Feldman's Faves: January 15, 2024

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE

This January has been one of the busiest starts to the year across the board that I can remember. I hope people managing ok.  If you need assistance on your files please let JC and I know and we will assist on that front.

Interesting week ahead in the world of politics given that Iowa is happening today. Will be very interesting to see how this turns out.

Playoffs and National Championship aside, this week has been quite a week in the world of football.  First, Nick Saban retires, then Belechick leaves New England and Pete Carroll leaves the Seahawks.  Looks like there are some job opportunities out there. And of course, GO BLUE and GO BILLS (fingers crossed).

No theme this week – just topics of interest.

PROPHET SONG By: Paul Lynch  – For those of you that actually read this, you know that I am huge fan of the Booker Prize Winner every year, which was one this year by Paul Lynch for his dystopian novel, Prophet Song. This book, in the tradition of the Booker, is incredibly disturbing and upsetting. Just when you think their choice is the most depressing they keep at it…. In this novel, Lynch creates a modern version of 1984 in which Ireland gets turned into a military state and people’s rights start disappearing – of expression, assembly and free movement. What is really interesting about this book is that instead of focusing on society at large it centres on one family and they struggle to deal with this horrific and unexpected changes in their lives and core beliefs.

As one reviewer notes, “If there was ever a crucial book for our current times, it’s Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song. The Limerick-born author’s fifth novel imagines the Republic of Ireland slipping into totalitarianism after the rise of the rightwing National Alliance party which seizes total control in response to trade unionists lobbying for increased teachers’ wages. Civil liberties erode and civil war breaks out. Like a lobster in a boiling pot, people don’t realize their freedoms have been obliterated until it’s too late: “All your life you’ve been asleep, all of us sleeping and now the great waking begins.”  Lynch’s critically acclaimed third novel, Grace, was likened to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and this could also be said of the Man Booker-longlisted Prophet Song, a dystopian nightmare in which the Stack family endure the horrors of the “great waking”. The book is also reminiscent of Anna Burns’s Milkman in that it’s an important story aching to be told, heavy with the reality it bears. While Burns wrote of sexual harassment, Lynch’s dystopian Ireland reflects the reality of war-torn countries, where refugees take to the sea to escape persecution on land. Prophet Song echoes the violence in Palestine, Ukraine and Syria, and the experience of all those who flee from war-torn countries. This is a story of bloodshed and heartache that strikes at the core of the inhumanity of western politicians’ responses to the refugee crisis. Told without paragraph breaks, the book has a breathless, claustrophobic atmosphere. Free will and the meaning of liberty are pushed beyond their limits, eroding both to a state of near non-existence. It begins in Dublin as Larry, a senior trade unionist, is disappeared at a rally, leaving his wife, Eilish, to raise their four children. She must make impossible decisions to protect her family. In one heart-wrenching scene, she has to run across no man’s land to see her injured son at a hospital, risking execution by snipers shooting at civilians.  Leaving home for an unknown existence beyond Ireland’s borders is a choice made all the graver for Eilish as her father, Simon, who has early stage dementia, is insistent on remaining in the house he shared with his wife. Shouting at a trafficker sent to rescue her and her family, Eilish says: “What my father needs is … to be surrounded by his memories, to have the past within reach.”

Eilish’s conversations with her father are fraught with memory slippage as she grapples to make him understand the severity of their situation. But his mind wanders between the past and present, conjuring false memories of his long dead wife. He is sometimes aware of the realities of the conflict, and when he is, he is razor-sharp: “you [Eilish] believe in rights that don’t exist, the rights you speak of cannot be verified they are a fiction decreed by the state”. He tells her to leave him behind and go to Canada – anywhere but here. Lynch’s message is crystal clear: lives the world over are experiencing upheaval, violence, persecution. Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.” The style of writing (really long unending paragraphs) and the subject matter (or at least how it is handled) are really original and it clear why this book won the award – I strongly recommend that you read it.  Here is a good review from The Booker Prize Committee - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/02/study-for-obedience-sarah-bernstein-review-granta-best-young-british-novelists-2023

The Next Big Idea - The Good Life: Lessons From the World's Longest Study of Happiness – One of the most interesting psychological experiments ever undertaken is the multigenerational longitudinal study by Harvard on happiness.  I believe this study started almost 100 years ago in an effort to find out what makes people happy. The study was confidential but it turns out that a young JFK was part of it. Spoiler alert, career success and lots of money is not the answer. It’s the relationships both quality and quantity you form over a lifetime that will determine your happiness (at least according to this study).   Here’s an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “What makes us happy? Researchers at Harvard have been trying to answer that question for 85 years. Now, they think they’ve found the answer. Marc Schulz, associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, joins to tell us more.” https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-next-big-idea/id1482067226?i=1000640521420

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon