Embers by Sandor Marai

I have just finished reading Embers by Sandor Marai.

It is a complex book with two possible interpretations to every event related by the narrator - the narrator's interpretation and an alternative.

I was puzzled for a while by the apparent murder attempt in the forest, until I realised that the person we are told was pointing the gun at the narrator (who had his back to him) was actually planning to kill himself.

And at the end of the novel the friend of the narrator is too kind to tell the narrator that he has ruined his life through jumping to conclusions and leaves him in his ignorance.

Stylistically it is very beautiful, although as a translation this must be due to Carol Brown Janeway.

Naturally true obedience required a deeper commitment than that prescribed by laws.  Obedience had to be rooted in the heart: that was what really counted.  People had to be certain everything was in its place.

There is no feeling sadder or more hopeless than the cooling of a friendship between two men.

Self-respect is the irreplaceable foundation of our humanity; wound it, and the hurt, the damage, is so scalding that not even death can ease the torture.

The Establishment by Owen Jones - 2

One of the first things I did when I received a copy of The Establishment by Owen Jones was to turn to the Index and look up "immigration".  As post-war immigration has been an immense social change (perhaps the biggest social change in modern times) which has occurred without the agreement of the majority of ordinary people one might suppose that a book on the Establishment might help to reveal who in the elite has effected this influx of millions of foreigners, and given them rights of settlement and rights to vote and rights to claim welfare benefits.  At last, I thought, we might get to the truth on this issue.

Unfortunately, there are only seven references to immigration in the Index.

All of them relate to immigrants as a target of "bigotry" and how they are unrepresented in the nation's institutions, particularly Parliament.

Despite referring many times to the 1950s, there is no analysis in The Establishment on how the Establishment (whether through incompetence or deliberate act) effected the entry of millions of immigrants without anyone ever voting on the issue.

This rather indicates that The Establishment is going to be an intellectually dishonest book.

From the Index I turned to the Acknowledgements where the author lists all the people who helped him during the course of writing the book.  Thirty-three people are listed.  As far as I can tell only one of these (Mehdi Hasan) is a BME person. 

Which rather suggests that there has been institutional bigotry in the production and editing of this book.


The Establishment by Owen Jones - 1 http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-establishment-by-owen-jones.html
 

The Establishment by Owen Jones - 1

Prominent on the front cover of The Establishment by Owen Jones is a quote by celebrity Russell Brand.

"Our generation's Orwell" Mr Brand proclaims.

For those of use who find Russell Brand distasteful, such an endorsement makes handling the book problematic.  It somehow makes the book feel dirty (Russell Brand is a celebrity womaniser, and possibly the "dirty" reaction is a subliminal feeling that a person who excessively sleeps around probably has venereal disease - unjust perhaps, but one cannot help one's reflex prejudices).  The solution is to remove the cover.

What however are we to make of the comparison with George Orwell?  This may just be publisher's blurb composed more or less at random, in which case the Brand quote might as well have been "Our generation's Shakespeare" or "Our generation's Barbara Cartland".  But assuming it was meant sincerely one must ask whether it is true.


Owen Jones is a good and competent writer, but he is not in the same category as George Orwell.  His writing is seldom emotionally moving.  He is too partisan for his work to achieve the humanity and universality of the Orwell oeuvre.

Nor has he written any fiction (we can ignore the critics who condemn his ideas as fantasy) and without substantial examples of fictional writing the comparison with Orwell is absurd.

Nor does he achieve Orwell status on the basis of being a left-wing writer expressing his life experiences.  Being raised in a comfy middle class family in Stockport and living in rented accommodation in London does not equate to Down and Out in Paris and London.  Going on an expenses-paid trip to Venezuela does not have the same committed intensity as Homage to Catalonia.  His collected articles from the Independent and the Guardian, passionate though they may be, do not add up to The Lion and the Unicorn.  Sometimes his articles (particularly those about the working class) have an echo of The Road to Wigan Pier but echoes are not enough.

If Russell Brand had said "Our generation's Tony Benn" one could perhaps agree with him.

But the comparison with George Orwell does not stand.

I doubt whether seventy or eighty years from now Tory MPs will be supporting the idea of a statue of Owen Jones outside the BBC.

Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate

I have just finished reading Twelve Bar Blues by Patrick Neate.

It is three stories in one - the experiences of a black jazz player in Louisiana in the early twentieth century; the experiences of a prostitute/jazz singer in 1990s London; the interactions among tribal figures in rural 1990s Zimbabwe.

It is an impressive novel, although it assumed a liberal outlook and a liking for jazz.

The misery sequences I thought were overdone. 

The prose style often adopted the tone of a cautionary tale - as if the book were being read aloud by Morgan Freeman. 

Patrick Neate obviously knows nothing about archaeology and failed to research even the basics.

Often his characters express a cod ideology of blackness and jazz.  As Patrick Neate is not black his projection of these ideas onto black characters is dubious.  How can Patrick Neate know what it is like to be black?

Often there is meaningless twaddle:  "The truth is that fate is both as crude and as subtle as a key change in music or the twists in a narrative.  And the truth is where you want to see it, so long as you've got enough moral energy or enough moral despair to get up and go looking."

The n-word is on every other page of this novel.  Obviously Patrick Neate is a liberal and presumably is using the n-word ironically.  But nevertheless it did seem gratuitous.

House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse

Have just finished reading House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse.

A review in the Sunday Telegraph said it was a retelling of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and with that in mind you can see all sorts of inverted parallels.

The author assumes a sympathy for Oxbridge graduates, which I'm afraid not everyone feels (I certainly don't).  And the male characters are two-dimensional.  Also the "character" of the house (gothic, brooding, conscious) never really manifests itself in a way that is tangible.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the narrator's sense of self-awareness.  At times she behaves appallingly - jealous, lustful (her head is turned when she voyeuristically sees Greg naked), petty, nerdish (the scenes at a provincial newspaper are wonderful), paranoid.  As a character she is absolutely convincing.

A Map of Tulsa by new author Benjamin Lytal

Have just finished A Map of Tulsa by new author Benjamin Lytal ( by new I mean this is his first novel).

It was full of insights that help to explain the young American outlook.

"...silence is essential to the masculine condition"

"...what are you supposed to do in life?  Are you supposed to sleep with everyone you meet?"

"...in America it's like we're always supposed to disappear - if we reach, you know, a certain level of success.  Like Elijah.  It's like, if we're valedictorian we have to get assassinated - because effectively we get up and give a speech and then we disappear to some faraway university.  All our major social institutions growing up are about building intense friendships over a limited period of time and then severing them.  High school, and then college.  And summer camp.  My parents, having completed their careers successfully, move."

The Great House by Nicole Krauss

On a day when Will Self, in a parody of Friedrich Nietzsche, proclaimed the novel to be dead I finished The Great House by Nicole Krauss.

I am never not reading a novel, just as I am never not reading a work of non-fiction.  Often I read several works of fiction and non-fiction at once.  I find the serendipity of moving from one book to another gives unexpected insights and connections.

However I did not enjoy reading The Great House (the title is an allusion to the temple in Jerusalem).

This book had been lavishly praised by reviewers and yet I found it to be incoherent.  As a collection of short stories it might have worked.  But as a narrative it was full of meandering paths, perplexing cul de sacs, irritating non sequiturs.

It doesn't even work on the composite level of The Yellow Rolls Royce (an overly sentimental film in the 1960s that followed the different owners of a car).

Some of the characters are connected to a desk that passes through different owners, but others just come and go.  Who for instance were the father and son (Dov) living in Jerusalem?  What was the significance of the child Gigi in the Schloss Cloudenberg?

But the book does have many pieces of fine writing.  For instance the description of the vain motor-bike riding Adam was magnificent.  And there was a section about the way in which a physical place can be transmuted into literature that was very thought-provoking.

As for Will Self and his argument, are we really expected to believe that less people worldwide read novels now than in say 1814 or even 1914?

The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh-Fermor

Recently I finished reading The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh-Fermor, the third in his travel sequence describing his walk from London to Istanbul in the 1930s.  I have read the two previous books A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water.  The Broken Road was published posthumously from an unfinished manuscript, and has an unpolished feel - as if a beautiful veneer casing had been left of a clock so that you could see the mechanism and how it all fits together.

All the usual Leigh-Fermor elements are in the book.  Highly picaresque, he is one moment camping with peasants in a cave huddled in with their animals, the next hob-nobbing with the diplomatic elite of Bucharest.  Effortlessly he charms people - Bulgarian nationalist youths, assorted monks in Mount Athos, German-trained middle-aged chatelaines of deserted hotels.

But for me the charm no longer worked.

I first read A Time of Gifts when I was 19, the age Patrick Leigh-Fermor was when he started his walk.  It completely captivated me, and the romance and adventure of the book seemed overwhelming.  It even inspired me to make a similar journey (but by rail, and disastrously I only got as far as Munich). 

Reading The Broken Road I felt I was just listening to another posh boy who has had his path in life smoothed for him.  The money arriving at regular intervals, the letters of introduction to the highest in every land he passes through, the incredible self-confidence he displays.  And I felt that if I were to meet the 19-year-old Patrick Leigh-Fermor I would dislike him intensely.

How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston

After reading The Lie by Helen Dunmore I was encouraged to go on to read How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston (first published in 1974).

As with the Dunmore novel, the story is about two boys who grow up together although this time separated by class, religion and ethno-national identity.  The first half of the book is set in Ireland, the second half on the Western Front during the Great War.  The illicit friendship is described through scenes of naked swimming, lingering glances, risky assignations - all implying that the friendship has a dimension that is more than just ordinary.

Themes are:  the complex idea of legitimacy (both personal and ethnic); inheritance (both personal and ethno-religious); displacement of others; divided loyalties; oblique sexual-emotional non-conformancy; self-sacrifice; conflict (family conflict, class conflict, international conflict); the necessity (or perhaps I should say the inevitability) of violence; the relationship between fathers and sons (and mothers and sons).

Most impressive character is Major Glendinning:

His face went white.  He picked up his cane from the table and walked over to me.  He drew back his arm.  I knew what was coming.  The cane struck me on the right cheek, just below the eye.

"I dislike physical violence as much as you do, but there are some people who will not listen to reason."

"Where did you learn to be so evil?"

"The world taught me.  It has taken many centuries to build the society in which we live.  It would be a poor thing if a handful of emotionalists were allowed to destroy it."

The Lie by Helen Dunmore

Have just finished reading The Lie by Helen Dunmore.

The combination of a renowned author (Helen Dunmore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature) writing on the theme of the First World War seemed irresistible.

Actually Helen Dunmore is writing about the aftermath of the war, and the way soldiers were treated when they returned home.  The narrator is a young ex-soldier who goes back to the rural community he was born into and finding that he does not fit in.  His close friend (heavy hints that that were more than close friends, although on a platonic level) had died in horrific circumstances in No Man's Land, and appears to him as a ghost/tangible memory.

Lots of ideas are explored in the novel:  the persistent nature of grief; the experience of people living on the margins (literally on the margin in this case, scraping a living from a tiny patch of land); the moral right of same sex partners to inherit money and position; the tension between doing what is right (in terms of a dying woman's last wishes) and doing what the law obliges; the intolerance of small communities; the impossibility of bringing the past back to life.

The Watchers by Stephen Alford

Have just finished reading The Watchers by Stephen Alford (Professor of Early Modern British History at the University of Leeds).

It is an academic study of espionage in the reign of Elizabeth I.

It is a dense book, and written for an academic audience, but worth persisting with (I read it at a rate of ten pages a day, which was just enough to stop my head from spinning).

We are used to thinking of the first Elizabethan Age as a golden period of expansion, innovation and dazzling culture (literary, in the visual arts, architecture etc).

This book reveals how threatened the Elizabethan state was (by enemies within and without) and the necessity for constant vigilance to outwit the assassins, the seditions, the acts of terror.

"The weapons they used were espionage, relentless interrogation, surveillance, the suppression of dissent, robust treason law, torture and propaganda."

Which rather sounds like the situation we are in today (except for the torture bit - the British security forces are not involved in torture).

Nineteen Twenty-One by Adam Thorpe

Have just finished reading Nineteen Twenty-One by Adam Thorpe.

The narrator is a weedy intellectual Oxbridge student called up right at the end of the Great War, the war ending before he is actually posted to the trenches.  Too cowardly to reveal himself as a lefty pacifist, he is injured during basic training, and thus unintentionally acquires the status of a war combatant.  Discharged from the army he retires to a broken down cottage in the Chilterns to write what he hopes will be the defining war novel.

Except that the drafts he produces are rubbish, inauthentic and pretentious.

Realising he needs inspiration he goes on an organised tour of the battlefields, which in 1921 still have much of the detritus of war in place.  Thousands of others are also visiting the former trenches, looking for the graves of family killed in the war.  The narrator falls pathetically in love with a young woman looking for the grave of her brother, and has a sordid affair with a middle-aged German woman looking for the grave of her son.

Throughout the novel characters appear who illustrate some aspect of the First World War - a farm labourer whose genitals have gone (and drops his trousers for a fee); a Chinese worker in France who shows him the "hand of General Haig" (in a deep dugout a skeletal hand that protrudes from the mud wall); a vast ossuary filled with unknown bones and open to the public who line up, dressed in black mourning clothes, to visit what might possibly be the remains of someone they once loved.

"We've still got it in the bone, the war.  It went too deep.  It's still in there, right in there, inside.  Right in the marrow.  Even those who are getting born, now, it's in them too."

The Liquid Continent by Nicholas Woodsworth

Have just finished reading The Liquid Continent by Nicholas Woodsworth.

It is a travel book - the authors meandering journey from Alexandria to Syria to Venice to Istanbul.  It was a book I was looking forward to reading, inspired by a review in the Daily Telegraph by Stephen McClarence (the cutting dated 8th March 2008, so it has taken me a long time to get round to it).  But ultimately I found the book disappointing - perhaps no book could live up to five years of anticipation.

The premise of the book is flawed - that the Mediterranean has created a cultural affinity among the cities and ports on its shores that transcends nationalities.  This is a sort of reverse Pirenne thesis (Pirenne argued that the Mediterranean world was united until the Arab invasions of the Middle East and North Africa).  This flaw would not matter if there were not more profound let-downs in the book.

The Alexandria section is excellent, and the subsequent journey to Syria superbly uncomfortable (both physically and emotionally).  But his arrival in Venice leads to pages describing episodes that seem to have been generated by the equivalent of the local chamber of commerce - dull people on yachts, dull delivery teams, dull museum personnel.  The Instanbul section is little better - dull trips on boats, dull custodians, dull fishermen.

One suspects that the author has been very careful not to offend any of the people he has met and named, and thus we have one-dimensional portraits that are inoffensive but also very boring.

Also it is an endurance to have to read about the author's wife.  She may be beautiful and charming and intelligent.  But the author is hardly an impartial witness, so he should have left all this out.

And the chapter endings each have an irritating tease of the "little did I know what was to happen next" variety.  One or two might be relevant.  But every single chapter is a bit predictable, and one gets the impression that the author added them in after the first draft.

Anyway, I did like parts of it. 

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Have just finished reading At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill.

It is set during the First World War in southern Ireland, which I suppose is what attracted me to the novel, since fiction that deals with Ireland during the Great War is unusual.  Also the book has a tremendous reputation (perhaps not wholly deserved) with reviewers comparing the author to James Joyce.  It's long (637 pages) and often I found it rambling and confusing.

It is the story of two teenage boys (obviously) over the period of a year up to the Easter rebellion in Dublin in 1916.  It deals with issues of identity, sexuality, nationalism, religion, class and legitimacy.  The ending is tragic.

There are many beautiful lines in the book, including the (comforting) sentence:  "Are they not truly the good who, desiring evil, renounce their desires?" 

There are also shocking sentiments expressed, including the savage statement of intent about the British:  "And he'd murder every last one till they were gone of his country.  That he would.  Every last one he told MacMurrough.  And still I'll kill them.  I'll kill them for fun..."  Remember that the "British" he is referring to includes English and Scottish migrants living in Ireland for hundreds of years.  Another indication perhaps that multicultural societies always break down in the end.

An interesting essay on Ireland immediately after the Great War appeared n this week's Spectator website:  http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2013/11/when-50000-irishmen-gathered-to-commemorate-the-first-world-war/

Beaufort by Ron Leshem

Have just finished reading Beaufort by Ron Leshem.  I picked this book up on impulse, attracted by the reference to Beaufort Castle, a mysterious crusader fortress in southern Lebanon (mysterious because very few historians can get a close look at it).  It's a work of fiction, but based on real events - the experiences of a garrison of soldiers from the Israeli Defence Force.

There's actually very little about the castle in the book - the soldiers are stationed at a modern concrete fort built beside the ancient structure.  Written in the first person, the novel recounts the last months of the IDF garrison before withdrawal from southern Lebanon.  Claustrophobic, alarming, often gross.

Israel-Palestine is an issue I can never make up my mind on.  You listen to one side and it sounds utterly just and convincing, then you listen to the other side and it sounds equally just and convincing.  So you are left with the impression that both sides are in the right (which means also that both sides are in the wrong).

Beaufort the novel revealed that Israel is a state under constant attack, and pays a heavy price to maintain its security.

Conspirators by Michael Andre Bernstein

I have just finished reading Conspirators by Michael Andre Bernstein.

I really wanted to like this book, and the first pages made me hope it would an intelligent extended thriller in the style of the Mask of Demitrios.  But all too soon it degenerated into a bewilderingly complex and meandering narrative that ultimately told me nothing about central Europe on the eve of the First World War (the book is mainly set in 1913).  Too many (far, far too many) characters, and none of them especially developed.  Myriad viewpoints, so that I felt as if I was experiencing a literary equivalent of dizziness and double vision.  And much too long.  And (dare I say it) dreary.

However there were also interesting ideas and fine paragraphs.

"...longing for some great, all-transforming crisis, a moment of truth, whether for good or ill, that would smash through the suffocating trivia of their daily routines..."

"...confused versions of a single complaint:  None of us has ever felt fully alive..."

"Mass action always develops after a deed of individual sacrifice, never the other way round."

"...even among those who have the least it is prestige, not just material improvement of their condition, that motivates people."

"...people all held, hived in the cells of their bodies and the blood that coursed through them, the stored-up traits of all their ancestors."

"...the kind of public humiliation that was nearly as dangerous to the government as revolutionary violence."

Anyway, reading this book is part of an assignment I have set myself to understand more fully the First World War through the anniversaries of the next six and half years, culminating in the centenary of the Versailles Conference (I might actually go to Versailles in 2019).

I hope to visit the graves of members of my family who died in the Great War - if they have graves, they might just be listed names on a collective memorial.

And I intend to call this six year study: a deliberately triumphalist commemoration of the First World War.

Not because I am a bombastic militarist.

But because too many idealistic people died in that conflict to allow their sacrifice to be negated by the lefty miserablists who will tell us it was all for nothing (already the thinktank British Future is preparing to publish a paper on the centenary of the First World War on 18th August - and you can imagine what a lefty drear-fest that is going to be).

So here, if nowhere else, you will find genuine respect for the idea:  Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Tangier Twilight by JV Stevenson

Have just finished reading Tangier Twilight by JV Stevenson.

It's a look at the British ex-pat community in Tangier in Morocco, almost all of whom are elderly or very elderly.  I thought at first it was a travel book, but I now think it must be highly fictionalised, although perhaps based on real people.  The narrator is unreliable, and says almost nothing about himself (what was he doing in Morocco?  why did he seek out the company of such elderly people?).

The writing is excellent - beautiful descriptive passages alternating with scenes of subtle comedy.  There is no plot as such, it is a forensic and anthropological look at the ex-pats in Morocco (barely able to fund their lifestyle; nostalgic for the past; falling ill and dying).  There is a sense of Whicker Island in the book.

"The sub-tropical garden and the view of Tangier alone destroyed the illusion of being somewhere in Sussex..."

"...I considered my priorities - everyone has priorities, the things they can't do without.  Mine were: servants..."

"As we stood sipping our drinks I found myself almost trembling with anticipation at the thought of seeing again a group of people I knew hardly at all yet retained so strong an impression of."

Diane Abbott MP reviews the David Goodhart book The British Dream

On the Progress website Diane Abbott MP reviews the David Goodhart book The British Dream http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2013/05/29/the-british-dream-2/

Diane Abbott's statements are in red, my commentary is in blue:

The British Dream frequently portrays the immigrant as the taker. But there is strong evidence that migrants are net contributors to our country.


If immigration is so positive why not get democratic consent for it? It’s positive according to Ms Abbott. Therefore all that needs to happen is for Ms Abbott and her party to develop a pro-immigration policy, put it upfront in the Labour manifesto, and ask the electorate to vote for it.

many Caribbean people do well in the United States… Yet, migrants to Britain and migrants to the United States are very often brothers and sisters.

Diane Abbott overlooks the fact that the United States is a society which has broadly given democratic consent to inward migration. The United Kingdom has never given democratic consent to this (has never been formally asked, despite registering objections in every poll of opinion on the issue). Is there perhaps a connection to the acceptance of immigrants in the United States (there by democratic permission) and the rejection of immigrants in the United Kingdom (where immigration has occurred contrary to the will of the majority) ?

in a globalised world immigration is a fact of life

No it is not. Japan is an economy fully integrated into the globalised world and yet has retained control over migration. It is dishonest to say “immigration is a fact of life” as if it is just some kind of elemental force – it happens because a section of society can make money out of it.

It is worth pointing out that it is not immigration (as Goodhart insists) that causes low wages and job insecurity.

How would it be possible for wages to fall if the supply of labour was limited? As GPs have proved, if you restrict the supply of labour in a particular occupation the wages offered must rise (in the case of GPs to ridiculous levels). On the other hand nurses are in an occupation that has seen completely unrestricted inward flow of foreign migrants and their wages have become pitifully inadequate as a result.

He has clearly never read any EP Thompson.

Diane Abbott should ask Professor Starkey about EP Thompson.

So it is the job of progressives to make sure there is a firm but fair immigration system.

Absolutely Ms Abbott. Put it in your party’s manifesto with estimates of numbers and reasons why they should come here and ask the people to endorse it. Anything else is dishonest and self-defeating.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

Have just finished reading An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro.

A very thought-provoking novel full of ideas.

I liked the idea of a school of art concerned with capturing the "floating world" - the indefinable moods and atmospheres of the evening.

Also the issue of how to remain loyal to your ideals when the rest of society has taken a different direction.

Delicate obliquity of the way even members of families spoke to each other.

The most important part of the book is towards the end, when Masuji Ono and Matsuda are discussing the role of art:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masuji Ono, the main character in the book, produced the influential "China Crisis" posters:

 

 

China Crisis was a 1980s band, formed before Ishiguro wrote his novel.

But possibly they were both inspired by a common source?

Troubles by J.G. Farrell

I have just finished reading Troubles by J.G. Farrell.

The novel uses the decay and destruction of a once-great hotel as a metaphor for the ending of British rule in southern Ireland and the consequent ethnic cleansing of the Anglo-Irish population.

In style it is as if Ivy Compton-Burnett had written Gormenghast.  It is far too long, and the symbolism is laboured (although some of the symbolism is so obscure as to be mystifying).  There are no characters that are particularly attractive - even the Major is a fool and the motives for many of his actions are incomprehensible.

But within the meandering story there are many examples of good writing.

A party of left-wing students from Oxford stay at the hotel to study the Irish situation:

"...the undergraduates were delighted with Edward's outburst and were thinking: 'What a splendid old Tory! What a rare find!' The whole thing was priceless: the old ladies, the revolvers (what a shame they weren't loaded!), the decrepit palace around them - and brooding in the middle of it, John Bull! Never-say-die in person! The evening would make a rare saga when retold over beer mugs in the buttery next term. It might be entitled: 'How Maitland Put His Cherubic Head In The British Lion's Mouth... And Got It Bitten Off!' "