The author (born 1905) went to Eton, our most elitist poshest public school (which in Britain means private school, just our little joke) and there heThe author (born 1905) went to Eton, our most elitist poshest public school (which in Britain means private school, just our little joke) and there he was pals with Evelyn Waugh (born 1903) . Maybe there was a competition between the two but anyways Henry won - his first novel Blindness was published in 1926 and Evelyn had to wait two whole more years to publish his first novel. They were 21 and 25 years old. Such precocious, ghastly rich boys! Who did they think they were?
Alas, both Blindness and Decline and Fall are excellent and worth reading! It’s just too bad. (Patrick Hamilton, born 1904, one of my favourites, published his first novel in 1926, aged 22. But he wasn’t posh. In comparison, Sally Rooney published her first novel in 1991 when she was an elderly 26.)
Blindness is pretty wonderful. A rich kid is travelling in a train, some nasty urchin flings a big stone at the train window, and tragedy strikes, the broken glass blinds the rich kid. There follows some stiff upper lip suffering, some upper class comedy, two or three excellent characters you would like to have seen more of, and some dazzling appreciation of leaves and cats and roses and weather and so forth.
Henry Green wrote 8 more novels, each pretty weird but weird in different ways, including Living which came out 3 years after this one and which I gave 5 stars to....more
I had never read a detailed history of this terrible conflict before, just bits and pieces here and there. This book looked like a good, detailed accoI had never read a detailed history of this terrible conflict before, just bits and pieces here and there. This book looked like a good, detailed account, and it was. It goes right up to 2017. The reader of today knows what will be coming along six years after that, an explosion of horror that throws an appalling shadow over all these previous events. Reading this history is like watching a horror movie � don’t go in that house! don’t make that decision! � but all the characters make the wrong awful decisions, nothing can stop them. And it’s also like a tremendous Shakespearian tragedy, there’s an implacable hideous inevitability about everything that happened in Palestine.
David Ben-Gurion in 1918 :
Not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf and nothing can fill this gulf. …I do not know what Arab will agree that Palestine should belong to the Jews ... And we must recognise this situation. …We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.
These days everyone talks vaguely about the Two State Solution. It seems ever more like a mirage. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research reported in 2023 that 82% of Israeli Jews and 75% of Palestinians believe the other side would never accept the existence of their state.
THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild in 1917
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So this was not a statement from the government itself. It was a lofty well-meaning gracious nod from one grandee to another. But it had the effect of an earthquake.
A FAMOUS QUOTE FROM ARTHUR KOESTLER REGARDING THE BALFOUR DECLARATION
One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.
SOME QUOTES
Some quotes in this book jumped out at me, such as this poignant one from Ahmad Samih Khalidi, a Palestinian writer :
For us to adopt the Zionist narrative would mean that the homes that our forefathers built, the land that they tilled for centuries, and the sanctuaries they built and prayed at were not really ours at all, and that our defense of them was morally flawed : we had no right to any of these to begin with.
Now let’s hear a painful burst of optimism from Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism :
Do you believe that an Arab who has a house or land in Palestine whose value is three or four thousand francs will greatly regret seeing the price of his land rise five or tenfold? For that is necessarily what will happen as the Jews come; and this is what must be explained to the inhabitants of the country. They will acquire excellent brothers, just as the Sultan will acquire loyal and good subjects, who will cause the region, their historic fatherland, to flourish.
This is dashed by a blast of common sense from Russian Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky :
Every native population in the world resists colonialists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine� into the ”Land of Israel�.
Whether Ian Black intended this or not, he gave me the strong impression in the first half of his book that the Arabs were doomed to failure, doomed to lose their country, that the Jewish immigrants were so much more educated, resourceful, they hadn’t been herding and grazing and farming in relative tranquility in a sleepy backwater of the vast Ottoman empire for 500 years, they came from the cities of Europe and from places of persecution, and they were done with being pushed around. The Arabic population seemed not to know what was happening to them until it was too late. Check these numbers � statistics are like weapons -
POPULATION OF PALESTINE
1918 : 512,000 Arabs; 66,000 Jews; 61,000 Christians 1922 : Jewish population 83,000 � this is now 11% of the total 1931 � Jewish population now 175,000 � 16.5% of the total 1936 � Jewish population 380,000 � almost 33% of the total
The immigrants bought land from the current owners, the Arabs. Clearly no Arab should ever have sold their land to the Jews! But they did, year after year! And this was “an embarrassing issue that has been little addressed in Palestine historical literature� says Ian Black.
As the book winds onward through all the twists and turns of almost-reasonable partition suggestions (The Peel Report 1937 argued for the Jews to get 25% of Palestine) and very-understandable rejections of partition and bubbling onrushing civil war population statistics give way to bodycounts, but I do not have the heart to quote any of those.
AND IN THE END
There will be no end. This conflict will outlive all of us. This is an excellent but depressing book....more
People still write books about Shakespeare, you would think there was nothing left to say after 500 years, but there always is. Same with the Beatles.People still write books about Shakespeare, you would think there was nothing left to say after 500 years, but there always is. Same with the Beatles.
What do we have here ? An engrossing book about something rarely discussed in such detail, an intense friendship, an intimate love, between two men, expressed through their artful musical brilliance whilst creating all those songs, around 180 of them, over a period of eight years or so, not that long in a person’s life, whilst being hurtled around in a cultural phenomenon that hasn’t been equaled since, enough to disrupt anyone’s equilibrium.
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Ian Leslie chooses 43 songs to tell the story of J&P, and quite a few are not the obvious ones at all � Come Go With Me, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, Besame Mucho? These are pre-Beatle songs. How Do you Sleep, Dear Friend, Let Me Roll It? These are post-Beatle songs. But of course the J&P story starts in 1957 and ends in 1980, although you can truly say it hasn’t ended at all yet.
At the beginning of it all they agreed that however much each contributed to a song, the composer credit would always be Lennon/McCartney. This means that both Yesterday and Give Peace a Chance are both Lennon/McCartney songs, there was never any dispute about it. *
This book does not get into the details of whether I Feel Fine is 80% or 90% John or if Eleanor Rigby is 99% Paul. What comes so clearly through is the bashing away for four or five hours with a guitar and a piano, and at the end of it a few bits and bobs that were in their brains already have now found themselves welded into a new song, which is then presented to the other two in the studio, which is then bashed and pounded into a finished article in a day or less.
Sometimes the harmony that I was writing in sympathy to John’s melody would take over and become a stronger melody. Suddenly a piebald rabbit came out of the hat!
And I liked this other quote from Paul :
Mine are normally a bit soppier than John’s. That’s because I’m a bit soppier than John.
Ian Leslie has a great phrase about Beatle songwriting serendipity :
They scooped up happy accidents like coins in the street, and the coins were everywhere they looked.
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But it’s very clear that when they stopped touring, they stopped living together, stopped sleeping in the same hotel room, and each one would write by himself; and at that point Lennon became depressed � stuck out in the suburbs in a bourgeois house with a little family � what am I doing here? is this my life now? � and envious of his mate who was pinballing around swinging London having a time and becoming prolific. Everything the Beatles did after 1966 except the trip to India was organised or promoted by Paul, Magical Mystery Tour, Apple, the idea of the Get Back film, etc. Lennon relinquished control, stayed in bed, wrote songs about staying in bed and not bothering.
A Paul quote from the Get Back sessions :
We’ve only got twelve more days, so we’ve really got to do this methodically. I really just hear myself the only one saying it.
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But even before all that, this book shows how throughout the Beatles Paul was a force of nature, continually making sure a song or a session or an album or a single got done, suggesting things, hustling George out of the way when he couldn’t get a lead guitar part right, kind of unstoppable and sometimes kind of annoying too.
Ian Leslie, hilariously :
That McCartney’s harsh side went unnoticed had a lot to do with how he looked…[his] winsome eyes and neatly arranged features made him look like a baby, or a cartoon of a little girl.
Not so fun fact : The five most covered Beatle songs are all by Paul. The critics all danced to John’s tune, they thought he rocked and Paul was the lightweight simpering balladeer, but that wasn’t so, you only have to listen to any Beatle record
NEVER MIND THE BEATLES, WHAT ABOUT THIS BOOK
I liked it a lot! Five stars! He says stuff like
Pop songs work on several different frequencies at once. Written down, they might suggest one story, but in sonic motion they throw off meanings and feelings like sparks from a Catherine wheel, beyond the conscious intention of the creators.
Maybe he overstates things, on occasion :
John was only truly happy when making music with the other Beatles. (p115)
And of course in a book about a relationship, about love and art and adventure and depression, and joy and the whole works, he likes to armchair-psychoanalyse � but only in the terms many Beatle fans would have thought of for all these years.
So there is now a third Beatle book I can describe as essential, after Tune In by Mark Lewisohn and Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald.
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*
*There were two songs about which their memories completely differed � In My Life : McCartney said he wrote the whole melody to John’s words, John says he wrote 90% of the melody; and Eleanor Rigby, where John said he wrote half to most of the words and Paul says he didn’t.
Final fun fact : McCartney’s famous actress girlfriend in the 60s was Jane Asher. Her father was an eminent endocrinologist who came up with the term “Munchausen’s syndrome�.
Our narrator at age 15 falls off his bike. Commenting on the guy who’s teaching him to ride he says :
It was very hard under such circumstances to presOur narrator at age 15 falls off his bike. Commenting on the guy who’s teaching him to ride he says :
It was very hard under such circumstances to preserve the standoffishness befitting the vicar’s nephew with the son of Miss Wolfe’s bailiff
He is an appalling entitled supercilious snob who says stuff like
I did not like to run the risk of being seen with people whom they (his family) would not at all approve of
Or
They went to the grammar school at Haversham and of course I couldn’t possibly have anything to do with them
At one point the local coal merchant brazenly rings the front door bell at the vicarage where he lives. Panic!
My aunt…felt honestly embarrassed that anyone should put himself in such a false position
Because, you see, it was utterly ghastly and unheard of that a coal merchant � a coal merchant � should have the temerity � the barefaced effrontery � to ring the front door bell! What is this, the French Revolution? This grotesque bell-ringing even discombobulates the maid
Emily, who knew who should come to the front door, who should go to the side door, and who to the back
Well he is poking fun at himself and his family, we are glad to realise. Later he says
The reader cannot have failed to observe that I accepted the conventions of my class as if they were the laws of Nature
That said, he is the most worldly gentleman you have met in a long while. He knows everything about everything. He says
When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right
and
he had the peculiar manner of the country doctor, bluff, hearty, and unctuous
because he knows all about young people and country doctors and he knows all young people and country doctors are exactly like that. It is so. Sometimes his observations are not quite to be taken seriously
No one can have moved in the society of politicians without discovering that it requires little mental ability to rule a nation
- A contemptuous bon mot that I think many modern readers would swiftly agree with. (It also implies that he has, but of course, knocked around with many ministers of the government). But what about this one � it almost made me gasp aloud :
We know of course that women are habitually constipated, but to represent them in fiction as being altogether devoid of a back passage seems to me really an excess of chivalry.
Steady on, sir! This is 1930! Are you allowed to say that?
Unfortunately for Cakes and Ale it was one of those many novels that are about novelists, and I was sadly uninformed of this before I started, because I hate novels about novelists, what a tiresome genre. But Somerset Maugham is an almost funny constantly condescending avuncular hifalutin tale teller, and his portrait of a great-grandmother of today’s manic dream pixie girls was engaging. Imagine � a woman in a 1930 novel who enjoys sex with multiple men and doesn’t get punished for it! And is a thoroughly nice person!
This novel was plucked from the vast lucky dip bag of 1001 Books you should Read before Next Thursday. At this rate it will only take me another 135 years to finish the whole list....more
Here’s something : there are film fans who would see that a movie about a housewife mostly doing household chores in real time which lasts 3 hours 20 Here’s something : there are film fans who would see that a movie about a housewife mostly doing household chores in real time which lasts 3 hours 20 minutes called Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) is currently considered the best film ever by a bunch of critics and they would say who on earth would want to see a movie like that? And the same film fans would also notice a movie called I Dismember Mama and another one called Orgy of the Blood Parasites and they would say who on earth would want to see those movies?
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*
The gospel according to Ric Meyers :
Even the worst of them were somehow better, and more vindicating, than the hundreds of soulless, pandering, cynical junk-heaps the major studios were grinding out.
The exploitation movies were those totally independent productions that played in drive in theatres or grindhouses. These movies were bottom of the barrel ultra low budget sex ‘n� horror efforts, you know, like
Doctor, Butcher, Medical Deviate Girl on a Chain Gang Shriek of the Mutilated Tower of Screaming Virgins
That kind of thing. Ric is fond of them, and even fonder of the loopy frantic culture they emerged from, and is sad that they don’t exist anymore, and this is because
the entire industry this book was created to celebrate was wiped out by the establishment’s embrace. There was no longer any need for marginalized grade Z movies once blood and boobs were being supplied by grade A powers-that-be.
And this happened because of the unignorable success of the famous slasher movies Halloween (1978) , Friday the 13th (1980) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
But I’m not so sure that exploitation movies are dead. The euphemistic term people now bandy about is “disturbing movies� and they are with us today, some recent examples
The Human Centipede (parts 1 to 3) Pig Megan is Missing Snuff 102 Murder Set-Pieces The Bunny Game
These are unlikely to be streamed on Netflix any time soon.
Did I really need a few dozen slightly jokey plot summaries of movies I have no intention of watching? Probably not. But Ric did remind me I should see The Corpse Grinders (1971)
What’s this you’re telling me? You’re dead? When did this happen? Was it before or after we got married?
I’ve been meaning to tell you� it was before� What’s this you’re telling me? You’re dead? When did this happen? Was it before or after we got married?
I’ve been meaning to tell you� it was before� sorry�.
Well we better get you to one of those cryogenic places fast!
Nah, wait till we get to 1939 and I’ll be fine�
But.. but it’s 1992! See? (Points to a calendar.)
Calendar : Hey buddy, that’ll be 15 cents before you can look.
Well of course it’s 1992, silly, but we’re all going back to 1939.
Winston Churchill : We shall wait for you on the beaches, we shall wait for you in the fields.
What do you mean all of us?
The whole world! We’re all moving back in time! Didn’t you notice that eggs are a lot cheaper and the movies are getting better?
But� but� this makes no sense at all!
Wait, I didn’t tell you the best bit. Because I am a precog I foresaw that this would be one of those annoying spoof reviews so I changed the past� it will now be a glowing 5 star rave!
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