Jim Granter

Back in the “60s”, which by now is recognizable as a period  which started for a lot of us in the late 50s and went on well into the 70s (and is still going on for some!), we bought our Che Guevara t-shirts and posters. We are not disappointed or disillusioned with that Cuban revolution and the way things have turned out so far. In the light, though, of what we learn about the high standards of health care and literacy in Cuba in spite of the USA trade embargo and the end of support from the USSR, we read of the lives of dissenters from the political system as manifested in restrictions to free speech. In a recent NYRB article, two Human Rights Watch workers write that “Some outside observers contend that the existence of around two hundred political prisoners has little impact on the lives of the 11 million other Cubans…. [however] .. The political prisoners may be small in number , but they are a chilling reminder to all Cubans of what has been a basic fact of life for half a century: to criticize the Castros is to condemn oneself to years of enforced solitude”. Cuban prison cells for solitary confinement of 3 feet by 6, Guantanamo Bay, the Gulag, rendition, darkness at noon and it ain’t volcanic ash causing it.

In the meantime we have our coalition government proposing to cut quangos by 2% of the £80+ billion (that’s £80+ billion) they apparently cost to run, to help to reduce the “national deficit”.  That should do it.

Anyway, to get away from it all a good read is always available, the current one being The Family Mashber by Der Nister which promises to enthrall for some time to come. Makes a change too from a prolonged period of Am Lit.

Just spent a satisfyingly idle hour on Flickr looking at a slideshow of one photographer’s work. He clearly loves America – classic cars, people and buildings; lots of sheds! To the question “How do they get those cars so clean?” the only answer must be time and effort. Which is probably what lies behind everything worthwhile really. Yes, those cars are worthwhile in my book. Whole slideshow takes me back to my trips in April ’88 and June ’02. Nostalgia is what it used to be. Thanks Marty.

Finding out about podcasts, how to use them, what equipment (I would say “kit” but somehow that makes me smile and squirm a bit) do I need and do I just want a player ? So far have managed to download 3 programmes, including one about the architecture of the New York Subway System, another called Americana with Matt Frei from the BBC talking to Americans in his Washington studio about a wide range of subjects. I look forward to having access to such stuff when and where I like which doesn’t mean being near the computer, as well as sometimes using the computer to “Listen Again” on the BBC  to their matchless output. BBCi is already a favourite source of entertainment.

Spent 2 hours on Thursday with F Scott Fitzgerald in our course – Into the Jazz Age: American Art and Literature 1900 – 1930 – run by Keele University at Silverdale Library. Introduced by our great tutor John Toft, the man was depicted, dissected, discussed, delighted in, debated and distributed in the form of extracts from Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby. Clive James includes eloquent praise for Fitzgerald in his Cultural Amnesia, putting into words whatever it was I thought or felt about him without knowing it and then some. Someone mentioned the shirts scene in Gatsby and away we went for a humorous minute led by John on the subject of his own shirt collection! Then I missed most of the next 20 minutes as he asked if anyone knew the name of the actor who played Tom Buchanan in the 1974 movie and I knew but couldn’t get the name off the tip of my brain. By the break, we had gathered the phrase “American Dream” to find out the origin of, too. Get Bruce Dern from memory, but this one’s going to be a search engine job.

Thought the start back Wednesday literature class The Century’s End didn’t happen today on account of treacherous roads and pavements under snow and ice but it may just have been a week early.  Borrowed a copy of York Notes on one of our set texts – Dracula – from the only other local resident / student who made it to the library just in case today was correct. We agreed that at our stage of studying we could cope with the dilemma of having York Notes available before getting on with the actual reading of the text. Even worse for me though as she has annotated the Notes! Well, I guess I’d just better get on and read the actual book if I hope to both enjoy it and have anything to say about it myself. Must visit Whitby again, hopefully this summer; it’s ‘on the list’, just after Chicago…..

I am really enjoying this collection. The stories transport me in a few lines to whichever part of America they are set in and I’m usually there without a break ’til the end of the story. This isn’t the same as the ‘sense of place’ so often commented on by writers on Faulkner and others, as Wolff moves easily from desert to suburb to city as he tells us of his characters’ troubles, delights and then often more troubles, usually of the spirit. His endings for me form a major part of the experience as they ripple out beyond the last sentence into the silence in which I gaze up the garden or out into the night while the story’s effect endures.