English Translations of Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Funes the Memorious’

The impetus for Jorge Luis Borges attaining widespread international recognition came when, in May 1961, at 61 years of age, he was awarded the first Prix International alongside Samuel Beckett. The Prix International was an international award for literary merit, established by six publishing houses – Seix Barral of Barcelona, Gallimard of Paris, Einaudi of Turin, Grove Press of New York, Weidenfeld & Nicolson of London, and Rowohlt of Germany – and convening in 1961 at the Hotel Formentor in Majorca. With members from six committees gathered to reach a decision, a tie transpired between Borges and Beckett, as the French, Spanish and Italian members pushed for Borges, and the American, British and German members insisted instead on Beckett. Henry Miller was briefly offered as a compromise candidate, and a seventh, Scandinavian committee was proposed as a means of settling the dispute; but in the end all parties resolved to split the award equally between the two men they had initially considered.

Receiving this international publisher’s prize jointly with with Beckett brought Borges to the attention of the Anglophone world. He embarked on a series of lectures in the United States and then on into Europe. Then in 1962 two English translations of his works appeared. A handful of his poems had been translated into English as early as 1942; and several of his stories had already emerged in various journals, beginning with ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’, translated by Anthony Boucher for the August 1948 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Yet the translations of 1962 were the first collections of Borges’ fiction to be published in English.

So Labyrinths was published in 1962 by New Directions, edited and with translations by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. It brought together a number of Borges’ stories – drawn mostly from his Ficciones (1944) and El Aleph (1949) – along with several of his essays and parables. In the same year, Ficciones – a fuller translation of Borges’ collection – was published by Grove Press. Edited and introduced by Anthony Kerrigan, it contained translations by Kerrigan alongside Anthony Bonner, Alastair Reed, Helen Temple, and Ruthven Todd. It would be published in the United Kingdom in the same year, and under the same title, by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

It may be wondered why Borges did not himself translate his works into English. He grew up bilingual in Spanish and English, learning to read via his English grandmother, and developing in his father’s library – a library he would later call the ‘chief event’ of his life – a lifelong passion for English literature. More, some of his earliest literary endeavours were in the realm of translation. He translated Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Happy Prince’ into Spanish when he was aged just nine. Moving from Buenos Aires, between 1914 and 1921 Borges’ family lived first in Zurich, then in Spain, and Borges became fluent in both French and German. Towards the end of his time in Europe, he completed translations of German expressionist poetry. Then in January 1925, back in Buenos Aires, Borges published a translation of the last page of Ulysses – the first translation of James Joyce into Spanish. At the same time, Borges developed a notion of translation as a creative undertaking, which could involve rethinking, reworking, and even improving texts rather than simply reformulating them into a different language.

Borges continued translating works into Spanish on into the 1960s. At the end of that decade, he did in fact turn his attention towards the English translations of his own texts. In November 1968, Norman Thomas di Giovanni flew to Buenos Aires to meet with Borges. Di Giovanni had recently signed two deals with publishers in the United States to translate new selections of Borges’ work. With the publisher Seymour Lawrence, under the Delacorte Press imprint, he would publish an anthology of Borges’ poetry. And with E. P. Dutton, he would publish translations of all of Borges’ fiction for which the publisher could secure the rights. In practise, this meant starting with El libro de los seres imaginarios, published in Spanish the previous year.

As Borges and Di Giovanni became close, the two began collaborating on the translations. Selected Poems was completed first, in February 1969: the translated poems would appear across issues of the New Yorker before being published in book form in 1972. The translation of El libro de los seres imaginarios was completed in May, and published by E. P. Dutton, as The Book of Imaginary Beings, towards the end of the year. It was followed in 1970 by the collection The Aleph and Other Stories, which was itself quickly followed by Brodie’s Report. By early 1972, however, Borges had grown tired of translating and weary of the pressures of working to tight deadlines, and he curtailed his relationship with Di Giovanni. Di Giovanni would continue to work on translations of Borges for E. P. Dutton throughout the 1970s. He translated a further eight volumes in all, including A Universal History of Infamy in 1972 and The Book of Sand in 1975.  Yet he would never obtain the rights to translate and publish any of the stories from Ficciones.

Penguin had acquired the rights to publish Labyrinths in the United Kingdom in 1970. It continues to publish that book today, as part of the Penguin Classics imprint; while New Directions continues to publish Labyrinths in the United States. In 1986, Penguin bought E. P. Dutton. After Borges’ death in June 1986, Borges’ widow, María Kodama, began to renegotiate his literary rights; and a new series of translations, to be undertaken by Andrew Hurley, were ultimately commissioned by Penguin to replace the Di Giovanni editions. Collected Fictions – first published in hardback under the Allen Lane imprint in January – was published as a paperback by Penguin in September 1999. Fictions and The Aleph came a year later. And they were followed a year after that by Brodie’s Report, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare’s Memory, and A Universal History of Iniquity – this last, which modifies Di Giovanni’s 1972 title, actually a translation of Borges’ earliest collection of fiction, which he wrote and published in 1935, and was reluctant to see translated.

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The short story ‘Funes el memorioso’ first appeared in the Argentine daily newspaper La Nación in June 1942. In 1941, Borges had published El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, a short story collection which would, in 1944, become the first part of Ficciones. Thus when Ficciones was published, ‘Funes el memorioso’ was one of the stories comprising its second part. The headings of the two parts have been translated by Andrew Hurley as ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ and ‘Artifices’.

‘Funes el memorioso’ is the story of an Ireneo Funes. From Fray Bentos, living in Buenos Aires, and already possessing an acute sensibility, he suffers a horse-riding accident as a youth which leaves him hopelessly paralysed. Unable to walk, confined to his home, he finds his sensibility and his memory have become absolute. In Labyrinths, the story was translated by James E. Irby under the title ‘Funes the Memorious’. My favourite passage from the story, in the Irby translation, reads as follows:

——–

He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen, he would say (for example) Máximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the cauldron, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated…I tried to explain to him that his rhapsody of incoherent terms was precisely the opposite of a system of numbers. I told him that saying 365 meant saying three hundreds, six tens, five ones, an analysis which is not found in the “numbers” The Negro Timoteo or meat blanket. Funes did not understand me or refused to understand me.

——–

Andrew Hurley’s translation – found in Penguin’s Collected Fictions and Fictions – instead opts for the title ‘Funes, His Memory’. Hurley explains his rationale in a note to the text: ‘memorioso’ is a commonly used, colloquial word in Spanish, which he argues is not encapsulated by the obscure English translation ‘memorious’. Hurley’s translation of the same passage reads:

——–

He told me that in 1886 he had invented a numbering system original with himself, and that within a very few days he had passed the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought, even once, remained ineradicably with him. His original motivation, I think, was his irritation that the thirty-three Uruguayan patriots should require two figures and three words rather than a single figure, a single word. He then applied this mad principle to the other numers. Instead of seven thousand thirteen (7013), he would say, for instance, “Máximo Pérez”; instead of seven thousand fourteen (7014), “the railroad”; other numbers were “Luis Melián Lafinur,” “Olimar,” “sulfur,” “clubs,” “the whale,” “gas,” ” a stewpot,” “Napoleon,” “Agustín de Vedia.” Instead of five hundred (500), he said “nine.” Every word had a particular figure attached to it, a sort of marker; the later ones were extremely complicated…I tried to explain to Funes that his rhapsody of unconnected words was exactly the opposite of a number system. I told him that when one said “365” one said “three hundreds, six tens, and five ones,” a breakdown impossible with the “numbers” Nigger Timoteo or a ponchoful of meat. Funes either could not or would not understand me.

——–

The translation of ‘Funes el memorioso’ by James E. Irby is the first that I read, and it remains my favourite. It possesses a rhythm and a humour which, in my opinion, other English translations of the story do not match. The translations by Irby and Hurley of the passage above may be closely compared. Their differing constructions of the second line of the passage suggest differently the mind and the methods of Funes. Divided into four parts via the use of three commas, Hurley’s sentence seems indicative of a more convoluted logic, and displays a momentary narrowing down upon thought before it progresses to memory. Irby’s sentence suggests the accumulation of memories and the distension of time. Irby’s depiction of Funes’ ‘discomfort’ at ‘the famous thirty-three gauchos’ is funnier and better demonstrates Borges’ frequent use of colloquialisms than Hurley’s depiction of Funes’ ‘irritation’ at ‘the thirty-three Uruguayan patriots’.

Irby’s ‘absurd principle’ captures, more than Hurley’s ‘mad principle’, a sense of Funes’ obstinacy; and there is a stronger cadence to Irby’s sequence of names, with their repetition of the definite article. Hurley’s use of punctuation and italicisation appears misguided. It is unclear to me why he gives Funes’ names in quotation marks up until the final two, ‘Nigger Timoteo‘ and ‘ponchoful of meat‘, which he italicises. The quotation marks are clunkier; the late use of italics draws ‘system‘, also italicised, into the sphere of the final two names; and the repeated use of quotation marks in other contexts (‘”365″‘, ‘”three hundreds, six tens, and five ones,”‘) blurs distinctions. More, the brackets containing numerical figures – apparently suggesting or opposing a certain rigour to Funes’ proceedings – seem ultimately superfluous, and obstruct the flow of the text. In the same vein, Hurley adds an asterisk to the text after ‘thirty-three Uruguayan patriots’, indicating a note at the back of both editions which explains who these patriots are. Hurley states that they ‘were a band of determined patriots under the leadership of Juan Antonio Lavalleja who crossed the River Plate from Buenos Aires to Montevideo in order to “liberate”‘ Uruguay from Spain. This is hardly essential knowledge for the reading of Borges’ story, and the presence of the asterisk seems only to disrupt the reader from the heady logic of Funes’ nominalism.

The pattern of Irby’s ‘I tried to explain to him that his rhapsody of incoherent terms was precisely the opposite of a system of numbers’ beautifully brings a stop to Funes’ logic. This sentence marks the turn of the paragraph. Its purpose is diminished by Hurley’s italicisation of ‘system‘, which closes the sentence on an inflection which is less decisive; but regardless, ‘rhapsody of incoherent terms’ is a peerless formulation, rendered poorer by Hurley’s choice of ‘rhapsody of unconnected words’. Finally, while the penultimate sentence is amusing no matter how it is rendered, both the setup and the final selection of words appear stronger in Irby. Hurley’s ‘a ponchoful of meat‘ is laudable, but there is something especially funny in the curt and insensible ‘meat blanket‘.

————

Anthony Kerrigan’s translation from the 1962 Grove Press Ficciones is the third readily available translation of Borges’ story into English. In fact, it was Kerrigan who first translated ‘Funes el memorioso’ into English: his translation, with the title ‘Funes, The Memorious’, appeared in the second issue of the short lived Avon Book of Modern Writing in 1954. The issue included new fiction, poetry and essays by writers including Elizabeth Hardwick, Hermann Hesse, Mary McCarthy, Alberto Moravia, and Delmore Schwartz. After Ficciones, Kerrigan went on to translate for Grove Press, in 1967 with Alastair Reed, Borges’ A Personal Anthology. Kerrigan translates the above passage:

——–

The voice of Funes, out of the darkness, continued. He told me that toward 1886 he had devised a new system of enumeration and that in a very few days he had gone beyond twenty-four thousand. He had not written it down, for what he once meditated would not be erased. The first stimulus to his work, I believe, had been his discontent with the fact that “thirty-three Uruguayans” required two symbols and three words, rather than a single word and a single symbol. Later he applied his extravagant principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen, he would say (for example) Máximo Perez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Train; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, Brimstone, Clubs, The Whale, Gas, The Cauldron, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedia. In lieu of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a species of mark; the last were very complicated…I attempted to explain that this rhapsody of unconnected terms was precisely the contrary of a system of enumeration. I said that to say three hundred and sixty-five was to say three hundreds, six tens, five units: an analysis which does not exist in such numbers as The Negro Timoteo or The Flesh Blanket. Funes did not understand me, or did not wish to understand me.

——–

Finally, in the original Spanish, Borges’ text reads:

——–

Me dijo que hacia 1886 había discurrido un sistema original de numeración y que en muy pocos días había rebasado el veinticuatro mil. No lo había escrito, porque lo pensado una sola vez ya no podía borrársele. Su primer estímulo, creo, fue el desagrado de que los treinta y tres orientales requirieran dos signos y tres palabras, en lugar de una sola palabra y un solo signo. Aplicó luego ese disparatado principio a los otros números. En lugar de siete mil trece, decía (por ejemplo) Máximo Pérez; en lugar de siete mil catorce, El Ferrocarril; otros números eran Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, azufre, los bastos, la ballena, gas, la caldera, Napoleón, Agustín vedia. En lugar de quinientos, decía nueve. Cada palabra tenía un signo particular, una especie marca; las últimas muy complicadas…Yo traté explicarle que esa rapsodia de voces inconexas era precisamente lo contrario sistema numeración. Le dije decir 365 tres centenas, seis decenas, cinco unidades; análisis no existe en los “números” El Negro Timoteo o manta de carne. Funes no me entendió o no quiso entenderme.

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The original 1944 edition of Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones, published by Editorial Sur

The 1962 edition of Labyrinths, edited and with translations by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby, published by New Directions

The first edition of Borges’ Collected Fictions in English, published by Allen Lane – a Penguin imprint – in January 1999

Penguin’s paperback version of Collected Fictions, published September 1999

The Avon Book of Modern Writing, issue number 2, 1954, which contained the first English translation of Borges’ story ‘Funes el memorioso’

The English translation of Ficciones, edited by Anthony Kerrigan, published by Grove Press in 1962

The UK edition of Ficciones, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson the same year

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Borges, J. L. Ficciones ed. Kerrigan, A. (Grove Press, 1994)

Borges, J. L. Fictions trans. Hurley, A. (Penguin, 2000)

Borges, J. L. Labyrinths eds. Yates, D. A. & Irby, J. E. (Penguin, 2000)

Williamson, E. Borges: A Life (Viking, 2004)

PDF files containing the full story translated, in turn, by Irby, Hurley, and Kerrigan: FunesIrby, FunesHurley, FunesKerrigan

Grayson Perry Plays Hide and Seek in York

The BBC reports:

Museums, galleries and historic spaces are preparing to host almost 700 night-time events over the next three days.

The annual Museums at Night festival gives visitors free access to museums from sunset onwards while special one-off events are planned around the UK.

It gets under way later on Thursday and runs until Saturday.

Events include an appearance at Nottinghamshire allotments by celebrity photographer Rankin and artist Grayson Perry playing hide and seek in York.

And the Museums at Night website confirms, with the heading:

Grayson Perry and Alan Measles play hide and seek in York for Museums at Night.

Composition of place.

The city of York is seen from below: narrow streets and cuts, squares, a fountain, a marketplace now empty and shuttered, a river flowing through. From Micklegate over Bridge Street a lady appears and is submurged, now striding steadily, now swaying uncertainly in the warm windless evening, wearing the insignia of the traffic light: three green circles, as the seven women weaving and clustering about her wear amber and red. It is soon to be the lady’s wedding day. From across the street a group of men shout boisterously in her direction. One of the men is dressed in imitation of a frog. His muffled calls, emanating through a mouthpiece of green, black and red felt, are directed not at the celebrant but towards one of her maidens: a blonde of short stature who has on a pair of yellow sunglasses, and holds another, in purple, in her dangling hand. The men cross the street: the groups entangle boisterously: before the men descend the stairs to the waterfront and the sanctuary of the Kings Arms.

Somewhere in York Grayson Perry is hiding.

Around York Minster groups gather, in preparation for the search. Some bear maps across their forearms, others prod and swipe at smartphones. Perhaps in the future we will be able to track, by virtue of Google Maps, individuals by their scent – but nobody knows what perfume Grayson Perry is wearing; perhaps in some future we will be able to track individuals by their shape – but nobody knows what outfit Grayson Perry is wearing either, and besides, the technology has not been invented yet. A man in loose-fitting grey flannel with a backwards growth of greyblonde hair is gently turned with anticipation, somewhere about Swinegate – but it is not Grayson Perry, and the gentleman now turns of his own volition and is soon on his way. The gathered groups ask aloud: is a citizen of the city of York of value in the present circumstance, or is he not; would his knowledge of the inner configuration of the city be of use, or ought one possess instead the same naiveté which Grayson Perry is presumably bringing to the affair? An unrelated quarrel threatens to break out; and somebody suggests that the groups move off.

You’ve found me, assures a voice.

I’ve done what? queries a gruff man in tracksuit trousers.

He never wanted you to begin with, offers the gruff man’s friend, and the two walk on.

Grayson Perry is confused. He doesn’t know how to act; emerging from underneath the arch by Cox’s Leather Shop at the far end of the Shambles, he considers whether to return to his hiding place, whether to find a new one, or whether to simply give up the ghost. A calculation as to how many people have passed him by over the last however so many minutes – failing to catch his eye as he pressed his back slimly against the flat of the wall and halted his breath – proves inconducive to determining how soon he is likely to be uncovered. I should have worn a watch at least, Grayson Perry says to himself; and how well has this been advertised anyway, he wonders. And when will it be his turn to seek?

It has been hours now since the event began; the searchers are growing tired and thirsty. If only they could narrow their search, set it within certain confines; if only it hadn’t been set to cover the full extent of the city. Then, they would stand a chance of finding Grayson Perry, but now they are floundering. They wish they could pen him in somehow, in the Minster Gardens, or in Clifford’s Tower. But then the Jews of York had been penned in Clifford’s Tower back in 1190: around 150 had died in total, burnt alive, by suicide, or murdered by the mob: York still remembers: and that – the searching groups and splintered individuals understood – was not art.

Grayson Perry looks out the window of a train marked for London. Fields, barn, fields, pylons; someone has left the shutter in the vestibule open, and there is a draft throughout the cabin.

WWE Extreme Rules and the Booking of Bray Wyatt

Many superstars have entered the WWE towards the upper echelons of the roster, promoted via series of vignettes or introduced or interposed into main event feuds, thereby being instantly posited as main event talents. Fewer have managed to stay the course to thoroughly establish themselves as main event stars. Yet even amongst those who have achieved this, Bray Wyatt appears exceptional. Since he and his Wyatt Family debuted in the WWE last July – after a series of vignettes which positioned Wyatt as a backwoods cult leader, combining anti-societal and quasi-apocalyptic rhetoric with the hypnotic sounds of southern rock music, with the visuals and atmospherics of horror films, as Wyatt sat and swayed in his evocative wooden rocking chair, with one of his followers adorning a sheep mask – Wyatt has been afforded consistent television time in the ring and on the microphone, engaging in significant feuds with Kane, with Daniel Bryan and CM Punk, and now with John Cena.

The will of the WWE has been there; but Wyatt has excelled beyond expectations, especially for somebody so young – he is 26 years old – and relatively inexperienced. Versatile, vicious and athletic in the ring, and able to invent and reinvent his persona on the microphone, Wyatt has drawn comparisons with the Undertaker and Mankind. While such comparisons should be made broadly – the Undertaker’s legacy is unparalleled, while Mick Foley’s sprawling intensity of words and actions can hardly be matched – they are certainly understandable given the nature of Wyatt’s character, and as a third-generation superstar with an obvious passion for and an acute understanding of the business, the feeling is that he could be a figurehead of the WWE for years to come.

Yet Wyatt’s momentum has stalled over the last month, following his loss to John Cena at WrestleMania XXX. As I suggested in the piece I wrote reviewing that event, the fact of his defeat ought not to have affected Wyatt: he did not need to win the match to seem a credible main event opponent, and with a memorable entrance and the crowd showing their support, he came out of a solid encounter looking strong. The return match at Extreme Rules last weekend – which pitted Wyatt against Cena inside a steel cage – demonstrated the relative value of wins and losses in the wrestling business, because despite coming away on this occasion with the victory, Wyatt’s character on the night was considerably diminished.

His character has an edge where it is rooted in a sense of place and attached to an apparent reality. His presentation has involved a complex but sensible and richly suggestive admixture of elements: from his rural background amidst a locale of woodland, farm and barn; to his wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts, black vest and coloured slacks; to his fatalistic outlook and his small group of dangerous acolytes. The tropes with which he plays – combining elements of folklore, Gnostic belief, American Spiritualism, and psychedelia – are broad but provocative, and developed by someone with an evident cultural awareness and a close attention to detail.

Some of this nuance has been lost in recent weeks. It is debatable whether Wyatt’s feud with Cena should have continued beyond WrestleMania: this is a match-up that will presumably repeat over the coming years, and perhaps with better timing and with more at stake. As the storyline between the two has progressed, the focus has turned to Wyatt’s utilisation of children – Cena’s biggest fanbase – to disturb and unsettle his opponent. This is interesting in theory, but its implementation has been heavy-handed. The idea that Wyatt could manipulate children to turn against Cena, and that this would strike a blow to Cena’s sense of self, could have been a novel facet of their feud; but it should have been one layer rather than the explicit focus of the feud’s attention.

As it played out, the use of children a couple of weeks ago on Raw constituted a unique visual which made little sense. A children’s choir performed on stage, singing ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’. They descended en masse to ringside along with Wyatt; then reemerged, after the lights went out, wearing sheep masks. Without any context to their appearance and judging by the faces of the youngsters involved, they were not labouring under some spell or part of Wyatt’s cult, and nor did they come across as fans of Cena who had been somehow turned. Rather, they seemed what they were – children organised by the company to present a visual spectacle. The stunt was palpably artificial. In the loose and hasty endeavour to show Wyatt keen to use and manipulate children, he appears a bogeyman with a single trick rather than a rounded psychological force.

The steel cage match at Extreme Rules was poorly booked. Wyatt looked weak, managing little offence and being saved by Luke Harper and Erick Rowan who interfered from the early stages of the match. Cena took on the worst and most criticised aspects of his persona, continually fighting off three men. But then with Wyatt prone in the ring and Cena atop the cage, he proved bizarrely unwilling to drop from the cage onto Rowan, who was flailing about on the floor with a steel chair. Cena could have dropped directly onto Rowan, or he could have dropped to the floor and taken his chances against his chair-wielding foe. In either scenario, he might have suffered physical punishment, but he would have won the match; and in the context of the match Cena certainly appeared to view victory as imperative, for he was constantly trying to escape the cage. So Cena appeared, in the midst of battling three men, briefly a coward; but he retained his dominance, and with all three members of The Wyatt Family defeated inside the ring, victory at last seemed inevitable.

Alas, as he attempted to leave through the cage’s opened door, the lights in the arena went out, and when they came on again a small boy had materialised in front of him. Singing ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ in a rasping, heavily distorted voice, this child proved enough to encourage Cena to retreat back into the cage. He retreated only into the arms of Wyatt, who hit the Sister Abigail and left the cage for the victory. Thus the match closed: suggesting that Cena was more than a match for the combined forces of The Wyatt Family; but lost because horrified by a child singing Wyatt’s over-elaborated motif in a funny voice.

The scenario was palpably absurd, and not aided by the overacting of the WWE commentators and panelists, who responded with stunned silences and with mutterings of distress. There are times too when the multitude of tasks now given to WWE commentators becomes counter-productive. The hushed concern upon the conclusion to the match was overdone, but then incongruously broken when Michael Cole suddenly turned to advertising WWE products. A scene which had, however ridiculously, been meant to profoundly unsettle had at once lost all of its power.

There were problems with the rest of Extreme Rules. The commentators flubbed Jack Swagger’s elimination at the hands of Rob Van Dam during the opening triple threat elimination match – apparently forgetting that, at short notice, the match had been changed into an elimination affair. Alexander Rusev’s handicap match success was functional rather than impressive; and while Bad News Barrett’s victory over Big E in the Intercontinental Title match was something to be celebrated, it demonstrated in part how little Big E was promoted during his reign. The match did not receive the sort of reception the talents involved deserve. Moreover, in spite of his tremendous wrestling ability, Bad News Barrett’s Bullhammer can be an uneven finishing manoeuvre, dependent on good selling and a perfect connection if it isn’t to look more meagerly like a clubbing forearm.

Across his feud with Daniel Bryan for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, the WWE have determined to dub Kane ‘The Demon Kane’. This is meant to be indicative of Kane’s present rage and fury; but to establish a different name for a particularly violent version of the character hardly seems conducive to coherent long-term storytelling. The name does not sit easily with the character’s origins, when he was at least as destructive but had only the single identifier; and at what point in the future and for what reasons ought a heel Kane no longer take the epithet ‘Demon’?

The backstage action in the main event was chaotic. Having been struck by a crowbar, Kane appeared unconscious for several minutes as Daniel Bryan drove him back to ringside hoisted on the forks of a forklift truck. Yet somehow – after Bryan had dropped Kane from the forklift into the ring, mounted the vehicle, and landed a diving headbutt – Kane came to his senses to kick out on the count of two. As the match drew towards a finish, Kane set a table at ringside on fire, only to find himself driven off the ring apron through the flames. Then a safety officer with a fire extinguisher seemed to provide Daniel Bryan with an assist: as Kane immediately rose from the fire to his feet, the fire extinguisher blasted him, and he lumbered disorientated into the ring, to be hit by a running knee for the pinfall.

The following night on Raw saw Sheamus triumph in a 20-man battle royal to take Dean Ambrose’s United States Championship. A concerted effort was made to establish Cesaro as a heel, as he beat down on Rob Van Dam: a difficult and a dubious task given how popular Cesaro has become, and how over many of his moves are with the audience, but understandable given the WWE’s relative lack of heel talent. The feud between Daniel Bryan and Kane continued with a convoluted scenario reminiscent of the worst of the Attitude era. Bad News Barrett retained his Intercontinental Title following a rematch with Big E. And Raw closed – after a battle pitting The Shield against The Wyatt Family – with Evolution gaining a degree of revenge over The Shield, having been defeated by the trio in Extreme Rules’ standout encounter.

The Premier League Now: Newcastle’s Plight, the Advantage Rule, and the Apotheosis of Ryan Giggs

Newcastle’s Plight? Pardew’s Shite!

Newcastle were roundly defeated at the Emirates Stadium on Monday night, 3-0 by an Arsenal side who roamed about the pitch without much impetus, but scrapped decisively in the opposition penalty area, and could ultimately have scored twice as many goals with only a little extra effort. Two points behind Everton with five games of the season remaining, and with Champions League qualification out of their hands, Arsenal are now four points ahead of their rivals and would guarantee fourth place with a win in one of their final two games. That and a victory in the FA Cup final against Hull would mark a pretty good season for the proverbial ‘Gunners’, who are only if habitually two or three players away from an exciting squad able to challenge on all fronts.

Meanwhile Newcastle can look back to 29 December, when they last played Arsenal, and will see that across 18 league games since then – precisely half of their season – they have won 4 games, drawn 1, and lost 13. They have failed to score in 13 of those games, and they have conceded 34 goals. 7 of those defeats have come at St James’ Park, including 0-3 defeats against their local rivals Sunderland and against Everton, and 0-4 defeats versus Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United. After six defeats in a row, the club is on its worst run for 27 years; over those six games, the statistics read 1 goal scored, with 17 goals conceded.

Many of the players have given up, and some have looked tired for several months now, but it has long since been time to recognise Alan Pardew’s absolute failure as a football manager. The statistics alone do not reflect quite how badly Newcastle play: they do not quite manage to convey the utter lack of defensive shape, composure and application, and the total absence of attacking intent. To the press, Pardew often proclaims himself an advocate of proactive, passing football. In his moments of private honesty, he probably thinks of himself as tactically astute, capable of setting up teams to be defensively solid, retaining their shape, and effective on the counter-attack. His coaching staff have previously admitted that, under his guidance, they spend 80% of their week on defensive coaching.

The notion that Pardew possesses any attacking instinct is an absurdity thoroughly disproved across his three-and-a-half years as Newcastle’s manager. He has singularly failed to impose anything resembling an attacking philosophy upon the team. His side play too many long balls; but they aren’t consistently directed, the club does not possess a target-man, and there appears no endeavour towards the midfielders breaking forward to seize on half-won chances. Newcastle have too few wide players; but Pardew prefers anyway to shunt central players out wide and to utilise them, essentially, as defenders, covering a lot of ground and supporting in the central areas and at full-back. The possibility of passing football is negated at the outset because – to the extent that they are coached at all as a unit – the attacking players do not appear to be coached to pass and move, or to move with any pace and ingenuity off the ball.

Pardew’s attacking modus has been to simply rely on his forwards conjuring enough goals, hoping that his side will thereby scrape enough points for barely respectable league finishes. He has been fortunate in that Demba Ba, briefly Papiss Cisse, and now Loic Rémy have provided precisely this – but Ba, an effective yet cheap solution in the summer after Andy Carroll had been sold for £35 million, left for Chelsea a year and a half  later for just £7 million, one of many instances whereby the club’s penny-pinching has in fact cost it considerable income; Cisse has been abysmal for two seasons now; and Rémy is on loan, and unlikely to sign for a club who will match neither his ambition, nor his transfer fee, nor his wages.

What limited success Pardew has achieved at Newcastle has been built on defensive solidity. That success amounts to the 2011-12 season, where Newcastle finished fifth, but only dominated teams and played good football during a spell towards the season’s close, progressing into a 4-3-3 system which was uncomfortably tossed aside at the start of the following campaign; and to the first half of this season, where Newcastle hit upon a strong run of form, impelled by the goalscoring of Rémy and the drive and creativity of Yohan Cabaye, then sold to Paris Saint-Germain. Yet this defensive solidity has always proven frail, incapable of being maintained and susceptible to minor shocks. Pardew is frequently shocked by that which everyone else sees coming, and he is incapable of adapting to meet changing requirements. Newcastle have lost 20 games by three goals or more under his stewardship (twice losing by three goals to Sunderland); and have let in three goals or more on 31 occasions in total.

Impotent when it comes to the attack, managing only a defence which stutters at best, but is now conceding goals at an alarming rate, what is it that Pardew does do? The answer is that he does, in effect, nothing; which is to say he does the same worthless things over and over again, without any care, sensibility or intelligence. His substitutions are throwaway gestures, by rote rather than responding to what is happening on the pitch. Recent absurdities have seen Shola Ameobi brought on with mere seconds to play against Everton and Manchester United, with the side already losing 0-3. The Newcastle fans do not regard Shola’s appearance as a treat which makes the previous ninety minutes of failure worthwhile. Hatem Ben Arfa, rarely allowed to start a game, has made frequent appearances from the bench after sixty minutes of games which are already lost; but his deteriorating relationship with Pardew has now robbed the team and the support entirely of the club’s most talented, most exciting, and only creative attacking player.

Off the pitch the fans are treated with the same contempt. Pardew – always quick to aggrandise himself when things are going well – resorts to platitudes about effort, about luck, about things ‘just not going for us’, while seeking to blame others for his own evils. The national media are typically compliant. The club admits to being disinterested in cup success; while this summer may see the culmination of years of mismanagement of the playing staff. With Loic Rémy to return to Queens Park Rangers before moving on to a bigger club, and with Newcastle’s other loan forward, Luuk de Jong, flat-footed and lacking in vigour, Newcastle will be without a strikeforce; and already require a replacement for Yohan Cabaye and reinforcements out wide. But more, it is difficult to see some of Newcastle’s better talents – Tim Krul, Mathieu Debuchy, Fabricio Coloccini, and Ben Arfa – remaining with the club. The squad will require, but is unlikely to receive, profound and astute investment. A club with Newcastle’s long and short term history, but more a support which continues to provide over 50,000 people at home games – the third best attendance in the country and one of the best in the world – has plenty of reason to expect better.

The Advantage Rule: Phil Dowd Makes a Pertinent Suggestion

One of the most controversial decisions affecting last weekend’s fixtures concerned the match between Sunderland and Cardiff.  On the stroke of half-time, Phil Dowd chose to award Connor Wickham a penalty, and sent off Juan Cala for pulling him back – only after first allowing Wickham to play on, rounding the keeper and playing the ball across goal, where it was cleared by Cardiff’s defenders. Sunderland’s manager Gus Poyet called the decision to then bring play back the ‘best decision I have seen in my life’; a sentiment broadly echoed by Match of the Day pundits Alan Shearer and Mark Lawrenson. Elsewhere the decision provoked some consternation, both among those who felt that Cala’s foul had taken place outside of the penalty area, and from those who were unused to or disagreed with such a lengthy interpretation of the advantage rule.

The raw essence of the advantage rule in football is easy to grasp, because its nature is explicated by virtue of its name. According to FIFA, the rule ‘allows play to continue when the team against which an offence has been committed will benefit from such an advantage’. That is, according to the rule, upon an infringement, play will be allowed to continue where it may conceivably advantage the non-offending team. Practically, this will usually refer to a team on the attack; but it is possible that an advantage may be played in a transitional moment, where an attacking player commits an offence amid the process of losing the ball, allowing the defending team to seize possession and launch a counter, turning defence into attack. Where there is no possibility for attack there can be no reasonable advantage from play continuing.

In practise, the rule is often ignored or misused. The most flagrant misuse of the rule seems to stem from an ill-conceived, incoherent notion of the very word ‘advantage’. Often when referees indicate that they are playing an advantage – negating their whistle, thrusting both arms in front of them, and continuing to run, often exaggeratedly and with renewed haste, as if to emphasise there will be no pause to proceedings – they are not actually offering an advantage to the non-offending team. Rather, they are simply allowing the game to flow; or worse, they are avoiding having to make a decision. A flowing game may be for the broad benefit of the general viewer, but the rule does not call for a flowing game. If an attacking player is fouled in the process of making a pass, and his teammate still receives the ball, advantage should only be played if that teammate finds himself in an opportune attacking position. If instead he finds himself isolated, without another teammate to pass to, his attacking partner on the floor instead of on the run and available for a return ball, then play should stop and a free-kick ought to be given. In the same vein, if an attacking player is pulled back or has to hurdle a wild challenge, and he remains in possession, but has lost his attacking impetus – slowed, and closed down by other defenders – then he is gaining no sensible advantage by the referee waving play forward.

Again, sometimes the rule is misused by referees who would abdicate their responsibilities. As FIFA’s ruling states, the referee ‘penalises the original offence if the anticipated advantage does not ensue at that time’, and he ‘takes disciplinary action against players guilty of cautionable and sending-off offences. He is not obliged to take this action immediately but must do so when the ball next goes out of play’. Often, however, referees will indicate an advantage as a means of ignoring an incident: where they are unsure if a foul has been committed, or where calling a foul would be problematic – perhaps owing to its practitioner already being on a booking – they will often indicate an advantage without calling play back where necessary, and without taking any action at the next stoppage. The rule is thus used to gloss over incidents with which referees would rather not trouble.

Aside from misuses and misinterpretations, there are other uncertainties regarding rule’s application. FIFA’s guidelines are not unambiguous: they call for referees to take into account, when applying the rule, ‘the atmosphere of the match’, as though a hostile crowd or an agitated set of players should imbue a certain degree of caution; and they seem to imply that it may be preferable to deal with serious fouls immediately, punishing cautionable offences without first affording the non-offending team an advantage. FIFA’s rules consider ‘the severity of the offence. If the infringement warrants an expulsion, the referee shall stop play and send the player off unless there is a subsequent opportunity to score a goal’. It is not clear why – cases of injury aside – the criteria for advantage should be stricter the more severe the offence.

Beyond these concerns, it seems that the rule can be applied, properly and with the right motivations, in two subtly distinct ways. The first is reactive, and the second proactive; the first merely utilises the rule in immediate response to events on the pitch, whereas the second would impress the rule in such a way so as to encourage future behaviour. The demarcator between these approaches is the length of time a referee is willing to allow before calling play back. If a referee is willing to allow only a couple of seconds, then his decision making has to be quick and, to an extent, speculative: he has to determine almost instantly whether the non-offending team is in a position to gain an advantage, accepting that he will not always get this decision right. Phil Dowd on Sunday demonstrated a different approach, allowing play to run on for longer, and being willing to call it back once it had broken down.

The great benefit of the second approach is that it is proactive in encouraging players to stay on their feet, and to make the best of their own abilities. If players understand they can make the effort to stay upright, can attempt a dribble, a pass, or a shot, while knowing that they will still receive a free-kick should they be tackled or their pass or shot immediately blocked, then this will surely reduce the numbers who go to ground easily or effectively dive anticipating contact. If players understand instead that the decision to play advantage is more or less final, and that play won’t be called back after more than a second or two, they will remain inclined to go to ground for the relative surety of a free-kick.

The issue becomes one of delineating advantage so that it properly allows for and encourages good attacking play; without offering attackers too much of an advantage, to the point where they effectively receive two bites at an overly-ripened cherry. It becomes inappropriate, for instance, for an attacker to force an excellent save from a goalkeeper, only for that goalkeeper to then have to face a free-kick from a dangerous position once play has been called back for a foul much earlier in the build-up. Phil Dowd got the decision on Sunday right, and used the advantage rule in a way which should suggest its future application – though it is worth noting that his decision was made easier precisely because a penalty kick was at stake. If Wickham had been pulled back ten yards further out, and had still rounded the keeper but failed to score, should the play then have been brought back for a free-kick?

The Apotheosis of Ryan Giggs

After the jubilation that met his appointment as Manchester United’s interim manager, Ryan Giggs vindicated utterly, once and for all and remarkably, the impassioned belief all in football have in him as he led Manchester United to a groundbreaking, new-era-defining 4-0 home victory over Norwich City – who are, incidentally, a club in the relegation zone and with six defeats in their last seven games.

David Moyes was a ridiculous figure at Manchester United, blundering from the very start of his reign: fumbling in the transfer market before overpaying for Marouane Fellaini; making uneasy remarks about fixture list corruption in an ill-considered attempt to ape Alex Ferguson; then acceding to Wayne Rooney’s every demand in tying him to a new contract. Still, the media’s response to him and to his departure has been in every way unpalatable: from their early forwarding of him as a reasonable candidate for the post of Manchester United manager; to their perseverance in his favour when foreign managers, such as André Villas-Boas, have been hounded out of clubs for doing much better work; to their bizarre and unwarranted sense of vindication and self-congratulation upon his sacking; to their celebration of Ryan Giggs as the rightful heir to Ferguson’s clammy throne. In the aftermath to Saturday’s game, the BBC’s UK website pushed United’s 4-0 win over Norwich as the third biggest story in world news; and for a couple of days ran as the second headline of their sports page with a vacuous article relating how Anders Lindegaard – the brazenly meaningless Manchester United reserve goalkeeper – has decided within a week that Ryan Giggs resembles, as a manager, Pep Guardiola, under whom Lindegaard has never played.

It ought to be remembered that, aside from being an adulterer, a bully and an abuser of the courts, Ryan Giggs has been one of the worst cheats the game of football has seen over the last twenty years. He had it all, in so far as he would dive, make cynical challenges, but most of all routinely lead the charge of Manchester United players as they surrounded, harangued and abused referees. Now not only he, but his partners in crime, Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt, have all been embraced as great coaches – regardless of the fact that they have never coached.

I recall Scholes and Butt as dullards: Scholes a thug who would lunge recklessly at opponents game after game without censure; Butt one of the worst players I have seen in a Newcastle shirt, always shirking responsibility on the ball, whether aimlessly chipping it forward or hammering it into his teammates’ shins. It would be remarkable that the players appear to be embracing Giggs and company; but Ferguson’s twenty years of success at United showed the virtue of an eminently stupid playing staff, who will buy into your siege mentality in spite of all the material odds, and invariably the referees too, being in your favour. For those of us who despise and would like to go on despising Manchester United, the prospect of the likeable Louis van Gaal’s appointment is eminently less enticing than Ryan Giggs continuing, and hopefully failing miserably, in the role.

Additional Thoughts: Brendan Rodgers, the Relegation Battle, José Mourinho and Champions League Defeat

• Many are too quick to dismiss the notion that success in football may be ‘deserved’ independent of actual outcomes. While there is much to dislike about the club, its supporters, and its overwhelming presence in the media via a horde of inane former-players-turned-banalysts, still Brendan Rodgers has done a magnificent job across two years as Liverpool’s manager, and his team do deserve the Premier League title based upon their achievements to this point and their enticing, entertaining style of play.

Though not all of his acquisitions have proven successful, the signings of Daniel Sturridge and Philippe Coutinho in January 2013 turned Liverpool around, and represented significant vision and risk-taking: it was far from clear that Liverpool required two physically slight, quick, and versatile forwards to partner Luis Suárez, at a time when many thought they needed instead a central striker off whom Suárez could play. This season, Rodgers has also drawn a lot out of Jordan Henderson, while encouraging Stephen Gerrard to (mostly) thrive playing a deeper role. Manchester City may still beat Liverpool to the title, and they have also shown themselves capable of superb attacking football – and in Manuel Pellegrini have one of the most engaging and dignified managers about – but they have also been exceedingly fortunate with some refereeing decisions in several close games.

• There is little between those teams from 20th up to Swansea and Hull in 12th and 13th; and arguably, in quality if not in points, all the way up to Newcastle who lie currently in 9th. Pepe Mel deserves a lot of credit for West Brom’s recent run of form; while an awful couple of months at West Ham have put Sam Allardyce increasingly under pressure. Both sides should be safe; with Aston Villa thereabouts. Norwich would seem destined for relegation given their two final games are against Chelsea and Arsenal; Sunderland have some momentum, but both they and Fulham may fancy their chances with two winnable fixtures remaining apiece.

• José Mourinho, obliged by the English media, has sought to identify a solid but unspectacular save by Thibaut Courtois – Atlético Madrid’s goalkeeper, on loan from Chelsea – as the decisive moment in Chelsea’s 1-3 Champions League semi-final defeat. So Mourinho and the English media continue a mutually beneficial but vapid and self-absorbed relationship: one which here seeks to assert English football as the centre of the known world, after a night during which Sky’s commentators repeatedly linked Diego Simeone and other successful Champions League managers to a relatively unappealing, unfulfilling, and irrelevant post which would restore Manchester United to the top of the sport.

Chelsea’s defeat was not, in sum, the product of one player who they happen to own anyway. It was the result of them being thoroughly outclassed by a much better side, stronger in defence, more courageous and clinical in attack, and superior at keeping hold of the football. José Mourinho’s manner on and off the pitch demands constant success in terms of trophies, and as Chelsea appear to have attained none this season, his first year back at the club can be considered nothing but a failure.

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FIFA’s guidelines governing the advantage rule: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/afdeveloping/refereeing/law_5_the_referee_en_47411.pdf