Prose not Prozac: Book therapy

I was reading recently about the new trend of forming book clubs or reading clubs among those suffering from a variety of mental problems ( see The reading cure, Blake Morrison). The author cites examples of great progress: "the neurological patient who sat in a group saying nothing for months, then after a reading of George Herbert's poem "The Flower" ("Who would have thought my shrivelled heart/Could have recovered greenness?") launched into a 10-minute monologue at the end of which he announced "I feel great"; the brain-damaged young man whose vocabulary significantly increased after he joined a book group; the husband caring for his disabled wife whose exposure to poetry has proved not just a respite but a liberation."
The power of literature resides not only in bringing people together, making them have a meaningful communication, but also in showing them the big picture, the fact that their suffering is only a small part of the larger story. If we read the best books, we have the chance of being on the way to our best selves, the argument goes.
To some extent I am bothered by this utilitarian approach to reading: in my view, one should not read because in this way one will get over a depression, a disease or a lost lover, but because books and the stories thy told have an intrinsic value. Books are not only for the sick; I'd rather say they are mostly for the healthy, full-bodied and full-minded citizen!
Reading (or writing) is no guarantee for staying (or getting) sane (so many examples go to prove this) but without books the entire world would become a place of madness, of chaos, of void. Sometimes they literally bring rationality to the univers, and sometimes, on the contrary, books mess up our picture of the world (on purpose, like Lucian Blaga said: "Eu nu strivesc corola de minuni a lumii/si nu ucid/ cu mintea tainele, ce le'ntâlnesc,/în calea mea/în flori, în ochi, pe buze ori morminte. ... eu cu lumina mea sporesc a lumii tainã). But I love them either way. Sometimes I am afraid, like Hrabal's hero in Too Loud a Solitude, that I will be buried under a mass of paper, so many books I dream of having, and of having read.

Books: Athena, by John Banville

Banville is just the most amazing magician of the English language. Even when everything else seems to be less interesting, as is the case with the plot in Athena, the very words that pour out of his pen have the power to entrance. I was disappointed by the book as a whole, but all the reading was worth it if for nothing else for the first paragraph. It reminds me of a John Lee Hooker song, all the blues's passion, längtan, knife in the wound, hope beyond hope...
"My love. If words can reach whatever world you may be suffering in, then listen. I have things to tell you. At this muffled end of another year I prowl the sumbre streets of our quarter holding you in my head. I would not have thought it possible to fix a single object so steadily for so long in the mind's violent gaze. You. You."
Or on page 3 "This is what it must be like having a wasting illness, this restlessness, this wearied excitatation, this perpetual shiver in the blood. There are moments -well, I do not wish to melodramatise, but there are moments, at the twin poles of dusk and dawn especially, when I think I might die of the loss of you, might simply forget myself in my anguish and agitation and step blindly off the edge of the earth and be gone for good. ... The rain falls through me silently, like a shower of neutrinos".

Political leaders

In her third volume of memoirs[1], Simone de Beauvoir writes about the war in Algeria and about the referendum held to allow General de Gaulle to return temporarily to power in order to restore French domination in Maghreb. When she discusses the results of the popular consultation (around 80% in favor of the general), she says: The heart of the matter is that they [the people] don’t want to be governed by their equals; they have too low an opinion of them, because they have too low an opinion of themselves and of their next-door neighbors. It’s ‘human’ to like money and watch out for one’s own interests. But if one is human like everybody else, then one is not capable of governing everyone else. So people demand the non human, the superhuman, the Great Man who will be ‘honest’ because he’s ‘above that sort of thing’. (p. 171)

This speaks millions about the attraction of populism and of the amazing opportunities that providential leaders can exploit to take themselves in the vicinity of absolute power, carried on the shoulders of a cheering crowd. Just watch what is going on right now in Venezuela – Chavez is to be admired for his audacity and for his brazen use of people’s feelings (incl. government by television, a new expression!) to justify his take-over of the country’s government.

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[1] Simone de Beauvoir ([1963] 1992). Hard Times. Force of Circumstance, II 1952 – 1962. With a new introduction by Toril Moi. New York: Paragon House

Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture

I so much admire people who defy death through their courage and energy. One such person is certainly Harold Pinter, too ill to travel to Sweden to receive the Nobel prize for literature, but not too ill to speak eloquently on issues of direct concern to us all.

In case you have missed the lecture, here is the link to the text: http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

The part I like best is when he volunteers to be a speech-writer for Bush. What an irony and what a delivery (he used to be an actor as well, and it shows!).

"I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.
'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it."

Books: Cat's Eye

I am not sure how I feel about this bit from Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye: "Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened" (p. 240)

Would this mean that you are compelled, by understanding one's behavior, to be less critical about it, to accept it even if y0u don't agree with it? I thought that knowing something more about other people actually evens out the balance of power between you and them...

I also like this phrase: "The body is pure energy, solidified light".

Walt Whitman and Bob Dylan

It hasn't occured to me before that there should be a common tradition that links Walt Whitmand and Bob Dylan, but I just recently re-read a collection of verses by the first author, only to be reminded of the revolutionary ethos of young Dylan.

Read this fragment from Walt Whitman:
"Beat! beat! drums! -- blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities -- over the rumble of wheels in the streets;
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? no sleepers must sleep in those beds,
No bargainers bargains by day -- no brokers or speculators -- would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums -- you bugles wilder blow."

Doesn't it remind you of "The Times They Are A-Changin'"?

"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."

Book Notes: Da Vinci's Code

After a long hesitation, I decided to take advantage of the public library collection and get my hands on this world-wide bestseller. After having read it, I find no surprise in the fact that it managed to stay on top of list for the most purchased books - it has a nice, lively writing style (even though very much along the expected path suggested by the suspense and mystery literature), and a plausible story. A bit on the obvious side perhaps, but it is hard to pretend you don't know what the book is about after a year of exposure to non-stop comments about its plot.

I guess what made it most attractive was 1. The combination of fact and fiction and the credibility of the story and 2. Touching a soft spot in today's consciousness, namely the questioning of mainstream religion from the point of view of feminism and other currents of critical thought. Of course, this second point is all in the interpretation and not present in the actual text, but I guess that is what made it worth to comment endlessly on. Perhaps it is more appealing to the imaginary of the contemporary person to see Jesus as a man, a visionary perhaps but a regular, un-divine, really just-like-you-and-me kind of guy. The desacralization of everything. And the need for a good story to mobilize the imagination - we are, after all, hungry for belief, as the success of this book, which tries to demolate the biblical narrative and to perhaps replace it with something more suitable for today's world, demonstrates.

Books: Latest Readings

I have meant to write down something about my readings for quite a while, but everytime I remembered to do it, I realized that I have not brought the book with me and I could not include some of my favorite quotations. Now this problem is solved, as I have packed away ALL my books, so bringing them anywhere is out of the question.
So, I decided to write down a couple of impressions about the books, with the quotations postponed until better, more stable times.

Eric Orsenna - "Madame Ba". Indeed, a great piece of writing, and, to my shame, one of the very few about Africa on my list. Conceived as a request for a French visa (and following the form's itemized questions), the book is the biography of a strong Malinese woman who has an astounding energy and an acute sense of observation. Her life, from the childhood spent near a mystical mother and a rationalist father, to the old age (she is a grandmother, although she does not feel drained of power), is depicted as to explore both the personal and the general; both the individual and the political and cultural background. A very critical but also loving portrait of a person and of a country.

J. M. Coetzee - "Youth". Although I really like the surgical quality of Coetzee's writing, I felt that "Youth", describing the life of a young computer engineer and poet wanna-be, is simply too dry. It is a novel where nothing happens, where the main character does not evolve, except perhaps to get deeper and deeper into misery, a key word in the text. Trying to escape his family and the feeling of marginality, a young South African emmigrates to London at the beginning of the '60s, but fails to become a poet (his secret ambition) and, despite his feeble attempts at romantic love, ends up disabused and lonely, a small cog in a big machinery he cannot control. Very well done, I thought, the feeling of displacement and isolation of the colonial exile as well as the atmosphere of the work environment in a 1962 IBM programming office.

Khaled Hosseini - "The Kite Runner". Supposedly the first Afghani novel accessible in English, "The Kite Runner" has very high but also very low points. On the positive side, the portait of Kabul before the Russian invasion, as well as during the Taliban regime, feels very real and moving. One can smell the food, see the houses, hear the conversations, get excited about the children's games, feel the fear of locals in face of the acts of random violence. The main characters are also made of flesh and bones, and are far from being perfect incarnations of generalized human types.
However, the plot itself, about a young Afghani who recalls his childhood and his betrayal of his best friend from an exile position in the US, has many artificial twists and turns and seems forced in its quest for a moral ending. Although the adventures grab you and keep you interested, some of the symbolism is simply over the top. Making exception of these moralizing attempts, the book is very readable and opens up a universe as of yet less explored.