The of Books

£3.50 Oxtheonian Review of books Revisiting Martin Amis Scarlett Baron Pierre Trudeau’s Catholic Conscience John-Paul McCarthy Royal Politics in Thailand Nicholas Farrelly High Style with Gore Vidal Andrew Hay spring 2007 volume 6 . issue 2 2 the Oxonian Review of Books spring 2007 • volume 6 • issue 2 in this issue: From the Editor: Features Between Fundamentalisms Love Among the Ruins It’s perhaps a sign of the times that to be heard dynamic liberal democracy: it revitalises our debates and, Jacob Foster page 6 in the public arena, you have to yell with a militant as much as it reveals differences, refocuses our attention shrill. It’s tempting to blame it all on public culture on the values we share. But while polemics have their Pierre Trudeau’s Catholic Conscience being increasingly beholden to tabloid standards. place, they shouldn’t drown out everything else in the John-Paul McCarthy page 8 With headlines and sound bites now the currency of public sphere. The right kind of public debate is guided debate, one needs to get the ‘message’ or ‘spin’ right, by an ethos of civility and mutual respect. It shouldn’t and reduce things to the lowest common denominator. be about shouting down at others, or taking gratuitous Royal Shadows in the Land of Smiles To be sure, we can rely on the custodians of the Daily pleasure in painting one’s opponents as deluded. If Nicholas Farrelly page 10 Mail and the Sun to deliver on such doses—which is the polarisation between secular humanists and their to say nothing of politicians—but not usually from opponents is any indication, this is unfortunately the our Oxford dons. However, there are exceptions. situation that prevails. Much like the schism between ‘blue’ and ‘red’ states in the United States, Britain has As Britain’s atheist-in-chief, Richard Dawkins (Oxford’s become a divided country, of believers and non-believers. Reviews Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding Same Again from Martin Amis of Science) has been a strident, if not abrasive, voice It is timely, then, that this month the Canadian Scarlett Baron page 3 of secularism. His most recent book, The God Delusion, philosopher Charles Taylor (a former Chichele which quickly reached the bestsellers’ shelves and won Professor in Social and Political Theory at All Souls At the Helm with Gore Vidal him a British Book Award for Author of the Year, is College) will be presented with the 2007 Templeton Andrew Hay page 4 representative. In it he speaks of ‘a mind hijacked by Prize. The world’s largest annual monetary award religion,’ of a belief in God as ‘pernicious.’ For Professor given to an individual for intellectual merit, the Making Up Real Things Dawkins, whose work is no doubt familiar to readers Templeton Prize recognises ‘progress toward research Alexandra Harris page 5 of the Oxonian Review, it’s secular reason or bust. or discoveries about spiritual realities.’ Professor Taylor is an inspired choice. A scholar renowned for his work So Much For the Past Professor Dawkins isn’t alone in his refusal to on modernity, identity and culture, he is not one to Tom Walker page 13 countenance religion. In God Is Not Great: The Case side with fundamentalisms—of either the secular Against Religion (to be released this month), Christopher or religious kind. As he explains in his best-known Putting America Back Together Hitchens puts forward the secularist case with typically work, Sources of the Self (1989), we acquire our moral Sam O’Leary page 14 trenchant fashion: ‘As I write these words and as you languages through dialogue. We become full human read them, people of faith are in their different ways agents not in isolation but by engaging in conversation Christopher Hitchens: Citizen-Critic planning your and my destruction, and the destruction with those around us. Sometimes our moral selves Aaron MacLean page 15 of all the hard-won human attainments that I have will be defined in opposition to others. But a dialogue touched upon. Religion poisons everything.’ For also leaves itself open to a ‘fusion of horizons,’ an The Contest Over Sovereignty atheists like Professor Dawkins and Mr Hitchens, expansion of our ethical world through an appreciation Robbie Shilliam page 18 morality needn’t be grounded in religious belief. A of others’ perspectives. As Taylor argues, this requires different faith will suffice—a faith, that is, in the us to admit, in all our humility, that we will always Making AIDS History Enlightenment ideal of reason and secular politics. be some distance away from reaching that ultimate Rebecca Hodes page 19 horizon for understanding the nature of the world Yet it’s clear secular humanists of a militant stripe are and from which we go about securing the good life. themselves guilty of the kind of blind dogma they’re so happy to denounce. Liberals may be inclined to give A value of dialogue stands in need of affirmation contemporary secular humanism the benefit of the at a time when public debate is characterised by Arts and Culture doubt. In a pluralistic society, insisting on religious truth indiscriminate abuse and crass conflict. However, or divine revelation as the standards guiding our public before any dialogue can begin, there must be a Warner Herzog’s Wilderness life is a recipe for social disharmony. Whose religion willingness to listen. The task for those like Professor Alex Nemser page 12 are we to endorse? Whose truths are we to obey? If Taylor who value a public conversation—as opposed there is a modern liberal achievement, surely it is the to a public brawl—is a difficult one, for it remains The Oscars 2007: Crass Globalism toleration of different values and different ways of life. unclear whether enough people—both secular Kristin Anderson page 14 But it doesn’t stand to reason that liberals should fight liberals and religious believers—are ready even to intolerance with another form of intolerance—namely, recognise that their opponents might have a legitimate High Art Lite in the Darkest Hour an intolerance of any worldview that doesn’t accord voice to be heard. This is the price we risk paying Emily Spears-Meers page 15 science and logic with supreme value. Civilisation would for speaking in the language of fundamentalisms. be much impoverished, and would lose authenticity, were we to subject everything in our realm to the strictures of reason understood as absolute truth. Tim Soutphommasane All of which is to say that British political culture is Editor-in-Chief showing some fault-lines that should be cause for Balliol College, Oxford concern. Granted, controversy is the battery for any May 2007 Have something to say? Letters to the Editor For special features and back issues, please visit: http://www.oxonianreview.org Email: [email protected] Cover Photo: Seth Lazar, © 2007 spring 2007 • volume 6 • issue 2 the Oxonian Review of Books 3 the Same Again from Martin Amis Oxonian Review of books Scarlett Baron http://www.oxonianreview.org Martin Amis Love has transformed him. Behind the barbed wires of House of Meetings the camp, he alone among the prisoners refuses to resort Jonathan Cape, 2006 to violence, suffering the worst hardships to protect his 208 pages love. To his uncomprehending brother, Lev explains his ISBN: 0224076094 status as a non-combatant: ‘That’s for her. That’s for us.’ Editor-in-Chief Tim Soutphommasane artin Amis has always enjoyed playing with By 1956, conditions at the camp have improved M slightly. Conjugal visits are allowed. Wives travel across names. In Money (1984), widely considered to be his Senior Editor best novel, characters go by such names as Self, the country to spend a single night with their husbands Sarah Roger God, Fucker, and Shakespeare. Night Train (1997) on the ‘northern Eurasian plain, with its extreme is narrated by an overweight American female cop temperatures.’ Reunions take place in a rudimentary called Mike. In Yellow Dog (2003) the protagonist, little chalet—the ‘house of meetings.’ Zoya comes to Executive Editor meet Lev, but what happens between them on 31 July Xan Meo, is married to a woman called Russia. This Nanor Kebranian enables Amis to deploy pun after political pun. (When 1956 (‘the night of crunch and crux’) is only divulged Xan rapes his wife, for instance, ‘he invaded Russia’.) at the very end of the novel. What we do know is that the meeting leaves Lev unaccountably destroyed. Russia has been much on Amis’s mind over the last Editors few years. In 2002, he published Koba The Dread, a Kristin Anderson documentary non-fiction work that describes the Lauren Arrington atrocities committed in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s Nicholas Farrelly rule. Amis’s latest novel, House of Meetings, features a Frances Flanagan character nicknamed The Americas (other characters Joanna Langille answer to Venus, Phoenix, Uglik, and Arbachuk), but Peiling Li its main concern, again, is Russia. The book is about Lydia Newell the country’s relentlessly murderous twentieth-century: Michel Paradis its wars, its camps, its pogroms, its terrorism, and its Matthew Pennycook corruption. It is also about America and the clash of East and West—and their irreconcilable ideologies. Acknowledgements & Thanks The narrative takes the form of an email. An 86-year-old Russian man prepares to send his memoirs to Venus, his Mr Justin Dowley twenty-four-year-old American stepdaughter. His last Mrs Emma Dowley lines are written from a hospital bed in Russia, where he Ms Frances Cairncross, Rector of Exeter College Mr Alastair James, Balliol College has arranged to receive a lethal injection.

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