AA Gill is Away
Lately I've been taking a run at adult literacy (as opposed to reading books for small children, to small children, or about soccer, which could be said to be for people with similar mental ages*).
I started out gently with "AA Gill is Away," an American edition of compiled travel articles by the writer for the Sunday Times. I had read an article some years ago in the UK edition of GQ which AA Gill wrote about his "adult" script being filmed in the San Fernando Valley, and I know that's he's friendly with Jeremy Clarkson, so I expected the writing to be self-satisified and offensive in tone (not a bad thing).
To an extent that was right, but I was taken with his approach of deliberately not learning much about a place before he goes so as to report back his reactions, as opposed to the confirmation or not of other peoples' biases and conclusions. It made for vivid writing.
The other aspect of his writing that struck me was the occasional flash of humanity, of anger, and of compassion. For instance, he pauses in mocking American Baptists in Israel to see the holy sights to point out that they at least came as the culmination of years of planning and saving, motivated by faith, to be treated like morons and worse by "the professionals" of the various holy orders, who were competing only with one another for doctrinal correctness through process. The scarcely contained rage of his piece on vaccination in Africa provided a counterpoint to the superficial sadness.
However, the section that I found really quite devastating was his description of an orphan in a TB ward in Nukus, capital of a formerly Soviet region called Kara-Kalpakstan:
There is no happy ending for something like this; it transcends sympathy. As someone who fulfilled all the stereotypes about emotionally engaging in stories about small children now that I have two of my own, this was an alternative universe so bad that the Star Wars blast shields went up before I could really think about it.
I'm even willing to forgive Gill his rude remarks about Scots on the strength of the above passage. That, and also because he revealed himself as a fully-paid-up-member of said club by being rude about his fellow members.
* for what it's worth, I recommend the Olivia books by Ian Falconer and "Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!" by Candace Fleming for the tinies, and "A Season withe Verona" by Tim Parks and "Soccer in Sun and Shadow" by Eduardo Galeano for the footie fans. "Football against the enemy" by Simon Kuper is good also.
I started out gently with "AA Gill is Away," an American edition of compiled travel articles by the writer for the Sunday Times. I had read an article some years ago in the UK edition of GQ which AA Gill wrote about his "adult" script being filmed in the San Fernando Valley, and I know that's he's friendly with Jeremy Clarkson, so I expected the writing to be self-satisified and offensive in tone (not a bad thing).
To an extent that was right, but I was taken with his approach of deliberately not learning much about a place before he goes so as to report back his reactions, as opposed to the confirmation or not of other peoples' biases and conclusions. It made for vivid writing.
The other aspect of his writing that struck me was the occasional flash of humanity, of anger, and of compassion. For instance, he pauses in mocking American Baptists in Israel to see the holy sights to point out that they at least came as the culmination of years of planning and saving, motivated by faith, to be treated like morons and worse by "the professionals" of the various holy orders, who were competing only with one another for doctrinal correctness through process. The scarcely contained rage of his piece on vaccination in Africa provided a counterpoint to the superficial sadness.
However, the section that I found really quite devastating was his description of an orphan in a TB ward in Nukus, capital of a formerly Soviet region called Kara-Kalpakstan:
A small lad tags along with us, pretty, pallid, Central Asian features with a mop of black hair. Whenever I look rough, he's there, sneaking with a tyke's smile and a slight squint. His name sounds like Gary. Gary's as bright as a button, except he's not: he's got TB and the complications of pleurisy, and he's brain damaged; and he's an orphan, he's seven.I read that and felt like someone had punched me in stomach. It's not the weepy self-indulgent reaction desired by emotional pr0n like Three Wishes or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition where nice things happen to badly-done-to people who really are the salt of the earth, and we can have a cry and all feel a bit better about life. (Clarification: I am not being sarcastic about the people on these shows who receive help; no need to add insult to injury.)
Today, by chance, is my son's seventh birthday. Thousands of miles from here, his healthy lungs are blowing out candles. I should be there but I'm not; I'm here with Gary, who puts his face close to mine and laughs -- the first laugh I've heard in days, a tinkling, rippling noise, an echo from another place. I smile back but realize he can't see it, because I'm wearing this antiseptic muzzle to protect me from his breath.
Being dealt TB, pleurisy, brain damage and a family of one in Nukus is about as low a hand as God can offer a seven-year-old. We walk on through the wards, the little hand fits into mine and breaks my heart.
There is no happy ending for something like this; it transcends sympathy. As someone who fulfilled all the stereotypes about emotionally engaging in stories about small children now that I have two of my own, this was an alternative universe so bad that the Star Wars blast shields went up before I could really think about it.
I'm even willing to forgive Gill his rude remarks about Scots on the strength of the above passage. That, and also because he revealed himself as a fully-paid-up-member of said club by being rude about his fellow members.
* for what it's worth, I recommend the Olivia books by Ian Falconer and "Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!" by Candace Fleming for the tinies, and "A Season withe Verona" by Tim Parks and "Soccer in Sun and Shadow" by Eduardo Galeano for the footie fans. "Football against the enemy" by Simon Kuper is good also.
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