The beginnings

Being from an “older” generation some of the books I read and the author’s thereof may seem strange or even unknown to more “modern” readers. No matter – I still read what I like and like what I read!

It is often the first few words of a book that draw one into continuing. Without going into an exhaustive list I will just give a few examples from books I have read.

One of the best to my mind is, “Wanted, a detective – to arrest the flight of time!” This is the opening sentence from the (1935) autobiography of Dr Halliday Sutherland, “The Arches of the Years”. My mother, dear old thing that she was, sensed my love of literature and well written books, and suggested this book to me and mentioned that first sentence. I was intrigued!

Charles Dickens also obviously had the knack of punchy first sentences. Take the opening of his well-loved “A Christmas Carol” – “Marley was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that.”  

And then of course the opening (very long) sentence from Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” - “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short the period was so far like the present period, that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on it being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

I can’t help adding that while this book was written in 1859, that sentence could apply equally well today (USA, UK, Australia – any other suggestions?)!! 

Another author not much read today is Nevil Shute. Some of his books are very dated but they are all very good and well-written tales. This opening sentence from his famous “A Town like Alice”  - “James MacFadden died in March 1905 when he was forty-seven years old; he was riding in the Driffield Point-to-Point.”

Then what I think is my favourite Nevil Shute story, “An old captivity”, starts “This case came before me quite by chance in the spring of last year.” And so it goes on.

Jeffery Farnol is another “old fashioned” author – it is actually quite difficult to

get hold of his books nowadays. He was almost an exact contemporary of the historical novelist Georgette Heyer and wrote rattling good yarns of daring do in the 17^thand 18^thcenturies – always a sword fight or duel of some sort, and of course a beautiful feisty maiden to be won!  As an example the first line of “Martin Conisby’s Vengence” – “The Frenchman beside me had been dead since dawn,” sets the tone.  Martin Conisby had been captured by Barbary pirates and was a galley slave sharing an oar with the Frenchman. 

Erskine Childers, the British author who was a supporter of a “free Ireland” and who smuggled guns into Ireland, in his yacht, for what became the IRA, wrote his most famous book “The Riddle of the Sands”. He was executed by the British for his troubles in 1922.

The Riddle of the Sands, written in1903, was amazingly prescient in that, to my mind, it foretold the possible invasion of England by the Germans using barges towed by tugboats from the "sands" - the low lying islands of the Frisian coast and Holland. Just what Hitler had in mind in 1940! 

The 1903 very English view of the world is evident in the first sentence, but it is a rattling good story – “I have read of men who, when forced by their calling to live for long periods in utter solitude – save for a few black faces – have made it a rule to dress regularly for dinner in order to maintain their self-respect and prevent a relapse in barbarism.”

Then of course there is Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous “Treasure Island”. The first sentence – “Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearing of the island, and that only because there is treasure still not lifted, I take up my pen in the year 17 --- and go back to the time my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodgings under our roof.”

Who would not be drawn into reading further?

I could go on, but as I said at the opening of this post – these are just a few examples that I have found intriguing.

Dangers of a strict adherence to the “Word”.

My latest concern is about a strict even “religious”, adherence to the “word”- not what it means – the spirit or symbolism – but how the word appears in printed form. Such a narrow interpretation has led to much grief and misunderstanding in the World. Particularly now -today.

What are we supposed to believe? What people (politicians, business and religious leaders) say is not always what they do – their actions often belie their words. All leaders employ legions of media advisors or “spin doctors” – those skilled in semantics to change perceptions. A standout in this regard is the “morphing” of Torture (which is illegal and banned by the Geneva Convention) into Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (which is apparently legal – at least according to the CIA’s interpretation of the Geneva Convention).

Similarly, some followers in all religious faiths are guilty of focusing on the words (and often their interpretations of those words) to promote THEIR version of scriptures. Just look at the difference between the vast numbers of Christian belief “systems” – very strict Baptists and Catholics through to more tolerant Church of England(?). The Jews have a similar range of belief systems, as do the Buddhists. Similarly with Islam – Wahhabism (very strict narrow interpretation of the Koran) ranging through Sunni and Shia to the Sufi (some Muslims don’t believe that Sufi’s are Muslims at all). The tyrannous assemblage known as ISIS or Daesh are allegedly followers of Wahhabism – this profanity is so outside normal human conduct that it is difficult to understand what they “believe”.

But they claim to be followers and defenders of the WORD!

Another ploy greatly favoured and resorted to by politicians (particularly in Australia) when they are caught out spending taxpayers money on self-indulgence is, “I have done nothing wrong – what I did falls within parliamentary guidelines”. There is apparently no consideration of fairness or the moral aspect of their actions and ethics seems to be an unheard of concept.

It is written in the rules and regulations – the “word” is there for all to see!

Chinese Characters

There was a local news item the other day regarding Chinese authorities concern about the “purity” of the Chinese language. They are apparently contemplating means to prevent the popularization of non-Chinese words (mainly English) together with the use of non-Chinese letters and characters.

Let me admit first up that I have no knowledge at all of Chinese – I can neither read, write nor speak any words in that language, so what I am saying now is based on my general knowledge, not on specifics. But I understand that Chinese is not a phonetic language (it is tonal), in that a Chinese “word” cannot be broken down into individual vowels and consonants, like words based on the Indo-Persian–Greek-Latin languages (ie English!). I am hoping that someone, with knowledge of Chinese, will correct me if I am wrong!

Be that as it may, how the Chinese authorities are going to enforce the “purity” of their language is difficult to imagine. Being an authoritarian government I suppose they could employ undercover “word police” arresting people who dare to use non-Chinese words in their speech. The trouble with this approach is that it poses two problems for the “language purity” authorities and the Chinese people in general:-

a. As soon as authorities “ban” the use of a word the message has to be disseminated somehow. The media generally – posters, the press, TV, the internet and cell phone SMS would all need to be employed to spread the message. Immediately many millions of people who had never heard of the “undesirable” word would now know what it was! So rather than curtailing the spread, the consequence would be to spread it even further – albeit, with a warning.

b. The world is a dynamic place and language follows. Many “new” words would represent new ideas, technology, inventions and concepts and “slang”, which may have no equivalent in Chinese characters or sounds. If the authorities wish to prevent these “new” words from entering and “polluting” their language they will need to employ an army of linguists to study every and all publications and the social media so as to constantly devise new characters or combinations of existing characters to equate to the new “sounds” and meanings.

The French tried this (to prevent the encroachment of English into French) and I believe that they have given up a battle they discovered they would never win. Society changes faster than any government authority can hope to emulate and as I said before language follows a similar course. This is the “advantage” of English – it is so adaptable – it absorbs and incorporates any new, useful word, from whatever language and then “adopts” it as its own – and nobody cares one way or another.

English (simply put) is based on three principal languages – Latin, Germanic (Saxon) and French, but has incorporated words (at least the sound but with Anglicized spelling) from Scandinavia (Norse), Holland (Dutch), Greece, the Middle East (Arabic), India, Australian Aboriginal, North American Indian, many other countries and yes, even Chinese.

Remember that a language is purely a means of communication, so it does not really matter which language is used as long as people understand the message! English has now been adopted as the “official” language of air and marine safety and many other international organizations. This came about, through a process of “soft power” – admiration, striving to emulate the activities of successful people, in music, in literature and a general accessibility. Authoritarian rule will never stop a “natural” process.