Once again I apologise for being late. I make no excuse for this, partly because there are too many reasons to mention. Oh all right, here’s one — my desire to participate in the online world is waning. The same empty vessels with the same prejudices still resonate as loudly as they ever did. I am very tempted to leave them to it and do something more useful instead. Partly for this reason I haven’t added the usual pictures and links, and I am wondering whether I shall continue much more in this vein. Time will tell.
Paul Cooper: Fall of Civilisations I was prompted to read this as there was a glimmer of a joint book event with the author given that my latest book is similarly fin d’espèce. The event never happened, but I got the book all the same. It’s a very readable account of the decline and fall of different civilisations through the ages, and seems to be a spin-off of a podcast called Fall of Civilisations. The book definitely has that episodic feel. Each one of the fourteen chapters is a case history of the rise, decline and fall of a civilisation, from Sumer to Easter Island. It was refreshing to find details of civilisations far from the usual beaten track, such as the Khmer; the southern Indian civilisation of Vijayanagar; and the Songhai of the African Sahel. It is engagingly written, but – perhaps because of its derivation from a podcast – doesn’t quite have the coherence of, say, Collapse by Jared Diamond. So, what causes civilisations to fall? Well, it’s a number of things. Climate change (whether natural or human-caused); the exhaustion of land required to support a large population; but, mostly, the endless capacity for human societies to bash themselves in the face with their own stupidity, cupidity and vainglory.
Mark Rowlands: The Happiness of Dogs In which a professional philosopher and avocational Dog Person takes issue with the Socratic ideal that only the examined life is worth living. In the course of his exploration (and I use the word course advisedly, because one acquires in reading this book a great deal of knowledge about the current thinking on matters such as morality, motivation, sentience and so on) Rowlands shows that dogs, lacking the human ability to reflect upon themselves and their place in the world, have a more fulfilled life. It is the unexamined life, contra Socrates, that is worth living. Humans sometimes achieve a nirvanic state in which they can fleetingly ‘lose themselves’ , if, for example, they are playing sport; indulging in some hobby or activity that they love; or during sex. To quote from the Guide to Jewish Buddhist Wisdom – there is no self. But if there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Dogs, though, find themselves in this state as a matter of course, and can do things routinely that many humans struggle to achieve even for a moment, such as full, honest love and commitment. So pupperino, so prelapsarian, and who, really, is the better off?
Jonny Sweet: The Kellerby Code is what might have happened had P. G. Wodehouse tried to write Brideshead Revisited but ended up with Vile Bodies. It concerns Edward, our mashup of Jeeves, Charles Ryder and Tony Last, who would do anything for his ungrateful friends Robert and Stanza. Collect their dry-cleaning. Get them tables at a restaurant. Be There for them at any time of day or night. And all because he has a burning and unrequited love for Stanza, whose ancestral pile of Kellerby stands in for Brideshead. Without wishing to spoil anything from this brittle, pin-sharp satirical froth, Edward – unlike Tony – laughs Last.
Tom Michell: Penguin Lessons The true story of a young Englishman who finds himself teaching at an English-style boy’s public school in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1970s. On vacation across the estuary of the River Plate in Punta dal Este, Uruguay, he becomes the unlikely saviour of a penguin, the only one left alive after a colony has been fouled by an oil slick. Smuggling the penguin into Argentina where it becomes a kind of school mascot, the penguin – named Juan Salvado – provides inspiration for one and all, mostly by being a good listener. The book is charming and reminiscent of such tales as Tarka the Otter. I have heard that it is to be adapted into a magic-lantern presentation starring Steve Coogan as Juan Salvado.
Mouthy Al-Rashid: Between Two Rivers I have long been fascinated with the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, ever since I did a school project on Sumer almost half a century ago, reading the works of Samuel Noah Kramer and Georges Roux and becoming entranced with the Epic of Gilgamesh. Al-Rashid became entranced on her very first exposure to cuneiform writing, and offers a guide to the rises and falls of Mesopotamian civilisations through a unique lens. One of the many discoveries was a collection, all in the same stratigraphic level at Ur and in a palace that might have been the residence of a princess, of a series of Mesopotamian artefacts of widely divergent dates and uses. This, says Al-Rashid, could have been the earliest known museum. Al-Rashid uses these objects to tell the story of ancient Mesopotamia. I find my schoolboy interest rekindled.
James Rhodes: Instrumental The author is a renowned concert pianist who is unusual in that he came to the instrument late in life, and indeed for a period of ten years didn’t touch a keyboard at all. In this searing and very sweary memoir, the author recounts how his mind and body were scarred by sustained physical and sexual abuse from a gym teacher over a period of five years between the ages of five and ten. This led to a very uncertain life in which his deep psychological trauma remained — and still remains — unhealed. It also led to back problems caused by the spinal damage resulting from the repeated violent penetration of the anus of a five-year-old by an adult male penis. This is occasionally a very difficult read (or listen) and leaves one recoiling with rage at those adults who violate the young and the defenceless, and how society repeatedly fails to do much about it. Oh, and there’s some lovely music.
Natasha Pulley: The Bedlam Stacks Another month, another highly imaginative novel from Natasha Pulley. This one is set in the same fictional universe as The Watchmaker of Filigree Street but apart from a couple of scenes with the main protagonist of that book, the setting is very different. The scene is the early nineteenth century, and an British expedition is sent to Darkest Peru to steal cuttings of the cinchona tree for transport to Ceylon, so the quinine can be used to treat malaria ravaging the Indian subcontinent. The expedition makes its way over the high Andes into a region of dreamlike fantasy, where people with various disabilities and disfigurements live in New Bethlehem (hence Bedlam), a colony set on three tall islands (hence Stacks), set in a wide river, where magic is real and statues appear to move. The style is very much the Boy’s Own Adventure of tales such as King Solomon’s Mines (though with more modern sensibilities) with nods to Heart of Darkness and — dare I say it — the chilling Weeping Angels from Dr Who. Each one of Pulley’s novels has its own flavour, even if some are set in the same fictional setting. Whereas The Watchmaker of Filigree Street was crisp and telegraphic, The Bedlam Stacks is richly weird. The Half-Life of Valery K takes place in the Soviet Union of the 1960s — and The Mars House is set on, well, Mars. There are, however, things in common. The characterisation is sensitive; there is quite often a bromance between the two male leads; and all the novels feature at least one mention of an octopus.
