Today I finished
Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. The
novel ends with a whimper rather than a bang. Chuck Ramkissoon’s murder, which
the reader was informed about earlier in the novel, remains unsolved, but I
don’t have a problem with that lack of resolution, especially as we are
provided with enough information about Chuck’s business dealings to imagine why
he was killed. Instead, the weakness of the novel’s conclusion comes from its
suspension of the more interesting aspects of what O’Neill had been doing throughout
the rest of the novel. The question of Hans’ belonging, for example, is settled
in a very formulaic and predictable manner when he returns to England and is
reunited with his wife. His time in New York City, along with the threads of
the novel that connected to 9/11, to the (post-colonial) status of cricket, and
to Hans’ sense of identity with immigrants, all these things are ultimately
nothing more than an interlude in Hans’ life. O’Neill self-consciously finishes
the novel by placing Hans and his wife and son at the apex of the London Eye,
with a panoramic view of the capital, and presumably with a panoramic view of
everything that has happened to him. O’Neill deliberately frustrates such a
simplistic reading, of course, but one is still left with a disappointingly
mundane sense of resolution. In particular, the exact nature and meaning of
Hans’ friendship with Chuck remains unclear. This could have been a great novel
about the peculiar mix of intimacy and anonymity that defines friendships
between straight men, but that novel remains to be written.
I also read the
first fifty pages of the Sept/Oct 2013 special issue of New Left Review, an issue written entirely by Perry Anderson and
devoted to the subject of “American Foreign Policy And Its Thinkers.” http://www.history.ucla.edu/people/faculty/faculty-1/faculty-1?lid=252
NLR has only had three single-authored special issues in the past (Tom Nairn on
Europe in 1972, Anthony Barnett on the Falklands War in 1982, and Robert
Brenner on hyper-leveraged financialization in 1998), so this really is an
unusual occasion. The issue is divided into two sections: “’Imperium’ examines
the objectives and outcomes of US world power; ‘Consilium’ the thinking of its
power elite.” The first fifty pages cover the evolution of American foreign
policy over the course of the twentieth century, focusing in particular on its
conduct during the two World Wars. Among the points that Anderson makes is the
lack of American appetite for imperial expansion in the wake of World War I, a
situation very different from the end of World War II thanks to the position of
the Soviet Union. Aggressive American expansion during this period was hidden
under the bland term ‘containment,’ and the architect of this term, George
Kennan, is treated by Anderson with the brutal honesty he merits, contrary to
his respectful treatment by other writers. Perry Anderson’s prose style is
characteristically clear and understated, but he is capable of a zinger or two.
For example, in the context of discussing the habit of successive American
presidents to claim that God approves of American world domination, Anderson
writes “America would not be America without faith in the supernatural.” By
Anderson’s standards, this is verbal shade of epic proportions.
I also watched
Ken Russell’s 1988 film The Lair of the
White Worm, (very) loosely based on Bram Stoker’s 1911 novel of the same
name. Ken Russell’s films are always great fun because they’re so over the top,
and Lair is no exception. The
dream/hallucination sequences in particular are gloriously overwrought,
resembling nothing more than a Soft Cell/Culture Club era music video. Amanda
Donohoe is to be commended for her ability to keep a straight face during some
of the more absurd scenes. From the perspective of 2013, one of the most
interesting aspects of the film is to see well-known actors at varying stages
of their careers. We see a pre-Four
Weddings and a Funeral Hugh Grant, who is as annoying as ever, a post-Dynasty Catherine Oxenberg, who looks
puzzled to be back in England, and a pre-Thick
of It Peter Capaldi. And, of
course, Doctor Who fans will enjoy
seeing Capadi at such an early stage of his career. One of my favorite things
about the film is the contrast between the understated Englishness of the
farmhouse scenes and the exaggerated depiction of everything else about the
film. It might be saying too much to claim that there’s an implicit class
critique in the way that the snake-worshipping lady of the manor victimizes the
rural locals, but the nice thing is that with Russell you can never rule
anything out, either. He is the most ‘grab bag-ish’ director I know. This would
make a great double-bill with Russell’s Gothic.
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