Tonio laid plates on the table, placed knives, forks and glasses beside them, fetched a flask of black wine, brought out the bread. Antonin leant back in his chair, speaking a sentence or two from time to time, talking of torrents, corrals, of names which were unfamiliar to Tonio, but mostly he sat there silent, smiling, like a man having his hair cut in a café on a Sunday morning.
John Berger’s TV documentary Ways of Seeing, a series of four 30 minute essays, is an essential work. It’s a manifesto for being curious about art as a medium and sceptical of the way culture is presented by more conservative schools of thought. There’s a profound generosity about Berger’s approach, and, while ambitious, the purpose of Ways of Seeing is never to flatter anyone for what they think they already know, or confirm any biases.
The stories in Berger’s short story collection Photocopies are all a few pages long each, with a density like poetry. The author’s voice is like a fly on the wall, I want to compare it to photography, like the writer has made an effort to capture what they’re writing about. There’s never a question of a lack of sensitivity in these stories – Berger is never less than tactful in the way he deals with any subject his work touches on.
A few recurring themes in the collection are homelessness, art, storytelling, friendship, and colonialism. There are many individual lines or paragraphs that jump out, and create an impression, even if they’re not relevant to the story they’re a part of. Berger’s worldview often threatens to overpower any chance for a story to emerge. The author’s voice is somewhat God-like, in a way that would be patronising if it wasn’t so consistently empathetic.
This has made me wonder whether having too benevolent an outlook on life can actually be a hindrance when writing fiction. I hesitate to say this though, as it’s usually the opposite – bad fiction, I tend to think, is the result of the writer not being generous enough, and therefore not inhabiting the same world as the other characters in the story or the same world as the audience, so it’s odd to see it the other way around.
Part of why I wanted to read this collection was that I wanted either to understand why Ways of Seeing works better than any of Berger’s other TV documentaries, or somehow get some understanding of his work which would help me appreciate it more. I think it might be its scope. Berger’s philosophical, political and existential musings are given a context which allows them the room they require. More prosaic things could only get in the way.
Sat on the Mat 