Ghettoisation is liberation

War is peace

Freedom is slavery

Ignorance is strength

To which we should now add a fourth slogan:

Ghettoisation is liberation

Yes, I know I must appear to be no more than an ageing has-been, or, more accurately, an ageing never-has-been, raging furiously at the way the world is going. But I hope that’s not quite the whole story. I grew up in Britain in the 60s and 70s, and, despite everything that is still far from perfect, I do know, for instance, that there is far, far greater racial tolerance now (at least in Britain) than there had been some forty or fifty years ago. I also know that modern advances in medicine and medical technology have saved my life: the chances of surviving a triple heart bypass operation are now far greater than they were back in my day. So I would have to be wilfully blind, and unthinkingly ungrateful, to rage against the modern world merely for being modern.

However, certain aspects of the modern world are nonetheless worth raging against. Certain cultural aspects, which, after all, are the major focus of this blog. And amongst the most insidious of these is the increasingly widespread credo that one’s ethnicity, or one’s gender, or one’s sexuality, defines one’s cultural and moral values – defines, indeed, the very person one is.

Certain things enter one’s mind at so formative a stage in that mind’s development, and stay embedded within it so firmly, that it becomes very difficult attempting to look beyond them, or even trying to understand that there may be valid arguments against them. I appreciate that. And one of those things that had entered my mind at a very early stage was the conviction that one’s cultural values, or one’s ethical values, are not determined by race. Indeed, I have long thought deeply objectionable, and, yes, as racist, the idea that one’s race determines the kind of person one is. One’s person is not defined by one’s race: such a credo, determining human value in terms of race, has always seemed to me the very epitome of racism.

So, naturally, I find myself rather bemused, to say the least, when the very people who claim to be anti-racist nowadays proclaim this same racist credo. Suddenly, it seems, everything I have understood about racism seems to be turned on its head. The very definition of “racism” seems to be changed before my very eyes.

Other definitions seem also to be changing before my eyes. Of poetry, for instance. Obviously, defining poetry has never been an easy task: and, after having given the matter much consideration – or, at least, as much consideration as I am capable of – the best definition I could come up with is that if a piece of writing ain’t prose, then it’s poetry, and vice versa. And prose is written in units of sentences, and poetry in units of lines, which may cut across sentences. Or, to put it more crudely, prose goes all the way up to the right hand side of the page, and poetry doesn’t. But that’s pretty uninteresting, and unenlightening: the question is whether something is good poetry, and that, of course, is another matter. And here, we cannot go by definitions, as there are so many different ways that a poem can be good. But, without going into any detailed analysis, it can be maintained, I think, that just as painting involves the manipulation of colours, and music the manipulation of sound, so poetry involves the manipulation of language – of making words communicate more than merely their dictionary definitions. What “more” it can communicate depends upon the intentions and the skills of the poet: it may communicate multiple layers of meaning, or plumb depths of emotion, or evoke distant associations, or elusive states of mind, or capture the most intangible of human feeling and thought; but whatever the poem achieves, its basic tool is language. To analyse how a poem works – should one wish to do that – it is the language we must focus upon.

But this too seems to be changing. Consider this poem, which, I am reliably informed, is a set text for English literature GCSE this year. As far as I can see, with my old-fashioned and no doubt outdated ideas on poetry, this is poetry only because it ain’t prose: the  lines don’t go all the way across the page. It uses a Caribbean dialect, which is fine, but the dialect is used not to any particular expressive end, but merely to assert the poet’s racial identity. And I cannot help wondering what there can be here that merits teaching. The poem conveys nothing more than what may be communicated by a bald summary of its content: “They do not teach us anything that makes me feel comfortable about my racial identity.”

Of course, how history should be taught is a complex issue, and fully deserving of debate and discussion, but to object to the way it is currently taught merely because it does not make one feel comfortable about one’s racial identity does not seem to me a very enlightening contribution to the debate. And such a simplistic statement seems to me a poor theme for a poem. A good poem lays bare the complexity and the intricacy of our human state: a simplistic statement may make a good rallying cry, but its worth as poetry worthy of study remains to my mind dubious.

Well, let’s not labour the point: let’s just say that this is not my idea of what poetry should be – or, at least, what good poetry, poetry worth teaching, should be. But then again, I am shown rap lyrics which I am told is poetry of our times, and I can see no poetic merit there either, so I suppose all this is no more than an indication of how utterly outdated and obsolete my perspective is on such matters.

And my perspective on what constitutes racism is similarly obsolete, I guess. I have changed my mind on a great many things over the years but one point I have been constant on, ever since I have been old enough to think about such matters, is that I was not going to define myself in terms of my ethnicity, as my ethnicity says no more about what kind of person I am than does my shoe-size. Of course, some others may well see me in terms of my ethnicity, but they’d be wrong, and I am not going to confirm them in their wrongness by agreeing with them. And, since I didn’t see myself in terms of my ethnicity, I thought it only good manners not to see others in such terms either. So it’s quite a shock, as I find myself approaching my sixties, to realise that what I had thought was a liberal position to hold in such matters is now actually considered racist – that people are actually clamouring for their ethnicity to be recognised, and to recognise it in others; and that it is racist not to see people thus.

For nowadays, it is quite commonplace to see individual people in terms of their race. No-one bats an eyelid. Of course, I’d expect racists to place a great emphasis on race: that’s because, obviously, they’re racists. But this is now a mark of the anti-racist as well, and, dinosaur that I am, I really cannot reconcile myself to it. In The Guardian, an avowedly liberal paper, there recently appeared an article written by someone who would no doubt claim to be feminist and anti-racist, headlined “How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Colour”. I appreciate that the author was not responsible for the headline, but on this occasion, it’s a fair summary of what the article says. Back in my own benighted times, an article so racist and so misogynistic as this would not have seen light of day.

For yes, it is racist – at least, given my no doubt obsolete understanding of the term. For how else can one describe making generalisations about an entire race? (And it is misogynist as well, for similar reasons.) I raised this point on Twitter, but I was confidently told that one cannot be racist to white people. I did not quite understand the reasons for this quite extraordinary statement , but it’s widely held, and is something, I gather, to do with the “power structures” of society. (It is astonishing how readily the general public laps up the various bits and pieces of bollocksology that emanate from the groves of academia.) And I was recommended to read a book called Why I Am No Longer Talking About Race to White People. I replied, as politely as I could, that I have too much to read as it is, and that I find the title, unless it is intended ironically, offensive. And then I retired from the fray. What else could I do? (The author of this book, incidentally, is so marginalised by the power structures of society that she recently gave a talk at the prestigious Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, and it was sold out.)

Looking back, I sat my Scottish O-Grade in English (the equivalent of GCSE) back in 1975, and I distinctly remember studying in class poems by Shelley, by Wilfred Owen, by Dylan Thomas. Even if one thinks more highly of “Checking Out Me History” than I do, it cannot be denied that what is now being taught in English classes nowadays as poetry is not of a standard comparable to what had been around some 40 or so years ago. What can be the reason for this?

The only possible answer I can think of is diversity. (That is, to be clear, diversity as a criterion replacing quality, rather than as an addition to it.) And, also, strangely enough, uniformity. For while we may insist on diversity of ethnicity (and all those other things), we must still insist upon uniformity of outlook. After all, there is no shortage of genuinely fine poets who are black, or South Asian, or East Asian, or whatever, writing poems that display richness of language, and depth of thought. But it’s far easier, and far more convenient, to teach a simple message such as “What is taught does not validate my racial identity, and it’s not fair!” All you do is repeat this simple message, ignore the irony that a poem communicating this very message is now a set text in schools, and, lo and behold, you don’t really need to teach about poetry at all! All that difficult stuff about the use of language, the subtleties of the rhythms, the sonorities, the imagery – the sort of stuff that I was introduced to in the works of Shelley, of Wilfred Owen, of Dylan Thomas, when I was fifteen – can now be safely ignored. And it’s all right, because we have diversity, and that, apparently, is an end in itself.

And meanwhile, it continues. Examples pile upon each other, and it becomes exhausting merely trying to keep up. We keep quoting to ourselves the inspirational line of the late Jo Cox, who was so tragically murdered last year by a far-right racist: “We have more in common than that which divides us.” But even as we repeat this to ourselves, in practice, it is all that divides us that we most insist upon. Human beings are barely regarded as individuals any more: they are white, or black, or brown, or whatever. At the drop of a hat, it’s the ethnicity or gender or sexuality that comes inevitably to the fore, before all else. A published poet feels affronted by an Uber driver saying that he would like to be published, and instantly, she publicly announces that “old white men are exhausting”. Instantly, this taxi driver, who was doing no more than making polite conversation, is not an individual, but someone to be characterised by race and gender (and age), and put down on that score. The tweet has since been removed after heavy criticism, but there has been no apology or retraction.

(I will not link to her poetry by the way, but some are available in Instagram, should anyone wish to see them. I have. As I say, I simply do not understand the criteria of poetic merit any more, so there’s little point my commenting.)

So here I am, wondering why I even bother writing this when there’s so much I clearly don’t understand. Nor, frankly, wish to understand. Foolishly, I really had believed, and believe still, that we have more in common than that which divides us, and still feel very strongly that we have a very long way to go towards racial equality, and, further, that such an end is worth fighting for. But I had imagined that the struggle against racism was to break through the differences, and find that common ground. But that’s all old hat now. The message from all sides seems to me clear: see everyone, including one’s own self, in terms of ethnicity; respect all that divides us; stay in your lane.

Well, I want out. Obsolete  I may be, but I want no part in any of this. Let others fart around trying to find validation in poetry for their racial identity, and judge literary works on such terms: I’ll sit in my ivory tower for as long as I can, and glory in the richness of language and the subtlety of imagery and the profundity of feeling that I found in the English class in the comprehensive school I attended. Especially when the October wind punishes my hair…

Yes, our English teacher taught us this poem by Dylan Thomas for our O-Grade examination. This, of course, was back when people actually believed that poetry, far from being something to validate one’s group identity, existed to enrich our lives.

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water’s speeches.

Behind a pot of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour’s word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow’s signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven’s sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make you of the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea’s side hear the dark-vowelled birds

Isn’t that just gorgeous?

Most ignorant of what we’re most assured

As is well-known, during the apartheid days, in the prison on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela, among others, was incarcerated, a Complete Works of Shakespeare was passed around, and many of the inmates signed their names next to lines they found particularly poignant. I find this story itself particularly poignant.

Nelson Mandela put his own name next to some lines spoken by Julius Caesar:

Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.

Not that I am myself particularly valiant, and neither have I undergone anything like what the prisoners of Robben Island had to go through, but I have often wondered: of all those passages in that volume (which, over the years, has meant to me more than any other book I can think of), which passage would I put my own name against?

Far too many to choose from, obviously, but I think my own name would go next to this passage from Measure for Measure, in which Isabella, pleading for her brother’s life, flames out into the most visionary of lines depicting our common human lot:

… but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep …

In performance, the drama has, of course, to move on. But when I am reading, I have to put the book down for a while when I come to these lines. I think I’d need to be about as articulate as Shakespeare himself if I were to explain why.

(Please feel free to add a comment below on any passage from Shakespeare that you find particularly affecting.)

Summer lovin’ had me a blast

Now that the nights are hot and sultry, I find I’m in the mood for a bit of lust and murder.

I have loved film noir, and whatever its literary equivalent is, for many years now. Ever since I have been old enough to love it. And possibly since when I was even younger. Oh, how I would long for some torrid femme fatale lead me into desperate mazes of lust, depravity, and murder! OK, maybe not the murder bit, but you get the idea. At an age when I should have been dreaming of a Mary Poppins leading me into a magical land of gentle fantasy, I was fantasising instead of Barbara Stanwyck or Jane Greer or Ava Gardner leading me astray. I still am.

Wife and lover murder husband, and are then tied together by bonds of guilt. This seems to me the archetypal film noir plot, but, as far as I can think, this plot appears only in two film noirs – Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Well, a few more than two if we count remakes. The Postman Always Rings Twice has been filmed a number of times: it was given an Italian setting by Visconti in the film L’Ossessione; and was later filmed in its American setting, first in a somewhat flat adaptation starring John Garfield and Lana Turner, and, later, in what seems to me a much finer effort, by Bob Rafelson, with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson. The Visconti and Rafelson versions are both, I think, rather fine, but it’s Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity that, more than any other film, epitomises film noir for me. And it is for this reason that this particular plotline strikes me as archetypal noir.

Both Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice are, of course, based on novels by James M. Cain. I am by no means well read in thrillers, but, as far as I have read, I’d unhesitatingly nominate these two as my favourites. Desire, lust, murder, sex, guilt … what more could one want? There seems to me something particularly disturbing, something uniquely horrifying, about two people committing this greatest of all sins, the taking of a human life, for the sake of gratifying their desires; there seems something particularly appalling about the coils of guilt and shame they find themselves enmeshed in, and their despair as they discover, after all they have done, that their desire is had without content. They do not need to wait for the afterlife for punishment: their damnation is right here on earth, even before the law gets to them

Without taking anything away from Cain, such a story must have had forebears. I can only think of two: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov, and Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola, both published within a couple of years of each other in the 1860s. There’s Clytemnestra as well, of course, but she murders her husband on her own, without her lover’s help (although with her lover’s knowledge and approval). If we widen the net a bit to cover murders committed by any couple (not necessarily wife and lover), and of any victim (not necessarily the husband), we can find a few more examples of this plotline: very obviously, there’s Shakespeare’s Macbeth; and there’s that strange, savage story, depicted by all three Athenian tragedians, of brother and sister, Orestes and Electra, coming together to murder their mother (although the murder in this case is not motivated by desire). I am sure there are many more examples I can’t right now think of. But restricting ourselves specifically to wife and lover murdering husband, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, Thérèse Raquin and the two Cain novels are the only ones I can think of.

And, given that I am now in the mood for this sort of thing, I was thinking of re-reading all four of these books. They’re all quite short works, after all, and even at my snail’s pace, they shouldn’t take too long. And I am sure there are other stories with this plotline I can’t think of right now.

And so, over to you. Wife and lover murder husband. Or maybe, for a bit of variety, husband and lover murder wife. For desire. And they go on to suffer all the torments of Hell, even here, on this bank and shoal of time. Any other title I should include in my reading plans?

Thanks in advance.

The tingle in the spine

I should stop trying to do irony on this blog. I just can’t do it very well. It could be that my flights of ironic fancy are often taken at face value because readers can’t see my body language, or the expression on my face; or that they can’t hear my tone of voice; and so on. But it’s no good: I might as well accept that my attempts at irony fall down because I am not a terribly good writer. And even if I was, it would make little difference: after all, the irony of even so great a writer as Jane Austen is often misunderstood, so what chance do I have?

(And may I say, incidentally, that there is nothing in the above paragraph that is intended ironically. And, indeed, nothing in that last sentence either. This could go on for ever, couldn’t it?)

Most definitions of irony (and a quick Google search indicates that definitions vary) talk about intentionally saying the opposite of what one really means; but I think irony can be considerably more subtle than that. Irony can also, I think, encompass saying things that one only partially means. The world is, after all, endlessly intricate and complex, and quite frequently, certain things can be merely partially true: certain things one may find oneself agreeing and disagreeing with at the same time. For instance, in my previous post, I had said that great literature should address great themes. I think I stand by this up to a point, but only up to a point. I think, for instance, that the Sherlock Holmes stories are great literature. I think Wodehouse’s Blandings Castle stories are great literature. I think The Three Musketeers is great literature. Not only do these works not address great themes, they sometimes go out of their way not to address them. But whatever we may mean by “greatness”, I think these books are “great”. And if they’re disqualified because they do not measure up to some pre-defined criterion, then I don’t know that I need worry about it too much.

This does not mean I am willing to jettison my contention: great themes I continue to associate with great literature, and I refuse to accept there is no connection between them. But appreciation and appraisal of literature are far from exact sciences, and rigidly applying pre-determined principles to assess literary value is a pretty fruitless exercise. I think, on the whole, that great literature should address great themes. Except when they don’t.

Perhaps it is best to see thematic seriousness as a criterion of literary merit that is neither necessary, nor sufficient, but which remains all the same an important criterion. And that all other criteria of literary merit one may think of are, similarly, neither necessary, nor sufficient. The entire range of literature is too vast, too unwieldy, too messy, to be bound by any pre-determined criteria.

And in any case, the greatness comes first. If we insist on trying to formulate criteria that determine literary greatness, we do this by examining those works that we already know to be great, and then, and only then, trying to identify what it is about these works that makes them so.

And how do we know without applying pre-determined criteria that a work is great? As that fastidious critic Vladimir Nabokov put it, we know it by that unmistakable tingle in the spine.

This is not the end of the matter, of course. Nothing is ever the end of the matter when it comes to literature: this is why there is always so much to discuss, so much to talk about. What about those works that I strongly sense to be great, but which give me, personally, no spinal tingle at all? Something such as, for me, Middlemarch? Well, let’s leave that for a later post. I have waffled on too long here as it is.

(That last sentence is intended as ironic, by the way: just thought I’d point that out.)