Has anyone read this new book by Nicholson Baker? It is a collection of historical records, newspaper articles, diaries, speeches, and events leading up to World War II, arranged chronologically, without any opinion or narrative. The idea is to allow people to experience the build-up to WWII as it actually happened, with no one interpreting the material, it is completely left up to the reader to determine the motives and merit of each actor's behavior and statements.
I am nearly done reading it and have found it to be profoundly disturbing but also empowering and life changing. I highly recommend it; in fact, I think everyone ought to read it. The method behind the book is fascinating in itself (take a look at any of the interviews with Nicholson Baker regarding this title, or the video of him as a guest on Charlie Rose), but the book itself is illuminating in terms of the propaganda, the lies and truths and the ways in which the two intermingle and affect the lives and deaths of millions.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle3758014.ece
I am nearly done reading it and have found it to be profoundly disturbing but also empowering and life changing. I highly recommend it; in fact, I think everyone ought to read it. The method behind the book is fascinating in itself (take a look at any of the interviews with Nicholson Baker regarding this title, or the video of him as a guest on Charlie Rose), but the book itself is illuminating in terms of the propaganda, the lies and truths and the ways in which the two intermingle and affect the lives and deaths of millions.
Quote:
| Baker has written a nonfiction book, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, which opens in April 1892 with Alfred Nobel musing that the explosives he manufactures may put an end to war. It ends in December 1941 with the entire world at war and the Holocaust raging in Europe. The book is a series of very brief fragments and images that, woven together, tell a story that many will not want to hear. It is history written by a novelist, with a strong narrative drive and dramatic sense. The fragments tell multiple stories simultaneously, revealing connections between continents and time frames. The more you read, the less disjointed and more ominous it becomes. |
. They keep updating it every few years, adding more documents, speeches, etc. (My copy is almost 20 years old, maybe it's time to get a new one. 
)
