The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O'Connor

The Lady in Gold

Anne-Marie O’Connor

Knopf, 2012

An account of how Klimt’s most famous painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also known as Lady in Gold, came to be painted; what happened to Klimt and his circle, and what became of Adele, her family and friends – assimilated Austrian Jewish families in Viennese high society. The last part of the book tells the story of how in the 1990s Maria Gutmann, Adele’s niece, then living in America, successfully sued the Austrian Government for possession of the painting.

Anne-Marie O’Connor is a journalist by training and profession, as is evident from the style of her writing – a high proportion of one-clause sentences and one-sentence paragraphs. She has undertaken a vast amount of research into the lives of everyone even remotely connected to her main themes.

It’s a fascinating story, and one learns a lot about Austria and art; Austria and the Austrians before and during the Second World War; and, of course, the Bloch-Bauer family themselves. The story is told through events, following one after another, not as a narrative. Most of us found it quite hard to keep track of who was related to whom, especially as the author has a habit of referring to people by their first names only, so that even the (essential) index couldn’t help. However, we found it utterly fascinating, crammed with facts, packed with information and new lights on twentieth-century history – and art history ­–, and some simply couldn’t put it down.

It is intriguing to find that here, as in so many places, wealthy Jewish families are major patrons of culture. The answer has to be that, as Pieper famously explained, “Leisure is the basis of culture”.

One of the important lessons of the book is how, after the Second World War, Austrians denied they had invited German Nazis into their country at the Anschluss (the union between Nazi Germany and Austria in 1938) and instead claimed to be the “first victims” of the Nazis. Once again, the book shows how Nazis plumbed the depths of human cruelty. One reader was amused at the change it brought about in her attitudes: The Olive Grove made her hate Israeli Jews for what they did to the Palestinians; but now she hates Austrians for what they did to the Jews. It is not, of course, only the Austrians or only the Nazis: the tragedy of Viktor Gutmann’s death in the Croatia he was hoping to help rebuild, stays in the mind.

However, the Austrian establishment persisted in its refusal either to admit the truth of the Nazi era, or to return the stolen or appropriated art to its rightful owners. The fact is that in the immediate post-war period, a large proportion of those in management or positions of authority were former Nazis or sympathisers. This parallels the situation in ex-Communist countries after 1989.

The characters in the book provoke endless reflection. Adele, unable to have children, was a “modern” woman and became a socialist. Klimt, and his artist friends, raise the question of why they didn’t have any morals. Maria (nee Bloch-Bauer) and her husband Fritz Altmann, after a dodgy beginning, were obviously very much in love. After escaping to America, Maria “discovered that she liked work” !!!!!!!!!!!! Perhaps “the devil finds work for idle hands”. And the book explains that Randol (her lawyer) worked so hard because he had a wife and children to support. One of the original things that could be pulled out of the book is: HOW BORING IT IS WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE WORK TO DO.

Another question which remains unaddressed is: Where was the Catholic Church in all of this? Wasn’t Austria a Catholic country? Maybe there is scope for another book about this?

The Flying Inn by G K Chesterton

The Flying Inn

G. K. Chesterton, first published 1914

A weird and exhilarating fantasy, rather too weird and too much of a fantasy for some readers. Chesterton imagines early twentieth-century England being taken over by an Islamic prophet and a peer of the realm who works tirelessly to introduce Islamic customs as English laws little by little. What the heroes of the book – a lunatic Irishman and a stolid, taciturn pub-owner – object to is the ban on alcohol. Their adventures as they combat the menace become more and more riotous as the book progresses, and they end up in a full-scale pitched battle against the Turks who have secretly been brought in to complete the conquest.

For a recent comment, see:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10918700/A-prophetic-trip-on-the-rolling-English-road.html

Eleni by Nicholas Gage

Eleni (first published 1983)

Nicholas Gage

This book is really two stories combined: the life and death of Eleni Gatzoyiannis, a Greek peasant woman, and the quest of her son Nicholas for truth and justice thirty years later.

Eleni was tortured, condemned to death and killed by the Greek Communist rebels who were occupying and controlling her mountain village.

In writing the book, Nicholas identifies with his mother and brings her life as vividly before us as if the book had been written by Eleni herself. His account of her life and character is detailed and convincing.

It is a tough book to read, and hard to recommend, as one suffers a lot in reading it. But one also learns an enormous amount. In the first place, about Greece in the mid-twentieth century. Secondly, about Communism, an idealism which, because it is totalitarian, necessarily includes the torture and murder of anyone who does not cooperate whole-heartedly – and, indeed, of plenty who do.

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember 

Nicholas Carr. Atlantic Books, 2010.

A book like this forces you to read it in small bites in order to understand and consider Carr’s observations.

Carr offers a very detailed study of ... what it says on the tin (how the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember). Careful scientific and psychological studies show that our brains physically change in response to what we do with them. Because internet technology (typified by Google) is designed to encourage us to jump from one thing to another quickly via hypertext links, related stories, images, etc., internet users progressively lose the ability for deep thought, concentration on one subject, reasoning things to a logical conclusion, silent contemplation, and so on.

He includes a survey of the development of reading. Interestingly enough, at the point where he discusses the ancient and mediaeval world and the transmission of texts, he makes some very ignorant blunders.

“The scribes didn’t pay much attention to the order of the words in a sentence [...]. In spoken language, meaning had always been conveyed mainly through inflection, the pattern of stresses a speaker places on syllables, and that oral tradition continued to govern writing. In interpreting the writing in books through the early Middle Ages, readers would not have been able to use word order as a signal of meaning. The rules hadn’t been invented yet.” (p. 61)

This is simply nonsense. He is confusing “inflection” with “intonation”. The word “inflection” is often used to mean the same as “intonation”, but when dealing with Latin and other languages, it means that the form of the word (typically its ending) changes in order to signify its function in the sentence. That is the reason why word-order in Latin and other inflected languages is much less important than it is in English, French, etc.: you could tell the meaning of the sentence from the forms of the words.

Less importantly, he says, p. 62: “... most literate Greeks and Romans were happy to have their books read to them by slaves.” As a matter of fact, only a tiny minority of literate Greeks or Roman owned slaves who could read Greek or Latin. I could continue with further examples, but it doesn’t really affect the argument of the book so I won’t.

Carr exposes the real problem with technology today – it’s not the speed and type of content it can deliver making our lives more efficient, enjoyable, informative, etc. etc., but actually the medium itself (TV, mobile phone, internet etc.) determining how we now think and work. I am already a child (actually adult, as this change took place in my adulthood) of spellcheck, cut-and-paste, fast forward, rewind, and instant access on the go, and I expect others to think and behave like me.

Funnily enough, the expectation to adapt to technological change is so strong with my grown-up children that after a year of pushing me to change my Windows phone, they clubbed together and bought me an iPhone 6 for my birthday. They argued that this type of phone was more intuitive and easier to use for old people like myself, because we don’t understand how all these things work! Secretly, I have already found I can do things on my iPhone 6 that I couldn’t do on my Windows phone, and so, slowly, I too am evolving new habits.