Shhhh!

As with most things, I'm rather behind the times.  It's been many months since most of the arguments to combat the closure of libraries in the UK have been made.  People have been impassioned.  Placards have been waved.  And so it's now, after all of that, that I've decided to blog about it.

Having said that I'm behind the times, like most classicists, I can be surprisingly modern.  I bought a digital camera when they were still very rare (one of those Sony machines which stored the data on 3.5" floppy disk!  When they still measured things in imperial...), I have not one, but two Raspberry Pis and, if I had my wish, a flat screen television would rise up from the foot of my bed (I said I was modern, not that I have taste).

Why then would the disappearance of libraries matter to me?  The great meta-data cloud of the internet can provide us with, in some cases, a lot more information than can be gleaned in a wood pulp collection, and, what's more, in a fraction of the time.  Books sold on the internet are relatively cheap and easily found.  As much as I miss the excitement and sensual pleasure of browsing in a tiny book shop, I don't mourn the passing of these institutions in the same way.

But that's because they weren't institutions, they were businesses.  One of the many wonderful things about a library is that profit really should not enter into its ethos.  I think that this is one of the reasons that they have fallen foul of the twenty-first century.  'Profit as worth' is a concept which has trampled on places like these.

What then can we get from a non-profit space?  Everything else!  And do you know how I know this?  Because of my dreams...

I have nightmares every night.  It's to do with my body reacting to pain.  Some nights they're not too bad, others they're awful.  But they are usually very interesting and vivid.  I have many repeated themes that would, no doubt, fascinate any budding psychotherapist.  But let us concentrate on the dream image of the library.

In my sleepy brain, a library can house almost anything - violent struggles (blood on the crinkled spines), intrigues (whispered conversations behind the shelves), quests (the rows and rows of books leading on for miles and miles) and...well...best leave it there in case I give too much away and sentence myself to a prolonged period of incarceration and therapy.

There is a very good reason why my brain can site so many different genres of action in one space.  A library can be a huge number of things.  It is an open, public space.  It does not discriminate on lines of gender, age, ability, literacy or even taste (you should have seen the number of x-files "novels" I borrowed as a kid).  People can gather for events (book readings, IT courses etc) and there are facilities entirely apart from the bound pages (in our library there were computers, a photocopier and spaces at which one could work).

When I was talking to Deb about this, she very sensibly pointed out that spaces of congregation were disappearing - fewer people go to church and the associated meeting groups.  Libraries worked in a similar way.  We as a species are bettered by being around a wide group of individuals.  We learn to tolerate and understand the true meaning of 'diversity' outside of political spiel.  It also gives a place which you don't necessarily need to drive to.  There's a reason why there were always a good number of pensioners wafting around the shelves.  It's a cheap, warm and safe venue.

And although I'm an advocate of actually owning books (if you buy enough of them, they act like a second layer of insulation on the walls of your dwelling), there are many advantages to being able to borrow them for free.  I developed much of my taste for fantasy and science-fiction literature through the dedicated shelf of my local library.  And I did this at a time when I desperately needed an otherworld to disappear into.  Escapism, though, was just one of the gifts given to me.

I remember as a child my entire primary school class going to the library to become members.  As cultish as that sounds, it was a rite of passage of which I heartily approve.  We all got our library card which we had to keep safe (it was made of porous cardboard too, not some kind of indestructible plastic.  If we wanted to keep borrowing books, we had to look after that thing!).  With the card we were able to take out our first book - and we did, the entire class.  I wish I could say that I remember which book I got out.  I only know that it was a reference book and so was probably about dinosaurs.

When studying for my A-levels via distance learning, I went to the library to study.  There was absolutely no practical reason to do this - I had all the information I needed in my course folder and I was comfortable working in my bedroom/study.  But I knew that studying in a library was something that people did.  So I travelled to the library on my mobility scooter, set myself up at a desk, and did my best to work for however long I could stand it (probably an hour).  I think in the handful of times I did this I read about twenty A4 pages and wrote less than five hundred words.  It was not energy efficient.  But I have that experience - sat at the shiny desk, trying my best to concentrate in this environment that was entirely shared.  It is a memory which makes me smile.

And then there's the issue of choice.  You can walk into a library and chose any book you want.  True, you have to make it past the judging eyes of the librarian ("Ground Zero by Kevin J. Anderson AGAIN?") but if you can cope with that, then you have the option to try everything with absolutely no monetary risk.  And so this place which you don't have to travel far to visit gives you access to a vast geography of knowledge and taste.  It really can open up eyes to new ideas.  And that's something we really need - new ideas and greater scope.  And we need that to be based in a space which is free from the tyranny of profit based worth.

So save the libraries!  If there are any left by now...

4/5 - Moan of Achilles

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - Review

I'm part of a book group on facebook, although honestly I'm rather behind; in part because I've been doing other things (not to mention reading other things) and in part because...well...we'll get to that in a minute.

The group decided to read Song of Achilles mainly, I think, because of its recent win of the Orange Prize for Fiction.  I was very pleased with the choice because of the subject matter - an interpretation of the relationship of Achilles and Patroclus: heroes of the Trojan War.  And when the book arrived, I was even more excited - in the extensive list of recommendations and panegyrics were ones from both Donna Tartt and Bettany Hughes *swoon*.

Now I must make it clear that I'm yet to finish the book.  We're about a hundred pages from the end.  But those hundred pages are beginning to look like the last twenty meters of a particularly long and hot walk over burning coals.

We are not enjoying the book.  Well, that's not entirely true - we've enjoyed laughing at a few bits.  But thus far there are some major problems.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the editing doesn't seem right.  There is a lot of repetition.  At first I thought this might be a stylistic thing - attempting to mirror the repetition you get in traditional oral storytelling (of which the Iliad is a major example).  However, in the first couple of chapters there were three separate references to Patroclus' thumbs.  I half wondered if I'd forgotten something important about this particular body part, but it just seems to be some little fetishistic detail that got left in.  Again, it makes sense that Achilles' feet are referred to on multiple occasions; he is, after all, swift footed Achilles.  But does there have to be so many?  And why do we have to read at least twice each chapter what he smells like?

And the smells, in general, are a bit funny.  It's like someone told the author that the key to writing is to describe what you see, hear and smell and if you do that you can't go wrong.  But, well, firstly that's not true.  And secondly, there's something odd about the smells.  It's like they live in a Greece that's at least two thirds Boots perfume counter.  Nothing ever smells bad, but it does often smell exactly the same over and over.

From my perspective, however, the most upsetting thing is the damage done to the story.  From the reviews I've read, people have been very impressed and moved by the story.  But the story is not hers.  And she really has hurt it in key ways.

Firstly, and most scarily, Patroclus is made as un-manly as possible.  Soldiering?  Not for our Patroclus - he can't fight.  Apart from in the last few pages where he's suddenly survived years and years of hand to hand combat without a scratch.  Being part of a homosexual couple, it would seem that Patroclus isn't allowed to be 'masculine'.  Achilles, meanwhile, becomes a serene photo of a character.  He's a poster on a teenager's bedroom wall, with much the same level of animation and spirit.  Diomedes is unrecognisable.  Odysseus is perhaps the most correct in translation, but the way that his story-telling dialogue is written is completely obtuse to anyone without knowledge of the myths and just not correct.

Not that any of the dialogue is correct.  Honestly, it is entirely flat.  And reading it out loud to each other (as we have been) really proves that point.

The result is a story that, thus far, has read like poor slash fan-fic.  The Iliad has been ravished and the characters rewritten to suit the fantasies of the author.  She inhabits Patroclus, allowing her to fondle Achilles who remains as 2D as the paper he's printed on.  And the worst part of the slash fan-fic style is that it ruins the *proper* relationship.  Ancient sexuality is not modern sexuality.  The early scenes in the palace are absolutely devoid of other homosexual relationships even though it's a veritable den of heterosexual iniquity.  It's as if Achilles and Patroclus are, not only 'the only gays in the village', but also the only gays in Greece.

This is pretty inexcusable.  It changes the relationships as much as the truly disturbing Troy solution - "Woah, we can't have two men kissing in an action film.  So how are we going to make sure that doesn't happen?  I know!  Let's make them cousins!"

It also makes the elements of heterosexual sex feel extremely weird.  And it would seem that there's more of that to come.

There are other modern moralities that really mess with the meaning of the story.  Patroclus and Achilles 'saving' women from a life of rape and slavery is a prime example.  I can understand why you'd do that...but it's an ancient story.  Your main character is a sulky brute who brings about the doom of his comrades because he's upset about a slave girl being taken because that reflects badly on his status not because of some kind of humanitarianism.  He's not compatible with the modern idea of hero.  But either you need to accept that and move on, or at least rewrite him properly.

The Iliad is a story about the universality of war and the experience of death.  It is also, in the wise words of Dr Nick Lowe, a book that tells you all you need to know about men.  All of this is gone.  The fighting is, thus far, the most competently written part of the book.  But it is neither interesting nor meaningful.  The motives of the characters are lost.  How can Achilles be sulky about a wound to his pride when, presumably, he'll be upset because a woman who is treated as free and meaningful is stolen?  How can his great decision (fame or life) be understood as the foundation of his entire existence when it's replaced with some third rate romantic obligation?

Why on earth did it win the Orange Prize?  Deb feels that it's down to the Classical themes combined with a study of a homosexual relationship.  I don't know.  I'm just horrified.  I just hope that people go on from The Song of Achilles to actually read the Iliad and realise what the true meaning of war and love is.

Dan Simmons - Flashback (review)

Although it's sometimes a tricky process, I'll never say that writing a Christmas list is a hardship.  I feel there's something positive about listing dreams, and although there are times when I'm scared to name the big-picture, long-term, life-changing desires, I'm definitely at home to Mr Capitalist-Consumer.

So this year's Christmas list was an interesting mix of toys - from a kit to build your own camera right the way through to Ponyo on dvd(and just in case you're feeling generous - no one got them for me...).  It was a masterpiece of an Amazon wishlist...and being Amazon based (and being mine) it featured a fair number of books.  I ended up with several choice volumes - a work on Disaster Movies as a genre, Terry Pratchett's 'Snuff' and 'Flashback', a novel by Dan Simmons, author of the superb Ilium and Olympos, as well as the Hyperion and Endymion books.  This novel, however, sounded a bit different - still SF, but less far-reaching and potentially less strange.  I looked forward to any book brave enough to name its hero Nick Bottom.  A book about a drug allowing you to relive your past and how that might work in a Private Investigator-type story.  I pictured repeated investigations of memories and the subtleties of experience.  The questioning of reality.  And, this being a Dan Simmons novel, plenty of literary allusions.  And maybe a few literary illusions too.

I am utterly stunned having read it.  And not in a good way.  I almost feel bad writing this, but then having read 550 pages of hate-filled ranting and raving, I need to exorcise the experience by doing a bit of my own!

I had no idea about Dan Simmons' political ideology prior to reading this novel.  I think it's fair to say that none of his ponderings on modern life are a mystery to me now.  Whether it's national health care, Islam or modern architecture, no narrative was brave enough to get in the way of page after page of drivel describing how mad, bad and dangerous they all are.  Honestly at times it felt like sitting alone with an elderly relative, rendered aggressive by poorly chosen medication, listening to their spittle-barbed tirades against the world as they see it.

This was a detective story!  First and foremost it should be about interesting plot twists and a story that keeps you guessing.  And yet I would think that at least half of the book was taken up with unimportant discussions of politics which just left me shaking my head in horror.  In fact, the few errors I found in the story were so glaringly obvious in part because they stood out by not being a political message about Muslims or Socialism.  The 'I'm an evil madman mwahahaha!' speech at the end of the book is followed by the (and I use the word loosely) 'hero' saying that he couldn't help but agree with the gist of the rant.  That just doesn't work!  I know that good villains should be sympathetic.  But there's sympathy and there's...well...there's a scene when a self-proclaimed pacifist fantasises about hanging people from lamp-posts and nuking Muslims!

What's worse, while I've been getting more and more wound up by this book, so it's been eroding much of what I've enjoyed in his previous books.  I can now look back and rather than picking out the good, I end up thinking 'Oh yes, yet another 'nice' woman who is dead, an aggressively strong woman who is alive but not to be messed with, and...well...not many other women at all'.

This is my blog.  I'm allowed to witter on about whatever I like.  Because it's a blog.  If this were a novel, it'd be a pretty poor one.  But not as poor as Flashback.

Let the Right One In (Novel and Film) - Art and Editing

Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.
- Robert M. Pirsig

You know how it is – in an awful display of preciousness, you are put off something which is linked in any way with a piece of art you value greatly for fear of disappointment.  It's that fear that keeps us away from revisiting childhood wonders in case they implode and crumble like a tissue meeting a candle flame.  This fear was part of the reason why it took me so long to get around to reading the novel which was adapted into the best Vampire film of all time.  Namely 'Let the Right OneIn'.  Of course, this goes to show how very silly I can be – surely the sire (to borrow the phrase so buffyfied in my brain) to the amazing film couldn’t be anything other than special?

Sadly, being a man of my room (as opposed to a man of the world), my language skills are limited, so when writing about this novel, I feel I can't comment too much about the language.  But rest assured, anyone reading the English translation should be happy.

The general story, for those of you unfamiliar with book or film, goes like this - A young boy lives a rather bleak life in which he is constantly bullied.  He meets a pale child of his own age.  The friendship which develops encourages the boy to value himself and fight back against the bullying.  Of course, things are never that simple...

The Pirsig quote, although apt when looking at the story and translation, was actually something which came to my mind when I was pondering the job of adaptation.  In this case, the novel was adapted into the screenplay by the original author, John Ajvide Lindqvist.  Lindqvist seems to have a natural grasp of the best way to cut down a story to make a successful film narrative.  I've not sat there with a stop watch checking, but I'm pretty certain the entire film falls neatly into the Syd Field plot paradigm.

Beyond this, however, Lindqvist has been able to revise his original story and polish a couple of flat points.  The ending, for example.  The film features a lovely bit of ring structure, whereby the actions of Eli and Oskar earlier in the film (namely communication through morse code) reoccur in the final scene.  It's a tiny thing (the setting of the scene is exactly the same as that in the book, it's just the addition of an action) but it made for a pleasing feeling of completion.  And is also tremendously touching (and, for those of you familiar with morse code) a confirmation of feelings denied us by the medium of film (i.e. we can't be certain of the thoughts and feelings which are kept internal).

Content, which in the novel gets a little extreme, is toned down into something more appropriate for cinema viewing, whilst also retaining the possibility for reading between the lines.  I don’t want to spoil the biggest ‘cut’ to the novel narrative (*cough*) which was given away to me by the Great and Powerful Nick Lowe in his Mutant Popcorn film review of the American remake (which I am yet to see and of which I am, unsurprisingly, rather wary), but the editing does not spoil the narrative one bit.  In some ways it was nice to read the novel and have the screen narrative expanded.  I am imagine that, had I come at it from the opposite direction, the removal of parts of the story would still have not felt intrusive, thanks to the ambiguity left on screen.  Ambiguity as a narrative device should be used more often.  It costs nothing other than a certain degree of faith in your viewers.

So, back to Pirsig.  Quality and art really do go hand in hand.  It is the quality that defines the art rather than the item itself.  I’d like to think that a few things I have created in my life qualify as art.  But they are all constructed from different media – the words that fuel my writing, the wood I craft into objects, the light that I collect and form into a photograph.  Lindqvist has managed to create two pieces of artwork, separate to each other, crafted from words but becoming something more.  The revision of one does not lessen the other.