Bibliography, June 2008

This is the second of what I think I will make a regular slot. I recorded my reading last month, and rather liked the discipline. So here goes once more:

Bought / Received (28)
L. Adkins, Empires of the Plain
H. Boll, And where were you Adam?
R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
A. Brookner, Hotel du Lac
M. Bulgakov, A Country doctor's notebook
A. Burroughs, Dry
K. Clark, Civilisation
P.K. Dick, The world Jones made
J. Fox, The Book of Martyrs
G. Greene, Stamboul Train
H. Hesse, Strange news from another star
S. Howatch, Mystical paths
J. Lovegrove, Provender Gleed
D. Martin and P. Mullen, No Alternative
V.S. Naipaul, India: A million mutinies now
L. Namier, The Structure of politics in the age of George III
S. Nowell-Smith, The legend of the master
J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey
S. Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox hunting man
B. Scovell, Dickie: A tribute to Harold Bird
J. Solomon, Accessing Antiquity
F. Spufford, The Child that books built
B. Sykes, The Seven daughters of Eve
A.J.P. Taylor, British Prime Ministers and other Essays
G. Usher, Dictionary of Military History
M. Weis & T. Hickman, Elven Star
P. Williams, Dylan as performing artist 1960-73
K. Williams, Complete Acid Drops

Read (12) - asterisks denote acquired this month also
J. Ash, A Byzantine journey
*R. Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
M. Goodwin, Rome and Jerusalem
*G. Greene, Stamboul Train
*H. Hesse, Strange news from another star
*V.S. Naipaul, India: A million mutinies now
*F. Spufford, The Child that books built
C. Thubron, Behind the wall
*B. Sykes, The Seven daughters of Eve
*M. Weis & T. Hickman, Elven Star
*K. Williams, Complete Acid Drops
*P. Williams, Dylan as performing artist 1960-73

A net gain of rather too many books this month (16; mostly from charity shops in the North); next time I am going to try to restrict acquisitions a little so that I start making inroads into my unread piles, which currently stand at an unprecedented high of 7% of my collection. I may well fail, but hopefully not as disastrously.

A good month as well: many of these were excellent and most of the rest disposable rather than bad. This was aided by deliberate selection of some known classics in their fields - Stamboul train is as good as it is famous and while Fahrenheit 451 isn’t as profound as it might be, it was still good. I’ve been reading a bit of Hesse recently, and though nowhere near as good as Steppenwolf, this mythic collection was generally fun, and occasionally profound. It also only took a lunchtime to read.

Elsewhere, Naipaul’s India redeems what I felt he did poorly in An Area of Darkness, and Thubron was fascinating, especially read in conjunction with the Chinese sections of his Shadow of the Silk Road, which I have also read recently. The contrast of both with John Ash’s Byzantine themed travel book is marked. Ash struggles to be more than a well written guidebook, though he has inspired me to get to Cappadocia.

I read The Seven daughters of Eve as part of my push to read more science, and I’m glad I did – it’s a great account of a complex piece of work, though the final imaginative sections were absolute rubbish. The other analytical books this week were also excellent. Goodwin is magisterial on the Jewish and Roman worlds of the first century, though he did lose focus, partly as a result of the scale of the book. The last chapters, though interesting, could have been cut. Spufford’s book on children’s literature was warm, affectionate and fascinating, as well as being more than a little familiar. It felt fitting to slide from this to one of the more fertile of the SF writers of my youth, for the Death Gate series, one I’ve never really got to grips with, but I think may reward re-reading (if I could find the others).

Lastly, one isn’t supposed to read Acid Drops in one go, but I couldn’t put it down. Paul Williams’ book on Dylan is average to poor, though occasionally interesting. The best bit however, is a binning of Tarantula (possibly the worst book I have ever read, with the exception of the Girl in the Box) - which is so splendid I reproduce it below:

"It is very unlikely a reader unaware of Dylan's other work would find anything of merit or interest here. There are occasional clever lines and paragraphs, but even these are quickly rendered unappealing by the phony ironic context that seems to entrap every sentence. The games with language are not liberating or stimulating, but transparent and banal; the rhythms of writing are fun for a sentence or two at a time, but quickly become stodgy, stagnant, sleep- inducing." p.171

Isn't this what we wanted?

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has attended the rising oil price, but it's not entirely clear why. Of course there are some immediate problems, but price increases make solutions economic.

Firstly, they make people use less. The Guardian led on this yesterday, but couldn't quite bring itself to argue that supply and demand appears to be working. Mark you, the Guardian has rather blotted its copybook this week with a long print supplement on Wednesday which extolled the virtues of using less resources in 6 A2 pages

Secondly, it makes other sources of energy more economically efficient, and makes the returns on investment in R&D a better bet. The Economist this week has an excellent supplement.

Of course, this isn't quite a painless as it sounds, and I am insulated from this, being well paid and living in a city without a car. However, it's not going to be a painless transition, so there's not a lot we can do about it.

So aren't price rises what we want?

Why I am not a politician

I am rubbish at this, thankfully. 'This' being understanding the electorate. Despite what I still maintain is silly sloganing (sloganeering?), we seem to have done gloriously well in Henley.

I'm not entirely convinced though. The Conservative share of the vote is mildly up, but approximately in proportion to the Liberal share. While Labour has obviously imploded, we cannot claim the credit for this, so I remain sceptical, but then my record is hardly unblemished.

In praise of Henry Chadwick

When I was young, and politically ambitious, I was very excited by the fabled "double" achieved by William Hague at Oxford, who as successively president of the Conservative Association and the Oxford Union. It hadn't been done since when I went up and wasn't done again until a friend of mine completed it in 2003. However, as it didn't really turn out well for Hague, and - let's be honest - it's not that interesting, it occurred to me there were more impressive and greater double achievements. As I get older, I find myself instead excited by those individuals who display polymathic abilities: Jonathan Sumption, who combines a highly successful practice as a QC with an academic career that is equally stellar.

However, when I read last week that Henry Chadwick had died, an older feeling of veneration for a single - career double kicked in. Chadwick is rare in having held the Regius professorship in Divinity at Oxford then Cambridge, as well as head of house at both Oxford (Christ Church) and Cambridge (Peterhouse); in effect, a double double in his chosen career. It was once said, that 'The Anglican church may not have a Pope, but it does have Henry Chadwick."

He was an astonishing scholar as well. I won't dwell here on his publications and contribution to patristics and late antiquity. By the time I got to Oxford he was in his late 70s, though still publishing and giving the occasional seminar, which were still enormously fascinating. However, I want to record here my personal thanks for one of his shorter and less weighty tomes. Having avoided the early church throughout my undergraduate history career, I read his Pelican history of the early church in 2001. Written in 1967, it is fresh, illuminating and remains brilliant. And it changed my academic life, beginning the process that brought me historically earlier into late antiquity and the early councils. Everyone should read it - it's also short.

His death has been noted by those in his field, just as he was garlanded with honours in his life; the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote his Guardian obituary, from which the quotation above comes, but he passes largely unknown to the great mass of the population. A great shame; for we shall not see his like again.

NH Yes

As I mentioned earlier, I am now a card carrying member of the Conservatives once more, after some years in self-imposed exile over a disagreement on immigration (not the same disagreement that the BNP have with them though). I'm quite pleased to be back and it does make it all more exciting, but the excitement is beginning to pall.

Firstly, they don't leave me alone. I would expect this at a general election, though that does sometimes backfire.* But I get emails all the time now - seven in June alone, mostly telling me to watch Cameron Direct. I ignore them, obviously, but it doesn't make me keen to campaign.

More concerningly, it's all so embarassing. In my welcome letter they sent a mailing that protested against cards (with a membership card attached) and ran through various campaigns. Of these, I'd like to draw people's attention to their NHS campaign (I know, there's a report out now, but I'm not that interested). I'm sure it's very worthy, but really, NH Yes.

Please stop it, rubbish rhymes do not policy make.

* In 2001, just before the election before last, I was rung up by CCO to try to get me to campaign; when I protested I was busy with my full time job, the man on the end of the phone did say (and I paraphrase, but it's pretty close), "yes that's our problem, our members have jobs; not like the gypos on the other side. " This was the beginning of my disillusion with the party at the time

Taxonomy

Why can't people categorise things properly? iTunes appears to think Iris Dement's Infamous Angel is a pop album. It's got a track with the word Opry in it, how hard can it be?

It's very good though.

Life, the universe and everything

The answer to which is, famously, 42. Coincidentally, its also the amount of time that the government thinks the police might need to hold someone without charge in the future, maybe. I don't really have particularly strong feelings on whether 42 days is the right number - let's be honest, everyone is making it up a bit - but this does seem to be one of those issues where everyone comes out of it looking like an idiot.

1. The government doesn't seem to know what it's for: If we need 42 days, let's have it, but not in the future, maybe, or maybe not. If we need to hold people, fine, but then let's not pay them. etc. Absurd.

2. The DUP as unlikely (and unconvincing) powerbrokers: One of my friends felt this was all rather reminiscent of the UUP propping up the Major government in the 90s, but this is slightly more bizarre. Apparently their support was "in the best interests of protecting the safety and security of the United Kingdom." Somehow, I'm not sure their approach chimes with mine. Apparently, it's all for economic benefits, though, to that's all right

3. Rubbish reporting: Statistics: not until I spent all day in the car during the debate did it become apparent that only six people had been detained for 14-28 days (of which three released). A bit more scrutiny might be in order on that one.

4. Rubbish reporting II: (This is Anna's) Non-comparability: much is made of other country's not having such long periods for detention but it's not relevant. They have different rules for evidence. I'm married to a lawyer, so I get told this, but you'd look in vain to be told elsewhere.

5. Ordinary people, suddenly being sanctimonious about liberty: people don't actually care very much about liberty, especially not of the trivial kind we're talking about here. Articles like this by Major are over-egging the point. Let's do the proper homework before we start using words like ancient liberties. Most of the key points in our constitutional history were about money (Civil War, Magna Carta, though it's a bit more complicated than that) or God (Glorious revolution), not liberty, which while clearly a good thing is not really eroded very much by having a lot of CCTV cameras, some DNA records, and a fortnight's extension on detention without charge for a handful of people. See also, otherwise respectable people using the words police state in articles.

6. David Davis: he's a twat. There's no other explanation for it; and there's no need to be more sophisticated about it. Name calling is about the right level of debate for him, but the BBC's list will do though if you need one.

Of course, as we know, according to Douglas Adams, the Question was "what is six by nine?" That didn't make sense either.

(Early) Modern life is rubbish

The eternal doctorate rolls on this week. I went to my first proper Digital Humanities seminar today, where the slightly eclectic set of us working in the area (some of us here) are due to meet and talk about our research over the next few years. And we did today. One of us talked through the context and database structure of her prosopography about the high officials of the court of John III of Portugal (I didn't know either: 1521-1557). And it was profoundly disorientating. It has of course many of the basic elements that I recognise from what I am doing, as you would expect. King's is a major centre for prosopography and she has drawn heavily on the Prosopography of Anglo Saxon England (PASE). However, as she went through the nature of her sources, I was struck by just how different the material is. I've just been considering the problems of hagiographic material in my prosopography and what to do with information that is undated, fantastical and may in some cases refer to a saint who never existed in reality. Whereas Andreia's data - much of it official documents - is dated, sometimes by the day, countersigned, usually located and collected in helpful archives as well as being readable to the modern Portuguese speaker.

I did quite a bit of early modern history throughout my academic career, some quite recently (2006), so I shouldn't be too surprised at this. Yet I am, which I suppose shows the extent of my engagement with the early modern papers I did for finals. However, leaving aside my failings, I think this cleavage between the (early) modern and medieval / ancient periods in history is quite profound, and there are two key issues, one apiece for specialists and one for laymen:


Firstly, the volume of data abruptly changes. No historian of any period before the early modern era has too much data anymore. Although when Theodor Mommsen (a Nobel laureate, who knew?) was working on the PIR in the nineteenth century, he was forced by technological and time constraints to restrict his data collection to the elite, this has pretty much been abandoned since at least the 1980s for us. But not in the early modern era, where a project such as this is restricted to an elite because there are too many sources and there just isn't time to read everything. This has obvious knock on effects on how we read this material, but now is not the time to do that, though I think it explains why I was never any good at modern history.

Secondly, the expectations of reliability and immediacy change (albeit gradually). And this is where non-specialists get turned over. I get the impression that those people who have never gone back to medieval sources (obviously, this is most people) don't really understand what evidence looks like for the period. It's been very noticeable in relation to the church over the last few years, with all this Da Vinci code nonsense. Most people don't understand what well attested looks like. On numerous occasions I have had to explain that that gaps in the Christian record are minor and entirely normal, yet they baulk at gaps in the post-Easter record of fifteen years before any attestation (Paul), and thirty plus before the first narrative account (Mark). Yet, this is normal and in many cases the gap is much greater: the first life of the prophet Muhammad is ninth century.


There is probably a moral here, but I'm sure what it is. It certainly doesn't make me more cheerful about ambiguity and lack of data in the modern world; on the contrary. But it is a lot more fun to study, even if you do have to explain things very slowly to people - too much information is cheating.

Bibliography, May 2008

Most blogs reveal the idiosyncracies of their writers, not so much in what they write, but what they write about. So it's strange that I haven't really written much about books. However, given that facebook's Books application has died and the Proustathon has also ended, I now have nowhere else to record my reading. So, I thought I would do it monthly, copying a format I've seen elsewhere, I thought I would also record what I've bought with some thoughts. If I am really organised I will do this monthly. I've deliberately left out most reference and practical books (oddly, I got / bought 4 cookbooks last month - no need for them to go in). So here goes:

Books Bought / recieved
D. Acheson, Present at the Creation
J. Ash, A Byzantine journey
M. Barrowcliffe, The Elfish Gene
D. Cruickshanks, Adventures in Architecture
A. Delaloude, The Dante Trap
M. Gladwell, The Tipping Point
J. Goodwin, Snake Stone
E. Mendelson, Later Auden
J. Morris, Wales
V. Nabokov, Speak , Memory
P. O'Brian, Master and Commander
M. Proust, Pleasures and Days
M. Satrapi, Persepolis
T. Shah, In Arabian nights
C. Thubron, Behind the wall
... and a bible, in Hebrew, that I cannot read. But it was cheap


Books Read (14)
H.E. Bates, The Darling buds of May
M. Barrowcliffe, The Elfish Gene
M. Bragg, 12 books that changed the world
C. Brown, This is Craig Brown
N. Davidoff, In the country of Country
R. Feynman. What do you care what other people think?
B. Frindall, Bearders: My life in Cricket
B. Johnston, Round Kenneth Horne
I. Kadare, Chronicle in stone
R. Kapuscinski, Travels with Herodotus
G. Keillor, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
J. Mortimer, Where there's a will
V. Nabokov, Lolita
M. Satrapi, Persepolis


In all, it has been a rather good month, driven by two major things: my birthday has meant that I've taken receipt of lots of books (and I might have missed a few out here) without having to pay for them; and leaving my job has meant I have had time to read a lot more, though looking through my list, it appears I have frittered much of this away on rather frivolous books. There are a few exceptions and my standout from the list is Lolita, which is a (slightly uncomfortable) tour de force, especially the first third. Persepolis and Davidoff's search for country roots were both also excellent and I read An Elfish Gene with deep affection, though we're back into the frivolity again there. I am currently ploughing through a rather weightier tome about first century Judaism, so June's comments should be shorter and possibly more profound.