Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to read Graham Robb's wonderful biographies of Hugo, Balzac and Rimbaud, and in the process of reading them, I discovered that Robb had become one of my favorite writers. Therefore, I approached "Strangers" with high hopes.

And I was not disappointed! What a marvelous book this is! Unlike many works of gay history, which are top-heavy with pretentious academic theory, this book is filled with original research and fascinating stories. For example, the first chapter does something never done before: it explores the arrest records of homosexuals from 1830 through the late twentieth century. It also presents the data in easy-to-read chart form.

What you realize, while taking this all in, is that other academics have presented partial looks at this data, with huge theories to explain tiny data-sets. Robb simply reads and presents all of the data, which make one thing very very obvious: it was much better to be gay in Victorian England than in 1950's America (or England)!

Now, this one discovery, all by itself, would be enough to make the reputation of a small flock of our current academic midgets. Imagine! We all thought of Victorian England as absolute hell for gay people, and -- it wasn't!! No, the move into the 20th century, and the "medicalization" of the "problem," and then the horrible totalitarian movements like the Nazis and the Communists -- all of this somehow worked together to create an atmosphere which was extremely brutal towards gay people -- brutal enough, perhaps, to create its own revolution at Stonewall.

And this is only the first chapter of "Strangers!" Robb goes on to discuss the "product conversion" in fascinating detail, and manages to get the story of the early German liberation movement right (no minor task) and to make it just as fascinating as everything else in this book. Along the way, he gently and wittily disposes of some of the more ludicrous ideas circulating among the academics (e.g. the idea that homosexuals came into existence in 1875).

You will also greatly enjoy the chapters on Jesus and Sherlock Holmes. This book belongs in the library of every person interested in gay history.

Highest possible recommendation!!

Charles Murray wrote a brilliant book called "Losing Ground," and co-authored a highly controversial book, "The Bell Curve." The first one was better than the second one.

His third book provokes only a question: why do this? Evidently he spent years reading art histories and science histories, counted up citations, and somehow convinced himself that he had constructed some sort of objective scale of greatness. Well, so what? According to his fabulous system, the second greatest artist of all time was Pablo Picasso! There's your big hint that his system has serious problems! :-)

The only practical result from this book is that one can now say, "Scholarly consensus says that Abu Nuwas was the second greatest poet in Arab literature." And you can cite Murray's book to "prove it." So??

The subtitle of this book should have been "How to Waste Many Years of Your Life Doing Something Dumb!"

Sorry! Not recommended!!!

This book should be must reading for everyone, especially for those who have been telling us (for many years) that "there is no such thing as race."

Well, some salient facts to consider, as Sarich presents them: first, race is a real concept directly related to DNA. You can send a DNA sample to the lab and the lab can tell you that the DNA came from a person who is 85 percent African-American and 15% Native American. Really! This sort of information can be invaluable to police trying to find a dangerous murderer.

Next up is the fact that collies cannot be given heartworm vaccine. So what? Well, reactions to medicine vary with the genes, and we are now learning that the different races sometimes tolerate various medicines differently. Life and death decisions may hinge on your race, and your doctor's awareness of such issues. It is hard to imagine how a medicial instuction such as "Xaprofill is poorly tolerated by some Japanese and Chinese" could be regarded as racism.

I won't go any further than that. Sarich upset the whole world of paleontology with his discovery of the molecular clock, and now he's doing his very best to upset the whole world of chat-show "intellectuals," and their silly idea that race is just a figment of our imagination.

By the way, there is one other very startling number in this book! Sarich estimates that modern man (homo sap sap) arose just 50,000 years ago -- not 150,000 or 250,000!! When this man talks about prehistoric dates, it's probably a good idea to listen!

I just re-read "The Little Prince" yesterday and was amazed to see how much real gold there is in this book. The part where the fox talks about "how to tame a fox" may be one of the most brilliant things ever written. The concluding paragraphs are also among the finest words ever written.

Don't miss this book! There's a reason why it's been translated into a hundred languages and is always in print, and the reason is simple: it touches your heart, speaks of important things, and reminds us of the truly important things in life.

Highest possible recommendation! (You may prefer the original Katherine Woods translation.)

The fabulous story called "A Forgotten Poet" is worth the entire price of admission here. VN must have laughed out loud when he first got the idea, chuckled heartily as he developed it, and hummed happily to himself as he wrote it down and polished it for publication. It is superb, and superbly funny. If you haven't read it, you owe yourself the pleasure!

I would never imply that the rest of the stories in this volume can be forgotten! In fact, they all seem to be nearly as good as the one I just mentioned. Look upon this book as a box of delicious chocolates which you have not yet unwrapped.... and then unwrap and savor them at your leisure.

Highest possible recommendation!

This book is worth buying and keeping forever, if only for two of the biographical entries: the essay on Kinsey by the brilliant C. A. Tripp, and the essay on Warren Johansson by William A. Percy.

Actually, either one of these two is worth the price of admission. You will gain very valuable insights into Kinsey -- a famous person -- and into Warren Johannson -- a person who accumulated no fame at all. But somehow, strange to say, they may have been the two most important gay activists of the twentieth century!

Both Kinsey and Johannson were born into highly religious families. Kinsey had a dictatorial Protestant father -- a Sunday -school tyrant who was a hypocrite to boot -- while Johannson was apparently born into a Jewish family and subsequently changed his name to the Aryan-sounding Johannson in rebellion against the Jewish faith.

Kinsey, of course, published "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" during the early 50's, while Johansson was involved in overt gay scholarship from the earliest days, contributing enormous gifts of learning and scholarship wherever asked, without fee, a wandering scholar and a free spirit.

Very highly recommended!

At several points while reading this guide, I was just stunned by the little mini-sermons offered to tourists:

1. Thou shalt have no plastic bottles before ye. This went on for a couple of columns, and I wondered just what planet the author came from. Other guidebooks show festoons of plastic bottles for sale in Rome, but we hear no complaints about Rome, here. No, the battle over one lousy plastic bottle becomes a battle for the reader's soul, here in vulnerable SE Asia. No hostages are taken!

2. Thou shalt have no monkey pets before ye. I just got back from a driving trip to Roi-Et from Chiang Mai, and, while we were passing through Nam Naaw National Park on the return, we turned off at a scenic view stop and discovered a marvellous view, plus a group of hill-tribe people living their lives, including a cute little monkey as a pet. The author of this guide would have the owner of the pet up before a court for cruelty, or something.

There are other instances, just as crude, of the author electing to use his status as a guidebook author as a good opportunity to hector the reader with ALL of his various opinions. Done with wit, this can work, but there is nothing witty here.

Alas!

I note with amazement that some reviewers comment favorably (!) on the fact that Chernyshevsky was one of the forerunners of "Socialist Realism," and that this man was held in great esteem in the Soviet Union. It's as if, somehow, some people still have not heard the news about the Soviet Union 1918-1953: that it was perhaps the worst period in the entire history of the planet. It should at least be noted that such artists and thinkers as Vladimir Nabokov hold "Socialist Realism" to have been nothing but writing PR for a gang of slave-traders.

Another item -- strangely overlooked -- is just how awful this "novel" is. I mean this seriously: this novel is so bad that it even makes the agitprop churned out by Ayn Rand look good! :-0
Ayn Rand presents the reader with cardboard characters, but Chernyshevky manages not even to produce cardboard characters, but talking heads, wandering moralists, and mad sermonizers. Frequently the characters do not have names firmly attached to them, and one wonders just who is speaking. At least with such other propaganda efforts as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Fountainhead," one always knows who is speaking.

It is somehow vastly depressing to learn that Lenin read this book five times (!) in one summer, and that he firmly considered Chernyshevsky one of the leading influences on his thought. It is even more depressing to realize that "leading Russian criticism" of the 19th century was heavily influenced by such dolts as Chernyshevsky, claiming that novels without overt morals and overt moralizing were worthless. This utilitarian, overtly political school of criticism led straight to the tenets of Socialist Realism, a school which never produced any art at all! (Mounds of human corpses were produced, however, so many that it was impossible to bury them all during the harsh Russian winters.)

This is a fascinating book for the historian and the philosopher, or for anyone trying to understand what went wrong during the 20th century.

VN loves doubles, and puzzles, and structure. In this book, he finally managed to convince me that he never writes a bad sentence, or utters a silly thought.

But what is this book? Or what is it about?

It's sort of autobiographical. It sort of describes VN himself, as a newbie Russian exile in Berlin. Certainly, like all imaginative writing, it draws on the writer's own experiences and emotions.

But that's only a beginning.

At the beginning, the young writer-protagonist (a Russian in Berlin) has just published his first volume of poetry. An older exile, named Chernyshevski, comes to tell him that his book has attracted a very favorable review. So Fyodor (our hero) sinks into a prolong reverie, reviewing his beloved poems with the (anticipated) wise words of praise. Later, he goes to Chernyshevski's house for the evening, and discovers that he has just been the victim of an April-Fool's joke: today is April 1, and there was no review. Fyodor's attention is grabbed by a young male visitor who says nothing. He says nothing because he is a ghost. He is the son of the Chernyshevski couple, who commited suicide, a few years ago, as the result of a love triangle. And so enters the theme of the father grieving endlessly for his son. The father Chernyshevski is mad, much of the time -- because of his loss.

In the next chapter, we get a stunning shift of scene, as Fyodor welcomes a visit from his mother and begins drafting a life of his father. This father, a character much larger than life, spent his life chasing butterflies across Asia, making more trips than Marco Polo, and finally was reported dead during WWI. And so enters the theme of the son grieving for his father -- a father of many voyages. Very moving, and obvious parallels to "The Odyssey."

In the next chapter, Fyodor moves, and falls in love, and begins drafting his second book, a life of Chernyshevki (the FAMOUS Chernyshevski). And the chapter after that (Chapter IV) is the book that Fyodor wrote.

Chapter V presents various idiotic reviews of Fyodor's book, and slowly VN knits all the themes together: the father mourning for his dead son, the son mourning for his dead father, people writing books which other people fail to understand (the ongoing "book review" theme), and the simple, absolute beauty of life here on earth, and love of another human being.

I'm sure I will be re-reading this wonderful work of art many times. I think you should regard it as a gift -- to you!

Highest possible recommendation!!

I am revising my review of this book downwards, after investigating the allegations about Pinker's misrepresentations of Turkheimer.

This book makes a good case against the noble savage, the ghost in the machine, and the blank slate -- but, frankly, I have known these ideas were rubbish for a long, long time. What strikes me as dubious is Pinker's refusal to stop thinking of the brain as a computer, and his dubious claims for the "achievements" of "cognitive science," which are practically zip unless you kidnap language research and call it cognitive science.