Literary Success

Literary Success 

The desire, the felt need, to talk is surely the need to be heard; and the desire to write is surely the desire to be read.

We seldom talk to ourselves, aloud, and appear odd when we do. (The unceasing chatter of internal monologue is something different.) Yet we write page after page of unread prose, sustained (I suppose) by the thought that those pages may be read by someone, sometime. 

I am reading Virginia Woolf's "Diary", volume three, 1925-1930. It is clear that she minds extremely whether or not her work is being read; and will be read by posterity. Then, following the admiring reception in 1925 of "Mrs. Dalloway" by certain critics, she relaxes. She then claims, with T.S. Eliot and E.M. Forster, that it is the writing alone that matters; the capturing of a thought; the moulding of a sentence. 

I propose the thesis that we do, absolutely, need to be read, by at least some people, the discerning few; perhaps only by family, perhaps only by one person. But, once we are granted that minimal audience, we can then concentrate on, and relish, the power and the beauty of our prose. 

It rankles, somewhat, that for some people the words flow from their pens straight into the best-seller list. Are those best-selling novices blest with a natural felicity, or the accident of a good plot; or are they perhaps great mimics, following a formula? For others, there are years of apprenticeship. For Virgina Woolf, for example, there were ten years and three unread novels before her two masterpieces. 

It must matter what we write as well as how we write it, but right now I am worrying about writing style and will wonder on another day about hooking the interest of the reader. 

How can we improve our writing style? Can we self-improve? Can we read our own prose with a sufficiently critical eye to see where we are being boring, or ambiguous, or trite, or illogical, or wrong. One problem is that we know already what we mean to write, and may not even read our own text accurately. A further and more insidious problem is the narcissus-trap, of so liking the thoughts we believe we are successfully expressing, that we accept our own work too readily.

It would be a great help if we could obtain outside help, offered so sensitively as to be emotionally acceptable; perhaps doing no more than encouraging us (as writers) to criticise ourselves; perhaps using bland key-words to flag, not actual objections, but categories of problems; like logic, rhythm, spelling, clichés;  so bland as to be unarguable.

This would not guarantee that our prose becomes compelling, accessible, or even readable; but it would surely guarantee that it improve.

Virginia Woolf, in her "Diary", often asks herself what she is doing in that exercise, in her case; perhaps honing her skill, capturing observations to feed into future novels, and recording conversations. In 1926, after 10 years of sporadic but persistent diary-keeping, she even raises the possibility that her diaries might eventually be published. I find them (and Anne Bell's foot-notes) fascinating, and read steadily on, two pages at a stretch. 

My own blogging started as an attempt to understand a topic (banking, debt, Ash die-back, COVID, the origin of morals, international law, etc).  As a result my blog lacks focus. It is unlikely that any single reader will find adjacent posts interesting. Yet, I think they are being read, a  little. (And not just by robots, though those undoubtedly dominate. Perhaps 1% of the 140,000 visits recorded by the blog are real people; perhaps 0.1%.).

(Comments direct to cawstein@gmail.com are welcomed.)

Decisions

Decisions

I hate making decisions. 

In a restaurant, I clutch the menu, dithering between the candidate dishes till the waiter comes to me. Even then I dawdle, till I plump for one (or the other) of my favoured two. I then look around the table, with relief, and a faint glow of triumph, as though I had just completed an exam. And I watch with surprise as the remaining diners grapple so easily with their own dilemmas. 

Why do I so hate decisions?

I have often thought it might be because I have what Lewis Carroll called "the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind". That sounds a lot better than admitting to being hopelessly indecisive. But then I fear I am flattering myself; indecision is after all a handicap and not a super-power. 

Another explanation with which I have often toyed, is to suggest that instinctively and habitually I have guided my life by reason, rather than by emotion, or will. Which, I ask myself, is better: Shepherd's pie or Lasagne? Of course, I realise that I do not know; I lack any relevant data. It does not occurs to me that I could simply shut my eyes and imagine putting a forkful of each into my mouth.

My standard recourse is to toss a coin. Not an actual coin. That would be altogether too geeky! But I have evolved a random-number generator in a corner of my brain which I can spin. And as it slows towards its resting place, I point out to myself, that if I cannot detect a preference, then it cannot matter – much. 

Furthermore, if I find that I do not like the decision of the spinning coin, I can over-rule its choice. I remain boss.  After all, dammit, it is I, not the coin, that has to eat the dish. And thereby I have finally tricked myself into imagining eating that rather bland potato topping. Ugh!

– = – ≡ – = – 

Some decisions are more important than others. For example, choosing a wife. I do not remember floundering around that fateful, life-determining, decision in my case. Perhaps it was she, not I, that decided. But I do remember chatting with a younger friend just after I had married. "I know", I said, "you have practically none of the relevant information! You have simply to shut your eyes and jump, and hope for the best."  So, I suppose there must have been elements of that in my own case. 

Was it good advice? I sometimes wonder. It was fifty years ago. He is still married, while I have had thirty five years of a second bachelordom. Mind you. I have never regretted my decision to marry that girl, and we have three successful children to love and admire as they grow up; and learn, somehow, to make their own decisions. 

                     The Psychology of Terrorism

Under the series heading 'Just the Facts' Gerald Posner posted on 5th May 2024 a reasoned plea titled 'Words Matter: Why Not Call A Terrorist a Terrorist?'. 

He detected, in parts of the main-stream press,  a reluctance to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. Apparently Associated Press says that "the terms terrorism and terrorist have become too politicized and [are] often applied inconsistently."  Likewise the world affairs editor for the BBC, John Simpson, said last October that terrorism "is a loaded word," and that "it's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn......".

Gerald Posner thinks otherwise. He wants to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. He thinks that calling Hamas 'militant' is not strong enough; that it 'normalizes' their 'horrific acts of terrorism'.

I do not think the terms 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' are useful in this situation. They are ill-defined, and tend to obscure the issues. When an angry many loses his temper, he loses the argument; vilifying the enemy is similar; it does not help. 

Calling Hamas a terrorist organisation adds nothing except an unnecessary and unfocussed implication of disapproval. It points to the scary nature of their criminal actions, and hints at a deliberate use of fear to enhance the military and political effectiveness of their crimes. As though such a strategy was not used by large and disciplined armies; nor allowed by the laws of war; because it breaks the rules, like hitting below the belt. Yet, as normally used, the term "terrorist" describes the attitude of the onlooker more than the nature of the crimes. It sheds little light on the psychological motivation of the perpetrator.

Hamas is certainly 'militant'. From the level of support given to Hamas, it seems that many of the 2 million people of Gaza feel desperate. With inadequate weapons, a bunch of brave zealots, maddened by decades of frustration, rush out and attack a powerful, ever-encroaching and inexorable enemy, which is supported and equipped by a superpower. What use is that? 

But what else could they do? Their protests were not heard, and their rockets proved useless. They had only their fists and kitchen knives. 

Who said Palestine belongs to the Jewish people; was it God or Mr. Balfour? And, whoever made the declaration, were they right to do so? 

Is there no grown-up person in the room to explain how mixed races and mixed religions can live together? It worked, more-or-less, under the Babylonians, and the Romans, and perhaps best of all under the Turks. 

Inequality: good or bad?

 Inequality: good or bad?

       This post has been revised. Please see the new version at:

https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2025/02/how-bad-is-social-inequality.html 

Pacifism: exploring non-violence.

 Pacifism: exploring non-violence.
(See Notes and Comments below)

Introduction.

Quakers are known for their consistent repudiation of war. But times change. Wars change. Our understanding of heaven and hell changes. Do we need to re-think our readiness to fight (in defence of self, or others, or in defence of our commercial interests)? Not all Quakers affirm the peace testimony; some fought in the second world war. What follow are some of the thoughts that occurred to me.

Quaker Pacifism.

A principled refusal to fight under any circumstances, is the best known feature of Quakerism. The 'Quaker Peace Testimony' is clearly and forcefully expressed in many places, and by many witnesses. 

Thus, William Dewsbury wrote (in 1655) "And the word of the Lord came up to me and said, "put up thy sword into thy scabbard; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my children fight", which word enlightened my heart and discovered the mystery of iniquity, and that the kingdom of Christ was within, and the enem[y] was within, and was spiritual, and my weapons against them must be spiritual, the power of God." [Note1]

In 1693, William Penn wrote "A good end cannot justify evil means, nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it". [Note 2]

Robert Barclay, in 1678, underlined the consistency of this pacifist stance with the direct teaching of Jesus in such gospel passages as: "Resist not evil", "Give also thy other cheek", "Love thine enemies" and  "Pray for those that persecute you and those that calumniate you". He could have added "Blessed are the peacemakers".  Yet many people who profess, as Christians, to follow the teachings of the "Prince of Peace", find themselves going to war, and praying to God for victory. 

However, Nietzsche scoffed at these teachings of Jesus, calling it slave morality by which meekness is elevated and nobility downgraded. I think many fellow Britons would agree with Nietzsche and would rather chance a fight than concede defeat without a struggle.

The refusal to fight with 'outward' weapons therefore runs right to the heart of what it is to be a Quaker. Do we respond to violence with violence, like the dominant type of savage human? Or do we avoid all (unnecessary) killing? Is war even good, for the species?

The two great wars of the 20th century brought home to millions of perfectly ordinary Europeans  these questions about the morality of war. The first World War seems to have been the devastating result of imperial pride. It quickly became obvious that the foot-soldiers on either side were being tricked  by their leaders into sacrificing their own lives and murdering their neighbouring brothers. Compulsory conscription was introduced in 1916. Some 16,000 (predominantly Quakers) sought exemption on conscientious grounds (political or religious). The majority were refused and were sent to prison. It took  courage, but the State did eventually recognise that there could be a conscientious refusal to fight. 

The second World War emerged from the nineteen thirties in much the same way as the first – as an imperial war. It was only at the end of the war that the moral depravity of the Nazi regime was unambiguously documented. Then (in retrospect) one might conclude that standing up to Hitler might have been the right thing to do.

In the present century, there have been, and still are, a surprising number of small wars in various parts of the world that do not demand, and largely escape, our notice: Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan. Perhaps racial or religious wars, exacerbated by scarcity and population pressure.

However, several other wars of the present century are presented to us by our media as just wars.  We are encouraged to consider the crimes of the enemy regimes (whether of Saddam Hussain, Bashar al-Assad, or Vladimir Putin) sufficient to justify war. Or a sufficient threat to our own peace. We pay for shells and drones to kill Russians and Palestinians, thereby  stimulating those to kill Israelis and Ukrainians. Sincere moralists might still believe that there is such a thing as a just war; e.g. when the enemy is undeniably wicked, and the only way to stop his terror is by fighting him (and winning). Note, however, that we are only presented the case for our own side of the dispute, and a brief reflection will suggest that many of our 'enemies' appear to be equally convinced of the justice of their war aims. 

But what if there were an undeniably bad man with a bomb, or a delusional maniac with millions of brainwashed followers? How would we stop him? Would it really be wrong to fight him and his armies? Is the principle of non-violence absolute?

Is pacifism a survival strategy, or an admission of inferiority, or a claim to superiority? There seems to be a case for testing, and continually re-testing, the Quaker Peace Testimony.

Grounds for a policy of non-violence.

[1] "Peter: Put up again thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword". Matthew's text rather argues that violence is dangerous to the perpetrator, particularly if he is outnumbered.

[2] There is a visceral, unthinking, reluctance to spill blood, and to take a life. This could be seen as a squeamish or vegetarian objection to war. 

[3] One is loath to harm family, and friends, and by extension anybody with whom one can empathise, and who we can see as a friend. (This thought doubtless occurred to many soldiers in no-man's-land, on Christmas Eve 1914.)

[4] The 'Gandhi tactic': take possession of the moral high ground. Passive resistance, in a very public but harmless way, can show strength of feeling against a powerful minority. (This method of winning requires the foe to have some awareness of morality, which doubtless covers most cases, but maybe not all. )

[5] The 'Margaret Fell' position which might be paraphrased as 'We Quakers do not pose a threat. We combat, but not with outward weapons.'

[6] The 'Ranyard West' position. We shall always misjudge the rights and wrongs of a dispute if we are a party to it. Force may often be necessary but that can only be decided by an independent entity like the United Nations.) By this standard, the Kuwait war of 1990, was legal; the Iraq war of 2003, criminal. 

[7] The 'William Penn' position: that the 'collateral death' of a single innocent non-combatant is an unacceptable, criminal, action.  [Note 2]

[8] The position of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: to teach a new morality he took possession of the high ground at the expense of his own life. Did he choose to die and be remembered rather than to live and be forgotten?

By what principles do we wish to be judged?

Are we trying to be intelligent, sympathetic, modern citizens? 

Or are we building a new Jerusalem, accepting the whole prescription that Jesus laid out for us: a community of equals, based on love, co-operation, sharing of goods, caring for the needy, binding up the wounded, forgiving and being forgiven; trying to persuade others that we have found The Truth and are in the process of creating for ourselves heaven on earth?

Or are we going to listen more to our feelings, as guidance from our true nature, eschewing what make us feel guilty and embracing what warms and gladdens us? 

By whom do we wish to be judged?  By ourselves, our families, our friends?   Who are our friends?

Conclusions.

I endorse grounds [1] to [7] above. I fully support the aim of creating the sort of world I would like to live in; i.e. 'heaven on earth'.  But I do not, for myself, feel called on to follow Jesus the whole way. I think that survival is our ultimate duty 

My father (Ranyard West) taught that, inside a civilised country, a police force is necessary to control rebel elements; so also in a civilised world to control strife between nations. But I wish to point out that even that force need not involve killing. Note that civilised countries no longer exact the death penalty of their criminal citizens.

To postulate a rogue state with no moral sense is merely to hypothesise; such a state may not exist.

Try first the route of friendship and understanding. Try also the route of arbitration. Retain the 'moral high ground', by avoiding that which make one feel guilty. Make sure that others know your moral preferences. Avoid being misled by your own leaders into actions that are both criminal, and damaging to millions of innocent bystanders. Make sure your leaders know your position in good time, so that their policy is not decided in haste and in error. 

An attempt to accept passive defeat and affirm the absolute rejection of violence may be to attempt to leap an impossible, but also an imaginary, hurdle.  

Can this be called a Peace Testimony?

NOTES AND COMMENTS

[Note 1] Was Dewsbury aiming to conquer the sword with the spirit, hoping that the assailant, bristling with intent to cause pain or death, would grow sheepish in the face of his calm indifference? Or is he saying that he is indifferent to being pushed around by the forces of 'this world'?  I think the latter.

[Note 2] The William Penn position – collateral deaths are murder, and on a large scale are a war crime. Mankind may be inching forwards towards civilisation, over the centuries. Many countries have denied themselves capital punishment even for capital crimes like murder. Yet, in some advance societies the standard response to an armed assailant seems to be to shoot to kill, rather than to disable. And some armies seem to condone the bombing of non-combatants as 'unfortunate collateral damage', where the bombing of inanimate targets might work just as well. 

[Note 3]  A friend warned against hugging oneself for pietistic purity while actually enjoying the protection afforded by a well prepared military umbrella. He argues that 'man' (Homo sapiens) is still a flawed creation, of body and soul, the world a 'fallen' world; and that armament has proved to be a better way to peace than disarmament.

Awake

 Awake: A Wake

     The bar was full of strangers dressed in black. I looked at the barmaid. Was she also new? Or familiar? (I had been away six weeks and my jet lag was yet to wear off.) I looked at her full in the face, from quite close up, which combined to render her face almost featureless, and completely unfamiliar.

     Mind you, that was always a problem for me –– I only had to look at a face intently, deliberately, and it ceased to seem familiar. Faces are so arbitrary; faces and names. If only people looked like their names! " Hello Beefy, you seem in good form today". Messers Loud, Acerbic and Peaky! Or Percy, for that matter.

     Words do the same thing for me. I can write a number of words correctly as long as I do not think about the spelling. But if I lose my nerve, they suddenly appear unfamiliar, unlikely, meaningless; and there is no way I can infer the correct spelling; or their correct meaning. In that respect I share one of William Spooner's problems. Once, when reading his own sermon in New College chapel, he came on the word 'misléd'. "Do not be místled", he read; then doubted himself, and the sense was irretrievably lost. Nothing for it but to repeat the exhortation and press on. 

     I think the barmaid is the one they call 'Liv'. I used to call her “Lev” for a while, like a Russian; until H told me it was short for 'Lavinia'; or was it 'Olivia'? If I could ask her to show me her profile, I might get more certain. I hate calling people by their wrong name. It makes me look so stupid. I suppose I am, in a way. "Your spectacles“ I murmur, in a half hearted attempt to explain my hesitancy, touching my own in case she did not grasp what I meant by 'spectacles'.

     “A wake", I said. She nodded. 

     "I’ve only been in the village 10 years" I said, looking over my shoulder at the crowd.  

      Liv leant forward slightly and said in a quiet voice "I think the deceased was called Jenkins."  

     I was certain that I did not know the deceased, nor any of his folk. I was impressed at the consistency of the black dress code. I have been to some half-dozen of my own family funerals and never wore a shred of black. Nor did most of the mourners, as far as I can remember, except at the burial of cousin Jean at Lilliesleaf in the Scottish Borders. Yet black is certainly the uniform dress in this Northamptonshire village. From the empty plates, and the cheerful conversation, it would seem that they were recovering from their numbing sense of loss, and beginning to enjoy meeting members of the family not seen in a while. Little groups. In each, one person talking, the others listening. 

     "Still awake! Just got back" I said to Liv. 

     "Mexico?" she said, tentatively. 

     "Yes." I agreed. I like Liv.

Street sounds in our Colonia

 Street sounds in our Colonia

Each time I hear a new noise I am tempted to look out of the window to see if I can identify the source. It might be a wheezy whistle, or a clear warble, a distant trumpet, or a marimba played with 4 hammers, or distant but uplifting snatches of brass band music; or, as yesterday and today, the unrelenting and shattering sound of nearby road works. So today, to escape the frightful din, I popped out before lunch to Sanborns’ to drink a beer, and to recollect the more pleasant, interesting, and distinctive sounds of Colonia San Miguel Chapultepec, Mexico City. Sounds that make this so very different from my little village in middle England.

One such sound comes from the truck that tours round each street each day offering to collect any old iron. The cry comes over a loudspeaker with the same childish female voice, the same unvarying intonation, the same repeated words, of which I only catch “..estufas, microondas,…” (stoves, microwave ovens). Towards evening another truck, using a similar business model, advertises “tamales, oaxaqueñas, " and suchlike food.

I prefer, for its old fashioned quaintness, the wheezy whistle that advertises roasted sweet potatoes (camotes). Toward evening, a man lights a small wood fire on his trolly, which presumably roasts the camotes, but at the same time makes steam. When all is ready, he pushes his trolly out onto the street and opens the valve to the whistle. This emits a piercing shriek that dies slowly away to a dismal groan.   

Another sound, which I had often heard over the years, I identified only yesterday, but relish for its throwback quaintness. An elderly man cycled slowly up the road towards me, one hand holding the handlebar, the other holding a small set of panpipes. Every now and then he warbled a handful of notes. Behind, on the carrier, he had a small two-stroke motor that would drive two grinding stones. So here was the 'sharpener of knives and scissors' that I had heard spoken of. One has to know the meaning of his warble in order to rush out and catch him before he disappeared down the road. 

The brass band was a one-off. But the other day, as I worked at my computer, I enjoyed for an hour their rousing snatches of melody and, occasionally, song. I had to go out onto the street to find the source. It did not take me long. The band were having their practice in the converted gym across the intersection, now called "La casa del humor", which, on weekend evenings, emits gales of laughter and applause. 

When I sat down to lunch just now, I heard the distant thump-thump of a drum, and some disjointed notes from a brass instrument. As they slowly approached our house I got up and looked discretely out. A man, on the far side of the street, thumped the drum keeping level with a man on our side playing the disjointed notes on a shiny trombone. I was reminded of a tip my father told me regarding busking in London before the war; "the worse you play the more you collect". A similar strategy may have motivated this duo. 

Not so the marimba duettists. They played their two or three pieces with considerable panache and some skill,  though I am afraid they collected little or nothing from either of their two stands in our street. 

These sounds, also, seem to be from a bygone era. These days, with iPod and earphones piping Mozart or Reggae straight into people's brains, who needs a barrel-organ or a marimba duo to enliven the siesta hours? 

(For others of my posts about Mexico, put the keyword Mexico in the search box.)