Books read this week: The Normans in the South (John Julius Norwich) 8/10
I always enjoy Norwich's books; his history of Byzantium is superb, and his history of Venice is fascinating. I don't think there is a better work on the later middle ages in England than Shakespeare's Kings. So I was very happy when I picked up The Normans in the South in the Oxfam bookshop last week. This is Norwich's first book; it covers the history of the Normans in southern Italy from their arrival in 1016 until the establishment of the Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. There is a second volume on the Kingdom of Sicily itself, but I haven't read that yet. I found this particularly interesting, as I have read (and enjoyed) Runciman's Sicilian Vespers, which details the end of the independent Kingdom of Sicily - so it was nice to find out how it began.
The most interesting thing about the progress of the Normans in Italy was how easy it was to take over a sizable chunk of the peninsula; initially invited as mercenaries, the Normans quickly seized land and began playing the (many) different sides involved against one another. They (almost accidentally) destroyed the last vestiges of Byzantine power in Italy, expelling the very last of the Romans from the country where their empire was born. The main thrust of the narrative focuses on the descendants of Tancred de Hauteville, a minor Norman baron whose enormous family (13 sons that we know of) rose to lead the entire Norman army in Italy. Two of them in particular, Robert Guiscard (the Crafty) and Roger displayed enormous cunning and skill and (especially in the case of the Guiscard) a certain amount of style. Norwich even says that when William the Conqueror would regularly ask himself "What would Guiscard do?". The contrast between the violent and repressive rule of the Conqueror in England and the more enlightened policy of the Guiscard is quite fascinating - as is the question: just why were the Normans so good at conquering things? They had no military innovations, and they were very prone to destructive infighting, and yet they repeatedly triumphed over larger, more established forces. Unfortunately, that's a question this book doesn't try to answer - they massive martial superiority of the Norman knights is taken for granted (although the Byzantine Emperor's Varangian Guard - comprised at this point almost entirely of exiled Englishmen - gave them a serious run for their money at Durazzo).
Norwich's prose is (as always) very free flowing and easy to read, shot through with a very dry wit: one particular passage, where he describes the bull issued by papal legates to the Patriarch of Constantinople (the document which officially began the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic churches) is a joy to read: the footnotes to the practices of the Orthodox church officially condemned in the bull run: Not true. Not true. Also not true. The exact opposite of the truth. Done by the early church. Also done by the Pope. A practice endorsed by scripture.
The sections on the papacy also make entertaining reading - whilst the papacy was not at it's lowest ebb (say hello to the "Papal pornocracy" of the 8th and 9th centuries and the reign of the first (Antipope) John XXIII - the Pirate Pope) the throne of St Peter was seesawing wildly between being a plaything of the Roman aristocracy and being held by humorless zealots so there were frequently multiple Popes (well, technically speaking there's only ever one Pope at a given time and a bunch of Antipopes but that does beg the question of what happens when you bring a Pope and an Antipope into contact. Presumably there's an annihilation reaction leading to the production of a bunch of high energy encyclicals.....). This of course makes Italian politics far more interesting. Although (and this was probably one of their strengths) the Normans never seem to have taken much interest in the pronouncements of the Pope: the Guiscard was excommunicated, and when he took no notice, excommunicated again (just in case he didn't notice the first time round). We're also introduced to the Pope Benedict IX, who became pontiff at the age of 12 and (after selling the papacy to his uncle) is generally believed to have poisoned at least 6 other popes. (Dude knew how to live). As the sections on the papacy are by far the most interesting (and funny) parts of the book, I'm very happy to see that Norwich's next project is a history of the Papacy.
Monday, 31 January 2011
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Carmilla Burns Raglan
Book Read This Week: Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (Robert Burns), Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu) 5/10, The Destruction of Lord Raglan: A Tragedy of the Crimean War (Christopher Hibbert) 7/10
It is slightly tricky to fit poetry into the current format of the blog; I find I tend to dip into the collections I have, more or less at random, and I rarely read a whole book of poetry end to end. I've therefore decided to write about poets when I feel like it, rather than when I finish one of their books. As it is Burns night, and I am sat in front of my computer digesting a meal of haggis, tatties and neeps whilst nursing a glass of scotch, Robert Burns seems an appropriate poet to kick off this (occasional) series.
I enjoy Burns' poetry; he has a gift for striking imagery, and much like Kipling, he knows how to coin a cliche. The sheer economy of his verse is also brilliant; the description of the farmer's wife in Tam O'Shanter, waiting at home "Gathering her brows like gathering storm/ Nursing her wrath to keep it warm." compresses a wealth of characterisation into just two lines. I can almost see the woman, waiting by the fire for her ne'er-do-well husband to crawl back from the pub, seething anger barely under control.
The other quality the Burns possesses in spades, that is sadly lacking in many poets is a sense of humour; any man willing to submit his tax return in verse ("The Inventory: In Answer to a Mandate by the Surveyor of Taxes") certainly knows how to have a laugh (although I would like to know whether, as one would expect, this submission led to a punitive audit by the Inland Revenue). I'm certain that plenty of his poems contain subtle satirical barbs at prominent figures in 18th Century Scotland, but I don't know enough about the period to understand them (an unfortunate inevitability if one chooses to write verse about current events).
I also remain convinced that some (if not all) of his poems and songs were double entendres (if not single entendres) when he wrote them; I can accept that in some cases language has moved on, in unfortunate directions for traditional songs (see: Cock Up Your Beaver, a song where it's quite difficult to read the title with a straight face, let alone the rest), but in others (What Is A Lassie To Do With An Auld Man?) I'm fairly sure that even in the 18th Century the meaning was obvious. So: Robert Burns, we salute you!
Carmilla is, of course, the first ever lesbian vampire novel, but that is just about the only interesting thing about it. Being Victorian (and, indeed, predating Dracula), there's lots of sighing and swooning and gazing with longing, but not much actually happens. One gets the feeling that when it was originally written, before vampires entered the popular consciousness, the idea of a nocturnal predator that caused virtuous (and they are always virtuous) christian (again, always christian) young ladies to develop anaemia and waste away was novel and unsettling. Now, it's a little bit passe. That's not to say I think the vampire as a literary device is outdated (all sparkling to the contrary), but rather that their use in Carmilla is poor.
The vampire story, when done well, develops a terror that depends upon two factors for its effect; temptation and intelligence. Temptation because, really, who doesn't want to live forever? The vampire is seductive, and beautiful and charming and they can make you just like them; all it will cost you is the sight of the sun. And your immortal soul. Intelligence because, unlike other traditional monsters, vampires can think. Vampires can plan. Humans have a lot of experience killing things that are stronger, faster, tougher than us. Killing something that's smarter than you, that's a whole other ballgame. Augustus Caesar was one of (if not the) smartest men who ever lived. At the age of 19, he could run rings round every other politician in Rome. At 36 he made himself sole master of the entire Roman empire. Give him another 2,000 years of experience and cunning, and how could you ever hope to defeat him? That is how a vampire story should be done.
My final book, The Destruction of Lord Raglan, is an attempt to excuse the massive incompetence which characterised the British military during the Crimean War. This is perhaps best exemplified by the process by which a commander was chosen:
"War has been declared! Who shall be our general?"
"We have the Duke of Wellington, the best general in the world!"
"Erm... he's been dead five years sir."
"Crap. Who do we have?"
"A man who was stood near the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo, and another man also named after an item of clothing."
"Close enough."
Hibbert's thesis is that the failings of the British war effort were not entirely Raglan's fault (probably true) and that Raglan was a very pleasant man, and extremely well meaning (probably also true). Unfortunately, this doesn't absolve Raglan of responsibility for the disasters into which his army fell, especially not when many of those disasters arose from excessive politeness on Raglan's part (a very British fatal flaw). The main message I took from the book was that the Crimean War, with it's mud, blood and gross incompetence, was pretty much a dry run for the First World War, although, in a reverse of Marx's famous dictum, the first time was the farce and the second time was the tragedy.
It is slightly tricky to fit poetry into the current format of the blog; I find I tend to dip into the collections I have, more or less at random, and I rarely read a whole book of poetry end to end. I've therefore decided to write about poets when I feel like it, rather than when I finish one of their books. As it is Burns night, and I am sat in front of my computer digesting a meal of haggis, tatties and neeps whilst nursing a glass of scotch, Robert Burns seems an appropriate poet to kick off this (occasional) series.
I enjoy Burns' poetry; he has a gift for striking imagery, and much like Kipling, he knows how to coin a cliche. The sheer economy of his verse is also brilliant; the description of the farmer's wife in Tam O'Shanter, waiting at home "Gathering her brows like gathering storm/ Nursing her wrath to keep it warm." compresses a wealth of characterisation into just two lines. I can almost see the woman, waiting by the fire for her ne'er-do-well husband to crawl back from the pub, seething anger barely under control.
The other quality the Burns possesses in spades, that is sadly lacking in many poets is a sense of humour; any man willing to submit his tax return in verse ("The Inventory: In Answer to a Mandate by the Surveyor of Taxes") certainly knows how to have a laugh (although I would like to know whether, as one would expect, this submission led to a punitive audit by the Inland Revenue). I'm certain that plenty of his poems contain subtle satirical barbs at prominent figures in 18th Century Scotland, but I don't know enough about the period to understand them (an unfortunate inevitability if one chooses to write verse about current events).
I also remain convinced that some (if not all) of his poems and songs were double entendres (if not single entendres) when he wrote them; I can accept that in some cases language has moved on, in unfortunate directions for traditional songs (see: Cock Up Your Beaver, a song where it's quite difficult to read the title with a straight face, let alone the rest), but in others (What Is A Lassie To Do With An Auld Man?) I'm fairly sure that even in the 18th Century the meaning was obvious. So: Robert Burns, we salute you!
Carmilla is, of course, the first ever lesbian vampire novel, but that is just about the only interesting thing about it. Being Victorian (and, indeed, predating Dracula), there's lots of sighing and swooning and gazing with longing, but not much actually happens. One gets the feeling that when it was originally written, before vampires entered the popular consciousness, the idea of a nocturnal predator that caused virtuous (and they are always virtuous) christian (again, always christian) young ladies to develop anaemia and waste away was novel and unsettling. Now, it's a little bit passe. That's not to say I think the vampire as a literary device is outdated (all sparkling to the contrary), but rather that their use in Carmilla is poor.
The vampire story, when done well, develops a terror that depends upon two factors for its effect; temptation and intelligence. Temptation because, really, who doesn't want to live forever? The vampire is seductive, and beautiful and charming and they can make you just like them; all it will cost you is the sight of the sun. And your immortal soul. Intelligence because, unlike other traditional monsters, vampires can think. Vampires can plan. Humans have a lot of experience killing things that are stronger, faster, tougher than us. Killing something that's smarter than you, that's a whole other ballgame. Augustus Caesar was one of (if not the) smartest men who ever lived. At the age of 19, he could run rings round every other politician in Rome. At 36 he made himself sole master of the entire Roman empire. Give him another 2,000 years of experience and cunning, and how could you ever hope to defeat him? That is how a vampire story should be done.
My final book, The Destruction of Lord Raglan, is an attempt to excuse the massive incompetence which characterised the British military during the Crimean War. This is perhaps best exemplified by the process by which a commander was chosen:
"War has been declared! Who shall be our general?"
"We have the Duke of Wellington, the best general in the world!"
"Erm... he's been dead five years sir."
"Crap. Who do we have?"
"A man who was stood near the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo, and another man also named after an item of clothing."
"Close enough."
Hibbert's thesis is that the failings of the British war effort were not entirely Raglan's fault (probably true) and that Raglan was a very pleasant man, and extremely well meaning (probably also true). Unfortunately, this doesn't absolve Raglan of responsibility for the disasters into which his army fell, especially not when many of those disasters arose from excessive politeness on Raglan's part (a very British fatal flaw). The main message I took from the book was that the Crimean War, with it's mud, blood and gross incompetence, was pretty much a dry run for the First World War, although, in a reverse of Marx's famous dictum, the first time was the farce and the second time was the tragedy.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Saladin FTW
Books read this week: The Templars (Piers Paul Read)
The Templars is an intriguing book, although the title is somewhat misleading; it is really more of a general history of the Crusades from 1096 until 1307, rather than an in-depth history of the Knights Templar. In part, I think this is because there is a lack of information about what the Templars were doing when not directly involved in the business of killing muslims; we are told, for example, that the Temple became a major (in fact the major) international banking house in Europe, but there is little discussion of how this occurred, or how the banking business impacted upon the monastic aspect of the Templar life. Similarly, we are told that the majority of Templars spent their time administering the order's properties outside the Holy Land, but very little about what that life entailed. This is a pity, as a detailed study of exactly how the order mutated from its original form as a poor monastic order to one of richest organisations in Christendom would be fascinating.
The history of the Crusades as presented here is interesting, partly because Read tries oh so very hard to make the Templars, the Crusaders and the medieval Church appear sympathetic, and fails absymally. There's lots of special pleading: a particularly darkly comically passage attempts to explain that whilst it is true that when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem they killed every living thing within its walls and waded knee deep in blood to the thanksgiving mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and it is also true that on both occasions that the forces of Islam captured Jerusalem there was no massacre, the cases were totally different, and anyway the Muslims started it (by daring to live in the Holy Land). And all the Crusaders were motivated by genuine piety, not loot, which must have been a great comfort to the Jews of Mainz, to know that the men who robbed and murdered them acted from genuine religious conviction.
Defending the Templars becomes particularly difficult when we get to the period immediately before the Third Crusade, because even if you're rooting for the Crusaders (and I'm really not), the Templars were a total disaster, whether it's supporting Reynald de Chatillon (called "Reginald" here, for no apparent reason - possibly because it sounds like the name a more pleasant man might have) when he broke the truce with Saladin (FAIL!), supporting Reynald's plan to attack Saladin's army (DOUBLE FAIL!) or insisting on stopping for the night in the middle of the desert miles from the nearest well (SUPER MEGA TRIPLE FAIL!). We're also treated to some rather pathetic apologies made by 'Reynald de Chatillon's defenders' (I wasn't aware he had any, being violent, untrustworthy and thoroughly unpleasant even by the Crusader's standards, which were not high). The most amusing of which is that "Chatillon consider the presence of guards on the caravan he attacked a breach of the truce".
Of course, once the Holy Land is lost, the Templars became a bit pointless. And so, (in a move of which Stalin would have been proud) the King of France had all 15,000 templars arrested, tortured and convicted of murder, heresy, blasphemy, sodomy and probably jaywalking as well. And then he stole their money. The Pope, being more concerned with temporal than spiritual matters, looked the other way. It has to be said, the medieval Papacy doesn't come out of the crusades well - and Boniface VIII is generally consider one of the more crap popes, having persuaded his (illiterate) predecessor to abdicate, before murdering him. The image of a cackling Boniface VIII sitting on the throne of Constantine waving a sword and screaming "I AM CEASAR!" is one that will stay with me (to be fair, the book doesn't explicitly say that he was cackling, but I can't imagine an octogenarian waving a sword and screaming "I AMSPARTACUS CEASAR!" doing anything else).
The feeling one gets reading about the final downfall of the Templars was not dissimilar to how one feels when reading about the Night of the Long Knives; you feel a brief twinge of sympathy for the victims, who were betrayed by the masters they served loyally and accused of ridiculous crimes which they obvious did not commit. Then you remember that they were very unpleasant people, and that whilst they didn't commit the crimes they were accused of, they certainly did commit a bunch of other crimes which they were not punished for.
The most interesting thing about the destruction of the Temple was how modern Philip IV of France's methods were - I said that Stalin would have been proud of his actions, and the account in this book certainly plays up the similarities - accusations of outlandish and absurd plots, backed up by very public confessions and show trials, combined with a reign of terror (one bishop was accused of treason, heresy, sorcery, simony and fornication for the crime of saying King Philip "looked like an owl") to prevent anyone objecting. Philip even had recourse to the very modern method of "disappearing" the Templar's lawyer when he proved too effective. It is surprising to me that such a well organised and efficient purge (arresting 15,000 people simultaneuous across the whole of France) could be carried out over medieval infrastructure. Of course, it may be that the Templars were just that unpopular amongst the general population. Or possibly (and this is the book's thesis) they just didn't employ enough lawyers before the purge.
The Templars is an intriguing book, although the title is somewhat misleading; it is really more of a general history of the Crusades from 1096 until 1307, rather than an in-depth history of the Knights Templar. In part, I think this is because there is a lack of information about what the Templars were doing when not directly involved in the business of killing muslims; we are told, for example, that the Temple became a major (in fact the major) international banking house in Europe, but there is little discussion of how this occurred, or how the banking business impacted upon the monastic aspect of the Templar life. Similarly, we are told that the majority of Templars spent their time administering the order's properties outside the Holy Land, but very little about what that life entailed. This is a pity, as a detailed study of exactly how the order mutated from its original form as a poor monastic order to one of richest organisations in Christendom would be fascinating.
The history of the Crusades as presented here is interesting, partly because Read tries oh so very hard to make the Templars, the Crusaders and the medieval Church appear sympathetic, and fails absymally. There's lots of special pleading: a particularly darkly comically passage attempts to explain that whilst it is true that when the Crusaders captured Jerusalem they killed every living thing within its walls and waded knee deep in blood to the thanksgiving mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and it is also true that on both occasions that the forces of Islam captured Jerusalem there was no massacre, the cases were totally different, and anyway the Muslims started it (by daring to live in the Holy Land). And all the Crusaders were motivated by genuine piety, not loot, which must have been a great comfort to the Jews of Mainz, to know that the men who robbed and murdered them acted from genuine religious conviction.
Defending the Templars becomes particularly difficult when we get to the period immediately before the Third Crusade, because even if you're rooting for the Crusaders (and I'm really not), the Templars were a total disaster, whether it's supporting Reynald de Chatillon (called "Reginald" here, for no apparent reason - possibly because it sounds like the name a more pleasant man might have) when he broke the truce with Saladin (FAIL!), supporting Reynald's plan to attack Saladin's army (DOUBLE FAIL!) or insisting on stopping for the night in the middle of the desert miles from the nearest well (SUPER MEGA TRIPLE FAIL!). We're also treated to some rather pathetic apologies made by 'Reynald de Chatillon's defenders' (I wasn't aware he had any, being violent, untrustworthy and thoroughly unpleasant even by the Crusader's standards, which were not high). The most amusing of which is that "Chatillon consider the presence of guards on the caravan he attacked a breach of the truce".
Of course, once the Holy Land is lost, the Templars became a bit pointless. And so, (in a move of which Stalin would have been proud) the King of France had all 15,000 templars arrested, tortured and convicted of murder, heresy, blasphemy, sodomy and probably jaywalking as well. And then he stole their money. The Pope, being more concerned with temporal than spiritual matters, looked the other way. It has to be said, the medieval Papacy doesn't come out of the crusades well - and Boniface VIII is generally consider one of the more crap popes, having persuaded his (illiterate) predecessor to abdicate, before murdering him. The image of a cackling Boniface VIII sitting on the throne of Constantine waving a sword and screaming "I AM CEASAR!" is one that will stay with me (to be fair, the book doesn't explicitly say that he was cackling, but I can't imagine an octogenarian waving a sword and screaming "I AM
The feeling one gets reading about the final downfall of the Templars was not dissimilar to how one feels when reading about the Night of the Long Knives; you feel a brief twinge of sympathy for the victims, who were betrayed by the masters they served loyally and accused of ridiculous crimes which they obvious did not commit. Then you remember that they were very unpleasant people, and that whilst they didn't commit the crimes they were accused of, they certainly did commit a bunch of other crimes which they were not punished for.
The most interesting thing about the destruction of the Temple was how modern Philip IV of France's methods were - I said that Stalin would have been proud of his actions, and the account in this book certainly plays up the similarities - accusations of outlandish and absurd plots, backed up by very public confessions and show trials, combined with a reign of terror (one bishop was accused of treason, heresy, sorcery, simony and fornication for the crime of saying King Philip "looked like an owl") to prevent anyone objecting. Philip even had recourse to the very modern method of "disappearing" the Templar's lawyer when he proved too effective. It is surprising to me that such a well organised and efficient purge (arresting 15,000 people simultaneuous across the whole of France) could be carried out over medieval infrastructure. Of course, it may be that the Templars were just that unpopular amongst the general population. Or possibly (and this is the book's thesis) they just didn't employ enough lawyers before the purge.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Iron and Orange
Books read this week: The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad), William The Silent (C.V. Wedgwood)
Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream is an interesting, although ultimately unsuccessful experiment in what might be termed alternative historical literature. The basic hypothesis of the book is that Adolf Hitler, becoming disillusioned with the NSDAP, emigrates to America, abandons politics and becomes a pulp science fiction writer, eventually expiring from tertiary syphilis in 1953, shortly after finishing his magnum opus, Lords of The Swastika, the text of which forms the majority of the Iron Dream.
There is an interesting debate to be had about the fascist tendencies of science fiction and fantasy - JRR Tolkien was himself uncomfortable with the orcs he created, precisely because the idea of an entire race born evil was extremely troubling to him. Unfortunately, that debate is not to be had in the Iron Dream, primarily because it is about as subtle as a 500 foot tall neon flashing billboard saying "Nazis are Bad!", but also because it reads as if it was written by a sexually repressed syphilitic madman. I know that was the intention, but it doesn't make the book enjoyable. The plot (such as it is) follows the ubermenschen Feric Jaggar (Hitler) as he rises to power in the land of Helden, the last 'genetically pure' country in a world destroyed by nuclear fire. The plot is basically World War II as Hitler would liked it to have gone, but is (quite deliberately) almost incoherent and illogical, with paper thin characterisation and lots of phallic steel truncheons. Phallic steel truncheons everywhere.
As I said, this is unfortunate, because there are things to be said about the inherent fascist tendencies of a lot of fantastic fiction - whether it is the tendency for the protagonist to be a perfect specimen of humanity and a 'chosen one', or the unfortunately regularity with which beauty is associated with goodness and the ugliness with evil. A lot of this is the result of how science fiction is designed to appeal to the inner child; we want life to be simple - good guys wear white hats and only do nice things, bad guys wear black hats and do bad things and will inevitably be defeated by the end of the episode. Fascism taps into this, with the added twist that the bad guys are inevitably some small, relatively powerless group. We can blame them for all our problems; it's their fault. And they can be victimised without fear of consequences because they, in reality, don't have the power to fight back.
I think a further contributing factor is that it is harder to make democracy interesting; it is easier to make a single, brooding hero's decision dramatic than a meeting of the general subcommittee on war production. It is easier to write a gripping battle scene than a stirring parliamentary debate. And democracy tends to be untidy. A hero singlehandedly vanquishing the evil overlord is easy to write; a true popular revolution is hard. Partly because there is no central character - no hero to hang a narrative on. Why did Mrs Smith refuse to pay double yesterday's price for bread? Was it Mr Jones who threw the first stone in the square? When did Private Atkins first decide not to fire on the demonstrators? Much easier to just follow the Chosen One when he (and it is almost invariably he) returns to claim his birthright. No one ever seems to ask exactly why birth confers those particular rights.
Of course, this is not to say that we can't enjoy books that have unfortunate implications or unpleasant ideas. You could write a book (and someone probably has) on the way in which HP Lovecraft's scariest stories are all based around Lovecraft's gnawing fear that one of his ancestors might be black. It means Lovecraft was a very unpleasant person. It doesn't mean I can't appreciate that his stories are extremely scary.
My second book this week was a biography of William The Silent, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the Netherlands. It's given me some insight into a region and a period I don't know much about - most of my knowledge of the Sea Beggars and the Dutch struggle for religious and national independence comes from its impact on Elizabeth I's foreign policy, and so it was interesting to see events as it were from the Dutch perspective. William himself emerges as a deeply tragic figure - desperately seeking an accord between the fanatically Catholic Philip II and the equally fanatic Calvinists of the Low Countries, before eventually deciding that humanity outweighed loyalty and joining the rebels. He married four times, and buried two wives, and his eldest son spent thirty years in a Spanish prison. William himself met his end on an assassin's bullet. It is also interesting how, for a general in a national war of independence, William devoted the majority of his time to politics - even to the extent that he inflicted the names Antwerpiana and Flandrina upon his daughters, in an attempt to win over those provinces. It is also a good example of what I said before; revolutions are always bigger than one man, no matter how powerful, charismatic and influential he may be.
Norman Spinrad's Iron Dream is an interesting, although ultimately unsuccessful experiment in what might be termed alternative historical literature. The basic hypothesis of the book is that Adolf Hitler, becoming disillusioned with the NSDAP, emigrates to America, abandons politics and becomes a pulp science fiction writer, eventually expiring from tertiary syphilis in 1953, shortly after finishing his magnum opus, Lords of The Swastika, the text of which forms the majority of the Iron Dream.
There is an interesting debate to be had about the fascist tendencies of science fiction and fantasy - JRR Tolkien was himself uncomfortable with the orcs he created, precisely because the idea of an entire race born evil was extremely troubling to him. Unfortunately, that debate is not to be had in the Iron Dream, primarily because it is about as subtle as a 500 foot tall neon flashing billboard saying "Nazis are Bad!", but also because it reads as if it was written by a sexually repressed syphilitic madman. I know that was the intention, but it doesn't make the book enjoyable. The plot (such as it is) follows the ubermenschen Feric Jaggar (Hitler) as he rises to power in the land of Helden, the last 'genetically pure' country in a world destroyed by nuclear fire. The plot is basically World War II as Hitler would liked it to have gone, but is (quite deliberately) almost incoherent and illogical, with paper thin characterisation and lots of phallic steel truncheons. Phallic steel truncheons everywhere.
As I said, this is unfortunate, because there are things to be said about the inherent fascist tendencies of a lot of fantastic fiction - whether it is the tendency for the protagonist to be a perfect specimen of humanity and a 'chosen one', or the unfortunately regularity with which beauty is associated with goodness and the ugliness with evil. A lot of this is the result of how science fiction is designed to appeal to the inner child; we want life to be simple - good guys wear white hats and only do nice things, bad guys wear black hats and do bad things and will inevitably be defeated by the end of the episode. Fascism taps into this, with the added twist that the bad guys are inevitably some small, relatively powerless group. We can blame them for all our problems; it's their fault. And they can be victimised without fear of consequences because they, in reality, don't have the power to fight back.
I think a further contributing factor is that it is harder to make democracy interesting; it is easier to make a single, brooding hero's decision dramatic than a meeting of the general subcommittee on war production. It is easier to write a gripping battle scene than a stirring parliamentary debate. And democracy tends to be untidy. A hero singlehandedly vanquishing the evil overlord is easy to write; a true popular revolution is hard. Partly because there is no central character - no hero to hang a narrative on. Why did Mrs Smith refuse to pay double yesterday's price for bread? Was it Mr Jones who threw the first stone in the square? When did Private Atkins first decide not to fire on the demonstrators? Much easier to just follow the Chosen One when he (and it is almost invariably he) returns to claim his birthright. No one ever seems to ask exactly why birth confers those particular rights.
Of course, this is not to say that we can't enjoy books that have unfortunate implications or unpleasant ideas. You could write a book (and someone probably has) on the way in which HP Lovecraft's scariest stories are all based around Lovecraft's gnawing fear that one of his ancestors might be black. It means Lovecraft was a very unpleasant person. It doesn't mean I can't appreciate that his stories are extremely scary.
My second book this week was a biography of William The Silent, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the Netherlands. It's given me some insight into a region and a period I don't know much about - most of my knowledge of the Sea Beggars and the Dutch struggle for religious and national independence comes from its impact on Elizabeth I's foreign policy, and so it was interesting to see events as it were from the Dutch perspective. William himself emerges as a deeply tragic figure - desperately seeking an accord between the fanatically Catholic Philip II and the equally fanatic Calvinists of the Low Countries, before eventually deciding that humanity outweighed loyalty and joining the rebels. He married four times, and buried two wives, and his eldest son spent thirty years in a Spanish prison. William himself met his end on an assassin's bullet. It is also interesting how, for a general in a national war of independence, William devoted the majority of his time to politics - even to the extent that he inflicted the names Antwerpiana and Flandrina upon his daughters, in an attempt to win over those provinces. It is also a good example of what I said before; revolutions are always bigger than one man, no matter how powerful, charismatic and influential he may be.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Romance: Lunatics, lords and really big swords
Books read today: An Utterly Impartial History of Britain (John O'Farrell), Rebecca and Rowena (William Makepeace Thackeray)
Our two pieces this evening make an interesting comparison; John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain is a light hearted, extremely funny but nonetheless accurate and informative history of the British Isles starting (as history usually does) in 55 B.C. with Ceasar's sightseeing tour of England, and ending (as history usually does) in 1945 when America became Top Nation. Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena is a very short piece of fan fiction (a vice in which I usually don't indulge) which both fixes the manifestly broken ending of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and simultaneously sends up the whole historical romance genre.
Turning first to O'Farrell's piece; any comedic history of Great Britain stands in the shadow of 1066 and All That - the Shakespeare of history as comedy. Nevertheless (as O'Farrell identifies in the introduction) Sellar and Yeatman's classic assumes the reader knows some history (or, at least, has forgotten it). O'Farrell's book on the other hand assumes very little in the way of prior knowledge - in fact, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a general but basic history of Britain.
I am generally very well disposed towards the concept of history as comedy - I once based an entire stand-up routine around the Schlieffen Plan* - and as far as I'm concerned, British history is pretty much comedy gold - from King John losing the crown jewels in the Wash (a joke first made about 5 minutes after the tide came in that day) to Wellington panicking that revolutionaries would storm the Tower of London.... by buying tickets and forming an orderly queue to come in and see the crown jewels. It's all good fun until someone loses an eye. Or their head. Or, in the case of Guy Fawkes, his testicles, his intestines, his stomach and then his head**. It is very much to O'Farrell's credit that he doesn't whitewash our history; he makes sure to point our just how unpleasant, nasty and just plain psychotic many of our rulers have been down the centuries - from the St Brice's Day Massacre (who the hell is St. Brice, anyway?), Ethelred the Unready's attempt to massacre all the vikings in England (yes, since you ask, it did end badly for Ethelred - a strong contender for the title of dumbest ever king of England - and when you consider his competition.....), to pointing out that William the Conqueror was (appropriately enough) a right royal bastard, it's all there.
It is interesting, given that history is written by the victors, how many people in England remain somewhat bitter about the result of the battle of Hastings (I know I am.... but then I still harbour a slight grudge about enclosure. And the dissolution of the monasteries. And Thomas a' Becket. The list goes on....). There's a general feeling that although Harold lost, he should have won really - he tried harder, and he was more romantic (just look at the names: Edith Swan Neck vs. Matilda), and he had a sense of humour (when Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, demanded the throne of England, Harold told him that as he was taller than other men, he could have seven foot of English earth, from his head to his foot... and then killed him. You probably had to be there). Whereas William the Conqueror just composed a giant book of what to steal. And we haven't had an actually English monarch since.
Scott's Ivanhoe, the basis for Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena, takes the tensions between the Norman aristocracy and the Anglo-Saxon people and forges it into a captivating historical romance; Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, disinherited son of the last remaining Saxon nobleman, Cedric of Rotherwood, finds himself torn between the affections of the royal, blonde, and frankly rather dull Rowena (heir to the line of Alfred the Great) and the raven haired, courageous, resourceful and beautiful Jewish doctor Rebecca. After a bunch of adventures, bumping into Robin Hood and the disguised Richard the Lionheart, a few battles and the odd siege, Ivanhoe regains his estates and his honour, and marries Rowena. He marries the wrong woman. And this is the problem Thackeray seeks to fix. Of course, one could argue about whether the problem needs fixing at all; Ivanhoe himself is very brave, very heroic and very conventional; he would never marry a woman who wasn't a Christian. And Rebecca would never leave the faith of her ancestors and she would not abandon who she is just for love - which is, of course, what makes her a stronger and more attractive character than Rowena. It is therefore completely appropriate, although also completely tragic, that Ivanhoe and Rebecca should go their separate ways at the end of the book.
Nevertheless, Thackeray wants Ivanhoe/Rebecca, and so Ivanhoe/Rebecca he shall have; after some unwarranted (although extremely amusing) character assassination of Rowena, he kills off Ivanhoe (he gets better) and then Rowena (she doesn't), and then he reunites Ivanhoe with Rebecca, and it's all going swimmingly, and then Rebecca converts to Christianity. Because William Makepeace Thackeray has missed the fucking point of the character. And then it ends. I get the impression the piece was motivated more by a dislike of the character of Rowena, than any real appreciation of the strength of Rebecca's.
Apart from the total disaster of an ending, the piece is otherwise very funny and does send up the whole historical romance genre excellently - it particularly needles the tendency for mysterious monks with marvellous medicines to appear when required, and the massively inflated body counts that the heroes of a romance can clock up. The final verdict: fan fiction: this is how you do it.
* Laugh? The audience didn't.
** Followed by his limbs; that was the quartering bit.
Our two pieces this evening make an interesting comparison; John O'Farrell's An Utterly Impartial History of Britain is a light hearted, extremely funny but nonetheless accurate and informative history of the British Isles starting (as history usually does) in 55 B.C. with Ceasar's sightseeing tour of England, and ending (as history usually does) in 1945 when America became Top Nation. Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena is a very short piece of fan fiction (a vice in which I usually don't indulge) which both fixes the manifestly broken ending of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe and simultaneously sends up the whole historical romance genre.
Turning first to O'Farrell's piece; any comedic history of Great Britain stands in the shadow of 1066 and All That - the Shakespeare of history as comedy. Nevertheless (as O'Farrell identifies in the introduction) Sellar and Yeatman's classic assumes the reader knows some history (or, at least, has forgotten it). O'Farrell's book on the other hand assumes very little in the way of prior knowledge - in fact, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a general but basic history of Britain.
I am generally very well disposed towards the concept of history as comedy - I once based an entire stand-up routine around the Schlieffen Plan* - and as far as I'm concerned, British history is pretty much comedy gold - from King John losing the crown jewels in the Wash (a joke first made about 5 minutes after the tide came in that day) to Wellington panicking that revolutionaries would storm the Tower of London.... by buying tickets and forming an orderly queue to come in and see the crown jewels. It's all good fun until someone loses an eye. Or their head. Or, in the case of Guy Fawkes, his testicles, his intestines, his stomach and then his head**. It is very much to O'Farrell's credit that he doesn't whitewash our history; he makes sure to point our just how unpleasant, nasty and just plain psychotic many of our rulers have been down the centuries - from the St Brice's Day Massacre (who the hell is St. Brice, anyway?), Ethelred the Unready's attempt to massacre all the vikings in England (yes, since you ask, it did end badly for Ethelred - a strong contender for the title of dumbest ever king of England - and when you consider his competition.....), to pointing out that William the Conqueror was (appropriately enough) a right royal bastard, it's all there.
It is interesting, given that history is written by the victors, how many people in England remain somewhat bitter about the result of the battle of Hastings (I know I am.... but then I still harbour a slight grudge about enclosure. And the dissolution of the monasteries. And Thomas a' Becket. The list goes on....). There's a general feeling that although Harold lost, he should have won really - he tried harder, and he was more romantic (just look at the names: Edith Swan Neck vs. Matilda), and he had a sense of humour (when Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, demanded the throne of England, Harold told him that as he was taller than other men, he could have seven foot of English earth, from his head to his foot... and then killed him. You probably had to be there). Whereas William the Conqueror just composed a giant book of what to steal. And we haven't had an actually English monarch since.
Scott's Ivanhoe, the basis for Thackeray's Rebecca and Rowena, takes the tensions between the Norman aristocracy and the Anglo-Saxon people and forges it into a captivating historical romance; Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, disinherited son of the last remaining Saxon nobleman, Cedric of Rotherwood, finds himself torn between the affections of the royal, blonde, and frankly rather dull Rowena (heir to the line of Alfred the Great) and the raven haired, courageous, resourceful and beautiful Jewish doctor Rebecca. After a bunch of adventures, bumping into Robin Hood and the disguised Richard the Lionheart, a few battles and the odd siege, Ivanhoe regains his estates and his honour, and marries Rowena. He marries the wrong woman. And this is the problem Thackeray seeks to fix. Of course, one could argue about whether the problem needs fixing at all; Ivanhoe himself is very brave, very heroic and very conventional; he would never marry a woman who wasn't a Christian. And Rebecca would never leave the faith of her ancestors and she would not abandon who she is just for love - which is, of course, what makes her a stronger and more attractive character than Rowena. It is therefore completely appropriate, although also completely tragic, that Ivanhoe and Rebecca should go their separate ways at the end of the book.
Nevertheless, Thackeray wants Ivanhoe/Rebecca, and so Ivanhoe/Rebecca he shall have; after some unwarranted (although extremely amusing) character assassination of Rowena, he kills off Ivanhoe (he gets better) and then Rowena (she doesn't), and then he reunites Ivanhoe with Rebecca, and it's all going swimmingly, and then Rebecca converts to Christianity. Because William Makepeace Thackeray has missed the fucking point of the character. And then it ends. I get the impression the piece was motivated more by a dislike of the character of Rowena, than any real appreciation of the strength of Rebecca's.
Apart from the total disaster of an ending, the piece is otherwise very funny and does send up the whole historical romance genre excellently - it particularly needles the tendency for mysterious monks with marvellous medicines to appear when required, and the massively inflated body counts that the heroes of a romance can clock up. The final verdict: fan fiction: this is how you do it.
* Laugh? The audience didn't.
** Followed by his limbs; that was the quartering bit.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Out With The Old....
Books read today: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (David Simon), Iron Sunrise (Charles Stross)
Happy New Year!
Today's two volumes are quite different; a gritty, well grounded and impeccably researched piece of investigative journalism about the workings of an inner city detective squad, and a fascinating piece of speculative fiction that examines the way in which modern technology will and won't change human nature - a work that even manages to take the tired and stale sci-fi antagonist cliche of Nazis! In! SPACEEEEEEEE! and make it new and interesting.
David Simon's Homicide is a brilliant piece of journalism, and (equally interesting for a Wire junkie like me) gives details on the real life events that inspired many of the scenes in the Wire. It's a generally very sympathetic portrait of a police department in the process of losing the trust of the public, and a very stark reminder of the way in which modern policing (well, all policing really) depends upon the consent of the policed. If witnesses won't talk and juries won't convict, the best investigative system in the world isn't going to help much. I say a police department in the process of losing public trust because it's clear from the various epilogues and postscripts (at least in the Kindle edition - I don't know about the print version) that things got much, much worse in the 90s and 00s (the book follows the Baltimore city homicide squad for the year 1988). The only issue I have with the book is that it is perhaps too sympathetic towards the police it covers; the officers are obviously close friends of the author by the end of the year, if not at the beginning. I think that a certain amount of fraternisation is inevitable in the circumstances (or at the very least, the book wouldn't be much good if there weren't close personal relationships between the author and his subjects), but obviously that personal relationship is going to slightly skew the book's perspective. For exactly that reason, I'm looking forward to reading Simon's next book, The Corner, which examines the war on drugs from the other side.
Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise (a sequel to Singularity Sky) is a very different beast. Charles Stross is one of my favourite living science fiction writers (along with Richard Morgan), and he shares with Morgan the ability to write books that feel like they're about the future, rather than the past; it's fairly easy to take past events and replace cannon with laser cannon, sailing ships with space ships; it's much harder to write a believable, exciting and interesting book that portrays societies which are both unfamiliar and futuristic, yet simultaneously feel real. Richard Morgan manages this very well, particularly in his Altered Carbon series, and in Iron Sunrise Stross also manages that difficult balancing act (although, being more generally upbeat in tone if not content, the result is less depressing). What Stross considers in Iron Sunrise is the problems of the politics of plenty; what if anyone, anywhere can produce anything (which looks quite likely in the near future - a combination of advances in nanotechnology, the internet and current 3D printing technology could well mean than if you know what you want to make, you'll be able to construct it in your garden shed).
Of course, an abundance of everything doesn't mean an end to conflict; it just means lots more new, interesting and painful ways in which human beings can hurt each other. Which is why the book opens with a piece of performance art gone horribly wrong; a professional (syphilitic) Idi Amin impersonator with his own personal thermonuclear device. The book also reboots the (by now rather cliche) concept of Nazis in space by examining the ways in which a fascist ideology (and its adherents) infiltrate and take over a polity. It's an interesting (and more than a little scary) examination of the corrupting influence that a totalitarian belief system can have on those in positions of power (a bit like Invasion of The Body Snatchers, but with Nazis). This is a big difference, and the most refreshing thing about this book; most works that reference the Nazis use them as little more than a villain label: we all agree Nazis are evil, these villains are Nazis, ergo they are evil - there is little discussion or consideration of how such a obviously and transparently evil ideology was able to spread and gain influence - of how men like Seyss-Inquart and Quisling were able to build fascist fifth columns.
Happy New Year!
Today's two volumes are quite different; a gritty, well grounded and impeccably researched piece of investigative journalism about the workings of an inner city detective squad, and a fascinating piece of speculative fiction that examines the way in which modern technology will and won't change human nature - a work that even manages to take the tired and stale sci-fi antagonist cliche of Nazis! In! SPACEEEEEEEE! and make it new and interesting.
David Simon's Homicide is a brilliant piece of journalism, and (equally interesting for a Wire junkie like me) gives details on the real life events that inspired many of the scenes in the Wire. It's a generally very sympathetic portrait of a police department in the process of losing the trust of the public, and a very stark reminder of the way in which modern policing (well, all policing really) depends upon the consent of the policed. If witnesses won't talk and juries won't convict, the best investigative system in the world isn't going to help much. I say a police department in the process of losing public trust because it's clear from the various epilogues and postscripts (at least in the Kindle edition - I don't know about the print version) that things got much, much worse in the 90s and 00s (the book follows the Baltimore city homicide squad for the year 1988). The only issue I have with the book is that it is perhaps too sympathetic towards the police it covers; the officers are obviously close friends of the author by the end of the year, if not at the beginning. I think that a certain amount of fraternisation is inevitable in the circumstances (or at the very least, the book wouldn't be much good if there weren't close personal relationships between the author and his subjects), but obviously that personal relationship is going to slightly skew the book's perspective. For exactly that reason, I'm looking forward to reading Simon's next book, The Corner, which examines the war on drugs from the other side.
Charles Stross' Iron Sunrise (a sequel to Singularity Sky) is a very different beast. Charles Stross is one of my favourite living science fiction writers (along with Richard Morgan), and he shares with Morgan the ability to write books that feel like they're about the future, rather than the past; it's fairly easy to take past events and replace cannon with laser cannon, sailing ships with space ships; it's much harder to write a believable, exciting and interesting book that portrays societies which are both unfamiliar and futuristic, yet simultaneously feel real. Richard Morgan manages this very well, particularly in his Altered Carbon series, and in Iron Sunrise Stross also manages that difficult balancing act (although, being more generally upbeat in tone if not content, the result is less depressing). What Stross considers in Iron Sunrise is the problems of the politics of plenty; what if anyone, anywhere can produce anything (which looks quite likely in the near future - a combination of advances in nanotechnology, the internet and current 3D printing technology could well mean than if you know what you want to make, you'll be able to construct it in your garden shed).
Of course, an abundance of everything doesn't mean an end to conflict; it just means lots more new, interesting and painful ways in which human beings can hurt each other. Which is why the book opens with a piece of performance art gone horribly wrong; a professional (syphilitic) Idi Amin impersonator with his own personal thermonuclear device. The book also reboots the (by now rather cliche) concept of Nazis in space by examining the ways in which a fascist ideology (and its adherents) infiltrate and take over a polity. It's an interesting (and more than a little scary) examination of the corrupting influence that a totalitarian belief system can have on those in positions of power (a bit like Invasion of The Body Snatchers, but with Nazis). This is a big difference, and the most refreshing thing about this book; most works that reference the Nazis use them as little more than a villain label: we all agree Nazis are evil, these villains are Nazis, ergo they are evil - there is little discussion or consideration of how such a obviously and transparently evil ideology was able to spread and gain influence - of how men like Seyss-Inquart and Quisling were able to build fascist fifth columns.
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