LETTERS

actually create site-specific work.”I was the visual artist who worked with John McGrath at the Tramway Glasgow on his two great site-specific works Border Warfare (1990) and John Brown’s Body (1991). John was keen to write work that exploited every possible corner of the space. In both productions, 600 spectators moved around as the playing space was constantly formed and reformed. Pamela Howard Selsey, West Sussex

AFRO-PESSIMISM 5th September 2007 I was disappointed by Alan Philps’s review (August) of Tim Butcher’s Blood River. My bookshelves groan under the weight of foreigners’ accounts of exotic Africa. Too few such visitors learn about Africa; instead they use snapshots as a basis for risky generalisations. I do not doubt Butcher’s courage or sincerity, but there is little to learn about the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or Africa from either his book or Philps’s review. Philps suggests that the government of Sudan used chemical weapons in the civil war in the south. No one has produced any evidence for this. Assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades, burning of food stores, destroyed health centres, mines and displacement caused plenty of suffering without the need for chemical weapons. Also, the war in the DRC did not exactly “kill four million people since its start in 1996.” The American NGO IRC very carefully extrapolated the “excess mortality”it measured in a sample of Congolese citizens: what it found was an extraordinarily high death rate, mostly caused by the almost complete lack of services available. It may be correct that 4m people

have died—no one knows— but their deaths are a result less of fighting than of displacement, destroyed infrastructure and failed governance, a tale that starts with the arrival of King Leopold’s men at the end of the 19th century. International operations to end the war in the DRC have been relatively successful. The international humanitarian effort, on the other hand, has failed to respond adequately to the enormity of its needs, with per capita humanitarian expenditure far below that in other comparable crises. In Darfur, by contrast, the international humanitarian effort has kept many millions of victims alive, and has fed and taught and treated them to the extent possible in an unforgiving terrain. Yet the international political response to Sudan’s political and military fractures has been disappointing, while disappointing is too mild a term for the military response of the outside world to the violence in Darfur. These failings are more important than quibbles about a review. Africa has risen up the international agenda and deserves better than this. Philip Winter Rift Valley Institute, Kenya

KATHERINAMANOLESSOU

SKIDELSKY ON MOSLEY 16th September 2007 Edward Skidelsky reviews the work of author Nicholas Mosley (September) with such approving sentiments as: “the style that has stamped his work... is a rejection of all the contrivances by which novelists have traditionally drawn readers into their worlds. His characters have no personality (and) they speak in flat, jerky sentences.” A little later, by way of contrast, Skidelsky deplores writers such as Beryl Bainbridge and Ian McEwan for “taking pains to get every period detail, every nuance of class and culture right. The results are deathly in their exactitude.”We also learn that Mosley “is not interested in stylistic experiment... For him, style is important only as a vehicle for moral truth.” So—Mosley can’t do dialogue, writes unengaging stories and unconvincing characters, won’t do research or deploy realistic detail, doesn’t care about the quality of his prose, and is concerned only to deliver a weighty moral message. In genre fiction, where I earn my living, we have a technical term for this kind of writing: we call it shit. Richard Morgan Glasgow

THE SACRED AND THE HUMAN 24th August 2007 Roger Scruton’s “The sacred and the human”(August) claims that the “alleged mimetic nature of desire is underjustified.”In fact, recent developments in neuroscience are bringing confirmation of Girard’s theory. “Mirror neurons”were discovered by Italian scientists in macaque monkeys in the 1990s, and provide a neurobiological foundation for mimetic desire. These cells fire both when the subject watches an action being performed, and when he or she performs this action. Researchers, including Girard, have already convened to discuss the convergence of mimetic theory and neuroscience. Trevor Merrill Los Angeles

BOYCOTTING ISRAEL 16th September 2007 Is there a double standard, as Josef Joffe claims (Letters, September), in focusing on Israel more than other illegal land-grabbers such as China (Tibet) or Turkey (Cyprus)? Israel upsets more people for three good reasons. First, in the 1947-48 civil war, the Jewish European settler minority won 78 per cent of Palestine, hardly a fair share, from the indigenous majority. Other 20th-century land grabbers have at least started from a fairer border. Second, there is the danger to the west created by Israel’s land hunger. If the Palestinians were not supported by 1.3bn Muslims, Israel’s expansionism would be less dangerous. Third, Israel is part of western JudeoChristian civilisation, and Israel has let our side down. This is a double standard. But, like the principle that we don’t torture even if the other side does, it is a commendable one. Joseph Palley Richmond, Surrey

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