Richard Ovenden: Burning The Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack

Written by the 25th librarian at Oxford's Bodleian Library, this is a book about books that starts in Mesopotamia, detours through Alexandria, takes a quick stop in Cromwell's England, followed by a trip across the the Atlantic to Washington DC. It returns this side of the pond to and pays a quick ode to Byron and Kafka (who had different views on what should happen to their archives once they died), before going to Nazi Germany, and finally Sarajevo in the early 1990s. At each turn, books and manuscripts and papyri and tablets were destroyed, and knowledge was lost as a result.

In times of war, books are destroyed. Authors want manuscripts burnt. Accidents happen. The same library suffers the same fate multiple times. And, re-building broad deep collections takes time.

I'm still reading this book, and will update this as we go along, but some fun facts I learnt along the way:

• The word "museum" comes from the inner library at Alexandria, Mouseion, a temple to the muse.
• The classic story of Alexandria—the library was consumed by one catastrophic inferno—is a myth. (My whole life's been a lie)
• Lord Byron had "accumulated a menagerie while in Italy: ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon."
• Byron's memoirs were destroyed posthumously based on a consensus vote as a subset of his family, friends, and publishers thought it would ruin his legacy ("fit only for a brothel and would damn Lord Byron to certain infamy if published.").
• Meanwhile, Kafka wanted all his works "burned" once he died (he wasn't famous while he lived). His friend and the guardian of his archives, though, created a "literary aura" around Kafka, and ensured his works were published posthumously, arguing "Kafka would have known Brod could not have gone through with this decision – if he had been really serious, he would have asked someone else to destroy the papers."
• Philip Larkin breaks down the value of literary collections as "magical" and "meaningful": "magical" being the actual paper work was written on and the actual words written; "meaningful" being the degree to which it enhances our knowledge and understanding of the writer's work and life. I love this categorisation, but also feel a bit...sad...that with time the "magical" will fade away. As writers use computers and word processors more, the penmanship, the paper, the "manuscript" becomes a lot less personal. You don't get a sense of the writer's handwriting, no notes in the margin, and no insight into real-time editing.
• In 1992, when Serbia attacked Bosnia, they targeted the National and University Library. Marksmen were placed to "pickoff" the firefighters who took ~three days to quell the fire. "It has been estimated that more than half of the provincial archives of Bosnia were destroyed: more than 81km of history." This didn't even make the A1 in newspapers across the world.
• When nations become independent, who owns their archives: the nation or the colonial power? Historically, colonial powers have dictated what happens to the archives: what gets destroyed and what returns to the homeland. After all, the colonial powers weren't answerable to anyone as they were leaving countries, and had reason aplenty to hide their behaviour.
• Looted archives, treasures, and cultural artefacts from other countries make their way into state and private collections, including the British Library, Cambridge University Library, and John Rylands Library.
• The East German Stasi "trained Iraqi officers in covert surveillance (especially bugging), the use of secret ink and in decoding communications, as well as in the protection of high-ranking political officials" in the late 1960s.
• The New Zealand government is encouraging their citizens to donate their social media profiles to the national archives. The idea isn't to get all profiles, but instead to get a representative sample to capture this moment in time, when so much data is in the hands of a handful of "private superpowers."

François Bizot - The Gate

I visited Cambodia in September 2013, and prior to the trip, I purchased Bizot's memoir detailing his days in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge. While I didn't have the time to read the book before landing in the Cambodian capital, I did visit the Killing Fields and the Museum of Genocide. Both left me speechless, and sick to my stomach. The tour of the Killing Fields was particularly haunting. Pits were cordoned off, and the audio guides told us what was discovered in each of these pits. Mostly corpses, unsurprisingly. However, the Killing Tree was marked as well - the tree against which the heads of babies and children were smashed, before being tossed into the nearby pit. People do that? Kill innocent babies, who under no circumstance could be CIA agents? The xenophobia and irrational spirit of nationalism resulted in the internal conflict, driven by the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. Over twenty thousand people died. My camera was clutched in my hand, but I couldn't bring myself to take any photographs. I just listened to the audio guide, and read the text. Months later, I still remember it all. Months later, I remain despondent that the main perpetrators are still awaiting trial. Pol Pot is dead; I suppose we can all find some solace in that. This is me, as a visitor, seeing things at the very surface. The audio guides prompted us to put ourselves in the shoes of the prisoners, and it remains something beyond the scope of my imagination. Even my worst nightmare isn't horrific enough. Bizot's memoir details him actually living through that nightmare, after a sequence of unreal, unfortunate events. An ethnologist drawn to Cambodia by the mysteries of the Far East, Bizot was imprisoned on suspicion that he was a CIA agent impersonating as an academic. While there was no concrete evidence to even suggest that this was the case, he was kept captive for approximately three months, while the powers that be tried finding the relevant evidence. Duch, an officer in the Khmer hierarchy, responsible for "overseeing the systematic torture of 15,000 prisoners," questioned (and over the course of the questioning, befriended) Bizot daily, trying to determine his innocence, and subsequent release. During this period, Bizot was given special treatment, compared to the rest of the prisoners, and yet, he witnessed all the atrocities. And yet, years later, at Duch goes on trial, Bizot still empathises with his friend, who ensured Bizot's freedom.

Eventually, he was released, and found himself as a translator at the French embassy. The scenes that follow depict the pandemonium as people tried to get out of the country, with or without their families, as the massacres increased exponentially. Bizot's own daughter was safe, but as a reader, we're never given any insight into what happened to his Cambodian wife. Yet, the hands of the French were tied, as they weren't allowed to provide asylum to the locals. The Khmer Rule had made that abundantly clear, including storming into the Embassy with guns, and shutting down their communications with France. Even members of Cambodian royalty aren't exempt from the rules. Nor women with babies, who try to fling their babies over the gates of the embassy, just so that the babies might have a chance at a future.

Through time, people have turned a blind eye to the genocide in Cambodia. The opening chapter of the book, where Bizot describes Cambodia prior to the Khmer era, is poetic. It started as an ode to a beautiful idyll-like country cherishing peace, which one can imagine with a tinge of lament. It's always a shame when peace and tranquility descends into oppression and hatred, in the hands of dictators like Pol Pot. The title of the book refers to the gate of the French embassy, which once, of such importance, now has a diminutive stature in the eyes of the author, as he looks back in anger upon the events that unfolded.

Jeannette Walls - The Glass Castle

I think sometimes people get the lives they want. This is a rather unflinching nonfictional memoir, in which Walls traverses her childhood days. For the most part, the book focuses on her parents, who were ill-equipped to raise children in the real world. Yet, it's the affection and lack of judgement leaping off the pages, that makes this book incredibly endearing.

In the opening paragraph, Walls is in a taxi in New York City, and she notices a woman scavenging a garbage bin, only to realise it's her own mother.

Once the present has been asserted, the trip down memory lane begins.

Walls' childhood isn't one most of us can imagine, and it is difficult to not to judge her parents. By the time she's four, her family's moved some eleven times, for a myriad of reasons and whims.

Her father, Rex, is an intelligent man, who's spent a fair bit of time educating the kids, to ensure that they're well ahead of other kids their own age. However, "a drinking situation" and the inability to keep a job means that money is always a problem.

Her mother, Rose, on the other hand, is a painter, and possibly one of the most self-involved and deluded mothers you'll come across. A self-proclaimed 'excitement addict', Rose doesn't really seem to care about anyone but herself.

“Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting.

Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom.

Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.”

A self-proclaimed 'sugar addict', Rose hid a king-sized bar of Hersheys in her bed, for herself, even though the kids had nothing to eat, and were scavenging for food in the school trash.

“Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour," she'd ask us, "when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?”

The "let it be" ideas that Rex and Rose harboured about parenthood was, in a conventional sense, far from ideal. Not only were they constantly moving cities, on the whims of Rex (or when his creditors were chasing him), but each traumatic experience that the children experienced was dismissed as mandatory lessons.

“Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy," Mom told me. "You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.”

When Jeannette managed to burn herself at the age of three, and required skin grafts, her father bailed her out from the hospital, because he doesn't like the bandages, against medical advice. Later, when they were moving cities in the old car, their cat was thrown out of the window by her father. At another point, Jeannette herself was hurled out of the car, and had to wait for a few hours before her parents picked her up again. And then, when her grandmother molested her brother, Rex sides with his mother.

Christmas is always an interesting time, as it's celebrated a few days later, to allow the family to get second-hand wrapping paper and presents. One Christmas though, money is tight, and Rex takes the children outside, and asks them to pick a star, for he knows a fair bit about astronomy - which they all do, but Jeannette who picks Venus. That's their Christmas present.

We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars.”

In West Virginia, they buy a "house" which is where Rex intends to the build "the glass castle", after striking it rich. He continuously updates the plans, and shares it with the children giving them false hope that someday - someway - their life will be ideal. One can argue that he means well, but it's his inner demons that continuously hurt the children. At times, it almost comes across as though he's not even aware of the damage he's doing, or in fact, that he's doing anything wrong.

It's a wonderfully written memoir, which isn't self-pitying or condescending in any measure. In fact, it's a novel that reverberates of filial devotion and love; that in spite everything, the children did love their parents unconditionally, and the family stuck together through thick and thin. They grew up to be resourceful, bright and independent, pursuing a more conventional lifestyle.

“One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me.

"You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.”

There is absolutely no bitterness, but instead, the affectionate forgiving tone indicates that Walls and her siblings have made peace with their childhood, and with their parents' eccentricities. Personally speaking, I find this quite commendable and feel as though I could learn a lot from the Walls' family - mostly Jeannette. The poignancy, humour and the lack of psycho-babble or emotional drama make this a must-read.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - News of a Kidnapping

Background:

This is another one for the Take A Chance Challenge, hosted by Jenners at Find Your Next Book Here: Public Spying. I commute for a couple of hours daily, and loads of people around me are reading something or the other; some books that I'm intrigued by, and some books I see and go: Meh. I saw someone reading this book, and my curiosity piqued. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez's works, but surprisingly, I hadn't stumbled upon this one before. So, I made a mental note of it. With a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one can't go wrong, right?

Review:

This non-fictional book traces the last few months of Pablo Escobar's freedom, as he used every trick in the book to ensure he wasn't extradited to the United States. Kidnapping important socio-political figures, like journalists and family members of politicians in high places, Escobar attempts to leverage his bargaining power with the President/Government of Colombia.

This book follows both, the life in captivity (relationships with each other, the guards, their fears, and hopes) for the ten hostages, as well as the struggle their family went through, trying to get them released - from trying to convince the President, to avoiding an armed raid, lest it led to someone innocent dying. While the President is pressured by the families and the media to take a stand that will ensure the hostages' release sooner, he sticks by what he believes in.

The Constituent Assembly, shrouded in uncertainties, would meet in the next few days, and he could not allow weakness on the part of the government to result in an amnesty for the drug traffickers.

As he says:

"The real threat came at those moments when we faced the temptation or risk, or even the rumor of a possibility of an amnesty" - in short, the unthinkable danger that the conscience of the Constituent Assembly would also be taken hostage.

This book is scary, it reminds us of the devil Escobar was, and how all of Medellin was in his hands; a result of the charitable works in the marginal neighborhoods where the spent their impoverished childhoods.

Luck and a clandestine life had left Escobar in charge of the hen house, and he became a legend who controlled everything. ... At the height of his splendor, people put up altars with his pictures and lit candles to him in the slums of Medellin. It was believed he could perform miracles. No Colombian in history ever possessed or exercised a talent like his for sharing public opinion. And none had a greater power to corrupt. The most unsettling and dangerous aspect of his personality was his total inability to distinguish between good and evil.

The story is gripping, haunting and fantastic. It is an insight into Colombian history, Escobar himself, and the trials and tribulations of the hostages and their families. Despite being a work of non-fiction, not being grossly exaggerated, and despite knowing what happens to Escobar eventually, the book still reads like fiction, with one caveat: by the style of writing, it was easy to tell which hostages had been killed, and which survived, from the very beginning.

What makes this book very 'real' is that Marquez interviewed all the protagonists he could, and then retold their stories. In fact, Maruja (one of the hostages) and Alberto Villamizar (a Colombian politician) approached Marquez to write about her sixteen month captivity. The book itself has minimal exaggeration, as Marquez weaves his magic making all of us hope that something like this never befalls anyone ever again.

If you've ever wondered about the enigma that is Escobar, read this book, for a combination of Marquez's style of writing, and the story itself makes this book simply unputdownable.

Rating: 5