Books that I have read
Having seen the film, I am now reading 12 years a slave (Kindle format)
Plato’s Republic (from Kobo)
Audio book: Great Minds of the Western Tradition from Audible (http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Classics/Great-Minds-of-the-Western-Intellectual-Tradition-3rd-Edition-Audiobook/B00DMDN0AO ). This is a series of lectures, approximately 30mins each. Total listening time is 43 hours – sI think I will be listening for some time.
There is a story that is told in my family about my great-grandfather, William Cunningham, who found that his new wife, Isabella Cameron, came complete with a slave plantation in British Guiana. My great-grandfather freed the slaves. He did a few another things, this man from Glasgow, but that is another story.
So we went to our local cinema to see the Oscar nominated film, 12 Years a Slave, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northrup. Solomon is a good, honest decent hard working citizen of New York State. He has a wife and two delightful children. He is also black. The year is 1841, twenty years before the start of the American Civil War. Solomon is enticed into going to Washington, where he is kidnapped and delivered into slavery. During the next 12 years, Solomon never gives up his humanity and decency, despite the deprivations and cruelty forced upon him. Eventually he manages to persuade a white Canadian, a carpenter called Bass to write to a list of people in Saratoga, New York. Liberation followed..
The film was beautiful. When Solomon has to whip Patsee, another slave, the camera was on Solomon. Any other director would have relished the blood and flesh – but McQueen does not. We see, in the end, Patsee’s back, a cruel mass of flesh and skin and blood as her wounds are being dressed. The degradation of the human beings sold into slavery does not need to humiliate.
Perhaps one of the mot startling message that came from the film was that slavery did not just dehumanise the slaves, but also their “masters”. The presence of slaves often had a corrosive effect on the relationships within the household. Wives and children had competitors. The slave-owner’s legitimate children often had half brothers and sisters born into slavery, living only yards away from them in abject poverty.
And then too were the economics. Solomon’s masters had to borrow money to buy him. $1,000 would buy you a male slave in 1841. This, depending on the source, was equivalent to $28,000 today (http://www.minneapolisfed.org/community_education/teacher/calc/hist1800.cfm ). Slaves were an expensive investment and also needed overseers. The reason for employing slaves appears to be largely social, owning slaves bought status. However, given the cost of initial purchase it seems incredible that anyone would want to mistreat their property.
Another point. I am reading Plato at the moment. Heavy going sometimes. Plato (through Socrates) asks “What Is Justice?” Ah yes, just what is justice in a slave owning society? Justice says that I have a right to my property. But what if my property is another human being? What then?
We now have a concept of justice that is inclusive. Solomon does eventually attain his liberty and return home. And yet he is denied justice. Despite his best efforts, those who were responsible for his enslavement went unpunished.
The phone rings. I answer. On the other end of the line is a polite american voice wishing to sell me some stocks in a company that I have never heard of. Alarm bells ring in my head – boiler room scam and I put the phone down, but not before I inform the caller that I do not want to deal with criminals….
On Friday we went to see “The Wolf of Wall Street” at our local cinema.
Two things stuck in my mind from the reviews that I had seen:
Yes, on both accounts this was true. It was very long and I am sure it could have been edited to remove an hour or so. Was it necessary to have quite so many orgies? And the ending was unsatisfactory. The problem is that the film was based on a true story so the ending could not be edited too much. Jordan Belfort served 22 months in prison for fraud and money laundering and now he is running his own motivational speaking business. $2000 dollars for a set of 10 DVDs to learn how to sell. Part of the judgement against Belfort was that he had to make restitution to his victims, to the tune of an eye-watering $110 million (55,000 DVD sets).
The film covers Belfort’s rise and fall, beginnning in 1987. Belfort begins work with Rothschild Stock Brokers, and then Black Monday happens and the stock market crashes. The great storm of 1987 and the London Stock exchange is off line. Net effect as far as ths story is concerned is that Rothschild folds and the young Belford has to fend for himself. And he does in spectacular fashion, creating the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont which at its peak employed over a 1,000 people. Stratton Oakmont’s core business was a “boiler room” scam, where worthless stocks were sold to unsuspecting customers. Eventually the justice system caught up with Belfort.
Belfort was deeply into drugs and sex. This is portrayed in the film, perhaps over portrayed. But there is something which is missing. Belfort claims that he had forgotten his ethics in the excesses of Stratton Oakmont. That may be so, but there is a gaping great hole in the centre of this narrative. Compassion for the victim. You are lef at teh end of the film with the distinct impression that as far as the Wolf of Wall Street was concerned, all he had done wrong was break a few rules and get caught. The victims never make it to the screen. The men and women who ploughed their life savings into Belfort’s “Make me rich” schemes. Belfort comes across as a charming sociopath unable to to empthise with people.
I found the film extremely disturbing, not because of the sex and drugs and profanities, but because it never shows the real human cost of Belfort’s actions.
If you want to discover the reason for the financial collapse in 2008, then this is your film. Greed, pure, unadulterated greed filtered through a drug-fuelled haze. Is there justice in the world? The answer from this film is “NO”. Have the financial players from the noughties learned their lesson? NO. Is the wealth of the USA based on a fiction? YES.
The film itself could quite easily be a stage play (and much shorter). A few years ago, we went to see the stage play “Enron”, which covered pretty much the same story – how greed and a total disdain for the regulatory process.
Links
The victims:
So this June I began by reading Dropping the Habit by Marion Dante. And gave up half way through. well I did cheat, and I read the ending. not an inspiring read.
Things got better with The Story of the 100 Year Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Johansson. So good in fact that after I had finished reading, I got the audio book so I could listen to the second reading. It si funny as you are taken on a whistlestop tour of teh mjor events on the 20th. century. My rereading has just got to 1968 and the riots in Paris.
The central charater is Allan Karlson. Apolitical, non judgemental – all Allan has asked for in life is a comfortble bed, plenty of food and vodka. Money, status, power mean little to Allan. And thanks to a little creative surgey, neither do women. Allan was never a violent man – yet he seems to have been instrumental in the deaths of a large number of people. Perhaps it was something to do with his fascination with explosives.
The next good book in June was And the Mounains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner. Another very satisfying read. How can this book be described? A collection of linked short stories perhaps? I am not a great fan of short stories as a rule, but this was a brilliant collection of interlinked stories. So what do we have? A warlord's son, coming to terms with the monstrosity of a father, the story of a girl horribly mutiated and abandonned by her mother, a glimpse of a story of an Afghan girl with a skull nearly cleeved in two, the story fo a doctor who promises so much… And more. Here we see Hosseni moving away from the Afghan community as he tells the story of Markos and Thalia who meet each other as children living on a Greek Islad. Hosseni also touches on social relism and the big issue for so many families these days, that of caring for the elderly.
June is coming to and end, and there are two more books, First I am reading The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje. This is about an 11 year old boy travelling unaccompanied to England on a ship. Fanciful? When my father was 12, he and 3 of his brothers were put on a ship to sail from Georgetown, British Guiana to England. these 4 boys, undisciplined, ran amok on the ship. This is what people did in the Great British diaspora, nice, middle-class people dispatched their children to sail half way round the world on their own to be met at the other end by relatives they scarely knew. So I reading this book with not quite the same critical eye as many commentators . Although this book is about an 11 year old boy and his friends it is not writeen for children.
Unlike my second book which I am listening to on my journey to and from work, This is a book by Carlos Rius Zafon – The Watcher in the Shadows. written for teenagers, and here we see the contrast between the optimism of the teenager and the cynicism of the adult, Zafon writes adventure books centred on teenagers, and sex is a natural part of teenage experience – but for Zafon, sex is part of a relationship. And these realtionships are part of teh adventure of growing up.
Perhaps another title could be "A History of the 20th century", for the central character, Allan Karlsson, seems to have been in on some of the pivotal moments of the 20th century and indeed, met the key players of the 20th Century (at least, through Swedish eyes).
The story is well told and does end happily ever after. It is funny, often unbelievable as a group of the most unlikely characters gather around Allan on his adventures. The story tells the life of Allan born in 1905 as well as the story of what happens after Allan climbs out of the window.
“Have you read…” began the conversation and a frisson of excitement briefly took form as we discussed the merits (or otherwise) of a book written by a former Salesian nun. This was our annual get together for the class of 1970 of the former St John Bosco’s Convent Grammar School, Chertsey. It was not often that our former Alma Mater makes it into a published work. Would we recognise any of the people mentioned, would we even find ourselves in the pages of the book, and would it shed light on the lives of the women who educated us? And what scandals would be unveiled along the way?
And so I acquired the book on my eReader. The beginning started well enough, with the reminisces of a young Marion Dante in Ireland. There must be a guide somewhere that authors use for recreating the thoughtscape of a young child. The simple language and the half understanding of what is happening. Which is strange, because children, when they write, do not use this language.
As the book wore on, once I had got past Marion’s stay at the Sandgates convent in Chertsey, the book began to pall. There were points of interest, the lives of the nuns and the aspirants for instance and the changes wrought by Vatican II.
Undoubtedly, Marion’s life as nun was hard. And yes, the Church does have some hang ups about sex. The Manichean Heresy is not dead, even after 1700 years. Bodies are bad and sex is even worse. Only the spiritual world is good. But we live in our bodies and in Marion’s story is the suffering that results in such a negative view of the world.
However, I lost interest. The life of Marion drones on. Marion has a difficult childhood (her mother is chronically depressed – post natal depression?), the family is poor. Marion becomes a nun (to escape?). Marion has a breakdown and eventually leaves the order. And in her state of depression she fails to see she is not alone, for she has the remarkable gift of always finding a friend or two to help her, to give shelter and advice. So I ask, is this a story about a woman maltreated by a religious order or is it a story of a woman whose life is blighted by mental illness – first her mother’s and then her own breakdown.
This was one of those 20p books from Amazon. Book 2 of a trilogy. Except that it did not feel like a part work.
The setting is the isles of Harris and Lewis where a perfectly preserved corpse, pickled in the bog is found. The story unfolds. Fin McLeod is returning to his roots after the death of his son and the breakdown of his marriage
It is an enjoyable read – the Hebrides really play the central role in this book. And so does Alzeimers. How do you get into the head of someone with dementia? Peter May gives us an insight.
Last night we went to the film Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis. This was an extremely enjoyable film and certainly made one think. The year is 1865 and Lincoln, like Barak Obama, has just been elected for a second term.
So much of the film is familiar. Congress holds the president to ransom; the forces of conservatism are pitched against the forces of “radicalism”, or liberalism. The film covers Lincoln’s last months as he stands on the threshold of history. The thirteenth amendment to the constitution was to abolish slavery in the United States. Other amendments were added later, building on this, the most radical of all amendments to the constitution. The most surprising this about this film is the fact that Lincoln was a republican and it was the Republican party that was most in favour of the abolition of slavery, the Democrats were opposed. And yet, nearly 100 years later, it is a Democrat president, John F Kennedy who finally brings full civil rights to Black Americans and finally, the first black president is also a Democrat. How things change over time.
At the crucial vote to pass the Thirteenth amendment, the speaker elects to cast his vote, for as he says, history is being made. Now, it is impossible to imagine a world where the United States had not legislated against slavery.
The film does no favours to the American political system. Then as now, the system is open the bribery and corruption – then as now the votes of Congressmen can be bought. And the film certainly does no favours to those who are on the religious right. How can anyone say that slavery is ordained by God? And yet the religious right did.