The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five
Venus and Mars....It's been said.
(by Doris Lessing) The first book in Lessing‘s Canopus in Argos: Archives series, Shikasta, is unimpressive upon reading, but impresses upon reflection. Lessing puts a thoughtful and intriguing spin on our understanding of humankind’s origins. The second volume, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five is unimpressive upon reading and almost impossible to reflect upon with interest. The bellicose inhabitants of Zone Five are unsophisticated, ‘masculine’ and heavy. The arty inhabitants of Zone Four are loving in an all-inclusive creepy way, ‘feminine’ and smug. So let’s marry the dopey queen of Zone Four to the blustering king of Zone Five and see what happens. Galadriel sets about doing…
Continue Reading →Hello and Absolve all Black & Tans
"Have a nice day, Ireland!"(Portrait by Peter Lely)
Happy St Patrick’s Day! If Pátraic was so hot though, why does Ireland still have to put up with Sinn Féin? Anyway, top of the morning to Paddys everywhere, and we hope not to have been too inflammatory by passing-on the best wishes of well known hibernophile, Oliver Cromwell. The more polite Irish tend to refer to Oliver as a “Special Occasion.”* [*euphemism with apologies to the late Elisabeth Wynhausen.]
Continue Reading →The Secret River
Heidrun Lohr
(Dir. Neil Armfield) (Anstey Quarry, 12 March 2017) [Memo to the traditional custodians: “How annoying, when you’ve got the place looking right, some great floating vector retches into view, bone in her teeth, lusting for dry land and croaking with violent anticipation. White folks revise and revise; you, in your pleasant way, make no objection. Naturally, the latecomers take it for granted that you know your place in this new world.”] This is the scenario of imperialism and it has played out (variably) on every inhabited continent from time immemorial. It is a powerful but overworked theme. In the capable…
Continue Reading →Gandhi’s Tax Revolt
No fries with this salt
On this day in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi started his long march to Dandi on the sea to collect some salt for himself. This seemingly innocuous act was illegal at the time – the salt tax in India brought in lots of cash in olden times for the East India Company and now for the English King. A hundred thousand Indians joined Gandhi along the 400 kilometre walk. On arrival, Gandhi stooped and gathered some grains of salt, a gesture that would lead to his arrest, and presage the doom of the British Raj. It seems the Tommys had forgotten the reaction that stems from…
Continue Reading →The Hitler Club
(by Gary Gumpl and Richard Kleinig) (2007) It’s not easy being a Kraut. Hitler saw to that. He took more than two thousand years of German contributions to the world – legacies from sources such as Beethoven, Bonhoeffer, Brahms, Charlemagne, Marlene Dietrich, Dürer, Einstein, Friedrich, Goethe, Hesse, Hoffmann, Kant, Kleist, Liebniz, Luther, Mann, Mozart, Schiller, Schubert, and yes, Wagner (especially Wagner) – and sullied them, perhaps for ever. The ‘don’t mention the war’ running joke in that Fawlty Towers episode is closer to the truth than we care to admit. In modern Germany especially, the shadow cast by Nazism is long. Grotesque irony abounded in the Nazis’ world. For example, Himmler rattled around in a special train…
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