For Whom The Book Tolls - Episode 5: End Times & The Leopard

Just howlong does it take for gangsters to be mistaken for aristocrats?*

In the latestedition of For Whom The Book Tolls, DK Powell & I discuss two seminal booksfor our age – End Times by Peter Turchin and The Leopard byGiuseppe di Lampedusa.

Watch the podcast here:  https://youtu.be/948ZNduVtCc

In EndTimes Turchin claims to have invented a new science – ‘cliodynamics’,effectively the crunching of large sets of historical data that suggestshistory is predictably cyclical after all. So far, so psychohistory & Hari Seldon / Isaac Asimov.  ‘Real’ historians of my acquaintance whentold about him tend to sigh and say ‘Oh no, not another one . . .’

But Turchinis originally a studier of animal population behaviours, andhe’s brought scientific rigour to his thesis.

His point:the accumulation of wealth upwards leads to 3 things fatal for any society –gross inequality, the immiseration of the majority of the population, theover-production of new elites who compete for power. Result: political disintegration followed by the persistence of the underlying conditions.

Now, dothose three things remind you of any societies either on this side of theAtlantic or the other? 

And on the subject of new elites replacing old, it’s time for you to read– or re-read - one of the great historical novels, Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s TheLeopard.  Set in Sicily during the 1860srevolution that led to the unification of Italy, it charts the managed decline –and persistence by other means – of Fabrizio, Prince of Salinas, whose nephewTancredi recognises reality early on – “If we want things to stay as they are –things will have to change.” 

The novelhas been filmed twice – once in 1963 by Italian aristocrat and Marxist LucinoVisconti, starring Burt Lancaster as the prince, Alain Delon as Tancredi andClaudia Cardinale as Angelica.  Thisversion is hypnotically ravishing & I warmly recommend it.

Available viaAmazon Prime: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/B00FYGUMKS

There’salso a new adaptation available on Netflix that really opens out the book’s oblique,interior narratives – we get a lot of wartime action scenes - and re-castsTancredi’s romantic relationships in a way that’s not encumbered by the socialcodes of 19th century Sicily  (if you so much as glance at a girl withliving male relatives, be prepared either to marry her or to fight for your life). 

Available via Netflix:  https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81392676

You can find End Times here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Times-Counter-Elites-Political-Disintegration-ebook/dp/B0BFB71KPC

And The Leopard here:  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leopard-Revised-material-Vintage-Classics-ebook/dp/B0041RRH6S

 *Twogenerations at most, in either direction, judging by the above.