Satrapi on Iran

Marjane Satrapi, Iranian exile and author of the phenomenal Persepolis, writes in the NYT about the Iranian uprising. 

From now on, nobody will judge Iranians by their so-called elected president.

From now on, Iranians are fearless. They have regained their self-confidence.

Despite all the dangers they said NO!

And I’m convinced this is just the beginning.

You can also read Persepolis 2.0: a work by other Iranian exiles that charts recent events in Iran based on Satrapi’s original line drawings.

Viva la revolution.

(Via Gene)

The Worst Of All Possible Worlds

My review of Hyok Kang’s This is Paradise! My North Korean Childhood is now available at 3:AM.

Fat Blackmail

Just a quick honourable mention of this amazing crime novel I’ve been sent. In this classic of the ‘caper’ genre an unnamed villain discovers that his recently dead associate and mentor has left some business for him to clean up – a favour that sounds simple but unfolds into a complex nightmare of violence, intrigue and betrayal. The narrator ricochets between London and Manchester, organising prison breaks and armed robberies, telling the tale in a pragmatic-staccato style. The background of Fat Blackmail’s authors – one a crime correspondent, the other an ex-villain – ensures that the book is fine on detail on everything from Serbian trafficking gangs to the mechanics of bank jobs. An excellent plot, with twists that are genuinely surprising.

Classic Books: American Psycho

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

- Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

The word ‘psychopath’ is tossed around a lot. In the colloquial sense it means someone especially angry, immoral or aggressive. Dave Cullen researched psychopathy for his book on the Columbine killings. Experts agreed that psychopaths were characterised by severe lack of empathy and ‘a poverty of emotional range’.

In Hannibal Lecter’s words, they could not be ‘reduce[d] to a set of influences’. There was a neurological difference. Cullen writes about a doctor who submitted ‘a paper analysing the unusual brain waves of psychopaths to a scientific journal, which rejected it with a dismissive letter. ‘These EEGs couldn’t have come from real people,’ the editor wrote.’

From Cullen’s chapter on psychopathy:

Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others: they will defraud, maim or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first… Yet the majority have consistently eluded the law… He’s not just conning you with a scheme, he’s conning you with his life. His entire personality is a fabrication, with the purpose of deceiving suckers like you…

He goes on: ‘The fundamental nature of a psychopath is a failure to feel.’ Although psychopaths can display terrifying rages, this is mere ‘readiness of expression’ without ’strength of feeling’. They seem to have some ‘primitive emotions closely related to their own welfare’ but that really is it: ‘Even an earthworm will recoil if you poke it with a stick… Psychopaths make it that far up the emotional ladder, but they fall far short of the average golden retriever, which will demonstrate affection, joy, compassion and empathy for a human in pain.’

The above criteria are certainly met by Patrick Bateman, Wall Street trader by day, torturer and killer by night. His narrative is a flatline hum. Whether he’s obsessively cataloguing the designer labels of everyone in his field of vision, or torturing a woman to death, the emotional tone remains exactly the same. He boasts of his expensive David Onica painting until a victim points out that the artwork has been hung upside down. Not only is he unable to feel, he’s unable and unwilling to recognise emotion in others. (Cullen quotes a psychopathic armed robber who found it confusing if bank clerks shook or babbled when his gun was pointed at them: why? What was the point?)

I first read American Psycho on a vulgar-Marxist level: as Jenny Turner had it, ‘a black-hearted satire on the terrible power of money.’ Bateman and his indistinguishable friends were part of the wealthy revered caste. Even Bateman had his limitations – witness his flailing attempts to get a Dorsia reservation – but still, his power and status allowed him to kill without fear of reprisal. His victims were almost exclusively from what Bateman himself called the ‘genetic underclass’; homeless people, prostitutes. Interestingly, while Bateman’s fellow yuppies had no idea of his murderous nature, it was that army of urban serfs – bar staff, beggars, waiters, cleaners, callgirls – who saw Bateman for what he was. He is mugged by a taxi driver who has witnessed his murder of another cabbie, and a transient blinded by Bateman is able to recognise him, by voice alone, almost two years later.

Reading the novel again, I noticed the inconsistencies. The yuppies consistently mistake each other for each other, as anonymous to themselves as the underclass are to them. Bateman murders a business rival who turns up later on in London. He visits an apartment in which he killed two escort girls to find no trace of the crimes - in fact, an estate agent is in the process of selling the flat. In Lunar Park, his best work, Ellis says this:

Patrick Bateman was a notoriously unreliable narrator, and if you actually read the book you could come away doubting that these crimes had even occurred. There were large hints that they existed only in Bateman’s mind. The murders and torture were in fact fantasies fuelled by his rage and fury about how life in America was structured and how this had – no matter the size of his wealth – trapped him. The fantasies were an escape. This was the book’s thesis. It was about society and manners and mores, and not about cutting up women.

This last line chimes with the quote from Judith Martin at the beginning of the novel: ‘There’s a whole range of behaviour that can be expressed in a mannerly way.’

American Psycho works very well as a comedy. There are the lengthy, inane discussions at Harry’s and Nell’s – Which bottled water is the best? Should you wear tasselled loafers with a business suit? Did you know cavemen got more fibre than we do? There is the classic business card scene. There are catchphrases (’I have to return some videotapes’) and a good running joke in The Patty Winters Show, a daily programme that Bateman watches religiously and whose topics get more and more bizarre as his sanity erodes. Comic highlights include Bateman’s attempts to bond with a black man (’We be, uh, jamming…’ ) his excruciating small talk with a couple of prostitutes, his faking of a Dorsia reservation. There are moments of wriggling awkwardness and feeble deception that rival and precede The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Take the murders out of the picture and Bateman comes off as Walter Mitty. His final crazed confession, made on the voicemail of a work acquaintance, is not believed. The colleague in question, after naturally mistaking Bateman for someone else, expresses his incredulity:

Jesus, Davis. Yes, that was hilarious… Bateman killing Owen and the escort girl?… Oh that’s bloody marvellous… But come on, man, you had one fatal flaw: Bateman’s such a bloody ass-kisser, such a brown-nosing goody-goody, that I couldn’t fully appreciate it… He could barely pick up an escort girl, let alone… what was it you said he did to her?

Bateman is without doubt an American psychopath – but is he active or passive; a genuine serial slayer or a pathetic fantasist? Is evil something you are or something you do? Both readings have validity and interest, but American Psycho can be primarily appreciated as a period piece and a fine dark comedy of modern manners.

Celebration of Steve Cohen’s life

Celebration of the life and achievements of Steve Cohen

Manchester Town Hall

Sunday 5th July

11am – 5pm

There’ll be various speakers, including speakers on antisemitism, friendship, Ireland, anti-deportation, Steve’s life, various speakers from campaigns Steve was involved in,and also a reading by Julie Hesmondhalg from Steve’s recent novel . Followed at 2 pm by the Immigration Law Practitioners Association 25th anniversary celebrations ‘Perspectives on Immigration’. All welcome.

More workfare bollocks

Bad news for the government’s workfare plans.

Recruitment companies getting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to find jobs for the unemployed are at the centre of a fraud probe after staff made false claims of getting people into work.

The Observer found that A4e, one of the government’s biggest private contractors, is at the centre of the Department for Work and Pensions inquiries. It is understood that at least two other recruitment companies have been probed by the DWP.

The revelation comes weeks after A4e was earmarked for £100m of contracts for the government’s Flexible New Deal, in which private companies will be paid for each person they place in a job.

Anyone want to try and persuade the public that funding corrupt recruitment consultants is a worthwhile use of taxpayer’s money?

Update: More, via Andrew

Further update: A commenter shares his experience of A4e:

Well, what a surprise about A4e. Last year I was recovering from illness so found myself seeking help from A4e so that I could get back to work under their Government Jobcenta related assistance to people like me. So I went to their office a few times and met some of their “advisers”. Their assistance seemed to be limited to them looking for jobs in the local papers, websites and, of course, the Jobcenta Plus list of vacancies: all things I can do for myself. I asked if they had any contacts with local employers and found that they didn’t. They did help me a little bit with with one job application in that they put the application in for me so, I guess, they could claim their payment if I got the job. Well, fair enough, I’m not begrudging them payment for work they do but I could have just as easily applied directly myself and if I had done would not have flagged up the fact that I had been recently off sick, which is not necessarily a plus point with employers.

I did get an interview for this job but didn’t get selected: it was a job that had been advertised in the local paper.

Then, as I was feeling better, recovered and ready to work I ceased claiming Incapacity Benefit. The people at A4e were clearly unhappy about me stopping my claim since they were only paid for helping people on Incapacity Benefit. One of them advised me to keep claiming. Instead I started claiming Jobseekers Allowance, which, because of my circumstances I didn’t get and, after finding there was similarly not much assistance, stopped my claim for that too.

The real problem is that contrary to Cordon Bleu and Peter M’s assertions, there are very few jobs out there at the moment. So wasting money on A4e and other contractors so they can give phoney advice to those looking for work is wrong.

It’s also potty that those unable to work because of illness are targetted (”we want to look at work you can do, rather than work you cannot do”) while there’s not so much help for those fit enough to work: most employers want employees who are fully fit.

There’s also not much training available, just some Learn Direct courses on English, Arithmetic and Word Processing. But what’s the point of doing training if there are no jobs out there?

Hensher on Bruno

Philip Hensher has an interesting essay on Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film Brüno, in which he plays a gay Austrian journalist. I always liked Baron Cohen’s character comedy – by playing prejudiced characters like Borat and Ali G, he draws out and exposes the prejudice in others. Hensher argues that this new film is not laughing at homosexuality but at the heterosexual reaction to it. He looks at the reality of homophobia and contrasts Baron Cohen’s well-crafted character study with what normally passes for British comedy.

Groups, and individuals influenced by group psychology, have murdered in Britain and the United States. Matthew Shepard was murdered by two men acting in collusion in 1998 in Wyoming. Jody Dobrowski was killed by two men on a planned spree on Clapham Common in south London in 2005. David Morley was murdered on the South Bank in London in 2004 by a teenage gang, who filmed the attack. Reading through the horrible accounts of these murders, one thing which recurs is the savagery of each attack, as if not murder but obliteration were the aim of the perpetrators. Dobrowski could only be identified by his fingerprints. Something beyond mere rage seems to have been awoken here.

Open and frank hatred of homosexuals through comedy has been remarkably persistent, and may even be on the increase in the media. The Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles casually uses the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way and ridicules the gay singer Will Young for his sexuality; he was defended by the BBC for the first incident, but censured for the second. Jimmy Carr has discovered that the use of the words ‘gay benders’ is enough to raise a laugh from a Channel 4 audience. Al Murray caused immense offence with a character in a sketch show who was both gay and a Nazi – that was the joke. He seemed to have forgotten that many thousands of gay men were murdered by the Third Reich. Those who survived the war were not, unlike all other categories of the persecuted, eligible for compensation. Still funny?

The appalling Horne and Corden show got a laugh out of a sketch about a gay war reporter – I suppose the joke was that gay men shouldn’t be interested in foreign or military affairs. A presenter of a talent show broadcast for a family audience, Patrick Kielty, mocked a male contestant who seemed moved almost to tears by calling him ‘a big gayer’; the BBC defended this stereotypical comment by saying that it was ‘not intended to cause offence’.

What relationship there is between publicly funded, broadcast abuse and violence against homosexuals is debatable. Probably the media have done no more than reflect some vulgar usage, and propagate it more widely.

Possibly. It reflects, if nothing else, the infantile desperation of British humorists and pundits in reaching for one of the few hatreds that still dares speak its name.

When You’re Gone

My review of David Eagleman’s Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives is now available at 3:AM.

It’s Just A Ride

Can religion be replaced? That’s the question CiF posed to Ophelia, perhaps hoping for a shouty advocacy of the New Atheist One World Government. It didn’t work out that way.

My thoughts are these. The question seems to imply a kind of formal replacement of religion with something else. Anyone with any intelligence or decency will know that this is just not possible or desirable. 

But we can make a humbler demand. We can insist that religious authority sticks to what it is good at – weddings, funerals, christenings – and let go of all the other areas it insists on being involved in, such as welfare, education, nuclear defence… The strategy should be one of containment. Keep religion in its box, and it’s fine, even worthwhile. Let religion into the sphere of governance, and you’re looking at Goldenbridge or the Swat Valley.

My second point is one that I’ve made before and will keep on making. Humankind is a mystical animal. Everyone has a metaphysical hunger for the big questions. We are preoccupied by love, meaning, desire, pleasure, intellect, ideology and the qualities of the physical universe.

Religion cuts off this speculation by providing quick and easy answers. It’s the philosophical equivalent of a Big Mac diet. It discourages all speculation beyond its binary afterlives and tinkertoy creation myths and, in so doing, frustrates and retards the spiritual development of humanity.

As Ophelia says in the comments, religion is subject to natural erosion and the great monotheisms will one day share the obscurity and irrelevance of the Egyptian kitchen gods. It will no longer act as barrier in our search for the real answers – and the real questions. Free from fear or incentive, we could take the first tentative steps towards a true spirituality. To finish with Bill Hicks:

The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think that it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly coloured, and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question – is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us. They say ‘Hey! Don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride.’ And we…kill those people. Ha ha ha. ‘Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride. SHUT HIM UP! Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and family. This just has to be real.’ It’s just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because: it’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings, and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourselves off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what you can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defence each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace.

Reflections on the Great Crunch

My review of Gillian Tett’s Fool’s Gold is now available at Butterflies and Wheels.