Summer Reading: Avenue of Spies

In keeping with my summer reading theme (World War II non-fiction), I accepted a review copy of Alex Kershaw's book, subtitled "A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris."

The subtitle alone reminded me that almost none of the World War II history I have read has been centered on France. I have read about the Russian Jewish resistance, the efforts of Germans to overthrow the Third Reich from the inside, the Norwegian resistance and the squads of double agents who sent Nazi secrets to England on a regular basis, in addition to books about ordinary people caught in or delivered from the Nazi scourge (The Zookeeper's Wife and The Nazi Officer's Wife are among the more recent titles in this vein that I have read). Of course, that's without mentioning (again!) all the books that look at specifically Catholic efforts at rescue and subterfuge. In all those books, the only glimpses of wartime France came through the English double agents. I have read nothing about the French themselves.

Even this book is not so much about the French, as it is about one family: an American surgeon, his Swiss-born wife and their only child. Approached by members of the French resistance, the couple agreed to turn their house on Paris' elegant Avenue Foch (the "Avenue" of the title whose mansions had almost all been requisitioned for the Germans' operations ) into a communications hub.

Actually, the family's quiet rebellion against the newly-arrived occupiers had already begun in the American Hospital in Paris. Before the US entered the war, the American Hospital was neutral territory, and friends in diplomatic circles kept the Germans from taking it over. Dr. Sumner Jackson worked long hours in surgery, trying to save the life and limbs of Allied POWs from a nearby camp. To the extent possible, he not only healed their wounds, but got them out of France entirely. (In some cases, the soldier's "death certificate" was delivered to the camp in lieu of his strangely vibrant corpse, which was already far from Paris...)

War was not new to Dr Jackson. He had been a volunteer in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I (defying US neutrality even then), a strange destiny for a man who had been raised in poverty in the back woods of Maine, and who had worked his way through medical school on his own. His wife "Toquette" could not bear living in the States, and so they had moved to France where her family had property and connections and Dr. Jackson's private practice catered to the "stars" of high society (many of whom gracefully transitioned into Nazi collaborators when the City of Lights fell so quietly that summer of 1940).

Perhaps one reason I have read so little about the French resistance is because it was so effectively dismantled by the Gestapo. Whereas all the double agents in the employ of England and Germany seem to have been working for the Allies, among the French it was not so. The Gestapo was able to monitor a great deal of resistance communications, even using French radio codes to summon unsuspecting agents from England to France, where they were arrested, tortured for yet more information and executed. (One of the most remarkable of the French agents who was betrayed into German hands was an unbreakable woman whose last, defiant word was "Liberté.")

It was the German's penetration of resistance communication (and the inexplicable failure of the Jackson's group to assign them an alias) that led to the entire Jackson family's capture. Toquette ended up in the Ravensbruck concentration camp, from which she was eventually transported to freedom in Sweden; her husband and son were interned together in Neuengamme. After Hitler's death, the men of Neuengamme were loaded onto prison ships, bait for incoming British bombers. Philip Jackson, age 17, was one of the few to survive and became the source of much of the information in the book (with 41 pages of end notes that are not to be missed and an index 14 pages long).

I would not say that Avenue of Spies was a page-turner in the same way as, say Church of Spies (do I sense a trend in those titles?), but it definitely kept my interest and gave me a beginner's sense of what happened in and with France as the Nazis swept through.

The author goes nowhere near this final matter, but I cannot help but suspect that part of France's embarrassingly tepid response to Nazi activity is in part the result of the French Revolution and the remaking of France ("the eldest daughter of the Church") into a rigorously secular nation and society.
The Reign of Terror had efficiently dismantled the religious houses and institutions that in other nations served as safe houses for the rescue of Jews and conduits of clandestine communication.


Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a free review copy of the book mentioned above with the expectation that I would mention it on my blog. I am committed to giving as honest a review as possible as part of my community's mission of putting media at the service of the truth. In addition, some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Book Review: Joy: Poet, Seeker and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis

When I returned from Rome in May I received a surprise package of books (a great way to start the summer!). Among the titles was an ample biography of Joy Davidman, better known as Joy Gresham or (as the subtitle notes) “the Woman Who Capitivated C. S. Lewis.” My previous awareness of her was through the movie Shadowlands and through Lewis' heart-rending A Grief Observed written after her untimely death. My impression of her from these sources couldn't have been farther from the truth—but, as I learned from the biography, that impression had in some ways been carefully crafted by Joy herself.

The woman who would marry the presumedly confirmed bachelor would not have been on anyone's short list of prospects for Lewis. He was born into a Christian culture; her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, children who grew up in New York slums. He was a professor in the most established of establishments: the tradition-bound Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; she, though quite well-educated (able read Greek and deeply familiar with the ancient classics) was a radical sometime Communist Party member. He was a (presumably) contented bachelor; she was the mother of two, who, frustrated in her marriage, would set off for England with the express aim of making Lewis her husband. (It would take long enough that the pair enjoyed only a scant three—or four, if you count their civil ceremony—years of married life before Joy died of cancer.)

And yet Joy Davidman was truly a match for C. S. Lewis. Their correspondence began, in fact, after Joy and her first husband, Bill Gresham, became convinced of the truth of Christianity in part because of Lewis' books. (Joy and her sons were baptized sometime around 1948; she was 33.) The pair's first letter (in 1949) made an impression on Lewis and by January mention of Joy's letters show up in the diary of Lewis' brother and housemate Warnie: “she stood out … by her amusing and well-written letters.”

Lewis was delighted to meet an intellectual sparring partner equal to the role. After she had been in England for some time, he invited her (more likely she offered) to assist him in the editorial work of book-writing, and suddenly a stubborn case of writer's block was overcome . A new series of books came pouring out: Surprised by Joy (this "Joy" is not his newfound helpmate; the title is from Wordsworth); The Four Loves; Till We Have Faces. Lewis began bringing Joy to the gatherings of The Inklings, little noticing that the writers in his circle did not appreciate the brash American female as much as he himself did. I found myself wondering: was it Lewis' dawning infatuation with her that blinded him, or was he introducing Joy as a worthy “Inkling” in her own right? (Probably both!)

There is no need for me to tell you the whole story. Until she finally “Captivated the Heart of C. S. Lewis,” Joy seems to have lived an erratic search, compromised by a lack of self-restraint and of appreciation for virtue. She was calculating and could be abrasive, and put herself and her immediate needs or desires in first place. Yet she was also honest, unashamed to admit her mistakes — for example, about her blind enthusiasm for the Soviet Union or her adoption of Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics." She  followed the truth when she managed to recognize it. Suffice it to say that Joy Davidman was, as the subtitle of the book says, a “Seeker.”

Despite the uncomfortable incidents of "TMI" in some of the selections from Joy's letters concerning her personal life, I recommend this book to any who are interested in the life and writings of C. S. Lewis or American literary life in the first part of the 20th century.

Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Book Review: Dancing on the Head of a Pen by Robert Benson

WaterBrook Press

Colorado Springs 2014

Shortly before moving to England for what I thought would be a year (it turned out to be half that), I signed up for a book review service that promised that so long as my Kindle was charged I would not be without something to read. I received (and reviewed) one e-book and then eagerly went to claim a new title. Seeing a book by Robert Benson on the list, I knew that no other book would do. The only problem? Benson's book was not available in e-format. I had to wait until my return to the States to read Benson's latest.

Robert Benson is a reader's writer. He shares his experiences and insights in a gentle, conversational style that I find poetic. There is an authenticity there that makes his genuine Christian witness shine (all the more since he's not trying to “witness”). At least, that was what I found in earlier titles of his that I had read (The Echo Within and Between the Dreaming and the Coming True), and I was not deceived in thinking that Dancing on the Head of a Pen would be similar.

Dancing is both a reflection and a “how-to” guide for the aspiring (or discouraged) writer; not a “follow these five simple steps and you'll be putting out a book every six months!” guide, but a “this is what has worked for me; maybe something here will resonate with you.” While Echo and Dreaming communicated (at least to this reader) Benson's contemplative spirituality, Dancing witnesses to his inner (and to some degree, outer) life as a writer. As an aspiring (but disorganized) writer myself, I found solid guidance here. It was especially encouraging to me that the same things that intimidate me (like the sheer whiteness of a blank page) were familiar to Benson. And the same siren calls that would lure me from my appointed task continue to find their way to Benson's Tennessee home. I was also pleased to be confirmed in my cut-and-paste approach to putting a text together. (Benson uses an X-Acto knife; I use whatever scissors are around.)

Taking a page from Graham Greene (!), Benson set a daily goal of writing six hundred words: a quota I can just about imagine imposing on myself. Through years of journaling (another practice he strongly recommends), he learned what times of day were better for him to tackle which stages of a project. I loved his metaphor of the three hats: the artist's beret; the faded baseball cap for the grunt work of refining and rewriting; the fedora for handling the business aspects of publishing. Wisely, he warns the writer not to multi-task when it comes to writing and refining: You can only wear one hat at a time.

The most surprising advice I received from Dancing on the Head of a Pen was the rather strong discouragement from talking too much about one's writing project. There's a double risk involved when a writer gets a little too chatty about his or her next book: being talked out of writing it at all (especially if the reason for talking is to find encouragment for the project—or the idea behind it), or saying everything that ought to have been written, and finding, when pen hits paper, that the words themselves have been drained dry in the telling. This also relates to the writer's need for silence—and for its opposite: reading the developed work aloud to an audience, as a way of recognizing where it does or does not hit the mark.

Several of my take-aways from Dancing on the Head of a Pen are destined to appear among my New Year's Resolutions. If you are an aspiring writer, I do not doubt that you will find the practical wisdom that can help you refine your skills or find your voice. Better yet, you will be moved and inspired in your calling.