Tintin’s first adventure to be published in a full book form (or rather album, as they were called), In The Land Of The Soviets is even more anomalous than it’s better known somewhat infamous follow-up, In The Congo, for several reasons. First of all it was never deemed worthy of a redraw, which might’ve seen it truncated to the normal length and format all the other Tintin albums share (62 pages), and would also have seen it colourised. So, at 141 pages, and in black and white, it remains an oddity in purely technical terms.
And not only this, but as a story, and as a work of art, it also differs markedly. Rather than hearing Hergé’s own voice, which only really comes through in the gentler humour (in itself mostly rather lame on this occasion, and also often anything but gentle: along with In The Congo, In The Land Of The Soviets finds Tintin at his most brutal), we are served up a very heavy handed dose of anti-Communist propaganda: Hergé is certainly the ‘company man’ at this point, doing the bidding of his Catholic employers. After this story, only his adventure In The Congo makes any explicit reference to the paper – Le Petit Vingtieme – for whom Tintin is allegedly a reporter. In fact In The Land Of The Soviets is also one of the very few Tintin adventures in which we ever see him writing up a report, to send back to the paper.
In addition to all of this, Hergé’s craft is very much in its infancy, which makes In The Land Of The Soviets an interesting rather than particularly satisfying document. The drawing, dialogue, and storytelling are all, by Hergé’s own later standards, really quite poor. In fact one of the most noticeable shifts in the whole catalogue of his Tintin work is the almost quantum leap between this and In The Congo, especially in terms of the artwork, but also in most other respects. Some aspects, such as the smoothing out of the episodic structures that originated with the weekly serial format, would take longer to iron out and improve. But there are precious few hints – some gags that will be recycled later, the odd well composed frame, or series of frames – of what was to come later. On the evidence of this adventure alone one would hardly predict the great lifetime achievement, with Tintin as the primary vehicle, that Hergé actually went on to.
Even more of a one-for-the-fans curio than In The Congo, but perhaps less so than the unfinished Alph Art, this would not be a recommended starting point for those coming fresh to Tintin. Even Tintin’s character differs from what it was to become, with him being less innocent and more thuggish, only Snowy resembling his character as it would remain (more or less) in future. So, although it was, in book form adventures, where the much loved reporter and his dog started out, I wouldn’t recommend any reader started here.
Still, for Tintin nuts like me, and there are clearly a great number of us out there, this is nonetheless essential.
Ok, I haven’t done this for a book before, here on ye blogge. But then I don’t often post book reviews before I finish the book under review, either, like I did with this one. I had to take a breather on 12 Rules, during which time I read a few other books, such as Peter Burke’s excellent Polymath.
I think the stink I kicked up on FB just around the mere idea I might have the temerity or foolhardiness to entertain the foolish charlatan mummery of this evil purveyor of patriarchy and conservatism drained me of energy and enthusiasm. Plus I found that JP’s incessant recourse to Biblical ‘wisdom’ grated.
But, returning, refreshed and invigorated, from said breather, I found I did actually want to finish 12 Rules. So, er… I did.
Interestingly enough, chapter eleven, which was unread at the time of my last (and therefore partial) review, is probably the one that most directly addresses the more contentious areas he covers, the ones that produce allergic reactions in some on the left. Intriguingly, chapter eleven is also the longest single chapter in the book.
The chapter title, ‘Do not bother children when they are skateboarding’, isn’t the clearest of the twelve chapter headings. I initially guessed it might simply mean ‘let the children have their fun’. And it does. But more than just this, it’s also addressing those that seek to circumscribe the fun those children might have: ‘Beneath the production of rules stopping the skateboarders from doing highly skilled, courageous and dangerous things I see the operation of an insidious and profoundly anti-human spirit.’
Some of the people Peterson chooses to attack, as exemplars of this anti-human spirit, are not that surprising, such as the Columbine shooters. But others include the much beloved naturalist and TV presenter David Attenborough, and the Club of Rome (a progressive international think tank dedicated to solving global problems). The former for calling humanity a plague the latter for calling humanity a cancer. The nihilism inherent in the actions of the shooters is patently obvious. It’s more shocking to hear Attenborough and a group dedicated to solving the world’s problems described thus, or juxtaposed with ‘postal’ teen murderers.
Not a juxtaposition I was expecting.
Clearly at times JP enjoys courting controversy and ‘needling’ his audience. But there is also a very sobering aspect to this. Whilst this is a challenge to those of us who love Attenborough, for all the incredible natural history TV he has given us (and, perhaps even the Club of Rome? Though how many folk even know of them, let alone who they are or what they do?), I think Peterson is on to something, and is essentially correct.
Attenborough and the Club of Rome are, in this instance, perhaps not being precise enough in their speech (and precision in speech is one of JP’s rules). The negativity of their language, designed no doubt (like JP’s juxtaposition of them with serial murderers) for maximum impact/effect, creates a dangerous space.
A dangerous space into which some folk – I was going to say ‘less enlightened folk’; but you can be genius clever and still be wrong – might seek to interpolate their own malevolent answers to the ‘human problem’. Via appalling ‘final solutions’ such as are imagined in say, 12 Monkeys. Casting themselves thereby as heroically ridding earth of the plague or cancer of humanity.
This sort of thinking, taken to it’s most nihilist extremes, was indeed the kind of raison d’etre behind the infamous Ted Kaczynski’s personal war against modern humanity. A very clever chap. Hence the decision not to use the term ‘less enlightened’!
Two other areas where he discusses stuff that seems to trigger hostile reactions from ‘the left’ are around his views on Marxist academia and gender politics/history. He clearly dislikes the whole postmodernist project. And he doesn’t pull his punches, describing it as state-funded extremism whose aim is the destruction of the very same state that supports it.
First off I might ask JP to calm down and substitute ‘transform’ for destroy. Having said that, having been in such an environment myself, studying art and art history at Goldsmiths, where Deleuze, Guattari, Barthes, Horkheimer, etc, were bread and butter, I can see and understand his position. I personally think that much of this stuff is indeed total bullshit, masquerading as intellectualism.
But, and here I may, perhaps, differ from Peterson; whilst they may posture as radicals, I think most academics are innately conservative; they want to stay in their relatively cushy well-paid jobs. The issue is, what does all the relativist, ‘nothing outside the text’ postmodern claptrap become, or facilitate, when it exits the groves of academe, and, like genetically-modified crops, escapes from its own fields, and get out into the ‘real world’?
And here I think Peterson’s fears are better founded. And no, they are not just some paranoid conspiracy theory. Ironically the whole postmodern ‘my truth vs your truth’ relativism actually seems to favour the extreme right – by nature generally more belligerent – at least as much, maybe even more, than the ‘extreme left’.
Another area to address, again coming out of the mammoth eleventh chapter, is gender roles, and our deeper cultural (and social/biological) history.
Some of the very dominant themes being cultivated or promulgated in the kinds of departments in universities that Peterson takes issue with, are ideas such as the whole ‘patriarchy’ narrative, or the popular notion that gender identity and roles are almost entirely culturally constructed.
One of the key themes in the whole ‘Do not bother children when they are skateboarding’, idea is allowing life to continue to have risk and danger within it. And around this idea JP does also address the current trend to constantly run down maleness or masculinity as ‘toxic’, and patriarchally oppressive etc.
Peterson addresses students at The Cambridge Union, Nov. 2nd, 2018. (Photo Chris Williamson/Getty Images)
I see plenty of evidence of this in daily mainstream social intercourse, say for example on FB, where some women will very openly and regularly complain of the constant oppression they suffer, usually by repeating off the shelf memes on these themes. And an amen chorus of fellow ladies, and a number of men – some will say enlightened, others might say dissembling, or even ‘pussywhipped’, etc. – will provide a hallelujah-chorus. And a frequent contrapuntal theme in such threads will be the mocking of any men who question this narrative, with vigorous suggestions that they are the blind, brutal, entitled oppressors.
I’ve seen Peterson coolly and calmly unpack such ‘arguments’ (in fact they are not usually arguments at all, they are blunt assertions), and dismantle the treasured narrative. And yes, he does the same here in his book, albeit only now and then, and in specific places.
One of his key arguments against the patriarchal oppression model is that what has oppressed women for most of history has not been men, but the natural workings of women’s own bodies. And in more recent times, a number of men have, via their compassion and industry, contributed to the liberation of women from the ‘tyranny’ of their own bodies, via such things as better sanitary products, and the pill. As JP asks, are they part of this all powerful all consuming patriarchal oppression?
Like Peterson, I think a good long look at human history will show that, by and large, ours has actually been a history of cooperation and mutual support between the sexes, in the face of the extreme hardships – and I’m talking now of the more fundamentally physical irrefutably extreme hardships, such as plague, famine, and war, not the more modern ones, which arise once we live longer and are somewhat liberated from the more basic limits on our biological survival.
The division of labour in the human species has rested for vast stretches of time on men doing certain things more, such as hunting and making certain stuff, and women doing other things more, mostly around the domestic sphere of child-rearing and food preparation, etc, albeit with a good deal of overlap, no doubt. I don’t personally ever hear JP saying that because this was true, we musttherefore continue exactly that way. Far from it, he says we need to rework what we inherit from the past and continue to adapt to our own peculiar set of circumstances.
My uncle Terry was recommending this to me recently. It’s a favourite of JP’s as well.
Viewing the past as having been predominantly cooperative between the sexes, as opposed to one long unceasing dominance and exploitation of men over women, seems to chime better with the evidence.
This is not to say that in recent history there has been no discrimination and imbalance between the sexes. There is plentiful evidence that there has been. What doesn’t seem right is to counter one form of imbalance with another. There is also a need to learn to be able to recognise things for what they are, not what we wish them to be. And perhaps ideas of totally uncircumscribed ‘freedoms to choose’ are illusory (or even worse, harmful?).
Another problem with the ‘oppressive patriarchy’ model, as I understand JP’s critique of it, is that it can give an appearance of having nothing positive to say about masculinity. And that is inevitably as lopsided and bad a stance as a male-chauvinist position. But, truth be told, much of what I’ve digressed into here really isn’t what this book is about.
Anyway, now that I have finished the book, I don’t find myself convinced that Peterson is a dangerous alt-right idealogue. Far from it. He does have some views that are what some might call ‘innately conservative’, such as that much of what we inherit, to our benefit (as well as detriment), from those who’ve been before us, whether that’s in the form of myths that might contain traditions of wisdom (for JP Christianity is one such), or social institutions, such as marriage, might be better than a complete abandonment of such things, to be replaced by a free for all. I don’t find such observations, especially if couched in the terms of traditions of contemporary science, i.e. supported by evidence, very threatening or troubling.
Unlike JP, I’m not a massive fan of the Christian religious tradition. I suppose aspects of such relationships will often boil down to one’s own personal experiences of these traditions. For me the Christian tradition has for too long been used too oppressively, and been taken or treated too literally. And I also believe that a big problem with the poetry of myth, any myth, is that it’s wide open to almost any interpretations. Many of the ways JP chooses to read Biblical stuff in the context of this book would be, to my mind, amongst the best (and most generous spirited!) of possible readings. But the fact that such a body of traditional tales can also be used to bolster positions I find totally moronic or repellent means I prefer to discard the whole thing, more or less.
I think this is a good book, for the most part. I don’t agree with everything Peterson says. But a lot of it I do. There’s a lot of potentially useful wisdom here, mostly around the perennial themes of taking personal responsibility, and working on self-improvement.
And, as he himself says, not directly so much, but in his use of references to religious traditions (mostly, but not entirely, Christian), and writers like Dostoyesky, and philosophers and psychoanalysts, etc, these are not his own original ideas, but long established ones, ones that are – and need to be – continually re-learnt and re-stated, in our cultural traditions.
I would definitely recommend this book. And perhaps most of all to those who think he’s some kind of alt-right nutjob; instead of bringing your preconceptions, listen to what he’s actually saying, try and understand it, and maybe even, as per rule nine, consider that he (or any interlocutor you may encounter) might know something you don’t.
Or he might even simply be restating something you do already know, but forget to put into practise? Anyway. I think I probably will read his follow up. Whilst 12 Rules isn’t perfect, it hasnt put me off JP either.
I absolutely loved Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects, and was wondering what he’d do next. This excellent series follows a similar line, albeit through the prism of ‘The Bard of Avon’, and objects that can, in some way, be related to aspects of his life, times and work.
From a simple apprentice’s cloth cap to a coin/medallion map celebrating Drake ‘s circumnavigation of the Globe, the range and scope is once again fantastic. MacGregor’s as charming as ever, with experts on hand to flesh out and illuminate, and once again both the individual objects and the larger themes are engaging and compelling.
At first I wondered if the Shakespeare focus could possibly sustain interest across the whole series, but by the end (and the last episode is excellent, taking a slightly different approach, which I won’t give away) I was not only convinced, but dead keen to see more Shakespeare.
More archival reviews from the vaults. This one from 2014.
I got this book because I’m interested in sex. Who – if they’re being really and truly honest – isn’t? Oh, and art and culture, of course! Having flicked through the pages to have a quick look over the pics, I made ready to, erm, get stuck in, so to speak.
My view was immediately arrested by the bizarre pendant of fig. 1, pictured below: ‘Pet Phallus’, c. 100 BC… length 9.2 cm. Even amongst academics and custodians of culture it appears size matters!
However, any idea that this might be an erotic viewing or reading experience, never mind entertaining (a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour – steady! – might not have gone amiss), rapidly evaporates upon reading the text, which is worthy but, frankly, rather dull.
Caroline Vout displays an admirable breadth of erudition, and the text is very clearly and sensibly organised, but it feels a bit flat and lacking in passion. The potential eroticism of the objects and images is rinsed out with academic earnestness; comprehensive and balanced, perhaps, but – for me at least – flaccid.
The book itself, organised into six chapters over approx. 240 pages, and supported by nearly 200 crisp, clear images (as many of these are context-setting as are sexual), is a handsome and well made thing, but I’d say it was beautiful, as opposed to sexy. Some of the images and objects can, as Vout says, still shock and challenge us, despite the pervasive ubiquity of sexual imagery in what some might call our ‘permissive’ culture.
Caroline Vout at the Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology.
Vout traces the history of these objects, from their contexts and origins, inasmuch as we can determine them, via later fates, including their passage through the collections of private ‘antiquarians’ of the relatively recent past, such as Warren and Townley. It was the collections of such men that stocked the museums they now reside in, the material here being predominantly drawn from the stock of the British Museum, who also published the book.
Having examined how the Greeks and Romans may have related to this material, Vout eventually looks at a range of C18th ideas, from admiration to opprobrium. On the one hand Vout quotes an Enlightenment collector, enthusiast and apologist, who ‘argued passionately for sexual tolerance’, and talks of the ‘noble simplicity of the ancients’, whilst on the other we hear from one of the numerous critics of such collectors, who decries their collections for being filled with ‘generative organs in their most odious and degrading protrusion’!
It’s only very recently that many of these once relatively commonplace objects, and this is particularly true of the more risqué ones included here – which include fairly explicit depictions of bestiality, rape and homosexuality (some taboos evolve, others perhaps don’t) – have begun to emerge from the shadow of our more recent Christian heritage, and find their way into public view, beyond the esoteric confines of the ‘museum secretum’. These changing modes of display reflect evolving values, and the ‘Warren Cup’, for example, has enjoyed an odyssey from ‘controversial’ object of private admiration to British Museum shop souvenir!
For me this book, whilst undoubtedly really quite interesting, and filled with many beautiful objects and images (as well as some strange, some disturbing, and some weird or banal), dissects rather than penetrates its subject, and is, rather bizarrely perhaps, almost sexless.
Towards the end of the book, as she starts to sum up, Vout refers to a Barbican show called Seduced (fairly recent at the time of writing) which she describes as ‘a show which put visual stimulation over and above context’. Vout very avowedly does the precisely the opposite.
Another old review, transferred and updated in minor ways.
As Sam Harris attempts to make clear at the start of his book The End of Faith, what we believe is tremendously important. In Harris’ opening scenario he portrays a religiously motivated suicide bomber. This character feels that by killing a bunch of random strangers, who they – and this is the crucial bit – perceive to be their enemies, they are doing God’s work, and thereby also taking a direct short cut to heaven.
In this book Christian Ingrao is looking at something similar, in relation to what highly educated Nazi intellectuals believed, and how their beliefs became actions: hence his title phrase, believe and destroy. Like the infamous image – known as ‘The Last Jew In Vinnitsa’ – used on the books cover, this is a horrible subject.
But where Harris’ book is an easy read, clearly very much intended for the general reader, Ingrao’s book is based on a thesis written for fellow academics, and consequently is a rather tough slog for the non-specialist. Freighted with specialist jargon and many German terms, and neither written nor translated with ease of readability obviously foregrounded (although some terms are explained in a brief glossary, others in the index, and yet more via translator’s notes, overall the approach is haphazard and hard to follow); it’s interesting and worthy, but often feels like swimming through treacle.
One thread that came through strongly for me, albeit not brought out clearly or specifically by the author, is Nazism’s unholy blend of science and religion: in religious terms, Nazism offered believers faith in ‘the expectation of a racial utopia in which the elect would be made as one.’ This faith aspect was in turn founded on a pseudo-scientific biological racial determinism, in which the continued existence of a superior Nordic/Aryan race is threatened – both directly via conflict, and indirectly via miscegenation – by other races, including Asiatics and Slavs, but particularly the Jews, who are seen as ‘parasitic’.
The supposedly scientific side has several strands, some of these come from the unfortunately named area known popularly as Social Darwinism (unfortunately named because it’s based more on the ideas of Herbert Spencer than those of Darwin), including such ideas as ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘might is right’.
But Ingrao barely touches upon this side, and deals instead in the scientific side as manifested by academic professionalism, as in data-gathering, compilation, and extrapolation. This aspect sees the SS intellectuals using what might appear to be scientific principles or methods to bolster their own world views.
Actually this is more like ideology skimpily clad in the apparent trappings of science, as the scientific method is (or ought to be) very different: you study the world, and the results tell you what to believe. With these SS intellectuals, you study the world to confirm what you already think. So, effectively what you have in Nazism is the unholy marriage of two of the worst aspects of belief systems: pseudo-science – an ideological natural fallacy – believed in with religious fervour, written in the blood of those perceived to be enemies.
The siege mentality, based on the unfinished business that many Germans felt was the legacy of WWI – and this is a major theme in Ingrao’s book – allowed many German’s to follow the Führer in believing that their active, discriminatory aggression was a defensive act! I would say that this is precisely the kind of mentality shared by Christian crusaders or Muslim jihadists, and more religious and emotional in its basis than rational or scientific, despite the desire within the higher echelons of the SS and the Nazi machine to pass itself off as founded in science. The emotionally driven atavistic völkisch aspects of this toxic creed clearly trump any kind of rationalism.
Unfortunately, the overly florid, windily verbose academic language Ingrao chooses to employ – a typical sentence: ‘They were, in their very subjectivity, an exceptional source for the history of representations’* – clouds what are essentially simple issues, making it all rather tortuously complex. Also, as with Esdaile’s Napoleon’s Wars, or a book I read on Constantine fairly recently, the nature of Ingrao’s choices, in choosing to study the structural and administrative side of the phenomenon under the lense, make for rather dry reading. So, far from being without interest, this is good, solid academic work, but a pleasure to read it ain’t. Put bluntly: worthy but dull.
The author.
* This is, in fact, a short and relatively clear/easy example. But it sounds as much (or perhaps more?) like a phrase from a postmodern influenced art theory essay, as it does something that might be said of Nazi ideologues.
Another ancient review migrates over to ye blogge. This one must be 10-15 years old? I’m thinking that I’ll try and publish a chunk of Tolkien related posts over the next few days.
Like many, perhaps most, I found my way to The Silmarillion after reading The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. And, again, like others, it took me several attempts to get past the first few chapters. In fact it is only now, some 30 years after I first started reading Tolkien (and I’ve read both The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and other sundry Tolkien works, numerous times) that I’ve been able to read the whole book.
It is in fact a compilation of several writings, put together after J. R. R. Tolkien’s death by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien. It’s this fact that leads me to title my review as I have done: J. R. R. Tolkien’s achievements in creating the legends, histories, geographies and languages of Middle-Earth are truly staggering, but Christopher Tolkien’s work since his father’s death, is likewise monumental.
Evolution is a theory that has changed our understanding of the world, but that doesn’t make some chapters of Darwin’s Origin any easier to get through. But neither does it devalue the worth of the book. And, in his own very different way, Tolkien (and his son) have also contributed to changing our world, by inventing a new one.
Despite the above, I’m not really trying to compare Tolkien or Darwin in terms of their impact on our understanding of ourselves, I simply mention them together because both worked obsessively on their projects, and both produced writings some of which carry you along with rapid drama, and others of which can be a bit hard going.
The dense historical and mythological nature of parts of The Silmarillion can, in places, be pretty arduous, and the large amounts of names, genealogies, and detailed reference to Middle Earth’s topography, may be rather bewildering and hard to grasp (better and more comprehensive maps would still be great, and I for one would prefer that any such maps kept to Tolkien’s original style, but were expanded – at the very least – to include Melkor’s realms in the north of Middle Earth, since he and his lands figure so prominently in much of the narratives. But, like Darwin’s difficult chapter on pigeons, in The Origin, it’s a case of all the parts making for a better whole.
And there are some parts of the book, especially the stuff about Turin, Hurin and Tuor (of which tales Christopher Tolkien has subsequently brought his father’s work to us, to his great credit, first via Unfinished Tales, and more recently The Children Of Hurin, and other similar syntheses) which are fantastically easy reading, and very gripping and exciting, full of the best qualities of Tolkien’s more famous and accessible writings (if a little darker, which actually makes them somewhat more thrilling).
J. R. R. Tolkien’s talent and imagination knew few bounds, and beggar belief. And his son Christopher has played a massively important role in bringing the richness of Tolkien’s unpublished legacy (unpublished in his father’s lifetime, that is) to us. The Silmarillion is a truly and uniquely magnificent book!
A poster by Ben Harff.
NB – A related post of interest, regarding an illuminated version of The Silmarillion, can be read here.
“One morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”
More archival doings. Opening up a new (old!) chapter on Tolkienian Middle-Earthiness!
Whilst I’ve read very varied views on this adaptation, personally I love it. Anthony Jackson is good as the ‘Tale Bearer’, a story telling device of the producers (i.e. not of a strictly Tolkien-ian pedigree), Paul Daneman is a lovably flustered Bilbo (slightly posh and middle aged, which is as Tolkien wrote him), and Heron Carvic – more famous, perhaps, as the original author of Miss Seeton novels – is, for me, an excellent Gandalf.
A full-cast dramatisation, with excellent sound from the radiophonic workshop, this production also benefits from some highly unusual and individual music. This is an aspect of the production some find unattractive, according to my researches, but I’m with the actor Michael Kilgariff, who adapted the 1937 book for this 1968 radio play/serial, and agree that the music actually helps make the production.
Like the books, The Hobbit is aimed at a younger audience than the LOTR, and this version stands, in relation to the BBC LOTR, in exactly the right relation, like a younger sibling. There are aspects that I’m less keen on, such as the voices of some of the creatures, e.g. the Spiders of Mirkwood, or Roarc the old talking crow.* But, all things considered these are minor gripes.
Even now, as ‘big kids’, we love listening to this. It’s atmospheric, fun, by turns ‘epic and homely’, evoking a world at once alien and yet familiar. Love it!
*AMENDMENT
Actually, I’ve changed my mind about these voices.
They’re rather like the Ents; so otherworldly to modern or contemporary minds (or mine, at any rate) it’s just plain hard to give them any kind of voice, without it seeming ridiculous.
I think the voices they come up with here are as good as one could hope for. Certainly Roarc is actually very good. The only one I really struggle with – and again, I think they do their best here – is the singing sparrow.
I guess I fall into the ‘human being’ category mentioned at the close of Professor Kitching’s excellent review of this very interesting book (on Amzon UK’s website), as I’m neither a science teacher or researcher (whilst he doesn’t specify the field, I’m guessing that’s who he’s alluding to!).
As an interested layman, learning about H and his work is both fascinating and yet also slightly frustrating: if, as Segerstrale notes, his ‘mathematical language remained obscure to many of his … colleagues’, and also ‘when writing, he was orientated strictly towards his scientific colleagues, not the general public’, is it any wonder he remains less well known than such popularisers of his own ideas as Dawkins and Ridley?
One of several very interesting aspects of this book that lie beyond the core aspects of Hamilton’s work itself, is how it shows that, despite the potential of an ideal paradigm of science as a disinterested sphere of ‘pure’ reasoning, in the real world things are much messier. The touchy issue of eugenics and its possible relation to H’s research into a genetic basis for altruism is, according to this book, a strong contender for one of the reasons H’s work and ideas were not always welcomed by the scientific and academic community at the time he was pursuing his work. In the post WWII climate, the idea of genetic root causes for human behaviours was decidedly out of favour.
As noted above, Segerstrale herself points out that BH wrote not for general readers but fellow specialists. The absence of a glossary of terms and the endorsements on the back cover suggest Segerstrale does the same. This was one of the first books in a glut of post Darwinian bicentennial reading where I felt I was getting either out of my depth, or just plain losing interest, or both.
Initially aired on BBC R4, this series, like its predecessor [[ASIN:1408427443 Life Stories]], is also available as a lavishly illustrated [[ASIN:0007425120 book]]. This second instalment of enthralling, beguiling and wide-ranging stories, follows the same format as before: 20 episodes, spread over 3 CDs, each approximately 9-10 minutes long. A useful little booklet succinctly outlining each episode is also included.
I love these little nuggets, and frequently listen to several at a time, most often whilst driving. The scope is massive, ranging across time, geography, species and subject with gleeful abandon, and, as the blurb on the box says, Attenborough’s “enthusiasm is as infectious as ever”. Personal favourites from this set include his homage to Alfred Russell Wallace, in which there’s a touching account of Wallace’s early relationship with Darwin, characterised (refreshingly) by mutual respect and admiration, in a situation where jealousy and antipathy could so easily have arisen (compare this with Leibniz, Newton, and ‘the calculus’, in Marcus Du Sautoy’s [[ASIN:1408469650 A Brief History of Mathematics]]); then there’s Attenborough’s own place (or lack thereof) in the story of Charnia, one of the world’s earliest fossils, a fractal form of life which evolution seems to have abandoned, as an early experiment in design.
‘Foreign Fare’ deals with the accidents of historical nomenclature: why are some widely different plants, e.g. the two types of artichoke, ‘globe’ and ‘Jeruslaem’, known by the same name? “The fault, if fault it is, can be traced back to Columbus”, says uncle David, before regaling us with a fascinating account of how some of these situations have arisen. With the very different films ‘Project Nim’ and ‘Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’ both out at the time of this review, the ‘Chimps’ chapter is not just inherently interesting, but topically so, particularly as a dose of reality. Episodes on hummingbirds and butterflies are in places rhapsodic, as Attenborough eloquently conveys his sense of wonder: “astounded… the clearing beyond, was filled with a blizzard of butterflies”. Even simply listing the exotic names of hummingbirds, for example, the ‘sapphire spangled emerald’ (I’d love to see/own John Gould’s work on ‘hummers’, reference to which which seems to form the basis of this chapter), conveys this, but, as he tells how many hundreds of thousands of these beauties were butchered in order to adorn Victorian ladies headgear, he explains that, appalling as this was, it was “their spectacular beauty that accounts for this mania … their particular splendour is their iridescence”.
One thread that’s apparent in several of these stories is the tendency of humans to name animals: Jane Goodall did so with her chimps, Attenborough had his own chameleon, named ‘Rommel’, and there are numerous other instances in various other episodes. Attenborough reflects on this with a good degree of equanimity, allowing the listener to judge for themselves if there’s a difference between the patient scientific methods underlying Jane Goodall’s work with primates, and what Joy and George Adamson did, as foster parents of the lioness Elsa. ‘Quetzalcoatlus’, a giant pterosaur (or ‘winged lizard’), is as exotic as the name promises, and even the people – the eccentric founder of what may possibly have been the world’s first ‘nature reserve’, Squire Waterton, or the Adamsons of ‘Born Free’ fame – are peculiar and remarkable. The series ends on the rather sobering ‘Elsa’ episode, with Attenborough meditating on the difficulties of achieving the right balance in conveying the violence of the natural world (also touched on in the chimps episode), “of which we, after all, are a part.”
I always come away from listening to these stories both better informed about a myriad of interesting things, and with a smile on my face. Appetisingly interesting, this is another trove of treasures, well worth enjoying.
I felt compelled to write this review after reading about eight of the other reviews. As a quick preface: I’m not what you’d call a ‘metal fan’ as such. I grew up on a diet of classic rock (Zep, Cream, Purple etc), and even followed through to the metal of the ‘eighties (Maiden, Metallica, Slayer etc), but my chief musical passions lead me to music like Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, and jazz, funk & soul (Coltrane, Davis, James Brown, The Meters, Curtis Mayfield etc).
My two main points are, however, firstly: that this is – musically at least – phenomenal stuff. Not knowing (or even particularly caring for) genres such as ‘death metal’ etc I can’t compare Meshuggah with all the other bands in this area (e.g. I’ve never heard Fear Factory). As a drummer I can’t help but be awed by Tomas Haake’s incredible drumming, and, by way of illustrating some of my limited knowledge of contemporary metal, I find his whole approach (and that of the band as a complete entity) far more interesting and innovative than that of, for example, Mastodon, or their drummer, the much-lauded Brann Daillor. No offence to Daillor, who’s clearly a brilliant drummer too, it’s just that the Mastodon vibe is much more straight ahead and obvious, which goes for the rhythms and drumming too (and I really quite enjoy some Mastodon stuff by the way).
Before I get to point two, a quick aside re guitars: I think most jazz guitarists would sniff at the idea that the guitar solos are particularly advanced (especially in the harmonic sense: a true genius of the guitar, as long ago as the 1950’s, is Joe Pass, and if you need distortion and intensity, then check out John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu period stuff), but I doubt that many open minded jazz drummers could deny that Meshuggah’s rhythmic prowess and individuality is pretty awe inspiring. Their lead guitar sound is also so Allan Holdsworth-esque at times that the charge of it being derivative could quite easily be made to stick. It’s when the guitars are being used as rhythmic jack-hammers, to bludgeon the senses with the low-tuned and unusual meter angular riffs that one can sensibly talk of Meshuggah’s guitarists as being innovative and interesting.
So, on to point two: the vocals/lyrics. This a tricky and complex area, so I might not be that brief… I have to disagree with several reviewers here in commending the vocals. I mean no offence to the singer either, he does a sterling job. I absolutely love the music, but why is it mandatory in the metal arena to have guttural screaming and morbid lyrics? The music makes some very imaginative departures from the typical metal template… it’s a shame the lyrics and vocal delivery don’t go so far off the map. To qualify: the words are mostly at least interesting, intelligent and display a quasi-philosophical bent (it’s great to hear openly athiest views expressed in music without it being in the guise of pantomime paganism or satanism), which is better than some of the teenage death-core tripe some other ‘dark’ metal bands concentrate on.
I remember a member of Slayer (or was it Dave Mustaine of Megadeth?), possibly Kerry King, saying how lyrics about flowers being sung melodically just wouldn’t work in metal… why not? A subsiduary and related musical criticism is about variety. I like Vashti Bunyan and Meshuggah. Are there any artists (there’s bound to be a few mavericks out there – The Mars Volta kinda lean in this direction at times) who don’t plough such monorail furrows? Beck’s a good example of an eclectic and experimental contempoaray pop artist. Metal could do with being less of a specialist introverted ghetto (the intense claustrophobia of much metal music aptly puts one in mind of a teenage lad’s bedroom, probably one of the places where most ‘dark’ metal is consumed)… y’know, open up those doors and windows, let some fresh air in.
Anyway, ultimately Meshuggah are/were a blast of icy cold fresh air in their own way, and despite (and at times because of) their relentlessly heavy dark vibe remain a fairly unique and singular musical unit. I have my criticisms and all that… but I’m still giving this fantastic album the full five stars… ’cause it’s brain blattingly brilliant. ‘Nuff said.
