Review Your Etiquette, Check Your Assumptions.

A ‘To Do’ and ‘Don’t Do’ checklist for people who want to get their books reviewed, by people they do not know.

I am a writer, journalist, editor and reviewer. It says so, on my professional profile. My field of specialty is language and literature.

Yesterday, I received a message via LinkedIn from a person on my professional platform. We had a fascinating discussion. I’m going to remove his name and profile picture and write about our exchange, here, because it is one of the best teaching exercises I have come across in my professional experience as an editor and reviewer.

The background is that he started by saying he wanted ‘to write an article’ on a book he wrote and launched late last year. Did he want me to edit an article he had written? No, he wanted me to write one! The book is huge — 600,000 words long. Could he send an online version of it? No, it only existed in print form.

It had been reviewed at the time it was launched, and had been written up in several papers, apparently. So … to be frank, I did not really understand why he wanted it reviewed again, 10 months later. It was not a second revised edition, was it? No. He said he ‘wanted it to be reviewed periodically’. The question for me remained: did he actually understand the difference between an article and a review? Did he understand that you can’t ask an independent professional to review a 600,000 word book, without checking first if they have any reason to wish to assist you? Was he a friend? No. Was he a colleague? No. Had we ever met or even spoken? No. Was I a specialist in the field he was writing in? No.

Want to know how this little chit chat turned out? I invite you to observe.

 

I opted for the direct approach. In Sri Lanka, many writers ask their friends for endorsements of their work, and while these testimonials are voluntary, and unpaid, they are not unbiased.

I needed to clear the ground.

First things first:

 

He wanted me to write ‘an article’. Did he know that I am a professional writer, journalist, editor and reviewer? Presumably yes, as my possession of these skills was why he had approached me in the first place. BUT. Did he understand that I had a pre-existing professional schedule, with inbuilt deadlines? For other projects? That had nothing to do with him, or his wishes and preferences?

Ah. 😬

 

Boundaries. And this assertion on my part received a surprising response:

 

Facts are facts, correct? It’s usual for an author or a publisher to send a review copy as a courtesy to the reviewer, who is not paid for their time and skill. It’s not an ‘inducement’. It’s a practical solution. If the review is published in a publication which pays the writer of the review, that is excellent. But that is not often the case. This way, the reviewer is given a book to add to their library, as a courtesy, or can choose to return it, if it is not of personal interest to them.

But:

To review a book, a person has to first read it. Right?

Did he expect me to buy the book? All 600,000 words of it? When its subject was not a field of special interest for me? What would I use it for? Furniture? 🤦🏾‍

I wanted to read it, before I reviewed it. Because — what sort of a review would be written by someone who had read only part of the book? But — how long would it take to read a book of that length?

 

At this point, he said all the review copies had been exhausted. He was getting the book widely endorsed, and had already had forewords for the book written by a legion of eminent specialists in the field. So the question arose again:

Why did he need a review in the papers? 10 months after the initial launch?

Clearly to renew interest in the book, as (perhaps) it had not achieved the success he wished? He claimed that everyone in the specialist field in which he worked referred to it, and thought highly of it, so that could not be the case. I received lists of names from him in this conversation of all the people who had praised the book. Many, many names.

So why did he need a review from me, a literature expert. For a work of non fiction?

To reach a wider public. To become known in the community, not just in his field of specialty amongst his peers. To increase the general recognition of his name, as an authority.

A review of an analytical and literary kind, printed in a large circulation print English newspaper, can reach up to 300,000 people in this country. And the people reading such a review would be politicians, corporate leaders, panel experts, organizers of seminars, potential clients, international advisory boards, and so on.

Was he able to openly acknowledge this?

Were the other ‘review’ articles written by people who had not actually read the book?

If so, their opinions were really not worth listening to. Were they? They would have only been able to write about the subject matter, or the themes. Not assess how well the writer had presented his opinions and facts, or his writing style, or his structure. In fact, they would really have written what he had told them to write. 🤨

You don’t ask an independent reviewer to do that. You ask your friends. Because you know they like you.

And then it would not be a review. It would be a promotion. 😐

 

Yes, it was indeed his ‘bad’. A writer wanting his book to be reviewed should have the discernment to choose a reviewer who is specialized in the field, or has enough knowledge to write an article promoting the book for public attention, or recommending it in the public interest. Would he run the risk of this independent reviewer being ‘a journalistic negative critic’? Yes. That’s what objective reviewing is. Weighing up what you are asked to review, and making an assessment that is of some value to readers, not only praising of the author.

 

 

Did he actually understand his own error? Or did he resort to shifting the blame for his disappointment? Was he asleep 😴 or awake? 🧐

 

The ‘problem’ was not that I was ‘not qualified’ to review the book. The ‘problem’ was that he wanted to prevent or discourage me from reviewing it objectively. He wanted only a positive opinion, and he wanted to control that outcome.

What can we learn from this case study of how not to approach someone you don’t personally know, for help?

DO NOT ASSUME THAT PEOPLE EXIST TO BE OF SERVICE TO YOU. THEY DO NOT.

Think before you ask someone to review your book. Do you actually want an unbiased, objective assessment of what you have achieved? Or do you really want a positive marketing endorsement, for promotional purposes?

Be honest with yourself.

Then select the person to approach, according to your honest need. Use the right terminology, when making your request. Try not to insult people when you are asking them to do a favour for you. It is unprofessional.

Be honest with the people you approach. No one wants their time wasted, or their professionalism disrespected.

Golden Opportunities

Like many people, I have been thinking a great deal recently about human nature, and specifically about the opportunism that we are seeing exposed by the stresses placed on our societies by the Covid19 threat, and the ongoing economic and social disruption it has caused.

We hear via social media and community discussion about people taking advantage of vulnerable others in unconscionable ways. People who are elderly, or ill, or lonely, or isolated. One person’s bad luck or misfortune is another person’s golden opportunity.

A lot of it goes unnoticed, in the maelstrom of daily life. The person who says they need to have surgery which is described by then as urgent and necessary, and is given a sizeable loan for that purpose, but who puts the amount in an interest-bearing account instead, and delays the surgery for as long as he can. The person who makes themselves indispensable to an elderly person living on his own, and then persuades him without witnesses present to sign over the land title deeds to his property to her.

People who invite their family and friends to invest in companies from which their life savings and the money they had invested - for their children’s weddings or their education or their own retirement - never emerge again. No accountability, no regulation, no returns. Unrecoverable loss.

The person whose schoolfriends join together to pay her child’s heavy medical bills at a private hospital, and then discover that the child had been moved by her parent to a local hospital instead, and that the person they helped had kept the balance money for herself. The tradesperson who charges a hidden commission on purchases he gets for a homeowner. The trusted bookings agent for a travel company who defrauds his employer by channelling the fees of incoming tourists into an unauthorized bank account set up by himself under a generic name, copying the letterheads and invoice forms of the company he is working for and substituting his own bank account for that of the company - to which, as an employee, he has a legal obligation not to act in a fraudulent way.

Horrified, we hear of people in public positions of authority, entrusted with the care of vulnerable children displaced by war, famine or disaster, trafficking the children they claim to have saved, using the children’s situations of poverty and economic desperation as leverage.

All these incidents show people who, when confronted or exposed, show that they really believe they were simply doing what came naturally to them in the circumstances. There was a gap in knowledge, or awareness, or capability, on the part of someone they knew, or worked for, or had been to school with, or were related to; and they felt entitled to insert themselves into that space and enrich themselves via the other person’s trust, innocence, frailty, generosity or sense of ‘old-fashioned’ honour.

At what point do self interest, sharp thinking and survivalism become exploitation? Not illegal acts, technically, but actually in fact unethical? The classic 1940s film ‘The Third Man’ shows this in a famous scene between two former friends in post war Austria. Orson Welles plays a man called Harry Lime, who is an American business operator working amidst the chaos caused by WW2, selling penicillin to the people via the black market.

When his friend Holly arrives at his request to accept his job offer to join in this enterprise, he discovers that his old buddy has been ‘watering down’ the penicillin he sells, charging higher prices and selling lower grade quality of the stock to ill and impoverished people: not selling the concentrated amounts that would make them well, but, like a predatory drug dealer, callously taking advantage of the great suffering and desperation of the people affected by the recent war. People - including children - had died as a result of the bad quality penicillin sold to them by Harry Lime. The debris of recent bombings lies around the city in which this scene is set:  the ornate public squares are deserted, and beautiful local girls are keeping company with Americans in exchange for silk stockings, high quality chocolate, and small amounts of cash to keep their families alive.

The exposure of Lime’s conduct takes place in the carriage of a Ferris wheel, in a macabre deserted amusement park in Vienna. As the Ferris wheel carriage sways, suspended high in the sky, Lime opens the door and invites Holly to look at the scene below. They themselves are so far up that the people ‘down there’ on the ground below look like dots.

He says to his shocked friend: ‘Victims? You’re being melodramatic. Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving, forever? If I offered you 20,000 pounds for every dot that...
stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you look down there and calculate how many - dots - you could afford to spare? And free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax.’

This is how an exploiter thinks. Whether they delay repaying loans given to them in good faith, or marry someone for money, or for property, or share dividends, or kill them for money, or land title deeds, the person they are extracting resources from ceases to be a human being in their eyes, but becomes a ‘mark’, a target. They look at them and see only how much money they can make from them. And they always say, as Lime does, ‘There’s no proof against me’. Indeed, it may be difficult to prove the crimes of these people, as so much of what they do is covered up, or obscured, or overly reliant on eyewitness reports, or described as ‘hearsay’ or ‘conjecture’ or ‘false accusations’ by the legal defenders they hire with the money they have unethically appropriated.

‘Nobody thinks about human beings,’ asserts Harry Lime, closing the door of the carriage. ‘Governments don’t. Why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat. I talk about the suckers, and the mugs. It’s the same thing. They have their Five Year Plans. And so have I.’

Harry Lime’s self-justifying monologue in this scene is very famous. I believe Orson Welles claimed to have improvised some of it, immersed in character as Harry Lime. The most famous speech, known as ‘the cuckoo clock speech’, takes place as they come back to ground and Lime takes his leave of his former friend, whom he has just, in a brief and menacing sequence, implicitly threatened to kill for knowing too much about his illegal activities, up in the carriage above the desolate city:

‘Don’t be so gloomy ...After all, it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said - in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly.’

Well, well. As young Elizabeth Bennet asked her favourite aunt, in Pride and Prejudice, 200 years ago, where does prudence end, and avarice begin? At what point do we say ‘this is criminal’ when the perpetrators themselves describe it as ‘self help in times of other people’s trouble’?

Masks and Musical Chairs

This is what I think the next 18 months is going to be like: an extended ride on a merry go round of anxiety and hilarity, interspersed by bouts of boredom and frustration. Because whatever we would all prefer to believe, there’s no proven and tested vaccine yet discovered that can provide immunity to COVID-19. 

The numbers of infected who are (or not) tested or diagnosed, who die or recover, whose contacts can be traced or not traced, rise and fall like tides, and as we navigate these waves of lockdown and opening up, in defiance or in caution, tied to the ebb and flow of statistics, the fears we each have of falling ill ourselves don’t subside. But there’s a pattern to them, which we can learn to discern. 

However exceptional we think we are, and however intelligent and protected by our research and our scepticism, if we are human we are susceptible to this illness, either as victims or as carriers. And whether it was man-made as a biological weapon, or developed from defrosting glaciers due to climate change, it seems to be virulently contagious. And even if we do develop immunity, how long will it last? Because viruses mutate. 

It is ironic that, even as many actual orchestrations are being exposed, corruption and exploitation and gross pyramid schemes of fraud and human trafficking, the citizenry of countries everywhere are quarreling about personal protective gear - to mask or not to mask? And what kind of mask is effective? Or what kind is a mere token gesture? As symbols of our personal freedom or civic awareness, and the pivotal friction between them. 

Beautiful masks

I applaud the people who have chosen to self-manufacture beautiful masks, as fashion statements, and in many colours, with empowering slogans embossed or embroidered on them, to accessorise and personalise their defensive armour of choice. It’s on the principle of ‘the spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’. It normalises this extraordinary rapid shift in our sense of apprehension, our calculated chances of personal survival, and the dangers of our newly minted world. 

Many of us did not know until now what crackpot beliefs many of our oldest friends have privately held. Survival mode removes the masks of civility, if they were just a surface pretence. We gaze in amazement at the non-mask activist people who express their conflictedness about this perceived insult to their liberty by choosing not to cover their noses, but just their mouths, as they perambulate about. Apparently the people most likely to pass on any contagious virus to us are the people we engage with, for the most extended period, and with the most prolonged close contact. In other words, our little family pods. No overnight guests, no unexplained absences. 

Survive to see 2022?

How can people who so enjoy their liberty, and the freedom to go wherever they please, voluntarily choose to shelter at home? Is it possible that we can all survive to see New Year 2022? Will we be having our restaurant meals and drinks and bites outdoors in the sun and the air, growing our own vegetables, minimising salon visits and avoiding crowds like chronic misanthropes? Is that the cost we are required to pay? Intermittent social  retraction?

I believe many of us, apart from the fear factor which adds layers of stress to every dental checkup and visit to the doctor, may have found that our lives have improved: we have much less interpersonal stress because we don’t see so many people; we are more attune to our natural desires and aversions; we are more elastic with our waistbands and our deadlines; we have the time to actually relish what we read or watch, instead of being continually interrupted; we have the opportunity to develop and enjoy our home life instead of seeing it as a brief backdrop before collapsing into exhausted sleep at night. 

Everything I have just said is only the case if we have not lost our jobs, or experienced an industry downturn which has affected us and our family, and caused us to lose income, and security, and sleep. We have discovered how close we all are to a line which has become the measure of our basic comfort, and which we must not be forced to cross. 

Our vulnerabilities and areas of concern are clearer to us than ever before. No concealment is now possible from ourselves. What do we want to save? Who is most precious to us? What are our natural affinities, and highest priorities? Each day these questions are asked, and answered, in the choices we make. 

When the music stops: when the case numbers rise, and lockdown is declared for the good of the nation, as it will be in every country throughout the world, from time to time until it becomes a regular pattern, until the vaccine is found and made accessible to all, will our homes be places of actual shelter and solace? 

Or will we be scrambling for survival, and seeking protection and space from the people we share lockdown with? If home is truly where our heart is, then the travel ban is not so hard to bear. We will emerge, and rise up, and fly to other places again. 

Our busy, hyper-productive work-centered lifestyles have masked and veiled these realities from us. Until now. Each person chooses the pace of their adjustment to the new game of survival which was declared this year, and we each face the end of the music in our own way. It’s hard to bear, at times, but I believe all of us are actually learning how to go with it, the ebb and flow, and let go of what becomes less important as the cycle goes on. 

The best way to predict or prophesy the future is to act now, one step a day, to create it. If we do that, instead of grasping at ineffective, damaging or counterproductive stop gap measures, or vainly trying to do things for show, time itself will befriend us. It’s a different season we’re in, that’s all. A new era is in our midst, and it’s not water or air that is our greatest resource: it’s Time, and like every valuable resource, it should be earned and must be used well. If we waste it, it will surely waste us, in return. 

Childhood books, still my favourites–Devika Brendon | Sunday Observer

Devika Brendon is an educator, reviewer, journalist, writer and a bookworm. She was awarded First Class Honours in English Literature at the University of Sydney, and holds a PhD in English Literature from Monash University. She is a teacher of English language and literature, and a literary mentor to emerging writers of all ages. Devika’s poetry and short stories have been published in journals and anthologies in Sri Lanka, Australia, India and Italy, and now she works as the consultant editor at FemAsia and. is also on the editorial board of New Ceylon Writing.

Q: What is your favourite book?

A: The books that I loved in my childhood are still my favourites. The ones that probably had the biggest impact on me were the Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin. Not just the trilogy, but the fourth one as well, which was published 20 years later.

Q: Why do you like it?

A: I liked the story arc, the difficult main character with his wilful stubbornness and pride, and the wisdom he learns from his failures. I loved the writing: Le Guin’s own knowledge and intellectual curiosity was fused in the story with the fantasy setting she created. Her writing style is so beautiful and clear and clean, uncluttered and precise.

Q:How about the characters?

A: Ged is a person on an epic journey, a flawed individual who came to understand the stages of a person’s life, and certainly that sense of quest is something I felt drawn to. There were not many female characters in books at that time who had adventures like that. In the fourth book, Tehanu, there is strong discussion about that, as he unites with Tenar, whose life paralleled his own, but who didn’t have the freedom he had to confront and create his destiny.

Q: How did you find the book?

A: This series was given to my brother and me by our neighbours, and it began a lifelong love for adventure, fantasy and science fiction stories in both of us. I was eight years old when I first read these, and the world was full of joy, and felt safe, not as dark and troubled as it is now.

Q: Did you use libraries?

A: I loved libraries. At my first school, we had book bags and we were allowed to borrow as many books as we could carry! This love of libraries continued into my university days, and into my doctoral studies, when I did research at the Duke Humfrey library in Oxford - where the oldest books are chained to the reading desks, because they are so valuable. Old books fascinate me - their texture, the ornate print, and their beautiful illustrations. I was given a first edition of a book by Jonathan Swift as a graduation gift by my father, and it is one of the most treasured books in my own library. I researched Dr. Swift’s writing for my PhD, and to actually hold a book that he had published as a young author himself in the early 1700s is an amazing experience.

Q: What is your favourite literature?

A: I can read French, but English is my first reading language. I love a broad range of literature - historical fiction, politics, satire, detective fiction, biography, memoir, philosophy, romance, speculative fiction, essays, as well as poetry, light fiction, manga and fairy tales, myths and legends. If I like a writer’s style of writing and respect their way of thinking, I will gradually build a whole collection of their work. Donna Leon for example, has created a very interesting character called Brunetti who solves mysteries in Venice. The descriptions and details of the City and his life and family are more interesting to me than the solution of each mystery. I like feeling the different atmospheres of countries and societies when I read - books set in Sweden or Iceland are very different from those set in Africa, India or Spain. The contrasts of character and codes of behaviour are fascinating.

Q: How do you select a book to read?

A: I select books depending on my mood and the context of what I’m working on at the time. Since the coronavirus crisis, I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie, whose succinct portrayals of character and setting over so many decades are so satisfying. I’ve also been reading flashy escapist thrillers by Dan Brown about the end of the world, and Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances, and Tagore’s poetry, and Tolkien.

Q: Do you have a personal library?

A: I’ve been building my personal library since I was a young person. My mother used to read to us when we were little, and we were given books as birthday gifts when growing up. At school, we belonged to book clubs where we could order paperback books which were delivered by mail, which was very exciting! I still have favourite bookshops which let me know when books come in. I arrange the books according to era and subject matter.

Q: What are your reading habits?

A: I read every day, and usually in the afternoon and evening. I can read anywhere - if the book is interesting I can’t hear or see anything else. I try not to read after 8pm in case I read into the early hours of the next day and miss out on sleep! I write in the mornings, and I like to write notes in an unlined book and then develop it straight onto my phone.

Q: Which is the more interesting: Reading or writing?

A: Reading is like stepping into someone else’s created world. Writing is immersing yourself into a world you create yourself. It’s so exciting! I’ve written short stories so far, but am working on longer stories now, and it is literally a parallel universe that draws you in, a path your own hand creates. You’re discovering your own ideas and beliefs as the characters develop.

Q: How do you feel when you read a marvelous, touching book?

A: I am very responsive to great literature, very open to being impacted by new ideas, and am moved even by very touching passages in an otherwise bland or cliched popular story, like Me Before You. I find the closing pages of the first book of The Hunger Games unbearably sad and beautifully written. I found the opening chapters of the first book of the Game ofThrones fascinating. That story line of the family members all being suddenly forced to go their different ways is a mythic starting point. Like the story of the Pandavas ( five brothers) in the Mahabharata.

Q: What do you think of the present readership in society?

A: Everyone I know reads, today. Not only my friends and colleagues and students, but so many people of all ages are reading for pleasure at every stage in life. It’s more engaging and imaginative and effortful than passively watching a story unfold on a screen. You get to know and feel for so many human beings and their lives through the written word.

Q: Do you read Sinhala novels?

A: I learned to read and write in English, and because it is an international language, there is a vast range of literature accessible, and there was a mix of all kinds of books available to me in every country from a young age. Books are the biggest component of what I own, and moving house is very difficult for that reason! I carry a book with me everywhere I go.

Q: Any advice to an aspiring writer and a reader?

A: My advice is to create time to read in your daily life. Through reading, you connect to other worlds, other times and other people’ situations and see how they dealt with the human experiences we all share. To be swept up in a story someone is telling you, is to be enchanted. It’s not necessarily escapist - it can actually help you confront and face realities you might otherwise find it hard to process. If you don’t read, you are missing out. Swift scolded a young friend of his for laziness: ‘I never look at your work without wondering how a Brat who will not read can possibly write so well’. I agree with him on this 100 %.

The Great Image Of Authority

In the first quarter of the 21st century, our idea of power is changing. The classical image of an emperor on his throne now has variant alternatives. No longer is the person in authority always Anglo Saxon or European, from a lineage or dynasty of people all wielding authority, or male, or over 60 years old at the time of assuming power. The trend towards younger Prime Ministers and Presidents started about ten years ago. And now we see that younger government ministers are being appointed, that they are often more educated and qualified than ministers were in the past, and that they often reflect more contemporary attitudes in their conduct and choices. 

Times are - slowly - changing. 

Experience and wisdom and guidance of the new contenders are maintained by the balance of the older cohort who remain in the   ministries. Leadership these days is not exemplified by the exercise of authority over others, but by the ability to influence others, not by force or fear, but by reason and respect, given and received. The clenched fist of feudal power now also requires an open hand of equanimity and co-operation. Respect formerly automatically given to a person in authority is now earned. 

This of course depends on the ability of the leader to manage his or herself, to excel in self governance and increase in self awareness as they fulfill their responsibilities to the public. Leaders who consciously and continuously use the position accorded them 

to genuinely serve the country and increase the welfare, well being and happiness of all. 

I have over the past few years found myself saddened as well as angered to see the President of the United States being so disrespected by the people who present talk shows and chat shows and interview him for television broadcasts. I could not believe my eyes at first, to see journalists in The New Yorker and The New York Times and hear the comedians on late night syndicated shows mock and parody a sitting President, cruelly portraying him as an incompetent buffoon. 

Speculating about a person’s fitness to hold a position of responsibility due to questions about their mental stability is actually a breach of their rights and their dignity, in civil society. If you call someone mentally unhinged, or say they are rambling or appear incoherent or confused, you can be charged with defamation or slander if it lowers their respect and standing in the community. But if they are in the supreme seat of authority, they are expected to be compos mentis, and to be able to fulfill their obligations, to stay on top of the incoming information they need to know, and to organize properly equipped and capable advisory staff to brief them as events develop. And they should listen to that advice, if it is good. 

The clearest sign of good leadership is the ability to effectively delegate, and to empower and encourage others. A leader who undermines those who question him or her, and publicly mocks or harries or freezes them out, is a person who does not understand the innate reciprocal agreements of power. This ignorance then leads to a situation where the leader ultimately and publicly loses the confidence of the people. 

Unfortunately, but inevitably, the disrespect given to people by a person in authority is also reflected back on them, in the way they are themselves disrespected. Leaders today are subjected to scrutiny and provocation on a large scale, given the ability of electronic media to widely share video footage of outrages and controversies in Parliament and every media interview and speech and appearance given by a public figure. It is inevitable that this aggressive onslaught will wear down a person’s equanimity. But the challenge is to stay focused on the goals undertaken, and remain undistracted, clear-minded and determined. 

Humility and the vital ability to recognize one’s own limits and flaws is difficult to combine with the abilities and talents which draw a person to public attention for high office, and it is almost impossible to maintain given the amount of flattery and praise directed at those who wield power. Yet it is the greatest quality a leader can have. 

To be able to see beyond one’s own personal ambitions and concerns is surely the key qualification of a leader who truly governs with integrity - whether it is a corporate Board or a nation - because it is this that enables a visionary individual to truly encourage the development of others to also exercise leadership and accountability in their own roles, in the interests of the public. Raging narcissism may be entertaining to watch as a performance on reality television, but it is discreditable in a leader, as the 45th President has discovered, in the buildup to the American election in November.

Particularly in the anxious and disrupted times in which we live, a person in authority today needs to recognize that they are truly accountable, and that they have a responsibility to the people they lead to keep them informed, to give them real facts, fulfill the promises made to them, and respect their need for guidance and information by updating them regularly on the changing situation in an era of unprecedented change and uncertainty. 

It’s called praxis. Theory made effective in action. And it’s what we all need, especially now. 

About

This blog contains a range of my recent writing from 2015 to the present day. Opinion pieces, fragments of memoir, academic essays, reviews of events and films and literary works, interviews, allusions and homages to the writers I love. They were written for Ceylon Today’s ‘Mosaic’, for ‘The Sunday Island’ and ‘The Sunday Times’, for FemAsia Magazine from 2018-20, and for LMD, for ‘Roar’ and ‘Groundviews’. Many of them are my weekly column pieces in Ceylon Today’s Columns section, from April 2019 to the present. One is an essay on ‘Fabrications In Othello’ which was published in The Hopkins Review in 2021. 

Another is the draft of an academic paper I gave at the FILLM Congress in Delhi, India, in 2017, on ‘The Power and Powerlessness Of The Exotic Status’. This paper, presented under the auspices of the International Federation of Modern Literatures and Languages, became Chapter 8 of the book ‘Representing The Exotic And The Familiar: Politics and Perception in Literature’, published by the John Benjamins Publishing Company in 2019.

My poetry has its own page on FB, called ‘Woman Of Her Word’, and I also write on Medium. 

When I write, I feel as if I am swimming in a sky filled with stars. It’s elation.

Undervalued Excellence

Broadly speaking, if we want to organise and prioritise the issues that concern us today into a 'to do' list, there are survival and fulfilment issues to consider. When it comes to fulfilment, the systematic dismantling of the arts and humanities as school and university subjects is an issue that is of paramount importance in how our culture navigates the challenges ahead of us. 

My view is that certain essential skills are only accessible through the valuing of arts subjects, which teach us problem solving in a sequential, illuminating and context driven way. 

We have been increasingly told recently by government ministers all over the Western world that arts subjects such as history and literature are now often classified as nonessential. 

Of course, this is a subjective and false statement, masquerading as an official objective and authoritative announcement, which reeks of political agendas and selective misinformation. This attitude directly contributes to the problems these nations face in effectively managing the new globally connected world in which we live. 

There's a systematic process involved in discrediting anything whether it's a person, an organisation or a subject of study. You begin by undervaluing and questioning its relevance, you discredit its practitioners, you measure its productivity in solely fiscal terms without factoring in its social and cultural impact, and you start to underfund its institutions. 

What skills can language and literature teach us? 

They teach us intellectual and discernment skills to analyse the written and spoken word, as well as how to accurately interpret what we read. We become able to filter out sensationalisation, exaggeration, understatement, euphemism, select obfuscation and distortion. 

Moreover, we're able to identify the triggering adjectives used by writers and speechmakers to detonate our emotions. We learn to feel the impact of cumulation and structural devices in text. And we can understand not only what is being said to us but the intention of the person presenting it. 

These skills of analysis and interpretation arc crucial to enable us to comprehend and process the huge amount of information, sensation and misinformation that comes out way. We also learn to communicate our own ideas most effectively.

If we don't develop these essential skill sets, we become passive consumers of information and susceptible to manipulation; and as a result. we may become overdependent on preprocessed information, susceptible, fearful, and confused participants in the societal spread of misinformation and fake news.

 All of us have witnessed what damage this can cause in our personal experience, society and online communities. 

Fifty years ago, school curricula were not so specialised. There was a much broader emphasis on liberal humanities as a foundation of education. Scientists studied history. geography and literature, while medical doctors and economists also studied fiction and poetry. These were not viewed as luxury or niche subjects and the professionally trained minds that resulted were respected worldwide. 

Today, with Sri Lanka's emphasis on science. technology, engineering and mathematics. (STEM) subjects to build the economy, we may overlook the fact that how we enjoy and comprehend our lives is as important as our material wellbeing. 

In my opinion, we're even more vulnerable to the erosion of the skills of critical thinking relative to other countries because we currently offer language and literature as an option at secondary school level rather than as the building blocks of information literacy that they should be. 

It should not be difficult to incorporate analytical and interpretative skills into any online course that students can access. And the benefit would be manifold: a citizenry that is empowered, articulate and information literate. 

Isn’t It Ironic?

 

This is the story of two men in the USA who recently found they could not breathe. It’s about 6 weeks since George Floyd had his neck stepped on by a group of policemen. And it’s a few days since Richard Rose, proud non-wearer of protective masks, died of Covid19, after testing positive on July 1st. 

I’ve just seen a Facebook post in which someone I know admits that she finds it ‘funny’ that Richard Rose posted a defiant statement on April 28th, declaring he would not wear masks, and that he ‘had made it this far by not buying into the hype’ around Covid 19. Now two months later, he is dead, and his belief in his exceptionalism has been proved to be unsubstantiated. 

Some people found the sight of George Floyd being killed humorous, too. Lynchings have always had some public support, for their entertainment value. We saw his death throes being imitated and exaggerated by people on home videos, with people taking it in turns to be victim and perpetrator. It reminded me of the kids in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ enacting what they had heard of Boo Radley’s tragic life, so ignorantly and so callously. 

Both men were asphyxiated. One by external force imposed unjustifiably on him in a public street. One by internal breakdown of his respiratory system, in his home, as a result of his own choice to exercise personal freedom. I personally don’t find either death funny, or even ironic. But I suppose callous unconcern is a legitimate response to the world in which we now live, and (in its own way) it is a form of survivalism. 

Some commenters on Richard Rose’s puny statement of defiance said his Facebook statement that he would not wear a mask should be ‘engraved on his tombstone’. I wonder what will be engraved on theirs. Or whether there will be no gravestones available, because we will be buried in mass burial sites in public parks, because the public services which administer our civilized processes of health, death, and burial will be overloaded. 

Perhaps we will end up living in small colonies of like-minded people, all living as we ourselves do, either maskless or masked, depending on our mutually-held beliefs. Like physical, real world versions of echo chambers. 

     ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls’ no longer has currency, I’m sorry to say. We are all becoming islands, withdrawn from each other, from fear of contracting illness, and suspicion that others do not uphold the same strict standards of social distancing that we ourselves do. We don’t want to be put at risk by being in contact with them, and we want to show our distinct difference from Covidiots who don’t wear masks by mocking their choices. Empathy creates connection, and we want to burn those bridges. 

     Richard Rose was exercising his right to not be afraid, to not be cautious, and he could not have made his stance 

more clear, really. Do we have our own moral objections to finding his fatal stupidity funny? But it’s karma, right? His careless defiance which turned out to be so puny and unfounded? His own immoral behaviour in infecting so many others in the name of his puny, unfounded defiance? It is funny in a way to see people making claims based on a sense of personal exceptionalism. I guess we’ll all find out what’s true before this is over.

Salman Rushdie summed up the chaotic, disconcerting paradoxes of the sudden shifts of postmodern life in his novel, ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet’: 

‘These things are bad for you: sex, high-rise buildings, chocolate, lack of exercise, dictatorship, racism! No, au contraire! Celibacy damages the brain, high-rise buildings bring us closer to God, tests show that a bar of chocolate a day significantly improves chilren's academic performance, exercise kills, tyranny is just a part of our culture so I'll thank you to keep your cultural-imperialist ideas off my fucking fiefdom, and as for racism, let's not get all preachy about this, it's better out in the open than under some grubby carpet. That extremist is a moderate! That universal right is culturally specific! This circumcised woman is culturally happy! That Aboriginal whistlecockery is culturally barbaric! Pictures don't lie! This image has been faked! Free the press! Ban nosy journalists! The novel is dead! Honor is dead! God is dead! Aargh, they're all alive and they're coming after us! That star is rising! No, she's falling! We dined at nine! We dined at eight! You were on time! No, you were late! East is West! Up is down! Yes is No! In is Out! Lies are Truth! Hate is Love! Two and two makes five! And everything is for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. ‘ ― Salman Rushdie

Under the manic energy of this cumulative outburst beat the twin pulses of fear and anger, the very qualities we pray to be rid of, in the Metta Meditation. If we entertain them, we will be overridden like the doomed City of Hamelin in the old children’s story. 

Let us act in such a way as to ensure a better outcome. May we be well, and happy. May we act in such a way as to lengthen our lives, if we find them valuable and meaningful. For we hold these things to be self evident.

The correct analogy

Two and a half years ago, a cyber lynching took place in Sri Lanka. To understand what I mean by this, you would need to know what lynching is, and the circumstances in which it occurs.

People today are using the word ‘lynching’ to describe the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, by U.S. policemen, and it has a history which enables us to see the pattern of how it is used, as an instrument of deliberate violence, to harass, intimidate, and humiliate.

It’s ritualistic and performative. It is used to dramatically enact a person’s isolation and powerlessness, when outnumbered by a gang of thugs.

Descriptor Credit: Wikipedia

I think of Tom Robinson in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. And the bathroom scene in ‘Ender’s Game’. I think of Andy Dufresne in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, being systematically got at by ‘The Sisters’. Of the images sent out from Guantanamo Bay of guards positioning prisoners in pyramid forms, blindfolded and immobilised while they let the dogs out. The horrors perpetrated against Jewish and Gypsy and homosexual prisoners by Nazi guards in the 1940s for entertainment. Of Aslan in the first Narnia book, ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’, taunted and put to death by his ghoulish enemies. Of the piñatas in Mexico, where, during fiestas, lifesize dolls or animal figures full of sweets are hung up and beaten with clubs, or stabbed in the stomach, until they burst open for the benefit of the cheering crowd.

There’s an overtly dramatic element in the rituals of lynching. It’s a tribalistic bonding experience. The sadism is shared, and delighted in by the perpetrators. The victim is positioned and framed in a myriad ways as an object of scorn and contempt. There is humor generated by the victim’s fear of their own imminent and painful death and their pleas for mercy are met with shouts of jubilation.

While researching this, I’ve seen several photographs of people who participated in these events. Their faces broadly smiling, grinning, unshadowed by any negative feeling. Their victim tied up and gagged, trussed up in a body bag like a cocoon of cloth, hung by the neck from a nearby tree: hung high, so everyone can see. Silenced and forcibly made passive, no longer any kind of threat to those who outnumber him.

Descriptor Credit: Wikipedia

Cyber lynching is not physical. It describes the orchestrated ganging up of a group of people online, on Facebook or Twitter, attacking one person who has said or done something to which someone takes offence. In online lynching, the weapons are words. And the intended effect of cumulative comments is the equivalent of cudgels or batons on the persona of the victim.

Many of these ‘events’ are participated in for fun — people joke about getting popcorn to be bystanders as if they were at the movies, and watching the performance in front of them, quite good humouredly. If there is a more sadistic or malicious intent, this becomes clear in the comments thread, especially in comments which have a sensationalist gloss, and attract multiple Likes, the trophy of the online cyber bully in their quest for viral transmission of their wit and verbal dexterity.

A lot of verbal arguments take place on Facebook and Twitter. Jousting, duelling, give and take of provocation and puncturing. It’s a fair fight. But not if one party is not even there, to participate. Online lynching can take place without the victim being actually present, either in person or in words, if they are not part of the conversation in which their reputation is being attacked, and their identity trashed.

So two and a half years ago, a cyber lynching took place in Sri Lanka, in the form of a Facebook post and a comments thread in which the perpetrator invited a few tagged people to participate in publicly attacking someone against whom he had a personal grudge.

His visible attempts to make it go viral did not succeed, and the post was taken down by him about 24 hours after it was first posted. But because he had set it to public setting, the post and comments thread were visible on the FB platform, and were photographed in their entirety as evidence of defamation, slander and libel.

The degree of malicious intent was quite remarkable in several aspects, centered on his attempt to frame the object of his anger as someone to be avoided, and shunned, as someone unworthy of respect, devoid of value and undeserving of the dignity of social recognition. It was — at its core — an unjustified, cowardly and one-sided attack. But justice was not its aim. Lynching is not an act of justice, even in the self-justifying minds of its perpetrators. It is a brazen, blatant and explicit act of dehumanization.

The person orchestrating this event was summoned and charged with malicious harassment by the police, because of the evidence in the post and comments thread. This apparently came as a surprise to him, because in Sri Lanka on Facebook and Twitter gross violations of decency are normalized and even admired, among his peers. A culture of online impunity and unaccountability for wrongdoing was prevalent. Many people felt entitled by this to act any way they wished, behind the relative anonymity of their screens and keyboards, or the safe spaces of their echo chambers of like-minded netizens.

Many of the comments and responses on that post were banal and predictable. But the most interesting part about it was the perpetrator’s conscious awareness of what he was doing.

As we can see, he described the woman he was ranting against as a ‘black dude (who) wanted the KKK to join HIM’. By calling this ‘the correct analogy’ for the situation over which he was presiding, and calling the woman he was attacking a ‘black man’ attempting to recruit support from the oppressors who outnumbered ‘him’, he was knowingly equating himself and his mates with the Ku Klux Klan, those white-robed, hooded, racist vigilantes, enactors and symbols of inhumane behaviour against African American men, whom they outnumbered and killed by the hundreds in the 19th and 20thC, their criminal acts made anonymous, apparently impervious to reprimand, and rendered unaccountable by their covering, concealing hoods.

The lawyers and police who read the thread found it very interesting that he described himself and his friends in such a way. Who in their right mind would voluntarily ally himself publicly on the side of the perpetrator in such a contemptible ritual?

After George Floyd’s death was filmed and recorded on video, and his dying words were made available on audio recording and in text form, and started appearing on placards in protest marches, he became an icon. Because he died, he achieved martyr status, and activists were quick to point out that the racism was not new, but that it was now being recorded, and thus impossible to deny.

A few days earlier, in New York’s Central Park, a man himself had recorded on video the threats of violence made against him by a woman walking her dog, in an area of the public park where he was peacefully birdwatching. His asking her to comply with the park rules and put her dog on its leash triggered a furious outburst from her, caught on video and audio.

She identified him to police on the phone as an ‘African American Man.’ Mere identification? Or racial profiling in a racist societal context, where she could frame his actions as dangerous to her merely by invoking the systemic injustice which she knew would endanger him, and which would immediately render him powerless in relation to her?

The Central Park incident illuminated the workings of white privilege. But the murder of George Floyd exposed the injustice and violence of the police, and because it is seen as racialised violence, which has become routine and normalized, and because hundreds of thousands of people all over the world find it unjust, ugly and unacceptable to them, it is being used as a catalyst to channel the people’s collective anger at injustice into a global revolutionary movement.

Debates about whether #alllivesmatter negates #blacklivesmatter have caught alight. People of all colours and creeds are educating themselves about racism, the ideology of white supremacy, and the destructive structures that have supported and sustained it.

In an obscene defiance of this rise in awareness, there have been people on home videos shared on Facebook ritualistically recreating George Floyd’s death scene as a dramatized joke, the person playing the perpetrator laughing with his foot on the neck of the victim; the ‘victim’ writhing in a facsimile of exaggerated agony.

In real life, George Floyd could not writhe in agony, because he was held down by several men and could not move or breathe. He was overpowered and immobilized.

How can people who witness such planned and deliberate damage which is done to another human being, not only stay silent and observe it, but actively participate and re-enact such an event?

To do this, they would have to feel disconnected from the person being targeted: to see the victim as not sharing in their own humanity, and disqualified from the entitlements to dignity and respect and safety and courtesy and sovereignty that come with it. They would have to objectify him/her, otherise them, and feel no pain — and even positive pleasure — at being a spectator of their suffering.

Do any contemporary or historical analogies come to mind?

If so, let’s call them what they are. And by all means, let us use the most accurate terminology.

Image credit: Polygon