pumpkinstrokemarrow

While gently snuffling the soup we got to pondering about the state of affairs when our state spends a relatively large amount of money on things which go bang, manages to shoot the wrong person at Stockwell and manages to sit by while some pirates make off with a couple of senior yachties somewhere in the Indian ocean. As I understand things, the senior yachties had been told that going for the sail they had in mind was not a good plan but they persisted. But then, when they got caught by the pirates, according to the DT, there was a boat load of marines - more or less special forces - about fifty yards away who were instructed not to engage. Now this strikes me as barmy. We are dealing with serious people who are going to need a good smack before they desist - and this is likely to involve some casualties on our side. In this case, my line is that the whole pirate show should have been surrounded. It made quite clear that there was no way they were going back home. That they could either release their captives and surrender themselves for trial in some relatively civilised country or be shot on the spot. We do not negotiate with people like this in such circumstances. Apt to be a bit rough on the victims and their families in the short run but there are going to be a lot more victims and families if we carry on the way we are. Standard of debate on this matter in the papers I see more or less non-existent. Maybe I should start reading the 'Economist' again.

Less seriously we moved onto pondering about the educational guru or something who had opined for a newspaper that three greatest novels in the world in all time were 'War and Peace', 'Nineteen Eighty Four' and 'Ulysses', in that order. First thought was that the desire to rank things of this sort was rather silly. To rank suitable things according to weight, height or even IQ is relatively straightforward. Maybe even useful and/or necessary in some contexts. But to rank novels is hard. What criteria do one use? Number of qualifying educational courses for which the novel is a set book? The number of pages? The value sold? The number sold? Number of times cited in qualifying learned journals? Number of times cited in the BBC version of 'Desert Island Discs' between 1950 and 2000? Number of times lent by qualifying libraries? Some weighted average of the foregoing? And what does it all mean when you have your ranked list? What is the point?

Second thought was that we did indeed have copies of all three masterworks. Go to the top of the class. I have probably spent the most time on the first and the least time on the third, which means that they have got the order right to that extent. I have probably read the first two all the way through several times each, leaving out the historico-philosophical nonsense which decorates the first; the last just the once, topped up with reasonably frequent dipping.

Third thought, why 'War and Peace' rather than 'Anna Karenina', which some respected authorities believe to be the better book? Why 'Nineteen Eighty Four' at all? A slight and rather dated piece compared with the other two. Why not 'Brave New World', which while dated, albeit in a different way, turned out to be a lot nearer the mark? What about 'Don Quixote'? What about 'A la Recerche du Temps Perdu'? What about 'Middlemarch'?

All in all, rather silly. One would do much better asking 'tell me about a book you enjoyed last year'. Which I suppose is what it all amounts to. But why don't they say that in the first place, rather than going for all this rankism?