Review of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia is the story of George Orwell’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War. He originally went to Spain to write about the war. When he arrived in Spain it was very much run by collectives in the republican controlled territories. Labour unions controlled most of the businesses, such as transport, hotels and the telephone exchange. He loved the way the republicans attempted to treat everyone equally. It was, except for shortages of some foods, verging on what Orwell imagined as a worker’s paradise. For him, this was something worth fighting for.

Orwell joined a militia run by POUM or Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, which translates to the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification. The POUM suited Orwell’s desire to fight for an organisation whose goal was a society run by collectives where everyone’s treated equally and there is no leadership hierarchy.

Orwell tells of the complete lack of training of recruits to that militia. He had two weeks of “training” where they just marched around. They were not shown how to fight or fire a rifle. They weren’t armed until they completed their training. The weapons they received were antiquated with many not in proper working condition. But at least the militia looked respectable enough, in their mismatched uniforms, when they marched out of town to the frontlines.

His militia was positioned in the mountains on a hilltop facing off against the fascists hundreds of metres away. They were too far apart for any deadly exchanges of fire. His militia was in a holding position, used to prevent any advances from the fascists while the republican government trained an army. The fascists seemed to be concentrating on arming themselves, so they were not interested in advancing in those hills either. Because Orwell was British it was assumed he knew something about fighting, so he was made a corporal, even though he spoke little Spanish. The real dangers for Orwell and his fellow volunteers were the cold, risking inaccurate enemy fire when out scavenging for firewood and food, and being shot by their own side.

His militia was eventually moved to a position closer to the active front lines. This is where Orwell saw his first action. He appears to have been a competent soldier. He carried out orders and advanced under fire as he led his squad of soldiers, but he was an inaccurate rifle shooter, so he doubts whether he shot anyone. He did throw a bomb which he thinks killed a few of the enemy. He was not that fearful, in fact he appeared to be a bit reckless. He wanted to help defeat the fascists and stop their gradual takeover of Europe.

After a few months, he returned on leave to Barcelona where he discovered the worker’s collective was falling apart. The PSUC or Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, which translates to the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, were trying to take control of the republican government. When Orwell arrived in Barcelona he hoped to relax with his visiting wife, instead he was caught up in a standoff in the barricaded POUM head office as the PSUC run police force threaten to storm it.

Orwell returned to the front and was seriously injured by a sniper. He was evacuated for medical treatment. Due to his injuries, he then went to Barcelona to get his military discharge papers. There he found the PSUC purging other political groups like his POUM. After close comrades of his were arrested, he decided to escape Spain rather than risk being thrown in jail and probably executed. Orwell’s wife played a pivotal role in helping both of them escape.

Homage to Catalonia was written only six months after Orwell escaped from Spain. It is obvious how his experiences in Spain influenced his later novels. His witnessing of the collapse of the worker’s collectives in Spain shows in how the pigs took control in Animal Farm. Orwell said the press was full of propaganda and lies about the war. He said that in many cases what the British press wrote had not the slightest factual truth to what was actually happening. He also noted that the left’s press in England went from “War is Hell” to “War is Glorious”. The dishonesty of the press would have influenced his Ministry of Truth in 1984. It is disquieting to think that if the bullet that hit him had been fractionally to the side, 1984, one of the most influential novels of all time, would not have been written.

Orwell says the republican’s eventually loss was not due to their infighting - which didn’t help - but due to the fascist nationalists being better armed. They were getting weapons from Germany and Italy (and troops too), while no outside government did much to support the republicans.

Homage to Catalonia is an informative, thought provoking, and entertaining read about one of the pivotal conflicts of the twentieth century. Who knows what effect it might have had on Hitler’s plans if the republicans had defeated Franco’s fascists. My respect for Orwell as a man who stood up for what he believed in increased after reading it. But, as Orwell says in the book, any personal account of a war is biased towards the experiences, knowledge and prejudices of its teller. 

Review of Annie Bot by Sierra Greer

Annie Bot is the story of a sentient sex bot. Her whole purpose and desire is to please her master, Doug. She can sense Doug’s emotional state and does all she can to keep him happy. In the beginning Doug happily uses her for very frequent sex, but then he becomes concerned about what other people will think about him using a sex bot. He thinks they might consider him a bit of a loser who can’t get a real girlfriend. So, he becomes unhappy with Annie, and she desperately tries to work out what she has done to cause this.

Annie is capable of learning. She learns from her interactions with Doug and the web (when Doug allows her to connect with it). Much of the time she is mystified with Doug’s treatment of her and why he gets angry with her. She is designed to be honest, which results in her frequently saying things that upset Doug. This results in her constantly second guessing herself about how to respond to him.

When Annie is tricked into having sex with a friend of Doug’s, he rejects her. Locking her in a closet and turning her off for extended periods. He threatens to reboot her so she will forget everything she has learned, everything that she has become. Doug’s control of Annie is exasperated by her being programmed to please him. The novel is very much an analogy for how some men want to control women.

Readers will be willing Annie to escape Doug’s control. But she has a built-in tracking device so Doug will always know where she is. This has real world similarities in how controlling men attempt to track their girlfriends and ex-spouses using mobile phone and car tracking devices. If Doug tracks her down, he might reboot her or even have her dismantled for parts. Annie appears to be in impossible situation like many victims of domestic violence.

The book is an interesting read considering the current debate in Australia about violence towards women. Interestingly, Annie Bot is recommended as “Witty, wicked and weirdly addictive” by the take no prisoners radical feminist Lionel Shriver. Shriver seems to be all about people taking personal responsibility for themselves, but Annie’s programming impedes her from taking personal responsibility and leaving Doug. This has real world similarities in how circumstances make it near impossible for some women to leave abusive relationships.

Doug is not a one note bully. He is a complex character who projects his fears onto Annie. At times he tries to help Annie grow. He enjoys choosing the clothes she wears and says that might be because he played with dolls when he was a child. At times he seeks her unconditional love but is aware that she has been programmed to say she loves him. He is very much into projecting a confident exterior which hides all his insecurities.

There is a lot of sex in the novel to begin with, but it is not that erotic, and the description of the sex seems to get more perfunctory as the novel goes on. This is not a novel designed to titillate with its sexual activity.

Annie Bot compares favourably with other novels set in the near future about sentient androids trying to live with humans and make sense of them. Novels such as Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan and the brilliant Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. When seen through android eyes, these novels show humans are full of faults and contradictions. The novels explore how we might interact with sentient artificial intelligence. Will we treat it/them as equals or slaves?   

 

Review of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel set during the Spanish Civil War. It is written by Ernest Hemingway who was a war correspondent during that war. It won the Nobel prize for literature in 1954.

The plot of the story seems very simple to begin with. Robert Jordan, an American fighting on the side of the revolutionary communists against the fascists, is assigned the task of blowing up a bridge behind enemy lines. Its destruction will stop fascist reinforcements being sent to an upcoming major attack by the revolutionaries. Sounds simple, but the plot is complicated by many events and challenges, especially the various characters involved. Just about all the novel takes place before the attack on the bridge, so we are kept waiting to find out for whom the bell tolls. Will Jordan successfully blow up the bridge or will he die trying?

At the beginning, Jordan needs to make contact with a small group of partisans to help him dispose of the guards at the bridge. The partisans are led by Pablo who has a mountain hideout not far from the bridge and who has previously participated in other acts of sabotage, including blowing up a train. But Pablo has become a disillusioned drunk and is paralysed by fears of his own mortality. It is up to his wife Pilar, the rock of the group, to keep the partisans together.

The group includes Maria, a young woman who was a prisoner on the train they sabotaged. Jordan and Maria fall for each other. This stretched credibility a bit as Jordan knows he was only going to be there for four days, and he would leave once the bridge is destroyed. But maybe their relationship could have developed as quickly as it did in the novel due to the emotional turmoil of the war.

The novel questioned the war, but it is not an anti-war book. The reader sees what various participants think about war and their part in it. Jordan slowly reveals the corrupt and fragmented leadership of the communists. Their leaders have fled to safety and have little to do with the fighting. Russians step in and are heavily involved in organizing the communist fighting effort. Some of the leaders of the revolution are drunks and psychotics. But Jordan still believes they must defeat the fascists to stop other countries in Europe falling under the fascist yoke.

Pablo just wants somewhere safe to hide. He knows once the bridge is blown the fascist forces will swarm over the hills he hides in to find his group. He was a merciless leader capable of war crimes. Pilar tells a particularly chilling tale of how he executed all the fascists in his hometown. Pilar on the other hand is still committed to the cause. We also get a glimpse into the minds of the fascists guarding the bridge. They are fighting under the duress of execution of themselves and families if they refuse. Some of the communist generals also freely execute soldiers who question orders.  

One of the things that catches a reader’s attention is the writing’s treatment of profanity. Words like “obscene”, “obscenity”, “muck” and “unprintable” are substituted for swear words. The most obvious is muck for fuck. I thought this might have been due to Australian censors, but no, it was done by Hemmingway in reaction to how publishers had treated profanity in his previous novels.

Another attention grabber is the detail Hemingway goes into with Jordan’s battle preparations and the battle scenes. In one scene Jordan orders one of his partisans to not put more tree branches around a machine gun placement as a group of calvary fascists have already been past its location and might notice the difference. Hemingway also details the thoughts of Jordan as he fights. His fears and concerns are constantly in competition with what he needs to do next and his will to successfully carry out his mission.

The novel shows the futility of war when everyone is not on the same page. Ideas of utopia have a hard time winning against corruption and brutal ideology, especially when personal survival is a main concern. The novel takes you into the mind of a soldier, one who is committed to the cause, even though he has his doubts about those leading the cause. The novel also exposes a turning point in world history to the reader.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great read. It is one of the best explorations of conflict I have read and well deserving of its accolades. It left me wanting to find out more about the Spanish Civil War.

Review of The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy

The Passenger is a novel with a false plot. It is a plot that doesn't matter at all. Things happen and you think they may be connected but that connection is never substantiated. So, it is a frustrating novel for anyone who wants events to come together in the end.

What is it about then? It is about Bobby who has many regrets about his one true love, his sister Stella. She may have desired a sexual relationship which he shunned. She spends a lot of time in a mental institution before killing herself, and he regrets rejecting her and not being there when she died. 

The novel consists of many long conversations between men who seem to be intelligent but delusional about the world around them and their place in it. Perhaps McCarthy is saying something about how deluded Americans have become in the Trump era. 

In between conversations Bobby has many adventures, from racing car driver to deep sea diver, which starts to look like an improbable Forrest Gump type life. The adventures that don’t let him escape from his regret for his sister. 

The novel frequently goes into the schizophrenic mind of Stella as she hallucinates conversations with the imaginery Kid who has been damaged by Thalidomide. The Kid tries to keep her amused by hosting not very good cabaret acts. Who knows why she chooses a character who had Thalidomide as the drug was never approved in the US, so they did not have the flood of babies born with its birth defects.  

McCarthy continues his habit of no quotation marks and no attributions for dialogue, which may have not mattered much for his other novels, like the dialogue sparse The Road, but becomes a pain for this one with its masses of dialogue. I was frequently wondering who the hell was speaking and had to go back and re-read, but even then found it hard to track down who was speaking. 

The passenger in the title might be Bobby's regret about not being there for his sister or it might mean that he has no control over his life and is just a passenger being taken wherever fate decides to take him. Or it might just be a reference to the plot red herring at the start of the novel where a passenger has disappeared from a crashed plane. 

Overall, if you want a novel with a resolved plot, don't touch this. If you want a novel where you think you may be able to resolve the plot from clues in the book, don't frustrate yourself with this. If you want a novel that ruminates on America's delusions then this might be the novel for you.

Review of The Dark Man by Referral by Chuck McKenzie

The Dark Man, by Referral and Less Pleasant Tales is a collection of ‘horror’ short stories. I put the horror in quote marks as the stories are not that horrific. They are more thriller stories in the tone of the Twilight Zone, with a bit of added humour. There is no blood and gore or scary shocks, but there are plenty of twists. Most of the stories are about people getting their just deserts, so readers can feel good about what happens to the characters.

The title story, The Dark Man by Referral, is a prime example of bad people getting their just deserts. It is a tale of a boy whose mother is in a relationship with an abusive man. The boy meets a mysterious dark man who gives him a toy that is not as innocuous as it looks, at least to his mother’s partner.

Confessions of a Pod Person would make a great movie. It is Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the point of view of the body snatchers. Unlike in the movie, their invasion fails, and the pod people have to deal with the consequences. This was perhaps my favourite story in the collection.

Other stories include Bad Meat, a zombie tale of sorts. While Retail Therapy will have a reader thinking about justifiable homicide, as a customer endlessly tries to bargain with a shop owner. The Eight-Beat Bar is about being tortured by a musical earworm, like having Hotel California constantly groaning on in your head until you really want to ‘check out’.

All up, there are 20 stories in the collection. Some are as little as a paragraph, while others are a lot more substantial. McKenzie concludes the book with a heart-felt outline of what inspired him to write each story. He tells us that he gave up writing for years, but now he thankfully has his muse back. All the stories have been published in other magazines and collections. Even though the stories were written over decades they seem to belong together.  

I very much enjoyed reading this collection and recommend it to anyone who has had a bad day and wants to see someone get their just deserts.