Gifts for progressives – Part 2: And over to you… December 22, 2009
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Okay. We’ve a little under three shopping days to Christmas. So, work with me here, any suggestions in addition to those of Brian Hanley for gifts that are suitable for those of us on the left? Books, DVDs, whatever. Cheap and cheerful preferably. What are your five or ten items that fit that bill?
Now there are some ideas that strike me… a recent history of a still contemporary Irish political party, History Ireland subs, a nicely entertaining SF novel by a guy called Adam Roberts entitled Yellow Blue Tibia which has some – ahem – unusual theories about just why Stalin was so Stalin-like (to be honest it’s not at all left wing, but set in 1986 and including Chernobyl, alien invasion, the Soviet Union in the throes of the arrival of Gorbachev and Mormons it’s sort of there)… I’m currently working through Robert Harris’s Lustrum set in Rome during the time of Cicero and well worth a look at for anyone jaundiced by power politics then and now… Anyhow, I’m sure others can do better than that…
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Tubridy’s discussing Strumpet City with a few guests right now. One of the guests says it’s turned him into a ‘rabid socialist’. Never thought I’d hear that in RTE.
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For DVDs I would recommend looking at the reviews by Louis Proyect
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/ a marxist with an interest in film. He usually suggests where you can get the DVD’s he reviews.
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Someone who’s very keen on crime fiction asked me to get her some of the Martin Beck novels, the Marxist crime novels by Sjowell and Wahloo which started the whole Scando crime fiction boom.
Not had a chance to look at it myself in any depth, but on a cursory glance it looks good.
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They’re good. The Laughing Policeman is probably the best and I like The Man Who Went Up In Smoke too.
I think the most inspiring left wing DVD of all, and regarded as one of the finest documentaries ever made, is Harlan County USA made by Barbara Kopple in 1975 which covers a bitter coal miners strike in Kentucky. Thought provoking but also immensely entertaining with some footage you wouldn’t believe. I’d imagine any regular on this site would enjoy it immensely and would emerge refreshed for the New Year. Can’t recommend that one enough.
I watched Strumpet City myself during the year and thought it wonderful, like an epic version of a Play for Today.
The Lost Revolution of course. And just as good for anyone who likes history is When The Lights Went Out by Andy Beckett, a magnificent history of the English seventies by someone who overturns a lot of the right wing cliches about the period (I like his observation in the intro that he’s fed up hearing that punk, which began in 1976, was a reaction to The Winter of Discontent, which began in 1979). Anyone who hasn’t read Postwar by Tony Judt or Dark Continent by Mark Mazower would enjoy either of those two histories of Europe in the 20th century. On a lighter note, Reasons to be Cheerful by Mark Steel does a lovely comedic number on the joys of left-wing political commitment and has surprising depth.
As for mag subs, one for The Wire is great if you know someone who’s (very) adventurous musically and one for Sight and Sound would be a well appreciated gift for anyone who takes movies seriously.
Finally a number of great British films came out on DVD over the last year and while I think they would be enjoyed by anyone intelligent with eyes in their head, they are undoubtedly slanted to the left. Terence Davies Distant Voices Still Lives is the most beautiful film ever made about working class life in this part of the world, (the inside of the house is the spit of my fathers childhood home in St. Francis Terrace), Bill Douglas’s Comrades is a great left-wing epic about the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their exile to Australia and Winstanley by Kevin Brownlow is about the Diggers. I think on other sites I’d have to apologise for the subject matter, but not here. They are very good movies, ideology aside. Both Davies and Douglas made trilogies, the former about a man’s life in Liverpool, the latter about growing up in Scotland which are terrific. And speaking of the Diggers, The Devils Whore which was on Channel 4 is great, a kind of a swashbuckling version of The World Turned Upside Down. It was written by Peter Flannery who did Our Friends In The North, the greatest work of political art of recent times and one of the greatest of the past half century. Or that’s what I think anyway.
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On books, just started Perry Anderson’s The New Old World on the European Union. Seems good enough at this point to submit as a recommendation. Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher is excellent, as is Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman, both on Zero books. Mark Mazower’s No Enchanted Palace, about the United Nations, is on my wish list, as is Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided. For those inclined to lament the absence of music with a political edge, Rhymesayers have a few excellent hip-hop records that might appeal: P.O.S.’s Never Better; Brother Ali’s Us and BK One’s Rádio Do Canibal.
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Mention of Perry Anderson reminds me that any of the books in the Verso Radical Thinkers series are decent stocking fillers for the theory inclined among us.
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Any suggestions for kids? Serious question. I’m still appalled by my kids’ reaction to Disney’s “Rasputin” years ago which went something like “why did those baddies kill princess Anastasia?”.
Where do you even start explaining that one to your kids from a marxist perspective?
Any counter propaganda suggestions for under-10s?
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Wall E, The Incredibles, Happy Feet, all of which are great and also, I think, on the side of the angels (or our side as it’s also known).
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I’m not at all sure that The Incredibles, entertaining though it is, is “on the side of the angels”. In so far as it has discernable politics, they seem to be of the Yank Libertarian variety. Ratatouille, by the same director, seems to me to have a similar inclination.
The Incredibles, for instance, contains an astonishing amount of sloganeering against the crushing effects of egalitarianism on the talented.
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Coraline was good, but it’s probably too scary for kids under 9/10. Politics aren’t explicit, but there’s nothing obnoxious in it (that I recall) and the heroine is independent and resourceful.
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The Incredibles, for instance, contains an astonishing amount of sloganeering against the crushing effects of egalitarianism on the talented.
The… well, fascist… undertones of The Incredibles would knock this off this list for me (and the mockery of the liberal Jewish teacher by the blond Aryan Supermen – literally – I found sinister).
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Not sure about recommendations for kids, though I am familiar with an episode of Pocoyo in which the friends lay waste to what appears to be a city devoid of inhabitants, just for pure enjoyment, only to discover that they’d been terrifying the (barely visible, from their perspective) faceless urban population. They never had stuff like that on Bosco.
Here’s a list of videos not to buy for kids, though:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15677_9-most-racist-disney-characters.html
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Stieg Larsson’s novels, obviously.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson
Wilkinson & Pickett’s The Spirit Level:
which everyone here’s no doubt already read.
Anything from AK Press, but especially David Graeber.
And for the kids, bicycles. Exercise and ideology in one. 😉
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The Long Emergency and the Omnivores Dilemma. Two books that influenced my take on the modern landscape more than any big “P” political book I read since I was a teenager. I picked up the works of Thomas Paine last winter and really enjoyed reading through it. Even my right wing friends were moved.
I already saw that my wife did indeed get me the collected writings of Tone for Christmas (it wasn’t my fault. really, she left them under some wrapping paper that I picked up to wrap her presents, or at least that’s my story).
The wife is putting togther a book based on her family’s history from the 17th century onwards. So I’ve bought a shitload of books on Hungarian history and with the little one hopefully learning to talk in the coming year I’m putting up a notice, Romanians, Slovakians, Hapsburg descendents, Russians, Turks, and Serbs are officially on notice.
Merry Christmas
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ON DVDs I would reccomend an oldie – The Molly Maguires. (Eamonn Cork’s mention of coal mining in the USA reminded me of it)
and a relatively new one – “Waltz with Bashier”. At least i think it came out on DVD this year.
The former is a pretty powerful story of an Irish American proto-Trade Union and their travails agains the mine-owners. There was a sherlock holmes book made of it, dont you know? Sean Connery has a few good lines in it.
Waltz with Bashir is an extremely powerful film. Really pushing the boundaries of animation as a medium. Have to say its quite brave for an Israeli to make too. That state doesnt come out of it looking too good.
The Reader was probably the best film I saw this year. That’s worth a purchase on DVD I would suggest.
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Interesting you mention Robert Harris. I may check out his book as I quite like the period.
Over the past few years I’ve found Tom Holland to be a particularly engaging History writer.
The best historical novel I’ve read for a while was “The Religion” by Tim Willocks, set during the Ottoman siege of Malta. A bit macho-ey boys own stuff at times but extremely well researched. The epic power of the story overcomes a number of the books flaws.
I also read Shantaram, along with what seemed the majority of people on planet earth. I liked it at first but would actually warn people off it now.
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I got Waltz With Bashir for the brother for Christmas so I’m happy to hear it getting a recommendation here. I twinned it with Persepolis, book and DVD, which might be of interest as Iran kicks off again after the Ayatollah’s funeral. And with all the references to the revolution in 1979, anyone expressing an interest in it would benefit from reading Ryzsard Kapsucinski’s great Shah of Shahs. And with all the Berlin Wall coming down nostalgia at the moment, any of Timothy Garton Ash’s books written at the time make interesting reading, as does The File written soon afterwards. And now I’ll stop recommending stuff before WBS twigs that I am a secret agent for Amazon.
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I have read some of Kapsucinski’s African stuff but not his stuff about the shah. Good recommendation.
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I think the most inspiring left wing DVD of all, and regarded as one of the finest documentaries ever made, is Harlan County USA made by Barbara Kopple in 1975 which covers a bitter coal miners strike in Kentucky. Thought provoking but also immensely entertaining with some footage you wouldn’t believe. I’d imagine any regular on this site would enjoy it immensely and would emerge refreshed for the New Year. Can’t recommend that one enough.
A -lightly – fictional account of an earlier battle the same age old struggle in the same hills is Matewan by John Sayles, starring an improbably young Will Oldham.
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And magnificent stuff it is too. As are City of Hope and Eight Men out by Sayles.
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A -lightly – fictional account of an earlier battle the same age old struggle in the same hills is Matewan by John Sayles, starring an improbably young Will Oldham.
I went into Lazer in Dublin a good few years back to see if they had a copy of this, having seen it when it was first released. The fella behind the counter looked (very unenthusiastically) through some sort of database and told me it had been ‘deleted’ (i.e, no longer available). The internet wasn’t as handy then: http://www.amazon.com/Matewan-Jace-Alexander/dp/B00005Y7R6. I’d also recommend Perry Anderson’s New-Old World. Seanachie’s list of Best Films of the Decade might provide a couple of ideas on DVDs.
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The Everyman Classics have beautiful new hardback editions of the Best of Frank O’Connor and the Novels of Flann O’Brien. Put the box set of all Heaney’s Poems read by himself on your ipod and listen to one a day – but listen at least three times. Donal Og Cusack’s book and Eoghan Corry’s ‘The Irish at Cheltenham’ for sports fans. And there are people out there who still haven’t seen The Wire: there’s no excuse at all for that.
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Probably too late to get delivered in time for the christmas …. I could put together a package(s) of Old Left Wing Election Material, an unusual gift….
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Does anybody here read New Internationalist? It does reviews, and I have womdered about some of the films, music items or books as gifts.
As for children, my approach on Sunday with the six-year-old niece was to try and steer her into some semblance of ethical decision making when I was heloing her buy gifts for her parents and grandparents (an avuncular task I am now on the third siblingdescendent with). I gave up, though, after an hour of trudging.
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In the straightforward political books, The Spirit Level – Why more equal societies almost always do better and Prosperity Without Growth. Economics for a finite planet make a nice pair.
But more fun, and with at least a little politics (of the Dominican Republic variety) is the brilliant Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – my book of the year (by a nose, from Lost Revolution).
Of course, from the point of view of minimising resource use, you should probably just skip the gift purchase and wish them a Happy Christmas. 😉
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It may yet come to that Damian…
Tomboktu, I feel your pain being that soldier… There’s only so much one can do for nieces and nephews…
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Jon Savage ‘ Englands Dreaming’ although panned by many notably John Lydon is a resonable attempt to place the punk experience in a social and politial context. A christmas present from my late mother, no doubt revenge for subjecting her to years off the Damned and the Fruit Eating Bears Etc.
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A good companion piece -if a little mad – is Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus, which place Punk-Rock in an even wider context that takes in 13th century Cathars, the Levellers (the original ones not the Brighton crusties), Critical Theory and Situationism.
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I’ve just picked up Paul Flewers’ The New Civilisation, on responses to Stalinism. Haven’t read it, but based on Paul’s track record I’m expecting great things. As for novels, still haven’t shaken the Kelley Armstrong addiction. I do notice though, for fans of the great Harry Harrison, the first three novels in the Stainless Steel Rat series have just been republished in a handy omnibus. Anybody who hasn’t read The Stainless Steel Rat needs to – it should be on the school curriculum.
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How about what must be a Progressive Democrat or blueshirt car sticker?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/IRELAND-Map-Flag-EIRE-Irish-Bumper-Sticker-Vinyl-Decal_W0QQitemZ370305558747QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM?hash=item5637ee68db
I’m going to get ‘When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order’ by Martin Jacques tomorrow in the mad dash last minute shopping.
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World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s an oral history of the zombie wars and Brooks comes out of the George Romero tradition of zombie as social commentary. The audio book has different actors for the different voices. Those who read for it include Henry Rollins and Mark Hamill, and well worth downloading for those who know how. As an aside, when the Vatican was over-run with zombies the Pope and the Church leaders left for Armagh, which is the seat of the roman church in the post-zombie world. Plans for a movie version are already afoot, but I feel it may focus more on the battle scenes – World War Z is different in that it’s the first real attempt at a high politics account of a zombie outbreak, despite its oral history structure – especially the Battle of Yonkers where the American president launches a full-scale attack against an enemy with no concept of death and dying.
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It’s a cracker… I see though, and maybe this will allay (or exacerbate) your fears, JM Strazynsci of Babylon 5 fame is writing the script… he’s not bad on the politics and certainly is of the socially conscious US left.
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BTW IIRC things don’t go so well for North Korea in it. Not well at all.
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22 million underground. nobody knows if they’re zombies or not. Cuba ends up as a world economic power, and Iran and Pakistan go to war because they don’t have the emergency forms of communication which Pakistan and India built up over the years.
I hope it does turn out well, not only for the social commentary, but also because we’ve never had a big budget “Macro” story of a zombie outbreak. It’s always a small group of survivors battling the zombies on their own. This time, we’ll have entire armies and presidents making decisions to sacrifice part of their populations to save the rest.
The audio book is great, by the way. Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, Alan Alda, it really brings it alive. 🙂
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This is great news. That son that I had just about given up on in another thread is a big zombies man. I got him that World War Z out of the library a while back. Is there any chance he could be saved for progressive politics by reading the likes of World War Z? Christmas truly is a time of hope.
Just on the zombies – are they zombies first or do national characteristics have anything to do with it? For example, would there be any chance of a Pakistani Muslim zombie siding with a non-zombie Pakistani Muslim against an Indian Hindu zombie – a sort of national all-species(?) alliance, if you follow?
Clearly we could bring this closer to home. What might be the implications of all this for the national question? Think about it over the Christmas, Conor and WBS – it deserves its own thread in the New Year.
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Joe, part of the book deals with Pakistani-Indian relations, and says that the history of mutual hostility between the two States actually saved them from all-out war with each other. When the outbreak reaches their borders, they are able to communicate through hotlines established to preserve the peace. When nuclear war does break out, it’s between Iran and Pakistan who, in the confusion and madness, don’t understand each other’s actions and don’t have mechanisms in place to prevent such a situation.
It also has apartheid-style politics saving the human race, as well as a wonderful piss-take on 21st century celebrity when a webcam fortress is overrun by ordinary folks trying to protect their kids, and two characters based on Bill Maher and Ann Coulter end up fucking each other as their world ends. I particularly like that as Bill Maher is, in my mind, as big a c**t as Coulter. Maher’s a fucking asshole.
As for the zombie infestation uniting Ireland, well, seems as the Pope himself moves to Armagh I wonder how that would play out in the Free Presbyterian Churches of Antrim and Down.
Ireland has produced its own zombie-flick, “Dead Meat”, and a credible contribution to the genre it is too.
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sorry Joe, you could do worse than get your son the four Romero “dead” movies – avoid Diary of the Dead, it stinks.
Night of the Living Dead – made in the late 1960s and saturated with the issues and tensions of the civil rights movement
Dawn of the Dead – the masterpiece. 1970s and rampant consumerism.
Day of the Dead – 1980s. Less political, but still a great movie, and Romero’s personal favourite.
Land of the Dead. 2000s. Capitalist exploitation, terrorism, unjust wars.
Possibly the best commentary on rampant consumerism and servile media though, is John Carpenter’s “They Live.” Absolutely wonderful. Essential viewing – even though Carpenter is not exactly what you would call a left-winger!
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Joe,
I take it given the zombies’ relentless concentration on their material needs, that we can take it that international zombie solidarity trumps national or religious particularlism amongst them.
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Ok Gari. So could we knit this into a stages theory for Irish unity in some way? I have it! – Peace, Work, Democracy, Class Politics, Eat Each Other.
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Thanks Conor for those suggestions above. I’m pretty sure he’s seen all of them but I’ll have to find out does he get the subtexts. I know I probably wouldn’t!
I’ve another (!) great idea. You know the way it’s so hard to get the kids interested in the great socialist works – the Communist Manifesto and so on. Well apparently it’s the same with Pride and Prejudice in colleges around the world. The kids just didn’t get it. So this lecturer slightly re-wrote it (same text with bits added, bitten off, chewed and digested) and published it as Pride and Prejudice with Zombies. It’s on the shelves of all good bookshops and the college kids are literally gobbling it up.
So let’s get working on The Communist Manifesto FOR ZOMBIES, What is to be done WITH ZOMBIES, The State and Revolution AND ZOMBIES and, lest we forget, The Irish Industrial AND ZOMBIE Revolution.
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the Irish filmmaker Aaronrip ran with the idea of Zombies as social commentary with his short: Wallets Full of Blood: Houses on the Moon
It’s about the bank bailout.
As regard The Communist Manifesto WITH ZOMBIES there’s no point in doing the same “with zombies” with Milton Freedom as “Capitalism and Freedom” IS for zombies.
Similarly, Newstalk 106 FOR ZOMBIES is simply a tautology.
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Peace, Work, Democracy, Class Politics, and Eat Each Other in Several Courses?
Dead Snow, the Nazi zombie film, is supposed to be excellent, though I haven’t seen it.
And we have zombie capitalism right now, so perhaps zombie socialism (it’s even alliterative) is what we need.
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Garibaldy, I’ve seen Dead Snow and it’s good fun. Very self-aware in a “scream” type of way, but also quite funny and scary in places. Zombie Nazis, I mean, it writes itself 🙂
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Thanks Conor. I’m well looking forward to seeing it. Genius – but like you say, writes itself.
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Forget zombies. What are progressives getting for their cats?
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A ball of string. He gets more pleasure from that than any of the swanky cat toys on offer.
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Ours is getting this basket-cum-throne with tail-pad (though I don’t think she’ll be sharing).
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Some classic text on non violence to staunch the flow of massacred mice and birds (there are four cats and I live in the countryside).
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Hmmm… the cat.
Food.
It’s Christmas every day for him.
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If you hurry, there’s a new left-wing bookshop open
in Cork city, called Solidarity Books, on 43 Douglas Street. It
was a good selection of new and second-hand left-wing
literature. You may be able to pick up some presents there by
Xmas Eve.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/95154&comment_limit=0&condense_comments=false#comment263643
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Nice one.
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Sonofstan re 21
Talking of Situationalism. ‘ Society of the Spectacle’ is a fucking hard slog but the section on the formation of modern religions is instructive not least at this time of year when we are bombarded with semi-religious crap. So the next time someone puts ‘ When a child is born’ on the pub juke box, engage them with a bit of Guy Debord. Then get out fast.
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Another writer worth worth putting on a list who is definitely political, without fitting into the category of books that are labeled “politics”, is Barbara Kingsolver. I first came across her (before she was picked by Oprah) because one of her novels was mentioned in a review essay I read somewhere about the representation of Native Americans in fiction. Of the novels named in the essay that I checked, hers was the only one that suited my tastes: it had a good, plain, old-fashioned narrative with a plot with a beginning, middle and end, that didn’t involve text written in a dream sequence (or what-ever the substance-induced equivalent is) or a post-something experimental style that leaves you wondering why you bothered reading it. (She has two novels involving that character, and I cannot remember which was the first one I read.)
Then, by mistake I bought High Tide in Tucson (on 9 March 2000, I see from the date I wrote on the pre-title page), which turned out to be a collection of essays rather than a novel. In the essay “Jabberwocky”, she describes her decision to leave the USA because of the hostility towards her for her opposition to George Bush’s (senior, though that appendage wasn’t needed then) decision to go to war in the Middle East. At a protest against the war the following:
She did indeed “leave it” (the USA) to live in Spain for a time, and explains in the essay how while she was there she worked through want it meant to her to be a patriot and decided that being one required her to return to the USA and stand by the values she holds and argue her case despite the abuse.
Other essays in the book are less directly or overtly about a political issue, but I think that the collection could be an excellent introduction to political thinking for (um, stereotype warning!) a teenager in your life who might need a not-overly didactic introduction to how politics doesn’t have to be about pickets, marches and meetings.
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Perhaps this is off topic, but I find a real disconnect here. I’m struggling like to stay in my home, forget about my country. So Always find it slightly off putting when someone exiles themselves to think about what America means to them. I mean I get it, Americans can be assholes and their politics are not always fully formed. Well who am I kidding? Lately our politics are half cocked, forget about half formed, but to jump ship? Just the ability to do so without leaving everything behind is mind boggling to say the least.
Though to be honest having never read her work and having since googled her I may just have to pick up a book or two. You never know.
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“I find a real disconnect here. I’m struggling like to stay in my home, forget about my country. So Always find it slightly off putting when someone exiles themselves to think about what America means to them”
I don’t know the full circumstances in which she left the USA. I should re-read the essay, but I do not think it was to think things through, but rather because she was pissed off with the USA.
I don’t know if she had the security of a steady income and a cash cushion to allow her the freedom to up sticks and go. Nor do I know if she was earning so little from freelance journalism in relatively small-sales literary magazines, a small number of minor novels, and (I’m speculate entirely here) teaching English that she decided she could live that insecure lifestyle that just as well in Spain as in the USA.
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Id say you’d like JG Farrell’s trilogy ‘Troubles’, ‘The Siege of Krishnapur’ and ‘The Singapore Grip,’ Tomboktu.
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I might’ve said this last year but a subscription to History Ireland is always good value, as is a sub to The Dublin Review, a quarterly which has been going now for nearly 10 years, invariably with an essay or two which might interest some of those who prop up the bar at the Cedar Lounge.
Music fans with young kids? The soundtrack of Where The Wild Things Are by Karen O and the Kids is worth a listen (though I/we haven’t seen the movie yet). It’s better than the fucking chipmunks anyway…
A stocking-filler for someone interested in Dublin history? Just under a tenner gets you Dublin in 1707. A year in the life of the city by Brendan Twomey, one of the Maynooth Studies in Local History series. His author’s biog on the back cover says he ‘has worked in banking for over thirty years’ but I wouldn’t let that put you off…
I dunno if this especially applies to ‘progressives’ but the new version of Connect 4 rawks. Happy Christmas to WbS and the rest of yiz.
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Someone gave me Laurence Rees’ Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West’.
Has anyone out there read this one – and if so, what did you think?
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