Christopher Isherwood (1945): Goodbye to Berlin. (1975 Folio Society edition with drawings by George Grosz) pp 256.
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Monday, 23 August 2010
New Books: to be reviewed
Ivan D. Illich (1971) Deschooling Society. Caldar and Boyars, London, 116 pages.
T.C. Lethbridge (1961) Ghost and Ghoul. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 153 pages.
Two books from the shelves, linked only by the trajectory of development away from mainstream academia by two authors who become progressively less able to accept the received wisdom of their respective disciplines as they develop their thought. The topics and methods they chose are widely different, but the process by which they question what seems common sense, provides the interest to me.
Tom Lethbridge critiques the accepted wisdom of scientific methods and Ivan Illich urges a radical re-examination of social myths and the institutions which increasingly govern our lives. Illich writes Deschooling Society in 1971, Lethbridge Ghost and Ghoul in 1961. I have already tinkered about at the edge of Tom Lethbridge via references in Tom Graves and from themes brought up in T.J. Hudson's Phychic Phenomena of 1893. Illich is more serious, and more pertinent. With the A Level and GCSE results just out, the newspapers full of inflationary grade accusations, and fears that 99% of everyone might not get to university irrespective of talent cost or interest, it seems timely to go back to the late 1960s to read from Illich WHY WE MUST ABOLISH SCHOOLING (I quote from the dustjacket). I will read and comment on both books over the next couple of weeks.
Please do join me if you have access to either of these.
"The War with Hannibal" Livy translated by Aubrey de Selincourt
Livy (59 B.C. - 17 A.D.): Limited to the amount of weight I could take by opting only to take hand luggage on a recent flight to Romania, I found myself in the difficult position of selecting a single book to take with me for a month abroad (hence the paucity of recent posts). In similar circumstances during fieldwork trips to Papua New Guinea, I have usually in the past opted for Dickens-like products: a little Dorritt, goes a long way. I have spun Bleak House out for entire months in the jungle without the need for alternative sustenance. But in recent years, I have reverted to an earlier practice of taking away a Penguin Classics translation of something or other. The Quintus Curtius Rufus History of Alexander came to Romania with me last year along with Xenophon's Persian Expedition; and before that, Hellenica came to Lycia walking at the suggestion of Freya Stark in her (1956) Lycian Shore, which was part of my pre-reading for the trek through the mountains sketching the rock tombs a la Charles Fellows. That trip set me off on a revisit to the classical references to Alexander, and by habit alone, it has come to seem appropriate to have a battered Penguin Classics in the rucksack rather than something more Dickensian or George Elliotsy.
Livy has not stinted in volume here. The account of the war with Hannibal is written in an annual format, in which he deals with the events of the year rather than an integrated structural explanation of each set of conflicts as it develops. This style cuts up the narrative as he skips back and forth between the number of concurrent actions which make up the second Punic War between Rome and Carthage between 219 and 201 B.C. That said, this is a fantastic battle of personalities: the speeches and actions main protagonists are well developed and the detail is often exquisite even if the historical accuracy might be doubted:
"...the dismounted cavalry fought on in the full knowledge of of defeat; they made no attempt to escape, preferring to die where they stood; and their refusal to budge, by delaying total victory even for a moment, further incensed the triumphant enemy, who unable to drive them from their ground, mercilessly cut them down. Some few survivors did indeed turn and run, wounded and worn out though they were."
This describing the calamitous Roman defeat in 216 B.C. at Cannae as the wounded consul Paullus sits on his stone bleeding profusely and about to fall under a shower of spears "his killers not even knowing whom they killed." Livy leads us quickly from the siege of Saguntum, then over the Alps with Hannibal into Italy from Spain to the Roman defeats at Cannae, the destruction of the Roman army at Boii, Marcellus's victory at Syracuse and the death of Archimedes in his garden. We pass the Volturnus, the capture and destruction of Capua, the collapse of Carthaginian efforts in Spain, and on to the final defeat of Hannibal, which no matter how often I read it always seems a shame. I'm never sure that the good guys win this one. If you don't know the story, and have a lot of time in airports, bus stations or in tents-in-the-rain to fill up, then I would recommend taking a copy of Hannibal with you. To be honest, I also took on the plane a slim modern copy of RLS's most excellent "Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes" because it covered a similar traverse as Hannibal. RLS is very enjoyable but not of sufficient length. I wouldn't quite cal him chick lit, but it is light, frothy and quick to read. He filled in a very enjoyable evening on his Modestine, but for the remaining two weeks I fell back on Livy.
Gardens Gallery Exhibition, Cheltenham
A link to our Flagstonepress blog article on the recent exhibition in Cheltenham.
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