Palestinian Walks by Raja Shehadeh

I read this book as a spin off from reading The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane, while MacFarlane walks in many locations Shehadeh's account is about walking in the “same” landscape over time – across times of great change.

This is a strongly political account because Shehadeh is a Palestinian walking in the West Bank, land occupied by Israel since 1967, and about which all discourse is politically charged.

Before the foundation of the State of Israel there was already a tension between the Palestinian experience of the land and the various colonizers narratives about it. The life of the Palestinians was often negated by these narratives about the land as a barren wilderness. At one level the Israel settlement of the West Bank is an extension of that colonial narrative of development of the wilderness (which has marginalised native populations across the global).

The Jewish identification with the land of the Biblical Israel, especially as articulated by Zionists, adds additional layers of complexity, of passion, and of pain to that standard dynamic.

One of the most depressing aspects of the book is Shehadeh's assessment of the Oslo Accords, which many of us took as the only real opportunity for peace there has been, and yet he felt they were a betrayal of the grass roots Palestinians and a guarantor of continuing violence. Sadly his assessment increasingly seems to have been accurate.

It is clear that there is mutual dehumanizing of the Palestinian and Israeli populations. The current separation, which is only going to be further entrenched by construction of the Israeli wall, allows both sides to ignore the humanity of the other and while that continues there is little chance of peace. Hope of a kind, albeit still very small, comes in the penultimate comes when Shedadeh encounters an Isreali Settler on one of his walks, it is a humanizing encounter for them both. (For while Shedadeh is a good man up until this point he had viewer the Settlers as a category rather than as people).

Once you acknowledge the humanity of the actors on both sides of a conflict simplistic divisions between the “good” and the “bad” have to be refused – but while resolution then appears more complex it is only be addressing that true complexity that meaningful and lasting resolutions are possible at all.

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

NB – Contains Spoilers

This is the third part of C. S. Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy but, after trips to Mars and Venus, this time we remain earth bound.

Published in 1945 this feels somewhat more political than the two pre-war parts and there is a definite Orwellian overtone to the N.I.C.E.

I found the antics of the N.I.C.E. (the Nation Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments rather than the latter day National Institute for Clinical Excellence) more engaging that the mysticism centred around the space travelling Ransom.

This was especially the case for N.I.C.E.'s Deputy Director, Wither, with his unfailing ability to speak without ever saying anything. He must have been a hero to Sir Humphrey and possibly civil servants everywhere. Wither takes “plausible deniable” (the holy grail for a successful political career) and elevates it to an art form.

That the University Don C. S. Lewis casts a “technocratic” Institute as the instrument of evil is revealing if not terribly surprising. During the first couple decades after the World War Two Britain embraced the technocrat in a way it had never done before, and mostly has not since. It was an era of great “Plans”, epitomised by the New Towns, and so it is interesting that at one level “That Hideous Strength” is a pre-emptive back-lash.

The allegorical quality of this novel is less evident than in the previous part, Perelandra, but the Christianity of those drawn around Ransom, even of Merlin, is firmly stated. The demise of the N.I.C.E. in a blood bath it perhaps an honest outcome but if you were hopeful of redemption... that seems lacking.

The couple at the centre of the novel, Mark and Jane, are neither of them particularly likeable. I guess one should be drawn to Jane as she is at least on the right side of the conflict, but really I found her pathetic and insipid. In one respect this is a token of the quality of the storytelling, it remains engaging whilst being devoid of any truly sympathetic characters.

To the extent that it is Orwellian it is to me a pessimistic vision. The power of N.I.C.E. is only broken by supernatural intervention and the novel clearly states that humanity, left on its own, would have succumb. Of course N.I.C.E. had its own supernatural backers too, so if you concede that supernatural “good” is needed to counter supernatural “evil”, perhaps you can hold on to the hope that ordinary human goodness has the power to overcome ordinary human evil.

Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver (Spirit Walker, Soul Eater, Outcast, & Oath Breaker)

Spirit Walker is the second of the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, after Wolf Brother which I read over Christmas.

I don't have a lot to add to what I said about Wolf Brother - I think I read this one even more quickly and I found it equally enjoyable.

This time they end up with an island people.  The accounts of sea trips in small canoes were vividly told and I felt I had a clear vision of the scenes in which the drama was unfolding.

Soul Eater is the third installment and once again I enjoyed the book - although this time there was a greater development of the ritual/religion of the Soul Eaters which I did not find quite as engaging as that aspect of the story did not carry the same sense of people and of place.

Outcast once again moves deeper into the world of the Soul Eaters and the challenges are more to do with the social constructs of Taboo than the "ordinary" life of early hunters. It is still powerful, and there are some big choices to be made as our young heroes find that doing what is "right" is not always the same as doing what is "permitted".

Oath Breaker, I don't know if it is because it is a little while since I read Outcast therefore I might be "fresh", but I found this much stronger than the last couple.  Paver once again confronts the reader with the death of a major character within the first chapter.  It also felt like Torak, Renn, and Wolf were all growing up, head strong teenagers being forced into wisdom of years, that the arc of the wider narrative was becoming visible. 

So it is now on to the next (and last) one...

Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity by Gary B. Ferngren

While this might appear to be a rather niche topic there is in fact a wider application.  It becomes clear that the root of the “Science versus Religion” debate comes from the assertion that Christianity rejected the proto-scientific medical practice of the Greco-Roman world in favour of a reliance on “faith” healing.  This idea has then been extrapolated out to a belief that Christianity is fundamentally anti-scientific.  Ferngren by showing that there is no evidence for the Christian rejection of contemporary medical practice also acts to undermine the wider argument that science and Christianity are incompatible.

This is most definitely an academic work – for example while the main body is just 150 pages long it is followed by 90 pages of notes and bibliographic references etc, which seems a pretty high ratio to me.  It also reads like a PhD thesis and a large part of content is a commentary on other writers, both ancient and modern, of whose ideas the reader is assumed to have a working knowledge (and which I mostly didn’t – this left me having to take a lot of Ferngren’s arguments on face value but thankfully it didn’t render those arguments unintelligible).

Ferngren’s main argument is that the interpretation of Scriptural and other Early Christian writings are flawed.  The usual assumption is that the predominance of “faith” healings of one kind or another within these writings is indicative of the same predominance within the Christian Communities.  But Ferngren’s suggests that such writings are instead capturing the exception occurrences and are largely silent on the normative practice which as a common place was not seen as worthy of comment.  To support this, through the examination of accounts of healing in the Christian writings, Ferngren identifies evidence to show that generally it was only after the recourse to ordinary medicine had failed to achieve healing that some form of “faith” healing was sort. 

The other challenge that the Ferngren provides is to the assumption that the normal explanation for illness was either divine punishment or the action of demons – this is shown simply by offering an unbiased reading which looks only at the early writings rather than reading the beliefs of the high Middle Ages backwards.

One of the most interesting aspects is the way Ferngren’s argues that charity as we understand it was a particular idea of the Jewish people and unknown in the Greco-Roman world until it was spread by the growth of Christianity.  This is interesting because it seems that charity is at one level hard wired into our society and yet at another that it is becoming an increasingly contested idea – private charity might continue to be encouraged but the idea that the state should act with charity towards either citizens or not-citizen residents is being rapidly diminished.

The Complete Poems by Leslie Norris

It is for well over a year that I have had this collection on my bed side and been reading it, at intervals, a few poems at a time, it now feels a little odd not to have him as my companion.

Here are a few of the poems which I marked up, I think the melancholic character of my selection is not completely representative of the complete body of Leslie Norris’ work.

Last leaves by Leslie Norris

Late last night, the moon in puddles, I walked the lane

North from my gate up to the small wood where,

Stirring and trembling from the sentient trees,

The last leases fell.  I heard them in the still air

Snap.  And almost saw their sifting passage down

To join their squelching fellows on the ground,

All glory gone. I tread on the black wreck

Of the year. Well, it is over.

Here, in the arboreal summer, struck

By the squinting light, I took for a hawk

No more than a flapping pigeon. I’ll not make

That mistake in valid winter. No, I’ll see

Each full-eyed owl stir not a breath

Of frost among the visible twigs as he pads

On air; and remember the owl’s truth

For the vole, the silver frog, and the

Soft-bellied mouse, her summer breeding done.

Stone and Fern by Leslie Norris

It is not that the sea lanes

Are too long, nor that I am not

Tempted by the birds’ sightless

Roads, but that I have listened

Always to the voice of the stone,

Saying: Sit still, answer, say

Who are you.  And I have answered

Always with the rooted fern,

Saying: We are the dying seed.

A Dying Hawk by Leslie Norris

She stoops and drops

through a straight

funnel of sight

into falling air.

She folds gravity

to her heart, and dives

Behind her eye.

The one purpose

of her gaze

will not let her see

the clear windscreen

moving to kill her.

She spread too late.

Her wings, her talons

set against air.

She dies at the roadside,

her hollow bones

are splintered

in the rags of her feathers,

and her brittle gape

is open and broken.

Before her head falls

what is left

stares from her yellow eye.

The Quiet-Eyed Cattle by Leslie Norris

The quiet-eyed cattle

Are nervous and heavy

They clumsily huddle

And settle together

The mists of their breathing

Are wreathing and twining

And wisp to the window

And fade in the moonlight

Out over the meadow

Where cattle tomorrow

Will amble in pasture

And always remember

Will always remember

The King in their stable

The Child in the manger

Whose name lives forever.

First Class: A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps by Chris West

This book is clearly going to mostly appeal to Philatelitic geeks, however they might be a little disappointed as it is not, and never claims to be, a history of the stamps.  It includes only brief commentaries about the 36 which are the starting point of the chapters.

These chapters give us little snap shots of social history, and the format of beginning with a object, in this case a stamp, as a good way to tell an engaging story.   There are no great revelations, it is for the most part a common place history, but it is well told.  I have dipped in to it reading a chapter or two at a time over the best part of a year.

As we come to the latter chapters there is perhaps a shift across that blurry line between the historian’s and the journalist’s art – as 2012 might be seen as a little too early to have written a “history” of 2012 – however it is of no great consequence.

The account is conservative, albeit with the smallest of ‘c’s, in the sense that it tends toward an emphasis on the continuity across the 170 years with which it deals, while other histories might want to focus instead on ways in which contemporary Britain differs from that of the early Victorian era when the Penny Black was first issued. 

Life on the Golden Horn by Mary Wortley Montagu

One of the Penguin Great Journeys series this is a collection letters written by Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, during their journey across Europe and, what turned out to be, their fairly short time in Constantinople. 

From my school boy history the Ottoman Empire appeared as the “sick man of Europe” in the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, but here in the early 18^th Century it is still in full health. 

That it takes Mary Wortley Montagu the best part of a year to cross Europe gives you a sense of the epic nature of the journey while the bright and lively style of her letters perhaps acts to conceal the same.   These are really engaging letters full of personality.

Her attitude to the Turkish culture is highly enlightened, and in most of the letters from Constantinople and other places within the Ottoman Empire she is deeply critical of most other western writers who have reported on life and culture there before her.  In particular her account of the lives of women act to over turn all that has been said before – the former writers being male would have had no access to the private spaces of Turkish women and so their reports were hear say or simple fabrication.  The contrast could not be clearer than that between the public veiling and the “private” nakedness of women in there bath houses.

The status of women within Islamic cultures remains contested, and this gives these 300 year old letters a real contemporary feel.  The wearing of the veil is often a flash point, as much, if not more so, in modern Turkey as in the “West”.