Cloud Atlas

For me, David Mitchell’s book is in my top five English novels from the past twenty years. It’s hard to describe without offering spoiler alerts, and I really don’t want to do that. If you haven’t read it, I really want you to, and I also want you to discover for yourself the intricate way in which it’s organised. A simple summary would say that it moves across varied settings, times and genres, allowing Mitchell to demonstrate incredible virtuosity. But it’s also witty and fast-moving, a delight to read, and it has recurrent themes and motifs which bind the whole thing together.

I knew all that before. Soon after I first read it, I picked up a second-hand hardback copy, knowing that I wanted it on my desert island bookshelf, of substantial novels I knew I would re-read. Some time back I’d lent it to my son, and he returned it in a quick visit between lockdowns. when the latest lockdown started, I knew my desert island had arrived. Would the magic still be there? It was. I knew what was coming, frequently had “Oh yes, it’s this bit” moments, but the pleasure of reading, of being drawn into this ingenious, compulsive structure, was as strong as ever. While there’s books around like this, I know I can cope.

Another Country

Regular readers will note that the range of fiction I’m reading is expanding all the time - Bulgarian, for instance. I’m reading new stuff, re-reading old favourites, and also digging up books that have sat on my shelves for years but somehow never got read. I can tell this when I pick up a 1973 copy of Another Country, and the blurb says “The greatest Negro Writer “ (The Spectator). They’re talking about James Baldwin, famous as the distinctive, angry voice of “I am Not your Negro”. But in this novel he’s more like George Eliot. It’s a panorama, that moves across a group of characters who are male and female, black and white, straight and gay, like some 1960s Middlemarch. And for each of them Baldwin presumes to enter their heads and hearts, convey the mixture and development of how they think and feel. And within that he’s quite capable of throwing in a lyrical paragraph describing how it feels to be walking though New York. It’s hugely ambitious and at moments it goes over the top or doesn’t quite convince, but that’s a small price to pay for ambition and adventure. I’ve never read anything quite like this, and I’m so glad I got round to it.

Bulgarian Fiction

Asya, my son’s partner, is Bulgarian, and for Christmas she gave me a contemporary novel from there - The Physics of Sorrow, by Georgi Gospodinov. Obviously, I had no clue what to expect. It turns out to be a total treat because (a) it’s clever, sad, funny all at once (b) brilliantly translated and therefore a pleasure to read AND (c) a really interesting insight into contemporary Bulgaria. And yet it’s only by that freak accident that I’ve come across it.

And this must, of course, be happening all the time. As a teacher and timetabler, I remember the teaching of languages being deliberately downgraded by a government with other priorities, and that’s of course an English government, with a high view of its own exceptionalism and very little interest in other countries. As it happens, I’ve never been that good at languages, and haven’t explored foreign writers with anything like the energy and curiosity of other people I know so I’ve obviously missed out, and will continue to do so in this post-Brexit fantasy of isolation to which our leaders wish to guide us. But it’s salutary to get the occasional reminder of what we’re missing.

Clear Bright Future

It would be good to have a clear account of how we got here - but there’s so much to take in. Trump and Brexit, of course, but also neoliberalism, xenophobia, marketisation, QAnon, sexism, racism, climate change, Western foreign policy, the power of algorithms, artificial intelligence and surveillance capitalism…

But here it is. Paul Mason’s Clear Bright Future deals with all this stuff, and more, in a clear, organised way that makes it understandable. He’s got vivid memories of his own upbringing and the strengths of a working class tradition that involved, but there’s nothing rosy about his analysis, and he’s also capable of a thorough, detailed and objective account of the bits of Marxism with which he does and doesn’t agree. Sometimes he’s like an old-style preacher, picking on a lively image to convey his meaning, as in his account of the financial crash of 2008 - “Imagine that the banks are a casino....” At other times he’s the experienced reporter, who’s been there, on the ground, at key moments of protest.

Best of all, there’s a burning, positive belief, in the need for an independent humanism, in the possiblity of resistance against the powerful forces which currently threaten our future and our freedom. On the back are rave quotes from Philip Pullman and Pankaj Mishra, which is a double plus in my book, but all the full-length reviews I’ve been able to trace have been grudging, failing at acknowledge the vision and ambition that’s at work.

Birds and People

In that precious interlude between lockdowns, when the libraries were still open, I borrowed “Birds and People.” I’d read good reviews, but had no clue what I was in for. It weighs in at over 2.5 kg, 592 pages, double columns, small print. Could look a bit boring, except that there’s stunning photographs on every other page. They’re from all over the world, and they’re all by David Tipling. How did he manage that? By spending eight years on it. This book looks like an encyclopaedia, but it has none of the dryness that suggests. It’s written by Mark Cocker, a lively thoughtful writer who’s also built up a massive network of contributors, who’ve sent him their observations, memories, favourite poems about birds. One of them is Jim Crace, whose cover quote describes the book like this: “A uniquely beautiful and engrossing volume, absolutely drenched in knowledge and love.”

And he’s right. I got this book out of the library, out of curiosity. I’ve taken it back now - but I’ve also bought my own copy, a bargain at £40.00. I’m not anything like an expert on birds, but one of my consolations during this further lockdown will be to go back to this book, again and again, and to keep finding in it something striking, amusing or entertaining, which will then lodge in my mind for days thereafter.

Back with the Books

I’m not sure I realised, until lockdown, how much I depended on libraries. I’m lucky in that I have a ton of books, and in a crisis there’s a lot I haven’t read, and many I’m happy to re-read. But there’s nothing quite like a steady supply of recent books for which you don’t need to find space on your shelves.

For the past week, for instance, I’ve had William Gibson’s “Agency” downstairs, and Tana French’s “Broken Harbour” by my bed. So at least once I day I wander into two completely different imaginary worlds. “Agency” is a dystopian glimpse of a possible future, but heaving with present references - Brexit, Trump, “the klept”. Which makes it sound deeply depressing and dull, except that it’s lively, witty and constantly entertaining, with much more optimism and love than you might expect.

Not a lot of optimism i n “Broken Harbour.” A dour detective in the aftermath of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, investigating a grisly mass murder in a grim Irish seaside town. He’s also got a new, young partner to adapt to, and a ton of family demons which he’s never managed to face. Again, it sounds like total gloom, but there’s ferocious energy and intelligence in the way French delivers the twists and gradually shows you more of characters you hadn’t quite understood the first time around.

Coming to the end of both. I need to go back through the reviews and reserve the next ones on the list, before lockdown shuts the library doors again.

The US election

A week ago, we got back from a week away, staying in an idyllic Welsh cottage next to a chapel, not far from Hay. No wi-fi, no TV, and - a real break for me - no copy of The Guardian. It was bliss. but also a really good chance to read and reflect, and I did take with me a collection of cuttings from The Guardian which I’d beeen building up over recent weeks. so although I didn’t consciously plan it that was, this became a kind of retreat to reflect on the Us election. (And it was a bonus that we had Sarah Kendzior’s brilliant book “Hiding in Plain Sight” about the development of the Trump kleptocracy. So I read and I wrote, and increasingly the coming US vote feels like a watershed - if, given the ample evidence of his blindness, selfishness and deadly incompetence, people still vote for Trump, what does that say about what we’ve become? Michael Moore has been warning Democrats that Trump’s supporters are more enthusiastic than theirs, and in a twisted way that makes sense - ho doesn’t have to consider the normal constraints of realism and responsibility, he can just say and do whatever makes them cheer. And yes, I wrote as well. There’s three poems on various aspects of the campaign - Kenosha, Portland and the overall tactical battle, which await serious fanatics in the “poems from the news” section of this website

In praise of libraries

I’m lucky that I’ve got a lot of books. so for the three months of lockdown I never thought I’d run out of reading material. I had some library books to work through, and then they sat idle while i went through the shelves, picking out old favourites to re-read, and deciding which neglected masterpieces I should belatedly sample.

But now I realise what I’ve been missing. Bridgnorth Library, eight miles down the road, is cautiously re-opening. Careful precautions, systems, routines - but books available for loan, on the shelves. Because our local Wenlock library wasn’t yet open, I drove to Bridgnorth, and came back with a haul of eight books. Next day, a friend who volunteers at Wenlock library brought round six books from there, which I’d ordered earlier. So, total bliss. A ton of good stuff I want to read. Within a week I’d read Sam Lipsyte’s Hark, Jill Soloway’s she Wants It, Tana French’s The Secret Place and Ali smith’s spring. Each totally different, but new to me, and exactly what I wanted to read. It’s great to have them back.

The Parisian

This, children, is how it worked in the good old days. At the weekend I read a long rave review about this new book, which followed the life of a young Palestinian man, from a life-defining early stay in France, through his return to Nablus, marriage and advancing age. It’s subtle, personal and sensitive, but it’s also brilliant on the surrounding context, of a turbulent Middle East between the wars. I ordered it online from the brilliant Shropshire Library service, and for 75p collected it within a week. It’s over 550 pages, the first novel Isabella Hammad (who to judge by her photo is barely out of her teens). she’s also got a rave review from Zadie Smith on the back but hey, that’s what the younger generation are for, to blow our socks off with stuff we couldn’t do.

But things have changed. I’ve read it all, and loved it, but it can’t go back. anyone else like me who took a note of it, can’t check in to the library to borrow it, and this brilliant career is put on hold, hovering in mid air. Who knows if anyone will remember by the time we’re back to normal. so this is me, doing my little bit to give Isabella a hand. Isabella Hammad - The Parisian. Don’t nod wisely and smile. Write it down.

The Brexit Fantasy

It was only a matter of time. Today we learn that the UK is not involved in a scheme to source ventilators, where the clout of the EU helps to keep the price down. But A No. 10 spokesman is scurrying to reassure us that this is nothing to do with Brexit; it’s just that we missed the deadline to apply. So that’s OK, then. We’re not doctrinaire, just incompetent.

It’s maybe tactless to be recommending books when the libraries are closed, but I’ll do it anyway. Fintan O’Toole’s “Heroic Failure” is a stunning study of Brexit, and the way it draws on various myths to generate a peculiarly English rage which has very little to do with how the EU actually works. It takes in Fifty Shades of Grey, Deighton’s SS-GB, P.G.Wodehouse, punk and The Italian Job (really, it does all make sense as you read). But the bit that’s stuck with me is “Brexit will always be a cause betrayed, for a third of the voters.”

And still its power lingers on. There are Brexiters who argue that coronavirus strengthens our hand, Farage is pushing for us to exploit Italy’s weakness, and Johnson insists that whatever’s happening to normal business, theatres, football and the Olympics, the Brexit timetable is sacred. You couldn’t make it up.

And again, one more time...

Why do they always do sequels? My heart sank the other night, walking through a cinema to see publicity for A Quiet place 2. A Quiet Place 1 was wonderful, a totally unique cinema shock that will never be the same again - but hey, we’re going to try. I’ve been feeling like that over the past few days, as I’ve read Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. It’s well-written and intelligent, its heart is in the right place, but the feeling of reading it is nothing like the fear and discovery that accompanied reading The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time. The first time really is special. I’m astonished they gave it the Booker Prize. The Booker is for alerting you to something you’d otherwise never have read, some magical that could go under the radar if it weren’t properly recognised - like Anna Burns stunning The Milkman. But if this worthy, efficient rerun really is the most exciting novel written last year, then we’re in deeper trouble than I’d thought.

Rusty Brown

One of the nice things about family is that they can give you Christmas presents you weren’t expecting, but find out that you need. My current pleasure is Rusty Brown, the mammoth graphic novel by Chris Ware, which my son bought me for Christmas. It’s really hard to explain to people, because it doesn’t sound attractive - you really have to immerse yourself to get the flavour. But as a start - it’s a complex story, starting from a schoolroom scene, but shooting off at different angles to explore the lives of various people involved in that scene, often in huge detail. The panels telling the story vary from huge to tiny, and there’s moments when my seventy year old eyes struggled to read the small print. There are also moments, often when there’s no writing, when I struggle to work out exactly what I’m being told - exactly what is going on here, and how does it relate to what I’ve just read? But it is all worth it, because Ware is clever, sympathetic and thoughtful - often in a sad, rather wistful way, and is capable of inducing his readers to get involved in characters who seem superficially to be far from sympathetic. It’s an ambitious, complex world, well worth the huge investment of time that’s required - there’s 350 detailed pages here, and if you don’t engage the brain you haven’t a chance. Strongly recommended.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

No, it doesn’t sound like a page turner. It’s over five hundred pages, with over a hundred pages of notes, and it’s possibly the best book I’ve read all year. It’s not often you feel, as you read a book, “it’s actually changing how I think about this.” And if “this” is the digital world of Google, Facebook and amazon, then that’s pretty impressive. It’s a combination of different kinds of writing - of historical research into the development of the internet; of personal research, through detailed interviews with people intimately involved in these developments; and of creative writing, seeing unexpected parallels - with research into wild animals, with the history of the conquistadors - which illuminate how it is that the masters of the digital world have ended up taking advantage of what they know about our lives to sell us stuff, in defiance of what we have always thought of as common sense and justice. It’s scary but entirely responsible, as well as rational and constructive, looking for the civic and personal responses which might help to secure our freedoms. Shoshana Zuboff has given me a lot to think about, and although I’ve saved £25.00 by getting her book from the library, I’m increasingly thinking that I need to buy my own copy, so that I can go back and check the stuff that I was impressed by but can’t completely remember. And that’s one special kind of book.

Tana French

So I’m reading a rave review of the latest detective story by Tana French, and then I find there’s a TV version of some of her earlier books about to start on BBC as Dublin Murders. I’m usually extremely unexcited by the prospect of a new crime series, since so many of them are formulaic, exploitative or unconvincing (and sometimes all three) but it was actually worth it. I’m hooked to the TV, and got The Trespasser out of the library. couldn’t out it down. Like Le Carre and Ian Rankin, she’s a terrific writer who just happens to operate within a genre, and so doesn’t feature in respectable discussions of good writing, but I find myself more invested in the lives of her detectives than I am in something like World on Fire, which has a huge budget and soaring pretensions to significance. This is a small canvas, but it captures the intense atmosphere of competitive teamwork (rivalries, suspicion, betrayal) really well. I had it by the bedside, and woke early one morning. Rather than get up, I carried on reading - and two hours later had finished the book. I shall be back for more.

Postwar

Strange how the human brain works. Years ago, I bought my wife Linda tony Judt’s “Postwar”, a massive history of post war Europe that was relevant to an OU course she wa studyingat the time. i’ve known for years that this 800-page monster was sitting on her shelves, and planned that some day I’d get round to it. And then, not quite sure how or why, that day arrived. i happened not to have any books out from the library, had a stretch of time ahead of me without many commitments, so I decided that this was the time. It’ been parked in our front room for a month or more. Each day I’ve come down in my dressing gown, made a cup of tea, and have sat down to read a few pages. And gradually, bit by bit, I’ve worked my way through. There’s no way I’ll remember it all, but as I read I did have this sense of pieces fitting into place, things that had seemed a blur becoming that little bit clearer. One detail, for example. There was no bread rationing in the UK during the war - but straight after the war, there was. We were desperate, broke, and that’s part of the reason why the amazing Attlee government didn’t last.

So now I’m free to read something else, which is nice. But i’m so glad I bothered to get around to this.

Sonnets with notes

Today I launched a collection of poems. that sounds like a momentous event, but I’ve actually run quite a lot of launches recently, as I’ve got into the habit of producing short topical pamphlets: book the Priory Hall, get nibbles and drinks, summon supportive friends. I read a few poems, we chat about the issues, eat and drink a bit more, and then go home - all within an hour. A pleasant kind of routine.

But this one was different. sonnets with notes isn’t a pamphlet, it’s a proper book - with a spine and an ISBN, produced by Orphans Press (who yet again were brilliant). And it contains 50 of my best sonnets (chosen from 400) from the last twenty years - so it’s a much more considered collection than the 36-page pamphlets I’ve thrown together within a few months. In so far as I have a poetic legacy, this is probably it. Certainlt the majority of my successes have come from sonnets (8 first-three placings out of 11, if you want the figures), so it’s been a pleasure to get this book in my hands, and the response of good poets I trust has been really gratifying.

Chickening Out

Kamila Shamsie, one of my favourite novelists, has been awarded the Nelly Sachs prize - and then had it withdrawn. The reason is that she’s expressed support for the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. Explaining their decision, the judges say “This contrasts with the claim of the Nelly Sachs prize to proclaim and exemplify reconciliation among peoples and cultures.”

Back in May, the German parliament labelled the BDS movement as anti-semitic, “reiminiscent of the most terrible chapter in German history.” Their decision was criticised by 60 Jewish and Israeli academics, seeing it a part of a trend. There’s certainly a rise in anti-semitism, but there’s also a massive push by the Jewish lobby to label any opposition to Israeli policies as intrinsically anti—semitic. In her defence, Shamsie refers to Netanyahu’s annexation plans (see my post of Sept 12), and states that “the jury has chosen to withdraw the award from me on the basis of my support for a non-violent campaign to bring pressure on the Israeli government.” The Dortmund authorities refused to release her statement with their own account of what happened.

It’s fraught territory, and giving in may look like playing safe, but it’s a sad abdication of judgement, and a discouragement to writers who want to take on serious issues of human rights.

Hermione Lee

So I read this rave review of Hermione Lee’s biography of Penelope Fitzgerald and thought, “Yeah, give it a try.” That’s 75p’s worth of try, which is what it costs me to order a copy from the library. the library, amazingly, continues to function, even if the budgets, staffing and footprint are all down. to me, it’s one of the wonders of the world, but God knows if it will last.

So, it’s along book, and i’m not sure, even know, how much I like Penelope Fitzgerald, or rate her as an author, but the biography is a thing of beauty - careful, detailed, sensitive. Fitzgerald’s a difficult, prickly character, and there must have been times when it was hard to be fair to her, but I worked my way steadily though, reading a chunk a day before breakfast, just luxuriating in the pleasures of intelligent, quality writing.

This encouraged me to seek out The Blue Flower, supposedly Fitzgeral’s masterpiece, from a local second-hand bookshop. I read it, with some enjoyment, but not much enthusiasm, and i’m not sure I’m converted. But the quality of the biography is utterly beyond doubt.

Steve Griffiths

Not a household name. He’s a poet, currently living in Shropshire, who’s had a long and successful career, writing in London and in Wales before moving into this part of the world. I’ve known him a while, and was delighted to go to the launch of his latest collection this week. He’s been writing for forty years, has had seven previous collections, and this is very much a “greatest hits.” Hours of going through old poems, sometimes rewriting them, starting off with a massive pile which is then trimmed down to a snappy 230 pages (still huge for a poetry collection). It’s partly that he’s a really decent guy - relaxed, friendly and brutally honest about himself and the mistakes he’s made. But it’s also the range of the work - personal and political, serious and funny, natural observation and historical research. I loved the reading, bought the copy with no hesitation at all, and ever since have been steadily reading my way through it, a few pages at a time.

Sonnets in Portugal

There’s a large-sized gap in my blog this month, since I went off on holiday. And for me holidaty is holiday - no emails, no nternet. It’s veryrestful - and a total joy to be missing out on Brexit - but there’s catching up to do when I come home. Portugal was gorgeous, for all kinds of reasons, but I wasn’t expecting the sonnet bit. I should have done, I suppose. When Elizabeth Barrett Browning announces her poems as “Sonnets from the Portuguese” she’s lying (they have no connection with any poems from that country) but nicely. Portugal does have a close link with sonnets. Camoes was writing them, and well, long before Shakespeare, and I bought a collection of “Five Lisbon Poets” four of whom were seriously involved in writing sonnets. So a good chucnk of my holiday was reading the English versions of their poems (parallel text, natch) and then writing sonnets about various doomed young intellectuals who wrote sonnets but were only appreciated after their death - Cesario Verde, for instance, who turned out to be a special favourite of our Portuguese guide. So I come back tanned and overweight - which was part of the plan - but also wiser.