The International Booker Prize 2023, Longlist

Hello Gentle Reader,

The International Booker Prize has recently announced their longlist for 2023. Thirteen titles from across the geographical and linguistic world, providing an invigorating global perspective, expanding readers horizons. Since its inception in its current format (post-2015), the International Booker Prize has made a conscious effort to promote translated literature within the English language, awarding some marvelous writers. Previous winners include:

Han Kang – 2016 – “The Vegetarian,”
David Grossman – 2017 – “A Horse Walks into a Bar,”
Olga Tokarczuk – 2018 – “Flights,”
Jokha Alharthi – 2019 – “Celestial Bodies,”
Marieke Lucas Rijneveld – 2020 – “The Discomfort of Evening,”
David Diop – 2021 – “At Night All Blood is Black,”
Geetanjali Shree – 2022 – “Tomb of Sand,”

The inaugural award in 2016 was a catalyst in how the International Booker Prize would be a catalyst for the award. By awarding Han Kang’s English debut “The Vegetarian,” the International Booker Prize was able to capitalize on a poignant and potent novel, but also affirm itself as both a outstanding literary award with enough relevancy to set trends. After her International Booker Prize win, Han Kang’s entry into the English language was affirmed, ensuring she is recognized as one of the most important contemporary (South) Korean writes currently writing. Kang’s novels are written with the effortless lyricism and grace and air of a ballet dancer, while providing the most subtle examination of her characters psychological state, as well as the daily violence encompassing human existence.

In 2018, the International Booker Prize judges named the marvelous and inventive Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk the winner with her magnificent constellation novel: “Flights.” Once again the International Booker Prize proved that it could keep itself relevant when reviewing and awarding great international literature. “Flights,” is considered Olga Tokarczuk’s breakout novel in the English language, despite having two published previous (“Primeval and Other Time,” and “House of Day, House of Night,” – both masterful novels in their own right) “Flights,” finally confirmed Olga Tokarczuk’s status as being one of the most innovative writers of Europe. Tokarczuk would receive the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature retroactively the following year.   

Last years winner, Geetanjali Shree is the first Hindi language writer to receive the prize with her novel “The Tomb of Sand,” which was rumoured from its initial nomination to be the front runner and favoured novel to receive the prize. “Tomb of Sand,” was beloved by the judges for its humour and humanistic vision, a slow burn novel, “Tomb of Sand,” affirms the International Booker Prize’s ability to curate and promote international and translated literature into the English language.

This year’s longlist for the International Booker Prize is as follows [in no particular order]:

Maryse Condé– Guadeloupe [French language] – “The Gospel According to the New World,”
Andrey Kurkov – Ukraine – “Jimi Hendrix Live in Liviv,”
Eva Baltasar – Spain [Catalan language] – “Boulder,”
Cheon Myeong-Kwan – (South) Korea – “Whale,”
GauZ – Côte d'Ivoire [French language] – “Standing Heavy,”
Georgi Gospodinov – Bulgaria – “Time Shelter,”
Vigdis Hjorth – Norway – “Is Mother Dead,”
Clemens Meyer – Germany – “While We Were Dreaming,”
Laurent Mauvignier – France – “The Birthday Party,”
Perumal Murugan – India [Tamil language] – “Pyre,”
Guadalupe Nettle – Mexico – “Still Born,”
Amanda Svensson – Sweden – “A Systems So Magnificent It is Blinding,”
Zou Jingzhi – China – “Ninth Building,”

Of the 13 books listed, 11 languages are represented which includes: Bulgarian, Tamil, Catalan, Spanish, French, Korean, Swedish, German, Ukrainian, Norwegian, and Singaporean. French is the most represented book on this year’s longlist. Maryse Condé is the oldest writer on the longlist at 86 years old. The Guadeloupean writer is a giant of postcolonial literature and is revered as the Grand Dame of Caribbean literature. Condé finds herself nominated with the novel: “The Gospel According to the New World,” is a bildungsroman set in modern-day Martinique, it follows the life of a child who is rumoured to be the messiah. What follows is a epic quest of this rumoured child seeking to discover their origins and mission in the world. Maryse Condé proves herself to be a remarkable epicist in spirit and scope, tackling with colour and flare the complexities of Caribbean life and history, but also the universal human condition, seeking meaning, order, and purpose with an increasingly chaotic and meaningless world. In a direction away from the epic and complex, comes the intensity and sensuality of Eva Baltasar’s novel “Boulder,” depicting the sensuous physical and emotional pleasures of intimacy between two women working on a merchant ship. The novels page count just reaches over a hundred pages, which is why “Boulder,” is praised both for its intensity and an exemplary piece of concision. In a manner similar to the great and legendary Maryse Condé, the Ivorian writer GauZ grapples with the French colonial history in his novel “Standing Heavy,” which recounts the journey and stories of Ivorian immigrants attempting to etch out a new life in France. The novel is praised for both grappling with colonial past of the wester African nation, while satirizing contemporary French society.

The Norwegian writer Vigdis Hjorth has drafted a novel of icy acuity and complexity that is both challenging, subversive, and difficult company to keep. The narrator is described as one of the most impossible, ugly, and unlovable characters, becoming in full scope and antihero, through her jaded perspectives, narcissism, and malicious motivations; these very same traits make her palpable even relatable. Compared to the exacting psychological analysis of Marguerite Duras and her exploration of intimate and personal relationships, Vigdis Hjorth has written a dark examination of family dynamics and the complex even violent power struggles between mother and daughters in her novel “Is Mother Dead.”  Clemens Meyer in turn tackles a sense of despondency and pathos with his novel “While We Were Dreaming.” Recounting a country on the brink of both unification and change, “While We Were Dreaming,” captures the pivotal moments of a group of friends as they live during a memorable moment in history, but also fall prey to the all the disappointments of life and growing up, when all the certainties of the world evaporate and future is no longer as straightforward. Clemens Meyer has written a novel that encapsulates the anxieties, anger, and lived experience of East Germany as the Berlin Wall fell, and the once divided Germanies reunified. A novel with credibility and palpability, providing a boot on the ground fresh perspective to a historical moment which has been eagerly propagated as an essential win to democracy and freedom, “While We Were Dreaming,” provides a more nuisance layer to those memories regarding such a historical moment.

Cheon Myeon-kwan’s novel “Whale,” is described as a riot, a multigenerational novel set in a remote village in (South) Korea, this otherwise carnivalesque novel brims with surprises, entertainment and enjoyment, a truly epic and adventurous romp, which entertain readers as three exceptional and surreal women traverse the Korean landscape. “Whale,” is an ode and requiem to self-transformation and the power of restlessness. While Georgi Gospodinov’s dystopian novel regarding memory and the past proves to be both thought provoking and humorous, tackling subjects regarding nationality, identity, and ageing, as well as both the horrors of loss of memory, its rejuvenating capabilities in addition to its destructive attributes. In “The Birthday Party,” by French writer Laurent Mauvignier is a novel that has been described encapsulating two very primal emotions of the human experience: empathy and dread. Amongst the mundane, even celebratory joys of simple life, external malevolent forces take intrude and disrupt. Make no mistake, “The Birthday Party,” is a novel riddled with tension, agony, and an unapologetic contributor to horror. A surveyor of the most disturbed thoughts and actions people can muster, the very dysfunction of existence in itself, and the delusions we tell each other to muster through. “The Birthday Party,” is described as a novel of marvelous thrilling intensity, I would not be surprised to find it on the shortlist.

As in years past, this years International Booker Prize longlist proves itself to be a diverse medley of languages, perspectives, cultures, and narratives. The judges are put in an unenviable situation of creating the shortlist, but it will surely be a refinement of what is currently on offer in the longlist.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

Dubravka Ugrešić, Dies at 73

Hello Gentle Reader,

In another shocking event, the Dutch-Croatian writer, Dubravka Ugrešić has died at the age of 73, ten days before her 74 birthday. In a manner similar to the death of the Spanish master, Javier Marias, the world is shocked and confounded by the surprising news of Dubravka Ugrešić, who like Marias was a internationally renowned writer and often considered a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Dubravka Ugrešić was born in a town in the former Yugoslavia (now Croatia), in a ethnically diverse family, her mother being a Bulgarian. She would go on to study at the University of Zagreb, majoring in comparative literature, where she would pursue parallel careers as both literary scholar and writer. As the Soviet Union disbanded and the Iron Curtain collapsed during the late 1980’s and 1990’s, the thread bare fragile adhesive that held the former Yugoslavia together also came undone. In 1993, Dubravka Ugrešić left what was then Croatia for political reasons. She remained an ardent opponent to the rising nationalism of the Balkan nation and its neighbours as they tore themselves apart and marched towards war, slaughter, and eventual genocide. Becoming one of the worlds newly minted exiled and borderless writers who resolutely opposed nationalism as it replaced the Soviet eras brand of socialism. IN her remaining life in exile, Dubravka Ugrešić taught at numerous European and American universities, including Harvard, UCLA, and Columbia University. As a writer, Dubravka Ugrešić was a consummate postmodernist, capable of soldering both high cultural allusions and references with the pastiche of low pop culture references and mass consumerist allusions, which crafted a renewed and reinvented form of the novel, encompassing the high components of postmodern literature, with its pastiche techniques, fragmentation, and sense of humour, creating a sophisticated chimeric literary production. Yet, her novels increasingly gained more gravitas with both political and sociological concerns. “The Ministry of Pain,” tangos with the violent divisions of the former Yugoslavia, and the despondency of exile, the realities and difficulties of making a life away from home. Beyond fiction, Dubravka Ugrešić was an accomplish and prolific essayist, once again employing her postmodernist perspective to both disarm readers while engaging in a political dialogue and dissertation. “Have A Nice Day: From the Balkan War to the American Dream,” is made up short essays in a dictionary-like format that recount the everyday existence in America, but through the lens of someone whose homeland is being destroyed. Each of her essay collections proved that Ugrešić was a remarkably versatile writer, one who could engage both with the palpability of political discourse, the anchoring realities of the mundane, and the curious treaties on literary subjects. In 2016, Dubravka Ugrešić won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

With the death of Dubravka Ugrešić, the world has lost a resounding literary and moral figure, one who was able to provide both insight and criticism into nationalism, while also exploring politics through a literary lenses without becoming polemic in nature. Her literary accomplishments were postmodern gems, a hybrid unity reflecting and refracting the human experience, both in terms of high poetic perspectives and the vertigo of mass consumerist culture.

Rest in Peace, Dubravka Ugrešić.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

Ōe Kenzaburō, Dies Aged 88

Hello Gentle Reader

One of the greatest Japanese writers of the Postwar years, Ōe Kenzaburō was a complex and intensely uncompromising writer. His novels were both deeply personal as they were difficult and dense. Working in the shadow of the great Kawabata Yasunari and the nationalist Mishima Yukio, Ōe Kenzaburō wrote about Japan’s failures and defeat after the Second World War, which allowed Ōe explore the main components of his literary themes, such as militarism, nuclear disarmament, shame, betrayal, trauma, and the loss of innocence. Ōe Kenzaburō recalled as a child in elementary school being taught that the Japanese emperor was a living god, an illusion that was quickly shattered when all of Japan heard the emperors voice over the radio and his concession of defeat and admittance in surrender. This lasting sense of betrayal and shame stuck with Ōe throughout his life and is a noticeable literary influence. Another major literary influence was the birth of his son Hikari, whose birth and cognitive challenges became some of Ōe’s most impactful novels: “A Personal Matter,” “A Quite Life,” “Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!”. Yet his social-political works: “A Silent Cry,” (remarked as his masterpiece), “Prize Stock,” “Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids,” “Death by Water,” where particularly regarded as masterful critiques of postwar Japanese society, and its subsequent transformation through the coming decades. Ōe Kenzaburō’s prose was heavily influenced by global and western writers, which includes William Faulkner (who Ōe is frequently compared to), W.B. Yeats, William Blake, Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist philosophers and writers. Being unabashed or ashamed of taking influence from external geographical, linguistic, and cultural spheres certainly branded Ōe as an outsider within the Japanese literary community, but he carved out a space that was singularly his own, while crafting a complex and often difficult literary oeuvre, which are celebrated masterful works of post-war Japanese literature, both as reckonings and as criticism, having once called Japan, morally speaking, a third-world country, whereby Ōe Kenzaburō revolted against the niceties and celebrations of other writers: Mishima Yukio, Kawabata Yasunari, and Tanizaki Jun'ichirō. In addition to his literary works, Ōe Kenzaburō was an active activist and pacifist, protesting nuclear energy being used in Japan, nuclear weapons, as well as a revitalization of nationalistic tendencies and a strengthening military.

Throughout his life, Ōe Kenzaburō was an accomplished and extraordinary writer, but also an uncompromising and devoted writer to moral causes and concerns. Truly an amazing writer and public individual, but also one of the most important and accomplished Nobel Laureates in the later half of the 20^th Century. 

Rest in Peace Ōe Kenzaburō.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

For Further Reading:

BBC: Nobel Prize Winning Author Kenzaburo Oe dies

The Guardian: Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel prize-winning Japanese writer, dies aged 88

The New York Times: Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Laureate and Critic of Postwar Japan, Dies at 88

 

Such Fine Boys

Hello Gentle Reader,

The literary career of Patrick Modiano begins with a bleak satire of the nationally held Gaullist legend of France’s resilience and resistance against the Nazi invasion and subsequent Occupation. Modiano exposed the rampant anti-Semitism that predated these events, tarnishing the readily held belief promoted by General de Gaulle that the French citizenry were allies of the Jews—and though it must be conceded that some certainly were—the collaboration of the regular French citizens, as Modiano so eloquently puts it, the explicit collaboration of the French authorities during the Occupation cannot be so easily dismissed as traitors or coerced collaborators, but were in fact regular French patriots, who engaged in the long standing tradition of acceptable anti-Semitism before the war and the Occupation. The gilded Gaullist legend and image was therefore cast into rusted ruin. Modiano’s days as satirist came to an end however, when his literary preoccupations moved towards his now famous grisaille portraits of Paris and his noir exploration of the inarticulate and dubious discourse of memory. Through each of his novels, Modiano has curated a truly ambient state that is both familiar to readers and citizens of Paris, while being continually unrecognizable or existing within the negative space within the recesses of the past. Modiano’s Paris is one of exhaustion. Wounded and weary, it’s a city of ghosts, intrigues, and secrets left to languish and be forgotten. Its citizens are always existing within a state of incognito. Lost within their own selfish lives, they seek to forge new identities and destinies for themselves. Their worlds existing on the perilous stages of superficiality, teetering on the edge of the abandonment and ruin. The exclusive boarding school: Valvert School for Boys, depicted within Modiano’s novel “Such Fine Boys,” is an anomaly within Modiano’s literary landscape. Valvert exists like a ship moored off of the coast, inaccessible and insular in its own existence, both fixture of a small community, while being separated from it. Valvert is merely the hostel and dumping ground of the young men of neglectful well-to-do parents or relative, who consumed and absorbed within their affairs, leave the education and rearing of their sons to others. A niche role that Valvert happily accommodates. The schools is run by the athletic ‘Pedro,’ Jeanschmidt, who takes instilling structure and education within his students seriously. There are rules, there are expectations, and there are privileges. Jeanschmidt is both commander and comrade to his student body, while being the nucleus of Valvert, both founder and foundation. The singular consistency within the institution. Under his charge is a roguish student body, who perhaps lacking in instilled familiar bonds, create their own fraternal bonds amongst each other. Intwining each other with the shared sense of despondency, while being susceptible to waves and bouts of melancholy. Always existing on the margins of the well to do, all the while being completely displaced and disposed.

“Such Fine Boys,” is a unique novel by Patrick Modiano, rather then being narrated and propelled by a singular questioning and questing individual, its an ensemble of voices calling out within the echoes of each other, resonating within the ley lines and undercurrents, the very faint threads of fate and circumstance, which both connects and intertwines their lives within each other. As Valvert as the catalyst and beacon of their shared lives, these voices depict the roguish gallery of characters who walked its halls, sat through one of its films, participated in delinquency by smoking, and often participated in unsanctioned nightly excursions. Then there are those others, who found themselves expelled, unable to meet the requirements laid out by Jeanschmidt (so affectionally called Pedro) they are ceremoniously stripped of their standing with the school in a mock military fashion and removed from the school’s grounds, where they rejoin both the liberated and excommunicated. From there they spiral out into the world. Existing in an ephemeral state both lacking substance and depth. Its this predisposition for superficiality, which leaves them in a state of hollowness. Their existential dread fails to be communicated with properly or grappled with. From good time to good time, they move exist within a purgatory of their own demise, still incapable of having meaningful life or relationships beyond appeasement or cuddling their insecurities. Members of the Valvert faculty, such as one aimless and washed-up chemistry professor, who’s lost after the school was closed. Now cast out into the world he finds himself in the company of young men, which is never confirmed only insinuated, to have a certain intimate relationship with them. Despite cozying up with the youthful, he is still lost as he wades into the void of anonymity and oblivion. A chance encounter with a former student, now minor actor in a theatre troupe, allows this otherwise displace chemistry professor to rise above the squander of he presents, and reminisce about those former days, those otherwise better days.

Each chapter provides further voice and distinction to the novel, building on the legacy and incubation of Valvert in providing a sense of place and belonging to the hapless boys who found shelter beneath its roof. Perhaps stereotypically, like all boarding schools, Valvert took a keen interest in both the development of academic aptitude if not understanding; as well as fostering and instilling a sense of sportsmanship in its pupils, while employing running or other cardiac activities as discipline measures, in turn fosters this sense of athleticism. The physical education teacher, M Kovnovitzine (affectionally called Kovo) was regarded warmly by the students, though Kovo had a particular liking for an odd boy by the name of Bob McFowles, whose country and lineage was American by birth, but found himself in stranded in Valvert as a son of equally aloof parents. McFowles, like the others is a tragic figure in his own right, but an accomplished sportsman, and was the point of pride of Kovo. He is reintroduced as an adult in the beauty of Versailles, where he and his new wife Anne-Marie have taken up honeymooning. Their honeymoon was overseen by a hot and sunny August, which the honeymooners took full advantage of. They sunbathed on the lawn of the Trianon, where McFowles embraced his youth further, wearing what is described as a leopard print bathing suit, which the narrator digresses to reflect on this style’s popularity in relation to Tarzan during their time in Valvert. Perhaps due to the heat, or sun exposure, McFowles grows increasingly longing for the sea, going so far as to have a break down over its absence in Versailles. In line with all tragedy, McFowles, young and full of life, dies in his youth. McFowles is that special Modiano character, one who has a thirst for life, a reminder and martyr of youthful abandonment and carefree displacement. McFowles finds himself immortalized in his small leopard print swimsuit, sunbathing on the lawn of Trianon, a portrait of summer and youthful splendor.

One of the best chapters from this novel is also one of its longest. In fashion and inline with much of Modiano’s bibliography, this chapter recounts the life of another from a distance. Like a spectator at the zoo or aquarium, an alumni of Valvert recounts his time as tutor of a kindred spirit, a neglected child by the name of Little Jewel, who is a starring film star in a film that is often shown on campus. This Little Jewel is one and the same from the same titular novel. To quote J.M.G le Clezio from his introduction of “Such Fine Boys,”:

“The passages of Such Fine Boys in which Modiano describes the tender bond between the youthful narrator and Little Jewel, who has been abandoned and abused by her overambitious mother, are among the loveliest pages written in the French language in the second half of the twentieth century.” 

This chapter of “Such Fine Boys,” is best described as a guided tour into what kind of world and life’s Patrick Modiano’s characters inhabit. Each of them presents an almost noncommittal almost nomadic existence. There’s the bleak casual disregard of Francis Jansen, who no longer exists within a lived reality, but instead resigned himself to the afterimage of life, the negative imprint left behind. The haunted and despondent Ingrid Rigaud, whose suicide in Milan, is both tragic and the catalyst for the Modiano narrator Jean, who is not only content with the thought of disappearing himself but removing and extinguishing all traces of himself. Then there are more abstract characters, such as Little Jewel’s mother, whose identity shifts within the soft yellow light, with a flash she’s the Countess; in the backroom she’s Sonia; to another she’s Odette, through each name she changes both airs, personality, but also function. The life of the Countess (or Sonia O'Dauyé or Odette) was an illusion, riddled with glamour and glitter, it existed in the most hollowed halls of someone else’s charity or support, and even than its charitable nature comes at the expense of other favours. The description of the Countess and Little Jewel’s apartment strikes the note at just how despondent and immaterial their lives are. The apartment is scantly furnished. There is little evidence to give way for habitation or life within it. It’s a flop flat. Faded squares were pictures and painting hang are distinguishable in the low yellowed light. Rooms are vacant. What little furniture there is, is only piled together for the sake of one person or a couple of people. All of which comes in complete contrast to the projected image of the Countess, the otherwise high-class socialite, is merely the faded glitter of times gone by, whose whole visage is supported by an intricate scaffolding of appearances. Yet the good times always come to an end, free lunches in turn get invoiced, and the scaffolding too falls away.

The novel is filled with many other voices. Legends and alumni of Valvert School for Boys. The otherwise lost and forgotten or inconvenient sons of the wealthy. They become in their adult years tragic and displaced figures. Some die in blaze and glory; others move on with their unexciting and uneventful lives; there are those who become vagrants, so abandoned by their neglectful parents; while others fail to grow up entirely, living in a state of gentrified infantilism; then there are those, who seek to shed their skin, their identity, their pasts, and start over, and living that life they themselves were so cheated, even if it means the contemplation of homicide. “Such Fine Boys,” is a marvelous novel, truly one of Modiano’s more unique and best works, encompassing a collective narrative and ensemble to provide a unique portrait of those roguish and amorphous beings that are the hallmarks of Modiano’s fiction. “Such Fine Boys,” in a euphoric and harmonic orchestrated novel, a compelling departure in form, while maintaining all the quintessential elements of Modiano’s style and themes.  

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

– XIII –

Homegrown truths are the worst truths. If only because you know what you used for fertilizer and how often you watered and tended them. When the harvest is lacking or the fruit is rotten, you only have yourself to blame, which does little to sate an appetite for fiction, fantasy, and falsehood.

Freedom to Read

Hello Gentle Reader,

Doris Lessing the renowned contrarian and keen-eyed scrutinizer of the 20^th Century and early 21^st Century, is renowned for her literary endeavors, especially those blockbuster novels which explored with increasing interest the rapidly changing social and political realities of the 20^th Century. Born in the shadow of the First World War, Doris Lessing became the first order surveyor and skeptic of the 20^th Century, becoming one of the most uncompromising visionary writers of the last century, who viewed her literary works as having both social and political responsibilities, grappling with the changing winds of social reforms, political engagement, rising ideologies, all the while exploring the psychological interiors of the 20^th Century individual. Throughout her early life, Doris Lessing provided support and allegiance to various causes and ideologies, only to later heap scorn on them. In her old biting years, Lessing proved she was one thing, an exceptionally independent minded and singular individual, whose concerns were holistic and humanistic in scope and vision, which is why (and for good reasons) she refused to be called a feminist, which she viewed with equal skepticism as any other movement or practice, whose eventual goal is to subjugate and indoctrinate. Doris Lessing tried on a variety of different ideals in her early life—including being a registered communist—became not only disillusioned of such movements, but increasingly distrustful and disgusted by them. As for the individual, Doris Lessing had equal amounts of praise for and pushed to safeguard independent though and intellectual freedom. The very notion of freedom. These are the principles, in which Doris Lessing had found her strength and stride, by not resting on her laurels, but by being primed and prepared to pounce on the foolheartedly and unprepared. A staunch defender of democratic values, of human rights, egalitarian principles, and freedom, Doris Lessing was never short of powerful and impactful quotes. Yet, her description and defense of libraries becomes increasingly resonate:

“With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one – but no one at all – can tell you what to read when and how.” – Doris Lessing

It should come as no surprise that libraries are one of the first institutions that authoritarian governments, institutions, politicians, and movements target. They ensure libraries are first to be closed, burned, defunded, or demolished. Why? Because libraries are the bastions for freedom of thought. They are the fortresses of intellectual curiosity. These are the strongholds of open discourse and discussion. They facilitate, foster, and nurture. Within their walls and on their shelves exists worlds, perspectives, opinions, experiences, lives, lifetimes, knowledge, and travels, all readily available to read and review. Libraries don’t question what you read or stifle curiosity. They curate it further with references, suggestions, and recommendations. Learning, knowledge, and a natural inquisitiveness are tended. A free-thinking society, a learned society, an independent society, is one that completely contravenes and aggravates any to all institutions who have an otherwise authoritarian streak or harbour those ambitions. The reality is, those with power and authority do not enjoy being questioned; being held accountable; or being criticized. Those are all inconveniences they’d otherwise swat away with indifference, but now and again they hit the mark and land a punch. Then they can no longer be dismissed but must be confronted. Explanations need to be made; rationales delivered; then excuses need to be aired; before insincere apologies are uttered in disgruntled tones. To remedy this and even prevent it, ideologues and politicians know they need to control the narrative and by extension the notion of truth. Libraries have little care for political machinations, and curate to endorse and create an environment that facilitates free thinking, and true intellectual autonomy through self-determination and actualization, by asking questions and seeking answers, which are readily provided by another book, by another source, by further reference material. Libraries are the world trees, whose roots, branches, and leaves reach out and sprawl, opening and connecting to new worlds. In turn, ideologues, politicians, political and social movements are the lumberjacks. Who through administrative power; sheer will, force, and pressure; through demonstrations, protestations, contestations, and defacement—whatever the means—it becomes the measure and axe in which to chop, saw, severe, mutilate, amputate, and ultimately censure before enacting censorship.

Censorship is broad in both terms and applications. Immediate thoughts conjure indignant rallies fueled by stoked anger and ignorance. There at the centre of such rallies is the instigator who through falsities, fallacies, and delusions, sows Erisian discord, enticing book burnings, to protest, denounce, and vilify the ideas of the written word, of the writer, and how any consumption of the text would inevitably corrupt others. It should be forewarned anyone who is that firebrand in their evangelical outrage and proclaims themselves somehow a saviour or purveyor of moral acceptability and decency is obviously not what they preach with regards to decency and upstanding moral principles. But this is an exaggerated form of censorship. There is another form of it, a more backhanded one, which smiles at you while it is enacting parameters and limitations around you. As the adage goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That’s what makes censorship of a paternal or maternal nature a particular appalling breed. The smug assurance that somehow someone knows what’s best for you and therefore can dictate what you choose to consume in a literary manner or intellectual format, is that disturbing backhanded slap, that patronizing pat on the head, while the world grows darker, narrow, and more limited. As for the reader their world becomes shallower and more neglected, as they slip into the mire of ignorance. Of course, those who advocate for such censorship always rest on the tired old excuses of having good intentions; protecting the vulnerable; safeguarding the innocent; disrupting the proliferation of indecency; stopping the consumption of violence; shielding the world from the pornographic. Though these causes may have noble and righteous, even legitimate components for concern and pause, they lose their credibility through their inflexibility and absolution. To refuse to publish, showcase, promote, or make accessible, a piece of work because its contents may or may not (as it’s a matter of personal preference and perspective) be viewed as controversial in nature, defeats any legitimate concern they may have.

Frequently throughout the ages, someone or a group or movement has taken issue with something that is written, depicted, performed, or said. Like striking a match on dry tinder, the following outrage explodes with roaring indignation. Books must be banned and pulled from shelves. Films must be pulled from cinemas. Production of plays can no longer be performed. In far more extreme cases, from recent memory, writers are subject to death threats and assignation attempts as in the case of Salman Rushdie. Thankfully then there are those fine and great institutions who stand forth and push back against the calls for censorship, and instead allow readers and individuals to come to their own conclusions regarding a piece of work, regardless of the controversy. Even when a work is seen as intentionally transgressive or offensive by nature, it must have the ability to be read, consumed, and discussed openly. Growth can only be achieved within the light. When ideologues, politicians, parental groups, religious institutions, or movements take issue or concern with any material written or otherwise, they do not reserve the right to pull it from circulation and locked away in the attic or basement. Nor do they reserve the right to restrict or limit access to the material. They can provide a counter perspective; release criticism of it; they can choose not to read it themselves, but they do not have either the right or the agency to destroy, deny, restrict, limit, or remove it from anyone else’s consumption.

This is what makes Freedom to Read an important week in Canadian society. Despite its limited advertisement and marketing, it is an important week for all Canadians to pause and consider the importance of intellectual freedoms, which includes freedom of speech and expression, information access, and freedom of the press. Despite these fundamental rights being entrenched within democratic societies, they are continually under threat from authoritarian forces, on both sides of the political spectrum. Since the attack of Salman Rushdie last year, it is imperative now, more so then ever, to recognize the growing threat to these fundamental human rights.

Recently, in a university in Canada, a controversial academic was invited by a professor to give a speech on campus regarding the erosion of academic integrity and freedom in the era of ‘woke-ism.’ Initially the university maintained staunch support for the academic to make her appearance and give her lecture, as it is the universities place to provide the platform for wide-ranging view of opinions, perspectives and discourse, in order to encourage dialogue, debate, and growth on both an individual level but also academic one. Perhaps through force or mob mentality, the university by pressure from its student body and some faculty, rescinded the offer for the academic to give her lecture on campus. This academic in question still showed up to the campus and was met with such hostility that even I think the student body of that institution should be ashamed of their lack of decorum and ability to foster civil disagreement and discourse. Instead, they did themselves a disservice by displaying themselves in such a histrionic state of lunacy. This is not rationale nor is it engagement. Its self-indulgent indignation that refuses to listen or facilitate any opinion, perspective, or view point that does not subscribe to their own. Anything contrary must be censored. This is wrong. On the contrary in Florida, there is an increasingly disturbing trend, where books are being banned or removed from schools if they are perceived to discussing race or gender outside of the prescriptive norm as defined by the politics of today. There are photos of classroom libraries empty or inaccessible to students, because the books must be vetted by a state sponsored media specialist. Non-compliance and violation including teachers losing their licenses or being formally charged with a felony. This too is cause for concern.

In both of these situations the human right for intellectual freedom is being willful dismantled, for entirely different reasons. On the one end is the progressive far left turning regressive, abandoning all classical liberal principles in favour of baptismal indoctrination and subjugation, whereby anything oppositional or contrary to their prescribed ideological stances regarding race, history, and gender, must not only be denied but physically confronted and intimated, with the singular goal of censorship. In turn, the situation in Florida provides that smarmy parental censorship, that patronizing backhanded censorship, which pulls reading materials from you because of their perceived ‘political,’ elements regarding discussions of race, gender, and history, until they receive state or legislative approval to be consumed. Both cases prove just how important it is to safeguard and promote intellectual freedom, which is being eroded by these institutions, ideologues, and movements. Universities are failing in their mandates to facilitate and preserve academic integrity and freedom; inspiring their students with broad perspectives, opinions, lectures, and view points on a diverse subject matter. While schools are being censored and censured by legislative authority and parental groups on the grounds of political posturing. Who would have thought through all the battles, fights, and pushes for less censorship and further open media and discourse, we would now be entering a new age of McCarthyism.

It’s a point of irony then with censorship that despite all of its lofty good intentions and ideological compliance that it promotes and propagates otherwise transgressive or controversial material. The problem with forcing anything into the underground or shadows of society, is it grows within secret and in turn becomes more powerful, more resonant, and in more extreme situations more militant in scope. At which point I am reminded of the importance of always doing battle in the light, as eloquently discussed by William Horwood in “Duncton Wood,” when discussing the tyrannical mole Mandrake and his memory:

“But there was one more, the seventh. A mole whose shadow had the smell of evil, whose very name still seems a curse on the mole whole mutters it. Many a mother has tried to still the tongues of youngster’s moles who ask in an excited unknowing whisper: ‘who was Mandrake? Tell us about him.’ Many a father has cuffed a son as he pretended to be as strong as Mandrake was. They felt his name was better left unsaid; his memory much better scratched with talons from the recesses of the mind. But that is not the way to fight evil. Let its name be called. Let the fire of the sun do battle with its form until it lies dried out and colourless in the evening shade, no more than a dead beetles wing to be carried off on the midnight wind.” 

There is always a movement to censure and maintain a sense of silence regarding the past. This was something German language writers were forced to confront and face after the Second World War. How does a society come to terms with its own shameful history? Rather then be silent and close the chapter and move towards a better future, writers such as Heinrich Böll sought to reclaim and reconcile with the recent history of Germany and the atrocities committed during the Second World War and the Holocaust. This mantel was picked up and continued by other German writers including Günter Grass. In turn, as Alice Munro pointed out in an interview in 1979, when her short story collection “The Lives of Girls and Woman,” was being pressured to be removed from school reading lists, she pushed back. As Munro said these groups say they are not interested in removing the book from bookstores or libraries, they just don’t want their children reading them, they would rather preserve them. Yet, Munro eloquently states that when a society or movement condones and makes that first step towards censorship, by removing it from the hands of a select group, the next step to remove it from libraries and then bookstores, and then not even being published become easier and more acceptable. It is imperative that the first step never happens and is resisted in full. This is what makes Freedom to Read week such an important week, it reinstates and affirms our societal commitment to oppose all censorship and uphold and maintain all intellectual freedoms, including the freedom to read. Where at the end of the day, if a reader doesn’t enjoy a book, or chooses not read it, at no point in time are they obliged to do so. The point in the matter is they have the freedom to shut it and walk away.

Therefore, it seems fitting to sign off with another quote from Doris Lessing, whose continued salt of the earth sage wisdom becomes increasingly refreshing for its straightforwardness:

“People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.” – Doris Lessing 

And heavens know the world needs further inoculations of this sort in order to truly combat the rampant rise of authoritarian perspectives in the world, regardless of their so called good intentions.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

 

M. Mary

To Read More About Freedom to Week, Please See the Following Link:

https://www.freedomtoread.ca/

The Memory Police

Hello Gentle Reader,

Winter is an authoritarian season. One of complex contradictions. A reduction and redaction of daylight. Long shadows and lengthening nights prevail. In turn there is the whiteout of snow blanketing and highlighting the world. The landscape changes beneath the weight of the snow. Roads, driveways, streets, alleys become impassable, treacherous to traverse, and altered in function. Mounds of snow pile up along embankments and curbs. Trees take on a menacing and clawed visage, gnarled branches framing a cataract white sky. The way the snow settles reshapes and reforms the world; hills become mountains, lawns and trails disappear. Just as the other seasons have their function, so too does winter. The spring melt provides necessary water to the spring seeding. The dormant plants are renewed and restful for the coming spring and summer, and if those two seasons remains amicable with both rain and heat, the autumns harvest will be bountiful in turn. Each season in turn brings their own charm. The rejuvenating green of spring buds, the thaw and warmth spreading throughout. Summer blossoming into a brilliant showcase and bouquet of flowers, greenery, and light. Those days long with a sense of never-ending charm. Summer always comes across as the eternal season, but even it burns out. As summers days die down into the ruminating coals, autumn takes flight. Dressed in golds, reds, oranges, yellows, and browns, autumn brings the feast through the harvest. Autumn’s regalia wears down as all the bright and brilliance falls away. What’s left are the barren brown husks of dormant trees. Fields reduced to a stubble. The days recede and before long that gravestone grey of November begins to hang over the days and haunt the nights. Yet as the year unwinds there remains a glimmer of hope in December, as the days turn their shortest and the nights their longest and darkest, there is the glint and sparkle of Christmas lights twinkling down streets and within windows. Despite its follies, its rampant consumerist propagation, there’s a certain splendor and decadence to the Christmas season. The lights become beacons of festivities, pushing back the shadows of the deepening dark of winter. January as a hangover month fills the space with endless sweeping shadows and frostbitten winds. Still, we persevere through January into February on the green dreams of spring; the memory of enchanting summer heats; the regalia of autumns bounty and bonfires; before we return to the sparkling lights of Decembers celebrations. Yet, if the seasons fell out of order or lapsed and disregarded the cycle of their natural order, what would an eternal and endless winter be? In Ogawa Yōko’s parable novel “The Memory Police,” an endless winter comes to settle over an unnamed and isolated island after calendars are sacrificed in another act of disappearing. This in turn means dates, history, and the seasonal cycle become obsolete in turn, and winter settles in as permanent season. The whiteout affects of the snow falling and replacing the dirty snow, recalls a landscape on the verge of being redacted and obfuscated in turn, as the snow continues to pile up.

“The Memory Police,” is one of Ogawa Yōko’s first novels. Originally published in 1994, after more then two decades it has finally been translated and published into English. Despite the gap between publications, “The Memory Police,” gained further prominence for its publication being just before the pandemic and then seen as a metaphorical resonance of the changing landscape caused by health orders and restrictions to curve and circumvent the virus. Daily life was immediately usurped. Changes to the simple and most mundane components of life altered and changed. Ogawa’s “The Memory Police,” provides a dystopian parable of what happens when the normal routines and confines of daily life are slowly eroded by measures far beyond the individuals control. Inspired by Anne Franks Diary, Ogawa’s “The Memory Police,” follows in a similar fashion of individuals finding refugee in hiding as an authoritarian atmosphere takes hold of normal life. This in turn has meant that “The Memory Police,” is compared to other famous dystopian anti-authoritarian novels, such as George Orwell’s “1984,” or Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” Yet, Ogawa’s novel shares greater kinship to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” or the twisted dark parables of Jose Saramago, such as his novel: “Blindness.” On this unnamed island there is a phenomenon simply known as the disappearing, whereby unknown decree or force, objects, items, and their associative memory are erased from the public consciousness. Citizens of the island accept the fate with alarming acceptance, though even they are perplexed by the choices. When roses have disappeared, residents comply by digging and ripping up their rose bushes. Afterwards the notion of roses having existed slowly evaporates. This scene is poignant, as the river runs with the spectrum of roses, from pink, to red, to white, their petals drift down the river into oblivion.

Early in the novel, the unnamed narrator remembers a scene with her mother, who not only archives and retains lost and forgotten objects, but also remembers their names and applications. For the narrator, however, these objects are foreign and alien, and can only be described via rudimentary and almost childlike language. Soft things. Beautiful things. Furry things. Small things. They can only be summarized as things. The mother provides a treatise on the objects and their applications. Perfume for instance, she laments the loss of their tender scents and beautiful bottles. While the narrator’s childhood self can only see a clear liquid, having no sense of smell to discern anything special. Emeralds in turn are turned over in one’s hands with beautiful satisfaction. The enchanting green stone brilliant and beautiful, but now forgotten, worthless, and lost. Other objects being lost are utilitarian in scope such as hats and boats, which inevitably means the milliner (hatmaker) and ferry operator are unemployed or redeployed to new careers, as their functions to the world no longer exist. While other disappeared objects are more mundane in nature such as ribbons. Then comes the haunting romantic ones, which provide clarity to how far reaching the redactions of memory can go, and to what extent items are obliged to disappear. When birds are deemed surplus to requirement, they are removed from the island. This includes not just physical living, singing, and flying birds, but all studies of birds, photographs, articles, books, drawings, recordings, films et cetera. The narrator’s father was an ornithologist, who thankfully is dead before his life’s work and area of study slips into the abyss. Birds maintain an associative meaning as well in turn. They represent flight and freedom. Their sudden and usual unexplained absence cements the already established suffocating claustrophobia of the island, which has now erased the notion of escape be it ferry, boat, or flight from the inhabitant’s mind, entrapping them on the island.

The titular memory police are an ambient threat. They enter and exist within the novel as a customary component of life on the island. Their neat uniforms complete with green fur lined collar coats and matching green trucks with canvas tarps roaming up and down streets, their impassible and expressionless faces, and their occupation of an old theatre as their headquarters, have them cemented as a mere facet of reality, however mundane and unpleasant all the same. They exist in the background only coming to attention when they’re operational or visible. This often means rounding up people who dissent by being able to still remember or have been discovered providing refugee to dissidents or retaining contraband items which have been disappeared. Their menace is more bureaucratic in nature, encompassing the notion of the banality of evil. When the narrator’s mother is taken by the memory police, the threat of the inevitable is glossed over by how nice the car is, and their pleasant demeanor as if they were escorting her mother on a holiday trip. It is only later when there is the observation of watching others round up into the canvas trucks and transported away is the threat of violence more palpable.

Despite the sensation of dread and violence in parallel with the increasingly bizarre acts of disappearances, Ogawa Yōko creates a multilayered novel, encompassing a multifaceted version of what existence is like on the island. The mundane elements of cooking, shopping, eating, and meeting under such increasingly bizarre circumstances, become rituals of survival as well as dissidence. Grocery shopping takes on new dimensions of horrors, as food becomes increasingly scarce and rations are instituted with tighter and tighter austerity measures. Yet the ability to bake a cake, celebrate a birthday, enjoy a meal, become acts of inspirational hope while clinging to the meager sense of normalcy. Then comes the fact that the unnamed narrator is also a writer (or novelist) in turn. Her books are in turn inflected with loss and disappearances, including her current novel, where a typist becomes trapped by her typing insturctor and looses her voice. Then there is the relationship between herself, her editor, and the old man. Her editor is one such individual who has the innate ability to retain their memories after the shared severance has taken place. To shelter him, the narrator, and the old man, create a new room in the house to hold and safeguard the editor, where he will remain in hiding from the machinations and authority of the memory police. This is done without any political inclination or messaging. The motivations of the narrator are merely out of altruism, and perhaps a sense of romance which is never acted upon. Unfortunately, details are added, and vague plot lines are added within the various stories of “The Memory Police,” but ironically are lost or evaporate, and are never finished, remaining loose. Yet as the novel progresses further memories are severed, further reductions are created in society, and in turn they become increasingly more twisted and Beckettian in their absurdism. Finally, the novel ends the only way it can. As more and more whiteouts take place, more and more holes and gaps begin to expand and widen, soon there can be nothing left to erase.

The publication of Ogawa Yōko’s “The Memory Police,” has been considered politically timely by some. The comparisons that Ogawa’s novel has with other dystopian  novels such as Orwell’s “1984,” or Atwood’s “The Handmaids Tale,” are rather misplaced and even superficial in their association. Ogawa’s work is not as palpable or as forewarning as Orwell’s work or Atwood’s novels. “The Memory Police,” is more closely related to Anne Frank’s Diary for its interest in capturing a sense of ambient dread and banal evil through the mundane, but also living within the confines of a space which continues to shrink both physically and metaphorically. This is the space that both the editor and the inhabitants of the island face. Their physical reality and their interactions, perspectives, associative meanings, and memories of the world become increasingly confined through the confiscation and termination of memories. For the editor the space becomes even more reduced when he’s forced to find sanctuary within a makeshift room, further isolated from the world. The novel also has no political message intended; it has no antiauthoritarian significance beyond the superficial elements of a group of people being oppressed, yet its more Kafkaesque and Beckettian then its revolutionary or explicitly political. Ogawa is not criticizing any political faction or providing any palpable forewarning to the dangers of the resurrected extremism being exhibited by the far-right and the far-left. Rather the novel is parabolic in structure, being less inclined to provide any particular meaning and instead envisioning how one lives within such trying and impossible circumstances. Memory (to no surprise) is a focal theme of this novel, its both torturous curse and the very ethereal element providing meaning to our lives. Its importance to how we interact, understand, perceive, and live in the world should not be abandoned or severed with casual ease. Ogawa Yōko’s ability to remain enigmatic and ambiguous with political stances is a testament to her work being more concerned with more abstract themes and elements of the human condition, while avoiding the pitfalls of the explicitly political. If I were to leverage any criticism against the novel it would be the language itself. Ogawa is renowned for her blanc prose. Its bleached and minimal, best described as being a still pond only slightly rippled with the disturbance of action, though it tends to take on a very still and lulling lyricism. Yet, there were times when the language came across exaggeratedly metaphorical, especially during emotional moments, which caused the novel to veer towards the edge of melodramatics. When so much of the novel is written in such pristine unadorned prose this sudden wellspring of metaphorical and emotional language, often came across as obscene and disruptive. Despite this, in “The Memory Police,” Ogawa Yōko is already establishing the foundational elements of her long literary career, which includes dissertations on memory, service and caretaking, absence, loss, preservation and curatorship, the sense of dread and absurd, and claustrophobic spaces and landscapes. Here’s hoping Ogawa Yōko has more of her works translated into English now. She’s proven herself to be a singular talent and vision, one whose work grapple with the truly impermanence and amorphous unknown of the human condition, exposing the frailty of such systems, without being absorbed in political overtones. In that regard, it is imperative readers understand that “The Memory Police,” is only Orwellian in marketing nature, but absolutely but Kafkaesque for its exploration of the absurdity of the abyss of reality.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 

M. Mary

– XII –

Those who dispense advise so easily don’t give good advice. They’re only providing commentary.

Welcome to the Rubber Room

Hello Gentle Reader,

The term ‘Rubber Room,’ conjures images of institutional padded rooms, whose purpose is punitive in nature. Literature, film, television have promoted the image of a white institutional windowless room covered in protective padding as the defining hallmark of incarceration in a psychiatric facility. Be it “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” or “Girl Interrupted,” or “The Green Mile,” these rooms are cast in a menacing light. Their sole purpose is to be penal even grossly vindictive. From this image the connotations of “Chill Out Room,” “Quiet Room,” “Seclusion Room,” “Time Out Room,” and “Rubber Room,” summons an isolative cell where one is tossed into to go mad. The image is associative of the restraint and isolation of psychiatric penal detention as both application and an inherent prescription of instructional treatment. Insanity can be inherited and curated. Yet the term ‘Rubber Room,’ has gained a new associative meaning, specifically in the New York City Department of Education.

While searching the archives of This American Life, I stumbled across an episode from February 2008 called: “Human Resources,” where the program investigates the strange world of institutions who hold immeasurable authority and power over individuals lives. This is why the episode is so aptly named: ‘Human Resources.’ My personal and professional disdain exhibited and harbored towards the profession of human resources is well documented and known. Recently, I called it a profession lacking in both character and form, an empire whose foundational elements are so vague they are alchemical in spirit while being completely nonexistent. Yet, the episode of This American Life starts with a prologue where Ira Glass talks with a veteran Human Resources administrator, who Ira Glass classified as a human resources ‘executioner’. This administrator held the position of being a coordinator of employee’s severance and termination from the company. A bit of background: it was the cusp of the new millennium and the novelty of the internet boom had waned and the economic repercussions from 9/11 had settled, and this human resources administrator was tasked with reducing a large cell centre workforce During a period of 5-6 years, this administrator had the unfortunate task of being the professional who informed employees that the organization was severing their employment. In a twisted fate of corporate irony during the end of the process the administrator himself was terminated. The administrator describes the process with palpable tension. Entering a nondescript office building, the atmosphere tense and uncomfortable, and as you walk by these rows of cubicles the eyes of employees follow you with apprehension and suspicion. In short something is up. Much like the butcher casually strolling through the chicken coop, so does this administrator, with the understanding the coop is being culled. At Ira Glass’s request, the administrator walks him through the process of being severed, simulating the conversation of being terminated. A consummate professional the administrator spoke low, soft, and went through an established speech. There was no blame, no argumentative components, no aggressive tactics, just a level and soft explanation of the situation followed by a review of what is described as a generous and fair severance package.

The administrator in question is a consummate professional. Who despite his chosen profession, remains amicable, even empathetic in his discussion regarding his time as being a human resources executioner--which it should be noted he took no enjoyment in, as the administrator went so far as to describe it a very depressing period of his professional career. This episode of This American Life then turned towards the main element of the episode, the supposed “Rubber Rooms,” used by the New York City Department of Education to hold and house teachers who have been accused of professional misconduct. Like a penitentiary or holding cell, the teachers find themselves in an indiscriminate office building with rooms and chairs. It is here they spend their days doing nothing. Of course, some read, some play cards, some sleep, while others visit and talk. Yet through the interviews with numerous individuals who found themselves remanded into these Rubber Rooms, seating arrangements took on a greater meaning. New initiates are oriented regarding the proprietary nature of a chair. Seating became the sole patch of earth one could stake out and claim as their own. In the process establishing a pecking order. A social structure within the amorphous purgatory of the Rubber Room.

The Rubber Rooms deployed by the New York City Department of Education, have been satirized and mocked via a variety of different mediums, including political cartoons and “The Simpsons.” Yet I listened to this episode with a combination of pity and disgust. The teachers who were being remanded into these facilities each had their own story. Some obviously engaged in inappropriate conduct, such as losing their temper and throwing a chair against a blackboard. Others had more human moments of indiscretion, such as letting a cuss word slip out when talking with a colleague in earshot of students. Then there were others whose reasons were pettier in form, as in the case of one teacher who said she had a personality conflict with the school principal. Regardless of the reason or the severity of their act each educator found themselves placed in a situation which became increasingly Kafkaesque in nature. As the existence of Rubber Rooms became more ubiquitous and infamous, a documentary was later filmed and made regarding their existence. The film itself revealed a education system which no longer seeks to facilitate or inspire or nurture education as a value, or lifelong learning as a principle. Instead, it reveals an anarchist state of social depravation, which is further condoned and promoted by willfully breaking the spirit and professional souls of educators. If school is the foundation of a function society. Then then New York City Department of Education reveals a system in ruin beyond repair.

The issue I took with the Rubber Rooms was not to critique the hollowed out remains of the New York City Department of Education; it was an immediate revulsion directed towards the profession of human resources. The very same profession veiling itself in the vague nebulous vagrancy of a defined profession. Though it cloaks itself with the corporate trends and buzz words, remaining indefinite in shape and character, just a superficial profession teetering on the point of irrelevancy. Yet perhaps the only anchor point of human resources is the entrenched understanding that the profession and business unit exist to be the heart of labour relations. In essence that corporate bridge between the corporation and the employee. In essence the faceless and soulless conglomerate and the individual employee, whereby it operates as the mediator between the two’s interests, ensuring fair play and compliance with pertinent employment and labour laws. It comes as no surprise that employee’s distrust and loath human resources, who as a function of the corporation will enact resolutions which are considered corporate centric. Such resolutions cannot be found as fault to a profession, however. Loyalty is an act all parties will subscribe to in order to maintain their position. This function also means that human resources is involved in the severance of employees from the organization, as previously mentioned in the prologue of this episode of This American Life. Business textbooks list the functions of human resources as: recruitment, onboarding, training and learning development, labour relations, and facilitation of employee exit. Then the endorsement and utilization of Rubber Rooms as a form of remand facility and detention centre for teachers who have allegedly engaged in a form of professional misconduct, becomes a distorted and disturbing Beckettian stage displaying just how absurd and disturbed the human resources profession is.

The description of these Rubber Rooms is best summarized as some absurd hellscape from within a Beckett play. Yet, they become thorough examples of the incompetence exhibited by the human resources profession. The establishment of Rubber Rooms and the complacent acceptance of their utilization shows a profession that has no professional interest in operating within its own vague mandate and maintain one of its own professional principles. It’s an insult to imagine that these educated professionals are left to languish in some bureaucratic exile, where they fill their days with nothing. The whole concept is absurd. I can’t imagine what defense or rationale could be provided to justify this practice. As a citizen of New York City, I would be appalled, I would be disgusted that an institution would engage in this kind of unprofessional practice, while keeping these educated professionals on the payroll, and paying them to do nothing. These are qualified educational professionals, whose talents and education could be redeployed or exercises in a variety of other measures. Yet instead, they are paid a salary to do nothing, to engage in nothing. All I can think is what a waste. A waste of public funds and a waste of such professional talent, who are left to languish in some penal purgatory. What is most infuriating through this entire process is viewed as normal. When This American Life asked a high-ranking labour relations representative from the Department of Education about the Rubber Rooms deployment as a solution, the representative appeared to shrug the question off and encourage an endorsement of the term: Reassignment Centre. Regardless of what semantic spin one wants to put on these institutionalized bull pens of nothingness, they are a disgrace to the professionals detained within those buildings and should be considered a blight and embarrassment to the human resources profession.

The Rubber Rooms remain an example of what is truly rotten at the core of human resources as a profession and should provide the corporate world with enough stock to evaluate what value and benefit such as a business unit brings to the organization. If any organization is looking for a special breed of leech like professional capable of syphoning funds from the organization while enacting Kafkaesque and Beckettian bureaucratic solutions to labour relations issues, then yes keep human resources on your payroll and in your organizational chart. While in turn the revelation of the Rubber Rooms and their continued utilization (now remotely with the rise of the pandemic), only affirms a deep-seated disgust and outrage against a profession whose qualities and functions were always in question prior.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
And As Always
Stay Well Read

Take Care

M. Mary

If you would like listen to that episode of This American Life, please see the following link: 

This American Life: Human Resources

 

Ronald Blythe, Dies Aged 100

Hello Gentle Reader,

The English countryside remains one of the most pastoral and romanticized landscapes in the world, becoming an infinite fountain of inspiration. One can only wonder how many roses have been endowed with odes adoration and tossed at lovers’ feet; how many daisies confessed the love me not and endured the love me; or how many trees have shaded poets, haunted painters, inspired scientists, or assaulted mathematicians. The English countryside remains the ideal. The portrait of pastoral perfection. It exists in cinematic nostalgic tinted dreams which is affirmed through such cinematic portrayals as the Dens in “All Creatures Great and Small,” or the picturesque, lush detail in “Downton Abbey,” and affirmed by many literary adaptions of Jane Austen or the Brontës. The most recent adaption of “Jane Eyre,” in 2011, provides wonderful homage to the windswept moors so beloved by Emily Brontë. The English countryside remains an eternal remark of beauty, an image, dream, and ideal ascended into the heavenly principles of the idyllic. Many writers have provided reflections and commentary on the English countryside, affirming its status as impeachable beauty, including W.G. Sebald, Beatrix Potter, Virginia Woolf, and of course the remarkable farmer and nature writer John Lewis-Stempel. Yet, sadly amongst them is the overlooked sleeping green giant of Ronald Blythe, whose career was formulated around the English countryside and nature, and in turn celebrated it. Though Blythe wrote fiction including the novel “A Treasonable Growth,” a collection of short stories, Blythe preferred to think of himself as a poet and an essayist above all else. His crowning achievement “Akenfield,” remains a classic and quintessential book celebrating English rural and village life and has vastly overshadowed all of Ronald Blythe’s other achievements. His columns and reflections deserve special attention though as they are perhaps most representative of Blythe’s work, grasping the full potential of essay as prose for art form and exploration, rather than academic edicts, or didactics. Perhaps unfortunately his later work was published by smaller independent presses, who valued his insight and personal form, while larger publishers were more interested in reissuing his earlier works, especially “Akenfield.” In addition to his literary career and prodigious column writing, Ronald Blythe was an editor, curator, and reference librarian. All in all, not to bad for a man whose formal education ended when he was 14 years old, but a love reading, voracious unquenchable hunger for the written word and a tutelage in the sanctuary of nature, provided him all the material he needed to fashion himself a literary corner. It didn’t of course hurt that Blythe came into company and tutorship of some of the more bohemian writers and artists of the 20^th Century, including an aged EM Forster. More interestingly, he had a one-night stand with the famous poet of apprehension Patricia Highsmith, and the two had a mutual acquaintanceship during Highsmith’s stay in the English country. Future nature writers such as the rugged Robert Macfarlane and environmentally conscious Roger Deakins came to befriend Ronald Blythe. Despite all of this, Ronald Blythe remains an intensely private figure. One whose relationships were never gossiped about or hinted in his work.

As a writer, Ronald Blythe remains a singular vision of the rural English countrymen writer. One whose preoccupation for the natural landscapes is both at odds with the increasingly urbanized world, and yet completely celebratory in what maybe mistakenly defined as simple living. An admiration for the natural and celebration of the mundane remain noteworthy and are in need of a greater audience. Truly a marvelous giant of quiet and passionate literature.

Rest in Peace Ronald Blythe.

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

I must say, I look forward to finding your work in the near future and reading it with anticipation and pleasure.

For further reading, please see this wonderful article by The Guardian, and two wonderful celebrations by the BBC and The Daily Mail

The Guardian: Ronald Blythe Obituary

BBC: Suffolk nature writer Ronald Blythe dies aged 100

The Daily Mail: Beloved Author of Akenfield Ronald Blythe Celebrates his 100th birthday and appeals for the world to 'slow down'