Books and Building

It has been just over a month since I returned from my visit to the States, a trip made during summer holidays in South Africa that landed me smack in the middle of an American winter. My first stop was Boston, where I spent a few days; for it is there that I visit my father, who just turned 95 on March 2nd. Much to my delight, as it had been so far a cold but rather snowless winter, 6 inches of fine white powder fell during my first night, which remained there to greet me in the morning when I awoke to peer out of the bedroom window. It was the sound of a motor running at 7am that woke me. The machine was none other than a small tractor with a snowplough attached to it being driven by my father, who had apparently been up for some time. So much for being old!

My next stop was northern California, which was not only a complete departure from winter in New England, but most of all it was the time and place I would visit with my own children and grandchildren. Nevertheless, I never venture to those American shores without a list of books I hope to buy while there. Books in general are expensive in South Africa, and many titles are hard to find unless shipped in from Amazon. So, list in hand, I set out on my search.

The first book on my list, already rapaciously devoured with exhilarating delight, was The Artist, ThePhilosopher and the Warrior (Da Vinci, Machiavelli and Borgia) by Paul Strathern. The lives of all three men crossed paths, with both Da Vinci and Machiavelli being Florentines, one actually employed by Cesare Borgia as a military engineer, while the other was assigned diplomatic missions by the government of Florence to liaise with (and spy on where possible) the young yet unrelentingly ruthless, famously handsome and intrepid Borgia. Borgia’s father was Pope Alexander VI (so much for vows of celibacy - something I personally find contra naturam) and together they were calculatingly and assiduously working towards unifying the feudal kingdoms of Italy under Borgia leadership, with a view to expelling both the French and the Spanish (the Borgia family were, in fact, Catalans), while simultaneously making secret strategic agreements with both sides.

Leonardo Da Vinci spent most of his life designing extraordinary machines, many of which were not built in his lifetime. His famous notebooks, some containing several hundred sketches that included ingenious war machines, seem to reveal that he observed in man a darkness that was equal to the use of such things. Nevertheless, he was himself unable to resist an ineluctable fascination with inventing them. A most egregious anomaly – but then again, he did paint the Mona Lisa in his spare time. Machiavelli, on the other hand, based his most famous work, The Prince, on Cesare Borgia and to a certain extent on Pope Julius II, who was elected to the papacy upon the death of Alexander. Strathern’s book is riveting, fascinating beyond words!

The next book was TheRoman Revolution by Sir Ronald Syme, enticingly placed upon a bookshelf, waiting to be started. Also on my list was The Muqaddimah (An Introduction to History) by Ibn Khaldun. This I am currently reading with great relish for in it I foresee the possibility of a new book, although I am a congenitally lazy writer, and no small effort will be required to move this idea into action. The premise of the book would proceed from my previous one, The Power Template, and undertake to examine Shakespeare’s handling of The Wars of the Roses from Ibn Khaldun’s understanding of leadership, royal authority and the prerequisites necessary to establish and maintain dynastic power: the prior social conditions; the essential character traits (most notably nobility of character, futuwwa in Arabic, often resorting in translation to the anachronistic term chivalry); and an innate quality of ‘group feeling’ (translated from asabiyya in the Arabic, while esprit de corps is also used in other translations). The purpose of such an ambitious undertaking would be in order to hold up this model before that of the modern political class, found in every country around the world:  insipid, corrupt and obsequious before their paymasters who have put them in office, but, of course, elected ‘by the people’.

I have a very long way to go in fully grasping Ibn Khaldun’s masterwork before attempting to embark on an endeavour that is as compelling to me as it is daunting. At any rate, let me plant the seed of my intention in the hope that it may germinate. My only thoughts so far are that Ibn Khaldun, who is clearly recognised as the most important Arab Historian (although he certainly had European blood from his Spanish side), is also recognised for his role as a philosopher, his astute understanding of political rule and his ability to extrapolate from the eye-witness accounts that he gained as he travelled the world, as well as building upon the great scholars (ulama) he was privileged to sit with and learn from. According to his English translator and biographer Franz Rosenthal, Ibn Khaldun is as important for his ‘sociological insights’ as he is for his fascinating accounts of world altering events, such as those he experienced while being held as a highly honoured captive guest of the fierce Timur-the-Lame (Tamerlane).

 Shakespeare, on the other hand, was certainly not a historian and took generous advantage of Hollinshed’s Chronicles and Hall’s Union of Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York, that provided the historical basis for his first tetralogy that focuses on the Wars of the Roses, and moreover, were among some of his earliest plays. What Shakespeare does do that is similar to Ibn Khaldun, although the English bard took much more poetic licence in doing it, was to extrapolate dramaturgically an understanding of power, leadership and the conditions that precipitate the founding or floundering of a royal dynasty, from the historical material available to him. That is as far as I’ve gotten.

What other book on my list did I find? I came across a perfect second-hand copy of The Terracotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri. Camilleri is heralded as the Italian Simenon. I know at least one person who may disagree with that, while there is no doubt that he is a marvellously entertaining and profoundly insightful writer, whose main character, Inspector Montalbano, is to be found somewhere between the indefatigably persistent Inspector Morse of Oxford and the seemingly absent minded and sartorially sloppy American Detective Colombo - who never misses a stitch. The novels are all immensely enjoyable. I was told by an Italian friend that there is a popular TV series in Italy based upon them.

Now the last book on my shopping list: Michael Pollan’s A Place of My Own. This book is referred to by its author in his preface as “a biography of a building”. Preceding the preface is a line from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden that makes reference to the hut Thoreau built on a tiny island situated in Walden Pond. It was recommended by a young fellow, now married to my niece, who I first met two years ago just after they were formally engaged. He came across then as a very dapper 20-something Sinatra, although he insists he doesn’t sing but rather reads. This year, having undergone a makeover, he resembled a poet from the post-Beat Generation, with long hair and full beard.

 Pollan’s book is the story of a writer who needs a place to work. With his and his wife’s first child on the way working from the house will be next to impossible. What he does, with absolutely no previous skill or even the slightest aptitude, is to venture to build himself a small writer’s hut some few hundred feet behind their New England home. It is a curiously interesting biographical account of a writer’s quest not just to find but actually make that special place to write, and, according to Pollan, “daydream”, and create something of substance - made out of words. The further along I read the more I became drawn into Pollan’s skill and craftsmanship as a writer. I think that what my niece’s husband had in mind when he recommended the book was that while he knew I had written a couple books and a bunch of essays, he had been told that I had built a considerable number of houses. There is an intriguing connection somewhere between the author of A Place of My Own and myself in the inverse correlation between our opposing trajectories.

That being said, it was some four years after I had sat on the stoop of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop on Plymton Street off Harvard Square, trying to understand The Cantos of Ezra Pound, that I crossed the big pond and managed to be taken on as an apprentice by a furniture maker in the north London borough of Islington. My employer, a master craftsman of the pre-world war era, said I was at 21 or 22 actually too old to start. After some persuasion he agreed to take me on, as I impressed upon him that I was interested in learning and not in how little he would be able to pay me. He first taught me how to sharpen a chisel (which I have not forgotten) and then something of how to properly use it. After some time I gradually moved from furniture to building houses. The pay was, quite frankly, a lot better and most of all it was suited to my peripatetic way of life.