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What’s your favorite genre of book? Some people like thrillers, some prefer romance. I know people who love a good cozy mystery and others who enjoy bleak horror. Some are sworn to a specific genre, like high fantasy or sci-fi, others would rather take in a good old slice-of-life narrative from that vast and varied garden of delights broadly dubbed “literary fiction.” Others may still take pleasure in the boy-wizards and sparkling vampire literature of their youth. Well—there is no judgment here.

What’s my favorite genre of book? How nice of you to ask! (You did ask, didn’t you? Of course you did!) Personally, while I have enjoyed books of many and sundry types, I would have to say that my favorite is the kind of book that has multiple layers of meaning to it which must peeled back slowly, like a really thick onion, until at last the different dimensions of the story leave me with a blurred sense of the line between fiction and reality itself.

Of course, it’s hard to fit all that on a sign in Barnes & Noble, so I generally find works of my favorite genre quite by accident. And so much the better; the unexpected nature of finding one makes it more fun.

I am glad to report that the book we discuss today is just such a tale! It is actually a book-within-a-book. It’s best if I start from the inside and work my way out, so we’ll begin by examining the inner book, which is a pulp sci-fi adventure set in a post-apocalyptic world infested by mutants, the result of a great nuclear war.

Into this dystopia steps Feric Jaggar, a man driven by a desire to save non-contaminated humanity from annihilation by the mutant hordes and the monstrous telepathic creatures controlling them, the “Dominators” or “Doms” for short; monstrous, deceptive beings from the evil empire of Zind.

Jaggar relentlessly works his way into the leadership of the human-controlled country of Heldon, most dramatically by winning the right to wield the “Steel Commander”, a fabled ancient weapon only worthy of the greatest of men according to legend. Like Mjölnir, in other words. He wins control of it during a fiery initiation rite into a motorcycle gang known as the Black Avengers. After his victory, Jaggar changes their name and sweeps to control of Heldon, winning the respect of all true humans and the fear of the mutants in the process.

Once in command of the human nation, he quickly raises an army and mounts a furious attack on the Empire of Zind, himself at the helm, fighting tremendous battles against innumerable hordes of monsters.

The battle scenes in this book are bound to be polarizing. Some may find them tedious and repetitive. Personally, I thought they were enjoyable in a campy sort of way. The prose is absurdly overwrought, and probably sets the record for most uses of the word “protoplasm” in a work of fiction. However, it’s also nothing that won’t feel familiar to a regular reader of Lovecraft. HPL rarely wrote extended battle scenes, but if he had, they would read like this.

Jaggar’s quest sends him hurtling from one cataclysmic battle to the next, each time proclaiming, in gloriously hyperbolic terms, how this one is really the great, finally struggle for the future of the universe. Okay, now that’s done with. Oh, but wait! Seriously, now, this one is the big one. Really, no kidding, this is for all the marbles…

It’s so over-the-top it’s almost funny, and indeed, on its own, it works as a fast-paced, violent sci-fi epic. If this appeals to you, I encourage you to stop reading this review right now and go pick up the book. You can come back after you’ve finished reading it. Get the Kindle version, because it automatically skips the introduction, which is an excellent thing. Much like listeners in the 1930s missed the intro to Orson Welles’ adaptation of War of the Worlds, and thought they were hearing a live news report of an alien invasion, this is one where it’s best to get the full context later.

From this point forward, I’m going to assume you have either read the book or are never going to, so from here on out spoilers will abound. Think carefully before proceeding.

To begin with, the book-within-the-book is titled “Lord of the Swastika.” Also, the cover above is the one for the Kindle edition. I opted to use it instead of the more colorful, but also more shocking, paperback edition or the appropriately pulpy first edition as seen on Wikipedia. (There are many different covers; this one is probably the best.)

You see, the framing device for this story is that it’s an alternate universe in which, after briefly dabbling in politics, Adolf Hitler emigrated to the United States in the 1920s, and made a career as a sci-fi pulp novelist and illustrator, with “Lord of the Swastika” being his most popular book.

I left out some important details in my plot summary above. The motorcycle gang Jaggar takes over is renamed the “Sons of the Swastika,” or “SS” for short. They wear black uniforms with red swastika armbands, hold torchlight parades, and chant “Hail Jaggar!” at every opportunity.

Also, except for the ending, the entire career of Jaggar is beat-for-beat a thinly-veiled retelling of Hitler’s actual biography, from his elimination of the old gang leader once he’s outlived his usefulness to invading the Zind empire to seize their oil fields.

Of course, in this alternative history, none of that actually happened, and Hitler was just another eccentric writer alongside Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Heinlein, and perhaps most pointedly, L. Ron Hubbard.

This is brought home in the afterword, by fictional critic “Homer Whipple,” who proceeds to deconstruct “Lord of the Swastika,” and in so doing reveals more facts about this alternate world, most significantly that, by 1959, the Soviet Union has conquered most of the planet except for the USA and Japan.

Whipple harshly critiques the novel’s poor writing and ridiculously simplistic characters, before turning to a Freudian analysis of the imagery the author chose, as well as adding a few words about what this suggests about the man’s psyche. This Hitler, he ultimately concludes, was a deeply disturbed individual, and it’s lucky that he only channeled his unhealthy desires and fixations into his fiction. Whipple figuratively shakes his head at the idea of such a psychologically abnormal man actually leading a political movement.

Okay, so… what exactly are we to make of all this? We’ve got our book-within-the-book, we’ve got the (apparently dystopian) “real” world, and a fictional literary critic telling us why the book we just read is not very good and in fact kind of disturbing. What does it all add up to?

Well, let’s back up yet another level in this weird metafictional matryoshka, and think about what the actual author, Norman Spinrad, was trying to do here.

To some degree of course, it’s a satire of Nazism. But that’s not really the main goal. After all, mocking Hitler in, say, 1936 took a lot of courage; mocking him in 1972 took rather less. No, Spinrad is after something else.

I think he had in mind two targets: the first is pulp science-fiction generally. With relative ease, he spins a perfectly serviceable sci-fi yarn that also happens to function as Nazi propaganda. Which has to be disquieting to any fan of sci-fi. Some of the messianic speeches Feric Jaggar gives feel not too far off from stuff Paul Atreides says in Dune . (Somewhere in there I’m sure there’s a line about Paul’s awakening race consciousness. I remember thinking it odd at the time.)

Lest anyone misunderstand, I’m not saying Dune is veiled Nazi propaganda. If you go beyond the first book, that series is itself also clearly intended as a criticism of messianic political movements. At the same time, almost everyone who goes beyond the first Dune book agrees that the subsequent books are boring and weird, whereas the first (and most Nazi-ish, or at least fascistic) one is a rollicking adventure. Is this more than just a coincidence?

Well… not when we remember that history did not start in the 1930s. The deficiencies in our system of historical education have led several generations to forget this fact, but in reality, the Nazi movement, despite its overall reactionary character, was in certain respects unusually modern in its technique.

By that, I mean they liked to use what Peggy Noonan once called “political bullshit about narratives.” (Every time someone says “narrative” in a political context, I think of this quote.) The idea of a legendary hero on a quest to save the nation is obviously way older than Nazism. The Nazi propaganda department was extremely adept at casting Hitler into this role, but the role had been written in the minds of the population literally millennia before. Again, the Kwisatz Haderach vibes!

Basically, Nazi propaganda and popular sci-fi were both drawing from the same well of ancient folkloric patterns encoded deeply in human memory to craft their respective stories. So, don’t worry too much that liking old school sci-fi adventure means you are secretly a Nazi. Just be careful about joining any cult-like political movements. I have developed this one weird trick to make sure I don’t do that on accident, which is to never join anything. Cultists hate me!

Speaking of cults, this brings me to Spinrad’s second target, which is much more speculative on my part, but I think I’ve got a sound case.

I mentioned above that the fictionalized Hitler of this book would have been a contemporary of L. Ron Hubbard, who, in addition to founding the Church of Scientology, was a pulp sci-fi author, and achieved some notable success with his fiction.

Spinrad, who in other works criticized Scientology in much less veiled terms, seems here to be suggesting that a man who achieved cult success as an author of sci-fi might be able to start another, much more dangerous movement. Beware of eccentric sci-fi authors, The Iron Dream implies; you never know what else they might be capable of doing.

Of course, this subtle satirical intent was almost certainly lost on most readers, especially in the pre-internet days. As sometimes happens with satirical works, here the author may have succeeded too well in imitating his intended target, to the point where it actually serves the very goal it is supposed to be undermining. As in, some neo-Nazi groups actually endorsed The Iron Dream, despite Spinrad’s best efforts to prevent this misreading. Let this be a caution to all writers who try to get cute and insert subtle messages into their texts; sometimes the readers are just gonna read it how they want to read it.

Most people read a book once, get a vague idea of the gist, and then move on. It takes a special kind of nutcase to, for example, spend almost 2,000 words analyzing the hidden depths and meanings of a book from more than 50 years ago. But hey, that’s why we have to “let a hundred flowers bloom,” right?

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One of my favorite songs for background listening is Hildegard von Blingin”s bardcore rendition of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” with lyrics rewritten to fit the medieval period. It’s this sort of thing that helps history come alive. Just as Joel wrote the original song to explain to some kid that the 1950s and ’60s weren’t exactly a settled time, so this version reminds us that the Middle Ages were a tumultuous era that must have seemed absolutely insane to anyone alive during it.

The point is, every era in recorded history seems terrifyingly apocalyptic to those living though it. Indeed, the history of the world can practically be told as the story of people expecting its imminent annihilation. This brings me to the book with which we are concerned today, which is described as follows: “a cross-cultural and cross-temporal study of models of history considered as a class of story. The book tries to do for doomsday what The Hero with a Thousand Faces did for the myth of the hero.”

Reilly begins his survey with the cyclical interpretations of history: the pessimistic German reactionary Oswald Spengler and the comparatively sunny and hopeful Arnold J. Toynbee. From there, he hops down a number of esoteric rabbit holes, examining apocalyptic cults from Münster to Jonestown, various interpretations of the Book of Revelation, and the Aztec conception of the end of the world, all sprinkled with liberal references and comparisons to works of science fiction, both famous and obscure.

If it all sounds a little rambling, well, that’s because it is. Fortunately, Reilly is a cheerful and good-natured narrator, who never takes himself or his subject too seriously. His witty style makes his treatment of what could have been a bleak subject charming to read:

The embarrassing thing about the history in the Bible is that it is all too familiar. There are stupid kings, sneaky women, ungovernable cities, debt-ridden farmers, and a very lively sense that life is intractably irritating. Even God is sometimes unreasonable. He sends bears to eat obnoxious children and a plague to punish a census taking.

He has a way of cutting through the cruft and making the complex and arcane seem straightforward:

It does not take a lot to destroy a civilization. All you have to do is stop making long-term investments, neglect to repair physical plant, and generally stop thinking about the next generation. All these things happened in late antiquity. The terminal apocalypse in the Roman Empire did not provide a framework for millenarian revolt. How can you fight City Hall when it closed years ago?

And his descriptions of people are no less entertaining. For instance, re. Oswald Spengler:

He was the sort of person who could not walk around the corner to buy a paper without seeing signs of cultural decay.

Guys like that are so annoying, right? 😉

Reilly’s style makes the book a breeze to read, even as he is tackling the most weighty of subjects. Another advantage of his easygoing style is that it gives a sense of neutrality. Despite his tackling political philosophies, I can’t really say with certainty whether he leans left or right. And despite some fairly deep dives into esoteric Jewish and Christian theology, from his attitude, he could have been Christian, Jewish, something else, or atheist. (I know the answer now, from reading the “About the Author” section afterward, but there was nothing definite in the main text.)

The most interesting parts of the book come close to the end, as Reilly examines the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit scholar who developed the concept of the noösphere. What’s that, you ask? Well, that’s why we have Wikipedia:

[T]he noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere has grown in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the Earth. As mankind organizes itself in more complex social networks, the higher the noosphere will grow in awareness. This concept extends Teilhard’s Law of Complexity/Consciousness, the law describing the nature of evolution in the universe. Teilhard argued the noosphere is growing towards an even greater integration and unification, culminating in the Omega Point – an apex of thought/consciousness – which he saw as the goal of history.

Reilly is quick to point out the remarkable similarity of this concept to the central idea of Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 novel Childhood’s End, and given how prescient that book was regarding other developments… well, it gives one pause, to say the least. Even Reilly’s considerable sang-froid seems a little shaken when confronting the implications of this.

Still, Teilhard’s ideas are only one of innumerable conceptions about how the world will end. And as Reilly reminds us, there are many different ways to even define what “world-ending” means. As he notes, for the Aztecs, the world effectively did end in the 1500s, much as their own religious beliefs suggested it would. For them, it was the apocalypse. For the Spanish, it was the Golden Age. It’s all relative, man!

A final question to ponder before we wrap this up: as Reilly demonstrates, most cultures and religions have the idea that the world will end. When or how is a subject of some discussion, but they all seem to agree it will. Which makes sense, as the most widely-observed truism in the world is that this, too, shall pass away. And I’ll admit, this seems a bit sad.

On the other hand, though, I wonder if the idea of an ending is itself a kind of comfort. After all, what would be the alternative? Waiting for Godot?

Estragon: “I can’t go on like this.” 

Vladimir: “That’s what you think!”

Or, to bring Arthur C. Clarke into the story again, let me paraphrase him: “There are two possibilities: either the world will end, or it will not. Both are equally terrifying.”

That’s a little too downbeat. On second thought, let me conclude with a quote about The End from another great British science-fiction author:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

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“All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.”

–Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“Everyone got famous. / Everyone got rich. / Everyone went off the rails / And ended in the ditch.”

–Warren Zevon, “Ourselves to Know.”

Don’t close the window just because this book is about football!

I know, I know; most of you care not a whit about our strange, violent American pastime. The names “Tom Brady” and “Bill Belichick” probably mean nothing to most of my readers. Well, in a way, I envy you.

But football is still America’s game, like it or not, and the story of the New England Patriots dynasty is one of its epics. And mark this well: it is about more than just football. The story it tells is part of the story of the early 21st-century United States, and there are lessons to be gleaned from it that extend far beyond the field. That’s why I wanted to review this book, and why I think even non-football fans should read it.

At the same time… there will still be quite a lot of talk about football here. So, I have highlighted in bold the parts that contain more general information, of interest to the laity. So you can skip over the parts about whether a short pass to Faulk on 4th-and-2 was the best call, if that sort of thing doesn’t interest you.

The book begins at the end, with New England losing to the Tennessee Titans (coached by once and future Patriot, Mike Vrabel) in the 2019-20 playoffs. It then flashes back to the very beginning, when Tom Brady was just another high school kid with dreams of making getting to play for a top college, and when Belichick was an assistant coach for the famously harsh Bill Parcells.

Basically, Belichick and Brady both had massive amounts of resentment over perceived wrongs–Brady because he couldn’t even be named the full-time starting QB for one of the lesser Big Ten schools, Belichick because Parcells treated him badly, and also probably because he coached the Browns. Coaching the Browns would be enough to turn any man to evil, I suppose.

Anyway, these two psychopaths found their way to New England, a historically poor franchise, and in the autumn of 2001—a pivotal time in the history of the United States—Brady became the starting quarterback and the Patriots upset the heavily-favored Rams in the Super Bowl.

It’s hard to remember now, but at the time, they were America’s darlings: with the country united in a spirit of patriotism (also hard to remember now) the fact that the plucky all-American kid could come out of nowhere to lead a team literally called “the Patriots” to an improbable victory was just too much. It was like a Disney movie out there.

Wickersham recounts how Brady, the kid-next-door, started receiving calls from actresses and models and celebrities, and generally fêted by the power elite. It was a classic rags-to-riches story.

Naturally, Brady and Belichick wanted to do it all again. And they did, two years later, winning another championship after a 14-2 season that began with a 31-0 loss to the Buffalo Bills. (Just wanted to get that in there.) And then they won another the next year. And by this point, everyone was pretty much sick of them.

Wickersham notes how, en route to building their dynasty, the Patriots, and more specifically Belichick’s defense, actually changed the way football is played. After a playoff game in which they defeated the Indianapolis Colts by physically dominating their receivers, the league altered the rules to essentially make this type of hard-hitting pass defense illegal.

Naturally, the Patriots also took advantage of the new rules a few years later, creating what was to that point the greatest passing offense in NFL history in 2007.

While I may not like them, I would still contend that the ’07 Patriots are in fact the greatest team in NFL history, or at least, the greatest team of the salary cap era. I don’t care that they lost the Super Bowl on a fluke play; they had an absolutely insane offense and a wily, tough defense coached by the best defensive coach of the era. I still can picture them annihilating my hapless Bills on Sunday Night Football that year.

In any case, Super Bowl XLII is where the first phase of the Patriots dynasty ends. If we want to talk in world-historical Spengler/Toynbee-esque terms, this is the part where the nascent culture has flourished into a full-blown civilization. “The Patriot Way” was now well-established.

Of course, as Wickersham is quick to note, few within the Patriots organization ever uttered the words “Patriot Way” or “culture.” The best line I ever read on this was, “Belichick doesn’t believe in ‘culture.’ He believes in ruthlessness.”  (Another good line from this book: Belichick “‘doesn’t hold grudges,'” someone says. ‘He holds death.'”)

What I would argue “The Patriot Way” is actually describing is asabiyya, as defined by the historian Ibn Khaldun:

[Khaldun] explains that ruling houses tend to emerge on the peripheries of existing empires and use the much stronger asabiyya present in their areas to their advantage, in order to bring about a change in leadership. This implies that the new rulers are at first considered ‘barbarians’ in comparison to the previous ones. 

And indeed, the rise of the Patriots is a prime example of the rise of such a “ruling house.” The old guard of the NFL was annoyed at the rise of these newcomers. The great Don Shula himself repeatedly expressed his antipathy to Belichick, whom he believed to be a cheater. Which he is, but, as this book explains in some detail, basically everyone in the NFL is constantly trying to cheat everyone else at all times. Yes, I know; who would have thought that some of the most competitive alpha males in the world, with millions of dollars as well as prestige at stake, would try to cheat one another? Possibly in a different era, that prized honor and integrity more highly, this would not be tolerated. But we are not in such an era.

And speaking of eras, the Patriots now transitioned to the second phase of their time in the sun, a run during which they would have consistent success, but not quite be able to crack the very pinnacle of the sport.

To some extent, I think the Patriots got away from what made them successful in the early 2000s, which was strong defense. From 2007 – 2013, their strength was unquestionably Brady’s offenses, which were consistently effective in the regular season yet somehow always seemed to fail when they were most needed. I mean, good lord, 17 points against a mediocre Giants team? And let us not forget that Brady gave the Giants 2 points with a stupid safety on the first play of the game. Personally, I think it’s funny that the greatest player of his era, and the most successful player in the history of the Super Bowl, also made one of the dumbest plays in the history of same.

Still, every year the Patriots were a threat to win at all, and always owned the AFC East and my (still) hapless Bills. But that was not enough for the ruthlessly competitive Belichick, and nor was it enough for Brady, who, despite having a supermodel wife and young children, continued to be obsessively dedicated to his craft. Honestly, if the rewards weren’t so spectacular, you’d say someone this absurdly devoted to a mere sport has a mental health issue.

I’m not blaming Brady. Our society has, in a way, failed him. It would be better, I think, if society incentivized intensely-driven and competitive young men to prove themselves as statesmen, explorers, warriors, diplomats, and so forth. Had he lived in the 1950s, Tom Brady might have pushed himself with the same fanaticism to excel as a soldier or an astronaut, instead of merely flinging a ball for our amusement. Still, here we are.

(I’m less bothered by Belichick’s dedication to the sport, simply because Belichick is an old man, “and the vices of peace are the vices of old men” etc.)

Speaking of the vices of old men, it’s time to discuss the third character in the triumvirate on the cover: Robert Kraft, the owner of the Patriots and noted illegal brothel enjoyer.

Kraft took over the struggling franchise in the early ’90s. The first three coaches to work for him are all Hall-of-Famers: Bill Parcells, Pete Carroll, and Belichick. Which of course is the job of a good owner: to hire good people, then sit back and let them succeed. Kraft did well at this part.

To get even more esoteric than this review is already, it is interesting to me to observe the parallels in the Belichick/Brady/Kraft dynamic with the Victorian comic opera partnership of Gilbert/Sullivan/D’Oyly Carte. (If this seems incongruous, remember that ultimately both football and comic opera are forms of entertainment.) Belichick is an obvious analogue to Gilbert, the irascible, sometimes tyrannical director; overseeing his show with meticulous attention to detail. Brady is Sullivan, a master of his art continually believing himself to be under-appreciated no matter how many accolades come his way. And Kraft is Carte; the businessman desperately working to manage the egos of these two mad geniuses in order to keep the gravy train rolling. In the end, of course, Carte couldn’t, and neither could Kraft.

If there is anything in cyclical theories of history, then it would seem there is an entropic process to which empires, comic opera companies, and football teams alike are subject. Namely, that their prosperity ultimately destroys them, as the ambition for a larger share of the credit divides the very elites who originally powered the success of the organization.

But I’m getting slightly ahead of the story: the Patriots had two of their best seasons in 2014 and 2016, both capped off with victories in two of the most memorable Super Bowl games ever played. These victories cemented their status as the greatest dynasty in NFL history, and Brady and Belichick as the best of their era at their respective roles. To Patriots fans, it was euphoria. To fans of all other 31 teams, it was like a never-ending nightmare, an Ugg boot, stamping on a human face—forever!

Ah, but the brightest light casts the darkest shadow! When you are at the top, there is nowhere to go but down! And any other cliché you care to use. The very fact of the Patriots success now set the stage for their eventual collapse. Wickersham documents how Belichick’s joyless discipline, Brady’s paranoid resentment of backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, and Kraft’s failures to reconcile the two men, made the 2017 season a particularly grim slog. It is a testament to the Patriots’ success that the fact that they made a Super Bowl again that year feels like an afterthought.

Something happened in 2017 to permanently damage the relationship between Belichick and Brady; something that not even another championship a year later could patch up.  Most Patriots fans, spoiled brats that they are, will tell you 2018 is the team’s worst Super Bowl win. (If you are fan of a team which has never won a Super Bowl, you can’t help but feel a sense of schadenfreude about what happened next.)

And so we come back to where the book began: that game against the Titans in the playoffs, with a terrible sense of ending in the air. It’s not often that the word “elegiac” can be applied to a football game, but it fits this one, particularly this play, in which Brady connected with veteran tight end Ben Watson. A combined 34 years of NFL experience allowed them to improvise when the play broke down… but it was negated by a penalty. This is the way the Patriots dynasty ended; not with a bang, but an ineligible man downfield, exploitation of obscure loopholes in the timing rules, and a botched “Stanford band” play. As of this writing, it is the last playoff game played at Gillette Stadium.

The book briefly covers Brady’s escape to Tampa Bay, where he built a team of superstars that won him a 7th title and elevated him above Belichick in the minds of most football fans. The fact that Belichick’s Brady-less teams struggled to achieve even mediocrity further hammers home the point: it was Brady, not Belichick, who was responsible for the Patriots multi-decade run of success. Not that fans don’t continue to debate it even now.

But this “debate” ultimately misses the point: everyone knows it is players, not systems, that win games. The greatest football coach in the universe will not win consistently if he does not have players who can execute his schemes. A great coach gets the most out of his players. His success or failure depends, ultimately, on what the players’ ceiling for “most” is.

There was a very telling incident last season, when Baker Mayfield, Brady’s successor as quarterback of the Buccaneers, talked about how “everybody was pretty stressed out” during the time of TB12, and how Mayfield saw himself as bringing “the joy back to football.”

Brady responded: “I thought stressful was not having Super Bowl rings… There was a mindset of a champion that I took to work every day. This wasn’t day care. If I wanted to have fun, I was gonna go to Disneyland with my kids.”

Indeed, Brady so relentlessly pushed himself that he didn’t even go to Disneyland with his kids all that much, and there is some reason to think that his borderline pathological pursuit of greatness destroyed his marriage. But there can be no doubt Brady’s obsession with constantly improving himself and his teammates made him the perfect man to execute Belichick’s scheme. I don’t like to put too much stock in generational stereotypes, but it may be that Brady, with his classic Gen X nose-to-the-grindstone, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, was just a better fit for the quasi-military mindset Belichick demanded, contrasted with the more laid-back attitude often attributed to the millennials who followed him. (I am a millennial, so I can say it: neither Brady nor Belichick would be the sort of guys to take kindly to participation trophies.)

This is where Wickersham’s chronicle ends, and as a rise-and-fall story–well, it ain’t Barry Lyndon, but it ain’t bad. But something is missing. It’s not Wickersham’s fault. His publication deadline prevented him including the last chapter of the saga, which I feel is necessary to complete the story of the Patriots Dynasty.

At the start of the 2023 season, on a rainy, windy day in Foxboro, the Patriots played the Philadelphia Eagles. The now-retired Tom Brady was the guest of honor, and was named the inaugural “Keeper of the Light” at the newly-renovated Gillette Stadium lighthouse.

As with many another empire, we can learn so much about a place and a people from their architecture. (It’s best if you can imagine the word spoken in the accent of Lord Kenneth Clark: “ar-KEY-tek-sure.”) The Gillette Stadium lighthouse tells the story of the New England Patriots in two simple images. Here is the original lighthouse as it looked from 2002 until 2023, during almost the entire run of New England’s success.

Sleek and spare, more a concept or suggestion of a lighthouse than a full-scale replica, without any unnecessary ornament. A pure column of light; Spartan maximization of efficiency. A turn-of-the-millennium expression of power and energy, just like the great Patriots teams of the era.

And here is its 2023 replacement: an unimaginative, gray, boxy, brutalist beast, squatting low over the field like a miserly ogre. Bigger? Yes. Better? Not by a long shot. It is emblematic of an organization whose vital energy is spent. Whatever fire Brady, Belichick, and Kraft had stolen from the gridiron gods long since burned out. Watching an oddly gaunt Brady standing atop this monstrosity, as the team he once led to glory fumbled its way to an ugly loss, I couldn’t help but think of Shelley’s classic lines:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Oh, well. “For one brief, shining moment” and all that. As Patriots receiver Julian Edelman prophesied, while in the thick of the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history: “It’s gonna be one helluva story.”

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To recap the previous episode: when we left our hero, Daniel J. Boorstin, he had just discovered that the foundations of the U.S. government were under threat from competing narratives of pseudo-events, which flood the public discourse and make getting a true understanding of political reality from the news effectively impossible.

A lesser man might have turned away at this point, unable to face any further horrors. But not Boorstin! No, he had to know it all.

Having defined the pseudo-event, Boorstin proceeds to document how every aspect of life is becoming more and more dominated by images, facsimiles, reproductions and imitations. Travel, once truly an adventurous activity, is reduced to tourist packages that offer pre-planned experiences. Celebrities have taken the place of heroes; instead of being famous for great deeds, they are famous because they are famous. Images have replaced ideals as the ultimate goal of people, organizations, and nations.

Among the many aspects of American culture that Boorstin analyzes, I want to highlight some of his thoughts on the literary industry that may be of interest to my fellow authors. For example, this remarkable passage on machine translation:

What Thomas J. Watson Jr., president of International Business Machines Corporation, calls the ‘Information Explosion’ is having an ever wider and deeper effect on the form in which we are willing to have our ideas expressed. And incidentally, it cannot fail to affect the respect we show for literary or any other kind of form. Translation, until recently, has been among the subtlest, most difficult and most respected of literary arts…

Now, in order to make available the increasing printed resources in other languages, the new data processing industry has perfected a machine translator. The Mark II machine, developed jointly by IBM and the Air Force, can take a passage of Russian and translate it into what IBM calls ‘rough but meaningful English.’ Here is a sample product of the machine when applied to a passage of Russian literary criticism:

United States appeared new translation immortal novel L.N. Tolstago ‘war and world / peace’ Truth, not all novel, buttony several fragments out of it, even so few / little, that they occupy all one typewritten page. But nonetheless this achievement. Nevertheless culture not stands / costs on place. Something translate. Something print. Truth, by opinion certain literature sceptics, translation made enough / fairly ‘oak.’

This goes on, but you get the idea. Basically, they have been working on AI literature for way longer than you thought.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as what Boorstin sees going wrong with the literary industry:

The expression ‘best-seller’ is, of course, another by-product of the Graphic Revolution. It is an Americanism (still not found in some of the best English dictionaries) which first came into use in the United States at the beginning of the present century… the word ‘seller’ in England had originally meant a person who sold; only around 1900 did the word come to mean a book (later any other item) that sold well. This subtle transference of ideas was itself interesting, for the very expression ‘best seller’ or ‘seller’ now implied that a book somehow sold itself: that sales bred more sales.

And so:

Best-sellerism has thus come to dominate the book world. Leaders in the book trade themselves often attacked it. In his Economic Survey of the Book Industry in 1931, O.H. Cheney called best-sellerism ‘an intolerable curse on the industry.’ But, he explained, there was (and there remains) a substantial commercial basis for the institution: one way to make a book a best seller is to call it one. Then many potential book buyers ‘want to join the thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of the inner circle of the readers of the book.’… A buyer going into a bookstore is apt to ask for a best-seller; even if he doesn’t, he is apt to be urged to buy a book because it is one…

…One of the most interesting features of the institution is how flimsy is the factual basis for calling any particular book a best seller. To speak of a best seller—to use the superlative to apply not to one item but to a score of items—is, of course, a logical contradiction. But the bookstores are full of ‘best sellers.’

In Boorstin’s view, basically everything is like this; manufactured and carefully-curated simulacra replacing real experiences. And how desperate are we for something that seems genuine to cut through all the public relations verbiage and artificial hype of pseudo-events?

Our hunger for crime news and sports news, then, far from showing we have lost our sense of reality, actually suggests that even in a world so flooded by pseudo-events and images of all kinds, we still know (and are intrigued by) a spontaneous event when we see one.

I’m convinced that part of the reason for the celebration of Luigi Mangione is that his crime was something unexpected and unplanned, and thus instantly attention-grabbing in a world of ads and social media memes.

There’s more—much more—but I can’t quote the whole book, now can I? After all, it would be particularly ironic to confuse the map with the territory in this, of all cases!

Suffice it to say, Boorstin saw the post-Graphic Revolution world as full of images that loom larger than the things they are meant to represent. And just as pseudo-events beget more pseudo-events, so do images beget other images, endlessly refracting until the underlying reality is a distant memory.

In other words, to paraphrase J.B.S. Haldane, the modern world is not only faker than we suppose, it is faker than we can suppose. Everything is a shadow of a shadow of a shadow, to where even what we think of as “real” is actually only a really thick shadow.

There is only one sphere of life that Boorstin does not excoriate for its replacement of reality with image. Not because he didn’t see it—it is inconceivable that he did not—but probably just because he was too classy to mention it. Well, I like to think I run a family-friendly blog, even if that family is the Addams Family, but I simply can’t ignore this particular issue.

The topic I am thinking of is, of course, sex. Now, even in Boorstin’s day, sex and media had already intermingled to quite an extent, and it is no doubt only the good librarian’s conservative sense of propriety that kept him from mentioning Playboy etc. But modern life has seen the Sexual and Graphic Revolutions combine to bring forth some real monstrosities.

The examples are endless, but I am thinking of one particular social media controversy from last year. Someone on Twitter modified this poster for the Amazon Prime series Fallout, probably using AI to do so. The modified poster gave the central figure tighter pants and a more toned backside. The person who modified it believed the woman wasn’t eye-catching enough in the original depiction. Naturally, there was a backlash, and a resulting discussion about sexism, male gaze, etc. etc. etc.

Now, what part of this whole sad episode is fake? Haha, trick question: it’s fakery all the way down! It is a poster for a television show adapted from a video game, further modified by machine to resemble a more visually striking conception of the female form. Literally everything about it is fake, and to become emotionally invested in arguing about any aspect of it is to lose oneself in shadows to the nth power.

Indeed, image so dominates modern concepts of sex that it poses a real danger to human reproduction. Does this seem impossible? Did you ever hear the tragedy of Julodimorpha bakewelli, a species of Australian beetle whose males are so attracted to discarded beer bottles that they mate with them instead of the females of their kind? Could a similar fate befall humanity, with the proliferation of things like AI romantic partners and virtual reality erotica? I don’t know, but I think we’re trying to find out.

None of this would come as a surprise to Boorstin, who in 1962 saw a world awash in shadows and illusions. To the extent it has changed, it has been a change in degree, not in kind. Influencers may have replaced movie stars, and social media may have replaced the nightly news, but it is just a more refined version of the same problem.

So what, then, is the solution? It may be impressive that Boorstin saw and understood the danger of trends that now permeate the society you and I inhabit. But that is of no help to us, unless he can offer us some way out, some hope of finding something real to grasp.

Here is Boorstin’s closing statement. It wasn’t enough to save us in 1962, but maybe, just maybe, we can for once harness the power of the internet to promote something true. Marshall McLuhan, whom Boorstin references more than once, said that “the medium is the message.” I am praying he was wrong. We’ve got the medium, now Dr. Boorstin supplies the message:

Each of us must disenchant himself, must moderate his expectations, must prepare himself to receive messages coming in from the outside. The first step is to begin to suspect that there may be a world out there, beyond our present or future power to image or imagine. We should not worry over how to export more of the American images among which we live. We should not try to persuade others to share our illusions. We should try to reach outside our images. We should seek new ways of letting messages reach us; from our own past, from God, from the world which we may hate or think we hate. To give visas to strange and alien and outside notions… One of our grand illusions is the belief in a ‘cure’. There is no cure. There is only the opportunity for discovery. For this the New World gave us a grand, unique beginning. 

We must first awake before we can walk in the right direction. We must discover our illusions before we can even realize that we have been sleepwalking. The least and the most we can hope for is that each of us may penetrate the unknown jungle of images in which we live our daily lives. That we may discover anew where dreams end and where illusions begin. This is enough. Then we may know where we are, and each of us may decide for himself where he wants to go.

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This is a collection of various books, articles, short stories, poems, and even sheet music dedicated to Halloween as it used to be celebrated. The bulk of the book is devoted to chapters describing forms of Halloween celebrations in various countries and eras, and how the rites of other holidays, such as the Celtic Samhain, evolved gradually into the holiday as we know it today.

The editing and organization of the book is somewhat peculiar. For example, we are told over and over about the same superstitions and party games. I lost count of how many times I read the story of a young woman eating an apple and then looking into a mirror at midnight, in the expectation of seeing the apparition of her future husband. And as for quotes from the poem Hallowe’en by Robert Burns, well… as “Weird” Al Yankovic would say, “If you missed it, don’t worry; they’ll say the line again and again and again.”

Still, there’s no doubt the older customs are interesting. The practice of trick-or-treating is actually barely referenced; as most older Halloween celebrations seem to have been focused far more on parties and games, particularly those with divinatory elements.

As much as anything, this book is a window into what people did for fun in the days before television, video games, and the internet. Bobbing for apples with letters carved into them seems a rather dull pastime these days, but when one considers the otherwise limited entertainment options available, one sees it differently.

According to this volume, Halloween is closely associated with Scotland, and indeed, imagining the feeling of gloom that must have pervaded the denizens of the bleak moors with the coming of winter, it’s easy to see how a night of diversionary festivities would have been most welcome. Perhaps we moderns, with all our creature comforts, have forgotten the simple pleasures of sitting by a warm hearth with a blazing fire and a cup of cider, safe from the wind and darkness outside the walls of our little cottage, and surrounded by good friends.

As one essay, “Halloween: A Threefold Chronicle” by William Sharp, makes clear, even as far back as the 1880s the traditional ways were struggling to stay alive in the face of modernity. Here is Sharp’s quotation of one Mr. MacDonald’s description of the state of Halloween celebrations in Scotland, complete with regional accent:

Weel, sir, it’s dying oot. Schoolin’ an’ railways an’ a’ the rest o’t’s bad for auld customs like these. In some airts the pu’in o’ the kale stalks is no’ to be seen at a’; in others it’s lingerin’ on among the farm folk; but every here and there it’s believed in as firmly as it was in the day o’ our grandfathers.

This reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? where George Clooney’s character says:

Yes sir, the South is gonna change. Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways. We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes sir, a veritable Age of Reason, like the one they had in France. And not a moment too soon!

You have to see it in context to really appreciate it. Somehow, the old ways still do manage to hang on in some form, don’t they? You can’t keep a good superstition down!

Is this book indispensable? No, not really; unless you happen to be a Halloween fanatic. And I know not all of you are. But if you’re the sort of person who wants to throw a traditional Halloween party, in an old barn, with candles and haystacks and paper cut-outs of witches, and so on, then this guide will contain many useful tips for planning same. I don’t even like parties, but reading this gave me half a mind to do just that…

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I know, I know; most of you aren’t here for non-fiction. I actually was planning to have a fiction review for you this week. I was! But then… things got busy, and my internet was down for much of that time, which caused me to fall behind on other work, and, and… well, you get the picture. “Excuses, excuses,” you say. “Next he’ll claim a dog ate his book review.”

But I ought to give you something as a reward for your loyally showing up here. So here is a review I wrote, but didn’t really plan to publish, of yet another Napoleonic history book.

As the title implies, this book is actually history of two separate events, 129 years apart, both of which occurred in the same place: Borodino, a place in Russia on the outskirts of Moscow. In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Armeé finally confronted the Russian Army after a long and frustrating game of cat and mouse across western Russia. In 1941, the German army met a strong Soviet defense, fanatically determined to keep the invaders from the gates of Moscow.

The author interweaves accounts of both battles, to build an almost eerily symmetrical story of how each developed.  Of course, the combatants in 1941 were aware of the historical significance of the 1812 battle, and noted the ominous feelings the word “Borodino” evoked. (Ironically, many of the monuments to the earlier conflict had already been destroyed by the Soviet government, who saw them as symbols of the Tsarist era.)

The 1812 battle, while technically a French victory, has got to be one of the worst moments for Napoleon as a strategist and as a tactician. The book is unsparing in its assessment of the Emperor’s many errors. While Waterloo will always be The Battle that ended Napoleon’s career, it’s pretty clear to me that his single worst miscalculations as a general came at Borodino. (Indeed, it’s tempting to wonder if the doomed last charge of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo was partially in reaction to his failure to deploy the Guard at Borodino.)

As for 1941; it’s hard to even get into things like tactics. Two technologically advanced, fanatically indoctrinated, tired, hungry, and desperate armies were hurled together into an unbelievably brutal slugfest in snow and ice. Nowhere is the relentless march of technology made more apparent than in the contrasting of what “artillery” meant in the Napoleonic era versus in World War II.

The author mostly does a very good job of weaving the two campaigns together, highlighting both the changes as well as the broader point that, well, as Ron Perlman would say, “War. War never changes.” There were a few points when I would be reading an account and honestly I wasn’t sure which battle they were in for a few sentences. (And the names are no help; there are men with Polish names fighting for the French, French names fighting for the Germans, and German names fighting for the Russians.)

Is it a good history? I think so. But what makes a good history? After all, even if you knew literally nothing about either battle, just by reading this far you have got a reasonable summary: Napoleon invaded Russia, and he lost. Then later Hitler invaded Russia, and he lost too. Bam, there’s your history! When we have the quiz, you should be able to ace it. Now, we can safely say that we have covered both campaigns when it comes time for our standardized tests.

But perhaps, if you are an inquisitive sort, (a rare thing these days!) you suspect there is more to this story. Maybe there is; but first, a trademark Ruined Chapel-style non-sequitur!

Hey, didja guys hear about the Galactic Starcruiser? It was some sort of Star Wars-themed mystery dinner-theater LARPing experience. But it lost a bunch of money and had to be shut down. Some vlogger on YouTube did a four hour show about how disappointing it was. (Apparently, it was insufficiently immersive.)

I was recently reading David Foster Wallace’s hilarious essay, Shipping Out, about his experience on a cruise ship, and how, eventually, no matter much luxury it provided, it was never really enough:

In response to any environment of extraordinary gratification and pampering, the insatiable-infant part of me will simply adjust its desires upward until it once again levels out at its homeostasis of terrible dissatisfaction. And sure enough, after a few days of delight and then adjustment…, the Pamper-swaddled part of me that WANTS is now back, and with a vengeance. By Wednesday, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that the A.C. vent in my cabin hisses (loudly).

That was in the ’90s. Wallace didn’t even have a smartphone!

Compared to any other point in recorded history, we in the modern West live lives of unparalleled luxury. Kings and queens of yesteryear had not 1/100th of the amenities available to modern people today. And are we happy? No, we are not! We are righteously dissatisfied that the quality of our entertainment is not as good as we imagine it could be. I’m as guilty as the next guy. I write a whole website dedicated to critiquing entertainment.

Which brings us back to Borodino and the book in question. The sheer, unrelenting, all-encompassing amount of horror and suffering described by the accounts of those who went through these battles are difficult to even comprehend. The modern middle-class American, which I am, struggles and fails to appreciate the sheer misery of men marching first in dry heat, and later sub-freezing cold, only to fight and die horribly hundreds of miles from their home. Civilian farmers, old men, women, children driven from their homes by the violence of these same starving soldiers and totalitarian regimes, people ruthlessly gunned down merely for expressing fear in the face of hopeless situation, or refusing to work as slave labor for an occupying enemy force.

It is Hell. It is the stuff of nightmares. I literally cannot, on a visceral level, understand how anyone survived these experiences. What would a soldier, shot with grapeshot and bleeding to death while buried in snow, even say if he could see the modern world, if he could see me? It’s the sort of question that haunted me while reading this book.

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You know I don’t often review non-fiction books. What am I supposed to say? “This guy’s life should have been different to be more dramatic.” But sometimes I read a non-fiction book that’s just so good, I can’t resist.

Remember when the Napoleon movie came out, and people were like, “it’s not accurate,” and Ridley Scott was like, “Were you there, bro?” Well, Captain Blaze was there! Admittedly, he wasn’t at the big battles, such as Austerlitz, Borodino, or Waterloo. But he was wounded at Wagram, and took part in many Napoleonic campaigns in Poland, Germany and Spain. As such, he is in a position to speak with authority on these matters.

Not that he purports to be telling us an authoritative history of the period. No, Captain Blaze’s manner is much more casual and friendly, as he tells interesting stories of things that happened to him throughout his military career. The feeling is rather like you’re sitting at a bar, knocking back a few with him while listening to his war stories.

This is how I like to learn history. It’s not random lists of names and dates; it’s things that happened to real people. Captain Blaze is witty, human and relatable. Well, mostly. He does have a few old-fashioned attitudes towards some groups that may strike some readers as offensive. But when we study the past–or at least when I do–I want to study the whole past; even the ugly parts. No sense in sugarcoating it.

Still, for the most part, Blaze is actually quite likable and self-deprecating, as when he says that the best battle he was ever in was one that he was able to observe through a telescope from the safety of a church steeple. It was the “best” in his view, because he was out of harm’s way.

Most interesting are Blaze’s insights into human nature. He has little use for people claiming that the French soldier was inspired by love for the emperor. While Blaze has a certain admiration for Napoleon, he makes no bones about why they fought:

“How often has it been asserted in print that the soldiers fought for the emperor! This is another of those current phrases, which many people have taken up and repeated without knowing why. The soldiers fought for themselves, to defend themselves; because in France, a man never hesitates when he sees danger on one side and infamy on the other…

…show them the Prussians, the Russians, or the Austrians, and whether they are commanded by Napoleon, Charles X, or Louis Philippe, you may be sure that French soldiers will do their duty.” 

But again, he respects Napoleon. Or rather, he respects General Bonaparte. His victories early in his career are what Blaze values most highly, for as he reasons:

“The glory of Bonaparte will never be eclipsed by that of Napoleon; for the means of the emperor were more vast than ever general had at his disposal. When a ruler drains a country like France of her last man and her last crown, when he renders an account to no one, it is not surprising that, with a well-organized head, he should accomplish great things; the contrary would be much more astonishing.”

I’ve really just scratched the surface here. I could go on quoting passages from this book for a very long time. Capt. Blaze is insightful, clever, and, above all else, very funny. Yes, while he never shies away from the horror and tragedy of war, he also has a knack for recounting humorous incidents he witnessed or was told about. He makes a jolly guide to what must have been a rather grim time.

Of course, not being able to read French, I’m going by the translation. I also was unable to find much more information about Captain Blaze, and I was obliged to use a Google-translated version of his French Wikipedia page. Apparently, he went on to a career in writing after his military service. Quite an interesting fellow.

Dear readers, we live in a strange and unsettled world. Last week, a controversy broke out over edits on the Star Wars wiki to a page about a minor character, to bring them into line with something that happens in one of the innumerable new Star Wars productions. It escalated to death threats. As Dave Barry would say, “I am not making this up.”

My purpose here is not to relitigate Star Wars-related controversies. There are no good guys in Wookiepedia edit wars. But what has this world come to, when people care more about the biographies of fictional aliens than real people who actually existed? Maybe once Captain Blaze has an English-language wiki, and a few of his other published works are available online, then we can worry about what is considered “canon” in a fictional universe. Or, better yet, not.

This powerful electronic network we’re using houses vast repositories of human knowledge. Yet we ignore that and use it instead in the pursuit of the most trivial inanities. People are always prone to recency bias, but c’mon; this is pathetic. This is worse than destroying the Library of Alexandria. At least the Romans were in a war. What’s our excuse?

Oh, well. Let me quote once more from Blaze himself, from a bit later on in the book. To set the scene a bit, he has been talking about the tendency of people to romanticize war and soldiers after the fact, exaggerating the dashing and adventurous element far beyond what existed before peace came.

“I was talking one day on this subject with a publisher of lithographic prints, and was beginning to prove what I am here advancing. ‘You preach to one who is already converted,” said he at the first word: ‘I am well aware that all this is not true, but such things sell. In trade, “such things sell” is an unanswerable argument…'”

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I was patient this summer, when all the internet was abuzz with fascination over the pink doll movie and the nerd scientist movie. I was biding my time, waiting for the moment when cinema-goers’ eyes would turn to the tale of the Corsican artillery officer.

It’s been a while since I’ve been actively anticipating seeing a movie. It brought back memories of when I was a lad, waiting for Star Wars I – III to premiere. Of course, I am not comparing Napoleon to the prequel trilogy.  Those films are about a gifted but emotionally unstable young man, trying to balance his military and political ambitions with his turbulent love life, while all around him a dying republic is giving way to an authoritarian regime. Whereas Napoleon… hey, wait a second! Maybe my tastes haven’t matured as much as I thought.

But seriously, folks; who doesn’t love a good sweeping epic, with massive battles, steamy love scenes, all telling a tale of destiny and struggle, heroism and villainy, and all the different shades of poetical feeling that form the kaleidoscope of the human experience? And who better to direct it than the versatile Ridley Scott, the director of such classic films as the sci-fi masterpiece Alien and the historical opus Kingdom of Heaven?

Then again, he has also directed such turkeys as the inane sci-fi mess Prometheus and the historical snoozefest Exodus: Gods and Kings.  Would we be getting Good Ridley or Bad Ridley for this outing? It only added to the suspense.

In case you can’t tell by now… this is going to be long. If you want a quick review, or even a moderately lengthy review, look elsewhere. Here at Ruined Chapel, we believe reviews are meant to be a little bit winding, even meandering. There’s nothing wrong with taking the long way.

Napoleon begins in the French Revolution, with the grisly execution of Marie Antoinette. In a bit of artistic license, the young officer is witness to the morbid spectacle. Unlike the jeering crowds, he seems rather put-off by the whole thing.

We then see him bravely leading the French against the British forces at Toulon, for which he receives a promotion to brigadier general and catches the eye of Josephine de Beauharnais, a striking widow with whom the youthful officer quickly falls in love.

Okay, pause right there. I said “youthful” because Napoleon was 27.  Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Napoleon, is 49. I’m not in favor of this business of “de-aging” actors, but it’s pretty disconcerting to see a middle-aged man portraying a brash young officer who is becoming infatuated with a woman who is supposed to be six years older than him, but in fact looks about 15 years younger. (Because the actress is.) I’m not saying it ruins the movie or anything, but it’s odd.

Oh, well. That’s why they pay these actors the big bucks, right? To play someone they’re not. I won’t get mired down by a little detail like this. There are much more important things by which to get mired down.

Like the already-infamous pyramid scene. In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it treatment of the Battle of the Pyramids, the film shows French artillery blasting the top off one of the iconic monuments. This didn’t happen. It is seemingly a riff on a story that French soldiers shot the nose off of the Sphinx, which also didn’t happen. Ridley Scott, however, claims it’s a fast way of communicating that Napoleon took Egypt. And Lord knows he wants to be fast, because this movie gallops along at an insane pace. Hardly are Josephine and Napoleon married before she’s cheating on him with another officer while he’s in Egypt, so then he has to come back from Egypt and confront her, but then they make up, sort of, and then…

It’s a tall order to compress 20 years of history into a 2.5 hour movie. Which is one reason I would have been in favor of not doing it.

The famous director David Lean once said that a mistake filmmakers make when adapting a book is to try to give audiences a little sample of everything in it, but the end result is no one aspect gets its due. The better approach, Lean said, is to find the core of the story, and tell that as richly and fully as possible. I’d argue this applies also to adaptations of historical episodes generally, not just particular books.

Lean directed a number of historical epics, including Doctor Zhivago, A Passage to India, Ryan’s Daughter, and, oh yes, a little picture called Lawrence of Arabia, which I consider to be one of the greatest films ever made, and certainly the bar against which all historical epics must be judged.

Now, in all fairness, Lawrence of Arabia is close to four hours long, and Scott plans to release a cut of Napoleon that will exceed even that. But Lawrence covers only a period of a couple years, whereas Napoleon is attempting to cover the entire career of one of the most accomplished soldier-statesmen in history. It would take 50 hours to do justice to the period Scott is tackling.

Or… it would take judicious thought about what the story really is.  I know we’re only a little way into the synopsis yet, but it’s not too early to ask the question: what is Napoleon about?

Well, obviously, it’s about the titular emperor. But what about him? What we want to know is why he did the things he did.

The film has an answer. Sort of. But it hasn’t given it yet, and meanwhile, we’re getting scenes of Napoleon bit by bit working his way up the ladder in France. First, it’s a coup against the French Directory, then it’s his coronation as Emperor of the French.

About this coronation: indulge me while I tell a little story not depicted in the film. Originally, Ludwig van Beethoven dedicated his third symphony, the Eroica, to Napoleon. (BTW, it’s an absolutely gorgeous piece and in my opinion old Ludwig van’s second best, trailing only the incomparable Ninth) But when the composer got word of Napoleon declaring himself Emperor, he just about had a fit, and angrily struck Bonaparte’s name from the score, supposedly saying:

“So he is no more than a common mortal! Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition; now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant!”

Man, when you’ve lost Beethoven, you know you’re in trouble. More seriously, this quote points us towards discovering the theme of Napoleon’s story. Namely, that he rose to incredible heights, and then lost it all.

And it’s worth pausing to reflect on how he rose to those heights. As the film depicts pretty clearly, the French Revolution was a disaster. While on paper it may have been for liberty, equality, and fraternity, in practice, it was a hellish orgy of psychopathic mass murder and weird cults. Anyone with a good head on his or her shoulders, (something the revolutionaries tried their best to eliminate) would obviously prefer being governed by the competent administration of a successful military officer to the so-called Committee of Public Safety.

To seize control of a society that has essentially collapsed into anarchy takes a certain level of drive and will and energy, all qualities which Napoleon possessed. Whenever I am accused of harboring unduly pro-Bonapartist sympathies, it is to this period in his career that I will point. Someone had to govern France. And frankly, in such a dire situation as that, it is quite believable that no amount of committee meetings or parliamentary votes would do the trick. The state of nature, Hobbes tells us, is a state of war; and who better than a daring officer to win a war?

So, we can see why Beethoven admired Napoleon up until his coronation. Even more interesting, though, is the fact that Beethoven instantly recognized that this moment signified a seismic shift in Bonaparte’s career, and not for the better. Events were to prove his instincts exactly right.

The coronation is the great turning point, and the film indeed uses it as such. Not least because it’s the last time in this movie that we get to see a glimpse of color. Enjoy those red robes and glittering jewels, because after this, we slide straight into blue-gray filter hell. They actually did the meme.

What has happened to modern filmmakers? Where does this absolutely hideous palette come from? Personally, like so many of our present social ills, I blame it on the Harry Potter films. They made a ton of money with this horrible washed out aesthetic, and now all the studios unthinkingly copy them. Talk about a situation where we need a heroic figure to break the fetters of unthinking consensus! Where is the brave director who will stand up and give us once more the vibrant hues of color cinema?

Anyway, back to Napoleon. After the coronation, things go wrong in a hurry. It does have a certain Faustian irony to it: the point the film makes consistently is that Napoleon loves Josephine; that she is the main guiding force in his life. And yet, when he “finds the crown of France lying in the gutter, and picks it up with his sword,” his political ambitions ultimately lead him to distance himself from the one person he cares about most. In his quest for an heir, he divorces Josephine and marries Marie Louise of Austria, who bears him a son. In a very telling moment, and possibly my favorite scene in the film, when Napoleon gets his heir, the first thing he does is run off and show him to Josephine.

From there, the inexorable downfall begins, as Napoleon learns that the Tsar is cheating on his continental embargo against English goods. Naturally, in Napoleon’s mind, the only reasonable thing to do is raise a massive army and invade Russia.

You know, I’m not as much of a free trade absolutist as I was in my younger days, when I bought unreservedly into what the Econ books told me. I think there can be good arguments for restricting trade. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to understand the Ricardian arguments against barriers to trade. And it’s especially worthwhile, if you find your barriers to trade can only be maintained by marching across Europe and into the desolation of Russian winter, to ask yourself whether the whole thing needs to be rethought.

And this is where I want to say a word about the little-heralded heroes of the story: the French Army. We don’t see much of the ordinary French soldier; they’re just a mob of extras that the Emperor directs with waves of his hands. Yet, once you realize that those gestures could be translated into deeds only by the well-practiced discipline of thousands of men, all drilled to work together as a unit in the face of gruesome death, do you understand the sheer awesomeness of his army. Whether it’s overthrowing the Directory, crushing the Austrians at Austerlitz, or the iconic moment on the road to Grenoble, the French soldiers loved their commander, and they came through for him time and time again. Napoleon may have been nothing without Josephine, but he was also nothing without his soldiers. If there isn’t anything else that may serve as evidence of his greatness, I think the fact that he had the loyalty of these men right up through Waterloo says quite a lot.

As Napoleon’s final words suggest, the three things he loved most were France, the Army, and Josephine. And here again we see the tragic irony of his life: France was left weakened at the time of death, its army shattered after the losses in Russia and at Waterloo, and its great enemy Britain ascendant. Josephine died during Napoleon’s first exile, without even being able to call herself his wife. Everything that Napoleon loved, he unwittingly destroyed.

By the time the film is slogging through Waterloo, which takes place in some sort of Mordor-esque hellscape with, again, NO COLOR, you can feel the weight of the inevitable bearing down. It feels like a chore, not helped by the one-dimensional and hammy performance of the actor playing Wellington, who seems like a sneering British aristocrat from central casting. Christopher Plummer did so much better in the film Waterloo.

Waterloo feels more like a doomed last gasp than a legendary clash of great generals, and so in short order, Napoleon is packed off to St. Helena to ponder where it all went wrong.

And where did it all go wrong? I found myself musing, if I could go back in time and give Napoleon some advice, what would I tell him? (Curiously, this is also the premise for an episode of I Dream of Jeannie.)

Remember how I said that it takes a gifted individual of tremendous talent to build something out of nothing, to craft a working society out of an anarchic horror show like the French Revolution? Well, I very much believe that’s true. But the corollary to that is, after the functioning society has been built, it takes more than one person to maintain it. Once the rule of law and order has been restored, and peace and stability established, it is beyond the abilities of anyone, no matter how supremely gifted, to keep it all running for long.

And this is where you need to have a good succession plan. I once read in some philosophy book somewhere about the importance of a great leader having a good officer corps; someone to whom he can hand off what he has built. Napoleon wanted to do that with his heir, which is why this became such a fixation for him, but this was because he had fallen into his enemies’ way of thinking. He was still in the mindset of the European aristocracy he so despised, believing that this was the only way to ensure his posterity.

What if, instead of crowning himself emperor, he’d just retired to the countryside with his beloved Josephine, secure in the knowledge that he had saved his country, and turned over the administration to the most capable hands in his officer corps? Probably the allied coalitions would have tried to crush France anyway, but maybe a true republic, governed by the people who had fought alongside Bonaparte for the security of France, would have been more robust, and better able to cope with the threat. And Napoleon could have gone down in history as a man who knew when to hold ’em, knew when to fold ’em, and knew when to walk away.

Well, c’est la vie. Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s easy to say all this from the viewpoint of an armchair historian 200 years later. I’m sure at the time, there were good reasons why Napoleon did what he did. It’s hard to stop once you’re riding the tiger.

The movie is good to the extent it makes the audience ponder questions like these, but too often, it just gets lost in trying to show all the highlights of Napoleon’s career, and ends up not giving you enough time to process it before we’re on to the next thing. Vanessa Kirby is fantastic as Josephine, and Phoenix does a solid job as Napoleon, but it’s all so hurried it’s hard to get to know them as characters. Maybe the Director’s Cut will be better. Maybe with the miracle of modern science, they will even discover a way to capture the full spectrum of visible light.

Ultimately, everything hinges on whether this movie is the beginning or the ending of your study of the Napoleonic era. If everything you know about Napoleon comes from this movie, then I’m sorry to tell you you’ve just been given a wildly distorted version of history. But if it sparks your interest to learn more about the story of the Corsican officer and the woman he loved, then it’s well worth the time and money.

Making a film is rather like building an empire, come to think of it. It takes a director leading a motivated crew to make it in the first place, but it is ultimately up to the masses to determine whether it has any lasting impact.

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William Gilmore Simms at National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Artist unknown.

I had never heard of William Gilmore Simms until a few weeks ago. Apparently, he was a prominent name in American literature in the first half of the 19th century. Edgar Allan Poe called him one of the greatest American novelists. Naturally, I had to find something he had written.

I found this story in an anthology of his works, but you can also read it here. It’s a short ghost story, told through multiple framing devices. The introduction is just a killer:

The world has become monstrous matter-of-fact in latter days. We can no longer get a ghost story, either for love or money. The materialists have it all their own way; and even the little urchin, eight years old, instead of deferring with decent reverence to the opinions of his grandmamma, now stands up stoutly for his. He believes in every “ology” but pneumatology. “Faust” and the “Old Woman of Berkeley” move his derision only, and he would laugh incredulously, if he dared, at the Witch of Endor. The whole armoury of modern reasoning is on his side; and, however he may admit at seasons that belief can scarcely be counted a matter of will, he yet puts his veto on all sorts of credulity. That cold-blooded demon called Science has taken the place of all the other demons. He has certainly cast out innumerable devils, however he may still spare the principal. Whether we are the better for his intervention is another question. There is reason to apprehend that in disturbing our human faith in shadows, we have lost some of those wholesome moral restraints which might have kept many of us virtuous, where the laws could not.

The effect, however, is much the more seriously evil in all that concerns the romantic. Our story-tellers are so resolute to deal in the real, the actual only, that they venture on no subjects the details of which are not equally vulgar and susceptible of proof. With this end in view, indeed, they too commonly choose their subjects among convicted felons, in order that they may avail them selves of the evidence which led to their conviction; and, to prove more conclusively their devoted adherence to nature and the truth, they depict the former not only in her condition of nakedness, but long before she has found out the springs of running water. It is to be feared that some of the coarseness of modern taste arises from the too great lack of that veneration which belonged to, and elevated to dignity, even the errors of preceding ages. A love of the marvellous belongs, it appears to me, to all those who love and cultivate either of the fine arts. I very much doubt whether the poet, the painter, the sculptor, or the romancer, ever yet lived, who had not some strong bias-a leaning, at least,— to a belief in the wonders of the invisible world. Certainly, the higher orders of poets and painters, those who create and invent, must have a strong taint of the superstitious in their composition. But this is digressive, and leads us from our purpose.

That out-Lovecrafts Lovecraft, it does! What a nice way to start a story. Also, note how it would so not get published today. We’re two long paragraphs in, and we haven’t even met any of the actual characters yet. That’s no way to hook readers. Of course, Simms was writing in an era when having time to read must have seemed like an almost decadent luxury.

The story goes on to relate a tale told to the narrator by his grandmother, of an experience which she was in turn told about as a young girl traveling through the Carolinas in the aftermath of the American Revolution.

The whole setting is rich with references to the early United States and the recent revolution, as a party of travelers encounters two very different persons in the forests and swamps of the south.

Here’s the funny thing: the actual story is pretty mundane and straightforward, but the way it’s told adds layers of interesting complexities to it. And the ending! It’s perfect as far as I’m concerned. It offers the reader two possible explanations for the events they have just read, and lets them choose which they prefer. In my opinion, every ghost story should end that way.

Above all, the story gives a great sense of how profoundly hard life was then. As a matter of routine, the characters are described doing more difficult physical work than I do in a month. It really brings home to you how tough day-to-day existence must have been. Just for the visceral sense of setting alone, it’s worth reading this.

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Did I not say, in my end-of-year post for 2022, that I intended to review a greater variety of books? Well, this is an example of what I mean. Never before on this site have I reviewed a comic book. I haven’t even read a comic book since I was about 12 years of age.

But, last year, my friend Joy Spicer wrote about of her favorite comics, including Wonder Woman. Joy’s post about WW features the 1987 reboot of the character, illustrated by George Pérez, and I highly recommend reading it. That post was what inspired me to write this.

At first, I thought I’d start with the same comic that Joy highlighted. But you know me, I prefer to start a series at the beginning. Or close to it. The real beginning of Wonder Woman is actually in All-Star Comics #8. But this is her second-ever appearance and, well, Sensation Comics #1 is free on Kindle, whereas All-Star Comics #8 costs $1.99. Yes, I’m cheap; I admit it.

One sees instantly that the art of comic books evolved greatly in the years between ’42 and ’87. Compare the lavish artwork by Pérez with the, um, less lavish ones we find here:

Another thing which I did not expect, though perhaps I should have, was that this plot was already known to me.

You see, I know Wonder Woman from the 1970s TV series starring Lynda Carter. The pilot episode for the first season is a fairly faithful adaptation of this comic, albeit with more subplots interwoven.

The basic plot is this: Wonder Woman rescues American pilot Steve Trevor, and takes him back to Washington, D.C. Entering the “world of men,” she draws much attention, first for her appearance and then for foiling a bank robbery. She is hired to perform her feats of super-strength by a sleazy impresario, who attempts to flee with the revenue, but is of course thwarted.

Trevor, by this point recovered, attempts to fly a mission but is shot down by an enemy plane. Wonder Woman rescues him and together they find the bad guys’ hideout and defeat them. Wonder Woman then assumes the identity of a nurse at the hospital named Diana Prince.

As you know, I’m not big on rules of writing, which is good, because this comic definitely breaks some fairly basic guidelines for dramatic storytelling. You know, things like “don’t randomly give your characters new powers transparently for the purpose of advancing the plot.” That sort of thing. And frankly, I was okay with this. People nowadays take everything too seriously and want even their superhero stories to conform to dramatic conventions. But there’s nothing wrong with a bit of daft fun now and then.

But perhaps there is more to Wonder Woman than just fun, after all. Wikipedia informs us that:

William Moulton Marston… struck upon an idea for a new kind of superhero, one who would triumph not with fists or firepower, but with love. ‘Fine,’ said Elizabeth. [Marston’s wife] ‘But make her a woman.'”

[Note: I highly recommend reading Marston’s wiki. It’s one of those “impossible-to-predict-the-next-sentence” things.-B.G.]

Marston ran with Elizabeth’s idea, writing:

“Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world.”

And of course, if you’ve seen the show, you must remember the theme song:

Make a hawk a dove / Stop a war with love / Make a liar tell the truth.

Which is why it’s hardly surprising that in both this comic and the TV show, Wonder Woman solved problems through conversation and empathy rather than fists and force.

LOL, psych! That’s not what happens at all. She pummels baddies left and right. She doesn’t, say, fly the invisible plane to Germany and slap the golden lasso around Hitler. I mean, that might have saved some trouble, right?

You know, there were real people, even in the 1940s, who tried to “stop a war with love.” I recently finished reading Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker, a book which, through chronologically cataloging first-hand accounts and contemporary news reports, tells the story of the global pacifist movement during the beginning of World War II. And it ends on December 31, 1941. Which means if you read Human Smoke and then read Sensation Comics #1, you’re effectively reading primary sources of World War II in chronological order.

Human Smoke is perhaps the single most depressing book I’ve ever read. Going from it to a comic book that sold for 10¢ in drugstores to amuse children is a uniquely bizarre and downright discomfiting experience. But you see, I love history, and Wonder Woman is surely as much a piece of history as any other document printed in the 1940s.

Needless to say, the real-life efforts at stopping war with love went down to defeat. Perhaps it is for the best. There are plenty of moral justifications for the use of force, and World War II is literally the textbook example. Not to go all Lt. Col. Dubois on you, but perhaps Wonder Woman is simply acknowledging the need for controlled violence to prevent uncontrolled violence. The proper role of the state, most philosophers would say, is to use its monopoly on violence to uphold the set of standards which produce civilization. A matriarchal society, as Marston apparently envisioned, would obviously need something to act as guarantor of its authority. Ultima ratio reginarum, you know…

Ah, but you see? I’m doing just what I said not to do, and taking things too seriously. That’s what happens when you read an unsparing catalog of all the human sins and miseries that led up to a global war of annihilation, and then follow it with what amounts to cotton-candy for the brain. But as the Ancient Greeks would follow their tragedies with satyr plays, so I feel compelled to follow something dark with something light. “If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects…”

Or something like that. Anyway, Wonder Woman is an iconic character, and as silly and quaint as her early incarnations may look to us today, when you put them in the context of their time, you realize they must have served as a welcome dose of hopeful idealism and light entertainment in a world gone mad.