Kiwi couture: some books I’ve read

I’ve finally read Oooooo……!!! by Hone Tuwhare, and it is such good fun… I don’t read a lot of poetry, but this is far from the staid stereotype. Mostly about sex and seafood, with a fair few mentions of Tangaroa (sea god) and jazz musicians; full of unpretentious grammar and spoonfulls of onomatopoeia, every second poem ending with “Yea!” or “ooooo” or the like. I’m probably missing all the subtleties and what but who cares? What I’m gettin’ is great.

Also on the local literary front, Patricia Grace’s Tu was also excellent. It’s about a soldier in the 28th (Māori) Battalion in WW2, fighting through North Africa and Italy, and about life back home, New Zealand, Māoridom, and Wellington in the ’40s, and various family and personal drama. Somehow mixing all those things into quite a short novel seems to fit and it is of personal interest since my grandfather fought in the same battles described in the book, and I’ve even visited some of the places. The sacrifices and struggles of Māori fighting in a very foriegn war on behalf of British New Zealanders – who still treat them badly at home – in the hope of acceptance is one of the novel’s themes, and an important one.

Completing my trifecta of good New Zealand novels lately was Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. (For the record I also read some books I don’t like so much, but don’t feel so inclined to write of them now.) It’s not really a New Zealand novel in that it has little to do with New Zealand, except for a surprise guest appearance of Wellington for about two pages, but it’s written by a kiwi so it counts here. It’s won some prizes and is about a teacher who reads Great Expectations to his class on a Bougainville during a civil war in the ’90s. Again a mix of themes, about love, and childhood, and the escapism of storytelling, and other stuff besides. Interestingly Jones narrates the story from Matilda, one of the student’s, points of views… while the teacher character Mt Watts, the only white man, who he could know best, remains largely unknown. But it works, and seeing both Dicken’s London and the developing civil war through the innocent child’s eyes is mysterious and enthralling.

On a separate front, I finally showed me the Monet the other day by visiting the Impressionists exhibition at Te Papa. Seems like the rest of NZ decided to too because there was a big queue from opening time and apparently it’s been like that every weekend for weeks. People even came from other cities to see it. Worth the wait for me, it was excellent. I’ve seen a few other Monet paintings around and about but to see a whole stack of them together here was cool, even having to fight through the elbows to see each one. I also restarted French lessons a few weeks ago, so I’ll be able to raise this blog to whole new levels of pretentiousness starting soon. Everyone knows that if you want to be cool and write in English you use as many French words as possible. Watch this space.

Raskolnikov Right?

I’ve been re-reading Crime and Punishment lately. Lately being the last three months or so (when I started re-reading I thought it could never take as long as first time through. Now it looks like it’s going to be even longer). If you don’t know of it, this is wikipedia’s plot summary:

Crime and Punishment focuses on the mental anguish and moral dilemmas of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, an impoverished St. Petersburg ex-student who formulates and executes a plan to kill a hated, unscrupulous pawnbroker seemingly for her money, thereby solving his financial problems and at the same time, he argues, ridding the world of an evil worthless parasite. Raskolnikov also strives to be an extraordinary being, similar to Napoleon, believing that murder is permissible in pursuit of a higher purpose.

The novel mostly deals with the psychology of Raskolnikov after he commits the crime, and his relationships with his family and acquaintances. It doesn’t deal much with whether or not he was correct in his premise… but I think it’s an interesting question. He thinks that some crimes are permissible to some people, if they would not be able to achieve some greatness without committing them. I think it’s true, in theory. If you can save 100 people with the death of one, is it right for that one to die? I find it hard to say no. Or at least, can think of specific situations for which I find it hard to say no. The pragmatic problem is of knowing for sure that 100 people can be saved, and that the cost would only be the death of one, and that is where Raskolnikov makes his mistake… He thought it would be a simple action and for the overall greater good, saving his own life from poverty, and his sister’s from submission, and at a much lesser cost. It eventuates that he achieves neither of those things, and is forced into another murder unwillingly in order to hide his first.

I don’t think he was right in killing Alyona (and Lizaveta), but I understand his theory. Isn’t there a philosophical name for that kind of morality, in which the total net gain or loss of each action should be calculated to know its moral right- or wrong-ness. Its opposite to the kind of moral rule that upholds that X is never right, no matter what its consequences (also has a philosophical name that I’ve forgotten).

So that’s the theory. But practise is different.  Since we shortsighted mortals can never know the consequences of any action or inaction, I think we should stick to the absolute laws that we currently use.