Imatge de l'autor

Jonathan Carr (1942–2008)

Autor/a de The Wagner Clan

10 obres 289 Membres 24 Ressenyes

Sobre l'autor

Jonathan Carr worked as a British-born foreign correspondent, reporting from Germany for The Financial Times and The Economist for nearly three decades. His other books are Helmut Schmidt, Goodbye Germany, and The Wagner Clan.

Obres de Jonathan Carr

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Nom normalitzat
Carr, Jonathan
Data de naixement
1942
Data de defunció
2008-06-12
Gènere
male
Nacionalitat
UK
Lloc de naixement
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Lloc de defunció
Königswinter, Germany
Educació
Brighton College
Pembroke College
Premis i honors
Commander of the British Empire (CBE), 2000

Membres

Ressenyes

Born and raised in Chicago, I ordered this book for a friend and I, looking forward to a novel of our hometown.

The opening, featuring Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable, was enlightening and will engage a search for truth vs fiction.

After that, notably with "The Doctor in St. Charles," things turned contrived and unwelcome.

The rest of the book was mostly boring and repetitive. Sure wish it had been different.
 
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m.belljackson | Hi ha 18 ressenyes més | Oct 30, 2021 |
Fascinatingly sordid story, gripping read.

I love music, but for years I couldn’t hear the music of Richard Wagner without seeing in my mind visions of Hitler brooding on the fate of the Jews. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve begun to delve into and enjoy the music, and now I wanted to learn more about “the master,” as Wagnerites invariably call him, as well as the dynasty he and his mistress, later wife Cosima (Liszt’s illegitimate daughter) engendered, the youngest offshoots of which still rule the festival house on the green hill in Bayreuth, nearly 140 years after its inauguration.

Jonathan Carr’s book turned out to be an ideal introduction. He writes in a sprightly style, only occasionally straining to make an effect with his prose, and rarely resorting to cliché. His judgments seem balanced, a neat trick since so much about Wagner and his heritage is ambivalent or contradictory. He seems especially struck by the paradox that Wagner began as a revolutionary, not only musically but more so politically, yet his music became the emblem of Germanness in Wilhelmine Germany, deeply affecting an adolescent Hitler, although many of his cohorts had to be dragged unwillingly to performances.
Beyond Richard, there is a multitude of family members: the imperious Cosima, their only son Siegfried, in a way Cosima’s favorite “daughter,” Siegfried’s wife Winifred, whose undying love was reserved for Hitler, a frequent guest of the family, who knew him as Uncle Wolf. These visits began before his failed Munich beer hall putsch and continued into the war years. I was fascinated by two other women: Siegfried’s sister, the mercurial Isolde, and one of his two daughters, Friedelind. With regard to her, Carr doesn’t fully accept the version of her as the good, anti-Fascist Wagner, but he also questions why the family continued to view her as the black sheep. Here is one of many places where it is evident that Carr did his homework.

In this extensively researched family portrait, Carr also draws on his deep knowledge of twentieth-century German political history (he earlier wrote a highly-praised biography of Helmut Schmidt). His excursions on this sometimes intrude on the narrative flow, but for the most part they provide context vital to an assessment of the tangled interplay of the Wagners and wider German culture (and politics). This analysis is a thread that runs throughout the narrative, then in the final chapter, Carr forms a judgment that strikes me as simultaneously sympathetic and unsparing.

Quibble: the Kindle edition omits the photos from the print version, although it teasingly retains the list of them. Despite this, highly recommended for anyone interested in music, modern European culture, or well-told family sagas.
… (més)
 
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HenrySt123 | Hi ha 3 ressenyes més | Jul 19, 2021 |
Recently the now 95-year-old Helmut Schmidt was (once again) voted by Germans the most admired living German male. This book, written by a British correspondent who observed him closely for many years, appeared shortly after Schmidt's coalition government was toppled in 1982. The portrait it paints, admiring yet critical, goes a long way to explaining the respect in which he is still held, more than thirty years after leaving office. In less than 200 pages, Carr gives a quick overview of his childhood, his experiences in the Wehrmacht in World War 2, and his political rise. It also touches on his deep appreciation of art, especially the twentieth-century German expressionism denigrated by the Nazis, and his love of music.
Much of the book focuses though on his political career. Few have risen to the top position in government as well-prepared as he. Frustrated in his hopes to be an architect or town planner, he took a degree in economics after the war as the most straightforward way to support his young family. From the start of his parliamentary career, he focused on defence policy, a subject few others in his party, the Socialists, wanted to be associated with. When his party finally came to power for the first time after the war, he was, in succession, parliamentary whip, defence minister, and finance minister. As chancellor, his strength was to see that military and economic issues were intertwined, and his common sense approach, combined with his intelligence and diligence, made him a crucial figure both in detente between the superpowers, and the efforts to keep some semblance of order in world markets reeling under the deterioration of the dollar and two massive rises in oil prices.
Some of the convictions that guided his efforts are cited as well. In a speech to the UN general assembly in 1978, he stressed the need for "predictability and calculability of political and military conduct" (something he felt especially lacking in the Carter White House), as well as for both superpowers "to avoid provocation; to make one's own options unmistakably clear; to defuse dangerous situations through readiness to compromise; and to enable those concerned to save face" (p. 150). And speaking to diplomats the evening before his government was toppled, he delivered what Carr calls his political testament: "Today we all face a dual crisis - involving both the world economy and the hardening of fronts in East-West relations. I want to ask you never to allow the dialogue between governments and statesmen to be discontinued, especially in a crisis - however good your reasons may be for reproaching the other side. In this time of great danger for worldwide economic and financial cooperation, I warn against thinking that one can solve one's problems by a policy pursued at the cost of others. . . . To ensure peace remains our primary task. Peace is not a natural state but one that must be ever re-established, as the German philosopher Kant put it" (188).
One comes away from the book with the feeling that the decade of the seventies, as bad as they were in world history, would have been much worse without this capable, dutiful public servant at the helm of an economic power slowly growing into a commensurate political role only thirty years after causing, then losing, World War 2. The "great person" view of politics and history has been unfashionable for the past few decades, but perhaps it needs to be reconsidered. A good read, highly recommended.
… (més)
 
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HenrySt123 | Jul 19, 2021 |
I had a galley of this 2019 release, and I got overwhelmed and bogged down, and then had a little reading slump. I finally got to it, and I'm so glad I did.

In this novel Carr tells the story of the first hundred years of Chicago, framed around the supposed 1902 "Alternative History of Chicago" by one Milton Winshop and a variety of "primary sources". He starts with the mulatto first settler of Echicagou, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable--who, we know, really was the first settler of Chicago, but the idea being in 1902 this was "alternative".

Carr goes on to tell his story through a mix of people--Potowatomies, original settlers, immigrants, boosters, transplants from the East, laborers, engineers, aldermen, builders, men, women, children. We see some children grow up, immigrants find their calling, residents suffer and succeed. Some of the characters are real people, others are fictional representations. They occasionally interact--and honestly this can be a little confusing as vastly different characters come and go and you jump forward in time. But I love this kind of structure. It is sweeping, it is disjointed and choppy and you get a picture of so many different kinds of people. I kept reminding myself "THIS IS FICTION"--I also tend to be annoyed by books that use real people to tell fictional stories. I thought he did this well, but where were fictional words put into real peoples' mouths? I'm not sure, and as a historian it bugs me. But I could not stop myself from enjoying this book.

I did wish there was more on the Potowatomies, and I found some of the writing in dialect (of Point du Sable, and one of the Irish brothers) to be a bit much--but I don't often like writing that is made to seem in dialect, it always feels false to me. I also would have liked a character list.

I am amazed that this is a first novel. The complex structure is so well done, it doesn't seem like it. The author is also English--though well traveled and not young.
… (més)
1 vota
Marcat
Dreesie | Hi ha 18 ressenyes més | May 15, 2020 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
10
Membres
289
Popularitat
#80,898
Valoració
½ 3.6
Ressenyes
24
ISBN
32
Llengües
4

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