On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> That's ridiculous. "Just and kind," eh?
Just, because it's a very bad book. Just as bad as he says it is.
Kind, because he praised his Goldhagen book quite highly, calling it brilliant. That's more praise than Finkelstein got from any other American or German reviewer, at least that I read. And coming from Bartov, who unlike say, Andrew Ross, really is an expert in the field, that's high praise, and it's nice that he put it at the beginning. Since most people never read boring Times reviews more than four pagagraphs in.
I'm using both terms relatively -- relative to what the book is worth, and relative to the other reviews he got.
But to be fair, if Norman had written a careful and judicious book, nobody would ever have heard of it outside a few scholars, just like nobody hears about Bartov. This way he's making real money, which his interviews made it sound like he could really use, so I'm happy for him. But in this, as in so many other things, just as Bartov says, he's ironically following in Goldhagen's footsteps. Goldhagen actually had some scholarship in that book, believe it or not, where he sat in fresh archive and went through it carefully. It happens about a hundred pages into the book. And he actually had something interesting to say to people outside the field of holocaust studies. But he had just written that, and written it judiciously, nobody would ever have heard of him outside a small circle of specialists. What made him famous and a sensation were the first 100 pages, which are complete bullshit. The man doesn't know the first thing about 19th century Germany or national identity. But that bullshit sold like hotcakes, that bullshit made him world famous, that bullshit almost even got him a chair at Harvard before they came to their senses and told the non-academic donor to get stuffed. Finkelstein tore those pages apart line by line. And then wrote a book that was every bit as over the top and full of outrageous mistakes. And, unlike his more careful books, which all went unnoticed, this one's selling like hotcakes. The German translation, which came out last month, sold out 50,000 copies in a *week*. From the outside, it looks like he decided if you can't beat them, join them.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com