"A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, and nobody wants to read." - Mark Twain.
Anyone who thinks Americans are irony-impaired needs to discover Mark Twain.* In fact I think it's possible that he stole far more than his fair share of irony, so for every humourless rightwinger we have Twain to blame. I'll be honest with you: this isn't exactly a new release. You could say. It's been out for. . . a while. However, it's available to download for free on the Kindle app, as many classics are, and I've been meaning to read it for a few yonks now.
And you should read it too, because it's utterly brilliant. I'm aware that the title of this blog is Neddy's Awesome Reads, and so far I have failed to describe anything as an awesome read. No longer! Huckleberry Finn is an awesome read. It will also make you think you're floating down the Missippi on a raft, eating cornbread, looking at the moon and listening to the local wildlife. And believe me it's weird the first time that happens. It has fantastic characters, settings, a great plot, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you panic, and it has a really interesting take on society. Which is, of course, the society of working class southern US in the 1840s. So if you're squeamish about the word "nigger" this is not a book for you. Every few years, as I understand it, someone sets up some kind of campaign to do a find and replace in Huckleberry Finn and change each "nigger" to "slave." Which is, of course, entirely missing the point. It's not pretty; it's inexcusable to speak that way now, but it is how people spoke then. Deal with it.
The basic storyline is: Huck is a tearaway boy in his early teens who is being held prisoner by his abusive alcoholic father. He escapes, fakes his own death and sets off down the Mississippi River on a raft. He meets up with a runaway slave called Jim, and they travel together and have various adventures. And here's the interesting (and heavily irony-laden) message of this book: Huck often does the right thing, even as he berates himself for it because he thinks it's wrong because of the society he lives in. What's more, he can do the right thing only because he's a complete outcast from society and has nothing to lose. Unlike, for instance Uncle Tom's Cabin, (itself a good read, and much misunderstood book) in which people are basically either saintly or depraved, and remain so throughout, the characters in Huckleberry Finn are a sticky mess of contradictions, and always only a moment away from realising what an absurd situation they're in.
As I say, it's brilliant. Read it now.
* Or, if they prefer, The Simpsons also works. I like the episode in which whatsherface who wrote the Bridget Jones books explains in very patronising tones about how Americans have no sense of irony and so British humour is far superior. Then suddenly she goes into a Benny Hill fast forward chasing round bushes routine. Utterly beautiful.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Thursday, 14 April 2011
The Virus Hunters: Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch
Okay, everyone loves a weird disease that makes people's limbs fall off and blood pour from their eye sockets. Or is that just me? Perhaps it is.
The Virus Hunters deals with a bunch of these kinds of diseases. It was written by the guy who discovered/named the Ebola virus, and has spent most of his career running around chasing viruses and trying to prevent them from spreading and such, in his job for the US Centre for Disease Control. It's co-written by his wife, who is in the same line of work... but to be honest I found her writing style quite annoying for some reason, so I skipped those chapters.
Blood pouring from eye sockets aside, the real story behind this book (which the authors themselves don't even seem to have realised) is the relentless tension between the latest scientific advances which these chaps know, and the way medicine is practised in some of the poorest parts of the world. There's something slightly dismissive about the way McCormick refers to "The white man's medicine" and the awe in which it's held by the diseased masses (the action mostly takes place in various countries in central and western Africa). I know what he means to some extent - the infrastructure isn't there at the front line, there's a lack of trained doctors around (some of these countries don't have a single medical school), and all the time you have some thoroughly nasty diseases doing the rounds. Hospitals are in a dire state.
But it's not "the white man's medicine". It's evidence-based, modern, scientific medicine. When done properly it does a lot of good, but the major problem in the background of these stories seems to be that a little bit of modern medicine is a very dangerous thing. Frankly "traditional" medicines may not do much good (except for the occasional discovery of something that actually works) but they don't tend to do all that much harm either. Once people get the idea that sick people need to have injections, because that's the western thing to do, and there isn't a supply of sterile, disposable needles available... well you can imagine where it goes from there. (I should add that this was published around 1995, so things may have moved on. Hopefully they have. If nothing else, the situation with Aids may have taught people that using the same needles on everyone in the ward isn't a good plan. Hopefully.)
So what's interesting about this book, I think, is that it doesn't seem to be about what the authors think it's about. They present it as sexy science, weird diseases, and a bunch of dead people. What comes across, though, are these cultural tensions. You are very, very conscious that there are double standards. The horror of a member of the CDC squad being accidentally exposed to infection is supposed to chill you to the bone, while all the time Africans are getting sick and dying. I suppose that's the way of the world - aid workers surely eat better than the refugees they're helping, or they wouldn't offer to go out there in the first place. There's no doubt that these CDCers aim to do good, and do save many lives. I think it's the fact that it doesn't get commented on that bothers me. Or perhaps the fact that I wouldn't want to leave the comforts of home to go out there and do it myself.
The Virus Hunters deals with a bunch of these kinds of diseases. It was written by the guy who discovered/named the Ebola virus, and has spent most of his career running around chasing viruses and trying to prevent them from spreading and such, in his job for the US Centre for Disease Control. It's co-written by his wife, who is in the same line of work... but to be honest I found her writing style quite annoying for some reason, so I skipped those chapters.
Blood pouring from eye sockets aside, the real story behind this book (which the authors themselves don't even seem to have realised) is the relentless tension between the latest scientific advances which these chaps know, and the way medicine is practised in some of the poorest parts of the world. There's something slightly dismissive about the way McCormick refers to "The white man's medicine" and the awe in which it's held by the diseased masses (the action mostly takes place in various countries in central and western Africa). I know what he means to some extent - the infrastructure isn't there at the front line, there's a lack of trained doctors around (some of these countries don't have a single medical school), and all the time you have some thoroughly nasty diseases doing the rounds. Hospitals are in a dire state.
But it's not "the white man's medicine". It's evidence-based, modern, scientific medicine. When done properly it does a lot of good, but the major problem in the background of these stories seems to be that a little bit of modern medicine is a very dangerous thing. Frankly "traditional" medicines may not do much good (except for the occasional discovery of something that actually works) but they don't tend to do all that much harm either. Once people get the idea that sick people need to have injections, because that's the western thing to do, and there isn't a supply of sterile, disposable needles available... well you can imagine where it goes from there. (I should add that this was published around 1995, so things may have moved on. Hopefully they have. If nothing else, the situation with Aids may have taught people that using the same needles on everyone in the ward isn't a good plan. Hopefully.)
So what's interesting about this book, I think, is that it doesn't seem to be about what the authors think it's about. They present it as sexy science, weird diseases, and a bunch of dead people. What comes across, though, are these cultural tensions. You are very, very conscious that there are double standards. The horror of a member of the CDC squad being accidentally exposed to infection is supposed to chill you to the bone, while all the time Africans are getting sick and dying. I suppose that's the way of the world - aid workers surely eat better than the refugees they're helping, or they wouldn't offer to go out there in the first place. There's no doubt that these CDCers aim to do good, and do save many lives. I think it's the fact that it doesn't get commented on that bothers me. Or perhaps the fact that I wouldn't want to leave the comforts of home to go out there and do it myself.
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