READING NOCTURNES BY KAZUO ISHIGURO

Kazuo Ishiguro is an eminent English novelist. Born in Nagasaki (32 degrees North, 129 degrees East) in 1954, he was raised in Britain. This nature-nurture combination equips him with gifts of the Orient and the Occident. He writes wonderful prose, telling stories of great power, drawn from his formidable imagination. His prize-winning novels garner acclaim across the world, achieving translations into over forty languages. Film versions of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go are hugely successful.

The reader is drawn into the worlds he creates, thrilled by his deep insights, his pleasure in language, his freshness and his command of character, plot, location and time.

Then the reader buys Nocturnes, a collection of five short stories, and is dismayed by the thinness of the plots, the artless manner in which the characters hover on surfaces rather than inhabit worlds, the trite sentences, the gormless repetitive story devices and the sense that hackneyed old ground is being dug over carelessly. It is as if Kazuo Ishiguro is having an off-day.

The problem for the reader is that critics and reviewers writing in powerful organs of the media laud this collection. It won the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa International Literary Prize. In The Observer, The Times, The Evening Standard, The Financial Times, The Independent, The London Review of Books, The Irish Times and many other newspapers and periodicals, phrases such as 'each story resonates with emotion' draw the reader to the collection.   Another reviewer writes 'This is a lovely, clever book about the passage of time.' Kazuo Ishiguro certainly writes lovely, clever books. The reader knows this. But Nocturnes is not one of them. 

So what is the reader to do, browsing on Amazon or in a bookshop, considering what to buy? Can the reader be guided by reviewers who write 'Brilliant.....Art, its dangers, its pains and its gaiety are all topics seriously considered in this accomplished book' only to find that, having parted with stg￡7.99 for the Faber and Faber paperback edition, the book is not 'accomplished' but thoroughly underwhelming. 

Rather than wondering about the role of the critic today, the reader is left to consider who to trust when it comes to recommending a good book. Past pleasure in the work of a particular writer offers some guidance, but, as with Nocturnes, no guarantee of future pleasure. Word of mouth and personal recommendations offer the reader a more tailored response, but they may mean the reader never experiences new and different work.

'Ishiguro is wise, witty and humane, one of our most accomplished story-tellers' – an utterly true and non-sycophantic statement from a reviewer of Nocturnes. Is there hope for the reader here?

Perhaps a re-working of the last sentence of the final story in the collection, Cellists, offers hope:

If he (Kazuo Ishiguro) comes back to the square, and I'm (the reader) not playing, I'll (the reader) go over and have a word with him (Kazuo Ishiguro).

Back to the novel then Kazuo.

Nocturnes – Five Stories of Music and Nightfall; Kazuo Ishiguro; Faber and Faber; 2009

TESCO AND THE ST VINCENT DE PAUL SOCIETY

A curious nexus is under-way in Ireland between Tesco, who the BBC reports as the world's third largest retailer by sales (behind Walmart and Carrefour) and St Vincent de Paul, a major Roman Catholic charity. 

For every 20 euro a person spends in a Tesco Ireland shop on 'back to school' clothes, the company will donate 5 euro to The St Vincent de Paul Society for use in alleviating poverty in their local area. This promotion runs for the first two weeks of August, a highly charged period for retailers of school uniforms. It is an unashamed action by Tesco Ireland to steal a march on their competitors by using charity to the poor as a marketing tool.

The motto on the logo of The St Vincent de Paul Society reads 'Turning Concern into Action.' Tesco Ireland's re-writing of the logo would read 'Turning concern into profit'. The BBC reports that the most recent account of Tesco's global profits shows them up by 11.3%, a whopping UK￡ 3.54 billion, on the previous year.

Saint Vincent de Paul, who founded the society that takes his name, was canonised in 1737 and his heart is held in a reliquary in a chapel of The Sisters of Charity in Paris (48 degrees North, 2 degrees East). It is said to be incorrupt.

Tesco Ireland's marketing ploy cannot be said to be corrupt in current economic terms, but, given the massive profits the global giant enjoys, it gives off an unpleasant whiff. It can certainly be labeled crass. The company makes profit using charity to give it a competitive edge, then gives some of the extra money it takes to an organisation to disburse to the poor in the local area. 

Wouldn't a direct (and quiet) donation to the St Vincent de Paul Society from recent huge profits have been a more efficient way to do this? And greater evidence of the company's commitment to sharing with the poor? 

Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher, who wrote The Guide of the Perplexed, notes we should:

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. 

Tesco Ireland re-write even Maimonides as:

Use charity by marketing poverty. 

The 'local' angle is another clever marketing hook from the global giant.

Perplexed?

The Guide of the Perplexed; Maimonides; The Horovitz Publishing Company;1952

SO SYRIA HAS NO OIL THEN?

The Assads are described as a despotic family regime. So are the Gaddafis. The Assads are Ba'athists. So were Saddam Hussein and his fellows. Bombs rained on Iraq and now on Libya. Bombs from NATO/UN/USA/EU, justified as necessary to prevent the killing of citizens by cruel dictators. Such as the Assads? Yet no Western/International Community bombs rain on Syria. 

The only conclusion to be drawn is that Syria has no oil. 

The CIA World Fact Book lists the country's natural resources as  petroleum, phosphates, chrome and manganese ores, asphalt, iron ore, rock salt, marble, gypsum, hydro-power. This source – and you can bet your bottom dollar these folks really know their stuff -  also reveals Syria to the be in 33rd position in the world in terms of oil production, behind countries like Canada, Australia and Mexico, not exactly well-known as geysers of the black stuff. So in that sense you could say that no, Syria has not much oil and more importantly is not a major supplier to the U.S.A.. 

A google check of the Syrian economy reveals that agricultural and industrial products are the principal outputs. These products are not desperately needed by Western/International Community powers in the way oil is, which points to the selective nature of military intervention. There is a particular manner in which the interests of Western businesses prevail when such interventions occur.  Cui bono  - who benefits? - as Cicero asked. Check the recent contracts signed by the Iraqi government and major oil companies for exclusive extraction rights and guaranteed pricing. 

But would the Syrian people want such military intervention and would it be good for them? Experiences in Iraq and Libya indicate such interventions do not automatically benefit citizens. As regards Afghanistan, let's not even go there. Perhaps Syria is blessed in not having much oil.

So what exactly is going on in Syria then?

Nizar Qabbani, the Syrian poet, wrote:

I conquer the world with words,

conquer the mother tongue,

verbs, nouns, syntax.

I sweep away the beginning of things

and with a new language

that has the music of water the message of fire

I light the coming age

and stop time in your eyes

and wipe away the line

that separates

time from this single moment. 

Could this be what's going on in Syria at present?

With the tanks rolling in Hama and bodies lying in the streets, it's not obviously the case. Recent promises by foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, that free and fair elections will be held to find an administration that delivers the desires of the Syrian people have not quelled the protests. Either have the tanks. 

Voices are raised from outside Syria condemning the state crackdown. 

But it is the Syrian people themselves who will speak and write their future. Will they sweep away the beginning of things with a new language that has the music of water and the message of fire to sound and light the coming age?

BRENDAN LILLIS AND THE QUALITY OF MERCY

A man with a debilitating arthritic condition, Ankylosing Spondylitis – Brendan Lillis – nears death in Maghaberry Prison, outside Lisburn (56 degrees North, 6 degrees West) in Northern Ireland. 

No doubt he is a criminal. He was convicted of causing an explosion in 1977 as part of a militant republican campaign. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1993 he was released under licence as part of the Good Friday Agreement that produced the current devolved administration in Belfast (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West). This licence was revoked in 2009 after he was re-arrested on robbery charges and told he must serve the rest of his life sentence. The new charges against Brendan Lillis, who weighs just five stone, were shelved last year because he was too unwell to stand trial.

The Northern Ireland administration, in both its justice ministry and its parole commissioner arms, now wrestles with the proper response to the plight of Brendan Lillis.   

Shakespeare, as so often in human experience, has been here before and offers:

The quality of mercy is not strained. 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 

Tis mightiest in the mightiest;

Both arms of the administration have the case under review and it is clear that this is not only a matter of justice and parole, but of politics.

All prisoners are political. All criminal acts are political which explains why so many white collar crimes go untreated and why the vast bulk of the best brains in the legal profession make a killing at the white-collar end of criminality. Think of the legal teams the Murdochs have.

As regards the case of the Northern Ireland state versus Brendan Lillis, is the new state so weak that it cannot find a way to benefit from Shakespeare's insights?  Has it no room for manoeuvre that would take it to the high ground of magnanimity? Would compassion not be a sign of strength in the face of the threat from dissident republicans who, along with family members and supporters, challenge the state on this matter? 

Grim histories exist here with the 1981 Hunger Strikes. The fateful determination of the prisoners. The bullish intransigence of Margaret Thatcher wielding her dreadful handbag, like a demonic tricoteuse, knitting at the foot of the guillotine during the Terror in Paris (48 degrees North, 2 degrees East). 

Images from 1981 of tricolour-draped coffins leaving a prison in 2011 would not be in the interest of a state attempting to present itself as 'new' and future-focused. Any moves, however, to release Brendan Lillis to die outside prison need to acknowledge the context and the challenge such moves would present to victims.

Another Brendan, this time Behan, famously quipped: If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks. Behan wrote a play, The Quare Fella, in which prisoners pass the night in jail discussing a colleague facing a death sentence. As Brendan Lillis faces.

Meanwhile the gentle rain of mercy falls through our forks and the state is in danger of becoming as fatuous as Margaret Thatcher's infamous handbag.

The Merchant of Venice; 1596; William Shakespeare

The Quare Fella; 1954; Brendan Behan