Anthony ArthurCritiques

If you like books about writers and also like a good old-fashioned feud then you'll like this one. The book is well-researched and presented. Could use a few ladies.
Read here if you like any of the following writers:
Mark Twain*
Bret Harte*
Ernest Hemingway*
Gertrude Stein*
Sinclair Lewis
Theodore Dreiser*
Edmund Wilson
Vladimir Nabokov
C. P. Snow
F R. Leavis
Lillian Hellman
Mary McCarthy
Truman Capote*
Gore Vidal
Thomas Wolfe
Norman Mailer
John Irving*
Sherwood Anderson
*Authors I've read

I wouldn't know an Anabaptist from a Baptist, although Anna Baptist will be my drag queen name. The Tailor King helped make the distinction between Anabaptists and the rest somewhat clearer and to be honest this atheist found the Anabaptist creed rather uncontroversial. Of course, 21st Century Australia is rather different to medieval Europe in the age of Luther and anything against the grain ecumenically was stamped out with great haste.

Which brings us to the city of Munster and the Anabaptists who take the city and attempt to transform it into utopia, with rather mixed results. Arthur kept me engaged throughout the Tailor King and it turns out I enjoyed this foray into medieval politics, even when the inevitable dictatorial Tailor King of Munster turned out worse than the Catholics.

Gore Vidal, among other authors, didn't like Truman Capote, although they had much in common.

I was very interested inj to learn about Upton Sinclair, but this writing was so poor and scattered I learned much less than I should have in 320 pages.

This is a straightforward telling of the remarkable rise and fall of the Kingdom of Munster in the sixteenth century. I didn't know any of these details so the book was a great way to learn the basics.

At the end Arthur does attempt a bit of analysis, to try to understand what could have driven people quite so crazy. He spends perhaps the most time following Ernest Jones's Freudian analysis of the Devil. I didn't find any of this analysis very convincing or informative, but it could provide a reader with some starting points.

I would have liked a bit more theology, e.g. laying out the different strands of Anabaptism. I don't recall a mention in the book of the Swiss Brethren. Of course this is a short book and the theological context is utterly vast so it is perfectly valid to stick to the bare bones as this book does. Author Arthur (ha!) tells us that it was the Waco Branch Davidian siege that motivated him to study King Jan and to write this book. It's really mass psychology that forms the parallel between these events, rather than theology.

Nowadays I would love to see something similar about Islamic Millennialism. Can we see Bin Laden, e.g., as a modern King Jan? This book was published in 1999 so it was too early to make that question at all urgent. Is there a Hindu Millennial wing of the BJP?

A fascinating story of the powers of faith at their most powerful yet destructive, told skillfully with annotations by a historian that can walk the line between storytelling and the delivery of straight facts.

The book chronicles the brief yet amazing story of the anabaptist kingdom of Munster, from the building of tensions as millenialist preachers arrive to spread the gospel that Munster is the holy city of the second coming to the brutal collapse of what had become a corrupt city-kingdom ostensibly ruled by a mad young king, ending eventually in the brutal execution of Jan van Lieden, King of Munster and the Second David, at the hands of the prince-bishop of Munster who leaves the dead hanging in great iron cages that still top the cathedral of Munster to this day.

Many of us would think that David Koresh, Jim Jones or Charles Manson are modern phenomenons. Think again.

Jan van Leiden considered himself a man chosen by G-d to usher in a glorious new age of peace and godliness across Europe. Jan was an Anabaptist - one of the sects that sprouted like weeds once the Catholic Church was splintered by the Reformation. His people believed that one could only come to the Kingdom of Heaven by willingly being baptized as an adult. They also believed in some fairly-forward thinking ideas such as pacifism, freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state - ideas that could get you killed in the early 1530s.

Jan, from the Dutch city of Leiden, came to Münster in 1533. He had heard that the city was friendly to Anabaptists and that he'd be able to make something of himself amongst a group of fellow believers. He heard correctly.

Within months of his arrival, Jan, along with a few of his Anabaptist followers, had seized control of the city, kicking out the city's council and stacking it with fellow believers. They achieved this mostly by running around the streets in a state of half-dressed religious zeal, singing about the End of Days and the glories that awaited G-d's chosen ones. Amazingly, this worked - you have to remember that this was an age of intense religious strife and hysteria. Anyone promising a little peace and prosperity far from the blood and muck of this world was considered worth hearing out.

Unfortunately, power began to go to their heads. The 'rules' began to get a little crazy. Capital punishment without a trial started to be the order of the day. The medieval version of the ATF stepped in, surrounded the city and prepared to starve the people into submission. Eventually, some were brave enough to escape Munster and help the local Bishop storm the city and regain control.

Jan and two of his most loyal cronies were arrested and eventually executed in a most painful, slow and torturous manner. Their bodies were put on display in three cages hung from the church steeple as a 'warning' to anyone else who might try to rock the boat. If you visit the city of Munster today, you will still see the cages hanging there.

This is a fascinating book and I would highly recommend it to any history buff.

I dipped back into the 2006-07 Chautauqua reading list for Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair. I really knew nothing about Sinclair -- only that he had written The Jungle which is credited with helping to pass the first pure food act in the U.S. It turns out that he had a most interesting life both professionally and personaly. He wrote prolifically (nearly 100 books plus countless articles) on a wide range of topics, from politics and morality to extreme diets and psychic phenomenon, produced plays and movies and even ran for goveror of California. The son of an acoholic he was a life long teetotaler who didn't even drink tea or coffee. Although he won the Pulitzer Prize and was considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature, many felt his writing wasn't up to these standards. The author suggests that his main strength was in absorbing huge amounts of data and then making the information clear and accessible to average readers. He suggests that was most obvious in the "Lanny Budd" series in which much of the history of the first half of the 20th century serves as a backdrop to a series of 11 spy novels -- the third of which was awarded the Pulitzer. I think I may start with the first one and read my way to the Pulitzer...and perhaps beyond, depending on how I like the first three.½

I purchased this book because I grew up near Shelby's home and because of Random House's reputation for quality books. In the first pages I was disappointed. Anyone writing about Shelby must deal with the fact that so much of what is known about him is mixed in with all the hyperbole, purple prose, and outright lies of his wartime adjutant John Newman Edwards, as well as the nonsense of the "Lost Cause." Shelby's mid-twentieth century biographer, Daniel O'Flaherty, made a considerably step up from Edwards, but still relied too much on the Shelby legend and too little on well-documented research. I was hoping Arthur had written a "life and times," relying a great deal on careful research of other authors about the times. Arthur stays more with Shelby than with his times, and has done little research in primary sources himself. Yet the more I read, the more the book grew on me. The final pages in their analysis of Shelby's character and how he met his moments in history are the book's strongest points. Overall, this is a good read thoughtfully written if not exhaustively researched½

Neat little volume. Organized into eight chapters/feuds. Each one is a standalone. Its a combination of literary history, criticism, and biography, very worthwhile if you have an interest in any of the authors involved.

A very readable account of an historical event at a time when incredible dramatic events were happening moment by moment throughout the world. It is an account from an American perspective, of the civilians in Philippnes at the time the Japanese invaded, and how they were interned until rescued by the 11th Airborne Division of the US Airforce. The internees were Filipinos, Americans, and British mostly - my uncle who was one of the internees and was a New Zealander is listed as British, probably because of the close ties NZ had with Britain at the time, and the fact that my uncle had gone from Britain to the PI. Had there not been US civilians in the camp, it is doubtful whether any of them would have survived or been rescued. It's a clear and unbiased account of atrocities committed, of the way "ordinary" people coped with extraordinary circumstances, of courage and personalities, and is well worth reading. If it has a fault it is that it focussed almost exclusively on one particular group of people, with only passing reference to others, such as the nuns and priests or other groups.½

I am perusing bios of Timothy Leary by Robert Greenfield and Upton Sinclair ("Radical Innocents" by Anthony Arthur). Obvious studies in contrasts, but both had alcoholic fathers:

Sinclair was an early feminist-phile, bitten by his own asp. His lovely first wife cuckholded him to his best friend, a minor poet. He was a precocious and productive child. Teetotaller, friend of Jack London's, Socialist running for governer of California, writer of over 60 novels in his 90 years. (Leary made it to age 76, surprisingly). He is best remembered for "The Jungle," his expose of conditions in the Chicago meat packing plants. He intended to elicit an outcry over the working conditions endured by the employees, but gained fame for exposing all the crap that was in the meat they packed. Adam Smith's invisible hand is also a stomach. We are selfish, self-interested creatures, without a doubt.

Leary did not fall far from the tree, basically an alcoholic all his life, we all know the rest--a clown prince in the burgeoning global village. Dropped-out of West Point as his alcoholic father who abandoned him and his mother had before him, during the early years of the Big One, over alleged violations of the honor code (involving the consumption of whiskey after the Army-Navy game in Dec., 1940 for which he was ultimately exonerated, but "silenced" for, as were two colored cadets from the moment they entered the hallowed halls, as was the custom in those days. MacArthur, when he was Commandant had tried to eliminate practices he, a distinguished grad, felt were archaic, fitting men for the War of 1812 and not modern warfare, but he had been swiftly overruled. Kinda can't blame Leary for being the iconoclast he was, given the harsh treatment by the system in his formative years. Fascinating study of how he died, oh so publicly, with no remorse. Kesey was his fellow prankster until the end. Laura Huxley was there at his deathbed too. We need people like Leary in this world too.

Each of them distinctly American seekers.

These little essays are quick reads before you drop off to sleep. Lots of fun facts and a really interesting look at the ways that authors interacted with each other.

Remarkably vivid and (within reason) sympathetic accont of
the Anabaptist state in 16th century Germany