The Muckraker in the Museum

“BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T LOOK GERMAN” large letters spell out across the front of a building a mere fifty meters from the Brandenburg Gate. Below the sign are placards listing the victims of right-extremist violence in Germany, mainly foreign-born immigrants who were killed because, well, they didn’t look German. Dressing up the façade of the prominent Academy of the Arts [Akademie der Künste] with documentation of provincial bigotry alongside a major tourist landmark is, however, relatively toothless for artist Hans Haacke, the man behind the sign. As “Hans Haacke for Real: Works 1959-2006,” the exhibit inside documents, Haacke’s work often bites the hand that commissions it, turning upon museums and galleries as participants in morally questionable societal practices, and exposing the skeletons in the closet of those places that invite him to create art for them.


For example, Haacke’s Manet-PROJEKT 74, created for the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum’s 1974 exhibition “PROJEKT 74,” chronicled the lives of the owners of the recently acquired Manet canvas Bunch of Asparagus. In so doing, it made public the Nazi-related past of Hermann J. Abs,
the driving force behind the canvas’ acquisition. It called to attention the widespread practice of “sweeping under the rug” of National Socialist past that occurred in the Federal Republic of Germany, a point only doubly proven when the museum declined to exhibit it.Haacke has also been censored when his works do not explicitly target the institution, such as in Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, which meticulously documents an implicitly immoral real estate practice through a series of photographs and charts. The “political” nature of the piece led to the Guggenheim’s refusal to include it in the show for which it was commissioned, creating one of the most famous cases of censorship of this century—at least until New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani tried to strip the Brooklyn Museum of Art of its funding in 1999 for showing a painting he thought was offensive.

Because they didn’t look German presents a point upon which educated viewers will doubtlessly agree, as well as exposing reprehensible behavior of a non-white-collar sort that museum owners, trustees, boards, and the like, are not involved in or linked to and can safely condemn. (It also camouflages a building whose appearance Haacke recently likened to a “bank from the Seventies.") However, Haacke’s work needn’t have an implied “up-yours” to challenge the viewer: in many cases, the plethora of information calls upon the onlooker to piece it together. An appreciative glance is not enough to "get" the work, which often seeks above all not to be aesthetically "appreciated" but rather and above all understood.

Thus, the way Haacke’s work defines itself as art leaves a question mark hanging in the air. Those pieces composed of informational plaques or graphs, like Shapolsky, could just as easily be found in a sociological museum or a town-hall citizens gathering or college history class; they become “art” through their location in a museum or gallery. They defy clichéd notions about viewer subjectivity, since statements like “art is what you get out of it” or “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” don’t apply to Haacke’s works. Rather, each has a fairly specific point which cancels out other messages; for Shapolsky, is it obviously not correct to conclude that Haacke is praising Shapolsky’s business acumen.

In fact, Haacke’s use of the phrase “Real Time System” is meant to indicate an art object that continues to function as depicted regardless of viewer perception or presence.[1] In Haacke’s early Conceptualist pieces, like 1965's Blue Sail, where a simple fan blows a blue sheet in the air, this functioning was mechanical. In later works like Shapolsky, it is sociopolitical. The choice to portray his message through the medium of art, then, when it is at times patently sociological and political, has been criticized by Slate editor Judith Shulevitz who encourages Haacke to stop “hiding out in an art museum” and join public discourse through the published journalistic word.

However, the author of “Museums and the Consciousness Industry” knows what he is doing: he picks museums as his medium because he believes they are participants in cultural discourse to an equal degree as newspapers (or online culture rags).[2] Two of these “generators of consciousness” are exhibiting “Hans Haacke for Real” right now: the Academy of Arts here in Berlin until January 14th, and the Deichtorhallen Hamburg until February 4th, with the former focusing on works where politics and history play a central role, the latter on earlier works as well as works which address economic roles of corporations and museum sponsorship.

The Berlin exhibit, filling the downstairs gallery space at the AdK, is curated with an emphasis on dialog between the works, chronologically mixing them in order to create cross-decade correspondences. For example, Manet-PROJEKT 74 is shown alongside Der Bevölkerung, Haacke’s 1999 installation in the Reichstag, presumably since both address Germany’s sometimes selective and reluctant memory of its past. In the latter case disputed memory can be seen more prominently in the response to the work than the work itself: the parliamentary debate about whether or not to install it is shown here on video. Such supplementary explanations throughout the exhibit form a necessary backdrop to understanding Haacke’s work the way he would like; as he states, “When a work of this nature is shown outside its original context, background information needs to be provided so that the viewers can understand the references and the impact it might have had.”[3] The only drawback is that explanations of the work’s cultural relevance are all in German and no supplementary English materials are available, an ironic shame given the imperative to read and understand embedded in Haacke’s ouvre.

The last gallery features Haacke’s latest works, placing pieces critical of American jingoism, flag-waving, and attitudes towards Iraq, alongside his suggestion for a memorial to 9/11 and a smaller commemorative piece, the aptly titled Commemorating 9/11. Responding to a call from arts support group Creative Time for poster suggestions in October 2001, Haacke’s entry is simply a white outline of the World Trade Center’s two towers’ silhouettes, which is posted on top of previously existing billboard paste-ups such that the advertisement composes the body of the towers while white defines the space around them.The silhouette suggestion shows an almost insider’s sensitivity to what the loss means to New Yorkers once familiar with the sight of the World Trade Center.

As seen in the annual re-creation of the buildings’ shape through the high-powered illumination of the Tribute in Light, the towers’ absence is a keenly visual loss to city inhabitants. The tragedy is not minimized but rather referenced with exquisite minimalism by these two projections of light into the sky. Haacke’s recreation of the silhouette even before the first showing of Tribute in Light—the visual memorial was first lit on March 11, 2002, six months after the attack—intuitively exhibits the same metonymy of visual loss for enormous societal loss, which makes sense since Haacke is a long-time resident of the city. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, Creative Time is also behind Tribute in Light).

Unfortunately I didn’t notice that these images of billboards contained a World Trade Center outline and had to read the wall text to put it together, assuming instead it was a commentary on pervasive visual culture in public space. If a native New Yorker equipped with the awareness of cultural context that Haacke describes as equally necessary to his process as “bronze or paint on a canvas,” doesn’t make the connection, then perhaps the need for explanation has gone too far.[4]The opposite problem was apparent with other new works, such as the enormous ripped American flag hanging from the ceiling, or the man wearing a flag-printed hangman’s hat-come-pillowcase that not only blocks his vision and obscures his individual identity but also threatens to smother him. Such simple social commentary seems a bit too obvious and uncomplex after the multivalent works in previous rooms.

Despite the weakness of the survey’s more recent offerings, it nonetheless presents a slice not just of the career of a thought-provoking artist but also snapshots of postwar Western society, through its descriptions of the work’s censorship or resultant political hullabaloo. Haacke’s work itself tries to prod the viewer into doing more than just “visiting a gallery” and the curators here ensure that the visitor sees not just a survey of painting but also of social criticism of the last several decades. And this relevance has no expiration date—with increased restrictions in American civil liberties as well as the growing Neo-Nazi movement in Germany, to name a couple examples, Haacke’s earlier work remains biting and important.

For more on the aesthetic happenings in Berlin, visit my blog A New Yorker in Berlin.

Exhibition catalog: Flügge, Matthias, and Robert Fleck, editors, Hans Haacke for Real: Works 1959-2006 Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2006. (With contributions by Walter Grasskamp, Benjmain Buchloh, Rosalyn Deutsche.)
[1] Walter Grasskamp, Molly Nesbit, and John Bird, eds., Hans Haacke (New York: Phaidon, 2004), 41.
[2] First English publication: Ian North, ed. Art Museums and Big Business (Kingston: Art Museums Association of Australia, 1984), 33-40.
[3] Grasskamp., 12.
[4] Ibid., 12.

Post-Modern Power or Merely Playtime?

Here in Berlin a competition is taking place. It is between neither football teams nor politicians nor beauty queens, but rather two Ferris wheels: the “World Wheel” and the “Giant Wheel.” Neither has been built yet, but in their planning stages both represent the city’s continual effort to transform into, and literally be able to see itself as, a first-class metropolis of recognizable stature. On the drawing board, the latter wheel is winning, sort of, with 5 meters of height on the merely 175 meter tall World Wheel, although the World Wheel is having an easier time collecting funds—200 million Euros--necessary to start construction. The competition also has a dicey tinge of East-West rivalry to it, with the World located near the famous Western transportation center Zoologischer Garten, and the Giant alongside the newly spruced-up Ostbahnhof, or “East-train-station.”

(Note: both Wheels bear names in the original English. Perhaps the world’s current-day lingua franca is employed to denote construction of international significance, or perhaps the owners simply know where the tourist dollars come from).

As with the London Eye, the premise behind these wheels is a popular and profitable tourist attraction that relies on the giddy pleasure of being high up in the sky and seeing all. And, as was the case in London in the pre-Eye era, there are sufficient extant look-out points in Berlin, for example, the cupola of the Reichstag or the cloud-grazing top of the Fernsehturm, or TV tower, unofficial icon of the city skyline. The added appeal of these wheels, then, is that their slightly peripheral location provides a view of all the viewing points, an ability to take in what you can’t take in if you are in the center of the city trying to take it all in.

But is that all? The paradox of a Ferris wheel is how sharply it exposes one’s atom-like existence compared to the spreading terrain out there while empowering the individual with an expansive gaze otherwise impossible to attain. The panoramic gaze has been a source of delight for centuries; in the United States nineteenth century landscape painters like German-born Albert Bierstadt showed their enormous canvases in conjunction with carefully constructed platforms, lighting, curtains, and curved walls so that the sweeping gaze would feel real, so that the view out over the landscape would be actual. These paintings were presented not as hermetic art but rather as entertainment; Bierstadt was no avant garde artiste but rather a showman.

In fact, George W. Ferris created his eponymous attraction for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair only twenty years after Bierstadt rose to the peak of his fame, at the close of the same era of wild geographic expansion and attempts at consolidation of the American identity. It was incredibly popular, grossing over half a million dollars at fifty cents per ride, and it rose about 80 meters, or 264 feet, off the ground. Its influence has been felt at fairgrounds ever since; the photos here depict an amusement Ferris Wheel from the current Christmas Market in Berlin’s Schlossplatz.

However, to paraphrase Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket, “this ain’t your granddaddy’s Ferris Wheel.” Unlike the amusement-park Wheel, which one rode as part of a larger fair experience of entertainment and oddities, and which positioned itself as part of a greater festival atmosphere, the new Wheel is proud of its stand-alone shock value and peddles itself as no more than the all-consuming gaze. These new Mega-Wheels are distinguished by this self-imposed uniqueness, evinced in their sheer enormousness as well as their physical distance. They are not for views of the terrain but rather out and over it; their marketing draw is the all-encompassing nature of their gaze which by definition stems from a point outside. If one is looking at something, one is not of it: the new wheels mark a boundary between onlooker and looked-upon, between individual and urban sphere.

This gaze is not just separate; it is also empowered by its mind-boggling breadth and reach. The equation of an all-seeing gaze with power has been discussed by thinkers like Jeremy Bentham, whose “Panopticon” prison tower posited a world where the threat of constant surveillance, rather than certain punishment, keeps people in line. (The Panopticon was popularized by French theorist Michel Foucault.) Art historian Allan Wallach has called the panoramic gaze in American landscape painting “Panoptic” to connote just these struggles to gain control over the landscape, to come to terms with new geography by forcing that geography to conform to the terms of one’s own vision.

So is this new Mega-Wheel proliferation a post-modern attempt to reconstitute the individual citizen as a powerful agent in the face of ever-larger and ever-more chaotic modern metropolises? Is it a way to make the nearly-atomized viewer, who increasingly counts for less in the over-populated globe, a judge on the perimeter of the brave new world? Perhaps a cultural attempt to figure out what to make of the sprawling society that we’ve created? A push to regain the upperhand over decadent millennial civilization through re-established visual supremacy?Or is it just another way to make money and have fun?

For more commentary about architecture and cultural politics in Berlin, check out the blog: Bagels by the Spree: A New Yorker in Berlin.

SOURCES
If the link above becomes outdated, information about the two wheels can be found in Karin Schmidl, “Das Geld reicht sogar fuer sechs Raeder,” Berliner Zeitung, 30 November 2006, 27.
Wallach’s assertion is in: "Making a Picture of the View from Mount Holyoke," in American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature, ed. David C. Miller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 73-84.

From the Archives

(Lifted from Harpers Readings 12/06)

From a November 10, 1962, letter by Rose Kennedy to her son, President John F. Kennedy, among 252 boxes of her notes and letters released in September by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Dear Jack,
In looking over my old diary, I found that you were urged on one occasion, when you were five years old, to wish for a happy death. But you turned down this suggestion and said that you would like to wish for two dogs instead. So do not blame the Bouviers if John has similar ideas.
Much love, dear Jack.

9/11: The Way We Were

Back in March, Maggie made a post about the film Loose Change, generating much discussion, both online and off. At the time, I argued that the film was sloppy and propagandistic -- and as such, a contribution to the dumbing down of American political discourse. A month or so ago, my roommate introduced me to another 9/11 film (approriately titled 9/11), which I would like to offer as an alternative to Loose Change.

In the months before September 11th, two French filmmakers, brothers Jules and Gédéon Naudet, came to New York to make a documentary about a rookie firefighter. The first months of shooting were uneventful, but on September 11^th the brothers were there filming with the fire department. The film contains one of the only two known recordings of the first plane hitting the Trade Center, as well as the only footage shot inside the towers on September 11th.

Unlike Loose Change (as well other documentaries such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Why We Fight) 9/11 is not propagandistic. Nor does it turn its subject matter into a melodrama as have some fictional films on the subject. Unlike the former films, it is a documentary in the sense that it actually documents, to a large extent, what it was like to be a firemen inside the towers, as well as in the time before and after the crash.

Watching 9/11, one remembers how unprecedented the event was which it depicts – something easy to forget after five years of having it abstracted and hammered into our political subconscious. As a film, it is deceptively simple: it seems to be little more than the Naudet brothers’ footage skillfully edited and honestly narrated. But as one watches, it quickly becomes clear how much has changed in the five intervening years since it was shot. Today, the firefighters' can-do attitude seems like innocence almost unimaginable in a world of terrorist threat levels and electronic surveillance. When the firemen close off one of the exits of Tower One or put labels on the front desk “just to make it obvious to people” which tower they are in, it seems almost naïve. Today, even when the subway stops for 10 minutes to wait for clearance it’s hard not to have a moment of panic.

It almost seems appropriate then, when during the break (in the TV version), we are treated to mini-lecture from Tom Ridge on the necessity for a Department of Homeland Security. Obviously this is not actually part of the movie, but viewed from the vantage point of 2006, it seems a clear example of how the emotion of 9/11 was expressed (or, if you will, manipulated) politically. For me, one of the most fascinating parts of 9/11 is contrasting the mentality of five years ago with today's, and this "commercial break" provides a clue about how this transition came about.

Although it is a bit long and at moments heart-wrenching to watch, 9/11 is definitely worth seeing even if only to remind us of the way we were. It received very little press in the US (or at least little that I can remember, and certainly little in comparison to Fahrenheit 9/11) which I find surprising since it is by far the best contemporary documentary I have seen in a while. It is available here from google video with French narration and here as it was aired on ABC.

A Letter from 2nd Law

You will have to forgive us, dear readers, for having undergone a severe haitus without telling anyone. Upon graduating from college the bloggers of 2nd Law scattered across the world (or simply across New York) with neither a sense of direction nor halting point. We had considered ourselves forewarned about post-grad life; but preperation does not entail experience. Knowing we were in for a year of transition did not stop what seemed like an endless and frustrating summer vacation.

By now, as you will soon come to realize, we have settled in a bit. Enough, at least, to get our bearings. Some of us are abroad (Germany, Japan, Mexico), most of us still in New York City (although we've now extended into Brooklyn). Regardless of our locations, we are ready to start writing again. Curiously enough, we created 2nd Law with this very diaspora in mind: what better way for us to keep in touch than to create a blog where any one of us can log in from anywhere and post updates, observations, and thoughts. We had no idea, however, that the shock of transition would leave us too overwhelmed and stimulated to collect ourselves in print.

So with that, allow us to reintroduce 2nd Law. These days magazine and blog launches seem to be fired off in rapid succession without much effect or thought, so we shall forgoe any hubub or fanfare in favor of a sincere and simple message: our apologies for the delay; and welcome back.

John McCain Does Not Speak For Us

This June, Senator John McCain will speak for Columbia College's Class Day.

Every year students of the American University system are given a chance to select their graduation speaker. The outcome is difficult to predict. In some instances, it can be satirical, like when Ali G (aka Sasha Baron Cohen) spoke at Harvard. In others, it can be glamorous, as is the case this year with Jodie Foster and UPenn. Other times, it can be painfully boring: UChicago - unsurprisingly - only chooses a speaker within the faculty. There are highs (George W. Bush came to Yale one year) and there are lows (George Stephanopoulos came to Columbia in another). And always, there are politics.

Understandably. Graduation is perhaps the only day (other than those awkward early years of recruitment) that a university will admit to being completely devoted to you. Emotionally, monetarily, temporally, physically. It is the only day from which most of us will enjoy an entire week of partying (thrown in our name and with no shame in a hangover). The only day our families will be forced to mingle and discuss our accomplishments. The only day we are compelled to wear a $44 (and up) article of clothing that is more poorly assembled than my grandmother's sofa-covers. It is special, and most of us - even if we say we don't care - want it to be perfect.

So, what did we expect when Senator John McCain was chosen as the speaker for Columbia College's Class of 2006? In 2000, this might have been acceptable. Back then, he was espoused by the left as a rare Republican who voted with intelligence. In the words of The New Republic: "In addition to shepherding campaign finance reform through Congress - against the administration's efforts to kill it quietly - he co-sponsored a patients' bill of rights with John Edwards and Ted Kennedy; co-sponsored with Charles Schumer a measure to allow the importation of generic prescription drugs; co-sponsored with John Kerry legislation to raise auto emissions standards; and co-sponsored legislation with Joe Lieberman to close the "gun-show loophole" and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in compliance with the Kyoto accords." He was socially aware too - supporting stem cell research and the precedent in Roe v. Wade.

After his brutal loss of the 2000 primary in South Carolina to the foul play of mastermind Karl Rove, a new McCain began to emerge from the folds of the Republican party. This Senator voted for tax-cuts, supported teaching "intelligent design", and endorsed the new anti-abortion legislation that recently passed in South Dakota. And despite originally voting against the Federal Marriage Amendment (which allows marriage to be defined as only between a man and a woman), McCain now supports an initiative to ban same-sex marriage in his home state, and opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would make it illegal for employers to dismiss employees based on sexual orientation.

To add insult to injury, McCain will also be speaking at the graduation ceremony of Liberty University (One need look no further than the recent NYTime's Magazine story on Liberty University's debate team. Shame on you, Liberty U, publicly lording your debate victories over Columbia's prestigious debate team). The school - located in Lynchburg, Virginia - was founded in 1971 by the spirited conservative Christian Jerry Falwell. For those of you unfamiliar with Falwell's fiery polemics, I shall not hesitate to include one of my favorite of his quotations: "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers ... AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." Falwell is the very same man who McCain once (and reasonably so) denounced as an agent of "intolerance."

In response, Columbia students have circulated a petition online titled "John McCain Does Not Speak For Us." Most of the signers respect McCain's right to speak, but are taking the opportunity to show their objection to his political views. As my classmate Wayne Ting wrote, "I believe Senator McCain has the right to speak at Class Day. I don't expect that this petition will stop him from speaking, but I do believe it will send a message that homophobia will not be tolerated."

Indeed, Class Day is a special moment for us all. It is a moment of supreme recognition: our names will be called, we will walk on-stage, and we will be acknowledged and congratulated by the University as graduates. In turn, however, we should use this recognition to call attention to politics and beliefs we find hateful and inconsistent. I encourage everyone to sign the petition here.

The Soccer War

A revolution every day...

Although, as a college student, I rarely get to read books for pleasure, I recently finished Ryszard Kapuscinski’s slim (at just over 200 pages) novel The Soccer War. Dubbed by LA Weekly as "the great prose-poet of international disorder,” during his career as a foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, Kapuscinski covered over 27 coups and revolutions, was sentenced to death four times, and was acquainted with Lumumba, Allende, Guevara and numerous other figures of third-world emancipation. From its modest beginning in Accra the year after Ghana became the first African colony to gain independence from Britain, The Soccer War seamlessly jumps to places as varied as the Congo, Nigeria, Palestine, El Salvador, Algeria, Honduras, and Cyprus in the period between 1958 and 1976.

I wouldn’t normally spend time talking about a book published nearly three decades ago, but since many of us will soon be leaving our small island for disparate parts of the world, I thought that it might be enlightening to revisit an era crucial in shaping the structure of that world. While we, the under 30s, are familiar with the sexual revolution, Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement, the massive global political transformation that occurred during the 1960s is far less present in our collective consciousness. It has been lamented that contemporary journalism on the developing world, and Africa especially, is often void of historical perspective. Media coverage may give sparse background as it is directly related to the story, but related historical context is usually skimmed over. For those of us who think we know or care about the developing world, the spirit of the era Kapuscinski documents is perhaps worth revisiting.

As a Polish journalist, Kapuscinski’s perspective has little of the latent self-importance or white guilt which might underlie that of a British, French, Belgian, or even American journalist in the same position. As he explains to some Ghanaians in Mpango towards the end of the book, “My country has no colonies, and there was a time when my country was a colony… There were camps, war, executions… That was what we called fascism. It’s the worst kind of colonialism.” Perhaps this background, and the fact that his roots lay behind the iron curtain, gives Kapuscinski’s prose a humility found rarely with other western writers.

Kapuscinski reminds us frequently throughout his narrative that what he is writing is not a book, but “disjointed fragments;” the plan of an unwritten book fit into the spaces between dispatches and chapters of other non-existent books. Ironically, it is this fragmentation which gives The Soccer War its cohesion; had it dealt with each subject comprehensively it would have quickly grown into a massive unreadable volume; had it focused solely on a few subjects it would have failed to capture the spirit of an era marked global transformation.

The book takes its title from the 1969 war between Honduras and El Salvador; a war which grew from the conflict surrounding a soccer match. Kapuscinski narrates his experience of the war and its beginnings with impassive candor; the war seems at the same time so fantastic and so ordinary that it could be an episode out of Garcia Marquez. In another chapter, Kapuscinski describes driving out of Lagos through enemy territory during the Biafran war.
Each roadblock he passes demands money and exacts a heavy price upon failure to pay. Along the road Kapuscinski passes burning cars and charred bodies. After two road blocks he has been beaten near unconsciousness, doused with kerosene, and nearly burned alive. Knowing that he has no money left, he decides to run the next roadblock, dodging Molotov cocktails and gunfire in a borrowed Peugeot.

Driving out of Lagos a few months ago, it would have been difficult for me to imagine that only 30 years ago, on the very same road, Kapuscinski might have been dodging homemade bombs and speeding over flaming roadblocks. Much has changed, but, although I was not there in the 60s to judge, I imagine that much has also stayed the same. Although driving out of Lagos is a vastly different experience today, there are still roadblocks every few kilometers and often you still have to pay a "dash" to the policemen manning them. Although I was dismayed by the sad state of the roads and the rampant corruption, reading The Soccer War a few months later put these things into jarring historical perspective. I don’t mean to imply that the problems of the present should be written off in light of the past, but rather that a little bit of historical context can go a long way when looking at the contemporary world. Prior to reading The Soccer War, my understanding of the events Kapuscinski narrates existed in a historical vacuum. The Algerian War for Independence, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Biafran War, the 1973 Chilean coup, the Soccer War, and a host of other contemporaneous events were unconnected in my mind. By jumping unhesitatingly through time and across oceans, drawing philosophic (and occasionally questionable) conclusions about events often difficult to believe, Kapuscinski’s narrative connects events which, to those learning about them from safe inside the Ivy League, would otherwise remain unconnected.

After finishing The Soccer War it is impossible not to wonder what drives someone to put themselves in the near death situations Kapuscinski routinely encounters. Such a person, as one of my friends remarked, “must have a death wish.” While this may certainly be part of the equation, in the subtext of the book Kapuscinski himself offers another explanation. Before he begins the narrative of his death-defying drive out of Lagos, he mentions the inexplicable feeling of passing close to a lion in the wild. “I knew no one could describe it to me,” he writes. “And I cannot explain it myself.” As he cannot describe this or Poland to the Ghanaians in Mpango, so is it impossible to really describe the events covered in The Soccer War. However, Kapuscinski’s blend of personal and political, prose and poetry, fact and (presumably) fiction, makes these events as accessible as is possible to to those of us who did not actually wittness them.