My Take: “Things Fall Apart”, Chinua Achebe’s first novel, is a seminal work in the modern literary cannon. Released in 1958, it was one of the works of literature written from the African perspective that was widely read in the West. This, combined with Achebe’s outspoken stance on the representation of Africa in the Western cannon, gives “Things Fall Apart” a significance beyond its (not insubstantial) literary merit. In short, there are cultural, literary and historical dividends from reading this book.

Achebe took the title of “Things Fall Apart” from a Keats poem about the collapse of European societies in the aftermath of World War I titled “The Second Coming”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

It’s disturbing prose and an ideal allegory for the book’s overarching theme– the wholesale upheaval in the normal order of things in African society brought on by the arrival of European colonisers. Achebe explores his theme through the eyes of Okonwo, an esteemed patriarch in a small tribe in pre-colonial Africa. Okonwo is born of humble origins but rises to a position of high status in his village through many years of hard work and personal, emotional sacrifice. Okonwo is someone who has invested much to progress according to the norms of pre-colonial African society.  Inevitably, the violent change in social norms and the loss of equilibrium brought on by the arrival of European settlers hits Okonwo more than most.

Achebe paints a convincing portrait of how the arrival of Europeans broke down the bonds and structures that held pre-colonial African society together. Interestingly, he dedicates particular attention to examining the impact of European missionaries and the spread of Christianity on tribal society. The animistic religions of tribal Africa were the foundation stone of societal organisation. As these religions were the primary source of power in these societies, the spread of Christianity and its active hostility to these beliefs, did not just cause a spiritual upheaval, but also resulted in a wholesale destabilisation of society.

“Things Fall Apart” is interesting in a cultural sense as Achebe consciously wrote the book in an effort to counter the negative stereotypes of African society perpetuated by turn of the century European authors like Joseph Conrad. However, the book really doesn’t have the feel of a public service announcement. Okonwo is far from a likeable hero – in fact in a lot of respects he really is a stupid and nasty piece of work. However, Achebe skilfully reveals the human drivers for his stupidity and nastiness. Okonwo isn’t nice – but he’s significant from a literary perspective for the mere fact that the story is told from his perspective as a complex human being influenced by the forces around him rather than as an outsiders view of a simple animalistic brute.

Highlight:

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”

My Take: Those who know me know that I’m a bit of a Sinophile. While the human rights record of the Chinese government is obviously indefensible and deserves public attention and debate, I do get a bit annoyed at the generally simplistic analysis applied to issues involving China.

China is obviously not a free society. Its citizens are constrained by the constant threat of brutal repression. But the trajectory of societal development is clearly towards increased personal freedom. There’s a legitimate discussion about whether the pace of this societal change is adequate, but nobody could argue that China under Hu Jintao is less free than it was under Jiang Zemin, or less free under Deng Xiaoping than it was under Mao. China today is more complex than the totalitarian police state caricature.

China’s people are far from a brain-washed, homogenous mass. While there are still absolute taboo topics with hideous consequences for transgressors, there is currently a vigorous political/philosophical debate occurring in China. Mark Leonard’s book, “What Does China Think?” provides a useful idiot’s guide to these debates. The book’s introduction provides a good synopsis of the ground that Leonard covers:

“Inside China—in party forums, but also in universities, in semi-independent think tanks, in journals and on the internet—debate rages about the direction of the country: “new left” economists argue with the “new right” about inequality; political theorists argue about the relative importance of elections and the rule of law; and in the foreign policy realm, China’s neocons argue with liberal internationalists about grand strategy. Chinese thinkers are trying to reconcile competing goals, exploring how they can enjoy the benefits of global markets while protecting China from the creative destruction they could unleash in its political and economic system. Some others are trying to challenge the flat world of US globalisation with a “walled world” Chinese version.

….While it is true there is no free discussion about ending the Communist party’s rule, independence for Tibet or the events of Tiananmen Square, there is a relatively open debate in leading newspapers and academic journals about China’s economic model, how to clean up corruption or deal with foreign policy issues like Japan or North Korea.”

To my mind, the most interesting part of “What Does China Think” is Leonard’s survey of Chinese experiments with new models of governance. There seems to be a lot of experimentation with different ways of making Government more responsive to its citizens – without actually introducing democracy. The result is an interesting series of bounded public consultations – focus groups, opinion polls, citizen deliberative juries – designed to increase citizens’ voice within specific circumscribed parameters, without actually giving them the power to challenge the Communist Party’s power.

As Leonard tells it:

The west still has multi-party elections as a central part of the political process, but has supplemented them with new types of deliberation. China, according to the new political thinkers, will do things the other way around: using elections in the margins but making public consultations, expert meetings and surveys a central part of decision-making. This idea was described pithily by Fang Ning, a political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He compared democracy in the west to a fixed-menu restaurant where customers can select the identity of their chef, but have no say in what dishes he chooses to cook for them. Chinese democracy, on the other hand, always involves the same chef—the Communist party—but the policy dishes which are served up can be chosen “à la carte.”

The authorities certainly seem willing to experiment with all kinds of political innovations. In Zeguo, they have even introduced a form of government by focus group. But the main criterion guiding political reform seems to be that it must not threaten the Communist party’s monopoly on power. Can a more responsive form of authoritarianism evolve into a legitimate and stable form of government?

Leonard terms the result ‘deliberative dictatorship’ and it’s interesting despite its numerous and obvious shortcomings. “What Does China Think” is a useful primer for the way the Chinese elite view the world and the policy challenges facing their nation.

Highlights:

“We are used to China’s growing influence on the world economy—but could it also reshape our ideas about politics and power? This story of China’s intellectual awakening is less well documented. We closely follow the twists and turns in America’s intellectual life, but how many of us can name a contemporary Chinese writer or thinker? Inside China—in party forums, but also in universities, in semi-independent think tanks, in journals and on the internet—debate rages about the direction of the country: “new left” economists argue with the “new right” about inequality; political theorists argue about the relative importance of elections and the rule of law; and in the foreign policy realm, China’s neocons argue with liberal internationalists about grand strategy. Chinese thinkers are trying to reconcile competing goals, exploring how they can enjoy the benefits of global markets while protecting China from the creative destruction they could unleash in its political and economic system. Some others are trying to challenge the flat world of US globalisation with a “walled world” Chinese version.”

My Take: The best way to describe “The Theory of Clouds” is to say that it is French. Very French. By that, I mean that “The Theory of Clouds” conforms to all of the most stereotyped clichés of Frenchness – pretentiousness, sensuality, ambition, obscenity and richness.

Unsurprisingly, it sharply divided audiences when it was released. In France, it was widely lauded and the novel was awarded the prestigious Prix Maurice Genevoix from the French Academy. In the United States, the much anticipated English translation did not meet with universal critical or commercial success.

Strangely enough, I originally picked up this book based on the strong recommendation of economist/blogger Tyler Cowen who lauded Audeguy as a French Ishiguro. I can see what he was saying to an extent, as with Ishiguro, Audeguy eschews linearity in his story telling, infusing large parts of his prose with retrospective, melancholic reflection. In this regard, Audeguy’s layering and inter-weaving of the modern day narrative of Akira Kumo and his private librarian, Virginie Latour with historical and faux-historical interludes is one of the strengths of the book. This style allows Audeguy to pepper the novel with interesting real-life factoids (such as the story of Luke Howard, a Quaker apothecary and member of the Royal Society who devised the names for clouds that are still used today) while maintaining a beautiful, poetical narrative progression.

Where Audeguy departs from Ishiguro however is in his inability to keep his feet on the ground and his insistence on turning the book into a highly conceptual wank-piece. Don’t get me wrong. I like a bit of surrealism in my reading and I definitely like writing that presents the reader with layers of meaning to explore. HOWEVER, I have to say that I was left a little bit confused when the plot began to pivot around a book full of close up photographs of vaginas and the execution of an orang-utan. Too pretentious by half me thinks. Like I say, very French.

On the whole, “The Theory of Clouds” has enough engaging prose to make it a worthwhile read. However, it’s just a little too conceptually ambitious for me to whole-heartedly recommended it.

Highlight:

“Men are destroyed, and destroy each other, over basic things – money or hatred. On the other hand a really complicated riddle never pushed anyone to violence; either you found the answer or gave up looking. Clouds were riddles too, but dangerously simple ones. If you zoomed in on one part of a cloud and took a photograph, then enlarged the image, you would find that a cloud’s edges seemed like another cloud, and those edges yet another, and so on. Every part of a cloud, in other words, reiterates the whole. Therefore each cloud might be called infinite, because its very surface is composed of other clouds, and those clouds of still other clouds, and so forth. Some learn to lean over the abyss of these brainteasers; others lose their balance and tumble into its eternal blackness.”

My Take: For quite a short novella, “The Heart of Darkness” has certainly prompted a lot of meta-discussion. The subject of critical attention as a part of the Western cannon, as a flash point in post-colonial literary debates, as a semi-autobiographical account of Conrad’s own travels in colonial Congo, and as an infamous adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola, “The Heart of Darkness” has been looked at from every imaginable angle in the last fifty years. However, as with most seminal books, the novel itself is worth a read if only so that you can make up your own mind distinct from the analysis.

Strangely enough, the “Heart of Darkness” is written in the format of a sea-story being recounted to an unnamed narrator (a framed narrative for the pedants). While the deck of a ship berthed in the River Thames at first seems to be a strange place to open a story about madness in colonial Africa, this device instils the book with the characteristic of a ghost story being told on a dark and stormy night – a perfectly fitting atmosphere for the novel.

Marlow, a steam-boat captain, tells the story of his travels in the Congo, and his search for the mysterious ivory trader Kurtz, with a ferocious emotional intensity. Marlow recounts the horrors he saw during his time in Africa – the instinctive violence of the Europeans towards the Africans and the savagery the local (‘cannibal’) inhabitants – with a pervasive philosophical reflection. Despite everything that Marlow faces during his search for Kurtz, the real conflict in “The Heart of Darkness” is internal. The most engaging passages of the book are Marlow’s internal struggles with what he confronts, to wit:

The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there — there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were, — No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it — this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity — like yours — the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.

Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you — you so remote from the night of first ages — could comprehend.

And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage — who can tell? — but truth — truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder — the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff — with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags — rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.

Marlow struggles to rationalise what he has encountered in the Congo, particularly the circumstances in which he finds Kurtz, and the flashes of self-recognition he saw as he peered into the abyss. This ultimately is the central philosophical question in “The Heart of Darkness” – what is it that separates man from savagery? The infamous ‘Horror’ of “The Heart of Darkness” is the conclusion that both Kurtz and Marlow reach that savagery is the natural state of the human condition and that the artificial moral constraints of civilised society are an unnatural, and impermanent illusion. Kurtz ultimately put the issue directly to Marlow, asking him to take his ‘choice of nightmares’ and live in a natural state of savagery and barbarity or an unnatural and repressed state of superficial moral constraint.

Probably the bleakest conclusion to a novel in the Western Cannon – but not one to be missed. Check it out for yourself.

Highlight:

I think the knowledge came to him at last — only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude — and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror — of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, — he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath — ‘The horror! The horror!’