Reading: Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, by Michael Oren
Time/Date: 6:30 pm / September 15, 2009
Location: Khyber Pass, Hillcrest, San Diego
Attendees: Eric, Suraj, Dan, Carlos, Rusty, Lee, Alan, Glenn
What a treat this meeting was! The entire Eight Men Out were present. We were seated in a private loft room, with low bench seats arranged in a square at low tables, with plush red cushion. I have no idea if it was authentically Middle Eastern or Afghani, but it was certainly enjoyable.
I only finished the first 1/3 of this long book. Dense yet immensely readable, Michael Oren’s book surveyed America’s involvement in the Middle East since America’s start in 1776. What may be as interesting a side story is that Michael Oren, Israel’s current Ambassador to the United States was for most of his life a U.S. citizen. His credentials make him immensely suitable to serve in that capacity, but Israel’s policy is that its Ambassador must hold sole citizenship in Israel. Thus, Mr. Oren had to renunciate his U.S. citizenship to take his current position.
Although I have gleaned much history from literature, I was fascinated by this book, how little I really knew about a subject matter that is daily in the news today and whose history informs current diplomatic relations between the U.S. and contemporary Middle Eastern states. Here is a summary of Oren’s book:
“Given the confusion and general polarization that our country suffers from our present political and military intrusions into the Middle Eastern areas, it would seem sensible in forming our opinions to understand the history of events that have taken us to this point. Oren has provided us with such documentation as covers the 230 years of our relationship with this crucial area, which should be helpful to better understand how we got into such entanglements as we now face. This book takes us from the founding of our country after breaking the colonizing bonds of the British, to early conflicts and attempted resolutions to effect commerce with Arab cities of the North African Barbary Coast, through the ultimate dissolution of the Ottoman Empire with formation of independent countries, and finally to extensions of events in such countries as have a majority of Islamic people. There is considerable focus on the foundation, politics, and military actions of Israel, including strife vis. a’ vis. Jewish and PLO Arabs within its present borders and with the larger numbers of Islamic peoples in surrounding areas such as Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In text-like but readable fashion, the book details the principal people, actions, treatises, and dates. Sufficient and reasonable sources are cited.” (by Don McCormick – http://www.uuview.org/Power,Faith and Fantasy.htm)
Whether the book presents a balanced view or not, that’s up to your own book club members to decide.
As much as anything though, the evening was enhanced by the superb selection of restaurant to accompany this work. Khyber Pass is an Afghani restaurant and the food (whether truly Afghani or not) is first-rate, so much so that it prompted a return trip with my wife. We shared several platters of appetizers and shared portions of main dishes as well. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.
We decided to try a new genre this time, invoking Achar’s rule (no work shall be over 700 pages long, or all works must be under x pages long (precipitated by the fact that Oren’s book was very long) – the rule has yet to be ratified as the work we chose is 703 or 708 pages long!). We chose science fiction as a genre, and in consulting a list of the best science fiction books for non-geeks, we were involved in a split-decision, with some members choosing one work, and the other side of the room choosing another. The “another” won. Stay tuned to find out just how successful that choice was.
Keep reading.
After some debate about just what book to read for this meeting, we decided upon our first choice, Dave Eggers’ masterful, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. AHWOSG, as it is affectionately referred to in some circles, is a literary triumph of the first order. Eggers’ narrator is presumably a rendition of himself, in this memoir, a hyperactive, young, reality-tv-driven, publicity hound seeking his 15 minutes + of fame during his early 20s in 1990s Berkeley, having cast off from his hometown Chicago upon the death, within 5 months of each other, of his parents, which left him as caretaker of his young brother, Toph. But Eggers is not one to write a straight-forward memoir. His is a literary pursuit of the highest order, a reclamation of meta-fiction (read the hilarious copyright page that precedes the title page) for a ritalin-addicted audience of 20 somethings.
Even though I missed the discussion, I did finish the book. During a busy time, I read it in stop-go fashion. I finished it the night before the meeting, which made missing the meeting even more disappointing. My goal has become: no more missing book club.
Once again, book club attempted to match cuisine with reading selection with this new selection, the Edgar Award winner, The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin. Goodwin, a British writer and historian who studied Byzantine history at Cambridge, fashions an old-fashioned mystery complete with smart, detail-oriented sleuth, double-crosses, historical puzzles, and epic campaigns of evil, along with some prized cooking, starring the sleuth who is a Eunuch who, nevertheless, …. performs admirably!
For lighter fare, compared to the WWII Holocaust and the Trujillo Massacres, we welcomed old-fashioned circus animal abuse and murder! Sara Gruen’s novel Water for Elephants was by far, thus far, the fastest reading of book club’s books, at least for me it was. It was also the first book I read entirely on a Kindle. Part nostalgic tramp through the circus lifestyle during the depression, part treatise on the life of senior citizens and the perils of memory and aging, part murder mystery with a twist, this best-selling novel (#1 as a paperback on the NY Times Bestseller list in July 2007) featured Jacob Jankowski in a coming-of-age novel as a young man whose fate was seemingly decided by the loss of the family fortune during the crash of the Great Depression and who subsequently ran away with the circus.
For the book club’s third selection, we chose from a list of Pulitzer Prize winners. What a delight this book was. The title is a play on words of Hemingway’s short story, “The Short Happy Life of Frances McComber” with the added twist of the name “Oscar Wao” being a permutation of “Oscar Wilde.” But the story of Oscar is anything but “happy.” More anti-hero than conventional protagonist, Oscar Wao is atypical in every respect both within and with-out the narrative.
After discussing the Holocaust and Trujillo’s atrocities for the past two book club meetings, we decided that our next meeting would present lighter fare, or so we had hoped. Until then, keep reading.
Part zoological catalog, part WWII suspense story, part treatise on naturalism, Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, a War Story served as the 2nd book for the Men’s Book Club.
On a chilly Tuesday evening, during the rush of the holiday season, I got lost in the maze of the QualComm complex in Sorrento Valley.
