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| Bad sex award shortlist pits Philip Roth against stiff competition Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Philip Roth is up against Amos Oz, Paul Theroux and Nick Cave on the bad sex award shortlistThe story of the seduction of a lesbian by an ageing stage actor, which includes an eye-watering scene with a green dildo, has won Philip Roth the dubious honour of a place on the shortlist for the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award.Roth can comfort himself with the fact that a roll call of literary fiction's great and good, from Booker winner John Banville to acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell and Whitbread winner Paul Theroux, have made it into the line-up for this year's bad sex prize, set up by Auberon Waugh to "draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it".On a shortlist of 10, singer Nick Cave was picked for his second novel The Death of Bunny Munro, about a sex-obsessed door-to-door salesman. "Frankly we would have been offended if he wasn't shortlisted," said Anna Frame at his publisher Canongate.The Pulitzer prize-winning Roth makes the line-up for The Humbling, in which the ageing actor Simon converts Pegeen, a lesbian, to heterosexuality. The Literary Review singled out a scene in which Simon and Pegeen pick up a girl from a bar and convince her to take part in a threesome. Simon looks on as Pegeen uses her green dildo to great effect. "This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be," writes Roth. "There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze."'Roth is very anxious about his description of sex," said Jonathan Beckman at the Literary Review of the extract. "Why write of a scene that repeatedly features a green dildo, 'this was not soft porn', unless you're worried that it might be taken as such - in this case, with sentences like 'then she crouched above Tracy, brushing Tracy's lips and nipples with her mouth and fondling her breasts...', the worry seems justified. But it's the overcompensation that qualifies this passage for the award – the totems and shamans are an attempt to convince us that Roth's leering is actually giving some vital anthropological insight."Sanjida O'Connell is the only woman to make the Bad Sex shortlist, selected for The Naked Name of Love, about a young Jesuit priest who is taught how to love by a gifted shaman woman on the eastern steppes of Mongolia.Beckman said the line-up for the 17th annual Bad Sex prize was "very strong, with a good mix of well-known writers and others who are less well-known". Also shortlisted are the first novel from Independent film critic Anthony Quinn, set at the outbreak of the first world war, Simon Van Booy's love-themed short story collection Love Begins in Winter, and 23-year-old Richard Milward's novel Ten Storey Love Song. Comprising just one paragraph and replete with graphic sex scenes, Milward's second novel follows the story of Bobby the Artist as he becomes a star and then sinks into drug-induced psychosis.Milward, who accepted the prize in 2007 on behalf of the late Norman Mailer, said he "would have been upset" if he hadn't been shortlisted this year. "I've been there before and I'll be there again .. There's so much bad sex in my book that this is a nice accolade," he said."Some authors spend five pages describing a walk in the park but when it comes to sex they'll just do two sentences - 'she rolled off him'. Sex is exciting stuff - it can be vey dirty and smelly, but you've just got to get stuck in, and I'm not afraid of doing that."The winner of the award, a plaster foot, will be announced on 30 November at London's In & Out club. Last year's prize was won by Rachel Johnson for her novel Shire Hell, in which at one point the heroine makes a "grab, to put him, now angrily slapping against both our bellies, inside". Previous winners include Sebastian Faulks, AA Gill and Giles Coren, while last year's ceremony also saw John Updike given a lifetime achievement prize after four consecutive nominations.The shortlistPaul Theroux for A Dead HandNick Cave for The Death of Bunny MunroPhilip Roth for The HumblingJonathan Littell for The Kindly OnesAmos Oz for Rhyming Life and DeathJohn Banville for The InfinitiesAnthony Quinn for The Rescue ManSimon Van Booy for Love Begins in WinterSanjida O'Connell for The Naked Name of LoveRichard Milward for Ten Storey Love SongBad sex awardAwards and prizesPhilip RothAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Dictator-lit: The Tajiks in the Mirror of History Historically spurious and spiritually confused, Emomalii Rahmon's presidential history of Tajikistan plays fast and loose with notions of national identiity, but it could have been far, far worse ...The third instalment in an occasional series on books written by some of the world's most notorious dictators. The author's goal is to subject himself to as much tyrant prose as he can bear, reporting back on his findings until the will to live deserts him.The collapse of the USSR brought catastrophe to the central Asian republic of Tajikistan. Between 1992 and 1997, a civil war raged between forces loyal to the Soviet regime and the United Tajik Opposition, which contained a strong Islamist element. By the time collective-farm-boss-turned-president Emomali Rahmonov had established order - with help from Moscow and Uzbekistan – between 60,000 and 100,000 people had died, while a further 730,000 had been displaced. The war cost Tajikistan $7bn - and it was the poorest central Asian state to begin with.Rahmonov spent the war's aftermath pursuing his enemies and holding rigged elections, while struggling to improve the economy and strengthen state institutions. He also found time to write a book, The Tajiks in the Mirror of History, which he intended would furnish the Tajiks with a new, dignified, post-Soviet identity. "In the course of its history and development," says Rahmonov, "the Tajik nation has been confronted by all sorts of vehement opponents who doubted its very existence." Thus, in addition to all its other problems, Tajikistan also faced a serious existential crisis: nobody believed it was real. Rahmonov sought solutions in the region's pre-Islamic past. His thesis is simple: the Tajiks are an ancient nation, whose achievements have been neglected or appropriated by their neighbours. Reclaiming these stolen glories, Rahmonov reveals that the ancient central Asian states of Bactria and Sogdiana were "countries" which should be regarded as the "… origins of first Tajik state". The best period in Tajik history was that of the Samanid State of 819-999AD. Controversially, he also declares the ancient Iranian prophet Zoroaster a local boy. Apparently, Zoroaster fought "atheism" while the Tajiks were always "patriotically minded … ready to defend the principles of progress and enlightenment". Of course, these ideas weren't invented until much later and in Europe to boot, but never mind. Rahmonov also notes that the Avesta of Zoroastrianism is superior to the works of Homer because it is older and has more words (2m v 345,000). Thus, the ex-communist apparatchik essentially replaces the Marxist myth of a future golden age with its much older ancestor: the lost golden age.For all his anachronisms and eccentric arguments, however, Rahmonov isn't entirely wrong. The Tajiks are descended from the ancient Iranian peoples of central Asia, and Zoroastrianism was widely practised in the region. But the history of central Asia is one of invasions, collapsing empires and population transfers. While the term "Tajik" existed prior to the Soviet invention of Tajikistan in 1924, nationalism, or even an identity based on ethno-linguistic criteria, did not: tribe, clan and religion were more important. As a result, when the Bolsheviks imported "scientific" European categories of identity, the locals often did not know who they were supposed to be - which makes Rahmonov's claims of an ethnic Tajik nationalism stretching back into the ancient past highly dubious.But Rahmonov is a dictator, and one of the perks of the job is that you can redefine the past as you please and few will dare to disagree with you. Thus not only does he claim Zoroaster for the glory of the Tajik nation, he also throws out all the bothersome theological stuff. Rahmonov's Zoroaster is barely religious at all, but rather a transmitter of uncontentious moral values, while the Avesta serves as an ethnographic guide to past Tajik greatness. Like the categories of identity, history and territory Rahmonov lifts wholesale from Tajikistan's Soviet founders, this secularising of sacred history is also an old Soviet strategy. Also striking is Rahmonov's profound aversion to Islam. Having just fought a war with Islamists, with the Afghans as neighbours and the Iranians as cousins, Rahmonov strenuously avoids mention of the majority faith of Tajikistan. When he does touch upon it, he implies that it is alien to the "true" Tajik identity: Islam came with the Arab conquest, he explains, and "the religion of our forefathers was prohibited by the force of the sword … The new authorities observed the people and put a watch on their houses, forcefully imposing on them the rules and habits of Muslim law ... many of them were forced to accept the new faith established by the invaders." In 2007, authorities in Dushanbe shut down 300 mosques, leaving only 57 open. The rest were converted for secular use, showing once again that you can take the apparatchik out of the USSR but you can't … etc. Clearly, Rahmonov prefers his faiths ancient and nearly dead. Since publishing TIMOH, Rahmonov has written many more books and elaborated greatly upon his love of Zoroaster. He placed Zoroastrian symbols on the national flag; the government's online news agency is named Avesta and, in 2007, he dropped the Russian suffix from his surname, while urging his countrymen to do the same. He also demanded that the British Museum surrender the Oxus Treasure, which was found on the territory of (the not yet-extant) Tajikistan in the 19th century. And yet, turgid and unreliable as TIMOH undoubtedly is, it could be much worse. Rahmonov, unlike his late neighbour Saparmurat Niyazov, doesn't elevate himself or his family into holy figures, or insert his own rancid poetry into the text, or dribble on about how the Tajiks are descended from Noah. And you can do a lot worse than Zoroaster when it comes to ethical teachings. Alas, Tajikistan inevitably falls short of the prophet's high standards: political corruption, embezzlement, and bribery are rife. The state's policy of ethnic nationalism may ultimately prove divisive in a country where a third of the population is Uzbek. Still, we can dream, and in TIMOH, Rahmonov dreams for an entire nation. Like the man says, "True patriotism and political wisdom will prevail so that the country may take its deserved place in the international arena."Amen.HistoryTajikistanCultural tripsDaniel Kalderguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
I Drink Therefore I Am by Roger Scruton Anthony Quinn enjoys Roger Scruton's passionate appreciation of fine wines, even if some of his recipe suggestions leave much to be desiredRoger Scruton is the sandwich-board man of intellectual discontent. All around him he sees a society in drastic decline, riven with loutishness, neutered by health fascists and enslaved by childish appetites. These last include the consumption of fizzy drinks and, in consequence, the environmental and aesthetic calamity of cans and bottles littering country lanes. But Professor Scruton, better known for his work in philosophy, music and fox-hunting, has a solution: abandon ye your Sprite and discover the moral virtue of drinking wine. I Drink Therefore I Am is a manifesto for civilised behaviour, an attempt to educate his readers in the right way to appreciate wine and thus enjoy a better life in the process.Quite a project, this, and it's an alarming experience to find yourself nodding at frequent stages in the text and thinking: "Hmm, not a bad idea." Scruton is generally not a writer I'd wish to be heard quoting, but whatever else he may be, he's no slouch when it comes to wine, and the first part of the book combines a memoir of his development as a "wino" (his word) with some useful tips and unexpected factoids. Did you know, for instance, that the best food with a white Hermitage is "clay-baked hedgehog" or, failing that, chargrilled squirrel?I'll skip that, come to think of it, but I did welcome the recommendations of a Stellenbosch red, Faithful Hound, which has been mistaken at Scruton's table for Château Léoville-Las Cases, and of varietals such as aglianico from Italy and bierzo from Spain. On the subject of claret – his youthful eureka moment was a sip of'45 Château Trotanoy – he is sound and confesses his occasional surprise "to discover that I drink anything else".He's no snob about wine, either, always on the hunt for a bargain and canny in seeking out those vineyards and plots that lie next to the big names yet charge half the price. Alas, he is prone to the sonorous pomposities of the connoisseur and in phrases such as "the higher liturgy of Bacchus" and the "ceremonial priestcraft" of uncorking a bottle you detect the crooked pinkie and the glint of the pince-nez.His dinner parties sound a real gas: "A good wine should always be accompanied by a good topic"; he prescribes, for example, "whether the Tristan chord is a half-diminished seventh or whether there could be a proof of Goldbach's conjecture." Everybody back to Rog's, then…That pedagogical side comes out strongly in the book's second part, which gets to grips with the philosophical implications of oenophilia. This is less enjoyable, though one may still sift bracing minerals of good sense from the slightly dry lecturing: he is good on wine as the expression of a place and community, on the nuances of intoxication and on the social beneficence of buying rounds. He is insistent, though not entirely convincing, about wine as an agency of moral enhancement: "Wine respects our illusions and even amplifies the more benign among them. But it does not provide an escape route from reality." One must suppose he has never tried drinking Thunderbird.While much of the book is thoughtful and serious, however, Scruton suffers, in common with many academics, an inability to hear when he's making an arse of himself. He can't seem to help it, in ways that are laughable and occasionally poignant. In one flight of fancy about the wines of Collioure he instructs: "Roll the name 'Maillol' in your mouth while imagining well-shaped buttocks and well-matured wine and you won't be far from the taste." I'm afraid he's ruined that one for me.Towards the end he makes the case for "virtuous drinking" and recalls a more sociable period of his life when he would get together certain friends to discuss weighty matters over a few bottles of wine – a symposium, as he inevitably calls it. It was at this point I started feeling rather sorry for the professor, who actually proceeds to name those important friends ("the novelist Ian McEwan" was among them), as if he were trying to persuade his readers that as well as being a philosopher and connoisseur, he's also quite a mover and shaker.But he admits that connecting with people was never his forte and that most of what he learnt about wine he learnt "in solitude". If I hadn't read that he now lives contentedly on a farm with wife and children, I would have felt almost duty-bound to invite the poor man to quaff a few bottles round here. As long as he came without the hedgehog bake, we might have got on, too.House and gardenWineguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
The Silences of Hammerstein: A German Story by Hans Magnus Enzensberger Commander Kurt von Hammerstein knew only the German army could halt the Nazis. Why he did nothing makes for a fascinating story, says Peter PrestonSo you thought there was nothing revealing left to say about the collapse of the Weimar Republic? Think again. One of Germany's most revered poets and literary polymaths has produced a book, part history, part novel, that sheds new light on an extraordinary time through the eyes of an extraordinary family.Meet the von Hammersteins. Dad, from an old military tradition, is the last commander of the German army before Hitler's takeover: remote, cold, intellectual, probably a touch lazy. Kurt's time at home, back from barracks, seems mostly spent alone in his study or spawning more children. Three of his four daughters become members of the Communist party (when father's away, they rifle his safe for top secret documents). And the Gestapo hunt for two sons after Count von Stauffenberg's failed plot to kill the Führer.It's the seeming scenario for an HBO black comedy series, with a profoundly serious twist. Around one Christmas dinner table, you see the wildly differing strands within a society that let the Nazis move from vicious clowns to global menace; and, better yet, you see their story told by a profoundly honest German for a German audience. This is the road to disaster via an inside track – "all the essential motifs and contradictions of the German emergency", Enzensberger writes. It's the closeness of the intermingling that strikes you most astonishingly. Germans, Russians, Bolsheviks, Jews, Nazis … they are different, but also eerily the same, part of a single bizarre pattern.Thus, in 1929, Hammerstein (he scraps the "von" himself) is sent to Moscow to try get help for his constrained, barely equipped force, and finds General Voroshilov in warmly encouraging mood. No tanks because of Versailles? laments this future Marshal of the Soviet Union. "The USSR is not bound by any treaties, and we can make tanks not only for ourselves but also for others." Have some of ours, then. Meanwhile, could you "acquaint us with the new chemical weapons the Reich has at its disposal?"Thus there is vile violence on the streets and a kind of indolent fatalism at the top. "If the German herd voted for such a leader – then they should also take the consequences," Hammerstein tells a pretty young girl from Bohemia who turns out to be a Russian agent. You're ducking out, she replies, you're playing the aristocrat. "That's the only intelligent thing a gentleman can do now…. I'm not a 'hero'… I stand my ground if I have to. But I don't shove my shoulder to wheel of history as your lot do."Thus, while there's a "deeply rooted, virtually taken-for-granted anti-Semitism" among the aristocratic elites – plus a cynically opportunist wish to climb on the right bandwagon – there is also a sense of honour among the 70 or so aristocratic names rounded up after the July 1944 coup. At home with the Hammersteins, Jews came and went in friendship and utter sociability. Daughter Helga had a long romance with one (Leo Roth) who also took Kremlin orders. This is a cauldron and a melting pot. This is confusion as well as calculation. This is a Germany, and a Europe, flailing for balance, trying at ground level to discover what it any longer amounts to.Enter, one stride at a time, "the little Austrian corporal". He is received with ambivalence. "Apart from the pace, the Nazis actually want the same things as the Reichswehr," writes Hammerstein in 1930. He grows in repugnance. "I can sleep easily again now, since I know that, if need be, I can order the troops to fire on the Nazis," Hammerstein confides two years later. And yet there is only muddle and frailty here. Those troops are not ordered into action as the Führer seizes complete control. Many of the officers who later turned against Hitler in defeat initially flocked to salute the swastika. "The bourgeoisie is dominated by a general state of paralysis, by a fatalistic wait-and-see attitude," one shrewd Soviet spy inside a ministry reports. "Everyone whispers in his neighbour's ear, full of fear of exposing themselves, all feel that 'something else is still to come'."An army coup, perhaps? Hammerstein could have been at the heart of it – along with his friend Kurt von Schleicher, defence supremo and briefly chancellor. But nothing happened. Von Schleicher and his wife were brutally murdered after the abortive (and rather separate) Rohm putsch. Hammerstein was retired – only to be briefly reappointed to a notional command when the war began. There were more tales of an army rebellion in the making; again, without result. Our hero, who was also non-hero, died of natural causes in 1943, just as Hitler was preparing to move against him. His son Franz wrote in his dairy that "it must have been terrible for him to stand and watch Germany being destroyed without him being able to do anything about it. Hardly anyone predicted developments as accurately as he did."True: Hammerstein knew Germany could not win. He might have turned events another way, but he did not have the strength. He was the still, calm voice in the corner that nobody listened to until it was too late. Enzensberger conducts "posthumous interviews" with him – the novel element of this book – and many other participants, as the narrative unwinds. They let Hammerstein reflect on the "political shambles" of the time when everyone involved, including his chum Schleicher, moved from one tawdry alliance to another. They also allow him to take his motto, "Fear is no philosophy of life", to praise his children as they carried on resisting after his death.And here we are, at the close of this "exemplary German story", with the communist utopia gone, but "signs of life to the German-Jewish symbiosis". With hope and a fresh beginning. It's an intricate, fascinating account, its fictions – simple bounds of imagination – only used to illuminate and explain. Don't expect pat theorising, all loose ends tied. Hammerstein dies midway through the third act, the real end of a real life. But he – and especially his older daughters, Marie-Therese, Marie-Louise and Helga – are haunting figures. They tell us what it was like to endure the Berlin of the 1930s. And, in their amazements, they help us understand.HistoryPeter Prestonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
McNally Robinson emerges from bankruptcy protection McNally Robinson Booksellers has emerged from bankruptcy protection and the owner of the company believes there is still a strong future for the industry. cbc.ca |