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Summer Series 2010: Reviewing the Books! continues……

Killing Rommel: A Novel by Steven Pressfield

As a rule, because of my academic  background and predisposition toward policy analysis,  I have a difficult time picking up a novel. Not because I dislike novels, but because with so many histories and “serious” policy books in my antilibrary demanding to be read, I feel guilty indulging myself in reading fiction.  Realizing that is mildly insane, I decided to shoot for a better balance in my reading this year between fiction and non-fiction and must report….that I have failed miserably. I’ve only read five novels so far in 10 months but one of the five that I read was Killing Rommel and I’m glad that I did!

I “met” the novelist Steven Pressfield online through the first iteration of his website, then a focus on the tribal aspects of the war in Afghanistan. We had some intriguing exchanges and I picked up his The War of Art, one of Steve’s few non-fiction works about becoming a professional writer ( or any creative professional) and defeating the internal psychological resistance that thwarts success and acheivement. I loved that book and read it straight through in one sitting, and later interviewed him about it. Knowing my interest in history and military affairs, Steve sent me a copy of his Killing Rommel and it sat in my antilibrary until this summer, where I read it during long stretches at poolside.

I found Killing Rommel to be a page turner.

Via a literary device, Killing Rommel is the story of  “Chap” – Major Richard Lawrence Chapman, DSO, MC. – and his mission as a member of “The Desert Rats”, The Long Range Desert Group of the British Army to find and kill the legendary commander of Afrika Korps, Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, “The Desert Fox”. In pursuit of his mission, “Chap” encounters an array of reverses, hazards and adventures in a manner of an ordinary, thoroughly decent, man rising above himself to master circumstances both physically heroic and morally agonizing, leaving the field with honor and humanity intact but free neither of doubt nor memory.

What makes “Chap” remarkable and identifiable as a character in his British ordinariness of an officer doing his duty to King and country, is the uncanny and unerring way Pressfield has reconstructed a British outlook specific to Chap’s time and class – that of the “respectable” upper middle class or younger sons of younger sons of gentry, for whom education and life was bounded by the traditions of the public school and military regiments to which family history was attached. It is a quality of “placedness” and sense of self that most Americans (other than scions of Andover and similar prep schools) cannot easily relate. Where you went was part of who you were and your whole outlook on life. Once established, Chap’s history consistently informs his actions and reactions as the plot progresses; Chap, in other words, “lived” an authentic life in Killing Rommel.

A second feature of Killing Rommel is Pressfield’s fidelity to historical realism. This is expressed both in his attention to details of military history and geographic setting and his willingness to grip war – even an unimpeachably “good” war as WWII – in all it’s moral ambiguity and unmediated violence on the human scale. It is disturbing to the reader that Rommel, the great enemy and objective of the mission, is an admirable man fighting for an evil cause; it is disturbing that dying Germans are not unrepentant Nazi beasts but are found to be men with families and lives, conscripts and volunteers, not unlike Chap and his comrades, who must persevere and fight for their lives but acknowledge these shades of gray.

Highly recommended.

Shameless Self-Promotion Department:

In an unusual turn of events, I was the subject of an interview by novelist and historian Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art.

Steve has an interview section on his newly redesigned site and I join a series of bloggers and authors like Instapundit  Glenn Reynolds, Tim O’Brien and Seth Godin who have sat down, in a virtual sense, with Steve for a discussion about writing and creativity. Having done such interviews of others in the past, it was a good experience to be on the receiving end of questions, for which I thank Steve:

The Creative Process: Mark Safranski

SP: Mark, what is the ZenPundit philosophy? Howdo you decide which stories or posts (or even guest bloggers) you want to include? What criteria do you use?

MS: Good question. My philosophy is something I also try to impart in my teaching.

Marcus Aurelius said “Look beneath the surface; let not the several qualities of a thing nor its worth escape you.” Most phenomena have many dimensions, multiple causes and second and third order effects. To deal with all of this complexity, we simplify matters by looking at life through an organizing frame, which we might call a worldview, a schema, a paradigm or a discipline. Whatever we call our mental model, we tend to become wedded to it because it “works.” It helps us understand some of what we are looking at-and in getting good at applying our model, advances us professionally and brings prestige or material rewards. So we will defend it to the death, from all challengers!

That’s getting carried away. Our mental model is just a tool or, more precisely, a cognitive lens. We need to be less attached to our habitual and lazy ways of looking at the world, put down our magnifying glass and pick up a telescope. Or, bifocals. Or, a microscope. Stepping back and applying different perspectives to a problem or an issue will give us new information, help us extrapolate, identify unintended consequences or spot connections and opportunities. When I do analytical pieces, I try to take that approach….

Read the rest here.

Broadening the discussion on the state of blogging begun by Dr. James Joyner and Dr. Bernard Finel, blogfriend Cheryl Rofer at Phronesisaical delves into the stratification and attribution issues that have been wrought in the blogosphere by the MSM:

A Sketch of a Post on Blogging

….Once upon a time, the blogosphere was a sort of talent night, a talent 24/7, with entertainment for all. Much of that is still there, but some of the talent has gone pro; Kevin Drum, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and others have joined the MSM or think tanks and link only to each other. Some days there is almost a perfect linking circle of Drum quoting Klein quoting Yglesias quoting Drum. Drum got linked from The Economist blog the other day, moving up one more notch. Stratification. The MSM, meanwhile, still doesn’t understand the idea of hyperlinks but provides something they call blogs at their sites. Some of these are actually blogs, like Ezra Klein’s at the WaPo. Some are more like newspaper columns with more depth or specialization, like Olivia Judson’s at the NYT. Some are sui generis, like the Gail and David show at the NYT. Others are clearly from reporters who have been told that they will produce a blog, probably not much more instruction provided.And then there’s the problem of the MSM simply stealing bloggers’ material (or those somewhere below them on the food chain) and not crediting it. I’ve seen this pretty unambiguously many times over the almost six years I’ve been blogging. And then there are situations where it’s not quite clear that material has been cribbed, but someone in the MSM says something that looks an awful lot like something I read days before in a blog. As a blogger friend said, “I think they call it research.” Or they don’t take it seriously enough. Today someone on The Oil Drum asked if the MSM was reading their threads, which have much more good information than anything I’ve seen on the BP Blowout in the MSM. Of course, it’s mixed, and there are some just plain dumb comments, but hey! that’s what the reporters get the big bucks to filter, right?

Read the rest here. 

Cheryl brings up a number of points about blogging from an information ecology standpoint I had not really considered when I reacted to Bernard’s post. I’ve noticed ideas or arguments that have been “liberated” from blogs I read in the media with some frequency in recent years and I think I first noticed a MSM outlet cribbing a paragraph, almost verbatim from me circa 2006. At the time, I laughed, but Cheryl’s considered point that attribution is important is not something peculair to the blogosphere – it’s actually the traditional standard for scholarship and journalism. Bloggers, reporters, academics, government officials – anyone writing in the public sphere – should hew to it.

When in doubt, adding the little quotation marks, a link or a hat tip is still the best course of action – it saves headaches down the road.

ADDENDUM:

Peter weighs in at The Strategist.

Dr. Bernard Finel reached a state that many bloggers find themselves in at one time or another:

Blogging

An interesting post over at OTB has me thinking about my blog.

I’ve been blogging very lightly recently.  The truth of the matter is that I am not sure that I want to continue doing it.  Basically, it comes down to a couple of interrelated issues.

(1) It gets me in a lot of trouble.  I work professionally in the same field that I often blog about.  Which would be fine if I were a congenital kiss-ass, but I’m not.  It isn’t so much that I don’t suffer fools gladly, as much as I think that idiotic arguments needs to be called out as such and not just subject to tepid criticisms couched in otherwise fulsome praise of the wisdom of the author in question.  Needless to say, this has not made me popular, and there is no doubt that I have severely harmed my future job prospects by pissing off a number of very powerful people in my field.

(2) Which would be okay if it was either opening up other doors or making me rich, but it isn’t.  What it comes down to is that my readership is really, really low.  High-quality, but small.  I am not looking to make money on the blog, but I’d like to think I could be influencing the debate through my posts, but really that is not the case.  Several possible reasons for that:

(2a) I don’t seem to be able to get posts out in a sufficiently timely fashion.  I usually prefer to mull things over for a day or two, and that is an eternity in the blogosphere.  By the time I weight in on most debates, everyone has moved on.

(2b) But more importantly.  I think I am not a very good blogger.  It isn’t like I haven’t gotten great links from excellent blogs.  James Joyner over at OTB has linked to me often.  The guys at Newshoggers do so as well. Fabius Maximus, Zenpundit, Schmedlap, Michael Cohen, and several others have linked to me often.  But if anyone is following those links, there are not impressed.  Which is fine, but my point, I guess is that despite some solid links, I’ve never really built a larger audience. 

I feel compelled to respond, point by point: 

1. Personally, I enjoy Dr. Finel’s posts because he’s straightforward with his views whether you are going to like them or not. Clarity in the discussion saves a great deal of time. Not everyone finds that quality charming though; particularly in the broad, public intellectual world of academia and think tanks there’s a lot of brittle egos with weighty credentials who are manning the last gates worth keeping – that of aristocratic sinecures to read and write. Sometimes it is not wise to blog the hand that feeds you. I could write absolutely excoriating posts about my profession, but I generally restrain myself and focus on areas of research interests instead, secure in the knowledge that no one I work with gives a rusty damn about Sun tzu vs. Clausewitz, globalized counterinsurgency or superempowered individuals.

2. I think Dr. Finel is being unrealistic as to traffic. The blogosphere has matured to the point that newbies cannot become “stars” unless they are already famous airhead celebrities (which means twitter is a better option for their vapid remarks) or are talented writer-personalities promoted by a major media platform site. If you can acquire a regular audience baseed on “class” as a part-time blogger, you have succeeded as much as you are going to do unless you can attract corporate sponsors or face time on MSM vehicles. Leverage your small but influential audience to get access to other venues.

2(a). Solo acts will never generate sufficient post velocity to compete with group blogs. Accept it. What small time bloggers can do is write posts that make a big splash periodically. Recognition will come.

2(b). Insert Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule here. Just because a person can write white papers or a novel, a biweekly column or a sonnet does not mean they will start out as a virtuoso blogger. Every medium has its own implicit rules that take time to master. Blogging well is deceptively hard to do and blogging poorly is tragically easy. If blogging is not an end in itself, then regard it as a tool for a specific purpose to keep in mind.

Here’s hoping that Dr. Finel chooses to keep at it!

Steven Pressfield, author, historian and this year, blogger has made a major revision of his blog, originally an Afghan War-centric site known as “It’s the Tribes, Stupid!”. Pressfield has relaunched the blog today with a sharp new site redesign, a broader focus and a new expert co-blogger, as:

Steven Pressfield Online    

Steve has enlisted scholar-soldier William S. “Mac” McCallister to apply his experience in military affairs and irregular warfare at Agora, a page which will cover the subjects and news formerly housed at “Tribes, where Mac has already put up his first post:

The Reality

Often, ideas are discounted because they don’t mesh with someone else’s concept of reality. I was on the receiving end myself recently, related to my latest recommendations for prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. And, well, I’ve shot down the ideas of others in the past, too.

End of day, we have to consider the different realities-because the one thing I think we can all agree on is that, in Afghanistan in particular, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, because the realities on the ground vary so greatly.

“Agora” is a place to consider all of the realities.

Steven will be blogging on “Writing Wednesdays” creativity and other themes on his page, The Creative Process and, I expect, popping in from time to time on Agora as well when the mood strikes.