Freddy the Politician by Walter R. Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars When Animals Decide to Take Responsibility The Bean farm animals, including the cat Jinx, the dog Georgie, the cow Mrs. Wiggins, a spider couple called the Webbs, four mice called Eek, Quick, Eeny, and Cousin Augustus, and the "brilliant but erratic" Freddy the Pig, decide that the best way to prove to Mr. Bean that they are capable of taking responsibility and running the farm so that he and Mrs. Bean may vacation in Europe is to start both a bank and a republic. Because they know nearly nothing about money or politics, complications quickly arise. Luckily, it seems at first, they are assisted in their endeavors by John Quincy, a woodpecker blown in to their upstate New York farm on a strong wind from the nation's capital, and by his father Grover and son X. John Quincy's family lives in a tree at the White House, and hence name the male children after US presidents (X has to wait for a new one to be elected because all the former presidents' names have been used). Well-versed in DC society and politics, the woodpeckers feel superior to the backwater Bean farm animals of New York State, though they decide to stay for the tender and tasty bugs in the trees there. And soon enough they are scheming to take over the First Animal Bank and the First Animal Republic, or FAR ("Woodpeckers always have a determined look"). Brooks uses the campaign for FAR president to satirize American elections, including rival political parties (the Bean animals' Farmers' Party vs. the woodpeckers' Equality Party), campaign speeches featuring impossible promises (Grover says he'll install revolving doors in the henhouse), voter population manipulation (when woodpeckers invite flocks of birds to stay in the woods around the farm during the election, Freddy and company get field mice and other small animals to stay on the farm), election prediction (on the eve of the vote Freddy calculates a favorable result and writes a newspaper article celebrating his hoped for victory of Mrs. Wiggins), election fraud (the vote counting scene is priceless). It's all entertaining and funny. Mrs. Wiggins laughs off the notion that "A cow's place is in the home" and runs for president. She fashions the FAR flag from a pair of Mr. Bean's old overalls, nightshirt, and underwear, and its resemblance to the Star-Spangled Banner makes me suspect Brooks of satirizing flags and patriotism. Freddy, who is "not very warlike," says, "Personally, I can't imagine going into battle under any kind of a flag." It's interesting to note that Freddy the Politician (1939) preceded Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), especially when Grover becomes "Imperial Grover," using a clockwork boy, heron and hawk bodyguards, and an obedient army of animals to start annexing neighboring farms so as to build an animal empire nested inside the USA. Published two years before America would enter World War II, Brooks' novel is a pacifist book, espousing ideas like, "Let us give up this dream of empire and cultivate the arts of peace." Mrs. Wiggins would be the best president because, as she tells the animals, "The thing I'd like you to do best is to just go on doing the things you want to do." Mrs. Wiggins' other virtue is her sense of humor. When she disrupts Grover's demagoguery by laughing, he scolds, "Laughter is a destructive element. It has no place in a government." But of course Brooks means precisely the opposite, because like his other Freddy books, this one celebrates "the power of laughter." The humor takes many forms. In addition to political and cultural satire, Brooks indulges in slapstick (as when Freddy jumps on a bicycle and flies off downhill while forgetting how to use the brakes), plays with language (as when Jinx asks John Quincy, "Are you trying to tell me you don't know where the state of New York is?" and the woodpecker replies, "I'm not trying to tell you. I am telling you"), parodies diaries (as when a nosy neighbor records the strange happenings in the house of the town banker Mr. Wheezer), and writes farcical comedies of manners (as when Freddy disguises himself as an Irish woman and flirts with a snoopy detective called Jason Binks). Brooks writes amusingly authoritative yet whimsical statements on animal behavior, like "Spiders are very talkative, but few people know it, for they have to get almost in your ear to make themselves heard, and they don't like to do it much because they know it tickles." And his dry asides are fun, as when Freddy takes a dislike to Jason Binks: "When a pig has a face like a pig's, it's only natural. But when a man has a face like a pig's, there's something wrong somewhere." Like Brooks' other Freddy books, this one's comedy has a core of serious life wisdom: --"Most brave people are like Jinx. They're brave because they're afraid to act scared." --"But he's afraid of me or he wouldn't call me names. That's what people do when they're scared." --"Maybe he can't give it to them. . . but he's promised, and that's what counts in elections." Kurt Wiese's realistic and humorous monochrome illustrations add much to the physical book, but John McDonaugh adds much to the audiobook, too. His voice is husky and moist, and he appealingly reads absurd events with gravitas and serious ones with humor. He does a great Grover (Southern stuffed shirt), Mrs. Wiggins (humorous leader), Freddy (multi-faceted and poetic trickster), Simon (sneery and schemy rat), Jinx (feckless and funny cat), and so on. Brooks doesn't write down to kids, using plenty of difficult and savory words like balderdash, ribald, and velocipede. Indeed, I bet that kids miss much if not most of his humor. When I was a boy, I read the Freddy the Pig books as interesting adventures, while now I'm an adult, I read them smiling and chuckling. I am glad to have recently rediscovered the Freddy books after 45 years. People who like Charlotte's Web and Animal Farm and enjoy laughing would probably enjoy Freddy the Politician. View all my reviews
0 Comments
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 by Ian W. Toll
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Absorbing, Well-Written History of an "execrable business" Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (2012), focuses on the first two years of World War II's Pacific theater and on the two main antagonists, Japan and America. After a prologue setting forth US (and world) naval philosophy before the opening of the war, oriented around the Mahanian Doctrine of concentrated forces, big battleships, and decisive battles, Toll starts the main part of his book in December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) and takes us up to June 1942 (Midway). Being American rather than Japanese, Toll gives more weight to American points of view and anecdotes and men. For example, he gives more physical details of the features of key American navy men than he does for those of their Japanese counterparts, which makes us more sympathetic to the former than the latter, as when he writes things like, "Hornet's Torpedo Eight was skippered by Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, a lean, hatchet-faced South Dakotan, bronzed by long exposure to tropical sun." At times he perhaps goes into too much detail in that vein, like with his introduction of Admiral Nimitz, including information about his being a devoted father and his riding a train across America to California, when he tried to teach Lt. Lamar cribbage and drank whisky before going to bed, etc. While Toll provides such detailed sketches into the backgrounds and personalities of a variety of top American naval officers like Admiral King, he pretty much only does the equivalent thing with one Japanese officer, Admiral Yamamoto, the leader of the Japanese navy then, revealing his candid nature and vaudevillian sense of humor and affinity for gambling and geisha. And although he gives a fair amount of detail from the Japanese point of view before, during, and after a particular battle, he goes into more detail about the American point of view. All that said, he is objective in his depiction of the conflict, treating both the Americans and the Japanese with dignity, sympathy, and understanding. Throughout his book Toll provides vivid details about various aspects of the war in the Pacific: about what it was like to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier deck (in windy weather, strong seas, or nighttime), about the tricky nature of refueling at sea, about the different kinds of planes in use and their different strong and weak points and roles etc. (torpedo planes, dive bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance planes for both sides), about the intense heat in an aircraft carrier around the equator, about the preparations before a sea battle between carriers, about the role of war games in naval planning, about what happens when a bomb or torpedo hits a carrier, and so on. He effectively conveys the change in naval strategy and warfare from battleship based to carrier based. He also effectively conveys the confusion (fog) of battle. Perhaps the most fascinating part of his book for me was his account of the burgeoning military communications intelligence and code-breaking field, including the competition between rival units, the suspicion with which the intelligence guys were viewed by the regular navy men, the way they intercepted radio broadcasts and cracked codes and put all kinds of data together to predict what the Japanese were going to do, and so on. Toll's accounts of the several battles leading up to and including Midway are riveting, even if we generally know the outcomes. He can turn a nice phrase, like "The sixteen B-25s heaved and strained at their tie-downs, like butterflies clinging to a windblown leaf." He writes some witty lines, like "Like Mae West, he did most of his best work in bed." He ends his book with an interestingly sober look forward (he stops his account right after the Battle of Midway in June of 1942, so if you want to continue the journey with him, you'll need to read his The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942–1944): "They [the Americans] would go on fighting, killing, and dying, overcoming fear, fatigue, and sorrow, until they reached the beaches of the detested empire itself. There, in 1945, the Yankee war machine would meet the immovable object of the 'Yamato spirit,' until two mushroom clouds and an emperor's decision brought the whole execrable business to an end." Which makes me think that although Toll recognizes the heroism of both Japanese and American men during the war, he also believes that war is nothing glorious to be proud of, being "an execrable business." The audiobook reader is the consummately professional and appealing Grover Gardner, who gives his usual fine reading of a book. Thankfully, he does not assume accents when reading British or Japanese people or Southern men, which is nice. People interested in the first stages of World War II as it developed in the Pacific--especially those readers not well-versed in the field--should be enriched by this book. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
This blog is for book reviews. Please feel free to comment on any of the reviews! Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
Jefferson's books
by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
|
My Fukuoka University