Category Archives: readings

“…We’re all exiles”

Posted on 18 May 2014 by Laleh Khalili

It’s at moments of misfortune that we remember we are all exiles (Total Chaos, p. 98) I first read about Marseilles when I was around 10 years old and someone gave me the Persian translation of The Count of Monte Cristo. … Continue reading →

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The Brooklyn Docks

Posted on 2 May 2014 by Laleh Khalili

Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) is often ranked among the greatest films made in the US.  I had seen it when I had been very young but, because of a friend’s suggestion, recently reread the script.  I was rather shocked … Continue reading →

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pair of ragged claws

Posted on 29 April 2014 by Laleh Khalili

From Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into the Night (thank you Anya!) EDMUND: You’ve just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They’re all connected with the sea. Here’s one. When I was on the Squarehead square … Continue reading →

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Piracy and Counter-piracy

Posted on 18 April 2014 by Laleh Khalili

There is a kind of romance around piracy.  It is the romance of anti-authority figures and of a life lived not just in the margins but outside the boundaries.   Just think about the masses of novels and films about piracy … Continue reading →

Posted in finance and insurance, logistics, piracy, political economy, ports, readings, shipping conditions, ships, transport | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Sailing on dhows and working in the auto industry

Posted on 15 April 2014 by Laleh Khalili

  A facebook friend sent me a URL to a blogpost which introduced Sons of Sinbad by Alan Villiers…  What struck me was the contention that the book was “probably the only work of western travel literature that focuses on the seafarers of … Continue reading →

Posted in finance and insurance, labour, Middle East, political economy, readings, seafaring, shipping conditions, ships, the sea, transport | Leave a comment

Poems about ships

Posted on 1 April 2014 by Laleh Khalili

The poem has a whiff (or more than a whiff) of orientalism about it – but I love the last verse: ‘Cargoes’ Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, … Continue reading →

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Interconnections

Posted on 26 March 2014 by Laleh Khalili

Dead Water by Simon Ings is the most fabulously dystopian novel about shipping, containers, ships, airships, tsunami, shipping, and dastardly deed that can happen when vast numbers of ships are circumnavigating the globes with vast numbers of containers on board.  One … Continue reading →

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“Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…”

Posted on 21 March 2014 by Laleh Khalili

From Melville’s Billy Budd: …war contractors, whose gains, honest or otherwise, are in every land an anticipated portion of the harvest of death…. And he is the inventor of “fog of war” too: Forty years after a battle it is … Continue reading →

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The prose and poetry of toiling in/on the seas

Posted on 20 March 2014 by Laleh Khalili

I am ashamed to admit that I was a latecomer to the magic of Allan Sekula. Far too much of a latecomer.  I discovered his stunning work on shipping and transport, last year; he died in August last year. His amazing … Continue reading →

Posted in Allan Sekula, capital accumulation, labour, ports, readings, ships, the arts, the sea, the sublime, transport | Tagged , | Leave a comment

On the interweaving of fiction and reality

Posted on 19 March 2014 by Laleh Khalili

I hate to use the formally inventive and affectively brilliant Cities of Salt (by Abdulrahman Munif) as a sociological text or a total mirror of reality, which is what so many people do probably because until America’s Kingdom came along very few texts … Continue reading →

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