Experiments with Google Squared

I've been playing around with Google Squared today, the new offering from Google Labs which they describe like this - 'Google Squared takes a category and creates a starter 'square' of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web.

I thought I'd share my findings with you - I thought they were kind of interesting and pretty funny in places.

So, let's start simple - I'll enter 'books'....

OK 1984, Naked Lunch, Ulysses not bad....but Little Black Sambo? Jesus Christ Google! That's appalling.


And what about the director and cast categories - nonsense! Sometimes a book is just a book, not a film too...

Next, I'll try 'great books'....

Absolutely amazing - we've got Homer...accompanied by an image of Lenny, Homer's friend from the Simpsons, but not Homer himself. Fantastic.

And why do we have all those Greeks and one solitary Roman? Surely there's been a great author since the year 180?

Next, an issue dear to my heart, 'Salman Rushdie'...

Now here's where I think Google Square starts to come into its own - the list is pretty standard, nothing I don't know and haven't read before, except for the last entry 'In Good Faith' an essay which I've never even heard of before. I gues what's its really intended for is compiling statistics and making comparisons, but I think that using it against the grain could potentially be interesting too...

Blood Relations - Anish Kapoor & Salman Rushdie

I've managed to see some of the Anish Kapoor pieces that we are privileged to have in Brighton at the moment as part of this year's festival. As I've mentioned before, I'm an admirer of Kapoor - I can remember seeing his sand sculptures at a gallery in Liverpool when I was very young. The bold colours, strong shapes and irresistible texture of the sand must have made a big impression on me - Ive never forgotten it.

I could happily talk about all the pieces I saw, but I'm just going to look at Blood Relations - because as a collaboration of sorts with Salman Rushdie, it's got a literary bent, and this is meant to be a blog about books after all.

Situated in the fabulous Fabrica gallery, Blood Relations is a sort of bronze tank, divided into two by a thick band of Kapoor's signature blood-red and engraved all around with text written specifically for Kapoor by Rushdie. To read the text in order and in its entirety you have to walk around the whole piece six times.

Inside, the tank is again divided into two halves, one filled with what looks like either red paint or blood, the other with large, red, fleshy lumps and pile of something that looks suspiciously like entrails.

I found the piece sensual and almost hypnotic, but with a disturbing edge - walking around and around the sculpture to read the text is slightly dizzying and really draws you in. It takes you on a physical journey, perhaps paralleling the mental process that Kapoor and Rushdie hope the experience will inspire.

Rushdie's text - an 'interrogation of the Arabian Nights' - exhibits all his usual characteristics as an author - humorous and insightful, and I noticed other people there half laughing at the words as they read them, before casting a wary, almost guilty, eye back toward the bloody mess lurking inside the tank.

It might seem an overly blunt and clumsy analysis to suggest that Blood Relations muses on the Satanic Verses furore - but as Rushdie's words encircle the bloodbath, in which the viewer/reader comes to be implicated as they slowly circle the tank, taking in the words, this is what came to my mind. There is a sharp contrast between Scheherazade, who tells stories night after night to keep herself alive, and Rushdie, whose storytelling in The Satanic Verses ultimately and tragically became implicated in a number of deaths - which is brought into focus as you orbit the tank, reading the words, delaying the inevitable glance you know you'll make at the gore that lies within.

One line stuck with me from the text engraved on the piece - 'There are no answers. There are only questions. We are alone with our imaginations'. I think these words encapsulate how all great art makes me feel - that more often than not, there is no answer and that it doesn't matter that there isn't - because the questioning is the most important thing.

The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie

I expect a great deal from Rushdie - as I've mentioned before, he's one of my favourite authors - but The Enchantress of Florence left me wanting more.
This isn't a criticism as such, just an observation. The book didn't provoke the kind of response that I usually feel when I read Rushdie's texts - and no, I'm not just talking about the Satanic Verses scandal.
I've always thought that Rushdie is a by nature a provocative author, whether he's reimagining the origins of Islam, highlighting the potential and limitations of multiculturalism or trying to write a history of modern India.
The Enchantress of Florence didn't provoke me - it is a beautiful text, 'exotic' (I hate that word, for numerous self-conscious, pseudo-intellectual reasons, but more of that another time) and full of rich imagery. It's also a good story, with fiction embroidered with historical detail that Rushdie must have put significant labours into gathering. Of all Rushdie's texts, this reminds me of Haroun and the Sea of Stories the most - his fantastic book for children and at its heart, this is a very diverting fairy tale for adults - which I suppose is no bad thing, but it left me missing the Rushdie of Midnight's Children, Fury and Shame.

Aids Sutra: Untold Stores from India. Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Vikram Seth et al

I loved this book, but then it was always going to appeal to me - the list of contributing authors is a 'who's who' of Indian literature, including authors I love, like Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, & William Dalrymple, looking at different aspects of the Aids epidemic in India. Plus, all the proceeds from Aids Sutra go to the charity Avahan, the India AIDS initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - satisfying my liberal sensibilities and some of my middle class guilt.



I did have some misgivings about reading a book that claimed to be giving readers a picture of the real, untold India - I'm slightly uncomfortable with the idea that we can all buy this book, read it, and feel smug and self-satisfied for having done something 'good' and like we understand the reality of living with HIV/Aids in India. I'm not into so-called 'poverty porn' literature and the idea that reading is a path to somehow understanding or knowing another culture - it isn't.



The reason why I enjoyed reading Aids Sutra so much is that it manages something that a lot of poverty porn does not - it doesn't generalise or claim to tell the 'truth'. So many different stories and lives are presented that the reader could never come away thinking that they know all there is to know about the plight of people living with HIV/Aids in India. Because so many stories are told, in so many different voices, the only thing that you can be sure of by the end of the text is the plurality and the undiscerning brutality of the disease.