Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

I loved this book. Can't remember why I put it on my to read list a few months ago, probably because a review caught my attention, and by the time I ordered it I noticed it had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The writing is elegant, witty and joyful, the main character is extremely believable and loveable, the plot clever, ironic and healthily self-deprecating in the way it depicts, criticizes but also loves the modern literary milieu / establishment. All that, and lots of intelligent and witty reflections about reaching middle-age and what it means to be accomplished - something I particularly related to, being the adequate age - and about love and happiness. At a certain point, the character asks himself one of the most important questions about love - is it the good dear thing? or is it the lightning bolt? I think the story gives us his answer, and I absolutely agree with it.

I'm glad there are such good books being written, and think I will check other Andrew Sean Greer's books.

Beach Rats, by Eliza Hittman

This is a beautiful movie, that conveys its message - mostly about longing, coming of age and the wish to belong even when one does not know what to (and isn't that one of the main features of adolescence?) - in an extremely visual, almost voyeuristic, way. And simultaneously very emotional, once more in a mostly visual, wordless, way, by creating atmospheres with the camera eye. Isn't this what cinema is all about after all? It somehow reminded me of the art of silent movies, when they knew how to tell a story without any speech.

The performances are outstanding, especially the main character, the girlfriend and the mother. I was really impressed, it's a magnificent piece of cinema art.

Before My Feet Touch the Ground, a documentary by Daphni Leef

I just watched this documentary by the Israeli activist and filmmaker Daphni Leef, and I found it very interesting and great food for thought.
It’s a very accomplished documentary, in the way it depicts very vividly the 2011 protests in Israel against the housing prices, how they grew, and the emotional and political development of Daphni, one of its main organizers. She was at the session, and I was very positively impressed by her intelligence and articulate ideas, and how much she grew intellectually since those early days of notoriety. I congratulate her for that, and for the courage it took to expose her doubts, humanity and privacy so poignantly and honestly.

But then there are the questions raised by those street movements that took place in those years, what did they mean, what is the aftermath, now that 7 years have gone by?

I will not discuss here the movements of the Arab spring; even if they happened at the same time and maybe the momentum was related, in Egypt, Syria or Libya, they were true revolutions crushed by totalitarian regimes and military coups or civil war, they are wonderfully and painfully chronicled in books like The City Always Wins, Guapa or The Queue – and certainly in others I haven’t read – and they belong to a different category from the street movements that took place in Western and democratic countries like Israel, Spain or the US, and I think it would be unfair and wrong to group them together.

So I’ll focus on these movements – the Occupy movements in Spain and the US and the protests in Israel. And I’ll say that the question that I wish to ask basically is: what did they accomplish? What are the results, 7 years later? And the answer I give myself is pretty dire. In Spain, they had the appalling government of Rajoy until last week. We had Brexit, and Trump was elected as president in the US. I don’t know about the rents in Israel, but my friends there keep complaining about the cost of living in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu is still Prime Minister and that annoying Regev woman is minister of Culture, so I guess things probably didn’t change for the best.

So, what’s left? A sense of huge disappointment. So maybe we should look critically at those events to try to learn from them. Was it the right way to fight? In my opinion, supported by the aftermath, definitely not. Looking back, I see a lot of well intentioned and very naïve people, dreaming of the ‘60s protest movements, manifesting against what they call “the system”, that they feel it fails them – and it does, in many ways – and getting inebriated by their capacity to be visible, wishing to change the world because they feel it’s supposed to be changed – which I agree to. But, after all the marches, feelings of communion, partying to the sounds of Redemption Song or People Have the Power, what happened? They had their minutes – or weeks – of fame, and then people just got tired, changed the channel and everything went back to the same – or worse. “The system” didn’t even need to be violent, it just reaped the fruits of boredom and inertia. And things did not only change but actually worsened – vd Netanyahu, Trump, Rajoy, Brexit.

So my point is – this is not the way to make things better. How much flawed “the system” may be – and it is, in many ways, dominated by greedy and wealthy people and corporations – the way to change and make things better in Western democracies – and, however imperfect they may be, they’re still the best way of government we’ve achieved – is not by chanting and screaming, but by participating in politics in an educated and informed way, moving “the system” according to our ideas, putting aside petty disagreements and inflated egos, and creating honest and reliable political parties with honest and progressive ideas. I believe the way forward is to perfect “the system”, with trials and errors like the “geringonça” we’re experiencing in Portugal at the moment, that is working, and I hope they will try now in Spain. Less folklore and more efficacy. More education and responsibility and less demagogy.

La Nuit sera calme, par Romain Gary

It's always interesting how one comes across a book or an author. In the case of Romain Gary, I was curious about him after reading very flattering references in Pumpkinflowers, by Matti Friedman - he mentioned particularly Les Cerfs-Volants, so this was the first Romain Gary book I read, and I was hooked. He's a wonderful writer, and his book La Vie Devant Soi, written under the pseudonym Émile Ajar, is one of the books that moved me the most in the last few years.

La Nuit sera calme is a kind of a long interview, des entretiens, as they say in French, and in it Romain Gary comes across as an extremely intelligent, interesting and sensible man of the 20th century, from a time and place when French culture was still at its best. It shows how sound political thinking and honest morals are timeless, and it somehow gives us some hope - as long as there are intelligent and committed people there is still some hope...

La vraie valeur n’a jamais rien à craindre de ces mises à l’épreuve par le sarcasme et la parodie, par le défi et par l’acide, et toute personnalité politique qui a de la stature et de l’authenticité sort indemne de ces agressions. La vraie morale n’a rien à redouter de la pornographie – pas plus que les hommes politiques, qui ne sont pas des faux-monnayeurs, de Charlie Hebdo, du Canard enchaîné, de Daumier ou de Jean Yanne. Bien au contraire: s’ils sont vrais, cette mise à l’épreuve par l’acide leur est toujours favorable. La dignité n’est pas quelque chose qui interdit l’irrespect: elle a au contraire besoin de cet acide pour révéler son authenticité.

L’O.N.U. a été dévorée par le cancer nationaliste. Le nationalisme, surtout quand il est jeune, frais et pimpant, c’est d’abord le droit de disposer sans appel d’un peuple – par tyrannie intérieure – au nom du droit des peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes. C’est le droit de couper les mains ou le clitoris des filles, de lapider les femmes adulteres, de fusiller, d’exterminer, de torturer, au nom du droit du peuple à disposer de lui-même. Tu peux faire tuer un million d’hommes à l’intérieur des frontières de ton pays et siéger aux Nations Unies à la Commission des Droits de l’homme, monter à la tribune de l’Assemblée générale et prononcer un discours sur la liberte, l’égalité et la fraternité et te faire acclamer, parce que les affaires intérieures d’un État, c’est sacré.

Sur le plan de la réalité seule, l’homme, enfin, c’est indiscernable, parce que toutes les notions de fraternité, de démocratie, de liberte, sont des valeurs de convention, on n eles reçoit pas de la nature, ce sont des décisions, des choix, des proclamations d’imaginaire auxquelles solvente on sacrifie sa vie pour leur donner vie.
Ces rapports “chien sans maître” avec Dieu ou avec l’absence de Dieu, que Dieu soit ressentit comme une préférence ou comme un manque, sont toujours des rapports avec un collier et une laisse qui me sont totalement étrangers.