--- andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Btw, has anyone read Doctorow's The March?
>
Never read it, and I could write all I know about the US Civil War on one typed page. But speaking of Civil War literature (a different Civil War, though one refered to in the subject heading), I just read Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry, about his time with the Red Cossacks (or as he calls them at one point, the Cossacks of the proletariat) while they were trying to liberate/reconquer Poland in 1920 -- intuitively a strange place for a Jewish intellectual to be, but he was there. Talk about bloodthirsty! It will certainly disabuse anyone of romantic notions of the Reds *and Whites, for that matter).
And speaking of Evil Poles, one would think from reading Babel that virtually the entire population of Poland was caught up in one gigantic pogrom. Of the three groups focused on -- Jews, Cossacks and Poles -- Jews are portrayed as intellectual but effeminate, Cossacks as heroic but ruthless and boorish, and Poles as Evil Incarnate.
Great book though.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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