Tuesday 29 March 2011

March 2011 Books

This month has seen me reading quite a mixture of books.  So let's start with the non-fiction stuff.

The absolutely best was Memory Ireland: History and Modernity edited by Ooona Frawley. It draws on the ways memory has been used to write histories of Ireland from the 16th century onwards. Most of these histories were written by English historians using official documents and some memories. Like the 12th century account of Ireland by Gerald of Wales. The first true history of Ireland was written in the 17th century by a priest in the western reaches of the country. His history was written in Gaelic. This is as much about politics (English attitudes to Ireland) as it is about memory. But an important book, nevertheless.

Memory Ireland
Volume one: History and Modernity

Edited by Oona Frawley
Syracus University Press, 2010; xxiv + 255
ISBN: 978-0-8156-3250-4

This is the first of four volumes exploring the place of memory  in Ireland’s history, literature and politics. This one is specifically concerned with the place of memory in Ireland’s history. The succeeding three volumes will focus on increasingly restricted aspects of memory. The second will explore Irish cultural memory in the diaspora (USA, England, Canada and New Zealand). The third will focus on the Famine and the Troubles, and the fourth on the writings of James Joyce and how cultural memory is embedded in his work.
            The point is well made in the Introduction that memory tends to mythologise the past whereas history tries to be objective. But in oppressed nations memory can supply aspects of oppressed history. While individual memory can’t be separated from the imagination, collective memory depends on lived history rather than learned history. Recent history has expanded to explore cultural, economic and social structures as well as collective mentalities; the distinction between history and memory thus becomes blurred. History and memory can now be seen as interdependent.
            Ireland has two histories. One is that of the English colonisers who ruled the country from the Norman Conquest into the 20th century. Much of the formally documented history has been recorded by the English through their administrative systems. The other is that of the Irish people who were ruled by the English. This has no formal documentation and depends on cultural memories.
            English histories of Ireland written in the 16th and 17th centuries are heavily indebted to Gerald of Wales’s account written in 1200. The Irish are there described as wild and inhospitable. They also live like beasts. These Elizabethan histories include as Irish those English Settlers from the Norman Conquest whose families had intermingled and intermarried with the native Irish. Stanihurst’s text for Holinshed in 1577 identifies a long-standing Irish hatred for the English Old Settlers living in their pale around Dublin.
            In contrast to the English histories, in 1634 Geoffrey Keating, a Catholic priest in East Munster, wrote an Irish history in Gaelic.  It described the unfairness of the English Settlement and rule since 1200. The important thing is that it draws on the collective memory of the Gaelic Irish and the Old English descendants and acts to counterbalance contemporary English histories.
            One study in the book explores memory of the 1798 rebellion in centennial celebrations in 1898. Over the country there was an overwhelming display of Irish nationalist solidarity. Analysis, however, shows that there were three different types of memory of the event. In eastern Ireland there was a mainly public memory. In the west, folk memory preserved details not included in the official public writings. In Northern Ireland, however, there had been strong support for the 1798 rising, but amnesia struck very quickly. Within two years the Protestant communities were realigning themselves en masse with Unionism and Orangeism.
            In the 1840s, while disease and famine affected the poor, Irish Antiquarians began to study prehistoric and other archaeological remains. It may be that this was  an attempt to replace narratives of poverty and sudden death with accounts of the past glory of Ireland attached to ancient places. The exigencies of the time led farmers to destroy monuments while antiquarians called for their protection. Many had been protected in the past by traditional fairy or giant stories. Preserving the monuments meant preserving these narratives. As the monuments were properly investigated, the idea grew that the Irish past had never before been accurately documented. This work gave rise to debates on concepts of Irish identity and nationalist politics and cultural identity. At the same time antiquarians collected threatened or forgotten histories of ‘Celtic’ Ireland through the preservation and dissemination of Irish texts. This process continued up to the 1916 Rising. Eamonn deValera, the most important political figure in 20th century Ireland, was fascinated by Irish history and great figures from the past. He used history to shape contemporary Ireland and influence the goals and values of the new State. He played down the troubles and miseries of the past in favour of romantic, nostalgic and inspirational stories. By the 1960s he, himself, formed part of Ireland’s historical memory.
            Recently there has been a major investigation into how children were abused by various institutions of the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, it did not include the Magdalene Laundries. Usually they were run by Nuns and were used to hold girls who were deemed to be at risk in one way or another. Families could sign their own children in independently of the courts. The only way they could be released was with the consent of a male family member. Inside the Laundries the nuns were often very cruel. What is amazing is that the last of these institutions only closed in 1996.  The stories of child abuse are needed to correct ‘official’ historical narratives. This will need the records of Religious Orders to be made freely available so that history can be objectified and matched with thee memories of the girls who were held in the Laundries.
            The Irish language outside the Republic can cause problems for those using it. The language is often associated with illicit activity, violence and irrationality. During the 20th century Irish was often associated with militant nationalists. In Northern Ireland the language was suspect and despised as a cipher for treason and Catholicism and is still a source of deep cultural division.
            In 1800Ireland was almost completely Irish speaking. By 1900 it was almost completely English speaking. In the 1930s, Irish was the language of the older generation but was not passed on. Many of these Irish speakers held a huge library of stories about the traditional past in their heads. As they died and the next generation abandoned Irish as their main language, so many of these stories (memories) were lost.
            This was part of a broader process during which Irish culture got buried under huge quantities of Victorian and Edwardian garbage ‘and we concocted a version of ourselves that was more devastating and destructive than that of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.’
            Buy this book, read it carefully and consider the consequences of English rule on the people of Ireland over most of the past millennium. I look forward with great anticipation to the succeeding 


Then there was Derek Wilson's magnificent biography of Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spy-master. This is a good book to read to learn about how her court worked as well as about how he kept in touch with what was happening both in England and on the Continent. What got to me was that while Wilson does use footnotes, they are way off being of academic standard. His select biography, however, is useful.

Now for the historical fiction. I love this type of writing. Always have. In fact, I was brought up on GA Henty and company. Kipling, too. But then,  I was born and brought up in the Union of South Africa where Kipling's Just So Stories had a relevance beyond mere fantasy. To start with the earliest novel. Revenger, by Rory Clements, is a murder mystery set in York during King Henry VIII's time. The King and court all arrive on a progress of the country to stay a few days there. In the process the hero of the story sees Catherine Howard and one of her lovers being more than indiscreet. After many people have been felled, a truth of sorts emerges and everyone goes home happily. Susanna Gregory's Blood on the Strand involves her lawyer Chaloner on the fringes of Charles II's court to solve several more murders satisfactorily. The King's Mistress, Barbara Castlemaine comes in for a lot of stick in this novel. But then, if she did the things she is said to have done here, she deserved all the criticism she gets. The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin is set in World War I and shows how a pals battalion from York Station are used to build and operate narrow-gauge railways to serve the artillery stations on the Western Front. Beneath this is the unreasoned hunt by an MP to prove an officer to be the killer of one of the battalion. Someone else was.


                               The Somme Stations
                               Andrew Martin
                               Faber and Faber, March 2011; x + 245pp
                               ISBN: 978-0-571-24960-2

Not another novel about the Great War! you might say. Yes. It does have mud, horses, men and machines sunk deep in the mud.  And bodies, gas and tanks. But this one is very different.
            The story starts in York Station in 1914 shortly before the war begins, which provides us with introductions to the characters we will be following through the rest of the book. Nice move, I thought.  Once war breaks out, the drivers, firemen, porters, office clerks, signalmen, and policemen hesitate to join up because of their responsibilities to keep the trains running. Then their way to join up is cleared through the creation of a railway ‘pals’ battalion. When Det Sgt Jim Stringer joins up, he knows nearly everybody in the battalion. And their domestic histories and police records.
            After initial training they are sent to build a railway the length of Spurn Head. Once the line is completed, they unload ships at the far end of the point. One night, thanks to the kindness of an officer, they all get blind drunk. Next morning, a man who was sent up to join them the evening before is found drowned beside the track. An MP investigates and is convinced that one of the company has murdered him. Only he can’t work out who it is. After some time he suspects Jim Stringer, but he can’t prove anything.
            Shortly afterwards they go to France and forget about the murdered man and the investigation. They are shocked by their experiences when they are employed as trench diggers. Soon after, when an officer discovers that they are all railwaymen, they are redeployed to build and operate narrow-gauge railways supplying ammunition to artillery batteries. Supplies are brought in to them on standard gauge railways. They unload and store the supplies until they are needed. Part of their work is laying narrow-gauge (2 foot) lines to the batteries. These change every few days as the military situation changes.
            At one point, Stringer and a fireman are driving their engine and train towards a battery. The signalman indicates that it is safe to progress. Hardly have they moved forward than a German shell lands more or less on top of them. The fireman is killed and Jim Stringer is badly wounded by shrapnel. He is found holding a German rifle which he reached when he was blown up. The fireman was killed by a German bullet. The MP again investigates the accident and decides that Stringer is a murderer. It turns out, however, that the signalman had disobeyed instructions from further up the line. He should not have allowed them to progress. The signalman is the older brother of a pair of twins in the battalion who only talk to each other.
            When Jim is in hospital in Yorkshire he slowly recovers from his wounds. The MP comes to visit him and arranges to meet him on the moors. Before the MP can shoot Jim, he is shot by the older brother of the twins.
            This is a really good read which is difficult to put down.


Charlotte Bingham's Goodnight Sweetheart is a story set in World War  II. Without giving the game away, this whole novel is about appearances being deceptive and hiding true heroism.

Other novels include Kit Marlowe's The Big Splash. Well, it's really a novella.


                          The Big Splash
                           Kit Marlowe

                           Noble Romance Publishing, NY, 2010; 44pp
                           ISBN: 978-1-60592-132-3

The story is set in 1920s London when Flappers and the Charleston were the rage. Constance Wynne-Hare is a wealthy, single woman who lives in her own house and loves the good time. You could say she lives for it. Her mother is determined to get her married to a respectable, wealthy banker. (Money begets money.) Only Constance is quite happy with her current lover, commoner Mr Wood.
            At a dinner given by her mother, she sits beside Mr Garfield, a staid banker whose conversation is restricted to banking. Which Constance, predictably,  finds very boring indeed. She persuades him to leave the house with her after dessert to go to a night club. There they have a whale of a time and, just as dawn is breaking, join in an enormous tug-of-war across Leicester Square which the police break up.
            A few days later, while she is entertaining Mr Wood in the living room, Mr Garfield arrives. The maid shows him into the parlour. After some shuttle diplomacy in which the maid is crucial, Mr Garfield almost proposes to Constance. Fortunately for her, Mr Wood has followed her into the parlour and, as all Knights In Shining Armour do, carries her off with his own marriage proposal.
            As the maid rightly says, many things can happen between an Engagement and the making of Wedding Vows.
            This is a well-structured, eminently readable short story. It is a pity it isn’t any longer.

And that ancient book that-you-should-have read-when-you-were-a-teenager-but-didn't, Samuel Beckett's More Pricks than Kicks. William Lychack's The Architect of Flowers is a lovely, comforting collection of short stories about human relationships.

And to end the month, I read Jim Christy's collection of amazing poetry called Marimba Forever .


                      Marimba Forever
                      Jim Christy
                       Guernica Editions Ltd, 2010; vi + 123
                       Essential Poets Series 170
                       ISBN:

This is an intriguing collection of poems, many of which need to run over onto a second page to say what they have to say. Christy’s poetic world is a wide one with many problems. Nevertheless, he wears his social conscience lightly. In part, because of that, I feel that this is an important collection.
            The title Jiminy Cricket implies a cartoon character. Instead you come up against two beggars who were once brilliant musicians earning lorry loads of money. A combination of the high life and drugs caught them and brought them down to their present lowly position in society.
            3 am in No Man’s Land is not about battle. It explores how people frequently live in the past in their minds. Perhaps making sense of the present through their pasts. Something which we all do to a greater or lesser degree. Christy defines the past through 78rpm blues and jazz records of the 1930s and 1940s. While you might disagree with the type of music, his point about music or pieces of music being an important part of memory – highlighting  individual events – is a good one.
            Rollerboard Blues sounds as though it ought to be played by a 1920s or 1930s New Orleans band. Or sung with a haunting voice to the accompaniment of a slightly out of tune guitar. And that is just what it is about. With the wry twist that the singer is a paralysed Vietnam? Veteran on a wheeled board singing for cash on the sidewalk.
            Democratic Vistas tells us that here is a hospital opposite the Walt Whitman Mausoleum. The neighbourhood is druggy and socially deprived. Is this the democracy Whitman dreamed of?
            Saigon Joe  is about silent collateral damage from the Vietnam War. Joe is a street sweeper in Saigon whose Vietnamese mother was a prostitute visited by some 3,500 US soldiers.
            Toronto Story is a frightening possible reality. Two 14-year-old boys dream about being hardmen or gangsters, as does another 16-year-old boy. The younger pair, pretending to shoot each other, were shot in reality by the older boy. He in turn was shot by a policeman. The cop is the only one in the poem who is not living in a dream world.
            Final Drive follows the poet all over North and South America searching for the answer to:

‘why death owned the roadhouses
And why the time of my life was speeding
Past, faster than the cacti headed the other way.’

There is, of course, no answer.
            In For me and my gal the poet intends writing about a time he worked on a ranch. But he finds himself holding a Halloween pencil decorated with all sorts of strange and ghoulish decorations. He comments:

‘Everyone looks
Like they’re glad to be dead.’
alloween pencil decorated wirth all sorts of strange and ghoulish figures. He comments:

            You expect Pnom Penh Blues to be about vets revisiting old haunts from their time in the Vietnam War. But it is about no such thing. It’s about how you can have sex with younger girls here than in Saigon.
            Mary Kathleen is  long poem about a troubled relationship wwith his mother. He came back to see her when she was dying. She accused him of always being a nigger lover:

‘        It’s
Disgusting. Niggers! They
Want the things like what we got.
……
               You
Always liked them, the niggers!
Finally, one moment, silent look
Of disgust, before
Dismissing me from her life.’

            Dead or Otherwise is a poem addressed to a friend who has been dead for three months. He remembers things they did together.

‘Is there indeed anything,
Dead or otherwise,
Where you are? Where
Are you? Let me know Philguy, friend
Of thirty-four years, please, and
Forthwith.’

            An Oldie but a Goody is a radio DJ’s chat leading up to broadcasting a song. He starts with:

‘Its five AM and this one’s
Going out to all those who just
Kicked off the dark blanket
Of a night that tried to smother them.’

Then comes a list of dedicatees and requesters, which ends:

‘To everybody waiting
For the early edition to reach
The corner boxes.’

Finally, the title is revealed:

‘                       It’s a little

Thing called “You an Bet Your Ass,
Things Ain’t Never
Gonna Change.!
I hope you like it.’

The final poem questions Why We’re in Afghanistan. It starts by describing wounds and amputates. One stanza peculates on who or what owns a leg and what they do with it once it’s been blown off a soldier.

‘..they’ll wake up some morning
A score and a half years from now
And wonder what the hell was
Going on in that godforssaken place
Over there when they were young’


I hope this review has given you a taste of the range of Jim Christy’s social conscience and the quality of his poetry. This is a collection well worth investing in.


                                                                                                     

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