Another time past created

by Brett Hilder. Pier 9, 2008.

A layered design recreates the intricate, collage nature of a journal, where words, quotes from philosophers, poets and authors, ponderings, experiences, travel observations and astonishing photographs of landscapes and people are interwoven.
This is a book of a journey showing the lands of Spanish culture in the Mediterranean and Latin America, made with notations of memory
Absolutely beautiful.

- Wendy

Update - From Pier 9's website: 'The winners of the 2009 Australian Publishers' Association Book Design Awards were announced as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival on Thursday 21st May. Another Time Past Created, designed by Toyoko Sugiwaka, won Best Designed General Illustrated Book and this beautiful, captivating book was also awarded Best Designed Book of the Year overall!'

Manly Library Author Talk: Bob Ellis

Bob Ellis is the author of more than eighteen books.

His most recent work is And So It Went: Night Thoughts in a Year of Change and other recent titles include the bestselling Goodbye Jerusalem,

Goodbye Babylon and First Abolish the Customer.

Bob Ellis will be speaking at Manly Library:

Wednesday 24th June 7pm
Manly Library Meeting Room

Market Place, Manly NSW
$5 entry light refreshments provided
Bookings essential call 9976 1722

Deaf sentence

by David Lodge. Harvill Secker, 2008.

David Lodge’s books include comic gems such as the campus comedy Changing Places, as well as more serious works such as Author, Author. Deaf Sentence is a bit of a mixture. It has comic elements, but the overall tone is darker, even alarming. Retired Professor, Desmond Bates, finds that life has become tiresome and embarrassing due to the onset of hearing loss. While blindness is commonly regarded as tragic, he observes, deafness is often the source of amusement, though not for the deaf person himself. Desmond’s ageing father is a source of further disquiet for him, as the start of some sort of dementia makes itself known. Set against these two strands of plot is a third, less successful element, involving a young, erratic student who is supposedly researching the language used in suicide notes. This plot element is not fully worked out, and is somehow reminiscent of the movie Fatal Attraction, (though no bunnies are harmed). Altogether, though, the novel is written with Lodge’s customary elegance, and successfully draws attention to the under-appreciated struggle many people have with deafness.

- John

Alice Munro wins 2009 Man Booker International

Alice Munro, known for her short stories, has won the 2009 Man Booker International prize (different from the Man Booker Prize). Her new collection is due to be released at the end of 2009, entitled Too much happiness. Her most recent titles include Away from her (which was made into a movie of the same name) and a collection called The view from Castle Rock.

The women

by T C Boyle. Viking, 2009.

T C Boyle’s mastery of the short story is at odds with his ability as a novelist. Having raised expectations with his marvellous early novel, Water Music, about the explorer Mungo Park, he has disappointed on several occasions since. The Women is an ambitious portrayal of the women who loved Frank Lloyd Wright, and it’s another frustrating read. Boyle is capable of enviable sentences and description, but there are many paragraphs here which could be struck out without loss. The novel is supposedly told through the recollections of one of Wright’s students, Tadashi, via an Irish American translator, but the various ironical effects achieved by this method are submerged by the suspicion that the author is being a clever-clogs. The characters of the three wives/mistresses of Wright are comprehensively detailed, but are of minor historical interest compared to the architect himself. With the exception of Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor, novelists have seldom been up to the challenge of putting themselves in the mind of an architect, and Boyle does little to show how Wright’s genius operated. And call me picky, but would people have fed coins into a jukebox in the early 1930s? Did the term ‘jukebox’ exist then? If you haven’t read Boyle before, I’d suggest looking for a collection of his stories first.

- John.

Burnt shadows

by Kamila Shamsie. Bloomsbury, 2009.

"Later, the one who survives will remember that day as grey, but on the morning of 9 August itself both the man from Berlin, Konrad Weiss, and the schoolteacher, Hiroko Tanaka, step out of their houses and notice the perfect
blueness of the sky..."

The day is 9 August 1945, and the place Nagasaki. It is the morning on which the second Atomic Bomb was dropped, and the one that survives, in this story, is Hiroko Tanaka.

Right from the Prologue of Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie makes it clear that this book will have no happy endings. Yet it is a book full of love and life, humour and strength.

Hiroko is a likeable heroine and as we follow her though the event-filled fifty-seven years which this book covers she matures into a strong, independent, resilient and loving woman. Yet, even before the bomb dropped and burned the embroidered birds of her kimono into her back, her life was shadowed. The earliest shadow is reflected from her father, who was branded a traitor by the local community for an act of protest against the glorification of a young man's death in war. On the day of the bomb, Hiroko feels the suspicion of the people around her in an air-raid shelter, even of those she has know as friends for many years, and so she leaves. Konrad Weiss's death on that day, too, throws a deep shadow over her life. Not just because of her grief for the man she loved and was going to marry, but because it sets in motion a train of events which take her from Japan, to India, then to Pakistan and, eventually, to America. Each move brings her new joys and new sorrows.Kamila Shamsie is a superb story-teller. The people in her book are human and believable, and she draws the reader into their lives in such a way that you warm to them and care about them. In some ways the lives of these fictitious characters become more real than the horrors of the non-fictional history that they live through. It is hard to believe, for example, that sane human beings can perpetrate the acts which have led to the family divisions, bloodshed and trauma of Partition in India; the growing power and the influence on young Afghan boys of the mujahideen in Pakistan; the war in Afghanistan; the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York; the growing power of the CIA and private militia; Guantanamo Bay; and the resulting spread of xenophobia, religious fanaticism, and everyday suspicion of strangers who are not "like us". The lives of Hiroko and her family and close friends are influenced by all of these. And, as Hiroko's story moves into the present-day, Kamila Shamsie makes us aware of the way in which these things have changed all our lives, prompting, especially, the suspicion of strangers, the resulting spread of surveillance and the erosion of individual rights.

Yet in spite of its thought-provoking portrayal of recent history and the frightening, unresolved, seemingly unresolvable situation with which the book ends, there is nothing polemic about it. There are good times as well as bad. For long periods, as one section heading suggests, the shadows are veiled and the book celebrates comfortable, loving, family relationships. Hiroko faces the worst that can happen and, as she did at Nagasaki, she survives - because she has to, and because, as she says at the end of the book "the world goes on". And the shadows, for all of us, are always there.

Burnt Shadows, like the two fragments of poetry which Shamsie chose to set at the front of her book, is an elegy for all that the earth has lost and is still losing. But it is also a powerful and moving story.

********************************
Copyright Ann Skea 2009

The house of wisdom

by Jonathan Lyons. Bloomsbury, 2009.

Reviewed by Ann Skea (ann@skea.com).

Baghdad: 'The Round City', 'The City of Peace'. This doesn't sound much like the city we hear of today. Nor do we think of Baghdad as one of the most important centres of learning in the world. So it is timely for Jonathan Lyons to remind us that all this was once true of Baghdad and to demonstrate how much the ancient Arabic-speaking world influenced the development of Western, non-Arabic-speaking, knowledge and culture.

In 762, the Abbasid Caliph, Abu Jafar al-Mansur, influenced by the geometrical teachings of the Ancient Greek, Euclid, set about designing the new capital city of his empire as a perfect circle. Learned astrologers (one a Zoroastrian, the other a Jewish convert to the Muslim religion) were consulted; a mathematically gifted overseer was appointed; various rites were performed, and The Round City grew up on the site of the old Persian city of Baghdad. Al-Mansur and his scholars then began to collect knowledge from wherever in the world they could find it. Persian, Greek and Indian knowledge was searched out, translated, studied copied and disseminated, and the city grew into a rich and important place which, according to one traveller, had "no equal on earth" for prosperity, luxury and learning. The great library of Baghdad, which housed the accumulated knowledge of the Empire also housed an academy of scholars and translators, and it was the resort of experts in astrology and scientific experiment. It became known as 'The House of Wisdom', and large sums of money were devoted to expanding its endeavors, accumulating valuable texts, and undertaking related cultural and intellectual projects.

Al-Mansur was not the first to so value knowledge and learning. The Umayyad dynasty, whose armies al-Mansur's brother had defeated in 750, were equally interested in 'scientific' enquiry. Astrology, logic, law, philosophy and medicine, all were studied, and when the most important surviving Umayyad Prince, Abd al-Rhaman, fled to Southern Spain, he took this love of scholarship with him. So Muslim Spain, too, became a important centre of learning.

Meanwhile, the Western non-Arabic-speaking world had lost the language skills which would have allowed them to learn from the Ancient Greeks. Latin had become the language of scholars in the few centres of learning. And Christianity suppressed Greek philosophy and independent thinking to such an extent, that only Aristotle's influence survived in the formal teaching and practice of logic and rhetoric. The Crusades soon made the free exchange of knowledge between Muslims and Christians almost impossible. However, contact with the Arab world, however bloody, did expose some Western men to Arab culture and a few, like Adelard of Bath, set out to learn more. Adelard is one of the heroes of Lyons's book. Born in about 1080, he had influential church patrons, a thirst for knowledge, a flair for languages and, apparently, a penchant for flowing green capes, green being a new dye colour discovered by the Alchemists. In about 1100, Adelard left his native England for a cathedral school in France. From there, he headed East, possibly by way of Spain and Sicily, spending at least seven years studying in and around crusader lands before returning home. He learned Arabic well enough to communicate with other scholars, and he read and translated (from the Arabic) the works of Classical Greek philosophers and mathematicians. When he finally returned to England, he brought back with him knowledge of geography, astronomy and astrology, as well as his own translations of a work on the use of the astrolabe and, most importantly, Euclid's Elements. Euclid's work was of seminal importance in the West. It covered geometry, number theory and such sophisticated mathematical concepts as irrational numbers, plus the logical method of stating a problem, hypothesizing a solution, demonstrating proof, and presenting a final conclusion. This 'scientific' method was, and still is, applied to every aspect of the search for knowledge. Adelard's work, Lyons notes, became the benchmark for Twelfth-century learning.Other scholars similarly sought out Arab knowledge and brought it back to the West. In 1230, the Scotsman, Michael Scot, brought back the medical work of Avicenna, and the philosophical work of Averroes. In twelfth-century Italy, Leonardo of Pisa, better know as Fibonacci, produced his Book of Calculations, which provided a detailed account of the use of the Arabic numbering system (which had, in turn, been learned from India) and so the nine figures 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and the sign 0 (which we still call by the Arab name 'zero') came to the western world. In the thirteenth century, English scientist and philosopher, Roger Bacon, brought from the East the knowledge of alchemy, which was the precursor of chemistry. Lyons's charting of these changes gives us an important insight into the major sources of our knowledge today, and the strong influence of Arab learning is still clear in every aspect of our lives. Music, manners, gardening, geography, religious debate, magic, all were strongly influenced by Arab learning. They gave us not only our number system but also many of the words which are in everyday use: 'alcohol', 'tariff', 'monsoon', 'algebra', and many more. The House of Wisdom is a timely reminder of the debt we owe to these early lovers of learning: the Arabs who searched for it, treasured it and transmitted it so freely, and the adventurous Western scholars who were fascinated by it, saw its value, and brought it back with them from their travels. Lyons writes well and his knowledge of the Muslim world is extensive. My only quibble, is that he tends to jump around in time in his book and, since history and dates were never my strong point, I often lost track of which century I was in.

However, this was a small price to pay for the knowledge I gained.

Copyright © Ann Skea 2009

Manly Library Author Talk: Love in the Age of Drought by Fiona Higgins

Fiona Higgins will speak at Manly Library on Wednesday 6th May on her first book Love in the Age of Drought her true story of rural romance.
Author Fiona Higgins met her husband-to-be at a conference in Melbourne, she wasn’t looking for a relationship, let alone the upheaval of falling for an eco-aware cotton farmer from South East Queensland.
But then life never goes quite according to plan...

Check out her interview with Grazia magazine.

6.30pm Wednesday 6th May

RSVP 9976 1722

Light refreshments provided

Land of marvels

by Barry Unsworth. Hutchinson, 2009

Not too many novelists in their 70s produce great work. It’s as if there is a slackening off of power. But Unsworth, pushing 80, has just produced a novel twice as good as anything recent by authors half his age. It should be a contender for novel of the year. Set in 1914 in Mesopotamia, the story concerns events surrounding an archaeological dig. As the scholars excavate through layers of the past, revealing the fate of doomed empires of long ago, events in the outside world foreshadow the end of another Empire. Others, with different agendas, gather at the dig – an American geologist, German and British spies, religious zealots. The action and tension are gripping to the end. Unsworth has explored imperial ambitions in the past, notably in Pascali’s Island, and the Booker-prize-winning Sacred Hunger, and Land of Marvels is well up to their standard. Here he is marvelously subtle, not only harking backwards to the age of the Assyrians, but making ironic reference to the most recent oil-fuelled imperial folly in the land now known as Iraq.

- John.

Library-a-go-go!

The Contra Costa County Library in California has launched a 'library-a-go-go' service. It is like a vending machine, but it lends library books.

Ghostlines

by Nick Gadd. Scribe, 2008.

As an unpublished manuscript, Ghostlines won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, and it’s a strong debut. Philip Trudeau, an investigative journalist fallen on hard times, finds himself drawn into a mystery involving corruption in the art world. The dialogue is convincing, the Melbourne settings are well-done, and Gadd pulls together the strands of the mystery neatly at the end. There’s no shortage of novels featuring investigative journalists. English author Joe Kelly, whose mystery novels are set in and around East Anglia, is possibly the best of the bunch at the moment, but Gadd could rival him once he’s got a couple more books under his belt. Not everyone will swallow the supernatural side of the story, which was an unnecessary element of the plot in my view, but I would certainly read more from this author.

- John.

The casebook of Victor Frankenstein

by Peter Ackroyd. Random House, 2008.

So, Victor Frankenstein had now given us another account of his life and it is rather different to the version he gave to Robert Walton in Mary Shelley's book. Which are we to believe?

That may seem a strange question to ask, since up to now it has always been believed that Mary Shelley, at the age of nineteen, invented Victor Frankenstein as a character in the horror story she concocted one dark and stormy night in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. The poet, Percy Bysse Shelley (Mary's husband to be) was there, so too were Alfred, Lord Byron, his physician Dr Polidori, and Mary's step-sister, Claire Claremont. Two of the stories told that night eventually became books: Mary's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampire.

Peter Ackroyd, however, seems to have come across an autobiography written by Victor Frankenstein in which he tells us how he met and befriended Percy Bysse Shelley and, so, came to meet Mary, Byron and Polidori. So, who are we to believe?

Maybe reading Victor Frankenstein's "casebook", as Ackroyd calls it, will solve the mystery. Or maybe not, since Ackroyd is well known for re-inventing the lives of famous people - Dickens and Defoe, to name just two. Ackroyd's Victor Frankenstein, like Mary's, was born in Switzerland. He speaks (or writes) with almost the same voice and he, too, creates a monster. Some of the things he tells us about himself are the same as in Mary's book: his obsession with the source of life, his experiments with electricity, his horror when his creature comes to life, the murders, the false accusations, the confrontation with his creature and its demands - all these are re-told but there are startling differences.Victor Frankenstein's visit to Oxford on his tour of England becomes, in Ackroyd's book, a much longer stay which is of major importance in his life. Enrolled as an undergraduate at Oxford University, he meets 'Mad Shelley' and is able to provide us with a vivid account of the poet and his 'libertarian' friends and activities. Fact and fiction become ever more entangled in 'The Casebook' as Frankenstein follows Shelley to London, meets the poet's first wife, Harriet (a poor factory worker whom Shelley rescues from a life of drudgery in this account), and becomes familiar with various aspects of nineteenth century London life. He sees the low life of poverty, squalor and inequality, and the high life of theatres, intellectual debate and the power of money. He is taken to meetings of the radical libertarian Popular Reform League, attends a lecture by Humphrey Davey on electricity, and searches out 'sack-'em-up men' (resurrectionists) who supply him with cadavers for his experiments. He buys an old Thames-side warehouse in Limehouse Reach (an area of London docks for which Ackroyd seems to have a particular fancy in his books), and here he does his gruesome experimenting and, eventually, brings his monster to life.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is sparing in his descriptions of what he actually does in his experiments and he passes swiftly over the moment when his creature comes horrifyingly to life. Ackroyd's man, however, tells us all in gory and terrible detail. All this is inventive, imaginative and entertaining, and Ackroyd is expert at re-creating the atmosphere of nineteenth century London. There are times, however, when he seems to be more intent on doing this, and on having fun playing games with fact and fiction, than in getting on with the story. And the story, in broad outline, is Mary Shelley's. Ackroyd has tinkered around with the chronology of events and with some of the characters, and he has inserted and invented biographical details of some real historical figures. Some might say this is plagiarism: others might call it post-modern trickiness. Whatever it is, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is an ingenious, light-hearted horror story, with a touch of Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde about it for good measure. It has little of the thought-provoking psychological and social depths of Mary Shelley’s' masterpiece and it is unlikely ever to become as famous. But it does have a much more startling ending!

- Copyright Ann Skea

The chimney sweeper's boy

By Barbara Vine. Penguin Classics, 2008.

Why bestselling novelist Gerald Candless assumed a new identity years before his marriage and the birth of his two daughters isn't revealed until the last chapters of the book, but the effect of his deception on his family drives this story. The search for the origins of a child is themed throughout. In Gerald's wife, Ursula, and his daughters, Hope and Sarah, Vine [Ruth Rendell] has created three complex women and in Gerald, an equally complicated and compelling man. Each chapter is headed by an extract from one of Gerald Candless' fictional novels and Gerald's mystery is wrapped around a forgotten murder.

I loved this book – every word. It deserves to be a penguin classic!!

- Wendy

Definitive list of novels everyone must read

The Guardian reports that they have compiled a 'definitive' list of the top 1000 novels that everyone should read. I'm sure there are people who might find something missing from the list, but 1000 is a lot of books. They're handily split into genre types. Although 'War and travel' seems strange combination. In any case, I'm sure you'll get some good suggestions from the list.

The northern clemency

by Philip Hensher. Knopf, 2008.

A big thick tome, which was short-listed for the 2008 Booker Prize, which might be enough to put people off reading it, but aha, local readers are in for a surprise. The bulk of this novel is set in Sheffield, England in the 1970s and 80s, but 620 pages later, the action shifts to the Manly we know and love. Is this the first time Manly has appeared in a Booker-shortlisted novel? Sydney is affectionately described, with a gee-whiz air that suggests that Hensher must have been over here for only a few days. Without wanting to give it away, the novel’s ending seems to have confused some English reviewers, who mistook the action of a tidal rip for the attack of a shark. Where were the life-savers??

Other reviews thought that the novel was too long, but shorter books can sometimes take longer to read, and this one flows pretty smoothly. It treads similar ground to Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters’ Club, or Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-pool Library, and is not inferior to either of those, only slightly soapier somehow. There would have to be a lot of the author’s childhood on display here, in among the melodrama.

- John.

Azincourt

by Bernard Cornwell. Harper Collins, 2008.

Cornwell, the creator of the Sharpe series of Napoleonic novels and the Starbuck series of US Civil War stories turns his attention to one of history’s most famous battles, Agincourt, at which an outnumbered English army took on the might of the French in 1415. Nick Hook, an archer who has been outlawed, finds employment as a mercenary in France, and later is enrolled in the company of Sir John Cornwaille, a superb fighter in the army of Henry V. The author’s research is thorough, and every character in the novel finds his contemporary in the chronicles of the time. There is a great deal of grim period detail.

The author faces two problems: Henry V is best-known to us through Shakespeare’s character, so Cornwell includes aspects of the Shakespearian king in his own portrayal of a stubborn, cold-blooded ruthless leader; and the result of the battle is well-known, which robs the story of much of its suspense, although Cornwell does his best to make up for this with a somewhat melodramatic sub-plot involving Hook’s French wife. But he really excels at battle scenes, and the novel is an assault on the senses, brutally violent. It seems unlikely that this will be the first in a new series, but if Cornwell decides to write about more great battles of English history then it will be an (almost) painless way to learn history.

- John

Afloat borrower goes floating from Byron to Sydney

One of my regular borrowers is off to Byron today where he’s going to kayak back to Sydney with a mate to raise money and awareness for Prostate Cancer Treatment. They’re getting a bit of publicity, and you can follow their progress on their blog:
http://www.b2b4prostate.blogspot.com/

- Richard
(The Manly Library Afloat service is parked outside Manly Wharf from 7:15am to 9:15am weekdays)

The dig

by John Preston. Penguin, 2008.

One of the most reliable ways of telling whether you are going to like an author new to you is to look at who is recommending the book. John Preston’s book comes with praise from Ian McEwan and Robert Harris, so we can guess that it’s going to be engrossing and highly readable, if it’s anything like their work. It also comes with a recommendation from Nigella Lawson, which is slightly odd, but not completely off-putting. The Dig tells the story of the excavation of the treasure site at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk in the weeks immediately prior to WWII. I was reminded of J L Carr’s lovely novel, A Month in the Country – same period, same sort of atmosphere. Although it is well-known that the finds at Sutton Hoo were rich and very important, this if anything heightens the novel’s tensions as rivalries fluctuate among the different personalities involved. A recommended read – time well spent.

- John.

The freedom paradox

By Clive Hamilton.

Over the past two centuries most citizens of affluent countries have gained unprecedented freedom and economic independence. Why is it, then, that we are discontented? Why, according to a report prepared by Harvard School of Public Health for the WHO, is depression "predicted to become the world's second most burdensome disease by 2020"? Why has the affluence we have struggled so hard to achieve not brought us the contentment and wellbeing we expected? This, says Clive Hamilton, is "The Freedom Paradox". We have never been more free to shape ourselves and our lives but, at the same time, we have never been more subject to social and commercial pressures to conform to collective goals. We are constrained by a new form of "unfreedom". Subtle pressures persuade us that we must have more money, a bigger house and car, a perfect body, a particular toothpaste, even, if we are to make our mark in the world. The consumer society in which we live focuses on generating needs, then, for a price, filling them. The market - commercial and economic - offers us our identity but also fosters conformity and intolerance towards those who break away from the common goals.

There is nothing new here. This is the condition which has been labelled 'Affluenza'. What is new, is the solution Clive Hamilton offers us for our malaise. What we need, he says, is "inner freedom": the reasoned ability and the courage to evaluate the commonly accepted route to happiness and to stand aside from it, the freedom to set our own goals, and the will to achieve them. But we cannot achieve this inner freedom, he says, without committing ourselves to a moral life - without imposing constraints on ourselves and living according to the values and standards these constraints require. Only in this way can we achieve a true sense of Self.

So, what is this 'inner freedom'? What constitutes a moral life? What does Hamilton mean by 'a true sense of Self'?

To answer these questions, Hamilton turns to philosophy. Examining earlier theories of morality, he writes clearly and concisely about the philosophies of Plato, Mill, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Rousseau, and of more recent philosophers like Sartre and Rawls. He also examines science, psychology, religion (eastern and western), and he discusses God, death, Marxism, suicide, various sexual practices, art and poetry. His project is hugely ambitious but his aim is to establish a new basis for morality and moral judgments.Hamilton's project is important and the book is full of thought-provoking argument and discussion. For anyone with any background in philosophy, however, this book is hard to read. Philosophers want to examine the validity of every argument along the way, and Hamilton covers almost every major topic of philosophical debate since the time of Plato and Aristotle. Better, to read this book in the manner in which Hamilton says he wrote it:"Contentious philosophical debates underpin much of the discussion....I exclude or skate over most of the controversies if pausing to review them would interrupt the flow of my argument". This is an easy way of avoiding having to point out and deal with the flaws in his own argument, although he does say he will offer some hints of these "controversies" in his notes.

The problem with Hamilton's approach, however, is that fundamental to his argument is his attempt to dismiss the carefully argued positions of some important philosophers in order to establish a distinction between what he terms the 'phenomenal world' ( the which we construct by the use of reason from what we experience through our limited range of sense data) and the 'noumenal world' (which is outside the range of our senses). The noumenon is undifferentiated, unmanifest, timeless, spaceless, causeless. It is essentially the same, although Hamilton does not say this, as the Ein Soph of the Jewish Cabbalists, the Ancient Greeks' mythological Chaos, the Scientists (and magicians') Aether. It is transcendental (it transcends all physical and phenomenal existence). Poets, artists, musicians, saints and, occasionally, ordinary human beings have moments when they intuit a connection with it. And according to Hamilton, the moment of creation of a new life constitutes connection between the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds, and sexual ecstasy, too, as in Tantric beliefs, is the result of such a connection.

Having established the existence of the noumenon, Hamilton goes on to argue that it contains a universal human essence which is made manifest in each of us in the phenomenal world. We intuit our connection with this 'Universal Self', and this is the basis of the new morality he proposes. Intuition and the recognition of some shared human essence which links us all to the Universal Self is what should guide our moral judgments. The fundamental idea is simple and attractive but Hamilton ties himself in a few philosophical knots trying to work out the practical details. Just for example, his undifferentiated, unmanifest, a-causal noumenon suddenly acquires individual essences, similar to Platonic Ideas, as he tries to determine a moral basis for general revulsion to the sexual act of bestiality.The main problem with the noumenon, however, and with any hypothesis of such a non-rational world (rationality is a human attribute and therefore confined to the phenomenal world) is that its existence cannot be proved by reason. Like all religions, and Hamilton's hypothesis constitutes his own religious interpretation of the world (or worlds), it relies on faith. Yet Hamilton's whole book is an attempt to rationalize his view and, especially, to offer a philosophical framework for his proposed code of morality. No wonder, as he comments in his 'Acknowledgements', the four (un-named) philosophers who read the early draft of his manuscript, offered him 'bracing' criticism.

Nevertheless, The Freedom Paradox makes stimulating reading and it deals with important issues which should be the topic of discussion and debate. Hamilton's chapters are short and easily digestible, and, as some of his chapter headings suggest, the range of topics he covers offers interesting material for thought and discussion. There is much to consider, for example: 'Do we prefer what we choose?': 'The decline of free will' ; Subtle coercion'; 'A digression on the existence of God'; On death'; 'Suicide'; 'Nature'; 'Emotions as judgments'; 'Egoism and malice', and much more.

Whatever I think of the philosophical basis of Hamilton's arguments, he proposes a form of morality based on common humanity and an awareness of the world around us, including something wonderful which is intuited and transcendental, which I find emotionally satisfying, even if reason cannot support it. What I am lacking, I fear, is faith that such morality can or will ever prevail.

*******************************

NOTE: Clive Hamilton was recently appointed Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of the Australian National University, Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne. You can listen to his presentation of some of the arguments in his book at http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/1166

********************************

Copyright © Ann Skea 2008

The descendants

by Kaui Hart Hemmings. 2008.

Hemmings’ first novel is narrated by Matt, a Hawaiian lawyer. Matt’s wife Joanie is lying in a coma after a boat-racing accident. Matt must pick up the pieces of his life, and try to reconnect with his two daughters, Scottie, ten, and Alex, eighteen. Hemmings’ characters are completely believable, and she has a gift for dialogue - the teenage slang, the adult banter, the Hawaiian phrasing are all note-perfect. As Joanie’s condition deteriorates, Matt and the girls go on a half-assed journey to uncover the secrets in Joanie’s life. Funny, moving and perceptive, and with plenty of side-swipes at the vacuity of American cultural influence, this novel should strike a chord with an Australian readership. The ending is perfectly arrived at.

- John.