The Moral Responsibility Of The Author Part 2

This book is an important and troubling one. A middle class researcher for a political thinktank befriends a South London gang and her book is an excellent insight into what remains a very alien mindset among such youngsters, utterly cut off from the rest of the society they prey upon. It's a really important record to be in the public domain, no matter how troubling its insights are, since it gives a wider readership the opportunity to see and understand where such alien values arise from and to follow the strange logic applied by such youngsters. I for one am glad this book exists and salute the achievement of the author in producing it.

However, the book is also deeply troubling in other ways to do with the author's own role in the narrative, that is the very real life of the boys she reports on. Quantum physicists state that the mere act of observation distorts the results that are being observed. And to my mind the same could be said to apply in this 'sociological' study. With worrying effects.

The author befriends a gang and with varying levels of interaction with individual gang members, comes to actively intervene in their lives, particularly in the case of one of the gang called Tuggy Tug. She wants to 'save' them and ultimately Tugguy Tug in particular from the bleak prospect of jail, death, addiction or sectioning under the mental health act. A highly noble aim, but as flawed as the Victorian Missionary's intent to save the 'noble savage' by converting them to Christianity. The book traces her coming to an understanding of both the barriers to these boys escaping their fates, but only by making mistakes that cost the boys along the journey. She comes to an understanding of not only how the boy's poor literacy levels works against them, but also how the system of bureaucracy is set up to thwart their likes at the bottom of the social heap. But only after dragging Tuggy Tug through the process of signing on to a Job Centre and raising his hopes unrealistically in doing so. Part of that process uncovers that he has a huge debt against his name of housing benefit he failed to back up with paperwork. An added stress brought upon him, where previously because he was entirely outside of the benefits system, had no way of catching up to him.

But even these well-meaning errors are nothing compared to more alarming elements. There is a minimal amount in the book about the author actually questioning herself as to her motives in all this. Maybe it is axiomatic that trying to help one's fellow man needs no justification, no matter how misguided. And yet I'm curious why she zeroed in so much on Tuggy Tug to the point where she is virtually mothering him (her actual son remarks on her having photos of Tuggy on her phone, but none of him, her own flesh and blood). Maybe it's because he responded the most positively to her actions of all the gang members. She remarks on his small size, maybe she is responding to a seeming physical (and emotional) vulnerability in him, but again there is no self-reflection on these matters. Perhaps she feels that as an objective researcher, she cannot allow her feelings to be openly displayed within the pages of the book. But that only leads her further into murky waters of responsibility. I find it significant that the end of the book has her recounting the tenor of some unseen (by her) documentary film footage of an interview with the now jailed Tuggy Tug. In it he extols her loyalty and efforts on his behalf as the only reliable adult in his life. To me that reads like a character witness in her defence, against unwritten accusations of failure, of meddling, of ignorance, of bull in a china shop. That it's the author indirectly averring that failure or not, it was all with the best intentions and appreciated by her study object. It's self-hagiography which blares out against the complete lack of personal reflection throughout the rest of the book.

Another way her personal stance would have been instructive, concerns the criminality displayed by the gang in her presence.  Drug taking, setting up drug deals, reports of theft and violence all take place in her presence, particularly in her car. Now while I have no issue with her allowing these things to take place on her watch because she realises it is part of the hand to mouth existence of these boys, I'm curious that she doesn't analyse her own journey of acceptance, of moving from the staunch law abider to a willing bystander, if not an actual facilitator of criminal activity. Now she is an influencer of government and policy by dint of her job. So again she may have felt that she could not openly comment on this illegality given her official position of responsibility. But what could be more illuminating in how she, a member of the establishment, was actually so influenced by what she observed on the streets as to reach a position of scarcely batting an eyelid whenever flagrant law breaking occurred in her presence?

She buys the boys food, takes them out to restaurants and museums. Gives them money. She is trying to materially affect their lives in helping them to elevate themselves into work and a 'normal' life. But they gang unerringly and depressingly shuffle along into their prescribed fates. One in prison, one in a mental institute, one addicted, one dead (their male mentor and admittedly not from gang violence) and one who has made it into designer clothes, but who had family money and influence behind him in the first instance. As much as this book is really important in being available to read, the process in which it was produced was ultimately exploitative and consuming of its cast of real life characters. There was hope throughout its pages but ultimately and for all the author's interventions, none escaped their fate. So part of me feels also that this book shouldn't be out and making money. That as an influencer with access to the corridors of power, her private observations should maybe have been kept for those policy documents as anonymous case studies. I don't know, I'm really torn on this one. But I do feel the author currently is getting an easy ride, since I'm unaware of others picking her up on her moral responsibilities and the consequences of her actions that take place within the pages of the book.

There's a world of difference between a fiction author withdrawing a book because of a turn of real life events, and a non-fiction author intervening in the subject matter of her book, to possibly detrimental effect.

What do you think?

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You can read my post on The Moral Responsibility Of the Author Part 1 here, in regard to Stpehen King withdrawing his novel "Rage"

Death Serenade - Friday Flash

I was accustomed to singing when lying prone. Usually counterpointing the hissing bombination of bullets as I hit the deck. Since my stomach was usually pressed against the ground, impulsively trying to burrow into it, I only sung from my throat. It may not have been loud, but it was powerful all the same. Talismanic powerful.

For in firefights I perpetually sung to myself and perennially emerged unscathed. Whereas my foes and comrades alike who didn't sing, paid the price with everlasting sleep. Even those who absurdly raised their voice in song to Heaven, managed to escape with their life intact. But it had nothing to do with summoning any numinous saviour. Same as I wasn't serenading my supposed natural ally the Devil. There was no such thing as Lucifer, other than what resided in our own psyches. Still as I brushed myself down and reloaded my clips, they claimed I only survived because the Devil wouldn't collect on me and thereby allow one of his crack troopers to pass over from the mortal field of combat. I always countered that couldn't be the case, since intoning towards god after a lifetime's unholy behaviour, they themselves couldn't in all conscience expect true absolution and redemption? Yet here they stood safe and sound.

There were no bullets flying around me now in the quiet of my house. And I was recumbent on my back rather than my belly. Yet my warbling was scarcely audible. I possessed scant energy to inflate my ribcage with silent breath, let alone pushing out fluctuating air jangling against gravity. My throat rasped dry, drier than the rest of my desiccated body. But I could not allow myself to stop singing. For not to sing was to beckon death with a bony finger.

I didn't know how it worked. But singing had always kept Death at bay. My mother had demonstrated that to me as a child. How she was always singing to herself, blazoned in bruises and welts. It didn't head off the violence, but it helped steel her to hang on until I was old enough to kill her fucker of a husband. Relieved of him, she had no more reason to descant her songs of affliction and clearly she didn't know any upbeat numbers. So she wasn't singing when I killed her for her deficiencies.

Unlike her, I expected to meet death at every turn. And that was before I actively made it part of my professional life. Cashiered from the army, I sought to continue a campaign of decommissioning of my own. Undertook bespoke stealth missions, paid to hunt down one man to another. I always endeavoured to get in a little pre-emptive singing. The sole thing with which I could get the jump on my adversary, if he heard me coming right?

Yet strangely the singing turned into a weapon. I developed a reputation as the triller killer. A male banshee. My signature solo which didn't just presage your death, it announced it. The sound of an air froze them dead in their tracks. Like a cobra hypnotising its prey. Made it easy for me. Their mouths too busy convulsing to be able to hold a tune of their own.

Every night in front of the bathroom mirror I used to take roll call of my tattoos. The names of every one of my victims inscribed all over my body, turned inside out by the reflective glass. Fitting, seeing as I had despatched them to the other side. All present and correct, they could rest easy in the repose of the dead and I too was safeguarded a peaceful night's sleep. No need for self-lullabying.

Maybe it was because singing reverberated your whole body. Set all your bones and cavities aquiver. Maybe Death was a touch short-sighted, or perhaps just lazy and faced with a vibrating target indicative of life and vitality, would instead plump for the easy option and snatch the guy next to you. How else to account for the cull of innocents and bystanders?

Except that only worked when you were operating in a crowd. When someone else could stand in for you by falling to the ground stone dead. Here I am exposed by being alone. Isolated in my death bed. I raised the effort to increase my volume, just so there could be no uncertainty on Death's part. Myopic, indolent, or not.

Death in all likelihood was sat perched at the end of my bed. Bating his breath, waiting for roll calling me off his list. Palpably my body was failing me. My skin hanging loose from the armatures of my skeleton. Was I actually singing, or more like a set of bagpipes being palpated? I rubbed the skin of my forearm. The tattoos there no doubt now stretched along the sagging canvas. Faded ink leached beyond its wrinkled up border. The names of my marks no longer legible, distorted beyond my own recognition even as they had vanished off the earth at my hand. This was an ineffable body clock counting me out. If I went, I would take them all down with me for a second time. Their fates were ineluctably still bound up with mine. But I didn't owe it to them to keep their memories alive, only that of my own.

God I was so tired though. My eyes, milkily unseeing anyway, just wanted to lid over. But I knew if I fell asleep now, I would stop singing. And if I stopped singing, then I would never wake again. The dead used to be buried with bells which they could ring in cases of being mistakenly buried alive. Perhaps it was as simple as that. If you were still vocalising for all you were worth, then Death knew you weren't actually dead and ripe for collection.

I knew I was in a struggle to the well, death. That again only one of us would stride clear of the detritus of life and despite the ruin of my body, I had to make sure it was me. It had to be possible. I may have harvested bodies in return for payment, but Death willingly cropped souls for nothing other than their own reward. That doubt caught in my throat and my singing stopped momentarily. I choked it back and roused my singing once again. Not yet Death you fucker. You're not stripping me of my body and whitewashing me for fresh canvas just yet.

Taken from the Flash Fiction collection "Long Stories Short" available on Amazon Kindle