Passacaglia and Fugue

Book Review: My Inventions and Other Writings, by Nikola Tesla
If I'd read this a few years ago I would probably have filed it as largely pseudoscience. With developments in recent years, I would still regard it as such, but would add that there's a lot of egotistic pronouncement about what Tesla would like to be the case in areas where he did not have knowledge (because it wasn't available yet). Tesla was right about quite a few things and maybe was a genius - certainly he thought so - but he was also wrong about a lot of things and failed to keep quiet about them. Does any of this (probably not all of this) sound familiar?

Sadly there isn't that much real science in the book, and the edition I read also omits the illustrations which originally accompanied the writing, which might be important in some cases. There is a lot of writing about war and armaments, which reads completely naïvely today (the idea of machines fighting each other in a bloodless war is not quite how things turned out). Most of the writing is either nineteenth century, or refers to events in that period. Some things might have been different if Tesla had understood relativity or the photoelectric effect - or human nature.

Book Review: Chernobyl Prayer, by Svetlana Alexievich
This is a collection of testimony, first published in 1997 and therefore, I guess, motivated by the tenth anniversary, from various people living in Belarus affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986.

It feels unedited and minimally curated, which is both a strength and a weakness. For certain, these voices should be heard; but on the other hand, My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge is writ large in some of this, and unfortunately it's just not true. Ten years on, some people had plenty of evidence in the form of lost loved ones and/or illnesses themselves. Those with some scientific training generally produce better reports. Some early sections are quite graphic and make for difficult reading. Of course, the disaster took place in a very different culture and many of the responses are a reflection of that. With the passage of time, this invites comparison with the way the Covid pandemic was handled, and it's not gratifying. Emergency procedures and equipment that were out of date and unusable? Check. An expectation that the authorities would keep people safe, when in fact they had no idea what to do? Check. We can't see it/taste it/feel it, so there's nothing there? Check. Death as a result of (sometimes heroic, sometimes foolhardy) exposure? Check. It's worth bearing in mind the priceless four stages of policy from Yes, Prime Minister, as applicable here as in the Foreign Office:

1. Stage one, we say nothing is going to happen.


2. Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.


3. Stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.


4. Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.

For me, there is certainly a case for some level of nuclear programme (we need a supply of radioisotopes for medical use, for example) but we have never seriously addressed the problem of nuclear waste, preferring forever to kick it down the road. The economic case has always turned out to be optimistic (one can say that for many, if not most, large-scale infrastructure projects).

Coincidentally, while going through the recordings on Dad's PVR, I found a documentary on the history of nuclear power. The programme itself stuck to facts and may not have shifted minds in either direction, but it did fairly cover the safety disconnect between the nuclear lobby and the real world - essentially, the argument that "it couldn't happen here" after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl; more difficult to make that claim following Fukushima. It's not about the small probability of an accident; it's about the grave consequences of such an accident.

Book Review: The Double Comfort Safari Club, by Alexander McCall Smith
Some books in this series are rather void of events; but this one is full of them, and is a better read for it. An accident befalls Phuti Radiphuti, with consequences; the detectives are looking for a vaguely specified legacy beneficiary; and one of Mma Ramotswe's friends has a delicate request which becomes tricky to handle. This series doesn't go for depth, but Mma Ramotswe in particular is often philosophical.

Book Review: Three Against The Wilderness, by Eric Collier
I've been clearing the bookshelves at Dad's home. Some are definitely to discard: they're of no interest, or they're duplicates; others are plausibly to keep; and others are probably worth a read but unlikely to be kept. This fell into that last category. In many cases it's not clear whether a book was initially Mum's or Dad's; this tale of remote Canadian settlement could go either way (I had increasingly distant family on Mum's side, now lost touch, in British Columbia).

Collier abandoned life in Britain in the 1920s as a young man, disinterested in urban life, and emigrated to Canada. In British Columbia he married a woman of part Native American descent, and obtained a land grant of more than 100,000 acres at least 300 kilometres north of Vancouver. This memoir covers the following 30 years or so, starting with nothing but the woods and a tent for shelter, and horses and a wagon for transport.

There's an irony in the early chapters of the book, where Collier attributes the poor land quality to the hunting to local extinction of the beaver for furs. As Collier describes it, the Native Americans, who hunted the beaver to extinction, blamed the white settlers and colonisers for not understanding the limits of the resources available - so much for the overwhelming contemporary perception that indigenous peoples live in balance with nature. But, in understanding and managing the land, Collier first mimics the beavers' actions in replenishing dams to improve and manage water supply and local irrigation, and later, persuades the authorities to reintroduce beavers to the area successfully. It feels in this area that Collier was ahead of his time - or perhaps of his time, given that this was mostly almost a hundred years ago - that one would get better results by working with nature rather than attempting fruitlessly to conquer it.

Collier tells of various episodes where the family is imperilled by nature: often by severe weather, occasionally by aggressive wildlife. Fortunately he never seems to have had serious incidents with the few other humans in the area, and his writing is never anything but respectful to native peoples. On the other hand, his attitudes to gender haven't aged so well, though his wife certainly played as much of an equal role as she was allowed, and the necessity of his situation perhaps made things more progressive on that score than he was comfortable with. His son Veasy was home-schooled, which also seems unusual and difficult in such remote circumstances, but must have been successful. Even in the remotest parts, the twentieth century intervenes: Veasy negotiates the introduction of a jeep for transport, and towards the end of the book he leaves to join the Canadian army and serves in the Korean war.

We ended the holidays by taking a trip to Dulwich Picture Gallery yesterday, to see the Anna Ancher exhibition. Although they always take place in the same space, some of their exhibitions are large and others small. This one felt on the small side, but the highlights were well worth seeing. In particular I found Three old women sewing a blue dress for a fancy dress ball reminiscent of Sorolla'a Sewing the sail: Northern rather than Southern European light, and a different subject, but a common communal sense of purpose.

Sunlight in the Blue Room

Three old women sewing a blue dress for a fancy dress ball

Harvesters

Collecting up the last few months' reading into a single post. With the passage of time some of the details are a bit vague.

The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage
A very readable history of the telegraph, starting with the optical versions but focussing mostly on nineteenth century innovations. While Cooke and Wheatstone bickered in the UK, Morse and others ploughed ahead in the US. The technology sustained an information revolution that was only superseded by the telephone.

Democracy: Eleven writers and leaders on what it is – and why it matters
A brief book containing essays by female writers on the nature of democracy, past and present.

Consciousness Explained, by Daniel C Dennett
A tricky book that I should probably have paused. Dennett had some ideas to do away with the "Cartesian theatre" - the concept of a single controlling entity somewhere in the brain. Disappointingly there was no attempt to join this "multiple drafts" model up with quantum physics.

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
A classic, and a lighter read. The entertainment nowadays is in the story-telling, rather than the conclusion.

Lost Realms, by Thomas Williams
Williams visits the skimpy evidence for nine kingdoms in post-Roman Britain. Despite seeking to avoid the English heptarchy, he includes Essex and Sussex in his choice. There are some telling points for our current politics, if people would choose to read them: for example, the assimilation of the Roman way of life into the post-Roman world, evidenced by amphorae and other traded goods in excavations in Cornwall and elsewhere; or the reminder that "English" are immigrants, the native "Britons" are now mostly Welsh. The inclusion of Fortriu definitely makes the Picts out to be a people apart, though Roman influences can be found even there.

Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman
First read in 2021, this was a re-read following the film adaptation.

I recall John Le Carré saying words to the effect that when your book is turned into a film or TV adaptation, you have to let go, and trust them to get on with it. It's sound advice. When this happens to a book, it's because it has been successful. But, inevitably, people who have read the book will compare the new rendition, and probably unfavourably.

( Possible spoilers )

Book Review: Sounds of the River, by Da Chen
An interesting memoir of Da Chen's teenage and twenty-something years, mostly in the 1980s. Descended from a landowning family, the Chens were out of favour during the Cultural Revolution, but as it ended, the teenager Da Chen obtained a place at the Beijing Language Institute to study English. This volume begins as Chen leaves his home village of Yellow Stone for the big city. Part of his story is universal - coming of age, making new friends in new places, encountering triumph and tragedy. Initially his city-dwelling fellow students look down on the country boy, but he studies hard, and makes friends with foreign students who are outsiders as well. Chen further finds obstruction because he is insufficiently politically astute, and there is a darker side, with progression dependent ubiquitously on bribing professors and officials. Written with the distance of time, Chen's writing sparks anger against the corruption, but not bitterness. Even with the obstacles, he finds opportunities to learn and grow, working both for government-arranged tours and giving private tuition, leaving an impression of humanity perennially battling against an unthinking system.

I'd known for a while that a film adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club was underway, but disappointed to hear it was being made by Netflix and concerned that it would be exclusively available on their platform. However, it is at least on some kind of cinema release, so I went along to the Showcase in Winnersh yesterday.

How does it compare to the book? Well, it's recognisably the same story and I enjoyed it, although it feels like there are some omissions and some additions. In my mind I'd cast Celia Imrie as Elizabeth, Thema Barlow as Joyce, the voice of Indarjit Singh as Ibrahim, while never really settling on a characterisation of Ron (Former football manager Ron Atkinson, perhaps, but only as some sort of default). Tempus fugit, as it turns out: Celia Imrie is now Joyce; Pierce Brosnan has aged into Ron; Ben Kingsley's clipped and impeccable English is Ibrahmin; and Helen Mirren is a cold Elizabeth. Rather than being a purpose-built low-rise retirement village, Coopers Chase is in fact the nearby Englefield House. I think I preferred the book, and I'm inclined to prioritise a re-read. But even though it's not quite how I'd imagined it, it works.

Tuesday's Prom was already a sell-out in the seats, and I wasn't surprised at the longer queue for the arena. This time I found myself in the third row, so nothing to be dissatisfied with.
The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by Andris Nelsons, began with Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten. It's a piece I have seen performed before, quite a long time ago, in 2007 it seems. The bell was truly sonorous, perhaps even melodious simply of itself, but where was it coming from? It took a while to work out it was hidden at the back of the flat part of the stage, behind the strings. It was also satisfyingly bell-shaped, rather than tubular. Intuitively I feel that bells are individual instruments, not mass-produced, and so finding the harmonic blend between the strings and the bell is tricky. The final strike of the bell was audible, but it didn't really matter. As the final toll decayed, Nelsons held the silence well. Clearly the audience were a serious lot.

The central work in the programme, Dvořák's Violin Concerto, was new to me - I think. Isabelle Faust was a late replacement as the soloist for Hilary Hahn, due to injury. She certainly seemed to have a rapport with the orchestra and conductor. The work was immediately familiar, if not entirely distinctive. Maybe I have heard it - or excerpts from it - before - or maybe it just sounds generic in places, I'm not sure. It doesn't suffer from over-longevity the way the composer's cello concerto does, but it probably isn't quite up there with its approximate contemporaries, concertos by Brahms or Tchaikovsky. Faust gave a solo encore which the arena considered likely to be Bach, but which BBC Sounds attributes to Nicola Matteis. So you learn something new every day.

The second half was a performance of Sibelius's Symphony No 2, another work I have seen a few times, most recently in 2018. Several things were quickly apparent. The difference antiphonal seating can make, with the way the sound moves through the different string sections. The difference between a good orchestra and a truly great one, with the absolute clarity and sound quality. The confidence of the brass section. The sometimes esoteric movements of the conductor. The feeling of flying, or perhaps skimming the water's surface, in the final movement. True joy is a serious matter, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus were serious indeed.