Sunday 13 April 2014

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave
1853; new edition with supplementary material and notes, edited by Sue Eakin, Eakin Films & Publishing, 2013.



We read this simply because the film had come out in the UK; otherwise, like so many people, we would never have heard of it. The book itself is fascinating. For those who had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the story was horribly familiar – it confirms in a factual account what Stowe had written as fiction.
The Eakin edition is well worth getting, though some would recommend reading the narrative first and then the introduction, notes, appendices etc. Northup did not write the book himself, though it is told in the first person. As is explained by Eakin, Northup told his story to David Wilson, who wrote it up for publication. I say “wrote it up” and not “wrote it down” because the style and ornamentations are almost certainly all Wilson’s, not Northup’s. Still, the narrative does not lose the enormity of this story, the emotions and the pain undergone by Northup and the other slaves. You are sucked right in, and feel exasperated and agonized by what they experience. The book was written in a very short space of time to ride on the back of the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as possibly to identify Solomon’s two kidnappers via those who read his story.
The book was written for a white audience, telling them the story of a slave’s life from kidnap or purchase from the slave-pen, to cotton-picking, sugarcane-cutting, labouring and trying to avoid minute by minute, every day and night, the cruelty of a master who could whip them for no reason and at any time.
We spent a lot of time discussing how people could treat slaves as they did. (Not all slave-owners were cruel, but very many of them were.) In the dialogues between Epps (Northup’s owner) and Bass (the abolitionist who eventually rescued him), it is made clear that slave-dealers and slave-owners convinced themselves, helped by the social acceptance of the practice, that slaves, “people of color” (and another word which is no longer printable), were simply not human beings. Many people in Louisiana and the rest of America believed slaves were an inferior species, little higher than an animal, with speech and limited intellect, and no rights. This is exactly what the Nazis and other twentieth-century abusers thought about their prisoners; and it is what pro-abortionists think about unborn babies. It is the only way that any of them can justify what they do. Slavery was legal then, as abortion is legal now; and as Bass tells Epps (chapter 19), the law said Epps had the right to hold slaves, “but, begging the law’s pardon, it lies.”
Epps and Tibeats, as well as the brief comment about Epps’s son (chapter 18), show the effects of the slave system on the people in it. The fact of being given unlimited power over others, and being allowed to inflict suffering on others without ever being called to account or punished for it, inevitably brings out the worst extremes of brutality in some (not all) people. The story of Epps’s dancing sessions (chapter 13) is hideously reminiscent of the behaviour of some of the Nazis in occupied Poland, the ghettoes and the concentration camps.

Some notes from chapters:
  
Chapter 6
The separation of Eliza from her children is heart-wrenching and difficult to read whether the reader is a mother or daughter. However, it is uncertain whether all of the “free” audience, who were the book’s target, could appreciate that a mother’s love and family ties were experienced by “slaves” in the same way.

Chapter 8
Northup/Wilson gives a history of plantations: land was cheap, and owners were rich. There was a huge drive to cultivate the land. Slaves were mortgaged and therefore worth a lot when alive, so that however much the planter or overseer wanted to whip them it was against their interests to kill them. Ford believed they were an investment worth looking after, and not to be ill-treated. He devised a Code of Conduct of Slaves, also known as the Plantation survival code: without slaves, crops could not be raised, no income generated to pay off the money borrowed by the planter. This was a society of debt and credit (as Bass says in Chapter 19)

Chapter 12
A description of slave life: planting cotton and tilling over 4 weeks, with the lead tiller whipping them if they lagged behind him. One of the most accurate accounts of the process ever recorded for that time. It also revealed how long they worked – in the field from the crack of dawn until dark, then the cotton had to be weighed (a separate chapter on being beaten if you did not collect a sufficient load) and dried.  Then the slaves had to go and make their dinner for that night and lunch for the following day, before they were able to sleep.

Chapter 15
The benefit of Solomon’s ability to play the violin – it gave him money to buy shoes, and also to witness how other rich plantation masters lived. Christmas time was the only time when slaves were free and did not have to work – for 3, 4, or even 5 days, depending on their master’s decision.
The education Solomon Northup had received from Sabbath School as a boy was at the insistence of his father, himself a freed slave.

Chapter 19
The discussion of slavery between Epps and Bass was another eye-opener for the readers on the attitudes of that time. This is a brilliant chapter which could form the basis for school discussion on the topic today.


Sunday 9 February 2014

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden InheritanceEdmund de Waal, Vintage, London, 2011.



Readers’ reactions to the book differed widely according to their past experience, among other things.
The writing is good, although the beginning in particular seems slow-moving and quite hard to get through. The author tends to write in short, terse sentences, with plenty of historic-present-tense verbs. Quite easy to parody, but basically well crafted and sustains interest. An interesting note in the preface explores the author’s reasons or motivations for writing and especially what does not motivate him (p. 15).

It is a book about a journey, or rather journeying: both that of the netsuke collection, and EdW’s own. For the netsuke there is a process of attachment and detachment along the way, being acquired, owned, valued or not valued differently, and passed on to someone else. The author takes you with him on his journey. He does not know where the journey is going to lead him, and neither do you. A totally enjoyable process, even for those who generally like books with a plot. There isn’t one, but by the end of it the reader has acquired a fair amount of meaningful historical information and has been on a journey of discovery; the netsuke are the thread that holds the whole thing together.

The author’s journey takes him notably to Tokyo, Paris, Vienna, Kovecses (Hungary) and Odessa, in the process of journeying into the lives of his family’s past members. It is not a travel book, because of the tremendous sense of place.

It is a book that needs to be re-read to get the most out of it as there is so much to take in. Not only to read again but to study and discuss. It is a fantastic angle on the history, especially the social history, of Europe in the 19th and early 20th century, and Japan in and after World War 2.

Eileen, an artist herself, enjoyed the beautifully crafted writing, and the rich masses of information about different artistic styles and movements in the course of the book. You identify with EdW’s appreciation of this little work of art that is a netsuke, so fine and small, over which a craftsmen had spent ages: they are objets d’art and worth studying for themselves. The value of a thing is all the human effort that has gone into making them. He spends time on the tactile value of the netsuke, to others and to him as a craftsman himself. This was especially interesting to Eileen because of her mother’s belongings: she bought things carefully, individually, planning what she was going to buy and whom for – a Wedgewood dinner-service she wanted her son to have, etc.: “This is beautiful,” she would think, “and I want it for so-and-so…”

Readers can appreciate Edmund de Waal’s sensitivity; this appears to be a tendency inherited from his ancestors and family, and he wants his children to have the netsuke; at the end of the book he installs a vitrine for them at home. All of this is in stark contrast to our current pervasive throw-away culture. The book makes one realise how unpleasant and alienating this culture is; and to want things that can be valued. Carelessness breaks and spoils things; the approach of the artist helps everyone to re-learn a love of things that have value and meaning. Costly and beautiful and material things have a meaning. There are so many reasons for valuing an object: De Waal really explores what happens when people value an object; just as an artist he didn’t want the things he had made to be lost or thrown away.

The story of the netsuke takes us to World War 2 Europe, and how the Jews – in this case the Ephrussi family of Vienna – were forcibly detached from their prized possessions. It is an effective introduction to what used to be called “the Jewish question”: why the Jews were disliked by so many members of their host countries: the book does not explain it so much as exploring it. It was particularly helpful to readers who had already seen Simon Schama’s programmes “The Story of the Jews”, especially the one about the Enlightenment. EdW’s family were assimilated Jews – Charles Ephrussi in 19th-century Paris; Viktor and Elizabeth in Vienna – they professed no religion, but what mattered was the clan, the family.


Other readers may find that there is no character in the book that they sympathise or can identify with in any way. The human angle is deliberately undeveloped, the relationships are dealt with from a historical angle. One may miss the fleshing-out that a historical-fiction approach would have brought; EdW restricts himself to appreciative history with a minimum of speculation.