Nicholson Baker’s new book, Human Smoke, is brilliant. It is a work of diligent scholarship, presented simply and artfully, that does what the best books do: it will make you think seriously. There has been some controversy about the book, particularly from neoconservatives. The otherwise reliable Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun wrote, arguably, his worst review about the book. The Sun, as I’ve said before, is like the student paper at Neocon High. Any piece that can be filtered through a prism of neoconservative principles (of which I can ascertain two: blind, reactionary support for Israel, and war as a means of promoting democracy), will be. Kirsch, in this case, hates the politics he perceives behind the pacifism that Baker espouses and goes on to write a biased and ad hominem attack on the book. The only objective info you’ll get from his review are winning discussion points for a cocktail party at Paul Wolfowitz’s house.
The columnist Anne Applebaum, who was apparently deeply threatened by Human Smoke, wrote a hysterical and condescending review in the New Republic that ranted about bloggers and amateurism. And lastly, William Grimes panned it in the New York Times.
I honestly don’t know what they’re talking about. Human Smoke is an impressionistic masterpiece that presents simple information in chronology and let’s you filter it through your over-saturated understanding of World War II. It demythologizes the neocon sacred cow Churchill (they all want to be him); makes the U.S. entry into the war seems inevitable from the first; and presents a view of the little seen pacifism movement of the time.
When I was finished with the book, you know what I walked away with?
War is terrible and must be avoided at all costs and we must fight them only when we are forced to.
Can any book that reinforces these truths really be a “stupid” and “scary” book?
Go out and get it. I recommend it highly.
P.S. I know I promised a book recommendation every Friday, but I simply can’t do it. Look in every two weeks or so (click on the category link for books) for a new recommendation.
