Avremmo voluto.
Avremmo dovuto.
Avremmo potuto.
Le parole piĂč dolorose del linguaggio.
Jonathan Coe

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Avremmo voluto.
Avremmo dovuto.
Avremmo potuto.
Le parole piĂč dolorose del linguaggio.
Jonathan Coe

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Ci sono momenti nella vita
che varrebbe la pena spendere
mondi interi per acquistarli,
momenti cosĂŹ carichi di emozioni
che in qualche modo diventano
senza tempo
Jonathan Coe
Esiste un certo tipo di silenzio in cui le parole non sono necessarie, e che non segnala la fine, bensĂŹ l'inizio della comprensione.
Jonathan Coe - Donna per caso
Have you read The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe (2001)?
yes
no
I didn't finish it
I've never heard of it
The author on getting hooked on Flann OâBrien, reassessing Kingsley Amis, and why his grandfather was outraged by Watership Down
Entirely agree. âLucky Jimâ is the only novel Iâve started in the last three years of reading more seriously that I couldnât be bothered to finish.

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Una frazione di secondo e unâeternitĂ diventano interscambiabili quando provi emozioni intense.
Middle England by Jonathan Coe
Reactionaries and remoaners clash in a meditation on anger, loss and the passing of time featuring the characters from The Rottersâ Club
At one point in Middle England, a couple attend a marital counselling session in which they are each asked to explain why they are so angry that their spouse voted differently from them in the EU referendum. One complains that the other, by voting leave, showed that âas a person, heâs not as open as I thought he was. That his basic model for relationships comes down to antagonism and competition, not cooperation.â Her husband answers that her remain vote made him realise sheâs âvery naĂŻveâ, âlives in a bubbleâ, and that it gives her âan attitude of moral superiorityâ.
The therapistâs verdict is: âWhatâs interesting about both of these answers is that neither of you mentioned politics. As if the referendum wasnât about Europe at all. Maybe something much more fundamental and personal was going on. Which is why this might be a difficult problem to resolve.â
That, perhaps, is the sore point a novelist taking on Brexit as a subject might be expected to probe. Thereâs a truth here â that the Brexit vote was experienced and has continued to be experienced as a matter of personal identity. For a novelist, this is where the action is.
Middle England is the third novel featuring the characters from Coeâs 2001 novel The Rottersâ Club and 2004âs The Closed Circle, and sees an excellent writer making an enjoyable, absorbing and less than completely successful attempt to find the sweet spot of that sore point. The action runs from the spring of 2010 to the autumn of 2018, and the newsreel that unrolls in the background takes in Gordon Brownâs encounter with âthat bigoted womanâ, the coalition government, the London riots, the murder of Jo Cox, Nigel Farageâs notorious âBreaking Pointâ poster, the London Olympics and all the rest of it. And in that respect, of course, we know whatâs going to happen because weâre living it. This is a book that foretells the present.
It also has a good deal to tell us, oddly, about geography and local transport. Coe has frequent resort to the melancholy poetry of place. On page four we read that the hero is driving âthrough the towns of Bridgnorth, Alveley, Quatt, Much Wenlock and Cressageâ, and 40 pages later heâs taking the route in the other direction: âCressage, Much Wenlock, Bridgnorth, Enville, Stourbridge and Hagleyâ. A garden centre isnât just âmidway between Shrewsbury and Birminghamâ: itâs ânot far from the M54 and considered such a geographical fixture that it had its own official sign on the motorwayâ. A pub is âtucked away in a hard-to-find corner beside the Suffolk Street Queensway in Central Birminghamâ. At one point we meet characters âdriving out of Birmingham along the A3400â; at another contemplating the ârail replacement service between Kettering and Nuneatonâ ââRail replacement serviceâ, âKetteringâ, âNuneatonâ. Were there five more dispiriting words in the English (or any other) language?â
In its politics, just as in its gripes about public transport, this is a great big Centrist Dad of a novel. It lives largely in the world of the media, academia, politics and (peripherally) the City. Benjamin Trotter is a failed novelist who in late middle age finds himself longlisted for the Man Booker prize; his old friend Doug is a well-heeled centre-left newspaper columnist; his niece Sophie is a university lecturer who becomes a minor TV don. The book has a wide cast of characters, though the ones weâre invited to sympathise with are pretty much all remainers.
And yet itâs never stronger or more convincing than when itâs furthest from political events. As the novel addresses the rise of populism, for example, we meet reactionary oldies in golf clubs moaning about âpolitical correctnessâ; a lunatic conspiracy theorist buttonholing a publisher with a manuscript about the EUâs âKalergi Planâ for white genocide; a porcine chancer funding the referendum through a dodgy free-market thinktank; an elderly former car worker uncomprehendingly contemplating the site where the Longbridge plant used to be; a privileged Corbynite student lodging a complaint against a lecturer after hearing (at second hand) that theyâd said something to a trans student that could be taken the wrong way. They tell us, in caricatural form, what we already know â or at least suppose we do.
One problem is that the historical scaffolding is so familiar, and yet will date so fast; this means that certain passages of exposition feel clunky. The reader in 2018 has no need to be told the following:
Jeremy Corbyn had become leader of the Labour Party in September. The surprising â even astonishing â election of this obscure but long-serving, rebellious backbencher had been seen by many, including Sophie, as a welcome sign that the party was planning to return to the principles it had abandoned under Tony Blair.
The reader in 2028 might welcome the reminder. The reader in 2038 will struggle to give a damn. The reader in 3018 may eke a PhD out of it.
To give Middle England its due, it doesnât aim to cover everything, recognising wanly that, in drink, the conversation will broaden out âto include Brexit, Donald Trump, Syria, North Korea, Vladimir Putin, Facebook, immigration, Emmanuel Macron, the Five Star Movement and the contentious result of the Eurovision song contest in 1968â. So the American elections are dispatched, wittily, in two lines:
Finally, Benjamin said: âI donât like Trump, do you?â âNope,â Charlie said. âCanât stand the bloke.â Benjamin nodded. With the political discussion out of the way âŠ
And it is when the political discussion is out of the way that the novel becomes richer and less schematic. Thereâs Sophieâs odd-couple relationship with her driving instructor husband Ian (they met on a speed awareness course) and the way she thinks and rethinks an adulterous near-miss at the beginning of their marriage. Thereâs Benjaminâs relationship with his sister Lois and his long-lost schoolfriend Charlie, now working as a childrenâs entertainer and locked in a feud with a rival clown. And thereâs Benjaminâs journey towards self-understanding and acceptance. All these are done with real style and feeling.
Coeâs writing is as smoothly accomplished as ever. His comic set pieces â funerals, dinners, clown fights â and scenes capturing the affectionate and ridiculous sex of middle age, and a relationship between a journalist and a Yes Minister-style government adviser, are very funny.
Yet this is also a surprisingly sentimental book, beginning and ending with Benjamin listening wistfully to Shirley Collinsâs song âAdieu to Old Englandâ, which is not to its disadvantage. It is an autumnal novel, and a sad one: poignant about the passing of time, the wishing for what has vanished, the decades lost to obscure hatreds, misplaced loves and unsatisfactory marriages â and about what, washing up on the brink of old age, weâre left with and what we can or canât make of it. That a river, or two, runs through it is no accident.
And in this context the national stuff just sort of bubbles up. The Midlands landscape of Benjaminâs childhood, a landscape at once familiar and remembered and transformed and imaginary, is the real middle England of the novel. And what is lost and gained goes far beyond the referendum in 2016. To quote that therapist again: âSomething much more fundamental and personal was going on.â
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Dans la vitrine de L'oiseau tempĂȘte"
"Vous vous inquiĂ©tez du rĂ©chauffement climatique, de l'avenir de la BBC, de ce qui se passe en Palestine ou en Syrie. Des choses auxquelles vous ne pouvez rien et qui pour la plupart n'ont rien Ă voir avec vous. Le monde serait meilleur si chacun se contentait de cultiver son jardin, parce que quand on se mĂȘle de ce genre d'histoires, Ă tous les coups on ne fait qu'empirer les choses. [âŠ] Martin grogna mais dit : "Bref, j'imagine que Pascal serait d'accord avec toi."
Qui ça ?
Blaise Pascal. Il a dit que « Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer en repos dans une chambre.»
TrĂšs bien dit. Ăa rĂ©sume parfaitement la philosophie britannique.
Il était français.
Eh ben ça arrive que les Français aient raison, de temps en temps."
extrait de: "Le royaume désuni" Jonathan Coe