heliopausa (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heliopausa) wrote2017-01-07 04:50 pm
heliopausa) wrote2017-01-07 04:50 pm
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Disgruntled post, with books
Oh, pooh! Crummy old Dreamwidth has lost a great chunk of draft post. Well - so it goes. I'll be back with a new yearish post in a day or so, but in the meantime, have some thoughts on two books read recently.
Dark emu, black seed - Bruce Pascoe. A compilation of evidence - in particular taken from accounts by European explorers and early settlers in Australia - of Aboriginal settlement on and use of the land, stressing that it meets all the supposed criteria for demonstrating permanence and ownership - including permanent dwellings, agriculture, land management (far beyond firestick farming). It's very good indeed, bringing out the wilful ignorance (self-deception? plain old lying?) of those who wrote in their diaries of things they later denied having seen, or at any rate drew conclusions unsupported by their own observations. It's really great stuff - accessible, undeniable, eye-opening, wonderfully useful - highly recommended. Caveat, though -- it's not as good as it could have been. Pascoe fudges facts sometimes e.g. seeming to illustrate Arnhem land housing with a photo of housing on Mer/Murray Island - maybe his source misled him? But then, he doesn't give his source, just leaves it to be inferred, as he left it to be inferred that the photo was taken in Arnhem land. I'm not sure how much it's just that he's being deliberately non-academic, and how much he's carried away by his eagerness to make his case, but it's a real defect; sometimes he jumps to very debatable conclusions, and could easily mislead in places. Which is a pity, and means I recommend with that caveat - I still do highly recommend, though.
Under Siege - Literary life in London, 1939-1945 - Robert Hewison. A dollar got me this unlikely-looking book, in a small-town op shop. I've been really enjoying it - partly because it gives such interesting and specific information - the details of paper usage in publishing before and after rationing, say, or the number of theatre companies which folded under the strain of wartime conditions, or the tug-of-war which saw writers torn between their own creative drive and the demands to produce for the war effort. Interesting gossip, too, though some of it about writers I've never heard of, and intermittently scraps of poetry, with comments. Very male-centric, though; there were only three women mentioned (as best I recall) and one of them was Myra Hess - ie women writers get very scant attention. Dorothy Sayers was mentioned, in the context of having been rejected for inclusion in a government-established body dealing with potential writers' contribution in wartime because she was (said the unknown civil servant advising on nominees) too loquacious and "difficult" - which is, I guess, to be interpreted as "won't sit down and shut up".
Dark emu, black seed - Bruce Pascoe. A compilation of evidence - in particular taken from accounts by European explorers and early settlers in Australia - of Aboriginal settlement on and use of the land, stressing that it meets all the supposed criteria for demonstrating permanence and ownership - including permanent dwellings, agriculture, land management (far beyond firestick farming). It's very good indeed, bringing out the wilful ignorance (self-deception? plain old lying?) of those who wrote in their diaries of things they later denied having seen, or at any rate drew conclusions unsupported by their own observations. It's really great stuff - accessible, undeniable, eye-opening, wonderfully useful - highly recommended. Caveat, though -- it's not as good as it could have been. Pascoe fudges facts sometimes e.g. seeming to illustrate Arnhem land housing with a photo of housing on Mer/Murray Island - maybe his source misled him? But then, he doesn't give his source, just leaves it to be inferred, as he left it to be inferred that the photo was taken in Arnhem land. I'm not sure how much it's just that he's being deliberately non-academic, and how much he's carried away by his eagerness to make his case, but it's a real defect; sometimes he jumps to very debatable conclusions, and could easily mislead in places. Which is a pity, and means I recommend with that caveat - I still do highly recommend, though.
Under Siege - Literary life in London, 1939-1945 - Robert Hewison. A dollar got me this unlikely-looking book, in a small-town op shop. I've been really enjoying it - partly because it gives such interesting and specific information - the details of paper usage in publishing before and after rationing, say, or the number of theatre companies which folded under the strain of wartime conditions, or the tug-of-war which saw writers torn between their own creative drive and the demands to produce for the war effort. Interesting gossip, too, though some of it about writers I've never heard of, and intermittently scraps of poetry, with comments. Very male-centric, though; there were only three women mentioned (as best I recall) and one of them was Myra Hess - ie women writers get very scant attention. Dorothy Sayers was mentioned, in the context of having been rejected for inclusion in a government-established body dealing with potential writers' contribution in wartime because she was (said the unknown civil servant advising on nominees) too loquacious and "difficult" - which is, I guess, to be interpreted as "won't sit down and shut up".
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That sounds incredibly valuable.
Dorothy Sayers was mentioned, in the context of having been rejected for inclusion in a government-established body dealing with potential writers' contribution in wartime because she was (said the unknown civil servant advising on nominees) too loquacious and "difficult" - which is, I guess, to be interpreted as "won't sit down and shut up".
Wow.
Does the author mention some of the male writers who weren't rejected? I'm just curious how "difficult" they were.
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b) Alack - I don't have the book by me right now (I've been moving about a lot of late). But I'll ask the person in whose care I left it, and get back to you.
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The people suggested were "all very establishment names, picked over for co-operativeness or faults". Sayers is the only one whose fault ("very loquacious and difficult") is reported in the book, though the Public Records Office files apparently contain all the notes.
Sir Hugh Walpole was proposed as the chair, but the Ministry demurred. The book doesn't say why; his homosexuality (discreet, but probably pretty well known in literary circles) might have been a factor. The book did suggest that the government people seemed to think that authors in general couldn't be trusted, and that a committee of authors would end in bickering.
The president of the Publishers' Association, Geoffrey Faber (ie Faber & Faber) was consulted, and advised: "authors are with rare exceptions, egocentric persons. They are not cohesive, they are not good at collectively tackling an impersonal problem. They mostly lack both knowledge and judgement of the means whereby their own books are actually sold: and this lack is the more dangerous because they are apt to assume they know all about it."
Following that, the whole idea of a writer's advisory committee was dropped, and the job of selecting writers to write material for the Ministry was left to Ministry's own general production department - the job went (are you ready for this?) to a former employee of... Geoffrey Faber!
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Aargh. I hate it when somebody pointing out a historical put-up job takes shortcuts with their own case -- it feels intellectually dishonest, and I always worry that if I notice the flaw, someone opposing the argument definitely will.
(There was a series of anti-smoking ads in the late 'nineties or early oughts that drove me up the wall because they combined "trying to hard to be cool and edgy," with "logical flaws obvious to any reasonably intelligent teenager.")
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