Birth Control

So Barack Obama's released his birth certificate in an attempt to end the ludicrous right-wing claims that he wasn't born in the USA. Well, fine. Whether this actually stops the half-baked 'birther' movement in its tracks remains to be seen - as others are pointing out, this was never really about his birthplace at all, but a pretty ineptly coded and rather nasty example of the sort of just-beneath-the-surface racism so brilliantly satirised in Clybourne Park, which we saw recently in the West End. (In fact, it's a kind of double racism - that directed against the first black President, plus the underlying assumption that Hawaii is some kind of banana republic which must, by definition, be lying repeatedly about the presidential birth certificate. But yes, I confess that my knowledge of Hawaii is derived principally from both the old and new versions of Hawaii Five-O.) Personally, I doubt whether this will end 'birthism', or whatever it's called; the conspiracy theorists who cry out loudest and longest for hard evidence are actually terrified of some turning up, either because it will give the lie to their fantasies or because they'll have to dream up an even more byzantine explanation of why this development doesn't satisfy them. I suspect that even now, pale young men staring at computer screens in bedrooms in West Virginia or wherever are putting together 'proof' that this certificate is some sort of elaborate forgery put together by an unholy alliance of the CIA, the Illuminati and Al Qaeda - just look at the way in which the conspiracy theories about the moon landings, the death of Diana and 9/11 have survived each new piece of 'definitive' evidence contradicting their cases.

My personal favourite was the story circulated after the Falklands War, when Argentina claimed to have badly damaged HMS Invincible,  now being torn apart in a Turkish scrapyard. I came across a suggestion just the other day that some Argentinians still believe this: the 'proof' was that all of the press photos and TV footage of Invincible's return to Portsmouth on 17 September 1982 was shot from the starboard side, thus cunningly concealing the hideous damage to her port side. Ah well, don't cry for me, Argentina (to coin a phrase) - as anybody who has actually been to Portsmouth knows, the best viewing positions to watch ships entering and leaving the harbour are all on the Portsmouth side (i.e. the starboard side of incoming ships). Moreover, I was there that day and have photos of her from the port side about an hour after she docked. But no doubt this will be disbelieved by pale young men staring at computer screens in bedrooms in the Chubut Valley...

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The new Kindle (see my last post) is still proving to be a revelation. Unfortunately, though, it's altering my reading habits, so that rather than sitting down and reading say three chapters of one book, I'm now skipping between two or three books at a time (of which more anon). Worse, I'm actually finding Peter Mandelson's memoirs pretty compelling - so much so that I've now downloaded Tony Blair's memoirs too. This is troubling. In fact, this is very troubling indeed.   

Rekindled

OK, I succumbed.

Having chuntered endlessly about how sceptical I was of e-book readers, and of how they'd never beat the comforting feel of 'real' books, I received a Kindle for my birthday. My weakening can be attributed to several causes, including the realisation that at the current rate of acquiring books, there would probably soon be no room for me in the Lair, let alone anything else; but I'm also working on a tentative idea to write some novellas exclusively for Kindle, and with that in mind it seemed sensible to actually experience it from a consumer's viewpoint.

So am I a convert? Yes, emphatically. The size is infinitely more convenient than most overblown modern paperbacks (I'm one of those recidivists who long for the days when one could fit a book comfortably into a coat pocket). The 'electronic ink' is easy to read, and obviously the ability to store many books on one small device has huge advantages - I won't now have to throw myself out, and I should be able to travel more comfortably from A to B without packing enough books to populate a small rural library. The facility to email my own drafts to the Kindle is likely to prove very useful indeed. Doom-mongers, my erstwhile comrades-in-arms, can predict 'the death of the book' all they like, but as far as I'm concerned, a week of the Kindle has already broadened my reading. For example, I've been vaguely interested for some time in reading Peter Mandelson's memoir, The Third Man, but it's probably not something I would ever have gone out and bought - but having it on the Kindle, taking up no space whatsoever, is ideal. Without searching the books available for Kindle, it would probably have taken me far longer to realise that one of my favourite authors, John Biggins (author of the simply brilliant Sailor of Austria series), had a new book out, namely The Surgeon's Apprentice, which is the first book I'm reading on the device. (Biggins is one of the very few authors who consistently writes books that I wish I'd written myself, and The Surgeon's Apprentice certainly fits that bill - set in the Netherlands in the 17th century and with a first chapter that touches on the assassination of Henri IV of France by Francois Ravaillac, a subject explored in the last chapter of my Blood of Kings, it seems eerily close to home!).

But I can foresee one serious flaw in the logic behind having the Kindle. I'm now likely to want a hard copy of The Surgeon's Apprentice, and the same is probably likely to happen with other tomes in the future. So rather than heralding the death of the real book and an end to space management issues, the Kindle might well lead to this reader, at least, ending up with even more books on his shelves. Maybe it's time for me to move into the shed after all...