Category Archives: Books

The Bluest Eye: The terrifying Logic of Racism

Books, racism

 

In the Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, Pecola’s mother and father, the products of a racist society that created people without self-worth, had epic fights. They were poor and black. Yet those fights, “relieved the tiresomeness of poverty, gave grandeur to their dead rooms.” As a result her mother—Mrs. Breedlove—what a name—and Cholly her husband had an incredible relationship. They started out loving each other, but over time that love curdled into something contaminated. Yet, they needed each other. “If Cholly had stopped drinking, she would have never forgiven Jesus. She needed Cholly’s sins desperately. The lower he sank, the wilder and more irresponsible he became, the more splendid she and her task became. In the name of Jesus.

         Yet Cholly needed Mrs. Breedlove just as much. They were not complete without each other. “No less did Cholly need her. She was one of the few things abhorrent to him that he could touch and therefore hurt. He poured out on her the sum of all his inarticulate fury and aborted desires. Hating her, he could leave himself intact.”

That is what the impotent black man in America was reduced to. He could not fight back against his powerful white oppressors. He had to accept the domination and the hurt because as Toni Morrison said, there was nothing he could do about it. The only thing he could do was turn on those who were less powerful than him. Even though he loved them—his wife and his daughter—he could only try to quench his abject self-hatred by hurting those he loved the most.

Half-remembered injustices that were “humiliations, defeats, and emasculations… could stir him into flights of depravity that surprised himself—but only himself. Somehow he could not astound. He could only be astounded.”

When Cholly was young he loved Darlene a lovely young black girl. One day they were having sex—loving sex—when they were interrupted by a group of young white men bent on harm. They forced them to continue the sex as they watched shining flashlights onto the bodies of the disgraced couple. As a result, Cholly came to hate Darlene instead of the white boys. That is the terrifying logic of racism. The victim comes to hate himself and those he loves the most, instead of the lethal white predators. Morrison described that process this way,

“Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene. Never did he once consider directing his hatred toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were big, white, armed, men. He was small, black, and helpless. His subconscious knew what his mind did not guess—that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up, like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke. He was, in time, to discover the hatred of white men—but not now. Not in impotence, but later, when the hatred could find sweet expression. For now, he hated the one who had created the situation, the one who bore witness to his failure, his impotence. The one whom he had not been able to protect, to spare, to cover from the round moon glow of the flashlight.”

 

What Toni Morrison, like James Baldwin before her, realized, and so many of us, like me in particular have not realized, is the astonishing visceral power of impotent rage. It is helpless before overwhelming power so it turns on itself and those the victim loves the most. It is irrational of course, but that does not matter. Somehow, in some twisted pathological logic, it is better to hurt those you love than do nothing but accept the injustice.

In Canada we are often told, by the comfortable privileged, that the “aboriginal problem” is exactly that—an aboriginal problem. Most violence against aboriginals is inflicted by other aboriginals. It is entirely their fault. That may be, but that changes nothing! That is exactly the deadly awfulness of racism. It can impel the victim to turn on himself or herself and turn on others, even more vulnerable, loved ones, in a cruel metamorphism that bespeaks generations of abuse and imposed self-hatred. The vulnerable ones are then attacked from all sides. There is no refuge, no safe haven. Racism is much more powerful and much more awful than I ever imagined. It is thanks to writers like Toni Morrison and James Baldwin that I have come to realize that. Thanks.

White Fragility

Books, racism

 

 

After the recent incident in Minneapolis where a white police officer killed a black by kneeling on his neck for nearly 9 minutes even though he was lying on his back with his handcuffed behind him and he was clearly having great difficulty breathing. That incident has energized  and enraged people around the world including Canada.

I was already thinking about the issue of racism because I had recently read a fascinating book called White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for White People to Talk About Racism, written by Robin DiAngelo. The book was given to me for Christmas by my half-indigenous daughter-in-law. I wonder what she was trying to tell me?   But I have learned a lot from that book. I recommend that everyone read it. It is worth the read. I also heard DiAngelo on PBS’s Amanpour & Company.

I have never met anyone who admits to being a racist. None. There may be some out there who admit that they are racists, but they would be extremely rare. That does not mean, of course, that there are no racists. There are many.

No one likes being called a racist. It is generally considered one of the worst things you can say about someone, even people who are clearly racists.

Even many progressive or liberal thinking people however are racists. They just don’t know it. That does not mean they are racists about everything. It does mean that they exhibit racism. They express racism.

When white people are questioned about racism, even without a deliberate accusation of racism, people are very quick to respond viscerally ‘I am not a racist.’ The problem is things are not that simple. Robin DiAngelo, in her  book,  argues that there is an unconscious bias even among the most progressive of white people, including herself.

What does she mean by the expression ‘white fragility’? She puts it this way, “The expression ‘white fragility’ is meant to capture how little it takes to set white people off into defensiveness. For many white people the mere suggestion that whiteness has meaning is enough to cause us to erupt in defensiveness.” Many white people object to any such generalizations. “Individualism is a really precious ideology for white people and we don’t like to be generalized about.”

DiAngelo responds to such objections a sociologist. She is comfortable about generalizing about people. Social life is observable in patterned ways. But, she adds, “I am also a member of a social group and we all have to be willing to grapple with collective messages we are all receiving because we live in a shared culture.”

She is a professor of sociology but she came to her current beliefs through experience. She got a job in the 1990s as a diversity trainer. She felt confident she could lead discussion on such topics because of course, she was above racism. After all, as she said, “I was a vegetarian how could I be a racist?” Yet she exhibited all the classic liberal symptoms of racism and when she worked with people of colour some of them challenged her. And those challenges were uncomfortable. She had to learn to handle accusations of racism openly and with grace and honesty. That was not easy at first.

Until then, when she was in her thirties, she had never had her racial world-view challenged. She did not believe she had a racial world-view. As a white person she saw herself as “just human.” As she said, “Most white people have an unracialized identity.”

When she went to workplaces they were overwhelming filled with white people who were mandated to have such discussions. As a result she was met with deep hostility. After all none of them were racists. At one company seminar where there were 40 people and 38 of them were white, one white man pounded the table screaming that white people can’t get jobs. According to DiAngelo this position is a kind of delusion. As some people have said, ‘when you are used to 100% 98% feels oppressive.’

DiAngelo tries in her book to explain why whites feel uncomfortable about discussing race with non-whites. It is worth thinking about. I intend to blog more about what I learned from reading her book and others, as well as some personal experiences.  All of us should think about racism. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Maybe, especially if it’s uncomfortable.

Religion in the time of Plague (or Pandemic)

Books, Classic Books, existentialism, Philosophy/Ideas, religion

Some last thoughts on The Plague by Albert Camus. In that novel Camus  challenges the religious approach to suffering. Suffering is of course a fundamental problem for anyone who believes in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God. How can there be such a God if there is suffering?

In the novel a Catholic priest Father Paneloux tries to approach the problem. He did that in response to a horrendously painful death of a young child from the plague. He set himself a difficult task. He said that there was a fact that we should under all circumstances take into consideration. We should always bear in mind that “Appearances notwithstanding, all trials, however cruel, worked together for good to the Christian. And, indeed, what a Christian should always seek in his hour of trial was to discern that good, in what it consisted, and how best to turn it to account.” We should not try to explain the plague; we should try to learn what it can teach us.

Paneloux acknowledged that “nothing is more important on earth than a child’s suffering.” He also refused to take ‘the easy way’ out of the dilemma. In his second sermon to the people,

“He, Father Paneloux refused to have recourse to simple devices enabling him to scale that wall. Thus he might easily have assured them that the child’s sufferings would be compensated for by an eternity of bliss awaiting him. But how could he give that assurance when to tell the truth, he knew nothing about it? For who could dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment’s human suffering? He who asserted that, would not be a true Christian, a follower of the Master who knew all the pangs of suffering in his body and his soul. No, he, Father Paneloux would keep faith with that great symbol of all suffering, the tortured body on the Cross: he would stand fast, his back to the wall, and face honestly the terrible problem of a child’s agony. And he would say to those who listened to his words to-day: ‘My brothers, a time of testing has come for us all. We must believe everything or deny everything. And who, I ask amongst you would dare to deny everything?”

The priest considered this “the All or Nothing”, “the greatest of all virtues.” Father Paneloux did not want to dodge the question. He wanted to face it head on. He did not want to sleep-walk through this question. Again a real (though fictional child) in the novel faced that terrible suffering. Could he not do the same?

While on the one hand religious thinkers for millennia have seen suffering as a way towards spiritual enlightenment, others have seen suffering as the greatest spiritual challenge. Perhaps there is no inconsistency there. Perhaps that is the point. Father Paneloux is certainly not trying to get around the problem. He wants to go through it. Paneloux knew, “religion in a time of plague could not be the religion of every day.” Paneloux also concluded, “The suffering of children were our bread of affliction, but without this bread our souls would die of spiritual hunger.”

This meant that Father Paneloux had to have  “a total acceptance” of that child’s suffering. This entailed that “since it was God’s will, we too should will it.” As Collin Wilson in Problematic Rebel said, we have to say yes to it all. So Paneloux says “believe everything so, as not to be forced into denying everything.” What a terrible choice, but he took it. “The Christian should yield himself fully to the divine will, even though it passed his understanding.” Paneloux would not allow a half-measure from the Christian. It was not good enough to say, ‘This I understand but that I cannot accept.” That was just a sorry attempt to weasel out of the piercing dilemma.

Paneloux’s position is certainly a courageous one. He said “we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at whiles, and try to do what good lay in our power.” Once again like Tarrou and like Camus himself, we must be satisfied with the small good. We need not concern ourselves with the grand design. That is above our pay grade. Do what good we can. That’s all. We need not be or even try to be saints.

Yet this is a very tough position.

“There is no island of escape in time of plague. No, there was no middle course. We could accept the dilemma; and chose either to hate God or to love God. And who would dare to hate Him?…’the love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God’s will ours.”

But of course this was not Camus’s position, or at least Rieux, the narrator. Like Dostoevsky in that other classic, Brothers Karamazov, he could not accept a world that required a child to suffer, He was not prepared to “justify” the suffering of a child. He would even dare to hate God if necessary. How bold is that? Who could be that brave?

Power Shift: The Longest Revolution

Books, CBC radio, Male Dominance

 

The 2019 Massey Lectures were delivered by Sally Armstrong. You can listen to them on CBC radio by using the free CBC app. A book on the lectures is already out called Power Shift: The Longest Revolution.  The theme of the lectures was the arrival of women’s fundamental equality. Armstrong argues The better off women are, the better off we all are.

Many parts of it were very interesting. The last 5 minutes of the last lecture were one example. With passion she concluded her lecture series this way:

“Man the hunter is bogus. There is no evidence that woman was not right there beside him hunting. The ancient past is a flawed account that was history recorded mainly by men and mostly about men. In fact, for millions of years we now know that men and women had equal status. And then they didn’t. It was during the agriculture era when food became plentiful, when they could focus on development rather than sheer survival until tomorrow, then both men and women realized that the future depended on producing more labourers and only women had the sexual reproductive capacity to deliver a child. Pregnant women were appropriated by men to produce the next generation, as much as land was prioritized and acquired by men at that time. That was the birth of patriarchy and subordination of women. That subordination was heightened when religion was formalized and institutionalized in the early legal codes. It has taken 10,000 years and a million years to right those wrongs. The power shift came from goddesses and priestesses, seers, diviners, nuns, healers, writers, reformers, activists, suffragettes, and feminists who took on the prophets and the kings, the orators and the philosophers, the politicians and the bullies, to find justice, fairness, and equality for all. It has been indeed the longest revolution.’

It really is time for male dominance to end. Even men would be be better off if that happened.

The Monarchy of Fear

Books, Decline of the west, Fear, politics, Populism, Trump

 

When I saw the title of a book, The Monarchy of Fear, I was immediately attracted to it. Then when I saw who wrote it, I had no choice; I had to buy it. The author is Martha Nussbaum, considered by some, to be the finest philosopher in the United States. I had read an article about her in the New Yorker, but had not read any of her books. In that article I learned that she liked to write about emotions. To me, a graduate in Philosophy some 5 decades ago, this seemed unlikely. I was wrong. Emotions are important in so many ways and it is good that philosophers opine on them.

For quite some time I have thought fear is an emotion that can have extraordinary consequences, particularly in the modern political context. Fear is a natural product of the age of anxiety or the age of anger. What could be more important than that?

Nussbaum had important things to say in the very first paragraph of the book. Here is what she said,

 

“There’s a lot of fear around in the U.S. today, and this fear is often mingled with anger, blame, and envy. Fear all too often blocks rational deliberation, poisons hope, and impedes constructive cooperation for a better future.”

This struck exactly the right note from my perspective. The real problem with fear is that it interferes with rational decision-making. And we see it everywhere. In Canada just like the United States, but I think it is particularly prevalent in the United States. That country is the richest in the world, has the best armed forces that money can buy, spends more on prisons and police than any other nation by a long-shot.  Yet it seems to me to be a country infused, no saturated, with fear. Americans like to call themselves the ‘land of the brave,’ but over and over again, from gated communities, to elaborate armies, the country is hobbled by fear to such an extent and with such intensity that it constantly surprises. And as Nussbaum suggests, such fear often “blocks rational deliberation.” Nowhere is the effect of this powerful more evident than in the election of Donald Trump. What rational deliberation could have ushered in his presidency?

Nussbaum boldly asserted the following:

“What is today’s fear about?  Many Americans, themselves powerless, out of control of their own lives. They fear for their own future and that of loved ones. They fear that the American Dream–that hope that your children will flourish and do even better than you have done–has died, and everything has slipped away from them. These feelings have their basis in real problems: among others, income stagnation in the lower middle class, alarming declines in the health and longevity of members of this group, especially men, and the escalating costs of higher education at the very time that a college degree is increasingly required for employment. But real problems are difficult to solve, and their solution takes long, hard study and cooperative work toward an uncertain future. It can consequently seem all to attractive to convert that sense of panic and impotence into blame and the “othering” of outsider groups such as immigrants, racial minorities, and women.  “They” have taken our jobs. Or: wealthy elites have stolen our country.”

How many of the important social problems of the day are encapsulated in that paragraph? There is a lot to chew over in that paragraph.

And of course with such fears rational deliberation is unlikely! It is hardly surprising as a result that the United States, in its moment of fear, has turned to a man who is probably more unlikely to solve its problems than anyone else we could consider. As a result of fear they made the worst possible decision imaginable. That is the monarchy of fear!

Toni Morrison on Hate

Books, Male Dominance, Philosophy/Ideas, racism

 

 

I have still not got over Toni Morrison’s  novel–Love. It is that disturbing. The novel is actually much more about its opposite. Hate. It is about a specific kind of love—love that is transformed into hate. How can that happen?

Morrison has a fine understanding of hate. She described how the Cosey girls fought over the coffin of Bill Cosey, the patriarch of the family , until one of the women, L (does that stand for love?) restored order. But the hate lived on. Hate is darn hard to destroy. Morrison described the haters this way: “their faces as different as honey from soot, looked identical. Hate does that. Burns everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy’s.”

The novel is deeply imbedded into a racist society infused with white male dominance, even though there are very few white characters in the novel and none of them is a major character. The natural product of such a society is that the dominated black males turn to dominate those  “beneath” them. And of course that is only other non-whites.

The man at the centre of the novel is Bill Cosey a 52-year old black man who rapes an 11-year old black girl with the consent of her family. The girl is so young and ignorant that she “grinned happily as she was led down the hall to darkness, liquor smell and old man business.” And as so often happens, the young victim ends up hating herself after the abuse. “I must have been the one who dreamed up this world, she thought. No nice person could have.”

Heed and Christine–11 and 12 year old friends—end up competing for a 52-year old man, entirely unworthy of either of them, and the two become transformed into enemies in the process. They learn to hate.  “The eyes of each are enslaved by the other’s. Opening pangs of guilt, rage, fatigue, despair are replaced by a hatred so pure, so solemn, it feels beautiful, almost holy.” Can you imagine a hate that is “almost holy”? Even the holy is turned perverse in a world ruled by hate and dominance. The dominance of whites over blacks turns the blacks into dominating other blacks.  That is the world that is a product of hate and in such a world even the holy turns evil.

Heed and Christine had a hard time maintaining their hatred for each other. Hate does not come easily and it is difficult to maintain. As Morrison said, “Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.” They had “bruising fights with hands, feet, teeth and soaring objects…once–perhaps twice–a year, they punched, grabbed hair, wrestled, bit, slapped, never drawing blood, never apologizing, never premeditating, yet drawn annually to pant through an episode that was as much rite as fight. Finally they stopped, moved into acid silence, and invented other ways to underscore bitterness.”

Both of them ultimately realized that neither one could leave. They were married to each other in a dark perverse marriage. They both had “an unspoken realization that the fights did nothing other than allow them to hold each other.” That is what undying hatred is all about. It bonds the two in unholy matrimony. “There in a little girl’s bedroom an obstinate skeleton stirs, clacks, refreshes itself.”

 

Toni Morrison’s “Love”

Books, Male Dominance, racism

 

I came to appreciate Toni Morrison late in life. That is a pity. But at least I did it. I finished her book, Love, just a couple of days before she died.

Love  is one of the best novels I have ever read. Of course, I think I have now said that about every one of Toni Morrison’s novels that I have read. She was a brilliant writer. When I started to write this review I said, “she is the finest living novelist.”  The only writer I could think of to compare her to was  Marilynne Robinson. Both of them were astonishing writers.

Loveis a difficult read. I was half way through the novel when I realized I had to start over from the beginning. I was missing too much. I had not caught on to enough. I hate to start over, but sometimes I just have to do that.

Though difficult, the novel, like any great novel, rewards the effort to understand it. That does not mean the reader has captured it. Far from it. It cannot be captured. But the reader can be captured by it.  the novel is about 2 “love” stories.  But they are hardly ordinary love stories.

The novel is a story about women and how they relate to a powerful man. The novel is told through or from the point of view of those amazing women and centres around a horrid incident at its core. Ultimately it is about the violence and its consequences inflicted on one of the women–but really all of them–by that strong man at the centre of the novel. It is a violence that is as unredeemed as it is chilling.

The man at the centre of the novel is Bill Cosey—“the Big Man who with no one to stop him, could get away with it and anything else he wanted.” He is a 52-year old man who can molest an 11-year old child with impunity and then marry her to make it ‘all right’.  her 12 year old friend saw this as a  “real betrayal,” by her “friend who grinned happily as she was led down the hall to darkness, liquor smell and old man business.” She was only 11 and did not know better so she “grinned happily.”  After all the adults who loved her would not abandon her to such a ravishing would they? Yes they would. As so often happens the young victim ends up hating herself after the abuse. She concludes, “I must have been the one who dreamed up this world, she thought. No nice person could have.”

Heed the Night, as she is called, has learned that this world into which she has been thrust by her family with the connivance of his family, is a terrifying world where evil catches fire and is doused with sugar creating a sickening black “caramelizing evil.” It is a world haunted by perverse love. It is impossible for her to escape, so Heed became “grown-up nasty.” How else could this have turned out?  Christine, Heeds friend, who is 12 years old, and is one of those women who betrayed Heed  and ends up with a mother-in-law who is her friend but younger than she is. Of course as Christine says, “most people married young back then (the sooner a girl was taken over by a man, the better.” In the end we learn a bitter black truth in which “the problem for those left alive is what to do about revenge–how to escape the sweetness of its rot. So you can see why families make the best enemies. They have the time and convenience to honey-butter the wickedness they prefer.” That sweet caramelized evil.

Heed and Christine–11 and 12 year old friends–competing for a 52-year old man are transformed into enemies. They learn to hate. Only hate is natural in this most unnatural world. “The eyes of each are enslaved by the other’s. Opening pangs of guilt, rage, fatigue, despair are replaced by a hatred so pure, so solemn, it feels beautiful, almost holy.” Even the holy is turned perverse in a world so infused with dominance. The dominance of whites over blacks turns the blacks into dominating other blacks.  The topsy-turvy world is a product of hate where even the holy turns evil. “There, in a little girl’s bedroom, an obstinate skeleton stirs, clacks, refreshes itself.”

There is another “love story,” if the first can be called a love story. This is a passionate love story. Young lovers this time. Such love should be pure and innocent. It is the story of Junior and Romen. When Roman sees Junior, “she seemed to him as beautiful as it is possible for a human to be.” It starts out innocent, but nothing in the novel is innocent for long.  In such a world how could it be different? All the principal characters in the novel are African-American. Of course, all are victims of white dominance and oppression that transforms their lives in the most ugly way imaginable. Mainly that oppression is entirely overt, but it is real. It curdles all love into caramelized evil where love is transformed into hate. Perverse love is the bastard child of oppression.  As Women says, Junior “plays hard, that’s all. I mean she likes being hurt…She didn’t just like it. She preferred it.” And Romen in response, was “cold, unsmiling, watching himself inflict pain and suffer pain above scream level where a fresh kind of joy lay.” No wonder that when in the abandoned hotel she undresses for him she keeps on her socks, then ties one around his neck and into the other inserts her foot and “the foot she slipped into the sock looked to him like a hoof.” His innocent passionate lover becomes the devil incarnate–caramelized black evil again. After all,  “A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick.” And he becomes her “Sugarboy.”

In the novel family is as twisted and s curdled as love. Junior is assaulted by her uncles (“the howling uncles”) who are “idle teenagers whose brains had been insulted by the bleakness of their lives, alternated between brutality and coma.” They are the products of a racist society.  The uncles threatened to turn Junior over to another old man–Vosh. This woke her up. The threat was real. As she thought, “the possibility that it could happen, that she could be handed over to the old man in the valley who liked to walk around with his private parts in his hands and singing hymns of praise, jolted her up from the floor, out of reaching hands and through the door.” For Junior prison is a reprieve from the maniacal madness of family. Prison is better than life with her family!

The world of love is no paradise. “People with no imagination feed it with sex–the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that–softly, without props.”

One of Morrison’s novels is called Paradise. This is certainly no paradise. But it is real. It is the product of a profoundly racist society where those at the top dominate with impunity and those at the bottom  accept the dominance while “grinning,” because they don’t even know anything better.

Gray Mountain

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Books, Law

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xacoebo7zns77ok/Screenshot%202019-03-14%2021.09.42.png?dl=0

 

Gray Mountain, by John Grisham, is in some ways a traditional Grisham novel. He often has great ideas that get you interested right off the bat. This was no exception. A Young Wall Street Lawyer gets laid off after the Financial Crisis of 2008. As a severance perk the firm pays for her health insurance if she agrees to work pro bono for a charity. As a result she finds a job with a Legal Aid firm deep in Virginia. There she discovers Appalachia and all that comes with it, including coal. The coal industry is up to its  old tricks and some employees need legal help in dealing with Big Coal.

Sadly, like most Grisham novels in my opinion, he starts off with a great idea that fizzles because he does not know how to finish it. Grisham is like a good starting pitcher who needs a closer. This book is in that strong tradition. It fizzles  at the end. In the meantime it did provide an entertaining read.

Before it ends, the heroine, Samantha helps a number of indigent people who were getting screwed. The saddest of her cases involves a coal miner who contracts Black Lung disease for which he is entitled to be compensated, but the system, and all embroiled in it, use that system to deny benefits. Samantha in the best tradition of the law tries to get redress. Big Coal resists. As Grisham writes, “coal companies are brilliant when it comes to finding new ways to screw people.”

As Grisham writes:

Chester said, “it’s a favorite trick in the coalfields. A company mines the coal, then goes bankrupt to avoid payments and the reclamation requirements. Sooner or later they usually pop up with another name. Same bad actors, just a new logo.”

“That’s disgusting,” Samantha said.

“No, that’s the law.”

Grisham is nothing if not cynical about lawyers and the law. But in recent years he has also painted the other side of the story, with lawyers like Samantha. There are some good lawyers too. This is what she learns from another lawyer, talking about court rooms, “I love them. It’s the only place where the little guy can go toe-to-toe on a  level field with a big, crooked, corporation. A person with nothing–no money–nothing but a set of facts can file a lawsuit and force a billion dollar company to show up for a fair fight.” That is the majesty of the law.  Even if the fight is not always fair, often it is. Often it brings justice. That is a pretty good thing.

For another client she helps, when no one else will, Samantha realizes this on her way home:

“As she drove away from the Starlight Motel, Samantha realized she had spent the better part of 12 hours aggressively representing Pamela Booker and her children. Had she not stumbled into the clinic that morning, they would be hiding somewhere in the backseat of their car, hungry, cold, hopeless, frightened, and vulnerable.” Again, a pretty good thing.

Sometimes– maybe not often enough, but sometimes–lawyers can be proud of what they do. Damn proud.

The Interesting World of Len Deighton

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Books, CBC radio, World of ideas

 

 

Though the wonders of the CBC Radio App, I listened to a fascinating interview on CBC with an old friend whom I have never met–Len Deighton. I never met him but I grew up with him. Deighton was the writer of spy novels from the 1960s to 1980s. He was in my opinion a great writer. He was right up their with another favortie John LeCarre.  Both of those writers broke the protocol of spy novels in suggesting that the good guys–the British and America spies–were just as morally corrupt as the bad guys–the Communists. Who would ever have thought that?

Listen to this  conversation between Bernard Samson and his boss Dickie Cruyer in British intelligence, who Phillip Coulter described as having “a PHD in office politics,”

 

Bernard: Who pays him?

Dickie:        He’s not for sale Bernard.

Bernard:      Then he’s no one I know.

His first novel, which he actually wrote for himself because he did not intend to publish it, did catch the public attention after he did publish it. He described blink and dingy streets of Berlin soaked with betrayal and paranoia. As Philip Coulter said, his books described “a broken down society at war with itself in which the greatest dangers were from within.”

Deighton realized that one of  the most most common fears of our policial leaders was a fear of a lack of information. He likened this to a fear of the dark or a lack of confidence that our future unknowns will be benign.      That opened up a lot of room for intelligence services (at least until the arrival of Donald Trump who relies instead on his own personal ‘intelligence.’)

Deighton described this in the first of the fabulous trilogy  Game, Set & Match where the spy Bernard Samson had sent a young and inexperienced spy, McKenzie, to a situation in which he was murdered. After that Bernard had terrible visions of McKenzie’s brains spattered on the wall behind his corpse. The visions came back to him at night and he shuddered. “I felt guilty and as I prepared for bed I suffered the delayed reaction that my body had deferred and deferred. I shook uncontrollably. I did not want to admit even to myself that I was frightened but that image of McKenzie kept blurring into an image of myself. And my guilt was turning into fear for fear is so unwelcome that it comes only in disguise and guilt is its favourite one.”

Coulter interviewed Deighton in the London Travellers Club dining room where well educated and well to do Englishmen who had travelled abroad met to discuss their travels. The club was a vital a cog in the British class system. It had a huge library with books that went right up to the ceiling. However, like the books in British aristocratic manors, many of them were seldom read. They were not really there to educate their owners; they were there for decoration. As Coulter said, “Fake books.  A Library not used for the purpose of imparting knowledge are in some ways metaphors for the themes in Len Deighton’s novels. Worlds where things are seldom what they seem where those with the trappings of power and competence actually rarely have those skills. The room too is emblematic of the class tensions that run through Deighton’s books. The tension between a natural aristocracy with wealth and power and the classes below them with little or none.”

Yet Deighton was actually ambivalent about that class system. He saw the good and the bad of that system and saw himself as a referee between the classes. He is a spectator.  As Deighton said in the interview, “If we look at history we see that the upper classes provided people with a sort of dignity, knowledge, self-respect and honour that is completely absent from the political world today and the world has grown much poorer in practicalities.”

Deighton’s complex view of classes is a familiar theme right through his books, filling them with humour, delight, and wonder. As Coulter said, “Yes he believes that there should be a leadership cadre, but no it shouldn’t be closed. Those who lead bear responsibilities not legislated but moral.”

This ambivalence in his novels is exemplified best by his main protaganist Bernie Samson. Sampson is constantly  wracked by that cruel division. After all he is the one who failed to go to one of the better British schools and had this constantly held over his head and his career by his superiors in the office and inferiors in life. “His office wars revolved around the occasionally inept but well educated bureaucrats who are his bosses.” Here is a delightful example, in a description by Bernie Samson:

“On Wednesday afternoon I was in Brett Renssalaer’s office. It was on the top floor not far from the suite the DG occupied. All the top floor offices were decorated to the personal taste of the occupant. It was one of the perks of seniority. Brett’s room was modern with glass and chrome and gray carpet. It was hard, austere, and colourless, a habitat just right for Brett with his dark worsted Saville Row suit, and the crisp white suit and club tie and his fair hair that was going white and the smile that seemed shy and fleeting, but was really the reflex action that marked his indifference.”

Deighton knew this world of spies from London was interesting, sly, and vicious, but above all complex. It is a world well worth inhabiting with a master guide like Len Deighton. He is well worth reading.

Reading is Sexy: The Tucson Festival of Books

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Arizona, Books, civilization

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I have wanted to go to the Tucson Festival of Books for many years.  Every year they have some very interesting authors. So this was the year we decided to go.  I was unable to secure tickets in advance. This was  a mistake.  But, I figured, that should not be a problem; after all for each venue they reserved 25% of the tickets for walk in traffic. We would just walk up right? Wrong!

To begin with we were late getting off by about 30 minutes and we missed the first event called “Sizzling Suspense” and featured 3 authors. We only knew one of them. That was J.A Jance as one of the authors. Chris and I had both read at least one of her books and liked them. However when we arrived we had a very difficult time finding parking. We had been told it was Spring break so parking would be easier. Wrong! Maybe it was easier than it was regularly, but it was definitely not easy.

As we were walking in we noticed there were a lot of people here. As we walked beside some enthusiastic attendees we were assured we would have a great time. One said she came very year and loved it. We were getting exciting despite the late start.

First, we were amazed at how many outdoor booths there were. Most were related to books or reading. All kinds for all kinds of readers. Childrens’ books, University of Arizona books, nature books, mystery books, religious books,  non-fiction, etc. There were Mormons trying to give away information about tracing our ancestral roots. Maybe they wanted to convert our dead relatives. That’s what people back home say they like to do. How do you convert dead people? There were more traditional religious nuts warning us to repent. You name it there was something there for your taste. The crowds were large. There was a busker in a pedestrian underpass under  a street who played wonderful music.  The acoustics were astounding where he stood. Even cheap Mennonites tipped! This actually was the highlight of the festival for me. Now you know it did not end well. I also loved some bumper stickers: “He’s not My President.” “Reading is sexy.” ”Keep the Immigrants. Deport the Racists.”

Eventually we found parking, not that far away from the site but we missed the first event. Still no problem as we took time to review the brochure.  We took so much time that we got to it “only” about 15 minutes before it was scheduled to start, but that should be enough time. Right? Wrong! The subject was “Is Democracy in Danger?” I thought that could not be very popular. Wrong once more! I went to the end of the line while Chris sat down near the entrance to the Hall. It was a very long line. I was getting doubtful about this process. About 25 feet from the entrance, after about 20 minutes of standing in line, it was announced that we would not get in. The line had been too long. It sucks to be us.

This was frustrating but we decided to get in line for the 3rd event even earlier so we could get in. This event  was called “Lets Get Real” and featured writers from the southern border. Although this was currently a very popular subject of debate, given Trump’s declaration of an emergency on the southern border, I thought there would not be big crowd for this talk. Wrong again! I was not there early enough. Many people support the wall; many do not. Same story. Just before getting to the entrance it was announced we would not get in, even though I had been in line for nearly half an hour. So the day was half over and we had got into zero events.  Needless to say I was frustrated with how this worked. I confess I even said a few bad words. I am not a very good Mennonite.  Me bad. No. Tucson Festival of Books bad.

I wanted to hear Noam Chomsky, one of my favourite political writers, and the featured speaker, who would be talking in the evening but I feared the same problem. I had been enough line-ups. I told Chris, “We are going home!” Wisely, she said, “no.”  Lets go to Madera Canyon so we get something out of our 90-minute drive to Tucson. Good thinking Chris. So we left without seeing 1 single event. We walked around, ate some food, looked at some weirdos and left.

It was not a total waste however. I figured out that there was no purpose in going to this Festival without tickets.  Had I bought them I realized I would still have to stand in a lineups, but only for a few minutes. There was a special line-up for ticket holders and provided people were not late they would get in.

The Festival  often have some very interesting authors. Here is a very partial list from years past:

2011 – Elmore Leonard

2012 – Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana

2013 – R.L. Stine

2014 – Richard Russo

2015 – Mitch Albom, Dave Barry, Sam Barry, Greg Isles, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan & Scott Turow -The Rock Bottom Remainders

2016 – J.A. Jance

2017 – T.C. Boyle

2018 – Billy Collins (America’s Poet laureate)

2019–Noam Chomsky

That is a pretty impressive list.

I also realized this was an immensely popular festival. The 2010 United States Census put the population of Tucson at 520,116, while the 2015 estimated population of the entire Tucson metropolitan statistical area was 980,263. That is similar to Winnipeg in other words. Yet this festival was huge. Many writers. Thousands of attendees. Everything free! Even parking (after we found it) was free.

What really amazed me though were the thousands of people who showed up. People of all ages. Not just intellectuals. Kids. Moms. Pops, odds and sod,  Hundreds of friendly volunteers. How could there be so many people to come to hear about books? I was stunned. Yesterday when we told a friend where we were going today he was perplexed. “Why would you do that?’ he asked. Tucson has many intelligent people that was my conclusion.  I hope to try it again when I am wiser.