Sunday morning in the mountains and lightning has just flashed out of clear blue skies, so I will have to turn off the computer to guard against power surges. A storm on its way.
Really good interview with writer Zadie Smith at the Rumpus:
I think what interested me is when you ask yourself what makes a person innately conservative or innately liberal, it’s really interesting. It’s more than the political argument, it’s a personality trait, one way or another. I was just trying to think of the fundamental questions around which the poles revolve. What really is it? It seemed to me that one of the most fundamental answers to this question is whether people get what they deserve, whether all things come to people in the right order, and whether there’s an unfairness in the world. The different ways you feel about this very basic question stack up in a political way, one way or another. That’s what interested me. I kind of wanted to make a book in which you had to think about such things on a very basic level. Not, “How do I feel about 20,000 immigrants coming on one day into my country?” but “How do I feel about a girl at my door?” Fundamentally they’re the same questions, but they’re reduced to a very local form. That’s what interested me—and to try to write it honestly.
It’s very easy when you’re writing a book to have already decided the answers to all these questions, it’s a little more difficult to feel your way through. I try to recognize that people’s fears are real fears, they’re not just there for no reason. They also have a validity, and should be thought about and considered.
Finished rereading the first volume of Samuel Beckett’s Letters yesterday. What I’m reading now, borrowed from the local library and in no particular order: Stieg Larsson The Girl who Played with Fire; Emma Donoghue’s Room; AL Kennedy’s Paradise; Henning Mankell’s The Man from Beijing. Steig Larsson’s heroine Lisbeth Salander reminds me of Modesty Blaise. The younger librarian is a devotee of Larssen’s Millenium trilogy and said to me with innocent voluptuousness, ‘Better than sex.’
The first loud belt of thunder has sent a grey squirrel dashing across the road to shelter under the catalpa tree. Time to go –
I’ve read some articles about the traits of liberals versus conservatives. Some have likened trying to make sense of it to the bogus “science” of phrenology. This was a particularly good article http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=calling-truce-political-wars. I hope that we can move more towards what things we have in common than looking at differences. What a better world we would have then!
An excellent article Syd and I’ve bookmarked it. That entrenched polarised stereotyping though is very much culturally determined. Out here you are more likely to find people holding a mix of liberal and conservative opinions and you won’t find the same media divide.
The books are entertaining, but not better than sex. xo ( In my oh so humble opinion!)
I agree Susan but it fascinated me that these books have had so much appeal globally.
It would be so refreshing to hear anyone talk about the poles of our beliefs without needing to demonize or dismiss the opposite end of the world.
It is easier for me to look at differing views because I’m not living in the First World — but those of us who will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia fall on both sides of the divide. Most of our Catholic bishops would be considered radical and left-wing in America but the situation here is so different.