This seems familiar ...

Had a strange experience this afternoon.  I was reading an editorial in one the national daily newspapers.  It felt strangely familiar.  Then I realised that it paraphrased a blog article I wrote yesterday on another blog.  Same observations and argument.  It didn't quite copy directly, although it wasn't far off in places.  For example, my first line:

"After three years of rapidly rising unemployment, and 22 months after the government published 'Building Ireland’s Smart Economy – A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal', it has finally set out a plan for job creation.".

It's second line:

'Coming as it does, after three years of rapidly rising unemployment, and 22 months after the Government published 'Building Ireland's Smart Economy -- A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal', the initiative is not before its time.'

The government press release didn't mention the previous report or how long since it was published; I joined the dots and worked out the length of time and I ummed and ahhed about whether to use 21 or 22 months (it was published in Dec 2008).  Nice to know that the post was worth lifting and rewriting, and I'm not too fussed about it, but is this what journalism has become, rehashing blog posts?

Unfolding space

The students are back and the university has a bit of life again after the summer.  It's kind of odd when only the staff and postgraduates are around.  I gave a two hour session yesterday detailing a genealogy of thinking about space.  I decided to try and illustrate ontogenetic conceptions of space (as something that becomes) as opposed to ontological conceptions (something that is) using a couple of videos of guerilla art; the idea that space is transduced - its a happening or an event or doing - as opposed to an absolute container in which life takes place.  I thought I'd share them as I think both are them are interesting and entertaining.  Both are set in train stations and disruption the usual socio-spatial production of the space.  Enjoy.

Review of Love, Sex and War by John Cosgrove (Pan, 1985)

Love, Sex and War is a social history of gender and sexual relations during the Second World War.  In a fascinating book, Cosgrove covers an enormous amount of ground, using a broad range of data (including official statistics and declassified reports, interviews, and newspapers) from a number of different countries, principally the UK, US, Germany, Soviet Union, Canada, France, Italy and Australia.  Chapters cover the mass mobilisation of women into uniform, civil defence, factories and farms (and the tussles over morals, home life, child care, equal pay, movement away from home, unionisation, etc), sexual liberalisation, war brides, affairs, illegitimate births, divorce, prostitution, VD rates, sex crimes (all of which soared), patterns of socialising, fraternisation with liberated/conquered populations, homosexuality in the armed forces, black propaganda, sexpionage, cinema and music, demobilisation and women losing their jobs, the moral backlash post war.  Cosgrove does well to draw all of this material together into a reasonably coherent narrative, detailing how such a large scale and total war broke down gender and sexual relations relatively quickly, and despite a moral backlash at the end of the war, sowed the seeds of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.  The text is very readable and engaging, especially when illustrated with interview data.  There are a couple of issues with structuring, both within and between chapters, but overall this is compelling social history and will make fascinating reading for anybody interested in the (r)evolution in gender and sexual relations in the twentieth century and the breakdown of conservative morality.

4.5 stars

Lazy Sunday Service

Ireland has been in the international media quite a bit this week as analysts and the markets try to decide if we're going to go the way of Greece.  Personally, I'm not convinced that we are, but neither is the situation looking good.  In fact, it looks awful.  Over half my posts this week have been on the other blog I contribute to - Ireland After NAMA. IAN provides analysis and commentary on the present crisis in Ireland as it unfolds and if you're interested in understanding what is happening here then its worth a read.  In fact, this week's posts are useful because they provide a range of graphs and charts that give a good overview of where we're presently at with unemployment, house prices, government bond yields, GDP/GNP, emigration, the office property market, and planning permissions.  All of them look like the design for a ski-slope.


My posts this week:
Financial transparency
When is a property a new propery?
Review of Smoked by Patrick Quinlan
First issue uploaded
Planning permissions, Q2 2010
What kind of mystery writer are you?
NAMA/DEHLG and school building
Review of The Green Ripper by John D. Macdonald
'Remarkable turnaround'?

Review of The Green Ripper by John D. Macdonald (Pan, 1980)

Travis McGee, salvage consultant and some-time detective, has finally found love with the lithe, Gretel.  Working at fat farm/real estate development as an all-round help – running with the fatties, coaching tennis, looking after the paperwork – Gretel has managed to stumble across a secretive organisation plotting a terrorist incident.  A fanatical religious sect, with cold war enemy connections, is trying to buy twenty acres of undeveloped land.  Only Gretel recognises one of the men, having encountered him when trying to rescue the sister of her former husband from the cult.  In order to protect their cover, the sect murder Gretel, and in so doing ignite the wrath of McGee.  Going undercover, expressly against wishes of the feds, McGee infiltrates the cult with the aim of exacting revenge.

The Green Ripper is the 18th McGee novel in a series of twenty one.  Macdonald writes elegantly in an easy and engaging style.  His characterisation is excellent, and he has a keen eye for observing and commenting on different social phenomena.  The first half of the story is well plotted and paced, unfolding in a way that draws the reader in.  The second half though lacked any real credibility.  Whilst how the religious cult operates and the motivations behind their actions seemed realistic, how they act with respect to McGee is a nonsense.  The rule of the camp is to kill all interlopers.  McGee is not only spared, he is invited into the group and becomes a confidant to all the other elite combat group members.  Then when they discover the truth, he triumphs against odds of 11 to 1.  All tense stuff, but it’s all but impossible for the reader to buy it.  I was confident based on the first thirty pages or so that this was going to be a five stars book, but in the end it tailed off to be a slightly above average affair.  There is more than enough here though to convince me to read more of his books.

What kind of mystery writer are you?

I’ve meaning to write this post for a few days but the semester has started, I’m backing teaching and it’s a crazy time of the year.  A couple of weeks ago Maxine at Petrona, responding to a post by Martin Edwards, discussed ‘what kind of a mystery reader are you?’  Martin had readers divided into two groups: "those who like to try to solve the mystery themselves, before the solution is revealed, and those who simply enjoy the story and make no serious effort to work out what is going on."  I guess I’m in the first group, though I don’t try too hard, and I don’t mind too much if there’s not much of a mystery in the book.  In fact, a few of my favourite books in the last year or so have been more about exploring a particular life or time or idea, rather than being a whodunit – Philip Claudel’s ‘Brodeck’s Report’, Dave Zeltserman’s ‘Killer’, Daniel Woodrell’s ‘Winter’s Bone’ and ‘The Ones You Do’, and Alan Furst’s ‘The Foreign Correspondent’ – all crime novels that have twists and turns, but no real revelatory moment of solution. 

It seems then that crime writers fall into two camps, those that are seeking to create a puzzle that they invite readers to try and solve as they read (or enjoy when it’s revealed), and those that are trying to do something else, such as exploring a particular idea or way of life, etc.  And my sense is that those that set up a puzzle are divided into two groups as well – those that are planners and work out the entire plot and puzzle in advance, and those where it unfolds through the writing.  I’m in the latter camp.  I have no idea how a story is going to unfold and end when I start.  My strategy is largely to keep as many people in the frame for as long as possible and see where the writing takes me.  If the story involves a murder, then who the perpetrator is will often change a few times in the journey until I settle on an outcome I’m happy with.  And the puzzles are with a small 'p' - they are not trying to come out of left field, or involve a massive twist, and I leave some puzzles unsolved (as many crimes are).  It’s the same with writing my academic books – I have no predetermined argument and therefore no idea as to how they’re going to unfold either.  The argument emerges through the writing and often the argument is open-ended.

So, what kind of writer are you – puzzle maker or social commentator or something else?

First issue uploaded

I've finally uploaded the last elements of the first issue of Dialogues in Human Geography into the publisher's online production system.  It's a new academic journal I'm co-editing for Sage.  It has a different format to other Geography journals because it only publishes forums and not individual papers.  So, there is a lead article with 4-6 commentaries, followed by an author response.  Book reviews are also done as forums with an author response.  The aim is to foster immediate dialogue around important ideas and issues.

The other journal I co-edit, Progress in Human Geography, has been ranked 2nd  in the world for citations in 2009 (out of 61 human geography journals).  It's been in the top three for the last few years, so this is another year of consolidation.  Very happy with that!  Will take a good few years to get Dialogues up to that kind of ranking.  Now onto issue 2 (the problem with editing a journal is it never ends, between the two journals nine issues a year have to go off - it's like producing an edited book every 5 or 6 weeks, which when written down scares the heck out of me!).  Best not to dwell on it.  On to issue 2 ...