Misha's Bell
I have two blogs to do today, one based on a dream I had this morning (which shows what is going on when I am blogging, and how my blogging has developed since it started about a month ago) and which I will deal with later on joan-dreams.blogspot.com, and this one, which is inspired by a review, from the Radio Times, which 'spoke to me' during my morning perusal of said magazine. The review reads:
...the light-hearted tinkling if Misha the penguin's bell is welcome amid the dark happenings of Andrei Kurkov's post-soviet satire. ..... Viktor is a failing novelist who agrees to write a series of obituaries for a crooked newspaper editor. The twist is that the editor's chosen subjects are not dead .... so Viktor and Misha are plunged into the Ukraines mafia-terrorised underworld, with its cast of unwitting criminals, and less-than-innocent victims. The beauty .... lies in Viktor's deadpan narration and the tinkle that signals Misha's enigmatic thoughts. ..... the listener is left perplexed: is Misha-the-penguin the most human character after all?
Well, first off: one of the things I like most about South Africa is the TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION committee, and one of the things I like most about the Soviet Union is that, when a journalist asked a resident, not long released from the gulags, of a block of flats how he could bare to live next door to one of the ex-gulag guards who had kept him incarcerated, he got the reply: 'there but for the grace of God....'. There is a lot of tolerance and humanity in those two countries.
But, why that review spoke to me has more to do with why and how I am writing these blogs: I am a failed novelist! Quite honestly, if I could bury myself in a world of fiction and fantasy right now, I would do so and these blogs would not get written. But I can't. I have not been able to find it in my to write a novel, not by the conventional means, at any rate .... all that preparation and organisation and locking yourself away from the world ... can't keep it up!
So, instead, here I am, writing obituaries for subjects that are not yet dead .... and running scared of the mafia, the unwitting criminals, and the less-than-innocent victims! And what subjects might those be? Well, so far I have had a go at the likes of scientists, academics, the art establishment etc etc, but I have run scared of mentioning the BIG J, associated with the BIG H, ... in fact, it might be true to say that I have so far gone for the unwitting criminals, and avoided the less-than-innocent victims. There are a hell of a lot of people in this world who make a living out of being 'victims' .... and who are the bigest victims, who has suffered more than anyone else in the history of suffering?
I might profitably, at this stage, go off tangentially, and talk of the nature of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact is that people who are paranoid get picked on and that just seems to justify the paranoia, and so .....
The situation is best understood by refering to the natural world. In the natural world, prey animals get 'picked on' by hunters because they BEHAVE LIKE PREY ANIMALS. So deer, for example get hunted. But, SKUNKS and the like do not get hunted because they DO NOT EXPECT TO BE. You might think skunks escape because of the stink, but no animal needs to be attacked by a skunk in order to learn to avoid it. No, it is the skunks sublime unconcern that is its protection. ... so with people, if you believe people will attack you, you behave like a prey animal and YOU GET ATTACKED.
OK, so here goes ... THE BIG J ... you may have guessed already, but if you haven't, I refer to the Jews. I mean, is there any race of group of people that has been so picked on in the history of the world? I think not! And what do they do about it? There are whole organisations trying to protect the Jews from being picked on, there is a whole industry built on keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive so that it will never happen again. Well, sorry folks, but all that is just ensuring that IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.
Having said which, I myself am an ex-schizophrenic, and there are now whole organisations devoted to protecting people with mental health problems --- in fact, we live in a world of 'protection rackets'! My response to being a lunatic is contained in another blog, titled: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE SCHIZOPHRENIA, and so, with my declared short attention span (I put it down to having suffered from schizophrenia!?), instead of wittering on about skunks, and how they teach us how not to need protecting, I refer readers to that blog which says the same thing, but at greater length and in more detail.
It is in: joan-well.blogspot.com
...the light-hearted tinkling if Misha the penguin's bell is welcome amid the dark happenings of Andrei Kurkov's post-soviet satire. ..... Viktor is a failing novelist who agrees to write a series of obituaries for a crooked newspaper editor. The twist is that the editor's chosen subjects are not dead .... so Viktor and Misha are plunged into the Ukraines mafia-terrorised underworld, with its cast of unwitting criminals, and less-than-innocent victims. The beauty .... lies in Viktor's deadpan narration and the tinkle that signals Misha's enigmatic thoughts. ..... the listener is left perplexed: is Misha-the-penguin the most human character after all?
Well, first off: one of the things I like most about South Africa is the TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION committee, and one of the things I like most about the Soviet Union is that, when a journalist asked a resident, not long released from the gulags, of a block of flats how he could bare to live next door to one of the ex-gulag guards who had kept him incarcerated, he got the reply: 'there but for the grace of God....'. There is a lot of tolerance and humanity in those two countries.
But, why that review spoke to me has more to do with why and how I am writing these blogs: I am a failed novelist! Quite honestly, if I could bury myself in a world of fiction and fantasy right now, I would do so and these blogs would not get written. But I can't. I have not been able to find it in my to write a novel, not by the conventional means, at any rate .... all that preparation and organisation and locking yourself away from the world ... can't keep it up!
So, instead, here I am, writing obituaries for subjects that are not yet dead .... and running scared of the mafia, the unwitting criminals, and the less-than-innocent victims! And what subjects might those be? Well, so far I have had a go at the likes of scientists, academics, the art establishment etc etc, but I have run scared of mentioning the BIG J, associated with the BIG H, ... in fact, it might be true to say that I have so far gone for the unwitting criminals, and avoided the less-than-innocent victims. There are a hell of a lot of people in this world who make a living out of being 'victims' .... and who are the bigest victims, who has suffered more than anyone else in the history of suffering?
I might profitably, at this stage, go off tangentially, and talk of the nature of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact is that people who are paranoid get picked on and that just seems to justify the paranoia, and so .....
The situation is best understood by refering to the natural world. In the natural world, prey animals get 'picked on' by hunters because they BEHAVE LIKE PREY ANIMALS. So deer, for example get hunted. But, SKUNKS and the like do not get hunted because they DO NOT EXPECT TO BE. You might think skunks escape because of the stink, but no animal needs to be attacked by a skunk in order to learn to avoid it. No, it is the skunks sublime unconcern that is its protection. ... so with people, if you believe people will attack you, you behave like a prey animal and YOU GET ATTACKED.
OK, so here goes ... THE BIG J ... you may have guessed already, but if you haven't, I refer to the Jews. I mean, is there any race of group of people that has been so picked on in the history of the world? I think not! And what do they do about it? There are whole organisations trying to protect the Jews from being picked on, there is a whole industry built on keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive so that it will never happen again. Well, sorry folks, but all that is just ensuring that IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.
Having said which, I myself am an ex-schizophrenic, and there are now whole organisations devoted to protecting people with mental health problems --- in fact, we live in a world of 'protection rackets'! My response to being a lunatic is contained in another blog, titled: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE SCHIZOPHRENIA, and so, with my declared short attention span (I put it down to having suffered from schizophrenia!?), instead of wittering on about skunks, and how they teach us how not to need protecting, I refer readers to that blog which says the same thing, but at greater length and in more detail.
It is in: joan-well.blogspot.com
posted by joan @ 2:57 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home