An interesting article.

I think the role of a reviewer is important and, if we are to maximise our literary experience, we all need to take on that role at some point. To review a book is to employ some metacognitive skills - rather than just reading a book and thinking 'gee, that was a good read', we take time out to think about WHY it was good. What is it about us, as people, that makes us like the book? How did the book impact on us as people?

Of course, there is a time and place for everything. I teach both English and Literature at high school, but I still enjoy reading books without thinking about them.

As an academic, presumably Jay also publishes in academic journals, and pursues other textual analyses. Nothing in the article about aesthetics (a dirty word), but nothing about cultural/Marxist readings either. My only grumble with the reviewer Jay conjures up is that he is utterly mainstream, supporting the status quo with his puerile apolitical correctness. Sorry, but identity politics just doesn't cut it any more. For the best book reviews, imo, that actually challenge conventional thinking, try the London Review of Books, or New Left Review. But then, in our celebratory postmodern age people prefer pastiche to prose, and pop to politics--what a nice alliteration!

Nice article. I enjoy reading immensely and as an avid reader, I also enjoy book reviews. In fact, I did some book reviews for both larger newspapers and smaller magazines in The Netherlands and I wouldn't mind doing the same in Australia. Am I a frustrated writer who can't write? Not really. If anything it's more due to laziness that I haven't written my 'ultimate masterpiece' yet. In the meantime I enjoy reading books, reading reviews, reading more books and agreeing and disagreeing with both critics and fellow-readers. The nicest thing about reading a lot of book reviews is that you start recognising 'your' critic: the one you learn to wholeheartedly agree with, the one whose opinion you follow blindly and - most important - the one who leads you to that hidden gem you might never have discovered otherwise.

Interesting article, Jay. I can't imagine how drearily prosaic must the inner person be, who can see literature only as something to deconstruct in terms of a few shibboleths - who agrees with Derrida that “There is nothing beyond the text”.

I teach Russian literature (amongst other things) to seniors. It's an absolute joy to have students who are there because they want to read and appreciate literary works on the terms of the works themselves, for the pure joy of it

Well I'm glad I got a bight, as I felt sorry for poor Jay; the thread wasn't going anywhere. You're unjust though, Glorfindel; I never mentioned nor alluded to Derrida--if I did, I wouldn't resort to that tired old chestnut. Nor am I the dessicated politiciser of prose I may appear to be. I'd be more than happy to discuss the Russians; mainly Tolstoy, who I've read to the dregs, Dostoyevski and Chekhov, as these as you'd know, were far from apolitical; indeed, read on the "terms of the works themselves", they are polemical from cover to cover--the Russians above all! Tolstoy is Russia's William Blake, with mellinarianism and the plight of the surfs (like Blake's London urchins) watermarked into every page. Or do you deal only with the Mills and Boonsy Natasha and her hero Andre (my hero as a lad I must admit)? What of Levin, or the rapscallion Vronsky, and the questionable politics of effete Pierre. And what of the Karamasov's? Now there is a political family--and the little girl saying her prayers in the out-house? Or Rascolnikov; or my favourite, Prince Myshkin--was he political, or just aspergers syndrome?
I love literature! But I hate seeing it demeaned as mere entertainment for an ignorant Bourgeoisie.
What do you think Tolstoy would have thought?

Gee, Squeers, you're a bit hard on the "ignorant bourgeoisie" being entertained by literature. You remind me of Chekhov in The Seagull, where in Act 1, Trepliov says "I have to escape, I run away as Maupassant ran away from the Eiffel Tower which so oppressed him with its vulgarity" ! There must have been more than a few "ignorant bourgeois" watch Gogol's Inspector-General - to salutary effect?

I didn't frame my previous post with yours specifically in mind. I just hate the mindset in Derrida. How can negative deconstructionism be ever conducive to the pursuit of excellence, if the very existence of excellence is dismissed as a fleeting illusion?

Russian literature, after Belinsky's Letter to Gogol (1847), must be the most ideas-driven in Europe. He and the Westernizers and their descendants may well have been prepared to analyze works in terms of some themes for deconstruction, but how can you appreciate Dostoyevsky this way?

He is fundamentally not about economic relationships, or the role of women, or race, or political action, but about transformation of the inner human being as the way toward Russia's, and man's, salvation. Contentious of course, and very unpopular with Marxists, but Solzhenitsyn echoes the idea (also included in Tolstoy's late tract The Kingdom of God is within You) in The Gulag Archipelago:
“The distinction between good and evil does not run between one nation and another, or one group and another. It runs straight through every human heart.”

How do you analyze that?

My position is simply this; if we lived in a less exploitative world, in which one could contemplate one's privileged life as other than contingent upon the misery that must pay for it elsewhere, then literature might be enjoyed for its own sake, for its wonderful aesthetic (notwithstanding that all texts are political). As it is, literature is both the ground of contention and the antidote, both sententious and salubrious; the discourse "is" the aesthetic. Great literature is just a commodity, and its assimilation cultural capital if the reader doesn't examine her own life according to its lights.
I think it's unfair to dismiss deconstruction as "negative"; Derrida didn't see it that way. It was via deconstruction that we have been able to expose our grand historical narratives as pure hubris.
There is nothing wrong with excellence, except if it's pursued for its own sake. I don't believe excellence to be a fleeting illusion, because for me there "are" universals and essentials--which are what make Shakespeare's sonnets great apart from their intricacy.
It's not the vulgarity of the bourgeoisie that I object to, it's the illusion of an insular little world of pleasant sensation they're coddled in. Of course in a sense there is no such thing as a bourgeoisie, as your last quote implies (debatable), yet the impact of it's collective demands make it just that. Solzhenitsyn is saying that it's the human heart that must be reformed--but is each human heart peculiar to itself, or is it the product of culture? Can individual reform occur in Sodom and Gomorrah, or must the culture be reformed first?
If your charges analyse texts in this way, I'm satisfied.

>if we lived in a less exploitative world
Every political ism and ology and every religion has been hijacked by human nature. Leftist and rightist utopias have all failed. The key to a "less exploitative world", if such is attainable, is in personal morality, not grand narratives.

>one could contemplate one's privileged life as other than contingent upon the misery that must pay for it elsewhere
Is life a zero-sum game? Russian "repentant noblemen" saw it thus. Not the whole story.

>all texts are political
Yes, even Nick Earls'. I loathe his for their hedonistic empty-headed conservatism! I remember Manning Clark once asking a tutorial: under what circumstances does a country produce a great literature? Social and political tensions must be part of that. But don’t you see also a place for Lewis Carroll's Alice books, enjoyable quite outside those grand issues?

>Great literature is just a commodity, and its assimilation cultural capital ...
Very one-dimensional economic view.

>...if the reader doesn't examine HER own life
Gratuitous feminist crap!

>It was via deconstruction that we have been able to expose our grand historical narratives as pure hubris.
Postmodernism has done us service by showing the need for more scepticism. GB Shaw (not a postmod!) said it right:
1. “He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.” [Caesar and Cleopatra]
2. "What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say 'I know' instead of 'I am learning', and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for scepticism and activity."

>is each human heart peculiar to itself, or is it the product of culture? Can individual reform occur in Sodom and Gomorrah, or must the culture be reformed first?
Yes a product, but not only; AND there is free will:
“It seems to me that the meaning of a person’s life consists in proving to himself every minute that he’s a person and not a piano key.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Notes from the Underground, Chapter 8)

Glorfindel
You seem very sure of yourself. I, on the other hand, am not.
Personal morality is surely no key to a less exploitative world unless it "become" a grand narrative?

Yes, poor old Onegin saw it as such. I couldn’t say. I just meant that consciousness of such contingency surely spoils the fun?

Yes, I suppose we all need diversion—as long as we don’t live by it!

You truncate what I say in the next and wilfully (it seems) misread me. My point was neither gratuitous, feminist nor economic. Perhaps I was too subtle?

I’m a big fan of GB (I might even be related), and I doubt that you, or even he, is more sceptical than I.

As for the rest, we seem mostly in agreement. Did I give the impression I subscribed to constructivist culturalism?

“Yes a product, but not only; AND there is free will”
A soul then? Or are we talking Kantian free will to be moral?

I can accept most of this, but my point remains that the condition humaine demands engagement beyond privileged self-indulgence.

“Men and women do not live by culture alone, the vast majority of them throughout history have been deprived of the chance of living by it at all, and those few who are fortunate enough to live by it now are able to do so because of the labour of those who do not. Any cultural or critical theory which does not begin with this simple most important fact, and hold it steadily in mind in its activities, is in my view unlikely to be worth very much. There is no document of culture which is not also a record of barbarism” (Eagleton, taking liberties with Benjamin).

Having just re-read Jay's piece, it strikes me as even more supercilious than it did on first acquaintance. This kind of self-importance belongs to a different age. The "absolutely crucial role" of the critic is mere rationalisation for a sinecure. At least GB Shaw was a prolific creative genius as well--oops, I just fell into one of Jay's stereotypes. I think criticdom should be preserved for those who have done the hard yards--and I'm not talking graduate school--just as ex-cricketers legitimately gravitate to the commentary box. As a puffed up critic from another age once said: "a book is like a mirror; if a monkey looks in, an apostle can't look out".
Perhaps you should enter the fray, Jay, and put me in my place.
I feel a little guilty about this cruel assault, but a critic's got to be able to take it as well as give it.

I totally agree with Squeers that "a critic's got to be able to take it as well as give it". I disagree with the suggestion that my "creativity" - my right to write, if you like - extends only to my enrolment in the humanities school of a sandstone university.

This kind of suggestion indicates: (a) That Squeers' knowledge of my work extends to my brief 'author's bio', and (b) the academic-bashing that John Howard's government fostered during their eleven years in power is still alive and well.

For the record, I am not an 'academic'. I have tutored in universities, but I have also worked in fields as diverse as marketing, insurance, and the public service. I wonder if this will sustain the stereotype of the sheltered young scholar preaching "identity politics" and "political correctness" in the "ivory tower"?

Hey, first time I've been dissed by an elf-lord of Rivendell. Thanks Glorfindel.

Good luck with your contribution to the planet.

Jay,
I don't deny your right to write, I just don't have a lot of time for the literary love-inns promoted in the commercial media, whose critics gush immoderately over pop culture and churn out petty celebrities as easily as they fabricate their CV's (when are you appearing on "Spicks and Specks"?). But this is an assumption; can you point me towards one of your finer pieces? I'd be happy to read it and eat crow...
And I didn't take you for an academic; you say yourself you're a student. Good academics are rare birds, but the only feeling Howard incited in me was loathing for his superficial understanding of their legitimate critical topics. If you make it to the ivory tower, I hope you have something to say.
Glorfindel,
I'm looking forward to your response.
Nick, I grew up in Brisbane but sorry to say I haven't read any of your books. Can you recommend one I might approve of?

" I just don't have a lot of time for the literary love-ins promoted in the commercial media, whose critics gush immoderately over pop culture and churn out petty celebrities as easily as they fabricate their CV's (when are you appearing on "Spicks and Specks"?)"

I cannot recall when exactly I've gushed immoderately over popular culture, at least in my prose.

The 'commercial media' in Australia has had a very mixed relationship with literature: when its not promoting the latest Peter Carey novel, it's attacking the latest literary fraudster (I apparently fall into the latter category with my fabricated CV).

I'm unsure of what a "literary love in" is, though it sounds enticing - and terrifying. Ken Russell's 1980s film 'Gothic' comes to mind here.

Now excuse me while I prepare for my 'Spicks and Specks' appearance ...

SQUEERS:

I can be judgmental, but also amenable to persuasion :-)

Sure of myself? Sceptical, but consternated at where postmodernism and permissiveness have led our society. "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Defining elements of society now are boredom at limitless freedom ("is that all there is?") and widespread desensitization to antisocial behaviour because virtual reality (TV, games, computers, mobile phones) has blurred the distinction between make-believe and real. I can't believe how MASSES of people will read or watch as "entertainment" things that are sadistic, cruel, depraved and vile.

On Kant and morality, I recall he said something like this: "There can be no proof of the existence of God, but it is in all our interests to behave as if he exists". He sees the need for a discipline emanating from outside of ourselves - counteracting the view put by Dostoyevsky's characters Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov that "if God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted".

Can't prove the existence of the soul. I choose to behave as if it does exist, and is accountable.

Your quote from Eagleton about the cultural elite living on the labour of the uncultured is well made, though that’s less imperatively true now in developed countries. Not sure what to make of "There is no document of culture which is not also a record of barbarism".

If you think "the condition humaine demands engagement beyond privileged self-indulgence", what are you advocating - polemics in the arts, or political activism? There’s plenty of precedent for the former, with uneven results (including the execrable socialist realism experiment).

NICK EARLS:

Actually I wasn’t aiming at you personally. I’m in Brisbane too; I’ve heard you on the radio and you’re an engaging personality. I AM hard on the values and attitudes of the slice of society you depict. I’m 63, maybe “crabbed age and youth cannot live together”, but it’s more than just that. I have a Gen-X daughter in Melbourne who loves your books – she inveigled me to read Bachelor Kisses, which I so did NOT like ….

Glorfindel,
all eminently reasonable points. I have six kids and can certainly relate.
Issues of free will and the make-up of the self are of particular interest to me as I'm researching in the area, like Eagleton through a Marxist lens, because I'm concerned about the ravages of capitalism, within and without.
"If you think "the condition humaine demands engagement beyond privileged self-indulgence", what are you advocating - polemics in the arts, or political activism?"
Both really, I'm in English Lit., but I'm not sure how to go about either--culturalism is at an impasse with its identity politics, and actually exacerbates the hegemonic hold of the markets.
"There’s plenty of precedent for the former, with uneven results (including the execrable socialist realism experiment)."
I agree with you about Russian realism, headed by the well-intentioned Lukacs; but the whole thing degenerated the way it did under Stalin. Russian realism the obverse of Russian nihilism!

It's a crazy world! But 'tis's'tis. :-)

Jay,
no offence and good luck with the reviewing! Criticism has to have a conscience, I believe.

SQUEERS

To say I can't imagine you approving of anything I've written would be to treat you unfairly, as if you're someone who can only find worth in dead Russians. So I won't say that.

I will say that, years ago, when I pre-occupied myself too much with impressing very clever people who could speak cogently about dead Russians, it all went rather badly wrong. And then I tried to be Peter Carey - the Peter Carey of the early short stories - and made it worse. I turned out fairly turgid pseudo-intellectual prose that about six people liked and most hated.

So I decided to stop trying to prove I was clever, and to try to tell stories instead. I wanted to connect with my characters, and to try to bring them forward in a way that felt true to them, and that didn't look clever or have my fingerprints all over it. That's an approach that works for some readers, and that gives me a job.

But that doesn't mean it works for everybody. Where I probably fare least well is in the places universities used to call Arts faculties. A few years ago, an edition of the University of Queensland student mag Semper had an article introducing newly-elected student union reps to readers using their responses to a short list of questions. Question number five was simply ‘Nick Earls: yes or no?’. The answers ranged from ‘Hell yes’ (I think from the GLBTI rep) to the Arts faculty rep’s succinct ‘He is inconsequential’.

When Perfect Skin was published, The Australian's Review of Books said 'more pretentious claims to literary worth look shallow by comparison', and I'm told Louis Nowra called it banal in the SMH. Two weeks ago, a reader told me reading it was the thing that most helped her through the death of her husband.

TBC ...

... cont'd

When we think of reviews, I wonder if we too often discount the work done to make the book in the head of the reviewer, and everything already in that head that we bring to bear when we read. The same words can elicit radically different responses in different heads.

If you take the template of the dead Russians to anything I've done, I can't say that I'll fit, but I can say that I wasn't trying to. Perhaps my new novel, The True Story of Butterfish, is as good an example as any. At a guess I'd say that Louis Nowra would find it banal, but there are others who haven't. Maybe I'm writing more for them.

GLORFINDEL
You did well to be so vitriolic and yet so impersonal, though your comment did read - to me at least - as if it was based on more than one book. My central character in Bachelor Kisses is, to my mind, someone wrestling with a lot of flaws and there's a lot about him and his perspectives that I don't like or endorse. I think he's real enough though, and I hope he's interesting. I was actually surprised by the number of people who read it just as a comedy, and didn't have issues with him, but I don't think I should go telling them how to read my books either.

Nick.
It’s all a game of egos out there, and I dare say mine’s as developed as anyone’s. But I’ve got a pretty eclectic range when it comes to reading—though perhaps I sound like a literary snob. It’s the genre and celebrity aficionados I sometimes have a beef with; I question whether the trendy arbiters of taste have any valid role to play. By valid I mean that critics should be more than (corrupt) vetting agents for the popular market. Rather than damning or rhapsodising according to a rubric, a genuine clerisy should be extrapolating upon themes and affects, and positing them, or the paucity of them, in society at large. I’d just like to see more thoughtful criticism, which might also lift the standard of fiction.
I’ve heard you compared to Tom Sharp and I like him, so shall give one of your books a go.
Four of my now six children lost their mother to melanoma six years ago, so I might make it “Perfect Skin”, so I can pass it on to them—they’re all keen readers and the oldest (13) is starting to ask a lot of questions about mum dying. It was a blessing that they were all very young at the time, so it was less traumatic. Actually, maybe you’d consider sending them a personalised copy? If so, I can give you my details—and payment of course.

I wrote a novel myself about ten years ago, but couldn’t get anyone to even look at it—now ten years wiser, I can see why!
Congratulations on finding your thing in the world—never easy :-)

NICK EARLS

I wasn't an academic but for 30+ years a Canberra public servant, with degrees in Russian language and literature and history - subjects still my first love.

Thanks for interesting background on your literary career. It helps me understand a bit. I seem to remember that an early historian of Australian literature had the name "Barron Field" (!). Compared with Old World countries, Australia has had few grand narrative issues. The old colonial ones don't resonate now, and life for recent generations has for most people been extraordinarily soft and privileged. So in this generally very blessed country, what can one write about that really captures the imagination?

I don't take much pleasure in the nihilistic, fairly values-free hedonism of many people today. All generations try to pursue happiness, but for me it is A PRESENT "GRAND NARRATIVE" that many today observe few behavioural limits, have little interest in social values, don't recognize and so can't affirm values that are important if we are to continue to live a mutually respectful, civilized life. There are already, and will be more, serious consequences.

Ed Husain ("The Islamist: why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what I saw and why I left" - Penguin 2007) writes at the end of his book:
"When Faye and I return home from a night out and walk past heaps of rowdy, drunken teenagers vomiting on the streets we despair as much as anyone else. Anti-social behaviour in our cities, high rates of abortion, alcohol abuse, and drug addiction are abhorrent to all right-thinking people, not just Muslims. The neglect of the elderly, shunting them off to ‘care homes’, does not sit comfortably with most Muslims. When the centre of social life in modern Britain is the local pub, where do Muslims and others fit in? Can an orange juice ever be enough?"

Now far be it from me to raise Islam as any sort of model (rather, a horrible example, I'd say) but Husain's criticism of much of youth culture is well taken.

Squeers,

I'd be happy to send a personalised copy of Perfect Skin (or The True Story of Butterfish, in which the central character is coming to terms with the loss of his parents - his mother when he was three, and his father in his 30s), but I'd want to feel that it was right for your children first. Perhaps you could look at the books and tell me. I can't say that that one recent reader's perspective makes me certain Perfect Skin is right for everyone who has lost someone. It's possible that, like the character, that reader's relationship with her partner wasn't exactly as it had appeared to the people around them. Perfect Skin recently went out of print, but it's still in libraries and there are some copies around beyond libraries. If you looked at library copies and decided either book was right, do let me know. Butterfish should be easy to obtain and I could see if I could locate Perfect Skin.

I must admit that, when a book of mine goes out to reviewers, my thoughts are pretty pragmatic. I hope it'll fall into the hands of someone who has been well chosen for it and who is at least positively disposed towards the genre (whatever my genre is). I hope they have the time to read it as a reader, and to reflect on it a little.

In the end, a book review still feels as if it involves a recipe with two main ingredients: a book and a reader. The author can only affect one of those, so many books that are lauded by some are panned by others, based I suppose on what's brought to the reading.

With The True Story of Butterfish, I've read reviews referring to Curtis as the drummer in the band (he played keyboards) and his brother Patrick as a dentist (he works in advertising). There was nothing obtuse about those details in the book, and I don't know how those errors found their way into the reviews. It can make reviews feel rather like pot luck though.

Glorfindel,

I think there's a lot to be concerned about when it comes to people's values and the way we treat each other. Fortunately, my young adult books see me visiting schools and I have the chance to meet some very impressive young people who are not at all selfish, who are considered and considerate, and who give me hope.

In some areas - for example, the property and legal rights of women and orphans (as referred to in the 4th Surah of the Qur'an) - I think Islam provided a model that was well ahead of its time, compared with Europe. It took us centuries to catch up in some areas. Some of the punishments in the Qur'an are far harsher than we would tolerate now, but so were they in Europe at that time.

What we face now is that European law has been free to evolve over centuries, and to detach itself from some of the harshness in the Bible, whereas the Qur'an is sometimes treated less flexibly. (I don't think either Book was intended to be treated flexibly, since each was received by its people as the word of God.)

I would like to see less drunkenness and vomiting in our streets - I live near two pubs - but I'm not sure to what extent the current hedonism is a new phenomenon. Perhaps it's unusually prominent at the moment, but it's something people no longer in their 20s seem to have complained about when observing youth since the ancient Greeks. The English in the 12th century were viewed quite poorly because of the amount of beer they drank and their frequent drunkenness. Marlowe and his cohorts at Cambridge in the 1580s were looked on very poorly for their drinking and carousing. A report I read of them reminded me of UQ engineering students in the 1980s. I don't think many of them have gone on to write for the theatre though.

Nick Earls:

All valid reasonable points. A pity that Islam hasn't moved out of the desert tribal tent since the 7th century. Its treatment of women today in much of the Dar-al-Islam and its ghettos in the Dar-al-Harb as documented in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel: My Life" is harrowing, shameful and absolutely unacceptable to civilized people.

The 4th surah of the Koran is hardly a model to cite! Have you forgotten 4:34, which commands women to be obedient and instructs their husbands to discipline including beating them? And it's 4:52 which so pruriently describes the torments for unbelievers - to burn in hell, with their skins being regenerated as soon as they are burned, so the scourge can continue to be felt. Oh, and surah 4 contains some great stuff on jihad (4:74, 96, 100), avoiding friendships with unbelievers (139, 145) and incitement to murder of unbelievers (89,90). A deplorable, execrable and satanic book. No wonder Tony Abbott on the ABC's Q&A last Thursday night described the Koran as 'the Old Testament on steroids"!

Yep, I'm well aware that every crotchety "old" generation badmouths the young, often unfairly. I don't look back to a past golden age at all. But I do remember a more socially conservative time when people were more timid in their thinking (constipated, I'd call Australia from say 1965 to Billy McMahon) but we didn't overstep behavioural limits the way so many do now.

It's good that you fly the flag for writing in your visits around schools. Now I'd write about different things, but perhaps you're a less heavy mirror!

Squeers:

I've taught Russian history and culture as well as language over the past five years, and spent nearly 18 months in Russia over 4 visits, including a postgrad exchange year at Moscow University in 1967-68 and 3 visits since 1993. Communism is a cancer of the human spirit. Marxism is OK for academic analysis of behaviour, but as a prescription for action it has WRONG WAY - GO BACK! written all over it.

Sorry I seem to have dropped out of the thread, folks. I've been at a conference in Brisbane.

I'm very envious, Glorfindel, of your Russian odyssey (virtual and actual!), and I've no doubt you know the books way better than I do.

On your other comment, it's such a can of worms that I hesitate...
Sure, yep, communism/socialism has been a disaster to date. Nevertheless, why should we settle for capitalism by default? I actually think that the human race under capitalism has burgeoned out to become such an unwieldy and hungry beast that "only" capitalism can now sustain it! If we suddenly reverted to something sustainable, conscionable and humanising, the price would be decimation. It seems to me that the next big dialectical shift the human race takes wont be the one Marx predicted, but a catastrophic plunge from an environmental or economic or military cliff. So it's all academic...

But... I'm interested in why communism/socialism, despite their utopian ideals, deteriorated into tyranny. Indeed all human political systems tend to tyranny. Capitalism's is a technocratic tyranny as aloof from worldly affairs, or the consequences of its actions, as any dictatorial system or tsar in history. I think that any one of the systems could work, even capitalism, if they were informed and regulated by ethics. Our vaunted humanitarian ideals are observed mainly in the breach and amount to little more than rhetoric. It wasn't socialism/communism that was a failure, it was and is the human spirit that is corrupt, that by nature exploits any advantage and is capable of feats of concomitant rationalisation. Until the human soul can be somehow cleansed of this evil tincture (sorry about the hyperbole), whatever political/economic system we live by has to be married to a guiding system of ethics that can't be turned to anyone's advantage. We have to stop blaming politicians and systems; they accurately reflect human nature, I'm afraid ... But perhaps there's a cure?
Nick, thanks. Will put another post up later.

Nick,
I was taking my kids to the library today anyway, and we’re now in possession of “Perfect Skin”—Butterfish is out on loan. I’ve talked to my eldest two, both verging on teendom, and we three are going to collaborate on a review! We shall put your book to the sword in a week or so!
The first few pages look promising. I remember my first wife going through a similar procedure and her doctor’s also being confident he’d got it all. In fact, all the doctors pretended to be confident, even when she was getting radium. Janice was a nurse, however, and knew better. The melanoma metastasised first in the lymph system, then the brain, and eventually the bowel, at which point all pretence was over and she entered a palliative care ward to slowly die of multiple organ failure. She received pain relief but nothing else, neither food nor water, and survived for nearly a week, lapsing in and out of consciousness. The urine in the catheter that hung by her bed got gradually darker until the slow drip stopped altogether and the contents resembled over-cooked caramel. I used to idle away the time thinking up such descriptions. I only brought the kids in to see her occasionally by that point because they could no longer relate, or even recognise her, and were a little afraid. She was 39 when she died and the last coherent gesture she made was two distinct little kisses she aimed at Isobel (the youngest) when I held her up to her.

All classically pathetic. I asked doctors and staff how this death by desiccation differed from euthanasia, as dehydration is just as lethal as a lethal injection.
Young children are incredibly indelicate creatures; mine used to ask the most appalling questions, and would have no truck with euphemism! As a result, we’ve all grown up willing to deconstruct anything honestly. So in answer to your concerns, not to worry, my oldest two are surprisingly sophisticated readers. And as I say, phoebe’s been coming out with more mature questions about it all lately.