I haven't blogged in a while. I've been following the happenings of the Middle East - the 'Arab Spring' as the media has taken to call it, though I'm not a fan of the name - since Egypt erupted in mid-January. Most of all I've been obsessing over the events of Bahrain, which have only gone from bad to worse in the last two months. The last five months have been mentally draining, and I've needed a break away from it all.
This post is nothing more than me dipping my toe to test the water. The 'dive' as such will come later. So for now, while I revise for the upcoming exams, I'll leave you with this. It's an interview from two days ago, between PBS and my dad, who's been damaged by the government crackdown as so many others have, and more succinctly describes the issues than I can.
Sunday 22 May 2011
Monday 2 May 2011
William Cobbett
Some background information on Cobbett:
When reading Rural Rides, it doesn't immediately come across as a journalistic work. Cobbett's writing style is to write his thoughts down as they come, with little to no revision. His advice was to “Use the first words that occur to you, and never attempt to alter a thought; for that which has come of itself into your mind is likely to pass into that of another more readily and with more effect than anything which you can, by reflection, invent.” His writing style is similar to the stream of consciousness narrative mode, and he does tend to ramble. For example, in one chapter he writes at length about William Ewing, a famous shooter from Philadelphia he once went out hunting pheasants with during his exile in America. The anecdote, while entertaining, has little to no bearing on anything to do with his journey. By the end of this tale, Cobbett puts more focus on the hunting hound he had taken during that trip than the character of William Ewing, which then trails into a discussion on how there are different sorts of men just as there are different breeds of dogs. It leaves you to ask, sometimes: What is Cobbett's point? Sometimes he doesn't seem to have any, and in the previous example I don't think there was a point to his story until near the end when he began writing nostalgically of his favourite hunting hound.
Having said that, there is also a wealth of social commentary in Cobbett's work. One exchange he has with his son after visiting the Winchester cathedral sums his views up:
As Cobbett goes around the countryside, he judges the living standards of the labourers in many of his stops. Early in the book, in Cirencester, he judges that 'the labourers seem miserably poor. Their dwellings are little better than pig-beds, and their looks indicate their their food is not nearly equal to that of a pig'.
Something that comes across quite clearly is Cobbett's compassion for these people, even despite his better upbringing. In the chapter Winchester to Burghclere, he details how he was resolved not to breakfast in Winchester, and from this decision does not get the chance to eat until the afternoon, when he buys bread and cheese from a labourer. He has a lucid moment of compassion before eating it; he describes how he irritably snaps at his son over a trivial matter. Realising his irritability was from his hunger, and that he was made this way from missing just a single meal, he begins to understand how miserable the lives of these labourers must be, and how they cannot be blamed if they turn to thievery to support themselves.
At one village, he likens the labourers on farms to slaves, which he saw in America. From his view, the slaves lived a better life than the labourers. He points out the flaw of logic in the press and by politicians, who say that education will righten the working class's morals and prevent thievery, but you only have to look to their half-starved selves to see that the working class is corrupted by their lack of food or drink. He exhibits even more disgust at the fact that felons in prison are allows better food, clothing and housing than these labourers.
I don't know if Rural Rides stands up as a great example of journalism. It meanders too much, and too often has no precise 'point' to it. Cobbett's thoughts are completely unfiltered here. While it provides an insight into the rural life in the period it was written in, I'm unsure if it could be called journalism in its purest sense – Cobbett is as much a story teller as he is a reporter, perhaps more so.
- He was born in 1763 in Farnham, Surrey, not too far from Winchester. He died in 1835 at the age of 72. The tavern he grew up in is now called the William Cobbett after him.
- He spent many years outside of the UK, in France and later America. In America, he started his career as a journalist publishing a pro-British pamphlet. This was in the last years of the 1700s, approximately twenty years after the American revolution.
- When he finally returned to England in the early 1800s, he established his newspaper, the Weekly Political Register, which at its greatest had a circulation of 40,000 copies. He became a radical, calling for the need for parliamentary reform.
- In the early 1800s, the agriculture industry was frequently depressed and the poverty in rural areas great. Unsatisfied with what Parliament was doing to fix these issues, Cobbett took it upon himself in the early 1820s to travel around the countryside of England and view the lives of rural people himself.
When reading Rural Rides, it doesn't immediately come across as a journalistic work. Cobbett's writing style is to write his thoughts down as they come, with little to no revision. His advice was to “Use the first words that occur to you, and never attempt to alter a thought; for that which has come of itself into your mind is likely to pass into that of another more readily and with more effect than anything which you can, by reflection, invent.” His writing style is similar to the stream of consciousness narrative mode, and he does tend to ramble. For example, in one chapter he writes at length about William Ewing, a famous shooter from Philadelphia he once went out hunting pheasants with during his exile in America. The anecdote, while entertaining, has little to no bearing on anything to do with his journey. By the end of this tale, Cobbett puts more focus on the hunting hound he had taken during that trip than the character of William Ewing, which then trails into a discussion on how there are different sorts of men just as there are different breeds of dogs. It leaves you to ask, sometimes: What is Cobbett's point? Sometimes he doesn't seem to have any, and in the previous example I don't think there was a point to his story until near the end when he began writing nostalgically of his favourite hunting hound.
Having said that, there is also a wealth of social commentary in Cobbett's work. One exchange he has with his son after visiting the Winchester cathedral sums his views up:
After we came out of the cathedral, Richard said, “Why, papa, nobody can build such places now, can they?” “No my dear,” said I. “That building was made when there were no poor wretches in England called paupers; when there were no poor-rates; when every labouring man was clothed in good woollen cloth; and when all had plenty of meat and bread and beer.”Ignoring the belief that life a millennium ago was superior to contemporary life, which I think seems over-simplified, Cobbett here is expressing his dissatisfaction with the lifestyle of common labourers. Life is meagre for them, and steps must be taken to improve it. One can't help but be reminded of Marx's idea of the proletariat’s liberation from the bourgeoisie, but Cobbett focuses on a different class of people. Marx looked down on labourers and did not even consider them in his Manifesto, but the labourers cause is one of Cobbett's obsessions. He also takes up the cause of the Catholics, though he is not Catholic himself.
As Cobbett goes around the countryside, he judges the living standards of the labourers in many of his stops. Early in the book, in Cirencester, he judges that 'the labourers seem miserably poor. Their dwellings are little better than pig-beds, and their looks indicate their their food is not nearly equal to that of a pig'.
Something that comes across quite clearly is Cobbett's compassion for these people, even despite his better upbringing. In the chapter Winchester to Burghclere, he details how he was resolved not to breakfast in Winchester, and from this decision does not get the chance to eat until the afternoon, when he buys bread and cheese from a labourer. He has a lucid moment of compassion before eating it; he describes how he irritably snaps at his son over a trivial matter. Realising his irritability was from his hunger, and that he was made this way from missing just a single meal, he begins to understand how miserable the lives of these labourers must be, and how they cannot be blamed if they turn to thievery to support themselves.
At one village, he likens the labourers on farms to slaves, which he saw in America. From his view, the slaves lived a better life than the labourers. He points out the flaw of logic in the press and by politicians, who say that education will righten the working class's morals and prevent thievery, but you only have to look to their half-starved selves to see that the working class is corrupted by their lack of food or drink. He exhibits even more disgust at the fact that felons in prison are allows better food, clothing and housing than these labourers.
I don't know if Rural Rides stands up as a great example of journalism. It meanders too much, and too often has no precise 'point' to it. Cobbett's thoughts are completely unfiltered here. While it provides an insight into the rural life in the period it was written in, I'm unsure if it could be called journalism in its purest sense – Cobbett is as much a story teller as he is a reporter, perhaps more so.
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