"... and I'll cry if I want to." Barry Cassidy on the 2010 election

Australia, it has been said, is the lucky country. Donald Horne meant lucky in the sense we had got where we are more by good luck than good management. Perhaps he is right but I am not entering that argument. However we got here, Australia, broadly speaking, is in a good place.  When people get sick of governments, we get rid of them with a vote that the government initiates. We don’t have battles, airstrikes, suicide bombings, hunger strikes or any of the more extreme methods other countries have had to use to get rid of their governments. Our leaders don’t have private armies, nor do we lie awake at night dreading the knock on the door, hoping the footsteps continue up the stairs to our neighbour and not to us. We have a working democracy, rule of law, and freedom of worship, assembly and speech (up to a point). We have faults of course, but we also have the means and the will to fix them. Cecil Rhodes once said that to be an Englishman was to have won in the lottery of life. In the broad scheme of the modern world, being an Australian is something similar. And our weather is better.

People complain that Australian politics are dull. Thank God. Interesting politics are like the interesting times of the Chinese curse. That said, I think the complaint inaccurate. Readers of this blog will already know that I am neither disinterested or uninterested in politics. Nor do I claim not to be partisan. I’m a liberal conservative – or a conservative liberal. Or something else. I do think anyone who can describe their politics, or those with whom they disagree, in the one label – left-wing, right-wing, conservative, liberal or whatever – suffers from lack of imagination. Such labels are often handy  but rarely accurate. I cannot think of anyone offhand whose views do not range across what we call the political spectrum; different issues, different circumstances, different times call for different responses. This is not hypocrisy but honesty and open-mindedness. Still they are useful shorthand, I must admit. And demonstrate below.

All this is a preamble to my response to Barrie Cassidy’s The Party Thieves: The real story of the 2010 election. Cassidy is best known these days as the host of Insiders, the nearest the ABC gets to a balanced look at politics. That the balance is usually represented by two left-leaning journos and one right-leaning journo gives you a fair idea of the ABC’s usual tilt at the concept. Cassidy however keeps a fairly tight grip on the tiller. Once Labor PM Bob Hawke’s Press Secretary, he is in interviews as keen to put the curly questions to Labor politicians as he is to Coalition politicians. Nor does he listen to noisier elements of the audience who demand this or that journalist never be allowed on the show again, usually starting their demand with “I’m all for freedom of speech, but…” (Just a tip: if you do use that phrase, you aint.) We need more journalists of Cassidy’s quality.

If you are at all interested in Australian politics, you should read this book. It is a good demonstration of Cassidy's virtues. As well as balanced, this book is eminently readable. The writing is clear and simple, while being entertaining and interesting. He writes the way he speaks, which is often the mark of a journalist (see Jeremy Clarkson’s work for the same effect.) He has real insight into politics and journalism, bringing years of experience in both fields to bear. And he is able to see the faults and strengths that both side of politics brought to the 2010 election.

Significantly, he doesn’t get to the 2010 election until halfway through the book. The first half is taken up with the story of the party thieves of the title: Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd. Cassidy sees both their ascensions to leadership as stealing the party from the rightful owners and both their downfalls had similar causes. Both stopped listening to the party and demanded their own way at all times. The big difference is, Liberals Party members still seem to like Turnbull and there may be a day when he becomes leader again. Meanwhile no matter how much Kevin Rudd woos the voters and flies about the world, he is so loathed by his party he has as much chance of being leader of the Labor Party as I do. The character of Kevin Rudd is, as Joseph Conrad said of the history of conquest of the world, not a pretty thing to look into too much.

Then of course there is the election itself, which no one party won, and finally Gillard managed to form government by gaining (or buying, depending on your view) the support of the Greens and a sufficient number of independents. In light of the election campaign and the consequent government we have, it is hard to disagree with Bob Hawke’s assessment that the Australian people generally get it right at elections, and 2010 was no exception. No-one deserved to win and no-one did. I was tickled to find some of Cassidy’s ideas of what went wrong and what went right occasionaly chimed with my own, while often finding correctives and illumination and information in areas of which I was unaware or misinformed or plain ignorant. Cassidy’s analysis is clearly-stated and well-argued.

It is also hard to argue with his conclusion that we as a people are hungry for a government that will do things because they are the right or best thing to do, not because a focus group liked it. The Hawke-Keating and Howard governments were of this type, which is why they both enjoyed long runs.  I tend to agree with Henry David Thoreau – a government is best that governs least. But in the end they must govern, not try to keep on the right side of popularity polls at all times.

"Varsity Blues." Lucky Jim

‘The AV Club’ is a pop culture website which I enjoy. One of its irregular features is ‘Better late than never?’ in which a writer takes on a piece of culture that was hugely popular or acclaimed in its day but which the writer has never experienced till now. Usually they focus on films, but sometimes music or even more rarely novels.  The writer is coming to the work weighed down with expectation and preconceptions or even just the awareness of what they are taking on has the reputation of being ‘great.’

It can be a problem when reading classic literature, and maybe what puts people off: the fear they won’t like the work, and if so, the problem must be with them. On the other hand, finding you like a famous novel can be a relief. I didn’t like Bleak House as much as I hoped I would, though I still found it rewarding to read. On the other hand, Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, with the reputation of one of the funniest novels of the 20^th century, was as enjoyable as promised.

The introductory essay (I had one of the new Penguin editions with the old white and orange covers) was off-putting when it said the novel wasn’t as continuously funny as remembered. I stopped reading then and went straight to the text. I have toyed with this idea before and now I recommend it: with Penguin editions (or any with a helpful introductory essay) of books you have not read before, skip the introduction, read the book and come back to the introduction afterwards.

Lucky Jim is James Dixon a junior lecturer in the history department of a provincial university in Britain in the early 50s. He is trying to hold on to his job and work out his romantic life. Working with and against him are his Head of Department Professor Welch, a classic eccentric and vague don, Welch’s wife, their egregious and pretentious son Bertrand, Jim’s neurotic girlfriend Margaret, and other colleagues in the History Department.

This is a funny novel, a combination of situation and character-driven comedy. One of the best laughs I had was from a throw-away phrase, slightly funny in itself, made hilarious as a culmination of a minor subplot. That’s genius comedy writing, not the relentless rhythm of set-up and punchline, but revealing humour you didn’t see coming even while the details were being prepared in front of you. The novel also contains the single best description of a hangover ever committed to paper

Amis’ has been criticised for his female characters. Christine, the object of Jim’s affection is a fairly shallow creation. She did come to life for one scene, when helping Jim cover up his indiscretions after a drunken night at the Welch’s. Jim’s other love interest, Margaret, was a richer character. Perhaps I’ve just known more Margarets than Christines. Worse luck for me.

Amis was counted as one of the Angry Young Men, attacking the suffocating complacency of post-war England, a label he rejected. Lucky Jim is not angry in the way Look back in anger is. Nor, oddly, as dated. Stories about young men desperate for jobs, caught in impossible relationships, yearning for something, and someone better, while battling pretentious artists, hopeless bosses, and a sense of being trapped are always going to resonate. Perhaps Amis wasn’t satisfied with the state of the world, but then what thinking person ever is?  However, I don’t think he was going for a comment on the state of the nation.

And so another classic novel read. Another drop of water from the sea, another grain of sand from the beach, examined. What do we hope to achieve, we readers? What vast mosaic will we one day step back from and finally see?

[PS I realise now I've misinterpreted this novel. But going to uni in the late 80s and early 90s in Australia meant your tedious self-important lecturers were inevitably left-wing. Hence my mistake!]

"That was then, this is now." Peanuts and other comics

Like everything else, books and literature are subject to trends, fads, and changing times. Books can soar up the bestseller lists and by the time you read them, you may wonder why. Future generations will read The Da Vinci Code and wonder about us, you can believe that. Other books become dated by their subject matter and are left behind by historical events and changing social mores.

A book that was a bestseller in its day but is now something of a curiosity is The Gospel according to Peanuts, which had sold over ten million copies since it was published in 1965. Booksellers are still selling it. I remember taking it off the shelf at my school but finding too much Gospel and not nearly enough Peanuts. Spotting it in a second-hand bookstore some time ago, I picked it up. My initial reaction was still the same, but I bought it anyway.

It’s not the silly idea that it may first appear. Charles M Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, was a devoted Christian who put Christian messages into his cartoons. This was not a constant in his work, nor particularly heavy-handed, but certainly present. Robert L Short, a Presbyterian theologian, used some of these cartoons to illustrate his book, showing Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy and the others as avatars for adults grappling with an unfriendly world.

The book is very much of its time. It’s not talking down to its audience at all though, which can often be the mistake of popularisers of any ilk.  One can image Short doing this book as a series of lectures with the cartoons on slides. His aim is to make the message of Christianity accessible and he does this very well. Perhaps he is preaching to the converted but then who doesn’t?

Incidentally, if you are a Peanuts fan, you might want to read Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis (2007). I found it good, and the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson, feels the same. Others say it is inaccurate (Michaelis stands by his work) and tries too hard to find explanations in Schulz’ life for his art. I recommend it though.

The other books I read recently that have been left behind by time were two of Herge’s Tintin books, Tintin in the land of the Soviets, and Tintin in the Congo. The Tintin books have all now been published in eight volumes, hardcover books each with up to four stories. This is Volume 1.  I was never a huge fan of Tintin, although he has a big following, though I did read him occasionally. He has never been that popular in the US, which hasn’t stopped Steven Spielberg making a film coming to cinema near you!

Fans of Tintin may not recognize the first of these books, not just because of its relative obscurity. It is the first of Tintin’s adventures and looks very different to its successors. It is in black and white, and the drawing crude, particularly compared to what came after. Tin is a taller, more solid character, although Snowy is already Snowy. None of the other regular cast, Captain Haddock, Thomson and Thompson, appear.  The plotting is also crude. Trapped in a basement cell next to a river, Tinin finds a diving suit in the cell. No, really. It is a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda with Tintin uncovering fake factories and the underground vaults where Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin keep all the food and wealth they are stealing from the people, while the GDU try to capture, kill or convert him. Herge later disavowed the work, saying it was youthful folly.

Folly it may have been, but oddly accurate. Anyone who can spot the moral difference between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany deserves a Nobel Prize in Hair Splitting – and that would be ill-deserved. Lenin introduced the use of terror as a means of control. The leaders deliberately starved their people.  Enemies of the State disappeared, and were tortured and killed at an impressive rate. I would not recommend this book as an accurate picture of the Soviet State but its broad brushstrokes somehow manage to reveal some detail.

The second book, in colour with Herge’s characteristic precise and detailed art, now has the reputation of being racist. It is. The Congolese are depicted with big red lips and big white eyes, childish and needing the wisdom that Tintin and Belgium can bring them (Had Herge read Heart of Darkness? Not by this stage.) . On the other hand the villains are a duo of white gangster and black witchdoctor– so that’s nice. Tintin also shoots a rhino, an elephant (taking home its tusks in triumph) as well as, hilariously, fifteen antelopes when he thinks he keeps shooting and missing the one.  And this is the version that Herge had adjusted in response to reader reactions.

The book now comes with a disclaimer that it is a product of its time. And so it is. Calls to ban the book are misguided. I would not buy this book for a child but with 21 (or 22 depending on how far you want to go) other stories, I don’t think the child would miss it. And by the time he or she picks it up on his own, they can work it out for themselves, or talk to you about it. That’s the whole point of teaching them to read, isn’t it?

"Fools like me" Poetry

 The literary world should take warning– I have started writing poetry again. I’m not entirely sure why as I haven’t written any poetry for some years. Perhaps it is just that I am writing more these days as a result of my blogging and other activities so that part of my brain, or my soul, has reactivated.  Whether I shall publish those poems here, or anywhere else is another matter, but it’s doubtful. Poetry can often just be another way of talking to yourself, so perhaps I am my poetry’s only appropriate audience.

My friend’s mother is a retired English teacher. I was working at a school at one time where the Grade Eight classes (12-13 yr olds) would rotate and so one teacher would teach the one unit to the four or five classes that made up the year, and I was teaching poetry. She said if her school had that system, she would choose the poetry unit. She loved, as I recall her telling me, introducing students to the uses of poetry. She would show them the Memoriam section from the paper to demonstrate how poetry worked: when our emotions go beyond mere words, we resort to poetry. Those columns were full of poems, original and copied, written and placed by people trying to cope with grief. I immediately stole that idea for my own classes. It was also her that introduced me to Yeats – and I never thanked her.

Poetry is a complex beast. In the twentieth century it underwent the same process as some of the plastic arts. Poems went from formal structured affairs to whatever collection of words spilled any which was onto the page that you nominated as a poem. Which, like most changes in life, was a change for better and for worse. Structure did not save us from bad poetry, and more free form poetry does not prevent good poems being written.  But I do admit a preference for more structured poetry. I think the extra rigour involved in following forms tends to produce better poems. Do read Stephen Fry’s (look him up if you don’t know who he is) The Ode less travelled for an informative ‘How-to’ on poetry forms.

Another side-effect of my poetry writing is that I finally got around to reading a book I bought ages ago, How to read a poem: And fall in love with poetry, by Edward Hirsch. It is a wonderful book and reopened my eyes and ears and heart to poetry again; I can put it no other way. Like Dickens, poems - even short ones - demand our full focus. Hirsch, a professor of English, critic and poet himself, takes us through various types of poetry and his passionate response to them. His responses are so detailed and loving it creates a need in his reader to read poems again to try to bring their own response to a similar level. His examples are wide ranging in time and style and most pleasingly for me, languages. Translation is a difficult art, and poetry trickier than most, but it was a pleasure to be introduced to a group of poems, poets and traditions of which I had been unaware.

Hirsch quotes Ezra Pound, “Emotion is what endures.” Certainly the poems that we remember, that come to us in half-remembered fragments in moments unprepared, are the ones that struck a chord in us when we read them. And the best poetry I think still maintains its links to the vocal tradition and responds well to being read aloud.  I am reading Robert Fangles’ translation of the Iliad at the moment and it screams to be read aloud and so at times I do. Not a bad way to practice diction either. And to feel those words and phrases in your mouth is to be part of a tradition, and a joy, that dates back millennia. Of course, the Iliad comes directly from a vocal tradition but Yeats, Frost, Cavafy, Hughes, Dawe, Oodgeroo and Heany all reward reading out loud. And that’s just a sample off the top of my head, there are thousands more.

And the lyric poem, which came from song , can lead back again. Here is Constantine P Cavafy’s The God abandons Antony. Antony thought himself under the protection of the god Bacchus. At midnight before Octavian’s final attack on Alexandria and Antony’s death, a Bacchanalia passed by Antony’s window, which the historian Plutarch saw as Bacchus leaving Antony to his fate. Cavafy’s narrator watches Antony as the procession passes:

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear

an invisible procession going by

with exquisite music, voices,

don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,

work gone wrong, your plans

all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.

Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say

it was a dream, your ears deceived you:

don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen—your final delectation—to the voices,

to the exquisite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. 

Leonard Cohen, who started life as a poet and whose lyrics are haunting and mysterious yet direct, took this poem and adapted it into a song about the end of a love affair:

A cycle of beauty, a coming together of history, poetry and music, myth, and emotion. Whose heart could this not move?

"(attr.)" Convenient quotations

Perhaps you haven’t heard but Osama bin Laden was killed the other day. I can only assume you were living under a rock – or possibly in a cave in Pakistan which was the wrong neighbourhood as it turned out. The day after his death was announced, this quote did the rounds on Facebook, and I assume other social media:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.

Which was attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. Soon enough it was pointed out that King had said no such thing, but people kept posting it. The fauxtation then morphed and enveloped an authentic quotation from King. Once you get past the first sentence, you are reading the authentic King:

‎I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

I don’t suppose anyone created the original line maliciously, and the attribution was made because it sounded like something he might have said. Voltaire never said, “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” but many agree it’s consistent with his worldview. Perhaps King would say the same of this line, I don’t know. Certainly many agreed with the sentiment and posted it with good will and good hearts.

But I did wonder if George W Bush had died that day, or John Howard or Tony Blair, if so many people would have rushed to post this fauxtation. Would their compassion for their fellow human beings have extended to these men who have online been compared quite happily to Hitler, monsters, Satan and cunts? Or would they have posted it if it didn’t contain an implicit rebuke to those Americans who did celebrate? I can’t say I felt like celebrating, but I thought I could understand those that did.

It also made me remember another popular fauxtation from early in the Second Gulf War. This one was attributed to Thomas Jefferson:

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

This was quoted by those who opposed the war and were accused of being unpatriotic. Of course, one may object to the decisions of one’s government and still love their country, and I don’t suggest otherwise. It’s called democracy, people. But people used this line as a badge of pride. And even when it was exposed as unauthentic, Barbra Steisand and others said something along the lines of “It may not be true, but it speaks to a higher truth.”

Now, I could not say whether Jefferson would agree with the sentiment or not. But I doubt it. To me, the fauxtation seems to strongly suggest that the dissenter’s patriotism is always greater than those who agree with their government. Really? So those who thought FDR’s programs in the Depression were wrong were more patriotic than those who thought they were right? Those who thought he should have maintained US neutrality rather than join the Allies were the more patriotic? Those who oppose Obama’s Health Plan love their country more than those who support him?

And then to admit, ok I’ve told a lie but it speaks to a higher truth? I love my country so much I can tell lies. My interpretation of truth is on a higher level than yours. I can make up things because I am on the side of right. Such an attitude is not so much opening a can of worms as uncovering the nest of vipers.

No. A lie is a lie is a lie. You want to make the argument that dissent is the highest form of patriotism? Fine, go ahead and make it. Don’t use false appeals to authority to back up what is a very tendentious proposition.  Likewise with the King quote.  You think your reaction to bin Laden’s death is a better one than those who celebrated? We can have that discussion but don’t use a false quotation as your only evidence.

In any case, I much prefer this quotation (quite authentic) from Edith Cavell. Cavell was a British nurse in Belgium during World War One who saved the lives of casualties from both sides. She also helped Allied combatants to escape back to England. When the Germans found her out, she was arrested, tried and shot. Just before she faced the firing squad,  she said, 

Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

There you are, a similar sentiment, an authentic quote and a challenge to us all. It sure aint easy but, ideally, I believe we should not feel hatred or bitterness to anyone – not bin Laden, nor the crowds who cheered his death, nor George W Bush, John Howard or Tony Blair. Or the people whose postings bug me on Facebook.

"Thursday's Child." Thurday Next's next.

For some reason I have not written about Jasper Fforde’s latest Thursday Next novel, One of our Thursdays is missing. My regular readers must be quite lost for guidance. I apologise to both of them.  I’ve already confessed my love of Fforde’s writing so I will surprise no-one when I say I really enjoyed this one. BookWorld is recreated, there are some fun new characters, and the climax takes place on a riverboat heading upstream to meet a mysterious renegade. Who could not love a book that contains the Mediocre Gatsby and a dangerous mimefield?

In brief: the real Thursday Next is missing and the written Thursday Next has to find her. To explain: the real Thursday Next is the one we read about. The written Thursday Next is the Thursday Next in a series of novels written in the real Thursday Next’s world, based on the real Thursday Next, so she is a similar character, but not real, although both Thursday Nexts can exist in each other’s worlds, can meet, and indeed have worked together before. Neither of them seem aware of us, so I don’t think we exist in their world. Clear?

The Thursday Next world created by Jasper Fforde is a world of books within books and worlds within worlds, sort of fan-fic meets fantasy meets detective meets intellectual meets Douglas Adams meets – oh I could go on and on. Woody Allen had a character travel into a classic novel in The Kugelmass Episode. This was but a paddle on the beach compared to the Pacific Ocean of Thursday Next’s world. If you are new to this series of novels, this is not the place to start! I’ve read every one of these novels and I got confused.  Start with The Eyre Affair and move on from there.

Fforde plays with a lot of ideas and stories within these books, mixed with parody and lit crit. I’m sure many of the references and jokes go over my head or through to the keeper unnoticed. But one idea that struck me forcibly was the nature of the revenge that Aornis Hades, one of Thursday’s many enemies, took on her. She gave her the memory of daughter that doesn’t exist. So she spends a lot of time worried about where her child is, because she never sees her. I’m not a parent but I can’t imagine how hard it would be not knowing where your small child is. A more subtle revenge I cannot imagine.

Thursday Next, despite the fantastic world she lives in, is a very believable character. She dresses for comfort and convenience, spends most of the time with her hair pulled pack into a pony-tail, has too much to do and not enough time to do it. Add to this her intelligence, toughness and love of books – heck I’d like to meet her sometime. If not her, someone quite like her.

Hmmm. I may be in love with Thursday Next. This could be awkward.