"With a little help from my Friends"

Friends of this blog have noticed my silence these past few months….and I’m grateful for signs that readers haven’t completely given up on me…

And it’s not just writing that I’ve found difficult – these past few months I’ve found that books have also become a big turn-off.

Perhaps it was the burst of reading and writing I did in the autumn for the blog series about the State and pubic management literature which finished me off - somehow I can’t take any more the dry, reified technicalities which most non-fiction work offers these days.

That, you may say, surely leaves the way open for novels – a genre I’ve admitted I rarely feel partial to (it’s 8 years since I last tried to give a sense of my favourites in that genre) And indeed I did reread with interest last month Alan Massie’s classic A Question of Loyalties and Bordeaux trilogy as well as some John le Carre novels last week……

It was perhaps a hopeful sign this week that some authors actually started to speak to me again…

-       Yanis Varoufakis’ And the Weak Suffer What They Must? – Europe, Austerity and the threat to global stability was the first voice to try to cajole me out of the lethargy which has been like a funeral pall these past few months. I had started the book last year, rediscovered it in a friend's house in April and found it a gripping read - effectively an update of his "Global Minotaur", I then moved onto the more autobiographical “Adults in the Room – my battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment” (2017) which is a "kiss and tell" about his 6 months' spell as Greek Minister of Finance (the phrase "Glasgow kiss" comes to mind!). The reviews contained in the 2 links give some of the essential background if you’re not already familiar with this controversial writer. I like the historical sweep and biographical tone of his writing but know that many find him a bit...well.... "showy"….I've attached at the bottom a short Varoufakis resource which includes important critiques of this latest book (and also Varoufakis' response to the more significant critiques)  

-       And a book about healthy eating and living which has been lying on my shelves for more than a decade also had the tone and voice I seem to need these days - and led me back to the little library I have of Michael Pollan’s superbly written books eg In Defence of Food and Food Rules – let alone his The Botany of Desire (2001) a foretaste of his latest book - How to Change your Mind – the new science of psychedelics

These days, I need writing which jolts me – not for its own sake but to help first identify minds which look at the world in original ways but which also understand that clear language is an essential tool for such originality…Recently deceased essayist Tom Wolfe was a favourite of mine ever since I first read his Mau Mauing the flak catchers in 1970 but the “creative writing” courses which have contaminated journalism in the past few decades have made me suspicious of even good journalists these days. James Meek remains an exception for his ability to reduce economic complexities to 5 or 10 thousand word essays – ditto Jonathan Meades for his forensic analyses of cultural issues.

Varoufakis and Pollan are, for me, all too rare examples of the sort of writing which is needed if authors are to stand out against the verbiage and noise which assails us everywhere these days………

The title is that of a famous Beatles song whose lyrics can be read here -https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beatles/withalittlehelpfrommyfriends.html

A Varoufakis Resource

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/; his website

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/paul-tyson/varoufakis-%E2%80%93-new-kind-of-politics (2015); a profile of the man

Reviews of "Adults in the Room"

https://www.adamtooze.com/2017/07/01/reading-varoufakis-frustrated-strategist-greek-financial-deterrence/ a sympathetic review 

https://adamtooze.com/2018/02/24/europes-political-economy-reading-reviews-varoufakiss-adults-room/; a good overview of reviews of "Adult in the Room", structured by ideological slant

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2018/03/07/was-defeat-inevitable-a-review-of-adam-toozes-meta-review-of-adults-in-the-room-1/ Varoufakis’ detailed reply to these critiques

https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/paul-tyson/adults-in-room-by-yanis-varoufakis-london-bodley-head-2017; a good review of the book

http://www.cadtm.org/Yanis-Varoufakis-s-Account-of-the; an important serial critique of "Adults in the Room" from someone on the Syrizan Left. Its first part contains one of the few exposes of Varoufakis' basic negotiating strategy you will find in the English language

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest-political-memoir; Paul Mason's review of Varoufakis' expose

https://verfassungsblog.de/losing-to-the-european-union-a-review-of-yanis-varoufakis-book-adults-in-the-room/; a critical assessment from a Greek centrist

https://www.ft.com/content/65e5c4ee-2ffc-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a; FT review

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/06/yanis-varoufakis-latest-eurogroup-statement-keeps-greece-on-the-austerity-rack.html; an example of some of YV's doodles!

For those who want an independent "take" on the greek economy of the past decade or so, I strongly recommend this blog from a retired German banker whose marriage takes him frequently to Greece,,,,

Man ist was man isst – we are what we eat

Serendipidy again – was browsing amongst reduced-price books in the nearby bookshop and found one with the title We Want Real Food – the local food lover’s bible by Graham Harvey (first published in 2006) which took my fancy. Michael Pollan is the guy I’ve read on the development of the food industry in the post-war period (in America) – and how damaging agro-business is to our health. He is actually a Professor of journalism in California who writes, as you might expect, very elegantly – but has become increasingly concerned about the issue. In Defence of Food – an eater’s manifesto (2008) is perhaps his easiest read. His classic - The Omnivore’s Dilemma (also 2006)- goes into harrowing detail about the composition of what we are eating (basically oil!), is more hard-going and, of course, talks exclusively about the United States.
So I was interested in what Harvey (a Brittish agricultural specialist) had to say about the issue – and the book certainly seemed a lot more practical – with notes on the minerals we need, on individual foods and details of real food shops and farmers’ markets in the UK ( not much use for me!). I was quickly gripped by the story he had to tell – particularly about the passion of a few heroes who stood against the gadarene rush to industrialise and fertilise our food in the post-war period – I was introduced to a family doctor in rural Aberfeldy, Scotland (Walter Yellowlees) who noticed the deterioration of health in the town and tracked it to fertilisers. His presentation of the results in London in the late 1970s to the British Medical Council in a paper entitled Ill fares the Land left his fellow medics indifferent. And I was stunned to read of the results of adding rock dust (with its trace elements) to soil fertility. Harvey’s argument is simple -

The best farm is a mixed farm in which grass and forage crops grown for ruminants are reared in rotation with crops grown for human consumption. This is a very balanced and sustainable system that mimics natural systems. It’s very productive and produces healthy foods.

Of course this is the method in Sirnea – and Romanian and Bulgarian villages which multi-national fertilizer companies want to abolish and who have had the support of the EU’s Agricultural policy for the last few decades. There are a few other books now about this scandal eg Raj Patel's
Food, health (and the safetly of what savings we can manage) are surely the most fundamental issues for the majority of Europeans. If only more of us would focus on what has been going on in these fields in the last few decades; identify the culprits; and come together to map out the sort of practical alternatives which Harvey does in this book!!!

I challenge my readers to produce a more moving combination of paintings and music than these two vidoes from the Skalen art gallery – just north of Copenhagen.