The Caucasian Chalk Centre Circle

In late 1992, Noam Chomsky was asked by Time magazine to pen an article, summarising what he felt would be the key elements of the recently elected Bill Clinton’s vision for America. Chomsky’s erudite and perceptive castigation of the inevitable philosophical bankruptcy of the quasi liberal functionary of the Capitalist elite who was moving in to the Oval Office, came in an article that gave a nod to the Scriptures, entitled New Bottles, Old Wine; it is an eerily prescient text for the tribulations endured by Newcastle United fans, players and management so far in 2013.

The white flag that was run up before kick-off at the Amex Stadium in the FA Cup was obviously one of convenience. Certainly it wasn’t as sickening an intervention as Sepp Blatter’s condemnation of Kevin Prince Boateng for leading AC Milan off the pitch when he was racially abused during a friendly against lower league Pro Patria, with the added threat that FIFA would bring sanctions against clubs who had the temerity stand up to abuse in such a decisive fashion in future, but Brighton 2 Newcastle United 0 was fairly foul.  While there are mitigating circumstances (Shola’s farcical red card for one; anyone wanting to see malevolent intent in a tackle ought to have seen Stockfield’s Bruce Vause launch a vindictive studs up assault on Percy Main’s Lindsay Collinson the same day), there is no doubt that at a managerial level any further involvement in that competition would have been viewed as a serious inconvenience to the squad.

Of course, there was at least a tacit assumption among everyone with a stake in the club, financial or emotional, that there would be some honour in a second successive cup defeat to Brighton. However, the sheer, ragged incompetence of the non-performance on the day left fans seething and a clearly enraged Pardew excoriated those who had disgraced the shirts. The unpleasant fact is, the only FA Cup tie success Pardew has presided over while in charge at SJP was the third round success last season over Blackburn Rovers, a club that we are seemingly intent on emulating as we fall further down the league each week. Of course, expedience and pragmatism has infected the body politic of Newcastle United to the extent that the only things held in greater contempt than the club’s fans are the domestic cup competitions. These cups may be a thing of the past, but the fans’ anger remains; and it’s growing.

In the past, I’ve alluded to the fact that a section of our support disproportionately responds to any bad news like Macduff learning of the fate of his family in IVii of The Scotch Play. I stand by that analogy, but it gives me no pleasure to report that some of the most active smart phone and keyboard savants, rather than reacting with simple melancholic fury to any dose of misfortune or ill-luck have now decided to adopt a world view that incorporates a constant audible level of malcontent misery that suggests they’re subsisting on a steady diet of readings from Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation to a soundtrack of Leonard Cohen on Librium at 16rpm. Unable to actually comprehend Schopenhauer’s contention that all human desire is futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so is all human action in the world, as summarised by the quotation "Man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants,” the Brothers Grim now sound like Tommy from “Early Doors” would if the club he’d supported since 1992 had fallen to a Championship club in the FA Cup two seasons running.

Let’s be clear about this, Pardew isn’t alone among Premier League managers in adopting a defeatist position towards the FA Cup, especially bearing in mind that the three games following the Brighton defeat (Norwich, Reading and Villa) are perhaps the most crucial league encounters this club has faced since May 2009. This is not the time for Pardew to start resembling Souness whenever he gets interviewed. However, I think it shows that the fans aren’t the only ones who are frightened of the prospect of relegation; the boss is clearly starting to panic.

A while ago I’d have suggested his squad selection at Brighton was a way of transmitting to the “owner” the fact that he thought our reserves were not up to scratch; that would be fair enough if he hadn’t slammed them unmercifully in the post-match interview, suggesting he’s starting to feel the pressure and wants to deflect some of the blame. The first time I thought Pardew might be reaching his sell-by date was his pitch side histrionics after we’d made it 3-3 away to Arsenal, expressively demanding that the squad hold on to a point by calming things down; however we all know how that one turned out. That night Pardew’s eyes betrayed the fear he felt, when they ought to have shown he possessed the resolve to assume ultimate control of the club’s destiny. At the Emirates, when the team needed his guidance the most, he was unable to influence our tactics in a positive way, so as to alter the team shape to give us a chance of grabbing a draw; even worse, when we went a goal down, instead of holding his nerve and trying to come again for a fourth equaliser, he rashly meddled, badly, and a defeat turned in to a thrashing. Obviously he will stay in place for at least the next two games, presumably as there are no credible contenders to replace him, despite my mischievous thought that Neil Lennon with Shearer as his assistant might be amusing in an odd sort of way, so Pardew is here for the long term. Indeed, I don’t want him to go; I want him to turn things around. This is the current Manager of the Year we’re talking about, remember.

However, as Bertolt Brecht said in his critique of Realism in the Balance by Gyorgy Lukacs; it is not about the good old days, but the bad new ones. If the unthinkable happens in the next two games and he is shown the door, it will be at the end of a transfer window that has yet to offer an ounce of positivity for Newcastle United; good news is a scarce commodity of Tyneside this year. To be fair, coming away from Carrow Road with a point, after we’d lost the 7 previous away games, even if the contest was an unwatchable mess from first minute to last, is something to build on; though it would be nice if we had something to build around, such as a squad. With Ba already at home in West London and scoring for Chelsea and Danny Simpson seemingly using his alleged broken toe and expiring contract as an excuse to shack up with his partner, also in West London, and whore himself around clubs in the South East, we’re a body down despite the belated arrival of Matthieu Debuchy and what happens next as regards comings, but especially goings, is a matter of terrifying conjecture.  Our fate hangs in the balance in a manner comparable to Eldon Square Nando’s now that Simpson has moved away.

When I was 19, I read Kafka oder Thomas Mann by Lukacs, in which he outlined his philosophical standpoint as regards literary aesthetics. In favouring Mann’s realism over Kafka’s modernist sensibilities, though the Czech writer died in 1924 before the concept of Modernism as a literary genre had become an established term, Lukacs showed himself to be not only Aristotelian in his default critical position, but also professed himself a Marxist. The man who would later be one of Comitern’s foremost intellectuals quoted from Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 to support his belief in the superior nature of realism within art, or Einfuhlung as he called it; by incorporating Marx’s phrase man is bigger than his thoughts. At that age, I was contemptuous of the seemingly conformist doctrine that Lukacs proselytised, yet I remained deeply suspicious of the ideological consequences of embracing the experimental, maverick approaches adopted by those proto and actual Modernist, not to mention postmodern and indeed avant garde writers I loved. Would opting for the Weltanschauung of Jarry, Dickinson, Pound, Eliot, Joyce and others whose avowed experimentation seemed more akin to the Nietzschean principles of Ubermenschen that the acceptable social realist works praised by Lukacs mean I was betraying the fact I possessed personal ideology that was at best counter intuitively reformist or at worst verging on petit bourgeois dilettantism?

Thankfully, my intellectual malaise was quickly resolved when I came across Brecht’s essays. Whilst Lukacs appeared to me, at that time in my intellectual and philosophical development, to embody a meek celebration of the Literary Canon with a kind of obsequious, conformist reverence I found stultifying and reductive, Brecht offered an exciting challenge to the established literary elite through his Marxist dramaturgy and his avowed anti Aristotelian ideological position. As Brecht said in a letter to Walter Benjamin; empathy is the emotion we must be rid of, which was the cornerstone of his concept of Verfremdungseffekt, which celebrated unemotional theatrical alienation. When watching a Brecht play, the audience instinctively knows, as well as being regularly reminded, that the drama is not real, nor does it pretend to be; rather it consciously and relentlessly battles against realism. I took Brecht’s theory and used it as a philosophical carte blanche to luxuriate in the most experimental Modernist and Nouvelle Roman texts imaginable, as I fell in with the deconstructionist critical charlatans, but that is another story.

Looking back from a distance of 30 years at my youthful philosophical wrangling, what intrigues me is not the conclusion that I drew, nor that I was unintentionally proving the validity of Roland Barthes’s concept of Jouissance, but rather the two thinkers who sparked my own internal debate were both, in their words, Marxists and have been thought of, now that their life and works are complete, as exponents of the philosophy of Marxism, however one seeks to interpret that word, for more than 6 decades since Brecht’s death and 40 years since Lukacs passed away. Do their theories and the way they have been interpreted really matter? Is debate on such recondite, abstract matters literally as relevant as two bald men fighting over a yellow polo shirt? Of course the Brecht Lukacs Debate matters; mainly because humans care enough to think about such things as literature and the ways in which it represents the world and the human condition. Brecht’s legacy is a tangible one in that his plays are performed, but both he and Lukacs penned words that make me think, even to this day, about literature and the purpose of writing.

This debate returned to my mind last weekend as news of Fabricio Coloccini’s unhappiness emerged. Before Christmas his father had said his son wanted to return to Argentina, to San Lorenzo where he’d played on loan as a young man. However as Coloccini senior had recently been appointed youth team coach at San Lorenzo, it seemed to be a load of hot air. This verdict remained the case until last Friday, when a story emerged in The Independent that Coloccini wanted to leave Newcastle United, as his wife had gone back to Argentina for an unspecified reason, which has resulted in much immoderate on-line speculation. It is instructive to remember the story was penned by Martin Hardy who, though he is a lifelong Newcastle fan who cut his journalistic teeth in The Mag when he was in Sixth Form two decades ago, came out with the risible non story of Newcastle’s Muslim players refusing to wear the shirt next season if Wonga are the sponsors as Islam prohibits usury. Well, that was shown to be a load of baloney, but they may not be wearing the shirt next year as they’ll all be flogged to the highest bidder, according to the doom mongers on the message boards.

Getting back to Colo, the inarguable fact is that San Lorenzo cannot afford him; if Newcastle are unwilling to cancel Xisco’s contract, there’s no way they’ll tear up our captain and best player’s deal,  one which he signed only a year ago, even if he has been pretty poor by his standards this campaign. That said, talks are set to take place between the player and club. My hope is that Colo will remain until the summer to guide us to safety, but I can’t delay my writing until the situation is resolved, having already waited 24 hours for the Loic Remy saga to conclude.

I’m like 50,000 other Newcastle fans in that I know nothing of this player other than his name, which I’m unsure how to pronounce. Nobody has seen him play, which ironically reflects how Brecht admitted he’d not actually read what Lukacs had said in the essay he so eloquently denounced, much less hear him speak, thus confident pronouncements as to why he’s turned us down and what he could have offered the team, based on little more evidence than Joey Barton’s Twitter feed are not helpful. Admittedly, a suggested £10m price tag and rumours he’s a good striker who can also play wide meant he’d do for me. When disaster struck barely 24 hours after a deal was seemingly concluded and it emerged he’d gone to QPR for £80k a week and a get out clause if they are relegated, it immediately became clear such fiscal brinkmanship is nigh on impossible to fight against; Newcastle United won’t break our wage structure to get him on board or give him the chance to walk away in the summer, which he’s been given in W12 if the Rs go down; such an amazing incentive for any avaricious player. Let’s just hope he doesn’t send us down when we play at Loftus Road in early May.

Such sentiments may be alarmist and are certainly negative, but it is impossible not to be influenced by the relentless negativity of the on-line Tommy Schopenhauers . If we take the words of these miserable bastards to heart then Ben Arfa, Colo, Krul (another one who has been well below par all season) and Santon are all for the off in this transfer window, with Cabaye, Cisse and Debuchy following them through the exit as soon as we’re relegated in May and there’s no-one coming in to replace him. I wonder whether the Tommy Schopenhauers at some elemental level want to have bad news heaped upon us, simply so they have the excuse to moan, whinge and gripe to the fullest extent. Personally, I’m a sentimentalist, so I’d love to see Danny Graham sign for us; he’s a local lad, a Newcastle fan and the Andy Carroll you’d trust to take your daughter on a date to the pictures.  I’m also an optimist; in the absence of supporting evidence, I still believe we’ll sign some players and that we can get out of danger. It isn’t May 2009 again, just yet. One can only hope that our club’s fate does not reflect Brecht’s analysis of one of his most famous works; what Mother Courage learns matters little, but what the audience learns by observing her fate is of the greatest importance.

I will admit that it is hard to argue against abject pessimism, especially when there’s no tangible alternative other than a cheery disposition and the hope that the next 2 games and last fortnight of the transfer window can bring us some good news. Thirty years ago I believed Bertolt Brecht was completely correct in everything he said and Gyorgy Lukacs spouted anachronistic, conformist nonsense; nowadays, I see the validity of both viewpoints, while tending towards the latter. It’s the same with the Schopenhauers and the Aristotelians at Newcastle United, though I think I’m slightly more in love with the latter, but only in a Platonic way…