Book 144: The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman

The third and final book in the Bernieres trilogy; once I read one, I figure I might as well read them all. It seems somehow mean to leave the trilogy incomplete, and, unlike a lot of trilogies, all of the books are strong enough to stand on their own while also reading beautifully together. This book also leaves me wanting more, because I feel like there are more stories to tell, and I hope Bernieres returns to the world of Cochadebajo de los Gatos and the wonderful characters that inhabit it.

Unlike Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord, which focused on the coca trade, this book had to do with religion, and the corruptive force which religion can have. While all of the books feature a smattering of priests and snide comments on the state of religion, this book took on the issue full-bore, and no punches were pulled. It’s not that religion itself is bad, but that terrible things can be done in the name of religion, and I thought de Bernieres illustrated that really well with the events of this book, just as he demonstrated that a military can be useful.

The back of this book says that it’s “part epic, part farce,” and I think that’s a really good way to describe it. It is an epic book, with a lot of sweeping themes, but it’s also farcical, and the farce often appears in the strangest of places. It also turns conventional ideas on their heads, what with ghosts behaving like regular people, and hybrid Muslim-Catholic communities where people believe that Mohammad is Christ returned to Earth so that he can know the love of a woman.

I think my favourite part of the book may be “The Battle of Dona Barbara,” in which Hectoro, one of the characters, ends up shooting a book:

“…reading on horseback while the horse browsed the grasses proved to be an unmanning experience, owing to an unfortunate coincidence. Hectoro reached a phrase. It was ‘the preliminary characteristic.’ This phrase struck Hectoro as a real pansy phrase…He bellowed with disgust at exactly the same moment that two chinchillas ran under the feet of the daydreaming horse. Startled by the terrible curse and the scurrying of the rodents, the horse reared violently and then kicked out with its back legs.

For the first and only time in his life Hectoro was thrown by a horse. He landed on his backside in an acacia, with the book still open in his left hand and a cigar still smoking between his teeth. ‘Hijo de puta,‘ he exclaimed, ‘this reading is dangerous business.’

He drew out his revolver and shot the book through the center where he had thrown it on the ground, and then he shot it again to make sure.”

After reading that, I think you can see why I love this series so very much.

Demographics:

The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, by Louis de Bernieres. Published 1992, 459 pages. Fiction.

30 May, 2008 – 5:27 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in book project, Everything |

Convictions

According to the Washington Post, in Britain, where people apparently are willing to tolerate millions of CCTV cameras because they are “good for safety,” the rape conviction is shockingly low. I’d say a decline from roughly 30% in the 1970s to just over 5% today is pretty depressing, and also pretty telling. (Compare that with rates in the United States, which hover around 15% of reported cases resulting in conviction.) I would be be really interested to see an estimate on the number of rape cases which are actually reported in Britain, although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it’s low, just like it is here.

The Washington Post article raised a couple of issues of interest for me, as a reader.

The first was to wonder what in the heck is being done with all of the miles of CCTV footage being collected in Britain. I mean, the presence of CCTV is justified by arguing that it makes it easier to track down criminals, and that it enables the prosecution and successful conviction of crimes in Britain. CCTVs are everywhere, and they are mute, all-seeing witnesses which happen to be much more reliable than people, thanks to the fact that they record information immutably and without judgment.

Now, obviously, every single rape in Britain isn’t caught on CCTV, but it does seem like actually using that footage might have some positive benefit on the conviction rate. This seems to be a common trend with security footage; the cameras are put in place to intimidate people, and so forth, but the footage is never actually used, which makes me wonder what the point is. It also gives me further fuel for opposition to the use of CCTV and other camera security systems.

Also, I was really interested in the cultural issues discussed in the article, like the results of a survey which found that “as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it’s okay to force a woman to have sex,” which was pretty mindboggling to me. Or an account of a recent case in which a 28 year old man raped a 10 year old girl and got two years in prison for it…because she dressed suggestively. Please, if you could, tell me how a 10 year old girl can dress suggestively, how a 10 year old girl can be “asking for it.”

But I’m not so sure that Britons have different attitudes about rape than we do. The article was obviously meant to be an analysis of British culture, not American culture, so there were no convenient compare and contrast sidebars, but it would be interesting to compare and contrast results of surveys and other methods of data collection in the two countries. I mean, I read this article and think “good lord, how I do not want to be a woman in Britain,” but I wonder how much better things are here.

After all, date rape is probably the biggest issue in both countries. Now, California happens to have pretty specific laws about forced sexuality, including a law which pretty much explicitly states that no means no, whereas the article didn’t delve that deeply into the law, leaving me with kind of an incomplete picture. I think that California’s laws have made it much easier to prosecute date and acquaintance rape, whereas it may well be that while British law enforcement would like to see more convictions, their hands may be tied by the law. As the article informed me, prosecutors can’t even meet with rape victims in Britain before the case comes to trial, which seems like a pretty big obstacle to getting a solid case in place.

Also, sexism and a double standard around sexuality is obviously present in both nations. I know plenty of Americans who think that there are circumstances in which a woman is “asking for it,” so that attitude is hardly restricted to Britain, especially when it comes to drunk young women trying to have a good time at parties or out on the town. In Britain’s case, it seems like sexism may have paralyzed the legal system, but I would argue that our own legal system’s approach to rape isn’t perfect, either. Depending on where you are and who you are, it can be very difficult to get someone to even take a report, let alone bring the case to trial.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution to fixing low conviction rates for rapes, but this article certainly gave me some food for thought, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that it spurs some reforms in the British legal system’s approach to rape cases. I sure hope so.

30 May, 2008 – 10:12 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, gender, Sexuality, social justice |

Stinky Vulcans

The Police Log at the Arcata Eye is so awesome that I may have linked to it before, but I wanted to make sure, so here’s this week’s. I might add that I think the Advocate should take a note from the Eye’s book; the Police Log is wildly successful to the point that there are several published collections of the best entries.

Obama smokes! But he’s in “excellent health,” apparently.

New York’s governor has stated that the state will recognize same sex marriages from out of state, even though the state itself does not allow gay marriage. A good first step, right?

Psychedelic research is returning to Harvard. Yeah, baby.

In case you had any illusions, this election is in fact controlled by the elite, and 30 of them are basically deciding who gets to be the Democratic nominee this weekend, voice of the people be damned.

Stonehenge, apparently, was a cemetery long before it was a site with giant creepy stones, and new evidence suggests that it went right on being a cemetery after the stones were erected. Note to self: revise plans for memorial headstone, it’s not nearly bombastic enough.

30 May, 2008 – 10:01 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in Everything, interesting |