The Brothers Karamazov

I have re-read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov after more than 30 years. I remember being almost spellbound by the novel when I first read it – it led me into The Idiot which I also found a revelation. A curious feature of my reading of both books is that, after such a time, the plots had faded almost entirely in my memory. I did remember a pervading sense of delirium yet a strong sense of realism in the writing. Obviously the impact was on me was emotional not narrative. Let’s face it the human condition seldom gets described accurately by popular culture and Hollywood - when we come across a quality portrayal the description sticks. Particular emotionally-charged passages I recall vividly as if I read them yesterday. One terrifying image that stuck is of a peasant beating a horse around its ‘gentle eyes’. Yet I had forgotten almost entirely about Fyodor Karamazov, his death and the prosecution of Dmitri which provides the bulk of the second half of the story.

In the chapter before that titled the ‘Grand Inquisitor’ Dostoyevsky exposits what, as far as I know, is one of the earliest versions of the ‘ticking bomb’ problem that I recall discussing on John Quiggin’s blog a few years ago. In the version I discussed the question was whether one should torture a terrorist who knew where a ticking bomb was concealed if the discovery of the bomb would prevent the deaths of millions. Dostoyevsky poses this problem much more dramatically. Should you torture to death a young innocent child if by so doing you could bring eternal happiness to all in the world? Our hero, Alyusha* Karamazov, thankfully says ‘no’! I thought I might have been the first to recognise this literary connection to a contemporary problem of ethics but Dostoyevsky’s argument, and its link to the ticking bomb issue, is, in fact, widely- known.

The Brothers Karamazov is not all gloom and pessimism and it does capture real life in all its complexity. I am intrigued by the initially peripheral figure Grushenka who is initially portrayed as a conniving slut but who gradually is revealed as a highly intelligent free spirit and ultimately as the ideal Russian woman. Indeed the whole novel is fascinating writing. Freud described it as the most ‘magnificent novel ever written’. In the absence of evidence to the contrary - and given my limited literary experience - I concur.

I was lucky enough to read this book in a beautiful Folio edition illustrated with wood engravings. It does make a difference reading an enjoyable novel that is so elegantly presented - hard cover, heavy high-quality paper and attractive non-miniscule fonts.

*Incidentally Alyusha was the name of Dostoyevsky’s young son who died aged 3 from epilepsy – a disease his father inflicted on him through his genes.

Fortune magazine

Fortune is one of those magazines I subscribe to with mixed feelings. On the one hand it caters to some the worst aspects of US consumerism and an almost adolescent worship of wealth. But it also provides a gritty and useful view of the world of business from a business rather than economics perspective. It's latest issue contains the Fortune 500 Global edition which looks at the performance of the world's biggest firms. I generally look at this carefully noting particularly how Australian firms figure and how the emerging giants of China, India and Mexico are making their impact. I always stick my copy of this particular edition on a bookshelf and refer to it over the coming year - it is an invaluable resource and a great teaching aid.

Another feature of Fortune I greatly respect is that much of its material is online.

On the Fortune 500 listing Australia's own BHP-Billiton is 183rd on the Fortune 500 list but 17th in terms of profits. For every three dollars of sales it makes about a dollar profit. For its size it is one of the most profitable firms on the planet. Amazing!

Barney Gimbel's piece The New New World Economic Order in the same edition (unfortunately not online) is about as eloquent a 2 page summary of where the world economy is going as I have seen. The US, and indeed the developed countries as a whole, are no longer the locomotive of global growth - 54 developing countries surveyed will grow by 6.7% this year even though growth in 31 developed countries averages 1.6%. Voracious consumerism has historically come from the US but its source will soon be elsewhere. By 2020 China will have 700 million middle income earners and India 583 million. Gimbel sees the major threat to the world economy as exploding inflation in developing nations.

Despite some mild misgivings Fortune remains one of my favourite weekly reads.

Climate change: Last chance for change

I have been reading a range of literature on climate change. Most of it has been rather dry, technical or policy-oriented work with an economics emphasis.

My favourite general ‘read’ is the attractive and informative discussion of the various aspects of the climate change by former Guardian environmental correspondent, Paul Brown, titled Global Warming: The Last Chance for Change, Reader’s Digest Books, 2007. Some short reviews are here. Intended for the general reader it is nevertheless accurate in the science presented. It is written clearly in plain language and is informatively illustrated. There is sound discussion of the basic science, of issues for developing countries, US policy, the case for renewable compared to nuclear power and simple ways of changing our lives to reduce our carbon footprint.

This is a good Xmas present both for environmentally-conscious families and for those not so. It is well-written enough to hold the attention of sceptics and to make them think.

Highly recommended.

The Reader’s Digest is an interesting publisher. Although disliked by snobs their family magazine has a readership of close to 80 million concentrated mainly among high income earners. RD have often pursued important social causes – in 1950 they were the first mainstream publication to attack cigarette smoking in a famous article ‘Cancer by the Carton’ – now they are directly tackling George Bush and US policy on climate change. Good stuff.

Bloomsday

I forgot today to celebrate the anniversary of Bloomsday, 16th June 1904 on Saturday. It was celebrated in Sydney and in Melbourne. A lifetime ambition of mine is to celebrate in Dublin. Another is to read Finnegan's Wake with a pleasure and understanding.

My earlier posts on JJ have not aged nor improved – here and here.

In digging around and trying to find some celebratory and new to say I came across this old post by John Quiggin on the attitudes of Joyce’s family to intellectual property. In particular Joyce’s grandson, Stephen Joyce, apparently didn’t want free recitations of his grandfather's work in Dublin.

This insistence is unfortunate but it can be at least understood if you realize the terrible poverty that JJ lived in for decades while writing Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The poverty must have been hard on his kids. It obviously was for daughter Lucia who, after a fling with Samuel Beckitt, went mad. You can read of this in Carol Shloss’s, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake.

Joyce was a great writer but a poor husband and dad!

What I have been reading

Books on water, tobacco and the acid-rock musical era.

I was informed by and enjoyed Fred Pearce’s When the Rivers Run Dry, Transworld, 2006 which dealt with global water problems briefly and concisely but which provided a good sense of perspective. Excellent value. Traversing all continents it highlights the monumentally huge water resource problems in India, Pakistan, various African countries, the Middle East, Europe, South America, Australia and China and the relation of these problems to groundwater mismanagement, building dams and of course irrigation schemes. Issues of flooding, water shortages, catastrophic problems of groundwater abuse and contamination gave me perspective on the problems of the Murray-Darling. For all our sins, Australia’s problems are negligible compared to those of the developing world. As I have suggested before Australia may derive economic advantage from the water-driven misery of other countries.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Iain Gately’s Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization, Grove Press 2001. He writes in a humorous, incisive way and I kept reaching for my pen to mark down points that I will use in my academic research into the evil weed. He starts 18,000 years ago – 500 years ago if you refer to puffing on the stuff but the real punch lines for me were Gately’s later chapters where he describes the development of automatic cigarette machines in the 1880s coupled with vast levels of marketing expenditure. Cigarettes really took off around the turn of the century when the great surge in lung cancer deaths began. The responses of the cigarette companies in the 1950s to the emerging horror is frightening. The demand for evidence of a causal mechanism explaining cancers when US deaths per thousand increased 9-fold in about 20 years reminds me of similar claims by the global warming denialists. But this is an interlude of morbid drama in what is overall a great read. Gately adores smoking but recognizes that it kills you.

I struggled through Dennis McNally’s A Long Strange Trip, Corgi 2003 which dealt with the history of one of the beloved rock groups of my adolescence, The Grateful Dead. The book was just too long and hagiographic for my tastes. I kept at it because of the interesting intersections which other acid-rock bands of the late 1960s such as Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish and the country-oriented New Riders of the Purple Sage. The Allman Brothers, the Band, Joan Baez, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, Bob Dylan, The Fugs, Santana, Rolling Stones and Frank Zappa all fitted in at various times as well as non-musical components such as Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters (including for a time Neal Cassidy), Baba Ram Dass, Owsley-Stanley III and Timothy Leary. If you don’t recognize these names you won’t want to read this book and even if you do recognize them you may not. The book is mainly focused on Jerry Garcia who could be a monumentally talented guitarist. Objectively speaking the book is a testimony to the destructive powers of dope and booze. Jerry Garcia ended up a very sick, overweight man who squandered his talents on heroin and cocaine. Many others from the musical scene in this era just died from overdoses, liver diseases and drug-related accidents.