The Success and Failure of Picasso - John Berger

   An interesting analysis of the work of Picasso through the course of his life.
   He makes a number of points around certain ideas.
   He sees Picasso as having been shaped by the feudalistic political and economic system still operating in Spain during his youth with a very different system of values and view of poverty than the one current in industrialized France at the time.  In Spain, there was poverty but one still had dignity, like that of the peasants in Pig Earth.  In industrialized France, poverty was simply a kind of desperation without dignity, a failure.  Berger sees this behind both the subjects and the style of Picasso's Blue period when he first moved to Paris. 
   Berger sees this sense of being an outsider, a "primitive", as critical to Picasso's overall career - a self-image as anarchistic social critic, as a noble savage, as an iconoclast.  Berger sees this as the driving force in much of Picasso's work, rather than the influence of an artist attempting to rework, rethink, expand the form and language of painting (outside the Cubist period, where he worked collaboratively with others on a formalized problem or new conception of the relation between painter/painting and subject).  As Berger puts it, Picasso became focused on the act of painting and creating as a confirmation of his noble savage status, of his social critic status, rather than on the paintings themselves and the more formal or conceptual side of the work.
    I tend to agree with his overall analyses.  Picasso did produce some important, focused, almost revolutionary pieces - Demoiselles, Guernica, post-cubist works too - but while much of his work, especially later in his career, exhibits a great deal of energy in terms of both style and sheer output, the works themselves are not so distinct or noteworthy.

   A victim of his own legend, and also of the one built around him by friends and society. 

Pig Earth - John Berger

    A novel loosely strung together around a group of characters, the last generation of small farm peasants in the mountains of France.  The book's introduction is an essay on what it means to be a peasant, the world view of that way of life.  He does a good job of highlighting how their world and the modern industrial world are so alien to each other.  I find he has done a good job of getting into their shoes.  Especially interesting is the perspective on the place and role of tradition in this peasant society.  The role of continuity of place and also of habitation and family history.

Reread the rest of the series.

Stars of the New Curfew - Ben Okri

A collection of short stories by the writer of "The Famished Road".

Critics talk about how his work is in the tradition of magic realism.  I can see this, in that he brings in a whole world of spirits and demons, visions and magic.  But to me his work seems more a portrait of place where the borders between superstition and a more objective reality are highly blurred, where demons and potions and magic actually form an important part of the fabric of life.  There is also a recurring theme of crowd hysteria leading to injury and death with no regard for the reality of accusations and supposed crimes.  (In current newspapers you can read about this kind of mass hysteria leading to murder and rioting in places like India and Pakistan.)
He paints a picture of Lagos and Nigeria as a place of absolute chaos and corruption, a chaos created deliberately by the political class to enable the corruption.  His portrait of the rest of the society is one of ignorance, anger, frustration, desperation.
An ugly world.

I should reread "Famished Road".

Le tranquille affligé - Gilles Jobidon

    Un écrivain québécois mais aux thèmes très larges.   Un petit livre, très lisible.  Il se déroule en Chine au cours du 19e siècle peu avant la deuxième guerre d'opium en 1850 et la chute de la dynastie Qing.  Il suit qui pourtant ne fait que partie de l'histoire.  L'auteur a aussi fait ses recherches sur la cour impériale et présente de façon vraisemblable des réflections sur la façon de voir et de comprendre le monde courante en Chine à l'époque.
     Un autre côté intéressant du livre est les aperçus qu'offre l'auteur des rapports entre la Chine et l'Occident, c'est à dire l'Angleterre dans le contexte du livre.  Il offre un aperçu des effets de ce commerce forcé d'opium sur la société chinoise.  Il raconte aussi la sac et la destruction du Palais d'été et du jardin impérial par les troupes britanniques.  Il fait mention aussi de la rapacité des forces coloniales en Chine après la chute des Qing.
     Ces aperçus offrent peut-être une explication de la méfiance contemporaine de la Chine envers l'Occident, et aussi de son désir de se rétablir comme un pouvoir important et capable.  Les perdants ont la mémoire longue, chose qu'oublient toujours les gagnants....

    Un sujet à explorer en plus de profondeur.

Le piccole virtù - Natalia Ginzburg

Piccola collezione di saggi in due parti.  La prima parte, che preferisco io, è una collezione di memorie - il suo esilio durante l'epoca fascista, la vita povera a Torino dopo la guerra - e di ritratti di persone importante nella sua vita.   Si trova un ritratto molto toccante di suo amico Cesare Pavese.  Spiega l'importanza di Pavese per i giovani autori, e anche nel ritratto molto personale si vede il carattero e i problemi che l'hanno spinto ad uccidersi.  Per me, è una spiegazione più verosimile di quelli che sono normalmente offerte.
La seconda parte, che non trovò così interessante, è fatto di qualche saggi critici sulla società contemporanea.  Li trovo un po' troppo didattici e moralisti.  Forse sarebbero più interessanti se fossero più brevi e più concentrati. 

Adua- Igiaba Scego

A novel by a Somali-Italian author, translated from the Italian. 
It portrays the life of a Somali woman who moves to Rome to become a film star, but ends up working in the porn field.
What is interesting is the portrait of Italy's engagement with Somalia and the Horn of Africa in the course of the 20th century.  There is a lot of exploitative history there, and historical ugly racism that is explored in the book.  Somalia was Italy's exotic East, same role as the Levant and North Africa played for France and Britain.

Peace and Good Order - Harold R. Johnson

Another wonderfully clear and concise book from this great author.  He has such clarity of thinking and of expression, no meanders, no bullshit.
This book is basically and indictment of the Canadian justice system in relationship to Canada's indigenous people.  Chapter by chapter he outlines the harms, both intentional and unintentional, that the system perpetrates (note:  many of the same things could be said  about the system in relation to white society...).  He also outlines the system bias that basically means even an increase in native lawyers and judges will not change the system itself nor the outcomes.  He also explores the cultural differences that ensure that the dominant system will never work for native communities. 
Johnson, in the case of the treaty for his people, also shows that native communities in fact have the right to maintain order and administer justice on the lands covered by the treaty.  He sees this as a possible solution or way forward.
Johnson also proposes a return to native traditional values and culture, and an education in these as one possible alternative to incarceration.  It seems like a good idea, but one potential weakness in the is that some native people may not want to return to this tradition viewpoint.  To me, it seems there is some kind of inherent conflict or inconsistency in wanting to live by a non-western set of values while at the same time benefiting from or keeping the fruits and products of that set of values - technology, entertainment, daily living enhancements...

Le Chagrin et la pitié - Marcel Ophuls

   Un film sur la France sous l'occupation.  Un film très controversé à sa sortie dans les années '60.   Il paraît que la France a la mythologie qu'en général elle n'a pas trop collaborée avec les Nazis au cours de cette occupation, tandis qu'il semble que la vérité est tout à fait l'opposée.  La collaboration était la politique officielle du gouvernement de Vichy.  Au commencement des hostilités,  le film donne les sens d'une élite française complètement démodée et hors de contact avec la réalité de la situation - perdue dans des illusions d'héroisme et gloire.

   Plein de personnages fascinants, surtout les anciens membres de la Résistance qui s'y sont mis au début du conflit.  Il y a aussi un noble très intéressant qui raconte franchement sa guerre en tant que membre de la Brigade Charlemagne, une brigade française qui faisait partie du Waffen S.S.   Quand on voit tous ces personnages, toutes ces expériences et perspectives diverses, c'est un miracle que la France n'est pas tombée dans un désordre social absolu après la guerre.  C'est peut-être l'accomplissement le plus important de De Gaulle à la fin.

   L'autre chose qui fait rire c'est les cigarettes.  Tout le monde est tout le temps en train de fumer....

White Fragility: Why it's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism - Robin DiAngelo

    A patiently argued book.  As she points out in the book, as a race relations workshop leader, she has faced a lot of angry push-back around these ideas.

    For me, her main idea is that the nature of racism has changed.  Whites are still stuck in the image of racism from the 60s, deliberate acts and attitudes aimed at hurting and excluding people of colour - lynchings, exclusion signs, institutionally separate services.  DiAngelo's point is that the nature of currently troubling racism is much deeper, much more all-pervasive, much harder to pinpoint.  It is what is referred to as systemic racism.  And her idea that causes so much push-back is that, as whites, whether we wish it or not, we all benefit from this systemic racism.  Benefits accrue to us without us even trying.  Therefore we all participate in/benefit from racism.  (I say 'we', which is true, as she points out this white superiority and racism benefits all whites around the world within the context of different societies.  But most of her concrete examples are pulled from the U.S.)
     The type of racism she refers to includes more obvious things like segregation through such means as property prices, where the undesired group is shut out by economics.  This then creates segregation in available services, especially in the area of education quality.  She is also talking about media representation of racial groups and the stereotypes that influence our perception when interacting with members of other racial groups. 
      Notice she is careful to state that whites are also a racialized group, and that some people can hold prejudices and stereotypes that denigrate whites, but the difference is these groups do not have the social position and power to impose their prejudices and stereotypes on us.  They do not control the levers of power that make this racism pay or hurt.

      DiAngelo does not really offer much in the way of solutions.  Speaking up when other whites speak or act insensitively from racial stereotypes.  Raising awareness of one's own racialized stereotypes and ideas as they whisper away in our own heads.

Clifford - Harold R. Johnson

Interesting book.  Interesting mix.  Part childhood memoir, part memorial to his brother, part speculative musings on the structure and nature of the universe.  The reader bounces from life on in an isolated corner of boreal Saskatchewan to the nature of time and black holes.  Woven in are moments of self-criticism, glimpses of what has made this complex man, and asides on the unjust treatment of natives in Canada.  

Kicks off with a quote from one of the characters of Dune...