Just Finished Reading: The Black Ball by Ralph Ellison [53pp] 

This was a short collection of short stories from the acclaimed author of the 1952 classic Invisible Man. All four were about different aspects of the black experience mostly in the US – from casual racism to targeted violence.  

For me the best of the bunch was the last one – and not just because it was based in the UK (actually in Wales). Called ‘In a Strange Country’ it told the story of an American black sailor in WW2 looking around the local area after his ship had docked to unload supplies in Britain for the war effort. Set upon by several white American soldiers he is rescued by some locals and taken to a local pub to recover. Bought a pint of beer by one of his rescuers he really doesn’t know how to respond and struggles to understand how white men are treating him so well. Slowly he begins to understand that the locals are treating him simply as a ‘Yank’ and as someone who came from another country to help them fight a common enemy – Germany. Later taken to the local hall he is introduced to more people who look past his skin colour and who appreciate his more than decent singing voice. 

I’ve heard of several real incidents like that after an increasing number of American servicemen – both black and white – were based in Britain during the run-up to D-Day and after. As the American services were still segregated at that point some insisted on segregated pubs and other venues when based in the UK. Without such a history here, they were denied that request which caused some friction between white and black Americans some of whom were forced to either mix or leave for the first time in their lives. I image both sides were hit by the significant culture shock. I’ll see if I can find some history books covering this interesting topic from a US and UK perspective.  

Dear GOD we're getting **ANOTHER** Prime Minister....!!! I did think he'd have more balls to fight for it but I guess that's par for the course. So, SEVEN Prime Ministers in TEN years.... ONE every 18 months.... Don't you just LOVE stable government.... [lol] Let's hope the NEXT guy lasts a bit longer..... I guess we'll see in 3 years (or less).

Happy Birthday: Audie Leon Murphy (June 20, 1925 – May 28, 1971) was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, and has been described as the most highly decorated enlisted soldier in U.S. history. He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at age 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded.

Murphy was born into a large family of sharecroppers in Hunt County, Texas. His father abandoned the family and his mother died when Murphy was a teenager. Murphy left school in fifth grade to pick cotton and find other work to help support his family; his skill with a hunting rifle helped feed his family. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Murphy's older sister helped him to falsify documentation about his birthdate to meet the minimum age for enlisting in the military. Turned down initially for being underweight by the Army, Navy, and the Marine Corps, he eventually was able to enlist in the Army. He first saw action in the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily; then in 1944 he participated in the Battle of Anzio, the liberation of Rome, and the invasion of southern France. Murphy fought at Montélimar and led his men on a successful assault at L'Omet quarry near Cleurie in northeastern France in October. Despite suffering from multiple illnesses and wounds throughout his service, Murphy became one of the most praised and decorated soldiers of World War II. He is credited with killing 241 enemy soldiers.

After the war, Murphy embarked on an acting career. He played himself in the 1955 autobiographical film To Hell and Back, based on his 1949 memoirs of the same name, but most of his roles were in Westerns. He made guest appearances on celebrity television shows and starred in the series Whispering Smith. Murphy was a fairly accomplished songwriter. He bred quarter horses, and became a regular participant in horse racing.

Because Murphy had what would today be described as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), then known as "battle fatigue", he slept with a loaded handgun under his pillow. He looked for solace in addictive sleeping pills. In his last few years, he was plagued by money problems but refused offers to appear in alcohol and cigarette commercials because he did not want to set a bad example. Murphy died in a plane crash in Virginia in 1971, shortly before his 46th birthday. He was interred with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

[I only knew him as one of my Dad's favourite actors. I knew that he'd served in WW2 but I had no idea he was SO decorated. Impressive!]

Just Finished Reading: Istanbul – Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk (FP: 2005) [333pp] 

On reading this interesting memoir by the Nobel Prize winning Turkish author I was pleased that I had read a history of modern Istanbul beforehand. This is, however, no criticism of this work. The previous history of the city gave me a good – indeed excellent – foundation to understand the deeper context that pervaded this work. The author was born in Istanbul in 1952 (around the time that the previous history book ended its narrative) so grew up in a city in the midst of change – from ancient to modern, from East to West, from religious to secular. It's not surprising that such a transition moulded and transformed the other into someone, in effect, living between two worlds and being nostalgic for a world that had been ‘lost’ (and was indeed crumbling or actively burning down around him) whilst struggling to exist in an officially sanctioned modern western looking world that was unfamiliar to him. It's odd how the official focus was very much directed at the west as an icon to look up to and emulate whilst the countries, and cities, rich Ottoman history was officially ignored, sidelined and sometimes actually denigrated. I think that would confuse anyone – never mind a sensitive soul searching for himself whilst walking the streets of an ancient city full of a rich culture from across an extensive fallen empire. I wasn’t at all surprised that his first impulse was to paint in order to reflect what he saw every day on his youthful wanderings. 

This was a memoir of painful honesty. The common theme throughout was the deep melancholy he felt growing up in a place that had not only seemed to forget its own history but had effectively been ordered to do so. Looking back was frowned upon. Wanting to look back, needing to look back to make sense of things was questionable and quite possibly disloyal. The only way to face was forwards and westwards. The authors quest for who he was and where he fitted into the grand scheme of things – especially within a Turkish historical context – was complicated (to say the least!) by his families emotional and financial slow-motion collapse throughout his young life. Despite being born into a moderately wealthy family (from money accumulated by his grandfather) his father continued to make bad financial decisions throughout his life bleeding money and slowly impoverishing the extended family. On top of this the authors father was often away from home and all too often with women other than his wife. This added complication was woven into the narrative almost as a microcosm of the city itself as it progressively crumbled, collapsed and was neglected into picturesque rubble. 

Apart from the often-beautiful writing (you can certainly tell why he won the Nobel Prize for Literature) the thing that I really liked about this book was the many photographs scattered throughout the text. Many of them were good and quite a few were simply excellent – sometimes breathtakingly so. I was MOST impressed. This book gives a great feel to the city of the author’s birth. He makes it seem exotic and familiar, dilapidated and picturesque, crowded and abandoned, timeless and ephemeral. I found it quite haunting. I look forward to reading more by this author and will likely be returning to him later in the year. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in the liminal spaces – in more ways than one - between the west and the exotic east. 

Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely

A *very* valid question and ONE reason why I have trust issues............