St Roseanne of Sligo

Some quick thoughts on The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. I enjoyed this immensely and I was blown away with some of the writing. I was initially wary since I thought it would be too close to The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. An old woman locked up in an Irish mental institution which is closing down and the question becomes: how and why did she get there? There’s also the parallel story of her psychiatrist, Dr Grene, and their stories weave closer together as the novel progresses.

One of the many joys of reading is working out how the plot will develop and I was very happy that I managed to guess the twist from some distance out. That’s masterful writing from Barry because he sows those innocent-looking almost throwaway ideas which then germinate in your mind.

One of the things I liked about this novel was the way it plays with memory and story-telling. You realise about halfway through that Roseanne McNulty (the mad woman in the attic) is an unreliable storyteller and there’s the back and forth between her account of her childhood (growing up in Sligo at the time of the troubles, with a reclusive mother and a father who was a gravedigger) and that of the cruel priest Father Gaunt. There’s also the power of the Catholic church, the political and social unrest and then the beauty of that part of Ireland. The description of the poor, slightly mad, isolated and pregnant Roseanne standing on the beach at Strandhill with the sensory overload of the German planes right overhead was wonderfully evocative:

The lights widened and grew taller, and then it was roaring, gathering and gathering, and then it was what looked like the edge of a flying carpet of monsters, and then that noise had grown into an enormous waterfall, and I was looking up, indeed like a mad woman, certainly feeling as mad as a hatter, and fuller and fuller, bigger and bigger came the noise and the lights, till I could see the round bellies of individual parts of it, and metal noses, and gigantic whirrings, and it was airplanes, dozens of them … something out of Revelation … (p.243)

You get the idea of the very close, lyrical descriptive writing which Barry uses. The Irish Independent says:

“Barry is an unrivalled chronicler of lost lives … He has imagined the life, thoughts and feelings of Roseanne with such extraordinary empathy that she comes to seem a much-loved intimate of the reader.”

If the book drags in parts and a bit in the beginning, then the last third more than makes up for it. Getting to the end I went straight back to the beginning to see how differently I viewed Roseanne’s descriptions in the light of my subsequent knowledge.

I suppose there were aspects of the novel that troubled me. Roseanne is a wonderfully-evoked character but part of me baulked at yet another description of a seemingly powerless woman who is abused by the system. I wondered why she didn’t just run away. Was her life really so constrained that she had to stay locked up for almost all of her life? Perhaps there’s something about the male author and the powerless female character which makes me suspicious. But the main male character is equally powerless in his own way, so I guess it evens out. But the question remains for me: where are the ‘good’ (as in nuanced and empowered) female characters? Roseanne becomes a bit of a saint as the novel progresses, which naturally makes me suspicious. I think if I had to choose between this and Esme Lennox, I’d opt for Maggie O’ Farrell’s book. But I heartily recommend this one. It’s brilliant.

Michael Jackson

I read the news yesterday – in the top right-hand corner of page three. Shock. Disbelief. And then of course the radio and TV stations were full of it. His songs, the reactions, commentary, analysis, the autopsy. For much of yesterday I had a few of his songs on as a kind of background music in my head. Bad. Thriller. Billie-Jean. Heal the World.

I was never a great fan but I was as fascinated as anyone else by the phenomenon (good, bad and strange) that was Michael Jackson. On SkyNews yesterday evening the tributes were coming in thick and fast. And there was also a sense that his troubles are over, which allows the genius and the music and the dancing to come to the surface again. He will be celebrated (and rightly so) for all of this.

I was going to post something about “Saint Michael” and how he is being glorified now that he’s gone. But I actually like the fact that this happens. There’s a settling of accounts, a tallying up with the greats. Is he as good as Elvis, better even? The parallels are also interesting. Have just read DoctorDi’s comments and I think she’s captured a lot of the sadness (and loneliness) behind the mask.

Here’s Billie-Jean:

Writing about crime

One of the less pleasant aspects about living in South Africa is that I get to think a lot about crime. There’s the vigilance when out in public (and also at home), the horror stories in the media and then the reports on how bad things are. Just this past week we had that disturbing report that of 1,000 men polled in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, 25% admitted to having committed rape at some point in their lives. The study received reasonable coverage in the media and has now been relegated to everyday conversation over the dinner table or over tea with colleagues. Everyone seems to agree that it’s shocking, frightening and disturbing.

We’ve also had some good news with the dress-rehearsal for the World Cup soccer tournament, the Confederations Cup, making us believe for however short a moment that we have a soccer team to be proud of. But even here, the tournament has been marred by theft from one of the teams, the Egyptians, who vehemently deny allowing prostitutes up to their rooms, and thus indirectly inviting a robbery.

Today’s Cape Times has an interesting piece by Joanne Hichens, who recently edited a collection of crime fiction short stories called Bad Company. Fresh from attending a Crime Stories Colloquium in Johannesburg, she writes:

I can’t remember who said that we’re living in a perpetual state of hyper-arousal, alert to the possibility of crime in everyday life. But isn’t it true that when it happens we are all to some degree vicariously traumatised?

When she gets home she finds that her neighbours’ Mercedez was hijacked the day before and some of her other neighbours email an all-too-familiar question: What must we do to protect outselves? Her answer:

“In a country where crime is routine, the way to protect ourselves, as the colloquium showed, is to cross the divide, to talk and to listen, to risk knowing. Crime is seldom a random dance. Perhaps it could be described as a clash of realities. The criminal’s story is as important as that of the victim in understanding the complexities of crime in all its forms.”

And, perhaps fittingly, that’s what I’m doing at the moment. Reading (and editing) a ‘criminal’s’ story. The level of abuse this young woman (the ‘criminal’) suffered as a child is shocking, disturbing and frightening. Reading her story also makes me realise some of the illogical logic of crime. To those who are already weak and disempowered, the most likely target will be those who are similarly weak and disempowered. Children and the elderly are two unfortunate targets.

I also know that equipping myself with knowledge about the “other” is anxiety-provoking. Realising the extent of people’s desperation and ‘damage’ makes me far less likely to take risks with my possessions or my safety. But it also makes me want to know more. Cape Town is a complex city and the more I learn about it, the more I want to know. Writing about crime gets to the point of a lot of what’s wrong with this city (and with South Africa as a whole).

So I’m both discouraged but also strangely encouraged in the sense of getting this book edited and into the pipeline of publishing. I think it needs a lot of work but it’s a good story. I’ll let you know what happens.

Kimberley and Rhodes

I’m back from a week in Kimberley, which is famous for its diamonds and its Big Hole. I went with a colleague to do psychometric testing on would-be military recruits. We got off very lightly since not only did we fly rather than drive, we also stayed in a comfortable guest-house rather than in the officer’s mess, and we worked on average about two hours per day. The rest of the day was spent chatting, shopping, eating and drinking, reading and going to places of interest such as the Big Hole and the Mine Museum.

The diamonds on display at the Mine Museum were just as you would imagine diamonds to be – sparkling, polished, in varying sizes and shapes and colours, and with exotic names such as Eureka, Cullinan, and Jubilee. The story of Kimberley is a story of greed, of perseverance, ingenuity, big business, capitalism, power, politics, colonialism, of black and white, of race and class divisions, Boer and Brit.

The Big Hole was once the Colesberg Kopje before hundreds of diamond-hungry diggers descended on the place to dig for gems. This was in the early 1870s and it’s pretty amazing to see how modern mining was so profoundly influenced by the innovations of the first big mining company in South Africa, De Beers Consolidated Mines. The two big mining magnates of the time were Cecil John Rhodes (CJR) and Barney Barnato and De Beers was formed with the consolidation of these two men’s mining interests. I’ve never paid much attention to CJR before but seeing the town where he rose to prominence intrigued me. Who was CJR, I wondered as I posed for a campish picture with a life-size cutout of him in the McGregor Museum. Apart from De Beers, there’s the Siege of Kimberley and then Rhodes’ political career. There’s Rhodesia, Rhodes University, the Rhodes scholarships and his vast colonial project (Cape to Cairo). There’s also his probable homosexuality, which is intriguing because it’s so hidden.

Judging by his Wikipedia entry, Rhodes epitomised British colonial arrogance. Two quotes which survive:

“We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.”

“I contend that we [British] are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race…If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible…”

Update: For those who’ve never seen a big hole, I’m going to post my pic. And then a pic of me posing with CJR himself. A touch camp, perhaps?

Sharpshooter

Bit of craziness here as I wait to see if the Military have booked my plane ticket to fly to Kimberley on Sunday for a week. The guy I have to deal with is particularly passive-aggressive and if he doesn’t feel like answering you he will carry on writing away while you stand there at his desk, waiting patiently for a reply.

The thing about Piet-skiet (as I call him, not to his face obviously) is that he only has nine fingers, which does make his work more difficult. As luck would have it, whatever military accident he was involved in (and which landed him in the sheltered employment of transport admin) took out the index finger of his right hand, which obviously makes writing a bit more challenging. It also makes his right hand look like a pistol with his long middle finger (now replacement index finger) as the single barrel. If we were in high school I could playfully call him sharpshooter and abbreviate this to “sharp” every time I saw him. In a South African context this would be funny since “sharp” is local lingo for “cool, OK, alright”. Leaving my car on a dark, wintry street in the evenings as I go to wherever it is I’m going, I’ll make eye-contact with the guy in the luminous yellow vest, give him the thumbs-up and say, “sharp”. The greeting will probably go: “Look after your car?”, “Sharp”, “Sharp”.

Piet-skiet, on the other hand, is anything but sharp. So there we sit, all five of us would-be-travellers, in Pieter’s office as he demonstrates surprising dexterity for a nine-fingered man, and wait. My phone rings and it’s someone from the nursery to say my dog has escaped and is now in their office. When can I get there? About 20 to 30 minutes. I ask Pieter if I’m still needed or whether my colleague can collect my form for me. Silence. Oh well, I’ll just leave anyway, shall I? Sharp.

****

I’ll probably take a bit of time away from the blog and be back around the 13th of June. I’m adopting a fairly relaxed attitude to the spam-comments thing. I’m sure there must be a glitch in their system whereby my IP address registers as spam (for some unknown reason). Akismet have stopped responding to my requests for help and I’ve decided to let bloggers know (via email) if there’s a comment I’d like them to see.

Otherwise:
• Pleased to report some progress on the V&A project (that’s Violence and Aggression research). I’ve decided that I want to write at least 10 chapters on this, and I’ve got enough ideas to keep me a busy for a whole year.

• It’s really horrible about that Air France plane crash and from a purely selfish point of view, I really don’t want to hear stuff like that in the days before I have to fly somewhere. Those poor people.

• The latest LRB has a really interesting article by John Lanchester on the current financial crisis. He explains the whole banking system wonderfully well and he had me totally convinced that the old way of doing business is completely unsustainable. Effectively he argues for the state to take over the banks — but also acknowledges that to do this properly is unlikely. (Incidentally, can the Royal Bank of Scotland really be the biggest company in the world by asset value?)

• P and I watched an oldish horror movie called The Hitcher and it was pretty good as horror movies go (which is actually pretty bad as far as movies go). I got way too involved in the movie and started shouting at the pretty girl in the skimpy outfit not to do the crazy stuff she was doing which was allowing the weird, creepy psycho guy to hurt her some more. The scene with the truck and boyfriend was just horrible. Really bad.

• On a completely different topic, and also in the latest LRB, Anne Enright’s diary was thoughtful, brilliantly simple and very common-sensical. Hotels are places of possibility (and therefore suggestive of sex and even murder) but the reality is a lot more mundane and humdrum. I couldn’t help thinking that she left out all the good bits of being a successful, Booker-prize-winning novelist! It’s a tough life if you can get it, hey?

• Lastly, it looks like I’m getting a whole book to do the first edit on, which is very exciting and rather scary. The writer is also poep-scared (as she says) that it’s no good and I really should write back to say that it’s fine and we’re on track.