Magazine_2008-2

C a p p e l e n s Il l u str asjo n: Inge r Da l e

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t i d s s k r i f t

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“Yes We Can!” The Story behind the Obama Victory

by Robert Mikkelsen

03 Nå som 2008 snart er overstått, kan vi trygt slå fast at dette året har stått i storpolitikkens og den globale økonomiens tegn. Aldri tidligere har vi vel opplevd maken til den spenningen og det engasjementet som har kjennetegnet det amerikanske presidentvalget, og vi skal vel også gå langt tilbake i tid for å finne mer dramatiske krisetider innenfor bank og finans.

Vi blir alle på ulikt vis berørt av slike hendelser, og for lærere må det oppleves som svært meningsfullt å undervise i emner og fag som gir elevene innsikt i og forståelse for hvorfor begivenheter inntreffer, og hvilke konsekvenser de kan få. Programfagene Internasjonal Engelsk på Vg2 og Samfunnsfaglig engelsk på Vg3 er på mange måter som skapt for slik meningsfull undervisning.

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Read It! The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

by Siri Hunstadbråten

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2008 har også vært året da Kunnskapsløftet nådde Vg3, og i dette nummeret av fagbladet vårt gir vi dere oppdaterte analyser av valgresultatet i USA og av Gordon Browns turbulente karriere som britisk statsminister. Dette er i tråd med vårt mål om at vi skal bruke fagbladet og våre nettsider til å gi regelmessige oppdateringer av stoff i lærebøkene våre.

Det sies at kultur er viktigere enn noensinne i dårlige tider. Vi introduserer en relativt fersk stemme i amerikansk litteratur i dette nummeret. Jhumpa Lahiri er et navn å merke seg, og du kan lese både et intervju med henne og en anmeldelse av en av hennes romaner.

An Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri

by Isaac Chotiner

Boiled Eggs and Jumping Fishes

by Richard Burgess

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The Ups and Downs of Gordon Brown

by Richard Peel

Verdisyn og verdikonflikter i et multikulturelt samfunn er viktige tema i Jhumpa Lahiris bøker, og dette er også noe av det som tas opp i Richard Burgess’ tekst med den snodige tittelen “Boiled Eggs and Jumping Fishes”.

Teksten og de medfølgende oppgavene er i hovedsak beregnet på elever på Vg1, med fokus på kompetansemålet som sier at “eleven skal kunne drøfte … verdier i ulike kulturer … ”.

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God lesning! [ mægə'zi:n] '

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Telefon: 21 61 66 54 / 55 E-post: birger.nicolaysen@cappelen.no Produksjon: PrePress as

“

! n a C s, We

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Twenty-two months ago on a windy day in Chicago, an African-American named Barack Hussein Obama declared his intention to run for the Democratic Party nomination for the office of the President of the United States.

It seemed an impossible dream. There had never been a black American president – not even a vice-president. In fact, on the day he declared his candidacy, he was the sole African-American in the Senate. On that basis alone you could say that his chances were about 100 to 1. Then there was his name. In an era when America’s sworn enemies were men like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, his name set off alarm bells across the nation.

And there was his background, son of a man from Kenya and a woman from Kansas, a boy from a broken home who had lived in Indonesia with a step-father and ended up an orphan brought up by his grandparents in Hawaii.

What kind of American is that? Finally, the Democratic Party already had a candidate.

Hillary Clinton was set to succeed her husband Bill. They commanded the party’s loyalty and were also determined to make history – she would be America’s first female president.

In sum, just about everything seemed stacked against him.

So, how did he pull it off?

The Political Landscape One answer lies in the political landscape of the day. The sitting Republican President, George W. Bush, was extremely unpopular by 2008. According his critics, Bush’s policies had led the United States into two unpopular and apparently unending wars, left the economy weak and failing, blackened America’s reputation abroad, undermined its Constitution at home and damaged the cause of human rights around the world.

Most Americans longed for a change. This became apparent as early as 2006 when the Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans for the first time in 14 years. It was clear that whoever won the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 would stand a very good chance of becoming America’s next president.

Barack Obama and his family arrive on stage for his election night victory rally at Grant Park on November 4, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois (©Scanpix)

But this doesn’t explain how Obama got that nomination or how he proceeded to win the election. For that we must examine how Obama made use of American myths and American know-how.

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The Story behind

the

01

Obama Victory

by Robert Mikkelsen

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Democratic Party supporters celebrate as they watch US President-elect Senator Barack Obama give his victory speech on television in Harlem, New York (©Scanpix)

American Myths One of the enduring American myths is that of the self-made man, the little man fighting his way up against established privilege, the common man with uncommon ambitions and abilities. From Ben Franklin to Abraham Lincoln to Bruce Springsteen, it echoes through American culture. And Barack Obama knew how to use that myth. He embodied it. Time and again over 22 months he stood up at campaign rallies and said, with studied understatement, “You know, I really shouldn’t be here at all.

I am not the likeliest candidate for President.” With these words he turned his weaknesses into strengths. Yes, he implied, I am from a minority, but that means I know what it is to face prejudice and overcome it.

Yes, he said, I am the outsider in the halls of power in the Democratic Party, but that means I know what it feels like not to be heard. Yes, I have an odd name, but it is an American name, just like that of millions of other immigrants who have come to this nation. My parents divorced, it is true, but I have succeeded despite such disadvantages – and so can you.

Together we can turn this country around. He left his opponents gasping for breath.

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Change is another enduring American myth, change for the better – the optimistic belief that no matter how bad the situation may be, it is possible to improve things in the future through hard work and pluck. Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressed this during the darkest days of the Great Depression with the words, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right in America.” Obama understood this longing for change, and “Change” became the mantra of his campaign – “Change We Can Believe In.” When his opponents accused him of naive optimism, of attempting the impossible and condemned his plans, his reply was a ringing – Yes, We Can! Millions of Americans who had felt powerless and marginalized for decades were inspired. Millions of young people were mobilized to work for a better future – their future.

E pluribus unum is the motto of the United States. It means “In Variety, Unity.” It was Obama’s call for such unity in his Keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004 that thrust him on to the national scene. He brought the crowd to its feet with these words: There are those who are preparing to divide us … Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America … There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.

He struck a chord in the American people. They were tired of bitter divisions between “red” and “blue” states that had characterized American politics for decades. They were ready for a new voice. More deeply, Obama was appealing to the very definition of America

as a tolerant, democratic and multicultural community. He stuck to that theme throughout his campaign, hammering home the message that Americans had common goals, no matter how they might disagree about reaching them, that there was more that united them than divided them. He refused to use personal attacks or negative ads against his opponents.

He took the “high road” to the presidency and it worked.

American Know-How There is little doubt that Barack Obama is a gifted politician, an inspiring speaker and a charismatic leader for millions of Americans.

But none of that is enough to become President of the United States. For that you need money – mountains of money – to finance your campaign. Twenty-two months ago Obama had very little of it while his opponents had “deep pockets;” i.e. solid financing from wealthy contributors. What changed?

In two words – the Internet. Pioneered in the USA and now familiar to the world, the Obama campaign perfected its use in politics. Back in 2004, a Democrat named Howard Dean had campaigned for the presidential nomination.

He was the first to systematically solicit direct contributions from his supporters on the Internet. Four year later, as one Democratic political insider put it, “If Dean’s campaign was like the Wright Brothers first flight, Obama’s campaign was like the Apollo11 moon landing.” A combination of superb organizing, direct Internet contact and the inspirational figure of Obama himself created a grassroots network of millions of supporters throughout the nation.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain holds the hand of running mate Sarah Palin after hugging her as he concedes defeat during his election night rally (©Scanpix)

This enormous mobilization allowed Obama to raise funds in amounts never dreamed of before. In September alone he raised $150 million. By the end of the campaign his funding amounted to a staggering $639 million, almost twice the amount of his Republican rival, John McCain. Most of this money came from individual contributors giving $200 or less. One former Republican fundraiser who had depended on rich corporate contributors in his day, remarked, “This year the model got turned upside down and truly became bottom up instead of top down.” The Internet et allowed Obama to outspend and overpower his opponents.

But it wasn’t just the money. It was the fact that the Obama campaign understood how to make use of the new channels of communication that information technologyy had opened up in the 21st century. Ads flooded ded ept the Internet. E-mails and SMS messages kept people informed, connected and motivated.

Volunteers were recruited through chat rooms ms and blogs and sent out to knock on doors. acted Individuals were contacted and then contacted again, each time with a different message tailored to their particular background and interests. Youth made up a major portion of Obama’s grassroots support and youth knew w how to navigate the net. The organization they helped put together broke the old moldd

of American presidential races. The Obama campaign marked a new way of doing politics, the way of the future.

Still, as one politician put it, “Without a candidate who excites people, you can have the greatest strategy and machinery in the world and it won’t matter.” In the end, this was Barack Obama’s personal victory. He succeeded in convincing a skeptical nation that he was the man for the job. He made history by becoming the first Afro-American

president. It all came together on November 4th with his resounding victory over John McCain.

That evening, back in Chicago, before he gave the traditional victory speech to a crowd of 125,000 waiting for him in Grant Park, he first wrote an e-mail to all his supporters around the nation. It must have been quite a mailing list. You will find a copy below. Let Obama himself have the last word in explaining his amazing victory.

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1 Below you will find a portion of the acceptance speech Obama gave in Grant Park.

What American myths can you detect him referring to?

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches to vote in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve, to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

2 Candidates for the presidency of the United States can solicit unlimited amounts of money to get elected. Some condemn this and call for limits.

But shall people be denied the right to contribute to the campaigns of candidates they like? How can this issue be dealt with?

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P to Grant Karen, , made a to head t u o b a on doors r change. d I’m e k c o n . tory time fo y you k id it. made his every da you believe it’s ow we d -h t n e ig We just rg a p ut why is cam you to fo n. bors abo uring th n’t want campaig le day d nds, and neigh g And I do in s n to this ry t what ie io ve s fr e s , a y ry p il on abou d to e his ur fam lent, an touch so ta in , e e You mad or talked to yo b m ti your and I’ll n, ho gave n track, donatio of you w y back o ll tr a n k u n o c a r th get ou I want to to do to t of work lo a e v We ha xt. g... e one thin comes n r about a le c ry ve nt to be ou.

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Discussion

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Language nd 1 Compare the ki a Ob of language am il ma eused in his to that he used in the excerpt from his speech in the exercise above.

What do they have in common? How t in are they differen y Wh ? le terms of sty te ria op pr are both ap t? ex nt co n in their ow 2 Repetition is an important part of rhetoric. How does Obama make use e of repetition in th s hi m excerpt fro Grant Park speech given above? (see p. 415, : Access to English , s ie ud Social St .)

“I Have a Dream”

The author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake talks about her affinity for “plainness”, why she avoids book reviews, and her new collection of short stories.

Unaccustomed Earth is a new short story collection by Jhumpa Lahiri, the acclaimed chronicler of the Bengali-immigrant experience. Both of her previous books – Interpreter of Maladies (a 2000 story collection that earned her the Pulitzer Prize), and The Namesake, a 2003 novel that later took shape as a popular film – explored the cultural dissonances experienced by immigrants caught between the culture of their Indian birthplace and the unfamiliar ways of their adopted home. In Unaccustomed Earth, a collection of eight short stories, Lahiri continues to explore this theme, this time with a focus on the lives of second-generation immigrants who must navigate both the traditional values of their immigrant parents and the mainstream American values of their peers.

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Lahiri was born in London to parents who emigrated from India. She grew up in Rhode Island and then attended Barnard College.

After graduating, she moved on to Boston University, where she earned three master’s degrees (in English, creative writing, and comparative studies in literature and the arts) and a doctoral degree in Renaissance studies.

She married in 2001, and now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children.

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Your first, Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Interpreter of Maladies, was a collection of short stories. You followed it with a novel, The Namesake. And now your newest work is another collection of short stories. Why did you decide to return to the short story?

I never really decided it formally. It just happened to be the case that while I was finishing The Namesake I had a couple of

an interview with

JHUMPA LAHIRI

by Isaac Chotiner

story ideas on the back burner and then I just started writing them; I fell into them.

Actually, a lot of these stories, to be honest, are very old story ideas that predate the writing of The Namesake. It’s not that I was looking for something new.

Is the process of writing a short story different from the process of writing a novel? Do you approach the two differently?

I don’t make a huge distinction in terms of what they require because I think an idea is either working or it isn’t. And it can work – or not – at long or short or medium length. It depends on what the story I want to tell needs.

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for The Namesake, I felt that it had to be a novel – it couldn’t work as a story. With this new book, as opposed to the first collection, I worked on many of the stories for years while they kept evolving and evolving and evolving. One difference is that in The Namesake each piece was contributing to a larger whole.

A lot of your stories are about exile – about people living far from home or moving to a new home. In your earlier work the focus was generally on Bengalis moving to America, but in Unaccustomed Earth it’s often people moving to new places within America, or characters going to London, Italy, and all over the world. What is it about the idea of putting people in new physical circumstances that interests you?

It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be. In the

first collection, characters were all moving for more or less the same reason (which was also the reason my parents came to the United States): for opportunities or a job. In this collection there’s a similar pattern of movement, but the reasons are more personal somehow – they’re reasons of family dynamics or death in the family or things like that. In this book I spend more time with characters who are not immigrants themselves but rather the offspring of immigrants. I find that interesting because when you grow up the child of an immigrant you are always – or at least I was – very conscious of what it means or might mean to be uprooted or to uproot yourself. One is conscious of that without even having ever done it. I knew what my parents had gone through – not feeling rooted.

One thing that fascinates me about your previous stories is the way you view the marriages of people in your parents’ generation. Your title story has that same theme, with a grown daughter coming to realize that her father is having a new relationship. Was that a fascination for you growing up: What is going on with my folks? And do you think it was especially interesting to you because you were growing up in a culture different from the one in which they grew up?

I don’t know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents’ marriage. And it’s interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison. I do think it’s a question that has preoccupied me in all the books I’ve written. My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one

way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it.

In one of the stories in your new collection, “A Choice of Accommodations”, the reader gets to view a marriage of people your age.

We haven’t gotten a glimpse like this of marriage when it comes to older generations.

In what way?

The story is explicitly about their marriage – you have them interacting alone, talking a lot, having sex, whereas the older marriages are viewed more from an outsider’s perspective.

I am an outsider for that generation, but with this couple I could put myself into that character with greater ease. Though invented, I could imagine being married to that woman, having that particular chemistry and dynamic.

Jhumpa Lahiri (©Scanpix)

In terms of writers that you like – older writers – whom do you go back to time and again?

I’ve been reading a lot of 19th-century novels recently. I’ve always loved Chekhov and Tolstoy, but lately it’s been Hardy. He’s one of those novelists whose work I always go to. I will never get tired of those novels. The complete worlds that he creates – they are so focused and compelling. I don’t think I know how to do that at all in my own work, but I find it inspiring. I really enter into something complete and rich and satisfying. There is a balance between the human drama and the world around it, and that interchange is so beautifully done. I also like learning things in those books – about the agricultural society, the hay, the farm – I love that. And I like it more the older I get. That connection to the land and how rooted it is. I’ve also been reading Hawthorne. That’s how I got the title for this book. I definitely get a lot of ideas from reading other books.

What about writers working today?

I read William Trevor, Alice Munro, and Mavis Gallant obsessively One critic who reviewed your first book said that your prose is extremely un-selfconscious and not showy. Without making a judgment on that, do you think he was correct?

I like it to be plain. It appeals to me more.

There’s form and there’s function and I have never been a fan of just form. My husband and I always have this argument because we go shopping for furniture and he always looks at chairs that are spectacular and beautiful and unusual, and I never want to get a chair if it isn’t comfortable. I don’t want to sit around and have my language just be beautiful. If you read Nabokov, who I love, the language is beautiful but it also makes the story and is an integral part of the story. Even now in my own work, I just want to get it less – get it plainer. When I rework things I try to get it as simple as I can.

Do you have any desire to write a huge, panoramic novel?

I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m an effusive writer. My writing tends not to expand but to contract. If I do write more novels, I think they’ll be more streamlined and concentrated.

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That fits into what you were saying about your prose style, right?

Maybe. Yes. I don’t like excess. When a great sweeping work is great, what makes it great is that there’s no excess.

Do you write during a certain part of the day, especially now that you have kids?

It is hard with kids, and so I write whenever I have time to myself. It’s getting more and

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more complicated, but on an ideal day there’s time in the morning to work. If everything else can be kept at bay, I can make some time. I’m much more practical about it now.

Time and furniture, then – practical about both.

Exactly.

A lot of current novelists, from Zadie Smith to Martin Amis, also write criticism. Does that appeal to you?

Not so much. I don’t like to judge. I don’t feel comfortable doing that. But by saying that, I don’t mean to judge people who do. A critic is an extremely valuable thing in art or literature or music, but I don’t feel it’s what I want to do. Before I wrote a book, I wrote some reviews and it was great fun. I’d get free books and write up a little something and I was into it. But then something changed. I think it was writing my own book.

To be honest with you, and maybe this is shirking my duty in some way, I like to try and stay as disconnected as I can from the world of contemporary writing because I just think it’s best for my writing. I want to be a little bit unplugged. If you’re reviewing, you have to stay on top of what’s coming out and what’s going on, and put yourself into that discourse. It’s a much more active and engaged position than I want.

Do you socialize with other writers?

Not a lot. I do have some close friends who are writers, so there are people in my life who I can turn to about things having to do with writing. But I don’t really seek out other writers.

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When your books come out, do you read reviews?

No – I haven’t read a single review yet about this book! With each book it’s been different.

For instance, with the first book, it was so astonishing that it was happening that I read everything. It was like the first baby – you take a million pictures and each moment is so special. I read the good and the bad.

It was intense and hard. After a point, I couldn’t keep my equilibrium anymore. With The Namesake I tried to stay more aloof.

For me it’s about, How can a review help me to write something better? It’s not about lots of praise, although no one wants the inverse of that. I feel like I should be more hardened at this point, but in a way I feel more vulnerable. With this book I decided not to look at anything at all. Perhaps in the future I’ll ask my editor or someone to show me a few that she thinks could really benefit me somehow.

So when The New York Times comes in the morning, you never take a glance to see whether a review is in there?

[Laughs]. Actually, my husband gets the paper on Saturday morning and tosses out the book-review section so I don’t see it.

He’s been doing that for a few weeks now.

It’s hard to live in New York City sometimes.

It’s easy for me to think, Why am I doing this? There are so many great writers and great books – what’s the point? I can get into that mindframe pretty easily, and the more I see that this or that book is coming out, the more easily I go into a very scared place. I know that about myself. I feel protective of my work. And the ability to stay focused is a very vulnerable thing. I think the people who review responsibly, though, are providing something very valuable. They’re like teachers.

Given that you feel so protective of your own work, how did you feel about your book being made into a movie?

I enjoyed it very much, because I relinquished all control and I felt a very easy connection with the director, Mira Nair.

I had seen her other work and I knew that she was smart and interesting. There was a sense of, This person has a vision, this person knows what she wants to say. It was an alternative universe and I conceived of it as something that was her thing. It was her Namesake.

Reviewed by Siri Hunstadbråten Drammen videregående skole

The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri Gogol Ganguli, the main character of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, has been named after his father’s favourite writer, Nikolai Gogol. The name Gogol is a highly idiosyncratic one for a boy of Bengali descent growing up in the USA. It is neither American, nor Bengali. Even worse, Gogol is convinced that he is the only person in the world to carry this particular name, and as a second-generation immigrant the last thing he needs is a name which makes him even more estranged from mainstream Americans. In the end, his name becomes so intolerable to him that he decides to change it.

When asked by the judge why he wants to change his name, “... he wonders whether

Read It! to tell the judge the whole convoluted story, about his great-grandmother’s letter that never made it to Cambridge, and about pet names and good names, about what had happened on the first day of kindergarten.”

But instead he takes a deep breath and tells the people in the courtroom what he has never dared admit to his parents. “I hate the name Gogol,” he says. “I’ve always hated it.”

Names and naming are important leitmotifs throughout the novel, and are of course inextricably linked to the notion of identity. It is our names that distinguish us from everybody else and, to a great extent, they turn us into who we are. The French psychoanalyst François Bonifaix, who has recently done some interesting research into the psychological implications of names, puts it rather more eloquently. “Names,” he says, “are the coathangers of our existence.”

He then goes on to explain why parents should be very wary when selecting names for their children. The title of his book – Le traumatisme du prénom (loosely translatable as The Traumas of First Names) – really says it all. Having the wrong name may lead to serious emotional distress.

When reading the first part of The Namesake we soon realise that Gogol is deeply troubled by his name, so his decision to change it before going to college may seem sensible enough. He thinks that in this way he will be able to reinvent himself as Nikhil. Not surprisingly, however, his assumption proves wrong. As readers we have sensed that he does not simply hate his name, he hates being Gogol. His experiences as a second generation immigrant, although very different from those of his parents, are still the result of what his parents have gone through. He cannot escape from his family history, nor can he escape having to juggle two sets of cultures.

As a result, he constantly feels out of place in the USA, and when he goes on an extended family visit to India, it turns out that he feels equally alienated there.

For Gogol, having two cultures in fact means belonging to neither of them. He is searching for a new racial and cultural identity, and no one around him understands how this process is affecting his entire outlook

on life. It is not that his parents are unwilling to help him, but for them the situation is completely different. Although they too have suffered because of lengthy separation from their families and have had a struggle to adapt to life in America, they do not have any “identity issues”. They do know who they are and what is important in life. For them the only viable strategy has been, and still is, to retain their Bengali identity, lifestyle and culture, and particularly to maintain close ties with the Bengali community. Living in America without their Bengali friends and acquaintances is unthinkable. For Gogol, however, the importance that his parents attach to keeping up a Bengali lifestyle and associating with Bengalis comes at a high price. It means that among his peers Gogol will forever be an outsider.

Nowhere is this seen more clearly than through his resentful teenage eyes, when for his fourteenth birthday Gogol is to have two parties and cannot help noticing how they differ in terms of the effort that his parents make. “Like most events in his life, it is another excuse for his parents to throw a party for their Bengali friends. His own friends from school were invited the previous day, a tame affair, with pizzas that his father picked up on his way home from work, a baseball game watched together on television, some PingPong in the den. … As usual his mother cooks for days beforehand, cramming the refrigerator with stacks of foil-covered trays. She makes sure to prepare his favourite things – lamb curry with lots of potatoes, luchis, pineapple chutney, sandeshes molded out of saffrontinted ricotta cheese.” The American party is hardly more than a chore, whereas the Bengali party is prepared with great love and care.

By now I am sure that you have thought to yourself that in terms of the actual story The Namesake resembles many other contemporary English-language novels. The search for a new racial and cultural identity among second generation immigrants is a common enough subject matter. However – and this is something we are always trying to impress on our students – literature is so much more than just the story. So I would argue that the reason why you should read The Namesake is not so much the story as

everything else in the novel. I would say that Lahiri’s novel is a cut above many of the other novels that are broadly classifiable as “novels about multi-culturalism”. There are several reasons why I claim this. More than anything else, Lahiri’s believable and endearing characters made me become engrossed in the novel from the very first page. I really felt for the Gangulis – Gogol’s mother like an exotic flower brought over from India, hibernating in New England, desperately homesick, and his father working terribly hard to succeed in his new country and provide for his family. Finally, there is Gogol, who despite having all the opportunities his parents did not have, is still not happy and ends up feeling guilty about rejecting not only his name, but, to a great extent, his parents’ culture. The Gangulis are the sort of characters you grow fond of – as I neared the end of the novel I was saddened by the prospect of having to leave them behind. The good thing about them, however, is that they are so memorable they linger in my memory almost as if they were real people.

The way the novel is narrated makes for a quite extraordinary sense of immediacy.

The narration is in the historic present and I felt that I was peering over the shoulder of the Ganguli family as their lives were unfolding, rather than looking back at their lives in retrospect.

Finally, there is a consistent tone of voice in the novel and, no matter whether the story is told from Gogol’s or his mother’s point of view, this contributes greatly to its total effect. It is almost as if a sad, nostalgic tune accompanies the Ganguli family tale.

Even though they do succeed in America, there is a sense of anxiety and loss. They have had to sacrifice quite a lot to get where they are, and for the Gangulis there is no going back.

They are in America to stay. In one way or another Gogol, or Nikhil, will have to come to terms with who he really is. He realizes just how difficult this will be when he is in Paris with his wife Moushumi, like him of Bengali origin, but also a French scholar.

Her complete ease when communicating with their Parisian waiter makes him reflect on the question of identity: “She both fits in perfectly yet remains slightly novel. Here Moushumi had reinvented herself, without misgivings, without guilt. He admires her, even resents her a little, for having moved to another country and made a separate life. He realizes that this is what their parents had done in America. What he, in all likelihood, will never do.” Suddenly, he understands why he has been struggling for such a long time.

He has been wanting to recreate himself, to start again, but that is the one thing he cannot do.

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by Richard Burgess

At first glance, human values seem to be pretty universal. After all, most people agree that it’s not a good idea to make a habit of killing people. Stealing is not to be encouraged either. And if you asked people from different backgrounds and cultures to say what was most important to them, most of them would mention family. In the same way, they would probably all mention hospitality, politeness and kindness as important human qualities.

However, when we start going into detail, differences arise – between individuals and, more importantly, between cultures and societies. When is it OK to kill someone? (For example, when they’ve killed somebody else?

Or when they’ve passed on secrets to your worst enemy?) What is stealing? Or rather, what belongs to me and what belongs to all of us? Who do we define as family? And how do we show hospitality and politeness? It is these differences that can cause problems between cultures and individuals. Here is an example:

The Sopranos – a special kind of “family” (©Scanpix)

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In Bulgaria hospitality means pressing your guest to have another helping of dinner. In Japan politeness means always accepting food when it is offered. Imagine the catastrophic results when the Japanese guest dines with the Bulgarian hostess …

Family values When you talk about “your family”, who do you mean? If your background is Norwegian, the chances are you are referring to your parents and your siblings (brothers and sisters).

Perhaps you would also be thinking of your grandparents, perhaps a favourite aunt or uncle. In many places in Africa and the Pacific the terms “mother” and “father” also refer to both parents’ brothers and sisters and no distinction is made between cousins and siblings. Even friends of the family can be referred to as “grandfather” or “brother” and treated as such. Now this obviously has its advantages (just think of the confirmation presents!) but it also means added responsibility. Members of the same family

are expected to look after each other in case of sickness and to share their wealth.

In some cultures family loyalties are so important that they are above the law. You have probably seen films about the mafia, where any insult to family honour – not to mention the killing of a family member – must be avenged on the principle of “an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth”. Such “vendettas” are common in societies that have no centralised legal system. (Indeed, they were common in Norway until the Middle Ages.) The difficulties arise when such values and rules live on within a modern legal system. In cultures where family responsibilities are strong it is often taken for granted that, if you reach a position of power, you help family members by getting them jobs or other financial advantages. Not to do so would be immoral. In Norway, however, this would be called corruption.

Nowhere are the differences between family values more obvious than in attitudes to old people. In the Far East the oldest members of the family have the highest status. They are admired for their wisdom and treated with great respect. Looking after them is seen as an honour as well as a duty. In the West, on the other hand, eternal youth is the ideal. We spend millions on cosmetics and surgery to avoid looking as if we are “past it”. When we are “past it” and no longer able to look after ourselves, it is accepted that we belong in an institution to be cared for by strangers.

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Wealth, poverty and ownership If you won a million kroner, what would you spend it on? Your answer to this question says a lot about your values. Would you put it in the bank to pay for your education? Would you go on a shopping spree? Or would you make a gift to your favourite charity? Cultures differ in their attitudes to wealth. In many western countries, it is quite acceptable to show off your wealth. A grand house and a smart car tell the world that you have been successful – and success is a virtue in itself. Among the Navajo Indians, however, there is a saying about people who act like this: “He behaves as if he had no relatives.” Among them it is taken

for granted that any money you make will be shared with your family – and that means your cousins too! In Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, they spend a large portion of their small earnings on the graves of their forefathers, decorating them with beautiful stones and ornaments. After all, the Madagascans argue, this is the place where we end up spending most time. An eternity, in fact!

And what of those that have no money, or in other ways fall on hard times? Whose responsibility are they? There is a marked difference here between, for example, Britain and the US. Britain, like Norway, has a well developed welfare state that provides a sort of safety net for the poor and needy. They are seen as being the responsibility of the state, to be paid for through taxation. This is rather different from America, where public welfare is viewed with suspicion. According to the American view, we are all responsible for our own destinies and poverty can be overcome by hard work and initiative. If this seems hard-hearted, it is worth pointing out that Americans are great believers in voluntary work and spend more time on fund-raising for charities than Europeans do.

Is it possible to own the air? Or the rain? An absurd idea, you might say – but for many Native American tribes the idea of owning the land was equally absurd. So when European settlers came and offered to buy the land, the Native Americans didn’t know what they meant. In many cases the “payment” was just seen as a friendly gift to the chief. When the fences came up they felt betrayed. Perhaps Norwegians are not so far removed from Native Americans in this sense. Certainly the idea of Allemannsretten – that everyone should be allowed access to the countryside, including private land – is mostly unknown in the rest of Europe.

Gender and sex “A woman’s place is in the home.” It is no more than a couple of generations since this would have been seen as a fairly uncontroversial statement by most people in Norway. It is after all less than a century since women were allowed to vote. Today equal opportunity for men and women is seen as a basic right, guaranteed by Norwegian law.

But there are still cultures that believe that women should have a subordinate role to men, both in the family and in society. For people from these cultures, both men and women, the idea of gender equality and “women’s liberation” is worrying. When two opposite and deeply held values live within the same society, there are sure to be tensions.

Cosmetic surgery (©Scanpix) Gender roles in the 1950s (©Scanpix)

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When it comes to values, nothing causes more debate than sex. We cannot even agree

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on what sex is and what it isn’t. A Norwegian woman who breastfed her baby in an American café was arrested and charged with indecent behaviour. What is seen as perfectly ordinary clothing in one culture may be seen as sexual provocation in another. Issues like sex before marriage, homosexuality and contraception are guaranteed to get pulses racing and voices raised. This is partly because sexual taboos often have a religious connection. It may also be because sex has to do with basic human instincts. When we see these instincts expressed in a way we are not used to, we feel threatened.

Value conflicts In a famous fantasy novel from the 18th century, Gulliver’s Travels, two neighbouring countries are locked in an endless, bloody war.

The cause of the war is that they cannot agree about which end you should start eating a boiled egg from – the round end or the pointed end. The author, Jonathan Swift, is making fun of the very real religious wars that had been fought in his time in which thousands lost their lives because of theological disagreements. It can indeed seem ridiculous that human beings are willing to fight over the “small print” of our values, when we agree on so much of the headlines. After all, all the major religions preach a similar message of peace and goodwill to all men – and women.

In an increasingly multicultural society, different sets of values must live side by side.

This is a challenge, certainly – but also an opportunity. By getting to know each other, we can learn to see our own values for what they are: just one of many different ways of looking at the world. In fact, we learn that they are values, and not universal truths. To quote an old Chinese proverb: “The fish doesn’t know it is swimming in water before it has jumped above the surface.”

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ding the text nderstanding the text. Help 1 (Mis)understan eps misu very bad day and ke

ga A classmate is havin tions: statements and ques his ng cti rre him by co ? think stealing is OK a So some cultures ts to eat dinner? es gu eir th ce for rians b Why do the Bulga e is related. d the Pacific everyon an a ric Af in , tly c Apparen atives at all! jo Indians have no rel d And the poor Nava lfa we re. one lives on public ces as presents? e In America every Native Americans fen e th e giv ers ttl se ean f But why did Europ n café? ve sex in an America ha to al eg ill 3 Vocabulary s g So it’ gs? ou igious wars ab t eg rel t gh fi lly rea ey Match these examples of behaviour h Did th with the abstract words below. a She started out with nothing and made a fortune selling healthy 2 Find someone who … fast food.

Make questions out of the points given below. b He always made his guests feel Go around class and find someone who can help welcome. you answer the questions. For each question, c He seems pleasant on the surface, you must write down the answer you have been but I think he’s up to no good. given and the name of the person who has given d The children were brought up to it to you. You can only ask one person one say “please” and “thank you”. question. Afterwards, go through the questions e She stuck by her husband in spite in class and tell your classmates who gave you of all the scandals. the answer and explain what the person said. f If I earn any extra money, I give it Find someone who … to the poor.

• has two or more siblings g It turned out that the “expenses” • knows why a Japanese guest dining with a he was claiming were all false.

Bulgarian hostess might be in trouble h He looked so cold and wet that she • can tell you what a vendetta is offered to drive him home.

• knows what Madagascans spend their money i As captain it is my job to make on sure all my passengers are safe.

• knows how Norwegian voting laws changed

in 1913 hospitality, kindness, politeness, • knows what “prevensjon” is in English responsibility, corruption, suspicion, • can tell you what Jonathan Swift’s famous initiative, loyalty, charity novel was called • can explain why the text is called 5 Writing ‘Boiled Eggs and Jumping Fishes’ The first four sayin gs and expressions below are mentioned in th e text. The last fou r are not.

Write in your own wo rds what they all me an in practice. a “An eye for an ey e – a tooth for a toot nationality d h.” an es lu b “He behaves as if he va me – so t g Bu . ns tio na rn has no relatives.”

4 Talkin ste we , ed lop ve de all e c “A woman’s place s the US ar is in the home.” areas. The sentence Norway, Britain and ferent values in some dif ve r d ha he “The fish doesn’t kn et ey th wh at ss th cu dis d an ow it is swimming irs would argue pa in . Sit in water before it ha an attitude or a value e three th of – ne no s jumped above the below each express or – e an on surface.” with one or more th you associate them e The grass is alw ays greener on the countries: other side. , not to the past. ure f fut e A bird in the hand is th to k loo worth two in the bu – We must . ity nt ide sh. for g Look before you portant leap.

– Traditions are im at you think. wh tly ac ex y sa d h Like father, like nest an son.

– It is best to be ho hers. u are better than ot yo nd te pre t no ld .

– You shou ow kn u don’t urself on people yo – Don’t impose yo ly. us rio elf too se – Don’t take yours st. be – Aim to be sociate with ed here that you as titudes not mention at or s lue va y an Are there these nations?

The Ups andof Downs Gordon Brown

by Richard Peel

On 27 June 2007 Tony Blair resigned as prime minister and Gordon Brown took his place. It was common knowledge that in Brown’s eyes Blair had overstayed his welcome. Indeed, opinion polls published three days later suggested that the voters agreed. Labour’s popularity had been slipping badly under Blair, and the Conservatives had edged into a lead in opinion polls. But on 30 June, just a few days after Brown took office, Labour recorded a 4% lead in several polls, and the press were talking of a “Brown bounce” and of the “Brown factor” reviving a lagging party.

However, not everyone in the Labour party was enthusiastic about him. The year before Blair stepped down, when he announced to the party’s annual conference in Manchester in 2006 that this would be his last conference as party leader, several Labour MPs looked around for a cabinet minister who could persuasively challenge Brown to the leadership of the party.

In his article in mægə'zi:n 02/07 Øivind Bratberg examined the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, what each meant for the Labour party, and what each wanted the Labour government to do.

In this article the focus is on Brown’s fortunes since he took office as prime minister.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown delivers his speech at the Labour Party Conference in September 2008 (©Scanpix)

No one of substance came forward. The party seemed in awe of the agreement between Blair and Brown – made, according to “the ballad of the Granita restaurant”, at a restaurant in Islington way back in 1994, soon after John Smith’s sudden death – that Brown would stand back and not challenge Blair’s bid to become leader. The understanding was, so the story goes, that after x or y years as prime minister Blair would in turn step down and make way for Brown.

To start with, all went well for Brown. Two small-scale crises occurred that gave him the chance to show that here indeed was a pair of steady hands. The first was a double-terrorist scare: two car-bombs were found parked in London, and the terminal building Glasgow airport was hit by a burning car driven by terrorists. A second more protracted crisis occurred when severe flooding struck parts of central England. Brown and his ministerial

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A closed branch of Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) is pictured in Birkenhead in north-west England, on October 15, 2008 (©Scanpix)

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team acquitted themselves well, overseeing quick and effective responses to both crises.

The floods even persuaded some sceptics that Brown’s well-known concern about climate change was perhaps relevant to everyday politics after all. With encouraging poll results coming in, Brown and his supporters felt good. Perhaps a fourth-in-a-row election victory was feasible after all, in spite of the unpopularity of the Iraq war, and the inevitable feeling many voters had that a change is a good thing after any party has been in power for over eleven years.

victory, receiving just under 50% of votes, with Labour receiving 30.6%, the Liberal Democrats 14.6% and other parties 5.3 %.

This was a mighty swing away from Labour which, if translated into a general election, would sweep the Conservatives back to power on a wave as triumphant as Blair’s had been in 1997. Staggeringly, it was the Conservatives’ first by-election gain since 1982. “This is the end of New Labour!” bellowed David Cameron, Conservative leader, his arms raised alongside the victorious candidate, Edward Timpson.

Now we push the fast forward button to summer 2008. The political situation had been transformed. At the beginning of May in local elections in England and Wales the Labour party lost a total of 331 council seats, winning only 25% of the vote, against 26% voting for Liberal Democrat candidates, and 44% voting for Conservatives. Turnout was low, this itself quite likely being an expression of displeasure with the party in power in Westminster.

Labour’s discomfort was compounded when the incumbent mayor of London, Ken Livingstone – a maverick character, but firmly the Labour candidate – was defeated in the mayoral election by Conservative Boris Johnson. In the context of national politics, the election to the job of mayor of London is of minimal importance, but for a few days it captured the headlines and revealed and advertised Labour’s unpopularity.

Opinion polls in July and through the summer to September reiterated the message. Brown’s government had become deeply unpopular.

David Cameron (for he was the beneficiary – the Liberal Democrats failed to cash in on the decline in support for Labour) sensed that he would be the clear winner in the next general election, which has to be held before 5 May 2010. The Observer, a left-of-centre newspaper, not predisposed to be scathing of Labour, commented on 21 September in its leading article:

Worse was to come. On 22 May there was a by-election in Crewe and Nantwich, a constituency in north-western England, where the Conservatives won an overwhelming

Voters are already deeply hostile to Mr Brown ...On its present trajectory, Labour will emerge from the next election with 160 seats, fewer than they won under Michael Foot in 1983 ... Those who plan to vote Conservative are firmer in their resolve than those who might back the government. Things could still get worse for Labour.

Needless to say, Labour MPs and party supporters were deeply worried. They asked,

and we must ask, what had gone wrong. Why had the Brown bounce of the previous summer collapsed so completely?

One reason is that Brown became a ditherer.

He dithered about a possible election in 2007.

When the media started asking whether, in the late summer of that year, when things were still looking good, he would call a snap election (as a prime minister can at any time), Brown made only one thing clear, and that was that he could not make up his mind. A brave politician would either have called the election instantaneously (no bad idea – to allow the electorate to give him their support, thus giving his premiership a huge dose of legitimacy) or have scotched the suggestion immediately.

Brown’s whole style began to appear fussy and indecisive. He arrived in Lisbon for the signing of the Lisbon Treaty far too late. This was a prime minister, who can fly anywhere at any time! Most commentators saw this as an attempt to steer a middle line between travelling enthusiastically to Lisbon, thus antagonising euro-sceptics at home, and staying at home, thus antagonising EU leaders. Prime ministers, especially those who quote school mottos on taking office, should not be late for such important meetings.

Brown took a middle-of-the-way stance again and again. For example, during the controversy over the Olympic torch (on its way to a country that carries out the death penalty on a huge scale and allows few political liberties) he agreed to talk with the Dalai Lama in London, but not at 10 Downing Street. He dithered over

the 10 pence tax band which, in his last budget as chancellor of the exchequer, he had planned to abolish. Uncharacteristically he had got his sums wrong, because it became apparent that some groups of poorer families would be hard hit by this reform. There was a revolt among backbench Labour MPs. Later, Brown retreated, and amended his plan. All this and more suggested to the voters that the steady hand was not steady at all.

achievements. He ridiculed the Conservatives for opposing many of them. And all the time he was reminding his listeners of the approaching thunderbolt – the global financial crisis.

“This is no time for a novice,” he asserted.

He did not name the two Davids, Cameron and Milliband, and did not need to. “Some say I’m too serious – I say there is much to be serious about.” He was right, and the time had come for action.

Prices were rising, not just on petrol (everyone knows that oil prices are outside a single government’s control) but also on food. The Opposition was on the attack, and could easily find targets. “The legacy of Brown’s failures,” remarked the Spectator in May 2008, “can be seen by the inner city slums, sink schools and family breakdown all across Britain. His way doesn’t work, and everyone now knows it.”

Cameron regularly got the better of Brown in the cut-and-thrust of prime minister’s question time in the House of Commons.

Brown acted fast. He re-shuffled his cabinet, surprising everyone by appointing Peter Mandelson to a new inner cabinet group, what the Guardian newspaper called the “economic war council”. The Tory press was cynical, seeing this as a panic measure from a doomed prime minister. Other newspapers were impressed. It was a risky move by Brown – Mandelson, after all, had resigned two cabinet posts already for using his connections to give advantages to buddies. True, in the second incident he had been proven innocent, but that he is accident-prone is beyond doubt. But the thing that really made the media buzz was that Mandelson and Brown had had a very strained relationship for many years, stemming from Mandelson’s decision way back in 1994 to support Blair in the leadership stakes.

Add to this cauldron of Labour discontent a Liberal Democrat party whose electoral strategy was switching from a focus on seats the Conservatives might lose to seats Labour might lose (thus splitting the left-of-centre vote) and we can sympathise with Labour MPs who began to see Brown as a liability.

In the run-up to the party conference this year foreign minister David Milliband gave an incautious interview in which he implied he might challenge Brown. But polls said voters had no more confidence in other Labour ministers than in Brown.

Brown was probably tempted to resign, but wisely did not. He had somehow to claw his way back to earning that genuine enthusiasm many people had felt for him a year before. But how? First, Brown had to forget about trying to please everybody, and focus attention on the sensible reforms his government was making, such as reducing hospital waiting lists, lifting children out of poverty, renovating schools, imposing controls on school admissions to stop the drift towards a two-tier scenario of popular middle-class schools and unpopular working-class schools, and creating a fairer university entrance system, to mention some examples.

He put his act together at the annual party conference this summer. A weak performance would almost certainly have made the temptation among rebel MPs to call openly for his resignation irresistible. His speech was good. In British politics a party leader’s speech to a party conference is extremely important. Brown spoke like the man in command. He apologised gracefully for failures, naming the confusion over the 10 pence tax band specifically. He listed Labour’s

It was a risky and daring appointment. What did it indicate? Mandelson was an out-andout Blairite. This is important, because the financial crisis that was now over-shadowing everything else on the political scene could be seen as giving an opening to the old left to reestablish control. Capitalism, one could argue, had failed, so let’s get back to socialism. By choosing Mandelson to a key post, Brown made it clear what he thought of that argument.

Mandelson’s position was well-known, as this statement in an interview in the New Statesman in October made abundantly clear: When I listen to some of the trade union leaders and others who are organising hard on the left of the party, demanding renationalisation and an end to new Labour, sneering at the so-called Blairites, I realise there are still those who prefer the comfort of opposition to the hard tasks of government.

Mandelson was not the only figure from the past invited to 10 Downing Street that week. The other was John Maynard Keynes, the economist called by Will Hutton in The Observer “the liberal who understood why free finance is capitalism’s greatest enemy”. Free finance had had quite a run. Brown, we should remember, as chancellor of the exchequer, had on frequent occasions praised the City and the world of high finance for its vision and enterprise, refusing to regulate it or oversee it with any thoroughness. It was a

paradox that this advocate of free-wheeling finance should now be called upon to rescue the country from the consequences of that very freedom and that very recklessness. The Tories, meanwhile, were check-mated, for they had been even more fulsome in extolling the virtues of unbridled capitalism. They are in a sense paralysed. Cameron has announced that he supports in broad outline Brown’s measures. The Conservatives are in the same weak position with regard to Iraq, where they have also supported the government.

Brown turned to the standard Keynesian remedy of rejuvenating the economy by using public money – as a first step, rescuing threatened banks. To the delight of his supporters, he suddenly became something of an international star, winning praise from many leaders for his rescue package, and looking confident and purposeful at international meetings. But the impact of his package remains to be seen. What will happen when the recession starts hurting?

A recession means loss of jobs and, usually, political unpopularity for those in power. This is Brown’s gamble – that he will be rewarded for dealing with the crisis in a relatively swift and decisive way, not punished for its consequences.

While the eyes of the world were on the US election campaign in late October, nervous Labour eyes in Britain were on the upcoming by-election in Glenrothes on 6 November. This would be “a D-Day for Brown” in the words of the Guardian’s Ian Macwhirter. Glenrothes is a constituency just north of Edinburgh and in fact adjacent to Brown’s own constituency.

Such is the significance of this by-election that Brown broke with Blair’s tradition of not taking part in by-election campaigning. The contest was, in every commentator’s view, a stern test of Brown’s early-winter standing in Britain as a whole, and of the current balance of power in Scotland between Labour and the Scottish National Party. In 2005 Labour won 52% of the votes in Glenrothes, with the SNP second with 23%. However, most polls predicted and pundits reckoned the SNP would win the seat in the by-election.

In fact, they didn’t. Labour held it with a fairly comfortable majority. There was, it is true, a 5% swing from Labour to the SNP, but this was nothing like the massive 22.5% swing from Labour to SNP recorded in the Glasgow East by-election in July. From July to November had been four crucial months in Brown’s political fortunes. The Glenrothes result was a tremendous relief to Gordon Brown – evidence that he has indeed been granted a breathingspace. He undoubtedly enjoyed his breakfast on 7 November, but he knows he has tough times ahead.

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ISBN: 978-82-02-29500-4

Engelsk ordbok – yrkesfag Herbert Svenkerud, Kari Bjerkeng, Petter Fuhre og Anne Lerø

NYHET

er en nyutviklet ordbok spesielt tilpasset elever som tar yrkesfag. I tillegg til allmenn engelsk, har ordboka et faglig ordforråd som spenner over alle de ni yrkesfaglige utdanningsprogrammene. Oppslagsord og uttrykk er satt med blå skrift, noe som gjør det enkelt å finne fram og slå opp. Ordboka har de riktige oppslagsordene for dagens brukere.

• • • • • • • • • •

Over 36 000 oppslagsord Tusenvis av faste uttrykk Lett og raskt å slå opp på riktig ord Elevvennlig layout Både britisk og amerikansk engelsk Alt fra slang til høytidelig språk Lydskrift etter internasjonal standard (IPA) Rikelig med illustrasjoner Minigrammatikk Nyttige faktasider og kart

Engelsk ordbok

NY UTGAVE

Herbert Svenkerud og Anne Helene Aarflot kommer nå i sin 4. utgave. Engelsk-norskdelen er gjennomrevidert for denne utgaven og oppdatert fram til mars 2008. Det er innført en egen blåfarge for oppslagsord og uttrykk. Midtsidene er nykomponerte med oppdaterte fakta og minigrammatikk. Ordboka er spesielt tilpasset elever i den videregående skolen.

• • • • • • • • • •

Over 60 000 oppslagsord Tusenvis av faste uttrykk Lett og raskt å slå opp på riktig ord Elevvennlig layout Både britisk og amerikansk engelsk Alt fra slang til høytidelig språk God dekning av mange fagområder Lydskrift etter internasjonal standard (IPA) Minigrammatikk Nyttige faktasider, kart og illustrasjoner