![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's not that I'm not getting things done. Heck, I gave three full-hour tests in three days last week, and I'll have returned all of them by this evening. I'm just not feeling any enthusiasm for anything at the moment. But I have to get on the stick; there are two departmental items - a form letter and a pamphlet - that I'm supposed to compose, and I also need to write up a couple of papers for publication. I'm supervising one Senior Project and one Master's thesis, and for their sakes I have to pay close attention.
I just don't feel like it.
Anyway. Last week I read a short book by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the subject of international law; he wrote it in 1990, in the aftermath of the Iran-contra mess and just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The main thesis is that the US government had abandoned its longstanding respect for international law, dating to the beginning of the republic, and especially strong from the Wilson presidency through the Carter administration. He points to the invasion of Grenada, the mining of Nicaragua's harbors, and the whole arms-for-hostages deal, deeming all of them violations of international law and fretting over the consequences. (Lest he be accused of partisanship here, he quotes Barry Goldwater, who served with him on the Intelligence Committee, as being publicly furious over much of this - for which fury Goldwater was savaged by William Safire, among others.) Interestingly, he specifically exempts the USAn support for the Afghan insurgents from this... An interesting and disturbing book, like most of Moynihan's work. I miss him.
I moved on from that to Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution; no comment as yet.
On the fictional front, I've been reading some of R. M. Meluch's books. I have three of her novels - Jerusalem Fire, Chicago Red, and The Queen's Squadron; apparently she wrote three or four others, all before 1992 and all out of print. (It seems that she has something new coming out soon, and in hardcover; I'm not sure how to interpret that, given the long hiatus.) She's an intriguing writer. She has some flaws; in particular, she's prone to melodrama. Her protagonists have outsize problems; one is a repentant mass-murderer, another an immortal who has turned her back on her past to live as a mortal. But she raises knotty problems and doesn't, generally, try to answer them. In Jerusalem Fire, she depicts an empire which is savagely crushing all opposition in the name of tolerance; Chicago Red deals with revolution in a ravaged future America ruled by an absolute monarch, and gives a certain amount of justification to the royal family. The Queen's Squadron, to my mind the best of the three, deals with a war between the Vikhen Empire, peopled by ordinary humans but ruled by a race of immortals, and the "free mortals"; the Empire, though a rigid aristocracy, is presented with surprising sympathy, even though one of the central characters is their chief torturer. (No, it's nothing like Gene Wolfe.) I can't say that Meluch is a great writer, but I find myself drawn back to her books from time to time, and I may take a look at her next one (but not until it comes out in paper).
I just don't feel like it.
Anyway. Last week I read a short book by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the subject of international law; he wrote it in 1990, in the aftermath of the Iran-contra mess and just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The main thesis is that the US government had abandoned its longstanding respect for international law, dating to the beginning of the republic, and especially strong from the Wilson presidency through the Carter administration. He points to the invasion of Grenada, the mining of Nicaragua's harbors, and the whole arms-for-hostages deal, deeming all of them violations of international law and fretting over the consequences. (Lest he be accused of partisanship here, he quotes Barry Goldwater, who served with him on the Intelligence Committee, as being publicly furious over much of this - for which fury Goldwater was savaged by William Safire, among others.) Interestingly, he specifically exempts the USAn support for the Afghan insurgents from this... An interesting and disturbing book, like most of Moynihan's work. I miss him.
I moved on from that to Gordon Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution; no comment as yet.
On the fictional front, I've been reading some of R. M. Meluch's books. I have three of her novels - Jerusalem Fire, Chicago Red, and The Queen's Squadron; apparently she wrote three or four others, all before 1992 and all out of print. (It seems that she has something new coming out soon, and in hardcover; I'm not sure how to interpret that, given the long hiatus.) She's an intriguing writer. She has some flaws; in particular, she's prone to melodrama. Her protagonists have outsize problems; one is a repentant mass-murderer, another an immortal who has turned her back on her past to live as a mortal. But she raises knotty problems and doesn't, generally, try to answer them. In Jerusalem Fire, she depicts an empire which is savagely crushing all opposition in the name of tolerance; Chicago Red deals with revolution in a ravaged future America ruled by an absolute monarch, and gives a certain amount of justification to the royal family. The Queen's Squadron, to my mind the best of the three, deals with a war between the Vikhen Empire, peopled by ordinary humans but ruled by a race of immortals, and the "free mortals"; the Empire, though a rigid aristocracy, is presented with surprising sympathy, even though one of the central characters is their chief torturer. (No, it's nothing like Gene Wolfe.) I can't say that Meluch is a great writer, but I find myself drawn back to her books from time to time, and I may take a look at her next one (but not until it comes out in paper).
