Tony Judt (1948-2010) created a masterpiece with his history of Europe, Post War, published in 2005.
Though now twelve years old, I couldn’t recommend this book more highly; it should be compulsory reading for everyone who is interested in the society in which we live.
Judt sets out in this massive enterprise to tell the history of Europe (both east and west) from 1945. The book is both thematically and chronologically organised. While the focus is on political, and to a lesser extent economic, history, Judt also covers culture and especially film in some detail, all of which helps give the reader an all-round understanding of period and place. Judt’s approach is not to dryly list facts and dates, but to link events into meaningful narratives.
The great advantage of Judt’s book is that it enables reader to set his or her historical prejudices against Judt’s erudite judgments. As Judt says so much in this book, there will be times when you think his assessments are wrong, but often you will be convinced by his argument. Being persuaded is also a matter of perspective. Most English readers will have become politically and socially aware in the Wilson to Blair years, and Judt enables us to conceptualise and comprehend the period as a whole, not just as British history, but also as a part of a wider European canvass.
The writing is sharp and engaging throughout. The only disadvantage of the book is the weight of its 890 pages which make it hard to read in bed.
Judt, Tony: Post War: Heinemann 2005
Showing posts with label Book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book review. Show all posts
5 June 2017
1 March 2017
Saturday by Ian McEwan
Musings by a well-off 'Blairite' on the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003
The book, all set on one Saturday in the lead up to the Iraq war, is an internal portrait on one man. Henry is a typical Blair bourgeois middle-Englander in every sense, who is married with children in their early twenties. McEwan carefully constructs through Henry's internal musings the background and influences of one man and by extension the whole era of Blair's Britain.
This excellent book has a side plot of a psychopath who breaks into Henry's family life and humiliates him and his family. Though extremely well described and written I felt that this typical McEwan theme could have been dispensed with.
McEWAN Ian, Saturday, Vintage 2005
The book, all set on one Saturday in the lead up to the Iraq war, is an internal portrait on one man. Henry is a typical Blair bourgeois middle-Englander in every sense, who is married with children in their early twenties. McEwan carefully constructs through Henry's internal musings the background and influences of one man and by extension the whole era of Blair's Britain.
This excellent book has a side plot of a psychopath who breaks into Henry's family life and humiliates him and his family. Though extremely well described and written I felt that this typical McEwan theme could have been dispensed with.
McEWAN Ian, Saturday, Vintage 2005
1 October 2016
Innocence by Pierre Magnan: Harvill 2001
A teenage boy's love affair with an older women
Stripped down, the novel is a love story between a sixteen-year-old boy and a bourgeois women in her early thirties. Set just after the Second World War in a small provincial town in France, the novel is written in the first person by an introverted loner, born of a near destitute working class family. Having left school, he works as a municipal road sweeper. In the opening pages he stumbles on a murder of a local dignitary and become entangled in a web of of love, jealousy and hate.
Despite the dramatic incidents in the opening chapter, the novel is slow-going, and it was only towards the middle of the book that I felt motivated to go on reading. The focus is definitely on the developing feelings of the young man rather than the logic of events, happenings which seem unreal and distant to the plot.
The power of the book lies in the long drawn out love affair between the adolescent and the older woman which is vividly described with great psychological and descriptive sensitivity. The novel is no masterpiece, but deserves a read.
Stripped down, the novel is a love story between a sixteen-year-old boy and a bourgeois women in her early thirties. Set just after the Second World War in a small provincial town in France, the novel is written in the first person by an introverted loner, born of a near destitute working class family. Having left school, he works as a municipal road sweeper. In the opening pages he stumbles on a murder of a local dignitary and become entangled in a web of of love, jealousy and hate.
Despite the dramatic incidents in the opening chapter, the novel is slow-going, and it was only towards the middle of the book that I felt motivated to go on reading. The focus is definitely on the developing feelings of the young man rather than the logic of events, happenings which seem unreal and distant to the plot.
The power of the book lies in the long drawn out love affair between the adolescent and the older woman which is vividly described with great psychological and descriptive sensitivity. The novel is no masterpiece, but deserves a read.
1 August 2016
Love Life by Zeruya Shalev
A powerful and psychologically rich penetration into the mind of woman having an affair with an older man.
The plot of the book is very simple. Ya’ara, a young Israeli woman, is married to a man of the same age, who is portrayed through her eyes as being well meaning but uninspiring. She meets Aryeh, an older man and a lifelong friend of her father, and starts a relationship with him. After a stormy emotional and sexual affair, exciting for her at first and then revolting, the relationship implodes. Throughout the book the reader is waiting to hear the response of her husband, Yonny, to her admission of infidelity and that suspense is kept up until the last page of the book.
The book is entirely written through the eyes, thoughts and delusions of the protagonist, and contains numerous psychological insights. At first, the reader is encouraged to think that Ya'ara is merely displaying what could be regarded as an excessive “feminine” perspective on the people and the world, but as the novel progress we begin to realise that she is mentally unbalanced and has at least partially lost her grip on reality.
While engaging, the book is not always written in an easily accessible style. Long paragraphs of poetic, but deluded, introspection can be difficult to plough through. Moreover, the book shuns the conventions of direct speech altogether, and relies on inserting conversation into the body of paragraphs.
Despite these possible shortcomings, the book is powerful and engaging. It engraves on the memory of the reader the personality and outlook of one particular young woman.
SHALEV, Zeruya, Love Life, Cannongate 2002
The plot of the book is very simple. Ya’ara, a young Israeli woman, is married to a man of the same age, who is portrayed through her eyes as being well meaning but uninspiring. She meets Aryeh, an older man and a lifelong friend of her father, and starts a relationship with him. After a stormy emotional and sexual affair, exciting for her at first and then revolting, the relationship implodes. Throughout the book the reader is waiting to hear the response of her husband, Yonny, to her admission of infidelity and that suspense is kept up until the last page of the book.
The book is entirely written through the eyes, thoughts and delusions of the protagonist, and contains numerous psychological insights. At first, the reader is encouraged to think that Ya'ara is merely displaying what could be regarded as an excessive “feminine” perspective on the people and the world, but as the novel progress we begin to realise that she is mentally unbalanced and has at least partially lost her grip on reality.
While engaging, the book is not always written in an easily accessible style. Long paragraphs of poetic, but deluded, introspection can be difficult to plough through. Moreover, the book shuns the conventions of direct speech altogether, and relies on inserting conversation into the body of paragraphs.
Despite these possible shortcomings, the book is powerful and engaging. It engraves on the memory of the reader the personality and outlook of one particular young woman.
SHALEV, Zeruya, Love Life, Cannongate 2002
1 June 2015
An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori
A masterpiece which paints a portrait of multicultural and polyglot Central Europe between the World Wars.
The book is a masterpiece, and like many such masterpieces the text is often a struggle to read, in this case as a result of sometimes difficult language, obscure historico-cultural reference and complexity of plot and situation. But don't give up; for me even months after reading Rezzori’s novel the message and images of the book remain in the head.
The story is told through the eyes of a young boy, a character who is self-consciously modelled on the author, an Austrian German from a minor aristocratic family, now living in the interwar period in what had become a provincial town in Romania. Czernopol is the fictional name, but this is a thin disguise for the town, the name of which is Czernowitz.
We are introduced to a wide range of eccentric characters, who are surviving amidst the anomie and confusion of the epoch. Most poignant in the book is the episode towards the end of the growing anti-Semitism in the town which explodes into a pogrom.
Though always perceptive, throughout there is often an unreal quality to the writing. Although the narrator is a child, much of what is written is far from childlike observation. In addition, we are often given huge stretches of description and dialogue from which the narrator is absent.
The book was first published in German in the 1966, but only received its definitive English translation in 2011.
Von REZZORI, Gregor, An Ermine in Czernopol, Nyrb Classics 2011.
The book is a masterpiece, and like many such masterpieces the text is often a struggle to read, in this case as a result of sometimes difficult language, obscure historico-cultural reference and complexity of plot and situation. But don't give up; for me even months after reading Rezzori’s novel the message and images of the book remain in the head.
The story is told through the eyes of a young boy, a character who is self-consciously modelled on the author, an Austrian German from a minor aristocratic family, now living in the interwar period in what had become a provincial town in Romania. Czernopol is the fictional name, but this is a thin disguise for the town, the name of which is Czernowitz.
We are introduced to a wide range of eccentric characters, who are surviving amidst the anomie and confusion of the epoch. Most poignant in the book is the episode towards the end of the growing anti-Semitism in the town which explodes into a pogrom.
Though always perceptive, throughout there is often an unreal quality to the writing. Although the narrator is a child, much of what is written is far from childlike observation. In addition, we are often given huge stretches of description and dialogue from which the narrator is absent.
The book was first published in German in the 1966, but only received its definitive English translation in 2011.
Von REZZORI, Gregor, An Ermine in Czernopol, Nyrb Classics 2011.
1 January 2015
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Chaim Potok shows us a closed world, but one with universalistic human values.
Like Potok's 'The Chosen,’ this book ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ is a highly readable glimpse into a world which is both open and closed. It is open in the sense that the orthodox religious Jewish community in the United States, in which the book is set, not only shares a meaning and context which spans the Atlantic, but allows though Potok’s pen for the presentation of universal human values. But in another sense this community is also closed and cut off – almost comically so - from most of the life and concerns of average Americans in the second half of the twentieth century.
Like much of Potok’s work, the novel is a Romansbildung, featuring a boy from a distinguished orthodox family, who discovers and takes up painting much to his father’s disapproval. His longing for the artistic freedom finally causes his unwilling but expected expulsion from his community into the wider society.
The book is well-paced, excellently written and highly enjoyable.
POTOK, Chaim, My name is Asher Lev, Penguin 1973
Like Potok's 'The Chosen,’ this book ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ is a highly readable glimpse into a world which is both open and closed. It is open in the sense that the orthodox religious Jewish community in the United States, in which the book is set, not only shares a meaning and context which spans the Atlantic, but allows though Potok’s pen for the presentation of universal human values. But in another sense this community is also closed and cut off – almost comically so - from most of the life and concerns of average Americans in the second half of the twentieth century.
Like much of Potok’s work, the novel is a Romansbildung, featuring a boy from a distinguished orthodox family, who discovers and takes up painting much to his father’s disapproval. His longing for the artistic freedom finally causes his unwilling but expected expulsion from his community into the wider society.
The book is well-paced, excellently written and highly enjoyable.
POTOK, Chaim, My name is Asher Lev, Penguin 1973
24 September 2013
The Master of the Day of Judgment by Leo Perutz
A short but gripping mystery set in the Vienna of Franz-Jozef
This book (148 pages) first published in Austria in 1921, is still a wonderful short read. Perutz weaves a beautifully written mystery story, set among the well-to-do of pre-First World War Austria. At first, one is put of by the comedy and strangeness of manners of aristocratic society in 1909, but the poetry of the book soon takes over.
The focus of the novel is the explanation for a string of suicides and the accusation that the narrator, a wealthy army officer, is morally responsible for one of them. Towards the middle of the book it is hard to believe that there is a rational explanation, but Perutz provides one in the final chapter.
Despite the magic of the text, I was struck by the emptiness of the narrator of the story, Baron von Yosch. Yet, if the explanation of the suicides is the first 'sting-in-the-tail,' the editor's postscript is the second. The narrator is laid bare. Do not on any account read the last page first.
Three nights of in-bed late night reading will finish this novel of psychological analysis, gruesome ingenuity and metaphysical horrors.
PERUTZ, Leo - The Master of the Day of Judgment, Harvill 1994
This book (148 pages) first published in Austria in 1921, is still a wonderful short read. Perutz weaves a beautifully written mystery story, set among the well-to-do of pre-First World War Austria. At first, one is put of by the comedy and strangeness of manners of aristocratic society in 1909, but the poetry of the book soon takes over.
The focus of the novel is the explanation for a string of suicides and the accusation that the narrator, a wealthy army officer, is morally responsible for one of them. Towards the middle of the book it is hard to believe that there is a rational explanation, but Perutz provides one in the final chapter.
Despite the magic of the text, I was struck by the emptiness of the narrator of the story, Baron von Yosch. Yet, if the explanation of the suicides is the first 'sting-in-the-tail,' the editor's postscript is the second. The narrator is laid bare. Do not on any account read the last page first.
Three nights of in-bed late night reading will finish this novel of psychological analysis, gruesome ingenuity and metaphysical horrors.
PERUTZ, Leo - The Master of the Day of Judgment, Harvill 1994
26 June 2013
A very short introduction to Heidegger, by Michael Inwood
A clearly written introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger
In writing this book Michael Inwood has provided us with a much needed straightforward introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger.
Inwood’s book begins with a journey through Heidegger’s 1927 masterpiece Being and Time, and ends with a brief examination of some of Heidegger's later work. The balance is probably right.
Though the book is written in a clear and accessible style, in my opinion Inwood presumes too much background knowledge on the part of the beginner. In the first instance, Inwood assumes that the reader is already reasonably versed in the tradition of philosophy that Heidegger reacted against. It is wrong to assume that readers are aware of Aristotle or the modern tradition to which Descartes gave rise. Also lacking is a fully explained up-front appreciation of what Heidegger was trying to do with philosophy, and just how different this approach was from the Cartesian tradition.
Stripped down to simplicities, the Cartesian tradition had dealt with the questions: what do we know? And, how can we be sure about what we know? Heidegger’s analysis in contrast basically answers the question: what is like to be in the world?
Like anyone writing an analysis of a thinker, the author has to create a balance between outlining what the thinker actually said and wrote on the one hand, and, on the other, the author’s own understanding of the key enduring themes of the thinker. In this Inwood probably gets the balance right by often presenting Heidegger’s ideas and then evaluating them.
When I first met the work of Heidegger, my initial reaction was: OK what he is saying describes everyday experience, but so what? What is the generative capacity of the theory in the sense that, say, Marxism was able to initiate a whole intellectual tradition of study and analysis. I would have liked Inwood to have addressed the question of what you can do with Heidegger’s work.
Whatever minor criticisms I may have of the book, it is nonetheless a valuable and well-written introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger.
INWOOD Michael, Heidegger: A very short introduction, OUP 1997
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In writing this book Michael Inwood has provided us with a much needed straightforward introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger.
Inwood’s book begins with a journey through Heidegger’s 1927 masterpiece Being and Time, and ends with a brief examination of some of Heidegger's later work. The balance is probably right.
Though the book is written in a clear and accessible style, in my opinion Inwood presumes too much background knowledge on the part of the beginner. In the first instance, Inwood assumes that the reader is already reasonably versed in the tradition of philosophy that Heidegger reacted against. It is wrong to assume that readers are aware of Aristotle or the modern tradition to which Descartes gave rise. Also lacking is a fully explained up-front appreciation of what Heidegger was trying to do with philosophy, and just how different this approach was from the Cartesian tradition.
Stripped down to simplicities, the Cartesian tradition had dealt with the questions: what do we know? And, how can we be sure about what we know? Heidegger’s analysis in contrast basically answers the question: what is like to be in the world?
Like anyone writing an analysis of a thinker, the author has to create a balance between outlining what the thinker actually said and wrote on the one hand, and, on the other, the author’s own understanding of the key enduring themes of the thinker. In this Inwood probably gets the balance right by often presenting Heidegger’s ideas and then evaluating them.
When I first met the work of Heidegger, my initial reaction was: OK what he is saying describes everyday experience, but so what? What is the generative capacity of the theory in the sense that, say, Marxism was able to initiate a whole intellectual tradition of study and analysis. I would have liked Inwood to have addressed the question of what you can do with Heidegger’s work.
Whatever minor criticisms I may have of the book, it is nonetheless a valuable and well-written introduction to the thought of Martin Heidegger.
INWOOD Michael, Heidegger: A very short introduction, OUP 1997
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21 March 2013
The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
A lengthy sequel which attempts to popularise and normalise the Ladover Hasidic community in Brooklyn.
The novel is long, at over three hundred pages, and is a sequel to Potok’s earlier My Name is Asher Lev.
The previous book introduced us to the character of Asher Lev’s and his childhood in the Ladover Hasidic Community in New York, focusing on Asher’s developing skill and interest in art and ending with the young man’s social exclusion from the community and his semi-voluntary exile in France. The sequel tells the story of the return of Asher, now in his mid forties, married with a son and daughter, to New York for his Uncle's funeral and his family’s initially unplanned extended stay in the Community.
The earlier part of the book is the more engaging. Here the focus is on Asher’s family as they enter - or in Asher’s case, re-enter - Ladover community life. Potok describes the reactions of Asher’s wife, Devorah, and his two children who hitherto have been living observant lives in a secular France as they now enter the all-embracing Brooklyn Hasidic community. Conversely, we see the reactions of Asher’s parents, relatives and the wider community to the return of the black sheep, Asher Lev.
The story takes off when we learn that Asher’s uncle has bequeathed his valuable art collection into Asher’s trust, throwing him into conflict with his pious and business-oriented cousins.
The second part of the novel is slow moving. Asher returns to France alone on business and we are introduced to his non-observant Jewish friends and colleagues. At the same time Asher;s wife and family are increasingly drawn into Ladover life in New York. Gradually, we are made to realise that the elderly rabbe, the theological and charismatic leader of the Brooklyn community, intends Asher’s five-year old son to be schooled into becoming the future leader of the community.
Overall the book has a powerful conservative message. Asher, the artist, is rebellious, but remains an observant Hasidic Jew. The ordinary members of the Brooklyn community are portrayed as both highly conservative and of limited intelligence; all insight and progressive intelligence emanate from the eighty-nine year old rebbe, who speaks in mystical riddles to clarify his meaning. Potok, though not himself a Hasidic Jew, seems to want to present what amounts to a segregationist sect, managed by a charismatic leader, as an acceptable and normal state of affairs.
The book keeps one's interest, but only just.
POTOK, Chaim, The Gift of Asher Lev, Fawcett Books 1990.
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The novel is long, at over three hundred pages, and is a sequel to Potok’s earlier My Name is Asher Lev.
The previous book introduced us to the character of Asher Lev’s and his childhood in the Ladover Hasidic Community in New York, focusing on Asher’s developing skill and interest in art and ending with the young man’s social exclusion from the community and his semi-voluntary exile in France. The sequel tells the story of the return of Asher, now in his mid forties, married with a son and daughter, to New York for his Uncle's funeral and his family’s initially unplanned extended stay in the Community.
The earlier part of the book is the more engaging. Here the focus is on Asher’s family as they enter - or in Asher’s case, re-enter - Ladover community life. Potok describes the reactions of Asher’s wife, Devorah, and his two children who hitherto have been living observant lives in a secular France as they now enter the all-embracing Brooklyn Hasidic community. Conversely, we see the reactions of Asher’s parents, relatives and the wider community to the return of the black sheep, Asher Lev.
The story takes off when we learn that Asher’s uncle has bequeathed his valuable art collection into Asher’s trust, throwing him into conflict with his pious and business-oriented cousins.
The second part of the novel is slow moving. Asher returns to France alone on business and we are introduced to his non-observant Jewish friends and colleagues. At the same time Asher;s wife and family are increasingly drawn into Ladover life in New York. Gradually, we are made to realise that the elderly rabbe, the theological and charismatic leader of the Brooklyn community, intends Asher’s five-year old son to be schooled into becoming the future leader of the community.
Overall the book has a powerful conservative message. Asher, the artist, is rebellious, but remains an observant Hasidic Jew. The ordinary members of the Brooklyn community are portrayed as both highly conservative and of limited intelligence; all insight and progressive intelligence emanate from the eighty-nine year old rebbe, who speaks in mystical riddles to clarify his meaning. Potok, though not himself a Hasidic Jew, seems to want to present what amounts to a segregationist sect, managed by a charismatic leader, as an acceptable and normal state of affairs.
The book keeps one's interest, but only just.
POTOK, Chaim, The Gift of Asher Lev, Fawcett Books 1990.
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7 February 2013
Conversations with Stalin by Milovan Djilas
Milovan Djilas gave us a clear-sighted assessment of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin.
Conversations with Stalin, originally published in English in 1961, is a wonderful piece of literary memoir and political analysis, which is still valuable reading over a half century after its appearance.
Milovan Djilas (1911-1995) was one of the four high-ranking communist leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party, whose partisans overthrew the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. At the end of the Second World War the establishment of a communist state in Yugoslavia did not wholly fit with Stalin’s plans for two main reasons. First Stalin feared that the early appearance of communist states in eastern Europe would unsettle the West and risked sparking a conflict; and second, Stalin feared the development of centres of communist power, which remained outside his control.
Starting from a naive and idealistic appreciation of Stalin, Djilas recounts his several visits to the Soviet Union to negotiate with Stalin and the Soviet government. He tells of his exhilaration as his plane flies over Soviet territory for the first time, then recounts his experiences and how his initial enthusiasm is dimmed by an accumulation of events.
Of most interest are his vivid accounts of meetings with Stalin and his foreign minister and sidekick Molotov. Djilas describes the aura of submissiveness and adoration that surrounds the old man, along with Stalin’s theatrical explosions of outrage (e.g. when Djilas complains about the behaviour of the Red Army in northern Yugoslavia) and his indulgence of his guests at alcohol-saturated dinner parties.
The book concludes with a brief assessment of Stalin, his crimes and achievements, and pointing out how Stalin’s legacy continued to affect his successors.
For writing this memoir, Djilas was imprisoned in Yugoslavia for betraying state secrets, though the only secret of substance communicated in the book is, in effect, Stalin’s offer that Yugoslavia could “swallow up” Albania in exchange for political and economic subservience to Moscow.
DJILAS, Milovan, Conversation with Stalin, Pelican 1969
Conversations with Stalin, originally published in English in 1961, is a wonderful piece of literary memoir and political analysis, which is still valuable reading over a half century after its appearance.
Milovan Djilas (1911-1995) was one of the four high-ranking communist leaders of the Yugoslav Communist Party, whose partisans overthrew the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. At the end of the Second World War the establishment of a communist state in Yugoslavia did not wholly fit with Stalin’s plans for two main reasons. First Stalin feared that the early appearance of communist states in eastern Europe would unsettle the West and risked sparking a conflict; and second, Stalin feared the development of centres of communist power, which remained outside his control.
Starting from a naive and idealistic appreciation of Stalin, Djilas recounts his several visits to the Soviet Union to negotiate with Stalin and the Soviet government. He tells of his exhilaration as his plane flies over Soviet territory for the first time, then recounts his experiences and how his initial enthusiasm is dimmed by an accumulation of events.
Of most interest are his vivid accounts of meetings with Stalin and his foreign minister and sidekick Molotov. Djilas describes the aura of submissiveness and adoration that surrounds the old man, along with Stalin’s theatrical explosions of outrage (e.g. when Djilas complains about the behaviour of the Red Army in northern Yugoslavia) and his indulgence of his guests at alcohol-saturated dinner parties.
The book concludes with a brief assessment of Stalin, his crimes and achievements, and pointing out how Stalin’s legacy continued to affect his successors.
For writing this memoir, Djilas was imprisoned in Yugoslavia for betraying state secrets, though the only secret of substance communicated in the book is, in effect, Stalin’s offer that Yugoslavia could “swallow up” Albania in exchange for political and economic subservience to Moscow.
DJILAS, Milovan, Conversation with Stalin, Pelican 1969
1 February 2013
ROSTEN, Leo - The Joys of Yiddish
Penguin 1968
This is definitely a book to have on the bedside table and to dip into from time to time rather than something to read from beginning to end. The combination of language instruction, cultural etymology and humour sustain the interest.
Rosten's claim that Yiddish is a language which is better than any other at expressing the emotions must remain suspect. Is it really the case that Swedes or Greeks are less able to bend and inflect their languages to express what they really feel? Nonetheless, it is possible that Rosten is right in arguing that Yiddish has a disproportionally large vocabulary to express types of human behaviour.
Rosten probably also makes the mistake of exaggerating the extent to which Yiddish has penetrated the English language, or British English at least. Words like kosher, glitch, schmuck may have made it, but the vast majority are not even understandable. (Some, though, are identical or similar to German and can be understood that way)
Before Zamenhof published Esperanto in 1887, he had worked out a simplified version of Yiddish written in the Latin alphabet which he intended to be used as a lingua franca. Had that language taken off, had the Holocaust not happened and had Israel not adopted modern Hebrew as its state language, the role Yiddish plays today might be so much greater.
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This is definitely a book to have on the bedside table and to dip into from time to time rather than something to read from beginning to end. The combination of language instruction, cultural etymology and humour sustain the interest.
Rosten's claim that Yiddish is a language which is better than any other at expressing the emotions must remain suspect. Is it really the case that Swedes or Greeks are less able to bend and inflect their languages to express what they really feel? Nonetheless, it is possible that Rosten is right in arguing that Yiddish has a disproportionally large vocabulary to express types of human behaviour.
Rosten probably also makes the mistake of exaggerating the extent to which Yiddish has penetrated the English language, or British English at least. Words like kosher, glitch, schmuck may have made it, but the vast majority are not even understandable. (Some, though, are identical or similar to German and can be understood that way)
Before Zamenhof published Esperanto in 1887, he had worked out a simplified version of Yiddish written in the Latin alphabet which he intended to be used as a lingua franca. Had that language taken off, had the Holocaust not happened and had Israel not adopted modern Hebrew as its state language, the role Yiddish plays today might be so much greater.
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10 December 2012
Popper by Bryan Magee
Karl Popper's philosophy makes a valuable point, but is fundamentally flawed.
This is the best selling book by Bryan Magee (born 1930), the articulate broadcaster of programmes explaining and popularising philosophy.
Magee provides a clearly written and enthusiastic account of the ideas of his personal friend, the philosopher Karl Popper (1902-94). The book proceeds from Popper’s view of science (a rejection of induction in favour of falsifiability), to his view of human knowledge as an ever-provisional attempt at problem solving, and concludes with how Popper applies these ideas to the defence of liberal democracy and of a pragmatic problem solving method of doing politics.
Though Popper is often correctly labelled as someone out to clobber Marxism in the post war period, there is much sense in what I understand him to be saying. However, for me his philosophy of knowledge (epistemology) is marred by problems.
Popper recognised the historical distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. Analytic statements (e.g. All bachelors are male.) are necessarily true by logic alone. In contrast, synthetic statements, (e.g. The cheese is on the table.) are contingent: that means they are dependent on how the world actually is. Popper regarded science as consisting entirely of synthetic statements.
Popper’s central contention was that a synthetic statement can only be held to be scientific if it is capable of being empirically falsified. There is much sense here; i.e. we should be cautious of statements which claim to remain true irrespective of what happens. Yet, I fail to understand why the truth of a statement is necessarily dependent on the ability to potentially falsify it. For instance, if for some reason, it were impossible to the test the proposition that water boils at one hundred degrees centigrade, that would not prevent the proposition from being either true or scientific.
Many synthetic statements involved in the foundation of science are incapable of being tested at all; for instance the axioms that objects exist in space and time, and that every change has a cause. In fact, following Kant, we could argue that without such so-called synthetic a priori statements we cannot think at all.
Popper is of course right to say that if an extrapolation from a theory is falsified in an empirical test, it’s not the reality which is wrong, but the hypothesis. Yet it seems mistaken to argue that that the theory (a collection of interdependent statements) must be abandoned wholesale, and there isn’t a case on occasion for modifying the theory and its concepts rather than immediately junking them. Popper says he is using practical human solving procedures as the basis for his theory, but, to use a crude analogy, if I have a new car and find the ignition doesn’t work one morning, I am more inclined to have the car repaired than consign it to the scrapheap.
One final point is whether Popper’s theory applies to his own theory of falsifiability. Quite clearly not, so we have to regard the notion of falsifiability as a postulate justified by logic, not experience. So not only does Popper's logic fail to hold up in all cases, as discussed above, but Popper is forced to justify his tool for doing science by the very logico-rational methods that he wanted to oppose.
Karl Popper saw his writing as an attack on the whole Kant-Hegel-Marx tradition in social science (and was certainly lauded by the establishment in Britain for doing just that). But in my view he failed in knocking Kant, Hegel and Marx from their position in Western thought. What he has certainly done is to hold up ‘warning signs’ which serve to alert us to dogma and nonsense in thought.
MAGEE, Bryan – Popper, Fontana 1973
This is the best selling book by Bryan Magee (born 1930), the articulate broadcaster of programmes explaining and popularising philosophy.
Magee provides a clearly written and enthusiastic account of the ideas of his personal friend, the philosopher Karl Popper (1902-94). The book proceeds from Popper’s view of science (a rejection of induction in favour of falsifiability), to his view of human knowledge as an ever-provisional attempt at problem solving, and concludes with how Popper applies these ideas to the defence of liberal democracy and of a pragmatic problem solving method of doing politics.
Though Popper is often correctly labelled as someone out to clobber Marxism in the post war period, there is much sense in what I understand him to be saying. However, for me his philosophy of knowledge (epistemology) is marred by problems.
Popper recognised the historical distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. Analytic statements (e.g. All bachelors are male.) are necessarily true by logic alone. In contrast, synthetic statements, (e.g. The cheese is on the table.) are contingent: that means they are dependent on how the world actually is. Popper regarded science as consisting entirely of synthetic statements.
Popper’s central contention was that a synthetic statement can only be held to be scientific if it is capable of being empirically falsified. There is much sense here; i.e. we should be cautious of statements which claim to remain true irrespective of what happens. Yet, I fail to understand why the truth of a statement is necessarily dependent on the ability to potentially falsify it. For instance, if for some reason, it were impossible to the test the proposition that water boils at one hundred degrees centigrade, that would not prevent the proposition from being either true or scientific.
Many synthetic statements involved in the foundation of science are incapable of being tested at all; for instance the axioms that objects exist in space and time, and that every change has a cause. In fact, following Kant, we could argue that without such so-called synthetic a priori statements we cannot think at all.
Popper is of course right to say that if an extrapolation from a theory is falsified in an empirical test, it’s not the reality which is wrong, but the hypothesis. Yet it seems mistaken to argue that that the theory (a collection of interdependent statements) must be abandoned wholesale, and there isn’t a case on occasion for modifying the theory and its concepts rather than immediately junking them. Popper says he is using practical human solving procedures as the basis for his theory, but, to use a crude analogy, if I have a new car and find the ignition doesn’t work one morning, I am more inclined to have the car repaired than consign it to the scrapheap.
One final point is whether Popper’s theory applies to his own theory of falsifiability. Quite clearly not, so we have to regard the notion of falsifiability as a postulate justified by logic, not experience. So not only does Popper's logic fail to hold up in all cases, as discussed above, but Popper is forced to justify his tool for doing science by the very logico-rational methods that he wanted to oppose.
Karl Popper saw his writing as an attack on the whole Kant-Hegel-Marx tradition in social science (and was certainly lauded by the establishment in Britain for doing just that). But in my view he failed in knocking Kant, Hegel and Marx from their position in Western thought. What he has certainly done is to hold up ‘warning signs’ which serve to alert us to dogma and nonsense in thought.
MAGEE, Bryan – Popper, Fontana 1973
2 March 2012
Fermina Marquez by Valery Larbaud
This strange romantic book is the product of a fantasy from a previous age.
The book is set at the turn of the century in a strict but liberal French school largely made up of international students. The boys become fixated on a South American girl who is staying in the area with her aunt and younger sister because her younger brother is at the school.
The protagonist sets out to win the girls affections through his intellectual prowess, but his intellectual arrogance loses her. While he holds himself in such high regard both she and reader sees his idiotic pomposity. Interwoven into the text is a comment on social class: the aristocratic girl and the lower middle class boy.
This book is probably worth reading once and then forgetting.
LARBAUD, Valery - Fermina Marquez, Quartet 1988
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1 March 2012
The Ultimate Intimacy
Ivan Klima’s book rises above its setting in 1990s Prague to embrace universal questions of life and moral existence.
My favourite contemporary writer is Ivan Klima, and his latest book, The Ultimate Intimacy" (387 pages) brings into sharp focus all the themes that he has developed in his work: moral choice, emotional confusion and lives constructed in given social environments. The book is a long read consisting of narrative, diary excerpts and letters, but, despite several side plots, always homes in on the central character, the protestant pastor, Daniel Vedra, who can only find intimacy in adulterous love. In a theme, much appealing to me, Vedra moves away from his religious beliefs. In a final letter to his lover, Bara, he writes:
"I told you and others that God's love will redeem us, but I think I was wrong. I don't think there is anyone who would one day judge our faults, forgive us and give us absolution. There is no higher justice than our own. Nothing lasts forever, except forgetting maybe."
In the same letter he reflects on what remains of his previous religious conviction.
"Maybe just the conviction that love is the greatest thing we can encounter in life and the most important thing we may strive for. I'm talking about human love; if God's love doesn’t exist then only the human sort remains: fleeting and imperfect."
While the book is set in a Czech setting and some familiarisation with background events is helpful, the meaning of this book is much greater than any comment on Czech society post Velvet Revolution.
KLIMA, Ivan - The Ultimate Intimacy, Granta 1998.
2 January 2012
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
Nationalism conceived as an imagined community continues to be a driving force in the world today.
Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, prompted a series of investigations into nationalism that embraced several other writers such as Eric Hobsbawm and Ernest Gellner. Of the book itself, there is much discussion on the net, so here I only want to add a few points which were of particular interest to me.
Nation as an imagined community is a gripping idea. The members of these communities (British, Swiss, Indonesian, etc) imagine themselves as part of a family or Gemeinschaft even though it is impossible for them to know one another. The book is an attempt to account for that conception in the modern world.
Anderson traces the first steps towards the development of the nation in Europe. The Middle Ages were nation-free. Allegiance was to king, church and lord and neither language unity (except for the Latin of the elite) nor clearly defined geographical boundaries existed.
Printing changed everything. After the market had been exhausted for Latin texts, publishers sought to exploit the vernacular and in so doing put in train the process of turning some local dialects into literary languages. In parallel, the development of the absolutist state expanded the state bureaucracies, whose officials used the vernacular language which was unified, consolidated and disseminated in printed form across territories.
Anderson comments on the seeming oddity of nationalism taking off first in the New World before exploding in Europe in the French Revolution. In discussing this, the book draws not just on North but in strong measure on South America. The argument is that the colonial officials of these states resented the growing centralised power of their European masters, so the middle rank state bureaucrats in league with commerical interests in the colonies rebelled. Rebellion had nothing to do with either ethnicity or language.
In Europe by the late Nineteenth Century the key promoters of nationalism were the school teacher, civil servant and journalist. Nation increasingly became anchored in an ethnic conception of language. Royalty and aristocracy engineered a new basis for their position: their representation of nation-ness as opposed to loyalty to them through God and tradition.
By the end of the nineteenth century most of Africa and Asia were colonies of European powers. As the state apparatus and commercial organisation expanded the number of administrators grew. European colonialists had their superior position preserved through growing levels of racism. The racist aspect of nationalism expanded.
In ruling their colonies, the imperial powers also imported their own nationalisms, which became templates for the oppressed people of those lands to copy. For instance, the story of the French revolution taught in colonial schools became a ready tool for those fighting for national Independence in Indo-China. Independence movements consolidated the existence of nation states across the globe, however ethnically heterogeneous those states were.
Nationalism did not die with advent of communist regimes after 1917. Revolutionaries consolidated their power within existing state apparatuses. Indeed, Anderson begins his book by focusing on the conflict which broke out in 1979 between two communist “nation” states, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Anderson highlights two features of nationalism which traditionally are overlooked: the map and the museum. Every nation state carves out is territory on the earth and so makes a shape of itself. In fact that shape comes to represent the nation as a shape without marking for rivers, mountains, towns, etc. The museum collects together the images and artefact's of the nation.
Several other features of the book are worthy of comment.
First, Anderson’s argument is distinctive, not just in his characterisation of nationalism and his argument that it is not something which is historically finished, but in the fact that the bulk of his examples are taken not from Europe and North America, but from Latin American and Asia. While this is fully justified given the argument, some of the material calls on historical knowledge which might challenge the “educated amateur.”
The book avoids jargon, though it does overflow with metaphorical language, but it is less flowery than the writing style of his brother Perry. The text is nonetheless easy and enjoyable to read.
Finally, the book ends with a chapter on its own history and an account of its publication and translation around the globe. Against the charge of arrogance, one could certainly excuse Anderson given the influence that his book has had. And strangely, the chapter is interesting to read in its own right.
ANDERSON, Benedict,Imagined Communities, Verso: 1983, 2006.
2 December 2011
Ĉu Ĝi Estas Nur Fabelo? (Is it only a fable?) by Jan Wolski
This book published in 1935 weaves a fantasy of inter-war Polish children building cooperatives and planning for better future.
This is a strange fairytale – a mixture of pure fantasy and political parable. The story is set in an impoverished village in interwar Poland. The children engage in various forms of naughty behaviour which parental disapproval – shown physically and morally – fails to rectify. The local teacher (La Senjoro Instrusito) believes that the root of all naughtiness is an attempt by children to emulate adult behaviour. The cure is to set up a youth cooperative in the village in which the children can produce things for themselves – products ranging from schoolbooks to the skating shoes. The children are enthusiastic and set about the work and so become model child citizens.
The bulk of the book consists of an imaginary state of affairs in which all aspects of building a network of cooperatives, first across Poland and then across the world, are considered. The boundless optimism of the young people for the project is unreal, but somehow makes the book interesting. You know that everything will turn out well.
In the final chapter we have moved on ten years and the teacher has retired. He is invited to visit a cooperative colony in the mountains where by chance all his old pupils (now trained as doctors, cooperative administrators, etc) now live. We glance into this regimented but idyllic community of cooperative, polite and enthusiastic young people. Visitors from cooperatives Denmark, Italy and even Algeria are there. In this later edition of the book, it is emphasised that Esperanto is spoken for international communication. The last pages of this book, published just four years before Poland’s conflagration in the Second World War, express the forlorn hope that such a generation of young people will go on to build a world based on peace and cooperation.
This book is no Comintern tract. It is distinctly Polish with endless soft nationalistic references to Polishness and indirect praise for the Polish dictator Josef Pilsudski. The book espouses moral virtue, cooperation, collectivism and self-help. It is a wonderful portrait of the hopes of a forgotten age.
I picked up this book in the Esperanto bookshop in Budapest for some fifty eurocents. Its pages are yellow with age; and one thought – perhaps more interesting than the contents of the book itself – is the where the book has been, and the history it has seen, since its publication in Warsaw in 1935.
WOLSKI, Jan. Ĉu Ĝi Estas Nur Fabelo? Esperanta Eldono-Kooperativo en Varsovio 1935
The book was written in Esperanto. (La libro estas verkita esperantlingve.)
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11 September 2011
HAMID, Mohsin - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
An atmospheric novel that gives the flavour of post 9/11 America.
The novel focuses on a young Pakistani whose family sends him to America and who succeeds in the 1990s American dream. Though different on account of his Pakistani background, he nonetheless finds a place in yuppie America as an elite management consultant. He develops a relationship with an haute bourgeois American woman who, on account of the death of an earlier boyfriend, has developed serious mental problems.
The protagonist is not personally abused by the events of 9/11, but his whole position in the US is rendered psychologically impossible. His girlfriend is institutionalised and he, after failing in his job and finally resigning, returns to his family home in Pakistan.
We learn about the story as the protagonist relates it to an unknown American in a restaurant in Pakistan We are led to believe that the listener is a CIA agent who at any moment will shoot the storyteller or have him deported to the Guantanamo gulag.
The book is an interesting insight into the post 9/11 mindset of a character, who shares two worlds – the yuppie America and an Islamic country.
Published by Penguin 2007
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8 March 2011
George Lichtheim on Imperialism
Imperialism subordinates one set of people to another by economic, political or ideological means.
Last week I took down another dusty Penguin paperback from my bookshelf, George Lichtheim’s slender volume “Imperialism” published in 1971. I must have bought it in the early 1980s, though I don’t remember doing so.
As its name suggests, the book is an attempt to define the concept of imperialism and Lichtheim does so historically from an independent Marxist perspective. His main thesis is that imperialism has had different features in different epochs: antiquity, medieval Europe, the mercantile age, industrial capitalism and the new imperialisms following the Second World War. With independent insight, he weaves his way through the claims of Kautsky, Hilferding, Luxemburg, Lenin, Mao, etc.
Lichtheim writes in a clear accessible English and displays encyclopaedic erudition in his writing. His is a style and approach much lacking in the current era. The only drawback to the book is that the initial chapters deal with his topic in antiquity and medieval Europe which are not matters of gripping interest to many.
Lichtheim himself committed suicide in 1973.
LICHTHEIM, George - Imperialism, Penguin 1971
Note
Many people have sought out this entry for an in-depth analysis of the book. I am sorry to disappoint them with this brief comment.
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9 February 2011
What is History? - E. H. Carr (1961)
The best book on the theory of history
Sometimes we come across a book which is so powerful that we feel we should have read it years ago. On other occasions we come back to a book which we did not make much of at the time, but on a re-reading wish we had. Such is the case with E. H. Carr’s short book “What is History?”
I took down the dusty volume from my shelf and re-read it last week. I had first attempted to read it at sixteen when an angry history teacher had thrust it into my hands after my writing in a student essay that all major historical events were inevitable. If they weren’t, I had argued, then Marx’s theory of progressive historical development couldn’t be necessarily true.
Carr’s book is a write-up of lectures given in 1961 at Cambridge. Its great strength is that it confronts the fundamental problems of historical theory and by implication those of other social sciences: the role of facts, the individual, causality, objectivity, etc. The language is sharp and clear and Carr produces well-argued answers to all the issues he raises. And though half a century has elapsed since the publication of the work, little in it has dated, save, ironically, the last chapter where Carr attempts to bring his conclusions up-to date.
Much incomprehensible waffle is written about dialectics. But without using obscurantist terminology Carr guides the reader through the interaction of facts and interpretation, the individual and society, accident and pattern in history.
It’s worth a read; and if you’ve read it a re-read.
Links
The Two Faces of E.H. Carr by Professor Richard J. Evans
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9 August 2008
McEwan, Ian - On Chesil Beach
McEwan, Ian - On Chesil Beach
First published 2007
Vintage 2008
This is a short book, almost a novella, which tells a powerful, but simple, story. The non-chronological narrative is without surprises or the acts of extreme violence which so often feature in McEwan’s work.
A very lower middle-class Edward and a haut-bourgeois Florence both in their early twenties fall in love during the late fifties and early sixties in a heavily repressive England. On their wedding night Florence can’t accept a sexual relationship with Edward, but offers him a platonic but open relationship instead. He rejects it only to fall later in life a series of unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships during the sixties and seventies.
The book paints not only a strong psychological picture of the Edward and Florence, but also comprises a portrait of a forgotten age which is then contrasted with our own.
First published 2007
Vintage 2008
This is a short book, almost a novella, which tells a powerful, but simple, story. The non-chronological narrative is without surprises or the acts of extreme violence which so often feature in McEwan’s work.
A very lower middle-class Edward and a haut-bourgeois Florence both in their early twenties fall in love during the late fifties and early sixties in a heavily repressive England. On their wedding night Florence can’t accept a sexual relationship with Edward, but offers him a platonic but open relationship instead. He rejects it only to fall later in life a series of unsuccessful and unfulfilling relationships during the sixties and seventies.
The book paints not only a strong psychological picture of the Edward and Florence, but also comprises a portrait of a forgotten age which is then contrasted with our own.
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