The book opens with the fall of Saigon and the escape of a cadre of South Vietnamese military to America with their families. The Sympathizer is a fresh look at the Vietnam War, told from a Vietnamese perspective. Winning a Pulitzer and an Edgar was enough to make me check it out. I was really taken with Viet Than Nguyen's The Sympathizer. Rollins gets his say, but unlike in Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, which champions Black Flag as such a seminal band to the development of the indie rock industry, in Under the Big Black Sun, Black Flag takes on a much more villainous role. Things unravel as the kids from the beaches and the suburbs roll into town. The scene becomes more violent, less open, less friendly to women, minorities, and the lgbqt scene. In Under the Big Black Sun, hardcore, epitomized by Black Flag, brings about less inclusion.
Most fascinating was discussion around how the introduction of hardcore into the scene really changed the face of the LA punk world. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about this history, but there was still plenty of fresh material to be gleaned. The audio book drips with enthusiasm, personality and authenticity. The audio version features the authors lending their own voices to the proceedings. In fact, don’t bother reading the book, you’d be better off listening to it. John Doe, Exene, Dave Alvin, Mike Watt, Jane Wiedlin and plenty others. The book consists of essays by the folks who were there. It chronicles the formation of the LA punk scene, focusing on the years between 1976-1980. Under the Big Black Sun is an essential rock document. I would have liked the book to get to the heart of the horror just a little more. These little glimpses into the lives of the people are spread throughout, and though they are enough to give you a true sense of the calamity on the ground, there is a clinical remove at play. That said, throughout the book, you get lists of atrocities within a region, followed by a short paragraph or anecdote focused on a citizen. Were these ever documented by the party? If they were, in all likelihood they would be sealed tightly in a vault somewhere. I also imagine the tales of survivors and the dead would be hard to come by. The level of hubris, fear, and folly within the party is staggering. The book showcases the “complete lack of connection between people and party”, but the book’s focus clearly lies on the side of the party. The book doesn’t have that personal quality or the human touch that many historical works carry. The book is not so successful in exploring the lives of the millions that die. In short, everything went wrong and people paid with their lives on a grand scale.The book does a great job chronicling the policies, analyzing Mao’s role in the debacle, looking at the party bosses, examining the brutality of the local cadres, exploring the culture of fear, and showing how such devastation could come to fruition. Putting on a brave face to the outside world, the Chinese honored all their trade agreements, exporting grain while their own people starved. Output dropped and the quality of goods produced were terrible. Foolish water conservancy projects were enacted. Of course, yields declined in a devastating fashion. The party handed down experimental farming techniques like close cropping and deep plowing to help increase rice and grain yields. Mao called for a rapid collectivization of agriculture and industry.
WERNER HERZOG OF WALKING IN ICE AUDIOBOOK SERIES
What followed were a series of policies of sheer madness. When Kruschev vowed to outproduce the US in short shrift, Mao responded by claiming the Chinese would soon outproduce Britain. With Stalin dead, Mao felt he could become the leading light of the Communist world. In large part, Mao was motivated by Kruschev’s maneuvers in this period. The book is a thorough exploration of the Party’s follies in this period. I kicked it off with Frank Dikotter’s Mao’s Great Famine, which explores the devastating policies of The Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) during which roughly 45 million people died. On tap for the summer I’ve got two tomes on Communist atrocities.