living in politics

Henning Mankell spoke last night at The Herbst Auditorium on Van Ness.

I attended somewhat reluctantly, having read only one of his Kurt Wallender books and one of his other novels,
"The Depths", a good read but somewhat professional for my tastes.

Made clear at the beginning is that Mankell is pronounced 'Monkul', not unlike 'monocle'.

Also made clear is what a decent, hardworking man and writer Mankell is. A Swede, he splits his time between Sweden and Africa (Mozambique). He's sold millions of books, been translated into umpteen languages, and Herbst, not a small place, was filled with his readers.

Mankell said that we should remember that 'we all come from Africa', and that Sweden for all its problems and social 'anxiety' was a decent society that valued education and took care of those not able to take care of themselves, though he was worried that the young there 'do not care about politics.' Holding one of his wildly popular paperback books aloft, he proposed a 5 cent fee be tacked on to the sale of every book and that publishers donate the money to 'literacy.' He closed with an African proverb that god gave man two ears and only one mouth so that he could do twice as much listening as talking.

After the talk, walking out into the night, I remembered being in northern Spain several years ago and realizing that everything, everything is political.