the napoleon of notting hill (g k chesterton)

The Edwardian decade is a ghost decade. That lost era between Victorianism and modernism. Between a kind of European peace and the wars that were latent. It’s also a curiously empty decade, from a literary perspective. The modernists had yet to get properly going, and the great Victorians were gone or going.

Chesterton’s comic novel might warrant a proper Barthesian exegesis. Here is a novel which doesn’t seem to want to make much of an effort to be a novel. There’s not a single female character in the book, so far as I could glean. There’s a refusal to take anything seriously. It’s a jaundiced critique of empire and nationalism, but one that sees it all as an absurd game, whilst the ramifications were soon to lead to global conflict and the rapacious aspects of Empire were just beginning to be confronted. Set in 1984, supposedly, a mad king awards London boroughs the status of medieval cantons, complete with heraldry and uniforms. When three of them gang up to attack Notting Hill, its leader, Adam Wayne, fights back. The war happens after decades of peace, and is almost viewed as an aesthetic gesture, in keeping with the heraldry and colours. The fact that a decade later, the citizens of Notting Hill, Hammersmith, etc, would find themselves caught up in a war that was, perhaps, equally senseless, is one of the disturbing aspects of Chesterton’s satire. The aestheticisation of war, the insistent irreverence and the name Adam Wayne feel like they could be something out of the Marvel universe. Both representative, perhaps, of societies unprepared for the shit that will soon be hitting the fan.  

the last englishmen: love, war, and the end of empire (deborah baker)

Baker’s tome seeks to encompass a multitude of historical nodal points, which over and underlap. The fall of the Raj, Gandhi and Nehru, the poets Spender and Auden, their brothers, their brothers’ lovers, the conquest of Everest, the impact of the second world war on geo-political history. Perhaps inevitably there are moments when it feels as though a certain shorthand is being employed by the writer. The book is lengthy, but could easily have been ten times as long if it were to fully investigate every strand it takes on. Nevertheless, there is much to be gleaned here. The way in which Auden and Spender’s brothers were part of teams that set out, unsuccessfully to conquer Everest as part of a colonial project, and how both came to realise the vanity, even stupidity of this, in spite of their personal ambitions. Also the way that the scientific work they did in the Himalayas and Karakorams would contribute indirectly to the war effort. In the process, Baker analyses the turbulent decline of the British empire in India, held together by an outdated ideology of British exceptionalism. As such, the book dovetails neatly with Baker’s husband, Amitav Ghosh’s account of the origins of the British empire in India, Smoke and Ashes. 

kobieta z… (woman of…) (w&d małgorzata szumowska, michał englert)

Kobieta Z taps into the wave of trans films that reflect the post-Foucaultian changes in global society, or at least western global society. Aniela Wesoly starts the film as Andrzej and the film follows the journey of their transformation over the course of forty years. Boldly, the film resists making Aniela an attractive woman, pushing the journey of transformation into middle age. Andrzej is a dreamy young man, confident in his sexuality, making the conversion all the more impactful. Deep down they feel themselves to be a woman in a man’s body and they remain true to this belief, no matter what it costs them. Which is almost everything: their social status, their livelihood, their loving marriage, their looks. There is an upside to all this at the end, when their sacrifices appear to be rewarded with another kind of happiness. But the journey is long and bleak and follows the journey of their country from tightly buttoned communism to something far more liberal. The edit style is pacy and sinuous. Scenes are rarely given time to settle, and when they do, the film pulls out of them as soon as possible. This curtails the possible melodrama which Aniela’s story is liable to, as family and friends react to their transformation. What the filmmakers seem to aim for is an epic vision of Aniela’s struggle, one where we too will come up against the relentless antagonism of the forces ranged against them. 

white noise (don delillo)

Once upon a time I used to read DeLillo. And then the reading stopped. Returning to the writer, twenty years later, is a curious experience. White Noise feels by parts frustrating, by parts brilliant. It has the feel of a sophomore work, full of tricks and conceits and authorial presence. Then I learn it was his eighth novel. The conceit of the narrator being a professor of Hitler studies at a remote US university, one who doesn’t speak German, feels like a brilliant idea, but doesn’t really go anywhere. The conceit of the narrator’s world being threatened by a toxic cloud, which takes up the central portion of the book, likewise seems a brilliant, Camusian idea, but again, it doesn’t really go anywhere. This is a novel bubbling with tricks and ideas, but one which delivers no coups de grace. Perhaps it’s in the vein of the nouveau roman, almost Barthesian, but there’s something showy about the whole contraption, made of bells and whistles that articulate the author’s intellectual chutzpah but fall short of ever really saying anything. 

la bella estate (w&d laura luchetti)

The Pretty Summer might be an English variant on this title, which would seem appropriate, as this is a pretty film with pretty people enjoying summer. And some winter. A slightly episodic drama which takes place from the summer of 1938 to 1939, it follows the coming of age of Gianna, a pretty young woman who has recently come with her brother to Turin from the countryside. She falls under the sway of artist’s pretty muse, Amelia, who leads her towards a life of moderate decadence. The shadow of what is to come hovers at the back of the film - there can be few better years in which to set a period film, with the sense of doomed youth that it portends. No matter how pretty you are, if it’s Italy 1938, the writing is on the wall.