Harrowing. I’ve always wanted a book that could describe simply and clearly what happened in Ireland during The Troubles. Not being Irish, I’ve too ofHarrowing. I’ve always wanted a book that could describe simply and clearly what happened in Ireland during The Troubles. Not being Irish, I’ve too often felt the pall of incomprehensibility daunting me. I never found the right book, until now. Say Nothing is indeed that longed-for book. The prose is just perfectly freighted, and the reader is hoovered into the narrative maelstrom from the very first page with the mad scene of Jean McConville being torn from the arms of her huge and loving family—never to return—by masked goons.
The hatred here is like hatred everywhere—irrational. Be it the Nazis and the Jews, the new “discoverers” of America and its indigenous peoples, the Tutsi and the Hutu—the list is abysmally long. And let’s not forget the Legacy Museum, in Montgomery, Alabama, also known as the lynching museum. I long to visit it. Why? What can I possibly do at this remove? I guess it’s as Victor Klemperer once said, or rather wrote, one must bear witness, even if it’s at second or third hand.
There were five hostile entities in Belfast in the early 1970s. There was the IRA which was Catholic Nationalist and which split into two rival camps: (1) the Official IRA, which was Communist, and sought to remove Northern Ireland from the UK and create a workers' republic; and (2) the Provisional IRA, which sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland, and bring about an independent republic, and who were known as the Provos—the largest and most active republican paramilitary group. Other bellicose parties included (3) the loyalist paramilitaries, which were Protestant militia opposed to Catholic Emancipation and supporting the British occupation; (4) the Royal Ulster Constabulary, RUC, which was a Protestant police force; and finally (5) the British Army, the key military force of a (largely Protestant) nation which had recently lost virtually all of its colonial possessions. Other paramilitaries formed later.
After Jean McConville was “snatched,” to use the tabloid argot, and her ten parentless children were left to fend for themselves in the execrable Divis flats—their father Arthur had died of cancer some time before—no one from the surrounding community took the orphans under their wing. These traumatized children received no care. Even the local parish priest was unsympathetic. With good reason, it turns out, since Jean had been taken by the papist IRA. This resulted in a culture of silence in Belfast not unlike that in the USSR under Stalin, when even next door neighbors would not speak to one another due to the mutual fear of denunciation.
In the Provisional IRA, the members were all very young. Kids, really. They generally volunteered as children, with many assuming important roles by their teenage years and early twenties. These were the snipers and bombers and hit persons then so feared. Dolours Price was eighteen when she volunteered, having been raised by parents who’d both been IRA members back in the 1950s.
It was Dolours Price’s idea to take the bombing campaign to London. ”The English public, removed on the other side of the Irish Sea, seemed only dimly aware of the catastrophe engulfing Northern Ireland. It was a case study in strategic insanity: the Irish were blowing up their own people in a misguided attempt to hurt the English, and the English hardly even noticed.” (p. 117) I abhor the religious irrationality which drives pietists and which here can be traced back to the 12th century. It is a long and labyrinthine historical view you’ve got to have to kill in the name of this very ancient idea. One wonders if everyone was a scholar here—if the origins of the conflict were as fully understood and recalled and recited chapter and verse as would seem necessary to justify so much killing?
It’s now 1973 and the IRA is about to plant four car-bombs in London near government facilities. Dolours Price is given command of the operation. I was living in America when these horrors occurred. I can almost see the headline in the Washington Post. The author is now destroying that distance. The night before the bombings Dolours and her companions go to a West End play by Brian Friel, The Freedom of the City. The next morning London police are scurrying about bright and early to locate the cars; they were tipped off 14 hours in advance by a Provo mole. That day there’s a transit strike so London is chockablock with cars. Fortuitously the cops find one vehicle and disarm it. It’s alarm-clock timer was set for 3:00 p.m. They infer that they have until then to find the three remaining cars.
However, I don’t mean to be too hard on the NRA. So how’s this for balance? “Loyalist gangs, often operating with the tacit approval or the outright logistical assistance of the British state, killed hundreds of civilians in an endless stream of terror attacks. These victims were British subjects. Yet they had been dehumanized by the conflict to the point that organs of the British state often ended up complicit in such murders, without any sort of public inquiry or internal revolt in the security services.” (p. 274)
Say Nothing is nonfiction. It’s every bit as good as, say, Killers of the Flower Moon. In some ways, one might argue, its better, which is taking nothing away from David Grann. But to my mind Killers is a little thin at the end. It almost peters out. Say Nothing by contrast has a consistent verbal density and narrative compression throughout.
How did I not know that the Irish Potato Famine has been justly laid at the feet of Britain, who was exporting food from Ireland for its own needs as one million Irish died and another million emigrated? Now Dolours and Marian Price, locked up with a sentence of twenty years each in H.M.P. Brixton, begin a hunger strike which echoes that genocide. “If the British had employed hunger as a weapon during the famine, it would now be turned around and used against them. Dolours Price had always felt that prison was where an IRA volunteer’s allegiance to the cause was truly tested. Now she told anyone who would listen, she stood more than ready to die.” (p. 151) The young women’s hunger strike will break your heart. That’s the surprise about this book. It knocks you off your moral high horse. Two-hundred and fifty people injured by the bombs—terrible!—but miraculously no one killed. So when the British decide to force feed these young women, you know this is a violation of their civil rights; you know it is wrong; only long after the fact is it condemned and prohibited by the state.
After developing an eating disorder from the 207 days of forced-feeding, Marian is released near death. She has served 8 years. Dolours is released for the same reason after serving 13 years. To have kept her in jail would’ve been to kill her. She renounces the IRA and its violence. We skip ahead to Bobby Sands’s election to Parliament on the 41st day of his hunger strike in 1981; PM Margaret Thatcher’s recalcitrance in the face of all good sense; Sands’s death, followed by nine more hunger strike deaths that summer, one every week or so; the rise of Gerry Adams—blackly tarred for giving away the store as his onetime fighters see it—and with him Sinn Féin, the Good Friday Agreement etc. One aspect of the peace that the GFA did not provide for is the truth and reconciliation process; thus the last part of the book, The Reckoning. Boston College undertakes this role when it is apparent no one else will. (The city has a large Irish-American population.) It’s called Project Belfast. The sheer tonnage of mental derangement and searing regret shouldn’t surprise us, not after a war this prolonged and bitter, but it does, it does.
Then Boston College “screws the pooch,” to quote former test pilot Chuck Yeager, when the old RUC, trying to take down General Adams, obtains the transcripts via subpoena in 2003 or so. None of Boston College’s agreements with the interviewees, it turns out, were ever vetted by in-house counsel, so the pledges to withhold the transcripts until after the interviewee(s)’s death(s) could not be honored. I was reading this and whispering: “oh God, oh my God,” which shows you how clichéd I become when dumbfounded. You may wish to brace yourself....more
I have come to realize, years after writing this review, that is it is marked by a naïve Lamarckism--a belief in the heredity of acquired characteristI have come to realize, years after writing this review, that is it is marked by a naïve Lamarckism--a belief in the heredity of acquired characteristics. But I'll let it stand as a reminder of my errors, and how much I have learned since then.
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I never was much of a genre reader but at some time in my middle years I was assailed by a love of dystopias. There's nothing like a vivid tale of the world ending to truly set me at my ease. It did not occur to me until I read Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium why dystopic narratives were so satisfying on an almost physiological level. I realized it was a hardwired need, evolved by centuries of my whack-job millenarian forebears, for apocalyptic solace. These eschatological needs are still within me and going strong. They include a desire for angels as messengers of the apocalypse, an irrational longing for the rewards of paradise, and an overwhelming desire to witness those less pure of heart than myself receive their fiery comeuppance.
Fortunately, unlike my forebears, I have not had to run riot over the Bavarian countryside acting out my delusions by stringing up debauched clerics and those belonging to the so-called hostile faiths, but have been able to sublimate the evolutionary inanities through art. I am happy to report that The Children of Men does at times rise to that exalted level.
Here is a world in which men have gone sterile. You just can't find fertile semen anymore. Some women, denied their customary reproductive roles, have gone bonkers. They end up baptizing cats and dolls and such. (Other women, one imagines, are dancing a jig so tickled are they to never again have to risk another perineum tear.) One thing I liked was the image of the world preparing to go on without mankind. For in the vacuum left by the end of human fertility all the other flora and fauna seem to redouble their efforts.
Our hero is Theodore Faron. A sardonic at times bitter retired professor of history at Oxford--there are no more children to teach--who ran his daughter over in a tragic accident many years ago. His wife never forgave him, then she started banging this rugby player half her age. Theo happens to be cousin to the Warden of England, Xan Lyppiatt, a childhood friend, who is running a thuggish police state. During the first half of the story the state is in the process of redistributing its thinning population to central locations for purposes of making delivery of services easier. At least that's the excuse. The first half is all clandestine meetings of the dissidents and background into Theo's boyhood relationship to Xan.
Then it turns into a road story not without parallels, though fleeting, to Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Though, it should be emphasized, this is not a post-apocalyptic world going-out-with-a-bang novel, like The Road, but rather a civilization fizzling-out-with-a-whimper story. Nevertheless there is sufficient violence and craziness and survivalist mentalities employed to keep everyone happy. There is an intimation of the second coming, personal betrayal of the basest sort, and headlong hysterical flight. There is an elegant density of diction that is consistent throughout, and I found that the descriptive sections, especially in the action-packed second half of the book, touch on the beautiful. Highly recommended for thriller lovers. Mandatory for lovers of dystopic fictions....more
A dystopic satire set in a future in which an overbearing government tries to deal with horrendous population growth. The government obsesses about whA dystopic satire set in a future in which an overbearing government tries to deal with horrendous population growth. The government obsesses about whether it can feed the vast population. So very Malthusian in that sense. As a means of doing so doctor's hasten the deaths of the sick whose corpses are turned into fertilizer. As until recently in China, fertile couples are allowed only one child. London has grown so wildly that it has reached its south and east-most shores. It can only grow north and west now. Soon it will swallow Wales and Scotland. First published in 1962....more
A dystopian novel about the advent of micro-sized robots by an Italian inventor who must keep his unruly staff placated and happy if he is to continueA dystopian novel about the advent of micro-sized robots by an Italian inventor who must keep his unruly staff placated and happy if he is to continue to be a Steve Jobs-like commercial success. The prose is lean, uncluttered. Very short sentences. Captain Richard is looking for work and finds it--somehow--at the very high-tech factory of the robot manufacturer, Zapparoni. This man, an entrepreneur, has revolutionized modern life with his robots. Nothing is done as it once was for his robots have permeated virtually every aspect of life and business. The narrator is a former cavalry man still stung by the loss of his profession in World War I. He was appalled by how the cavalry was rendered obsolete by the invention of tanks, machine guns and long range artillery, and by the disruption in the ranks caused by this change in military technology. More generally he is not sure how it is possible for him to be a man in this radically changed world. Many around him find their purpose in fascism, but Captain Richard rejects that ideologically riven path. It would be possible, if he were a vindictive man, for him to see in Zapparoni all that has gone wrong with contemporary society, and to envision Zapparoni's destruction as the necessary corrective. There are a number of pages when the reader thinks that this is the expectation about to be fulfilled. But Jünger shakes off this predictable ending for something superficially reassuring for its conformity to the new standards, but ultimately more startling because of it....more
Nicola Six's legion of men don't have name or lives. They're more like units, monads, and as such disposable.
"ConsidNotes on fourth or fifth reading.
Nicola Six's legion of men don't have name or lives. They're more like units, monads, and as such disposable.
"Considered more generally - when you looked at the human wreckage she left in her slipstream, the nervous collapses, the shattered careers, the suicide bids, the blighted marriages (and rottener divorces) - Nicola's knack of reading the future left her with one or two firm assurances: that no one would ever love her enough, and those that did were not worth being loved enough by. The typical Nicola romance would end, near the doorway of her attic flat, with the man of the moment sprinting down the passage, his trousers round his knees, a ripped jacket thrown over his ripped shirt, and hotly followed by Nicola herself (now in a nightdress, now in underwear, now naked beneath a half-furled towel), either to speed him on his way with a blood libel and a skilfully hurled ashtray, or else to win back his love, by apologies, by caresses, or by main force. In any event the man of the moment invariably kept going. Often she would fly right out into the street. On several occasions she had taken a brick to the waiting car. On several more she had lain down in front of it. All this changed nothing, of course. The car would always leave at the highest speed of which it was mechanically capable, though sometimes, admittedly, in reverse. Nicola's men, and their escape velocities ..." (p. 25)
I'm no great fan of Science Fiction, but this novel transcends the genre. It has a corker of a plot, which I won't spoil here. The only thing I was noI'm no great fan of Science Fiction, but this novel transcends the genre. It has a corker of a plot, which I won't spoil here. The only thing I was not crazy about was the way Priest uses dialog throughout to relay a lot of exposition. That's okay early in the novel because the narrator is a young apprentice of a guild; it's natural for him to ask questions about his new duties and surroundings. Toward the end of the book, however, the device shows its creakiness. But don't let me put you off the scent. The suspense is beautifully handled. You never quite know where the narrative will end up. I think the book's real strength is its masterful use of omission. It withholds beautifully the information the reader needs to solve everything. But at the same time one is not frustrated by that because one is borne along so expertly. Priest subtly hints at resolutions which never occur. Just when you think you know where he's going, he doesn't. Read it....more
Zamyatin's theme here is the impossibility of being fully human in totalitarian society. His future is not technologically superior. It contains littlZamyatin's theme here is the impossibility of being fully human in totalitarian society. His future is not technologically superior. It contains little of what we'd call high-tech. This is still very much the age of steam. The story seems both forward-looking and dated, almost paradoxically so. The mood it inspires is rather like that of Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis. I liked that. It was like finding this artefact of world lit. Another piece in the long history of dystopias—and one that influenced George Orwell. But We is worth reading for more than historical reasons. In Cormac McCarthy's The Road we are in a post-apocalyptic thus post-technology future. In We science is very much at the service of OneState. Thanks to "our glass," with its steel-like properties, buildings are completely transparent, so one can see everything everyone else does. Except during sex when one can lower one's blinds, with prior authorization of course. The fictional patterning is admirable throughout, but there are inconsistencies of logic. For instance, the spy agency of OneState known as the Guardians seems inanely feeble in comparison to, say, the efficient quasi-Stasi of 1984. But then Orwell was writing more than 25 years later when advanced ideas like television were in the air. For D-503 everything is fine and dandy. He begins by being a rather tiresome booster of OneState. He's happy sharing O-90's favors with R-13. He's happy with his work on the INTEGRAL which is some sort of missile, time-capsule affair destined for other civilizations on other planets. (Later, when it flew, I was assailed by mental footage of Buck Rodgers' low-tech rocket jiggled on fishing line before the camera.) Everything is fine with D-503 until he falls passionately in love with I-330, who is both beautiful and a willful transgressor of state laws. She's a revolutionary. I-330 is constantly gaming the system. And because D-503 is insanely in love with her, he's drawn into her crimes for which death appears to be the only possible punishment. There are a number of disconnected images, scenes that don't quite fit with the otherwise lucid patterning of the novel. It's as if the book never made it through it's final draft. But I, ordinarily so unforgiving, was willing to live with that. After all it's an artefact. If you're seeking perfection this is not your novel....more
This is an excellent dystopia. It's certainly every bit as good as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or P.D. James's The Children of Men. It's fThis is an excellent dystopia. It's certainly every bit as good as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale or P.D. James's The Children of Men. It's far better than Yevgeny Zamyatin's dashed off We. I'm rereading it now. What higher praise is there? Not to be missed....more
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