Blame it on the mountain

• Climbing the mountain has to be one of the best things you can do in Cape Town. On Saturday morning I ascended up Skeleton Gorge and swam in the reservoir on top before running down Nursery Ravine. The reason that I was running is that I didn’t have any sunscreen and Nursery Ravine (unlike Skeleton Gorge) is exposed to the sun. And once I’d started running it was difficult to stop since gravity was pulling me down with irresistible force. The result is very sore calf muscles, which are even worse today than they were on Sunday. “Ooh”, “eeh” and “aah” followed by some swearing and also hobbling.

• There’s something magical about the mountain and you can tell when you’re a real Capetonian when you start mentioning it in revered tones. But perhaps that’s one of the key things that sets us apart from Joburgers. We have a transformational wilderness experience right on our doorsteps. And when I’m not typing with seven fingers rather than the usual eight (thanks to the metal dustbin) I will do a better job of detailing the experience.

• But a few highlights: swimming in cool, natural water at the top; the light filtering down through the trees that hug the Kirstenbosch side of the mountain; the hundreds of steps that make it easy to climb; the red disas which you spy at the top (if you’re lucky in summer); the stillness up there; the smile on your face when you come down.

• The wonderful thing about audio books is that when you’ve exercised yourself to a standstill and are too tired to hold up a book let alone turn pages for several hours, you can just lie back and let the voices wash over you. What a delight it was this weekend to listen to Emma Fielding reading Jane Eyre. I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never read any of the Brontes before but this was brilliant. Orphan Jane reminded me of David Copperfield and Harry Potter and then there were shades of Jane Austen and Gothic romances. The madwoman in the attic and earnest, lovable Jane. Mr Rochester was a lot gruffer than I expected but I’m sure you know that it all turned out alright in the end. I even liked the dog Pilot.

• Still on the English classics, I borrowed Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from the library, this time on DVD. I’m not even going to attempt a review here but Kenneth Branagh’s production didn’t quite work for me. Robert de Niro was excellently cast as the monster though, and his patchwork face was one of the scariest parts of the movie. I can also see why Tim Burton gave Helena Bonham-Carter a second chance at being the corpse bride. But I think what I liked about it the most was having the chance to see the source of so much later science fiction. And I’m sure there were metaphors there about the things we create coming back to haunt us.

• In four days time I’ll be heading off my week-long retreat at Betty’s Bay. Reading, writing, walking on the beach, swimming in the sea and not a lot else (except eating and drinking perhaps). Small matter of a whole lot of work (and cases) to tie up before then though. I’ll check in from Betty’s.

Some randomness

• I spent almost two hours on a “fiendish” Sudoku this week and finally cracked it. What makes a Sudoku fiendish rather than just cruel? And is fiendish crueller than cruel or less so? Maybe I just don’t know all the Sudoku tricks but this was like trying to play a game of Chess ten moves ahead. I had an Aha! moment halfway through which was like disproving a faulty cognition after some strenuous CBT. After that it was easier. And then I celebrated with a 40-minute run/walk.

• Yesterday I just couldn’t get this cartoon. What was the joke? Finally the light came on. Perhaps I shouldn’t try these things after seeing four patients in a row.

• A friend is interested in Dance & Movement Therapy (DMT) and so I’ve been reading up on the subject. Makes me think about how we communicate with our bodies and how unconscious memories are stored in the body (cf. kinesiology). Traditional analytically-trained therapists have been quite resistant to using dance or movement in therapy but, as the saying goes, “the body doesn’t lie”. Non-verbal communication is definitely as important (or even more important) than verbal communication.

• I’ve not been following the tragedy in Haiti closely but I did catch some visual footage of Haitian orphans arriving at a US hospital, each one bundled up in yellow plastic and accompanied by a concerned adult. I suppose this sort of story is made for TV but I found it moving to think that these kids will hopefully receive excellent medical care and loving adoptive families in the US. I’ve also been impressed with the multinational rescue efforts to try and free survivors from the rubble of Port-au-Prince.

• I’ve rediscovered book podcasts and have found them an excellent accompaniment to ironing. Started with the Guardian and was very interested to hear their best and worst books of the decade. Saturday was voted the worst book of the decade for its smug white male narrator while Atonement was a contender for best book of the decade. I don’t go in for these best and worst things but I did get some names of books to order. Apparently I can’t ignore Joan Didion’s “A Year of Magical Thinking” anymore. Lorna Sage’s Bad Blood was also highly recommended. Which podcasts do you listen to?

• As for the books to look out for in 2010, Ian McEwan is at it again, this time with an Eco book, while Martin Amis apparently writes about his sister in “The Pregnant Widow”. Hmm, not sure. The reviewers were wondering about female authors. Any must-reads to look out for in 2010?

Engleby

I finished Engleby by Sebastian Faulks this weekend and I’ve been thinking about it on and off this week. It affected me quite powerfully because I immersed myself in the distorted perceptions of the narrator for almost two days as I was caught up in the story and I wanted to know how it would turn out.

[Spoiler alert: The discussion that follows gives away the key plot development so click away if you don’t want to know what happens. I think a lot of readers will anticipate what happens and it’s still interesting to see how Faulks gets there. But of course a lot of people will feel that their reading is spoiled if they know the key plot development in advance.]

Contemporary Writers gives an excellent synopsis:

Engleby (2007) is in many ways Faulks’ most unusual novel. It shares with Human Traces the subject of human consciousness but its setting and manner is entirely different. Instead of heroic and altruistic scientific Victorian characters, we are introduced to an-almost contemporary voice from the outset: ‘My name is Mike Engelby, and I’m in my second year at an ancient university’. This is the Cambridge of the early 1970s, replete with drinking, pop culture and dull tutorials. Engelby proceeds to tell us of his encounters there, especially with good-looking student Jennifer Arkland, whose subsequent disappearance forms the essence of the plot. Engelby proves to be an engaging narrator, even as he unveils his disturbed family history and increasingly devious behaviour, but also – of course – an untrustworthy one. He comes to admit that ‘My memory’s odd … I’m big on detail, but there are holes in the fabric’. We follow his burgeoning career in the national media as the years unfold, and his viewpoint on events becomes ever darker. As always with Faulks, the period detailing is excellent, the narrative drive strong, and full of clever contrivances. While Sebastian Faulks’ forte has been to depict romance under pressure of war, in this startling book he shows another side to his talents – summoning up an almost contemporary era as well as more disturbing aspects of humanity.

My emotional reaction to this novel was powerful. I felt sad and also quite horrified. And then I had a feeling of being used somehow and I went looking for blog reactions. It’s interesting that readers are very divided on whether they loved or hated it.

At a broader level, I wondered why it is that in most crime novels the victim is a woman (and often a pretty woman). What if he had killed a male student? Would we as readers have cared less? I was reminded of the tragic Cape Town story of the American student Amy Biehl and how her death (at the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy) became more important in many ways that the countless other deaths we read about or hear about in South Africa.

By choosing to depict one more man killing another woman, is Faulks perpetuating a dominant narrative of male violence and female victimhood? By way of comparison, the other novel set in Cambridge which I read recently is Rosy Thornton’s Hearts and Minds. I won’t review it here but perhaps the triumph of that novel (as one reviewer pointed out) is the character of the female academic Martha Pierce. And obviously the Cambridge that is depicted there is very different from the distorted perceptions of Mike Engleby (however interesting and fascinating they might be). Hearts and Minds touched on serious issues (ethical, cultural) and was still an uplifting, enjoyable and easy read. With Engleby the going was a lot tougher at first but then I was pulled along by the powerful narrative arc.

I had a sense after reading Engleby that the female character was a means to an end and we never, even when reading her diary, really saw things from her perspective. In the background there was always the filter of Mike Engleby’s perceptions which controlled our access to this other story.

From a psychological point of view, there were a number of thought-provoking issues and it made me very curious to know more about amnestic disorders (memory disorders) and the experience of dissociation. I’m also interested to find out more about how personality disorders can be considered to constitute diminished responsibility for violent crimes. Is a personality disorder a ‘mental illness’? The expert psychiatry witness in this novel says that Mike Engleby is not mentally ill but rather that he suffers from schizoid personality disorder. But isn’t that a form of mental illness? I suppose you could have a situation in which a personality disorder would not be considered a mental illness for legal purposes but could be considered one for lay purposes.

I would favour a broader definition of mental illness for lay purposes, and I’m certainly at pains to reassure my clients who complain of anxiety or depression that their symptoms are quite common and don’t make them different or defective. When does anxiety or depression become a mental illness? And why would someone with Borderline Personality Disorder not be considered mentally ill?

And then I was remembering Adam Phillips’s contention that we are all crazy to some degree and that craziness is actually part of the human condition. For me it comes down to our ability to manage or contain that craziness. We might have the odd violent nightmare or express a wish to hurt somebody out of frustration but we wouldn’t act on this. This is what it means to be sane, to control our crazy impulses and to act in accordance with what society expects. With Engleby this wasn’t the case and the violence escaped in a very uncontained way, which he subsequently blocked off and was largely unable to remember.

I did think that Engleby was excellently written and it made a much stronger impression on me than the other Faulks that I read, which was On Green Dolphin Street (also good but I have almost no memory of it). With Engleby I had disturbed thoughts on the Saturday night as I filtered his own problems through my own experience. And then when I finished I took a drive to the supermarket and was quite relieved at the simple warmth of the brief exchange with the teller. Those transactions are quite absent from Engleby’s life where he was quite trapped in his own (brilliant but damaged) mind. His attachments were poor and everything deteriorates from the lack of real human contact.

Another interesting aspect for me was that I realised that anger, if properly expressed, could have been a redemptive force in Engleby’s life. If he was irritated with Jen for not talking to him or taking much of an interest and he was able to express this to himself then it would have been easier for him to manage the frustration and not act on it by becoming violent.

Will be interested to hear your thoughts. Hope my spoiler review was not too spoiling!

A tale of two cricket writers

Consider, if you will, the following two journalistic extracts on yesterday’s cricket test match between England and South Africa.

England’s Graham Onions brings tears to South African eyes
Another day, another arse-nipper. Test cricket, which many believe to be fighting for survival, is pulling out all the stops. This was exceptional, a match that, as at Centurion a few weeks back, went to the last available ball.

As in that first Test of this remarkable series, it was the unlikely and certainly unheralded batting of Graham Onions that secured England the draw. They will now go to Johannesburg and The Wanderers next week for the final Test leading a series that they cannot lose and may well win.

Onions makes Proteas cry again
NEWLANDS, the grand old lady of South African cricket grounds, has seen many great test matches over the years, but none more thrilling that the third Test which ended yesterday.

Heading into the final session, just like they had at Centurion in the first Test, England appeared to have done enough ground work to secure a credible draw after being set a world-record target of 466.

It’s a bit disheartening for me to see the comparison between the two openings. The first is from the Guardian’s Mike Selvey and the second is by the Cape Times’s Zaahier Adams. The first captures some of the excitement of the match and the anxiety felt by both teams of supporters. “Arse-nipper” is an unusual description but it works here.

The second story, by comparison, is plodding. What does it serve to call Newlands a “grand old lady”? What is a grand old lady anyway? And what does she have to do with cricket? Maybe the Mount Nelson hotel with its pink walls and stately setting could be called that but as an opener to a report on a thrilling test match it falls very flat.

I could go on but there’s absolutely no excitement in the words “enough groundwork to secure a credible draw”. Credible draw? Credible in whose eyes? Who cares whether it’s credible or incredible? The fact was that it was exciting and heroic and showed how passionately England take this “funny game” that their supporters take huge delight in hours of dot-balls. “Dot ball to the England” sang the Barmy Army in that final over while the rest of us sat on the edge of our seats and clenched our sweaty paws and desperately willed South Africa to an improbable (and ultimately unattainable) victory.

I’ll admit it. I’m a Grinch. But please, if South Africa can’t win a test match this summer, can we at least have some excellent reporting at their attempts to do so?

The bonds of blood and childhood (Brothers and Sisters)

Our maternal or primary relationship provides the base, secure or insecure, for development but it is not the only story of childhood. Children’s identities are shaped in so many ways by friends, schools, neighbourhoods and, particularly importantly, by our brothers and sisters.

Brothers and Sisters (2009), which I finished over my summer holidays, provides twelve very different and excellent Australian accounts, some fictional and some autobiographical, of the special bond that exists between siblings. Those bonds of blood and childhood can be haunting but also a great source of comfort as well as reflection and storytelling.

As Charlotte Wood writes in her introduction:

“The writers in this collection … have written in surprising ways about the deep bonds — bad, beautiful or broken — between brothers and sisters, and, in one piece, about our abiding suspicion of that happy, foreign creature, the only child. Twelve stories speaking of love and fear, separation and tenderness, confusion and — sometimes — reunion.”

Perhaps my favourite piece in this collection is that by Charlotte herself called “The Cricket Palace”. This is a tender and finely-realised story of two older sisters, Ruth and Wendy. On a whim, seventy-one year old Wendy accepts a casual invitation to Ruth’s daughter Leonie’s wedding in Greece and the two sisters travel there together. As the older and better-travelled of the two, Wendy feels a sense of superiority towards her younger sister but it is Ruth’s daughter’s wedding and Wendy is the outsider here.

Charlotte talks about siblings as being mirrors of each other and our “other selves” — grander, sadder, braver, shrewder, uglier, slenderer. In this story there’s a lovely contrast for me between Wendy’s other selves, her much-loved late husband Jim and then Ruth, her spoiled younger sister who had the children which she covets for herself. Wendy has brought a container of Jim’s ashes along on the trip for comfort, something she knows Ruth would find distasteful. When Wendy inadvertently loses this container, all that she has left is Ruth who, despite all her failings, is still there for her. This is a tender and also funny story and it certainly makes me want to look out for Charlotte’s novel “The Children”.

Three other stories which I have to mention are those by Ashley Hay, Tegan Bennett Daylight and Nam Le. Ashley Hay’s autobiographical piece on being and having an only child is a gem and I loved the way she brings in photographs, for example the one of Granville Stanley Hall, the man credited with founding the discipline of educational psychology and who was responsible for bringing Freud and Jung to America in 1909.

“Who wouldn’t warm to someone whose scientific surveys asked about the way laughter spread across a child’s face, about which features were first and which last involved? … [...] Which is why it’s such a shame that Granville Stanley Hall is the villain in this story, given that it was just one statement of his that did all the damage to the Anglophone world’s perception of only children.”

Hay’s piece does a brilliant job of correcting our misperceptions of only children that they must be selfish and lonely. Here they are loved and full of life. Not “only” but unique.

Tegan Bennett Daylight’s story ‘Trouble’ is a wonderful example for me of an understated coming-of-age story. Her narrator never gets a name but she’s 18 years old and living in London with her older sister Emma. They both work at uninspiring jobs and adapt to unfriendly London where “no-one touched you, except on the tube, and that was either by accident or horrible design”.

Emma is the prettier, confident one and spends the majority of her time with boyfriend Jerome. The narrator is left with her cousin Karen and her job in a bookshop with its creepy, patronising manager. As the narrator becomes more aware of herself and her place in the world she experiences a gradual shift of perception which is part of her growing up. Lovely story.

And then there’s Nam Le’s story “The Yarra”. On the basis of this story I’ve added his collection “The Boat” to my TBR wishlist. For me “The Yarra” is a study in male violence and also about the almost inseparable bond between two brothers, Lan and Thuan. There’s an ominous atmosphere here from the outset as Lan describes his brother and the effect he has on him:

My brother, my blood and bones, confessor and protector, came in last night, he must be sleeping downstairs, and — as always when he comes — I find my hand on my heart and my mind wide open and wheeling. …

… As always, he lies on his back. His mouth is open, his eyelids violent with their shuddered thoughts, and under the thin sheet I can see the heavy limbs, flat and parallel as though lying in state.

[...] Our father, in his own way, failed to beat this into us, and so my brother beat it into me. I thought then I hated him for it but I was wrong. I wanted to know him — I always have. Now I realise it was only when he asserted himself in physical motion — then, ineluctably, in violence — that I came closest to doing so.

Violence, loyalty, identity. Nam Le does an excellent job of conveying all three. And then there’s the twist of course — there’s always a twist.