I seem to remember mentioning in a previous entry that I tend to have a ridiculous number of writing projects on the go at any one time. This is both encouraging and frustrating. Encouraging, because it suggests that I am not lacking when it comes to inspiration, and gives me plenty to be getting on with even if the ideas dry up for a while. Frustrating, because I rarely seem to get anything finished: even when I do by some fluke manage to follow an idea through to the last sentence, it is promptly filed away in a drawer or Word document and never looked at again. For reasons of personal vanity, and also for my own future reference, here is a list of projects that I am working on, as of 11.52 pm on Sunday, 6 June 2010:
SHORT STORIES
“No Going Back”, a medium-length story about a wealthy, middle-aged Chilean woman looking back on how she betrayed her youthful ideals during the 1973 coup.
“Hands” A very short story in which a man contemplates his wife’s hands. That’s not quite it, but it’s only a tiny piece and I don’t want to give the whole game away!
“All Our Yesterdays” My current project: a longish story about relationships, bereavement and the writing process, among other things.
(Untitled 1) Written for the prompt “A moment of failure”, this untitled, unedited little piece is written from the point of view of a man who set out to assassinate a former schoolfriend who has become a brutal dictator, but lost his nerve at the last minute.
(Untitled 2) A very long short story, possibly bordering on a novella, about a couple in Berlin during the 1920s and 1930s – so, a flagrant violation of my usual rule of only writing about what I know! I haven’t worked on it for over a year now, but I still find myself thinking about it on occasion.
NOVELS
“The Jess Landau Chronicles” A rather breezy, very first-novelish (but not entirely autobiographical) novel about a girl in her first year at Oxford. This is always designated as a priority project in my head, but always seems to get neglected nonetheless.
(Untitled) Kind of a hybrid realist/fantasy novel about a troubled teenage girl who takes refuge in her overactive imagination. Definitely the most ambitious project I currently have swirling around my overactive brain, so it probably won’t see the light of day for years.
ARTICLES (mostly academic-related, to be written after submitting my Masters thesis, and for the most part spin-offs from said thesis).
1) one on the Chinese explorer and seafarer Zheng He and his image in Chinese public diplomacy today, particularly in relation to China’s relations with the developing world.
2) one on China’s role in Sudan’s North-South conflict (as opposed to its more publicised role during the conflict in Darfur).
3) One on China’s evolving attitude towards sanctions at the United Nations.
4) Departing from the China theme, I also want to write two articles on Tolkien for possible publication in the Cambridge Tolkien Society’s journal Anor: one about female characters in Tolkien’s writing, and one about metafiction and the creation of a fictional manuscript history for Tolkien’s works.
FUNNY STUFF (purportedly)
“Beren and Luthien : The Musical!” Er, enough said.
“Silmarillion Missing Scenes” 12 scenes which aren’t explicitly described in Tolkien’s early mythology, but which must have happened. Warning for extreme plot and character distortion.
Finally, a ridiculous number of political song parodies, at various stages of completion. These will only see the light of day if I am ever successful in my aim of founding a British equivalent of the Washington DC Capitol Steps.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
President Tom and "Dashing Sally"
A few years ago, while we were watching a humdrum programme on TV (I would guess, from the context, that it was "Who Do You Think You Are?") that my mother pointed out to me an obvious yet seldom-acknowledged fact. The subject of the documentary, a black Brit with roots in the Caribbean, was distressed to learn that he or she (I can't for the life of me remember who it was!) was descended not only from slaves - a fact which, after all, they must always have know - but also from slave owners. Mum, in her blunt, observant way, pointed out that anyone with eyes could see that this had been the norm throughout the Americas, as most African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans look distinctly different from the modern-day inhabitants of West Africa - and, one must presume, from their own ancestors who were shipped to American plantation during the days of the slave trade. She was, of course, completely right. In the United States, miscegenation (described by Barack Obama as an "ugly, humpbacked word", and at the time of slavery usually denoting the result of a white man taking advantage of an enslaved woman) seems to have been something of a Southern tradition. The most infamous example, of course, is the alleged liaison between President Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, which is thought to have resulted in four surviving children (three of whom, interestingly, ultimately made the decision to "pass for white" and move into the white community).
For anyone who wants to know the whole story, Annette Gordon-Reed's "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy" summarises all the known evidence for and against Jefferson's paternity. (Let me say in passing that despite being written before a DNA test proved that at least one of Sally Hemings' children was fathered by a male from the Jefferson line, the evidence for the prosecution is pretty compelling. All of Sally's children were conceived when Jefferson was home at Monticello -a remarkable coincidence given that he was a national political figure who spent ten to eleven months of the year away from home. The boys bore a striking resemblance to the former President, in one case so striking that visitors to Monticello were frequently visibly startled. All four children were freed at the age of twenty-one or thereabouts - and were among a handful of slaves to be set free during Jefferson's lifetime). In short, while it is hard to see how the charge can ever be proved irrefutably, given the evidence, it takes quite an imaginative leap not to come to the conclusion that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children.
However, Gordon-Reed, a law professor whose clear, logical style of exposition clearly owes much to her profession, goes further than that. First of all, I was impressed by her objective, non-judgemental tone througout. As a black woman whose ancestors presumably suffered the same injustices as Sally and her family, one might expect her to be angry - heck, I was angry - at the abuses that happened under the system of slavery. However, none of that comes across in her writing. She even addresses the thorny question of why Sally might have believed such a liaison to be in her best interests and why an affair with her master might well have been - well, "a good career option" isn't quite the phrase, but a good opportunity nonetheless. In short, she does well to avoid presentism and instead displays a remarkable ability to comprehend the very different mindset that held sway during the period she is writing about.
If Gordon-Reed's primary objective was to provide a clear-headed examination of the evidence for and against Jefferson's paternity of Sally Hemings' children, then her secondary objective was equally important; what is more, since I was already acquainted with the Jefferson/Hemings story, this was the real revelation for me. Gordon-Reed demonstrates that historians, from the 19th century to our own time, have sought to exonerate Jefferson from the charges laid against him - and, in doing so, have demonstrated clear bias in terms of the sources and information they deem relevant to the understanding of their subject. Above all, they have routinely discounted sources based on the oral testimonies of blacks (former slaves at Monticello, for example, as well as Madison Hemings, the alleged second son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings) on the grounds that oral sources and family tradition are hopelessly unreliable in terms of providing accurate historical information. At the same time, however, they have been perfectly happy to accept similar reports from white sources (for example, rumours that did the rounds in the vicinity of Monticello, the oral testimony of Jefferson's former overseer - who was not even present at Monticello until after the birth of Hemings' last child - and the family tradition recounted by Jefferson's grandchildren.) "An American Controversy", then, is not merely a clear-headed reexamination of what was arguably America's first presidential sex scandal, but also an exposition of the source-related bias inherent in so much of what is written about the antebellum South.
For anyone who wants to know the whole story, Annette Gordon-Reed's "Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy" summarises all the known evidence for and against Jefferson's paternity. (Let me say in passing that despite being written before a DNA test proved that at least one of Sally Hemings' children was fathered by a male from the Jefferson line, the evidence for the prosecution is pretty compelling. All of Sally's children were conceived when Jefferson was home at Monticello -a remarkable coincidence given that he was a national political figure who spent ten to eleven months of the year away from home. The boys bore a striking resemblance to the former President, in one case so striking that visitors to Monticello were frequently visibly startled. All four children were freed at the age of twenty-one or thereabouts - and were among a handful of slaves to be set free during Jefferson's lifetime). In short, while it is hard to see how the charge can ever be proved irrefutably, given the evidence, it takes quite an imaginative leap not to come to the conclusion that Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings' children.
However, Gordon-Reed, a law professor whose clear, logical style of exposition clearly owes much to her profession, goes further than that. First of all, I was impressed by her objective, non-judgemental tone througout. As a black woman whose ancestors presumably suffered the same injustices as Sally and her family, one might expect her to be angry - heck, I was angry - at the abuses that happened under the system of slavery. However, none of that comes across in her writing. She even addresses the thorny question of why Sally might have believed such a liaison to be in her best interests and why an affair with her master might well have been - well, "a good career option" isn't quite the phrase, but a good opportunity nonetheless. In short, she does well to avoid presentism and instead displays a remarkable ability to comprehend the very different mindset that held sway during the period she is writing about.
If Gordon-Reed's primary objective was to provide a clear-headed examination of the evidence for and against Jefferson's paternity of Sally Hemings' children, then her secondary objective was equally important; what is more, since I was already acquainted with the Jefferson/Hemings story, this was the real revelation for me. Gordon-Reed demonstrates that historians, from the 19th century to our own time, have sought to exonerate Jefferson from the charges laid against him - and, in doing so, have demonstrated clear bias in terms of the sources and information they deem relevant to the understanding of their subject. Above all, they have routinely discounted sources based on the oral testimonies of blacks (former slaves at Monticello, for example, as well as Madison Hemings, the alleged second son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings) on the grounds that oral sources and family tradition are hopelessly unreliable in terms of providing accurate historical information. At the same time, however, they have been perfectly happy to accept similar reports from white sources (for example, rumours that did the rounds in the vicinity of Monticello, the oral testimony of Jefferson's former overseer - who was not even present at Monticello until after the birth of Hemings' last child - and the family tradition recounted by Jefferson's grandchildren.) "An American Controversy", then, is not merely a clear-headed reexamination of what was arguably America's first presidential sex scandal, but also an exposition of the source-related bias inherent in so much of what is written about the antebellum South.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Writerly naval-gazing
And now for something totally different - a few musings, not from the point of view of a reader, but from the point of view of a writer. I don't know why - maybe it's the analytical mode I've become locked into as a result of working full-time on my thesis - but lately I've been in an unusually reflective mood, and every time I pick up my pen to write I find myself thinking about how I operate as a writer. Here are some of my observations:
1) I am fascinated to an unusual degree by other times and places, and often merely reading about them doesn’t do the trick. I really need to know what it felt like to live, say, in 1920s America or in Russia during the Second World War. Short of acquiring a Tardis, the closest I’ll ever get is trying to “write myself there”, and I think that’s why I do it.
2) Inspiration is not a problem for me (touch nearest available wooden surface!) At the moment, my writing notebooks – yes, I have several – are full of potential plots for stories and novels, in various stages of development. Moreover, once I start writing, these have a tendency to spiral off in all sorts of unexpected directions, often becoming unmanageable monsters in the process! No, my problem is buckling down to the hard work of actually writing a story, and then editing and polishing it until I have a final version. I’m too embarrassed to say how many half-finished projects are currently inhabiting my bedside cabinet.
3) My strongest source of inspiration is music. Quite a few of my stories – and certainly some of my favourites – have begun when I was listening to a particular piece of music (usually when walking home late at night) and a germ of an idea entered my brain. This then sprouted a plot and characters and became a story – or in one case, a novella.
4) I don’t seem to be able to write “anonymous” characters. No matter how short or insignificant their appearance in the story, they all seem to end up with a name, background, motivations – the lot.
5) I’m a busy grad student, and logically speaking, writing should interfere with my scholarly life and make me less productive. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I find that when I use my free time well, work just kind of “slots into place – so when I spend an hour or two every day writing and generally being productive, I’m just as efficient during my eight or so hours of study.
1) I am fascinated to an unusual degree by other times and places, and often merely reading about them doesn’t do the trick. I really need to know what it felt like to live, say, in 1920s America or in Russia during the Second World War. Short of acquiring a Tardis, the closest I’ll ever get is trying to “write myself there”, and I think that’s why I do it.
2) Inspiration is not a problem for me (touch nearest available wooden surface!) At the moment, my writing notebooks – yes, I have several – are full of potential plots for stories and novels, in various stages of development. Moreover, once I start writing, these have a tendency to spiral off in all sorts of unexpected directions, often becoming unmanageable monsters in the process! No, my problem is buckling down to the hard work of actually writing a story, and then editing and polishing it until I have a final version. I’m too embarrassed to say how many half-finished projects are currently inhabiting my bedside cabinet.
3) My strongest source of inspiration is music. Quite a few of my stories – and certainly some of my favourites – have begun when I was listening to a particular piece of music (usually when walking home late at night) and a germ of an idea entered my brain. This then sprouted a plot and characters and became a story – or in one case, a novella.
4) I don’t seem to be able to write “anonymous” characters. No matter how short or insignificant their appearance in the story, they all seem to end up with a name, background, motivations – the lot.
5) I’m a busy grad student, and logically speaking, writing should interfere with my scholarly life and make me less productive. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I find that when I use my free time well, work just kind of “slots into place – so when I spend an hour or two every day writing and generally being productive, I’m just as efficient during my eight or so hours of study.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Bluestockings
I have to confess to a strange, somewhat perverse prediliction: I have a weakness for what you might call "vintage sexism". While the racial attitudes of bygone eras leave me more nauseated than amused, I find hilarious comments from Victorian and Edwardian chaps along the lines of "The fairer sex should not tax their minds unduly with education, or their reproductive organs will wither and die." (Needless to say, their modern-day equivalents, the posts on newspaper comment pages and the BBC's "Have Your Say" section that read along the lines of "Women can regurgitate facts but they lack the incisive analytical minds men have", all posted by men who appear to spend their days spurting verbal diarrhoea all over the Internet, are less funny - to say nothing of the repulsive attitudes towards women's education still found in some parts of the world).
Anyway, to return to my initial subject, it was my amusement at the sexist attitudes of the past, coupled with my belated realisation that my own current institution (Cambridge University) did not grant degrees to women until 1948, that led me to pick up Jane Robinson's "Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education". I expected to find it fascinating, and it was - I raced through it over the weekend, and by the end I was still desperate to know more. As a women who has gone through the education system to postgraduate level without my gender being an issue or even being mentioned (the only sexism I've ever encountered was at Oxford, and that came from old members of my college unhappy about the negative impact the admission of women had had on the performance of Trinity's rugby team - an infrequent and minor annoyance rather than a persistent obstacle to my enjoyment of the university experience), it was truly humbling to think about those pioneering young women who challenged the universities, the Establishment and often their families as well, to achieve something to which their intelligence and ambition should have entitled them automatically. I was left wondering: would I have possessed the courage and spark to do likewise, orwould I have resigned myself to a life of respectable but dull domesticity, circumscribed by the narrow limits of home, family and propriety? I don't know - and reading "Bluestockings" reminded me how lucky I am that I never need to find out. I want to put a copy of this book into the hands of every girl or young woman who's ever told me that she's not a feminist, or that women's lives weren't so bad back in the days before feminism. This was a welcome reminder of just how far we've come.
Anyway, to return to my initial subject, it was my amusement at the sexist attitudes of the past, coupled with my belated realisation that my own current institution (Cambridge University) did not grant degrees to women until 1948, that led me to pick up Jane Robinson's "Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education". I expected to find it fascinating, and it was - I raced through it over the weekend, and by the end I was still desperate to know more. As a women who has gone through the education system to postgraduate level without my gender being an issue or even being mentioned (the only sexism I've ever encountered was at Oxford, and that came from old members of my college unhappy about the negative impact the admission of women had had on the performance of Trinity's rugby team - an infrequent and minor annoyance rather than a persistent obstacle to my enjoyment of the university experience), it was truly humbling to think about those pioneering young women who challenged the universities, the Establishment and often their families as well, to achieve something to which their intelligence and ambition should have entitled them automatically. I was left wondering: would I have possessed the courage and spark to do likewise, orwould I have resigned myself to a life of respectable but dull domesticity, circumscribed by the narrow limits of home, family and propriety? I don't know - and reading "Bluestockings" reminded me how lucky I am that I never need to find out. I want to put a copy of this book into the hands of every girl or young woman who's ever told me that she's not a feminist, or that women's lives weren't so bad back in the days before feminism. This was a welcome reminder of just how far we've come.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Looking back at New Labour
I'm writing this just three days before our next General Election here in the UK - in which , despite widespread popular mistrust of the Conservative leader David Cameron and the recent surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, New Labour is expected to lose power after thirteen years. The upcoming election was not the reason I chose to pick up Andrew Rawnsley's "Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour" during a few days off and a recent trip to London. Nevertheless, this look back at the halcyon days of Labour's first term proved to be an excellent choice, dredging up a lot of forgotten memories from the time when I first became interested in politics and rekindling my interest in local UK politics just when I needed it most.
The General Election of 1 May 1997, in which Tony Blair swept into 10 Downing Street at the head of a landslide victory for Labour - is the first election I have any memory of at all. (In fact, despite being only 11 at the time, I even got a chance to participate after a fashion. Our school held a "mock election", in which sixth formers signed up to be "candidates" for the major parties and presented their case during assembly. Everyone in the school then "voted" during break time on polling day. Although I voted Green - presumably because I wanted to be different from everybody else - our school bucked the national trend with a crushing defeat of Labour by the Tories, presumably because most girls voted for whoever Daddy supported). In spite of this early experience of the thrill of democracy, it wasn't until a couple of years later that I really started to get interested in politics, and my early memories of that burgeoning interest are intimately bound up with the personalities and events of Labour's first term. While the big names of the pre-1997 era (Michael Heseltine, Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock) seem to me like figures from some long-distant past, the cast of Rawnsley's book (Robin Cook, Clare Short, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson, even the hapless Ron Davies with his embarrassing nocturnal safari on Clapham Common) are very familiar indeed. These were the individuals who - in all their power-hungry, feuding, voter-punching, badger-spotting glory - got me interested in politics in the first place, and "Servants of the People" provided both a nostalgia trip and a much-needed fleshing out of many of the incidents and scandals of which I had gained only a very sketchy (and no doubt tabloid-influenced) idea at the time.
As a behind-the-scenes account of the early years of the New Labour government, then, Rawnsley's book looks unlikely to be surpassed - although an electoral implosion on Thursday could give birth to a few explosive autobiographies (by the likes of Brown and Mandelson) which might provide fodder for an expanded edition. As a guide to the current state of the party, it is rather more limited. For one thing, most of the events it describes happened a decade or more ago. Many of Rawnsley's protagonists have either faded into the political background (Clare Short, John Prescott, David Blunkett - even, at least in theory, Tony Blair himself) or, in the case of Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam, departed this life altogether. Of the major players, so far as I can recall only Brown, Mandelson and Jack Straw are still prominent members of the Government - although I will confess I did experience a minor thrill whenever I came across a prominent member of the present Cabinet (David Miliband, Harriet Harman, Ed Balls) in an earlier incarnation as a policy planner or lowly aide.
Moreover, I don't think that Rawnsley's focus on the bitter intra-party feuds during Labour's first term (notably the infamous division between Blairites and Brownites), relevant though it is to a study of that period, is particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the problems afflicting the party today. I see these as stemming from a combination of factors including a massive loss of credibility after Iraq, the economic crisis, Brown's personal shortcomings as a leader, and (in my opinion very significantly) the malaise that inevitably afflicts any government that has been in power for thirteen years. In order to get some perspective on the current state of the Labour Party, I will need to pick up Rawnsley's more recent book, "The End of the Party", just as soon as a library near me thinks to obtain a copy.
The book is, however, well worth reading for two main reasons. First of all, New Labour's rise to power changed the British political landscape, just as Thatcherism had done during the 1980s. If you don't believe me, take a look at the current leaders of the Liberal Democrats (Nick Clegg) and the Conservatives (David Cameron). Both men, particularly Cameron, have adopted a public persona that owes a lot to Tony Blair. Secondly, "Servants of the People" really is a goldmine of useful - and often hilarious - anecdotes. Ron Davies' nocturnal mishap on Clapham Common is here, of course, as are other New Labour "classics" such as Euan Blair's drunken post-GCSE revels and John Prescott's infamous left hook on the campaign trail. My favourite, however, was the reminder of a gloriously awful conference speech by the grand old lady of the Conservative Party, Baroness Thatcher herself. Brits who were above the minimum age of political awareness in 2001 will no doubt remember her "Mummy Returns" speech. As Rawnsley puts it, "the former Conservative Prime Minister surely had no idea that she was comparing herself to the disinterred monster of a horror movie." And on that note, I'm off to search for the clip on YouTube.
The General Election of 1 May 1997, in which Tony Blair swept into 10 Downing Street at the head of a landslide victory for Labour - is the first election I have any memory of at all. (In fact, despite being only 11 at the time, I even got a chance to participate after a fashion. Our school held a "mock election", in which sixth formers signed up to be "candidates" for the major parties and presented their case during assembly. Everyone in the school then "voted" during break time on polling day. Although I voted Green - presumably because I wanted to be different from everybody else - our school bucked the national trend with a crushing defeat of Labour by the Tories, presumably because most girls voted for whoever Daddy supported). In spite of this early experience of the thrill of democracy, it wasn't until a couple of years later that I really started to get interested in politics, and my early memories of that burgeoning interest are intimately bound up with the personalities and events of Labour's first term. While the big names of the pre-1997 era (Michael Heseltine, Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock) seem to me like figures from some long-distant past, the cast of Rawnsley's book (Robin Cook, Clare Short, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson, even the hapless Ron Davies with his embarrassing nocturnal safari on Clapham Common) are very familiar indeed. These were the individuals who - in all their power-hungry, feuding, voter-punching, badger-spotting glory - got me interested in politics in the first place, and "Servants of the People" provided both a nostalgia trip and a much-needed fleshing out of many of the incidents and scandals of which I had gained only a very sketchy (and no doubt tabloid-influenced) idea at the time.
As a behind-the-scenes account of the early years of the New Labour government, then, Rawnsley's book looks unlikely to be surpassed - although an electoral implosion on Thursday could give birth to a few explosive autobiographies (by the likes of Brown and Mandelson) which might provide fodder for an expanded edition. As a guide to the current state of the party, it is rather more limited. For one thing, most of the events it describes happened a decade or more ago. Many of Rawnsley's protagonists have either faded into the political background (Clare Short, John Prescott, David Blunkett - even, at least in theory, Tony Blair himself) or, in the case of Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam, departed this life altogether. Of the major players, so far as I can recall only Brown, Mandelson and Jack Straw are still prominent members of the Government - although I will confess I did experience a minor thrill whenever I came across a prominent member of the present Cabinet (David Miliband, Harriet Harman, Ed Balls) in an earlier incarnation as a policy planner or lowly aide.
Moreover, I don't think that Rawnsley's focus on the bitter intra-party feuds during Labour's first term (notably the infamous division between Blairites and Brownites), relevant though it is to a study of that period, is particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the problems afflicting the party today. I see these as stemming from a combination of factors including a massive loss of credibility after Iraq, the economic crisis, Brown's personal shortcomings as a leader, and (in my opinion very significantly) the malaise that inevitably afflicts any government that has been in power for thirteen years. In order to get some perspective on the current state of the Labour Party, I will need to pick up Rawnsley's more recent book, "The End of the Party", just as soon as a library near me thinks to obtain a copy.
The book is, however, well worth reading for two main reasons. First of all, New Labour's rise to power changed the British political landscape, just as Thatcherism had done during the 1980s. If you don't believe me, take a look at the current leaders of the Liberal Democrats (Nick Clegg) and the Conservatives (David Cameron). Both men, particularly Cameron, have adopted a public persona that owes a lot to Tony Blair. Secondly, "Servants of the People" really is a goldmine of useful - and often hilarious - anecdotes. Ron Davies' nocturnal mishap on Clapham Common is here, of course, as are other New Labour "classics" such as Euan Blair's drunken post-GCSE revels and John Prescott's infamous left hook on the campaign trail. My favourite, however, was the reminder of a gloriously awful conference speech by the grand old lady of the Conservative Party, Baroness Thatcher herself. Brits who were above the minimum age of political awareness in 2001 will no doubt remember her "Mummy Returns" speech. As Rawnsley puts it, "the former Conservative Prime Minister surely had no idea that she was comparing herself to the disinterred monster of a horror movie." And on that note, I'm off to search for the clip on YouTube.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
America, Right or Wrong
Middle Earth one week, the American heartland the next. Well, I've always prided myself on being an eclectic reader.
This week, in between juggling two essays, I've been working my way through John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge's "The Right Nation: Why America is Different" - a scholarly but readable account of why America is, and continues to be, so much more, well, conservative than other Western capitalist democracies. Now, this could so easily have been the wrong book to try reading at bedtime at this precise moment - after all, I spend all day reading about politics, I've just recovered from an exam on US foreign policy that required me to stuff my head with all things American, and I'm currently spending my mornings researching the impact of New Right ideas in Britain and America during the 1980s. Anything less than a thoroughly engaging account of American conservatism would have been overkill. Luckily, this book proved to be just that - the engaging style belies the formidable amount of research than has clearly gone into it, so I coasted along nicely and finished it in just over a week, barely even noticing that it technically counted as "work".
Anyway, a few brief comments about specific aspects of the book:
1) It's hardly the authors' fault -"The Right Nation" has been on my "to read" list for a couple of years now, and I really should have got round to it before now - but the book is starting to look rather dated. It was published just before Bush's reelection in 2004 (in fact, it accurately predicted the outcome of that election where most people on this side of the Atlantic were forecasting a victory for Kerry). As a result, it depicts a country where the Republicans are in the ascendancy and where the conservative movement is more united, more organised and more ideologically vibrant than the apparently moribund liberal movement. Six years down the line, however, Obama is in the White House, Congress is dominated by the Democrats, and the organised, unified foot-soldiers of the Right have been replaced by the "Tea Party" - that motley band of evangelicals, libertarians and the generally disaffected, as opposed to mainstream Republicanism as they are to the communist, Muslim non-citizen they believe to be in the White House. A lot has changed since 2004, some of the conclusions reached back then don't seem to fit the picture today, and I think that a substantially updated version will be necessary if the book is to continue to be an accurate account of American conservatism.
2) That said, it would be a great shame if this book were to be rendered obsolete - because it's a great account of the historical journey of American conservatism from the fringes of the political scene, through the seminal Goldwater campaign in '64, to the eras of Reagan and George W. Bush. What is more, it offers a nuanced account of the many different shades of political opinion that come under the umbrella of "conservatism". (This is definitely something which is seldom acknowledged by liberals. I've heard many friends and acquaintances - including quite a few Americans - simply equate neo-conservatives with evangelical Christians, when in fact John Ashcroft was very much the exception rather than the rule). One of the negative impacts of the Bush years (well, one of the many, if you ask me!) was a tendency towards extreme polarisation and the obliteration of nuance in political books from and about the United States. If conservatives such as Ann Coulter were guilty of painting all liberals as terrorist-hugging baby-killers, those on the left were just as quick to characterise conservatives as a grotesque patchwork of every offputting right-wing trait - homophobic, Bible-bashing, Iraq-invading, racist bombers of abortion clinics to a man. "The Right Nation" is an excellent antidote to this kind of stereotyping - which, while it can be fun in the right time and place (believe me, I did my fair share of Bush-bashing as an undergraduate) doesn't really help us understand anything at the end of the day.
3) Finally, the most important point this book makes is contained in its title - "The Right Nation: Why America is Different". It is beyond doubt that mainstream politics in the United States is considerably to the right of any of the other Western capitalist democracies. The contrast with Western Europe is especially striking. While the ever-widening gulf between the Republicans and European conservative parties such as Britain's Tories has generated quite a lot of press of late; what fewer pundits have picked up on (but Micklethwait and Woolridge do) is how right-wing even the Democrats tend to be by Western European standards. There is no shortage of Democrats who are opposed to abortion and healthcare reform, and even fairly left-wing Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Howard Dean are strong advocates of the death penalty. While their prognosis that the Republicans would continue to dominate US politics for the foreseeable future now looks dated - a throwback to the era of George W. Bush where the Republican grassroots now rallies round Sarah Palin - this is a more lasting feature of American politics.
(One more quick comment before I sign off on this one and collapse into bed. As a Hispanist, I was perplexed by the description of a San Francisco politician - I can't remember who - as "Pablo Neruda-reading", as though this was a clear indication of a terminal case of left-wing looniness. Now, despite my connections with Chile I can't say Neruda is a favourite of mine, but surely a fondness for the work of a Nobel Prize-winning poet is a sign of erudition, not insanity?)
This week, in between juggling two essays, I've been working my way through John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge's "The Right Nation: Why America is Different" - a scholarly but readable account of why America is, and continues to be, so much more, well, conservative than other Western capitalist democracies. Now, this could so easily have been the wrong book to try reading at bedtime at this precise moment - after all, I spend all day reading about politics, I've just recovered from an exam on US foreign policy that required me to stuff my head with all things American, and I'm currently spending my mornings researching the impact of New Right ideas in Britain and America during the 1980s. Anything less than a thoroughly engaging account of American conservatism would have been overkill. Luckily, this book proved to be just that - the engaging style belies the formidable amount of research than has clearly gone into it, so I coasted along nicely and finished it in just over a week, barely even noticing that it technically counted as "work".
Anyway, a few brief comments about specific aspects of the book:
1) It's hardly the authors' fault -"The Right Nation" has been on my "to read" list for a couple of years now, and I really should have got round to it before now - but the book is starting to look rather dated. It was published just before Bush's reelection in 2004 (in fact, it accurately predicted the outcome of that election where most people on this side of the Atlantic were forecasting a victory for Kerry). As a result, it depicts a country where the Republicans are in the ascendancy and where the conservative movement is more united, more organised and more ideologically vibrant than the apparently moribund liberal movement. Six years down the line, however, Obama is in the White House, Congress is dominated by the Democrats, and the organised, unified foot-soldiers of the Right have been replaced by the "Tea Party" - that motley band of evangelicals, libertarians and the generally disaffected, as opposed to mainstream Republicanism as they are to the communist, Muslim non-citizen they believe to be in the White House. A lot has changed since 2004, some of the conclusions reached back then don't seem to fit the picture today, and I think that a substantially updated version will be necessary if the book is to continue to be an accurate account of American conservatism.
2) That said, it would be a great shame if this book were to be rendered obsolete - because it's a great account of the historical journey of American conservatism from the fringes of the political scene, through the seminal Goldwater campaign in '64, to the eras of Reagan and George W. Bush. What is more, it offers a nuanced account of the many different shades of political opinion that come under the umbrella of "conservatism". (This is definitely something which is seldom acknowledged by liberals. I've heard many friends and acquaintances - including quite a few Americans - simply equate neo-conservatives with evangelical Christians, when in fact John Ashcroft was very much the exception rather than the rule). One of the negative impacts of the Bush years (well, one of the many, if you ask me!) was a tendency towards extreme polarisation and the obliteration of nuance in political books from and about the United States. If conservatives such as Ann Coulter were guilty of painting all liberals as terrorist-hugging baby-killers, those on the left were just as quick to characterise conservatives as a grotesque patchwork of every offputting right-wing trait - homophobic, Bible-bashing, Iraq-invading, racist bombers of abortion clinics to a man. "The Right Nation" is an excellent antidote to this kind of stereotyping - which, while it can be fun in the right time and place (believe me, I did my fair share of Bush-bashing as an undergraduate) doesn't really help us understand anything at the end of the day.
3) Finally, the most important point this book makes is contained in its title - "The Right Nation: Why America is Different". It is beyond doubt that mainstream politics in the United States is considerably to the right of any of the other Western capitalist democracies. The contrast with Western Europe is especially striking. While the ever-widening gulf between the Republicans and European conservative parties such as Britain's Tories has generated quite a lot of press of late; what fewer pundits have picked up on (but Micklethwait and Woolridge do) is how right-wing even the Democrats tend to be by Western European standards. There is no shortage of Democrats who are opposed to abortion and healthcare reform, and even fairly left-wing Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Howard Dean are strong advocates of the death penalty. While their prognosis that the Republicans would continue to dominate US politics for the foreseeable future now looks dated - a throwback to the era of George W. Bush where the Republican grassroots now rallies round Sarah Palin - this is a more lasting feature of American politics.
(One more quick comment before I sign off on this one and collapse into bed. As a Hispanist, I was perplexed by the description of a San Francisco politician - I can't remember who - as "Pablo Neruda-reading", as though this was a clear indication of a terminal case of left-wing looniness. Now, despite my connections with Chile I can't say Neruda is a favourite of mine, but surely a fondness for the work of a Nobel Prize-winning poet is a sign of erudition, not insanity?)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
On Tolkien, love and immortality
So, after saying that this would be a place for book reviews, I'm going to go back on my word immediately and post something a little bit unconventional. Instead of a whole book, the first thing I find myself wanting to write about is a fascinating essay from volume 10 of Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle Earth series, Morgoth's Ring. (I've recently delved into the HoME series properly for the first time. Although I had dipped into it before - primarily the parts concerning the writing of The Lord of the Rings - I had never got as far as Morgoth's Ring. A good thing too, as I don't think I would have been ready for it. It's not for the casual fan, but for the hardcore nerds - among whom I count myself - parts of it are pure crack, exploring in detail some of the deeper questions of Tolkien's secondary world). The particular essay I'm talking about, as any really hardcore fans ought to have picked up from the title, is the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, to the best of my knowledge Tolkien's most detailed exploration of the central question of mortality and the differing fates of Men and Elves in the world he created.
The Athrabeth takes the form of a dialogue between the wise Elf-lord Finrod Felagund (brother of Galadriel) and the mortal wise-woman Andreth, on the subject of mortality,which is the principal distinguishing factor between Men and Elves in Tolkien's world. I'll try to be as brief as possible in discussing this long (60 pages, including notes) and dense text, although that is difficult given that it provides such profound insight into a range of fascinating issues. In the most reductive terms, the Athrabeth is a metaphysical discussion of mortality - the so-called "Gift of Iluvatar" to Men - and the difference this creates in the lives and fates of Elves and Men. That said, it's actually one of the most beautifully-written pieces I've read in Tolkien's early mythology. Rarely for the tales of the First Age, it is also primarily a dialogue, providing us with a lot of insight into the characters of Finrod and Andreth. Where the characters in the Silmarillion tend to strike the reader as heroic archetypes, here Finrod's wise and generous nature is palpable in his response to Andreth's sorrow and bitterness. His genuine love for and interest in the race of Men is also very much in evidence in his desire to learn as much about their history and traditions as possible, which somehow makes his eventual self-sacrifice for Beren seem all the more poignant. I have to confess that I'd never really paid much heed to Finrod before, being too preoccupied by the flashier types of the Silmarillion (Feanor and his sons, especially Maedhros), but this essay has given me a greater appreciation for his character. Professor Tolkien, if you're listening, I promise I'll never get him and Fingon mixed up again!
Then, of course, there are the ideas - and what a lot of complex and fascinating insights there are in this dense little text! From Andreth, Finrod learns (and so we do too) about mortals' fear of death, and about the differing nature of "death" for Men and for Elves: while Elves are tied to Arda for as long as it endures, and can be reincarnated even after being killed, Men's spirits are not tied to the world, and upon dying they are doomed to "go out to no return", a fate Andreth describes as "an uttermost end, a loss irremediable". One of the little details I love about Tolkien's world is that both Men and Elves in a sense envy one another's fates. Mortals in Tolkien are seldom overly appreciative of the "Gift of Iluvatar". Although The House of Beor, to which Andreth belongs, have not gone to the same extremes as their descendants the Numenoreans, it is clear that they perceive mortality not as a gift, but as a flaw - a curse placed on them, they believe, by Morgoth himself. (I thought this was a particularly acute observation on human nature by Professor Tolkien, showing that he was sensitive to the human tendency to create myths to rationalise the things we don't understand - of which the greatest mystery is death). Finrod explains that Elves, meanwhile, sometimes grow envious of Men, who are not tied to the world and therefore are able to leave it; what is more, while Men have a shadow behind them (something I will discuss in a moment), Elves have a shadow before them, in that they are doomed to live as long as the world and therefore presumably to perish with it. After that, they have no idea what their fate will be; according to Finrod, this uncertainty weighs heavily on the Elves. As for how we are supposed to interpret what Andreth says about Men and their belief that mortality is a curse, Finrod points us in the right direction: he surmises that Morgoth did not curse the Edain with mortality (none but Iluvatar himself, he believes, could so change the nature of one of his creations) but rather with the dread of death: "Nay, death is but the name that we give to something that he has tainted, and it sounds therefore evil; but untainted its name would be good".
The most poignant thing about the Athrabeth, however, is what it has to say about the relations between Elves and Men, given their differing fates and life-span. Finrod, as we have seen, is a true friend to the race of Men and takes a genuine interest in their history and traditions; unlike certain other Elves of the Elder Days (coughThingolcough), he also appears to believe that there are things that Men can teach the Elves: "Yes, Wise-woman, maybe it was ordained that we Quendi, and ye Atani, ere the world grows old, should meet and bring news one to another, and so we should learn of the Hope from you: ordained, indeed, that thou and I, Andreth, should sit here and speak together, across the gulf that divides our kindreds, so that while the Shadow still broods in the North we should not be wholly afraid." At the beginning of the Athrabeth, however, we learn of his grief at the swift (to him) passing of his friends of the House of Beor. The really touching revelation, however, is left for last. We learn that Andreth's bitterness about the differing fates of Elves and Men stems, at least in part, from how it has touched her personally. As a young woman, she fell in love with Finrod's brother Aegnor. He loved her back, but chose not to pursue that love because the differences between their two kindreds were too profound - a few short years of happiness, then a parting that would endure until the end of time. Rarely, moreover, have these differences been more poignantly and evocatively expressed - Men, brief as they are, must seize their chance for happiness, while Elves, with all the life of Arda to regret, are more cautious. This essential difference in fate and outlook, coupled with the similarities and sympathy between the two kindreds, inevitably result in tragedy when the two are close together. The words Tolkien puts into the mouths of Finrod and Andreth express this far more poignantly than I ever could:
"For one year, one day, of the flame I would have given all: kin, youth and hope itself: adaneth I am", said Andreth.
"That he knew", said Finrod; "and he withdrew and did not grasp what lay to his hand: elda he is".
This is incredibly touching stuff, as moving as anything I have read in Tolkien (and far more so than, say, the story of Beren and Luthien, which also deals with mortality and the two kindreds without exploring the issues in anything like as much depth - or for that matter, allowing you to care about the characters in this way). It's full of tragedy, but manages to end on a note of hope, as Finrod suggests that the two kindreds may yet meet again in Arda Remade: "But you are not for Arda. Whither you go you may find light. Await us there, my brother - and me."
Anyway, I've definitely gone on enough here, although there is so much more I could say about the Athrabeth - with its layers of complexity, its deeply poetic language, and the deep sense of humanity that sets it apart from the more "heroic" narratives of the Elder Days. One last observation, then: along with much of HoME (particularly the later volumes such as Morgoth's Ring and The Peoples of Middle-Earth), the Athrabeth shows clearly the incredible time and effort Tolkien put into developing every aspect of his secondary world, to the point of engaging in in-depth philosophical speculation about issues such as death and mortality. It is, for want of a better term, mind-boggling.
The Athrabeth takes the form of a dialogue between the wise Elf-lord Finrod Felagund (brother of Galadriel) and the mortal wise-woman Andreth, on the subject of mortality,which is the principal distinguishing factor between Men and Elves in Tolkien's world. I'll try to be as brief as possible in discussing this long (60 pages, including notes) and dense text, although that is difficult given that it provides such profound insight into a range of fascinating issues. In the most reductive terms, the Athrabeth is a metaphysical discussion of mortality - the so-called "Gift of Iluvatar" to Men - and the difference this creates in the lives and fates of Elves and Men. That said, it's actually one of the most beautifully-written pieces I've read in Tolkien's early mythology. Rarely for the tales of the First Age, it is also primarily a dialogue, providing us with a lot of insight into the characters of Finrod and Andreth. Where the characters in the Silmarillion tend to strike the reader as heroic archetypes, here Finrod's wise and generous nature is palpable in his response to Andreth's sorrow and bitterness. His genuine love for and interest in the race of Men is also very much in evidence in his desire to learn as much about their history and traditions as possible, which somehow makes his eventual self-sacrifice for Beren seem all the more poignant. I have to confess that I'd never really paid much heed to Finrod before, being too preoccupied by the flashier types of the Silmarillion (Feanor and his sons, especially Maedhros), but this essay has given me a greater appreciation for his character. Professor Tolkien, if you're listening, I promise I'll never get him and Fingon mixed up again!
Then, of course, there are the ideas - and what a lot of complex and fascinating insights there are in this dense little text! From Andreth, Finrod learns (and so we do too) about mortals' fear of death, and about the differing nature of "death" for Men and for Elves: while Elves are tied to Arda for as long as it endures, and can be reincarnated even after being killed, Men's spirits are not tied to the world, and upon dying they are doomed to "go out to no return", a fate Andreth describes as "an uttermost end, a loss irremediable". One of the little details I love about Tolkien's world is that both Men and Elves in a sense envy one another's fates. Mortals in Tolkien are seldom overly appreciative of the "Gift of Iluvatar". Although The House of Beor, to which Andreth belongs, have not gone to the same extremes as their descendants the Numenoreans, it is clear that they perceive mortality not as a gift, but as a flaw - a curse placed on them, they believe, by Morgoth himself. (I thought this was a particularly acute observation on human nature by Professor Tolkien, showing that he was sensitive to the human tendency to create myths to rationalise the things we don't understand - of which the greatest mystery is death). Finrod explains that Elves, meanwhile, sometimes grow envious of Men, who are not tied to the world and therefore are able to leave it; what is more, while Men have a shadow behind them (something I will discuss in a moment), Elves have a shadow before them, in that they are doomed to live as long as the world and therefore presumably to perish with it. After that, they have no idea what their fate will be; according to Finrod, this uncertainty weighs heavily on the Elves. As for how we are supposed to interpret what Andreth says about Men and their belief that mortality is a curse, Finrod points us in the right direction: he surmises that Morgoth did not curse the Edain with mortality (none but Iluvatar himself, he believes, could so change the nature of one of his creations) but rather with the dread of death: "Nay, death is but the name that we give to something that he has tainted, and it sounds therefore evil; but untainted its name would be good".
The most poignant thing about the Athrabeth, however, is what it has to say about the relations between Elves and Men, given their differing fates and life-span. Finrod, as we have seen, is a true friend to the race of Men and takes a genuine interest in their history and traditions; unlike certain other Elves of the Elder Days (coughThingolcough), he also appears to believe that there are things that Men can teach the Elves: "Yes, Wise-woman, maybe it was ordained that we Quendi, and ye Atani, ere the world grows old, should meet and bring news one to another, and so we should learn of the Hope from you: ordained, indeed, that thou and I, Andreth, should sit here and speak together, across the gulf that divides our kindreds, so that while the Shadow still broods in the North we should not be wholly afraid." At the beginning of the Athrabeth, however, we learn of his grief at the swift (to him) passing of his friends of the House of Beor. The really touching revelation, however, is left for last. We learn that Andreth's bitterness about the differing fates of Elves and Men stems, at least in part, from how it has touched her personally. As a young woman, she fell in love with Finrod's brother Aegnor. He loved her back, but chose not to pursue that love because the differences between their two kindreds were too profound - a few short years of happiness, then a parting that would endure until the end of time. Rarely, moreover, have these differences been more poignantly and evocatively expressed - Men, brief as they are, must seize their chance for happiness, while Elves, with all the life of Arda to regret, are more cautious. This essential difference in fate and outlook, coupled with the similarities and sympathy between the two kindreds, inevitably result in tragedy when the two are close together. The words Tolkien puts into the mouths of Finrod and Andreth express this far more poignantly than I ever could:
"For one year, one day, of the flame I would have given all: kin, youth and hope itself: adaneth I am", said Andreth.
"That he knew", said Finrod; "and he withdrew and did not grasp what lay to his hand: elda he is".
This is incredibly touching stuff, as moving as anything I have read in Tolkien (and far more so than, say, the story of Beren and Luthien, which also deals with mortality and the two kindreds without exploring the issues in anything like as much depth - or for that matter, allowing you to care about the characters in this way). It's full of tragedy, but manages to end on a note of hope, as Finrod suggests that the two kindreds may yet meet again in Arda Remade: "But you are not for Arda. Whither you go you may find light. Await us there, my brother - and me."
Anyway, I've definitely gone on enough here, although there is so much more I could say about the Athrabeth - with its layers of complexity, its deeply poetic language, and the deep sense of humanity that sets it apart from the more "heroic" narratives of the Elder Days. One last observation, then: along with much of HoME (particularly the later volumes such as Morgoth's Ring and The Peoples of Middle-Earth), the Athrabeth shows clearly the incredible time and effort Tolkien put into developing every aspect of his secondary world, to the point of engaging in in-depth philosophical speculation about issues such as death and mortality. It is, for want of a better term, mind-boggling.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
