Zoo in the head

Casting modesty aside...

...or possibly caution, I ought to point out that I'm presenting tonight's Archive on 4 on BBC Radio 4, on the theme of pubs and literature, produced by the gifted and fragrant Tim Dee. You should listen, if only to hear W. B. Yeats, little leprechaun of a man that he is (after that you can switch off).

8pm GMT, shortened repeat Monday, 3pm GMT (and I've an uncomfortable feeling the 45-minute version will be pithier and more effective); and of course, you can always listen again via the BBC iPlayer.

UPDATE: Now on iPlayer. As I write, the programme is the top-trending new subject on the Radio 4 messageboard, but it turns out that you only need three messages to do that. Still, two of the messages are quite nice; the other one points out that we didn't include any Hardy, which is true. We did think quite long and hard about putting in the pub scene from Jude the Obscure (in which Jude gets roaring drunk and recites the creed in Latin), and maybe we should have. But my impression is that Hardy's interest is not in pubs qua pubs but in drunkenness. 

UPDATE UPDATED: Another complimentary message on the messageboard, containing this enigmatic sentence:

"For some reason I’d always suspected that I’d detect an element of BSA Bantam (175cc) within Mr. Hanks’s voice; quite the opposite and rather pleasant and generous."

"Pleasant and generous" I'll snap up with glee. But what is "an element of BSA Bantam"? And why the 175cc? Wikipedia lists these differences from earlier 150cc models: "The spark plug sits in line with the cylinder head, front forks are stronger (as they are from the larger capacity C15), slightly lower compression ratio at 9.5, separate headlight with high-beam warning, exposed rear shock springs, strengthened kickstart shaft, revised fixing on crankshaft compression disc plates." I'm glad none of that applies to me.

FINAL UPDATE: I am told by other members of the household that my "self-obsession" is nauseating. I'll shut up now.

Now hear this: The Shape of the Table

In a piece in the New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash writes:

Every writer on 1989 wrestles with an almost unavoidable human proclivity that psychologists have christened "hindsight bias"—the tendency, that is, to regard actual historical outcomes as more probable than alternatives that seemed real at the time (for example, a Tiananmen-style crackdown in Central Europe). What actually happened looks as if it somehow had to happen. Henri Bergson talked of "the illusions of retrospective determinism." Explanations are then offered for what happened.

None of the factual histories of 1989 I've read, seen or heard gets across the tenuousness of what actually happened as convincingly as David Edgar's play The Shape of the Table, which depicts the haggling and horse-trading behind the scenes of a democratic revolution in an unnamed Communist country. Pavel Prus, a writer of "fabrications hostile to the state" - fairy-tales - finds himself thrust into the middle of negotiations as the modernising realists in the ruling party prepare to step back from government in the face of mounting popular protest; meanwhile, the old guard ponder the possibility of keeping things going through a judicious application of violence. Edgar shows how the transfer of power brings into play a whole new, unfamiliar set of ambitions, ideals and terrors; how many factions exist and compete in even the most monolithic forms of government; and how difficult it must have been to see through this mess to the future.

No doubt the freshness of events - the play was premiered at the National Theatre in November 1990 - helped Edgar; and I would guess that his socialist sympathies predisposed him to be more sceptical than most of the supposed triumph of capitalism (which is not to say that he didn't welcome democracy). But really The Shape of the Table is a demonstration of the power of applied imagination: this is, you think, what it must have been like.

In hindsight - ah, that stuff - aspects of the script are clumsy: from the start, references to fairy-tales ending with bells ringing suggest how this is going to finish. There are also some neat lines, though: told that the pro-democracy "disturbances" appear to be "more or less spontaneous", the hard-line Party first secretary says, "Comrade, you'll learn there's nothing needs more organising than a more or less spontaneous disturbance."

I hadn't registered it was going to be on Radio 4 this afternoon, and was chuffed to stumble on it (though also, as so often, puzzled that they recorded a new production when they have a perfectly good one in the archives). It's on iPlayer until next Saturday, 21st November.

Snap, crackle and pop

There was a time, before I was married, when I spent hours sitting up at night listening to shortwave radio. With a more regular lifestyle and the availability of web radio, it's become a very occasional indulgence; but Myke Weiskopf's blog, devoted to music recorded from shortwave, captures the peculiar romance and mystery of sounds looming and receding in a fog of static. On shortwave, all music has distinction. It hasn't been updated in a year, but I see that Weiskopf has been through periods of inactivity before; hope he starts again soon.

A nod to the phonography group at Yahoo! for drawing my attention to it.

One cheer for imperialism

Recommended listening: The Origins of the Origin (BBC Radio 3, available until Sunday 15.2.09), a programme by Andrew Cunningham about Darwin's intellectual precursors in France - in particular, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire père and Lamarck, who both thought of evolution but got the mechanism wrong; and Cuvier, who realised that fossils imply extinction of species but didn't cotton on that new species might develop.

Much interesting information, much of it in amusing French accents, but I was struck by the comment that Cuvier's pre-eminence in comparative anatomy was largely down to the success of Napoleon's armies, who brought back specimens from across Europe. Similarly, Darwin accumulated his data on a survey expedition sponsored by the British admiralty as part of Britannia's continuing efforts to rule the waves. In each case, their theorising was based on a breadth of observation made possible by an expansionist state.

So one cheer for imperialism, which may enslave and impoverish subject peoples and leave the conquerors bitter and confused, but which advances and enlightens mankind.