Unawakened

Unusually for me I watched a couple of fairly substantial things on telly early this evening. The first was deliberate. I've been feeling mildly depressed since finishing the Ishiguro, largely on account of following it by dipping into some Holocaust related reviews and writing, including a very fine piece by Christopher Browning in a recent New York Review of Books dealing with material on some of the Jewish leaders who negotiated and, to some degree, collaborated with the Nazis. So I thought I might as well watch something to cheer me up.

The something was the first episode from Attenborough and the BBC's Blue Planet series. If watching the blue whale at the beginning doesn't make you feel better about the world then nothing will. Out came my trusty DVD and some fifty dazzling minutes later I'm thinking the world isn't such a bad place after all - well, the bit that comprises oceans, that is.

Then I'm idly browsing through the channels and I hit the start of that film documentary The Fog of War featuring Bob McNamara spilling the beans on the American involvement in Vietnam. Brilliant stuff: McNamara is captivating on camera, and the supporting footage is an extraordinary counterpoint. The only problem is that although watching this obviously highly intelligent and, more importantly, obviously deeply decent and humane guy is hypnotic in the extreme, it's also depressing. So I'm back where I started.

History is a nightmare from which I don't think I'll ever wake up, to mangle a much better line.