On Tyranny

After the American election lots of people started mentioning 'On Tyranny' by Timothy Snyder, written in 2017 during the first Trump administration, many of them quoting the first lesson: "Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do." 

I have been listening to Lord of the Rings on Youtube (for the third time) and at one point Frodo laments that the task has fallen to him, how hard it is to be living in such dark times. Monkey is currently on Okinawa and went today to the memorial to the 200,000 people who died in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. I found myself very moved by the photos she sent. I guess many people never realise at the time that they are part of a dark time in history, nor the role they may have played. 

Timothy Snyder ends his lessons with this one and it left me feeling overwhelmed but also heartened to think that throughout history people have been prepared to die for their freedom, and wondering about my own courage:

"Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny."

New Year Resolutions

He looks such a nice ordinary bloke but I am still left to wonder what motivates Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky's desire to own Royal Mail, an apparently loss making company. His reputation precedes him. This quote from the bottom of the wiki page, "We want to make money in industries that are dying because we think they'll die much more slowly than the general consensus says." makes my blood run somewhat chilly, as does his undertaking not to take funds from the pension surplus ... for five years. It seems that what he has done with his life is just own stuff, companies mainly. And since Royal Mail seems so keen to be owned by him I can only assume the current board do not give many fucks about the company. Therefore my new year resolution is to withdraw my fuck-giving, and devote the next four years and two months to the bits of my life that are more important. Once my mortgage is paid and the rest of my pensions fall due I will quit and find something low key and part time to prop up my income.

My 2019 resolution not to beat myself up about things remains very much in place and ties in quite nicely with the new addition.

And Japanese ... I will continue to learn, for my brain health, and for ordering green tea when I go to Japan.

Stay safe. Be kind. Take care on the icy streets.

Bookish Review of 2024

 

Happy Clean Bedding Day, as Dunk has rechristened Christmas day. Getting up on Christmas morning when you live alone was so low key I just put some washing on and made a cuppa. I find I am very much enjoying the quiet, I have to keep reminding myself that I can do everything to my own schedule.

So onwards to the review of this year's reading (and I am not going to beat myself up about whatever the finally total turns out to be). From the beginning (or rather the end of December 2023) (some links lead to several books):

Being Dead by Jim Crace

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Library of Heartbeats by Laura Imai Messina

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otttessa Moshfegh

Books do Furnish a Life by Richard Dawkins

Men Who Feed Pigeons by Selima Hill

The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon

Greek Lessons by Han Kang

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The Big Snow by David Park

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad

Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawami

Here is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley

Findings by Kathleen Jamie

The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart

Earthlings by Sayata Murata

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

Winter by Ali Smith

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

Cold Crematorium by Jozef Debreczeni

The Advantages of Nearly Dying by Michael Rosen

We All Want Impossible Things by Claire Newman

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing

The Life of a Banana by PP Wong

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

The Party by Tessa Hadley

Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton

The Yellow House by Martin Gayford

Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

35 books. I find on passing by each post that Ann Patchett must be the author I have read most of and loved universally, from Bel Canto back in 2010 through to the Magician's Assistant this year. On reflection I have read some excellent books this year, other top picks being Eileen, Being Dead and Greek Lessons, so I am not going to concern myself with the few that I didn't care for. Currently reading 'On Tyranny' by Timothy Snyder. Having been to hear Richard Powers at the Literature Festival in November (what a wonderful and engaging man) I have 'Overstory' waiting in the pile, very much anticipating, and 'The North Light' by Hideo Yokoyama, that I am reading for a book club at The House of Books and Friends in January.

Stay safe. Be kind. Enjoy your reading.

Art and Meditation

One of the perks of my loft bed is that I can have a whole stash of books tucked down the side and they don't fall off. 'The Yellow House' by Martin Gayford has been renewed several times as other things have interrupted the reading. (I think I read a review of another of his books and the library happened to have this one.) It tells the story of a brief period in 1888 when Paul Gauguin lived with Vincent Van Gogh in a house in Arles. It was just such an interesting book because it gives you the two artists as real people, their lives together and the impact they had on each other's work. It is a detailed timeline of the works they produced during this brief intense period. Vincent had this idea of creating a place where artists could come and work together and share ideas and influences. He had set a lot of store by his invitation to Gauguin and admired him greatly, though it turned out Vincent himself was not an easy person to live with. There is much discussion of the art they created but it also charts the development of the crisis in Vincent's mental health, an issue that had haunted his life and would lead finally to him taking his own life. The books brings to life the real person behind the myth that is Vincent.

'Meditations for Mortals' by Oliver Burkeman has been just a lovely and helpful as 'Four Thousand Weeks' was in 2022. It's all about considering what's important in life and not sweating about being a 'better person'. I loved this notion, 'cosmic debt': 

"Of course, there's the mundane sense in which we 'need' to do all sorts of things: in order to pay the rent, you must generate an income; if you do that by working at a job, you'd better meet your employer's requirements, or you can expect to run into trouble. If you have kids, it's generally a good idea to provide them with food and clothing. But we overlay this everyday sense of obligation with the existential duty described above: the feeling that we need to get things done not only to achieve certain ends, or to meet our basic responsibilities to others, but because it's a cosmic debt we've somehow incurred in exchange for being alive. As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han has written, 'we produce against the feeling of lack'. Our frenetic activity is often an effort to shore up a sense of ourselves as minimally acceptable members of society." (p.21)

Designed to be read over four weeks, not as a blueprint for 'action' but as a guide to considering different kinds of problems and getting comfortable with imperfection, insecurity, and inevitable oblivion, and I was left with much to ponder. 

I very much liked this analysis of Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' poem (which I understand he grew to hate since it was so much requested at readings), taking a closer and slightly alternative reading of it, and it kind of sums up much of the book's message:

"Frost's poem undermines the conventional reading on almost every line. No sooner has the speaker told us about the road less travelled than he admits that, in fact, previous travellers had left the two paths worn 'really about the same'. And on closer examination, he never asserts that his choice of path 'made all the difference' in his life, either. How could he know, since he never got to compare it to the other one? What the speaker of the poem may be saying is that 'ages and ages hence' when he's an old man, he expects that's what he'll claim. Because he'll want to rationalise the choices he made - like everyone else does.

The true insight of Frost's poem, on this interpretation, isn't that you should opt for an unconventional life. It's that the only way to live authentically is to acknowledge that you're inevitably always making decision after decision, decisions that will shape your life in lasting ways, even though you can't ever know in advance what the best choice might be. In fact, you'll never know in hindsight, either - because not matter how great or how appalling the consequences of heading down any given path, you'll never learn whether heading down a different one might have brought something better or worse. Even so, to move forward, you still have to choose, and keep on choosing." (p.49-50)

Stay safe. Be kind. Eat the damn marshmallow.

Birnham Wood

Wow was the word I used when I reviewed 'The Luminaries' by Eleanor Catton a decade ago(!), and my response to 'Birnham Wood' is the same. You know you are on to a good thing when you have to get up at 4.30am but you know there's no point trying to 'leave it there' and get some sleep. 

The story revolves around Mira and Shelley who are the driving forces of a guerrilla gardening organisation, Birnham Wood, that cultivates neglected plots of land to provide food to sell and give away. When a landslide hits the news Mira learns of a neglected farm nearby and sees it as an opportunity for a larger project. While scouting the area she meets Robert Lemoine, a tech billionaire, who is buying the land, ostensibly for an end-of-the-world bunker, but more sinister motives are also at play. With funding from Lemoine a group of people move on to the farm to start planting. Meanwhile, former Birnham member (and Mira's some time love interest) Tony has become suspicious of Lemoine's motives and travels to the site to investigate. Add a trojan horse computer programme, high tech surveillance drones and some LSD into the mix and you get a denouement that was not going to let me go to sleep. 

Just like last time it is the cast of characters as well as the plot that truly carries this novel. The slightly fraught and unequal relationship between Mira and Shelley, and then you have this neat little aside of Jill and Owen Darvish (who own the farm), their relationship painted in quite a bit of detail even though they seem peripheral to the story, but they then become the driving force of the crisis. But it is the portrayal of Lemoine that is most wonderful. Everyone is so deferential to him, overawed by the money, and the power that accompanies it. And he is so wonderfully psychopathic; you watch him charm everyone, playing them off against each other, manipulating people, and you watch him fuck them over for his own ends. You see his utter disregard for other human beings, as if they are merely ants for him to squash. It's wonderful to have a character to hate. 

So here is the setup, doing good for the community and making the world a better place, but...

"And they did more than trespass. Their plantings occasionally choked out local competition, or became so prolific as to be expensive to remove; sometimes, they returned to a site to find it had been doused in weedkiller or burned. They took cuttings from suburban gardens, leaf litter out of public parks, and manure from farmland. Mira had stolen scions from commercial apple orchards - budding whips of Braeburn and Royal Gala that she grafted to the stocks of sour crab-apple trees - and equipment out of unlocked garden sheds, though only, she insisted, in wealthy neighbourhoods, and only those tools that did not seem to be in frequent use. But she prized her freedom too highly ever to risk it very far, and she was careful to conceal any potential criminal activity from the wider membership of Birnham Wood, whose good opinion she was anxious to retain. That, Shelley thought, as she forked the compost and released the sweet vegetal stink into the air, had been her most valuable contribution to the group, over the years; through the sheer unlikelihood of her allegiance, she gave Mira the only kind of credibility she lacked: the ordinary. In playing the supporting role not as a disciple or a fanatic, but as a foil, she not only tempered Mira's image, she ensured - and she had ensured - that the hidden face of Birnham Wood stayed underground." (p.23)

And then, in retrospect, all sorts of hints in this quote:

"Mira knew that a large proportion of the world's billionaires were psychopaths, and she also knew that one defining feature of psychopathy was a tendency to lie. It was possible that Lemoine had never even met the Darvishes. Maybe he was trespassing as well. Maybe he wanted to acquire Birnham Wood in order to destroy it - or maybe he was looking for a loss to write off against his taxes; maybe his whole intention was to run them into the ground. Or maybe he'd never intended to invest in them at all. He might have dangled his offer only as a lure - or he might be grooming her for something else entirely - or he might be trying to frame her - or he might be simply toying with her as a joke. He might be sick in the head. He might be planning to kill her. He might be planning to kill the whole group. Mira tried her best to scold herself, but even at her sternest, she could never quite repress the knowledge that the only person who she knew for sure had lied to Birnham Wood about the Darvish farm was her." (p.188)

And just a little taster of the action:

"He was keeping his phone angled away from her, but Mira could see it in the dark reflection of the glass, and she realised that he had opened an app that gave him bird's-eye perspective on the farm - a live feed, it seemed like. Somehow, it had never occurred to her that he might be keeping the farm under surveillance; she opened her mouth to say something, but she was distracted when he scrolled past something that was moving ... and then in the next instant she heard the roar of an engine revving painfully in a low gear. Stupidly, she looked down at the SUV at the gate, but it was stationary, its windows still dark - and then, before she had time to speak, the Vanette came careening past the house and down the hill." (p.273)

It was so wonderful to read a book and be completely gripped by it. So well plotted, so well researched. And, of course, a picture of what is actually going on in the world; the dichotomy between people (with very little) trying hard to make a difference versus people (who already have everything) who just take at any cost. It makes you look at the philanthropy of the very wealthy and feel very suspicious.

Stay safe. Be kind. 

The Party

I quite like Tessa Hadley but I found this book irritating. Billed as a tale of sisterly bonding I struggled to engage with them or their situation. Moira and Evelyn are sisters, Evelyn the younger studious one, Moira the older and more adventurous. They mislead their parents and head off to a party in a pub where they get talking to two men, who are apparently of little interest. And yet at the weekend they find themselves picked up and taken to a second gathering in a fancy, though somewhat down at heel, house, attended by the same men. Much of the description felt laboured and excessive and I was irritated by the unclear period of the book. It is set very vaguely 'post war' but the description of Evelyn's outfit felt more 1950s, or even 60s, but the music at the party is definitely not rock and roll... 

I keep reading things I don't care about, and feeling irritated with myself for a waste of reading effort. I am definitely in a slump. Started Birnham Wood by Eleanor Catton (who I have loved) but ...

Life is short

 

Having lost several days of my holiday to the US election and its aftermath, then another day to a wasted outing when our train was returned to Piccadilly because of another train broken down on the line ahead, I have tried to find solace in reading. I have loved everything by Ann Patchett ( ... reviewed here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here!) and 'The Dutch House' was no exception. Danny and Maeve live there, with a somewhat absent father and a rather more absent mother, cared for by Fluffy the nanny, and Sandy and Jocelyn the housekeepers. After their mother leaves for good their father marries Andrea and a tense stalemate sets in. When he dies suddenly it turns out that the whole kit and caboodle, the house and his business, now belong to her. Maeve is in college and Danny in high school by this time, she promptly throws them out. 

It is a beautiful, extravagant house, built by a Dutch family who had since all expired, that was bought with contents, including all their personal possession. Once the raccoon infestation in the attic is sorted out the place is preserved in its entirety, including the portraits above the mantle of Mr and Mrs VanHoeBeek. I thought that the house would become like a character in the book, but it didn't. Although there are many description of it, it looms large in their lives but not really in the story. Danny tells the story of the two of them, finding their own paths, but bonded by the fact of just having each other ... and the house. They sit in the car outside and smoke and talk, not to spy or even to unnerve Andrea, but simply because it is their place. I just love a good sibling story, I feel for people who don't have siblings, there is something unique about these people who you have spent your childhood with. Maeve is the protective big sister and tries to push Danny into becoming a doctor, using their father's education trust fund to put him through expensive medical school, but all he wants to do is follow his father into real estate. They muddle through life until Maeve has a heart attack and their whole lives start to turn full circle. As always, it can be so hard to put my finger on what makes good writing. I engaged with all the people and their relationships, and then she broke my heart and mended it again. It left me feeling that life is short and precious.

Here, in the aftermath of their departure from the Dutch House:

"Maeve was feeling better but I told her to go upstairs and sit down while I lugged what I had up three flights of stairs to her apartment. There was only one bedroom and she told me to take it. I told her no.
'You're going to take the bed,' she said, 'because you're too long for the couch and I'm not. I sleep on the couch all the time.'
I look around her little apartment. I'd been there plenty of time but you see a place differently when you know you're going to be living there. It was small and plain and suddenly I felt bad for her, thinking it wasn't right that she should be in this place when I was living on VanHoeBeek Street, forgetting for a minute that I wasn't living there anymore. 'Why do you sleep on the couch?'
'I fall asleep watching television,' she said, then she sat down on that couch and closed her eyes. I was afraid she was going to cry but she didn't. Maeve wasn't a crier. She pushed her thick black hair away from her face and looked at me. 'I'm glad you're here.'
I nodded. For a second I wondered what I would have done if Maeve hadn't been there - gone home with Sandy or Jocelyn? Called Mr Martin the basketball coach to see if he would have me? I would never have known.
That night in my sister's bed I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of my father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of mistakes." (p.98-99)

Stay safe. Be kind. Love your siblings.