Just being difficult?

Lately I have been engaged in studying Jonathan Culler’s Structuralist Poetics, a fascinating survey of the potential and problems of structuralist literary criticism. Structurawhat? Well, literary research conducted from the structuralist perspective aims to be, as Culler explains, ‘a poetics which strives to define the conditions of meaning’ (p. xiv), so that ‘the study of literature (…) would become an attempt to understand the conventions which make literature possible’ (p. xv).

See what I have to deal with to earn a living? Poor Fred…

Actually, it’s really not that bad. While Culler’s definitions of structuralism are not meant for a four year old, they’re not exactly inscrutable gobbledygook either. In fact, the man is a champion at explaining difficult thinking in simple words. Quite unlike many of his colleagues in literary theory who excel in using obscure language, sometimes malignantly to conceal poor thinking. Indeed, Culler even devoted a book to the subject, under the title Just being difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena, where he deals with branches of the academe which tend to indulge in an academic style that has once been described as ‘terrorist obscurantism’. Wikipedia mentions a famous example from the work of the feminist author Judith Butler, who in 1998 got a prize in a Bad Writing Competition for this sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

Yaiks. That’s bad.

So bad, it can even get funny; which is exactly what inspired the boys from this site http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/. They decided to develop a software program called The Postmodernism Generator which randomly generates complete essays on postmodern issues, complete with quotations and footnotes. Each time you visit the site a different essay pops up. Five minutes ago, its title was ‘Debordist situation and postcapitalist cultural theory’ and the first paragraph read:

If one examines precultural narrative, one is faced with a choice: either reject postcapitalist cultural theory or conclude that art may be used to entrench capitalism. Derrida promotes the use of Debordist situation to challenge class divisions. Thus, an abundance of desituationisms concerning the modernist paradigm of reality may be discovered.

So for all you students out there, next time you need an essay quickly, you know where to look. And I’m very curious to find out whether your teacher will see through the hoax…

Quotes from the book (5)

In preparation for the Book Swishing Event, which - if I may add - was a great success, I noticed that my bookshelf contains different types of books. And I don't mean fiction versus non-fiction, but the label that comes with your bond with the book under consideration.

I suppose we all have at least one book we would like to take with us into the grave, right? Which is a stupid idea, by the way, since it's too dark to read in there. These are obviously unswishable.

On the other kind of the spectrum, you have the books which are deliberately kept out of display. Hidden in the basement, gathering dust and mould in the anonymous cardboard moving boxes, or behind other books, like the least popular kid on the class picture, if your bookcase allows a double row of books. Strangely enough these species are unswishable too, as they are very likely to jeopardize your street credibility. Insofar as you frequent circles in which 'books' and 'street credibility' can be used in the same sentence. Avoiding any verb expressing an act of destruction, that is.

A third kind of books, which I am particularly fond of, is the unexpected discovery. It's the paperback version of having a memorable conversation with a random person, or dancing the night away on a band you had never heard of. This is usually the kind of books I prefer to keep as a birthday present back-up plan. The book which I just finished falls under this category: The terrible privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe.

Most of us would have difficulties using the words 'toothbrush', 'SatNav' and 'Chinese cardgames' in one sentence - not me, of course, I just did - but Coe brew them into an enjoyable story. Containing the following passage:

In days gone by, before motor-ways, before by-passes, traveling through England must actually have involved visiting places. You would drive along high streets (or ride your horse along them, if we're going to go way back) and stop at pubs in the town centre (or staging posts or coaching inns or whatever they used to be called). Now, the entire road network seemed to be set up to prevent this from happening. The roads were there to stop you from meeting people, to ensure that you passed nowhere near any of the places where humanity congregates. A phrase came to me, then - a phrase that Caroline was fond of repeating. 'Only connect'. I think it was from one of the fancy writers she was always trying to get me to read. It occurred to me now that whoever designed England's roads had precisely the opposite idea in mind: 'Only disconnect'.

Sadly enough, there's also the category of books which were recommended to you but turned out to be quite a disappointment. In that case, keep in mind that this is definitely a swishable book...

Meteo sensitive

When I was younger (sit down, grandpa Fred will tell you a story), I didn’t mind bad weather at all. In fact, the worse, the better as far as I was concerned. I used to love riding my bike through the pouring rain and I took secret pleasure in arriving at school with numb fingers and a drunkard’s nose on a freezing morning. Yes, I even loved those dark, overcast and rainy days of late Summer which we are currently experiencing. It might have had something to do with being a gloomy teenager, but it was all fine by me…

Nowadays bad weather really gets my spirits down and good weather definitely cheers me up. So I’m either turning into a normal person, or I’m getting more meteo sensitive, as they say, depending on how you look at it. In any case, this recent change has also renewed my attention in the daily weather forecast. Like many people, every evening I anxiously await the end of the TV news to hear what the weather man/lady has to say. Will it rain cats and dogs tomorrow? Will we have a ray of sunlight over the weekend? Any danger of late frosts? (I wasn’t kidding about grandpa Fred, you see).

But yesterday I began thinking about how strange it really is to have a weather forecast in the news. Just think about it. The first part isn’t news at all. “Today we saw heavy rain all day”, no shit, Sherlock! We have seen what the weather was like, thank you, we do not need you repeating it for us. And the second part, the actual forecast, shouldn’t be in a news program, should it? Indeed, a weather forecast is little more than an educated guess; and lately they have been wrong more often than right. So what legitimate place does educated guessing have in a news program, which should be about facts?

Imagine we would do the same with the news! Go on, suppose for a minute we had a news forecast as well as a weather forecast at the end of every news report. Can you imagine the anchor going:

And finally, the news forecast… Tomorrow might well be the day Kaddafi is captured or killed by the Libyan freedom fighters. It’s got to happen one of these days. Even before noon there is a good chance some politician in the north will have gravely insulted a colleague in the south, or vice versa. And by late afternoon there will definitely be someone who has won the day’s stage in the Vuelta. Tonight will probably be fairly uneventful, unless we are invaded by aliens or something, but that doesn’t seem likely. The rest of the week could be important, or not - frankly, it’s too early to tell. Of course, there’s always the off-chance the pope might die. See you tomorrow for more news!

That wouldn’t do at all, would it?

X-men

It's August, and for unfortunate students this means resit examination time - not exactly the highlight of a young adult's summer (even though, technically speaking, there was no summer). Neither is it for the assistants: I am pretty sure that 'surveilling students for a whole afternoon' beats 'watching paint dry' on the Universal Scale of Boredom. Just imagine you're an assistant at the College of Arts and your supervisor teaches 'Advanced Portraying Techniques III: Using Slow Drying Paint in Extremely Cold Conditions'...

For the grading teachers however, resit exams are not that bad, as it gives them yet another opportunity to observe students and to realize that some of them have rather special abilities and habits. Here's an overview of the most fascinating species:

Time-warp (wo)man:

These students are known for bending time, although rarely to their advantage. When you look at them during the exam, you will never see them loitering. They always seem to be completely immersed into their tasks, frenetically scribbling on their exam copies as if they're afraid that their knowledge may evaporate into thin air. More than often in a handwriting which leaves so much space for interpretation that you could easily loose an elephant in it. Strangely enough, their exam papers never contain more than half an answer to one (of many) question(s). This often leaves teachers behind with the feeling that they lost the rest of the exam somewhere on the way from the auditorium to their office, but the truth is of course that these students only had time for half a question, as they bend time.

Rubberface (wo)man:

This is the type of students you would love to see in a black suit and matching hat, with a white painted face, carrying a basket and picking imaginary plums. They are true mime artists, wrapped around a mind that had different plans for the future. Observing these students is particularly funny and entertaining, as you can deduce their thought process and progress - or, as is often the case, lack thereof - on the exam from their facial behaviour. And they know how to handle the complete spectrum: from anguished expressions over Archimedesque moments of insight to the look on their face when they raise their finger and ask you wether they can go to the toilet (I once had the impression the plums were not that imaginary), it all comes with a powerful visualization.

The Non-Sensei:

Also these students are true artists, in a sense which transcends reality. Unlike the time-warp people, they always hand in an exam which contains more pages than reasonably expected. The surprising thing however, is that their exam is a bizarre mixture of facts, ideas and shreds of course material which makes no sense at all. To outsiders, their exams must look like exemplary answer sheets, but these students have the unique (and, let's be realistic, pretty useless) ability to blend a whole lot of true facts and correct pieces of information into an answer which lies so far from the truth that it makes teachers question the very concept of grading. They never reach the absolute minimum score however, as even the most down-to-earth teacher takes into account the possibility that their exam copy is a message from outer space. And you don't want to be the dork who pissed off the aliens, do you?

Disclaimer: this survey is by no means complete. If you feel that your abilities have been gravely overlooked, please accept my apologies. You can always use the comment box to update this limited account.

Anthropology for commuters

Many of these blogs are conceived on a train. Belgian trains have the tendency to run late, as I’m sure many of you know, so they offer ample opportunity to think about the odd blog entry. Moreover, travelling by train provides you with a steady flow of strange events, strange people and strange conversations. This blog is about all three of these elements.

I don’t know about other people, but once I set foot on a train, I turn into something of an anthropologist. Especially, when there’s a delay and especially when annoying people cross my path, I feel the urge to analyse the situation and the people in participant observation, as anthropologists do. Today, the ferrovian karma decided to punish me with both things: I had to take a one hour stop-train on a trip that usually only takes twenty minutes and I was in the company of three young girls who, much to the blatant frustration of the other commuters, said out loud (very loud) whatever came into their heads.

So I put on my anthropologist’s cap, or hat, or whatever it is anthropologists wear, and decided to study these girls as if they were an undiscovered tribe whose language I now finally understood. Here’s a transcript of the notes I made. (FYI: I’m not kidding, I took out my laptop and just started typing away):

Observation log, entry 1.0: Have spotted three members of said tribe engaged in conversation. All three are young females; probably between the age of 16 and 19n judging by a) the fact that all three smoke (they are nervously fidgeting lighters); b) the fact that all three wear heavy make-up and highly sexualized items of clothing; c) the fact that one of them got a call from an unemployment agency. Still, I’m unsure if any of the three facts really falsifies the hypothesis that they could be under sixteen…

Observation log, entry 2.0: The tribe seem not to mind my presence. After a preliminary study of their behavioural and communicational strategies, I have established the basic social matrix of this group of females. The brunette is obviously the alpha-female; the others look at her, not at each other, when telling a tale and spy for signs of approval (mostly an annoying sound which I presume is laughter). The Asian girl, who could be her stepsister (I will have to double check my transcript of the conversation), is the prettiest one and the brunette’s best friend. The social exchange happens mostly between these two and when they talk, the third one does not disrupt the conversation. She only addresses the brunette directly, or so it has seemed during the span of my observation period. One might conjecture that she feels threatened by the Asian girl’s looks and her close relationship with the alpha-female. Still, the third one is clearly the smart one, but does a good job of hiding it vis-à-vis the others.

Observation log, entry 2.1: Indeed, stupidity seems the pivotal sociocultural dynamic in this pack. On several occasions the females have given proof of this fact, including the previously-dubbed ‘smart one’, who has just claimed that not only Ethiopia, but also ‘Utopia’ is an African country. ‘Honestly’, she said, ‘I have heard that name before’. On the other hand, though, the three seem very fond of the Harry Potter-movies - paradoxically a tale of a slightly nerdy character, sprung from a bookish background with pseudo-Latinized spells and such. They seem quite intimate with the movie’s details. At one time the alpha-female and the Asian girl even produce black magic wands and start doing some of the Harry Potter-spells. They know quite a few of them by heart. Still, this Harry Potter-cultureme seems only a subtext in the general sociocultural repertoire of stupidity, as the conversation about Harry Potter climaxes in an argument about whether they had once spent a ‘whole day long’ or ‘twelve hours straight’ watching the movies…

Observation log, entry 2.2: I’m fairly convinced now that stupidity is the main typology of this tribe’s sociocultural code. Another cultureme that fits into this hypothesis is rude corporeal behaviour. However, there is special social capital involved here, as this behaviour seems largely reserved for the alpha-female. In the last hour she has burped loudly several times, stated angrily that her face is covered in zits (which is true, this observer might add, yet the other two females would not acknowledge it), and she has complained that her arse is sweaty and itchy. In a surprising turn of events, the Asian girl then tried to match the alpha-female’s behaviour by coarsely stating that her titties (sic) are getting too big for her shirt and rudely shaking them up and down to demonstrate her claim. However, neither the alpha-female nor the third one met this behaviour with approving acclamations or gestures. As to the reason of this lack of success for this equally rude corporeal behaviour, this researcher can only speculate…

One of the advantages of being a nerd with a lot of imagination is that it kills time. And keeps you from laughing out loud when you actually start listening to the conversations some people have. But today, it was a close one...

Dictionary for aliens (2)

Mosquito repellent: a substance applied to human skin, in order to attract mosquito's and encourage them to bite at particular places on the body - depending on one's preference. Earthlings do this by covering themselves with this substance almost completely, but deliberately avoiding certain spots which are then meant to be bitten. This can be a finger, the tip of an elbow or a spot on the ankle.

Mosquito net: (Australian slang: mozzie net) a device which looks like a fine, see-through mesh construction which can be hung over the bed (from the ceiling or a frame) or built into a tent, and works more or less like a fish trap for small, biting insects spreading tropical diseases. Unless the mosquito net is broken, there will always be at least one tiny hole through which insects will enter the trap but cannot leave. Most mosquito nets are impregnated with some kind of repellent, in order to make sure that this hole can easily be found. For optimal results, humans sleep under these nets having applied mosquito repellent to their body: this increases the chances of being bitten at the desired position.

Golf

(Warning! We from Fred and Fred might be nerds, but this post is still about sports. If you dislike sports intensely, please keep in mind that golf might be the nerdiest sport out there. Or perhaps a close second to curling. So do read on, dearest of readers. Thank you!)

This summer I was introduced into the fascinating game of golf. The boyish spark in my eye probably gave me away when I watched K. and G., both experienced players, hit some balls in the stretched out domain of a French castle. My friend T. pointed out to them that I was dying to try it myself and they were all too pleased to give me an introduction. So K. showed me the basics that day (stance, grip, swing) and over the next few days G. refined my technique. He even gave me an iron 7 as a training club, which I broke out at every possible occasion. Hitting pinecones, wine corks, balls of tin foil - whatever would fly into the air and allow me to practise - much to the amusement of everyone else and the annoyance of people passing by. And I must say, I had a ball (pardon the pun). When I returned to Belgium I quickly suffered from golf deprivation. Fortunately, G. invited T. and myself over to his local club in Hasselt for a serious initiation and a round of golf on a splendid nine-hole course. After that, it got from bad to worse. My hands burned with enthusiasm whenever I saw that iron 7 resting idly against my bedroom wall…

Now I know, most of you are probably wondering what all the fuss is about. Isn’t golf a prime example of what I myself recently described as accurately hitting small balls with awkward equipment in awkward poses? Indeed, the ball is really small, the course is really big with rivers and sand bunkers, and the hole is really tiny. Moreover, the club is quite short, so you have to bend over and stick out your ass like a retarded king penguin.

And still! After my first hour I immediately understood why people play golf and why it’s good for you. First of all, it’s impossible to play if you’re not relaxed. When your shoulders are tense, when your fingers grip the club too tightly, when your head is not perfectly still during a shot - in short, when any kind of stress is in your body -, the attempt will result in either a giant hole in the air or a giant hole in the ground. So when players step onto a golf course, they need to relax and enjoy themselves. And consequently, they do. Secondly, it’s a fabulous feeling when you do hit the ball correctly. (Here's how to do it). When you launch that thing into the air in a perfect arch, glistening in the sun, and landing a hell of a long way further down the fairway, it’s a thing of absolute beauty. And then you want to do it again. And again. And again…

So last Sunday, when a shaft of sunlight pierced my window and put a glint in the eye of my iron 7, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, I was going to play some golf no matter what. So I put on a polo shirt (I know, it’s ridiculous) and drove fifteen minutes to the nearest golf course. But, there was a little problem. The vast majority of golf courses only allow licensed players on their course. The one in Hasselt I mentioned is the only exception in Belgium, I think. Indeed, you need to be a certified player with a handicap (a standardized rating of your ability to play), to be allowed on the course. But surely, I thought, the practice range (actually driving range) would be open for anyone, wouldn’t it?

Well yes and no. The lady at the reception, after eyeing my crappy irons suspiciously, did reluctantly allow me access to the driving range only, but it would only be this once, she said. ‘You know, Sir, you need a license to use the driving range too’, she added. ‘Well, suppose I wanted to take up golf?’, I asked, ‘How does one go about getting a license and handicap?’. Upon which she handed me a luxuriously edited leaflet, at which I got a bit angry just a while ago.

To get a golf license (golfvaardigheidsbewijs in Dutch) and a handicap 36 which allows you access to most European golf courses, here’s what you need to do:

1. Take a theoretical exam on etiquette and game rules.
2. Take a technical test.
3. Play a certain amount of points under the guidance of licensed player.
4. Take a license test (to get to handicap 45).
5. Play in at least three competitive games within twelve months and get a certain score (to get to handicap 36).

Gulp. And I haven’t even started about what all this costs…

I can understand you can’t just go to a sports centre, buy a bag of golf club and hit the course. Pretty quickly it would look like landmines had gone off all over the place. But it shouldn’t be that difficult to get permission just to play a sport either! Compare it to swimming. The analogy isn’t too far off, I think. Indeed, you need to take a few lessons before you go swimming. You really do, otherwise you’d die. But suppose someone then told you ‘Hang on there, cowboy. You may be able to swim, but now you have to swim competitively for a while before you can get into the pool!’.

I think I’ve played about ten hours of golf by now. I can hit a ball from the tee, from the fairway, and from the bunker without much difficulty. Sure, I can’t send it a full 150 meters with my iron 7 in a dead straight line, but I’m getting there. I know the basic rules both of play and of conduct. I won’t ruin the course and I won’t kill anyone by playing out of turn.

So how about letting me play then, would you? Or at least let me go to the driving range. And ease up on those rules. I thought golf was about being relaxed?

Did you order a special meal, sir?

Ever since I was a child, airplanes have fascinated me. Not just because they're basically fucking massive objects hanging in the sky - which, despite all the physics I studied at university, still has a magical feel to me - but also because I once read that there are so many airplanes cruising around our globe that it would be impossible to get them all on the ground in case of an emergency. Which is essentially the reason why there is no such thing as National Pilot's Day.

I guess this remarkable fact also inspired Michel Lotito to adopt his rather unconventional lifestyle, when he realized - just like all dedicated vegans, people deliberately not owing a car and alcohol addicts avoiding flambé pancakes - that some actions, how insubstantial as they may seem to the outer world, can make a difference. Because this French entertainer, who was born in 1950 and died in 2007 of (surprisingly) natural causes, was famous for devouring indigestible objects. And we're not talking about swallowing the occasional Lego brick. We've all been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and liked the Facebook page - right? This guy actually disassembled bicycles, shopping carts and televisions, and consumed 1 kilogram of plastic, metal, rubber or other materials per day.

His pièce de résistance however, and I suppose we can take this quite literally in the present context, was a Cessna 150 (see picture above). Some people can't even sit in an airplane without getting sick, let alone eat an airplane? The contents of the mini-bar - yes, no problem, I could even handle a Boeing then - but two seats, an engine, three wheels and more than 500 kilograms of erhm... airplane? Not really. At least this type of planes doesn't come with a toilet, I hope.

- Excuse me Mister Lotito, did you order a special meal?

- Not really (crunch...crunch), I can help myself.

But let us picture a world in which this were rather common human behaviour (warning! airplanes may contain nuts): getting all airplanes on the ground in case of a disaster wouldn't be that big of a problem, now would it? One could choose to let airplanes crash randomly into the outskirts of densely populated areas (not forgetting the occasional C-130 military transport aircraft in Somalia) and count on the local Lotito's to get rid of the wreckage, dancing around the bonfire and munching themselves through the night. Even from our couches it would look better: instead of staring appallingly at disaster footage, it would rather feel like watching a TV cooking show (the exact opposite of Hell's Kitchen and the likes thereof, quoi)...

"Isn't that too much of a stretch", you say?

Not really. Unless of course this was only half a question, because I do believe it would be quite a stretch for a stomach. Not to mention the rest of the Sanitary Highway...

Why we are naked apes and other such questions

Yesterday I saw a great documentary called What’s the problem with nudity? in the BBC series 'Horizon'. It dealt with the question why modern man is essentially naked, having lost his fur or coat of hair ages ago - something our primate ancestors had spent millions of years acquiring. Indeed, it’s not only impractical that we humans are naked (we now need clothes for warmth and protection), we even get embarrassed or even ashamed about our nakedness in social contexts. So why, in fact, are we what the famous anthropologist Desmond Morris called The Naked Ape?

I’m not going to tell you the answer (you can watch the documentary here), but as I said, it was a good and enjoyable documentary. Not only because it supplied some interesting answers to the question of human nakedness, but also because it was a good question to begin with. As an academic, I’m very fond of a good question, which I think of as one we would all like the answer to, but which for some reason no one seems to have asked before. Some of them can even be quite funny, like the ones a comedian like Adam Carolla constantly asks, like ‘Why should panda bears - a species we have so few of - be the only species that seems completely uninterested in sex?’ or ‘Why does a toaster have a level that will burn your slice of bread to a char?’.

So in honour of the good question, here’s some that I have asked myself countless times. Maybe one of you will know the answer?

• Why do most people, including myself, take immense pleasure in accurately hitting small balls with awkward equipment in awkward poses? (I’m thinking of golf, snooker, baseball, polo, squash, etc.)
• Why do small children talk in a sing-songy voice? ('Do you want a little biscuit with your tea?' - 'Yeeees, pleaaase...' 'What do we say then?' - 'Thaaaank yoouuuu…')
• Why is the petrol cap on a car sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right? And why is there no arrow in the interior indicating which side of the gas pump you need to go?
• Why can no one come up with a dynamo-driven bicycle light that does not inexplicably stop functioning after a certain period of time? (Or exactly when you meet the cops in the street)
  
• Why does going to work feel even more of a nuisance after going on holiday?
• Why does almost every police force in the world use blue as their colour?
• Why do so many products use animals in their ads and logos? (Tigers, mice, frogs, crocodiles, roosters and many more for cereal, ducks for toilet cleaning, dogs for toilet paper, elephants for paper towels, bulls for beer, bears or monkeys for washing powder, etc.)
• Why is it so difficult to play an instrument but can I instantly whistle whatever song I want?

Why, dammit, why!?

Dictionary for aliens

Toothbrush (-es): an instrument which looks like a head of tightly clustered bristles (mostly synthetic fibers, although animal bristles are sometimes used as well) attached to a handle. Earthlings usually employ this object under the pretext of oral hygiene, but recent studies have confirmed that the act of brushing the teeth is essentially a ritual which may precede any activity that requires them to use both hands. The idea is to moisten the brush, to apply some toothpaste to it and - most importantly - to wedge the brush into the cavity formed by one relaxed cheek and the (gently) clenched teeth at the same side. Once this is done, earthlings can do whatever comes to their mind: sending text messages, putting food into the fridge, writing things down, updating Facebook statuses, going to the toilet, tying shoes, making sandwiches or - although slightly more advanced - answering phone calls.

Theoretical physicists claim that toothbrushes may cause tiny local distortions in the space-time continuum when used properly: local customs on Earth dictate that teeth should be brushed for 3 minutes (an old-fashioned unit of time, roughly equal to the time it takes to boil an egg), but almost all scientists who have actually seen an Earthling brushing his teeth have noticed that it takes less time on the observer's clock. The precise explanation for this phenomenon is not yet fully understood.

How to talk about books you haven’t read

How to talk about books you haven’t read is the somewhat provocative title of an amusing booklet by the French author and professor of literature Pierre Bayard (°1954). It offers certain strategies and behaviours for those wishing to talk about books they haven’t actually read or haven’t read in full - a pose frequently adopted by scholars of literature. In general, many of us who enjoy a good book, have used the names Shakespeare or Tolstoy in a sentence. But who can honestly say they’ve read a complete book by them? Still, Bayard argues, that needn’t be a problem. It’s perfectly alright to talk about books you haven’t read. As long as what you’re saying is interesting…

So let’s put the theory to the test, shall we? For some time now, I have been planning to write something in our section Quotes from the book about Herman Koch’s Het diner, which for over a month figured in the ‘Fred and Fred are currently reading…’-category. Before today, however, I was reluctant to put anything down on the topic, because I hadn’t actually finished the book yet. In fact, I have to confess that I lost interest in it a couple of weeks ago already, but only today did I muster the courage to put it away, unfinished. To me, there is something ambiguous about not finishing a book. In a way, there’s always a feeling of defeat, of having given up, accompanied with a certain amount of shame. You have failed the author; quite possibly because you did not understand what the book was about, or because you are such a brute you couldn’t appreciate the artistry. Besides, there are friends or eminent critics who highly recommended this very book you never could bare for more than a couple of pages. ‘Surely, it’s me, not you’, you think while looking at the cover… On the other hand, not finishing a book rouses a feeling of victory, of courageous decisiveness, not unlike when a politician leaves the room in a heated debate to express utter disagreement. Anyhow, it’s just a funny thing, when you do decide to physically put the book back on the shelf, destined never to be read or to be swished at the earliest convenience. Many books I haven’t finished I remember vividly, many others I have read, I retain no memory of…

However, as I was reminded of Bayard, I lost my apprehensiveness to talk about this particular book I haven’t (really) read. Indeed, why wouldn’t I quote that funny passage about Dutch tourists in France, which reminded me so much of my holiday experiences? Truth be told, although I find Koch’s narrative rhythm too slow and his tableau vivant of the diners too awkward to watch (for the same reason, I never liked Het eiland, for instance), this passage is brilliant, and I would not want to keep it from you:

Ik liet mij blik over het grasveld glijden. Iemand had ondertussen een cd van Edith Piaf opgezet. Babette had voor het feest een wijde, zwartdoorschijnende jurk aangetrokken en nu deed ze een paar onvaste, aangeschoten danspassen op de tonen van ‘Non, je ne regrette rien…’ Wanneer ruiten ingooien en brandstichting niet het gewenste resultaat opleverden, moest je de strijd naar een hoger plan tillen, dacht ik bij mezelf. Je zou zo’n Nederlands watje van huis kunnen weglokken met het voorwendsel dat je ergens een nóg goedkoper wijnboertje wist te zitten, om hem daarna ergens in een maïsveld af te tuigen - geen slap pak rammel, nee, iets stevigers, met honkbalknuppels en dorsvlegels.
Of als je er eentje los zag lopen, in een bocht van de weg, met een boodschappentas vol stokbroden en rode wijn op de terugweg van de supermarché, dan kon je je auto een kleine uitwijkingsmanoeuvre laten maken. Bijna per ongeluk. ‘Hij dook zomaar ineens voor de motorkap op,’ kon je later altijd zeggen - of je zei helemaal niets, je liet de Nederlander als een aangereden haas voor dood in de berm achter en waste bij thuiskomst eventuele sporen van bumper en spatbord. Zolang de boodschap maar overkwam was alles geoorloofd: jullie horen hier niet! Rot op naar je eigen land! Ga in je eigen land maar Frankrijk spelen met stokbrood en kaasjes en rode wijn, maar niet hier, bij ons!

Marvellous, isn’t it? So, to conclude, it seems we can talk about books we haven’t read. Indeed, it’s great fun. After all, I haven’t read Bayard either, but do you really feel tricked by this blog?

Lol.

The (futile) fight against fate

According to an online dictionary, 'fate' can be defined as follows:

Fate: the will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are, or events to happen as they do.

Whether or not you believe in a predetermined future, yours or even in general, we all have our own little encounters with fate - haven't we? And I'm not referring to life-altering situations, I mean these seemingly irrelevant everyday moments which lead you to the inevitable conclusion that fate has at least one feature in common with Laika and Lassie: they're female dogs...

For example, you're at the railway station at 17h15, waiting for a friend whom you were supposed to meet at 17h. You have read 'The Cosmic Encyclopedia III : on general principles not making any sense at all', so you are aware of the fact that your friend will only show up once you turn the corner. Which tricks you into the following course of action: you actually decide to leave the railway station, almost thinking out loud "that's it, he will not be coming today, I am leaving", trying to induce the corollary to the aforementioned general rule. I tried it several times - which does not say anything about my friends, by the way - but it hasn't worked once. Because fate knows what you're up to, and it just doesn't work that way: either your friend shows up once you really decide to leave, or - as happened to me once - your detour is so big that he arrives in the meantime, doesn't find you and decides to leave. In order to avoid the latter situation, buy your friends a copy of the Encyclopedia for their birthday...

"So why didn't you text your friend then?" Like I said, you can't fight fate: the only moments you are aware of the fact that you forgot your phone, are the moments in which you could really use it.

So next day, you call your friend to fix a new date. He's busy at work however, and says he will call you back around 19h. Which is obviously when you usually have your shower. Not that day however, as you decide to wait for the phone and get into the shower afterwards. A similar pointless rule applies here: you can wait as long as you want, smelly and aware of that, your phone will not ring until you're all soaped up. My experience is that the IDF (imminent disaster factor) increases to a fatal level when you also decide to wash your hair, as this is usually when you run out of hot water during the shower.

Now, there was a reason why I started this blogpost like this: it seemed like the perfect introduction to a travel story I wanted to share with you. Unfortunately, I forgot my point. And we all know how it works when you're looking for something, right? I am not going to pretend. Fights with fate are futile...

What can I do?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few weeks or do not own a TV set, you’ve seen it. I allude to that sepia-toned movie clip in which 1212 (official name: Belgisch Consortium voor Noodhulpsituaties) asks the Belgian people for donations to battle the current famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Children with white tubes up their nose, sinewy hands groping for food, shoulder blades protruding from backs like the wings on a drowning butterfly. You’ve seen it.

But have you really seen it? I mean, have you actually watched it from start to finish? I haven’t. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I guess it’s normal. It hurts to watch this kind of thing with honest eyes, and besides, these movie clips are designed to make you tear up and feel guilty. But while their hard colours and that sad piano in the background might be orchestrated by a clever director, the message that goes out from such a movie clip is nothing if not real. In fact, its moral appeal can be quite a shock. Here you are in your couch, perhaps enjoying a glass of wine or even a snack, and suddenly you realise that the lives of 12 million people are threatened by drought. That should keep you from complaining about the Belgian summer for a while…

Now this moral appeal has always fascinated me. I consider it one of the most beautiful (tragic, but beautiful) human emotions. Seeing the face of the other and understanding its appeal as something that transcends us, sharply defines our own existence. The words are not mine, but are the metaphors used by Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), whose whole philosophy consists of an ethics of the other. But besides fascinating, the feeling of a moral appeal is at the same time extremely bothersome. If you really attend to it, it bugs you, it gnaws at you, and it questions your actions. And almost inevitably the crushing weight of responsibility you feel, will prompt the age-old question: “What can I do?”. And indeed, I don’t mean to be cynical, but ask yourself honestly: What can I do about the 2011 famine in the East of Africa?

I’ll tell you what I did. I donated 100 Euros to 1212.

But I didn’t feel better for it. Not in the least. Even now when I type it, it seems so easy and so little. One hundred Euros, what difference does that make? Another cynical question.

So I started honestly thinking the matter over. Seriously, what can I do?

• Could I perhaps give more? Two hundred Euros? Five hundred? A thousand? Would I really miss that money? But money cannot be a miracle cure, can it?
• Should I try to do something more substantial? Like supporting Oxfam or Doctors Without Borders every month? But I already do, and surely I need to do something more than the usual this time…
  
• Should I try to raise awareness? Like writing letters to the European Union or blogging about the problem? But I’m doing just that, and I can’t say I feel tons better now. Besides, what an armchair-solution to famine is that?

The more I think of it, the guiltier I feel. Only actually packing my stuff and going to Somalia to help could probably make me feel truly helpful. (And even then, how much good could a professional Latinist do in a refugee camp?) Otherwise, I doubt if I will ever be able to look at those images of starving people and feel I am doing enough…

And then it hit me. What’s the real problem here? The famine in Somalia? Or the fact that I will always feel frustrated, no matter what I do, that injustice and poverty still exist?

That’s right…

So, what can we do? That’s for everyone to decide for himself/herself. But whatever we do, we shouldn’t expect to feel any better about human misery because of what we do to fight it. In fact, I’m glad it never gets any better to watch those images of dying children. So, please do what you can for Africa and 1212. (The press recently pointed out that Belgium is preposterously behind other countries in this matter.) And if you want a clean conscience: do not give because you need to. Give because someone else needs it. Badly.

(Donations for the Horn of Africa can be made through BE 19 0000 0000 1212. Click here for more information.)

Listophobia

My biology teacher at secondary school had the following quote at the start of one of the chapters in his course notes: "Man is a classifying animal." I do agree with these words, which is probably the reason why I still remember them, although I would have put it slightly different: "Man is an animal, albeit a classifying one."

One of the things I miss when traveling is reading newspapers. Not that these are hard to find once you cross the border, nor are (wifi) internet connections allowing you to scroll through the latest updates, but I tend to be preoccupied with discovering real places and stories when I am abroad. Also, apart from fueling up with coffee, visiting news websites is basically the first thing I do when I enter my office on any given working day. Which means that, strangely enough, this has become a metaphor for work. So when I came back from my satisfying trip this summer, I had enough news to go through. It probably took me 3 headliners (Norway shooter traumatizes nation - Tottenham in flames as riot follows protest - Somalian hunger crisis leaves Belgians unaffected) to confirm the first part of the quote: man is an animal.

Albeit a classifying one.

I realized this, once again, when I was flying back to Brussels: on the last page of my travel notebook, the official end credits started to materialize. The entries of my things-to-do list. I promptly decided to start another list:

You had a perfect summer holiday when...

• the straps of your flip-flops are tanned into your feet
• you disembark from the airplane, and the first thought that comes to your mind is: "Hello rainy weather, long time no see!"
• you open your inbox, containing 763 unread messages, and you just shrug your shoulders and decide to do something useful - like washing your hair
• you wake up after a jet-lagged afternoon nap, and it literally takes you more than a minute before you realize you are actually at home, in your very own couch, and not in some fully-booked backpacker's where the compassionate owner suggested you to surf the couch for a night
• you come to the realization that you still know how to spell it, as W-O-R-K, but you forgot how to do it
• you start marking the days between now and the next trip
• you want to buy a train ticket in Brussels, and you address people in English instead of Dutch
• you are unpacking, and you suddenly realize you didn't use your raincoat
• you have more than 10 new facebook contacts, from various parts of the world
• you look at your travel pictures, and your thought after the first picture is "that seems ages ago"
• you did at least one thing you never did before.

Back to the first list now. Bugger.

Swishing!

We all have too much stuff. If you’ve ever moved house, you know what I mean. Once a year we all should go through the experiment of putting all our stuff in cardboard boxes and carry it down and up a few flights of stairs. I doubt we would keep half of what we do now!

Some of this stuff is completely useless (e.g., since 2009 I have had a Hello Kitty bubble blowing pipe in one of my drawers and cannot for the life of me say why I keep it), but other stuff you have paid good money for and are reluctant to throw away. You look at that ill-fitting sweater and think: ‘There’s nothing wrong with this sweater. I bet many people would be glad to have it. Just not me…’

Maybe this is how the concept of ‘swishing’ came about, which Wikipedia describes as follows:

• Swishing refers to swapping an item or items of clothing or shoes or an accessory with friends or acquaintances. Parties must willingly give an item to participate in the transaction, once they have given an item they are free to choose something of interest from what others have offered. Value does not come into the equation, swappers do not necessarily get an item of equal value and are free to choose anything that the other person if offering (without having to pay).

I got to know about the phenomenon from a funny description of an evening of swishing organised by my friends E. and B., who told the tale of the occasion in one of their blog posts on Schoenen en andere kwesties. ‘Fifteen women, as many bottles of sparkling wine, and a huge pile of clothes’, to quote the post… Oh how I would have loved to be a fly on that wall! The adrenaline! The excitement! The ecstasy! Indeed, I must confess that I feel in fact a bit jealous of this women-only, but obviously thrilling entertainment…

Yet, I think you won’t quarrel when I say that neither I nor the other Fred are very much inclined to spend the evening trying on someone else’s shoes or jeans. We need something else, something slightly more ‘Fred-ish’, so to speak. That is: a bit nerdy, but with a twist. So we came up with this.

We are proud to announce the FRED AND FRED’S BOOK SWISHING!

For sure, it needn’t be clothes or shoes, books will do just fine for swishing. So here’s the concept. On Friday 19 August Fred and Fred will host a very swishy party, where our readers are invited to come along with their swishable books. Please keep in mind, though, that no one will likely be interested in outdated yellow pages, in books that have been partly eaten by your dog, or in your school copy of the Children’s Bible. To stay in religious context: ‘Do not swish unto another what you would not have him swish unto you!’. What I am thinking of is that novel you excitedly bought in a cute bookshop, only to discover a forgotten copy of it on your top shelf. Or that historical novel your aunt bought you for Christmas, while you absolutely detest that genre. Or that book you have started reading five times, but somehow never managed to finish.

You get the idea…

The exact rules of the swishing and the exact proceeding of the evening will be decided on at a later point in time. Perhaps you could entertain us with some stories about the acquiring of certain books (How did you get that copy of “Dagboek van een herdershond”?). Or perhaps we could read a passage from the swishees (How about a small extract on doing the Heimlich Maneuver on yourself from “The SAS Survival Handbook”?). But rest assured, we won’t let the evening turn stuffy or aloof. There will be plenty of booze (incidentally one of the Freds celebrates a birthday sometime in August) and if it all ends in a drunken second-hand book market, that’s just fine with us!

So please reply through the comment box or at fredcumfred@gmail.com, if you’re interested and we’ll get back to you personally with the details of the event!

PS: In case you didn’t notice, Fred and Fred are back from their summer break! So keep your eyes and browsers peeled for new posts which will be appearing regularly on weekdays!