Tag Archives: author

Things I love: A Confederacy Of Dunces

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The perverted (and I suspect quite dangerous) mind of Clyde has devised still another means of belittling my rather invincible being. At first I thought that I might have found a surrogate father in the czar of sausage, the mogul of meat. But his resentment and jealousy of me are increasing daily; no doubt they will ultimately overwhelm him and destroy his mind. The grandeur of my physique, the complexity of my worldview, the decency and taste implicit in my carriage, the grace with which I function in the mire of today’s world – all of these at once confuse and astound Clyde.

So writes Ignatius Reilly, hero of A Confederacy Of Dunces, in his trusty Journal, one of the main devices employed by the novel’s author, John Kennedy Toole. I’ve recently rediscovered this incredible book as Gemma’s currently reading my copy and I’ve purloined an audiobook version to listen to on my journey to and from work.

‘Dunces’, for those who haven’t yet read it, is one of the finest comic novels ever written. Telling the story of Reilly and his one man struggle against modernity (and his valve), the book’s set in New Orleans in the 1960s and features a range of outlandish and hilarious characters, though none more outlandish or hilarious than Ignatius himself. If you’ve never read it, go and buy a copy tomorrow, stop reading whatever you were reading before, and devour this masterpiece. If you’ve already read it, read it again.

‘Antisistema’ activist ‘stole’ €492,000 from banks, to prove how stupid they are

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This is a brilliant story.

Basically, this guy claims to have defrauded several banks and Caixas (savings banks) of €492,000, purely in order to prove how easy it was to do. He used the money to publish 200,000 copies of his free newspaper, Crisi, which denounces the world financial system for inefficiency, dishonesty, living in a make-believe land and causing poverty and famine throughout the world. The money not spent on the Crisi newspaper project was given to charities and NGOs. And the author has also fled Spain (understandably) and will only return when his crimes have been pardoned.

The author couldn’t really have timed this better as the world’s financial markets are still reeling from the largest crisis since 1929, and the insurance giant AIG has just been nationalised by the US government (something they refused to do for Lehman Brothers just the other day).

Opinion is divided on who exactly is to blame for this calamitous situation. I think it’s obviously the bankers’ fault as they’re the ones playing with imaginary money, things they don’t own and other things which they invent the value of. Banking analyst, Diana Choyleva made the incredible claim on Monday’s Newsnight that central banks (and therefore, by extension, governments) were to blame for the crisis because they had allowed a long period of low policy (interest) rates to occur, they allowed a situation to develop whereby bankers felt almost obliged to take more and more risks. In other words, bankers are nothing but irresponsible risk-taking children with no control over their actions, who need to be reigned in better. I’m not sure how well that will go down with her banking chums.

Actually, there have been a lot of people who put this entire crisis down to poor or ineffectual regulation. Yes, the very same regulation which was previously railed against as strangulating and diametrically opposed to the ‘ethics’ of neo-liberal free market capitalism. Of course, the real problem is the system of so-called free market capitalism. From inventing vast amounts of ‘value’ where no true capital exists, to deregulating money markets, this socio-economic ideology has done nothing more or less than place the fate of pretty much every living person under the direct control of three unelected, practically unseen organisations. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation are the tripartite leadership and main proponents of this ideology, and they are all wholesale controlled by the United States government.

If we are ever to escape this inherently unstable and totally illusionary cycle of boom and bust, it will not be, as Gordon Brown thought, via the means of free market capitalism which is, after all, the name of the problem itself.

Things I like: O alienista (The Psychiatrist)

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About eight years ago, I lived in Fremantle, Western Australia. I had a great time there, working as a door-to-door salesman (more on this in the future), getting into scrapes, going clubbing and listening to Royal trux and the Flaming Lips. I also indulged my habit of wondering around second-hand bookshops looking for new, interesting books that I thought I’d enjoy.

One such book was a collection of Latin American short stories edited by Thomas Colchie (it’s still available second-hand from Amazon or you could spend a pleasant afternoon in an actual shop, looking for it). The anthology is packed with moving and amusing stories by writers from all over Latin America, translated into English. At the time, I knew nothing about Latin American authors (still don’t, really), except that I had enjoyed the dreamy romance and masculine mendacity of Love In The Time of Cholera.

I devoured the collection and have read it several times since. But one story I always come back to, and must have read nine or ten times now is The Psychiatrist (O alienista) by the famed Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. First published in 1882, The Psychiatrist tells the story of one Dr. Simão Bacamarte, a famous physician who decides to start studying psychiatry. He constructs a mental hospital in the town of Itaguaí and begins the process of committing those who appear to be mentally ill according to his theories.

The story is an obvious metaphor for the abuse of science, power and authority on the part of Bacamarte but it’s also a stinging (and hilarious) indictment of bureaucracy, populism, demagoguery and selfishness. Another fascinating aspect of the story is that even though it was written in the 1880’s, if not before, it seems to gently foreshadow much of the madness that was coming with the century ahead.

In turn funny and thought-provoking, O alienista is also helped along by the very modern direct-narrative form employed by its author. Machado de Assis had a very interesting background as he was apparently the son of a mulatto housepainter and a Portuguese washerwoman, not an upbringing which one would expect to produce a famous writer and journalist (at least, not in the 19th century). His writing is clear, simple, witty and absorbing and The Psychiatrist almost feels like it might have been written in 1952.

If you’ve not been lucky enough to enjoy this fine piece of literature, I cannot recommend it strongly enough. It’s almost certainly available in numerous anthologies and if you find a copy of Colchie’s, it’ll be accompanied by a fine selection of great Latin American writing.

Update: Apparently, you can still buy the anthology I have, published under a different title.

George MacDonald Fraser: 1925-2008

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I was sad to hear about the death yesterday of George Macdonald Fraser, author of the Flashman series of historical comic novels. His books were politically incorrect, naughty, adventurous, educational and above all seriously funny. They charted the story of the British Empire through arch-cad, Harry Flashman’s eyes, placing this coward and poltroon at many of the key events and battles of the mid to late 19th century. He wasn’t, as some will claim, an apologist for empire or colonialism… far from it. In fact, MacDonald Fraser occasionally used his writing to warn of the dangers present in the waging of imperialist campaigns far from home.

Flashman remains, in my opinion, one of the great comic characters of the English novel and now his creator has died without giving any answer as to how Flashy managed to fight on both sides during the American Civil War.

I nearly shed a manly tear.