Good Bones by Margaret Atwood

It’s not often that a book review of any kind threatens to be longer than the original work. Any review of Margaret Atwood’s Good Bones, however, risks such ignominy. Good Bones, which might also have been successfully entitled Bare Bones, is not just succinct: it is short. Ostensibly, it’s a collection of short stories, but cover to cover there is only enough material to keep a determined reader happy for an hour or so, if the object is merely to cover the ground. If the object is to savour the material and follow its concentrated lead, then there might even be a lifetime of involvement within these few pages.

The tales feature characters from fiction, from Classical myth, from folk tales and fairy stories, as well as other, more disparate sources. Margaret Atwood herself seems to figure here and there as well. In every case, we see something familiar from an unusual perspective, points of view that in every case take the reader by surprise.

But there is something much more arresting and surprising than the subject matter, and that is the various forms in which these pieces are presented. They are all different, but none addresses its subject matter via mere prose. And strangely, these are not poems either. They are poetic, and they feel like they ought to be prose. They are like sketches or verbal doodles and, as such, regularly flit from one unexpected turn to another, equally unpredicted.

If these short pieces were pictures, they would remind us of smaller canvases by Paul Klee, with their schematised line drawings, cartoon witticisms and the occasional joke tinged with nightmare. Throughout they would speak of big ideas that seem to underpin the content, and this is communicated in concentrated form, despite their small scale, emerging via suggestion. And it is surely their biting irony that simultaneously arrests and entertains.

In some ways, these short stories by Margaret Atwood, these prose poems-cum-doodles almost constitute a new literary form, perhaps doing for prose what haikus do for poetry. Each one could have become a novel, if Margaret Atwood had been lucky enough to have had the luxury of multiple lives to afford the time to construct them. Read them quickly and the revisit them individually with more time to spare. Their stature is small, but their rewards are great.

Machiavelli And Renaissance Italy by J. R. Hale

J. R. Hale’s Machiavelli And Renaissance Italy was originally part of a Teach Yourself History series, published by Penguin Books in the 1960s. A twenty-first century reader will first of all be impressed by the book’s size, since it appears to be short, and by its laudable aim of opening up otherwise specialised knowledge to a wider audience. The same reader, however, is also going to be surprised, because this is no small sketch to expand an icon into a mere outline. On the contrary, this text deals admirably with its subject and in some detail. It is, in the end, actually quite a long read because of the book’s intensity and the level of detail presented. The picture that it paints of its subject, however, will appear doubly surprising for anyone who can associate Niccolo Machiavelli only with The Prince.

J.R.Hale’s book is a biography first and a history second. By its end, we have a thoroughly rounded portrait of Machiavelli, who turns out to be a rather complex, somewhat vulnerable, if also self-confident conservative. He is best known for a treatise on cut-throat politics, presenting a prescription that many others have dissected and some have tried to follow, believing it to provide a recipe for success. Machiavelli the politician, however, was only partially successful in the pursuit of his own career, and spent much of his life sidelined by the higher and mightier, often frantically trying to prise himself through any crack that might lead back inside the power structure. The creative or academic side of Niccolo Machiavelli’s genius, however, seems to be largely unknown to modern audiences, but Hale’s book deals admirably with all of Machiavelli’s achievements.

Machiavelli was an historian. Indeed, he was commissioned to write a history or Florence. He was also a linguist of sorts, a bit of a pedant in the area, if truth be told. Like all such types, he was right, sometimes. What is less obvious from our distance in time is that he was also a poet and a playwright, with some of his stage works being quite well known to contemporary audiences, since they received numerous performances.

But it is the political polemic that is The Prince for which we know Niccolo Machiavelli. He wrote the work after analysing the habits, achievements and tactics of one Cesare Borgia, with whom he served during the prince’s more successful times. Now Cesare was not noted for his negotiating skills. He was indeed a man of action. He was usually up for a fight, in fact whenever the opportunity arose. For him, it seems a quick war held the same kind of space in his life as his next meal. Machiavelli‘s own account of a conversation with Cesare relates that: “(Lucca) was a rich city, and a fine morsel for a gourmand”. Then, commenting on Cesare’s methods, Machiavelli records that a certain Messer Ramiro had been cut in two and left in the piazza at Cesena so everyone could see the handiwork. His death “was the pleasure of the prince, who shows us that he can make and unmake men according to their deserts”. So Cesare ate cities as snacks and half people for dessert. He was moderately successful for a while, it has to be said, and so it is no surprise that Machiavelli should incorporate his policies and practices as prescriptive method in his own manual on statecraft.

But the methods never did transfer easily. To survive, he tells us, states need money, since states are only respected if they have armies. Likewise, political power, it seems, can only accrue via wealth and the ability to buy force. And it was money that eventually deserted Machiavelli when paid employment as a diplomat dried up to nought. The Medicis did not trust him, even though his own role had always been that of a pen-pusher, a statesman of sorts, a civil servant. And so, when the work in politics dried up, he turned his hand to history

Not, of course, that he had ever been separated from it. Machiavelli lived in an age of princes and emperors. Two of the latter invaded the Italian peninsula from the north during his lifetime, one French and the other a variety of Hapsburg. Medicis came and went and came back again. Popes did the same, but not in the same identity, since they came from different families, or indeed with even the same goals, except the advancement of the family interests they represented. In Machiavelli’s day popes behaved like the emperors they are and every war was self-evidently just, as long as there was profit to be had. And just to underline the fact that times have hardly changed, Machiavelli saw a religious fundamentalist capture the popular imagination via a puritanical message, only to be destroyed by that same popular imagination when it moved on. At the turn of the sixteenth century, it seems that austerity fuelled by a guilt complex had only temporary caché.

J.R. Hale’s book is thus a brilliant reminder that within every icon there is a story, and that history is populated by real people, characters who drive events and create the future. These real people sometimes become eternalised as icons, fixed in their own times, but able to be transferred to any other to serve the needs of whoever needs their support. If only such iconic figures had known that at the time, then they might have behaved differently. When the icons are again reduced to mere people, however, they once again become interesting, full, engaging individuals, and this is what we discover via Hale’s book on Niccolo Machiavelli.

And if we feel that Machiavelli has nothing to say about the politics of today, then reflect on these words of his: “From some time past I have never said what I believe, nor believe what I say, and if I do happen to speak the truth, I wrap it up in so many lies that it is difficult to get at it”.

A Reflection On The Annals Of Imperial Rome by Publius Cornelius Tacitus

History changes when it is re-read. The casual reader, as opposed to the historian, always reads history with one eye on the present: there is always comparison at work whenever we reflect on events we assume are faithfully recorded from the past. And this past is not itself fixed, since our appreciation of it has already been formed as an amalgam of contemporary interpretations. On re-reading Tacitus, therefore, the reader is also feeding from lasting impressions formed by Cecil B DeMille, Gladiator, I Claudius. Julius Caesar, Lindsay Davis, Spartacus and Caligula, at least.

But Tacitus set for himself a different task from that which the contemporary reader appreciates, in that he saw himself as merely a recorder, year by year, of the important events that affected the public life of the empire. Tacitus seems largely unconcerned with ordinary people, except where collective opinion bore down on those with power or influence or, indeed, to record where those everyday folk unlucky enough to be left in residence at the end of a siege were summarily slaughtered. Neither, by and large, do slaves figure, except when they are paid or cajoled to act above their pay grade.

Tacitus is interested in emperors, consuls, politicians in general, military leaders, armies, rich socialites and influential foreigners, especially enemies. The Annals of Imperial Rome thus catalogues internal intrigue and external warfare and records how both impinged on a society we continue, despite much of the evidence, to label ‘civilised’.

It was not an age where prisoners were taken, unless they could be sold. Within these pages there is much blood letting, many wars, and some fascinating detail on the myriad ways human beings can set about killing one another. Current horror genres could learn much from Tacitus, since the blend of blood and drama is unrelenting. This was also an age of ceremony, where gods had to be pacified, oracles consulted and diviners believed. Of course, if you chose not to believe the soothsayers, you could always have them killed. Served them right, one supposes. Never deliver a story you think might not be received gratefully. There will always be consequences.

But within these pages ceremony was often the determining factor. It could not be by-passed. And of course, being civilised, Romans maintained respect for the law. Murder, for instance, was always culpable, but when committed by bovver-boy emperors, no doubt tattooed to their little boots, the crime often went unpunished. Towns where only the old, the female and the young remained after siege were of course subjected to mass slaughter, because none of those left could possibly fight back. Just how important constitutional means were to these living gods is illustrated by a fall from grace whose consequence was the elimination of the offender’s entire family, just in case… In a particular case this also meant doing away with a couple of young daughters, but at the last minute an official noted that the law banned the execution of virgins. Not wanting to stand on ceremony, the executioner was invited to rape them first and then carry out his duty. Must do things properly… Presented with the severed head of a rival, offered as proof that instruction have been dutifully carried out, Nero calmly observed that the fellow had started to go grey.

But what also must be borne in mind is that Tacitus, himself, was no contemporary observer. His productive life was more than a generation later than any of the events described in The Annals, whose stories begin half a century earlier than that. So it is possible that the reported sexual acts in public, the free and almost communal use of prostitutes and the general contempt for almost everything below elite status was just exaggeration. It might just be that contemporary mores required a vilification of the past, and that Tacitus was willing to provide it. Pigs, apparently, do fly.

A stunning juxtaposition comes in a comparison of two reported cases. One poor chronicler historian had the cheek to suggest that Brutus and Cassius might not have been all bad, despite their having murdered an emperor. The author, of course, signed his own death sentence. A games promoter, on the other hand, built a stadium that in the event collapsed, killing and maiming thousands. His punishment was a limited exile, the judgment doubt influenced by the fact that it was only the plebs who suffered.

During The Annals, we perhaps begin to wonder why we read history and, indeed, why it is written. By the time we have finished this account, we surely know. The modern country seems to be a feeble invention when compared to the more durable empire, which itself can be remarkably transient. Empires exist to pursue conflict with other empires, usually at the periphery, but with the aim of maintaining stability at the centre, where there is a constant struggle for power. So while plotters were being uncovered and eliminated in Rome, the great external threat at the end of this era came from the Parthian Empire. In anyone does not recall the location of the Parthian Empire, please do check it out. And then re-read history.

A Few Chapters on The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen by Laurence Sterne

Chapter One – The Plot

Well, gentlefolk, at least that’s out of the way!

Chapter Two – The Characters

Young Tristram Shandy, so unfortunately misnamed, is so young he’s still in the womb. He doesn’t even condescend to appear until volume three! This means he writes a bagful of pages before he even has access to paper, pen and inkhorn. But there is his good father and perhaps better mother, who at the outset suffer the ignominy of being depicted clock-winding.  There’s Uncle Toby, who has a passion for fortifications. In fact, verily indeed, whatever compass point provides the direction for whatever conversation, up will pop Uncle Toby and let off about mullions, parapets and ´scarpments. And don’t expect any assistance with vocabulary! Toby’s servant Trim and a forgetful maid called Susannah complete the cast. But there are others everywhere walking in and out of the tale, a farce acted through the momentary opening of doors, a trip to France and an occasional visit to the parlour for a pipe or a snifter.

Chapter Three – The Style

There will be no chapter three. The greatest of all philosophers, the very Slawkenbergius, assures us that the inclusion of third chapters inevitably lowers to tone of a tome, so these notes will have no chapter three, just to repeat what was said earlier. Thus, as a result of this pontification that we may not cross, this particular chapter three does not exist and is hereby deferred until chapter LXVIII of volume six.

Chapter Four – Noses

We all have one, we are told. Restating this perhaps more precisely, so that the good Doctor Hume might not be tempted to issue his objections, we all have the potential to possess one. But nose possessors beware! Be they long and judgmentally wagging, heavy and lewd or retroussé and apologetic, no nose is safe when the infant must be drawn forth into the world with newfangled assistance such as metal forceps.  Imagine the relative frailty of the protrusion compared to the grip of metal tongs! And if the child be a male, let that be the end of it! Or perhaps the end off it…

Chapter Five – The Moral

Morals were always questionable. And since there is nothing left to say on the matter, let’s let chapter five be the same as chapter four. Except let us also include reference to nonsense, absurdity, Monty Python, Cervantes, Rabelais and perhaps anyone else who cares to call in. Including the young Tristram Shandy, gentlemen, the poor unfortunate lad whose memoir this reported ‘novel’ claims to be. Hilarity also must look in to confirm the status of masterpiece, a status obviously to be achieved the moment the redoubtable author, one Laurence Sterne, placed his pen upon paper in Shandy’s name. And let it also be said, that, despite its two and a half centuries of age, the memoir may sound surprisingly modern, if the word Pythonesque be validly employed. Not all readers might be of the opinion, but in the end, what does it matter?

Chapter Six – The End and The Plot Again

So that’s it! The end. Please have a look at my website.

A Pair Of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy

A Pair Of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy was first published in the eighteen seventies. It is a romance of the Romantic era. A cursory glance from today’s perspective might suggest that the book has little to say about our own time, and that its significance, if it retains one, is purely historical. It could thus be read purely as a nineteenth century tale of manners, suitors, marriage pursued and formalised via the route of platonic encounter. But Thomas Hardy, if he be nothing else, was always a keen observer of social mores, airs and graces, and so A Pair Of Blue Eyes provides for the contemporary reader and intriguing picture of life as it might have been lived a century and a half ago. Where Hardy’s novel certainly does speak to our own times, however, is in its portrayal of social class in English society.

Elfride is an attractive young woman. She is middle class and apparently worried beyond her years that she may already be on the shelf. She is portrayed as rather fickle, sometimes less than focused, thoroughly aware of her social face, but strangely self-obsessed at the same time. She seems permanently to be analysing whom she might marry, and for what reason, but often from a standpoint of her own perceived standing. Her parents are keen that any suitor should possess commensurate status and have sufficient assets or prospects. This is where a young man called Stephen Smith falls short.

Stephen has as yet made neither a name nor a fortune. We learn that he is well educated, but has followed a curriculum far removed from that prescribed as a social passport by the prestigious schools. He is of low birth, since his father is nothing more than a manual labourer. Even a status elevated to that of the self-employed late in the story cannot make amends for having spent most of a working life as a mere employee. Elfride, however, seems to be besotted with Stephen Smith. He is of her age, and somewhat the wiser of the two. She is young, inexperienced, retiring but determined, and not a little myopic. They decide to elope when Elfride’s family declare their opposition. The couple travel to London by train, an act that in itself could easily compromise Elfride’s future marriage prospects, but Elfride immediately has second thoughts she declares she wants to return to England’s west country on the next train out of Paddington. Stephen insists on doing the right thing and accompanies her to preserve her safety. Stephen decides he must make his way in life before Elfride or, more importantly, her parents will accept him. Elfride declares she will wait, faithfully.

Thomas Hardy tells us that “…when women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.” Elfride does not seem to be too secret about anything when Mr Knight appears on the scene. He is a decade older than her, rather stiff and correct, but also solvent. With Stephen away, out of sight becomes almost out of mind and things duly progress.

There is a strange episode when Elfride saves Knight’s life on a cliff top. We are reminded perhaps that this is more soap than opera when there is an even stranger episode when Elfride is, conveniently for the plot, blamed for the death of a young lad who, unknown to her, became obsessed for distance. There is always a need to write letters in romantic novels. Characters always need to commit their thoughts, requests and accusations to paper. And, in an age without instant communication, words thus committed to the permanence of paper can be read, and also re-read or misread by anyone who cares to scan them. And so when Knight presses Elfride on her past, words both spoken and written are misunderstood and misinterpreted.

Stephen returns and meets Knight. Stephen has been in India and has done well for himself. Here is another truth of the time in that it is easier to climb socially via the colonies. In the end there are surprises for both men and for the reader as life takes all the characters along paths they believed to be familiar but eventually lead them into unknown territory.

“Of course; a sensible woman would rather lose her wits than her beauty,” is another of Hardy’s gender musings, an area where the book might grate with many a modern reader. But equally there is much in A Pair Of Blue Eyes that remains familiar. Even that last quoted opinion retains significance in an age that is perhaps more obsessed with personal appearance than any other, an age where cosmetic surgery transforms bodies as commonly as wisdom changes minds. Thomas Hardy’s novel ought to remind us that there are perhaps some universal truths, despite the fact that their appearance may change.

My latest is One On One, a story about a mathematical trick to exploit markets that comes under scrutiny from interested parties.

Development As Freedom by Amartya Sen

Perhaps not many people regularly read non-fiction, especially when it might appear to emanate from academic sources. Thus a title such as Development As Freedom by Amartya Sen, if encountered on a book browse, might suffer immediate and regrettable rejection. Subjects such as international politics, economic change and human development considered via the writings of a Nobel Prize winning economist might not suggest bedtime reading. But read again! And preferably read many times, for this book surely places the word ‘human’ at the heart of the development process and, because of that, is not only readable, it is an absolute joy.

Sen’s argument is simply encapsulated in the book’s title. As human beings change and as the societies in which they live transform, development can be measured, certainly perceived, and possibly achieved via greater life expectancy, access to education, improved gender and social equality, increasing population, technological progress, access to health care and a host of other life enhancing and enriching phenomena that all of us now seem to take for granted, bur, perhaps paradoxically, few societies actually achieve.

But for Sen, and this is the truly optimistic core of the book’s message, is that all of these identifiable and measurable phenomena are mere effects of a more fundamental cause. Development, for Amartya Sen, is about increasing human freedom. The concept includes freedom of choice, freedom to participate, freedom to express and in fact any freedom that might be exercised by an individual or community in the context of enhancing, not undermining, the wider social groups or societies in which the people live. There is undeniably something wider called society and it is thus society’s role to evaluate policy and practice to ensure that social and economic change enhance the sum of freedoms that people can claim.

But let it also be clear that this is no neo-liberal, individuality-is-God, markets-know-best diatribe. Development As Freedom is a concise, sometimes intense, but always sympathetic look at various aspects of economic and social change and the generality of development policy that can stimulate it. The point is that the human race and the societies in which it lives make progress for the common good when participation is widened, when inclusion rather than exclusion is the goal, when the whole range of human potential, rather than that of an elite in restricted roles, is allowed to blossom. And it is this overall message that makes the book such a positive and enriching experience.

Early on in the book, Sen sums up his approach by saying that “Poverty can be sensibly defined as capability deprivation…” and thus that the alleviation of poverty, in all its manifestations, allows human beings to develop whatever capabilities they might have, capabilities that would otherwise never be realised. Furthermore, greater social equality is more likely to provide opportunity for the development of this human potential than any other route.

In making his case, Amartya Sen deals the occasional body blow to a few nostrums. Reassessing Adam Smith from the original, Sen identifies that the original intellectual arguments on markets were at least partly aimed at countering the power and influence entrenched interests of the time. Now those would have certainly arisen out of the previous century’s tendency to grant and support monopolies. Sen thus casts Smith as least partly as a moderniser, who wanted to transform economic structures in order to transform society as he knew it. He also finds in Smith an admission that opportunity might have more to do with birthright than ability, or even availability of educational facilities. The champion of the market principle, as we now know him, is here not seen to claim that markets in themselves will always provide the most effective or efficient basis for economic interaction.

Sen also illustrates how so-called free markets might not work to the advantage of the majority. He cites an example of a Pareto-efficient system in which 1000 people each give up one dollar, without caring too much about the transaction. One person pockets the thousand dollars as profit and will clearly fight hard to retain such privileged status. When opinion about how the society transacts, it is likely that the individual who profits will speak loudly to maintain the status quo and, given the status of economic success, the person will also have access to the modes of expression needed. The thousand do, however, have the right to vote and so democracy is at the core of any approach to enhance freedom, but to be effective it has to function. Sen reminds us that there has never in human history been a famine in any democratic society with a free press.

Since development, in Sen’s vision, is about developing the capabilities of all people, it is clear that human development as a goal is first and foremost an ally of the poor, rather than the rich and powerful. Modernisation theory is thus merely a starting point for the process as Sen envisages it. But beyond this beginning it must continue until participation is increased and real democracy is achieved. Policy and practice should be continually evaluated to ensure the proper spread and effectiveness of their goals. Development As Freedom is much more than a description of what we are and from where we have come. It is nothing less than a far-sighted and clear prescription for political practice and provides a yardstick we might use to evaluate it.

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The Turn Of The Screw and The Aspern Papers by Henry James

Henry James, great though his name remains, can be something of an acquired taste for some readers. Lest it be said, in terms a lay person unacquainted with this writer’s indeed impressive array of both products and talents, that this particular artist of the written word might, on occasions perhaps far too frequent to count, might occasionally employ one or two -  let us fall short of the word ‘many’ - employ just a few too many of the aforementioned raw materials of his craft - words - for good measure. And sometimes this opacity of prose does obscure rather than enhance meaning, of that there is no doubt. Equally obvious, however, is the writer’s complete mastery of elegance and pace. So what better place for the still wary to start than a pair of short works, The Turn Of The Screw and The Aspern Papers?

The Turn Of The Screw is a classic ghost story. It’s told as the first person account of a governess appointed to a well-to-do family that has no mother. A distant father and a housekeeper live alongside a young girl and an older boy, who has just returned from school with a letter that suggest he does not return.

There is something strange about the children. They seem worldly wise beyond their years, almost political in the way they seem to require adults always to comply with their wishes. And then there are the sightings, apparitions of previous employees, perhaps, people who might have looked after these same children. What is the history? What are the circumstances that led to these poor souls being apparently trapped in this place in the psyche of two small children?

Turn Of The Screw is a ghost story, but it certainly avoids the clichés and falsely hyped drama that so often affect the genre. It thus, in the hands of Henry James, achieves a status that is merely fiction. No genre need claim to intervene, since its development and indeed denouement is always more about the characters rather than the events.

The Aspern Papers is another first person account, but here the storyteller is engaged in a search, a pursuit, in fact, and not a self-analysis. The Aspern of the title was himself a writer, but one active in the early part of the nineteenth century. By the time our narrator goes in search of the writer’s papers, we are decades into the future, well past the writer’s death.

Aspern’s former lover, now known as Miss Bordereau, who, it is believed, still holds the archive of this revered but little-documented genius, lives in Venice with the young and attractive niece, Miss Tina, who is likely to inherit. The narrator travels to Italy, makes contact with the household by renting rooms in their dilapidated canal-side home.

Miss Bordereau proves to be something of a recluse, so even arranging an audience where the narrator might discuss the Aspern Papers proves difficult. But the old lady knows how to do business and exacts a high rent from her tenant, meaning that the mission must be completed as quickly as possible, before funds run out. The eventual financial beneficiary of the arrangement will be the young Miss Tina, who soon becomes an object of interest for our storyteller.

The Aspern Papers is a thoroughly successful short novel that works by layering various plots and motives so they can all progress together via luscious, if rather dense prose. For a reader unused to James’s style, these two often coupled classics perhaps form a perfect introduction.