Not angry, disappointed: Australian cricket's legacy.

It is easy to feel sorry for Steve Smith. He’s a young, highly-strung man in a position of great responsibility in the public eye who is currently struggling under the tonne of bricks that fell on him from a great height. He allowed a ball-tampering scheme to go ahead, and lied to the umpires on the field, then lied to the public in the press conference where he was supposed to be coming clean. As a consequence, he has been stripped of the captaincy for two years and banned from playing international and interstate cricket for 12 months. His latest press conference saw him break down in tears, unsurprisingly. 

Australian fans and officials have been accused of over-reacting. Perhaps, but I don’t think this is merely a response to one instance of ball-tampering and clumsy cover-up. This is a response to being embarrassed by the on-field behaviour of our national team for two decades. Ever since Steve Waugh announced that they were aiming for “mental disintegration” of the opposition, as if the cricket field was a early branch of Ahu Ghraib, the Australian cricket team have put an unholy emphasis on sledging. What is sledging? It is the organised, systematic, verbal abuse of opposition batsmen. Wow, you might think, that sounds a lot like bullying, which we’re all against. It does, because it is.

A lot of people confused sledging with the witty put-downs one used to read about in books such as “Chappelli laughs” or Max Walker’s “How to hypnotise a python.” It’s actually more along the lines of “How does Brian Lara’s cock taste?” as said to a young West Indian batsman by one of our best fast bowlers. And this was organised - he didn’t even think that up himself. They have team meetings to decide on their campaigns of sledging. They selected a keeper to bat and for his ability to keep up the chatter, not because he was  the best keeper.  In this latest series, they demanded the stump microphones be turned off so they could sledge. This would be time and energy I imagine better used in practicing batting, bowling, and fielding, but what do I know?

So why have we gone along with it? Why has it taken this long for the Australian public and officials to be angry? Simple - we were winning. Shame on us. Under Steve Waugh we were the best team in the world. Under successive captains, we’ve been less so. “Hard but fair” was their mantra, always claiming to know where the ‘line’ was. It was easy to spot the line actually; whatever the Australians did was on the right side, however the opposition responded was on the other.  We were winning, so bad behaviour was called ‘professionalism’, ‘larrikinism’, ‘the Australian style of game’.  As our success rate started going down, the number of people questioning the team went up. There were those who never liked it and said so - full credit to them. But it has taken this ball tampering incident for CA to realise for two decades they had been letting successive Australian teams bring the game into disrepute, and maybe they should do something about it. 

The players were under a lot of pressure on this tour, far from home, and losing. Perhaps what the SA cricketer said to Dave Warner was horrible. But when you’ve been antagonising someone precisely in order to make them snap, and when you succeed they don’t snap in a way you  like, I’m not sure the moral ground you think you’re on is all that high - or moral. Large sections of the South African crowds behaved poorly. Darren Lehmann, now thankfully Australia’s ex-coach, during the last Ashes series asked the Australian crowd to make a particular English cricketer cry and go home. It’s more like immoral quicksand.

Nor is Australia alone taking the game down this slope where it is now. Weak officials and powerful money brokers have seen cheating and corruption blight the game. There are plenty of people to look at beyond the three Australians at all levels across the globe. But I’m just focussing on the sledging, Australia’s specialty and pride. This summer I enjoyed watching some schoolboy First XI matches, games you’d imagine played in the best spirit of the game, with some of the players already enjoying representative honours. Yet batsmen were abused on the field by close-in fielders. Here’s one direct quote: “You’re a fucking ugly cunt.” Not all teams indulged in this behaviour but one is too many. There should be no place on the cricket field for that, but neither the umpires nor the coaches did anything about it. These boys are the future of the game. This is the legacy of these two decades of sledging. The Australian cricket team should be ashamed. It’s time international cricket took a deep breath and start to get the game back to what it was; a game of honour and fair play. Australia has a chance to lead the way.

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Getting ahead of the game: Australia's next mini-series

A lunch room at a cricket ground in Cape Town. Two discouraged looking men are discussing the day’s play

SMITH: I don't understand it, we just can't get on top of these South Africans.

WARNER: I know. 

SMITH: Where could we be going wrong? We don’t need to consider our skills or tactics at all. Are you still talking yourself up?

WARNER: Endlessly. Actually the wife's a little sick of it if I'm honest. And the kids.

SMITH: And the sledging?

WARNER: We had an emergency meeting of the sledging subcommittee last night, and we reckon we are on point. We are in THEIR HEADS

SMITH: But didn't one of them get into yours? 

WARNER: Yeah and that was really mean. That was over the line.

SMITH: Yeah the line is so important isn't it? And that's why we're so good at it, because we know where the line is, and can define it for the other teams.

WARNER: If they ask.

SMITH: And they never do.

BOTH: Until it's too late.

WARNER: And then it’s all, ooh the Aussies are so mean. Sometimes I just want to… sniffles

SMITH: putting his arm around Warner’s shoulder. It’s all right mate. You didn’t do anything wrong. You never do.

Pause

Enter BANCROFT

BANCROFT: G’day Skipper, g’day Mr Warner. How’s it going?  We got a plan to get these blokes out? Have we? Huh? Huh? Cause you guys are ace and if anyone can come up with a plan it’ll be you guys. Yeah. Can’t wait to hear it. I bet it’s a really good one.

SMITH: Go away.

BANCROFT: Yeah, sure skip, anything you say skip. I’m over here if you need me skip.

Exit BANCROFT

Pause

SMITH: What if we, you know, cheated?

WARNER: Cheated?

SMITH: I mean, take professionalism to new levels.

WARNER: Ohhhh. Wouldn’t that be, maybe, over the line?

SMITH: Not if we do it.

WARNER: Good point.

SMITH: If we interfered with the ball.

WARNER: With the ball?

SMITH:  A bit.

WARNER: Don't other teams do that sometimes?

SMITH: Oh yeah. All the time. It’s practically part of the game.

WARNER: And how did we react to it?

Pause

SMITH: I think we were cool with it.

WARNER: Yeah cool, that's right. I'm pretty sure we stayed on the right side of the line.

SMITH: I'm not sure the line applies in that situation.

WARNER: But if did, we were.

SMITH: Because we always are.

WARNER: Exactly. 

SMITH: But how would we do it?

WARNER: It would need to be subtle. What if we used this bright yellow tape?

SMITH: Yeah, that won’t show up on cameras at all.

WARNER: There’s cameras?

SMITH: I think so.

WARNER: But I can't do it. For some reason those South African bas…

SMITH: Language! You’ve got a small fortune in the swear jar already.

WARNER: Those South African bounders …

SMITH: Much better.

WARNER: … have taken a real set against me. They’ll be watching me like a hawk.

SMITH: I know. I don’t understand it. No-one talks themselves up as much as you, nor sledges as well.

WARNER: It’s a mystery.

SMITH: And I can’t do it, because I’m the captain.

WARNER: But isn’t it your responsib -

SMITH: I said, I can’t. 

WARNER: What if we asked someone whose place in the team is heavily dependent on our good will?

SMITH: That would be good. But who would be silly enough...?

Pause. They both smile, look at each other, and call:

BOTH: Bancroft!

Enter BANCROFT

BANCROFT: Yeah fellahs? 

                                                  END OF SCENE

Staring into the abyss: Looking back on some recent history

I once read a article criticising George Lucas. I know, I’m as shocked at you are. The author took exception to Yoda’s lines, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to hate. Hate leads to anger. Anger leads to suffering.” He summed up his objection to this by saying no-one ever hated Hitler so much they became a Nazi. (Never mind that Yoda never makes the link from fear to the Dark Side complete. Suffering leads to the Dark Side? Or what? Damn you Yoda, I need closure.)

Whoever the writer is, he may now have to concede Yoda was on to something. I did study 20th century German history, including the rise of Hitler to power, as part of my Arts degree. That was some time ago, but when people kept insisting Trump was exactly the same as Hitler, I kept wondering if they knew something I didn’t. To be frank, I was fairly sure they were wrong and engaging in hyperbole (once again, shocked as you are) but I thought I’d better check again, just to be sure.

So I listened to Richard J Evan’s The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany via Audible.  This is the first volume of his Third Reich Trilogy which has been acclaimed as the best general history of the Third Reich extant. To sum up, I was right. The differences between Hitler’s climb to power via multiple election campaigns  and Trump becoming President almost on a whim, and the vastly different histories of Germany and the United States, are too many to go into here. Read the book. One major difference is that Hitler was able to destroy the Weimar Republic in large part because many of the other parties, Right and Left wing, were committed to doing the same thing, and previous administrations had already greatly reduced the role and power of the parliament long before Hitler put it out of its misery. But I digress.

What did strike me as having similarities to today’s politics were some of the Nazi tactics. The SA brownshirts were well-known for beating up opponents in the streets or at their meetings. (As were the Communists.) And if the Nazis weren’t able to prevent speeches other public events  being run by political opponents on the grounds of public safety (mainly fear of the fights that would break out orchestrated by the Nazis) they would attend the event and with shouting and other methods make it impossible for the event to continue.

Let’s see: beating up opponents, preventing speeches on grounds of public safety, and shouting down speakers. Who does this these days?

Mainly it seems to be people who don’t like Trump. The so-called Antifa (Anti-Fascist) movement actually appear in masks and beat up Trump supporters. At least the Brownshirts showed their faces. Students who consider themselves liberals ie those who respect other people’s opinions and beliefs even if they differ to their own, shout and disrupt and in some cases physically threaten speakers they don't like to stop them speaking on their campus. They have built barriers and lit fires to stop people from going in to listen. And that’s if the university administration haven’t already withdrawn the invitation to speak on grounds of public safety. 

So Yoda has been in some way vindicated, and George Lucas revealed as a writer of surprising prescience. There are people who hate Trump so much they have become fascist in order to stop him. To quote Christopher Booker, "Evil men don't get up in the morning saying, 'I'm going to do evil.' They say 'I'm going to make the world a better place.'" Or to quote Terrence Rattigan, "The trouble with being on the side of right, as one sees it, is that one often finds oneself with such questionable allies."

Let the Trumpfish sound? The history of Huey P Long

It starts with a Democratic Party running a primary where 'the powerful politicos decided the results beforehand and controlled the voting by means both fair and foul", and whose candidate "ignored the rural and impoverished areas." It went into a campaign described "as amusing as it was depressing", and ended up elevating into public office "a man possessing neither culture nor refinement, a man whose every public or private act is offensive to good taste", a man "without a scintilla of respect for worthy womanhood."*

Louisiana state politics from 1928 to 1936 is not exactly a world away.

The man then was Huey P Long, Governor, Senator and Presidential candidate. He called himself the Kingfish, and the nickname stuck. For his admirers, and they ran into the tens of thousands in his home state and through the country, it spoke to his down to earth manner, his humour, his preparedness to get down and dirty if he needed to, and his slogan, Every man a king. To his enemies, who numbered about the same, it suggested a bottom feeder in a swamp, dangerous and difficult to catch.

He took Louisiana out of the dark ages in many ways. He built thousands of miles of roads, bridges over the Mississippi, gave free textbooks to all school children, expanded and improved the state university, and instituted literacy classes for adults. He did so through coercion, a wide system of patronage, extortion, bullying, kidnapping, nepotism (which didn't always work - his brother was one of his greatest opponents), almost bankrupting the state and making himself very rich indeed. He took control of the powerful Democratic Party machine, that tried and tried again to stop him for their preferred candidates, and made it his own. When he died he held operating power in almost every government institution the state of Louisiana had to offer. He was the nearest thing the United States so far has had to a fascist leader.

Huey P Long inspired art, Sinclair Lewis's "It can't happen here," the story of a home-grown American fascist leader, and Robert Penn Warren's "All the king's men" the story of a backwoods politician who turns from idealist to demagogue. Both novels have been turned into plays and Warren's twice into a film, once in 1949 to Academy-Award-winning effect, and again in 2006 to lesser effect. (Some acting is so bad, someone once said, only a great actor is capable of it; hello Sean Penn.) The art, it must be said, had no effect on him. (To be fair, he was mostly dead at the time.)

I first came across the Kingfish when I saw the second half of a Ken Burns documentary. At the time he reminded me of Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen who likewise took an economically backward state into the twentieth century by fair means and foul. But the Kingfish was Joh only more so. Both used the elite branches of the police service for political purposes, but Joh never set them on political opponents, brandishing their machine guns, forcing them out of buildings. Nor did Joh ever get into fistfights on the floor of parliament. Or kidnap anyone.

Long came to mind more recently for obvious reasons. People want to compare Trump to Hitler, largely because Hitler is one of the few people from history who is generally known. If you don't like someone's politics, there's no-one else to compare him to. It's easy, and generally unhelpful. But he reminded me of Long - the vitriolic attacks on opponents, the disdain for the press, the hatred by his enemies, the worship by his admirers, playing to the crowds, and the strong appeal to people who felt forgotten by a complacent government. And the abuse by his opponents of his followers. In Burns's documentary there is footage of a politician dismissing Long's appeal as merely to "the ignorant in distress", as if dismissing them with the former epithet meant you could ignore the latter. And in the end, Long was assassinated. People are already hoping the same will happen with Trump. Too often people opposed to violence and hate find both quite acceptable if aimed at someone they don't like. 

Long also built an enormous tower to his own memory. It's the Louisiana State Capitol and you can see it for miles as you drive towards Baton Rouge. It's ludicrous, 36 stories high, looking as though it's a New York skyscraper that got lost, 48 steps leading to the front door, each engraved with the name of a state in order of admittance to the union (Alaska and Hawaii since added to the top step), and marble sourced from around the world in the foyer. It cost $5 million dollars in Depression dollars. God knows what it would cost today. Facing it across the lawn is Long's grave, topped with a large monument, featuring a statue of Long staring at his Capitol. The guides like to tell you that the concrete monument was paid for by his opponents, to make sure he couldn't get out. (Worth doing the tour if you're in the area) So vanity - there's another common feature to the two men. (Also, as self-given nicknames go, 'The Kingfish' is much better than 'The Donald'. What does that even mean?)

But there are big differences between the two, and they're in Long's favour. Long was a dynamic speaker, both with prepared speeches and off the cuff. An opponent tried to appeal to the poor by talking about his childhood in bare feet. Long responded "I can go one better than that! I was born in bare feet!" Long was also extremely intelligent. He studied law for one year (of a three year course), missed most of his classes and failed his subjects. He insisted on sitting the bar exam however, and due to his own hard work and private study, passed. He later argued in the Supreme Court, where noted jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes praised his legal mind. (He often appointed himself state counsel while Governor, another way to line his own pocket.) This was also a product of his prodigious memory, which meant he remembered clients from his days as a salesman when campaigning, nor never let a slight go or an enemy unpunished. (Pettiness - that's something else they do have in common.) He worked fantastically hard travelling thousands of miles (even before he had improved the roads) into the poor and rural areas of the state and made them his own. James Thurber, the novelist, cartoonist and humorist, remembered his almost constant state of movement, even when 'relaxing' in his hotel room.

But the biggest difference is that Long knew how to run a party machine, government departments, and both houses of a legislature. Yes he did so corruptly, but as more than one enquiry found, that was business as usual in Louisiana, taken to the nth degree. Trump has no experience in this area at all. Even the General presidents, Grant and Eisenhower, who had never held public office, knew how to deal with massive organisations under astonishingly adverse conditions, while dealing with the quirks, varying skill levels and interpersonal squabbles of subordinates. I'm not sure what Trump brings to the table, except enormous self-belief. His own party don't like him and he has no legislative experience. He keeps talking of his business nous, but this seems spotty at best. Imagine a general arguing "I won a number of battles to be fair. Not the war, sure, and some of the other battles were pretty grim if I'm honest, but you know, some." So whatever he may want to do or not to do,  you have to query his ability to do so.

Huey P Long for all his considerable faults was fighting for the poor of his state, and did improve infrastructure and education. He lost sight of his ideals, and confused the means, acquiring all the power he could, for the end.   What is Donald Trump fighting for?  Most of the leading political analysts knew he could never win the election, so they can't tell us. We're getting four years to find out together.

*All quotations are from Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P Long,  by Richard D White Jr

"Land it on a sixpence" Cricket and money

Cricket, test cricket, that is, is a game that engenders speculation and philosophy. It takes five days, has lunch and tea breaks and most of the action takes place a long way from you sitting on the boundary. Even if you’re playing, standing in the field gives you time to think. It’s a game of nuance: a bowler manages a maiden over, and the advantage has passed to the bowling team. By the same token, a batsman surviving such an over may have given the advantage to his team. And as such, it also engenders, for mine, the finest sport writing. Not that boxing, football and other faster paced sports haven’t resulted in good writing, but a good cricket book is something special. My favourite contemporary cricket writer is Melbourne-based journalist Gideon Haigh. His books are witty, informed, and driven by a love of the game.

Sphere of influence: writings on cricket and its discontents is a 2010 collection of essays, speeches, and articles Haigh has written for such sources as Cricinfo, The Monthly, The Spectator, Sports Illustrated India and The Age. The major theme of these articles is the rise of the India to the economic centre of international cricket, the ineffectualness of the ICC, and Twenty20 and its effect on the sport. These are all entwined issues.

Twenty20 is a great money-maker for the game, particularly India, where an entrepreneur took an English concept and made it into an Indian powerhouse. Other nations have followed suit, with less success. Twenty20 may yet be a dazzling flash in the pan, but India has bet its future on it, eschewing test cricket which is the ultimate test of a player’s talents and strengths. India has been the No 1 test nation in the world (although the method of determining that, as Haigh says, is obscure and complicated at best) but in its last tour of Australia was an example of diminishing returns.

The other problem with the tidal wave of money now engulfing cricketers is its almost inevitable handmaiden, corruption. Match-fixing was a blight on the game in the 1990s. Now we have spot fixing, no-balls at particular time and so on. Pakistan players were guilty in this instance. Poorly paid, other countries unwilling to tour their troubled country, banned from the riches of the IPL by India, is it any wonder that some of them were happy to take money wherever they could get it? Dodgy administrators and administrations, a powerless and petty ICC, ruthless and powerful gambling interests; is it any wonder the Haigh senses an approaching crisis? He poses a very pertinent question: does cricket make money in order to exist, or does it exist in order to make money? He thinks it should be the former, he fears too interested parties are starting to think the latter. And the consequences of that for those who love the game are worrying indeed.

And I see in my own profession signs that there are those who are moving the bottom line from an important consideration to the main consideration. One theatre director, convinced that ‘bums on seats’ should be the major driver, programmed ‘popular’ shows and almost took his theatre company to the wall. A university changed the Department of Arts to the Department of Creative Industries. It said it was a hard-nosed recognition of the nature of arts and the importance of knowing how to make money with it. Somehow, departments of Medicine, Science, Engineering, Law and Architecture, have never considered how to make money using their knowledge, nor recognised that at some point they would need to. To me it was a buzzword approach that signified the ultimate surrender of Art to Money.

If cricket and theatre are simply tools to make money, then we play and watch cricket for the same reason we play and watch theatre. And having done both, to lesser and greater effect, I can tell you we don’t. The play, and the day’s play, still need to remain the thing.

"Without a hitch." Christopher Hitchens

Don’t read Christopher Hitchens’ essays last thing at night. Not that he’s frightening, it’s that he’s like Maltesers – you can’t stop at just one. I spend some night sitting up in bed, reading Arguably, a 2011 collection of essays and columns covering the breadth of his career.

And it is a breadth of subject as well as years. Reading some of the less-informed commentary on his death, you could be forgiven for thinking he had written one book, God is not great and had only one subject, atheism. Hitchens was able to turn his mind to many topics, cultural, historical, political and yes, religious. His writing is elegant, well-informed, witty, intelligent and compelling. I don’t think he ever wrote purely as a provocateur, but he was never afraid to offend nor did he ever curb his opinion to follow a popular line. He knew what he thought, and more importantly why he thought so, and was able to argue it lucidly and entertainingly.

Of course there are areas where I disagree with him. Oddly one day I met someone who knew I was a Catholic, and because of that, was surprised that I liked Hitchens. It was an example of a new intolerance I see creeping in. Just because I disagree with him on God, doesn’t mean I have to reject him and all his work. It’d be astonishly dull to read a writer with whom I agreed on everything anyway. Why bother?

But I was thinking of another topic. In 2002, Martin Amis (who with Clive James and others used to share a regular boozy Friday lunch with Hitchens) wrote Koba the Dread: Laugher and the Twenty Million, an examination of the reign of Stalin and the odd attitude the left wing has taken towards Communism then and now. He related a story where Hitchens told a story at a speech about his days as a Communist, and got a laugh. Amis wondered if Hitchens had related a story about his days as a Blackshirt, whether he would have got the laugh, or even been a working writer in modern Britain.

To me he raised a fair point: why do we still look at the USSR, with the Great Terror, the gulags, the use of famine as a tool of oprression, the twenty million dead (some sources would say more), as somehow all right, well-intentioned, while Nazi Germany is beyond the pale? Why is left wing extremism somehow not so bad, while right wing extremism is the greatest form of evil ever? To put it another way, why are we not as appalled by Stalin’s Socialism within One Country as we are by Hitler’s National Socialism? After all, to quote the political pundit Clint Eastwood, if you go far enough right you meet the same idiots coming from the left.

Hitchens didn’t believe this was so. He accused Amis of coming late to the information about the terrors of the USSR, and assuming no-one else knew about it either. I think Hitchens has made a similar mistake. He knew about it, and so assumed everyone else must know about it. And it still doesn’t explain the laugh – in fact, if they do all know about the horror of Stalin’s reign, the laugh becomes even more sinister.  But I believe there is an enormous double standard in our attitude towards left-wing totalitarianism and right-wing totalitarianism.

In another column, Hitchens supplies an example of this very phenomenon. He is reviewing the third volume of Victor Klemperer’s diaries. Third? Sure there were only two? Yes, two best-selling volumes about life under Nazi Germany, but a third volume, of life under the Communists in Eastern Berlin, could not get a publisher in the US nor as far as I can tell in Australia. And here it is! A book that tells of life under the Communists cannot get a publisher, even though the author had two best sellers! The interest, the market, is not there. We simply don’t take the terror of Communism with the same gravitas as we do for the terror of Nazism. And why that is, is a question of great interest. Hitchens never makes this connection, and so never turns his considerable mind to it.

But disagreements and argument were the stuff Hitchens thrived on. His work is provocative and entertaining. As a writer and as a man, he was courageous. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Every one is free to write those opinions and get them published if you can (or blog/twitter them). But it is only if you bring the comparable intellect, knowledge, and integrity that you can be as respected as Christopher Hitchens. I suppose he would have thought me a complete idiot, being religious and all.  But I too am sorry I will never again reading something new he has written.

"With great power..." Grant Morrison on comic books

Grant Morrison is one of the most successful and influential comic book writers around today. So much so his ideas were ripped off by the Wachowski brothers for ‘The Matrix'. He seems to have taken this in his stride; after seeing the sequels he reportedly said, “They should have kept stealing my ideas.” On the back of the dust jacket of his new book Supergods: Our world in the age of the superhero, he looks like a comic book villain, intense, bald, handsome, in a round collared jacked with gold buttons up to his neck. His life has been shaped by comic books, as he tells us. Not only were they a welcome diversion in his Scottish childhood and adolescence, they have been his career. And now he has produced a book about both comics books and his life.

And for the most part it’s good. Any successful writer of comic books is going to be converscent with the history of comic books, their characters, their stories, their tropes and conventions. His view may be a little limited – he credits the writers of Superman with the invention of the secret identity, ignoring the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro and countless others. But as a history of comic books, it was for me informative and interesting. He traces the impact of the world onto comic books and the impact of comic books on the world, finding why a genre that was born in the Depression and the Second World War, is increasingly popular in a time of globalisation, terrorism and uncertainty. Heroes who spoke to the masses at a time when the enemy was clear and in uniform, still speak, in altered voices and with different attitudes, to our modern age, and Morrison has some interesting ideas as to why.

The book lost me in its more autobiographical sections, and discussing comic books of which I have no idea. Reading an appraisal of any art work you don’t know is always problematic. Comic books in particular depend heavily on their fans’ knowledge. (This in itself was an innovation of Marvel, taken up by DC creating complex worlds and multiworlds for their heroes to play in.) So when Morrison discusses Spawn, for example, at some length my eyes glazed over. Fans of Spawn may well be gasping now, but having never read Spawn, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I also didn’t particularly care for his autobiography, and I skipped a lot of it. If I were more knowledgeable about his work or a greater comic book fan, I imagine this would have been much more compelling. Morrison comes over a little self-involved, and perhaps he is. Even so, it gave me some insight into how comic books are created and managed, both new and continuing titles and characters. But having someone tell you about their drug days are as dull as people who want to tell you about the enormous amounts they used to drink. It’s probably significant to them, but hardly interesting to the outsider. There are some exceptions to this rule, but this wasn’t one of them.

Al that said, I enjoyed the book. (Although he dismissed the Phantom with one line about the 1996 film. Humph, I say. For those who don’t know the Phantom, he’s a bit like Batman with a more positive upbringing – no superpowers, just fit, fast and intelligent. Also he lives in the African jungle.) Oddly for a book about comics, it could have used more illustrations. A minor quibble. Those with a greater interest in the genre will doubtless get more out of it, but still a good writer is a good writer, regardless of the genre in which they work. 

"The mystery of things." Bomber Harris, Orson Welles and Tom Waits - together at last!

Biographies have changed. Like other history books the authors aimed for a impersonal detached and objective tone. Now, with changes in taste and philosophies, the authors’s voice has become much more idiosyncratic and for mine, obtrusive. When Pamela Stephenson, for example, is writing about her husband Billy Connolly, such a personal approach may be justified. But many biographies these days seem to be written in a much more direct even chatty style, even when they don’t enjoy such a personal relationship with their subject.

The three latest biographies I have read have spread across the gamut of modern biography. One is old-school objective, another focussing on one section of its subject’s career, and the third an unauthorised biography of a still-active artist covering his entire life.

The first was Bomber Harris: His life and times the life of Arthur Harris, who led Britain’s Bomber Command during World War II. Harris still a controversial figure and Bomber Command’s tactics are still the cause of argument. But from Dunkirk through to Normandy, bombers were the only way Britain could fight against Nazi Germany and give support to the Russians on the Eastern Front. After the war, Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments, said the damage done by the bombers, the extra guns and troops stationed in Germany to combat them, was as effective as a second front and a large part of the reason Germany lost. This still leaves plenty of room for arguments about tactics and strategies, and morality.

There is no easy answer but the author fairly lays out the facts, opinions from others from the era, and gives differing conclusions from other historians, while presenting his own findings. In the end we get a pretty clear picture of the man both as a person and as a military commander, his strengths and his flaws. If the book is somewhat dry to read, and does get a bit bogged down in detail, it does what it sets out to do: tell the life and character of Arthur Harris.

The second book is not quite a biography but I’m not sure what else to call it. Clinton Heylin’s Despite the system: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios examines the Welles’ Hollywood career, from Citizen Kane through to Touch of Evil from when he had complete control of his film to becoming a director for hire. Here the author is not afraid to make his voice heard at all and is quite scathing about a number of previous biographies of Welles, as well as praising a few others. He is especially scathing on half-arsed psychological assessments of Orson Welles that ‘explain’ the number of films he did not finish. By contrast he shows the hurdles the Welles had to overcome in terms of budgets and studio politics. These are real, identifiable and demonstratable. And as an explanation of Welles’ career, much more satisfying.

Welles’ personality of course did not help him in playing studio politics. He was never afraid to call a shovel a shovel or an idiot an idiot. He did have a tendency to indulge himself at some expense to his employers. But he deserved better than what he got. Welles’ control of his film Kane was unprecedented but now it is not uncommon. Directors now have complete control of their films and what do we get? More Kanes? No, we get “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Chrystal Skulls” and the Star Wars prequels. It takes more than total control to make good art

Heylin also gave me an insight into Welles’ films I had not had before. Welles’ is a Brechtian film-maker, drawing attention to the techniques of film as you watch it. Also, as a result of his work on radio, he had a much more interesting and integrated approach to the use of sound in film. Even today he would still be a radical in Hollywood. When he was able to get these factors together, it made Welles’ films identifiable almost at a glance – and a listen.

He also puts to bed, for mine, the theory that Welles did not write Citizen Kane, but rather, at best edited what Herman J Mankiewicz wrote. Simply put, Mank’s scripts before and after Kane was formulaic pot-boilers. Welles on the other hand was making films that challenged Hollywood’s aesthetic, narratives and techniques for the rest of his career. Welles was always ready to give Mank credit when it was due, the  ‘Rosebud’ Macguffin but one example. It’s time some of his detractors gave Welles the same courtesy.

The next in this biographical triumvirate is Low side of the road: The life of Tom Waits  by Barney Hoskyns. I am an enormous fan of Waits, the wide range of his musical styles and his fun, provoking, often moving lyrics. Hoskyns is open about the music he likes and the music he finds not so essential. He is also ready to admit that others may disagree with his assessment - a radical approach for a critic. This is an unauthorised biography which often means a hatchet job, but not in this case. This is an admiring biography, while not shying away from aspects that Hoskyns does not find as admirable. It’s an entertaining and informative read. I was delighted to read that all the idiosyncratic names that pepper Waits' work are from people he has known.

Waits has lead an interesting life both professionally and personally. But unusually for these times, he keeps his private life very private. He also believes that an artist’s work should speak for itself and not be interpreted through the narrow lens of autobiography.  This is part of what makes Waits such an oddity. All art is supposed to be confessional and revealing one’s private life is supposed to be a sign of honesty. Both these ideas, though popular, are questionable. (Incidentally, Arthur Harris declined several offers to write his autobiography. He thought he had said quite enough on the subject.)

Waits and his wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan asked people not to talk to Hoskyns, and Hoskyns is quite open about that. However a number of people did speak to him, and Waits himself has a sheaf of interviews published over the years, including several with Hoskyns and the result is a good read, a good biography. Once again, it had me going back to the music to listen to it with new ears, always a good sign.

Three books, three different approaches. All three are worth reading, but do any of them crack the mystery of their subject? Ultimately no. Where talent for music, film or leadership comes from is unsolvable. Welles and Waits have given us great art, Harris is one of those responsible for our freedom. They are imperfect as we all are. Perhaps in the biggest terms, biographies are another tool in our ongoing attempt to make sense of human existence and the meaning of life. Or perhaps we just find people interesting.