Here's an interesting fact about Keith Richards - he may not even be able to play the guitar at all! He does this thing called open tuning, so the strings are naturally set to G without fingers. It's the only way you can make Start Me Up and Brown Sugar sounds right, apparently. And he only uses five strings, rather than six. It sounds more Guitar Hero than guitar hero to me, but who am I to judge. All I can play on the guitar is Patience. And not the Guns and Roses one...
Keith's writing has an easy and seductive flow, and he's got a robust sense of irony and the poet's eye for picking out telling details. He manages to portray himself as the the sensible, down to earth one in the Rolling Stones, even when he's sleeping with a gun under his pillow, and can only be woken by his seven year old son Marlon in case he opens fire.
So, about those other Stones. Brian Jones doesn't come out looking good at all. Manipulative, massively egocentric, out of control and a woman beater. Keith steals Anita Pallenberg from him (also portrayed in this book). Bill Wyman - likes 'em young, boring, but once went and bought heroin for Keith, so a point in his favour. Charlie Watts he has a lot of respect for, and was the one member of the band they really had to fight for in their younger days. And he gets on well with Ronnie Wood too because they've both got that gypsy/pirate thing going on.
His relationship with Mick Jagger is a bigger issue. Keith talks fondly of them sitting down, writing songs together, and he rates Mick as one of the best harmonica players in the world. Says it's the one time he's not striking a pose onstage. That's his problem with Mick - he always wants to be something else, rather than Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, which Keith feels should be enough for anyone. His failed attempt at a solo career in the 80s created a pretty big rift between them. And, of course, the knighthood from Tony Blair is roundly mocked. He's still got plenty of respect for him, but it's striking that they haven't been to each other's dressing rooms for decades.
A lot of this book is about the drugs, and it's great on the exhausting and humiliating efforts to get enough gear just to make you feel normal. He remembers how, from his youngest days, he was never knocked out by illness. You just man up and keep going. He took that businesslike approach to taking huge amounts of drugs, and still turning up on stage. Fair enough, he used to regularly vomit behind the speakers, but he says they all did that. Plenty of others in his life, however, didn't have his stamina, and he tends to skirt the issue of how much responsibility he should feel in introducing these casualties to a lifestyle only he can really maintain.
Thankfully there's also plenty about music - his passion for the blues shines off the page. As well as how to tune your guitar, there's how he comes up with riffs, meetings with his musical heroes (Chuck Berry, predictably, is a big disappointment), on-stage mishaps, like a firework burning right through his finger on stage as they open with Start Me Up. He doesn't even stop, but of course he's got that open tuning, so it's not that impressive. What's also really interesting is who's playing what on those early tracks: on Play with Fire for instance, that's Phil Spector on bass. And the harpsichord isn't Brian Jones, it's Frank Nitzche - the man who really invented the Wall of Sound! He also played piano on Paint it Black. Well....I thought it was interesting.
A very easy and entertaining read this - rock and roll, drugs and sex. In that order.
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
Power Play by Gavin Esler
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS
The good thing about listening to books on tape is that no matter how godawful the book is, you can generally push through to the end. Unless it's the Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, which unaccountably won the Booker Prize, and even more unaccountably is supposed to be a 'comic novel.'
I doubt Power Play's won any literary awards, and it is rubbish - but at least it's readable enough. Listenable, anyway. The hero is the British ambassador to the USA. There's a very powerful and hawkish Vice President who needs to be massaged by the British. They take him on a grouse shoot in Aberdeenshire, where he vanishes. Cue pandemonium.
A pretty nice set up then - lots of potential. Missing VP on British soil! What's happened to him? Kidnapped by jihadists? Gone nuts? Is it all a set up to justify another war?
Except the book fails utterly. Problem one is this Vice President is clearly just Dick Cheney, with maybe a touch of Rumsfeld thrown in. He even has a tendency to accidently shoot his friends on hunting trips! A few years on, and we've got nice cuddly Obama pouring over his kill list and no-one bats an eye. A carbon copy Cheney already seems cheap, trite and old hat. Here's a theory - Esler's a journalist, and journalists don't have any imagination. We report what we see, and maybe twist it a bit. Don't ask us to write a novel.
But that's not the big problem. Here's the story: the VP disappears. Then tapes of him getting Abu Graibed are released on the internet - exciting! Then he's found chained up naked on a beach on Norfolk, driven half mad. This is where the big SPOILER comes in. We never find out what happened to him...
Aha!!! Did you see what he did there? Not everything's got an answer - not everything comes with all the loose ends tied up in a bow - the world's complicated etc etc etc. Absolutely unforgiveable, and Esler's editor should probably be sent to Abu Graib for not sitting him down and saying - yes, very clever. Now stop mucking about and finish the novel.
Just a couple of final quibbles. Uncomfortable softcore BDSM. No. And I'd like to draw attention to one scene which only makes sense if the author was doing it as a bet. The ambassador makes a speech where we've been expressly told Mike Myers is in the audience. A fairly feeble joke is made (though I think it's supposed to be witty) and Myers says "groovy baby" to the room. In, and I quote "his best Austin Powers accent."
This makes no sense whatsoever in the context of scene, or in the book as a whole. Is this the kind of thing Mike Myers would do? Neither Myers nor Austin Powers had been referenced in the speech, I should point out. That would make some kind of sense.
This scene really, really bothers me and I've been trying to figure it out ever since. I've actually found it online here so if anyone can figure out what's going please let me know. Start on page 81. Thanks in advance.
The good thing about listening to books on tape is that no matter how godawful the book is, you can generally push through to the end. Unless it's the Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, which unaccountably won the Booker Prize, and even more unaccountably is supposed to be a 'comic novel.'
I doubt Power Play's won any literary awards, and it is rubbish - but at least it's readable enough. Listenable, anyway. The hero is the British ambassador to the USA. There's a very powerful and hawkish Vice President who needs to be massaged by the British. They take him on a grouse shoot in Aberdeenshire, where he vanishes. Cue pandemonium.
A pretty nice set up then - lots of potential. Missing VP on British soil! What's happened to him? Kidnapped by jihadists? Gone nuts? Is it all a set up to justify another war?
Except the book fails utterly. Problem one is this Vice President is clearly just Dick Cheney, with maybe a touch of Rumsfeld thrown in. He even has a tendency to accidently shoot his friends on hunting trips! A few years on, and we've got nice cuddly Obama pouring over his kill list and no-one bats an eye. A carbon copy Cheney already seems cheap, trite and old hat. Here's a theory - Esler's a journalist, and journalists don't have any imagination. We report what we see, and maybe twist it a bit. Don't ask us to write a novel.
But that's not the big problem. Here's the story: the VP disappears. Then tapes of him getting Abu Graibed are released on the internet - exciting! Then he's found chained up naked on a beach on Norfolk, driven half mad. This is where the big SPOILER comes in. We never find out what happened to him...
Aha!!! Did you see what he did there? Not everything's got an answer - not everything comes with all the loose ends tied up in a bow - the world's complicated etc etc etc. Absolutely unforgiveable, and Esler's editor should probably be sent to Abu Graib for not sitting him down and saying - yes, very clever. Now stop mucking about and finish the novel.
Just a couple of final quibbles. Uncomfortable softcore BDSM. No. And I'd like to draw attention to one scene which only makes sense if the author was doing it as a bet. The ambassador makes a speech where we've been expressly told Mike Myers is in the audience. A fairly feeble joke is made (though I think it's supposed to be witty) and Myers says "groovy baby" to the room. In, and I quote "his best Austin Powers accent."
This makes no sense whatsoever in the context of scene, or in the book as a whole. Is this the kind of thing Mike Myers would do? Neither Myers nor Austin Powers had been referenced in the speech, I should point out. That would make some kind of sense.
This scene really, really bothers me and I've been trying to figure it out ever since. I've actually found it online here so if anyone can figure out what's going please let me know. Start on page 81. Thanks in advance.
Monday, 30 July 2012
The Fall of the West by Adrian Goldsworthy
"...instead of inquiring how the Roman Empire was destroyed," asked Edward Gibbon in the Decline and Fall, "we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long." This recent but nicely old-fashioned history of the fall of Rome certainly bears this out: a litany of no-marks and nutters in charge; endemic civil wars and an institutionally terrible government. Gibbon thought the sheer size of the Empire brought the whole thing down - Goldsworthy reckons the momentum was the only thing keeping it going.
It starts off looking at the 3rd century - a time of crisis, with frequent assassinations, different bands of troops proclaiming new emperors all over the shop, and constant fighting. In the 4th century, things calm down a bit with a couple of strong emperors who know what they're doing - Diocletian sets up a tetrachy (four emperors!) which only works for as long he's the one in charge of them. More civil war - then the rise of Constantine who turns the Empire Christian and, less famously, murders his wife by locking her in a sauna until she chokes to death. The 5th century is when it all comes crashing down. Attila the Hun, Vandals and assorted Goths. The Empire carries on at Constantinople for a thousand more years after this. But it's not the same - real Romans don't speak Greek!
Goldsworthy has a bit of a grumble about all the different theories historians have put forward about what went wrong - population decline, disease, movements of peoples outside the Empire. All things which are very hard to discern in the historical record. What they tend to ignore is what we what we do know about - interminable civil wars, which ran for most of these three centuries. For Roman soldiers the big enemy was always other Roman soldiers. This was a colossal drain on resources, and would also have been devastating for Roman citizens living in the path of these warring armies. And barbarians living on other side of the Danube or wherever couldn't fail to notice when all the legionnaires had abandoned the border to fight other legionnaires...
It's important to note that these emperors weren't fighting for a cause - Romans didn't really have any ideologies. It wasn't even as if it was, say, a Christian emperor versus a pagan emperor. They were fighting only for power and survival. In previous centuries emperors had all come from the senatorial class. To stop potential claimants, the senate was increasingly sidelined to make emperors more secure. In fact, the opposite happened - lower class equestrians started grabbing the throne anyway and the pool of potential usurpers grew exponentially. In the end any military officer who could sit straight on a horse had the chance to become a living god. For a short time, anyway.
I've mentioned it in respect to this trash, but the original sin of the Roman Empire was succession. Augustus never set up a good system for who becomes next emperor. British history is obsessed with succession - arguments about who's descended from whom, who's got a strong claim to the throne, who's the rightful heir. It all might seem pretty ridiculous to us, but a very likely alternative would've been the anarchy and violence of the late Roman Empire.
Here's an interesting aside. Like the popes, emperors grew sick of Rome. Most of them in this period never even saw the Eternal City - they were either constantly on campaign (mostly against other Romans, of course) or holed up in Milan or, increasingly, Ravenna. Poor old Rome - it became a shabby backwater in its own dying Empire.
It starts off looking at the 3rd century - a time of crisis, with frequent assassinations, different bands of troops proclaiming new emperors all over the shop, and constant fighting. In the 4th century, things calm down a bit with a couple of strong emperors who know what they're doing - Diocletian sets up a tetrachy (four emperors!) which only works for as long he's the one in charge of them. More civil war - then the rise of Constantine who turns the Empire Christian and, less famously, murders his wife by locking her in a sauna until she chokes to death. The 5th century is when it all comes crashing down. Attila the Hun, Vandals and assorted Goths. The Empire carries on at Constantinople for a thousand more years after this. But it's not the same - real Romans don't speak Greek!
Goldsworthy has a bit of a grumble about all the different theories historians have put forward about what went wrong - population decline, disease, movements of peoples outside the Empire. All things which are very hard to discern in the historical record. What they tend to ignore is what we what we do know about - interminable civil wars, which ran for most of these three centuries. For Roman soldiers the big enemy was always other Roman soldiers. This was a colossal drain on resources, and would also have been devastating for Roman citizens living in the path of these warring armies. And barbarians living on other side of the Danube or wherever couldn't fail to notice when all the legionnaires had abandoned the border to fight other legionnaires...
It's important to note that these emperors weren't fighting for a cause - Romans didn't really have any ideologies. It wasn't even as if it was, say, a Christian emperor versus a pagan emperor. They were fighting only for power and survival. In previous centuries emperors had all come from the senatorial class. To stop potential claimants, the senate was increasingly sidelined to make emperors more secure. In fact, the opposite happened - lower class equestrians started grabbing the throne anyway and the pool of potential usurpers grew exponentially. In the end any military officer who could sit straight on a horse had the chance to become a living god. For a short time, anyway.
I've mentioned it in respect to this trash, but the original sin of the Roman Empire was succession. Augustus never set up a good system for who becomes next emperor. British history is obsessed with succession - arguments about who's descended from whom, who's got a strong claim to the throne, who's the rightful heir. It all might seem pretty ridiculous to us, but a very likely alternative would've been the anarchy and violence of the late Roman Empire.
Here's an interesting aside. Like the popes, emperors grew sick of Rome. Most of them in this period never even saw the Eternal City - they were either constantly on campaign (mostly against other Romans, of course) or holed up in Milan or, increasingly, Ravenna. Poor old Rome - it became a shabby backwater in its own dying Empire.
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Embassytown by China Mieville
This is everything science fiction should be - epic, dramatic, awe inspiring and mind blowing. I liked China's The City and the City, but it wasn't without its flaws. And I didn't even get all the way through The Kraken and Perdido Street Station - both were good, but too sprawling and unfocused for my tastes. Embassytown is the real deal.
I'm not going to give too much away about the plot, because much of the enjoyment comes from the unexpected twists and mounting drama. It's set very far in the future, and a colony of humans has been on an alien planet for generations, in a small enclave called Embassytown. The aliens are the Arekei and are treated with the utmost respect and called Hosts. They in return supply living biological technology from vehicles to homes and power stations. All very weird and interesting, but it's the communication between the species which is the real focus of the book.
The Arekei cannot lie, and this throws up some fascinating ideas. For instance, some of the humans have become living similes, so the aliens can use them as rhetorical devices. The protagonist Avice is "the girl who was hurt in the dark, and who ate what was given to her." This had to literally happen to her, so she could become a simile. It doesn't make a lot of sense to humans, but the Hosts talk about her in different ways, and this search for nuance and, ultimately, lies, becomes hugely important to everyone on the planet.
This is all a bit hard to get your head around sometimes, but I found it hugely rewarding. I saw echoes of some of the best sci-fi here: Lem and the Brothers Strugatsky in its convincing portrayal of the deeply alien; A Fire Upon the Deep and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card in the way it looks at communication between humans and the deeply alien; Dune and Asimov's Foundation series in its epic scope, its portryal of earth-shattering changes in society, and even in the rise of ambiguous prophets and gods.
Despite all this, it's not overly long and there's always a clear dramatic focus to keep you going. It's also intelligent and literary, and the writing and imagery are beautiful and affecting. This is a huge recommendation from me - the best book I've read all year.
I'm not going to give too much away about the plot, because much of the enjoyment comes from the unexpected twists and mounting drama. It's set very far in the future, and a colony of humans has been on an alien planet for generations, in a small enclave called Embassytown. The aliens are the Arekei and are treated with the utmost respect and called Hosts. They in return supply living biological technology from vehicles to homes and power stations. All very weird and interesting, but it's the communication between the species which is the real focus of the book.
The Arekei cannot lie, and this throws up some fascinating ideas. For instance, some of the humans have become living similes, so the aliens can use them as rhetorical devices. The protagonist Avice is "the girl who was hurt in the dark, and who ate what was given to her." This had to literally happen to her, so she could become a simile. It doesn't make a lot of sense to humans, but the Hosts talk about her in different ways, and this search for nuance and, ultimately, lies, becomes hugely important to everyone on the planet.
This is all a bit hard to get your head around sometimes, but I found it hugely rewarding. I saw echoes of some of the best sci-fi here: Lem and the Brothers Strugatsky in its convincing portrayal of the deeply alien; A Fire Upon the Deep and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card in the way it looks at communication between humans and the deeply alien; Dune and Asimov's Foundation series in its epic scope, its portryal of earth-shattering changes in society, and even in the rise of ambiguous prophets and gods.
Despite all this, it's not overly long and there's always a clear dramatic focus to keep you going. It's also intelligent and literary, and the writing and imagery are beautiful and affecting. This is a huge recommendation from me - the best book I've read all year.
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
Johnson's Life of London by Boris Johnson
An odd book, but enjoyable. The first thing I noticed was the bald faced lie on the cover. A book on tape, read by the author. Well, I know what Boris sounds like. He may have read the first cd, a chapter in the middle, and a bit at the end (all with the sound of the photocopier in the background, amusingly), but the rest was written by someone defiantly not Boris, and definitely not credited. I hope his Mayorship doesn't bring this kind slap-dash, half-baked approach to running one of the greatest cities in history.
This is - like Boris - a very self consciously old-fashioned yet modern history. Most of it is portraits of the great men and women who've made their mark on London through the ages. Boudicca, Chaucer, Dick Whittington, Shakespeare, Churchill and......Keith Richards? Not that I've got a problem with an old school "great men" historical approach, and certainly not that I've got a problem with Keith Richards, but this is an affectation too far for me.
It's sometimes a bit too much like Boris setting out his political stall. On one hand he gives a staunch defence of arch-conservative Samuel Johnson, but he also shows great affection for the radical rabble-rouser and freedom nut John Wilkes. Mary Seacole (aka the Black Florence Nightingale) is a figure of annoyance to some on the right (and left) who see her as a PC icon, who's come to dominate the Crimean War in the classroom, but Boris gives sterling support to her rehabilitation. The Churchill chapter lists his many faults, mistakes, prejudices but concludes that, despite all this evidence, he was fantastic. Again, not there's anything wrong with any of this, but there's more than a touch of inclusive, touchy feely Vote for Borisism about it all. This becomes ridiculous when he starts talking about a new airport for London and - good grief - Routemaster buses.
The bits I liked best were a step away from politics, like the fitting tribute to the natural philosopher, architect and drawer of fleas Robert Hooke, who appears to have been the only man more eccentric and misanthropic than his rival Isaac Newton. The highlight for me, though, was the passage on the life and paintings of J.W. Turner, someone I've previously known next to nothing about despite loving his pictures. Turns out he was another weirdo.
So, it's kind of all over the place this book - more a collection of essays with London as its theme than a history. Entertaining and informative though, which is always a plus. I just wish Boris had read the whole damn thing. Which isn't something you'd say about Ken.
This is - like Boris - a very self consciously old-fashioned yet modern history. Most of it is portraits of the great men and women who've made their mark on London through the ages. Boudicca, Chaucer, Dick Whittington, Shakespeare, Churchill and......Keith Richards? Not that I've got a problem with an old school "great men" historical approach, and certainly not that I've got a problem with Keith Richards, but this is an affectation too far for me.
It's sometimes a bit too much like Boris setting out his political stall. On one hand he gives a staunch defence of arch-conservative Samuel Johnson, but he also shows great affection for the radical rabble-rouser and freedom nut John Wilkes. Mary Seacole (aka the Black Florence Nightingale) is a figure of annoyance to some on the right (and left) who see her as a PC icon, who's come to dominate the Crimean War in the classroom, but Boris gives sterling support to her rehabilitation. The Churchill chapter lists his many faults, mistakes, prejudices but concludes that, despite all this evidence, he was fantastic. Again, not there's anything wrong with any of this, but there's more than a touch of inclusive, touchy feely Vote for Borisism about it all. This becomes ridiculous when he starts talking about a new airport for London and - good grief - Routemaster buses.
The bits I liked best were a step away from politics, like the fitting tribute to the natural philosopher, architect and drawer of fleas Robert Hooke, who appears to have been the only man more eccentric and misanthropic than his rival Isaac Newton. The highlight for me, though, was the passage on the life and paintings of J.W. Turner, someone I've previously known next to nothing about despite loving his pictures. Turns out he was another weirdo.
So, it's kind of all over the place this book - more a collection of essays with London as its theme than a history. Entertaining and informative though, which is always a plus. I just wish Boris had read the whole damn thing. Which isn't something you'd say about Ken.
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikötter
Probably the most harrowing book I've ever read - and I've read Mao: The Untold Story by Jung Chang.
45 million now looks like the best estimate for how many people died between 1958 and 1962. Much of Dikötter's research comes from Chinese archives never before seen by historians, so I tend to trust his judgement on that. This makes it almost certainly the worst man made disaster in history.
It was caused by a series of stupid and evil decisions. Mao decided in the late fifties (as part of an internal party struggle, as was so often the case) that China needed to modernise fast. Overtake Britain in just a few years, in fact. He did this by destroying almost half of the homes in the country, and putting everyone in communes, where everything was controlled by party cadres, and troublemakers were banned from the canteen. He forced millions to build dams and take part in irrigation projects - generally in the wrong places, with disastrous consequences. He also championed new, more socialist agricultural practise from Soviet idiot Trefim Lysenko, which ruined the crops.
Then he told everyone to make steel in the backyards of their communes. Oh, and he declared war on sparrows for eating grain, and drove them to near exinction in China. Which caused a plague of locusts. It's still hard to tell how much of this regime was evil, how much insane and how much just stupid.
At the same time, the state took a higher and higher proportion of the grain being grown. Part of it went to feed the cities, where there was often so much it was left to rot. People even took part in eating contests - 2kg of rice in a single sitting was considered a good effort. But an even larger proportion was exported - to Russia, Eastern Europe, Cuba and Africa. Showing a successful China off to the world was much more important to Mao than the deaths of millions.
What really shook me about this famine was the cruelty, rather than the stupidity. The communes became death camps with party officials regularly murdering people. There are so many heartbreaking stories - from the 8 year old boy who was beaten to death for stealing a handful of rice, to the parents who were forced to bury their 12 year old child alive for a similar crime. A mother commits suicide, so her young children are bricked up in their home to starve to death. The violence seems to have become more and more systemic as people got more desperate, and those in charge learned exactly how much power they really had.
Other stories are now seared in my memory. Corpses were dug up and eaten - the heart was popular because it rotted more slowly than other parts. People eating mud from riverbanks to fill their bellies, then having to dig out each others' faeces because of the chronic constipation. I also now know more about prolapsed uteri than most people would ever want to.
In a secret meeting in 1959 Mao told the other party leaders that it was better to let half the people die, so the other half could live. This at a time when officially a third, but in fact a great deal more, of the grain was being sent to other countries, who didn't really want it in the first place.
Mao learnt his lesson from the Great Famine. He was sidelined for a few years and returned with the Cultural Revolution. It's easier to see now how he managed to instigate such hatred from the people towards party officials, and indeed anyone in power. All that anger and frustration and hatred which should've spelled the end of Mao was instead channeled towards those party cadres who'd been carrying out his policies just a few years before. And at the end the disgusting psychopath was more powerful than ever before.
Not the easiest of reads this, what with all the unthinkable horror and reams of statististics, but it's easier as a book on tape and I recommend it highly. It shows us exactly what happens when society is ripped down to its most basic elements and rebuilt by thugs.
45 million now looks like the best estimate for how many people died between 1958 and 1962. Much of Dikötter's research comes from Chinese archives never before seen by historians, so I tend to trust his judgement on that. This makes it almost certainly the worst man made disaster in history.
It was caused by a series of stupid and evil decisions. Mao decided in the late fifties (as part of an internal party struggle, as was so often the case) that China needed to modernise fast. Overtake Britain in just a few years, in fact. He did this by destroying almost half of the homes in the country, and putting everyone in communes, where everything was controlled by party cadres, and troublemakers were banned from the canteen. He forced millions to build dams and take part in irrigation projects - generally in the wrong places, with disastrous consequences. He also championed new, more socialist agricultural practise from Soviet idiot Trefim Lysenko, which ruined the crops.
Then he told everyone to make steel in the backyards of their communes. Oh, and he declared war on sparrows for eating grain, and drove them to near exinction in China. Which caused a plague of locusts. It's still hard to tell how much of this regime was evil, how much insane and how much just stupid.
At the same time, the state took a higher and higher proportion of the grain being grown. Part of it went to feed the cities, where there was often so much it was left to rot. People even took part in eating contests - 2kg of rice in a single sitting was considered a good effort. But an even larger proportion was exported - to Russia, Eastern Europe, Cuba and Africa. Showing a successful China off to the world was much more important to Mao than the deaths of millions.
What really shook me about this famine was the cruelty, rather than the stupidity. The communes became death camps with party officials regularly murdering people. There are so many heartbreaking stories - from the 8 year old boy who was beaten to death for stealing a handful of rice, to the parents who were forced to bury their 12 year old child alive for a similar crime. A mother commits suicide, so her young children are bricked up in their home to starve to death. The violence seems to have become more and more systemic as people got more desperate, and those in charge learned exactly how much power they really had.
Other stories are now seared in my memory. Corpses were dug up and eaten - the heart was popular because it rotted more slowly than other parts. People eating mud from riverbanks to fill their bellies, then having to dig out each others' faeces because of the chronic constipation. I also now know more about prolapsed uteri than most people would ever want to.
In a secret meeting in 1959 Mao told the other party leaders that it was better to let half the people die, so the other half could live. This at a time when officially a third, but in fact a great deal more, of the grain was being sent to other countries, who didn't really want it in the first place.
Mao learnt his lesson from the Great Famine. He was sidelined for a few years and returned with the Cultural Revolution. It's easier to see now how he managed to instigate such hatred from the people towards party officials, and indeed anyone in power. All that anger and frustration and hatred which should've spelled the end of Mao was instead channeled towards those party cadres who'd been carrying out his policies just a few years before. And at the end the disgusting psychopath was more powerful than ever before.
Not the easiest of reads this, what with all the unthinkable horror and reams of statististics, but it's easier as a book on tape and I recommend it highly. It shows us exactly what happens when society is ripped down to its most basic elements and rebuilt by thugs.
Thursday, 24 May 2012
The Alteration by Kingsley Amis
More alternate history! This one's got more Catholics and fewer testicles.
It's set in 1976 and the Pope's in pretty much complete control of the world, aside from some pesky New Englanders and Mohametans. The Reformation never happened. Catherine of Aragon dutifully produced a boy for Henry VIII and Martin Luther became Pope Germania I. There's a Pax Romana across Europe and beyond: no world wars, no nazis, no communists. And no electricity.
The technology I loved in this book, and that wasn't something I was expecting from a more literary writer like Amis. Diesel is king. Petrol engines never caught up, because they use sparkplugs, and electricity is considered pretty suspect by the church. But the industrial revolution still appears to be in full steam, so to speak. All railways lead to Rome, and there's a direct link from London, over the channel, over the top of the Alps and down through the Papal States. And the Yanks at least have airships, so you know for sure this is early steampunk.
Another aspect of this book works wonderfully - historical figures from our world exist here, but in very different aspects. At the start we meet two cardinals of the "Holy Office" (Inquisition) named Beria and Himler. Edgar Allan Poe was a great New Englander general, and had one of those airships named after him. There's a well respected French Jesuit theologian called Jean Paul Sartre. And two church heavies loom up half way through, called Foot and Redgrave - who in another reality would be well known left wing firebrands of the day. I'm sure there are plenty more references I've missed.
The plot's about a young boy with the voice of an angel, and of course the authorities would like that voice to remain untouched for the greater glory of God. By taking his knackers. The boy Hubert is well portrayed and convincing, and the story really works. It has a clear narrative drive, we learn a lot about the world, and it explores sexuality, art, power and rebellion without anything seeming forced. I wasn't totally sure about a twist (literally) towards the end, but it didn't harm the book for me.
It hardly paints a rosy picture of the Church, but I saw this more of a satire on human nature and totalitarianism rather than Catholicism. Any belief or political system, when unopposed, will tend to brutality and horror. That's why Amis shows people like Himler and Beria flourishing. When your system is in complete control, it doesn't really matter if you're a Nazi, a Bolshevik or a Cardinal. In the end, you're just another thug.
It's set in 1976 and the Pope's in pretty much complete control of the world, aside from some pesky New Englanders and Mohametans. The Reformation never happened. Catherine of Aragon dutifully produced a boy for Henry VIII and Martin Luther became Pope Germania I. There's a Pax Romana across Europe and beyond: no world wars, no nazis, no communists. And no electricity.
The technology I loved in this book, and that wasn't something I was expecting from a more literary writer like Amis. Diesel is king. Petrol engines never caught up, because they use sparkplugs, and electricity is considered pretty suspect by the church. But the industrial revolution still appears to be in full steam, so to speak. All railways lead to Rome, and there's a direct link from London, over the channel, over the top of the Alps and down through the Papal States. And the Yanks at least have airships, so you know for sure this is early steampunk.
Another aspect of this book works wonderfully - historical figures from our world exist here, but in very different aspects. At the start we meet two cardinals of the "Holy Office" (Inquisition) named Beria and Himler. Edgar Allan Poe was a great New Englander general, and had one of those airships named after him. There's a well respected French Jesuit theologian called Jean Paul Sartre. And two church heavies loom up half way through, called Foot and Redgrave - who in another reality would be well known left wing firebrands of the day. I'm sure there are plenty more references I've missed.
The plot's about a young boy with the voice of an angel, and of course the authorities would like that voice to remain untouched for the greater glory of God. By taking his knackers. The boy Hubert is well portrayed and convincing, and the story really works. It has a clear narrative drive, we learn a lot about the world, and it explores sexuality, art, power and rebellion without anything seeming forced. I wasn't totally sure about a twist (literally) towards the end, but it didn't harm the book for me.
It hardly paints a rosy picture of the Church, but I saw this more of a satire on human nature and totalitarianism rather than Catholicism. Any belief or political system, when unopposed, will tend to brutality and horror. That's why Amis shows people like Himler and Beria flourishing. When your system is in complete control, it doesn't really matter if you're a Nazi, a Bolshevik or a Cardinal. In the end, you're just another thug.
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