War: What is it good for? The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots - Ian Morris

I have only read a handful of pages of the introduction to this long, weighty book, but I can honestly say I have never disagreed so profoundly with so much in so many different ways as I do with this author. To be precise, if the introduction is a faithful summary of the book as a whole then I disagree with it in numerous ways. Whether this is going to get in the way of actually finishing the book remains to be seen of course.

The astonishing thing for a book of popular history is that it takes as its central thesis the argument that Edwin Starr was wrong. More specifically, it argues that war, far from being good for absolutely nothing is at the heart of the development of civilisation. War builds society while at the same time driving behaviours that make war less likely and less damaging. War creates larger, more prosperous, and safer communities, and seems to have been the only way to create such bigger societies. At the same time war is now in the process of putting itself out of business. Strange that we happen to be living at such a turning point in the development of human history, the one time when war, having been the driving force behind social change and improvement, suddenly becomes obsolete. The end of history anyone?

Morris, to be fair, does seem to genuinely believe his thesis. No-one could be as cynical as you would need to be to think up a controversial and hard to prove position as he has here, dedicating the hundreds of hours of research required to support his arguments. (I assume that the following 400 pages or so aren't filled with Garfield cartoons or such, but follow the pattern of densely written argument found in the introduction. Time will tell.)

Morris is so spectacularly wrong, in such a variety of ways, that it is quite hard to find a starting point. Let's begin with the classic mistake of associating two things that happen at the same time and believing they are related. So wars (of many different forms) have characterised human history since the last ice age, and the beginning of modern civilisation. At the same time human civilisation has developed, population has grown, forms of Government have become more complex, and in essence we have become more "civilised". Are the two things related? It's impossible to disprove a theory like this. If you point to periods of peace and prosperity where society has taken a leap forward, well that's just people reaping the rewards of earlier conflict. And periods where society has descended into barbarism - preparing the ground for the next step onward and upward. The problem here, you will have spotted, is that the exact same set of arguments could be used to prove the oppostive point - that war harms society, and the peaceful resolution of conflict or the avoidance of conflict, in those rare moments when it is tried, is what allows society to prosper.

The second thread of Morris's argument is that over time people have become less violent, and that deaths as a result of warfare have declined - as a percentage of the population. This argument is reference in Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, and I probably ought to read what I said about it then, but that would be cheating. I now think, irrespective of what I argued then, that the only way this point can be demonstrated is by cheating - cheating with the definition of warfare for example. The thesis becomes confused here - war builds societies, which allow people to prosper, but war is declining, becoming less lethal. Some of the wars we learn about in history involved professional armies a few tens of thousand strong, drawn from populations many times their size. I will need to see what evidence Morris presents before going much further on this point, but for now I am not persuaded.

Societies build, become larger and more prosperous, for many different reasons. Technology is obviously key, for example, in the Industrial Revolution. Morris probably would argue that war enabled the conditions in which technology could play its part, and I would concede that war has proven the catalyst for many technological breakthroughs. But was the spinning jenny developed as a response to the threat of war? Did we send battalions of steam engines or Internet enabled laptops into conflict against the French, the Germans, or anyone else we felt threatened by? You can argue war is at the root of these changes. Take the agricultural revolution - we needed more food to feed a growing population which happened because we were at peace because we had won previous conflicts, or alternatively because of a growing empire, won by war - you see, the theory fits whatever the circumstances, which means ultimately it is useless.

The Real Band of Brothers - First-hand Accounts from the Last British Survivors of the Spanish Civil War - Max Arthur

This book is a collection of eight first person narrative accounts of the Spanish Civil War, told by International Brigade survivors. Accounts such as this, obviously inspired at least in part by the fading away of the last of the Great War veterans, are an important historical legacy. This is not a history of the war, although a useful introduction provides some context. The accounts have been tidied up to an extent – no-one struggles to form a coherent sentence or remember a name – but apart from that sensible editing the accounts stand largely untouched. There is no dramatizing of events, no sanitising – when one of the interviewees describes shooting a Spanish soldier there is no hint of any regret. International Brigade volunteers went to Spain largely on their own steam – there seems to have been very limited active recruiting – and the haphazard nature of the struggle is clear. These personal accounts provide clear testimony of the struggle against fascism in the 1930s – these men and women understood the threat of the rise of fascism in Germany, Italy and of course Spain, as well as the home grown varieties in the form of Mosley’s blackshirts, and the Irish equivalent, the Blueshirts (which I hadn’t read about before, so I learned something!). Not one of the interviewees expressed regret,  nor any hesitation in saying they would do it all over again, despite the very heavy price paid.

I have only one minor reservation about this book which relates to its title – the Real Band of Brothers. This title suggests that other bands of brothers lacked some essential quality which this group had. If that’s the author’s position – that because this group were all volunteers who were ideologically committed to their cause, rather than conscripts or people who sign up for other reasons, they are more real than others – then it needed to be argued rather than suggested.  Without wanting to over-react on this issue, other bands of brothers (such as Henry’s Agincourt comrades, pressed men, mercenaries and regular troops) had a comradeship that was the equivalent of the international Brigades. Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia shows that comradeship on the republican side of the civil war had to say the least its limits.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell

What a curious, complex novel this is. Let’s start with the title. Late on in the novel we find a reference to Japan (the book’s setting) as the “land of a thousand autumns”. So on one level the novel’s title can be interpreted as “Jacob de Zoet’s life in Japan”, which would be entirely accurate. But on another level the reference to a thousand autumns – ie a thousand years – hints at the theme of unnatural longevity, which is a small under-current in the novel, which I will explore in a bit more detail later on.  

Japan at the end of the 18^th century was obsessively insular, and made only the smallest concessions to contact with the outside world, in the form of a very small, physically segregated Dutch trading post on an island in the port of Nagasaki. The eponymous Jacob de Zoet takes a post as a clerk on this trading post to make his fortune, and the first two hundred or so pages of the novel follows his introduction to this bizarre, corrupt community. His contact with the Japanese is very limited, but his eye is caught by a Japanese midwife and medical student. This section of the novel follows a very traditional, linear, well researched formula which passed very slowly for me – the central character is not particularly interesting or appealing, and he has not much to say about his situation other than to pine for his fiancé back in Holland and simultaneously lust after the midwife, Orito. This is presented not very convincingly as a passion which he struggles against despite himself. Quite a few of the critical online reviews mention giving up on this novel due to the lack of pace or action, and I very nearly joined them. Jacob is a passive character who as a first person narrator fails to engage the read.  

However, the novel takes a sudden shift of tone and speed when the story starts to follow Orito when she joins a convent. When shown from Jacob’s perspective at the end of his section of the novel, this is a voluntary decision, but we are quickly shown that in fact a kidnapping. Orito has been sold into captivity by her step-mother (following her father’s death). Things get much darker quickly – the convent is populated by women rescued from brothels and freakshows with various ill-defined deformities, and they are used as sex slaves by the monks in the neighbouring monastery. Kept pregnant as often as possible, their babies are stolen from them shortly after birth. We are suddenly in a completely different kind of novel, lurid, exploitative, just a little bit racist. The pace of the novel accelerates – Orito tries to escape, and then a complex and desperate rescue plan is implemented. The outrageously sinister figure behind the baby farm emerges as we learn even more horrific details about the convent.

Having set up a scenario where a character we can empathise with and care about is in desperate danger, the focus then switches again, this time back to Nagasaki and the arrival of an English ship looking to plunder from the Dutch settlement. This scene is drawn from real life incident, and provides the catalyst for the novel’s denouement. There are then some hastily sketched notes for a finale in which the author appears to have lost all interest.

 

Having previously read the Bone Clocks, (ie out of publication sequence) the brief references here to the death cult being more than just a sick fantasy stand out. Lord Abbott Enomoto, the cult leader, mentions at one point that he is over 600 years old – there is no real explanation of this claim, and the reader is given no clue as to whether this is the claim of a lunatic, or has any substance.

My problem with this novel is this – well researched historical romances are fine, but they are not normally my preferred choice of reading. Rape/murder/infanticide/torture/time travelling thrillers also have a specialised audience. Mashing the two together, as this novel does, goes beyond bizarre. I half expected to see some vampires and zombies being woven into the plot. The case for the defence is that this is just magical realism, but I don’t buy that. The very dark aspects of this novel go far beyond the lighter feel of most magical realism novels. I do admire what Mitchell is trying to achieve. He is reinventing the novel, or at least experimenting with its form to breaking point. He is a fine writer, and his poetry, clumsily disguised as prose, is superb. His metaphors and imagery are often remarkable. But building a novel around such bleak, disturbing themes requires more than a patina of historical realism and gentle romance.  I’d be really interested in your thoughts.

The Bone Clocks - David Mitchell

David Mitchell’s novels defy categorisation. Anyone who has read Cloud Atlas, or seen the pretty trippy film version, will know that he is keen to break down the traditional structures of the novel. The Bone Clocks is no exception, and I am reasonably sure that if it had been published anonymously it would have been quite easy to have identified Mitchell as the author.

I’m quite torn in reviewing this novel. On the other hand, I read it in a few short days, consuming it and carrying on reading long after the point common sense was telling me to take a break and get some sleep. I am trying to avoid the cliché “unputdownable”, but this is the first book for a long time where that has happened, where I genuinely engaged with the characters and wanted to know what happened to them, how the author manages to tie together the strands.

But on the other hand this is really a very silly novel. Woven into the naturalistic strands, stories of a teenage runaway in the seventies, a boorish Cambridge graduate on a skiing holiday in the 80’s (I think) and so on, short stories really but all linked by characters that come in and out of focus, is a time travelling science fantasy thread which on its own would be utterly preposterous and almost certainly unpublished. I suspended critical judgment when reading because the naturalistic sections are so well done, but it undoubtedly makes a strange beast of a novel.

Bone Clocks, incidentally, is a euphemism for people. Quite nasty really. On balance I’d say Mitchell just about gets away with this, although his credit in the readers’ trust is eroded somewhat. But this was enough to get me reading some of his earlier novels, in particular the more recent “Thousands Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” which I am partway through at the moment. I’ve read some of the online commentary on Bone Clocks, and there are some fierce deconstructions of the text, notably on Amazon, that make good points. It is silly and self-caricaturing at points, and evidence of “dialling it in” aren’t hard to find. But I keep coming back to those “just another chapter” nights – am I that much of a sucker for an adventure story?

Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte

There’s a Darwinism in play which determines whether novels continue to be read after the author’s death and the passage of a few decades. Authors that were once widely read and popular turn out over time to be of interest to only a very specific audience, and do not translate well into later periods. As the years pass the number of surviving and still read authors dwindles further, until even once great, Nobel-winning titles are only downloaded for £0.00 on the Kindle, to remain on aspirational reading lists but never quite got round to. But some novels buck the trend, going into hibernation for a century or more only to be rediscovered with a fresh relevance by a new generation. Agnes Grey undoubtedly is not one such novel. It is dull beyond comprehension, and only appears here a) because of the previously mentioned Kindle free availability, b) it is an AS text, c) it was written by a Bronte (Anne, her first novel).

A measure of the novel’s popularity is that it has never been adapted for television and screen. For good reasons – very little happens. We expect, from Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, for Bronte leading female characters to have some spirit, if not spunk, but Agnes is limp, passive, and dull. She gets her man in the end, but doesn’t really deserve him, AB simply rewarding patience and virtue with a predictable long foreseen happy ending which is a complete anti-climax. With most Bronte novels it’s not really about the destination, more about the journey, but with Agnes there is little if any self discovery or personal growth. Some novels deserve to be forgotten, not disinterred to torture A level students, when there is so much great literature out there waiting to be read and discovered. Sorry Anne.
Now I should end there, but I feel guilty. This novel must have some redeeming features, surely, and it is my self appointed task to seek them out. There’s a natural instinct to be protective towards Anne, a romantic figure over-shadowed by her sisters, dying tragically at a young age, a compelling part of the Bronte mythology. ( Forgive me, but I can’t resist mentioning here the academic discoveries of that great critic Mr Meyerburg who postulated, indeed demonstrated, that Bramwell was in fact the author of all the “Bronte sisters’ novels”, and that his alcoholism was all a heroic act to disguise the dissolute nature of his siblings.)

Agnes Grey, simply put, is juvenilia. It is an author learning her craft, using autobiography as material. No-one could possibly criticise Anne for writing this, following a path taken by many authors, but that doesn’t make the novel any more readable.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones review

I started to read GoT for two simple reasons. First, I watched the television series, but found the constant cutting between scenes made it really hard to follow the story. I suspect my constant “Which one is he trying to murder/trap/skin?” became somewhat annoying. Second, my teenage sons raved about them, and in the past their judgment has been pretty reliable, at least when it comes to this genre. So I dutifully made my way through the several thousand pages across the – how many novels is it now, five but several are divided into different segments and published as separate books, so approximately eight – without finding it a particular effort. Short chapters and constant switching of scene help drive the narrative along nicely.

Having looked it up across the five books there are well over 3000 pages of text, as follows:

A Game of Thrones 704

A Clash of Kings 768

A Storm of Swords 992

A Feast for Crows 753

A Dance with Dragons 1056

I know this is not really relevant to the content of the novels itself, but I can’t avoid mentioning this fact – it has taken Martin nearly 20 years to write the five novels, the last being published in 2011 i.e. four years ago. The chances of the series being finished (by Martin) seems slim – although I have no doubt his estate will continue to allow novels set in this fictional world for many decades to come – in fact his output is likely to accelerate after his death.

Because the novels, and the television series, have been such huge successes, it is as usual (I always seem to say this) going to be hard to find something original in this review. So as a different approach, I wanted to summarises some of the debates about the series, and perhaps take some sides.

Martin is following in some well-trodden footsteps in these novels. This ground has been covered extensively before, pillaging medieval England for characters, themes, incident and drama, with an overlaid patina of magic. It is all informed by a very late 20th century perspective – the people don’t really sound or behave like pre-industrial warlords, knights, peasants and so on – they could easily be translated into numerous other settings. If you’ve only seen the television series then you might be surprised that the incidence of rape and sexual abuse is much lower in the novels – for instance the attack on Cersei by Jaime is consensual in the novel, but clearly rape on screen. (Martin’s subsequent justification for the “sexing up” of the television series, that there is plenty of sexual violence in war, doesn’t really make sense when the attack is brother on sister.) There are also plenty of strong female characters, unlike in Tolkien for example,

My main reaction to all this however is a growing conviction that Martin has quite literally lost the plot. He has lost control of his material, pulling out so many random threads that he has no chance whatsoever of drawing them back together again. Sure he will do it, but only at the expense of any credibility or coherence, most of which has already been lost anyway. Plot development were set up three or four books ago but left hanging for hundreds of chapters. Whenever you think he is going to turn to tying something together he then introduces a whole cast of new characters, (the Sand Snakes anyone) only to then throw them away and not return to them again. The whole thing shows a complete lack of control in a way that almost every other series of this kind does not. My diagnosis is JK Rowling syndrome – the phenomenon where an author becomes so successful they start to ignore or over-ride their editors. (Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect children’s novel – Harry Potter goes Camping aka Deathly Hallows is a bloated mess).

My other reaction to A Song of Ice and Fire is that despite the efforts to make the world of Westeros believable, it is all actually hugely incredible.  Very few if any of Martin’s characters behave in a rational or realistic manner. They make bizarre, life threatening decisions. They put themselves in danger for no sensible reason. Stannis for example has the power to kill people using magic - which he then seems to completely forget about after he kills his brother Renly. The northmen are panicking for the whole of the duration of the novels about the rise of mysterious undead creatures north of the Wall, when all the signs are that they just need to close their gates and forget about them. Wherever you look people say and do stupid, unlikely things constantly. No wonder they all die so frequently. Would the huge tribes of wildlings be able to survive north of the wall given the weather (what do they eat?) and predation by the undead. Why has it taken Daenerys five novels to even start to return to Westeros, when she now has an army of ninja berserkers? (the unsullied). Why would the Black Watch recruit from the dregs of society and then expect them to behave like virtuous monks? It’s just daftness wherever you look. The suspension of critical scrutiny will only take you so far, and there comes a point when you just have to say “I’m not buying this.” How does he get away with this? Mainly because there is so much going on, and it happens so quickly, the reader isn't given time to consider just how stupidly most of the characters are behaving. Secondly the characters are quite well realised, despite their irrational behaviour. Varys the eunuch master spy, or Littlefinger the brothel owner and master politician with the, er, little finger, are memorable characters, reinforced by their portrayal on screen.

I'll carry on reading when and if Martin brings out 6 and 7, and may even watch the television series as it spins off on its own axis, but this will never be anything other than expensive nonsense.