Customer Reviews

Other Septembers, Many Americas: Selected Provocations, 1980#2004

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Ariel Dorfman's writings have meant a lot to me over the years, and Seven Stories Press has done us a service by printing this collection of pieces. It is stretching it, however, to call it a book of collected provocations. More like the same old miscellany every writer eventually publishes--his speeches, book reviews, catalogue essays for exhibitions, "second thoughts" on his greatest hits, etc. Provocations would describe about twenty pages of it, the rest would be ego. As I made my way through the book I thought to myself, "Next we'll be getting his commencement addresses," and then I turned a page and bang, there's one printed out in full.

That's not to say that among the many, many pieces here aren't some with permanent value. His review of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD imparts some biographical tidbits about GGM which you will find nowhere else (the two writers are chance acquaintances and are often called to speak together on panels about Latin American literature).

He is also a trustworthy observer of human nature whose insights into the mysteries of the heart are usually spot on. And his eye for other men's writing is very good. I would never have read THE LIGHTNING OF AUGUST if not for his perceptive review of it in The NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW in 1986. Even his analysis of Homer's Iliad has a weary sort of wisdom to it, the kind that Peter O'Toole wore so heavily on his brow in the recent blockbuster movie of TROY.

I shouldn't play the September 11th card, not to poor old Ariel Dorfman, but he really shouldn't be playing it either. he could have thought of some other title to sell his miscellaneous prose under. But in a way I don't blame him, his credentials are what he has to sell, and after having read Dorfman's DEATH AND THE MAIDEN many will be anxious to see what he has to say about Al Qaeda and about the torture village of Abu Ghraib. Good collection.

On September 11th, 1944 Jews were herded into trains in Hungary for the trip to Auschwitz. At the same time American troops in France were being briefed on a midnight raid to capture bridges across the Rhine for the liberation of Germany.

For those who hate America they searched through the history of the last 230 years to find 'another Sept. 11' in order to pretend somehow that the loss of 3,400 civilians could be excused by showing that 'America deserved what it got.'

For those America hating leftists, like the author of this book about how Americans deserved to die on Sept. 11 becuase of American support for Pinochet, they might be more intlligent to ask what would have happaned has Eisenhower not planned the European invasion of Normandy on September 11th, 1941. However instead they dwell on America's support for a coup in Latin Ameirca, of course never dwelling on Soviet support for similar coups all over the world. For 40 years Communism enslaved parts oft he world, committed genocide in Cambodia, and starved the people of Ethiopia. For those who hate America, as found in these essays, it is America that is to blame. Perhaps they are correct, it would have been better had American isolationism prevailed in 1941, and had America abandoned all these people to their deserved fate under Nazism and Communism. Next time hopefully we will.

Seth J. Frantzman