Ça fait un bout de temps que je n’ai plus écrit, c’est vrai. Malgré, j’ai pensé beaucoup à toi ce dernier temps. Des souvenirs me sont revenus, de l’hiver 2010/2011, juste avant ta naissance. Moi et ta maman ont été très excité de te voir. Il neigeait beaucoup cet hiver-là. Avec une voiture empruntée des amis, j’ai même conduit ta mère à l’hôpital la veille de Noël, dans la neige, parce qu’elle pensait que tu allais arriver un peu tôt. Mais non, tu n’avais pas encore envie à ce moment-là! La voiture, hélàs, a été entretemps remorquée parce que, dans la panique, je n’ai pas fait attention à l’affiche qui interdisait de garer la voiture devant l’hôpital! Tu es resté au chaud encore jusqu’en janvier (comme tu le sais). Et donc ton premier Noël n’était qu’en 2011…
…maitenant on va fêter Noël 2019 avec tes deux soeurs, Anna et Daphné. Ton oncle sera aussi là. Nous avons chez nous un très beau sapin avec beaucoup de place autour pour les cadeaux apportés (j’espere!) par le Père Noël.
Et toi? J’espère que tu as été sage, et que des cadeaux t’attendent aussi (et qqchose de bon à manger!). J’ai malheuresement pas le droit de te donner un cadeau, mais saches que dans mon coeur, je t’embrasse tres fort, mon cher fils.
A conventional narrative among political commentators of our day has been one of increasing polarisation and a collapsing ‘middle’. In economics, leading international think-tanks like the OECD are writing reports with catchy titles like “Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class“. In the media, pundits are falling over each other to predict the demise of the political centre.
And while the centre may indeed be under threat, there is little-to-no evidence of increased political polarisation. Across Europe, an unprecedented number of ‘grand coalitions’ have arisen in recent years, bringing traditionally opposed centre-right and centre-left parties into government together. While very recently there has been some weakening, the bigger picture is how remarkably stable this arrangement has proven. Meanwhile across the Pond, despite what social media outrage would have you believe, the extent of bipartisanship has been on a steady rise for almost a decade – spanning both Obama II and the Trump Administration. This should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to how the American political system really works. The donor class tends to stick its fingers into both the Republican and the Democrat pies, in more or less equal measure. Party bickering is a useful tool to deflect public attention away from the real issues, but when it starts to impede on the business of the State, the interests are quick to take notice.
The worst lack all conviction
Yet there is a divide opening up, of another kind. I see it as the increasing disparity between the interests of the political class and those of the people they are supposed to serve . In this sense the ‘middle’ is, and has always been, a careful compromise between the public interest and the interests of those who represent the public. The fact that vested interests and lobbyists choose to buy favour among the political class is nothing new. It is how business gets done. What has changed is the extent to which those vested interests deviate from the public interest. As globalisation and increasing human population ratchet up the scale and reach of public policymaking, the stakes go up. The decisions of our day – on how to regulate corporations that are bigger than countries, on how to handle the migration of millions, on how to deal with climate change – are bigger than anything we have faced before. This means public policy matters more, and the size of the ‘middle’, the gap between the people and its representatives, is growing.
In America, the Democrats have traditionally positioned themselves closer to this space, but at least since the Obama Administration it has become piercingly clear to anyone watching that establishment Democrats have moved far, far away from the interests of ordinary people. The two-party system prevents them from experiencing an out-in-out decline, simply because there are no voting alternatives. Yet the fracturing witnessed among the base during the 2016 Presidential campaign had the same political effect. Since 2004, the percentage of Americans identifying as politically independent has been on a steady rise, and now outnumbers either Democrats or Republicans.
Far from being on the fringes, candidates like Sanders and Gabbard are rank centrists, if the ‘centre’ means being closer to what most people actually want.
In Europe, the near universal decline of ‘centre’-left social democrat parties – once the parties of the masses – tells a similar tale of elites leaving their bases behind. The ‘centre’-right too has drifted away from its base; in Germany most notably through the policies of open immigration which the CDU Chancellor Merkel pursued in the teeth of public opposition.
But where the Establishment has abandoned the middle most evidently is in American military foreign policy. The consensus among ordinary Americans against funding rogue regimes like Saudi Arabia and getting stuck in endless, pointless regime-change wars like Afghanistan and Syria is as overwhelming as it is obvious. What is not as obvious is how political representatives fail to take any action: A bipartisan bill sponsored by Rand Paul to curb Presidential power in this respect and withdraw from Afghanistan has languished in the Senate since April. Why? Surely it is because the political elites are captured by a vested interest, this time the military industrial complex.
While the best are full of passionate intensity
In the face of this drift, the ‘collapse of the middle’ is the death of the convenant these traditional Establishment parties had with the public they only ever uneasily served. But others are moving quickly to fill the space, and the Establishment is quick to brand them with the now-tired dysphemism ‘populist’. Trump is commonly thought of as being in the vanguard of this new kind of populist. But in truth, he is only the loudest and most showmanlike of its outriders. In Eastern Europe, where the Establishment was less … established, populist leaders responded to the drift more quickly.
And on the political left, the wrangling over the 2020 Democratic party nomination shows this new divide quite clearly. On one side, the Establishment candidates, led by Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and … it would seem, Elizabeth Warren. They are backed by big donors but get only a lukewarm reception from the public. Against them the three anti-establishment candidates – the ‘populists’ if you will – of Bernie Sanders (with his vastly popular Medicare for All plan), Tulsi Gabbard (with her vastly popular End Regime-Change War platform) and Andrew Yang (with his vastly popular Universal Basic Income plan). They fight an almost endless battle against media smears and unfavourable coverage, relying on the internet for publicity and on small political donations from actual grassroots supporters for cold, hard cash. Since in this light, it’s wholly unsurprising that they are the candidates Trump voters are most likely to support if they decide to switch. After all, they are fellow ‘centrists’.
One does not have to look very long at history to guess which side will eventually come out on top. The Establishment, as it veers towards the extremes, will crack and fade and a new political middle will reform. It’s already happening. The pundits on television just don’t know it yet.
In the parcours of every reading adult, books will be encountered that challenge his perception on a deeper level. Books that connect the loose, live wires of his mind and satisfy an aching in his heart. These are the rare books that manage to do what mere human interaction cannot: They transcend the vacuum divide of isolation that separates all of us – teacher from student, husband from wife, brother from brother. Through such books, the writer creates a deep communion with the reader.
Nemesis, by Jo Nesbo, is not one of these books.
It is a book you read to avoid connections, not to make them. It is a book you read when work is hard, and you want something other than a Tuesday evening glass of wine to clean your brain of the meetings and spreadsheets which pay for the rent and the wine alike. It is a book you read on the train, because the alternative is looking out the rain speckled window, and in the four and a half years you have commuted through South Morley and Wenton Village, the scenery has not changed by even one semi-detached house.
Nothing about the protagonist, Harry Hole, seems real to me. I don’t believe the story in the Nemesis could ever remotely happen.
Nor am I meant to. Scandi-crime novels are comforting precisely because they not only have nothing to do with our lives, they also have nothing to do with the lives of actual Nordic police officers.
They are comforting because I know every tired cliche that will befall Hole before I break the paperback’s spine. I know it before his new partner – a young female cadet with the best marks in the policy academy – makes her first appearance on page 50. I know it before his relationship fails; before he breaks down and pours his first whiskey; before he arrests the obvious yet ultimately innocent suspect, then is forced to release him under severe reprimand from the police chief, twenty pages later.
And that’s just as we, the readers of Scandi-crime novels, want it. Because spreadsheets and management meetings are a pain in the ass. And so are commuter trains.
For this, we show our thanks in the only way Jo Nesbo – artist that he is – truly appreciates:
J’ai decide quand meme de t’ecrire en français au lieu de mes lettres habituelles en anglais, car entretemps j’estime que ce sera moins probable que tu apprendra l’anglais dans l’avenir proche.
Comme d’habitude je veux te dire a tel point je t’aime. Je pense souvent a toi, bien que ce dernier temps les evenments ont ete tels que je commence a perdre l’espoir de te jamais revoir. Mais l’idee de t’effacer de mon esprit, mes souvenirs, cela n’est pas possible pour moi.
C’est la raison pour laquelle je ne vais jamais arreter de t’ecrire ces lettres – meme en 20 ans, je garderai cette voie de communication. Et qui sait? Peut-etre un jour quand meme tu decideras de me contacter, en posant la question: Ou etais-tu toute ma vie?
La verite – et rien et personne ne peut l’effacer, la verite – c’est que je n’ai jamais voulu que de te faire du bien. J’ai toujours ete la pour toi. Je le suis maintenant, aujourd’hui. Je le serai demain aussi. Le peu de temps qu’on a passe ensemble – jusqu’a ton premier anniversaire, tu as ete mon ‘little man’, mon petit bonhomme, mon ‘Daniel Papaniel’ comme je disais a l’epoche.
Bon, assez dit. Quoi d’autre? Ta petite soeur Daphne pousse comme de mauvaise herbe, comme on dit en anglais. Elle est tres rigolo, bien que parfois un peu insolente. Mais elle chante beaucoup (principalement en francais – ah les crocodiles, le petit navire, l’elephant que se balancait sur une toile d’araignee…) elle adore sa trottinette. Son meilleur copain s’appelle Mathias – il est moitie bulgare, comme l’hasard le veut!
Ta soeur ainee Anna est parti pour son voyage aux Etats-Unis – 5 mois de chemin a pied. Elle est tres courageuse. Comme je suis fier d’elle!
Sinon je continue de profiter de l’ete pour jouer beaucoup de tennis, autant que le travail et les autres responsabilites de la vie le permettent.
J’espere que tu passes des bonnes vacances, avec beaucoup d’activites, de bonnes choses a manger (de la glace?!?) et surtout du soleil et de la chaleur.
Esperons que la raison et la bonte vaincent, et que les forces qui nous separent s’epaissent.
What is the ultimate homage one can pay to an author?
Surely it is to say that his or her work, when viewed through the lens of time, has lost some of its impact on the modern audience because it has become a genre-defining cliche – done and redone by copycats, some very talented, until the novelty fades. This kind of ‘victimhood of one’s own success’ can be said of the great Alfred Hitchcock. It can be said of the classic hip hop group Public Enemy.
And it can be said of John Buchan’s ‘The 39 Steps’. For the contemporary reader whose appetite for vicarious thrills has been fattened on the fast food of Jack Reacher, Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer – not to mention James Bond, the antics of Richard Hannay come across as a little hammy.
For one thing, his protagonist (Richard Hannay) has a first name which doesn’t begin with J. And then, many of the plot devices – the just-in-time escapes, the ‘ordinary man antihero’, the ratcheting up of the stakes as the plot reveals – all seem rather tired. That is, until you remember that Buchan’s character was penned in 1915, at a time when writing of this kind was largely non-existant. Richard Hannay was escaping from exploding buildings long before John McClane was even Born Hard, never mind the ‘Die’ bit.
Regarding the plot of this book itself, I won’t say too much, except to note the extent to which it is pregnant with the zeitgeist of a powerful Britain, caught in the midst of the Great War. The villification of the Germans and the rabid jingoism of the Empire are anacharonisms, which, when viewed in the tail lights of the muddy, blood-soaked trenches and sour colonial legacy of racist Western powers, retain appeal only insofar as they provide us with historical context.
Buchan called his books ‘shockers’, which in itself sounds silly and antiquated, until you think a little on the word ‘thriller’ and realise it’s actually no less silly-sounding. As a politician and a well-known biographer, he considered his shockers among the least important of his accomplishments. And yet even in his own lifetime it was clear that this is what he would be remembered for.
I give ‘The 39 Steps’ three stars for the story in its own right, and an additional star in recognition of the many Johns, Jacks, James’ and Jasons who followed in Richard Hannay’s wake.
It has been a while since I’ve written to you, but that is not to say I have stopped thinking about you. Oh, not at all. On the contrary, you are in my thoughts every day.
I hope now that the evenings are getting brighter you will have a chance to play outside a little bit more. The parks are certainly bustling these day. When I collect your little sister from creche I often stop at the park and she watches the big boys and girls playing on their scooters, bikes and roller skates. She’s eager to get going too, but at 22 months still too small for that kind of thing.
It’s Lent now, which is a good period of the year to reflect on things and take stock of the good. It’s sort of a spiritual springtime! I am using this time to try and get back in shape – lots of running in the morning and playing tennis.
How is your tennis going? I hope you are improving. One day, perhaps, we can go out to the courts together and play a few games. My backhand is still kind of weak but I have quite a strong forehand and a decent enough serve.
Anyway, enough for now. I recorded a little video message for you before Christmas. Hopefully you have had a chance to watch it.
I came across this poem that I’d written ten years ago to mark the passing of Gary Gygax – creator of Dungeons & Dragons
Eulogy For A Dungeon Master
Countless the basements
You transformed to caverns;
Nameless the kitchen tables
fabled, formed as tabled taverns
Where a pimply 16 year old
Did his best
to bluff the role
Of rugged half-elf grimly
Assigning the next quest or tale
From o’er the rim
Of a dinted pint of frothy ginger ale.
We saw not the chinks
In our own teen-male armour
Nor did we stop to think
If days of playing roles might harm our
Hold on a real world so much more alarming
Than a hoard of charging orcs.
For in that four foot table space
Of paper, dice and figures made of lead
There thrived a truly magic place
where teenies meek were brave instead.
No slick slew of game designers needed we
No 3-D graphics, LANs or fancy Wiis.
With one hardbound spellbook you made the spark
That filled our teenage years with something more
than boredom and a high school pecking order.
Maybe your DM’s rolled a 20 now
Or just grew up and found
a girl, a job, a better place in whatever
World is real to Him.
And in a box in some cosmic attic
Your long forgotten character sheet
Will fade to dust, crumpled up against
An old SAT study guide.
But know this, Gary Gygax:
In every memory that still persists
In every fighter, cleric, thief or mage
Reborn upon a line-ruled page
A piece of you comes back to life.
And so we say adieu and thanks
Until we meet again as NPCs.
When you get used to reading inferior books, even a nibble of a great masterpiece can challenge your digestive system in ways that cause stomach cramps. Franz Kafka is no light read. After a diet of heavily processed modern literature, Franz Kafka’s The Trial is as hard to digest as a meal of wholegrain rice and raw vegetables would be to a junk food aficionado. And yet like its gastronomical equivalent, Kafka’s prose stays with you and nourishes you much longer.
Though hard to digest, The Trial is not hard to chew. The prose is in fact deceptively accessible, inviting the reader into a world that is familiar enough, and well rendered enough, to suspend one’s disbelief, despite the many incongruities that make that world so intriguing and so mysterious. This, indeed, is the fine art of surrealism: To lure the reader with hyper-realistically crafted descriptions into the acceptance of things he might otherwise dismiss as simply absurd.
But unlike, say, a Magritte painting, Kafka’s Trial does not stop at flaunting absurdity. Instead, it takes the reader well beyond the ridiculous into something far more dangerous, as we accompany Joseph K., our middle-aged protagonist, on his descent into insanity. We begin our journey in his bedroom, following him into the bank at which he holds a mid-ranking position, into a farcical courtroom and through the various sordid relationships that belie his repressed sexuality. At no point are we sure of what is truly real and what is a projection of his mental illness. Yet the quality of the prose is such that we can glimpse through the cracks in the protagonist’s madness the light of a more solid world; one that is just beyond his grasp, the existence of which is indispensable for us to appreciate what Joseph K. is experiencing.
The narrative device which Kafka uses to set up this surreality is the bureaucracy of a modern judicial system. This is particularly effective for any reader who has had the displeasure of knowing the vagaries of an inefficient and often self-contradictory public administration; in particular, the infuriating functioning of the legal system. Bureaucracies really are insane, which makes it all the easier for us to accept what Joseph K. is going through. Yet we are reminded at regular intervals that this device is only a metaphor, and that the trial, the court which hosts it and the many court attendants we meet throughout the story, are all of the protagonist’s own making.
It’s possible, if one reads about Kafka’s life, to draw parallels and seek explanations for this or that aspect of the book. But I feel doing so adds nothing to the reader’s experience. My best advice is to sit down at the table, clear your palate and take small and deliberate bites.
Yet another Easter is coming around the corner and I find myself thinking, once again, of you. There has, in fact, only ever been one Easter that we have spent together. It was the Easter of 2011. I remember I took you to Mass at Notre Dame au Sablon.
In all the years that have followed, I have always thought of you because Easter is a special time, a time for family.
Your little sister Daphne is thriving. She can’t yet crawl or walk but she scoots around on her bum – very cute. The creche gave her a gift of a few chocolate eggs for Easter but I’m afraid she’s too young to enjoy those kinds of treats (so instead she will have to make do with mushy vegetables and milk!)
I have an Easter egg here for you but as I have no way of giving it to you, I’m afraid I will have to donate it or eat it myself.
Still I hope you get some nice chocolate (but not too much!). I will be thinking of you.
Love,
Dad
As with birth rates, we use data for 4 categories of countries from 1990 to 2015 (100 observations total). We have two explanatory variables, AGE and Y, where AGE is defined as the percentage of the population aged over 65 and Y is per capita GDP.
After eyeballing the scattergrams, we test the following functional form:
d = (minY^a)/Y^a * (1/AGE^g)
Where minY is the constant equal to the smallest value of Y in the series.
Logarithmic transformation gives:
ln(d) = ln(minY^a) – a*ln(Y) – g*ln(AGE)
which we test on the data using OLS. Here are the results:
Adjusted R square: 75.191
Intercept coefficient: 7.37384
t-Stat: 20.4011
Y coefficient: -1.01444
t-Stat: -13.1059
AGE coefficient: 2.0097
t-Stat: 11.5208
The estimated intercept is a good, but not perfect, approximation of ln(minY^a)
Here are the fitted against actual values of the scattergram for death rate against per capita GDP:
While the results are not as good as with the birth rates calculations, it is nevertheless a good enough fit and the explanatory variables have a strong enough confidence factor to be usable in our estimations.
We begin by examining the scatter of data for 100 observations of per capita GDP and per capita emissions for 4 categories of countries, over 25 years (1990 – 2015).
The scatter suggests a cubic functional form, so we test:
GHG = a + b*Y + c*Y^2 + d*Y^3
where GHG are per capita emissions of GHG, and Y is per capita GDP.
