An October cycle in the Eastern Townships

 My partner-in-life and I went cycling in the Eastern Townships last Thursday. I took this photo, which prompted a haiku.

Through leaf fall tunnel,
wheel crushing the golden dead.
Autumn life cycle.

Books, memory and the Holocaust

Last Friday I visited the Montreal Holocaust Museum along with my partner-in-life M, and our neighbour J. I've wanted to go for years, since the boys went with their school, and we eventually committed to a date over back-garden drinks with J and her husband. They're a jewish couple, something which is incidental to our usual conversations, but it came up this time after they recounted receiving anti-semitic insults from Trump supporters at their holiday apartment in Florida. They've decided to sell it.

Of course the museum is a terribly moving experience, but it's also a brilliantly educational one. What are the first warning signs of an impending genocide? The museum tells of several, and the one that struck me most were the huge book burnings in Germany in the early 30's. We saw a video of smiling people running to toss piles of books into the towering flames, watching on by celebrating crowds. Books in Hebrew. Books written by jews like Proust and Einstein. Books written by 'degenerates' like Hemmingway. Hatred with smiles, a communal experience in front of a roaring fire, a loosening of repressions, an opening of terrible possibilities. 

It seems to me that writers have a special responsibility to memory. What else is writing other than the ultimate act of remembering? And books have a special symbolism, representing memory and culture, a voice kept alive long after death. 

It's easy to be critical of the modern state of Israel. There's a many good things about it, but its treatment of the Palestinians is so obviously wrong. Criticism of that is just. And needed.

Sally Rooney is a fine writer. She clearly loves books and, well-educated in modern Ireland, she undoubtedly knows the history of the 20th century. She has refused to have her latest book published in Hebrew because the publisher operates in Israel, her way of expressing solidarity with the Palestinians. Frankly, the symbolism of that decision is horrific. And liable to be jumped upon by some of the most unsavoury elements in Irish society, anti-semites who lurk in the so-called republican movement. 

So although I don't always agree with Anne Harris, I'm in complete agreement with her article in today's Irish Times. The rabid reaction of some of the people commentating on it shows why.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Over the weekend I finished 'Beautiful world, where are you' by Sally Rooney. A few years ago I read a fine short story she wrote in the Irish Times, but with all the hype about her since Normal People was televised I thought it was about time I read one of her novels. Well reader, I found it to be a strangely complex and unsatisfying experience. But that might be exactly what she was aiming for. 

For me, the first three quarters of the book are a bit cold and lifeless. The interactions of the four principal characters are stilted, all manners and pose. Their conversations never seem to get to a point, very little that they're saying seems authentic or of any real consequence. Their sexual relations are detailed explicitly but are self-conscious and, dare I say, passionless. In their emails to each other the characters of Eileen and Alice adopt  intellectual personae to pontificate about politics and culture, each seeking to impress the other in an earnest and writerly way, and neither trying to read deeply what the other is saying. The narrator's perspective moves in and out, sometimes intensely close to the thoughts and feelings of the characters, sometime floating far about them and puzzling about what they are thinking, just like the reader is. That seems intentionally cinematographic, like Rooney was already thinking about how this could be filmed. But her mastery of the building blocks of the novel is evident, there is real skill on display here. to the point where I feel she must be deliberately making a point of highlighting the narrative technique rather than the characters.  

And then at about the three-quarters point the four characters come together to share a house for a few days and the story finally grips and we see the emotions come to the fore. Each of them is flawed, and none of them is particularly likeable. But this part is compelling, and as I read it I thought that Rooney had been using the first three quarters as a set up just to emphasize the impact of these moments when the characters reveal themselves. And if that was her plan, well, it worked very well. But just as I was ready to say that this was a great novel, the last two chapters bring us back again into an email exchange, and we're back to that shiny surface that occludes the interior.

At the end I feel this is not a great novel but a very clever one, and that Rooney is in some way challenging her readers, testing what she can get away with. I admire what she has done, but can't say I really loved it. Frankly I got a bit bored with it and rushed to finish it because I didn't care about any of these characters at all. But the author's skill is undeniable and I'm really curious about what she'll produce next.   

A charged moment

Last night I was at the opening concert of the Orchestre Métropolitan's new season, the first concert with a sizeable audience in a long long time. The excitement of the crowd was palpable. The centre piece of the evening was the Ravel piano concerto in G major featuring Hélène Grimaud, and at the end of the wild and jazzy first movement we couldn't contain ourselves, breaking into applause to the obvious pleasure of the musicians. Grimaud paused for a while before beginning the lyrical second movement which was just stunning, lifting us all on waves of music. When that movement concluded there were ten or fifteen seconds of electric silence, not a cough or sniffle to be heard, everyone suspended in an atmosphere that was almost radioactive in intensity. And then the orchestra launched in to the super third movement.

What a evening.

The opening piece of the night was also wonderful, a composition by Barbara Assiginaak, a composer with First Nation's ancestry, evoking the Fleuve St-Laurent as it meandered through this ancient land. It succeeded perfectly.