Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince (1532)
Politics – read via the Kindle app on the iPhone, in April 2011
- 4 nods out of 5 -
Niccolo Machiavelli has had a fair amount of bad press in the past four centuries. Today his very name has become synonymous with unscrupulous cunning, of deception and dishonesty. The Prince, his masterwork that is attached to his enduring legacy, is his layout of governance for any ruler; and by trampling in the dirty dishwater of politics, of what would become known as realpolitik, little favour is given to such machiavellian machinations.
The Prince was written in the early part of the sixteenth century, a tumultuous and exciting time in Italian history. Not yet united – that would come much later in the 1800s – Italy was divided between princedoms and kingdoms, of occupying forces and cultures, from France to Spain. Machiavelli played a decisive role in the city of Florence, as it cast a greater influence over its neighbours, before being invaded by a French army.
After being thrown out of government, Machiavelli appears to have written this treatise as an attempt to cuddle up to the ruling Medici family; but The Prince was of greater innovation and lasting benefit than a simple expediency. In a series of chapters, the author lays out the problems facing a ruling prince and how best to deal with them, from conquering neighbouring territory to examining the qualities that make up a prince. Questions are asked and debated, upon the benefits of ‘criminal virtue’, of gaining the support and respect of the people, and of ‘avoiding flatterers’.
Machiavelli supports his questions and answers with examples of recent history, mostly centring on the rising and ebbing fortunes of the numerous Italian states that surround Florence. Due to an absence of financial flexing and military muscle when compared with the great states of the day like France, it is common sense to assume cities such as Florence had to adapt and implement a range of tactics to merely survive.
The influence of The Prince cannot be doubted, from English kings to Napoleon. It helped lay out the basis of a political philosophy, with the work being used in situations from policing a people to management of upstart workers in an office. And it will continue exerting influence, just as Machiavelli’s name will continue to carry with it less welcome connotations. For readers who wish to climb inside the minds of many of the military geniuses and great statesmen of the past five hundred years, The Prince is a must read; however, it holds little attraction for those who want nothing to do with the sordid deals of Machiavellian politicians.
Monday 23 May 2011
Thursday 19 May 2011
Flushed With Pride - Wallace Reyburn
Wallace Reyburn – Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper (1969)
Biography – 95 pages – my copy (hardback; 1989) bought for 50p from the Pannier Market in Plymouth, sometime in 2008
- 1 nod out of 5 -
The world of Toilet History: what fascination. The Worm states this with genuine enthusiasm, having amassed a collection of books on the subject, including works such as Sitting Pretty and The Porcelain God. A suggested title for the Worm’s own study on the toilet was given as Bang, Plop, Flush – but as of yet, this masterwork remains in the draft stage.
One of the most influential and illustrious of toilet history’s stars was Thomas Crapper, the Victorian plumber who was applauded from the Cockneys of London to the Queen of England. Wallace Reyburn here recites Crapper’s life, from his arrival in London as a boy to his royal appointment, including a general overview of the toilet and its plumbing abilities in the late nineteenth century.
It is a book loose on fact and, indeed, so minimal on Crapper himself that the cricket legend W.G.Grace finds space in print, even obtaining a page of illustration himself despite having nothing to do with Crapper’s life (only a tenuous link with this death!). Flushed With Pride is a poor biography, with few and modest jokes, this book quickly came out of print only to find itself in a brighter, more confident edition decades later due to it achieving ‘cult status’. How could this happen? Ah, but the dedication of toilet enthusiasts is strong!
Crapper, perhaps, deserves a biographer with greater skills; but what else could we expect from the author of Bust Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra!
Biography – 95 pages – my copy (hardback; 1989) bought for 50p from the Pannier Market in Plymouth, sometime in 2008
- 1 nod out of 5 -
The world of Toilet History: what fascination. The Worm states this with genuine enthusiasm, having amassed a collection of books on the subject, including works such as Sitting Pretty and The Porcelain God. A suggested title for the Worm’s own study on the toilet was given as Bang, Plop, Flush – but as of yet, this masterwork remains in the draft stage.
One of the most influential and illustrious of toilet history’s stars was Thomas Crapper, the Victorian plumber who was applauded from the Cockneys of London to the Queen of England. Wallace Reyburn here recites Crapper’s life, from his arrival in London as a boy to his royal appointment, including a general overview of the toilet and its plumbing abilities in the late nineteenth century.
It is a book loose on fact and, indeed, so minimal on Crapper himself that the cricket legend W.G.Grace finds space in print, even obtaining a page of illustration himself despite having nothing to do with Crapper’s life (only a tenuous link with this death!). Flushed With Pride is a poor biography, with few and modest jokes, this book quickly came out of print only to find itself in a brighter, more confident edition decades later due to it achieving ‘cult status’. How could this happen? Ah, but the dedication of toilet enthusiasts is strong!
Crapper, perhaps, deserves a biographer with greater skills; but what else could we expect from the author of Bust Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra!
Sunday 15 May 2011
Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood – Oryx and Crake (2003)
Novel – 420 pages – my copy (paperback) bought from Amazon in 2008
- 4 nods out of 5 -
Oryx and Crake is a disturbing, frightening and entertaining dystopian vision of a possible future of mankind. Set in the no-so distant future, Atwood’s novel follows the life of a boy named Jimmy and his complex and fatal relationships with both Oryx and Crake.
A future in which a privileged few live in their own settlements, away from the pleeb-lands, working on genetic breakthroughs such as pigoons (with many hearts and livers, harvested for humans), wolvogs (the appearance of a dog but with the ferocity of a wolf) and the poor, doomed genetically deformed chickens who are fried for consumption in the form of ChickieNobs:
‘What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
“What the hell is it?” said Jimmy
“Those are chickens,” said Crake. “Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.”…
“This is horrible,” said Jimmy. The thing was a nightmare. It was like an animal-protein tuber…
“No need for added growth-hormones,” said the woman, “the high growth rate’s built in. You get chicken breast in two weeks – that’s a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal-welfare freaks won’t be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain.”’
Yet most interesting, by far, is Crake’s own creation: the Crakers. Named after influential figures in history (such as Abraham Lincoln), they are programmed to ‘drop dead at the age of thirty – suddenly, without getting sick. No old age, none of those anxieties. They’ll just keel over’; no longer any racism due to their multi-colours, and:
‘Hierarchy could not exist among them, because they lacked the neural complexes that would have created it. Since they were neither hunters nor agriculturalists hungry for land, there was no territoriality: the king-of-the-castle hard-wiring that had plagued humanity had, in them, been unwired. They ate nothing but leaves and grass and roots and a berry or two; thus the foods were plentiful and always available. Their sexuality was not a constant torment to them, not a cloud of turbulent hormones: they came into heat at regular intervals, as did most mammals other than man.
In fact, as there would never be anything for these people to inherit, there would be no family trees, no marriages, and no divorces. They were perfectly adjusted to their habitat, so they would never have to create houses or tools or weapons, or, for that matter, clothing. They would have no need to invent any harmful symbolisms, such as kingdoms, icons, gods, or money…’
There are many themes within the book – consumerism, technological naivety – though perhaps the key is that of exploitation. Animals are exploited for human gain, the west world exploits the rest, and is Oryx is exploited in her childhood for the financial and sexual pleasure of others. It is this cruel world in which Crake interferes, giving dominance to his own exploited kind, the Crakers.
Atwood ties up this complex mix of ideas into a story well plotted and packed with suspense; we have Jimmy’s alienating childhood, his inability to succeed in the big world, the impending apocalypse, as well as the uncertain future when Jimmy is no longer Jimmy, and Snowman becomes the last bastion of human-kind:
‘Valance. Norn. Serendipity. Pibroch. Lubricious. When they’re gone out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been’.
The novel ends on a cliff-hanger: a do or die moment. The reader is left musing over what becomes; though Atwood has put many a good reader out of their misery by returning to this world once more in a follow up book, Year Of The Flood. This Book Worm is off to purchase a copy, to delve back into the enlightening and chaotic world of Margaret Atwood.
Novel – 420 pages – my copy (paperback) bought from Amazon in 2008
- 4 nods out of 5 -
Oryx and Crake is a disturbing, frightening and entertaining dystopian vision of a possible future of mankind. Set in the no-so distant future, Atwood’s novel follows the life of a boy named Jimmy and his complex and fatal relationships with both Oryx and Crake.
A future in which a privileged few live in their own settlements, away from the pleeb-lands, working on genetic breakthroughs such as pigoons (with many hearts and livers, harvested for humans), wolvogs (the appearance of a dog but with the ferocity of a wolf) and the poor, doomed genetically deformed chickens who are fried for consumption in the form of ChickieNobs:
‘What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.
“What the hell is it?” said Jimmy
“Those are chickens,” said Crake. “Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.”…
“This is horrible,” said Jimmy. The thing was a nightmare. It was like an animal-protein tuber…
“No need for added growth-hormones,” said the woman, “the high growth rate’s built in. You get chicken breast in two weeks – that’s a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal-welfare freaks won’t be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain.”’
Yet most interesting, by far, is Crake’s own creation: the Crakers. Named after influential figures in history (such as Abraham Lincoln), they are programmed to ‘drop dead at the age of thirty – suddenly, without getting sick. No old age, none of those anxieties. They’ll just keel over’; no longer any racism due to their multi-colours, and:
‘Hierarchy could not exist among them, because they lacked the neural complexes that would have created it. Since they were neither hunters nor agriculturalists hungry for land, there was no territoriality: the king-of-the-castle hard-wiring that had plagued humanity had, in them, been unwired. They ate nothing but leaves and grass and roots and a berry or two; thus the foods were plentiful and always available. Their sexuality was not a constant torment to them, not a cloud of turbulent hormones: they came into heat at regular intervals, as did most mammals other than man.
In fact, as there would never be anything for these people to inherit, there would be no family trees, no marriages, and no divorces. They were perfectly adjusted to their habitat, so they would never have to create houses or tools or weapons, or, for that matter, clothing. They would have no need to invent any harmful symbolisms, such as kingdoms, icons, gods, or money…’
There are many themes within the book – consumerism, technological naivety – though perhaps the key is that of exploitation. Animals are exploited for human gain, the west world exploits the rest, and is Oryx is exploited in her childhood for the financial and sexual pleasure of others. It is this cruel world in which Crake interferes, giving dominance to his own exploited kind, the Crakers.
Atwood ties up this complex mix of ideas into a story well plotted and packed with suspense; we have Jimmy’s alienating childhood, his inability to succeed in the big world, the impending apocalypse, as well as the uncertain future when Jimmy is no longer Jimmy, and Snowman becomes the last bastion of human-kind:
‘Valance. Norn. Serendipity. Pibroch. Lubricious. When they’re gone out of his head, these words, they’ll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been’.
The novel ends on a cliff-hanger: a do or die moment. The reader is left musing over what becomes; though Atwood has put many a good reader out of their misery by returning to this world once more in a follow up book, Year Of The Flood. This Book Worm is off to purchase a copy, to delve back into the enlightening and chaotic world of Margaret Atwood.
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar (1599)
Play – read as app from the splendid site playshakespeare.com
- 4 nods out of 5 -
He came, he saw and he conquered… then was promptly stabbed to death. This was the life of Julius Caesar, the man who led the Roman Republic to its end, falling before its rebirth as a large, behemoth empire. The largely unknown playwright Bill Shakespeare (okay, poor joke), made a name of dabbling in the biographies of the past, largely upon English kings; but in Roman antiquity he made these personalities and a vital period in time famous once again to audiences in the modern world.
It is 44 BC and Caesar is the master of Rome. Gone are his enemies, Pompey & Co, and a long period of dictatorship is set to follow his return to the capital. But lying beneath his official rule – where the likes of Mark Antony delight in acclaiming the glorious Caesar – is a growing band of conspirators. The duplicitous Cassius, knowing such a revolt would need solid backing, enlists the help of Brutus, the most honest of all Romans. And it is with a heavy heart that Brutus conspires against his father-figure.
Ignoring a soothsayer’s warning to beware the Ides of March, as well as Artemidorus’ letter (‘If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayest live; if not, the Fates with traitors do contrive’), Caesar walks to the fate of a brutal stabbing. He falls to face the last man, Brutus himself, to ask in his last breath: ‘Et tu, Brute? – Then fall Caesar’. These words commonly applied as: ‘And you, too, Brutus?’ Caesar’s body fails in union with his dejected heart. It is left for the faithful Mark Antony to lament: ‘O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?’
Combined with Caesar’s assassination, the other outstanding scene in the play is the delivery of Brutus’ and Anthony’s speeches to the people of Rome. Brutus begins, asking his fellow Romans to ‘be patient till the last’, advising them the reason he killed the father figure of Caesar: ‘Not that I lov’d Caesar less, but that I lov’d Rome more….As Caesar lov’d me, I weep for him…but he was ambitious, I slew him’. It is a humble and steadfast speech; yet a speech that is immediately blown out of the water by Anthony’s words to the people, in which the deeds of Caesar are blown beyond the imagination, therefore inflicting acrimonious damage towards Brutus and the conspirators. Rome revolts and Brutus and Cassius flee, only to find meet their deaths at the end of the play during battle against the combined forces of Mark Anthony and Octavius, Caesar’s proclaimed heir.
The combined death toll fits the bill for perfect Shakespearian tragedy; yet there is a bigger victim in the play: Rome and western civilisation itself. Although Julius Caesar has no such definitive character – even the title’s character plays a minor role and is killed half way during proceedings – to match the likes of a Macbeth or a Hamlet, the plot itself shows a greater idea, being the fall of democracy and the rise of dictatorial empire. Such a scenario is all the more relevant in the context of the twentieth century, and a warning that heroic and honest Brutus-like deeds may yet lead to ruin.
Play – read as app from the splendid site playshakespeare.com
- 4 nods out of 5 -
He came, he saw and he conquered… then was promptly stabbed to death. This was the life of Julius Caesar, the man who led the Roman Republic to its end, falling before its rebirth as a large, behemoth empire. The largely unknown playwright Bill Shakespeare (okay, poor joke), made a name of dabbling in the biographies of the past, largely upon English kings; but in Roman antiquity he made these personalities and a vital period in time famous once again to audiences in the modern world.
It is 44 BC and Caesar is the master of Rome. Gone are his enemies, Pompey & Co, and a long period of dictatorship is set to follow his return to the capital. But lying beneath his official rule – where the likes of Mark Antony delight in acclaiming the glorious Caesar – is a growing band of conspirators. The duplicitous Cassius, knowing such a revolt would need solid backing, enlists the help of Brutus, the most honest of all Romans. And it is with a heavy heart that Brutus conspires against his father-figure.
Ignoring a soothsayer’s warning to beware the Ides of March, as well as Artemidorus’ letter (‘If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayest live; if not, the Fates with traitors do contrive’), Caesar walks to the fate of a brutal stabbing. He falls to face the last man, Brutus himself, to ask in his last breath: ‘Et tu, Brute? – Then fall Caesar’. These words commonly applied as: ‘And you, too, Brutus?’ Caesar’s body fails in union with his dejected heart. It is left for the faithful Mark Antony to lament: ‘O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?’
Combined with Caesar’s assassination, the other outstanding scene in the play is the delivery of Brutus’ and Anthony’s speeches to the people of Rome. Brutus begins, asking his fellow Romans to ‘be patient till the last’, advising them the reason he killed the father figure of Caesar: ‘Not that I lov’d Caesar less, but that I lov’d Rome more….As Caesar lov’d me, I weep for him…but he was ambitious, I slew him’. It is a humble and steadfast speech; yet a speech that is immediately blown out of the water by Anthony’s words to the people, in which the deeds of Caesar are blown beyond the imagination, therefore inflicting acrimonious damage towards Brutus and the conspirators. Rome revolts and Brutus and Cassius flee, only to find meet their deaths at the end of the play during battle against the combined forces of Mark Anthony and Octavius, Caesar’s proclaimed heir.
The combined death toll fits the bill for perfect Shakespearian tragedy; yet there is a bigger victim in the play: Rome and western civilisation itself. Although Julius Caesar has no such definitive character – even the title’s character plays a minor role and is killed half way during proceedings – to match the likes of a Macbeth or a Hamlet, the plot itself shows a greater idea, being the fall of democracy and the rise of dictatorial empire. Such a scenario is all the more relevant in the context of the twentieth century, and a warning that heroic and honest Brutus-like deeds may yet lead to ruin.
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