Notes from a small island

Notes from a small island
A weblog by Jonathan Ali

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Just read a witty little piece on "How the t-shirt war was won" at the recently concluded ICC Champions Trophy, via Abeni, a (relatively) new blogger, from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. A belated welcome, Abeni.

And in agreement with the article--and with due apologies to Brian Lara--King Viv indeed reigns supreme.

posted by Jonathan | 2:48 PM 0 comments

Thanks to Nicholas for linking to Wayne Brown's latest column in the Jamaica Observer. I'm not a regular reader of that newspaper's online edition, so I don't usually read Wayne Brown, and haven't read him much since he left Trinidad for Jamaica a number of years ago.

Reading the column, on the Haiti situation, I found myself wondering, why, in praising Jamaica's empathic relationship (as he sees it) with that beleaguered country, Brown thinks it necessary to be critical of Trinidad for lack of same.

Brown writes:

"David Rudder [Trinidadian singer/songwriter] may have sang famously once, 'Haiti, I'm Sorry'; but Trinidadians singing along did so callowly, I feel - with almost the same inexpensive sentimentality with which, back in the 80s, they sang 'We are the world'. The Trinidadian has a kneejerk fastidiousness - 'Poor? You ent see 'poor' until you see how Haitians poor, boy!' - and a basic bewilderment. Who are these Haitians, really? I mean, they don't even play cricket!"

Brown may well be right in what he says here, but he fails to note the reasons for the Trinidadian view of Haiti, or, the reasons why Trinidad does not have the relationship with Haiti that Jamaica seems to do. Trinidad does not have the commonalities that Jamaica has with Haiti: the very similar pasts of long-standing plantation systems, both rife with slave rebellion; the majority black populations in both countries (although, in saying "Haitians and Jamaicans derive from the same racial stock" Brown ignores the significant Chinese, Indian and white minority populations in Jamaica); and Jamaica's obvious geographical proximity to Jamaica (which Brown does not take into account).

If Brown were to look at a country that Trinidad does have closer ties to--Grenada--he'd see another scenario. The outpouring of support and relief aid, most of it spontaneous, that has gone out, and continues to go out, from Trinidad (and Tobago) to Grenada in the wake of the ravages of Hurricane Ivan has been nothing short of tremendous.

Also, why is Brown grudging in his acknowledgement of Trinidad's promise of aid for Jamaica after Hurricane Ivan? (Aid relief figures are being bandied about by the prime minister without his yet having received Parliamentary approval, but that's another matter.) Not only is Brown's tone indicative of an extreme reluctance to applaud Trinidad for helping its Caribbean neighbours (including Haiti; and Trinidad also was by and large opposed to Aristide's ouster earlier this year), he also finds it necessary to mention--not just once, but twice--that he wishes the current economic upturn Trinidad is experiencing were happening to Jamaica instead. Why does an economic boom in Jamaica--which I'd love to see--have to be at Trinidad's expense?

I used to think I was missing out by not reading Wayne Brown's columns. But if this unexplained anti-Trinidad bias is indicative, perhaps I haven't really been missing anything after all.

posted by Jonathan | 2:30 PM 0 comments

Happy second blogiversary to Ryan and the West Indies Cricket Blog. Long may this fine innings continue.

posted by Jonathan | 11:13 AM 0 comments

Monday, September 27, 2004

I watched Dr. Strangelove (full title: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb) over the weekend.

Dr. Strangelove is a favourite film of mine. A satire about the Cold War and what would happen if the Bomb were ever actually launched, it's one of the most hilarious, most fantastical, and considering its year of release (1964) as well as the ending (which Michael Moore ripped off in Bowling for Columbine), one of the most audacious films ever made.

The movie's chock-full of great moments. The scene where Peter Sellers as the American president, Merkin Muffley, is on the phone to the inebriated Soviet premier, Kissoff, is particularly inspired; Sellers as former Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove is pure genius; and when the Soviet ambassador and the gung-ho General "Buck" Turgidson come to blows, Sellers-as-President utters perhaps the single funniest line ever in a film: "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"

Dr. Strangelove is, of course, patently absurd; it was meant to be. But watching it in these times, it doesn't appear as absurd as all that. With the countdown to the US presidential election on and GW Bush seeming more and more likely to secure four more years, we can be very assured the new Cold War, the war on terror, will continue. (I refuse to capitalise Bush's personal crusade; I won't give it any more legitimacy than it deserves, however "real" its proponents think it to be.)

Bush's hubristic determination to follow his current course of action, allied with--even premised on--his belief in divine sanction for his deeds, isn't that far removed from the Dr. Strangelove scenario and General Jack D. Ripper's belief in a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the West. Ripper's crackpot conviction that the Commies plan to take over through the contamination of bodily fluids (um, see the film) leads him to put in train the events that will ensure the destruction of the world; Bush, while perhaps not on the same team, is certainly in the same league. I can't say that I'm looking forward to how this movie is going to end.

posted by Jonathan | 12:51 PM 0 comments

Indeed, a sight for sore eyes.

posted by Jonathan | 8:04 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

-- "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, who yesterday turned seventy.

posted by Jonathan | 3:29 PM 0 comments

Reviews of VS Naipaul's new novel, Magic Seeds have begun to appear; Nicholas links to Anita Sethi's in Glasgow's Sunday Herald.

Siddhartha Deb in the New Statesman says:

"Naipaul's gift for social observation has always had to struggle against the current of his political sensibility, his unwillingness to register the full implications of what his novelist's eye has sought out. In this book, where the idea being confronted is the rationale behind mass political movements, his characteristic feeling for form, language and character is swamped by a tide of distaste for Maoists, Indian peasants, British workers, white liberals and women."

And he concludes, echoing Naipaul's pronouncement some years ago that the novel is dead:

"The novel as a form may not be exhausted, but Magic Seeds shows us a writer who has nothing more to tell us until he reinvents himself and his world."

Sudipta Datta in India's Sunday Express is also displeased by what she sees as Naipaul's prejudices:

"Willie lives in a vacuum, and what’s more confusing is the writer’s stranglehold over this character. Naipaul’s biases — a disgust for guerrillas, Indian farmers (cricket people/matchsticks whose minds have gone after centuries of malnourishment), English masses (dole-scroungers) — creep into the book, and into Willie’s and others’ mouths."

Other reviews aren't as damning. In fact, Philip Hensher in the London Telegraph is greatly impressed by Magic Seeds:

"Psychologically, this has all Naipaul's celebrated subtlety - he quietly notes when an Englishwoman unconsciously reveals herself by using the characteristic vocabulary of her lover. In style, it is unmistakably a 'late work'. Like his characters here, but more clear-sightedly, Naipaul has steadily renounced many of his previous luxuriances. After A House for Mr Biswas, the knockabout comedy disappears; after the magnificent A Bend in the River, the scornful and resonant irony fades away; and by now, he has started to drop the lushly physical descriptive mode which, in The Enigma of Arrival, mounts a serious challenge to Conrad. What is left is a style of narrow, exquisite refinement."

Anthony Thwaite, however, also writing in the Telegraph, is not quite sure what to make of the book:

"At the end of one passage, Willie says: 'And, as so often with her when she was soothsaying or story-telling, we couldn't tell at the end how we had got to where we had got. Everybody just had to look solemn and stay quiet for a while'. That's rather how I feel about Magic Seeds."

India's Outlook, meanwhile, dares to suggest that Naipaul may be past his prime:

"Magic Seeds, unfortunately, is no more than disparate experiences and ideas offered to the reader in the form of a novel. Is this the inevitable outcome of an author reaching a stature which makes it impossible for anyone to edit his work? The tragic loneliness of success? Or a casualness that comes from the confidence that there is an audience waiting? Whatever the reasons, the novel, sadly, conveys a sense of a writer slipping from the exacting standards he had set for himself.

"It is hard to believe that the man who wrote books like A House for Mr Biswas or The Enigma of Arrival has written this novel. Somewhere along the way, an honest, creative self-exploration turned into barren, narcissistic self-absorption.... Naipaul’s criticism of Dickens was that he died of self-parody, words that come perilously close to what Naipaul is doing to himself."

The Scotsman is more complimentary of Naipaul's literary gifts, and thinks we may end up with a trilogy:

"The ending leaves us far from certain that Willie’s story is complete. I look forward, with hesitations, to the prospect of a third volume. In spite of its austere and ungenerous vision, Magic Seeds is pleasingly well-paced and, for the most part, elegantly written. It also reminds us that the Nobel committee is willing to honour a talented maverick."

India's Business Standard is rather non-commital; this piece is more than mildly entertaining, if a little forced.

posted by Jonathan | 9:25 AM 0 comments

Monday, September 20, 2004

Where else in the world would this particular grouping of writers have any meaning? "Britain did this to us," is how Gary Younge put it. "Before we came here our parents were from all over the Empire. But being in Britain gave us all a common identity." From where I stand it's difficult to see anything good about the British Empire and its aftermath, but this photograph, with all its shades of ethnicity, does represent one positive legacy. A new group of people who are, in one way or another, part of Britain but who bring with them experience and creativity from many different parts of the world.

posted by Jonathan | 3:44 PM 0 comments

Monday, September 13, 2004

When there's a pause I ask him if he can ever imagine a time when he can no longer write?

'I think it will happen and I think it will be extremely painful. Without writing, everything will become insipid. Reading would have no point, because a writer reads with a purpose.'

Nadira laughs. 'I can tell Tim what you said to me: when I've finished writing, I will do reviews.'

'No,' says Naipaul quickly, 'I would not do that. I have changed my mind.'

'You said you were going to destroy a lot of big reputations!' Nadira says.

'Now,' he says, 'I think it is not worth it.'

'That's what I said,' says Nadira. 'I said: you do that, Vidia, and no one will come to your memorial service.'

Naipaul considers this. 'There are very few writers over 72, you know,' he says, 'who have written well.'

I am about to suggest Saul Bellow, when he reminds me who he considers his peers to be.

'Tolstoy perhaps,' he says. Then, bleakly: 'It was at 72 that Ibsen had his stroke.'

posted by Jonathan | 9:04 AM 0 comments