More books I have read recently

'The Madness of Crowds' by Douglas Murray

A couple of issues in particular over the last year or so seem to have tipped me into a bit of re-evaluating what I had thought were my personal politics. As a Guardian reader and (mostly) Lib Dem voter for most of my adult life, my newly-minted subscription to The Spectator comes as something of a surprise to myself - and to the people I’ve mentioned it to, seemingly. My friend Steve suggested The New Statesman as a more palatable alternative, but I won’t be swayed and frankly am enjoying feeling a bit naughty. And it's a good magazine (which obviously isn't to say that I agree with everything in it, nor will I be taking advantage of the Christmas subscriber offer of a set of Countryside Alliance Christmas cards).

(Actually I’m a former member of the LDs, not just a voter, but I won’t be rejoining unless they pick less idiotic hills to try and die on.)

My recent foray into Douglas Murray’s writings and commentary comes sort of as a result of the above. This book is a lively and readable discussion/demolition of ‘identity politics’ (the idea, say, that the fact that one is black, or gay, or a woman, is somehow an indicator of one’s political and other beliefs), of ‘intersectionality’ (a term that baffles me but one I’d come across on Twitter) and of ‘cancel culture’. Murray divides the book into four main chapters: ‘Gay’, ‘Women’, ‘Race’ and ‘Trans’, interspersed with shorter discussions of (what he argues are) the Marxist foundations of social justice campaigning, the impact of technology (social media in particular) and a well-placed discussion headed ‘On forgiveness’, which discusses a few examples where people’s careers have been severely impacted, if not ruined, by one or more ill-advised tweets they may have put out some years earlier and asks, given that the internet will never forget, ‘how, if ever, is our age able to forgive?’.

Murray’s thesis is that the legitimate human rights campaigns behind his four main chapters had more or less reached the point of victory, but then – using a train metaphor – careered off the tracks and through the crash barrier. He seems to identify the financial crash of 2008 as a spur for speeding up the appearance in the mainstream of previously fringe ideas (when the economy goes bad, we become vulnerable to bad ideas). These include identity politics, where a particular characteristic is assumed to be the only relevant attribute of its holder. Also intersectionality, which seems to refer to the existence of interlocking oppressions, which Murray argues convincingly leads to a bizarre sort of oppression Olympics. And there’s much (and timely) discussion of the set of tripwires now laid across the culture that can explode someone’s career seemingly in an instant:

‘[we are] waging a constant war against anybody who seems to be on the wrong side of a question which may itself have just been reframed and the answer to which has only just been altered’

‘The Madness of Crowds’ was first published last year; this is a re-issue with a new afterword dated July 2020. It’s an extremely articulate and engaging book. That’s not to say that there weren’t a few bits where I either didn’t follow or didn’t see the connection; a couple of examples: I’m not sure about the idea that a focus on intersex conditions should be the starting point of the trans debate; the extensive quotes at the end of the ‘Gay’ chapter from Daniel Mendelsohn’s ‘The Elusive Embrace’ are interesting, but I felt they sat slightly oddly against the rest of the chapter – or possibly I just didn’t get what Murray was trying to say through them. And the Marxist stuff was a bit lost on me, most likely because I know little about Marxism. But the book as a whole is an elegant and head-on treatment of some concerning contemporary trends, and highly recommended.

'Blue Sky July' by Nia Wyn

Welsh writer Nia Wyn’s reflections on living with her son Joe’s cerebral palsy. The book is based on her diary entries during the first seven years of Joe’s life. Seemingly Joe was born healthy but suffered a catastrophic brain injury shortly after birth – Wyn relates the change in her child’s cry before and after – and a subsequent brain scan reveals extensive damage. Wyn and her partner are told that Joe is blind, will never walk or talk and in fact won’t even know them. Wyn is, understandably, less than keen to accept this verdict and throws herself into an exhausting round of daily therapies, visits to ‘healers’, etc.

I had some sympathy for Nia’s (by the end of the book, ex) partner Alex, as he feels increasingly frustrated and excluded as Nia retreats into a world comprising entirely of her son and the exhausting series of therapies – Wyn does note at one point ‘the therapies are ridiculous, out of control’. However, it’s in their specially adapted ‘light room’ that Wyn first observes Joe moving his fist towards the light, and she suspects that he might not be blind after all – she sees a different eye specialist who thinks that Joe is not blind but that he does need some cataracts removed. (That bloody eye doctor at the first clinic! If Wyn’s account is accurate, her behaviour seems appalling.)

I assume part of the medical staff’s aim was not to build up false hopes in Joe’s parents, but from Wyn’s retelling it does sound as though they perhaps went too far the other way – the child would have been completely written off had it not been for Nia’s determination that he wouldn’t be. By his seventh year, Joe can see OK (though he wears glasses), can get about with a walker and can talk after a fashion. Wyn herself has had some therapy and effectively conveys how she reached a greater acceptance of her son’s disability, albeit not an acceptance of the original damning verdict – sort of a meeting in the middle, I guess. She eventually abandons following up every rumoured miracle cure and her overwhelming desire to heal Joe gives way to a focus on enjoying spending time with him and doing those activities he enjoys.

‘Blue Sky July’ was published in 2007.

'The Lazarus Strategy' by Norman Lazarus

Newly-published book by an 80-something retired doctor. South African-born Lazarus retired in his fifties, though returned to academia aged 70 to carry out research at King’s College London into healthy ageing, which by all accounts he is still doing. This book is aimed at anyone over 50, though primarily at people in their fifties as Lazarus has it that it’s then that you’ve really got to start focusing on your health if you want a healthy old age (he comments acidly on middle-aged people giving out advice to oldies, when many of the problems we associate with old age would, he has it, be avoided if fifty-somethings followed their own advice earlier).

Lazarus argues that ageing is not in itself a disease and doesn’t have to be accompanied by ill-health – it’s all the stuff we do to ourselves that does that. Even though we may be living longer these days, he argues that that’s not enough in itself if we spend the last ten years of our lives taking a shedload of medication and generally being a burden on the state and our families – he presents the notion of ‘healthspan’, as opposed to ‘lifespan’. A key tenet of the book is that many diseases are not due to the inherent ageing process but are largely the result of our behaviour and lifestyle choices (‘Our lifestyles determine the state of our bodies’).

Lazarus presents his healthy ageing ‘trinity’: consisting of Exercise, Food and The Mind, three fundamentals of behaviour all of which, he argues, need to be kept in sync. Every fifty-something needs to take up a form of exercise which they enjoy and can therefore do long-term – evidently long-distance cycling in his case, but thankfully he reckons that walking’s also fine if you do enough of it. He stresses the need to maintain basic physical capabilities at a level that allows us to live independently and healthily, which includes from middle-age onwards fitting in resistance exercises. Somewhat disappointingly, he debunks any connection between exercise and weight loss, sternly noting that to lose weight you’ll have to eat less, and your calorie needs will decline with increasing age, so get used to feeling hungry. His personal story was that he realized in his mid-fifties that he was looking porky around the waist, dieted off the weight and has pretty much eaten like a bird ever since.

By all accounts Lazarus and his wife are as fit as they can be for people in their eighties. He does, however, emphasise that however fit you are, the inherent ageing process will lead to a decline, and that this is natural (he started to notice a bit of a twinge in his knee while mowing his HECTARE-sized lawn, apparently). It’s all fairly uncompromising stuff but food for thought, and probably from my point of view a timely read.

'Fifty Shades of Grey' by E L James

'I want you to behave in a particular way, and if you don’t, I shall punish you, and you will learn to behave the way I desire.'

Hmm, arousing stuff. Well, soon-to-be university graduate Anastasia (‘Ana’) Steele evidently thinks so. She meets local CEO and entrepreneur Christian Grey when she goes to interview him for the student newspaper. Ana is overawed by Christian’s good looks and general aura of wealth and power; Christian is equally taken with Ana and in due course flies her in his private helicopter for dinner at his luxury penthouse apartment in a Seattle skyscraper. Once there, Christian shows Ana his ‘playroom’, a fully fitted-out BDSM chamber full of whips, shackles and the like that Ana mentally labels the ‘Red Room of Pain’. Grey confesses that he is a ‘dominant’ (clearly preferring this term to ‘sadist’) and invites Ana to be his submissive. Grey informs her that he won’t touch her without her written consent and presents Ana with a contract, an extensive list of rules including, among other things, that she must obey his every request immediately and without question, only wear clothing that he has personally approved and keep herself nicely clean and waxed at all times.

Much of the rest of the book is taken up with reasonably tedious email exchanges between Ana and Christian where they, among other things, negotiate the terms of the contract. Despite having informed Ana that he doesn’t do ‘vanilla’ sex, on discovering that Ana’s a virgin he decides he’d better do some with her as his conscience doesn’t allow him to have a virgin as a submissive. Ana enjoys the deflowering and they proceed to have lots of subsequent sex (in between sending each other emails). The book only actually features a couple of BDSM scenes if you don’t include the ‘punishment spanking’ that Christian administers in Ana’s bedroom (for rolling her eyes at him). They’re not too bad, actually – the least pleasant scenes are the aforementioned spanking and the scene in Christian’s parents’ boathouse. It’s suggested that Grey’s psychological problems are because he had a hard start in life – he was adopted aged four after being birthed by a crack whore, and subsequently seduced into a sado-masochistic relationship with a friend of his mother’s when aged fifteen.

It’s tedious and poorly written – no better written really than the Silhouette Special Editions I consumed in my teens. Some of Grey's annoying qualities are common among romance novel heroes - e.g. getting irrationally angry if Ana even talks to a platonic male friend - but he takes them a step further, even taking issue with Ana for arranging to visit her mother without consulting him first. He criticises all her clothes and her car, and insists on buying her new ones - and threatens to check that she's obeying him (“Don’t drive your Beetle again. I will know.”). Ana is shown throughout as questioning herself as to whether she should be with Christian, but then keeps getting uncontrollably sexually aroused whenever she is with him. James has clearly made some effort to try to make Christian attractive to female readers – as well as being good-looking and wealthy, he is shown repeatedly as assuring Ana that he won’t do anything to her without her consent – the idea of being forced to experience pleasure, I suppose, though he quite clearly also enjoys inflicting pain.

I don’t have strong moral views on BDSM provided it’s between consenting adults, but did find Christian fairly unpleasant. I assume his tortured past is supposed to make the reader feel intrigued and sorry for him, though it didn’t work on me. The man needs psychological help before entering into any sort of relationship. I had the sense throughout that it wasn't the BDSM per se that was the distasteful aspect of Christian and Ana's relationship, and interestingly the current Wikipedia entry on the book has the following, and links to an article in the Journal of Women’s Health:

'Several critics and scientists have expressed concern that the nature of the main couple's relationship is not BDSM at all, but rather is characteristic of an abusive relationship. In 2013 ... [a study was published] ... wherein multiple professionals read and assessed the books for characteristics of intimate partner violence, or IPV, using the CDC's standards for emotional abuse and sexual violence. The study found that nearly every interaction between Ana and Christian was emotionally abusive in nature, including stalking, intimidation, and isolation. The study group also observed pervasive sexual violence within the CDC's definition, including Christian's use of alcohol to circumvent Ana's ability to consent, and that Ana exhibits classic signs of an abused woman, including constant perceived threat, stressful managing, and altered identity.'

'Fifty Shades of Grey' was initially self-published as an ebook in 2011, though it did subsequently acquire a publisher and has sold extremely well. There are two sequels, 'Fifty Shades Darker' and 'Fifty Shades Freed', neither of which I’ll be reading.