Third World Britain II

A Train's Weather

On August the fifteenth post lunch hour the air
Over the rail flutters, of a lover the skin
The steel track swells and twists like a monstrous snake
Comes alive, scales screeching, slowly stirs
The Extreme Summer Heat has jumped to thirty five
On this moving body you puff, too hot to ride
And your metallic wheels on its metallic spine
Come to a stall

It is October now and the track is so wet
Inexhaustible rains of unexpected fall
On the railway the leaves weave a papery shawl
Such feast of colours - yellows and browns and reds
From untiring skies, coal-coloured, water-clogged
Relentless raging rains drizzle down on the rail
Metal in water rusts ! Your wheels on it derail !
With such Extreme Weather your body cannot cope

January fifteenth - they say Winter Has Come
The Cold Tightens Its Grip on the metallic track
It is Minus Zero ! There is snow on the track
Your metallic lungs freeze and your engines succumb
This last breath you exhale you exhale every year
Christmas in December is no bigger surprise
Than to see all winter these tracks covered in ice
Would there be a pattern to such Extreme Weather ?

So many things have changed since you first saw the day
The seasons were better in eighteen twenty five
Now, twenty thirteen, Britain is in dismay
There is no money left on which you could survive.

Third World Britain I

The Potholes

I am riding my bike around Bell Green crossroads
The surface is porous and crumbles like a cheese
It is what it is not as well as what it is
The holes are so many, oh! English holy roads!

South of Mayow Park is a Disney set of chess
Kingsthorpe moves to Queensthorpe and Bishopsthorpe awaits
Exotic front gardens framed by brick walls and gates
Where potholes and tarmac draw a grey board of chess

Now my legs push north strongly to Ladywell
Her name's a shining bug, her name's a flying song
On my bike my back breaks and creaks riding along
Potholes digging deeper than an old water well

Britain! Glorious age! Scorn all that is foreign!
From your padded car seats, exotic front gardens!
What happened to your roads, your streets, and what happens
To your schools, hospitals, trains, tubes, to your children?

Great Britain you were once, Britain you fight to stay
On top of the (third) world

"Même pour prendre conscience de l'horreur, il faut être un privilégié."

Even to become aware of the horror, you need to belong to the privileged.

Patrick Deville, Kampuchéa, Points, Seuils, 2009, p.30

The Book Sill - Floating Worlds

Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Cecilia Holland is not a science-fiction writer. Any person familiar with the genre will notice her lack of grasp on some of the fan's favorite science-fiction features, mainly the scientific and the gadget sides. The novel use of paraphernalia is ridiculously poor and stamps it irremediably from the seventies: if we were to believe Holland, videophones and air buses would be the only technical innovations humanity could come up with in almost 2,000 years !

This aside, Floating World is a powerful evocation of the female condition - one that makes the best possible use of a utopic / dystopic Solar system. All planets from Venus to Uranus have been populated. In the most remote ones lives a mutated human population, organized in a male-based, extremely hierarchic, fascist society. This society happens to control the biggest source of energy of all the Solar system. This is not the only feature reminiscent of a Saudi Arabia-like civilization : in Uranus too polygamy is a men-only privilege, in Uranus too their wives have to go veiled in public.

Paula Mendoza is a small black woman who grew up on Earth. There, like on any other planet of the Solar system, humanity lives in bubbles. Pollution has rendered the atmosphere unlivable to human beings. Under the massive globes of glass covering London or what is left of New York, Earth's society evolved to a form of pacifist egalitarian anarchy : people are poor, social bounds are loose, passions are low, life has little prospect to offer other than one of chilled-out, low-key survival.

But Paula is ambitious. She wants wealth. And where to find it other than in Uranus ?

The shock between the small, black, anarchist, ambitious, incredibly resilient Earth woman and the big, sur-human, machist, fascist leaders of Uranus echoes throughout the 630 pages of the novel with a strength that never weakens. Ten pages from the end I found myself still entrapped into the action and unable to guess what the final situation would be. The only reason why I wouldn't give this book the 5 stars it deserves in so many aspects is the writing itself: dry, quick, factual, unemotional, it misses opportunities to develop landscapes promising to be stunning -the quick glances we get at the outer planets, at the cities of Uranus, made me long for more ; their dark, monochrome beauty deserves to be put in pictures, in a form or another-.

However, regardless of how much my romantic French soul suffered from poetry starvation, I can see how the dryness of the style serves to reflect the harshness of Paula's condition. The novel covers most of her adult life: kidnapped, beaten, "harem-ed", enslaved, raped, constantly despised, hated, bullied, she earns every single atom of respect she gets the hardest way. Paula's survival through constant struggle is her victory - the victory of the resilience of the oppressed, of men over merciless gods, of Anarchy over dictatorship.



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The Book Sill - Roach Killer

Roach Killer by Jacques Tardi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Tardi has a knack for drawing specific periods and contexts. New York in the 80's looks particularly sinister and hopeless in the main story of this graphic novel. The simple, efficient plot brings out a striking image of a destroyed working class.
The main character was raised in the Bronx after WWII. He is now working as a pest killer in lower Manhattan. Equally rejected by the middle-classes who wallow in their new wealth and by the sordid ghettos which violence turns against anyone who, here and now, does not belong to their petty world, he ends up victim of a blind conspiracy. A masterpiece.



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