Michael Wood, on The Wire:

I don’t really doubt the authen­tic­ity of The Wire, its pro­lif­er­a­tion of unpulled punches, but it isn’t good because it’s authen­tic, it looks authen­tic because it’s good, and if one day I learn that Bal­ti­more cops and crim­i­nals do not deduce and die and kill with the mag­nif­i­cent style they show in this series, I shall be unsur­prised and undisappointed.

For nearly four decades, there’s been an open ques­tion about the 1971 coup that brought dic­ta­tor Hugo Banzer Suárez to power in Bolivia: was the U.S. gov­ern­ment involved? Thanks to newly declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, we now have an answer.

Banzer was a dic­ta­tor of Bolivia from 1971-8 and a demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected pres­i­dent from 1997-2001. His three-​day coup in August 1971 was sig­nif­i­cant not only for the fight­ing that accom­pa­nied it, which left 110 dead and 600 wounded, but for the seven-​year regime that fol­lowed, one of the most repres­sive in Bolivia’s his­tory. Under Banzer’s rule, more than 14,000 Boli­vians were arrested with­out a judi­cial order, more than 8,000 were tortured—with elec­tric­ity, water, beatings—and more than 200 were exe­cuted or dis­ap­peared. (I’m writ­ing a long arti­cle about the legacy of the regime for Nar­ra­tive Mag­a­zine. It will hope­fully be out by the end of the year.)

Check it out.

When Jordan rec­om­mended this book to me a couple of months ago, I had reser­va­tions; I’m not always a fan of the Marcus approach, for rea­sons sug­gested here (e.g., “Depending on your tastes, this is either spell­bind­ing secret his­tory or a rote exer­cise in épater le bour­geois…overeager to replace piety with kitsch”). Jordan then emailed a pdf of the entry on Hank Williams to per­suade me. It was good. So when I saw the book fresh on the shelves of the AUB library—an improb­a­ble sight to be sure—I got my hus­band to borrow it for me.

This post is not about the book, but about the way two essays re: poetry glanced off each other and illu­mi­nated some­thing awfully depress­ing for me.