Brideshead Revisited

The status this novel has as one of the quintessential Oxford novels is more than cause enough for me to want to read it. Although I purchased a lovely hardback edition while studying at Oxford, I never did get round to reading it there. I picked it up again due to the impending release of a new movie adaptation of the book in November 2008, intending to finish the novel before watching the movie. I managed neither. My friend Karin recently purchased the 11 episode ITV adaptation (dating from 1981 and starring a youngish Jeremy Irons as Charles Ryder and scripted by the recently deceased John Mortimer of Rumpole fame). Since she lent it to me, I decided to finally get round to reading the book, and after that watching the ITV series.

The novel itself is to a large degree an examination of the decline of the English aristocracy through the eyes of Charles Ryder's relationship with the Marchmain family. Indeed, it is a telling point that Ryder makes his fame as an artist by painting the aristocratic houses before they are forced to close or to be sold, profiting as it is from their financial decline while also capturing them it their last glory. Similarly, the decline of the Marchmain clan is seen through Charles' eyes particularly through his relationship with Sebastian Flyte (his old Oxford chum) and Julia, his sister.

As for the much vaunted Oxford section, it was a world almost totally alien to me, despite having spent three years in one of the more traditional colleges (women were only admitted in 1979). It was a time of servants, and real separation between the majority who were privileged and those who were not. This upper-class aristocratic reserve was a highly endangered species in my Oxford, ironically as belittled in modern times as those who were not similarly privileged were treated by them in the past. The lifestyle of secretive dining clubs where languid philosophical debates were had in accents that could sear through butter were akin to sightings of a mythical highly endangered species - the occasional report filtered in, but one wondered if they were real or just imaginary. The last vestiges of Oxford as it was.

I should say straight out that I didn't particularly enjoy the book. Reading it in several bits and pieces over a holiday in Cambodia (on the two flights, on a long bus ride between Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City, and in various hotel rooms) certainly didn't aid my appreciation of it. Perhaps as a result I failed to see how subtly Waugh manages to tie the threads of the different sections together. Most critics acknowledge that Brideshead is the most richly written of Waugh's works (perhaps directly as a result of the wartime shortages and privations he faced during the writing of the novel - his various appetites fulfilled on the page where it could not be fulfilled in real life) but I found the language occasionally turgid and sometimes excessive.

Given Waugh's own fervent catholicism, it is unsurprising that religion plays a significant role in the novel. As it is presented in the novel, religion has the ultimate power to redeem, though it also suggests that to try and come closer to God is to invite suffering. Religious redemption comes especially to Sebastian, who finds a measure of solace and self-worth in religion from his dissolute and drunken lifestyle. It also ends up as the irreconcilable stumbling block between Charles and Julia. To Waugh's credit, both sides of Catholicism are presented, and Lady Marchmain's holier than though embracement of martyrdom isn't shied away from. One can't help but feel that the whole notion of faith and guilt and redemption is handled better by Waugh's fellow Catholic Englishman Graham Greene.

A Sobering Though in These Troubled Economic Times

Many countries worldwide are facing their worst recession in many decades. World economic growth has been estimated by the IMF for 2009 to be only 0.5%, the lowest in half a century. Amidst continued fears of job losses, home foreclosures, fall in stock prices and failing banks, there is the added concern of the social and political consequences that the economic downturn might bring.

Unemployment is certainly a major social evil that will result. Surveys have shown that losing your job is doubly painful - there is the unhappiness caused by poverty as a result of the loss of income but also unhappiness as a result of social shame and loss of self-respect due to the loss of a job. The news is getting more dire by the week, with Starbucks now closely hundreds of outlets, manufacturing and steel jobs declining to add to the job losses in the financial sector.

The most sobering thought of all? In the 1928 German elections, the National Socialists polled less than 3% of the votes. In 1933, Adolf Hitler succeed in winning the Chancellorship. What happened in the interim? The great depression and a major worldwide recession. The example above was of course over-stated and I doubt that anything quite so drastic will result from the current economic downturn (which is expected to last for at least the next two years). Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind the possible severe political consequences of economic collapse. That might be the most sobering thought of all.

You Are What You Read (and Watch)

I read a lovely piece in the New York Times called "It's Not You, It's Your Books" (March 30, 2008) which I could eminently empathize with. Rachel Donadio, the author, recounted a "Pushkin" moment from a girlfriend who had just broken up with her boyfriend and was looking for some form of justification. Her answer? "He hadn't even heard of Pushkin!"

As a keen reader myself, her story resonated with me tremendously. After all, I am a person who first became attracted to one of my eventual girlfriends (we dated for a year) after she noticed that I was holding a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of the Hills at a party and mentioned that she enjoyed his books, especially The Remains of the Day. I will freely admit that if I visit the home of a friend (or any home at all), one of the things that I will surreptitiously do is quickly scan the bookshelves to see what lies therein.

As Donadio acknowledges, reading and what a person reads need not be the deal-breaker in a relationship. In fact, inveterate bookworms often get along smashingly well with counterparts for whom the daily newspaper and Reader's Digest is the limit of their literary tastes. Sara Nelson, who wrote the book memoir So Many Books, So Little Time admitted she married a man who read nothing and could not understand her love of reading. He tolerated her eccentric habit however, grew used to sleeping with the glow of a reading lamp in the background, and proved useful by building her bookshelves (he was a set designer by trade).

Indeed, the fact is that the written word is hardly the popular medium of choice in our modern generation. Book loving friends tell me that they are happy to find someone who reads at all - being picky about literary taste would probably mean a life of singlehood dreaming of Heathcliff and Mr Darcy (if you are female) and the appropriate female literary fantasy equivalent if you are male (Lolita? Elizabeth Bennett?). Still as Sloane Crosley, a publicist told Donadio, "if you're a person who loves Alice Munro and you're going out with someone whose favourite book is the Da Vinci Code, perhaps the flags of incompatibility were there prior to the big reveal".

One undoubtedly popular modern day entertainment medium, however, is the cinema. Almost everyone watches movies. In Singapore, going for a movie is about as standard a first date as there is. So while it would be difficult to assess your compatibility with a prospective date over literary tastes, finding out what movies she or he enjoys watching (or even what TV shows) can be instructive.

In fact, choosing the movie for a first date is an interesting exercise, one often fraught with difficulty. Taking a girl to the latest high octane Hollywood summer blockbuster might not send the right message if you are a guy (think Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer), worse is inviting her over for a Star Trek marathon. Insisting on a romantic comedy might be mildly off putting if you are female, especially one involving a woman desperate to get hitched and settle down (27 Dresses immediately springs to mind).

The specific movie you bring your date to can also be very illuminating. I remember taking a girl to watch My Summer of Love, a small indie movie about a young working class English girl who falls for a richer, more posh girl home for the summer from boarding school. She took my choice of a movie with a lesbian theme as a sign of a refreshing open-mindedness about homosexuality (the choice of the movie itself was completely coincidental, I had desperately wanted to watch it). We both enthused about being able to talk about specific scenes that we loved, including a beautiful shot of the two girls in the dark silhouetted by a camp fire.

I once fell completely for a girl with whom I had been exchanging long emails, more often than not about movies. She had amazing taste in movies (in my opinion) and it was refreshing to discuss Altman and Kubrick and Woody Allen with someone who was similarly enthusiastic. One eureka moments transpired when I told her I was keen to find a copy of a Kubrick war movie which was supposed to be a classic. She enthusiastically replied that it was a fantastic coincidence and she had just seen it on DVD and it was great! Turns out that I was talking about Path of Glory and she was referring to Full Metal Jacket. Our passion for film never did translate into very much else, but that was a moment where I truly felt a meeting of minds.

There are however, cases where the opposite happens. A girl I was having dinner with declared that she loved local Singaporean director Jack Neo and she would watch anything he did. I mean Jack Neo isn't bad but, surely there are better directors out there? After she decided one of her favourite movies of all time was I Not Stupid, an involuntary shudder went down my spine. It would be increasingly hard for me to date someone if what I wanted to see was Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen), Burn After Reading (Coen brothers), and My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar Wai) when what they preferred was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Mamma Mia!, and Night in Rodanthe (just to use 2008 as an example).

Things came to a head recently when a date (whom I had just taken to see a movie) told me over dinner that she hadn't liked Wall-E. In fact she found it boring, was tempted to walk out (but didn't), found the plot completely unsubtle and pointless, and I mean, there wasn't even any dialogue in the first half an hour! I was mildly apoplectic. How can a person dislike and be totally bored by a Pixar film? This is a movie that scored close to 100% on the tomatoemeter (at Rotten Tomatoes). It was a beautiful love story to boot (shouldn't that at least appeal to some extent to a girl?). It was also powerfully human and very moving.

Is that the end then? Well, she is cute. But if I do pursue things, and they don't work out, I can always call a friend and moan - "but she didn't even like Wall-E!"

Chinese New Year Punitive Punning

I have decided that if I receive one more MSN Message, or email, or Chinese New Year greeting of any form, both verbal and electronic, wishing me a 'Happy Niu Year', or some other equivalently poor pun, I shall strangle the person responsible. It is bad enough putting up with bad puns that seem an inherently unavoidable part of the English language. To have to put up with puns involving a transliteration of phonetic sounds of a language without an alphabet, now that is really pushing things to a level which is completely ridiculous.

My Top 10 Movies of All Time

I've recently gone through and updated a list of all the movies I can recalling watching, either in the cinema, on VCD/DVD (or even on Laserdisc!), as well as on TV. It came up to well over 800 individuals titles. I also attempted to assign ratings for the majority of them, though it proved difficult given that I had seen some of them a long while back. However, in the process of doing that review, I have chosen my 1o favourite movies of all time, as of the start of 2009. In no particular order:

The Shawshank Redemption
Singin' in the Rain
Cinema Paradiso
Pleasantville
Double Indemnity
Patton
Pan's Labyrinth
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Casablanca
Raise the Red Lantern

A full list of all the movies I rated **** (out of ****) will follow, once I have finalised it. Comments on my choices are welcome.

Australian Open Predictions

The first major sporting event of the year, the Australian Open Tennis Grand Slam at Melbourne Park, is about to start. Here's my attempt at crystal ball gazing.

The men's draw is by far the easier to predict, with four strong favourites for the title. They are world No. 1 Rafael Nadal, three time champion Roger Federer, defending champion Novak Djokovic, and current World No. 4 Andy Murray. Despite being World No. 1 Nadal must be considered, on paper, the least likely of the four to win. He is probably the weakest on hardcourts (his least favourite surface), and the only one yet to reach a hardcourt grand slam final (he has two semi-final appearances at Australia and one in the US to date)

Federer must always be considered a strong favourite at any of the Slams (perhaps excepting the French), and has a sterling record at Melbourne Park. He also has the added incentive of tying Pete Sampras' record for most Grand Slam singles titles were he to win. To win the title though, Federer will have to overcome his recent hoodoo against Andy Murray (though to be fair, Federer comprehensively beat him in last year's US Open final), and the psychological blow of last year's straight sets semifinal loss to Novak Djokovic. However, few will doubt that if Federer is fully on song, he will be the favourite in Melbourne.

Andy Murray was made the joint favourite to win in Australia by the bookies after his excellent early season form, raising the surprise and ire of Federer in the process. Federer does have a point - it seems a bit presumptuous to make a man who has never won a slam the favourite over a player who has won 13 of them, even if he has beaten Federer twice in a month. Nerves certainly got the better of him last year in New York and he folded in straight sets in his first Grand Slam final. Common wisdom has it that the first slam is the hardest to win - just ask Federer about that - but it remains to be seen whether Murray is seasoned enough, and has the nerves to win it all in Melbourne. Also against him is the heat. Murray's fitness levels have improved enormously over the past year, but the grueling conditions and close to forty degree heat definitely puts him at a disadvantage. If he fails to win his matches quickly in the early rounds, and gets stretched to a five setter or two, there are certainly valid questions as to how well his fitness can hold up.

Novak Djokovic must be considered a contender given he is the defending champion, but his recent form hasn't been the best. Still, the high bounce hardcourts of Australia does suit his game quite nicely, and the 'Djoker' should be a good contender for a quarter-final or probably a semi-final place at the least. If his game comes together, he can win it.

Wildcards: Jo-Wilfred Tsonga is a very dangerous player when he is fit, and he was absolutely tremendous in destroying Nadal in the semi-final last year, hitting 49 winners in the process. He had also dumped out Murray, Gasquet and Youzhny to reach the final. He was again plagued by injuries in 2008, and we can only hope that he has recovered his fitness and form in time for the tournament. Marat Safin, the mercurial Russian (finalist 2004, winner 2005), is always a threat, provided he comes out on court with his head screwed on right. His possible third round clash with Federer is certainly going to be intriguing. Tommy Haas is another old hand plagued by injuries in recent years. His hard hitting game (especially his strong forehand) is suited to hardcourts. He is a three time semifinalist in Australia, most recently in 2007 (he missed the 2008 tournament due to injury). He could well make a decent run.

To say that the women's draw is open ended would be a major understatement. World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic has never won a grand slam despite making the final of the US Open in 2008, World No. 2 Ana Ivanovic was a finalist in 2008 and has a strong chance, but in truth any of a dozen players including the Williams sisters, any of five Russians (Safina, Petrova, Kuznetsova, Zvonerava, Dementiava) not to mention other possibles like former champion Amelie Mauresmo. All this despite the absence of Maria Sharapova through injury, and the two top Belgian players (Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin) who retired the previous year.

Let's start with the Williams sister. Serena has an excellent record at Melbourne Park but her recent form has been patchy at best. Still, she has proven on more than one occasion that she is more than able to play her way into a tournament, including the Australian Open. She has to be considered a top contender. Venus, on the other hand hasn't had the best of runs down under, getting knocked out more often than not in the Quarter-finals or earlier. Her record, and a lack of matches in the latter part of 2008 will count against her, so she is a dark horse at best.

Now to the two Serbs. Jelena Jankovic managed to claim the top ranking in the world without having won a slam (though she made the final of the US Open losing to Maria Sharapova), and without winning that many tournaments in general. However, she has a good all-around game. However, she has also been plagued by niggling injuries, often in deeper stages of big tournaments, so she has to hope that her health holds up. Ana Ivanovic was a finalist last year, and must be seen as another real threat but she too is battling poor form. It all depends on whether Ivanovic can play her way into the tournament and gain momentum in the process, if she does, expect to see her in the semi-finals at least, and if things go well, she might well go all the way this time.

The upper tier of woman's tennis has been inundated by Russians and the Russian girls will pose a strong challenge even without their belle, Maria Sharapova, who is out injured. Among them is Dinara Safina, Marat's younger sister. Like her older brother, she has a big serve, and powerful groundstrokes. Unlike him, she seems to have her head screwed on right for the most part. Still there are questions whether she will be able to outmaneuver a quicker and more agile opponent on court.

Interestingly, the Russian with the best current form is Elena Dementieva. She's won her first two tournaments of the year and is in fantastic form. Her achilles heel has always been her serve, which is often as fragile as a champagne flute, especially when she is under pressure. Her consistent baseline play, both on the forehand and backhand side, will probably not be enough to overcome that weakness. Kusnetsova is an old hand at the grand slams by now, and has a consistent game, but she will have to play above herself to beat some of the higher ranked players. The same could be said, in many ways of Petrova.

So, it now comes a time when I have to stick my neck out. For the men's side, I predict a Rafael Nadal vs. Andy Murray showdown in the semifinals. Federer will extend his streak in grand slam semi-final appearances, though Djokovic might fall in an upset. It is a really tough call but I expect Rafael Nadal to cement his growing dominance of the men's game and claim the title after avenging his loss to Murray at the semifinals of the US Open. He might well face Roger Federer in the final, where he has the opportunity to extend his dominance over Federer once again.

For the women's draw, it is much too fluid and open to call, but Ivanovic, Jankovic and Serena Williams are the three favourites for me. I will go out on a limb and predict that Jankovic underlines her status as the top ranked women's player by claiming her first slam.

Addendum: My prediction for the Men's draw proved correct. It was indeed Nadal vs. Federer, and Nadal did triumph but what a classic, what a close match it was! He has clearly gotten into Federer's head and the Swiss superstar completely broke down at the prize presentation ceremony.

Atheist Bus Ads

I was very interested, and somewhat amused to read about a new campaign, led by a group of humanists in Britain and supported by such well know luminaries as Richard Dawkins and A.C Grayling, to fund ads on buses calling into question the existence of God. The campaign, which has raised over 250,000 pounds so far, involves a bus ad stating: "There's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life". I applaud the campaign for coming up with a creative and open way to question religious belief, and the seeming monopoly of the religious communities in propagating their views. That it was done without the usual condescension and stridency of previous attacks of religion by atheists (Dawkins being a prime example) is surely to be commended.

What was predictable was the response from some religious groups. Christian Voice called the ads "offensive to Christians and others believing in a single God". Adding considerably to the irony is the fact that the campaign was conceived by Ariane Sherine in response to adverts on buses funded by religious organizations, notably "Jesus said" ads, and others providing a website URL which propounded such gems of wisdom as the threat of "spending all eternity in torment in hell" unless one believed in Jesus. Sherine wanted to find a way to propagate the humanist message without being as blunt as the Christians. If she had seriously wanted to match like with like, she should have come up with slogans like "God is a figment of your imagination, stop being delusional" or "Grow up and send God the way of the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus". Clearly tact was lacking in one of the advertising campaigns, and it is evident which one it was.

It is worth noting that there were varied responses from Christians to the ads. Some groups welcomed them, saying that it would re-open debate on metaphysical matters, which have far too often taken a back seat to practical ones in our modern consumerist society. However, the response from Christian Voice is telling because it only serves to underline the gross disparity facing humanists and atheists with regards to spreading their views. Any attempt to question the organized religion or faith is seen as offensive or derogatory or an attack on the foundations of British society and heritage. It is not clear to me why the church, or any other religious institution should be entitled to such a free ride. A Christian quoting bible verses on a street corner is evangelising, a humanist and atheist attempting to put forward their views in the same locale is seen as inciting religious hatred and insulting believers. This double standard is wrong, and must be stopped.

A even more hilarious response was an attempt by one Christian group to have the ad campaign stopped by lodging a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), complaining that the atheist bus ads didn't meet the regulatory body's requirements on grounds of "truthfulness and substantiation". Without any irony whatsoever, the letter to the ASA claimed that the ads "completely fails to reflect the true state of the current scientific argument" regarding God. Since God exists, any attempt to question that notion must necessarily be false advertising. According to them, the evidence of God - in the form of "personal experience, complexity, interdependence and the beauty and detail of the natural world" - has proved largely incontrovertible, and made the statement "God probably doesn't exist" patently false. Adding to the letter's ridiculousness, it was soon revealed that large chunks of it were cut and pasted directly from websites. It seems that the group isn't even capable of independent thought, or aware of copyright regulations.

One excellent suggestion has been made regarding the atheist bus campaign. James Ball, who was a fellow PPEist at Trinity College, Oxford, suggested using this campaign as a controlled experiment to prove the efficacy (or not) or religion. We now have a number of buses going about London with atheist ads, and a number of buses going about London with religious ones. We also have a large control group (buses advertising cosmetics, shoes and the like). Let's track the punctuality of all the various buses and see if a larger proportion of the buses advertising the existence of God run on time as compared to questioning his existence. As James rightly pointed out, beating London traffic is surely something that requires divine intervention in some shape or form.