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.

The Odyssey (11): Books 19 – 20

A washing of feet & a final feast

Some of the things I find myself thinking about in my reading of Books 19 and 20 are remarkable, though I can’t believe original. As old Eurycleia washes the feet of the beggar king, the truth of his person is told in the story of a scar; a mark of the youthful and impulsive Odysseus, before the years had left their mark. And, I imagine the scene of another King, and running in reverse, and he washing the feet of those who serve Him, before supping in their midst for the last time (Maundy Tuesday). In this context, I wonder at the symbolism that could be attached to the ritualistic washing of feet; so integral to hospitality customs as practiced in ancient civilisations – an intimate act of cleansing that respects, reveals and absolves.

**Odysseus and Eurycleia**, by Christian Gottlob Heyne

If there were not enough Kings to speak of; this a much more pop-cultural reference: “The Lion King”. There are, I think, some fairly obvious structural and thematic similarities between the Disney film(s) and aspects of The Odyssey – the father and son relationship, the homecoming, the circular storytelling. Mostly, though, it was the “scar” micro-narrative that moved me to this diversion; in the epic, Odysseus’ scar is a physical reminder of how an intelligent, attentive man learns with time and experience from past mistakes, but in “The Lion King”, the envious brother and uncle is defined, redefines himself (in renaming himself “Scar”), by the bitterness and envy that fester in the wake of his mistakes.

book 19: the queen and the beggar

pp. 424-444

Preparations are afoot for the planned mayhem, but first Odysseus manoeuvres himself in position to talk with Penelope, who easily confides in him of how she had to “spin schemes” to keep the wretched suitors at bay, and how she literally did spin of a day and unweave of a night the promised shroud for Laertes. A pledge that must be abided by before marriage proposals could be considered – thus, at least for some time, she had been able to deceive the suitors; to only then be betrayed (the slave girls are really in trouble now!) And, for his part, Odysseus spins his familiar tale of Crete and Troy and adventures galore, and of the great “Odysseus” and his imminent homecoming; and is convincing enough.

And, then, the aged Eurycleia, as much a reminder of the past as the scar upon his leg, is sworn to secrecy. Penelope conflates dreams with schemes, and resolves, even in her choosing of a new husband, to honour alone the old. Odysseus pride in his “good woman” is barely concealed. What the morrow will bring?

book 20: the Last Banquet

pp. 445-459

Each wake otherwise to the new day. Through the night, enraged by the slave girls cavortings with the suitors, Odysseus is now touched by the weeping sounds of Penelope (and Athena doing her thing!). Telemachus is bothered that Penelope has not accorded the respect due to Odysseus – those fears unwarranted, assures Eurycleia. And the old woman is full of energy and orders her “troops” – this feast day will be like no other.

You are either with me or against me, he might as well have said. Eumaeus clearly is, and now the herdsman, Philoetius, shows respect and where his loyalties lie. For the opportunist, Melanthius, fate will not be so kind I fear.

Omens abound, and the suitors falter – hesitate in fulfilling their intent – and for the moment retreat, to instead revel in the preparing of the feast. One knows, peace will not reign for long; for so is it with the suitors. And, Athena must nudge just a little bit for them to return to their former spite, and only the prophet Theoclymenus sees the shadows fall, the writing on the wall, and makes haste. Telemachus is left to the suitors’ taunts and ever alert to his father’s command, and the beautiful Penelope sits and watches.

More than nostalgia

In these frenetic days, in which so much stuff, and so much more unsavoury stuff, is endlessly being thrown around, The New York Times has resorted to viral videos and the nostalgia of the urban snowball fight of yore. Not exactly today’s weapon of choice on the streets of Lyon or anywhere else I would suggest. So were my first thoughts…

Auguste & Louis Lumière: Snowball Fight (1897)

But, the author of the article, Sam Anderson, manages to retrieve his piece from my harsh verdict; both with some very nice observations and imagined narrative of the content, but more importantly with his reflections on our complicated relationship with the past and our exaggerated sense of the importance and uniqueness of our present.

…On an intellectual level, we all understand that historical people were basically just like us. […]They were anxious and unsure, bored and silly. Nothing that would happen in their lifetimes had happened yet. The ocean of time was crashing fresh waves, nonstop, against the rocks of their days. And like us they stood there, gasping in the cold spray, wondering what people of the past were like.

[…] to watch this snowball fight, to see these people so alive, is a precious gift of perspective. We are them. They are us. We, too, will disappear. […] We are not unique. We move in the historical flow. The current moment will melt away like snow crust on a moustache…
Sam Anderson, in “The New York Times Magazine“, Nov. 5 2020

The original black and white version included in the Lumière catalogue can be found here. On a technical level, the colorisation and a smoothing process makes the participants, indeed, look more like us – which of course they really did. This was something I actually thought about quite a lot a couple of years ago on seeing some excerpts from Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, a documentary film he made in remembrance of the end of the First World War, and in which he took archive footage from the time and, with all the technical wizardry available to him, transformed the subjects from blurred images of long ago to (mostly) young men who one may very well come across today – on the bus, at the pub or football, or most anywhere. I remember thinking, irrespective of the objections raised by purists, the familiar visages that were exposed with such technical finesse do create a powerful bridge between all the years of the century passed. Again – they were just like us! Beyond that of community and comradeship, there is little comparison between the respective fights on the winter streets of Lyon and on the fields and in the trenches of the Somme, but what they do share, are the threads of time that bind each inextricably with our present and all the presents to come.

Segregation by Genre

For a couple of reasons Alex Abramovich’s piece entitled “Even When It’s a Big Fat Lie” (limited access so the link is a bit dicey) in the London Review of Books particularly interested me. Firstly, it is a review of Ken Burns’s eight part PBS documentary “Country Music”, and I had read a flattering piece in The New York Times a couple of months ago, and that Abramovich’s is not; secondly, I saw a grainy rerun of Burns’s lauded by some, and lambasted by others, 1990 series, The Civil War, not so long ago – and thought it a very mediocre work – whereby, I mean in terms of the structure and film-making aesthetic (though to be fair it is thirty years old); the historical shortcomings and omissions, as Abramovich mentions, were debated at the time by those qualified to do so, and the criticism has not abated over the years. (I should say just about everything I know about the Civil War comes from Eric Foner, and he was one of the fiercest critics at the time.)

And it is in terms of Ken Burns’s prior work, that Abramovich launches into his criticism of “Country Music”, because, whether one agreed with their perspective or not, a range of historians did contribute to “The Civil War”, whereas in Burns’s succeeding documentaries the input from historians has dramatically declined over the years, to the point whereby “Country Music” has only one, Bill Malone, and it his interpretation alone that frames Burns’s work. And, one should say, even there it seems Malone had more to offer but could only give that which fulfilled Burns’s vision.

What Alex Abramovich bemoans the most, are the half-stories and half-truths that will never add to a whole. Instead, one is left with a blurred vision of a music genre that has never reconciled its shared roots in the poor white and Black South, and instead rejoices in an (often false) nostalgia. Following is an accompanying conversation with Abramovich, that explores, beyond his written LRB piece and the specifics relating to Burns’s documentary, the wider history of segregation in vernacular music and the defining role played by the recording industry.

Alex Abramovich on the history of segregation in music in the US

Finally, this is not the same thing, but related, I think, in that it is illustrative of how music and recordings track the extreme social shifts of an era, particularly in respect to the African American experience, through the twentieth century and into the present. Recently, I read an extraordinarily interesting article, again in the NYT, that examines music – American folk music this time – beyond a matter of categorisation that tends to segregation and exposes instead blatant racism and hate, and considers the ensuing dilemma of how to deal with historical works, once popular and now despicable.

Magical mystery tour de force

*“Time of the Magicians”, by Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside*

Whilst in the midst of reading Wolfram Eilenberger’s book Zeit der Zauberer (2018) in German, I was interested to see that now a couple of years later an English translation has been published by Penguin Press. Not that many German non-fiction works get that far. And not that many as well reviewed – a very good review indeed by Jennifer Szalai at the NYT that hopefully encourages some good sales and thoughtful reading on that side of the Atlantic.

Certainly, I enjoyed the book immensely, and Eilenberger’s interwoven portrait of four extraordinary men – Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Ludwig Wittgenstein – formulating their ideas into interconnecting but individual philosophies amidst the ruins, so to speak, of the First World War and the disintegrating Weimar Republic, is told in a very winning and readable way; some German critics found it to be too so. (Enough of the Feuilletonisten here have a tendency I think to want to keep “high” culture just that!) Believe me, an awful lot of German writers struggle with what one may call ‘accessibility’ – that is, not just informing and hoping for the best, but presenting difficult subject matter such that it reads as a narrative thereby capturing the attentive reader. This, then, foremost is an immensely readable book.

Cover “Zeit der Zauberer” by Wolfram Eilenberger

There is no denying that some of the stuff is indeed difficult, or as difficult as one wants to make it; one could go barmy trying to extricate the precise and nuanced meaning, especially in terms of the references to primary sources, and the stringency of formulation and terminology is a hurdle for those without a pertinent academic background (like, guess who!). My reading, then, concentrated on the living in the time, and I conquered my irritations at just how many ways these guys came up with of saying approximately the same thing and all in the interest of justifying their (to be fair, ‘our’) existence. When I was really irritated I would mumble something along the lines of: What hocus-pocus! But they were, after all, magicians of a special sort; all occupied with their own very special brand of magical thinking!