Oxonian Review

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2.00theOxonian Reviewof bookshilar y 2005 . volume 4 . issue 3Ensuring India’s Nuclear Security Priyanjali MalikCharles Trevelyan and the Irish Famine Ciara BoylanAmongst David Constantine’s Damned April WarmanEngland’s Foremost Tenor on a Scholar’s ArtDitlev Rindom inter views Ian BostridgeThe Dual Mandate of the United States in Occupied Iraqby Dominik Zaum

the Oxonian Review of books2trinity 2005 . volume 4 . issue 3From the EditorIn This Issue:FeaturesIA Scholar’s ArtAn Interview with Ian BostridgeDitlev Rindompage 8The Dual Mandate of the United StatesOn Noah Feldman’s Ethics of Nation BuildingDominik Zaumpage 10Book ReviewsOxford’s Post-War ArchitectureGeoffrey Tyack on the Modern CollegeMatthew Nichollspage 3Chomsky’s Future GovernmentThree Decades OnMichel Paradispage 4Amongst the DamnedDavid Constantine’s Latest FictionApril Warmanpage 12A Simple StoryMiriam Toews’ Complicated CommunityLeonard Epppage 15Architect or Pawn?Charles Trevelyan and the Irish FamineCiara Boylanpage 18The Second Draft of History?Anthony Seldon on Tony BlairLewis Allanpage 20Country Profile: IndiaEnsuring SecurityThe Legacy of K. SubrahmanyamPriyanjali Malikpage 6Intimate BordersAmitava Kumar’s Husband of a FanaticElizabeth Angellpage 13Legitimate TransgressionsBare Acts between Words and WorldsRahul Raopage 14Film, Dance & TheatreDrama Queen, Victim, PublicistJonathon Calouette’s TarnationWill Normanpage 16The Quiet Centre of the Third ReichHirschelbiegel’s DownfallWill Normanpage 16n 2005 one hopes that creative works of fiction nolonger suffer censorship and that authors are no longerbanned or incarcerated for expressing their personalopinions against governmental policies. This is, of course,a naïve hope.One inspiring author comes to mind: Duong ThuHuong, born in Vietnam in 1947. Huong enjoyed heryouth in a nomadic theatre troupe and trained at aschool for entertainers. At twenty, however, she joinedthe Communist Youth Brigade and fought during theVietnam War; she was expelled from the Party in 1991after persistently advocating human rights and democratic reform in her country. She was then arrested andimprisoned without trial for eight months. ‘My chosenpath today is to struggle for a democratic society’, she saidin an interview with Radio Free Asia (July 2000). She wasparticularly alarmed when President Bush received Vietnam’s Prime Minister Phan Van Khai at the White Housein June, a reception which caused a stir among many ofher generation, Vietnam and American – for respectivelydifferent reasons.After working in the film industry as a screenwriterand as a journalist, she turned to writing fiction. Dueto her political activism (she was nearly assassinatedtwice), her six novels are banned in Vietnam. Althoughnot overtly political, her fiction continually portrays thedisillusionment of people trapped in a society withoutcivic freedoms. In his review of Memories of a Pure Springin 2000, Richard Bernstein of The New York Times explained this phenomenon: ‘One reads it certainly for itspolitics, but even more for the depth and complexity ofits characters who strive to define themselves in a worldthat still puts everything and everybody in one or anothercategory of ideology and national aspiration’. Her mostrecent book, No Man’s Land was published in America byHyperion in April 2005. Like many of her other works– Beyond Illusions (1987, translated 2002), Paradise of theBlind (1988, translated 1991), Fragments of a Life (1989),Novel without a Name (translated 1995), and Memoriesof a Pure Spring (translated 2000) - No Man’s Land is setin rural Vietnam at the end of the war and dissects lifeunder one of the few Communist regimes remaining.The novel focuses on a young woman, Mein, who is happily married to a hard-working farmer, but soon learnsthat her husband, who reportedly died a martyr for thecause, is actually still alive and returning to claim her. Sheis forced to give up her happy life and family to live withher first husband who has been reduced to abject povertyand is physically and psychologically marred by his trialsduring the war. Without descending into sentimentality,Huong offers a tightly constructed and hard-biting tale ofchoiceless choices – over war and peace, love and honour,family and state – as endured under a regime of strictCommunist codes.In 1994, Huong was offered political asylum inFrance where she made one of her first visits outsideVietnam. She kindly refused, saying passionately that hercountry needed her. She would return, she said, ‘to spit inthe face of the regime’.§Our Summer 2005 issue covers a wide range of subjects,with particular emphasis on international politics andrelations. Dominik Zaum’s essay on the current state ofnation building in Iraq is not simply a review of NoahFeldman’s new book, What We Owe Iraq: War and theEthics of Nation Building, but also an informed examination of the broader issues of state-building and policymaking in post-conflict nations. The issue includes threearticles focusing on India today. Elizabeth Angell’s reviewof Amitava Kumar’s memoir Husband of a Fanatic: APersonal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hateexplores one man’s inter-racial and inter-cultural experiences during the Kargil border conflict between Indiaand Pakistan in the summer of 1999. Engaging with thetopics of India’s post-colonial history and national security, Priyanjali Malik reviews a new book, Security BeyondSurvival: Essays for K. Subrahmanyam, dedicated to oneof India’s top strategic thinkers. Rahul Rao examines aneclectic reader of essays on the textual essence of Indianlegal codes. Other politically related articles include afresh look at Noam Chomsky’s 1970 polemic Government in the Future (reprinted after 25 years) and giventhe recent parliamentary election, an appropriately timedreview of Anthony Seldon’s biography of Tony Blair.Moving from politics to performance, the OxonianReview is delighted to present an extensive interview withclassical tenor Ian Bostridge, who shares with Ditlev Rindom his passion for music, especially Schubert, and hisinterest in the intersection between music and the mind.Books reviewed in this issue include Miriam Toews’ newnovel, A Complicated Kindness; David Constantine’snew collection of short stories, Under the Dam; CharlesTrevelyan and the Great Irish Famine, Robin Haines’s reexamination of the influence of the Head of the Treasuryin the 1840s; and Geoffrey Tyack’s book on post-WorldWar Two Oxford architecture, released for the 450th anniversary of St John’s College. The issue is rounded out byan Arts section including reviews of recent films Downfalland Tarnation, avant-garde theatre work by the TigerLillies, as well as dance performances by the The RambertDance Company and Compagnie Kafig.Avery T. WillisEditor-in-ChiefBalliol CollegeFrom Modern to BeyondThe Rambert and Kafig Dance CompaniesKate Nichols, Elizabeth Gallowaypage 17Cheap TricksThe Tiger Lillies in ConcertKristin Andersonpage 17Got a letter to the editor?editor@oxonianreview.orgBlackwells will offer a gift voucher worth 25 to the writer of the best letter tothe editorFor special features and back issues, please visit:http://www.oxonianreview.orgCover Photo: Angela Palmer, copyright 2005.Want to advertise?execeditor@oxonianreview.org

trinity 2005 . volume 4 . issue 3the Oxonian Review of booksOxford’s Post-War ArchitectureGeoffrey Tyack on the Modern CollegeOxford is a city full of much-loved old buildings andmostly-unloved modern ones. The first reaction tothe various quads, annexes, library extensions, laboratories, and offices built by the University and its Collegessince, say, 1945 is often one of hostility or incomprehension. Many colleges have a ‘modern eyesore’ tucked awaysomewhere behind their statelier ranges or in an outlyingannexe, and so most of us can feel some sympathy withBill Bryson’s characteristically robust condemnation ofthe city’s modern architecture:What sort of mad seizure was it that gripped thecity’s planners, architects, and college authorities inthe 1960s and 1970s? [.] Just look at the MertonCollege Warden’s Quarters – which is not by anymeans the worst building in the city. What a remarkable series of improbabilities were necessary toits construction. First, some architect had to designit, had to wander through a city steeped in eighthundred years of architectural tradition, and withgreat care conceive of a structure that looked like atoaster with windows. Then a committee of finelyeducated minds at Merton had to show the mostextraordinary indifference to their responsibilities to posterity and say to themselves, ‘You know,we’ve been putting up handsome buildings since1264; let’s have an ugly one for a change.’ Thenthe planning authorities had to say, ‘Well, why not?Plenty worse elsewhere.’ Then the whole of thecity—students, dons, shopkeepers, office workers,members of the Oxford Preservation Trust—had toacquiesce and not kick up a fuss. Multiply this by,say, two hundred or three hundred or four hundredand you have modern Oxford.Bryson’s tirade, of course, does not tell the whole story.Some of Oxford’s modern buildings—ugly, impractical,justly unloved—are fair targets; others, though, are success stories, enriching the city’s thousand-year architectural patrimony. In each category are buildings that are nowpart of the city’s and University’s history: love them orhate them, they illustrate important architectural movements and developments in taste, materials, and engineering, and also chart the changing nature of the institutionsthat built them.Tyack’s book unpacks the processes of decision-making obliquely outlined by Bryson, explaining the rationalebehind what the latter saw as simple folly. He uses asexamples a series of structures erected by a single College,St John’s, which used the twin blessings of a large site anddeep pockets to become one of Oxford’s most importantarchitectural patrons in the second half of the twentiethcentury, commissioning or completing major projects inevery decade since the Second World War. Appearing inSt John’s 450th anniversary year, the book will naturallyinterest those with a connection to the College, butfrequent comparisons with the story of modern architecture elsewhere in Oxford and beyond broaden its appeal.Anyone interested in how our city’s modern buildingscame to be built will find it a richly rewarding read.The book begins with an account of the growing needfor new accommodation in post-war Oxford, as the University and the government sought to improve access tohigher education. St John’s first response was Sir EdwardMaufe’s inoffensive neo-Georgian Dolphin Quadrangle,which offered ‘a safe and reassuring style to an age whichfelt that it had experienced enough change’.As post-war prosperity and confidence increased,proponents of the architectural avant-garde began tooutnumber the conservatives. British architects andpatrons began to favour a movement whose roots in3theOxonian Reviewof bookshttp://www.oxonianreview.orgGeoffrey TyackModern Architecture in anOxford College. St John’s College1945–2005OUP, 2005144 pagesISBN: 0-19-927162-3 30.00 (Hardback)Editor-in-ChiefAvery T. WillisSenior EditorKristin AndersonExecutive EditorBrian FlanaganEditorsBritain stretched back to the International Style of the1930s, in which function dictated form and ornamentwas eschewed: bold, even stark, simplicity was the orderof the day.In Oxford the tipping point came when a caucus ofyoung fellows at St John’s rejected Maufe’s plan for thecompletion of the College’s North Quad and demandeda ‘frankly contemporary treatment which would makeno concessions to the adjoining buildings’. The youngmodernists of the Architects’ Co-Partnership werechosen instead of Maufe; as admirers of the Bauhaus andLubetkin’s Tecton firm they were epitomes of the urge toregenerate and renew in post-war Britain. The modernisers did not have it all their own way, though. At an earlystage of the project, the architect Michael Powers showedthe fellows his designs for a building whose study-bedrooms opened off corridors. ‘There was a gasp of horrorand revulsion. “What? Can’t have that! Can’t have that!Can’t have corridors in St John’s! [.] Women’s Collegeshave corridors! Keble has corridors!” What did we wantthen? Staircases! Staircases!’The result was the Beehive, a set of hexagonal studentrooms whose dramatic intrusion into the quad has gathered praise and criticism in more or less equal measureever since. Tyack likes the building’s ‘variety, surprise,irregularity, varied surface’; current residents are less sure,although most agree that it is comfortable to live in.Expansion continued in the 1960s and 70s as participation in university education more than doubled. Thiswas the era of the baby boom, the maintenance grant,and Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’. Britain neededa new generation of administrators and technocrats, andthe universities were to provide them. The ArchitecturalReview of 1963 caught the zeitgeist when it claimed thatthere was ‘a new intellectual tone to university patronage[.]. The air of ivy-girt traditionalism has blown away.The aim now [.] is to make universities contribute visibly to the progressive applications of the nation.’This atmosphere of rapid, progressive growth produced in Oxford more than a few buildings like Bryson’s‘toaster with windows’, whose ideologies of style andfunction seem dated today, but whose effects were profound. St John’s contribution, the Thomas White Quadrangle of 1975, benefits through its detachment from theCollege’s existing buildings, allowing it sufficient space tospeak for itself, and from the landscaping which over theyears has grown up to soften its harder edges. Conceivedinitially as a huge project incorporating a lecture theatre,an underground swimming pool, a car-park, a library,and a ‘chapter-house’ SCR, the project was scaled back tothe eight-staircase block which can now be seen from thewestern end of Museum Road. It too keeps the staircaseas its ordering principle, but follows a strand of architectural rationalism that makes the building’s structure intelligible to the viewer, exposing its skeletal framework andemphasising its materials (concrete and glass). The resultcontinued on page 4Chris BradleyEmma CavellJosh ChernissPhil ClarkLen EppAlex KalderimisKatherine LafranceThomas MarksApril WarmanDavid WilliamsAssociate EditorsRahul RaoTim SoutphommasaneOnline EditorPaul VetchOnline AssistantWilliam MayAcknowledgements & ThanksAndrew Graham, Master of Balliol CollegeFrances Cairncross, Rector of Exeter CollegeAngela PalmerEric Bennett, Exeter CollegeSir Michael Scholar, President of St John’s CollegeSir Timothy Lankester, President of Corpus Christi CollegeDr Henry Hardy, Wolfson CollegeMichael HugmanRachael Kerr, QIFriends of the Oxonian ReviewBalliol CollegeCampion HallCorpus Christi CollegeExeter CollegeJesus CollegeMagdalen CollegeMerton CollegeSt John’s CollegeProf. Martin McLaughlinDr. Graham NelsonEnglish Faculty LibraryLady Margaret Hall LibraryMagdalen College LibraryBalliol MCRHarris Manchester MCRExeter MCRJesus MCRLinacre CRMagdalen MCRPembroke MCRSt Hugh’s MCRSt John’s MCRHertford JCRJesus JCRThe Oxonian Review of Books is published primarily by graduate members of the University of Oxford, although it welcomescontributions from other University members. Contributorsbear sole responsibility for its content, which in no way reflectsthe views of the University of Oxford. All works are copyright oftheir respective authors.

the Oxonian Review of books4trinity 2005 . volume 4 . issue 3continued from page 3was a building credited with boosting St John’s academicstanding within the University, as it allowed the Collegeto attract students with the offer of on-site accommodation throughout their courses.More recent developments continue to echo thechanging nature of the University and of architecturaltastes. In the last quarter of the 20th century, risingnumbers of graduate students and high property pricesmeant that it was desirable for colleges to add yet morenew accommodation, and libraries and labs continued tostrain their existing facilities. Meanwhile, the modernist architectural movement that had dominated the lastthree decades began to be eclipsed by a shift towards thepost-modern. Those who were had been discomfortedby the starkness of modernist architecture found theirviews in favour again; the Prince of Wales famously calleda proposed modernist extension to the National Gallerya ‘monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved andelegant friend.’ Accordingly, architects began to reintroduce vernacular elements to their buildings, incorporatingdecorative treatments for their own sake and once againprivileging form above pure function. Buildings also began to take more note of their surroundings, abandoningthe shock tactics which characterised earlier designs: it ishard to imagine a modern college committee demanding,as St John’s did with the Beehive, that a building deliberately clash with its older neighbours, or erecting something as wilfully eccentric as Stirling’s Florey Building (atThe Queen’s College).Oxford’s first example of the new style was theSainsbury Building at Worcester, with its brick exteriorand reassuring pitched roofs. In recent years many othershave followed, ranging from the novel (MacCormac’sBowra building in Wadham, for example) to the amiablepastiche of the Sackler Library or Magdalen College’sGrove Buildings. At St John’s, Tyack chronicles the designand construction of the architect MacCormac JamiesonPrichard’s Garden Quad, a self-consciously dramaticPiranesian confection of upper and lower levels, brick,concrete and glass towers, geometrically disposed plantingbeds, and chains which channel rainwater into floodlightswhere it steams off dramatically. The author includes anearly artists’ impression showing exuberant vegetationand a group of students playing lutes in a glass-walledbelvedere: things have come a long way since the austeredays of the 1940s and 50s.Ultimately, Tyack’s blend of the particular with thegeneral makes this a very engaging book; he is able toconnect specific buildings in Oxford with national andinternational social and architectural trends in a way thatshould fascinate expert and non-specialist alike. He writeselegantly, avoiding jargon and explaining clearly the widercontext of his subject buildings, and he and his publishershave sensibly illustrated the book very liberally with goodclear photographs and plans.Matthew Nicholls is a Junior Research Fellow in Classics at TheQueen’s College. His research and teaching interests include ancient architecture.theOxonian Reviewsubscribe:of booksWant to subscribe? Email:execeditor@oxonianreview.orgChomsky’s Future GovernmentThree Decades OnNoam ChomskyGovernment in the FutureSeven Stories Press, 2005.76 pages.ISBN: 1583226850If you want to make money writing or on the lecturecircuit, do not become a linguist. With the rare exception of books like Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinctor John McWhorter’s Power of Babel, the general readingpublic does not have a strong appetite for the latest innovations in syntax. Modern linguistics is highly technical, and despite their study of language, linguists have aremarkable inability to write approachably. Except, itseems, when writing about politics.A surprising number of contemporary linguists havemade names for themselves offering social and politicalcommentary that, though credible and compelling, canonly occasionally be described as linguistic. While thisis in no small part due to a considerable methodologicalconsistency across the social sciences, it is doubtful thatany of them would have written so confidently outsidetheir field if not for the Abraham of linguist-as-publicintellectual, Noam Chomsky.While there is ample debate regarding Chomsky’scontribution to both linguistic and political theory, thereis none about his influence. It has now been fifty yearssince Chomsk

Books reviewed in this issue include Miriam Toews’ new novel, A Complicated Kindness; David Constantine’s new collection of short stories, Under the Dam; Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine, Robin Haines’s re-examination of the infl uence of the Head of the Treasury in the 1840s; and Geoff rey Tyack’s book on post-World

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