The Hobsbawm-Mona Lisa principle. Or just a bad book?

It is hard to judge how critical one is. I have at least long since decided that life is too short for books that are too enjoyable. Books may be so for a variety of reasons. Mostly if I simply struggle to get into the story, as it were, and that persists, then I give up. There are too many books left to be read to waste time on that which requires more energy than it provides. Reading should definitely be a net gain in terms of returns.

Sometimes I think it is simply because not every book can (or should) "speak" to the reader. This is the point at which I invoke what I have titled above as the "Hobsbawm-Mona Lisa principle". It stands to reason that given my personal beliefs, the writings of the leftist historian Eric Hobsbawm should be right up my alley, as they say. I do however find him a bit difficult to read. I did however manage to read his autobiography Interesting Times. In that book he writes the following upon viewing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre: "But she did not speak my language". I thought that brilliant. In a few words he captured a feeling I also had felt when I finally saw the Mona Lisa myself. Not to mention a sense I had when viewing or reading many famous works of art or books. At that moment it somehow became permissible to just not enjoy everything that everyone else does. You enjoy what you enjoy, period.

So that is a principle I also adhere to when reading books. It is not a reflection on the book in question, it is simply one of those things.

This is of course, not to imply that there are no badly written books. There are many reasons why I may struggle to get into a book or otherwise decide to put it aside. I am at the moment struggling to get into a novel, and to my chagrin put aside C.J. Cherryh's Fortress of Eagles. That had absolutely no relation to anything of the above, it is one of the books I have abandoned that I am quite sure I will try again. The timing was simply off,  that also happens.

However, to the book in question for this post - Charles Todd's Wing of fire. Putting aside my annoyance that a mother and son writing team write under the name of the son, this is the second book featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge. (Perhaps also wondering why USians must write series based in a country they do not live in. Did no soldiers from the US suffer from shell shock? I digress and concede that I might be surprised if this does not make me appear more critical than I clearly would like to). I managed to read the first book, and I think it was fine. I was not a particular fan of "Hamish" I recalled as soon as I started reading this one, but the entire concept, of a historical crime set in the twentieth century should be one that I enjoy. Except that I did not enjoy this. Hamish aside, it was just poorly written. Not the language (there are editors for that), but the story. Already in chapter four there is a character who in the one instant is trying to bully and intimidate Inspector Rutledge into giving up an investigation and yet in the next is accusing his step-sister, one of the deceased of a triple murder! Furthermore the aforementioned Inspector Rutledge seems to accept this rant at face value, only pausing to point out the lack of evidence for his accusations. At no point does it occur to him to question why this man has no qualms about accusing someone, in two cases a mere child of seemingly cold-blooded murder, and this on a fairly thin basis. This followed by the unmitigated admiration for a titled widow simply oozed precisely USian stereotypes of the UK during that time.

Now that my own rant is complete, I would add that I did read the first novel in a series by the same author(s) featuring one Bess Crawford, which I rather enjoyed. I suspect (assume/hope) the author(s) have in fact matured in the course of their writings - the latter book was after all published some thirteen years after the first Inspector Rutledge, and eleven after Wings of Fire. I have nevertheless decided to abandon Inspector Rutledge forthwith. Which is a bit of a pity. Perhaps I will reconsider. Time will tell. Either way, in this case, it feels like a combination of the Hobsbawm-Mona Lisa principle (perhaps henceforth the HML principle?) and that the book was just not well written. Or I am becoming more critical, and not necessarily in a bad way.

Six in Six

I confess that I like making lists. An enjoyment I have long felt should be put to use in my job, but which I unfortunatley have not had sufficient use for. The most consistent list in my life is my list of books read. The four lists, if one includes Goodreads.

Thankfully, a blog I follow shereadsnovels.com has provided me with a lovely idea for a new list. That idea is from The book jotter (thank you Jo!)


So inspired, here is Mystic's Six for Six for the first half of 2019:

Six new authors

1. N.K. Jemisin
2. Ann Leckie
3. Elizabeth Bear
4. Sheri S. Tepper
5. Claire North
6. Quentin Bates




Six best crime novels so far this year (in no particular order)

1. Malcom Mackay - How a gunman says goodbye
2. Maureen Carter - Dead old
3. Peter Robinson - Wednesday's child
4. Jill Paton Walsh - The Wyndham case
5. Martha Grimes - The Anodyne necklace
6. Aline Templeton - The darkness and the deep

Six best science fiction or fantasy novels (in no particular order)

1. N.K. Jemisin - The hundred thousand kingdoms
2. Lois McMaster Bujold - Paladin of souls
3. Sheri S. Tepper - Shadow's end
4. Elizabeth Bear - Carnival
5. Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice
6. Douglas Adams - The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Six books that disappointed a mite

1. Christopher Fowler - Full dark house
2. Larry Niven - The smoke ring
3. Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars
4. Delia Sherman & Theodroa Goss (Eds) - Interfictions
5. Ann Cleeves - Red bones
6. Nnedi Okorafor - Binti: the night masquerade

Six books that surprised

1.Anne B. Ragde - Berlinerpoplene
2. David Weber - On Basilsk station
3. Kage Baker - The empress of Mars
4. Martin Amis - Time's Arrow
5. Mathews Phosa - Deur die oog van 'n naald
6. Susan Cooper - Over sea, under stone

Six books I abandoned (some very disappointingly so)

1. Elizabeth Taylor - Angel
2. Frank Welsh - A history of South Africa
3. Rachel Pollack - Golden Vanity
4. Doris Lessing - Re. colonised planet 5. Shikasta
5. Sophie Hannah - Little face
6. C.J. Cherryh - Fortress of eagles

Don't speak ill of the dead

Yesterday it was announced that the South African musician Johnny Clegg died. Sad news indeed. But I will admit to being a little mystified by the outpouring of grief on social media and even perhaps the media more broadly. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy his music. Some of it. I have my favourite songs.

He became famous in my childhood. In those days he was radical. He rubbed shoulders with black men as equals (more or less), and in the eighties in South Africa that was revolutionary. In trying to understand his appeal I have a suspicion that he showed my generation that black South Africa could and was in fact cool. He did so with some respect. I guess.

The problem is that it is now 2019. And we are still honoring a white man who had the temerity to see value in the Zulu culture.

Have we come no further?

Judging by a FB post where overwhelmingly white people were delighted at the notion at the South African Parliament would fly flags at half mast for him. My first thought is: what am I missing? Was he really that great? He is also, even in European newspapers described as musician and activist. Except that other for treating black people like humans and equals, what did he do?

This is still not clear to me.

However there appears to be some disagreement as to who actually was being honored by the flags being flown at half mast. Only turns out that Advocate du Toit died in June 2009, so it definition wasn't him, but in fact Mr. Ike Maphoto, struggle icon.

So it turns out my misgivings are well founded.

What he did was show white people, particularly of my generation that there was something cool about our country. That there were aspects of authentic African culture and life we could enjoy (appropriate). It wasn't so bad after all.

Other than a statement from the appropriate portfolio committee in the Parliament, I have yet to see a black person comment much. They appear to be maintaining a respectful silence, no doubt in bemusement as to the response from white people. One should, after all, not speak ill of the dead. I will follow for the discussions as to cultural appropriation which I suspect may come. And if a person really deserves that much honour for treating his fellow South Africans as humans. Especially nearly thirty years later, when we should have come further.

Seems we're still "coming".

Postscript (Friday 19th):

We have arrived.

I fear this is not a correct respect for copyright, but this cartoon was purloined from This Dialogue Thing Facebook group. And all I can really say is: Bingo. THIS is why an overwhelming number of whites (and a few brown, though not a single black as far as I could tell) thought Johnny Clegg was worthy flags at half mast. Once more, we shown how little progress we have really made.

If the rest of the world cannot see the difference?

Then maybe they're not the problem. 

It has worried me for a while the USian church's complicity with Donald Trump and the politics he espouses. Or perhaps one's choice of words should reveal where one's sympathies lie, and as such the idea of colonisation and appropriation as used by Critical Discourse Analysis comes to mind rather to describe the USian's relationship to Donald Trump. It is however ironic. The community of people who claim that Jesus Christ of Nazareth, as described and known through the Bible, has allowed itself to be colonised by "the world". And I do absolutely believe that. Only it is nothing new. Rather I consider this current revelation of this relationship to be nothing more than a ripping away of the veil of what has been the case for centuries. Christendom has a dialectical relationship with Western Europe and its values. And thanks to technological developments like the internet and the emergence of values such as free speech, the veneer is gone.

I grew up in apartheid South Africa. At some point I wondered why christians had done so little to fight the injustice. There was also the question of the rise of Nazism. The past three years have answered that question beyond any reasonable doubt. So to be clear, I am pretty sure it is a white, Western thing, not an USian thing.

Time for a reckoning. Time to reclaim the Jesus and God that I know from the Bible. Time to decolonise this too.

 

Article can be found here

Article can be found here