Friday, August 08, 2008

"Rhinoceros"

Spent much of the last fortnight holed up in the New Forest for an edit of my new novel. As a rule, I pretend such ventures are lonely pilgrimages, significant of wholehearted dedication to my work. But, secretly, I enjoy them. Apart from the chance to immerse myself in what fascinates me most (me, obviously), I can spend evenings watching entire seasons of HBO’s finest and living on nothing but Chinese takeaway.

I also read a newspaper every day, cover to cover. I try to circulate titles, so as to balance the baloney. Yesterday, I bought The Independent and I was intrigued to discover that Zim has made it back into the media consciousness (albeit, only to the inside pages these days). Seems like Bob and Morgan are about to do a deal, and the much derided Mbeki has found a local solution after all. So that’s good, right? Please God that it is so. And we’ll know all is well if nobody in the western world takes any further notice.

There are so many things I think about Zim, but predominant among them is that we, in Britain, should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. I’m not going to explain this here – partly because you either know or you don’t; mostly because, if you don’t, I suspect you’ll never agree no matter what.

A couple of months ago, writing about the American election in The Guardian, Martin Kettle discussed ‘false rhinoceros syndrome’. I’d never heard the expression before, but it certainly chimed. Kettle described it as follows: ‘Back in 1515, Sultan Muzaffar II, the ruler of Gujarat, presented a live Indian rhinoceros as a gift to Alfonso d'Albuquerque, the governor of Portuguese India. Albuquerque duly arranged for the rhino to be shipped to Lisbon as a present to Dom Manuel I, king of Portugal. When the rhino arrived in the Portuguese capital it created a sensation.

'A few weeks later, word and even a sketch of the rhino reached Nuremberg, where Albrecht Dürer created a famous woodcut of the beast. The German artist worked from inaccurate anatomical sketches, including armour-like plates covering the rhino's body and a small extra horn on its neck, which he replicated and embellished in his woodcut.

‘Such was the success and fame of Dürer's print, however, that his imagination came to define reality. For nearly 300 years, most subsequent depictions of the rhinoceros continued to reflect the artist's errors rather than anatomical fact. As late as 1956, indeed, Salvador Dali sculpted a rhino, neck horn and all, that owes more to Dürer than it does to zoological accuracy.

‘False rhino syndrome is the willingness to believe that something is other than what it is. The tenacity of the false rhino in the popular mind for so long is a reminder that human beings possess a vast capacity for misperception and for preferring to believe what they would like to believe.’

What a cool idea! No surprises that I’ve found myself accusing people of ‘FRS’ (whether aloud or only in my head) with increasing frequency – Zim is just the latest subject. Only trouble is, telling people they ‘just don’t get it’ makes you sound like a patronizing dickhead, at best; more often an insane solipsist. And you still sound like a mad, patronizing dickhead, even if you’re as right as right can be.

In other news, Starbucks has just opened its fourth branch within a hundred metre radius of Hammersmith Broadway. For all my faux-engaged bleating, this doesn’t actually bother me that much. If I must resent something about this, therefore, I will resent the synthetic baking smell the Bucks pump into the atmosphere and the homogeny of the shop fronts.

In an effort to avoid confronting the latter, I’ve taken to lifting my eyes as I walk through the neighbourhood and I’ve been surprised by the rewards. For all the branded monotony of Hammersmith’s high streets, I quite like the late Victorian and Edwardian architecture you can see above. It would be a step too far to describe it as elegant, but it does seem somehow hopeful; reminiscent of a time when proclaiming a belief in progress wouldn’t have found you accused of ‘FRS’ by some self-righteous arsehole.

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