- Email: [email protected]
Ground level
DISSECTING ROOM
If nothing else, this show is a testament to the all-inclusive nature of the unconscious.There is a range of subjects and styles: most of the major modern art movements from abstraction to minimalism to conceptualism are covered. Not surprisingly, the majority of the art has a Surrealist bent to it, including work by the major surrealists: Dali, Magritte, Masson, Ernst, and Seligman. There are also examples of “magic realism”, paintings by Juan Gonzalez and Alfredo Castaneda along with the Norwegian, Odd Nerdrum’s kitsch variety of hyper-realism. Mark Rothko’s early painting, Hierarchical Birds is a beautiful composite of abstraction and surrealism that rises above any illustration of psychoanalytical theory. Photographs by Javier Silva Meinel and Jerry Uelsmann stand out, showing us a mysterious other-world, while remain-
ing conscious of the material world of craftsmanship. The exhibition points out that psychoanalysis and film are contemporaries—both were created at the end of the 19th century. Indeed, films are the perfect medium for representing the narrative quality of dreams. Dreams 1900–2000 has some wonderful dream sequences from the masterpieces: Un Chien Andalou directed by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, and segments by Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa. Some of the films though, are of the hokeyHollywood variety, undermining any serious scientific image of the show. The contemporary video artist, Bill Viola, shows his pastoral Reflecting Pool, one of his most pleasing works. Steve Miller has an interactive piece that can be seen on the web at www.dreamingbrain.com.
Ground level Disgrace J M Coetzee. New York: Secker & Warburg, 1999. Pp 219. £14· 99. ISBN 0436204894 he Booker Prize is a popular target. Every year, the choice of winner causes controversy, which inevitably escalates into a conflict over the value of the prize itself. The mistake many detractors make is to treat the Booker as if it were an example of a modern phenomenon. It is not.The Greeks were handing out lit-
Eve Arnold/Magnum
T
erary prizes more than 2000 years ago. Of the three great Athenian tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—it was reputedly Sophocles who won the lion’s share. The notion of one work of literature being deemed “better” than others may be absurd, but it is not a contemporary absurdity: there is much to suggest that literary
Magna Brava:The Magnum Women Photographers, at Edinburgh’s Scottish National Portrait Gallery, is the first exhibition to bring together the work of women members of the Magnum Photo Agency. Shown here is Eve Arnold’s Horse Training for the Militia, Inner Mongolia, China (1979). Arnold was first American woman member of Magnum and during the 1950s she photographed many influential people, including Senator Joseph McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, and Malcolm X.Throughout her long career, she also captured ordinary lives, often in photo essay format; her subjects range from birth and family to prejudice and tragedy.
152
Of historical interest is a painting by Freud’s patient, Sergei Pankejeff (“The Wolf Man”), of his dream of five white wolves sitting in a tree. Freud’s analysis of the dream accompanies the painting, and next to it is a contemporary version by Jim Dine. The successful treatment of “The Wolf Man” by Freud was instrumental in the acceptance of psychoanalysis by a larger community, and as Gamwell points out, consequentially to the acceptance of much of the art of this century. The curator makes this point by attempting to bridge art and science in this ambitious show. By doing so, she briefly opens an intriguing door for us; but entering it leads us into a short, matter-of-fact labyrinth, only to return from where we started. Fred Bendheim e-mail: [email protected]
prizes are as old as literature itself. This year’s winning novel, Disgrace, was a less controversial choice than many. It is the eighth novel by South African novelist J M Coetzee, Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town. Disgrace offers an apocalyptic vision of contemporary South Africa. Coetzee’s first attack is on the academic establishment. Given the glaring parallels between the author and the novel’s protagonist, David Lurie, adjunct professor of communications at the fictional Cape Technical University, it is not surprising that Disgrace has caused anger in South Africa’s scholarly community. On only page 4, we learn of Lurie’s disenchantment with his institution: “Because he has no respect for the material he teaches, he makes no impression on his students.” To prevent Lurie becoming irritatingly preachy, Coetzee makes him morally ambiguous—in his character’s own self-analysis, “not a bad man but not good either”. In keeping with this moral dubiety, Lurie, twice divorced and now a serial womaniser, has an impulsive affair with a 20-year-old student, Melanie. The affair, however, is only semiconvincing; though plausibly confused and timorous, Melanie is too obvious a literary construct—the instrument by which the author engineers his character’s downfall. In this sense, she is used as ruthlessly by Coetzee as by his oversexed professor. Lurie’s fall from grace results from the affair’s exposure. He is subsequently questioned by an inquiry committee at the university. He readily admits his guilt, but in refusing to make a public show of repentance, is forced to resign. His career and reputation in tatters, he leaves Cape Town for his daughter
THE LANCET • Vol 355 • January 8, 2000
DISSECTING ROOM
Lucy’s remote smallholding in the country. Here, Lucy, who is living alone after the departure of her female lover, provides him with sanctuary. But it is in the farmhouse that the novel’s central event takes place: a violent robbery and attack by three intruders. Although the brutality against Lurie is described explicitly, the violence Lucy endures, as in Greek tragedy, is reported rather than presented—which only serves to intensify its horror. The real substance of the novel is Coetzee’s analysis of the physical and psychological consequences of the attack, and the pressure it puts on an already strained fatherdaughter relationship. What transforms Disgrace from a good, compelling book into a work of brilliance is its allegorical reach. At the barest structural level, the novel is highly schematic—full of ironic parallels and tidy symmetries: Lurie and his daughter are white and middle-class, for example, whilst their attackers are poor and black. In the hands of an inferior writer, the novel would collapse into artifice. But what might have been its weakness is transformed into its strength by Coetzee’s subtlety. The underlying structures are deeply buried, and, combined with the author’s spare, precise, elegant prose—which frequently has the weight of poetry—charge the text with a resonance beyond its surface meaning. Like an Athenian drama, Disgrace is both an organic work of art and a discursive vehicle for philosophical conflict. Lurie and his daughter clash in their views over how the aftermath of the attack
should be handled; but their arguments are also about the future of their country. Lurie is desperate for Lucy to leave the farm for her own safety, even offering to pay for her to return to Holland. But Lucy refuses on the grounds that this would amount to capitulation to their attackers. Lucy’s dilemma is thus a broader one faced by the immigrant population of South Africa. Should they flee the country—or at least the countryside—to escape from conditions of near-anarchy? Or should they hold firm, stoically recognising that reprisals by some in the black community are part of an inevitable backlash against years of apartheid and repression? Lurie’s daughter not only wants to stay in rural South Africa, she is prepared to relinquish her farm and property to her black neighbour, Petrus, to do so. “But perhaps that is a good point to start from again” says Lucy. “To start at ground level. With nothing . . . No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.” Only then, she suggests, when the old society is swept away, can the new South Africa come into being.
Stripes
Daniel Davies [email protected]
Websites in brief Fascinating science The BioInteractive website is a treat; it almost made me wish I were back in school. In the virtual neurophysiology laboratory, I set up lab equipment, dissected a leech, and examined its guts under a microscope. Next, I did an ELISA assay and learned how it’s used to help diagnose disease. Then, on to the cardiology lab for an engaging exploration of the heart and other organs. Intelligently written texts accompany the virtual experiments, creating a truly hands-on, mind-on experience. These creative modules were developed in consultation with student interns at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. www.hhmi.org/grants/lectures/biointeractive/
THE LANCET • Vol 355 • January 8, 2000
Deborah Jaffé
Wild west on the web Anyone who ever spent a Sunday afternoon watching old westerns on television, and those who never did but want an idea of what it was like, will find much to be nostalgic about at Westerns.com. This glorious website offers 82 classic films for web viewing, featuring such favourites as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Gabby Hayes. The videos load quickly and the quality is surprisingly good—though I suspect I “filled in” some of the gaps from memory. Also featured: biographical sketches of the stars, theme songs in MP3 format, trivia quizzes, and a trading post. www.westerns.com
Stimulating ageing research AgeNet serves as a clearinghouse for information on ageing research in the UK, including funding sources, workshops, and partnership opportunities. The site includes links to relevant resources, such as the websites of the Technology Foresight programme (www.foresight.gov.uk/) and the Aging Research Centre (www.arclab.org), a discussion list, a register of research training courses, and a database of studies. As the Millennium Debate of the Age (www.age2000.org.uk/) reminds us, “over the next 30 years, the number of people aged over 65 in the UK will increase by 50%.” AgeNet aims to stimulate research that will have beneficial outcomes for this growing population. www.agenet.ac.uk Marilynn Larkin [email protected]
153
If nothing else, this show is a testament to the all-inclusive nature of the unconscious.There is a range of subjects and styles: most of the major modern art movements from abstraction to minimalism to conceptualism are covered. Not surprisingly, the majority of the art has a Surrealist bent to it, including work by the major surrealists: Dali, Magritte, Masson, Ernst, and Seligman. There are also examples of “magic realism”, paintings by Juan Gonzalez and Alfredo Castaneda along with the Norwegian, Odd Nerdrum’s kitsch variety of hyper-realism. Mark Rothko’s early painting, Hierarchical Birds is a beautiful composite of abstraction and surrealism that rises above any illustration of psychoanalytical theory. Photographs by Javier Silva Meinel and Jerry Uelsmann stand out, showing us a mysterious other-world, while remain-
ing conscious of the material world of craftsmanship. The exhibition points out that psychoanalysis and film are contemporaries—both were created at the end of the 19th century. Indeed, films are the perfect medium for representing the narrative quality of dreams. Dreams 1900–2000 has some wonderful dream sequences from the masterpieces: Un Chien Andalou directed by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, and segments by Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa. Some of the films though, are of the hokeyHollywood variety, undermining any serious scientific image of the show. The contemporary video artist, Bill Viola, shows his pastoral Reflecting Pool, one of his most pleasing works. Steve Miller has an interactive piece that can be seen on the web at www.dreamingbrain.com.
Ground level Disgrace J M Coetzee. New York: Secker & Warburg, 1999. Pp 219. £14· 99. ISBN 0436204894 he Booker Prize is a popular target. Every year, the choice of winner causes controversy, which inevitably escalates into a conflict over the value of the prize itself. The mistake many detractors make is to treat the Booker as if it were an example of a modern phenomenon. It is not.The Greeks were handing out lit-
Eve Arnold/Magnum
T
erary prizes more than 2000 years ago. Of the three great Athenian tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—it was reputedly Sophocles who won the lion’s share. The notion of one work of literature being deemed “better” than others may be absurd, but it is not a contemporary absurdity: there is much to suggest that literary
Magna Brava:The Magnum Women Photographers, at Edinburgh’s Scottish National Portrait Gallery, is the first exhibition to bring together the work of women members of the Magnum Photo Agency. Shown here is Eve Arnold’s Horse Training for the Militia, Inner Mongolia, China (1979). Arnold was first American woman member of Magnum and during the 1950s she photographed many influential people, including Senator Joseph McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, and Malcolm X.Throughout her long career, she also captured ordinary lives, often in photo essay format; her subjects range from birth and family to prejudice and tragedy.
152
Of historical interest is a painting by Freud’s patient, Sergei Pankejeff (“The Wolf Man”), of his dream of five white wolves sitting in a tree. Freud’s analysis of the dream accompanies the painting, and next to it is a contemporary version by Jim Dine. The successful treatment of “The Wolf Man” by Freud was instrumental in the acceptance of psychoanalysis by a larger community, and as Gamwell points out, consequentially to the acceptance of much of the art of this century. The curator makes this point by attempting to bridge art and science in this ambitious show. By doing so, she briefly opens an intriguing door for us; but entering it leads us into a short, matter-of-fact labyrinth, only to return from where we started. Fred Bendheim e-mail: [email protected]
prizes are as old as literature itself. This year’s winning novel, Disgrace, was a less controversial choice than many. It is the eighth novel by South African novelist J M Coetzee, Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town. Disgrace offers an apocalyptic vision of contemporary South Africa. Coetzee’s first attack is on the academic establishment. Given the glaring parallels between the author and the novel’s protagonist, David Lurie, adjunct professor of communications at the fictional Cape Technical University, it is not surprising that Disgrace has caused anger in South Africa’s scholarly community. On only page 4, we learn of Lurie’s disenchantment with his institution: “Because he has no respect for the material he teaches, he makes no impression on his students.” To prevent Lurie becoming irritatingly preachy, Coetzee makes him morally ambiguous—in his character’s own self-analysis, “not a bad man but not good either”. In keeping with this moral dubiety, Lurie, twice divorced and now a serial womaniser, has an impulsive affair with a 20-year-old student, Melanie. The affair, however, is only semiconvincing; though plausibly confused and timorous, Melanie is too obvious a literary construct—the instrument by which the author engineers his character’s downfall. In this sense, she is used as ruthlessly by Coetzee as by his oversexed professor. Lurie’s fall from grace results from the affair’s exposure. He is subsequently questioned by an inquiry committee at the university. He readily admits his guilt, but in refusing to make a public show of repentance, is forced to resign. His career and reputation in tatters, he leaves Cape Town for his daughter
THE LANCET • Vol 355 • January 8, 2000
DISSECTING ROOM
Lucy’s remote smallholding in the country. Here, Lucy, who is living alone after the departure of her female lover, provides him with sanctuary. But it is in the farmhouse that the novel’s central event takes place: a violent robbery and attack by three intruders. Although the brutality against Lurie is described explicitly, the violence Lucy endures, as in Greek tragedy, is reported rather than presented—which only serves to intensify its horror. The real substance of the novel is Coetzee’s analysis of the physical and psychological consequences of the attack, and the pressure it puts on an already strained fatherdaughter relationship. What transforms Disgrace from a good, compelling book into a work of brilliance is its allegorical reach. At the barest structural level, the novel is highly schematic—full of ironic parallels and tidy symmetries: Lurie and his daughter are white and middle-class, for example, whilst their attackers are poor and black. In the hands of an inferior writer, the novel would collapse into artifice. But what might have been its weakness is transformed into its strength by Coetzee’s subtlety. The underlying structures are deeply buried, and, combined with the author’s spare, precise, elegant prose—which frequently has the weight of poetry—charge the text with a resonance beyond its surface meaning. Like an Athenian drama, Disgrace is both an organic work of art and a discursive vehicle for philosophical conflict. Lurie and his daughter clash in their views over how the aftermath of the attack
should be handled; but their arguments are also about the future of their country. Lurie is desperate for Lucy to leave the farm for her own safety, even offering to pay for her to return to Holland. But Lucy refuses on the grounds that this would amount to capitulation to their attackers. Lucy’s dilemma is thus a broader one faced by the immigrant population of South Africa. Should they flee the country—or at least the countryside—to escape from conditions of near-anarchy? Or should they hold firm, stoically recognising that reprisals by some in the black community are part of an inevitable backlash against years of apartheid and repression? Lurie’s daughter not only wants to stay in rural South Africa, she is prepared to relinquish her farm and property to her black neighbour, Petrus, to do so. “But perhaps that is a good point to start from again” says Lucy. “To start at ground level. With nothing . . . No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.” Only then, she suggests, when the old society is swept away, can the new South Africa come into being.
Stripes
Daniel Davies [email protected]
Websites in brief Fascinating science The BioInteractive website is a treat; it almost made me wish I were back in school. In the virtual neurophysiology laboratory, I set up lab equipment, dissected a leech, and examined its guts under a microscope. Next, I did an ELISA assay and learned how it’s used to help diagnose disease. Then, on to the cardiology lab for an engaging exploration of the heart and other organs. Intelligently written texts accompany the virtual experiments, creating a truly hands-on, mind-on experience. These creative modules were developed in consultation with student interns at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. www.hhmi.org/grants/lectures/biointeractive/
THE LANCET • Vol 355 • January 8, 2000
Deborah Jaffé
Wild west on the web Anyone who ever spent a Sunday afternoon watching old westerns on television, and those who never did but want an idea of what it was like, will find much to be nostalgic about at Westerns.com. This glorious website offers 82 classic films for web viewing, featuring such favourites as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Gabby Hayes. The videos load quickly and the quality is surprisingly good—though I suspect I “filled in” some of the gaps from memory. Also featured: biographical sketches of the stars, theme songs in MP3 format, trivia quizzes, and a trading post. www.westerns.com
Stimulating ageing research AgeNet serves as a clearinghouse for information on ageing research in the UK, including funding sources, workshops, and partnership opportunities. The site includes links to relevant resources, such as the websites of the Technology Foresight programme (www.foresight.gov.uk/) and the Aging Research Centre (www.arclab.org), a discussion list, a register of research training courses, and a database of studies. As the Millennium Debate of the Age (www.age2000.org.uk/) reminds us, “over the next 30 years, the number of people aged over 65 in the UK will increase by 50%.” AgeNet aims to stimulate research that will have beneficial outcomes for this growing population. www.agenet.ac.uk Marilynn Larkin [email protected]
153