The Idyll of Garturk

Revolutionary Road: You're Only Kidding Yourself...

2012-01-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

My 2011 reading trip round the decay of American family structures and consumer capitalism concluded with this book - Richard Yates' first novel from 1962. My appetite has obviously been whetted with John Cheever but as explained below although the subject matter is in the same ball park it's a slightly different game that Yates is playing.

One of the limited benefits of a movie being made from a novel is that it reinvigorates interest in the work. This was the case for this as Sam Mendes 2008 version led to a reprint and increase in sales of the work; Yates himself died in 1992. I've not seen the film as was waiting to finish the book but as adaptations go it is very good apparently and pretty faithful to the work. But as ever the internal monologue of a good writer, use of phrase and metaphor only enhances itself in prose for me and this is particularly true here.

Split into three the novel is ostensibly an examination of a young suburban couple living on the eponymous street in the mid 1950s. Young as in their 30s with the requisite two children (of which more later) - in 2012 you could probably add 10 years to their age for the same stage of life.

Cars, new televisions, tentative attempts at creating a suburban community, cocktails after work, train journeys home - so far so Cheeverian 1950s America and I would argue many modern developed captialist societies in 2012. But there is a distinction this couple : Frank and April see themselves as apart and removed from their literal lifestyle. More of the avant garde than the golf club/swimming pool set. When they meet 10 years before Frank fresh from the war lives in Greenwich Village and frequents jazz clubs. Even his job in a proto- computer company in the City (which he commutes to) is taken as a post-modern prank or so he would have people believe.

This deceit although buried eventually sprouts up into loathing between the couple which comes to a head after a disastrous (and hilariously written) am-dram production of a mainstream American play which had been a big success in 1950s tv. April is the lead (she trained vaguely as an actress in the 40s) but the show almost literally falls about around them. The fight between the couple is bitter and quite painful to read.

Warring couples are also a Cheever trait but I think the route of the unhappiness is different. This is not simple alienation creating a consumer lifestyle to fill the emptiness of modern capitalist work in a place removed from your geographical being. This is a couple who are pretending to play the game but hold it in disdain but as they play the game becomes more important than the disdain.

The Cheever novels I have read actually only deal with the suburban lifestyle in passing - they have a broader historical sweep ( as this work does slightly with the examination of the couples' parents' lifestyles). It is his short fiction where he forensically dissects it so it is a change to read it in the context of a novel.

An escape is offered - an emigration to Paris where April will work to sustain Frank in "finding out what he wants to do". This is unclear as although Frank tries to be aloof he never really exhibits any particular desire or interest in any other direction - he even refuses to audition for the terrible play. Thus his emptiness or fear of it is exposed by this possibility. It is not a mere fantasy the plan gains legs and serious moves are made to turn it into reality but ultimately Frank baulks using the excuse of April's pregnancy to hide his growing reliance on the lifestyle he despises.

This hesitation exposes April and Frank and their relationship for what they really are with truly sad consequences. Adultery is almost inevitable on both sides. But it culminates in the banal setting of a suburban hospital with a poster advertising a staff dance and Life magazines on the table.

You could make a case that Yates is making broader points about American capitalism - a country born on Revoulutionary Road remember. The book is set almost mid way through the twentieth century in the richest society ever created on the planet but that point but the desire not to be part of it and the unhappiness that seeps into the protagonists bones is palpable. But this is no obviously didactic piece it is in the minutiae of personal relationships that Yates is brilliant at , and a big influence on other writers I think.

He also preempts one of the defining issues of American society in the late 20th Century : abortion. Unusually this is dealt with in an open, honest and contextual way. This divides the couple though they both have ambiguous views on it - again parallels with the broader USA.

The use of minor characters - the realtor Mrs Givings who provides the passage into suburbia for the Wheelers, her son an asylum inmate who is the mirror that reveals the deep truths that the young couple don't really want to see, Shep and Milly a sort of distorted mirror image of the Wheelers with some similar disdain but ultimately I think Shep deals with it in a more honourable way - particularly at the climax.

I enjoyed Yates style of narrative which provides sort of mute and multiple witnesses - he sweeps into scenes and takes different perspectives: Frank, April,Shep, even briefly and memorably Frank and April's children. Yates speaks of the curtainless massive windows in all the houses in Revolutionary Road and the adjoining estate and in a sense he invites us the readers to look through them.

The closing image of Frank as described by Shep is an image that will stay with me for a long time. An important and beautifully written work.

Netochka Nezvanova: Fragmented Witness

2011-11-20T04:16:00.000-08:00

My latest FD instalment is an intriguing piece which he was working on prior to his arrest as part of a Utopian Socialist underground group in 1840s Russia. He didn't have another piece of published fiction for ten years. So this I guess is the last piece of this specific period of Dostoyevsky's work.

It is a little difficult to judge it as it is a fragment of what was clearly planned to be a substantial "major" work - like a Dickens or French 19th Century Novel. The eponymous character outlines the early years of her life from brutal childhood to her alienated teenage years: unlike the Double - no laughs to be had here.

As this is all that survives I assume that FD must have written chronologically as there are no records of any other parts of this novel. So it can be followed unlike other unfinished novels.

He develops his psychological approach for the characters although being part of the rigid Russian social stratification are never characatures but more rounded - a constant theme or tension of his early writings. However I also think he is attempting to use the young female narrator as a witness of certain aspects of human interaction and obliquely Russian society. Thus her unhappy childhood unravelled by her step-father a drunken musician elevated from the peasantry and moved to Petersburg, convinced of his genius. Her adoption by an aristocrat provides an insight to that world. She is then passed on to a slightly lower echelon of aristocrat where she is a witness to a disintegrating marriage undermined by secrets and lies. A wee bit like Oliver Twist - an orphan can look at different aspects of society - in Dickens case the underworld in London.

Thus the character is a bit of a cipher, indeed the translation of the name is Nameless Nobody, but she has her own relationships. In particular with another 10 year old - the Princess daughter of the aristocrats which is very abusive and unusually written I thought for kids of that age. This is one of the problems of the work as it stands you dont get the sense of a child or an adolescent's view point. It reads the same as the perspective of an older writer. Apparently this was not FD's wish he wanted a different style for each part of her life - this definitely doesnt come across in translation. It may account for the strange way the relationship with the little princess is written.

Like the other short works I have read of his at this time it is also about the power of art and writing itself. The character's partial liberation comes from getting a secret key to the library and discovering the joys of fiction in particular the novels of Walter Scott - a pioneer of that form - Although this source also provides the root of the downfall from her last familial setting. Art is also shown through music and the mercurial nature of her stepfather. According to the Dost biography I am reading he wanted the character to become an artist - so the interaction of art and life was going to be a constant in the work.

Unusual that he never returned to this, unlike the Double which he re-worked after his decade's absence, perhaps the moment had passed or he felt he could deal with the ideas and themes in a different way. A fragment, then, but gives a glimpse of his power as a writer and of how he would later construct his big novels.

John Cheever Collected Stories part 2 - drilling down to the core.

2011-10-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

There's a point when I was reading the second half of Cheever's complete collection of stories (I completed first half earlier this year) when you think he can't better the one you've just read but he does.

For me he really raised his game consistently between the end of the 50s and early 60s. You could argue that this is the period when his alienated bourgeois suburban lifestyle was beginning perhaps to get a little dated in the States. Yet his laser like eye for detail means he really just hones his craft, outlining the destructive nature of these claustrophobic cocoons which the quite wealthy have put themselves into.

Unlike his Wapshot novels the sexual alienation which are felt by the characters (male mainly) is not represented by any gay encounters - with the slight exception of a couple of stories but through the constancy of adultery. The Country Husband (brilliant), the Chimera, the Brigadier and the Golf Widow all show the essential sadness of betrayal but also the essential sadness of the life which nominally they seem to want to escape from.

There are less classical references than his novels although one story Metamorphoses attempts to transfer Ovid's work to suburbia.

His later works also combine more Italian travels with the American world - some dealing with the ex pat world of the American living there - others with the Italian attempting to fit into modern consumer capitalism: Clemintina for example. I recently saw the Antonioni movie L'Avventura based in Sicily and the time frame (1960) and the group it focussed on - the Italian wealthy reminded me strongly of Cheever's work.

As the stories progress (this work is chronological) the early references to the servants and the poor of consumer post war America are less. The focus is more on the internal distintegration of these high salaried individuals with their world of hard liquor and regular trains. There are also very little specific historical points of reference although there is an excellent working in of a domestic nuclear bunker within suburbia in the Brigadier story- around the Cuban Missile crisis. He even creates his own suburban neighbourhood, Bullet Park - the title of one of his later novels.

The zenith I think comes with the Swimmer (written in 1967) - unsurprisinglythe basis of a movie with Burt Lancaster. It is breathtaking in what it does in such a short space - it's only around 10 pages yet Cheever considered making a novel on the theme , having 150 pages of notes. This condensing intrigues me and is really more like the mechanics of writing poetry. The work is quite experimental and every word is relevant and powerful. It concerns the travel of a man across his suburban landscape swimming through each of his neighbours' swimming pools - but embarking on the journey he (and Cheever) drill down to exactly what this society represents - the deceit, the social climbing- and exposes the whole edifice with a chilling final paragraph. It's like a summary of all of Cheever's work, quite brilliant.

An unfortunate theme in some of these later stories much more prominent than in his earlier work is the deceitful and selfish nature of women : Clementina, An Educated American Woman and The Geometry of Love leave a slightly bitter taste in the mouth over their portrayal of women. Not that men get it much easier it just seems a bit nastier - I think there was quite a lot of turmoil in his private life at this time which is definitely worked through here.

I would also add that the last few stories written in the 70s when he also wrote two novels are a little weaker perhaps because they don't have the discipline and tightness of the other prose which were published in the New Yorker magazine. Ironically they seem to come from the collection called the World of Apples - the titular story concerns an old highly respected poet (An American in Italy)who becomes focused on sexuality and obscenity as he nears the end of his life - writing endless dirty limericks until he resolves the issues. Yet all Cheever's subsequent stories are equally explicit with reference to orgies, pornography and masturbation - he apparently had to publish them in Playboy as the New Yorker refused. They don't really work for the most part although even them have the occasional phrase or sentence which reflect his brilliance as a writer.

So flaws exposed as his work and indeed his life drew to a close but an amazing collection of work. 2011 has been an eventful year but one of my highlights has been my discovery of John Cheever's writing.

Dostoyevsky: The Double - Fear and Loathing in St Petersburg.

2011-09-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

Did you ever have a moment in your life when you act in such a way that you dont recognise yourself - as if you were looking in from outside? Well old FD seems to have or rather young written alongside Poor Folk when he was 26. That very 20th century form the existential novel seems to have a forebear here in Dostoevsky's second work and first traditional novel.

It was a critical failure at the time apparently particularly amongst the left intelligentsia who had seen (and overstated I think) in D's first work a new voice exploring the poverty and inequities of Tsarist Russia. But it was so important to the writer that he spent many years re-writing it when he got out of his Siberian exile.

Narratively the work is "fantastic" in that it deals with a middle ranking civil servant in mid nineteenth century St Petersburg confronting some one who is his literal doppelganger. Yet although they start on friendly terms the double soon undermines him at work, humiliates him in front of women and makes him pay for ten pastries he buys and consumes at a German bakers!

Through this unusal prism FD explores the static nature of Russian feudalism, as in Poor Folk, the frustration of accepting without question such an unfair society. Yet to the chagrin of the critics he doesnt do it through a downtrodden serf or a decadent aristocratic but a pompous bureaucrat with a servant who he treats pretty badly.

But Golyadkin, the name of the dual character, is collapsing. His other doesn't appear in the work until after he's spent a morning skiving off work, wandering around shops promising to pay for stuff and then not, tried to get medication from his doctor and he has humiliated himself in front of a beautiful woman whilst at a party. Sounds like a modern tale !

I think all of these events are a catalyst for the self-examination which is externalised with the appearance of his look - a - likey. The passages where Golyadkin examines his faults and then pulls back to put a superficial brave face on it to admit everything is fine are painful to read yet anyone who has ever had self-doubt (which I would hope is everyone) will clearly identify with them. The problem is every time he resolves to make the best of things his double appears and stamps all over them

Golyadkin goes even further though ending up being carted away by his sinister doctor to an asylum we guess lost in the throes of mental illness crying "I think Im all right". I think the work is a brilliant examination of mental disintegration and the feeling of not having a place in a society which is completely reliant on structure. Golyadkin is an outsider who doesnt want to be - indeed in one of the passages he accuses his double of being disdainful of the rightful order of things.

Way ahead of its time in many ways but strangely it is quite contemporary - the sense of 1840s St.Petersburg is palpable - indeed the sub-title of the work is A Petersburg Poem. Reference is made to music and prose of the time (again like Poor Folk).

The tale works if you believe it is possible you can have an absolute double or if you view it as a sort of fantasy but I really think it is more about the single, the struggle that we all have as individuals to keep things together particularly when someone (who looks very much like ourselves) is trying to rip them apart.

I saw after finishing this that the guy out the IT crowd is going to direct a movie of the book - which again is pretty short 130 pages. I'm not surprised the attraction given its universal themes. But for me it was a real surprise as a piece. but a pleasant one.

Dostoyevsky: Poor Folk - Communication Breakdown

2011-08-21T04:07:00.000-07:00

Every journey begins with a single step someone once said. This unusual piece of prose was Fyodor D's first "novel" and for the record this is the first one of Dostoyevsky I have read in full. I tried the Brothers Karamazov when I was 17 but I was too too young and couldnt get past the first few chapters.

The form of this (pretty short) work is a set of letters between two people - an older man employed as a copyist a fairly low role within the burgeoning Russian civil service and an impoverished young woman once from a relatively privileged background. What is their relationship - well it is familial at a distance they seem to be second cousins but is it more: lovers, future partners?

This chamber piece has limitations - indeed I think about 120 pages is about as far as you can take the forms of two letters between two narrators, unreliable or otherwise. Other novels which use letters usually break down more into a narration of events as a third party or protagonist - Wuthering Heights from memory does this and much more recently White Tiger.

It doesn't help that both characters are very pathetic, in the literal sense of the word, the male Makar is a balding, occasionally heavy drinking, in debted individual. Varenka is an ailing abandoned soul open to abuse and manipulation from richer people. Both lived in cramped penury in the urban setting of St. Petersburg - opposite each other: this is what leads to their communication. So their missives are not full of laughs!

Varenka, almost inevitably, by the end is married off to a brutal landowner who wants to hide her away in the Russian countryside. This leaves Makar devastated in a final sad letter to her he states: "I write only in order to write, only in order to write as much as possible to you". But even this is unusual. One doesnt get the sense that this is a great romantic tryst broken by the needs of feudal society and property - a common theme in 18th/19th Century literature - Jane Austen, the Brontes et al.
Makar is a pretty sad character who never gives a sense of being a romantic partner of Varenka. He continually calls her little mother, for example. He is self indulgent in a very male way in his tone particularly after drinking escapades or trying to borrow money - FD does this brilliantly - subservient to his masters but torn by his very real poverty: not a great catch for Varenka!

So not a doomed love story, definitely not. What it is though , which surprised me, is very contemporary (for its time). It explores the static nature of Russian feudalism - which in a sense both characters are victims of - where everyone has their station from which there is no escape. Everything that happens is because of God's will - nothing can be challenged. What is innovative is that this is done from two "urban" characters rather from the serf's perspective which FD was very pre-occupied with in the 1840s.

Urban landscapes are also central - the crowded nature: people living on top of each other; sharing (unwillingly) their most intimate moments - love and death. Compared to Austen where her romances take place in vast spaces - country estates and houses. The claustrophobia here is palpable.

But also, and perhaps most importantly for the author the work explores contemporary literature. Apparently it is very influenced by Gogol which I have not read, in particular a story called the overcoat. In one very funny communication Makar takes personal offence when Varenka sends him this work to read as he identifies so closely with it - stating "I am going to register a complaint". Pushkin is also central - in a moving piece Varenka writes how in her past she searches for a complete works of Pushkin to buy for her first love (also doomed) but allows the boy's impoverished father to say he bought them. French and English lit also get mentions in passing.

So you could say that this novel is about novels albeit this is not clearly stated - the quote at the beginning of the work talks of the power of fiction. And I suppose in the 19th Century the novel was finding its form - which FD was going to spend his life working on.

Others saw it in other ways - it was thought of as Utopian Socialist - with its vision of poverty and its implied critique of the ruling elite. FD was going to do 5 years hard labour for such thoughts in a short amount of time. I think that is there but its lasting significance comes from its other elements. He was also only 26 when he wrote this an incredible fact in itself.

So a lot in 120 pages! And a good signpost for a future journey through FD's work.

Review of the Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim: Broken Britain

2011-08-10T07:23:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I think Jonathan Coe is one of the most subversive English novelists working today. Ostensibly his novels look very straightforward contemporary comic works - sometimes set in a specific recent historical time: the Rotters Club, 70s; What a Carve Up, 80s; the Closed Circle 00s. Yet his biography of the idiosyncratic experimental novelist BS Johnson (brilliant, incidentally) and his involvement in discussions on the future of the novel give a sign that Coe's work is trying to aim beyond the "cracking great read" idea of the book.

I thought his last novel the Rain Before It falls pointed in this direction most clearly: an examination of a woman faced with all sorts of abuse in Society it also integrated an innovative structure and an examination of modern classical music as well. It engaged very little with contemporary comment but sought to make more universal points.

This combination is struck again in this work although at the start of the work it doesn't feel like this. Indeed my initial thoughts were that Coe had retreated to his earlier work with a very broad brush approach to current social issues. A bit like a bad observational comedian he makes points on spam emails, cappuccinos that are served too hot and the contradictory nature of friends on Facebook. But this is misleading in fact perhaps Coe uses this to lure the reader in to a narrative about an alienated, lonely, broken man who through a journey discovers some truths. And at the end, which I won't give away, it is arguably one of the most experimental passages that Coe has ever written.

The "unreliable narrator" is Maxwell Sim as he outlines his own breakdown and his voice is a difficult one. Part of the problems of the early part of the work stem from this I think as he is an unengaged man who loves the structure of motorway service stations, idealises chain restaurants and finds difficulty expressing his feelings or even describing anything (a point he makes in the first chapter) and dislikes books. This is risky as it relies on the reader sticking with him even though it seems he has nothing to say. I remember feeling similarly about the narrator in Alexei Sayle's underrated novel Overtaken, who was much more dislikeable (deliberately) than Max Sim. On the other hand it is clearly not Coe's own voice which in some of his other works I think intervenes in a not very subtle way.

Of course this develops - he is a keen observer of humans and their various schemes which ultimately lead to his own catharsis. The narration is also broken up by 4 pieces of writing - a letter, an essay, a short story and a memoir - written by 4 other characters who will all have significance. Through these writings Max gains his self awareness. This episodic use of different forms of writing is quite a common trait of Coe's but he uses it to full effect here. He also labels each one of the elements - following the Structure of Eliot's Four Quartets - which is significant in itself.

This makes the novel sound poe faced and academic which it is miles from - it is very funny, hilarious actually, in places and moving ultimately. The title "Terrible Privacy" is good as well as we seem to value privacy talk of it as a human right but not recognise the isolation which it can also bring. So society never really thinks of privacy as "terrible". A common theme is the inability of people to communicate even in a wired world.

Max's journey is across Britain as he recovers or rather doesnt from depression seemingly brought on by the break-up of his marriage, for some half-arsed business promotion which requires him to drive to the Shetlands going via Birmingham, the Lakes and Edinburgh. The use of a road trip to discover home truths is not a new idea in Art but the structure and link with the other texts give this one originality.

The ending seems a little pat - revolving around Max and his relationships - and you can see it coming from about two thirds through but even this is teasing of the reader - because even after the revelation Coe pulls his experimental writing trick- this turns your feelings on their head, if feelings can have heads!

I felt some similarities with Franzen, the keen eye for contemporary detail and how it interacts with the most intimate issues people have, the unreliable voices and the use of different types of text within a novel but the ending is most definitely Coe-style.

There are some nods to BS Johnson particularly in the memoir part (written by Max's father) with a character who bows to pagan ritual, which BSJ does. It also has a parallel with the life of doomed sailing fraudster Donald Crowhurst , contemporary Artist Tacita Dean who did work on Crowhurst and as always with Coe the nature of writing and the novel particularly with his ending

Ultimately Coe is such a confident writer so although I think all these themes are there they stream by as you turn the pages because it also is a "cracking good read"!

Orlando - Fantastic Life.

2011-08-01T02:45:00.000-07:00

An incredible piece of work. Quite unlike anything I have read before but in some ways one of the most significant.

Ostensibly a fantasy, Woolf herself apparently called it a writer's holiday, but don't worry it's not about goblins or medieval characters called things like Spatcock as that genre usually has. It covers the life of the aristocrat Orlando over a 500 year span during which she changes gender from male to female. It ends literally at the current day - 1928 - coinciding with the date of publication.

The historical sweep is massive and one part of the work is its overview of English history and literature. Yet part of its brilliance is the work's combination of this with its dissection of the intimate and the exploration of what it means to be human and how to live.

I particularly enjoyed the summaries of the 19th Century and its imposition of a moral code vis a vis marriage which attempts to declare itself as universal yet in Orlando's experience is in direct contrast to her previous 300 years of life! The chaotic baroque period of the 17th century is also done very well. And of course as a modernist the 20th Century scenes are remarkably observed - but by an outsider.

For Orlando is that, an outsider, not simply because of Gender but throughout history she is ancilliary to great events - from the Elizabethan period to the Civil War to World War 1 - these do not really figure in her life.

Literature and Biography are constant themes as well. On the face of it this is written as a biography of Orlando - who in many ways reflects Vita Sackville West - an adventurous aristocratic woman who Wolf had a love for and sometime relationship. Yet the limits of biography and indeed writing about the human experience are commented on by the writer throughout. The work opines that one individual has a thousand characters or more yet a biography has to distill that to one or two at most, outlining that writing can never really do that.

As a parallel there is a character who appears twice - a hack writer who rips off Orlando - in the Elizabethan times he attacks the current writers Shakespeare, Marlowe et al as a pale reflection of the Classical Roman and Greeks. Then he re-appears in the 19th and 20th Century to attack modern writers and praise the Shakespearean era. This reflects attack on Virginia Woolf's work which moves away from traditional narrative to try and be a closer reflection of human experience.

The last chapter set in the "modern day" does this to amazing effect - all of the character's 500 years of life bubble around her head as she walks around her estate and come out in different ways. Many writers Becket, Joyce, Flann OBrien etc do this but this is one of the more accessible examples of this I have read.

It is also experimental in other ways - it uses faux illustrations like a normal biography mostly of Vita S-West to represent Orlando. It also pre-figures magic realism by a few decades with its surreal elements, use of nature and animals and obviously the central scene of her sex conversion.

The change of gender is obviously crucial in the work yet I dont think it is a bold statement on transgenderism or transvestism - rather its an exploration of the flexibility of gender in some ways particularly over a long historical period. What it means to be a woman and a man is explored - the nature of attraction and love. All Orlando's partners are fairly ambiguous sexually - from a Russian princess to a sea captain.

In part I guess this is about Virginia Wolf expressing her love for Vita but it is more I think about a love of people or life and how gender only is only one part of it. The nature of sexual relationships is not really explored indeed she has quite a witty side swipe at DH Lawrence's work on that issue.

But gender aside the work explores life and what is important - the strength of nature, home comforts and friendship. One of my favourite chapters occurs when Orlando is in Turkey and has just become a woman - ends in a debate with gypsies over what is important - a 365 bed -roomed house versus wandering across the earth.

It is an aristocratic vision which Orlando has - the nature of work or labour which is so significant to most of us because of the nature of society is never an issue to him/her because she never has to do it. Even in the last scenes she visits a department store where goods are brought to her and taken from her car by her servants. This liberation from work, which I think intrigued Woolf who was from a more traditional bourgeois life, allows the experimentation of thought and gender. Orlando's house is more like a town than a normal house - similar to Vita's mansion which significantly due to property laws although an aristocrat was not allowed to inherit because of her gender.

There is so much more to the work though - the nature of mortality - interesting as the character is more or less immortal: the clock on the mantlepiece as Woolf says. The awkward conversations that men and women can have - there is one hilarious scene with an Archduke! Shakespeare is also commonly referred to - the master of English literature because I think the book also deals with the nature of English identity particularly around its ruling class.

A masterpiece, definitely, and not easy but if you dig around it I think some of the secrets of happiness and life are here.

Review of Ajax, the Dutch, the War.

2011-07-19T05:15:00.000-07:00

A relatively quick summer read this one from my favourite sports writer Simon Kuper of the FT. From a English/South African/ Dutch background Kuper in this book tries to explain what happened to football during the Nazi occupation of Holland and its aftermath.

In doing so he says he is attempting to redress the balance of Dutch history - that there was a brave resistance to Nazism to one where most people were neither resistant nor compliant, they just were.
This is quite a big ask from a football book and I dont think it really achieves it. Essentially it begins with an examination of Ajax who pre-war and since the 1950s had a strong relationship with the Amsterdam Jewish community. However the issue is that this population were almost completely wiped out by the Nazis. The book is full of intriguing data from the time and there was a lot of original primary research. One chapter consists largely of Kuper going through the minutes of football club Hercules, which covers the expulsion of Jewish members: an order from the occupiers to dealing with the aftermath of the war and collaborators. There is a lot of data in this bit which I think could have done with a bit more editing.
There is also a bit of confusion of the scope of the book it seems to try to deal with football across Europe during the war - a chapter on England and German football at this time; the politics of pre-war international friendlies.
According to the introduction this started off life as a magazine article about Dutch football - maybe the publishers didnt think this was a big enough topic. But the broadening approach is a bit frustrating as it doesnt get its teeth into the other subjects enough.
Where the work is fascinating is in its use of facts: Holland had the most registered footballers of any country in the world for large periods, Holland was the only country in the World! to buy broadcasting rights for the 1938 World cup. It also has a dissection of Dutch Football which is second to none - the history of Ajax, its links and equally its distance from the Jewish population, its links with Israel and the animosity with Feyenoord, their Rotterdam rivals, was all new to me.
These make the book worth reading though I think he overstates his argument, which has a degree of validity, that the Dutch Resistance was pretty weak and ineffective. There are some real heroes highlighted here from the Jewish community and from broader Dutch society this is done through some very moving testimony.

So a very strong intelligent football book but over-stretching itself a little. I would have bought a book that solely dealt with the Dutch aspect (as the title itself suggests) but there is more to it than that. As a result it loses a wee bit of focus.

Review of Iain Banks' Transition: Multi-versatile work

2011-07-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you can accuse a writer of plagarising themselves. I suppose it is something that is never really mentioned it is normally discounted as a writer going over similar themes and ideas developed in slightly different ways. For example there is a criticism of Philip Roth's last few novels that he has engaged in this.

But when you write in two completely different persona as Iain Banks does (his science fiction is written by Iain M Banks) I suppose the p word becomes a possibility. Iain M Banks is the name adopted by Banks (his full one!) when writing his science fiction which he has done as long as his more traditional literary fiction.

It has long been a bug bear of mine (and apparently Banks) that readers who devour his work draw a line at his science fiction. This has even been the case, in my view, when in the last few years his strongest and most inventive work in terms of style, structure and character has been his SF. And given that a few of his more recent mainstream contemporay novels although OK have been treading water a bit - I'm thinking of the Road to Garbadale and the Business.

Banks has dealt with this now in a fairly obvious way now though by transposing a lot of the themes of his science fiction directly into this work. Not completely a first - he dabbled with this a bit I think with the Bridge one of his earlier novels - but never as full on as this.

Limited to Earth (or Calbafreques!) this is no space opera. Indeed the existence of alien life or humans making contact with them form an essential question of this work. Where the sci-fi comes in is the existence of an infinite number of planet Earths and humans within them. Ones where we died when we were 4 or had coffee rather than tea this morning or have blue hair or.... So for example one of the worlds has a problem with Christian Fundamentalist terrorists, this is quite well done but draws very much on Dawkins' God Delusion. This is an actual area of theoretical physics at the moment speculating over the nature of infinity and what it means for humans - but it is purely at that level - theory which makes it ripe for fictional treatment.

There are a group of individuals structured in a bureaucratic organisation - the Concern who can travel or transition across these multiple worlds and do so by entering other people's bodies. Familiar to anyone who has seen Terminator 2 or the early 90s tv show Quantum Leap, currently on just before the Tour de France! They intervene across the world ostensibly to do good; to prevent bad things happening but at the top of the organisation there is some foul work afoot with a hidden agenda or is there?

The debate over intervention whether helping an individual to benefit society or indeed killing many more individuals for the same reasons is dealt with here. This is a central theme of Banks' sci fi particularly with his utopian space communist society the Culture who have to interact with a variety of worlds. That is where I get the idea of plagarism - accusation is not really a fair word though because he deals with these themes really well here. I just think he has done it before and with a lot more detail in his sci-fi work. I think it is telling the Concern is also a 7 letter word beginning with C - although a more exclusively human form. It criticises the money-grabbing aspect of a version of Earth which looks very much like ours.

And I suppose that is the difference the Culture doesn't engage with the planet Earth - its scale is much vaster than that. There is I think just one short story where the two interact. In contrast this is very much a human story - exploring how we would deal with these theoretical themes.

In that there are strong characters this is done well - Mr Oh, a transitioner who is used by the Concern and comes to his own conclusions over what to do, although his awakening near the end is a bit too close to the Matrix conclusion for me, Mrs Mulverhill - his lover and mentor, the Philosopher (a torturer) and Adrian (a hedge fund manager (closer than you would think in job) are all interesting creations and all drawn into the Concern.

Sometimes there is a slight tendency to crowbar a theme around a character though - the torturer (philosopher) has a dialogue with another man who has tortured for a greater good which amounts to a text book discussion of Kantian autonomy of the individual versus utilitarianism. As outlined so well in Michael Sandel's recent series on Justice. It is worthy of discussion as many of the ideas are but breaks the narrative flow.

However where the work is excellent is the study of self - what it means to be a human. It explores the vanity we have as individuals - solipsism - which suggests we are the centre of the world, bad things wont happen to us - everything revolves around us. Very much a modern Western vanity which we all suffer from including most of the characters in the book especially Adrian who really personifies the pre-2008 crash mentality of capitalism. His end though is not particularly drawn up with events around Lehman Brothers which I thought it would be. I thought these philosphical themes and their discussion show Banks at his best which he normally reserves for his sci-fi.

It also is fairly experimental in narrative structure for one of his traditional novels. The multi-narration overlaps and is difficult to keep a handle on - I think this is quite brave and well done. It dives right in so the reader will have to work, cross reference and so on. This means the conclusion could be seen as a little convaluted - I am still trying to work out if I fully understand it.
The descriptions of other worlds - which are remember essentially this one where I am typing this - also takes no prisoners in their flowing and alien detail and I wonder how much his traditional literary readers enjoyed it. The book seems to have got great reviews from the blurb though this can sometimes be misleading - because I think it shows the link between contemporary issues and philosophy which Banks expounds much more in his science fiction; but Im not sure all readers will agree.

There is more in the book, perhaps too much some times, and it takes a while to get going because of the narrative style. Sometimes Banks could be more subtle - the first line whilst great is a bit undercutting of his own strength as a writer: "Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator" It's like he doesn't have the confidence to leave this unstated and let the reader work it out - this narrative art being a central part of much of modern fiction.

My advice would be to stick with it for it says a lot about the nature of being human, sexual relations, materialism and alienation. There's even an inter-planet Earth chase culminating in a European tourist trap! A bit Bourne-esque. I liked this but I hope it doesn't reflect Banks draining the well of ideas from his sci-fi for his contemporary work or indeed vice versa.

Review: John Cheever's stories Part 1 - A Modern Mad Microscope.

2011-06-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

As the maelstrom of marking eases (onset a little earlier this year) and the battle to resist compulsory redundancies has abated for a little I have found a bit more time to read ma books.
It was a bit of a palaver to get the full collection of Cheever stories this year but I finally did. I have devoured the first half which covers the beginning of his short story writing after his dismissal from the army at the end of WW2 and the end of the 1950s.

What Cheever does is present a complete meticulous dissection of the growing wealth of American society and the individuals involved. New York Apartments, the tea-time drinking of Martinis and Old Fashioneds, suburbia (then in its infancy), swimming pools, adultery and city life. But just as with Irvine Welsh's similar approach to working class communities in the East coast and the sub-cultures within it Cheever provides us with startling insights on the nature of human relationships, mortality, love and life really.

He also does explore the poor - in particular elevator operators - very significant in Manhattan, janitors and nannies - serving the wealthy. This is an interesting comparison to his Wapshot novels when only really one part of the Saga could really be said to focus on the New York work/suburb/bourgeouis ennui nexus. Those works' focus are much more older wealth in the States - an earlier generation.

Many parallels with these stories could be drawn with the show Mad Men (have never watched it) which I see has been done a lot online. I have wondered why that show is so popular and I think it is partially to do with why I find the stories so resonant. They deal really with a group of people for who wealth is not a problem (although see the Housebreaker of Shady Hill story - similar to the movie 30 years later Fun with Dick and Jane) in a different way to the "old money" and they throw that into consumerism - of which this era was the first really. And it is one in which many of us now live or are definitely influenced by - property booms, commuting and consumer products.
Thus they are the first really alienated middle class in human society - they work in a different location from their home, in many ways this is reflected in their behaviour when they are literally different people - see Housebreaker, the 548, the Chaste Clarissa, their comforts dont solve their unhappiness - see pretty much every story! And there is a group desperate to enter that class The Pot of Gold, O City of Broken Dreams a move indeed which will be resisted by the incumbants.

As in Mad men the position of women is dubious and I think Cheever is ambiguous over the role of women of whether they are to blame for their partner's boredom or over indulgent of male excesses. See Torch Song and the Trouble of Marcie Flint for this.
Or whether they are the victims of male predatory behaviour - The 548 and the Chaste Clarissa.
Some say that these stories present a misanthropic view of human relationships and indeed some are not for the faint hearted - pardon the pun - but I think when there is a glimpse of genuine happiness and love then it is truly moving.
There are less classical references than in his novels but there are similar mentions of bisexuality and alcholism both of which were a struggle for Cheever. There is also a continual theme of absent or neglectful fathers - not sure how that was reflected in Cheever's own life.
I have also read one set in Italy the Bella Lingua which is very good and reflects his own ex-pat life and a big part of the Wapshot Scandal.
So far I have really enjoyed the Summer Farmer, the Sorrows of Gin and the Housebreaker. But their real brilliance is that a phrase or sentence jumps out from every page sometimes at quite surprising moments. The detail is also depressing but brilliant - the shabby bar by the train station, the faded wealth of Rome.
A break for some other books then ill read the second half. Highly Recommended - gives an insight into the Madmen world that only a novel could do.

At Swim Two Birds review: Experimental Pub Chat?

2011-04-06T00:28:00.001-07:00

I started this book to help my daughter who was reading it as part of her uni course and was a bit flummoxed by it. Anyway she gave up on it 20 pages in but for me it has been a relevation.
A complex work I suppose you could call it an “experimental” novel, it was Flann O’Brien’s first work. Having said that , although written in 1939, its structure is similar to the early novel: Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy et al.
There are no real chapters although the words Chapter I cheekily emblazen the first page but are never referred to again. It is episodic and in some ways a patchwork quilt of different work – fragments are drawn from a variety of sources – a circular letter from a dodgy bookmaker, an old poem, encyclopaedia entries, a Western novel. Ostensibly though it is about a waster student in Dublin who lives with his sanctimonious uncle but spends most of his time on the drink or in bed.
He is a writer however, and I think this is right, he is writing a novel about a corrupt writer, Trellis, who rips off his ideas from another writer – of Westerns – and creates a series of characters including some lifted from Irish legend. These characters despise their creators and gang together to torture and destroy Trellis. This is done by another writer an illegitimate child of Trellis – caused by him violating one of the female characters he created!
Thus the work is about the nature of writing, narrative structure and character. There are a couple of passages which may, or may not, be O’Brien’s view of the nature of the novel: “A modern novel should be largely a work of reference”. This makes it sound drier than it is but it is actually very funny.
As well as dealing with the nature of the novel though it explores the Irish character – it juxtaposes the re-telling of ancient Irish myth, Finn MacCool and Sweeney being turned into a bird – with guys having banal drunken chat. For example there is a hilarious argument over the nature of poetry and what is “good”. A poet of doggerel also makes an appearance.
The drunken conversations are particularly good – some within the novel within the novel and some by the student himself. They are out of time I think I have had some of these chats! Can also see why it may not appeal to a 19 year old female undergraduate though.
There is so much more in it as well though. The nature of creating myt h – some of the language telling the sagas from old Ireland is quite beautiful, how to take minutes of boring meetings, the joy of drinking and many comments on Dublin itself. It is difficult though but more accessible than say Becket who deals with similar issues. Although Becket never really engaged with the Irish identity to this extent. There also seems to be quite a casual misogyny as well: there are no female characters of note or if there are they literally are a plot device. Maybe he’s making a point about the male writer.
Glad I read it and a challenge but shows the power and unique things that a novel can do compared to other forms of art. And remember A Pint of Plain is your Only Man!

Not Sidney Poitier - review

2011-02-16T14:40:00.000-08:00

An unusual one. A word I had heard a few times but never knew the meaning of until last year was "picaresque" - it means an episodic adventure with an unreliable hero. I think this is one of those.
Using the character who is born (after a two year pregnancy) and named Not Sidney Poitier Everett uses his rites of passage to humorously explore race, class, money and education in modern 21st Century America. And it is very funny in places especially with the understated wit of Not-Sidney. I am not sure it succeeds in everything it is trying to do though.
N-S's mother dies early on in his life and in essence he is adopted by Ted Turner whose company NS has made a fortune from. The portrayal of Turner is surreal (dreams play a big part in the novel) but hilarious a bit like a minor Simpsons character. But Turner flits in and out of the book as NS goes to school, college, home with his girlfriend, gets arrested for being black, escapes, gets arrested again and solves a murder!
I think each chapter is meant to centre around a Sidney Poitier - who NS grows to look more and more like by the end he is indistinguishable - rmovie which is quite a clever device. I spotted the Defiant Ones, Guess who's coming to Dinner, the Heat of the Night, to Sir with Love and er the one about the nuns! All of these took place in the 60s when America was having to deal with race in a central way. Poitier won an Oscar then I guess for many white Americans Poitier was the only interaction with a black person they had. By fast forwarding it 40 years and throwing it up in a crazy refracted way Everett is showing how much or how little has changed through the years. There are some twists the disapproving parents of NS 's girlfriend are light skinned African Americans rather than Tracey and Hepburn. The college he attends is nearly all-black. But the ignorance of racism is still fairly universal.
I also think it is a novel about identity -this is particularly evident in the closing speech. What does a name mean - how does it affect the way people interact with you.? There is also a degree of existentialism in the way Sidney self reflects constantly at his actions - it reminded me a little of Camus - honest!
Along with Turner and Jane Fonda a real person featuring in the novel is the author himself. I am not sure this device works well, at all. I think a few writers have tried it. There is quite a self indulgent bit where he (as character) reflects on the nature of the novel and in particular his most successful work : Erasure. Also his annoyingly obscure lectures are well annoying.
But having said that it is ambitious and at least it tries to do something a little different. So a funny writer with a semi-experimental work that doesn't quite come off.

Sex, Death and Boredom: The Wapshot Scandal Review

2011-01-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of my first Cheever experience I have now devoured his other Wapshot novel - published almost 10 years later: the Wapshot Scandal.

A sequel? Of sorts: Leander is now dead although a lost chapter from his journal reemerges to give us a reminder of his struggles and demons. His wife also gone, mentioned as an afterthought. The senior materfamilias(? though she's not actually the mother) Honora is still here as are the separate but equally unhappy brothers : Coverly and Moses. Though there is no narrative link really.

I must say the vibe of this book is very different the Chronicle had a turn of the nineteenth century early American Capitalist feel to it - even some earlier periods with modernity only being introduced through the last chapters. This is a mid-twentieth century work in every way: the Nuclear race, suburbia, adultery, consumerism are all dissected with minute accuracy.

I would also say the influence of Cheever's short fiction is more apparent here. Though there is some continuity in character and lightly in plot - the development of a torrid but sad affair, the pursuit of a tax dodger - essentially each chapter reads like a set piece short work in itself. Nothing so wrong with that because what it does do is give minor characters incredible depth in their moment in the sun: Dr Cameron the sinister scientist who is Coverly's boss at a nuclear development site, Emile the young delivery boy who Moses bored and alienated wife takes an interest in.

But above all the writing. The writing is consistently magnificent - I found myself highlighting passages. There is humour throughout and it does in its own way paint an accurate picture of American life at that time. But I think death is the continual theme here. It begins and ends with a death. The last phrase in the work is "nothing at all". All characters are struggling with the fact that one day they will not be here and react to it in different ways.

The classical references are less but there is an interesting portrait of post-war Italy intertwined in the work. Loads of great parts - I particularly enjoyed the disintegration of Coverly's wife Betsey the roots of which were laid in the earlier book. But you could choose any piece - I have to say for its differences I think I preferred this work.
And the Scandal? Difficult to say it could be one of many things but taken apart they look so minor yet heart breakingly major in their consequences.

But let the writing speak for itself:
"The pain in her chest seemed to spread and sharpen in proportion to her stubborn love of the night, and she felt for the first time in her life an unwillingness to leave any of this...."

Now if only Amazon would deliver his collection of short stories.

The Decline and Fall and Fire of ...Review of the Wapshot Chronicle

2011-01-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

The next book following Freedom was always going to be difficult but this 1950s American novel was ideal.
Cheever is apparently better known for his short fiction a bit like Chekov. He is also an influence on modern writers like Eggers and Franzen. So a thoughtful Xmas gift.
The novel as title suggests is a family saga. Indeed this New England clan can trace their origins back to the original settlers. But this family has seen better days. In many ways the family parallels the development of American capitalism.
Though the background is given the time setting is the 1920s and 30s. Significantly, i thought, this is never made explicit with no clear references to external events, it is more implicit. Both sons of the family work for the state in some capacity.
The faded glory is encapsulated by the father Leander a sailor trapped on a tourist ferry and his wife who is obsessed with gift shops.
For a novel written in the 50s and set twenty years before it is very frank on sexual issues. Theeldest son iis a Lothario with fairly misogynistic attitudes. The other is struggling with his sexuality - these passages seemed very hearfelt - I am not sure of Cheever's own background
Both marry into relationships that have their own specific style of unhappiness.
As a writer of short fiction each image in the work seems intricately crafted. I like the descriptions of train stations on Sundays. There is also some narrative experimentation with extracts from Leander's journal quite difficult to follow. An excellently written novel with a lot of originality - a lot of emphasis on fire as an image. Set in Massachusetts the Great Boston Fire of the late 19th century is a seminal moment. A book to think about once read.

Spectacular: Review of Freedom by Franzen

2010-11-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

“I don’t know how to live” so says Walter at a pivotal moment in Franzen’s work. It’s a fair commentary on life and freedom but I would now say that a central element of anyone’s life should be reading this book.
I was always worried that when Franzen followed the Corrections with such effective and brilliant non-fiction in his memoirs and essays that we would never see a substantial work of fiction from him again. Perhaps he thought he had done all he could in the genre but I was well off the mark.
Focused on a married couple who met at college, Walter and Patty, and thirty years of their lives: it initially starts like a chamber piece of those two rather than the full symphony that the Corrections represented of pre- millennial America. But this is part of the work’s amazing narrative structure.
It starts and finishes with outsiders, neighbours, looking in at the couple and judging them: only a partial picture is revealed. Then it pulls out like a camera shot to reveal the bigger context in which Walter and Patty. This is done using a variety of methods – excerpts of one of the character’s auto-biography, chapters written from the perspective of very different people central to the two of them. It is a powerful method of structure because it has a variety of “unreliable narrators” and you judge others and them as you read. This however get s turned on its head as you read another perspective and you see that your own judgements were misplaced and you think again about how you have looked at them.
A strong character (in every sense) in the work is provided by Richard Katz – Walter’s best friend – an aging Lothario by the end but a young one to start with ! rock star who is both shallow and deep in equal measures. He does not believe he is free but is lead by his groin into most decisions. Perhaps not unsurprisingly there is a long passage in the final chapter regarding the destructive nature of domestic cats on bird-life in the states. Katz has his own appetite for destruction but also building.
For that is another trait of the work – it integrates non-fiction elements throughout on the environment, Iraq, modern music, birds (Franzen’s own obsession) reflective of his recent work. Sometimes this slightly jars as for example when they discuss a method of brutal mining over 10 pages or so which Walter an Envrionmental lawyer has to promote. I also had a sense of work that Franzen had read before writing this work – notably The Shock Doctrine and I think Collapse by Jared Diamond.
Diamond’s seminal work on the collapse of untrammeled human societies throughout history has an introduction with almost identical tensions raised by Walter in his struggle to tackle the immanent environmental disaster of modern capitalism by doing deals with those very capitalist billionaires. Diamond himself made such compromises which he describes. I am not convinced that it is the right thing to do – and neither ultimately is Walter as it in part leads to his unraveling.
But that is only one dimension of the book it is also starkly, brutally at times, intimate unpicking the nature of family, friends, parenting, unhappiness, betrayal and redemption. It does this with insight and power which is pretty unequalled by any other current writer of fiction. When horrible things happen in this work which they do they are almost unreadable because you feel almost personally entwined with them. After one passage I had to stop reading for a couple of days.
I also like the fact that the central section is labeled 2004 – a key year in recent American history. The fairly comfortable re-election of W Bush to the horror of the left, the chaos in Iraq at its height, Fallujah, post- 911 tensions, environmental destruction being re-discovered as a reality – also the year that the disintegration of Walter and Patty’s life comes to a critical point. There are other historical periods outlined – notably the late 70s when Richard, Patty and Walter are at college and a small taste of post-Obama America. In contrast to the Corrections there is very American context to the work – one (fairly humourous) trip to Latin America apart this is an internal work on America.
And of course the title – its power lies in that you keep referring back to it whenever the concept is mentioned in the work. When Patty is dealing with one of her own personal crisis she sees a sign at her daughter’s college: “Use well thy freedom”. Patty and Walter’s son Joey gets involved in a way with the neo-con movement and their bastardised use of the word. Walter’s campaign against human reproduction seeks to limit freedom for the good of all. In a sense, everyone is cursed with their freedom and the sadness is brings.
I am only really scraping the surface here of the work. There is so much humour, observation, very sad and devastating passages that it cannot be replicated. The ending and writing for the last 50 pages and so also needs to be read. It literally is indispensible.

Streams of time - Mrs Dalloway review

2010-10-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

My first completed book of my 40s and an appropriately brilliant one. Originally inspired to delve into after watching the Hours earlier this year.
The movie (and novel) bases itself around the themes, structure and indeed the author of Mrs Dalloway. Death, suicide, trauma, marriage and the role of women are a number of the themes which were explored. I later then saw the movie adaptation of this book starring Vanessa Redgrave.

Those cinematic depictions of the book obviously had enough in them to make me want to read it but nothing really prepared me for the unique and groundbreaking nature of the fiction.

Essentially a novel bound by time - over the course of one day (a similar structure used by Joyce) it nominally covers an upper middle class woman preparing for an ornate party in the 1920s. Except it doesnt really - it is a stream of conciousness work of sorts but the consciousness is passed from one character to another like a baton.
One of the brilliant things this book does is write in the way that people actually think so events from long ago pop up alongside inappropriate feelings and banal conversation. It shows that humans are creatures of the present but their mind contains so much background and history. In a sense it reminds me of Becket's fiction which I enjoy but is very difficult as it burrows down to almost the very inner core of what it means to be human. Mrs Dalloway does not go as far as this which makes it easier though not easy to read.
It actually does much more though as it is a contemporary novel of the 20s - it explores women's roles through time. There are significant female characters at all age of life including Clarissa Dalloway in her mid 50s. It examines class, political stagnation and the insidious affect of the war (First World) which had ended a few years before but whose impact society could (and arguably never has) escape. This is personified in the character of Septimus suffering from severe mental illness/shell shock from the trenches whose tragic arc lies in parallel to Clarissa's "privileged" life.
But what I was really struck by was the sense that this is a novel about change and response to that. The late 19th century is constantly compared with the modern era and the endemic social changes - women for example were just about to get the vote. But also in personal life how mortality is a constant burden we must carry as Clarissa says "Oh...in the middle of my party, here's death she thought"!
In some ways similar to Mme Bovary as it depicts the essential shallowness of upper class life it actually is much more.
An amazing piece of work with so much in it and will definitely read more of Ms Woolf.

Review of Bingham's Rule of Law

2010-09-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

Just finished this and just found out that Tom Bingham died yesterday. I think the work may gain added significance.
An overview of a central legal concept by recently retired leading judge. Impressive in its breadth and in its concise use of language: it's quite a short book.
Bingham outlines in his introduction that the work is not aimed at lawyers but the general populace. I think this is a bit of a vain hope as the technical legal detail (whilst far from impenetrable) generally will be difficult for people with no legal knowledge at all to engage with. As evidence of this witness his appearance on Start the Week where the rest of the panel had either not read the book or not really engaged with the ideas.
When I was a law student (a few years ago! )there was quite a large left wing debate on the rule of law as a concept. EP Thompson, The Marxist Historian and peace activist, labelled it "an unqualified human good" whereas Thatcherite and New Labour politicians were endlessly condemning strikers, protestors and activists for not respecting the "rule of law". Significantly this argument is not even skirted on by Bingham for his sole focus is the state and what it must do to adhere to the concept. Individuals are only mentioned in terms of their rights being protected.
This focus is welcome and enlightening because it removes the political rhetoric from the phrase. But it is limited particularly in his admittedly guarded support for Dicey and Hewart's attack on the "New Despotism" of governmental discretionary power in the 1920s - which was really an attack on socialism, municipal and general.
Its other innovation in exploring the concept is giving the rule of law a substantive content in particular one which respects Human Rights - this was anathema to traditional English law thinkers (particularly Dicey).
The most devastating part of the book is the attack on the decision to go to war in 2003 and the current anti-terrorist laws. A forensic dissection of the shocking legal arguments used by Blair and Straw - Bush as he points out wasnt bothered about getting legal endorsement. A case could be made that this part is the reason Bingham wrote this book it certainly reads like he is getting a lot off his chest. Essential reading when currently witnessing Blair all over the airwaves with his new memoirs.
More technically he also uses the book to have a go at 3 even more liberal law lords and their approach to the power of the courts viz Supremacy of Parliament. Ultimately there are weaknesses - there is a fairly naive view of history - English in particular - which he spends a chapter exploring. And the conclusion hedges its bets on whether the British Parliament will always respect the rule of law (rather than the Government/Administration on which he is fairly scathing) or whether recourse to an ultimate law - a constitution - is needed.
It is a contradiction of modern British Capitalism that the judiciary (in general) have become part of the liberal wing - upholding human rights and taking an interventionist approach. This seems a change from the age of Griffiths "The Politics of the Judiciary" but shows the changes that constitutional reform has made. Obviously they are still an integral part of the establishment - see the recent anti-trade union rulings - but they are now analytical critics of the state too. This covers a wide spectrum of views in the legal system: Bingham's are far from the most radical but are worth spending a bit of time reading

Zeitoun- vital writing

2010-08-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

It seems a bit portentous to say that this is probably the most important book Dave Eggers will ever write, but it is no less true.
An examination of the event 5 years ago that is the paradigm of the current period of 'disaster capitalism' that as Naomi Klein has pointed out we are now in: the flooding and destruction of New Orleans.
The genius of the work is that it is firmly a piece of non-fiction and that it tells the story through the eyes of a Muslim-American family. Indeed the narrative structure which is clever builds a picture of a family happy and global in nature around the disintegration of American civil society.
There are endless debates on the line between fiction and non-fiction but in this work its jaw - punching power lies in its truth. Eggers' last major work was also non-fiction but relied much on recollections of a young African child. This work has the sense of research, testimony and interviews - a bit like Capote's In Cold Blood.
Zeitoun is a Syrian immigrant who is a successful builder who stays behind in his city New Orleans as his family leaves. He seeks to help those stranded. Things take a dramatic (and for me shocking) turn though. The themes of 21st century America become intertwined - deregulated capitalism and government and fear of Islamic terror.
Egger's elegant prose style takes a back seat here and he lets the terrible story unfold. He understands that the most moving images in life are fairly simple and mundane - a sore foot, hamburger meat, a child's question. And it is moving - almost unbearably sad in places but uplifting and anger inducing too. To read the book really explains why Obama won the Presidency in the states so convincingly 3 years after this.
Zeitoun states of one of his colleagues attitude to the disaster unfolding in front of him and how he rises to the occasion of helping out people he was "a good man made better". The same is true of Eggers, a vital piece of work.

Thoughts on Sen's Idea of Justice.

2010-08-10T08:54:00.001-07:00

One of my achievements of this summer (also got flooring done in hall cupboard!) was reading Amartyn Sen’s “Idea of Justice”. This big chunk of thoughts covers almost all elements of human thought through the prism of struggling with what the concept of Justice means in our contemporary society.
Although ostensibly an economist, Sen has won the Nobel Prize, his style is very broad both in the disciplines which he covers but also in his breadth of sources notably drawing on Eastern writings which are more than often overlooked in Western writings particularly on economics, philosophy and law.
His work, which I have never read any of, mainly deals in social choice theory which looks at the economics underpinning human behavior and the choices people make. Sen seeks to counter the presumption, which is fairly prevalent in capitalist thinking, that faced with a choice people always look after their own interests in a selfish way. Indeed, as he points out, choice theory has become synonymous with this.
This work is partially an attempt to integrate his work in this field into the area of legal theory. Indeed it also works as a comprehensive summary of all of his work to this date with a substantial and impressive referencing system and bibliography as part of the work.
The sweep of the work is one of its most impressive features from discussing the nature of freedom, to exploring the economic and political roots of famines to dissecting the writing of proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. You get a real sense of the breadth and depth of Sen’s knowledge but also of his enthusiasm for all aspects of learning and knowledge. I would add though that some of the roots of the weaker elements of the work lie here as well.
The essential argument of the book is that theories of justice are dominated historically and in the present time by “transcendental institutionalism”. That is the discussion focuses on the ideal institutions and how they could deliver a ‘just’ society – not only the institutional machinery but the theories which underpin this are also discussed in relation to the higher transcendental concepts.
Sen also labels these thinkers “contractarians” as they often use the concept of a social contract - in that he puts Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau , Kant and importantly in modern times John Rawls. The first part of the work is essentially a dissection and critique of Rawls’ work ‘A Theory of Justice’. For Sen this is the paradigm of this mode of thinking.
He contrasts this school of thought with those who challenge injustice in the here and now and only view justice as how it relates to the immediate. They adopt a comparative approach to realize justice in a real social setting not an ideal world. In this school he puts Wollstonecraft, Condorcet (an early French revolutionary thinker on social choice who I had never heard of) Adam Smith, Bentham, Mill and possibly controversially but I think correctly Marx.
This I would argue is a strength of the work as it illustrates that Marx’s work contrary to sloppy capitalist critique was not about creating a far off utopian society but exploring the concrete reality of capitalism and the injustice it delivers. By putting Marx in this category Sen is certainly distinguishing himself from most other current academic writers.
Sen places himself in this latter camp and in particular cites Smith heavily, in particular his writings on Moral Philosophy which is another neglected aspect of intellectual work. He utilizes in particular his concept of the ‘impartial spectator’ as a judge (in the broadest sense) of what is just.
One of the examples and scenarios (of which there are many good ones) which was lept on by book reviewers and shows like Start the Week is in the Introduction, may have been as far as they read!, seeks to explore this. It concerns three children and a flute. All of the kids have a claim on the flue – only one of them made it, only one of them knows how to play it and one of them is so poor they have no other toy to play with. Who should get it?
Now Sen is not making the case for any one of the children, contrary to the impression some of the reviews of the work have given. Rather his point is that all of them have a valid claim to the flute. In a modern society justice needs to have a system of deciding which is the most “just”. Democracy is necessary for this as Sen equates democracy with public discussion and discourse not simply voting.
The flute example is also used to contrast Rawls’ work and indeed is part of the critique. Now Sen is effusive in his praise of Rawls, the book is dedicated to him (he died in 2002), he cites all the joint teaching work he did with him and makes high claims for Rawls relevance to modern political thought. This I think is a bit of overstatement and perhaps overcompensation for his work more or less takes the basis of Rawls’ work apart.
Rawls ideal institutions are drawn up by participants in a society from behind a “veil of ignorance” that is no one knows what their role in a society would be so they can’t act in their own subjective interests. Sen’s justifiable gripe with this is that it assumes that there is one true model of justice that will emerge from this which all will accept. In contrast to the flute problem where it is seen that three kids can’t agree on what is just.
Thus this basic flaw makes the whole Rawlsian project untenable although Sen feels it has validity in some other areas for example the pre-eminence of liberty. It is of little use in delivering actual justice because it aims for a higher ground which is actually irrelevant. A parallel I enjoyed was an artistic one! That is it is of little use to say the best painting ever made was the Mona Lisa when you are comparing a Picasso and a Matisse and asked which is the best compared to the best painting ever made.
In producing an alternative to this Sen travels across the whole world of human thought – the nature of subjectivity, how humans make choices, the role of language, what sustainability actually means in the modern world . In truth it probably goes too far on tangential issues – I was a bit lost at the discussion of incompleteness in evaluative theory for example!
This feeds into the conclusion which is a study of democracy and Human Rights, although the easiest to read it seems the weakest in argument as it idealises to a large degree issues around the media. Sen argues this is central to democracy and hence justice but does not really explore the pressures and the capitalist domination of all traditional media outlets now which threaten democracy. It also is weak in its examination of current tensions with a slightly idealized version of the Indian state and the UN, both of which Sen has links with. In a sense Sen is dabbling in some transcendental wish fulfillment of his own – ignoring for example the general Maoist uprisings across the subcontinent for example which has its own vision of injustice.

Also because of its scope I found the conclusion a little unsatisfying. Essentially the idea of justice deals with the here and now and must be determined through public discourse with input from outside observers so our idea of justice is not parochial and does not cover up injustice which we in our society may accept. I guess this is enough without being prescriptive and indeed he want s to get away from idealized institutional prescription.
But a brilliant book in many ways – an excellent source of further reading, very well written and comprehensive. I think I will always have a well thumbed copy on shelf.

And the Ass Saw the Angel Review

2010-07-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

Having kindly received this for my birthday last year from my mate I thought a holiday by the English seaside would be the ideal environment in which to savour it.
I am more of a distant admirer of Nick Cave than a fan and don't own very much of his music. My passing knowledge of his work and the fact it was set in the deep dead South of America led me to think his first novel published in the late 80s would be about a drunken blind dwarf having sex with his half cousin before being garrotted by a rusty blade of a harvester and to be honest that wasn't very far off the mark.

When you have lines like "all the welkin bile had been pumped from the sewers of Hell then vomited in a black and furious torrent down upon the shack" Mr Cave is probably only one of the people you would have been in the company of.

The plot such as it is concerns an outsider in a community of outsiders stuck in the middle of desolation. The dominant themes are Religion, corruption, violence, the Old Testament view of God and death. It is very similar to his musical work - in particular I think he did a specific album of Murder Ballads which is echoed here.
As a writer he is pretty good with a forboding sense of environment and outlines the hypocrisy of religion. He writes from a number of perspectives but mainly centres around the outcast Euchrid Eucrow (the crow is a constant in the work). Looking at his spying on the internal machinations of the obscure sect-arian community and their chosen child saviour.

As a whole though the novel loses itself in a miasma of brutal imagery, weather and confusing character development. This is particularly true in the last book within the work which breaks down into a song like structure with repetition and rhythms in parts.
I think one of the problems is that there are not enough concepts Cave cares enough about to fill a novel or if they are he doesn't develop them. In a way writing 4 minute songs you don't have to do this.
The violence (sexual and otherwise) is fairly graphic but in parts so over the top it reminded me a bit of the climactic scene in Kill Bill Vol 1 which was a bloodbath but more like a comic book.
Cave has a bad habit of falling back on long lists to express the same thing - like he'd fallen onto an old thesaurus. Also I am not sure how Euchrid the mute outsider mountain man would have such an articulate form of written expression. I guess it is to contrast with his "dumb" nature but it is never explained: the Bible, God's intervention.
Because of Cave's skill though it just does enough to get you through it. I am even tempted to look at his new book out this year. But generally writing a song or an album of them aint the same as writing a novel.

Between the Assassinations: fury and birth

2010-06-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

A rattling collection of ice cold water in the face tales that maintains Adiga's momentum after White Tiger. Literally because the speedy pace is similarly maintained here as it was in his Booker Prize winning novel.
This time the work is a number of short stories set in the fictional town KIttur in the South-West of India paced nominally over a week. Each story is allocated a specific spot in the town and time of day. But as the title suggests this is largely a flag of convenience as every tale takes place between 1984-91, the historical period between the Gandhis being killed by different groups.
I particularly liked this time period as unlike White T which provides a contemporary overview of the impact neo-liberalism is having on Indian society this showed the genesis of these themes and the nascence of some specific problems in India today - the growth of the Naxalite movements for example could be seen by the attitudes of several of the characters. Indeed the last short story outlines a disillusioned Maoist (membership of his Party: 2!) rejecting his vision of socialism for some immediate pleasure/return. A parallel for the collapse of Stalinism perhaps and the beginnings of the unbridled growth of capitalism across the planet.
The over-riding emotion expressed throughout is anger, anger at the caste system, at religion, at poverty, at abuse that seem to be in every corner of the town. But it is not pessimistic per se - each story seems to have a character that wants to challenge their place in the stratified system although ultimately they are frustrated.
This emotion coupled with the brilliant detail of the everyday made me think of quite an unlikely parallel - Irvine Welsh. In particular his Acid House Collection (set at a similar time in history). Welsh's thorough knowledge, humour and depiction of the dispossessed in the East of Scotland are all similar.
Pick of the bunch for me was the delivery boy Chenayya and his rebellion coupled with his admiration of nature. Though every one is good involving everyone from teachers, servants, journalists, schoolkids and a bus conductor and will have a moment that you will find difficult to forget.
To finish on Chenayya's thought which Adiga, a brilliant writer, documents so well: "You have to attain a certain level of richness before you can complain about being oor. When you are this poor you are not given the right to complain".

Emergency....paging Doctor Beat!

2010-05-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

As May draws to a close the new Con-Dem coalition has really been only engaging so far in shadow boxing with regards to the massacre of public services that they will carry out to pay for the bail-out of the banks. Indeed to salve their consciences the Liberals and Clegg have stressed the progressive nature of the reforms of civil liberties .Indeed Clegg has said this "will be a government unlike any other".

6 billion pounds of cuts were announced last Monday by the now resigned but "dignified" copyright British Media Right wing Liberal Democrat Laws. But the ominous date is the upcoming June 22nd "Emergency Budget".

The formation of an unlikely coalition behind closed doors and an emergency economic programme reminded me of a passage in the Shock Doctrine on Bolivia. In 1985 Bolivia became a laboratory for neo-liberal economics. Not unique but unlike Chile where a bloody dictatorship brought in the Chicago Boys to carry this out on the crushed bones of the Allende regime. This time however it was done after an election.

The Presidential election of 1985 had been inconclusive but both candidates were locked away to discuss the economy. The "left" candidate Paz a sort of Peronist figure emerged as Presidente. He was then in his 80s and had been a long standing figure in Bolivian politics But the important point was that along with his emergence there was announced a cross party economic programme called Decree 21060 (passed in a one-r) - drawn up by Jeffrey Sachs an unelected American academic advisor - later a critical figure in the reintroduction of capitalism in Russia .

This programme (which noone had voted for) included mass privatisation, huge price hikes of basics and an opening up of the economy to global capitalist forces. 20,000 miners lost their jobs, Oil and bread prices went sky high. It was the ultimate shock therapy. Although there was much resistance it took another generation for the political impact to hit of President Evo Morales and his Movement for Socialism administration (elected first in 2005).

Back to GB and all the rhetoric post election is that things are much worse than anyone imagined. Managers across the public sector are using it as an excuse to justify excessive cuts amongst staff.
So a cobbled together coalition in the national interest may use its majority to get through an economic programme that was not endorsed in any election. Austerity and Emergency Budgets have been passed in the last couple of years.
Ireland: Public Sector pay cuts and big taxes on the lowest in 2009 - provoking public protests and a swing to the left in some elections. Spain passed its austerity budget by 1 vote on May 26th icluding a 5% pay cut and a freeze in pensions. The trade unions have called a public sector strike for June 8th.
So the real fight against the coalition will become clearer after June 22nd - though the way they will sell it may be rhetorically different because of the Liberals. For example if there is a sizeable rise in Capital Gains Tax this will be promoted as a tax on the rich - it is already provoking opposition from the Tories bristling at the coalition - the Daily Telegraph have launched their own campaign. But I would guess in Bonapartist style this will be coupled with some outrageous attack on the public sector.
How the opposition will manifest itself is hard to see as the left are so weak at the moment but the battle lines will be clearer post Emergency or rather shock.

Inheritance of Loss: Disintegrating Dreams.

2010-05-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

A dream-like description of disintegration. I read this as I saw it was going to be on the BBC World Service Book Club. I also really enjoyed other Indian Booker winners - God of Small Things and White Tiger.
This work is quite different to those with a few significant exceptions as outlined below. It is thoughtful, well written and eventually quite engaging. Overall though there is an aloofness here which means you can't fully absorb the situation unlike Arundhati's Roy work or the frenetic pace of Adiga.
Part of that could be due to its setting which is the literal misty foothills of the HImalayas where Everest is a dominant omniscient presence and country borders mean little. The setting of the study of the three main protagonists is Darjeeling in West Bengal and an uprising of the Nepalese population there in the 80s. Bhutan, Tibet and Sikkim are also nearby.
This insurrection actually happened - something I was not aware of and the demands for Gorkhaland are still ongoing apparently .
Funnily enough both Roy and Adinga also deal with Indian rebellions - the birth of the Maoist movements in the 60s and the contemporary Naxalites respectively. However I never felt an understanding of why these Nepalese were fighting unlike the other works. This is not helped by the dreamlike landscape and the lack of certainty in the time setting of the work.
It is strongest when it speaks of the weakness of the individual's autonomy in the context of broader struggles and happenings. This is seen in the insurrection but also in the forelorn adventures of one of the character's sons travails in the underworld of American illegal immigration.
There is also a nice turn of phrase throughout - each chapter is broken up in a series of vignettes really. I think this is a nod to poetry but this is not done as successfully as Roy.
The other link with Indian literature is the continual use of nature metaphors and similies - in fact a dog is almost a full character. This is done well.
So a distant work in many ways that ultimately has a fairly hopeless take on humanity. Unclear why it won the Booker but worth a read.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - unconvincing.

2010-04-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

Unconvincing. I recently watched Paul Merton's documentary about Hitchcock and the big man stated that he only ever made who-dunnit and he immediately regretted it. This was for the reason that the audience either say "I knew it was them" or say "that was a bit of a shock". No other emotional responses are possible, That's one of the problems of this book because for all the hype surrounding it is a basic piece of traditional crime writing. Much like the novels the protagonist reads throughout - although they are on the left-field side of that genre- mainly female writers. There is no experimentation with narrative structure.
The only other book which is mentioned is Laserman - a non fiction account of a Far-right Swede who acted as a sniper killing immigrants in the early 90s. This fits into the novel and Larsson as he was an active anti-fascist and member of the Fourth International. The setting and explanations of Swedish capitalism, politics and history were the bit I enjoyed most. Like all crime writing the novel involves a lot of exposition but this socio-political stuff was good. Doesnt really take any prisoners though for those unfamiliar with it - expect a lot of mentions of the Left Party, Olaf Palme etc. This is the best written part of the book In some ways similar to Iain Banks, not as good though. The family saga element of the book is also very closely related to Banks last novel.
But what undoes the book for me is the characters and the attitude to gender. Ostensibly it is an attempt to expose male violence towards women in all its forms. The Swedish title of the book was Men who hate women. Interesting to see if it would have been a worldwide phenomenon if they kept that title and didnt use the sexy imagery of the book cover. There are many examples of it - rape, domestic violence, flashing. However the scenes involving the most graphic attacks to me are observational rather than empathetic.
I do think male writers can expose violence against women - Jonathan Coe did it brilliantly in his last novel - but in a more subtle way. In this context they are gratuitous. I think this is because there is a revenge fantasy element to the book. Salander, the eponymous heroine, is a victim of all sorts of abuse but gets her own back in a sense. I think she comes across as a bit of a symbol or cipher for these broader themes. The male hero Michael an investigative journalist (jailed for libel which I didnt know they could do - so you do learn a bit about the Swedish legal system) also manages to sleep with 3 of the female characters with apparent ease which to me seemed unfeasible and tagged on. Given the book is meant to explore the relationships between the genders it falls down on that. T
The book falls away badly in the last two parts - with some virtually unreadable dialogue about techy stuff. There is a sad element with Larsson's death predating their publication but it does mean that there is no possibility or re-writing or editing. The exposing of the villain is disturbing to no real end. The last chapter is pure corn.
A massive hit - perhaps among techies in particular because it is really set in their world - but I think a very flawed piece of work. So absolutely no desire to see the film nor read the other parts of the trilogy.

Keats: Long, sad but brilliant

2010-03-28T04:01:00.000-07:00

Keats by Andrew Motion

A huge slab of a book which delivered much more than I expected. I was interested in the whole poetry scene of Keats' time after reading the Age of Wonder book which showed the impact radical scientific discoveries had on all aspects of life including art.

But I didnt know much about Keats or his work outside the famous lines. But this well researched (and referenced) book - at times akin to a major academic work - had me hooked.

I was perhaps less surprised at the brilliance of Motion's writing - he is himself a poet after all - as I was with the political context of the work.

The revolutionary nature of the times - the aftermath of France 89, the rise of Bonaparte, the Chartists, crushing of reform and the Peterloo massacre all play their part. In fact it is part of Motion's thesis that Keats' politics are underplayed in traditional appreciations of his work. Later 19th Century works were particularly bad for this. It's a pretty convincing argument though when you look at the vitriol heaped upon him by the right wing throughout his life and the company he kept,

For he did have a big bunch of mates - it is sometimes a little difficult to keep up with them all but through meticulous detail Motion does outline the tension and "politics" of maintaining friendship in a large group.

I was really blown away by Keats' work though especially the explanations given by AM - there is quite a technical aspect but not insurmountable. I liked the way Keats used Greek mythology and paganism as the ideal society (which was quite a common thing at the time apparently) - hence the endless nymphs and naiads etc! Motion's writing on "To Autumn" and the work itself is spellbinding.
Keats attitude to poetry was complex - it was unclear if he saw poets as a sipher of higher pastoral (?) powers or as a document of life put in a different context. He was not a realist at one level - which critics have cited as an absence of political dimension, a point more or less destroyed by Motion. In some ways it reminded me of Engels' description of feudal socialists in Socialism Utopian and Scientific - which was highlighting a similar period.
His relationship with Fanny Brawne (this book is the basis of recent movie Bright Star) is dissected warts and all. It is hardly a romantic ideal indeed Keats had extremely confused and in the modern sense messed up attitudes to women and abandonment. His mother had left him and his family early in his life. There is also some speculation that part of his weakness was due to a lingering veneral disease caught when he was studying to be a doctor,

The last few chapters are very sad but bring the themes together. A lot of Keats' work was over blown in a teenage angsty way but he was only 25 when he died. Also never consummated his relationship with FB which I assume was pretty frustrating! He also was only 5 foot a point which seems irrelevant but lead him to be insecure throughout his life. A point Byron (who comes across as a bit of a tosser here) exploits.

In many ways a tragedy but one which produced wonders. Have now ordered the collected poems for by bedside.

Fool's Gold: Review.

2010-01-30T01:55:00.001-08:00

An enthralling race through the anarchy, selfishness and ultimately vandalism of financial capital. It puts the last decade of capitalist "development" in context and is taut as a thriller in its last couple of chapters.
Although many of the processes are complex Gillian Tett explores the foundations of them well so even if you get a little bit lost you have the basic understanding of what the bankers were getting up to.
Her journalistic style makes it readable but I would criticise the referencing which is patchy. It seems to be trying to nod its head to academic work (Tett studied anthropology prior to FT journalism) but not fully engaging with it. The references either should have been ditched or more fully developed. Perhaps the latter could not happen because of speed of publication as it is pretty contemporary.
Though Tett states in the conclusion that she is angry over the mayhem unleashed by the banks her prose does not really reflect this in the way say Naomi Klein would. Understandable given the different politcal complexions but this position is a boon here. Taking a fairly diffident style in reporting the banks dealings in credit derivatives as they get more and more ludicrous is actually pretty effective.
I am not 100% sure why she chooses to focus her discussion through the prism of JPMorgan and she occassionally falls into the trap of character biography of some of the protagonists (see Robert Peston review from last year) but normally pulls back from the brink.
It definitely deepened my understanding of how the banks pursued profits through essentially gambling on losses and defaults, hedging their bets, swapping risks and expanding credit exponentially. It made me angry and I will use it for future reference.
One quote to show the madness - when the sub-prime mortgages started to default in big numbers in 2006 the banks actually increased their exposure to it : " Between Oct and Dec 2006 banks issued a record $130 billion in CDOs alone double the level of a year ago and 40% were created from sub-prime mortgages". And they wonder why people dont trust the banks!

In Cold Blood - A Neer Day Treat!

2010-01-05T09:51:00.001-08:00

Not the first way you would think of spending New Years Day reading about a multiple murder in Mid West in the 1950s but I am really glad I did.

An incredibly well written book which although based on a real-life incident is an example of how to write experimental narrative. Using multiple voices - witness statements, materials from the killers, newspaper articles, academic journals to explore amorality. It was labelled "New Journalism" but it is more indicative of a modern novel.

The sense of location is strong - funnily enough it reminded me of two non - fiction books I have read in the last few years - Collapse and Fast Food nation which although about very different topics gave a similar picture of the Mid-West in the States - the people, landscape nature of the environment.

As a form of combining fiction with real events you are never sure when Capote is expanding on the truth or simply making it up. But he is such a good writer that is not a hindrance - only I suppose if you wanted it as historical document. A criticism is that Capote got too close to murderers but the narrator's voice is quite absent - Capote is only directly referred to at one point near the end of the book. This occurred to such an extent I wasnt sure if he was present at the execution - he was apparently.

Moral ? Well it's definitely not a campaigning book against a miscarriage of justice it does show the mess society and families can make of people or how supportive it can be. It also shows the randomness of brutal violence - like being struck with lightening as the investigating cop calls it. Very influential and I am intrigued to read Capote's other material.

The Age of Wonder....indeed.

2009-12-21T09:20:00.000-08:00

An incredibly readable document of a period of time I knew very little about. Ostensibly a study of the intense period of scientific development between the late 18th and early 19th Century. But offers a lot more than that. It explores the intimate links (sometimes literally) of the Romantic poets of the time and the Scientists or more accurately Natural Philosophers of the time. In particular the Shelleys, Keats, Coleridge - of which I think Holmes has written biographies (not read them but am now tempted). There is a lovely intertwining of verse in the context of various scientific developments. It introduced a lot of poetry I was not really aware of.
It also is really a study of knowledge being in the hand of an elite and the tension that brings. Should there be a broadening out of this or kept in the hands of an elite. At this time there seemed to be a slight broadening of knowledge in the relatively new British state from the aristocracy to slightly more middle class geniuses - personified here by William Herschel and Humphry Davy(pictured). But what I like is Holmes introduces a whole new generation of young Turks who challenge these modest advances.
It is also a time of revolution - American, French, industrial which is a constant background though never dominating the discussion. It is telling how men of science fell into the nascent capitalist state - Mungo Park becoming seemingly reluctant imperialist adventurer. Davy developing his lamp in the face of major industrial change - one of the best chapters of the book I think.
By combining quite indepth personal details of several individuals with societal and artistic context the work comes across as very full. Radical politics are examined - notably with the intriguing figure Dr Beddoes in Bristol. But equally aristocratic machinations are explored representing the dichotomy of the day I think.
A great platform to explore this era - with a very inviting bibliography. Holmes is also a brilliant writer if perhaps a little inconclusive. One to keep if only for the excellent quotes

The God of Small Things - amazing.

2009-11-03T14:50:00.001-08:00

Absolutely breathtaking. Sometimes you have to just stop reading a book either because you dont want it to end or because the situation and characters are so real and moving you dont want any harm to come to them.
This was one of those books - I am only sorry I have never read this before. Ostensibly a family drama but set in a turbulent India not often written about the 60s when the Maoist movement was just beginning to take off, The writer links the "small things" of the household with the big picture of Indian society: class and caste struggle, the machinations of the Stalinist dominated CP and trade unions, the role of religion, human desire and abuse

The scenes with the twins - the fulcra for the book - are funny, well observed but ultimately almost unbearably sad. Nature and animals are a common occurrence almost a character themselves - coming to a head in the moving final chapter.

The narrative structure is very clever and in a funny way prepares and disarms you for what comes next. It's a bit cinematic and I read that Roy also did compose some screen plays but she also trained as an Architect which you can also see in the craft of the work.

Some of the most significant and saddest happenings in the book take place almost in a flash but their impact is huge.
There is so much in this book I could write and talk about it for hours. It reminds me a little of Franzen in its witty/sad/informed narrative of human relationships and societal structures.
In some ways not a surprise that Arundhati Roy has not written a major piece of fiction since. Testament to her humanity though that she has committed herself to activism and raising awareness for the Indian peoples.

Crash - not for the faint hearted.

2009-10-03T04:49:00.000-07:00

"An extreme metaphor for an extreme situation" Ballard writes in the foreword of the edition I read - too true. A brilliantly written but disturbing and towards the end pretty gruesome tour around a male psyche and sexuality.
In some ways it is more poetic than prose with a lot of repetition of phrases and words: pubis, mucus, semen get a lot of coverage! There is a lot of repetition in JGB's work. And it has a very dream-like feel to it.
Knowing about the time of JGB's life he was also working through issues in his own head - losing his wife in a freak accident, bringing up 3 young kids himself. The main protagonist/narrator is actually called James Ballard.
But it is more than that - it actually takes quite a radical approach to the novel. It reminded me a little of Becket's novels digging deeper and deeper into what it means to be human - the juxtaposition of sex and death.
The "villain" Vaughan is a precursor to the charismatic dodgy guys that populate his later novels. I got a sense of him being the other part of the character of Ballard - a la Fight Club.
The explicit nature of the sex is paralleled with the detail of the crashes - in a sense they are interchangeable.
So a difficult read but worthwhile and another indication of the great loss suffered with the death of JGB this year.

Return of the Samurai.

2009-09-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

With all the exaggerated talk of an economic recovery sounding more and more like an alcoholic convincing himself he's kicked the habit and can just have a couple of drinks there are some pretty significant happenings out east, far east which undermine the whole picture.

It should be noted the first foreign leader that Obama chose to meet was the PM of Japan, Aso on February 24th of this year. Even though he was a lame-duck leader who was going to lead the LDP to its worst result in its history a near wipeout for a party that had run the country for nearly 50 constant years. The reason was, of course, economic Japan holds a massive amount of US Bonds -second only to China- thus supporting the massive debt which American capitalism has.

This has lead to a lot of resentment by buying dollars they are adding to their problems by strengthening their own currency. This means that exports - a critical part of their economy - are weakened. Sony made their first loss for 14 years. The economic turmoil largely led to the defeat of the LDP the only other time they have lost power very briefly was in response to the recession of the early 90s which its domestic economy has never fully responded to.

Although the new PM Hatoyama is an establishment figure his financial advisers took a much more strident approach to the US - this was also reflected in some foreign policy pronouncements. For example reviewing the US military bases on the islands. Concretely they want to promote Samurai bonds based on yen - more importantly they want America to buy them so that Japan is not so reliant on the dollar.

The Finance spokesman for the new governing party the DPJ wants to promote other bonds as reserve including IMF and Samurai bonds. Obviously the current situation suits the US as they remain the world's reserve currency everyone has to come and buy them. This in turn finances its debt. So will the new government push US capitalism on this issue? This will have a bigger impact on global recovery than a lot of the superficial stories appearing in the British press. There is speculation that this is just nationalist rhetoric for the election and this wont materialise.
Indeed it seems that the Finance spokesman who promoted this policy :Masaharu Nakagawa may be being sidelined with veteran politician Fujii aged 77 likely to get the job. This shows the issue may not be live for a while but it is definitely one to watch if/when the economy goes down again.

The Fall - Albert Camus

2009-09-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

A challenging read. More of a philosophical tract than a novel and though it is only 100 pages long it contains more ideas than most writers deal with in their whole career,
Ostensibly I read this because it followed the same structure as the Reluctant Fundamentalist (which I think is influenced by it) a onesided monologue in a supposed conversation.
Rather than develop a plot though Camus uses this device to discuss different aspects of human existence: sex, death, law, justice, morality, religion.
A few points really stuck with me - the narrator is a French lawyer who uses his calling of helping others as his fulfillment - this is how he feels alive. It builds his arrogance - he likes to be above everyone else physically and feeds his debauchery. Once this is challenged though his spiral (or fall I guess) is pretty sudden. He is found in a sleazy bar in Amsterdam - the atmosphere of which is very well written.
There is an interesting intro in my edition that the book is partially an outline of the dispute between Sartre and Camus - an expression of Camus' disillusionment with theLeft. This is reflected in the tone and barbed asides. Though Sartre did praise the work as the meaningless of the narrator's existence does chime with elements of his philosophy.
You can aso see why Mark E Smith stuck with the name of the Fall- the anti-hero in a bar is a Mark-e archetype.
A wee review like this cannot do this justice - academic careers have probably been built writing about this. I will keep this book handy though and will re-read it.

A Fraction of the Whole: Review

2009-08-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

Fasting men survive , starving men die.

One of the many memorable phrases in this very enjoyable sprawling Oz family saga. Very well written in its turn of phrase - metaphor and simile (overdoes these a little - bit Blackadder-esque) and narrative structure - using monlogue, letter, journal and more conventional dialogue. It also has very strong characters.

Over 700 pages long - which I note is mentioned in several reviews and it could probably lose about 100 of them - gets a bit diverted in places.

Also very moving in its depiction of father -son relationship - speaking as both!
There is something missing from it though stopping it being a truly modern great. I am not sure what but think it is lacking a bit in context. Set in Australia it does try and make a comment on that society: obsession with sport, crime, Murdoch like characters, the link with Asia and asylum policy. Though there is only a passing reference to the Aboriginal issue - perhaps that is reflective of Oz society.

Yet I dont think it is fully developed - if you compare it with Franzen who explores dysfunctional families within a broader American context then it falls short. Some interesting philosophical arguments to.

So, very readable and a big achievement, Read it over a relative short space of time for book of this length - but think he may have a sharper novel within him.

Turn East for Culture 09.

2009-08-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

At weekend spent a couple of days over at Ed Fringe Fest for mish-mash of artistic performances. City very busy and usual chaos at bigger venues with overpriced bevvy - Tattoo was also on this time. But ticketing system worked very well compared to last year. My tip would be to anyone - buy all your tickets online even for wee venues (maybe especially for that).

Anyway breaking it down into artistic form

Theatre: Ended up seeing two double header plays - ie with just two actors: David Mamet's Oleanna and Tennessee William;s Auto -da - Fe. Both in pretty small venues but both sold out.
Never seen Oleanna before although I had heard about it. It centres around accusations of sexual harassment/misogyny(!) against an arrogant University lecturer (!!)from female student. It was very good and quite intense over a continual 90 minutes - same set of his office for 3 Acts. Partially it was about a study of language, power and lack of empathy/understanding for other people. It has a very polarised dynamic as a piece - male lecturer dominates in one part then female student. It asks a lot of the cast - it was probably a wee bit too much for the female lead -who was quite young: not entirely convincing though the guy was very good though both in his smugness and the crumbling of his position and the undercurrent of violence. Another interesting factor was that the production came from Zimbabwe and each actor was a different race- this was not fully developed (wasnt issue in original production) but obviously an undercurrent throughout. They were Pumpkin Pie Productions - an engrossing 90 mins - worth a look.

The Williams piece was a one act play from late in his career. Set in the South, where else, it covers a fairly tense conversation between man and his mother on the porch of their Southern villa. Covers all TW's usual themes: sex, repressed homosexuality, heat, fire and a bit more heat and a little more sex. This was excellent - 30 minutes flew by - both actors here (Americans) delved completely into the piece: showed themselves as very experienced. Although short for the theatre - not slight - a bit like a good poem, he added pompously! Poor flyer for the show though but apart from that highly recommended Location wise, it was just a wee room in the Radisson Hotel - a thing i like about the Fringe is the imagination given to venues - just converted into a studio theatre for the month.

Visual Art: Checked out a free show at the Ingleby Gallery - nice venue never been there before - good lighting. Show of Calum Innes an abstract expressionist was pretty disappointing though.
It was basically a set of large coloured squares halved with different colours in each and sort of blended together in the middle. All "Untitled" - sparked debate about whether u can get away with using untitled in any other artistic media. So not a lot to it - looked like he had developed a new artistic technique and was just experimenting with it over and over: so not really an exhibition at all.

Comedy: I'm always a little selective with the comedy i choose to see in Edinburgh there is so much garbage with identikit posters for identikit boys in suits telling anecdotes about moving in with their girlfriend - desperately searching for a place on a panel show on Men and motors or something. But hit the jackpot twice here - Andrew Maxwell an Irish guy who I had only seen wee bits of on tv - he won a channel 4 reality show couple years ago where comedians had to live together and perform a completely different show a night. Good funny relaxed show - master of his craft. Material is not ground breaking but hits the spot and at least takes time to remark about the specifics of Scottish culture. Ridiculously small bar for venue though - there's a bit of Scottish culture for you :-).

Tim Key was a poet who I had spotted on the Charlie Brooker show though apparently he has a big Cambridge Footlights fringe background. Show really good - combination of comedy, poems (again sparked debate whether they were real poems or not) and short films. Bit different and very engaged with audience in a distant way! Annoying heckling woman though - surprisingly little of that at Andrew Maxwell.

Funnily enough both acts finished with two physical displays (different to the preceding shows)- wont give it away by saying what they were.

Misc: Couldnt get into a couple of shows - neither the one on the Mafia nor Eric Morecombe. Had a cheap cocktail at top of Leith Walk. And watched the Celts first game of the season in Haymarket pub - usually a Jambo haunt.

So to finish this indepth analysis Ill revert to type and place an East coast stereotype at top of blog..

2 reviews: The White Tiger and Mother Night.

2009-08-03T05:39:00.001-07:00

Summer reading kicking in so here are two more reviews posted in some form on Facebook.
Bleak. An examination of the duplicity of an American Nazi who was also a spy.

Very well written and explores why Nazism triumphed amongst people - as we all come from Mother Night - the Darkness. So the spy has no heroism or any belief. Reflected also in America's justification for fighting - personified in the pathetic soldier O'Hare who sees it as his mission to track down Campbell after capturing him originally as a Nazi.

The human exception to this is his relationship where he wants to create a nation of two - "Das Reich der zwei" - an escape from the world.
As the fate of the two show - the work is dictated from Campbell's cell in Israel as he faces a war crimes tribunal this escape is a pipe dream.
It also works well as an expose of the sections of post-war American society that were attracted to the Nazi right - a faint echo of Roth's plot against America.
So a lot to think about in quite a brief piece - it is quick to read. But actually more brutal in its view of humanity than Slaughterhouse 5 so not easy. Made into movie too with Nick Nolte - may try and track that down.

2 reviews: The White Tiger and Mother Night.

2009-08-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Rooster Coop. An incredibly fast-paced coruscating exposure of the neo-liberal development that India has gone through in the last decade.
Taking the form of a monologue (similar to Reluctant Fundamentalist) but as a series of letters to the Premier of China. It reveals early on that the writer has murdered his master - the work builds on this to show how he did this and ended up a successful "entrepreneur" in Bangalore - the ultimate deregulated capitalist city in India.
The casual way the narrator depicts the relentless poverty is very moving - at one point almost as an aside he mentions that he and his brother have been sleeping in the streets in the city. Equally casual is the brutality of the rich - even its more liberal representatives like his direct master and victim.
The build-up to Balram's rebellion/crime is powerfully done and has its own twisted logic. The extensive use of animal metaphors is also powerful: the Roosters, the gekkos, spiders, water buffalos and of course the eponymous tiger. It underpins the basic humanity of the work epitomised by the line "Animals should be animals and humans should be allowed to be humans."
Definitely justified in winning the Booker - but like DBC pierre perhaps surprising that it did. Think unlike Pierre's work though it will mark a long writing career from Adiga.
Not checked it out but I guess this book will be hated by the Indian establishment as it outlines albeit satirically the corruption of the political system, the landlords and masters and the shallow nature of the capitalist "success" within India so often feted in the Western press.
It shows the aspects of Indian life that the vast majority of that society experience - a bit like Slumdog - but with no spiritual or schmaltzy salvation. Some reviews have drawn parallels with Dickens but I saw a lot of Irvine Welsh in here - a voice to the voice-less.
Brilliant

Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

2009-07-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

Review originally posted on Fbook
An incredible piece of writing. I was intrigued by the author when hearing him on a World Service Radio show saying he took 9 years to write this even though it is quite short. Also the host of the show said it was her favourite work of 2007.

I can see what she meant. Reading it it seems that every word, phrase and image has been thought over and is there for a purpose. Almost like a prose poem. Taking the form of a single character monologue in real time, a young Pakistani addresses a shadowy American (tourist, agent, soldier?) as dusk turns to night.

The format of the monologue is quite Russian but two of my favourite recent Scottish novels also adopt this structure: How late it was how late and Filth.

Ostensibly a narration about disillusionment with the West and human relations in the wake of the 11th September bombings it actually reveals much more. Damaged people, the nature of writing, the instability of finance capital (quite prescient on that one), the nature of hierarchies both past and present are all examined. And in a sense that is just scratching the surface.

The "platypus" (quote from book) form of the novella works to perfection here. The underlying danger, the build up of tension and the ambiguous ending brought to mind other current works of fiction most notably the excellent final episode of the Sopranos.
Only his second work too, impressive

Iain M Banks : Matter

2009-07-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Boom!
There is some climax in this book spread over the last two chapters. They put the whole narrative in a real context.
I think context is a central theme here for banks - using the space opera format he can contrast a feudal society functioning on an artificial planet with other civilisations including obviously the Culture. Although the primitive society is aware of the others it simply doesnt care! A bit of a parallel with the arrogance of current societies across the globe.

It's not completely original though the idea of an individual coming from a sleepy society to experience the wider world or universe is a common in sci/fi - fantasy - think of the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings or Luke in Star Wars. Here you have three who make the journey - Holse, Ferbin and Analpin

Other positives are the amount of big ideas looked at - interventionism in other wars/societies, the possibilites of complete destruction, the petty rivalries of different communities the nature of hierarchies, the length of time in space Again Banks always does this well in his sci-fi much better than his mainstream work, although I thought he had covered much of this ground in other works
Also as a Culture novel - people not familiar with it - probably would find this one a wee bit difficult as the first taste; it is again on the fringes of the Culture - the edges where they battle and intervene with other rivals.

So overall good - I liked the ending, some of the other civilisations introduced were good. I thought some of the passages set in feudal Sarl dragged a little though arguably I can see why this was done - makes the ending a little more shocking. But I did get the sense some of it was a bit of a retread - there is actually quite a telling interview with Banks at end of paperback where he admits he did go through a period of doubting whether he had the ideas to maintain writing sci-fi. I am not sure how many more of these epic works he will be able to do.

Peer Gynt: National Theatre of Scotland

2009-06-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

A rare trip to the Theatre last night - the Royal no less to see the NTS' excellent adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt.

This is quite a complex piece of work - Ibsen wrote it in verse as a saga and so didnt envisage how it would be staged. In fact it was not put on in a theatre in Norway until 10 years after it was published. It was then that the fellow Norwegian composer Grieg added his music - the famous Hall of the Mountain King - well known to Manic miner Fans! or those Slater Hogg and Howison adverts in the 80s.

It's no surprise why some have said it is "unperformable". It involves a long trippy journey about a outsider's life - bit of a pisshead and womaniser - via trolls, a group of monkeys, bad wedding parties, the desert, an asylum and that just scrapes the surface.

It is also pretty long but you wouldnt notice it from this production which has an amazing energy. This is personified by the two guys (Keith Fleming and Gerry Mulgrew) who play the young and old Peer who bounce around the full time dragging the whole thing with them. Keith Fleming reminded me a bit of Rik Mayall in Bottom which I would say is a good thing! Helped by excellent music - which eschews the classical to something much more modern and folky - including a well placed cameo for the Pet Shop Boys "Go West". The support is also uniformly excellent they are more or less literally support as the play is pretty much focussed on Peer Gynt - the other characters are never fleshed out in the text.

The work also focuses on the nature of self - Who is Peer Gynt? what makes a man different from a troll(!) and the divorcing of celebrity self from reality. Also the nature of man - is he always dragged down by his baser side - shown here in two bacchanalian scenes at a small town wedding (reminded me of a few I had been at) and in the troll( King Bastard)'s lair.

One element which was very prevalent in the translation I read which is more or less taken out completely is regarding Norway which at the time of writing was part of a union with Sweden as the weaker partner. One reading of Ibsen's work is that Peer keeps getting dragged down because of the folk tales he's obsessed with (the trolls in particular) and the small town mentality of his village - which could be seen as Norway as a whole. So it was a critique of Norwegian society - Ibsen wrote it when abroad in Italy. Greig and Ibsen were both involved in maintaining a separate Norwegian culture. There's a pretty complicated scene where 4 people symbolise Sweden, Germany, France and the USA - that's gone replaced with a brilliant sort of chat show format!

I thought that there could have been interesting parallels with Scotland - part of union, sentimental aspects to culture but there weren't really any drawn. It would have been difficult to integrate that in though as there was so much else going on.

You can see there's reference to topical things for Ibsen at the time - Darwin's theories, slavery and obliquely the American Civil War. I guess the celebrity culture/mythologising aspect which actually is quite implicit in the piece written in the 1860s is a message for our times.

So really loved it - energetic, funny, loud, fast moving and a bit bonkers.

And the results from the Helsinki jury...

2009-06-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

So it's a week since the results from the Euros are in. My delay in this response is not because we had a landslide and I had to pack my bag for Strasbourg but rather I had to get back to my day job and finish the marking of the exams.

We, the SSP, got a fairly disappointing if not surprising 0.9% - marginally up on our 2007 Parliamentary vote 0.6% but obviously way down on the last Euros in 2004 when we got 5.2% but that was another world away pre-split.

Other left groups the Socialist Labour Party (Scargill's project) gained the highest with 2% - but probably mainly due to error. They were right above the Labour Party in the ballot - first time that has ever happened. I saw quite a few spoiled papers at the count I was at (South Lanarkshire, if you're wondering) and a lot of them were of that nature eg scrubbed out votes at SLP replaced with Labour etc.

The no2eu group - set up by Bob Crow and basically an alliance of Solidarity (Sheridan's group) the SWs and the CWI got 800 votes less than us in Scotland and were a bit of a damp squib across Britain getting 1%. I think that shows the error of having such a narrow anti-EU focus - not really in touch with the left forces in Britain. Although they did have a point with some of their arguments about the neo-liberal nature of the EU in particular the Lisbon Treaty - though they did exaggerate them- historically there is not the base for left opposition to EU in Britain as there is in say France, Holland or Norway.

As a side issue it shows the continuing decline of Tommy Sheridan as an electoral brand. His name was on the ballot paper as one of their list candidates, yet this could not lift them amongst the marginal left votes. In fact the SSP got a bit more in Glasgow overall compared to 2007 where his party gained 4x more than SSP in the city.

But it's all pretty depressing given that the left were beaten by the Nazis (2.5% - more on them below) and even the fundamentalist Christian group (1.5%).

I suppose on the positives the Tories and the UKIP votes marginally fell (they more or less stayed static on a UK level). The Greens increased their vote to 7.3% and the Nats topped the poll with 29%. Though this was a big improvement on 2004 where they had a bad result in fact ending up with Swinney's resignation as leader it wasn't as high as their vote in the Scottish Parliament elections.

The universal story across Britain was the collapse of New Labour - they got 20.8% in Scotland - their lowest vote since 1918 and 15.7% in the UK as a whole - behind UKIP. It shows the game's basically up for Brown but there is no clear picture as to what the alternative would be - the Tories increased in Britain but not by very much, the Liberals more or less stayed the same. The Greens also did well and kept their 2 seats.

But back to the SSP there were a number of positives from the campaign - we raised all the funds from members and supporters for a fairly shoestring campaign - this didn't allow for a national mailing but did allow us a ppb - so we didn't get into more debt as party. The broadcast was strong and a good length for posting around the internet. I think our online campaign was a positive the first time we have used it so extensively with good website and u-tube/social networking presence. Another positive was an accident in the sense that we could exploit the publicity about the MPs' noses in their trough because of the expenses scandal - fitted in well with make greed history idea. We also gained a bit of coverage in media - though pretty limited and access to some hustings - although there were not a lot of them anyway.

The frustrating thing from all these positives is that they didnt matter to our vote. Objectively with the economic collapse and utter discrediting of the capitalist political elite a unified socialist party should be mopping up. One of the reasons proffered for standing was that the election would be a referendum on the economic collapse of capitalism generally and the British economy in particular - the first time people would have a national chance to have their say on Brown. In a sense this was true - witness the collapsed vote but certainly no anti capitalist force gained from this. With the partial exception of the Greens who I think are perceived like this even though their policies stay within the capitalist framework.

Colin (Fox) I think said at the hustings where we selected our candidates that there would be a much higher turn out at this election in Scotland than before as people would want to have their say against Brown and NuLabour. This wasn't true. In fact Scotland had one of its lowest ever showings at 26.1% I think 1999 was a bit lower. This was well below the UK average of 34% this time and lower than the Scottish vote of 30% in the 2004 election. People were actually less inspired to vote.

In such a context it was difficult for us to make an impact particularly even in the cities as we only had a fairly small number of activists involved - I would guess even less than were involved in the Glasgow East by-election last summer. Though we had a couple of good rallies - I thought the one in Glasgow was very positive.

It is difficult to see how we break out of our electoral irrelevance. Personally I think we should be engaging our branches with campaigns at community level like the anti-schools closure activists and the work being done in Maryhill with the burgh angel. Also working alongside other left groups on the Charter- whose launch I attended earlier this year (See blog post below) and the Social Fora. None of these is a silver bullet to coin a phrase which will relaunch the left electorally but at the moment it's probably the best we can do.

The other British story was the Nazi BNP gaining two seats in the North West of England and Yorkshire. In fact their national vote went up by 1.3% much less than the Greens who went up by 2.4%. Griffin and the other guy actually got less votes than in 2004 but because of Nulab's collapse and the low turnout they sneaked in.

The Nazi vote in Scotland was up by 0.8 - a bit less than England (although in Wales it went up 2.5%!) . Which is worrying particularly given the left's vote but they are still on the margins - given the blanket media coverage they got they probably wanted more.
I hate to think what they'll do with the resources from the Euro parliament though. Good to see Griffin get the reception he deserved at Parliament.

A bit of a messy result then.

PCS Hustings - Thursday May 28th

2009-05-31T14:27:00.000-07:00

Back to a more traditional hustings on the Thursday organised by the PCS trade union in Edinburgh. Colin was doing the tv debate so I came through for it. There were 10 candidates ! So each of us got 2 mins to speak and the questions came from the floor. Because of responses we only managed to get 4 or 5 questions in the time we had. So a lot less inclusive than the Wednesday one.

And pretty shockingly every candidate was male. The Labour and Green guys were the same ones as the night before. Surprisingly, I thought, UKIP were invited. Their candidate was outrageously right wing but he mumbled quite a lot so I dont think people picked up on what he was saying. He started his speech claiming to be a climate change denier, thought the BNP should have a platform and that Griffin's Nazis were "too left wing"! because they stood for troops out of Iraq, scrapping Council Tax etc. I was sitting quite near him so I heard it all dont think the audience did!

Tommy Sheridan was there for no2eu - he's the second on their list. I thought his opening speech seemed pretty stilted as he was referring to a lot of detailed legislation -European directives from 1989 for example! He got into a bit of flow later on during the questions but only when he moved away from focusing on the EU and went into general propaganda. It shows the limits of the narrowness of the no2eu agenda though. He had quite a few supporters in the audience maybe about a dozen who were looking for some rousing stuff but they didnt really get it. He was referring quite heavily to a CWI journal Socialism Today in front of him for the detail.

Jim McDaid from Scargill's Socialist Labour Party was there he did the withdrawal from EU from a left wing perspective bit much more fluently. Mind you they have been arguing that since they were formed in 1995 and Scargill has been arguing that since 1975!
Again showed the tragedy of having such a splintered left in this election.
Questions focused on privatisation, pensions, public sector pay and the BNP (which doesnt begin with P!). I managed to bring my own experience in working in a new uni and of course the battle against INTO.

New Labour guy got a bit of a hard time though he answered the question on no platform for the BNP quite well. He left at the same time as me and said he couldnt believe the hostility of the left to New Labour! Where had he been for the last 12 years I wondered. Well the answer is not here - he works in Brussels for the EU and lives in Sweden a lot. You can tell he was a bit of an outsider to the battles of Scottish politics. He thought the Tories would win the next election and then people would regret attacking Labour.

Friday morning and did a photo shoot for the STUC against the BNP - most of the parties were there :us, Greens, Liberal, NuLabour, Tories and the SNP. It was the big names that were there for most of the parties apart from the Tories and of course the SSP :-). Rikki R came along and took some photies one of which is on here.
Last week of campaign beckons...

World Development Movement Hustings - Wed 27th

2009-05-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night saw me attend the hustings organised by the Glasgow World Development Movement Hustings in the West End. It was around their trade justice campaign , they want all the MEPs and potential candidate to sign a pledge to stop European institutions tying poorer countries into unfair trade deals.

It was a different format - each candidate spoke for 3 minutes then each one sat at a separate table with tea and cake! and people could move from table to table and quiz the candidates. It allowed people more time for one on one discussions I guess and didnt allow the candidates to confront each other in a top table structure.

The other parties that were there were the 4 establishment ones - Nulabour, Tories, SNP and the Libs. The others represented were us, the Greens and No2EU - the formation called by Bob Crow of the RMT and backed by Solidarity and the Morning Star Communists up in Scotland.

Only ourselves, the Greens, Labour and the Tories sent actual Euro candidates. Most of the introductory speeches were fairly inoccuous. The Labour Candidate was a Euro apparatchik Paul McAleavey who actually works for the European Commission bureaucracy. The Tory was 2nd on their list Belinda Don who was a very "Dave" Cameron candidate: very approachable and posh and believe it or not the first candidate to mention the crisis facing the environment and the only one of the establishment candidates (I hadnt spoken and the Greens hadnt mentioned it at all!) I mention those 2 because they were the only ones that didnt sign the Trade Justice Pledge at the end.

The Liberal was Elspeth Atwooll who is standing down as MEP this year - She taught me at Glasgow Uni and she is very nice sort of Old School Liberal I get on quite well with her. The Nat was Patrick who works for Jamie Hepburn in the Scottish Parliament, the green was Alastair Whitelaw who is on their list been around for ages and was wearing a nice pair of green slacks! The no 2EU rep was Ian McInnes who I know quite well he is a Govanhill community activist and had been dropped into doing the hustings at last minute. They are all pretty good guys so couldnt get much snarling done there :-)

I spoke last was the only one that mentioned expenses in the opening speeches surprisingly said I was disappointed that they had supplied coffee and cake because I wouldnt be able to stick in a claim for high tea at the Grosvenor Hilton!

Then I took my table -see photo at top!

The idea was that people could go from table to table to question the candidates and the WDM guys sort of facilitated it and raised their issues of trade justice between the EU and other countries, lack of democracy in the negotiations and the ignoring of factors like sustainability for poorer countries.

It was good in the sense that people got a fair say and it was more interactive- everyone got to speak that wanted to. I learned a bit at it as well. People raised issues on Africa, economic growth, the lack of democracy within the EU.
One older guy said he was a socialist and enjoyed my speech but what society needed was a "meltdown" before it could happen. Another woman was an ex-journalist who is carrying out a campaign against the building of a new Coalfired power station at Hunterston by Danish company DONG which would put all CO2 targets out the window - I hadnt heard about that. I would say the bigger parties probably had more people going to speak to them - maybe that wanted to have a go at them or maybe because they have a better chance of being elected.

Anyway Steve Rolfe from WDM concluded it and me, the Liberals, SNP, Greens and no 2 eu signed the pledge. Unbelievably or rather believably the two Big business parties didnt sign it. Shows how much New Labour have changed and how little (apart from posh appearances)the Cameron Tories have.

WDM seem quite a campaigning body - will look out for stuff they do.

SSP Euro Election Rally

2009-05-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

The SSP European Election Rally in Glasgow went well last nite. Around 60 attended. There were speakers from Save Our Schools - the Glasgow campaign - Donna and Jacqui from Wyndford and Billy from Bellahouston. They brought a taste of real community campaigning - outlining the numerous activities they have all taken part in since the January announcement of the school closures by New Labour. Also the unrelenting anger that has been unleashed. They plan to stand at every polling station they can on the day of the Euro elections telling people not to vote Labour!
We also had music interspersed through the evening with acoustic sets(!) from Kevin and Pauline. Good to hear a Beautiful South track from Kevin and Pauline sang a song I'd never heard about the Liverpool Dockers' struggle in 1995 which was excellent.
I addressed the masses with some stuff - think it may be appearing online video somewhere so god help us all - incorporating phrase to condemn neo-liberal capitalism and greedy politicians :"We can do what we want". Also updated on police/BBC/BNP action.
We were lucky to have comrade Joachim over from France and the new Anti-Capitalist Party which is a sort of united left party like the SSP seeks to be. Although it was difficult for him with an interpreter (Johanna another candidate who did brill job) he got some important points across. He's from Mulhouse in Eastern France and part of the movement of workers who have literally locked up their bosses to explain their hardship!This is taking place in the midst of massive strikes and protests against Sarkozy. The party should do well with this background but they are just new and trying to build for the future.

Onto a hustings tonite (note the sacrifice as this is corresponding with the European Cup Final, Go Barca!)Speech now on line in 3 parts! First bit here, and Parts 2 and 3 linked

Classy PPB - Make Greed History!

2009-05-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

Good stuff from Tam Dean Burn on why you should vote for the SSP on June 4th and fight for a better world!

Cuddly capitalism?

2009-05-21T02:07:00.000-07:00

Review of BBC Business guy Robert Peston's book: Who Runs Britain?

Very readable and full of jaw dropping statistics on New Labour's obsession with the super wealthy and their lifestyles which is likely to bring them down. Particularly good are the chapters on private equity, pensions and the peerage scandal.

There are problems with work however - it doesnt really feel like a whole book more a collection of writings - which it is not sold as. The chapter on Marks and Spencer for example doesnt even follow the same structure as the rest and repeats points made in other parts of the book. The conclusion is also contradictory which strikes at another flaw - Robert Peston's ambiguity.

Some of his writing condemns the wealthy with also harbouring a large amount of admiration for them. He condemns pension schemes for not following private equity in taking huge risks - surely if they had done this we'd all be in even biggertrouble than we currently are. His support for Post Office privatisation in the current climate is also faintly bizarre.

His political position reminds me a bit of Brian Gould in the 80s Labour Party - remember him! A moderniser at the time calling for popular capitalism in 1987 booed at conference etc but by the time Smith was dragging Labour to its neo-Liberal position Gould ended up on the left of sorts! I think he stood against Smith in 1992. Essentially a lover of the exploitative system of capitalism but not its excesses.
Having said that a good guide to the current crisis - not completely thorough though - it was published in the midst of it and that does come across

2 weeks to go

2009-05-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

European elections beckon in 15 days and the political class is in meltdown over the expenses crisis. May be some interesting results - meanwhile here is the SSP Politbureau in action :-)

Vote SSP in Euro election - Make Greed History!

2009-05-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

My minor play to start a cult of personality! Topical though I mention climate change and the climate changes during my talk!

Pimp - Iceberg Slim Review

2009-05-05T02:17:00.001-07:00

Review of Iceberg Slim's semi-biographical work 1967: Pimp

Relentless from the first disturbing page to the jailhouse revelation Slim gets by the end.
Very well written with intelligent use of metaphor - which is just as well because a more direct application of language would make many scenes unreadable with their brutality.
One criticism may be that each chapter seems to be based around one particular brutal episode - normally involving a women. But I guess it was a way for him to structure.
It also has that problematic ambiguity of gangster rap - used a lot by Ice T named after slim. Is the misogynistic violence sexual and actual being exposed or celebrated. There were some parts where I actually didnt know.
However as the afterword from a black female writer puts it -it shows elements of African American male culture which had been ignored or idealised by some in the past.
Read it in very nicely laid out new edition with foreword from Irvie Welsh and you can see the influence with a number of scenes seeming to be lifted directly into his work.
Shocking but readable.

Dark is the day?

2009-05-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

Review of SFA's new work published in Scottish Socialist voice May 1st 2009.

Although it is 13 years since their debut album, Fuzzy Logic, Super Furry Animals are still something of an overlooked gem on the music scene. They also are the only group to appear in the NME reading the seminal Scottish socialist work Imagine, apart from the Pussycat Dolls. That last part was a joke!
Their current album Dark Days/Light Years was revealed with an online concert playing it in full a few weeks ago. For me, in our climate-ly changing world it is already the sound of the (premature) summer.
The last Super Furries’ work Hey Venus was a concept album about a young girl running away to the big city. Although containing a couple of cracking pop songs it was fairly short and had a slight feel to it. Dark Days, however, is a massive smorgasbord of tunes with literally something for everything: glam rock, heavy metal samples and disco all make an appearance.
One of the skills that SFA have showed over their nine albums is using all of pop music’s heritage but presenting in a way that is relentlessly current and original. Partially this is down to Gruff Rhys’ lyrics – sample song titles “The Very Best of Neil Diamond” and “Moped Eyes”.
The musical diversity is reflected in the album’s dialectical title – although there is a happy upbeat feel to many of the tracks they are placed in the context of the “dark days” that the planet is currently experiencing. For example the jumpy song “Inaugural Trams” salutes the wonders of an integrated public transport system (yes really) whilst recognising currently such a thing is unlikely, utopian even. Rhys has also said it is a salute to technology: “It’s a celebration of living with science rather than religion”. It also has a real Kraftwerk vibe, to the extent that a member of Franz Ferdinand raps in German throughout it.
There is a degree of retrospection to this work too there are two lengthy electronic soundscapes – which have a techno feel to them. They are a bit softer than some of the Super Furries earlier dance material but are quite stunning and in “Cardiff in the Sun” they have created a beautiful piece of music. There is also a nod to their Welsh roots, having once released an album of entirely Welsh tracks, with “Lliwiau Llachar” meaning Bright Colours.
Personally I think the stand out is “Mt” which is an inspirational celebration of human society – if you only seek out one track make it this one.
An excellent soundtrack for life at the moment then and the funny thing is the Super Furries make it seem so effortless .
Nick McKerrell

RIP - JgB

2009-04-20T00:53:00.001-07:00

A sad day - goodbye JG Ballard..

Justice for the 96

2009-04-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

The Monday after Hillsborough John Peel played this with tears running down his face as first song on show - according to Nicky Campbell

Rushing to Paradise

2009-04-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

Review of Ballard novel from 1994 - picked up in second hand shop late last year. Not heard of it before - review probably explains why.

A difficult one. A sort of inbetweener for Ballard by his autobiographical work and his last 4 hyper-realist books set in the decaying modern world.

Of course brilliantly written and strong/memorable characters - also a good sense of location in the South Pacific. which at the time of writing in the mid 90s was the centre of dispute with Chirac resuming nuclear testing.
A project to supposedly liberate an island from the French Army and to allow the albatross to return collapses with hellish consequences.

I think it loses its way a bit with its discussion of women taking over society. Arguably sexist particularly with its portrayal of Dr Barbara. Notably in his later works his charismatic bad leading figures are all male. It also has a number of pretty disturbing scenes.

Not sure if it is meant to be an allegory but probably bites off more than he can chew which is quite surprising for JGB, on the whole misfiring

The beautiful occupations

2009-04-07T09:20:00.000-07:00

2 schools in occupation in opposition to Glasgow NU Labour Council cuts - brilliant stuff. Spread the word

Gordon Brown as overenthusiastic SW member - discuss!

2009-04-07T00:42:00.000-07:00

Looking at the coverage at the recent G20 meeting over the last week I sensed a certain desperation about G Brown. Firstly he built the meeting up ridiculously from what was a run of the mill summit. In the words of the FT

"Finally, it is most interesting that the G20 emerged as the crucial global economic forum. This is quite a transformation. It started as a forum for finance ministers and central bankers to discuss technical arcana. Five years ago, when the G20 convened in the small Mexican city of Morelia, it was not even the biggest act in town. Hotel space in the city was instead hogged by a convention of Harley-Davidson owners, and there was not a protester in sight".

Such was his hyperbole he almost caused capitalism to splinter between European and American interests. Then he overhyped the results stating $1 trillion had been injected even though most of it had already been pledged.

It reminded me of standard SW behaviour - totally exaggerate the importance of an upcoming demo (normally in London). Annoy everyone by focussing on it to the detriment of everything else. Then when the demo is a bit of a damp squib give a completely upbeat report of it playing with the attendance numbers a wee bit! I know Brown was once on the left neolithic ages ago but was he grounded in this school I think we should be told!

I'll Protect you for the Hooded claw

2009-03-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

As the economic crisis maintains its momentum despite the stock exchange displaying its usual bi-polar elements, there are worried glances by the neo-liberals as regards the p-word: Protectionism. This is anathema to the globalisation disciples like Brown, Blair etc yet although all the leaders are protesting against the possibility of bringing back national barriers there are several straws in the wind that shows the big capitalist powers are drawing up their drawbridges.

Sakorzy in France is trying to woo car business back from Slovenia - fellow EU member. As discussed below China have killed off the Coke deal: dead in the sugary water. American Congress puts Buy American steel clause in new public building projects. Oz politicians campaigning against the Chinese state owned metal company buying a huge stake of Rio Tinto mines. Even Britain which under Nulabour was arguably the most globalised part of the global economy - literally everything was for sale- hence why belief that Britain will suffer more than most other countries in recession is urging Banks to lend to domestic customers hence negating foreign investment.

Its all little bits and bobs just now but could mount up particuarly if populist politicians take up the mantle - sadly more likely than the left at the moment given the general weakness of socialism internationally.

In truth free trade was always a bit of a myth - witness the continual failure of the WTO talks but the shift is still significant, particularly ideologically.

In other news Hungary latest to lose PM cos of IMF austerity and Serbia need to go back for more cash with conditions.

2 American Tourists.

2009-03-13T03:57:00.000-07:00

I finally saw the new Woody Allen flick - Vicky Christina Barcelona which surprisingly (well to me) was still on at Cineworld. Reviews had said it was the best WA for years which wasnt saying much but it was pretty shallow.

I really enjoyed it the acting was uniformly strong with Rebecca Hall who played Vicky who I had never seen before and Penelope Cruz very good. The setting of Barcelona also did not distract as London did in the last few pretty shoddy films that Woody Allen made.

In part I think this is because it was made clear this is a visitor's movie. It begins and ends in an airport, takes place over a summer and the use of Spanish is at a minimum - in fact this becomes a bit of a running joke between Bardem and Cruz.

I also dont think it's shallow although there are many cliches - the tempestuous artist, the two friends with opposite views of love and life it actually explores many themes. The nature of love and security, what value we put on art and music and the role of Americans abroad. There are no real answers in a sense the ending recalls Manhattan.

Also I think it dispels the idea that Allen has Scarlett J as some sort of muse who he puts on a pedestal. She is portrayed here as a pretty weak and superficial young woman - which she plays excellently - not really an object of desire.

It's also funny which is an advantage. Bardem has some very sleazy chat up lines "What colour are your eyes?".

A partial return for Mr Allen then.

Have a Coke and a smile...

2009-03-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

Viz the terrible adverts with insipid pop starlet Duffy with her extolling the virtues of sugary water based drinks. Mind you the corporate evil that Coca Cola represent are admittedly less annoying than those bloody Lenny Henry ones for Travel Inn "I've found something small time - the price!".

Anyway discovered in FT that Coke want to buy the biggest indigenous Chinese soft drink company the China Huiyan Juice group. It would be the biggest corporate take over in Chinese history - big business tends to just use Chinese capitalism as a staging post at the moment. Could be a significant test of the threat of protectionism which Brown has being waxing lyrical about in states.

It already is the 3rd biggest market for Coke in the world but that seems mainly down to population as their pc consumption is only about a third of global average. So the West want to introduce China to the wonders of tooth decay and obesity and of course Duffy!

Bizarre quote though re the biggest "research and development Coke centre in Asia" based in Shanghai- what the hell can you research about Coke! Its fizzy and sweet?

The Fall-en

2009-03-05T15:24:00.000-08:00

Finished Xmas pressie book by Guardian journo on tracking down ex-members of the Fall.

Review below:

I enjoyed some of this book - it is a good idea, gives some cracking anecdotes and quotes about MES through the years and is a good accompaniment to appreciating the different eras of the Fall. The way Smith alternately bullies and nurtures different mostly young talent is quite intriguing.
Yet it is flawed - it is a bit circular in its analysis and offers no real conclusions to MES' modus operandi. It also seems very unwilling to concede on whether he is an alcoholic or not. That wouldnt be so bad in and of itself - the bigger problem is the invasive voice of the writer.
At time he looks like he wants to be writing one of those Andrew Collins/Stewart Maconie type books about his upbringing in the North. This feels bolted on and distracts from the main theme.
The worst bit though is towards the end where he outlines the breakup with his long-term partner. This is self-indulgent tosh - I would love to know what his ex feels about him using a book about the Fall to have a go at her and her new partner! The writer also has throw away line about how he was thrown out of school for bullying as if this were the norm. So good content but pretty unlikeable writer by the end - which ironically could confirm MES' attitudes to artists/musicians.

Resistance or representaion?

2009-03-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

On Saturday afternoon I was back at the Caley for the launch of Scottish LRC and people's charter. Report:

The launch of the Scottish Labour Representation Committee saw an audience of around 30 being addressed by John McDonnell MP, Rozanne Foyer full time official with UNITE and Vince Mills - the secretary of the Campaign for Socialism (a left group in Scottish Labour). It was chaired by Kevin Lindsay of ASLEF. There were also a couple of MSPs in the audience - Bill Butler and Elaine Smith.

As well as consolidating the launch of the LRC which has operated at a British level for the last couple of years it was to launch the People's Charter in Scotland. A document that had been drawn up by two lawyers! including Imran Khan following meetings of left groups down south. The idea is to get a million signatures which I guess would be a hundred thousand in Scotland. I say I guess because the meeting fell down a little bit on concrete proposals which Ill come back to.

There was no clear message from the top table - which is the format in which the meeting went. Indeed some of the tensions of the LRC were inherent. Rozanne spoke explicitly of it being a vehicle to reclaim the Labour Party although she did also say that the broader "Labour movement" she was also very positive about the new broad left formation in UNITE which had its founding conference last weekend. Vince however spoke on the Charter and spoke of it being part of a radical coalition for change which would involve other parties and individuals. Indeed he stated the Labour left in Scotland is not strong enough to put the charter into practice. He also stated that the left in Scotland was currently very weak and divided and this could be used to coalesce a movement to reignite that in Scotland. This sort of confirmed Vince's approach that he thinks the Scottish LRC should be not only open to Labour members and parties that dont stand against Labour.

John McDonnell who spoke in quite an open way allowing interruptions and discussions did state the question was not one of representation but resistance. This is a movement I think from when I last saw him speak when he was more open to the idea of left regroupment in a political sense. But at base I would probably agree with him in Scotland (and probably England& Wales) because the left is weaker I dont think any group can claim the hegemony of being the main organisation and thus impose its own programme. If the SSP was at its strength of 2003 then we would clearly be the beacon for this with our programme of building a broad pluralist Scottish socialist party outside the Labour Party, if the left in the SNP were strong they would be the focal point, ditto Left in Labour. But none of this is true so joint activity around these sort of demands I think is positive and may lead in the direction of a new left formation in Scotland - but to be honest that seems a long way away at the moment.

The floor discussion was also reflective of this contradictory position. It was frustrating that 4 of the speakers from the floor were from the SWP but not one of them identified themselves as such Dave Sherry was a trade unionist, Keir McKechnie from Stop the War, Margaret Woods from Campaign to Welcome Refugees and Unite against Racism. Ridiculous really they must have about 80 years of SWP activity between them. Perhaps they think they can get multiple representation on any campaign if they have many different hats. They deflected any serious discussion on strategy and tactics because they just came up with usual bland pronouncements specifically on the British jobs for british workers thing. And they adopted usual patronisng approach - the campaign should call a demo on about a million different things.

Socialist Appeal had a group of 4 there - mostly thru from Edinburgh - they adopted a sectarian approach - it wasn't a transitional programme, didnt mention the need for workers' control or the taking over of the commanding heights of the eceonomy. Very CWI-ish I thought - unsurprising given the political tradition which at one time also included me!

Simon Steel spoke from the CPB and they were positive -seeing it as a plan for action in housing schemes. As did Gregor who echoed these problems.

John Milligan for the RMT spoke quite negatively about the left in Scotland - although he didnt explicitly have a go at the SSP that was implied point I thought and John McD for believing the Labour party could be reclaimed. To be fair though that wasnt really John McD's position at least at this rally. He also spoke about some Socialist Forums that have been taking place in Lanarkshire.

Liam spoke very well about the context of the crisis of capitalism and the environment and how we are running out of time for a socialist solution. This was more frustrating given the weakness of the left across Scotland including the SSP and that campaigns like this were needed to bring these together. A lot of people came up to speak to him at end to say they agreed with it - including Bill Butler!
Solidarity werent there -though Gordon Morgan came to social event after.

So meeting came to quite abrupt end with no clear direction as to what to do next. The format and the dominance of lengthy SW contributions from floor did not allow itself for that. I think a good initiative would be to have a more interactive set up like a Socialist Forum to decide how we campaign on the Charter. Another criticism would be the lack of any real Scottish dimension - the SNP government werent mentioned once for example let alone independence or inviting lefts in the SNP to other. I dont think that should be in charter because it would essentially kill it dead as a broad campaigning tool.

So a mixed bag but on the whole a positive move - it may not progress much under the weight of its own contradictions but I think the SSP should participate in this as much as we can.

As obsolete as...?

2009-02-26T14:42:00.000-08:00

Doing my usual reading of my paper from the back business pages first - it's the only way to really understand the world - I came across a small bit about the way the economic crisis has hit Eastern Europe who were already up to their eyes in debt badly.

Our old friends the IMF as outlined in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine have got their claws into Hungary and Latvia and are eyeing up Serbia, Agencies are giving Latvia a junk rating for credit which is almost unheard of for a country. My pals Wullie and Jo were recently there and said that heavily armed cops were very visible. No wonder - there were riots in January not really reported anywhere but see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6TNr1OVVrA

This has resulted in the PM resigning last week - surprisingly because the IMF told him to cut public expenditure and raise taxes. The IMF are still circling though so whoever wins an election if it is called expect them to be told what policies they have to implement whatever their policies were.

And yes I know that the photo is EMF but in my defence it is unbelievable....

Too late....too late

2009-02-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

Attended a local meeting in the Hill about the plans to close Victoria Primary and Nursery as part of the latest massacre of public services by Glasgow City Council.

It was nominally a "consultation" - with powerpoint-armed officials explaining how closing a school splitting it between two other schools - disrupting education and increasing class sizes will actually improve the kids' education.

The room was packed and really representative of Govanhill I thought - a buzz of kids and different communities - interpreters had been employed for the Eastern European families and some of the Asian ones. There was a semi-respectful silence for the presentation carried out by an official who used to be a primary school head teacher - you could definitely tell! But even then there were muffled jeers at some of the more outlandish claims.

The open session was excellent - mothers and grandmothers mostly who knew all the counter arguments to blow the officials away also peppered with genuine anger and

disbelief that the wee building that they were sitting in may no longer be there in 6 months time. They also held their own when the officials started talking over them and countered.

There was a bit of politicking - a new SNP MSP spoke Ann something she got the seat when Bashir Mann died - not bad points but a bit crude in promoting her own party I thought. Danny the local Green councillor spoke very well and got the best reception for non-parent: pointing out this was a Labour Party scheme not some neutral education plan. Denied vociferously of course

The anger kept mounting and the articulate arguments kept coming from the floor so the ex-headie stopped the meeting. Then as people were getting up to leave some old guy got up to say he wanted the last word. It was one of the local labour hack councillors! Not a front ! He got completely shouted down and couldnt get any of his attack out at all. You're too late, too late the parents shouted at him. Brilliant.

Next stages for the campaign will be critical as the facade of consultation is gone through. A city wide response is vital - but I think what happens in Govanhill will be essential for success.

L-Idyll: the brutal truth.

2009-02-22T13:14:00.000-08:00

A relatively late trip to supermarket for weekly shop. Bit down cos of end to good weekend and numerous domestic and work tasks mounting up. But a chat with the woman on the check out gave a big dose of perspective and showed how hellish this economic crisis is getting.

My local supermarket Somerfield was bought out last summer by the Coop. So it has been known that our place is going to go and replace by Lidl who must have bought the site in G hill.

So staff have been worried a lot as my weekly chats has shown. If they would be kept on what the transition would be etc.

The checkout worker told me that at a meeting on Friday Lidl announced that the the building would shut for 6 months from March 7th and all staff would lose their jobs. Although 100 work there Lidl only plan to have 15 staff who would multi-task. They also have to sort out their own tax and insurance - essentially be self employed. No sick pay or paid holiday entitlement. Absolutely outrageous and shows how capital is using the crisis to carry out a lot of excesses.

You can sense the despair in the shop and the shelves are almost bare - no new stock being delivered a la Woolies and Zaavi. My worries over the renegotiation of my weekly shopping ritual is nothing compared to the shock facing 100 low paid shop workers. Grim grim grim....

20th century composers...honest!

2009-02-22T13:03:00.000-08:00

Finished reading the massive footnoted work that I began in early January - an education in many ways but some flaws. The Rest is Noise see blog and pic - tells the story of 20th century classical music in historical context or vice versa. Made me listen to some cracking music that I wouldnt have done otherwise. Bit musicological in places but not 2 much. Also discovered Moz and Shostakovich link!

See my review below - from Fbook.

A muscular tome - absolutely thorough in its discussion of 20th century classical music. Very enthusiastic in places which rubs off - You tube has taken a pounding with me listening to stuff . He has introduced me to material I would never have heard.
The historical context is also excellent for the most part although the write seems quite hostile to the left which means that there is a weakness to some of the analysis of the whole number of composers who were influenced in this way.
It takes a long time to get through but is a very fulfilling and worthwhile read. Criticisms would be it tends perhaps inevitably to focus on the States. British classical music which I saw 3 hours of documentary on is only told through the prism of Britten in one chapter.
I think it also gets a little rushed in the last couple of chapters - it means you dont have the luxury of examining the history or appreciating the music just a whistle stop thru a number of composers. But a good project to embark upon.

Let them eat pizza

2009-02-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

Significant piece in papers yesterday regarding general economic collapse. Hailing the creation of 1500 jobs by Domino's Pizza while all other sectors are massacred. We thmay all have no money or rather no access to credit anymore but we still cant do without our heavily topped melted cheese snacks.

The context seems to be that the British service economy may weather the storm more than other places in the world. Dont follow the logic given that the NuLabour ethos has been to worship the financial services economy at all costs. That is what has collapsed.

It's ironic that Britain and the States have buggered up the rest of the world's capitalist economies that actually produce things - like Japan and Germany. Our drunken credit fuelled boom has been able to buy flat screen tvs ipods and mobiles ten to the dozen. Now all the money's gone as Babylon Zoo put it in their less successful second single the crisis of overproduction is there for all to see. No wonder the Japanese Finance Sec was apparently steaming at a press conference - he has now resigned!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg7zm3O4PgE

On the first article I linked to what a terrible conclusion it makes - typical of the patchy analysis of economic commentators who have been mostly caught completely unawares over the last year. Anyway Im off to watch new Moz dvd.

Consequences of boring football

2009-02-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

Zero squared bore draw with Old Firm yesterday. Two shots on target or something like that. Needless to say the chat and company were exponentially more interesting.

This led to some non-football related topics such as the worst film you have ever gone to see on a date. Mine is to the side - the hilarious story of Tom Hanks and his police dog side kick that slavers a lot and um.. that's it.

Bad date in lot of other ways though and I was 19!

In other news it seems pound shops are ruling the roost on the high st!

Demo time

2009-02-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

Went to save our schools demo in city centre yesterday. Pretty good about 1000 people there and most of the areas represented. Important because a traditional tactic of Labour councils is to pick one area off against each other and play a sort of Dutch auction.

It is getting pretty clear though that the schools may have to prepare for occupations - interesting to see if that takes off. Has not in the past but we shall see.

Lots of speakers at demo including celebrities who signed autographs for the kids for hours! Nice.

SNP backtrack

2009-02-13T01:04:00.000-08:00

This week saw the first major uturn of the SNP government - they wont scrap the council tax or even present an Act on it in this Parliament.

It's strange stuff given the tactical advantage they would have gained if they had been defeated by Labour and the Tories. Maybe its a post - budget deal so they could win the vote last week. Maybe the rich backers like

man above pulled some strings.

Possibly it was to do with the flat tax element where everyone would pay the same rate if not the same charge which would have substantially cut council budgets.

Anyway it's a gift for the Unionist parties and I think is going to make the referendum bill even more tricky. Given one of the reasons that they stated they were withdrawing the proposal was that there is no majority in the Parliament for it.

I wrote a piece on the contradictions and problems of the SNP government at the end of last year it's here.