Multitasking in the library

 

 

As Padma can tell you, I am usually very good at multitasking as I can listen, ignore, and forget all at the same time, and today I was watching BHP's price on the share market while also reading Henry Miller's "The Colosus of Maroussi".

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

In 1939 Henry Miller travelled to Greece from Paris, where he had been living at the time, at the invitation of Lawrence Durrell, who lived in Corfu. During his nine-month stay, he travelled across Corfu, Athens, Poros, Hydra, Spetses, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Crete and Delphi. The "The Colosus of Maroussi" defies the linear style of a travel narrative. The description of cities, archaeological sites and landscapes is interrupted by taverna scenes and by Miller’s rambling and ranting about western civilization, the press, technological advancement and revolution.

Through Durrell, he met and befriended some of the most emblematic representatives of the group of poets, artists and intellectuals that became known as the Generation of the ’30s. It is in Athens, a city “still in the throes of birth”, against the “light and splendor of the Attic landscape”, that Miller makes the acquaintance of intellectual George Katsimbalis, the 1963 Nobel Prize winner George Seferis and of painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas. The war was on, but forgotten in the company of those men. The trips and the evenings shared among them in tavernas, between intellectual conversations, fine food and lots of retsina, render The "The Colosus of Maroussi" a book on friendship.

To me, Miller's transcendental ramblings become interesting when "A week or so later we all boarded the boat at Piraeus to go to Hydra ...

Hydra is almost a bare rock of an island and its population, made up almost exclusively of seamen, is rapidly dwindling. The town, which clusters about the harbor in the form of an amphitheatre, is immaculate. There are only two colors, blue and white, and the white is whitewashed every day, down to the cobblestones in the street. The houses are even more cubistically arranged than at Poros. Aesthetically it is perfect, the very epitome of that flawless anarchy which supersedes, because it includes and goes beyond, all the formal arrangements of the imagination. This purity, this wild and naked perfection of Hydra, is in great part due to the spirit of the men who once dominated the island. For centuries the men of Hydra were bold, buccaneering spirits: the island produced nothing but heroes and emancipators. The least of them was an admiral at heart, if not in fact. To recount the exploits of the men of Hydra would be to write a book about a race of madmen; it would mean writing the word DARING across the firmament in letters of fire.

Hydra is a rock which rises out of the sea like a huge loaf of petrified bread. It is the bread turned to stone which the artist receives as reward for his labors when he first catches sight of the promised land. After the uterine illumination comes the ordeal of rock out of which must be born the Spark which is to fire the world. I speak in broad, swift images because to move from place to place in Greece is to become aware of the stirring, fateful drama of the race as it circles from paradise to paradise. Each halt is a stepping stone along a path marked out by the gods. They are stations of rest, of prayer, of meditation, of deed, of sacrifice, of transfiguration. At no point along the way is it marked FINIS. The very rocks, and nowhere on earth has God been so lavish with them as in Greece, are symbols of life eternal. In Greece the rocks are eloquent: men may go dead but the rocks never. At a place like Hydra, for example, one knows that when a man dies he becomes part of his native rock. But this rock is a living rock, a divine wave of energy suspended in time and space, creating a pause of long or short duration in the endless melody. Hydra was entered as a pause in the musical score of creation by an expert calligrapher. It is one of those divine pauses which permit the musician, when he resumes the melody, to go forth again in a totally new direction. At this point one may as well throw the compass away. To move towards creation does one need a compass? Having touched this rock I lost all sense of earthly direction. What happened to me from this point on is in the nature of progression, not direction. There was no longer any goal beyond — I became one with the Path. Each station thenceforth marked a progression into a new Spiritual latitude and longitude. Mycenae was not greater than Tiryns nor Epidaurus more beautiful than Mycenae: each was different in a degree for which I had lost the circle of comparison. There is only one analogy I can make to explain the nature of this illuminating voyage which began at Poros and ended at Tripolis perhaps two months later. I must refer the reader to the ascension of Seraphita, as it was glimpsed by her devout followers. It was a voyage into the light. The earth became illuminated by her own inner light. At Mycenae I walked over the incandescent dead; at Epidaurus I felt a stillness so intense that for a fraction of a second I heard the great heart of the world beat and I understood the meaning of pain and sorrow; at Tiryns I stood in the shadow of the Cyclopean man and felt the blaze of that inner eye which has now become a sickly gland; at Argos the whole plain was a fiery mist in which I saw the ghosts of our own American Indians and greeted them in silence. I moved about in a detached way, my feet flooded with the earthly glow. I am at Corinth in a rose light, the sun battling the moon, the earth turning slowly with its fat ruins, wheeling in light like a waterwheel reflected in a still pond. I am at Arachova when the eagle soars from its nest and hangs poised above the boiling cauldron of earth, stunned by the brilliant pattern of colors which dress the heaving abyss. I am at Leonidion at sundown and behind the heavy pall of marsh vapor looms the dark portal of the Inferno where the shades of bats and snakes and lizards come to rest, and perhaps to pray. In each place I open a new vein of experience, a miner digging deeper into the earth, approaching the heart of the star which is not yet extinguished. The light is no longer solar or lunar; it is the starry light of the planet to which man has given life. The earth is alive to its innermost depths; at the center it is a sun in the form of a man crucified. The sun bleeds on its cross in the hidden depths. The sun is man struggling to emerge towards another light. From light to light, from calvary to calvary. The earth song....

I stayed at Hydra a few days during which time I ran up and down thousands of steps, visited the home of several admirals, made votive offerings to the saints who protect the island, said prayers for the dead, the halt and the blind in the little chapel attached to Ghika’s house, played ping pong, drank champagne, cognac, ouzo and rezina at the Old Curiosity Shop, sat up with a bottle of whiskey talking to Ghika about the monks in Tibet, began the log of the Immaculate Conception which I finished for Seferiades at Delphi — and listened to Katsimbalis, to the Ninth Symphony of his travails and transgressions. Madame Hadji-Kyriakos, Ghika’s wife, laid a wonderful table; we rose from the table like wine casks without legs. From the terrace, which was distinctly Oriental in flavor, we could look out on the sea in drunken stupefaction. The house had forty rooms, some of which were buried deep in the earth. The big rooms were like the saloon of an ocean liner; the little rooms were like cool dungeons fitted up by temperamental pirates. The maids were of divine origin and one of them, at least, was descended directly from the Erectheum though she bore the name of a sacred cereal.

I stayed at Hydra a few days ..."

(Clearly, Henry Miller was not a great believer in paragraphing.)

 

The port of Hydra. Click on image. You couldn't find a more beautiful screensaver.

 

From Henry Miller to Leonard Cohen, George Johnston, and Charmian Clift, to more recently Roger Green's "Hydra and the Bananas of Leonard Cohen" and Daniel Klein's "Travels with Epicurus", this small Greek island has attracted creatives for over eighty years, including this "creative" accountant who escaped the smog of Athens several times in 1983/84 to spent happy weekends there. What would we be without our memories?

Oh, and BHP's share price closed 78 cents down, but who cares?

 

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On Turning Eighty

 

 

Only 200 copies of Henry Miller’s 1972 chapbook, "On Turning Eighty", were ever printed; each hand-numbered and signed. Each copy is expensive and outside my financial means, but there's always good ol' www.archive.org.

 

December 26, 1891 - June 7, 1980 (aged 88)

 

The book contains 3 essays, one of which is on aging and living a fulfilling life. Full of insight from someone who has already finished the maze, "On Turning Eighty", is a wonderfully fascinating read on the perspective that 80 years gives you. The full text is all over the intenet, so I won't break any more copyrights than have already been broken:

 

 

If you are 80 or over, there's no need to reach for your reading glasses. I have arranged for a large-print page here.

 

"If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power. If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on the way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss — under your breath, of course, ”Fuck you, Jack! You don’t own me.” If you can whistle up your ass, if you can be turned on by a fetching bottom or a lovely pair of teats, if you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked.

It’s the little things that matter, not fame, success, wealth. At the top there’s very little room, whereas at the bottom there’s plenty like you, no crowding and nobody to egg you on. Don’t think for a moment that the life of a genius is a happy one. Far from it. Be thankful that you are a nobody.

If you have had a successful career, as presumably I have had, the late years may not be the happiest time of your life. (Unless you’ve learned to swallow your own shit.) Success, from the worldly standpoint, is like the plague for a writer who still has something to say. Now, when he should be enjoying a little leisure, he finds himself more occupied than ever. Now he is the victim of his fans and well-wishers, of all those who desire to exploit his name. Now it is a different kind of struggle that one has to wage. The problem now is how to keep free, how to do only what one wants to do.

Despite the knowledge of the world which comes from wide experience, despite the acquisition of a viable everyday philosophy, one can’t help but realize that the fools have become even more foolish and the bores more boring. One by one death claims your friends or the great ones you revered. The older you grow the faster they die off. Finally you stand alone. You observe your children, or your children’s children, making the same absurd mistakes, heart-rending mistakes often, which you made at their age. And there is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. It’s by observing the young, indeed, that you eventually understand the sort of idiot you yourself were once upon a time — and perhaps still are.

One thing seems more and more evident to me now — people’s basic character does not change over the years. With rare exceptions people do not develop or evolve: the oak remains an oak, the pig a pig, and the dunce a dunce. Far from improving them, success usually accentuates their faults or shortcomings. The brilliant guys at school often turn out to be not so brilliant once they are out in the world. If you disliked or despised certain lads in your class you will dislike them even more when they become financiers, statesmen, or five-star generals. Life forces us to learn a few lessons, but not necessarily to grow. Offhand I can think of only a dozen or so individuals who learned the lesson of life; the great majority would not recognize their names if I were to give them.

As for the world in general, it not only does not look any better to me than when I was a boy of eight, it looks a thousand times worse. A famous writer once summed it up thus: “The past seems horrible to me, the present gray and desolate, and the future utterly appalling.” Fortunately, I do not share this bleak point of view. For one thing, I do not concern myself with the future. As for the past, whether good or bad, I have made the most of it. What future remains for me was made by my past. The future of the world is something for philosophers and visionaries to ponder on. All we ever really have is the present, but very few of us ever live it. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist. To me the world is neither this nor that, but all things at once, and to each according to his vision.

At eighty I believe I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious, but it is also painful to endure. Moreover, what is called youth is not youth, in my opinion; it is rather something like premature old age.

I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. (Picasso once said: “One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it’s too late.”) By this time I had lost many illusions, but fortunately not my enthusiasm, nor the joy of living, nor my unquenchable curiosity. Perhaps it was this curiosity — about anything and everything — that made me the writer I am. It has never left me. Even the worst bore can elicit my interest, if I am in the mood to listen.

With this attribute goes another which I prize above everything else, and that is the sense of wonder. No matter how restricted my world may become I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder. In a sense I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it. Much as I may rail about the condition of life in which we find ourselves I have ceased to believe that I can remedy it. I may be able to alter my own situation somewhat but not that of others. Nor do I see that anyone past or present, however great, has been able to truly alter la condition humaine.

What most people fear when they think of old age is the inability to make new friends. If one ever had the faculty of making friends one never loses it however old one grows. Next to love, friendship — in my opinion — is the most valuable thing life has to offer. I have never had any trouble making friends; in fact, it has sometimes been a hindrance, this facility for making friends. There is an adage which says that one may judge a man by the company he keeps. I often wonder about the truth of this. All my life I have been friends with individuals belonging to vastly different worlds. I have had, and still have, friends who are nobodies, and I must confess they are among my best friends. I have been friends with criminals and with the despised rich. It is my friends who have kept me alive, who have given me the courage to continue, and who have also often bored me to tears. The one thing I have insisted on with all my friends, regardless of class or station in life, is to be able to speak truthfully. If I cannot be open and frank with a friend, or he with me, I drop him.

The ability to be friends with a woman, particularly the woman you love, is to me the greatest achievement. Love and friendship seldom go together. It is far easier to be friends with a man than with a woman, especially if the latter is attractive. In all my life I have known only a few couples who were friends as well as lovers.

Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gaiety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face. The truly wise man — even the saint! — is not concerned with morals. He is above and beyond such considerations. He is a free spirit.

With advancing age my ideals, which I usually deny possessing, have definitely altered. My ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea. As a young man I was greatly concerned about the state of the world; today, though I still rant and rave, I am content simply to deplore the state of affairs. It may sound smug to speak thus but in reality it means that I have become more humble, more aware of my limitations and those of my fellow man. I no longer try to convert people to my view of things, nor to heal them. Neither do I feel superior because they appear to be lacking in intelligence. One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless. I believe that the ideal condition for humanity would be to live in a state of peace, in brotherly love, but I must confess I know no way to bring such a condition about. I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in a way that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.

Though I am still quite a reader I have come more and more to eschew books. Whereas in the early days I looked to books for instruction and guidance, today I read primarily for enjoyment. I can no longer take books, or authors, as seriously as I once did. Especially not books by “thinkers.” I find such reading deadly now. If I do tackle a so-called piece of serious writing it is more to seek corroboration than enlightenment. Art may be therapeutic, as Nietzsche said, but only indirectly. We all need stimulation and inspiration, but they can be had in many different ways, and often in ways which would shock the moralists. Whichever path one takes it is like walking the tightrope.

I have very few friends or acquaintances my own age or near it. Though I am usually ill at ease in the company of elderly people I have the greatest respect and admiration for two very old men who seem to remain eternally young and creative. I mean Pablo Casals and Pablo Picasso, both over ninety now. Such youthful nonagenarians put the young to shame. Those who are truly decrepit — living corpses, so to speak — are the middle-aged, middle-class men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

I have never belonged to any organization, religious, political, or otherwise. Nor have I ever voted in my life. I have been a philosophical anarchist since my teens. I am a voluntary exile who is at home everywhere except at home. As a boy I had a number of idols, and today at eighty I still have my idols. The ability to revere others, not necessarily to follow in their footsteps, seems most important to me. To have a master is even more important. The question is how and where to find one. Usually he is right in our midst, but we fail to recognize him. On the other hand I have discovered that one can learn more from a child very often than from an accredited teacher.

I think the teacher (with a capital T) ranks with the sage and the seer. It is our misfortune not to be able to breed such animals. What is called education is to me utter nonsense and detrimental to growth. Despite all the social and political upheavals we have been through, the authorized educational methods throughout the civilized world remain, in my mind at least, archaic and stultifying. They help to perpetuate the ills which cripple us. William Blake said: “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” I learned nothing of value at school. I don’t believe I could pass a grammar school test on any subject even today. I learned more from idiots and nobodies than from professors of this and that. Life is the teacher, not the Board of Education. Droll as it may sound, I am inclined to agree with that miserable Nazi specimen who said: “When I hear the word Kultur I reach for my revolver.”

I have never been interested in organized sports. I don’t give a damn who breaks what records. The heroes of baseball, football, and basketball are virtually unknown to me. I dislike competitive games. I think one should play not to win but to enjoy the game, whatever it be. I prefer to get my exercise through play rather than through doing calisthenics. I prefer solo performance to teamwork. To swim, to ride a bike, to take a walk in the woods, or to play a game of ping-pong satisfies all my need of exercise. I don’t believe in pushups, weightlifting or bodybuilding. I don’t believe in creating muscles unless they are to be used for some vital purpose. I think the arts of self-defense should be taught from an early age and used for that purpose only. (And, if war is to be the order of the day for the next few generations, then we should stop sending our kids to Sunday School and teach them instead to become expert killers.)

I don’t believe in health foods and diets either. I have probably been eating all the wrong things all my life — and have thrived on it. I eat to enjoy my food. Whatever I do I do first for enjoyment. I don’t believe in regular checkups. If there is something wrong with me I’d rather not know about it, because then I would only worry about it and aggravate the condition. Nature often remedies our ills better than the doctor can. I don’t believe there is any prescription for long life. Besides, who wants to live to be a hundred? What’s the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long life sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance. With all the progress medicine has made over the years we still have a pantheon of incurable diseases. The germs and microbes seem to have the last word always. When all else fails the surgeon steps in, cuts us to pieces, and cleans us out of our last penny. And that’s progress for you.

What is so woefully missing in our world of today are grandeur, beauty, love, compassion — and freedom. Gone the days of great individuals, great leaders, great thinkers. In their place we are breeding a spawn of monsters, assassins, terrorists: violence, cruelty, hypocrisy seem to be inbred. In summoning the names of illustrious figures of the past — names like Pericles, Socrates, Dante, Abelard, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, William Blake, or even the mad Ludwig of Bavaria — one forgets that even in the most glorious times there was unbelievable poverty, tyranny, crimes unmentionable, the horrors of war, malevolence, and treachery. Always good and evil, ugliness and beauty, the noble and the ignoble, hope and despair. It seems impossible for these extreme opposites not to coexist in what is called a civilized world.

If we cannot better the conditions under which we live we can at least offer an immediate and painless way out. There is the escape through euthanasia. Why is it not offered to the hopeless, miserable millions for whom there is no possible chance of enjoying even a dog’s life? We were not asked to be born; why should we be refused the privilege of making our exit when things become unbearable? Must we wait for the atom bomb to finish us off all together?

I don’t like to end on a sour note. As my readers well know, my motto has always been: “Always merry and bright.” Perhaps that is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: “For all your ills I give you laughter.” As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies in which while laughing your guts out you feel your heart breaking. What better comedy could there be? The man who takes himself seriously is doomed.

The tragedy which the vast majority of human beings is living is another matter. Therein I see no comic element of relief. When I speak of a painless way out for the suffering millions I am not speaking cynically or as one who sees no hope for mankind. There is nothing wrong with life itself. It is the ocean in which we swim and we either adapt to it or sink to the bottom. But it is in our power as human beings not to pollute the waters of life, not to destroy the spirit which animates us.

The most difficult thing for a creative individual is to refrain from the temptation to make the world to his liking and to accept his fellow man for what he is, whether good, bad, or indifferent. One does his best, but it is never good enough."

 

It's not my most favourite reading-voice but it was the only one available on YouTube and, as Henry Miller wrote, "One does his best, but it is never good enough."

 

I have started writing my own essay on turning eighty-TWO. If my GP — he's German and very thorough — gives me the medications he hasn't even prescribed me yet, it should be finished by September next year.

 

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P.S. A reminder of who Henry Miller was: he was an American writer and artist who lived to the age of 88. He published "On Turning Eighty" in 1972 at the age of 80. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind were "Tropic of Cancer" (1934), "Black Spring" (1936), "Tropic of Capricorn" (1939), and the trilogy "The Rosy Crucifixion" (1949-1959). Many of his books were banned or blocked from importation in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia until the 1960s and even into the 1970s. Don Chipp, the then Federal Minister for Customs and Excise, dismantled Australia's strict literary censorship regime during the early 1970s.

 

Do fish feel pain?

 

 

Many people firmly believe fish are dim-witted creatures incapable of feeling pain. Accepting that an animal has the ability to suffer from pain changes the way we choose to interact, handle, and care for it. After all, pain is a negative, unpleasant sensation that we try to avoid. It makes most of us feel uncomfortable to know that someone else is hurting.

Most people consider fish to be different; they're ... well, they're fish. While they have a face with eyes, nostrils, and a mouth, these features appear to be rigid and fixed, which contrasts sharply with the more expressive, mobile faces of most terrestrial vertebrates, and yet, ever since I read Victoria Braithwaite's book "do fish feel pain?", I know that they absolute do. I haven't held a fishing rod in my hand since that day.

Which is why when an old mate from my days on Thursday Island sent me links to this series of fishing videos, I did at first not want to watch them, but as soon as the Tip of Cape York with Seisia came into sight, and the SWIFT cargo ship and Thursday Island, I was ... well, "hooked".

 

 

I lived and worked in many places, often for as short a time as three months but usually a year, and never more than two, and it is impossible to say which of those places left the most lasting impression on me.

Bougainvile did, as did Burma and Saudi Arabia, and I loved the Greek islands, but Thursday Island will always have a place in my heart for its quaintness, its remoteness, and the people I briefly befriended there.

 

Hubert Hofer diving on his favourite shipwreck, the SS QUETTA, sometime in the 1990s.

I pointed out to him that he was drawing on the portside while talking about the starboard side of the ship (Part 1 at 12:40). "Very observant of you!" he drily admitted. 😄

 

It didn't take me long to catch on why my friend had sent these videos: he stars in Part 1 at 11:00 diving on his favourite shipwreck. He even wrote a book about it: "The Wreck of the SS QUETTA, Cape York 1890".

 

 

Thanks for sending me the links to these videos, Hubert! I should be outside mowing the lawn but the weather has turned hot again and I'm about to watch the videos for the third time! You may want to read my travelogue of the time when I went back there in April 2005 - click here.

 

 

To top it all off, you may enjoy to watch the above video clip which I found on the website of Roko Island Pearl Farm. I've just heard Padma's car pull up and must help her unload the Christmas shopping she's done.

I'd earlier gone to the online banking website to see how much she's put on the VISA-card. It doesn't quite break the bank but it's getting close. Luckily, the BHP shares are up fifty cents today which evens things out.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Just follow the red arrow!

 

Follow the red arrow to the jetty and the "Red House"

 

BLACKSHAW have just listed a house for sale across the river. Lo and behold, from there they can look straight at our jetty and the "Red House". I had better not pick my nose or leave my fly undone as I sit on the jetty early in the morning to enjoy my first cup of tea of the day.

 

The "Red House"

 

If I want to show my friends where I live, I don't need a drone; I simply go to the real estate adverts and pick whatever aerial photos I want:

 

↑ A view of the village of Nelligen from the east

↓ A view of the village of Nelligen from the north-west

 

Just ignore the MY AGENT sign to look at "Riverbend" in the far-right top-corner. It's a small price to pay for not having to pay for a drone.

 

Click here for GOOGLE Map

 

As you can see, I haven't far to travel on that last trip: past "Sunlit on the Clyde" onto the highway and across the bridge, then a left-turn into Reid Street, then right into Runnyford Road for just a few more metres.

If you want to visit me before then, just follow the red arrow!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

All Quiet On The Western Front

 

 

This story is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war." [click here]

So begins Erich Maria Remarque's book "All Quiet On The Western Front", the most famous anti-war novel ever written. Remarque wrote his novel hoping it would be the last word on war; for anyone who has never seen a war movie, maybe this should be their first. It is more grisly, more disturbing, and more sadistic than any Hollywood horror movie in 2023.

It ought to put you in the right frame eleven minutes past the eleventh hours on this eleventh day of the eleventh month when the fighting on the Western Front officially ceased 108 years ago. Lest we forget!

 

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