Birches on a Day by Richard W. Halperin

Found in Planet 199

I walked through them in the usual dappled light,

They not turning but I, in the light, turning

Toward birches, as deeper and quieter I went,

Not falling but walking toward the cave where

Greenness lives. I’d known this wood before – over there

Under a tree (not a birch) Tolstoy reading

And Repin painting him reading, an old man

In loose white holding a book raised toward the light

That one associates with birches, I not in

Loose white and in fact I not – coming alone

From church after our wedding or whatever

The ceremony had been, you the usual

Dappled light drawing me on past the reading man,

As deeper and quieter we went, and all in all,

You, I, the reading man, the book, the day,

Were in the book; but not the birches.

The Garden by Garham Thomas

Found in Planet 199

End of another summer. The Leaves

Dry and thin, then fall, their dark

Curls the anatomy of an autumn.

Like light, the closures come and go:

A line glimpsed under the printed page

Or absence of the voice that asked

What you alone could give, but asked

The one time only. Soon the garden

Will revert to water. Daylight will hide

In its shrubbery, with only the ferns’

Geometry to save it. I shall remember

To guard my steps, before I re-enter

Kick off my boots for fear I print

Lead skeletons on the kitchen floor.

Exile by Richard North Patterson

Exile

This book is  Geenbelt 2011’s ‘Big Read’ – having finally dragged myself to end of it I am not only disappointed with the book but irritated with Greenbelt from encouraging me to read such drivel.

WARNING: the following does contain spoilers.

If you wanted a book to pass the time while lying on the beach this would be a reasonably acceptable offering but the idea, proffered by Greenbelt, that this was a work that would prompt and merit intelligent people discussing it is fanciful.

The book takes the conflict between Israeli and Palestinians, with the extensions of USA and Iran on either side, as the context for the drama, yet in this massive geopolitical scope it merely flounders.  The author feels the need to tell us a large amount of the ‘history’ of the conflict and so the hapless lawyer in the midst of the story elicits clunky monologues from various parties during his ‘investigations’.  This is one of the causes for the 699 page book being so flabbily written. I also think a strong editorial hand might have cut it by a third and perhaps polished it in something resembling a decent product.   

The book is one that should be filled with intense emotions – yet it is rather flat, we are too often told not shown what is being felt – for example on the trip to the Israel and the West Bank we are repeatedly told that it felt ‘like a different world’ without a vivid description of what this different world consisted of.

There was a major twist in the plot, which when it is finally revealed is a great relief to the reader as the frustration that everyone in the saga was so dim witted they were unaware of this twist was intolerable.  The lawyer and his lover had parted 13 years ago, and now she is back with a 12 year old daughter, the maths was hardly difficult.  This was also the ‘key’ to unlock what the author thought was the intractable puzzle of the rest of the plot.  So shocking was this twist believed to be that it revelation is spun out over 100 pages so we could keep up.

There are also points in which the plotting is weak – and the plot is all this book has going for it – there is the drama of the family and the global conspiracy, the two have become entangled in a symbiotic relationship but how did the threads first come to be twisted, perhaps the really interesting point in the story where a man manages to turn a plot to kill a Prime Minister into revenge against his unfaithful wife – this is never revealed.  

To be frank this book comes close to the category of the crass, as it invokes the Holocaust but it has nothing to say – there are some topics that if spoken of demand the best of speech and thought – not the poor or mediocre disposable ‘literature’ that Patterson gives us. 

The Customs of the Kingdoms of India by Marco Polo Translated by Ronald Latham

The Customs of the Kingdoms of India (Penguin Great Journeys)

I found this extract engaging for the turn of phrase and structure - ending each section with a dismissive "As there is nothing else worth noting, we will pass on to such and such", yet  it was clear that it had been dictated for after passing on from an area often there would a little later be some aside that returned you to a former place clearly as the recollection of it had just occurred to Marco Polo. 

That it was written some 700 years ago is a marvel as there are points at which the places some recognisable - in translating there must I am sure have been a certain amount of updating of place names but also perhaps also some adjustments to the idiom to make it more accessible to the modern reader - and that creates a weariness about just how much you are encountering Marco Polo's own voice.  

The Juggernauts by Garham Bannock

The Juggernauts (Pelican)

Like the other Pelican books I have recently read The Affluent Society and America's receding future Bannock while writing 40 years ago seems, depressingly, to be describing contemporary problems.

Throughout this essay on the problems that are created by the dominance of giant corporations he makes reference to examples, and in particular to General Motors is the archetype of a permanent corporation.  While the financial crisis of 2009 including the bankruptcy of General Motors might at first raise question about permanence very few giants were allowed to fall and most of the assets of those that did fall have been shared among their rivals and so only added to the process of concentration which Bannock sees as such a problem.  All of the bad practices he attributes to these giants are only made worse by their recognition that they are too bad to fail - market capitalism only really exists if the entities within the market can fail without threatening the system as a whole.  He also gives examples of M&S as a large company that didn't display the undesirable character of a 'mature corporation' - one of the pieces of evidence was the fact than M&S did not advertise very much, each time I read this I heard "This is not just..." in my head and smiled that some things at least had changed.

Bannock has faith in the ability of the competitive market to delivery in the consumers interest but  sees an emerging problem when a market is dominated by 3 or 4 corporations as there is a lose of competition, and for him the motor industry was first market to reach this fully developed state. The problem in this state is that rather than competing to meet the consumers need the corporations instead focus on creating consumer desire for their products - roles are reversed we, the consumer, in fact provide the service of buying stuff.

He also focuses on the fantasy of 'innovation' - his example is the yearly style changes for cars, ours would be the latest mobile of i-pod - in both cases it has a new shape but what is under the bonnet hasn't changed - and the plague of built in obeisance, (How many people have found their mobile breaks just in time for them to need an upgrade and lock them in to another years contract with the network?).  Real advances in technology come from outside the big corporate machines - eg how long would we have gone on buying shiny new vacuum cleaners that did a bad job without Dyson?

The analysis is good - but it is hard to see the remedy in Bannock's essay, and even harder now as we have spend 40 years traveling in the wrong direction - particularly as it is so hard for a consumer to avoid these massive firms, even when you think you are dealing with an independent you will often find in the tangle web of corporate ownership your money is in fact ending up in the same pockets as it would have done with the big brand you were avoiding. 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 

This is an early Poirot story, dating as it does from 1926, and is one of the most famous - although this fact was lost on me and when I started reading it over a year after I brought the book I had forgotten that is was a Poirot - and so it was a surprise went our Belgian friend popped up next door! But this was about the only point of surprise as having seen it on television much of the plot was familiar however this created many points of discord as there was little in the descriptions that made you think of David Suchet.
There is a twist at the end - but I think you would have to been exceptionally dull witted not to have arrived at the murderer almost before the deed itself had been done.
While I enjoyed it I would question why this story is held out as a particularly fine example of Christie's work. 

The Affluent Society by J K Galbraith

The Affluent Society (Pelican)

Another Pelican book brought on the same trip as America's Receding Future, Galbraith is writing ten years before Segal and while they do have slightly different focuses they are seeing much the same world through much the same lens.

It was particularly interesting to be reading this essay while traveling in China as it showed some great similarities to the America of the late 1950s and some radical departures (both in line with Galbraith's recommendations and at counterpoint to them).


It seems China today is living the America dream - there are plenty of opportunities to get rich quick - and while there are the dream lives as even the poorest of the poor can endure in the hope that it could be them - however this phase will not last for ever - soon the opportunities will dry up and wealth will settle around a traditional core the really rich will not be people who made money but people who inherited it - society has a great capacity to look warmly on those who made money (even when they did so with little ethic regard) the link between their toil, their gamble, even their lie, and the wealth they enjoy is a model for how to join them, for inherited wealth has no redemption for try as you might you can not become born on a wealthy father after the fact.


One area of interest is on productivity - one of the striking things about China is the number of people working in roles which we saw as under-employed - the vast numbers of assistants in the shops - the people sweeping the highway with twig brooms or cutting the bushes in the central reversion with hand shears - one of Galbraith's key arguments is that in a poor society it is important that every member is pushed to the maximum level of productivity but in an affluent society (like our and these days China - where people have enough food, shelter etc) the drive to increase productivity is counterproductive it renders some members of society redundant - "That full employment is more desirable than increased production combined with unemployment would be clear alike to the most sophisticated and the most primitive politician." If you are adequately fed what is the point in you working harder if it while adding marginally to your wealth denies a job to another?

The second be area is the contrast we make between private expenditure and public expenditure - Galbraith asks why money spent by individuals is a sign of a successful society but money spend collectively by the society/the state is a problem, why is money spend on for examples cars better than money spent on schools? Clearly China does not at this time make this distinction  - it has high taxes, it spends big money on public infrastructure (which is an enabler to private enterprise - for example while its cities are huge they are moving because the state has put in the trains, expressways, and subways to meet the need - in the West the same ciy would be on its knees in grid lock) also the success of China's state owned corporations means that the dividing line between the state and the private economy not as clear as in the West.

There are also clear questions to ask in light of the problems of public deficits - Galbraith argues that the affluence of the private sphere should be matched by the affluence of the public (with the accompanying high taxes to transfer money from private to public hands) - to Galbraith the answer to the deficit would be more tax not less expenditure - on a day when many public sector works are on strike trying to protect their pension rights the question is how much higher tax would they be prepared to stomach in order to key those rights?

I think Galbraith's ideas are so far out of fashion at the moment to be almost laughable - but they do ask some very deep questions of the assumptions that frame they current political debates and reveal just how narrow our politics has become as you would have to go to the very extremes of the left (beyond politics and into the realms of insanity and idealism) to find anyone who would publicly sign up to any of what Galbraith is saying.