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UBC: Lying About Hitler
Nov. 6th, 2011 12:15 pmEvans, Richard J. Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. Basic Books-Perseus Books Group, 2001.
Like The Case for Auschwitz, this is a book written by an expert witness for the defense in the libel suit David Irving brought against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 2000. In this case, the expert witness is the historian: Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University; his role in the defense was to assess Irving as a historian.
His findings, briefly stated, are that Irving manipulated and misrepresented historical facts and primary sources from the very beginning of his career, and always twisting in favor of Nazi Germany and against the Allies. He goes into some detail in his discussion, but as far as I was concerned, not nearly enough. I don't care particularly about the confusion in the media about who was on trial (many commentators thought that the trial was about Irving being denied free speech) or about Evans' experience of being cross-examined by Irving--which is not to say that wasn't a nightmare, because it totally was; it's just that what I want is the process by which Evans and his research assistants retraced Irving's steps and dissected his twisting of evidence.
That's a personal bias. Leaving it aside, this is a perfectly good book; eleven years after the trial, it's not particularly illuminating--and actually, I think that is because Evans doesn't go through his 700 page expert opinion and lay out everything he discovered about Irving's quote-unquote "historiography." This is a popular book about the Irving trial--in the sense that it is written for a "popular," i.e., casual audience, and as such, it's much more ephemeral than van Pelt's book, which is partly about the trial, but mostly about the evidence, and which is written for an assumed audience that wants all the minutiae and neepery. That audience would be me. I'm never satisfied with books that only give me the surface of their topic; what I want, always, is the gears and vital organs underneath. Evans gives me some of that, but left me twitching and hungry for more.
Like The Case for Auschwitz, this is a book written by an expert witness for the defense in the libel suit David Irving brought against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 2000. In this case, the expert witness is the historian: Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University; his role in the defense was to assess Irving as a historian.
His findings, briefly stated, are that Irving manipulated and misrepresented historical facts and primary sources from the very beginning of his career, and always twisting in favor of Nazi Germany and against the Allies. He goes into some detail in his discussion, but as far as I was concerned, not nearly enough. I don't care particularly about the confusion in the media about who was on trial (many commentators thought that the trial was about Irving being denied free speech) or about Evans' experience of being cross-examined by Irving--which is not to say that wasn't a nightmare, because it totally was; it's just that what I want is the process by which Evans and his research assistants retraced Irving's steps and dissected his twisting of evidence.
That's a personal bias. Leaving it aside, this is a perfectly good book; eleven years after the trial, it's not particularly illuminating--and actually, I think that is because Evans doesn't go through his 700 page expert opinion and lay out everything he discovered about Irving's quote-unquote "historiography." This is a popular book about the Irving trial--in the sense that it is written for a "popular," i.e., casual audience, and as such, it's much more ephemeral than van Pelt's book, which is partly about the trial, but mostly about the evidence, and which is written for an assumed audience that wants all the minutiae and neepery. That audience would be me. I'm never satisfied with books that only give me the surface of their topic; what I want, always, is the gears and vital organs underneath. Evans gives me some of that, but left me twitching and hungry for more.
UBC: The Case for Auschwitz
Feb. 9th, 2010 01:38 pmvan Pelt, Robert Jan. The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.
with an assist from:
Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil. 1998. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.
Long, ranting in parts, depressed in others.
( click )
with an assist from:
Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil. 1998. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.
Long, ranting in parts, depressed in others.
( click )
UBC: The Piltdown Forgery
Sep. 20th, 2009 09:59 amWeiner, J. S. The Piltdown Forgery. 1953. Introd. Chris Stringer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Of the three books I've read about Piltdown Man, this, the first written, is also the best. It was written by one of the three men who actually uncovered the hoax, and unlike Ronald Millar's The Piltdown Men and Frank Spencer's Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery, it focuses first and extensively on the mechanics of the Piltdown forgery, and only then proceeds to the detective's whodunnit. Thus, by the time Weiner gets to talking about means, motive, and opportunity for the various suspects, he's already built a fairly clear picture of the perpetrator, based on the actual evidence of what the forger did (and, just as important, when he did it). And thus he convinces me that Charles Dawson hoaxed Arthur Smith Woodward and the paleontological establishment. (Chris Stringer's afterword, with the benefit of another fifty years of hindsight, makes it clear that if Dawson was the Piltdown forger, his actions fit into a pattern evident in the rest of his career--which cannot be said about any of the other suspects.) Possibly Weiner's best point is that (although he doesn't put it quite like this) Dawson, aside from being the only person who could control what was found at the two Piltdown sites, is the only person who benefited from the forgery. For every other suspect, the motive is embarrassing Smith Woodward, or Dawson, or another scientist, or British paleontology in general--and in every one of those cases, you end up having to ask, where was their pay-off? Why did they wait forty years for three scientists to quite independently do the reveal for them? But Dawson died in 1916--after which, as Weiner also points out, no further Piltdown discoveries were made, despite the fact that Smith Woodward continued excavations for the rest of his life--and Dawson got acclaim and respect from the London establishment. Not only does Dawson as forger apply Occam's Razor to the Gordian Knot (if you'll pardon the free mixing of metaphors), but it is also the only scenario in which the forger got what he wanted through his own actions.
There isn't any proof of Dawson's guilt (which is another fascinating thing about Piltdown: all accusations are hypotheses, because we still don't know), but Weiner convinced me. At the very least, it's the most plausible theory, and the most richly and firmly supported, that I've encountered.
Of the three books I've read about Piltdown Man, this, the first written, is also the best. It was written by one of the three men who actually uncovered the hoax, and unlike Ronald Millar's The Piltdown Men and Frank Spencer's Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery, it focuses first and extensively on the mechanics of the Piltdown forgery, and only then proceeds to the detective's whodunnit. Thus, by the time Weiner gets to talking about means, motive, and opportunity for the various suspects, he's already built a fairly clear picture of the perpetrator, based on the actual evidence of what the forger did (and, just as important, when he did it). And thus he convinces me that Charles Dawson hoaxed Arthur Smith Woodward and the paleontological establishment. (Chris Stringer's afterword, with the benefit of another fifty years of hindsight, makes it clear that if Dawson was the Piltdown forger, his actions fit into a pattern evident in the rest of his career--which cannot be said about any of the other suspects.) Possibly Weiner's best point is that (although he doesn't put it quite like this) Dawson, aside from being the only person who could control what was found at the two Piltdown sites, is the only person who benefited from the forgery. For every other suspect, the motive is embarrassing Smith Woodward, or Dawson, or another scientist, or British paleontology in general--and in every one of those cases, you end up having to ask, where was their pay-off? Why did they wait forty years for three scientists to quite independently do the reveal for them? But Dawson died in 1916--after which, as Weiner also points out, no further Piltdown discoveries were made, despite the fact that Smith Woodward continued excavations for the rest of his life--and Dawson got acclaim and respect from the London establishment. Not only does Dawson as forger apply Occam's Razor to the Gordian Knot (if you'll pardon the free mixing of metaphors), but it is also the only scenario in which the forger got what he wanted through his own actions.
There isn't any proof of Dawson's guilt (which is another fascinating thing about Piltdown: all accusations are hypotheses, because we still don't know), but Weiner convinced me. At the very least, it's the most plausible theory, and the most richly and firmly supported, that I've encountered.
UBC: The Wilkomirski Affair
Dec. 28th, 2008 10:41 amMaechler, Stefan. The Wilkomirski Affair: A Study in Biographical Truth. [Includes the complete text of Fragments by Binjamin Wilkomirski. Transl. Carol Brown Janeway.] Transl. John E. Woods. New York: Schocken Books, 2001.
The Wikipedia entry on Binjamin Wilkomirski provides a capsule summary of what this book is and how it came to be written.
I'm fascinated by forgeries and frauds, and in particular by narratives of how they come to be uncovered. Maechler (and his translator) writes a very clear, calm, patient account of his investigations and conclusions. What I found particularly striking is the compassion he shows, not merely for the Holocaust survivors and other innocent persons taken in by Wilkomirski's fraud, but for Wilkomirski himself--even in the face of Wilkomirski's attack on Maechler's competence and motives. Maechler doesn't merely disprove the validity of Wilkomirski's Holocaust survival narrative; he uncovers the truth--what can be found of it--of Wilkomirski's real childhood, and he champions the suffering of the child Bruno Grosjean in exactly the way he is accused (by Wilkomirski) of betraying the suffering of the imaginary child Binjamin Wilkomirski.
He also has a very thoughtful discussion of why Wilkomirski's fraud was accepted as truth--and not merely accepted but fervently embraced--analyzing and explaining the phenomenon through the rhetorical strategies both of the book and of Wilkomirski's performance as a Holocaust survivor, and through the needs and desires of the audiences before whom book and man performed, especially the ways in which Wilkomirski fit into and advanced the agendas of various parties, most of whom were sincere and legitimate researchers, advocates, and survivors, but one of whom, Laura Grabowski a.k.a. Lauren Stratford a.k.a. Laurel Rose Willson, was every bit as much a fraud as Wilkomirski himself. Their collusion, shading strongly as it does into folie à deux, is one of the most train-wreck fascinating byways of Maechler's investigation.
But mostly the book is compelling for Maechler's patience and persistence, for the way in which, again and again, he uncovers the truth by retracing Wilkomirski's steps, by talking to the people Wilkomirski talked to (most notably the Holocaust survivor Karola, whose story Wilkomirski appropriated), by asking questions Wilkomirski never bothered to ask--in particular, Wilkomirski's story of entering Switzerland illegally, which, in its rhetoric of victimhood, of the helpless child caught in the cruel teeth of the bureaucratic machine, feels true to those of us who have neither experience nor expertise to know better, but which, Maechler discovers, simply cannot have happened that way--that, in fact, the bureaucratic machine would have macerated and spat out the child long before he got to Basel. It's a deeply illuminating and disturbing demonstration of how far a lie can get if it reflects what its audience thinks the truth should look like.
The Wikipedia entry on Binjamin Wilkomirski provides a capsule summary of what this book is and how it came to be written.
I'm fascinated by forgeries and frauds, and in particular by narratives of how they come to be uncovered. Maechler (and his translator) writes a very clear, calm, patient account of his investigations and conclusions. What I found particularly striking is the compassion he shows, not merely for the Holocaust survivors and other innocent persons taken in by Wilkomirski's fraud, but for Wilkomirski himself--even in the face of Wilkomirski's attack on Maechler's competence and motives. Maechler doesn't merely disprove the validity of Wilkomirski's Holocaust survival narrative; he uncovers the truth--what can be found of it--of Wilkomirski's real childhood, and he champions the suffering of the child Bruno Grosjean in exactly the way he is accused (by Wilkomirski) of betraying the suffering of the imaginary child Binjamin Wilkomirski.
He also has a very thoughtful discussion of why Wilkomirski's fraud was accepted as truth--and not merely accepted but fervently embraced--analyzing and explaining the phenomenon through the rhetorical strategies both of the book and of Wilkomirski's performance as a Holocaust survivor, and through the needs and desires of the audiences before whom book and man performed, especially the ways in which Wilkomirski fit into and advanced the agendas of various parties, most of whom were sincere and legitimate researchers, advocates, and survivors, but one of whom, Laura Grabowski a.k.a. Lauren Stratford a.k.a. Laurel Rose Willson, was every bit as much a fraud as Wilkomirski himself. Their collusion, shading strongly as it does into folie à deux, is one of the most train-wreck fascinating byways of Maechler's investigation.
But mostly the book is compelling for Maechler's patience and persistence, for the way in which, again and again, he uncovers the truth by retracing Wilkomirski's steps, by talking to the people Wilkomirski talked to (most notably the Holocaust survivor Karola, whose story Wilkomirski appropriated), by asking questions Wilkomirski never bothered to ask--in particular, Wilkomirski's story of entering Switzerland illegally, which, in its rhetoric of victimhood, of the helpless child caught in the cruel teeth of the bureaucratic machine, feels true to those of us who have neither experience nor expertise to know better, but which, Maechler discovers, simply cannot have happened that way--that, in fact, the bureaucratic machine would have macerated and spat out the child long before he got to Basel. It's a deeply illuminating and disturbing demonstration of how far a lie can get if it reflects what its audience thinks the truth should look like.
Kaplan, Louise J. The Family Romance of the Impostor-Poet Thomas Chatterton. New York: Atheneum, 1988.
But, Mole, you say--and rightly so--the only thing you hate more than biographical criticism is Freudian biographical criticism. What are you doing reading this book?
Well, you see, it was on the five-dollar table . . .
Okay, so I disagree with Kaplan's psychoconceptual model--and that on several levels, because (1) I can't read--much less say--with a straight face passages like, "By proving that something which is not real is real, the imposter allays his mutilation anxiety. That peculiar logic derives from an image of something he has seen and found so frightening that he must prove it isn't real. The terrifying image that must be denied and reversed is that of the woman's penisless genitals, a sight that arouses anxiety in most little boys, but absolute terror in fatherless boys who have no masculine ally around to defend them from the all-powerful, swallowing-up mother" (217). And (2) even if I could, I am deeply deeply dubious about applying straight-up Freudianism to the psychosexuality of any subject born before about 1850. Freud's theory is based on a very particular definition of sex and the difference--and relationship--between the sexes. (Also a very particular definition of childhood, and of the gendered basis of parenting, and so on and so forth.) I don't think it applies very well to people who weren't brought up with those definitions.
(There are things Freud articulates that I do think are useful--the nature of the unheimlich is one--but almost none of them has anything to do with sex. My personal opinion about Freud's theories of sexuality is that we've spent a century being brainwashed by one man's rationalization of his own sexual hang-ups. But I digress.)
The fact that I don't agree with her theory doesn't mean I can't find interest and value in her book, and in fact much of Kaplan's book, the parts that are either straightforward biographical investigation or engagement with Chatterton's other biographers, are fascinating. And my principal objection to biographical criticism doesn't so much apply to Chatterton. The nature of his enterprise (amateurish forging of fifteenth century poetry--which nevertheless managed to fool a great many men who should have known better), and the fact that he was only 17 when he committed suicide, means that the connections between his life and his writing are transparent. I'm even convinced that in Chatterton's case, the obsession with the absent father explains a good deal.
What interested me most was the relationship between Chatterton and his biographers--the gaps and discrepancies and outright fabrications in the stories they tell about him vs. the (really sufficiently odd all on their own) things we know about his life and psyche from his own writing. To me that's the most fascinating thing about biography: the attempt or the refusal to make a narrative, and what agendas those narratives may serve.
But, Mole, you say--and rightly so--the only thing you hate more than biographical criticism is Freudian biographical criticism. What are you doing reading this book?
Well, you see, it was on the five-dollar table . . .
Okay, so I disagree with Kaplan's psychoconceptual model--and that on several levels, because (1) I can't read--much less say--with a straight face passages like, "By proving that something which is not real is real, the imposter allays his mutilation anxiety. That peculiar logic derives from an image of something he has seen and found so frightening that he must prove it isn't real. The terrifying image that must be denied and reversed is that of the woman's penisless genitals, a sight that arouses anxiety in most little boys, but absolute terror in fatherless boys who have no masculine ally around to defend them from the all-powerful, swallowing-up mother" (217). And (2) even if I could, I am deeply deeply dubious about applying straight-up Freudianism to the psychosexuality of any subject born before about 1850. Freud's theory is based on a very particular definition of sex and the difference--and relationship--between the sexes. (Also a very particular definition of childhood, and of the gendered basis of parenting, and so on and so forth.) I don't think it applies very well to people who weren't brought up with those definitions.
(There are things Freud articulates that I do think are useful--the nature of the unheimlich is one--but almost none of them has anything to do with sex. My personal opinion about Freud's theories of sexuality is that we've spent a century being brainwashed by one man's rationalization of his own sexual hang-ups. But I digress.)
The fact that I don't agree with her theory doesn't mean I can't find interest and value in her book, and in fact much of Kaplan's book, the parts that are either straightforward biographical investigation or engagement with Chatterton's other biographers, are fascinating. And my principal objection to biographical criticism doesn't so much apply to Chatterton. The nature of his enterprise (amateurish forging of fifteenth century poetry--which nevertheless managed to fool a great many men who should have known better), and the fact that he was only 17 when he committed suicide, means that the connections between his life and his writing are transparent. I'm even convinced that in Chatterton's case, the obsession with the absent father explains a good deal.
What interested me most was the relationship between Chatterton and his biographers--the gaps and discrepancies and outright fabrications in the stories they tell about him vs. the (really sufficiently odd all on their own) things we know about his life and psyche from his own writing. To me that's the most fascinating thing about biography: the attempt or the refusal to make a narrative, and what agendas those narratives may serve.
