TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Top flights From nursery rhyme to Baudelaire, the birdwatcher and the poet spot literature's finest flights of fancyAs well as being one of Britain's most popular and acclaimed poets, Simon Armitage is also a dramatist, novelist, broadcaster and the winner of an Ivor Novello award for his song lyrics to the Channel 4 film Feltham Sings. His nine poetry collections include The Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs. Tim Dee is a BBC radio producer based in Bristol. He is the author of The Running Sky, a memoir of his birdwatching life.The Poetry of Birds is their new – ornithologically ordered – anthology of the best bird poems, newly published by Penguin. Buy Tim Dee and Simon Armitage books at the Guardian bookshop"If we are to continue to live with birds about us we need bird poems as much as the RSPB," writes Tim Dee. "Birdwatchers don't necessarily make good poets but the best bird poems are steeped in observation and detail which promote their authors to among the very best watchers of birds. Since the beginnings of English poetry poets have been drawn to birds. The fleeting bewitching quality of birds' flight and song have been mainstays of poetry ever since. And despite depleted numbers and the loss of house sparrows and cuckoos and many other species, birds continue to populate poetry in a noisy and colourful conversation with the wild. Long may they do so."Tim Dee's choicesThe Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins. A poem that enacts as well as describes, as if Hopkins were channelling a kestrel hovering 100ft up in the wind; it is mind-blowing no matter how many times you read it. The Heron by Paul Farley. In which a heron taking flight is compared, decisively and brilliantly, to a grumpy old man getting up to buy a packet of cigarettes; perfect pastoral poetry for today. The Wren by Norman Nicholson. A beautifully observed poem about a male wren building an unwanted nest; it is ornithologically accurate but also a heartbreaking elegy for Nicholson's father and the male of the species in general. Sing a Song of Sixpence. The "blackbirds" of the nursery rhyme might be rooks, they make very tasty pies; but regardless of the birds or their end, the poem celebrates the deep and continuing entanglement of birds and people at all levels of life. The Yellowhammer's Nest by John Clare. A birder's poem: Clare's description is pin sharp and indistinguishable from the lofty text of The Handbook of British Birds. He was a consummate nest finder and put his field-notes into poems and described more birds in them than any other poet before or since. Surely the greatest bird poet in the language. Simon Armitage's choicesThe Albatross by Charles Baudelaire. A grand lofty poem by a grand lofty poet, it has a thumping confidence in its assertion that bird and poet are of the same species. Leda and the Swan by WB Yeats. A poem of brutality and wild beauty. I've always given swans a wide birth since reading this poem at school. Cock-Crows by Ted Hughes. Hughes is one of the great bird poets. This is an orgiastic firework display of common hens calling to the dawn, as seen from the height of the hill. The Exposed Nest by Robert Frost. The lines "We saw the risk we took in doing good,/but dared not spare to do the best we could/though harm should come of it" stay with me. It's about covering up an exposed bird's nest, but it could be about Iraq, Afghanistan ... Curlew by Gillian Clarke. Wonderfully observed and described. One of those classic bird poems in which the bird appears to offer huge significance to our life and our world (without, presumably, any intention or knowledge of doing so!)Best booksPoetrySimon Armitageguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
We can afford to be choosy | Douglas Murray Violent fanaticism is never acceptable. This is no less true because we approve of the cause the fanatics claim to speak forThe question: Is fanaticism always wrong?The word "fanatic" has scare quotes quite properly written into it. A fanatic commits to an ideal to whatever end. A fanatic throws everything aside to pursue their idea.Take something which it would be good to be committed to like basic human rights. You might campaign for such a thing. You might spend every day of your life pursuing such a thing. But once you become fanatical about it anything can happen. Fanatics end by subverting their own argument. For instance, animal rights activists have some point and many people feel sympathy with them. But animal rights fanatics do not have a point. They are the sort of people who threaten human beings in their effort to "defend" animals. Fanaticism always leads down such paths because it absolves its devotees from the levelling necessity of constant self-criticism.Fanaticism is at its very strongest when it has political or, better still, religious motivation. Strangely, such fanaticisms are the types most often excused. In part this is the expression of a relativistic age in which belief in anything – even Islamist nihilism – seems admirable to those who can bring themselves to believe in nothing. But the confusion starts earlier and runs deep.We have to divide aims and tactics. John Brown could be right about a major issue but that does not mean he was right in everything he did. He could be right in his drive whilst being wrong in some or all of the things he did as a result. A good cause need not be tarnished by its most fanatical expressions. But it is rarely helped by them.We must also be able to divide right causes from wrong ones. One of the most infuriating clichés in current circulation is: "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Like most clichés it attempts to shut-down rather than add to discussion. It may well be the case on occasion (though not nearly so often as the cliche's speakers think). But if it is the case then why bother finding anything out? After all, if one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter why bother finding out which is which in a particular case?I think we can do – indeed we have to do – better than this. Let me give an example. Those of us who are friendly towards the Israeli state often notice that in Britain at any rate there is a form of anti-Israeli-ism somewhat distinct from the more rabid recent varieties. It tends to be held by British people of the older generation who will tell you that the Israeli state was founded on terrorism. They cite the acts of such groups as the Irgun and Stern gangs. I find these groups cited at me quite often, as though I must, inevitably, be sympathetic to some terrorism and not others, or that I will deny that one is terrorism at all. I mention this not to argue the rights and wrongs of that conflict but simply to point out that it is perfectly possible to share political sympathies with people who commit or committed terrorist acts whilst being wholly opposed to their actions. Like some 1940s terrorists I think the idea of a Jewish state a good one. But I do not believe blowing up the King David hotel was any way to go about it.The cause of the Palestinian people suffers more than anything from the presence of fanatics within its ranks. Take the fanatics out and no good argument for not creating a state remains. Some 40 years ago Catholics in Northern Ireland suffered discrimination. But their cause was helped least of all by the re-emergence of the fanatics of the IRA who putatively fought for them. As in the Middle East, the fanatics only prolonged – and multiplied – the suffering of those they claimed to be concerned for as much as those they claimed to oppose.Let me put it another way for a moment. In 2004 the journalist John Pilger gave an interview which I have done my bit to make better known. Asked whether the so-called "anti-war movement" should support the "anti-occupation resistance" in Iraq he proclaimed "Yes, I do. We cannot afford to be choosy." It is the only phrase of Pilger's that could ever haunt me. The idea that there is ever a time when "we cannot afford to be choosy" should be anathema to decent people. The idea that 2004 was such a moment does not only demonstrate that Pilger does not possess a moral compass, it shows that he does not possess a moral clock.Fanaticism represents the moment when people decide to override their instinct to be "choosy". Once that decision has been made anything at all can happen. And usually does.ReligionPhilosophyDouglas Murrayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Best Music Writing 2009; edited by Greil Marcus Gareth Grundy enjoys a compendium of the year's best rock journalismGiven the destruction technology continues to wreak on the music industry, the lot of the music journalist seems much like that of the farrier at the dawn of the internal combustion engine: ludicrously specialised, definitely antiquated and woefully short on prospects. The truth, as Nick Hornby, Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill or any other graduates of this notoriously poorly paid vocation might tell you, is that as a trade it's always been that way. Plus, the death of rock'n'roll's worn-out business model is hardly the same as the passing of music itself, not when as individuals we possess more of it than ever before and carry that personal archive around in our pockets. Similarly, the steady decay of the traditional music press – the NME, Q, Mojo, Rolling Stone et al – on both sides of the Atlantic isn't necessarily the same as the demise of decent writing about popular music's place in the world as it is now.Another music press graduate, the Guardian's John Harris, caused ripples of discomfort among his former peers when he examined these issues at length in June. He cited Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus's highly regarded 1989 exploration of the links between punk, 1960s counterculture and the early-20th-century avant-garde, as an example of what the genre can achieve when it puts in some effort. That strength – an ability to reveal something about the world beyond how rich, famous or high any particular artist might be – is the starting point of this Marcus-edited anthology of some of the finer recent examples of the form.Previous editors of this well-established, sometimes hit-and-miss annual round-up have included Hornby, Jonathan Lethem and Simpsons creator Matt Groening. But San Francisco-born Marcus, Rolling Stone's reviews editor in the magazine's early years and now an eminent cultural historian, is the perfect choice for its 10th edition. He's part of the reason music journalism was taken seriously in the first place, at least by American outlets, which this edition, like most of its predecessors, almost exclusively favours.The sole British representative is drawn from this very newspaper: Michael Odell coaxing some gently profound quotes from former Orange Juice singer Edwyn Collins, following his recent recovery from two brain haemorrhages. Elsewhere, Marcus's decision not to bother with any standard profile pieces, on the basis that they say mostly the same glib things, proves sensible. Britney Spears gives interviews consisting largely of gibberish, but by choosing instead to swim with the pond life that surrounds her, Vanessa Grigoriadis skewers both the contemporary obsession with celebrity, and its ground zero ("She's the perfect celebrity for America in decline: like President Bush, she just doesn't give a fuck").Speaking to famously self-destructive New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne can be equally fruitless, but David Ramsey's reminiscence of his first year teaching in the city, post-Katrina, provides a far better explanation of just what the hip-hop star's success means to fans short on options and struggling to live in the moment. Pleasingly, there's room for smaller-scale characters too, with David Remnick's study of New York jazz fanatic Phil Schaap unfolding into a warm tale of eccentricity that's equal parts Rain Man and Zelig.For several years, the series has included work first published online. Generally, the zippier, funnier articles, such as Carrie Brownstein from the band Sleater-Kinney's spoof record reviews, survive the transition to old media the best. That said, Tom Ewing's thoughtful posting on the legacy of the late John Peel and his annual compilation, the Festive 50, should convince the last remaining digital refuseniks that the music journalism of the future won't be entirely made up of links and YouTube clips. At least, not just yet.MusicPop and rockGareth Grundyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Committed: a Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert A sequel millions will cheer for, says Nicola BarrWhen Elizabeth Gilbert appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, Winfrey declared she hadn't been so excited since Bono was on. This neatly captures Gilbert's very particular success with her previous book, Eat, Pray, Love, her memoir of a year spent abroad reassembling herself post-early-30s divorce and subsequent breakdown: global recognition on the one hand, individual female adoration on the other. Women didn't just love Eat, Pray, Love; they assimilated it, spun narratives out of it, as if it was their story Gilbert had told. The book sold seven million copies.Any subsequent effort was always going to be as much about the difficulty of writing anything again, ever. In her "Note to the Reader" at the start of Committed, Gilbert talks of the impossibility of repeating her "freakish" success. "I do not know how to write a beloved bestseller," she writes, perhaps pointedly to those detractors who saw in her first book's mix of memoir, self-help, self-improvement and spirituality a rather obvious route to bestsellerdom.Although, like millions of others, I adored Eat, Pray, Love, I wasn't overwhelmed with joy when I heard Gilbert had chosen to write, as her follow up, a "sociocultural dissection of marriage". To be honest, I wasn't particularly pleased when she fell in love with a sexy Brazilian called Felipe at the end of Eat, Pray, Love, never mind sticking with the dude and ending up married to him when visa problems meant it was their only way to live together in the US. Frankly, I'd seen Liz through two break-ups in Eat, Pray, Love – her marriage and her passionate post-marriage affair. My happy ending for her was, you know, some more alone time.But in love she was, and the necessity of marrying Felipe presented her with the structure for her follow-up: a memoir, yes, but framed by an examination of marriage at a time in its history when the institution has never been less popular. Gilbert is not at her most comfortable mired in socio-historical research, and the early parts of Committed are a garbled mess. Gilbert soon hits her stride, however, and the book grows into a lively commentary on a paradoxical institution she represents as repressive and expansive, subversive and conformist.Try as she might, though, she can't draw herself away from what she does best: telling her own story with humble but courageous honesty. Resistant to Felipe I may initially have been, but her descriptions of their growing love, their struggle with US immigration, their efforts at keeping their relationship on an even keel through testing circumstances (and not shouting out on a bus in Vietnam "the whole crapping rant" going on in her head), their desire not to replicate their own failures, their nausea at the thought of another public wedding – all this won me over.When they do finally get married, ruminating all done, doubts quashed, green cards in place, Liz in her favourite red sweater, I defy the most hardened sceptic to be indifferent.Gilbert's ambivalence about marriage is genuine. I don't believe she even cared enough about the process to delve properly into its history, which is why sections of this book feel so cursory and forced. But this doesn't make it a failure. It just doesn't quite do what it says on the tin. It isn't, thank God, a handbook for marriage. Nor is it a diatribe against it. Really, it's a study of intimacy, partnership and romantic love, and the possibility – or impossibility – of it in the 21st century, told in that effortlessly analytical, wittily self-deprecating, chummily wise voice that we all fell so hard for last time around. Oprah – and millions of other women – will welcome her back with open arms.MarriageWomenNicola Barrguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Books of The Times: North Korea Keeps Hiding, and Fascinating Three provocative new books about North Korea parse the slivers of light that escape this enigmatic and often baffling place. feeds.nytimes.com |