Strange Truths
Mark Twain said: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isnt. As we are exposed to more and more bizarre news, as the old rules of civility break down, it becomes increasingly difficult for a writer to satirise or even dramatise social conflicts or interpersonal relationships. What was once parody is now a story in the papers. Granta 60: Unbelievable (distributed by Penguin, special Indian price, £4.99) tells us about life that is chaotic, fragmented, random, discontinuous; in a word, absurd.
The book opens with the reaction to Lady Dianas death. Did the world over-react? Hours after the news broke, Diana was buried under an avalanche of generalities. The myth-making machinery that cranks up at every celebrity death turned a troublesome Princess into an easy-to-identify archetype. One tabloid called her the most saintly woman who ever lived, who with her charitable activities brought hope to thousands.
The media banged the drum; but the drum had to be there. A gullible public wanted a reality based on myths, not on the cold light of reason. But did everyone get taken in by the hyperreality of the media? A wide cross-section of people felt a distinct sense of unease. The symbiosis between the object of the media (Diana), the media and the customers of the media made many feel that unqualified grief was a kind of a heresy.
Ariel Dorfman, known to us for his play, Death and the Maiden, traces the events that led to the death of Salvador Allende in September 1973. It is a blow-by-blow account of how the President and his friends were shot in the presidential palace and how he narrowly escaped.
Dorfman said that the President understood that the people held the government but did not hold the power. The phrase was more bitter than it seemed, and more alarming, for Allende carried a legalistic germ that held the seed of his own destruction. In the final battle, Allende was still bound by legality.
Did humanitarian aid like Band Aid and Live Aid really help famine in Sudan and Ethiopia? Who are the people attracted to the worlds most awful places by urges, half-hidden even from themselves? Romantics who are open to the irrational, who want to walk on the dangerous edge of things. Most empire builders Clive, Warren Hastings had this but they were backed by firepower.
Deborah Scroggins traces the story of Emma, a British aid worker involved in Sudans civil war. Emma had ideals but ones that were misplaced in a revolution that had galloped off in unanticipated directions. Whether Deborah saw through the hopelessness or not, she stuck on, married a Sudanese warlord, and did whatever she could.
Where did it lead to? All the aid went down the tubes with the corrupt. Thousands starved to death while an underground economy flourished on the aid. Did it do any good? None at all. It didnt even help Emma; she died a mysterious death at the hands of the people she sought to help.
Dan Jacobsons Arguing with the Dead, Jonathan Levis The Srimshaw Violin and Clive Sinclairs A Soap Opera from Hell are interesting, if only because they show how deeply divided we are within ourselves.
l V.V.