![\"armyoftherepubliccover\"](\"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/armyoftherepubliccover.jpg\" "\\"armyoftherepubliccover\\"")
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This is a silly novel.\u00c2\u00a0 I plucked it out from a spot that had thrown out a bunch of old books, and I now shall deposit it at a public spot where some anonymous person might pluck it up for their silly reading enjoyment.\u00c2\u00a0 I picked it up with two other books — one bad, one lighter silly and enjoyable.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’ll mention that one later.<\/p>\n
There are a few things I wish to say about Stuart Archer Cohen’s Army of the Republic<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 Firstly, I wonder how many real names appeared in his first draft which were then crossed out and replaced to fictional names — perhaps partly way through his first draft.\u00c2\u00a0 Secondly, I need to note a manner I read this book — I skipped just shy of the first hundred pages and read them last.\u00c2\u00a0 I have a theory that a lot of novels would be improved and better served if the editor just arbitrarily knocked off a large chunk of the beginning and threw it past some expository elements into some action which can’t help but allude to the exposition.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, were a novelist to take this approach, s\/he’d end up constantly knocking off hundred page installments until we end up with a single page or two — and that is no way in furthering explorations of the human experience.<\/p>\n The last thing I want to say about this book has to do with a cover blurb.\u00c2\u00a0 Check this out.\u00c2\u00a0 “One of the first works of art with the courage to live up to our historical moment.\u00c2\u00a0 The Army of the Republic is brilliant, terrifying, and much too close to comfort<\/em>.”\u00c2\u00a0 — Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine, No Logo.\u00c2\u00a0 Okay.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, near the end of the book — and by “near the end of the book” I mean within the first 100 pages, on page 9 as the case is, the narration (at this point by the mid-20s guerrila fighter) describes a decoy apartment room.\u00c2\u00a0 The apartment itself has been purged of anything remotely political.\u00c2\u00a0 No Malcolm X posters, no heavy theory by trouble makers like Chomsky or Klein.\u00c2\u00a0 A few canned photos of ballet slippers and nature scenes hag on the mostly empty walls, and the bookcase is heavy with mindless historical romances we picked up from the Salvation Army for a nickel each.<\/em> Hey!\u00c2\u00a0 He just name-dropped one of his blurbers!\u00c2\u00a0 Funny that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a silly novel.\u00c2\u00a0 I plucked it out from a spot that had thrown out a bunch of old books, and I now shall deposit it at a public spot where some anonymous person might pluck it up for their silly reading enjoyment.\u00c2\u00a0 I picked it up with two other books — one bad, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4917,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4916\/revisions\/4917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}