Hello Gentle Reader
Margaret MacMillan is a renowned and decorated historian, whose accomplishments and CV are decorated with titles such as former provost of Trinity College Toronto, history professor University of Toronto, former history professor at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and current professor of history at Oxford. In addition to her blazing and stunning academic career, Margaret MacMillan is also an accomplished published author on her expertise of historical international relations, and their continuing influence on modern day political life and discourse. MacMillan has also delivered both the Massey Lectures in Canada, Histories People: Personalities and the Past (2015) and the Reith Lectures, The Mark of Cain (2018) in the United Kingdom. Having had the pleasure of listening to the recordings of MacMillan’s five-part Massey lectures, I was struck not only by Margaret MacMillan’s use of irony, but also her incisive ability to prove that history can be quite enjoyable when not reduced to just dates, facts and figures; but by the people, personalities, and stories that create the often incomplete, but fascinating and entertaining window into the past. Margaret MacMillan reminds listeners, however, that when discussing history, we are not merely discussing or looking into the past, but entirely different worlds that are alien and foreign to our contemporary perspectives, tastes, and biases. Yet, they provide the foundation and groundwork for the modern world, which in turn makes up the next layer for the foundation of the future. Margaret MacMillan makes it very clear that the work of the historian is very different than that of the novelist. As MacMillan vaguely recalled a historical novel, where the writer transplanted some thought and reaction into the mind of Marie Antoinette as she rode in a carriage from Palace Versailles, where she gazes out the window and thinks of a forthcoming revolution and a tear rolls down her cheek. Historians cannot take such indulgent liberties with such sentimental revisionism; they strictly adhere to the facts and figures as they are recorded. Thankfully what is designated in a record from a historian’s perspective is a broad pallet of spice. Historians understand that the most mundane elements can be the most enlightening. To this point, MacMillan points out marketing advertisements from British-India heralding hat styles to block or limit sun exposure and reduce tanning. Historians also read through intimate correspondence, including letters and diaries to gain a fuller understanding of the times. What is considered impolite by general standards of the time are dutifully absolved by time, death, and curiosity. Margaret MacMillan is generous in her assessment of these types of records. The intimacy and unfiltered observations of personal correspondence and diaries give an unfiltered lens of the realities of the time. Newspaper articles, advertisements, accounting ledgers, memos and government records are the bread and butter of understanding what values society held at the time. But the personal letters and dairies give an unfiltered look at out these values were put into practice.
A fascinating example of this would be the diaries of the German scholar Victor Klemperer, whose diaries explored the daily realities of life during the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. The banality of evil and its bureaucratic application, with an almost frightening Kafkaesque flare. Despite viewing himself in the contexts of German and converting to Protestantism, Victor Klemperer was designated a Jew by the Nazi’s prescriptive classification system. In a twist of bizarre administrative policy, Klemperer was spared the fate of others who had been designated Jews—the concentration camp—because he was married to a woman who was considered fittingly Aryan. This, however, does not mean Klemperer is spared discrimination or absurd policies. Margaret MacMillan recounts one such entry where Victor Klemperer laments the worst birthday he has ever had, where at the university library he was denied borrowing books because he was Jew as explained by a tearful librarian. In a fashion similar to the diary of Anne Frank, Victor Klemperer’s dairies gave an unprecedented vantage point and commentary on life under Nazi occupation, which provided an extensive context and understanding of ordinary life in conjunction with the government records of the detailed plans and information architecture of the Holocaust itself, and all the testimonials and witness accounts, video, photographs, and logs which were recovered from the camps detailing the depravity and inhumanity that transpired there. Personal records are a privilege for the historian—at least that’s the impression Margaret MacMillan provides. MacMillian secures the point by detailing the insight gained from the letters of Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, which had literary merit for their wit and vividness, but provided a wonderful perspective of court life during the Louis XIV’s reign. These otherwise personal letters provide the necessary context and colour outside of the historical register.
Annie Ernaux maintains a firm assertion she is not a historian; intrapersonal ethnographer or personable sociologist are the more accurate descriptions of Ernaux. Yet, her work maybe of some interest to future historians. “Exteriors,” in this case takes the form of a fragmented diary over the 1980’s and early 1990’s. This slim volume of prose, fragments, and observations grapple with the disjointed complexity of life and existence. It traces the extradentary mundane realities of life the expansive and strange realm of a new town (villes nouvelles), which lacks the medieval roots and historical resonance of Paris or other such established cities, having instead gestated from conscription, planning, and design. these places are often viewed with disdain. Lifeless and characterless. By products of urban studies that otherwise hodgepodge discipline of environmental studies, geography, and political theory. These orchestrated communities are criticized for lacking a sense of place (by which all critics mean history that is not manufactured). These communities are developed to with a utilitarian perspective, deprived of cultural components which are gained through a sense of historical resonance found elsewhere. Paris trots its streets with a parade of cultural landmarks and its cemeteries are populated with a plethora of famous residents, the literary of special notice. These new towns—mere suburbs—do not have such luxuries or legacies. They are the towns of the reality where the needs of daily life need to be met. Where supermarkets exist; hair salons sprout up with an air of ordinariness; and the apocalyptic emptiness of its residential streets are mere facts. Yet in time, these new urban districts attract the required residents who are more concerned with the business of daily life, including all the practical considerations required to set up shop or set down roots. For all its luxurious reputation, the lights and the glamour, Paris is excessively expensive, to the point of financial asphyxiation. The satellite communities; the fringe of suburbia; those otherwise backwater polyps, can prove to be a financially feasible for the families who can provide a functioning kitchen for the many mouths to feed, a yard for running and playing, while accommodating the necessary amenities such as supermarkets, schools, and miscellaneous recreation facilities and services, while still being in proximity to the marvelous metropolitan city centre, where everyone is bound to be employed. It is there in once such commune that Annie Ernaux settled in 1975: “in the midst’s of lives started elsewhere.” This commune gradually becomes a socially diverse and complex ecosystem. It is here on October 6th that Annie Ernaux made her way up to the front gate of her hidden home in the town of Cergy, where the 82-year-old Ernaux cloaked in a stylish black dress coat and brilliant scarlet scarf quickly met with journalists. She didn’t take questions from the assembled reporters, but was gracious, warm, and kind in her interactions.
Annie Ernaux maintains that the town of Cergy cannot be summarized as a lifeless place, but even she must concede it exists on the peripheral of life and events. Perhaps from this vantage point is exactly how Ernaux is able to craft her works. Away from the trappings and illusions of Parisian literary life, established now for centuries; Ernaux is able to observe and write about life with refreshing accuracy, completely away from the echo chamber of self-congratulatory praise taking place within the self-assured Parisian literary saloons. It is here Ernaux can trace, sketch, and experience the discombobulating upheaval of daily life:
“Memories as I am driving past the black 3M Minnesota office building with all its glass windows lit: when I first moved to the New Town, I would invariably lose my way but would go on driving, too panicked to stop. In the shopping mall, I would make sure I knew exactly through which door I had entered – A, B, C or D – so that I could locate the same exit later on. I would also try not to forget in which row of the parking lot I had left my car. I was afraid of having to wander under the concrete slab until nightfall without ever finding it. So many children got lost in the supermarket.”
Many of us have been in the same position as Ernaux, devoted to remembering which entrance of the mall we are entering, and which section of the parking lot we have parked at. The dislocation and expansiveness of everything, affirms our own minuscule positioning within the exterior world. Or perhaps in turn the sheer gluttonous consumption consumerism has come to embody in a purely physical and spacious form, shadowing our own insignificance in the process.
“Exteriors,” also provides insight into the other more empathetic moments, where despite geographical and linguistic differences existing, the common experience both lived and recorded, and then read and experienced via second-hand, can sense and understand the forming atmosphere and the moment as it is relayed. As if we can grasp onto the discomfort and embarrassment bristling unspoken amongst those anonymously gathered:
“We were waiting at the dentist’s, reading magazines laid out on a coffee table. Three patients who had never met. The sound of a motorbike close by reached us through the window of the waiting room (situated on the ground floor). A young male voice rang out, addressing someone from a distance: ‘So see you on Sunday, okay?’ The reply, coming from a boy or a girl, was impossible to catch. ‘Don’t be late, eh?’ the voice continued. Then, much louder: ‘And good fuck with the principal!’ No doubt said in jest, in lieu of ‘good luck’. An embarrassed silence descended upon the waiting room, because of these words and the situation we were in – complete strangers unwittingly caught in the act of eavesdropping. Had we been alone, the incident might have amused or intrigued us. In the company of others, it became obscene.”
Through observation, eavesdropping, and reading graffiti, Annie Ernaux traces herself within the flotsam and jetsam of the daily life on the peripheral, watching the comings and goings; the changing landscape; the neighbours who herald from distant lands, be it Vietnam, Côte d’Ivoire, Maghreb – or in the case of Annie Ernaux, Normandy. Each of them, however, finds a home within this specifically engineered and envisioned town, and it is here Ernaux is able to grasp at the driftwood of life, free from the ostentatious falsities which inevitably would be imposed on her writing if she were writing and working in Paris, where readers would approach her work with an otherwise established orientation and deep seeded expectations. Perhaps in the future, historians will read the work of Annie Ernaux both for their literary analysis, but also for their ability to record with palpable acuity the changing social dynamics and realties of the 20th Century; in a fashion reminiscent of the famous letters of Madame de Sévigné. Strikingly, however, Annie Eranux has mastered the ability to survey and encapsulate the sensation of the passing of time with a graceful and seamless transition. Annie Ernaux receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature is not surprising, her sociological narratives, memory exploring cartography, and interpersonal survey of the changing social dynamics and realities are wonderful. Her prose maybe pinpoint sharp and blanched to the point of being bleached; yet they remain startling and sparkling in their clarity, which can be unflinching and uncomfortable in their impersonal examinations, but also revelatory and necessary in their unsentimental accuracy for getting to the point of the manner without being slathered in sentimentality or tabloid sensationalism.
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
M.
Mary
No comments:
Post a Comment