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Further to this recent post, here's Archbishop Pius Ncube:
Cemeteries are filling up throughout the country, but no blood is being spilt... People are just fading away, dying quietly and being buried quietly with no fanfare, and so there is little media attention.The report goes on to say that, according to a U.N. World Food Program estimate, '6.1 million Zimbabweans, about half of the 12 million population, face starvation'. (Thanks: LGu.)
Why Chelsea are loathed - 'loathed with greater intensity, by more people, than any club in the history of English football'. Michael Henderson tells you. (Thanks: MS.)
Pamela Bone writes in today's Australian on a meeting of Muslim feminists in New York:
[I]f Islam is to be reformed, and the world consequently made safer and happier for all, it is women who will do it. Yes, there are male Muslim reformers, but in general most Muslim men do not see a feminist interpretation of Islam as in their interest. Why should they? Western men didn't see last century's women's liberation movement as in theirs. It had to be driven by women because the status quo advantaged men.Bone also refers to a comment from Maryam Namazie on the silence of the Western left about the oppression of Muslim women, putting it down to a belief that '[c]hange must come from within'. If this is indeed the basis of liberal silence, it's a poor one. The left hasn't previously lacked an understanding that solidarity with people fighting against oppression is an encouragement and resource to them in their struggle.
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As to whether Islam oppresses women, there is no Islamic society in which women are free. The question is whether it has to be this way.The Koran seems fairly clear about women's subordinate status, but then so is the Christian Bible. If Christian women have been able to argue, more or less successfully, that the misogynistic passages in the Bible are merely a reflection of the era in which they were written and have no relevance to today, there should be no reason Muslim women can't do the same.
There's an interesting piece here on current efforts by Palestinian and Israeli historians to use truth as a pathbreaker towards future peace – in pursuit of the principle that 'mutual recognition of the competing narratives that emerged following the establishment of the state of Israel' is important. (Thanks: L.)
This I've got to blog. I'm at Brisbane airport sitting in a booth checking my emails. The guy in the next one is making a call on his mobile, and he's leaving a message, like this:
'Hi [name], this is Heals... etc.'I peer round from my booth into his, and it is indeed... Ian Healy. 'Ian Healy!' I say, and follow up with other 'huge fan'-type stuff, and can I have his autograph? Sure - do I have something to sign? You bet.
If you don't know who Ian Healy is, this is who he is.
Update on November 30: This amazing tale has an even more amazing sequel. I get on the plane thinking that I must watch out to see where Ian Healy is sitting. I don't spot him anywhere. Next to me there's an empty seat, however, so you'll know what possibility crosses my mind. And lo and behold, practically the last passenger to get on, Ian Healy strolls up to claim the empty seat next to mine. 'Hello, Norm,' he says, 'small world.' Let it be recorded, therefore, that coming to Australia in November 2006 to follow the Ashes series, I travelled from Brisbane to Adelaide sitting next to Ian Healy after having run into him an hour or so earlier. Did we spend any part of the journey talking about cricket? I leave it to you to form your own hypothesis about that.
Victory in Australia is the title of one of E.W. Swanton's accounts of an Ashes series here, and it will do nicely as well for the title of this post. You surely didn't think I was going to let the result of the Brisbane Test go by without a comment from me?
Comment from me: Hooray, Australia won conclusively, and I saw the whole thing.
But getting back to E.W. Swanton, that account was of the series in 1954-5, and as many have been pointing out, England lost at the Gabba then but still came back to win the series. As is also being much said these last couple of days, England lost the first Test at Lord's in 2005, yet recovered to take the Ashes in memorable fashion. Then again, one could remind people, if one wanted to - and I do want to, I do - that England have lost at Brisbane before and not gone on to win the series, but gone on to be trounced.
Like a person can be walking along and fall down; or be walking along and not fall down; or can start by falling down and not be able to get up; or can fall down and get up and start running. Or, in other words, nobody knows what's going to happen, and talking about 1954-5 and 2005, or about 2002-3, or about 1994-5, gets you nowhere.
On our way to the Gabba on the fourth day, Ian and I passed a fortune-teller's hut. Inside it with the fortune-teller was an England fan who'd stopped off to hear what she had to say. I wonder if she predicted the outcome of the series.
Whatever she told him, it probably had more point to it than this little number from Mike Selvey:
To Stuart Clark went the final wicket, that of Steve Harmison caught at long leg, to spark Australian celebrations of only their second victory in the last seven matches against England. [Emphasis added.]Seven? Why seven? If you take the last Ashes series, of 2005, and the Test just completed at the Gabba, it's six. But in that case England have also only won two from six. If, however, you add on to the beginning of this sequence the final Test from the 2002-3 series, a Test which England won, then England have three from seven to Australia's two from seven. That's why seven. But what a dumb game that is. Because once you're going back before 2005, you might as well add the whole of the 2002-3 series. It's more logical. In which case you've got a sequence of 11, of which Australia have won six and England only three. Even better: you could start in the summer of 1989. Doing that, what you get is that Australia have won 30 Tests to England's nine.
Gabba, Gabba, Gabba, Gabba, Gabba, Gabba, Gabba, said the monkey to the chimp.
I don't know what's going to happen any more than you do, but I think it will be harder fought than most of this first Test might have suggested. The fourth day indicated as much. England need to play Monty Panesar and to drop James Anderson. Andrew Strauss needs to remember that his job as an opener is to stick around.
Gideon Haigh is blogging about the series at Cricinfo.
Rod Marsh calls the England set-up a shambles.
Why are cricketers such good dancers? (Thanks: JB.)
Tomorrow, I go to Adelaide.
A list - who, when and why. (Thanks: IT.)
Natasha Walter reports back on a recent trip she made to Afghanistan, and on the grim situation for women there. The Taliban figure prominently in her account, and George Bush and Tony Blair also put in an appearance. Then there's this paragaph:
Like all the other women I meet on my trip, Kochai is very sure that despite all the insecurity and lack of progress, life would be far worse if western forces pulled out. "If the British and American soldiers left now, we wouldn't be able to leave our houses. We would lose all that we have."
Every now and again one comes across the 'Bloggers - who needs them?' article, written by a journalist (see here for example). Decrying the low standard of much of what is to be found on blogs, and contrasting it unfavourably with the content of the regular media, the article will set out to deflate the claims and activities of the enormous number of us who happen to enjoy blogging, having our say whatever it might be. Against some of the more exorbitant claims made by a very few bloggers, such pieces may have a point. But otherwise you wonder why their authors bother. There is poor stuff on blogs, but there is poor stuff everywhere, including in established newspapers. That's the way the world is. And you can read whatever you like, or not. There is also good stuff to be found on blogs, as in established newspapers. It's a mixture, here as there, as most places. I don't care to comment on relative proportions because I don't care, period. The point stands whatever those proportions are, and one should get used to it. The more canny amongst journalists are untroubled by the existence of the blogosphere, and they've adapted to it.
These reflections are prompted by an argument currently going on over book reviewing. I haven't followed all its stages, but it seems to involve a literary variant of the anti-blogger gripe. John Sutherland worried, in The Daily Telegraph, 'what the web is doing to the craft and ethics of reviewing' - and about people 'shooting off their mouths'. Horrors! That any old body, and lacking the proper credentials, should be able to give his or her opinion about a book. Whatever next? Then there was this on Sunday from Rachel Cooke in the Observer:
The question that Sutherland has raised... is not only fair; it is one that no one who cares about art, and especially writing, can ignore.Well, excuse me, but I think I care - to an extent anyway - about art and writing, and I'm not especially troubled here, because people, at any rate plenty of them, can tell the difference between a well-written and well-informed, instructive, etc., review and something that is worse than that. I also think that the following question merits a loud raspberry:
But what if the media... gives up on serious criticism, exchanging it for the populist warblings of the blogosphere? This would be easy to do, and cheap. But my God, I hope it will not happen. This is not only because there are so many critics, past and present, that I admire. It is because so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written.'Populist warblings' is quite exquisitely chosen, don't you think? But why should, why would, the media or anybody else give up on serious criticism? I mean how many pointless, ignorant, rambling and indeed utterly vacuous articles has one read in established newspapers, without giving up on the more serious things that these papers contain?
The 'end of civilization as we know it' comes across as a comical theme often enough. But at least where it involves an imagined catastrophe of world-historical scope, it can possess dramatic charm. In the present case, however? A snooty fear of the imminent collapse of reviewing standards? My God, my God, now that truly is belly-laugh stuff.
Adèle Geras has written more than 90 books for children of all ages, and for adults. Her latest books are Ithaka and Made in Heaven. She reviews regularly for The Guardian and the TES. Here, Adèle writes about William Maxwell's Time Will Darken It.
Adèle Geras on Time Will Darken It by William Maxwell
I first read Time Will Darken It about 10 years ago. I was led to it by Nicholas Lezard of The Guardian who described it as a 19th century novel written in the 20th century. When I went to buy it, I was attracted to it also by the beautiful house on the cover. There are those who like buxom young ladies in shawls on the front of their reading matter; others admire futuristic gizmos and ridiculously hi-tech fonts. For me, a house on the cover promises disclosures of what's going on behind its doors and in rooms hinted at by dark windows. I'm curious to find out.
I found it a little difficult to concentrate on other things while I was reading this book. I became absorbed in a way that adults seldom are, because they haven't the leisure to read as a child does, ready and able to give themselves up entirely to a fictional world. After I'd finished it, I became a William Maxwell addict and read all his other novels. For a time, I was telling everyone, aloud and in print (I wrote about him for Susan Hill's much-missed journal, Books and Company), how marvellous Maxwell was, how amazing that he wasn't better known and how important it was that they read Time Will Darken It at once.
The title is enigmatic and I like that about it, too. I appreciate books whose title you only really understand after you get to the end of the story. In the case of this novel, though, all becomes clear once you read the introduction. This is a short piece by Francisco Pacheco, the 17th century Spanish painter, on the subject of painting landscape, and what he says is fascinating. A passage about preparing the paint ends thus: 'If you temper the necessary quantity of pigment - or even more - with linseed or walnut oil and add enough white, you shall produce a bright tint. It must not be dark; on the contrary, it must be rather on the light side because time will darken it...'
What is true about organizing a landscape with figures applies equally to setting the stage for a novel to unfold. If we're looking at a life, or at a time in the past, we may not be able to see clearly. Things may be hidden and others difficult to pick out for all the clutter that's grown up around them. In this story, which takes a family and sees what happens to it over a stretch of time, I think it's Maxwell's intention to highlight aspects of relationships, emotions, actions and outcomes which might not be noticed in the comings and goings of daily life.
The story is a simple one. Austin King is a respected lawyer and we are told of the consequences to him and his family of a visit from relatives who come to stay one summer. They've arrived from the South to Illinois, which is where Maxwell was born in 1908. His mother died from influenza when he was young and this colours his work. Mothers and children and the bonds and conflicts which spring up between them are important to him. Austin is married to Martha and they have a daughter called Ab. He has a secretary in his law office, the formidable Miss Ewing. He has neighbours and servants, and we get to know the whole of the small, pleasant community to which his family belongs.
Nora, his cousin, becomes besotted with him. He is polite and helpful. His actions are misunderstood. They have repercussions. I'm not going to give away any more of the plot. Rather I'm going to list, as I did in the piece I wrote for Books and Company, reasons why Maxwell is such a wonderful writer.
He's modern and traditional at the same time. He starts us on a narrative journey which, as Nicholas Lezard was quite right to point out, is very 19th century. We have a linear narrative, strong characters described in detail, and values which readers two hundred years ago would not have found in the least strange. And yet, there are modernist flourishes. The point of view changes and then sometimes, right in the middle of telling us the story, Maxwell the writer speaks to us directly. For example, he suddenly lists (and this takes up one and half pages) things you will find pasted in every family album. These include:
- 'two families seated along the edge of a band pavilion'Check your own albums against Maxwell's and there's an eerie accuracy about it, as well as the kind of poetry that lists often seem to produce. It's magical stuff.
- 'the children wading with their clothes pulled up to their thighs'
- 'girls with young men they did not marry'
- and 'a path shovelled through snow'
There are strong emotions at play in this book and Maxwell is not afraid to describe them. At a time when the ironic, the post-modern, the sharp and the clever are highly valued, it's good to read about things which other writers might consider insignificant but to which Maxwell gives appropriate weight: petty jealousies that people don't like admitting even to themselves; unworthy thoughts; secret resentments and the methods we use to cover them up. He manages to describe all these without becoming a bore.
He's a writer who's not in a hurry. The story unfolds slowly, though never ploddingly. There's a lightness in the prose that prevents it from becoming leaden. Anyone in a rush for action, or who longs for one damn thing happening immediately after another is advised to try another book. This one takes its time. We wander through the house. We learn about every corner. Maxwell was writing in an age before television and thought it part of his duty to tell us what places looked like, what people were wearing and so forth. If you're into fizz and buzz and dazzle, this is not the novel for you. But if you're interested in structure, it's a kind of masterclass. It has a shape: a beginning, middle and end. Seasons change and, with the passage of time in nature, there is a choreography that affects the plot and the characters. The point of view moves from one character to the next; we go from interiors to exteriors; we move from one house to another in the same street; and we are reminded again that Maxwell is highlighting certain things for effect, just as Pacheco recommended in the short piece at the beginning of the book.
What determines whether or not we love a novel often has to do with character. Is there someone in the story with whom we can identify? Someone we grow to love? Or someone we hate passionately? In Time Will Darken It, as well as a very sympathetic hero, we have many memorable characters, and Maxwell is particularly skilled at bringing us a child's point of view and creating a child character who is every bit as complicated and fully-developed as the adults in the book.
This is not a novel which will keep you up at night turning the pages to see what happens next. You will not be holding your breath for the next shocking revelation. Things are disclosed gradually. The meaning of words spoken, looks exchanged, and things undone or done badly, take time to percolate through the text and into your consciousness. But when you've read it, you'll remember it. An image, a conversation, a nuance of thought or emotion will have stayed in your mind. And I'm betting that, like me, you'll want to go on and read something else - everything else - by this supremely civilized, elegant and compassionate writer.
[All the pieces that have appeared to date in this series, with the links to them, are listed here and here.]
