Sleepwalkers and the Germans.

Wed Aug 6 08:42:35 CDT 2014

I finished The Sleepwalkers last week: brilliant, and we'll all be
fortunate if some of its complexity seeps into the received wisdom about
WWI. Pynchonians who read it will have a richer response to the protean
"Situation" and "the balloon about to go up" in V., and to Brigadier
Pudding's ramifying, combinatorial "Things That Can Happen in European
Politics" in GR.

Clark is especially good at showing how every member of 1914's Triple
Entente (France, Russia, UK) and Triple Alliance (Austro-Hungary, Germany,
Italy) had (1) recent and/or potential conflicts of interest within its own
alliance, and (2) recent and/or potential shared interests with members of
the other alliance... so that almost every development, not just "some
damned thing in the Balkans," had the foreign offices and general staffs
twisting their kaleidoscopes in fear (or anticipation) of sudden, radical
realignments. I'm both drawn to and very wary of physical and mathematical
models for psychological, social and political situations (cf. Pynchon's
early abuses of entropy). Still, that configuration is a perfect playground
for chaotic dynamics and catastrophe theory.

On to Iron Kingdom next. While I understand that the brusque, decisive
Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars were much fresher in memory in
1914 than today,  I've always found it hard to see what made "Prussian
militarism" so very different from the contemporaneous rise of US empire
(Hawaii, Spanish-American war, Philippine counterinsurgency, "open door"
for China, routine Latin American intervention) or from the broader cult of
manly, virile Social Darwinism (from Theodore Roosevelt to Baden-Powell) in
all the Anglophone nations.

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de
> wrote:

>   In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
>
>  In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
>   In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
>
>  In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> > In 2010, his history of Prussia,* Iron Kingdo**m*, attracted
> considerable praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the
> Historisches Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. <
>
> A brilliant study. I can recommend it to P-listers who need to know more
> about Prussia than Thomas Pynchon can provide. But caution! You'll
> unavoidably lose a commonplace or two ...
>
> From the NYT review:
>
> But “Iron Kingdom,” Christopher Clark’s stately, authoritative history of
> Prussia from its humble beginnings to its ignominious end, presents a much
> more complicated and compelling picture of the German state, which is too
> often reduced to a caricature of spiked helmets and polished boots. Prussia
> and its army were inseparable, but Prussia was also renowned for its
> efficient, incorruptible civil service; its innovative system of social
> services; its religious tolerance; and its unrivaled education system, a
> model for the rest of Germany and the world. This too was Prussia — a
> tormented kingdom that, like a tragic hero, was brought down by the very
> qualities that raised it up. (...) The myth of Prussian militarism,
> likewise, receives careful scrutiny. A large, disciplined army transformed
> the Mark Brandenburg, with its poor soil, scant natural resources and lack
> of access to the sea, into a regional power. But the militarization of
> society did not really begin until the late 19th century, and even then Mr.
> Clark questions whether the Prussian experience set it apart from the rest
> of Europe. France and Britain were equally committed to empire-building and
> military might. “The ‘civility’ and anti-militarism of British society were
> perhaps more a matter of self-perception than a faithful representation of
> reality,” he writes. “It is also worth noting that the German peace
> movement developed on a scale unparalleled elsewhere.”
> was
> was
>  Cambridge-based Australian historian Christopher Clark was not unknown
> in Germany when he published his latest book, The Sleepwalkers. In 2010,
> his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable praise and saw
> him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches Kolleg, an important
> centre for advanced study in history. His biography of Wilhelm II, which
> followed shortly after, was also generously received. The success of Th -
> See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> Cambridge-based Australian historian Christopher Clark was not unknown in
> Germany when he published his latest book, The Sleepwalkers. In 2010, his
> history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable praise and saw him
> awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches Kolleg, an important
> centre for advanced study in history. His biography of Wilhelm II, which
> followed shortly after, was also generously received. The success of Th -
> See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
> Cambridge-based Australian historian Christopher Clark was not unknown in
> Germany when he published his latest book, The Sleepwalkers. In 2010, his
> history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable praise and saw him
> awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches Kolleg, an important
> centre for advanced study in history. His biography of Wilhelm II, which
> followed shortly after, was also generously received. The success of Th -
> See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
>   In 2010, his history of Prussia, Iron Kingdom, attracted considerable
> praise and saw him awarded the prestigious prize of the Historisches
> Kolleg, an important centre for advanced study in history. - See more at:
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/#sthash.Xs7cFj10.dpuf
>
>
> Yours truly,
>
> The Prussian Pussy Eater
>
>
>
> On 05.08.2014 14:17, alice malice wrote:
>
> http://inside.org.au/christopher-clarks-sleepwalkers-and-the-germans-a-misunderstanding/
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
>
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