Clive Davis

NOTEBOOK

Tadene had told her they were both slaves. But that was impossible.  Even Tadene was mistaken there. She did not know why the Massas were taking them on this horrible journey across this huge lake of salt. They must have some dreadful purpose. But she and Tadene could not be slaves. She had seen the slaves in her father's house. Slaves were strangers who you sometimes bought to help if there was too much land for the people to till. She and Tadene were not strangers. They were the people.

John Hearne, The Sure Salvation.

EPIC TIMEWASTERS

Not that I was likely to buy a ticket anyway, but Mark Holland's two-word summary of the Spartan thong-saga, 300 finally scared me off:

Turd. Polished.

As for TV, the one TV programme I've been watching religiously is Lost. My eldest son put me on to it well after the first season began, and I've been catching up on DVDs. He still loves it, but my enthusiasm has been waning ever since Jack and Co wandered into the hatch. I'm still hanging on, but only just. Not so John Podhoretz, who's several episodes ahead of me, and now pronounces the show brain-dead:

Let me say that "Lost" has grown so absurdly bad that it's now alternating between its pointlessly convoluted central mystery-within-a-mystery-within-a-mystery — which clearly its own creators no longer understand or can follow — and unbelievably stupid episodes like the one last night, which was little more than a Twilight Zone knockoff.

THE CONCERT HALL OF THE FUTURE

Every city must have its Bilbao-style cultural blockbuster. Hamburg's is the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, arising from the foundations of an old warehouse and due to open in 2010. As you can see from the picture below, the traditional shoe-box design has been replaced by something out of a Timothy Leary acid-trip.

Alex Ross notes:

Jacques Herzog  remarked that he and his associates had learned more about designing symphonic spaces from the stadiums they've done (notably the Beijing Olympic bird's nest) than they had from the whole history of concert halls.

BTW, I  enjoyed this classical music quiz over at Jessica Duchen's. The best question of all was kept till last:

If it was scientifically proven that Beethoven's 9th Symphony caused irreversible brain damage, would you still listen to it?

DOCTORS ON THE COUCH

One of my friends is a homeopath, and as I'm often guilty of teasing her about faith-healing, I've alerted her to a new study of how conventional medicine men go about their business:

Contrary to popular belief most medical mistakes are not due to technical screw-ups, like reading an X-ray backward or inadequate medical knowledge. The majority of problems are rooted in flawed thinking that can set off what Dr. Groopman calls "a cascade of cognitive errors"...

"How a doctor thinks can first be discerned by how he speaks and how he listens," Dr. Groopman writes, noting that studies have shown that physicians, on average, interrupt patients less than 18 seconds after they have begun telling their story.

THAT SLAVE TRADE APOLOGY

We've heard a lot about African history, but not much from modern-day Africans. Global Voices has a useful round-up.

AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE REAL WORLD

Just for once, I'm going to have to take issue with Stephen P. The point about Julian Baggini's superb book, Everytown, is that he does something George Orwell attempted in The Road to Wigan Pier: he's escaping from his own bubble and immersing himself in the kind of ordinary life most of us in the media rarely encounter. We go to press conferences, policy conferences, book launches, and we read about other people doing the same thing. We write or blog about what The People think. But by and large we interact with people like ourselves. I come from the sort of blue-collar background that Baggini [left] writes about, but I still experienced a jolt at seeing things I'd almost forgotten about. Everytown's cod-anthropological tone can seem quaint at times, but that, in a way, is why Baggini wrote it: he wanted to become re-acquainted with the everyday, the good and the bad.

ON PATROL IN BAGHDAD

Michael Yon's latest milblog dispatch is another blend of the good, the bad and the very ugly. Some shafts of sunlight this time:

I think Petraeus’ plan has a serious chance of working despite heavy odds. In fact, within my first three days with 1-4, talking with Iraqi families and police, there were strong indicators that for this little neighbourhood, local people and Iraqi police are definitely encouraged. This doesn’t extend to the terrorists, however, and 1-4 Cav has been under fire.  Our soldiers showed amazing fire discipline, not even knowing I was just feet behind them with a video camera. (I’ve seen it many times, but finally have got video proof that our guys will go far not to shoot the wrong people.)

THE NEW IRANIAN HOSTAGES

In case you haven't seen it, Gerard Baker has a fascinating piece on the latest crisis and the parallels with the Falklands war:

The key difference, according to Tony Blair's critics in the UK, is that, whereas he wrings his hands and does nothing to halt this flagrant abuse of British rights and of the country's citizens, Margaret Thatcher, prime minister in 1982, boldly declared the outrage would not stand, assembled a massive naval task force to confront it and pulled off a magnificent military victory that restored international law and healed Britain's wounded pride.

Let me state, for the record, that I am an inveterate fan of Mrs Thatcher's and regard her as one of the giants of the 20th century for her contribution to the advancement of political and economic freedom around the. But it is important to record that this version of events that occurred 25 years ago and the sorry contrast it seems to represent with what is happening today is simply hooey.

It's definitely worth reading the whole thing.

BOOKS YOU CAN ALMOST EAT

Another entry in the Wall Street Journal's five-best lists. This time Tunku Varadarajan chooses the ultimate combinations of fiction and food. Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea takes first place. It's good to see The Wind in the Willows makes an appearance as well.

BOOKS I CAN'T READ

Trollope is one of my very favourite authors, yet I've never, ever  been able to get to grips with the final instalment of the Barchester series, The Last Chronicle of Barset. Over the last few days I've been trying again, and even allowing for the fact that I'm slightly under par at the moment, I still found my eyelids drooping after 60 pages. Did the clergyman steal the cheque, or didn't he? I just didn't care. Yet when I once interviewed the Trollope biographer, Jack Hall -  a droll New Yorker -  he told me he thought the Last Chronicle was the pick of the whole, prodigious bunch. One of the things that distinguishes Trollopians from Dickens lovers, Jack added, is that the former's admirers tend to have sharp disagreements about their favourite titles, whereas Dickensians tend to cluster around the same three or four. (I do like Dickens, BTW. I just think Trollope is the better psychologist.) Just to illustrate that point, we discovered that while I raved over the fairly obcure Is He Popenjoy?, Jack thought it was deadly dull. Ah well.

I'm also trying to continue my treatment for my Tolstoy phobia, a deeply shameful condition, I admit. (Does ayone else out there suffer from the same problem?) As I've mentioned, my friend Martha Bayles recommended Hadji Murad, but I hated it as much as the first time I read it a decade and a half ago. I'm now testing my theory, based on not much in particular, that the great Russian reads better in French. I definitely preferred Ivan Ilych in translation, although I still found it repetitive (and it's barely a novella). Today I'm finally sending off for the first volume of, um, Guerre et Paix, which should keep me going until the summer. I've never managed more than 250 pages in English.

At least I'm not entirely alone. I just came across this passage in H.E. Bates's autobiography. He's discussing Stephen Crane's Civil War tale, The Red Badge of Courage:

It is interesting to note that War and Peace, Tolstoy's "endless panorama", annoyed Crane. "He could have done the whole business in one-third of the time, and made it just as wonderful. It goes on and on like Texas." Exactly. Not for the first time, nor the last I fear, had sheer length and size seduced readers into the mesmerized belief that they were in the sacred presence of greatness.

So it's me, H.E. Bates and Stephen Crane. I feel slightly less embarrassed now.