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Power, Values, and the
Constitution of International Society
AN DREW HURRELL
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introduction to the analysis of global political
order.
OCTOBER 20 07, 368 pages,
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ANTHO NY KI NG
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tie s were ever there .
Jam es M . Murphy takes on
the memo irs of form er CIA
direc tor, Georg e Te net. He
ention the "Woman in
M the Moon", even here
at the Times Literary Supple-
also find s him se lf reli ant on
the Renai ssance stage, citing
Troilus and Cressida on the
ment , and you are mor e " mystery" in "the soul of
likely to conjure up the film state" in ord er to ask wheth er
direc tor , Fritz Lang , than the we exp ect too much of our
onc e equally fashionable intelligence agencies today.
sixteenth-century playwright, K atha rine He pburn And in our first rev iew this
John Lyly. Lang ' s silent clas- wee k the historian N iall Fer-
sic of that name , based on the the troublesome first wo man gu son ex amines the anal yti-
1928 novel by his wife, gav e at Bryn Mawr Coll ege - also , cal basis of lan Kershaw 's
astronauts their first "co unt- strangely, in 1928 . new book on "ten deci sion s
down to lift-off' and cinema- Th e var ying laws by wh ich that changed the wor ld
goers a po werful prophecy of a man might take subseq uent 1940-41 ". What wa s the
space rockets . Lyly' s verse women to wife were a stock nature of the choices that pre-
play, The Woman in the theme of ear ly modern cip itated Germany' s inva sion
Moon , conc ern s the jealou sy theatre . As our critic , Da vid of Russia, Moscow' s dis-
felt by the planets at Nature's Hawkes, points out, the missal of its own intell igence
creation of the first hum an Church' s " naughty courts" warnings and other crucial

OXFORD femal e, and has for 400 year s

diverted scholars more than
UNIVERSITY PRESS theatr ego ers. This week Lucy
Munro reviews a new edition
of the play and descr ibes
Available from all good bookshops, or from OUP direct how the student Kath arine
lel: 01536 741727 I Email: bookorders.uk @oup.com Hepburn took the rare role of
www.oup.comJukfor special offers, sample chapters, and news
were hard to pred ict: sex
after a promi se of marr iage
might easily be enough for
legal wedlock. From the first
Queen Elizabeth' s England
to the television age of Judge
Jud y, the dramatic possibili -
events? Wh at about the
"what if ' que stion? Ferguson
find s Kersha w' s scholarship
"impeccable" but his phi lo-
sophica l underpinning "posi-
tive ly antique" .
PS

T LS S EPT EMBER 2 1 200 7


One among many
Hitler and Stalin had huge personal sway: but there are still more decision-makers, and
more possiblities, than we like to think
hen the second vo lume of lan
W Kersha w' s magisteri al bio-
grap hy of Hitl er was publi shed
in 2000, I reca ll bein g struck
by how often these two wor ds appea red :
"Hitler decided" . As one of that ge neration of
British historians who had stee ped them-
selves in the meth od s of German "s ocietal
histor y" (Gese llschafts gesch ichte) - and as a
scho lar whose ear ly research had focused on
popul ar opinion in 1930s Bavaria - Sir lan
Kershaw seemed an unlik ely prop onent of a
new Personali sm us. Hi s contem pora ries, not
least Richar d J. Eva ns, had been dismissive
of John Rohl' s co ntention that the biogr aph y
of Wilh elm II might be of some importance
to the Wilh elmine period. No such criticisms
were dir ected at Ker shaw ' s Life of Hitl er.
Yet here was a po werful reaffirmation that,
whateve r the imp ort anc e of "structural"
factor s in Hitl er' s rise, these became mere
background mu sic afte r he was in po wer, and
especially after he was at war. Th e critica l
decision s that cond emn ed Europe to co n-
flagration , the Jews to annihilation and
Ge rma ny to devastation emanated from one
man . Others co ntributed only in so far as they
"worked toward s him" . Nemesis , as Kersha w
subtitled the seco nd volume of his Life of
Hitl er, was a triumphant reaffirmation of
the cent ralit y of the powerful indi vidu al
decision-m aker to the historic al proc ess.
In Fateful Choices : Ten dec isions that
changed the world 1940- 1941, Profess or
Kershaw takes a step for ward , but also a step
back . Th e step for ward is that he now applies
his acute and meticulous scho larly mind to
the deci sion- makers in the other key combat-
ant countries of the Second World War. The
step back is that he does so as if in thrall to an
earlier Ge rma n historic al tradition - that of
Leop old va n Rank e. This is political histor y
wie es eigentlich gewesen ("as it actu all y
was" ), based on a clo se readi ng of document s
left behin d by the deci sion-makers or of
bo ok s writte n by oth er histori ans employ ing
thi s distinctly trad itional methodolo gy. A
bo ok abo ut "choices" might have been
ex pec ted to deal in some detail with the man y
alterna tive sce nar ios cont empl ated by con-
tempo raries and by subse quent histori ans.
Disapp ointingly, however, Kershaw is as
d ismi ssi ve of co unte rfac tua l hi story as was
Ev ans in his 2002 Butt erfield Lecture at
Qu een ' s, Belfa st. "In theor y" , writ es Ker-
shaw in his "Afterthought" , there were alter-
nati ves to all ten of the deci sion s he has stud-
ied. "Any one of them could have changed
the course of histor y. A rich variety of ' what
if' sce narios might be con structed on such a
basis - a harml ess but pointl ess diver sion
from the real question of what happ ened and
why ." Counterfac tual histor y is no doubt
harml ess enoug h. But pointl ess? With all
its undoubted strengths, Fateful Choices
illu strat es very we ll the point that to say why
HISTORY
N I A L L F ER G USO N
Ian K er shaw
FAT E FU L CH O ICES
Ten decisions that changed the world 1940-1 941
656pp. Alien Lane. £30.
97807 13997 125
US: Penguin Press. $35. 978 159420 123 3
a hi stori cal eve nt happ ened is at least to sug-
ges t reasons why the plausible alterna tives to
that eve nt did not happ en . Proponents of coun-
terfactu al or "virtual" histor y have been arg u-
ing for a lon g tim e that it is bett er to be
ex plicit about these unr eali zed alterna tives
than to beguil e read er s with an apparently
inexorable and often teleolo gical narr ati ve.
Ker shaw ' s cho sen focu s is ten "interlinked
political deci sion s . .. [taken] between May
1940 and December 1941" . It was these, he
contend s, that "transfor med the two separa te
wars in different continents into on e trul y
global confl agrati on , a colo ssal conflict with
ge nocide and unprecedent ed barb ari sm at its
centre The rem ainin g three years [of
war] wo uld esse ntially play out the con se-
TLS SEP T E M B ER 2 1 2 0 07
qu ences" of these deci sion s. Wh at we re they?
In brief : (I ) Britain' s decision to fight on
after the fall of Franc e ; (2) Hitl er ' s to attack
the So viet Union; (3) Japan ' s to attack the
Europea n Empires in A sia; (4) Mu ssolini ' s to
attack Greece ; (5 ) Rooseve lt' s to offer eco-
nomi c ass istance to Brit ain (" Lend-Le ase ");
(6) Stalin ' s to ignore intelligenc e wa rnings of
a Ge rma n atta ck; (7) Roo sevelt ' s to wage
"undeclared" wa r on Ge rman submar ines in
the At lanti c ; (8) Japan' s to atta ck the United
States at Pe arl Harbor; (9) Hitl er' s to decl are
war on the United Stat es; and ( 10) Hitl er' s to
murd er the Jews of continental Europe .
If one wanted to show a class of und er-
gradu ates ho w histori ans con ventionall y deal
with the prob lem of ca usa tion, these ten
essays would be hard to improve on. In each
one, Kersha w starts with a summary of the
deci sion itself and its imp lications. The n, ju st
as E . H. Ca rr recomm end ed in What Is Hist-
ory ? (1961) , he goes back some years to
unc over the chai n of eve nts that led to thi s
deci sio n. Alt ern ati ves are con sidered only in
order to dem on strate that they we re not reall y
alterna tives at all, and were bound to be dis-
card ed. Kersha w' s scho larship is impeccable .
11.9.07: London
WC l
The First Emperor of China must be
one of the few figures in ancient history
for whom the h igh security at th e
British Museum might have seemed
inadequate. If a man is used to some
7,000 ter r acott a guards on his way to
th e afterlife, th e security for Gordon
Brown's appearance to open the
British Museum's latest Chinese
exhibition might seem almost lax.
There are eleven 2,200-year-old
soldiers on display, a longside dancers,
weightlifters and musicians, th e
greatest number ever to have been
dis played outside their home. The
exhibition is set immediate ly under
th e dome of the old Reading Room: so
th e dignitaries waiting in line to se e
these foun dation ston es of strong
government in the region could freely
imagine what Karl Marx might h a ve
made of it all . To t he art critics in th e
hall, the moustachioed military men
appeared more individually crafted
th a n they normally do in th eir massed
ranks in X'ian, in north central China,
where th ey were d iscovered thi r ty
years ago. The Emperor's posthumous
civil servants, the Prime Minister
pointed out, were somewhat less indi-
vidual in character.
3
And yet the philosophi cal und erpinning to
his essays is positi vely antique .
Could Stalin have sided with the Western
Powers in 1939? Kershaw poses the que stion
onl y to dismi ss it: "Who kno ws how it might
have turn ed out? The guessing game is point-
less. The variables in the equati on are simply
too many to make speculation fruitful " . As
soon becom es appare nt, Kersha w regard s his
ten deci sion s as bound togeth er in a chain of
logic. "The Briti sh decision to stay in the
war", he writes in the first chapter, " [gave]
Hitler only two option s: impo se military
defeat on Britain ; or force her to acknow ledge
German supremacy on the Co ntinent throu gh
defeatin g the Soviet Union in a rapid cam-
paign , with the ultim ate effect of keepin g the
Americans out of the war." Sinc e the
Briti sh, enco uraged by Am eric an economic
ass istance, refu sed to thro w in the towel,
Hitler had no alternati ve but to attack the
Soviet Union. Sinc e his most likely allies,
Italy and Japan, were stro ngly predispo sed to
attack other states, the war was bound to
spread to the Balkans and the Pacific. But
since neither Ger many, Italy nor Japan stood a
realistic chance of defeatin g the countries they
attacked in 1941, they were bound to lose the
war, albeit after four more years of carnage .
This narr ati ve has the appeal of famili arit y.
Yet that appea l sho uld make us wary. Eve n if
each of Ker shaw ' s ten deci sion s was a simple
choice bet ween two optio ns (in reality, there
we re oft en more than two ), the number of
possib le histori es that could have unfolded is
not one, nor twenty, but 1,024 . For the histori-
cal proc ess is not a linear narr ativ e, with liter-
ary signpostings (" Rise and Fall", "Hubris
and Nemes is") , but , in Jor ge Lui s Ba rges' s
image, a garde n of forking path s. And the
true numb er of deci sion s is close to infinite,
since it is not onl y grea t men who make deci-
sions, but all hum an bein gs, and they oft en
face mor e than two cho ices. Mor eo ver, Ker-
shaw see ms unaware of the pitfall of "hind-
sight bias", which (as num erou s psych olo gi-
cal studies have show n) tend s to distort
human retro spection by portrayin g outcomes
ex pos t as havin g been much mor e prob ab le
than they actually appeared a priori . We are
stro ngly inclin ed to rati onalize eve nts when
we look back , devising chain s of cau sati on
that were ge nerally invisihl e to us hefore the
fact. This seems to be especially true of
disasters. As there has been no man-made
disaster bigger than the Second World War ,
we should expect "hinds ight bias" to exert a
po werful forc e on histori ans. Sur e eno ugh, it
do es. Part of the point of counterfactual
histor y is to pro vid e a correcti ve to 20 :20
hind sight.
Rath er in spite of him self, Ker shaw occa-
sionally gives us glimpses of tho se path s not
taken, which see med at the tim e eve ry bit
as rea l as the path s that were . At any time, it
Continued on page 4
4

Continued f rom page 3

HIS TORY 3 Niall Ferguson lan Kershaw Fateful C ho ices sho uld be rem ember ed , there is no suc h thin g
Douglas Porch Todd Shepard Th e Invention of Decol onizatio n as the future ; onl y futures plural , from which
Jim House and Neil MacMaster Pari s 1961 we try, not always success fully , to choose .
Ernest R . May Matthew Parker Pan ama Fever More than mo st periods in history, the sum-
mer of 1940 was pregn ant with a ve ritable
LET T ERS TO TH E EDI TOR 6 T he gree ning of the Ren aissanc e, Bo swell vs Hum e, brood of suc h plau sibl e futures.
Lud wi g Lewi soh n, etc Ker sh aw shows us Churchill in Fra nce on
Ma y 16, 1940, conjuring up "an apoca ly ptic
PO EMS 7 Robert Selby Brun swick , Maine vision" of him self, " in the heart of Ca na da,
25 Cia ran Carson Zu gz wan g dir ecting, over an Eng land raz ed to the
gro und by high ex plos ive bombs and over [a]
POLITIC S 9 Alex de Waal Giles Bolton Poor Stor y Fra nce who se ruin s we re alrea dy cold , the air
Robert Calderisi T he T ro uble with Africa wa r of the New World against the Old domi-
Roger Riddell Doe s Fore ig n Aid Reall y Work? nated by Germa ny" . He quotes Hitl er o n Jul y
3 1, 1940 - ten we eks later - visualizing
MEMOIRS 10 James M. Murphy George Tenet At the Cent er of the Storm - My years at the C IA
" Russia smas hed, Brit ain' s last hop e ... shat-
Caroline Finkel Esra Ozyiirek, editor Th e Politi cs of Public Memory in Turkey
tered [and] Germ an y ... master of Europe
BIOGRAPHY 12 John Rogister Stephane Giocanti Maurras - Le ch ao s et I' ordre and the Balkan s". At aro und the same time,
Admiral Rolf C arls , the head of Ger ma n
TRAVEL 13 Edith Hall Ryszard Kapuscinski Travel s with Herodotu s naval command in the Balti c, was im agining
a po st- war sett leme nt which would give Ger-
COMMENT AR Y 14 Oliver Dermis Sm ok e rin gs - John Shaw Neilson, the fir st poet of Au strali a man y, among other priz es, parts of Belgium
Hugo Williams Freela nce and Franc e, the Sh etland Island s, the Cha nnel
Then and Now TLS Ma y 28, 1964 - Fra ntz Fanon Island s and Northern Rhodesia - not to men-
tion naval bases in the Ca nary Island s, Dakar ,
ARTS 17 Clive Sinclair 3. 10 to Yum a (Va rious cin em as) Madagascar , Mauritius and the Seych elles.
Lucy Dallas Brian Wilson That Luc ky Old Sun (Royal Festi val Hall) Th e Itali an Fo reign Minister , Count Ga lea zzo
Katharine Hibbert Daphne Du Maurier T he Year s Between (Ora nge T ree Th eatre, C iano, im agin ed a victor ious Italy acquiring
Richmond) part s of France as well as Malta and Briti sh
Som alil and. At thi s stage, the chi ef of the ital-
FICTI ON 19 Paul Quinn Junathan Cue T he Rain Before it Falls ian Gen eral Staff was so unc ert ain about Mu s-
Anthony Cummins Nathan Englander The Mini str y of Sp ecial Cases solini's int entions that he complained: "T he
Tom Perrin Amy Bloom Awa y ene my changes every da y. I ex pec t the ord er
Danny Leigh Tod Wodicka All Shall Be Well ; and All Sh all Be Well ; and All to attac k Iraq! " Me an whil e, in Berlin, plan s
Mann er of Things Sh all Be Well were being carefully dra wn up to deport the
Kristin Ewins Jeanette Winterson The Ston e Gods
Jews of Poland to Madagascar. Thi s, trul y,
Patrick Denman Flanery Caryl Phillips For eigners - T hree Eng lish lives was deci sion-making und er unc ertainty.
Am erican ass istance to Britain was crucial
LIT ERATUR E 22 Lucy Munro John Lyly Th e Woman in the Moon
prior to Pearl Harbor, Ker sha w maintains.
LIT ERARY CRIT ICISM 23 David Hawkes Subha Mukherjee Law and Representation in Ea rly Mod ern Drama But, in the fac e of wides prea d public reluc-
Katherine Duncan-Jones Catherine Belsey Wh y Sh ak espear e? tanc e to be drawn into anothe r Euro pe an con-
Katharine Craik Kenneth Gross Shyl ock is Sh akesp eare flict , ho w delic ate a thin g was Roosevelt ' s
policy! The Selecti ve Ser vic e Act of August
REF ER ENCE BOOKS 25 Peter Nasmyth Donald Rayfield, editor-in-chief A Co mprehe nsive Geor gi an- En gli sh 1941 , without which the ex pa nsio n of the US
Dicti on ar y Army would have been severely inhibited ,
passed through the Hou se of Represent ati ves
IN RRIEF 26 David Mamet Ramhi vs. Godzill a by a sing le vote . T he escalatio n of Ameri can
Leo Docherty Desert of Death assistanc e to a policy of "shoot on sight" in
Mike Davis Pl anet of Slums the Atl antic mi ght not hav e been po ssible but
Tim Farrant An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Fre nch Liter ature for the torp edo es fir ed by the German sub-
Manchan Magan Manchan' s Tr avel s marin e U-652 at the Am eric an destro yer USS
B. R . Burg Bo ys at Sea - Sodomy, ind ec enc y, and courts martial Greer off Icel and the follo wing month.
in Ne lson's navy Ker sh aw ' s response is that for the key deci s-
Robert Lutton Loll ard y and Orthodox Reli gion in ion-mak er there simply we re no alterna tives .
Pre-R eformation Eng land " For Hitl er", he writ es, " an altern ative to his
Steve Fielding Th e Ex ecutioner's Bibl e ch osen strategy [of attacking Ru ssia] never
Elana Levine and Lisa Parks, editors Undea d TV posed itself .... From his point of view , there
was, therefore , no ch anc e [of victory in the
SALES OF BOOKS & 28 H. R. Woudhuysen Attacks of ve llo ma nia Mediterranean] that was missed. " And aga in:
MA N USCRIPTS "In the real wor ld of Hitl er [sic], rath er than
the counterfactu al wor ld of fant asy and ima gi-
31 T his week' s contributors, Crosswo rd
nation, it see ms clear that no ch anc e was
missed in 1940". Wh at Ker sh aw means by
NB 32 J. C. NB: Alb ee and Wo olf, Pri soners' readin g, Edm und Blunden ' s
"the real world of Hitl er" is of course the
Eng land, etc
world of Hitl er ' s own fantasy and ima gin a-
tion .
Th er e is much to be sa id fo r thi s approa ch.
Hitl er was master in his ow n land in a way
that no oth er leader save Stalin could match.
The o nly ch oices that matt er ed , therefore,
were the ones Hitl er was prep ared to counte-
nanc e, ju st as the onl y options ope n to the
So viet Union we re the on es Stalin con sid ered
legitimate. Neverthe less , it is imp ortant to
Cove r picture: Ado lf Hitler, 1941 , reproduced from a postcard by Hugo Leh mann © Mar y Evan s Pictur e Library; p2 © Cor bis; p3 © EPA/A ndrew Parsons; pS
rem ember that (as the Jap ane se For eign Min-
© Getty Images; p9 © Reuters/James Akena; p l2 © AKG Images/D enise Bellon ; pl 3 © AKG Images; pl 4 © State Library of Victoria, Me lbourne (Lothian
Co llection MS 6026); pl 6 © Ed itions du Seuil, D. R.; p I7 © Lion sgate Films; p2 1 © The Art Archive/ Biblioteca Nazionale Mar ciana Ve nice/A lfredo Dagli Orti; ister Matsuoka Yosuk e put it) "Great men
p22 © Mary Eva ns/Gros venor Prints; p24 © Hulton-Deut sch Co llection/Corbis will ch ange their mind s". For a tim e, to take

TLS SE PTE M BER 2 1 2 0 07


just one exa mple, Hitl er was as much in two
mind s about whether or not Japan sho uld
attack the So viet Union as was M atsuo ka.
The critical qu estion is whether Hitl er ' s idee
fixe - his ambition to car ve Lebensraum out
of Stalin's imp erium - was madness , or a
viable strategy with at least some prob ability
of success. For Kershaw, there is no doubt.
Operation Barb aro ssa was doo med from its
very incept ion; the invasion of the Soviet
Union was as lunati c as the Jap anese attac k
on Pearl Harbor. But there is a vital distin c-
tion that need s to be drawn here. The Japa-
nese knew in their hearts that they stood littl e
cha nce of victory over the US, as Ker shaw
shows . To all the key deci sion-m aker s in
Tok yo, Pearl Harbor was a lon g shot, a
ga mble that the country' s milit ary lead ers
ultim ately preferred to the alterna tive of aba n-
donin g, und er Am eri can eco nomic pressur e,
their dreams of empire in China. By contrast,
the Ger ma ns we re highl y confident that they
wo uld defeat the Red Ar my. And so we re
mos t informed observers in the West. The
pro bability of a German vic tory ove r an
unprepared Sov iet Union was in fact much
higher in 1941 than Ker shaw allows, as histo-
rians such as Michael Burl eigh and Holger
Her wig have persuasively argued (in co unter-
factu al ess ays con spicuous by their abse nce
from Kershaw' s bibli ograph y).
Th ere are many other instanc es of hind-
sight bias in Fateful Choices. One more exa m-
ple will suffice. Yes, Churc hill did ultim ately
prevail over more pusillanimo us Tor ies in
the cri sis of May 1940 , when Halifax and
Cha mberlain were urgin g that no diplomatic
stone be left unturned to end the wa r. But that
he should have emerged stre ngthened from
the debacle at Dunkirk did not app ear likely at
the time. What Kershaw fail s to do is to spell
out what peo ple in Brit ain thought peace with
Ger many wo uld have mea nt at that j uncture.
The reas on Brit ain fou ght on was not ju st
because Church ill decided to. It was because
he was articulating a collecti ve popular ave r-
sion to the alterna tive of French-style subj uga -
tion to the Third Re ich . Th at is a reminder of
something that the erstw hile practiti oner of
soc ietal history appears to have forgotten. It
was not ju st the deci sion s of dict ators, empe r-
ors, president s and prim e ministers that deter-
min ed the cha racter of the Second World
War. It was the deci sion s of hundreds of
milli on s of peopl e: decisio ns to acquiesce in
consc ription rath er than defy the author ities;
deci sions to kill not ju st enemy soldiers but
civilians, whether in death camps or from the
air; dec isions to kee p fightin g rather than to
surren der or flee (and vice versa).
Th e pro per role of the mod ern histori an is
to shatte r the de lusion that 60 million hu man
bein gs had to die because of the "fateful
cho ices " made by fewer than 250 men (the
indi vidual s nam ed in Kershaw ' s index). That
is as absurd a delu sion as the one assa iled by
Tol stoy in War and Peace, that eve rything
that happ ened in Russ ia in 1812 was willed
by Na po leo n Bon aparte. Wh at happ ened
between 1939 and 1945 was onl y one of an
infinit e number of histori es that did not hap-
pen but which were, if only briefl y, pl ausibl e
futur es for cont em por aries. These "what ifs"
are mor e than merely the stuff of histori cal
"parlour ga mes" , in Car r's notorious phr ase.
Pace Ian Ker shaw, they are as mu ch a part of
a phil osophi cally ed uca ted historiogr aph y as
"what actua lly happened" .
HISTORY
A deluded mission
nce writte n off as the ulti mate
O traum a of French co lonialism,
Franc e' s six-year strugg le in Alge-
ria has co me to see m rem ark abl y
co ntempora ry in the wa ke of the attac ks o n
New York an d Washin gton and the co ntinu-
ing "war on terror". Strateg ists of "the long
wa r" saw its relevanc e as a dry run for
tod ay ' s "clash of civiliz ati on s" bet ween the
West and a sclerotic Islamic fundament ali sm .
And ind eed , the similarities are striking :
between 1954 and 1962 , Pari s fou ght to
retain its Algeri an departm ent s and their
Mus lim citize ns in the name of a
"globalized", Western vision of reason,
prog ress and toleran ce, aga inst an indi genou s
insur gency that ch aracteriz ed Alge ria as a
separate nation defin ed by Arab culture,
Berb er roo ts an d Islami c traditi on.
Not surp rising ly in the light of Europe 's
immi gration debat es, the A lgerian war also
thru st itself into French politics when a Febru-
ary 2005 law that ackn owled ged the co ntribu-
tion of harkis - Algeri an Muslims who fou ght
for France - also mand ated that French his-
tor y texts "recognize the positi ve role of the
Fre nch presence in its overseas colonies, espe-
cially in North Afr ica", accor ding to Chris J.
Bickerton , writing in Le Monde diplomatique
in February 2006. Riots in the autumn of
2005, in French suburbs popul ated mainly by
Fre nch people of Nor th African origin, sug -
ges t that the legacy of that war is far fro m
ove r.
Th at is precisely the conclusion of the
Am erican acade mic Todd Shepard. Th e Alge-
rian war, he argues in The In vent ion of
Decolonization, was a turning point for
France in several ways . First, it redefin ed
" Frenchness" . Th e am putation of France 's
Al gerian lands allowed con ser vati ves, led by
Charles de Gaull e, to je ttison "the principl es
of race -blind equa lity and republican uni ver-
sa lity rooted in 1789" that had form ed the
ideol ogical fr amework of both the Third and
Fourth Republics. Henceforth , France was
defin ed as a "E uropea n nati on , racially white,
cu lturally Gree k and Latin , and reli giou sly
Jean-Paul Sartre at a protest in support of deported Algerians, Paris, October 17, 1961
TLS SEPTEMBER 2 1 20 07
DO UGLAS POR CH
Todd Sh ep ard
T HE I N VE N TIO N O F
D E C OLO NI Z A nO N
The Alger ian war and the remak ing of France
304pp. Ithaca, NY : Co rne ll University Pres s. $54:
distributed in the UK by NBN. £25.5 0.
978 080 1443602
Jim H ou s e and
Ne i l M a cM a st e r
P ARI S 19 61
Algerians, state terror, and mem ory
392pp. Oxford Univers ity Press. £60 (US $ 110).
9780 199247257
Christian" . And while thi s result was sold as
one comp atibl e wi th de Ga ulles vision ,
She pard ca utions aga inst readin g histor y
back wards. The classic view of Ga ullist
policy was that the General, never a fan of
empire, was eage r to shed Algeri a and redi-
rect French strategy and influ ence to Euro pe
- indeed the French President cas tiga ted Brit-
ain's relu ctance to decoloni ze as ev ide nce of
Lond on ' s lack of com mitment to the Euro-
pean co ntinent. Shepar d agrees that de Gaull e
never accepted Mu slim Al geri ans as French,
and was fin e with minor ities so long as they
rem ained small. However, an ind ependent ,
FLN -dominated A lge ria was not the out com e
de Ga ulle sought when he returned to powe r
in 1958 follo wing a French military rebel-
lion . Indeed , both book s und er review see the
evo lution of de Ga ulles Al geri an policy as a
mu ch mor e ad hoc and improvised aff air.
De Ga ulles first priorit y from 1958 was to
asse rt his authority over his fanatically pro-
Algerie francaise ge nera ls, and henc e recl aim
contro l of French policy in Algeria. In this he
was ultim ately success ful, altho ugh his poli-
cies of repression and negotiation created
uncertain ty and instability that led to a seco nd
milit ary rebellion in April 1961 , the form a-
tion of a terrori st spin-off in the right- win g
OAS , and set the stage for the blood- soaked,
5
FLN -spon sored demonstration of Algerian
workers in Fra nce on October 17, 1961.
De G aull e"s second goa l was to outfl ank
the FLN with a "third forc e" that wo uld find
a co mpro mise to kee p aro und a million pieds
noirs - Al gerian s of European ex trac tion - in
A lgeria and ret ain French co ntrol of oil and
nucl ear testin g sites there. Hi s offer of a
"peace of the brave" in 1959 recogni zed
A lgerian self-de termination within limits. He
offe red carro ts that consisted of the "Constan-
tine Plan" , which invested millions of francs
in the eco nomic developm ent of Algeri a, and
an "affirmative action" pro gramme that
rese rve d state job s for Al gerian Mu sli ms and
set aside almos t 10 per ce nt of the sea ts in the
Cha mber of Deputi es for them. The sticks
co nsisted of incr eased milit ary pressur e in
A lgeria, co ntinued tortu re and guillotining of
FLN capti ves, and the imp ort ation of co lonial
polic e meth od s to intimidate and control
A lgerian workers in France .
This prov ides the contex t for Paris 1961 .
Its authors , the two Briti sh acade mics Jim
Hou se and Ne il MacM aster, break with the
traditional interp retation of the Octob er 17,
1961 demonstration as a polic e riot sparked
by FLN attac ks on poli ce stations in France,
althoug h this cert ainl y added to the ten sion .
Instead, they arg ue that Octob er 17 was the
culmination of an orches trated ca mpa ign of
violence again st Mu sli m Fren ch that began
with the suppression of the Serif rebelli o n in
194 5 an d was tran sferr ed to France in 1958 to
co mbat nationalist influ ence amo ng its
35 0,0 00 Mu slim workers fro m Algeria. Th e
leader of the anti-M uslim camp aign in Pari s
was non e other than M aurice Pap on , the
man who had earne d his spurs by dep ortin g
the Jews of Bord eau x to Naz i dea th cam ps
durin g the Ger ma n Occupatio n of 1940 -44
and who, after the wa r, served as strateg ist
a nd hit man for c olo nia l politici an s eager to
intimidate and di sor ganiz e No rth Afri can
nationalists. (He died on Febru ary 17 thi s
yea r at the age of ninety-six.) Papo n and
man y of his super iors beli eved that the sur-
viva l of the state required them to imp ort tech-
niqu es wor ked out in the Ma ghr eb , including
remo val of population s from neighbourhood s
regarded as FLN bastion s, internm ent s, depor-
tation s, rand om harassm ent and arres ts, and
eve n ex traj udicia l killin gs, operations usually
spearhea ded by harkis. While histori es of the
period focus o n the Oct ob er 17 dem on stra-
tion s organi zed by the FLN as a protes t
aga inst state-spo nsored violence, Hou se and
McM aster em phas ize the dur ation and co nti-
nuit y of the repr ession , and point out that
more Muslim Algeri ans had heen murd ered
in the wee k precedi ng Octob er 17 than on the
day itself and its imm edi ate aftermath.
FLN victory in Algeri a ironic all y allowe d
de Ga ulle to realiz e his fin al goal: that of
leveragin g the co nflict to reshape the French
governme nt and mak e it conform to the mor e
authoritarian, Presidenti al vision that he had
failed to sell, on the Lib eration in 1944.
She par d arg ues con vincin gly that the Ge nera l
brill iantl y mana ged the endga me to ex ploit
the par adoxes and shor tco mings of Repub-
lican uni versali sm : French ambiva lence
Conti nued on page 7
6
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Villa of the Papyri Ludwig Lewisohn

Sir, - Mary Beard (Sep te mber 7)
"particularly enjoyed" James Por -
ter' s "debunking of so many of the
myths" about the Villa of the Papyri
(that it belonged to Piso Caesoni-
nus, the father-in-law of Julius
Caesar; that he was a patron of the
Epicurean Ph ilodemu s; that a Latin
library awa its our discove ry in the
unexcavated parts). Porter for his
part cites me as the chief witness for
these "romantic" views . The argu-
ments rehearsed by Por ter are all
well known , and Pisos ow nership
rema ins by far the likeliest hypo-
thesis. The Pisones ow ned villas in
the area ; Caesoninus had very close
relations with Philodemu s; here is a
wealthy villa with a gallery of Epicu-
rean statues and a late Republic an
library that was almos t cert ainl y
Philodemu s' ow n (evident not only
from its contents, but from its du pli-
cate copies, draft s and rejects). As
for what's left, the few Latin
books fou nd am id hundr ed s of
Gree k ones were hardly all there
was ; the eightee nth-cen tury excava-
tors stoppe d j ust shor t of prom ising
rooms , and the recen t excavatio ns
have revealed more levels belo w.
Yet eve n if not a single book were
to be found, this fabul ous villa
demand s excavation for all kinds
of reaso ns. Even the determin edly
unromanti c must agree with that.
ROBERT FOW LER
Herc ulaneum Society , loa nnou Centre
for Classical and Byzantine Studie s,
66 SI Giles, Oxford .
----~--­
Boswell VS Hume
The greening of the Renaissance
Sir, - Alastair Fowler is sometimes
so busy seek ing things he can depict
as error s that he neglects to mention
the main ideas of the book he is
reviewing. He complains (August
10) that the word "almost" is persist-
ent in Back to Nature , without
noticing why it is important. The
late-Renaissance rapp rocheme nt
with the natural world was haunted
by Zenos paradox. Post-feudal
eco nomics, Protestant theology,
empiricist technologies, Renaissance
semiotics and rediscovered classical
scepticism together imposed a tanta-
lizing recognition that human beings
can never quite grasp reality, never
know things in and as them selves.
Thi s provo ked a nostalgic view of
nature as a reso urce of simple truth s
and direct experience - a view
deeply contemplated by the artists of
the seventeenth century and deeply
consequenti al for environmentalists
in the twenty-first century.
It' s ex aspera ting to be chided for
failin g to notice things that the book
spec ifica lly asse rts . The very pas-
sage Fow ler criticizes for ove rlook-
ing the traditi onal assoc iation of
gree n with hop e not only glosses
"greener" as "more full of youthful
hope", but also quotes the same
Marvellline Fow ler cites as omitted
evidence. Another example: Fow ler
impli es that I failed to recognize
that others, such as Jan van Goyen -
not Rui sdael alone - paint ed "low
hor izo ns below dizzyin gly vas t
skies", but the book describes "a diz-
zyingly vast sky" in Rui sdael and
imm edi atel y liken s it to the domi-
nant skie s in several Van Goyens.
Ietters @th e-tls.co.uk
loo ' s staffage is not onl y made but
directly refuted within the book, as
is hi s obse rva tion about the more
forgivin g atmo sphere of Rui sdael' s
late work.
Fow ler acts as if I blund ered into
self-co ntra diction in my remark that
"M ichel Fo ucault was impressively
right abo ut all this, exce pt that he
was also entirely wro ng" ; but my
next two sentences explain that As
You Like It repeatedl y engages the
problem of likeness (so Fouca ult
correc tly identifi ed that Ren ais-
san ce episteme), but does so,
intentl y and ana lytica lly , in the six-
teenth century (so Foucault's ma in
claim - that it was impossibl e to
ex amine that episteme critica lly
until well into the seve ntee nth
ce ntury - sta nds refuted) .
Fow ler then suggests that, in offer-
ing an analogy between the behead-
ing of Charles I and the deforesta-
tion of England, I "conveniently"
neglect to "discover that most of the
disparkin g was done by Parliament-
arians (the side he favours) appropri-
ating Royalist asse ts". But that
Sir, - I read with interest Michae l
Gree nberg 's Free lance column
analogy , and the entire chapter (Se ptember 14). In the accou nt of
describes the Parliamentarian move- Lud wig Lewisohns career there is
ment - in whose favou r he impli es 1 a bizarre and striking om ission. He
am prejudi ced - as characteristically was an influ enti al figu re in the
opposed to nature. histor y of Am erican Jewish life
Fowler's objections to my literary and thou ght. His writings include
interpretations are similarly un- a biograph y of Theo dor Herzl , a
foun ded. He dismisses my sugges - collec tion of Jewish short stor ies,
tion that "amaze" (in Marvell ' s witty and books on modern Jewish
"The Garden") could have meant thought, inclu ding a volume
"put into a labyrinth" , yet - in addi- entitled The American Jew: Char -
tion to the clear etymological link - acter and desti ny. He edited both
Shakespeare' s Venus and Adonis the American Zionist Review and
describes the hedges throu gh which New Palestine.
a hare darts as "like a labyrinth to Lewisohn also has a came o
amaze his foes". Fow ler also mom ent in music histor y. It was
rema rks that, in interpr eting The he who tran slated that colossa l, if
Merchant of Venice as teachin g (in not notorious, theatri cal spec tacle
Fowler's words) "a humanity not known in its English version as
authori zed by abso lutes, but rather The Eterna l Road. This bibl ical
the approx imations of nature", I dram a, written by Franz Werfel
must be "forgetting ' the quality of with music by Kurt Weill , was
Mercy . . . droppeth . . . fro m stage d in a legend ary production
heaven " '. In fact, I quote Portia' s by Max Reinhardt at the M anhat-
phrase (though without Fow ler's tan Ope ra House in January
baseless and, in this context, tenden- 1937. Alth ough abridged, the
tious upper-case "M") twice in this Lewisohn vers ion of the work,
chapter, because it supports my point und erwritten by Meyer We isga l,
about forgiving measures, about we nt on for hou rs and its cas t
equity as earthly grace . Perhaps to included Sidney Lumet, Sa m
avoid clinchi ng my point about Jaffe, and Lotte Lenya. Nor man
nature' s mediating role, Fowler Bel Geddes was the designer
elides the phrase "as the gentle rain". for this massive collabora tion of
I regret that I once referred to three great figures: Weill , Werfel
Thom as Wright as Tho mas Bright. and Reinhardt.
There, Fow ler has me - though I did
not (as he asse rts) ca ll the auth or LEON BOTSTE IN
"Timothy Wri ght" instead. To err is Pre sident's Office , Bard Co llege ,
hu man. Annandale-on-Hudson,
New York 12504.
ROBERT N. WATSO N
----'~,---
De partment of English, University

Sir, - Richard B. Sher (Letters,
Septemb er 7) is correct: I have not
read his boo k. I wou ld not presum e
to criti cize a book I have not read ,
and I have no reason to think that it
is not as excelle nt as your reviewer
Bart on Swa im evidently thought.
My letter (August 17) was a
response to Swaim ' s review (July
20).
Swa im began by recounti ng an
ep isode wh ich, he said, " lies at the
heart" of Sher 's book : the visit of
John son and Boswell to Dr Adams ,
by then Master of Pembroke, on
March 20, 1776. Boswell noti ced a
copy of Hum es Essays in Adam ss
library. Accord ing to Swa im, " He
disapp roved: as he wro te in his
diary, an 'infidel' writer such as
Hum e shou ld not be treat ed with the
' politeness and respect ' of a hand-
some ly bound edition: a plainly
bound duodecim o, perh aps, or eve n
an octavo , but not an attractive
quarto" .
Thi s is not what Boswell wrote.
He merely observed in Adam s' s
library a qu arto edition of the book ,
bound in morocco. He made no
Fow ler's obse rvation about Coninx-
---------'~,---------
com ment on the quality of the
bindin g, nor did he use that modern
cliche so belo ved of book club s,
"handsomely bound".
Sher writes that Boswell was
"disturbed" and "upset" by the pres-
ence of this volume in Ada mss
library. Possibly so: but this interpre-
tation rests on the flim siest of
evidence. Sher ack now ledges that
when Boswell ca me to describ e this
visit in his Life of Johnson, he did
not menti on the presence of Hu mes
hook . "We may spec ulate ahou t
the reaso ns for this om ission" ,
writes Sher, but neglects the obvi-
ous one - that Boswell considered
the detail insignific ant.
In his letter, Sher " stands by"
his interpr etation and "the genera l
principl e it is cited to illu strate: that
the physical attributes of books
have significan t cultu ral impli ca-
tions".
I make no comme nt on this prin-
cipl e, beyond obse rving that , as
exp resse d, it is somew hat vag ue.
fact confirms rather than refu tes my
My origin al letter , which it wo uld
be tediou s to reiterate, offered a
much simp ler explanation for
Boswell's di sapp roval, which fit s
with what is otherw ise know n of
the relation s between Boswell and
Hum e (and bet ween Boswell and
Joh nson). I stand by what I wro te
then.
It is good to be told , however,
that neither Sher nor Swa im has
confused Oxford with Cambridge.
ADAM SISMAN
cia HarperColli ns Publishers, 77-85
Fulham Palace Road, London W6 .
----~---
No Inkling
Sir, - In his review of The Company
They Keep by Diana Pavlac G lyer
(September 14), Jo n Barnes men-
tion s E. R. Eddison (not " Edison")
as one of the Inklin gs - "that
renowned circle of Oxford writers
and acade mics" . In fact, Eddison
o f Ca lifornia, Lo s Angele s,
California 90024 .
was not a memb er of this group,
alth ough he did attend two meet-
ings, in February 1943 and aga in in
1944 , at the invitation of C. S.
Lewis who had written him what
in effec t was a fan letter , on readin g
The Worm Ouroboros late in
1942. Eddi son, living in Marlbor-
ough, could not attend regularly. He
died of a heart attack in August
1945.
He and Lewis exc hanged a
numb er of letter s, usuall y written in
early sixtee nth-century English (as
was Lewis' s original letter to
him ), now in the Bodleian . Whil e
Eddiso n's elabora te, fant astic
roma nces are well kno wn within
the field , attrac ting adm irers fro m
H. Rider Haggard and H. P. Love-
craft to Tolkien and Ursula K. Le
Guin, he rem ain s an unju stly
neglected writer.
CO LIN GRAN T
53 Bellshill Road, Motherwe ll,
North Lanarkshire .
W riter-murderers
Sir, - A footnote to D. H.' s
acco unt of "writer-murderers"
(NB, September 14). The bril-
liantl y ecce ntric poet-pl aywri ght
Barnabe Barnes made his murd er
attempt in Westminster, not in
Berwick. He persuaded John
Brown e, the Record er of Berwick,
to acc om pany him to a tavern
ca lled the Queen' s Arms, where
he secre ted mercury mingled with
suga r into his co mpan ion's silver
clar et cup, having previously
tried a stunt with a poisoned
lemon . He see ms to have been
acting as a hitm an for Ralph ,
Lord Eure, whose quarrel this was.
We ca n read more about this
extraordinary episode in Mark
Eccles 's Thomas Lodge and
Other Elizabethans (1933).
Barnes' s vict im surv ived. The
actor Ga briel Spenc er, killed by
Ben Jonson in a fight in Hoxton,
was not so luck y.
KATHE RINE DUNCAN-JONES
24 Great Clare ndo n Street,
Oxford .

TLS SEPTE MBER 2 1 2007


Continued from page 5
c once rning its "c ivilizing missio n", the
inequ aliti es, rac ism and hypocri sy of colonial
rule, and the war fatigue, lassitude and passiv-
ity of the Frenc h popul ation so as to sideline
parliament and eve n the judi ciary in the con-
stitution of the Fifth Republic.
The 1961- 2 termin ation phase of the Alge-
rian war presented a tissue of ironies. The dis-
enfranchised pieds noirs and their outlaw
OAS terrorist allies ju stified their violence as
a legitim ate resistance agai nst the illegality of
Gaullist actions - most notably handin g ove r
sove reign French territory to an insurgency
and stripping millions of its Muslim inhabit-
ants of French citizens hip. Pieds noirs and
North Africa n Jews, on the other hand, were
allowed to retain their French citizenship in
what can only be seen, Shepard arg ues, as an
arbitrary, racist-mo tivated determination of
who qualified as "French" . The position
ado pted by the French Left was equally biased
and hypocritical. So eage r was the Left to
define the triumph of the FLN as a victory for
"decolonization" that they failed to notice the
curtailmen t of their freedom s at home. The
gro ups that pro tested about harsh, police-state
measures aga inst the FLN stereo typed the sup-
porters of Algerie francaise as "fascists" and
exp loiting colonize rs. As a consequence, they
emitted barely a peep of protest as de Ga ulle
abando ned principles that had defined French
Rep ublicanism since 1789, marginalized par-
liament, expa nded po lice powers, intervened
in judi cial decisions and altered laws designed
to impose res traint on arbitrary state powe r.
So distracted and confused had they become
by the strugg le against the "fascist" OAS that
they bought into de Gau lles interpretation of
the severa nce of Algeria from France as an
end to colonialism and a victory for "Repub-
lican principles" . In this, however, the Left
emulated a war -weary French peopl e who ,
eage r to wash their hands of the conflict, voted
in various referenda to surrender ex traordi-
nary powers to de Gau lle to do as he wished .
History, allegedly, does not repeat itself and
perhaps the French experience interpreted in
these two fine works defies any co mparison to
the present. But, in every respec t, the Algerian
war offers a rather grim prognos tic to contem -
porar ies about the likely success of the curren t
"war on terror" . "G lobalists" should be dis-
heartened that big tent "Western" notions of
progress did not reso nate in a Muslim culture .
Although he acknowledges that France 's "civi-
lizing mission" never lived up to its press
notices, Todd Shepa rd is probably correct
when he notes that the war exposed once and
for all the conceit that France's "Republican
universalism" could unite peop les of different
races, cultures and languages around a single
vision of national unity. Moralists should find
concern in the fact that a nation professing civi-
lized , uni versal values co uld descend so rap-
idly into a brutal race war, prosec uted by politi-
cized military and police forces, which French
civil society appeared powerless to stop. Legal-
ists would do well to note how de Gaulle
employed the extraordinary circumstances of
a war to expand "executive privilege" , curtail
legal restraint s on civil and human rights, and
arbitrarily strip Muslims of French citizenship .
If the past is prologue, France 's experience in
the Algerian war suggests an optimistic out-
co me neither for the integra tion of immigrants
in Europe nor for the robustness of democratic
institutions in time of "the long war".
HISTORY
Locks, lakes and bubbles
he Panam a Ca nal was an enginee ring
T marvel when it was co nstruc ted.
Tho ugh much less regarded now that
so much tra vel is by air, and employed less
for freight because it is too narrow for
today' s co nta iner ships, it remain s a vital
artery in the internat ional economic system.
In 2006, acc ordi ng to Panama's Cana l
A uthority, the Ca nal car ried abou t 20 per
ce nt of all com modities that move d between
the Atlan tic and the Pac ific .
Visions of a wa ter route connec ting the
two Ocea ns appea red in Euro pea n minds
almost from the mome nt Europea ns learned
that there were two oceans, not ju st one,
between Euro pe and Asia. Colum bus's first
three voyages es tablishe d that "America"
blocked access to the silks and spices of As ia.
In his fourth and last voyage, in 1502, he
skirted the Panamani an coast in hopeful
searc h for a navigable strai t. In 1513, Vasco
Nufiez de Balboa climbed the 6,000-foot
height of the Serrania de Darien , from which
he could see both Oceans . For fou r ce nturies
after Balboa, adve nturers and spec ulators
soug ht some way to enable ships to cross this
narrow isthmus. A harbin ger of the famous
bubb les of the early eightee nth ce ntury was
the Darien ca nal venture of 1698- 9, in which
Sco ts squandered much of their nationa l
cap ital and hence much of their capac ity to
resist union with England.
In the midd le of the nineteenth ce ntury,
passengers and goods began to move from
ocean to ocean via a Pa nama rai lway, deve l-
oped and managed by investors in the United
States. Initiated ju st before the Ca lifornia
go ld rush , it proved a bonanza. The dream
of a ca nal nevertheless remained potent. The
French promoter Ferdinan d de Lesseps, cred -
ited with having crea ted the Suez Ca nal,
came up with a project for an interoceanic
canal throu g h Panama. He and his ass oc iates
only gradually became aware of the huge
differences bet ween removing sand to crea te
a passage from the Red Sea to the Medit er-
ranea n and cutting though moun tainous,
disease-plagued jun gles. De Lesseps never-
theless succee ded in selling huge quantit ies
of bond s to the Frenc h public. Like the Scots
before them, these spec ulators lost almos t
eve rything . Moreover, after it ca me to light
that de Lessepss co mpany had bribed ma ny
French po liticians , the company and most of
its champions sa nk in disgrace .
Aro und the time when de Lesseps' s
venture disintegrated, interest in an isthmian
canal quickened in the US. Alfred Thayer
Mahan' s influential writings on the supreme
importance of sea power inclu ded an argu-
ment that an isthmian canal could serve the
US in the way that the Straits of Gibraltar had
served Britain as a grea t multipli er of naval
streng th. Though the US-ow ned railway ran
through Panama, the route preferred by
most interested Americans was the longer
one through Nicaragua. It was alleged to pose
fewer engineering challenges . In 1901 ,
however, a report from a gro up of experts
pro nounced the Panama route feasible.
Theodore Rossevelt had ju st succee ded the
assassi nated William Mc Kinley as President ,
and he deve loped a pass ion for a canal through
TL S SEPTE MBER 21 2007
7
E RNE ST R. M A Y whose two previous books dealt with aspec ts
M a t t h e w P ar k er
of the Second World War (the Battle of
Britain and the contes t for Mon te Cass ino),
Par ker begin s with Co lumb us and concludes
PANAMA FEVER in the prese nt day, when the Ca nal has
The battl e to build the Ca nal become the property and responsibility of the
464pp. Hutchinso n. £20. Rep ublic of Panama. Brimmi ng with quota-
978009 179704 I tions from letters, diaries and con temporane-
ous news reports, the book ma kes vivid the
Panama. At the time, Panama was a prov ince various highlight s of the Canal's history. It is
of Co lombia. The Colombian Co ngress also one of the few books to make the point
refused to gran t the US canal rights on terms that actua l constructio n on the gro und
acce ptable to its North Ame rican counterpart. was mos tly done by workers nati ve to the
With enco urage ment fro m Ame rican citizens Car ibbea n, and hence co mpara tive ly im mune
and officials, Panamanians declared Panama to ye llow fever and ma laria.
indepen den t and signed the treaty on their Panama Fever is otherwise consistent w ith
own behalf. On the basis of an ear lier treaty - and does not depart much from - the story
under which the US had pro mised Co lombia that run s through the ISO-odd other histor ies
that it would guarantee uninterrup ted transit of the Canal catalogued by the Library of Co n-
across the isthmu s, the US Navy prevented gress . There are eno ugh trivial errors to make
Co lombia from trying to recla im control. For a one sceptica l abo ut its perma nence as a work
dozen years, Americans now strove to co m- of reference (" Heinrich" Goe the , for exam -
plete wha t de Lesseps had failed in. Partly as a ple). The experience of the book is like that of
result of better understanding of how to a television doc ume ntary . One visible sce ne
cope with mosquito-borne fevers, the effort fades into ano ther, with interpre tative com -
succee ded. From 19 14, a chain of locks and men ts, such as tho se about the work force ,
artificial lakes enabled ocean -going vesse ls intruding onl y briefly, as if in voice-ove r.
to enter on one side of the isthmus, be floated Using Gra ham Greene's famous distinction
to success ive different levels, and emerge between novel s and "entertainments", Pan -
forty-eight miles away, on the other side. ama Fever cou ld be classed as a non-fi ction
Ma tthew Parker' s Panama Fever is the lat- "entertainment" . For travellers, it could be an
est telli ng of the story . A freelance writer instructive alterna tive to a boo kstall thriller.
Brunswick, Maine
It is estimated that fewer than a half-dozen of the public parking spaces
will be lost due to the placemen t of the statue (Tow n Co unc il minut es)
Joshua Cha mber lain stan ds in the square
in his do uble-breas ted high bron ze jacket,
high bron ze face showi ng a decade of wear,
the frost-bitten favourit e of Brunsw ick,
Union general , ca p in hand - in the thick of it.
The piebald and dow nrigh t dirt y snow
adorns the old house of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
author of Uncle Tom 's Cabin . This is Maine
on the Kennebec , the Pine Tree State,
so snow blows in off the Appa lachian range,
sweeping over the ice shee ts of Sebago Lake
into the mouth of the Atlan tic's roll and wake.
North Pole photos by Peary and Macmillan,
Inuit artefac ts, shiver in the Arc tic M use um.
Mean time , we're outside the hardware store
lagged up fierce in muff and windcheater,
squeez ing a radiator and some two-b y-four
into the trun k of our snow -cove red Toyo ta.
A flatpack cot, piled on the bac k sea t, teeters
as, delicatel y, we craw l our homeward esca pe,
passing ghos ts of upturned boats round the ca pe.
Joshua Cha mber lain stan ds in the square
in his do uble-breas ted high bron ze jacket,
cold promontory without the least fanfare,
so lemn, pious emb odime nt of Brunswick,
Union general, cap in hand - in the thi ck of it.
The piebald and dow nrigh t dirt y snow
is falli ng now, remas king eve ry exit furrow .
ROB ER T S EL BY
8 POLITICS
Plan after plan after plan
n M ay 2001, Afri ca ' s fin ance mini sters AL EX D E WAAL
I held their annual meetin g at a seafro nt
resort ju st outside Algiers. Th e Al geri an
govern ment in vited the mini ster s as a way of
Gil e s Bolt on
reviv ing the country ' s ro le as an African POOR S T ORY
leader after a decade of ci vil wa r and massa- An insider uncovers how globa lisat ion and goo d
cre, but they too k no chances with the sec u- intenti on s have failed the wor ld's poor
rit y of their gues ts . Th e beach es, orc hards 348pp . Ebury Press. Paperback, £ 10.99.
978 009 1914349
and half- empty mod ern hot els were sea led
off with high fenc es and armed guards , and R ob e rt C a l der is i
eve n within the vast co mpo und, each offici al
car was shadowe d by a ner vy armed esco rt. T HE T ROU B LE WITH AFRI C A
Inside the conference hall , the mini sters were Why fore ign aid isn't working
224pp. Yale Uuiversity Press. Paperback, £9.99
eq ually jitter y. There was ju st one agend a
(US $ 15.95).
item : the adoption of a continent- wid e devel-
978 0300 125122
opme nt plan which would then be present ed
to the leader s of the G8 at their summit in Ro g e r Ridd ell
Gen oa two month s later. The stakes we re
DO E S FOREI G N A ID R E ALL Y
high : To ny Blair had signa lled that if African
WORK ?
govern ments could agree on a common plan,
448pp. Oxford Uuiversity Press. £ 18.99 (US $35).
he wo uld champion it at the G8 , turning that 978 0 19 929565 4
meetin g into a forum for Africa. Blair was
read y to invite two of Afri ca' s new dem o-
cra tic leader s: South Afri ca' s Th abo Mb eki Th e DFID' s civil servants had been tasked
and Nigeri a ' s Olu segun Ob asanj o. Blair' s with drawing up the developm ent blu eprint,
Africa mission was ju st beginning. He had and the mo st important piece of adv ice they
ju st created a new Dep artm ent for Inter- gave to Short and Blair was : our efforts will
national Development headed by Clare work only if we support an Afri can-d esign ed
Short, who held Ca binet rank, and endowe d and Africa n-ow ned plan . Gil es Bolton ,
it with a fast-expanding bud get. Rob ert Ca lderisi and Roger Riddell have
;'; '; '; '; '; '; '; '; '; ';':===============================:;1 ion ed in collaboration with Europea n mini s-
ter s of development - the four leadin g ones,
'This is a very timely book, setting out a thoroughly
researched agenda for a renewed struggle against
social injustice at home and abroad.'
- Stuart White, Oxford University
Politics for a
New Generation
The Progressive Moment
Edited by N ick Pearc« Illl d IlIl ill M" rKQ
Politics/oraNew Generation invites some ofthe leading
lights of the Labour government and some of the best
new thinkers from the younger generation of Labour
politicians to renew progressive thought,
TLS SE PTEMBER 2 1 2 0 07
different - sometimes mark edl y diverg ent -
views of the aid business; but they also ag ree
on thi s premi ss: the visions and plan s fo r
development mu st be Afri can- vowned", Yet
what does thi s word actually mean ? Most
writers on aid are Western ers and eve n the
mo st sens itive - like these three authors -
tend to neglect the Afric an cont ribution to
the intelle ctual history of aid. Th e 200 I
Algiers conference pro vid es a lens for
show ing both how important, but ultim atel y
ho w compromised , that input has been.
Th e con venor of the Al gier s meetin g was
the UN 's Economic Co mmiss ion for Afric a,
an organi zation which twent y years earlier
had dra wn up ambiti ou s blu eprints for cont i-
nent al integration and accelerated develop-
ment , driven by Afric a itself. The 1981
"Lagos Plan of Acti on" had been a Third
World-ist age nda pushed by outspoken Afri-
ca n leader s determined to resist neo-imperial-
ism . That and other ambitious develo pm ent
proposals becam e footnotes in Afric a' s
len gth enin g list of failed dream s.
By the turn of the millennium, the ECA ' s
fin ance mini ster s ' meetings we re more sobe r
affa irs. The EC A 's exe cutive secretary, the
Ghanaian economist K. Y. Am oako , was a
lon g-time senior official at the World Bank
whose inno vati ve idea s were carefull y fash-
at that time, all left-l eanin g women. Am o-
akos team had done a grea t deal of technical
work on ho w developm ent cooperati on co uld
work bett er, and their idea s are refl ected in
the mor e upb eat sec tions of tod ay ' s assess-
ment s of aid in Afric a.
One of Amoakos ideas was to target for-
eign aid se lective ly to Afric a ' s best perform-
ers under an "enhanced partnership" agr ee-
ment , in wh ich aid donors wo uld ma ke lon g-
term, predict abl e c om m itme nts of aid
throu gh recipi ent s' nation al bud get s. Thi s
would overco me the ineffi ciencies of ass ist-
anc e that was late, unpred ictabl e and at var i-
anc e with African gove rn ments' priorities.
Th e DFID was an early ch ampion of this idea
and Bolton worked on the pro gramm e to
ass ist on e of Britain ' s fa vour ed recipi ent s,
Rwand a. He still suppo rts the con cept.
Better , he says in Poo r Story, to take the
calcul ated risk of investin g suffic iently
seriously in a country, we ll awa re of its short-
comings, than to sit ner vou sly o n the side-
lines ju st dabbli ng with a few proj ect s. Gi ven
that the countries in which aid is mo st needed
are the poo rest and least capable, some risk-
takin g is necessary. Imm ediately followin g
the 1994 ge noc ide , Rwand a, its soc ial and
political infrastructure shattered, was a high-
risk aid investm ent. Today it has one of
Afric a' s fastest-gro win g eco nomies which, if
sustained for two decades, wo uld achieve
middl e-in com e status. But the politi cs are
unr esolved.
Ca lderisi takes this ide a a step furth er in
The Trouble with Af rica and sugges ts that
most aid to the co ntinent sho uld be targeted
at ju st five countries which, he says , are
taki ng povert y redu cti on serious ly: Ghana,
Mali , Mozambiqu e, Tan zani a and Uga nda .
For the rem aind er, he arg ues , aid sho uld be
cut by half : countries sho uld compete for it.
Thi s, he says , will reduce the perve rse incen-
tives that foll ow when poor performers are
con sistentl y reward ed w ith continued aid .
Calde risi arg ues that whe n corruption and
bad govern ment per sist, aid simply fuel s
them and doesn 't redu ce povert y.
A noth er idea that matur ed in 200 1 was for
both donors and recipi ent s to assess o ne
anoth er ' s performance und er what was called
"mutual accountability". Donors routinely
call recipi ent s to acc ount - mostly for faithful
impl ementation rather than outc om es, as
Ridd ell notes in Does Foreign Aid Really
Work ? Th e reverse is rare. Wes tern aid
donors' failure to live up to their promises is
a recurring theme in all three book s. Because
aid is politicall y accountable to Western elec -
tor ates - which consum e only the images and
reports of its imp act and not the real thin g -
there are few incenti ves to make it work
better. The recipi ent s are too po werless to
have a real say and the aid bur eaucracies are
resistant to chan ge . On e of Ridd ell' s mor e
striking findin gs is that there are still not eve n
sufficient obj ecti ve data to make a prop er
assessment of whether aid achi eves its aims .
In Algiers, the political initiati ve lay with
South Afric a. Recentl y elected as President ,
Th abo Mbeki faced the impossible task offol-
lowing Ne lson Mandela . Mb eki ch ose to focus
on something his predecessor had neglected :
the rest of the African contin ent. Integratin g
Sout h Africa with its north ern neighbours
allowed him to philoso phize about the "Afri-
can Renaissance" and the chan ce for South
African capital to take a leadin g role in devel-
oping those countries' economies. Mb eki
drafted a "M illennium Plan" for African
rebirth and developm ent , meand erin g between
eclectic acco unts of the origin of civilization
in the co ntinent and incisive analyses of
the need for better term s of trade, incr eased
investm ent rates and sound governance .
Mb eki put Afric an governa nce fir st: he
wan ted the econom ic dim ension s of the initi a-
tive to focu s on macroecon omi c man age-
ment , trade and debt reli ef , alongs ide initia-
tives for demo crac y and conflict resolution.
A lthough Mb ek i had travelled wide ly in
Africa as a forei gn repr esent ati ve of the Afri-
can National Congress durin g the years of
strugg le, his ex perience had been mo stly of
Afric a ' s solida rity with the AN C and not the
less pleasant fac e of Afric an dom estic poli-
tics. His transform ation al plans for Afri ca
were idealistic , eve n nai ve. But with 40 per
cent of sub-Sa hara n Afri ca' s GDP in South
Africa, Mb eki was the continent ' s undi s-
put ed ec onomic leader. He also enj oye d a
goo d rapp ort with To ny Blair , who shared his
passion for the social transformation of the
continent. Co nfide nt that his prop osals wo uld
sail throu gh, Mb eki sent his deputy fin an ce
mini ster to Al gier s.
But the legacy of Afri ca ' s col oni al divi-
sions lay like a suffoca ting blank et ov er the
mee ting. One of the most intractable endow -
ments of the Treaty of Berlin of 1885 is the
division of a geog raphical giant but eco -
nomic dwarf into fift y-three separate sove r-
eign spheres . The combin ed GDP of the Afri-
can contin ent is less than that of Spain and
 POLITICS 9

about the same as the Pent agon' s annu al
bud get. Size matter s: when a country' s eco-
nom y is no bigger than that of a medium-
sized pro vincial English town , the perqui sites
of nation al office loom disproporti onately
large - espec ially the right to collect taxes on
minerals and receive foreign aid. The conve n-
tion of sove re ign equality gives every state,
no matter how sma ll, a sea t at the UN and the
African Union, and this seat can be its gove rn-
ment ' s most import ant source of levera ge.
When Cameroon or Ca pe Verde is repre-
sented at the UN Security Co uncil, suddenly
Am erican, Briti sh and French interest in that
country shoo ts up. And in Algiers, Senegal
showe d what sove reign equality can mean .
Senegal' s President, also recentl y elected,
was Abdoulaye Wade, a septuage naria n
long-tim e opponent of the country' s hith erto
dominant party. Wade too wanted to make a
splash in Afric a, in his case by rally ing the
bloc of form er French colonies around a rival
continental scheme called the OM EGA plan.
Wade' s staff drew up a list of infras tructura l
projects to be fund ed by foreign aid, and
added an age nda of democratizati on. The
OM EGA plan had so me techni cally sound
propo sals, but politic all y it was a spoiler. If
Afr ica present ed two competing plan s for
continent al development , the G8 would sup-
port neith er. But the Se nega lese mini ster
refu sed to shift. Indeed , many of the coun-
tries that suspected that they would not be
amo ng the favour ed partner nation s in the
Mb eki- ECA plan, expresse d support for
OM EGA. By the eve ning of the fir st day of
the ministerial meeting, the imp asse look ed
unb reak able.
There was too much at stake for Mbeki ,
Wade and the other key contin ental leaders to
let Algiers fail, and that night they phoned
their delegates with new instructions. In the
mornin g, the atmosphere changed. The South
Afr ican s and the Se nega lese embraced and
compromise was reach ed . There would be a
single "New Afri can Initi ati ve" and all Afr i-
ca n countri es wo uld be equal members. Sen-
ega l wo uld be repr esented in its leader ship .
In Jul y at Ge noa the G8 decided "to for ge a
new partn ership to address issues crucial to
Afric an developm ent". Thus was born the
New Partn ership for Afric a ' s Develo pment
(NE PAD), the continent's most ambitious
developm ent pack age to date and a beginning
of the annual G8 sess ions on Afric a.
Blair was an enthusiast for NEPAD -
perhaps too much so: he sometimes appeared
as more of a spokes man for the plan than his
Afric an counterparts, and irritated them by
his condescens ion in G8 and Com monwe alth
summits. Meetin g with the head s of Briti sh
aid chariti es in Downing Street two yea rs
later, Blair explained the initi ative by compar-
ing it to the enlarge ment of the Euro pean
U ni on. Ge tti ng a gove rn me nt to enact one
reform was difficult enough, Blair said, and
getting wholesale chan ge in a sys tem of eco -
nomi c management was next to impo ssible.
The EU had succeeded in helpin g Eas t Euro-
pean countri es to bui ld market economies and
liberal democ racies because it offered the
exceptionally attractive but realizable priz e of
EU memb ership . NEPAD, he said, is a compa-
rable bargain . If Afric an countri es reform
their eco nomic management and democ rati ze,
we can offer aid, trade and debt relief.
Blai r' s parallel between Eastern Europe
and Africa was always tenuous, espe cially as
Members of the nomadic Karamojong tribe in Uganda receiving United Nations
food aid, January 2007
the rich world has yet to deli ver on its side of
the bargain . To be fair , there is significa nt
progress. Aid is increa sing ; it has doubl ed
since 200 I , though half of the increase is due
to emergency aid and one-off debt relief, and
it hasn 't risen in the past two yea rs. Mor e
importantly, as Bolton and Ridd ell stress , aid
hasn 't yet reached a scale at which its pro-
mises of sustainable grow th and poverty
reduction can be prop erly eva luated. Not
only are the gross quantiti es of aid far below
the 0.7 per cent of GNP that wea lthy coun-
tries promi sed in the 1970 s, but that aid is
hugely ineffi cient. Bolton cites two independ-
ent studies, by the Ce nter for Globa l Develop-
ment in Washin gton, DC and Action Aid
(which has moved its global headquarters
from London to Johannesbur g), which
conclude that the real value of aid is only
about 40 cent s in the bud get doll ar. For
a range of reaso ns, most notabl y the unrelia-
bilit y of aid commitment s and the large
amount s spe nt o n nation al co nsult ants, aid
recipi ent s need to discount aid income by 60
per cent or more.
Ridd ell stresses that while we have had
plent y of experience with aid ove r the past
half century, we still have rem arkabl y few
data to demon strate what works . There are all
kind s of biases and wea knesses in aid eva lua-
tions (many of them courage ously addresse d
in more recent report s, he adds) . Among
these is the tend ency to see k inform ation on
specific proj ects whose success is attributed
disprop orti onately to the resourc es and
efforts of the outside age ncy involved . Most
analysis neg lects the wider contextual fac-
tors, despite the prov en fact that the main
determinants of aid ' s imp act are the commit-
ment and ahility of the recipi ent to make use
of what is provided .
Bolt on, Ridd ell and Ca lderisi each have
different prop osals for how to lower aid ' s
discount rate. Bolton is in favour of simplic-
ity and sca le. The multiplicity of aid donors
in a country is a huge imp edim ent to effi-
ciency. The most talent ed staff in an Afri can
ministry are tied up in dealin g with endless
delegations from a multitude of aid don ors
and writing thou sand s of report s on aid
fund s, rather than doin g the job of actually
runnin g the eco nomy. He argues that the
World Bank is the world 's most effec tive aid
donor because its opera tions are free from the
micro-m anagem ent and intru sive conditional-
ities typic al of bilateral aid donors. Calderisi
sugges ts mergin g the World Bank, the Inter-
nation al Mon etary Fund and the UN Develop-
ment Programm e. The institutions have dif-
ferent mandates and phil osophi es: long-term
developm ent , sound short- and medium-
term ec onomic managem ent, and capac ity-
buil ding respectively. The IMF' s strictures
regul arly cont radict the developm ent al ambi-
tion s of the others. Wh y not compel them to
develop a comm on vision by fusin g them in
one instituti on? Ridd ell' s prescripti ons focu s
on incremental ways to make the ex isting
sys te m function better , such as mor e pro-
gra mmes of cash tran sfers directl y to the
poor and an impro ved science of impl em enta-
tion . Such modest sugges tions have a better
chance of bein g reali zed.
Western donor s are makin g goo d if belated
progress on the debt relief promi se. Large
amo unts o f Afri ca' s debt to We stern cre di-
tor s have been canc elled , but this has been
too recent for its imp act to be pro perly
assessed. As with aid, we are moving in the
right direction, but are still far from the desti-
nati on . In countries such as Uganda and
Ethiopia, this has result ed in a marked
increase in infrastructural investment. It is in
the area of trade that Western failure and
hypocri sy are most clearly ev ident. Eve ry
study of povert y reduction concludes that
opening Western markets to Afri can produc ts
and ending the dumping of surplus beef and
milk powder on Afric an markets would do
far more to reduc e povert y than any aid pro-
gra mme that is curr entl y envisaged. Unwi ll-
ingn ess to reform the world trade sys te m is
the higgest failur e of the last decade. As Bol-
ton compellin gly shows, the continuing sys-
tem s of subsidies and quot as are an insult to
rationality, the cause of unn ecessaril y high
prices in Western countries, a waste of tax-
payer s' money and the cau se of much need-
less povert y in Afri ca - povert y that destro ys
livelihoods and kills children. An d the migra-
tion (aka poaching) of health professional s
from Africa to Euro pe repr esent s a resou rce
tran sfer from the poor to the rich wor lds that
outwe ighs the benefit s of official ass istance
for health. Onl y last yea r did DFID work
out an agreeme nt with the National Health
Service that it will not hire nurses from the
poor est Afric an countri es, and Brit ain is well
ahead of other countries in this respect.
Unless these di storti ons and inju stic es are
reformed radicall y, all the impro vement s in
aid and debt relief will have mod est effect.
Will Robert Zoe llick, newly cho sen as Presi-
dent of the World Bank, be ready to use his
expertise as form er US Trad e Repr esent ati ve
to take this bull by its horn s?
Poss ibly. The bigger failur es are on the
Afri can side, however. The compromises
struck in Algier s that allowe d Afri ca to
present a single, unit ed initiati ve also pro ved
the greatest weaknesses of NEPAD . Both
Mbeki ' s Mill ennium Plan and A moa kos
Compact for Afric a' s Recovery had put trad e
and investm ent first, debt relief seco nd and
aid third. Both had singled out comp etiti ve
crit eri a for exce llence as the basis for new
enhanced aid relationship s. In practice,
NEP AD revert ed to the old clamour for aid
fund s. The probl em of distorted incentiv es
has not go ne away: gove rnmen ts that preside
over sma ll eco nomies based on primary com-
moditi es and foreign aid have little incenti ve
to promote eco nomic developm ent and every
reason to sustain the status quo . NEPA D has
becom e a slow -mov ing and largel y empty
gravy train . Noneth eless, debt relief , aid and
better eco nomic mana gem ent may be work-
ing their magic . Afric a' s GDP grew at more
than 6 per cent last yea r and more than 5 per
ce nt the year before. Ethiopia has notch ed up
10 per cent annual grow th for the past three
years. In Africa, it is always important to be
cauti ous as there have been many false
da wns. But the economic fund ament als see m
to be better this time around.
Bolt on, Riddell and Calderisi have each
written exce llent and significa nt book s.
Bolton ' s Poor Story is the most access ible: an
entertaining guide to the rea lities of aid based
on fir st-hand experience in Eas t Afric a, laden
with revealin g anecdo te and the recurring
theme of the constraint s faced by the newly
elected and well-mea ning president of a fic-
tion al co untry, Uz ima . Covering not ju st aid
but also trad e and debt , it is a wonderful intro-
ducti on to the issues, not least because Bolton
gra pples with a lot of incon veni ent realiti es
about the inefficienc y of the aid syste m.
Ridde ll started Does Foreign Aid Really
Work ? as an upd ate of his earlier book on the
subjec t, but soon reali zed that the intervenin g
two decades had tran sform ed the aid busi-
ness. Not only had aid amounts suddenly dou-
bled , but the complexity of the sys te m had
hugely increa sed. The largest voluntary age n-
cies such as CARE and Medecin s Sans Fron-
tieres now manage programm es of a size and
complex ity comparable to those of middl e-
rankin g official aid donor s of thirt y years
ago. Like Bolton , he mercilessly dissects the
failin gs of the aid sys tem and det ails the ways
in which donor instituti ons are resistant to
change.
Calder isi's The Trouble with Af rica is the
most original of the three, with its refreshin g
frankn ess about the drags on deve lopment
ca used by dysfunctional politi cal sys tems. It
is improbabl e that any of these auth ors' radi-
cal ideas will be impl em ent ed, or eve n reach
the stage of formin g a prop osal to be pre-
sented to Afric an ministers of fin ance and the
G8. But it is significa nt that such ideas are
now part of the main stream di scu ssion on
reducin g Afri ca' s poverty.

TLS SEP TE M BER 21 2 0 07

IO MEMOIRS

his is the office me mo ir of the last man bluffing and he didn 't under stand that we

T to retire as Director of Ce ntra l Intelli-

gence, the job havin g since been
di vided into two - a Director of Na tional
Watchful still were not". Te net does not spec ulate on the
strategy behind the administration's drift to
war; ind eed , "a serious co nsidera tion of the
Intelli gence and a Director of the Ce ntral impli cation s of a US invasion " never took
Intelli gence Agency . Th ings had not go ne J AM ES M . M URPHY Tenet claim s, in any case, that the C IA was place, to his kn owled ge. Per ha ps , he now
we ll for the C IA in the yea rs before George not slow to ident ify the threat , and reel s off a think s, he should have intervened when
Tenet took charge, an d wi th the co llapse of G e o r g e Te ne t list of warn ings sent up the line (incl uding the public com ments "went beyond our intelli-
the Sov iet Union man y wo ndered whether arres ting ly titled Presidential Brief, August gence". But the intelli gen ce co mmunity
the nation really needed such a dubi ou s AT THE CENTER OF THE ST O RM 2001: Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the prides itself on kno win g its place, wh ich is to
expedien t of statecraft. Aldrich Arnes' s My years at the CIA United States). Lik e his colleagues who lived help elec ted policymakers achieve their aims,
unpard on able treacher y the KG B' s 514pp.HarperCollins. £25 (US $30). throu gh that uneasy summer of 200 I, Tenet not critiqu e them: "po licy makers are
Parthian sho t as it yie lded the field - further 978006 1147784 is left with deep remorse that the intell igence allowe d to co me to ind epend ent j udge men ts
und ermined its reputation and its mor ale. community co uld not anticipate the place an d abo ut what the intelli genc e may mean and
Be fore the arrival of Islami c terrorism , one wors t, to satisfy with leaks, sp ins and goss ip. time of the attac k, inform ation which Co ndo - what risks they will tolerat e . .. " . Of one
could speculate whether the CIA in tim e Th ere see ms no reaso n why Tenet's shou ld leezza Rice later suggested was necessary for thin g, ho wever, he is sure : "The United
wo uld go the way of the Prohibition Bureau . not be on the book shel ves as we ll. He writes action at the po licy level. C IA co unter-terror - States did not go to war .. . solely because of
Tenet restored the Age ncy's badl y eroded direct and readable prose, wi th only occa - ism operations since, he says, have tracked WMD" . With out say ing so dir ectl y, he lets us
confide nce ju st in time to confro nt a new an d siona l lapses into ma nage ment demotic (log- do wn some 254 terrori st suspec ts and headed draw the inevitable co nclusi on that Iraq ' s
unfamili ar kind of adve rsary : an outlaw frater- j am s ge t unbl ocked , thin gs are laid on the off more than twent y conspiracies - suc- WMD capa bility and an allege d connec tion
nity of unidentifiable zea lots ready to use sui- line), presenting himse lf as a cigar-chomping cesses, no doubt, but no con solati on for 911 1, with al-Qaeda were se ized on by policy-
cide tac tics to bring may hem to the streets of "Greek kid from Queens" . No t one who mu ch less an ass ura nce aga inst its repetition . makers who felt , as politicians ofte n do, that
America n cities . Hi s reaction can be imag- climb ed the crowded ladder of the profession Striking back at al-Qaeda in Afgha nistan some headline issue was needed to shortc ut
ined on bein g told, shortly after his ap point- from case offic er or ana lyst, Te net made his fell to his Agenc y, whose off icers soo n found divisive deb ate and win popul ar support.
ment, that the FBI had mor e special agent s way to the seve nth floor at Langley along the them selves foll owing in the foot step s of A go od third of the book cove rs the de terio-
in New York City than the C IA had cland es- better- greased channels of Co ng ress ional their nineteenth-century Brit ish cou nterp art s. ration of Te net's influ en ce in an administra-
tin e office rs throu gh out the wo rld. staff wor k and the Na tional Sec urity Co uncil. These latter-d ay Gree nmantles impro vised tion strugg ling to deal with too much bad
Unlike the discur sive reflec tions of most Once arr ived, he was to fin d that Islamic shifting coa litions amo ng trib es with fleetin g news and not hap py to hear any more . There
ex -Di rectors, Te net's acco unt is packed wi th terrori sm co nstra ined the strategic roo m for loyalt ies, their Maxim gun an abil ity to ca ll are plent y of anecdotes to sugges t that thi s
incident , often rive ting and worthy of individ- mano eu vre for his stewa rdship ju st as Sov iet do wn aeria l bomb ardm ent which was devas- was no real-life versio n of The West Wing:
ual atte ntion. Some will regard it as a breach nuclear rivalr y had for his predecessor s. tati ng for a Third World militia like the Th e Defen se Secret ary, Don ald Rum sfeld,
of the spy 's omerta, but this age ncy which Some complain that he should have done Ta leban. In a ma tter of weeks, al-Qae da was snipes at the CIA 's managem ent of the
o nce operated out of unmarked buildings had more to prod the qu agmire-averse President rout ed in a camp aign led by 110 C IA offic ers Af gh an wa r while his Unde rsec retary 's intel-
lon g since becom e an obj ect of public curios - Clinton to strike do wn al-Qae da in its with 3 16 Special Forces and oth er support ligence sho p co mpetes with the CIA and dis-
ity - which niche jo urna lism did its best, and infancy, but that mu st be left to the histori ans. per sonn el - "o ne of the grea tes t successes in sem inates di scredit ed infor mation to shore up
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -----, Agency hi story" . It is a tell ing indi cation of the ad ministration line; someone in the Pe nta-
a new era of wa rfa re that spec ial per mission go n eve n transport s to Iraq a rag tag brigade
TheAssociationof was required to bur y a CIA casualty, a civil- led by a man long before den ou nced by the
ian case officer, in the Arlin gton militar y CIA as an intell igenc e fabric ator. Co lleag ues
Literary Scholars ALS @ cem etery. (Despite the pusill ani mo us effo rts do not answer Condo leezza Rice 's phon e
and Critics of the CIA ce nsor, a vivid picture of what call s, and she does not always return calls her-
the campaign loo ked like on the gro und is self. Gli mp sed at the ce ntre of thi s stressed
fou nd in Gary Bernt sen ' s Ja wbreaker. ) Th e com mu nity, but seem ing ly re moved fro m its
Thirteenth Annual Conference Iraq cris is took Tenet almos t unawares: dail y grind, is a Pres iden t who see ms to see
exac tly when the wa r became inevitable, he his job more as that of board chairma n than
Chicago • The Hotel Allegro • October n-I4, ~007
says, is still a myster y to him. He wa lks us CE O, and appears as loa th to involve him self
throu gh the hectic preparati on of Na tional with deci sion-m aking in his departm ents as
Sessions on Shakespeare, Teaching the
Intelli gence Estima te (NIE) 2002 , Iraq 's he wo uld have been to cha nge the battin g
Great Books.Toseph Conrad, Poetry
Continuing Programs for Weapons of orde r of the baseball team he once ow ned.
and Politics in the '930S, and much
Mass Destruction, the ill-fated atte mpt to Mean while, Tenet strugg les to prevent bad
more.. . determin e if Sadda m Hussein had nucl ear intelli gence from being cherry -picke d to co n-
Appearances by Eleanor Cook, we apo ns, or might ex pect to ge t them . Hi s is fir m what the po licy make rs want to hear - or,
Clare Cavanagh, Morris not an excu lpatory exercise : he admits that worse, annou nce to the wor ld. Sometimes he
Dickstein, Stuart Dybek, Michael while hedged and padd ed with ritua l qu alifi- wins : his analysts firml y resist certa in
Gorra, Stephen Orgel, A.E. ca tions, the NIE encouraged readers to take atte mpts to connec t Iraq with al-Qaeda.
Stallings, Elizabeth Taylor, as true something which was no more than Som etim es he loses: Co lin Powell ' s speec h
prob able, and, in the eve nt, pro ved mistaken . to the UN includes reporting the C IA sho uld
Michael Wood, and many others ...
Co ntrary to what many see m to think, it have rejected as unreli able - a blu nder which ,
Readings by Reginald Gibbons, stated the beli ef that Sadda m did not have togeth er with the W hite Hou se ' s atte mpt to
Mary Kinzie, and Adam nucl ear wea po ns - but did so with on ly a du ck its share of respon sibility, tou ches off
Zagajewski "moderate level of confide nce". Whil e it "an unint end ed war betwee n the Whit e
warne d that "we lack specific inform ation on Hou se and CIA". Eventually, Te net 's posi-
Roundtable on the Relations between man y aspe cts of Iraq ' s WM D", the contex t tion becom es imp ossibl e whe n he find s that
Creative Writing Programs and sugges ted that thin gs wo uld look eve n worse the Whit e Hou se briefed against him person-
English Departments with:John Barr, if th er e we re so me. In re ality , of c o urse, more ally, feedin g Bob Woodward the story that he
David Fenza, Linda Gregerson, data would never have turn ed up what it was had ass ured an und ecid ed President that the
and Rosanna Warren ass umed Sadd am was hidin g. Mi sjud gements case for Iraq ' s possession of WMD was a
are certainl y nothing new in the intelli gence "s lam du nk". Wood ward ' s book s "have lon g
business, and pos t-mo rtems of duff C IA esti- been used in j ust thi s way - to defl ect blam e
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
mat es ove r the years confirm the wisdo m and set up fall guys ", Te net clai ms. He
J ames Wood, Critic
that , starting with flawed ass umptions, one admits having made the fatal rem ark, but
.............................................
, ............... digs oneself eve r deeper into error. The co n- adds that , in con text, it mea nt only to suggest
clu sion of one such critiq ue could app ly here, that decl assifying more inform ation wo uld
Conference and membership details : www.bu.edu/literary
that the analysts "lacked a model or doc trine help the adm inistration's case. (A las, this
Inquiries: 617-358-1990 / alsc@bu.edu for coping with im prob able outco mes" : the sounds like pleadin g to a lesser charge , and
T he Association of Literary Scholars and C ritics (A LS C) is a nonprofit organization of sc holars , crit ics , black swa n never swa m into view. The CIA he is right to think that "some might criticize
w rit ers, educators , editors , and read ers dedicated to t he advancement and study of literature-ancient to thu s became the victim of Sadda m 's suic idal us for pa rticipating in what was esse ntially a
modern, in all lan gu ages- an d the encouragement of international li t er ary exchange. decepti on : " we didn' t realize that he was marketin g mee ting". Is it less imp rop er for an

TLS SEPTEMBER 21 2007


int elli gen ce chief to hyp e hi s case to the
peopl e tha n it is to se ll it to a Pr esid ent ?) A n
out raged co mplaint by Tenet to A ndr e w
Ca rd, the Pr esid e nt' s Chie f of Staff, brou ght
no response, C ard bein g either too hon est to
den y Te net's cha rge, or too as ha me d to co n-
firm it. T he necessary tru st bet ween Te ne t
and the President havin g been brok en , it was
tim e to res ig n.
So me read er s may be un easy about part s of
Te ne t's account. T he re is hi s inhuman recall
of eve nts and eve n of co nve rsa tions (g ive n
with in speech ma rks) , wh ich a mounts to a
kind of pro saic licen ce. Is it lik el y, too, that
hi s wa rn ings to Sa ud i and Paki stani leader s
open ed th eir eyes abo ut al-Qae da, as he
see ms to think? Some thin gs we mig ht ex pec t
from th e acco unt by suc h a we ll-place d
so urce are missing: the C IA 's rep ort ed
contac t w ith Sa dda rn's Fo re ign Minister ,
Na j i Ali Sabri , on th e eve of th e war, for
example, or rumours suggesting th at Sa dda m
had been co nsi der ing last-minute abdica tion .
On the troubling issue of ho stil e int err ogati o n
or torture , Te net confines hi mself to restatin g
a terrible dil emma, ye t arg uing that inform a-
tion im po rtant to public sa fe ty wo uld not
have been acquired had Khalid Sheik
M oh ammed, the inspi rati on behind 9/1 1,
been adm itte d to the crim inal ju stice sys te m
as he had dem anded (he sta ted he wo uld not
--------------------------~--------------------------
ext year mark s th e six tieth annive rs-
N ary of the death of th e arc hitec t of th e
T urk ish Republic, but as my dau gh-
ter once sa ng o n the way hom e from her Istan-
bul crec he , "A ta turk did not di e, He lives in
my heart " . He lives on in eve ry public space
as we ll, or as on e of th e contributors to The
Politics of Public Memory ill Turkey, edi ted
by Es ra Oz yur ek , wr ites, " a refer ence to
At atiirk [is] almost obliga tory in ord er to ga in
legitimacy" .
T ur key is back in th e new s wi th noth ing
less th an th e nat io n' s so ul at sta ke, accord ing
to so me . In th e run-up to Jul y ' s general
elec tions th e se lf-appo inted guardia ns of
At atiirk ' s legac y tri ed and failed to beat back
their designated " other" , the govern ing Ju s-
tic e and Devel opment Part y (A KP) w hose
sen ior fi gures o nce had roots in an Islam ist
mo vem en t. T he elec to rate, unp ertu rbed ,
retu rned the AKP to po wer. Worse still, from
the military' s po int of view, is th at the ne w
pa rlia me nt ch o se as Presid ent (a nd thei r ne w
com mander -in-c hief) a man who se se cu lar
c rede ntia ls th ey ope nly suspec t. Ma ny Turks
see the real battl e to be abo ut cl ass and privi-
lege, but there are outs ide rs w ho share Kem al-
ist fear s th at the cl eavage is no t bet ween
dem ocrac y and nati on ali sm but mod ernity
and Isla m, an d wring their hand s at the
thou ght of " Isla mists" negotiating EU e ntry .
T ur ks ofte n cite the yo uth of the nati on as
the reason fo r sho rtco mings in th eir de mo-
c racy. But 2008 will also see the eighty -fifth
annive rsary of the Republic' s foundati on and
thi s wo uld see m a bad case of " Peter Pan
syn dro me" . Th e authors of th e pap er s in thi s
vo lume - all , with o ne ex ce ption, ge nuinely
yo ung T ur kish sc holars - offer an alternative
ex pla nation, nam el y the very narro w limits
pl aced aro und th e public sphere. T he At atiir k
re volution was very effec tive in erasing the
me mor y of the di scredited Ottoman past. The
citize ns of th e new Republic were enj oined to
look for ward , with beli ef in a future where
MEMOIRS & POLITICS
talk until he had reach ed New York and go t
a la wyer ).
A s mig ht be ex pec ted, most rev iews of thi s
book have focu sed on its characte r as bein g
th at of T enet resti ng hi s case - censur ing its
passion for se ttling scores or rel ishing its
insid e anecdo tes of an ad ministra tio n in trou-
bl e. Yet the book oilers gro un ds for m uch
wide r a nd mor e int erestin g re flec tions o n
wha t int ell ige nce ca n do in our day and w ha t
we ex pec t from it - not al ways the same
th ing s. Ulysses tell s Achill es in Troilus and
Cressi da, " T he provi de nce th at ' s in a wa tc h-
ful sta te / Knows almos t eve ry gra in of Plu-
tus' go ld ... / Do es thou ght s un veil in th eir
du mb crad les . / There is a myster y . .. in the
soul of state / Which hath an ope ration more
di vin e th an breath or pen can give ex pressure
to . . .". No doubt peopl e incr easin gl y like to
think Ulysses was right , and fin d it easy to be
per su aded by scie nce (an d the oxymo ron of
politi cal sc ie nce) that all thin g s are kn ow-
abl e. M uc h is thu s ex pec ted from the wa tc h-
ful sta te, for getting th at its ade pts, like the
res t of us, mu st negotiate the trade- offs
bet ween w ha t we k now and w ha t we guess
at, both of w h ich ment al states are alw ays
intert win ed and int erdep endent. Unlike th eir
co lleagues in the hard sc ie nce of thi ngs, who
ca n chec k res ults a nd try again, ana lys ts of
human affairs bet th eir cards o nly once and
Old Turks
CA R O LlNE F IN KE L
Es ra O z y u r e k , e d i tor
THE P O L IT ICS O F PUB LIC
M E M O RY I N TU RK EY
225pp. Syrac use University Press. $24.95;
distributed in the UK by Eurospan. £ 16.95.
97808 156 3 1316
they wo uld e njoy the ben efits of th e mod ern
wo rld on equal ter ms wi th th e othe r peopl e of
the Western world. Yet, as th e co ntributors
show, the pas t will not be suppressed.
Eve n as indi vidu als are now looking
bac k into their mult i-strand ed hi stor y to find
for them sel ves alterna tive identiti es to th ose
prescribed b y the supposed ly homogeneou s
Turkish national sta te, past traum as rem ain a
palp abl e forc e th at se ts th e ter m s of de ba te
and th e limit s of th e per mi ssibl e. T he essays
in The Politics of Public Memory ill Turkey
co ver a ra nge of telling in stanc es. In 1998,
when the Republic was mer el y seve nty-five
years old , a newsp aper associated with the
" Isla m ist" Virt ue Part y tu rned the co mpul-
sory At atiirk front page picture int o a subve r-
sive ac t hy puhli shin g a pre viou sly unkno wn
pho to of the mod ern leade r pra yin g on the bal-
con y of the new Na tiona l Assembl y building
alon gside a turb aned cleri c - and on th e very
day of the decl arati on of the sec ular republic.
It was inte nde d as a reminder th at At atiir k
had wor ke d with reli gio us leader s and only
lat er purged religion from the public sp here.
T he non -M us lim population of the terri-
tor y co mpri sin g mo de rn T urkey was 19.1 per
cent at the beginning of the twenti eth ce ntury
and by its en d had dec reased to 0.2 pe r cent.
Th e vi ole nt di sapp earanc e of the Ott o man
A rme nians an d G reeks are ineradic abl e ele-
TLS SEPTE MBER 21 2 007
mu st live with th e res u lts. Ten et also might
have sa id more abo ut the ofte n troubled mar-
riage of intelli gence and poli c ym aking. Bo th
parti es lik e to prom ot e the my th of a Ca rte-
sia n du ali sm bet ween the obse rver and the
ac tor - tho se w ho know an d tho se w ho do -
but , as in most oth er hu ma n e nterprises, the y
are j oin ed at th e head and sha re in the risks
and the co nse q ue nces . Geor ge Tenet's
account ce rta inly shows aga in th at best prac-
tic e in govern me nt does no t always survive
the defo rmation professionnelle of po litics ,
and the perverse arrival of the eve nts M ac mil-
lan wa rne d of. Te ne t beli eves th at he has
don e the Sta te some se rvice, but unlike Oth-
ello, he ca nno t be so sure they know it. The
C IA recen tly - and relu ct antl y - rel eased a
2005 rep ort by its Inspect or Genera l (IG) on
the Age ncy 's sha re of c ulpa bility for the di s-
as te r of 9/1 1. Suc h post- mort em s o n intelli-
ge nce failures usu all y refl ect a se lf-co nsc io us
di sint erestedn ess befitting th ose w ho wor k in
hindsight. T his rep ort , however, raised
pointed ques tio ns about Tenet's perform-
ance, eve n suggesting that a panel be created
to assess w he ther it fell bel ow th e sta nda rds
required by hi s po siti on . Knowin g thi s rep ort
was in th e works, Te net may we ll have
intended hi s mem oir to ge t his side of the
story out fir st.
T he IG' s re vie w - of wh ich onl y the sum -
ments in national mem or y. Des pite a break-
th rou gh confer ence on Ott om an Ar meni an s
hel d in Ista nbu l in 2005 , di scu ssio n of ge no -
cide is still tab oo. Ye t th e notion th at G ree ks
and T urks are kin , becau se both popul at ion s
have a common ide ntit y as An at oli an s, is
wi de ly held , and book s an d mu sic redole nt of
thi s shared past are published by e nte rprising
pri vate conce rns. O ne publisher , Ragip Zara -
kolu , w hose book s we re so suc cessful th at
the Ministr y of C ulture lent its sup po rt, over-
ste pped the limits of public di scourse in pub-
lishing the me mo irs of an A rme nian doctor in
Izmir in 1922 a nd is now on tri al for in sult in g
the army and T urkishness . A ltho ug h Zara -
kolu was ac quitted in a case rel atin g to publi-
cation of ano the r Arm enian mem oir , hi s tran s-
lator is c harged with in sult ing the state a nd
insulti ng the me mor y of Atatiirk. Me mor y is
clo sel y poli ced.
Reference to An atoli a as the mark er of
share d ident ity was a pre valent notion in the
early days of the Re public. Visitors to the An a-
toli an Civ iliza tions Mu seum in A nkara are
inv ited to see the msel ves as the latest of the
peopl es inh abitin g Anatoli a and to see co ntem-
pora ry Turkey as the crown of these civiliza-
tion s. R ut not everyone hu y s into the m yth ,
acco rding to survey inter vie ws. Displays
meant to produce a sense of national unit y and
hom ogen eit y in stea d provoked feelin gs of
hierar ch y and variety. Some saw the past as a
go lde n age an d found the present a di sapp oint-
ment ; others viewed mu seum-goin g as an elite
pastime and felt them sel ves excl uded.
T he 9,000 -year-o ld site of Ca ta lhoy uk in
cen tra l An at oli a has no ex plic it link s to any
prese nt-day gro up, ethnic, re ligi ous or rac ia l,
but since excavations restarted in th e 1990 s
ther e has been a co nflic t over w ho "ow ns" it.
Ar ch aeolo gi sts assert their primacy bec au se
11
mar y co ncl us ions we re decl assifi ed - strives
to dem on str ate the acco untability w hich Co n-
gress and the public dem and, but cannot ident-
ify any bun gled lead or m isse d opp ortunity
" that would have e nable d the Int elli gen ce
Com munity to predi ct or pre vent th e 9/1 1
attacks . . . " . Yet , as if to reassert
the faith in th e wa tc hful sta te , it find s that
hum an s once aga in did not deli ver what
bu reauc racy ex pec ted of th em : " if Int elli-
ge nce Co mm unity office rs had been able to
view and an alyze th e full ran ge of inform a-
tion av ailable before 11 Sep te mbe r, 200 I ,
they could have de vel oped a more informed
contex t in w hich to assess the threat rep or ting
of the sp ring and summer of th at year". Co n-
text is ce rta inly an essentia l to make sense
of thin gs; brief ings wo uld be imp ossibl e wi th-
out it. But it is no subs titute for the informa-
tion it is meant to ex plica te. Te net, a nd
oth er s, ha ve alrea dy cha lle nge d man y of
these judge ments. They may also re mark that
the IG' s team was itself unabl e to tie up an
important loose e nd in its study, eve n though
working with coope rati ve witnesses and a
mountai n of unimpeach abl e document ati o n -
sure ly a lesson for tho se w ho spea k of a
pa no ptic mi ssion to " view a nd ana lyze the
full ra nge of informati on ava ilable before
9/1 1" . Co ntex t is all: Ge orge Ten et may tak e
so me comfor t in the th ou ght.
they are unco ver ing clu es to the ori gin s of
hum an settle me nt in th e regi on ; T urkish
visitors see it as a so urce of national prid e; art-
ists use its im ages in thei r work an d ha ve
di scovered th at it is a ma rke ta ble brand;
and free- spending "goddess groups" cl aim
Catalhoy uk as the origin of the moth er go d-
dess, pro mp ting co nse rva tives in 1998 to
burn down th e "Herl nn" - a near by hou se
dedi cat ed for th eir use. T he Catalhoyuk of
tod ay has differ ent mea nin g s for different
peopl e , and the mann er of their interaction
with the site colo urs the me mories they
in vok e in order to ac hieve th eir e nds .
Villagers aro un d Ca ta lhoy uk try to capit al-
ize on thei r prox im ity to suc h a hi gh-profil e
p roject to win a ne w roa d or sc ho ol. T he ir
e mbrace of the mod ern is share d by carpet-
weaving wo me n in wes tern An atoli a who
feel trapp ed by the touri st fi cti o n th at the y
lead lives governed by tradition . Th ese
wo me n acc e pt th eir rol e as a livin g link to the
pas t onl y w he n it co mes to marketing their
wares. Th e y are eager to employ new prac -
tices and ga dge ts, a nd esc hew co nnections
with ea rlier ge nera tions of cra fts wo me n.
Ju st as oth er Turkish citize ns di spute the
ide ntity fashion ed for them by the State, the
weavers of wes tern An atoli a are ha rd put to
asse rt the identit y they choose aga inst the
ingra ined perceptions of we ll-inten tioned out-
side rs . Th e lesson for outsiders , be they pack-
age tou rists or broad sheet pundits, is to
develop new ways of loo ki ng at mod ern T ur-
key, a country we so badl y nee d to und erstand .
It is arra nt laziness to rep rodu ce the circum -
scribed term s of the debate within the country :
excl us ive focu s on the appa rent dichoto my
between the Kem ali sts and " fundamentalists"
is no lon ger a useful ficti on. Instead , we
sho uld be listenin g to a new gene ration of
scho lars, like the percepti ve insider voices co n-
tributing to thi s vo lume. The ir und er standing
not only furth er s our ow n, but help s ero de the
rigidit y orde ring T urkish publ ic life.
12
A King's man
n a major Europ ean country it is rare for
I a dail y newspap er with a circulation of
bet ween 90 ,000 and 125,000 to beco me a
significant cultural as we ll as a political
forc e. It is unu sual to find a writer wh o could
influ enc e such widely contrastin g figur es as
General de Gaull e, the Algerian Nationa list
leader Ferh at Abb as, Jacqu es Lacan , T. S.
Eliot , Andre Malrau x, or Geor ges Dum ezil , It
is pu zzlin g to find a Frenchma n with a deep-
sea ted hatred of Germ any bein g pro secuted
by his comp atriot s for collaboration with the
Germans. Th e common link between these
different propositi on s is Charles Maur ra s,
the mo vin g forc e behind the neo- ro yali st
Action francai se mo vem ent. Wh en his
name is menti oned it attra cts the epithet
"ex treme right- win g" and the accusa tion
of "virulent anti-Se rnitis m". Maurr as is
ge nerally conside red "unappealing" .
In his full-l en gth study, based on new
archi ve mat erial , Stephane Gi ocanti , auth or
of a wor k on T . S. Eliot (rev iewe d in the TL S
by Steph en Rom er, Nove mber 14, 200 3),
do es not set out to rehabilitate M aurr as but
to trace his intell ectu al developm ent , concen-
tratin g as much on hi s literar y contribution
as on his political thou ght and acti vity. In
the proc ess, he ex plains why this Pro vencal
po et came to exer t such a lingerin g influ ence
over several ge nerations and beyond Fre nch
bord ers.
Maurras was born in Marti gues in 1868,
the son of a liberal-minded teach er and of a
Ca tho lic, conservative mother. Pro venc e left
its stamp on him . He liked the sea, the food ,
the mu sic , the effects of the Medit err anean
sun, and the rem ain s of Classica l civi lization.
Hi s father died whe n he was six, and, as he
grew up, Maurr as became parti ally deaf , an
affl iction that put paid to his dream s of a
naval career. Indeed , to his shame, he was
exem pted fro m military se rv ice . Co m bine d
with an ugly nose, the deafn ess brou ght out
a tend ency to imp atienc e and assertiveness.
He was "cet enfa nt trop vif que les disgr aces
endurcirent" , Fortunately, he was also
blessed with Pro venc al charm.
Maurras pur sued his studies in Aix-en-
Pro venc e, soon fallin g under the spe ll of
Frederic Mi stral, the lyric al poet of Pro venc e,
and of the Felibrige, the literar y movem ent
that aimed to revive Provenc al culture and
aut ono my. M aurr as bec ame no mean poet
him self. A readin g of Pascal had give n him
the courage to overc om e his deafn ess. At the
Sorb onn e he practic all y lived in the libr ary,
as his affliction made the lectur es a trial. He
relaxed by readin g Lucretiu s in the ori ginal
latin , sha ring th e po et ' s view that man was
hi s own enemy. "Aucun Anci en ne rna ere
plu s pro che" , he late r recall ed .
Giocanti sensibly discern s the major them e
running throu gh Mau rras' s wor k as an
awa reness of the fragility of ci vili zati on s.
Hi s childhood had witnesse d the calamitou s
defeat of Franc e in 1870- 71 , the destru cti ve
Pari s Co mm une, the occupation of a third of
the country by Ger ma n troop s, and the loss
of two pro vin ces. He learn ed that cau ses had
effects. " What was the Revoluti on ?" , he
asked his nur se . Using the present ten se, she
repli ed : " It' s when everybo dy kills eve ry-
BIOGRAPHY
the recent histor y of Fra nce had predi spo sed
his compatriots to endow the Republican
ideal with the same sentime nts which oth er
nation s reser ved for their heredit ary rulers.
Without such sentime nts of attachme nt no
JOH N ROGIST ER the high- wat er mark of its civilization, the country co uld surv ive. O n all the other
St e p h a n e G i o ca n t i
mon arch y must therefore have had intrinsic
value. If one restored it as the form of gove rn-
ment, one wo uld be doin g so because that
aspects of M aur ras' s programm e - the need
for a stro ng cent ral author ity combined with
region al decentrali zation - Barres was in
M AU R RA S instrin sic value could contribute to the we l- agreem ent.
Le chaos et I'ordre fare of the country. Th e daunting task which With the Enquete sur la monarchie the
575pp. Flammarion. €27. he faced was that of convincing others. neo-ro yali st moveme nt was launched and
978 208 210495 1 Maurras was not the found er of Action L 'Action fra ncaise, which became a dail y
francaise, which he j oin ed in 1899 , six newspape r in 1908 , becam e its organ , with
bod y else". He was twent y-on e whe n the months after a committee bearin g that name Maurras as its leading light. He attr acted a
fled glin g Third Republic celebrated the cente- had been es tablished by Hen ri Vau geois, a gifted editor ial team from different back-
nary of 178 9, ju st at the tim e when the bene- philosoph y teach er, and Mauric e Pujo , a gro unds, including the ebullient literar y critic
fit s of the Revolution we re bein g qu estioned mu sic critic. They were Republican , nati onal- Leon Daudet (w ho later secure d the Gon-
not onl y by Ernes t Ren an and Hippolyte ist and anti-Drey fusa rd . Th e deci sion to par- court Priz e for Prou st), and the states ma nlike
Tain e, but also by the new schoo l of sociol- don Dreyfu s left hi s supporters angry that he histori an Jacqu es Bain vill e. Soc ia l Ca tholics
ogy found ed by Frede ric Le Play. Involve- had not been prop erl y exo nerated by du e pro- flock ed to support a movem ent that reject ed
ment with the Felibrige had show n Maurras cess of law, and the anti-Drey fusa rds claim- both socia list coll ecti vization and rampant
the ill effec ts of the Revolution' s legacy of ing the pard on was part of a cove r-up. Vau- capit ali sm in the name of traditi on al va lues,
centrali zation on the nati ve culture of geois and Puj o, joined by Mauri ce Barr es, although Mau rras him self was not a practi s-
the French pro vinc es. A few da ys' work in cl aim ed that the Republic had been subve rted ing Catho lic . Th e pap er attacked parliament-
the archives at Martigues revealed a lost by Jews, Prot estant s and Free maso ns. M aur- ary demo crac y as a recip e for ch aos and cor-
pre-R evoluti onary wor ld of customary law, ras' s camp aign was dir ect ed at the Prot estant rupti on. It was decri ed as a sys tem in which
administrative diversity, local autonomies , histori an and founder of the Revue his- anyone placed anywhere could do any thing
parish right s, all chec ks and balanc es afford- tori que, Gabriel Monod, whom he atta cked anyho w.
ing prot ecti on to the indi vidu al and to cul- for preferrin g fashion able Ge rma n methodol- How was the mon arch y to be restor ed ?
Although Maurr as famili arized his read ers
with Ge neral Ge orge Monk and his role in
Eng lish history, his search for a French equiv-
alent see med to preclude the recour se to a
coup d'eta t. He was a pri son er of the contra-
diction bet ween the tradi tion al natur e of the
mon arch y he wis hed to restor e and what
Gioca nti ca lls "le caract ere volontariste du
coup de for ce qu i le retablirait", In any case,
M aurr as was an able pro pagandi st but not a
man of action. How ever, he did receive the
acti ve suppor t of the Pretend er , the "descend-
ant des qu arante rois qui en mille ans firent la
Franc e", the Due dOrleans, living in comfort-
able ex ile as a con sequ en ce of a Republican
law of 1886 (repealed only in 1950 ) which
banned the heads of form er rulin g hou ses
fr om li vin g in Fr an ce.
As a propagandi st, Maurras was in a class
of his own , especially whe n debunking grea t
literary figure s. He had no time for Chateaubri-
and , whom monarchists had regarded until
./ then as a proph et. The grea t man was dis-
Charles Maurras at the printers of L 'A ction francaise, Lyon, 1941 missed in Trois Idees po litiques (1898) as a
closet liberal, the undert aker of the Bourbon
tural en tities in their traditional relation ship ogy to that of Fustel de Co ulanges , the prec ur- mon arch y rath er than its extoller. Chateaubri-
with a state that confin ed itself to its pur ely sor of "I' histoire de lon gue d uree et de l' his- and could not see what the past co uld offer.
reg alian duti es of guardian and arbiter. A toire des ment alit es" . This was the fir st salvo "Le passe co mme passe, et la mort comm e
readin g of Balzac enha nced that vision of in Maurrass ca mpaign to win support for the mort , furent ses uniqu es plaisirs." Giocanti
the past, one that hard ened into realit y once neo-royali st ca use . Gio canti subtly delin eates reveals the unexpectedl y close co mmunion of
Maurr as had discovered Au gu ste Comte and the intell ectu al hurdl es that had to be ove r- thought between Gide and Maurr as in their
Positi vism . Histor y he now saw as the com e, in particul ar, the identification of the rejecti on of Chateaubriand and of self-indul-
science of the past with laws that co uld be nation with the Republic, and of " la patri e" ge nt romanticism genera lly . His analysis of
empirica lly tested . with political parti es. Maurr ass writings is masterl y, particularly of
Maurr as went on to formulate the notion M aur ras laun ched a public debate on the the key works, An thinea (1901 ), L 'A ven ir de
of the fragilit y of civiliz ation . Bein g born in a desirability of restoring a traditional, her edi- l 'intelligence (1905 ), which greatly influenc ed
civiliz ed society, the individual found more tary, anti-parlia mentary mon arch y, not in the Eliot, and Quatre Nuits de Provence (1930), a
than he co uld person ally cont ribut e to that pages of L 'Ac tion francaise, but in a dail y beautifull y written autobiographical reverie.
society . However, civilization was depend ent newspap er that needed a shot in the arm, La Gioc anti gives too pass ing menti on to Maur-
on man' s ability to impo se order on cha os, a Gaze tte de Fran ce. He inter viewed leading rass tribut e to 1. E. C. Bodl ey (1853-1925),
trul y Sisyphea n task. Maurras had moved figur es and published the result s in hi s Sir Charles Dilke' s former secretary, whose
beyon d the narro w world of the Felibrige to Enque te sur la mo narc hie in 1901. The work impre ssive sociolog ical study of France led
view the defence of civilization as a politic al was re-edit ed with a signi fican t introduction Mau rras to describ e him in the title of that trib-
challen ge. Positi vism came to his ass istance . in 1924 . Th e main contributors were Barres, ute as L 'Anglais qui a connu la France (1928 ).
As it could be scientifically dem on strat ed that the noveli st Paul Bourget , the poet Sull y- G ioca nti co vers famili ar ground with his
the Capetian mon arch y had been the longest Prudhomme and the art historian Loui s account of the imp act and chan gin g fortunes
perio d in the history of Fra nce, markin g not Dimi er. Not all we re con verted to the idea. of LAction franca ise until its disapp earanc e
only the creation of its nation al unit y but also Barres rem ained a Republican bec ause he felt in 1944 . Despit e a relati vely small circulatio n
TLS SE PTEMBER 21 2 0 07

the paper had successfully targeted the elites.
It was also in part a victim of its ow n success.
During the 1914-1 8 wa r it kept up the mor ale
of the nation with its anti-Ge rma n rhetori c,
but in so doin g it possibl y strengthened the
equation betwen patriotism an d the Republic.
After the wa r the agei ng M aurras had increas-
ingly to thro w out of his ed itor ial office
yo ung men lured by popul ist and fasci st
movements, es pec ially if they displ ayed
Ge rma nophile tend encies. M aurras tended
to see the Catho lic Ch urch somew hat excl u-
sive ly as an age nt of civiliza tion. L 'Action
[rancaise recei ved a bod y blo w when it was
cond emn ed by the Vatican in 1926 (a ban
revok ed onl y in 1939), and anoth er one in
1938, when the Due d'Orleanss successor,
his cousin (and not his son as stated by
G iocan ti), the Due de Guise, withdrew his
endorsement und er pressur e from his son, the
Co mte de Paris. Th e yo ung and imp atient
Co mte de Pari s had previously goa ded the
reluc tant Maurr as into laun chi ng the ill-fated
demonstrat ion s of Februa ry 6, 1934 , which
result ed in the co min g to power of Leon
Blu m and the Fro nt Popul aire.
Maurr as saw the Naz is as the nastiest
manifestati on of hated pan- Gerrnani srn. In a
fam o us article he dwell ed prophetically on
the fate of ordin ar y men and wome n at the
hand s of "ce peupl e de Se igneurs" . He had
lon g established a distin cti on between "anti-
sern itisme d' etat", whic h he supported in
his attac ks on the role of un assimil ated Jews
in French soc iety, and "anti-sernitisme de
peau", which was redolent of racis t pseud o-
scie ntific theor ies, was espo used by danger-
ous pop ulists, and led to pog ro ms. He
endorsed Pope Pius Xl's encyclica l Mi t bren -
nender Sorge ( 1937) con demni ng totalit arian
excesses. At the sa me tim e, however, he did
not wa nt France to be dragged into wa r by
Brit ain and by French Jews, at the wro ng
tim e and in the wo rst circums tances. In his
view, thi s was what happened in 1939.
Ac tion francaise suppo rted Marshal Petain
and relu ctantly had to tone dow n its an ti-
Ge rman stance. Some o f the yo ung men
Maurras had thrown out were now happil y col-
labor ating with the Nazis . Maurras supp orted
the Marshal' s "Revolution nationale" with its
"return to the land" ideology and its em phas is
on tradit ion al values. He co nde mned the
Ga ullist "dissidence" as roc king the boat. In
1944 , with the Liberation , he ended his caree r
predictabl y in the prison s of his erstwhile
admirer, General de Ga ulle . He died in ho spi-
tal in 1952 , a Ca thol ic at last, shortly after his
release on com pass ionate gro unds .
A parti cul arl y interestin g aspec t of
G ioca nti's acco unt co ncerns Maurr as' s littl e-
known views on France's role in North
Africa. In the French pro tec tora te of
Moro cco , he thou ght it wro ng of the Re pub-
lic to see k to repl ace an ol d civ iliza tio n with
its own . As for A lgeria, then offi ciall y part of
France , it offered the perfect mod el for the
region al autonomy that he wa nted to see
back hom e. His discipl e Fer hat Abbas , the
foun der of L 'Action alger ienne . init ially mili-
tated in favour of local organ ized dem ocrac y
at the grass roots, the only one Ma urras
strove for. Stephane Gi oca nti quotes Ferhat
Abbass stateme nt that there was nothing
in Holy Wr it that prevented an Algeri an
Mu slim from being a Fre nch citizen. Charles
M aurras had und er stood A lgeria bett er than
most of his contem poraries.
BIOGRAPHY & TRAVEL 13
Persians in Polish
yszard Kapusc inski, widely rega rded E D IT H H ALL cursive style, with its myriad digression s and
R as the greates t journalist of the twen-
tieth century, died in Janu ary thi s
yea r. Virtu ally the last sen tence he wrote was
R y s za rd K apu s c in s ki
embedded anecdotes, but there are classic
sym ptoms of the unrevised manuscript, espe-
cially undi sciplined repetitions. Yet there are
the one that co ncl udes this vo lume of mem - TRA VE LS WITH HER O D OTUS also passages of the breatht aki ng descripti ve
oirs. It is a des cription of the recepti onist at a 275p p. Alien Lane The Pengnin Press. £20. brilli anc e to be ex pected from the author of
hotel in Bodrum, Tur key, the mod ern name 978 0 7 139 9848 1 Shah ofShahs ( 1982): mass cremations on the
for the ancien t town of Hali carn assus, where bank s of the Ganges; the view from his plane
the ancient Gree k historian Herodotus was our ances tors, Kapuscin ski was convinced, of a sunset ove r Kabul ; the dri ve from Peking
born. As she gree ted the agein g Po le, the that the hum an race ca n becom e full y alive to to the Great Wall of China; Loui s Arrns tro ng
"black-eyed" yo ung Turk' s smile was pro fes - its histor y as "an unint errupted pro gression sweating pro fuse ly, in his suit and bo w tie,
sio nally polit e, but "tempered by tradition ' s of eve nts". He therefore imagin es that he is as he sang Deep South ballads before a
injunction always to maintain a serious and actually an eyew itness to the epoc h-making nonplu ssed crow d in a Sud anese stadi um .
indifferent mien toward a stra nge man" . even ts that make up Herod otu s' acco unt of Epigra mmatic phrases sparkle throu gh the
In thi s brief enco unter there is crystalli zed the rise of the Persian Empire, such as the some times stilted tran slation from Polish:
the effec t of thi s book - a so litary Euro pea n's em otional traum a du ring the siege of Baby- Herodotu s' Medit erranean wor ld was "a
account of Asiatic and Afric an cultures , in all Ion, or the ch aotic Battl e of Salam is. bright Arcadia that eve ry few years ove rflows
their beaut y but also in their imp enetrability, The rec onstruc tions slide into rivetin g with blo od".
and always in the com pa ny of Herod otu s. In com parisons: Cyrus ' attem pt to subdue the Aspect s of Kapu scinski' s adm iration of
1956, as a young news paper report er , Kapu s- Massagetae of the Ru ssian steppes remind s Herodotus wi ll inevitabl y annoy classicists.
cinski was give n a copy of Seweryn Ham- him of Napoleo n's ill-fated camp aign on Mo s- Th e one rea l defect is his con victi on that
mer' s tran slation of Herod otu s - the fir st to cow; To my ris, the proud queen of that Pontic Herodotus was non- parti san in his construe-
app ear in Poli sh - by his shrew d editor-in-
chief as she despatched him to Indi a. He
began readin g it on the flight to New Delhi
and continued for the rest of his life. Tra vels
with Herodotus narrates how Kapu scinski
ca me to identify Herodotu s as his role mod el
and inspirati on , both in his approach to ethnic
differenc e an d in his meth ods as a wr iter. He
rega rds Herod otu s as the fir st true "glo-
balist" , who espo use d "rnulticulturalism" and
who in his lively, observant Histories co m-
pose d the first grea t example of "reportage"
in wor ld literature.
Kapu scinski fails to say, of co urse , that
Herod otus has since antiquit y also been
widely regarded as the "father of lies". Perh aps
this is a wise om ission, since it is now known
that under Communism, as foreign co rrespo nd-
ent for the Polish news agency PAP, Kapus-
cinski also engaged in espio nage . Yet none of
the retrospec tive dirt that became attache d to
his name after 1989 can alter the candou r
and de licacy with which he explores the effect
of Polish politi cal culture on the way he con-
ducted ethnogra phy. A desperately impo ver-
ished childhood in wartime Warsaw made him
incapable of tolerating or describin g objec -
tively the vast gulf between rich and poor that " The World According to Herodotus" (1867) by WilbeIm Wagner
he witnesse d in India, and the secular ethos
of his educa tion rend ered him insensitive, he tribe, becom es a prototypi cal antico lonial tion of "the Greeks" as freedom-l ovin g dem o-
admits, to the importance in other cultures of hero ; Cambyses , the deranged King of Persia, crats sta nding up to the tyrannic al Persian
religion, whether Hindu polytheism or Islam. prov ides a model for Sta lin's last years of par- Emp ire . In fact, it was the Greeks them sel ves
Kapuscinski w itnessed many revoluti on s anoid bloodl ettin g in the 1950 s. Man y of who invent ed thi s profoundly ethnoce ntric
and surv ived several life-threatening situa- Kapu scin ski' s co mme nts on the Persian view of the cultura l gulf between Eas t and
tion s, eve n death sentences . But he is full y Empire are infor med by his dir ect person al West, prec ise ly at the time of the Per sian
aware of his ow n reck less ness and restl ess- expe rience of both Na zis m and Sov iet Co m- Wars that Herodotu s recounts. Kapu scin ski
ness, claimin g that both he and Herod otu s muni sm in Poland. In the post-war wor ld he also blat antl y appro priates Herod otu s to the
helon ged to a tin y min orit y of hum ans des- is awa re of the recedin g glohal influ ence of ca use o f hi s o wn se lf-marketing. Herodotus ,
tined from birth to become travel writers, Brit ain (especially in India and Hong Kon g) we are told, mu st have been char ming,
fanati cal cultural missionaries who devot e and of France (in Nor th Afri ca). His fascin a- patient, ge nia l, convivial and intol erant of the
their lives (at whatever perso nal cost) to the tion with Herod otu s' theory that the moto r of di stin ction between slave and free .
discou ragement of the one thin g he really histor y is revenge has unsettling impli cation s Notwithstanding such irritations, this is a
hated - sma ll-m inded xen opho bia . Kapu s- for postcoloni al Euro pea n states, above all in fascin atin g book . Besides one ep isode in
cinski made huge efforts to study the alie n his acco unt of the savagery in Co ngo as the Michael Ond aatje ' s The English Patient
cultures to which he fou nd himself po sted (he Belgian administrators fled in 1960. (1992), Herod otu s is not one of the charmed
was defeated by Chinese ideogram s only It is not clear whether Tra vels with circle of ancient Greek authors - Hom er, Sap-
after a co nsiderable strugg le) . He declares Herodotus was fini shed to its author ' s satisfac- pho, So phocles - who surface often in the
himself an ene my of what T . S. Eliot ca lled tion. So metimes it reads like a series of unf in- modem canon. There can be no better introduc-
the "temporal prov incialism" that makes ished essays on Herodotu s inserted between tion to Herod otu s' Histories for the genera l
peo ple blind to the "other country" of the recycled newspaper articles. This could be a reader than this vivid mem oir, nor any better
pas t. It is only in permane nt dialogue with delib erate attempt to imitate Herod ot us' dis- case made against prov incialism of any kind.
TLS SEPTE MBER 21 2 007
14
Smoke rings
The first unapologetic poet of Au stralia
raditionally, Au stralians have been
T ave rse to all for ms of ex travagance .
In 1914,
Ne ilson's
when John
long-ti me
Shaw
supporter,
A. G . Step hens, ca lled him "the first poet in
A ustra lia" , this form er Ed itor of the Bulletin
was wi dely co nsidere d to have lost whatever
power s of discriminati on he once had. In the
ninet y-odd years since, Ne ilsons reput ation
as a poet has never quit e reco vered from
Stephens' s prai se. While critica l op inion on
his cont em por aries and predecessor s is now
more or less settled (the case for Adam
Lind say Gor do n, for ex ample, has long been
hopeless), Ne ilson's ca nonica l status ,
thou gh streng then ing, still has an air of the
pro vision al abo ut it.
To anyone at all acq uainted with Ne ilsons
wor k, the reason s for thi s are plain : its ra nge
is narr ow, Ne ilso n has a wea kness for senti-
me ntal subjec t matter, and the overall qu alit y
of the writing is uneven. Th e follo wi ng pas-
sage , ripe for inclu sion in an anthology of
dir e verse, de mo nstrates the len gth s to which
he coul d go when pressed for a rh ym e:
As green as the light on a salad
He leans in the shade of a tree ,
He has the good breath of a ballad,
The strength that is down by the sea.
("The Bard and the Lizard")
On the other hand , onl y a poet of unc ommon
vision could have produced a poem like "The
Walk er on the Sand" (1934 ), whose co nclud-
ing lines - brief, haunting and wor thy of Sap-
ph o - capture the simple fact of our ex istence
mor e effec tively than any I know:
The spires so delicate are but the fear s
Of the poor fishes back a million years:
Th ese te rraces that brin g th e eye deli ght
Are but the wishes of the birds at night.
They all have feared the Riddler, he who
planned
The reptiles and the fishes hungry from the sea.
Slowly I walk, I walk uneasily
Along the sand.
Thi s po em , and others of similar qu alit y,
remain ed virtua lly unkn own for clo se to
thirt y yea rs after the poet' s death . Its ex treme
purity , the tru st it places in intuiti on , and the
mark ed ten sion between an effortless idiom
and the spea ker' s anx iety in the presenc e of
an all-powe rful go d, are amo ng the hallm ark s
of Neil sons writing ge nerally. Thi s is poetr y
that values feelin g above reason , the arch e-
typal above the part icul ar ; it has no "key" ,
and asks only to be apprehended. As Hal
Port er wro te of Nei lson' s mo st we ll-know n
(and opaque) poem, "The Oran ge Tree", '' It' s
like readin g smo ke" .
Mor e so than in the case of mo st poets, the
fact s of Neil sons life - a particularl y tryin g
o ne - tell us much abo ut why he wrote the
way he did . Born into rur al po vert y in
Victor ia, Ne ilson was em ployed for most of
his life as an itin erant labourer , wor king in
shearing sheds, orch ard s, in qu arri es and o n
roads. Early critics mad e mu ch of the
contrast bet ween the hard ship of his circum-
stances and the rare delicacy of his verse . A
OLIV ER DE NNIS
legend developed of Neil son as a sweet-sing-
ing navvy, a naif who had maintained a con-
nection with po etr y ' s true so urce . Outw ardly,
the par allel is with Joh n Clare, a poet, as a
rule, more interested in det ail and show ing
grea ter cont rol than Neil son. Ce rtainly, ho w-
eve r, there are passages in Neil son' s autobio-
graphy, written late in life, that one might eas-
ily mi stake for equivalents in the "Journey
out of Essex":
I found out I could only sleep an hour or so at
night. I could eat anything & I could walk well
enough in fact I could walk too well. I could
scarcely keep still if I met anyone on the road
& started to talk. I really should have gone to
some rest hom e or some place like that for
awhile. I had no treatment & I began to think
that my reason might go altogether.
John Shaw Neilson
As Cliff Hann a, Neilson's mo st recent bio g-
raph er, has shown, Ne ilson was mor e widely
read than previou sly thou ght. He attended
country schoo ls for only two- and- a-h alf
yea rs, but later had access to a Free Libr ar y
in the town of Nhill, and is known to have
been famil iar wi th the works of , amo ng
others, Gray, Co llins, Gold smith, Co leridge ,
Burn s and Hood. He was born in 1872 to
parent s of Scottish ances try at Penola , South
Au strali a. Neil sons father, John Ne ilso n,
wrote poetr y, and enco urage d his son's inter-
est in doin g so. Hi s wife, Margaret , was by
all acco unts wa rm and lovin g, but also rigidl y
Presbyteri an and pron e to ner vou sness. She
inculc ated in her children a Calvinist fear of
God, whose abso lute authority the yo ung
Shaw Ne ilso n took for granted until the age
of about thirt een , when it first struc k him as
unlik ely that the beauty he found in natur e
sho uld have been created by a God intent on
TLS S EPT EMB E R 2 1 2 007
reveng e. A conflict was set up within him
that was to have a form ati ve influ ence on the
kind of poetr y he wo uld write. Mean whil e,
the famil y mo ved throu ghout north- west Vic-
tori a in sea rch of a better life, but never man-
age d to ove rcome their po vert y as other ear ly
settlers had don e. Ne ilso n worked wi th his
fath er clearin g scru b, and oft en composed
poem s in his head. Alth ough able to write for
him self, he cam e to rely on dict atin g poem s
to his sisters after his eyesight deteriorated
(the ca use see ms to have been psych olo gi-
cal). He succee ded in getting work into print
from as early as 1890 , eve ntua lly attr actin g
the atte ntion of Steph ens, who first accepted
a poem of Neilson's for the Bulletin' s "Red
Page" in 1896. Another five years passed ,
ho wever, before Stephens ass umed the role
of regul ar mentor to Ne ilson, a service
which, while ulti mately to the poet ' s benefit ,
was not without its difficulties. Th e pair met
onl y on ce, in Sydn ey.
Ne ilson's first vo lume of poem s, Heart of
Spring, didn 't appea r until 19 19, by which
tim e he was already fairl y we ll kno wn . He
continued to do the work he had always don e,
making occasional, relu ctant visits to Mel-
bourne, where a patron, Loui se Dyer , intro-
duc ed him to prominent artists and writ ers of
the day. (There is a memo rabl e account in the
Autobiography of the embarrassment Ne ilson
ex perienced at bein g forc ed to present him-
se lf to Mr s Dyer, fresh from und ert aking
clearin g work, in "unspeakable" trou sers.)
Ev entually a job was found for him in the
offices of the Co untry Road s Authority; but ,
for the most part , he found the cit y har sh and
oppressive. Twel ve years later , in 1942 , he
died , alone, in a Melb ourn e hospit al, the
cause of death a wea kened heart.
As a man , Shaw Ne ilson was intelli gent ,
humble, ex treme ly sensitive, and dedic ated
to po etr y - he gives the impression of havin g
been unable to help bein g a poet. He had a sur-
prisin gly loud voic e and held purit anical
views. Far from bein g that of a simple
peasant , his temp erament , like his mo ther's,
was compl ex and anxiety-ridde n. Encounters
with women were limit ed and always unsuc-
cessful , and it is quit e probable that he
rem ained a virgin. (As one would ex pect
from someone of Ne ilson's cla ss and ge nera-
tion , on all person al matters the Autobio-
graphy is silent - eve n descriptions ofthe pre-
mature death s of Neil sons two sisters are dry
and factu al ; neverth eless, like the parent s of
Gra ha m Gre ene, who unwittin gly gave away
so much abo ut them selves when reco unting
their dream s at the breakfast table, Ne ilson
reveal s everything that is worth kno win g
about him self in his poem s.)
Some ex planation of his inn er moti vation s
is una voidable. Spurred, it seems by romantic
failure, he fashi oned an ideal of pur e love
and innoc enc e, in the pro cess rejecting his
moth er' s sav age God in favour of a belief in
nature' s pow er to clean se and heal. If the
poetr y is to be belie ved , at the same tim e Neil-
son was torm ented with sex ua l desire and
guilt, but , for whateve r reason , couldn' t rec-
oncile him self to our naturally fallen state,
with the result that he app ears to ha ve been
left with a keen sense of incompleteness. Th e
result ant di vision between the part of him
that lon gs for purit y and the part that lon gs
for experience is the source of ever ythin g
Ne ilson wrote; on some level or another, he
see ms to have realized as much.
The chief difficulty facin g anyone who
choo ses to write about the wor k of a poet like
Shaw Ne ilson is finding thin gs to say about
it: his po em s spea k for them sel ves, and one
either accept s their term s, or one doesn't.
Al ways with poetr y of thi s sor t there is the
risk, in ex plication, of destro yin g the ver y
quality that makes it uniqu e, and of Ne ilson's
writing the obse rvation is es pec ially true -
such, at its very best, is its ex q uisite delic ac y
and natural refinement:
"Tis the White Plum Tree"
It is the white Plum Tree
Se ven days fair
As a bride goes combing
Her joy of hair.
As a peacock dowere d
with golden eyes
Te n paces over
T he O ran ge lies.
It is the white Plum Tree
Her passion tells
As a young maid ru stlin g,
She so exce ls.
The birds run outwar d,
The birds are low,
Whi sp erin g in mann a
The sweethearts go .
It is the white Plum Tree
Seve n days fair
As a bride goes combing
Her joy of hair.
Then there is its beguiling imager y,
There is a gulf behind
Dull voice and fallen lip,
The blue smoke of the mind,
The gray light on the ship.
its unselfc on sciou s, j oyful eloquence ,
Dark eyes are hers - that move my heart to
sing.
They have consumed the Summ er ! caught the
Spring!
Stolen the star-light, and exultingly
Lifted the moon-beams old embroidery:
Dark eyes are hers.
("Her Eyes")
and its occa sion al qui et perfection, built on a
strange comin g togeth er of the new and old ,
the literary and the traditi on al:
"The Smoker Parrot"
He has the full moon on his breast,
The moonb eams are about his wing;
He has the colours of a king.
I see him floating unto rest
When all eyes wearily go west
And the warm winds are quietin g.
The moonb eams are about his wing:
He has the full moon on his breast.
Nei lson also wrote a good deal of light ve rse ,
some of which is as encha nting as anythin g
he wrote:
The sun it was more like a moon, it was never
so mellow

Your heart would be thinking of plenty, and
alwa ys at ease ;
How drowsy the cattle were! Oh! And the
butter was yellow!
All summer the little round parrots fell
out of the tree s.
And who, after reading one of the many
lim ericks, co uld do ubt his brilli ant sense of
humour ?
A savage old critic name d Dyer,
Renowned for his gloom and his ire,
When to Hell he went down
Looked around with a frown
And began to belittle the fire.
The above selec tion from Ne ilso n's wo rk
is not wholly repr esent ative, but it pro vid es
an idea of how he thinks. The writing has
no delib erate aes thetic, onl y a we lling up of
dir ect feeling; thi s helps to exp lain why
Ne ilson is ge nerally at his wors t as a poe t
whe n tryin g to con vey a fixed idea (his best
poe ms ca me to him slow ly and with the right
sense of inevitability, whereas some of the
wea ker ones create an impression of havin g
been writte n too much at the front of the
brain ). "The Ball ad of Rem emb rance" , for
exa mp le, is a progra mm atic poem that turn s
on the brut al floggin g of a con vict, and ques-
tion s whether the Eng lish , for perp etratin g
such cruelty, deser ve their Christia n reput a-
tion (it was suppre sse d by Ne ilso n, who
feared bein g bran ded a C om munist) . To be
effec tive , thi s sor t of poe m requires the kind
of con vention al, regul atin g mind that only a
complete ed uca tion can produce. Ne ilsons
Heavyweight thinking,
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"",,,,"", ... ,,,."
LDear Eng:cn... I
.s very sad after
W\.
on Remember what
our last conversa te ~ater wheel;
you to~d me ab~u~:iend, think back.
and th:cnk ba~ 'be moving slowly,
We may seen: to,S Awe ' r e moving .. ·
but the po:cn - ,
James Baldwin's letters to ! stanbul
James Campbell
COMMENTARY
relia nce on guida nce from Step hens , who
co uld be insensit ive, but neverth eless had his
heart in the right place, was only half a so lu-
tion ; there we re always going to be a good
many "misses", but the price the rea der pays
for enjoy ing the best poems is sma ll.
An odd charac teris tic of poetry as diffu se
as Ne ilso n' s is the fact that it tend s to rely on
a series of very particul ar icon ogr aphi es.
Like Blake, whose influ enc e he firml y
denied , Ne ilson views the who le of life in
term s of sy mbo ls and their opp osi tes, and is a
mas ter at co nfla ting them ; he has the true
poe t's ability to see that one thin g might ju st
as eas ily be another. In "The Mo on is Seve n
Days Do wn" , which he regarded as hi s best
ball ad, the foretellin g of a woman's death is
placed in a co ntex t of spring time fruitfulness.
A nd, as one lover says to another in a poem
fro m his middl e yea rs: "The eve ning is the
mo rning, dea r f but in a swee t di sgui se" . For
the most part , the use of recu rrin g sym bo ls is
self-ex planatory . Whil e spr ing and gree nery
rep rese nt youth, ideal love, inn ocence, fertil-
ity and the po tential of healin g (Ne ilso n we nt
so far as to clai m that wor king am ong vines
and foliage was a benefit to hi s eyes), the col-
our red, summe r and "the tyrant sun" itself,
which is also invoked as a source of life-giv-
ing wa rmth, sugges t the destru ctive conse -
qu ences of giving way to passion ; purpl e
stands for death and sensuousness, white for
purit y and blu e for space and the imagin a-
tion. In add ition, eve ry third line or so of Ne il-
son's shows ev ide nce of synaes thesia : "Here
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TLS SEPT E MB ER 21 2 007
15
in the heart of Septe mber the wor ld that I when com posing in the open air), the grea t
wa lk in is full f Of the hot happy sound of the majority of his stanzas divide neatly in two.
shear ing, the rud e heavy sce nt of the woo l". Here, for example, is a qu atrain that also co n-
Single- minded as Nei lso n was , it is no sur- veniently demonstrates ju st how sensual and
prise to fin d that the themes and subjec ts of allusive a poet Ne ilson could be:
his poetr y are all of a piece - albeit usually in Night - and the silence honey-wet:
op position to one another. Co mpa re the pris- The moon came to the full:
tine opening stanza of one of his best-loved It was the time for gentle thought
poems, " Schoolgirls Hastenin g" , And the gathering of wool.
Fear it has faded and the night: ("The Eleventh Moon")
The bells all peal the hour of nine: It goes witho ut say ing that thi s poem (and a
The schoolgirls hastening through the light good man y like it) has no thing to do with
Touc h the unknowable Divine. ideal love and eve ry thing to do with sex . The
with the dra matic rend erin g of a sor did, ad ult eroticism wo uld norm ally seem q uaint, but ,
wo rld in "Heard at Mul cah y"s": co ming from a puritan , it has the virtue of
Heard in the depth of the night! bein g intri guin g. This ability to write abo ut
Out where the timid souls go; sp iritual uncertaint y in a mann er not found
Brief as the life of a spark, elsew here is the key to Neil sons appea l and
A lover could whisper as low: val ue . Whil e the ex act flavour of his poetr y
- A sob, or a sigh or a word, has to be ex perienced fir st-h and , and is in any
What was it, now, that you heard? case imp ossibl e to pin down , mu ch of it
Heard at Mulcahy' s. see ms to deri ve fro m the fac t that - as
Simil ar sorts of diame trica lly related Stephens intim ated - Nei lson was the first of
arg umen ts opera te throu ghout the whole of Au stralia' s poets not to have felt the need to
Ne ilson 's writing, and we are never left in any apolog ize for his or igins . His poe try 's
doubt as to where his sympathies lie. Whil e strengths and defect s, alike, came fro m the
he respo nded to a wide ran ge of stimuli with sa me un corrupted source, and the pleas ure
an intensity unfamiliar to mo st of us ("I am we ge t fro m reading him , which we also ge t
assa iled by colours", he writes in "The Scent from the thin gs he loved most (childre n, flo w-
0' the Lover"), Ne ilso n could only eve r make ers, anima ls) is in his gift for preservin g the
moral distinction s, and express his preference mystery of where those energies lie:
for one way of life over another, in black and He knoweth the false and fair
white. It is significant that, although he often And the deeps of deep things:
co nce ived of a poem ' s overall struc ture as cir- - How shall I know this bird
cular (partly, no doubt , as an aid to me mory Who sings and sings and sings ?
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16
he poetic career s of Da vid Harsent and
T myself have run parallel eve r since
we first met, under the lan Hamilton
umbr ella, in the mid-1960s. We both had
Review pamphl ets publi shed in 1969 and we
both appeared as "Hugo Harsfried" in one of
Cli ve Jam ess long poem s in 1974 . Born , like
me , in 1942, Da vid was brou ght up in the
Buckinghamshir e town of Princ es Risbor-
ough, while I lived a mile aw ay in the village
of Whit eleaf. He lived in a flat above the post
offic e, while I resid ed in the sturdy Whit eleaf
House. My father ' s fortun es took a turn for
the worse in 1949 and we moved to a flat in
Brighton , but Whit eleaf was where the magic
started and where it has remained : something
about an ave nue of trees that led up to a white
cro ss cut in the hillsid e, clearly visible from
Risborough.
The other day, David told me he was going
back to look at his old flat and wondered if
I'd like to go along. He particularly wa nted
to see the thirt y-foot stairwell he'd fallen
down , aged eleven , a fall which cost him his
11 Plus. I can see that this might not be every-
one' s idea of a fun outin g, but David is aware
of my back ward-fac ing enthu siasm s.
The first surprise is that everything is
exactly as he described it, only more so. Here
is the big red brick post office , now a sorting
office. Here is the yard where the coke pile
stood, a mount ain then. Over there is the
dispatch platform that doubl ed as a cowboy
camp . Here is the bike shed, still hou sing a
single mould y deli very bike, where the ten-
year-old poet kissed his cou sin. David stands
in the yard and stares, seeing things I can't see,
but can almost see, having played the same
games myself at the same time. He point s to
the window of the flat from where his mother
saw his father getting off the bus after the war.
He swivels his arm. "At that bus stop over
I N NEXT WEEK'S
Steven E. Aschheim
Why Hannah
Arendt matters
Tom Shippey
Europe's national
thinking
Clive J ames
British film forever
Raymond Ta llis
Cigarette ends
COMMENTARY
FREELANCE
HUGO WILLIAMS
there." She hadn 't seen him for four years and
promptl y fainted with delayed relief. Nearby
is the British Legion, which his father, a coun-
cil brickl ayer, helped to build every Saturda y.
Oppo site the post office is Carlton House,
once the Carlton Cinema. Over there is
his school, the Princes Risborou gh County
Primary School , chan ged , suitably, to an old
people s' home. It strikes me that there is an
Englishness to this suburban scene that has
mostly disappeared from today ' s countr yside,
a glimmer of hope that some things can be
trusted to sit still, if onl y from dumb stupidity.
We have arran ged to meet up with Post-
master Jasjit Dhillon, who ha s agreed to
unlock the past for us and show us around.
We begin at the side door. " Is this the same
bell ?" 1 as k. "Yes, but the door was always
open." Jasjit leads the way do wn to the cell ar,
where we stand watching David regress to a
little boy, contemplating hi s erstwhile dun -
geon. "This is wher e Mr Barnard the boiler-
man sat in hi s rocking chair with a rug
thro wn over it, ea ting apples with a knife." I
imagine him rockin g away in his cosy hide-
out, staying wa rm in the bitter days of 1947 .
No w here is the brutal concrete stairwell
we have come to see . The single luxury of
the hallw ay is the original polished banni ster ,
the cau se of David ' s downfall. " I used to lean
ove r, not straddle it, and one day I leant over
too far. I remember seeing a crack in the cei l-
ing as I we nt down and thinking that I must
tell my father about it." He was badl y con-
cussed and unab le to take his 11 Plus. He
passed the 13 Plu s and should have gon e to
TLS May 28 1964
Frantz Fa non
Following the review of two book s about the
aftermath of the Algerian war (page 5), we
look back to Da vid Caute 's review of Front:
Fanon 's posthum ous politi cal writings f rom
the TLS of May 28, 1964. It can be read in
f ull at www.the-tls.co.uk
militant acti vist of the FLN , a psy-
A chiatrist, a writer of real originality
and special insights, and latterly the
Algerian Revolution' s "ambassador" in
Accra, Frantz Fanon died prematurely in
196 I . He left behind him three works which
constitute important testimonies on the
exact natur e of the fast-d eveloping revolu -
tion in the "Third World " : Peau noire,
masques blancs; L' an V de la Revolution
algerienne; and Les damn es de la terre.
The present volume is largel y composed
of the shorter, journalistic piece s written by
Fanon in the heat of the Algerian war and
publi shed in the paper El Moudjahid and
elsewhere. It cou ld be argued that , with the
wounds of that bitter conflict now healin g,
the resurrection of such violently parti san
polemic s can serve onl y to revive dorm ant
TLS SEP T EM BE R 21 200 7
High Wycombe Grammar School , but his
fath er didn 't wa nt him travelling so far, and
he had to go to Risborough Technical Col-
lege . " I' m quit e pleased to have my Ordin ary
Nationa l Certificate in Metalwork ", David
says.
The top floor of the post offic e has been
stripped and vanda lized, but David is tran s-
fixed . To the left of the stairs was the tele-
phone excha nge, where his grann y was the
night telephoni st. "This little room here was
where she slept when she was on dut y.
Almo st no one rang up in the night then , but
if they did , my granny had to get up, put on
her wraparound bak elite head set and say,
' Hello call er, what numb er do you require ?
Put four penni es in the box plea se"' . The
Harsents had no telephone them selves, but
his mother was one of the daytime operators:
my parent s must often have spoken to her.
On the right of the stairs is a tall room with-
out any windo ws and, beyond that , the door
to the famil y flat , inhabited by four genera-
tion s of women, until his father cam e hom e.
Gingerly we step over the threshold into
I 940s Britain. By virtue of its ruin ed condi -
tion , almo st like a skillfully dressed film set -
high cei ling s, high cream gloss, the parqu et
floor pull ed up he used to slide on - the flat
see ms timeless, as if the fami ly have ju st
mo ved out. "This was Grandma ' s room",
Da vid tell s us. "H olrnan Hunt' s 'The Light of
the Wor ld' used to hang over there and the
light would trav el round her room ." In here
was where his great-grandm other slept:
"Whisky before meals, brand y for dig estion" .
And here was the tap in the kitchen und er
which his father would hold his head to cool
Frantz Fanon, Paris, 1952
animosities. Yet the Alg eri an war was part
of a wider struggle which ha s by no means
been finall y resolved, and Fanon's voice car-
ries a lesson, a message, which the white
race as a whol e has still to ab sorb and
digest thoroughly.
According to Fanon, raci sm is a product
of certain cultures, and not of others . These
cultures are in ess ence coloni ali st; a col on i-
the piece of shrapnel lodged there . "All this is
totall y unch anged", he repeats, as he touch es
a surviving doorknob and performs the com -
pu lsive repetiti ve routin e he used to put him-
self throu gh as a child. He shows us the high
cupboard hang ing open in the hall where his
grandfather's mysteriou s hoard of inflation-
ary deut schmarks was stashed - the neare st
he ever came to an inheritance. By the time
anyon e realized they were valuabl e as Nazi
relic s, his grandfather was dead and the ca sh
had been burnt in Mr Barnard' s boiler.
The 1940s tiled fireplace has somehow
survived in the one-time living room , and we
clearl y see David' s fath er, always kno wn as
"Snips", from " Harsnips", kneeling on the
bare board s, lighting the fire . "My moth er
would be laying the table for tea. The tab le-
cloth would billow up . .. ." There is an old
tab le in the room and I see the cloud of linen
hover ing over it. One Chri stm as day they
sang " Daisy, Dai sy" to their son, before
taking him into the hall where a new bike was
standing. The story rep licates exactl y my
memory of my own first bike , waiting for me
in the hall at Whiteleaf, a mile awa y, on that
same Christmas Day in 1948.
A few day s after our visit, David call ed
up his Aunt Elaine , now seve nty-three, and
happen ed to mention the tall windowle ss
room at the top of the stair. That was the
strong room , she told him . The orig ina l door
was made of stee l. One day durin g the war, a
number of security guard s came to the post
offic e and the nine-year -old Elaine was told
that something was going on which she
should keep to herself. The guards position ed
them selves on every second step and started
pa ssing hundr ed s of gold bar s up the stairs
and into the tall room , where they we re
stacked on reinforc ed shelves . The room was
then sealed for the duration of the war.
alist nation is by definit ion a raci st nation,
if only becau se raci sm con stitutes a vital
element in the proce ss of inferiorization
which is visited upon the enslave d peopl e.
Fanon regarded (rightly) the who le colon ial-
ist nation , the ent ire peop le, as bein g impli-
cated in and responsible for the cr imes com-
mitted in its nam e, and he ridicu led the
anc ient myth , or hop e, that the Europea n
prol etariat stands in natural solidarity with
the co lonial ma sses. On the contrary, the
white pro letari at had absorbed the raci st
poi son .. ..
Among the most interestin g pa ssages in
this book are tho se in which the author
discu sses, often scathingly, the acti vitie s of
the French left -win g intellectuals on the
colonial question . He did not spare the Com-
munist Part y for dragging its heel s about
Alger ian independence and for bowing
hefore the rising tide of raci sm and chauvin-
ism sweeping over the French working
class. The communists, he wrote , prom ise
us their support if we pled ge our sel ves to
keep out the Am er ican s and if we ackno wl-
edg e that we will never be able to carr y on
without French assistance; the non-commu-
nist Left promi se their support if we pledg e
our sel ves to remain in the wes tern camp.
Thu s neith er faction cou ld und erstand that
the Negro es, Arab s and yellow peop les
must and would cre ate their own particu lar
values and relationships with the out side
world . . ..

C LIVE S INC LA I R
3. 10 TO YUMA
Var ious cinemas
he 3. 10 to Yuma first puffed out
T of the depot back in 195 3, when
it appeared as a shor t story in
Dime Western . Set in Co ntention,
Arizo na, it co nce ntra tes on two me n awa iting
the same trai n; Paul Sca llen, deput y marshal
of nearb y Bisbee, and Jim Kidd , roa d age nt
of no fixed abo de. Th e o ne is esc orting the
other to Yuma, where he is due to serve a
five- year sen tence fo r his crimes . Both
remain firml y in role, despit e the outlaw's
best efforts to per suade his un wanted
guardian to shirk his dut y. As the hour s pass,
Kidd ' s ga ng reco nve nes in the street out sid e.
Scallen is left with a stark choice : to act with
mauvaise fo i (tha t is, to place ex istence
before essence); or unil aterall y to embrace
engageme nt, wi th its likely cost. Nee dless to
say, he opts for the latter. When yo u think
about it, isn't "A man' s go tta do what a
man ' s gotta do" ex istentia lism in a nut shell ?
A nyway, the chemi n de fer turn s out to be
the chemin de la liberte for at least one of the
prot agoni sts.
If yo u co nsi der the co mpar ison far-f etched
the author wo uld probably seco nd yo ur opin-
ion. Wh en Elmore Leon ard spoke about his
crea tion at the National Film Th eatre (w here
the 195 7 mo vie of the story was scree ned
last May) , his main interest was the fee
he rece ived for it (two cents per wor d). Later ,
he was able to add $4,0 00 to the basic $90,
whe n the movie right s we re sold to Col um -
bia. Of the film, Leon ard had thi s to say :
" ... I was very please d with it. They had to
add abo ut twent y minut es to a half hour onto
the front end of the pictur e bec ause a 45-
hundred- word short story isn't go ing to ge t
yo u very far in a featur e. Ho wever, they did
fin e, they did a goo d job in add ing on and
I was very, very pleased with the pictu re" .
Th e man give n the responsibility of turning a
tightl y focu sed and "relentless" (Leo nard's
wo rd) cham ber piece (mos t of which takes
place in Roo m 207 of the Republic Hotel )
into a nin ety- minut e hor se opera was Halsted
Well es. Hi s solution remain s a thin g of
beaut y. He simply cha nged the occ upation
of the story 's hero from de puty to ranc her.
He also changed his name from Paul Sca llen
to Dan Eva ns. Lik ewise, Ji m Kidd became
Be n Wade.
Th ey fir st meet not in some courthou se,
but when Wade and his henchme n use the
ranc her 's meagre herd to stop the stage they
intend to rob. Trac kin g the cattle with his two
boys, Eva ns is a helpless spec tator as the
crime is com mitte d and the dri ver shot. That
moment - the total ecl ipse of Bob Moon s -
co nditions all that follows. Moon s grabs
o ne of the robbers, ho lds a gun to his head,
and says some thing like "Stop, or he gets it" .
A classic Western and its modern refashioning
Total eclipse
Ru ssell Crowe, as Ben Wade, and com pany
Wade respond s by first shoo ting his partn er
in crime, then the ex pose d Moon s.
On hearin g her hu sband ' s descripti on of
th e events A lice Evans is unabl e to conce al
her disapp ointment : " It see ms terrible that
so mething bad can happ en , and all anybo dy
ca n do is stand by and wa tch" . To which
her hu sband repl ies: " Lots of thin gs happ en
when all you ca n do is stan d by and wa tch" .
But his wife remain s uncon vinc ed: "No, but
to have yo u stand by, and have the boys
wa tching". She doesn 't mean to ca ll her
hu sband a cowa rd, but that is the message
he ge ts. To make matter s worse, the ranch
is failin g, for wa nt of rain, and for wa nt of
$200 to buy access to water. And so when
$200 is offered to anyo ne wi lling to esc ort
Ben Wade (now shac kled) to Co ntention,
Dan Eva ns volunteers .
Onc e there, the story co uples smoothly
w ith Leon ard' s origina l. On e addi tio n of not e
is the fact that Ev ans and Wa de are assigned
the brid al suite. If they are a co uple, then Van
Hefli ns hom ely Da n Eva ns mu st be the
brid e, and Glenn For d 's coc ksure Wade the
groo m . As time passes, ho wever, the roles
slow ly reverse , until the climac tic mom ent
when Eva ns must ru n the gauntle t of Wade' s
men in or der to ge t his priso ner to the station.
He uses the sa me tactic that failed Bob
Moo ns. The diffe rence being that Wade' s
ga ng wo n' t sho ot the boss. So the qu estion is:
will Wade du ck, or will he ru n with Eva ns?
Either way , Eva ns is redeemed.
TLS SEP TE MBER 2 1 2 007
In his book Existentia lism and Humanism,
Sartre deni es that peopl e are born cowards or
hero es. Au contra ire, ex istentialists beli eve
th at " the coward ma kes himself coward ly,
the hero makes him self heroic; and that there
is always a possibi lity for the coward to give
up cowardic e and for the hero to stop bein g a
hero. Wh at counts is the total commitmen t,
and it is not by a particul ar case or particul ar
action that you are co mmitted altoge ther" . Of
co urse, Sartre was not thin kin g about 3.10 to
Yuma, thou gh his words apply ; as much to the
movie, as to the story from which it deri ves.
Ju st before the light s dimmed at the NF T,
Leon ard also revealed that Columbia we re
plannin g to celebrate the movie' s fiftieth anni-
versary, not with a re-r elease, but with a
rem ake. Tom Cru ise was in line to take
Glenn Ford 's role, and Eric Ba na to replace
Van Heflin . James Mangold wou ld dir ect.
" I' m sure th at the ne w version wi ll be
change d quit e a bit", added Leon ard . "Tom
Cruise, I'm told, is aski ng for rewrit es . . .
you know, that ' s Hollywood, that ' s what hap-
pen s out there." Leo nard was right abo ut the
director, and abo ut the rewrit es, but not about
the cast. Instead of Cruise and Ban a, there' s
Ru ssell Crowe and Christian Bale . Wh at
prompted these cha nges I do not know. But I
do know that there was reaso n for optimism
in the choice of M angold . Had he not mod-
elled Cop Land (his second featur e) on 3.10
to Yuma, and nam ed its hero Fre ddy Hefli n in
honour of Van? If only he hadn 't hired
17
Mic hae l Bra ndt and Derek Haas as his scri pt-
writers. In the Produ cti on No tes, Brandt is
quoted as sayi ng : "We all loved the or igina l,
and we wa nted to figur e out a way to make it
for mod ern audiences . Jim ' s focu s was ,
' Let' s make it gritty. Let's mak e it real"'.
Haas, for his part, call s Crowes cha racter,
"tough and glamo ro us, the equiva len t of a
mod ern roc k star" . The truth is that if yo u put
a new engi ne on old track s you' ll ge t but one
thin g: derailment.
The movie opens with a sho t of Bale' s two
boys in bed : one is coughin g, the other is read-
ing a ninetee nth-ce ntury precu rsor of Dime
Western , in which bad men like Ben Wade
are mythol ogized. In mos t "modern" Wes t-
erns wi th an eye to "reality" (Unforgive n
being a prime exa mple), thi s wo uld be a sure
sign to expect a rude awakenin g. Such expec-
tations are co nfounded the mo me nt Crowe
appea rs; he is wea ring designer togs (fe tch-
ingly distressed ) topped off with a daft hat,
and sketch ing a raptor. From tho se arti stic
height s he descend s into the va lley, to rob
the stage and plu g poo r Bob Moon s. Instead
of bein g a mom ent of significa nce, and some
so lemnity, the stage -dr iver's death is merely
the occasion for a James Bond- style quip.
Instead of subtlety, crudity now cro ws.
This is exemplifie d in the sce ne - common to
both movies - set aro und the dinn er tabl e at
the Eva ns ranc h. The famil y' s unwelc ome
gues t of hon our is Ben Wade, hand cuffed ,
and en rout e to Contention. In the first ve r-
sion, Heflin notic es that Ford is having diffi-
culty in cutting his meat , so offe rs to do it for
him. In the new ve rsi on, Crowe pick s up the
stea k e ntire , a nd be gin s to gnaw at its edges .
Onl y then does Bale do the Christian thin g.
In both versi ons, Wade rep ays his host by
atte mpting to sed uce his wife . Ford and
Crowe speak more or less the same lines. But
only in Ford's ca se do they matter, bei ng his
primary mean s of enc ha ntme nt. For Crowe
they are an irrelevanc e, his appeal bein g
esse ntially ph ysical. His se lf-con fidence is
such that any wo man who fail s to respond
has to be either dead or a lesbian.
Fifty years ago , no ex planation was
offe red for Ford's errant beha viour. In the
mode rnized versi on, ho wever, Crowe is
allowed a dam aged psyche, the result of
super-bad parentin g. He reveal s to his fell ow
din ers that he had no father wo rthy of the
name, and that his mo ther was little better. It
seems she left him on a ra ilway platform ,
with nou ght for co mfor t but a Bibl e, and
instru cted him to wa it for her return . It took
the eigh t-year-old three days to read the Hol y
Book fro m cover to co ver, after which he
recogn ized that he was alone in the wo rld. I
know his listener s ex isted in a pre-Freudi an
era, but sure ly one should have had the wit to
ask : "W ho taught yo u to read?" . Of co urse,
one ca n never be certain about such thin gs,
but it seems to me to be a bad case of false
me mory syndro me.
One person who do esn't doubt a word is
18
Bale's older boy, the one already in thrall to
blood-and-thunder fic tion. In Crowe, he sees
the hero ic father-figure of his dreams. How
can his real fathe r, a born loser, com pete?
Ba le is handsome rather than homely, but he
is a cr ipp le, having lost a foot in the recent
Civil War. As a res ult, he limp s in life, and
(it's safe to infer) he limps in bed, too. I
suspec t the injur y could also be an exa mple
of the Ches ter Effec t, named after the charac -
ter in Gunsmoke - played by Dennis Weaver
- who was forced to adopt a limp to ensure
that he wo uld never appear more man ly than
Ma tt Dillon .
Having dined, Heflin and For d co mplete
the jo urney to Con tention uneventfully. Bale
and Crowe take a more co lourful rout e,
which requires them to beat off Apac hes , and
the railway police (one of who m has a per-
sona l grudge aga inst Crowe). Being
" modern" (and therefore en lightened), the
mov ie de monstrates how these villainous
police expl oit their Chinese labour ers. Whe n
Crowe falls into their hands they tortur e him,
Abu Ghra ib-sty le. This scene has no fu nction
other than to add a frisson of "relevance" .
Besides, it is negated when Crowe is rescued ,
and a bundl e of dynamit e cas t into the tunn el
behin d them , killin g both pursuers and inno-
cen t Chinese alike. But now they are j ust
expe ndable extras . At no time are we asked
to count them as collateral damage.
The real cas ualty of all this carnage is the
mov ie. The sce ne which should be its long
and suspense ful cen tra l act is redu ced to an
ep isode bet ween gunfights . By the end, the
onl y aspec t of modern ity that re mains is cy ni-
cism. Crewe's henchm en offer the armed citi-
zens of Co ntention $200 for shooting Bale or
anyo ne fooli sh enough to ass ist him. Why?
So that there will be more peopl e for Bale to
sho ot. As he sprints towards the sta tion with
his captive, his prosth etic foot see ms to
beco me flesh aga in. At any rate he is able to
leap from tall buildi ngs and hit the gro und
run ning. But this appa re nt return to full man-
hood is qui ckly under mined by a sentimental
twi st worthy o f Vi cto rian mel odrama. No
ex istential hero he. The movie's final
moments ditch any pre tence of rea lity, and
co nfirm that it hero- worships villains as well
as any penn y dreadful. Bah !
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ARTS
He had this dream
he last time Brian Wil son brou ght his
T
band to the Roya l Fes tiva l Hall, they
played the whole of Smile, the long-
lost album of the I960s. It was an imm ensely
satisfying eve ning, both mu sicall y and emo -
tionall y; Smile lived up to its thirt y-fi ve-year
promise and Wil son see med frai l but happ y.
It is diffic ult to think of ano ther performer
who elicits the same feelings of co ncern and
affec tio n from an audience ; his story , with
ea rly brilliance and the success of the Beach
Bo ys followed by breakd own and ment al ill-
ness and finall y an Indi an summe r of crea tiv-
ity, em bodies one of the most powerful resur-
rections in pop music.
Now Wilson is back for the ope ning seaso n
of the remodelled Roya l Festiva l Hall,
premi ering a new wor k, That Lucky Old Sun.
Thi s is an audac ious piece of programming;
the nove lty of Wilson's return to form has
worn off, and his recent work has co me
nowhere near the height s of his 1960s and
ear ly 70s songwriting. The hall is not sold out,
but it is mos tly full , and the audience appears
as devo ted as eve r. The eve ning starts with a
surprising numb er of early Beac h Boys hits
and eve n some obscure num bers, all of which
sound fresh and lustrous; Wilson's backin g
band (originally a band in their own right , the
Wond ermint s) is made up of extraord inary
musicians, most of them play ing at least
two instru ments and singing Wilson' s more
co mplex harmonies with feeli ng and perfect
inton ation. Wil son him self is more present
than he was on the Smile tour ; he looks less
lost, illustrates his lyrics with weirdly literal
gestures , talk s to the crow d ("W ho ca me here
by taxi?" ) and see ms generally more sure of
him self. His voice has grow n stronger, too,
though when he gets carried away he is the
only one to sing out of tune.
In the seco nd half of the conce rt the band
finally play That Lucky Old Sun , a set of nine
songs link ed into a cohere nt whole. The
wor ds and tun e of the spiritual "That Lucky
Old Sun" , recorded by Louis Arm strong and
Frank Sinatra, among others, recur through-
out. The songs are set in a sun-drenched
TLS SEPTE M BER 2 1 2 0 07
L UCY D ALL A S
Br i an Wi lso n
T HAT L U C K Y O LD SUN
Roya l Festival Hall
Ca lifornia , co mple te with san d, surfing and a
fair dose of nostalgia; musicall y they hark
back to the simple, me lodic tunes of Wi lson's
ear ly Beach Boys days, but the links bet ween
them take risks with tempo and harmony and
are remini scent of the more complicated
materi al on Smile . O ne of Wilson ' s grea t
strengths as a writer is that, eve n in the most
straig htforward of his so ngs, there is always
something unexpected.
The songs are interspersed with spoke n
narratives about "the heartbeat in LA" written
-----------~,-----------
Out of the background
K A THARI N E HIB B ER T
D aphn e Du M au r i er
THE YEARS BETWEEN
Orange Tree Theatre, Richm ond
hen Daphn e Du M auri ers second
W
play, The Years Between, opened
for the first time in Nove mber
1944 , it was a spec ulative piece, imagi ning
the end of the Seco nd World War and its
impact on those who we nt off to fight and on
those who had staye d behin d. Now, revived
at Richmo nd's Or ange Tree more than sixty
yea rs after it was last perform ed, it ga ins new
interes t as a backward s glance at a different
era, of butt oned-up emotio n, dutiful wives
and incipient political and soc ial change.
Colonel Michael Wentworth (Ma rk
Tan dy) , an M P, is missing after his plane
cras h-lands in the Mediterranean. His wife
Diana (Ka ren Ascoe) is left in limbo, initially
griev ing for her brilliant, demanding hus-
band, but gradually buildin g a more independ-
ent life for herself: she wins a by-election to
take over her husband' s former seat in the
Co mmons, discovers that she is a capable and
enthusiastic politi cian, and forms a new and
very different relatio nship with her neighb our
Richa rd (Michae l Lum sden ), a kind, suppo rt-
ive farm er, kept home from the wa r by a dam-
aged knee, and co nsidered by Michael to be a
"dull old stick" . Mea nwhile, her son Robin,
playe d priggishly by Domini c Che lsom on
press night , re act s to his father' s presu med
death with a childi sh ca llousness, pleased to
inherit his father's fishing rods, gain his
cla ssm ates' sympathy , and ado pt Richard as a
surroga te dad.
But Mich ael isn't dead. He retu rns, as the
wa r ends, from a heroi c and shadowy
und ercover operation on the Co ntine nt. After
an abse nce of three yea rs, du ring which
he dreamed cease less ly of hom e, he arr ives ,
gaunt and wild-eyed, to find eve rything
changed - not j ust his wro ught-iron gates
melted do wn for salvage, but a so n who
barely rememb ers him and a wife whose
by Van Dyke Parks, Wilson's collabora tor on
Smile; these feel superfluous and lack Parks' s
customary playfulness. They are illustrated by
a set of weird and wholly unnecessary
cartoon-lik e pictures. The only images that do
have an impact are the photograph s from the
Wilson famil y album of the brothers Brian,
Dermis and Car l; they float past as Brian sings
"I had this dream, singing with my broth ers"
in the gentle elegiac song "Southern Califor-
nia" . Dennis and Car l are now dead, and as
Brian lays bare his personal and musical past
it is hard not to be move d. A couple of hiccu ps
aside, That Lucky Old Sun co ntains a coupl e of
really good songs and works as a whole; this is
some of Wilson's best original work for years.
After this emo tional set, the band return for
some rousing versio ns of "Fun, Fun, Fun",
"Help Me Rhonda" and others; though Wil-
son chooses to end the eveni ng with a Beach
Boys -esque version of The Beatles' " She' s
Leaving Home", his ow n back catalog ue is
aga in revea led to be seco nd to none.
atten tion now turn s outwa rds - to parliament-
ary com mittees and the 1944 Educatio n Ac t -
rather than to his whims. For her part, Diana
finds him newly cy nica l, stripped of his
form er vision and enthusiasm by his exper i-
ences , and redu ced to childish bull ying by
her success . She rejects the idea of leaving
Mich ael for Richard , and Richard dismisses
the possibil ity of an illicit relationship, show -
ing a now anachronistic respect for the sanc -
tity of marriage, and displ ayin g the pain of
confli ctin g loves. But as none of the three
can undo their expe riences and return to the
status quo ante, all must strugg le for new
ways to face the imp erfect futur e.
The play, the first of the Orange Tree 's new
seaso n of wor k by fem ale playwrights, is
laden with scenes which today offer insights
into ho w ex tens ive ly wo men 's lives have been
reshaped in the past six decades. Diana, Du
Maurier ' s partly autobiograp hical hero ine, is
determined to deny any desire for power,
tellin g Richard with pride: "I' ve never had any
kind of personal ambition . I neve r wanted to
be anything more than a background for
Michael, eve r". Polit ical old buffer Sir Ernes t
Young tells Diana what a pleasure it is to have
"decorative" fem ale MPs in the house - and
Diana responds with an indulgent smile.
Diana and M ich ael' s most interestin g rows
are over their different political attitudes -
he, an old Tory , moc king her involvem ent
with a slum-clearing bill by as king "what if
people don't wa nt bath s?" , while she revea ls
her socialist bent by replying: " Inspectors
will go round to see that the bath s are used" , a
prescient illustrati on of the shift in public atti-
tud es which wo uld contribute to Labour' s
1945 elec tion land slid e.
Caro line Sm ith's compelling production
makes efficient use of the Orange Tree's
in-th e-rou nd setting to crea te the single room
in the Went worth s' country house where the
play takes place. Subtle pe rformances, parti c-
ularly fro m Ascoe, commun icate profou nd
emo tional turbul ence beneath the effor ts to
preserve stiff upper lip s, making this a wor th-
while revival of an imperfect but interestin g
play.

Curious circles of experience
PAUL Q UIN N
Jon ath an C oe
TH E R AI N B E FOR E IT FA L LS
278pp. Viking. £ 17.99.
97806709 1728 0
ewsworthy eve nts were never
N far away in Jonathan Coes last
two novels, The Rotters ' Club
(200 I) and its seq uel, The Close d
Circle (2004). The reverb erations of an IRA
bomb blast near the beginning of the fir st are
still felt by several character s at the end of the
second ; two land slid e victor ies, M argaret
Th atch er ' s in 1979, and To ny Blair ' s in
199 7, pro vide a furth er frame to assess the
mora l, social and eco no mic shifts in the
nation and the wrigg ling duplicity or stub-
horn resi stanc e of hi s lar ge cast, w ho , even in
mome nt of qui et dom esticit y, are backlit by
news bull etins: the television and the wider
turbulent world remain always sw itched on
and audibl e. The Close d Circle culminates
with two of the central prot agoni sts' teenage
children marching port ent ou sly beneath the
great arch of the Brandenburg Gat e in a reuni-
fied Germany, "wanting nothing mor e from
life, at that mom ent, than the chance to repea t
the mistakes their parent s had made" .
Coe's eighth no vel, The Rain Bef ore I1
Fall s, is preoccupi ed with parent s, children
and the mistakes they mak e, but thi s tim e
these ge nerational reiteration s are less freneti-
cally intercut with large-scale soc ial and polit-
ical happ enin gs. It is, for the most part, nar-
ra ted by R osam ond, a ge ntee l se ptuage na ria n
lesbian , with a great but thwart ed capacit y for
surroga te motherhood and an acute sens itiv-
ity to the inadequ acies of the various parent s
she views from her critica l distance. An y
lessenin g of geopolitica l ambition here is
comp en sated for by a co nsi dera ble form al
chall en ge. Wh en the novel begin s, Rosa-
mo nd, a reti red se nior editor at a publishin g
hou se who has been suffering from heart dis-
ease, dies aged seve nty-three, havin g named
her niece, Gill, as her exec utor. Th e latter
makes the journey to Rosamond ' s hou se in
Shropshir e, and disco vers a discreetl y hidden
tumbl er of whisky and an adjacent empty bot-
tle of Dia zep am, sugges ting her aunt has has-
tened her own end. Th ere are also a number
of tap e s and a w ritten reque st that th ese be
give n to Imo gen, a distant rel ati ve, whom
G ill has met only onc e, years before, at
Ro sam ond ' s fift-i eth birthday part y, when
this mysterious littl e blind girl was guided
around the ga thering .
Wh en the grow n-up Imogen cannot be
located , Gill takes the tapes to the flat of her
two stude nt dau ght ers in Primrose Hill , so
they can all listen togeth er. Th e fram e story
is, therefore, the account of Gill and her
dau ght ers as they settle down to listen to and
reflect on Rosamond' s end-of-life recordings.
Th e core of the novel is a transcripti on of
Jonathan Coe's photographic memories
"Some Partial Continua" (1991 -6) by Hamish B uchanan, from Scissors, Paper, Stone:
Expressions ofmemory in contemporary photographic art by Martha Langford
(352pp. McGiII-Queen's University Press . Can$55; distributed in t he UK by
Combined Academic Publishers. £27 . 978 0 7735 32113)
these tapes, in the course of which Ro samond
describ es twent y photo graph s or images in as
much detail as she can mu ster for the benefit
of the unsight ed and long-l ost Imogen , bur-
nishin g them with back story . "W hat I wa nt
you to have, Imo gen , above all, is a sense of
your own histor y; a sense of where yo u com e
from , and of the forc es that made yo u." These
twent y images spa n decades and consist of
photograph s and other visual cues carefully
cho sen to illuminate Imogen ' s herit age. They
include: the Shropshire far m where Ro sa-
mond was evacuated as an inf ant from Bir-
mingh am , and fir st met her belo ved but skit-
tish cousin Beatri x; the ice rink where Beatri x
was put in ch arge of the dog her cru elly indif-
ferent moth er see med to love mor e than her
own dau ght er, until the dog bo lted over the
hor izon never to be found aga in; a lobb y card
featurin g the ca ravan in which Beatri x ran
away with a carp enter working on Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburg er ' s Gone 10
Earth, which was film ed in Sh rop shir e in
1949; a cheri shed photographic mem ento
from a glor ious trip to the Au vergne when
Ro samond holidayed with Rebecc a, the (lost)
love of her life, and their adore d Th ea, the
infant dau ght er Beatri x dumped on the
two w ome n w hile pursuing ano the r man to
Ca nada; a paintin g by Ruth (a nother of Rosa-
mend' s lovers) of Imogen, Thea 's dau ght er,
who was accide ntally blind ed at the age of
three after bein g shaken by her emotionally
damaged moth er. Th e childless Ro samond is,
dur ing her stagge red suicide, the one tryin g to
hold these fragm ent s of narrati ve togeth er,
ju st as she onc e did these fragm ented lives.
Lik e the protagoni sts of the earlier novels,
Ro samond is eve r alert for "unexpected
pattern s" and "curious circl es of ex perience"
as she narrat es her tapes, tryin g to clarify and
sharpen vag ue cont our s and half-rememb ered
TLS S E PT EMB E R 2 1 2 007
colours for the sake of the blind Imogen . Coe
is faced with a dauntin g technical difficulty:
ca n his decent but button ed-up narrator be
both emotionally plausible and yet rise to this
challenge? There is a section where Ro sa-
mond recalls describing thin gs to the recentl y
blind Imogen, desperat e she never for get what
the world look s like, which has und oubt ed
power and urgency; but the taped descriptions
intend ed for the adult Imo gen do not con sist-
ently pro vide anything like the bra vura mak-
ing-strange of the world throu gh language,
or the play of synaesthes ia one might ex pect
in the extraordinary circumstances. It is tell-
ing that the mo st effective re-enchantment of
perc ept ion through wordplay in the text is pro-
vided not by an adult but by a child , Thea , on
that trip to the Au vergne, when she asse rts
that her favourite kind of rain is the rain
befor e it fall s (in a note Coe reveals he took
the phr ase from a tune by Michael Gibb s).
Uttered durin g a holiday from realit y, the
phra se is itself an exc ursion aw ay from strict
realism, conjuring up an image of something
that is par adoxical and whose truth-cl aim
status is unc ertain; scene and phr ase combine
as a lost paradi siacal mom ent in the text, and
in Rosamond' s remor selessly rained-on life.
Rosam ond ' s own language significantly
rises above the ordin ary when she cont em-
plates Th ea as a baby, "her eyes shut tight with
a kind of furrowed conc entration, as thou gh
sleeping is yet another one of the difficult
grown-up tasks she must set herself to learn".
In the main, however, and like the Shropshir e
land scap e that is called on as a correlative
throu ghout the novel , Rosam ond' s narrative
voice is "English and undem on strative" .
Thi s voice works we ll enough when sma ll
details of her dawnin g lesbian awareness,
disapp oint ed love life and fru strated atte mpts
at surrogate motherhood are gradually and
19
delic ately revealed ; but tasked with renewing
the world for her singular addressee , one for
whom not ju st a history but a whole spectru m
of co lour mu st be reco nstruc ted, a whole
world of detail be evoked, without the wea lth
of reference and co mparison ava ilable to the
sighted, it is doom ed to fall flat. To o often she
spea ks like one who has risen to the upper ech-
elons of the judiciary rath er than publi shin g:
" By profession he was a roadie - I believe that
is the term - for a pop group" . Rosamond' s
age and class might be said to account for this
kind of diction. But Coe permit s the other char-
acters to speak in the same way; they see m
doom ed not on ly to repea t the past but to
express them selves in its subfuse term s.
The inclu sion of Powell and Pressbur ger is
significant. Coe has great fun describing an
establish ing shot in Gone 10 Earth , where sup-
posed ly the teenage Beatr ix and Ro samond
can he see n in the c orne r of th e fr am e , tr ick ed
out in peri od costum e as ex tras (two girls
who fit their descri ption can ind eed be see n
in the film , going throu gh exa ctly the
moti on s described). Pow ell and Pressburger
are invok ed , I think , not ju st becau se of Gone
10 Ea rth's cel ebration of the Shropshir e
land scape , nor simply becau se that film tell s
the story of a fre e spirit, like Beatri x, dogged
by fate, but becau se, at their best, the film-
makin g du o achieve an effec t the no vel
strains after and ass ociates ex plicitly with the
Shropshir e vistas : "They see med utterl y
fami liar, and at the same tim e, utterl y stra nge
and oth er worldl y". It is also a brave analogy ,
bec ause in man y ways the novel suffe rs
by comparison : it too tries to be both utter ly
Eng lish and unsettlingly strange . But
Rosamond' s language is not a supple enough
med ium con sistentl y to sustain both effec ts,
however ex plicitly she touch es on the natur e
of parado x: "life only starts to mak e sense
wh en yo u reali se that some times - often - all
the tim e - two completely cont radi ctory
ideas ca n be true . Eve rything that led up to
you [Im ogen] was wro ng. Therefore yo u
should not have been born . But eve ry thing
about you is right : you had to be born " .
Occ asion ally, as in the description of the
trip to the Au vergne , Coe does make invigor-
ating use of parado x, and during Ro samond' s
dyin g mom ents there is a mom ent of ontolo gi-
cal und ecidability, ev ok ing, for thi s reader at
least, the unc ertaint y at play in another Pow-
ell and Pressburger film , A Matter ofLife and
Death : has Ro samond passed into some kind
of reli giou s tran scend enc e ? Does she enco un-
ter Imogen in so me afte rlife? Or is thi s a
merely material end: is the dyin g Ro sam ond
free-associatin g, imagining that she sees the
dec eased Imo gen simply bec ause Ro sa-
mond' s view of paradi se is ass ociated forever
with the Au vergne, and she has, earlier in her
narration, described both the mirrored sur-
face of Lac C hambon and the blind girl's
eyes as cerul ean blu e? Perhaps the question s
Coes characters ask so desperatel y of life are
best answered by the parado xes of art.
20
third of the way into Nathan Englan-
A der ' s spirited novel, a man tells his
son, " I wish you' d never been born " .
In The Ministry ofSpecia l Cases , such wishes
ca n be granted. It is Bueno s Aires in 1976 :
over the next seve n years, up to 30,000 people
will be "disappeared" , as a military dict ator-
ship see ks to extinguish politi cal opposition.
So when a nineteen- year-old phil osoph y
student called Pato Poznan is abducted from
home, the ras h words of his father become sin-
ister rea lity. As Kaddi sh and his wife Lilli an
try to recla im their only child, they are
impeded by a corrupt bureaucr acy, epito-
mized in the "M inistry" of the title, which has
erased the official record of Pate ' s ex istence .
What follows is a tale of hope aga inst
incr easingly desperat e odd s, told with a light
touch . The novel is not only about the hum an
cos t of Ar gentina' s "Dirty War" ; it also
focu ses on division within the country 's Jew-
ish community. Englander approac hes the
subje ct throu gh the story of Kaddi sh ' s Rus-
sian moth er , who was put to wor k as a pro sti-
tute after bein g unwittin gly traffi cked into
Bueno s Aires. As an hijo de puta (so n of a
whore) , Kaddi sh is shunned by his fellow
--------------------------~,--------------------------
Noharm
done
TOM P ERRI N
Am y Bl o om
AWAY
240pp. Gra nta Books. Paperback, £ 10.99 .
978 1 86207 970 0
my Bloom' s novel A way tell s the
A
story of Lilli an Leyb , a yo ung Rus-
sian Jew who migrates to New York
City in 1924 foll owin g a pogrom in which,
she believes, her whole famil y has been
slaughtered. She begin s to make a life fo r her-
self as the mistress of both a yo ung matin ee
idol and his elderly father. However, hearing
a rum ou r that her daughter might be alive in
Siberia, she sets out on a j ourn ey north to
Ala ska, from where she intend s to cross the
Berin g Strait to the USSR.
The novel, thou gh , has its sights set
on bigger them atic game. It open s on New
York City 's Lower Eas t Side , where the
immi grant Jews "look out the kitche n win-
do w" and " see Opp ortunity". Drawn to the
New World by flyers bearing images of
workers carryin g "bulging sack[s] of
money" to a ca rtoo n building mark ed
" BAN K" , they live in poverty, refu sin g to
give up the hope th at unlimited wea lth
await s tho se of them willing to graft or grift
sufficiently hard for it. Out of thi s sce ne,
famili ar to readers of Jewish US immi grant
fiction from Ab rah am Caha n to E. L.
Do ctoro w, Bloo m' s prot agonist emerges, in
an overcoat lined with map s of North Amer-
ica, ready to traverse the continent from the
Eas t Coas t to the Mid west to Seattl e throu gh
Ca nada to Alaska. In a text dott ed with refer-
ences to, and trop es famili ar fro m, the ca non
of Am eri can fiction, Bloom ' s big subjec t is
the United States itself.
FICTION
Better than history
A NTHO NY CU M M IN S
Na t ha n E ng l an der
THE M IN IST RY O F SPE CIAL C A SES
339pp. Faber. £ 14.99.
978 057 1 19692 0
Jews. Yet many of them share similar ori-
gins, and their desire to hide the fact gives the
pari ah a cha nce to earn a livin g. The pill ars
of Arge ntine-Jew ish society commi ssion him
to erase any evidence of such di sreput able
origins: und er cover of darkn ess, Kaddi sh
chi sels away their good names from the tomb-
stones of pim ps and whores .
Eras ure thu s lies at the heart of The
Ministry of Spec ial Cases . As a motif, it is
ce ntral not only to the novel' s dram ati zation
of the j unta terror ca mpaign, but also, more
obscurely, to its examination of Jewish ident-
ity. Whil e there is a se nse that Englander's
delicatel y ironi c parallels are designed to do
Thou gh Away delib erat ely insert s itself
into a wider literary traditi on, in many
regard s it delib erately confounds the stereo-
types of the "Great A merican Nove l" . In parti-
cular, Bloom ' s softly spoken narr ator see ks
to make of Am erica neith er triumph nor trag-
edy. Her charac ters are point edl y neith er
heroes nor monster s (a quality of her fict ion
that critics have remarked on since she first
started to win awa rds for her short stories in
the early 1990s). Th ere is a di squi etin g
ordinariness to characters who perform the
wors t of actions. A railway con ductor , his
attempted sex ual assault on Lilli an thwarted
by impotence, sends her on her way with a
cheery word and a sandw ich ("No harm
done, love"). In the opposite vein, there is
often some thing unsettlin g about the novel' s
good charac ters. Wc ne ver quit e trust the
moti ves of the apparently kindl y sheriff who
prevent s Lilli an from travellin g into the
Alaskan wilderness in the deadly cold of
winter, by first incarcerating her in his house,
then having her sent to prison on a fabricated
charge. Even Lillian herself kills a man at one
stage, before disposing of the body and co n-
tinuin g with her jo urney. The effect of
Bloom' s approach is to lend the horrors and
hardship s of her A merica a kind of everyday
feelin g that, far from dimini shin g their imp act,
gives them an uncanny, hauntin g qualit y.
Despite its heavyweight themes, A way is
by no means a dry novel. Its motley cast of
characters (sea mstresses, show men , co n men ,
thieves, "speciality" prostitutes, peddlers), as
well as its action-pac ked plot, make it as
enjoyable to read as a thriller. But unlike most
thrill ers, Away ends in only partial resoluti on.
The happin ess Lillian pursues is achieved only
conditi onally. American authors writing about
their own count ry often finish their work with
a gra nd conclusive gesture signifying the
nation's ultimat e success or failure. If Lillian's
journey is a sym bol of a wider American story,
then its conclusion represents neither the coun-
try' s redempti on nor its damnation . Rather, in
a move typical of Bloom' s mastery of narra-
tive techniqu e, the novel ends not with a show -
down but with a skilfully handled anticlimax.
TLS SEPTE M BER 2 1 2 0 07
no more than add a rich met aphysical textur e
to his story, he threads the strands togeth er
with grea t skill.
His princip al narrati ve technique is the
ob vious j oke : Kaddi sh chi sels throu gh one
of Pato' s fingertip s, as father and son collabo-
rate o n some reputation- saving grave desecra-
tion . Elsew here, the noveli st exhibits his abil-
ity to manipul ate our emotions in a rapturous
sequence that reveals Patos fate. In part , this
sequence depend s for its effect on the preced-
ing 300 pages, and it is far too finely wrough t
to give away. A review of the Am eri can
edition adduced the clim ax as evide nce that
Englander treats his character s better "than
histor y eve r would" (" If onl y the junta had
been half so kind"). But Englander see ms to
have little interest in merely res tag ing painful
atroc ities. He unashamedl y cas ts a glorious
enchantme nt ove r the terribl e even ts he
describ es. The mixture of horror and elation
recall s 'T he Twe nty-Seventh Man" in his
previous book For the Relief of Unbeara ble
Out of period
"B ec ause I was old, they ass umed
I was deme nted." So announ ces
Burt Hecker, medieva l re-enactor , at
the outset ofTod Wodicka' s boi sterou s debut
novel. "They" on this occ asion are the police
arres ting him for stea ling a ca r, but the term
co uld be applied ju st as eas ily to the world at
large. Ne ither could one blame the wo rld , so
heavily does Wodicka load up his sixty-
three-year-old hero with quirk s and foibl es,
round ed off with a passion for mead and
devoti onal chanting. Yet shortly into All
Shall Be Well; A nd All Shall Be Well; And All
Manner af Things Shall Be Well, it becom es
clear the novel will sta nd or fall on his protag -
oni st movin g beyond the ridiculou s. Because
for all its co mic vim, this is not a novel mea nt
as mere ca per; indeed , barely has Hecker
been released fro m custody before the first
hint s of tragedy drift into view.
It is some time before the plot allows those
clouds to gather, hurlin g Burt across the
Atl anti c from New York state to provincial
Germ any with various fellow re-en actor s,
then on alone to Prague to find his estranged
son, Trista n. Only on his arrival there, seve ra l
misadventures later , is the true grav ity of his
pilgrim age clear. If this tension at the heart of
the book often feels uneasy, that is, at least in
part , due to the absurdist natur e of Wodicka's
co medy. As the defiantl y out-of-step Hecker
ca reers ac ross Middle Europe, all is e ncroach-
ing chaos ; the antic potenti al of the fish-
out-of-water premi ss is energe tically mined .
But that energy cut s both ways . In its droll
detail and outsize supporting ca st, the novel
sports its sense of whimsy proudly, and the
result is a certain baroqu e ove rkill: the lan-
guage is mannered . At one stage, almos t
eve ry page of the nove l features some eye -
ca tching flouri sh, many of which are delight-
ful , but which ca n, collecti vely, begin to
loom over the reader: a radio broadcasts
"aural halito sis", window wipers "smear
stars of exploded insect into grey fro wn s" . It
Urges (1999), in which an unpubli shed writer
in Stalin' s Russia is mistakenly added to a list
of literary heavyweight s to be exec uted;
befor e they all die, the illu strious authors
con sent to hear a story from the aspirin g
unkno wn. They applaud his talent in a bitter-
swee t conclusion that sugges ted Englander
can imagine triumph in eve n the mo st
wretched of circums ta nces . The Ministry oj
Specia l Cases co nfirms this, to powerful
effec t. However , the read er' s response to the
warmth that the novel kindl es from its grim
source materia l may depend on the latitud e
gra nted to histori cal fiction. Englander says
that so me incredul ous readers have asked
him whether or not the state-sponsore d vio-
lence he describ es really took place; they will
find an answer in his list of sources .
There they will also find that Englander
continues to trace implicit parallels, the pre-
cise meanin g of which can only be guesse d.
Nes tling discreetl y among the wor ks which
he tells us "proved helpful " is Sey mour
Hersh' s famous New Yorker article "The
Gray Zo ne" (2004) . Of course, Hersh ' s arti-
cle is not about Ar gentina ' s Dirt y War: it is
about Abu Ghraib.
D A N NY L EIGH
To d W odi c k a
A L L SHAL L BE W E L L ; AN D A L L
S H ALL B E W ELL ; AN D ALL
MANNE R OF THI N G S S HA L L
BE WELL
264p p. Cape. Paperback, £ 11.99.
978 0 224 080477
is not that All Shall Be Well is badl y wr itten -
for the most part , quit e the opp osite. It is,
however, very much written .
Su ch co nc erns mu st be co ns ide red alo ng -
side the novel' s rea l and substantial achieve -
ment: it does succee d in makin g Burt Hecker
the centr e of a genuinely moving narrative.
It wo uld be one thin g for Wodi cka to show us
the man beneath the period- auth entic tuni c -
a faithful husband , well-intentioned father.
More impressively, it reveals the man beneath
that, a figure deserving of neith er amused con-
tempt nor unqu alifi ed sym pathy , but one who
grows more ambiguous and complex the
closer the novel comes to its end.
Despit e his cartoo nish impul ses, Wodi cka
shapes Burt into far more than caricature; it is
made clear, for instance, that his fixation
with the medi eval long predat es the personal
tragedy at the heart of the book , squas hing
the too-n eat idea of it bein g only an addled
response to traum a. No, he is a far more
authentic oddba ll than that - and the result is
that when the narrati ve call s on him for real
emotional heft, as in the pivotal reuni on with
his son, his res ponse is co mpellin g.
In Heck er, as obsessed by the pasts of
others as he is torm ent ed by hi s own , the
novel offers a stri king study of how seductive
(and peril ous) it ca n be to forever live, as the
re-en actor s say, OOP ("o ut of period" ). It
would be dishonest to deny there are mis-
steps en rout e, but ultim atel y Wodi cka pull s
off his tightrope wa lk - applause is ju stified .

ixty-five milli on yea rs into the futu re -
S or maybe the past - with Ear th's
natur al resources utterly exhausted, the
cl imate closing in, and fifty years left of
inhabitabl e env ironme nt, Planet Blue is dis-
cove red so me light yea rs away. Fit for human
habit ation , it promi ses a new start. Billie
Crusoe , a hob by farmer and scie ntist with a
terro rist pas t, is forced to jo in a mission to the
planet. On board the spacecraft, Billie, the
book-l oving Ca ptain Handsome, a ce lebrity-
crazed housew ife nickn am ed Pink who won
the space trip on a game show , and Spike -
the latest in robot techn ology, solar-powe red ,
super-intelligent and stunning - debate
humanity' s self-des tructive tend ency. Co uld
hum ans do thin gs differentl y if give n a
seco nd chance? Revellin g in sci-fi det ails,
Jeanette Wint er son ' s futur e teem s with
robots - as pets, polic emen, clean ers,
barmaids, traffic war dens - talkin g-screen
personal shop pers, implanted ID chips, lab-
pro duced meat, and genetic "Fixing" at your
chosen age . The detail is slick, thou gh there
are few novelties amo ng the futu ristic prop s.
Self- consciou sly evo king Brave New
World' s lab babies and the omni- surveill ance
of Nineteen Eighty-four, the novel comes
closer to Margaret Atwoo d's dystopic tale of
the disastrou s consequences of over- amb i-
tious scie ntists, ge netic manipul ation and
state-of-the-art hum anoid s, Oryx and Crake.
Writing in much the same vein as the
ro mantic crus ading of her early novels such
as The Passion or Sexin g the Cherry , Wint er-
son turn s the sea rch for a physical landin g
place into a quest for the lover. The imperi al-
ist ove rtones of such a venture are spe lt out in
repea ted lines fro m Donn es love poe try -
the mistress cast as "all States" , elsew here
her bod y the lover ' s " new-found land".
Awe d by a torrent of poetry, and curious
about inter- species sex , Billi e risks her life
to be with Spike. But, despit e the narrative
cl aim s of intimacy, the re latio nship fails to
con vince. The cha racters rem ain flat amid
extens ive theorizing about a robot's potential
-----------------------~,-----------------------
" There is very stro ng ev idence", Caryl
Phill ips obse rves in his new book ,
"that black Roman so ldiers we re sta-
tioned near Hadri an ' s Wa ll" ; and, he contin-
ues, by 160 I , "concerned by the esca lating
numb er s of co loured people in her kingdo m,
Qu een Eliza beth I .. . issued a procl amation
ordering the expulsion of the ' blacka-
moors '." Born in St Kitt s but raised and edu-
ca ted in Britain , Phillips has long been one of
Britain's most astute interro gators ofthe rami-
fications of this black presence in Britain. In
Foreigne rs, presented as a ble nd of "report-
age, fiction, and historical fact" (though it
might more producti vely and forgivingly be
labelled "creative biograph y" ), he turn s his
attenti on once again to the po litics and psy -
chology of black British and diasporan ident-
ity by focu sing on three men: Francis Barber,
Samuel John son' s Jamaican servant and bene-
ficiary; Randolph Turpin, the first black
Briti sh wor ld cham pion boxer ; and David
O luwa le, a Nigerian em igra nt who lived in
Leeds in the middl e of the last century.
Barber ' s life is recounted by an unn amed
associate of Joh nson who , yea rs after the
writer 's death , goes in search of Barber in
Lichfield , where the form er servant has fallen
into near-d estituti on. Whil e clearly sympa-
FICTION
Waste of space
KRISTI N E W I N S
J e an et t e Wint er s on
THE ST ONE G O DS
207pp . Hamish Hamilton . £ 16.99.
978 0 24 1 14395 7
for emotion and the nature of love. Though
with Pink - irritatin gly vap id, con vinc ed that
"tec hies" ca n fix all probl ems, and deter-
mined to have her genetic age "fixed" at
twel ve, in order to seduce her paedophil iac
husband - this flatness highli ght s the cultural
drought and human regress ion that come
with consumer culture.
In this, the first of four stor ies that make up
the novel, Winterson's delicious prose is
often flattened by dialogue and too preoccu-
pied with putting across a po litica l message:
" Humans only assume d that their s was the
only kind that mattered . That's how you
destro yed your plan et" . Stronger on famili ar
ground, Wint er son gives a mov ing and witty
acco unt of loss and rejec tion when Billie,
in another time, rem emb ers life in the wom b,
her birth , her mother ' s bod y, and the isola-
tion that follo wed her early adoption. Here
also is rekindl ed so me of the burl esque
hum ou r that spar ked Oranges Are Not the
Only Fruit : Billies gra ndmo ther bites off the
umbil ical cord, " Her teeth we re false and the
greasy , blood y umbilical cord caught in her
top plate and pull ed it out. She wen t to soak it
in Steradent and left my mother to her first
milki ng".
Set on Eas ter Island in 1774, the seco nd
story rework s the them e of perpetual destruc-
tion of natur al resources as the last tree on
this isolated Pac ific island is ceremoniously
felled . Bill ie and Spike of the fir st story are
rein carn ated as Billy, a sailor mistake nly left
Voiceless views
PA TRI CK D E NMA N FL A N ERY
Ca ry l Ph illip s
F OR E IGNERS
Three Eng lish lives
262p p. Harvill Seeker. £ 16.99.
978 0 436 20597 2
thetic to Barber, there is no do ubt about the
unexamined racism of the narrator, who
ultim ately co ncludes that "the hlack shou ld
have left our countr y and journ eyed back to
Jamai ca or to Africa" as "E nglish air is clearl y
not suitable for negro lungs" ; it reduces "these
creatures" to "childish helpl essness".
The tra gic life of Turpin, so n of a Briti sh
Guya nan father and English mother, is told in
co mpara tive ly objecti ve bio graphi cal mode,
detailin g the facts of his troubl ed childh ood
in Leam ington Spa, sensa tiona l defeat of the
Amer ican Suga r Ray Robin son, and untim ely
declin e into poverty, depression and suicide .
This rather routine biographi cal sketch is
redeem ed , however, by its fin al eight pages,
TL S SEPTEMBER 2 1 2 0 07
Monuments on Easter Island, 1826
behi nd from Captain Co ok's expedition to
the island, and Spikker, the adult son of a
Dut ch explore r who deserted his ship to live
with a nati ve wo man fift y yea rs earlier. The
island becomes a microco sm of a world on
the brink of ruin.
The enigmatic carved statues that stand
around the perim eter of the island - the title ' s
stone gods - becom e an emblem of pointl ess
waste : the island' s for ests were sac rificed to
in which Phillip s, nameless, appea rs to enter
the story, interviewin g two of Turpin ' s adult
daughter s. Wheth er or not we are meant to
think of Ann ette and Charmaine Turpin, or
the interviewer, as fictional analog ues of
their real selves , Foreig ners breathes here for
the first time.
Phillips is most effective, however, in the
final section, about Oluwale. In a mosaic of
unidentified interview transcripts (which, jud g-
ing fro m the ackno wledgements in the back of
the hook , are prohahl y real transcript s), quota-
tions, social history of Leeds from its Roman
origins to the recent past, and an incantatory,
poet ic, second-perso n address to the dead Olu-
wale, Phillips tells the story of a man who, I
r-;:::::::;:::;;:;.;:;:;:::::;;:;.;:::;;;;.;::;:;::;.;:::;
unlike Barber, elected to make Eng land his
home, but with decidedly worse consequences
than either Barber or the English-born Turpin
faced. Institutionalized , and later homeless,
Oluwa le was for years hound ed, harassed and
beaten by the police in Leeds. He was ulti-
mately found dead in the River Aire, and two
police officers were later found guilty of
assault, though not of manslaughter.
21
buil d these artefacts, which in turn are top-
pled in the chaos following the collapse of the
ecosys tem. Gaz ing at the stump of the new ly
felled tree, Billy spells out the contradiction:
"Why would a man destro y the very thin g he
most needs?". Thi s question runs throu gh the
novel with little to serve as an answer.
In the third story , a degenerat e wor ld of
super-cas inos , twenty-four-hour drinking,
legali zed prostituti on, universal CCT V, and
compulsor y identit y cards is oblitera ted by a
nuclear holocau st. All faith in politici ans
go ne, the West is rebuilt and domin ated by a
gigantic multinational corpora tion. The polit-
ical shortco mings of this state are at odds
with the adva ntages of the ec o-friendly, low-
impact, fully rent-b ased soc iety now
achi eved - a curious twist on the right-o n
gree n message of the first sec tion. Instead,
Winterso n here celeb rates an undergroun d
resistance movement made up of an eclec tic
collective of husky Hell' s Ange ls, lesbi an
vega ns, anarchist nuns, two leath er-loving,
cha mpagne-s ipping blondes and a banker-
cum-barman. The politi cal thread of the
ear lier part wea kens as Winterson abando ns
ecolog ica l ethics , and turn s the now body-
less Spike into an anarchist lesbian happy to
perform sex ual services .
Characteristica lly driven and experime ntal,
Wint erson ' s ow n eclec ticism some times pull s
the novel in too man y different directi ons.
In the light of the threatened environmental
disaster , the vigorous opti mism of the love
narrati ves jars with the eerie rem inders of the
rea l was tefulness of modern culture : near the
end, numerou s half-d ead, maimed, bleedin g
children stream out of a rad ioac tive forest in a
mac abre parade to face the global corp oration
which has sea led their fate. Doomed to repeat
old mistakes as hum ans see m to be - despit e
Wint erson ' s genero us provision of new plan-
ets and second chances - what stands out in
this novel is its rec ord of human surv ival,
neatly summed up in one of Winterso n's
punchy one-lin ers: " History is not a suicide
note - it is a record of our surviva l".
One might speculate, genero usly, that
Phillip s consciously chose to deny each of his
three subjec ts a voice, as if to say, "they were
voiceless when they lived, who am 1to ventril-
oquize for them now?". But what a different,
and perhaps braver, book it might have been
had Phillip s dared to give Barber, Turpin and
O luwa le the chance to describe their own
lives, rather than observing them as startlingly
tragic obje cts, all ultimately unknowable.
It would be co mforting to think that thin gs
have ch anged, but Philli ps sugges ts other-
wise . When he walks throu gh the Chape l-
town neighb ourh ood of Leeds, the city where
he grew up, a wo man with a "broad York -
shire" accent sees him a nd shou ts: " Hey yo u,
black man ". One hopes this is mere fiction ,
know ing instin cti vely it is not.
NEW AUTHORS
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22
L
ast year was the 400th annive rsa ry of
the death of John Lyly, an annive rsary
that went ge nerally unn otic ed and
unmarked . Such indifferenc e to Lyly and his
wor ks would no doubt have surprised obse rv-
ers of Eng land's literar y sce ne in the late
1570 s and 80s, when he was prob abl y the
mos t fashion able writer of the da y. Hi s pro se
wor ks, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578 )
and its seq uel, Euphues and his England
( 1580), creat ed a vog ue for min glin g "human-
ist grav ity in matter with self-consc ious fri-
volity in mann er" (as the grea t Lyly scholar
G . K . Hunt er term s it), and he also popul ar-
ized a pro se style that bec ame kno wn as
"euphuism" . Ca refully pattern ed and rhetori-
cally ass ure d but non etheless (in Lyly' s
hands at least) light and wi tty, euphuism is
found ed on antithes is, a careful patterning of
sound (espe cially the use of ass onance and
allit erati on ), and insistent pun s and word-
play. As Eubulus tell s the ca llow hero in
Euph ues: The Anatomy of Wit, "Here, yea,
here, Euphues , mayst thou see not the car ved
vizard of a lewd woman, but the incarnat e vis-
age of a lasciviou s wa nton; not the shadow of
love, but the substa nce of lust" .
Having popul arized thi s mod e of writing,
Lyly went on to play with its effec ts in the
theatre. The seco nd sce ne of Campaspe,
which may be his earlies t dr amatic work,
opens with the com plaint of Manes, servant to
the gro uchy philo soph er, Diogenes: " I serve
instead of a master a mou se, whose hou se is a
tub , whose din ner is a cru st and whose bed is
a board ". Euphuism's antith eses, sound pat-
tern s and wordpl ay are here used for comic
purp oses. Despite its stylistic oddities , Lyly' s
dr amatic lan guage can sound striking ly
modern, espec ially in comp arison with oth er
plays of the early and mid-15 80s. As Stanley
Well s has recentl y sugges ted, there is some-
thin g almos t Wild ean about this mode of
writing, with its witty artificiality and its
tend enc y to con vey emo tion throu gh a charac-
ter' s ofte n futil e attempt to conceal it. In an
elliptical exc hange between the besotted title
characters in Sappho and Phao, Sappho asks
Phao about cur es for her suppose d sickness:
Sapp ho. . . But what do you think best for
your sighing to take it away?
Phuo. Yew, madam.
Sapp ho. Me?
Phuo. No madam, yew of the tree.
Sapp ho. Then will I love yew the better. And
indeed I think it would make me sleep, too,
therefore all other simp les set asi de, I will sim-
ply use only yew.
Phao. Do, madam, for I think nothing in the
wor ld so goo d as yew.
Part of the play's com edy deri ves from the dis-
parit y in status between Sapph o and the ferr y-
man, Phao , and the rather silly pun s on
"you"l" yew" and "simples" (remedi es) and
"simply" sugges t not only the clum sy
attempt s of unpr acti sed lovers to assess one
anoth er ' s emotions, but also the indi gnit y that
love can impo se o n those of any class. We are
enco urage d to laugh at the ch aracters while
also sympathizing with their predicament.
In creatin g this witty det achm ent , Lyly was
aided by the fact that his plays were writte n
for the troup es of boy actors attached to the
LITERATURE
Lunar life
L UCY M U NRO
John L yl y
TH E WOM A N IN THE MOO N
Edited by Leah Scragg
142pp . Manchester Univers ity Press. £45.
978 07 19072444
choir schoo ls at St Paul' s and the Chapel
Royal. The impersonation of not only feminin-
ity (as was customary in all-male adult comp a-
nies), but also adult masculinity, lent itself to
narr atives in which ge nder becom es fluid - a
boy actor might , afte r all, play male or femal e
roles. In L yl ys plays, thi s flui dity goes with
an emphas is on the prot ean qu aliti es of
comed y. Every thing is subje ct to chan ge:
girls are disgui sed as boys and may ultimately
chan ge sex; old men regain their lost youth;
nymph s turn into trees, rock s, flowers and
bird s; kin gs ga in the ability to turn all they
touch into gold; queens and kin gs find them-
selves tran sform ed by love as they becom e
infatuat ed with their soc ial inferiors.
Luna's chariot (1585) by Jan Sadeler
Lyl ys pla ys we re regularly performed at
Co urt, where presentati on s by boy actors
outnumbered those by ad ults for much of the
sixtee nth century, and he becam e, briefl y, a
mod el for writers striving for courtl y prefer-
ment. As Barnabe Rich ob ser ved in 1584 ,
Lyly could "court it with the best and scho lar
it with the mo st", and it is difficult to
ove rs tate his influ enc e on the next ge nera-
tion of dramati sts - from Rob ert Green e to
Shakespea re - who transplanted man y of his
co nce rns and techniques into the plays they
wrote for their companies. Lyly' s own hey-
day was short-live d . He see ms to have been
the vict im of politi cal circ umsta nces not
en tirely of his own makin g: the M artin M ar-
prelate scandal of the late 1580s. A series of
outrageously satirica l pamphlet s attacking
the episco py had emerge d under Martin ' s
name from sec ret printin g presses and , see k-
ing an appropriate respon se, the bishop s
see m to have commissioned Lyly and
TLS SE PTEMBER 2 1 2007
iour "T hat she may feel the influ enc e of our
beam s, I And rue that she was form ed in our
despit e" . Her emotions und er the sw ay of the
planet s, Pandora is by turn s melanch oly
(Saturn), proud (Jupiter), violent (Ma rs) , vir-
Thomas Nas he to write rival pamphl et s tuou s and mod erat e (So l), lustful (Ve nus) , sly
defending them. Onl y one pamphlet by Lyly and eloquent (Me rcury) and mad (Luna). She
surv ives , Pap with an Hatchet, but evi de nce marries one she pherd, Stesias, but cuckolds
sugges ts that his involvem ent ex tended to him with the other shepherds and with her
pl ays satirizing Martin . Th e plays seem to serva nt, Gunophilus. Eve ntually, Natur e
have taken eve n pro- Establi shm ent satire too takes Pand or a and plac es her in the planet of
far , and the Children of Paul' s, who per- her cho ice ; Pand or a chooses Lun a, decl arin g
form ed them , disapp ear ed from the theatrical that "change is my felicity I And fickl eness
scene around 1590. Pandora' s prop er form". Th e ve nge ful Ste-
So me of Lyly' s plays were revived by a sias is conde mned to be her slave and to fol-
new generation of children ' s companies at the low her to the moon , while Gunophilus is
turn of the seve ntee nth century, but they did transformed into a thorn-bush which Stes ias
not develop a sustained performanc e tradition. mu st bear on his back . An ori gin is thu s pro-
Mor eo ver, though Euphues: The Anatomy of vided for the image of the man in the moon ,
Wit was to remain in print for more than fifty who appe ars to carry a bundl e of sticks on his
years , the plays were largely neglected by pub- back, and, apparently, for fem ale cha nge abil-
lishers. By the early 1630s, the publi sher ity; Na ture decl ares that the cha ngea ble Pan-
Edwa rd Blount, address ing the readers of a dora will reign "a t wo me n's nupti als, and
collection of "Six Co urt Co medies" writte n their birth".
"By the only Rare Poet of that Tim e, the Sur veyin g the play' s criti cal histor y,
Witt y, Comica l, Face tiously Quick and Scragg notes that it has been "as shifting and
Unpara lleled John Lyly, Ma ster of Art s" , unstable as Pandora her self', some critics
sugges ted that he has ex humed the works of a favou ring a topi cal interpretation of the
long-forgotten writer: "A sin it were to suffer play which wo uld asso ciate Pando ra with
these rare monument s of wit to lie cove red in Elizabeth I (w ho was occ asion all y addressed
as Pandora in panegyric), others rejectin g thi s
idea ve hemently. Hunt er sugges ts, for
instance, that to detect a satiric proj ected
behind the play "implies a ge nera l migration
of lunacy out of the play and into the author ,
the Master of the Revels, the licen ser for the
press, the actors and the wors hipful co mpa ny
of stationers" (his italics) . Scragg urges, how-
eve r, that a satiric und ertone may not be
incomp atibl e with prai se of the mon arch in
the present ation of Nature, the play' s presid-
ing deit y. Lik e much literatur e of the 1590s,
The Woman in the Moon is both satire and cel-
ebra tion; panegyric is ju xtapo sed with poten-
tial co nde mnation. Scra gg argues that the
play is neither "a n idealized portrait" of Eliza-
beth nor "a satirica l represent ation of her
fl aw s" , but " a multifacet ed im age of th e mo n-
arch ' s public and pri vate se lves".
Th e 1597 qu arto text of The Woman in the
Moon is we ll print ed , with few significa nt
printing errors, and it thu s poses few prob-
lem s for the editor. A few characteristics of
the text are unu sual , ho wever. Wh ereas stage
dir ecti on s in earlier Lyly qu artos tend to be
minim al, those of The Woman in the Moon
du st, and a shame such conc eited co medies are much full er and are , at tim es, entertain-
should be acted by none but worms". ingly evo cative . When Pand or a is awa ke ned,
One of the pla ys that Blount did not for instance, a stage dir ection states that " The
unearth is The Woman in the Moon, a late image walks about fearfully" ; and whe n,
work which may have been neglected eve n in under the influ ence of Saturn , she violently
its ow n day and which is rarely read by non- reject s her suitors, successive dir ecti on s
spec ialis ts. Thi s is a sha me, as a new edition requi re that: "S he plays the vixen with every-
of the play, edited by by Leah Scragg, thing about her" , "She hits him on the lips",
reveals. Possibl y the ulti mate ex press ion of "She th rusts her hands in her pocket" a nd
Lyly' s interest in change and mut ability, The "She winks and frowns" .
Woman in the Moon rework s the myth of the Scra gg is es pec ially good on the pla y' s
first woman, Pandora. Here, cont rar y to theatric al cont ext. It has often been assum ed
Classica l traditi on , Pand ora is brou ght to life that The Woman in the Moon was writte n
by Na ture in respon se to the entrea ties of a after the suppress ion of the Children of
gro up of lonely she pher ds. Her crea tion Pau l' s, an attempt by Lyly to mo ve with the
an gers the plan ets, who fear Pandora as a tim es and to write a pla y for adults . Som e
rival and resent Nature 's theft of their ow n aspect s of the play appea r to support thi s co n-
characteristics (including, amo ng oth er jecture , including its intri cate plottin g, its use
thin gs, Venu s ' chee ks, Mercury' s ton gue, of direct address to the audience, and its
Luna' s foreh ead and Juno' s arms) to endow ex tens ive use of multi-leve l stag ing.
her new creation. They therefore resolve to Unusua lly for Lyly, the play is written in
"tyrannize" Pandora, cont rolling her behav- verse, a piece of ex perime ntalis m empha-

sized in the prologue: "Re me mber all is but a
po et ' s dre am / Th e fir st he had in Pho ebu s'
hol y bower, / But not the last - unless the
fir st displea se". As not ed above , the play ' s
present ation in print differs from that of
Lyly' s oth er plays, but there is no solid
ev ide nce to link this with performanc e by an
adult company. Indeed, as Scr agg argues, the
differenc es between The Wom an in the Moon
and Lylyan dr ama in ge neral have been over-
stated. Lik e the majority of its predecessors,
the pla y is heavi ly we ighted in fa vour of
fem ale and ju venil e roles: it is difficult to
imagin e an adult compan y of the early 1590s
ha vin g the per sonn el required to perform the
text. Scr agg sugges ts that we sho uld recon-
sider some of our ass umptions abo ut Lyly' s
car eer: "the inventi veness di splayed in
Mid as, Mother Bombi e, and The Woman in
the Moon do es not support the propo siti on
that their author was too we dded to a parti-
cul ar style of cot erie drama to respond to rap-
idly evolving theatrical tastes an d condi-
tion s" . Unlike many previou s com ment ator s,
she resists view ing Lyly merel y as a "victim
of fashion" , as Hunt er term ed it.
Th e post-Eli zabethan stage histor y of The
Woman in the Moon is not ex tensive . It is,
ho we ver , the only one of Lily' s plays (thus
far) to have featur ed a future Holl ywood star
in a leadin g role: Katharine Hepburn, who
played Pandora in a production of the play at
Bryn Mawr Co llege in 1928. Scragg print s a
--------------------------~--------------------------
Ties that bound
he private lives of early mod ern
T
Eng lish peopl e were supervise d by a
feroci ou sly co mplicated legal sys tem.
Matter s such as marriage, illegiti macy,
divorc e, forni cati on and per ver sion ge nera lly
fell und er the jurisdicti on of canon law,
which was administered by the Church in
what were po pularly known as the "naughty
co urts". By the late sixtee nth ce ntury, Eng -
lish canon law was depl or abl y archaic,
havin g been neith er seriously revised in the
perfunctory Henri cian Reformation , nor
affec ted by the reforming Ca tho lic Co uncil
of Trent. Furthermore, the common law,
based on precedent and practic e, rarely writ-
ten down , evo lving with incr em ent al slow -
ness over man y centuries, oft en claim ed ju ris-
dicti on over the sa me matters as canon law.
As a result , sixtee nth- and seve ntee nth-
centu ry litigants and lawyers had to hack their
way throu gh a barely penetrable herm eneuti c
jungle . Subha Mukh erjee shows how this ardu-
ous ex perience form ed new habits of thought
in those who underto ok it, giving rise to novel
ways of thinkin g about moti vation , int enti on
and the hum an person ality itself. She argues
that this process took place simultaneously,
and in remarkabl y similar fashion , in the law
courts and in the theatres. Most English
Ren aissance dramati sts had studied at the Inn s
of Co urt, and plays were frequ entl y performed
there: the dram a of the period is packed with
court room scenes and legal imagery.
The lab yrinthine subtlety of sixtee nth-
century marriage law provid ed particularl y
rich material for the stage . Can on law theoret-
icall y reco gn ized pri vate declaration s of mar-
riage as valid, eve n in the absenc e of a priest
LITERATURE & LITERARY CRITICISM
photograph of a young, bar efo oted Hepburn
as her edition's fronti spiece, and quotes the
actor's descripti on of Pando ra as "a great part
. .. warlike und er Mars. Lo vin g under Venu s
.. . Funn y, tearful , etc ." . The potenti al of the
play in performanc e is also sugges ted by a
1953 revival by the London Unive rsity
Drama Society and a revival at the Unive rs ity
of Toronto in 2000 .
The picture of Hepburn ca me to mind
when watching a one -off rehearsed readin g
of another Lyly play, Gallathea, in a pack ed
King' s Head Th eatre in Islin gton on Ma y 13
thi s yea r. We are, it see ms, in the mid st of a
minor resur genc e in the profession al perform-
ance of Lyly' s plays, which ha ve also been
prominent in the "Read Not Dead " series of
stage d readings that the Ed ucation Dep art-
ment at Shakespeare' s Globe have sponso red
since the mid-1 990 s. According to the co-
ordin ator of these readin gs, James Wall ace,
one potenti al presenter of Campaspe, the first
Ly ly readin g at the Globe, was put off by the
wordiness of the pla y; havin g taken on the
challen ge , Wall ace found that the words
lifted from the page with rem arkable ease .
Lyly in perfor ma nce - eve n in a stage d read-
ing - is reveal ed as something rather spright-
lier than we might expec t: the plays, it see ms,
may have foun d success with their first audi-
ences not onl y because the y were stylish,
intell ectually satisfying and (at least poten-
tiall y) daringly political, but because they
DAVID HAWK ES
Subh a Mukh erj e e
LAW A ND R E PR E SE NT ATIO N I N
EA RL Y M OD ER N DR AM A
291pp. Cambridge University Press. £50.
9780 52l 850353
or ceremo ny . Webster ' s Duchess of M alfi
simply decl ares her self married , askin g "how
ca n the church bind faster ?" In Cha pma n's
Gentlema n Usher , Vinc entio and Margaret
"rnarie before heaven" by tyin g a sca rf abo ut
eac h oth er ' s arms , con vinc ed that " It is
enoug h and bind s as much as marri age" .
Eve n a promi se to marry might con stitute a
marriage "de f uturo" , which ca me into
present effec t on con summation. If a man
promi sed to marr y a wo man and then had sex
with her , there was a goo d legal case that he
actu all y had married her.
Thi s natu rall y crea ted a hu ge demand for
lawyers. The law ' s complexit y train ed its
pr actitioner s in redoubtabl e po wer s of int er-
pretation, as we learn from Mukherjee' s
study of Henr y Swinburne ' s Treatise on
Spo usa ls (writte n about 1600) . Swinburne
not es that "divers words are suffic ient to
pro ve a perfe ct contract of Matrim on y" , and
words we re not always necessary; a marri age
could be effec ted by an "accumulation of
some Act ", and eve n "by Sign s". If a relu c-
tant husband could show that his swee t noth-
ings had been spo ken in "Jest or Sport" , they
might be legall y invalid ated . Sin ce ca non law
was deri ved fro m Latin texts, there were
knotty qu esti on s of tran slation to con sider.
TLS SE PTEMBER 2l 2007
were amusing .
Galla thea at the King' s Head dem on s-
trated convinci ng ly L yl ys ability to mani-
pul ate comic ton e ; there is broad comedy in
the subplot, in which a group of yo uths
atte mpt to find a suitable trad e in which to
apprentice them selves, and more subtle iron y
in the exchanges between Gall athea (there
played by Charlie Cove ll) and Phyllid a
(Ma ry Nighy) . In a cha ract eri sticall y Lylyan
doubl e struc ture, each girl has been di sgui sed
as a boy by her father, in an attempt to evade
the edict that the mos t beautiful virgin in the
land mu st be sacrificed in ord er to appease
Ne ptune . Hidin g in the wo ods, the two dis-
guised girls meet and fall in love ; eac h ini-
tiall y beli eves the oth er to be male, but
begin s to fear that "he" is not what he see ms:
Phyllida. Have you ever a sister?
Gallathea. If 1 had but one, my brother must
need s have two. But, I pray. have you ever a
one?
Phy llida. My father had but one daughter, and
therefore I could have no sister.
Gallathea. [A side ] Ay me, he is as I am, for his
speec hes be as mine are.
Phyllida. [Aside] What shall 1 do? Either he is
subtle or my sex simple.
Thi s com ed y is not merely the kit sch product
of dram atic archa ism - so mething that is
impo sed by unc ertain dir ectors and perform-
ers - it arises from the play' s dr am atic and
lingui stic design , and its brittl e patho s sure ly
A ll wo rds ma y have a "double se nse" , and
magistrates mu st take acco unt of the "Com-
mon Use of Speech and Custo m of the place"
where they were uttered. Such words ten ded
to be gas ped in the heat of passion , and thu s
to "be so general and unc ert ain that the mean-
ing of the Parti es cann ot appear". It was an
Elizabethan lawyer' s job to make that mean-
ing appea r. He had to del ve throu gh the
mor ass of verba l ambi guit y and ex tract the
intention, the motive , of the actor s in a ca se.
A co urt judged in the 1590 s that Nicho las
Jepson ' s pant ed vows to his belo ved did not
legally marry them , becau se "he is unl ernid"
and ignor ant of the legally necessar y form of
words . However "he said, yf he had kno wne
any oth er wordes of more effe cte than the
above writte n were , he sa id at that time he
wo ld have spo ken them ; for . .. his mynd was
to have made them as sure as he cold ". It was
his "mynde" , his intern al intention, that
va lida ted the marri age, not the words he
pro nounc ed.
Sw inburne is un apol ogetic about the law ' s
co mplex ity. He compares its fiendi shly
subtle distinc tion s and qu alific ation s to
Ariadnes thread , which leads to the Mino-
taur of hum an intenti on , "the Ce ntre of eac h
Man ' s thou ght " . Early modern legal theori sts
often wrote of "trapping" or "catching" the
con sci ence, and Mukherjee arg ues that the
dram a share d the same "urge to unco ver the
inward " . Wh en Hamlet decl ares "the pl ay ' s
the thin g / W herein I'll catch the con sci ence
of the King" , he uses "thing" in its archaic
sense of "legal case" , makin g an exp licit anal-
ogy between the courtroo m and the theatre.
Th e idea that drama' s main functi on is the
23
left its mark on the Shakespeare of As You
Like It and Twelfth Night.
Stage d readin gs are often an effective
form at in which to reassess neglect ed dra-
matic wor ks . The King' s Head reading of
Gallathea was stage d simply and with ob vi-
ous res pec t for the text by the dir ector Tom
Littl er, and L yl ys lines were deli vered
clearl y and with confidenc e by a stro ng cas t.
I was part icul arl y struck by the perform an ces
of Co veil, Nighy, T ai Sha n Ling (do ubling
Cupid and the appren tice Ra fe) an d Simo n
Poland (doubling the A lchemist - one of the
apprentices' prop osed ma ster s - and Ne p-
tun e). Though it consisted of onl y one
spee ch, Pia Fitzge rald's perfor ma nce as
Haebe, a yo ung woman who is set up as a
sacrifice to Ne ptune but is rejected by his sea
mon ster becau se she is not the fairest maiden
in the land, was a comi c tour de for ce,
Haebes fea r grad ually giving way to out-
raged humili ati on .
In his 1632 edition of Lyly' s plays,
Edwa rd Blount tell s his readers that he has
"for the love I bear to posterit y, digged up the
grave of a rare and ex ce llent poet , whom
Queen Elizabeth then heard , graced and
reward ed ". G lobe Ed ucation plan s to stage
Gallathea and The Wom an in the Moon in
the Read Not Dead series thi s autumn.
As rehearse d rea ding and scholarly edition
dem on strate in their different ways, both
plays are we ll worth the diggin g.
ide ntification and analysis, eve n the creation ,
of the internal hum an con scienc e was first
propo sed by Friedrich Nietz sche in his Bir th
of Tragedy . For Nietzsche, the co nce pt of
intern al subje ctivity is necessary for the
ascription of legal guilt. Th ere mu st be a
"doer behind the deed" , a self that ca n be
held respon sibl e for its actions. Early mod ern
dram a is fascinated by the differe nces
bet ween peopl e' s internal esse nce and their
ex ternal appearance : thi s is the differenc e to
which lago alludes whe n he boasts " I am not
what I am" , and Shakespeare fam ou sly tant a-
lizes the audi ence with the elusive qu estion
of Iagos moti vation. As the co nce pt of me ns
rea , "mental guilt" , ga ined currenc y in legal
theor y, the inner space inhabit ed by the co n-
scientious self was ex plor ed in the theatre.
Am on g the spec tators in Elizabetha n court-
room s were scribbling "brac hy -gr aphy men":
pamphlet- writ ers, ball adeer s and , Mukherjee
spec ulates , playwri ght s such as Web ster and
Dekk er, who produced wor ks based on the
cases they ob ser ved. It is not hard to identify
their twent y-fir st-c entury eq uiva lents. Ce leb-
rit y trials and reality TV shows like Judge
Judy testify to the co ntinuing interface
betw een courtroom and theatre. But these
hyp erreal spectacles ass ume a different kind
of self from the motivated, intendi ng subjec t
of the early mod ern period, and thi s see ms to
reflect a chan ge in the ver y natur e of the
hum an person alit y. What ever dr ives the likes
of Harold Shipman and Seu ng Hui- Ch o, it is
nothing we can recogniz e as a moti ve, nor
do es "co nscience" see m a relevant concept in
such cases. One of the man y virtues of Law
and Representati on in Ea rly M odern Drama
is its reminder that the autonomo us, con scien-
tiou s, legall y respon sibl e self is not a natu ral
but a de liberately construc ted, histori call y
specific ph enom enon, and one whose cultural
domin ance may no w be approa ching its en d.
24
he qu esti on posed by the title Why
T Shakespea re? is spelt out ju st once:
"W hat differenti ates Shakespeare from
other writers?". That is, what qu aliti es have
caused his works to be still rememb ered , ce le-
brated, performed, adapted and comm erciall y
ex ploited today, far above and beyond tho se
of any other writer of the past'! But , in prac-
tice, thi s issue is not full y integrated within
the eight cha pters of Ca the rine Belsey ' s book ,
o nly one of which co nce rns Shakespeare's
"singularity" . The qu estion seems to be, in the
true sense of the phrase, "rhetor ical": that is,
it "is posed for rhetorical effect rath er than for
the purpose of ge tting an answer".
As she di sarmingly admits, Bel sey has
chose n to ex plore traditi on al motifs and
devices for reason s that are entirely per son al ,
and have no esse ntial co nnection wi th the
title question . She has, for the first time, been
peru sing her late moth er' s childhood co py of
the Grim m Bro thers ' Household Tales (1918
edition), and thi s has cause d her to respond
appreciatively to the folk-tale eleme nts that
lie at the heart of some of Shakespeare' s
plays. The approach is fresh and enj oya ble,
but does not provid e co nv incing answe rs.
Th e very fact that Belsey has come to read
and value these folk tales so late in her career
as a cultural critic see ms to undercut the
cl aim s she no w mak es for their ce ntrality.
Ce rtainly she mak es no case for Shake-
spea re's use of such material as histori cally
di stincti ve or rem arkable, since she barely
glances at those "other writers " fro m who m
he is allege dly different. No "control gro up"
is offered for comp arison. Th e nearest she
com es to thi s is when she touc hes on folk-tale
stra nds in some later wor ks. Perh aps tell-
ingly, these are novels rather than plays -
such coming-of-age narrati ves as Tom Jones,
David Copperfield and l ane Eyre .
Wh en she glances toward s contem pora ries
of Shakes pea re, she approaches them nar-
row ly. Ear ly o n, for instance, she gives an
account of The Old Wives ' Tale by Geor ge
Peele, in which he "makes enterta ining
comedy precisely out of the naivet y of fire-
side narratives". But she fail s to note that, as
Bri an Vickers has recentl y show n, there is
littl e doubt that Peele was one of the ea rlies t
of Sh akespear e' s "co-authors" , so an interest-
ing case co uld have been made for his having
learned so mething fro m the old er poet about
the theatrical potenti al of old tales. Lik ewise,
in her discu ssion of The Winter 's Tale,
closely based on Rober t Gr eenes ro mance
Pandosto, she do esn't point out that the
maj or ity of Gree nes many wor ks, both
theatri cal and oth er wise, are exp lici tly folk-
tale-lik e. This is prob abl y a maj or exp lana-
tion of their great popularit y in the Eliza -
beth an period, but has done them no favours
with pos terity, which is amo ng the reason s
(;lFOUR COURTS PRESS
That island never found
N IC H O LAS ALLEN & EVE PATTE N EDITORS
A collec tion of poems and essays on and by some of
Ireland's leadin g writ ers and scholars including Louis
MacNeice, Edn a O 'Brien, W B.Yeats, Seamus H eaney,
Brendan Kenne lly and De rek Mahon.
ISBN 978-1 -84682-07 2-4 208 pa ges £50
Published: :JI September
7 M alpas Street, D ublin 8, Ireland
Tel. (Dublin ) 453 4668 www.fourcourtspress.ie
LITERARY CRITICISM
Tales told
KATH ERI N E D U N C A N-JO N ES
Ca t her i ne B el s e y
WH Y S HAKESP EARE ?
190pp. Palgrave.Paperback, £9.99.
978 I 4039 9320 5
why I am sceptica l about the claim s made
here for folk-tale cor es as the key to
Shakespe are's lastin g po wer.
Th e strength of Bel sey' s ess ays lies in their
fresh and stra ightforward manner, which
sho uld be much enjoyed by yo ung readers.
When discu ssin g Hamlet, for instanc e, she
rejects relentless ly psycho logi ca l readin gs
and suggests that the prot agoni st' s "closest
ana log ues in popul ar culture are prob abl y
to be found ... in the private detecti ves and
amateur sleuths of mod ern crime ficti on" .
------------------~,------------------
IamaJew
KA THARI N E C RA I K
K enn eth G ross
SHY LOC K I S S HA KE S P EA RE
202pp. University of ChicagoPress. $22.50:
distriboted in the UK by Wiley. £10.95.
978 0 226 309774
eadings of dr amati c characters have
R recentl y com e back into favour. Some
Shakespeareans have becom e di sen-
chan ted with historic ally ori ented criticism ,
dense with cont extu al de tail des igne d to
illu min ate large, ideological forc es rather
than the mor ality or motives of individu als.
Shylock Is Shakes peare by Kenn eth Gross
offe rs a rej oinder to such histori cist acco un ts,
prop osin g instead that Shy lock's dr amati c
compl exit y - and his full afterlife in cont em-
porar y fiction - may be ex plained throu gh
the charac ter's close affinity to Shakes pea re
him self. Harold Bloom , drawin g on Hegel' s
asse rtion that Shakes peare made his best
charac ters free artists of them selves,
famou sly describ ed Fa lstaff, in The Invention
of the Human, as a cipher for Shakes pe are 's
ow n lingui stic resourcefuln ess and life-
affirm ing hu manit y. To Gross, ho wever,
Shakespeare is the Jewish money lende r in
The Merchant of Venice who de ma nds a
pound of flesh from the merchant A ntonio
when he fail s to repay his loan .
The re are indeed sim ilarities het w een
Shakespeare and his creation. Both make
mon ey throu gh unhol y mean s: Shy lock as a
mon eylend er , Shakes peare as a man of the
theatre. The profession s of both are susta ined
throu gh suspec t currency: Sh ylo ck' s invis-
ible amass ing of interest, Shakes pe are 's
investm ent in fantasy, reverie and illusion.
Both deal in promises, or "merry bond s with
hidd en strings" , and Shy lock , like Shake-
spea re, knows that the etymo log ical meanin g
of "credit" is "he believes" or "he has faith
RI in". His bond with A ntonio serves psychic
and dramatic ends rather than pur ely eco -
TLS SEPTEMBER 2 1 2007
Ho wever, there is a fine line between an
accessible approac h and a redu cti ve one, and
thi s is occasionally crosse d, as in her rem ar k
that " if Haml et is no mor e than a study in
bip olar disorder, there are now goo d, up-to-
da te, profession al acco unts of ma nic dep res-
sion" . This rather misses the point, since no
one (to my knowl ed ge) has eve r cl aim ed that
the play is " no more than" such a study.
Rather, that powerfully theatri cal and highl y
ori gin al pla y articulates cert ain disord ered
states of mind, such as Haml et ' s mood
sw ings and Oph elia ' s manic distress, with an
imag inative power beyond the reac h of any
"professional" chro nicler, either in Shake-
spea re 's tim e or in our own . Belsey ' s mo st
successful chap ters co nce rn the Co medies,
es pec ially A Midsumm er Nig ht 's Dream,
with its mis takes of the night plausibly seen
as a revel atory fiction; Twelfth Night, fruit-
Arthur Bou chier as Shylo ck , 1905
no mic ones, and his unaccountable attac h-
ment to it - lon g afte r the exc hange it
proposes to enact has becom e imp ossibl e -
reveals the sca ndalous hond Sh akespeare
makes with his audience. Noting Shylock ' s
ruthl ess fero city, John Berr ym an suggested
that it was here (rather than in the later trage-
dies) that Shakes pea re first tasted blood.
Per haps Berr ym an meant the blood of an
audience trul y gripped by dr ama, or the blo od
of a full y-fl eshed charac ter. For Gross, the
blood is Shakespeare' s own . Rage is part of
Shakespeare 's artistic natur e, and his plays
di splay that which is most painful and diffi-
cult to wa tch: our hu man attrac tion to terr or ,
agg ress ion and inhumanit y. Thi s "poetics
of repu gn anc y" lies at the heart of The
full y ex plore d in term s of va rio us kind s of
riddle - she firml y asse rts that the play "is not
a docum entary about social status"; and The
Merchant of Venice, examined in ter ms both
of fairy-tale arc hetypes and of the coll ective
scapegoating of those who are "culturally dif-
ferent " . In that closin g essay, she co mes near-
es t to ackn ow ledg ing the profound differ en ce
between inh erit ed models an d Shakespeare ' s
more troubling co mplex ities:
A comedy, like a satisfying fairy tale, ends
well. Shylock does not, and in addition he
has lost his acce ss to the eloquence that once
enabled him to denoun ce the inj ustice of his
treatme nt.
Ultimately, Ca therine Belsey' s Why Shake -
speare ? is uncon vin cin g. Wh at has cause d
Shakespeare' s plays to end ure is not their
status as "well-told tales" . As the openin g
and clo sing sce nes of Cymbe line so labori-
ously show , he knew ju st as we ll as the
disgui sed Kent in King Lear ho w to "mar a
curious tale in telli ng it". Neve rtheless , we
ca n reli sh a disting uished criti c ' s rel axed
reflecti on s on Shakes pea re and folk tales.
Merchant of Venice, and Shy lock's impl aca-
bilit y in the courtroom of Act Fo ur sta nds for
Shakespeare' s ow n uncompromisin g attitude
toward s his audience . He see ks neith er indul-
ge nce nor pard on , but works instead to stir up
o ur sha me, terror and re sentment.
Gross beli eves that per son al engageme nt is
what reall y matters, and his book record s his
ow n imp assion ed ex perience of the play. He
imagin es the qu estion s he might as k Sh ylock
if they found them sel ves stro lling togeth er
throu gh a narr ow calle in Venic e ("What
could you have been thinking?" ). He wo n-
ders what happ ens to Shy lock after his blank
acceptance of the news that he must co nve rt
to Christianity . Wh at wo uld the sce ne of
his bapti sm look like ? Who wo uld stand for
his go dparents? How co uld Sh ylock put the
bod y and blood of Christ into his mouth at his
fir st communion ? Shakespeare is here made
to offe r an account in th e fir st pe rson of the
play' s "truth" , and his voice has an occa-
sional Am eri can inton atio n. When Gross's
Shakespeare wr ites , "Shylock is what I know
myse lf to be" , one wonde rs who is really
spea king .
To the qu estion of Shakes pea re 's alleged
anti- Semiti sm , Gross pro poses that Sh ylock
is a Christian hallu cin ation , a repo sitory for
peopl e ' s fear and suspicion of outsiders.
Ex isting studies, such as Shylock: 40 0 years
in the life of a legend by John Gross have
ex plored the chara cter's rep utation as an
archet ypal villai n. Kenn eth Gross suggests
instead that Shy lock stea ls for him self the
mas k that others projec t on to him, turning in
a bravur a perform ance of Jewish mali ce and
bitt ern ess. The Merchant of Venice is there-
fore neith er pro-Shy lock nor anti-Shy lock,
becau se Shyloc k stea ls anti-Se mitic hatred
for his ow n ends . The unsettli ng spec tacle he
then mak es of himself reveals his hum anit y.
Th ere are man y such insights in thi s whimsi-
ca l, pro vocati ve book , which is, above all,
committed to the idea that the mor al and
ethica l qu estion s Shakespea re raised we re
not of an age , but for all tim e. Kenn eth Gross
captures what he ca lls the sly shoc k of the
play: Shakespeare may have kno wn very lit-
tle abo ut actu al Jews and Jewi sh histor y, but
no one was better eq uipped to imagine them .

New maps of Tbilisi
et between powe rful Indo-European
S and Turkic language nation s to the
north and south; contained by the
Black and Cas pian Seas to the west and eas t,
the sma ll but distinctive Ca ucasic language
family is found among the high Caucasus
mountains. While a number of these unique
non-Indo- European tongues have now van-
ished for eve r, one in particul ar - Geo rgian -
ha s show n a notable resilience. Surviving the
success ive waves of invasion , from the
G reeks, Rom ans, Ara bs, Mongols, Per sians,
Turk s and more recentl y Russians, today the
Georgian language sustains a spirited local
publi shin g indu stry in its ow n script. Visitors
to Georg ia's capit al, Tbilisi, are often sur-
prised to find, not only new editions of con-
tempo rar y Georgian writers alongside the
medieval cl assics, but also up-t o-date tran s-
lations of Harr y Pott er. It leads to the thought
that if the definiti on of a language reall y is "a
dialect with an army", then this tiny, repeat-
edly invaded nation with its pint-sized army
ha s sustained a rem arkable cultura l victory.
The arrival of this substa ntial Compre hen-
sive Georgian-English Dictionary might
well be mooted as officia l confirmation.
Publi shed out of Queen Mary , University of
Lond on , the Georgian-English sec tion alo ne
cont ain s 1,730 near-A4 size pages and over
140,000 entries - a major undert aking, with
the English-Georg ian sec tio n still to arrive .
But already it will sit easily beside
the offici al lexicon of any major modern
language.
Some may query such a huge task for a
language of only about five and a half millio n
speakers worldw ide , with only a sma ll inter-
national diaspora - also that of a country that
many still mistake nly believe located in the
United States. But there is solid reason -
belon ging as much to the pas t as to the
prese nt. Georgian is an ancie nt langu age in
possession of its ow n unique script and writ-
ten literature from as far back as the fourth
centur y AD. Indeed, it is the only Ca ucasic
language to have its own script. As Donald
Rayfield , editor-in-chief, put it in an earlier
book, The Literature of Georgia (reviewed in
the TLS, October 6, 1995), by the twelfth cen-
tury the Georg ian language had as many
"speakers and rea ders and the sa me prestige
amo ng its neighb ours as the English language
in the time of Shakespea re" . By that time,
Georgia's national poet, Shota Rustave li, had
just crea ted his rem arkable 1,666- verse
poe m, "The Knight in the Panther Skin", a
kind of Neo platonic epic based on a Persian
tale, quit e unique for that time and place .
Furthermore, due to its long history of
mon asticism and scholars hip, nex t to the Silk
Road and among high pro tecting mount ain s,
the Georgian language has also serve d as co n-
duit and safe hou se for many imp ortant texts.
For instance, the arrival into Euro pe of the
story of the Buddh a ' s life almost certainly
res ulted from a Georgian translation in the
tenth cen tury . Kno wn to Georgians as the
"Ba lava riani", or "The Story of Barla am and
Josaphat" , this Christianized version of the
famo us Indi an tale has been credited to Geor -
gian monk s who tran slated it from earlier
Ara b texts. After adding a suitable Christian
R E F ER ENC E BOOKS 25
of the few nations regularly to imp ress the
English with produ ction s of Shakespe are.
Robert Sturua 's burlesque vers ion of Richard
11/ and Mikh ail Tum ani shvili ' s A Mid-
summer Night's Drea m have so ld out in
P E T ER NA S M YT H to refer to that other development from several London theatres. More recentl y Rezo
Don ald R a yfi eld ,
e d it o r -i n - c h ie f
John son' s Dictionary - The Comp lete Oxford
Dictionary.
In Georg ia itself , the Ge orgi an-English sec-
Ga briadze's Stalingrad and the Sadarpe
Theatre' s Faust have done the same , stepp ing
into the spaces left by the agei ng Soviet
tion has alrea dy recei ved many effusive and avant- garde.
A C O M P REHENS IVE enthusiastic reviews. Certainly, as the lan- Georgians hope that even ts like this Dic-
GEORG IAN -ENG LIS H D IC TIONARY guage of arts and scie nce rapidly transforms tionary might encourage Western publishers
Two vo lumes , 1,72 8pp. Ga rne tt Press. £75. from Russian into Eng lish, this dicti onary - to consider some of their living wr iters, still
978 0953587 83 4 many times better than any before - is a grea t waiting for first English-language publ ica-
assistance (and even more so when the tion out of Geo rgia (like Lasha Bughadze,
twist to the story , they then tran sported the English-Georg ian section has arrived). About whose When Cabb ies Are Att acked recentl y
text to the Georgian monas tery at Mount the only criticism in Georg ia is of the editorial won the Russia and Ca ucas us section of the
Athos in north ern Greece . This in turn led to decision to include slang and swea r words - BBC' s International Radio Playwriting Co m-
a Gree k translation in the twelfth cen tury which some more traditi onal Ge org ians feel petit ion). Also, to "discover" some of their
which result ed in the tale ' s dissemin ation should have been staved off into a separate dic- more original poets, such as the anim ist
across Euro pe - leadin g to the canonization tionary of slang, rather than jos tling alongside Vazha Pshavela (1861-1 915 ), whose savage
of Barlaam and Joseph as Christian saints. the sonorous words of Old Georg ian. But the mountain-born poem s so impr essed Osip
Thi s superb new dictionary is as suitable editors arg ue, rightly, that to create a full and Mandelstam. Thi s, their "voice of the moun-
for acade mics researchin g these early Old living resource, the ancient as well as the tain s" , they believe wo uld appeal to the new
Georgia n texts, as for translators of contempo - ultra- modern both have their place. Indeed, trekking generations of Euro pe and A merica .
rary Georgian literatur e. Indeed , anyo ne with though neither Old Georg ian nor much of its The thirt een-p age introduction to the
a serious interest in this sma ll, culturally rich alphabet is used today, many of its words are Dictionary is useful and inform ati ve. It gives
nation should quietl y doff their hats to Profes- found in ancient texts or carved on church instructi on on its ow n histor y; what is
sor Rayfield and his team for their enterprise . walls. includ ed and excluded; nou ns, verbs, and
Certai nly many Ge orgia ns and scholars of One other issue is price. £75 makes it how to use the diction ary. One niggle is that
the Georgian language already do. Rayfield inaccessibl e to tho se who most wa nt it - in a althou gh the introduction decla res the Dic-
set out to create a single, up-to-d ate and co untry where the state salary for a professor tionary is "aimed primarily at an English-
authoritative point of research for Georgian ' s is still £ 10 a month . Whil e Ray field has speaker interpr etin g Georg ian text or dis-
relati onship with the English language - supplied many free copies to those involved cour se" , strange ly it places its contents page,
where none existed. To this end, he took in its production, it ca n never be enough in Soviet-style, at the end rather than beginnin g
early retirement from his Professorship of the current non-intellectu al clim ate in Tbilisi . of the vo lume, which may be co nfusing for
Russian Literature at Lond on University, Many Georg ian aca dem ics now lament that fir st-tim e Eng lish users trying to rem emb er
gathered around him a team of plucky lin- their country is losin g its intellectual edge , as the ord er of the thirt y-three-Ietter Georgian
guists, both Georgian and English, and set the rapaciou s comme rcial sector closes their alph abet. Such ecce ntricities are eas ily com-
about the task. It took six yea rs, but it is true instituti ons, or sna tches their buil dings (as in pensa ted, however, by the tho rou ghn ess of
to say he has achi eved his goal, and with true the recent case of the Writ er s Union in the listin gs - and the technique of including
scholarly dedicati on. Tbili si). As a result , Georgia's mos t talented multipl e entries for a numb er of variously
Indeed one senses an attempt at something youth now regul arly leave the country to spe lt words, espec ially verbs, which can
Joh nsoni an in the enterp rise. As did Samuel furth er their educa tion abroa d - man y, of appear separa tely both in present and futur e
Joh nson in A Dictionary of the English Lan- course, never to return. forms (a grea t help for begin ners tryin g to
guage, Ray field set out to produce a standard Those that do stay continue to sustain grasp the complexities of Georgian gra mmar
for dictionaries of the futur e, and also, unlike Ge orgia's well-know n cultura l expo rts in - a language in which the word for "father" is
prior dic tio naries , inclu de illu stratio ns o f theatre, fil m, dance and polyphonic song . "mama" and for "mother" "deda" ).
wor d usage with the definitions . Furthermore During the Sov iet peri od, Georgia was Uns urprisingly, this diction ary generated
the two boxed, hard-bound volumes , pre- regarded as the artists' colon y of the Sov iet far more work than ex pected for its team of
sented in navy blue with gold lettering, seem Union, and tod ay it is still kno wn as one crea tors , and Rayfield was kno wn to have
mutt ered the word "S isy phea n" at times. But
now it is completed , one ca n safely recall
Zugzwang that John son ' s Dictionary of the English
Language took nine years to produce, instead
of five, and inclu ded his now famou s, exas -
As you might hear every possibl e babbl e of language perat ed definiti on of a "lexicographer" as " a
in bell s that tumble and peal to ce lebrate victory ; writer of diction aries, a harml ess drud ge . ..''.
This, as eve ryo ne kno ws, pro ved inaccu rate -
as the quilt ers make a pattern of their remn ant s and rags, born e out by the enduring author ity of
and the jersey, unravelled , becom es a new skein of woo l; his diction ary over the ce nturies . The same,
one suspec ts, might be said by futur e genera-
as the fugue must reiterate its me lodic fragment s tions of Donald Rayfield' s ach ieve me nt at
in continuously unfini shed tapestries of sound; the beginnin g of the twent y-fir st.
as the poli ce might have trawled the wrec k of your Deesse
Dr Neill Martin (University of Edinburgh )
in searc h of the twist in the plot, the point of no return ;
The Formand Function of Ritual Dialogue in the
Marriage Traditions of Celtic-LanguageCultures
as the words of the song whe n remem bered eac h time around
remind us of other occas ions at different times; 424pp £79.95 Hardc over
978-0-7734- 5328-9 July 2007
as the geographer traces the long fetch of the waves "...Its expert andsensitive handling of source materialcon-
from where they are born at sea to where they fou nder to shore - fers on thisbook the hallmark of a classic treatment of
reiteach ritual ..." Or Padraig 6 Heala l, National university
of Ireland , Galway
so I retu rn to the question of tho se stagge red repeats
as my memories of you rece de into the futur e. The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
Telephone 01570 423356
Email: cs@mellen.demon.co.ukwww.m ellenpress.com
C I A RAN C A RS ON
TL S SEPTEMBER 2 1 2 0 07
26
David Mamet
BA MB I VS. GODZILLA
On the nature, purpose and practice
of the movie business
250pp. Simon and Schuster. Paperback, £1 1.99.
978 0 7432 4839 6
F or Da vid Mamet, the business of the mov-
ies is "simple huck steri sm: find an attrac-
tion, present it as engagingly as possibl e, take
the mone y, and guess again" . Holl ywood is a
hotb ed of jealou s stars with "litigious bent s" ,
corrupt age nts, childi sh directors, inan ely
meddling produ cer s and mend aciou s critic s
("The critic ' s j ob in Am eric a is to sell news-
pap ers. News papers are sold by goss ip") . The
studios are on the brink of an anti-S emitic
eruption ("I predict the grow th of the Jew as
monster in the next few years' film s") while
audi enc es are onl y too quick to dem and the
insipid and "politically acce ptable" . Writ ers,
howe ver , are mo stly a good bunch. Mam et,
hi mself a writer who has profit ed nicely from
this odiou s-sounding world, is for the "w ork-
ing people" of Hollywood , whom he unflinch-
ingly refers to as "the salt of the ea rth" . He
admires their dedi cati on and prof ession alism .
Americans, he believes, are particul arly good
at this sort of thin g: "there is a true and admi-
rable American instinct of 'ge tting it right ' ",
In Bamb i vs. Godzilla, Mam et does him self
many similar disservices. Thi s is a shame, for
when not disgor ging spurious generaliza-
ti on s, he can be ac ute, en gagi ng and funn y .
He makes wry observations and airs some per-
suasive theori es - about why "the perfect film
is the silent film" ; why some actor s are no
good at auditions; about the probl em s with
audienc e testin g; the absurdit y that "the entry-
level position at motion picture studios is
script reade r" . He is an exce llent raconteur ,
whether explaining the truth behind the stunts
or describin g the various characters he has
encountered. (One good exam ple is his anec-
dote about the produc er Otto Premi nger, who
couldn't afford to pay for the 10,000 extras
requir ed for the cro wd sce ne in Exodus .
Premin ger dul y pap ered the town with post-
ers: "BE IN A MOVIE, TEN SHE KE LS". )
But Marnet ' s unendin g quest to sound
urbane and e rud ite le ad s him into man y infe-
liciti es (is the " marriage as feminine ord eal
ca tegory" of movie-m akin g - Thelma and
Loui se; The lee Storm - simply "a form of
whinin g" ?). He outlin es his "rules" for movie-
makin g, but almos t entirely ignor es film s
made out side Am erica; he opines about art
and narrati ve, without eve r reall y say ing any-
thin g. His conceit is palpabl e, not least when
he is bein g obli ging. To help us better und er-
stand dramatur gy, he recomm end s three fur-
ther cruci al books: by Brun o Bettelheim,
Joseph Ca mpbell and David Mamet.
T OBY Li CHTI G
IN BRIEF
Incident in play, Aboriginal war dance, Palm Island, Qu eensland, 1930 ; from E. O.
Hoppe's Australia, edited by Graham Howe (208pp. Norton. $49.95. 978 0 393 066111)
Memoirs
Leo Docherty
DESERT OF DEA TH
A soldier's jo urney from Iraq to Afghanistan
192pp. Faber. £14.99.
978 0 571 23688 6
R udyard Kiplin g ' s contemporaries had
learn ed what it was like "When you' re
wo unded and left on Afghani stan ' s plain s /
And the wome n come out to cut up what
rem ain s". So when the Defence Secr etary
John Reid first announced the United Kin g-
dom ' s nebulous mission in that countr y' s Hel-
mand pro vince - where in 1880 the army suf-
fered the di saster of Mai wand fightin g
aga inst "T alibs" - and ex presse d the hop e
that the UK co uld complete the mission with-
out firin g a shot, one could only question his
kno wledge of both poetry and histor y.
Leo Dochert y is not a histori an either,
although clearly an exceptionally gifted man ;
fluent in numerou s non- Europ ean languages
and with an imm ense and genuine curios ity
about exo tic places and cultures, part icul arly
in Central Asia . But it means that when he
reaches his epiphany towards the end of
Desert of Death, cau sed by the death of a
close friend , it comes out of the blue. There is
little to sugges t he had misgivings about the
mission until he suddenly finds himself oppos-
ing it so vehemently that he gets into deep
troubl e for express ing his views to the press.
Desert of Death cover s Doch erty' s time as
a so ldier in Iraq and the initial mo ve into Hel-
mand in early 200 6; it has the imm edi acy of a
diary, and he clearly wants to do the right
thin g. But when the Briti sh arrive in Sangin
they soo n learn that local official s cannot be
tru sted ; they are ob viou sly wa tching to see
how the land lies, and are all deepl y involved
with opiu m.
There is a sense throu ghout this story that
nobod y at the top und erstand s either what is
going on, or what the army is suppose d to
achieve. Doch erty was ple ased by the displ ay
of dem ocrac y in Iraq ' s elec tions, and felt that
morali zing about the Iraq wa r was "unthinka-
TLS SE PTEMBER 2 1 2007
ble". He was singularly optimi stic about
goin g to Afghani stan until faced with the
abse nce of a coherent plan . Instead, he
learned that "if we wa nt a fight we ' ll get one
here" . Ala s, Kiplin g could have told him that.
JO N LATIM ER
Social Studies
Mik e Davis
PL A NET OF SL UMS
228pp. Verso. Paperback, £8.99 .
978 I 84467 160 I
A ccording to the CIA's World Faet hook
(a surprisingly reliabl e compil ation),
over one billi on workers, repr esentin g one-
third of the world's labour force, are either
unemployed or under-empl oyed. They are
conce ntrated in what we are ple ased to ca ll
the developin g wor ld, or, rather gnomica lly,
the South . To be a little more precise, they
are concentrated in developin g cities - not
the cities of opportunity that Northerners
kno w, but " megac ities" with a population of
8 million or more, or "h ypercities" with a pop-
ulati on of 20 milli on, such as Mexico City or
Seoul , or, biggest of all, the Rio/Sao Paulo
Extended Met ropolitan Reg ion, a serpentine
cit y 500 kilometres long, with a megacit y at
ea ch end. In such places, the unempl oyed and
und er-empl oyed are concent rated in slums
(in Mexico City an estimated 7 milli on
peopl e live cheek by jowl in 350 square kilo-
metres of "informal hou sing"), usuall y on the
urhan periph ery. Their co ndition is describ ed
as "pe ri-urban povert y". They exist on the
mar gin s. This is what Planet of Slums is
about: conc entr ation (as in ca mp) and margin-
alization (as in life).
Mik e Davis is an urban histori an who
exce ls at apoca lyptic geograph y. He is socio-
logic all y literate and stree t-smart. His book
fizz es with facts and anger.
With a literal "great wall" of high-teeh border
enforce ment blocking large-scale migrat ion to
the rich countries, only the slum remai ns as a
fully franehised solution to the problem of
ware housing this century's surplus hum anity.
Slum populations, according to UN-HABI-
TAT, are currently growing by a staggering 25
milli on per yea r . . .. the frontier of safe, squat-
table land is everyw here disappearing and new
arrivals to the urban margin confront an existen-
tial condition that can only be described as
"marg inality within marginalit y", or, in the
more piquant phrase of a desperate Bag hdad
slum- dwe ller, a "sem i-death",
Daviss project is defiantly, almo st messian-
ically Marxist. Planet of Slums interpr ets the
world in a certain way ; the point is to change
it. " Wo n' t the poor revolt ?" Davis asks hope-
full y. He has a sequel planned, exploring the
histor y and futur e of slum-base d resistanc e to
globa l capitalism ("the gove rnments of the
poor"). His predi spo sition may be apocalyp-
tic, but his vision is telescopic.
ALEX D ANCH EV
French Literature
Tim Farrant
AN IN TROD UCTIO N TO
NI NE TE ENTH -CENT URY FR ENCH
LI T ER AT UR E
216pp. Duckworth. Paperback, £ 14.99 .
978 07 156 2907 9
I t see ms that eac h generation of scholars
and students requi res fresh genera l intro-
duction s to its chosen subje cts; we are fortu-
nate that the Duck worth series of New Read-
ings, edited by Nicholas Hamm ond , is cur-
rently prov iding such "accessible introduc-
tions to European literature and culture" . The
poss ibilities of rereadin g the literary and cul-
tur al pa st differentl y can often be track ed in
the bibli ographi es of such vo lumes . Henc e
Tim Farrant di spo ses of John Cruickshank's
two edited volumes on the nineteenth ce ntury
(Oxford, 1969) in the "selected readin g" of
his own first ch apter (on, preci sely, " Histo-
ries"): "Sound, in some ways dated , essays
on major subje cts". Indeed , we may note that
the TLS' s reviewer s of the time (Joanna Rich-
ardson and Martin Turn ell ) were far more
dir ect in their criticis ms.
Farran t, by trade a Balzac scho lar, offers
an exce lle nt addition to the French volumes
in the Duckworth series and will rightl y find
his place on readin g lists in the anglophone
world . Fluently comp osed and se nsibly struc-
tured , his sev en chapt ers fall into three part s:
fir st, on narrati ve, the openin g chapters deal
with Napol eonic histor y and the historic al
novel, and then first-p erson narrati ve and
autobiography ; seco nd, on genres, Chapters
III to V on poetr y, drama and novels; and
fin ally, Chapters VI and VII on " moderni-
ties" and "margins, periph eries and centr es".
We might expec t the grea test differenc e
between Farra nts and Cru ickshank's ver-
sions of the nineteenth century to emanate
from work in the intervenin g decades on
gender studies and wome n's writing, sepa-
rated as their books are by more than a
third of a ce ntury of scholarship. Even the
twenti eth-c entury volume in Cruickshank's
series bore no obse rvation, never mind chap-
ter, on Colette, and only one passin g refer-
ence to Simone de Beauvoir. Farrant' s vo l-
ume closes with a glossa ry of over 150 liter-
ary figur es, and ten of these are wo men.
Although the critic s M argaret Co hen, Ali son
Finch, Diana Holm es and Nao mi Schor do
rightl y appea r in his bibli ogr aph y, little of the
book ' s actual analysis is dedic ated to wo me n

authors. Beyond passin g referenc es, there are
onl y a coupl e of pages eac h on Marcelin e
Desbord es-Valmore and Mm e de Stael and,
both in cont rast with Balzac, one page of
clo se readin g on Rachilde and ju st three on
Geor ge Sa nd. Introductor y volumes such as
these can cas t a powe rful spell, not least over
students, and one wonders how the next gen-
eration will respond to this version of what
Leon Daudet once ca lled the " stupid nine-
teenth century" .
N ICH OLAS W HI T E
Travel
Manchan Magan
MA NCH AN 'S T RAVE LS
A journ ey through India
276pp. Brandon. Paperback, £9.99 .
978 86322 368 6
W hile relishin g the isolation of a din gy
Him alayan hove l and the effects of
urine therapy durin g the mid-1 990s, Man-
chan Magan received unexpected news from
his hip older broth er. A new Irish television
channel had commissioned the siblings to
create a programm e in Gaelic on the marvels
of Indi a. The need s of Magan ' s friend , Tara,
a gay teena ger rec ove ring from lepro sy,
made it diffi cult for him to set off on his film-
makin g journey - the adolesce nt, enco uraged
by Ma gan to com e out of the clo set, had been
shunned by his famil y - but the author deli v-
ers him into the hand s of a transgender hijra
community in Delhi; and, as Tara reads Buffy
the Vampire Slayer book s and experime nts
with dru gs, activism and prostituti on, the
broth ers hunt for material in the touri st
hot spots - Rajasthan , Delhi, Varan asi.
Choos ing subje cts for purely "sensational-
ist" reasons, as Magan acknow ledges , might
be probl em atic. But this does not prevent him
from paintin g a hackn eyed pictu re of India,
one that is co mpose d of maharaj as, scorpi-
ons, leopards, immortal yog is and Muslims
who hate Hindui sm. Star Trek "should be
requir ed wa tch ing befor e se tting foot in
India" , he quips. Magan has a keen eye for
the hypocri sies of elite urban India and art-
full y evo kes the "fevered serenity" of the
Him ala yas; but he spells the city of Bhopal
without an "h " and tells us that a "lakh" , an
Indian numerical express ion meanin g
I00 ,000 , is equal to 10,000 . These mistak es
aren' t surprising. Magan hasn 't learnt conver-
sational Hindi and re lies on guides and driv-
ers as translator s; his subjects , who don 't
spea k English fluentl y, see m cartooni sh and
say thin gs like " next goodes t" , They are
merely a launchp ad for the writer 's tiresome
discussio ns on the irrevocable differences
bet ween Indi a and Europe, Hinduism or
Gandhi . Euro-American backp ackers and hip-
pi es, on the other hand , are give n more
weight, presented not as insolent tokers but
as Blakean pion eers who are like stitches
"knitting the two hemi spheres closer
together".
Fortunately, Manchan 's Travels concl udes
on a less naive note. Tara ends up a "freak
show" at a co nference on gender in Sea ttle
and is stee red toward s a porn ring by an
American aca demic. Ma gan might not be
able to reconcile the potenti al pitfalls of docu-
ment ary representati on and miss ionary wor k,
but his readers are forced to.
HI RSH SAWHNEY
IN BRIEF
Naval History
B. R. Burg
BOYS AT SEA
Sodomy, indecency, and courts martial
in Nelson's navy
245pp. Palgrave Macmillan.
£50 (US $69.95) .
978 0 23052228 2
C hurchill' s famous observation that the
traditi ons of the Navy we re "Rum, Sod-
omy and the Lash" cont ained an element of
truth . Sodom y, narrowly defin ed , became a
criminal, rath er than a religious offence after
the Reform ation. The Co mmonwea lth made
it a capital offence in the Navy. For the next
two centu ries a small numb er of naval person-
nel were tried , rather fewer we re hanged.
Oth er form s of homoeroti c behaviour were
punished by floggin g and dishonourable dis-
charge .
Using Co urt Martial record s, B. R. Burg
analyses the soc ial and instituti onal contex t
of sex, crim e and discipline across two ce ntu-
ries. He concludes that confining large num-
bers of young men in an all-male environ-
ment , fuelled by co pious quantities of strong
drink , produ ced a raft of homo eroti c acti vity.
However, such activity was not considered
effeminate, unm anl y or hom osexual, merely
part of the broad spectru m of seafaring sex u-
alit y. Cases singled out for puni shm ent usu-
ally invol ved threat s to di sciplin e. Ty pica lly
they involved older men in position s of
authority coerci ng boys.
Burgs use of court record s substantiates a
key theme of Herm an Melville ' s incisive
novel White Jacket (1850 ), namely that these
older men, usually petty and warrant officers,
were the principal sexual predator s. The last
man hanged for sodomy by the Royal Navy,
hauled up to the yardar m in 1829, was a boat-
swa in, his victim a boy. After 1815 attitudes
to sex, profanity and the treatm ent of boys
changed, the Eva ngel ical movement wan ted
to save men' s souls, stop them swea ring, and
suppress their sexuality. Even the langua ge of
the court transcript s changed , explicit obscen -
ity giving way to po lite euphemism. If sod-
omy was a fact of naval life, it has finally
been plac ed in context by this careful,
scholarly analysis. So, what did Nelson think?
Co nfronted with the case of a captain who bla-
tantl y pursued the ship's boys, he hop ed the
offender "would take himself off' and save
the Navy the embarrassment of a trial.
AN D REW LAMBERT
Religion
Robert Lutton
LOLLARDY AN D OR THODOX
RELIGION IN PR E-REFO RMATIO N
ENG LAN D
236pp. Royal Historical Society. £45.
978 086 193 283 2
B ehind the univer salizin g title of this
book stands a rather more modest
endeavour: a clo se study of pre-R eform ation
relig ion in its soc ial cont ext in the pari sh of
Tent erden , in the Wea ld of Kent. Te nterde n
is famou s as a centre of Lo llard heresy in the
decades befor e the Reform ation , but Robert
Lutt ons primary concern is with pattern s of
orthodox religiosity, and with the interaction
between orthodoxy and heresy. The aim is an
TLS SEPTE M BER 21 2 007
27
ambitious one: to debunk the now "dominant Nuremberg exec utions.
paradigm" (associated parti cul arly with the The book inclu des some horrifi c and
work of Ea mon Duffy) which sees lay piety disturbin g sce nes, often when wo men we re
on the eve of the English Reform ation as vig- condemned. John Ellis, a Rochd ale barber,
orous, esse ntially harmonious, and commu- hanged Edith Thompson, and after that pain-
nal in focus. Charging the prop onent s of this ful dut y he tendered his resignation. Spies
view with "theoretical naivety" and "absence who were taken to the scaffold often fought
of retle ct ion on method ", Lutton subjec ts the ferociou sly against the warders and exec ution-
263 surviving wills from Tenterden ers . Fielding gives gra phic acco unts of these
(1449- 1535) to rigo rous analysis. highl y charged moment s of shee r terror.
There are sugges tive findin gs. Most effec- Mo st hangm en' s thou ght s were train ed on the
tive is Lutton 's demonstration that patterns of
piety, fro m the lavishly traditi onal to the
necessity of effecting a spee dy death , and the
cool Harry Allen was in the habit of returning
barely con vention- satisfying, replic ated them- to fini sh a smoke after pullin g the lever.
selves in famili es ove r genera tions. He also These men also had wives and famili es and,
establishes that by the early sixtee nth cen- for the most part , the part-time wor k of judi-
tury, testator s increa sin gly preferred to invest cial killin g was never spoken about at hom e.
in funerary and annive rsary comm em ora- Like his subje cts, Fielding concentrat es on
tion s, rather than in chantry Masses, and that the technical aspec ts of the wor k; reco verin g
they showe d a preference for the so-ca lled the details of ropes, the trainin g, the calcul a-
Jesus Mass ove r other new for ms of devoti on tion of the "drop" and the long and careful
or es tablished saints ' cult s.
These findi ngs are made to work
extreme ly hard. The sugges tion that lay devo-
preparation s made in the j ails befor e the exe -
cutio ns we re carried out.
ST EPHEN WAD E
tion , in Te nterde n as elsewhere, was becom-
ing increasingly Christ-centred at the close Television
of the Middl e Ages see ms unexcepti onal, but
one wo nders whether the ev idence reall y EIana Levine and Lisa Parks, editors
allows the Catholic town sfolk to pose as UN DEA D T V
sta ndard-bearers of an "evangelically-in- Essays on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
spired orth odox reforrnism" which could 232pp. Duke University Press. Paperback,
eas ily shade over into full-blo wn Loll ard y. In $21.95; distributed in the UK
fact, there is a ten sion in how Lutt on present s by Combined Academic Publishers. £9.75 .
the relation ship between ortho doxy and her- 978 0 8223 404 3 0
esy. On the one hand , he sugges ts that
Loll ards were wide ly tolerated, eve n sym pa-
thized with, and their outlook influ enc ed the
shape of orthodox piety along a broad spec -
I
t is pa rtly its strengths - inventi ve spins on
superna tural tropes, verba l wit and an una-
shamed fondness for sweep ing Rom antic
trum of belief. On the other, he recogni zes gesture - that have mad e Buffy The Vampire
that the move into Loll ardy was a dram ati- Slayer a useful way for academics and other
ca lly self-co nscious step, and that its adher- intellectu als to write about popular tele-
ents tried hard to keep their opinions sec ret. vision. It is also throu gh the fact that it ca me
Lutton him self concedes that he has along at j ust the point when some show or
employe d the " interpretative method of other was going to become an obje ct of such
abduction", and eve n "creative imagination" study and partly that it has fault s that ca n also
in his elucida tion of the evidence . An unch ari- be studied - for exa mple, docum ented mud-
table reader mig ht point to the dan ger of dle in the show -running line of command. It
circular and tel eol ogi cal re adin gs. is a hand y focu s for the sorts of knowledge
P ET ER M ARSH ALL that ca n be brou ght to bear on television
shows - Buffy is a thick text, which is to say
that it is a comp romi se, a collabora tion and
History the product of a set of contin gencies.
Steve Fielding The present volume touch es on some very
T HE EXECUT IONER 'S BIBLE predictable bases - Cy nthia Fuchs compa res
The story of every British hangman and contrasts the white-bread Buffy with the
of the twentieth century more multi- ethnic Dark Angel, though with-
291pp. John Blake Publishing Limited, out prop erly exa mining the latter' s wea k-
3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road, nesses in other respect s. Elana Levine ce le-
London WI4 9PB. £17.99. brates Buffy as feminist icon (hardly new ter-
978 I 8445 4422 6 ritor y this) and Jason Middl eton analyses the
show 's relation ship with the Final Girl , who
H anging as a form of exec ution was most survives slasher movies.
likely introduc ed to England by the Mor e interestin gly, Annette Hill and lan
An glo-S axons, and it later became an occ a- Calcutt investigate the sad story of how Buffy
sio n for publi c re vel s and voyeuris m of the and its stahlemate Angel we re butchered in
worst kind s. order to fit the ea rly eve ning slot deem ed
In The Execu tione r 's Bible, Steve Fielding, appropr iate for the fant astic by terrestrial TV.
whose previou s book s includ e a biograph y of Susan Mu rray looks at Sarah Michelle Ge l-
the Pierrepoint dynasty of exec utioners, pro- lers ca reer in other film s and shows and how
vides a darkl y fascin atin g cultural histor y of they and her performance in Buffy inform
the scaffold. He recount s the earlier histor y, eac h other, while Allison M cCracken
but then concentrates on the stressful, alcohol- describ es how the tortu red bodies of Buffy ' s
dri ven lives of the exec utio ners of the past vampire paramour s add a spice of
century . Mos t of these men see m to have homo erotic gaze to the show 's manipul ation
taken on the work for publi c serv ice as well of its audience. Thi s is a useful, but not esse n-
as for money. So me relished the travel and tial, addition to the bod y of wor k on Buffy
dram a involved , as jobs wo uld arise in Ire- and other shows.
land ; Alb ert Pierre point presided ove r the Roz KAVENEY
28 SALES OF BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS

ellum, the fine parchm ent made from dinky sixtee nmo is estimated at $3, 000-

V the skins of sucking or aborti ve

calves, has long been valued by
scribes, print ers and bookbinders. Before the
advent of paper, manu script s were written on
it, and eve n when paper was established as a
cheaper alterna tive, scribes continued to prefer
it for calligraphi c book s and for testimoni als,
for mal addresses and citation s, legal and other
docu ments. It was valued for its strength and
durability, but also for the way very white (as
opposed to yello wish) vellum takes black or
coloured ink and gold leaf. This made it partic-
ularl y attracti ve to print ers and bind ers.
Sin ce the best vellum is ex pe nsive , the
difficult task of printing on it has always been
reser ved for spec ial book s and editions which
ha ve been much sought after by coll ectors:
Robin Al ston ' s va luable list of book s print ed
on vellum in the Briti sh Library reveal s quit e
how ex tensive the pract ice was. Poor er-
qu alit y materi al was regul arl y used for bind-
ing in the sixtee nth and seventee nth centuri es
and limp vellum wrappers are ofte n found on
pamphlets and more substantia l Eng lish and
Continenta l books of the period. Bind ers
wo uld also use vellum ove r bo ard s for more
subs tantia l book s, which they might then
decorate with go ld tooling and stamps.
Th e cr aze for collectin g and catalo guin g
book s, mainl y incun abul a, print ed on vellum
was at its height durin g the early 1800 s, cul-
Attacks of vellomania
H. R. WO UDHUY SE N
minating in the self-sty led "ve lloma niac" Sir
Th om as Phillipps, but the materi al was also
much valued by the pri vate press mo vem ent
at the end of the century. Ev ide nce of thi s can
be fou nd in Blo om sbury Auction s' fir st sale
in New York on Sep tember 26 , wh ich is of
the Pamel a and Richard M. Estes Co llec tion
of Fine Printing and Private Press book s - a
collecti on begun by Richard Estes 's father.
No ne of the ear ly print ed book s is print ed on
vellum, but there are good run s of item s from
the Aldin e, Estienne and Plantin presses. A
cop y of the second edition of Henri
Estienne's Xenophon (1581) is bound in limp
vellum with ya pp edges, a gilt laur el wrea th
on both cover s and the spine tooled in gilt
compartment s, with the tile in a carto uche
(estim ate $700-$ 1,000). Th e Rob ert Hoe
cop y of Joh ann es Philoponu s' s 1534 Aldin e
commentary on Ari stotle was rebound in the
nineteenth century: the vellum cover s have
an elabora te gilt geo me tric design with the
famou s Aldin e anchor device as the ce ntre
decor ation (estim ate $2,500-$3,500). The
Estes' cop y of Henri Estienne 's attac k on
Ju stus Lip siu ss archa ic Latin sty le - too
$4,000. The Doves Press boo ks are equally
impressive and include the vellum-bound
Bibl e (estimate $5,000-$7,000) and Co bde n-
much T acitus and Seneca - is mor e unu sual Sand er son ' s The Ideal Book or Book Beauti-
and ex pected to sell for bet ween $ 1,200 and fu l, London and Credo , all on vellum in
$ 1,800. The bo ok was publi shed at Fra nkfurt- editions of ten , five and twelve copi es and
am-Ma in in 1595; thi s may be the dedi cation es timated at $800-$ 1,200, $5 ,000-$7,000
copy since it has the signature on its title- and $4,000-$6,000, respecti vely .
page of its dedi cat ee, Hermann IV, Land graf Th ere is nothin g on vellum from the
of Hesse. It has been bound in vellum and Ashend ene Press among the Estes ' book s,
tooled not in go ld but silve r gilt, which has but there is a magnific ent cop y of the Dante,
slightly tarni shed , thou gh the gauffere d gilt bound in qu arter pigskin ove r oa k board s
edges of the book are rather fin e. (estimate $ 15,000-$20,000). Yet there is vel-
Th e impressive run of Kelm scott book s lum in profu sion with the less celebr ated (and
begin s with the Press' s first publicati on , a less ex pensive) product s of C. R. Ashb ees
copy of The Story of the Glittering Plain by Essex Hou se Press. The Press issued fourt een
Willi am Mor ris (1891 ), bound in its ori gin al reprints of short po em s betwe en 1900 and
stiff vellum, with the title and date sta mped 1905 , in editions limit ed to bet ween fift y and
on the book ' s spine (estim ate $2 ,000- 150 copi es, all print ed on vellum. The Estes
$2 ,500). Although Morri s liked his books in have six of these, including the soug ht-after
either limp or stiff vellum, he reser ved fort y- The Flower and the Leaf (estim ate $500-
eight out of 438 cop ies of what ma ny think of $800) and Burn s' s Tam O'Shante r ($600-
as his masterpi ece, the Kel mscott Chaucer, to $800) as we ll as oth ers like Dryden' s Al exan-
be bound in white pigskin to make it look like der's Feas t ($3 00-$400) and Robert Brown-
a fifteenth-century German binding. Th e ing' s Flight of the Duchess ($300- $500 ).
Estes have a cop y of the Chaucer bound in Th ese are very charming and characteristic
thi s sty le which is ex pected to fetch as much specimens of the Art s and Crafts Press: they
as $ 150,000 . Th ey also have one of twent y are printed on and (mos tly) bound in stiff vel-
copies of the French rom anc e, The Tale of lum, with the Press ' s flower device and
Emperor Coustans and of Over Sea, which mott o, " Soul is form " , sta mped in blind or in
Morris had printed on vellum: thi s rather gilt on the upp er co ver.

PUBLISHING &
YALE UNIVERSITY
BEINECKE RIGHTS
Rare Book & Manuscript Library THE BRITISH LIBRARY hav e d igit ised as par t
of a historu-a l rew<;p,1per proj ec t (1800-1900) t he
fo llOWing tit les and will be pu bl ishing th em o n t he
we b this year:
2008·2009 1

VISITING FELLOWSHIPS

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library offers short-term fellowships The following named fellowships arc among those to be awarded:
to support visiting scholars pursuing post-doctoral or equivalent research Frede rick w. Reined e Fello wship in We stem Ame ricana

in its collections. The Beincckc Library is Yale University's principal Hermann Broch Fellowship in modem German literature 188i )
II.D. Fello wship in Engli sh o r Ameri can literatur e
repository for literary papers, and for early manuscripts and rare books in
Jonathan Edwards Fellowship in the Jonathan Edwards Papers or related areas of
the fields of literature, the ol ogy , history, and the natural sciences. For more
Am erican religio us history
information about the Bcincckc Library and its collections, please visit our Elizabethan Club Fel lowship in the literatu re or history of the English or European
web site : www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/. Renaissance
Edi th and Ri chard French Fellowship
' 1851)
The fellowships, which pay for travel to and from New Haven and a living Donald C. Gallup Fellow ship in American literature 18~ 2)

allowance of $4,000 per month, are designed to provide access to the library A. Bartlc n Gia matt i Fell owship

for scholars who live outside the greater New Haven area. Students enrolled Archibald 1Ianna. Jr. Fellowship in American history

in degree prog rams arc ineligibl e . John D. and Rose H. Jackson Fellowship 30. r Goleuad
Jackson Brothers Fellow ship ;,
Fellowships, normally granted for onc month, must be taken up between RP. Kraus Fell owship in early hoo ks & manuscript s
.1 864)
September and May. Recipients are expected to be in residence during the Czeslaw Milosz Fellowship
Laur a K. and Valerian Lada-Mocarski Fellowship
period of their award and are encouraged to participate in the activities of
James I\1. Osborn Fellow ship in English literature and history
Yale University.
Frcdcrick A. and Marion S. Pottle Fellowship in l Sth-ccntury British studies
An application form can be downloaded from the Beinecke Library's Rccsc Fell ow ship in Ame rican bibliog raphy and the history of the book ill the Americas 1B03)
40
webs ite, In addition to the application form, applicants are as ked to submit Bctsy Beineckc Shirlcy Fello wship in American children's literature 'est
18, 9)
Thorn ton Wilder Fellow ship in W ilder stud ies 1R'
a curriculum vitae and a brief research proposal (not to exceed three pages). ,m
Marjoric G. Wynnc Fellowship in British literatu re " ," ,.
The proposal should emphasize the relationship of the Beinecke collections
to the project. Applicants should also arrange to have two confidential letters Awards will be announced in March 2008 for the period ,b
September 2008 - May 2009.
of recommendation sent to the Director. These letters must specifically
addre ss the merits of the Beinecke research project. Application materials should be sent to:
Director
Appl ication materials must be received by
Beinecke Library, Yale u niversity,
December 15,2007. r.o. Box 208240, New Haven. er 06520-8240, USA
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/
e-mail: beinecke.fellowsbips@yale.edu
phone: (203)432-2956

TLS SE PTEMBER 2 1 2007

 CLASSIFIED
UNIVERSITY AWARDS &
APPOINTMENTS FELLOWSHIPS
\0 ' Hu
o~... Fellowship opportunity on
Head of Research ~1- 8 <..

' C' t N T ~ ~'

"
.'''1-
~ sc ience, humanities, and t he
concept of "the human"
The Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) seeks a Head of Research to
oversee the development of t he Center's research culture. The Nationa l Huma nities Center offers several fellowships of
up to $75,000 as part of its project "Autonom y, Singu larity,
The activities of the Researc h Department inc lude the orga nizatio n of scholarly events and Creativity," an inquiry into the impact of recent scientific and
technological ad vances upon trad itional notions of "the human ."
public programs. underg raduate and grad uate teaching initiatives , programmatic suppor t for
"Whereas , in the past , poets and philosophers asked what it
Center exhibitions, and running the fellowship progra m as well as other research op portunities means to be human, sc ientists today are asking what it is to be
at the Cent er. The Research Department also incorporates the Cent er' s Education Department, human ," says Geoffrey Ha rpha m, President and Director of the
which ove rsees a thriving program for Yale underg raduates, regional school children, and the National Huma nities Center. Scholars whose work is related
public at large. The Head of Research oversees a departme nt of 8- 10 including an Associa te to this question are en couraged to appl y for s ix to nine month
residentialfellowships at the National Humanities Center.
Head of Research.
For further information on feliowships and app lication material, see
The Head of Research will run the department, oversee ing the development and exec ution of http :;jnationalhuman itiescente r.orgj
scholarly, public and educational programs, which currently include over 300 events per year. or write to National Humaniti es Cent e r,
As an active mem ber of a renowned teaching institution, the Head of Research will oversee Box 12256, Research Triangle Park ,
NC 27709.
and enhance the use of the Center's collections and exhibitions in teaching, in collaboration
Appiicat ion deadline Oc tober 15, 2007.
with members of the faculty and with members of the staff. The Head of Researc h will also
collaborate with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London to help to
coordi nate Yale-in-London, Vale' s undergraduate study program in the United Kingdom.
Canadian Centre for Architecture
The Head of Research is expected to pursu e scholarship in the history of British art and to
partici pate fully in the intellectual life of the university. Slhe will have one day a week for
Visiting Scholars Program 2008-2009
research, plus four weeks for research each summer. S/he will also be encouraged to teach one The Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architectu re
(CCA) we lco mes applicatio ns from scho lars and architects
graduate or undergraduate course each yea r, as the university course schedule allows.
conductin g re search in archite ctural histo ry, th eo ry, and
Applications for this pos ition arc sought from scho lars in the history of British art who hold criticism at post-do ctoral or mor e advanced acade mic levels.
the PhD and have at least five years of professional experience . Preference may be given to Scholars in reside nce pursue individual resear ch project s and
those who have worke d in both academic and museum settings and who are fam iliar with the participate in the scho lars' se minar pro gram . Residencies
running of research ccntcrs, A collab orative spirit is required, along with excellent at th e Study Centre may extend from thr ee to eight month s
com munication, managemen t and leadership skills , and a proven track record of scho larship in beginning in September, January. or May. Adequate stipends.
the field. private offices, and administrative and research suppo rt are
pro vided . Applications must be received by 1 5 Novemb er
Please send a letter of application, CV, and a copy of a recently publi shed article or book 2007 . No tification is in spring 2008 . For application form s
chapter to: Amy Meyers, Director, Yale Cen ter for Brit ish Art, p.a . Box 208280, New Haven and a desc ription of the Visiting Scholars Pro gram please
CT 06520-8 280. Three letters of recommendation should reach the same address by the contact the Study Cent re at studium@cca.qc.ca o r consult:
closing da te of October 31, 2007. Please also apply online at www.yale.edu/jobs For www .cca.qc.cajstudium
req uisition l 795BR. Study Centre, CanadianCentre for Architecture

CCA 1920 rue Baile, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3H

256 T 514 939 7000 F 514 9397020

UNIVERSITY
AWARDS & To book your TLS Classified APPOINTMENTS
FELLOWSHIPS advertisement with
FREE online insertion,
please contact Lucy Smart: 1111 ~~W ' N
020 7782 4975 .== PUBLIC
. - AFFAIRS
PrincetonUn iversit y
School of Uterature and Creative Writing Princeton University's Program in Law and
Pu blic Affairs (LAPA) invites outstand ing facu lty, independent scho lars,
UEA Writing Fellowship Ref:AMI7 lawyers, and IUdg es to ap ply tor ap pointme nts as Fellows fo r the ac ade mic
year 200 8-20 09. We ant icipate nam ing up to six Fellows who me enqaqs d
The Scho ol of lite ratu re and C reative Writing at the
in substantial research on topics broad ly rolatod to iaw and pub.ic affa irs
Univer sity of East Anglia and t he N ew W riti ng Partn ership " ~ O Il1­
,.,
wit h suppo rt from Arts Cou ncil Englan d. East , is offering a
Fellowship to be held by a practising writer du ring th e
.:; ~

0 vG l f\\ \<)
or law and normative inquiry. incl ud ing one Microso ft/LAPA Fsllow
specializing in intellect ual property or the legal regui at ion of the econ omy.
Succ essful cand idates w ill devote an academ ic year in residence at
Spring Semeste r 2008 (15th January 2008 to 15th July 2008) .
T he Fellowsh ip is o pen to wri ters o f all gen res, but t he Princeto n to enga ge in researc h, d iscuss ion . and sc holarly colla boration .
Fellow is ex pec te d t o be a ble t o t each in th e are a of fict io n Follows may also qu alify to teac h a grad uato or undo rgraduato cou rso.
and /or po etry.The fee will be £8 ,000. Accommodation will be Applicants shou ld have a d octor ate, JD or an equiva lent professional
provided as required. postgraduat e d egree.
Closin g date : 22nd October 2007. The application deadline is 15 November 2007.
Inte rview date: Week commencing 16th November 2007. For more information and for instruct ions about the on-line ap plication
p rocess, visit t he LAPA web site at http://lapa.princeton.edu .
Furthe r particulars and an application fonn can be obtained from the
University's web page at: http://www.uea.ac.uklhr/jobsJ or bye-mail at: Pnnc oton Univorsity is an Equal Opportunity/ Af trmativo Act ion Empl oyor.
hr@uea.ac.uk or by calling the answerphone on 01603 593 493 or by LAPA is co-sponsored by the Woodro w Wilson School of Public and
mail to the Human Resourc es Divis ion. University of East Anglia, International Affairs, the University Cent er for Human Values, and Prince ton
Norwich NR4 7TJ. University
 CLASSIFIED
HOLIDAYS ACCOMMODATION PUBLISHING & CONFERENCES
• Rome - historical centre - one bedr oom apart- .Modern house, central London , 2 bdrm, RIGHTS
ment availabl e for short term rental . Images on
http ://www.paulahowanh.net
garden; £1150 pcm, for six months . Email
muste inwgmail.com .PUBLISHER WANTED : Experienced author SHAKESPEARE AND DERRIDA
seeks sympathetic tho ugh solvent publi sher with An international conferenceto be held at Cardiff University,hosted bythe Cardiff
a view to supporting his latest project: A Subjec t School of Eng lish, Commu nication and Philosop hy on Saturday 29th September 2007
Bibliograph y of the First World War: Books in
English 1950-2007. If interest ed pleas e contact Plenary spea kers:
AWARDS & Gerald Gliddon, 79 The Street. Brooke, Norwich,
NR15 UT, or by email: HELENE CIXOUS, MARIE -DOMINIQUE GARNIER,
FELLOWSHIPS gerald.gliddon@btinteme t.com
inform ation.
for furthe r CHRISTOPHER NORRIS, NICHOLAS ROYLE, RICHARD WILSON
The aims of th is co nference are to comm emor ate th e elective affinity betwee n the Frenc h
philosop her and English dramatist, to con sider th e im portance of Shakespea re for Derrida' s
think ing, and to project ways in wh ich Derrida's work might influence th e futur e understanding of
Shakespeare 's plays.

~ Washington University in St.lDuis Venue: Hum anit ies Building, Co lum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU. Registration from 9.00a m
Please note the H ~L1~N E CIXQUS lecture is a FREE event starting at 4.30p m in t he above venue.
ARTS & SCIENCES Payme nt is only requ ired for attenda nce for wh ole or part of th e day
For deta ils, see website: http://www. cardiff.ac.ukj encapj shakespeareji ndex.html

Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry: HEALTH

A Postdoctoral Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences & THERAPY

Washington University announces the eight year of Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry, an Andrew W. Mellon INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL REFERRALS
Foundation Postdocto ral Fellowship Program designed to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching Former H arvard Medical School faculty member will provide highly
across the huma nities and social sciences. We invite applications fro m recen t Ph.D.s for the positions as Fellow, personalized access to renowned specialists worldwide for diagnosis
ln September 2008, the selected Fellows will join our continuing Fellow in order to participate in the and trea tment of complex medical conditions.
University's ongoing inter disciplinary programs an d sem inars. The Fellows will receive a two year appointment Thoroughness and discretion assured .
with a stipend beginning at $43, 150 per year. Postdoctoral Fellows have an opportunity to plan and pur sue Call or wri te for more info rm ation.
thei r own conti nu ing research in associa tio n with a senior faculty memb er at Washington University, and, over (609) 924-2317; awm enzin@patmedia.net.
the course of their two-year appointment , to teach three undergraduate courses in their home discipline and to
collaborate in an interdisciplinary theor y and methods workshop. AWARDS & BUSINESS
There is no application form, but further information on Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry is available on the
FELLOWSHIPS SERVICES
web at htt p://www.artsci.wustl.edu/ -szwicker/Mellon_PostdoctoraL Program.html. Applicants should submit a Business Proposal
Princcton University from Indian Company
cover letter, a description of their research program (no more than three single-spaced pages), a brief proposal
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Indian Publishing & Prem edia
for the sem inar in theory and methods, a curriculum vitae, and three letters of recommendation, All mat erials
SOCIETY OF FELLOWS Outsoureing Company invites
must be submitted in paper copy. IN THE LIBERAL ARTS publish e rs/marketing age nts from
UK/Europe for alliance.
Three year postdoct oral fello wships 08-
www.premedia.eo.in
11 for recent PhDs (Jan. 2005-June 2008)
premedia@andersonindia.eom
Submit materials by December 1,2007, to in humanitie s or social sciences. Five
appointments to pur sue r esear ch and
Steven Zwicker (szwicker@artsci.wustl.edu) Department of English teach half-time . Open discipline (two
Washington University, Campus Box 1122 One Brookings Drive, St. Louis MO 63130 fellows hips); Judai c Studies; LGBT BOOKS & PRINTS
Washington University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Studies; Race andlor Ethnicity Studies.
Annual stipend: approx. $66,500. .A CATALOGUE OF MAINLY FIRST
Employment eligibility verification requested upon hire. EDITIONS Varied subjects including
Appli cation deadline : October 8, 2007. Antiquarian , Illustrated, Science Fiction &
For details, see website Literary Periodicals available from I D EDRICH,
www.princeton.edu/-sf 17 Selsdon Road. London, GB. Ell 2QE
idedrich@idedrich.co.uk

YALE UNIV ERSITY

BEINECKE
Rare Book & Manuscript Library

2008·2009
JAMES M. OSBORN POST-DOCTORAL
RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP
IN BRITISH STUDIES
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale U niversity invite s
applic ations fo r a newly defined Jamcs M. Osborn Po st-doctoral Research Fellowship
in British Studie s. The fellowship , for the aca demic year 200 R-2009. is open to
scholars of British history, literature, society or culture in any period from the
Middle Ages thro ugh the end of the Twen tieth Cent ury who will devote the term of
the fellows hip to resea rch in the Beinecke Library ' s exten sive co llec tion of book s,
manu script s, prints, and origi na l art co ncerni ng the literature , history, and cultu re of
the British Isle s.
The ten month fellow ship pro vides a stipend of $42,j OO and a resid ential apartment
within walking di stanc e of the Li brary. The Osborn Fell ow will be expect ed to take up
res idence in New Ha ven by Augu st I, 200 X,to conduct research in Beinecke Library
on a consiste nt basis, and to part icipat e in the intellectu al life of the Vale co mmunity
throu gh Ma y 3 1, 2009.
Applicant s mu st have rec eived their Ph .D. (or equi vale nt degree) between September
1, 2001 and Jannary 14, 200 X.
Consideration is guarantee d for appli cations rece ived by lanuary 15, 2008.
All materials should be postmark ed by that date .
The Fe llows hip will be award ed on the basis of the appl ican t' s sch olar ly qualifi cat ions
and prom ise as well as the merits and significan ce of the research to be undertaken at
Bcincckc Lib rar y.
Applications co nsist of a cover sheet (ava ilable at the Oshorn Fell ow sh ip on the
Bcin ckc wcbsit c) ; a curriculum vita e; a IjOO-word essay descr ibin g the applica nt' s
re search interests, including a detailed discu ssion of the relevance of Beinecke
collections to the applica nt's larger proj ect; and three confide ntial letters of
recommendation sent directly to the Libr ary from scho lars acqu ainted with the
applican t' s research and writi ng.
All material s should be sen t to ;
Dire ctor
Be inecke Rare Book & Ma nus cript Lib rary Yale University
PO Box 2mQ 40
New Haven, Co nnecticut06520-R240
US A
Announcement of the O sborn Fellowship appointment will he made in late March, 200R.
For additional informa tion about the collections of the Beinec ke Library consu lt the
Library website at httl. :llwww.library. yale.edu /hei neck e/hrblinfo/hrhl guide .html.

http://www.library.yale.edulbeinecke/
e-mail: beinecke.fellowships csyale.edu
phone: (203)432-2956
 31

Ciaran Carson is the author of nine books of
poetry and four prose wor ks, and the
winner of seve ral awa rds including the Irish
Times Irish Literatur e Pri ze, the T. S. Eliot
Prize and the Forward Pri ze for Best
Co llec tion for Breaking News in 2003.
Katha rine Craik is Se nior Lectu rer in Early
Modern Literatur e at Oxford Brook es
University. Her book Reading Sensa tions in
Early Modern England was publi shed earlier
this yea r.
Anthony Cummins is wn tmg a doctoral
thesis at the University of Ox ford on Emile
Zo la in late nineteenth- centu ry Eng land .
Luey Dallas is the editor of the TLS we bsite
and In Brief pages.
Alex Danehev is Professor of International
Relation s at the University of Notti ngham.
His books The Hospitality of War:
International affai rs and Georges Braque:
A life were publi shed this year.
Patriek Denman Flanery recentl y fini shed a
doct orate in Eng lish at Oxford. He is writing
a book on adapt ation and ca nonicity.
Oliver Dennis is a violinist and violin
teacher living in Melb ourn e.
Katherine Duncan-Jones is the co-editor of
the Arde n (Third Series) Shakespeare's
Poems, to be publi shed later this yea r. Her
biograph y Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes
from his life was publi shed in 200 I.
Kristin Ewins is writing a DPhil at Oxford
University on the 1930s writing of Sylvia
Tow nse nd Warner , Storm Jameson, Winifred
Holtb y and Charlotte Haldan e.
Niall F erguson is Professor of Histor y at
Harvard University. He is also a Senior
Research Fellow of Jesus Co llege, Oxford,
and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Instituti on,
Stanford Univers ity. His most recent book ,
The War of the World: History 's age ofhatred
was publi shed last year.
Caroline Finkel' s most recent book is
Osman 's Dream: The story of the Ottoman
Empire, 1300-1 923,2005.
Edith Hall is Professor of Class ics and
Dram a at Royal Holl oway, Unive rsity of
London . Her most recent book , The
Theatrical Cast of At hens: Interactions
between An cient Greek drama and society,
was publi shed last ye ar.
David Hawkes ' s new book , The Faust
Myth: Religion and the rise of representa-
tion was publi shed ea rlier thi s year. He is
Associate Pro fesso r of English at Lehi gh
Univers ity, Bethl ehem .
Katharine Hihbert was shortlisted as
Yo ung Journalist of the Year in the 2006
British Press Awards for her work at the
Sunday Times Magazine.
Roz Kaven ey ' s book Teen Dreams:
Reading teen fi lm and television fro m
Heathers to Veronica Mars was publi shed
last yea r.
Andrew Lambert is Professor of Nava l
Histor y in the Departm ent of War Studies at
King 's Co llege Lond on. His publi cation s
includ e Nava l History 1850-Present, which
was publi shed this yea r, and Ne lson:
Britannia 's god of war, 2004.
Jon Latimer is the author of Burma: The
fo rgotten war, 2004 , Alamein, 2002 , and
Deception in War, 200 1. He is wor king
on an account of the war of 1812 . He lectures
on War and Soc iet y at the Sw ansea
Univers ity.
Danny Leigh ha s publi shed two novels, The John Rogister is the author of Louis XV and
Greatest Gift , 2004, and The Monsters of the Parleme nt ofParis, 173 7-1 755, 1995. He
Grame rcy Park, 2005 . is a Corres ponding Memb er of the Aca dem ie
Toby Liehtig is an Assistant Editor at the
TLS.
Peter Marshall is Professor of Histor y at the
University of Warwick . His most recent boo k
is Mother Leakey and the Bishop: A ghos t
story , publi shed this year.
Ernest R . May is Char les Warren Professor
of A merican History at Harvard University.
His publications include Dealing with
Dictators: Dilemmas of us
Diplomacy and
Intelligence Analysis, 1948-1 990, 200 5, and
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House
during the Cuban Missile Crisis , 2002.
Lu ey Munro is a lectur er at Keele Univer-
sity. She was the editor of the Globe Qu artos'
edition of Edwa rd Sharpha m's The Fleer ,
2006, and her book, Children of the Queen's
Revels: A Jacobean thea tre repertory, was
publi shed in 200 5.
James M . Murphy is a retired intelli gence
offic er and a freelance writer on intern ational
affairs.
Peter Nasmyth is the author of Georg ia: In
the mountains ofpoet ry, 1998 . He is working
on a photographic acco unt of the southern
Caucas us.
Tom Perrin is a PhD studen t in English at
the Univers ity of Chicago.
Douglas Porch is Professor and Chair of
the Dep artm ent of National Security Aff airs
at the Naval Postgradu ate Schoo l in
Monterey , Ca lifornia. His book The Path to
Victory: The Mediterranean theater in World
War II was publi shed in 2005.
Paul Quinn is a freel ance writer and
programme-m aker.
des sciences mor ales et polit iquesand an
Officier de I'Ordre des Palm es acade rniques .
Hirsh Sawhney is a Contributing Editor at
Brooklyn Rail and Wasafi ri magaz ine. He is
working on his first book and editing a
collecti on of fiction ca lled Delhi Noir, which
will be released next year.
Robert Selb y is curre ntly study ing for a
master s degree in Crea tive Writin g at Royal
Holloway, University of Lond on.
Clive SincIair is the author of five novels
including Meet the Wife, publi shed in 200 2.
His new book Clive Sinclair 's True Tales of
the Wild West will be publi shed next spring .
Al ex de Waal is the author of AIDS and
Power: Why there is no political crisis - ye t,
publi shed last year. He is a Fellow of the
Global Equity Initiati ve at Harvard
University, as well as prog ram direct or at the
Social Sc ience Research Co uncil in New
York City.
Stephen W ad e' s Spies in the Emp ire:
Victoria n Milit ary Intelligence and Plain
Clothes and Sleuths: A history of detectives
in Britain were publi shed this year. He
lectur es on the Histor y of Cr ime at the
University of Hull.
Nicholas White is a Fellow of Emmanuel
Co llege, Ca mbridge. He has recentl y
co-edited a volume of essays entitled After
Intimacy: The culture of divorce in the West
since 1789.
Hugo Williams is a poet and freel ance
writer.
H. R. Woudhuysen is Professor of English
at University Co llege London. He is the
author of Sir Philip Sidney and the
Circulat ion of Manuscripts, 1558- 1640,
1996. He is working as co-ge neral editor on
The Oxford Compan ion to the Book.

TLS CROSSW ORD 711 u

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ACROSS DOWN L A M A S E R A I G o W E R
A U E I L H e 0
1 Only a frame for model rhyt hm (5)
4 Victo rian poet portrays animals round
1 Medi um-we ight seve nteenth-ce ntury
dramatist (9) H A L 0 W I N H U T T 0 , s
0 U H e y M S
stream (9) 2 He had the gall to cure his own blind -
U P S E E E 0 OM I T E S
9 Capital Irish folk portrayed by Joyee (9) ness (5) R R S F P C
10 Spo rting arena assoc iated with Masters 3 Quotes for unreliable pie charts (9) C I N E A S T E S A L V 0
by A. G. Maedonell? (5) 4 One of Kipling's brought the bread you A S P R E I R
11 Part of Grace Paley's same day (5) eat (7) F R E N E A U R 0 0 G E R S

12 Cry "ham act!" possib ly, as thea tre F G X F A I 0 E

5 A. S. Byatt's epony mous creat ures in
A U R I e F E L I X H 0 L T
cr itic (9) dissenting bodies (7)
I I E E L I W E
13 Big lie identifies friend of Felix 6 The beaut iful Italian Miss Wilfer (5)
R A M e L E R S . A T 0 N E 0
Salten's forest dwe ller (7) 7 Land of Hope, and slightly tarnished
15 Misdemeano ur includ es Latin from Glory (9) SOL UTION TO CROSSWOR D 707
Point s for Italian People (7) 8 Try a cut of lamb, say (5)
18 Admiral hold s one Scandinav ian writer 14 Lucian (the revised editio n) is The winner of Crossword 707 is
(7) improper (9) Nesta Thomas, Swansea.
20 Frenzied women reform - amend as 16 Desert resort for tourists , last resort for
bacchantes (7) Elija h (9)
21 Feminist writer reportedly member of US 17 She's set on nonsense from
The se nder of the first correct
fraternity (9) Ma upassa nt's freet hinking uncle (9)
19 Musica l girl twice warned (7) so lutio n opened on Oc tober 19
23 Nurse never without her ga mp (5)
25 Peacoc k characte r from old cro ne's will receive a cash prize of £40.
20 Spo il written work of Shakespearean
vicar (7) E ntries sho uld be addressed to
co ttage (5)
26 His achievements are history (9) 21 Meas ures taken by Kosinski (5)
TLS Crossword 7 11,
Tim es House, I Pe nn ing to n Stree t,
27 "Her comp lexion really was as pure as 22 Eligible bache lor fro m novel to note
- Parian marble" (Thackeray, The Virgin- London E98 I BS.
(5)
ians) (9) 24 Sort of route booked by Malraux (5)
28 Fleet asse mb ly point in Ga ul is
desc ribed by Rac ine (5)

TLS SEPTEMBER 2 I 20 07
32
T he most famou s poem of the twenti eth
century begin s:
First we had a couple of feelers do wn at To m's
place,
There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind
(Don' t you remember that time after a dance,
Top hats and all . . .)
At least, that' s how it we nt in its early
version. Follow ing the inter vention of Ezra
Pound , the openin g of The Waste Land
pick ed up a rhythm : "April is the cruellest
month , breeding / Lilac s out of the dead
land " , and so on.
Thi s is one of the stor ies in Ga ry Dexter ' s
book, Why No t Catch-21?, an exa mination of
fifty literary works and their origins. It is
easier to get going with The Rape of the Lock
if yo u kno w befor ehand that , in 1712, "the
7th Lord Petre committed a galla nt little
rape" by snipping a lock of hair at a card
part y "from the head of a young beaut y,
Ar abella Fermor" . The Fermors and the
Petres stopped talking. Mr Dexter tells us that
Alexander Pope' s account of the affair - in
which A rabella is cast as " Belinda" and Lord
Petre as "the Baron" - was intended to recon-
cile the famili es.
The title of Dexter ' s book refers to Joseph
Helier' s arithmetic. Co nceive d as Catch- I 8,
his novel sa nk to Catch- I 1, caught up a bit by
hecoming Catrh-14, before makin g the deci-
As De xter puts it , th e ga me " is de alt a crue l of fiction , poetry, ess ays and photo graph y
sive leap to Catch-22. A theory advanc ed for
coup de grace by the husband , [whil e] stand- was firmin g his resol ve to lea ve behind hi s
ing behind his wife with his hand s on her current res idence (Vacav ille prison, Califor-
the deri vati on of Waitin g fo r Godot is that
neck" - ju st as Ge orge does with Martha nia) at the first opportunity, he was hindered
Beckett saw the 1936 film of Balzac ' s play
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -----, hole, and not being allowe d read ing glasses" .
Meet the Nordic
literature at
Goteborg Book Fair.
On September 27 we open the doors to the largest
cultural event in the Nordic countries. Writers and
visitors from all over the world gather here to see
what's new and to do business at the International
Rights Centre. Welcome.
~'Bok(i
~'Bibliotek
GOTEBORG BOOK FAIR
SEPTEMBER 27 - 30, 200 7, SWEDISH CONGRESS CENTRE, GOTEBORG
WWW.GOTEBORG-BOOKFAIR.COM
Godeau to Godot
Le Faiseur, in which credit ors wait anxiously
for the stock-market trader Go dea u to arrive
with their money. An English-language ver-
sion was made in 1949 (the yea r Godot was
bein g written), starring Buster Keaton , whom
Beck ett grea tly admired . The last line of
Balzac ' s play is " Let' s go and see Go dea u" .
The last line of Godot is " Yes, let' s go" .
A good Dexter story concern s Edward
Alb ee and Leon ard Woolf. After seeing
Alb ees famou s play, featurin g the name of
s menti oned here before, the Berk eley
his late wife, Woolf wro te to the playwright
quarterly journal, Threepenny Review,
about a short story by Virgini a called "Lap-
pin and Lapino va", in which a husband and
offers free subsc riptions to US prisoner s.
wife indul ge in a fantasy ex isten ce at home
One gra teful recipi ent , Ga ry Hallford , wro te
(like Alb ees Ge orge and Marth a). He, Lap-
to the magazin e last spring to say that, while
pin, is a rabbit, and she , Lapin ova, a hare.
he was confid ent that the Threepenny' s diet
in puttin g his theor y to the test, as "I ' m in the
TLS SE PTEMBER 2 1 2 0 07
at the crucial moment in Alb ee' s play:
'Oh, Ernest , Ernest!' she cried, starting up in
her chair. ' It's Lapin ova . . . She's gone. I' ve
lost her !' .
' Yes', he said at length .
trap, killed.'
So that was the end of the marriage.
Alb ee claim s that he has never read the story.
Why No t Catch-2 I ? is publi shed by Franc es
Linc oln at £9 .99.
A
Perh aps reh abilitative subsc riptions to the
Threepenny Review should be offered to the
guards .
Still, the well-mea nt strategy continues -
whenever copies of the magazine get
through. A letter in the Fall issue from Robert
J. Za ni, an inm ate of Te nnessee Colony,
Texas, states that "the Texas pri son sys tem
banned the Summ er Threepenny Review as
'containing sex ually explicit images'''. Mr
Zani has appealed, and hopes he will eve ntu-
ally be permitted to read the magazine.
We aske d the editor of the Threepenny,
Wendy Lesser, what had pro voked the author-
ities to ban the Summ er issue. "They we re
Edwa rd Weston nudes - only two out of thir-
teen phot ograph s in the issue were nud es, but
that was enough. One was of Tina Mod otti in
an open kim ono , and one of Mr s Weston (aka
Charis) naked on the porch of their Ca lifo rnia
house" . The flesh part of the latter " was
tiny" , Ms Lesser says , but she admit s that
Modotti ' s nakedn ess cam e over "rather large
on the inside pages" . Our belief in the impro v-
ing natu re of the written word is unshaken ; to
extend its influ ence, we are sending Mr Zani
a copy of a typi cally cha ste TLS.
P erambulatory Christmas Book s. In a ten-
part series, culminatin g at Yuletide, we
intend to recommend admirable but more or
less for gott en books by notable writers . Eac h
will have been picked up for und er a fiver
© The Tim es Literary Su pplement Limit ed , 2007. Published and licensed for distributio n in electronic a nd all other
derivativ e forms by The T imes Literary Supplemen t Limited, Times House. I Pennington Street. London E9" IBS, England.
Telephone: 020 -7782 5000 Fax: 020-7782 4%6 E-mail: lcrtcrseathc -tls.co.uk without whose express permissio n no part may
he reproduced. Printed
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and dis tributed in the USA by OCS America Ine, 49-27 ylst Street. Long Island C ity. r-;Yl llOl -3113. Periodicals postage
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Box 3000. Denville, r-;J071'34. USA
at one of Lond on' s seco nd-hand book shops,
which lazy report s deem an ailing spec ies.
We kick off with Edmund Blund en ' s
delightful book The Face of England, pub-
lished by Longm ans at 3s 6d seve nty-five
yea rs ago. (Blunden had a long association
with the TLS; he joined the staff in 1945. )
The first thin g to strike us about this series of
sketches on the subje ct of the turnin g yea r is
that it would be imp ossibl e to write in such a
way today, without iron y:
The new almanac has begun work. If we still,
as by instinct, feel that a New Year is a sort of
perso nality, a shape. we are at this time stari ng
at shadows and sharp rain; the vision, a few
paces off, is grey smoke. Its voice proceeds
from some unseen mouth. All day long there
'Caught in a sounds the wres tling of the wind in the trees.
Thus comes our fabled Infant.
The question is not whether the quality of
composition is good or bad (we tend toward s
the form er); simply that the tune has been
lost. The Englishness of Blund en' s prose
sounds imp robably foreign .
There are num erou s memorable touch es in
The Face of England , including a descripti on
of youths bull yin g a cow at market ; they were
"almos t ferret in eye, nose, mout h and action.
Their white faces quivered. They becam e
almost beside them selves becau se the cow ,
terrori zed , to ok wrong turnin g s" . A stra nge
thin g, Blund en muses, "that all our soci al edu-
cation seems incapable of preventin g degener-
acy" . He think s that better diet might help
(people are say ing the sa me toda y).
Every now and then , the author insert s an
oblique menti on of his First World War expe-
rienc e (to whi ch he devoted a separate book) ,
which marked him indelibl y. "The definit e
see ms past" , he writes as spring approa ches ;
"all that is permitted me as I stand bewildered
in this carni val is to live over aga in the corre-
sponding wee ks and weather, which we re so
minut ely charactered in me, of the 1916 war
in the wild- gro wn field s of Festub ert."
We pic ked up The Face of Eng land, com-
plete with dust jack et, at one of our favourit e
Lond on bookshop s, Any A mount of Books in
Char ing Cross Road, for £ 1.
I ntimations: A me morial readin g and con-
cert for the poet John Heath-Stubbs, who
died in Decemb er, will take place at St
Jarnes' s Church, Piccadill y, on Sept ember
29, at 12 noon . The readin gs will be give n by
Danni e Ab se, Elspe th Barker, Eddie Linde n
and A. N. Wilson, among others; Peter Dick-
inson will pla y piano settings of a numb er of
Heath-Stubbs poem s. All are welco me.
The Am erican poet C. K. Willi am s will
read at the Troubado ur in Earls Court, SW5,
on Oct ober 8, as part of the autumn seaso n of
Co ffee -House Poe try. He will be follo wed on
Nove mber 5 by C. D. Wright and Loui s
Jenkins. Eve nts begin at 8 pm, and the price
of adm ission is £6 (unemployed poets £5).
For a full programme, write to PO Box
16210 , Lond on W4 IZP.
J .C .
PRI C ES
3 8>
10. Spain
5. Eurn