Just Finished Reading: American Cultural History – A Very Short Introduction by Eric Avila (FP: 2018) [126pp] 

American culture has dominated the world throughout most of the 20th century and beyond with movies, music and other media being instantly recognisable in country after country despite cultural and language barriers. Part of the reason for such a wide appeal has been the cultural melting pot in the US itself aided by the original mix of cultures from England, Spain and France as well as local Native culture and the, no doubt unintentional, importation of African culture from the slave population. 

With the arrival of newspapers, the railroads and increased immigration the culture of America both exploded and diversified across the continent along with the waves of migration westwards supported by ideas of ‘Manifest Destiny’ and the idea of the Frontier. The following ‘Gilded Age’, fuelled in no small part by the philanthropy of Robber Barons resulted in some of the iconic architecture still standing today as well as the rise of advertising, magazine culture and lavish events such as World’s Fairs.  

The post-WW2 suburbanization of American culture produced Film Noir, TV and Disney. But it also produced The Twilight Zone and the House Committee on Un-American Activities and shopping malls – to say nothing of Motown music and Las Vegas gambling.  

Covering this and much else – I don’t intend to precis the entire (if short) book – this is a fast, high-level and broad brush look at American culture from its earliest days to the edge of the 21st century. For those paying attention I don’t think you’ll learn much new here. We’ve been drowning in American culture, from Coca-Cola to Hollywood blockbusters for generations now. But this does provide some structure to the outpouring and, as is often the case, a more than decent Bibliography to dig deeper into the subject if so desired. As both a long-time fan, and long-time critic, of American culture I shall be doing just that. More to come. Reasonable.        

Happy Birthday: Robert Dennis Harris CBE (born 7 March 1957) is a British novelist and former journalist. Although he began his career in journalism and non-fiction, he is best known for his works of historical fiction. Beginning with the best-seller Fatherland, Harris focused on events surrounding the Second World War, followed by works set in ancient Rome. His later works are varied in settings but are mostly set after 1870.

Several of Harris's novels have been adapted into films, including The Ghost Writer (2010) and An Officer and a Spy (2019), for which he co-wrote the screenplays with director Roman Polanski, and Conclave (2024).

After leaving Cambridge, Harris joined the BBC and worked on news and current affairs programmes such as Panorama and Newsnight. In 1987, at the age of 30, he became political editor of The Observer. He later wrote regular columns for The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Harris co-wrote his first book, A Higher Form of Killing (1982), with fellow BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman: this was a study of chemical and biological warfare. Other non-fiction works followed: Gotcha! The Government, the Media and the Falklands Crisis (1983) covering the Falklands War; The Making of Neil Kinnock (1984), a profile of Kinnock just after he became leader of the Opposition; Selling Hitler (1986), an investigation of the Hitler Diaries scandal; and Good and Faithful Servant (1990), a study of Bernard Ingham, press secretary to Margaret Thatcher while she was prime minister.

[Harris is an auto-buy for me. I've either read or at least own most of his novels including Fatherland (1992), Enigma (1995), Archangel (1998), Pompeii (2003), Imperium (2006), The Ghost (2007), Lustrum (2009), The Fear Index (2011), An Officer and a Spy (2013), Dictator (2015), Conclave (2016), Munich (2017), The Second Sleep (2019), V2 (2020), Act of Oblivion (2022), Precipice (2024), Agrippa (2026). I've enjoyed everything I've read by him with one notable exception. But I haven't let that put me off reading more. I'll just stick to his historical novels!]

Just Finished Reading: Confessions by Saint Augustine [347pp] 

If you have read as widely as I have (or for as long) you couldn’t help but hear about this classic work – in more sense than one – of early Christian text. Like most other such work I had, until recently, no intention of actually reading it. Surprisingly I did, however, find another foundational text The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius more than a little interesting, though mostly because of the quality of its writing and its philosophy. So, why did I choose to read this? Essentially, I discovered that Stephen (over at Reading Freely) was doing a re-read and thought it might be interesting adding myself to any group doing so (it actually ended up with just the two of us) adding an Atheist perspective to the reviews and, presumed, debate. 

So, what did I think? It all started with an age-old philosophical debate on the question “Who was I before I was born?” Which can be a fun debate before you start adding science and what we understand about reproduction – human or otherwise. No conclusions were reached (no surprise there) because what debate could exist was happening in a factual vacuum. It wasn’t long after that we reached the first significant speed bump when the author said: “For it is better for them to find you [God] and leave the question unanswered than to find the answer without finding you.” This goes against my fundamental beliefs and my suspected problem with the text became a confirmed one. 

The text however was scattered throughout by interesting things. One thing I did find interesting was just how LONG it was before Augustine was baptised despite his mother being a Christian. I had presumed (wrongly?) that baptism took place ASAP after birth to ensure the child’s entry to Heaven if, in all too many cases, s/he died in the first weeks/months of life. [Side note: Although both my brother & I were christened as infants I have a distinct memory of my sister WALKING to her christening in her best outfit]. 

Augustine spent a great deal of time talking about his youth and student experiences in Carthage. It sounded pretty normal to me – hanging out with questionable people, having ‘fun’ at others expense, drinking too much, gaming and chasing women. Although I did think that some of his ‘acting out’ was for the attention maybe his parents (and especially his mother) seemed not to have given him. 

At this point I started skimming bits. The CONSTANT praising of God at the beginning and end of every paragraph or section got increasingly tedious very quickly. Even the occasional good metaphor didn’t really help here. 

One thing did surprise me - already in his late 20’s he had been aware that his understanding of things was inadequate and deeply lamented the idea. Yet... he seems to have made only minimal efforts to seek the truths he was looking for. Despite having access to documents from some of the best thinkers of the age – either owning them already or having access to them through friends – he was ‘too busy’ to read them and then debate others with what he had found. That seems a little odd especially when I have been reading everything I could get my hands on for the last 50+ years in that self-same quest. His supposed motivation didn’t really match his actual effort. 

Probably the highlight of the entire book (for me at least) was when he delved into Astrology in order to disprove it. He actually ran quasi-scientific experiments which, with some more effort, may have actually been valid. His comments of outcomes of a slave and a ‘middle-class’ man born very close together and at approximately the same time being VERY different as well as the lives of twin brothers (from the Bible I think but the concept of Twin Studies stands) made me both nod in approval and laugh out loud. If only he used this level of reasoning elsewhere! 

Near the end of the book things got very philosophical with debates about Memory, Language and much else. As an introduction to Greco-Roman ideas, it might be an interesting source document but wasn’t exactly heavy on content. Yet again the author warned against the danger of being TOO inquisitive and wanting to know things – which was both kind of ironic from such a supposed seeker of Truth and kind of what I expected. This was followed by pretty constant verbal self-flagellation about being unworthy. 

Then we were back to philosophy again with a debate of origins of the Universe. Interestingly the questions mused upon still come up today including what happened BEFORE the Universe came into being. It did catch my eye when he talked about ‘pauses’ or God ‘resting’ between creation events – of course being completely unaware of the HUGE time gaps between the Big Bang, the formation of the Earth and the arrival of humans. Pause just doesn’t do it justice. But as the discussion ranged around the ideas of ‘before’ and ‘after’ there followed a LONG (and pointless) discussion about the nature of time itself. As far as I know, Time can only really be fully discussed (if not completely understood) using mathematics WAY above my paygrade. So, MUCH skimming was done here! 

Lastly there was a rather in-depth series of arguments over semantics in the Bible. Not being an English Lit person, I’ve never (fortunately) undertaken a serious course in textual analysis, so I have no clear idea if the debate in Book XII held any water. So, much skimming etc.. 

As you can probably tell by now (I hope!) I was rather less than impressed by this book. If I hadn’t been buddy-reading with Stephen I most probably would’ve DNF’d it around the halfway mark. Overall, I thought it was very light on content and often only borderline interesting. Skimming bit was definitely a necessity. Apart from the Astrology bit (which honestly made me chuckle) the only thing that stuck with me was the fact that Roman civil servants who converted to Christianity – or at least those mentioned in the book – left public service to pursue their new Religion. This brain drain couldn’t have been a good thing for an already failing Western Empire. I think (not having read it yet) this was one of the factors Gibbon cites in his ‘Decline and Fall’ as a cause of that decline. Maybe he was right? So, definitely not a recommended read from me but might appeal to those less cynical and less atheistic than I am. 

Translated from the Latin by R S Pine-Coffin 

Happy World Book Day! Go READ something - if you're not already!!