A small book of essays on the Mideast written from 1969 to 1973 by the political essayist and linguist Noam Chomsky. The best piece ridicules the claim of Zionists such as Irving Howe and Seymour Lipset that Chomsky and "the New Left" advocate the destruction of Israel. The other articles are bland and constricted and sometimes off the mark, as when Chomsky asserts that arrangements between Europe or Japan and the Arab oil producers would threaten U.S.-based multinational capitalists. The book has the merit of showing that the claims of Zionists and Palestinian nationalists to that pathetic patch of land possess equal merit and urgency on their own terms. But "neither view can be adopted by people with any compassion or sense of justice. . . . Supporters of the just claims of each contending party. . . have reinforced the tendencies of each toward self-destructive policies." Chomsky also warns against a consolidation of Israel with the reactionary Arab sector as buffers on behalf of the U.S., and suggests that a so-called independent Palestinian state might be nothing but a South African-style labor reserve for Israel. The book does not investigate how Palestinian terrorism has been manipulated but takes it at face value. And even in Chomsky's long introduction, there is no substantial analysis of the external causes of the 1973 war. The book's virtues are negative — it transcends reflex parti pris, it demolishes narrow logic up to a point. Its affirmative features aren't really far from the spirit of neocolonialist regional development (Chomsky abstractly terms it "binational socialism") which is mooted with contrasting saccharinity by Elon and Hassan in Between Enemies (see below).
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1974
ISBN: 0006339182
Page Count: 187
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1974
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.
Ten homespun personal essays—most published elsewhere—from the author of last year’s acclaimed novel Jim the Boy.
Earley grew up in a small-town, kudzu-covered corner of North Carolina more recognizable as the terrain of Thomas Wolfe than that of Dorothy Allison. Seven of these pieces explore his early years there, as a 1960s television acolyte, a squirrel-hunting dilettante, and, through it all, an astute, heartbreaking observer of the idiosyncratic people around him. The title story, which appeared in Harper’s, serves as an introduction to this American boyhood, wholly transformed by a color, Zenith television set, replete with rooftop antenna. As the cornerstone entry here, a masterful exercise in metaphor, it’s hard to imagine what more the author could have to articulate about his young life. But Earley thankfully only has more trenchant memories to spin. With “Hallway,” in an equally unadorned language, but with more deeply felt remembrances, Earley recalls, with a child’s perception, his extended family’s peculiarities and his own fearful awe of his grandfather. A look at the odd Scots-derived Appalachian dialect of his youth (“The Quare Gene”) leads to a reflection on the “shared history” that the author is losing with his highland ancestors. A similar wistfulness pervades “Granny’s Bridge,” a tribute to a time when crossing a bridge—and certainly not one to the 21st century—could enhance a person’s outlook. In “Ghost Stories,” Earley takes his wife to New Orleans to investigate the haunted city: “We are looking for ghosts, but, I think, a good story will do.” And the final piece (“Tour de Fax”), another gem from Harper’s, follows him on a record-setting circumnavigational flight, recorded stop by stop in under 32 hours. Earley’s skewering of the trip’s corporate sponsors is good fun, and his capstone epiphany—that where he ended up, at home, is the only place he’d fly around the world to get to—rings true.
Poetic, inspiring proof that you can go home again.Pub Date: May 25, 2001
ISBN: 1-56512-302-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
Peter Mayle fans who haven’t yet had enough of Provence knockoffs will enjoy Drinkwater’s genteel tale, as well as James...
The memoirs of actress and author Drinkwater (Molly on the Run, 1996), best known for her role as Helen Herriot in the 1980s TV series All Creatures Great and Small.
Although the author plays down the importance of her life as an actress, it was through acting that she met her husband, Michel, a film producer. Leaving behind the tinsel of Cannes, the two wandered the back roads of southern France and found an abandoned villa attached to ten acres of old olive trees. The bucolic setting and the vision of themselves as custodians of the land led them to purchase the villa in one fell swoop, but real day-to-day life on the farm proved resistant to their romantic visions. The house hadn’t been lived in for years; simply establishing water and electricity service turned out to be a major job. Refurbishing an old swimming pool was an even more expensive (some might say prodigal) effort. In spite of her successful acting career, and her husband’s ongoing film projects, financial woes soon presented themselves—at least until money flowed in from one of the author’s residuals checks or Michel signed a new contract. Eventually the problems were solved and the grove was producing the finest olive oil in the region, mainly because of the Drinkwaters’ hard work, but even more because of their ability to hire the right people to help out—such as René (who knew just about everything there was to know about olives) and Quashia (an itinerant Algerian with a tragic past). In the end, not surprisingly, the story seems rather like a movie.
Peter Mayle fans who haven’t yet had enough of Provence knockoffs will enjoy Drinkwater’s genteel tale, as well as James Herriot groupies.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58567-106-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
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