Sheenagh Pugh's Blog, page 23
June 21, 2017
Review of The Mabinogi, by Matthew Francis, pub. Faber 2017
Everything seemed to have been torn from its roots,
so that it tumbled over the mind
as in a dream: pigs, seaweed,
birds, people, flowers.
Perhaps that's what he meant by Unland,
a country where things break loose
from their own being.
The storyteller goes on,
as if to himself.
In his introduction to this poetic re-imagining of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, Matthew Francis remarks that the nearest thing to a hero in the original is Pryderi, which is true. But in this version, a far more important character is Gwydion, the magician who is described (again in the original) as the world's greatest storyteller, and whom Francis casts as the narrator of the Fourth Branch. For above anything, what Francis has done here is to recreate the immediacy these tales must have had before they were pinned down in writing, when they were spoken by a storyteller who might at any moment shift an emphasis, drop or add material, or see a character in a new way and make the audience do so. It isn't often that a collection of poems is, literally, a page-turner, where the lure of "what happens next" will not let you stop reading, but it is so here, and I know the actual stories well. But knowing them doesn't mean you know what happens next, because every storyteller puts his own slant on the material, highlighting bits that others leave in darkness. How it actually feels to be a giant like Bran:
the wind in his ears
that his friends must shout to compete with,
a life lived in the weather –
no house will hold him.
He is closer to the birds
than his family.
Or the way something seen from a distance becomes all manner of things before resolving into what it actually is:
a horse with a lick of sunlight on its back,
a horse with a knight in gilt armour,
a horse with a splash of silk
horsewoman riding,
not so much moving as sharpening.
It is, as much as anything, Francis's unusually "sharp" vision, and his eye and ear for a telling image, that give these poems the clarity and colour of a mediaeval manuscript, an effect heightened by the happy device of including the kind of marginal notes you might find in a Bible. These also give some play to his humour, a quality in evidence throughout the collection, as in his description of pigs:
a herd of animals
with small eyes, harrumphing speech
and babyish smiles.
The magic, the constant transitions between the real world and the Otherworld (Unworld, as Francis calls it) come over particularly strongly. It is true, as he says in the Introduction, that "poetry has never had much of a problem with magic. Poets spend their lives transforming things into other things". But it is true too that not all poets could take alternative realities as much in their playful stride as he does, and that part of the reason the magic works is that he treats giant baby-snatching claws, necromancers' wives masquerading as mice, and horses made of mushrooms as perfectly normal, something you might well come across when wandering in so elemental and history-haunted a place as Dyfed. At least, you might if you were as open to possibilities as this writer.
Like all the best storytellers, Francis has love and respect for his source material without feeling bound by previous versions of it. He has shaped, re-ordered, sometimes altered, as the early oral storytellers must surely have done, regarding their material as alive and full of potential rather than a dead, immutable text on a page. Nothing kills a story like treating it with reverence, and his refusal to do so is why his version feels live, fresh, new. I would love to hear these poems read aloud, and I doubt any audience would willingly let the teller stop until the tale was done.
Every so often, I've asserted that if some Francis collection doesn't win an award, the judges must be idiots, and every time, it turns out they are. I've begun to wonder if his work is perhaps not miserable enough to please judges. He is certainly a "serious" poet in that he writes of serious matters, but he does it with humour and a constant delight in the variety and wonder of the world. It is this delight which comes over most strongly from these poems, and which will tempt most readers back into them.
June 10, 2017
Review of Prole, issue 22
Something a bit different: a review of a literary magazine, Prole, cos someone asked me to do it.
This issue of the magazine contains a mix of poems and short stories: no reviews, no critical articles except the judge's comments on the entries to the Prole Laureate Poetry Competition. This isn't a criticism on my part, by the way; I'm just trying to give a factual idea of what sort of magazine it is.
The short stories are a mix of set-in-the-real-world (Richard Hillesley, Dave Wakely, Sue Pace) and set somewhere at an angle to reality (Olivia Pope, Rebecca Sandeman) with Marc Jones coming somewhere in between, in that his story is set in the here and now but with a rather unusual narrator and a definite tinge of the Under Milk Woods in the style. I thought the Hillesley story did a bit too much spelling out and explaining its intentions, while the Sandeman could have done with more; I couldn't really figure out what she was trying to do. I enjoyed the Pace and Wakely stories very much. Because of the variety of styles, I should think most readers would find something to enjoy.
There was variety among the poems too, though I'd say the majority fell into two categories: observational and polemical, with a sprinkling of the determinedly quirky. Some, of course, cross boundaries: Margaret Beston's "Commodity" is observational but carries an oblique, understated message (the best kind, for my money). D A Prince's message in "Illegal" is more overt, but comes over powerfully because the situation is so well imagined. Patrick Deeley does observational very skilfully. There are, as ever, poems that feel merely observational or wholly polemical, and which I find less memorable on that account (I prefer transformative when I can get it). There weren't nearly as many of the determinedly quirky, which suits me as I can soon have enough of them. You can often tell them from the start; they'll have an off-the-wall title or opening line meant to surprise the reader and grab the attention. Unfortunately that's frequently the most interesting point, from which they go rapidly downhill.
There was some unexpected variety of style, too. It's quite easy, these days, to pick up a magazine and find nothing but free verse, but there's a fair bit of rhyme in here of an informal, ballad-like type. Again I think most readers would find something to their taste. Mr Hillesley popped up again with a very spare, minimalist piece called "Aries" which I found mesmerising in its rhythms and all the more memorable for being somewhat elusive.
Unless I somehow missed it, I can't see any notes on contributors, which I thought a pity; when a writer has lodged in our memory, we like to find out more.
Prole is £6.70 an issue with postage and comes out three times a year. I'd say you get a lot of prose and poetry for your money, much of it of a high quality.
This issue of the magazine contains a mix of poems and short stories: no reviews, no critical articles except the judge's comments on the entries to the Prole Laureate Poetry Competition. This isn't a criticism on my part, by the way; I'm just trying to give a factual idea of what sort of magazine it is.
The short stories are a mix of set-in-the-real-world (Richard Hillesley, Dave Wakely, Sue Pace) and set somewhere at an angle to reality (Olivia Pope, Rebecca Sandeman) with Marc Jones coming somewhere in between, in that his story is set in the here and now but with a rather unusual narrator and a definite tinge of the Under Milk Woods in the style. I thought the Hillesley story did a bit too much spelling out and explaining its intentions, while the Sandeman could have done with more; I couldn't really figure out what she was trying to do. I enjoyed the Pace and Wakely stories very much. Because of the variety of styles, I should think most readers would find something to enjoy.
There was variety among the poems too, though I'd say the majority fell into two categories: observational and polemical, with a sprinkling of the determinedly quirky. Some, of course, cross boundaries: Margaret Beston's "Commodity" is observational but carries an oblique, understated message (the best kind, for my money). D A Prince's message in "Illegal" is more overt, but comes over powerfully because the situation is so well imagined. Patrick Deeley does observational very skilfully. There are, as ever, poems that feel merely observational or wholly polemical, and which I find less memorable on that account (I prefer transformative when I can get it). There weren't nearly as many of the determinedly quirky, which suits me as I can soon have enough of them. You can often tell them from the start; they'll have an off-the-wall title or opening line meant to surprise the reader and grab the attention. Unfortunately that's frequently the most interesting point, from which they go rapidly downhill.
There was some unexpected variety of style, too. It's quite easy, these days, to pick up a magazine and find nothing but free verse, but there's a fair bit of rhyme in here of an informal, ballad-like type. Again I think most readers would find something to their taste. Mr Hillesley popped up again with a very spare, minimalist piece called "Aries" which I found mesmerising in its rhythms and all the more memorable for being somewhat elusive.
Unless I somehow missed it, I can't see any notes on contributors, which I thought a pity; when a writer has lodged in our memory, we like to find out more.
Prole is £6.70 an issue with postage and comes out three times a year. I'd say you get a lot of prose and poetry for your money, much of it of a high quality.
June 1, 2017
Interview 2 with Mike Thomas
Why yes, this is a new departure. I've never interviewed someone twice before, but then none of my previous interviewees has ended up in quite such a different place, and not just geographically. I found there were a whole new lot of questions I wanted to ask him, about actually living as an author.
SHEENAGH: Last time we had a natter, you were still a serving policeman alongside writing novels about police procedure. Now, I believe, you and the force have parted company and you're living in Portugal, making your living through various kinds of writing, not just fiction but freelance jobs like online travel guides? How's that working out?
MIKE: Yes, I quit in 2015, but I’d been on a ‘career break’ since 2011 so – coupled with the move abroad – I was pretty far removed from all things police work-related. My life now is novels and freelancing, which is lovely most of the time but has led to some hairy moments. Until resigning from the Five-Oh I’d spent my entire working life on a guaranteed monthly salary so it took some – often painful – adjustment. At one point a year or so back we had eighteen Euros to our name, a hefty amount of unexpected bills to pay, and no more paydays on the horizon. Much sleep was lost. But you learn, and when the biggish chunks of money come in you discipline yourself not to spend all the cash on Blu-rays and booze, because, y’know, you have to feed the kids every now and again or they complain. It’s funny, I frequently have to disabuse people – especially family – of the notion that my life is spent bronzing my nipples on a beach in the Algarve, while occasionally typing a bit of crap for my publisher. We live in the mountains of central Portugal in a house that needs serious fixing up and where the winters are brutal. Both my wife and I work full time, often seven days a week and for ten to twelve hours a day. I think I sunbathed for an hour about two years back. But that’s the life of a freelancer, I suppose. We have to do it if we want to stay here, because neither of us has any desire to return to the UK – look at what’s going on there.
SHEENAGH: I am, I am... and wondering whether "what's going on here" is liable to reflect in your future books at all?
MIKE: The whole thing is just too depressing to write about, to be frank. I’d just point everyone in the direction of P D James’ The Children of Men. Or even Cuaron’s film adaptation; it stands up just as well. I worry that at some point in the not-too-distant future we will come to regard that novel – certainly the Omega section with its depiction of societal breakdown and state barbarity – as scarily prescient. Warden May, anyone?
SHEENAGH: We've mentioned that you are now an émigré, like several other writers I've interviewed – Barbara Marsh, Frank Dullaghan, Ruth Lacey. Has this affected your writing at all? So far, your books have all still been set in South Wales. Are you finding it harder to write about Wales now you don't live there, or does distance actually clarify vision?
MIKE: It’s not the country, or whatever Welsh town or city the story is based in, that I have difficulty with now because I know Cardiff inside and out, and I have almost photographic memories of South Wales. It’s the police procedure and legislation I struggle with. As I’ve mentioned, it’s been a good while since I was a copper and it’s frightening how much has changed and what I’ve forgotten. I wanted to forget at first, I hated the job and was so happy to leave. But now it’s needs must for work, so I’m frequently on social media badgering old colleagues about stuff like firearms policy and radio etiquette. It’s one of my pet hates in crime fiction: getting the basics wrong, the plod vernacular and policies and techniques. So I do fret about that a little now. I’m lucky that my wife was a much better copper than me and has managed to retain an awful lot of information so I usually go whining to her first.
SHEENAGH: Are you liable to start setting books in Portugal?
MIKE: Lisbon features in one or two chapters in Ash and Bones, but I’m not sure if I’d want to have Portugal as the backdrop to an entire novel, certainly if they continue to be crime-related. I know the country has its problems but I don’t really want to know too much about its nasty side. After two decades as a cop I’ve had my fill of nastiness, thanks very much. That ruined Cardiff for me for many years, I had a real love/hate relationship with the place until recently because I’d seen some terrible things that skewed my perception of the capital and its people. I can separate it now, and see the good in the city while still writing about fictional bad things going on there. As for Portugal, perhaps if the local farming community are uncovered as a Europe-wide goat-smuggling ring I’ll write about it. Until then: probably not.
SHEENAGH: Your first two novels were police-procedural, but Ash and Bones was more a crime novel, though still very much informed by your police background, and I think the new one is too? What brought about the change?
MIKE: Honestly? Simple economics. Other than Booker winners, big names like McEwan and the odd fluke that nobody predicted would go stratospheric, literary novels don’t sell that many copies. My first two were well-received, and Pocket Notebook did quite well for a debut that was difficult to classify as it had a police milieu but wasn’t crime. Then in 2014 my then-publisher and I parted ways, and I was a little bit lost for a while. This was after I moved to Portugal so I had to have a serious rethink about how I was going to earn a living. I was also being nudged, ever so gently, towards writing something more commercial (that dirty word). It was either do that or give up novel-writing completely, which I seriously considered for a few dark months as I wasn’t enjoying being part of the business at all. In the end I got my act together and dug out an old character who’d already featured in three unpublished novels, and started writing. That got me a deal with the guys at Bonnier, meaning I could feed those pesky kids for a couple more years, at least until they’re old enough for me to put them in the army. And I’m still writing the standalones, they keep me from finally losing the last of my marbles.
SHEENAGH: Your protagonist Will managed to survive Ash and Bones and looks like being a fixture. This was also a bit of a change, as the protagonists of your first two ended up dead or totally dispirited… why did you decide on an ongoing character?
MIKE: I refer you to my last answer. A series is where it’s at, nowadays. Television, film and publishing are all desperately looking for the next big returning series or character. That ‘brand’, that ‘franchise’. I know some of this will be anathema to many writers I know, but thems the facts. You might have a beautifully written, powerfully moving literary novel but it won’t sell anywhere near as many copies as a pulpy, twisty thriller – probably with ‘girl’ in the title – and a female protagonist who has a drink problem/amnesia/a double life/insert affliction du jour here. Or as many copies as a crime series. I remember going to London for a meeting with a pretty powerful TV production company who were thinking of optioning my second novel, Ugly Bus. Once the coffee and small talk was out of the way, the conversation quickly turned to how the characters could be developed so they’d all return in a second, third or even fourth series. When I said they’d all end up in prison so you’d have no second series, I was thanked for my time and shown the door.
SHEENAGH: Weren't you tempted? Because I can easily see how they keep out of prison on that particular score anyway; the woman, understandably, doesn't complain. And I can see how both her story and the sergeant's continue, even the Bus crew if they're careful or devious enough... Does the consciousness of "series is where it's at" influence how you're writing now? - I notice you still killed a promising character off in your last!
MIKE: The ‘series is where it’s at’ thing doesn’t even enter my head. It is what it is at this moment in my career: I have a deal to write three books, so that’s what I will do. I suppose that’s the police officer still in me: you’ve got a job, do it as best you can, then move on. So after that’s done, who knows? If the publisher doesn’t want any more MacReady novels then I’ll write something else. Your ‘track’ (i.e. track record of sales) is everything nowadays and if you don’t sell enough you’re out, regardless of whether you’re writing a series or not. A few months back I read a piece written by an agent lamenting how long-term relationships and nurturing by publishers is becoming increasingly rare, how authors aren’t given a chance to establish themselves or their ‘brand’ and make the publishing house some money back. It’s the nature of the business now, depressing as it is.
As for the Ugly Bus characters, the only one I’ve given serious consideration to returning to is the female character and how she navigates her life and career after those terrible events. That novel was a nightmare to write. It wasn’t just the ‘difficult second album’ syndrome. During the eighteen months of the first draft my wife and I were working full time opposite shifts, we had two children under four, moved house twice in the UK then abroad, I had another job as a creative writing tutor with nearly a hundred students on my books, and I was still to finish my University work. It was incredibly stressful. And then it was released to absolutely no fanfare and pretty much disappeared, which was heart-breaking. So I have mixed feelings about it – while I’m not sure I want to write another ninety thousand words following the same flawed/awful coppers, I’m hugely proud of the book itself: the effort it took to write, the characters and story and that final kicker that everyone gasped about.
SHEENAGH: By now, you must have had quite a lot to do with publishers, editors, the process of actually getting a book published and marketed. What advice would you give a writer new to all that?
MIKE: A great question. It’s wonderful being published, it was a dream come true, and I’ve had moments – certainly in the beginning, with the people I met, the places I was wined and dined in – where I’ve had to pinch myself. But I always think of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, because as glorious as it is at first, and as terrific and enthusiastic as the people can be in publishing, you quickly discover what’s behind the curtain ain’t all that. It’s a job, and sometimes a ball-achingly tedious one, and occasionally a clench-your-fists-and-scream-at-the-skies-in-frustration one. And the reality is you’re probably not going to be a bestseller. You’re not going to become rich, or anywhere near comfortable. You are not going to be asked to opine on television panels or sit on a sofa opposite Jonathan Ross while you share ‘bantz’. I don’t want to come across as a miseryguts, but anyone who enters this world assuming they’ll soon be doing that Algarve thing I mentioned really needs to carefully manage their expectations or it will crush you. A bit of digging will reveal that the vast majority of authors out there still have ‘day jobs’. There’s a very good reason for that. So if I could narrow it down to one piece of advice, it would be: savour every moment, but don’t expect the world…
Mike's new novel, Unforgivable, comes out from Zaffre in July.
SHEENAGH: Last time we had a natter, you were still a serving policeman alongside writing novels about police procedure. Now, I believe, you and the force have parted company and you're living in Portugal, making your living through various kinds of writing, not just fiction but freelance jobs like online travel guides? How's that working out?
MIKE: Yes, I quit in 2015, but I’d been on a ‘career break’ since 2011 so – coupled with the move abroad – I was pretty far removed from all things police work-related. My life now is novels and freelancing, which is lovely most of the time but has led to some hairy moments. Until resigning from the Five-Oh I’d spent my entire working life on a guaranteed monthly salary so it took some – often painful – adjustment. At one point a year or so back we had eighteen Euros to our name, a hefty amount of unexpected bills to pay, and no more paydays on the horizon. Much sleep was lost. But you learn, and when the biggish chunks of money come in you discipline yourself not to spend all the cash on Blu-rays and booze, because, y’know, you have to feed the kids every now and again or they complain. It’s funny, I frequently have to disabuse people – especially family – of the notion that my life is spent bronzing my nipples on a beach in the Algarve, while occasionally typing a bit of crap for my publisher. We live in the mountains of central Portugal in a house that needs serious fixing up and where the winters are brutal. Both my wife and I work full time, often seven days a week and for ten to twelve hours a day. I think I sunbathed for an hour about two years back. But that’s the life of a freelancer, I suppose. We have to do it if we want to stay here, because neither of us has any desire to return to the UK – look at what’s going on there.
SHEENAGH: I am, I am... and wondering whether "what's going on here" is liable to reflect in your future books at all?
MIKE: The whole thing is just too depressing to write about, to be frank. I’d just point everyone in the direction of P D James’ The Children of Men. Or even Cuaron’s film adaptation; it stands up just as well. I worry that at some point in the not-too-distant future we will come to regard that novel – certainly the Omega section with its depiction of societal breakdown and state barbarity – as scarily prescient. Warden May, anyone?
SHEENAGH: We've mentioned that you are now an émigré, like several other writers I've interviewed – Barbara Marsh, Frank Dullaghan, Ruth Lacey. Has this affected your writing at all? So far, your books have all still been set in South Wales. Are you finding it harder to write about Wales now you don't live there, or does distance actually clarify vision?
MIKE: It’s not the country, or whatever Welsh town or city the story is based in, that I have difficulty with now because I know Cardiff inside and out, and I have almost photographic memories of South Wales. It’s the police procedure and legislation I struggle with. As I’ve mentioned, it’s been a good while since I was a copper and it’s frightening how much has changed and what I’ve forgotten. I wanted to forget at first, I hated the job and was so happy to leave. But now it’s needs must for work, so I’m frequently on social media badgering old colleagues about stuff like firearms policy and radio etiquette. It’s one of my pet hates in crime fiction: getting the basics wrong, the plod vernacular and policies and techniques. So I do fret about that a little now. I’m lucky that my wife was a much better copper than me and has managed to retain an awful lot of information so I usually go whining to her first.
SHEENAGH: Are you liable to start setting books in Portugal?
MIKE: Lisbon features in one or two chapters in Ash and Bones, but I’m not sure if I’d want to have Portugal as the backdrop to an entire novel, certainly if they continue to be crime-related. I know the country has its problems but I don’t really want to know too much about its nasty side. After two decades as a cop I’ve had my fill of nastiness, thanks very much. That ruined Cardiff for me for many years, I had a real love/hate relationship with the place until recently because I’d seen some terrible things that skewed my perception of the capital and its people. I can separate it now, and see the good in the city while still writing about fictional bad things going on there. As for Portugal, perhaps if the local farming community are uncovered as a Europe-wide goat-smuggling ring I’ll write about it. Until then: probably not.
SHEENAGH: Your first two novels were police-procedural, but Ash and Bones was more a crime novel, though still very much informed by your police background, and I think the new one is too? What brought about the change?
MIKE: Honestly? Simple economics. Other than Booker winners, big names like McEwan and the odd fluke that nobody predicted would go stratospheric, literary novels don’t sell that many copies. My first two were well-received, and Pocket Notebook did quite well for a debut that was difficult to classify as it had a police milieu but wasn’t crime. Then in 2014 my then-publisher and I parted ways, and I was a little bit lost for a while. This was after I moved to Portugal so I had to have a serious rethink about how I was going to earn a living. I was also being nudged, ever so gently, towards writing something more commercial (that dirty word). It was either do that or give up novel-writing completely, which I seriously considered for a few dark months as I wasn’t enjoying being part of the business at all. In the end I got my act together and dug out an old character who’d already featured in three unpublished novels, and started writing. That got me a deal with the guys at Bonnier, meaning I could feed those pesky kids for a couple more years, at least until they’re old enough for me to put them in the army. And I’m still writing the standalones, they keep me from finally losing the last of my marbles.
SHEENAGH: Your protagonist Will managed to survive Ash and Bones and looks like being a fixture. This was also a bit of a change, as the protagonists of your first two ended up dead or totally dispirited… why did you decide on an ongoing character?
MIKE: I refer you to my last answer. A series is where it’s at, nowadays. Television, film and publishing are all desperately looking for the next big returning series or character. That ‘brand’, that ‘franchise’. I know some of this will be anathema to many writers I know, but thems the facts. You might have a beautifully written, powerfully moving literary novel but it won’t sell anywhere near as many copies as a pulpy, twisty thriller – probably with ‘girl’ in the title – and a female protagonist who has a drink problem/amnesia/a double life/insert affliction du jour here. Or as many copies as a crime series. I remember going to London for a meeting with a pretty powerful TV production company who were thinking of optioning my second novel, Ugly Bus. Once the coffee and small talk was out of the way, the conversation quickly turned to how the characters could be developed so they’d all return in a second, third or even fourth series. When I said they’d all end up in prison so you’d have no second series, I was thanked for my time and shown the door.
SHEENAGH: Weren't you tempted? Because I can easily see how they keep out of prison on that particular score anyway; the woman, understandably, doesn't complain. And I can see how both her story and the sergeant's continue, even the Bus crew if they're careful or devious enough... Does the consciousness of "series is where it's at" influence how you're writing now? - I notice you still killed a promising character off in your last!
MIKE: The ‘series is where it’s at’ thing doesn’t even enter my head. It is what it is at this moment in my career: I have a deal to write three books, so that’s what I will do. I suppose that’s the police officer still in me: you’ve got a job, do it as best you can, then move on. So after that’s done, who knows? If the publisher doesn’t want any more MacReady novels then I’ll write something else. Your ‘track’ (i.e. track record of sales) is everything nowadays and if you don’t sell enough you’re out, regardless of whether you’re writing a series or not. A few months back I read a piece written by an agent lamenting how long-term relationships and nurturing by publishers is becoming increasingly rare, how authors aren’t given a chance to establish themselves or their ‘brand’ and make the publishing house some money back. It’s the nature of the business now, depressing as it is.
As for the Ugly Bus characters, the only one I’ve given serious consideration to returning to is the female character and how she navigates her life and career after those terrible events. That novel was a nightmare to write. It wasn’t just the ‘difficult second album’ syndrome. During the eighteen months of the first draft my wife and I were working full time opposite shifts, we had two children under four, moved house twice in the UK then abroad, I had another job as a creative writing tutor with nearly a hundred students on my books, and I was still to finish my University work. It was incredibly stressful. And then it was released to absolutely no fanfare and pretty much disappeared, which was heart-breaking. So I have mixed feelings about it – while I’m not sure I want to write another ninety thousand words following the same flawed/awful coppers, I’m hugely proud of the book itself: the effort it took to write, the characters and story and that final kicker that everyone gasped about.
SHEENAGH: By now, you must have had quite a lot to do with publishers, editors, the process of actually getting a book published and marketed. What advice would you give a writer new to all that?
MIKE: A great question. It’s wonderful being published, it was a dream come true, and I’ve had moments – certainly in the beginning, with the people I met, the places I was wined and dined in – where I’ve had to pinch myself. But I always think of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, because as glorious as it is at first, and as terrific and enthusiastic as the people can be in publishing, you quickly discover what’s behind the curtain ain’t all that. It’s a job, and sometimes a ball-achingly tedious one, and occasionally a clench-your-fists-and-scream-at-the-skies-in-frustration one. And the reality is you’re probably not going to be a bestseller. You’re not going to become rich, or anywhere near comfortable. You are not going to be asked to opine on television panels or sit on a sofa opposite Jonathan Ross while you share ‘bantz’. I don’t want to come across as a miseryguts, but anyone who enters this world assuming they’ll soon be doing that Algarve thing I mentioned really needs to carefully manage their expectations or it will crush you. A bit of digging will reveal that the vast majority of authors out there still have ‘day jobs’. There’s a very good reason for that. So if I could narrow it down to one piece of advice, it would be: savour every moment, but don’t expect the world…
Mike's new novel, Unforgivable, comes out from Zaffre in July.
May 19, 2017
The fear of difference
I've been getting quite worried lately by the number of vox pops, BTL comments and pronouncements on the likes of Twitter (perhaps I should say Twatter) which seem to indicate a growing fear and intolerance of any difference from the perceived norm. It isn't just about immigrants or foreigners, though lord knows they suffer from this; it also affects disabled folk. This is partly the fault of governments and newspapers who have encouraged their dimmer readers to believe everyone in a wheelchair is some kind of fraudster bent on robbing them via the benefits system. But it goes deeper, I think, witness the online conversation I had lately about a man who, some years ago, was wrongly suspected of murder by the press (probably encouraged by the police) and had, quite rightly, received compensation for the injury to his reputation when the real culprit was found. The person on the other side of the conversation was inclined to blame him, because "if he didn't want to be suspected he shouldn't have looked so weird and had an odd hairstyle".
This is why I don't like politicians advocating national unity, coming together, shared values, singing from the same hymn sheet (particularly that metaphor: I don't wish to sing from any hymn sheet, and since I live in a post-enlightenment secular democracy, not a mediaeval theocratic dictatorship, that is my right). But I also want to live in a country where one is not obliged to act like everyone else, fall in behind the majority opinion, or even have a sensible hairstyle. I don't want "unity" if it means conformity, nor "coming together" if it means ironing out difference, rather than learning to tolerate it.
So basically I think all natural-born conformers should have a good listen to Georges Brassens' great song La mauvaise réputation. When the lyric says everyone speaks ill of him except the dumb, everyone kicks out at him except the one-legged, he isn't just making black jokes, he means those who are somehow different from the norm have a natural affinity, unlike the "braves gens" who think everyone should go the same road as them and be exactly like them. For anyone whose French is rusty, here's a rough translation I once did purely for the purpose of singing in the bath.
In the village, without a doubt,
I enjoy an ill repute.
Whatever I do, whatever I say,
I'm looked on as something out of the way.
Yet I do no harm to anyone,
I just want to go on my way alone.
But the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Yes, the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Everybody speaks ill of me,
Except for the dumb, naturally.
When the procession passes by,
I lie in bed and close my eyes.
If they want to have their jubilee,
That's got nothing to do with me.
Yet I do no harm to anyone,
If I do not choose to follow the drum.
But the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Yes, the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Everyone points the finger at me,
(Not those with no arms, naturally).
If I see a kid who's been pinching fruit
Run by with the law in hot pursuit,
I stick out a foot, and strange to say,
It's always the policeman in the way.
Yet I do no harm in anything,
If I help a kid who's been apple-scrumping.
But the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Yes, the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Everybody kicks out at me,
Except the one-legged, naturally.
You don't need the gift of prophecy
To work out what will happen to me.
If they can find a good excuse,
I shall be hanging in a noose
Yet I do no harm to anyone,
If I follow roads that don't lead to Rome.
But the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Yes, the good folk hate to be told
Theirs isn't always the only road.
Everyone'll come to see me die,
Except for the blind, naturally.
May 9, 2017
Review of "Gutenberg's Europe: The Book and the Invention of Western Modernity" by Frédéric Barbier
This is a fascinating read, but quite a tough one. For one thing it's been written by an academic for academics, which means he doesn't feel required to stop and explain, say, concepts like the semiotic triangle, or throwaway references like "we need think only of Sidonius Apollinaris" (well yes, I think of him constantly, or might do if I had a clue who he was). Secondly, it talks a great deal about the arcane processes of printing and book-binding, in the terminology of those crafts, and while admittedly he explains said terms when they first appear, if your memory is like mine, you will find yourself, next time they crop up, thinking "what the hell was that?" And since they mostly don't appear in the index, it isn't easy to refresh your memory. Nothing would have been more helpful than a glossary of printing terms. I'd have liked more illustrations too, though some of those that do appear are enchanting, notably the spire of Strasbourg Cathedral poking up through the margin of a page in the Chronicle of Nuremberg.
I found I couldn't read it in large chunks without my head starting to swim, but once you get into it, there are some really thought-provoking and illuminating observations on things you might never have thought of in the way they appear here, and particularly the relationships between different developments. The link, for instance, between the rise of silent reading and the representation in signs of punctuation. The way silent reading turned the whole act of reading into something more private, less social, even anti-social, and enabled each individual reader to put his own slant on a text. The impetus which the introduction into Europe (from China) of playing cards gave to mass production of texts and images. The way different fonts evolved for different texts - Gothic, at first, for devotional works, Antiqua and other roman fonts for secular romances. Those who, like me, didn't realise that fonts were sometimes named after people may like to give Messrs Garamont and Bembo a wave in passing...
In his foreword, Barbier says he hopes "by a discussion of the very first media revolution, that of Gutenberg in the mid fifteenth century, to offer some insights into the media revolution of the early twenty-first century". Oddly enough, and despite his use of such terms as hardware and software in the 15th-century printing context, I don't think much of a likeness does emerge between the two. It's true that the internet has opened up a form of self-publishing to huge numbers of people who didn't have access to it before, in the same way that the availability of printed books and their relative cheapness compared with manuscripts hugely widened the audience for texts in its time. But the more this history conveys of the print revolution, its entrepreneurial spirit, the sudden spread of knowledge, the ability to disseminate news (and propaganda) with an unheard-of immediacy via leaflets and posters, the sheer excitement of being able to lay one's hands on a book, the less important the online revolution looks by comparison.
I found I couldn't read it in large chunks without my head starting to swim, but once you get into it, there are some really thought-provoking and illuminating observations on things you might never have thought of in the way they appear here, and particularly the relationships between different developments. The link, for instance, between the rise of silent reading and the representation in signs of punctuation. The way silent reading turned the whole act of reading into something more private, less social, even anti-social, and enabled each individual reader to put his own slant on a text. The impetus which the introduction into Europe (from China) of playing cards gave to mass production of texts and images. The way different fonts evolved for different texts - Gothic, at first, for devotional works, Antiqua and other roman fonts for secular romances. Those who, like me, didn't realise that fonts were sometimes named after people may like to give Messrs Garamont and Bembo a wave in passing...
In his foreword, Barbier says he hopes "by a discussion of the very first media revolution, that of Gutenberg in the mid fifteenth century, to offer some insights into the media revolution of the early twenty-first century". Oddly enough, and despite his use of such terms as hardware and software in the 15th-century printing context, I don't think much of a likeness does emerge between the two. It's true that the internet has opened up a form of self-publishing to huge numbers of people who didn't have access to it before, in the same way that the availability of printed books and their relative cheapness compared with manuscripts hugely widened the audience for texts in its time. But the more this history conveys of the print revolution, its entrepreneurial spirit, the sudden spread of knowledge, the ability to disseminate news (and propaganda) with an unheard-of immediacy via leaflets and posters, the sheer excitement of being able to lay one's hands on a book, the less important the online revolution looks by comparison.
April 8, 2017
Review of "Les Parisiennes", by Anne Sebba, pub. Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2017
The last book I reviewed here was
The Unwomanly Face of War
, Svetlana Alexeievich's account of Russian women who served in World War 2 and what happened to them in its aftermath. Now we have a similar account of "how the women of Paris lived, loved and died in the 1940s" - ie, again in the war and its aftermath.
There are similarities, the most obvious being the attempts for many decades in both France and Russia to airbrush the contribution of women from history. But there are also great differences. Firstly, many of the Russian women were frontline combatants, which Frenchwomen, barring certain resistance fighters, were not (though the definition of "combatant" in postwar France became controversial, since those women who had hidden endangered soldiers and civilians, and often endured the horrors of Ravensbrück for doing so, understandably felt themselves as entitled to the name of combatant as the uniformed men who had put up such a brief resistance to the invader). Secondly, though parts of Russia were occupied, there was no question of "collaborating", even had civilians wished to, because the invader was interested not in coexisting with the locals but in exterminating them. In Paris it was otherwise, which meant there were choices to be made by the inhabitants, and some of these were far from easy. Those in public service might choose to resign their jobs, or stay and try to do them in such a way as best to serve the interests of civilians - though that might also leave them open to the charge of serving the enemy's interests. Rose Valland, volunteer assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume (her sex debarred her from a paid job as curator), stayed on and risked the suspicion, which surfaced briefly after the war, of colluding with the invaders' favourite occupation of looting artwork on a grand scale. What she was in fact doing was secretly keeping records of everything being looted and where it had gone, so that after the war, thousands of artworks could be located and restored to their rightful owners. She also managed, with the Liberation imminent, to notify the Resistance of a trainload of paintings waiting to be despatched by the panicking occupiers, with the result that the train was delayed and captured by the liberators.
Obviously many of the problems female civilians faced in Paris, such as food shortages and moral dilemmas - whether to resist, collaborate or simply keep one's head down - were problems for men as well, and nor were they confined to Paris. The rationale for concentrating on women is twofold. They did have special problems related to their sexual vulnerability and they were in some ways made scapegoats, after the armistice, by men still smarting from their own frontline failures. Sebba remarks of the "tondues", women publicly shaved and humiliated after the liberation for sleeping with Germans, "they were punished by the men who had failed to defend them" and it is true that when you look at the photographs, though there are women in the background it is nearly always men taking the lead. Postwar, too, government ministers, even former resistance fighters among them like Henri Frenay, who knew well the role women had played, were urging them to give up their jobs and let men coming home from prison camps and forced labour return to their role as chef de famille "so that they could regain their lost confidence". This emphasis on the needs of men also exacerbated, for women, the problem that all returning concentration camp survivors faced, namely that nobody wanted to hear what they had suffered. "Don't say anything, they won't understand" as one warned another. The one thing French women did get out of the war was the right to vote, which until 1945 they hadn't had - I must confess I didn't know that and was amazed by it.
The rationale for concentrating on Paris in particular I'm not so sure of, though it seems to be the supposition that Parisiennes are somehow more stylish and clothes-conscious than anyone else. The trouble with that notion is that half the women in this book, though they lived in Paris, were not born there nor even in some cases French nationals. One of the more famous photographs reproduced here was taken by Robert Doisneau in 1948 for the cover of Paris Match: a carelessly elegant young woman sitting on the banks of the Seine, typewriter perched on her knee, writing a novel, the quintessential Parisienne. Since he never spoke to her, he wouldn't have known that she was Emma Smith from London....
There is quite a lot about fashion, reasonably since it was a major industry of the city and the justification for couture houses continuing to operate through the war was that many people would be thrown out of work if they did not. But I did actually get a bit impatient with some of the women's preoccupation with being fashionable at all costs, especially when one reads that "some went as far as to call it 'resisting'" - well, it wasn't. It may have been their way of keeping up their morale but to call it resisting was an impertinence to those who actually were resisting, and risking their lives for others. Karma intervenes at one point when the fascist sympathiser Comtesse de Portes, deciding that even for collaborators an occupied Paris won't be much fun, tries to escape south in a car so overloaded that a hatbox falls from the roof, obscures the driver's view and causes him to hit a tree, killing her instantly. I'm afraid I laughed....
This is a history book with proper notes, bibliography, index etc and a lot of illuminating illustrations. Much of its interest lies in being able to follow individual lives through it, like the incredibly brave Noor Inayat Khan, resistance fighter, and the quiet, dowdy Rose Valland, who didn't much care about fashion or chic, but who preserved so much that was beautiful from thieves and vandals. Even the more dubious characters like Corinne Luchaire, dimwitted teenage actress who collaborates because she doesn't really know how to say no to any man, have their sad fascination. The author is commendably neutral, except where it would be an offence not to take sides. I'm especially glad she did not follow the advice she mentions in the prologue: "When I began this book a male historian suggested I spend hours in the subterranean Bibliothèque Nationale reading the diaries of men like Hervé Le Boterf and Jean Galtier- Boissière." Why yes, how better to discover what women were doing and thinking than to check what men have to say on the subject....
There are similarities, the most obvious being the attempts for many decades in both France and Russia to airbrush the contribution of women from history. But there are also great differences. Firstly, many of the Russian women were frontline combatants, which Frenchwomen, barring certain resistance fighters, were not (though the definition of "combatant" in postwar France became controversial, since those women who had hidden endangered soldiers and civilians, and often endured the horrors of Ravensbrück for doing so, understandably felt themselves as entitled to the name of combatant as the uniformed men who had put up such a brief resistance to the invader). Secondly, though parts of Russia were occupied, there was no question of "collaborating", even had civilians wished to, because the invader was interested not in coexisting with the locals but in exterminating them. In Paris it was otherwise, which meant there were choices to be made by the inhabitants, and some of these were far from easy. Those in public service might choose to resign their jobs, or stay and try to do them in such a way as best to serve the interests of civilians - though that might also leave them open to the charge of serving the enemy's interests. Rose Valland, volunteer assistant curator at the Jeu de Paume (her sex debarred her from a paid job as curator), stayed on and risked the suspicion, which surfaced briefly after the war, of colluding with the invaders' favourite occupation of looting artwork on a grand scale. What she was in fact doing was secretly keeping records of everything being looted and where it had gone, so that after the war, thousands of artworks could be located and restored to their rightful owners. She also managed, with the Liberation imminent, to notify the Resistance of a trainload of paintings waiting to be despatched by the panicking occupiers, with the result that the train was delayed and captured by the liberators.
Obviously many of the problems female civilians faced in Paris, such as food shortages and moral dilemmas - whether to resist, collaborate or simply keep one's head down - were problems for men as well, and nor were they confined to Paris. The rationale for concentrating on women is twofold. They did have special problems related to their sexual vulnerability and they were in some ways made scapegoats, after the armistice, by men still smarting from their own frontline failures. Sebba remarks of the "tondues", women publicly shaved and humiliated after the liberation for sleeping with Germans, "they were punished by the men who had failed to defend them" and it is true that when you look at the photographs, though there are women in the background it is nearly always men taking the lead. Postwar, too, government ministers, even former resistance fighters among them like Henri Frenay, who knew well the role women had played, were urging them to give up their jobs and let men coming home from prison camps and forced labour return to their role as chef de famille "so that they could regain their lost confidence". This emphasis on the needs of men also exacerbated, for women, the problem that all returning concentration camp survivors faced, namely that nobody wanted to hear what they had suffered. "Don't say anything, they won't understand" as one warned another. The one thing French women did get out of the war was the right to vote, which until 1945 they hadn't had - I must confess I didn't know that and was amazed by it.
The rationale for concentrating on Paris in particular I'm not so sure of, though it seems to be the supposition that Parisiennes are somehow more stylish and clothes-conscious than anyone else. The trouble with that notion is that half the women in this book, though they lived in Paris, were not born there nor even in some cases French nationals. One of the more famous photographs reproduced here was taken by Robert Doisneau in 1948 for the cover of Paris Match: a carelessly elegant young woman sitting on the banks of the Seine, typewriter perched on her knee, writing a novel, the quintessential Parisienne. Since he never spoke to her, he wouldn't have known that she was Emma Smith from London....
There is quite a lot about fashion, reasonably since it was a major industry of the city and the justification for couture houses continuing to operate through the war was that many people would be thrown out of work if they did not. But I did actually get a bit impatient with some of the women's preoccupation with being fashionable at all costs, especially when one reads that "some went as far as to call it 'resisting'" - well, it wasn't. It may have been their way of keeping up their morale but to call it resisting was an impertinence to those who actually were resisting, and risking their lives for others. Karma intervenes at one point when the fascist sympathiser Comtesse de Portes, deciding that even for collaborators an occupied Paris won't be much fun, tries to escape south in a car so overloaded that a hatbox falls from the roof, obscures the driver's view and causes him to hit a tree, killing her instantly. I'm afraid I laughed....
This is a history book with proper notes, bibliography, index etc and a lot of illuminating illustrations. Much of its interest lies in being able to follow individual lives through it, like the incredibly brave Noor Inayat Khan, resistance fighter, and the quiet, dowdy Rose Valland, who didn't much care about fashion or chic, but who preserved so much that was beautiful from thieves and vandals. Even the more dubious characters like Corinne Luchaire, dimwitted teenage actress who collaborates because she doesn't really know how to say no to any man, have their sad fascination. The author is commendably neutral, except where it would be an offence not to take sides. I'm especially glad she did not follow the advice she mentions in the prologue: "When I began this book a male historian suggested I spend hours in the subterranean Bibliothèque Nationale reading the diaries of men like Hervé Le Boterf and Jean Galtier- Boissière." Why yes, how better to discover what women were doing and thinking than to check what men have to say on the subject....
March 25, 2017
Review of "The Unwomanly Face of War", by Svetlana Alexievich, pub Penguin 2017 (English version)
First published in Russian in 1985, this is not a history book, though it would make excellent source material for one. It is a collection of interviews with Russian women who lived through World War 2 – a few were civilians but most saw active service and many on the front line, not only as nurses or cooks but as snipers, tank drivers, sappers, pilots and partisans, among many other roles.
The interviews themselves, which of course make up most of the book, are fascinating. They build up into an overall picture of experiences with some common elements but many disparate ones. For instance, the fierce patriotism and determination to serve seem to have been just about universal – as was the regret at parting with the long braided hair which was then the norm for Russian women. But while some commanders, desperate for troops, welcomed potential snipers or sappers irrespective of sex, others disapproved of women on the front line. Some women found nothing but kindness and support from their male colleagues; others found them predatory – "when there's gunfire they call out 'Nurse! Dear nurse!' But after the battle they all lie in wait for you… you can't get out of the dugout at night". Some women stopped menstruating and feared they would not be able to have children after the war; others didn't stop and were at their wits' end to cope with a condition for which the forces made no provision. Nearly all felt intense hatred of the invader, but most found they could not translate this into hatred for an actual individual and surprised themselves by offering kindness to captive enemies.
The hardships and dangers were often mitigated by their sense of being young, and caught up in something momentous – "there probably will never again be such people as we were then. Never! So naïve and so sincere. With such faith!" And there was, as always, humour to lighten matters, as when the commissar of a Field Laundry Unit working at the dangerous Kursk Salient has to put in a report that her girls have found and surrounded two wounded (but still armed) enemy soldiers coming out of a wood. "The next day we had a meeting of the commanders. The head of the political section said first thing, 'Well, comrades, I want to give you some good news: the war will soon be over. Yesterday the laundrywomen from the 21st Field Laundry Unit captured two Germans.'"
Nevertheless, many witnessed the aftermath of unspeakable atrocities, and even the more ordinary horrors of war stayed with some for life, like the ex-pilot who, long after, had to stop working in the field as a geologist when her health gave out: "A doctor came, took a cardiogram and asked 'When did you have a heart attack?'
'What heart attack?'
'Your heart is scarred all over'.
I must have acquired those scars during the war. You approach a target and you're shaking all over. Your whole body is shaking."
Perhaps the saddest aspect of their story, though, is what happened afterwards. Much later, by the time these interviews were conducted, their contribution was being recognised and feted, but immediately after the war they faced little but hostility, particularly from other women: "I lived in a communal apartment. My neighbours were all married and they insulted me. They taunted me, 'Ha-ha, tell us how you whored around there with the men'" – this to a decorated sergeant of riflemen who'd likely had rather too much else to think of at the time. Many of the girls' mothers, when they wanted to enlist, had protested "who will marry you afterwards?" and this proved prophetic; many indeed did not marry. Unlike the men, they tended not to wear their medals and felt their contribution was seen as an embarrassment. Yet, though some wished not to have their full names given, they were eager for the chance to tell the stories they felt had been airbrushed out of history: as one said, "it's terrible to remember but it's far more terrible not to remember".
Basically, then, this is not only a worthwhile exercise but a very gripping, if sometimes harrowing, read. But I must protest, once more, at the current practice, in historical and factual books, of including unnecessary prefaces detailing at inordinate length the author's "journey" in writing the book. I don't know if editors and publishers ask for this, but the writers seem to relish the chance to discard, in these prefaces, the sober style suited to their subject matter in favour of sentimental and self-obsessed gush about themselves and their work process. Here's my two-penn'orth as reader: dear writer, I don't give a damn about your "journey". I don't want to know why you wrote the book, how you felt when writing it or how many publishers you sent it to. Just spare us these "me, me, me" prefaces and get on to your subject. I recommend this book heartily, but I also recommend ignoring the fifty (!) pages it starts with. Go straight to the interviews.
The interviews themselves, which of course make up most of the book, are fascinating. They build up into an overall picture of experiences with some common elements but many disparate ones. For instance, the fierce patriotism and determination to serve seem to have been just about universal – as was the regret at parting with the long braided hair which was then the norm for Russian women. But while some commanders, desperate for troops, welcomed potential snipers or sappers irrespective of sex, others disapproved of women on the front line. Some women found nothing but kindness and support from their male colleagues; others found them predatory – "when there's gunfire they call out 'Nurse! Dear nurse!' But after the battle they all lie in wait for you… you can't get out of the dugout at night". Some women stopped menstruating and feared they would not be able to have children after the war; others didn't stop and were at their wits' end to cope with a condition for which the forces made no provision. Nearly all felt intense hatred of the invader, but most found they could not translate this into hatred for an actual individual and surprised themselves by offering kindness to captive enemies.
The hardships and dangers were often mitigated by their sense of being young, and caught up in something momentous – "there probably will never again be such people as we were then. Never! So naïve and so sincere. With such faith!" And there was, as always, humour to lighten matters, as when the commissar of a Field Laundry Unit working at the dangerous Kursk Salient has to put in a report that her girls have found and surrounded two wounded (but still armed) enemy soldiers coming out of a wood. "The next day we had a meeting of the commanders. The head of the political section said first thing, 'Well, comrades, I want to give you some good news: the war will soon be over. Yesterday the laundrywomen from the 21st Field Laundry Unit captured two Germans.'"
Nevertheless, many witnessed the aftermath of unspeakable atrocities, and even the more ordinary horrors of war stayed with some for life, like the ex-pilot who, long after, had to stop working in the field as a geologist when her health gave out: "A doctor came, took a cardiogram and asked 'When did you have a heart attack?'
'What heart attack?'
'Your heart is scarred all over'.
I must have acquired those scars during the war. You approach a target and you're shaking all over. Your whole body is shaking."
Perhaps the saddest aspect of their story, though, is what happened afterwards. Much later, by the time these interviews were conducted, their contribution was being recognised and feted, but immediately after the war they faced little but hostility, particularly from other women: "I lived in a communal apartment. My neighbours were all married and they insulted me. They taunted me, 'Ha-ha, tell us how you whored around there with the men'" – this to a decorated sergeant of riflemen who'd likely had rather too much else to think of at the time. Many of the girls' mothers, when they wanted to enlist, had protested "who will marry you afterwards?" and this proved prophetic; many indeed did not marry. Unlike the men, they tended not to wear their medals and felt their contribution was seen as an embarrassment. Yet, though some wished not to have their full names given, they were eager for the chance to tell the stories they felt had been airbrushed out of history: as one said, "it's terrible to remember but it's far more terrible not to remember".
Basically, then, this is not only a worthwhile exercise but a very gripping, if sometimes harrowing, read. But I must protest, once more, at the current practice, in historical and factual books, of including unnecessary prefaces detailing at inordinate length the author's "journey" in writing the book. I don't know if editors and publishers ask for this, but the writers seem to relish the chance to discard, in these prefaces, the sober style suited to their subject matter in favour of sentimental and self-obsessed gush about themselves and their work process. Here's my two-penn'orth as reader: dear writer, I don't give a damn about your "journey". I don't want to know why you wrote the book, how you felt when writing it or how many publishers you sent it to. Just spare us these "me, me, me" prefaces and get on to your subject. I recommend this book heartily, but I also recommend ignoring the fifty (!) pages it starts with. Go straight to the interviews.
February 19, 2017
Review of Russia in Revolution, 1890-1928 by S A Smith, pub. OUP 2017
Smith begins by pointing out that the Russian Revolution, like the French one in its day, polarised opinion and is still hard to talk about in a non-partisan way. He has gone to great trouble to present the events of 1890-1928 in a dispassionate, neutral way as far as possible so as to avoid being pigeonholed as a partisan of one or another side.
For the most part, I think this works well. He does give a very clear and detailed account of events and conditions, of how these led to revolution and how, inevitably, they also led to said revolution veering off-course. It's pretty easy to read, except when it occasionally gets bogged down in undeniably necessary statistics. But one result of this approach is that the drama of the story, to some extent, goes missing and key players do not emerge as personalities as strongly as they might - if by the end we know that Lenin was a charismatic speaker, or Trotsky a haughty man who couldn't unbend, this is because we have been told so rather than because we have seen it in action, so to speak. One might say it is unfair to criticise the book on these grounds, since it has stated its factual, dispassionate remit, but charismatic personalities do have a bearing on events, and one reason, alongside those he suggests, that revolution happened in Russia but not in Britain or Germany may well be that the leaders who could have fired it were missing in those countries.
It's also perhaps not completely consistent about this approach. During the civil war that followed 1917, there were several independent warlords leading bands of more-or-less thugs about the countryside supporting sometimes Whites, sometimes Reds and more often only their own interests. Some indulged in vicious atrocities, and he names several, but one name he doesn't mention in that context is the anarchist Makhno, who according to accounts I've seen, some of them eyewitness, was as rabid a sadist as any, shooting total strangers through train windows for the fun of it. He mentions Makhno several times, but never imputes these acts to him, so that one might read this book and imagine him better than his ilk.
I'd also have liked rather more, in the chapter "Society and Culture" on the amazing literary flowering of the 1920s, among young writers (especially in Odessa) who might have been excused for thinking of nothing but where the next log of wood for the stove was coming from. On the other hand, it was gratifying that he dealt with the changing position of women more fully than many might have done.
My principal source of information on that time up to now was the 6-volume autobiography of Konstantin Paustovsky, who lived through it and describes it so vividly that one might be there. This is a different approach, and for those desiring a thorough, dispassionate overview, there couldn't be a better. I'd recommend reading it in conjunction with such an account as Paustovsky's, to get something of the "in that dawn" feeling , the heady sense of being alive in interesting and extremely dangerous times.
For the most part, I think this works well. He does give a very clear and detailed account of events and conditions, of how these led to revolution and how, inevitably, they also led to said revolution veering off-course. It's pretty easy to read, except when it occasionally gets bogged down in undeniably necessary statistics. But one result of this approach is that the drama of the story, to some extent, goes missing and key players do not emerge as personalities as strongly as they might - if by the end we know that Lenin was a charismatic speaker, or Trotsky a haughty man who couldn't unbend, this is because we have been told so rather than because we have seen it in action, so to speak. One might say it is unfair to criticise the book on these grounds, since it has stated its factual, dispassionate remit, but charismatic personalities do have a bearing on events, and one reason, alongside those he suggests, that revolution happened in Russia but not in Britain or Germany may well be that the leaders who could have fired it were missing in those countries.
It's also perhaps not completely consistent about this approach. During the civil war that followed 1917, there were several independent warlords leading bands of more-or-less thugs about the countryside supporting sometimes Whites, sometimes Reds and more often only their own interests. Some indulged in vicious atrocities, and he names several, but one name he doesn't mention in that context is the anarchist Makhno, who according to accounts I've seen, some of them eyewitness, was as rabid a sadist as any, shooting total strangers through train windows for the fun of it. He mentions Makhno several times, but never imputes these acts to him, so that one might read this book and imagine him better than his ilk.
I'd also have liked rather more, in the chapter "Society and Culture" on the amazing literary flowering of the 1920s, among young writers (especially in Odessa) who might have been excused for thinking of nothing but where the next log of wood for the stove was coming from. On the other hand, it was gratifying that he dealt with the changing position of women more fully than many might have done.
My principal source of information on that time up to now was the 6-volume autobiography of Konstantin Paustovsky, who lived through it and describes it so vividly that one might be there. This is a different approach, and for those desiring a thorough, dispassionate overview, there couldn't be a better. I'd recommend reading it in conjunction with such an account as Paustovsky's, to get something of the "in that dawn" feeling , the heady sense of being alive in interesting and extremely dangerous times.
February 5, 2017
Review of Heligoland by Jan Rüger, pub OUP 2017
Though accessibly written, this is an academic history with all the expected trimmings: photos, bibliography, and thorough notes. As usual, these are arranged under the various chapter headings, which means that when you want to look one up you must first ascertain the chapter title you're on and then scrabble through the notes to find it. I saw a history book recently that included the relevant page numbers from the text at the top of each page of notes, making it so much easier to look up the notes while reading the text. I'd recommend that practice to all writers of annotated books.
This is a "micro-history" which illuminates a bigger story, namely the relationship between Britain and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries, via one small place, a much-disputed island in the North Sea. It belonged at various times to Denmark, Britain and Germany and while the latter two owned it, there were constant influxes of tourists, political agitators, spies, artists, construction workers and military men to unsettle the original population of fisherfolk. The entire population was evacuated twice, in connection with the world wars; the Germans twice turned it into an armed camp and the British attempted to blow it into oblivion, though amazingly it's still there.
Not surprisingly, the Heligolanders themselves had very little notion of loyalty to any of the various nations who made use of them and their island for their own purposes, and quite sensibly spent their time playing one off against the other. They seem to have always had an innate reluctance to paying taxes or duties of any kind and managed to avoid doing so under the British, the Kaiser, Weimar and even the Nazis; indeed the place is still a tax-free zone.
What this book left me with, in fact, was a keen desire to know more about the Heligolanders themselves, this original population who kept vanishing behind the myths others created around them, not to mention the influxes of outsiders. In particular I'd have liked to know more about how they adapted on their return in the 1950s to a place that had been reconstructed from scratch and, needless to say, not in the way they themselves had favoured. The photos from various eras are fascinating, but none shows the island and its buildings as they are today, which seems a pity.
However, it would not be a fair criticism of this book to say that it concentrates too little on the Heligolanders, because its whole purpose is to discuss, through the history of the island, the relationship between Britain and Germany and their contest for supremacy in the North Sea. This it does very thoroughly and readably; the fact that it left me wanting to know more about a quite different aspect of things is a bonus.
This is a "micro-history" which illuminates a bigger story, namely the relationship between Britain and Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries, via one small place, a much-disputed island in the North Sea. It belonged at various times to Denmark, Britain and Germany and while the latter two owned it, there were constant influxes of tourists, political agitators, spies, artists, construction workers and military men to unsettle the original population of fisherfolk. The entire population was evacuated twice, in connection with the world wars; the Germans twice turned it into an armed camp and the British attempted to blow it into oblivion, though amazingly it's still there.
Not surprisingly, the Heligolanders themselves had very little notion of loyalty to any of the various nations who made use of them and their island for their own purposes, and quite sensibly spent their time playing one off against the other. They seem to have always had an innate reluctance to paying taxes or duties of any kind and managed to avoid doing so under the British, the Kaiser, Weimar and even the Nazis; indeed the place is still a tax-free zone.
What this book left me with, in fact, was a keen desire to know more about the Heligolanders themselves, this original population who kept vanishing behind the myths others created around them, not to mention the influxes of outsiders. In particular I'd have liked to know more about how they adapted on their return in the 1950s to a place that had been reconstructed from scratch and, needless to say, not in the way they themselves had favoured. The photos from various eras are fascinating, but none shows the island and its buildings as they are today, which seems a pity.
However, it would not be a fair criticism of this book to say that it concentrates too little on the Heligolanders, because its whole purpose is to discuss, through the history of the island, the relationship between Britain and Germany and their contest for supremacy in the North Sea. This it does very thoroughly and readably; the fact that it left me wanting to know more about a quite different aspect of things is a bonus.
