Are there any books about the troubles of Northern Ireland that are less than 400 pages? This is the second Ed Moloney book that I’ve profiled for this blog (I have also discussed A Secret History of the IRA). Both Voices from the Grave and A Secret History investigate or discuss Gerry Adams career as a high ranking member of the Provisional IRA, although Voices touches upon a number of other aspects of the troubles as well, including the less discussed Protestant paramilitary units of Northern Ireland.
Voices from the Grave is a book that uses materials from the Boston College Oral History Archive on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. A controversial archival project wherein individuals active in the Troubles gave interviews recorded by Boston College historians. The recordings are now sealed until the death of the interviewees, and certain governmental bodies seek to have these sealed archives released for legal purposes. Ed Moloney, in his blog, The Broken Elbow, discusses at length the issues surrounding this archival project. The present book is the first text to take advantage of the archives, as Brendan Hughes, a high-ranking Provisional member, and David Ervine, a Ulster Volunteer Force leader, and eventually a successful politician, were the first of Boston College’s interviewees to pass. Two men on either side of Northern Ireland’s sectarian struggle, gave Moloney a chance to discuss the troubles across the cultural divide.
The material about Brendan Hughes, a former OC (Officer Commanding) of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Belfast, takes up more than half of Moloney’s book. Hughes discusses daily life as an IRA volunteer, and his position as a ranked officer of the paramilitary organization, but to a large extent Moloney emphasizes the parts of Hugh’s interviews wherein he discusses the hurt he felt over Gerry Adams denying any involvement with the Provos, a denial that Moloney is particularly concerned with as it supports the main thesis of A Secret History. Moloney’s Secret History was glibly dismissed by Adams et. al. because it included unnamed interview subjects among its sources. Voices presents a perspective on this issue from a named source who was close to the heart of the matter, and what’s more, Moloney was not Hughes’ interviewer, and therefore cannot be accused of asking questions that guide his subject towards a particular agenda. Hugh’s discusses his prison escapes, and via Hugh’s testimony, Moloney mocks Gerry Adam’s own attempt at escape from incarceration. It is, perhaps Hugh’s discussions of his prison experiences that are the most relevent passages of the book, as he discusses the blanket protest (where the incarcerated Provos protested rules against them wearing their own clothes by going nude) and the hunger strikes. Hughs also laments the role he played in the 1981 prison hunger strikes where ten men died, an event over which the IRA veteran expresses deep regret.
Converse to Brendan Hughes, David Ervine, Hughes ideological enemy, served in the Ulster Volunteer Force, a particularly violent Protestant/Loyalist paramilitary organization. The brutal Shankhill Butchers, who committed numerous random torture killings against catholics, for example, were UVF affiliated. Ervine discusses the violence of the UVF in vague terms. Hughs was often quite explicit about his experiences, while Ervine was often vague or evasive in his responses to questions. Hughes discussed, in candid detail, matters that are close to those interests Moloney explored so thoroughly in A Secret History, while Ervine was significantly less revealing than Hughes’ was about his own role and knowledge of the conflict. Ervine, perhaps wanted to protect his reputation as a mainstream politician, or perhaps held onto the ideal of secrecy when it comes to UVF matters, and his inclusion in this volume creates a false sense of balance. Still, the Irish Republican Army is a well represented topic in literature on the troubles, while the protestant paramilitary organizations are largely underrepresented as the history of the British military is often represented in their place.
Hi there, I picked up a copy of Mimi’s Dada Catifesto from Raven Used Books, in Northampton, Massachusets.
Mimi is a poor alley cat living in a top hat in an unnamed European city (presumably Zurich during WWI). Mimi has companionship in her life, her best friend is a pigeon named Lazlo, and she shares the top hat with newlywed cockroaches. Mimi’s dream, however, is to find an owner and a home, albeit one that suits her particular creative sensibilities.
Mimi stumbles, one evening, into a cafe (something like the Cabaret Voltaire) where there’s a raucous performance being given by the Dada artists. This cat immediately became attracted to the Dadaist’s anarchistic attitude, ethos, and approach to art. Mimi had particularly come to admire Mr. Dada, the most extreme and outrageous of the Dadaists, and likely intended by Jackson as a representation of Tristan Tzara (or could be a composite of a number of those artists). The book then follows Mimi’s attempts to appeal to Mr. Dada, in the hopes of becoming his pet, through strewing trash around his flat as a series of readymade sculptures, through loudly screeching as a poetic performance,
and through incessantly strange behavior. Mr Dada rejects Mimi at first, but overtime he acknowledges the cat as a consummate Dadaist via the realization of how relentlessly irritating she was. The final page of Jackson’s narrative displays Mr. Dada snuggling with Mimi after adopting her as his pet.
Mimi’s Dada Catifesto is a children’s book about the Dada movement (one of my favourite topics in counterculture). It presents to children a simple narrative which encapsulates all of the basic ideas of the interwar avant-garde art movement. Each page is covered by full-page illustrations in pastiche of the various Dada styles, and thus the book also encapsulates all of the Dada’s aesthetic forms. Some illustrations emulate George Grosz particular drawing style:
Many of the illustrations recall the photo-montage or collage styles of Raoul Haussman and Hannah Hoch:
While Mimi is often adorably represented as a realistic tabby cat, rendered in a quasi-expressionist style.
Jackson also inserted activities into the book to teach children about high modernist art, and especially about the chaos of Dada. The book recalls how Dada historian Richard Sheppard put the art of children as an influential factor on the original Dada movement, but it also plausibly makes the cat into the quintessential Dadaist.
Medgar Evars was the outspoken Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP during the early phase of the American civil rights movement. Evers was one of the first nationally known leaders of that movement, gaining recognition over his fight to desegregate public schools in the American south, one of the many struggles to end racial injustice that Evers waged. As an outspoken leader for black rights in Mississippi, Evers faced constant threats of violence. In June, 1963, Evers was murdered by a Jackson MS. salesman and White Citizens Council member named Byron de la Beckwith, who shot the civil rights leader to death in front of his home. De La Beckwith’s murder trial resulted in a hung jury and he was permitted to walk free, often making not-so-subtle references to his crime in public conversation.
Of Long Memory is a book about the long term cultural effects of the Evers murder on Jackson, and American, society. The book’s author, Adam Nossiter, is a journalist with the New York Times, whose work often deals with racial politics in the American context. In this book, Nossiter discusses the cultural trauma of the Evers’ murder, as in the year of this book’s publication, De La Beckwith was finally tried and convicted for the crime. Nossiter investigates the social temperature before the trial, where many of the region’s whites were of the opinion that the 1994 De La beckwith trial was a waste of time after all those years. Nossiter portrayed a society where Jackson’s white society was still willing to let a killer go free for the murder of a black man, only the rhetoric changed. For area black’s, however, Evers murder was an open wound that couldn’t heal until Beckwith, who would frequently refer to the murder to show his willingness to use violence, was punished.
Nossiter begins his book with a journalistic look at Jackson’s contemporary racial climate. Early in his text, a meeting between the author and Byron De La Beckwith himself went awry (having devolved into anti-Semitic ravings). Following this meeting, Nossiter’s text becomes a series of biographical sketches of the stakeholders in the Evers’ murder, then and now, with the lives of Evers himself, Evers brother Charles, original prosecuting attorney Bill Waller, and 1994 prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter profiled by the author. With the exception of Medgar, each of these subjects were living at the time of Nossiter’s writing, and Nossiter had personal encounters (for better or worse) with all of them. Nossiter discusses the lives of these individuals as they were after the murder - Waller and Charles Evers entered politics - and the assassin, Byron De La Beckwith became a prominent member of the white power movement.
Nossiter’s profile of Medgar Evars, of course, details his political life and the dangerous fight he was waging in Mississippi during the 1960s. Evers’ story ends with his death, which shined a spotlight on the political power structure of white supremacy that reigned in the American southern states during that period. The courts were a major instrument in maintaining white supremacy as a way of life, by allowing murderers of southern blacks to walk free. Byron’s freedom, for decades, was symbolic of this power structure, of a society that permitted vigilantes to repress black leaders with extreme violence if required. Nossiter discusses De La Beckwith’s final trial, resulting in his conviction, as a needed event in healing Jackson society.
Tim Pat Coogan HarperCollins 1970 (2000 Edition) 808 pages
Tim Pat Coogan’s exhaustive book The IRA chronicles the entire history of the Irish Republican Army, right back to the Irish war of Independence that ended in 1916. What I read was the 808 page edition of Coogan’s history that was published in 2000. The original edition of the book, published in 1970, was a mere 375 pages (still a long book), but Coogan’s original text was published during the dawn of a new era of IRA activity, and included little information on the then beginning period now referred to as ‘the troubles’. The Provisional IRA that drove republican violence during that period had only formed in December 1969, and Jerry Adams career in Republican politics was only beginning. Hence the 2000 edition is double the length of the original book to include all of the IRA history that occurred since the late 1960s.
Coogan is a journalist and broadcaster who worked as editor at the Irish Press newspaper for much of his career. He has written a number of historical texts on Ireland and Irish politics, many of which focus on the radical edge of their political discourse. The IRA is a history of the Irish Republican Army going back to its origins (as opposed to Ed Moloney’s A Secret History of the IRA which focuses, primarily on the career of Gerry Adams), and Coogan brings his expertise as a journalist to his research process. The book, which is quite exhaustive, mixes research collected from the historical record, with personal anecdotes and impressions of meeting with interview subjects.
Over the course of 38 chapters, Coogan has sought to be as thorough as possible with his subject matter. Part I, which covers the history of the IRA up until 1969, is likely the material that made up the original edition of the book, with the remaining chapters covering post-1969 updates. Virtually every aspect of IRA history is touched upon in this book, from its formations, to mid-century bombing campaigns, and connections to the Third Reich vis-a-vis their common British enemy. The early history of the IRA, that may have been subsumed under the recent and dramatic history of the troubles, is surveyed in detail by Coogan. Furthermore, Coogan gives a similar amount of attention to the post-1969 IRA, discussing its American connections, its arms shipments from Libya, its aggressive use of paramilitary tactics and its expressed solidarity with leftist struggle outside of Ireland.
The IRA is not just comprehensive as a history, it also contains detailed appendices about the Irish Republican Army’s court martial proceedure and statistics about sectarian violence during the troubles. Also useful is the glossary that Coogan had placed at the back of his book, making navigating the various acronyms used throught the text much easier. Furthermore, a chapter on the IRA’s Green Book (instruction manual and ideological guide for IRA volunteers) includes many directly quoted passages at length, giving the reader a lucid look at Provisional IRA ideology. Furthermore, the text of the book is followed by Appendecies that provide readers with the details of the IRA court-martial procedure and other aspects of the organization’s structure and processes.
