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Sylwia Chutnik again:

“All the time the old gits are blowing their big noses into flannel handkerchiefs and snorting the leftover phlegm back into themselves, into their lungs. Maybe it’ll come in useful later? Maybe, when that rainy day comes, you go for the phlegm and eat it for dinner.”

Chutnik easily avoids the intellectuo-philosophising that mars so much Polish writing but also avoids the traps of Polish “ousiderism.” Her characters are from the margins - or thereabouts - of society but despite the cruelty (in Chutnik hell is others) there is none of the “look at me” wallowing in filth and degradation that passes for documentary-style realism in the works of Stasiuk and Nowakowski. What alarms in Chutnik is how broad the margins of modern Polish society have become - not just winos and criminals, but the old, the unmarried, children, non-conformists…

She has already won prizes and acclaim in Poland and if there is any justice in publishing she will be one to watch outside of the country too.
Kieszonkowy atlas kobiety

The government assigned me to a pension fund (the one that was stung by Bernie Madoff) run by one of the big banks here. In their very first letter to me, an unwilling and forced customer, the managers of my money write: “In the attached prospectus you will find the conditions of your membership.” Oh good. Perhaps if I break their rules they’ll kick me out. From the prospectus I find that I am now an investor in several banks, a television station, a newspaper, a stockbroking firm, a developer and God knows what kind of other shady businesses. Mostly, though, I am an investor in government bonds. So to recap: the state takes money off me and (via an expensive and privately owned firm) lends that money to itself to be repaid to me with interest at some later date. That interest comes from the taxes paid by me. The state could just take the money off me in the form of pension contributions and pay it back to me later but that would cut out the middleman.

Olga Tokarczuk, my most favouritest writer of them all, has an article in the latest Polityka. It’s travel literature, my most favouritest genre of them all. She’s been to China: “His [Mao's] face is found in the most unlikely places: on the walls of buildings–” Hold on, hold on a minute there. The wall of a building is an unusual place to find the image of a dead communist leader? Has Tokarczuk never heard of Cuba? — “on the label of a bottle of mineral water, on wallets, on tiszerty [sic]–” Again, just a minute there. A tee-shirt is an unusual place to find the picture of a dead communist leader? Has Tokarczuk never heard of students? — “and the faces of watches.”

“How is it possible that someone who caused so many deaths is worshipped by the people?” she asks someone. The person answers (”calmly and with conviction”) that Mao is like a river, sowing destruction but also fertilising land. If a westerner wrote like Tokarczuk Polish critics would be all over him like a rash, and rightly so. China is a totalitarian state, they would say. Such a naive question would be treated with great suspicion, as a provocation. The wrong answer could lead to the work camps, and so on. Has Tokarczuk never heard of communist Poland? She was born there, after all.

This is why, Kapuściński aside, I don’t like travel writing

Sport is a subject I neglect somewhat so in an attempt to redress the balance and bring all readers up to speed on what’s going on in the wonderful world of noble sportsmanship, here’s a quote from yesterday’s Gazeta Wyborcza: “Former Polish Football Association observer and umpire ethics lecturer Wiesław K. has been arrested by Wrocław police.” The charges concern corruption in soccer. The plaintiff – a well-known and influential lecturer in ethics.

Sylwia Chutnik, who has been looking out at us from numerous magazine covers and newspaper interviews over the last few months, is a feminist and a radical. She also likes punk and wrote a book called A Pocket Atlas of Women, which is actually very good. Depressing as all hell of course but a welcome antidote to the second rate glitter of self-obsessed award ceremonies that seem to take up so much time on television. Here’s a rough and ready (I have no dictionary to hand, for example) translation. I’ve put in italics those words that were in English in the original and have not been thoroughly borrowed into Polish:

“Madwomen have annual international conferences during which they discuss their rights while eating the wonderful catered food. There are special Power Point presentations, identity badges and special folders containing didactic materials. The madwomen give talks in which they sum up their fucked up lives. They complain about the paucity of EU funding, murderous tax regulations and the low level of social awareness in the area of work-life-madness balance. Madwomen have their own clubs, chatrooms, discussion forums, their own subculture, language and interests. Mańka from Ochota, then, is a part of the global society of madwomen, hysterics saints, suicides and damned. Even still, she feels lonely and empty. That’s the way it is when the Housewife is cut off from her natural environment of crumbs and dust.”

And in a further break with Polish tradition, Chutnik seems to be able to avoid the temptation of dropping brand names. She writes “a collection of toys from egg surprises.” I don’t know if a male Polish intellectual writer could have restrained himself from writing “kindersurprise.”

As we all know, if it were easier to fire workers, capitalists would hire more of them. But what about tenants? The law regarding rented accommodation in Poland is being changed. In short: it will be easier to evict tenants. “And what’s in it for tenants?” asks today’s Gazeta Wyborcza. “Thanks to the reduced risk connected with renting flats, more flats will appear on the market. Rents will fall as an effect.” In fairness to GW, even they express some reservations.

When the zloty was strong a lot of people took out mortgages denominated in other currencies, especially the Swiss franc. In a so-broad-as-to-be-meaningless sense any loan is a gamble of course, but this seems to be a double hazard: (1) I will be able to pay off the loan and (2) the zloty will not fall in value against the Swiss franc. Well it did fall and some are now seeing mortgage repayments fifty per cent higher than they bargained on six months ago, and loans worth more than their houses. These people are bad gamblers and so far no one is suggesting that they simply renege on their loans and give the banks the finger.

Of course not: tearing up contracts like that just wouldn’t be cricket. As Blihr points out, one of the state’s main raisons d’etre is to guarantee contracts. But amazingly, Poland’s deputy prime minister is talking about tearing up the contracts signed between businesses and banks regarding foreign currency options. When capitalists, as opposed to would-be home-owners, gamble on a strong zloty things look very different.

What’s fun about the crisis is watching the experts scramble to explain things they obviously don’t understand. The same experts who didn’t see this coming are now spouting off about how long it will last. It’s funny also to see blind faith in the voodoo power of magic words make a comeback. Tusk announced yesterday that if the zloty sinks in value to 20 euro cents Poland will defend it. But it’s not “intervention” and please don’t use that word, he says. After all, the government is not about intervention. Another funny one, which unfortunately I can’t find on the internet editions of Gazeta Wyborcza, was the opinion expressed by some experts that actually intervening in the currency markets would be a bad idea but talking about intervening – that would be fine, just what the zloty needs.

The government is interv– errr, defending the zloty by cashing in all the euros it has from the EU on the money markets rather than in the central bank (if this sounds like gibberish to you perhaps you should consider a career in economics). A good idea, surely? Those euros are worth a lot of zloties these days. But basically this is currency speculation and speculation, we are being told, is the problem causing the zloty’s weakness. It’s good when we do it but bad when others do it.

More entertainment: a mini-Madoff has been found.

Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Barbara Ehrenreich, Thomas Frank - I’m familiar with them all but it turns out that if you want real red in tooth and claw writing you should turn to the French. I’ve been reading Alain Bihr’s frankly Marxist Neoliberal Newspeak and it’s strong stuff. Essentially, any kind of exchange between people is exploitation. It’s quite frustrating to find out that all your life you’ve been both a helpless, pathetic pawn and a bloodsucking plutocrat. Marxists have the answer to everything: whatever way you turn you run into Marxism. In fact, its one-size-fits-all model is nearly as annoying as neoliberalism’s “There is no alternative.”

Some of Bihr’s theses are frankly ludicrous. For example, he claims that pension funds are a gigantic scam. According to Bihr, this rational and reasonable response to the demographic timebomb that is ticking away ever louder leads to greater inequality in society.

By an enormous fluke, I happen to be reading this book as the first wave of post-pension reform Poles retire to enjoy the fruits of the money they wisely invested in the pension funds that have been performing so handsomely lately. Plastered over the newspapers has been the news that the first pension paid out in this way amounted to just over 20 zloties a month (a pizza and a coke but the state is making up the difference). This twilight-years bonanza is being enjoyed by a woman who over the ten years in which the pension funds have been in operation managed to pay nearly 6,000 zloties into her fund. Gazeta Wyborcza - the same paper that admitted the pension funds have lost half of their value in the last few months - informs us with a straight face that if she had paid in 60,000 she would be in receipt of just over 200 zloties (one fifteenth of the alleged national average pay). Or in other words: if she were richer she would be richer.

You really don’t want to know what Bihr has to say about public debt…

When Platforma Obywatelska took over it looked like the end of a glorious two-year run of self-writing stories courtesy of the assorted gang of oddballs and weirdoes that had been in power before. With PO in the saddle it was just more dull neoliberalism – without even any need for the shock tactics Naomi Klein writes about.

Sure, there’s the crisis now, which makes newspapers worth buying again, but the entertainment value of world wide depression is short-lived. Already it’s settling into a depressing round of lay-offs, pay-cuts and dole queues. Madoff was good for a laugh but the high hopes everyone had entertained that another Madoff or two was in the woodwork waiting to be smoked out have faded.

But suddenly, PO perked up. Ćwiąkalski, minister for justice, resigned after a third convict in the Olewnik kidnapping case committed suicide in prison. Nie claimed that prime minister Tusk demanded Ćwiąkalski’s head not because of the suicide but because he (Ćwiąkalski) was seen at a party organized by a businessman awaiting trial on very serious charges of corrupting ministerial officials but the silence that greeted this revelation was deafening. But Ćwiąkalski’s replacement, Andrzej Czuma was another pair of galoshes. Firstly – look at him:

Secondly, he has espoused the American Way of gun ownership: a gun in every Polish household is what he wanted, though like those bishops he had to recant. Thirdly, it turns out that he left a string of angry creditors behind him in America. Fourthly – inevitably – he’s having a spot of nepotism bother over waving his son into his ministerial office. And so Tusk is left defending him and assuring all that Czuma is not for the boot – after less than a month in office.

And on top of all these goodies, Jan Rokita – a politician whose (admittedly limited) appeal I have never understood – goes and gets himself led off an aeroplane in handcuffs in Munich after getting shirty with an air hostess. Palikot (another crrrazy Polish politician) claims Rokita rang the highest leaders in the land to get the consular help all air ragers so richly deserve.