Robert Harris, Precipice

 

- I've read all of Robert Harris's novels over the years and can say, without a doubt, that Precipice is easily one of his best. A master of historical fiction, he has delivered here a beautifully and sensitively written drama about about love, companionship and intimacy, and the need for deep, trusting personal relationships in difficult times. The First World War is about to begin, and Britain is sucked into supporting its allies France and Russia against their enemies Germany and Austria. 

- It's a fascinating story by a master of the craft. We're taken deep into the heart of the British government in war time, and the passions, arguments and personal feuds at the Cabinet level. Harris fully captures the dynamics of the predicaments and debates. 

- The Prime Minister, H.H.Asquith, heads Britain's first and only Liberal Government. He's an intelligent, sensitive human being as is revealed to us, and a real leader, unlike some of his loud and boisterous colleagues. Many names are familiar: Winston Churchill, Lord Kitchener, Lloyd George, Edward Grey, Arthur Balfour. Their personal hatreds and resentments are often on show. Cabinet meetings are reliably contentious. We're also exposed to the key role of Ambassadors and their frequent telegrams. 

- The communications of the time were telegrams and letters. The postal service delivered mail up to twelve times a day - an analogue email if you will!

- Hidden from his colleagues and the public is the very personal and intimate relationship Asquith is having with a young woman from the aristocratic class, Venetia Stanley. They see each other regularly and write loving letters every day. Unfortunately the security service catches on and secretly photographs their letters before they're delivered. The married and much older PM is likely to be engulfed in a huge scandal propagated by the conservative press. 

- Meanwhile we're taken to the heart of the war. The British naval landing in the Dardanelles is a total failure, despite being enthusiastically supported by Churchill. Many British ships are sunk and thousands of sailors drowned, so the army is sent to Gallipoli, along with Australian and New Zealand troops. Thousands are slaughtered. The novel digs deep into the machinations of war planning and resourcing - the soldiers, munitions, ships, weapons, and maneuvers - and the mistakes that can be made on every level. 

- The ending brings the political and personal dimensions of this highly emotional drama to a satisfying resolution. And Harris's Historical Note is very enlightening. 

- I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is magnificent. 

Noam Chomsky, The Myth of American Idealism

- The great Noam Chomsky, now 95 years old, is widely credited with having revolutionised the field of modern linguistics, and is equally renowned for his incisive writings on global affairs and US foreign policy. This new book, written in collaboration with Nathan J. Robinson, co-founder and editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine, re-works some of Chomsky's pieces over the last few decades or so to bring them up to date. 

- It is an utterly inspiring book. He brings a razor sharp clarity and perspective to today's substantial issues, and he's as unforgiving of ‘liberals’ as he is of conservatives. It's a critique of American delusion and imperial ambition. The US is a warmongering nation. Every president has committed crime after crime.

- Each chapter addresses a major war or issue over the last seventy years, and America's disastrous response. The US had no legal or moral right to interfere in Vietnam. The wrecking of Afghanistan was just appalling US revenge for 9/11 - the Taliban offered to give bin Laden up, but Bush declined. The war was a major US crime, with no justification whatsoever.

- Similarly the invasion of Iraq was  ‘…a criminal act of aggression by a state seeking to exert regional control through the use of violence’. 

- If you just want to dip into this book then read first the thoroughly enlightening chapter on Israel/Palestine history. The war is placed into a deep historical perspective, and Chomsky, a Jew himself, does not shy away from condemning Israel's atrocities. 

- Then read the chapter on China’s emergence as a ‘threat’. It's full of sense, and is highly critical of Obama, Trump, Biden and other US leaders and politicians. Their demonisation of China is ignorant, America-first hogwash. And they use the so-called defence of Taiwan as cover. He actually praises Paul Keating as one of the only Western leaders to call it right. 

- Then there's Ukraine and NATO. He questions the relevance and continued existence of NATO after the end of the Cold War, condemning it for engaging repeatedly in illegal and aggressive warfare. The US should have dropped the goal of NATO membership for Ukraine and persuaded it to become a neutral country. 

- Nuclear: the frightening prospect of a nuclear war initiated by the US is real. The US consistently refuses to do anything to help avoid it. It refuses to support any related UN resolutions.  

- The current climate disaster? Oh please, ‘US politicians have consistently placed the interests of the fossil fuel industry over the future of humanity’. The Green New Deal (AOC led) was cynically disparaged by senior Democrats, even though it was the right way forward. ‘The green dream, or whatever they call it’ scoffed Nancy Pelosi. Influential media like The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times continue to be abysmal in their coverage.

- ‘In the United States now, there is essentially one political party, with two factions’. The Republicans’ ‘core agenda is to privatise, to deregulate, and to limit government’, and the Democrats ‘have essentially abandoned whatever commitment they had to working people and the poor, becoming a party of affluent professionals and Wall Street donors.’ 

- The US believes it has an inherent right to dominate the rest of the world. ‘As Harold Pinter argued in his Nobel Literature Prize address: "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless...The US has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good". 

- Chomsky ends with this paragraph: An extraterristrial observer looking at our species would say that our primary trajectory is toward suicide, that we are collectively running toward a cliff. Human civilisation, having started almost ten thousand years ago in the Fertile Crescent, may now be approaching its inglorious end. It may turn out that higher intelligence was a kind of 'evolutionary  mistake'. One of the theories put forward for why no intelligent life has so far been discovered elsewhere in the universe - the 'Fermi paradox' - is that intelligent life may be a kind of lethal mutation that annihilates itself whenever it arises. 

- A brilliant book from one of the best minds of the last hundred years. 

Josh Bornstein, Working For The Brand

 

- This is so damn good. It's comprehensive, enlightening and global in reach. Bornstein, an award-winning Australian lawyer who specialises in employment and labour-relations law, digs deep into the underside of corporate operations and how they treat their staff. He sees through their bullshit. If you’re not a leftie you’re gonna hate this book. If you are, you’ll love it!

- If you've been awake and alive over the last few decades you will recognise the multitude of awful instances of corporate and institutional stupidity that Bornstein covers in detail. Here are some of them: Scott McIntyre and SBS cowardice; Yassmin Abdel-Magied and the ABC (‘Like SBS, the ABC sacked Abdel-Magied in order to placate a right-wing mob’); Israel Folau and his immature treatment by Rugby Australia; the appalling treatment of Antoinette Lattouf and Laura Tingle by an ABC management terrified of the Murdoch press. 

- He provides us with an excellent background to these current employer-employee woes - the neo-liberalism agenda of the 80's onwards, the disaster of Howard's WorkChoices, the huge drop since then of union membership, and the development of corporate cancel culture. I relished his destruction of Alan Joyce and Qantas and their sackings of thousands of staff represented by unions. 

- Academic freedom also comes under the microscope. The Roz Ward case was an example of ‘serious misconduct’. She posted, satirically, a photo of a red 'communist' flag on social media on Anzac Day and was persecuted by her university. Universities have become corporate institutions over the last three decades, and we've witnessed a rapidly shrinking minority of tenured academics. The ugliness of the system in its underpayment of casual academics on short term contracts is horrendous. Bornstein provides lots of examples of unbelievably stupid and immature behaviour by university administrations.

- He also digs deep into the current status of news outlets. 'The ideals of fairness, objectivity, and impartiality are invoked in support of the rules that severely restrict the human rights of their journalists...and like other businesses, the rules are often selectively enforced, in response to dubious online shaming campaigns'. 

- And what about consensual sexual relationships? That freaks corporates out. So 'morals clauses' are now common in employment contracts. Corporations have amassed far-reaching powers over the private lives and opinions of their employees. 

-Bornstein’s dream corporate statement closes the book and it says it all. If only!

We sell goods and services for profit. We employ many people who harbour a range of values and views. We support our employees' fundamental right as citizens to participate in debate and other forms of civic life, including by expressing unpopular views. Their views are their own. They don't speak for the company. We will not censor, sack, or discipline them for exercising their rights.

- (This book has no index, which is intensely annoying. It also has no author photo. This cheapness is common in the Australian publishing community unfortunately.)

Tim Winton, Juice.

 

- A man and a girl traverse a deserted, isolated terrain in a post-apocalyptic world. He tells his story to a ‘comrade’ they meet along the way, a story about his father, mother, wife and child, and their very rustic lifestyle. 

- Over generations what is left of humanity has suffered extreme and highly dangerous weather. Their summers were spent in underground bunkers to escape the mid-fifty degree days. Even winter days averaged mid-thirties. Huge storms, floods and bushfires were common, and hailstones were fist-sized, frequently destroying houses, sheds and crops. 

- A few hundred years ago the world suffered 'The Terror' brought about by fossil fuel caused climate change. What remains of humanity lives in diminished cities and small communities, referred to as 'hams'. There is no money or commerce, only trading in goods and services. Homes and vehicles are rare and powered by home-made batteries. 

- He was captured by an eco movement of disruptors (the Service) at the age of 17, and trained in the way of the real world to operate against the 'Dirty World'. He becomes an ‘operator’, sworn to secrecy. Their job is to destroy the wealthy inheritors of fossil fuel corporations, kill all of them and their children and servants. It's a murderous agenda, fuelled by anger and revenge. 

- The operations were always dangerous, and many of his colleagues died. Winton describes them in graphic detail. The Utah, Exxon, and Gulf of Oman eliminations were highly dangerous, highly risky, and many of his colleagues were killed.  

- He eventually suffered severe depression, taking a major toll on his young family. 

- I've read most of Tim Winton's books over the decades and was frankly getting tired of his focus on seashores and surfers. But this novel is absolutely a radical and passionate departure from that homey terrain. It is brilliantly written in prose full of inventive and imaginative descriptions. And it is unsparing in its condemnation of our current global heating denial.

(This would make a great TV series)

Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

 

- An Intermezzo is an interlude: a short period when a situation or activity is different from normal. So it's a very apt description of the story Sally Rooney brings to life in her new and hugely enjoyable novel. 

- It's about two brothers and their love lives. And the interlude is the period after their father's death, during which their never really close relationship descends into anger, resentment and deeper separation.

- Peter is older than Ivan by ten years. In alternate chapters Rooney tells their stories. Peter's in short, sharp, sentences, mostly without verbs. He's nearly thirty-three years old and is a successful barrister. His love life is complicated. His ex, Sylvia, is a literature professor of the same age, and their relationship was upended by an accident she had that destroyed her ability to have sex. They are still very much in love though. Peter frequently walks the streets of Dublin as in Joyce's Ulysses.

- The younger brother Ivan's chapters are in standard sentences. He's a twenty-two year old chess champion, who meets a divorcee, Margaret, the program director of an arts venue. They become attached despite her being fourteen years older than him. When Peter finds out about this relationship he condemns Ivan for his immaturity, and they argue aggressively. 

- However Peter has also met another woman, the young and beautiful Naomi, who, ironically, is ten years younger than him and a former sex worker.  

- Rooney’s focus on likeable young people and their love lives in microscopic detail is her familiar terrain. In Intermezzo however she digs a lot deeper and brings sex to the forefront. What part does it  play in deep loving relationships? There are many detailed descriptions of the sexual acts, and she explores the conflicting human emotions involved in all their complexity. Few novelists do that with Rooney’s level of intensity. This is by far the most erotic of her novels. 

- But interspersed throughout are rich conversations about art, culture, history, and religion. So on all levels the novel is deeply immersive and satisfying. 

Don Watson, Quarterly Essay: High Noon: Trump, Harris and America On The Brink

• This Quarterly Essay by well known author and respected political insider Don Watson is not just about the upcoming US election. It’s essentially a sociological read of today’s America. Watson imbeds the campaign in the nation’s history, its full political and cultural character, and how so much has changed for the worst for so many people over recent decades. Detroit being so representative of all that has happened to the struggling working class. ‘If you want to know America, know Detroit. If you want to fix America, fix Detroit’.  

• The central focus is on Trump and why he appeals to so many of the disaffected class.  

• Kamala Harris barely gets a mention until the last few pages. The essay ends with Biden’s resignation and Harris’s official nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Then, obviously, Watson had to submit his manuscript. Unfortunately the turning point, the debate, came afterwards. 

• However Watson absolutely nails what Harris’s weakness is, and how she needs to do a lot more than offering ‘joy’ to win the election. ‘…keep the love but temper the joy. The people whose votes [Democrats] need see nothing to be joyful about. Stop talking about the middle class, as if working people have only themselves to blame for low wages, and rents and mortgages they can’t afford’.

• ‘Once the Democrats allow themselves to be defined by their opposition to Trump, the fight is as good as lost.’ 

• Watson continually demonstrates his insightfulness. He talks to a number of people he meets on the streets, and visits various towns and cities to assess their economic circumstances. 100 miles west of downtrodden Detroit is Kalamazoo, a city of 75 thousand people, which is absolutely thriving. 

• ‘Sometimes the hoopla makes you wonder if Americans will ever grow up, and if we don’t have more in common with the village people of Albania, or Mars. What is it about their longstanding love of marching and mass rallies? Their hand-on-heart, flag-waving patriotism?’ 

Andre Dao, Anam

 

• This novel was recently announced as the winner of the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for 2024. 

• It is certainly not a work of fiction in the usual sense. The people and events described are historically real. It’s more a bio infused with imaginative elements to bring the story alive, a blend of memory and history, and an intellectual journey. The narrator makes no concessions. As an undergraduate he read Derrida, a founding father of postmodernism and poststructuralism, and Husserl and his phenomenology.

• The Vietnamese war is the central focus. His family forbears were South Vietnamese and his grandfather an active supporter of the resistance to the Communist revolutionary forces under Ho Chi Minh. After the war ended in 1975 his grandfather was imprisoned for ten years for being a ‘non-communist intellectual’. The narrator spends a lot of time reflecting on his grandfather’s thoughts, friends, and experiences. He also takes us to Manus island camp, under Australia’s control. It has closed and the ‘boat people’ are being forced out. He became a migration lawyer, defending them. 

• But the narrator eventually realises he’s not retelling the story of his grandfather, he’s questioning it and interrogating it. And what about the contradiction presented by the Vietnamese refugees to Australia - after the war what were they fleeing from? Were they angry about the end of French colonialism and the retreat of the Americans? He now sees he’s writing a story about a story.

• There is a lot more to the novel than what I’ve described here. Dao delves deep into the family’s history - the grandmother, the aunts and uncles, and the narrator’s own relationship with his partner, Lauren, and their baby daughter Edith. All these elements add immense depth to the story, and increase the pleasure of reading it.