Tragic Story Research Articles

Reading Henry Miller in the New Millennium

Reading Henry Miller in the New Millennium Daniel Manuel Mendoza (bio) Sit in on any creative writing course and you are likely to see a lot of unwarranted praise. The writing workshop as it exists today is equivalent to group therapy, where the professor—instead of reading every MFA candidate’s work with a critical eye—applauds even the most embarrassing attempts as works of creative genius. The issue is that writers in the MFA programs rarely read the greats. How could they? The MFA workshops typically consist of a three-hour weekly meeting where we get to hear embarrassing attempts at memoir or poor imitations of Alice Munro. The MFA reading lists I have seen have two primary texts: some kind of writer’s handbook full of silly exercises more appropriate for old ladies and works of contemporary fiction—provided by the professor’s friends. Professors, critics, editors, and writers feel the overwhelming necessity to give lip service to the “concerns” of authors who are a racial minority or who identify with an alternative lifestyle. The politically correct environment of contemporary arts has brought on this necessity. Today, every genre has a community that serves as a “safe space” for these groups. They all come complete with a university funded journal, a small press, and a set of conferences at AWP every year. Even the parties at AWP are designated by genres. If you do not fulfill the aesthetic or moral aspects of any such genre, you are unwelcome. Me and Joe Haske—another working-class writer—accidentally walked into a party sponsored by a big east coast writer’s retreat one night in LA. We were quickly made aware of our mistake when an older man in a camel hair jacket turned to us and said, “Well young men, you certainly look like you have a few tragic stories to tell.” The rest of the crowd snickered and we finished our drinks, drank a few more, and then headed back to our bar on skid row. I don’t take issue with the growing diversity of contemporary literary fiction. If it weren’t for the encouragement of diversity, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities to study where I have and then work with American Book Review, Pleiades, or Boulevard. I do take issue with the vacuum it has created. We have become a culture that is afraid of stepping out of our groups. We no longer challenge our assumptions and we have failed at creating a more complex body of literary work. In the world of literary fiction today—both in MFA programs and in the journals—the works of Miller would have no place because they challenge the politically correct assumptions we have come to accept as fact. When Miller is talked about it’s usually in the context of his antifeminist and hyper-misogynistic attitude. One recent critic of Tropic of Cancer (1934) asserts if it “has traveled from banned book to spiritual classic that tells us ‘who we are’? A reasonable objection is that ‘we’ cannot include women, unless a woman is comfortable with her identity as a half-witted ‘piece of tail.’” Is it reasonable to object to Miller’s work as one that is unacceptable for contemporary readers—particularly female readers? And what do we make of the female readers that find other valuable aspects of Miller’s “spiritual classic”? Further, should we ban all books that portray women in a negative way? Perhaps the Old Testament and Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) should be off the shelves, as well? When we evaluate a work of art we should keep in mind the importance of analyzing it with the complexity it deserves. To consider any work of art from any time period with one-sided judgments does a great disservice to our culture. When we threaten the legitimacy of Miller’s art because of one narrow aspect of his work, then we risk making the same mistake this country has made in its attempts to ban the works of Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. Like Whitman, Melville, Twain, and countless other American writers, Miller’s work provides a wealth of philosophical and...

On Fairness and Accuracy in the Academy: A Brief Response to Wim Vergeer's Use of Terminologies, and Some Simplifications, in the Article "The Redeemer in an 'Irredeemable Text' (1 Timothy 2:9–15)"

On Fairness and Accuracy in the Academy:A Brief Response to Wim Vergeer's Use of Terminologies, and Some Simplifications, in the Article "The Redeemer in an 'Irredeemable Text' (1 Timothy 2:9–15)" Maretha M. Jacobs The reason for this brief response is that, in the above-mentioned article, Wim Vergeer dealt with my work, and with that of another scholar (Gerald West), inaccurately. More precisely, he ascribed to us an expression that neither of us used in the form quoted by him (Vergeer 2016, 84). Although the most visible problem is the incorrect quotation, more than a mere quotation is at stake, as will become clear. Since an academic discourse is an open one, this matter is discussed here in the openness of the same academic journal in which his contribution was published. Although I only write on behalf of myself, for the sake of fairness I briefly refer to the article by West. Already in the abstract of Vergeer's article (2016, 71), the term "irredeemable texts of terror" is used and dealt with as if it is an existing expression with which he links up. At this stage, he merely ascribes it to "some" who "branded" this passage in this way, without providing names. Having read the article, I realised that Vergeer did not link up with an existing expression, but coined it himself by conflating two separate terms, used by two different authors—one by me and the other by Gerald West. Instead of making it explicit that he himself coined the term, thus taking responsibility for it, he ascribes it to both West and myself. On p. 73, he does keep the terms "irredeemable" and "texts of terror" separate, and places them between quotation marks, but he fails to link each term to a specific person's name. In the hermeneusis (p. 84), he explicitly ascribes the conflated term, which neither of us created, to both of us. The term "texts of terror" is, of course, a term that is used by feminist biblical scholars, although I have never used it myself. It is probably derived from Phyllis Trible's book, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (1984), in which she undertook a close reading of the tragic stories of four abused women in the OT, reinterpreting them in the process. Gerald West used the term in the title of a 2004 article. Contrary to the un-nuanced way in which his work is referred to by Vergeer, West's is a theoretically well-informed article that not only brings into focus specific [End Page 359] contemporary examples of how the passage has been abused to the detriment of women, but also makes meaningful suggestions for interpreting the passage in a more life-giving way. By not taking the content of the article seriously, and merely relating the term "texts of terror" to its history of reception (Vergeer 2016, 84), the nature of the article is distorted. I did use the term "irredeemable" between quotation marks in a 2005 article: "On 1 Timothy 2:9–15: Why Still Interpret 'Irredeemable' Biblical Texts?" (Jacobs 2005a).1 However, I carefully qualified and therefore nuanced it (2005a, 85). By not taking this into account and by removing the quotation marks from the term, in both the abstract and the hermeneusis of his article, this nuance was completely lost (Vergeer 2016, 71, 84). His linking of the term "irredeemable," as used by me, solely with the passage's "depressing history of reception," as he calls it (2016, 84), is also not correct. In my article, I specifically paid attention to the problematic nature of the passage itself, embedded as it was in the Greco-Roman patriarchal culture of the time, in which males spoke and wrote about females and the latter did not have the authority to speak for themselves, where and when it mattered, specifically in the public sphere (Jacobs 2005a, 88–89). The passage itself, based as it was on the values of the hierarchical Roman household (Martin 2008, 278), gave rise to abuse against women. Part of the issue addressed by my article was whether or not it is really possible to...

Saint Sebastian and the Mule-driver’s Wife: Marguerite de Navarre’s Renaissance Martyr

The second tale of Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron recounts the tragic story of the mule-driver’s wife. This virtuous woman is brutally attacked with a sword, raped, and murdered. Scholars have remarked on similarities between this tale and hagiographical narratives, but the parallels between the heroine and Saint Sebastian in particular are noteworthy. This article demonstrates that Marguerite’s heroine manifests exemplary spiritual fortitude when confronted with brutality just as Saint Sebastian did. It also reveals that Marguerite’s narrative engages in Renaissance religious controversy by making a statement about saints, violence, and female heroic virtue in Renaissance France.

Myth, Ritual, and the Early Development of Shiite Identity

Abstract The developing myth about the events at Karbala, as well as the image of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī and the cult connected with him, were important factors in the shaping of early Shiite identity. In this article, I argue that some of the earliest traces of this process are found in the account of the Tawwābūn, or Penitents, events which took place in the years immediately following the death of al-Ḥusayn at Karbala in 60/680. Important elements of this story originate at least as early as the late first/early eighth century. In the story we see the image of al-Ḥusayn in process of transformation from that of someone merely human to someone ascribed traits that transcend the human. In the same course of events, the story of his death at Karbala is in process of being elevated from a tragic story to a myth with its associated rituals.

Whom to Trust When Sick?

A21 -year-old hardworking student from Xidian University in Xi'an, Wei Zexi MJffi, has been at the centre of public discussion since his death in April 2016. When diagnosed with end-stage synovial sarcoma back in 2014, Wei and his family searched for more information on ways to treat the seemingly incurable disease. Baidu, the largest Internet search engine in China, naturally became a useful channel for information. The family's search on Baidu linked them to the Second Hospital of Beijing Armed Police Corps, ranked a Grade A tertiary (sanji jiadeng ^^), the highest ranking in the Chinese hospital classification scheme. Wei and his family were assured by a doctor at the hospital that there was a very high chance of saving Wei's life after rounds of medical treatment called cellular immunotherapy. The doctor's indication of collaboration with Stanford University in the United States further raised the hope of Wei's family. However, the treatment also put the family in massive debt with its extraordinary cost. When Wei's medical condition deteriorated, the doctor in charge revoked his previous claims about the success rate of the treatment and was found to have lied about collaboration with the renowned university. Wei and his family felt deceived by the hospital as well as Baidu. Before his death, Wei posted a long article on the Internet in February 2016, blaming Baidu for doing evil with its information rank bidding service jingjia paiming%and expressing his grievance against the hospital and the doctor in charge without revealing their names.® When he passed away on 12 April, his tragic story stirred up a huge public outcry on media originating with the question-and-answer platform Zhihu £p^. Public concern over the death of Wei Zexi was enormous, with 370 million people having read about the case on the media platform Weibo as of 7 May.® Initially, heavy criticism was directed towards Baidu. State-run media such as People's Daily and China Daily criticised Baidu for a business model lacking in social responsibility and made a general call for improvements in state regulation.® Baidu's commercial competitors also joined this round of attack on Baidu.(4)The Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), however, soon caused the case to die down on 4 May by urging related media to delete posts that take the opportunity to attack the Party, the Government, the medical system, and the system. Some news articles covering the scandal about the military hospital could no longer be read from then on.®Meanwhile, various government departments took action to ease public discontent in early May. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), and State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) launched a joint investigation into Baidu on 2 May, followed by state directives demanding a re-organisation of Baidu's search page and modification of its information rank bidding service.®The NHFPC and Central Military Commission (CMC) also looked into the operation of the Second Hospital of Beijing Armed Police Corps on 3 May. All collaboration between military-operated hospitals and private medical companies was suspended. Several officials in the hospital were disciplined after publication of the investigation report.(7) There have also been calls for termination of paid services provided by the military.(8)Indeed, the Wei Zexi Incident combines a number of problems that have long existed with Baidu and healthcare reform in China. It ignited heated discussion amongst the general public and experts, notably on the circulation of online medical advertisements without proper regulation, the lack of transparency about the outsourcing of medical departments of military1. run hospitals to private medical companies, the quality of which is often in serious doubt, and the limits of the recent round of healthcare reform. …

It's Time for Innovation in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Whether it is the result of a tragic news story, a thoughtful commentary, or a segment on the entertainment networks, patient privacy rights are never far from the top of our minds. The Privacy and Security Rules contained in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) represent a concerted effort to protect the privacy and security of the volumes of patient data generated by the health care system. However, the last twenty years has seen innovations and advancements in health information technology that were unimaginable at that time. It is time for innovation to the Privacy and Security Rules. We offer a common and relatable scenario as proof that certain Privacy and Security Rules can tie the hands of educators and innovators and need to be transformed.

The Book of Daniel: Exposure and Criticism of Political Violence

AbstractE. L. Doctorow’s historical novel The Book of Daniel (1971), by using trauma narrative, from the perspective of the political Left wing, combining memory with imagination and mixing history with fiction, reconstructs the tragic historical story of Daniel’s parents who were electrocuted for treason by the state in the 1950s, exposes and criticizes the political violence as the root of trauma imposed upon the younger generation from that tragedy.

Shalimar the Clown and the Politics of “Worlding” the Kashmir Conflict

This article analyzes Salman Rushdie’s novel Shalimar the Clown and argues that while Rushdie’s strategies of “worlding” produce a compelling “political elegy” (Mondal 31) of Kashmir and powerfully confront post-9/11 Islamophobia across the world, the problem lies in Shalimar’s memorializing Kashmir as a tragic story of loss and violence. This elides the many ongoing, complex, stories of Kashmir – stories of conflict and suffering, but also people’s struggles to survive, to rebuild, to heal homes and communities.

Visual History with Choson Dynasty Annals

For this paper, the authors selected three historical events taken from the Annals of the Choson Dynasty that represent dramatic and tragic stories about parents and their sons for data visualization. By connecting names with entities indicating conductions from history books, they found interesting patterns that tell stories with embedded relations. The visualized images in this paper were mainly code-generated, based on the data of the Annals, with some graphic embellishment added.

The Happy End of Tragic Story: Recycling of Avulsed Teeth

The Happy End of Tragic Story: Recycling of Avulsed Teeth

Migrant Narratives and Ethnographic Tropes

Tragic stories of border crossings are often central to accounts of migration, and as ethnographers we are privy to stories of clandestine crossings, painful separations, and unspeakable loss. In the process of writing, ethnographers make these stories central to their own arguments and in so doing, those crossings, separations, and losses become knowable, imaginable, and part of a larger story of global interconnectedness and inequality. Ethnographers of migration write about those who cross borders, who become stuck within borders, or who are forcibly moved across borders because of deportation. Ethnographers thus position themselves at the crossroads of being activists, storytellers, and academics, even as they also locate their informants’ narratives along trajectories of tragedy and possibility.

Workplace Ladder-Related Electrical Accidents: “Repetitive Injuries”

Dear Editor, Every year, many workers throughout the world are killed or injured as a result of inadvertent contact with power-line conductors. Surprisingly, over half of those killed are not in traditionally electrical fields, i.e., not linemen, electricians, technicians, etc. (1). Electricity remains a serious workplace hazard to anyone who works in an industrial environment (2). Contact between portable metal ladders and overhead power lines cause serious and often fatal injuries to workers. Data show that during the years 1980 to 1985, the contact of metal ladders with overhead power lines accounted for approximately 4% of all work-related electrocutions in the United States (e.g., 17 out of 382 deaths for 1985) (3). Workers often misjudge wire distances or lose control of fully extended ladders, thereby exposing themselves to electrocution hazard (4). Ladder contact with power lines usually occurs during the erection, lowering, or relocation of the ladder (5). Case history: Contact with a high-voltage overhead power line happened in March 2014, while five workers (mean age 24) relocated a 6-meter four-wheeled metal stool. First, the victims were transferred to a private general hospital without a dedicated burn unit. After two days, they were referred to our tertiary burn center. Sadly, all of them sustained serious injuries and standard treatments had not yet been carried out. On the first day of their admission, the average burn size of the victims was 15.8%. One death occurred due to sepsis and organ failure. Nine limb amputations (upper or lower, proximal to the wrist or the ankle) were performed. In 2 cases, amputation of 3 extremities was carried out. Discussion: Unfortunately, these tragic stories of workplace fatality or injuries are frequent, happening every day. How are ladder-related electrical fatalities and injuries among workers to be prevented? There are clear regulations to prevent workers’ deaths and injuries from contact with overhead power lines when using metal ladders or similar appliances. Implementation of the following occupational safety rules should be mandatory in operations when working near overhead power lines: 1) All workers should be trained in the operation’s overhead power-line hazards. 2) Overhead power lines should be de-energized or insulated before the start of work. 3) Non-conductive ladders (fiberglass or wood) should be used around power lines. Careful attention to occupational safety regulations will reduce the incidence of occupational injuries (6). If occupational regulations had been applied by these workers and their manager, this event might have been prevented.

When breath becomes air

Many doctors, as they approach old age, observe that it is only when they themselves, or members of their family, fell ill and became patients that they really understood what the patients whom they had treated had had to go through. Paul Kalanithi wrote When Breath Becomes Air while he was waiting to die from metastatic lung cancer. It is, however, much more than just another tragic life story or the memoirs of a cancer victim—literary forms that are currently very popular—as Kalanithi was a young neurosurgeon who was just on the point of completing his training when his cancer was diagnosed. As with many doctors with cancer—who often deny their symptoms—it was some time before the diagnosis was made. He dismissed his back pain—caused by secondary disease in his spine—as being benign. He recounts the months of treatment, and the difficult limbo of prolonged remission, which modern medicine can now give us. We are treated but not cured and must learn to live with a slow death sentence. He movingly describes the negotiation between hope and acceptance of death, and the complexity of discussions with your oncologist, as different chemotherapy treatments provide only temporary reprieve, and become increasingly toxic. The balance between hope and resignation becomes increasingly difficult to judge. He died at the age of 37 before …

New York City as Dwelling Place: Reinventing the American Dream in Steven Millhauser'sMartin Dressler, Joseph O'Neill'sNetherland, and Atticus Lish'sPreparation for the Next Life

York City has long been emblematic of American dream, celebrated in historical and fictional accounts, photography, and film. In his founding narrative on American dream in The Epic of America (1931), James Truslow Adams points to York City as center of American economic prosperity, but he claims that in quest for material well-being Americans have forgotten how to live (56-57, 186-87, 40406). More recently Michel de Certeau, observing York City from atop (original) World Trade Center, sees himself as a voyeur, not a walker, remote from practices of everyday life {Practice 92-93). Certeau argues that a city is not just a place, a location on a map, but a space in which people read and talk and walk and dwell- a dwelling place (94-97, 117-18). This tension between vast reaches of city with its seemingly endless opportunities and realities of everyday life is captured in vivid images from early twentieth-century photography and film (Lindner, After-Images; Lindner, New York Vertical) and is explored in contemporary fictional accounts that seek to reinvent American dream not as a quest for economic and social status but as a way of life-the originary dream of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (Cullen 35-58). Steven Millhauser's Martin Dressier: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996) portrays a character who achieves, and tragically exceeds, his dream of rebuilding York City but cannot experience a meaningful personal relationship, even with his wife. Joseph O'Neill's Netherland (2009) rewrites this version of American dream in two interwoven stories: narrator's tale of a character who is destroyed by his dream of limitless and saga of his own attempts to rebuild his fragile relationship with his wife and son, played out in post-9/11 London and York. Atticus Lish's Preparation for Next Life (2014) rethinks and questions even dream of personal freedom and happiness for a man and woman at margins of York City's economic life, whose highly emotional and ultimately tragic love story is shattered by War in Iraq and trauma and neglect experienced by returning soldiers; by violence, drugs, and alcohol; and by restrictions on employment opportunities and threat of arrest, deportation, or imprisonment of illegal immigrants.Historically, American dream has been most closely associated with success as measured by economic and social status (Cullen 3-10, 59102, 133-57; Samuel 1-11, 111-16, 144-47). Contemporary fictional accounts suggest, however, that for many Americans and indeed for many others old dream of success has become a quest for something much simpler and more fundamental: a new dream of meaningful personal relationships and honest work as a means of achieving a measure of human dignity and economic or even physical survival. In cultural history, essence of American dream has long been the notion of upward mobility, idea that one can, through dedication and with a can-do spirit, climb ladder of success and reach a higher social and economic position (Samuel 7). Its most tangible instantiation is ownership of an individual family home: No American Dream has broader appeal, and no American Dream has been quite so widely realized (Cullen 136). The dream persists, Lawrence R. Samuel believes, despite changing economic and social trends, and is enriched and revitalized by continual flow of immigrants into United States, their enthusiasm and energy to achieve great things rubbing off on all of us (202). Jim Cullen maintains, moreover, that dream has evolved in part due to this flow of immigrants, as the trend... toward greater acceptance and opportunity has gradually expanded from men to women, from Irish and German to Arab and Mexican populations, and from Jews to Muslims (188).In fiction, classic portrait of American dream is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), which captures this striving for economic and social status in narrator Nick Carraway's portrayal of nouveau riche Jay Gatsby and lavish home and extravagant parties that serve as emblems of his success. …

What the Canadian Public is Being Told About the More than 1200 Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and First Nations Issues: A Content and Context Analysis of Major Mainstream Canadian Media, 2014-2015

Our examination of coverage from 2006 to 2015 in eight major daily newspapers identified more than 30,000 stories that referenced issues relevant to Indigenous individuals and communities. Through a more in-depth search for coverage of Indigenous individuals and communities between 2014 and 2015, we located nearly 2,500 articles. Many of these articles dealt with murdered and missing Indigenous women, which is the particular focus of this study. In this report, we present the findings of the quantitative and qualitative media analyses we conducted. The empirical analysis provides an evidence-based foundation for our exploration of issues identified by previous research and reflections on the coverage.• Readers could expect to find a front page story on First Nations’ issues in any newspaper at most once a week, suggesting a lack of media attention that inadequately represents the of the importance of the issues• While Indigenous voices were present in more than half of the stories we examined, it is not clear that articles were consistently framed in terms that would communicate First Nations’ perspectives effectively to non-Aboriginal audiences• There was considerable emphasis on Canada’s responsibility for its lack of response to the MMIW issue as well as on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) ineffectiveness in bringing closure and justice to the families of women who had been murdered or gone missing. While nearly a third of the coverage of the MMIW focused on straight-forward reporting of events, a high proportion included a reference to the moral or ethical issues involved in government policies or lack thereof, with calls for a public inquiry gaining most attention. • The manner in which Aboriginal issues are reported by mainstream Canadian media is what we call a ‘searchlight phenomenon,’ meaning that the media presents brief intensive coverage of Indigenous issues (i.e. demonstrations, occupations, suicides, the murdered and missing Indigenous women, unsettled resource claims, police incompetence) followed by a reporting void. • The coverage of the Tina Fontaine case transcended ethnic stereotypes and engendered a broader human response by the national media. Personalizing her story became one of the ways that the national media transformed a tragic news story into a national event that moved Canadians.• In general the Indigenous news sources were found to be optimistic in their reporting of issues, with a strong focus on mobilizing for change. Despite limited resources, they offered more suggestions for repairing the broken relationship between the federal or provincial governments and First Nations than the mainstream news outlets. Even in articles that were not opinion-based, there was clearer apportionment of blame placed squarely on the government and police for their lack of effort and attention to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. The root causes of the issue were also discussed more frequently in the Indigenous coverage. • In the First Nations media, racism and colonialism are often seen as the causes of the issues facing Indigenous people today. On balance, the Indigenous press more accurately reflected the values and concerns of their community. These media sources were also much more assertive than the mainstream media in their insistence not only that an inquiry into the missing and murdered Indigenous women was needed, but also that immediate action, better protection for women, and an overhaul of social services were necessary.• A major reason that the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women garnered increased coverage by the mainstream media is the pressure from First Nations communities and their ability to use social media strategically to present their case forcibly to the Canadian public. Their mobilizing efforts have succeeded in forcing the issue from the margins where it had been relegated for too long into the national consciousness. The RCMP report into the murdered and missing aboriginal women itself appears to have been a response to the work of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC).

The Ultrahazardous Activity of Excluding Family Members in Canada's Immigration System

A family, while waiting to be resettled as refugees, welcomed a new baby and for fear of delaying the processing of their application, they did not disclose of the birth of their child. A woman is afraid to disclose her baby born out of rape due to social stigma and the shame of being unwed. A father is afraid to speak to a local interpreter at a Canadian embassy about the existence of a child born out of an affair. A father believed his son was killed in genocide but after he arrived in Canada, the International Committee of the Red Cross located his son. What do all of these stories have in common? They are tragic stories that start with the non-disclosure and non-examination of a family member in an immigration application and end with permanent family separation.This paper is about Regulation 117(9)(d), a law whose purpose is to prevent immigration based on misrepresentation and fraud, but actually results in the harsh imposition of a lifetime ban from sponsoring bona fide family members. The paper argues that the regulatory regime is prejudicial, a sticky generalization that allows non-discretionary exclusion of persons from Canada. Further, while the government may feel that this regulation makes it easier to determine who is in the family class, it is not merely suboptimal, but inhumane and unconstitutional.The paper first provides an overview of Canada’s family reunification scheme, and how family members are excluded from sponsorship by regulation 117(9)(d). The paper then discusses the real consequences of being caught under the provision, how it addresses a non-existent problem, and finally, how it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Shore, Marci The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe (review)

SEER, 94, 2, APRIL 2016 378 Shore, Marci. The Taste of Ashes: The Afterlife of Totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. William Heinemann, London, 2013. xiv + 370 pp. Cast of historical figures. £20.00: $27.00. In her first book, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968 (New Haven, CT, 2006), Marci Shore undertook extensive archival reading to illustrate how a generation of Polish Marxists evolved from a clique of interwar idealist dreamers excited about a revolutionary future into a pathetic band of sellouts and tyrants. After taking power at Stalin’s behest, they continued to purge themselves from the inside out at the same time that they repressed society. Ultimately, ‘the war and the Stalinist era had broken all of them, each in different ways’, Shore concludes (p. 328). Especially after 1956 some gave in to alcoholism, others descended into depression or grew horribly ill, not a few committed suicide and Jakub Berman, once head of Poland’s feared Stalinist secret police, begged for the restoration of his party card after he had been purged. Sudden influence in an unexpectedly Communist Polish state after World War Two had unravelled their community and mortgaged their souls. The Taste of Ashes is not a sequel, as its title might suggest, nor is it a scholarly monograph. Lacking footnotes, a bibliography and even an index, Shore’s second book is a meld of history, memoir and memory based on her encounters with a broad spectrum of Eastern Europeans from her first visit to the region in 1993 through the present. Framing herself as a naive American student at first adrift in a complex and tragic post-socialist world, Shore recounts how her notions of a ‘happy ending’ after Communism dissolved at once. On the one hand, she met scores of everyday intellectuals whose lives had been upended and whose future remained uncertain. From the students she taught in English language schools in Prague and Domažlice to her own ill-fated Czech instructor in Vermont, these are often tragic stories of winded people trying to find their way in a world that had long since gone awry. On the other hand, she came to know people who had been leading dissidents, not least members of the Charter 77 movement in post-1968 Czechoslovakia. One intriguing theme here is former dissidents’ apparent lack of faith in the people, as when Charter 77 member Jan Urban related to Shore his frustration with human passivity. Just four years after the end of Communism, Urban told her, ‘many people remember it as a very comfortable life’ in which there was ‘nothing to really cry about’ (p. 30). In Romania too, Shore recounts resentment among dissidents that they alone had believed in anything while the public had bent with the political winds. Nonetheless, much like the Communists who populated Shore’s first book, any dissident who took power after 1989 appears ready to sacrifice earlier ideals and succumb to corruption. Nationalism and antisemitism associated with Eastern Europe form another recurring theme in Shore’s post-socialist memories. In the multi-ethnic REVIEWS 379 Transylvanian city of Cluj, she encounters students troubled by RomanianHungarian segregation and personally interacts with Cluj’s notorious nationalist pro-Romanian mayor, Nicolae Gheorghe. Shore’s experiences with fellow Jewish students in Cracow and Auschwitz and reflections on Poland’s 1968 anti-Zionist Campaign coincide with her confrontation of ongoing violent crime in 1990s Warsaw, in which a Polish graduate student despaired to her that ‘the pillars of Polish reality’ were ‘envy, insanity, racism, and hooliganism’ (p. 141). In keeping with this motif, Shore’s narratives about Poland regularly dip back into the time of the Holocaust. One learns that it was out of this context that she first gained her interest in exploring the Jewish background of so many Polish Communists: a theme that mattered much in her first book, and whose backstory fills the heart and conclusion of her second. Shore’s book freely shifts between past and present, making it something of a temporal palimpsest. After introducing Tim Snyder, who was researching wartime Polish-Ukrainian ethnic cleansing before they were married, Shore introduces Snyder’s friend...

Tragic Historic Story of 'Knowledge, Power and Being': Film 'The Throne'

Tragic Historic Story of 'Knowledge, Power and Being': Film 'The Throne'

Narrating the Contested Space of Detroit’s River Rouge, 1600–2015

Abstract The River Rouge, which flows through Michigan into the Great Lakes at Detroit, has been a contested space, from the Mound Builders c. 1100 AD to the present. The river’s changing uses and meanings provide a microcosm of North American history, including Native Americans, French fur traders, the British, American settlers, small-scale industries, and Henry Ford’s largest factory. Narratives treat the river as a landscape, as a highway, as a natural resource, as raw material, as a minor detail, or as a threatened environment. The river has been part of a romantic view of pre-history, a heroic story of colonial conquest, a tale of democratic expansion into new land, an exemplary second creation in which unfinished nature is transformed into the world’s largest factory, a narrative of class warfare between workers and capitalists, a tale of the triumph of democracy over National Socialism in World War II, a tragic story of the exploitation of nature, and a recovery narrative in which the river is rescued from pollution and misuse.

Thoughts at the Groin.

T he dreaded sheath pull, bane of every interventional fellow’s existence. A maligned but critical necessity, it inevitably engenders a visceral sense of discontent amplified by the fact that nurses are unhappy because it disrupts their workflow and patients are certainly not pleased at the prospect of another 4 to 6 hours of recumbence, having already endured a stranger mashing down on their nether regions for 15 to 30 minutes. The only solace may be the certainty of burning off a few calories in the tetany-charged upper body workout achieved by the process. I was surprised then, to find myself looking forward to pulling the sheath of a particularly ornery patient around 11 PM one evening. My eyelids trying hard to betray me as I drove back to the hospital, I wondered aloud, why? This woman had recently signed out against medical advice, was threatening to sue the staff for defamation (she deemed certain diagnoses offensive), and to be her nurse meant certain accusation of theft. Frankly, it had been difficult to focus on our procedure through her ceaseless diatribe about the individuals who had scarred her life. And did I mention she had Clostridium difficile—equating to a veritable silo of those lovely yellow gowns we so adore. To that end, she was quite adept at calling out the minute her nurse had left the room, degowned and hand-washed. Reentry was met with further caustic autobiographical details and a disheartening sense that you had contributed to her tragic life story. But, could I blame her? Effectively homeless, she had been left penniless by her daughter and sister, was abandoned as a child by her mother, lost contact with her pedophile father at a young age, and had a host of chronic ailments she could not afford to manage. By right, she was angry at a life that had never really given her a chance. And then, came the week just passed: she had been diagnosed with locally invasive lung cancer, had fallen and fractured several thoracic vertebrae, and had amassed a reputation that precluded physicians from believing her back and chest pain were genuine. It was at this juncture that her entire anteroseptal myocardium fell prey to an occlusive coronary thrombus. This pain was real; electrocardiograms rarely lie. That was when I met her. Now, driving back to the hospital, the following questions ricocheted through my mind. What could I tell her? Would I be just another suspect face? Would she respond to encouragement? Would she care that anyone cared? Why should she—who was I to her anyway? We had the ability to treat her heart. But the heart of the matter lay in her broken spirit. Could we do anything for that? She had shouted sincerely at the start of the case that if God wanted to take her, she was ready. And as we wheeled her out after the heart catheterization, she said emphatically, ‘‘I hope God blesses you all.’’ Of course, our role was to fulfill our duties irrespective of what God or fate or the mysteries of physiology had in store for her. Is it not privilege enough to be entrusted with the responsibility of negotiating the fate of another’s life, or being granted the resources to pursue this role with perseverance? Do we need any further blessing? Now at the bedside, I settle into my familiar stance, hands secure over her femoral arteriotomy. ‘‘Ma’am, you wanted God to bless us—I couldn’t help but wonder, despite all that’s happened this week, do you feel blessed too? You had said you were ready to go. Yet, here we are talking to each other because maybe he wasn’t ready for you.’’ I could see her thinking, and continued: ‘‘You had that pain in your chest that led them to find the cancer, which prompted a transfer to our facility. You tried to leave us, but were made to return after fracturing your spine, bed bound, perhaps to assure that you could not escape us again. It was then that you had this massive heart attack just a short elevator ride away from us. The cancer is removable, the spine will heal, the cigarettes you’ve left behind, and social services have found you a roof under which you can mend. But, had you been anywhere else—even at your local hospital for that matter—this heart attack could have killed you. That didn’t happen, did it? Maybe the blessing you sought for us, ma’am, has been bestowed on you too.’’ I gave her a minute to process this internally. ‘‘Tell me, ma’am, what makes you happy? What do you like to do?’’ She started her story again, but this time, the tone was different. She was intently working through several word game books to improve her DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-15-00192.1