Pleasure in reading

Start the week with Andrew Marr and a good listen, then read on.

“Derrida, Woolf, and the pleasure of reading”

Read Derrida, should you dare! Lighter work, for sure, to deconstruct the person. The philosopher, Julian Baggini, reviews Peter Salmon’s book An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida here.

Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader found critical acclaim and a worldwide audience, but had its detractors in Germany – not an apologist work, but, if sought, excuses for a nations fall into barbarism are too easily to be discerned. His 2018 novel Olga, just published in English, received here a fairly tepid reception – a woman’s fate through the panorama of German history from the Kaiserreich through the 20th century; and character just too good to be true? History tells us, there were many more “Hannas” (the illiterate guard of The Reader) than there were “Olgas”.

Enjoyed very much (hardly a surprise!) Alexandra Harris’s perceptive commentary on Virginia Woolf’s reading habits and expectations. In Virginia Woolf’s own words, “How Should One Read a Book” from The Common Reader, Second Series. Woolf may have suggested to Schlink’s young reader (in The Reader), to keep the best of it to himself.

Reading, with all its extended connotations, may well bind them, but strange bedfellows these three. I love Andrew Marr – he can bring together disparate voices to a successful ménage à trois.

The Odyssey (12): Books 21 – 22

Let the Bloody Show Begin

At day's end what's left to be said? 
What use a play of false forbearance,
or calculated regret? 
Too late now for redress,
for false pardon or indulgence.

Fate and a song have long decreed
those favoured few to be reprieved. 
A bōw, or a bŏw, and a change of dress,
changes not the bloodied scene.

- Anne Dromache November 24th 2020

Book 21: An archery contest

pp. 460-475

Penelope with slaves in tow, 
fetches Odysseus' famed 
and curved bow.

Well armed her beaus 
with arrows aplenty,
that will quiver and spin
when strung and aimed
at axes hung all in a row.

So ordained be their will.
Alone, aloud be it said:
here only one destined to win -
the rest, they will be dead.

- Anne Dromache November 24th 2020

Astute she may be, but Penelope is oblivious that she too now is slave – to Athena’s scheme, so assiduously brought to fruition in cahoots with Odysseus, and nearing its fulfilment!

The swineherd and cowherd pass their final test of fealty; and with that the lives of Eumaeus and Philoetius saved, and Odysseus reveals to them his person and receives them as co-conspirators.

One after the other, the cocky crew of “wanna be’s” show off only the limitations of their prowess, and Antinous seeing what lays ahead for him – no, not that; his prescience only stretching as far as the contest – suggests the competition be held over for one day, as this day is Apollo’s day and the god obviously angered at their meddling in what famously is his sport.

Odysseus will try, and is roundly rebuked, but Penelope takes his side, and Telemachus too. Having played her part, a role of which she knows not of, to perfection, mother Penelope’s exit is insisted upon. For the eyes of neither mother nor wife is that which follows fit. The die is cast; the bow is passed into great practised hands and his gifts and person then displayed. As the book ends, father and son stand united:

With his eyebrows
he signaled, and his son strapped on his sword,
picked up his spear, and stood beside his chair
next to his father, his bronze weapons flashing.

Book 21 [lines 431-434] The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson

Book 22: Bloodshed

pp. 476-493

More than expose himself; a deadly exposition:

Odysseus ripped off his rags. Now naked,
he leapt upon the threshold with his bow
and quiver full of arrows, which he tipped
out in a rush before his feet, and spoke.

"Playtime is over [...]

Book 22 [lines 1-5] The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson

Illustration from Schwab, Gustav: “Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertums” (1882)

Hardly surprising; Antinous, the most troublesome of all is the first to fall, and ever lurking Fate and the goddess Athena, guised as Mentor or hovering in the rafters orchestrating the carnage, decrees all the suitors to follow suit on their bloody way to meet their own fate.

Spared only are Phemius, the famous singer – thinks Odysseus in this moment of his legacy to be told in song? And, for his son’s sake, the house boy Medon – he, who calls Telemachus “friend”.

At the hands of the other herdsmen, an ugly death awaits the goat herd Melanthius – does Odysseus think this a favour, an honour, that he grant them this gruesome deed? Eurycleia is too easily “forced” into role of denunciator – twelve slave girls will pay, but not before they have cleaned Odysseus’ house of the massacre and its remnants – a cruel extra, known well enough in modern times.

A final fumigation; as a cure against lurking evil. But, will it cleanse the soul? And, the hero weeps. Or does he? For more precisely: “…seized by sweet desire to weep…” [500-501]. The condemned slave girls; they did really weep as they made rid of the hero’s bloody carnage, to then be ushered to a drawn out death.

And, for Odysseus, has home been at long last reached? And, was it worth it?

Titillating

Well, it is not very fair to comment without a full frontal view, but whether this is quite the right way to honour the great Mary Wollstonecraft is debatable!

Irrespective, there is one part of me pleased enough that some more diverse (if you count “women” as diverse!) historical figures, are finding their way into public spaces. And, of course, that Virginia Woolf should find a place now in Richmond, where she lived for a long period, is fitting. Though sitting on a park bench watching the day go by – is that not a bit too Mrs. Dalloway? As the tortured soul she does not have to be depicted, but… And, whether this trend is stretching to people of other ethnic or cultural backgrounds (beyond Gandhi and/or Mandela) I have not heard. Then, there is the sceptical me, one who can’t help but doubt whether any number of busts, statues, plaques, do very much in the way of taking the viewer (or casual passer-by) beyond the public space into the public consciousness; whether they really tell us anything of the person, the time and circumstance, and are in the end only sentimental reflections of a work’s creator and the society and time in which he/she/they lived, rather than that of the subject.

There are indeed enough that one could be well rid of – for instance, Cecil Rhodes; a hullabaloo that spans continents, and Sloane; now put under wraps at the British Museum. A couple of years old now, but this is an opinion on the greater global predicament of just what to do with some of these guys (they are mostly “guys”!). And Jonathan Jones questions the whole “folly of depicting history through the dead art of statues”, and pleads for “serious art” and a contemporary approach that remembers without the false promise of restoration. His “selfie in bronze” description is spot-on – and not unlike my reflections above.

All the above links are to The Guardian.

Four more for thought

Feuer der Freiheit. Die Rettung der Philosophie in finsteren Zeiten (1933 – 1943) by Wolfram Eilenberger

… may be translated into English as something like: Fire of Freedom (liberty) or Flames of Liberty – The Saving of Philosophy in Dark (gloomy, sinister) Times …

Recently published in Germany, this new book from Wolfram Eilenberger is conceptually very similar to Time of the Magicians that I wrote about a short time ago. When Feuer der Freiheit will be published in English I don’t know, that it will, given the international success of the aforesaid, I am very confident.

Briefly I will say, that this time Eilenberger invites us to follow the paths of four women, and in the ten years from 1933-43. Until I read the book, I can only divulge who the subjects are: Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil and Ayn Rand. Hannah Arendt, of course, arose in Time of the Magicians in terms of her relationship with Heidegger, and does so again in our own gloomy present – though far removed from the very sinister 30’s – where her star has risen on both sides of the Atlantic. Madame de Beauvoir has survived her contradictions and the ruthlessness of competing feminist movements to retain icon status (and on her own!). Simone Weil; one can but wonder, for she died so young, but I can’t help but think of the unstable genius of Wittgenstein or Benjamin. And, just as for Cass Sunstein in this review for a recent biography of Ayn Rand (limited access at The New York Review of Books), I too as a young thing had an inexplicable attraction to The Fountainhead, and in extension to its author.

I very much look forward to seeing how Eilenberger interweaves the lives of this extraordinary group in a very extraordinary time. For anyone who can read German more than a bit, I suggest this review by Jens Bisky in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and, if you can really read German, don’t wait for the translation, be like me and put the book on your reading list now. Popular it may well be, and personality driven, but I would warrant place enough is given to an exposition of the philosophical ideas driving his subjects.

Obama again, and then enough…

…until I read this tome that arrived on my doorstep the day after publication – courtesy the enormous first printing that demanded a “Printed in Germany on acid-free paper” component!

My copy of “A Promised Land” , Crown Publishers, 2020.

Liked very much this interview given to David Olusoga on BBC Radio 4 – to be followed (from December 14th for two weeks) with an abridged reading of A Promised Land by Barack Obama himself.

David Olusoga has written an accompaniment of a sort for The Guardian, which is an interesting extension to his interview experience and his not terribly optimistic personal observations of the United States post-4 Years Trump.

And a musical accompaniment there must be!

And the winner is…

…all the books listed and fiction and lovers of the same one could say, but (with the exception of last year!) there can only be one winner of The 2020 Booker Prize, and that is Shuggie Bain, written by Douglas Stuart.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

On the BBC Radio 4 “Front Row” page there is (for the moment at least) a video of last night’s event hosted by John Wilson, in that hybrid digital mix – in person, far away, on tape – that we have become more use to than we would like this year – nominees keeping their distance, and others likewise, and Wilson, Margaret Busby and Bernadine Evaristo at the “Round House” in Camden. But I must say all were stoical, and found a very fine tone.

Margaret Busby, reminds me that her work as a publisher over decades has been instrumental in the diversification of talent, especially Black talent, in the UK – it may be only now that she sees, we see, the fruits of her labour. Evaristo, as representative of this. And Ishiguro and Atwood, that a Booker is nice but a body of work is better. President Obama – he, presumably responsible for the rescheduling – prompts me to remember at least of one of the reasons I forgive him his shortcomings: his love of books, and belief in the power of fiction. The Duchess of Cornwall; that royal patronage is not without its virtues, and you can love horses and Charles and also words.

Forget the gripe about the transatlantic bias, what a “great looking” group it was zooming in from afar, what choice readings we heard; more than enough reasons to read their work. Given the difficulties of this year, the Booker has done a very good job, and their jury to be congratulated.

A short story, a loving tribute & a long review

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Another one, most favoured by many, and by me; so elegant her prose, so singular her voice. And, here is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie now, with three quite different pieces of writing, but all seeped with ideas about belonging – to family, to nation; about losing – those we love, freedoms taken for granted; and about fickle power – as a tool to control or to set one free. All are recent, very recent, very contemporaneous in style and subject and intent.

Firstly, Zikora. As modest a work as it is in terms of length, so wide its sociological and psychological scope; and all displayed in the compact first person narrative of a successful professional Nigerian woman, Zikora, about to give birth surrounded by the cool accoutrements of western medicine. At her side, the mother who she does not know how to please, and in the conspicuous absence of a partner, Kwame, deemed “perfect” and then to do “a runner”, and from whom she struggles to let go, and all the while reflecting upon her complicated Nigerian family and their complicated relationships, the awkwardness of her place as an African woman in the United States where her Blackness is always writ large. And, in the end, wondering herself why she persisted in forgiving the men who did her wrong – Kwame was not the first, and then there is the father who had deserted her mother (and her) and started another family, but whose attention she still craved. And when it is over, a new life brought into the world, a realisation is in the dawning that just as her thoughts flew to Lagos and her impossible family, it is alone her mother who has flown to her; her difficult, impossible to please mother who never left her and was with her now.

Interesting, in another respect, is that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has chosen to publish this through Amazon. I dare say this will not impress some, but it does actually make sense for a “small” work at a small price that she would have wanted to make available to as many people as possible.

This links to Amazon.de in Germany (because that’s where I am) but it is of course at every other Amazon out there in the big wide world.

Rethinking Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton’s pop-culture revival in recent years, with all the negative repercussions accompanying such hype, has also had the positive effect of renewed interest in the historical person (as opposed to the theatrical), and especially in questioning his bona fide credentials as an Abolitionist.

The New York Times reports on a startling piece of new research, in which substantial and previously overlooked evidence is presented that Hamilton was in fact a committed slave owner and, it follows, complicit in the institution as such. It will be for others to decide where this work fits in the bigger picture of Hamilton’s life, and afterlife, but one has to congratulate the young researcher, Jessie Serfilippi, and presumably also the New York State Parks, Recreation & Historical Preservation for their support. One should pause and acknowledge the contributions often made, beyond academia, in the realm of public history. Short, succinct and available here for download.

Beyond Hamilton (or ‘Hamilton’), my own recent inquiries surrounding the Civil War, have certainly made me aware that slavery as it existed in the North was far more insidious than the historical record would sometimes suggest, so I will certainly be returning to say more about this.