lightreads

This last weekend was a lot, church-and-music-wise. All good!

( Organ workshop, youth orchestra, stake conference music, stake leadership change )

Last week: The Jews are basically in an abusive relationship with Rome and have no good options; they choose the particular bad option of picking a war with Rome that they can't win. The Romans are terrible. Also continuing discussion here about Britannicus, Messalina, and the Praetorians.

This week: Vespasian comes down like a ton of bricks. That whole !!!! part of Josephus happens, where he gets stuck in the cave with a bunch of others and invents and wins the Josephus problem (well, in the text it says they draw lots, so he doesn't actually really cite what developed into the problem) (*) and surrenders to the Romans once he and another guy are the only ones left, and prophesies to Vespasian that he will become emperor. (selenak: Is it Feuchtwanger's invention to add the nomenclature of Messiah in there too? That definitely... upped the ante.)

(I'll comment more on this tomorrow -- I got done with the reading late and obviously barely got this written.)

Next week: first part of book 4, to "Despite the Zealotes didn't exactly behave as if they disbelieved the prophecies, they themselves contributed to their fulfillment" (Josephus describing the Zealotes as the worst!)

(*) E. wanted to know what I was reading, so I told her about the Josephus problem, and she said, "Real-world applications of math!"

idek, I am continuing to fall so hard for the musical of Operation Mincemeat in a way that I sometimes do with theater-plus-music but haven't done for a while (I think the last time I got so fannish about something like this was Don Carlo(s) but for completely different reasons; hey, I can't really predict these things). There are clearly a lot of reasons (okay so yeah the whole hot-charismatic-women-in-suits thing is definitely still a thing), but one of them has to do with the tension between what is actually happening in the musical (a comedy/farce but with a lot of strong feelings bubbling under the surface) and what is happening on a meta level, as it's the kind of musical that cheerfully plays with semi-breaking the fourth wall whenever it feels like it, and the very nature of the way all five actors have to continually interlock and sing together in different combinations and switch from being in conflict to being in sync or vice versa gives a very strong meta vibe of teamwork/found-family.

Operation Mincemeat (Macintyre) -- so I read it! about the actual historical operation using a corpse with faked invasion plans to fool the Nazis, and it was very good and I don't feel like writing it up properly, so, here, instead, have a few totally random things that may or may not make sense:

- the part that I found most compelling was the bit about Baron Alexis von Roenne, whom I had never heard of before but who was Hitler's favorite intelligence analyst and who seems to have been quite intelligent and cautious, and also who wrote a report basically saying, "welp, so, these random invasion plans, found by our not-known-for-detail-or-for-incorruption guys, and which additionally haven't really been examined at all for, say, any kind of counter-espionage tells, contain information that is CLEARLY ALL TOTALLY TRUE." It turns out that he actually had become anti-Nazi and by 1943 "was deliberately passing information he knew to be false, directly to Hitler's desk," and although von Roenne (understandably) did not leave any actual documentation, Macintyre thinks it is very very possible that von Roenne did not believe a word of the Mincemeat faked papers... but... figured he might as well help out the British in their far-fetched plot. As far as I can tell from Macintyre, Hitler did not actually find out about the part where he was passing false information, but he was friends with the guy who tried to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, which unfortunately was enough reason for him to be executed horribly in October of that year. :(

- Macintyre mentioned that in the documentation, Glyndwr Michael, the man whose body lent itself to the Mincemeat deception of the "man who never was," ("Bill Martin") was considered a suicide by rat poison, but Macintyre postulated that it was just as possible that it was an accident, e.g. if Michael had gotten hungry enough to eat poison-laced bait. And I rather appreciate -- which I am sure is 100% intentional -- that the musical lyrics say "This homeless chap in Croydon / Accidentally ate rat poison."

- I found it absolutely hilarious that the musical scene switching between Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley partying and the seriousness of the submarine going to Spain to release the body is actually something Macintyre spells out! (They did not do a bar crawl as in the musical, but rather attended the theatre with the tickets used to flesh out Bill's cover story, with dates, one of which was Jean Leslie.) No wonder they wanted to make a musical of this!

Finding Hester (Edwards) -- I also read this, on the recommendation of troisoiseaux and nnozomi. This was just really sweet! And I super appreciated reading it after the Macintyre. It's a love letter to the power of internet fan groups who can Find Things Out -- here, they tracked down Hester Leggatt (who was first erroneously called Hester Leggett), the MI5 secretary who wrote Bill's love letters, and found out who she was and a lot of cool things about her life, including that she was not the embittered spinster that Macintyre portrays her as, nor the long-bereaved-fiancee that you might think from watching the musical, but someone who had a rich social life and a long-term lover (who was married, and it sounds like they may have eventually separated because he wouldn't divorce his wife). And who wrote a lot of letters! <3 It's a great counterpoint to Macintyre's book and a good reminder that people, in general, are more lovely and complicated and multi-faceted than they look, and than they might come across in a cursory first glance at their life.

I had to laugh at this bit near the end of the book:

The story of Operation Mincemeat seems to be cursed to carry with it inaccuracies and mistakes in books, articles, documentaries and any other form of media that features it. It even continues into media about the musical now, with articles continually getting things wrong regarding the writers, the actors or the show itself. Perhaps it is simply a matter of us now knowing far too much about the musical and having accidentally become Hester Leggatt experts, and the errors on these subjects specifically stick out to us. Maybe every book and article out there is wrong at least once, and we just don't have the knowledge to pick up on it.

I am here to tell you courtesy of salon, or at least selenak and mildred_of_midgard are here to tell you, that last sentence is true!

On the musical itself: I have been listening to the soundtrack somewhat nonstop in the car, and this means my poor A. has also been listening to it somewhat nonstop. He is not particularly a fan of the musical, but now he recognizes a lot of the lines... Anyway, so, this happened:

There's a song, "Making a Man," where the MI5 team is talking about constructing and describing the persona of the fictitious-man-behind-the-corpse who will be used in Operation Mincemeat. The first time it came on in the car when A. was there, he had his own thoughts on it:

Montagu: A mind that is stronger than iron
A: Alan Turing!
Montagu: That shines like a light in the dark
A: Yep!
Montagu: And a body that could wrestle a lion
A: ...never mind.