I'm reading J P Donleavy's first - notorious - book, "The Ginger Man". I was intrigued years ago by his sparky titles ("The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B" etc) but never got around to opening one until now.
The back cover quotes Dorothy Parker: "... brilliant.. the picaresque novel to stop them all, lusty, violent, wildly funny." That should be a warning bell: DP would look back on her own disorderly days with rue, calling herself a "smartcracker".
The book, set in Dublin in the late 1940s, is not so much funny as horrifying. The protagonist is a raging sociopath called Sebastian Dangerfield, modelled on one Gainor Crist according to Ken O Donoghue (who himself is in part the model for Dangerfield's pal Kenneth O Keefe). Dangerfield chisels evryone for money, women are groomed and exploited with satanic skill and discarded ruthlessly, and forever there is drink.
O Donoghue, who also knew Brendan Behan, reflects:
I, at that time, still liked the pubs. So I would frequent them. But to avoid
the poisonous drinking I would slowly consume a sandwich. If asked what I was
having I'd always say, "A sandwich, please." Most wouldn't buy me one but now
and then the odd one would. I never bought drinks in return for anyone. I would
offer to return the compliment by offering the buyer a sandwich in return. But,
as you may know in OZ, drinkers, especially those who are Irish or of Irish
descent, care nothing for food while they are drinking. They then progress to
the stage where they practically never eat, then into the box for
good.
Today, like an old Puritan, I think Irish pubs are the most gloomy,
uncomfortable, smoky, highly unpleasant places ever invented for the
entertainment of man. Murderers of Irishmen I think of them
now.
It was living on the continent that taught
me drinking and eating go together. The Irish never drink while eating, except
milk, or tea and sometimes even water. Drinking is something else; not to be
contaminated by food. They go into the pub. Throw it back like crazy; go out
with the poisonous alcohol in their blood eating away at their brain tissue,
slowing down their reflexes, get into packed cars, career down the roads with
the hope of killing themselves which many do. Or outside the pub get into a
fight over some alcohol inflamed set of ideas. I've done it all and now wonder
why I did.
Gainor Crist is dead, Paddy Kavanaugh, is dead. Brendan Behan
is dead. Myles na gCopaleen is dead. John Ryan is dead. There are others. They
committed suicide using the Irish pub as an instrument.
To me Donleavy's writing has echoes of James Joyce, but the spirit is reminiscent of Henry Miller: darkness, desperate dissolution.
Here in Britain the radio is advertising deals on canned cider with the sound of the ringpull pop and into the glass gurgle. The TV tells us where you can get litres of vodka for £15. And in Dublin, you can book a literary pub tour to follow in Flann O'Brien's footsteps.
Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies" refers to "the real aristocracy... the two or three great brewing families which rule London" (to tickle his friends Bryan and Diana Guinness); a Guinness descendant was 15th in the 2014 Irish rich list, thanks largely to a stake in the parent company Diageo.
Without drink, what would we do to celebrate? Is British culture that nihilistic?
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Sunday, December 27, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Walls
All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they themselves have built, and most: men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing something that is impersonal, useful, and beautiful.
Word of his activities is carried over the walls. His name is shouted and is carried by the wind into the tiny inclosure in which other men live and in which they are for the most part absorbed in doing some petty task for the furtherance of their own comfort. Men and women stop their complaining about the unfairness and inequality of life and wonder about the man whose name they have heard.
Sherwood Anderson – Poor White (1920)
This was one of Anderson’s themes, our inability to scale the walls of misunderstanding we ourselves have built. He saw it as an ineradicable feature of human nature when faced with the flux of interests and social convention in which we find ourselves so firmly enmeshed. Powerful interests know it well and build more walls by fostering even more misunderstanding.
One might have supposed that Anderson’s view would become dated, that the walls would be at least partly demolished by modern communication, but it doesn’t appear to be so. If anything the situation is worse now that it was almost a century ago because we have more powerful forces intent on building walls designed to suit their interests.
As always the most pernicious walls are those between elite classes and everyone else. David Cameron builds such walls, building them with care from obfuscation, misdirection and endless petty dishonesties.
Rats and mazes come to mind, but who is the master builder?
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Monday, December 21, 2015
Energy and liberty
An excellent long-range thinkpiece by Nick at Capitalistsatwork, looking at the energy landscape in the wake of the closure of the UK's last deep coal mine.
I comment:
Bang on. It's very worrying. England's population was only 7.1 million in the early 18th C; for GDP-expanding reasons, we seem to have a policy of suicidal population overshoot. If ever the wonderful world-wide goods trading system hiccups we're sunk into the most terrible chaos - WW2 ended just in time for us, as our soil was getting exhausted ("losing heart" was the phrase used, I understand) - and that was with a population considerably smaller than now, and much more growing land.
And I've been thinking recently that our quasi-democracy and civil rights are luxury by-products of the new energy sources and technological development and empire-building of the Industrial Revolution, else we might easily have gone the way of the French Terror. Funny how we suddenly stopped burning women at the stake in 1789.
We've had Illich's "energy slaves" for two or three centuries and that's going to change. US/Mexican billlonaire Hugo Salinas Price reckons we'll see the return of domestic service. And maybe the servants will lose the franchise.
Follow-up: Google "Olduvai Theory."
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I comment:
Bang on. It's very worrying. England's population was only 7.1 million in the early 18th C; for GDP-expanding reasons, we seem to have a policy of suicidal population overshoot. If ever the wonderful world-wide goods trading system hiccups we're sunk into the most terrible chaos - WW2 ended just in time for us, as our soil was getting exhausted ("losing heart" was the phrase used, I understand) - and that was with a population considerably smaller than now, and much more growing land.
And I've been thinking recently that our quasi-democracy and civil rights are luxury by-products of the new energy sources and technological development and empire-building of the Industrial Revolution, else we might easily have gone the way of the French Terror. Funny how we suddenly stopped burning women at the stake in 1789.
We've had Illich's "energy slaves" for two or three centuries and that's going to change. US/Mexican billlonaire Hugo Salinas Price reckons we'll see the return of domestic service. And maybe the servants will lose the franchise.
Follow-up: Google "Olduvai Theory."
READER: PLEASE CLICK THE REACTION BELOW - THANKS!
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Sunday, December 20, 2015
Elite scientists
Sackerson sent this interesting link about elite scientists and their tendency to retard the evolution of new ideas until they peg out.
Max Planck — the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who pioneered quantum theory — once said the following about scientific progress:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Shorter: Science is not immune to interpersonal bullshit. Scientists can be stubborn. They can use their gravitas to steamroll new ideas. Which means those new ideas often only prevail when older scientists die.
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Max Planck — the Nobel Prize–winning physicist who pioneered quantum theory — once said the following about scientific progress:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Shorter: Science is not immune to interpersonal bullshit. Scientists can be stubborn. They can use their gravitas to steamroll new ideas. Which means those new ideas often only prevail when older scientists die.
The piece goes on to demonstrate the validity of this claim via patterns in published work. It comes as no surprise of course. Scientists are human; they have families to support, mortgages to pay, status to earn and maintain.
To explain what is going on here we could adapt an idea from Wittgenstein – the distinction between symptoms and criteria. Acolytes may present the opinion of Celebrity Scientist as a criterion of valid science. Celebrity Scientist says X, therefore X must be scientifically valid. Celebrity Scientist has become a criterion of sound scientific opinion.
In reality Celebrity Scientist's opinion may not be a criterion of sound science at all. It may have been once upon a time, but perhaps other possibilities are emerging within Celebrity Scientist's field. Celebrity Scientist's opinion may have become a symptom of hierarchy, personal vanity and the inability to accept new thinking.
In reality Celebrity Scientist's opinion may not be a criterion of sound science at all. It may have been once upon a time, but perhaps other possibilities are emerging within Celebrity Scientist's field. Celebrity Scientist's opinion may have become a symptom of hierarchy, personal vanity and the inability to accept new thinking.
Confusing symptoms with criteria is very common. For example, is an Ofsted report a criterion of educational excellence or a symptom of educational malaise? Both perhaps. Symptoms and criteria are often mingled.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is another example. Widely known to be a misleading metric, GDP could be seen as a symptom of political mendacity rather than a criterion of economic health.
GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided.
UK general elections seem to have have become a symptom of democratic decline rather than a criterion of healthy democratic government. Which is why useful reform is unlikely.
GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided.
UK general elections seem to have have become a symptom of democratic decline rather than a criterion of healthy democratic government. Which is why useful reform is unlikely.
One could go on and on because elites often confuse symptoms with criteria. Even elite scientists may find it useful once perched atop the greasy pole.
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Friday, December 18, 2015
"EU renegotiations: Pathway for deal found - Cameron"
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Sunday, December 13, 2015
Moggyzilla: planes, trains and automobiles - can you survive them?
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Saturday, December 12, 2015
Quote of the day
"The media is no longer about who, what, why, where, and when; it's all about the rise to prominence and then the fall from grace."
Read Jim's piece - great.
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Read Jim's piece - great.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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