Booker Book 1 : Netherland

Finally finished Netherland by Joseph O’Neill last night.

That may sound like I had to labour through it for the last few days and didn’t enjoy it all that much. I hope it sounds like that. That was the exact tone I was going for.

First off, linky to complete review, which seems to be some sort of ‘rotten tomatoes for books’. Which reminds me: why isn’t there a rotten tomatoes for books?

Back to the book. I don’t want to sound too harsh so I’ll mention firstly that I’ve never ‘gotten’ cricket. In fact I’ve never really been interested enough to try to understand it, and when a variety of cricket types have tried to explain the rules, the purpose, the passion etc I have usually ended up politely asking them to save their breath. This book is almost entirely about cricket. So I started off at a distinct disadvantage.

The book is also set in New York, and I haven’t been there since I was a kid so haven’t developed a post-adolescent appreciation of the magic of the city that never sleeps even if you want it to. Many of the more positive reviews of the book are by NY-based publications and writers, which is probably significant.

It’s well-written, to a point, but while the story didn’t really get me interested that would be forgivable if I had enjoyed the characters, or on any level started to care about them. The fact is that by the time I was three quarters of the way through the book I was hoping the narrative would abruptly end with the untimely death of ‘our hero’ Hans. That’s how much I liked him.

The premise of his isolation leading him into the world of New York cricket is fine, but the fact that Hans spends the duration of the novel being unhappy, alone, and playing cricket with people he barely speaks to did very little for me.

Last year I absolutely hated Anne Enright’s The Gathering, and she won the prize… so maybe this is a good sign for Joseph O’Neill. Personally I’m moving on to Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture hoping for something a little, nay a lot, more interesting…

DICK

Dick Roche has announced his (‘personal’) opinion that a second referendum on Lisbon is the only way to go. We got the answer wrong, or something.

So if the fine people of Wicklow accidentally re-elect him next time around, does this mean we can ask them to try again til they get it right?

FF are now clarifying that he was expressing a personal opinion and not the party policy (yet) – which scares me, if only because they are clearly relying on the electorate’s inability to remember this moment in six months time when they decide the dust has settled and start printing ballot papers.

Gracious in Defeat 1.01

Darren Sutherland lost his semi-final this morning, but in doing so he was the very embodiment of how to lose something well.

In an interview immediately after the fight, no matter how much the interviewer tried to get him to admit his disappointment, he was brilliantly upbeat and instead emphasised the greatness of his achievement of a bronze medal.

It’s a pity this doesn’t happen more often, not just in Irish sport, but generally – but I hope Darren is rewarded with a sweet sponsorship deal at the very least. This guy should be talking to every kid in Ireland.

Are we a nation of begrudgers?

All week there’s been a fair bit of moaning in certain circles (notably the Indo letters page) about the fact that we didn’t win the olympics. There is a winner, of course, and it’s not us. We didn’t get 50 golds, so why did we bother. What a fantastic bit of sporting spirit.

At a time when fewer kids are playing sports, because after all what’s the point if you’re not the winner, surely this isn’t the attitude we need to be advertising from every corner? I always thought the whole purpose of the Olympics was the achievement of participation, and where possible the breaking of personal or even national records. How wrong I was.

It was one thing to have abstract discussions of our supposed failure, but when the chef-de-mission of our Olympic team joins with the criticism then you really have to take a moment and call a halt.

The Olympics aren’t even over, we have three boxers competing for medals over the next few days, and here we have team officials declaring the whole expedition a failure. That’s a fine example for kids who have been watching, and cheering, and practicing their sprints so they can qualify for the 2018 games. A fine example.

Admittedly there were at least three of our athletes who were (badly) injured and shouldn’t have been put out to compete. But the rest, those who came eighth in the world, or fourth in the world, or made it to the semi-final, or won their heat, or beat their personal best… they deserve every bit of support we can give them.

Possibly the point that is being skirted around is that the financial investment isn’t being made in Irish sport, and given that this is the case, expecting world class results is nonsense. We are a small country – really, we need to remember that – and can’t be expected to win every race we enter. However the government needs to think more broadly about the importance of physical activity at all levels, from toddlers to OAPs, and part of that is investing in the ’sports stars’ so that kids have someone to look up to.

Personally I think that Derval O’Rourke deserves every bit as much praise for her olympic effort as she does for her previous medals, and would really hate to see her being declared a ‘failure’ for having a bad day. I think Paul Hession was outstanding and did us proud. I think Scott Evans – Ireland’s first male badminton Olympian – deserves just as much praise as both of them.

I know the three boxers will be welcomed home and cheered, and supported – and sponsored, and funded.

But I think that every single member of the Irish Olympic squad deserves that support, and that funding – and if we don’t give them the welcome they have earned when they get home, then we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Post Interrupted

A quick one before I get to my main post.

Some bloke on the radio just said that given that there’s a recession happening, people should stop hiring ‘potential mothers’. So, women in other words. All of us.

Great stuff.

Creep

Not the Radiohead song. The ex-Westlife singer.

Three years to the day from when his former bandmate finally felt like he was able to be honest about his sexuality, and for that matter his longterm relationship, and Brian decides nobody cares about him anymore so he should get himself some attention.

Not content with having his two daughters (the ones he deserted?) paraded on television once a week while he sips cocktails in Oz with the woman he left their mother for, he has to get on the magic bandwagon called ‘Worlds Worst Role Models’.

The worst part is that Mark Feehily is very, very unlikely to lower himself to BMcF’s level and call it like he sees it. In fact it is unlikely that anyone associated with Westlife will want to engage in the nasty business of contradicting the lovely little hate message the Creep has just broadcast to the world. They wouldn’t even need to start a fight, just publicly state that the man is clearly a muppet and they’re glad to be rid of him. But they won’t. So not only does one (former?) role model encourage a new generation of bigotry, but the people in a prime position to put a stop to it step back and keep their mouths shut.

What’s that quote about what is required for evil to prosper??

Via unarocks, via mulley… linky linky…

Here we go…

Right, so here’s the divided-by-day list of all artists for Electric Picnic 2008. Will add the times once they are published but for the moment get listening and try to decide who you can bear to miss!

All links are for myspace where available, for music-taste-testing purposes.

FRIDAY 29^th

At First Light
Booka Shade
Carbon Silicon
Christy Moore
Dawn Landes
Digitalism
Dobet Gnahore
Fovea Hex
Giveamanakick
Goldfrapp
Gomez
Jape
Joan As Policewoman
Kila
Kissy Sellout
Late of the Pier
Little Green Cars
Lou Rhodes
Miles Electric
New Young Pony Club
Pinky
Presets
Sigur Ros
Terry Callier
The Gutter Twins
The Stunning
Think of one’s camping Shaabi
Tiga
Tinariwen
Wallis Bird
Yard Dogs

SATURDAY 30^th

A Trak
Antibalas
Arno Carstens
Black Acid
Boss Volenti
Cathy Davey
Crash Ensemble
Crystal Castles
Cut Copy
Dan Deacon
Digital Mystikz
Duffy
Elbow
Franz Ferdinand
George Clinton
Grace Jones
Halves
Havana Son
Josh Ritter
Juana Molina
Kormac feat BS Quartet
La Rocca
Large Mound
Laura Izibor
Liam O’Maonlai
Lisa Hannigan
Mercedes Peon
Midnight Juggernauts
Mornington Singers
Msg
New York Fund
Oppenheimer
Ra Ra Riot
Rachel Unthank and the Winterset
Santogold
Silver Apples
Soha
Super Extra Bonus Party
Teitur
That Petrol Emotion
The Breeders
The Faint
The Flaws
The Herbaliser
The Kills
The Radio
Tindersticks
Tobias Froberg
Ulrich Schnauss
Underworld
Wilco
Yurodny

SUNDAY 31^st

Absentee
Adrian Crowley
Black Lips
Candi Staton
Ceili House Allstars
Chromeo
Conor Oberst
Cowboy X
CSS
Deadmau5
Dengue Fever
Dublin City Big Band
Dublin Gospel Choir
Emmy The Great
Famer’s Market
Faust
Florence & the Machine
Foals
Gemma Hayes
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.
Grinderman
Hadouken!
Ham Sandwich
Hayseed Dixie
Hercules & Love Affair
Iarla O’Lionaird’s Invisible Fields
Ibrahim Electric
Jah Wobble’s Chinese Dub
Johnny Flynn
Leila
Mahmoud Fadl’s United Nubians
Mark Geary
Micah P Hinson
Michael Franti & Spearhead
My Bloody Valentine
Pivot
School Of Language
Sex Pistols
Sinead O Connor
Stephen Malkmus
The Congos
The Dodos
The Gossip
The Roots
The Urges
These New Puritans
Turin Brakes
Wolfgang Haffner
Yacht

The Fees Thing

Hands up who didn’t see this one coming?

For months now, the heads of the universities have seemed a bit too cheerful, and it seems likely this was because someone had a word in their ear.

Somehow, in the last few years, while steadily cutting funding to third level just to see how much longer they could last, the government and the aforemention uni-heads have managed to convince the outside world (or is it just mainstream media?) that bringing back fees is not only the best solution, but a perfectly reasonable one.

And they announce it two days before leaving cert results are published.

One thing I have noticed in the last few days is that on the likes of boards.ie, it’s the Leaving Cert thread on fees that is having the biggest debate. I sat in McDonald’s yesterday listening to two girls who are going into 5th year talking about how they have their college courses picked and planned, but even they are now worried that by the time they get to the CAO form there’ll be a big red mark at the bottom saying “Remember kiddies, arts is €5,000; science is €7,000 and if you want to study medicine just hand over your first born”.

The basis of free fees is a simple one: that education is a right, not a privilege that should be confined to the lucky few who can afford it. Those who argue that free fees are not helping to encourage those from less well-off families to go to college are missing a key point – that the very existence of fees means people who don’t have a spare €20,000 won’t even consider it, let alone apply, let alone get to the stage of finding out if there is a functioning grant system that might take some of the edge of that much debt. If you think telling someone that they won’t be up to their eyeballs in debt until they have their first job, chat to a few people who are just about reaching that level now and see how they’d feel about having that kind of loan to pay off when they’re trying to get their post-college lives together.

On the grant system, it is significant that this has been, and remains, unfair, unequal, and fundamentally flawed. Fees or no fees, the system needs to be changed so that those who need assistance are the ones getting it, and so that that assistance is vaguely in line with the real cost of going to college. Nobody with any knowledge of the current grant system can dispute that neither of those scenarios are currently the case.

The means test for the grant is perhaps the most relevant aspect in relation to the current fees debate – not least because of the abstract comments about ‘better off’ families being the only ones affected. Currently ‘better off’ families are the ones who can’t get the grant. What’s that? Giant loopholes? Wealthy farmers and PAYE workers dancing their way through that loophole? No doubt the DES will mend their ways and suddenly develop a fair system for means testing. I mean, look at the medical card system. That works, right?

Two major arguments are being made in favour of the return of fees.

The first is that colleges are underfunded. This is undeniable. Core funding for third level has been massively cut in the era of the supposedly knowledge-based celtic tiger, but what they’re not telling you is that this isn’t about to change. In fact, if fees were to be re-instated, you can bet your bottom dollar (well, if you haven’t just used it to pay off your gargantuan student loan) that core funding will be cut further. Better still, if the department stunned everyone by ensuring that it really was only the ‘many millionaires of ireland’ that were paying fees? It wouldn’t generate enough cash to properly fund one college, let alone all of them. But these are the minor details that BattMan is leaving out.

The second reason that seems to have been decided upon by the Pro-Fees PR gurus is that the ‘many millionaires’ are spending money on private secondary schools instead of college fees, and that this isn’t fair. Is this some attempt to start leeson-street-wars? Sure, this is going to get the goat of many, particularly those not inclined towards trying to buy points for their offspring. But dealing with what is definitely a major problem in the secondary education system shouldn’t be used as an argument in favour of third level fees. It’s greed, and nothing more, on the part of the DES, and frankly there are much better ways of killing grind culture. Like pointing out the percentage of those who failed maths today and who had been doing grinds for two years.

If the ‘many millionaires’ decide to pay for their child to attend a fee-paying private college, most likely because their child didn’t get the points to get into a free-fees institution, then that’s fine. That is their choice. But it is much, much more important that every child in the state has the option of gaining further education in some form, somewhere, without their financial background impacting on them having that choice.

The biggest issue, as I see it, is that the bar has moved.

Primary education was once seen as the bar – then it was made free to all, because it was ‘required’.

Secondary education then became the bar – and guess what, it was made free to all.

Third level education is now the bar. A degree of some sort is increasingly the measure for employers in terms of hiring a candidate, and in fact increasingly huge numbers are going on to a minimal further year of study beyond that so they can have ‘the edge’.

If you take back the freedom to go on to third level, you exclude a huge proportion of society from the option of reaching that bar. Yay inequality.

I could go on, but I won’t – for now.

The ugly side of what should be a great day

I don’t know where to start with this one.

Yesterday the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre released guidelines for young people to stay safe tonight when they are out celebrating their Leaving Cert results.

Today, newstalk’s morning show discusses a compensation body in England who seem to be routinely cutting compensation levels for women who were intoxicated when they were raped.

And plenty – by which I mean the majority – of callers are reminding the world that being a woman apparently makes it your responsibility to not get raped and your fault if you are.

I’m trying to take long deep breaths on this one, but it’s not working.

About a month ago, Una Mullally wrote a piece in the Tribune about exactly this issue. That the responsibility is somehow put on the rape victim to avoid being in a situation, while the rapist is essentially let off the hook because the victim was drunk, or dressed a certain way, or walked a certain route home.

The rape conviction rate here is sickening. There is no other word for it. Other than, perhaps, terrifying.

It is terrifying to think that tonight someone, or more realistically some people, will have their lives torn apart, and that we live in a society which will most likely not punish the perpetrator of this horrific crime.

Worse still is the fact that every girl getting dressed to go out tonight, somewhere in the back of their minds, knows that.

As one caller to the newstalk show today pointed out, “If you stand naked in the middle of Grafton Street, No Means No”. What would it take for that notion to be become a reality?

Hunting for books

Booker longlist reading brings with it an unreasonable level of frustration.

I made the mistake of looking for a few of the books in the Eason’s in Dundrum Town Centre yesterday, and really should have known better.

For a long time now, Easons has been the bane of my life – it pretends to be a book shop, newsagent, stationery shop and school supply store in one relatively small space and in doing so succeeds in none of its intended purposes. Meanwhile DTC think they have the book shop thing sorted so they don’t get in another supplier. The news that Hughes & Hughes are due to move in soon is an apeasement of sorts but I really hope they’re getting enough space to be browse-worthy.

Anyway back to Eason(’s?) – and the near total absence of booker longlist materials.

I had my list (via iPhone), I went to the three shelves of non-bestseller fiction. I stared in vain.

Then, after much use of expletives, I thought “wait a second, two of these are Irish”. So I move to the small little ‘Irish fiction’ section (admirable if tiny).

Sebastian Barry…start of the B’s…top shelf…right between… eh… where’s Sebastian Barry?

That’s my question for today: where is Sebastian Barry?

I’m not looking for all of his work, I’m no longer even looking for the specific booker book. Just show me something that suggests that you haven’t got something against the guy. Just one little copy of one little book.

But no. No Sebastian Barry. None.

As I slumped out of the shop in a misery I spotted a copy of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, so I got a little less grumpy, but there’s no fun in buying only one of the booker longlist at a time. It seems less triumphant.

So I’m reduced to heading off to Borders at the weekend and giving my book money to a nasty multinational with a big warehouse full of books…

Whimper.