Penny's first novel, and very successful too. Interesting that (in my opinion) it has taken her a few years to get back to the same level of complexity of tapestry. Gamache and all the other characters are born fully developed in this book, along with some characters in embryo that will slowly unfold over the following books.
She has some great quotes in this book - the Ruth Zardo character is a challenge, but her being a poet also opens certain doors for the author. Myrna the ex-therapist has a similar potential.
p. 140 '... I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life....
Life is change. If you aren't growing and evolving you're standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. The lead "still" lives, waiting.'
'Waiting for what?'
'Waiting for someone to save them. Expecting someone to save them or at least protect them from the big, bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs and so is the solution. Only they can get out of it.'
A great poem quote
Jenny kissed me when we met,
jumping from the chair she sat in;
time, you thief, who love to get
sweets into your list, put that in:
say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
say that health and wealth have missed me;
say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
Leigh Hunt, Rondeau.
Sunday 30 March 2014
Saturday 22 March 2014
Kolyma Tales - Varlam Shalamov
Tales of the Siberian political convict camps created by Stalin. Horribly wonderful tales. Horrific lives recounted an indifferent and matter-of-fact voice that mirrors the indifference that overcomes the convicts in this inhuman environment. No idealogical or political analysis, though there is an portrait of the bureaucratic and inhuman absurdity of the prison rules and environment. In a sense it is the logical extension of the absurdity revealed in the biography of Stalin that I read recently.
The Naming of the Dead - Ian Rankin
Another exploration by Rankin of the structures of bureaucratic governmental power in the modern world - inflexible, inhuman, sterile - and the links to corporate power. Also a look at links and crossovers between the private sector and the various levels of the police. His crimes always explore the vagaries of human emotions and psychology in opposition to the sterility of the bureaucratic world - which indulges in a different, more cold-blooded type of crime. Similarities here to Michael Dibdin.
Sunday 16 March 2014
A Darker Shade of Sweden ed. John-Henri Holmberg
An anthology of stories by well-known swedish crime writers. Some good ones, but short doesn't work that well for me. Many of them very psychological.
A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny
Another one of Penny's more successful books. The characters are more alive, and there are more and more threads passing from one book to the next. Part of the series that begins with the book where Gamache and Beauvoir get shot in a raid to rescue a kidnapped officer.
Nice little scene in this book where she takes a page from classic detective fiction - the stormy night gathering of suspects around a table for the final revelation of the guilty party.
Nice little scene in this book where she takes a page from classic detective fiction - the stormy night gathering of suspects around a table for the final revelation of the guilty party.
Stalin Breaker of Nations - Robert Conquest
An excellent account of Stalin's rise to power and some insight into him as a person. Not overly detailed nor sidetracked by too much detail on side shows. A fair case to be made for Stalin as sociopath - I don't know how one man can fool/dominate/dupe so many people, an entire nation basically. A study in the exercise of raw power and fear - come with me or die, agree with my absurdities or disappear.
Over the years Stalin seems to have been able to create a completely alternate reality, but one that only existed in his mind, in a universe of propaganda and by force, in other peoples' minds. Imagine the effect, and the aftereffect, of living for decades in a universe where the mental, social and public reality, and discourse, was completely at odds with your everyday experienced personal and social reality. A world where everyone lies, everyone pretends (nothing new - we all do this) but in the same lie, the same fantasy universe - that's what's weird. No wonder Russia is such a messed up place. I wonder if this is why Putin is so popular - he is working to restore a mythologically great Russia; after decades of the communist illusions of greatness, maybe they can only feel comfortable in a fantasy universe of communal greatness as an antidote to the tawdry daily personal reality of corruption and repression.
Some other interesting points:
"Hitler had also said that while Communists could easily be converted to Nazism, Social Democrats could not." A point Conquest takes up further in his book, "Reflections on a Ravaged Century".
The mystery of Communism's and Stalin's rise: "First of all, the peasants, still the majority, overwhelmingly loathed the system.[communism] The intelligentsia, or a large part of it, had little use for a regime which suppressed all but a particular orthodoxy of thought. The supposedly favoured 'workers' lived a miserable existence, mainly in hovels and huts around the new blast furnaces."
The first bureaucratic nightmare society of the 20th century. The domination of the many by the few through ideology, reason, and bureaucratic process.
Over the years Stalin seems to have been able to create a completely alternate reality, but one that only existed in his mind, in a universe of propaganda and by force, in other peoples' minds. Imagine the effect, and the aftereffect, of living for decades in a universe where the mental, social and public reality, and discourse, was completely at odds with your everyday experienced personal and social reality. A world where everyone lies, everyone pretends (nothing new - we all do this) but in the same lie, the same fantasy universe - that's what's weird. No wonder Russia is such a messed up place. I wonder if this is why Putin is so popular - he is working to restore a mythologically great Russia; after decades of the communist illusions of greatness, maybe they can only feel comfortable in a fantasy universe of communal greatness as an antidote to the tawdry daily personal reality of corruption and repression.
Some other interesting points:
"Hitler had also said that while Communists could easily be converted to Nazism, Social Democrats could not." A point Conquest takes up further in his book, "Reflections on a Ravaged Century".
The mystery of Communism's and Stalin's rise: "First of all, the peasants, still the majority, overwhelmingly loathed the system.[communism] The intelligentsia, or a large part of it, had little use for a regime which suppressed all but a particular orthodoxy of thought. The supposedly favoured 'workers' lived a miserable existence, mainly in hovels and huts around the new blast furnaces."
The first bureaucratic nightmare society of the 20th century. The domination of the many by the few through ideology, reason, and bureaucratic process.
Cabal - Michael Dibdin
The Vatican, fashion, family disfunction and madness, old family aristocracy and corruption.
Ratking - Michael Dibdin
Corrupt links between political and business worlds. Kidnapping. Family infighting, greed.
Medusa - Michael Dibdin
A very good mystery writer. His books are set in Italy, and Dibdin does a wonderful job of evoking the setting, the people, the ethos with well-chosen brush strokes. His characters are solid rather than just instruments for the action.
Dibdin's mysteries are also built around Italy, Italian history and Italian political culture - he must know that country very well. Each book is built around some aspect of Italian social culture - kidnapping, fascism, behind the scene machinations of big business, webs of influence between the political class and the business class, family empire infighting, feuds and old village culture. In the end, though, the crime usually comes down to individual foibles - greed, revenge, madness.
Good but completely different from Rankin. In Rankin, the individual comes more to the fore, with the social and political element further in the background. His underlying themes have more to do with social criticism and less to do with social portrayal.
Dibdin's mysteries are also built around Italy, Italian history and Italian political culture - he must know that country very well. Each book is built around some aspect of Italian social culture - kidnapping, fascism, behind the scene machinations of big business, webs of influence between the political class and the business class, family empire infighting, feuds and old village culture. In the end, though, the crime usually comes down to individual foibles - greed, revenge, madness.
Good but completely different from Rankin. In Rankin, the individual comes more to the fore, with the social and political element further in the background. His underlying themes have more to do with social criticism and less to do with social portrayal.
Monday 10 March 2014
Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans - John Philips
An account of the post-Yugoslavia ethnic conflict in Macedonia between Macedonians and Albanians. Some background information on preexisting situation during Yugoslavia period. A bit too detailed for my purposes - at times it is told event by event, kidnapping by kidnapping. With all the detail it's hard to get the general overview of the shifting relationship between the two sides, or develop an understanding of how the situation has come to a relatively stable state.
The Scarlet Plague - Jack London
A different side to the author of White Fang. A post-apocalypse book in the vein of Ridley Walker, it takes place a few decades after the complete collapse of industrial society. A mix of memories of the narrator and glimpses of what life has become after the collapse. A strongly socialist book, with the rich elites exploiting the lower classes, who are of course the survivors after the fall. Politics is clear but as a book it is a bit simplistic - there is not a lot of depth to the story.
Journey to Karabakh - Aka Morchiladze
A rare Georgian novel translated into English. A plot that really goes nowhere - the book is all about atmospherics and moods, which is different. It portrays the life of young people as fairly desperate and purposeless, caught between the old ways (village life, connections, "who you know") and the more anonymous modern life. Everyone is small-time on the make. The characters, the plot lines, the locations, they all come across as seedy.
The Sudden Disappearance of the Worker Bees - Serge Quadruppani
A mystery set in northern Italy. Plot line incorporates several modern issues - technologisation of life, biotechnology, the state within a state of Italian politics. Unfortunately, not that successful as a book. The characters and setting are weakly developed; the details stand out too much as significant details. The story is also a bit contrived and improbable. If this is Quadruppani's first, he could get better. Have to wait and see.
Sunday 2 March 2014
About Looking - John Berger
A collection of essays reflecting on photography, painting and the act of looking.
The first few essays are about photography. "Why Look at Animals" is a reflection on the objectification of animals in the modern world, and the disappearance of the look of recognition between living beings across the species barrier. It relates to the Winogrand book of photos about animals I read recently. p. 13 "This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units... The mechanical view of the animal's work capacity was later applied to that of workers..."
The other really dynamite essay is "Uses of Photography", reflections on Susan Sontag's book.
p. 58 " During the second half of the 20th century the judgement of history has been abandoned by all except the underprivileged and dispossessed. The industrialized, 'developed' world, terrified of the past, blind to the future, lives within an opportunism which has emptied the principle of justice of all credibility. Such opportunism turns everything - nature, history, suffering, other people, catastrophes, sport, sex, politics - into spectacle. And the implement used to do this - until the act becomes so habitual that the conditioned imagination may do it alone - is the camera.
- from Sontag: "Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggest that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing..."
There is another interesting essay, "Francis Bacon and Walt Disney." He argues for a basic similarity both in underlying style and ethos between the two - similar distortions of the human body, violence, colour ranges. Both explore alienation - Disney makes it funny, Bacon makes it banal, the subject of art. No moral judgement in either. Interesting idea.
Didn't get through all the essays. Some interesting ones on seminal figures in art in the first half of the 20th century. Need to have another look.
The first few essays are about photography. "Why Look at Animals" is a reflection on the objectification of animals in the modern world, and the disappearance of the look of recognition between living beings across the species barrier. It relates to the Winogrand book of photos about animals I read recently. p. 13 "This reduction of the animal, which has a theoretical as well as economic history, is part of the same process as that by which men have been reduced to isolated productive and consuming units... The mechanical view of the animal's work capacity was later applied to that of workers..."
The other really dynamite essay is "Uses of Photography", reflections on Susan Sontag's book.
p. 58 " During the second half of the 20th century the judgement of history has been abandoned by all except the underprivileged and dispossessed. The industrialized, 'developed' world, terrified of the past, blind to the future, lives within an opportunism which has emptied the principle of justice of all credibility. Such opportunism turns everything - nature, history, suffering, other people, catastrophes, sport, sex, politics - into spectacle. And the implement used to do this - until the act becomes so habitual that the conditioned imagination may do it alone - is the camera.
- from Sontag: "Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera's interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggest that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing..."
There is another interesting essay, "Francis Bacon and Walt Disney." He argues for a basic similarity both in underlying style and ethos between the two - similar distortions of the human body, violence, colour ranges. Both explore alienation - Disney makes it funny, Bacon makes it banal, the subject of art. No moral judgement in either. Interesting idea.
Didn't get through all the essays. Some interesting ones on seminal figures in art in the first half of the 20th century. Need to have another look.
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