Kafka-esque

The finale of the D'Oliveira book was as deeply moving as any. 

Having arrived where he had, with only him knowing he'd lied about his age to get there, and achieved so much so belatedly it is a measure of the dignity of the man that he got through, like Kenneth Clark's Civilisation claims that classical culture did, by the skin of his teeth. Such stories survive knife-edge, cliff-hanging situations or else they wouldn't have become stories at all and we thus never know how many such stories there never were because at one point or another the project failed.

Thoroughly decent and only wanting to do what he did - play cricket- he was put in impossible positions by the opposing demands of a wicked world that would seem beyond our ken by now if that world hadn't continued to re-invent its capacity for wickedness in however many other ways. It is a story of more than derring-do, not least due to the humility, bravery and also talent of its hero and the parcel of rogues he had to deal with. While always having known that the MCC was infested with them and it wasn't only the South African government he was up against, I'm glad to read how Ray Illingworth was one of the good guys, alongside John Arlott, who took Baz's side. Good for him.

 

Something else entirely prompted the possibility of a Kafka revisit, not at all to do with being the victim of regimes in place because they are in place and whose victims don't understand and aren't ever told why they are guilty. It's an idea that can be extended into all those petty little gripes I look back on so resentfully like compulsory rugby union at school, having to do an essay on Vanity Fair at university and being told what a fine democracy we live in and then being given a choice between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at a General Election.

I'm not as well up on Kafka as I thought I was but a look at one of the other stories in Metamorphosis and other stories is enough to suggest he's writer worth reading for more than just what he says, and that is how he says it. The Library Service will provide The Trial. I'm sure I read either that or The Castle in the 1970's but I haven't been back since. He might have been one of those 'teenage' writers one first comes across at that age and then leaves behind but it's possible he's worth another look. 

 

It was once possible to think there was some sort of concensus about what common sense was but perhaps I was the more deceived. I like Rishi Sunak more than I like many Conservatives but, given the qualities of his predecessors and the idea that David Cameron is now regarded as statesmanlike, that's not a big call. And he achieves it while promoting the Rwanda plan and claiming the next General Election is 'in the balance' which shows how bad you can be while still being the preferable face of the Conservative Party.

There doesn't seem to be common sense any more - the relatively thin gap there was between Ted Heath and Harold Wilson- when students at illustrious Cambridge University, supporters of Donlad Trump, Liz Truss herself et al just say what they say and keep on saying it.

Times Radio, and maybe The Times itself, seem to be able to retain some perspective and, having interviewed Monty Panesar, the ex-troubled cricketer now standing as one of George Galloway's candidates, at first ridiculed his lack of grasp but subsequently softened into sympathy for someone who actually made other politicians look good and perhaps it's not his fault and maybe he needs help.