Wreck: Géricault's Raft and the Art of Being Lost at Sea | Book Review | Tom de Freston

 

A few months ago I visited the White Chapel Gallery in London. The exhibition I went to see - 'A Century of the Artist’s Studio: 1920-2020' - presented a variety of art forms, from painting to video installation, sculptures, audio, immersive space and more. It's the type that can be rather hit or miss, depending on how much abstraction one is willing to put up with on that specific day. Fortunately, as is normally the case at this Gallery, some pieces were exquisite - William Kentridge debating with himself on video, slightly out of sync, enough to build to a comical yet highly intriguing effect; Francis Bacon's studio recreated in detail, as organised chaos. Others, however, lost their meaning in translation for me, due especially to the lack of explanation of the artist's motives, inspiration or background. This, of course, begs the question (one of my favourites to debate): what do we expect from art? Is it an individual, laying their soul bare in front of the viewer? Is it a shared experience? Or is it a deeply personal, individualistic form of entertainment where the viewer is free to create their own experience?

Perhaps it is all and none of those things. This is one of the questions that Tom De Freston explores in Wreck: Géricault's Raft and the Art of Being Lost at Sea. I find myself itching to write a review of this book before I've even finished it. Why? Perhaps because it's so visual, filling my mind with thoughts - the first book to do so in a while. 

Tom is an artist wearing many hats. As he himself proclaims in the book, he has been known to experiment with enough art forms to draw criticism for his broad net but, like his many-pronged approach to creating art, this book benefits from its many layers. The threads he weaves add up to a varied tapestry, starting with an in-depth analysis of the painting of The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19) by Géricault, which he uses as the base structure to build the book on. He gradually layers additional storylines, like coats of paint; grappling with his own childhood trauma, as well as that of Syrian writer, translator and professor Ali Souleman, with whom he begins an artistic collaboration. Having lost his sight to a bomb blast, Ali works with Tom to learn to see together, exploring each other's lives as their friendship develops, and creating through their interwoven stories.

There is something that captures Tom's imagination in the tragedy of Ali's past. It isn't clear whether the intention is to capture, work through or heal, and throughout we get the sense that Tom reaches for a multitude of art forms, unsure which one will express that unnamed desire that will, perhaps, create a final product. We don't get the satisfaction of seeing it, but perhaps the book is all the stronger for it. Observing the creative process, I once again think about art as often a delicate balance between fine and pretentious. It's easy to gloss over, refute the abstract as performance and false intellectualism. But in this book, we stand up close, breathing down the artist's neck while he devises and performs his art, first painting, then performing as on a stage, twisting his body into contortionist shapes, then exploring further and stranger artistic avenues. It would be easy to smirk. But I chose to believe the artist, let his art in, follow him down the rabbit hole. 

Parallel to the developing collaboration and its many surprising turns, Tom also explores the story of Géricault's life, full of obsession and phantasmagorical elements. It is a fascinating overview of the painter's biography and art, and Géricault's collaboration with a survivor of the Medusa, Corréard, during his work on The Raft draws neat parallels with the present day storyline too. I very much enjoy the logical and solid structure throughout the book.

Creative references abound, and the wide-ranging research that has clearly gone into this work is like a breath of fresh air. In reading about paintings, especially ones we haven't come across before, we are invited to follow Ali's way of seeing, relying on our narrator. I constantly find myself faced with these two options: phone at the ready to Google all the art mentioned; or simply read, giving control to the author. I do a bit of both, taking in his words but looking up the art later. It's a fascinating game, seeing with someone else's eyes, thinking with someone else's brain and background, imagining with someone else's imagination. Another person may see a face where we see billowing sails, or shadow where light is overwhelming. We're exploring how different people come to view the same piece of art, circling back to the meaning of art itself.

This is, ultimately, a fascinating combination of art history and analysis, and the type of book that launches a reader on a journey: to discover Goya's Black Paintings, to seek out de Kooning's biography, to understand why [Jacques-Louis] David had such an influence on his followers. It reads as if it's happening in the present moment, a stream of consciousness reflecting on art as it is born. It's thrilling to observe the process.

The Nightingale | Sam Lee | Book review

I first came across Sam Lee's work in April 2020. We were a month into our first lockdown, when most of our evenings were spent on Zoom quizzes (remember when those were still fun?) and drinking lots of wine to forget the bleakness outside. (Okay, we still do the latter.) It had only been a month, but I was already itching for the outdoors, desperately watching the start of camping season - my favourite time of year, really - slip away.

And then I came across 'Singing with Nightingales', organised by the Nest Collective. A live stream, free to access through YouTube: an evening with live nightingale song, side by side with contributions from artists, musicians, poets, writers and singers. All combining to create something truly magical. Hosted by Sam Lee.

That night is honestly one of my fondest memories of 2020: starting to listen to the session out on the balcony, watching the lights go off one by one - the live stream stretches well into the night - then migrating to bed, drifting off to the sound of birds singing and the occasional piece of song or recital. It was magic.

So when I found out that Sam was collating a book on nightingales, I was delighted. This before even knowing what the book would entail exactly, or just how beautiful the item itself would be.

Notes on a songbird

The subtitle of this book doesn't do it justice. It's a very modest approach to all the knowledge, years of research, detail, love and passion that is clearly contained within these pages. Instead of a simple piece of non-fiction (if you're after that, I'd suggest the RSPB), Sam's book combines stories, songs, poems and tradition to paint a picture of this strange and unique bird both as a living thing, and as a symbol that we created by projecting our own emotions onto it.

The focus is very much on the history of the nightingale in our collective consciousness. From the captivating story of how Beatrice Harrison, 'the woman who played with nightingales', brought the bird's song into livingrooms through the BBC, to the traditional tale of how the nightingale got its voice, the book creates a colourful, vivid and fascinating image. There is also occasional 'supporting material', including a list of the different names of the bird in different languages, as well as more practical sections - such as where to go, and when, to hear their song yourself.

The writing is often tongue-in-cheek, gently mocking. There's lots to smile at. I particularly enjoyed a disagreement about the bird between Milton and Coleridge, the latter of whom "thankfully, took up this mantle to protect the nightingale from drowning in doom. His 'The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798) corrects Milton's 'Most musical, most melancholy' tag (from his Il Penseroso) and roots the bird in its nature."

Global fame

It is difficult to summarise just how global the reach of this little bird is - the more I read about all the different traditions and imagery surrounding it, the more astounded I was. From Persian music and poetry, through Turkish folk songs and lamentations, to Russia, Greece and France, the nightingale makes an appearance in almost any tradition. 

It sings to emperors and it is 'spring's messenger'; it is a witness to love and a singer of sorrow. In the UK, the nightingale tends to arrive sometime around these very days in the first few weeks of April, and so it has been linked with the bringing of good weather and the May Day traditions across the country. It has even laid its roots in places where it was never known to nest. 

Is it the strange, almost mysterious trait that it is the only nocturnal songbird? Is it the special song they practice through winter and perform in spring? What makes this bird so attractive for our stories and songs?

Good night, nightingale

It cannot be ignored that this beautiful species is under dire threat. The combination of climate change and human activity means their habitats are disappearing (and actually, they're fairly picky birds when it comes to habitats). It means that within the next 30 years, they could completely disappear from the UK. 

Towards the end of the book, Sam recommends a range of things we can all do to try and reverse (or at least slow) this, and his work with Extinction Rebellion is very inspiring to read. I did feel that the chapter on conservation and taking action was a little rushed - understandably, he wanted to get a lot of information and inspiration into a few pages. His worry for this beloved bird comes across crystal clear though. 

Oh hark, how the nightingale is singing

If you've never heard a nightingale sing, you are in for a treat. Not only are there wonderful soundscapes both on YouTube and Spotify, it also happens to be April - the very month that nightingales arrive in the UK. To get the comprehensive list of where you might find them, I'd urge you to buy this book - but I'm sure the RSPB also has some tips.

But most excitingly, the Nest Collective is actually streaming three live sessions this year on the 14th and 22nd of April, and one on the 1st of May (a dawn chorus no less!), so I'd definitely recommend tuning into at least one and giving yourself over to pure magic. You can find all the details on the Nest Collective website.

And as for this marvellous book - if you're like me and hope to keep a sense of wonder and curiosity that doesn't disappear with age, buy this, read this, read it again. And it's only the beginning of the journey. With so many songs and stories to discover, you can go on your own nightingale 'pilgrimage': seek out the songs, seek out the birds, organise your own nightingale journey. 

I certainly plan to.

Horizon | Barry Lopez | Book Review

 

When the film 'A Life on Our Planet' with David Attenborough came out in 2020, it was signposted as his witness statement. Horizon by Barry Lopez is very much in a similar vein.

I first came across Lopez's writing through Robert Macfarlane, who considers Lopez a 'friend and inspiration', and through buying a copy of Arctic Dreams. Of similar length to Horizon at over 500 pages, it is a beautiful exploration in the Arctic, and any and all life within it. It reads, indeed, like a dream, covering so much territory and offering beautiful, intimate glimpses into this remote world. Lopez was always drawn to the most remote places of the planet, and held a special place in his heart for Arctic landscapes - something that is crystal clear from his writing, whichever page you happen to open Arctic Dreams on.

Horizon is slightly different in that it seems to carry a warning that cannot be ignored. Its deep dive into certain places, peoples or histories all look to the same issue - of climate change and the imminent threats we are facing if we don't change our ways. And yet it still offers respite every now and again through its lyrical, often tongue-in-cheek but always humble descriptions of breath-taking scenery and sights. 

I am nowhere near qualified to review, let alone completely understand all the deep ideas and thoughts that have gone into the creation of this book. But I hope I can give you a glimpse, and hope that you come away from reading this piece with at least one reason why you might pick up Horizon.

"To triumph. To win."

In this last message to us, Lopez doesn't circumvent difficult topics. He questions governments, our constant drive towards betterment, our refusal to stop and consider. He asks whether progress really is the only, the ultimate and at the same time unachievable aim for humanity - whether there's not so much more that we should be, and need to be, focusing on. "... are these questions now thought to be anachronistic, questions no longer relevant to our situation?" he asks. 

There is often a desperation that comes through his writing, grown out of many years of travelling the world - over 80 countries in his lifetime - getting to know its peoples, and observing first-hand the hand- and footprints that humans are leaving on the environment. Cultures disappearing, knowledge evaporating, and the value of those he refers to as 'elders' no longer taken into account. "History tells us," he writes, "that with every great empire comes great barbarism, that the two are inseparable ... This forces the question of what, really, civilization brings to people that they did not already have. And why is civilization so hard on the people who turn it down?" This is a recurring idea throughout the book, from observing the forced extinction of certain species on the Galápagos Islands to revisiting the prisons of Port Arthur and considering its living history that many would be all to happy to bury and label as 'of the past'. Lopez, on the other hand, makes the connections that are too uncomfortable to point out - those to modern-day concentration camps, of arms sales, of how little we have changed on certain fronts to this day. History, he argues, isn't to be buried. It is - and this, I think is the central plea of the book - to be learnt from.

The humility in his writing is comparable to none, and it inspires reckoning within ourselves too. He is all too conscious, at all times, of his privilege, his outsider status, and tries to handle this with as gentle a hand as possible. He never exempts himself from the philosophy he is exploring. And this connectedness, the idea of us forming part of one large community rather than being islands on our own, cuts especially deep during his time spent camping near the Turkwel River in Kenya, looking for fossils in the ground. Where his team, five Kamba men and himself, meet representatives of the Turkana people, ancestral inhabitants of the land. The clash of the modern and of ancestry come into sharp focus during a short exchange about the team's right to camp. "He [a member of Lopez's team] listens patiently while the other man explains the tenets of traditional hereditary land ownership among the Turkana people ... One senses he and his ancestors have been losing this argument for more than a hundred years now." He finishes the section: "The only ethics I really needed to probe in this situation, anyway, were my own. What were my own reasons for not asking permission? For not having knocked?"

And why don't we, dear reader, tend to knock?

"We are darkness as we are, too, the light."

Besides the philosophy, of course, the scenery is breathtaking. Lopez travels from near his own home at Cape Foulweather to the Canadian High Arctic, to Africa and Australia, to the Arctic circle and the Galápagos. He dives under sea ice, assists in archelogical efforts, visits zircon crystals dated as over 4.27 billion years old, and lays eyes on an immense emperor penguin colony on a polar expedition. These unbelievable sights, sounds and experiences are carefully intertwined with his musings on human history, often taking the examples of well-known explorers - Cook, Amundsen, Scott and Darwin, to mention but a few. His extensive reading and knowledge of these lives gives a deeper shade of colour to the ideas and images presented to us, helping to leave a lasting impression.

A long-term view

"What if the perspective you could imagine for yourself, the foundation for your ethics and your politics, was not the condescending now of right now?" Lopez asks. This is what this book can do for you, what it did for me - it looks forwards and back, it brings the then into the now to give a better perspective on today. Why is the history of our species' development relevant here? How does an encounter with a bear, observed through an indigenous perspective, give us better insight into the knowledge we are losing?

Lopez helps shift our focus and questions the obvious to change our priorities. It's as if he's placing a virtual reality lense on our eyes, giving us sight, sound, experience as if we were in it - and in reality, we're reaching into the void around us, helplessly. 

This is a vital call to action, a stark reminder of our place in the universe, written in gorgeous, lyrical language and composed almost like a piece of music. 

It is best read slowly.

White Fever | Jacek Hugo-Bader | Book Review

 

I'm terrible at reading translations. It shouldn't make a difference, but it does. I wonder if you're familiar with this feeling - that fear of the avid reader that by not reading something in its original, intended language, you're losing out on something vital. That perhaps something important gets lost in translation.

It's not fair, really. Translations have been winning prizes left, right and centre over the past few years - Flights by Olga Tokarczuk comes to mind which, after winning an International Booker prize, went on to win a Nobel Prize in literature for Olga and which, by the way, I still need to read. And I have no doubt that thousands of brilliantly translated books keep appearing on the market that, due to this ungrounded fear, so many of us miss out on.

This is a convoluted way of telling you that White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia by Jacek Hugo-Bader is translated from the original Polish, and it is an exquisite work that took me by surprise. 

In a modified Russian jeep, Jacek sets off on a journey of nearly 13,000km from Moscow to Vladivostok, documenting the people, lives and customs he encounters on the way. With a sharp eye and an even sharper interview style, the author gives a clear glimpse into not only the country as it is now, but the traumas and history it continues to grapple with 30 years on from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through fragments of conversations and insights, he creates a full picture.

Snapshots

The author presents a wide range of lives, from the stereotype of what an ignorant Westerner like me imagines life in Siberia to be - viewed through a lens of American films and the perceptions I scraped together over the years - and all the way to the other end of the spectrum where, for example, shamanism and religious cults reside. He explores a dying hippie culture, the music scene (from hip-hop to anarcho-punk and fascist rock) and the AIDS epidemic in Russia, moving on to meeting Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov - yes, him, and a shocking encounter it turns out to be - and travelling on to villages in old nuclear testing grounds, religious congregations and the isolated indigenous communities.

There is no 'everywhere' in this book. Each new place or peoples Jacek meets, the revelations, opinions and reactions differ widely. And yet through these snapshots, a feeling starts to emerge, a sense of Russian values and mind sets. A stubbornness, perhaps, or 'their languid way of waiting for disaster to happen before getting on with anything', as he describes it. 

Self-preservation is a recurring theme, a priority especially in these harsh conditions. When Jacek suffers an accident in his car while driving, the lorry driver he was trying to overtake makes sure Jacek is alive, then drives away hurriedly without giving him a ride. The book also opens with telling the reader that in Siberia, no one will stop for you at night if your car breaks down. They are afraid of bandits. People die of hypothermia out there, setting their cars on fire as a last effort to keep warm. Without success. But they know no one will stop.

It is not an easy read by any measure. Alcoholism, suicide, terrorism and death occur much more often in this work than love or even satisfaction. With temperatures reaching minus forty in winter, with no cities - and often no electricity - around, with a police culture that is only there to protect if you can buy that protection (the 'impunity, rapacity and corruption' of the militia is legendary), this is as desolate a landscape as it gets. Jacek has a masterful style in selecting what is relevant for the reader to get some kind of an understanding of why things are the way they are, without holding back. 

Jacek often employs a brilliant toungue-in-cheek approach to coax people to talk to him. He provokes, takes small stabs and waits for the reactions. He gently mocks and questions, and this kind of witty approach to all the horrors he encounters allows us not just to be truly horrified by what we are reading, but to really engage with it. He puts a hand on the subject matter saying 'look, it's fine to touch'. 

'The technical term is delirium tremens'

White fever itself is a condition that can set in after a few days of boozing, even once the person has sobered up. It is an after-effect, a sort of whiplash after days of heavy drinking. Its effect is delirium, often with hallucinations - hearing or seeing demons and voices. 

'One day he ran out of the tent in the middle of winter without his jacket and hat. He was entirely sober, but this was soon after a tremendous, four or five-day drinking spree. He ran blindly ahead without stopping for two days and nights.' (Later, when discussing this story: 'He wasn't running, he was fleeing.')

It is discussed in what is perhaps the hardest part to read in the book, a chapter about the Evenks, one of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North. Jacek spends a week or so with them, recounting a truly staggering amount of death and suicide, narrating the story of Brigade Number One, a collective of seventeen reindeer herders, falling victim to the white fever one by one. 

The story of the ex-nuclear test sites comes close. Here, he explores the shocking effects and attempted cover-ups of nuclear testing in the 1950s. The cancer that still affects those whose parents or grandparents lived here during that time. When bombs were tested not 50kms away from villages. 

Let it be enough to say that the chapter is constructed according to the nine circles of hell.

'Are you happy?' 'I don't know. But I don't feel sad.'

I'd like to think things must be different now, over there in this strange and far-removed world. But this was written in 2008. 

Often it is crazy, absolute madness, outrageous. Something inside me screams the whole way. How are these things possible in today's world? But the people might just shrug at me if I asked them. 'How should I know?'

Some of the scenes casually recounted in this book will continue to haunt me, but it's possible to see beauty too. It's as bittersweet as Russian music sounds to me, the sad notes somehow constructing a slightly more upbeat melody. An enlightening read, for sure, and an excellent piece of reportage. 

8/10