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Richard Reeves confuses humanity and modernity in Prospect this month and still makes a very nice point:

Blair implicitly promised to replace the grandees and squirearchy with a fresher, more humane, fairer-minded elite. An emblem of this modernity was Labour’s controversial ban on foxhunting. It seems somehow appropriate that in the week when the expenses scandal peaked, the police announced that they would no longer attempt to enforce this law. It was, they said, a waste of public money.

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Issue 6 of Five Dials, Hamish Hamilton’s brilliant literary magazine, landed in inboxes on Friday with this time-and-space refuting missive:

You may have noticed we call ourselves a monthly, but if you’re waiting for Five Dials to appear every 30 days, well, sorry, we are a little late. But what is a month? Our definition doesn’t quite sync with that of the Gregorian calendar. We hope you are the kind of reader who would rather enjoy tardy brilliance than a magazine that shows up with dreary regularity. Who knows? You might see another another edition in around 30 days, whatever ‘30 days’ means.

The very next day, Geoff Dyer walked into the pages of the Guardian Review, removed all his clothes and beat himself with a very thorny branch. His crime? Late, by forty-five whole minutes:

This incident was so out of character, so totally inexplicable, that I spent much of a sleepless night trying to find someone or something to blame: Andrew Kelly, the trains (punctual to the minute), my parents (who had instilled in me the necessity for being reliable and punctual), my wife … But no. It was no one’s fault but mine.

… I don’t know what to think. I only know how I feel: like a broken man, like someone who no longer has a moral leg to stand on. It is horrible, and I am so sorry.

“Fuck you”, or “fuck me”? What do you prefer?

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From Bill McKibben’s concise, thoughtful and utterly depressing summary of the current state of climate change politics (subscription needed):

… presumes that the negotiations are being conducted between human beings - between industry and environmentalists, between Chinese and Indians and Americans and Germans. That is true to an extent - indeed, these are the most delicate negotiations the world has ever engaged in. But the real negotation is between humans on the one hand and chemistry and physics on the other. And chemistry and physics, unfortunately, don’t bargain.

Sign up to 350.org here.

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The resurrection of Elizabeth Taylor proclaimed by the reviewers of Nicola Beauman’s new biography is greatly to be welcomed. Anything that persuades more people to read Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is officially a Good Thing. But let’s not get carried away. Taylor is not an unqualified genius. And Angel, which I have just finished reading, is not a classic.

The Angel of Angel is Angelica Deverell, a graceless, sensationalist writer whose career begins suddenly, with a novel dreamed out of nowhere and written a trance while skiving off school. Her teacher finds her literary efforts bewildering, although not without merit: suspecting plagiarism, she searches through Ruskin and Wilde, because “before she would say the piece was vulgarly over-written she hoped to find out who had written it”. Publishers laugh at the impossible content, potboiled characters and overblown style. Yet they send it out, to huge success. Angel is a commercial triumph.

And that’s it. Yes, there’s a love affair, although certainly not a romance; the decline and fall of Angel’s commercial prowess; the interruptions of outside events, including two wars. But this is a book about one person only; and that person cannot sustain a novel. For all the strength of Taylor’s initial insight, this is a book two hundred pages too long.

What fascination there is in Angel derives from her self-delusion, her absolute refusal to see the world on anything but her own terms. Taylor sets this up brilliantly in the opening scenes: it is no exaggeration to call each one a small comic masterpiece. But from there on she has nowhere to go. With her absolute self-confidence and total lack of introspection, Angel resembles a Jason Bourne or a James Bond. But this is a character-driven, literary novel, not a plot-based blockbuster.

Novels about self-delusion always face this challenge. Does the author sustain the delusion, leaving himself with a character who cannot change, or learn from the world? Or does he rip the mask off, risking a trite reconciliation with reality and denying the character dignity or heroism? How does Taylor succeed? Put it this way: Angel is no Don Quixote.

Hilary Mantel makes an interesting point in her Introduction:

One could argue that the author is showing us Angel as an awful warning; that she is telling us “this is how bad art is made”. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It seems to m that what Elizabeth Taylor is doing is to de-romanticise the process of writing and show it to us close up … whatever the impulse to art, however great or little the gift, a cast-iron vanity and a will to power are needed to sustain it.

Taylor could be ruthless, as Beauman’s biography shows. Commenting on the end of her forty-year affair with columnist Ray Russell, Peter Parker writes:

She ended the affair at the insistence of her husband, and if she seemed ruthless in doing so, it was the necessary ruthlessness of the artist who made her choice not simply for the sake of convention and her children but because she needed the stability marriage provided in order to do her work.

But Angel isn’t a book about this sort of ruthlessness, because Angel isn’t self-reflective, or even caring. It’s rather a book about someone with complete self-confidence: cast-iron vanity, Mantel calls it. It makes me wonder: is it possible to write character-driven novels about people without doubt? What would Taylor make of Max Clifford? Or Barack Obama?

One of the arguments in my book is that it is not only artists that need cast-iron vanity nowadays; it is all of us, at least if we want to be successful. Celebrities, bankers, journalists: who doesn’t benefit from an unhealthy dose of confidence? Taylor is often - with some justice - compared to Jane Austen. But can that sort of literary style capture the madness of contemporary confidence games, their grotesque grandiosity? So far as books on self-delusion go, this is a much better starting-point.

But back to Taylor, now in what must be her fifth or sixth coming. Angel was first published in 1957 and first resurrected (by Virago) in 1984. Its latest attempt at revitalisation comes with this smart new edition, and the Introduction by old Mental. It’s a valiant effort. But this is a minor work. Sometimes - it has to be said - books die for a reason.

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I wrote last week about the boredom of the bereaved. Reading C. S. Lewis’s painful reflections on the death of his wife, A Grief Observed, I came across a similar idea:

No one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job - where the machine seems to run on much as usual - I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth?

They say an unhappy man wants distractions - something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one.

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The incredible Carrie Prejean story (the film must be on the way) staggered to its conclusion earlier today with an intervention from the great lion of Manhattan, Donald Trump. Looking ever more like a stuffed pelt, Trump (playing Solomon in Bible) pronounced Prejean free to go.

I followed the drama in the company of twittering genius Roland Hedley: like all right-thinking people he was on Carrie’s side. Samples:

“Carrie will remain Miss California!” A great, great, awesome, humungous, wise, awesome determination!

Uh-oh. Asking Carrie to say a “few words”.

Grandfather served at Battle of Bulge. Taught her never to back down.

Afterwards, I was reminded of the great Jake Thackray’s song “Miss World”. It’s lyrics seemed to sum up the majesty of the situation perfectly:

There they all go in a row
Exposing their fleshy perfection
Their withers and their flanks, their hams and their shanks
Open to public inspection
But the judges are discriminating men
This is no job for no nitwit
They must carefully watch
Every cleavage and crotch
For the girl who’s the world’s biggest titbit

Here’s the whole thing. A masterpiece:

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An incredible picture from the New Yorker blog: therapy for a man with phantom limb syndrome.

In this week’s magazine (registration only, infuriatingly) John Colapinto profiles the man Richard Dawkins called “the Marco Polo of the mind”: University of California professor V. S. Ramachandran. It’s quite heavy-going, but I can’t recommend it more highly. I don’t think an article has made me think so much for a long time.

Colapinto says:

I urge all of you to try the mirror trick, first synchronizing your movements with both hands (touching the tip of each finger, for instance, with your thumbs) while watching only one of your hands in the mirror; then mixing it up—touching thumb to forefinger of your right hand, while touching thumb to pinkie of your left.

The sense of neurological and physical imbalance that this induces provides a disquieting glimpse into the disjunctions of mind and body suffered by stroke victims, and a reminder of how delicate is the seeming solidity of the reality that surrounds us—even the “reality” of our own bodies.

Apparently this sort of interaction is made possible by a system of “mirror neurons” within our brains. According to Ramachandran, these neurons are not only responsible for interactions inside the self (to make an unavoidable distinction), but also outside it. With characteristic playfulness, he dubs mirror neurons “Ghandi neurons” - because they dissolve the boundary between two people:

“One of the theories we put forward … is that the mirror neuron system is used for modelling someone else’s behaviour, putting youself in another person’s shoes, looking at the world from another person’s point of view”.

In short, the dawn of empathy and self-awareness.

I think I may well write something about mirror neurons - perhaps for this competition. If anyone’s got any suggestions for reading, please let me know.

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I’ve written before about the death of honour, noting both its ghostly remnants and its usurpation by accountability. In the wake of the parliamentary expenses scandal, Nick Robinson’s blog offers a perfect example both of trends:

… for the past 20 years or so MPs have behaved in precisely the way that they have legally prevented other groups from behaving. Trade unionists, doctors, the police and many many others used to argue that they could be trusted to manage their own affairs. Few would argue that now.

Yet the House of Commons has run itself as if Members of Parliament can and should be assumed to be honourable and, by implication, better than those they govern.

Robinson suggests that, henceforth:

Honour in politics is something that, as in the rest of life, will have to earned, proved and upheld and not merely assumed.

But honour that has to be interrogated is not honour at all, as Montaigne knew only too well. It is accountability.

Accountability is different from honour in that it expects nothing from its subjects. Or rather, it expects only wrongdoing. This really is the death knell for the idea of “honourable members”, because it denies MPs autonomy, the right to make their own decisions.

Ironic, really, that politicians should be forced to suffer, as a result of their own sins, the loss of self-government that the rest of us have been putting up with for years.

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Facing bereavement is very much like being having a birthday party. That is, if you absolutely hate birthdays.

Imagine this through the eyes of a birthday hater. You arrive home from work one day, tired and irritable, to be confronted by a room full of your friends. They are shouting something at you. It seems to be “surprise”.

These are not your close friends, the ones you can see no matter how you feel. News of this particular party has spread far and wide, and in the crowd you can see various people you thought – perhaps even hoped – you had lost touch with. While you are still – unsurprisingly – surprised, this mass of acquaintance crowds round you, in the manner of small boys hunting autographs, and wishes you well. It’s all quite ghastly.

People wish you well, you know, for the very best of reasons. But you wish you could stop being the centre of attention, because you are exhausted, and because you know that you have done nothing to deserve their notice, beyond being born on a particular day. Like death, births are an unplanned incident only tangentially related to life. Celebrating them can often seem presumptuous or conceited. After all, it’s just a day. Just another day.

(Like birthdays, a great deal of bereavement is carried on through cards. Thankfully – from what I can tell, at least – these seem to require no response, which suits my natural inclination. I have also left unreplied the emails, the texts and the voicemails. Sorry. I do read them, you know, and they do mean a lot).

But back to the party. Bereavement is like a birthday party for a birthday hater, but with one cruel difference: that the bereaved are also required to manage, organise and throw their own “surprise”. Those dealing with a death are given all the disadvantages of management, with none of the advantages. For they cannot achieve control. And no matter how scrupulously they prepare, they will still be as shocked as ever by what jumps out from behind the door.

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The New York Times Economix blog reports Malcolm Gladwell’s thoughts on confidence.

… the financial crisis was not due to incompetence or regulatory failure, but psychological failure — the fact that bankers were overconfident.

Gladwell compares the financial crisis to the Gallipoli Campaign - although, as a commenter notes, he could have just as easily used Hitler or Napoleon’s doomed assaults on Russia.

Interestingly, Gladwell seems to think that confidence invariably leads to overconfidence:

“Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise,” he said. “Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.”

In fact, he suggests that overconfidence may well be an evolutionary trait:

… because appearing “bigger and stronger” than you really are keeps you from being attacked. And the people most likely to appear “bigger and stronger” than they really are tend to be the ones who have “miscalibrated” beliefs that they really are bigger and stronger than they really are.

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