Books read this week: The Killer Angels 7/10 (Michael Shaara)
As is usually the case over Christmas, I've been pretty busy, and as I've received quite a few books over the holiday period, I've been dipping into several of them, with the net result that I've only finished one of them so far. The Killer Angels is a historical novel about the battle of Gettysburg; it was adapted (very faithfully) into the film Gettysburg, and it's a fairly entertaining read, if you can get past the bombastic pomposity that seems to afflict a huge proportion of American historical works; it's almost as if they feel that because they don't have very much history, it all has to be treated with massively exaggerated respect, and they have to make palpably absurd claims about it (like calling the American Civil War "one of the greatest wars the world has ever seen" - a statement which is self-evidently false to anyone with even a passing knowledge of European or Chinese history).
What I found most irritating about the book was that it buys into the (unfortunately very popular) narrative that the Confederacy were somehow worthy and noble opponents fighting for a way of life, rather than the Nazis v 0.1. This is a common flaw in treatments of the American Civil War, but I was surprised to see it pop up in such an (otherwise very well researched) book: the sequence where the Joshua Chamberlain, the Union colonel and the escaped slave is particularly infuriating - the African-American is presented as having been recently brought across the Atlantic, and therefore having no command of English. Not only is this extremely improbable (the Royal Navy had swept the slave traders from the seas thirty years prior, and any slave trader bringing slaves into the South would have to evade not only the Royal Navy, but also a (very efficient) Union blockade), but it is a literary sleight of hand designed deliberately to deprive the slave of a voice: we get a lot of white men telling us what they think he thinks, or what he should think, or why what he thinks doesn't matter, but we can't actually hear his voice. Of course, the reason for this is very simple: once you have read the histories of ex-slaves it's impossible to feel even the slightest sympathy for the Confederacy, in much the same way that once you've seen pictures of Bergen-Belsen you can't feel any sympathy for the Nazi regime.
Thursday, 29 December 2011
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Inquisitors, Skeletons and Angry Glaswegians
Books read this week: The Grand Inquisitor 5/10 (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), Gardens of the Moon 7/10 (Steven Erikson), Devil Bones 5/10 (Kathy Reichs), My Shit Life So Far 6/10 (Frankie Boyle)
Bit of an odd mix of books this week. The Grand Inquisitor is, of course, an extract from the Brothers Karamazov; a sort of strange story within a story where Christ returns to earth for a day to visit Spain at the height of the Inquisition. I didn't find it particularly interesting, or, indeed, in any way enlightening; possibly because the translation I was reading was abysmal (littered with "thees" and "thous" which, unless you're transliterating the speech of someone with a strong Yorkshire accent is either an unforgivable attempt to sound olde timey or a lazy attempt to translate from a language which maintains the formal and informal second person pronoun distinction). It also possesses a common flaw in alternate history works in that Dostoyevsky doesn't know his history (this is why I tend to avoid alternate history like the plague): the Spanish Inquisition was entirely subordinated to the needs of the Spanish monarchy - had he written about the Roman Inquisition his points might be more valid - which further increases the irony of the piece, as the Tsarist government (which Dostoyevsky supported at this stage of his career) had a very similar relationship with the Russian Orthodox church at this point in time (in fact, it is the total subordination of the church to a tyrannical regime which led to both the Catholic Church in Spain and the Orthodox Church in Russia taking such a pasting when the tyrannical regimes were overthrown). Perhaps the story would make more sense in context (and it would definitely make more sense in a better translation).
Gardens of the Moon is the first installment in Erikson's gigantic Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Erikson says in the introduction he set out with the aim of writing something like Dune. In this he has definitely failed; Dune is a stupendous book, with fascinating multifaceted characters and a deeply strange, but also comprehensible and believable universe. Gardens of the Moon is a fairly good and decently well written fantasy novel; but Erikson has failed (thus far; obviously there are nine more books to go in the series) to construct a world that I find complete and immersive: that said Erikson does avoid the cardinal sin of fantasy and science fiction writing, which is over-explanation and over reliance on a single concept.
I can generally divide fantasy and science fiction books into two categories: the fantasy/sci-fi novel and the novel in a fantastic or science fiction setting. It's not a hard and fast distinction, but basically the fantasy/sci-fi novel skates by on elves, magic or spaceships: the science fiction drives the plot (because the characters can't); the novel in a fantastic setting on the other hand is more about well developed characters who face interesting dilemmas (which just happen to involve elves, magic and/or spaceships). Basic questions that can be used to separate the two: would I still want to read this if the characters were transplanted to present-day Slough? (If yes then it's a novel in a fantastic setting) Can the plot of the novel be reduce to "What if XXXX"? (If yes then it's a sci-fi novel) Does the world feel complete? (If yes then it's a novel in a fantastic setting) Does the author explain exactly and explicitly how the setting differs from the everyday world in the first chapter (If yes then i) it's a sci-fi novel and ii) it's a bad sci-fi novel). So I would label Dune, The Song of Ice and Fire, and everything Richard Morgan has ever written as novels in a fantastic/sci-fi setting, whilst Charles Stross and David Weber write sci-fi novels (this is not to say Stross' work is bad, quite the contrary, but that he puts the emphasis on the science fiction rather than the novel).
Gardens of the Moon seems to me to fall very close to the boundary. Erikson doesn't fall into the sin of over-explanation, which means it does take about a quarter of the book to work out what's going on, but I do feel that in this novel at least the fantasy McGuffin was driving the plot overmuch (which is partly why it took so long to work out what was going on; the more transparent motives of greed, ambition and self aggrandisement in a Song of Ice and Fire, for example, are much more transparent), and I certainly didn't feel like there was a complete world and that I'm just seeing flashes of it, the way I do with the Song of Ice and Fire and the Takeshi Kovacs books (and even with the Lord of the Rings). Partly this is because we don't really see anything that isn't immediately plot relevant; in many ways I think the needs of writing a tight, sparse plot are in direct opposition to those of developing a fully realised fantasy world (not that Gardens of the Moon is a short book): all those discussions of types of pipe-weed and elvish languages in the Lord of the Rings and the fragments of the Butlerian Jihad and the Bene Gesserit mantras in Dune don't actually add much to the plot directly, but they do create the impression that there's a whole world out there, and we are just seeing one very small part of it: this is something Erikson doesn't manage in the Gardens of the Moon. That said, I did enjoy the book, and I'm certainly going to keep working my way through the series (and I always like to have a nice long series to plough my way through ahead of me)
Devil Bones was a disappointing book. It's one of those crime stories where the main detective doesn't seem to do much detecting, and also seems (for someone who's supposed to be a top rank forensic anthropologist) to be extremely dense. I dislike mysteries that are solved in the last chapter by Deus Ex Machina; it seems very much to defeat the point of a detective novel. I also dislike detectives who are less perceptive than me (because, frankly, I'm not that perceptive). I think Reichs intended the book as packaging for a message that Santeria and Wicca are legitimate religions; this is, of course, true, but I doubt anyone is going to be convinced of that by reading a mediocre crime novel: frankly, if actual reality can't dispel your delusions, an train station shop thriller isn't going to do the job.
My Shit Life So Far is Frankie Boyle (of Mock the Week fame)'s autobiography. He is a very angry man. It's not a brilliantly good book, but it's not an awful book either. Obviously there's a fair amount of material recycled from his standup routines: I do find it interesting that some comedians (Mark Steel springs to mind) write excellent books, but are somewhat lacklustre on stage: Boyle is in many ways the opposite. Partly I think it's that black rage and bile are excellent in small doses (which is why he was so excellent on Mock the Week), but are somewhat overwhelming when repeated continuously for 300 pages.
Bit of an odd mix of books this week. The Grand Inquisitor is, of course, an extract from the Brothers Karamazov; a sort of strange story within a story where Christ returns to earth for a day to visit Spain at the height of the Inquisition. I didn't find it particularly interesting, or, indeed, in any way enlightening; possibly because the translation I was reading was abysmal (littered with "thees" and "thous" which, unless you're transliterating the speech of someone with a strong Yorkshire accent is either an unforgivable attempt to sound olde timey or a lazy attempt to translate from a language which maintains the formal and informal second person pronoun distinction). It also possesses a common flaw in alternate history works in that Dostoyevsky doesn't know his history (this is why I tend to avoid alternate history like the plague): the Spanish Inquisition was entirely subordinated to the needs of the Spanish monarchy - had he written about the Roman Inquisition his points might be more valid - which further increases the irony of the piece, as the Tsarist government (which Dostoyevsky supported at this stage of his career) had a very similar relationship with the Russian Orthodox church at this point in time (in fact, it is the total subordination of the church to a tyrannical regime which led to both the Catholic Church in Spain and the Orthodox Church in Russia taking such a pasting when the tyrannical regimes were overthrown). Perhaps the story would make more sense in context (and it would definitely make more sense in a better translation).
Gardens of the Moon is the first installment in Erikson's gigantic Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Erikson says in the introduction he set out with the aim of writing something like Dune. In this he has definitely failed; Dune is a stupendous book, with fascinating multifaceted characters and a deeply strange, but also comprehensible and believable universe. Gardens of the Moon is a fairly good and decently well written fantasy novel; but Erikson has failed (thus far; obviously there are nine more books to go in the series) to construct a world that I find complete and immersive: that said Erikson does avoid the cardinal sin of fantasy and science fiction writing, which is over-explanation and over reliance on a single concept.
I can generally divide fantasy and science fiction books into two categories: the fantasy/sci-fi novel and the novel in a fantastic or science fiction setting. It's not a hard and fast distinction, but basically the fantasy/sci-fi novel skates by on elves, magic or spaceships: the science fiction drives the plot (because the characters can't); the novel in a fantastic setting on the other hand is more about well developed characters who face interesting dilemmas (which just happen to involve elves, magic and/or spaceships). Basic questions that can be used to separate the two: would I still want to read this if the characters were transplanted to present-day Slough? (If yes then it's a novel in a fantastic setting) Can the plot of the novel be reduce to "What if XXXX"? (If yes then it's a sci-fi novel) Does the world feel complete? (If yes then it's a novel in a fantastic setting) Does the author explain exactly and explicitly how the setting differs from the everyday world in the first chapter (If yes then i) it's a sci-fi novel and ii) it's a bad sci-fi novel). So I would label Dune, The Song of Ice and Fire, and everything Richard Morgan has ever written as novels in a fantastic/sci-fi setting, whilst Charles Stross and David Weber write sci-fi novels (this is not to say Stross' work is bad, quite the contrary, but that he puts the emphasis on the science fiction rather than the novel).
Gardens of the Moon seems to me to fall very close to the boundary. Erikson doesn't fall into the sin of over-explanation, which means it does take about a quarter of the book to work out what's going on, but I do feel that in this novel at least the fantasy McGuffin was driving the plot overmuch (which is partly why it took so long to work out what was going on; the more transparent motives of greed, ambition and self aggrandisement in a Song of Ice and Fire, for example, are much more transparent), and I certainly didn't feel like there was a complete world and that I'm just seeing flashes of it, the way I do with the Song of Ice and Fire and the Takeshi Kovacs books (and even with the Lord of the Rings). Partly this is because we don't really see anything that isn't immediately plot relevant; in many ways I think the needs of writing a tight, sparse plot are in direct opposition to those of developing a fully realised fantasy world (not that Gardens of the Moon is a short book): all those discussions of types of pipe-weed and elvish languages in the Lord of the Rings and the fragments of the Butlerian Jihad and the Bene Gesserit mantras in Dune don't actually add much to the plot directly, but they do create the impression that there's a whole world out there, and we are just seeing one very small part of it: this is something Erikson doesn't manage in the Gardens of the Moon. That said, I did enjoy the book, and I'm certainly going to keep working my way through the series (and I always like to have a nice long series to plough my way through ahead of me)
Devil Bones was a disappointing book. It's one of those crime stories where the main detective doesn't seem to do much detecting, and also seems (for someone who's supposed to be a top rank forensic anthropologist) to be extremely dense. I dislike mysteries that are solved in the last chapter by Deus Ex Machina; it seems very much to defeat the point of a detective novel. I also dislike detectives who are less perceptive than me (because, frankly, I'm not that perceptive). I think Reichs intended the book as packaging for a message that Santeria and Wicca are legitimate religions; this is, of course, true, but I doubt anyone is going to be convinced of that by reading a mediocre crime novel: frankly, if actual reality can't dispel your delusions, an train station shop thriller isn't going to do the job.
My Shit Life So Far is Frankie Boyle (of Mock the Week fame)'s autobiography. He is a very angry man. It's not a brilliantly good book, but it's not an awful book either. Obviously there's a fair amount of material recycled from his standup routines: I do find it interesting that some comedians (Mark Steel springs to mind) write excellent books, but are somewhat lacklustre on stage: Boyle is in many ways the opposite. Partly I think it's that black rage and bile are excellent in small doses (which is why he was so excellent on Mock the Week), but are somewhat overwhelming when repeated continuously for 300 pages.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Candles In The Dark
Books read this week: The Demon-Haunted World 8/10 (Carl Sagan)
I first read The Demon-Haunted World twelve or thirteen years ago. There was a (rather battered) copy in the local library, rather ironically filed with the books on alien abductions and the razor-blade sharpening properties of pyramids (I've always wondered why it is that pyramids are supposed to sharpen razor blades specifically - why not knives or forks?). The Demon-Haunted World had a profound effect upon me; it is probably one of the two or three most influential books I have ever read and I very much doubt I would have studied science at university had I not read it. There is a certain symmetry then, in returning to it now, when my thesis is almost done and I'm nearly done with the scientific part of my life.
The Demon-Haunted World is Carl Sagan's plea for better scientific education as a buttress against superstition and stupidity and for teaching sceptical thinking as a tool for preserving democracy. I remember that it moved me when I was young - but I am older and more cynical now. Not that I don't still think scientific thinking and scepticism are important things to learn' in fact, I think one chapter of this book - "The Baloney Detection Kit" - should be compulsory reading for all school children, as it contains the best and most succinct summary of the ways in which people (let's be honest, primarily politicians) try to lie to us. Of course, that is why, the world being as it is right now, no one is going to give it to them. This is why I find the book less impressive than I did when I first read it: yes it would be nice if the general level of scientific education was higher. Yes it would be nice if fewer people believed in astrology/homeopathy/etc. Yes it would be nice if people were more sceptical and less willing to take pronouncements from authority on faith. But what we really need is a way in which to make that happen, and Carl Sagan comes up a little short on policies. Partly this is a matter of timing: the book was written in 1996, during that brief, odd, hopeful decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 when economic growth was high and international politics were relatively quiet (insert the obvious caveat about Rwanda and Yugoslavia) - it's a decade when we could have fixed the world's problems and chose not to. I'm sure that in the future historians will look back on the 1990s as the Wasted Decade and ask why we didn't do more about poverty and climate change and whatever other crises are hurtling towards us. But as I said, it was a hopeful time, and I think that's why I saw it so positively back when I first read it - it seemed like all we had to do was identify the solution, and then implement it. Now I recognise that you also need to work out how to implement the solution.
Looking at the book with a more critical eye, I also notice now how American-centric the book is: it was rather surprising, for example, to be told that the concept of a trial by jury was an invention of the Founding Fathers, when we've been using it in one form or another in England since at least 1100, and probably since before the Norman Conquest. Also, were I constructing a list of "Fathers (and Mothers) of Democracy" I have to say that not only would Thomas Jefferson not be at the top of the list, I doubt he'd be on the list at all. Certainly Cleisthenes, Pericles, the Gracchi and John Lilburne come above Jefferson. I'd also rate Robespierre, Danton and Saint-Just as well as Marx and Tom Paine far above Jefferson. I'd also take issue with any description of the USA as a "democracy" before about 1965 (in the same way that the UK can't really be described as a democracy until at least 1918 (universal male suffrage and women's suffrage) and probably, really 1928 (when women were granted the vote on the same universal terms as men)).
That said I am forever endebted to Sagan for introducing me to both Frederick Douglass and Tom Paine, both of whom are heroes of mine. I have relatively few heroes, but I have always found Frederick Douglass, in particular, an enormous inspiration: a testament to the power of human determination and the indomitable human spirit. His autobiography is a brilliant account of the power of literacy and knowledge (the message Carl Sagan takes) and also of the way in which absolute power corrupted the slave owning aristocracy of the antebellum south absolutely: Douglass' description of a previously pleasant woman turning slowly into a monster when she inherited slaves is one that has always stayed with me. I have often been struck by the similarities between the Confederacy and the Nazi regime - both were essentially regimes of bullies, and fundamentally cowardly ones at that, and both had a strongly antagonistic relationship with the truth.
Ultimately, for all the imperfections I found reading The Demon-Haunted World again after all these years it remains a fascinating book, and an excellent introduction to Science (with a capital S) and to sceptical thinking, and it has a brilliant dissection of the alien abduction and witch hunting crazes that swept the world. The book is worth reading just for "The Baloney Detection Kit" alone. I just wish I could still be as optimistic as I was the first time I read it.
I first read The Demon-Haunted World twelve or thirteen years ago. There was a (rather battered) copy in the local library, rather ironically filed with the books on alien abductions and the razor-blade sharpening properties of pyramids (I've always wondered why it is that pyramids are supposed to sharpen razor blades specifically - why not knives or forks?). The Demon-Haunted World had a profound effect upon me; it is probably one of the two or three most influential books I have ever read and I very much doubt I would have studied science at university had I not read it. There is a certain symmetry then, in returning to it now, when my thesis is almost done and I'm nearly done with the scientific part of my life.
The Demon-Haunted World is Carl Sagan's plea for better scientific education as a buttress against superstition and stupidity and for teaching sceptical thinking as a tool for preserving democracy. I remember that it moved me when I was young - but I am older and more cynical now. Not that I don't still think scientific thinking and scepticism are important things to learn' in fact, I think one chapter of this book - "The Baloney Detection Kit" - should be compulsory reading for all school children, as it contains the best and most succinct summary of the ways in which people (let's be honest, primarily politicians) try to lie to us. Of course, that is why, the world being as it is right now, no one is going to give it to them. This is why I find the book less impressive than I did when I first read it: yes it would be nice if the general level of scientific education was higher. Yes it would be nice if fewer people believed in astrology/homeopathy/etc. Yes it would be nice if people were more sceptical and less willing to take pronouncements from authority on faith. But what we really need is a way in which to make that happen, and Carl Sagan comes up a little short on policies. Partly this is a matter of timing: the book was written in 1996, during that brief, odd, hopeful decade between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 when economic growth was high and international politics were relatively quiet (insert the obvious caveat about Rwanda and Yugoslavia) - it's a decade when we could have fixed the world's problems and chose not to. I'm sure that in the future historians will look back on the 1990s as the Wasted Decade and ask why we didn't do more about poverty and climate change and whatever other crises are hurtling towards us. But as I said, it was a hopeful time, and I think that's why I saw it so positively back when I first read it - it seemed like all we had to do was identify the solution, and then implement it. Now I recognise that you also need to work out how to implement the solution.
Looking at the book with a more critical eye, I also notice now how American-centric the book is: it was rather surprising, for example, to be told that the concept of a trial by jury was an invention of the Founding Fathers, when we've been using it in one form or another in England since at least 1100, and probably since before the Norman Conquest. Also, were I constructing a list of "Fathers (and Mothers) of Democracy" I have to say that not only would Thomas Jefferson not be at the top of the list, I doubt he'd be on the list at all. Certainly Cleisthenes, Pericles, the Gracchi and John Lilburne come above Jefferson. I'd also rate Robespierre, Danton and Saint-Just as well as Marx and Tom Paine far above Jefferson. I'd also take issue with any description of the USA as a "democracy" before about 1965 (in the same way that the UK can't really be described as a democracy until at least 1918 (universal male suffrage and women's suffrage) and probably, really 1928 (when women were granted the vote on the same universal terms as men)).
That said I am forever endebted to Sagan for introducing me to both Frederick Douglass and Tom Paine, both of whom are heroes of mine. I have relatively few heroes, but I have always found Frederick Douglass, in particular, an enormous inspiration: a testament to the power of human determination and the indomitable human spirit. His autobiography is a brilliant account of the power of literacy and knowledge (the message Carl Sagan takes) and also of the way in which absolute power corrupted the slave owning aristocracy of the antebellum south absolutely: Douglass' description of a previously pleasant woman turning slowly into a monster when she inherited slaves is one that has always stayed with me. I have often been struck by the similarities between the Confederacy and the Nazi regime - both were essentially regimes of bullies, and fundamentally cowardly ones at that, and both had a strongly antagonistic relationship with the truth.
Ultimately, for all the imperfections I found reading The Demon-Haunted World again after all these years it remains a fascinating book, and an excellent introduction to Science (with a capital S) and to sceptical thinking, and it has a brilliant dissection of the alien abduction and witch hunting crazes that swept the world. The book is worth reading just for "The Baloney Detection Kit" alone. I just wish I could still be as optimistic as I was the first time I read it.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
This Is How The World Ends
Books read this week: The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF 6/10, The Book of Were-Wolves 7/10 (Sabine Baring-Gould)
Not a cheerful set of books this week. The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF is exactly what it says on the tin: an anthology of short stories divided fairly equally into stories about the end of the world as we know it, and stories set after the end of the world. I found the former generally more interesting than the latter: how people behave under extraordinary circumstances is fascinating, whilst predictions of life in the far future often aren't (especially when you suppose that as we've used up all our fossil fuel reserves any post-apocalyptic society will be necessarily neolithic, something which flies in the face of all human experience: it's not like the Romans or the ancient Greeks made extensive use of fossil fuels - certainly not to the extent that their societies couldn't function without them). Particular highlights include "The Clockwork Atomic Bomb", which is probably the best story in the book, but not really about an apocalypse per se: more about the years leading up to it: it's also one of the few stories here that isn't based entirely on a European or American perspective of the apocalypse, which made of a bit of a change. "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" and "Fermi and Frost" were also pretty good. "A Pail of Air" was memorable, but stretched my suspension of disbelief. "World Without End" is a fairly nice updating of the old myth of the Wandering Jew and the curse of immortality; the tale of an immortal London street walker with a vagina capable of mass-to-energy conversion. I wonder if the author drew from the sections of the Gilgamesh epic on Shamhat the Harlot for that story (I've always felt that Shamhat got a very raw deal).
It is also interesting the range of scenarios for the end of the world we have here: we have nuclear and biological as well as nanotechnological ragnaroks here, as well as out of control global warming and cosmic disasters. I wonder had this book been written twenty or thirty years ago, would we have so many different ways to destroy ourselves? Generally I'm very pro-technology, but it has to be said that as well as all manner of good things, science has also given us an ever-increasing variety of ways to destroy ourselves: as is so often the case, David Low put it perfectly: http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE1258
Armageddon is depressing enough; somehow what people do when the world isn't about to end is that much more depressing. The Book of Were-Wolves is a fascinating 19th Century monograph: in theory it is an examination of the werewolf myth across the world, which would be interesting enough, but it is actually an examination of the way in which pre-enlightenment societies dealt with the kind of people we call serial killers today: Baring-Gould makes a very convincing argument that (unlike the various folk beliefs surrounding witchcraft) folk belief in werewolves is based upon the observation that occasionally individuals turn up who kill (and sometimes eat) other people for no readily apparent reason. With the knowledge of psychiatry we have today, we can begin to understand what can go wrong with someone, and how mental illness can lead them to commit otherwise inexplicable acts, but obviously if you're a medieval peasant and you find your neighbour eating your other neighbour you're probably just going to blame the devil and burn them. There is some discussion of the triggers for what we would call a psychotic break, and one gets the feeling that the first hesitant steps towards modern psychiatry are being taken.
The last part of the book is an interesting, although not very relevant digression into the history of some of the more famous mass murderers of the middle ages; there is a section on Elizabeth Bathory, which isn't particularly interesting, mainly because her crimes are sufficiently titillating that there's plenty of information about her life scattered across libraries, bookshops and the internet. However, the chapters on Gilles de Rais are far more interesting - not for the details of the crime themselves (horrific though they were; the descriptions of the silent villages where all the children had been stolen are like something out of a twisted fairy tale - except they were real and there was no happy ending) but rather for the way in which the investigation was conducted, and the efforts the secular authorities made to cover things up: in many ways the case reads like a lot of the child abuse scandals that hit the news today (although thankfully these usually end with a lower body count). First there is a reluctance to investigate such a high profile figure at all, then there is a failure to believe the evidence that is presented, and then, finally, there is an attempt to cover things up, because otherwise it'll be embarrassing. One also gets the feeling that de Rais found that, being part of the French aristocracy, most of the laws and conventions that ordinary people had to abide by didn't apply to him, and all he did really was to push the limits of what a rich aristocrat could get away with: he didn't realise that there were some actions so heinous that even his fellow aristocrats would (eventually) turn on him: one sees something similar in the Elizabeth Bathory's case. That said, the Duke of Brittany consistently tried to hush things up: it is to the eternal credit of the Bishop of Nantes that he refused to allow de Rais to creep away into a monastery, even when it would have been financially advantageous for him to do so. I almost wonder if there was a class aspect to this: the Duke of Brittany was (obviously) part of the French aristocracy, and displayed their typical contempt for the ordinary people of France. The Church, on the other hand, has always had a far more meritocratic structure, and so the Bishop may well have come from a relatively poor family himself (compare Henry II's early life with that of Thomas a Becket). Either way, it is fascinating how little the response of a large and powerful institution to a crime of this nature has changed over the centuries.
Not a cheerful set of books this week. The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF is exactly what it says on the tin: an anthology of short stories divided fairly equally into stories about the end of the world as we know it, and stories set after the end of the world. I found the former generally more interesting than the latter: how people behave under extraordinary circumstances is fascinating, whilst predictions of life in the far future often aren't (especially when you suppose that as we've used up all our fossil fuel reserves any post-apocalyptic society will be necessarily neolithic, something which flies in the face of all human experience: it's not like the Romans or the ancient Greeks made extensive use of fossil fuels - certainly not to the extent that their societies couldn't function without them). Particular highlights include "The Clockwork Atomic Bomb", which is probably the best story in the book, but not really about an apocalypse per se: more about the years leading up to it: it's also one of the few stories here that isn't based entirely on a European or American perspective of the apocalypse, which made of a bit of a change. "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" and "Fermi and Frost" were also pretty good. "A Pail of Air" was memorable, but stretched my suspension of disbelief. "World Without End" is a fairly nice updating of the old myth of the Wandering Jew and the curse of immortality; the tale of an immortal London street walker with a vagina capable of mass-to-energy conversion. I wonder if the author drew from the sections of the Gilgamesh epic on Shamhat the Harlot for that story (I've always felt that Shamhat got a very raw deal).
It is also interesting the range of scenarios for the end of the world we have here: we have nuclear and biological as well as nanotechnological ragnaroks here, as well as out of control global warming and cosmic disasters. I wonder had this book been written twenty or thirty years ago, would we have so many different ways to destroy ourselves? Generally I'm very pro-technology, but it has to be said that as well as all manner of good things, science has also given us an ever-increasing variety of ways to destroy ourselves: as is so often the case, David Low put it perfectly: http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/LSE1258
Armageddon is depressing enough; somehow what people do when the world isn't about to end is that much more depressing. The Book of Were-Wolves is a fascinating 19th Century monograph: in theory it is an examination of the werewolf myth across the world, which would be interesting enough, but it is actually an examination of the way in which pre-enlightenment societies dealt with the kind of people we call serial killers today: Baring-Gould makes a very convincing argument that (unlike the various folk beliefs surrounding witchcraft) folk belief in werewolves is based upon the observation that occasionally individuals turn up who kill (and sometimes eat) other people for no readily apparent reason. With the knowledge of psychiatry we have today, we can begin to understand what can go wrong with someone, and how mental illness can lead them to commit otherwise inexplicable acts, but obviously if you're a medieval peasant and you find your neighbour eating your other neighbour you're probably just going to blame the devil and burn them. There is some discussion of the triggers for what we would call a psychotic break, and one gets the feeling that the first hesitant steps towards modern psychiatry are being taken.
The last part of the book is an interesting, although not very relevant digression into the history of some of the more famous mass murderers of the middle ages; there is a section on Elizabeth Bathory, which isn't particularly interesting, mainly because her crimes are sufficiently titillating that there's plenty of information about her life scattered across libraries, bookshops and the internet. However, the chapters on Gilles de Rais are far more interesting - not for the details of the crime themselves (horrific though they were; the descriptions of the silent villages where all the children had been stolen are like something out of a twisted fairy tale - except they were real and there was no happy ending) but rather for the way in which the investigation was conducted, and the efforts the secular authorities made to cover things up: in many ways the case reads like a lot of the child abuse scandals that hit the news today (although thankfully these usually end with a lower body count). First there is a reluctance to investigate such a high profile figure at all, then there is a failure to believe the evidence that is presented, and then, finally, there is an attempt to cover things up, because otherwise it'll be embarrassing. One also gets the feeling that de Rais found that, being part of the French aristocracy, most of the laws and conventions that ordinary people had to abide by didn't apply to him, and all he did really was to push the limits of what a rich aristocrat could get away with: he didn't realise that there were some actions so heinous that even his fellow aristocrats would (eventually) turn on him: one sees something similar in the Elizabeth Bathory's case. That said, the Duke of Brittany consistently tried to hush things up: it is to the eternal credit of the Bishop of Nantes that he refused to allow de Rais to creep away into a monastery, even when it would have been financially advantageous for him to do so. I almost wonder if there was a class aspect to this: the Duke of Brittany was (obviously) part of the French aristocracy, and displayed their typical contempt for the ordinary people of France. The Church, on the other hand, has always had a far more meritocratic structure, and so the Bishop may well have come from a relatively poor family himself (compare Henry II's early life with that of Thomas a Becket). Either way, it is fascinating how little the response of a large and powerful institution to a crime of this nature has changed over the centuries.
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Books Without Heroes
Books read this week: The British Revolution 7/10 (Robert Rhodes James), Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles 5/10 (Kim Newman), David Copperfield 6/10 (Charles Dickens)
Something of a miscellany of books this week, united only by their almost total lack of heroism. The British Revolution is a history of British politics covering the period 1880-1939. As something of a politics junkie myself, I found it fascinating, entertaining and terrifying in turn. It cover a tumultuous period; world wars and economic crises, the suicide of the Liberal party and the birth of the Labour party, the introduction of old age pensions, universal suffrage (a death blow to the Liberal party) and unemployment benefit. But it was also a period of intensely personal politics; a period when a personal antipathy between Joseph Chamberlain and Gladstone could shake the entire nation and destroy political parties, and also a period when the ability to perform in the House of Commons was the skill and up and coming politician had to develop; something that changed during the period the books covers, as electorates became larger, and the mass media developed, but never entirely went away. It is the personal nature of the politics here that gives rise to most of the humour; that and the leisurely lifestyle of the upper classes, which gave plenty of time for the refinement of barbed wit, and the construction of bon mots; a particular high point is Kitchener's observation that "All of my cabinet colleagues discuss military secrets with their wives - except X, who discusses them with other people's wives."
It has to be said that Rhodes is more charitable to Asquith, Baldwin and MacDonald that I would be; Baldwin's admission in the House of Commons that he had lied to the electorate about his policies because otherwise they wouldn't have voted for him is particularly damning, and of course Ramsay Mac occupies a place in the popular conscience of the Labour party somewhere between Judas Iscariot and Nick Clegg.
I said the book is terrifying, and it is, mainly because it all feels so familiar; we have misbehaving press barons, and economic stupidity on a grand scale (Churchill's return to the gold standard was a massive low point in what was a very chequered career), collusion between the Liberal and Conservative parties to lock the nascent Labour party out of power, by fair means or foul (Lloyd George even proposed the Alternative Vote as a means to that end), coalitions and mass unemployment. The book was written in the late 70s, and is absolutely damning about the prevailing wisdom in the 20s and 30s that it was possible to cut your way back to prosperity (whoever would think that now?) and about the ability of the upper classes to ignore mass unemployment. But the main failure we see in the book is one of political leadership: there was a long succession of governments very happy to blunder carelessly from disaster to disaster, enthusiasm undimmed, with no plan and no strategy, except a (misplaced) confidence that if they waited long enough eventually "something would turn up". This is really what scares me: not the prospect of long term mass unemployment (although that is a terrifying, soul-destroying thing) but of the extremism that it gives rise to. This is a dance we have been through before and we know how it ended last time - and yet no one seems to want to stop it.
My second book, Moriarty has no heroes but plenty of villains: it's an anthology by Kim Newman (of Anno Dracula fame) of stories about Dr Moriarty and Col. Moran - it includes "The Adventure of the Six Maledictions" which was the stand out story in Gaslight Arcanum which I read last week; unfortunately this is by far the best story in the book, although the rest does have it's moments. However I found the book's tendency to put in footnotes explaining or pointing out allusions to other works of Victorian fiction, and to minor aspects of 19th Century history quite grating: if I can't spot the allusion without a hint I don't really to spot it - the story should be enjoyable without needing a knowledge of esoteric Victoriana (not that I don't have a knowledge of esoterica Victoriana, but it really shouldn't be necessary) and the constant footnotes distract from the flow of the story: Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen does this much better (or did, at any rate, before it turned into pornography: impeccably referenced, period appropriate pornography, but pornography nonetheless).
And rounding off a Victorian-heavy entry, my final book this week was Dickens' David Copperfield. I have read relatively few of these gigantic mid-nineteenth century doorstoppers; the books where the author was paid by the work, and which were published in serial form. The only other ones I've read are Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo - both of which are on my list of best books of all time. Other than that, I tend to read older novels (Austen, Laclos and Scott) or newer ones, so this was something of a departure for me. I found David Copperfield interesting, and I'm certainly going to read more Dickens now I've started, but it didn't really compare to the Count of Monte Cristo or Vanity Fair for me. I read Orwell's stupendous essay on Dickens a long time ago, and having finished David Copperfield now I'm strongly inclined to agree with him: Dickens writes phenomenal, memorable caricatures. This is a great strength: Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep and Mr Murdstone will stay with me (although in the case of Mr Murdstone this is mainly because he could almost be the ur-example of a domestic abuser: all the signs they tell people to look out for are there) but also a weakness: caricatures don't develop, and they don't mature: they turn up, speak their catch phrases, and then retire. So although I'll remember them, the characters don't feel rounded enough that I care deeply about what happens to them; you can contrast this with Vanity Fair, which, when I read it for the first time, I stopped reading for two weeks when half way through because I didn't want bad things to happen to Dobbin and Becky Sharp. In fact, once past the part of the book on David Copperfield's early life, the only passage that moved me was when Uriah Heep tells David that for generations his family have been sent to schools where they teach them nothing except to by "umble". But I think the main thing that I found strange about the book is that David Copperfield never really seems to do very much - certainly he does almost nothing to move the plot forward. He is an observer; brought in to witness other people's actions and reactions. Obviously, when he's a child this is understandable, but when he grows up I kept waiting for him to actually do something, and he never did: of course, that statement probably ultimately applies to most of us, but I typically hold the protagonists of novels to a higher standard of being interesting. Indeed, I was reflecting on how the characters of Vanity Fair and The Count of Monte Cristo would deal with a man like Mr Murdstone: Becky Sharp would leave his reputation in tatters and his bank account empty, whilst if he dealt with Edmond Dantes, he would be lucky just to end up penniless and insane, his life's work in ruins (and I don't mean an entertainingly eccentric urge to write memorials on Charles I, but rather the screaming, raving strait-jacket wearing insanity that lands you deep in the Bedlam). Certainly neither of them would be content to let him live unmolested with a new family.
Of course, what David Copperfield shares with Vanity Fair is estwhile heroines who are stulifyingly boring (although Agnes shows a little more spark than Amelia Sedley, which is remarkably wet); it is, I think a very strange commentary on Victorian social mores that being as dull as ditch water was seen as something to aspire to: Jane Austen and Walter Scott's heroines, by contrast, have far more fire in the belly (although Rowena in Ivanhoe has something a little drippy about her, of course Rebecca is the real heroine of that book). The introduction assures me that Dickens' approach to "fallen women" was, for the time, extremely progressive, but his attitude toward Little Em'ly does not compare well with Thackeray's treatment of Becky Sharp (either in terms of modern ethics or sensible character development).
The only other thing I have to note is the strange belief Dickens expresses at the end of the book that the "separate system" in Pentonville where Uriah Heep and was somehow more humane than the unsanitary Georgian prisons that it replaced (the type of prison where you could pay the gaoler for food and rooms - the kind of prison you see in Hogarth prints); of course, the reason why the separate system was scrapped soon after it was introduced wasn't because it was too kind - it was because the sensory deprivation drove a sizable proportion of the prisoners mad.
Something of a miscellany of books this week, united only by their almost total lack of heroism. The British Revolution is a history of British politics covering the period 1880-1939. As something of a politics junkie myself, I found it fascinating, entertaining and terrifying in turn. It cover a tumultuous period; world wars and economic crises, the suicide of the Liberal party and the birth of the Labour party, the introduction of old age pensions, universal suffrage (a death blow to the Liberal party) and unemployment benefit. But it was also a period of intensely personal politics; a period when a personal antipathy between Joseph Chamberlain and Gladstone could shake the entire nation and destroy political parties, and also a period when the ability to perform in the House of Commons was the skill and up and coming politician had to develop; something that changed during the period the books covers, as electorates became larger, and the mass media developed, but never entirely went away. It is the personal nature of the politics here that gives rise to most of the humour; that and the leisurely lifestyle of the upper classes, which gave plenty of time for the refinement of barbed wit, and the construction of bon mots; a particular high point is Kitchener's observation that "All of my cabinet colleagues discuss military secrets with their wives - except X, who discusses them with other people's wives."
It has to be said that Rhodes is more charitable to Asquith, Baldwin and MacDonald that I would be; Baldwin's admission in the House of Commons that he had lied to the electorate about his policies because otherwise they wouldn't have voted for him is particularly damning, and of course Ramsay Mac occupies a place in the popular conscience of the Labour party somewhere between Judas Iscariot and Nick Clegg.
I said the book is terrifying, and it is, mainly because it all feels so familiar; we have misbehaving press barons, and economic stupidity on a grand scale (Churchill's return to the gold standard was a massive low point in what was a very chequered career), collusion between the Liberal and Conservative parties to lock the nascent Labour party out of power, by fair means or foul (Lloyd George even proposed the Alternative Vote as a means to that end), coalitions and mass unemployment. The book was written in the late 70s, and is absolutely damning about the prevailing wisdom in the 20s and 30s that it was possible to cut your way back to prosperity (whoever would think that now?) and about the ability of the upper classes to ignore mass unemployment. But the main failure we see in the book is one of political leadership: there was a long succession of governments very happy to blunder carelessly from disaster to disaster, enthusiasm undimmed, with no plan and no strategy, except a (misplaced) confidence that if they waited long enough eventually "something would turn up". This is really what scares me: not the prospect of long term mass unemployment (although that is a terrifying, soul-destroying thing) but of the extremism that it gives rise to. This is a dance we have been through before and we know how it ended last time - and yet no one seems to want to stop it.
My second book, Moriarty has no heroes but plenty of villains: it's an anthology by Kim Newman (of Anno Dracula fame) of stories about Dr Moriarty and Col. Moran - it includes "The Adventure of the Six Maledictions" which was the stand out story in Gaslight Arcanum which I read last week; unfortunately this is by far the best story in the book, although the rest does have it's moments. However I found the book's tendency to put in footnotes explaining or pointing out allusions to other works of Victorian fiction, and to minor aspects of 19th Century history quite grating: if I can't spot the allusion without a hint I don't really to spot it - the story should be enjoyable without needing a knowledge of esoteric Victoriana (not that I don't have a knowledge of esoterica Victoriana, but it really shouldn't be necessary) and the constant footnotes distract from the flow of the story: Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen does this much better (or did, at any rate, before it turned into pornography: impeccably referenced, period appropriate pornography, but pornography nonetheless).
And rounding off a Victorian-heavy entry, my final book this week was Dickens' David Copperfield. I have read relatively few of these gigantic mid-nineteenth century doorstoppers; the books where the author was paid by the work, and which were published in serial form. The only other ones I've read are Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo - both of which are on my list of best books of all time. Other than that, I tend to read older novels (Austen, Laclos and Scott) or newer ones, so this was something of a departure for me. I found David Copperfield interesting, and I'm certainly going to read more Dickens now I've started, but it didn't really compare to the Count of Monte Cristo or Vanity Fair for me. I read Orwell's stupendous essay on Dickens a long time ago, and having finished David Copperfield now I'm strongly inclined to agree with him: Dickens writes phenomenal, memorable caricatures. This is a great strength: Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep and Mr Murdstone will stay with me (although in the case of Mr Murdstone this is mainly because he could almost be the ur-example of a domestic abuser: all the signs they tell people to look out for are there) but also a weakness: caricatures don't develop, and they don't mature: they turn up, speak their catch phrases, and then retire. So although I'll remember them, the characters don't feel rounded enough that I care deeply about what happens to them; you can contrast this with Vanity Fair, which, when I read it for the first time, I stopped reading for two weeks when half way through because I didn't want bad things to happen to Dobbin and Becky Sharp. In fact, once past the part of the book on David Copperfield's early life, the only passage that moved me was when Uriah Heep tells David that for generations his family have been sent to schools where they teach them nothing except to by "umble". But I think the main thing that I found strange about the book is that David Copperfield never really seems to do very much - certainly he does almost nothing to move the plot forward. He is an observer; brought in to witness other people's actions and reactions. Obviously, when he's a child this is understandable, but when he grows up I kept waiting for him to actually do something, and he never did: of course, that statement probably ultimately applies to most of us, but I typically hold the protagonists of novels to a higher standard of being interesting. Indeed, I was reflecting on how the characters of Vanity Fair and The Count of Monte Cristo would deal with a man like Mr Murdstone: Becky Sharp would leave his reputation in tatters and his bank account empty, whilst if he dealt with Edmond Dantes, he would be lucky just to end up penniless and insane, his life's work in ruins (and I don't mean an entertainingly eccentric urge to write memorials on Charles I, but rather the screaming, raving strait-jacket wearing insanity that lands you deep in the Bedlam). Certainly neither of them would be content to let him live unmolested with a new family.
Of course, what David Copperfield shares with Vanity Fair is estwhile heroines who are stulifyingly boring (although Agnes shows a little more spark than Amelia Sedley, which is remarkably wet); it is, I think a very strange commentary on Victorian social mores that being as dull as ditch water was seen as something to aspire to: Jane Austen and Walter Scott's heroines, by contrast, have far more fire in the belly (although Rowena in Ivanhoe has something a little drippy about her, of course Rebecca is the real heroine of that book). The introduction assures me that Dickens' approach to "fallen women" was, for the time, extremely progressive, but his attitude toward Little Em'ly does not compare well with Thackeray's treatment of Becky Sharp (either in terms of modern ethics or sensible character development).
The only other thing I have to note is the strange belief Dickens expresses at the end of the book that the "separate system" in Pentonville where Uriah Heep and was somehow more humane than the unsanitary Georgian prisons that it replaced (the type of prison where you could pay the gaoler for food and rooms - the kind of prison you see in Hogarth prints); of course, the reason why the separate system was scrapped soon after it was introduced wasn't because it was too kind - it was because the sensory deprivation drove a sizable proportion of the prisoners mad.
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