It’s always about you, isn’t it?

Kevin arrived late, but better late than never huh? Actually he got confused about the time and I wasn’t answering my phone, having taken seriously the Vic’s preference that you put your phone on silent, which meant I can’t actually hear it… A good policy I thought, as is the no TV thing, especially on a night when there was an apparently important football game on in Rome. The lack of phones ringing is a good thing, but we were still occasionally drowned out by passing trains. Anyway Kevin arrived late, after we’d almost given up on him and launched into a debate on Sartre’s ‘Existentialism and Humanism’. He also left early, claiming that the Uni was sending him on a trip to Khazakstan, and he had to catch an early train to London and sit in the Khazakstan Embassy all day waiting for a visa. Now either Kevin has a much more interesting life than the rest of us, or a very elaborate fantasy life. And if the University is sending you to Khazakstan “for a few days”, what does that tell you about how they feel about you? Maybe it’s a funny little English Department joke they play on all their new lecturers – oh how they laughed thinking about the look on his face as he turns up at the Embassy to be confronted by a bunch of diplomats with no sense of humour – “No, Doctor Harvey, we don’t have any record of an appointment to get you a visa…”

Anyway, enough of my own fantasy life (or jealousy!), Dave had picked the book, which had the virtue of being very short, for a work by a French philosopher. The introduction is nearly as long as the lecture text, and is followed by a Q&A session where a M. Naville tries to show what a smart-alec he is by holding forth at the end. “Actually mate, we all came to hear what M. J-P Sartre had to say, not hear what you think.” We’ve all been there, questions at the end of a presentation where someone tries to score points, but M. Sartre was very restrained and, as far as the records show, didn’t slap the guy, but contented himself with a Gallic shrug and a sensible answer or two. Turns out we are all responsible for the choices we make…

M. Sartre refills his pipe whilst bravely tolerating the exposition of M. Naville

Which is pretty much the central thesis of the book, a particular favourite of Dave. Whilst we got the central thesis I was a little concerned that this actually puts a heavy responsibility on us all, making choices which affect not only ourselves but all of mankind. Not that I could quite make out that link, that what we do translates across to making choices for everyone else, and Sartre then bases a lot of what follows on that premise. Of course, our choices affect other people in many ways but do not construct the world in the way implied by Sartre or at least he does not, in this particular text, make this connection strongly enough. Maybe he elaborates on this in more detail elsewhere, but not sufficiently in ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’.

Dress-down Fridays became something of an art form in 1970s Paris...

Coming from a mental health bent, as we do, there was also a lot of discussion about how informed the choices we make can be. Sartre is very clear on taking responsibility for those choices, preferring to minimise the effects of both Nature and Nurture on how those choices are made, but seems to assume a high degree of rationality on those choices. What about those with less capacity, the learning disabled, or those temporarily or permanently afflicted by mental health issues? Are they able to make such informed choices? The discussion centered around this as a limitation of most philosophies which originate from the intellectual classes who assume a similar level of capacity in everyone, which may not necessarily be the case. Are those with horrific experiences to be blamed for how they react to adversity? What do we make of the different levels of resilience which seem to affect the way in which people survive abuse or misfortune, is that entirely a choice that can be made rationally?

Having dealt with Sartre we moved onto less weighty matters. I had brought along a copy of McKeiver’s book on Cromwell’s Irish campaigns.

A New History of Cromwell's Irish Campaigns

Showing it to the others they quickly detected my problem with this book – the worst punctuation in a published book I have ever seen. Now there is a point to this, as Paul often pointed out the limitations of my own punctuation skills when he supervised my own thesis, even making me read the bible of grammar nazis ‘Eats Shoots and Leaves’ in an attempt to quell my fascination with the grocer’s apostrophe. But McKeiver takes it to a new level, with approximately three times as many commas in each sentence as are strictly necessary, making reading the text a chore. And when you do work out what he’s saying it’s mostly not worth the effort anyway, blatant apologism which probably means that Mr McKeiver will not be able to travel to the Republic of Ireland under his own name in the near future…

Inevitably a certain amount of beer was consumed, Dave and Paul being quite keen to stick to their favourite Harvest Pale. Preferring the darker bitters myself I enjoyed a couple of pints of Bargee bitter, and some unspeakable muck that Kevin bought me because he misheard what I asked for, probably a train was passing at the time…

Turns out that we are not the only ones who read the blog, so here’s special mention for Dave’s better half – Hi Jan!

Next month we’re reading Susan Sontag’s ‘On the Pain of Others’ a cheery little number on what we get out of seeing images of horror and pain, or ‘A corruscating sermon on how we picture suffering’ (New York Times) depending on your point of view.

After that we have to pick a whole new round of books, so each of us needs to have a thought about what to inflict on the others! The discipline of reading stuff you wouldn’t necessarily pick to read has, however, been an interesting challenge for us all, we agreed, so I think we’re looking forward to the next cycle of Lunar Society reading…

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 🙂

I have a cunning plan, my Lord…

So, after a bit of too-ing and fro-ing (not sure how you’re supposed to spell that particular saying!) we seem to have a plan:

Next meeting is Weds 25th March at which we will discuss, amongst other things, The Myth of Sisyphus by M. Albert Camus.

After that we will meet on Weds 29th April, being the last Wednesday of the month (and actually the fifth Wednesday), at which we will muse over The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

The other planned books are amongst the links, but it was pointed out by Dave that a couple of months notice would help in actually planning ahead and geting the necessary volumes and having time, amongst our busy lives, to actually read them. Particularly studious folks (or those with poor memories, like me!) might even take a few notes…

A couple of extra folks have been suggested to add to our numbers, and we’ll see how that goes, if they wish to join our little gang or not. For the record these might be Paul B and Mike.

Current folks are Paul (who will become Paul C if  Paul B joins), Dave, Kevin and myself, Laurence. If I post a comment I seem to show up as Partizanmeister, and one day I might reveal why that particular nom d’internet 🙂

I’m keeping the names fairly vague as this is an open blog, and some of our members are a little luddite and nervous about internet security. Strange really as they include people who’ve done serious research using internet resources for their data. Or maybe they know too much about identity theft and all that stuff…

Why no meeting in February? Some people are slow readers.

Actually Paul has a commitment of the international type that would prevent him from attending last Wednesday in Feb, so we’ve given him an extension for this one. Typical academics, huh, only just started and already they’re bending the rules!

Given the idea that this was a group of friends we don’t want to make the whole thing a chore, and an ‘organic’ approach to how the group develops is essential for its success I think.

Oh, and for fans of the Lunar Society concept, a picture of Erasmus Darwin:

and a link to the Wiki page about them

Laurence

In the beginning…

…was The Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Well, actually in the beginning was a conversation on a train with my friend Marie, who, like me, is a Nurse Consultant in child mental health. She was describing to me a new book club that had been started up by a group of colleagues at work. Marie was excited about the opportunities to chat, discuss books and generally socialise, all of which sounded great. But as she went on to describe the need for privacy, taking it in turns to go to other people’s houses, everyone brings wine or cakes etc I realised that what she was describing was an all-female group, which was doing things in a particularly female (even ‘girlie’) way.

So, as the idea appealed to me I wondered how blokes would do a book club. The essence was the same, a group of like-minded chaps who enjoyed a good conversation about matters of intellectual challenge, but probably wouldn’t think to provide doilies and angel cake. It occurred to me that the sort of people I’d like to have these conversations with all rather liked a drop of beer, but actually getting together for a beer often seemed like a bit of a self-indulgence, what with family commitments and all. In particular I hadn’t seen Paul and Kevin for a little while, at least not out of work time (and then not often, we don’t actually work together, just have our paths cross through mutual interests sometimes), so I proposed we meet up and discuss this concept.

Somewhere along the line Paul invited Dave along, which was fine because I’ve known Dave for years, even shared an office with him a long time ago whilst I was on a temporary secondment to the School of Nursing where he works. Even better was the fact that three or four was not really enough for a book club, so we needed an organic growth of like-minded souls who could stimulate enough difference to get some really good conversations going.

So, allowing for the need to accommodate our geographical spread across the city of Nottingham (and Derby in Paul’s case) we arranged a meet at the Victoria Hotel in Beeston, generally known as ‘The Vic’, a place familiar to us all. Actually when we got there it turned out that Paul hadn’t mentioned the book club idea to Dave at all, so it came as a small surprise to him, but he quickly came onboard with what is a splendid idea.

Now, as the originator of the idea I was surprised by how things turned out on a couple of fronts, but very pleasantly surprised. The first was that Paul had been reading a book about the ‘Lunar Society’ based in Derby which comprised some very enterprising gentlemen. Paul enthused about this group and how they had met and developed ideas in the eighteenth century, pimping carriages and taking daring balloon flights at the dawn of air travel as well as hotbedding ideas and philosophical concepts. It seemed a suitable inspiration for our more modest group…

I have to admit that I haven’t read the book yet, but as Paul is talking about talking an afternoon trip to enjoy the history and cafe society of Lichfield, which features heavily in the book apparently, I guess I’d better have a peek and try and catch up on the history of ideas within it.

The second surprise was that when we started talking about what books we might like to discuss, that the suggestions were not just fiction, but included some fairly heavy philosophical tomes. Well, not tomes as such, because we decided that meeting monthly was about right and we didn’t want anything too long, to avoid it becoming a chore. Nonetheless Camus and Sartre came up, making my initial pick of The Kite Runner seem a bit tame. But I want an excuse to read it, and this seemed as good a reason as any. The theme of an interest in mental health, and by implication the human condition, also seemed to shine through…

So, first pick is from Kevin, a little light reading, which we will meet on the last Wednesday of the month to discuss The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.