Not long after his 50th birthday, in 1974, George Bush senior went to China to take up a diplomatic position. On the way there, he began dictating a diary, and this has now been published for the first time. China seems to be a popular place for Westerners to indulge in a spot of diary writing: a few years back, the UK’s Prince Charles ended up suing a national newspaper for revealing some of his (private) China diary; five centuries ago a Korean official wrote an impressive journal about journeying across China; and, more than a millennium ago, a Japanese Buddhist monk wrote one of the very earliest of travel journals, yes, to China.
George H W Bush was Vice-President of the US from 1981 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan and then President from 1989 to 1993. Having made a fortune from oil before his 40th birthday,he turned to politics during the 1960s. In 1974, he became head of the US Liaison Office in Beijing, and, on the way out to China that year, in October, he started recording a diary. This has now been published by Princeton University Press with a slightly overblown title: The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global President.
A few pages of the book are available to read on the Amazon website. In the first chapter, called Everybody in the United States Wants to Go to China, this president-to-be muses a bit. It’s 21 October 1974: ‘Am I running away from something?’; ‘Am I leaving what with inflation, incivility in the press and Watergate and all the ugliness?’; ‘Am I taking the easy way out?’ The answer I think is ‘no’, because of the intrigue and fascination that is China. I think it is an important assignment; it is what I want to do; it was what I told the President [Gerald Ford] I want to do; and all in all, in spite of the great warnings of isolation, I think it is right - at least for now.’
The publisher says Bush reveals ‘a thoughtful and pragmatic realism’, one that would ‘guide him for decades to come’. Not only does he, in this diary, formulate views on the importance of international alliances and personal diplomacy but he even describes his explorations of Beijing by bicycle, and experiences with Chinese food, language lessons, and ping-pong. Heady stuff.
Also heady stuff is this: Chinese diplomats being described as ‘appalling old waxworks’. According to the BBC, this allegedly comes from a private diary written by Prince Charles during a visit to China in 1997. In 2005, the UK’s Mail on Sunday printed extracts from the diary, and, then, when the Prince sued, lost the legal battle. According to The Guardian, the Mail on Sunday said ‘it had acted in the public interest by publishing the diaries because they contained the political beliefs of the UK’s future head of state’. Apparently, Prince Charles regularly writes journals of his official visits and then circulates around 100 copies to various relatives, friends and contacts.
Keeping a diary on a trip to China has been fashionable for centuries. Five hundred years ago, in 1488, a high-level Korean official called Choe Bu was shipwrecked on his way back to the mainland from the island of Jeju. Washed up on the coast of China, Choe Bu made his way overland to Beijing. During the journey, he kept a diary which modern historians find invaluable for its perspective on Chinese culture in the 15th century and for the information on China’s cities and regional differences. According to Wikipedia, his ‘description of cities, people, customs, cuisines, and maritime commerce along China’s Grand Canal provide insight into the daily life of China and how it differed between northern and southern China during the 15th century’.
And going back even further, a Japanese Buddhist monk, Jikaku Daishi or Ennin, travelled to China in 838 to act as a Japanese representative to the T’Ang court. He stayed for 10 years, travelling to monasteries even though Buddhists were being persecuted at the time. Among the many books he wrote is a diary of the time in China. This was translated into English by Edwin Reischauer, a US ambassador to Japan. Reischauer claimed it - Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law - was one of the world’s three great travel books.
Just for the record, when George Bush senior was heading for Beijing, my own diary records that on 21 October 1974 I was not that far away, in Penang, Malaysia, visiting a snake farm: ‘I . . . bus out to the university it’s fairly modern, with a nice hilly setting in the forest-covered hills around Penang. In 1980, I learn, the main language will change to Malay. I bus a bit further out to the snake temple - a small Chinese temple which, a long time ago, became a refuge for snakes. A few are now kept on twigs inside the temple - poisonous pit vipers - hardly worth the trip except maybe to see a tourist with snakes on his head and a photographer looking happy.’ But no China diary from me, at least not yet.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
The veriest drudge
Tonight (23 June) at 9pm the UK broadcaster, Channel 4, is screening the final part of its Victorian Passions documentary season. This episode is entitled Upstairs Downstairs Love, and focuses on the relationship between a trained solicitor, Arthur Munby, and a servant woman Hanna Cullwick. Apart from the cross-class nature of the relationship, two other factors make this a worthy documentary subject. Firstly, the two had a long-term and complicated sexual relationship based on their real master/servant roles; and, secondly, they both wrote about it in some detail in diaries.
Cullwick had humble origins, although, unusually, she did learn to read and write. From the age of eight, she worked as a servant in various situations. In 1854, she met Munby, a trained solicitor acting for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Office. He had a long-standing interest in working class women, and became fascinated with Cullwick. Subsequently, she took a variety of part-time servant jobs so as to be near him in London. In 1873, they married secretly, and Cullwick went to live in Munby’s lodgings. Nevertheless she retained her maiden name, and her servant’s job, and her servant’s salary. In the early 1880s she left him, and took a position in her home county of Shropshire. However, Munby was a regular visitor until her death.
Wikipedia has entries on both Munby and Cullwick. According to the one on Cullwick, she proudly referred to herself as Munby's ‘drudge and slave’. For much of her life, she wore a leather strap around her right wrist and a locking chain around her neck, to which Munby had a key. She wrote letters almost daily to him, describing her long hours of work in great detail, and she would arrange to visit him ‘in my dirt’, showing the results of a full day of cleaning and other domestic work.
According to Wikipedia’s entry on Munby his interest in working class women led him to collect hundreds of photographs of, for example, female mine workers, kitchen maids, milkmaids, charwomen, and acrobats. These were left, along with his and Cullwick’s diaries, to Trinity College, Cambridge, but were not opened to the public until 1950, as per the terms of Munby’s will. Since then, they’ve been used extensively by researchers, especially those examining the role of women during the Victorian period.
There is good information about the diaries and a few extracts on the website of Adam Matthews Publications, which promotes a digital version of the Munby papers held by Trinity College. There is also quite a lot from the diaries in Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives by Joy Webster Barbre much of which can be browsed at Google Books.
Finally, an interesting article by Helen Merrick in Limina, a journal of historical and cultural studies, can be found at the University of Western Australia website. Merrick refers to several Munby diary extracts of which this is one, from 19 August 1860: ‘. . . let me look on this hardworking simplicity, this humble unselfish devotion, which finds its highest expression in the doings of a sweep or a lapdog, and feel, unreservedly, what I always meant to prove - that the veriest drudge, such as she is, becomes heroic when she truly loves.’
Cullwick had humble origins, although, unusually, she did learn to read and write. From the age of eight, she worked as a servant in various situations. In 1854, she met Munby, a trained solicitor acting for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners Office. He had a long-standing interest in working class women, and became fascinated with Cullwick. Subsequently, she took a variety of part-time servant jobs so as to be near him in London. In 1873, they married secretly, and Cullwick went to live in Munby’s lodgings. Nevertheless she retained her maiden name, and her servant’s job, and her servant’s salary. In the early 1880s she left him, and took a position in her home county of Shropshire. However, Munby was a regular visitor until her death.
Wikipedia has entries on both Munby and Cullwick. According to the one on Cullwick, she proudly referred to herself as Munby's ‘drudge and slave’. For much of her life, she wore a leather strap around her right wrist and a locking chain around her neck, to which Munby had a key. She wrote letters almost daily to him, describing her long hours of work in great detail, and she would arrange to visit him ‘in my dirt’, showing the results of a full day of cleaning and other domestic work.
According to Wikipedia’s entry on Munby his interest in working class women led him to collect hundreds of photographs of, for example, female mine workers, kitchen maids, milkmaids, charwomen, and acrobats. These were left, along with his and Cullwick’s diaries, to Trinity College, Cambridge, but were not opened to the public until 1950, as per the terms of Munby’s will. Since then, they’ve been used extensively by researchers, especially those examining the role of women during the Victorian period.
There is good information about the diaries and a few extracts on the website of Adam Matthews Publications, which promotes a digital version of the Munby papers held by Trinity College. There is also quite a lot from the diaries in Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives by Joy Webster Barbre much of which can be browsed at Google Books.
Finally, an interesting article by Helen Merrick in Limina, a journal of historical and cultural studies, can be found at the University of Western Australia website. Merrick refers to several Munby diary extracts of which this is one, from 19 August 1860: ‘. . . let me look on this hardworking simplicity, this humble unselfish devotion, which finds its highest expression in the doings of a sweep or a lapdog, and feel, unreservedly, what I always meant to prove - that the veriest drudge, such as she is, becomes heroic when she truly loves.’
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The suffragette times
Saturday 21 June 1908, one hundred years ago today, 200,000-300,000 supporters of the women’s suffragette movement converged on Hyde Park, London. It must have been an important event for the movement, but online I can find no first hand diary reference to it. Although there are a few suffragette diaries, which do shed some light on the movement (a bit too much perhaps), there seems to be a surprising dearth of them in general.
In her biography of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) at the time, June Purvis writes about the 21 June demonstration: ‘There were several bands and 700 banners fluttering in the breeze on this brilliantly sunny day, including a banner with the picture of the WSPU leader declaring her to be a Champion of Womanhood Famed For Deeds of Daring Rectitude’. One of the chief speakers was Mrs Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel, who claimed the demonstration would convince the government that public opinion was on their side. Another speaker, Annie Kenney, a working-class activist from Oldham, said it showed the movement had the support of men as well as women.
That day, a century ago, sounds a genteel affair, but the suffragette movement was nothing of the sort. According to Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, ‘it was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination in 1928’. By drawing on diary extracts, as well as newspapers, letters, etc. the book’s editor, Joyce Marlow, allows the women themselves to tell the story.
An alternative view of the movement comes from the diaries of Mary Blathwayt. These have not been published but Vanessa Thorpe wrote an article for The Observer a few years ago based on Professor Martin Pugh’s examination of the diaries. The article was titled Diary reveals lesbian love trysts of suffragette leaders, and claimed that ‘the complicated sexual liaisons - involving the Pankhurst family and others at the core of the militant organisation - created rivalries that threatened discord’. Pugh believes, the article says, that Christabel was the most classically beautiful of the Pankhurst daughters and was the focus of a rash of ‘crushes’ across the movement, and that she was briefly involved with Mary Blathwayt herself, but was probably supplanted by Annie Kenney.
Many of these trysts apparently took place at the Blathwayt home, Eagle House, near Bath. There is biographical data about Mary Blathwayt in The Woman’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 by Elizabeth Crawford. And Wikipedia has some information about Eagle House. Blaythwayt’s diary is held by the Gloucestershire Archives.
On the other side of the ‘war’ were the anti-suffrage campaigners, such as Alexander MacCallum Scott. He became a Liberal MP in 1910, and during the First World War was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Winston Churchill. In the 1920s, he switched to the Labour Party. In his diaries (1909-1914), held by the University of Glasgow, he frequently discusses his activities as a member of the anti-suffrage committee in the Liberal Party. There is some useful information about MacCallum Scott and his diaries on the university’s Special Collections website.
In her biography of Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) at the time, June Purvis writes about the 21 June demonstration: ‘There were several bands and 700 banners fluttering in the breeze on this brilliantly sunny day, including a banner with the picture of the WSPU leader declaring her to be a Champion of Womanhood Famed For Deeds of Daring Rectitude’. One of the chief speakers was Mrs Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel, who claimed the demonstration would convince the government that public opinion was on their side. Another speaker, Annie Kenney, a working-class activist from Oldham, said it showed the movement had the support of men as well as women.
That day, a century ago, sounds a genteel affair, but the suffragette movement was nothing of the sort. According to Votes for Women: The Virago Book of Suffragettes, ‘it was a bloody and dangerous war lasting several decades, won finally by sheer will and determination in 1928’. By drawing on diary extracts, as well as newspapers, letters, etc. the book’s editor, Joyce Marlow, allows the women themselves to tell the story.
An alternative view of the movement comes from the diaries of Mary Blathwayt. These have not been published but Vanessa Thorpe wrote an article for The Observer a few years ago based on Professor Martin Pugh’s examination of the diaries. The article was titled Diary reveals lesbian love trysts of suffragette leaders, and claimed that ‘the complicated sexual liaisons - involving the Pankhurst family and others at the core of the militant organisation - created rivalries that threatened discord’. Pugh believes, the article says, that Christabel was the most classically beautiful of the Pankhurst daughters and was the focus of a rash of ‘crushes’ across the movement, and that she was briefly involved with Mary Blathwayt herself, but was probably supplanted by Annie Kenney.
Many of these trysts apparently took place at the Blathwayt home, Eagle House, near Bath. There is biographical data about Mary Blathwayt in The Woman’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928 by Elizabeth Crawford. And Wikipedia has some information about Eagle House. Blaythwayt’s diary is held by the Gloucestershire Archives.
On the other side of the ‘war’ were the anti-suffrage campaigners, such as Alexander MacCallum Scott. He became a Liberal MP in 1910, and during the First World War was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Winston Churchill. In the 1920s, he switched to the Labour Party. In his diaries (1909-1914), held by the University of Glasgow, he frequently discusses his activities as a member of the anti-suffrage committee in the Liberal Party. There is some useful information about MacCallum Scott and his diaries on the university’s Special Collections website.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Whitman the diarist
Walt Whitman is best known as one of America’s greatest poets, and is sometimes dubbed the father of free verse (see Wikipedia). He also kept daybooks and diaries, but there is only one specific book of his titled as a diary. It’s about a trip to Canada in 1880, and begins with an entry on 18 June.
Walt Whitman’s Diary in Canada, with Extracts from Other of His Diaries and Literary Notebooks was published by Boston, Small, Maynard in 1904 in a limited edition of 500. There is a very brief introduction by the editor, William Sloane Kennedy, who says he transcribed ‘out-door notes from the worn and time-stained fragments of paper (backs of letters, home-made note-books, etc.), on which they were originally written’. The whole work is available online thanks to Internet Archive.
Here is the book’s first entry: ‘London, Ontario, June 18, 1880. Calm and glorious roll the hours here the whole twenty-four. A perfect day (the third in succession); the sun clear; a faint, fresh, just palpable air setting in from the southwest; temperature pretty warm at midday, but moderate enough mornings and evenings. Everything growing well, especially the perennials. Never have I seen verdure grass and trees and bushery to greater advantage. All the accompaniments joyous. Cat-birds, thrushes, robins, etc., sinking. The profuse blossoms of the tigerlily (is it the tiger-lily?) mottling the lawns and gardens everywhere with their glowing orange-red. Roses everywhere, too.
A stately show of stars last night: the Scorpion erecting his head of five stars, with glittering Antares in the neck, soon stretched his whole length in the south; Arcturus hung overhead; Vega a little to the east; Aquila lower down; the constellation of the Sickle well toward setting; and the halfmoon, pensive and silvery, in the southwest.’
Walt Whitman’s Diary in Canada, with Extracts from Other of His Diaries and Literary Notebooks was published by Boston, Small, Maynard in 1904 in a limited edition of 500. There is a very brief introduction by the editor, William Sloane Kennedy, who says he transcribed ‘out-door notes from the worn and time-stained fragments of paper (backs of letters, home-made note-books, etc.), on which they were originally written’. The whole work is available online thanks to Internet Archive.
Here is the book’s first entry: ‘London, Ontario, June 18, 1880. Calm and glorious roll the hours here the whole twenty-four. A perfect day (the third in succession); the sun clear; a faint, fresh, just palpable air setting in from the southwest; temperature pretty warm at midday, but moderate enough mornings and evenings. Everything growing well, especially the perennials. Never have I seen verdure grass and trees and bushery to greater advantage. All the accompaniments joyous. Cat-birds, thrushes, robins, etc., sinking. The profuse blossoms of the tigerlily (is it the tiger-lily?) mottling the lawns and gardens everywhere with their glowing orange-red. Roses everywhere, too.
A stately show of stars last night: the Scorpion erecting his head of five stars, with glittering Antares in the neck, soon stretched his whole length in the south; Arcturus hung overhead; Vega a little to the east; Aquila lower down; the constellation of the Sickle well toward setting; and the halfmoon, pensive and silvery, in the southwest.’
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Famous Brazilian diaries
Virago Press has just re-published, in the UK, the Brazilian diary of a young girl from the mid-1890s - The Diary of Helena Morley - but it retains a translation made by Elizabeth Bishop, a famous American poet, over 50 years ago. Bishop’s introduction says the diary contains scenes that are ‘odd, remote and long ago, and yet fresh, sad, funny, and eternally true’. There is another famous Brazilian diary, by Carolina Maria de Jesus, from the 1960s about life in the slums, which became one of Brazil’s best selling books.
After serving as America’s Poet Laureate in 1949-1950, Elizabeth Bishop took a trip to South America. She didn’t intend to stay more than a few weeks when visiting Brazil, but ended up living there for 15 years (during which time she won a Pulitzer Prize). Early on, friends recommended Minha Vida de Menina (translatable as My Life as a Young Girl), a diary kept by Alice Dayrell Caldeira Brant and published privately in 1942. Alice was born to a British father and Brazilian mother, and grew up in Diamantina (Minas Gerais state), once a mining town and now a Unesco World Heritage site very approximately half way between Rio and Brasilia.
Brant’s diary was translated by Bishop and then published, with the pseudonym Helena Morley, by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in New York in 1957, and, a year later, by Victor Gollancz in London. A few of these early editions are on sale at Abebooks for as much as £150. The translated diary has been re-published several times since then, in the 1970s and in the 1990s.
An extract from Bishop’s introduction is widely quoted: ‘The more I read the book the better I liked it. The scenes and events it described were odd, remote, and long ago, and yet fresh, sad, funny and eternally true. The longer I stayed on in Brazil the more Brazilian the book seemed, yet much of it could have happened in any small provincial town or village, and at almost any period of history - at least before the arrival of the automobile and the moving-picture theatre.’
A review by Time Magazine says the diary is ‘full of the fun, the beauty, and some of the pain of growing up in a primitive town where recently freed slaves were still living with their old masters by choice’. There are also one or two short quotes, such as this one: ‘If grandma would give me the money she spends on Masses, I’d be rich. I don't know if what I’m writing is a sin.’
There is another famous diary, which must have been written at the same time, in fact, as Bishop was living in Brazil and translating Alice’s diary. Carolina Maria de Jesus was also born in Minas Gerais state, in 1914, but by the 1950s found herself with three children (all by different fathers) living in a Sao Paolo slum. Thanks to the philanthropy of a local landowner, she had had slightly more schooling than other black girls, and perhaps for this reason was able to, or wanted to, write about her life. She did this on scraps of paper, which were later put together into notebooks. A young reporter published some extracts in a local newspaper. Subsequently, in 1960, de Jesus’s diary was published as Quarto de Despejo (Child of the Dark), and became a publishing sensation. See The Diary Junction for more details.
After serving as America’s Poet Laureate in 1949-1950, Elizabeth Bishop took a trip to South America. She didn’t intend to stay more than a few weeks when visiting Brazil, but ended up living there for 15 years (during which time she won a Pulitzer Prize). Early on, friends recommended Minha Vida de Menina (translatable as My Life as a Young Girl), a diary kept by Alice Dayrell Caldeira Brant and published privately in 1942. Alice was born to a British father and Brazilian mother, and grew up in Diamantina (Minas Gerais state), once a mining town and now a Unesco World Heritage site very approximately half way between Rio and Brasilia.
Brant’s diary was translated by Bishop and then published, with the pseudonym Helena Morley, by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy in New York in 1957, and, a year later, by Victor Gollancz in London. A few of these early editions are on sale at Abebooks for as much as £150. The translated diary has been re-published several times since then, in the 1970s and in the 1990s.
An extract from Bishop’s introduction is widely quoted: ‘The more I read the book the better I liked it. The scenes and events it described were odd, remote, and long ago, and yet fresh, sad, funny and eternally true. The longer I stayed on in Brazil the more Brazilian the book seemed, yet much of it could have happened in any small provincial town or village, and at almost any period of history - at least before the arrival of the automobile and the moving-picture theatre.’
A review by Time Magazine says the diary is ‘full of the fun, the beauty, and some of the pain of growing up in a primitive town where recently freed slaves were still living with their old masters by choice’. There are also one or two short quotes, such as this one: ‘If grandma would give me the money she spends on Masses, I’d be rich. I don't know if what I’m writing is a sin.’
There is another famous diary, which must have been written at the same time, in fact, as Bishop was living in Brazil and translating Alice’s diary. Carolina Maria de Jesus was also born in Minas Gerais state, in 1914, but by the 1950s found herself with three children (all by different fathers) living in a Sao Paolo slum. Thanks to the philanthropy of a local landowner, she had had slightly more schooling than other black girls, and perhaps for this reason was able to, or wanted to, write about her life. She did this on scraps of paper, which were later put together into notebooks. A young reporter published some extracts in a local newspaper. Subsequently, in 1960, de Jesus’s diary was published as Quarto de Despejo (Child of the Dark), and became a publishing sensation. See The Diary Junction for more details.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Rachel Corrie and (self-)deceit
More than five years ago, in March 2003, Rachel Corrie, a young American, was killed in Gaza while trying to obstruct an Israeli army bulldozer. An Israeli investigation concluded her death was an accident, but the Palestinians believe it was intentional. Now, on publication of Corrie’s diaries, an American Jewish academic, Roberta P Seid, has lambasted the exploiting of Corrie as a ‘poster child, an alleged symbol of youthful idealism, Palestinian victimization, and Israeli brutality’.
Rachel Corrie had only been in Gaza two months, working for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian movement which advocates non-violent resistance to Israel’s land occupation, when she was killed while trying to stop the destruction of Palestinian homes. The circumstances of her death remain controversial. Wikipedia gives a good summary. In essence, an official Israeli investigation concluded that, having been hidden from view, she was killed accidentally by debris falling as a result of a bulldozer’s actions. The ISM claim the bulldozer driver ran over Corrie deliberately.
In any case, during the last five years, Corrie’s death has been used widely by Palestinians and their supporters for campaigning against Israeli occupation of their lands. Many musicians have written songs about her, and she has been the subject of countless articles. In 2005, a play My Name is Rachel Corrie, composed from Corrie’s diaries and emails, opened in London. It was written by British actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner; Rickman also directed the play. Viner wrote about the process of editing Corrie’s journals for The Guardian. She starts by quoting one entry from when Corrie was around 19 or 20, which is worth re-quoting.
‘Had a dream about falling, falling to my death off something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah,’ she writes, ‘but I kept holding on, and when each foothold or handle of rock broke I reached out as I fell and grabbed a new one. I didn't have time to think about anything - just react as if I was playing an adrenaline-filled video game. And I heard, “I can't die, I can't die,” again and again in my head.’ The same article contains other good extracts from Corrie’s diary.
Now the diaries themselves have been published, with the title Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie, by Granta Books in the UK and WW Norton in the US. Amazon UK or Amazon US lets you have a peek inside. Although publication was a little earlier this year, Commentary magazine has just published a response to the book, by Roberta P Seid. Commentary calls itself America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life, and has been a flagship of neoconservatism since the 1970s. Seid is a Jewish intellectual who is also connected to StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organisation based in Los Angeles.
Seid’s article in Commentary is entitled The (Self-)Deceit of Rachel Corrie. She finds no facts to back up the Palestinian version of Corrie’s death and therefore criticises the way ‘the ISM and other anti-Israel activists seized upon Rachel’s death for public relations purposes’. The young American, she says, ‘instantly became their poster child, an alleged symbol of youthful idealism, Palestinian victimization, and Israeli brutality.’ She talks of the ‘Rachel Corrie industry’, and makes particular play of the fact that Corrie’s parents, who had never shown interest in the Middle East conflict, are now regulars on the international anti-Israel lecture circuit.
Corrie’s diaries, she writes in Commentary, are of interest ‘primarily because they provide insight into how a young American girl ended up in Gaza with the ISM, trying to protect terrorist operations and demonising Israel, about how anti-Israel propaganda and the ISM work, and about who or what actually killed Rachel Corrie’. She finds evidence in the diaries that Corrie was ‘ripe fodder for the ISM’, and that the organisation ‘callously recruited idealistic, naive “internationals” to break Israeli law, violate [Israeli] security zones, indoctrinate them with its peculiar version of the conflict, and to groom them as future speakers for its anti-Israel cause.’
Rachel Corrie had only been in Gaza two months, working for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian movement which advocates non-violent resistance to Israel’s land occupation, when she was killed while trying to stop the destruction of Palestinian homes. The circumstances of her death remain controversial. Wikipedia gives a good summary. In essence, an official Israeli investigation concluded that, having been hidden from view, she was killed accidentally by debris falling as a result of a bulldozer’s actions. The ISM claim the bulldozer driver ran over Corrie deliberately.
In any case, during the last five years, Corrie’s death has been used widely by Palestinians and their supporters for campaigning against Israeli occupation of their lands. Many musicians have written songs about her, and she has been the subject of countless articles. In 2005, a play My Name is Rachel Corrie, composed from Corrie’s diaries and emails, opened in London. It was written by British actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner; Rickman also directed the play. Viner wrote about the process of editing Corrie’s journals for The Guardian. She starts by quoting one entry from when Corrie was around 19 or 20, which is worth re-quoting.
‘Had a dream about falling, falling to my death off something dusty and smooth and crumbling like the cliffs in Utah,’ she writes, ‘but I kept holding on, and when each foothold or handle of rock broke I reached out as I fell and grabbed a new one. I didn't have time to think about anything - just react as if I was playing an adrenaline-filled video game. And I heard, “I can't die, I can't die,” again and again in my head.’ The same article contains other good extracts from Corrie’s diary.
Now the diaries themselves have been published, with the title Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie, by Granta Books in the UK and WW Norton in the US. Amazon UK or Amazon US lets you have a peek inside. Although publication was a little earlier this year, Commentary magazine has just published a response to the book, by Roberta P Seid. Commentary calls itself America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life, and has been a flagship of neoconservatism since the 1970s. Seid is a Jewish intellectual who is also connected to StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organisation based in Los Angeles.
Seid’s article in Commentary is entitled The (Self-)Deceit of Rachel Corrie. She finds no facts to back up the Palestinian version of Corrie’s death and therefore criticises the way ‘the ISM and other anti-Israel activists seized upon Rachel’s death for public relations purposes’. The young American, she says, ‘instantly became their poster child, an alleged symbol of youthful idealism, Palestinian victimization, and Israeli brutality.’ She talks of the ‘Rachel Corrie industry’, and makes particular play of the fact that Corrie’s parents, who had never shown interest in the Middle East conflict, are now regulars on the international anti-Israel lecture circuit.
Corrie’s diaries, she writes in Commentary, are of interest ‘primarily because they provide insight into how a young American girl ended up in Gaza with the ISM, trying to protect terrorist operations and demonising Israel, about how anti-Israel propaganda and the ISM work, and about who or what actually killed Rachel Corrie’. She finds evidence in the diaries that Corrie was ‘ripe fodder for the ISM’, and that the organisation ‘callously recruited idealistic, naive “internationals” to break Israeli law, violate [Israeli] security zones, indoctrinate them with its peculiar version of the conflict, and to groom them as future speakers for its anti-Israel cause.’
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Lady Nijo’s confessions
‘I have continued to note down all these trifling details of my life, even though I cannot aspire to having left posterity anything worth reading.’ This might have been written by any one of a million bloggers in today’s world. In fact, it’s a translation of a diary or memoir written by Lady Nijo, a Japanese courtesan, born in 1258, exactly 750 years ago.
Nijo came from a well-connected family, but as a young girl was fostered by the Prime Minister and Lady Kitayama (who was to be a mother and grandmother to emperors). While still a teenager she was given to the emperor Gofukakusa to be his courtesan. She also took other lovers. By the age of 25 she had had four children, only one of which was fathered by Gofukakusa. Eventually, she left, or was expelled from, the palace and became a wandering Buddhist nun. (See The Diary Junction for more, or Bookrags which has an excellent biography of Nijo or Nij.)
Sometime after 1307, Nijo completed writing five books, collectively called Towazugatari (literally, ‘an unsolicited tale’). They were not rediscovered until the 1940s, by a scholar named Yamagishi Tohukei. Karen Brazell’s translation was published in English in the 1970s as The Confessions of Lady Nijo. According to Branislav L. Slantchev, on his Gotterdammerung website, the book covers about thirty years, from 1271 to 1306, and presents ‘an intimate portrait of a very human emperor, a court obsessed with nostalgia for the glorious Heian past, and the often turbulent life of a beautiful woman’.
Although not strictly a diary in the modern sense of the word, as in being written day-by-day or week-by-week, diary bibliographies often consider Nijo’s writing as one of the very earliest examples of the diary form, and academics do sometimes quote ‘Nijo’s diary’ (for example, in The Aesthetics of Discontent: Politics and Reclusion in Medieval Japanese Literature). The book can be previewed at Googlebooks; and The Gloss has a good set of extracts including the following. Having born a son to Gofukakusa, she gave birth to a second child, by one of her lovers, and this birth had to be kept secret.
‘[Akebono] lit a lamp to look at the child, and I got a glimpse of fine black hair and eyes already opened. It was my own child, and naturally enough I thought it was adorable. As I looked on, [he] took the white gown beside me and wrapped the baby in it, cut the umbilical cord with a short sword that lay by my pillow, and taking the baby, left without a word to anyone. I did not even get a second glimpse of the child's face.
I wanted to cry out and ask why, if the baby must be taken away, I could not at least look at it again; but that would have been rash, and so I remained quiet, letting the tears on my sleeves express my feelings.
‘It will be all right. You have nothing to worry about. If it lives you'll be able to see it,’ Akebono said on his return, attempting to console me. Yet I could not forget the face I had glimpsed but once. Though it was only a girl, I was grieved to think that I did not even know where she had been taken. I also knew it would have been impossible to keep her even if I had so desired. There was nothing for me to do but wrap my sleeves around myself and sob inwardly.’
Nijo came from a well-connected family, but as a young girl was fostered by the Prime Minister and Lady Kitayama (who was to be a mother and grandmother to emperors). While still a teenager she was given to the emperor Gofukakusa to be his courtesan. She also took other lovers. By the age of 25 she had had four children, only one of which was fathered by Gofukakusa. Eventually, she left, or was expelled from, the palace and became a wandering Buddhist nun. (See The Diary Junction for more, or Bookrags which has an excellent biography of Nijo or Nij.)
Sometime after 1307, Nijo completed writing five books, collectively called Towazugatari (literally, ‘an unsolicited tale’). They were not rediscovered until the 1940s, by a scholar named Yamagishi Tohukei. Karen Brazell’s translation was published in English in the 1970s as The Confessions of Lady Nijo. According to Branislav L. Slantchev, on his Gotterdammerung website, the book covers about thirty years, from 1271 to 1306, and presents ‘an intimate portrait of a very human emperor, a court obsessed with nostalgia for the glorious Heian past, and the often turbulent life of a beautiful woman’.
Although not strictly a diary in the modern sense of the word, as in being written day-by-day or week-by-week, diary bibliographies often consider Nijo’s writing as one of the very earliest examples of the diary form, and academics do sometimes quote ‘Nijo’s diary’ (for example, in The Aesthetics of Discontent: Politics and Reclusion in Medieval Japanese Literature). The book can be previewed at Googlebooks; and The Gloss has a good set of extracts including the following. Having born a son to Gofukakusa, she gave birth to a second child, by one of her lovers, and this birth had to be kept secret.
‘[Akebono] lit a lamp to look at the child, and I got a glimpse of fine black hair and eyes already opened. It was my own child, and naturally enough I thought it was adorable. As I looked on, [he] took the white gown beside me and wrapped the baby in it, cut the umbilical cord with a short sword that lay by my pillow, and taking the baby, left without a word to anyone. I did not even get a second glimpse of the child's face.
I wanted to cry out and ask why, if the baby must be taken away, I could not at least look at it again; but that would have been rash, and so I remained quiet, letting the tears on my sleeves express my feelings.
‘It will be all right. You have nothing to worry about. If it lives you'll be able to see it,’ Akebono said on his return, attempting to console me. Yet I could not forget the face I had glimpsed but once. Though it was only a girl, I was grieved to think that I did not even know where she had been taken. I also knew it would have been impossible to keep her even if I had so desired. There was nothing for me to do but wrap my sleeves around myself and sob inwardly.’
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Has Coelho revealed too much?
Paul Coelho is not an author I’ve read, or know anything about, but I'm aware of his fame and immense readership around the world. However, I have suddenly become intrigued by the man and his life. A new biography, O Mago (The Wizard), published in his home country of Brazil, is very revealing largely because Coelho allowed the biographer to read 200 volumes of personal diaries. Now, Coelho himself is wondering about the wisdom of revealing so much. On his own website, he has posted a blog asking his readers this question: ‘Should you know all about me?’
Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1947. He must have been an unruly teenager because, according to the new biography, his father put him in a mental institution where he was sedated and given electro-shock therapy. Later, after dropping out of law college, he travelled in Latin America, Europe and North Africa, and then, on returning to Brazil, wrote popular music lyrics. He was imprisoned in 1974 on allegations of subversive activities. Thereafter, he spent several more years working in the music industry.
Coelho published his first book in the early 1980s, but it didn’t sell well. In 1986, his spiritual quest, which had begun during his hippie travelling days, reached some kind of climax when he undertook the arduous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The Alchemist, his most famous book, was published two years later, in 1988. It is a symbolic story that urges people to follow their dreams. According to Wikipedia, Coelho has sold more than 100 million books in over 150 countries with his works being translated into 66 languages.
The publication of a revealing biography is thus likely to be of interest to many, including me (even though my own travelling was never motivated by any kind of spiritual quest). According to Marjorie Rodrigues, writing for Reuters, Fernando Morais, the author of O Mago, says it reveals the ‘wild, sometimes dark, past’ of Coelho, and has everything, ‘violence, sex, religion, rock and roll, Satanism’. These revelations come from over 200 diaries and 100 tapes compiled by Coelho earlier in his life and which were locked in a locked chest.
Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1947. He must have been an unruly teenager because, according to the new biography, his father put him in a mental institution where he was sedated and given electro-shock therapy. Later, after dropping out of law college, he travelled in Latin America, Europe and North Africa, and then, on returning to Brazil, wrote popular music lyrics. He was imprisoned in 1974 on allegations of subversive activities. Thereafter, he spent several more years working in the music industry.
Coelho published his first book in the early 1980s, but it didn’t sell well. In 1986, his spiritual quest, which had begun during his hippie travelling days, reached some kind of climax when he undertook the arduous pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The Alchemist, his most famous book, was published two years later, in 1988. It is a symbolic story that urges people to follow their dreams. According to Wikipedia, Coelho has sold more than 100 million books in over 150 countries with his works being translated into 66 languages.
The publication of a revealing biography is thus likely to be of interest to many, including me (even though my own travelling was never motivated by any kind of spiritual quest). According to Marjorie Rodrigues, writing for Reuters, Fernando Morais, the author of O Mago, says it reveals the ‘wild, sometimes dark, past’ of Coelho, and has everything, ‘violence, sex, religion, rock and roll, Satanism’. These revelations come from over 200 diaries and 100 tapes compiled by Coelho earlier in his life and which were locked in a locked chest.
Coelho planned, so the story goes, for the chest to be burned when he died. However, it seems, he offered Morais a key to unlock it if he could find the identity of the man who had tortured him (presumably in 1974) - and Morais did. Among the book’s many revelations is one about the young Coelho making a pact with the devil, and there are many others about his sex life, including homosexual affairs.
Coelho keeps up a dialogue with his readers through a website. Yesterday (9 June), he posted this (in text and speaking to camera on video): ‘My biography, entitled The Wizard, has just been released in Brazil and given that I opened all my files to my biographer, some people have been horrified with my past. So here is my question to you: Should you know all about me?’ As I finish writing this, more than 80 fans have responded to the question so far, most very appreciative of Coelho’s honesty and openness. Here is one, from Jasrah, 'I will just say thanks for being on earth.'
Coelho keeps up a dialogue with his readers through a website. Yesterday (9 June), he posted this (in text and speaking to camera on video): ‘My biography, entitled The Wizard, has just been released in Brazil and given that I opened all my files to my biographer, some people have been horrified with my past. So here is my question to you: Should you know all about me?’ As I finish writing this, more than 80 fans have responded to the question so far, most very appreciative of Coelho’s honesty and openness. Here is one, from Jasrah, 'I will just say thanks for being on earth.'
Monday, June 9, 2008
In Slingsby’s memory
Yesterday, Sunday 8 June, was Slingsby Day, according to the Slingsbys website. It was the 350th anniversary of the death by execution of Sir Henry Slingsby, a Yorkshire landowner, a Member of Parliament, and, crucially, a Royalist. He was also a diarist.
Slingsby, made a baronet in 1638, married Barbara, daughter of Sir Thomas Belasyse. They had four children. A Protestant and a Royalist, he fought for Charles 1 against Cromwell in the civil war. Unfortunately for Slingsby, he was eventually arrested, tried as a traitor and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. The sentence, though, was commuted to simple beheading. Fortunately for us, the Slingsbys website says, Henry kept a diary during those turbulent years (and it quotes a few extracts). The website also nominates 8 June 2008 as Slingsby Day.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, available on Google Books, carries some extracts from Slingsby’s diary, though these mostly concern Redhouse, the family home on the banks of the Ouse, near York. However, the full text, with an interesting introduction, of Slingsby’s Memoirs, is available online thanks to Calderdale Council. The introduction concludes: ‘Having knelt down to the block his head was severed at a single blow. His remains were deposited in a chapel belonging to his family in the church of Knaresborough, under a large stone of black marble.’
Wikipedia and The Diary Junction both have pages on Slingsby.
Slingsby, made a baronet in 1638, married Barbara, daughter of Sir Thomas Belasyse. They had four children. A Protestant and a Royalist, he fought for Charles 1 against Cromwell in the civil war. Unfortunately for Slingsby, he was eventually arrested, tried as a traitor and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. The sentence, though, was commuted to simple beheading. Fortunately for us, the Slingsbys website says, Henry kept a diary during those turbulent years (and it quotes a few extracts). The website also nominates 8 June 2008 as Slingsby Day.
The Gentleman’s Magazine, available on Google Books, carries some extracts from Slingsby’s diary, though these mostly concern Redhouse, the family home on the banks of the Ouse, near York. However, the full text, with an interesting introduction, of Slingsby’s Memoirs, is available online thanks to Calderdale Council. The introduction concludes: ‘Having knelt down to the block his head was severed at a single blow. His remains were deposited in a chapel belonging to his family in the church of Knaresborough, under a large stone of black marble.’
Wikipedia and The Diary Junction both have pages on Slingsby.
More on Turkish coup diary
An intriguing story about how a diary revealed plans for two military coups in Turkey (blog 14 May) has resurfaced in the Turkish newspapers. Alper Görmü, the newspaper editor that published extracts from the diary, was taken to court but then acquitted. Now a court prosecutor, Süleyman Aydın, has appealed against the acquittal so as to allow Görmü to prove his allegations about the planned coups.
Görmü was the editor-in-chief of the Turkish newsweekly Nokta (until it closed down) which published excerpts from a diary allegedly written by a former navy commander, Özden Örnek. The excerpts gave details of how Turkey narrowly escaped two military coups in 2004. Örnek himself was one of the coup plotters. He denied having written the diary entries and claimed they had been libelously attributed to him. During the course of the legal case against Görmü, it was proven that the diaries did originate from Örnek’s computer. At the time of his acquittal, Görmü and others expressed serious concern about the fact that there was to be no investigation of the coup plotters.
Now, though, with Aydın’s appeal the allegations look set to be investigated further. Bianet quotes Aydın: ‘According to these arrangements, when there is public good in clarifying particulars of an accusation, the accused has the right to prove his/her allegations. It is clear that there is public good in proving the incident that is the subject of our case and therefore the accused has the right to prove his allegations. . .’
And Today Zaman quotes Görmü himself: ‘We wanted a chance to prove our claims. A path to proving them was blocked with my acquittal, so we were getting ready to appeal that decision. Now, with the prosecutor’s initiative as well, I’m glad to see that there is an open path to getting justice.’
Görmü was the editor-in-chief of the Turkish newsweekly Nokta (until it closed down) which published excerpts from a diary allegedly written by a former navy commander, Özden Örnek. The excerpts gave details of how Turkey narrowly escaped two military coups in 2004. Örnek himself was one of the coup plotters. He denied having written the diary entries and claimed they had been libelously attributed to him. During the course of the legal case against Görmü, it was proven that the diaries did originate from Örnek’s computer. At the time of his acquittal, Görmü and others expressed serious concern about the fact that there was to be no investigation of the coup plotters.
Now, though, with Aydın’s appeal the allegations look set to be investigated further. Bianet quotes Aydın: ‘According to these arrangements, when there is public good in clarifying particulars of an accusation, the accused has the right to prove his/her allegations. It is clear that there is public good in proving the incident that is the subject of our case and therefore the accused has the right to prove his allegations. . .’
And Today Zaman quotes Görmü himself: ‘We wanted a chance to prove our claims. A path to proving them was blocked with my acquittal, so we were getting ready to appeal that decision. Now, with the prosecutor’s initiative as well, I’m glad to see that there is an open path to getting justice.’
Friday, June 6, 2008
Who look in stove
It is a hundred years today since the birth of Edgar Vernon Christian (6 June 1908), a British teenager who followed his dream (and possibly his love too) to a tragic death in Canada’s far north. On an expedition into the Barren Lands, along the Thelon River, Christian and two older companions died of starvation in 1927. Two years later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found Christian’s diary in the cabin where the men had died.
The ill-fated expedition to Canada’s far north was mounted by Jack Hornby, a wealthy British aristocrat in his mid 40s, who had emigrated to Canada as a young man. He took with him two inexperienced companions. Harold Adlard, the older of the two, was a 27 year old would-be British explorer Hornby had met in Canada. The younger was Christian, Hornby’s second cousin, who he’d encountered on returning to England for his father’s funeral. Christian, it seems, begged Hornby to let him join an expedition. In the spring of 1926, the three set off to the Barren Lands (or Grounds), the vast tundra area in northern Canada, where Hornby planned to show it was possible to survive by feeding on caribou. However, it seems, Hornby’s party missed the caribou migration, and so had to spend winter without adequate food.
In 1928, the bodies of three men were discovered by prospectors in the Thelon region; a year later the Canadian police mounted an investigation. They found the cabin where the men had died. On a stove in the cabin was a note saying ‘WHO LOOK IN STOVE’, and inside the stove was Christian’s diary and a letter to his parents. The investigation, and the diary, made clear that the three men had died of starvation, first Hornby, then Adlard two weeks later, and then Christian. Christian’s last diary entry was dated 1 June 1927: ‘9 a.m. Weaker than ever. Have eaten all I can. Have food on hand but heart peatering [?] Sunshine is bright now. See if that does any good to me if I get out and bring in wood to make fire. Make preparations now.Got out, too weak and all in now. Left things late.’
Enrique Ramirez , a PhD student at Princeton University, gives a good account of the expedition on his website, and says of the diary that ‘[Christian’s] clipped, pithy style is matter-of-fact, as if he were protecting future readers from the grisly details of starvation. Death was a lonely and personal business, and he only wanted to present a bare minimum of details.’
Even more details about the tragedy and especially about the three men can be found on the Cowboy Song website, where the author (possibly Alan Miller) suggests that there was more than a hint of homosexuality in the relationship between the cousins. He suspects some of the evidence may have been suppressed or destroyed. He says, for example, that whole pages may have been torn out from the diary, and that some passages from Christian’s letters, with potential homosexual significance, were supressed in early versions of the tragic story.
I can find no extracts from Christian’s diary on the internet (apart from that quoted above). There are several books and a play, though, about the tragedy which rely heavily on the diary. In 1937, J Murray published Unflinching: A Diary of Tragic Adventure; in 1980, Oberon Press published Death in the Barren Ground; and most recently Viking, in 2001, published Cold Burial. The 1993 play Who Look in Stove by Lawrence Jeffery touches on the homosexual theme, the Cowboy Song website says.
The ill-fated expedition to Canada’s far north was mounted by Jack Hornby, a wealthy British aristocrat in his mid 40s, who had emigrated to Canada as a young man. He took with him two inexperienced companions. Harold Adlard, the older of the two, was a 27 year old would-be British explorer Hornby had met in Canada. The younger was Christian, Hornby’s second cousin, who he’d encountered on returning to England for his father’s funeral. Christian, it seems, begged Hornby to let him join an expedition. In the spring of 1926, the three set off to the Barren Lands (or Grounds), the vast tundra area in northern Canada, where Hornby planned to show it was possible to survive by feeding on caribou. However, it seems, Hornby’s party missed the caribou migration, and so had to spend winter without adequate food.
In 1928, the bodies of three men were discovered by prospectors in the Thelon region; a year later the Canadian police mounted an investigation. They found the cabin where the men had died. On a stove in the cabin was a note saying ‘WHO LOOK IN STOVE’, and inside the stove was Christian’s diary and a letter to his parents. The investigation, and the diary, made clear that the three men had died of starvation, first Hornby, then Adlard two weeks later, and then Christian. Christian’s last diary entry was dated 1 June 1927: ‘9 a.m. Weaker than ever. Have eaten all I can. Have food on hand but heart peatering [?] Sunshine is bright now. See if that does any good to me if I get out and bring in wood to make fire. Make preparations now.Got out, too weak and all in now. Left things late.’
Enrique Ramirez , a PhD student at Princeton University, gives a good account of the expedition on his website, and says of the diary that ‘[Christian’s] clipped, pithy style is matter-of-fact, as if he were protecting future readers from the grisly details of starvation. Death was a lonely and personal business, and he only wanted to present a bare minimum of details.’
Even more details about the tragedy and especially about the three men can be found on the Cowboy Song website, where the author (possibly Alan Miller) suggests that there was more than a hint of homosexuality in the relationship between the cousins. He suspects some of the evidence may have been suppressed or destroyed. He says, for example, that whole pages may have been torn out from the diary, and that some passages from Christian’s letters, with potential homosexual significance, were supressed in early versions of the tragic story.
I can find no extracts from Christian’s diary on the internet (apart from that quoted above). There are several books and a play, though, about the tragedy which rely heavily on the diary. In 1937, J Murray published Unflinching: A Diary of Tragic Adventure; in 1980, Oberon Press published Death in the Barren Ground; and most recently Viking, in 2001, published Cold Burial. The 1993 play Who Look in Stove by Lawrence Jeffery touches on the homosexual theme, the Cowboy Song website says.
Diaries of a saint-to-be
Some 25 years after the death of Dorothy Day, her diaries have been published in the US by Marquette University Press. Marquette says Day ‘is widely regarded as the most influential lay person in the history of American Catholicism’. A very different sort of 20th century American Catholic - Thomas Merton - also kept his diaries sealed for 25 years after his death.
Dorothy Day, Wikipedia says, was an American journalist turned social activist and devout member of the Catholic Church. She became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. In 1933, she helped found the Catholic Worker Movement, espousing nonviolence, and hospitality for the impoverished and downtrodden. She died in 1980, and three years later was proposed for sainthood. The Vatican officially accepted her cause for canonization in 2000 when it bestowed upon her the formal title ‘Servant of God’.
Day’s diaries - sealed until 2005 - have now been edited by Robert Ellsberg and published by Marquette. They begin in 1934, in the early days of the Catholic Worker Movement, and continue through until a few days before her death. In the diaries, Marquette says, Day reflects on the changing political and economic times, from the Depression to the Vietnam War; and they describe her own personal struggles, relationships and travels. Throughout, she also continues a dialogue with God, connecting every aspect of her life with her deep spiritual devotion. Ellsberg adds, in his introduction, ‘these diaries provide a unique window on her life, and on the witness of a woman for whom, in the end, everything was a form of prayer.’
As the Thirties come to a close, Day concludes her final entry of the decade with these resolutions: ‘To pay no attention to health of body but only that of soul. To plan day on arising and evening examination of conscience. More spiritual reading . . . To waste no time. More conscientious about letters, visits, about these records. More charity.’
Here’s another entry from 1973, (thanks to the National Catholic Reporter website which has a good number of extracts): ‘June 19, 1973. We feel so powerless. We do so little, giving out soup. But at least we are facing problems daily. Hunger, homelessness, greed, loneliness. The greatest concern of the Bible is injustice, bloodshed. So we share what we have, we work for peace.’
Thomas Merton is another famous 20th century Catholic diarist. He wasn’t born in the US, but moved there as a young man and converted to Roman Catholicism. He died 40 years ago in 1968, but his writings were not released until the 1990s. Whereas Day’s commitment to the Catholic cause seemed to get stronger and stronger, Merton became more open and looked to forge a dialogue with other religions, especially Buddhism; and whereas Day focused on the hungry and homeless, Merton was strong civil rights campaigner.
Dorothy Day, Wikipedia says, was an American journalist turned social activist and devout member of the Catholic Church. She became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. In 1933, she helped found the Catholic Worker Movement, espousing nonviolence, and hospitality for the impoverished and downtrodden. She died in 1980, and three years later was proposed for sainthood. The Vatican officially accepted her cause for canonization in 2000 when it bestowed upon her the formal title ‘Servant of God’.
Day’s diaries - sealed until 2005 - have now been edited by Robert Ellsberg and published by Marquette. They begin in 1934, in the early days of the Catholic Worker Movement, and continue through until a few days before her death. In the diaries, Marquette says, Day reflects on the changing political and economic times, from the Depression to the Vietnam War; and they describe her own personal struggles, relationships and travels. Throughout, she also continues a dialogue with God, connecting every aspect of her life with her deep spiritual devotion. Ellsberg adds, in his introduction, ‘these diaries provide a unique window on her life, and on the witness of a woman for whom, in the end, everything was a form of prayer.’
As the Thirties come to a close, Day concludes her final entry of the decade with these resolutions: ‘To pay no attention to health of body but only that of soul. To plan day on arising and evening examination of conscience. More spiritual reading . . . To waste no time. More conscientious about letters, visits, about these records. More charity.’
Here’s another entry from 1973, (thanks to the National Catholic Reporter website which has a good number of extracts): ‘June 19, 1973. We feel so powerless. We do so little, giving out soup. But at least we are facing problems daily. Hunger, homelessness, greed, loneliness. The greatest concern of the Bible is injustice, bloodshed. So we share what we have, we work for peace.’
Thomas Merton is another famous 20th century Catholic diarist. He wasn’t born in the US, but moved there as a young man and converted to Roman Catholicism. He died 40 years ago in 1968, but his writings were not released until the 1990s. Whereas Day’s commitment to the Catholic cause seemed to get stronger and stronger, Merton became more open and looked to forge a dialogue with other religions, especially Buddhism; and whereas Day focused on the hungry and homeless, Merton was strong civil rights campaigner.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Chesnut’s Civil War diary
Today, 3 June, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Although not a diarist himself, there is much about him in the diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, whose husband served as the President’s aide.
Davis spent four years at the United States Military Academy, and then another seven in the army. However, in 1835, after falling in love with the daughter of his colonel, he resigned from the army, and then married the daughter. Unfortunately, she died soon after, and subsequently Davis became something of a recluse. The year 1845 saw him take an elected seat in the House of Representatives and marry a second time. The following year, though, he resigned the seat so as to fight in the Mexican-American War. In 1847, he was appointed to the senate, and served there, off and on, through the 1950s until the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the start of the civil war.
In 1861, Davis was elected as President of the eleven Confederate States of America, and served in that position until the Confederate government was dissolved in 1865. Thereafter, he spent two years in prison awaiting trial for treason, but the charges were eventually dropped. According to Wikipedia’s biography, Davis’s insistence on independence, even in the face of crushing defeat, prolonged the war.
Davis himself left many letters and speeches which are available through Rice University’s website The Papers of Jefferson Davis, and there are many biographies. However, Mary Boykin Chesnut gives first hand accounts of the man in A Diary from Dixie. Her husband was part of the Confederate’s provisional congress, but he was also an aide to Davis himself. During the war, Mary accompanied her husband setting up a home wherever he went, and this often served as a meeting place for the Confederate elite.
The full text of Chesnut’s diary is available online thanks to the University of North Carolina’s library which runs a website called Documenting the American South. Here are four extracts from the diary (about the President, ‘Jeff’ Davis).
25 February 1861 - ‘Everybody means to go into the army. If Sumter is attacked, then Jeff Davis’s troubles will begin. The Judge says a military despotism would be best for us - anything to prevent a triumph of the Yankees. All right, but every man objects to any despot but himself.’
29 June 1861 - ‘[We] drove in a fine open carriage to see the Champ de Mars. It was a grand tableau out there. Mr. Davis rode a beautiful gray horse, the Arab Edwin de Leon brought him from Egypt. His worst enemy will allow that he is a consummate rider, graceful and easy in the saddle, and Mr. Chesnut, who has talked horse with his father ever since he was born, owns that Mr. Davis knows more about horses than any man he has met yet.’
10 September 1863 - ‘Then we went to the President’s, finding the family at supper. We sat on the white marble steps, and General Elzey told me exactly how things stood and of our immediate danger. Pickets were coming in. Men were spurring to and from the door as fast as they could ride, bringing and carrying messages and orders. Calmly General Elzey discoursed upon our present weakness and our chances for aid. After a while Mrs. Davis came out and embraced me silently. “It is dreadful,” I said. “The enemy is within forty miles of us - only forty!” “Who told you that tale?” said she. “They are within three miles of Richmond!” I went down on my knees like a stone. “You had better be quiet,” she said. “The President is ill. Women and children must not add to the trouble.” She asked me to stay all night, which I was thankful to do. . . Early next morning the President came down. He was still feeble and pale from illness. Custis Lee and my husband loaded their pistols, and the President drove off . . .’
18 January 1864 - ‘Our Congress is so demoralized, so confused, so depressed. They have asked the President, whom they have so hated, so insulted, so crossed and opposed and thwarted in every way, to speak to them, and advise them what to do.’
Davis spent four years at the United States Military Academy, and then another seven in the army. However, in 1835, after falling in love with the daughter of his colonel, he resigned from the army, and then married the daughter. Unfortunately, she died soon after, and subsequently Davis became something of a recluse. The year 1845 saw him take an elected seat in the House of Representatives and marry a second time. The following year, though, he resigned the seat so as to fight in the Mexican-American War. In 1847, he was appointed to the senate, and served there, off and on, through the 1950s until the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the start of the civil war.
In 1861, Davis was elected as President of the eleven Confederate States of America, and served in that position until the Confederate government was dissolved in 1865. Thereafter, he spent two years in prison awaiting trial for treason, but the charges were eventually dropped. According to Wikipedia’s biography, Davis’s insistence on independence, even in the face of crushing defeat, prolonged the war.
Davis himself left many letters and speeches which are available through Rice University’s website The Papers of Jefferson Davis, and there are many biographies. However, Mary Boykin Chesnut gives first hand accounts of the man in A Diary from Dixie. Her husband was part of the Confederate’s provisional congress, but he was also an aide to Davis himself. During the war, Mary accompanied her husband setting up a home wherever he went, and this often served as a meeting place for the Confederate elite.
The full text of Chesnut’s diary is available online thanks to the University of North Carolina’s library which runs a website called Documenting the American South. Here are four extracts from the diary (about the President, ‘Jeff’ Davis).
25 February 1861 - ‘Everybody means to go into the army. If Sumter is attacked, then Jeff Davis’s troubles will begin. The Judge says a military despotism would be best for us - anything to prevent a triumph of the Yankees. All right, but every man objects to any despot but himself.’
29 June 1861 - ‘[We] drove in a fine open carriage to see the Champ de Mars. It was a grand tableau out there. Mr. Davis rode a beautiful gray horse, the Arab Edwin de Leon brought him from Egypt. His worst enemy will allow that he is a consummate rider, graceful and easy in the saddle, and Mr. Chesnut, who has talked horse with his father ever since he was born, owns that Mr. Davis knows more about horses than any man he has met yet.’
10 September 1863 - ‘Then we went to the President’s, finding the family at supper. We sat on the white marble steps, and General Elzey told me exactly how things stood and of our immediate danger. Pickets were coming in. Men were spurring to and from the door as fast as they could ride, bringing and carrying messages and orders. Calmly General Elzey discoursed upon our present weakness and our chances for aid. After a while Mrs. Davis came out and embraced me silently. “It is dreadful,” I said. “The enemy is within forty miles of us - only forty!” “Who told you that tale?” said she. “They are within three miles of Richmond!” I went down on my knees like a stone. “You had better be quiet,” she said. “The President is ill. Women and children must not add to the trouble.” She asked me to stay all night, which I was thankful to do. . . Early next morning the President came down. He was still feeble and pale from illness. Custis Lee and my husband loaded their pistols, and the President drove off . . .’
18 January 1864 - ‘Our Congress is so demoralized, so confused, so depressed. They have asked the President, whom they have so hated, so insulted, so crossed and opposed and thwarted in every way, to speak to them, and advise them what to do.’
Friday, May 30, 2008
Fake diary debacles
A couple of ambitious fake diaries have been in the news lately. A diary attributed to France’s Sun King, Louis VIX, was mistakenly used by New Zealand author Veronica Buckley as a prime source for her biography of the King’s secret wife, Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon. And, it is the 25th anniversary of the ‘finding’ of Hitler’s diaries, which, according to Der Spiegel, caused one of ‘the greatest media debacles of all time’. Buckley may care to take heed of the Hitler diary story, since the faker himself ended up doing quite well, whereas the writer who tried to exploit the faked manuscripts is still shunned by former colleagues.
Madame de Maintenon - The secret wife of Louis XIV is ‘a rags-to-riches tale’, publisher Bloomsbury says, revealing ‘every layer of the vibrant and shocking world that was France in the age of Louis XIV’. The author, Buckley, uses quotes from journals, purportedly by Louis XIV himself as prime source material to describe these layers. According to The Guardian, Buckley herself explained in the advance copy edition that the diaries were only found in 1997 (nearly 300 years after they were written) in ‘a packet of yellowed papers, wrapped in string and sealed with faded red wax’ hidden ‘inside a heavy old chest in a Loire valley manor house’.
Madame de Maintenon was due for publication in early May when, in mid-April, Bloomsbury received a letter from Buckley. She wrote, The Guardian again reveals, that the journal she had used as a prime source was not in fact written by the Sun King himself, but by a French historian François Bluche as recently as the late 1990s. Bloomsbury immediately postponed publication ‘to give them time to tip in pages - pulping the offending pages, in effect, and glueing in new ones’. Bloomsbury’s catalogue now promises publication on ‘16 June (subject to change)’. Although the price is advertised as £17.99, Bloomsbury’s own bookshop has £25 as the RRP, but discounted to £18.75. Bloomsbury seems in a bit of tizz.
Not half as big a tizz as caused by Konrad Kujau and Gerd Heidemann 25 years ago with the fake Hitler diaries. In April 1983, Heidemann announced to a stunned world that he had purchased, on behalf German Magazine Stern, 60 volumes of diaries actually written by Hitler. They were good enough to convince some experts leading Stern and others (The Sunday Times in the UK) to begin publishing them. Within two weeks, though, they were revealed as being ‘grotesquely superficial fakes’, written by Kujau, a notorous forger, according to a Wikipedia article.
To acknowledge the anniversary, rival German magazines have been tracing the histories of the two men. Der Spiegel, which has an English language online edition, notes that Kujau spent three years in jail for his fraud but then went on to thrive after his release as a media celebrity appearing on chat shows displaying his signature-forging skills. He died in 2000. Heidemann, though, has not thrived. He too served a prison sentence (for embezzlement having billed his magazine for more than the diaries actually cost). Now he lives alone in ‘a cramped Hamburg apartment’ with massive debts, and is shunned by former colleagues who have not forgiven him, Der Spiegel says, for ‘one of the greatest media debacles of all time’.
Madame de Maintenon - The secret wife of Louis XIV is ‘a rags-to-riches tale’, publisher Bloomsbury says, revealing ‘every layer of the vibrant and shocking world that was France in the age of Louis XIV’. The author, Buckley, uses quotes from journals, purportedly by Louis XIV himself as prime source material to describe these layers. According to The Guardian, Buckley herself explained in the advance copy edition that the diaries were only found in 1997 (nearly 300 years after they were written) in ‘a packet of yellowed papers, wrapped in string and sealed with faded red wax’ hidden ‘inside a heavy old chest in a Loire valley manor house’.
Madame de Maintenon was due for publication in early May when, in mid-April, Bloomsbury received a letter from Buckley. She wrote, The Guardian again reveals, that the journal she had used as a prime source was not in fact written by the Sun King himself, but by a French historian François Bluche as recently as the late 1990s. Bloomsbury immediately postponed publication ‘to give them time to tip in pages - pulping the offending pages, in effect, and glueing in new ones’. Bloomsbury’s catalogue now promises publication on ‘16 June (subject to change)’. Although the price is advertised as £17.99, Bloomsbury’s own bookshop has £25 as the RRP, but discounted to £18.75. Bloomsbury seems in a bit of tizz.
Not half as big a tizz as caused by Konrad Kujau and Gerd Heidemann 25 years ago with the fake Hitler diaries. In April 1983, Heidemann announced to a stunned world that he had purchased, on behalf German Magazine Stern, 60 volumes of diaries actually written by Hitler. They were good enough to convince some experts leading Stern and others (The Sunday Times in the UK) to begin publishing them. Within two weeks, though, they were revealed as being ‘grotesquely superficial fakes’, written by Kujau, a notorous forger, according to a Wikipedia article.
To acknowledge the anniversary, rival German magazines have been tracing the histories of the two men. Der Spiegel, which has an English language online edition, notes that Kujau spent three years in jail for his fraud but then went on to thrive after his release as a media celebrity appearing on chat shows displaying his signature-forging skills. He died in 2000. Heidemann, though, has not thrived. He too served a prison sentence (for embezzlement having billed his magazine for more than the diaries actually cost). Now he lives alone in ‘a cramped Hamburg apartment’ with massive debts, and is shunned by former colleagues who have not forgiven him, Der Spiegel says, for ‘one of the greatest media debacles of all time’.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
British PM kidnap plot
Can you decipher the newly-released diaries of Lord Hailsham (Quintin Hogg)? The diaries, partly written in code, have already revealed that there was a student plot to kidnap Alec Douglas-Home, in 1964, when he was prime minister, and they promise to provide insights into the period when Edward Heath was prime minister. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation is appealing for help in decoding more of Hailsham’s writing.
Lord Hailsham was a UK Conservative frontbencher and cabinet minister for more than 30 years, and, for a short period in 1963, was seen as a possible leader of the party. He died in 2001, three days after his 94th birthday. Approximately 1,000 boxes of his papers are held by the Churchill Archives Centre, which recently released 450 of them - including political diaries (1970-1979) and a wartime diary (1941-1942) - for scrutiny by researchers.
Under an arrangement with the Centre, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation has been given exclusive rights to publish parts of the diary online. Some of them were written in code, adapted from an American shorthand system. The Foundation says it has successfully translated a number of the coded entries ‘with very generous help from some cryptanalysts at GCHQ working in their spare time’. The University of Cambridge - home to both the Churchill Archives Centre and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation - issued a press release (April 2008) suggesting that ‘the most astonishing revelation’ in the diaries is about a ‘massive security breach’ in April 1964 - which nearly resulted in the kidnap of Douglas-Home.
The decoded diary entry reads: ‘An odd story of the 1964 election never published. Alec (then Prime Minister) was staying with John and Priscilla Tweedsmuir - who had no room for Alec’s private bodyguard. He went to the nearest town (Aberdeen?) and John & Priscilla left Alec for a time alone in the house. Knock at the door. Door answered by PM in person. Deputation of left-wing students from Aberdeen University. Said they were going to kidnap Alec. He: “I suppose you realise if you do the Conservatives will win the election by 200 or 300.” He asked and received permission to pack a few things & was given 10 mins grace. After that they were offered and accepted beer. John & Priscilla returned and the kidnap project abandoned. The bodyguard swore Alec to secrecy as his job would have been in peril.’
Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, who is helping to digitise Hailsham’s papers, said the prank ‘was one of the worst breaches of a Prime Minister’s personal security in the twentieth century.’ But, according to The Scotsman, Lady Douglas-Hamilton, the 14 year old daughter of Hailsham’s hosts, says the meeting was all rather amicable and there was no real threat.
The Foundation believes that the diaries may have ‘special significance’ in particular for what they reveal about Edward Heath’s government, since no other senior Conservative seems to have kept a diary during that period.
A large number of extracts from the diaries are available on the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website, some of them decoded and some with photos of the originals. However, there are also entries which are still untranslated, and the Foundation's website is appealing for help in decoding them.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Foundation expresses surprise at the existence of the diaries given how forcefully Hailsham condemned political diary-keeping in his memoir, A Sparrow's Flight, and how he stressed that nothing of the kind would be found in his own papers. Perhaps he saw the notes as something less than a diary, the Foundation surmises, or else maybe he intended ‘to make a bonfire of them but failed to (thankfully)’.
Lord Hailsham was a UK Conservative frontbencher and cabinet minister for more than 30 years, and, for a short period in 1963, was seen as a possible leader of the party. He died in 2001, three days after his 94th birthday. Approximately 1,000 boxes of his papers are held by the Churchill Archives Centre, which recently released 450 of them - including political diaries (1970-1979) and a wartime diary (1941-1942) - for scrutiny by researchers.
Under an arrangement with the Centre, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation has been given exclusive rights to publish parts of the diary online. Some of them were written in code, adapted from an American shorthand system. The Foundation says it has successfully translated a number of the coded entries ‘with very generous help from some cryptanalysts at GCHQ working in their spare time’. The University of Cambridge - home to both the Churchill Archives Centre and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation - issued a press release (April 2008) suggesting that ‘the most astonishing revelation’ in the diaries is about a ‘massive security breach’ in April 1964 - which nearly resulted in the kidnap of Douglas-Home.
The decoded diary entry reads: ‘An odd story of the 1964 election never published. Alec (then Prime Minister) was staying with John and Priscilla Tweedsmuir - who had no room for Alec’s private bodyguard. He went to the nearest town (Aberdeen?) and John & Priscilla left Alec for a time alone in the house. Knock at the door. Door answered by PM in person. Deputation of left-wing students from Aberdeen University. Said they were going to kidnap Alec. He: “I suppose you realise if you do the Conservatives will win the election by 200 or 300.” He asked and received permission to pack a few things & was given 10 mins grace. After that they were offered and accepted beer. John & Priscilla returned and the kidnap project abandoned. The bodyguard swore Alec to secrecy as his job would have been in peril.’
Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, who is helping to digitise Hailsham’s papers, said the prank ‘was one of the worst breaches of a Prime Minister’s personal security in the twentieth century.’ But, according to The Scotsman, Lady Douglas-Hamilton, the 14 year old daughter of Hailsham’s hosts, says the meeting was all rather amicable and there was no real threat.
The Foundation believes that the diaries may have ‘special significance’ in particular for what they reveal about Edward Heath’s government, since no other senior Conservative seems to have kept a diary during that period.
A large number of extracts from the diaries are available on the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website, some of them decoded and some with photos of the originals. However, there are also entries which are still untranslated, and the Foundation's website is appealing for help in decoding them.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Foundation expresses surprise at the existence of the diaries given how forcefully Hailsham condemned political diary-keeping in his memoir, A Sparrow's Flight, and how he stressed that nothing of the kind would be found in his own papers. Perhaps he saw the notes as something less than a diary, the Foundation surmises, or else maybe he intended ‘to make a bonfire of them but failed to (thankfully)’.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Wyn and Joe's special needs
Blue Sky July, a collection of intimate and heart felt diary-type musings by Nia Wyn mostly concerning her severely disabled child Joe, has been short-listed for the Wales Book of the Year. The book, first published in 2007 by Seren, has already won critical acclaim, and is due for a hard back launch in the US later this year. However, Peter Limbrick, who runs an organisation called Interconnections for those supporting children with special needs, believes the book should come with a ‘health warning’.
The book begins in the summer of 1998, when Joe is born, and finishes in 2007. On the day of the birth Wyn writes: ‘If I could keep one feeling, from the whole of my life, I’d choose this one. This time, when just to be human feels divine, and nothing is wrong.’ Within hours of the birth, though, something goes wrong, and her son is transferred to intensive care. Wyn then notes: ‘It’s the strangest time – a birth – for life to start falling apart. Just like that!’ Subsequently, Joe is diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Blue Sky July describes how Wyn battles against impossible odds to heal her son, Seren says, and also explores the impact of the tragedy on her life.
Although first published by Seren, which describes itself as Wales’ leading literary publisher, Blue Sky July has been re-issued by Penguin under the Michael Joseph imprint in the UK, and is about to receive a hard back launch in the US under the Dutton Books imprint (as Blue Sky July: A Mother's Story of Hope and Healing). It has also been serialised on BBC Radio Four in the UK, and been featured in several UK newspapers. Now, though, this ‘runaway success’ (Seren’s words) is continuing with a short-list nomination for the £10,000 Wales Book of the Year prize. Other nominees include the poet Dannie Abse (who, many years ago, was my father’s best friend!) writing about his late wife, and Tom Bullough with a novel about childhood friendship. The winner will be announced on 1 July.
There are long extracts from Blue Sky Blue on The Guardian website.
But not everyone is a fan of the book, especially Peter Limbrick, who set up Interconnections in 1995 to support all those ‘who work with babies, children and young people who have ongoing special needs for whatever reasons’. In an article on the Interconnections website, he says: ‘[This] is not a book that I would recommend to parents of children with disabilities and special needs and I would want to issue a very serious ‘health warning’ for those parents who do get hold of it.’
Limbrick lists all the many many ‘interventions’ Wyn tries for her son (a few of which include sensory rooms, muscle tapping, music therapy, a ‘second skin’, botox, and faith healing), but says the prevailing image is of ‘a circus’ - one with cash tills. There is talk of miracles in the book, he adds, but ‘the miracle might be that Joe survived the circus, unlike his parents’ relationship or his mother’s career’. ‘We have entered the 21st century’, he warns, ‘without a science of early intervention for children . . . to help families like Joe’s. Hence the clowns, the snake oil and the cash tills.’
The book is beautifully written, he admits, and nothing can detract from Wyn’s love, commitment, enterprise and energy. But his health warning comes for two reasons: ‘The book reinforces the message that parents should sacrifice all to offer their infant every treatment and therapy available (without guidance about what is worth having and what is not); and it challenges every parent (usually the mother) to strive every minute of the day and every day of the year to produce a cure for the child’s disabilities.’
The book begins in the summer of 1998, when Joe is born, and finishes in 2007. On the day of the birth Wyn writes: ‘If I could keep one feeling, from the whole of my life, I’d choose this one. This time, when just to be human feels divine, and nothing is wrong.’ Within hours of the birth, though, something goes wrong, and her son is transferred to intensive care. Wyn then notes: ‘It’s the strangest time – a birth – for life to start falling apart. Just like that!’ Subsequently, Joe is diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Blue Sky July describes how Wyn battles against impossible odds to heal her son, Seren says, and also explores the impact of the tragedy on her life.
Although first published by Seren, which describes itself as Wales’ leading literary publisher, Blue Sky July has been re-issued by Penguin under the Michael Joseph imprint in the UK, and is about to receive a hard back launch in the US under the Dutton Books imprint (as Blue Sky July: A Mother's Story of Hope and Healing). It has also been serialised on BBC Radio Four in the UK, and been featured in several UK newspapers. Now, though, this ‘runaway success’ (Seren’s words) is continuing with a short-list nomination for the £10,000 Wales Book of the Year prize. Other nominees include the poet Dannie Abse (who, many years ago, was my father’s best friend!) writing about his late wife, and Tom Bullough with a novel about childhood friendship. The winner will be announced on 1 July.
There are long extracts from Blue Sky Blue on The Guardian website.
But not everyone is a fan of the book, especially Peter Limbrick, who set up Interconnections in 1995 to support all those ‘who work with babies, children and young people who have ongoing special needs for whatever reasons’. In an article on the Interconnections website, he says: ‘[This] is not a book that I would recommend to parents of children with disabilities and special needs and I would want to issue a very serious ‘health warning’ for those parents who do get hold of it.’
Limbrick lists all the many many ‘interventions’ Wyn tries for her son (a few of which include sensory rooms, muscle tapping, music therapy, a ‘second skin’, botox, and faith healing), but says the prevailing image is of ‘a circus’ - one with cash tills. There is talk of miracles in the book, he adds, but ‘the miracle might be that Joe survived the circus, unlike his parents’ relationship or his mother’s career’. ‘We have entered the 21st century’, he warns, ‘without a science of early intervention for children . . . to help families like Joe’s. Hence the clowns, the snake oil and the cash tills.’
The book is beautifully written, he admits, and nothing can detract from Wyn’s love, commitment, enterprise and energy. But his health warning comes for two reasons: ‘The book reinforces the message that parents should sacrifice all to offer their infant every treatment and therapy available (without guidance about what is worth having and what is not); and it challenges every parent (usually the mother) to strive every minute of the day and every day of the year to produce a cure for the child’s disabilities.’
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
A child in the ghetto
Rutka Laskier, a 14 year old Jewish teenager, was confined with her family to the Będzin ghetto, in southern Poland, and then killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1943. Her short diary, from 1943, was discovered in 2005, and printed first in Polish and then in English and Hebrew editions. A more lavish version with maps and photographs has now been published in the US, and the publishers are calling Laskier the ‘Polish Anne Frank’.
Laskier was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), then a predominantly German-speaking autonomous city-state. Soon after, though, in the early 1930s, her father moved the family to Będzin, the southern Polish city where his parents had come from. During World War II, the family was eventually forced into the city’s Jewish ghetto. Subsequently, Rutka, her mother and brother were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were killed, probably in a gas chamber. Her father, however, survived the war, went to Israel, remarried, had another daughter, and died in 1982.
For three months, while still in the Będzin ghetto, Rutka wrote a diary. Her friend, Stanisława Sapińska, helped her to hide it under some floorboards; and later, when the ghetto had been cleared and Rutka had gone, Sapińska went back to recover it. She kept the book safe for over 60 years, and secret. It was only in 2005 that her family persuaded her to allow it to be published. (The story is well told on Wikipedia’s Rutka Laskier web page.)
Subsequently, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, published English and Hebrew editions. Its website has an informative article about the diary. ‘While forming a chilling human and historical document,’ it says, ‘Holocaust diaries have great documentary value for the understanding of the period from the viewpoint of those who experienced it - as an illustration of life in the ghettos, in camps or in hiding, as well as in battling Holocaust deniers.’
The New York Times has a good selection of extracts from the diary. Here is one from 6 February 1943: ‘Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother’s hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby’s brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy. I am writing this as if nothing has happened. . .’.
The new version of the diary, just published by Times Inc. Home Entertainment in collaboration with Yad Vashem, is called Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust. According to Publishers Weekly it sets Laskier’s writings within a larger context: ‘Pages on the left feature her diary entries, typeset on what looks like parchment, while pages to the right feature maps, historical documents, or photographs (including several of Laskier with family members and friends), as well as historical commentary and annotations explaining obscure terminology.’
The co-publishers claim this is a ‘Polish Anne Frank’, but not everyone agrees. Canada’s Calgary Herald says ‘she is nothing of the kind’. Frank’s diary, Naomi Lakritz says in the article, ‘was richly textured with detailed descriptions of people, places, conversations and events. One could walk right in to Frank’s life; trying to catch more than a glimpse of Laskier’s family and friends is like discerning their shapes through a pane of frosted glass.’
Laskier was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), then a predominantly German-speaking autonomous city-state. Soon after, though, in the early 1930s, her father moved the family to Będzin, the southern Polish city where his parents had come from. During World War II, the family was eventually forced into the city’s Jewish ghetto. Subsequently, Rutka, her mother and brother were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where they were killed, probably in a gas chamber. Her father, however, survived the war, went to Israel, remarried, had another daughter, and died in 1982.
For three months, while still in the Będzin ghetto, Rutka wrote a diary. Her friend, Stanisława Sapińska, helped her to hide it under some floorboards; and later, when the ghetto had been cleared and Rutka had gone, Sapińska went back to recover it. She kept the book safe for over 60 years, and secret. It was only in 2005 that her family persuaded her to allow it to be published. (The story is well told on Wikipedia’s Rutka Laskier web page.)
Subsequently, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, published English and Hebrew editions. Its website has an informative article about the diary. ‘While forming a chilling human and historical document,’ it says, ‘Holocaust diaries have great documentary value for the understanding of the period from the viewpoint of those who experienced it - as an illustration of life in the ghettos, in camps or in hiding, as well as in battling Holocaust deniers.’
The New York Times has a good selection of extracts from the diary. Here is one from 6 February 1943: ‘Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother’s hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby’s brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy. I am writing this as if nothing has happened. . .’.
The new version of the diary, just published by Times Inc. Home Entertainment in collaboration with Yad Vashem, is called Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust. According to Publishers Weekly it sets Laskier’s writings within a larger context: ‘Pages on the left feature her diary entries, typeset on what looks like parchment, while pages to the right feature maps, historical documents, or photographs (including several of Laskier with family members and friends), as well as historical commentary and annotations explaining obscure terminology.’
The co-publishers claim this is a ‘Polish Anne Frank’, but not everyone agrees. Canada’s Calgary Herald says ‘she is nothing of the kind’. Frank’s diary, Naomi Lakritz says in the article, ‘was richly textured with detailed descriptions of people, places, conversations and events. One could walk right in to Frank’s life; trying to catch more than a glimpse of Laskier’s family and friends is like discerning their shapes through a pane of frosted glass.’
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Steadyhand Diaries
Financial services might not be the most riveting of diary subjects, and financial services in Canada may be even less so, but Tom Bradley has done a good job in bringing the subject alive. A generous selection of his diary entries have just been published in Globe Investor Magazine, a supplement of Globe and Mail, the country’s largest circulation national newspaper.
In early 2005, Bradley resigned as president of Phillips, Hager & North (PHN), one of Canada’s largest independent investment firms. A year later he wrote in his diary: ‘I want to focus on getting a new mutual-fund company off the ground. Enough dreaming about it. We'll burn through some serious cash and I'll offend a few industry friends along the way, but if we do it right and get a little luck, we can have a real impact. Steadyhand, as I’ve called it, will sell its funds directly to the investor. Our fees will be low - no commissions or trailers. Clients will get simple, straight-ahead service. . .’
Five pages of Bradley’s diary entries - entitled ‘The Steadyhand Diaries’ - were published online by Globe Investor Magazine on 22 May. Starting in 2005, they cover three years of Bradley’s life through to early 2008, the day his old firm, PHN, announced it was selling out to Royal Bank. Along the way, he describes, with a deft touch, how many of the decisions in developing and launching Steadyhand were made (for example, ‘we just hired a CFO who’s six months pregnant. Are we nuts...or incredibly enlightened?’).
The launch of Steadyhand took place in April 2007. A week later Bradley writes, ‘the silence is deafening’, and ‘a few clients are trickling in, but I can tell the team is disappointed’, and ‘Man, it’s tough putting bums in the seats’.
And it was especially tough for Bradley too, because - according to his diary - he’d been seriously ill since the beginning of the year, and by May was on the waiting list for a liver transplant. It came in August, and by October he had officially returned to work, presumably with his steady hand back on the tiller.
In early 2005, Bradley resigned as president of Phillips, Hager & North (PHN), one of Canada’s largest independent investment firms. A year later he wrote in his diary: ‘I want to focus on getting a new mutual-fund company off the ground. Enough dreaming about it. We'll burn through some serious cash and I'll offend a few industry friends along the way, but if we do it right and get a little luck, we can have a real impact. Steadyhand, as I’ve called it, will sell its funds directly to the investor. Our fees will be low - no commissions or trailers. Clients will get simple, straight-ahead service. . .’
Five pages of Bradley’s diary entries - entitled ‘The Steadyhand Diaries’ - were published online by Globe Investor Magazine on 22 May. Starting in 2005, they cover three years of Bradley’s life through to early 2008, the day his old firm, PHN, announced it was selling out to Royal Bank. Along the way, he describes, with a deft touch, how many of the decisions in developing and launching Steadyhand were made (for example, ‘we just hired a CFO who’s six months pregnant. Are we nuts...or incredibly enlightened?’).
The launch of Steadyhand took place in April 2007. A week later Bradley writes, ‘the silence is deafening’, and ‘a few clients are trickling in, but I can tell the team is disappointed’, and ‘Man, it’s tough putting bums in the seats’.
And it was especially tough for Bradley too, because - according to his diary - he’d been seriously ill since the beginning of the year, and by May was on the waiting list for a liver transplant. It came in August, and by October he had officially returned to work, presumably with his steady hand back on the tiller.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The lure of birds’ eggs
The obsessive zeal with which some men - for it is almost always men - hunt down, steal, and hoard birds’ eggs is difficult to understand for most of us, especially since it is a criminal activity. However, recently a master criminal in this respect, Richard Pearson, was caught and sent to jail. A set of carefully compiled diaries helped to give some insight into his obsession. But for a literary appreciation of the lure of birds’ eggs, temptation tasted yet resisted, one should visit Barbellion’s early 20th century diaries.
Skegness Magistrates Court sentenced Pearson last April to 23 weeks in prison and ordered him to pay £1,500 in costs for illegally stealing and possessing birds’ eggs. The police prosecutor, in presenting his case, called Pearson’s hoard, discovered at the Cleethorpes family home in 2007, as an ‘Aladdin’s Cave’, according to a BBC News report. In total, police officers found more than 7,000 eggs, including many rare species, says RSPB investigator Mark Thomas on his blog, such as honey buzzard, Montagu’s harrier, red-necked phalarope, black-tailed godwit, dotterel, greenshank and red-backed shrike.
The police also found 59 dead birds in a freezer and dozens of diaries detailing where and when he had found the eggs; and they seized egg-hunting paraphernalia - a rubber dinghy, waders, climbing spikes, syringes, cameras and sat-nav systems.
At the time of his arrest, Pearson claimed he had been given the eggs by the late Colin Watson, an infamous egg collector, who had died in May 2006 after falling from a larch tree containing a sparrowhawk nest. Prior to his death, Watson had been convicted seven times for offences connected to birds’ eggs. However, Pearson’s meticulous diaries, as decoded by the RSPB investigators, gave the police all the information they needed for a successful prosecution.
Also among his possessions, Pearson had photocopies of diaries written by Watson which together with Pearson’s diaries, the Times Online says, provide ‘an insight into the minds of men who crawl up trees and down cliff faces, risking their lives in pursuit of prizes with no monetary value that can never be displayed in their homes for fear of a police raid’. The same article, using RSPB sources, explains how these men saw their exploits as comparable to secret agents, and how half the fun was in beating the police, the RSPB and the system.
The lure of bird’s eggs is not only experienced by criminal types. Just after the First World War, a young man made this entry in his diary: ‘Birds’ eggs were another electrifying factor in my youth. I can remember tramping to and fro all one warm June afternoon over a bracken-covered sandy waste, searching for a nightjar’s eggs. H—— and I quartered out the ground systematically, till presently, after two hours’ search, the hen goat-sucker flipped up at my feet and fluttered away like a big moth across the silvery bracken out of sight. Lying before me on the ground were two long, grey eggs, marbled like pebbles. I turned away from this intoxicating vision, flicking my fingers as if I had been bitten. Then I turned, approached slowly, and gloated. It was just such an effect on me as a girl’s beautiful face used to make — equally tantalising and out of reach. I stared, fingered them, put one to my lips. Then it was over. I had to leave them, and an equal thrill at goat-suckers’ eggs could never return again.’
The young man was born Bruce Frederick Cummings in 1889, but is better known today by his pen name, W N P Barbellion, because of the fame of his diary - The Journal of a Disappointed Man. It was published, with a preface by H G Wells, in 1919, only months before his death, aged but 30. The diary is freely available on the internet at Barbellionblog (many thanks to Ray Davis for the website).
Skegness Magistrates Court sentenced Pearson last April to 23 weeks in prison and ordered him to pay £1,500 in costs for illegally stealing and possessing birds’ eggs. The police prosecutor, in presenting his case, called Pearson’s hoard, discovered at the Cleethorpes family home in 2007, as an ‘Aladdin’s Cave’, according to a BBC News report. In total, police officers found more than 7,000 eggs, including many rare species, says RSPB investigator Mark Thomas on his blog, such as honey buzzard, Montagu’s harrier, red-necked phalarope, black-tailed godwit, dotterel, greenshank and red-backed shrike.
The police also found 59 dead birds in a freezer and dozens of diaries detailing where and when he had found the eggs; and they seized egg-hunting paraphernalia - a rubber dinghy, waders, climbing spikes, syringes, cameras and sat-nav systems.
At the time of his arrest, Pearson claimed he had been given the eggs by the late Colin Watson, an infamous egg collector, who had died in May 2006 after falling from a larch tree containing a sparrowhawk nest. Prior to his death, Watson had been convicted seven times for offences connected to birds’ eggs. However, Pearson’s meticulous diaries, as decoded by the RSPB investigators, gave the police all the information they needed for a successful prosecution.
Also among his possessions, Pearson had photocopies of diaries written by Watson which together with Pearson’s diaries, the Times Online says, provide ‘an insight into the minds of men who crawl up trees and down cliff faces, risking their lives in pursuit of prizes with no monetary value that can never be displayed in their homes for fear of a police raid’. The same article, using RSPB sources, explains how these men saw their exploits as comparable to secret agents, and how half the fun was in beating the police, the RSPB and the system.
The lure of bird’s eggs is not only experienced by criminal types. Just after the First World War, a young man made this entry in his diary: ‘Birds’ eggs were another electrifying factor in my youth. I can remember tramping to and fro all one warm June afternoon over a bracken-covered sandy waste, searching for a nightjar’s eggs. H—— and I quartered out the ground systematically, till presently, after two hours’ search, the hen goat-sucker flipped up at my feet and fluttered away like a big moth across the silvery bracken out of sight. Lying before me on the ground were two long, grey eggs, marbled like pebbles. I turned away from this intoxicating vision, flicking my fingers as if I had been bitten. Then I turned, approached slowly, and gloated. It was just such an effect on me as a girl’s beautiful face used to make — equally tantalising and out of reach. I stared, fingered them, put one to my lips. Then it was over. I had to leave them, and an equal thrill at goat-suckers’ eggs could never return again.’
The young man was born Bruce Frederick Cummings in 1889, but is better known today by his pen name, W N P Barbellion, because of the fame of his diary - The Journal of a Disappointed Man. It was published, with a preface by H G Wells, in 1919, only months before his death, aged but 30. The diary is freely available on the internet at Barbellionblog (many thanks to Ray Davis for the website).
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
I am a super-person
‘I want this to be remembered forever. Maybe I'll even have a follower; after all, I am a super-person, almost God.’ This is one of many disturbing diary entries made by Pekka-Eric Auvinen, a Finnish student, in the run-up to his shooting of eight people and himself at Jokela High School in November 2007. Information about the diaries has recently come to light thanks to publication of a final report by the Finnish Bureau of Investigation.
The shooting was one of the worst such incidents ever reported, and certainly the most terrible in Finland. At the time, the Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen called it a ‘great tragedy’ and said the shooting had ‘deeply undermined the sense of security in society’, according to BBC News. The facts are carefully explained in an excellent Wikipedia entry.
There are many extraordinary and indeed disturbing aspects of this tragedy, not least that Auvinen was on SSRI antidepressants (which, it is now thought, can lead to suicidal tendencies in teenagers), and that his murderous shooting spree happened just three weeks after getting a gun licence.
But also disturbing is the extent to which Auvinen’s obsession was publicly visible on the internet for a long time prior to the tragedy. The Wikipedia article gives details of a video posted to YouTube, hours before the shooting, announcing the massacre, and of other videos, posted earlier, showing an unhealthy interest in violent incidents, such as the Columbine High School massacre, the Waco Siege, and the Tokyo sarin gas attack. Auvenin even left a media package explaining his actions and his motives for the shooting. The Odd Culture website carries much of Auvinen’s own material, while The Trenchcoat Chronicals, which is fairly obsessed in its own way, has much to say about the Jokela tragedy and other school shootings.
It has now been revealed - thanks to a final report from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation - that Auvenin also kept a diary. It shows, a Bureau press release states, that ‘Auvinen had started to plan the school shooting in March 2007 and given it the name ‘Main Strike’. The diary entries display the will and the plans of the perpetrator and their realisation as well as the possibility that the perpetrator himself could die in the incident. No traces were found in the investigation that an outsider would have read the diary.’
I don’t think the text of the diaries has been made public (at least not in English), but various extracts have made their way into news reports. WikiNews has these:
- ‘In the best case, this (attack) would create massive destruction and chaos, or even a revolution’;
- ‘In any case, I want this to be remembered forever. Maybe I'll even have a follower; after all, I am a super-person, almost God’;
- ‘kill as many of you bastards as possible’.
The shooting was one of the worst such incidents ever reported, and certainly the most terrible in Finland. At the time, the Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen called it a ‘great tragedy’ and said the shooting had ‘deeply undermined the sense of security in society’, according to BBC News. The facts are carefully explained in an excellent Wikipedia entry.
There are many extraordinary and indeed disturbing aspects of this tragedy, not least that Auvinen was on SSRI antidepressants (which, it is now thought, can lead to suicidal tendencies in teenagers), and that his murderous shooting spree happened just three weeks after getting a gun licence.
But also disturbing is the extent to which Auvinen’s obsession was publicly visible on the internet for a long time prior to the tragedy. The Wikipedia article gives details of a video posted to YouTube, hours before the shooting, announcing the massacre, and of other videos, posted earlier, showing an unhealthy interest in violent incidents, such as the Columbine High School massacre, the Waco Siege, and the Tokyo sarin gas attack. Auvenin even left a media package explaining his actions and his motives for the shooting. The Odd Culture website carries much of Auvinen’s own material, while The Trenchcoat Chronicals, which is fairly obsessed in its own way, has much to say about the Jokela tragedy and other school shootings.
It has now been revealed - thanks to a final report from the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation - that Auvenin also kept a diary. It shows, a Bureau press release states, that ‘Auvinen had started to plan the school shooting in March 2007 and given it the name ‘Main Strike’. The diary entries display the will and the plans of the perpetrator and their realisation as well as the possibility that the perpetrator himself could die in the incident. No traces were found in the investigation that an outsider would have read the diary.’
I don’t think the text of the diaries has been made public (at least not in English), but various extracts have made their way into news reports. WikiNews has these:
- ‘In the best case, this (attack) would create massive destruction and chaos, or even a revolution’;
- ‘In any case, I want this to be remembered forever. Maybe I'll even have a follower; after all, I am a super-person, almost God’;
- ‘kill as many of you bastards as possible’.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Chester Gillette on death row
Death Row diaries/blogs are common today and easily accessible on the internet, but such a diary from a century ago is a real find. One written by a young man called Chester Gillette, and recently unearthed by a relative, has been published in time for the 100 year anniversary of his execution.
After leaving school and doing various jobs, Gillette began working at an uncle’s factory (making skirts) in 2005. Here he met Grace Brown who, by the spring of 1906, had become pregnant. She was anxious to get married; Gillette, though, was too busy chasing other skirt. He did, however, agree to take her on a weekend trip to the Adirondacks, a pretty mountainous region in northeast New York. There they went on a boat trip, on Big Moose Lake, from which Brown never returned. Her body was recovered the next day. Gillette claimed she had drowned accidentally and he had panicked and fled. But the court decided he had clubbed her with a tennis racket and left her to drown. It sentenced him to death.
The story entered into the American psyche through Theodore Dreiser’s famous 1925 novel, An American Tragedy, and the 1951 Academy Award-winning film A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens.
Last year, a diary that Gillette kept in Auburn Prison from September 1907 to his death on 30 March 1908 was donated by Marlynn McWade-Murray to Hamilton College. The diary (and some of Gillette’s letters) had been handed down to McWade-Murray, from her father who was the son of Gillette’s sister, Hazel. In advance of the anniversary of the execution, Hamilton College published The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette, edited by Craig Brandon and Jack Sherman.
Brandon has his own website where he chronicles the finding and publishing of the diary, and where he writes in some detail about the diary. Gillette’s very last entry starts: ‘Went to bed at 12:30 and was asleep in a few minutes. I slept soundly until called at 3:45. Feel refreshed and calm. I am surprised that I can look at this matter so calmly. Had communion for the first time. I feel that I am fully prepared to go and meet Jesus.’ Indeed, it seems from the diary that on death row the young man returned to the deeply religious ways of his parents.
These days, diaries and blogs by those on Death Row, or others concerned about them, seem to be the norm - Deathwatch International, for example, has links to several. Others include Vernon, who claims to be the first death row blogger, and Rob Will who’s ‘telling the world in cyberspace what it’s REALLY like living on Texas Death Row’.
After leaving school and doing various jobs, Gillette began working at an uncle’s factory (making skirts) in 2005. Here he met Grace Brown who, by the spring of 1906, had become pregnant. She was anxious to get married; Gillette, though, was too busy chasing other skirt. He did, however, agree to take her on a weekend trip to the Adirondacks, a pretty mountainous region in northeast New York. There they went on a boat trip, on Big Moose Lake, from which Brown never returned. Her body was recovered the next day. Gillette claimed she had drowned accidentally and he had panicked and fled. But the court decided he had clubbed her with a tennis racket and left her to drown. It sentenced him to death.
The story entered into the American psyche through Theodore Dreiser’s famous 1925 novel, An American Tragedy, and the 1951 Academy Award-winning film A Place in the Sun, directed by George Stevens.
Last year, a diary that Gillette kept in Auburn Prison from September 1907 to his death on 30 March 1908 was donated by Marlynn McWade-Murray to Hamilton College. The diary (and some of Gillette’s letters) had been handed down to McWade-Murray, from her father who was the son of Gillette’s sister, Hazel. In advance of the anniversary of the execution, Hamilton College published The Prison Diary and Letters of Chester Gillette, edited by Craig Brandon and Jack Sherman.
Brandon has his own website where he chronicles the finding and publishing of the diary, and where he writes in some detail about the diary. Gillette’s very last entry starts: ‘Went to bed at 12:30 and was asleep in a few minutes. I slept soundly until called at 3:45. Feel refreshed and calm. I am surprised that I can look at this matter so calmly. Had communion for the first time. I feel that I am fully prepared to go and meet Jesus.’ Indeed, it seems from the diary that on death row the young man returned to the deeply religious ways of his parents.
These days, diaries and blogs by those on Death Row, or others concerned about them, seem to be the norm - Deathwatch International, for example, has links to several. Others include Vernon, who claims to be the first death row blogger, and Rob Will who’s ‘telling the world in cyberspace what it’s REALLY like living on Texas Death Row’.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Confidential recycling
A retired NYPD policeman has been selling his log books on eBay at $30 a lot - thanks to Susan Edelman at the New York Post for this. James Giordonello marketed his log books, Edelman says, as ‘unique NYPD memorabilia’. He claimed they contained ‘the good, the bad, and . . . oh yeah, the ugly’ sides of police work, with everyday details of a cop’s life on the street ‘from shootings to missing children’. Very properly, Edelman bought one of the books to report on its content (a typical notation reads, she says, ‘Visited 886 Home St. - padlocked.’), but could not get hold of Edelman himself for a comment. She did, though, contact NYPD which then demanded eBay stop posting Giordonello’s lots.
Is this right? Surely, recycling should be encouraged. There must be good money to be made from anything confidential, not only by cops for their logbooks, but by doctors for their notes, psychotherapists for their jottings and doodles, solicitors for their briefs, and, of course, politicians for their memo pads.
Is this right? Surely, recycling should be encouraged. There must be good money to be made from anything confidential, not only by cops for their logbooks, but by doctors for their notes, psychotherapists for their jottings and doodles, solicitors for their briefs, and, of course, politicians for their memo pads.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Smoking, heroin and opium
The third and final volume of The Smoking Diaries by Simon Gray has just been published in the UK. The Last Cigarette, like its predecessors, is not really a book of diary entries but of reminiscences, a bit faded I would guess, like an old smoking jacket. For something a little more hard core, try The Heroin Diaries, also recently published, or The Confessions of an Opium-Eater, not so recently published but freely available on the internet.
Those who admired the first two volumes by Gray, The Daily Telegraph says, ‘will be glad to know that [The Last Cigarette] is the same mixture as before: an up-to-the-minute account of what is happening to its author here and now interlaced with autobiographical flashbacks and curmudgeonly asides.’ The reviewer, Jeremy Lewis, who loves the book (‘consistently entertaining’) reinforces my own suspicions by remarking that the book’s ‘high point describes a flight from London to Athens’ and the tale of some lost luggage. Riveting stuff.
The Guardian has a longish extract, wittily called Gray’s Anatomy. An alternative, and more informative, title might have been The First Fuck - but I suppose The Guardian is a family paper.
Extracts from the first volume, The Smoking Diaries, can be found on the Amazon website. Here’s a sample from the first page: ‘Thus am I, at sixty-five and a day. Thus he is, at sixty-five and a day, a farter, a belcher, a dribbler and a what else did I say I did, farting, belching, dribbling, oh yes, wheezing. But then as I smoke something like sixty-five cigarettes a day people are likely to continue with their inevitable “Well if you insist on getting through three packets. etc.” to which I will reply, as always - actually I can’t remember what I always reply, and how could I, when I don’t believe anyone, even my doctors, ever says anything like, “Well if you insist, etc.” In fact I’m merely reporting a conversation I have with myself, quite often, when I find myself wheezing . . .’
There’s something endearingly old-fashioned about Simon Gray, his smoking, and his diaries, But there is very little to be recommended in having a publisher, Granta, so behind the times: its website carries no information about Simon Gray or his three volumes of non-diary diaries.
Meanwhile, as I say, for something a little more hard core, try The Heroin Diaries, published by Simon & Schuster. Wikipedia gives some basic information: ‘The book is co-written by Nikki Sixx, bassist of the heavy metal bands Mötley Crüe and Sixx:A.M., and Ian Gittins. It’s a 432-page collection of diary entries written between Christmas of 1986 and Christmas of 1987, and chronicles Sixx’s wild lifestyle, drug addiction, descent into paranoia and depression, and his subsequent recovery.’
Otherwise, for a cross between Gray and Sixx, try Thomas de Quincey’s classic Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which is nearly 200 years old. The full text is available on many websites. One of the easiest to read is at The University of Adelaide Library.
Finally, it’s worth noting that there are several good titles still available for addicts or ex-addicts, such as The Last Whisky, The Last Spliff, The Last Fix - but not, I'm afraid, The Last Fuck, which is the title of a 2003 horror flick!
Those who admired the first two volumes by Gray, The Daily Telegraph says, ‘will be glad to know that [The Last Cigarette] is the same mixture as before: an up-to-the-minute account of what is happening to its author here and now interlaced with autobiographical flashbacks and curmudgeonly asides.’ The reviewer, Jeremy Lewis, who loves the book (‘consistently entertaining’) reinforces my own suspicions by remarking that the book’s ‘high point describes a flight from London to Athens’ and the tale of some lost luggage. Riveting stuff.
The Guardian has a longish extract, wittily called Gray’s Anatomy. An alternative, and more informative, title might have been The First Fuck - but I suppose The Guardian is a family paper.
Extracts from the first volume, The Smoking Diaries, can be found on the Amazon website. Here’s a sample from the first page: ‘Thus am I, at sixty-five and a day. Thus he is, at sixty-five and a day, a farter, a belcher, a dribbler and a what else did I say I did, farting, belching, dribbling, oh yes, wheezing. But then as I smoke something like sixty-five cigarettes a day people are likely to continue with their inevitable “Well if you insist on getting through three packets. etc.” to which I will reply, as always - actually I can’t remember what I always reply, and how could I, when I don’t believe anyone, even my doctors, ever says anything like, “Well if you insist, etc.” In fact I’m merely reporting a conversation I have with myself, quite often, when I find myself wheezing . . .’
There’s something endearingly old-fashioned about Simon Gray, his smoking, and his diaries, But there is very little to be recommended in having a publisher, Granta, so behind the times: its website carries no information about Simon Gray or his three volumes of non-diary diaries.
Meanwhile, as I say, for something a little more hard core, try The Heroin Diaries, published by Simon & Schuster. Wikipedia gives some basic information: ‘The book is co-written by Nikki Sixx, bassist of the heavy metal bands Mötley Crüe and Sixx:A.M., and Ian Gittins. It’s a 432-page collection of diary entries written between Christmas of 1986 and Christmas of 1987, and chronicles Sixx’s wild lifestyle, drug addiction, descent into paranoia and depression, and his subsequent recovery.’
Otherwise, for a cross between Gray and Sixx, try Thomas de Quincey’s classic Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which is nearly 200 years old. The full text is available on many websites. One of the easiest to read is at The University of Adelaide Library.
Finally, it’s worth noting that there are several good titles still available for addicts or ex-addicts, such as The Last Whisky, The Last Spliff, The Last Fix - but not, I'm afraid, The Last Fuck, which is the title of a 2003 horror flick!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Diary clue to sudden death
Whose body parts are distributed between three major museums in Australia and New Zealand: the heart in the National Museum of Australia, the skin in Melbourne Museum, and the skeleton in New Zealand’s National Museum?
Phar Lap, a name which means ‘lightning’ in Thai, was a most extraordinary horse, perhaps the most famous and revered in the Australasian continent. Foaled in Timaru, New Zealand, in 1926, he was transported to Australia where he then dominated the racing scene for several years, winning more than two-thirds of all his races, including the Melbourne Cup. In 1932, he was shipped to a racecourse near Tijuana in Mexico for the Agua Caliente Handicap - where he won the largest purse ever raced for in North America - and then to a private ranch in California. But he died there suddenly and under suspicious circumstances, on 5 April. A necropsy revealed that his stomach and intestines were inflamed, and this gave rise to a strong suspicion of poisoning. American gangsters were considered to be likely suspects, since it was thought they were deeply concerned about Phar Lap’s potentially negative impact on their illegal bookmaking activities.
Over 70 years later in 2006, Australian scientists used a newly constructed synchrotron (a kind of huge and expensive electron gun or particle accelerator) to analyse hairs from Phar Lap. They concluded, according to ABC News, that the horse had been poisoned from a single large dose of arsenic. However, in another ABC News story the same day, a racing expert claimed that arsenic was often included in tonics given to horses at the time, and that 90% of horses then had arsenic in their system.
Now, a couple of years later, a new source of information has come to light - a diary kept by Phar Lap’s trainer, Harry Telford. It was bought at auction on 23 April by Museum Victoria with Australian government money. According to a ministerial press release, the diary details 30 recipes used by Phar Lap’s trainers to prepare him for races, and many ingredients in these recipes included poisonous substances such as arsenic and strychnine. All of which gives credence to the idea that he was poisoned - but not deliberately, and not by American gangsters.
To show how much Phar Lap was, and is, loved in Australia here’s a paragraph from a short memoir written by Doreen Borrow, who was born on the same day as Phar Lap. The memoir is entitled My Ride On An Ozzie Icon and is published in Illawarra Unity, the journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: ‘His name still conjures up all that is good and brave in people. To have a heart as big as Phar Lap, carry more weight than Phar Lap, or to go like Phar Lap remain among the highest accolades heaped upon the most supreme champions by the older generation of Australians who remember what a great galloper he was. I recall my mate Mike using one of these expressions during a family dinner. My future son-in-law, being of Italian descent asked, ‘Who’s Phar Lap?’ There was a stunned silence from all present and utter disbelief that an eighteen-year-old, born in Australia, had never heard of the great Phar Lap! It was almost enough to make us cancel the wedding!’
Phar Lap, a name which means ‘lightning’ in Thai, was a most extraordinary horse, perhaps the most famous and revered in the Australasian continent. Foaled in Timaru, New Zealand, in 1926, he was transported to Australia where he then dominated the racing scene for several years, winning more than two-thirds of all his races, including the Melbourne Cup. In 1932, he was shipped to a racecourse near Tijuana in Mexico for the Agua Caliente Handicap - where he won the largest purse ever raced for in North America - and then to a private ranch in California. But he died there suddenly and under suspicious circumstances, on 5 April. A necropsy revealed that his stomach and intestines were inflamed, and this gave rise to a strong suspicion of poisoning. American gangsters were considered to be likely suspects, since it was thought they were deeply concerned about Phar Lap’s potentially negative impact on their illegal bookmaking activities.
Over 70 years later in 2006, Australian scientists used a newly constructed synchrotron (a kind of huge and expensive electron gun or particle accelerator) to analyse hairs from Phar Lap. They concluded, according to ABC News, that the horse had been poisoned from a single large dose of arsenic. However, in another ABC News story the same day, a racing expert claimed that arsenic was often included in tonics given to horses at the time, and that 90% of horses then had arsenic in their system.
Now, a couple of years later, a new source of information has come to light - a diary kept by Phar Lap’s trainer, Harry Telford. It was bought at auction on 23 April by Museum Victoria with Australian government money. According to a ministerial press release, the diary details 30 recipes used by Phar Lap’s trainers to prepare him for races, and many ingredients in these recipes included poisonous substances such as arsenic and strychnine. All of which gives credence to the idea that he was poisoned - but not deliberately, and not by American gangsters.
To show how much Phar Lap was, and is, loved in Australia here’s a paragraph from a short memoir written by Doreen Borrow, who was born on the same day as Phar Lap. The memoir is entitled My Ride On An Ozzie Icon and is published in Illawarra Unity, the journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History: ‘His name still conjures up all that is good and brave in people. To have a heart as big as Phar Lap, carry more weight than Phar Lap, or to go like Phar Lap remain among the highest accolades heaped upon the most supreme champions by the older generation of Australians who remember what a great galloper he was. I recall my mate Mike using one of these expressions during a family dinner. My future son-in-law, being of Italian descent asked, ‘Who’s Phar Lap?’ There was a stunned silence from all present and utter disbelief that an eighteen-year-old, born in Australia, had never heard of the great Phar Lap! It was almost enough to make us cancel the wedding!’
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The secrets of military coups
Notable Turkish diarists are few and far between. Indeed, The Diary Junction, with over 500 diarists listed from over 30 countries, does not have any on its lists. Nevertheless, a Turkish diary has been in the news recently - for no less than highlighting the ever-present possibility of a coup!
Last year, the Turkish newsweekly Nokta (which subsequently closed down) published excerpts from a diary allegedly written by a former navy commander, Özden Örnek. The excerpts gave details of how Turkey narrowly escaped two military coups in 2004. Örnek himself was one of the coup plotters. He denied having written the diary entries and claimed they had been libelously attributed to him. During the course of a legal case against Nokta’s editor-in-chief, Alper Görmü, it was proven by a group of experts that the diaries did originate from Örnek’s computer. Görmü has just been acquitted of all charges.
The English-language newspaper, Today’s Zaman, draws strong conclusions from the case: ‘This acquittal implicitly verified the claims that top-ranking commanders of the army had been involved in attempts to stage coups. However, not even a single investigation has so far been launched against the coup plotters. This incident clearly indicates that even those who attempt stage coups are very well protected. To this day, none of those who have made these attempts have been investigated, despite very clear and open evidence, let alone tried.’
Just before the end of the trial the independant policy insititute, European Stability Initiative, had come to a similar conclusion: ‘The outcome of the Nokta affair is that it is the journalists, not the potential coup plotters, who are under investigation’.
Also few and far between are military coup diarists of any nationality (but any future ones should keep their writing under close guard until ready to reveal all). There is, though, an interesting set of diaries by Petr Vologodskii, a prominent Siberian lawyer and a member of the anti-Bolshevik government, set up in Omsk, during the Russian civil war. The Hoover Institution has published them in English in two volumes - The Diaries of Petr Vasil'evich Vologodskii, 1918-1925. They give rich details of the coup that led to the formation of the opposing government. Although the books themselves are not available online, the Hoover Institution has made available an extensive (but apparently anonymous) article about them.
Last year, the Turkish newsweekly Nokta (which subsequently closed down) published excerpts from a diary allegedly written by a former navy commander, Özden Örnek. The excerpts gave details of how Turkey narrowly escaped two military coups in 2004. Örnek himself was one of the coup plotters. He denied having written the diary entries and claimed they had been libelously attributed to him. During the course of a legal case against Nokta’s editor-in-chief, Alper Görmü, it was proven by a group of experts that the diaries did originate from Örnek’s computer. Görmü has just been acquitted of all charges.
The English-language newspaper, Today’s Zaman, draws strong conclusions from the case: ‘This acquittal implicitly verified the claims that top-ranking commanders of the army had been involved in attempts to stage coups. However, not even a single investigation has so far been launched against the coup plotters. This incident clearly indicates that even those who attempt stage coups are very well protected. To this day, none of those who have made these attempts have been investigated, despite very clear and open evidence, let alone tried.’
Just before the end of the trial the independant policy insititute, European Stability Initiative, had come to a similar conclusion: ‘The outcome of the Nokta affair is that it is the journalists, not the potential coup plotters, who are under investigation’.
Also few and far between are military coup diarists of any nationality (but any future ones should keep their writing under close guard until ready to reveal all). There is, though, an interesting set of diaries by Petr Vologodskii, a prominent Siberian lawyer and a member of the anti-Bolshevik government, set up in Omsk, during the Russian civil war. The Hoover Institution has published them in English in two volumes - The Diaries of Petr Vasil'evich Vologodskii, 1918-1925. They give rich details of the coup that led to the formation of the opposing government. Although the books themselves are not available online, the Hoover Institution has made available an extensive (but apparently anonymous) article about them.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Politkovskaya's Russian Diary
‘[This book] should be dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read.’ So wrote Jon Snow in his introduction to A Russian Diary, by Anna Politkovskaya. First published in 2007 by Random House, just a year after her death, A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia, has now been issued in paperback by Vintage. Politkovskaya was a crusading Russian journalist, most well known perhaps for her reporting from Chechnya and her strident criticisms of the Russian regime’s role in that conflict. She was also a severe critic of Putin’s presidency. In 2006, at the age of 48, she was shot dead in her apartment block lift. Russian state security officer Alexander Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering the assassination. Putin argued publicly that, in his opinion, murdering such a person would do much greater damage to the authorities than her publications ever had. Litvinenko, though, himself was murdered in London two weeks after making his accusation against Putin.
A Russian Diary is not a diary in the normal sense, but pieces of Politkovskaya’s writing put together and attached to specific dates. The book had been prepared by Politkovskaya herself and was in the process of being translated, by Arch Tait, when Politkovskaya was murdered. Wikipedia carries a detailed biography of the journalist and includes part of Jon Snow’s introduction: ‘Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact. Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being. I must confess that I finished reading A Russian Diary feeling that it should be taken up and dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read.’
Thanks are due to the New York Times which has substantial extracts from the book, and an excellent review, by Andrew Meier. He is not enamoured of the translation or the editing but is much taken with Politkovskaya herself. He concludes: ‘Her writing made her more than a reporter; when she died, she was a crisis mediator and Russia’s most prominent human rights advocate. Stacks of letters — pleas for help — came daily. Politkovskaya fought for the victims — of the state, of terror and of that Russian catchall, fate. Then she joined them.’
Politkovskaya was born in the US to Soviet Ukrainian parents, both UN diplomats, but grew up in Moscow. She graduated from the Moscow State University Department of Journalism in 1980 with a thesis on the writer and poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who also led a troubled life, much affected by the Revolution. Tsvetaeva died, by committing suicide, at the age of 49, just a year older than Politkovskaya. Curiously, she was also a pseudo diarist: her book called The Demesne of the Swans is a series of political poems but written in the form of a diary.
The Diary Junction - Data and links for over 500 historical and literary diarists
A Russian Diary is not a diary in the normal sense, but pieces of Politkovskaya’s writing put together and attached to specific dates. The book had been prepared by Politkovskaya herself and was in the process of being translated, by Arch Tait, when Politkovskaya was murdered. Wikipedia carries a detailed biography of the journalist and includes part of Jon Snow’s introduction: ‘Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact. Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being. I must confess that I finished reading A Russian Diary feeling that it should be taken up and dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read.’
Thanks are due to the New York Times which has substantial extracts from the book, and an excellent review, by Andrew Meier. He is not enamoured of the translation or the editing but is much taken with Politkovskaya herself. He concludes: ‘Her writing made her more than a reporter; when she died, she was a crisis mediator and Russia’s most prominent human rights advocate. Stacks of letters — pleas for help — came daily. Politkovskaya fought for the victims — of the state, of terror and of that Russian catchall, fate. Then she joined them.’
Politkovskaya was born in the US to Soviet Ukrainian parents, both UN diplomats, but grew up in Moscow. She graduated from the Moscow State University Department of Journalism in 1980 with a thesis on the writer and poet Marina Tsvetaeva, who also led a troubled life, much affected by the Revolution. Tsvetaeva died, by committing suicide, at the age of 49, just a year older than Politkovskaya. Curiously, she was also a pseudo diarist: her book called The Demesne of the Swans is a series of political poems but written in the form of a diary.
The Diary Junction - Data and links for over 500 historical and literary diarists
Monday, May 12, 2008
Prokofiev's literary gifts
The murder of Rasputin, by coincidence, is one of many and varied incidents written about by the composer Serge Prokofiev in his diaries, the second volume of which (1915-1922) has just been published in Britain. The diaries, translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips, are getting a reasonable press. The Times calls them ‘compelling reading, and not only for musical historians’; and Phillips’ translation is described as ‘masterly’. However, the New Statesman ‘can't help but wish in places that [Phillips had] adopted a rather harsher editorial approach’ because ‘in the later diaries, the composer's lapidary prose fails to enliven interminable descriptions of parties, romantic indecisiveness and suchlike’.
The publisher, Faber&Faber, says: ‘Taken as a whole, the Diaries represent an inexhaustibly rich portrait of one of the most vibrant periods in the whole of Western art, peopled by virtually every musician and artist of note. They constitute both an indispensable and an entertaining source of reference for all scholars and lovers of Prokofiev’s music.’ Generously, the publisher’s website makes available the full text of Phillips’ introduction.
The diaries were published in Russia some time ago - see the excellent Sergey Prokofiev Foundation website. Available on this website are extensive extracts, in English, from the third volume (1923-1933, yet to be published in English) along with many photographs. There is also the text of an interview with Phillips, and comments by literary and academic figures. For example, Natalia Savkina, an associate professor of history at the Moscow Conservatory, comments on the diaries as follows: ‘I am convinced that Prokofiev's literary gift was equal to his talent as a musician. As a result, we obtain a book in which Prokofiev the writer is challenging Prokofiev the musician.’
When the first volume of Prokofiev's diaries (1907-194) were published in English in 2006 it sparked a mini-debate about whether a composer's autobiographical material was really relevant to his/her music. Oliver Kamm gave the subject a good airing, focusing on the fallacy of assuming that the works and the composer's intentions for the works were equivalent.
The publisher, Faber&Faber, says: ‘Taken as a whole, the Diaries represent an inexhaustibly rich portrait of one of the most vibrant periods in the whole of Western art, peopled by virtually every musician and artist of note. They constitute both an indispensable and an entertaining source of reference for all scholars and lovers of Prokofiev’s music.’ Generously, the publisher’s website makes available the full text of Phillips’ introduction.
The diaries were published in Russia some time ago - see the excellent Sergey Prokofiev Foundation website. Available on this website are extensive extracts, in English, from the third volume (1923-1933, yet to be published in English) along with many photographs. There is also the text of an interview with Phillips, and comments by literary and academic figures. For example, Natalia Savkina, an associate professor of history at the Moscow Conservatory, comments on the diaries as follows: ‘I am convinced that Prokofiev's literary gift was equal to his talent as a musician. As a result, we obtain a book in which Prokofiev the writer is challenging Prokofiev the musician.’
When the first volume of Prokofiev's diaries (1907-194) were published in English in 2006 it sparked a mini-debate about whether a composer's autobiographical material was really relevant to his/her music. Oliver Kamm gave the subject a good airing, focusing on the fallacy of assuming that the works and the composer's intentions for the works were equivalent.
Rasputin's diary?
The Diary of Grigory Rasputin has just been published in Russia, according to Russia InfoCentre. Rasputin, sometimes dubbed the Mad Monk, rose to great heights in Tsarist Russia, over a hundred years ago. Little is known about his childhood, his life was controversial to say the least, and his murder in 1916 remains the subject of speculation today. According to InfoCentre, it took experts several years to decipher the text of the 102 page diary, and to recognise that it was not actually written by Rasputin himself, but on his behalf. This person, InfoCentre says, ‘tells about [Rasputin’s] calling and healing power, writes tenderly about Mama, the Empress, and scornfully about Papa, the Emperor: “Take his crown off, and you won’t distinguish him amid a dozen of people”.’
For an alternative view of this diary, see Edvard Radzinsky’s book, The Rasputin File published in 2001 by Random House. Radzinsky calls the diary a ‘ crude ideological forgery’.
For an alternative view of this diary, see Edvard Radzinsky’s book, The Rasputin File published in 2001 by Random House. Radzinsky calls the diary a ‘ crude ideological forgery’.
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