I really enjoyed this book. The prose is flowing and easy to read. It’s really impressive given that Orwell must have only been in his mid to late twenties when he wrote it. The characteristic clarity and economy is already there in abundance. One aspect of this book, which isn’t evident in the other Orwell books I’ve read, are the occasional justifications he offers for his writing. It’s as if he lacks confidence that what he is writing is sufficiently interesting or is worried that the purpose of his observations will be misunderstood; ‘for what they are worth...’, ‘I do this to...’, ‘These are only my own ideas...’, ‘I present them as a sample...’ etc. It’s unnecessary and a bit clunky. This is one of the weaker part of the book.
The characters are brilliant; Charlie, the shirker, rapist and bistro philosopher, Mario, the Italian expert cafetiere, Boris, the enthusiastic and overweight former Russian soldier, Paddy, the loquacious Irish moocher, Bozo, the stoic Screever. They are so well drawn I felt like I had an intimate knowledge of them. But Orwell never hammers out lengthy, self-conscious passages of description to achieve this. Rather, the idiosyncrasies are finely crafted into the general flow of the writing so I hardly noticed them as distinct. The book also contains street stories about more minor characters he has met or heard about. These too have an authentic feel. The swindles are probably my favourites. The couple selling pornographic postcards that turn out to be normal. The Serb who only takes day work, works hard and then tries to get sacked as soon after noon as possible so as to receive his day’s pay for the minimum amount of effort. The miser who buys fake cocaine didn’t quite ring true as, if he were the incorrigible miser he’s made out to be, then surely he would have inspected the goods he was purchasing more thoroughly.
The physical scenes that Orwell draws are excellent too. The chaos of the Hotel X, the squalor of the Russian restaurant and the filth of his various accommodations are all highly memorable. Like the characters, Orwell achieves this without too much laborious prose and it’s pleasurable reading throughout. The scene of drinking in the bistro in Paris during his day off was amusing and vivid. I did find myself incredulous at the extent of the dirt and the hardship that employed people suffered in the late 1920s. I thought perhaps that things had been exaggerated for dramatic effect. Even in a cheap hotel, the filthiness of the bedclothes and the magnitude of the insect infestation in Paris seem outrageous. It also seems astonishing that someone can work so many hours and be so abjectly poor. Later on, the hardships of ‘the spike’ and the dormitories in London seem equally unfathomable for a modern reader.
The book also contains interesting philosophical or sociological observations about poverty and different classes from Orwell, who’s experiences probably made him more informed on this subject than most. The freedom and relief of poverty is one counterintuitive aspect of this. He writes, ‘poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.’ And later on, ‘within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry….you have talked so often of going to the dogs–and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.’ Orwell also writes about the unwarranted fear rich people have of the poor. Perhaps this is because the rich know that the situation is so unfair! He writes, ‘Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?’ This passage is obviously also racist and there are several other examples of it in the book. It’s unpleasant to read but I suppose these sort of views were common for the time even among educated people like Orwell.
Orwell also offers an interesting justification of begging as a profession, ‘Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar’s livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course–but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout–in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.’ Here it seems to me that Orwell is fundamentally correct. He is also insightful about the reasons people despise beggars, ‘I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except ‘Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it’? Money has become the grand test of virtue.’ If anything, money may have become an even more universal test of virtue today that it was then.
Chapter 22 is quite an interesting, if somewhat incomplete, reflection on the nature of employment. He asks why hard, unskilled work exists and why it must continue. He likens it to ‘slavery’ and asks if the ‘luxury’ it provides, or the end of ‘civilisation’ that it purportedly serves, are really so worthy after all. I would broadly agree with him on these points except for the fact that while Orwell seems to think there is something like ‘civilisation’ I see only people who want to do things and people who are willing to supply these desires. I don’t see an overarching aim or purpose to society’s various occupations save, perhaps, some broad species of self-interest. Equally, Orwell tell us ‘smartness’ simply means that the customer pays more and the staff work more and the only person who benefits is the proprietor. This also struck me as a slightly facile and naive understanding of the situation. A large hotel will employ many more staff than a cheap one and not simply make the same number of staff work harder. Equally, the staff there will earn more as Orwell himself describes when detailing the tips of the waiter. He also says nothing of the role of capital in the provision of a smart hotel experience. The hotel must operate in a building and in a capitalist system that cannot be had for nothing. He concludes that the system exists to keep the working class tired and servile. He goes on to speculate that most rich people would know this but want the status quo to remain for their own safety. This all struck me as a rather immature conspiracy theory without much genuine support or evidence. For me, he’s right to point out that lots of jobs are more or less pointless but to conclude that this indicates a grand, systematic subjugation of the poor by the rich is incorrect. The rich do benefit from many privileges the poor will never enjoy and this could be seen as unethical. However, to see the whole labour market as rigged is a step too far for me. This chapter was superficial and a bit naive.
The fact that being poor attracts the attention of many worthy types who wish to ‘help’ those less fortunate than themselves is well drawn in the book. Orwell writes, ‘It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.’ This strikes me as true and it easy to see examples of poor people been made the object of middle class people’s worthiness in many instances of charity. This may be a contributing factor in the scene described by Orwell in London where 100 or so homeless people jeer and mock a church service they have been forced to attend in exchange for some food. Orwell thinks that it may be a deeper human instinct, which I’m not totally convinced about. He writes, ‘a man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor–it is a fixed characteristic of human nature’.
I thoroughly enjoyed the prose, characters and scenes depicted in this book even though some of them may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect. If none of them have been hyperbolised then I am glad that things have come so far in the last 80-odd years! Some of the reflections on how society operates struck me as grandiose, naive and superficial but even these sections contained valid points too. It’s not the best book I’ve read by Orwell but it is impressive to see how good his prose was even as a young writer and some of the characters and scenes are fantastic.
Saturday 28 July 2018
Wednesday 25 July 2018
Hans Rosling - Factfulness
If you’ve watched one of Rosling’s famous talks then it’s debatable if it’s worth reading this book. If you haven’t then I’d say it’s definitely worth it. The book kicks off by asking 13 multiple choice questions about global health, development and education. If you’ve seen his TED talk, then you already know that the answer will always be the most optimistic answer. Because of this, a lot of the book is a bit slow paced and redundant if you’re already familiar with his message. The book is written so it will be comprehensible to almost anyone. It is very clear and easy to read. This makes it a little pedestrian for people who already know that not everyone outside of the ‘Western’ world is poor. On the other hand, it’s not a long book and the style is very light and easy to comprehend so it’s possible to skim some of the explanations if you’re already familiar with the facts.
The book has a clear mission: To encourage people to inform themselves by using statistics to combat their biases. Rosling’s approach to statistics is sensible and the advice he gives is clear and applicable. I’m a bit of a sceptic about huge scale stats like GDP, which strikes me as impossible to measure but, for the most part, the stats used in the book are more comprehensible. For example, child mortality rates, percentages of women in education and where the human population live in the world. Of course, it’s possible to argue that all statistics have their limitations but Rosling is prepared to accept that. I think it’s fair to say that some inputs are needed for a meaningful discussion about the issues that are addressed in the book and the stats are better than uninformed speculation.
Alongside a presentation of his message about the importance of statistics in informing our opinions and decisions there are enjoyable and interesting anecdotes about his life and varied career. These are delivered in the style of an experienced professor or lecturer who’s told the same story hundreds and hundreds of times. Sometimes there’s a bit too much name dropping but it’s not intolerable. The style is formulaic but this does give the book clarity and structure. The summaries at the end of each chapter are very useful and I’ll reproduce a version of these after this review. In the chapter on urgency, Rosling makes the point that information is best learned when it is returned to and reinforced over a period of time. This is one of my main aims in writing these notes. In an informative book like this I think it’s really great to have this feature included.
This book is aimed at the popular market and, in order to make the material clear and comprehensible, sometimes it is a bit superficial in its presentation. I was reminded of reading books like Bjorn Lomborg’s The Sceptical Environmentalist and Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow by certain parts of this. These books offer more in depth analysis of some of the issues raised. Rosling doesn’t always use the academic terms for the psychological or behavioural phenomena he talks about. Nor does he reference the other people who have worked on these ideas and discovered them before him. I suppose this could be described as arrogant and taking credit for other people’s ideas. On the other hand, it’s not an academic book and lots of footnotes and references would make the text clunkier. Nonetheless, most of these ideas aren’t Rosling’s and he isn’t the first to write about them but this book gives the impression that they are!
Overall, I’d say this book would be a great introduction to statistics and behavioural biases for someone who knows nothing about them. If you’ve already read quite a lot about this topic then the book is a bit facile. Nonetheless, Rosling and his team should be heartily congratulated for quest to reduce ignorance and encourage people to have strong supporting facts for their opinions!
CHAPTER SUMMARY
1. To control THE GAP INSTINCT, look for the majority.
• Beware comparisons of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all.
• Beware comparisons of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.
• The view from up here. Remember, looking down from above distorts the view. Everything else looks equally short, but it’s not.
Page: 65
2. To control the NEGATIVITY INSTINCT, expect bad news.
• Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g., better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.
• Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.
• Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.
• More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.
• Beware of rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories.
Page: 74
3. To control THE STRAIGHT LINE INSTINCT, remember that curves come in different shapes.
• Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to. [cf. Malthus]
Page: 123
4. To control THE FEAR INSTINCT, calculate the risks.
• The scary world: fear vs. reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected—by your own attention filter or by the media—precisely because it is scary.
• Risk = danger × exposure. The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it? And how much are you exposed to it?
• Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.
Page: 143
5. To control THE SIZE INSTINCT, get things in proportion.
• Compare. Big numbers always look big. Single numbers on their own are misleading and should make you suspicious. Always look for comparisons. Ideally, divide by something.
• 80/20. Have you been given a long list? Look for the few largest items and deal with those first. They are quite likely more important than all the others put together.
• Divide. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions.
Page: 165
6. To control the GENERALISATION INSTINCT, question your categories.
• Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories. And …
• Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant. But also …
• Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g., you and other people living on Level 4 or unconscious soldiers) applies for another (e.g., people not living on Level 4 or sleeping babies).
• Beware of “the majority.” The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between.
• Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.
• Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think, In what way is this a smart solution?
Page: 184
7. To control THE DESTINY INSTINCT, remember slow change is still change.
• Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades.
• Update your knowledge. Some knowledge goes out of date quickly. Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.
• Talk to Grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparents’ values and how they differ from yours.
• Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s.
Page: 199
8. To control THE SINGLE PERSPECTIVE INSTINCT, get a toolbox, not a hammer.
• Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses.
• Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others.
• Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.
• Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.
• Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise. Solve problems on a case-by-case basis.
Page: 208
9. To control THE BLAME INSTINCT, resist finding a scapegoat.
• Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.
• Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit.
Page: 242
10. To control THE URGENCY INSTINCT, take small steps.
• Take a breath. When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down. Ask for more time and more information. It’s rarely now or never and it’s rarely either/or.
• Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful.
• Beware of fortune-tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before.
• Be wary of drastic action. Ask what the side effects will be. Ask how the idea has been tested. Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluation of their impact, are less dramatic but usually more effective.
The book has a clear mission: To encourage people to inform themselves by using statistics to combat their biases. Rosling’s approach to statistics is sensible and the advice he gives is clear and applicable. I’m a bit of a sceptic about huge scale stats like GDP, which strikes me as impossible to measure but, for the most part, the stats used in the book are more comprehensible. For example, child mortality rates, percentages of women in education and where the human population live in the world. Of course, it’s possible to argue that all statistics have their limitations but Rosling is prepared to accept that. I think it’s fair to say that some inputs are needed for a meaningful discussion about the issues that are addressed in the book and the stats are better than uninformed speculation.
Alongside a presentation of his message about the importance of statistics in informing our opinions and decisions there are enjoyable and interesting anecdotes about his life and varied career. These are delivered in the style of an experienced professor or lecturer who’s told the same story hundreds and hundreds of times. Sometimes there’s a bit too much name dropping but it’s not intolerable. The style is formulaic but this does give the book clarity and structure. The summaries at the end of each chapter are very useful and I’ll reproduce a version of these after this review. In the chapter on urgency, Rosling makes the point that information is best learned when it is returned to and reinforced over a period of time. This is one of my main aims in writing these notes. In an informative book like this I think it’s really great to have this feature included.
This book is aimed at the popular market and, in order to make the material clear and comprehensible, sometimes it is a bit superficial in its presentation. I was reminded of reading books like Bjorn Lomborg’s The Sceptical Environmentalist and Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow by certain parts of this. These books offer more in depth analysis of some of the issues raised. Rosling doesn’t always use the academic terms for the psychological or behavioural phenomena he talks about. Nor does he reference the other people who have worked on these ideas and discovered them before him. I suppose this could be described as arrogant and taking credit for other people’s ideas. On the other hand, it’s not an academic book and lots of footnotes and references would make the text clunkier. Nonetheless, most of these ideas aren’t Rosling’s and he isn’t the first to write about them but this book gives the impression that they are!
Overall, I’d say this book would be a great introduction to statistics and behavioural biases for someone who knows nothing about them. If you’ve already read quite a lot about this topic then the book is a bit facile. Nonetheless, Rosling and his team should be heartily congratulated for quest to reduce ignorance and encourage people to have strong supporting facts for their opinions!
CHAPTER SUMMARY
1. To control THE GAP INSTINCT, look for the majority.
• Beware comparisons of averages. If you could check the spreads you would probably find they overlap. There is probably no gap at all.
• Beware comparisons of extremes. In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.
• The view from up here. Remember, looking down from above distorts the view. Everything else looks equally short, but it’s not.
Page: 65
2. To control the NEGATIVITY INSTINCT, expect bad news.
• Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g., better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.
• Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.
• Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.
• More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.
• Beware of rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories.
Page: 74
3. To control THE STRAIGHT LINE INSTINCT, remember that curves come in different shapes.
• Don’t assume straight lines. Many trends do not follow straight lines but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. No child ever kept up the rate of growth it achieved in its first six months, and no parents would expect it to. [cf. Malthus]
Page: 123
4. To control THE FEAR INSTINCT, calculate the risks.
• The scary world: fear vs. reality. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected—by your own attention filter or by the media—precisely because it is scary.
• Risk = danger × exposure. The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it? And how much are you exposed to it?
• Get calm before you carry on. When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided.
Page: 143
5. To control THE SIZE INSTINCT, get things in proportion.
• Compare. Big numbers always look big. Single numbers on their own are misleading and should make you suspicious. Always look for comparisons. Ideally, divide by something.
• 80/20. Have you been given a long list? Look for the few largest items and deal with those first. They are quite likely more important than all the others put together.
• Divide. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions.
Page: 165
6. To control the GENERALISATION INSTINCT, question your categories.
• Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories. And …
• Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant. But also …
• Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g., you and other people living on Level 4 or unconscious soldiers) applies for another (e.g., people not living on Level 4 or sleeping babies).
• Beware of “the majority.” The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between.
• Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.
• Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think, In what way is this a smart solution?
Page: 184
7. To control THE DESTINY INSTINCT, remember slow change is still change.
• Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change over decades.
• Update your knowledge. Some knowledge goes out of date quickly. Technology, countries, societies, cultures, and religions are constantly changing.
• Talk to Grandpa. If you want to be reminded of how values have changed, think about your grandparents’ values and how they differ from yours.
• Collect examples of cultural change. Challenge the idea that today’s culture must also have been yesterday’s, and will also be tomorrow’s.
Page: 199
8. To control THE SINGLE PERSPECTIVE INSTINCT, get a toolbox, not a hammer.
• Test your ideas. Don’t only collect examples that show how excellent your favorite ideas are. Have people who disagree with you test your ideas and find their weaknesses.
• Limited expertise. Don’t claim expertise beyond your field: be humble about what you don’t know. Be aware too of the limits of the expertise of others.
• Hammers and nails. If you are good with a tool, you may want to use it too often. If you have analyzed a problem in depth, you can end up exaggerating the importance of that problem or of your solution. Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite idea is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.
• Numbers, but not only numbers. The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone. Love numbers for what they tell you about real lives.
• Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions. History is full of visionaries who used simple utopian visions to justify terrible actions. Welcome complexity. Combine ideas. Compromise. Solve problems on a case-by-case basis.
Page: 208
9. To control THE BLAME INSTINCT, resist finding a scapegoat.
• Look for causes, not villains. When something goes wrong don’t look for an individual or a group to blame. Accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Instead spend your energy on understanding the multiple interacting causes, or system, that created the situation.
• Look for systems, not heroes. When someone claims to have caused something good, ask whether the outcome might have happened anyway, even if that individual had done nothing. Give the system some credit.
Page: 242
10. To control THE URGENCY INSTINCT, take small steps.
• Take a breath. When your urgency instinct is triggered, your other instincts kick in and your analysis shuts down. Ask for more time and more information. It’s rarely now or never and it’s rarely either/or.
• Insist on the data. If something is urgent and important, it should be measured. Beware of data that is relevant but inaccurate, or accurate but irrelevant. Only relevant and accurate data is useful.
• Beware of fortune-tellers. Any prediction about the future is uncertain. Be wary of predictions that fail to acknowledge that. Insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case. Ask how often such predictions have been right before.
• Be wary of drastic action. Ask what the side effects will be. Ask how the idea has been tested. Step-by-step practical improvements, and evaluation of their impact, are less dramatic but usually more effective.
Tuesday 24 July 2018
Darren McGarvey - Poverty Safari
This book is about poverty and class relations in Scotland. In the interests of full disclosure, I live in Scotland and would classify myself as a bona fide middle class person. I went to private school, have a university degree and worked in a high status job. That’s if status can be defined by salary, which, rightly or wrongly, it often seems to be. So anyone reading this can take my opinions in the context of that cultural background. I don’t think this defines everything I say but it would be foolish to think it has no effect. As McGarvey writes, ‘From a very young age, we are all inculcated into the mores of a tribe and adopt those values often without thought, later mistaking them for our own.’ This seems like fair comment.
I had a mixed reaction to this book. It has interesting and powerfully expressed sections. Other sections are contradictory, incoherent or lack supporting evidence, which weakens the argument being made. It’s a bit disorganised and I wasn’t that keen on McGarvey’s style of writing.
From the outset, McGarvey admits the book doesn’t have a definite structure or argument. This is true and, for me, it affects the quality of the reading experience. The chapters take the form of short anecdotes, experiences or rants. It’s haphazard and I was often left wanting more discussion of the points it raised. I felt like the book highlighted problems more than it offered ideas for solutions. For example, I never felt like I had a good idea of what McGarvey thought about universal basic income’s efficacy as a means of solving poverty because it’s only referred to in passing. With the exception of some broad ideas like taking more personal responsibility, quoted above, engaging in cross-societal discussion and involving people more in their community it was short on specifics. Obviously, a book can’t do everything in a few hundred pages but I didn’t feel like it was very coherent in this regard. In terms of style, McGarvey writes some great passages and has a large vocabulary for someone who claims not to read much. I’m fairly sure this lack of reading has been exaggerated for dramatic effect as he references quite a few books and essays in the course of the book. In some sections the style feels needlessly wordy and verbose. Three or four adjectives or verbs are piled one on top of another where one would do just as well and give the text more clarity. As Orwell wrote in Why I Write, ‘good prose is like a windowpane’ because the writer struggles to efface their personality. McGarvey’s prose is quite the opposite of this and, for me, focuses too much on expressing his personality and too little on the underlying ideas. This book won the Orwell prize, according to google awarded ‘for political writing of outstanding quality’, and while this book is certainly political I don’t think the writing is of outstanding quality.
Some of the book takes the form of heartbreaking memoir. McGarvey writes that, for a while, telling his shocking stories about his Mum and his experiences growing up to middle class people were his specialist subject. He writes, ‘there’s no way someone like me would have been given the opportunity to write a book like this had I not draped it, at least partially, in the veil of a misery memoir.’ I’m not sure how true this is and I’m not well placed to say. I think it is effective insofar as it helps people with no experience of this kind of life gain some understanding of its challenges and hardships. These are things middle class people like me could never imagine as a child. Against this, the narrative McGarvey presents feels heavily redacted and there were points where I really wanted to know more about the other influences in his life. His father seems an interesting figure but is barely discussed in detail. He seems more responsible than McGarvey’s mum: he works, but we don’t find out as what, he encourages them to live a moderate lifestyle and takes them swimming once a week. He wanted to leave McGarvey’s Mum but found out she was pregnant and stayed with her. Did he then go on to have four more children with her or are the siblings McGarvey writes about half brothers and sisters? What was the history behind such a dysfunctional and ill women having so many children? When McGarvey says his relationship with his Dad broke down, why did this happen? Much like the criticism I made of the books structure, there were lots of parts where I wanted to know more. His aunt, who’s an MSP, is another example of this. She sounds like a formidable woman and I wondered what her experience of poverty had been and how she fits in to the narrative of communities isolated from the political process. Again, it’s not fair to ask a book to be several different things at once but I felt like I would have preferred a fuller account of the author’s life and a fuller account of his political ideas. I feel this would have helped provide a clearer presentation of both.
This book had an interesting, if unclear, approach to money. No one in Scotland is in poverty in an absolute sense, as defined by any widely accepted measure. What’s being talked about in this book is relative poverty, having less money or a lower income than most people in your country, which is in no way to say that it's a less serious issue. According to the Scottish government, poverty means less than £7,300 per year, after housing costs, for a single person. To me, that’s an almost inconceivably small amount of money whichever way you look at it. But would the problems of poverty disappear if everyone had more money? Theoretically, if everyone in Scotland's income doubled overnight this would have no effect on relative poverty. I’ve always assumed that giving people more money would have to be a major part of any solution to poverty. I’ve liked and been interested in the idea of Universal Basic Income for a while. This book made me less optimistic about it. I’m not even sure there could be such a thing as a solution to poverty now. The biggest problems that McGarvey writes about don’t seem to be directly related to money. Most seem to be about mental health and, speaking from my own experience as a relatively rich person, money doesn’t seem to be able to solve these problems across the board. Of course, incidence of mental health problems is far lower amongst higher income groups. This is probably in part due to lack of services and resources for lower income groups, which could be improved by more money. But, as McGarvey’s stories about his childhood make abundantly clear, it’s also because people with low incomes experience many more causes of mental health problems and I’m not sure more money would help this. What’s the main cause of these mental health issues? Childhood trauma, according to McGarvey, and this seems to impossible to reverse retrospectively. I may be completely wrong but the environment McGarvey grew up in, as he describes it, doesn’t seem like it would have been helped much by simply giving him and his mother more money. Addicts usually spend any extra money they get on their intoxicant of choice and giving them more cash won’t make the root of their addiction go away. McGarvey describes how he was given a £5,000 backdated disability allowance payment. He writes about how he spent it mainly on drinking and drug taking. I’m not trying to blame him for this, I’d have done the same at his age and I grew up with plenty of positive role models in far less traumatic circumstances. Meanwhile, McGarvey’s mother, who also suffered from addiction, seems a dreadful role model and the cause of considerable trauma for him. Giving large sums of money to young people with no idea how to manage it strikes me as a terrible idea whatever their circumstance. At one point in the book, it seemed like maybe McGarvey did think universal basic income would be the answer when he writes about the options available to people who are living in poverty right now. He asks, rhetorically, what ‘the people who’ll never see Universal Basic Income being rolled out?’ can do. This seems to imply that he feels that UBI could be a solution to poverty but it’s not clear. He doesn’t expand on this point and so it’s inconclusive.
I’m fairly convinced that spending more money on social services must be an important part of reducing poverty but I’m also convinced it can’t be the only part. The overall tone book offers a far more nuanced view of poverty so perhaps his comment on universal basic income was just a rhetorical throw away. I feel like he’s closer to the truth when he writes, ‘contrary to what we’ve been told, the issue of poverty is far too complex to blame solely on ‘Tories’ or ‘elites’. It’s precisely because of the complexity at play, and how difficult it is to grasp, that we look for easy scapegoats. Whether it be the left blaming the rich or the right blaming the poor, we tend only to be interested in whichever half of the story absolves us of responsibility for the problem. That’s not the sort of thing a politician looking to get elected can say to a potential voter.’ I think there’s a lot of truth in this passage. It’s not just a matter of money. It’s not a matter of any one, specific, easily identifiable factor. The worrying and saddening truth about poverty seems to be that no one really knows what to do. Would it have helped McGarvey if his Mum had had more money? Possibly, but the mental health and addiction issues would have surely remained. Would he have been better off if he’d been taken away from his mother at a young age and put in care? Probably not, but what do I know. These sort of counterfactual, theoritical questions don’t seem to be of much use to those experiencing poverty first hand.
I felt like one of the strongest and most powerful parts of the book was McGarvey’s call to take action and responsibility at a personal level. He writes, ‘What we now need to ask ourselves, as a matter of urgency is, which aspects of poverty can we positively affect through our own thinking and action? If poverty is negatively affecting our quality of life, is there any action we could take to mitigate this harm? Ultimately, which aspects of poverty are beyond our control and which are within our capability to change? On the left, I see constant talk of new economic systems, of overthrowing elites or of increasing public spending. I see endless debate about the overlapping, interdependent structural oppressions of western society and the symbolic violence inherent in capitalism. But I rarely see anyone talking about emotional literacy. It’s rare to see a debate about over-eating. I never see activists being more open about their drink problems and drug habits or the psychological problems fuelling them. Nobody ever seems to be writing a dissertation on the link between emotional stress and chronic illness or writing an op-ed about how they managed to give up smoking. As if somehow, these day-to-day problems are less consequential to the poor than the musings of Karl Marx.’ I once had an eye opening discussion with a former colleague of mine who came from a lower income background than mine. I remember espousing the idea that people in poverty were a product of their environment and couldn’t be expected to take full responsibility for what happened to them given they were coming from such disadvantaged backgrounds. Looking back on it, I was a tragically cliched middle class person in my approach to poverty! My colleague told me that this kind of thinking robbed lower income people of their agency and dignity. ‘Why haven’t I become a product of my environment?’, he asked me and I struggled to give a decent response. His theory was that it took him a huge amount of work and sacrifice to do it and that most people didn’t work as hard as he had. ‘But if you’re living a shitty life on a shitty council estate, do you want that to be your fault or somebody else’s?’ he asked me, ‘of course, you’d rather say it’s someone else's’, he concluded. I don’t think that his reasoning applies to all people living in poverty. Far from it, the reality is probably much more nuanced and complex than this rather black and white analysis makes allowance for. But I do remember suddenly realising how patronising my views were. McGarvey captures this brilliantly when he writes, ‘at some point, I started believing the lie that I was not responsible for my own thoughts, feelings and actions. That these were all by-products of a system that mistreated and excluded me.’
Similarly, across the class spectrum, it’s recently become fashionable to complain about Donald Trump’s presidency in America. McGarvey writes about being criticised by a fellow activist for bringing this up in a panel discussion. I see lots of people I know Trump bashing too. In no way do I feel like Donald Trump is a positive person or leader but I also don’t see how I can lay all the problems in the world at his doorstep. Wouldn’t I be better served trying to ‘be the change I want to see in the world’, however cliched that Ghandi quote has become? As McGarvey wisely points out, most of us have a lot of work to do in overcoming our own personal demons, whatever they may be, and Trump has nothing to do with these. I felt like this was one of the best parts of the book.
I wrote at the beginning that I had a mixed reaction to this book. A lot of this was to do with his confusing views on public spending and social work. Some of his criticisms are, to my mind, incorrect, confused or contradictory. For example:
At the beginning of the book he writes about how the news agenda is set by middle class people and gives the example of how a family taking the council to court over their decision to take their child out of school for a holiday was attracting more attention than a change in child benefit provision. However, he also acknowledges that people want to hear his ‘misery memoir’, clearly indicating that there is a place for working class issues in an undeniably middle class media. To my mind, the media focuses on dramatic issues and doesn’t care which class they come from. This is the reason why plane crashes get more coverage than traffic accidents even though the latter kills millions more than the former. Seeing everything through a class lens isn’t accurate in this instance.
He writes, ‘once you see the mechanics of the poverty industry up close, you realise it’s in a state of permanent growth and that without individuals, families and communities in crisis there would no longer be a role for these massive institutions.’ This seems to give the impression that there is a conspiracy to keep people poor and exploit them, which I’ve never seen any evidence for. Poverty costs society a huge amount in various ways that McGarvey eloquently describes in other passages of the book. So how could anyone, either rationally or morally, want it to continue? He also criticises austerity cuts in other passages of the book, which is odd if he really sees government spending as part of the problem rather than the solution. Of course, I’m not trying to say the government is perfect and totally free from bad decision making and bureaucracy but all large institutions suffer from these problems and to suggest that it is malicious strikes me as unfair and unsubstantiated.
He writes, ‘even the good guys make a mint from social deprivation’. By the standards of the middle class, no one in social work is making a mint. These people could be working in the private sector and making far more money so it struck me as unfair to have a go at people who have made personal financial sacrifices to try and help solve social problems. Again, not everyone’s perfect but this criticism struck me as unwarranted. Equally, he writes about his own working experiences in prisons, libraries and schools all of which, I am assuming, are paid for by the government but he doesn’t seem to see himself as part of the problem. Nor do I, to be clear, I think social work is necessary, demanding, largely underpaid and underappreciated. But how can he criticise this kind of work and also do it himself? It’s confused and contradictory.
He writes ‘the tools to fix the place are already here rather than parachuting government initiatives in who don’t understand the area. They want us to do work that looks good and sounds good; but isn’t always good.’ Again, I’m sure this is true in some cases but to use such a broad brush strikes me as incorrect. He also writes about the positive help he received from organisations like The Firestation, The Notre Dame Centre and The Prince’s Trust. These organisations don’t seem to be located in his community but are written about in a positive way so his criticism ends up looking contradictory. I’m also assuming that all these organisations receive at least some government funding, which, like all assumptions, may be incorrect! But would he really have been better off if The Firestation weren’t there to help house him when he was homeless and apply for the benefits he was entitled to? He explicitly mentions the Notre Dame Centre as providing him with a welcome opportunity to leave his area and go to the more affluent West End of Glasgow; should they be included in his criticism of parachutists?
Those who provide social services come in for some pretty harsh treatment. He writes, ‘success is not eradicating poverty but parachuting in and leaving a ‘legacy’. And when you up and leave, withdrawing your resources and expertise as you go, if a legacy hasn’t materialised, one is simply fabricated.’ This may be true in some instances but McGarvey doesn’t give any examples and I feel like if you’re going to make accusations like this then you should really back them up. I felt like it was an unsubstantiated rant at some points, which isn’t a crime in itself, but the argument would have been so much more powerful and persuasive if it had been supported by facts.
That’s probably enough examples for now! In summary, I felt the book argued against itself sometimes and made too many unsupported claims for my liking.
McGarvey writes some interesting reflections on how middle class people interact with poverty. For example, his description of how he quickly became less popular as a poverty media personality when he started to ask uncomfortable questions like, ‘Who makes the decisions about your budget?’ and ‘How do we solve poverty if all your jobs depend on it?’ is thought provoking. He writes, ‘What I soon learned was that, no matter your background, you are cast out the second you offend the people who’re in charge of your empowerment. Sometimes it’s a person, other times it’s an organisation. Sometimes it’s a movement and other times it’s a political party. But the minute you start telling your story in service of your own agenda and not theirs, you’re discarded. Your criticism is dismissed as not being constructive. Your anger is attributed to your mental health problems and everything about you that people once applauded becomes a stick they beat you with. Look out for these people. The people who pay wonderful lip service to giving the working class a voice, but who start to look very nervous whenever we open our mouths to speak.’ Some of this strikes me as true. There is always a power dynamic to any situation and this can often create perverse outcomes. Other good points I enjoyed were:
The decline of libraries and the impact this is having on lower income communities was described eloquently and accurately. I recently went to renew my parking permit at the council offices where I live and was told that this service had been moved. When I went to the new address it was in a library in a less affluent area of the city. First, I thought it was strange that half of the library reception area and one meeting room had been dedicated to council activities. Worse, was the fact that the library was no longer a quiet and peaceful place conducive to work and concentration. People were constantly coming and going, asking questions of the library staff in the mistaken belief that they worked for the council and generally disturbing the atmosphere. As McGarvey rightly points out, ‘the library is one of the few places in a deprived community that is quiet enough to hear yourself think’. The kind of repurposing he writes about has led to them becoming ‘busy, often quite noisy places, which seriously defeats their intended purpose.’ He goes on to explain, ‘essentially, the community centre is being imposed on the library to streamline the service in order to justify keeping the library open.’ This strikes me as a terrible loss to those communities that are unlucky enough to suffer this fate. In the instance of my experience, I would also question why it had been moved to a less affluent area on the outskirts of the city and not to a more central location. Equally, McGarvey’s accurate description of the importance of libraries in communities makes me wonder why he is so critical of government spending in poorer communities. Perhaps he is talking about different types of spending but he doesn’t make this clear and that’s why it’s strange to read such scathing criticism of ‘these massive institutions’ in the same book as such a well argued description of their benefits and importance.
The example of the council’s spending on the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow was very well drawn. He describes ‘a public Wi-Fi system, designed especially for the games so that affluent international sports fans could explore the city without having to log out of Facebook’. Meanwhile, in the same city, it can take up to 15 minutes to log on to an antiquated computer in his local community centre. Of course, there are arguments that could be made about how all the money spent on the Commonwealth Games is good for Glasgow’s global image and brand and will result in increased investment in the city, eventually leading to more jobs etc. etc. I think most of this is sophistry and that events like the Commonwealth Games are largely an excuse for government bigwigs to have a taxpayer funded jolly. The example of recent football World Cups suggests even more sinister motivations may be in play too. I may not be right about this, but McGarvey’s anger seems totally justified in this instance.
The section about ‘The Barn’ was very good insofar as it expressed what people working on the front line of poverty felt about how best to alleviate it. The sentence, ‘In an ideal world we would get funded for building trusting relationships with young people’ seemed so sensible and full of truth. What almost everyone needs, and most middle class people get from their families without giving it a second thought, are trusting relationships. This kind of writing began to give me an insight into the vitriol McGarvey expresses in the unsubstantiated rants against government agencies. If staff at The Barn are working to build lasting, trusting relationships but every four years a new government comes in with new initiatives to ‘solve’ poverty or cut spending, I can understand how frustrating and counterproductive that could be. Politicising poverty probably does result in a demand for statistics to make it seem like things are getting better or to justify money being spent when a government has promised to cut the budget. However, McGarvey doesn’t make this link or provide this evidence. As a reader, there is one chapter slagging off government agencies approach to poverty and then another, totally unconnected one, singing the praises of The Barn. I’m sure the staff at The Barn could provide plenty of examples to support but the type of criticism McGarvey makes in other passages of the book. But they are left unsupported and are much less powerful because of this. As opposed to a tightly argued comment, which it seems like it could become with the addition of facts, it’s left as an unsubstantiated rant. Readers are left to read between the lines and make assumptions about what he might be writing about and it would be so much better, and more coherent, if these connections were made explicit.
McGarvey is a really honest and self-critical writer. I have a lot of admiration for this as it’s not an easy thing to do. The book contains multiple sections where he takes a step back from a belief he’s strongly adhered to in the past and places it in a new context. Gaining this kind of perspective on yourself, your ideas and your shortcomings is, I know from my own experience, difficult and painful work and he should be congratulated for doing it in such a public way. When he discusses how he attacked artist Ellie Harrison’s publically funded project to stay in Glasgow for a year it’s really refreshing to see someone being honest about their mistakes and admitting when they’re wrong. In a section dripping with sarcasm he writes about how he attacked her, ‘believing myself to be well informed and deeply virtuous, unaware of how personal resentment was subtly directing my thinking. I am sure you have no idea what I’m talking about.’ I definitely know what he is talking about and I think anyone who claims they don’t isn’t being honest with themselves!
There were a few sundry sections of the book that I felt were either inaccurate or dealt with deep, complicated issues in too precursory a manner. When he writes about Brexit, ‘when people vote against their own interests because they don’t think it’s going to matter either way.’ It’s not clear to me that many working class people in Glasgow did vote for Brexit. Turnout was only 56% in the city and the results show voters voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU (67%). Even if we suppose they did vote for Brexit, which I don’t see much evidence for, how can he possibly say that it’s not in their interests to do so? No one even knows what form Brexit will take yet, let alone what it’s legacy will be in 10 or 20 years for working class people in Glasgow. It’s not possible to predict the future and I thought this section was misplaced and arrogant.
The discussion of the rise of intersectionality, social justice and identity politics was similar. I’m certainly no expert on this complicated topic but it seems unfair to me to dismiss it so summarily. Some of the points he makes are valid, like the lack of accountability in social media driven ‘call out’ campaigns. He’s making a good point when he writes, ‘ultimately, while holding everyone else to account, this culture is itself accountable to no one.’ He also raises an interesting idea when he writes of multinationals seeming endorsement of the social justice agenda in their marketing, ‘it’s certainly no bad thing that multinational companies like Pepsi, General Electric, Pfizer, Microsoft and Apple are using their clout to advance social justice. But it begs the question: what’s in it for them? Intersectionality in its current form, rather than an irritant to privilege, atomises society into competing political factions and undermines what really frightens powerful people: a well organised, educated and unified working class.’ However, I’m fairly sure these firms just do what their PR departments or advisors tell them to and those departments are just trying to concur with whatever they perceive the zeitgeist to be amongst the consumers they are targeting. The idea of a global conspiracy to keep the poor atomised assumes a level of collaboration that simply doesn’t exist, to my mind.
Lastly, and much more frivolously, McGarvey sometimes writes about drugs like none of his readers have ever taken any. He opines, ‘some people don’t get bad come-downs because they are not running away from anything when they get high.’ In my experience this is true of precisely zero people that I’ve ever met and is a bit like saying some people don’t get drunk when they drink! Of course, I can’t speak for everyone else’s experience but nor can McGarvey and I can only use my own experience and the reports other people give me of theirs. In the same manner, he seems to dramatise a, ‘Sunday morning...obligatory off-sales run after a night of partying’ when anyone who lives in Scotland and has had an all nighter on a Saturday knows you can’t buy booze until 12.30pm. It sometimes feels like he’s trying to make the safari more exciting for the punters.
This is an interesting book with some interesting ideas that suffers from being a bit haphazard and not fully developing or supporting the ideas it contains. There are good sections but overall it can seem contradictory. The style is a little self conscious and egotistical for my taste too. In the end, McGarvey adopts quite a conciliatory and conservative tone writing, ‘our system is riddled with internal contradiction, injustice and corruption, but is also very dynamic and offers a great many freedoms. For example, our current system, for all its flaws, is so dynamic that it can provide food, shelter and employment, as well as education, training and resources, for the very movements that are openly trying to overthrow it. This sort of liberty is not to be sneered at or taken for granted.’ While I would broadly agree with what he’s saying here, this kind of conclusion makes the more extreme sections of the book seem a bit incoherent. At some points he seems to be saying all government spending on poverty is a sham designed to keep poor people poor. This isn’t a bad book but it’s not amazing either.
I had a mixed reaction to this book. It has interesting and powerfully expressed sections. Other sections are contradictory, incoherent or lack supporting evidence, which weakens the argument being made. It’s a bit disorganised and I wasn’t that keen on McGarvey’s style of writing.
From the outset, McGarvey admits the book doesn’t have a definite structure or argument. This is true and, for me, it affects the quality of the reading experience. The chapters take the form of short anecdotes, experiences or rants. It’s haphazard and I was often left wanting more discussion of the points it raised. I felt like the book highlighted problems more than it offered ideas for solutions. For example, I never felt like I had a good idea of what McGarvey thought about universal basic income’s efficacy as a means of solving poverty because it’s only referred to in passing. With the exception of some broad ideas like taking more personal responsibility, quoted above, engaging in cross-societal discussion and involving people more in their community it was short on specifics. Obviously, a book can’t do everything in a few hundred pages but I didn’t feel like it was very coherent in this regard. In terms of style, McGarvey writes some great passages and has a large vocabulary for someone who claims not to read much. I’m fairly sure this lack of reading has been exaggerated for dramatic effect as he references quite a few books and essays in the course of the book. In some sections the style feels needlessly wordy and verbose. Three or four adjectives or verbs are piled one on top of another where one would do just as well and give the text more clarity. As Orwell wrote in Why I Write, ‘good prose is like a windowpane’ because the writer struggles to efface their personality. McGarvey’s prose is quite the opposite of this and, for me, focuses too much on expressing his personality and too little on the underlying ideas. This book won the Orwell prize, according to google awarded ‘for political writing of outstanding quality’, and while this book is certainly political I don’t think the writing is of outstanding quality.
Some of the book takes the form of heartbreaking memoir. McGarvey writes that, for a while, telling his shocking stories about his Mum and his experiences growing up to middle class people were his specialist subject. He writes, ‘there’s no way someone like me would have been given the opportunity to write a book like this had I not draped it, at least partially, in the veil of a misery memoir.’ I’m not sure how true this is and I’m not well placed to say. I think it is effective insofar as it helps people with no experience of this kind of life gain some understanding of its challenges and hardships. These are things middle class people like me could never imagine as a child. Against this, the narrative McGarvey presents feels heavily redacted and there were points where I really wanted to know more about the other influences in his life. His father seems an interesting figure but is barely discussed in detail. He seems more responsible than McGarvey’s mum: he works, but we don’t find out as what, he encourages them to live a moderate lifestyle and takes them swimming once a week. He wanted to leave McGarvey’s Mum but found out she was pregnant and stayed with her. Did he then go on to have four more children with her or are the siblings McGarvey writes about half brothers and sisters? What was the history behind such a dysfunctional and ill women having so many children? When McGarvey says his relationship with his Dad broke down, why did this happen? Much like the criticism I made of the books structure, there were lots of parts where I wanted to know more. His aunt, who’s an MSP, is another example of this. She sounds like a formidable woman and I wondered what her experience of poverty had been and how she fits in to the narrative of communities isolated from the political process. Again, it’s not fair to ask a book to be several different things at once but I felt like I would have preferred a fuller account of the author’s life and a fuller account of his political ideas. I feel this would have helped provide a clearer presentation of both.
This book had an interesting, if unclear, approach to money. No one in Scotland is in poverty in an absolute sense, as defined by any widely accepted measure. What’s being talked about in this book is relative poverty, having less money or a lower income than most people in your country, which is in no way to say that it's a less serious issue. According to the Scottish government, poverty means less than £7,300 per year, after housing costs, for a single person. To me, that’s an almost inconceivably small amount of money whichever way you look at it. But would the problems of poverty disappear if everyone had more money? Theoretically, if everyone in Scotland's income doubled overnight this would have no effect on relative poverty. I’ve always assumed that giving people more money would have to be a major part of any solution to poverty. I’ve liked and been interested in the idea of Universal Basic Income for a while. This book made me less optimistic about it. I’m not even sure there could be such a thing as a solution to poverty now. The biggest problems that McGarvey writes about don’t seem to be directly related to money. Most seem to be about mental health and, speaking from my own experience as a relatively rich person, money doesn’t seem to be able to solve these problems across the board. Of course, incidence of mental health problems is far lower amongst higher income groups. This is probably in part due to lack of services and resources for lower income groups, which could be improved by more money. But, as McGarvey’s stories about his childhood make abundantly clear, it’s also because people with low incomes experience many more causes of mental health problems and I’m not sure more money would help this. What’s the main cause of these mental health issues? Childhood trauma, according to McGarvey, and this seems to impossible to reverse retrospectively. I may be completely wrong but the environment McGarvey grew up in, as he describes it, doesn’t seem like it would have been helped much by simply giving him and his mother more money. Addicts usually spend any extra money they get on their intoxicant of choice and giving them more cash won’t make the root of their addiction go away. McGarvey describes how he was given a £5,000 backdated disability allowance payment. He writes about how he spent it mainly on drinking and drug taking. I’m not trying to blame him for this, I’d have done the same at his age and I grew up with plenty of positive role models in far less traumatic circumstances. Meanwhile, McGarvey’s mother, who also suffered from addiction, seems a dreadful role model and the cause of considerable trauma for him. Giving large sums of money to young people with no idea how to manage it strikes me as a terrible idea whatever their circumstance. At one point in the book, it seemed like maybe McGarvey did think universal basic income would be the answer when he writes about the options available to people who are living in poverty right now. He asks, rhetorically, what ‘the people who’ll never see Universal Basic Income being rolled out?’ can do. This seems to imply that he feels that UBI could be a solution to poverty but it’s not clear. He doesn’t expand on this point and so it’s inconclusive.
I’m fairly convinced that spending more money on social services must be an important part of reducing poverty but I’m also convinced it can’t be the only part. The overall tone book offers a far more nuanced view of poverty so perhaps his comment on universal basic income was just a rhetorical throw away. I feel like he’s closer to the truth when he writes, ‘contrary to what we’ve been told, the issue of poverty is far too complex to blame solely on ‘Tories’ or ‘elites’. It’s precisely because of the complexity at play, and how difficult it is to grasp, that we look for easy scapegoats. Whether it be the left blaming the rich or the right blaming the poor, we tend only to be interested in whichever half of the story absolves us of responsibility for the problem. That’s not the sort of thing a politician looking to get elected can say to a potential voter.’ I think there’s a lot of truth in this passage. It’s not just a matter of money. It’s not a matter of any one, specific, easily identifiable factor. The worrying and saddening truth about poverty seems to be that no one really knows what to do. Would it have helped McGarvey if his Mum had had more money? Possibly, but the mental health and addiction issues would have surely remained. Would he have been better off if he’d been taken away from his mother at a young age and put in care? Probably not, but what do I know. These sort of counterfactual, theoritical questions don’t seem to be of much use to those experiencing poverty first hand.
I felt like one of the strongest and most powerful parts of the book was McGarvey’s call to take action and responsibility at a personal level. He writes, ‘What we now need to ask ourselves, as a matter of urgency is, which aspects of poverty can we positively affect through our own thinking and action? If poverty is negatively affecting our quality of life, is there any action we could take to mitigate this harm? Ultimately, which aspects of poverty are beyond our control and which are within our capability to change? On the left, I see constant talk of new economic systems, of overthrowing elites or of increasing public spending. I see endless debate about the overlapping, interdependent structural oppressions of western society and the symbolic violence inherent in capitalism. But I rarely see anyone talking about emotional literacy. It’s rare to see a debate about over-eating. I never see activists being more open about their drink problems and drug habits or the psychological problems fuelling them. Nobody ever seems to be writing a dissertation on the link between emotional stress and chronic illness or writing an op-ed about how they managed to give up smoking. As if somehow, these day-to-day problems are less consequential to the poor than the musings of Karl Marx.’ I once had an eye opening discussion with a former colleague of mine who came from a lower income background than mine. I remember espousing the idea that people in poverty were a product of their environment and couldn’t be expected to take full responsibility for what happened to them given they were coming from such disadvantaged backgrounds. Looking back on it, I was a tragically cliched middle class person in my approach to poverty! My colleague told me that this kind of thinking robbed lower income people of their agency and dignity. ‘Why haven’t I become a product of my environment?’, he asked me and I struggled to give a decent response. His theory was that it took him a huge amount of work and sacrifice to do it and that most people didn’t work as hard as he had. ‘But if you’re living a shitty life on a shitty council estate, do you want that to be your fault or somebody else’s?’ he asked me, ‘of course, you’d rather say it’s someone else's’, he concluded. I don’t think that his reasoning applies to all people living in poverty. Far from it, the reality is probably much more nuanced and complex than this rather black and white analysis makes allowance for. But I do remember suddenly realising how patronising my views were. McGarvey captures this brilliantly when he writes, ‘at some point, I started believing the lie that I was not responsible for my own thoughts, feelings and actions. That these were all by-products of a system that mistreated and excluded me.’
Similarly, across the class spectrum, it’s recently become fashionable to complain about Donald Trump’s presidency in America. McGarvey writes about being criticised by a fellow activist for bringing this up in a panel discussion. I see lots of people I know Trump bashing too. In no way do I feel like Donald Trump is a positive person or leader but I also don’t see how I can lay all the problems in the world at his doorstep. Wouldn’t I be better served trying to ‘be the change I want to see in the world’, however cliched that Ghandi quote has become? As McGarvey wisely points out, most of us have a lot of work to do in overcoming our own personal demons, whatever they may be, and Trump has nothing to do with these. I felt like this was one of the best parts of the book.
I wrote at the beginning that I had a mixed reaction to this book. A lot of this was to do with his confusing views on public spending and social work. Some of his criticisms are, to my mind, incorrect, confused or contradictory. For example:
At the beginning of the book he writes about how the news agenda is set by middle class people and gives the example of how a family taking the council to court over their decision to take their child out of school for a holiday was attracting more attention than a change in child benefit provision. However, he also acknowledges that people want to hear his ‘misery memoir’, clearly indicating that there is a place for working class issues in an undeniably middle class media. To my mind, the media focuses on dramatic issues and doesn’t care which class they come from. This is the reason why plane crashes get more coverage than traffic accidents even though the latter kills millions more than the former. Seeing everything through a class lens isn’t accurate in this instance.
He writes, ‘once you see the mechanics of the poverty industry up close, you realise it’s in a state of permanent growth and that without individuals, families and communities in crisis there would no longer be a role for these massive institutions.’ This seems to give the impression that there is a conspiracy to keep people poor and exploit them, which I’ve never seen any evidence for. Poverty costs society a huge amount in various ways that McGarvey eloquently describes in other passages of the book. So how could anyone, either rationally or morally, want it to continue? He also criticises austerity cuts in other passages of the book, which is odd if he really sees government spending as part of the problem rather than the solution. Of course, I’m not trying to say the government is perfect and totally free from bad decision making and bureaucracy but all large institutions suffer from these problems and to suggest that it is malicious strikes me as unfair and unsubstantiated.
He writes, ‘even the good guys make a mint from social deprivation’. By the standards of the middle class, no one in social work is making a mint. These people could be working in the private sector and making far more money so it struck me as unfair to have a go at people who have made personal financial sacrifices to try and help solve social problems. Again, not everyone’s perfect but this criticism struck me as unwarranted. Equally, he writes about his own working experiences in prisons, libraries and schools all of which, I am assuming, are paid for by the government but he doesn’t seem to see himself as part of the problem. Nor do I, to be clear, I think social work is necessary, demanding, largely underpaid and underappreciated. But how can he criticise this kind of work and also do it himself? It’s confused and contradictory.
He writes ‘the tools to fix the place are already here rather than parachuting government initiatives in who don’t understand the area. They want us to do work that looks good and sounds good; but isn’t always good.’ Again, I’m sure this is true in some cases but to use such a broad brush strikes me as incorrect. He also writes about the positive help he received from organisations like The Firestation, The Notre Dame Centre and The Prince’s Trust. These organisations don’t seem to be located in his community but are written about in a positive way so his criticism ends up looking contradictory. I’m also assuming that all these organisations receive at least some government funding, which, like all assumptions, may be incorrect! But would he really have been better off if The Firestation weren’t there to help house him when he was homeless and apply for the benefits he was entitled to? He explicitly mentions the Notre Dame Centre as providing him with a welcome opportunity to leave his area and go to the more affluent West End of Glasgow; should they be included in his criticism of parachutists?
Those who provide social services come in for some pretty harsh treatment. He writes, ‘success is not eradicating poverty but parachuting in and leaving a ‘legacy’. And when you up and leave, withdrawing your resources and expertise as you go, if a legacy hasn’t materialised, one is simply fabricated.’ This may be true in some instances but McGarvey doesn’t give any examples and I feel like if you’re going to make accusations like this then you should really back them up. I felt like it was an unsubstantiated rant at some points, which isn’t a crime in itself, but the argument would have been so much more powerful and persuasive if it had been supported by facts.
That’s probably enough examples for now! In summary, I felt the book argued against itself sometimes and made too many unsupported claims for my liking.
McGarvey writes some interesting reflections on how middle class people interact with poverty. For example, his description of how he quickly became less popular as a poverty media personality when he started to ask uncomfortable questions like, ‘Who makes the decisions about your budget?’ and ‘How do we solve poverty if all your jobs depend on it?’ is thought provoking. He writes, ‘What I soon learned was that, no matter your background, you are cast out the second you offend the people who’re in charge of your empowerment. Sometimes it’s a person, other times it’s an organisation. Sometimes it’s a movement and other times it’s a political party. But the minute you start telling your story in service of your own agenda and not theirs, you’re discarded. Your criticism is dismissed as not being constructive. Your anger is attributed to your mental health problems and everything about you that people once applauded becomes a stick they beat you with. Look out for these people. The people who pay wonderful lip service to giving the working class a voice, but who start to look very nervous whenever we open our mouths to speak.’ Some of this strikes me as true. There is always a power dynamic to any situation and this can often create perverse outcomes. Other good points I enjoyed were:
The decline of libraries and the impact this is having on lower income communities was described eloquently and accurately. I recently went to renew my parking permit at the council offices where I live and was told that this service had been moved. When I went to the new address it was in a library in a less affluent area of the city. First, I thought it was strange that half of the library reception area and one meeting room had been dedicated to council activities. Worse, was the fact that the library was no longer a quiet and peaceful place conducive to work and concentration. People were constantly coming and going, asking questions of the library staff in the mistaken belief that they worked for the council and generally disturbing the atmosphere. As McGarvey rightly points out, ‘the library is one of the few places in a deprived community that is quiet enough to hear yourself think’. The kind of repurposing he writes about has led to them becoming ‘busy, often quite noisy places, which seriously defeats their intended purpose.’ He goes on to explain, ‘essentially, the community centre is being imposed on the library to streamline the service in order to justify keeping the library open.’ This strikes me as a terrible loss to those communities that are unlucky enough to suffer this fate. In the instance of my experience, I would also question why it had been moved to a less affluent area on the outskirts of the city and not to a more central location. Equally, McGarvey’s accurate description of the importance of libraries in communities makes me wonder why he is so critical of government spending in poorer communities. Perhaps he is talking about different types of spending but he doesn’t make this clear and that’s why it’s strange to read such scathing criticism of ‘these massive institutions’ in the same book as such a well argued description of their benefits and importance.
The example of the council’s spending on the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow was very well drawn. He describes ‘a public Wi-Fi system, designed especially for the games so that affluent international sports fans could explore the city without having to log out of Facebook’. Meanwhile, in the same city, it can take up to 15 minutes to log on to an antiquated computer in his local community centre. Of course, there are arguments that could be made about how all the money spent on the Commonwealth Games is good for Glasgow’s global image and brand and will result in increased investment in the city, eventually leading to more jobs etc. etc. I think most of this is sophistry and that events like the Commonwealth Games are largely an excuse for government bigwigs to have a taxpayer funded jolly. The example of recent football World Cups suggests even more sinister motivations may be in play too. I may not be right about this, but McGarvey’s anger seems totally justified in this instance.
The section about ‘The Barn’ was very good insofar as it expressed what people working on the front line of poverty felt about how best to alleviate it. The sentence, ‘In an ideal world we would get funded for building trusting relationships with young people’ seemed so sensible and full of truth. What almost everyone needs, and most middle class people get from their families without giving it a second thought, are trusting relationships. This kind of writing began to give me an insight into the vitriol McGarvey expresses in the unsubstantiated rants against government agencies. If staff at The Barn are working to build lasting, trusting relationships but every four years a new government comes in with new initiatives to ‘solve’ poverty or cut spending, I can understand how frustrating and counterproductive that could be. Politicising poverty probably does result in a demand for statistics to make it seem like things are getting better or to justify money being spent when a government has promised to cut the budget. However, McGarvey doesn’t make this link or provide this evidence. As a reader, there is one chapter slagging off government agencies approach to poverty and then another, totally unconnected one, singing the praises of The Barn. I’m sure the staff at The Barn could provide plenty of examples to support but the type of criticism McGarvey makes in other passages of the book. But they are left unsupported and are much less powerful because of this. As opposed to a tightly argued comment, which it seems like it could become with the addition of facts, it’s left as an unsubstantiated rant. Readers are left to read between the lines and make assumptions about what he might be writing about and it would be so much better, and more coherent, if these connections were made explicit.
McGarvey is a really honest and self-critical writer. I have a lot of admiration for this as it’s not an easy thing to do. The book contains multiple sections where he takes a step back from a belief he’s strongly adhered to in the past and places it in a new context. Gaining this kind of perspective on yourself, your ideas and your shortcomings is, I know from my own experience, difficult and painful work and he should be congratulated for doing it in such a public way. When he discusses how he attacked artist Ellie Harrison’s publically funded project to stay in Glasgow for a year it’s really refreshing to see someone being honest about their mistakes and admitting when they’re wrong. In a section dripping with sarcasm he writes about how he attacked her, ‘believing myself to be well informed and deeply virtuous, unaware of how personal resentment was subtly directing my thinking. I am sure you have no idea what I’m talking about.’ I definitely know what he is talking about and I think anyone who claims they don’t isn’t being honest with themselves!
There were a few sundry sections of the book that I felt were either inaccurate or dealt with deep, complicated issues in too precursory a manner. When he writes about Brexit, ‘when people vote against their own interests because they don’t think it’s going to matter either way.’ It’s not clear to me that many working class people in Glasgow did vote for Brexit. Turnout was only 56% in the city and the results show voters voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU (67%). Even if we suppose they did vote for Brexit, which I don’t see much evidence for, how can he possibly say that it’s not in their interests to do so? No one even knows what form Brexit will take yet, let alone what it’s legacy will be in 10 or 20 years for working class people in Glasgow. It’s not possible to predict the future and I thought this section was misplaced and arrogant.
The discussion of the rise of intersectionality, social justice and identity politics was similar. I’m certainly no expert on this complicated topic but it seems unfair to me to dismiss it so summarily. Some of the points he makes are valid, like the lack of accountability in social media driven ‘call out’ campaigns. He’s making a good point when he writes, ‘ultimately, while holding everyone else to account, this culture is itself accountable to no one.’ He also raises an interesting idea when he writes of multinationals seeming endorsement of the social justice agenda in their marketing, ‘it’s certainly no bad thing that multinational companies like Pepsi, General Electric, Pfizer, Microsoft and Apple are using their clout to advance social justice. But it begs the question: what’s in it for them? Intersectionality in its current form, rather than an irritant to privilege, atomises society into competing political factions and undermines what really frightens powerful people: a well organised, educated and unified working class.’ However, I’m fairly sure these firms just do what their PR departments or advisors tell them to and those departments are just trying to concur with whatever they perceive the zeitgeist to be amongst the consumers they are targeting. The idea of a global conspiracy to keep the poor atomised assumes a level of collaboration that simply doesn’t exist, to my mind.
Lastly, and much more frivolously, McGarvey sometimes writes about drugs like none of his readers have ever taken any. He opines, ‘some people don’t get bad come-downs because they are not running away from anything when they get high.’ In my experience this is true of precisely zero people that I’ve ever met and is a bit like saying some people don’t get drunk when they drink! Of course, I can’t speak for everyone else’s experience but nor can McGarvey and I can only use my own experience and the reports other people give me of theirs. In the same manner, he seems to dramatise a, ‘Sunday morning...obligatory off-sales run after a night of partying’ when anyone who lives in Scotland and has had an all nighter on a Saturday knows you can’t buy booze until 12.30pm. It sometimes feels like he’s trying to make the safari more exciting for the punters.
This is an interesting book with some interesting ideas that suffers from being a bit haphazard and not fully developing or supporting the ideas it contains. There are good sections but overall it can seem contradictory. The style is a little self conscious and egotistical for my taste too. In the end, McGarvey adopts quite a conciliatory and conservative tone writing, ‘our system is riddled with internal contradiction, injustice and corruption, but is also very dynamic and offers a great many freedoms. For example, our current system, for all its flaws, is so dynamic that it can provide food, shelter and employment, as well as education, training and resources, for the very movements that are openly trying to overthrow it. This sort of liberty is not to be sneered at or taken for granted.’ While I would broadly agree with what he’s saying here, this kind of conclusion makes the more extreme sections of the book seem a bit incoherent. At some points he seems to be saying all government spending on poverty is a sham designed to keep poor people poor. This isn’t a bad book but it’s not amazing either.
Saturday 14 July 2018
William Shakespeare - Romeo & Juliet
This play was very enjoyable and a good read. It’s hard to tell how much of the enjoyment comes from its status as the archetypal love story in most Western European countries. Any attempt to discern this would be impossible given my cultural background so I won’t attempt to answer this question.
The play’s prologue is really beautifully worded and sets the scene for a fast paced narrative. It was exciting even though I was fairly familiar with the basic plot. It’s not a strictly realistic play insofar as some elements of the plot belong firmly in the realm of fantasy. The best example of this is the potion that Friar Laurence gives to Juliet to make her appear dead for 42 hours, which is medically impossibility. Another aspect of the plot that I was slightly suspicious of was Juliet’s decision to take this course of action in the first place. Why doesn’t she just run away and join Romeo in exile in Mantua straight away? Going through the rigamarole of pretending to be dead and spending a couple of days in a tomb seems a bit unnecessary. She already knows her parents will disown her if she refuses to marry Paris so in this sense she has nothing to lose. I suppose it is plausible that she fears a retaliation from her family if they find out she has eloped with Tybalt’s murder. In this case it may be safer to fake her own death. Against this, it is possible that news of her reunion with Romeo will reach her family in Verona and she will be discovered in any case. It’s not a major compliant and the play is clearly not supposed to be hyper realistic. This part of the plot is also essential in setting up the climatic tomb scene.
On the whole, the characters and dialogue are much more realistic than the plot. Of course, the speed and intensity with which Romeo and Juliet fall in love could be questioned. As could the willingness of Friar Laurence to lie and scheme on behalf of a couple of teenagers. On the other hand, scenes like the interaction between Juliet, her Nurse and Lady Capulet are excellent and instantly recognisable (Act 1 Scene 3). The Nurse insists on recounting a nostalgic tale about Juliet’s childhood twice, in the true style of a domestic windbag, before being told to shut up by Juliet . Equally, the boisterous, swaggering chatterbox character of Mercutio is very well drawn and his bantering with Romeo in Act 1 Scene 4 also rings true:
ROMEO: I dreamt a dream tonight.
MERCUTIO And so did I.
ROMEO Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
And later in the same scene, when Mercutio is recounting a lengthy monologue on the different types of dreams people have according to their tastes and interests, Romeo interrupts him saying:
ROMEO Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talkest of nothing.
MERCUTIO True. I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy; Which is as thin of substance as the air
Mercutio’s bawdy chatter with the Nurse is also a highlight of the more lighthearted sections of the play:
NURSE God ye good-morrow, gentlemen.
MERCUTIO God ye good-e’en, fair gentlewoman.
NURSE Is it good-e’en?
MERCUTIO ’Tis no less, I tell ye. For the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.
NURSE Out upon you! What a man are you!
(Act 2 Scene 4)
Of course, other sections of dialogue are far more stylised and there are several monologues that could never have a counterpart in natural speech but this is true of almost all theatre. Equally, I feel this type of dialogue conveys the inner life of the characters, something that would be far harder to achieve if they were limited to everyday speech. Some of these sections are extremely beautiful and the language can be a joy to read. For example, when Romeo expresses his agitation to the Friar who is trying to calm him down after the murders of Mercutio and Tybalt:
ROMEO Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.
Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
An hour but married, Tybalt murderèd,
Doting like me, and like me banishèd,
Then mightst thou speak; then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave. (Act 3 Scene 3)
Here, one can hardly say the form of speech is realistic but it contains such heartfelt and faithful feeling it seems entirely appropriate and is very effective. Also, throughout the play the dialogue is riddled with gnomic comments and observations. Again, this can hardly be considered true to life but the comments are circumspect and thought-provoking and lead the reader, or theatre goer, into interesting asides. This is one aspect of Shakespeare’s plays that makes them so enjoyable to read; they are rich with ideas and opinions to reflect on. There are too many to quote extensively but a few examples will suffice:
ROMEO The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.
The world affords no law to make thee rich. Then be not poor, but break it and take this. (Act 5 Scene 1 to the Apothecary when he hesitates to sell Romeo illegal poison)
JULIET They are but beggars that can count their worth. (Act 2 Scene 6)
FRIAR For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime’s by action dignified. (Act 2 Scene 3)
There are also myriad sections where the poetry and euphony of the language make it a joy to read regardless of the ideas expressed.
ROMEO The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, (Act 2 Scene 2)
ROMEO Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books; But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. (Act 2 Scene 2)
FRIAR Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift. Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. (Act 2 Scene 3)
ROMEO O here Will I set up my everlasting rest And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! (Act 5 Scene 3)
ROMEO The time and my intents are savage-wild, More fierce and more inexorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea. (Act 5 Scene 3)
I really enjoyed reading this and look forward to seeing it again at the theatre now I have a deeper familiarity with the text. As I’ve tried to describe, the language is so rich and pregnant with different meanings; it’s truly polyvalent. Reading, as opposed to watching, the play gives more time to consult the notes and re-read. The plot is maybe a little too fairy story for my tastes but that’s the type of play it is and I really liked it for what it was.
The play’s prologue is really beautifully worded and sets the scene for a fast paced narrative. It was exciting even though I was fairly familiar with the basic plot. It’s not a strictly realistic play insofar as some elements of the plot belong firmly in the realm of fantasy. The best example of this is the potion that Friar Laurence gives to Juliet to make her appear dead for 42 hours, which is medically impossibility. Another aspect of the plot that I was slightly suspicious of was Juliet’s decision to take this course of action in the first place. Why doesn’t she just run away and join Romeo in exile in Mantua straight away? Going through the rigamarole of pretending to be dead and spending a couple of days in a tomb seems a bit unnecessary. She already knows her parents will disown her if she refuses to marry Paris so in this sense she has nothing to lose. I suppose it is plausible that she fears a retaliation from her family if they find out she has eloped with Tybalt’s murder. In this case it may be safer to fake her own death. Against this, it is possible that news of her reunion with Romeo will reach her family in Verona and she will be discovered in any case. It’s not a major compliant and the play is clearly not supposed to be hyper realistic. This part of the plot is also essential in setting up the climatic tomb scene.
On the whole, the characters and dialogue are much more realistic than the plot. Of course, the speed and intensity with which Romeo and Juliet fall in love could be questioned. As could the willingness of Friar Laurence to lie and scheme on behalf of a couple of teenagers. On the other hand, scenes like the interaction between Juliet, her Nurse and Lady Capulet are excellent and instantly recognisable (Act 1 Scene 3). The Nurse insists on recounting a nostalgic tale about Juliet’s childhood twice, in the true style of a domestic windbag, before being told to shut up by Juliet . Equally, the boisterous, swaggering chatterbox character of Mercutio is very well drawn and his bantering with Romeo in Act 1 Scene 4 also rings true:
ROMEO: I dreamt a dream tonight.
MERCUTIO And so did I.
ROMEO Well, what was yours?
MERCUTIO That dreamers often lie.
ROMEO In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.
And later in the same scene, when Mercutio is recounting a lengthy monologue on the different types of dreams people have according to their tastes and interests, Romeo interrupts him saying:
ROMEO Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talkest of nothing.
MERCUTIO True. I talk of dreams; Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy; Which is as thin of substance as the air
Mercutio’s bawdy chatter with the Nurse is also a highlight of the more lighthearted sections of the play:
NURSE God ye good-morrow, gentlemen.
MERCUTIO God ye good-e’en, fair gentlewoman.
NURSE Is it good-e’en?
MERCUTIO ’Tis no less, I tell ye. For the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.
NURSE Out upon you! What a man are you!
(Act 2 Scene 4)
Of course, other sections of dialogue are far more stylised and there are several monologues that could never have a counterpart in natural speech but this is true of almost all theatre. Equally, I feel this type of dialogue conveys the inner life of the characters, something that would be far harder to achieve if they were limited to everyday speech. Some of these sections are extremely beautiful and the language can be a joy to read. For example, when Romeo expresses his agitation to the Friar who is trying to calm him down after the murders of Mercutio and Tybalt:
ROMEO Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.
Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,
An hour but married, Tybalt murderèd,
Doting like me, and like me banishèd,
Then mightst thou speak; then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave. (Act 3 Scene 3)
Here, one can hardly say the form of speech is realistic but it contains such heartfelt and faithful feeling it seems entirely appropriate and is very effective. Also, throughout the play the dialogue is riddled with gnomic comments and observations. Again, this can hardly be considered true to life but the comments are circumspect and thought-provoking and lead the reader, or theatre goer, into interesting asides. This is one aspect of Shakespeare’s plays that makes them so enjoyable to read; they are rich with ideas and opinions to reflect on. There are too many to quote extensively but a few examples will suffice:
ROMEO The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.
The world affords no law to make thee rich. Then be not poor, but break it and take this. (Act 5 Scene 1 to the Apothecary when he hesitates to sell Romeo illegal poison)
JULIET They are but beggars that can count their worth. (Act 2 Scene 6)
FRIAR For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
But to the earth some special good doth give;
Nor aught so good but, strained from that fair use,
Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime’s by action dignified. (Act 2 Scene 3)
There are also myriad sections where the poetry and euphony of the language make it a joy to read regardless of the ideas expressed.
ROMEO The grey-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, (Act 2 Scene 2)
ROMEO Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books; But love from love, toward school with heavy looks. (Act 2 Scene 2)
FRIAR Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift. Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift. (Act 2 Scene 3)
ROMEO O here Will I set up my everlasting rest And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! (Act 5 Scene 3)
ROMEO The time and my intents are savage-wild, More fierce and more inexorable far Than empty tigers or the roaring sea. (Act 5 Scene 3)
I really enjoyed reading this and look forward to seeing it again at the theatre now I have a deeper familiarity with the text. As I’ve tried to describe, the language is so rich and pregnant with different meanings; it’s truly polyvalent. Reading, as opposed to watching, the play gives more time to consult the notes and re-read. The plot is maybe a little too fairy story for my tastes but that’s the type of play it is and I really liked it for what it was.
Monday 9 July 2018
Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood
I found this book seriously underwhelming. It wasn’t completely devoid of enjoyment for me as Murakami has a tight, pithy writing style and there’s the odd simile or expression that’s really good. It’s readable and in this sense the prose is flowing and easy to consume. Some of the sections were Watanabe feels confused by his emotions when he is in love with both Midori and Naoko are well drawn too. I have too many problems with the characters, structure and narrative to really say I enjoyed this book.
First, Watanabe isn’t a likeable or believable character. He’s self-obsessed and posturing but at the same time strangely bland and one dimensional. At one point I thought that maybe Murakami was trying to write him as a typically self-obsessed 19 year old. For instance, he never mentions his family and seems to only think of himself. While at the same time believing that he is worthy and virtuous in a special way that makes him better than everyone else. The further I got into the book the more I thought that Murakami was trying to write a kind of sentimental, troubled and romantic character that he thought other people would think deep and dreamy. For me, he’s a total failure as a character and is a sort of superhero for pretentious young men who think themselves more intelligent and profound than everyone else. He seemingly has no interest in girls, except for his highly romantic love for Naoko, but they can’t get enough of him and his brooding self-absorption. Every girl he sleeps with orgasms even though he is only a 19 year old who hasn’t slept with many people. This is unrealistic. They all fall in love with him, Naoko can only get wet for him, Reiko gives up years of celibacy to sleep with him and it's apparently so good she never wants to have sex again (Chapter 11). Midori sums it up quite well when she says, ‘you’re all locked up in that little world of yours’ (Chapter 10) but the problem is that this world of his isn’t interesting or believable. He doesn’t talk much and what he does say isn’t engaging and so it’s a bit of stretch to think of him as this magnetic character that Murakami wants us to believe that he is. He’s always sitting around, lovesick and feeling sorry for himself, and indulges in some really overwrought, romantic sentiments like this section where his roomate gives him a firefly:
‘Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul.
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in theat darkness. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond their grasp.’ (Chapter 3)
This struck me as twee, sentimental, posturing and pretentious. Amusingly, later on Midori talks about how she manages to get lots of work as a writer by inserting, ‘one little episode like that and people love it, it’s so graphic and sentimental’ (Chapter 4) and I immediately thought that this was a good description of Murakami’s style in portraying Watanabe. Watanabe’s month long trip sleeping rough after Naoko’s death is another example of unlikely sentimentalisation of depression. It’s like he is throwing together fairly unconnected stories and impressions in the belief that they’ll correspond to what people want. In this regard, I have to concede he has been pretty successful!
In general, the dialogue and behaviour of the students is far too grown up and sophisticated for people of their age. I was reminded of Donna Tartt’s Secret History where all the teenage students are ascribed highly adult ideas and conversations. It’s implausible and incongruous. Equally, there are inconceivable incidents like the dinner that Watanabe, Nagasawa and Nagasawa’s girlfriend have together where the couple start discussing their relationship in highly personal terms in front of Watanabe. Watanabe seems to be very intimate with Nagasawa’s girlfriend in spite of the fact he never seems to spend any time with her. As Nagasawa gets into a taxi he gives high falutin, overly certain assessment of Watanabe’s character to Watanabe and his girlfriend:
‘Watanabe’s practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he’s incapable of loving anybody. There’s always some part of him somewhere that’s wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won’t go away. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’ (Chapter 8)
Like a lot of the dialogue, it reads like a posturing middle aged author rather than the drunk student who we’re supposed to believe delivers it. To complete farce, Watanabe tells Nagasawa’s girlfriend to dump him and Nagasawa doesn’t seem at all concerned by this and the two continue to be friends. Naoko’s character also indulges in the following sentimentalised assessment of her relationship with Kizuki. She claims that the two of them missed, ‘the pain of growing up’ and now have to, ‘pay the world back what we owed it’, using this as an explanation for his suicide. It’s all far too manicured and reads like a middle aged man writing about idealised, fictional teenage relationships rather than authentic dialogue or feeling. Naoko also talks about how her and Kizuki had, ‘no sense of the oppressiveness of sex or the anguish that comes with the sudden swelling of the ego that ordinary kids experience’ (all Chapter 6). This section is not only implausible but isn’t even internally consistent given that Naoko can’t even get wet to have sex with Kizuki so they never do it! There are lots of examples of this kind of sloppy character construction and inauthentic dialogue.
I was also extremely bored and unimpressed by the number of lengthy monologues that this book contains. Everyone seems to want to tell Watanabe their life story in highly stylised dialogue that would only ever really be found in a book. Naoko, Midori and Reiko all pour out implausibly long and well presented speeches on their lives that are only interrupted by an occasional nod or, ‘what happened next?’ from Watanabe. It’s a really lazy narrative device and doesn’t read at all well. These sections were a real slog to get through and reminded me of the writing style of cheap thrillers or romance novels where a character’s backstory is dumped out on the page in crude heaps of ugly, rambling text. It’s facile and guileless writing.
Another aspect of the book that really annoyed me is Murakami’s borrowing from other books without really acknowledging it or exploring it in any kind of detail. The most obvious example is Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. Watanabe reading this when he goes up into the mountains to visit Naoko at her own mountain sanatorium. The similarities are too numerous and obvious for anyone who’s read the book to miss. Watanabe takes a long journey to visit someone at the sanatorium, the place itself has a strange, other-worldly feel and a lifestyle and community all of its own. Just like Hans, Watanabe is physically assessed by a member of the community when he arrives. The food is delicious, just like in Magic Mountain. Many of the patients have been there for years and there is a suggestion that Watanabe may stay there for a long time if he settles into the rhythm of life there. The patients take their temperature and are involved in therapy, just like in Magic Mountain. The outside world is referred to as a distant and different place, just like the ‘flatlands’ in Mann’s book and the winters are snow filled and beautiful. Despite all of this, Watanabe doesn’t seem to notice or reflect on any of this even though he is reading the book while he is staying there. This is implausible and the only reference made to it is when Reiko says to Watanabe, ‘How could you bring a book like that to a place like this?’ and Watanabe thinks, ‘Of course, she was right’ (Chapters 5&6). I don’t see any reason why she was right to say this. On the whole, it just seems like Murakami borrows a lot of details from Magic Mountain and wants the reader to know that he has read it but doesn’t want to have his character reflect on it in any substantial way. This was irritating and unsatisfactory for me. He also seems to borrow lots of other bits and pieces during the course of the story like life being like a box of cookies, from Forrest Gump, and tigers turning to butter from Little Black Sambo. I’m sure there are others that I either didn’t notice or are borrowed from books I haven’t read. Of course, all authors borrow from other things that they have read but I felt in this book it was done in an especially unsubtle and artless way.
My last complaint about this book is the misogynistic tone that I felt permeated the whole story. All the women are more or less sexual objects for Watanabe including Reiko, which is the most implausible and confusing. The women are subservient to men and seem to define themselves only in reference to men. Naoko’s psychological problems are cast in a mainly sexual light and she only gains relief from them when she sleeps with Watanabe. She exposes herself to him in her sleep and is presented as an object for him to masturbate over. When Watanabe goes out with Nagasawa, girls are desperate to sleep with them and are even willing to swap partners if that’s what the men want. Reiko makes several jokes about rape when Watanabe is staying at the sanatorium and flirts with him. Of course, Watanabe ends up sleeping with her even though it doesn’t really fit the storyline and makes for a clunky conclusion. Midori’s conversation is sexually explicit from the outset and she gets upset when Watanabe doesn’t notice her new haircut or view her as an object for his sexual desire. Everything relating to women in the book is about sex and none of the women seem to be happy or fulfilled unless they are having sex with the wonderful, male Watanabe. Even when the women speak, Murakami has them denigrating themselves in comparison to men. Naoko writes, again highly implausibly, ‘Girls my age never use the word fair. Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not it is beautiful or will make them happy. Fair is a man’s word” (Chapter 5). This not only sounds like a man writing and not a young woman, it is also highly insulting to women of all ages. It’s a good example of both the bad, implausible dialogue and the misogynistic tone that occur throughout. The whole book primarily seems to portray women as weak sex objects that are desperate for the approval and validation of men. Nagasawa’s girlfriend is another perfect example of this theme.
The prose in this book is good but otherwise it’s pretty bad and annoyed me in several ways I’ve outlined above. I didn’t enjoy it much at all and at the end I thought about Nagasawa’s policy of only reading books by authors who have been dead for 30 years. He justifies this by saying, ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature...but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short’ (Chapter 3). While this is an extreme statement, and not one I wholly agree with, this book was disappointing and I felt it was a bit of a waste of time reading it. Perhaps it will be considered a classic 30 years after Murakami’s death but I certainly wouldn’t bet on it!!
First, Watanabe isn’t a likeable or believable character. He’s self-obsessed and posturing but at the same time strangely bland and one dimensional. At one point I thought that maybe Murakami was trying to write him as a typically self-obsessed 19 year old. For instance, he never mentions his family and seems to only think of himself. While at the same time believing that he is worthy and virtuous in a special way that makes him better than everyone else. The further I got into the book the more I thought that Murakami was trying to write a kind of sentimental, troubled and romantic character that he thought other people would think deep and dreamy. For me, he’s a total failure as a character and is a sort of superhero for pretentious young men who think themselves more intelligent and profound than everyone else. He seemingly has no interest in girls, except for his highly romantic love for Naoko, but they can’t get enough of him and his brooding self-absorption. Every girl he sleeps with orgasms even though he is only a 19 year old who hasn’t slept with many people. This is unrealistic. They all fall in love with him, Naoko can only get wet for him, Reiko gives up years of celibacy to sleep with him and it's apparently so good she never wants to have sex again (Chapter 11). Midori sums it up quite well when she says, ‘you’re all locked up in that little world of yours’ (Chapter 10) but the problem is that this world of his isn’t interesting or believable. He doesn’t talk much and what he does say isn’t engaging and so it’s a bit of stretch to think of him as this magnetic character that Murakami wants us to believe that he is. He’s always sitting around, lovesick and feeling sorry for himself, and indulges in some really overwrought, romantic sentiments like this section where his roomate gives him a firefly:
‘Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me, its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids like a lost soul.
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in theat darkness. My fingers touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond their grasp.’ (Chapter 3)
This struck me as twee, sentimental, posturing and pretentious. Amusingly, later on Midori talks about how she manages to get lots of work as a writer by inserting, ‘one little episode like that and people love it, it’s so graphic and sentimental’ (Chapter 4) and I immediately thought that this was a good description of Murakami’s style in portraying Watanabe. Watanabe’s month long trip sleeping rough after Naoko’s death is another example of unlikely sentimentalisation of depression. It’s like he is throwing together fairly unconnected stories and impressions in the belief that they’ll correspond to what people want. In this regard, I have to concede he has been pretty successful!
In general, the dialogue and behaviour of the students is far too grown up and sophisticated for people of their age. I was reminded of Donna Tartt’s Secret History where all the teenage students are ascribed highly adult ideas and conversations. It’s implausible and incongruous. Equally, there are inconceivable incidents like the dinner that Watanabe, Nagasawa and Nagasawa’s girlfriend have together where the couple start discussing their relationship in highly personal terms in front of Watanabe. Watanabe seems to be very intimate with Nagasawa’s girlfriend in spite of the fact he never seems to spend any time with her. As Nagasawa gets into a taxi he gives high falutin, overly certain assessment of Watanabe’s character to Watanabe and his girlfriend:
‘Watanabe’s practically the same as me. He may be a nice guy, but deep down in his heart he’s incapable of loving anybody. There’s always some part of him somewhere that’s wide awake and detached. He just has that hunger that won’t go away. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.’ (Chapter 8)
Like a lot of the dialogue, it reads like a posturing middle aged author rather than the drunk student who we’re supposed to believe delivers it. To complete farce, Watanabe tells Nagasawa’s girlfriend to dump him and Nagasawa doesn’t seem at all concerned by this and the two continue to be friends. Naoko’s character also indulges in the following sentimentalised assessment of her relationship with Kizuki. She claims that the two of them missed, ‘the pain of growing up’ and now have to, ‘pay the world back what we owed it’, using this as an explanation for his suicide. It’s all far too manicured and reads like a middle aged man writing about idealised, fictional teenage relationships rather than authentic dialogue or feeling. Naoko also talks about how her and Kizuki had, ‘no sense of the oppressiveness of sex or the anguish that comes with the sudden swelling of the ego that ordinary kids experience’ (all Chapter 6). This section is not only implausible but isn’t even internally consistent given that Naoko can’t even get wet to have sex with Kizuki so they never do it! There are lots of examples of this kind of sloppy character construction and inauthentic dialogue.
I was also extremely bored and unimpressed by the number of lengthy monologues that this book contains. Everyone seems to want to tell Watanabe their life story in highly stylised dialogue that would only ever really be found in a book. Naoko, Midori and Reiko all pour out implausibly long and well presented speeches on their lives that are only interrupted by an occasional nod or, ‘what happened next?’ from Watanabe. It’s a really lazy narrative device and doesn’t read at all well. These sections were a real slog to get through and reminded me of the writing style of cheap thrillers or romance novels where a character’s backstory is dumped out on the page in crude heaps of ugly, rambling text. It’s facile and guileless writing.
Another aspect of the book that really annoyed me is Murakami’s borrowing from other books without really acknowledging it or exploring it in any kind of detail. The most obvious example is Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. Watanabe reading this when he goes up into the mountains to visit Naoko at her own mountain sanatorium. The similarities are too numerous and obvious for anyone who’s read the book to miss. Watanabe takes a long journey to visit someone at the sanatorium, the place itself has a strange, other-worldly feel and a lifestyle and community all of its own. Just like Hans, Watanabe is physically assessed by a member of the community when he arrives. The food is delicious, just like in Magic Mountain. Many of the patients have been there for years and there is a suggestion that Watanabe may stay there for a long time if he settles into the rhythm of life there. The patients take their temperature and are involved in therapy, just like in Magic Mountain. The outside world is referred to as a distant and different place, just like the ‘flatlands’ in Mann’s book and the winters are snow filled and beautiful. Despite all of this, Watanabe doesn’t seem to notice or reflect on any of this even though he is reading the book while he is staying there. This is implausible and the only reference made to it is when Reiko says to Watanabe, ‘How could you bring a book like that to a place like this?’ and Watanabe thinks, ‘Of course, she was right’ (Chapters 5&6). I don’t see any reason why she was right to say this. On the whole, it just seems like Murakami borrows a lot of details from Magic Mountain and wants the reader to know that he has read it but doesn’t want to have his character reflect on it in any substantial way. This was irritating and unsatisfactory for me. He also seems to borrow lots of other bits and pieces during the course of the story like life being like a box of cookies, from Forrest Gump, and tigers turning to butter from Little Black Sambo. I’m sure there are others that I either didn’t notice or are borrowed from books I haven’t read. Of course, all authors borrow from other things that they have read but I felt in this book it was done in an especially unsubtle and artless way.
My last complaint about this book is the misogynistic tone that I felt permeated the whole story. All the women are more or less sexual objects for Watanabe including Reiko, which is the most implausible and confusing. The women are subservient to men and seem to define themselves only in reference to men. Naoko’s psychological problems are cast in a mainly sexual light and she only gains relief from them when she sleeps with Watanabe. She exposes herself to him in her sleep and is presented as an object for him to masturbate over. When Watanabe goes out with Nagasawa, girls are desperate to sleep with them and are even willing to swap partners if that’s what the men want. Reiko makes several jokes about rape when Watanabe is staying at the sanatorium and flirts with him. Of course, Watanabe ends up sleeping with her even though it doesn’t really fit the storyline and makes for a clunky conclusion. Midori’s conversation is sexually explicit from the outset and she gets upset when Watanabe doesn’t notice her new haircut or view her as an object for his sexual desire. Everything relating to women in the book is about sex and none of the women seem to be happy or fulfilled unless they are having sex with the wonderful, male Watanabe. Even when the women speak, Murakami has them denigrating themselves in comparison to men. Naoko writes, again highly implausibly, ‘Girls my age never use the word fair. Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The central question for them is not whether something is fair but whether or not it is beautiful or will make them happy. Fair is a man’s word” (Chapter 5). This not only sounds like a man writing and not a young woman, it is also highly insulting to women of all ages. It’s a good example of both the bad, implausible dialogue and the misogynistic tone that occur throughout. The whole book primarily seems to portray women as weak sex objects that are desperate for the approval and validation of men. Nagasawa’s girlfriend is another perfect example of this theme.
The prose in this book is good but otherwise it’s pretty bad and annoyed me in several ways I’ve outlined above. I didn’t enjoy it much at all and at the end I thought about Nagasawa’s policy of only reading books by authors who have been dead for 30 years. He justifies this by saying, ‘It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature...but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short’ (Chapter 3). While this is an extreme statement, and not one I wholly agree with, this book was disappointing and I felt it was a bit of a waste of time reading it. Perhaps it will be considered a classic 30 years after Murakami’s death but I certainly wouldn’t bet on it!!
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