Ian McEwan - Enduring Love

Someone told me that the opening passages of this book contained the most beautiful prose they’ve ever read.  This wasn’t the case for me and, reflecting on this idea, I thought that perhaps the most potent passages come further into a book when the ideas or characters have been more fully developed.  Nonetheless, the author’s ability to conjure up powerful and instantly recognisable scenes, sensations and emotional landscapes is undeniable.  This first struck me at the end of chapter nine, where an argument is described between the two main protagonists, Clarissa and Joe.  It is vivid and recalls much of the chaotic, visceral immediacy of verbal sparring with those close to you.  Thoughts, threats and accusations seems to be formed and spoken simultaneously without any conscious reflection or planned strategy. Nevertheless, despite this lack of planning, they can often be more hurtful than considered comments.  As if you’re responding instinctively, like closing your eyes or putting up your arms when physical objects fly towards you.  It’s a reflex and can be all the more apposite because of this.  Another example of his skill is the crescendo of suspense that is built up in chapter nineteen by throwing the reader’s attention forward to a crucial event that has yet to happen before returning to the chronology of the narrative.  For instance, “a day or so later it became a temptation to invent or elaborate details about the table next to ours” where the reader is aware that something seismic is about to happen but is left wondering what it could be.  Juxtaposed with the smooth, finely rendered description of a birthday celebration in a busy restaurant it creates a powerful feeling of anticipation and anxiety.

The characters are depicted with more intellectual detail than physical.  I felt close and connected to the scientific musings of Joe and his crisis about abandoning his career as a popular science writer and returning to ‘real science’.  The flowing prose was occasionally inlaid with captivating ideas that inspired the character with greater vivacity and brought me closer to them.  Joe opines, “so the meanderings of narrative had given way to an aesthetics of form, as in art, so in science” or “if you lived in a group, like humans have always done, persuading others of your own needs and interests would be fundamental to your own well being.  Sometimes you had to use cunning.  Clearly you would be at your most convincing if you persuaded yourself first and did not even have to pretend to believe what you were saying.  The kind of self-deluding individuals who tended to do this flourished, as did their genes”.  In other places the details and specifics are less convincing.  I often found these clumsier touches to be physical.  The grieving widow of the hot air balloon hero looks “a long way off, out on her own in unspeakable weather, like a lone Arctic explorer”.  The mien of someone facing extreme weather rarely looks detached in my experience and imagination it is more a countenance of resolve and determination.  The phrase certainly didn’t aid the depiction and actually jarred somewhat.  Again, the physical description of the same character’s house provoked more confusion than animation.  “Facing the poisonous fire, set opposite the sofa were two chairs”, how can the chairs both face the fire and be opposite the sofa, I thought?  The fire must be contained by a wall and short of the sofa being beside the fire, against the wall, or in front of the fire meaning the fire was largely obscured. It seemed to me the chairs must face the sofa perpendicular to the wall where the fire’s located.  

However, the worst aspect of the book was some of the character’s behaviour in the story.  Clarissa, who is depicted as a caring, compassionate and intelligent woman, transforms from a loving partner into a suspicious, dismissive narcissist  when Joe acquires a stalker.  Her behaviour seems unlikely, unbelievable and unreasonable in equal measure given the previous information we have been given about her.  Her actions are so strange it made me think that Joe has gone mad and that it would turn out that he had invented the stalker, as Clarissa seems to suspect.  One could argue this tension is part of the plot but the this line of thinking strikes me as full of gaping holes.  Clarissa was at the accident and would have seen Parry, the stalker, herself.  Joe also could have shown her Parry standing watch outside their house.  Joe, inexplicably, deletes the 30 answerphone messages Parry leaves and never presents Clarissa with this type of evidence for no apparent reason .  She dismisses the extremely numerous letters as possibly written by Joe on the pretext that the handwriting is the similar, which seems very odd and summarily dismissive for a caring partner not to mention improbable from a purely technical perspective.  Furthermore, where is Joe finding the time to write such voluminous missives!?  Equally, if he was in fact writing himself hundreds of letters wouldn’t Clarissa be more seriously concerned about his mental health and therefore take more concentrated actions to find out if Parry did in fact exist?  Her position is an inconceivable one for the character we are presented with earlier:  She cares about Joe, sees that something is having a very profound effect on him but can’t be bothered to conduct even the most precursory investigation into its veracity and decides he is mad but not actually mad enough to get him to talk to a psychologist or doctor!  However, and in my opinion conclusively, the fact that Parry does exist makes this entire portion of the plot weak and only supportable in a very flimsy and half-hearted way.  The letter of justification that Clarissa writes in chapter twenty-three represents an incredibly generous self-assessment. Again, it was not in keeping with her presentation as a character earlier in the book, and was, for me, the nail in the coffin for this portion of the storyline.  It is simply too unreasonable and far-fetched to warrant any real interest.  Another problem I had with the plot is Joe’s acquisition of the gun and its subsequent use.  Again, good, convincing prose and description is diluted by wholly unbelievable narrative developments on Joe’s trip to buy a gun from some retired coke dealers.  Why would he break down in uncontrollable fits of laughter halfway through the deal?  It spoils the otherwise well-crafted depiction of their living environment and conservation needlessly.  Finally, Joe’s shooting of Parry when he has kidnapped Clarissa also seems unlikely and melodramatic.  Would he have such confidence in his aim after one practice shot that probably wasn’t accurate given it took him a long time to find the hole in the tree trunk?  I think not, especially given the proximity of Clarissa to the target.  Why not just attack him without a gun?  Parry has already been described as small and, at the time of the shooting, was only going to stab himself and not Clarissa!  The whole episode struck me as forced and unnecessarily melodramatic and, combined with Clarissa’s incongruous and scarcely credible behaviour, it ruined the other considerable merits of the book.  It also formed a stark contrast with the other parts of the plot.  The ballooning incident, its aftermath for Clarissa and Joe and the story of the hero’s widow were all sensitively and believably handled throwing the more pantomime themes into garrish relief.

I found the book engaging and beautifully written in parts but the weak narrative and issues I have with the behaviour and actions of the protagonists considerably reduced my enjoyment of it as a whole.

Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza

The story jumps around a lot chronologically so it is quite hard to establish the characters definitively, especially the peripheral ones.  However, it’s also quite powerful in highlighting how huge swathes of our lives pass without much of note remaining in our memories, while other passages are remembered in pellucid, excruciating detail.  In this respect it is effective.  The chronological gaps between the two can be huge or very short and what is remembered ranges from the obviously significant to the seemingly irrelevant, which all lends yet more mystery to the chimerical and ethereal character of memory!  The negative, for me, was that I felt that most of the peripheral characters are a bit redundant as I didn’t really have a clear idea of their histories or characteristics.  They’re sort of shadowy, half characters who occasionally come into focus but remain largely blurry.  In some ways I feel the story might be more powerful if told in a more traditionally chronological way; however, given I found the end very moving this may be an unfair, and inaccurate, criticism to make. A bit like having a good plate of pasta in a restaurant and then thinking it might have been better to have had pizza!  I suppose one could read the chapters in chronological order rather than in the order they’re presented in order to compare.  Another, far more minor, criticism is the lack of translation of Latin, French, Italian and perhaps another couple of languages in the Vintage Classics edition I read; just how erudite does this publisher expect their readership to be!?  It’s not like they’re in a footnote and I was just too lazy to look them up; they’re not included at all! Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book more and more the further into it I got as I felt there was more depth to the characters and more narrative context in which to locate them.  The individual chronological pieces combine and crescendo together to create a very powerful ending, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  

The prep school scenes are extremely well documented and realistic, presumably drawing on Huxley’s own experiences at Hillside School, Malvern.  The scenes depicting sex and sexual desire are also very vivid but encompass a range of appetites and dispositions.  From ravenous, insouciant man and woman eaters, to ever-ambivalent Anthony to the, scarcely believable, chastity of Brian Foxe who reveres his lover so much he doesn’t want to defile her by the act of copulation!  For me this range of characters and emotions says a lot about Huxley’s ability to observe and portray very different characters believably.

Anthony is an intriguing character with a development that includes the despicable and delightful.  Initially, I felt so sorry for the poor boy left with only his peculiar, unemotional father after the death of his mother.  However, his behaviour towards his old friend Brian, wooing the woman he loves for a bet and then shirking his duty to admit this, made my stomach turn.  I found myself enraged at him and Mary Amberly, his lover with whom he makes the bet, for treating the emotions of others with such disregard.  Especially Anthony, who perpetrates the crime against his oldest friend and must have some premonition of the hurtful consequences.  Brian’s suicide note is heart wrenching to read:

“It’s as if a broken statue somehow contrived to hold itself together….A statue at one moment, and the next a heap of dust and shapeless fragments.”.

We cannot even claim love or infatuation in his defence; he does it to show the worldly-wise Mary how he too can be flip about sex and relationships.  Later, I despise his cowardice for not confessing his crime.  However, at the same time, I feel I can understand how terrible actions emanate from confused feelings that are nowhere near as awful as the acts themselves.    

I really like the dichotomy Huxley draws between Anthony, a boy who hasn’t been loved enough, and Brain, a boy who has been loved too much.  Both end up emotionally retarded in very different ways but with the ultimate consequences that they are broadly unsuited to meaningful relationships.  Brian because he is too idealistic and places his lover on an impossible pedestal and Anthony because he seems scared of commitment, probably on account of the loss he has suffered earlier in his life and never properly come to terms with.  I feel like what happens between the two is sickening and disgusting but in some way it is also understandable and almost familiar. In the end, my anger and hatred of Anthony subsided into a feeling of hopelessness and loss at the tragedy of Brian’s suicide and the dreadful feelings of guilt that must haunt Anthony in the aftermath.  

As I mentioned, the end of the book is by far the most powerful section to me as Huxley, and the characters, try to make some sense of their lives and the experiences that have lead them to this point.  Dr. Miller is an intriguing, semi-prophetic character who speaks didactically in almost parabolic language; short sentences, lots of repetition, sweeping, unqualified observations that challenge conventional wisdom or seem unrelated to the topic at hand.  He is a figure from the society Anthony knows, appearing in a strange land at a time when he desperately needs help and he provides it to him while simultaneously reflecting on the metaphysical nature  of the universe!  There is more than a little of the saviour about him and what he says and does.  It strikes me there’s also a lot of wisdom in what he says and that this is his purpose in the book for Huxley, to be a demagogue for Anthony and help him to develop and reach greater understanding.  I hear what I imagine to be Huxley’s opinions in a mixture of what he says and what the mature Anthony says at the end to Helen, which I’ll include later. I have a feeling he makes a very brief appearance earlier in the book but cannot be sure of it.  His other worldly quality reminds me of the dog that falls out of the sky while Anthony is lying on the roof with Helen.  As far as I’m aware this remains totally unexplained but seems to be the totemic image of the horror and pain of the world for both Anthony and Helen; recurring in both of their narratives over long periods of time.

One piece of the novel I loved was Hugh Ledwidge’s letter to Helen about the passage of time.  Apart from this missive and some very vivid depiction of him as socially and sexually awkward I would put him in the category of ‘shadowy, half characters’ that I mentioned in the first paragraph.  I never feel I’ve got to know very well owing to their scanty appearances and a personal narrative that is, at best, loosely sketched.  The letter is wonderful though and can probably justify his whole inclusion as it’s not something Brian, Anthony or Helen could really say:

“‘Midsummer Day, Helen.  But you’re too young, I expect, to think much about the significance of special days.  You’ve only been in the world for about seven thousand days altogether; and one has got to have lived through at least ten thousand before one begins to realize there aren’t an indefinite number of them and you can’t do exactly what you want with them.   I've been here more than thirteen thousand days, and the end’s visible,  the boundless possibilities have narrowed down.   One must cut according to one’s cloth; and one’s cloth is not only exiguous; it’s also of one special kind - and generally of poor quality at that.  When one’s young, one thinks one can tailor one’s time into all sorts of splendid and fantastic garments - shakoes and chasubles and Ph.D gowns; Nijinsky’s tights and Rimbaud’s slate-blue trousers and Garibaldi’s red shirt.  But by the time you’ve lived ten thousand days, you begin to realize that you’ll be lucky if you succeed in cutting one decent workaday suit out of the time at your disposal.  It’s a depressing realization; and Midsummer is one of the days that brings it home.  The longest day.  One of the the sixty or seventy longest days of one’s five and twenty thousand.  And what have I done with this longest day - longest of so few, of so uniform, of so shoddy?  The catalogue of my occupations would be humiliatingly absurd and pointless.  The only creditable and, in any profound sense of the word, reasonable thing I’ve done is to think a little about you, Helen, and write this letter…’”

I feel the conclusion of the novel, consisting of Brian’s death, Anthony’s trip to South America and encounter with Dr Miller and his final monologue with Helen is very powerful.  For some reason, Helen’s experience with the Communists where she loses her lover didn’t have such a profound effect on me except as an exemplification of the kind of hate politics that Anthony later criticises in his exposition on how to live life.  This portion is, for me, presaged by Anthony’s conversation with Mark in Chapter 13 (1934) when he says:

“But, after all, if you had enough love and goodness you could be sure of evoking some measure of answering love and goodness from almost everyone you came into contact with - whoever he or she might be.  And in that case almost everyone would really be ‘dear’.  At present, most people seem more or less imbecile or odious; the fault is at least as much in oneself as in them.”  

But reaches its fullest expression in Chapter 54 (1935).  It’s also perhaps because I was better placed by this point to appreciate his philosophy knowing more about his experience and narrative:

‘It begins,’ he answered, ‘with trying to cultivate the difficult art of loving people.’

‘But most people are detestable.’

‘They’re detestable, because we detest them.  If we liked them, they’d be likeable’

‘Do you think that’s true?’

‘I’m sure it’s true.’

‘And what do you do after that?’

‘There’s no “after,”’ he replied.  ‘Because, of course, it’s a lifetime’s job.  Any process of change is a lifetime’s job.  Every time you get to the top of a peak, you see another peak in front of you - a peak that you couldn’t see from lower down.  Take the mind-body mechanism, for example.  You begin to learn how to use it better; you make an advance; from the position you’ve advanced to, you discover how you can use it better still.  And so on, indefinitely.  The ideal ends recede as you approach them; they’re seen to be other and more remarkable than they seemed before the advance was begun.  It’s the same when one tries to change one’s relations with other people.  Every step forward reveals the necessity of making new steps forward - unanticipated steps, towards a destination one hadn’t seen when one set out.  Yes, it lasts a lifetime,’ he repeated.  ‘There can’t be any “after”.  There can only be an attempt, as one goes along, to project what one has discovered on the personal level on to the level of politics and economics.  One of the first discoveries,’ he added, ‘one of the very first one makes, is that organized hatred and violence aren’t the best means for securing justice and peace.  All men are capable of love for all other men.  But we’ve artificially restricted our love.  By means of conventions of hatred and violence.  Restricted it within families and clans, within classes and nations.”  

I really like the idea of life’s purpose being a constant, never ending process of improvement and it resonates with what I have experienced in life so far.  I also like the idea, probably more present in the first quote than the second, that what we think of the world is at least as much a reflection of our own internal lives than it is any objective reality.  

The final passages of the book, where Anthony expounds a meditative philosophy of peace, contain some very beautiful passages:

“Frenzy of evil and separation.  In peace there is unity.  Unity with other lives.  Unity with all being.  For beneath all being, beneath the countless identical but separate patterns, beneath the attractions and repulsions, lies peace.  the same peace as underlies the frenzy of the mind.  Dark peace, immeasurably deep.  Peace from pride and hatred and anger, peace from cravings and aversions, peace from all the separating frenzies.  Peace through liberation, for peace is achieved freedom.  Freedom and at the same time truth.  The truth of unity actually experienced.  Peace in the depths, under the storm, far down below the leaping of the waves, the frantically flying spray” - my highlights

At the beginning, I didn’t think I’d enjoy this book nearly as much as I did at the end, which is much better than the inverse!

Adam Phillips - Against Self-Criticism (Article in the LRB - 5/3/15)

What does it mean to love thy neighbour as thyself in the context of the abject self-loathing that many people display?  Was the advice originally conceived as ironic?  Or do most people actually conform to it, insofar as they treat other people with a good deal of cruelty and indifference.  As this example, which Phillips attributes to Lacan, shows there is a beguiling simplicity to this Christian teaching that is unhelpful and untrue when considered in the context of an average person’s psychology.  As Phillips goes on to show, most of our feelings are fundamentally ambivalent; meaning they are a mixture of opposing views.  We hate what we love and vice-versa.  All strong feelings are accompanied by their opposite.  What satisfies us also frustrates us, and we must believe what frustrates us could potentially satisfy us otherwise we wouldn’t find it frustrating!  Viewed from a position that accepts that love is meaningless, or impossible, without hate the Christian narrative of love may begin to look like a facile cover story designed to repress the ever-present ambivalence we all feel.

Phillips evokes “a malign parent that harms in the guise of protecting” when talking about the self-criticism.  This highlights that there are, most certainly, positive and essential attributes to self-reflection.  However, the relentless and unending self-criticism that most of us subject ourselves too is a strange and sadomasochistic way of loving ourselves.  Nevertheless, it is so deeply ingrained in our day to day behaviour that the very idea that we should stop criticising ourselves ordinarily arouses a great deal of criticism itself!  Over the past few days I have tried to catch myself in the act of self-criticism and have been struck by several things.  First, it is almost unbelievably frequent.  Secondly, it is extraordinarily repetitive consisting of limited variation around a couple of unimaginative and unexamined themes - “you’re lazy / useless / selfish”.  Thirdly, it is cruel and leaves no room for other interpretations of the action or mindset it is criticising.  As Phillips points out, if we met a person like this we would think them highly unusual, inexplicably cruel and very, very boring! Phillips suggests we would imagine that they had suffered a traumatic or damaging event from which they are recovering.

So what is this bizarre, but ubiquitous, part of the conscience that detaches itself from our conception of ourselves and repetitively abuses us in such unfeeling fashion?  Is it a small fragment of an alternative self; someone we could be but is overpowered by other selves within us?  For Freud, who calls it the superego, it is the voice of culturally learned behaviour that protects us from biological desires that are dangerous to us when we live in a society.  For example, the urge to murder.  Someone offends us, we want revenge by murdering them but we are afraid of the consequences this will have for our continued existence in society so we turn this violence on ourselves and internalise our hatred.  This constant self-criticism makes it impossible to truly evaluate ourselves in a more measured and subtle manner; like someone shouting at you while you’re trying to watch a film.  Furthermore, so great is our fear of the superego, perhaps because we are terrified of the murderous darkness inside ourselves, that we agree with the superego’s criticism and speak on its behalf!    

However, as with ambivalence, understanding such a powerful and prevalent part of our psychology cannot be achieved via simple interpretation or singular methods of explanation.  As Hamlet says in Act 3 Scene 1, “conscience does make cowards of us all”.  Even though we are the creator of the superego; the superego also makes us something different by its existence.  It is an unforbidden pleasure, allowed for and even encouraged by society, that is always available to us, which may go some way to explaining our near constant recourse to it.  We relish our failure to live up to standards without reflecting on what the standards against which we are judging ourselves are.  Partly because our conscience is too busy berating us and never allows us time to consider this question.  Indeed, conscience itself may be a coward, as well as making cowards of us, afraid of allowing us to develop a more complex and subtle morality.  Conscience criticises because it is afraid of what it it doesn’t know or cannot comprehend.  Thus, by interpreting our conscience simplistically and taking its criticisms at face value we lend credibility to its boring seriousness, suffocating drama and fearfulness.  Self-criticism itself is incredibly simplistic; involving no consensus or negotiation and endlessly repeating the same unexamined insults.  It is dictatorial and tyrannical and leads to a situation where, for Freud, the superego enslaves the ego.  Instead of this unconsidered dogma and ill supported judgement there should, instead, be reasoned conversation and inquisitive experimentation.  

So why do we seem to enjoy something that is so cruel and boring? And why is it so prevalent?  Freud thinks it arises from a fear of loss of love.  Safety and security of love are the things we most covet and for this reason safety is preferred to fulfilment of desire and desire is, similarly, sacrificed for security.  We conceive of ourselves as criminals and need to be protected from our immoral and wayward desires.  However, this viewpoint leaves little room for us to explore desires that are not forbidden as we are constantly engaged in criticising out of fear of ourselves.  We are so busy repressing our nature, on the supposition that it will be forbidden by society and hence unhelpful, that we are unable to truly get to know ourselves and our deepest desires.  Again, there is certainly a risk of overly simplistic interpretation and explanation here.  Nonetheless, once I began looking out for self-criticism I was shocked by how often I engage in it.  It is amazing that something so unusual and mean can play such a large part in one’s life and yet go unnoticed.  Part of this must be due to habituation; and another part to society’s endorsement of this trait, both explicit and implicit.  However, once we have noticed what we are doing to ourselves it also allows us to see just how boring, unimaginative and overwhelmingly useless it is! Viewed in this light, Phillips advises us not to take the self-criticism of the superego too seriously.  I also think it’s best to try and catch oneself indulging in this sadomasochism and to make a conscious effort to limit it.  Such basic, repetitive cruelty cannot be helpful in coming to a proper understanding of who we are and we must strive for more intelligent, nuanced understanding.   

One supplementary point I think is worth consideration is one’s response to the self-criticism of the superego.  In the paragraph above, I mention Phillip’s advice to not take the superego too seriously; which I believe is fundamentally sound counsel.  However,  we must be cautious that these attempts to marginalise the message of the superego do not turn into an equally hateful counter-criticism.  Just as the superego’s simplistic criticism is not helpful in coming to a deeper understanding of oneself, I think that an overly vitriolic assessment of the superego could be equally unhelpful.  Rather than trying to despise the superego and dismiss it as idiotic, I believe it may ultimately be more rewarding to try and comprehend the superego from a position of acceptance and loving understanding.  While the jibes of the superego may be cruel and hurtful, it is incumbent on us to resist the urge to respond to hatred with hatred or to return cruelty with further cruelty.  As Spinoza tell us in The Ethics, “hate is increased by being returned but can be destroyed by love”.  

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

Spread over a range of disparate characters, Tolstoy shows striking emotional astuteness and sympathy. So real, and in many cases, personally recognisable, are the depictions of the psychological and emotional machinations of his dazzling cast that I was left in awe his mastery of the internal life. There is such an abundance of interesting situations, individuals and relationships I feel like I could study its contents almost endlessly. This being the case, what follows will be necessarily superficial and will, no doubt, exclude huge swathes of material of equal or higher value than what it contains.

Anna is a character of incredible charm and social tact. All bow before her perfect manners, enchanting good looks and impeccable demeanour. This inherent agreeability she shares with her sibling Oblonsky, who is portrayed as the personification of good nature, warm feeling and clubby bonhomie. However, Oblonsky’s preeminently calm, gentle and soothing social manner is juxtaposed with the tumultuous state of his finances, his lazy attitude to work and his relaxed approach to adultery. As with her brother, Anna’s considerable charm is not left unsullied by other aspects of her character. However, as with most of the characters, you don’t feel you’re being shown a cast that have been preordained simplistically as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I’m reminded of Chekov’s comments on the duty of an artist, “A court must put the questions correctly, but it is up to the members of the jury to decide, each according to their own taste”. To me, Tolstoy achieves this in the same manner as George Eliot in Mill on the Floss. The possible exception to this impartial presentation is Varenka, whom Kitty meets while recovering from her rejection by Vronsky in Germany and who later almost receives a marriage request from Levin’s academic half-brother Sergei Koznyshev. Anna married as a young woman not knowing love and subsequently fell in love. This is the root of her various difficulties that eventuate to a sad and horrible fruition. Can this be described as a crime? I don’t think so. To me it speaks more of the evils of an inflexible social structure that cannot accommodate change. However, one could easily argue that if a society accepts too much ‘change’ then there will quickly be no structure at all. Anna is a deeply sociable person and becomes consumed by boredom and jealousy when isolated from society. She is intelligent and self-critical, acknowledging her own evil in her actions towards her husband. However, despite his evolving actions and motivations, she holds her hatred of him firm. What does this point towards? Perhaps it is evidence of her own regret at having made the wrong decision and the social turmoil recognition of this fact causes her; Karenin is the externalisation of her own anger with herself. Whatever the cause, the pain and deterioration that occur to Anna as a result of her effective exile, a terrible punishment for one who seems to thrive on social interaction and appreciation, are acute. Her descent into suicide is excruciating to read and the grim inevitability of the sequence does nothing to lower its tension.

Vronsky is another character blessed with excellent social manners and a surfeit of charm. He too is a mixture of acts that we both condone and condemn, leaving our final judgement of him quite unsure. He is a talented man as indicated by his successful career, his mastery of his horse racing and his meticulous management of his estate after his elopement with Anna. This also displays his love of detail. He also seems to hold the esteem of his peers. However, against these broadly positive representations we have other less complimentary incidences. His courting of Kitty surely doesn’t endear him to all readers, however, is he to blame for falling in love with Anna? Again, while his actions towards Kitty are hardly desirable, I feel he can’t be blamed for falling in love. He also displays a violently emotional side, which seems to be most in evidence when he is under pressure. He falls in love with Anna immediately and absolutely and gives up his career for her without a second thought. He falls at the last hurdle in his important horse race. He shoots himself in the chest when his love of Anna becomes confused and unbearable in the face of Karenin’s magnanimity towards Anna during her illness. Here Tolstoy summarises the experience of real, deep seated confusion, “He felt himself knocked quite out of the rut along which he had hitherto trodden so proudly and lightly. All the apparently solid habits and rules of his life suddenly seemed false and inapplicable”. He is reported to be almost inconsolable upon Anna’s suicide after which he elects to join the Serbian war with the words, “As a man I have this quality, that I do not value my life at all and that I have physical energy enough to hack my way into a square and slay or fall - that I am sure of. I am glad that there is something for which I can lay down my life which I not only do not want, but of which I am sick! It will be of use to somebody”. In sum, I find him implacable. He seems more sure of himself than Levin and more conservative too but, at once, he seems more passionately in thrall to his emotions too. I feel like the love that Anna and him share is admired by Tolstoy and that he may even ascribe to it a mystical quality. I take as evidence for this the nightmare they share about the peasant talking French that they never discuss. The dreadful effects that arise from their pursuit of their love seem more to do with the circumstances Anna finds herself in once society has judged her and Vronsky’s response to losing Anna to suicide; he can find no love in the world once Anna is taken from him.

Karenin’s character moves through differing phases too. At first he seems the boring antithesis to Anna’s vivacity; capturing this social bird of paradise in a dull cage of status seeking officialdom. However, we feel his pain when he is wronged through little fault of his own and, to a degree, admire his stoicism and equanimity. Nonetheless, this initial reaction could be reinterpreted as self-deception in light of his later hatred of Anna and his wish for her death. This, in turn, is followed by what appears to the reader as an attitude of genuine forgiveness and magnanimity. However, these ‘true’ Christian feelings quickly metamorphose into spitefulness masquerading as magnanimity and a parading righteousness deceitfully claiming a loss whilst secretly booking a profit of indignation. Lydia Ivanovna’s involvement in this stage is despicable and makes us think much less of Karenin for consorting with her. The climax of this false Christianity is their encounter with Oblonsky and the sleeping savant! Here, Anna’s former friend and her estranged husband effectively decide her fate via the expedient of French charlatan, Landau, who claims to offer God’s opinion through his sleep-talking. I like the name of the savant especially, ‘pram’ in French, seeming to simultaneously refer to his sleep induced revelations and, perhaps, the childishness of such ideas! I see Lydia Ivanovna, in this guise of Karenin’s spiritual guide, as the personification of the society that was once so charmed by Anna turning against her and exacting pointless revenge on what it deems a ‘fallen woman’.

Levin’s moods are spectacular in their variety and depth but, as anyone would know from an honest assessment of their own feelings, they are hardly unusual for being so assorted. In a small way, the reader suffers with him as he grasps hold of a new notion, full of enthusiasm and zeal, only to have these feelings abandoned as sophistry or overturned in favour of newer, seemingly more suitable, schemas. His infatuation with Kitty at the skating rink quickly turns to embarrassment and dejection following his refused proposal. Following this, we see him turn to the management of his estate with renewed zeal and resolve to occupy himself in agricultural matters. As he moves through these phases, it seems to me that his feelings and emotions are the most vividly and believably displayed of all the characters, which is a real distinction in a book that deals with the emotions so adroitly. This deft treatment continues through the various, delicately described incidences of his life. The rekindling of his romance with Kitty is a masterpiece of reawakened love and restitution of feelings that had been previously abandoned as hopeless but which were never totally discarded. Again, as with Vronsky and Anna, Tolstoy seems to show a potentially metaphysical or mystical side to love when the pair decipher implausibly long chains of letters, drawn in chalk on a card table, into complete sentences. Levin’s rapture about Kitty’s acceptance, his nerves and agitation in preparation for the wedding and his wild jealousy at Veslovsky’s flirting with Kitty when Oblonsky brings him to stay at Levin’s estate, his mixed feeling about his child’s birth. All treated with the same exceptional skill by Tolstoy; making us feel and relive the same, or approximate, emotional events from our own lives. I see Levin as an emotional man, but in a very different way to Vronsky. While Vronsky may appear to be more measured and conservative during his day to day life, he is overcome by feelings so strong that he takes extraordinary actions. Levin’s feelings, on the other hand, receive more minute description from Tolstoy but do not result in such devastating consequences. Alternatively, Levin seems to be able to find a way of rededicating himself to something else or is capable of recourse to actions that aren’t as final as attempting to die; either via suicide or fighting in a war. At bottom, I feel Levin is an optimist. He cares deeply about his serfs and servants and has an altruistic desire to improve their lot, as evidenced by his co-operative schemes and attempts to introduce superior foreign farming techniques. Despite their reluctance, or the disappointing results of such schemes, he perseveres in his care for them. Indeed, one feels that he is quite right to think primarily of the character of the labourer when considering farm management, which is the thesis for his book that he works on sporadically. The love of the countryside and a simple rustic life seem central to any understanding of Levin. Excluding his romantic interactions with Kitty he’s happiest after a long day mowing the grass with his labourers or out shooting with his dog before his companions have arisen. When in town he’s astounded at how so much time can be spent essentially in pursuit of small talk and is upset at how little he achieves whilst he is there. However, against this seeming placement of rural life above urban it is also noteworthy that Levin and Kitty only fight in the countryside and not in the town. Equally, Anna and Vronsky’s disagreements reach their zenith during their rural exile. However, this may be little more than a coincidence given that Levin and Kitty don’t spend much time in town and that a deeply social creature like Anna is bound to suffer while in exile; both physically and emotionally. Despite this, I feel like Tolstoy is, at some level, showing us the pros and cons of both lifestyles. The town is filled with diversion and interaction, which we all need, whilst the country life can be more simple and solitary but, equally, can be socially claustrophobic and lonely. Whatever the niceties of Tolstoy’s view of urban living versus rural living, to understand Levin I think it is central to locate the nub of his character in simple, visceral, religious rural life. For me, the most moving passage in the book is his religious experience in Book 8, Chapter 12. Here, Levin discusses the character of another serf with his carriage driver who refers to this man as someone who, “lives for his soul and remembers God”. Levin proceeds to interrogate him about what this phrase means in practice. The driver struggles to elaborate beyond a very general, “you know what I mean”! Levin continues to reflect on the driver’s comments and the role of reason in spiritual matters, here I will quote at length as I think it is so well written:

“To live not for one’s needs but for God! For what God? What could be more senseless than what he said? He said we must not live for our needs - that is, we must not live for what we understand and what attracts us, what we wish for, but must live for something incomprehensible, for God whom nobody can understand or define. Well? And did I not understand those senseless words of Theodore’s? And having understood them, did I doubt their justice? Did I find them stupid, vague or inexact?
No, I understand him just as he understands them: understood completely and more clearly than I understand anything in life; and I have never in my life doubted it, and cannot doubt it.”

“I, and all other men, know only one thing firmly, clearly, and certainly, and this knowledge cannot be explained by reason: it is outside reason, has no cause, and can have no consequences.
‘If goodness has a cause, it is no longer goodness; if it has a consequence - a reward, it is also not goodness. Therefore goodness is beyond the chain of cause and effect
‘It is exactly this that I know and that we all know
‘What greater miracle could there be than that?”

“And in all of us, including the aspens and the clouds and the nebulae, evolution is proceeding. Evolution from what, into what? Unending evolution and struggle...As if there could be any direction and struggle in infinity!”

“‘What should I have been and how should I have lived my life, if I had not had those beliefs, and had not known that one must live for God, and not for one’s own needs? I should have robbed, lied and murdered. Nothing of that which constitutes the chief joys of my life would have existed for me.’ And although he made the greatest efforts of imagination, he could not picture to himself the bestial creature that he would have been, had he not known what he was living for”

“‘Where did I get it from? Was it by reason that I attained to the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.’”

To me, this is a very powerful exposition of a feeling I have experienced many times when considering spiritual matters. I feel I know what is “right” in my “heart” but find excuses or explanations that override it via reason. However, a rationalist would probably respond that my intuition amounts to nothing more than accumulated social prejudices and that if I lived in another time, in another society that I would have a different set of prejudices thus demonstrating the fundamentally unreliable nature of such feelings. Against this objection, I would point to the real emotional consequences of attempting to live a rationalist or nihilist philosophy in practice. Both Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment make this point. In any case, Levin is overwhelmed by a feeling of revelation and I would see this as the most important passage in the book for him. Indeed, Levin’s struggles with rationalism and atheism earlier in the book appear to solved by this experience and it seems to me like this chapter sees Levin find a way of expressing himself, or understanding his experience, that brings him closer to his nature and living in accordance with it. It’s unclear to me whether Levin’s all encompassing revelation amounts to an endorsement of Christianity by Tolstoy.

Kitty strikes me as one of the less intensely analysed characters in Anna Karenina. Perhaps this is because I feel more affinity with the male characters but I still believe that she is something of a carte blanche, especially when compared to Levin or Anna. One explanation for this could be her age. Kitty is young, ingenuous and emotional. She seems to be mainly the object of others intentions or emotions but this is not to say that she doesn’t have feelings or show emotional development. Indeed, there are several interesting instances of this: Her encounter with Varenka is interesting as it seems to mark a movement away from youthful self-absorption, although this change is not immediate. She is, however, immediately in awe of Varenka’s selflessness and ability to show love to all people in spite of, and perhaps because of, her own pain. This change in Kitty continues through her love for Levin and their marriage and reaches its climax when she is nursing Levin’s dying brother; an act we, and Levin, think her incapable of when in reality she performs this most difficult of duties with aplomb. In contrast to Levin’s struggles with reason and religion, we are shown Kitty as a steadfast and simple Christian believer and it is possible that she is part of the theme exemplified by Levin’s driver; unsophisticated, inexplicable faith that is actually far more advanced than the seemingly urbane sophistry of those who employ reason in pursuit of a similar aim. For example, Levin and his half brother Sergei.


Levin’s brother Nikolai, is a form of tragic hero to me. He evokes strong and contradictory feelings in Levin from repulsion and disgust to pity, respect and deep seated familial love. Levin’s recollection of him as bright young man; attractive, full of life and loved by everyone contrasts starkly with the angry, selfish and depressed alcoholic we encounter in his filthy bedsit. The particulars of his life seem to echo some of the themes we find in Anna’s experience. I think of him as a vivacious young man whose keen intellect and considerable strength of mind bring him to a rejection of the corrupt and confused society he sees all around him. The same society that casts Anna out into exile and, ultimately, brings about her suicide. His decision to marry a prostitute seems to indicate his liberal, autocratic leanings and disregard for conventional wisdom. However, he seems to lack the strength or ability to turn this rejection into something positive. To be sure, he falls into the category of those who use reason when probing spiritual questions and, in this sense, he appears condemned to endure a cold life by the standards of this novel. This is the case for both Levin’s brothers. His desperate and sporadic appeals to God during his last moments are terrible.


Anna Karenina is a book about love and the magic, madness and tragedy it can produce. In the religious sense, we see Tolstoy reject intellectual and rational attempts to explore meaning in life. As is shown in Levin’s religious experience, we see that love of God, or good, is irrational and unreasonable at it’s heart. Levin is, in some ways, helped to this understanding by his marriage and his romantic love of Kitty. However, other romances in the novel don’t have such positive outcomes. Anna and Vronsky’s love is condemned by society and drives Anna mad, removing the meaning from Vronsky’s life. Nikolai’s love for his former prostitute wife is frail and becomes consumed by his hatred in the face of his illness. Levin’s other half-brother is so intellectual he seems incapable of even beginning a romance with Varenka. However, I wouldn’t wish to draw a distinction between the happiness of those who love God and the despair of those who do not. The story is far too nuanced to support such a simplistic interpretation. Love, either of God or of other people, is an endlessly complicated and intricate emotion. However, love does seem to me to be the central theme. It produces wildly different outcomes for the various protagonists but, in every case, it is the thing that gives meaning to their lives. Much of what we see that appeals to us as readers must be classified as love of some type or another and much of what repels us is hatred of one form or another. The most extreme instance of this hatred is that which is shown to Anna by society and this indictment also strikes me as a central theme. As such, I would see the book as condemning the hatefulness, which is often associated with societal judgement and those judged by it, and endorsing the simple, visceral love that I feel sure everyone feels for the world at certain points in their lives. Varenka shows free and indiscriminate love despite the pain in her life while Nikolai’s pain turns to hatred and judgement of it’s own. Levin finds love and also finds a way to love the world whereas Anna and Vronsky’s love destroys them, in Anna’s case because she may love the approval of society too much and in Vronsky’s because he may love Anna too much. Love in Anna Karenina is mystical and unavailable to rational analysis, but it is the animating force of the world and all that occurs in it.

George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss

This is a wonderfully well observed and constructed story of a similar calibre to ‘Middlemarch’ but perhaps with fewer truly breathtaking characters. Although there are several very good ones in this too. We encounter siblings, Tom and Maggie, in an amazingly well portrayed middle-class, small town, early industrial setting. We journey through their, by turns, oppressive and idyllic childhood to the pressures of adolescent expectations to the sadness and tragedy of loss and familial disintegration and then further to young adult issues of sexual awakening, love, loyalty, belief and societal perception.

One theme that struck me is the stupidity and foolishness of pride and intransigence.  The father of the family, a Mr. Tulliver, is rigidly steadfast in his beliefs with disastrous consequences including, indirectly, his own demise.  His son too suffers via his immutable attitude to his sister.  The childhood friend of the siblings turned boatman in later life, Bob, shows a form of steadfast, unchanging loyalty that casts immovable opinions in a more favourable light. However, ultimately, it’s hard to award this outlook the highest moral or ethical accolades owing to its simplicity. For instance, he offers to beat up anyone who has offended Maggie without questioning their motives. Of course, there is much that I admire in this unconditional loyalty but is it not also a form of the immutable attitudes that appear to be criticised in other passages?  Philip, a disabled schoolmate of Tom's who later becomes Maggie's clandestine lover owing to the animosity between his father and Mr Tulliver, or Lucy, a cousin of the Tullivers might come closest to the type of heroine or hero but largely because they're minor characters and aren't developed as fully as the main protagonists.

To me, this is not a straightforward exemplary tale of ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ but rather a dissertation on the complexity of life, psychology and emotions.  There are no, or perhaps few, unequivocal heroes and all the characters show the admixture of good and bad we all know so well. We admire Tom for his gritty determination but despise his heartless and uncharitable attitude to his sister. Similarly, we're touched by his faithful adherence to his dead father's wishes but despair of his dogmatic cruelty to Philip. We admire Maggie's intelligence and bravery in the face of much societal criticism but can hardly do the same for her swooning at the advances of her kindly cousin Lucy's lover.

Much time is spent on the misery of the human condition and this is really brilliantly rendered. For example, “We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires - we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or next year’s crop”, and “human life...is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception” . The pain and strife of the two young adults, thrust into a hard life prematurely by the financial ruin and death of their father, is heart wrenching to read. Both seek partial respite, Maggie in love and Tom in commerce working to regain what his father lost, but fail to find it or become disillusioned along the way.

To me the book is really about the duality of human life and emotion; at once, sublime and sinful, beautiful and disgusting, from which no one is exempted. This wonderful passages summarises better than I ever could: “All people of broad, strong sense have an instinct repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy.  And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgement solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality - without the care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly-earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human”.

Joe Navarro - What Every Body is Saying

   If she keeps playing with her hair it means she fancies you.  If they cross their arms it means they don't.  Everyone is familiar with the concept of body language as expressed by simplistic, quasi-scientific rules such as these.  One of the things I liked most about Navarro's book is that it eschews basic X means Y type formulations and attempts to locate the art of reading body language in a broader, richer context that any matter relating to the highly complex matter of human psychology clearly deserves.
   Navarro himself was an FBI expert on reading body language, using his skills in the field and latterly to teach agents and law enforcement officers about the subject.  Interestingly, he links the early development of his skills to his experience as a child; he was the son of an immigrant family who spoke no English.  In this environment, he says, you quickly learn a lot about body language! Navarro appears decidedly well versed in the academic literature of his field, the text is well referenced and the list of further reading is extensive.  Throughout one has a sense of a man immersed in his chosen profession.
    Before we move through a survey of the different types of 'language' each part the body may be 'speaking' it is worthwhile to highlight a few general points Navarro is a pains to make plain.  He counsels a cautious, reasoned approach.  First, scientific research in the field is conclusive: There is no 'Pinocchio Effect' akin to the statements made in the first two sentences.  Even the most skilled professional can only hope for a success rate of c.60% and will make lots of mistakes.  Indeed, even the famous polygraph is only 60-80% accurate depending on the operator.  Inevitably, this will cause some people to cry foul.  Here I see considerable similarities to the fund management industry; is it all just luck?  I suppose know one truly knows but I am prepared to accept there is skill in both.  One thing is certain, neither are sciences!  Given this background, Navarro suggests we must begin by observing what a persons normal, comfortable behaviour looks like; establishing a control.  A large part of this is asking neutral questions, in a neutral tone whilst using neutral body language yourself.  Also, sufficient time must be left between questions to allow for full observation.  This is probably a lot harder than it might initially seem.  One of the things that made me feel that there might be some truth to the claims made in this book was the fact that I began to notice that I was exhibiting some of the traits identified in exactly the kind of situations described without realising it!  Once a 'control' of normal behaviour has been established we might move on to ask harder questions or broach more uncomfortable topics thus contrasting comfortable body behaviour with uncomfortable body behaviour.  Alongside this, one should try to notice if there is synchrony between verbal and non-verbal behaviour.  For example, if a person is saying they really like someone but all their body language is saying the polar opposite.  One should also pay close attention to the grouping of signs given the inherent uncertainty in interpretation. Lastly,  one must pay close attention to emphasis.  When someone is making a strongly declarative statement to which they should be passionately committed, like "you have to believe me I didn't do it", you should look for a similarly emphatic display from the body. The main point here though, to me, is "there is no single behaviour that is indicative of deception"!
   Now, what sort of things can we look for:

• Isopraxism, or mirroring behaviour, is a very strong sign of comfort as is leaning in or angling of the torso towards your conversational partner.  
• Eyes and eyebrows may slightly open or raise on the appearance of someone we like whereas they may slightly narrow for someone we dislike
• Pursed lips are almost always a sign of stress 
• Nasal dilation or flaring of the nostrils is a preparation for action as it allows more oxygen to be taken into the muscles - this can mean persons limbic brain (animal part of the brain associated with non-verbal, unconscious movements as opposed to the neo-cortex which is associated with speech &c.) is readying itself for a fight or defence
• Fight or flight is actually FREEZE-FIGHT-FLIGHT: in the first instance of danger humans, like many other animals, freeze to limit danger.  This can be displayed as a lack of movement, direction of eyes downward, shoulders hunched up, head down like the person is trying to hide.  Flight is rarely physical with humans today and is usually expressed as blocking like putting one's hands over one's face, closing eyes, rubbing eyes, placing something in one's lap or in front of themselves, leaning away, turning feet to the exit or placing one's heel down with the toes up like they're about to start a race. Fight, again, is rarely physical, but is the process of turning fear to rage and limits the ability to think clearly.  Associated physical behaviour may be puffing out one's chest, making oneself bigger, invading other's space and using verbal abuse
• When feeling uncomfortable, stressed or insecure about a question or topic of discussion people will often use pacifying movements to offset these feelings.  Examples include touching, especially the neck but can be face and legs too, or stroking, rubbing cheeks and lips from the inside with the tongue, exhaling slowly with puffed out cheeks, chewing gum faster, smoking more.  Men prefer to touch the face or neck, which contains a nerve for slowing the heart rate, whereas women prefer to play with jewellery, clothing, arms, hair.  Other signs associated with this type of behaviour are massaging earlobes, licking lips, stroking thighs with palms down, ventilating neck by moving collar or tossing hair 
• Feet and legs tell us the most from a body language perspective and this may be because of their importance in hunting behaviour
• Jiggly, bouncing or swinging feet can be associated with elation but can also be impatience or restlessness so it is important to look for groupings, synchrony and emphasis alongside this
• Ordinarily people talk toe to toe so if one person has L-shaped feet or their feet point away from the person towards the door this can mean they want to leave
• When you interrupt a conversation between others and their feet don't turn towards you with their torso to greet you then they may not want you to join them
• Both hands on knees, usually with a move forward or a lean, means that the person wants to leave
• Bouncing on balls of feet, standing on tip toes and pointing one foot to the ceiling when sitting are associated with happiness or receiving good news
• Increasingly wide splaying of legs can indicate an increasing level of unhappiness and is an attempt to claim more territory
• Crossed legs is a sign of comfort and confidence and may point in the direction of the person most favoured.  Crossing away, forming a barrier with the upper leg, is a negative behaviour whereas crossing towards, pointing to the other person with the upper knee, is a positive sign
• Women dangling shoes of their toes is a sign of relaxation
• After you meet someone if you take a step backwards they will usually - 1) step towards you - +ive 2) stay put - neutral 3) step back themselves -ive
• Jiggling feet is quite a neutral behaviour but can turn to kicking or freezing when questions / topics become unpleasant or stressful
• Attempts to lock ankles, especially for men as many women wearing skirts do it anyway, or hide feet behind chair legs or under the chair are defensive posture
• Lot of chattering doesn't mean innocence and silence doesn't imply guilt; these are both neutral when take in isolation
• Hands up when making statements mean, 'please, I beg you to believe me' whereas hands down is a much more assertive behaviour.  People telling the truth have no need to beg.

TORSO

• Will lean away from what it finds unpleasant as torso contains lots of vital organs
• People who dislike each other will only turn towards each other with their heads when seated in the back seat of a car
• Buttoning ones jacket, folding arms or blocking with other objects are signs of discomfort and defence
• Men fiddling with watches, cufflinks and tie are all associated with blocking
• Coldness and hugging of pillows when others feel normal temperature can be a sign of stress or discomfort
• Torso splaying is a territorial display of disrespect - like a slouching, lounging teenager being bollocked
• Puffing out of the chest, heavier inhalations and disrobing are all signs of fight / flight mechanisms
• Partial shoulder shrugs, where one shoulder goes higher than the other or shoulders don't fully go up, indicate lack of commitment to what is being said by the shrugger.  Full shrugs are a sign of confidence and are a 'gravity defying behaviour' (arms up, jumping, bouncing feet) which are almost always positive / comfortable / happy
• Rising shoulder and lowering of neck are an attempt to hide and are associated with negative thoughts and moods

ARMS

• Arm waving is a sign of elation whereas sinking arms are a sign that things are going against us - this is very visible in sport
• Crossed arms, especially restrained arms where the hand grips the bicep, and freezing of arm movement can be a sign of anxiety and attempts not to be noticed.  Abused children often freeze in an attempt of go unnoticed and avoid abuse.  When people are doing something they shouldn't like stealing they also tend to restrict arm movement and look around a lot more than usual.
• Arms behind one's back is a sign that you perceive yourself to be higher status than those around you.  It is saying, don't touch me or come near me!  
• Reaching for physical contact, like a handshake or a hug, which is not reciprocated is highly unpleasant for humans
• In meetings when people spread out their arms and papers it is a show of power and confidence whereas people wishing to go unnoticed or with low confidence will often keep their hands in their laps and their elbows below their waist
• Arms akimbo is a territorial display of dominance and an authoritative pose indicating standing one's ground, a position of authority but less so if the thumbs point forward - which makes it more inquisitive and concerned rather than dominant
• Hands interlaced behind the head means I'm in charge and is also indicative of confidence or dominance
• Closeness of hands and arms when sitting face to face with someone indicates comfort and confidence and vice-versa
• Touching between the elbow and the shoulder is a way of establishing rapport and saying, "We're OK"
• Hugging is a great way of displaying care and affection

HANDS

• People like to be able to see hands when you are talking as it engenders trust, use them to express what you're talking about
• However, pointing and snapping fingers are aggressive, domineering behaviours and it's better to gesticulate using an open palm
• Sweaty palms don't indicate anything
• Shaking hands can indicate both joy and stress and can also result from Parkinson's, injuries and alcoholism so this sign needs to be understood in context
• Steepling is a high confidence indicator whereas interlocking and wringing is associated with stress or concern. Cupping is a higher confidence hand position.
• Pointing of the thumbs upwards, when grabbing lapels or collars, is a high confidence sign as is sticking hands in pockets with thumbs sticking out.  Equally disappearance of thumbs and hiding them is a low confidence behaviour
• Interlacing of fingers tends to be a low confidence behaviour unless the thumbs point upwards
• Thumbs in belt loops with fingers pointing down is called genital framing and is a high confidence display of sexual virility
• Interlocking fingers accompanied by rubbing or wringing is a high stress indicator

FACE

• Unpleasant or negative emotions cause tension and result in clenched jaw, flared nostrils, fixed eyes, rigid, un-tilting head position, pursed lips and disappearing or squinting eyes, quivering lips, furrow lines on the forehead.  Positive emotions tend to elicit the opposite
• Dilated pupils are associated with positive emotions and surprise whereas constricted pupils are usually associated with negative emotions as the eyes are trying to bring things into sharper focus because of a perceived danger or unpleasantness
• Raised eyebrows are a gravity defying behaviour associated with confidence and happiness whereas lowered brows are associated with negative thoughts 
• Hands in front of the eyes, touching the eyes or delayed opening and tight clenching shut are all associated with blocking negative or unwelcome thoughts
• People look away to clarify thoughts without the distraction of a person's face so this is neutral
• An increase in the rate at which we blink is associated with stress
• Looking askance conveys scepticism about the topic under discussion or the veracity of what is being said
• Fake smiling doesn't involve the eyes and usually the mouth moves sideways rather than upwards.  A real smile usually involves upward movement of the mouth as well as broadening and involves the eyes
• Increasingly disappearing lips indicate stress or disagreement especially so when the corners point downwards
• Puckered lips show disagreement and consideration of alternatives
• Sneers indicate an attitude of, 'I know more than you do' and a disrespect for the knowledge or assessment of the other person
• Lip licking is a pacifying behaviour.  Sticking one's tongue out between the teeth with no contact with the lips can mean a variety of things like, 'I got caught', 'I screwed up', 'I'm naughty' and 'I got away with something'.  It is usually displayed briefly.
• Nail biting is an insecure pacifying behaviour
• Faces associated with bad tastes or unpleasant food like mini snarls and nose crinkles indicate displeasure and can be very fleetingly displayed
• Holding one's chin and nose high shows positivity and vice versa

    Having completed this brief survey of some of the main points, Navarro also suggests that if the signs are mixed then one should always side with the negative indicator as negative feelings are expressed more strongly than positive.  He also suggests that if one has trouble interpreting a certain behaviour then a useful approach is to do it oneself and see how it makes you feel.

    Overall, I found this a useful and considered introduction to the subject.  In places the style is quite overbearingly that of a person who idealises law enforcement, "that'll be the last time he tries something like that" etc., but this is to be expect from a career law man.  One less forgivable aspect of the text, to my mind, is the infuriating habit of placing exemplary stories in shaded boxes and separating them from the text.  If the example is illuminating then it deserves to be in the text proper, if not it deserves to be omitted.  It's unclear when the reader should interrupt a sentence to read them, as they sometimes appear, or whether we should wait until the end of the book to review them as a distinct collection of narratives!  To me, it represents wrongheaded editing and confronts the reader with a jarring reading experience.  Otherwise, it was an interesting read with a couple of stylistic shortcomings. 

John Lee - How to make a million - slowly

       Much as an academic doyen might conclude a famous lecture series by collecting the salient points into a book Lord Lee, the doyen of ISA investment, marks the end of his interesting and informative My Portfolio column in The Financial Times with the publication of this short book.  It has much to recommend it.  
       First, we must recognise the authority conferred upon the author by his extraordinarily strong track record.  An average annual return of c.21% places him firmly in the upper echelons of all investors and the longevity over which this figure has been attained only serves to reinforce the idea that Lee is "a serious private investor", as he describes himself in the book.  As one might imagine, the book is full of insights gleaned from a long career of what I would term "proper" investment; visiting companies, reading annual reports, judging boards and management teams, assessing their incentives and holding shares for the long term.  
       Lee locates himself in the tradition of 'value investment' generally accepted to have its foundations in Benjamin Graham's Security Analysis although, as with all investors, his style is really unique to his personality.  It is this adaptation of a successful style that I believe marks out really great investors.  To quote Jose Mourinho on the subject, "With a mentor you can improve and have a base for evolution, but when you try and copy, the copy is never the same as the original.  So I think you have to learn from people with more experience who have had success, but always keep your own personal identity". While Lee never mentions Graham or his co-author Dodd, I think he clearly lies within this 'school' of investment. Indeed, he does mention "The Dean of Wall Street's" star pupil, Warren Buffet, who has had consistent, long term success adapting the value style with his partner Charlie Munger at Berkshire Hathaway.
There's much to learn from this pithy volume. The points are made concisely and summarised clearly, as one would expect from a mind expert in focusing on the important details in a complex situation: Seek shares displaying both a decent dividend and good prospects for capital growth. Try to buy on modest valuations. Avoid making forecasts about the direction of the market or economy. Identify companies with a proven track record of profitability and dividend payment. Hold shares for the long term; a minimum of five years. Ignore minor share price movements. Focus on conservative, cash generative companies with low levels of debt avoiding start ups, biotech and exploration companies. Search for strong, stable board members with significant share holdings in the company themselves.  Don't overcomplicate valuation methodology. Don't buy shares in businesses where you lack even a basic understanding of the industry. Look for a stable, high quality board. Pay close attention to optimistic or improving CEO and chairman's statements in annual reports.
Alongside these excellent pieces of practical advise we find recommendations of less objective character; but by no means less valuable. Lee counsels us that very small companies are often overlooked by large fund management and stock broking firms. Investors should attend AGMs as it gives an opportunity to judge the managements' body language and ask questions. It may also reveal rifts between managers or between board and management and gives opportunity to chat and gossip with the company's executives and form a judgement as to their character and sensibilities.
Lee is refreshingly honest about his own mistakes and spends considerable time analysing their morphology rather than simply gloating about his considerable successes. Again, this strikes me as a mark of good a investor as there is invariably more to be learned from one's failures than one's successes; the usual outcome of the latter being overconfidence and complacency in my own experience! From these frustrations, Lee establishes some general rules. One is that losers should be sold after a 20% loss. However, this strategy, approximating a 'stop-loss', would be anathema to a more puritanical value investor. Another is that winners should be run and not 'trimmed' or 'top sliced'. Lee relates how he has often pruned his holdings in winning shares only to regret the decision when they shows further gains in the long term. Here, again, we find Lee at variance with classic value investment, which would espouse a strategy of selling once 'fair value' had been reached, ordinarily book value. It is this kind of modification that contributes to Lee's brilliance. While Lee makes low price, judged by a decent yield and a single figure price / earnings multiple, central to his search for new ideas this criterion does not seem to carry such weight for his selling practices. We can see this from the fact that large portions of his portfolio now trade on quite dear valuations, even if they were purchased on 'double eights' and 'double nines' (shares with a yield of 8/9% and the same price /earnings multiple) as Lee calls them. This shows Lee's inclination to hold on to shares in good quality businesses where the management and board have shown themselves prudent and honest stewards for the shareholders. While I wouldn't take issue with this practice as I believe that quality trumps value in the long term a value investment purist would surely argue that the more expensive stocks should be sold and replaced with those selling at a discount to book value so as to re-establish a 'margin of error' and avoid losses from sharp de-ratings. Lee also shows himself to be a bona fide long term investor by this practice of holding shares indefinitely.
All told, I thought this was an excellent exposition of the basics of a modified value investment style expounding much investment wisdom in a relatively short volume.