tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49050806028856764902024-03-18T04:04:19.907+01:00zmkcMy name is Zoë Colvin & I am increasingly baffled about everything.zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.comBlogger1827125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-90655440190897620542024-03-17T12:33:00.001+01:002024-03-17T12:33:36.526+01:00Reading 2024 - various<p>For a project I am occasionally working on, I've read, exceptionally slowly, with endless recourse to a dictionary, <i>A Princess Remembers</i>, the memoir of Eugénie Odescalchi, who was married to Baron Béla Lipthay.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDM3KVBgEa9ASJh73fHSV5MA4OA2EOKjrb-11N-t3sG6mDE3SeE7dG9R8d_l_qpN5i99LexvJWKdhUhWe_AVlg2xeD1H_BHxUM2BzKb_v3XuuCLh_TY1v-mSkpsPS8s97FMLhE1pzbvJztaLbnJYeBGNFwv5IkjxX3nbyCbi0YqlA8cX1rqBqwEJ35nyn2/s483/Screenshot%202024-03-17%20at%2012.05.14.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="348" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDM3KVBgEa9ASJh73fHSV5MA4OA2EOKjrb-11N-t3sG6mDE3SeE7dG9R8d_l_qpN5i99LexvJWKdhUhWe_AVlg2xeD1H_BHxUM2BzKb_v3XuuCLh_TY1v-mSkpsPS8s97FMLhE1pzbvJztaLbnJYeBGNFwv5IkjxX3nbyCbi0YqlA8cX1rqBqwEJ35nyn2/s320/Screenshot%202024-03-17%20at%2012.05.14.png" width="231" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Wedding picture of Baron Bela Lipthay and Princess Eugenie Odescalchi</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The princess and her family endured a great deal of hardship in the early part of the twentieth century, but - possibly because she was exceptionally sweet-natured and a devout Catholic or possibly because her memoir was published before the fall of Communism - there is not a breath of complaint in the text of the book.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZg4RfQ0hrKu65_u3ppJt1-rIxzBj7TsNk31C9IRwhxhCpa3lMGnJdHc7wNKtNP1o3UwlPYYCIF1H0LC4xBcUwWfqDW3fmJgsN4XNQNw-RbZ-xSvkQmPewUhIop2W_RBCZTm9R7ZrqpwdkughNBGNLXntmu93F8j46FIINc1h2iPpvmHSumE5OYIv6FnB/s716/Screenshot%202024-03-05%20at%2012.18.40.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="498" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZg4RfQ0hrKu65_u3ppJt1-rIxzBj7TsNk31C9IRwhxhCpa3lMGnJdHc7wNKtNP1o3UwlPYYCIF1H0LC4xBcUwWfqDW3fmJgsN4XNQNw-RbZ-xSvkQmPewUhIop2W_RBCZTm9R7ZrqpwdkughNBGNLXntmu93F8j46FIINc1h2iPpvmHSumE5OYIv6FnB/s320/Screenshot%202024-03-05%20at%2012.18.40.png" width="223" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Anthony Wilding with Bela Lipthay and his brother, when Wilding lived with the family as tutor</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For the same project, I read a book by Anthony Wilding and a book about Anthony Wilding. Both books can be found at Internet archive. The link to the biography is<a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924029810664"> here.</a> The link to the book by Wilding is <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.156037">here</a> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Each of these books gives glimpses of the world just before the First World War. Each glimpse deepens my sense that it was at the outbreak of that conflict that everything went horribly wrong. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Wilding, by the way, was a New Zealander who won Wimbledon four times, and is considered by some the world's first tennis superstar. I suspect that no tennis superstar of today would ask his friend to send the following books to give him some light reading matter while staying at the Lipthays in 1907:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Robbery Under Arms</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Browning's <i>Poems</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>The Four Georges</i> by Thackeray</div><div style="text-align: left;">Horace Walpole's <i>Letters</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Southey's <i>Life of Nelson</i> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">Carlyle's <i>Sartor Resartus</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Earl of Chatham</i> Macaulay</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Clive</i> Macaulay</div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Silas Marner</i> George Eliot </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For my own pleasure, I read AN Wilson's <i>How Can We Know. </i> I really liked it, particularly Wilson's understanding of the encounter between the rich young man and Jesus. When the rich young man goes away, after being told to sell his possessions, Wilson says that it is not Jesus but the young man who executes judgment on himself. Had the young man fallen "at the feet of Jesus and [said], 'I cannot rid my heart of its love of earthly possession. Help me to do so'", Wilson argues, that would have been fine. Instead, he chooses to walk away. "By implication, he denies not his ability to follow Christ, but Christ himself."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are also many other good things in the books, as well as some bits I found confusing. The thing I was probably most grateful to discover was this passage quoted by Wilson from Jeremy Taylor who he identifies as a 17th century divine:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Is it not enough for me to believe the words of Christ, saying, <i>This is my body?</i> And cannot I take it thankfully, and believe it heartily, and confess it joyfully; but I must pry into the secret and examine it by the rules of <i>Aristotle</i> and <i>Porphyry </i>and find out the nature and the indiscernible philosophy of the manner of its change and torment my own brains, and distract my heart, and torment my Brethren, and lose my charity, and hazard the loss of all the benefits intended to me, by the Holy Body; because I break those few words into more questions than the holy bread is into particles to be eaten?"</div><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-37473115345902183402024-03-02T15:38:00.001+01:002024-03-02T15:38:57.944+01:00Reading 2024: The Index of Self-Destructive Acts by Christopher Beha<p> On the opening page of <i>The Index of Self-Destructive Acts </i>(a baseball reference), we meet Sam Waxworth, a "young man from the provinces" newly arrived in New York. In the book's first line he asks this question:</p><p>"What makes a life - self or circumstance?"</p><p>Perhaps in part the novel is an attempt to answer the question.</p><p>Sam is a data-cruncher who has been invited to write for an established New York magazine. The year is 2009 and Sam feels he has "an opportunity at greatness" "in a place worthy of his ambitions". He believes in aggregation - "the combination of observations" (these, please note, are purely data observations) - and he wants "to test his ideas against the world".</p><p>We watch as he uses data to find himself a flat, and presumably we are supposed to be amused that Sam thinks himself brilliant for finding somewhere available and affordable that everyone else has mysteriously overlooked. The fact that the building houses a poultry warehouse, crammed with smelly caged birds might be what has put off others less addicted to data, but Sam seems oblivious.</p><p>Strolling the city, Waxworth notices a charismatic street preacher who is forecasting the world's end on 1 November. Waxworth, who has "spent a good deal of his life thinking about forecasting" makes the preacher the focus of his first piece.</p><p>Menwhile Eddie, a young veteran recently returned from Afghanistan, son of a formerly prominent, now cancelled, columnist, also encounters the preacher, saves him when he is attacked, and moves in to his apartment to take care of him. </p><p>Eddie's father, Frank Doyle, is to be the focus of a long Waxworth piece. Sam plans a hatchet job but over the course of a baseball game in Doyle's company finds that he likes him and ends up being caught up in the charm of Doyle family life.</p><p>Frank Doyle is quite unlike Sam, all emotion, no precision. "Not everything that happens can be saved in a database", he tells Sam. In the area of baseball, his great passion, he believes that some elements that affect a game cannot be defined in words.</p><p>Sam has a wife who is not joining him in New York immediately. The effect Frank Doyle's daughter Margo has on Sam when he meets her may be one of those things in wider life that cannot be put into statistical terms, let alone words. </p><p>Margo has adored her father until very recently when the behaviours that got him cancelled also led to her own disillusion with him. "Her father had taught her that engaging seriously with ideas was one of life's great pleasures". Until the moment of disillusion "she has spent so much of her life wanting to impress her father that, now she no longer cares, she doesn't know what to do."</p><p>Margo and Sam fall into a habit of wandering the city talking about poetry and looking at paintings. Margo tries to explain that poems aren't riddles, that Sam can't treat them as puzzles from which to extract a solution. </p><p>Meanwhile Margo's mother has come unstuck because of the financial crisis, which is tricky given that Frank is no longer on anyone's pay roll. Frank's fall from grace it becomes clear was precipitated by alcoholism, and as a result he is unaware of any problems outside of his pretty immediate orbit. His son Eddie becomes ever more enmeshed with his preacher friend, and his best friend from school, a gay scholarship boy who has made a enormous fortune at a hedge fund, decides to help Mrs Doyle, a decision that leads in the end to his downfall and hers. </p><p>Sam's wife meanwhile arrives in New York and quickly realises that something is going on between Margo and Sam, (although in a way not much is as Sam, as Margo observes, is not so much in control of his passions as actually almost devoid of them). </p><p>Everyone hurtles forward on their own trajectories toward a brilliantly plotted finale and, despite the raw ingredients that I've set out possibly sounding not wildly interesting, over 500 pages flash by enormously enjoyably and in a manner that conjures a particular time and place with great vividness.</p><p>This is not a novel that plays with form. It is that far more entertaining and infinitely trickier thing - an old-fashioned story set in a richly imagined world with a sprawl of characters, a novel that captures the mood and atmosphere of a particular moment while creating a tangle of endearing characters and plot lines. I was not bored once. The mother and the school friend were, to my mind, weak points in the structure - that is, I was not persuaded that the author saw them as characters of interest rather than pawns to be shifted about to assist plot and add the right amount of diversity - but overall this is a hugely entertaining book with a lovely elegiac ending. Few people can or do write this way any more. I am glad that Beha does. </p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-77719757236508043852024-02-11T13:16:00.001+01:002024-02-11T13:16:10.558+01:00Reading 2024: Money from Holme by Michael Innes<p>Some people do the Wordle puzzle to keep their minds agile. The writer known as both J.I.M Stewart and Michael Innes seems to have written novels with the same end in mind. He was astonishingly prolific. </p><p><i>Money from Holme </i>is set in the art world of London. It is only 171 pages long. Those pages contain a cleverly plotted tale about an unprepossessing man who thinks he can take advantage of an artist but ends up in a farce. As the story treats the politics of a fictitious African country as risible - </p><p>"First, there was a Fascist revulsion. Then there was a Communist revulsion. And after that there was the revulsion of the Moderate Democrats. That was the worst"</p><p>- it probably wouldn't be allowed to be published now. Additionally, much fun is had with the muddled English of a London gallery owner of probably Central European origin, which is a racism of sorts, I suppose, if you're in the market for taking offence at racism. </p><p>The novel is frivolous and amusing and contains a reference to those "rotten chaps in Whitehall" and so I enjoyed it. It is definitely not a must-read for the improvement of one's soul but it may give some people an hour or two of mild pleasure. </p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-30399097800232098302024-02-07T17:37:00.000+01:002024-02-07T17:37:11.558+01:00Words and Phrases, an Occasional Series<p>My husband tells me that he has discovered the most dominant element of my personality - namely, I don't like change. As he has had the dubious privilege of spending his life with me pretty much continuously since the day of Brezhnev's death - also known as the day we first met - I think he probably has as good a perspective on the topic as anyone. This dislike of change - if I accept it exists (and actually I do) - may explain why I get het up about new bits of language that suddenly appear and begin infesting every journalistic piece I read.</p><p>Which brings me to today's gripe - a new (at least to me) coinage that makes me feel queasy each time I see it:</p><p>"meet cute".</p><p>It's round the wrong way, it makes no sense, it is maddening. Maybe only because it's new? I don't know. I just think it's disgusting.</p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-26066239002760803942024-02-06T11:14:00.002+01:002024-02-06T11:14:43.877+01:00All the Fun of the Fair<p>I have a huge talent for time wasting and one of my favourite methods of doing so is looking at auction catalogues. In that context I browsed through <a href="https://www.sworder.co.uk/auction/details/a1135-an-english-fairground--the-john-barker-collection/?au=1175">this one</a> yesterday and was struck by the exuberance of the objects. I can't think where I would put a fairground horse but I have the idea that glimpsing one around the place would always be cheering - even though I am fully aware that no actual horse ever has their legs in that position when galloping.</p><p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisb24iQIVJmNtReykXvTPUL7hsFfvzas8ZFbesY33e1OMglBLJgKhVClxoCHnQeoMEC7TabKnqSfKQdpTv7rvyEfLKHYJvGx-d0751GUk4u_3yYZMLGQ0T06zVUWL08ZNKML2Kx057HVsMMUsWR85jaBtipps_Jp27U_jqdvesHEMB25pwLYmCFRN9momK/s950/Screenshot_20240206_110919_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="718" data-original-width="950" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisb24iQIVJmNtReykXvTPUL7hsFfvzas8ZFbesY33e1OMglBLJgKhVClxoCHnQeoMEC7TabKnqSfKQdpTv7rvyEfLKHYJvGx-d0751GUk4u_3yYZMLGQ0T06zVUWL08ZNKML2Kx057HVsMMUsWR85jaBtipps_Jp27U_jqdvesHEMB25pwLYmCFRN9momK/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110919_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJi5Lfv9bkz0PBD7AI4WRRUdcbrtg8q4aDSRrbybBazJ9Wu1GmyPbBCUSS-ovvD6qwzDzWhjofjOTT86BF7tYdftTLUYWqu_z139gFut_EfCmcQsRvf2dFgz87w3qNRNHVGAAzkX8s_b97ezXnlLUvygJYgdWHGal31JSfKSD-mGD3aACn1ZV_99fPnBjp/s814/Screenshot_20240206_110858_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="693" data-original-width="814" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJi5Lfv9bkz0PBD7AI4WRRUdcbrtg8q4aDSRrbybBazJ9Wu1GmyPbBCUSS-ovvD6qwzDzWhjofjOTT86BF7tYdftTLUYWqu_z139gFut_EfCmcQsRvf2dFgz87w3qNRNHVGAAzkX8s_b97ezXnlLUvygJYgdWHGal31JSfKSD-mGD3aACn1ZV_99fPnBjp/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110858_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnPidKrvnfv0bVMxbIYgzJDhvlUi0kY3tAidK53cVlSQbpFipy5WIQ1ccjX02hZJ-FcS2ezE7QdRnNFg5szkI9TepukNZsuWDEwrp2GUWy7r4nL2znPTvUDRqfKEbMGVF5vGkkLsGw08HIcGiR2TgknvJvBkgtlQgyErT94_y898_kiHBM2t_wrGEnwNPa/s797/Screenshot_20240206_110802_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="775" data-original-width="797" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnPidKrvnfv0bVMxbIYgzJDhvlUi0kY3tAidK53cVlSQbpFipy5WIQ1ccjX02hZJ-FcS2ezE7QdRnNFg5szkI9TepukNZsuWDEwrp2GUWy7r4nL2znPTvUDRqfKEbMGVF5vGkkLsGw08HIcGiR2TgknvJvBkgtlQgyErT94_y898_kiHBM2t_wrGEnwNPa/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110802_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9U-SgZPaVvmsHpGeS-VUT_7LajIFXaOvY8jUC9H0AC_0zpNG5bsWL7tY1rSvSTxP3T279LmxCBQSC502Pv4QduQwGp_Fi8sEOm6U-FAZLAsooiGrghJjDh_RjkJVKvYi2ENVymBUAGp2qmCfpS3vHbdet30r5Z61M5HQO1pHEtZhvo17lbqSxXxkHo0O/s869/Screenshot_20240206_110746_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="758" data-original-width="869" height="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9U-SgZPaVvmsHpGeS-VUT_7LajIFXaOvY8jUC9H0AC_0zpNG5bsWL7tY1rSvSTxP3T279LmxCBQSC502Pv4QduQwGp_Fi8sEOm6U-FAZLAsooiGrghJjDh_RjkJVKvYi2ENVymBUAGp2qmCfpS3vHbdet30r5Z61M5HQO1pHEtZhvo17lbqSxXxkHo0O/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110746_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKfv7M1cxTkQW0bagkRdYwBj6UiD7OV2rUXLQ4ZSbSr82SKOCmaBzlUjDqr3Bcu3LK3CPcFvjaWMWC4L73ww_Nja1r4bzCtAiid-piSQFfBS6kp0oWmcSMoIeje0dc2FOIXpAi-EsQkbFJH5FYyssx1gcO9EGo5sghyphenhyphenQYszdPcS0cUWpZCAZbDzNnx-GZf/s981/Screenshot_20240206_110728_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="981" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKfv7M1cxTkQW0bagkRdYwBj6UiD7OV2rUXLQ4ZSbSr82SKOCmaBzlUjDqr3Bcu3LK3CPcFvjaWMWC4L73ww_Nja1r4bzCtAiid-piSQFfBS6kp0oWmcSMoIeje0dc2FOIXpAi-EsQkbFJH5FYyssx1gcO9EGo5sghyphenhyphenQYszdPcS0cUWpZCAZbDzNnx-GZf/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110728_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-okOQJveFtDhuwfYT8c0TefEFwNVi9NqA5ZKG5BJeeq6cfDEQ9fcicne433F_r7gPPQ0CdAxZPCePV2PyVpku3N361aJcb9PpYYBsecGFG0584rkDRbPZgzKxJqubut6dFb8tlT4fZ-TZzZP-X8jNfNFB07j47wOBjuCeST3fWW9EnjoQjRUSWEhPWhEx/s918/Screenshot_20240206_110713_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="892" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-okOQJveFtDhuwfYT8c0TefEFwNVi9NqA5ZKG5BJeeq6cfDEQ9fcicne433F_r7gPPQ0CdAxZPCePV2PyVpku3N361aJcb9PpYYBsecGFG0584rkDRbPZgzKxJqubut6dFb8tlT4fZ-TZzZP-X8jNfNFB07j47wOBjuCeST3fWW9EnjoQjRUSWEhPWhEx/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110713_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="311" /></a></div>I love the use of the word "important" in auctioneers' catalogues - to whom? In which circles?<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQg6ITw6zlcXEGh9flGFWC0IuMWmHqDFssIg2MgDU3wT5usP0tmgzRBpUnl4uDdM1r3oHruJVWOrF1i7aVkb3MluIMBHHiqfmqwjk4yGEo_SVd0_XgyIKiSYp2IxoFAqDpbfR0vaXmHEcG7IJw004xHVOUtH74uA-kPJYIs40LEluQkDR3eQu_tgefIt9/s957/Screenshot_20240206_110657_DuckDuckGo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="738" data-original-width="957" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifQg6ITw6zlcXEGh9flGFWC0IuMWmHqDFssIg2MgDU3wT5usP0tmgzRBpUnl4uDdM1r3oHruJVWOrF1i7aVkb3MluIMBHHiqfmqwjk4yGEo_SVd0_XgyIKiSYp2IxoFAqDpbfR0vaXmHEcG7IJw004xHVOUtH74uA-kPJYIs40LEluQkDR3eQu_tgefIt9/s320/Screenshot_20240206_110657_DuckDuckGo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-1755317987848886202024-02-05T14:49:00.000+01:002024-02-05T14:49:33.329+01:00New Club<p>I just listened to <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4OwNk3CSw70KeufuG6O41N?si=ihnXlvFSSpqWvAo0zaOZrw">this long interview</a> between Louis Theroux and Nick Cave. I don't listen to contemporary music so I have little idea about Cave's work in that area. However, I am always stimulated by the interviews with Cave that I've read or listened to, and this one is no exception. Among the topics covered are: drug addiction - surprising insights there; Kylie Minogue - as radiant and oddly brave as I've always hoped she might be; and Cave's churchgoing.</p><p>This last is the thing that especially caught my attention. Cave admits that he goes to church very regularly, but he goes out of his way to emphasise that he is not a Christian, even though he also explains how very significant going to church is for him.</p><p>This dabbling on the edge of faith is becoming more and more common. The two other examples that spring to mind immediately are Louise Perry and Tom Holland. Jordan Peterson is hovering somewhere in the same "faith adjacent" area, I gather. Douglas Murray, as an ex choir scholar, is presumably steeped in the Christian faith and has said he cherishes Christianity, describing himself as a Christian atheist. Ayaan Hirshi Ali has even come out of the closet and declared herself Christian, but in a rather equivocating kind of way, so that I feel she also is still really a member of this new club of teeterers.</p><p>I suppose they are all embarassed to make any further leap, because to say you are a Christian is to provoke the not in-valid accusation that you are entirely irrational. How can you believe some bloke who lived 2,000 years ago was the embodiment of God? How can you even admit a God exists?</p><p>There is no proof. None of it is measurable scientifically. But for me at least, irrationality is not a criticism. The whole of existence is irrational and in the face of that I feel only humility (not a particularly encouraged trait at present). We understand nothing on the vast scale of existence, only a few bits of the mechanics. I am therefore content to ignore other people's scorn and pity and follow Saint Anselm's lead when he said:</p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: -30px;">"I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe - that unless I believe I shall not understand."</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: -30px;">------------------------</span></p><p><span style="font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: -30px;">PS If I wanted to be cynical, I might ask how it happens to be so easy for one group of people - Muslim asylum seekers in Britain - to embrace Christianity when it is so hard for the majority of the British population. It is a puzzling phenomenon, (hem hem, as Nigel Molesworth would say).</span></p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-32621915510850077402024-01-31T15:33:00.000+01:002024-01-31T15:33:05.691+01:00Reading 2024: Yesterday's Spy by Len Deighton<p>Told in the first person, this is a plunge into a world peopled by men equipped with gold Dunhill lighters who bonded through sharing danger in the Second World War and whose main approach to coping with what they remember is to drink large amounts without ever getting properly drunk. </p><p>It opens in White's, the very grandest of the St James's Street clubs. Someone I used to know joined White's and Brooks's and, realising that the latter was a nicer place by far, inquired at White's how he could resign his membership. His question was met with utter perplexity: "Sir, no one has ever requested such a thing before."</p><p>Anyway, that is pretty much the last glimpse we get of English high society - and puzzlingly the character who is supposedly a member of White's is more Arab than English anyway. </p><p>Speaking of things Arab, the plot turns out to be surprisingly contemporary - with both Russians and Arabs implicated in a dangerous plot against the west. As regards the latter of the two aggressors, one character observes that everyone knows what the novel's villain "is up to: he's an Arab." "And you?" comes the response. "I'm a Jew, simple as that", is the reply. The same character later observes "Helping the Israelis might be the West's only chance to survive". I suspect this may still be true today, although I recognise this is contested ground and have no intention of engaging in any arguments on the subject.</p><p>It is eventually discovered that the dirty work to get the planned attack on the west off the ground has been performed in secret in France by people "from all the Arab states, brought in as waiters and labourers, foundry workers and garbage men...the French immigration can't stop them." Immigration authorities worldwide seems to have caught the virus of impotence since then. Perhaps it originated with the French - who knows.</p><p>Anyway, lo and behold, what a shock, our narrator narrowly foils the dastardly plot, after some rather John Steed/Avengers plot twists. All eventually ends reasonably well - as well as it can in a disenchanted post-war world. </p><p>The whole thing took only a few hours to read and is therefore a proper airport book - in the sense that if you got stuck, as sadly does happen too often, for hours in an airport, it would entertain you for several hours. </p><p>Incidentally, one aspect of the novel that I hadn't expected, and that enhances its escapist atmosphere, is Deighton's fondness for describing men's clothing. One character has "a beautifully cut chalk-stripe suit", another wears "chalk-stripe worsted" and "hand-made shoes", a third, bizarrely, sports "a short fur coat and a black kerchief knotted cowboy-style, right against the throat", while a fourth, a rather tough German policeman, is seen straightening "the shoulder strap of his impeccable white trench coat". I seem to remember that a dark grey pure silk trench coat also makes an appearance. </p><p>Not many hand-made shoes or chalk-stripe worsteds were in evidence at Luton airport last time I was there. Perhaps things have improved since. If not, Deighton would provide not only diversion but a sartorial refuge while stuck waiting for a cheap flight.</p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-40028220018076041262024-01-20T15:32:00.000+01:002024-01-20T15:32:55.197+01:00Reading 2024: The Afterlife and Other Stories by John Updike<p>I wonder if John Updike would be published, were he starting out now. On the basis of one short story and a bit of one of his novels, t<a href="https://medium.com/@carolinekgorman/updike-in-2019-af3dea945">his reader believes he's worth ditching</a> from the canon on the charge of misogyny - and there are plenty of others who have appeared over the last decade or so as witnesses for the prosecution in that regard.</p><p>Finding women so attractive that you keep being unfaithful to other women - as Updike seems to have done a lot in his early adulthood ("I was a passionate creature in those years, with surges of desire shaking my bones" one of his elderly characters in this collection observes, looking back at his younger self) - is, I suppose, a kind of misogyny, although not a straightforward one. Whatever kind it is or isn't, I don't think it makes any difference to whether Updike's writing is bad or good - but I don't read fiction in order to think, "Hurray, this writer thinks exactly like me".</p><p>What I read Updike for is his wonderfully meticulous descriptions, the notice he takes and the care he then goes to in order to create for his readers a small world, a few characters. If all the photographs of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties are digitised and then vanish due to digital wastage or a permanent outage of electricity, we will still be able to find, in Updike's evocations of the America he lived in, perfect snapshots of that part of our past.</p><p><i>The Afterlife and Other Stories </i>is a collection that seems to have been written when Updike was beginning to feel "the ineluctable logic of decay tightening its grip on his body", so that "the headlines in the paper ... seemed directed at somebody else, like the new movies and television specials and pennant races and beer commercials - somebody younger and more easily excited, somebody for whom the world still had weight". The stories mainly concern middle class people in the middle of their lives. Some are still married, some newly divorced, some alone, some in uncomfortable second marriages. Most of the protagonists are increasingly aware that death is approaching. </p><p>A recurring theme is a complicated relationship with a mother who remains a difficult, yet intimately connected, figure, a woman who irritates but can share with the protagonist, "the vanished texture of the world she had brought him to life within, a world of glamorous drugstores, with marble counter tops, and movie houses that were exotic islands of air-conditioning, with paper icicles dripping from the marquee," or who, if she has already died, has left her son "the sole custodian of hundreds of small mental pictures...of a specialised semiotics, a thousand tiny nuanced understandings of her, a once commonplace language of which he was now the surviving speaker." </p><p>The stories tell of the awkwardness of visiting neighbourhood friends who have reinvented themselves elsewhere, of the uncomfortable intimacy of ill-matched couples holidaying far from home without children or other people, of a mother's obsession with a farmhouse, of the rise and fall of a community recorder orchestra and various other things. Mostly they are mesmerising in the clarity of their description and the attention Updike pays to the protagonists and their mysteriously shifting moods. Interspersed through the book are some lighter pieces, most notably one about a Scottish caddy, which beguiled me, even though when I began it I fretted, because I wanted more of the usual quiet insight I'd come to expect.</p><p>I am reading a lot of Updike at the moment. In another book, he talks of his jet-lagged insomnia during a trip to Finland. In this collection, in a story called <i>Falling Asleep Up North, </i>he provides one of the most accurate descriptions of insomnia I've ever come across. Reading it as an insomniac, I was grateful to discover that I am not isolated in my, until now rather lonely, inability to sleep:</p><p>"Falling asleep has never struck me as a very natural thing to do. There is a surreal trickiness to traversing that in-between area, when the grip of consciousness is slipping but has not quite let go and curious mutated thoughts pass as normal cogitation unless snapped into clear light by a creaking door, one's bed partner twitching, or the prematurely jubilant realisation <i>I'm falling asleep. </i> The little fumbling larvae of nonsense that precede dreams' uninhibited butterflies are disastrously exposed to a light they cannot survive and one must begin again, relaxing the mind into unravelling. Consciousness of the process balks it; the brain, watching itself, will not close its thousand eyes. Circling in the cell of wakefulness, it panics at the poverty of its domain - these worn-out obsessions, these threadbare word-games, these pointless grievances, these picayune plans for tomorrow, which yet loom, hours from execution, as unbearably momentous."</p><p>For me, reading Updike is like being with a companion who describes what he sees and feels with such care and precision that I am able to pay more attention to my own surroundings and to see more sharply and perhaps with greater wisdom what being a human is. His work is reassuring and also inspiring - his close observation of life and his subsequent ability to turn what he has observed into sentences full of bright, clearcut images deserves nothing but praise.</p><p><br /></p><p> </p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-58067834366403162602024-01-19T14:00:00.007+01:002024-01-19T15:21:59.761+01:00Virtue Signalling <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In the district of Budapest variously called the party district, the Jewish quarter and district VII, this mural appeared in 2022. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxI3KFPgGHkupwhOhHNBbTu9u9hVr8xogmauNFQa6l7HzhiSlSJRViG6noW7g3-mN2_thyYF7xa9Fw4u0jkLwXc9A6fSuFFsbpTwhJeAYfXha8yB6mKjYqxC7C7YvNGRCLnBgyVOvxpo2EFV7mwML6Uc8gf50iP75e5sotewfU8Zc3w7QktRKF4CKow/s4000/20230311_104033.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxI3KFPgGHkupwhOhHNBbTu9u9hVr8xogmauNFQa6l7HzhiSlSJRViG6noW7g3-mN2_thyYF7xa9Fw4u0jkLwXc9A6fSuFFsbpTwhJeAYfXha8yB6mKjYqxC7C7YvNGRCLnBgyVOvxpo2EFV7mwML6Uc8gf50iP75e5sotewfU8Zc3w7QktRKF4CKow/s320/20230311_104033.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>It was commissioned by the United Nations (your taxes at work) and shows a refugee, a dove at her left shoulder, two children in tow.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ4wyrQqXZWcOvP8IBODSw4egXwG4m14iiZKoHfw57VAg8OvTvhFKrEQRnH2v4kMLLAm9y7mcpw28VP5FCruCVKey6P1bxvvXUnu-7TAOuBGyg45nsMHV3og7uj1PxU5mzCnSwCmwx3YI_Ih2CfyTHm5OTJX9SbNbWzo9525mWYiaGmY8KeURFM9SxrA/s4000/20230311_104038.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ4wyrQqXZWcOvP8IBODSw4egXwG4m14iiZKoHfw57VAg8OvTvhFKrEQRnH2v4kMLLAm9y7mcpw28VP5FCruCVKey6P1bxvvXUnu-7TAOuBGyg45nsMHV3og7uj1PxU5mzCnSwCmwx3YI_Ih2CfyTHm5OTJX9SbNbWzo9525mWYiaGmY8KeURFM9SxrA/s320/20230311_104038.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvty83ZvFwgfHsbm5kAz6_fmnh5UdpQAiRhQmNRBe3Hi1mPy6BCoxnvCO3SAb4bK9S-dEb3SW4bD2s4PcGv9jnI_kRIoW3rqMTPKeCHUpv18-QQPahbAJCAfebrWmUlXnVQMgYXTIcN724OBNRrEIlKNgA4HqB9bq_gL0vbJ1pkFFmLoF2BfCq0eWfjg/s4000/20230311_104137.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvty83ZvFwgfHsbm5kAz6_fmnh5UdpQAiRhQmNRBe3Hi1mPy6BCoxnvCO3SAb4bK9S-dEb3SW4bD2s4PcGv9jnI_kRIoW3rqMTPKeCHUpv18-QQPahbAJCAfebrWmUlXnVQMgYXTIcN724OBNRrEIlKNgA4HqB9bq_gL0vbJ1pkFFmLoF2BfCq0eWfjg/s320/20230311_104137.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div>What I find nauseating about it is how insulting it is to the actual refugee from whom it takes its inspiration:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIURbkDySQ4QLRT7UDE9wXbW0E_YkmpggFGps0I1h2aCb8uK0Ud61IdQMrOhX00jsa-kG-mtQ6hwL0GE7Z4KEWAJmuA-S5R727NCE4PPTZPycOyH41n8xviMeX1tej3Qy4jr5Z8-UrhtSD9W7tT9OtQyXF5OSe_nOCvTPv9Xy4KoVD2y3RGiRoNu0ZA/s4000/20230311_104115.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIIURbkDySQ4QLRT7UDE9wXbW0E_YkmpggFGps0I1h2aCb8uK0Ud61IdQMrOhX00jsa-kG-mtQ6hwL0GE7Z4KEWAJmuA-S5R727NCE4PPTZPycOyH41n8xviMeX1tej3Qy4jr5Z8-UrhtSD9W7tT9OtQyXF5OSe_nOCvTPv9Xy4KoVD2y3RGiRoNu0ZA/s320/20230311_104115.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Why does the woman in the mural not look like an actual woman under great duress, but instead resemble a catwalk model? Is the implication that refugees must not only be desperate but also fulfil the requirements of the fashion and beauty world's adjudicators?<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2BSaQN7pP7OhIAun8k0iw__vcZxTPSI7hnrZO50SqCU8CJlXDupy1EROI6I3MChsNWjbcwWuFy_3sIV4gHqXKCAjjvyW1PiMwy5wgEjTQxTeiO21W-HazCZBAePz7abZBki1wjhyguknIVPM4NY_-LzYzOICUU139KWQM_OQHW6YHO5ACqS9lHgW5vQ/s4000/20230311_104120.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2BSaQN7pP7OhIAun8k0iw__vcZxTPSI7hnrZO50SqCU8CJlXDupy1EROI6I3MChsNWjbcwWuFy_3sIV4gHqXKCAjjvyW1PiMwy5wgEjTQxTeiO21W-HazCZBAePz7abZBki1wjhyguknIVPM4NY_-LzYzOICUU139KWQM_OQHW6YHO5ACqS9lHgW5vQ/s320/20230311_104120.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2PPGrlSswBYoHfH9_qwDgHUu6aGzGbyQYnH4xvazcOIoH281386MdJSUcb4uieui97Lau7mVRvfpdN1shEWUlNy5sPbtgq7yoEDQuC6VK7yNzwqRS7pqG-Jn_3CONKtA0cH5Ih6EJMKYRje345J2v8w5rYCRXxgjKE_zabc_PWG4JL6wlOJVxsrSSQ/s4000/20230311_104140.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2PPGrlSswBYoHfH9_qwDgHUu6aGzGbyQYnH4xvazcOIoH281386MdJSUcb4uieui97Lau7mVRvfpdN1shEWUlNy5sPbtgq7yoEDQuC6VK7yNzwqRS7pqG-Jn_3CONKtA0cH5Ih6EJMKYRje345J2v8w5rYCRXxgjKE_zabc_PWG4JL6wlOJVxsrSSQ/s320/20230311_104140.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>More importantly, why is the UNHCR wasting money on this kind of thing? If you donated to them, would you expect them to use your cash for propaganda?<br /> <p></p><div>PS How interesting - I just walked past and saw that the explanatory plaque which showed the original photograph on which the mural was based has now been taken down. </div>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-2061408677094416372024-01-15T14:05:00.001+01:002024-01-15T14:05:02.087+01:00The Draft Horse by Robert Frost<p> I came across this poem for the first time yesterday:</p><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span style="font-family: Times;">THE DRAFT HORSE by Robert Frost</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Times;">With a lantern that wouldn't burn <br />In too frail a buggy we drove <br />Behind too heavy a horse <br />Through a pitch-dark limitless grove. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">And a man came out of the trees <br />And took our horse by the head <br />And reaching back to his ribs <br />Deliberately stabbed him dead. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The ponderous beast went down <br />With a crack of a broken shaft. <br />And the night drew through the trees <br />In one long invidious draft. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The most unquestioning pair <br />That ever accepted fate <br />And the least disposed to ascribe <br />Any more than we had to to hate,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;">We assumed that the man himself <br />Or someone he had to obey <br />Wanted us to get down <br />And walk the rest of the way.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><a href="https://newcriterion.com/issues/2011/4/frosts-horse-wilburs-ride">Here</a> there is an article about the poem that goes on too long but begins with some interesting observations. There is another <a href="https://formalverse.com/2022/01/29/odd-poem-robert-frost-the-draft-horse/">here</a> and another <a href="http://banjo52.blogspot.com/2011/08/robert-frost-draft-horse-william-logan.html?m=1">here</a>. I haven’t read those last two, but I am intrigued to do so as I am curious </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt;">about other readers’ reactions to the poem’s mystery.</span></div>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-22628727213295994002024-01-11T23:29:00.002+01:002024-01-11T23:29:44.549+01:00An Intergalactic Conversation<p> I was sent a link to this strange and very short radio play.. I don’t know who wrote it but it mildly amuses me so I’m putting it here in case it might amuse anyone else:</p><p><b>They’re Made Out of Meat</b></p><p>“<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> They're made out of meat."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Meat?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Meat. They're made out of meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Meat?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"There's no doubt about it. We picked several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in the sector and they're made out of meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take too long. Do you have any idea the life span of meat?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "No brain?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Oh, there is a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat!"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "So... what does the thinking?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"You're not understanding, are you? The brain does the thinking. The meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Finally, Yes. They are indeed made out meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "So what does the meat have in mind."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the universe, contact other sentients, swap ideas and information. The usual."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "We're supposed to talk to meat?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "I thought you just told me they used radio."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Officially or unofficially?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Both."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome, and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in the quadrant, without prejudice, fear, or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "I was hoping you would say that."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say?" `Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "So we just pretend there's no one home in the universe."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"That's it."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you have probed? You're sure they won't remember?"</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> "A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">"And we can marked this sector unoccupied."</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-88892305206259307662024-01-10T13:26:00.008+01:002024-01-14T20:22:25.894+01:00Reading 2024 - The Hardest Problem by Rupert Shortt<p>I believe, sometimes with more or less difficulty, in Catholic Christianity. I understand that part of my obligation as a Catholic is to explain why I am a Catholic, in the hope others may join the faith. Yet I have to admit that I do not find faith explicable in a simple way. It is for me a mysterious response to mystery. I recognise that, especially now, in this age of technology, believing in something called God seems preposterous, let alone the idea that the being we call God decided to bring into the world via virgin birth an incarnation of himself whom he then allowed humanity to kill - and as for the proposition that whenever I go to mass I am spiritually renewed by eating a wafer that is Christ trans-substantiated, I am left only with the statement that that is what I believe, ever more so as I experience the certainty that consumption of the sacrament makes me a (slightly) better person. </p><p>The one faintly rational argument I have ever come up with is that the Christian doctrine of love and self denial demonstrates such an accurate understanding of what humans are bad at and need to be good at that I can't help feeling only a greater power could have constructed it. Jesus's Lord's Prayer seems to me a similarly miraculously clear articulation of an entire religion, suggesting to me it was not formulated by a mere human. </p><p>All this is not enough to make me confident to try to persuade, especially as I am possibly one of the least persuasive people around on any subject. I rarely lay out an argument succinctly or with clarity, and my fondness for meandering off point is a major fault. </p><p>Thus, I decided to read <i>The Hardest Problem</i> by Rupert Shortt. I hoped to arm myself with excellent arguments for faith, in the face of the sometimes scornful disbelief of most people I encounter.</p><p>The book begins with Shortt quoting David Hume: </p><p>"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"</p><p>My immediate thought on reading this was that Hume has not defined evil. Shortt does not go on to do so either, but simply remarks that people of faith should be chastened by Hume's remarks. He then quotes a scientist, Freeman Dyson, who says: </p><p>"to worship God means to recognise that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether passes our comprehension." </p><p>Shortt concludes from that that: </p><p>"we should move through the world in somewhat the same way as we move about in someone else's home, noticing that we are the guests and someone else is the host." </p><p>He goes on to suggest that a specifically Christian framework regards self-sacrificial love as necessary for happiness, so that "service is perfect freedom" and "endurance is a spur to salvation in a longer perspective." </p><p>Shortt goes on to look at Hobbes and his misuse by Richard Dawkins, at Jonathan Sacks on Auschwitz (he said God was there "in the words 'Thou shalt not murder'"), at Joseph Ratzinger, at the actor Matthew MacConaughey and at a journalist called James Marriott, before arriving at Schopenhauer who, Shortt tells us:</p><p>"is only one of a posse of major philosophers to have seen as clearly as any theologian that a grown up life necessarily involves struggle softened by periods of contentment." </p><p>Shortt then quotes Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who said: </p><p>"The world is an immense groping, an immense search...It can only progress at the cost of many failures and many casualties."</p><p>Shortt passes on to cosmological arguments - as he describes them, "a recognition that it is not possible in the terms naturalism allows to say how anything at all can exist." </p><p>He cites a physicist called Peter Hodgson, who wrote:</p><p>"Simple or complicated, small or large, the passage from non-existence to existence is the most radical of all steps...the transition from non-being to being is beyond the power of science to detect."</p><p>Shortt adds the observation of a philosopher called Denys Turner who wrote:</p><p>"'Nothing' has no process, no antecedent conditions, no random fluctuations in a vacuum, no explanatory law of emergence, and, there being nothing for 'something' to be 'out of', there can be no physics, not yet, for there is nothing yet for physics to get an explanatory grip on."</p><p>The mind-boggling mystery of existence versus non-existence is for me a compelling argument for a higher power than man, but it does not address Shortt's "hardest problem."</p><p>Nor, I think, does his next set of arguments - those for moral truths. He looks at the question of why most humans do have a sense of some things being morally right and some wrong, and points out that a creditable life can be led without religious convictions, but it is hard for an atheist to explain why a moral compass is not simply arbitrary. Shortt ends this section by in a sense returning to the cosmological, stating that "Abrahamic monotheism starts with the fundamental intuition that in the beginning God created."</p><p>The next section of the book is largely devoted to Iain McGilchrist's insights into left and right brain interaction, or lack thereof, and their relevance to religion. Shortt observes that: </p><p>"One of the things good religion can do is remind us of how contentious it is to take for granted a model of human beings as greedy minds and wills roaming about a passive world in endless search of stuff to satisfy ourselves."</p><p>At last, Chapter 3 comes to the matter in hand, "<i>God, Evil and Suffering</i>". Aquinas scholar Timothy McDermott is quoted, Rowan Williams is quoted, CS Lewis's <i>The Efficacy of Prayer</i> is quoted. Shortt points out that while the Gospels (specifically Matthew 7:7, "Ask and it shall be given you") suggest that there is "a simple equation between faithful discipleship and the realisation of one's goals" the refusal of Jesus's prayers for deliverance in Gethsemane rather undermine that possibility. </p><p>Shortt goes on to quote Herbert McCabe, David Bentley Hart, Eleonore Stump and various others, in an attempt to answer the question posed by Dostoevsky in <i>Brothers Karamazov</i> - is the unspeakably violent death of one small child justification for the saving of all humanity? He makes many good arguments but from my point of view as a would-be proselytiser most of them seem to be arguments that rest on a Christian faith. He says himself at one point that he is arguing "from a Christian standpoint", whereas what I had hoped for was an argument to persuade others who as yet don't see "from a Christian standpoint".</p><p>Perhaps that is impossible though. Perhaps the very first step in being a Christian is to give up trying to solve "the hardest problem", opting instead for a humble acceptance that humanity will never know why anything, including suffering, exists, because these things are beyond human comprehension. It is this acceptance that can bring an individual to the recognition that there is something greater in the universe than human ingenuity. </p><p>But much of humanity - including extremely intelligent individuals - seems not to have noticed the impossibility of understanding either eternity or infinity, nor to have recognised that the very fact of existence is profoundly mysterious. Without perceiving those things - (and also without accepting - [reluctantly and with constant difficulty and effort, as it is very hard to repress one's own deep belief that the centre of everything is oneself and one's happiness] - that we need to desire what God has created us for, even though it may not include getting what we want) - it is hard (and probably to most people, seems unnecessary) to think about anything beyond oneself and the pain we suffer or see others suffering, apparently unfairly. </p><p>However, by recognising the mysteriousness of existence itself, the strangeness of eternity and infinity, I think we can begin to understand how much we do not understand - and at that point faith, (most particularly the faith described by St Anselm - "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe but I believe in order to understand") can enter. After that, it may be possible to recognise that the hardest problem is not suffering but learning the habit of self sacrifice. And that's where Christ comes in.</p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-80602905612491983162024-01-05T11:24:00.002+01:002024-01-05T13:10:39.052+01:00Reading 2024 - The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld<p>I admire Curtis Sittenfeld very much. I have not read her imagined tales of Laura Bush and Hilary Clinton and I probably won't, as I hate fiction into which real figures intrude (the big flaw of <i>War and Peace</i>, for me, is the appearance of Napoleon as a character within its pages).</p><p>What I have read by Sittenfeld is her novel <i>Eligible</i>, an updating of <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, which I really enjoyed - even couldn't put down, to be truthful. Purists hate that book, but I have always found Jane Austen unbearably waspish - never allowing a reader to intuit, always insisting on explaining who is absurd or irritating or silly - so anything written as a pastiche of her is not going to outrage me. Instead, I found <i>Eligible</i> clever and entertaining, and was amused by Sittenfeld's updating of some of the original's social dilemmas. I have also read several short stories by Sittenfeld and every one of them was both a pleasure to read and full of insight. Therefore, I was very happy to start 2024 with a novel by her</p><p><i>The Man of My Dreams</i> tells the story of Hannah, who at the beginning of the novel is 14 or 15 and staying with her father's sister, as her family have been driven from their home by her father's temper. The novel follows the life of this lonely girl as she grows up, with little help or care from selfish parents, in a society that gives her the message that the most important thing for a young female is being able to attract young men and go to bed with them. </p><p>Hannah does not fit the template of attractiveness necessary for this - or at least she believes she does not. She is also not at all sexually adventurous. She feels as if she is a misfit, although she is actually both wise and normal and probably far from alone, if only her contemporaries would be honest. </p><p>I find Sittenfeld's writing so absorbing that I happily followed Hannah through almost 300 pages of not really getting what she has been taught to want and slowly learning that perhaps what she has been taught is wrong. I don't know how Sittenfeld does it but for me at least she is simply never boring. Perhaps one element of her charm is her truthfulness. An example of this is her description of teenage Hannah's reaction to being accosted by an older male stranger in the park. Instead of the simplicity of me-too outrage, Sittenfeld explains that Hannah felt "simultaneously alarmed, insulted and flattered."</p><p>I suppose I should register the suspicion that <i>The Man of My Dreams </i>might be of no interest to most male readers, chronicling as it does the coming of age of a young female. Although would anyone by the same token argue that <i>Tom Jones </i>would be of no interest to female readers?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-88718298344902156372023-12-26T22:33:00.006+01:002023-12-26T22:33:58.336+01:00The Horses by Edwin Muir<p>Dogs, cats, sure - lovely creatures. </p><p>But horses - nothing matches horses for the quality of their companionship.</p><p>Feeling thus, I suppose it was inevitable I would love this poem:</p><p><br /></p><p>The Horses by Edwin Muir</p><p>Barely a twelvemonth after</p><p>The seven days war that put the world to sleep,</p><p>Late in the evening the strange horses came.</p><p>By then we had made our covenant with silence,</p><p>But in the first few days it was so still</p><p>We listened to our breathing and were afraid.</p><p>On the second day</p><p>The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.</p><p>On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,</p><p>Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day</p><p>A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter</p><p>Nothing. The radios dumb;</p><p>And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,</p><p>And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms</p><p>All over the world. But now if they should speak,</p><p>If on a sudden they should speak again,</p><p>If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,</p><p>We would not listen, we would not let it bring</p><p>That old bad world that swallowed its children quick</p><p>At one great gulp. We would not have it again.</p><p>Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,</p><p>Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,</p><p>And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.</p><p>The tractors lie about our fields; at evening</p><p>They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.</p><p>We leave them where they are and let them rust:</p><p>"They'll molder away and be like other loam."</p><p>We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,</p><p>Long laid aside. We have gone back</p><p>Far past our fathers' land.</p><p>And then, that evening</p><p>Late in the summer the strange horses came.</p><p>We heard a distant tapping on the road,</p><p>A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again</p><p>And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.</p><p>We saw the heads</p><p>Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.</p><p>We had sold our horses in our fathers' time</p><p>To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us</p><p>As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.</p><p>Or illustrations in a book of knights.</p><p>We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,</p><p>Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent</p><p>By an old command to find our whereabouts</p><p>And that long-lost archaic companionship.</p><p>In the first moment we had never a thought</p><p>That they were creatures to be owned and used.</p><p>Among them were some half a dozen colts</p><p>Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,</p><p>Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.</p><p>Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads,</p><p>But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.</p><p>Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.</p><p><br /></p><p>Happy Christmas and a blessed new year to all.</p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-36836836586412744182023-12-17T15:16:00.000+01:002023-12-17T15:16:45.538+01:00Unintended Consequences<p><i>The Observer </i>newspaper reports today that owners of recent Volkswagens are encountering an unexpected difficulty - their cars are seizing up because rats have eaten through wiring on the underneath of the vehicles. </p><p>This is a new phenomenon apparently, created by Volkswagen's desire to create more environmentally friendly products. To further this end, Volkswagen have started casing car wiring in a plant-based material that rats find delicious.</p><p>I suppose encouraging rats to flourish is achieving some kind of blow for the environment versus mankind. And manufacturing cars that don't work must reduce emissions. Honda and Toyota are using soy-based insulation which is apparently the equivalent of KFC for vermin, so switching to them provides no escape for car owners. </p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-63319410291883424582023-12-10T11:21:00.003+01:002023-12-10T11:23:05.634+01:00What Colour was Montmorency*?<p>The Guardian's list of best books<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/09/the-best-fiction-of-2023"> is out for 2023</a></p><p>What a feast of joy it isn't. Among the recommendations are:</p><p>1. The story of a trio of gay Americans looking for their ancestral roots in Ghana </p><p>2. A propulsive thriller responding to the climate crisis</p><p>3. A harrowing testimony from a slave plantation. </p><p>4. An auto- fiction deeply engaged with the horrors of colonialism</p><p>5. A shadow history of queer desire and erasure </p><p>6. A hypnotic journey into the dub reggae scene</p><p>7. The tale of young Vietnamese refugees in Thatcher’s Britain </p><p>8. A chronicle of Soweto under and after apartheid, </p><p>9. A tale of gay "pioneers" in 1890s London </p><p>10. An excoriating account of Contemporary Britain, which sets one woman’s desire to return to the Nigeria of her youth against the backdrop of the Grenfell tragedy</p><p>It's all a very long way from <i>Three Men in a Boat.</i></p><p>Do people in other countries also dedicate most of their publishing industry to self-hating fiction and books challenging heterosexuality? If it's just us, why do we do it? Are publishers responding to the market or trying to indoctrinate their customers? </p><p>Are they successful? Personally, I avoid anything published since this century began, buying books only secondhand. I pray there will be a reset to normal very soon and I can go back into bookshops with optimism and excitement about what enjoyable new novel I might find inside.</p><p><br /></p><p>*Montmorency is the fox terrier in <i>Three Men in a Boat.</i></p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-42587487960296419692023-12-09T20:18:00.001+01:002023-12-09T20:18:22.635+01:00Reasons to Like Twitter - an Occasional Series<p>Commenting on footage of today's umpteenth Saturday afternoon pro-Hamas March in London, someone Tweeted, </p><p>"Oh I'd forgotten it was Jihaturday again. The weeks go by so fast".</p><p>In reply someone else Tweeted:</p><p>"Before you know it, it'll be Christhamas".</p><p>Dark humour, yes, but we live in dark times, and a sense of the absurd is a useful instrument of survival </p><p>The two Tweets I've mentioned were accompanied by footage of the redoubtable Peter Tatchell, fresh from his dressing-up box, looking for all the world like a boy on his first day of kindergarten:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtB0pKMbVNbqxNc1IJtBV63dt1AqOvkFeStWzZVLqYJUuSv0HMHyDFgCXdLzj611fOKM2FzQEBQQjOREP9d8_R0qy5q9Y8BkkNSn5VtVX7qXOfhv1iyWvYUOO9xAWcJVGjUkFMoh_NpCI0M0Gcct8hFfpFmhwRHfXmgkJ8teF989LI0pGLmiZdNerjI-z4/s1080/Screenshot_20231209_200200_X.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="1080" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtB0pKMbVNbqxNc1IJtBV63dt1AqOvkFeStWzZVLqYJUuSv0HMHyDFgCXdLzj611fOKM2FzQEBQQjOREP9d8_R0qy5q9Y8BkkNSn5VtVX7qXOfhv1iyWvYUOO9xAWcJVGjUkFMoh_NpCI0M0Gcct8hFfpFmhwRHfXmgkJ8teF989LI0pGLmiZdNerjI-z4/s320/Screenshot_20231209_200200_X.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>His poster shows that if only he ruled the world all our problems would be swiftly and simply sorted out.</p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-22199192492426274342023-11-29T14:22:00.659+01:002023-12-02T11:09:07.398+01:00At the Liszt Academy<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">During the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, like everyone else I missed a great many things. Most of them were of the unremarkable day-to-day variety, small rituals and interchanges that I'd completely taken for granted until they were taken away. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Something I'd never taken for granted though, but definitely missed, was going to concerts, especially those at the Liszt Academy, not far from where I live in Budapest. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Of course the music at a concert is the most important element, but when the concert hall itself is lovely it enhances listeners' experience of the music. <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/sgVhO2rRs8gyJw">This link</a> will give you an idea of just how sumptuous the Liszt Academy building and its concert hall are. The separate elements are not all necessarily beautiful in isolation, but together they create a dazzling splendour, conveying a sense of confidence and optimism, a verve that has since been lost.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">That loss is unsurprising when you realise that the concert hall was first opened in 1907. The people who commissioned its riot of decorative details had no idea that in less than a decade war would break out and their ordered world would be shattered. Their innocence is for me most poignantly expressed in the design of the stained-glass ceiling panels that proclaim the virtues of song and poetry, rhythm and beauty. The people who created these do not appear to have suffered from our contemporary inhibitions; no one seems to have suggested they restrain themselves, toning their enthusiasm down a bit in order to try to seem cool.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I think that when human beings gather to listen to music, we are at our most civilised. At the Liszt Academy last week, my mind was still full of the news that a wave of primitive violence had been unleashed on civilians in Israel, the murderers exhibiting the kind of demonic joy I associate with Charles Manson's acolytes. Then out came the orchestra, a group of people who devote their lives to the discipline of musicianship. Following them came the conductor, a great favourite with the Budapest audience, now approaching 90 years old. The music began and as we listened it seemed to me that everyone in that room was striking a blow for civilisation. We must never let the barbarians win.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="223" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NLCxAWTnXk4" width="320" youtube-src-id="NLCxAWTnXk4"></iframe></div><br /> <p></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-90945589780713120332023-10-26T08:27:00.005+02:002023-10-26T22:43:12.718+02:00Reading - The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott<p>In the early 1980s I saw a television adaptation of Paul Scott's <i>The Jewel in the Crown. </i> I came away thinking that it was a poignant love story but nothing more. It had an exotic setting and was entertaining as a romance.</p><p>Now I have read the novel from which the television series was adapted. Not for the first time I am struck by how badly novels are served by film adaptation. The original novel from which the <i>Jewel in the Crown </i>television production was taken<i> </i>is among the most intelligent and complex novels I have ever read. There is a love story of sorts within it, but rather than being the point of the book it is just the thread upon which everything else depends.</p><p>By "everything else", what I mean is an exceptionally wise and perceptive portrait of what being involved with British rule in India did to mostly well-intentioned people - and, of course, what it did to Indians themselves. The novel is told from a number of points of view and that I think makes its title absolutely perfect - we are looking at the Raj as if it were a gem stone and seeing it from the many different angles the stonecutter has created on its surface.</p><p>A gem stone is the wrong analogy, however, as Scott does not present British rule as benign and excellent. Nor does he condemn it. What he does is create numerous vivid characters and take the reader into each one's way of seeing the world. He shows us how, while most of those involved were not intending to do harm, many were pretty unimaginative and mainly interested in the benefits they received from being in India as servants of Britain. Even those who had reservations about the system, such as Miss Crane and Deputy Commissioner White, were not able to either change anything, nor to fully understand it - or, in Miss Crane's case not until very late in the day. </p><p>After reading the book, I wanted to find out about Paul Scott, because I was in awe of his wisdom and skill. I was saddened to discover that he died unrecognised and that his writing was a struggle that seems to have cost him his happiness and health. I urge anyone looking for a superb novel to give <i>The Jewel in the Crown </i>a try. I feel we owe Scott that. He may no longer be alive but I hope he will continue to be read and appreciated. I hope this both because his work is superb but also because I would like to know that his efforts were not in vain.</p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-86266151700987421512023-09-13T17:04:00.005+02:002023-09-13T17:04:52.229+02:00Charles Causley<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtBevm-21anJ1NIgYMeEQf1yZBCoVlp_x8XfQegRZumsXnxh7e76WopHla-Pl6VL4oIxqMwMB1cq6WY4NkOpV-rZKtnTJ8CTusw9PeUhAxw59uR99-jgCAdEmhZD1IehnPlaAkzVtH22peAHzbJKnEXkK8i_qMZ9FtAYJuG3aLvKBZeuLUTSsrDrjB8dvl/s3689/Screenshot_20230913_154235_X.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3689" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtBevm-21anJ1NIgYMeEQf1yZBCoVlp_x8XfQegRZumsXnxh7e76WopHla-Pl6VL4oIxqMwMB1cq6WY4NkOpV-rZKtnTJ8CTusw9PeUhAxw59uR99-jgCAdEmhZD1IehnPlaAkzVtH22peAHzbJKnEXkK8i_qMZ9FtAYJuG3aLvKBZeuLUTSsrDrjB8dvl/w189-h640/Screenshot_20230913_154235_X.jpg" width="189" /></a></div><br /><p>This charming Tweet, (or whatever the things formerly known as Tweets are now called), reminded me of what may be Charles Causley's most famous poem - the one about a dancing bear. </p><p>In 1985, to my astonishment, I saw a dancing bear. It was in Belgrade, in an underpass near the BIP - (Beogradsko Industriuja Pivo) - factory (was there ever a more enticingly named beer?) and the rehabilitation hospital where men from whatever socialist conflict Yugoslavia was then supporting in Africa lay on loungers contemplating their lost limbs and the perpetual snarls of traffic on the spaghetti junction beside which the institution was positioned.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksTB6AeZP6S1rOSOFBYvIs1GqTjUXy-GPMnaDaNcqaVkQTUhGdKCNLASQiTIdY4yqDdycRt3yw-xHqEu4EUMKdvxU1fgIu8wq8R8qDICB-q07PR4w0pfFUwiPYaDcJ0_lh2xEkx4XlvMSH5SZmOac-fD4RCT1ZdKamjluvtQTLab-YrP6TZi4eW32hmTR/s2316/Screenshot_20230913_155440_Maps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2316" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgksTB6AeZP6S1rOSOFBYvIs1GqTjUXy-GPMnaDaNcqaVkQTUhGdKCNLASQiTIdY4yqDdycRt3yw-xHqEu4EUMKdvxU1fgIu8wq8R8qDICB-q07PR4w0pfFUwiPYaDcJ0_lh2xEkx4XlvMSH5SZmOac-fD4RCT1ZdKamjluvtQTLab-YrP6TZi4eW32hmTR/w186-h400/Screenshot_20230913_155440_Maps.jpg" width="186" /></a></div><p>Years later I encountered Causley's poem for the first time. He captured perfectly the expression in the eyes of the bear I saw, sadly. It was one of the most melancholy things I've ever witnessed:</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e1e1e; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My Mother Saw A Dancing Bear</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />My mother saw a dancing bear<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />By the schoolyard, a day in June.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />The keeper stood with chain and bar<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />And whistle-pipe, and played a tune.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />And bruin lifted up its head<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />And lifted up its dusty feet,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />And all the children laughed to see<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />It caper in the summer heat.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />They watched as for the Queen it died<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />They watched it march. They watched it halt.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />They heard the keeper as he cried,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />‘Now, roly-poly!’ ‘Somersault!’<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />And then, my mother said, there came<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />The keeper with a begging-cup,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />The bear with burning coat of fur,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Shaming the laughter to a stop.<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" /><br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />They paid a penny for the dance,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />But what they saw was not the show;<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Only, in bruin’s aching eyes,<br style="box-sizing: inherit;" />Far-distant forests, and the snow.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1e1e1e; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Charles Causley</span></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-43077893582924724502023-09-07T23:09:00.001+02:002023-09-07T23:10:04.471+02:00More Play for Today<p>Phil and I watched <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://playfortodaypilgrimage.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-billy-trilogy.html?m=1"><span style="color: red;">three plays set in 1970s Northern Ireland and, while neither of us totally enjoyed every minute, we were both ultimately glad we had seen the pla</span>ys</a></span>. As Phil says: </p><p>The trilogy "takes us inside a world that would usually be closed to us and explores the complex relationships within a dysfunctional family, allowing us to see below the surface and understand something of the world the members of the family inhabit."</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-13547739162678302662023-08-21T13:32:00.000+02:002023-08-21T13:32:21.521+02:00Words and Phrases - an Occasional Series<p>Recently I've noticed the phrase "whisper it" creeping into articles and features. Here is an example:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVxYe92k9AuZIoyTtkU0l4CY6SsRnR25-5sJfbVeNQQoUjIAk6bgIFd9yTyEitAqq3A73I4yUNg15_-OIlM3Dqio1pbmDFiA5HIZN6fXGniZxv8wD2gY3ep0uKXa4jRVTtkP1khH3Sj2dzIPhLFElpN7i8TeXRLplE28ABPnUoNdr93UNNivwXvdjULDnf/s1346/Screenshot_20230821_122241_Gallery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1346" data-original-width="1020" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVxYe92k9AuZIoyTtkU0l4CY6SsRnR25-5sJfbVeNQQoUjIAk6bgIFd9yTyEitAqq3A73I4yUNg15_-OIlM3Dqio1pbmDFiA5HIZN6fXGniZxv8wD2gY3ep0uKXa4jRVTtkP1khH3Sj2dzIPhLFElpN7i8TeXRLplE28ABPnUoNdr93UNNivwXvdjULDnf/s320/Screenshot_20230821_122241_Gallery.jpg" width="242" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>I've been wondering why it makes me squirm. I think it is because it encourages the reader to believe they are in cozy collusion with the writer. It has a giggly, girlie feel that I don't want to be part of - and I don't trust. There is also the falsity of suggesting we all keep something a secret that is actually being highlighted in a widely-read publication.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then there is "spree" used in the context of murder. Spree is usually associated with shopping and it makes me very uncomfortable to see it used in association with wicked activities. I am not saying shopping is virtuous but it is frivolous. Killing people is not:</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_U-r0xfrd4FGpnDxiywD_fVOpY6UW-qM_5w9S4F62jDwJWMnC9qBJ5MJ-Tu_z8iL0S6SNHmVhJ0_qMmCT_DYOzUXSDsmvHZR0aUFIJmtBnIlJaphypMPctEGh89u6ntdS25GlWTitDtp2pkVm-CgkgF7SgD8gxOkGakGXAOXrKs_T9-UE6pyTmthMtkS2/s893/Screenshot_20230821_121846_Gallery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="893" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_U-r0xfrd4FGpnDxiywD_fVOpY6UW-qM_5w9S4F62jDwJWMnC9qBJ5MJ-Tu_z8iL0S6SNHmVhJ0_qMmCT_DYOzUXSDsmvHZR0aUFIJmtBnIlJaphypMPctEGh89u6ntdS25GlWTitDtp2pkVm-CgkgF7SgD8gxOkGakGXAOXrKs_T9-UE6pyTmthMtkS2/s320/Screenshot_20230821_121846_Gallery.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-5002638268412328492023-08-19T14:51:00.001+02:002023-08-19T14:51:40.940+02:00More Paper Recycling<p>I am not posting something from the <i>Financial Times </i>this time - possibly this one is from the <i>Telegraph</i>, although I didn't make a note so can't be sure.<i> </i>Anyway it is an enchanting little poem by a pre-World War I phenomenon:</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHZ9wlRTqv3d4Ku4k_DMxI5RyJ37Jm4Y2P-afsR7wUuNiYs8OFkpSWO2XGoOpSSdR0JGIN6gffaWf-0Up3y8330P5g4qgYljqVuUYW7ZSOgrdZ7sWquDUESJJPJI-E8AjC9QnhaU4pRsEYl1pGGRgT9JTFpWOkKq2b88HTYqwN7m56ZXNphN1WY8ND2vDU/s1307/Screenshot_20230819_133632_Gallery.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1307" data-original-width="603" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHZ9wlRTqv3d4Ku4k_DMxI5RyJ37Jm4Y2P-afsR7wUuNiYs8OFkpSWO2XGoOpSSdR0JGIN6gffaWf-0Up3y8330P5g4qgYljqVuUYW7ZSOgrdZ7sWquDUESJJPJI-E8AjC9QnhaU4pRsEYl1pGGRgT9JTFpWOkKq2b88HTYqwN7m56ZXNphN1WY8ND2vDU/s320/Screenshot_20230819_133632_Gallery.jpg" width="148" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIfvnsyk5NYE4GX0bNIT6grU5KdjnugqrPQqVmqFjd0WpwRdly_ghafGkoSHHxKoupUd2AUz1pAB7T0F3nCyaUOSz4kAnAx-TAJw9I7Kp4rGWd4iaumEnlBZhDRknzx1zdRnuDTb9PkxdZr8zWWVgzMApNmII4HPbgbVWDsaD8OFaeb54msW-ljJCoOSaR/s846/Screenshot_20230819_133509_Gallery.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="715" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIfvnsyk5NYE4GX0bNIT6grU5KdjnugqrPQqVmqFjd0WpwRdly_ghafGkoSHHxKoupUd2AUz1pAB7T0F3nCyaUOSz4kAnAx-TAJw9I7Kp4rGWd4iaumEnlBZhDRknzx1zdRnuDTb9PkxdZr8zWWVgzMApNmII4HPbgbVWDsaD8OFaeb54msW-ljJCoOSaR/s320/Screenshot_20230819_133509_Gallery.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HFmkgnvOjCsx0lAX1kHNnitBXUbi0p6S0O827wofdORiLiH7fjKvlJoM16_OwNdcpmlCOFScTchtZsiWeHrjQ_hqmWK1bx_cAYn2nI8mJTfRufHY4_iu3z-EksuaYoOcz6QCEsGpfgtmjUku2alq4G_imIcj9ItXeN_PiDBtwYgpFZxQNzBPG3KTfRzF/s4000/20230816_192138.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="1775" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_HFmkgnvOjCsx0lAX1kHNnitBXUbi0p6S0O827wofdORiLiH7fjKvlJoM16_OwNdcpmlCOFScTchtZsiWeHrjQ_hqmWK1bx_cAYn2nI8mJTfRufHY4_iu3z-EksuaYoOcz6QCEsGpfgtmjUku2alq4G_imIcj9ItXeN_PiDBtwYgpFZxQNzBPG3KTfRzF/s320/20230816_192138.jpg" width="142" /></a></div><br /><p>Perhaps I find this poem moving because <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://cargocollective.com/Unrealities">the opening pages of my first novel contain moth references</a></span>, suggesting I have moth inclinations. Or, more likely, it is because the question the poem asks is such an interesting one.</p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-23280421867309645352023-08-17T09:10:00.001+02:002023-08-17T09:10:26.125+02:00Niger<p>I bought a copy of the <i>Financial Times. </i>As it is difficult to access it on-line, I am posting the articles I read in it that strike me as worth sharing.</p><p>This one touches on the extraordinary trivialisation of news reporting in Britain. The BBC is so tabloid it is breathtaking. As the writer of the article says:</p><p>"The Sahel, that luckless area stretching from Senegal to Eritrea, is nearer to Europe than America is. Maybe its slow impalement by the pincers of jihadism & secular banditry will turn out to be of no external consequence but it seems a subject deserving more than indifference."</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0qzUybSqjaqw27YjKtVvxoRV568CWj1036jUfbnDZYE2UMBFnQO4CZU5FL8BlmI7k3qi74hSYgjSjn_yChBNOkZB4Ttsdo35N0lFt633DQ3nZB4W0tRXs6Wzx7WHLFgaw3TRVu6TttnnfrjVGEHMQGNE5McGEKjQZrcklhJpirQaIbCmf41Zc0ushRT3/s1386/Screenshot_20230817_080849_Gallery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1386" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0qzUybSqjaqw27YjKtVvxoRV568CWj1036jUfbnDZYE2UMBFnQO4CZU5FL8BlmI7k3qi74hSYgjSjn_yChBNOkZB4Ttsdo35N0lFt633DQ3nZB4W0tRXs6Wzx7WHLFgaw3TRVu6TttnnfrjVGEHMQGNE5McGEKjQZrcklhJpirQaIbCmf41Zc0ushRT3/s320/Screenshot_20230817_080849_Gallery.jpg" width="249" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4905080602885676490.post-44493587283455413962023-08-14T20:35:00.010+02:002023-08-14T20:35:59.460+02:00Catty<p>I don't know how much of this interview in Saturday's <i>Financial Times </i>to believe, but I love the bit about the cat. It's probably an embroidery, intended to make us think, "Ooh Bellingcat belling a cat", but it's a good anecdote all the same, ripe for conversion to fiction or cinema:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDVSKsFxRJ7zRSv9ptPJwYqC6xTpKNYBvxunRD-aSWllKjxMjMa2gjb6O0Kxn9dqJcmPPHx_KeVYFnJUISnKgq_zD0CVthBrUhfq-4nDitGZLCshVybApnvU9UcSmEmvk66RKZgOnsC2hoOl-WkWtfOt0k5rkQUp0ZGFQ13L9fTUBctzB8HvsYqqDxk1xV/s3948/20230814_192807.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3948" data-original-width="2628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDVSKsFxRJ7zRSv9ptPJwYqC6xTpKNYBvxunRD-aSWllKjxMjMa2gjb6O0Kxn9dqJcmPPHx_KeVYFnJUISnKgq_zD0CVthBrUhfq-4nDitGZLCshVybApnvU9UcSmEmvk66RKZgOnsC2hoOl-WkWtfOt0k5rkQUp0ZGFQ13L9fTUBctzB8HvsYqqDxk1xV/s320/20230814_192807.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAvgjorwkT0VWr7wlL8I-6WkDOaA_0qvH9Wj1EREM8y6Suw48dHEfOaL-eJrubZ2FDBDEg0YvOHsxdg-AHmsFernY4amrPOesTaz0iX4TF4vnV0GQH_yrAQQdY4Ts5_M-vfB1d7YSsoHM9lPtKLNWvm-unEgjoZvjqudUqW3EF4rxmZcDmPuRTB0JBgSjq/s3312/20230814_192705.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3312" data-original-width="2250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAvgjorwkT0VWr7wlL8I-6WkDOaA_0qvH9Wj1EREM8y6Suw48dHEfOaL-eJrubZ2FDBDEg0YvOHsxdg-AHmsFernY4amrPOesTaz0iX4TF4vnV0GQH_yrAQQdY4Ts5_M-vfB1d7YSsoHM9lPtKLNWvm-unEgjoZvjqudUqW3EF4rxmZcDmPuRTB0JBgSjq/s320/20230814_192705.jpg" width="217" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>zmkchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com0