Ursula Le Guin – The Lathe of Heaven

Sci-fi is not my novel genre of choice, but Le Guin is a fine writer so I only hesitated a little while before spending a dollar on this one. Actually it barely constitutes a novel at all, following the lives of the protagonists comes a distant second to an extended allegory on the merits of utilitarianism as a philosophy.

This is done through the interaction between George Orr, who has the ability to alter reality in dramatic ways through his dreams and wants to be cured of this power, and his therapist, William Haber,  who is able to give direction to the dreams and thus shape the world to his choosing.

Naturally this raises potentially interesting issues as to whether Haber’s largely benevolent ends can justify the means, the inevitability of unintended consequences and so on, but the book doesn’t really explore them because the examples are so grotesque. For instance, when Haber tries to address the problem of overpopulation that afflicts Portland in approx 2020 (when the book is set), Orr imagines a plague a couple of decades before which killed off 6 billion people, reducing the world’s population down to 1 billion.

The regular tropes of sci-fi set in Earth’s future are all present and correct – environmental catastrophe, alien invasion, totalitarian autocracy, though the invasion at least is neatly subverted. But while the events of the book are often overblown, the writing and the characters are much more understated. Orr generally responds fatalistically to the changes wrought in his world, while Haber eschews most mad scientist traits. Le Guin’s prose is very good, clearly and convincingly delineating the threads of history and avoiding melodramatic descriptions. It’s this restraint which makes the book readable, if not one worth searching out.

[edit]I just had a nap and dreamt very vividly that a) I was Bruce Springsteen’s brother, circa Born In The USA; and b) that I had incredible difficulty doing up my belt. I think humanity can be grateful that my dreaming does not materially affect reality.[/edit]

The Stud Farm On Tour

From today’s Fiver email from the Guardian:

“When we notice some sort of surge we look for the reason and it’s evident that the cause of the increase this week is the euphoria of Barça fans thanks to the huge win and [Andrés] Iniesta’s goal” – Mercedes Rodriguez, of Barcelona’s Quiron Clinic, puts the city’s current 50% rise in births down to the team’s 6-2 smiting of Madrid and Didier Drogba-riling at Stamford Bridge nine months ago.

I notice that they ignore the most obvious explanation for the phenomenon – that I happened to be going through Barcelona that week. Still, I guess we should allow them their little illusions. [/in joke]

Tourist Downtime

Been dealing with practical stuff for the last few days, so not much sightseeing. But going to Montreal on Saturday, which should allow more cheap shots acute observations on Canadian society.

For those who’ve been asking me about the weather, from tomorrow onwards it’s going to be cold. I’ve really liked the cold crisp days at around freezing, keeps me alert. -10 and lower? We’ll see.

Philip Roth – The Human Stain

Roth can write a beautiful sentence. Indeed he can write a beautiful paragraph. And The Human Stain has lots of them, it’s a very easy book to read. But once I’d put it down, I felt under very little compulsion to pick it up again. Ultimately, I don’t think it adds up to the sum of its parts.

Partly this is personal preference. I like plots. And throughout, the plot comes third behind Roth’s desire to expand on his characters, and the books message. As a character study, the main protagonist, Coleman Silk, is brilliantly portrayed and wholly convincing, as is his family and upbringing. Roth’s ear and tone for New Jersey in the 1940s is superb, and also for the academia parts. When he leaves that setting though he’s less successful. Faunia Farley never really seems a real person, while considerable (and sometimes repetetive) exposition fails to lift her ex-husband from cliche. The book struggles to grip you as soon as Silk is not directly involved.

The other problem is Roth’s agenda. The book clearly sets itself against multi-cultural, relativist, political culture in academia, against some assumed ideal humanist, meritocratic, liberal utopia, with echoes of David Mamet’s Oleanna. Roth cleverly uses subversive mouthpieces for his viewpoints. Silk, an ostensibly Jewish professor who is secretly from a light-skinned African-American family is undermined by ridiculous allegations of racism. His sister rails against Black History Month, while another black professor decries political correctness. Meanwhile a young French female literary theorist incarnates all that is wrong with contemporary academia, she is not only the villain of the piece, but also revealed as sceptical herself of the value of theory and in awe of the elite culture humanist scholars.

The Human Stain is not quite as reactionary or as blunt as that paragraph might suggest, but however much sympathy he might get for his arguments they don’t work as a sociological analysis. Likewise, as a work of fiction, it’s undermined by the way the narrative has to fit around Roth’s thesis. It’s a testament to his strengths as a writer that this flaw is not fatal to enjoying the book.

A Bride’s Second Great Disappointment

Apparently Oscar Wilde never actually said that about Niagara Falls – he called them one of the “keenest and earliest disappointments” which is not quite as pointed. Anyway, today I went to see them. What with Oscar’s comment and every guide book ever decrying the tacky and touristy building around the falls my expectations were not that high. But in fact, the falls are very impressive and although the surrounding buildings are horribly tacky (the US side is even worse apparently, which I find hard to envisage) it doesn’t really affect your enjoyment of the view itself. Actually, the route down there was more depressing, particularly between Toronto and Burlington, which appears to be just one loooong strip mall. Yuk.

One brilliant thing I did see in Niagara Falls town was a bus which had as its destination “Hospital-Optimist”. Now, I’m going to assume that this means there  is also a “Hospital-Pessimist” bus, with one for people who are upbeat about their prognosis you know, I really think I’m going to beat this. OK, only 25% of people survive this operation, but why shouldn’t I be one of them? While the other bus has people saying things like Sure, my doc says that I’m going to be fine, but I don’t think she knows what she’s talking about. Heaven knows what would happen if you missed your bus and had to get the wrong one.

Culture Stuff

Wednesday evenings offers free admission to the two big cultural attractions in Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. The museum only offers an hour, which really isn’t sufficient time to see everything, but I guess for locals that’s not an issue as they can always make more than one trip.

The general museum atmosphere is very much a “isn’t learning fun” one, with lots of interactivity and designs to make kids see how the exhibits relate to their daily life. In that respect it’s very well done, though as an adult I had more time for the Far Eastern Art which was presented in a more conventional museum atmosphere, presumably because they don’t think there’s any prospect of getting kids interested in it! The other thing I enjoyed was the amazingly beautiful collection of minerals there, though time didn’t really allow anything more than an appreciation of their appearance.

By contrast, the art gallery allows two and a half hours of free admission, which is more than enough time to see everything, particularly as the second floor is basically full of mediocre (and sometimes just plain bad) Canadian art. Paul-Emile Borduas was just about the only artist I liked.

Other than that, there’s a lot to enjoy. It’s a great building to start with, managing to combine modernity with a feeling of comfort. The collection of mainly European art is, understandably, a bit short of works for several periods/styles of painting and tries to make a virtue out of a necessity by taking a thematic approach instead. Some “themes”are pretty fluid, but it often works surprisingly well. The “herstory” room, primarily made up of portraits of women that span 200 years is really interesting.

Notable works:

Ribera’s – St Jerome. Now I love Ribera, and I like this piece, but the hands are really odd, It doesn’t fully come across in this link, but they look like baked apples or something.

Andre Derain- Still Life With Frying Pan

George Bellows – The Drunk. Gratuitous semi-nudity from the 1920s, posing as moral instruction.

Now for some blog interactivity. When I was young, I had a football management computer game (don’t all the best anecdotes start this way?) where the players abilities were described in words rather than, as is more normal, numbers. So you had to decide whether an “excellent” player was better than a “brilliant” one, or whether “decent” was worse than “good”. I was reminded of this when I saw all the categories by which the gallery listed its benefactors/founders. “First Founders” were top of the list, with mere “Founders” bottom. But in what order did these come in (I’ve alphabeticised them). A prize for anyone who gets it right, or is closest to doing so.

• Distinguished
• Grand
• Landmark
• Luminary
• Milestone
• Patron
• Transforming
• Visionary

Good luck.

The Face of the Future

Make your own

More idle observations on Toronto

Ok. Now the big attraction in Toronto is the CN Tower. And when I say big, I mean big. Well, actually I mean tall. It’s very tall. In the last couple of years it’s been overtaken by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, but until then it was the tallest building in the world. Actually, it being overtaken may cause some problems. The signs pointing to the CN tower say something along the lines of “this way to the top of the world”. Presumably they will have to be moved round to point to the airport.

However, although it’s very tall, and really rather pretty, it doesn’t look tall enough to be the tallest (or second tallest) building in the world. I imagine that being something you can barely see the top of. Perhaps it’s partly because it’s surrounded by lots of other tall buildings makes it stand out less. If it was the only structure above 2 stories, maybe it’d seem more incredible.

Speaking of other tall buildings, many of them have signs by them saying “Beware of falling ice”. This raises two questions for me. Firstly, what are you supposed to do about it? Walk with your head constantly looking upwards? That’d be pretty dangerous in itself, not to mention slightly impractical. Secondly, what exactly is the risk of being struck by falling ice? Do Canadian news programmes feature segments where the newsreader says “17 people were killed today on the streets of Toronto by falling ice. Experts explain this relatively low figure by saying that police advice to wear steel helmets whenever you go outside is being listened to.”

Also went to the distillery district, which isn’t as riotous as it sounds. Instead it’s some very attractive, old-fashioned Victorian red brick architecture which has been converted mainly into arts spaces. I really liked it. Obviously Toronto isn’t going to have medieval buildings, but even fairly recent historical architecture can be interesting as long as its sensibly adapted. Unfortunately, it’s a little too far from the centre for many people to just drop in on, and not quite big enough to be worth an excursion to, so I suspect it’s fairly quiet most of the time.

Phase 2

It’s taking me a little while to get used to the “Shoppers Drug Mart” signs. I guess cinema and TV have accustomed me to “drugstore”, but “drug mart” might as well say “needle exchange” in my mind. In another example of you can take the boy out of Cardiff…it took me a while to realise that the shards on the ground were ice, rather than broken bottles from last night’s glassings.

I managed to nick my thumb with my razor yesterday morning. After it had been bleeding for about 20 minutes I decided I’d have to buy some plaster for it. Which brand is the cheapest? Ah, it’ll be the kids friendly one with the Shrek motif. Will look ridiculous. But it is half the price. Rarely does that not clinch the argument. Not convinced whether my decision shows that I am confident and self-assured, not so image obsessed that I need to pay over the odds; or whether it means I’m cheap.

Objective Actually Talk To Canadians worked out well. Went for a meal with 2 guys at C’est What (that’s the sort of clever bilingual humour you get in a sophisticated country like Canada). Very good beer. So that’s one important criteria satisfied.

Toronto – First Impressions

Actually my first impression is that its difficult to form a clear first impression. After spending much of the last year going round cities geared up for tourism, where its highlights were all nicely packaged for the flying visitor, Toronto just doesn’t have that sort of atmosphere. Possibly this is because January isn’t exactly tourist season here, possibly it’s just not a tourist town at all. So, I’m going to have to do leg work to discover its attractions, and use my own judgement to analyse it. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.

Today was phase one, orienting myself.

Started off down to the harbour front. Lots of water (unsurprisingly) which is a plus, though I think you really need a bit of height to properly appreciate lakes. Reckon it probably looks better from the top of one of the many impressive skyscrapers behind me. The area was almost eerily deserted, even for a January weekday morning. But pretty cool. Then went through the commercial area, basically the same the world over. Think the city looks a bit like Oslo, but that may just be that my brain can’t get beyond the link between tall buildings and snow. Finally to Chinatown and then the Kensington street vintage shops. Think I’d spend some time and money here if I did become a permanent resident – not least because of the way I was shamelessly short-changed when I bought some gloves in Chinatown. It wasn’t the amount of money (about 75 cents) but the utterly obvious way it was done. Even though I have no idea what the individual Canadian coins look like it was clear that the combination I was getting was not the right amount, nor that she’d made an innocent mistake. It was too funny for me to bother complaining.

Already having some issues with Canadian sporting priorities. Everywhere is covered with advertising for Canada’s winter olympians, plus all the hockey stuff. And when I went passed an outdoor skating rink instead of people staggering about unsteadily and holding on to each other for support like you get at normal, British, outdoor rinks people were skating with control and skill. It’s all wrong, I tell you. If God had meant us to skate, He’d have given me basic co-ordination skills. My hopes did rise briefly when I heard cricket mentioned on the TV, but instead of being what you’d expect – an in depth analysis of Canada’s momentous win in the u19 World Cup over Zimbabwe – it was an advert for an internet service provider. One tries not to judge too harshly, but there has to be something fundamentally rotten in a society which has these priorities.

Tomorrow is phase 2 – actually talking to some Canadians.