Beach reads for summer!
Here’s a story. Peter Maguire, whom you fell in
love with two weeks ago on Dirty Water,
lived, for a time, at Mokuleia, on Oahu’s North Shore.
Real quiet, real pretty lil place you go when you want to steal
away from the seven-mile miracle’s crowds. Head west from Pipe
towards Kaʻena Point etc.
And Pete, with his loaded nine mm pistol on a desk, and his
ominous… serenity… spooked all the heavies so much
they kept a real wide berth.
Figured he was a spook, CIA, maybe.
When he’s not teaching Chas Smith to grapple, punch, choke, he’s
a surfer, war crimes investigator and, among plenty of other
things, the author of the seminal Law and War: American History and
International Law.
Recently, Peter answered Thirteen
Questions in the Pensive Quill’s “A Booker’s
Dozen.”
To wit, what books you might wanna read, and those you should a
mile away from.
What are you currently reading?
I never read just one book at a time. I am currently reading
Worth Defending, Richard Bressler and Scott Burrs’ new
book on Gracie Jiu Jitsu, Fashionable Nonsense, Alan Sokol
and Jean Bricmonts’ book on postmodern claptrap, Peter Dimmock’s
remarkable novels on American imperialism Daybook From the
Sheep’s Meadow and George Anderson: Notes For a Love Song
in an Imperial Time, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of
Darkness to remember what great writing sounds like.
What are the best and worst books you have ever
read?
I loved George Orwell’s Animal Farm for its spartan and
bitingly precise characterization of Stalinism. Edmund Morgan’s
brilliant history American Slavery, American Freedom
articulated America’s central historical contradiction for me in a
way that no other book has. Morgan forgot more than all of the
authors of the tendentious The New York Times 1619 Project will
ever know. Voltaire’s Candide is also a favorite because
it shows that good intentions do not necessarily yield good
results. C. Wright Mills The Power Elite is also a
favorite because Mills was so prophetic when it came to America’s
fame at any cost culture. Hey Rube, one of Hunter S.
Thompson’s last books, was also remarkable because nobody more
accurately predicted where America’s “downward spiral of dumbness”
would take us after 9/11.
Worst book? There are so many to choose
from.
Neocon cheerleader Max Boot’s Savage Wars For Peace was
dreadful as was David Frum and Richard Perle’s An End to
Evil. Both provided the pseudo intellectual underpinnings for
America’s ill fated Global War on Terror. A Problem From
Hell by journalist-turned-politician Samantha Power was not
only grossly over-rated, but also totally unoriginal. Like Boot and
Frum, Power provided the neoliberals and “the humanitarian hawks”
with their intellectual rationalizations when the Obama
administration’s turn came to play world cop.
Book most cherished as a child?
I grew up on boats and in the sea so The Dove by Robin
Lee Graham was extremely inspiring to me as a child. At 16, Graham
left my home port of Marina Del Ray, California, and sailed his
24-foot sloop, The Dove, around the world. He was the youngest
person to circumnavigate the globe and did it without Loran or GPS.
He made me want to do similar things.
Favorite childhood author?
Margret and H.A. Rey’s Curious George series and the many
authors of The World Book Encyclopedia. I probably spent
more hours reading the encyclopedia (A-Z) than any other book as a
kid.
First book to really own you?
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Swiss Family
Robinson by Johann David Wyss. I was always fascinated
by stories about survival and self sufficiency.
Favorite male and female authors?
George Orwell and Joan Didion.
A preference for fact or fiction?
Fact, I don’t read much fiction.
Biography, autobiography, or memoir that impressed
you?
I loved Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye because it was
set in Los Angeles where I grew up and explained so much about
Bukowski’s deep loneliness and sadness. Gore Vidal’s
Palimpest was an eye opener for me because I knew little
about America’s 20th century ruling elite. Vidal was an American
aristocrat and his memoir provides a very uncensored expose of so
many prominent people. I have never looked at the Kennedys
the same way after reading it.
Any author or book that you point blank refuse to
read?
Anything written by the neoconservatives who cheer led America’s
disastrous Global War on Terror – William Kristol, David Frum, Max
Boot, the ubiquitous Kagans, Thomas Friedman, and many others. I
also try to avoid anything written by neocons turned “Never
Trumpers.” If they think their hatred of Trump somehow absolves
them of their rank intellectual dishonesty and colossal errors of
judgment, they should visit Walter Reed National Military Medical
Center.
A book to share with someone so that they would more
fully understand you?
My book Facing Death in Cambodia and my introduction to
my book Thai Stick.
The last book you gave as a present?
I gave Harry Crews novel A Feast of Snakes to a Yankee
friend. He was talking nonsense about the South and Southern
writers, but had never been south of the Mason-Dixon Line. I prefer
southern and western fiction to the many well publicized New York
centric tales of angst and neurosis.
Book you would most like to see turned into a
movie?
My book Thai Stick.
A must-read you intend on getting to before you
die?
Volumes 1-7 of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire and Hans Delbruck’s The Barbarian Invasions,
Medieval Warfare, and The Dawn of Modern Warfare. I have
nibbled at all of them, but have yet to read them
systematically.
