digging with which foot again...?

so after the last couple days -- not counting fridays -- which have been pretty horror-heavy, this wednesday i need to put on the historian hat again and talk about marianne elliott's recent (-ish; i'm a bit behind the curve, really) tome, the catholics of ulster.

first: it's giant. seriously: don't plan on lugging this book around a lot if you have a bad back or stiff shoulders.

second: there are holes. i started to write that they were "significant" -- but i'm not quite sure they are really.

elliott's whole point here is to debunk a very catholic-centric, nationalist-centric, increasingly-over-the-course-of-the-20th-century-republican-centric style of irish history, and so i'm sure she knows perfectly well what she's left out and has left it out (or minimized it) for a reason.

the thumbnail "plot summary" might run something like: a history of catholics in ulster from prehistory to the good friday agreement.

there's a lot of time spent on the early years -- the prehistory through, say, the late eighteenth century bit -- and then, to my mind, ever-less time as the book ratchets on towards the end of the twentieth century. which is a shame from my point of view, because that's the bit i'm interested in. still, there is enough provocative material here to make me leave my pencil in the book as a bookmark because i was making that many marginal notes. who knows if i'll never use them for anything, but they made me feel better.

my chief argument with the book might be that as time goes by and elliott gets closer and closer to the present day and -- in all fairness -- as the republican nationalist movement gets more and more catholic and nastier and nastier with it (not that i'm implying these two things are vitally linked or inextricable or anything because that would obviously be very foolish), she gets closer and closer to being dismissive of things which i think are very important.

of course, this could just be me thinking, "but i think it's interesting! talk more about what i think is interesting!" and there are plenty of books out there that talk about nothing but the things i think are interesting -- still, i think elliott comes close to sounding rather patronizing as she tries to describe the effects that something that happened over 200 years ago can have on the present day. the historical narrative started to become a bit clogged with elliott's own personal memories of growing up in northern ireland and, while i understand that she's doing this in order to make her own potential biases and point-of-view absolutely clear, it also starts to feel that maybe what she wanted to do was write a history up to about 1950 and then write a memoir.

in fact, the more i think about it, the more i wish she had done just that: written the history through...oh, say, partition, ended that, and then written a memoir. as it was, in the final chapters, i kept wanting to say, "but, wait -- if the people in question think that's really important -- aren't you being a bit dismissive by saying it isn't? shouldn't you take into account the fact that they -- being your subject under discussion here! -- think it is?"

i apologise for not having a more coherent argument to make about the text right now; due to bad weather and a long day at work, i'm more than a little out of it. but the summing up of all this would probably read: marianne elliott. new-ish book. go forth and read it if you are interested in a) things catholic; b) things irish; c) things irish catholic.

if nothing else, her bibliography is absolutely eye-wateringly wonderful.

~ ~ ~

and since this post is (marginally) concerned with things academic and scholastic, here's something else, too.

as you may or may not know, i live in boston. as you also may or may not know, the boston public library system is facing some "economic hardship." the latest iteration of this hardship is what seems like a serious threat to close the main branch's microtext department.

when my boss told me this last friday, i squawked at her for two minutes straight about how awful this was and how "they" couldn't do this before realising: a) she isn't my old boss and wouldn't either think i was funny or sympathise; and b) "they" might very well do just that.

it is fair to say that, without the microtext room at the bpl, i could not have written the history thesis i did. without the access to the historical irish newspapers collection they house, i would have had to cut my topic in half, redirect it radically, or give up on it entirely. i'm sure there are other people out there with similar stories.

i have spent a lot of time in the microtext room and i was never the only one there even when i was there at 9 a.m. on a saturday morning or 5 p.m. on a tuesday night. patrons ranged from professional genealogists to amateur family historians; college undergraduates; other graduate students like myself; and the average run of people looking for someplace to burn a few hours because they had nowhere else to be. the room needs a new carpet; the microfilm machines need repairing; the printers need upgrading; the librarians need some new reference materials. what they do not need is to be shut down or have a huge, incredibly valuable collection doled out piecemeal among the other branches of the library.

so, as this is the biggest public soapbox i have, i'm putting it out there: please. if you have half an hour of free time and you give a damn about this amazing, marvellous, free resource in boston, send a letter; send an email; make a phone call.

SUGGESTED ACTION: We are asking all concerned individuals to write to the following contacts and let them know that the resources and staff of the Microtext Department and the Newspaper Room should not be eliminated or dispersed. If you are a Massachusetts resident or Boston Public Library patron, please indicate that in your email/letter. The Boston Public Library Annual Meeting will be held Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 8:30am, at the Copley Square Library. Let's let our voices be heard and make an impact now before that important meeting.

Contacts:

Amy Ryan, President of the Boston Public Library 

aeryan@bpl.org

700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116

617-536-5400

Mr. Jamie McGlone, Clerk to the Board of Trustees

jmcglone@bpl.org

700 Boylston St., Boston MA 02116

617-536-5400

Mayor Thomas Menino

mayor@cityofboston.gov

1 City Hall Square, Suite 500

Boston, MA 02201-2013

617.635.4500

Photograph by Gretchichi

"...writing yer name in all those history books..." Part 2

all right, so here we are back again as promised to discuss a few issues with hunger.

i took just about 2 pages of notes on this; i'll try to summarize the best points without sinking to the point i was at on saturday of lecturing the computer screen. there are lots of questions here: what about prisoners who came off the strike to conform? what about prisoners who came onto the strike, abandoning the uniform? what about the other prisoners in the freakin' jail of whom there were hundreds? what about the other prisoners who were in the prison ira leadership with sands? what about the guards who weren't sectarian fuckheads? what about...what about...what about... but some of these are just me being picky because, well, this is my subject and sketchy treatments of it make me twitch. and some of it isn't relevant to the story mcqueen has chosen to tell but his ignoring of them does his story a disservice. given that the movie he has produced is obviously directed towards an informed audience, they are going to ask these kinds of questions -- i would hope! -- because they are informed.

the movie only really finds a driving force about 50 minutes in. given that it's about an hour and a half long, this might be considered a small pacing problem. from then on in, the prison might as well have been built around bobby sands. i'm sure this is probably how he might have liked to see things (or not -- other prisoners reported him as being somewhat self-effacing), but it isn't true. it isn't even fair to the other dozens -- more reasonably, hundreds of prisoners although not all of them were on either the dirty strike or the hunger strike -- at the same time as sands. making him the centerpiece of the entire thing simply plays straight into the republican tendency to create martyred hero figures.

congratulations, mr. mcqueen; you bought it. it's a great story; i find it hard to blame you. it's seductive; it's powerful; it's black-and-white; it's like a great mythological cycle -- with more shit on the walls. and y'know why? because they've had about 90 years to work it all out.

and i don't think this is self-conscious or knowing, either; mcqueen seems to have genuinely bought into sands's self-representation. in a long static sequence in the middle of the film, a lengthy debate between sands and a priest named moran about the morality and timing of the hunger strike, moran even makes the argument that all sands wants is to "....[write] yer name in all those history books..." after james connolly and terence macswiney -- both of whom earlier republicans who were of key importance to sands in his personal vision of irish republican nationalism. i'd've said this is probably at least part of the truth -- sands did want to be a martyr; he realised fully how powerful they were in terms of irish nationalism and thought that a new generation of martyrs was just what the movement needed. after the collapse of the first hunger strike in 1979, he was heartbroken over the loss of the chance; the new strike in 1981 was fuelled, in large part, by his impatience to create republican heroes for ireland. (this is all a bit slapdash in the way of historical reasoning, by the way; there were lots of other reasons, too. but this is a big chunk of it.)

the movie places great emphasis on the ability of the prisoners to endure brutal treatment -- the sequences of forced bathing and haircutting and the mirror searches are more or less accurate in their deep unpleasantness. there's a really lovely sequence after the mirror searches contrasting sands in his cell, bleeding heavily from blows to the head, and a young riot officer who has had to retreat from the line, unable to deal with the treatment meted out to the prisoners. the officer is lurking behind a half-wall, within earshot of the beatings, tears running down his cheeks, looking as if he would rather be just about anywhere than where he is; sands, on the other hand, looks peculiarly contented, relieved (presumably at having survived what could have been a fatal experience), but also pleased. i'm not sure about the guards -- i don't think many prison officers from the '70s or '80s in northern ireland sat down to write books about their experiences! -- but sands's reaction is certainly in line with the stories he told in writings from prison and which other prisoners recounted in their memoirs or narratives.

possibly the worst problem is that the end of the movie veers away from acknowledged historical medical fact about what happened to sands during his hunger strike (and i really want to know how the prisoners stayed in such excellent shape while being largely confined to cells that are about half the size of an average dorm room with no exercise privileges -- personally, i'd've thought it would be difficult to keep up a six-pack or biceps like a soccer player's, but, hey, what do i know?); privileges him to the total loss of the other dozen-plus men who went on hunger strike, to say nothing of the other nine who died; and descends into inexcusable maudlin sentimentality.

during the conversation with the priest, sands recounts a story about going down to a track meet in the south with some other boys when he was 12. (possibly based on a true event; sands was a track runner until his late teens, apparently a gifted one, and enjoyed playing football, running the track-and-field events, and was a member of several local clubs around his home district of belfast.)  the story slides downhill into fairly threadbare symbolism as sands adds on a story about the boys going down to a river near the meet site and finding a foal, starving and half-drowned in the water with a broken leg. sands takes it upon himself to drown the foal as the other boys debate what to do about it. i imagine the audience is meant to take this as evidence of sands's strength of character and determination -- as he himself says it is. i'm not sure about this, really, but that may also be because i'm fairly sure i can see the seam where actual biographical story is hooked into symbolically convenient story and it annoys.

at the end of the film, then, as he lies dying (medically incorrectly but much more attractively), there is a lengthy -- 2+ minutes -- flashback to the boy sands running the course by the river.

it's ridiculous. it's pointless. it's insulting, both to sands and to the audience. really, if you watch the movie, turn it off at about 1.27.00. the last shot of sands in the hospital bed, looking up at the ceiling, would have made a stronger, more telling, more compelling final shot, rather than the rubbishy, saccharine, "it'll all be okay, kids" shot of the boy on the bus, returning from the golden day in the republic.

even an older movie about the hunger strikes, some mother's son, which took more liberties with the prisoners and their stories and played the entire episode more for dramatic tension than for historical accuracy, didn't descend to that level of crayola-style storytelling.

"...writing yer name in all those history books..." Part 1

so, this week i'm going to put on my historian hat and do a bit of ranting.

i finally found time on saturday morning to watch artist steve mcqueen's film about bobby sands, hunger. the film could fairly be called "critically acclaimed" -- often a meaningless phrase -- because, well, it was. one of the guardian's film critics went so far as to say that he was never going to watch another film that wasn't made by an artist again because this had been a life-changing experience. subsequently, he's watched wolverine, avatar, and (i think) alice in wonderland, so i'm thinking this grand claim didn't hold true for too long!

brief synopsis: the film follows (or tries to from about 52 minutes in) bobby sands, member of the irish republican army, who was imprisoned in 1976 (for the second time) and died on hunger strike in 1981, the first of ten ira members to die in the long kesh prison in northern ireland in '81. their aim was to pressure the english government into returning "special category" prisoner status which would allow imprisoned paramilitaries to be treated, in essence, as political prisoners. they would have the right to wear their own clothes, receive more mail and more visits, arrange their own living spaces (with prison rules), and a few other privileges that "ordinary decent criminals," so called by the prison system, did not receive.

so -- first, the good stuff. the film is beautiful. i don't know exactly what mcqueen's background is or what other work he has done but he has an eye some directors and cinematographers would probably kill for.

when i say that it's as carefully, precisely, and gorgeously shot as a good polanski film (see the ninth gate) or pretty much any danny boyle or sam mendes movie (see 28 days later or american beauty), this should get the idea across. there are no particularly fancy camera tricks -- except for some crane work when bobby is dying that gets truly dizzying which i imagine was the point -- and most of the work is simple close-up, static shot, or dollying. it's very basic, which makes it gorgeous.

the colors are beautiful -- for a film which as to take most of its action inside a prison system, mcqueen did a fantastic job of finding a way to make it not bleak or, rather, to make the bleakness meaningful without making it drip with symbolism. the prison is a prison; there's really no way around that. but the use of light -- see the scene in the beginning with a prisoner standing by a broken window grill, the cold light from the snowy day outside lighting his bare torso and making it appear to glow ivory -- is phenomenal. it's the opening of the trailer down there; the picture quality on this isn't as good as on the dvd copy i watched, but it should get the idea across.

there's a scene at about the midway point of the movie -- lasting for about 10-15 minutes -- done in two shots: one a static framing shot, and the other a tight close-up and the photography of the cigarette smoke as the two men in the shot smoke and argue is distractingly lovely. really -- it does get a bit distracting! but it's beautiful to watch. and it highlights the emptiness of the room around the two men nicely.

so, yes, look, i said some good things, right? now -- the problems.

i have never seen a better propaganda piece for the ira. or, more precisely, for the martyrisation and idealisation of bobby sands.

really.

and that's including all the time i've spent reading/watching/looking at actual ira propaganda!

and i'm having to take periodic breaks from writing this post because it's making me too upset; by the end of the movie, i was actually lecturing the computer screen sternly on its iniquities as a piece of historical thinking.

and, of course, that's one of the problems. it isn't a piece of historical thinking. it's a movie. but it's a movie that purports to be closely based on historical events -- and not all that distant ones, either. less than 30 years old. it isn't like mcqueen could claim the clouds of intervening centuries blurred his vision; there are men who were in prison with sands who would, i'm sure, be delighted to talk to him. or, if not delighted, could probably be talked into it. if nothing else, there are histories -- believe me, there are histories -- and memoirs and narratives and state papers -- all of which could have helped this be better.

now, go forth and watch the preview for hunger and i'll be back on wednesday to discuss a few problems:

where is sam vimes when you need him?

i'm going to be doing some work this week to prepare a presentation for the new england historical association's spring conference. i sent in this really clever looking proposal in january to talk for 20-25 minutes about bobby sands as a key figure in the (re)construction of irish republican nationalism at the end of the 20th century. god, it sounded so clever when i wrote that proposal. and now, of course, i have to make good and actually make the presentation and some notes and something to actually talk about.

ah, well, these things happen, right?

but that's not my point. my point is that, over the last three or four days -- say from the last saturday in february to the first monday in march -- there have been several stories about violent attacks in northern ireland. at least one man died -- or was killed, depending on how you like to frame these things; no-one in the actual country seems quite sure yet as to what really happened -- and a police barracks was attacked.

i want to go on record right now by saying that i'm not arguing that any of these things are good or defensible in any way. i think they're probably explicable and understandable but that's not the same thing.

what i also think is not good or defensible is the automatic leap i have seen being made in the news sources i follow from the uk...which are, for the purposes of full disclosure, chiefly the times, the guardian, the independent, and various subsections thereof, as well as gerry adam's semi-official blog although adams has not commented on the events of recent days. in any case, there is an automatic jump being made here from "attack" to "sectarian attack," or, even worse, "dissident republican attack." there isn't even any attempt made to justify the reasoning that takes the journalist from "attack" to "dissident republicans."

now, i have to say that the odds are very high that, yes, in fact, dissident republicans -- probably the continuity or real ira or some combination of the two (which is an unpleasant, but possibly inevitable, concept) -- are behind the attacks. this is particularly likely in the case of the attack on the police barracks. historically speaking, the paramilitary republican (catholic) community has been much more strident about the entrance of catholics into the police service of northern ireland (psni) than the unionist or english communities. there are a whole raft of reasons for this, but you can basically boil it down to the fact that, for some republicans, catholics going into the psni are traitors to years of painful community experience. the psni (the modern name for the police service) has long been a bastion of unionist/english power, often deployed violently and cruelly against catholics in northern ireland. the conclusion "good" catholics should draw is, therefore, considered to be obvious by some.

regardless of the obviousness of the conclusion, however, i feel that the conclusions being drawn are evidence of a long tradition of blaming violence in northern ireland on republicans regardless of the actual perpetrator. this sort of thing gives the unionists a golden chance -- which they have already, in the reporting on monday, march 1st -- taken full advantage of, to cry innocence and load more blame on their republican counterparts while the "legitimate" republicans, on their part, have to scramble to claim innocence and/or shift the blame onto "dissident" republicans.

this isn't a productive cycle of events. it's familiar; it's easy; i imagine it might even be comfortable -- in an uncomfortable sort of way -- for all concerned at this point. but it sure as hell isn't going to get the political system in northern ireland any closer to true devolution of powers from westminster to stormont any time soon.

random items

as you read this, i will (most likely) be at a new england historical association session in burlington, vt. i'm not presenting at this conference so my ego is safe; i just get to sit back, relax, and enjoy what everyone else has to say. and then cross my fingers and hope that the restaurants i remember as being good are still good so that anna and i don't have to wander around too much looking for somewhere to eat!

this is, of course, assuming that we get there at all -- i keep getting weather update alerts (from my mother, mostly) telling me about all the horrible things that are due to happen in the next 24-36 hours.

anyway, there are a few things i've got starred on my greader list that i wanted to put up here in case anyone else found them interesting, too.

hillary clinton was in belfast this past week. i haven't had time to go looking for any irish coverage of her talks, but there is some coverage from the guardian here. i've never been wildly impressed by hillary clinton, honestly; if a clinton had to continue to be involved in the government on an international level, i would've voted for her husband, but no-one asked me. in this case, i think her talk -- at least the excerpts i've seen -- sounded more condescending than friendly or helpful: "okay, kids, if you all learn to play together real nice, we'll give you some candy!" in this case, the candy being international investment by american corporations in northern ireland. just in case you can't get your own banks to fail on time, let the americans show you how to do it!

as a sidelight, there was also a report this morning of another car bomb in belfast. i doubt it has anything to do with clinton's visit, but there it is.

also this week was an "anniversary" of an attempt by the ira to bomb the grand hotel in brighton 25 years ago -- at the time, a political conference was being held there. if i remember rightly, the actual aim of the bomb was to kill margaret thatcher. no comment but anyway, they missed thatcher, killed four other people. the article here discusses the odd relationship that has built up between the ira bomber, patrick magee, and the daughter of one of the men killed as well as loosely commenting on the aftermath of the bombing itself. what gets me is the last sentence or two:

After all Patrick Magee couldn't bring himself to say sorry for the suffering he caused either.

"Pat, I find that quite hard," said Berry. She emerges as the bigger person.

my only thought on reading this the first time -- and i've read it several times since and i think it will find a home in the conclusion to my thesis -- was, 'well, no, of course he won't apologise. what did you expect?' if you're waiting for a hearts-and-flowers-style apology from a still-living ira paramilitary, complete with bended knee and hand on heart, i'd suggest you're going to be waiting a long damned time.

and this i saw this morning and couldn't quite believe: apparently a judge in louisiana totally missed the odd supreme court case or two in his legal training, like, say, "loving v. virginina." small details!

on a less political note, apparently vampires and zombies also reflect a "sexual divide" in mainstream culture. (and, while we're at it, does anyone want to have a stab at explaining what "post-scifi" might mean?)well, damn. apparently i don't like 28 days later and resident evil after all -- i actually like twilight. who knew! and i haven't even read/seen it. i've tried to put together a more reasonable comment on this article but i just can't. it makes me boggle -- i probably would have put this guy's book on the list to read had i not read this first. but, y'know, i have david wellington's 99 coffins on hand and, really, anyone who wants to snog one of his vampires needs their head examining. (and don't forget wellington's ongoing 30 [free] stories in 30 days at dailylit.com!)

if you're looking for a reason to make a list, i found this via imdb.com: what movies have you "rolled the dice" to see?

for those of you waiting with bated breath for the appearance of this ebooks blog i keep talking about, paper not included will be starting up sometime in the next few weeks; we're busily trying to work out stylesheet and other such-like formal issues on the discussion board.

i got sucked in by the "new books" shelves at the coolidge corner library the other day, so instead of walking out with two books which had been the plan (robert w. chambers's the king in yellow and patrick messert's literature of the occult which is less exciting than it sounds), i walked out with four, including dark places and prospero lost which has gorgeous cover art -- as well as a highly complimentary blurb from kage baker. i'm also looking forward to finishing wellington's 99 coffins this weekend and to the arrival of jonathan maberry's bad moon rising at the library so i can finish that series. more 5-cent book reviews in a few weeks!

and, as a final note, i offer this video clip (only the first 8 minutes of a longer show, sadly) from a charity "children in need" concert -- you've always wanted to see david tennant work a crowd, haven't you?

Doctor Who - A Celebration
Uploaded by frankzaatar. -

random linkness

i'm posting this article by victor keegan from the guardian largely because of the conversation we had in my preservation class the other day. the topic of the day was, theoretically, reformatting. really, most of the class was taken up with two things: microfilm and arguing about digitization. our professor is, somewhat unexpectedly, an absolute and total devotee of digitizing everything in sight because "that's what patrons expect."

i have to admit, i had to bite my tongue to keep from commenting, "well, they can expect it all they want."

our professor was bound and determined that everyone expected everything to be digital all the time and we should really face up to this fact and do--- something. i'm not quite sure what he wanted us to do -- even just in terms of the class -- but he definitely expected something.

one of the other students and i tried rather gingerly to point out that maybe the expectations for digital collections were different depending on what field you were in and what kind of work you were doing -- and that didn't get us very far, but it slowed him down a little. since he seemed to be basing a lot of his argument, at least for the day, on the fact that students pull the bulk of their sources from online databases and the like, i wasn't all that convinced. again a little tongue-biting was involved to keep from saying, "well, of course. we're lazy and busy and you let us get away with it. what do you expect? i would never think of trying to pull that for my history work. shall we have a discussion about differing expectations in differing fields?"

anyway, the actual article i wanted to post is this: victor keegan writing about e-readers for books. the picture alone makes it worthwhile to click in.

in the interests of tossing up a few more interesting things midweek, here's an article i haven't had time to read through fully about the new world digital library. which may seem ironic in light of my summary of class-time yesterday, but i'm okay with irony this morning. or perhaps just too tired to avoid it!

i also found roy foster's review of a new history of the 1916 easter rising. the new history looks quite interesting and i've added it to my goodreads list so, y'know, in eight months or a year or so, i'll remember to read it! but this review is also delightful because foster calmly and seriously uses the tardis as a metaphor for the dublin post office.

and a xan brooks article about re-viewing films. i recently tried to re-view a film i've never had much time for, silence of the lambs, and found i didn't have time for it for a variety of excellent reasons and gave up about 40 minutes in.

and, as an a/v treat although i have mostly already discussed this with my friends who i know are doctor who fans, the trailer for the first of the david tennant post-season 4 specials:



it aired in britain on saturday -- so far no sign of it on dvd, although i hope it will only be a matter of months!