Booker longlist announced!

Here it is, the official longlist for the 2005 Man Booker Prize:

The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw

The Sea by John Banville

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

Slow Man by JM Coetzee

In the Fold by Rachel Cusk

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

All For Love by Dan Jacobson

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Saturday by Ian McEwan

The People’s Act of Love by James Meek

Shalimar The Clown by Salman Rushdie

The Accidental by Ali Smith

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

This Thing Of Darkness by Harry Thompson

This Is The Country by William Wall

I'm intrigued. It's about half the size of previous years' longlists, and it's nice to see some of the big names there - actually, they almost dominate the list this time around. There are also three debut novels. Al-Guardian weighs in:

Professor John Sutherland, chairman of this year's judging panel, described 2005 as an "exceptional year" for fiction, saying that, in the judges' opinion, the longlist ranked as "one of the strongest since the prize was founded." He went on to say that "the judges have enjoyed their judging experience enormously - so far."

Now in its 37th year, the prize is acknowledged to have the power to transform the lives of the authors who win it; at the very least, instantly soaring sales figures are guaranteed. The prize was awarded last year to Alan Hollinghurst, who pipped David Mitchell and Colm Toíbín to the post with The Line of Beauty, his devastating satire of the Conservative government of the 1980s. Following his win, his previously critically acclaimed but only modestly successful novel spent the rest of the year on the bestseller lists.

The prize, the most high profile in the UK's literary calendar, is open to fiction writers from the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The shortlist will be unveiled on September 8, and the winner of the award, now four years into its sponsorship by the Canadian Man investment group, will be announced at a ceremony at the London's Guildhall on October 10.

Brief descriptions for each novel are available on the BBC website. I might just get around to reading one or two before the short-list is announced, depending on how far I get with my reading for uni. Sigh...

Thoughts on End of Summer (Yasujiro Ozu)

I viewed End of Summer (1961), Ozu’s second-to-last film, yesterday. As well as being another masterpiece from an artist who was possibly the most consistently excellent film-maker of all time, this story of the disintegration of a family is also remarkably different from any other Ozu film I have seen. Despite being shot in sumptuous Technicolor, it is undoubtedly one of the bleakest films in the great director’s oeuvre.

Skimming through a plot synopsis, one would think we are in familiar Ozu territory. Two daughters are being pressed by their once-prosperous family to marry. As is often the case, they, the eldest and youngest of the family’s three daughters, have other plans. To complicate the situation at home, their dad is sneaking out to visit an old lover, with whom he has had an illegitimate daughter. A man of failing health, it is after a day out with his former flame that he collapses and dies.

Many of Ozu's films do end with a sense of irretrievable loss - but there is often also that bittersweet moment when the characters resign themselves to the fact that life has to go on. Yet as Ozu scholar and Japanese film buff Donald Richie says, there are almost no "survivors" when End of Summer finishes. The final scenes of the crematorium smokestacks, the black-clad figures moving along a pier and that very last shot of crows cawing on an empty beach can have a different effect - one not of wistfulness, but of devastation. The dramatic soundtrack (rare for an Ozu film) adds to this almost overbearing sensation.

Yet a difference in tone does not mean a difference in quality. End of Summer is an outstanding film, and well worth seeing. The tension, while maybe not as subtle as in the earlier masterworks, never approaches Hollywood-style melodrama, and Ozu’s gentle humour is also evident in places, particularly the scene in which the mischievous patriarch sees, and takes, an opportunity to escape to his girlfriend during a game of hide-and-seek with his grandson. The clash of East and West in 1960s Japan, being felt more accutely now than before, is documented poignantly. And, of course, the performances are excellent, with the saintly Setsuko Hara playing a considerably older character than her “Norikos”, and Chishu Ryu in a welcome cameo as an old fisherman.

The Artificial Eye DVD edition of the film, like the Criterion Good Morning, is simply inadequate. In terms of extras, an Ozu filmography is all we get, and the transfer leaves something to be desired. The image isn’t as sharp as it could have been, and the colour-scheme is rather eccentric, with skin tones ranging from ruddy to a chalky pink, which is probably not what Ozu intended (look at DVDBeaver's review for an idea on how this film should look). Another problem for Criterion to rectify. I wish they’d pull finger.

Someone doesn't like Israel...

The New Zealand Palestinian Human Rights Campaign is an ostensible "human rights" organisation, which, like others of its ilk, seems to think that "human rights" should not be extended to Israeli citizens. Working to improve the situation of the Palestinian people sounds like a noble endeavour, sure enough, but when dehumanisation of Israel and its citizens is thrown into the bargain, something is wrong.

Much of the PHRC's on-site literature is by a chap by the name of Leslie Bravery. He appears to be an English ex-pat (judging from an earlier article of his) with something, perhaps personal, against Israel. Yes, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the occasional abuses this entails are open subjects for debate, but Bravery never misses an opportunity to slander Israel for merely existing, ignoring key facts of the conflict and offering his readers, in occasional letters to The Listener or "editorials" published on the PHRC website, a distorted view of the situation. Ultimately, Israel is cast in a near-demonic light while the Palestinians are guiltless no matter what barbarities they commit. Like any propagandist, Bravery isn't above overstating his case using over-emotive language, hyperbole, misleading quotations and misrepresentations of Zionism's purpose. Here's just a quick sampling:

Israel’s toxic waste is analogous to the poisonous racism of Zionist ideology, which flows into and infects popular consciousness, subverting perceptions of morality. This pollution of conscience allows the resistance to occupation of an abused people to be almost universally reported as ‘violence’, while the State that is the abuser is admired as ‘the only democracy in the region’ and its leader hailed by US President Bush as ‘a man of peace.’

The wording in the above passage is eerily similar to antisemitic tracts - you know, all talk of "the Jews" casting their evil influence on the world. Bravery has claimed he is not an antisemite ("the Palestinians are semites too, you know"), but this sort of rhetoric makes me a little sceptical.

And, having supposedly grown up in England during the Blitz, he feels qualified to compare Israeli security measures to Nazi aggression:

Memories of growing up in London during the Blitz help me to understand, just a little, what bombardment must mean for Palestinians. Hitler’s air raids did succeed in making people afraid – but not afraid of hitting back – and Nazi bombs, flying bombs and V2 missiles inspired nothing but contempt and defiance.

Elsewhere, he particularly enjoys comparing Palestinian terrorists to the French resistance:

In the recent commemorations of D-Day it was noticeable that very little tribute was given to the French Resistance. These heroic men, women and children played a vital role in sabotaging the Nazi occupation – the Nazis called them ‘terrorists’. Honouring the French Resistance has gone out of fashion, no doubt, because of the uneasy resonance it must have with reactions to present-day injustices imposed by the powerful upon the powerless.

There are many differences between the French Resistance and suicide bombers - and they are not exactly subtle ones. For one, I don't recall reading about French resistors sneaking into Berlin to blow up cafes and buses full of civilians.

In his latest rant, Bravery opens with a description of the "Free Palestine" rally held each month in the Auckland CBD. He meets a young Palestinian gentleman who had entered New Zealand on an illegal South African passport (just like someone else we Kiwis know) - one supposes this is because people holding a Palestinian passport cannot enter the country. He is due to stand trial. He left South Africa, understandably, because it is a violent place and chose New Zealand because it was the clean, green, very friendly and welcoming country it is reputed to be. Then...

He finally asked me, "Why is the New Zealand Government so friendly to Israel?" I couldn't think of an adequate reply.

The New Zealand government is "friendly" to Israel? Surely, Bravery could've told his new friend about the "Israeli Spy" scandal, which received world-wide attention and prompted Auntie Helen to cut all diplomatic ties with Israel until fairly recently, when she was presented with the apology she demanded. But as the Palestinians are supposed to be a beleaguered people with no friends in the world, such information is easily ignored in favour of a "purer" narrative of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli malevolence.

And here come the comparisions:

Israeli passport holders enjoy visa-free visitor status when entering this country, while every possible obstacle is placed in the way of Palestinians wishing to do the same. Israel does not allow the Palestinians free right of entry or exit from their own land. The Zionist State does not even allow freedom of movement to Palestinians within their own land. As you may read above, Israel does not, at times, even allow Palestinians the freedom to enter or leave their own homes. Worse still, Palestinians all too often are not even allowed the freedom to move from room to room within their own homes!

Aside from the usual hysterics, no context is provided (note also the disdainful reference to the "Zionist State"). Israel is simply making the Palestinians' lives a misery for sheer sadistic pleasure.

A Palestinian mother has within the past 48 hours been beaten up in her home and her children terrorised by soldiers imbued with an ideology of ethnic supremacy.

This is a common Bravery tactic - take one horrible (isolated) incident, and blow it out of proportion to present an illustration of how absolutely evil Israel is (and don't forget to bring in the children!) The fact that the evil IDF stormtroopers Bravery vilifies include among their ranks Jews of numerous shapes and colours as well as Arab, Druze and other non-Jewish soldiers (and citizens of Israel) makes nonsense of his allegation that they are somehow "imbued with an ideology of ethnic supremacy". And the fact that I can't seem to find any information about the above incident (and probably wouldn't outside a press release from the lovely ISM) speaks volumes.

The Occupation and the settlements are in flagrant violation of the human rights and international law that New Zealand claims to support. It looks very much as though New Zealand is selective when it comes to demanding that other countries respect human rights. "Why is the New Zealand Government so friendly to Israel?" That's a very good question.

New Zealand should redeem itself by withdrawing the special favour it accords Israeli passport holders until Israel accords a similar dignity to Palestinians.

In the end, it's funny that Bravery, so eager to condemn collective punishment, supports the idea of refusing entry to Israeli citizens because of the perceived "crimes" of their government.

What a joke.

The Novel: alive and well (apparently)

A rather interesting article, courtesy of the Guardian, on the state of the novel today, by former judge of the Booker Prize, Jason Cowley.
Now, I usually find myself having to watch my step when it comes to the Guardian. It is, after all, a left-of-centre publication, and although it has probably one of the best arts and literature sections of any newspaper, the insidious ghoul of Political Correctness rears its ugly head all too often. If you're willing to look past the incessant America-,Israel-,Blair-bashing of the politics and world affairs columns, you'll probably find something of substance elsewhere in the paper, like this piece, fr'instance.

Cowley, among other things, refutes the suggestion that the tragic events of September 11, 2001 have altered irrevocably the literary artist's ability to come to terms with a world suddenly made new:

Yet the evidence from the new novels I have read so far this year is quite the contrary - our writers have not allowed the extremity of 11 September and the wars that have followed to silence or defeat them; their imaginations seem far from meagre. The 'culture' is not overwhelming them. Quite the opposite, in fact, because this is, I think, perhaps the richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969, with most of our best novelists - Ian McEwan (Saturday), Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go), Zadie Smith (On Beauty), JM Coetzee (Slow Man), Julian Barnes (Arthur & George), Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), Hilary Mantel (Beyond Black) - publishing exceptional new works.

Having read most of these novels, as well as outstanding books from emerging writers such as Louise Dean (This Human Season, which is set in a Belfast riven by sectarian conflict) and James Meek (The People's Act of Love, which is set in Siberia during the years following the Russian Revolution), I would argue that the novel, so often declared dead or moribund by VS Naipaul and other cultural pessimists, is as vital now in this time of profound political crisis as it has ever been - and continues, through the popularity of reading groups and the huge influence of television programmes... as well as the astonishing popularity of global bestsellers such as the Harry Potter books and Dan Brown's conspiracy thrillers, to be the principal artistic form of our times.

This is heartening news. Even the most devastating of occurrences should not dampen the artist's creative fire, and today's post-9/11 world proves a veritible gold-mine of subject matter for talented writers:

The devastating events of 11 September 2001 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the second wave of mass asylum-driven immigration into Britain and the emergence of our new wired-up, interconnected world, have changed everything in this country. As has the emergence of writers such as Monica Ali, Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy, who write with such verve and insight of the shifting realities of the lives of the new Britons, the black, Asian and mixed-race people, and their descendants, who arrived here in the post-war years and whom you seldom, if ever, encountered in novels, except in mocking or pejorative representation.

Mitzi Angel, a senior editor at Fourth Estate, and one of the most talented of the younger generation of publishing editors, says: 'It's always difficult to look for patterns in fiction, but perhaps some do stand out. There are this year, for example, the dystopian elements to Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; Rupert Thomson's Divided Kingdom, and Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days. All three novelists have imagined alternate worlds in which the interactions of man, machine, technology and political experiments result in terror. I couldn't read these without remembering David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, published last year, which also deals with a post-apocalyptic future and the breakdown of civilisation.'

Novelists have, of course, been conjuring up these sorts of visions for centuries; but, as Angel continues, 'Perhaps the uncertainties of a post-11 September world have lent this kind of questioning more urgency. This year, some novels have tackled the attacks on the World Trade Centre head-on - such as Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or, very recently, Chris Cleave's Incendiary (which was published on the day of the London bombings) or Frederic Beigbeder's Windows on the World, published last year, in which he replays the last moments in the building.

McEwan's Saturday, by contrast, seems to be about the shift in consciousness that has occurred since the attacks; the heightened sense of danger that seeps into ordinary life ... the emphasis here is on the fragility of the domestic world.' Of this year's leading Booker contenders, Saturday certainly offers the most complete fictional response so far to the murderous attacks on New York and Washington and how they have altered the way we think, act and remember. (The visionary French novelist Michel Houellebecq's Platform, about the clash between western secularism and Islamic puritanism, was published just before 11 September.)

Cowley also offers this brief yet honourable defense of the novel as a genre:

[N]o other art form privileges consciousness and interiority in quite the same way. One can tell fabulous stories through moving images, but how to show thought in film without resorting to the clumsy device of the voice over? How to show in film what Virginia Woolf called the 'quick of the mind'? Only the novel can truly show, from the inside, how it feels to move through space and time, from one day to the next, with contradictory thoughts constantly clashing, over the narrative of a lifetime.

Bravo.

I'm looking very forward to dipping into some of these titles. I have Ishiguro's book sitting in my to-read pile, and Rushdie, McEwan and Coetzee (especially) are sure to make their way in that direction before the year is out.

Incidentally, this year's Booker longlist is out on 10 August.

Worth a tick on the calendar

On Wednesday, 10 August, National Radio is broadcasting a programme on one of the unsung geniuses of "popular" music, Richard Thompson:

11.06am Nine to Noon Artist of the week

Marty Duda features British singer, songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson.

Thompson first made his mark as a founding member of acclaimed folk/rock band Fairport Convention in the late 1960s. After leaving the band in the early 70s he recorded both as a solo artist and as a duo with his wife Linda Thompson. The couple split in 1982 and Richard Thompson has continued to record on his own. We’ll feature music from his brand new album, Front Parlour Ballads, along with tracks from throughout his career.

I have just ordered my copy of Front Parlour Ballads from Real Groovy, Auckland. It should be in store in the coming week. It has been getting some favourable reviews from the likes of the Guardian and the Independent, and I have high hopes for it. Then, again, Thompson is one of the most consistently excellent musicians in the biz, so I don't think I'll be too disappointed.

Thoughts on Good Morning (Yasujiro Ozu)

I saw this 1959 Ozu film yesterday. Critics often reference it as a remake of Ozu's 1932 silent masterpiece, I Was Born But..., and while I do not think it is as good as the older film, it holds its own quite well. In so far as similarites go, both movies concern young children who rebel against their parents for one reason or another: in I Was Born, But..., a father's obsequious behaviour provokes a hunger strike, while in Good Morning, two boys take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them that most beloved of household appliances: the television set.

It is probably the most light-hearted Ozu film I have yet seen. I Was Born, But..., despite its inspired scenes of slapstick comedy, has moments of the quietly intense drama that would prove an Ozu trademark in later years. Good Morning, however, is Ozu making a film almost completely from the child's perspective. I mean, who would've thought that Ozu-san, of all people, would ever include fart jokes in a movie? Yet it is not all flatulence: the scenes of childhood rebellion, high-jinks and camaraderie ring absolutely true. The adults themselves - the gossipy housewives and frazzled salarymen - though not the focus of the film, have their moments as well. Ozu regular Chishu Ryu turns in an excellent performance as the the obstinate dad and Eiko Miyoshi is hilarious as the neighbour grandmother with a knack for warding off shifty peddlers.

What we have in the end is a humourous commentary on both the mounting consumerism of late 1950s Japanese society and problems of communication between the generations and sexes.

Sadly, the Criterion DVD is atrocious. No extras, liner notes that say nothing, and worst of all, an awful transfer - I could've sworn I saw the colours fluctuate from time to time. This is especially noticeable at the beginning, when the colour of the burlap against which the credits appear subtly wobbles from brown to yellow. Thankfully, Criterion made up with their following Ozu releases. All 3 of them. It's about time they released some more - chop, chop!