The Night Before Christmas

The Night Before Christmas
By Scarlett Bailey
Ebury Press – £6.99

As it says on the inside cover of The Night Before Christmas: ‘’Scarlett Bailey loves nothing more than spending a wet Sunday afternoon watching her favourite films back-to-back with large quantities of chocolate.’’

Might it be said that this is an ultimate reflection of the book itself. In other words, chick-lit at it’s finest. It’s most blatant. It’s most obvious.

In fact, perhaps a little too obvious, especially so far as the book’s plot is ultimately concerned. That said, if it was Fyodor Dostoevsky you were after, you’ve obviously come to the wrong place.

Okay, here goes: four long-time, attractive (in this particular genre of writing, everyone is always attractive) girlfriends get together for the Christmas period, as one of the friends is preparing to open a boutique hotel (whatever that means) in the middle of the Lake District. Accompanied by their respective partners, they each envisage a romantic break – replete with coy consultation, cuddles and camaraderie.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite pan out that way, and the ensuing saga takes up the remainder of the novel; which, considering it’s set over the time span of a week, certainly contains huge dollops of fun’n’frolics. Not to mention fashion. Not to mention menus (I kid thee not) for ‘Stephen’s Boy Scout’s Baked Beans,’ ‘Will’s Shovel Fried Eggs’ and ‘Cumberland Rum Butter.’ (all available at the back of the book !)

Without wanting to divulge too much, our protagonist Lydia has three lucky men to choose from – if indeed ‘lucky’ be the term – the boxes inexorably ticked throughout come under the following yawnesque headings: reliable and safe, naughty and sexy, dark and mysterious. As any fem fatale would do in preparation for picking out the best man: ‘’Once she’d raised her body temperature to acceptable levels, she found a pair of the aforementioned evil hipster jeans […], pulled on a contrasting grey and white vest combo, and finished it off with a knee-length off the shoulder sweater that was probably a bit loosely knitted to be practical, considering the Artic conditions, but which looked sexy. And Lydia decided that, right now, looking as sexy as a quite short, quite curvy, brunette girl could when standing next to a quite tall and willowy, very beautiful, semi-famous redhead was more important to her than being warm […]. She brushed out her hair, until it wended its way in long, dark ripples down her back, and smudged a little eyeliner around her chocolate-brown eyes, before applying the mascara she never usually went anywhere without.’’

The Night Before Christmas can only be described as the runner-up in the X Factor of literature; which in this instance is obviously a good thing, as there’ll always be a market for light-weight escapism.

David Marx

The Great War And The Making Of The Modern World

The Great War and the Making
Of the Modern World
By Jeremy Black
Continuum – £20.00

By providing a justifiably more than cohesive assimilation of the facts in relation to the First World War, this book will no doubt trigger a number of debates – some no-doubt heated – which in the grand scheme of things, can only be an exceedingly good thing. Reason being, there’s a veritable shortage of documentation on what came to be known as The Great War; especially when compared to the sheer bombardment of information concerning the Second World War.

This is somewhat substantiated by the fact that throughout an array of history faculties, there has always been a never-ending university question that begins thus: the First World War was essentially started on the streets of Sarajevo – discuss. In and of itself, this open-ended question has no doubt, provided history boffins the length and breadth of the English speaking world with hours and hours of social and political, jocular and satirical deliberation. The sort of which is perhaps still raging as I write.

Almost a century on from the catastrophe of the heinous event itself, it ought come as no surprise that Jeremy Black’s The Great War and the Making of the Modern World has finally come unto being. I say finally, because there really hasn’t been that many books of late, that delivers the bear, brutal facts in such a way as they desperately need to.

Without bias.
Without political agenda.
Without anything to gain.

In fact, as is written on the book’s back cover: ‘’There is a civic and professional duty for historians, a responsibility to the present and the future, as well as the past, to try and to explain and discuss the war without yielding to the ease of conventional platitude.’’

Lest it be said, if there’s one thing this totally independent book does not yield to, then it’s that of ‘’conventional platitude.’’ It walks its own walk and most certainly talks its own talk. Already in the book’s Introduction, there’s enough courageous evidence to suggest that Black has thrown nigh all of his considered caution to the wind; which in turn, makes for a thoroughly refreshing read throughout: ‘’As we move further into the twenty-first century, so the respective weight of the two world wars will probably alter, a process that will accelerate when the last of those who fought in the Second World War die. Nevertheless, the extent to which Hitler was such a distinctive enemy, whereas Kaiser Wilhelm II, the ruler of Germany in the Great War, appears banal and mediocre, if not weak and ridiculous, will remain an important difference.’’

The above is a rather brazen statement to make – especially so early on. This absolutely isn’t to suggest that The Great War eventually evolves unto a beige manifesto of the bland. Far from it. If nothing else, its nine chapters (plus Conclusion) is a clear and literary concise consideration of not only the Great War itself, but also that of its totally myopic causes and unspeakable trajectory.

For instance, in the final chapter, Black writes: ‘’Europe went to war in 1939, and it is easy to trace this resumption of hostilities to the failure of the Versailles peace settlement of 1919 and the deficiencies of the League, and thus to see the Second world War as the sequel of the Great War […], a product in part of the factors that had caused and sustained that conflict and, more particularly, of the unfinished business its unsatisfactory close had left. Focus on the reparations (payments) demanded from post-war Germany as an aspect of its war guilt proved a particular source of liberal (and German) criticism in the 1920s and 1030s. This criticism ignored German reparations from France after earlier victories and, instead, encouraged the view that the peace settlement had been mainly retributive. It was argued that a mishandled, if not misguided, total war in 1914-18 had led to a harsh peace, the latter a consequence of the former.’’

Such analytical writing ensures The Great War and the Making of the Modern World is a tough, thought provoking and more than stimulating read for all and sundry; not only readers and teachers of history, but also countless cynics and disbelievers.

David Marx

Crisis And Contemporary Poetry

Crisis and Contemporary Poetry
Edited by Anne Karhio, Sean Crosson and Charles I. Armstrong
Palgrave Macmillan – £50.00

Only an ignorant and suave simpleton would contemplate the idea that literature, let alone poetry, is as alive and as kicking as it ought to be.

Without wanting to garner the risk of sounding a total pessimist, isn’t the latter something of a dying idiom? Which, were this not tragic enough, is as an acute an indictment of the morally bankrupt society in which we unfortunately find ourselves, as it is a direct result of that which poetry has always fought so hard to promote: reality.

In times of yore, translucent poetry and reality were, if nothing else, a discriminating polar like reflection of the other. Whether it was love (as seen through the eyes of the Romantics), or war (as seen through the eyes of the War Poets), poetry has forever endeavoured to ply society with some sort of kernel of truth.

After all, (real) poetry doesn’t lie.
It merely substantiates reality.

Regardless of outcome.
Regardless of backlash.
Regardless of reward.

As a collection of words, it has to be said that poetry has never been about the beautiful, or just, reward. It has surely, always been about the inner-sanctum of ones’ own truth, wanting desperately to reach out to the inner-sanctum of another’s truth. Despite perhaps being aligned with all of life’s ultimate pristine beauty (by way of the Romantics) or gore like filth, rage and hypocrisy (the War Poets). Hence, so much of today’s reality – by way of the media’s current obsession with that of supposed reality – having not only let itself down, but that of most poetry (and literature) too.

Riddled and fraught with an array of fascinating deliberation, Crisis and Contemporary Poetry pinpoints not only the above (‘’Certainly, if poetry is to be an alternative to, rather than a simple abettor of, the news media’s sensationalism, then it must scrupulously question its own medium and ethos’’), but also casts as wide and courageous an academic net as is possible within the aforementioned context of a vacant society.

The above is therefore, profoundly brought to bear on a number of occasions throughout this (unsurprisingly) excellent collection of essays, as the editors Anne Karhio, Sean Crosson and Charles I. Armstrong hint at in the Introduction: ‘’Crisis of politics, place, person and poetry […] seeks to articulate fresh vantage points on how poetry of the present responds to situations of turmoil and tension. How far back, beyond the precedent of someone like Auden, can we trace the issues that poetry is tackling today? From what underlying disaster or intrinsic fault does poetry’s need to reach the deaf and speak for the dumb stem? There may not be easy answers to such questions; it is often in the nature of a crisis that a large part of its challenge will lie in the calibration and fine-tuning of questions, rather than in the arrival at pat formulations or solutions. Poetry’s efficacy may be that it helps us approach or frame a problem, rather than providing the sort of technological or political solutions one seeks for elsewhere.’’

Divided into four sections (‘The Limits of Expression: Representation and Identity,’ ‘A Special Case: Crisis and Poetry in Northern Ireland,’ ‘Situated Words: Ecology and Landscape,’ ‘Suspended Judgements: Rethinking Poetic Reception’) all fourteen essays are as equally stimulating as they are challenging. As such, it’s rather difficult to home in on any one, without pertaining to a suggestion that the others aren’t quite as strong, because this really isn’t the case.

That said, Scott Brewster’s essay ‘Hern: The Catastrophe of Lyric in John Burnside’ really does endeavour to tell it as it might be told, right from the outset of its opening gambit: ‘’The lyric poem emerges in crisis; the lyric poem emerges as crisis.’’

By shedding a quintessentially thought provoking light on Jacques Derrida, Burnside pinpoints the degree to which pure interiority and independent spontaneity appeals to the laws of mnemotechnics: ‘’The poematic marks both a retreat into ‘pure’ self-containment, and a countervailing exposure to distress and contamination; in its encounter with the other, the poem opens itself up to danger, but also to an event, something that happens here and now, at a moment of crisis: ‘Just this contamination, and this crossroads, this accident here. This turn, the turning round of this catastrophe.’’’

Focusing on poetry from Britain, Ireland and the USA, Crisis and Contemporary Poetry dissects and discusses a number of controversial issues within poetry; ranging from the Troubles in Northern Ireland to their (immediate) aftermath within the context of the war on terror, from the Holocaust to questions of current cultural and national identity. It does so in a totally refreshing and inviting manner, which, by the book’s end, enables one to feel both enriched and enlightened.

David Marx

What It Is Like To Go To War

What It Is Like To Go To War
By Karl Marlantes
Corvus Books – £17.99

War, along with all its vile and harrowingly wasteful implications are herein broached with a severe and brutal honesty. An honesty that I have never encountered before; but then Karl Marlantes does write from elongated, explosive experience; which is to say he writes from the inside out, as opposed to the outside in: ‘’Killing someone will affect you. Part of you will think you’ve done something wrong. It’s drilled in from babyhood. If, however, you’re prepared ahead of time for it, you’ll suffer less because this knowledge and structure will add a thin layer of armour. Why put on the armour after the war? This is what I did.’’

As dark, barbaric and fundamentally male induced as war is, What It Is Like To Go To War is surprisingly humane and in parts, even delicate. As such, much of what Marlantes writes traverses the anaesthetized acquiescence of war, as if a literary heat-seeking missile. This is particularly true of the fourth chapter, ‘Numbness and Violence,’ wherein the author not only usurps the psychological human nature of war by quoting both Nietzsche (‘’I am by nature warlike. To attack is among my instincts’’) and Kierkegaard (‘’It is not good works that make a good person but the good person who does good work’’), but penetrates the solipsistic stasis of the benison acceptance of war, by just telling it as it needs to be told.

And it’s the truth in the telling, just like that of Marlantes’ outstanding debut Matterhorn, which will separate this book from a plethora of (terribly average and misinformed) others. To be sure, there are a number of stark, uncomfortable home truths throughout that are simply laden with unspoken clarity and conscience.

For instance, on the subject of ever increasing weapons technology, he writes: ‘’The critical psychological issue about weapons technology is the ability to distance the user from the effects. A constant martial fantasy is the ‘’clean kill.’’ To kill someone with an almost effortless eloquent blow of the first two knuckles of the fist is aesthetically more pleasing than to bludgeon them to death with a rock. How much more pleasing, then, with a fine rifle? A precision-guided bomb? A ray gun that simply makes people disappear? One of the major horrors of war is the blasted bodies, rotting parts, bloated intestines, and the stench. In Vietnam I used to fantasize about a laser beam so fine that you could slice an airplanes wing off with no more than a hair-line cut – or man’s head, with no blood at all.’’

That Marlantes declines to deny his own acceptance of such fantasy, enables the reader to feel comfortable within the much sought after knowledge, that what one is reading, is the oft ignored truth of the matter. Or at least certain candour bequeathed by way of high-octane, resolute understanding. As he invariably continues: ‘’This clean kill fantasy avoids the darkness. It allows the hero trip without any cost, so of course we fantasize about it. And as we get more and more technologically advanced there are more and more policy makers tempted to live out this ‘’clean kill’’ fantasy. Even the language is getting neat and tidy, as in ‘’surgical strike.’’ There is nothing very surgical about maiming Khadaffi’s children, the children of Baghdad, or Taliban fighters, or Iraqi soldiers. Dealing with blood is a major problem in surgery. I don’t mind the activity nearly as much as the hypocrisy.’’

Hypocrisy within war is endemic. The two are almost a partnership. A bad marriage of sorts, whereby one feeds off the other; while in so doing, depleting every moral sense of balance and discrimination to such an extent that all that’s left is pure hatred.

Indeed, manmade hatred.
Not to mention outrage and remorse.

What’s more, political hypocrisy within the parameters of war, is surely amid the worst, and most shameful of its kind. Here again (and again), Marlantes commendably shines a light: ‘’A Congressional junket to a combat zone is one junket this taxpayer would feel good paying for – as long as the junket doesn’t stop short at headquarters. Unfortunately most of them do because most junketing members of Congress are there so that they can tell people back home they’ve been there, not to actually see the results or failures of their votes. Walk through a burned-out village where the dogs haven’t been fed and you hear them eating the dead. If this doesn’t snap through your conditioning, then smell human meat rotting. Listen to the wailing of the orphaned child and go mad with it because you can’t get it out of your ears until you either walk away or do away with the child. Pick up chunks of body and feel the true meaning of dead weight. These senses aren’t filtered and dulled by visual media. These channels are much more directly open to the heart. This is another reason why ‘’computer game’’ warfare has no natural checks on its violence.’’

It’s not often one reads such frighteningly fraught and forthright sanctity; laced with one literary power punch, after another, after another, after another. This is why What it is Like to Go to War will probably end up being not only one of the best books of 2012 (and it’s still only January), but also one of the best books ever written on the subject of war.

David Marx

The Skinny French Kitchen

The Skinny French Kitchen
By Harry Eastwood
Bantam Press – £20.00

Ever wondered why there aren’t that many fat French women?

Or why, when le palate is of paramount importance throughout France, that French women simply refuse to resemble a small tenement building (unlike so many of their les anglais counterparts)?

Might it have something to do with the fact young teenage French girls are simply incapable of drinking seven hundred pints of snakebite of a Friday evening – invariably followed by a mish-mash of sloppy love-bites and kebabs. Or more to do with the fact slapperesque behaviour just hasn’t yet caught on across the channel?

Either way, as a menagerie of minds ponder upon such sociological gastronomy, here’s a book that’ll hopefully retain many a waistline from potentially resembling that of a small caravan. That’s right folks, The Skinny French Kitchen – 100 light and delightful French favourites by Harry Eastwood, will both enable and procure even the most reticent of weight obsessed addicts, into (hopefully) lightening up and getting stuck in.

A self-confessed lover of snails and profiteroles – now there’s a topsy-turvy combination – the authoress succinctly writes in the book’s Introduction: ‘’I love French food. The only fly in the ointment is that traditional French food doesn’t love me. As someone who has struggled with putting on and losing weight for most of my life, French dishes (with all that butter) make me rather nervous. So, in The Skinny French Kitchen, I have combined my knowledge of French cuisine with my field of expertise: I’ve lightened up le menu and cut the calories from one hundred of my favourite French recipes.’’

So scattered amid these 248 pages, are such mouth-watering delights as ‘’guilt-free’’ Gratin Dauphinois, Calves’ Liver with Red Onions in a Raspberry Vinegar Glaze (for those who ‘’love eating meat that’s gutsy but lean’), Profiteroles au Chocolat (‘’hands down the best dessert in the world’’) and yet another best: The Best Roast Chicken Ever; beneath the title of which Eastwood writes: ‘’This is a bold claim, I know. But you haven’t tasted this chicken yet… I am one of many who feel that roast chicken is what the soul of a home would look, smell and taste like. I love it simply done with lemon and rosemary, I love it with a thousand garlic cloves slow-cooking alongside it, I love it hot or cold.

This recipe is what I would call the golden Mercedes of roast chickens. It’s a little more fiddly than simply bunging a beautiful bird in the oven with half an onion up its cavity and a grind of pepper over the top, but when you’ve tried it, you’ll understand what I’m on about…’’

Having lived in Normandy prior to moving to Berlin, I do know where she’s coming from, especially with regards actually having to put some effort into cooking, which, when all’s said and cooked, really is worth the effort!

Along with some truly wonderful colour photographs, this cookbook – like those of Jamie Oliver – is extremely user friendly. It addresses the reader by way of friendly, inviting, liner persuasion. This in itself makes The Skinny French Kitchen a very worthy addition to one’s kitchen library. Bon Appetit…

David Marx

Man’s Search For The Ultimate Meaning

Man’s Search For Ultimate Meaning
By Viktor E. Frankl
Rider/Ebury Publishing – £9.99

In the very first chapter of this unsurprisingly amazing book (‘The Essence of Existential Analysis’), there’s a quote from Vienna’s most famous poet and contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzer: […] there are really only three virtues: objectivity, courage, and a sense of responsibility.’’ Not only is it nigh impossible to disagree with said substantiation of virtue, there’s no denying that Viktor E. Frankl – Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Philosophy and former inmate of both Auschwitz and Dachau – was, perhaps still is, one of its quintessential living embodiments.

Perhaps best known throughout the world for having written Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl has bestowed upon literally millions of troubled souls, a form of translucent, sincere understanding; the sort of which is as illusive to embrace as it is metaphorically awkward to define.

Hence, the countless diversionary tactics which are relatively easy to embrace and define, such as alcoholism, drug abuse and a wanton desire to be anything other than that which we truly are: human. To be sure, within the context of human nature, there are forces of good and forces of unspeakable evil. That Viktor E. Frankl and Adolf Hitler were both born in Austria within six years of each other is just one such instance – if not a juxtapositional, social calamity. As while the latter was all powerful yet deluded beyond any form of redemption, the former was a gentle intellectual; with more scope for human discernment and comprehension, than a thousand wretched Third Reichs’ put together.

This might partly explain Frankl’s survival, not to mention his wisdom and heart-felt authorship of an extraordinary collection of books – among them: The Doctor and the Soul, The Will to Meaning, The Unconscious God and The Unheard Cry for Meaning. Lest it be revered within the thread that traverses throughout all of his writing(s), is the degree to which all of us really can discover meaning.

That life has so much more to offer than anyone can ever possibly imagine.
But here’s the deal: we have to make the effort to find it. What’s more, we won’t find it within the context of the needle and the damage done (or within the inexorable shopping malls of insanity).

That said, we might not find it in Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning either, but we will at least find the right questions. And what more could one possibly ask for, but to at least embark on one’s journey from the right place? As Michael Berenbaum, author of After Tragedy and Triumph has written, this book is to be ‘’treasured by… men and women who wrestle with ultimate questions and encounter God as often in the question as in the answer.’’

David Marx

30 Second Psychology

30-Second Psychology
By Christian Jarrett (ed.)
Icon Books – £12.99

Who’d have ever thought there’d be a quintessential link between a certain strand of psychology and a certain configuration of crass rap; but in this exceedingly easy to read reference book, 30-Second Psychology – The 50 Most Thought Provoking Psychology Theories, Each Explained in Half a Minute, there is indeed a link as well as a considerable mention.

In the section on ‘Positive Psychology, one of the five contributors states: ‘’’That don’t kill me can only make me stronger.’ So sang rapper Kanye West in his 2007 track ‘Stronger.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, put it similarly in the nineteenth century when he wrote, ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.’ Their words would make an ideal motto for positive psychology – a movement that was launched by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman […] in 1998. Seligman lamented the fact that psychology had for so long focused on mental ailments and distress. He called on the discipline to focus more on the positive – on people’s strengths and virtues.’’

So having taken psychology out of the dusty vaults of Viennese didacticism, Seligman, rather like the editor of these fifty theories, Christian Jarrett – award-winning journalist for The Psychologist – has endeavoured to deliver the discipline to that of a far wider audience. And not a moment too soon might I add. For as ever increasing numbers of young people opt for a Bachelor of Arts in media studies – by way of hit’n’run infamy for all the wrong reasons (myopic glamour and translucent depth by way of push-up bras and the thirty second sound bite) – such disciplines as science and maths are falling by the way-side.

To be sure, I’ve heard of a number of British universities offering free degree courses in science and maths – which really is a terrible state of affairs, especially considering the current economic crisis. So it’s all the more refreshing to stumble upon a book such as this, which somehow manages to depict what is more often than not considered a dry, dense, dichotomy of a subject, as being more than approachable, and dare I say it, somehow sexy.

As Jarrett writes in the Introduction: ‘’Each of the book’s 50 entries provides a plain English 30-second introduction, a 3-second ‘psyche’ for when you’re really in a rush, and a 3-minute analysis, which probes a little deeper. The chapters also include biographical profiles of some of the luminaries in this field, including Sigmund Freud and William James. Whether you choose to dip in or to study the book from cover to cover, you are about to learn about the most complex entity in the universe – the human mind. Have fun!’’

The overall layout and design of the book is most inviting – that its actual cover is reminiscent of an early Foo Fighters album is rather fetching to say the least! There’s lots of room to breath and generally reflect and cogitate upon what one may have read (which could be anything from Psychoanalysis to Milgram’s Obedience Study, Pavlov’s Dogs to Beck’s Cognitive Therapy). But the best thing about 30-Second Psychology is its simplicity and all round inviting manner.

David Marx