Some thoughts on recent readings

Which metaphorical object could we employ to describe Paul Auster´s intricate plots in his novels? A jigsaw puzzle? A matrioshka? I personally would choose the expression ‘hub and spokes’. According to the Oxford American Dictionary, the phrase hub-and-spoke denotes ‘a system of air transportation in which local airports offer flights to a central airport where international or long-distance flights are available.’ The concept conjures up the image of a bicycle wheel, and Auster´s novels often seem to recall a group of wheels disparagedly intersecting with each other, with different main stories and characters tangled up with minor ones in a sort of complex web. Furthermore, you never know in which direction the story will be developing and which characters and events will end up being paramount to it. Something you may be absolutely certain about, however, and this is the author´s trademark, is that pure chance will play a big role at fuelling the plot. Admittedly, The Brooklyn Follies (London, Faber and Faber, 2005) may not reach the height of Paul Auster´s chef-d´oeuvre, Moon Palace, yet it is Auster in full swing, with its colorful characters, its detailed Manhattan-Brooklyn background, its convoluted turns of action and its masterly description of the overcoming power of chance and coincidence to alter our daily lives in unsuspected ways.

It may not be his best creation, and besides, it gives you the impression of being a hasty assembled potshumous book (nothing to blame on the author himself), but W. G. Sebald´s collection of incomplete literary sketches on Corsica -plus some essays- entitled Campo Santo (Barcelona, Anagrama, 2007; originally published in German with the same title by Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003), contains pieces which should be counted among his best works and are on a level with his masterpiece, Austerlitz. I am speaking of chapters such as ‘Campo Santo’, on the role of death in Corsican traditions; ‘Between history and natural history’ (on the literary description of total destruction)’, reviewing the German literary approach to the massive bombing of German cities by Western allies during World War II, something he addressed at lenght in his On the natural history of destruction; and ‘An attempt at restitution’, an inclassifiable bildungs-like short essay on his literary and personal maturation. I consider this last piece a jewel whose beauty and power to conjure up images and reflections may move anyone to tears.

I admit it. It may be heretic to some, but I am overwhelmed by the infinite sadness and the weighty role of routine in Fernando Pessoa´s account of a clerk´s immobile life -sure, there is an ultra-rich inner life in him, on the other hand- in Libro del desasosiego [Livro do desassossego / Book of disquietude] (Barcelona, Acantilado, 2003), despite the beautiful, musical translation into Spanish and the meticulous edition of Acantilado Publishers, a real pleasure for readers. As a second heresy (some will wonder why on earth should I compare these two Portuguese authors), I prefer the more classical in style works of Jose Maria Eça de Queiroz. However, there is much more of Pessoa to read before I give up.

Photo: Soho, New York City, 2007 © Loudsoul

Deceiving language

Here are just a few examples -all recent Spanish press headlines, but they could have been taken from any other country´s- of the fraudulent political language we have become accustomed to, and with which we fool ourselves, to the delight of politicians.

ANV and PCTV finance Batasuna with more than a million euros

(Obviously not. It is us, taxpayers, who are financing the illegal Batasuna group through the public funds allocated to those political parties, which have representatives in several local and regional chambers thanks to our current government´s decision not to instigate months ago their illegalization process, being all of them members of the same terrorist organization.)

Chaves promises free 1MB internet for every Andalusian

(Well, internet, as most goods and services, is not free, so what the Andalucian Autonomous Community president is generously promising -estimated in 70 million euros- will be actually paid out of Andalucian and non-Andalucian taxes.)

The Popular Party promises free day care

(Free day care is not free at all, but this electoral promise sounds much better than claiming the party wants to tax everyone to finance nurseries only for a certain group -parents-, however large. Please note I am not criticizing this policy but the way it is presented to the public.)

We should stop deceiving ourselves and start behaving like active citizens, asking for a real, comprehensive public debate -with logical arguments, apparent needs, informed opinions, inclusive participation, and willingness to reach agreements- on the way we collect and spend government revenues, though perhaps that is expecting too much of our politicians and, yes, of ourselves.

A Russian remembrance

Flying over the Baltic Sea, contemplating one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in my life. The aggressive faces of regular police looking like military police at Pulkovo airport. A city which reminded me at once of Helsinki or Vienna, but not of Paris or Venice, as I had heard. Another common belief: the city is ‘decadent’; actually, its buildings are not decadent but falling apart. The rudeness of all the inhabitants of Saint Petersburg, most of them used to a very hard daily life, and the strange expressions in their faces when you show good manners towards them. The glass of vodka invariably served with every meal you order at a restaurant. I wonder if they serve it at an ice cream parlour as well. I would not be surprised. The display of contempt at the mention of foreign vodkas. The smelly but nevertheless beautiful subway train stations. Druken people everywhere, poisoning themselves with bootleg booze bought at street kiosks. Extreme luxury side by side with extreme poverty. A corpse in the street, surrounded by flies and a few empty vodka bottles. A bunch of children smoking and crossing the street among speedy cars and up to no good. Probably, they have suffered and witnessed more terrible things at their age than most of us will experience in our entire life. A strange feeling of personal safety wherever you go, despite all of the above. A visit to the botanical gardens. The gatekeeper is asleep at the ticket booth. There are no other visitors, and we wake him up to buy a couple of tickets. Who knows if those kopecks will not end up in his pocket. Back in the street, experiencing as pedestrians the Russian crazy way of driving. Everywhere else in the world, a crosswalk is that marked part of a road where pedestrians have right of way to cross. Therefore, cars must stop if there if someone crossing. In Russia, a person has to stop at a crosswalk is there is a car approaching and she puts any value in her life, because cars never draw up. A wonderful traditional meal, if only too filling, at the Chekhov Restaurant, including some amazing Sevruga caviar served with delicate blinis and a glass of kvas (yeast beer). Then, a walk through a huge and nearby forest north of Petrogradskiy island. At night, back in the city center, close to Nevsky Prospekt, it is easy to spot frightening mafiosi in every fancy restaurant or bar. My friend tells me of some businessperson she knows who became rich: ‘He did lots of illegalities, and then more, but never killed anyone. Well, perhaps one or two. He is a good man’. The toxic, burning taste of a glass of 70% absinth going down my throat in a dark, smoky basement bar, full of prostitutes and killer-looking guys with shaved heads and tattooed arms. A second glass goes down, causing me to feel not drunk but stoned, as if doing strong pot. At bars, specially at fancy ones, there is a disproportionate presence of women as compared to men. All these women wear tons of make-up and dress like going to a party. The men wear cheap suits with t-shirts and golden bracelets, and never stop talking on their cell phones. They never engage in any kind of conversation with the several women seated at their tables. Most of them eat, drink and behave like pigs, and then leave the place with the girls in their brand new Lexus cars, as if they owned a moving harem. My friend says: ‘Now you know how oligarchs look like’. Then, the wide smile of a beautiful waitress when you say ‘spasiba’ (thank you), and an even wider smile when she hears the word ‘puzhalsta’ (you are welcome) from the visitor. They are not used to these good manners from foreigners, or anyone else. Actually, except in touristic hotels, they are not used to either foreigners or good manners. There is also the ineluctable feeling that History pervades every stone, every breath, every conversation, and the sense that many highly educated but nonetheless poor people are fully aware that they will not be able to scape this dog´s life, at least by legal means. After all, the city gave birth to Fyodor Dovstoyevsky, whose pessimism and fatalism -none of his invention but a perfect description of the Russian mindset- have never ceased to linger in the air. Long time ago, a traditional Russian toast captured admirably well this bleak, passionate and perseverant attitude towards life: Here´s for our hopeless cause!

Photo: Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2006 © Loudsoul

Whimsical demands, grim present, bleak future

Last month, the political science students of the University of Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain, set up a series of demonstrations to protest against the new organization of their studies. The students claim these changes amount to a depreciation of their major, which will no longer be a full degree - ‘Political science studies will vanish from Galicia’, they contend-, whereas the university says they are needed to comply with the so called European ‘Bologna Process’. Leaving aside the question of having an ill-conceived EU higher education ‘harmonization’ policy dictate how universities should adapt to social changes and educational needs in the continent -and this should not be a matter of minor concern-, the uproar is just an example of something happening far beyond the Galician region, as such protests are endemic in the Spanish higher education system. Essentially, what these Galician students are claiming, as nearly all students in Spain, is that they have a right to study what they want, in the place they want, and with the taxpayers money.

Actually, the problem is twofold.

On the one hand, Spanish college students are not used to look for a specific school for their chosen studies (out of reputation, convenience, tuition fees or otherwise), and then assume the consecuences of that decision, which may imply living independently and far from their families, engage in an academic competition with other students, face the hard demands of scholastic life, make choices among different professors and courses, look for sources of funding for their studies, and so on. Quite the contrary, they think attending university is an unforfeitable right which should be free for them, or very cheap, that it must not imply any changes in their teenage lifestyles, and that they have the right to live at home with their families (or very close) while they do so, using all their energy not to look for the best educational investment for their future but to demand the government sets up a school in their neighbourhood. Governments (both local and national) usually bow down their heads to these capricious and ocasionally violent wishes of our youth, since, apparently, politicians are of the opinion that many electoral benefits are up for grabs behaving this way-. As a result, the Spanish landscape is dotted with myriads of what I call ‘around-the-corner universities’, poorly-financed, low-quality public colleges, but conveniently close for most of the students and their families´ homes, that is, the politicians´constituency -and I would have nothing to say if those institutions invested only private money instead of wasting public resources, that is, your taxes and mine-. Obviously, students do not think that, besides studying hard, they could strongly request -in public demonstrations or, better still, through voting/petition mechanisms- not a college ‘in the neighborhood’ but a real public policy on scholarships and grants to help finance their studies in the best university they were able to get admitted to if they could not afford them by themselves.

On the other hand, the Spanish higher education system suits well the low expectations on the part of the students; due to a sort of vicious circle effect, it is both the cause and the consecuence of the students´ attitudes. Public universities do not bother to compete neither for good students, nor for the best professors and researchers. In the first case because they do not care about academic reputation, since the money comes not primarily from the students but from the state; that is, whatever the quality of what they offer, they will have enough students (those living nearby) to both keep the ball rolling and the budget balanced (government pays for it). In the second case, since students do not make choices according to ‘who is teaching where’ but ‘how close is the school to my parents place’, they do not have any incentives to attract the best scholars, nor could they, since salaries are roughly the same in all universities.

We have a higher education system which discourages competition (both for students and professors), with both overcrowded classes or empty ones, and chronically underfunded. A system which turned its back long time ago to the necessities of modern Spanish society and which openly favors mass enrollment to quality education. A system which allows itself to have 30 or 40 medical or engineering schools (for a medium-size country!), most of them mediocre, instead of concentrating resources in a few very good, competitive ones, and in scholarships and grants for low-income students to attend them. A system which does not require from professors they are up to date in their academic fields. As a result, good professors and researchers show excellence because they want to, and not because universities will reward their talent, whereas bad ones (and there are many who should be quicked out right away) are allowed to keep their positions. Also, since there is no need to get the best faculty, departments engage in endogamic practices as much as they want and, as a result, vacancies are nearly always filled and tenures decided through corrupt and rigged processes which seek to hire or promote not superior candidates but members of a given ‘academic clan’. Consecuently, and despite the efforts of some very good professors and students, our universities are, overall, static and of a very low quality, and their international reputation is negligible.

Nevertheless, the main reason to remain pessimistic about this state of affairs lays in the converging character of the main elements of the system: government, professors and students. All three parties go hand in hand in their interest in maintaining the status quo, and as long as we lack enough courageus political leaders, excellence-seeking, competitive professors, and responsible, hard-working students, who understand the importance of education for the future -and the present!- of our country and the welfare of our citizens, we will not be able to abandon this nightmarish path.

Photo: Library, Faculty of Philology, Free University Berlin © Svenwerk

The convictions of a libertarian candidate

Reading some of the opinions about a variety of issues of one of the American presidential candidates, you may think we are no longer living in the 21st century and travelled back in a time machine to the age of the American founding fathers. You cannot accuse Republican congressman Ron Paul of flip-flopping or dithering about his principles. However, in the words of this Texan libertarian, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan become strange bedfellows. Paul claims governments are the biggest threat to freedom, thus the need to reduce their size as much as possible and devolve decision powers to citizens in nearly every realm of social life. This includes upholding the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which allows American citizens to keep and bear arms, and reapeling every single piece of legislation devised to put into effect that right in the case of assault weapons or psychopaths. What Paul eschews to acknowledge -it would go against its libertarian beliefs-, and many other libertarians as well, is that the sole purpose of arms is to kill or wound, that we no longer live under tyrannical regimes -though far from perfect, we have devised institutions to help us have a say in what is being done to us and in our name-, that we no longer require armed militias to defend ourselves from our own government, that modern, functioning democracies are not just examples of ‘majoritarianism’, and that if we want to keep social order we better grant the state the monopoly of violence and then try to control it with reasonable checks.

Paul makes sharp and appropriate comments regarding government´s meddling in our private affairs (i.e.: the war on drugs) and, as other libertarians and classic liberals before him, the limits and failures of government intervention in many areas of public life, but fails to identify the present and future challenges to our freedom and our welfare, which do not come from democratically elected governments whose actions are subjected to the rule of law. Also, he does not recognize we may not fight many forms of discrimination in our modern societies with liberalization and free markets alone, and that some sort of government action is needed. True, governments may end up worsening the very problems they tried to solve -for instance, he is right at stating governments are exacerbating the problem of ethnocultural relations with their notions of ‘multiculturalism’-, but that is not an argument per se against public policies -to follow with our example, doing nothing will not improve social and economic integration-. Those challenges and threats -global terror, climate change, mass migrations, AIDS and other diseases, failed states, some forms of discrimination or how to bring the benefits of globalization to many world regions, to name but a few- are best meet with a flexible combination of private entrepreneurship and the accompanying role of a limited, effective government constrained by national and international laws (Paul is a self-proclaimed and extreme isolationist who advocates the U.S. withdrawing from or opposing institutions such as the UN, the NAFTA Agreement or the International Criminal Court).

Our libertarian candidate makes yet other remarks (i.e: against abortion, against federal funding for stem cells research and other comments on religion) that have nothing to do with liberalism. I am interested in knowing about his ideas on gay marriage or euthanasia, though I may easily guess at them. I claim these particular views make him a conservative, like scores of others who purport to be (classic) liberals but actually defend the status quo and despise certain lifestyles they dissaprove.

Ron Paul´s official website

Photo: Ron Paul © The Ithacan