http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php Copyright 2012, Julian Evans Julian Evans en-US SPHPBLOG 0.4.8 http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry071220-213501
The book is longer than I expected or wanted it to be, possibly because I didn't have time to make it short. In my present condition of muddled euphoria this long book's virtue seems to be chiefly that, having written it, I have discovered what I wanted to say.

I have also discovered this evening that there is a book jacket to look at on Amazon, so I can offer a link here too. The photograph is by David Montgomery, of Norman Lewis in a small plane over southern Mexico in 1970, the kind of plane he disliked because of their habit of falling out of the air. The man sitting behind him is a Huichol shaman, Ramón Medina Silva, who he was travelling with and who was murdered shortly after their journey.]]> http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry071220-213501 Julian Evans Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:35:01 GMT http://www.julianevans.com/blog/comments.php?y=07&m=12&entry=entry071220-213501 http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry071210-190846
Not having blogged for nearly a year, it becomes clear that when I am writing elsewhere, in other words at work on the book I am writing, a biography of Norman Lewis, there is a mental tendency for book and blog to be incompatible. Some deep immiscibility is at play here, and I am not sure why.

It may be to do with the destinations of the two thought processes: the one a strictly private circulation, under my hat, for an audience of one so long as I'm writing, and the other an unguarded public stream out into the wide unknown. Can a book be written in the company of that unknown audience? It doesn't look like mine can.

Perhaps I am coming out from under my hat.

]]> http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry071210-190846 Julian Evans Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:08:46 GMT http://www.julianevans.com/blog/comments.php?y=07&m=12&entry=entry071210-190846 http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070222-114925 Prospect magazine sent an invitation to contributors to respond to the question "Left and right defined the 20th century. What's next?" This was my answer to the question.

"The next hundred years will be a battleground between spirit and technology. The imperialist reach of technology is already global in ways that large sections of humanity, not least Islamist extremists, are hostile to. But it is not just terrorists who will be against the west’s technological and economic hegemony. Democratic citizens will voice increasing unease at an empire of innovation that dumps its products on every street and its garbage sacks in every corner of the planet.

"So political battle lines will be drawn between ideologies of spirit—expressed in everything from Islam and other religious faiths to eco-campaigning—and ideologies of technology, mostly in its economic formulations. One truism of the west is that we could all do with less. Somewhere in the psychological territory the two sides will be fighting for, there will be the warring instincts of those who believe we find our identity, as well as our deepest pleasure and harmony, in intimacy and relationships, with nature as much as each other, and of those who obtain their satisfactions in the desire-based, individualistic life-support systems sold to us by technology."


There is, it occurs to me, a literary parallel here.

In the 21st century the battle lines of the word will be drawn between those who believe it's for self-expression -- in other words, the first-person confession of life in a technological state -- and those who believe it's an instrument for recounting the plight our spirit is timelessly in, and our eternal adventures in trying to extract it.]]> http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070222-114925 Julian Evans Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:49:25 GMT http://www.julianevans.com/blog/comments.php?y=07&m=02&entry=entry070222-114925 http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry061221-221723

A historian, David Cannadine, was speaking on Start The Week on BBC R4 this week about his biography of Andrew Mellon. Mellon, an American banker, art collector and eventual philanthropist, led a scandalously dull life, from a biographer's point of view, until he did the decent thing and invigorated his story by forcing his lively young wife into adultery out of sheer boredom. A public divorce followed. This episode, Cannadine confessed, became a spice and godsend to his biographical efforts.

I have been a great fan of Cannadine's writing, notably his fiery Class in Britain. But there's something problematic here. The biography industry surely has a problem when distinguished historians use the genre as a way of filling up empty cultural spaces -- choosing subjects because they haven't been written about before, regardless of whether their lives, their lived histories, have anything to show us. (Mellon's might have been of interest, but Cannadine didn't say so.) At such a point modern biography, always an under-theorized genre, becomes simply a high-class version of box-ticking. Cannadine's expressed relief that his subject had an appalling marriage bespeaks both a certain cynicism, and a drift into the voyeurism that is modern biography's last and worst throw of the dice.]]> http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry061221-221723 Julian Evans Thu, 21 Dec 2006 21:17:23 GMT http://www.julianevans.com/blog/comments.php?y=06&m=12&entry=entry061221-221723 http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry061218-173651
Kundera's quote about graphomania is a good place to start. I believe it. It is difficult to find fault with it. Above all, it starts by pointing to a proven period of attempted understanding. Backwards, yes, and upwards, to a place of shared human value. Beyond the mirrors of solipsism and self-publicity, whose reflected self-images, it could be argued, motivate the writing of a large number of the books published today.

So the first objective of what's written here is to outlaw graphomania, to shame it and ridicule it, drive it to extinction. To replace it with understanding, with involvement, with outwardness. Is that counter-intuitive in a blog, which exists by definition in the silence of the cybersphere? I don't know. I am an amateur, open to argument. My only area of surety is to welcome an argument. To want to raise the prospect of contact. To hope for agreement, or disagreement, in the interest of mutual understanding.

Please feel free to respond.]]> http://www.julianevans.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry061218-173651 Julian Evans Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:36:51 GMT http://www.julianevans.com/blog/comments.php?y=06&m=12&entry=entry061218-173651