Something New

   We feature each month Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

Mr. SIDHU’S POST OFFICE by Amman Brar ( Harper-Collins NZ$34.99 )

There is absolutely nothing wrong having a novel about a very good man. Mr. Sidhu’s Post Office has such a man. But this is not a simplistic story. As the novel develops we understand his travails, how he deals with people who do not understand his ethnicity, and how he has to deal with his children.

Mr. Sidhu [full name Mantinder Singh Sidhu] is a Punjabi Sikh who was born and raised in Pakistan but who has come to England after studying mathematics. He hoped to become an academic, but he could not get a place, so he buys a shop in Hounslow where he sells foodstuff but he is also a sub-postmaster - that is a man who looks after money, checks, pays etc. He always wears Sikh clothes including his turban. His wife Sarabjit has died years before. His adult children are his daughter Meenu and his son Raju. They live a separate life from their father, even though they both like him. Meenu and Raju see themselves as English citizens  - as they are – and they have cast away some Sikh traditions. Raju aspires to become an actor though it is hard to get work. Raju is also a bit of a layabout. He wants his father to give him money so that he can have a house of his own. Raju is aware that over the years his father has, by thrift, accumulated a reasonable amount of money . And in all this Mr. Sidhu looks after other people. There is the old pensioner who was almost cheated out of her money by a thief. Mr. Sidhu stepped in and set things right. He looks after old people who do not know how to look after their money.

But there is another important character. Working in his shop is Rose, a Cockney woman, herself a widow. Mr. Sidhu gradually falls in love with her, but he is too shy to say so. What would his children say? Rose lives in Richmond – a little better than Hounslow. Rose tells Mr. Sidhu that she would like him to come her house and meet her friends on Christmas Day. Mr. Sidhu picks up her offer… but he does not fit in with all her friends. It is not that they are unpleasant to him, but that he does not understand their jokes and there is a very annoying dog in the house. [By the way, Mr. Sidhu’s English friends for some reason call him David.] After the party is over, Rose and Mr. Sidhu go to the pub. She tells him about the lives of some of the people he had met at the party. Some of them had gone through tough times… and then she tells him her own story. When she was a teenager, not married, she had a baby. Because she was not married, she was made to adopt her child out… and it was only many years later that she once again met her son, now fully an adult. His name is Jay. Jay is a rather lazy fellow but he gets on well with his mother.

I will not tell you every episode of the novel, but some of them. The relationship of Mr. Sidhu and Rose blossoms. Rose says they should take a holiday together – but twice Mr. Sidhu runs up against Punjabi people who want him to act as if he is still in the Punjab. A couple want him to find somebody who will pay a dowry for the marriage of their child. Mr. Sidhu has to explain to them that that is not how young people choose to get married in England, even if their parents came from the Punjab. Later, when Rose and  Mr. Sidhu are well on their way to their holiday, they run up again with not only the same people but also a whole Punjabi festival. Rose and Mr. Sidhu are drawn in … but Rose is annoyed because this is holding them up from the holiday that they had planned. Finally they have their holiday. They go to a hotel for dinner but they had to listen to bad Bollywood music when they were eating. What was more, the food was bogus and nothing like real Indian food.  Mr. Sidhu complains … so as compensation the waiter gives him free whisky… and, not being used to drinking alcohol he gets drunk. Rose is appalled by his behavior… but later they get into bed together … and become very intimate…

Now I could tell you all the things that happen to Rose and Mr. Sidhu and his children and what they did ; but in a way I have cheated you. So far, I have told you only about the ethnicities in England and how, on the whole, they get on well together. This novel is giving you an image of a sunny community and only occasionally are there moments of unpleasantness. But the fact is that Mr. Sidhu, for no fault, is in deep trouble; and the trouble is based on real events. Amman Brar has put Mr. Sidhu into one of the scandals that upset England between 1990 and 2015. This was when about 900 sub-postmasters were convicted of theft and false accounting, many going to jail. What had happened? The sub-postmasters insisted that the new computers that were being installed were coming up with false tallies, making it seem that the sub-postmasters had stolen much money. Some pointed out that the Fujitsu systems were often unreliable.

Early in the novel, a breezy fellow called Alan Dankworth installs the new computers in  Mr. Sidhu’s shop saying cheerfully “The new system saves the government billions, because each transaction they save money. Now you don’t need paper books any more and the money can only be collected by the person with the card. There’s no book, no date stamps, no fraud, no filling out forms – everything is electronic.” But as the months go by, matters get worse and worse for Mr. Sidhu. Like so many others he is finally accused of major theft.…. And so he faces the law. I will not spoil your reading by telling you how things end, but it is surprising.

Perhaps Mr. Sidhu is more forbearing than most men are; and perhaps he is more generous to people than most people are. Nevertheless he is an agreeable character. This book is a little long maybe, but thoughtful.   

Something Old

  Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.  

O PIONEERS by Willa Cather (first published in 1913)

On my shelves I have four novels by Willa Cather which I had never read. When I looked up her history, I discovered that she had written a total of twelve novels as well as seven collections of short stories, not to mention much journalism. She died at a ripe old age, being born in 1873 and dying in 1947. Part of her life was growing up in what was then called by Americans “The West”, although it was far from the real West. Where she grew up was in Nebraska, down south, though much later she moved up to New York. I am not going to read and write about every one of her novels. I am sticking with the four novels that I have on my shelves – but I am reading two of her earlier novels and two of her later novels. O Pioneers was the first of her novels to be greatly admired. The title O Pioneers was taken from a poem by Walt Whitman. So to the novel.

Willa Cather is interested in the people who had settled as farmers in the prairie of Nebraska - the great variety of those pioneers who had come from many countries in Europe. She is always interested in the flora and fauna and the good earth itself, and often she tells us about the little town called Hanover that people had come to. This is how she begins : “One January day, thirty years ago the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away.  A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky.  The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod;  some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain.  None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them.  The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end.” 

John Bergson and his family have come from Sweden. He has a farm and has worked hard but he is dying even though he is only 46. He has a wife and four children. Before he dies he gathers his children and tells them that his daughter Alexandra is to be the master of the house. It is clear that she is the most intelligent of the family. The older boys, Oscar and Lou, agree to that. They are happy to be working in the fields while Alexandra works hard organising everything to do with money and with crops that can be planted; indeed she knows more than her brothers do about how a farm works. The youngest of the family, young Emil, is going to be sent off to school in the hope that later he will become a lawyer.

So we learn about how the family lives once the father has died. Alexandra, her mother and her brothers have outings when the weather is good. The older boys are always looking for girlfriends when they go to town. The family visits an old Russian man, Ivor, almost a hermit, who reads his bible every Sunday and is a pacifist, but he knows how to make hammocks and they need them for their barn… and later old Ivor lives in the Bergson’s barn. Alexandra always protects him from people who treat him as an oddity. She learns how to raise pigs with her brothers helping. So far, everything is going well. But then there is a drought … and it lasts for two years. The older boys want to leave the house, sell it off and go somewhere else, but Alexandra persuades them that things will improve. She takes out a number of mortgages and is able to buy a number of farms.

While walking with young Emil she says  “The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”

The years go by. It is sixteen years since John Bergson died. The mother dies.  Alexandra now has a fine house quite different from the log house that she grew up in. She can afford to hire some young Swedish girls to be her maids for cooking and cleaning. She now has a foreman, an Irish man called Barny Flinn. We are now aware of the many ethnicities that there now are in Nebraska and its Hanover… French, Bohemian, German as well as the Swedes, the Irish etc. And Alexandra now has many children about her – the children of her older brothers. One man with whom she sometimes talks is a thoughtful man called Carl Linstrum. He has a hard time working out what he wants to do in his life, and he comes and goes as he tries to find peace in different places in America – including Alaska. Quite different is her rowdy brother Lou, a loudmouth who wants to talk about politics although he does not know much about them. At the same time she is proud of her youngest brother Emil and how he diligently studies.

When Carl Linstrum looks at all the things Alexandra has done and how she has shown other farmers how to do things, he says “How in the world have you done it?  How have your neighbours done it?” She replies: “We hadn’t any of us much to do with it, Carl.  The land did it. It had its little joke.  It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right;  and then, all at once, it worked itself.  It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still.”

More years go by. And here we are introduced to a very different tale. A Bohemian man, Frank Shabata, is married to Maria, but she is flighty. Frank is jealous of boys who flirt with her. Alexandra and her siblings often visit the Bohemian people and she often enjoys their company… and young Emil takes a shine to Maria….

At about the same time, Carl Linstrum stays at Alexandra’s home… for quite a long time. Oscar and Lou think that Carl Linstrum is going to cheat Alexandra in some way and take over her house and the many fields she owns. They say that a man should always be in charge of house and home, not a woman. She calmly reminds them that for all these years it was she who had kept the homestead going, dealt with all the money and had the ability to make them prosper. Her brothers went away. More years go by. Alexandra is on her way to being fifty. Often she finds herself dealing with old people.

 Willa Cather gives us many depictions of the land, such as her description of winter: “Winter has settled down over the Divide again;  the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring.  The birds have gone.  The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated.  The prairie-dog keeps his hole.  The rabbits run shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks.  At night the coyotes roam the wintry waste, howling for food.  The variegated fields are all one color now;  the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray.  The hedgerows and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue they have taken on.  The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the ploughed fields.  It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy.  One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.”

Later “Alexandra was well satisfied with her brother.  As they drove through the rolling French country toward the westering sun and the stalwart church, she was thinking of that time long ago when she and Emil drove back from the river valley to the still unconquered Divide.   Yes, she told herself, it had been worthwhile:  both Emil and the country had become what she had hoped.  Out of her father’s children there was one who was fit to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the pow, and who had a personality apart from the soil.  And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for.  She felt well satisfied with her life.”

There is a festival - a Mardi Gras organised by the French and others. It is a wonderful example of people from many ethnicities getting together… and young Emil is about to go off and become a lawyer … but he and Maria had too often been taking long romantic walks together. It is too much that Frank can bear. In a fit, he takes his gun and shoots them both dead. So in one sense the novel almost ends at a very gloomy way. There are sad funerals. Frank goes to jail almost for life. After the tears and after some months Alexandra gets permission to see Frank in jail. Why should she do this? Because she knows that Frank was a hard-working man who could never get ahead as a farmer and was always shamed. She says she forgives him for what he had done.

O Pioneers ends with Alexandra having a long talk with her friend Carl Linstrum. Sentimental readers might think that they would marry but no such thing happens. However they remain good friends. Alexandra speaks of the earth and the homestead and says:  “Lou and Oscar can’t see those things….Suppose I do will my land to their children, what difference will that make? The land belongs to the future, Carl; that’s the way it seems to me.  How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will be there in fifty years?  I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother’s children.  We come and go, but the land is always here.  And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it for a little while.”

 And the last words of the novel are “They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them, under the evening star.  Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra’s into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!”

Now that I have read O Pioneers I can see it as a story of struggle and failure and sometimes success.  In that respect, Willa Cather gives us a view of those who came from many countries and had to make something of the bleak prairie of Nebraska. Willa Cather also has a strong sense of the land itself - flowers, birds, fish, trees, hills. Sometimes it almost reads like poetry. Towards the end though, there is a bit of melodrama in the deaths of Emil and Maria.  

 In telling you all this I am missing one major thing. It was unusual to have, as the main character, a woman who is in charge of men. In Alexandra we have a strong woman who is more intelligent than her brothers. Willa Cather was an early feminist and in a way she was man-ish. Biographies of her tell us that as a child she got on better with her brothers than with her sisters because she thought girls games were silly. She never sort a husband for an obvious reason. She wanted a female partner – not a man - and for most of her later years she had one. Was she a lesbian? Probably, but then people were more discreet in those days.  

Something Thoughtful

    Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

Reid’s Reader NOW ONLY ONCE A MONTH

Back in 2011, when I first set out to review books in my Reid’s Reader, I thought it would be easy. Each week I would read and review a new book; read and review an old book [usually a classic book but sometimes more recent]; and write a comment about anything that interested me. In other words what I called Something New, Something Old and Something Thoughtful. What made it easy was the fact that for years I had always made detailed notes about the old and classic books that I had read, and so I could present Something Old easily. But running out of my old notes, I now had to read other old and classic books before writing Something Old .

It became more difficult for me to write Something New, Something Old and Something Thoughtful in time. The late Vincent O’Sullivan told me that I was working too hard at reviewing every week. Later I agreed with him. So instead of reviewing books every week I was now reviewing books etc. every fortnight. This gave me less difficulty in getting book reviews on time. On top of this there were all the distractions of life, such as going on journeys to Australia or elsewhere, visiting our many grown-up children, etc. etc. And you will already know that I always took a writing break between Christmas and the end of January.

Now I find it hard to review books even in a fortnight. So I have decided to produce Reid’s Reader only once a month. You are still welcome if you want to make comments about this…. And you might have noticed that for the last week I had not sent books reviews.

Read me late next month.  

Something New

   We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

CITY OF WIDOWS by Nadia Hashimi ( Harper-Collins NZ$66.99 )

Let’s be honest. How many of us know anything about Afghanistan? I always knew that Afghanistan has Pakistan on its right and Iran on its left and a little bit of Russia on its north. I know this because I have often looked at maps. And I did know that in the 19^th century both the British Empire and the Russian Empire tried, without success, to take over or tame Afghanistan. But as for more recent history I have only a very limited knowledge of Afghanistan. So before I read Nadia Hashimi’s novel City of Widows, I checked a number of things. The recent history of Afghanistan goes something like this. Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and took over until they retreated in 1989. While the Russians tried to allow girls to go to high-school and university they found themselves against a growing Islamic Republic of Afghanistan which was made up of many different ideas – most wanting democracy. At the same time there were the Mujahideen insurgents who harassed the Russians… and then there was the Taliban, which can only be seen as an extremist version of Islamic ideas. While some women were accepting the idea that men only could become politicians, doctors, etc. more women were wanting their place in the nation. At first it seemed that the Taliban would accept a place in the parliament , but it was soon clear that the Taliban wanted to take over. At which point the U.S.A. invaded in October 2001 and stayed there for some years. There was an Afghan National Army ready to fight the Taliban and there was a Female Tactical Platoon which was trained by the Americans. And that is my account of what happened.

So to Nadia Hashimi’s novel City of Widows. Hashimi lives in America and she is the daughter of Afghan immigrants. The story she tells – in all 418 pages of it – is very much a feminist story, with an emphasis on how the intelligent women got by when it was clear that the Americans were about to withdraw. Some people still think that the Taliban will not take over but will become parts of the government.

There are some dominant women. There is Rahima who had been a warrior but her child was locked up. She is one of the many women who want to know where their fathers are. Many people shout Allahu Akbar in the street [God is Great] but “The Taliban have usurped the phase, manipulated the devotion into a battle cry.” There is also a brave woman called Mina who runs a radio bulletin explaining how the Kabul could still be saved by the Afghan National Army. At one point the Taliban almost break into her station, but they are repelled.

But the major character is Marjan. Even before the Taliban took over, Afghan men took it for granted that they were able take children away from a mother without her consent.  As one character says “Birth certificates intentionally did not bear a mother’s name until only a year ago, and many still grumbled about the impropriety of seeing a woman’s given name on an official document.” Marjan has a little girl called Hawa. Marjam’s husband was Abdul Khalig who was something of a thug when he wanted to be. Marjan decided to get her little child away from Abdul Khalig but “every mother in Afghanistan knew that in the rare case of a dissolved marriage, the law sided with men in the issue of custody.”… so Hawa was put into orphanages, much as she did not want to. But at least she could keep in touch with her child.

And there is a side of Marjan that we understand only gradually. Marjan has had  training as a member of the Female Tactical Platoon – attached to the Afghan National Army, as taught by the Americans. She has been a soldier. But her first priority is to save and look after her child. Hawa grows… and as she does … so do more and more people think that once the Americans leave, the Taliban will destroy anything like democracy.

But who have the documents that would allow one to board an American plane? There are armed members of the Taliban, waiting outside the perimeter to check documents and ready to grab anyone who says something they do not like. There are two incidents in this novel where Marjan, with her child, tries to pass the perimeter. The first time there is a very huge crowd of people waiting and waiting… and then a fanatic Talib throws a bomb into the crowd, killing many and no more people are allowed in. The second time Marjan and her child do get through…. And there follow conversations among those women who had been able to get to the American planes… and they have much to say about how terrible the Taliban regime will be for women.

Nadia Hashimi has written a clear account of what life was like for women  in Afghanistan and it is understandable that she presents Americans positively. At the same time, I can’t help remembering seeing on television the horror of crowds desperately running along runways in the hope of being taken on board… and being ignored. It is very like what happened when the Americans left Vietnam…

Any main flaw? It is not only rather too long, but often it is written in the present tense which can be confusing.

Something Old

    Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.  

THE DEFINITIVE JUDGEMENT OF GEORGES BERNANOS’S WORKS                                            [No other judgement will be accepted.]

 

 For the last nine weeks I have read my way through all the novels by Georges Bernanos with one exception – the first novel he wrote, L’Imposture, appaired in 1927. It was about a priest who had lost his faith and set out to recover it. Regrettably I was not able to find a copy of this novel. But I did read and commented on all his other seven novels. To give my own view of this novels, it goes like this:  Sous le Soleil de Satan (Star of Satan),             Nouvelle Histoire de Mouchette (Mouchette) and his masterpiece Journal d’un Cure de Campagne (The Diary of a Country Priest) are his three most readable novels, all of them dealing with mis-treated women, a lack of charity and a need for saintly help. (Priests are essential in two of these novels.).   Un Crime (A Crime) is lighter, being a whodunnit, very readable but also laced with religious ideas.  The two most difficult of his novels to read are Les Tenebres (Joy) and Monsieur Ouine (The Open Mind), the first riding on long philosophical conversations and the second being filled with characters who come and go for little reason.   As for Un Mauvais Reve (Night is Darkest), his posthumous novel, it is often reviled because it was not polished before he died; but I champion it because it is the only novel in which Bernanos not only criticised himself but he also looked at the young Parisian men who have big ideas of themselves but go nowhere - the tale of nihilism.

So much for my round-up of Bernanos’s novels. But there was much more to the man. To begin with there were the many other non-fiction books he wrote. Most famously was his Les Grande Cimetieres Sous la Lune, in which he condemned the violence and murder Franco was using in the Spanish Civil War. Then there were the many historical books that he wrote, two of the most thoughtful being The Great Fear [about what happened during the French Revolution] and Joan of France. He wrote his play Dialogues Des Carmelites, about the murdering of nuns in the era of The Terror. Later it was turned into an opera by Poulenc.

Bernanos, still living in Brazil, wrote very long essays during the Second World War, aimed at making sense about what was going on in France and other parts of Europe. Letters to the English was published in December 1940. Letters to the Americans was published in September 1941. Letters to the Europeans was published in November 1941. Overall these essays were made part of his Plea for Liberty, hoping that Europe would become democratic but also preserving its traditions. But after the end the Second  World War he had to write what was the most and difficult long essay Reflexions sur le Conscience Francais, in which he had to deal with how there had been heroes and partisans in France, but there had also been many French collaborators and members of the Vichy regime… and the mass of the French simply hoped for the best and sat back.

To put it simply – Bernanos had some ideas on the importance of France, but he was not so deluded as to imagine that France was unique in its many flaws. He was equally aware of the importance of religion. But, if you have been annoyed by the many religious matters in his novels – and especially the Catholic ideas – he at no time said his priests were perfect, and you can find in his novels corrupted priests.

     

Something Thoughtful

    Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

                                                             HOME HORRORS

It doesn’t rain. It pours. You know the old idea. One damned thing comes after another. So here I go with my tale of woe. But don’t worry. It ends well… sort of…

Four weeks ago I underwent a colonoscopy. This is not surprising. Other members of the family into which I was born regularly have had colonoscopy’s. Our forebears were prone to being killed by cancer.  So in I went, this being the third time I was to have a colonoscopy. There is always trepidation in entering a surgeon’s room, so of course I thought for the worst… but that was nonsense. Of course I was knocked out by the anesthetics so that when I woke up I was happy and smiling. No pain whatsoever.  The surgeon told me that he had snipped off three little polyps, but for the rest I was in good health. So my bowels were in good order. 

So that was four weeks ago. But more recently was something far more annoying.

My good wife teaches piano to young students… and alas, some of them bring coughs and sniffles with them. So one day my wife came home sniffing and coughing and blowing her nose… and the sniffing and coughing and blowing her nose continued for more than a week with her throat being raw. Now we sleep in the same bed and I was sure that I was not going to catch her ailment simply by looking the other way. For a week it worked – I was in good health. And then I got the evil bot - dripping nose, endless coughing, phlegm and an endless use of handkerchiefs until I realised that it was better to use throw-away tissues. But I coughed so much in the night that I moved to a different bedroom so as not to wake my wife. It’s strange but true that coughing is most violent in the night and various medicines went down my gullet to help me out. Some angry words did not help me out.

I’m glad to say that the horror has mainly gone now. As I sit here I write and then look out the window and see a blue sky and feel a warm sun. Life is good – or it seems to be.

Next time I will try to deal with something more important – like the intelligence of ants.  

 

Something New

   We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

TE TIRITI, EQUALITY AND THE FUTURE OF NEW ZEALAND DEMOCRACY by Dominic O’Sullivan (Auckland University Press, NZ$39:99)

            How can we really understand and interpret the Treaty of Waitangi? What influence does it now have on us and is it still relevant? Does anybody still think that once the treaty was signed it was adequate to say “we are now one people” Maori and Pakeha? Surely not. And there is also now the fact that Maori rights are being more fully understood and used than before. Many people have asked these questions, but Dominic O’Sullivan takes a very different approach. He is interested in how New Zealand / Aotearoa can and should become a commonwealth, a democracy in which both Maori and Pakeha participate evenly.  Dominic O’Sullivan often refers to CTA [Critical Te Tiriti Analysis], looking closely at how the Treaty of Waitangi should now be interpreted and how it can enlighten us. So far so clear. But there is a major problem. Te Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy is very much a work for academics. Back in 2023 I reviewed on this blog Bain Attwood’s  A Bloody Difficult Subject, about the Treaty of Waitangi. In 2025 I reviewed on this blog Eric Olssen’s The Origins of an Experimental Society. Both were scholarly and thoughtful, but I made it clear that inevitably they would probably be read only by specialists and students. I must say the same about Te Tiriti, Equality and the Future of New Zealand Democracy, but in this case the language is even more specialist. So, rather than giving my opinions, I will present O’Sullivan’s ideas by quoting what I believe are his major ideas.

            On his opening page he reminds us that the idea of the Republic is that there is no one person ruling. He says “the book’s ambition is to help shift the treaty discourse toward the development of a republican commonwealth”. On page 7 he says “This book’s overarching question is… how might all and not just some people – Maori people as much as anybody else – reach a point where they can say that New Zealand is recognisably ‘owned’ by everybody, and that their share in an ownership is and meaningful and worthwhile…” And on the same page “Racism’s ultimate expression is a political order where some people do not count. Some people not counting is not compatible with democratic values. Those values are sometimes rashly and incoherently co-opted into the argument that equality means sameness of a kind that supposes cultural homogeneity: the presumption that equalily means ‘everyone should look and think like me.’ ”

            In Chapter Two page 27 he discusses “Partnership and Sovereignty”. He opposes the idea of the Treaty as partnership which diminishes opportunities for Maori self-determination.  The Treaty does not mention partnership.  “The Crown is not, in fact, a routine protector of Maori interests.  It repeatedly fails as a protector of rangatiratanga or as a site for the meaningful expression of Maori citizenship.  The Crown may, however, be more of a political than constitutional impediment to an inclusive state with power and responsibility distributed as Te Tiriti imagines.  So, it may be, as Shore and Kawharu (2014) suggested, that the ‘discourse of the Crown’ is ‘an impediment to constitutional reform’ (p. 32).  Furthermore, they argue, the Crown itself is a ‘legal fiction’ and a ‘shape-shifting’ symbol whose definition is obtuse and whose meanings vary according to context’ (p.17).  Its value may be its location ‘above the fray of every day political interests’ (Shore & Kawharu, 2014, p.27).” Personally I agree entirely with what Dominic O’Sullivan is saying here. Further he says [Pg 30] “The Crown is, in effect, the government of the day.  The king enjoys no legal, political or even moral power to exercise the personal responsibility that might be read into the original Te Tiriti text.  No monarch, since 1840, has intervened to protect Maori people from stage aggression or intrusion into their lives. Te Tiriti’s influence is only ever the product of legislation, judicial interpretation and moral persuasiveness.  No monarch has or could have shown a personal political interest.” I interpret this to mean that the idea of “The Crown” is a fiction… and [unlike polite O’Sullivan] I would go further and suggest that New Zealand / Aotearoa would be better if we became a republic. However… [Pg 64] “A republic that simply replaces the king with a citizen as head of state would miss the opportunity to consider republicanism’s particular liberal emphasis and how it might support a stronger democracy – one based on a conception of Te Tiriti concerned with secure independence and meaningful inclusion rather than binary conflict.  From this perspective, republican’s value is not so much its presumption that a citizen, not a king, will be head of state, but its presumption that non-domination is the organisational principle that should determine how public institutions work and relate to citizens.  Changing the head of state may be minimally disruptive.  However, self-determination requires profound conceptual disruption.”. Further [Pg 69] “It does not matter whether it is the king or a New Zealand citizen who is head of state.  I propose that interpreting Te Tiriti to imagine New Zealand as a commonwealth means that it reflects neither a homogenous one people nor a state where people are partners in a racially constructed binary order – an order where rangatiratanga is for us and provides the only space where we may exercise authority because kawanatanga is exclusively for them.  Instead the commonwealth could allow Te Tiriti to be more clearly expressed as an instrument concerned with who makes decisions, how, why, where and for whom, so that a genuine common good is upheld.  This would mean political possibilities are not framed through the always shifting and obscure lens of the Crown as sometimes friend and usually foe.  The commonwealth also means that as participants people may expect fair influence over setting the policy agenda – in other words, deciding what governments do, what is set aside and what is done by others.”

            The main point in these quotations is…[Pg 79] “A commonwealth, in its truest sense, means that the colonial construct of race should not be used to rank people on a continuum of human worth, whereas colonialism either divides people in that was or assimilates them through the systematic undermining of culture and independent identity.  Undermining may occur by setting illiberal boundaries on what is acceptable in public life – for example, by proposing that it is unreasonable for people to own land collectively or to privilege its environmental or spiritual value over corporate profit.  Instead, the relational justice that the commonwealth might support means that Indigenous claims on the state ‘are not only about compensation or reparations, but also about the terms of association between them and the colonial state.  The injustice of expropriation of Aboriginal lands, for example, is not only about the dispossession of property, or the violation of negative rights of non-interference, but a violation or denial of just terms of association.’ (Ivison, 2002, p.100)”

[Pg 99] “Participatory parity may give effect to differentiated citizenship by protecting independence and ‘voice’ (Fraser & Honneth, 2003).  It means that people contribute to public life with parity of esteem. As a starting point, participatory parity rationalises a Maori entitlement to contribute to public decision-making according to their own values and aspirations.  It presumes non-domination and a meaningful share in government.  It presumes that participation from one’s own cultural perspective is a determinant of liberal equality.  People cannot be required to express themselves in languages and according to value systems that are not their own.”

[Pg 113] “Tikanga matters as a lens through which people think and reason about what policy is for and what it should achieve.  New Zealand’s stable and ordered political environment makes it conducive to thinking about what tikanga means in practice, even with prejudice as a strong counter-influence.  The political environment also supports examining what it means to say that liberal democracy should, according to its own tradition, protect people from perpetual exclusion.  Excluding tikanga means excluding people.  With reference to selected cases heard by the Waitangi Tribunal, this chapter shows how and why tikanga is necessarily a constituent of political equality and guards against exclusion.  Tikanga is, then, a precursor to democratic legitimacy, and to what makes the commonwealth capable of non-domination. The commonwealth is an entity that works for everyone, because it is everyone.”

[Pg 132] “Colonialism does not expect public policy to work in favour of Indigenous people and tends, in fact, to explain policy failure as a product of human deficiencies.  It may do so because public policy is neither neutral nor objective.  It is not necessarily made to serve an agreed public good and may be set to respond to the essential colonial assumption that some people’s self-interest may override what might be objectively defined as fundamental human rights, such as the rights to property, culture and self-determination.  It manufactures crises to assert colonial authority as political ‘actors use framing strategies to (re) allocate blame for politicised incidents’ (Brandstrom & Kuipers, 2003 p. 282). Furthermore, ‘the reality of the crisis can only become (partially) accessible through some kind of mediation, through its performative construction by populist discourse’ (Stavrakakis et al., 2018, p.9).”

[Pg 166] “The amended Local Government Act 2002 should, therefore, begin with the assumption that Maori people are citizens and thus shareholders in the powers and responsibilities of local government.  They are consequently entitled to see their values and aspirations reflected in how government works and sets and implements policy priorities.  Their ultimate expectation is for the system to work in their favour as much as it does for anyone else. There is a presumption of equal political standing that contrasts with junior partnership as a lesser standing, requiring some people to be located on the margins of decision-making, akin to the role of a stakeholder in someone else’s project.”

[Pg 190] “Democracy means that people may hold whichever opinions they like. Nobody is compelled to offer reasons chosen only because others find them acceptable.  Just as democracy cannot tell people what to think, it cannot prescribe the intellectual process one would follow to reach a position.  Indeed, people may choose no intellectual process whatsoever and simply make rash decisions based on emotion over reason.  Policy proposals concerned with protecting Maori rights are routinely opposed from this perspective, but the deliberative democratic presumption is that a policy proposal is likely to be objectively better if the political system encourages reasoned objection, reasoned support or reasoned refinement.”

[Pg 191] “Public participation and consultation are established features of New Zealand’s liberal democracy.  The citizens’ assembly shows explicitly that democracy does not belong only to ‘them’ in a ‘them’ and ‘us’ binary and provides an instructive foundation for thinking about what it means to practise equal tikanga in public decision-making.  More important are the principles and processes of deliberative reasoning that it raises, which could also be applied to other institutions of the republican commonwealth.”

            Now while I have been cherry-picking quotations from Dominic O’Sullivan’s book, I might have missed some of his most important ideas; and certainly his concerns about Maori inclusion is important.

            Having said all this, in its style it really is a hard book to read.

Something Old

  Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.  

UN MAUVAIS REVE by Georges Bernanos [First published in 1950 in France]. First published in English in 1953 as Night is Darkest

            Un Mauvais Reve had an odd history. Originally it was going to be a larger part of his earlier novel Un Crime [reviewed on this blog]; but his publishers thought it would be too long, so they told him to re-write it. Only some years later did he pick up what he had meant to write originally. Georges Bernanos died of cancer in 1948 and Un Mauvais Reve was published in 1950. There has been some controversy as to whether Un Mauvais Reve was not yet completed and it is true that the novel that we now have is divided into two parts, the second part being relatively short. Unlike many of his novels, Bernanos does not set this novel in a rural town, though there are some sequences out of the city near the end. Most of the novel is set in Paris, and the major characters are sophisticated – or at least they think they are. Given the milieu, some reviewers have suggested that Bernanos was deliberately copying the style of the likes of Andre Gide and other writers who were always looking for prestige. But what he is really doing is mocking himself, as we shall see later. Note too that this novel does not deal with religious ideas – at most, towards the end of the novel there is a brief moment when a priest goes by, but that is all. One other point – the English title is Night is Darkest. This does not really say what the original French title means. Un Mauvais Reve means A Bad Dream and we are left to consider much of the novel is a bad dream. So at last to one of my long synopsis.

            Monsieur Emmanuel Ganse is a novelist who has been writing for years. Indeed  many of his novels, which were once popular, are now seen by many as old-hat – but he thinks that he is still a major intellectual. [This is where Bernanos is deliberately mocking  himself.] He has three secretaries, the aging Madame Simone Alferi and two young men who are cousins, Olivier Mainvilles and  Philippe. The novel begins with Olivier writing a letter to his aunt in which he says that Ganse’s works are rubbish and he notes that Simone Alferi seems to know everything and all the nasty things that go on in Ganse’s home. But [conveniently] Olivier happens to leave his letter on Ganse’s desk… and of course Ganse finds it, reads it, and later in the tale he more-or-less rebukes Olivier without exactly firing him… but he is out of favour. Olivier is an orphan, but he is hoping that he will get a rich heritage from his grandmother. Meanwhile he has little income. Phillipe tells Olivier to be careful about how he goes because he has being using drugs, but Olivier says that he does not want to be “one of those mediocre puppets” who are trying to tell him what to do.

And it is at this point that we learn that Simone Alferi has had many men in her life… and Ganse had failed to seduce her. The fact is that she is currently Olivier’s mistress… and she takes in drugs galore, pumping in cocaine and frequently injecting herself… and Olivier is taking the habit himself.  I did say that there was a whiff of decadence didn’t I? Olivier is a resentful young man, thinking that he should have that heritage he longs for. He is, in fact, like Stendhal’s Julien Sored or Dostoievsky’s Raskolnikov – young men who think they are superior than other people and have the right to take whatever they want. By contrast, Philippe is a thoughtful young man, but always unhappy, wandering about and thinking of killing himself. On and off, both young men follow such fashionable things as Communism and Nihilism… Meanwhile Ganse, now unsure of his works, goes to see the psychiatrist Lipette. The psychiatrist basically tells him that his novels are really mere versions of himself.  Ganse has a different view, and says so. “I haven’t got faith. I was born and I shall die a free-thinker and a rationalist… I can pull myself together”… but after this talk the phone rings and we learn that Philippe has just committed suicide.

There follows a kind of flashback about how Philippe killed himself. It was in a room where young rowdy men were talking about Anarchism and Communism. Both Olivier and Philippe leaned towards Anarchism, but Philippe shot himself elsewhere after talking with Olivier . And how does Olivier react when he hears of Philippe’s death? He says that “I don’t care a damn about Philippe when all is said and done! He has committed suicide to annoy and humiliate me. Yes I know how stupid that sounds. I tell you he killed himself for no other reason” But later he starts thinking that he might kill himself. Not sure what to do, Olivier goes on a very long walk. It rains, it is cold (it’s winter). He thinks things over… but after he has woken in a hotel, he still wants to take a long journey… what really is his purpose in life? He has still not worked it out…

And then we find ourselves in a very different situation. This is where we come to Part Two of the novel. Away from other characters, Simone Alferi decides to commit murder by killing Olivier’s grandmother who has not yet given him his inheritance. So she sets off by herself through different places [mainly rural] leading to Olivier’s grandmother… and this part of the novel gives us every step she takes. Indeed Bernanos describes the mountains and fords and small hamlets and railway-stations that she passes through. And of course  pumping in cocaine and frequently injecting herself as she goes her way. She is sure of herself… but then don’t junkies think they know what they are doing? And here she passes briefly a young naïve priest and they say some polite words, but naturally she hates priests. And she gets to the house where Olivier’s grandmother lives and…

Now wait a minute. Did you really think that I am going to tell you how it ends? This is exactly what I said when I reviewed Un Crime. It is a crime story but, like a good whodunnit, you have to work it out for yourself and what it all means. At the same time, I have to suggest that this novel was probably not fully worked out by Bernanos before he died. So we are left hanging. And yet please remember the title of the novel - Un Mauvais Reve meaning A Bad Dream. Simone Alferi’s journey could be just a bad dream, the type  of thing that would go through the mind of a disordered brain – like that of somebody who uses too many narcotics… like Simone Alferi.

            Un Mauvais Reve did not sell well when it was first published. If Monsieur Ouine was an enigma, then for some readers Un Mauvais Reve was even more baffling. Was it a crime story or was it a psychological study? Certainly the novel contains many conversations of the style where there is much pretentious philosophy used by young men including the ideas of Olivier and unhappy Philippe. This can be irritating for most readers. And yet I still see Un Mauvais Reve as one of  Bernanos’s most interesting novels. On one level he was ridiculing his own works – not because he was refuting his works, but because he was making it clear that all writers can have their pompous moments. But more importantly he was doing what he had never done before. He was dealing with the decadent Parisian intellectual writers who write to no purpose and he was aware of the type of the nihilism that many young Frenchmen took up after going through both the First and Second World Wars. 

 

Something Thoughful

   Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

                                                           VERBAL NAUSEA

I do not know what part of New Zealand you come from, but I know that we have just gone through a very cold spot. In the South Island there was not only snow but freezing ice on windows and cars. Roads became impassable, cars skidded and ran into one-another, some were injured and of course it became difficult to go to work and take the children to school. On the south part of the North Island, things very cold too with some snow and frost and even in Hamilton things were very cold. We Aucklanders were warned that things would be very cold… but as it happened the sky was blue for most days up here, though when it came to night we too turned on our heat-pumps in the evening and later cuddled up in bed with extra blankets. So that is winter.

I am writing about this because for once our woefully bad TV six o’clock news got it right. For once we were given full information about the situation, the weather, the roads that could not be used, what was coming etc. I write this because too much of the so-called  six o’clock news is not real news at all. We are told that we are getting an hour of news, but in fact much of it is filled with trivia. Too often we are given tripe about some pop or rock musicians who are visiting New Zealand  - which means merely advertising – and fillers about nice people who are doing nice thing in small towns. Surely this should be put in the seven o’clock show that follows the news. Then there is the fact that the last 25 minutes of the so-called  news is taken up with sports; and recently I have noticed the way that the same images and stories from Sunday are used again on Monday, presumably because there are not enough reporters working on the job. What is really missing? It is detailed information about what is happening in the wide world – what is happening overseas – perhaps because footage is not available or perhaps our “news” cannot pay. And then there is the very limited information about New Zealand politics, sometimes given in the form of pointless “vox pop”. And did I notice the number of advertisments that butt in?

So why do I bother watching the six o’clock news? I watch it so that I can legitimately swear loudly in the living room about the inane reportage that we are given -  before I eat my dinner.