Nadja - Andre Breton

 NADJA - ANDRE BRETON

Andre Breton, founder of the Surrealist movement and he of the famous credo 'Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all' as declared in his novel Nadja. You only live once apparently so why not have a read of it whilst here? In for a penny in for a pound, as they say. Half-way through, however, and I'm thinking 'Hang on a minute, this is near-unreadable, a near-incomprehensible exercise in tortured English' though inadvertently it's also an insight into the way Breton's mind works. It's all over the place and not particularly pretty. Scant attention is paid to such things as 'Does any of this make any sense?' or 'Is this the way to compose a sentence?' and is instead a kind of literary free-form jazz.

'How can I make myself understood?' Breton asks. Well, by trying to not be deliberately misunderstood would be a start and I say that with some qualification as someone who has read James Joyce, William Burroughs and Kathy Acker - writers who are not particularly renowned for being 'easy'. Writers who could be said to have committed crimes against the English language but in doing so still conveyed meaning and brilliance. I speak as someone who has read Paul Auster whose writing can be so boring as to test the patience of the most determined of readers. Not that I'm saying Nadja is boring or even experimental, it's just that it's so willfully obtuse to the point of being impenetrable. 

From what I can gather the book is autobiographical and is about a writer (Breton) meeting a young girl (called Nadja) in Paris and becoming besotted with her. What is unclear is the nature of the relationship between the two and whether the girl is just out to make a bit of money from the writer by her playing up to his expectations and desires, or is it the writer seducing the girl for his own ends through his artistic credentials and the money in his wallet?

It doesn't much matter in the end because during the course of their relationship they both come across as being just as pretentious as each other. It's telling, however, that in the end the girl vanishes and having been told by his friends 'She's mad, you know' the writer thinks maybe she's been committed to an asylum but he's too scared to investigate further, so writes a book instead: Nadja.

'There is no use being alive if one must work,' Breton writes and therein is the pivot on which Breton's elitism and privilege turns, adopting a position of splendid isolation where he freely ponders and pontificates to his heart's content without having to worry about if anything makes sense because to him the senselessness is the sense. Hence the notion of 'petrifying coincidence' and Surrealist thought. Everything, including the lives of others and such notions as 'communication' is rendered therefore as just so much grist to the mill. The problem being, unfortunately, that there is nothing tangible in the end to hold onto and all his words are nothing but grains of sand falling through fingers.

John Serpico

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

 EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE - JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Nobody talks of 9/11 these days. It's never mentioned. Not that it should be on the tip of everyone's tongue of course but it's just funny how an event of such magnitude, of such historic, global impact has now practically faded from memory, only remembered on its anniversary and then only by a now limited number of people. Do people still remember where they were at the time in the same way as in when John F Kennedy died? John who? 9/11 changed everything, so it's said. It was Tony Blair's finest moment even, with his 'the kaleidoscope has been shaken' speech though it was also all downhill for him from there on.

I was in New York shortly after 9/11 and obviously I went along to Ground Zero just to see it with my own eyes. We'd all seen the pictures, we'd all seen the footage but it was only when face to face with it did I truly recognize and understand the sheer, immense scale of it. New York is impressive anyway, where the streets are like canyons but for there to be a devastated hole where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood was mind-boggling. It was like looking upon something that shouldn't be, that wasn't possible - but there it was. And that was the paradox: it was a sight to behold because there was nothing there - there was nothing there, which made it a sight to behold. On trying to comprehend what was essentially the incomprehensible it suddenly dawned on me that I'd never actually considered the noise that the towers collapsing would have made. How loud exactly was that noise? Was it a boom, was it a rumble, and how long did it last?

Millions upon millions of words have been written about 9/11 but Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was one of the first to write about it in novel form and at the time it was a pretty brave thing to do. It was an obvious subject to write about but to Americans at least it was still a raw and emotive subject. On the other hand, perhaps the only way to come to terms with reality is to turn it into fiction? Who knows?

Foer's book is a novel but at the same time it's more than that. It's bricolage. It's a scrapbook of differing styles of writing, of photographs, design and experimentation. It's wordplay. It's a mean feat. A quite astonishing accomplishment in its own way. It's all about a nine-year old boy by the name of Oskar who has lost his father in 9/11, 'lost' being the relevant word because like so many others his body was never found. Though it's never explicitly stated, Oskar has autism so is somewhat different from all other children and indeed somewhat different from all other people. He's a precocious genius, at odds with everything and against the grain. Already finding it hard if not near impossible to function 'normally' in the world, 9/11 and the death of his father compounds it further.

Is Oskar a metaphor for America? Probably not but it's an interesting notion. Could not America's reaction to 9/11 as in lashing out at Afghanistan - bombing an already primitive country back to the Stone Age - be construed as the illogical/logical action of an autistic child? Those scenes of President Bush at the bomb site wreckage of Ground Zero, posing there for the cameras with an idiot grin on his face as Rescue Workers around him chanted 'USA! USA!' like at a ball game. Is that the actions of responsible adults? Posing for the cameras on top of what in effect was a mass graveyard?

Until someone is diagnosed as such, would they even know they might be autistic? And when someone is diagnosed as having autism does it come somewhat as a relief because it's an explanation as to why they always felt there was something not quite right with them? Did Jonathan Safran Foer know he was writing about a child with autism or was he writing about a character who he viewed as simply being an idiot savant - a precocious child genius? Does Foer have autism himself, I wonder? Do all Americans? Did they once know but have now forgotten? Just as they now seem to have forgotten about 9/11? The United States of Amnesia. The United States of Autism. Who knows?

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is all about searching for clues and searching for answers. Oskar spends all his time making sense of the world by using the most elaborate means and when his Dad is killed it tips him over into doubling down on that sense making. When he finds an old key that had belonged to his father he assumes that whatever it unlocks will hold all the answers he's searching for so he sets off on a quest through the six boroughs of New York, which seeing as there are only actually five boroughs introduces a sense of magic realism into the story. It's a thankless task, with Oskar encountering all manner of New Yorkers each with their own stories going on.

I wouldn't want to make light of 9/11 because a lot of people died that day and with the war on Afghanistan, a lot more people died later. Making light of it is, however, a criticism that could be levelled at Foer's book due to him being overly sentimental and cloying at the heart strings to such an extent that it ends up being annoying and rather than feeling sorry for the Oskar character, you end up almost disliking him.

Is it mere coincidence that Oskar shares the same name as the child protagonist in Gunter Grass's classic novel The Tin Drum? Probably not though whether it's intentional or a subliminal influence is something only Foer would know. At the end of the book, is the use of the series of photos of 'The Falling Man' (the person captured on camera as he fell from the Twin Towers) that when the pages are quickly flicked over make him appear to be floating upwards a nod to the Russian war film Come And See where at the end footage is played backwards and in so doing reverses World War Two? Probably, but again only Foer would know.

Does Oskar find any answers in the end? Well, not exactly. He finds out what the key is for but it's of no personal use to him but in the process and as a result of his quest he ends up finding himself. Which is probably a lot more that can be said about America.

John Serpico

French Revolution 1968 - Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville

 FRENCH REVOLUTION 1968 -

PATRICK SEALE & MAUREEN McCONVILLE

If this was France everything would be on fire. And there's the nub of it. Why is England not on fire? Why is England in a near-state of lethargy when it comes to questions of social change? Why do its peoples allow themselves to be plunged head-long into yet another round of austerity when their country is meant to be one of the richest in the world? Why is everything so quiet and subdued? Why is there no foment on the streets? Why is there no sign of anything approaching anywhere near the events of May 1968 in France that caused riots in the streets, barricades to be erected, the near fall of the Government and the near ushering in of a new age? Why? Why? And why again.

French Revolution 1968, written by Patrick Seale and Maureen McConville is the story of the events around May '68 in France, written as they unfolded. Books age, especially if they're written of and about their time. History is always in the making, history is recorded and history moves on leaving only scholars and the likes of us to pore over its bones.

'The quite extraordinary feature of the May Revolution in Paris,' the authors note 'was the extreme youth of the rebel troops. If most of the general staff were over twenty, much of the infantry came from school.' And therein is one of the biggest lessons to be learned: those who have the most to gain are those who have the least to lose, and students at that time having no investment in the system and no sign of a future had a whole world to gain which explains why their discontent and their demands went well beyond the life they led within the walls of their universities. 

"No future!" proclaimed the Sex Pistols nine years later and you can bet any money this was a slogan that Malcolm McLaren came up with rather than Lydon as McLaren would have had a better understanding of how to cajole a crowd into action having been in Paris in '68. Not that McLaren was any kind of seasoned street activist or anything it's just that he probably had a better understanding of how culture works in a kind of reverse psychology way, particularly in comparison to someone like Penny Rimbaud of Crass who would say the Pistols' 'no future' was "a challenge to our creativity", suggesting a lack of understanding on his part. But I digress.

The parents of all these newly politicised students knew nothing about what was going on until it was too late. It was almost as though that within every respectable middle class family there was a Fifth Columnist. So too with the established political parties of both the Left and Right, little did they know that young people everywhere were coming to the view that their parents' world was due for some pretty violent political surgery.

In as much as Daniel Cohn-Bendit is rightly highlighted as playing an important part in triggering off the revolutionary avalanche of May '68, it's always wrong to place too much emphasis on any one individual in regards to such events as they're often turned into heroes of sorts and heroes always in the end tend to disappoint. If there is in fact any one thing that can be pointed at as being the trigger for the '68 Revolution and the actual rioting in the streets then it's the police moving in on the university of Sorbonne to eject students who were occupying it. At the sight of a great mass of armed police arresting a mass of peacefully protesting students, the mass of student on-lookers took exception and jeered and shouted at the police. All it took was for a stone to be thrown at the police for another to follow. All it took was for a gas grenade to be thrown at the students followed by another for the situation to escalate out of control.

'The authorities had blundered badly by penetrating the Sorbonne, and taking into custody scores of young people whose only offence had been to make a little noise. They had then compounded the error by parading their prisoners in front of their comrades. As was so often to happen, repression bred violence rather than stifling it. The immediate effect of the authorities' crude display of strength was to unite the mass of uncommitted students - and their teachers - behind the enrages. In a few minutes a mass movement was created. It was war. The Revolution had begun.'

To provoke a riot is a pretty difficult thing to do as any erstwhile, would-be black bloc anarchist might attest though paradoxically it can take only a tiny incident such as a stone being thrown for things to escalate beyond all expectations. Arguably, most riots are instigated by the police through something they have done such as the killing of someone (be it in custody or not) or through attacking a crowd, causing that crowd to hit back. There can be all the necessary ingredients in place to form a breeding ground for a riot such as a government bearing down unacceptably upon its populace, or economic turmoil, repression, discrimination and so on but if there isn't the spark then depression will prevail and the over-riding state will remain moribund. The key then is for there to be a riot situation for that spark to be lit and that can only occur in no other place but the street. Not on the television, not on the Internet, not on social media. In the street.

'To the observer, one of the puzzles of the May Revolution is that, from the first day of serious fighting, it was hard to establish at whose door responsibility should be laid: was it the heavy hand of the police which lit the fuse, or was it, perhaps, the deliberate courting of repression by small groups of hard-headed revolutionary tacticians?' This question at the end of the day is one of the most important as to understand it leads to understanding where power lies, particularly in regards to who has the power to prevent a riot from happening and who has the power to start one.

From riot to insurrection, as they say, and this is exactly what happened in France, starting from the students rioting and the throwing up of barricades in the streets to the reaching out for support from the unions and the workers in the factories and - to the consternation of the Gaullist government - receiving it.

On the taking over and the occupation of the universities, workers throughout France took note and in solidarity did likewise; downing their tools, taking strike action and occupying their own places of work. This was all done, however, very spontaneously and mostly at base level without the actions being urged or carried forward by the union leadership.

Coming in for criticism during the whole May '68 crisis and deservedly so is the Communist Party of France and the Communist-led CGT trade union federation who when it came to choosing sides between the revolutionaries on the Left and the Gaullist establishment, chose to go with the latter. Their reasoning was that the students and the militants were adventurists and that as Communists they shouldn't jeopardise their hard-gained, supposed semi- respectability by being stampeded into insurrection. Much rather they would in alliance with the non-Communist Left make a bid for political power but acting strictly within the framework of Republican legality. No, not for them the overthrow of capitalism but just a larger slice of the pie.

Much to his credit as a skilled political animal, in what was like a giant game of poker President de Gaulle played his hand, just at the point when his government seemed about to fall. 'In the present circumstances I will not withdraw.' he declared 'I have a mandate from the people. I will fulfil it.' Now where has this been heard before, this talk of mandates - and only recently? The British Conservative Party, of course, and their interchanging Prime Ministers and their clinging to of power.

De Gaulle rallied his troops, calling on all sections of his State apparatus and every tricoloured-blooded Right-wing leaning citizen of France to stand firm against the Communist hordes and their 'totalitarian enterprise'. No matter that the actual Communist Party had denounced the students and their uprising, no matter that they had denounced Cohn-Bendit, no matter that they had done their utmost to present themselves as respectable politicos with no intention of pulling down the State in fact the complete opposite - to the maintaining of the State - the Communist Party and the CGT union and indeed anyone to the Left of politics were all tarred with the same brush and cast as enemies of the State and subsequently enemies of the people.

It was an exceptional display of politics with de Gaulle's words serving to unite every French conservative under the sun whilst at the same time causing disunity on the side of the revolutionaries. Cut off at the pass. Ambushed and kiboshed by offers of higher wages and shorter working hours. The Revolution stumbled before falling flat on its own dreams then given a good kicking whilst on the ground. The Revolution was dead.

To this day it's always asked when and where did a revolutionary, anarchistic society ever successfully exist? The answers trotted out are always Spain in '36, Ukraine in '18, and so on. To this I would add Paris in May of 1968 - if only for a few short weeks. It was there and then that the peoples of Paris became truly alive; without petrol, without public transport, without monies to spend on commodities, with food rationed - though all alleviated through mutual aid to ensure no-one went without and no-one went hungry. With only themselves and each other. When the pomp of officialdom and the social pressures of bourgeois-dictated society were done away with. When the first full-scale challenge in a Western state to the inhuman efficiency of modern industrial life was launched.

It didn't last, as we know. The flame was snuffed out and the red and black flags were replaced by the tricolour, and the Internationale replaced by the Marseillaise. The example, however, had been set. The imagination and the spirit fired. The gauntlet had been thrown down for others to follow with lessons taught and left to be learned for the next time. And it's inevitable. There will be a next time. There's no question about it. When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake and the key is in not being afraid of ruins because before they leave the stage of history the bourgeoise are blasting and ruining the world anyway so what have you got to lose? There isn't really any other option.

John Serpico