The Child on the Street

Ken Worpole writes about children's street games and the importance of play in underpinning a free society:

"As the events of 1968 are commemorated, it is worth noting that it was the postwar celebration of children's play that anticipated the reclamation of the street as a domain of political liberty. Even the Opies realised that many children's games were an implicit form of political protest, as when they saw that dangerous games of risk such as Last Across the Road were an "impulse of the tribe" against the encroachment of the car into their sacred territory. This position was endorsed by the anarchist Colin Ward in his seminal 1970s book, The Child in the City, the last great expression of belief in the power of play to turn the street and the playground, if not the world, upside down."

Read the full article in The Guardian:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2277916,00.html

Punk Rock Baby

Cartoon animations of songs by David Rovics, and others illustrated by
Norwegian artist Bjorn-Magne -  including "Punk Rock Baby" and "Bullies":

http://uk.youtube.com/user/Khezerghul

Mayday Mayhem

Mayday celebrations are always associated with maypoles, maypole dancing, and flower garlands, and the quiet Essex market town of Saffron Walden is no exception. But Saffron Walden was unusual as in the evening this gentle and picturesque tradition gave way to a riotous celebration.

This was the “game” called “Pig in the gutter” (known locally as “piggetty-gutter”) probably a relic of older May Day games, and dancing round the may pole. It consisted of the inhabitants of Castle Street and other nearby roads congregating at a given spot and time, joining hands and then forming a long line, rushing off through the streets, “yelling and shouting like a troop of wild Indians”.

Castle Street at that time was a crowded working-class street in which the poorest people of the town lived, crammed into tiny houses grouped around small squares. There are contemporary reports of some families so poor that parents and children slept on straw. But poverty could not break their spirit, and once a year, on Mayday, they overturned the “respectable” rules of small town life.

Writing in 1911, Frank Emson described the people gathering in the evening. “Headed by a merry old soul, ‘Royal Moll’, they danced round the town hand in hand about 200 strong. When a “Moll” saw a chance to suround a few persons she would lead on her tribe and hem them in, not letting them go until them had paid toll. The leaders were dressed in colours and adorned with flowers, and the townspeople turned out to see the fun.”

The colourful biography of Saffron Walden’s socialist mayor, Stanley Wilson, relates how: “On the evening of May Day after the garlands had faded and the Morris Dancers had finished their dances and jigs they adjourned to the ‘Eight Bells’ for their annual feast of beer bread and cheese. The town Bandsmen went to ‘The Hoops’ inn.”

Then about one hundred and fifty men and boys in their “beribboned smocks and Sunday best clothes and top hats would assemble at the top of Castle Street, borrow a very long rope from Bill Beans, the twine and ropemaker, and all line up holding the rope in the gutter down the street.”

Led by several men playing home-made wooden whistles (made from hazel with a pea in it) and beating pails, saucepans and frying pans, they ran through the town entering every public house by the front door and out at the back door, each having a mouthful of free beer in each pub.

As crowds ran down Castle Street, High Street, Gold Street to the Market Place, they would encircle and catch as many people as possible on their way. The price of release was a coin dropped into an old tin can which went towards more beer. “Those with no money were kicked up the backside and allowed to join on the end of the human snake. Boys loved to join the gang and to drink strong beer - an initiation into manhood” wrote Stanley.

Both Wilson and Emson stress that the “greatest good humour prevailed” throughout the evening. But they were writing about a tradition suppressed in the middle of the 19th century, within living memory of the bread riots of 1795 and the Swing revolt in local villages in 1830. The “respectable” and wealthier members of the local community were just too frightened to allow Mayday mayhem to continue - in case it became a more serious challenge to social order.

[Thanks to the anonymous librarians of nearly one hundred years ago, for preserving some yellowing newspaper cuttings in the local library, and to the late Stanley Wilson for recording the local folk memory of these events.]

EU threat to Freedom of Information

Statewatch has an important but alarming report on proposals to restrict access to EU documents:

www.statewatch.org/foi/foi.htm

Dockers and Detectives

Catching up on the fast moving world of publishing, I've been meaning to mention the 2008 reprint of Ken Worpole's pioneering book Dockers and Detectives, by Nottingham based Five Leaves. Ken has written several books on social history and architecture, but Dockers and Detectives, was his widely and rightly praised, first publication which explored the long neglected work of working class writers in Britain. Dockers and Detectives contains five long linked chapters on literature and politics, American influences on popular fiction, popular literature during WWII, the novels of working class writers from Liverpool, and the novels of the Jewish East End of London.

Five Leaves is one of the most innovative alternative publishers, with a programme that shames many much larger operations, supporting the Lowdham Book Festival in Nottinghamshire, and with a mouthwatering back-list. Check out their list of new crime express series, and new publishing programme of books for young adults.

www.fiveleaves.co.uk

Stuff 1968! - What About 1962?

A history of Amsterdam's "Provo" movement has been sorely lacking for many years so author Richard Kempton and publisher Autonomedia are to be congratulated on the recent publication of Provo: Amsterdam's Anarchist Revolt.
From the publisher's blurb:

"Provo staged political and cultural interventions into the symbolic and everyday spaces of Holland from 1962–1967. In this first book-length English-language study of their history, Richard Kempton narrates the rise and fall of Provo from early Dutch “happenings” staged in 1962 to the “Death of Provo” in 1967. He chronicles Robert Jasper Grootveld’s anarchist anti-cancer campaign, the riots against Princess Beatrix’s marriage to an ex-Nazi, and the famous White Bicycle program. He also comments on parallel contemporary and near-contemporary movements (including Dada and Situationism), Amsterdam’s previous anarchist traditions, the spread of Provo through Holland and the development of the Kabouter party, and ends by offering an existentialist critique of Provo and other anarchist movements of the 1960s."

Shelf Doubt: the Intimate History of Bookshops

Boyd Tonkin explores the bookshop as portrayed in literature in this readable and neatly crafted essay:

"Few writers respect the intimate history of bookshops. Their presence, or absence; their plenitude, or poverty, feeds a stream of feeling that runs through the lives of people who read, and who write. They nourish and withold. They gratify and disappoint. They reward curiosity with serendipity. Responses to their opening and closures, their makeovers and takeovers, compile an index of emotions stretching from agony to zealotry.

Yet authors often feel compelled to foul the nests that nurture them. In novel after novel, from George Gissing to Vikram Seth, bookshops and their staff shrink into sketchy cartoon shapes. Alarmingly often, they feature as boringly unwholesome temples of dullness and delusion. Why should this be so?"

Just one of many contributions to New Writing 15 - the British Council's annual anthology of the finest contemporary writing in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, selected by Bernadine Evaristo and Maggie Gee. Published by Granta, but with many contributions now available as downloads, including Boyd Tonkin's essay, and an extract from Alasdair Gray's novel The Posthumous Papers of John Tunnock, and a piece by Julian Barnes: 'The Case of Inspector Campbells's Red Hair'. The downloads, including "Shelf Doubt', are available at:

http://newwriting.britishcouncil.org/all/themes/?theme=52

Cabinet Magazine

Billed as a quarterly journal of art and culture, Cabinet currently features an interview by Brian Dillon with Robert Macfarlane, author of The Wild Places, and Original Copy, an interesting feature on Freud and porcupines: "The Porcupine Illusion" by George Prochnik, and "Being There" reflections on visiting Martin Heidegger's hut, by Leland De La Durantaye:

www.cabinetmagazine.org

"That Smidge of Chaos - that's how we like it"

Iona and Peter Opie explored children's literature, nursery rhymes, childhood street culture, and playground games in a remarkable series of books, published between 1946 and the year 2000. One of these was Iona Opie's The People in the Playground (1993). Taking this book as his starting point for a series of programmes on Radio 4 this week, Michael Rosen has been exploring the self-organisation and creativity that characterises children's play in an over-organised world.
Each programme is only 15 minutes long - so take advantage of the BBC's listen again feature:

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/peopleintheplayground/pip/9br0u/

The Magna Carta Manifesto

A recent British Library poll revealed that nearly half the UK population (45%) don't know what Magna Carta is. The ancient charter dating from 1215 set limits to the arbitary rule of the King - although its concerns were those of the powerful barons, rather than of the unfree peasantry. The poll was commissioned by the British Library to accompany launch of the Library's new Magna Carta website and forthcoming exhibition: Taking Liberties: the Struggle for British Freedom and Rights which will run from 31 October 2008 to 1 March 2009.

Just published is a new book from Peter Linebaugh, that uses Magna Carta to explore "the current state of liberty and show how longstanding restraints against tyranny–and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture–are being abridged."

Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a history of the Great Charter and its little-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor. "In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state."

The Magna Carta Manifesto is published by the University of California Press. Peter Linebaugh is also author of The London Hanged, and co-author of the award winning The Many Headed Hydra.

British Library website
www.bl.uk/treasures/magnacarta/index.html

The Magna Carta Manifesto:
www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10566.php

Sheila Rowbotham

Professor Sheila Rowbotham, author the the ground-breaking book Hidden From History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It (1975) and many other books has been told by the University of Manchester that her contract will not be renewed at the end of 2008. Sheila only wants one-third of her current salary to continue teaching at the university. The University (which is currently paying novelist Martin Amis £80,000 for working 28 hours a year) is pleading that it can no longer afford to pay Sheila.

According to the Telegraph the University has already cut 600 posts (many of them teaching staff) in order to reduce its £30 million deficit.

According to Womensphere some of the people who will be making the final decision about Sheila's case have admitted that they are not acquainted with her credentials or background.

To ask the University to reconsider their decision please email the following by the 10th March:

Please email by 10th March 2008:
* Head of Social Sciences david.farrell@manchester.ac.uk (professor)
* Dean of Humanities alistair.ulph@manchester.ac.uk (professor)
* President and Vice Chancellor president@manchester.ac.uk (professor)

Please c.c your letter of support to Sheila.rowbotham@manchester.ac.uk

BBC News

The BBC regularly reports instances of repression from around the world - instances such as the arrest of opposition activists in Moscow following the recent elections there. Yet similar events that occur in this country go completely unreported. Take for example the recent arrests of members of the Brixton-based group "Reclaim Your Food" for "anti-social behaviour".

www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/393028.html

or the arrest of Simon, a lone protestor outside Downing Street, under laws supposedly intended to tackle "serious and organised crime":

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE4dvlkJCCo

or an incident in Birmingham when police forced a press photographer to delete images from the memory card in his camera in clear breach of ACPO police-press guidelines:

www.epuk.org/News/818/police-officer-forced-photographer-to-delete-images

These are just a few sample incidents that have occurred recently and it is quite clear that what used to be occasional and random instances of repression directed at protestors are becoming much more organised and systematic. If the BBC doesn't have the time or the inclination to show what is happening perhaps Russian t.v. might take an interest?

Julian Rathbone - "An old-school lefty"?

Novelist Julian Rathbone died last week - a prolific author of some of the best contemporary thrillers and historical novels. Tight plots and good characterisation - see for example A spy of the Old School (1982), or Lying in State (1985) - were his hallmark. Although his writing often dealt with overtly political themes - his books were also quietly subversive in the way he portrayed relationships between men and women, as in Dangerous Games (1991)- as well as anticipating new social issues such as genetic engineering, ZDT (1986). In recent years he reached a much wider audience with his historical novels The Last english King (1997) A Very English Agent (2002) and most recently The Mutiny (2007).

Nick Coleman, in the Guardian describes Rathbone as "an old-school lefty. He said so himself. His detestation of privilege and the structures which maintain it was profound. His contempt for them was expressed by turn frighteningly, wittily and sexily, and often all at once, but never, ever dully or merely rhetorically." but Julian Rathbone was more than that, describing himself in an article for the Independent as "a romantic optimist with anarchist leanings"*
It was this libertarian socialist vision that suffuses Rathbone's books and makes them quite unlike those of any other modern English writer, giving them an alternative system of values and ideas which appealed to the ordinary reader.

*Julian Rathbone: "Futuristic Notes: sorry to disturb you. Tax Control here,"
The Independent, Sep 30, 1998
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19980930/ai_n14183503

Julian Rathbone: "Englishness in The Last English King and Kings of Albion"
www.britishcouncil.org/studies/england/rathbone.htm

Nick Coleman in The Guardian:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2261780,00.html
Bob Cornwell interview with julian Rathbone for Tangled Web UK:
www.twbooks.co.uk/crimescene/Rathboneinterv.html

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Rathbone

...and lastly, here is Julian Rathbone discussing "War and Britishness" at a symposium at the University of Tubingen, originally mentioned on Booksurfer in 2002:
http://tinyurl.com/ytcy84

Author Interviews

There are some serious and thought-provoking author interviews on the Book Depository website including interviews with Gillian Darley, author of the recently reprinted Villages of Vision, and a new biography of John Evelyn; Ken Worpole, author of the seminal Dockers and Detectives; novelist Robert Goddard, biographer Hilary Spurling, and literary theorist Toril Moi. Altogether there are nearly 100 interviews with new material being added all the time - to say nothing about some great book deals - nearly two pounds lower than the Amazon price on James Simpson's new book Burning to Read - and free delivery.

www.bookdepository.co.uk

Book Depository interviews at:

http://tinyurl.com/3dwrbd

[url shortened at tinyurl]

"Porpentine?"

One of the delights of reading P G Wodehouse's "Jeeves" books are the quotations and casual literary references - some of which provided me with my first introduction to Robert Browning as a teenager. In the Telegraph A N Wilson explores the Shakespearean allusions that are scattered throughout the books, and asks "Was Bertie Wooster a silly ass or a wise man?"

"The device of using Shakespearean quotation throws into relief one of the central paradoxes of the Bertie Wooster books. Bertie as narrator insists on writing himself down as a silly ass. Yet his own use of metaphor, and his own recollection of great poetry, is as encyclopedic as - well, as PG Wodehouse's."

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/02/18/do1805.xml

May 68 and All That

Remember when IT stood for "International Times" rather a bit of electronic gadgetry? A Conference and Book Fair to celebrate May 68 will be held on May 10th at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London. Interesting talks from a wide range of speakers including Nick Wright, Esther Leslie, Ian Bone, Sheila Rowbotham, and Stewart Home and there will be poetry from Adrian Mitchell. There are also bookstalls from publishers, booksellers and many different organisations. The event website carries some great texts to keep you reading between now and May - including the best eye-witness account "Paris May 1968" by Chris Pallis.
Just one question - when does the demonstration start?

www.1968andallthat.net

Breaking the Frame: Anarchist Comics and Visual Culture

Jesse Cohn situates the emergence of comics within the wider context of anarchist culture in an breathless and exciting essay that is rich in ideas and associations. From the French online magazine Belphegor:

http://etc.dal.ca/belphegor/vol6_no2/articles/06_02_cohn_comics_fr.html

The Ten-Cent Plague

David Hajdu looks at the moral panics and "inflamed passions" surrounding the publication of dime-store comics in the pre-internet age for Bookforum:

www.bookforum.com/inprint/014_05/2045

Literary blogs vs the Critics

William Skidelsky examines "an outbreak of agonising about the state of book reviewing" and the role of the literary blogs in the February issue of Prospect magazine:

"A battle for authority is being waged between the printed and the digital word, and this explains both the chippy, combative tone of many bloggers, with their talk of "people power" and it being "our turn now," and the defensiveness of many print journalists."

www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9995

The War on Literature

News that the Arts Council has slashed government funding to a number of literature projects such as the publisher Daedalus Books and the London literature centre, Centreprise, comes alongside the announcement that the the amount paid to writers for Public Lending Right (PLR) is to be frozen - effectively reducing it by the amount of inflation. Taken with the wholesale withdrawal of books from public libraries (which in many cases are sent straight to the local tip) there is little doubt that the state is waging war on the whole idea of a literary culture.

Meanwhile the bloated establishment bureaucracies have managed to pull together an "aspirational" statement "What Young People Should Expect Library Services to Offer". It has taken representatives of 12 organisations and "extensive research and consultation" to produce a statement that is just 223 words long, stating the obvious that young people like everyone else expect libraries to be "warm safe and welcoming" and provide "up-to-date books and other information."

A progress report on the state of Library buildings might have been a more appropriate use of resources - a 2006 report revealed that 1 in 4 Library buildings failed to meet health & safety requirements. Have these all been put right?

Another interesting gem from the statement is that young people can expect to be involved in the appointment of library staff in future.


Arts Council Funding Cuts:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2250784,00.html

Public Lending Right frozen:

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3285512.ece

MLA Press Release and Statement:

http://tinyurl.com/ys3ygq

Summerhill

"The idea that children should make decisions in their own life about how they learn is deeply alarming to many adults, so top marks for the BBC in commissioning the new children's TV drama "Summerhill" - based on the real life Summerhill School - although it is a pity that they haven't provided any info about the programme or the school on the BBC website.

The website for the real Summerhill School does provide some information - so you could look here if you want to find out more:
www.summerhillschool.co.uk/bbc-drama.html

James Rampton also provided an interesting overview in The Herald:
www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.1957884.0.a_school_breaking_all_the_rules.php

and also in the Telegraph:
http://tinyurl.com/2mk5r7

[this url has been shortened]

How about cutting Eastenders out of the schedules one day a week - and screening when adults have time to watch as well?

Celeste West

Celeste West, the inspiration behind the amazing Booklegger magazine, and co-editor of Revolting Librarians is dead. Booklegger was a library magazine like no other, radiating with a practical yet free spirited anarchism that was applied in a no-nonsense way to books, libraries and librarianship. It is impossible to believe that someone with such so much life and spirit in her is no longer around. An inspiration.

For a full obituary see SFGate.com:
www.legacy.com/SFGate/DeathNotices.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=101564534

[Thanks to Richard for the details of the obit]

Star Wars

One of the most flamboyant quarrels in literary history was that between Elizabethan poets Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey but it was preceded by a much earlier quarrel involving Harvey's brothers Richard and John who were deeply interested in astrology. As it is less well-known than the Nashe/Harvey dispute, I am posting a short article I wrote recently about this astrological spat:

Star Wars

In the 16th Century astrology was taken seriously - so seriously that the Essex market town of Saffron Walden became the focus for one of the strangest quarrels in English history when a Saffron Walden astrologer predicted the end of the world.

The quarrel centred around two brothers from Saffron Walden - Richard and John Harvey - the sons of wealthy local rope-maker John Harvey, and brothers of the poet Gabriel Harvey. All three brothers went to Cambridge University, and developed an interest in astrology - a subject closely connected to both science and mathematics at the time.

In 1583 Richard Harvey provoked widespread alarm and controversy when he predicted that the world would come to an end on April 28th a day when “two superior planets” Saturn and Jupiter were in conjunction:

“A great sterility and barrenness of the earth shall ensue; there will be shipwerecks, burnings, and other fiery and watery calamites; much envy, hatred, quarrelling, and strife will spring up; ecclesiastical persons will be persecuted, and many great men and nobel personages will be treachersously entanged, to their overthrow, disgrace, and dishonour. It is quite possible that a fearful comet will follow, and the very frame of the worlde, cannot endure long after.”

Harvey incurred a considerable amount of public scorn for his predictions, and Bishop Aylmer preached against Harvey’s book at Paul’s Cross. But he was defended by his younger brother John, who although still only 19, published his own “Astrological Addition” in an attempt to answer Richard’s critics.

One of the first to challenge Harvey’s pediction of catastrophe was the renowned mathematician Thomas Heth who quickly published a book in which he attacked errors in Harvey’s calculations and the disasterous consequences that would result from the planetary conjunction.

After April 28th it was obvious to everyone that the Harvey brothers predictions had failed and Richard was subjected to a country-wide storm of ridicule. Several derisive ballads were written about him and he was mocked on the London stage.

Astrology itself became the subject of attack - particularly from Henry Howard, who wrote “A Defensative Against the Poyson of Supposed Prophecies.” Howard was a controversial man. He was the youngest son of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, and later inherited his house and lands at Audley End (near Saffron Walden). Following the execution of his father in 1552 and his brother in 1572 (both for treason), he became involved in the shady world of court conspiracies.

Soon after the publication of his “Defensative” he was was arrested, accused of “seeming heresies and treason” and confined in London’s Fleet Prison for several months.

The Harveys got off more lightly - Richard gave up astrology, and became a minister in the Church, while John Harvey pursued his interest and published several almanacs . But their failed predictions were not forgotten, and the Harvey brothers remained the target for some of the best known writers in Elizabethan England, including Shakespeare, who made them characters in some of his plays.

[first published in the Walden Local, January 9, 2008]

Wikia Search

A new, and collaborative search engine, Wikia Search allows users to make suggestions, and comment on the search results - eventually the comments will be used to refine and improve the searches:

http://alpha.search.wikia.com/

Anger at Library Cuts

Ciar Byrne, Arts & Media Correspondent for the Independent newspaper examines the threat to public libraries in what has been designated the "National Year of Reading" outlining the continual effect of library closures, staff cuts, and the culling of books:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3295854.ece

Since this piece appeared several other newspapers have taken up the issue.

British Architectural Library Abolishes Charges

The British Architectural Library has announced that members of the public are now able to use the Library completely free of charge. The Library collections of about four million items, ranging from books, photographs, archives, periodicals and a whole range of artifacts, are located at the Roya Institute of British Archtects HQ, 66 Portland Place, London. Drawings and archives are held at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Find out more about the RIBA British Architectural Library, including access to their online catalogue and RIBApix an online collection of c16,000 photographs, drawings and etchings:

www.architecture.com/LibraryDrawingsAndPhotographs/Home.aspx

The Poetry Paper

Like the items listed in the posting below the Poetry Paper is only available in printed format - a pity as the current issue - issue four, 2007/8 - has a great layout and contains some interesting stuff - in particular a two-page interview with poets Adrian Mitchell and Michael Rosen "The Delivery Men", some new poems and a lengthy article by US poet Gerald Stern who "looks back on his unusual journey as a writer". Pick up a free copy from the London Review of Books bookshop, or go to the Poetry Paper's page on the Poetry Trust website, and request a (free) copy:

www.thepoetrytrust.org/html/poetry_paper.htm

Only In Print

Just out is a new book by Wayne Price: The Abolition of the State: Anarchist and Marxist Perspectives, (AuthorHouse, 2008). 196 pp Price starts with a conception of the anarchism as a radical extension of democracy, and examines how social coordination in non-statist society can be achieved through organisations such as workplace councils, neighbourhood assemblies and other co-operative forms:

www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=45363

The current issue edition of Rare Book Review contains an article on "Philip Pullman - the Most Dangerous Man in England?" and another by actor Neil Pearson: "Books do furnish A Room" based on his book Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, (Liverpool University Press, 2007) 494 pp

www.rarebookreview.com/

Kate Sharpley Library
Librarian Jessamyn West's "Interview with Three Members of the Kate Sharpley Library" ,
was published in Serials Review, vol 33, issue 2 June 2007 pages 129-131, but is unfortunately not available free online. You can find out more about the Kate Sharpley Library here:

www.katesharpleylibrary.net/

Copac

Because I've been immersed in research over the last few months I've become increasingly aware that one of the websites that I use more than any other is Copac. For those who don't know Copac - it is the "merged online catalogue of major University and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland", and a fantastic resource for identifying and locating books. Now it has become even more useful with the trial introduction of a search interface enabling users to simultaneously search Copac and the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) of materials published between c1473 and 1800:

www.copac.ac.uk/

John Harvey

Great news for fans of crime-writer John Harvey, as his next book features the long-overdue return of his humane, jazz-loving detective Charlie Resnick. Although Harvey's recent novels featuring world-weary Frank Elder have all been successful, they have never really quite captured the reader's imagination in the way that the ten earlier "Resnick" novels managed. The book is called "Cold in Hand" and is due out in January. John Harvey won the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger award for 'sustained excellence in the genre of crime writing" in May, and is the subject of a first-rate interview by Nicholas Wroe in this week's Guardian:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/crime/story/0,,2232896,00.html

The Two Nobel Lectures of Doris Lessing
Writing for the Britannica blog J F Luebering dissects the different versions of Dorris Lessing's Nobel lecture that have been circulating:

http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/main/2007/12/the-two-nobel-lectures-of-doris-lessing/

I haven't read any defence of the Internet against Doris Lessing's charge that the Internet has fragmented culture and destroyed reading, but I would love to hear of any spotted by readers of Booksurfer. Meanwhile let me briefly spell out some reasons why I believe Doris Lessing is wrong.

Far from fragmenting culture, the Internet disperses culture more widely, decentralises and democratises it. True - "official" and prescribed cultural forms are threatened - but that is not a bad thing, as social cohesion should not rely upon imposed cultural norms. The World Wide Web has widened the availability of minority cultural forms, which were often only "minority" because people lacked access to the capital required to disseminate them more widely. "Inanities" identified by Doris Lessing as a fundamental characteristic of the Internet existed long before the Internet was even thought of, and seduced people into wasting their time centuries ago - although what one person describes as "inanity" might be someone else's treasured cultural norm.

Does the Internet destroy reading? Hardly as the Web is primarily text based so that reading becomes more important than ever. Does it even (to take the argument further than Doris Lessing does) destroy some forms of reading? Even this is doubtful as many of the the Internet's real successes such as Project Gutenberg, Amazon, abe.com, are closely linked to literature. There are many other online book related projects that support and enhance reading - the British Library's "Turning the Pages", WorldCat and Copac, and Intute, are just some of the examples that spring to mind. In addition, many public libraries now make book-based reference resources available online to even the most remote communities. Rock lyrics and poetry (from rap to Milton) are now available at the click of a mouse. It is possible to find out about Camus even though the local library has no books about him on the shelves. The decline of reading (if ineed it is happening) cannot be attributed to the Internet.

Of course the Internet presents problems, both general - like the new forms of information monopoly that are emerging, - and for specific groups - such as the threat posed to monopoly News organisations by the rise of "citizen journalism" for example. But these contested aspects of the Internet follow from the challenges presented to entrenched interests by new social groups moving onto the stage of history.

SpikeMagazine

Ben Granger writes a lengthy and perceptive review of Stephen Dorril's Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism in Spike Magazine:

www.spikemagazine.com/oswald-mosley-blackshirt-biography-stephen-dorril.php

In Print

The Art of Political Murder: who killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman (Grove Press). An account of the investigation into the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, Guatemala's leading human rights activist who was "bludgeoned to death in his garage on a Sunday night in 1998, two days after the presentation of a groundbreaking church-sponsored report implicating the military in the murders and disappearances of some two hundred thousand civilians. Realizing that it could not rely on police investigators or the legal system to solve the murder, the church formed its own investigative team, a group of secular young men in their twenties who called themselves Los Intocables (the Untouchables)." A tense account of a remarkable group of young people and their fight for justice.
www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100966750

Writing in an Age of Silence, by Sara Paretsky (Verso) Author of the bestselling Warshawski novels explores the traditions of political and literary dissent against the background of her own life, and also "traces the emergence of V. I. Warshawski from the shadows of the loner detectives that stalk the mean streets of Dashiell Hammett’s and Raymond Chandler’s novels, and in the process explores American individualism, the failure of the American dream, and the resulting dystopia".
www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/nopq-titles/paretsky_s_writing.shtml

Villages of Vision, by Gillian Darley (Five Leaves) has been reprinted in a new and enlarged edition.

The Anarchist Past and Other Essays, by Nicolas Walter (Five Leaves) is a selection of essays by the late Nicolas Walter, one time editor of the New Humanist magazine, a member of the Committee of 100, the Direct Action Committee and Spies for Peace, and a key contributor to the anarchist press as well as a prolific letter writer. Some of his best essays collected and edited by David Goodway.

www.fiveleaves.co.uk/social.html

30 Year Closure Rule

The "thirty year closure" rule before government files are transferred to the National Archives and the public are given free access is to be reviewed. The terms have reference have just been published. See the National Archives website for more information.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/176.htm

Alan Furst

I'm only just catching up with Alan Furst's thrillers - I'm reading Foreign Correspondent at the moment - here's an interview with Furst, conducted by Robert Birnbaum and featured on identitytheory.com:

www.identitytheory.com/people/birnbaum9.html

Donald E Westlake

The Times profiles the life and work of Donald E Westlake:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/crime/article2930115.ece

GLASGOW'S RADICAL INDEPENDENT BOOK-FAIR PROJECT

DEC 15th - CCA - 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow 12am - 10pm -- free entry
stalls / resources / videotheque / events

Within Britain, Scotland and specifically Glasgow there are fewer and fewer outlets for independent and radical materials. Corporate bookshops rule the roost and offer little in the way of counter culture, radical voices or local independent materials. The Radical Independent
Book-fair project (RIB) has come about to help redress this imbalance...

RIB is a support structure for a number of individuals and groups who produce publications, information and materials for sale, view and free distribution. The project is self-financed by the participants, nopublic or corporate monies are involved, no one takes a wage, it is not
party politically aligned and is autonomous from other organisations. The project is not just an occasional bookshop and travelling bookstall... it is also a temporary library, a videotheque, a meeting point for distribution, discussion and ideas, as well as a place to come and have a blether.

...supporting small press publishers and independent
producers...circulating radical reading materials and information...

For more info on RIB and and the programme of events go to:

www.ribproject.org

Held in Thrall

Writer Amy Corzine describes her feelings about writing the forthcoming comic adaptation of Jane Eyre:

"...the clever chemistry and verbal dances between the lovers are perhaps what most strike the heart. Often it seemed as if Brontë were simply recounting real conversations – perhaps ones she had really had with a schoolmaster with whom she fell in love while working as a governess in France.

The book was so well-plotted, its language so moving, and its descriptions so colourful, that putting it into visual form was one of the easiest and most enjoyable writing jobs I have ever had. My most difficult task was choosing which passages to leave out."

Read the whole interview on the Bronte Parsonage Blog:

http://bronteparsonage.blogspot.com/2007/10/held-in-thrall.html

Libraries Threatened by In-fighting

Alison Flood writes about the new report on Libraries from think-tank Demos for the Bookseller:
"The report, Fact and Fiction: The Future of Public Libraries, divides the library lobby into two camps: the "book lobby", which argues that the solution lies in putting more re-sources into book stocks, and the "diversifiers", who believe that libraries are about more than books and need to broaden their offer. The book lobby thinks the diversifiers are philistines, while the diversifiers look on the book lobby as obtuse." The report
calls on the two sides to work together to avoid forcing the public library service into a permanent downward spiral.
www.thebookseller.com/news/48735-page.html


This "coming together" presupposes that the "book lobby" (Library users who deplore the running down of the public library system over the past ten or more years) has as much power to influence events as those the report calls the "diversifiers" - when in fact the latter is made up by the Councillors, council officials, politicans and central government bureaucrats who have neglected the Library buildings, cut library staff and book budgets and sold off the books over the past years. "Coming together" sounds like another way of saying "don't complain - put up with what we give you."

A quick examination of Public Library statistics demonstrates that the "downward spiral" has been going on for over ten years. The so-called "book lobby" (of which I count myself a member) are not against computerised resources in Libraries - far from it. Many reference sources are much better provided online than in out-of-date printed works - and it is great to be able to access these from home, as I can in Essex. Computerised catalogues and online reservations are great - but so are books. The argument about computers in Libraries is a complete red herring - they are already there, and have been for many years. Nobody is saying that they should be taken out. But neither should they be used as a stalking horse for the kind of cuts and changes they have been taking place. The whole focus of our criticism is that book stocks are being reduced, insufficient books are being purchased, and Libraries are being turned into "community centres" "one-stop shops" for council services, and even gyms, to the detriment of their use as libraries. Library closures, staff cuts, and falling bookstocks are resulting in people turning elsewhere for books and information. Of course, a "one-size fits all" approach is wrong, but so is the continual closure of small community libraries to finance services in big urban centres. Yinnon Ezra and John Holden want to find common ground with the book lobby. Until they can accept that continuing library closures, the neglect of library buildings, and the reduction of bookstock are unacceptable it will be very difficult indeed to find common ground.

Slaughter in the Stacks?

"ALMOST a quarter of a million books have gone missing from Waltham Forest libraries amid claims they have been burned or pulped" reports the Waltham Forest Guardian. Nearly 75,000 books vanished between January and March this year alone, amid reports of library staff spending weeks packing and labelling books for disposal, and van loads of books destined for the tip. the full story can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/37w4rs

[The 144 characters in the original link have been shortened to 25 characters using TinyUrl]

Variant 30

The winter 2007 issue of Variant is available. Contents include Rebecca Gordon Nesbit's lengthy review of three books on anarchism: Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority, edited by Josh MacPhee & Erik Reuland; Ben Franks' Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends of Contemporary British Anarchisms; and the Trapese Collective's Do it Yourself: A Handbook for Changing our World, Tom Jennings: "Rebel Poets Reloaded" and John Barker's "The High and the Mighty."
Pick up a free copy from a good bookshop or arts centre - or read online at:

www.variant.org.uk

Bookforum

The December/January issue is published, and can be read online. Articles include John Banville on the birth and development of pulp fiction - a new genre "that sought in the gritty seams of American life a fresh moral code, one that made sense for hard times and harder people." Wendy Lesser on Tomasi de Lampedusa, and Peter Brooks on the letters of the young Henry James. To read this issue click the cover illustration on the top left of the home page.
www.bookforum.com

Mark Twain Project Online

The ultimate purpose of the Mark Twain Project is to "produce a digital critical edition, fully annotated, of everything Mark Twain wrote" using innovative online technology. " It offers unfettered, intuitive access to reliable texts, accurate and exhaustive notes, and the most recently discovered letters and documents". MTPO is a collaboration between the Mark Twain Papers and Project of The Bancroft Library, the California Digital Library, and the University of California Press.
Great stuff, fanatastic letters, and a wealth of detail in the notes. Brought to my notice by the Scout Report.

Mark Twain Project:
www.marktwainproject.org/homepage.html

Article 26

Although it was only built in September, Fasayil School will be demolished on 29th of November. Built out of traditional mud bricks, using traditional building techniques, it is the first and only primary school in the village of Fasayil, and badly needed by the 115 local children. But this new school is situated in the heart of the Jordan Valley which has been occupied territory since 1967. New construction requires a permit from the occupation authorities, but (catch 22) they never issue them. Now a demolition order has been issued, requiring the villagers to dismantle the school, or pay a hefty fine for failing to respect the construction ban, and watch while the occupation's bulldozers do the job.

The villagers remain defiant:
"They can knock our school down as often as they want. We cannot stop them from doing so. We will build the school again and again and again. They cannot destroy our determination to give proper education to our children."

See photos of the construction here:
http://charity.dc5b.com/fsp/

Online petition here:

http://brightonpalestine.org/blog/?page_id=224

Future Reading: Digitization and its Discontents

Anthony Grafton explores the way in which the "computer and the Internet have transformed reading more dramatically than any technology since the printing press" and the the likely impact of digitization programmes such as Google Book Search in the New Yorker.

www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/05/071105fa_fact_grafton