Theodore Dalrymple delivers a Global Warning
I realised that the town was a true community as soon as I heard a rumour that an old lady, a herbalist, had poisoned one of her neighbours. That is what community means: caring enough to poison people. In cities, contact with neighbours is so fleeting and impersonal that antagonism can be expressed only with baseball bats, a crude method requiring little cunning. If Marx were alive today, he would speak of the idiocy of urban life.
In a small town, the rest of the world hardly exists. One soon finds what happens there to be more interesting than what happens in the wide world beyond. For example, banks were crashing, shares were going up and down like lifts in a department store, the world was on the edge of a financial abyss (to speak metaphorically), but what really interested me was the flight the night before of the local publican. Why did he suddenly disappear, leaving no message for the orphaned carousers of the town?
It might have had something to do with the wider world, of course. The town’s four other pubs had closed down in the recent past, victims of changing habits and no doubt of taxation. Perhaps even the remaining pub was not commercially viable any longer.
True, it was not beautiful or picturesque, but what was encouraging about it was its convivial atmosphere. People got drunk there, but without exuding menace, which reminded me of a book that I read nearly 40 years ago that had a profound effect on me: Drunken Comportment, a survey by social psychologists of the way in which people get drunk around the world, demonstrating that aggression and importuning vulgarity are not purely pharmacological effects of alcohol. If the British are violent, vulgar and nasty when drunk, that is because they are violent, vulgar and nasty and live in a violent, vulgar and nasty society.
As it happens, I was reading a book entitled The Last Days of Tolstoy, by Vladimir Tchertkoff, when I learnt of the publican’s flight. The book was about another sudden unexplained flight from home, that of Tolstoy from Yasnaya Polyana just before his death.
More articles from: Theodore Dalrymple | this section
Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
Advertisement
The other day, the 9.56 bus to the nearest train station was late and the people at the stop — of whom I was by far the youngest — began to grumble a little. Then, looming out of the mist, appeared the driver.
Barack Obama has risen to power on the back of an enviable oratorical ability. But it is a two-edged sword. Ancient Greeks, who had a word for it (rhetoric) and were the first people to analyse and describe its rules, were both captivated by and fearful of it. One thinker, Gorgias, likened it to magic for its ability to charm you into unexpected courses of action.
We need a new language to describe time, preferably without spatial metaphors
Books do furnish a room; overfurnish it too
I’m the celebrity who told ITV there was too much Ant and Dec — get me out of here!
Dot Wordsworth on the social use of language
Contrary to myth, we are becoming ever wittier in our deployment of scorn
James Delingpole asks second world war re-enactors what they think of the green agenda: the answer is very different to the consensus around the pine tables of metropolitan London
Peter Jones looks bank on finance in ancient times
From Hadrian to Gordon: sublime to ridiculous
Build your own Sky package online. Sky TV, Broadband & Talk only £17.
Subscribe to Sky from £16 a month. Get free equipment and free broadband - Join Now. Sky HD - be amongst the first to have it - order now.
Build your own Sky package online. Sky TV, Broadband & Talk only £17.
Subscribe to Sky from £16 a month. Get free equipment and free broadband - Join Now. Sky HD - be...
PORTA METRONIA, ROME Standing high on the top of one of the seven hills of Rome- the Coelian- this unique
ROME and PARIS: over 350 holiday rentals apartments listed: visit www.romanreference.com and www.parisreference.com or call +39 0648 903612.
Goldsmiths by Design Welcome to Ruffs! You have found a company of Goldsmiths that specialises in the manufacture, amongst other
Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine
Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms
Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP
All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved