Cartel Land

Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All the habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. 

         (Old Major, Chapter 1 of Animal Farm)

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a fatalistic look at life after a revolution. In the beginning of the story, the animals of Mr Jones’ farm are tired and embittered: they work diligently day and night to provide the yield that will only go to making their employer richer. With Old Major’s above words, the animals envisage a different future, one where they don’t work in servitude for one, but in a collective for one another. Heeding the eloquent battle cry of Major, Jones is turfed off the land and a new, more benign dawn begins. Over time though the milk of socialism becomes curdled when the dastardly pigs launch an insidious coup to wrestle control of Animal Farm. By the end of the book, the animals are back where they started: their utopian dream vanquished by dystopian reality. They are again under control; it’s just this time control has another name.

The animals have had enough of Mr Jones.

The reason I talk about Orwell’s polemical allegory is because I couldn’t help thinking about it whilst watching the brilliant documentary, Cartel Land. The film is an expose on the Mexican-American meth trade - the victims surprisingly are neither supplier nor consumer, but the communities and lives in-between.

We begin in Mexico. Under the cloak of darkness, barrels are rolled out the rear end of a truck. Inside is the methylamine that will be ‘cooked’ and packaged into the addictive drug that will go on to scourge communities. Concealed by a bandana, one of these cooks tells us why he has chosen a life of crime: poverty is his answer. If he had what the cameraman had, he wouldn’t need to risk punishment in this life or the next. As it is he doesn’t, so he prays God gives him the means to carry on turning a trade. This invocation to the Almighty to facilitate drug production is laughable to First World ears, but in the world of the have-nots the irony between being God-loving and people-hurting is completely missing.

The meth cooks.

The camera then takes us to Arizona’s Altar Valley, which lies on the Mexican-American border. Tim ‘Nailer’ Foley stalks the terrain like an extra who hasn’t been told Apocalypse Now has wrapped. Coming clean from years of drink and alcohol abuse, his eyes have the intensity of a man who has seen his own death. He is fitted out in full camo, a firearm sits snug in his arms; he looks every bit a soldier. But he isn’t. Foley is part of a vigilante group that have migrated to the border to fend off the marauding drug cartels. With an under-funded Border Patrol agency unable to hold back the tide, a patriotic militia group have formed to fire the devils straight back to hell.

Foley and his a million-yard stare.

Now, we’re in Michoacan, a Mexican town that lies 1000 miles from the border. A funeral cortege is in process. This is no ordinary one though. There is not the dignified solemnity of your typical service, instead there are the strangulated cries of raw emotion. Body after body is being put in the ground. A family has been killed. 13. From elder to teenager to baby – all killed. You can’t treat death with dignity when lives have been taken without it. Their crime: working for a person who owed the drug cartel money. Their employer couldn’t pay so they paid with their own lives. This is the warped justice system of a country whose constitutional one is seriously lacking.

The family of the deceased.

Finally in our four-pronged narrative, we’re introduced to Jose Manuel Mireles - or as he’s popularly known ‘El Doctor.’ The fact that Mireles has a moniker only supports the idea of him being styled on Western folk heroes. He has the hat, the moustache and the gun of his inspirations. He also has the cause: as a resident of Michoacan, he has seen too many deaths arising as a consequence of the cartels. He feels that the police are corrupt, handcuffed to greed with the very men they are meant to arrest. In his eyes, he has no other option but to establish the AutoDefensas, a people’s army that will bear arms and bring down the criminals that blight their community. The fact he manages to do all this whilst doing his day job as a doctor makes him the stuff of filmmaker's dreams.

Michoacan's answer to Clint Eastwood.

This is Cartel Land then: a modern day Wild West where the Sheriff saw the gunfire and quickly left town, a country where the saloon door has been kicked in and been co-opted by a gang of desperados. But outside a movement is growing. Can you hear it? It’s the AutoDefensas rising, ready to show these outlaws the long arm of the draw. And it works. For a time the cartels go running to the hills, but it’s not long before the corruption within El Doctor’s own tribe sends the revolution back to the warning Farm's Old Major envisaged.

I loved Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land because it says something about the time we live in. Poorer communities aren’t tended to by the state, as a consequence the weeds of lawlessness and violence take hold. Surely for a better land it’s worth listening to the people responsible for its destruction. After all, as the cartel cook argues, poverty led him to where he was. Maybe if we watered people with education and hope then Eden would be possible. Otherwise the alternative is UKIP. As this week proves, we have been warned.

Cartel Land is available on Netflix.

Mothering Sunday

Jon Snow is a voice that we all trust. Whether he is discussing the Syrian conflict or dancing to pop songs on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, he is always appears a decent egg. So while listening to him give his book recommendation on Radio 4’s A Good Read my ear’s piqued: what is good enough for Jon Snow is good enough for me, I thought. His choice was Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday, a novella he describes as ‘a very short book, but very long on emotion, romance and beauty.’ 

The people's newsreader.

The only other liaison I've enjoyed with Swift was when I read his Booker winning novel Last Orders, a naturalistic portrait of the days following death. That book set in contemporary London followed a group of working-class men coming together to carry out the last request of a deceased friend. For many winning a major Arts prize is the apex of a one’s career, but in Sunday Swift has crafted a miniature of such finesse and detail that the observant eye may perhaps view it as more impressive than his supposed ‘masterpiece.’

Last Orders was later turned into a film starring Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins.

Mothering Sunday is set on the titular date in 1924. It tells the story of a maid Jane Fairchild and her affair with wealthy landowner Paul Sheringham. Now at this point, I appreciate many of you are retching into your cliché bucket. This love across the classes is a story as old as time, lapped up by Sunday audiences since God had a rest. I too had my reservations about the premise, but despite the rather hackneyed plot the execution is anything but, proving as it does to be unutterably intoxicating and incredibly beguiling.

The novella is redolent of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway in that it takes place over one day after the First World War. In Woolf’s modernist novel she experimented with stream of consciousness, a form that attempts to solidify the vaporous thoughts of a character by putting them on the page. As we don’t think in straight lines, this form of narrative is jumbled with visions of the past intruding on the present. Stories like this are satisfying for some and frustrating for others: there is delayed gratification in a story that doesn’t hurtle towards its ending; the reader must surrender to the nebulous world of interior thought, accepting the external world of galloping action is something for other novels. Much of Mothering Sunday then slides in and out of time, making you wonder how on earth the writer knew where they were with the timeline. A case in point is the start of the story: we’re in Sheringham’s room, he and Jane are in glorious wonderland, feeding on the fruits of their clandestine lovemaking. We’re then transported back to before this union happened, only to be ushered back into the bedroom, before again being displaced to hear more of how their affair came to be. This toing and froing would be jolting in the wrong hands, but in Swift's the narrative sways as naturally as the tides.

The book that perhaps inspired Swift.

Snow is also right to call the language ‘deeply poetic’ and remark on how special it is. Sheringham’s love for Jane is duplicitous in that he is betrothed to Miss Hobday, a lady from another rich family; however, the pain in this forced arrangement is made more acute by the instinctive tenderness he feels towards his true love. Coming down from the ecstasy of carnality, the two are described as lying together like ‘pink salmon on a sideboard, waiting for guests, guests at a wedding even, who would never arrive.’ Later, Jane theorises on the satisfaction of sexual pleasure: 

It was called ‘relaxation,’ she thought, a word that did not commonly enter a maid’s vocabulary. She had many words, by now, that did not enter a maid’s vocabulary. Even the word ‘vocabulary.’ She gathered them up like one of those nest-building birds.

This utterance deals with the novel's twin concerns: the power of love and language. Over the course of the novella, Jane learns that the former subjugates the latter, that true kinship between people can never be captured in words- it’s impossible like casting your rod to heaven and being disappointed when you can't catch a cloud.

A lady in the nuddy.

Like Romeo and Juliet, the lovers are never meant to be. Status and tradition are the ruling party, with democratic love pushed to the fringes. The nakedness of the bedroom allows the two be unclothed of the positions that define them. But outside the vultures of conformity hover, reminding the pair that boundless passion will be landlocked by class for many years yet. Tragedy is just a front door away, which is why we our unease grows when one finally has to step outside.

At 132 pages Mothering Sunday is a quick read but a great one. So today on Father's Day why not order yourself a copy? It's what Jon Snow would do.

Mothering Sunday is available now.

The World of Simon Rich

Every once in a while something comes along that seems made for you. I felt it when I first heard The Smiths; I was sure of it when I first read Dan Rhodes, and this week I felt it when listening to Simon Rich. When people produce art that you love, it feels as though your personality has been lifted by a skilled ghostwriter and transformed into articulacy you’re incapable of. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it’s so exciting, because you then look at the artist's back catalogue and think, “How have I missed all this!” The regret soon fades as you relish the wealth of material you'll now have to catch up on.

Simon Rich is the boy wonder of the humorist scene. A prodigious talent, he signed his first book deal when he was still a student at Harvard University. On graduating he became a staff writer for American institution, Saturday Night Live. It wasn’t long before he received the call to be part of Pixar's creative time, where he would go on to provide additional material for Inside Out. With a sitcom based on his short stories gaining critical acclaim Rich has his fingers in a lot of creative pies.

Rich had something to do with this.

Looking to conquer his next medium, Rich’s imaginative sails have reached radio where he can now be heard in The World Of Simon Rich. Following a recommendation in the Radio Times, I downloaded the first episode and was quickly bowled over by a mind at play. The radio show is a platform for Rich’s writing with most of the contributions coming from his short story collection, The Last Girlfriend on Earth and other stories. Rich reads a few of the pieces, but many of the vignettes are performed by the vanguards of the British alternative comedy scene: Tim Key, Peter Serafinowicz, Cariad Lloyd and Joseph Morpurgo. This is a sensible move on Rich’s part as it elevates the show from being a collection of readings into something more distinct and engaging, benefitting as it does from the best vocal talents in the country.

Download the iPlayer App - it's great.

The centre-piece of episode 1 was the story Unprotected read by Tim Key. This to my mind is a distillation of the author’s talent: a rude premise romantically executed. The story is narrated by a condom, personified to tell his life journey from the factory warehouse to the wallet where it's raised. What is stunning about the storytelling is the intricate details that Rich includes; for instance, when the condom gets to the wallet he describes how:  'I also met photograph of girl human. Very beautiful. Eyes like Blockbuster Video. Blue, blue, blue.' 

Why the banal simile? Because the condom's world is limited to a wallet, it is only be able to compare the girl to things it’s seen, hence the Blockbuster Video card. Another genius moment in the story is how the condom’s life is entwined with his owner Jordi Hirschfield As Jordi gets older, the Velcro Batman wallet is displaced for stiff brown leather, meaning Condom must vacate his comfy home for more austere surroundings, a relocation he is not happy about: 

‘I am angry. What was wrong with Velcro Batman? It had many pockets and was warm. I miss my friends and I am lonely.’ 

This transference marks Jordi’s move to adulthood, a transition that he hopes leads to a sexual awakening; however, will this desire for sexual gratification come at a cost to our narrator? Essentially, it’s a grown up Toy Story 3 with the waste paper bin being the incinerator – don't fear Condom's fate though, as in most of Rich's tale the climax isn't what you think.

Tim Key voices the condom.

Episode 2 that aired this week followed a similar format with quick sketches alongside longer narratives. My favourite was The Adventure of The Spotted Tie, a pastiche of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock stories. As in the original, Watson narrates the puzzle Holmes must solve. Unlike the original, Holmes’ private life is the source of the mystery, with his girlfriend Alyssa the focus for his investigation. It appears that when looking through her overnight bag Holmes found a spotted tie – a spotted tie that doesn't belong to him. How could a man’s tie end up in his girlfriend’s possession? Suspicious, Watson asks: “Where is she now?” Holmes replies, “With her personal trainer, Jeremy. They meet on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. For her thumb.” For Watson this is an open and shut case; for Holmes, a man in love, ardor has blindsided logic. Like much of Rich’s work, it’s a story that shows how love conquers all – including the intellect of men.

Unable to get enough of Rich’s mercurial talent, I bought The Last Girlfriend on Earth and other stories where these two stories come from. Personification and pastiche are just two comedic skills in the man’s armoury: there’s analogy too in Occupy Jen Street where an Occupy protestor sets up an encampment at a girl’s house, refusing to move until she reciprocates his love demands; there’s Sci-Fi in the Archeological Excavation Report which brilliantly deconstructs 21^st century mating rituals from the vantage point of the distant future; there’s surrealism in Is it Just Me? which tells the modern story of a girl’s relationship with Adolf Hitler. The movement between styles gives the work a kaleidoscopic quality, imbued as it is with a revolving richness that constantly entertains.

The brilliant Simon Rich.

So there you have it. I’ve fallen hook, line and sinker into The World of Simon Rich. If anyone wants to join me down this rabbit hole, then turn on Radio 4, Thursday at 10pm.  I promise you, it's a pretty good place to be.

Previous episodes of The World of Simon Rich are available through the BBC iPlayer Radio App.

The Last Girlfriend on Earth and other stories is £1.99 on Amazon.

The Line of Beauty

I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about at college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. 

(Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby)

In Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is a satellite to the Jazz Age: the functional collector of information in the glittering cosmos of West Egg.  Gatsby reveals his buried love for Daisy to Nick, and Tom also confides in him his affair. In a selfish society predisposed to talk, the listener is king: with every man shouting his success to the rafters, everyone's success goes unnoticed - it becomes a trading floor of white noise- what is needed is a listener on the other line to confirm their stock is valued, that they have a personality worth buying into.

Gatsby's Nick Carraway.

Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty is I believe The Great Gatsby transposed to the Thatcher age. Just as Gatsby begins with a procession of parties, Line does too with Gerald Fedden's elevation to Parliament inciting a succession of soirees. The year is 1983 and the Tories have won a landslide election, owed largely to the 'successful' Falklands campaign. Everything is rosy in the garden of conservatism: Mrs Thatcher, the dominatrix of Downing Street, has another opportunity to crack the whip at her increasingly masochistic electorate. The ensuing celebrations heralding her second coming are lavish affairs, scored classically by an orchestra of men chinking glasses and toasting the leader they love. This is a golden time for greed in England.

Gerald Fedden, the newly elected MP, is leader of the house in Notting Hill. A luxury pad that owes more to his wife Rachael’s unhumble beginnings, as the daughter of aristocracy, than his own career climb. Their children Toby and Catherine are blue-bloods that nurse more liberal values than their parents. Catherine, for instance, doesn’t understand why someone who has made money wants to make more. Her cynical outlook on greed is hardly Orwellian though: she will challenge her father’s friends on avarice from their holiday home in France. Toby is less resistant than his sister, although his views on homosexuality and marriage are progressive. 

The other character that makes up the household is Nick Guest. 

Nick is a guest in the Fedden nuclear unit. A friend of Toby’s from Oxbridge, he turns out to be the guest that never leaves. Although Nick stays with the family over the course of the book – the four-year span of Thatcher’s second term – the term guest still seems applicable to him. He remains an outsider in their world because he is never their equal. The son of an antique dealer, Nick comes from wealth, not riches. Also as a homosexual he is considered tainted, regardless of the Feddens tacit acceptance. On grounds of class and sexual predilection, Nick can never be a Fedden and is destined to remain a Guest.

Beauty's Nick Guest.

The role of guest affords you privileges that being part of the family cannot. It allows you to be a neutral observer, to see things for what they are, rather than what they ought to be. Consequently, you spot things that a family might miss: the furtive glances of husband and secretary; the stolen conversation between mother and brother; the disquieting behaviour of the daughter. Nick Guest sees all of this, making him just like Carraway: ‘privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men.’ On the swimming pool surface of the Feddens glittering lives everything appears beautiful, but underneath noxious secrets threaten to rise and contaminate the water. Beginning the decade united, ending the decade divided, the families fortune follows the same downward curve of the Conservative Party they represent.

I should end by remarking on Hollinghurst’s prose. His character Nick Guest is a postgraduate involved in the study of Henry James, a novelist regarded in the literary cannon as ‘the master.’ Throughout the novel, Guest is referred to as an ‘aesthete’ because of his appreciation and sensitivity to beauty. Hollinghurst is the same as Guest: he is more interested in art than commerce. His book is a satire on greed, an avowal to artistic endeavour. Sentences like: “Ricky clearly never hurried, he was his own lazy happening” and ‘they toasted them sardonically in milk and sugar’ show a true master at work. 

Essentially, in making a Gatsby for the modern age, Hollinghurst achieves a greatness akin to his inspiration. It really is a great read.

The Line Of Beauty won the 2004 Booker Prize and is available from all good bookshops.