The West and the Rest

Niall Ferguson - professor, TV historian, Glasgow boy - returned to his home city yesterday to give a talk at the Aye Write Festival.

I've read two of his books this year - Empire and Ascent of Money - both of which I found hugely helpful as regards the novel I've been writing.

Feguson isn't to everyone's taste, of course. He is, like David Starkey, a Marmite historian. One friend of mine actually shuddered at the thought of going to his talk (she refused to entertain the idea). That said, the Mitchell Theatre was pretty well full and my impression was that he got a very warm response before and after his lecture.

His current schtick is based on his new book and C4 TV series: Civilization, The West and the Rest. Ferguson relishes the soundbite and has boiled down the past five hundred years of history into "six killer apps" which the west had, but the others didn't. It's a compelling argument but actually not that different from the world history course I did at Glasgow Uni back in 1987. What makes it new is the inexorable rise, in the past decade, of China. Ferguson talks a lot about China, has travelled there extensively, and it was intriguing to hear his take on it. One person asked how long before China would have to become a democracy: he fired back the answer "20 years" (based on the South Korean and Singapore model).

He doubted it would come sooner because he didn't think the young generation there were interested in political freedom. One young woman apparently told him that she and her friends don't care about the 'Square thing'. She meant Tiananmen Square.

His final comment was both provocative and memorable. "What should we do here in Scotland?" he was asked. "Get your kids to read Adam Smith," he replied, adding, "We should reconnect with Smith and forget about Marx" (I'm paraphrasing).

My friend would have been impressed with that, but he has a point.

Super Sad True Love Story in Glasgow

I thought Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story was a hilarous, brilliant book when I read it last year. In fact, it's one of those novels that seems to grown in stature as time goes on (and other books disappoint).

Set in a near future New York, it depicts a society being torn apart by a financial crisis clearly related to the one we've just experienced. A broken United States of America is being ruled over by an authoritarian coalition (no really), having been credit crunched into a state of revolution. It is a society in which technology - in the shape of highly evolved iPhones called Apparats - dictates not just how we work but how we date and socialise too. Facebook isn't just a social networking tool, it is the social network.

Shteyngart takes the iPhone generation and twists it. There are some gloriously irreverent features to the book. His anti-hero works for a company promising eternal youth (it's a hollow promise, but such companies already exist). The fashion of the day is dominated by 'onion skin' jeans... think transparent leggings. His world is one in which the sex war has been fought and lost on many battlefields and retail parkchanging rooms.

This is a very funny writer dealing with a topic that is highly prescient. I interviewed him over the phone last September and you can read the piece here - posted in an earlier blog. Now he is coming to Glasgow, so if any of you fancy a really interesting Saturday afternoon go and check him out on the Aye Write website.