The Kite Runner

April’s gathering was again a triumvirate, Kevin again calling off due to work commitments, sadly. It was marked by our decision to sit outside as it was a lovely day, and I have to take responsibility for deciding that we should sit right by the railway platform a do a bit of train spotting at the same time. This decision was fine when made, but obviously became a little bit of a problem when the conversation was interrupted by passing trains, given that The Vic actually has a gate onto the platform of the station, so is very close. Remarkably Beeston station has its own Wiki page which can tell you more about this if you really want to know! The effect was to interrupt the conversation from time to time with the passing of interesting stuff like this:

East Midlands Trains HST

Well, interesting if you like trains …
Anyway The Kite Runner. Bit of a split in the group I think – I liked it, but opinions were a bit mixed from Dave and Paul. Dave’s not so keen on first person narratives, so that kind of put him off from the beginning. Paul thought that the way it is constructed rather telegraphed what was going to happen, that some of the devices were rather obvious and not subtle enough. He’d worked out ahead of time some of the key points of narrative, which I must confess I hadn’t seen quite so clearly, although there ARE times when it seems like the author is slightly labouring a point, and you then assume that this is going to be important later. This led onto a bit of a diversion as Dave and I briefly discussed one of our favourite films ‘Blade Runner’ – the original theatrical release has a rather heavy ‘film noir’ voiceover which explains things as you go along, which is rather irritating. Tt’s actually a very well constructed film, and I remember when I first saw it thinking “Yes, but I’ve just worked all that out – why are you telling me!”. The later Director’s Cut and the Final Cut manage without the voiceover and the film is much the better for it. In some ways The Kite Runner has a similar feel, that you could have worked it out with a few less hints. None of us have seen the film version, so can’t comment on that yet. On the other hand I felt that the description of Afghan culture was good, as well as the description of how Afghan communities in exile managed to retain their identity. As someone who has no knowledge of this particular culture, but an interest in cultural adaptation and how people live their lives I thought this was an interesting insight to a way of living which I will almost certainly never have a chance to experience.
Then Dave said something very profound that was drowned out by one of these:

East Midlands Trains Meridian

Fortunately it had gone by the time he was telling us about what he’d got up to in Mumbai (formerly Bombay, of course) when he was in the Marines many years ago.

Somehow we got back onto the subject of mental health again, probably in the course of talking about work and stuff. Paul was bemoaning the way in which there is a glut of experiential books and wondering if this was helpful. Some of course, are very good ways of gaining insights into the experience of different types of mental distress and suffering, but the question was more about whether there is just too much of this stuff out there now. We weren’t sure if this is just a publisher’s commercial imperative, if it sells well, then why not commission more of it – ‘If you liked x you’ll probably like y’ type thinking promoted by some websites.

This led onto some more thoughts about whether there is also a myth about the link between creativity and madness. Everyone has heard of the theory that there is a fine line between madness and genius, but does there ALWAYS have to be an element of unhinged-ness to spark creativity. Dave probably had the answer, but it was drowned out by another one of these…:

Another Meridian unit

Whatever it was he said led onto us finally thinking about the way in which creativity can also be stifled in mental health practice by the current mechanistic approach to treatment, led by the somewhat reductionist NICE guidelines which can promote the view that, for example, if you have OCD then you need 6 sessions of CBT and everything will be fine. Anyone who has experience of this will know that NICE guidelines can be a very useful summation of the best evidence-based work on particular ways, but seems to lose something of the hear and soul of caring approaches to mental distress. The pressure that practitioners are currently under to conform to this mechanistic approach was memorably described by Paul as ‘despicably feudal’, a turn of phrase which we all agreed deserved greater currency. But then we had all had a couple of pints by this time. For those of you with an interest in these things Dave stuck with the Harvest Pale, but I tried the Batemans XB, which went down very nicely, Paul converting to the Batemans half way during the evening just for the experience…
These were the most disruptive, being very long and even louder than the passenger trains…

EWS tankers...

Having sorted out the NHS we turned back, for a while, to think about where we were going with the group and wondered if we should widen it oiut a little to include others who had an interest in the sorts of things we were discussing, even making it an open invitation for people to turn up, knowing what book we were discussing. Not entirely sure where we are going with that, but happy to have others along 🙂

Not sure we’ll sit right by the platform again, but did notice one of these, as well as the East Midlands Trains stuff:

Cross Country Trains Super Sprinter (I think)

So, how do I know so much about trains, you ask? Simple really, Dad was a train driver on the old Southern Region, though he drove stuff much more like this, on the Victoria, Brighton and Hastings lines:

Southern Region Electric Multiple Unit

And I worked on Eastbourne Station as a porter for a few months between school and Uni. That might also explain the Eurostar picture at the top of the blog too, come to think of it. But I’m not really a train buff, not me, oh no…

And what are we reading for next month? Nothing less than Sartre’s ‘Existentialism and Humanism’. Did you guess yet who picked that one? Not me, but then just discussing fiction and not talking about big ideas may just be boring. After that (in June) it’s Paul’s pick, Susan Sontag’s ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’, which the Daily Telegraph’s review said is: “A brilliant analysis of our numbed responses to images of horror’… Between now and our next meeting, on Wednesday 27th May, our task is to start thinking about the next round of books. Oh, and Kevin has to buy the beer next time for missing a meeting or two 🙂