What I read in February

My favourite February read was Christopher Lasch’s brilliant analysis of the family, Haven in a Heartless World. Lasch unpicks the changing nature of the threats to this foundational social institution that have, for over a century, come from social scientists, psychologists and experts in marriage and child rearing. With the authority of parents called into question, the role the family plays in society is undermined and families are weakened. Lasch’s powerful argument is that removing the moral responsibility for socialising children from families and placing it within broader society is not personally or politically liberating but socially contstricting. Here are a couple of quotations that really resonated with me: 

Formerly, it was parents who were self-righteous. Now they are unsure of themselves, defensive, hesitant to impose their own standards on the young. Forced at every turn to defend their authority by abstract standards and legitimacy, they fall back on argumentation, negotiation and covert manipulation.

And:

Critics of the concept of ‘mental illness’ would abolish the hospital only to make the whole world a hospital.

If Lasch’s argument is right and the declining authority of the family means that socialisation is handed over to a child’s peer group, schools and the media, then Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans should disturb us all the more. Doyle describes ‘social justice’ as a new religion, complete with rituals, mantras and rigidly enforced beliefs but entirely lacking in forgiveness and salvation. Parallels between today’s cancel culture and the witch-trials of a long gone era are well drawn. Doyle sensitively points out the intolerance and inhumanity that all too often lies behind edicts to ‘be kind’. 

The final non-fiction book I read was Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, which I reviewed for Spiked. This book is well worth reading for the challenge it poses to our dominant narrative of western history as a litany of sins. Biggar points out that colonialism was never a coherent ideology underpinned by racial prejudice but rather a series of events that took on a dynamic of their own. My fear is that Biggar goes too far in his attempts to rationalise atrocities and ends up apearing to minimise historical western responsibility for deaths and cultural destruction. 

When it comes to fiction, Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban is possibly the strangest book I have ever read. First published 1980, Hoban tells a dystopian tale set 2,000 years after a  nuclear war caused complete destruction. In this new world, society has completely broken down. Family relationships are tenuous, people are considered adults from the age of 12 and fend for themselves against a backdrop of brutality and superstition. Despite the resilience of the young narrator, Riddley Walker, and the author’s witty word play, this book is bleak. It is also a very challenging read: not only is Walker’s grasp of the world immature and partial, not only is he constantly moving from one place to the next, but language itself has changed. Hoban writes almost entirely in dialogue, using words and spellings as Walker. Here’s an example:

He said, ‘Wel Im the Ardship of Cambry enn I.’

I thot he wer making a joak. I said, ‘Thats about it and you bustit out befor the 1st chop too. So now its someone elses tern inside the circle innit.’

Reading this book was like watching a film without my glasses on and through constant buffering. It was only towards the end that I grasped key details of what was happening and at that point I felt I should probably re-read the book. But not any time soon.

Far more enjoyable was Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. First published in 2008 this novel is really a series of short stories, or events, all set around one town and mostly featuring, in one capacity or another, the character of Olive. Olive is difficult to like. She is snobby, interfering and impetuous - but these weaknesses make her human and they must be set against her unstinting loyalty to her husband, son and community. Coming to understand and even empathise with Olive, despite her flaws, makes us more human too.