After a refreshing sleep, THORNY ISSUES returns with new posts, new contributors, new attitude. Our first topic is BOOKS – you know, those papery things we had before epubs, mobis and pdfs? There’s nothing like curling up with a good one, so put on your specs and make yourself a nice cup of tea as our team of hungry bookworms get ready to start chewing. As usual, your comments are welcome!

Victoria Kent: the revolution of emotional intelligence

Victoria Kent is the name of a Spanish prison in Madrid where the inmates can serve their sentences with the best possible standard of penitentiary confidence. It was named after a woman with a relevant public career during the past century. I have recently read some books about her that I would like to review for you briefly below. “Victoria Kent, 1892-1987” is a book by Mª Dolores Ramos that gives a short biography of Victoria Kent (front now on V. K.) in relation with several historical events that happened at the same time. It seems a useful way to gain a more complete knowledge about someone.

V.K was born in 1892 in Málaga. She was nineteen years old when she finished her studies as a schoolteacher. She continued studying law at the Complutense University of Madrid and earned a doctorate degree in 1924. She worked as a lawyer and was especially interested in the penitentiary system. She was a politician too and tried to change the Spanish prison system because she believed that prisons were factories for producing delinquents. She tried to change this and defended the idea of social rehabilitation, considering that time in prison must be useful to the inmates for their re-entry into the society as honest people. She had many professional experiencies; especially remarkable was her work as a Prison System Head. About this Zenaida Gutiérrez Vega wrote the book “Victoria Kent, una vida al servicio del humanitarismo liberal” (“ Victoria Kent, a Life Serving Liberal Humanitarianism” ). It is said that she was a very committed Prison System Head who tried to humanize Spanish prisons and improve their condition. New establishments were built , education and labor training of inmates were promoted and, of course, the training of prison system workers was encouraged. A special school was also founded with that objective so that these employees had the highest level of education possible.

V.K. was in charge of the Spanish Prison System for one year. Her way of thinking was not accepted by her political peers, irrespective of their ideology. Nowadays, however, her ideas are a reality in our prisons. Our legal system follows them more than she could have imagined. It could be said that she was ahead of her time so that the present we know needed her to believe in it a long time ago. V.K went to work for/at the Spanish Embassy in Paris in 1937. When the Spanish Civil War ended, she remained there as an exile.

She tells her own experience in her book “Cuatro años de mi vida 1940-1944” (“Four years of my life 1940-1944”). Secretly, somebody in the Spanish Embassy warned her that the Nazis wanted her and she managed to escape to Mexico at the last moment. “Progresistas” (“Progresists”) written by Javier Moreno Luzón defined V.K.´s thinking as humanist and liberal. It is very interesting what the author tells us about her opinions and sayings, such as the following ones, could be said by V.K. : “the horrors of the mass and their infinite capacity for cruelty”, “man is able to repair his mistakes against the irresponsible mass”, “an unlabeled individual, out of the mass, is suspected by power”, “law must fight against injustice and human pain”, “only a proportioned and balanced use of strength is justified” “violence and intransigence, typical of totalitarianism, must be repudiated”. All of theses so true in light of events in the thirties and forties of the 20th century. Nowadays, everybody would agree with them.

“Victoria Kent. Una pasión republicana” (“V.K. a republican passion”) written by Miguel Ángel Villena explains the vital development of this tireless woman from her life in Spain to her new life in New York, passing through France and Mexico. In relation to the decisive stage of her life as Prision System Head, the author describes an exciting event that happened in “El Dueso” prison when she faced armed inmates whit only her words. Hygiene, instruction, education, labor training, treatment were words often used by V.K. when she tried to change prisons in 1931. Joseba Martínez´s book “Las Santas Rojas” (“The Red Saints”) compares V.K with Santa Teresa de Jesús although he introduces a difference between as he thinks that V.K. was a free woman and her thinking was independent of any masculine authority. This book was written from the intersex and transgender movement´s perspective and the Queer theory, which might provide a complementary point of view of V.K.. The book “Mujeres para la Historia. La España silenciada del siglo XX” (“Women in History. The Silenced Spain of 20th century”, by Antonio Rodrigo, shows a very popular V. K in her time. A popular song about her was then being sung in the streets: “Anda que te ondulen con la permanent, Y si te sofocas, que te den “cold-cream”. Se lo puedes decir a Victoria Kent, Que lo que es a mí, No ha nacido quién…”

V.K. was in contact with Spain all her life and in 1978 she came back and published an article in “History 16 Magazine” where she again explained her penitentiary beliefs that rang true as they do even now. She died in 1982 in New York, where she had lived and worked (at the United Nations) since 1950. V.K certainly did not vote in favour of women´s universal suffrage during the Second Spanish Republic. She thought women could be easily manipulated, especially by the Church, due to their lack of education. She reached that opinion because she knew the real situation of the society in which she lived. She was not simply a theoretical thinker; she was a woman of action and was in touch with the people.

Finally, it can be said that the Spanish penitentiary system would not be the same we know today if V.K. would had not existed!

Further information at Intranet/SGRICT/”BIblio”/Monografías. Anyone can borrow the books from the library (basement floor).

Acknowledgements: grateful thanks to Lourdes Toscano, Documentation Head, for her help.

Peña

Reading, watching, listening to... a book

From Gutenberg to my mother, reading a book has been one of the best ways to spend my time. Perhaps you do not agree with me and you are thinking of the best thing to devote your time to, but even for that thing you are thinking about, I would dare to say, you need or have sometimes needed a book, particularly if you are trying to do it well. Reading a book is the most moving and stimulating thing you can do without having to sweat or get tired. And even more, reading a book is really an adventure, a personal and hazardous undertaking, the only risk that a man like me, mortal and fearful, can afford to take. Nevertheless, if you love perspiration and feeling the endorphins running through your veins, this is not for you, so, please go practice any sport and let us alone to enjoy our books.

You will be able to experience a lot of things by reading a book... in your imagination, of course. For instance, you can enter the murderer’s hideout without being seen, smell the perfume when the girl takes off her clothes or even, if you want it, save the whole world or a piece of it. In addition, you can sell your soul, give life to a corpse, go around the world in 80 days, or live one hundred years in solitude just by going beyond the cover of a book. Knowledge, compassion, emotion, justice, crime and punishment, beauty and ugliness... there is room for everything in a book and by extension all things fit in the core of the one who reads, in that secret room closed to the reader’s heart. But, dear reader, be careful. Opening a book has a lot of side effects: it can affect your mind and change your mood; after reading for a while you might feel wiser, stronger, the most overwhelming person in the world. Well, let’s just say wiser and stronger... Just wiser?... Maybe only witty? Anyway, you will surely feel better than before you started to read. In any case it is the best way to spend a while by yourself.

Books are good for almost everything, as you can see. We can read to have a good time, pass an exam or impress friends with our knowledge. These are some of the common uses of a book. But people use books as well for other purposes as well, like lighting a fire, shimming a table, reaching a biscuit box, hammering a nail or feeling taller in front of a mirror; these are some of the uncommon uses of a book. This way you can see how versatile or adaptable a book could be. But, please, don’t take me too seriously, I’m just kidding.

I like reading but sometimes I have the chance to watch a book, that is, to watch a movie based on a book. Most of my favourite movies have come from a book, such as Solaris or Farenheit 451. The relationship between movies and literature is a thorny issue. Most people think that movies based on novels are inferior to the novel itself; that is, lower or poorer in quality. Some think that it is not possible to enjoy the book after having watched the movie. I am not sure. A high percentage of the most awarded movies in the history of the cinema have been adaptations of books but the movie-goers do not know this. Filmmakers like Kubrick, for instance, only used novels or short stories for their scripts.

Comparing movies to literature is not recommended; they are two different narrative forms. A movie has more impact and uses a lot of expository tricks; visualization in a film is easier than in a novel but it is a more passive act since the plot is shown in pictures; in a novel, visualization is an active act and, therefore, difficult and demanding of more intellectual effort because you have to re-create the plot by yourself. But a novel has more room to create scenes, characters and so on. So it is better not to compare them. What we can do is to give our opinion about whether the film adaptation is faithful to the text and summarises the essence of its messages or situations or whether it cares for the structure, reproduces the atmosphere, is a good portrait of the characters and so on.

Anyway, when I have the chance, what I like doing is watching a book and reading a movie. The film provides the setting (borrowed but normally reliable) and the book provides the depth in the characters and the plot if needed. So, this way, I enjoy both, the book and the film. Try it. It is a fantastic mix I enjoy reading and watching books and, too, listening to them. There are some ways to listen to a book. For instance, listening stories narrated on the radio is a pleasure that only compares to listening to music. And the same is true of audiobooks. It does not matter if it is a theatre play, a novel or a short story. You are always transported to a new world by the magic of voices that come from the outer space. I can feel still around me the sound of Tris Tras Tres, a radio broadcast in the 80’s, by Carlos Faraco. It was my nightly surprise. The echo of those voices resounds in my mind after all these years.

To summarize, what I like is to learn stories, the stories themselves, and I do not care how they came to me: in a book or in a movie or in a radio broadcast or audiobook. In the future, thanks to the digital era, we will able to read, watch and listen to a story at the same time. The first digital generation are already doing it right now. Are you up for it, too?

Bart Ptolomy

Novel healing: is literature a medicine?

Hospital in-patients suffer not only from their illness but also from loneliness, isolation and, the fears and worries that are usual in hospital stays, far from social, work and family environment. These aspects are added to the excessive number of empty hours. All of these factors are bad for the mood and the soul, and could have serious effects, triggering depression and even worse, they could make more difficult or block recovery.


Since the end of the 18th century, the therapeutical benefits of free-time hobbies for in-patients have been accepted. But it was during World War I when regular libraries were set up in hospitals to help the treatment of the wounded soldiers. The idea spread to hundreds of military hospitals in Europe and the USA.

 In relation to this, UNESCO's (1972) Manifesto proclaims: “The services of the public library are provided on the basis of equality of access for all, regardless of age, race, sex, religion, nationality, language or social status. Specific services and materials must be provided for those who cannot, for whatever reason, use the regular services and materials, for example linguistic minorities, people with disabilities or people in hospital or prison…”.  http://www.unesco.org/webworld/libraries/manifiestos/libraman.html

In 1999, during the inaugural ceremony of Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid , the professor Rafael Quijano said: “Bibliotherapy is an important complementary technique in daily clinical, psychological and psychiatric practice. It aims to help the patients to develop their aptitudes, skills and self-esteem. In postoperative processes (usually accompanied by depression) and in psychologically-oriented symptomatology treatment, literature has a valuable influence in the patient. (…). In-patients need a leisure activity that makes their stayis in the hospital more pleasant and that lets them be connected with more familiar settings.This kind of reading has an entertaining goal and also reduces the patient concern and anxiety, acting as a therapeutic tool that will make rehabilitation easier”.

 On the other hand, scientific and technological improvements have resulted in man being able to solve problems and cure diseases by taking pills, by an injection or, pushing a button or a key to avoid pain, growing older or to keep anxiety away. Furthermore, psychiatry and psychology have developed tablets and therapies to help us be happier. But maybe the most effective prescription is as old as history itself and as simple as paper.

 This is the way of thinking of E. Berthoud and S. Elderkin, colleagues at the School of Life in Bloomsbury. They believe in the curative powers of the novel, and it has led them to set up a formal bibliotherapy service "for life's ailments". They prescribe only fiction ("the purest and best form of bibliotherapy") and concentrate on books written within the last couple of centuries.

  The Novel Cure is the result of these recommendations. "Our apothecary contains Balzacian balms, Tolstoyan tourniquets, salves of Saramago and the purges of Proust".
For example, under "L", you can find: "left out, feeling" (Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding), "libido, loss of" (Mario Vargas Llosa's In Praise of the Stepmother), "long-winded, being" (Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and "love, unrequited" (four novels: Turgenev's First Love, Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Ann Patchett's Bel Canto). Berthoud and Elderkin make it clear that they are not going to make any distinction between emotional and physical pain; they are as interested in literature that will help you heal a broken leg (Cleave by Nikki Gemmell) as much as a broken heart (Jane Eyre). But who knows? You might find yourself satisfied to know that one of your favourite books has been selected for its healing properties.

 Changing the subject, but not the issue: On a dark evening in Echo Park (California) in October 2012, Punk Hostage Press began its launch readings at Stories Books & Café on Sunset Boulevard.

At the time, the press had already put out a handful of books, mostly poetry and stories by the founders A. Razor and Iris Berry. As Berry and Razor had worked in shelters for homeless men and battered women, they started to think about bringing literature into the situation as a complement to established recovery programs. At the beginning of 2013, they decided to launch of a non-profit organization, Words As Works, dedicated to bringing books and creative writing to institutionalized people in prisons, shelters and recovery programs. Words As Works emerged from their own use of literature to remove themselves from traumatic situations. 

They had spent many years fighting drug addictions and had accumulated a past full of scenes of violence and misfortune. In other words, they are survivors and they realized that they had something to offer. Since then, both have developed pretty good lives. Berry works at a women’s shelter and as a fund-raiser for orphanages, the Red Cross, a prostitution rescue group, different rehab facilities and battered women’s shelters. Razor works at a homeless shelter, helping to treat men whose situations include repeated hospitalizations and arrests. “This kind of program has the potential to develop new ways to help people on a long-term basis”. “If it can work for us then it can work for others. We’re not reinventing the wheel—we’re just trying to keep it spinning.” —A. Razor.

San Francisco County Jail in San Bruno is a very progressive jail. It offers Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings in certain pods. Razor was invited to visit the jail for a reading during National Poetry Month.

At the end of the reading, some of the men told him: “ I write to understand myself".

                                                                                                                             Scissor Sister

My book, my shadow

Books. What can be said about them? Or rather, what can be written about them that still hasn’t been? Honestly I wouldn’t know how to answer. But what I can say, or write, is that I like them and I’m not the only one. Whenever I travel by bus or by metro I see people devouring books eagerly, when I go to my friends´ homes I see the shelves weighed down with them, and when I walk through the bookstores and book fairs, they seem to be always crowded. Why do we like books? Well, there must be many reasons; they teach us very interesting things about deep feelings, about our history, science and many other subjects.

When we were children fairy tales, with their stereotyped characters, taught us morals, the importance of proper social behaviour as well as the threats of life, all decorated with beautiful illustrations. From this age I remember reading books from the publisher “Barco de Vapor” and I was fascinated by Andersen and Perrault.

When I grew up and started high school, I read books like the gripping Diary of Anne Frank, East Wind West Wind by Pearl S. Buck and Like Water For Chocolate by the Mexican Laura Esquivel, which, with its brilliant magical realism, showed me about more profound feelings such as love and passion. At this point, the simple characters stood aside to let more complicated ones pass. What’s more, the happy endings turned into unpleasant situations, where right and wrong were not so obvious. No illustrations were needed beyond the words, as mesmerizing descriptions drew the stories in our imagination.

Later, when I went to college I became more interested in books related to my studies, such as the classic 1984 by George Orwell, the disturbing Brave New World by Aldous Huxley or the spellbinding The Fear of Freedom by Erich Fromm. With these I learned about the human behaviour and the social construction of reality made by humans themselves.

Now that I look back I see that books have accompanied me my whole life, and I have learned many of the things I know from them. But I also see a parallel evolution between my life and the books I have read. What I feel is that I choose books depending on my interests and curiosity at a particular moment and, more than this, I choose them because I am looking for answers to the questions and problems that I have in understanding this world.

Wildcat

Four books I recommend

I really do like to read! Someone asked me last week ‘Do you read books?’ and my answer was ‘Absolutely, I do enjoy reading books about adventures, fantasy stories, classic books’. And I must confess I certainly don’t read very much. I have only read 5 books in the last 8 months.

Sometimes we think that we don’t have enough time to read, but we have to make time for the things that are important to us. If I watched TV less, I could spend more time reading. Don’t worry about the price of books: you can get them at public libraries or you can acquire them for an e-book from Internet. There’s really no excuse not to start reading on a regular basis. Reading is the best way to enjoy and gain a specific knowledge from any source.

I’ve decided to make a list of books that I have discovered this year.

THE CROOKED LINES OF GOD

I enjoyed reading The Crooked Lines of God a lot. It’s addictive reading by Torcuato Luca de Tena. The main character is the detective Alice Gould and it’s set in a psychiatric hospital which she enters voluntarily as a patient with the purpose of following clues in a murder case. She gets into the hospital by faking a paranoid state, with the support of a doctor who is a friend of hers. She thinks he will give her discharge when she finishes her mission.

Problems arise with the doctors and the other mentally ill patients during her stay, and she tries to prove her sanity. She goes through so many experiences that she begin to have doubts about her own mental health.

I think the main reason it had such an impact on me is because mental health conditions are common and can have serious consequences for both affected individuals and society. This moving story shows that love and friendship can appear anywhere.

KAFKA ON THE SHORE

I read this novel by Haruki Murakami. You might have heard of the author, who also wrote 1Q84. It’s an absolutely riveting read. The book relates Kafka's story. As a teenager, he runs away from his father’s house and tries to find his mother and sister. They don’t have a good relationship because his father always admonishes him that he is about to repeat the Oedipal complex (a child’s attraction to the parent of the opposite sex). He meets a guy who works at a library of Takamatsu, where he finds shelter and spends his days reading books, until the police begin inquiring about him in connection with a brutal murder.

The other main character is Nakata, an older man who can talk with cats since he suffered a rare accident when he was a child in the Second World War.

The end of the novel was a bit disappointing for me because I expected an ending which explains all the relevant aspects of the plot.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE: ‘A GAME OF THRONES’ AN ‘A CLASH OF KINGS’

A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels written by George R. R. Martin. The author wrote the first volume of the series, A Game of Thrones, and then extended his original story to seven volumes. Martin is working on the sixth, The Winds of Winter, which is still in progress. I have read the first novel and now I am reading the second: A Clash of Kings.

The story takes place on fictional continents. The books describe the point of view of the different characters in each chapter of the story. There are two predominant stories: a dynastic war between several families for the control of the kingdom and the return of Daenerys Targaryen with her dragons to claim her rightful throne.

There are lots of characters, but the reader may not safely presume that a certain character will survive. Each family has a slogan which identifies its member and makes it different from the others. I have difficulty remembering all of the principal characters.

THE KITE RUNNER

I can add one more book, whose author is Khaled Hosseini. This story tells the betrayed friendship of Amir and Hassan during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban regime.

As a child, Amir fails Hassan because his cowardice doesn’t let him save his friend. He can’t forget his feeling of guilt even after leaving the country, moving to America and becoming a writer.

Eventually, Amir finds the way to redeem his failure by helping Sohrab, Hassan’s son, who is in an orphanage in Kabul.


In conclusion, I can say I love reading in Spanish but I want to improve my English, so I will try to read them in English.

Mayleles

Prospero's Books

“Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”

The Tempest, Act I.2

Magic books. Books of fearsome spells, forbidden knowledge, unspeakable wonders… Aside from his beautiful daughter Miranda, they are Prospero’s only consolation on the remote island to which he has been banished by his evil brother, Antonio. To pass the time, he has populated it with spirits and beings conjured from those same books: the “airy” Ariel, the half-man-half-animal Caliban and a horde of lesser sprites and imps. And then, one day, a magically-induced shipwreck lands the false duke Antonio and his men on the shores of Prospero’s island... 

The Tempest is Shakespeare’s last play, as well as his most fantastic and puzzling. It seems alternately a fairy tale, a metaphysical allegory, a farewell to the theatre or perhaps to life itself. And through it all there is a disturbing sense of unreality and fakery, of fiction unmasked, dissolving before our eyes like an illusionist’s trick. As a work of dramatic art, it still seems surprisingly avant-garde.

There have been many film and TV versions, but surely none as extravagant as Peter Greenaway’s 1991 adaptation, Prospero’s Books. With Greenaway’s own Prosperesque style (channelling Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Fellini), Michael Nyman’s pulsating musical score, the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation, Sir John Gielgud, as Prospero, and a script by, well, you-know-who, the result may be a bit overpowering for some, but it is one of those films that must be seen (and in better quality than these YouTube clips!). To call it baroque would be an understatement, but keep in mind that the original play was written in 1611, roughly contemporary with Velázquez, Bach and Bernini. Would Shakespeare approve? I’d like to think he would.

Greenaway’s own contribution to the story is to intercut the action with filmic imaginings of the various books in Prospero’s library: the Book of Utopias, the Book of Mirrors, The Book of Mythologies, and so forth. It’s a good pretext for showing off the documentary techniques he developed while making training films for the UK’s Central Office of Information from 1965 to 1980.  

Caliban  

CALIBAN: “You taught me language, and my profit on’it is that I know how to curse.”

I.2

19th-century illustration showing Caliban, Miranda and Prospero

In the dramatis personae to the play, Caliban is described as “a savage and deformed slave”. We get the impression that he is a kind of failed experiment, like one of Dr. Moreau’s beasts (and Jules Verne certainly knew the The Tempest!) or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. On the stage, he has been envisioned physically in many ways; Shakespeare, in any case, created him as the embodiment of envy and spite, of the hatred felt by the powerless for the powerful.

And all because of those books!

CALIBAN: “For without [his books] he’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not one spirit to command. They all do hate him as rootedly as I”.

(“Because without his books, he’s only a fool, like me, and doesn’t have even one spirit to command. They all hate him as deeply as I do.”)

III.2

Caliban enlists the aid of two drunken criminals, Stephano and Trinculo, in a plot to steal Prospero’s books, kill him and take control of the island.

 “There thou mayst brain him, having first seized his books; or with a log batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, or cut his weasand with thy knife.”

(“There you can club him over the head, after you take away his books; or smash his skull with a log, or stab him with a stake, or cut his throat with your knife.”)

III.2

Greenaway’s Caliban, played by Scottish ballet star Michael Clark, is neither minotaur nor werewolf, but something like Nijinsky’s faun. And, rather than prosthetics or special effects, it is the dancer’s obviously painful contortions that express his character’s deformities.

Vaslav Nijinsky in Debussy's 
Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1912)

  
Click here to watch Michael Clark in Prospero's Books

Miranda and Ferdinand

Is The Tempest a comedy or a tragedy? There isn’t much humour here, or grand drama, but, if we take as a guide the convention that comedies end in a marriage and tragedies in a death, it must be the former. The climax of the play is the wedding of Miranda and Ferdinand, future King of Naples. Greenaway gives them an especially lavish banquet, with a multitude of half-dressed spirits offering gifts and a musical number that goes on and on and on…

Miranda meets Ferdinand

The Book of Mythologies and the wedding

And then, at the beginning of Act IV, it all begins to unravel.

Here we come to one of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare, and in all of English literature:

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air; and, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

IV.1

Sorry, no film clip. But here’s an audio of a young Gielgud reciting it on record many years ago.

The company thus dismissed, Prospero returns to the stage for one last appearance, in the epilogue – the last speech in the last scene of Shakespeare’s last play. Having married off his daughter, regained his dukedom, freed his enslaved spirits and found peace, Prospero takes his final bows and bids us all good night (and so, it is usually thought, does Shakespeare). 

Films by Peter Greenaway:

The Falls (1980)

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)

A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)

The Belly of an Architect (1987)

Drowning by Numbers (1988)

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her Lover (1989)

Prospero’s Books (1991)
The Baby of Macôn (1993)

The Pillow Book (1996)

8 1/2 Women (1999)

The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2004)

Nightwatching (2007)

Magic Bob