Are contemporary English and North American novels "gutless"?

There’s a very good discussion thread in today’s Guardian stimulated by an article which suggests that contemporary English and North American novels are gutless – “Sadly, the article argues, literary writers in these countries today seem to have no time for politics” (He recognises that Scotland and Ireland are different).
The discussion which follows is a serious one - some agreeing with the author's contention and offering reasons for the lack of contemporary Orwells; others profoundly disagreeing and offering examples of good political writing. I've selected just three of the offerings -

John Le Carré is someone I´d count as a political author, one of England´s best authors and someone whose status as a "genre writer" perhaps means he´s not given his due compared to the likes of Amis, McEwan and the other overrated stars of English Literary Fiction. While he doesn´t have the linguistic showboating of Amis, you learn far more about the way the world works and the fact that his works are allegedly thrillers has nothing to do with his intelligence and unwillingness to dumb down or sugar coat an essentially bleak artistic vision of humanity and the operations of power.
Really, good writing always transcends genre simply because it has an intelligence and craft and originality that stops it from being "generic". If a book is good its irrelevant what genre it is placed in as a matter of marketing speak. Bad literary fiction is genre fiction as well simply because it is "generic" in that sense, while good writing whether it be le Carré or Roberto Bolaño makes the notion of genre irrelevant.
When I say good writing there are many ways to be "good" of course. Le Carré isn´t a great stylist, in the way that say James Kelman or William Faulkner might be, or rather while he does write well, the style isn´t really what he is about, but he is a great drawer of characters and elucidator of the mechanics of the world. Whereas really what does Amis have which gets him so much attention?

Chakrabortty's chasing a packaging problem - if it is a problem. The book industry has strangled itself with high-cost hardback (auto)biographies of such distasteful entities as Blair, Bush, Brown, Darling, Prescott, Jobs, Lawson... not to mention its surrender before the supposedly fascinating lives of z-list celebs. Nevertheless, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, Richard Dawkins, Howard Zinn and Chomsky (among many others) have managed to get opuses out that I'd qualify as deeply political. It's more that subversion and protest has shifted to a better packaging. Film. Inside Job, Slumdog Millionaire, Inconvenient Truth, Sicko, Farenheit 911, SuperSize Me, Frozen Planet, Munich, Darwin's Nightmare... Wider audience, greater impact, just as good as a book, extra commentaries on the DVDs. Chakrabortty may merely be suffering from a nostalgia for the printed page (and theatre, but the audience there is pitifully limited) but don't let this make you think that eloquent, hard-hitting, informed protest has ceased to be

I question the premise of this article unless the author objects to the lack of explicit, didactic political advocacy in fiction. I have read quite a few novels published in the last 15 years that are clearly political in their dissection of societal behavior and values: Pamuk's Snow (a wonderful book in the style of the late 19th Century Russian masters), Ballard's Super-Cannes and Millennium People, Le Carre's Absolute Friends, Ellroy's White Jazz and American Tabloid, Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, Ma Jian's Beijing Coma, Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads and Takani's Battle Royale, among others. All of them explicitly critique existing social and political conditions, encouraging us to ponder alternatives

If the mood takes me, I'll perhaps offer some thoughts of my own.
Here in my Transylvanian village of Sirnea, the Easter celebrations have already started - with the priests' incantations echoing around the valley. Very touching.

Making sense of our lives

It’s perhaps appropriate that my thoughts this Easter week have turned to basic questions such as
• How can we make sense of the life we lead?
• What is a good life?
• Can we learn from those who live a good life?
• How can we best remember such people – and what they stand for?

My father, for example, led a very full and “good” life - so did other, public-spirited people I worked with in Scotland in the 1970s and 1980s. When they died, they were sorely missed by thousands of ordinary people whose problems they had dealt with – in my father’s case as a Minister of the same Church (“charge”) for 50 years.
I was disappointed, however, to find that they had left behind few (or no) personal reflections on the dilemmas they had faced and lessons they felt life had given them. My father’s weekly sermons may have shown patterns of concerns (even if they were not exactly personal notes) but he seems to have thrown them away on his retirement (at age 75). On the other hand, bookstore shelves groan with biographies and autobiographies of the Great and Not So Good – mostly exercises in self-aggrandisement.

For years, I’ve been worrying about this apparent bias against the modest, self-less servant we find at local levels. I became cynical about the British Honours’ system largely because noone nominated or accepted my father for such recognition; whereas I knew many on high salaries in public service who were avid for an Honour and whose patience and avidity duly paid off. Arise Sir Robert!!

We Brits are not very good at remembering the dead. In Bulgaria, they have the custom of posting a sheet with details and a picture of a deceased person on the door of their building and church. It remains there until the ravages of time erase it.
In Romania, ceremonies are held at set (lengthening) intervals from the date of the death.
My father got a Memorial Service – but then silence. The website of the church he nursed for 50 years had its centenary celebration recently – and its website did not even mention him. The Museum/library complex he served as (a very active) Chairman for many years has been absorbed within the town’s municipal services – although its curator remembered him fondly when I talked with her some years ago about possible ways to commerate him. An annual Lecture? An annual award?
I dithered and took no decision.
And even when a rare book gets to be written about one of these self-less servants (eg Geoff Shaw who died in 1978) it tends to be read only by the faithful and has no internet profile. That’s one aspect of the internet I have seen little discussed – that it whitewashes people of my father’s generation out just as mercilessly as Stalin did.

In the meantime I am a child of my immodest age and fill the airwaves with papers and blogthoughts. Overkill! Search for the nuggets! I readily admit that I use writing to explore my uncertainties.
And yet theree is an arrogance there as well whcih seems to know no bounds – I have even been contemplating a Trust to be established after my death to help pursue some of my concerns!

And here we get to the heart of this post. I know that I have done little in my life that is in itself special. But I am very much a man of my hubristic times – who absorbed the critical optimism of the developing social sciences in the 1960s. But someone with endowed with enough self-confidence to admit ignorance and doubt; with wide reading; and with no little luck. I was lucky enough to hold a senior (but background) political position at an early age. And also lucky enough to be able to reinvent myself at age 50 as an international consultant. I have, therefore, been priviliged to have
• seen politics and policy-making in action from upclose in different countries for forty years
• had access to the academic literature on the subject
• viewed it all through a sceptical and vaguely anarchistic prism

Surely, I like to think, this combination of praxis, knowledge and reflection (and of international experience) has given me insights others (more specialised and focused) don’t have?
We are all, of course, different – in the cards fate deals with us; and in what we make of them. Perhaps, therefore, it is utterly unrealistic to imagine that we would do anything differently from the mere fact of reading how a wiser and better person had tackled an issue. I will never forget the written response of a Hungarian official on the proforma I had given those who made a study-visit in the mid 1990s - "the one thing I have learned is that there is nothing to learn from other countries"! And the same message was in the poster I had in my office in the 1980s - "In my next life, I will make the same mistakes - but earlier"!

Of course, case-studies are an iportant part of MBA studies. And, in my field of government and policy-making, we still need more flesh and blood cases. There is still too much abstract theorisising - too much aping of a discredited 'economic rationality' model.
We all seek for meaning in our lives - its perhaps difficult to accept that everything is accidental and random!.We are all more interesting than perhaps the normal rules of conversation allow us to demonstrate. Some years ago, we were all being encouraged to write (short) autobiographies setting out the key time-lines in our life and then exploring questions such as –
• How did your upbringing affect your life?
• What do you consider your greatest achievement?
• Your greatest failure?
• Your most noble failure?
• Your most interesting experience?
• Your greatest passion?
• Your most challenging project?
• How would you like to be remembered?

Perhaps we talk too much. Writing is a tough master – it exposes the fallacies and gaps in our thoughts. Have any of my readers tried out this sort of autobiography, I wonder? Was it useful?

In conclusion - I have to confess that I don't actually know where all this takes me in my own question about what I have learned from my various political and project experiences which is worth passing on!!

Hedonism as the new default system?

A banker with links to the oil industry has commented that my blog indicates that I wear a rather large “hairshirt”. I would like to think that only someone with such an exploitative background could make such a comment.
But I fear that the notion that individual pleasure is the default style and that those concerned with social injustices are strange aberrants has become much more widespread than we think.
I’m actually as hedonistic as the next person in my pursuit of good experiences - be they good wines, blue sea or mountain landscapes.
But I’m old enough to know that selfish behaviour (in whatever form it takes – injustice, exploitation etc) destroys lives and has to be fought. Otherwise this becomes (as it is becoming) the default behaviour.

Martin Niemöller, prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor, put it very eloquently 70 years ago

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Why public provision makes economic sense

The blog has made several references to the Nordic social model. At a time when neo-liberal attacks on the "welfare state" are as strong as they have ever been, it is important that a properly strong response is given to these attacks. The argument is that public goods make strong economic sense. And this is well stated in a recent Social Europe article 

there are many misunderstandings of the Nordic states, even by sympathetic commentators. The most common one is that the state is portrayed as a very costly undertaking that by its high level of taxation becomes a hindrance to economic growth. This reveals a misconception regarding what the welfare state is about. The largest part of this type of welfare state is not benefits to poor people but universal social insurances and social services (like health care, pensions, support to families with children and public education) that benefit the whole, or very large, segments of the population. These goods are in high demand by almost all citizens and research shows that having these demands covered by universal systems in many cases becomes more cost effective.

The economic theory about problems of asymmetric information in markets is well suited for understanding this. Although this theory is quite technical, the logic is very simple. For example, in private health insurance systems, the costs that such information problems lead to (overtreatment, overbilling, the administrative costs for insurance companies screening out bad risks, the costs for handling legal problems about coverage) can become astronomical as seems to be the case in the United States[2]. Universal systems are much more cost effective in handling these problems since risks are spread over the whole population and the incentives for providers to overbill or use costly but unnecessary treatments are minimal.

The second misunderstanding is that such welfare states by necessity come with heavy handed bureaucratic intrusion and paternalism (“the nanny state”) and that it cannot be combined with freedom of choice for various services. This is for the most part wrong. An example is the publicly financed school system in Denmark and Sweden that are full-fledged charter systems. Public schools compete with private charter schools that are run on public money and have to accept to work under the same national regulations and education plans. For example, they have to accept students without any discrimination concerning their learning abilities. This can be compared with the intrusive inquiries and testing used by many private schools in the US in their admission processes. The same choice systems have been developed when it comes to health care, elderly care and pre-schools in the Nordic countries. Simply put, public funding of social services can very well be combined with consumer choice and respect for personal integrity.

A third common misunderstanding about the universal welfare state system is the neo-liberal argument that high public expenditures is detrimental to market-based economic growth. As shown by the economic historian Peter Lindert, this is simply not the case. In a global perspective, rich states have a level of taxation that is almost twice as high compared to poor states. And when the rich western states are compared over time, the evidence that high public spending is negative for economic growth is simply not there. This is also shown when the leading international business organization, the World Economic Forum, ranks countries’ economic competitiveness. The Nordic countries come out at the very top, far ahead of most low tax/low spending countries. In addition these states have their public finances in good order, simply because people are willing to pay taxes for the services that are proven. And lastly, when it comes to measures of human well-being, the Nordic countries outperform all other known social models. Thus, the future of the state looks bright, provided it is modelled on the Nordic model.

Cold Transylvanian idyll

I was premature in removing the snowbound Transylvanian valley from the blog masthead! I arrived a few hours ago in my mountain house for my first visit since mid-January to find the village wearing a newly-endowed cloak of light snow. Apparently, in my absence, the snow has been at least two metres and covered cars and some houses – but my roof and verandah have survived the pressure. Although there is still no running water….and the gas-stove hose seems to have given up the ghost. So the kitchen fire was duly kindled – and supplied the heat for everything.

And lots of books and paintings were duly transferred – with less difficulty now that the cowpath at the bottom of the garden has been upgraded to a track which can sustain the car. Not quite the dual carriageway I had feared in the autumn - although various assets such as the gate and a pile of construction material have been stripped without consultation by the municipality). And the lack of water may be due to the road construction!
Tomorrow the car has its bi-ennial technical test – which will hopefully allow me to make the last trip to Sofia (and its swimming and fitness facilities) in a few days before vacating the flat there at the end of the month. Sad to leave the aesthetic thrills I get there – but its good to be back in this country house with its views, library and music….

In praise of Direct Action

There couldn’t have been a more appropriate location for a lone protest against the ongoing insidious repression of our democratic freedoms than that of the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race yesterday. Not just that these are the universities which predominantly cater for the elites but that the homes of the super-privileged overlook the river.

And the impact should be all the greater since the guy who disrupted this traditional annual race on the River Thames is himself one of the elite – expressing (in what I confess I find a powerful but strangely-written manifesto) his deep concern about the direction public policies in countries such as the UK seem to be taking us -  

Everyone will remember some of their history lessons ... where people have been taken advantage of by people that believe themselves somehow better, more entitled than others. Most recently this has included the enclosure and eviction from the commons, transatlantic slavery, imperialism and colonialism, fascism, holocausts, genocides and dictatorships and migrant labour camps. It is difficult to grasp, as many of us have strong memories of the previous ‘boom’ decade, but .... we have just about reached the precipice of another era of mass enslavement and the large scale enclosure of ‘Our Public’. What is happening in the UK, for example, is not ‘privatisation’ but a contemporary demonstration of full scale enclosure of Our Public. "Couldn’t happen again ..." why not? Why wouldn’t something different but similar happen again? What policies, what institutions, exist to prevent something similar from happening again? What evidence is there that this isn’t happening? When did Our Public last experience an injection of its own readily available dose of agency and liberty?

To enclose and to enslave requires the audacity, cunning and daring to take advantage of our natural kindness, our belief in others, our respect for authority, our desire to please, and our apprehension about ‘causing waves’, our hope for all to have a better life, somehow. It also depends on our disbelief, despite having experienced it, that other people would purposefully set out to harm us for their own advantage. More recently we have also been encouraged, though the evidence displays the opposite much of the time, that a whole raft of institutions exists that work to prevent human catastrophes like our right to protest being denied, detention without trial or charge, the monopolisation of industries, and essentials like food and water. These institutions were established to prevent slavery, genocide, indentured labour and groupings of indices of deprivation and poverty from occurring. It is likely many in the western Baby Boomers generation (large percentage of the UK population), who have benefited so much from these institutions, are finding it very difficult to consider that these institutions might now be turning against them, their children and their grandchildren? Could what is happening in the UK (and around the world); the state of exception with Olympics, the wholesale removal of countless civil rights, the project to create fear and suspicion of others, the transfer of our money into the vaults of a handful of corporations, the ongoing wars, the pomp and ceremony for unelected official anniversaries, the amazingly high unemployment, the devastation to public services such as health and education, the isolation of education due to high fees, the entangled corrupt relationship between the media, police and politicians, the racism, the increasing misogyny, the forced labour in supermarkets, the spying on our emails, skype calls, the control of food production and distribution and the reductions of tax burdens for the richest ... could these all be best understood as the process of enclosure? Do we resist now setting out to avoid something akin to slavery and imperialism? Or do we hesitate and find ourselves and our children without agency once again and in a long battle to gain it again? How long might it take and how many lives might this demand?

His manifesto encourages others to take similar direct actions. There are so many people of my age who have nothing to lose and who should certainly be inspired by his example. The discussion thread which The Guardian eventually added to the story was, curiously (since Guardian readers are notoriousoy liberal), pretty hostile to the action. So much so that I was moved to add my own comment to the discussion -

Most of these comments are at the level of "He stole my football, mummy!!" Ironically, they confirm the point the guy hints at in his statement/manifesto - that too many of us seem to be living in a protected bubble, unaware of what is going on around us - our sense of history lost. Direct Action has an honourable tradition - and has to be a serious option when corporate power has castrated our political choices and system. That Guardian readers can react in such a selfish way will, however, have to be taken into consideration during discussions about future actions.
And, for those who can't see a bigger picture, who are stuck at the level of the individual rower who has trained hard for months, can you not imagine the courage it takes for a guy to prepare for such an act?

Back in Romania

Bucharest is in full spring growth – so male testerones are obvious in the drivers (a stand-off within minutes of arriving - with a driver unwilling to back the metre needed to let me access my street). The stupid arrogance of a young (female) Vodaphone staff member who can’t answer a simple question (about the term-date for an internet payment) ensures gender balance. I advise her on the answer she should have given and add a comment that she lacks listening skills and seems able only to use formulae they’ve been trained to use. When I leave, she utters a “Good Day” and fails to appreciate the irony.

Romania’s honour is saved (as always) by its older generation – in the shape of a wood sculptor from Targovishte (80 year-old Marin Manea) who has a stall at the Easter Fare at the Peasant Museum here in Bucharest.
I could not resist this traditional "dresser" which he had beautifully carved (and embossed) from Tei (Linden or Lime) wood. For 60 euros. Perhaps "dresser" is not quite the right term since what he had carved was the upper part which holds the plates and cups (almost a metre in depth - with 3 levels).
I expressed my admiration and envy of his skills – and he offered to teach me. An idea worth thinking about – and appropriate on the day I read this section of a late Updike short story ("Personal Archeology")

an utterance…gouged with effort from the compacted accumulation of daily pretence and accomodation

Updike did not win the Nobel Literature Prixe - and this reflects badly on that Award.

More tax evasion

I wrote a few days back about the impact of Nicholas Shaxson’s book Treasure Islands - and the revelations it contains about unregulated financial institutions and tax havens being much more extensive than we realised. Today there is a story about how Amazon UK changed its ownership a few years back (now owned by a Luxemburg company) and has paid no Corporation tax on its 7.5 billion euros annual sales

Ironic (to put it mildly!) that I bought Shaxson’s book from Amazon UK; that Shaxson is apparently domiciled in Switzerland; and that his book was published by Bodley Head – once a proud and independent company but now part of the multinational Random House which itself engages in the tax gymnastics the book attacks.
Actually it's not ironic! It is a powerful demonstration of how extensive the coils of the octopus of the new gene of capitalism has become!
For new readers, these are not the rantings of a leftist -  but of someone who in the 1980s strongly fought the hard left (and would still justify my role) but from whose eyes the scales have now fallen about the parasitical greed of the commercial elite.