I never thought I'd find myself in agreement with former Living Marxism editor Mick Hume, but his column in today's Times on the 'mourning sickness' that still surrounds Diana Spencer, 10 years after her death, is spot on.
I turned on Radio 4 around midday today, expecting to hear a bit of light consumer news on 'You and Yours' as I prepared my lunch, but instead found myself listening to the Diana memorial service. I hurriedly switched to Radio 5 Live, and was astonished to find the station carrying the very same service. And it was being broadcast simultaneously on BBC 1.
OK, so it may have been just about excusable to clear the schedules 10 years ago, to cover the shock news of the Princess' death, and for her funeral a week later - but a memorial service, after all this time, live on three BBC channels? The thought crossed my mind that this was another stage in the BBC's grovelling campaign to win back Establishment approval after the storm in a teacup over the royal temper-tantrum affair.
Friday, 31 August 2007
Can a writer's claim to greatness be undermined by their politics?
On Sunday the New York Times carried a long article by Fernanda Eberstadt about Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, author of one of my all-time favourite books, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Among other things, the article is a reminder that being a great writer of fiction, even a Nobel prize-winning one, is no guarantee against holding perverse political views.
Saramago aroused controversy a few years ago by naively and offensively comparing conditions in the Palestinian territories to Auschwitz. The veteran novelist is also a longstanding member of Portugal's notoriously hardline Communist Party. Before I read Eberstadt's article, I had regarded this as an understandable response to growing up under Salazar's quasi-fascist regime, when the communists were the main opposition force, and a recognition of the Party's key role in the 1974 revolution which saw the dictatorship overthrown and Portugal's overseas colonies liberated.
What I hadn't realised was Saramago's complicity in the communists' rather less glorious role in restricting press freedom following the revolution. Saramago was appointed deputy director of the formerly fascist Diário de Noticias, a newly-nationalized and Communist-dominated newspaper. According to Eberstadt, 'under his sway, people claim, it became an unofficial organ of the Communist Party. Many Portuguese intellectuals’ dislike of Saramago stems from this period.' She quotes book distributor Jorge de Azevedo:
For Saramago, black is black; there were no different viewpoints, no debate. He was hard on people working at the newspaper who were not party members; he made life extremely difficult for them. Because of this, he has a tough image that remains.
Do a writer's political opinions and activities affect our assessment of their imaginative writing, or is it possible (as with Evelyn Waugh, D.H.Lawrence, etc) to maintain a separation between the two?
Footnote
Along somewhat similar lines: there's a piece in today's (London) Times about Arthur Miller consigning his week-old son, who had Down's Syndrome, to an institution and then concealing his existence. I'm a huge admirer of Miller's work, but this comment from his biographer Martin Gottfriend still makes me uneasy:
All that theatre people care about are the works themselves...In England, where Miller is considered an equal of Chekhov, all they care about is that Miller is a great, great playwright... If he wrote Death of a Salesman and that’s all, that would be enough...He could be the worst son-of-a-bitch who ever lived, but he still wrote those plays.
Saramago aroused controversy a few years ago by naively and offensively comparing conditions in the Palestinian territories to Auschwitz. The veteran novelist is also a longstanding member of Portugal's notoriously hardline Communist Party. Before I read Eberstadt's article, I had regarded this as an understandable response to growing up under Salazar's quasi-fascist regime, when the communists were the main opposition force, and a recognition of the Party's key role in the 1974 revolution which saw the dictatorship overthrown and Portugal's overseas colonies liberated.
What I hadn't realised was Saramago's complicity in the communists' rather less glorious role in restricting press freedom following the revolution. Saramago was appointed deputy director of the formerly fascist Diário de Noticias, a newly-nationalized and Communist-dominated newspaper. According to Eberstadt, 'under his sway, people claim, it became an unofficial organ of the Communist Party. Many Portuguese intellectuals’ dislike of Saramago stems from this period.' She quotes book distributor Jorge de Azevedo:
For Saramago, black is black; there were no different viewpoints, no debate. He was hard on people working at the newspaper who were not party members; he made life extremely difficult for them. Because of this, he has a tough image that remains.
Do a writer's political opinions and activities affect our assessment of their imaginative writing, or is it possible (as with Evelyn Waugh, D.H.Lawrence, etc) to maintain a separation between the two?
Footnote
Along somewhat similar lines: there's a piece in today's (London) Times about Arthur Miller consigning his week-old son, who had Down's Syndrome, to an institution and then concealing his existence. I'm a huge admirer of Miller's work, but this comment from his biographer Martin Gottfriend still makes me uneasy:
All that theatre people care about are the works themselves...In England, where Miller is considered an equal of Chekhov, all they care about is that Miller is a great, great playwright... If he wrote Death of a Salesman and that’s all, that would be enough...He could be the worst son-of-a-bitch who ever lived, but he still wrote those plays.
A third way between fundamentalism and atheism?
As mentioned here and here, the public reaction by religious believers to the recent spate of books in defence of atheism (by Dawkins, Hitchens, et al) has often been characterised by defensiveness and a sense of victimhood. So it's a relief to see a Christian writer offering a more thoughtful response, as John Cornwell did in an article in yesterday's Guardian. I reviewed Cornwell's excellent memoir Seminary Boy here, and the article is a taster of his forthcoming book-length riposte to Dawkins (Cornwell is director of the Science and Human Dimension Project at Jesus College, Cambridge).
Cornwell's main argument is that Dawkins reductively confuses all religious belief with fundamentalism and overlooks the part played by doubt (but also what he calls 'doubt of doubt')in the faith of even the most fervent believers (he cites Graham Greene, but also more surprisingly Mother Teresa, as examples). Between the authoritarian extremism of some religionists, and Dawkins apparent desire 'to eliminate belief with a dollop of science', Cornwell advocates 'a third well-tried way':
which is to tame religion of its excesses by encouraging believers to respect, and to coexist with, all those they regard as dissidents and heretics, as well as agnostics and atheists. The fact that religionists already do this in vast numbers, in many parts of the world, notably most of Europe and North America, brings us to what I see as not so much a flaw as a vacuum in Dawkins' thinking: he simply does not get the point of pluralist societies under secular auspices. Nor does he credit believers with the capacity to be pluralists and democrats, even though members of the great world religions have contributed to the formation and preservation of pluralism, and resistance to its opposite - totalitarianism - in the modern period. Dawkins' failure to accept that religious believers are capable of respect, a healthy measure of doubt and latitude of imagination, needs examination.
It's refreshing to see this restatement of a liberal, pluralist strain of religious belief, with its reminder that believers can be allies in the fight against intolerance and totalitarianism.
There was another thoughtful discussion of the nature of belief earlier this week, in Darcey Steinke's New York Times review of Mary Gordon's memoir about her mother. Like Cornwell, Steinke wants to propose a third way, this time between religious books which 'insipidly set out conservative precepts, encouraging us to join churches, obey their doctrines and center our spiritual lives around them, no matter how limiting those lives might be in that context alone' and 'gleeful repudiations of religion' like Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great : she believes that Hitchens' definition of religion 'is childlike and reductive; he completely discounts the longing many of us feel for divinity'. Steinke suggests that Gordon's nuanced account of her mother's complex and often contradictory faith offers an alternative approach to understanding the persistence of belief.
Cornwell's main argument is that Dawkins reductively confuses all religious belief with fundamentalism and overlooks the part played by doubt (but also what he calls 'doubt of doubt')in the faith of even the most fervent believers (he cites Graham Greene, but also more surprisingly Mother Teresa, as examples). Between the authoritarian extremism of some religionists, and Dawkins apparent desire 'to eliminate belief with a dollop of science', Cornwell advocates 'a third well-tried way':
which is to tame religion of its excesses by encouraging believers to respect, and to coexist with, all those they regard as dissidents and heretics, as well as agnostics and atheists. The fact that religionists already do this in vast numbers, in many parts of the world, notably most of Europe and North America, brings us to what I see as not so much a flaw as a vacuum in Dawkins' thinking: he simply does not get the point of pluralist societies under secular auspices. Nor does he credit believers with the capacity to be pluralists and democrats, even though members of the great world religions have contributed to the formation and preservation of pluralism, and resistance to its opposite - totalitarianism - in the modern period. Dawkins' failure to accept that religious believers are capable of respect, a healthy measure of doubt and latitude of imagination, needs examination.
It's refreshing to see this restatement of a liberal, pluralist strain of religious belief, with its reminder that believers can be allies in the fight against intolerance and totalitarianism.
There was another thoughtful discussion of the nature of belief earlier this week, in Darcey Steinke's New York Times review of Mary Gordon's memoir about her mother. Like Cornwell, Steinke wants to propose a third way, this time between religious books which 'insipidly set out conservative precepts, encouraging us to join churches, obey their doctrines and center our spiritual lives around them, no matter how limiting those lives might be in that context alone' and 'gleeful repudiations of religion' like Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great : she believes that Hitchens' definition of religion 'is childlike and reductive; he completely discounts the longing many of us feel for divinity'. Steinke suggests that Gordon's nuanced account of her mother's complex and often contradictory faith offers an alternative approach to understanding the persistence of belief.
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Bad faith?
When I wrote here about Carmen Callil's book Bad Faith (about anti-semitism and collaboration in France during the Nazi occupation), I had no idea of the furore that had already been caused by the link she makes between the Holocaust and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Saturday's Guardian review section carried an interview with Callil, which mentioned the apparent cancellation of an American launch party for the book after pressure from 'a pro-Israeli lobby group.' The interviewer, Emma Brockes (who nails her own colours to the mast in describing 'the idiocy of this response') asks Callil if she regrets including the line. This is Callil's answer:
No! I wish I'd said more. I don't see why Jews shouldn't be monsters. Jews can be monsters; they're not sacred people. And I think Israel behaves monstrously towards the Palestinians, I don't care what you say. Quite truthfully, I said what I meant in the book.
Actually, this is what Callil said in the book, and it's what has caused such controversy:
What caused me anguish as I tracked down Louis Darquier was to live so closely to the helpless terror of the Jews of France, and to see what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel 'forget' the Palestinians.
To my mind, this goes beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, which Callil has a perfect right to voice. As I said in my previous post, it's the attempt to psychologise that policy and to see it as a 'passing on' of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis (which, at however subterranean a level, draws some kind of parallel between the two events) that I find unacceptable. The attempt by the Guardian article to paint Callil as simply the victim of a heavy-handed attempt to silence her criticisms of Israeli policy obscures all of this.
As I said before, it's a shame that such a powerful and necessary book has been diminished by this unnecessarily tendentious attempt at contemporary relevance in its final paragraph.
No! I wish I'd said more. I don't see why Jews shouldn't be monsters. Jews can be monsters; they're not sacred people. And I think Israel behaves monstrously towards the Palestinians, I don't care what you say. Quite truthfully, I said what I meant in the book.
Actually, this is what Callil said in the book, and it's what has caused such controversy:
What caused me anguish as I tracked down Louis Darquier was to live so closely to the helpless terror of the Jews of France, and to see what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel 'forget' the Palestinians.
To my mind, this goes beyond legitimate criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, which Callil has a perfect right to voice. As I said in my previous post, it's the attempt to psychologise that policy and to see it as a 'passing on' of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Nazis (which, at however subterranean a level, draws some kind of parallel between the two events) that I find unacceptable. The attempt by the Guardian article to paint Callil as simply the victim of a heavy-handed attempt to silence her criticisms of Israeli policy obscures all of this.
As I said before, it's a shame that such a powerful and necessary book has been diminished by this unnecessarily tendentious attempt at contemporary relevance in its final paragraph.
The consequences of abandoning Iraq to the extremists
There's surprising support for President Bush's comparison between Iraq and Vietnam from William Shawcross, in this week's Sunday Times. Shawcross, most famous for his castigation of Nixon's and Kissinger's policy in Vietnam and Cambodia, now thinks that he and his fellow opponents of the war in Indochina were naive to claim that the region would be better off without the Americans: 'Such naivety was horribly wrong, and I have always thought that those of us who opposed the American war in Indochina should be extremely humble in the face of the appalling aftermath.'
Shawcross draws parallels between the way that ingrained opposition to the war in Vietnam prevented some commentators from facing up to the consequences of US withdrawal and the way that 'too many pundits' hatred (and it really is that) of Bush (and until recently Blair) dominates perceptions'. He goes on:
Many armchair editorialists seem to dwell more on the American abuses at Abu Ghraib (quickly stopped and punished) than on the horrific, deliberate mass murders committed by the terrorists, both Sunni and Shi'ite. Far too many Muslims have died in Iraq, and the vast majority have not been killed by American or British soldiers. They have been killed by other Muslims.
Shawcross thinks it ironic that calls for a withdrawal of troops are gathering strength at a time when America is making real progress against Al-Qaeda in the northwest of Iraq and Baghdad:
Local insurgents have been revolted by Al-Qaeda atrocities - decapitating babies, slicing off people's faces with piano wire, using chlorine gas tankers and vast car bombs as weapons of mass destruction to kill as many innocents as possible - and have rallied to the government.
Shawcross believes that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Indochina, and would match the horrors in Darfur:
Why do the horrors inflicted by Islamic extremists in Darfur seem to appal us, more than those in Iraq? Because, I suppose, in an orgy of self-deluding hypocrisy, we prefer to blame the United States. We should grow up.
On the other hand, there's this excoriating reaction to Bush's historical comparison from Hitch. Take your pick.
Shawcross draws parallels between the way that ingrained opposition to the war in Vietnam prevented some commentators from facing up to the consequences of US withdrawal and the way that 'too many pundits' hatred (and it really is that) of Bush (and until recently Blair) dominates perceptions'. He goes on:
Many armchair editorialists seem to dwell more on the American abuses at Abu Ghraib (quickly stopped and punished) than on the horrific, deliberate mass murders committed by the terrorists, both Sunni and Shi'ite. Far too many Muslims have died in Iraq, and the vast majority have not been killed by American or British soldiers. They have been killed by other Muslims.
Shawcross thinks it ironic that calls for a withdrawal of troops are gathering strength at a time when America is making real progress against Al-Qaeda in the northwest of Iraq and Baghdad:
Local insurgents have been revolted by Al-Qaeda atrocities - decapitating babies, slicing off people's faces with piano wire, using chlorine gas tankers and vast car bombs as weapons of mass destruction to kill as many innocents as possible - and have rallied to the government.
Shawcross believes that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in Indochina, and would match the horrors in Darfur:
Why do the horrors inflicted by Islamic extremists in Darfur seem to appal us, more than those in Iraq? Because, I suppose, in an orgy of self-deluding hypocrisy, we prefer to blame the United States. We should grow up.
On the other hand, there's this excoriating reaction to Bush's historical comparison from Hitch. Take your pick.
Art and inspiration in St.Ives
We're just back from a week in St. Ives. It was our third annual visit, following a number of years of late-summer escapes to North Norfolk, and the Penwith peninsula has begun to supplant that magical stretch of land between Burnham Market and Blakeney in our affections. Having explored most of the 'sights' - Zennor, Land's End, Minack - on previous trips, we spent more time in St. Ives itself this year - apart from a couple of journeys out along the rugged coast road to St. Just and Sennen Cove.
We made the statutory visit to the Tate, which was showing a fascinating if rather uneven exhibition - If Everybody Had An Ocean - inspired by the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. One of the strengths of the exhibition was the links it made between the southern Californian inspiration for many of the artists and the wide surfing beach of Porthmeor, visible through the glass frontage of the Tate building.
Disappointingly there were very few examples of work by homegrown artists on display. Last year we caught a major retrospective, including some key works by my favourite St.Ives modernist, Patrick Heron. We also visited his grave in the churchyard at Zennor, and drove past his former home, Eagle's Nest, perched high above the village and looking down on Tregerthen, the site of D.H.Lawrence's ill-fated attempt to found an artistic community before suspicions of spying sent him packing to Italy. (St.Ives has other literary associations too. H. spent her early childhood holidays here, staying in a hotel which turns out to have been the holiday home of Virginia Woolf's family, and which finally this year had a plaque to acknowledge the fact).
Driving through the slate-grey tin-mining village of St.Just (which begins to rival St. Ives as a favoured spot for artists) we were tempted by posters advertising an exhibition of engravings by Eric Gill, at the Great Atlantic Gallery. Many years ago I laboured over a long-forgotten thesis on the work of the Welsh artist and poet David Jones, like Gill a Catholic convert and a member of his lay religious-artistic community at Ditchling.
The Gill prints were interesting, but the real highlight of the visit for me was stumbling upon the work of Jenny Grevatte: unfortunately, her paintings weren't on display, but the catalogue of a forthcoming exhibition and a booklet featuring reproductions of her stunning landscapes and still lifes impressed and inspired me. Like Heron, she cites Bonnard, Vuillard et al as influences, but I thought I detected similarities with David Jones' work. I'm now on a quest to track down other galleries where Grevatte's work is on display.
We made the statutory visit to the Tate, which was showing a fascinating if rather uneven exhibition - If Everybody Had An Ocean - inspired by the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. One of the strengths of the exhibition was the links it made between the southern Californian inspiration for many of the artists and the wide surfing beach of Porthmeor, visible through the glass frontage of the Tate building.
Disappointingly there were very few examples of work by homegrown artists on display. Last year we caught a major retrospective, including some key works by my favourite St.Ives modernist, Patrick Heron. We also visited his grave in the churchyard at Zennor, and drove past his former home, Eagle's Nest, perched high above the village and looking down on Tregerthen, the site of D.H.Lawrence's ill-fated attempt to found an artistic community before suspicions of spying sent him packing to Italy. (St.Ives has other literary associations too. H. spent her early childhood holidays here, staying in a hotel which turns out to have been the holiday home of Virginia Woolf's family, and which finally this year had a plaque to acknowledge the fact).
Driving through the slate-grey tin-mining village of St.Just (which begins to rival St. Ives as a favoured spot for artists) we were tempted by posters advertising an exhibition of engravings by Eric Gill, at the Great Atlantic Gallery. Many years ago I laboured over a long-forgotten thesis on the work of the Welsh artist and poet David Jones, like Gill a Catholic convert and a member of his lay religious-artistic community at Ditchling.
The Gill prints were interesting, but the real highlight of the visit for me was stumbling upon the work of Jenny Grevatte: unfortunately, her paintings weren't on display, but the catalogue of a forthcoming exhibition and a booklet featuring reproductions of her stunning landscapes and still lifes impressed and inspired me. Like Heron, she cites Bonnard, Vuillard et al as influences, but I thought I detected similarities with David Jones' work. I'm now on a quest to track down other galleries where Grevatte's work is on display.
Friday, 17 August 2007
Friday afternoon musical and other musings
My latest musical purchase is Rufus Wainwright's Release the Stars. A colleague thought it was 'my kind of thing', so I made a point of watching his Glastonbury appearance on TV. He looked even more out of place in the mud and rain than Arcade Fire - Rufus is definitely not an outdoor kind of guy - but I was impressed enough to buy the album. I know his rather nasal voice and the lush orchestration are not to everyone's taste, but the boy certainly has style.
1970 T.Rex 'Ride a White Swan'
1971 T.Rex 'Hot Love'
1972 David Bowie 'Starman'
1973 David Bowie 'Jean Genie'
1974/5 - not sure, as these years were a bit of a rock 'n' roll hiatus
1976 Sex Pistols 'Anarchy in the UK'
1977 Clash 'White Riot' ...
...at which point my inspiration, not to mention my memory, lets me down.
When it comes to accidental meetings with famous people, there's a nice story over at Drink Soaked Trots today about Christopher Hitchens bumping into the Archbishop of Canterbury:
Back home, after weeks on the road, he’s out at a restaurant with the missus and the daughter and who does he find himself seated right beside but the Archbishop of Dang Canterbury: I lean over. “My Lord Archbishop? It’s Christopher Hitchens.” “Good gracious,” he responds, gesturing at his guest—”we were just discussing your book.”
Stand out tracks for me so far are 'Sanssouci' (love those swooping chord changes) and 'Going to a Town', though I wince when European audiences cheer the line 'I'm so tired of America' - as they do when Arcade Fire proclaim 'I don't want to live in America no more' ('Yes you do,' says H. when she catches me singing along) on 'Window Sill'. At the risk of sounding pompous about a mere pop song, I wonder if American bands realise they're playing into a reflexive anti-Americanism with this sort of thing? Maybe it's just me, getting old: after all, I pogoed along with the best of them to the Clash's 'I'm so bored with the USA' thirty years ago (!) at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.
Speaking of which: Graham over at Harry's Place has a competition going on to choose one song to represent each decade from the Fifties to the present. His choice for the Seventies is the Clash's 'White Man in the Hammersmith Palais'. As a man of the Seventies myself, I'd probably have gone for something by Bowie - trouble is, what? You see, as the responses to Graham's appeal have shown, there was more than one Seventies. It would be much easier, of course, to select a song for each year. This would be my choice (highly idiosyncratic, I admit):1970 T.Rex 'Ride a White Swan'
1971 T.Rex 'Hot Love'
1972 David Bowie 'Starman'
1973 David Bowie 'Jean Genie'
1974/5 - not sure, as these years were a bit of a rock 'n' roll hiatus
1976 Sex Pistols 'Anarchy in the UK'
1977 Clash 'White Riot' ...
...at which point my inspiration, not to mention my memory, lets me down.
While we're on the subject of the Clash, let me tell you about my two near-encounters with the band. Once was after the afore-mentioned Cambridge gig, when some fanzine-editing friends asked if I wanted to accompany them backstage to meet the guys. Being a shy young thing, I hesitated and missed my chance (mind you, on another occasion I said 'yes' to the chance to meet the Buzzcocks backstage - Pete Shelley was very nice - and managed a brief 'interview' with support band the Slits - they weren't nearly so friendly - for good measure ). On another occasion I was travelling down to London from Worcester on a half-deserted train, when Mick Jones got on at Oxford (where the band had been recording). Again I hesitated and the moment again passed me by.
And then there was the time I was working in Basildon and found myself standing next to Alison Moyet in W.H.Smith, which was soon after the time I saw Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode waiting for his girlfriend outside the office building where I worked (oh, and I once performed at the same Boys' Brigade camp concert as that other doyen of the south Essex scene, Vince Clarke, long before he formed Erasure, and have the photos to prove it). Other missed rock 'n' roll opportunities: when I was 16 I was offered a ticket to see Bowie on his 'Ziggy' tour and passed it up because it was a school night - can you believe it?When it comes to accidental meetings with famous people, there's a nice story over at Drink Soaked Trots today about Christopher Hitchens bumping into the Archbishop of Canterbury:
Back home, after weeks on the road, he’s out at a restaurant with the missus and the daughter and who does he find himself seated right beside but the Archbishop of Dang Canterbury: I lean over. “My Lord Archbishop? It’s Christopher Hitchens.” “Good gracious,” he responds, gesturing at his guest—”we were just discussing your book.”
It's the 'My Lord' bit I love: Hitch is an old charmer, really. My own chance encounter with Rowan Williams came a couple of summers ago at Land's End. We were just walking away from the awful themed visitors' centre when there he was, white beard blowing in the wind, out for a casual stroll with wife and child, seemingly unrecognised by the holiday crowds. I must admit to having an annoying habit of spotting famous people when we're out and about: whether it's Terry Waite in the Strand, Michael Portillo on his mobile at Embankment station, George Alagaiah shopping in Oxford, Emma Watson (Hermione in the Harry Potter films) at the next table at Browns in the same city....I told you it was an annoying habit.
Mention of Land's End reminds me that another period of silence will ensue here after tomorrow, as we'll be spending next week down in the south west, not far from here:
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