The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

This post contains spoilers – please do not read if you want to read the book in the future!

I finally got round to reading The Buried Giant by newly crowned Kazuo Ishiguro. Although aware of his work, it was my first novel of his that I’d read and I have to say I found it compelling and interesting. And after being slightly bemused by where the story was headed, and I have to say, I didn’t like many of the characters at times, it came to a great conclusion which left many questions unanswered. It’s readable, addictive, with a gentle prose like delivery.

The story is set in the early Dark Ages, that is, shortly after the fall of the Roman influence (around 400 – 600AD), and from a historical context, it would be true to say that little documentation remains from that era, or was written centuries after the events that allegedly took place.

What we do know is that the Christian (Romano) Britons and the newly arrived pagan Saxons (who would become the modern day English), live together side by side. Ishiguro captures this well, and adds the omnipresent weight of the understanding that more and more Saxons were arriving on the eastern shores of Britain and spreading west, squeezing the Britons into smaller and smaller territories.

However, this is an alternate, fantastical Britain being depicted, drawing heavily on the myth and legend of these islands. Fierce and stupid Ogres roam the land, sometimes stealing children. Pixies hide in forests and rivers, beguiling travellers. Boatmen adopt a Charon like role, ferrying passengers to an idyllic island where they will live in happiness but may not necessarily see another person. Although not common, sorcery is respected and feared. Monks allow crows to shred their flesh to absolve themselves of sin, carrying the guilt of people. And an old dragon spews a mist over all the surrounding lands which has a strange calming effect on the residents, both Christian and Pagan, making them struggle to remember their pasts and memories. Although this magic relating to the dragon’s breath isn’t revealed until later in the book.

Ishiguro also draws from the chivalrous romances of Arthurian legend too, and in the Buried Giant the Romano-British King Arthur has died some years, possibly decades, before. This was after leading a great victory against the Saxons and an uneasy peace treaty is in place between the Britons and the Saxon invaders/settlers. This combination of history, fantasy, myth, legend and romance was also successfully blended in the underrated film Excalibur by John Boorman and there were many times reading the book, where I was reminded of that movie.

So that’s the backdrop, what about the story?

The story revolves around two characters, a husband and wife Axl and Beatrice. They are old, they are tired, but they are devoted to each other and in love. They live on the outskirts of a warren like village community in the countryside, where everyone contributes to the good of all. Seemingly, because they are old and less important than the stronger villagers, they live further away from the central fires of the warren and are not allowed to keep candles due to some unspoken or unremembered accident which nearly led to a fire. Thus when their communal duties are complete, their evenings are spent in solemn darkness which adds to the melancholy.

They both have little reveries and flashbacks, but their memory is impaired by this mist. They both do agree though that they have a son, who lives in a nearby village, a couple of days walk from them. And thus they seek permission from the village leaders to find him.

Their adventure leads them, in both their trek and in the fragments of recovered memories, to meet sinister monks, witches, the aforementioned boatman, soldiers, an ancient survivor of Arthur’s court and the old King’s nephew (Sir Gawain), an exiled orphan boy Edwin who was bitten by a dragon and thus cursed and finally an accomplished warrior called Wistan, a Saxon, who was tasked with the mission to kill the dragon.

These latter three, Sir Gawain, Edwin and Wistan band together with Axl and Beatrice, and the final scenes culminate with an ascent up to meet the Dragon, Querig.

Throughout the book, little by little, more memories are whispered to Axl and Beatrice. Axl is recognised by both Gawain and Wistan as someone from many decades before. And these memories trickle back to the old couple, such that they end up fearing what they might remember of each other, who they were, what secrets they’d suppressed and might end up hating each other because of it. It’s searingly sad, because they love each other and memories may make that love perish. Their anxiety burns through the pages.

The overall theme though is one of guilt, the power of memory, revenge and war. The eradication of an enemy, the genocide of a perceived enemy is a modern as well as an ancient theme and this unsettles. Sir Gawain is noble, but he carries the burden of the great massacre, a murder of the innocents in the Saxon communities at the end of the war Arthur sanctioned. Although he did not personally take part in killing civilians, he was complicit and didn’t condemn his King. Thus, immune to the effects of the mist, he has adopted the role of Querig’s protector, to keep the dragon’s breath rolling over the land and to keep the memories of hatred suppressed, to ultimately keep the peace. At times his character appeared slightly unhinged, it wasn’t clear if Ishiguro wanted to portray some ambiguity in that, with the secrets he carried and his venerable age contributing to some form of dementia or madness. In other ways he may have adopted this persona as an affectation, to maintain the charade that his mission was actually to topple Querig and not protect her, and thus the populace saw him as a doddery old fool on a fool’s quest.

Axl also finds memories which hurt his heart, he was an important knight himself, “the knight of peace” and ultimately he was betrayed in this massacre, retiring into ignorant obscurity and hard work.

Wistan also carried a burden. He grew up with Briton’s as a child, trained with them, but he was a Saxon. And his Saxon king wanted the dragon dead, so the memories of anger would come to the fore, and thus it would lead to an uprising where the Saxons would deliver brutal revenge upon the Britons. Wistan is also immune to the Dragon magic and was the perfect choice to kill the dragon, his head would be clear, he would not forget. He wanted to hate the Britons, but he saw Gawain and the old gentle couple as decent folk. And thus, once he would kill the Dragon, he would train Edwin, the boy with the dragon bite, to be his protégé.

I won’t spoil the ending if you’ve read this far, I won’t say whether Axl and Beatrice find their son, or whether the dragon gets killed. But it is tragic and heart wrenchingly sad. It’s not a fantasy book. It’s a book about people, about love, regret and the aftermath of war, set in a fantasy setting. A boatman narrates the final chapter, where the ailing couple look to end their journey over a body of water. It’s left open to make your own assumption about what happens to them, or whether they, or their love survives.

But I definitely recommend reading it.

The secret in the book

 

A book of poetry has sat on my shelf for twenty years, I didn’t know about the secret inside it. Sometimes the books themselves have a story.

1937.

It took nearly eighty years for her gift to reach me, her hand written pencil strokes, folded up and slid into the water stained poetry book.

The one she originally had written it for, possibly had left her, or died in the war, or was not all he promised to be, a sweet heart no more.

Maybe she discarded it in pain, threw those words into the darkness, water damaged by rain and ending up in a box or a cellar,

Gathering dust and damp through those quiet dark years, then appearing, pale and dulled by time, surrounded by other dusty discards,

unloved and shoved together, in batteries of loose categories, on that shelf marked “poetry”, in that now closed shop on the steep high street hill.

It was then, decades later, that I caught her book, it arced into my arms. When I bought it, I was poor, the few coins I had, I used to rescue it.

I lifted the sad little thing from the shelf and took it home for a moment of pleasure. A smile is worth the money in your pocket,

a cursory flick through didn’t reveal the secret at first, but I got my smile, and though I was hungry, I was momentarily happy.

And after that first night, the book sat unread, on my shelf, for two more decades, and still those words, the dead woman’s words,

her copied favourite poem, longhand, on love and longing, spoken when she was in the spring of her life, youthful and red lipped, lay hidden,

Secreted, folded and unread on the Children’s Hospital note paper. But tonight, I opened her book and it fell gently to the floor,

Carefully I unfolded it, and I read it, and I was filled with her sadness and hopes for life,

I wonder what her laugh sounded like, I wonder whether she loved, whether she was happy and beautiful,

Nurse Jones, thank you, I got your gift, you poem, and though I am a stranger and we are separated by time, I love it.

© words and photos. Mel Melis 2015. (apart from the words of Nurse Jones and her hand written poem by Dinah Craik, from A Life for a Life, 1859)

I googled the words, turns out it was this beautiful prose by Dinah Craik from her 1859 novel, A Life for a Life

By Dinah Craik

    Oh, the comfort—
    the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—
    having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
    but pouring them all right out,
    just as they are,
    chaff and grain together;
    certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
    keep what is worth keeping,
    and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Fighting Fantasy

1982

I distinctly remember being at school and one of my friends shoved a book in my hand, possibly Nick or Luke. I can’t remember who exactly, because the book was that exciting, their presence faded into insignificance and the only memory I have is of the endorphin hit of happiness as I feverishly got to grips with this new concept presented before me. It had a picture (cover art by Peter Jones) of a sultry smoking dragon on the front, writhing out from a unsettlingly stern faced wizard’s crystal ball.

My duffed up copy of Warlock

That book was The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. As the blurb on the front says “A fighting fantasy gamebook in which YOU become the hero!”. Unusually for any book, it was written in the second person, because the reader was directly influencing and interacting with the story path through a non-linear multi-choice system. Every choice made is then numbered, from choosing whether to try and sneak past a sleeping hobgoblin, or attacking him, going east or west, bashing a door down, or picking a lock. You flick backwards and forwards through the numbered sections of the story, depending on the options you choose. And there was also an element of randomness and fortune. So, two dice, a pencil and an eraser were essential equipment for any journey into the mysteries of the book.

You rolled dice to define the characteristics of your character before you set off. SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK were key to your characters survival. If your STAMINA ran out, through combat (also dictated by rules involving dice throws) or otherwise (e.g – a spiked pit you might stumble into), you were dead, you would have to start again. A high SKILL was important, as that made it more likely to defeat monsters or perform tasks. And a high LUCK was important, as there were times when luck was key to say noticing an important fact, or sneaking past a powerful enemy. You could pick up gold, provisions, keys, weapons and items, some of which might be useful, some might be useless. All of this information you scribbled on your character sheet.

What complemented the book was also the illustration by Russ Nicholson. For example this illustration of two orc’s drinking grog. The incidental detail is astounding, the shading, the scoring of the table by the orc’s fingers, the vacant drunk expressions (looks a bit like some of the pubs I go to in north London). All the way through, the standard is incredible, bringing the story further to life.

Both Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone have gone on and become fabulously successful in Role Playing, Tabletop Wargaming and Computer Game fields, but for a group of people of a certain age (35-45), we all fondly remember Fighting Fantasy.

After Warlock, many more books followed, my favourites I think were Forest of Doom, it had an eerie nightmare emptiness about it, punctuated by tough encounters with brutal monsters. And of course the classic Deathtrap Dungeon, which was really hard to complete, that claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded, unable to retreat and having little hope as various beasts or traps killed you in a variety of ingenious, frustratingly amusing or bloody ways. Baron Sukumvit was a right git.

2012

And thirty years later, a new book has been written by Livingstone, to commemorate this landmark. It’s set in a contemporary horror setting. Called “Blood of the Zombies” it puts you in the role of someone trying to prevent a zombie apocalypse. it’s gory, fast paced and fun. And the best bit for me is that I was one of a select few twitter followers who won an opportunity to have my name appear in it! (teeny spoiler below).

“Melis” is a village/town which appears in the book. Which I am massively excited about. I queued up at Forbidden planet to get it signed too. I’m Zombie no 23. “Enjoy the town…” writes Ian.

Below, two giants of computer science. Well, one giant and one dwarf.

As Ian has stated in recent interviews, Blood of the Zombies’ art nods to both the past but also today’s teenagers, it’s universal really. But I haven’t played it to any great depth yet as I want to keep my signed one pristine, I’m waiting for the iPhone app! (imminently coming out). No spoilers, other than the reference to “my” town in the photo above. Which neatly brings me onto computer games.

As has been oft reported, Fighting Fantasy were the book equivalent of an adventure computer game and the influence on modern computer games is not to be underestimated. So I’d like to thank Ian Livingstone, I guess without his intervention, the mystery of Computer Science may have been lost on me. Role Players also like computers and computer games. Not sure why, we just do, computers, geekiness and role playing are the holy trinity of awkward teenagers. So I studied computer science. Admittedly there were hardly any girls on my university course and I was pretty shit at programming, so at times I was just this bewildered socially incompetent nobhead with no girlfriend, but I’m happy I played the long game now :)  I’ve forged a decent career in IT Services and this allows me to make such bourgeois decisions as rebuying (I can’t find my original copy) a duffed up 1982 copy of Warlock for posterity and for that nostalgia hit. It arrived the other day. It still has the rubbed out scribbles of some contemporary of mine in the character sheet section.

It just wouldn’t have been right to buy a brand new copy. Therefore my collection spans a true 30 years now.

If you haven’t read any Fighting Fantasy books, try them. And remember. YOU are the hero. Blood of the Zombies (with my name in it hehe) – OUT NOW !

Maurice Sendak

It was announced this week that the illustrator and author Maurice Sendak had died. He was 83.

It affected me more than I thought it would, here was a man who I only knew through his books, illustrations and marvellously grumpy opinionated interviews, but yet, I felt a deep sense of sadness.

I think it stemmed from his attitude to life, to adults, to the lies all around us. He appeals to the child within us all, before adults indoctrinated us with their fears and lies. This may seem like a strong view, but it’s common for parents to use a lie, thinking this would be less harmful to the ‘fragile’ psyche of a child, than the truth.  But Sendak had it all sussed.

“Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what's real and what's not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.”

And, in this fantastic, yet ever so melancholy interview with the Guardian last year he said

“I refuse to lie to children, I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence."

(n.b – this interviewed also contained the classic “flaccid fuckhead” dismissal of Salman Rushdie after he wrote a poor review about him, something Rushdie accepted with irritated grace on hearing about it).

His books could be both innocent and beautiful, but also angry and challenging. The child protagonists weren’t always good boys and girls. They articulated that peculiar inexpressible rage we all feel as children, where our vocabularies and our social skills are not developed enough to either talk about our feelings or suppress them. For an author such as Sendak to be considered dangerous or frightening, was only a projection of parents anxiety.

“We've educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren't. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they're really protecting themselves. Besides, you can't protect children. They know everything.”

Sendak is best known for Where the Wild Things are of course, where the scolded Max, dressed in his wolf play suit, having been sent to bed with no dinner, embarks on a fantasy adventure to an island where he is King and he can have anarchic violent adventures with his new subjects. When I was little, I remember the big fuss about this book, newspaper headlines about children having nightmares, the goggle eyed, slabbering sharp toothed Wild Things, based on Sendak’s own relatives, invading their dreams. Max’s adventure captured something we all did as children, creating make belief worlds and living in them for a time.

“I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.”

WTWTA didn’t pander to sentiment or the adults expectation of how a child hero should behave. Max was a naughty little monster, a normal kid, prone to excess and rages, testing his boundaries, preparing himself for life. But he also had that forgiving quality, no matter how angry you got, you always knew who loved you deep down, the anger would pass. It spoke to children at their own level, their own experience and that is why so many people love that book, it has a timeless longevity.

“I remember my own childhood vividly. I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them.”

The Wild Things too, what wonderfully monstrous creations, so vivid and terrifying. Sendak gave them weight and power with his fine pencil cross hatch work.

Other interesting works

I am no expert by any means, having discovered only a small portion of Sendak’s magnificent artistic bibliography. Every time I see something new, I am delighted. The “Little Bear” books, which he illustrated but didn’t write (Else Holmelund Minarik wrote them) are another example of the beauty of his work.

My wife remembered these gentle fairy stories fondly as a child, so we bought some vintage copies a few years ago, so she could own them all again.

The Little Bear series pre-dates WTWTA by a few years, but “A Kiss for Little Bear” (1968) came after and has a mischievous little “Wild Thing” included within it. (images from Debbie’s first edition)

And the skunks got married, good on them!

One project I was fascinated to read about was that Sendak was “tried out” for illustrating a 1967 30th anniversary version of The Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien’s first masterpiece. He prepared two drawings, one of Gandalf and Bilbo and another of Wood Elves dancing. These were whisked off to the then 75 year old Tolkien for review.

This excellent site gives the whole story, but to summarise here, a seemingly unimpressed Tolkien dismissed the two images. Hasty efforts were made to get the two men to meet and agree to work together on what would have undoubtedly been a monumental success, but sadly Sendak (only aged 39 at the time) has a heart attack, spending several weeks recuperating. It happened on the day before they were due to meet, so the project never got off the ground.

A hint at what could have been. Gandalf and Bilbo. Unfortunately the Wood Elves drawing is seemingly lost.

Angry Parents

It’s quite fun to go on Amazon and read some of the reviews of his most “challenging” books. I say “challenging” but then this is a matter of opinion. Most children love to devour scary stuff. A parents fear projected onto a child will cause the child to feel fear. So it saddens me to read some of the comments. There’s no murder, or blood or viciousness. These are great adventure stories with happy endings, children are flawed, but heroic. And fair play to Sendak, he was utterly unforgiving and belligerent about it, as well as many other things!

“Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences. That is obvious. But what is just as obvious — and what is too often overlooked — is the fact that from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”

A few years ago, I got Debbie a present of Sendak’s interactive pop up book “Mommy?” about a lost child walking through a scary house. He’s lost his mum, he’s on his own, but he isn’t frightened, far from it. Although he’s keen to find her again, he is utterly unphased by the succession of monsters which try to scare him. In fact, they get scared themselves at his pluck. What a fun book! And of course he finds his mum… so what’s the problem?

I’ve taken a photo from our copy of the book.

But some of the one star amazon reviews state their children had nightmares and terrors, dismissing his work as awful and frightening. Not fair.

Another book I can’t wait to read is “Outside Over There”, I’m putting it on my wishlist, it’s about a girl whose little sister is kidnapped by goblins, so she sets out on a trek to rescue her. Again, quite adult themes, but this sort of adventure and escape is what children love to read.

In searching for suitable images, I came across this great link/article, from which I’ve lifted the image (credited to the publishers Harper Collins). Looking at the pictures of the faceless hooded goblins though, whoa! It is quite scary, but I’d have loved this kind of stuff as a kid!

Fairy Tales are another area where Sendak has delivered a phenomenal quality of output. Take the Brothers Grimm translation and compilation “The Juniper Tree”. I wrote about this book on my Haiku blog in January. Where I revisit similar themes.

“Fairy stories are violent and frightening, full of foul acts, murders and dubious cruel characters, but with a clear lesson running through them and where normal people can be heroes. Children love this stuff, we shouldn’t patronise them by making decisions on their behalf as to what is disturbing or scary.” – I haven’t italicised the quote as I’m quoting myself, not Sendak :)

Similarly, he illustrated a book of eastern European Jewish folktales, called “Zlateh the goat”. I don’t own this, but just look at this example of the art! (image from harper collins)

Maurice Sendak didn’t come out as gay until his long term partner died a few years ago. In later life I’m guessing it couldn’t have been much of a big deal for him, but in his younger days, he wanted to keep it from his family. They were old fashioned in their attitude, they wouldn’t have been able to deal with it. That feels so sad.

“I’m gay. I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business. All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.”

Other than the company of his beloved Alsatian Hermann (after Melville, Sendak chewed the ear off an interviewer who asked who he was named after… “Who’d you think? Goering?”) he was on his own with his memories, revisiting his literary loves. And William Blake. He wanted to die like Blake, who reportedly shot out of bed and started singing hymns seconds before his demise. Sendak’s sharp wit came through with this quote.

"A happy death..it can be done.. If you're William Blake and totally crazy.”

Going back to that Guardian interview from last year, he seemed a lonely old man. But he was ready, he was prepared to die, albeit with some regret.

And as a final quote (not from the guardian), one which seems the most poignant.

“I have nothing now but praise for my life. I’m not unhappy. I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can’t stop them. They leave me and I love them more.... What I dread is the isolation.... There are so many beautiful things in the world which I will have to leave when I die, but I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready.”

So I wish Maurice Sendak a peaceful rest. He made a lot of children (and adults!) very happy, fired their imaginations. He will continue to do so. It sounds over dramatic, but I feel part of my childhood has died too.

Persian Fire, Rubicon and Millennium by Tom Holland

As a keen amateur dabbler in the short story area and having stumbled over the corpses of several fizzled out novels, advice that is often lobbed in your general direction is to Read, Read, Read… read other authors, let other authors amazing skills ooze into your pores and by osmosis you will be at least enthused if not influenced to write better.

Sod that. Much as I like fiction, what I usually end up reading is narrative history. I respect writers in this area because they combine both;

1) The painstaking effort in the meticulous research required to build their book, balanced with-

2) Being actually able to write, be compelling, tell a story, without actually making it up or losing the determination to get to the end of the project.

These are two very different skills, they almost pull at each other, opposing forces, so if an author can achieve both, seemingly effortlessly, then this makes for a good book.

And Tom Holland really hits the spot in both areas. I’ve read approximately 2.9(!) of his books so far (I’m just coming to the end of Millennium) and I have to say all three books are excellent, the others being Persian Fire and Rubicon. There’s a fourth on the way too.

My well thumbed copies of Tom Holland’s books. Guaranteed to make you appear to be erudite and wise when visitors appear and you lean against the bookshelf they are housed in, your other hand ruminatively holding the pipe you are slowly puffing on.

To keep you on your toes, he also inserts a little fact or reference to make you smirk along the journey, to perk you up, some humour to go along with the hardships, glory and despair of the realities of conquest and war. Stuffier authors might consider these facts unnecessary or lacking in historical worth, but for me, they paint a picture. Of what the goss’ was back in the day. Of what people were saying, this is just as important as the actual facts to me, to get to grips with the psychology and motivations of the protagonists, their contemporaries and enemies.

Examples, from memory, Greeks looking down on the Persians as effeminate as they wore “trousers”.

Or where he cites (in Millennium) one of the stories of how Sweyn Forkbeard assassinated his own father Harold Bluetooth to take the Danish crown, through shooting him “square between the buttocks with an arrow” as his old man was “squatted down behind a bush for the purpose of emptying his bowels”. Which may or may not have been the way it actually happened, but brilliantly enlightening that someone saw fit to spread this rumour about back then!

To someone who had a wholly vocational education from the age of 13, who is only catching up on the arts and history I would have thoroughly enjoyed as a kid, it’s also educational without being patronising. There’s a childlike wonder when I consider the origins of words. Like “ostracised” coming from the Greek “ostraka” meaning the broken pieces of pottery on which voting Athenians would scratch the name of their choice for expulsion from Athens, a kind of inverted voting system, which clearly the classically astute producers of “Big Brother” studied deeply in the development of their TV programme :)

Or as covered in Rubicon, “decimation”, the ugly way the Roman’s would punish a failing army, by randomly picking every tenth man and having him executed in front of his comrades. How terrifying. And how this possibly could lead to a rally in their morale or improvement in their fighting ability I have no idea. But this is another thing Holland expertly points out. How people thought in that period was significantly different to how we think now. Modern morality is built upon an Abrahamic foundation, whether you are religious or not. The Romans, Greeks and Persians seemed unencumbered by such “trivialities” as compassion or forgiveness. Sure, they loved and they grieved, but their motivations were different to ours, as Holland himself states in the preface of Rubicon:

The Romans, it goes without saying, existed under circumstances – physical, emotional, intellectual – profoundly different from our own. What strikes us as recognisable about aspects of their civilisation may be so – but not always. Often, in fact, the Romans can be strangest when they appear most familiar. A poet mourning the cruelty of his mistress, or a father his dead daughter, these may seem to speak to us directly of something permanent in human nature, and yet how alien, how utterly alien a Roman’s assumptions about sexual relations, or family life, would appear to us. So too the values that gave breath to the Republic itself, the desires of its citizens, the rituals and codes of their behaviour. Understand these and much that strikes us as abhorrent about the Romans, actions which to our way of thinking are self-evidently crimes can be, if not forgiven, then at least better understood. The spilling of blood in an arena, the obliteration of a great city, the conquest of the world – these, to the Roman way of thinking, might be regarded as glorious accomplishments. Only by seeing why can we hope to fathom the Republic itself.

In that vein, my favourite of his books, Persian Fire, explored the vast differences between modern and ancient peoples, but also the vast differences between Greeks and Persians, and finally the vast differences, the bickering in-fighting and wars between the Greek speaking peoples themselves. A Spartan was as different to an Athenian as he would be to a Persian. There seemed to be a deep mistrust.

The words “Laconic” and “Spartan”, in popular use today, stem from the behaviours of the residents of Laconia, of Sparta, built for war, with their economy of words, unsympathetic to weakness, to their own children, wearing nothing more fancy that a red cloak wrapped round their shoulders (when they earned the fighting right). A red cloak, a symbol of athletic power, of skill in battle, that struck fear in kingdoms and city states from near and far. I’m generalising, but diplomacy wasn’t something they considered worthwhile investing in. They were insular and warlike.

The Athenians on the other hand, seemed duplicitous, full of intrigue, making bargains and deals, loving a bit of old chit-chat, philosophising and speculating. This “democracy” they had invented seemed alien to all outsiders that would witness it. Dangerous, worthy of being crushed in case it caught on (of course it was only elite men who got the vote). After all, a hero could become a villain overnight and be cast from Athens, based on some tenuous slight or perceived mistake. Shockingly, even Themistocles ended up ostracised, that hero of the Persian wars with his “wooden walls”. But being a fickle Greek, he ended up working for the Persians as a special advisor on Greek matters. Being of Hellenic stock myself, I can picture him being flattered by the interest, coyly turning his bull neck, a one time enemy becoming a trusted confidante. I hate to use this analogy, but I will anyway :) … Like football managers in the modern era, you were only good as your last result in ancient Athens.

And the Persians, with their splendour, their armies from all of their nations, the real Empire of the day, gigantic compared to the flea that was Greece on the fringes of their borders, nipping at the thick golden hide of the ever hungry Persian beast. Persia’s seemingly benevolent King, making nothing more than a demand of “earth and water” (in the form of gold levies and soldiers) from the nations he conquered, letting them maintain they culture and ways of life as long as they maintained a loyalty to him. They absorbed the interesting aspects of the conquered cultures rather than destroying them, but were happy to destroy if the subjugated nation ended up too meddlesome. The Persians had seemingly been delivered a disservice by the crowing Greek chroniclers in the aftermath of their setback at Thermopylae and defeat at Platea, dismissing them as barbarians but Holland gives them an even handed assessment. It’s interesting in a modern context, had the Persian’s conquered Greece, would modern people be looking at Democracy as some quaint old folly, long since disposed in the dustbin of antiquity? And in the context of fledging democracies today, is it better to live safely and with relative wealth under a tyrant, on the understanding that you give complete subservience and don’t have an opinion. Or do you opt for the dangers of the chaos and danger that comes with that fledgling democracy? I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to make any assumption as to what hardships the people of Iraq or Libya (and even the poor and unemployed within the old Soviet states) are going through now or when they lived under dictatorship, or what decision they would make if given the choice to go back to what they had. But it leads to an interesting consideration.

I have very fond memories of Persian Fire as I read it on my honeymoon, which I shared not just with my wife, but with Themistocles, Leonidas, Cyrus, Darius, the Oracle at Delphi, Xerxes, the enslaved Helot underclass and the horsemen of the Medes. As I read it, on our hillside cottage in St Lucia, I’d occasionally take a sip of some cocktail, or watch a hummingbird flit around the lush flowers. It was a beautiful week.

Holland gives a history of Sparta, Athens and Persia, sets the scene. It’s a quite amazing story, considering the majority of Greek states chose to (seemingly wisely) side with Xerxes and his gigantic army. And yet, two distrustful, diametrically opposed Greek states, sharing only a language, Gods and heritage, formed an alliance with a clutch of other Greek cities, to defend or be crushed against their common enemy. Luck played its part, but from a historical context, it seems almost miraculous that these small armies and navies (Athens had no real maritime history at that point but made a huge investment to train and create one based on the Oracle’s “wooden walls” advice and Themistocles belligerence) could defeat the power house that was Persia.

I have to say, it’s one of my favourite books, fiction or non-fiction.

My final point is that this probably isn’t one of my better blogs, it’s a bit stilted. It’s because I’m having to research and quote and try to avoid naive conjecture which means it doesn’t flow very well. It just shows, even with the books sitting in front of me, I’m just not very good at detail *and* entertainment. I don’t think I could write narrative history without resorting to embellishment (I even did it with Themistocles making flirty eyes at the Persian’s above!), outrageous lies, or losing all faith and giving up.

Tom Holland however, is an expert, so really, you should go and buy his books and take my word for it :)

Big House and Big Load o’books

17:30 - We’re staying in Southwold at the moment, in a big house by the sea. We’re on our own now, the family have moved out, who spent the weekend with us. We had a lot of fun with the kids, playing on the beach in gorgeous tee shirt weather.  (As in the weather being gorgeous, although my tee shirt was gorgeous too). Today is a grey day however, spots of rain and a bitter wind cutting in from the North Sea. But how can you not be moved when you look out of your window and see this?

We love the sea and being near it. The sound of it through the night breaking against the shore, the salt spray, the sun rising in the East, brilliant over the waves, even the sound of gulls bickering. Suffolk is probably one of our favourite places, with Southwold and Aldeburgh our holiday destinations of choice.
The house is huge, I admit I’m a bit scared so stay in my room when dark. I don’t piss at night and uncomfortably wait till the first dull light of morning before I will venture down to pee. But other than my childlike fear of the dark and creaky old buildings groaning in the wind, this is a wonderful holiday.
Another feature of the house is the abundance of books, whoever owns or owned this place has a wonderful collection. They are learned, I am impressed. Overwhelmed with the choices I can take to the little sun trap conservatory/lean to overlooking the sea and garden I procrastinated as to what to read.
Kingsley Amis, George Orwell, M.R James, Angela Carter, Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare, D.H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley, James Ellroy, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Ted Hughes, Satre, Kafka, Greer, Kipling… to name a few.
And my choice… an old book of short stories by Jack London. An American socialist, he died young. He seemed to have an ambiguity in his perception. Sometimes vilified by both left and right, as capitalist and communist respectively and roundly condemned for alleged racist views, was he just a victim of his time and circumstances?
As to his writing style it’s warm, full of colour and vivid analogies. It always depresses me when I read someone who can create dialogue and characters seemingly so effortlessly!
21:30
Had to go to dinner, so didn’t finish this blog. Before we left, we (Debbie) had to deal with a murderous cat in our garden, which was torturing a rabbit. Yes, this rabbit is normal rabbit sized, which means the cat is the size of a puma. It was freakin’ huge!

And during dinner, we had a nutty geordie woman on a nearby table kicking off about her Bouillabaisse Sauce smothering her Halibut. She had the airs and graces of gazza after seventeen pints.
“This wasn't what ah expected leik, ah divvent even leik octopus, it should be more leik a soup yee southern bastid”
She was excessively rude and the proprietor was right to hand them their bill. But she continued to rant and rave like a mentalist on the restaurant doorstep threatening to “I'll gis a reet poor rating on tripadvisor an myek sure the lercal rag gets te knaa aboot this terrible fuud”
All good fun, but it somewhat disgusted me to hear a geordie say “Bouillabaisse”, it just sounded wrong.

Recent Book Purchases

I’ve made four book purchases of note recently.
Firstly, artist Max Ernst 1891-1976. I stumbled across his work originally in the modern art museum Munich. His technique of “Frottage” sparks the imagination where he scrapes paint on a canvas over a contoured background, eg – bark, creating unearthly landscapes and unsettling forms. Actually, he more accurately called it “Grattage” – the French for scrape. Although “Frottage” is still used (meaning “to rub”) to describe his work, if you look it up, it also is a colloquial term for dry humping, so lets not confuse things….
In summary Ernst was deeply effected by serving in the First World War, I’m not claiming to know much more than what I’ve looked up or seen, but his autobiography begins "Max Ernst died the 1st of August, 1914", so I’m going to add that onto my wishlist too.
Another interesting fact brought to my attention by a proper Art Historian (thanks Miriam!) is that he was deeply effected by the death of his pet bird as a child and a lot of his work also incorporated birds. And you can feel that, without sounding too pretentious, in the deep melancholy in some of his pieces.
Which brings me onto my first book purchase… when I was in Paris recently, the modern art museum had a book on display called Une semaine de bonté. It had a series of animal headed figures, including bird headed ones and prostrate bodies in dramatically posed disturbing scenes. Ernst pulled this book together by cutting up and collaging various sources (magazines, newspapers, books) to create a graphic novel of sorts. I found a modern reprint of it for sale on Amazon, so I bought it. It’s the kinda weird shit I like.
  

If I saw these two dudes fighting, I wouldn’t take sides, I’d just run away….


The second book I purchased is about a Japanese artist and printmaker, Ohara Koson (1877 – 1945). His work, depicting animals, especially birds, flowers and trees are evocative and beautiful.
Little is known of the artist himself, but his work speaks for itself. It’s pretty much a source catalogue of his work, with some complementary text as to his life and possible influences.
What I find interesting is there is a lively and accessible market for his original work. I may start saving up to buy a print myself one day…. of a crow… obviously. But crows will be the subject of another blog.
The book is called Crows, Cranes and Camelias, the Natural world of Ohara Koson. (By Newland).
 


My third purchase…. it’s about tube stations (nerd alert)… and one of the foremost architects of the day (1920s/30s) Charles Holden 1875 - 1960. Having spent most of my youth traversing up and down the Piccadilly line, I feel part of it. The stations in the northern section are sleek and modern, full of sexy (can a tube station be sexy? Yes, but no so much as to develop inappropriate behaviour leading to my arrest) curves and lines. Southgate tube station, with its circular form, like a flying saucer is my favourite. As you approach when it’s brightly lit at night, I can imagine myself as a 1930’s spiv, lighting a woodbine against the brim of my trilby and trying to sell watch straps to housewives. Or whatever it is that spivs sell. Is it art deco? I dunno, I’m no expert, but it makes me proud to be a londoner. And a 1930’s spiv.

A pic of Manor House (my most local station as a kid) tube platform from back in the day…

Southgate tube station, where I went to college and took my first steps as a computer loser (and spiv). Even though the shops are different today, the shop frontages and signs use the same low key font and design.

Charles Holden’s last (finished 1937) and arguably most famous building though is Senate House, part of the University of London, but taken over by the government under the Ministry of Information during the second world war. It is an Art Deco monster, imposing and looming over you. It cuts an impressive sight even today when there are so many taller buildings dominating the London skyline.
You can tell why Orwell, who worked there during the war, used it as his inspiration for the “Ministry of Truth” as part of his novel 1984. (photo from wikipedia)
 
And my final book, and the one I’m most proud of, is I’ve finally got a copy of “Skeletons” by Ray Bradbury… and not only that, but signed by the author! I mentioned this in my blog of 7th April, where I declared my love of Ray Bradbury and his works and also of artist Dave McKean. Well, now I have a copy…
There is an amazing bookshop in LA called “Mystery and Imagination”. If I lived there, I’d be in it most days I’m sure, to browse around. Lots of rare / signed copies of cool books from various authors, deliver to Europe too. Have a browse…!
http://www.mysteryandimagination.com/
Ray Bradbury, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday in an event at the shop, had signed it on a previous visit… and lucky me, I bought it! I’m very proud and honoured. Happy birthday Ray Bradbury, and thankyou Mystery and Imagination!

The ink of a master storyteller…

Some art from McKean and wordage from Bradbury….

Dave McKean and Ray Bradbury

Last Autumn, me and D were looking at places for a weekend away whilst the sun still warmed the face and the breeze was bracing but not cold. Having investigated the east coast in suffolk, our normal haunt, we tried norfolk, but no luck in terms of character accomodation anywhere. So I traced a fingers along the map of the South Coast and randomly selected a place to visit... Rye. A bit of research proved this was not a chav town and there was plenty to do. The selection of the Ship Inn was a good one too, not too fussy, quirky and with delicious unusual stuff such as razor clams on the menu (oh my god, Ray Mears is right... they are delicious...!)
On the Saturday afternoon we popped into the small Art Gallery in Rye and to our surprise, multi-media artist Dave McKean was exhibiting there.
For the unitiated, McKean has form in many media, childrens books (eg - Wolves in the Walls) and comics such as the absolutely seminal Arkham Asylum graphic novel featuring Batman up against all his enemies. He's also recently designed a set of stamps for the Royal Mail, featuring mythical beasts such as Giants and Dragons... and there are reams of further work.
Both of us are big fans, I was aware of McKean through his work in comics, D through his childrens books, so to find him exhibiting and more thrillingly selling original work in this gallery was amazing for us. He lives locally and is a keen and active member of the local arts community.
We've never done this before... but we thought sod it, once in a lifetime... so we ended up foregoing food and heating for three months and buying two original pieces of work from a new hardback graphic novel/story he penned set in Sussex and around called "The Coast Road". This book isn't to my knowledge going to be available on major release, it was printed as a limited run for the gallery to sell alone, so we felt proud to be part of it and own part of it.
These two pieces of work are now proudly displayed in our living room.
There was another one of a crow in a graveyard which I drooled over, but someone else had already purchased it, so it's just the two bird related McKean originals.

Photo quality isn't that good, but it gives you a gist for the quality of the work.

What was also in the gallery was a group of pen drawings made by McKean to illustrate the sinister Ray Bradbury story "Skeleton". It's about a guy who becomes fixated and terrified of the fact that a skeleton was inside him, so much so that he plots to have it destroyed. His descent into dark obsession is wonderfully captured.

I grew up with Bradbury short stories, tales of small town american fairgrounds and the disfigured and the supernatural.

Most were written in the 1940's and 50's, certainly those I read, and still have some relevance and resonance today. His story "The Veldt" for instance, is ominously premonitory of the technology coming down the line in the modern age.

But anyway, Skeletons, limited release of 500 books. You can't get one for under 100 quid now... and here was the whole set of art from the book, available to buy. Alas... I couldn't afford it of course. Gutted. Here is a snippett of what I mean, it would have made an amazing portfolio if someone was rich enough to buy them all. And there they all were, hanging on the wall... saying "buy me", laughing at me with their bare skeletal teeth, looking through the bare bones of my finances with those empty leering sockets...

Finally, and thankfully more widely available is another great McKean / Bradbury collaboration. In the lush hardback version of "The Homecoming" a tale of a normal mortal boy being born into a supernatural family, McKean adds his art to the old short story.

I wouldn't say this is a particular favourite story of mine, but from a popular culture context I believe the supernatural family Bradbury created was the inspiration for either (or both) the Munsters and the Addams family.

The art really fleshes out the story though and the ending, the last paragraph in fact is really heart wrenching and sad. Here is an example.

If you want to check out more examples of McKean art... try this amazing blog article which pisses all over mine....

http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=1599

Finally, I salute you Ray Bradbury.. he's around 90 odd, still writing, but my favourite stuff is from his pulp short story days in the 40's and 50's... never get bored of them.