Nom de Plume

I rarely read short stories; they seem to require a curious mindset, in which one feels intelligent but mildly ADD. Generally, I feel one or the other. That start and stop, start and stop puts me off, before I even begin. And it’s a shame, because my bookshelves are teeming with shorts. Like Mark Winegarder’s That’s True of Everybody. It was one of my Edward R. Hamilton purchases at least a year ago. I had read Winegardner’s novel Crooked River Burning, and liked it. So what the heck, I thought. The book has been moldering away since.

Well, I’m down with the flu–recovering nicely now, thank you–and spent all of Sunday lying in bed reading. One of my informal resolutions for the year is to catch up on the many titles I’ve bought but haven’t read. This was one. And it was a strange one.

Oh, not in a bad way. It’s just that I recently finished this book, and I can barely remember any of the individual shorts–but am still left with a general impression of everything being off somehow, that the strangeness of all the characters is somehow illuminated but universal. It was good.

The village of Fetherhoughton is a dour place, indeed. Anchored by moors, the people are superstitious and humorless in their isolation. The Catholic church is presided over by Father Angwin, who has lost his faith, and Sister Perpetua (otherwise known as Purpit) of the convent, an austere, cruel terror of a a woman. When the bishop decrees that the statues in the church are nothing more than idolatrous symbols and must come down, he also threatens Father Angwin with a curate. And thus appears Fludd. But Fludd is not all that he appears to be, and strange, miraculous things start to happen. Recommend.

Good airplane reading. May the person who found it in the seat pocket enjoy.

I had thought that this was an overrated book. I had thought it overhyped. I had thought that it wasn’t nearly as press-worthy as it appeared to be.

Reader, I was wrong.

I’m coming into this a little late in the game, so there’s no point in recapping the story. All I can say is that the e-mail exchange in the beginning makes it hard to get into the book–but once you do, it’s worth it. Well worth it.

Someone, somewhere (I wish I could remember who) said that Diana Norman was a great historical writer, so I promptly bookmooched the one book I found, which just happened to be A Catch of Consequence. It’s the Boston Tea Party, and Makepeace Burke rescues a drowning Englishman and hides him in her tavern–the very same tavern that Sam Adams and all his ale-swilling Patriots make all their plans in. When it is discovered that not only is she hiding an Englishman in her tavern, but that he’s nobility … well! And that he rescues her! And that they fall in love and move back to England! Well, and well, and well again. Highly improbable, but also highly entertaining … and I confess that midway through the book, I even shed a tear. So if you’re looking for a well-written historical diversion, look no further. I’ll probably even bookmooch some more Norman novels.

From the Tabakat-i Nasiri, written by court historian Minhaju-s Siraj:

Sultan Raziya was a great monarch. She was wise, just, and generous, a benefactor to her kingdom, a dispenser of justic, the protector or her subjects, and the leader of her armies. She was endowed with all the qualities befitting a king, but she was not born of the right sex, and so in the estimation of men all these virtues were worthless. (May God have mercy on her!)

In the time of her father, Sultan Sa’id Shamsu-d din, she had exercised authority with great dignity. Her mother was the chief wife of his majesty, and she resided in the chief royal palace in the Kushk-firizi. The Sultan discerned in her countenance the signs of power and bravery, and although she was a girl and lived in retirement, yet when the Sultan returned from the conquest of Gwalior, he directed his secretary Taju-l Malik Mahmud to put her name in writing as heir of the kingdom, and successor to the throne.

Before this farman was executed, the servants of the State, who were in close intimacy with his majesty represented that, seeing the kind had grown up sons who were worthy of the dignity, what wisdom could there be in making a woman their heir to a Muhammadan throne, and what advantage could accrue from it? They besought him to set their minds at ease, for the course that he proposed seemed very inexpedient. The king replied, “My sons are devoted to the pleasures of youthm and no one of them is qualified to be kind. They are unfit to rule the country, and after my death you will find that there is no one more competent to guide the State than my daughter.”

It was afterwards agreed by common consent that the king had judged wisely.

When Sultan Raziya succeeded to the throne, all things reverted to their old order. But the wazir of the State, Nizamu-l Mulk Junaidi did not give his adhesion. He, together with Malik Jani, Malik Kochi, Malik Kabir Khan, and Malik Izzu-d din Muhammad Salari assembling from different parts of the country at the gates of Delhi, made war against Sultan Raziya, and hostilities were carried on for a long time. After a while, Malik Nasiru-d din Tabashi Mu’izzi, who was governor of Oudh, brought up his forces to Delhi to the assistance of Sultan Raziya. When he had crossed the Ganges, the generals, who were fighting against Delhi, met him unexpectedly and took him prisoner. He then fell sick and died.

The stay of the insurgents at the gates of Delhi was protracted. Sultan Raziya, favoured by fortune, went out from the city and ordered her tents to be pitched at a place on the banks of the Jumna. Several engagements took place between the Turkish nobles who were on the side of the Sultan, and the insurgent chiefs. At last, peace was effected, with great adroitness and judicious management. Malik Izzu-d din Muhammad Salar and Malik Izzu-d din Kabir Khan Ayyaz secretly joined the Sultan and came at hight to her majesty’s tents, upon the understanding the Malik Jani, Malik Kochi, and Nizamu-l Mulk Janaidi were to be summoned and closely imprisoned, so that the rebellion might subside. When these chiefs were informed of this matter they fled from their camps, and some horsemen of the Sultan pursued them. Malik Kochi and his borther Fakhru-d din were captured, and were afterward killed in prison. Malik Jani went into the mountains of Bardar, and died there after a while.

This is hysterical, especially if you’ve been using WordPress for a long time.

Via Petrona

Reuters article, reprinted in its entirety.

My favorite line is “The Bush administration rejects Munshi’s views …”

US envoy says Iraq rebuilding plan won’t work

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Kiki Munshi was showcased by the media in September as a seasoned U.S. diplomat who came out of retirement to lead a rebuilding group in Iraq.

Now she is back home, angry, and convinced that President George W. Bush’s new strategy of doubling the number of such groups to 20 along with a troop surge of 21,500 will not help stabilize Iraq.

A diplomat for 22 years, she quit her job last month as leader of a Provincial Reconstruction Team — groups made up of about 50 civilian and military experts that try to help Iraqi communities build their own government while strengthening moderates.

“In spite of the magnificent and often heroic work being done out there by a lot of truly wonderful people, the PRTs themselves aren’t succeeding. The obstacles are too great,” Munshi said this week in Washington, where she was pressing her view at the State Department and to Congress.

“Once again we are proceeding to lay people’s lives on a line drawn with faulty information. Once again the fantasies of the ‘policy-makers’ drive decisions without much link to the realities on the ground,” said Munshi, who retired from the foreign service in 2002 .

Her postings included Romania, India and Sierra Leone before Iraq, where Munshi said he had felt a “moral obligation to sort out the mess we have made there.”

An audit by the special inspector general for Iraq last October found similar problems with the PRTs to those listed by Munshi, including an “ever-changing security situation, the difficulty of integrating civilian and military personnel, the lack of a finalized agreement on PRT operational requirements and responsibilities.”

REJECTION

Members of Congress have also been critical of the program, which suffered early on from not being able to attract enough civilian staff and a dispute between the State and Defense departments over who would provide security for the teams.

The Bush administration rejects Munshi’s views and the State Department said the expanded PRT plan was more focused, requiring team members to do pre-deployment training and with a clear goal of bolstering moderates and sidelining militants.

“We have been very mindful of the problems our PRT leaders have reported to us. We have worked very hard to streamline it,” said Barbara Stephenson, the deputy coordinator for Iraq at the State Department, which oversees the PRT plan.

Munshi said the PRT plan was ill-conceived, under-funded and poorly staffed.

She said security was so bad that the council in the town in Diyala province where she was based had not had a quorum since last October and that death squads were rife.

PRT members found it hard to meet with Iraqis because of intimidation, she said, giving the example of training sessions that had been canceled because of poor security.

The PRTs are embedded with the military, a tactic Munshi says has varying results depending on the ability of the unit.

“All the PRTs embedded with the military are subject to the vicissitudes of military fortune, for good or ill,” she said.

But the State Department countered that Munshi’s experiences were not repeated in all the provinces and set up interviews with two PRT leaders who said while there were difficulties, they believed their work was making an impact.

Stephanie Miley, a PRT leader in the Iraqi town of Tikrit, said her teams managed to get out to see Iraqi officials five or six times a week but security issues meant they could not stay for long.

“I just hope that people will recognize that this is not something we will achieve overnight,” she said.

Alternative titles to this blog post:
1. I wasted enough time on the movie. I don’t need to finish the book.

2. Damn those nefarious Border “3 for 2″ book schemes, especially in an airport when one is afraid of running out of reading material.

3. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

4. Lessons in bad writing: a casebook.

Anyone? Any other alternative titles?

Hannah Green and her father have escaped the Spanish Inquisition–but only after Hannah’s mother has been burned at the stake for being a Jew. Newly resettled in London, the illustrious Robert Dudley and his tutor come in to purchase books from her bookseller father, it is revealed that Hannah has a gift for the Sight when she sees three men rather than two–and they determine that the third is an angel. Dudley, who is thrillingly handsome to Hannah, capitalizes on his charm and promptly places her as a spy within the court of Queen Mary I. With a new role as the Holy Fool, Hannah becomes embroiled in court politics, balancing her allegiance to Mary with her admiration of the future Queen Elizabeth, and of course, her private life.

A nice diversion. I read this on the plane, and left it there too.