The Forgotten 500

Posted on March 18, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II
© 2007 Gregory A. Freeman
313 pages

Throughout the Second World War, Great Britain and the United States engaged in a strategic bombing campaign against Hitler’s regime, hitting its industries and supplies. As the range of bombers and (more importantly) fighter escorts increased, Allied bombers began penetrating deep into the interior of Europe, striking at ball-bearing plants and oil refineries as far as Romania, determine to bring the Nazi war machine to its knees.  These far-ranging days rank as the bloodiest in the air war, as fierce resistance saw bomber after bomber drop from the skies. Many of the bombing crews assigned to the Ploesti raids bailed out over Yugoslavia, where — rescued by sympathetic Serbian peasants — they found shelter and open arms eager to hide them from their enemies. As their numbers increased (every abandoned bomber had a crew of at least ten), these men and their friends in the Serbian resistance contacted the Allies, who devised a daring plan: HALYARD,  in which a group of C-47 transport planes would steal into Europe, land at an improvised runway created by the grounded airmen, and take off into the night, rescuing the bomber crews under Hitler’s very nose. 
This is a story worthy of being told, steeped in human interest: the compassion of the Serbians is stirring, as is the sheer audacity of the Operation of Strategic Services men who created HALYARD and the courage of the pilots who carries it out. As inspiring and dramatic as it is, though, it’s not quite the story of the Forgotten 500. Their rescue, while tense, is over quickly. Instead, the tale of these airmen and their Balkgan guardians is used to frame a reappraisal of Draza Mihailovich, the leader of the loyalist Chetniks who opposed both the German occupation and the ambitions of another resistance group, Tito’s Moscow-backed Partisans. Though history remembers Mihailovich as a man who eventually collaborated with the Nazis out of hatred for the Bolsheviks and engaged in ethnic cleansing,  to the airmen he is a friend, guardian, and saviour. Gregory Freeman’s Mihailovich is an unassuming and noble saint, an egalitarian leader of men who refused to shed innocent blood and whose steadfast service to the Allies was ignored by history. Freeman attributes this to a Communist conspiracy within British intelligence,  the coup of a mole that was exacerbated by the “leftist, socialist” sympathies of OSS in its early years. After the war, the airmen are outraged by Mihailovich’s treatment at the hands of the Allies and Tito, and protest against his trial and execution. They continue to work to redeem his reputation as the decades pass by, to little avail; their struggle is apparently adopted by Freeman, whose portrayal of the man is unabashedly charitable.
I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Freeman’s writing bothered me, tending toward the superficial and reminding me more like sensational journalism than history.  It lacks nuance altogether, particularly in regards to politics, presenting Mihailovich as a forgotten hero. Perhaps he is. Since finishing this, I’ve been shifting through the evidence, trying to get a better handle on this man. The accounts of hundreds of airmen make one thing very plain: Mihailovich sheltered the grounded bomber crews and earned their affection and respect. This doesn’t rule out cooperation with the Nazis in other regards: war makes strange bedfellows. People and groups who would otherwise be enemies may have slightly overlapping interests (in this case, destroying Tito) and work together to that end,  while at the same time pursuing their own private agendas. Mihailovich’s kindnesses toward the Americans doesn’t rule out hostility toward Croats, Bosnians, and Muslims, either — for human beings are not storybook villains with simple, predictable characters.
Though Freeman presents a storybook hero in Mihailovich, and The Forgotten 500 seems a little amateurish because of it,  I’m glad I read it. The story of the 500 is worth knowing about, but without Freeman I don’t know that I would have been exposed to the controversy surrounding Mihailovich’s character. I’m still iffy about the integrity of the book itself, but it’s possibly worth your while.  Caveat lector. 

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Then Everything Changed

Posted on March 16, 2011 by smellincoffee

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan
© 2011 Jeff Greenfield
434 pages

“…playing with history is a small bit of payback for the way history has played with us.”

Historical speculation may not be fruitful, but it’s fun — and former Kennedy speechwriter and longtime political journalist Jeff Greenfield definitely has his fill of it, presenting three alternate history scenarios spanning two decades. He begins with the assassination of John F. Kennedy nearly two months before his inauguration as President,  resets the clock and jumps to a kitchen in Los Angeles, where JFK’s brother Robert narrowly escaped an attempt on his own life. After following RFK’s bitter election campaign, Greenfield restores reality again and moves us into the seventies, shortly before Gerald Ford informed Jimmy Carter that there was no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe and never would be under his administration. Here, though, Ford rallies and just barely beats Carter in the election.

Greenfield’s fun at history’s expense provides for some great stories: for instance, after his aggressive stance offends Kruschev, the latter decides to “put a hedgehog in Uncle Sam’s pants” and forces Johnson to respond to Soviet missiles in Cuba. Later, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy confronts violent students  protests in Chicago in 1968, and still later Ted Kennedy is forced to debate a man who adopts Kennedy’s own brother’s legacy and uses RFK’s words against him. Greenfield throws in little allusions to how historical events truly played out — both during this period and beyond. Newly-minted congressman Al Gore Jr. vows to seek a constitutional amendment that will ensure the winner of the popular vote is declared president, after a member of his own party manages to win the popular vote but lose in the electoral college:  Richard Nixon grumbles that he needs a ‘fair and balanced’ news network that will cut him some slack; and a young Dick Cheney rants that “next, those bastards will be trying to privatize social security!”.  The book ends with a particularly humorous allusion, one that shows how ludicrously history can sometimes repeat itself.

While the author is more unkind than not to Nixon and Reagan,  his bias is toward the centrist politics of Robert Kennedy rather than traditional progressivism as espoused by McGovern or Humprey. The Kennedy clan has a central role in the book: RFK’s presidential campaign is its core, and the other two scenarios draw heavily on the Kennedy influence. The scenarios featured are stirringly plausible, though generally the range of the scenarios is limited. I wanted to see him explore how the space race might have unfolded with LBJ at the head, but there’s no mention of it. This is part understandable, because history becomes increasingly more predictable as its scale broadens: while someone could write a book on how the early assassination of JFK altered the entire latter half of the 20th century, Greenfield doesn’t — ostensibly because there would be too many variables to deal with. He keeps the range of his scenarios small to limit the effects of chaos.

 Greenfield also works in historical ripple effects into his narrative: in a world where Watergate never happens, Bob Woodward leaves the Washington Post to become a lawyer, and MASH fails after Vietnam ends on a less-than-agreeable note.  Greenfield is a fine storyteller, but his flawless integration of real-life speeches into a completely different historical retelling impressed me the most. Dialogue abounds, but most of it — Greenfield says — is taken from the official Oval Office recordings that the various presidents kept. He devotes several dozen pages at the end of the book to explain how he drew from history to make the changes he did, which is always commendable when writing alternate history or historical fiction.

A fun romp through two decades of American politics that will especially appeal to those who feel the promise of America was shortchanged by acts of violence and like seeing Richard Nixon lose elections (repeatedly).

             

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These Weeks at the Library (3 March – 15 March)

Posted on March 15, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week at the library..

  • I recently added a Books of Interests ‘page’, which is a list of books I’m itching to read. I started keeping the list for those times when I have a little money to spend on books but can’t remember ‘that one book’ I saw last month and really wanted. It’s organized into categories.
  • The Fort by Bernard Cornwell and A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe were particularly good reads from this past week of reading. I’ve decided to dispense with recounting or listing all the books I read from week to week, as that is a bit of an anachronistic carryover from when this blog was only updated weekly. The cumulative reading list makes it all the more redundant. 

The Broke and the Bookish’ 2011 Nonfiction Reading Challenge:
Two additions from this past two weeks of reading:

  • The History of Japan (history)
  • Confessions (Culture)
Selected Quotations:

“He’s not the stud,” said Charlie, “he’s the teaser.”
“The teaser?”
“Yep. You just use the teaser to get her aroused.”
“And she urinates in his face?” said Howell.
“Yep. Always happens.”
“And that’s all he gets out of it?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Terrific,” said Howell. “Reminds me of when I was in high school.” 

p. 301, A Man in Full. Tom Wolfe.\

“The human tongue is a furnace in which the temper of our soul is daily tried.”

The Confessions, Augustine

Potentials for Next Week:

  • Bomber, Len Deighton. A novel portraying a bombing run, said by the author of With Wings Like Eagles to be one of the best aerial novels ever written.
  • Don’t Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff. No idea what it’s about, but the author appeared on This American Life. 
  • The Forgotten 500: the Untold Story of the Men who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II, Gregory A. Freeman
  • Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan. Jeff Greenfield. 
  • The Wellspring of Life, Isaac Asimov
  • Galileo’s Finger, Peter Atkins. I stopped halfway through this to tackle The Outline of History, but it’s high time I resumed it.
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Teaser Tuesday (15 March)

Posted on March 14, 2011 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday again, from Should Be Reading.

“People don’t have to lease expensive office space in top-end buildings like Croker Concourse, but they can’t defer their food consumption function.”
“Can’t defer their food consumption function?”
“They have to eat. Every day.”

p. 74, A Man in Full. Tom Wolfe

Next one isn’t censor-friendly —

What would Epictetus have done with this bunch? What could he have done? How could you apply his lessons two thousand  years later, in this grimy gray pod,  this pigsty full of beasts who grunted about motherfuckin’ this and motherfuckin’ that and turning boys into B-cats and jookin’ punks? And yet…were they really any worse than Nero and his Imperial Guard? Epictetus spoke to him! — from half a world and two thousand years away! The answer was somewhere in these pages!

p. 410-411,  A Man in Full.

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Top Ten Literary Characters I’d Adopt

Posted on March 14, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and the Bookish are stocking their family trees with literary figures!

1. Hari Seldon (Foundation,  Isaac Asimov)

He’s the grandfather who knows eeeeeeeverything.

2. Minerva McGonnagal (Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling)

“Aunt Minnie”, anyone?  Tough, but kindly.

3. Gred and Forge Weasley (Harry Potter)

Living in the same house as these two would be a constant riot, assuming I was IN on their jokes and not the butt of them. (“Out of the way, SERIOUSLY evil wizard coming through!)

4. Captain Sir Edward Pellew (Horatio Hornblower, C.S. Forester)

I’m more enamored of his character from the movies than the books (less developed in print), but he’s a good man: not just a good soldier in terms of ‘doing his duty’, but he cares about the job he does and will bend the rules if need be.  Robert Lindsay makes the father-son dynamic between himself and Horatio come through spendidly.

Speaking of whom…

5. Horatio Hornblower
Were Hornblower a cousin or brother of mine, I could see the two of us being introspective, overly intellectual, and socially awkward at parties together.

6. Brigadier McLean (The Fort, Bernard Cornwell)
The perfect affable uncle and the most humane soldier I’ve ever read of.

7. Violet and Klaus Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Daniel Handler)

One is fiendishly inventive, the other a bookworm — what’s not to like?

…aside from the hammy villain who intends to kill/enslave/otherwise discomfit them?

8. Ellie Arroway (Contact, Carl Sagan)

No funding? No problem. She’ll sit in the field and listen HERSELF. 

Cool older sister/aunt/mom?  Doesn’t really matter. She’s passionate about science, hopeful, and can give you a lecture on demand — just point at a star and ask, “What’s that?”

9. Either Remus Lupin or Gordianus the Finder (Roma sub Rosa series)
They’d both make good uncles.

10: Captains Jean-Luc Picard and Kathyrn Janeway (various books, including Mosaic by Jeri Taylor)

I like reading about ship captains the most when they have a paternal air about them — not a patronizing one,  but to the point that the reader knows they care about the people under their command.  Janeway is especially noticable in this regard.

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A Man in Full

Posted on March 13, 2011 by smellincoffee

A Man in Full
© 1998 Tom Wolfe
727 pages

Zeus! Send me what trial thou wilt!

A Man in Full is an epic story of individuals grappling with life, facing trials that force them to reconsider their worth and threaten to destroy them utterly, as well as temptations for easy escape and riches. It’s primarily the story of two men from radically different backgrounds living across a continent from one another whose fates are bound together as if by destiny.
Charles Croker is a ‘bull of a man’, a good ol’ boy who rose from the backwoods to the boardroom of Atlanta’s largest real-estate company through risk-taking courage and brass. His work has shaped the very skyline of Atlanta and made him as rich as Croesus. He revels in his power, success, and influence, and no more so during his grandiose parties at a large ranch where he plays at being the master of a plantation in southern Georgia. He’s a man used to everything going his way, but now his latest risk has failed: he’s nearly a billion dollars in debt and sliding fast, emboldening those who see in his decline an opportunity for their own success.  Croker’s foil is Conrad Hensley, a working man from San Francisco with a sense of honor and personal responsibility who’s poor in opportunity. Conrad works in a refrigerated warehouse in circumstances so dire that they make the warehouse’s owner — one Mr. Charles Croker — shiver in dread from a continent away.  Conrad accepts the brutal work because it means creating a better future for himself, but his hopes are thrown against the wall when Croker decides to institute mass layoffs rather than sell any of his five personal jets. For Conrad, it’s the beginning of a tumultous downhill sldie that ends only in prison.
Though there are other characters of note, Croker and Conrad are the central actors whose personalities and lives function as counterpoints for the others. Croker’s self-worth is based on his ability to control his circumstances, his accomplishments in doing so, and in the way his forceful personality makes others act around him. He puts great stock in his status as a Leader, as a ruler of men: he expects his trophy wife, children, and ‘black retainers’ to know their place, and feels pleasure that he, Cap’m Charlie, can take care of them.  Conrad, on the other hand, has never known the privilege of being able to change his circumstances: he only knows that he cannot allow them to get the better of them. He is driven to overcome adversity, to say “YES!” to life, and committed to the struggle. This emotional resilence and self-determination are amplified when he accidentally acquires a copy of The Stoics while in prison and encounters the life of Epictetus, a slave and prisoner-turned-philosophy who taught his students that the only posession anyone has is his or her character.  Isolated in a place seemingly designed to crush spirits, Conrad clings to Epicteus as a life preserver and learns to express courage in the face of a chorus that urges him to submit — courage that he will later try to impress upon other people, including Charlie Croker. 

Given my interest in Stoic philosophy, this book has been on my radar for quite some time. Its presumed setting in Atlanta’s business world turned me off, though, and Charles Croker is an entirely unsympathetic character from the start, whose boorishness does nothing to discredit my prejudices against  business moguls. He begins the book in self-inflicted steep decline, though, and this I watched with morbid interest while wondering what the other story threads about race and Atlanta politics had to do with his or Conrad’s stories.  Conrad is the true hero of the novel, standing stall among a cast of spoiled and avarice-obsessed bankers, businessmen, politicans, and high-society members.  While Croker bitterly surrenders to the idea that his fate is in the hands of other people — after steadily decaying in the midst of debt,  manipulation, confusion, and physical infirmity — Conrad becomes a devotee of Stoicism and determines that he will be the ‘master of his fate, the captain of his soul’*  in spite of his circumstances, being trapped in the violent world of US prisons. Ultimately the stories of Wolfe’s various characters converge in triumph and redemption, giving me a satisfying conclusion after a weekend of gripping entertainment.
For this story of trials, character, and redemption alone I would reccommend the book, but Wolfe also has a visceral style that makes his characters, their environment, and their fates seem desperately real — and often unpleasant. The sheer earthiness of his language and syntax captivated me, and works well to generate pathos. 
Though not without its faults, A Man in Full kept my attention all weekend along, and I’d reccommend it — especially to those interested in Stoicism.

* “Invictus“, William Ernest Henley
Related:
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Booking through Thursday: Multi-Tasking

Posted on March 10, 2011 by smellincoffee

Booking through Thursday wants to know:  Do you multi-task when you read? Do other things like stirring things on the stove, brushing your teeth, watching television, knitting, walking, et cetera?

“My mother always said, ‘If you try to combine talking and eating, you’ll end up doing neither very well!’” – Miles O’Brien

 I am rarely far from a book, and often turn to one if I have downtime. Combining reading with eating has been a habit of mine since childhood, to the effect that I’m constantly sipping water while reading — I’m used to the combined stimuli. While living on-campus, I often brought a book with me to the dining hall in case I found no friends to eat with, and I tended to stay long after the meal sipping coffee or hot tea, immersed in my book.

Though I do not watch much television, when I do I mute the commercials and read between the breaks — usually my ‘leisure’ reading, as books in history, science, philosophy, or other such serious topics demand more attention than the commercial break period provides.

I also combine music and reading — sometimes having music on as background accompianment, but often listening to music that corresponds to the subject at hand. For instance, while reading “Our Oriental Heritage”, I listened to music from India and Japan while reading the histories of those respective nations — and when reading one of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels, I put on Bosch’s favorite jazz  to better immerse myself in the character’s environment. Last week, while reading Augstine’s “Confessions”, I listened to both Benedictine chants and classical music (specifically, Beethoven), because they seemed appropriate.  I enjoy combining music and literature in this way.

I sometimes combine reading and napping, but this is entirely by accident!

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Inferno

Posted on March 9, 2011 by smellincoffee

Star Trek Millennium, Book III: Inferno

© 2000 Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

410 pages

“I did everything I could,” Sisko cried into the silence that engulfed him.
But everything he had ever done was for nothing.
Everything that had ever been was for nothing.
Zero seconds.
It was over. (p. 366, The War of the Prophets) 

Well, it’s over. The universe is kaput. The two Bajoran wormholes have collided and the very fabric of existence winked away, just as the Bajoran prophecies foretold.  But the competing gods of Bajor, the Prophets and the Pah-Wraiths,  are still fighting — and while their cosmic struggle tarries for just a little while longer, hope lingers for what few survivors there are. In the final moments of the universe’s existence, two ships entered the Bajoran wormholes, and were thus sheltered from oblivion. Aboard them are the crew of the Defiant,  three ’emissaries’, and a scattering of civilians. As surprised as most of them are to learn that the Bajoran prophecies came to past, the wormholes — now, truly, the Celestial Temple — also carry within them the space station Deep Space Nine, protected — as with the ships — inside a bubble of existence. Deep Space Nine still exists — though in what timeframe, no one can be sure — and by returning home, Sisko and his crew hope to change history and prevent the end of everything.
This is truly a wild series. The first novel contained an intriguing mystery that partially buds off the station’s history, while the second throws the reader into a kind of fantasy/political drama. Inferno is another beast all together: a science fiction novel in which our characters try to figure out a way to restore existence from the past without actually changing the past: every timeline, every ‘universe’ is like one face of a diamond which is the multiverse, and if the multiverse itself is destroyed, nothing else matters. I like time travel stories, and this novel forces Sisko, Kira, O’Brian, Jadzia Dax, Worf, Jake Sisko, Quark, Garak, and others to scurry around the station while constantly shifting to various timeframes, trying to figure out some way of preventing history from repeating itself while being harried by two madmen, the Pah-Wraith possessed Gul Dukat and  Kai Weyoun, infested by nanites that make him a loyal servant of the other Pah-Wraiths.  Though this has been a series deep in Bajoran mythology, here it takes a backseat to temporal mechanics and a race against….well, time. True to form for a book about time travel, quite a few plot developments are counterintuitive and resolve — or create — some of the mysteries seen in the first book. The ending shocks even the characters. While this series isn’t notable for the kind of intense character drama seen in say, David Mack’s work, there are some golden scenes in here — most notably, between Sisko and his son. 
This series was written after the television show’s end, and is set before “Tears of the Prophets”, in which a canon Pah-Wraiths v. Prophets storyline erupts. (Jadzia Dax is killed there, while she’s still alive and kicking here.)  Foreshadowing for the rest of the sixth season and the whole of the seventh season abound,  though they tend toward the depressing — the writers allude to Jadzia’s future death on several occasional throughout the series. 
As good as I remembered. Though a different kind of epic story than Destiny,  Millennium is grand storytelling in its own class.
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The War of the Prophets

Posted on March 8, 2011 by smellincoffee

Star Trek Millenium: Book II, The War of the Prophets
© 2000 Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
372 pages

Riker reappeared on the virwer, eyes afire with rage. “The War of the Prophets is coming! Choose your side, Emissary — because this is your war now!”  – p. 408, The Fall of Terok Nor

When Captain Sisko and the rest of the Ds9 crew recovered three lost Bajoran artifacts — the lost Orbs of Jalbador — they thought a great mystery and the murderous schemes surrounding it had finally been put to rest. When when the three orbs spontaneously gathered together and opened a second wormhole, glowing crimson,  the Defiant and all aboard her were thrown into the future while attempting to escape the destruction of Deep Space Nine.  They found themselves trapped in a nightmarish future, where Klingons, Cardassians, and humans were all but extinct species — where the remnant of Starfleet which remained is allied with the Borg and dedicated to the wholesale destruction of Bajor –a Bajor which is the seat of power for a new, mighty empire intent on enacting the Apocalypse.

Defiant jumps 25 years into the future and is immediately caught between the opposing forces: the Ascendancy need Sisko alive to fulfill prophecy, while Starfleet is determined to kill or capture Sisko to prevent his taking a role in the things to come. Gone is the Prime Directive and Starfleet’s scientific, diplomatic culture:  the universe may very well be doomed if Bajor is not eradicated. It’s a bizarre, disturbing future the authors introduce us to, and when Defiant’s crew is captured by both warring parties, the readers are able to see how truly demented the powers that be have become. Weyoun, formerly an agent of the Dominion, is now Kai of the Bajoran people — and while he happily waits for the universe to end in two weeks, Starfleet —  and specifically, Fleet Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Nog — are sending a timeship 25,000 years into the past to prevent cosmic catastrophe.

Sheer morbid curiosity in this strange world kept me reading the first time, but now I enjoy it more for the fun the authors had with their characters. Kira is the only weak point, reduced to a religious fanatic who yells “That’s blasphemy” and does little else. Garak, the station’s longterm resident Cardassian and former covert operative for the Obsidian Order, gives a unique perspective on the end of things, commenting surreally as he awaits the inevitable.  The drama ramps up toward the end, when Starfleet’s master plan is supposed to unfold….but it all goes to hell.

I had no intention of reading this so soon after The Fall of Terok Nor, but I picked it up to read with supper…and didn’t stop until I was done. If I can find the third book, I just may read the entire trilogy in as many days.

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Top Ten Dynamic Duos

Posted on March 7, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and the Bookish are discussing powerful duos — best friends, nemeses, and couples.

1. Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling)

These two are tied together by prophecy, destined for mutual destruction — for neither can live while the other survives. Potter’s role in Voldemort’s first defeat, his rebirth, and his eventual downfall drive the Potter series. They’re also tied together in a more…personal way, which i’ll not mention for those who haven’t read from Order of the Phoenix on.

2. Elijah Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw  (Robots series, Isaac Asimov)
Elijah Baley is a curmudgeonly detective who doesn’t like robots and has no interest in space. Naturally, he’s paired with a robot and sent into space to solve crimes. I loved seeing Baley mature to the point that he regarded Daneel as a friend.

3. Gene and Phineas, A Separate Peace (John Knowles)
These two are best friends, but the relationship is clearly unhealthy and  antagonistic at times. I’d comment further, but for fear of spoiling a classic for someone who’s not read it…

4. Risika and Aubrey, In the Forests of the Night
Risika and Aubrey are both vampires taken by the same woman, Aether, and locked in a relationship of mutual hatred.  They are two of the most powerful vampires living, and both pride and contempt for the other keep them one from acknowledging the other as greater. Their cat-and-mouse game drives the book until they finally descend into a final conflict.

5. Kirk and Spock

The picture that launched a thousand fanzines…

Possibly cheating even that their relationship first appeared on television, but it’s been further developed in countless novels. Besides, I’d be remiss in not mentioning them! According to Michael Okuda,  Kirk and his two best friends were complements of the other:  Spock represented logic, McCoy humanistic emotion, and Kirk the strength of will. (Okuda contributed heavily to TOS and TNG: his comments on the trio come from “The Conscience of the King”‘s text commentary.)

6. David and Goliath, Hebrew texts
You undoubtedly recognize the reference and know what it means, but I doubt that many people are aware of the original story — in which a boy, disgusted by the cowardice of his kin, takes up the sling and throws rocks at a giant’s head,  knocking him unconscious and then slaying him with his own sword.  That’s actually more impressive to me than the stone-throwing, because how did a little kid manage to saw off a grown man’s head with a sword bigger than himself?

7, Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
It’s been years since I read any of the Holmes stories, but these two sprang to mind fairly quickly upon reading the subject for this week.

8. Horatio Hornblower and William Bush (Horatio Hornblower series, C.S. Forester)

Hornblower and Bush are introduced in Captain Horatio Hornblower, and the A&E movies show their meeting. Their close camaraderie — Bush is as close to a friend as Hornblower ever has in the book series — makes the end of the Napoleonic wars particularly poignant. Hornblower is marked by his formality, reserve, and introspection, but he and Mr. Bush are obviously fond of each other:  Bush, the ever-faithful lieutenant, made Hornblower more human.

9. The Narrator and Merlin, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain
The narrator is a 19th century man thrown back into the 700s or so, where he decides to remake the medieval world into a semblance of his own. Progressive and intellectual, his greatest foe is Merlin — who represents tradition, authority, and superstition. When I read this for the first time, I remember despising Merlin and even today…

10. Sidney Carton and Charles Darnay, A Tale of Two Cities & A Far Better Rest, Charles Dickens and Suzanne Alleyn.

The lives of these two lookalikes converge repeatedly before and during the French Revolution, and their love for the same woman will save the one and redeem the other.

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