Category: Living

So June 19 is the anniversary of something important in American history – it’s the day that, officially, the abolition of the legal institution of slavery was promulgated in the last rebel state to lay down arms in the Civil War, Texas. There had been the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 but that was a bit of a con job: Lincoln announced that slavery was outlawed in those states that had rebelled against the Constitution and the Union, but the Union largely had no control over the regions affected – and in states that had not rebelled, slavery remained legal. The 13th Amendment to the US constitution declared slavery illegal in all of the United States in December of 1865, but with the military defeat of the rebel states in April of 1865, the Union government had the power and the authority to enforce the Proclamation of 1863, and it was finally promulgated in that last large bastion of slavery on June 19, 1865. Given that both Mexico and Canada had long since eliminated the peculiar institution, we can thus celebrate June 19 – Juneteenth, as it came to be known by the newly freed black in the South – as the last day of chattel slavery in North America.

And as we all know, it was not the last day of racism in continental North America. Or anywhere.

Continue reading “Juneteenth”

I started to write this text on Bloomsday, famously the calendar day on which James Joyce’s great novel Ulysses is set.   Joyce borrowed the title and structure of his book from Homer, although Odysseus (to give him his original Greek name) took ten years to travel from Illium to Ithaca after spending ten years fighting at the siege of Troy, whereas Leopold Bloom wanders around Dublin for fewer than twenty hours.  Joyce is said to have chosen to set his story on 16^th June 1904 because that was the day of his first romantic outing with Nora Barnacle, whom he later married, although it is not clear to me whether this act of homage was to celebrate her loyalty to him, as Penelope to Odysseus, or her disloyalty, as Molly to Leopold.   

I have been re-reading Ulysses at a leisurely pace, enjoying its jokes, provocations, and digressions, alongside its description of the many ways in which we are prone to self-deception but also capable of moments of self-enlightenment, and for its sympathetic reminder that during the journey of life youthful ambition often develops into mature disappointment.  Along with several other lengthy novels published in the 1920s and ‘30s – Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Musil’s The Man Without Qualities – Joyce’s work invites a slow pace, allowing the reader to savour the complex meanderings of plot and explorations of character.   For all my enjoyment of his work, I had not been planning to write about Joyce in this text, the theme of which is our sense of a persistent identity through the passage of time.  Then, a day or two ago, I came across this incident in Ulysses, which acted as a catalyst for my thoughts.

Continue reading “Backwards and forwards”

It is reported that Harold Macmillan, heir to a successful publishing company, claimed that one of the pleasures of becoming British Prime Minister was that he had more time to read novels.  That was almost sixty-five years ago, and it is not a statement one could imagine a contemporary Western political leader making.  For one reason, modern politicians like to present themselves as ordinary people, just like the voters whom they represent, and since they assume that most voters do not read books they likewise pretend not to.  Instead, they allow themselves to be filmed playing golf, watching football, and taking their kids to the cinema, to celebrate their normality, to reaffirm their averageness.  The second reason is that they think they are much too busy, rushing from one meeting to another, speed-reading briefing documents and policy papers, talking with special advisors and party operatives, worrying about the daily news cycle, and the changing trends in the polling data that they collect incessantly.  The closest they might come to admitting to opening a real book, as opposed to a policy file, is when they publicise their annual summer holiday reading list, which will tend to be a small number of fashionable non-fiction titles, thereby trying to connect themselves to certain popular concerns of the day. 

Reading for pleasure is considered a luxury, or worse an indulgence that the modern politician can and should do without.  This is especially true of the reading of fiction – or “story books” – which is assumed to be appropriate only for children and those adults with surplus time on their hands, such as pensioners or academics.  By contrast, those who carry the burden of responsibility of government – in “the real world” – consider themselves too busy to be bothered with make believe.

Continue reading “The spectre of good literature”

I’m on a retreat right now.  I’m taking the train from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, with a change in Chicago.  It’ll take four days.  The boy is with his grandparents, and the dog is with a trainer who hopefully will get her to stop jumping on people.  I have a two-person “roomette” to myself for the entirety of the journey.  After fifteen months of full time single parenting with just two six day breaks when the ex-wife flew out to have in-person time, I’m savouring every moment of being solitary, just the gentle sway of the train, and no more human contact than the occasional trips to the cafe car for mixers and ice. I miss the boy and the dog, but my guess is, on some level, they’re both enjoying a break from me, too.

Continue reading “Down by the tracks”

A good friend told me this story, knowing I would find it funny. 

Some time ago, his family had guests staying with them for the weekend.  On the Saturday evening, my friend prepared a meal with a variety of dishes, mostly drawn from the Chinese cookery tradition.  They all ate and drank well, and they talked until the early hours of Sunday morning before going to bed.  When my friend woke up the next day and headed down to the kitchen to make coffee, he discovered one of the guests busy at work cleaning up the kitchen.  All the plates, the cutlery, and the glasses had been washed and dried, and were stacked neatly on the table.   On the draining board were clean pans and lids.  The guest was standing at the sink, working away with a wire scouring brush, on my friend’s oldest and most prized wok. 

“Nearly finished,” said the guest with a smile, “it takes a lot of work to get these really clean.”  He lifted the steel wok out of the water to reveal that the near spotless metal was as smooth and bright as when it had first been bought.  My friend forced a smile, nodded, and then retreated upstairs to his bed, speechless.  Ten years of cooking – ten years of sizzling hot oil, infused with ginger, garlic, chilli, black beans, spices, sauces, and marinades – ten years of working at the stove, carefully building up the patina on the surface of the wok, ten years of culinary labour, all obliterated by ten minutes of over-zealous uneducated cleaning.  Disaster!  

Continue reading “Seasoned and sharpened”