GRGR: Todorov and Clendinnen on the Holocaust

[rj]

> I haven't read the Todorov book in question, but I'd caution against
> drawing any conclusions about it based on a daily newspaper review 

I can vouch for the reviewer and the newspaper. Which is why I posted.
Andrew Riemer is a foremost literary scholar, journalist, editor and
novelist. The "daily newspaper" is a Saturday broadsheet with
supplements, of comparable quality to the *NYT*.

I also agree with Doug regarding Todorov. I haven't read this book yet
either, but I have read some of his other stuff and he is both
intelligent and responsible. The excerpts I cited previously indicate
that the reviewer also believes that Todorov has "written about the
Holocaust in a way that ... engage[s] moral sensibilities" etc.

Derek accuses the reviewer of "implying that there's something
inherently wrong in applying the language of outrage" to which I'd say
that this is his inference rather than the writer's implication. As to
what the "language of outrage" is, well, I guess Derek's post pretty
well exemplifies it for me.

Riemer makes no disparaging comments about any other books written on
the subject, as Derek infers, nor is writing that a historical text is
"distinguished by intellectual rigour" a "dig", as is also accused.
Neither Riemer nor Todorov refer to Pat Buchanan or Steven Spielberg in
their texts.

I'd like to assume that Derek has actually read the book, even if he is
only taking the reviewer to task, as Doug suggests. This does give me
the opportunity to cite another excerpt from the review, however:

  "Todorov begins by juxtaposing two famous uprisings: in the Warsaw
Ghetto in 1943 and by the Polish population of the city the following
year.
  "Both, he remarks, were marked by extraordinary acts of heroism in the
face of overwhelming odds. Both came to occupy places of honour in
national mythologies -- Israeli in one case, Polish in the other.
  "He finds, nevertheless, significant differences between the two.
  "The Poles revolted in the name of large abstractions: nation,
civilisation, Christendom, the West. In most cases the Jews of the
Ghetto sacrificed themselves for a very different reason: to choose the
manner and moment of their own deaths, rather than to remain passive
victims of systematic extermination.
  "For Todorov the latter mode of heroism is morally preferable. Yet it,
too, is found wanting: the memory of the Ghetto uprising has given
spurious justification, he argues, to injustices and even atrocities
committed by the State of Israel. What he calls ordinary virtues --
caring, compassion, a regard for one's integrity rather than fame --
take precedence for him over large-scale national, ethnic, religious or
cultural aspirations.
  "The particular is always to be preferred to the abstract, the
individual to the corporate or communal."

best