november bravo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Good

2006-05-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

Just finished reading "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel. By any rights I shouldn't like it. I enjoy realism; Foer is a fantasist. His books are postmodern, gimmicky, and sort of disjointed. Apparently he ripped off many characters and literary devices from writers like Sebald, Borges, and most obviously Vonnegut. His narrators can be annoying. He is too precious by half. Plus he is only a year older than me. Still, under all this, his books beat with a human heart. I hate most contemporary fiction. I shouldn't like Foer, but I do. He is a very talented writer, and if he should ever attampt anything truly original, the result may be magnificent.

Decadent Culture Watch

2006-04-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

This Washington Post article on upcoming books is revealing, and hilarious. I know these books can't be adequately described in one-sentence plot summaries, but it is evident that most of this stuff is very lightweight.

My favorite:

The Whole World Over , by Julia Glass (Pantheon, May). By the author of Three Junes, the story of a plucky Greenwich Villager who turns family life upside down to go off and bake pastries for the governor of New Mexico.

Writers only write what the publishers will publish; the publishers only publish what will sell. But when the reading public laps up obvious fakery like "A Million Little Pieces" and lauds it as being authentic and "real," something is desperately wrong. War, corruption, plague, and dizzying scientific breakthroughs surround us all. Who will write about these things? Who will take on a subject more substantial than the baking of pastries?

Iraq WAS looking for uranium in Niger

2006-04-10T23:53:00.000-07:00

So argues a new Christopher Hitchens piece in Slate. The Bush administration has been deceptive about many things, but not everything they said before the war was a lie.

And Joseph Wilson is still an opportunistic douchebag.

Article here.

A moment of respect for a hero's passing

2006-03-31T18:01:00.000-08:00

I have tremendous respect for the generations that served in WWII and Korea. They were ordinary men whose often extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice are too little celebrated. Take a momemt to reflect on the life of David Bleak, an army medic in Korea and a Medal of Honor recipient. Here is what earned him the Medal of Honor:

As he and his comrades walked up the rough slope of Hill 499, they came under automatic-weapons and small-arms fire. Mr. Bleak tended to the casualties and then rejoined the men to continue fighting up the hill. From a concealed trench, the communist forces again plowed down many U.S. soldiers.

At this point, Mr. Bleak ran into the trench, killed two of the communist fighters with his enormous hands -- breaking one's neck and crushing the other's windpipe --
and killed a third by plunging his trench knife into the man's chest. He then jumped atop a fellow soldier to block the impact of a grenade that had just knocked against the man's helmet and rolled into the trench.

During this same engagement, he was hit by a bullet in the leg but ignored his wound to care for others. Later, while heading back to Allied lines with a comrade around his broad shoulders, he was attacked by two communist soldiers armed with bayonets.

"Closing with the aggressors, he grabbed them and smacked their heads together, then carried his helpless comrade down the hill to safety," according to Mr. Bleak's citation for the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for valor.

After the war, Bleak led a typically quiet, modest life. The humility and dignity of the warriors of that era is remarkable. The "greatest generation," indeed.

Source: Washington Post

Red Scorpion

2006-03-30T22:57:00.000-08:00

Somehow, in all the blather about Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's fraud trial (and now conviction), I missed this odd tidbit: Abramoff wrote and produced the 80's Dolph Lungren action flick Red Scorpion.

First things first

2006-03-17T00:58:00.000-08:00

I don't yet know exactly where this blog is going to go. I want to exercise my writing chops a bit, and divert myself from the school work I should be doing. I will record whatever interesting things I'm up to at the moment and whatever I am reading/watching/listening to.

Don't expect frequent updates, detailed minutiae of my daily routine, lots of pictures, or anything too profound. My life is terribly boring. But then, yours must be, too, or else you wouldn't be reading this.

A note on the name. I originally wanted to call the blog "Nota Bene," in the storied tradition of law school blogs with oh-so-intelligent-sounding Latinate names. Having never studied it, I know almost no Latin, but I use NB in my notes all the time. "Nota Bene" was already taken on Blogspot, so I decided to name it "November Bravo," which is "NB" in the NATO Phonetic Alphabet used by the military.

Blogger doesn't have many templates, and this one has probably the clearest and easist to read layout. I don't really like it, though. It is over-serious and slightly pretentious. On second thought, maybe it's perfect for me. When I learn more about how to use Blogger I will try to jazz it up a little.

Test

2006-03-03T16:14:00.000-08:00

My first leap into the blogosphere. Here goes nothing...