Another Rave Review for "Julie Kogon"!

THEIR LIFE ALREADY, August 13, 2007

By	DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England)

This is the saga of a downmarket Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut, taking in four generations over a period from 1947 to 1989. Allen Ruff writes as an insider, but there is nothing even faintly mawkish or oy-oy about this story. The main points to make about this novel are first, it is a very good story indeed; and secondly, the author knows what he is talking about. There is the familiar disclaimer about resemblances to real persons, events etc being entirely coincidental, and while I don't dispute that in any way I can't believe either that the characters and incidents came from nowhere. It all has a ring of art imitating life about it.

Julie Kogon is apparently a debut novel, although Ruff is already a published historian. It does not read like any debutant's effort, and the author is the master of his craft from the start. The flashbacks in time are handled easily and naturally, and he has the confidence to feature dialogues with the deceased, including one right at the start, which is not a simple trick to take. The identity of Julie, long withheld from us, is a very clever surprise. Incidental episodes, such as meals or card-games, are skilfully inserted too, fitting into the narrative in a natural way without bringing it to a halt. The pacing is good, the dialogue is often very good indeed, and the characterisation is coherent and convincing.

Offhand I am not recalling any of the cast not being Jewish, but if there is any political or ethnic message to this story I think Ruff leaves it to us to form our own interpretation. This is a story, and it is a very involving and readable story. I sense the historian in the precise handling of details, but by `historian' I do not mean `chronicler'. It's true to life certainly, but it's fiction already. The writing is high-quality as well, fluent in the narrative and with an acute ear for idiom in the dialogue.

I was genuinely impressed, and just as genuinely entertained. Julie Kogon may be a hard act to follow, but if Allen Ruff is planning a future career as a novelist I for one am going to be looking out for what he offers us next.

Petras At It Again?

For those of you not up on James Petras, he's well-known for writing dozens of books and hundreds of articles critical of the US imperial project, with a primary focus on Latin America. He's also written some interesting more recent stuff debunking a lot of the nonsense about "globalization"

More recently, he's decided to take up the issue of Zionist influence in the US and came out a short while back with a first book -- a despicable tract that would suggest to any critical, sensible reader that the man fell off his bicycle and received a sever head injury. He's now written another vicious screed. Before reading the publisher's description of his latest, below, those of you who haven't seen it might want to take a look at my critique of Petras' earlier conspiracist piece of drek which I originally wrote for Against the Current.

As I stated in my initial review, Petras' horribly flawed analysis (if one could call it such!) will be taken up all over the place, particularly by "know nothing" reactionary and backward elements. We now learn that his book on the "Ziocons" and their control of the US has now been translated into Arabic, Indonesian, German, Italian and Arabic.

As a friend of mine put it, Petras' work will not only serve to discredit the entire Left, but it will manage to drive numbers of Jews further toward the right since the active supporters of Israel's expansionist project will use his ramblings as a key example of the "new Anti-Semitism," the supposed anti-Semitism of the Left.

Check out this noise!:

Clarity Press, Inc. is pleased to announce Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists and Militants by James Petras—a brilliant (??) and succinct guide to the systemic dimensions of the US Empire: the social forces which rule it, the politico-economic and military means whereby US domination is assured, and the current state and possibilities of resistance.

Expanding upon his highly successful book, The Power of Israel in the United States (now available in translation in Japanese, Indonesian, German, Italian and Arabic), Petras reviews how financial capital dominates the US economy, and sets the parameters for political debate on the US role in the world economy and its implementation.

Questions of war and peace in the Middle East, however, are set not by oil interests or by finance capital, but by the Israel-Zionist power configuration, which exerts tremendous leverage over Congress, the mass media and the executive branch. This conflict of interests within the US ruling elite has led to a mounting schism. In pushing the US to engage in the disastrous Iraq war and promoting a further potentially catastrophic assault against Iran, the Zionist/militarist sector of the ruling elite has come into conflict with the interests of US finance capital, which seeks to entrench itself worldwide through the global liberalization of trade.

Finance capital and its political representatives in the US government depend on the support of client regimes in other countries, including those considered relatively ‘center left’, to sustain the US empire.

However, in pursuit of freedom, justice, national independence and peace, powerful social movements and in some circumstances armed national resistance forces have emerged to challenge the power of the financial ruling class, the Zionist power configuration and their collaborator client rulers.

Faced with a world in which the rule of financial, Zionist and collaborator elites brings us to the brink of catastrophic war in the Middle East and social decay at home, Americans need to know who is calling the shots, how they do so, and why their interests do not coincide with the common good—of either the USA or the rest of the world.

These questions have more than academic interest—the answers affect our everyday lives. From the crises of workers' rights, forced emigration and our health care system to the false panaceas of foreign investment and trade liberalization, from the plunder of domestic infrastructure in support of foreign wars to the infliction of genocides upon distant populations—this is the window we need to get a clear grip on the calamitous impacts of the US-dominated world system, and assess the possibilities of global resistance.

Save Me, Julie Kogon is Here!

Welcome to Ruff Talk!

My first novel, Save Me, Julie Kogon, was just released this Spring!

So far, all those who have read it and offered reviews and feedback have had nothing but wonderful compliments and high praise. I'm encouraging everyone to check it out and to help spread the word about it.

While I’ve lived here in Madison, WI for almost thirty-five years, the book is set in my hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. It takes place in two days’ “real time” in 1989, but spans four generations through flashbacks, dreams and hallucinations. It paints a portrait of a contemporary Jewish-American family rarely, if ever, seen.

What's it about?

When Harry Rabin collapses in the yard of his fly-by-night used car lot and dies a short time later, his three sons come together to bury “the ol’ man”. Flying home with his Midwestern wife to a New Haven scene from which he thought he had escaped, Davey Rabin steps headlong into that world that his oldest brother, the perpetually struggling street guy Mickey, and Howard, the closeted all-business middle one, never left. Confronted by Harry’s sudden exit, the three look to figure out their father’s dying words and other long buried secrets as the funeral approaches.

Harry, you see, was “old school.” The son of impoverished immigrants, he came off of Legion Avenue, that hard-pressed “old neighborhood” where survival was the game and everything was a gamble. His story is told through vivid, sometimes startling dream sequences and flashbacks - those of his sons, his hard-drinking life-long friend and undertaker, his Black girlfriend of over twenty years, and a daughter unknown to the sons, among others. You’ll meet late ‘40s Irgun gun smugglers, Italian and Jewish hoodlums, corrupt cops, beleaguered wives and lovers lost, and generations of abandoned kids left to navigate an uncertain world on their own.

Save Me, Julie Kogon is a story of love and reverberating neglect told with compassion and sadness as well as irony, subtle ambiguity, and touches of savvy dark humor. It’s a book filled with memories lost and recovered from a receding time and all but forgotten place, an American tale of hard choices and missed opportunity, twisted fate and a certain legacy of craziness handed down across decades as the sole father-to-son inheritance.

I hold a Ph.D. in US history from the University of Wisconsin and have published non-fiction. This is my first foray into fiction. What makes this tale work are the story teller’s skills inherited from my father, Harry Rabin’s “model”. I know his world, now vanished, and fluently speak its language.

For some initial press, see the Madison Isthmus.

What They're Saying About Save Me, Julie Kogon:

*We Come To Bury Harry, And To Praise Him*, June 8, 2007 By T. Grinde (From Amazon)

Mr. Ruff has written a deeply engrossing, hard-to-put-down tale involving four generations of the Rabin family. Harry Rabin has died. As his family gathers for the final rites, questions begin to arise. This book uses major doses of history, psychology, and sociology (and certainly humor!), all in aid of solutions to various mysteries: What was Harry Rabin really like, and why was he like that? What can the tantalizing book title possibly mean?

The author examines the connections between memory and time and the varying perceptions of both. He makes effective use of flashbacks, dreams and even hallucinations to easily move the reader back and forth from the early 1920s to 1989 and points between.

The characters inhabiting Save Me, Julie Kogon are large. You may not love them all, but it's most unlikely that you will be indifferent to any of them. Mr. Ruff has a great ear for dialogue, which is clearly presented and a delight to follow. This novel would make a great movie, and readers may enjoy the prospective casting of various scenes. Pay careful attention to the embalming episode!

Save Me, Julie Kogon is a tightly woven narrative which will both instruct and amuse. Read this book; you'll find yourself wishing for more when you're finished.

-T. Grinde

Do check it out. I promise you will not be disappointed!

You can get a signed copy, shipped directly from Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative here in Madison. Or you can order either through the publisher, Trafford. (Just type in my name in their "Quick Search"). The book is also available on Amazon

Other books by me:
We Called Each Other Comrade - Charles H. Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers(Univ. of Illinois press, 1997)
Forward! A History of Dane County: The Capital County (Madison, WI: 2001)

*****
For something else that I've written recently, in a different vein, see my widely circulated "Do Zionists Run America?" a review of James Petras' ill-conceived conspiracist tract ,The Power of Israel in the United States.