Short, fun, and good

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We’ve been traveling for Independence Day but I wanted to put something short together before the weekend. A few recent items that have been on my mind:

All good food for thought, and with an important commonality: the importance of short books. Per Henderson’s Substack essay, an easy either to get back into or to renew one’s love for reading is to “prioritize short and fun books at first.”

My one quibble: I’d strike “at first.” Short, fun books are good at any time of one’s reading life. The following is a list of my own recommendations. All are books I’ve read and enjoyed and would stick up for in a fight, and all are 1) short, 2) fun, and 3) have good literary qualities. I have considered no other factors in selecting them, so if you have some criterion or criteria for a list that you value above 1-3 above, write your own list. The more book recommendations the merrier!

I’ve sorted them into broad categories but, in making these recommendations, I’d also encourage you not to limit yourself to any one category. Again—I’d vouch for all of these.

Familiarity breeds contempt

These are the books that you read—or were supposed to read—at some point in high school. I’m listing these here because despite being on a lot of school reading lists, they’re actually classics and are still being read for a good reason.

  • Animal Farm, by George Orwell

  • Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

  • The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

  • Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

Thrillers and spy novels

Arranged in chronological order.

  • The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan—A man framed for murder by agents unknown must flee both his enemies and the authorities. One of the books most responsible for the shape of the modern thriller and still a lightning-fast read. Long blog review here.

  • Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household—A hunter arrested and tortured by the (unnamed) Gestapo for an attempt on the (unnamed) dictator of a central European German-speaking country must escape his pursuers, who chase him all the way back to England.

  • Journey into Fear and Epitaph for a Spy, by Eric Ambler—Two excellent spy thrillers from just before the outbreak of World War II. In both, an ordinary man is caught in the crossfire of international espionage and must contend with his enemies as well as his own ignorance of spycraft in order to survive.

  • Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming—Forget the stereotype of movie Bond. The original Bond novel is short, brutal, briskly paced, and brilliantly written. Whether you go on to the rest of Fleming’s original series or not, Casino Royale is worth your time.

  • The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, by John le Carré—A British agent plays a long con on East German intelligence. A Cold War thriller in a deliberately different vein from any of the novels listed above, with heavy emphasis on the intricacies of spying and deception.

Swashbucklers old and new

  • The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope—An English tourist swaps places with the king of a small European kingdom when he gets falling-down drunk on the day of his coronation. Then the king’s scheming brother kidnaps the real king, forcing the bluff to continue. Spawned a whole subgenre of lesser imitators but a rollicking old-fashioned adventure itself.

  • Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson—Another one that’s a classic for a reason. Even if you know the story, it’s hard not to feel a boyish yearning for adventure awaken while reading or re-reading it.

  • Salute to Adventurers, by John Buchan—A young Scot embarks on a series of wilderness adventures involving pirates, Indians, and apocalyptic religious extremists in colonial Virginia. Long blog review here.

  • Captain Blood, by Raphael Sabatini—An English doctor falsely accused of treason escapes imprisonment and wages a war of piracy against his enemies. Less well-known now than Treasure Island, but one of the canonical pirate tales.

  • On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers—The great modern pirate story, combining vividly imagined real-world piracy with magic. An exciting, engrossing read from the first chapter.

Mystery and crime

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—Sherlock Holmes and Watson wander into a gothic ghost story. Good mystery, great atmosphere, and sharply and concisely written.

  • Death Comes as the End, by Agatha Christie—I’ve enjoyed every Christie novel I’ve read, but the vividly realized ancient Egyptian setting in this one makes it unusual and especially memorable.

  • The Moonshine War and Mr Majestyk, by Elmore Leonard—Two good early crime novels from Leonard, one set in Prohibition-era Kentucky and the other in early 1970s California. In both, ordinary men must resist overwhelming odds to do what they think is right. Short, tight, and engaging.

  • The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by George V Higgins—Boston crooks scheme, run guns, rob banks, and betray each other to the authorities. A brilliant short crime novel told almost entirely through dialogue.

  • The Highwayman, by Craig Johnson—Is a long-dead Indian police officer sending distress calls in an area that is otherwise without radio reception? A short supernatural entry in the Longmire mystery series.

Sci-fi (and adjacent territory)

  • The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, by HG Wells—Again, classics for a reason. Both brilliantly imagined, well paced, thought-provoking, and very short.

  • The Scarlet Plague, by Jack London—An apocalyptic story of an epidemic that wipes out most of mankind as well as the story of one man left in the ruins who must start over. A great surprise from an author I’d previously associated with dog stories.

  • The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, by John Wyndham—Two great postwar sci-fi novels. In one, killer plants escape and wreak havoc after the majority of mankind is blinded, and in the other, alien invaders wage war against mankind from beneath the ocean. Both brilliant, suspenseful, and surprising reads. Long blog review of The Kraken Wakes here.

  • The Road, by Cormac McCarthy—Father and son cross a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Again, don’t let its popularity and the Oprah endorsement lull you into contempt. This is a genuinely great and powerfully moving novel.

Westerns

  • Massacre at Goliad, by Elmer Kelton—Human drama and action in the Texian Revolution.

  • Last Stand at Saber River and Valdez is Coming, by Elmore Leonard—Two of Leonard’s best Westerns. As in the crime novels recommended above, both feature principled men seeking restitution against stronger and less scrupulous enemies and monstrous injustice.

  • True Grit, by Charles Portis—Whether you’ve seen one or both film adaptations, Portis’s original novel is still better. A masterpiece of tone and voice with a compelling story whether you’re reading it for the first or the fifth time.

  • No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy—Another brilliant novel brilliantly adapted for the screen, but still better than the movie. Not a bad place to start with McCarthy if you find The Road’s post-apocalyptic bleakness daunting.

Other (I dare not say “literary”)

  • Shiloh, by Shelby Foote—A great short Civil War novel told from multiple points of view over two days. A great fictional account of real events, beautifully written and rich in detail.

  • The Great Divorce, by CS Lewis—The souls of the dead take a field trip to the edge of heaven. Simple, straightforward, but wonderfully rich and powerful. One of my favorites of Lewis’s books and one you can easily read in an afternoon.

  • Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King—My estimation of King has steadily fallen for the last decade, but this novella remains a small masterpiece and one of the handful of books on this list that I read in one sitting, without stopping. Still one of my favorite reading experiences. I reread it recently and it holds up.

  • Eaters of the Dead, by Michael Crichton—Beowulf retold from an outsider’s point of view. A great adventure, a wry spoof of academia, a shocking horror story, and a lot of fun if you also know Beowulf. Long blog review here.

  • Grendel, by John Gardner—Though “Beowulf retold from the monster’s point of view” might sound like a familiar, overdone premise in our age of Wicked and Maleficent and Cruella, Gardner’s novel differs from those in presenting Grendel as sympathetic but still evil and Beowulf as still heroic. A great read with hidden depths.

  • The Loved One and Black Mischief, by Evelyn Waugh—The darkest of dark comedies from a sharp-eyed master of stinging humor. I laughed so hard I cried in both books.

Again, these are just the ones that came easily to mind, and I’m sure I could supply a list twice or three times as long. Whether you’re one of the people described above, someone who wants to become a reader again, or you’re just looking for something to refresh your reading life here in the middle of the year, I hope you’ll find something good in this list.

Butler, Palmerston, and the soldiering menace

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Each week on Substack I publish a clerihew, my favorite form of light verse: a quatrain in AABB with intentionally awkward scansion and forced rhyme. The subject is always a person, whose name constitutes the first line. My clerihews usually concern historical figures. My subject last week was General Benjamin Butler.

The joke in the poem itself had to do with something tawdry that Butler, playing the part of the moneygrubbing Yankee to the hilt, supposedly did while dining at a wealthy lady’s home while in charge of the Union occupation of New Orleans. But in my brief historical note afterward I mentioned something for which he was infamous: General Order No. 28 of May 15, 1862, which reads:

As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from the women (calling themselves ladies) of New Orleans in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that hereafter when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.

The women of occupied New Orleans had not welcomed the Union army or navy into the city and had shown repeated disrespect to them. One story has a lady emptying a chamber pot onto Admiral David Farragut. Cartoons depict them spitting at Union soldiers. One suspects simple snubs and insults were most widespread. But Butler could allow none of this to stand. In case it wasn’t clear, General Order No. 28 calls for any woman (he denies them the title “lady,” an obvious dig) disrespecting his troops to be considered and treated as a prostitute.

The reaction was predictable and swift. Here’s Confederate General PGT Beauregard, who issued a general order of his own in response, a straightforward appeal to gallantry and the protection of women’s honor:

Men of the South! shall our mothers, our wives, our daughters and our sisters, be thus outraged by the ruffianly* soldiers of the North, to whom is given the right to treat, at their pleasure, the ladies of the South as common harlots? Arouse friends, and drive back from our soil, those infamous invaders of our homes and disturbers of our family ties.

Political authorities weighed in as well. President Jefferson Davis condemned Butler. The Governor of Louisiana, Thomas Moore, published a longish open letter in which he echoed Beauregard, defended the women of New Orleans as reacting naturally to an invading foreign force, and, interestingly added force through historical argument:

The annals of warfare between civilized nations afford no similar instance of infamy to this order. It is thus proclaimed to the world that the exhibition of disgust or repulsiveness by the women of New Orleans to the hated invaders of their home and the slayers of their fathers, brothers, and husbands shall constitute a justification to a brutal soldiery for the indulgence of their lust. . . . History records instances of cities sacked and inhuman atrocities committed upon the women of a conquered town, but in no instance in modern times, at least without the brutal ravishers suffering condign punishment from the hands of their own commanders. It was reserved for a Federal general to invite his soldiers to the perpetration of outrages at the mention of which the blood recoils in horror.

Unable to penetrate deeper into Confederate territory or to break the spirit of civilian resistance, Moore suggests, Butler “sees the fruits of a victory he did not help to win eluding his grasp, and nothing left upon which to gloat his vengeance but unarmed men and helpless women.”

There’s a lot going on here, and more I could have quoted.

Over the years I’ve seen this incident downplayed as Confederate hysteria, with everything from “Lost Cause” mythology to “the patriarchy” playing a role. The short version: Southerners were ninnies upset about nothing, and anyway they deserved it. Sometimes the fact that Butler’s order did not result in a wave of rapes is adduced in support, but this is post facto justification. No one living through this could have known how it would turn out. The example of history gave them plenty to worry about.

And the historical dimension is what most piqued my interest. Reading up on Butler ahead of publishing that clerihew, I discovered in Library of America’s great four-volume set of primary source materials a British reaction to General Order No. 28. Here’s a note delivered by Lord Palmerston, then prime minister, to American ambassador Charles Adams (son of John Quincy, grandson of John) on June 11, 1862:

My dear sir,—I cannot refrain from taking the liberty of saying to you that it is difficult if not impossible to express adequately the disgust which must be excited in the mind of every honorable man by the general order of General Butler given in the inclosed extract from yesterday’s Times. Even when a town is taken by assault it is the practice of the Commander of the conquering army to protect to his utmost the inhabitants and especially the female part of them, and I will venture to say that no example can be found in the history of civilized nations till the publication of this order, of a general guilty in cold blood of so infamous an act as deliberately to hand over the female inhabitants of a conquered city to the unbridled licence of an unrestrained soldiery.

If the Federal Government chuses to be served by men capable of such revolting outrages, they must submit to abide by the deserved opinion which mankind will form of their conduct.

Adams asserted that he would not “recognize” Palmerston’s note—which was marked Confidential—“unless he was assured it was official.” Palmerston replied that it was, and publicly condemned Butler in a speech in the Commons. Adams, according to his secretary’s journal, “was much offended,” considering Palmerston’s note an “impudent” act of “insolence” and its arguments “sophistical.” Adams’s secretary, who viewed Adams as the winner of the tangle, thought Palmerston was projecting:

Knowing the brutality of his own officers and soldiers he readily imagined ours of the same stamp, and insolently presumed to lecture Mr. Adams on a thing which was not his business. His ill-manners were properly rebuked. American soldiers, he will find out, are not beasts, tho’ English soldiers are; and he will also learn that it is only a debased mind that would construe Gen’l Butler’s order as he has done.

If there is anything “sophistical” in this exchange, it is this. The explicit insult and implicit threat in General Order No. 28 were clear, hence the outrage. This is perhaps the first move in the long game of pooh-poohing the outrage at Butler.

At any rate, the women of New Orleans, Southerners generally, and foreign observers like Lord Palmerston knew what was up. So did Lincoln. Whether out of principle, canny strategic considerations, or for reasons of pure PR, Lincoln removed Butler from command in New Orleans in December 1862.

I was struck by the similarity of Palmerston’s appeal to that of Moore. Both correctly observe the dangers of a population of soldiers toward civilians in an occupied area. Both correctly observe that part of the long, slow evolution toward an ideal of “civilized” warfare involved the responsibility of leadership to protect civilians, even enemy civilians, and “even when a town is taken by assault,” which in the ancient world and much of the Middle Ages was understood to give the victor carte blanche to loot and rape.

Here’s something I’ve had to work hard to make my students understand given our “thank you for your service” culture of trust and admiration for soldiers: historically, soldiers were a menace. Even your own soldiers. (Perhaps especially your own soldiers, since if all was going well you would never see the enemy.) Discipline, martial law, flogging and the firing squad, and the inculcation of chivalrous ideals were partial solutions to the threat posed by large bodies of bored, strong, regularly paid young men to the civilian population, but only partial solutions. And these crumbled following the French Revolution which, as David Bell makes clear in The First Total War, rejected limited “civilized” warfare as an irrational fiction and embraced ruthless pragmatic brutality.

So, what to make of all this? Far from hysteria or Lost Cause mythologizing, the outrage was justifiable and the concern real. To pretend otherwise is partisanship.** Palmerston knew his history, and how thin and artificial the barrier between civilization and barbarism is. Adams imagined Union soldiers to have transcended history. One of these men is, at best, a deluded optimist.

A few years ago, quoting the Oxford History of Modern War, I wrote about the Civil War as a psychological conflict. Butler’s General Order No. 28 is a good example of what this looked like before the “frankly terrorist” campaigns of Sherman and others, campaigns that had more than a little of Jacobin total war in them. In addition to military victory, Butler needed to crush the enemy psychologically. Nothing short of abject subjugation would do, which is why Butler became a darling of the punitively-minded Radical Republicans. No “hearts and minds” here. In that way it’s of a piece with other nationalist wars.

* Appropriately, ruffian comes into English from Italian, in which it means “pimp.” Dante uses it in Inferno XVIII, the circle of panderers and seducers. Moore plays on the same theme when he writes that Butler can “add to infamy already well merited these crowning titles of a panderer to lust and a desecrator of virtue.”

** As a measure of the extent to which these events are still subject to purely partisan interpretation, why do we hear so much about the Southern desire to protect women being “misogyny” and “patriarchy,” but not Butler’s expressed intention to treat Southern women as prostitutes out of political spite?