I try to read at least one work-related book every summer. Last year it was the disappointing Struck by Lightning and the slightly more satisfying and substantive Tipping Point. This year I have just finished reading Arthur Battram’s Navigating Complexity, which was a cult read some ten years ago, I think. Ummm… One of the blurbs describes it as an ‘easy-to-read overview’, and I suppose that just about sums it up. This is a book deliberately designed for the businessman’s shelf and occasionally for his bedside table. Everything is in bite-size morsels and Battram regurgitates in layman’s language a series of scientific discoveries and theories which may be of use as metaphors but cannot be of direct application. He clearly didn’t expect anybody to read the book through: we learn about coyotes in the Bronx, central heating systems as ‘closed’ systems and about Rank Xerox’s use of walkie-talkies three times each. There is also ghastly stuff like the following: ‘Possibility space is an extended metaphor for both the exploration of possibilities and the design of space for the creation of possibilities. One could say that fitness landscapes exist in a hilly part of possibility space.’ Quite. Notwithstanding this sort of pseudo-scientific blather, I confess to having enjoyed the book in bits. The central thesis of complex adaptive systems is a useful one. And I was happy to learn that I was already following his four concluding recommendations, including ‘be a wider reader’: ‘Broaden your range of inputs: read outside your field, read some fiction or even some science fiction… Look at the strangest things you’ve read and think how they might relate to the work of your organisation.’ Aye, aye, sir!

Summer reading again. This time something much heavier, if shorter. Jacques Chessex won the Prix Goncourt in 1973 and was considered one of Switzerland’s greatest authors. He was variously a novelist, poet, essayist and won the French Literature Grand Prix of the Académie Française. In October last year this grand old man of Swiss letters died of a heart attack at the age of 75 whilst, characteristically, defending Roman Polanski in a public discussion. Earlier the same year he had published a novella. In the tautest, tightest, sparsest prose, Un juif pour l’exemple tells the chilling and true story of how, in 1942 Switzerland, a group of misfits and Nazi sympathisers in the bourgeois town of Payerne chose almost at random a local Jewish cattle farmer and killed and butchered him as a sort of tribute to Hitler, a few days before his birthday. Vain and clumsy, and convinced that Switzerland would soon be under Gauleiter rule, the assassins were rapidly caught and condemned to long prison sentences. Why should Chessex have chosen to write such an account? His answer comes midway through the novella: born and brought up in Payerne, and eight years old at the time of the crime, he writes of his compulsion ‘to explore events that have never ceased to poison my memory and left me ever since with an irrational sense of sin.’ Eight years old when the events took place, Chessex sat in class with the children of the assassins and of the policemen and judge. Indeed, his father was the headmaster and, as a fierce anti-Nazi, was on the list of potential targets. In telling this story shortly before he died, Chessex was not only seeking to expunge that irrational sense of guilt but also to tell us solemnly that what happened to Arthur Bloch in Payerne could have happened anywhere.

Impatient with the continued poor weather, we got up early and scrambled up to the top of Monte Berlinghera before the bad weather could close in again. It’s not the biggest of mountains and certainly not the tallest (+/- 1,950 metres) but it has a satisfyingly mountain-like shape and the views it affords – down the Lago di Como to Bellagio and Varenna; up the Valtellina towards Morbegno; up the Valchiavenna, with Chiavenna itself a miniature town in the valley below; the Swiss Alps – are stupendous. Just by the summit are the ruins of a viewing platform and, having been to the Forte Montecchio, we knew that this was one of the Fort’s observation platforms to help the gunners’ accuracy. It must have been a great hardship posting in the winter! The rain began again as we made our way back down but by then we had had an eagle’s eye view of the world and so were glowing inwardly with the satisfaction of the effort and the reward.

Yesterday evening we watched Hitchcock’s The Birds, an intriguing work of art. I wanted to know more, particularly about the abrupt ending, so I surfed on the internet and came across a wonderful monograph, ‘The Day of the Claw: A Synoptic Account of Hitchcock’s The Birds’, by an Australian expert on Hitchcock, Ken Mogg. What Mogg very cleverly demonstrates is that Hitchcock’s and Evan Hunter’s screen play was not only, as acknowledged in the credits, based on Daphne Du Maurier’s 1952 short story of the same name, but its inspiration was also drawn, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, from a series of works of fiction including: The Food of the Gods (1904), by H.G. Wells; The Terror (1917), by Arthur Machen; Our Feathered Friends (1931), by Philip Macdonald; Le Hussard sur le toit (1951), by Jean Giono; The Mind Thing (1961), by Frederic Brown; and, most strikingly of all, The Birds (1936), by Frank Baker. But Mogg is not interested in implying plagiarism but, rather, in demonstrating the underlying philosophical and cultural influences which these works all shared to a lesser or greater extent and also in highlighting the very deliberate and considered genius of Hitchcock. The director once famously declared that film critics who ignored ‘pure cinema’ and concerned themselves only with the content of his films were like a gallery visitor who wonders whether Paul Cézanne’s apples are sweet or sour. Mogg’s monograph, an unexpected and delightful diversion, demonstrates why Hitchcock is considered a genius by his own kind.

Summer reading again. Last summer I got through the first two volumes of Clive James’s ‘Unreliable Memoirs’. I have just finished the third volume, May Week Was in June, covering his period at Cambridge University. In the preface he admits that he hadn’t initially thought of writing beyond the first two volumes. Just occasionally, the commercial imperative shows through; we learn twice, for example, that the chalky blue of a spring sky ‘matched the sundials of Caius’. But May Week Was in June is as rich in wonderful aphorisms and chuckle-enducing one-liners as its predecessors. James went up as what in Oxbridge parlance would be called a ‘mature’ student, meaning he was a little bit older than his fellow undergraduates. He clearly fully exploited this tactical advantage. Among his contemporaries, the young and fiercely impressive Germaine Greer plays a star role and future Monty Python, Eric Idle, is clearly destined for greatness. There are evocative cameo portraits of Florence and Venice in the 1960s – I almost fell out of my chair when he described Florence’s Trattoria Anita – a wonderfully down-at-heel place where I must have eaten most Friday evenings for three years in the 1980s – and there was an uncomfortably familiar ring to his descriptions of Oxbridge undergraduates trying too hard. He is excellent on why even the failures (think of Shelley) never escape Oxbridge’s grip. ‘Where else in the world,’ he laments as he seems finally about to leave the university, ‘would I ever fit in except here, where I had never felt the least urge to fit in?’ It is cheerfully conceited stuff, but the critic is disarmed in anticipation by his cheerful and frank admission to the crime.

Today being grey and overcast, we visited two historic, strategically located defensive points at the northern end of the Lago di Como. The first, il Forte di Fuentes, was built in 1603 by a Milan-based Spanish Duke and mostly destroyed in 1796 by Napoleon as a peaceful gesture to the Grissons. The second, the First World War Forte Montecchio, is located on a hill just alongside the first. Both stand at the mouth of the Adda, the main river feeding the Lago di Como, and overlook two valleys, the Valtellina and the Valchiavenna, and both were built in anticipation of invading forces descending down either valley towards the Po Plain. However, uulike Fuentes, the Forte Montecchio is largely intact. Indeed, a stupendous example of Italian military architecture, it is the best preserved fort of its kind still standing in Italy. It probably owes this to the facts that, though a key structure in the ‘Cadorna line’,  it never saw true action but was nevertheless maintained in some sort of military usage until 1981. Now, a jovial and erudite guide shows visitors around the Fort. It was built in one year and was obsolete by the end of the next. This was because it was built with massive walls to withstand cannon attacks but with relatively thin roofs that would not have been able to withstand attacks from Austrian howitzers and mortars. In any case, the expected Austro-Hungarian invasion never came. Interestingly, the Fort’s four cannons (perfectly preserved to this day) were designed primarily not to fire on any advancing force but, rather, to destroy bridges, railway lines and canals – a case of deliberate friendly fire. The place is wonderfully atmospheric – down to stencilled Mussolini-era mottos (‘courage is a habit!’) – and would surely be a great film set. A small but well-illustrated guide, by Stefano Cassinelli, is available from Guide Macchione, for ‘White War’ enthusiasts and is well worth its cover price.

Like our counterparts in the other EU institutions, no doubt, Gerhard Stahl, SG of the Committee of the Regions, and I did a quick remote check on our e-mails this morning to make sure that all was well, only to discover this was decidedly not the case. We are putting out the statement below, available only in French for the time being. Thank goodness this happened on a Saturday night in August! I shudder to think what might have happened if it had occurred at any other time in any other period. (The European Parliament, it will be recalled, had a similar lucky escape with the ceiling of its Strasbourg hemicycle. We seem to share the same lucky star!)

Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche, le 7 août 2010, une partie du faux plafond qui isole les espaces Atrium 5 et Atrium 6 dans le bâtiment Jacques Delors s’est effondrée pour une raison inconnue. L’incident s’étant produit en dehors des horaires de travail, les secrétaires généraux du Comité économique et social (CESE) et du Comité des Régions (CdR) soulignent qu’il n’y a que des dégâts matériels à déplorer. Pour faire toute la lumière sur l’incident, les deux Comités ont informé et saisi le propriétaire et garant de la construction, le bâtiment étant toujours couvert par la garantie de 10 ans en matière de travaux de construction. Le secrétaire général du CdR, Gerhard Stahl, souligne : ” Malgré leur importance, cet incident n’a heureusement causé que des dégâts matériels, puisqu’il s’est produit pendant la fin de semaine. A partir de maintenant, les atria des 5e et 6e étages seront inaccessibles pour une période indéterminée. Nous procédons également à la révision de tout espace comportant des faux plafonds similaires à celui qui s’est montré défaillant”. Le secrétaire général du CESE, Martin Westlake, ajoute : “A ce stade, la raison de l’incident n’est pas encore claire, mais les parties compétentes, y compris le propriétaire du bâtiment, ont été informées et les actions nécessaires ont été demandées par les deux Comités. Tout est mis en œuvre pour que les travaux de réparation démarrent dès que possible.” Par précaution, l’accès à l’espace sinistré a été interdit jusqu’à nouvel ordre. Des agents de sécurité veillent au respect de ces consignes. Les atria 5 et 6 du bâtiment Jacques Delors qui abrite le CESE et le CdR ne sont pas occupés en permanence, mais servent périodiquement d’espace d’exposition et de réception pour les deux Comités. L’Atrium 5 est aussi un espace de passage pour le personnel entre les bâtiments Jacques Delors et Bertha Von Suttner.

Summer reading time again. First down is True Tales of American Life, edited and introduced by Paul Auster (with grateful thanks to Paul C for the gift). I am a great fan of Auster’s fiction though, as readers of this blog will know, I think he has gone off the boil a little with his last few novels. When I first saw True Tales I thought ‘what a brilliant commercial project!’ Basically, through a radio programme slot, Auster encouraged his listeners to send in their own (true, short) stories. Of the four thousand-odd pieces submitted to what became the National Story Project, Auster selected 179 and these, edited by him and a team of helpers, became the published compilation. Each author is personally mentioned, of course, so the book was guaranteed considerable sales (relations, friends…). However, by the time I had got a short way into the book I had banished such cynical thoughts. The trademark of Auster’s fiction is coincidence rendered meaningful by subsequent events, and the best of the stories in the book out-Auster Auster in this regard. Scientists, psychologists, mathematicians and statisticians would doubtless have explanations for all of the apparently inexplicable coincidences and premonitions recounted by Auster’s contributors, but that is not the point. For, in telling their stories, these Americans tell us all about themselves and their land. Take, for example, this fragment: ‘A branch line of the Milwaukee Railroad ran from Sioux Falls through Vienna and Naples and on up to Bristol…’ Take any map of the US and Europe is all over it. It’s as though somebody plucked up all the names of European towns and cities, chucked in a few indigenous Indian names for good luck, then shook everything up and cast them randomly over the map. Some of the contributors were just one generation away from the immigrants who had first toiled to render so many inhospitable parts of the land habitable. If I had to choose one story from this book it would be South Dakota, submitted by Nancy Peavy, which recounts the mysterious disappearance of a local rich girl from a small German-Danish agricultural community on the South Dakota plains. Fields in that region had to lie fallow for many years, and the mystery was only finally resolved when such a field was at last put to the plough and her remains, together with those of an aborted foetus, were found; the victims of a botched job by a back street abortionist. If I have one quibble, it is with the title. It should have been True Tales of American Lives.

In the evening we at last got to see Christopher Nolan’s  Inception, our summer treat. This is a tour de force, up there with Lynch’s  Mulholland Drive. Di Caprio is brilliant. His forte is clearly the tormented individual but he is going to have to be careful, this film coming hard on the heels of Shutter Island, that he doesn’t become typecast in dream-within-dream films. In its own way, this film is as referential as Castle in the Sky (see previous post), and it seems it is now de rigeur for Hollywood directors to splice in homages to the cinematic greats (and to great cinematic moments). But this is one of those films that is not only brilliantly acted and brilliantly filmed but also brilliantly edited. Apparently, Nolan had been interested in such a concept, of dream-stealers and dream-manipulators, since he was sixteen years old and the risk with such long-term projects is that they become over-written and over-wrought. But that is not the case with Inception – a film with a plot that is, thanks to Nolan’s clever editing, truly what you choose to make of it. And, unlike Shutter Island, there is no POV problem because any point of view is possible. Great fun!

This afternoon I chaired my last big meeting before the summer break. The European Economic and Social Committee’s members are elected for a mandate (previously of four years, from now on, under the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions, of five years). Towards the end of the mandate, the Member States’ governments make proposals for membership under the next mandate. In our parlance, the beginning of the new mandate is known as ‘renewal’. Last year the administration set up a task force to start preparations for the renewal process, which will take place this October. We now have most of the Member State lists of new members in, and so we know that ‘turnover’ will be between a quarter and a third of our membership. The guiding spirit of my mandate as Secretary General is ‘serving the members better’, and the guiding spirit of our renewal task force is ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression’. This seventh meeting of the full task force went very well. Colleagues have excelled themselves in their efficiency and good will and it was a dream of a meeting to chair. I could not have imagined a more satisfying way of finishing before the summer break.