Workshy Fop

Bluestocking

2012-02-07T15:01:00.003Z

We all have our own methods for picking what we’re going to read next, from friend recommendations and favoured websites to prize shortlists and ‘people who liked this…’ adverts. There’s a natural link between certain bands and authors – Suede and Ballard, Morrissey and Shelagh Delaney - and there’s a whole cottage industry of novels about Bowie (Slow Down Arthur, Stick to Thirty being my favourite). For me, the Manic Street Preachers guided a lot of my reading, from The Virgin Suicides to The Society of The Spectacle.

It’s less common for a single song to throw up enough recommendations to keep you busy, but one which manages this is Momus’s ‘Bluestocking’. Momus (real name Nick Currie) is a Scottish songwriter who emerged from the Glasgow School of the 1980s and has gone through various musical manifestations, from the traditional acoustic singer/songwriter set up, through ‘analogue baroque’ and ‘folktronica’ to his current ‘furtive and crepuscular’ loops and samples. Whilst his music has changed down the years, his lyrics have consistently revolved around tragi-comedy, murder, postmodernism and overt sexual references.

As a lyricist he is capable of poetic beauty in songs such as Lucky Like St Sebastian ('Oh Dante though I’m anti such romantic speculation I’m your hypocrite reader in the same situation, I’m your double’) as well as cruder statements (‘the cultural meaning of coming in a girl’s mouth’). Bluestocking leans towards the forthrightness of the latter, despite a surprisingly tender undertone. Like a classical poet, Momus addresses his loved one, praising her intellect and her dirty mind in equal measure: ‘I love you, you’re so well-read / blue stockings, well-spread / your carnal knowledge knocks me dead’, before going on to list the books they have enjoyed together. The titles he references are essentially a beginner’s guide to classic erotica, and are well worth further research.

Over the years, I’ve been slowly working my way through the lyrics like a reading list; I think the first I picked up was Sacher Masoch’s Venus in Furs, a classic of female cruelty and male submission on a par with Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden. Sacher Masoch will always be linked to de Sade as writers who gave their names to fetishes; unlike his more famous counterpart, he can actually write, and the cruelty of his heroine, Wanda, is deliciously chronicled.

From there, I moved on to Anais Nin, The Delta of Venus and Little Birds. One thing that always struck me from Nin’s writings was that her heroines must have possessed incredibly strong pelvic floors; regardless, I enjoyed the stories far more than the boorish trash peddled by her lover, Henry Miller.

The range of reading displayed in the song is eye-opening, from Frank Harris’s Victorian sex memoir ‘Lives and Loves’ (far superior to ‘My Secret Life’) to Bataille’s insane, surreal and perverse Story of the Eye. Francophiles will be pleased to see a strong Gallic representation including Lautreamont and Verlaine, while the references to Ovid, Petronius and the Latins of the silver age (Seneca, Apeleuis, Marcus Aurelius) took my knowledge of classical filth beyond the obvious Catullus verses.

Other highlights from Bluestocking include The Song of Songs, with its lush food metaphors, and the oral tales (behave) of The Decameron and Arabian Nights. The only one which has missed the mark for me, so far, was ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’, the narrator’s overly knowing tone at odds with most of the other texts. I still have a few to go (I haven’t got round to reading Mishima yet), but I’m getting there.

What songs have inspired you to pick up a particular book? Let us know in the comments section.

Literary Lyricists

2012-01-26T22:50:00.004Z

Joshua ben Jospeh's One Song From The Dosshouse. A lyricist taking inspiration from the French poets and any number of decadent classics. Oh, and one other important influence, as his name suggests.

Moonlighting

2012-01-26T14:11:00.002Z

For Books' Sake kindly let me review Lynn Shepherd's Dickens-inspired mystery novel 'Tom All-Alone's', here

Whilst Dan Carpenter allows me to purge my embarrasing musical past at his new site, Top Ten of Interest.

Please to visit both.

The New Libertines at Three Minute Theatre

2012-01-25T11:51:00.004Z

Poet, publisher and performer Dan Holloway bought his literary travelling circus to Manchester last night, under the ‘New Libertines’ banner. There’s a developing spoken word scene centred on the Northern Quarter at present, with nights such as ‘Bad Language’ and ‘Tales of Whatever’ flourishing, and the event managed to match up some of the more popular local performers with a variety of others from around the country.

The Three Minute Theatre was an excellent choice of venue for the event, with the room’s ramshackle charm and mismatched seating suitably reflecting the ethos of the event itself. Silent films were projected onto the back wall as the crowd milled around the bar. Resplendent in red braces and a fishnet stockinged arm, Dan introduced the evening’s performers before launching into one of his own poems, Monsters Walk These Streets. His Ginsberg facial hair and Beat delivery make Mr Holloway an engaging performer, as does his willingness to tackle potentially embarrassing themes in a direct manner. He brings huge doses of boyish enthusiasm to his introductions, and it was great to see a compere laughing and applauding heartily during each act.

The first act of the evening was Laura Jarratt, a YA fiction writer (‘without vampires’), reading the first section from her new novel, Skin Deep. The opening chapter, told from the viewpoint of a teenaged girl, featured a near-fatal car-crash, whilst the second was more reflective, with a refrain of ‘ugly people don’t have feelings – at least that’s what I thought’.

Following on from Ms Jarrett was Rachel Genn, a reading from her novel The Cure. The section she chose described a disastrous swimming date, with the male narrator spending an awful amount of time fiddling with the content of his trunks; the humour of the story was heightened by the downbeat northern tone of the reader.

Next up was Claire Robertson, a writer/performer from Huddersfield, who seemed to be a big favourite with the For Books’ Sake contingent in the audience. She was the first performer to go beyond the traditional set-up of these events, making the most of the stage. Her piece, written specially for the event, was inspired by the Chinese Year of the Dragon, and her pregnancy. Reading from a scroll she had created herself, and using her own body as a prop, she spun an ethereal tale of a young woman searching for a distinct identity and exploring the world her ‘little dragon’ will be entering. The piece was almost stream of consciousness at times, and Claire’s sly eyes darted round the room, engaging with the crowd.

After Ms Robertson’s performance, Dan introduced the first writer he’d invited from Oxford, Paul Askew. His short, darkly surreal poems dealt mainly with death and birds (‘pigeons are the alcoholics of the bird world’), and his presentation was reminiscent of Lee and Herring in their early, ranty days.

After a short break and a rush to the bar, the event restarted with Elizabeth Baines, reading from her book Balancing on the Edge of the World. Fittingly, the piece (‘Condensed Metaphysics’) was based down the road from the venue, and detailed a drunken discussion in a takeaway over aspiration, being and disillusionment.

The second poet of the night came next, 2011 ‘Not The Booker Prize’ winner Michael Stewart, reading poems he had written for an exhibition called Couples. These short, humorous poems drew wry grins from the audience, and trod a fine line between subtlety and smut. This line was then gleefully trampled by Sarah-Clare Conlan. Her first and last poems were each 69 words long (‘an arbitrary number’), and the set ended on the word ‘pussy’. In between, she told stories of masturbating librarians and fireman fantasies, with a knowing understatement.

The last of the featured readers, Sian Rathore took the stage next; her first poems included some memorable lines (‘she had the anagram of a good face’), but her third, and longest, got the biggest reaction of the night. A description of hypermanic episodes, ‘I’m So Jacked’ was the poetic equivalent of the Chuck Norris internet memes (‘I’m so jacked I’m listening to Marilyn Manson and I don’t care… I’m so jacked Marilyn Manson is listening to me!’) and fit well with the increasingly merry audience.

Finally, an open mic section featured a debut reading from For Books’ Sake’s Alex Herod (a short piece inspired by Nabokov and the plastic rock planted by secret services in Moscow) and Bad Language’s Dan Carpenter, as well as a didgeridoo version of ‘Inspector Gadget’ and contributions from Fat Roland and David Hartley.

The event was a great success overall; the performers had disparate styles but maintained a high level of quality, and the audience seemed swept up in the enthusiasm coming from the stage. Late drinks were had, plans were hatched and things were lost. While ‘The New Libertines’ sounds like a Granta style tag for a new movement, there was too much variety on show for the acts to be pigeonholed – it does appear to be a guarantee of a good night out though.

Dedalus Books; An Appreciation

2012-01-20T15:24:00.007Z

The home of decadent, debauched and disturbing story-telling, Dedalus manages to present a recognisable and consistent identity despite a catalogue which crosses decades and continents. I first came into contact with Dedalus as a teenaged Manics fan searching out Octave Mirbeau, the source of many an album-cover quote. Later, as a young fop, their Decadent Handbook was a source of inspiration. Now, their range of republished forgotten classics and new literature in translation occupies a substantial amount of shelf-space at Workshy Fop HQ.

Their catalogue is notable for its breadth, and focuses on three main strands: classics of decadent fiction, modern European fiction in translation, and anthologies, from the Book of Absinthe to the Book of Modern Finnish Fantasy. The impression is of a body of editors and translators with a stunning depth of knowledge and dedication to finding work of the highest quality, despite an apparent lack of marketability. Their books are as well-presented as you would expect, and have attracted a cult following. They seem to appeal to a certain type of creative individual; their anthologies feature contributions from members of Blondie and Placebo, among others, with the likes of Sebastian Horsley representing the arts.

My own collection of Dedalus books mainly consists of nineteenth century writers. Starting with the bewildering, beautiful rage of The Torture Garden (described in their own catalogue as being, at times, ‘probably meaningful only to scholars of French political history’, a wonderful piece of anti-marketing), I was able to move on to Huysmans (especially La Bas and Marthe) and from there to less well known Eastern European writers such as Gustave Meyrink (The Golem, an astoundingly atmospheric piece of fin de siècle mysticism). These books share a spellbinding, ethereal quality, and prompt further investigation. Fortunately, the list allows you to delve beyond the obvious to discover the authors' less-celebrated but equally intriguing works.

In modern literature, the ‘Dedalus’ name on the spine guarantees that the book will deliver something beyond the ordinary, and you can be confident that whichever authors you choose will have something to drag you in. A recent lucky find for me was Sylvie Germain’s ‘Days of Anger’ (1993), a dark and absorbing allegorical fairytale, and one of the most unusual novels I’ve read in years. Dedalus also publishes ‘Euro Shorts’, a line of modern European fiction which must be short enough to be read on the Eurostar from London to Paris. Sophie Jabes’s ‘Alice the Sausage’ is a standout from this list, a surreal piece of erotica about a young woman who turns to prostitution to support her eating habit, until she grows too large to move.

Dedalus anthologies are a great starting place for new readers. The Decadent Handbook is one of their more high-profile publications. Edited by the Erotic Review’s Rowan Pelling, it acts as a lifestyle guide for the modern dandy, as well as an introduction to some of the best writers published by Dedalus. Other standouts include Dead Letters, the book of literary suicides, a fascinating mixture of literary anecdotes and textual criticism put together by Gary Lachman. Other titles inspire a double-take from casual browsers – ‘The Dedalus Book of Estonian Literature’ anyone?

The existence of Dedalus came under severe threat due to Arts Council cuts, and was reprieved after a vociferous campaign of support. It would have been a tragedy to see the company go to the wall, as it acts as an outlet for works of genuine quality which would otherwise risk being forgotten outside of academia, or unavailable to English-speakers. As it is, they are still publishing innovative and unusual work, most recently New Finish Grammar, a tale of memory-loss and identity which won several prizes in Italy on its publication in 2001. The books I have mentioned all come highly recommended; but I would encourage you to dip into the catalogue almost at random, and surprise yourself. Likewise, if you ever see the name ‘Dedalus’ on a charity shop shelf, pick it up straight away.

Dedalus’s mission is: ‘to be unique: an exciting, innovative and distinctive alternative to commercial publishing; to find new talent and put British publishing at the heart of Europe.” It is succeeding.

What Happens If I Push That One?

2012-01-10T14:59:00.004Z

Writer and Eight Cuts publisher Mr Dan Holloway shares his proposals for a productive 2012.

As a species, and often to the blind horror of our parents and peers, we learn by trying things out and seeing what happens. After all, “It can’t be that bad, can it?” Or at least, if it is, then no one else will make the same daft mistake again. And so we muddle towards progress, constantly learning how to “fail better.”

But as writers we seem to have the notion that’s not how you do it. We’re told to know what we’re aiming for and then practice doing the same thing over and over till we get there. And so we make incremental progress towards replicating something a gazillion people have already done better.

And then we write articles on how the novel’s going nowhere, or how there’s nothing new after Modernism. Hmm, yeah, I wonder why that is.

Now I’m not going to fetishise “The New.” New isn’t better. Most of the time it’s not even possible. But it’s interesting.

I’m not even saying don’t work hard, don’t focus. Heck, I used to be a powerlifter training 6 times a week to improve three basic kinds of lift. Now *that* is repetitive.

What I’m saying is every now and again put everything to one side and do something just to see what happens. Then bring that back to your long-term projects (if you haven’t discovered something much more fun in the meanwhile) and see how much better they can be. The thing is, if you only do what you’ve always done, you’ll never discover what else is out there. Which isn’t a bad thing in itself. I keep trying very hard not to sound flitty and flighty and like I’m advocating a zero attention span, but isn’t art at least to some extent about that old fashioned thing – wonder? Isn’t there part of it that’s watching someone’s eyes pop out of their head when you show them something they’ve never seen before? More fundamentally, isn’t it about going to a place within yourself you never knew was there?

I’m giving up everything (writing-wise) in 2012 except doing stuff “to see what happens.” A year’s a long time, but why don’t you give it a month, say?

What does that mean? Well, if I could tell you that then it wouldn’t be a voyage of discovery. But let me tell you about the time my wife and I used to go travelling. It was at the height of the budget airline boom. You really could go anywhere in Europe for under a fiver – including taxes – if you weren’t fussy about when you went. So we did. At one point we visited 23 countries in a year. Sometimes leaving the house at 2 on a Sunday morning and getting back at 4 on Monday morning after a brief sleepless sojourn in Luxembourg or Geneva. Being a budding writer (believe it or not I was going to be a travel writer – until air travel went belly up a few years back), I wanted to create a memoir of our trips. My wife being an avid hoarder, the answer just happened. Instead of taking snapshots of our travels, we made scrapbooks out of our receipts. Whatever we bought, down to the last tub of rillettes from Carrefour. Looking back through them now it’s a way better recollection of those trips, of what they actually meant, of what we were feeling at the time, than any number of photos.

Hmm, nice holiday anecdote, but… Well, I guess the point is, don’t do it one way just because “that’s the way you do things.” Try things out. See what happens. Have fun.

Dan will be hosting spoken word sensation The New Libertines at Afflecks Palace 'Three Minute Theatre', Manchester on January 23, featuring 2011 Not The Booker Prize winner Michael Stewart, spoken word femme fatale Sarah-Clare Conlan, award winning author Elizabeth Baines, and more.

The Workshy Fop Awards: 2011

2011-12-23T14:07:00.003Z

My Books Of The Year, 2011

1) Half-Blood Blues – Esi Edugyan

Brilliantly readable, Half-Blood Blues conjures up the spirit of Weimar Berlin, war-torn Paris and the Jazz age whilst delivering an intriguing tale of betrayal, fallibility and forgiveness. The dialogue is effortlessly convincing, and Edugyan manages the difficult feat of writing about music without resorting to clichés or pseudery. Half-Blood Blues was one of the surprise hits of the year (well done For Books’ Sake for picking up on it early on), and its success is entirely justified.

2) A Cruel Bird Came To The Nest And Looked In – Magnus Mills

As usual, Magnus Mills managed to create a surreal, downbeat, comic and profound novel crammed into about two hours worth of reading time. Mills is hard to categorise, and doesn’t fit readily alongside anyone else currently writing in the mainstream. I suppose you could position him somewhere between Samuel Beckett, Mervyn Peake and Alan Bennett. A Cruel Bird…may not quite reach the heights of ‘The Restraint of Beasts’ or ‘Explorers of the New Century’, but is still one of the most enjoyable books of the year, with its deft satires of Empire, Orwell, and Oil Wars.

3) The Stranger’s Child – Alan Hollinghurst

Taking a more expansive view than his previous work, The Stranger’s Child surely cements Hollinghurst’s position as the most technically gifted author currently writing on the mainstream. In this novel, Hollinghurst toned down the sex scenes while still writing a great party, and created an evocative piece of work, reminiscent of Forster or Waugh. The length may put people off re-reading it, but I suspect there is plenty to be drawn out of The Stranger’s Child with time.

4) The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

One of the most purely enjoyable reads of the year, The Marriage Plot focuses on the problems college graduates face when confronted with the real world, and demonstrates that academic virtues can become a hindrance away from campus. The novel may not have all the audacity or technical accomplishment of the Pulitzer-winning Middlesex, but Euginides still writes a great character, and displays an engaging warmth and humour.

5) There But For The – Ali Smith

Another book ignored by the Booker panel, There But For The takes an idea straight out of Pinter and parlays it into a full-length novel of comic absurdity. The concept couldn’t be simpler or more engaging - a dinner party guest locks himself in an upstairs room and refuses to leave. His actions reveal the true nature of his hosts, and of society as a whole, like a middle-class Bartleby; we see subtle cruelties and meaningless chatter, opportunistic money-making and witless acts of solidarity, one act of rejection causing utter chaos. The structure of the novel leads to occasional dips in interest, but overall this is a fine read.

Best of… In Translation

Neither of these books were written this year, but both were translated into English during 2011. Firstly, Michel Houellebecq delivered his most enjoyable and mature novel to date, The Map and The Territory. Similar to Bret Easton Ellis in Lunar Park, but more satisfying, Houellebecq portrays himself as a past-his-peak, dissolute character trapped in his own text. Free from the overt misogyny and racism of previous work, the novel is an enjoyable satire on modern France and the art world. Also in France, Jean Tuele’s novel ‘Eat Him If You Like’ was a disturbing, unpleasant and deeply compelling account of mass hysteria and brutality, drawn from an obscure nineteenth century incident in which a popular young man is falsely accused of treachery and set upon by a mob.

Non-Fiction

Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman has dominated best-seller lists and year end awards. While there are problems with the presentation of this book as a definitive guide for the modern feminist, as a coming-on-age memoir it is a huge success, equally hilarious and moving. You can’t help being glad that Moran exists as a counterbalance to the likes of Louise Mensch. Elsewhere, The Psychopath Test was probably Jon Ronson’s best book to date, with plenty of stories you’ll remember and tell your friends about. Mark Kermode’s The Good The Bad and the Multiplex takes everything you like about his radio shows and turns it into an impassioned rant about the evils of dumb blockbusters, 3D, English-language remakes and the multi-screen cinema. Imagine Eric Idle’s package holiday sketch, but replace ‘Watney’s Red Barrel’ with ‘Bloody anti-piracy ads’, and you’ll have the flavour of it. Alexei Sayle’s childhood memoir ‘Stalin Ate My Homework’ is full of fascinating anecdotes, but sometimes strikes an uncomfortably hostile tone towards his mother, in particular.

Crime

Christopher Fowler has been writing the Bryant & May novels since 2004, and this year’s effort, The Memory of Blood, is his ninth. Following the fortunes of the elderly detective duo Arthur Bryant and John May, founders and leaders of London’s Peculiar Crime Unit, the series deals in the mythology of the capital, with esoteric assistants, scheming villains, an obstructive Home Office and a Victorian sense of Grand Guignol. The Memory of Blood is a typical case, a locked room mystery centred on the figure of Mr Punch. The detectives, as ever, face a race against the clock, armed only with their arcane knowledge and supporting cast of white witches and defrocked academics. Fowler’s books cast light on forgotten byways of London’s history, with a wicked wit and a nod to psychogeography. The series does not necessarily flow chronologically, and this is as good an entry point as any. The audio books are also excellent.

Publisher of the Year:

Eight Cuts is an Oxford-based publisher, dealing largely in experimental work, be it poetry or prose. They have had some success this year with The Dead Beat by Cody Jones being nominated for, and sadly withdrawn from, Not The Booker Prize, and strong reviews for The Zoom Zoom by Penny Goring. It's great to see an independent publisher with such a strong sense of identity, creating fascinating (and well-presented) books. Dan Holloway contributes semi-regular polemics to this blog, on the importance of experimentation and the DIY aesthetic - a great introduction to Eight Cuts.

Website of the Year:

For Books' Sake has made great progress in its first full year, with lively reviews and debate, excellent regular features (Battle of the Bookshops, Book Candy and Five Minute Fridays), as well as raucus events around the country. There's definitely a place for a website focussing on independent women writers (and independent publishers), with the depth of focus this allows. They do nice merch, too.

The Sense Of An Ending - Julian Barnes

2011-12-22T10:01:00.003Z

Boy meets girl, girl leaves boy, runs off with his best friend, close group of male friends is broken up as a result - Julian Barnes's Booker-winning novella appears to lean heavily on the John Terry / Wayne Bridge saga. There's also a close resemblance to Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, and the protagonist displays a hint of Martin Amis's middle age ennui, but it's the spectre of Terry which looms largest over this year's prize-winner.

There were a number of stand-out books up for consideration by this year's panel, among them the excellently readable Half-Blood Blues and Ali Smith's There But For The. So why on earth did they pick this slim effort, with its lame dialogue, in which sixth formers hold forth like history professors? The opening of the book, in particular, is ripe for a Craig Brown parody: 'Tick tock, is there anything more plausible than a second hand?'

The narrative voice is fashionably dull, making 'The Sense of an Ending' the literary equivalent of being trapped by the pub bore: 'That's life, isn't it?', we are asked, over and over. 'That's what people do, don't they?' When Barnes isn't being boring, he is boorish. His protagonist, Tony, 'wanked explosively', and 'peed aggressively'. I yawned, expansively. Yes, Barnes does a great job of getting inside the skin of his character; but when the character is this dull, should he have bothered?

Likewise, Barnes fails to provoke interest when he tries his hand at plot twists. Like a hillock in a Norfolk landscape, or the curve on a rural Motorway, there is the occasional event to keep the reader awake, but they struggle to create real dramatic involvement. Late on, Barnes commits the fundamental sin of withholding vital information, before springing a surprise ending on the reader, a thoroughly dishonest piece of trickery, requiring no skill or subtlety on the part of the author.

Presumably, the revelation about Tony’s weekend with the in-laws was supposed to be a dramatic literary device, but instead you get the impression of an author who has run out of ideas and doesn’t know how to finish his book. Dress this up in ‘the mutability of memory’ all you like, but the sudden appearance of un-hinted at information has no more credibility than you would expect to find in the works of Dan Brown.

At one point, a young character speculates: 'What is the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist doesn't behave as he would have done in a book?'. It may be that Julian Barnes is having a massive, postmodern joke at the expense of the reader, and this is the key to it. But, the reader is entitled to ask, what is the point of having a book, if the protagonist doesn't behave in a way that's worth reading?

Penguin True Crime: An Appreciation

2011-11-30T08:52:00.005Z

It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the NEWS OF THE WORLD. Roast beef and Yorkshire, or roast pork and apple sauce, followed up by suet pudding and driven home, as it were, by a cup of mahogany-brown tea, have put you in just the right mood. Your pipe is drawing sweetly, the sofa cushions are soft underneath you, the fire is well alight, the air is warm and stagnant. In these blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.

The opening passage of George Orwell’s 1946 Tribune essay, ‘Decline of the English Murder’, was much quoted earlier this year by journalists keen to highlight the importance of the recently deceased News of the World to the traditional English Sunday afternoon. This essay has always been a favourite of mine. When I was growing up, classic crime books lined the walls of my house, and I was versed in the traditions of the English murder from a young age; on family days out, my dad would point out the house where Dr Buck Ruxton cut up his wife and housemaid, and other such sites.

One shelf in the lounge always stood out; it was filled with Penguin True Crime editions. With their typically iconic red and black striped spines, they stood out among the editions of ‘classic British trials’ and so on, and my young eyes were unavoidably drawn to them. Over the years, I have built up my own collection of these books, from charity shops, or 1p purchases from Amazon. Predominantly, these editions focus on crimes from what Orwell may have described as the ‘classic era’ of British murder: domestic dramas in middle class homes, from the late Victorian era through to the Second World War. Occasionally, the publishers cast their eyes across the Atlantic, with an account of the Manson Family trial by the chief prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, or a history of Lizzie Borden’s crimes (unproven), but the identity of the series was essentially English. The recurring themes of the books are family jealousy, and the need to preserve face, to a degree when arsenic was a preferable alternative to the decree nisi. The best would also include an air of mystery, a crime unproven or a verdict doubted.

Although the series was published between 1988-91, most of the books were reprints of earlier works. As a result, they tend to adopt a comfortable, patrician tone which eschews sensationalism of any kind, sounding instead more like a fireside lecture (fans of this authorial voice will also be charmed by the sub-genre of pathologists’ memoirs, exemplified by Dr Keith Simpson’s ‘Forty Years of Murder’). Whilst there are again some exceptions, such as campaigning left-wing journalist Paul Foot, most of the authors have the air of the gentleman amateur about them, rendering the goriest of murders strangely suitable for bedtime reading.

The first book in the series which I read was Donald Rumbelow’s ‘Complete Jack the Ripper’. This is still considered an essential book for Ripperologists, and was quoted in a disproportionate number of my Undergraduate essays. A former London policeman himself, Rumbelow undertakes a disinterested examination of the evidence, undercutting sensational theories, and also placing the events in the context of East End political and social upheaval. Rumbelow also contributed a further book on the Houndsditch murders and the Siege of Sydney Street, brilliantly investigating this little-known (nowadays) incident in 1910, lifting the lid on émigré anarchist groups which blossomed in turn of the century London.

(SYDNEY STREET SIEGE) (aka SIDNEY STREET SIEGE)

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Footage from the Siege of Sidney Street

These books are great examples of the skilled crime writer’s ability to use murder to shine the light on the social context of the incidents they are investigating. This is an essential aspect of the True Crime series, whether it be the anarchist societies of London (also seen in 'Stinie: Murder On The Common'), or the role of women (‘The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick’, or ‘Suddenly At The Priory’, which explored the murderous intrigues which could surround the figure of a wealthy young Victorian widow).

These crimes were sensations in their day. Judith Flanders’s recent overview ‘The Invention of Murder’ describes the way in which Victorians immortalised their notorious criminals through theatre, pamphlets and waxworks, which the tabloid press boomed in the early twentieth century thanks to its tireless court reportage. Killers such as ‘Acid Bath’ Haigh were sensationalised every bit as much as modern murderers such as the self-proclaimed ‘Crossbow Cannibal’. However, they have now dropped largely off the radar.

Modern crime fiction is enjoying a boom; whilst Scandinavian and American authors invent serial killers working to occult methodology, British writers have been getting their hands dirty in the murky world of 70s gangland, dredging up memories of Harry Roberts and the Krays. The invention and quality of many of these novels is at odds with the state of true crime writing. Reading Cathi Unsworth’s excellent novelisation of the Jack The Stripper murders, ‘Bad Penny Blues’, I was pleased to see a number of familiar texts in the acknowledgements, such as John Pearson’s classic ‘The Profession of Violence’. I was also familiar with the source texts on the Stripper crimes though; ‘Found Naked and Dead’ and ‘Jack of Jumps’, both of which are spectacularly misogynistic and distasteful, with all the charm of a 1970’s police station locker room. Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher broke the mould by returning to the traditions exemplified by the Penguin series; the family conflict, the uncertain outcome, the investigator’s minute examination of a family’s private allegiances and routines. It was a shining light among the Mad Frankie Fraser biographies*.

Nowadays, American serial killers dominate the bookshelves and the cinema screens, with only the illiterate memoirs of football thugs and nightclub bouncers to compete. Genuinely interesting cases, such as that of Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox, are ill-served by rush released books made up of newspaper clippings. I’m a bit of a sucker for criminal profiler memoirs, but have lost count of the number of people who claim to have been Thomas Harris’s main contact in the writing of the Hannibal Lector novels. Whilst aware that we are discussing human life and its abrupt curtailment, the random, casual acts of violence inflicted by American serial killers hold little interest compared to the webs of intrigue which surround the classic English murder.

These criminals are far from remarkable. Crushed by the pressures of conformity, boiling with impotent rage, they scheme and plot; the easy availability of deadly poisons in Victorian England proves an irresistible temptation. Living in close proximity to their victims is a dreadful strain, pushing their nerves to breaking point and leading to often bizarre behaviour (Crippen fleeing the country with his lover disguised as a young boy). Likewise, the police officers are reassuringly human, their investigations illuminating the dark corners of suburbia. With no CSI labs to fall back on, the intuition of Detectives such as Abbeline and Walter Dew pokes into the darker side of human nature, searching out motive and opportunity

Overall, I think the most fitting recommendation for these books, and a suitable introduction to their tone, comes from John Dickson Carr, in his foreward to ‘Suddenly at the Priory’:

‘When murder-fanciers draw up their chairs to the fire, each settling himself to a night-long discussion of their favourite homicide, there always enters a ghostly procession of what the late William Roughhead called ‘the Lost Ladies’. In fact, you can seldom have a good case without a fascinating woman. They distract us as much in debate as they do in real life. Shadowy, smiling, they glide in and lean across our chairs. Was she guilty? Was she not guilty? Did she think about murder – but refrain? She may have died on a scaffold one hundred years ago, or drawn her last breath yesterday under a (figurative) heap of lilies. It doesn’t matter. We still pound the table and yell.

All these events take place against the starchiest background of Victorian respectability. Behind lace curtains lurks demoniac possession, and a twilight conservatory is a-buzz with lies and murder.’

Whilst Donald Rumbelow is one of the best exponents of the old-fashioned crime writer’s art, the cases he describes are relatively atypical. For an investigation of what Orwell would describe as a perfect murder, I would recommend John Williams’s ‘Suddenly at the Priory’, or Richard Whittigton-Egan’s ‘The Riddle Of Birdhouse Rise’, a complex Victorian poisoning case also notable for the author’s over-enthusiasm as an amateur detective, badgering the perpetrator’s descendents almost half a century on. John Cornwell’s ‘Earth to Earth’ is a deeply strange depiction of life and death on a Devonshire farm which had been untouched by progress for almost 600 years, whilst PD James’s The Maul and The Pear Tree is a masterful account of the early Victorian Ratcliff Highway Murders. All are available for pennies from the usual online sources.

*Incidentally, Frankie Fraser does not appear half as unbalanced as he claims. Most of his behaviour is extremely predictable.

Eat Him If You Like: Jean Teule

2011-11-28T11:56:00.003Z

Jean Teule’s latest novella (published two years ago in France) deals with an obscure yet shameful incident in French history. Set during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the action of Eat Him If You Like takes place in the village of Hautefaye. The popular young Deputy Mayor, Alain de Moneys, rides into town to attend the fair, as a last public appearance before he is due to join his regiment at the front. Unfortunately for de Moneys, drought and bad news from the war have turned the village into a tinderbox, and a misheard comment has horrific consequences. The crowd turn on their hero, and he finds himself at the mercy of the mob.

Teule wastes little time setting the scene; although the opening pages paint a picture of a charmed young man inhabiting a rural idyll, the rug is swiftly pulled from under the reader’s feet. The main body of the short book (111 pages) is concerned with the graphic, brutal treatment de Moneys receives at the hands of his tormentors. Accused of being an enemy spy, despite his strong local links, the Deputy Mayor is pursued throughout the village by the mob, receiving almost unreadably barbaric treatment at every corner. The author presents de Moneys’s suffering with clear parallels to Christ’s passion; the young man is repeatedly denied by those who he has helped, whilst authority figures prevaricate and wash their hands of him.

Teule focuses almost exclusively on the character of de Moneys; however, the reader can gain a clear insight into the madness of the mob, and the horror which can ensue once reason is abandoned and bloodlust embraced. Any sign or comment is taken as a reinforcement of the crowd’s beliefs. Teule also reinforces the power of fate; a series of hideous coincidences and misunderstandings conspire to make de Moneys’s situation ever more dire. There is no black comedy here, though – Teule’s writing is unforgiving and relentless.

Although Eat Him If You Like feels insubstantial in the reader’s hands, it packs considerable emotional punch. Teule takes the reader far beyond their comfort zone, in a way which horror films so often fail to do. There is no need for the clever ‘nods-to-camera’ employed by the likes of Michael Haneke; the act of reading on forms a bond between reader and subject, giving his suffering a visceral effect.

In his previous historical novels, such as Monsieur Montespan, Teule has subtly encouraged readers to re-evaluate historical oddities through a modern sensibility, whilst also demonstrating a Rabelaisian relish for the dirt and disease of pre-twentieth century France. While the narrative focuses solely on the events of that day in 1870, there is a clear and universal message about the dangers of mob rule and the natural urge to search for a scapegoat in difficult times. The willingness of young men to become vicious and stupid under the guise of patriotism is also condemned.

It is difficult to recommend Eat Him If You Can; large sections of the book made me feel physically sick, and played on my mind for days after reading it. On the other hand, it is superbly well-written, economic yet extremely powerful, graphically brutal yet also nuanced. Whilst some passages may appear to ape torture-porn motifs, they also display humanity, a dark awareness of fate, and an understanding of mob behaviours. It is not a book which can be easily turned away from or forgotten.

Aleister Crowley: The Biography - Tobian Churton

2011-11-18T12:21:00.002Z

Aleister Crowley feels rather quaint from the perspective of the early twenty first century. Horror films and heavy metal has left us rather jaded, negating the shock value of Satanism, the odd Daily Mail child abuse panic aside. Crowley’s apparently genuine belief can seem rather endearing to the modern reader; the credulity of his biographer is possibly less so.

Tobias Churton’s new biography of The Beast attempts to position Crowley as a Great Edwardian, focussing on his shadowy secret service work and his early mountaineering exploits, as much as his Magick experiments. Regrettably, he also seeks to resurrect and reappraise Crowley’s bloody awful poetry, giving undue attention to his doggerel verse.

The most interesting elements of the book focus on Crowley’s youth, and his very English form of rebellion, encapsulated in the tale of his tutor seeking to expand young Crowley’s horizons: ‘He took the 15 year old to Torquay, opening him up to the joys of drinking, smoking, card games and girls’. Churton vividly portrays Crowley’s stifling Puritan upbringing, making a career as a notorious Satanist seem a natural reaction to a childhood with the Plymouth Bretheren.

In many ways, Crowley is a typical middle class rebel, with a style molded by Shakespeare and the King James Version. His innovation, such as it was, was to apply a modern, scientific rigour to ancient invocations and rituals. This allows Churton to interpret his work as a form of psychological experiment, aiming to break open the doors of perception. He is also linked to the fin de siecle decadents who sought to create an aesthetic which functioned beyond normal morality, and highlighted the glory of the individual.

Unfortunately, Churton is keen to imbue Crowley with undue significance and perception. A list of things Churton claims Crowley predicted includes (but is not limited to) the special relationship between the USA and Britain, both world wars, the rise of the European Union, the Great Depression and the Soviet Union. He also credits Crowley with inventing Churchill’s ‘Victory’ gesture as a form of Occult war on Nazism, and somehow using his ‘powers’ to influence Rudolf Hess’s flight to Scotland. More ludicrously, he suggests that Crowley invented the Loch Ness Monster, and even that Nessie was ‘a manifestation of Crowley’s potent penis’. Other examples of Crowley’s occult prowess read like the diary of a lonely 15 year old, particularly his descriptions of Crowley’s solitary sessions of ‘left-handed sex magick’.

This apologetic attitude displayed by Churton fails to convince the reader. Early in his career, Crowley was involved in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, with the likes of WB Yeates. As the group fractured, Crowley was accused of being a Government spy or double agent. Churton argues that Crowley acted as a ‘human zeitgeist’, capable of giving his body to one cause, and his mind to a conflicting cause – a convenient excuse for hypocrisy or betrayal. Later, he presents Crowley’s decision to engage in a four month trek across China with his partner and new born child in tow as a valid exercise in ‘ridding himself of reason’, with scant regard for his unfortunate companions.

Although Churton is a academic specialising in esoteric religions and beliefs, he is mercifully brief when presenting the reader with the mumbo-jumbo of Crowley’s magick. Unfortunately, he is prone to supposition and conjecture when dealing with historical sources, always attempting to put the best spin on Crowley’s dubious and self-interested actions, and making much of possible coincidences.

The latter stages of the book present a portrait of Crowley as an increasingly marginalised and irrelevant old man, struggling desperately for any hint of publicity he can muster, although Churton is at pains not to describe him in these tones. Despite the biographer’s best efforts though, the elder Crowley is not charming, appearing to the modern reader as a bitter and frustrated old misogynist.

Writing Crowley’s life is a difficult prospect for a biographer; there is a fascinating narrative of rebellion, mountaineering, intriguing, espionage and provocation, weighed down with tedious nonsense about ancient Nile gods, and the subject’s off-putting attitudes towards women, the poor, and anyone who disagreed with him. Chruton’s book attempts to cover all these issues in similar detail, strectching the reader’s attention to breaking point, whilst his apologist tone really got my goat. Far too many of his enthusiastic claims were met by a raised eyebrow, or derisive snort towards the end. Maybe Crowley does deserve a modern re-evaluation, at least the young Crowley might. However, this is not the book to do it

Why I Catch

2011-11-04T11:05:00.004Z

David Meller is the editor of a 'quarterly independent publication', Catch, which is currently on its second issue. Catch features articles on current affairs, music, sports, technology and more, and is notable for its intelligent, thoughtful air and professional presentation. Here, Mr Meller explains his motivation for starting the publication, and his reasons for going to print in what is supposedly a new digital age.

When I look back, I realise I have always been fascinated by newspapers and print. When I was 12, I used to buy The Daily Mirror from the newsagents at Stockport Bus Station on my way to get the 192 bus to school. From there, I would take it to my form room and read it until registration. Others in my year would come into the room and think I was odd for reading a newspaper. I shudder to think what they would have done were I reading The Guardian.

Although saying that, there were times when I would buy a copy of The Daily Telegraph (although that was to do with checking my fantasy football scores). I can imagine that looked odd. But this was when the Internet was a thing desired rather than needed, with its penny a minute after 6pm offers and free AOL discs that are now taking up large spaces in landfills across the country.

I eventually stopped buying newspapers not because of the Internet, but because I began delivering them. In the mornings I'd deliver everything from The Daily Sport - a particularly enjoyable read for a teen well into puberty - to The Independent; from 'reading' about Lolo Ferrari's breasts to understanding the arguments for and against the Euro. In the afternoons it would be the Manchester Evening News and at weekends it would be a mixture of the two.

There are three things I remember vividly from doing my paper round. The first is delivering the MEN's daily sports pink; a separate sports newspaper not only thrilled me, but the fact it was pink used to make me smile. The end of the pinks wasn't appreciated when I was younger, being ignorant of their history and symbolism, as well as people’s attachment to them, aged 14-16.

The second thing is delivering the immediate editions of The Mail on Sunday and The Observer after the infamous Brass Eye paedophile special. I wasn't hugely versed when it came to ideologies of newspapers, but that Sunday morning was an education easily worth more than the £9 I'd get every week to wake up at 6am every morning and deliver them.

The third and final thing was arriving home from my afternoon round on September 11, to see the World Trade Centre being destroyed. The morning after the night before, and seeing all those front pages, made me fully realise the powerful and everlasting nature of the front page. From that morning, I began collecting front pages and momentous editions of various newspapers.

No to Spreadsheets, Yes to DTP

I had been considering creating a “quarterly independent publication” for some time, and this idea began to seem like a necessity late last year. I had come off the back of a journalism degree and headed into working with spreadsheets inside a school five days a week. Despite having some success writing for When Saturday Comes (the best football magazine available in my view and a big influence on me), I still felt I was not doing as much writing as I wanted to. To be blunt, I don’t have the stomach to be a freelancer and I don’t want to take orders from people above me. Plus, there was a real possibility that I was going to spend a large portion of my life dealing with spreadsheets and Excel formulae. I couldn’t allow that to happen.

It wasn’t until about April of this year that the final urge to begin this quarterly independent publication came to mind. It was on a Sunday afternoon and I sent a Facebook message to numerous friends pitching for contributions.

I was firstly careful that the pretentious sounding “quarterly independent publication” wouldn’t be called or categorised with ‘zines, particularly those exclusive to a particular audience. Rather, I wanted something that, to a point, could represent not only my varied interests, but the variety you'd find in a paperboy's delivery bag - except without the breasts and the outright right-wing horror. I wanted to create a “catch-all publication”, where there would be at least one article someone could enjoy, covering current affairs and arts right through to technology and sport.

I also wanted to try and bring an intentional look of professionalism: for it to deliberately look like it had been designed in a desktop publishing [DTP] program rather than hand-drawn, cut and pasted – or appear to be so.

The feedback I got was encouraging. Within a couple of weeks, I had a bank of good and versatile writers to rely upon, all with a range of interests and ideas: from music production and a love of the Bee Gees to a betting column and writing about tickets touts.

I then thought about a name. Thinking back to the Facebook message, “catch” seemed appropriate. I also discovered I had the font used by British Rail on my laptop. Using that in the logo amused me somewhat and seemed very fitting.

Finally, there was the issue of what form it would be printed in. I obviously wanted to stay away from the ‘zine type, A5 publications, but I was also conscious that I needed to make Catch online friendly in some way.

I have never been a huge fan of blogs – ironic since you’re reading this on one, albeit a very good one – because they can seem very transient and effortless. I speak from experience. I was conscious that I didn’t want the content of the ‘publication’ to eventually end up as blog-looking posts when eventually put online.

The Future of Print

I came across a website called Newspaper Club, based in London. Their aim is to give people the opportunity to not only print their own newspapers, but to show that print as a form can thrive in a now largely digital culture. Perfect. Catch would be a newspaper. Perfect for the deliberate DTP aesthetic I wanted.

It also linked well into the website, which would differ further from the blog-style many news websites now adopt. It would be very simple and consist mainly of an embedded PDF reader, with the newspaper there to read and enlarge full-screen. This is not online content, but online print.

But still, why a newspaper?

Firstly, as you have probably realised, I have a sentimental attachment to, and fascination with, newspapers – but I believe others do, too, when there is quality, originality and aesthetic appeal.

I hope Catch achieves this not only through the mixture of writing, but also through the artwork: Catch’s writers are complemented by a bank of highly talented illustrators. The front pages of the first two editions are eye-catching and memorable, worthy of being appreciated in their own right, worthy of someone’s time.

The ambitious aim is that, rather than being disposable, I want people to savour each edition in some way: to show how the newspaper and print media can be more than a cheap, throwaway thing. Much like my collection, I suppose. From those who have bought a copy – yes, bought, not been given – this has worked so far, with comments praising its design and overall quality. The narrative of the newspaper, from current affairs to sport, also lends itself to having a product that contains a variety of content.

Secondly, I want to try and fuse print and the Internet in a much more harmonious way, not taking away the joys of print by simply having a block of text on a screen or on a smartphone, but interacting with print through a different means: in this case, through the embedded reader on the website and Catch for iPhone. The newspaper form allows me to do this. I don’t want the Internet and print to compete in the way they so often do now.

Finally, Catch is a personal experiment: to see if I can lead on a project, inspire other ambitious writers and illustrators to get involved through providing an opportunity to have their work shown in something professional, and to see if it can grow from there. Like When Saturday Comes, 25 years on.

On a personal level, the effects of Catch have already been positive, with it providing a fantastic example of leadership when I was recently accepted onto the TeachFirst scheme: finally away from Excel spreadsheets, several hours a day. I want others to gain just as much from contributing as well.

Catch is getting there but there is still a lot to do, notably on promotion and getting it distributed. There also isn’t much of a business model; it all comes out of my pocket and I’m glad to sell a few copies and lose no more than £100 per issue. That has to change.

But I am in no doubt that Catch is a good product and has a future, much like print – through whatever medium. My younger self keeps telling me that.

Catch is available to read online, and in printed form in selected retailers nationwide. The latest issue features articles on the UK riots, pop-up libraries, and a guide to producing music at home, as well as much more. Have a look, and support a bold new publication. Let us know what you think in the comments box, and tell us what you think of the role of the printed press in the modern media.

A Passion for Evil - Lowry Studio, Manchester, October 30

2011-11-02T09:19:00.002Z

The first part of a pre-Hallowe’en double bill, A Passion for Evil is a one-man show based on the life of the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley. As is traditional with these things, the play takes the form of a self-justification by the subject, charting the main events of his life.

A Passion for Evil was developed by John Burns, and is very much a personal labour of love. It was performed the Edinburgh Festival in 201, where it came to the attention of the Lowry’s Theatre Programmer Porl Cooper, who invited Burns to take part in the theatre’s ‘In Development’ strand. The programme offers emerging writers and performers the opportunity to develop their work with the guidance of experienced directors. Burns was keen to take part, as he had struggled to become involved in any sort of artistic community in his native Highlands.

For this performance, Burns was directed by Nigel Fairs, who sought to ‘put a bit of theatrical polish on a deliciously raw and passionate piece’. He clearly took on board his mentor’s advice, as he used the Lowry’s studio space effectively throughout his hour long performance, and was an engaging stage presence. Employing only a small number of props (desk, hat stand, chair), he took his audience from a theatre in Sheffield to a villa in Sardinia, via the Himalayas and Mayfair society parties. Burns credits Fairs with ‘bringing the stage to life’ and ‘helping me to see the other characters that were on stage’. He also uses pre-recorded voices to represent the received opinions which he fought for all his adult life.

The play began with a theatrical flourish, as Crowley began to enact the ritual invocation of Horus, as part of a tour of music halls in his later life. The body of the performance, though, takes place backstage, as Crowley waits to go on. He reminisces on the sequence of events which has taken him from his puritan upbringing to notoriety, as a representation of the devil itself. He challenges the popular myth of Crowley (‘I made my children watch as my wife was fucked by a goat. Maybe that one was true…’) without idealising the man; he still rages, and seeks to justify himself.

When a life is presented in the form of a one man show, it can place greater emphasis on factual accuracy than would be expected from a play. From this point of view, A Passion for Evil seems to tick as many boxes as possible for such a controversial figure. More importantly, though, Burns is an engaging and charismatic performer, portraying Crowley with charm and flashes of humour mixed in with his anger and bitterness at the forces of conservatism which plagued him throughout his life.

A Passion for Evil manages to humanise Crowley, highlighting his actual achievements without becoming mired in interminable ‘magick’ mumbo-jumbo which can bog down his biographies. Instead, we see his early mountaineering achievements, his creation of a utopian commune with followers, his ‘scarlet women’, his drug use and his rejection of the Plymouth Brethren sect in which he was raised. We also see him as a child, murdering a cat to test out the theory of nine lives – ‘I felt a bit sorry for the cat. But that’s science’.

The play was bought into the Lowry Studio In Development programme because of its potential, and there is still an element of the show which remains a work in progress. Despite this, though, it makes for an enjoyable and engaging beginning to the evening, both as an entertainment in itself, and as an introduction to the life of an Edwardian to whom the term ‘eccentric’ does not do justice.

London Film Festival: French Revolutions: 17 Girls / Last Screening / Nobody Else But You

2011-10-31T10:43:00.003Z

Jamie Brown's third dispatch from the frontlines of the BFI London Film Festival seems him tackle three new French offerings.

The LFF reserves significant space in its programme each year for new offerings from France, grouped beneath the moniker “French Revolutions”. Many of these films don’t make it back to a UK projection booth, so it’s always a good idea to catch a few at the festival if you’re in the market for a lost-classic-to-be. Another good reason for seeing French films is that many of them are screened in the delightful Ciné Lumière, based in the UK’s French Institute in South Kensington. I’ve no idea if it says anything about the priorities of the French when it comes to designing a cinema auditorium, but it offers unusually generous personal space.

It’s a Sunday afternoon at the Lumière for the first of my three French choices, 17 Girls (or if you prefer, 17 Filles). This is a based-on-real-events drama inspired by the story of a sudden and simultaneous occurrence of teenage pregnancies at Gloucester High School, Massachusetts, which reached international notoriety in 2008. The French sibling team of Delphine and Muriel Coulin have made of the subject their debut feature, and moved the events to the French port of Lorient.

In spite of the title, the film’s plot is driven by the story of one girl; Camille is smart, confident, attractive, mature, very popular and pregnant. Whilst her pregnancy does nothing to detract from Camille’s allure to her friends, initially numbering about half a dozen that form the cool set, they all assume that an abortion will result. When Camille shocks her peer group by deciding to keep the baby, plans for the child’s upbringing become the main topic of conversation. Before common sense has had a chance to prevail, the girls descend en masse to a party with the intention of having unprotected sex. Whilst this is only ‘successful’ for one girl, the die is cast. The girls grow closer than ever as they make plans to form a community support network that will ensure nobody has to drastically rethink their future once their offspring arrives. The group’s membership swells (sorry) as word gets around the school that babies are in.

Though there is clearly something admirable about the girls’ solidarity and rejection of the conflicting and judgmental advice they receive from floundering adults, it’s impossible not to see similarities with the small town angst-turned-self-destruction of The Virgin Suicides. It’s in searching for a reason behind the girls’ behaviour that the film finds its most sympathetic moments. There are two scenes of adults seeking explanations which both ring true and raise a smile; one at a school governors meeting where every stereotypical flawed response from the left, right and centre of public opinion is comically rolled out; and another in the form of a TV news report that attempts a bizarrely tenuous link between the perceived moral decline and the collapse of the town’s industry.

I enjoyed the film, and was genuinely upset by its sad and abrupt climax, but there are a few too many under-developed ideas and characters. A lot more could have been made, for instance, of Clementine, physically and emotionally the least mature member of the gang, who could have offered a lot in terms of a contrast with Camille’s headstrong leader. Camille’s brother is also underused, despite being the only remotely serious male character. A soldier sent to war as a teenager, his very different kind of lost innocence offered a potentially interesting parallel storyline.

The treatment is also a little too French for its own good. Whilst the abundance of flesh, fornication and drug use is perhaps refreshingly liberated when imagining how Hollywood might have treated the same subject, it’s also just a bit too predictable. There is one especially outrageous moment involving Clementine’s attempts to conceive which is courageously played for laughs, but is actually very uncomfortable to watch. The film also floats along in a dreamy, philosophical atmosphere that becomes a little irritating at times. Essentially though, it is Camille’s story, and Louise Grinberg’s performance in the central role is arresting enough to forgive the peripheral flaws.

Two other new French films attempt a little cinematic nostalgia, with variable results. Most successful is Last Screening, a slasher horror that is all kinds of retro. The cinematography is pure 70s/80s genre classic, the references draw on the 50s and 60s, and the message is anti-modernisation.

Sylvain single-handedly runs the local art-house cinema, doing everything from projection to ticket sales. It’s not an arduous task as no more than about three people ever seem to attend a screening. For this reason, the owner announces the cinema’s closure, but this means nothing to Sylvain who remains in denial whenever anyone dares to enquire about it. The resistance is hardly surprising; the cinema is Sylvain’s life – he even resides in a cramped and gloomy living space in the basement.

In the evenings Sylvain pursues his hobby of slaying women with a knife, and his twisted trademark is to remove a single ear from every victim. We soon learn that this is connected to a secret section of his living quarters, hidden behind an enormous Jacques Tati poster, containing portraits of Hollywood’s greatest female icons, and one of Sylvain’s mother. Yes, what we have here is a lonely young man for a killer with an absent mother looming large. It doesn’t take a genius to work out which famous horror character is the inspiration for Sylvain, and he is given a similarly disturbing quality thanks to a wonderfully blink-resistant performance by Pascal Cervo.

The life story of Sylvain and his mother is revealed in a series of flashbacks which enable us to reach a full understanding of the situation by the film’s climax. To be honest, the revelations are nothing original, but then that’s kind of the point as the whole thing is homage. In addition to the stars found in his basement flat, the only feature showing in Sylvain’s cinema is Jean Renoir’s French Cancan, the film’s tribute to a French master. It’s a pleasingly ironic choice; in the real world an arch-cinephile such as Sylvain might regard the use of Renoir in a cheap, gory B-movie as somewhat sacrilegious.

However, despite the references to the classics, what’s really being celebrated in Last Screening is the filming process itself, and specifically the use of traditional celluloid. In the post-screening Q&A, the writer/director Laurent Achard, otherwise slightly unsure of himself, states as a matter of fact that “35mm is still the most beautiful film we have”. He means it so much that this is the only statement Achard dares to make in English, conducting the rest of the interview through a BFI interpreter. For all the dismembered bodies he leaves behind, it’s clear that what this director really wants to see the back of is digital technology.

To be honest, the Q&A isn’t all that successful. Most of Achard’s comments are quietly mumbled in French, with long pauses and the odd “Norman Bates” thrown in. The interpreter doesn’t seem an awful lot wiser than the rest of us. Mind you, the boot switches amusingly to the other foot when the floor is opened to the audience, as an academic-sounding question comes in from a young lady, first in perfect French, then self-interpreted in a cut-glass English accent. After a pause, Achard shrugs and turns to the official interpreter for help, proving there’s an international language of unintelligibility.

A much more ham-fisted effort at celebrating the golden age is made in Nobody Else But You. The film’s French title Poupoupidou actually offers more in the way of clues to the film’s subject, and I can’t immediately think of a reason why it was deemed necessary to change the title to a less famous line from the same song. You may have guessed by now that we are into the murky waters of Monroe-worship. This celebration of arguably the greatest screen icon of them all is in fact a daft whodunnit set in an obscure, snow-bound French outpost with a weathergirl in the role of Marilyn.

The story revolves around a crime novelist, David Rousseau, who makes his way to the wintry retreat of Mouthe for the reading of a will, clearly expecting a tasty inheritance. When it turns out to consist only of an unwelcome memento of a family pet, Rousseau plans to set off home. That is until he chances upon the story of a recently deceased local celebrity and Monroe-alike, Candice Lecoeur. For no apparent reason besides obsession with Candice’s beauty, Rousseau dismisses the accepted verdict of a suicide and goes on the hunt for his own evidence, much to the consternation of the local fuzz.

What does Rousseau discover about Candice? Well, oddly enough there’s a tragic back story of drugs, violent men, chronic self-doubt, unpredictable behaviour, etc… and you know what? This suicide thing might not be as clear-cut as it seems. I’m sure I don’t need to go on, but just in case you’re wondering, yes they even go as far as introducing a president into this, and yes, it’s every bit as ridiculous as it sounds, mostly because the girl we’re dealing with here, besides reading the weather, is famous only for cheese commercials, and only within the confines of Mouthe.

The problem is that the film never really makes its mind up what it wants to be; it’s part pulpy noir, part deadpan indie comedy, part mainstream crime thriller. My guess is that the director was aiming for a low-rent Mulholland Drive with more laughs, but it falls some way short of that. Rousseau is the divviest of detectives, and if you root for him at all it’s for his failure rather than success. The other blatant issue is that we’re so obviously watching Monroe’s story that we know exactly what’s going to happen. If anything, what keeps the viewer hanging on is to find out what twist they put on it but, without wishing to plant a plot spoiler, it’s a futile endeavour.

Salome, with live score by Charlie Barber - Royal Northern College of Music

2011-10-30T17:26:00.003Z

Charles Bryant’s 1923 silent film, Salome, adapted from the play by Oscar Wilde, is currently touring with a live accompaniment composed by Charlie Barber. The film is rarely shown in the UK, but provides an impressive visual spectacle, with an aesthetic based on designs by Aubrey Beardsley.

As the audience enters the RNCM Concert Hall, they are confronted by a silver screen flanked by two scaffold towers, which will soon be occupied by four percussionists. These scaffolds are the first of many symbols which will keep the prospect of death at the front of the mind throughout the evening. As the lights dim, the musicians strike up a death march, using traditional Arabic instrumentation including a range of drums, cymbals, the Djembe, Sistra and even the scaffolding itself. The ominous score puts the audience in the position of the mob, waiting for the tumbrels to arrive.

The film itself is a byword for fin de siècle aestheticism, with its opulent art nouveau design. Although the action, such as it is, takes place on one stage set, there is a huge crowd of extras. The events of the film take place in real time; captions set the scene. Herod, Tetrarch of Judea, lusts after his daughter in law, Salome. His wife, Herodias, conducts her own affairs, in full knowledge of the court. John the Baptist (Jokanaan), meanwhile, is imprisoned at the bottom of an abandoned well for his own safety; the Jews want him dead, and the superstitious Herod is too fearful to comply.

The theatrical origin of the film is obvious, and the Director creates tableaux in a way that will be very unfamiliar to modern film watchers. Scenes tend to be long, with few cuts. The director leaves visual clues throughout the film; there is barely a shot which does not feature an executioner in the background. The costumes and stage sets are highly stylised, and at times matched by beautiful shots, particularly those of the imprisoned prophet, silhouetted in moonlight in his cell. The cast also add to Salome’s melodramatic atmosphere. Mitchell Lewis as Herod is the essence of debauchery and dissolution, with his lecherous, impotent gaze, whilst his wife (Rose Dione) is a fearful harridan. Nigel de Brulier plays Jokanaan with the wild-eyed intensity of a seventies acid casualty rock star, whilst Nazimova, the film’s star and the main driving force behind the production, plays Salome with feline poise and capriciousness.

The narrative is driven by the sexuality of Salome, who is lusted after by Herod, but is weary of life at court. She is entranced by Jokanaan, whose purity appears to radiate on screen. Her desire is so powerful that two courtiers are driven to suicide by her efforts to seduce the prophet. In an erotically charged scene, he rejects the princess, as a ‘daughter of Babylon’. ‘Suffer me to kiss they mouth, Jokanaan’, Salome begs, but he retreats to his cell. Driven wild by her desire, she forms a plan which will allow her to meet this end, though it will result in the death of both.

The insistent and ominous score maintains an air of heightened tension throughout the course of the film, ensuring that even the lighter hearted sections are underscored with a threat of the violence to come. The audience is obviously swept up in the emotion; very few film screenings can be enjoyed in such total audience silence.

The message of the film is complex; on the surface, we see a clear conflict between the decadence of Herod’s court, and the truth and morality embodied by Jokanaan. The two cannot coexist, and the prophet must be crushed. There are darker undertones though. Jokanaan appears to will his own death, provoking his captors, and the ‘daughter of Babylon’, and rejecting the opportunity of salvation. Meanwhile, love is portrayed as a powerful and destructive force; Salome rejects earthly riches, and destroys the object of her desire, bringing about her own downfall as she declares that ‘the mystery of love is stronger than the mystery of death’. It is ambiguous as to whether the film criticises aestheticism as a philosophy, or simply warns of the need for deeper understanding of morality within the movement.

The film’s one false note, sadly, is the centrepiece, the famed dance of the seven veils which Salome performs, in order that she may be rewarded with the head of her inamorato. The choreography is reminiscent of the last days of Amy Winehouse, as Salome staggers across the screen with seemingly little co-ordination or control.

Overall, this is an excellent production, and a great opportunity to experience a seminal piece of cinema history. The intoxicating atmosphere created by the score is entirely appropriate for such an emotionally powerful film, and enables the audience to bask in a sensory overload of which the aesthetes of the roaring twenties would surely have approved.

London Film Festival: The Forgiveness Of Blood

2011-10-28T08:40:00.006Z

The second part of Jamie Brown's reports from the London Film Festival features Albanian family feuds in an incongruous setting.

Tonight, I’m in the commercial heart of London’s film scene; Leicester Square. It’s an early evening Saturday screening, and anyone who has visited Leicester Square at this time will be aware of what an impossible place it is to negotiate. All the big theatre shows are approaching start time, and the situation is not helped by the appearance of the red carpet outside the VUE multiplex that I’m attempting to enter. The carpet in question is probably for Woody Harrelson, whose new film is showing after mine.

There’s something not quite right about seeing festival films at the VUE, they are often quite inappropriate for the setting, and it’s certainly true that many of them will never see a popcorn venue again. That couldn’t apply more strongly to The Forgiveness of Blood, a bleak, micro-budget drama about life in rural Albania. I was drawn to this film as an admirer of the director’s only previous feature, 2004’s Maria Full of Grace. That film told the story of a young girl attempting to escape a poor and lifeless Columbian village by becoming a drug mule, swallowing pellets of cocaine in order to get them to dealers in New York City. It was a quiet classic, offering a detailed insight into the lives of people long forgotten by the system, and uncompromising in its portrayal of their unpleasant reality.

In this respect The Forgiveness of Blood picks up right where Maria Full of Grace left off, only in an even more marginalised setting. The film concerns a family ‘blood feud’, an apparently long-standing ritual that occurs whenever one family accounts for the death of the member of another family, and which comes into force in this case when the perpetrator isn’t brought to justice.

Mark is a father of four with a local bread round. He delivers the bread on a horse and cart. One day, he’s out on the round with his eldest daughter when he finds his usual route blocked. An argument ensues and we learn that Mark has been taking a short cut that causes him to trespass on a neighbour’s land. It transpires that the land previously belonged to Mark‘s family, so he regards the roadblock as a personal insult. A short time later, Mark goes back there with his brother, and the result is that the neighbour is killed. Though his brother is arrested, Mark escapes and goes on the run. It’s at this point the feud commences. Although the matter is in the hands of the police, whilst Mark avoids the law his family must comply with the terms of the feud, which are set out in an ancient text called The Kanun, a local code of law.

The situation appears to be understood by all parties to be inevitable, there is no discussion, and the bereaved family makes no approach to instigate the feud. Nobody from the ‘guilty’ family even raises an eyebrow at the implications, or at least not until they have lived with them for a while. In effect Mark‘s family are placed under house arrest, though this is enforced by nothing besides the implied threat of death should they dare to set foot out of the door; for them to do so is considered an insult to the grieving family. The duration of the feud is apparently indefinite whilst Mark remains on the run, its end only coming with the consent of their neighbours.

The story is told through the two eldest children in the family; Nik, a headstrong young man with a passion for technology and one of his female classmates, and Rudina, the school’s star pupil with plans for university and a career in a more prosperous country. The aspirations of these young characters are perhaps the key to the motives behind the making of this film, as they bring to mind themes of equality of opportunity, and social injustice. Their aspirations are dashed by factors beyond their control, factors created by their environment and particularly by adults living behind the times. Both Nik and Rudina’s plans are completely torn apart by the feud. They are unable to attend school, they can only meet friends in the home, and Nik is forced to keep in touch with his girlfriend via video clips recorded on mobile phones. When a small concession is made that allows the women to leave the house to perform essential tasks for the family, Rudina, previously only concerned with learning, takes to buying and selling cigarettes to try and keep the family’s head above water. Inevitably, the strain of this unofficial imprisonment starts to tell on the sanity of both teenagers, and the rest of the household.

The scenario, and it’s setting, are so unrecognisable that most viewers would surely conclude that the film is set in the past. It’s for this reason that the director goes out of his way to show us that we are very much watching present-day problems. The young members of the family are seen constantly using bang-up-to-date technology in their otherwise archaic surroundings. Rudina uses her mobile phone whilst being pulled around the town by the family’s horse; the evening entertainment in the farmhouse appears to be Pro-Evolution Soccer. It’s clearly vital that we don’t disassociate the events on the screen from our own world.

What the film does incredibly well is to inform with subtlety. For a Western viewer, there is a hell of a lot to keep up with here in order to make sense of what’s happening, assuming that the majority of the audience will be coming into this without too much knowledge of Albanian customs. After the film, I felt I’d understood a fairly obscure set of circumstances, set in a place I knew nothing about without having to work overly hard. You’d imagine that to achieve this, the script would have to include several of those all-too-common segments where the plot is explained in tiresome detail, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The film could easily be mistaken for a documentary, such is the level of realism, but the dramatic devices are still there and are crucial in enabling the audience to engage.

The aspect of seeing a Western viewer’s perspective on these events is an interesting one. The film is so convincingly authentic that most would guess the film was a home-grown Albanian effort; for instance the dialogue is in Albanian, and it has a cast made up of unknown (at least to me) Albanian actors. Yet the director, Joshua Marston, is an American. It strikes me as too random a choice for an American director to suddenly want to tell the world about life in Albania, there’s clearly a stronger motive behind this; perhaps linked to immigration, and certainly linked to economics. Marston has now made two films, over a seven-year period, with young people for subjects who find that their homeland offers little in the way of opportunity to fulfil their hopes for the future. There are issues being raised here, equality being the fundamental one. After all, it would be unthinkable to watch this film in the USA or Western Europe and not compare the situation of these young people with those in our own society.

The director deserves tremendous credit; I’m happy to be corrected but I can’t think of any other American filmmakers around making low-cost, foreign language, social issue films. To pull it off once marked Marston down as a director to note, but now he’s achieved it twice he surely merits greater recognition. Interestingly, the filmmakers have already had issues with qualification when it comes to foreign language submissions for awards. It is to be hoped that such trivialities don’t prevent this film reaching a much wider audience.

London Film Festival: The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975

2011-10-27T10:38:00.007Z

Our new film correspondent, Jamie Brown, reports back from the BFI London Film Festival.

It’s my first evening at my third BFI London Film Festival, and although it’s actually the third night of this year’s event, I get the feeling that most people milling around the BFI Southbank (some still call it the National Film Theatre) are paying their first visit, as the atmosphere of opening night expectation still lingers. Out to prove that not all corporate sponsorship of such events is agreed entirely for the purpose of pissing me off are some nice young people representing a well-known brand of blended Irish whiskey. Thanks to them, I take my seat in the ever-magnificent NFT1 having been furnished with a complimentary drink. May the festivities continue in this manner.

My first appointment of LFF 2011 is with The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975. This absorbing and unusual documentary presents collated footage shot mostly but not entirely in America over an 8-year period which comprises the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement and the years of change in political agenda that followed. What makes it unusual is that the filmmakers, past and present, are Swedish. Director Goran Olsson chanced upon some left over films made by Swedish news reporters frequently visiting America during the period, and decided what he found was so extraordinary that the world needed to see it. The evidence certainly supports such a claim; most of the material is obviously priceless, and many of the most important figures of the era make significant appearances.

The earliest footage seen besides that of the news crew arriving in Florida as if on a beach holiday is, appropriately, of Martin Luther King Jr conducting some of his final engagements. The director contextually adds a speech by Malcolm X, by this time deceased, simply to demonstrate how their conflicting viewpoints helped shape the different strands of activism which were to follow their deaths, and are to feature in the rest of the film. The footage is mostly made up of interviews, many with some of the leading players in the era of radicalism and “Black Power” that arose as a progression of, and in some cases opposition to, the mainstream Civil Rights Movement.

All the material is presented without conventional analysis; what we do get is a series of present-day interviews which serve as a commentary on the general events, whilst not addressing the footage specifically. The technique works very well, particularly as an antidote to the arguably worn-out ‘talking heads’ method of voicing the pictures. It also helps that the choice of interviewees is excellent, including two people who feature heavily in the archive films, Angela Davis and Bobby Seale, plus hugely insightful contributions from Harry Belafonte, Erykah Badu, and Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson.

The lack of opinion emanating from the creators is a refreshing element of the film; the director makes a sound call in trusting his audience to draw their own conclusions about who the heroes and villains are. For example, similar time is given to lengthy interviews with Davis and Louis Farrakhan, and no commentator suddenly appears to ferociously endorse or oppose either’s views. The Davis interview is actually the film’s centrepiece; filmed whilst she was incarcerated awaiting trial in 1971, it’s a profoundly intense exchange, and Davis’s words are an astonishingly calm and sympathetic acknowledgement of her fury at the injustice she is enduring, and its symbolic nature in the context of wider events.

Other highlights are some wonderful captures of Stokely Carmichael, including an ‘at home’ piece where he actually takes over an interview with his mother about the family’s struggle and mercilessly drags the truth out of her about the prejudice faced by his father; and a memorable interview with the world’s most righteous bookshop owner, which actually draws a hearty round of applause from the audience in the middle of the film.

It’s important to clarify that this is not intended to be a historically informative piece, and in no way does it serve as a Swedish perspective on the events. More than anything else, it’s a metaphorical sigh of relief that such a collection somehow escaped the can. Seen as a whole it’s a triumph, chiefly because the filmmaker has been honest enough not to try and turn this treasure trove into anything other than the sum of its parts. This point could easily be missed though; so emotive is the subject matter that it becomes easy to convince oneself that the film is at fault if something is not adequately explained, or an obvious gap appears in the timeline.

This confusion is certainly in evidence in the post-screening Q&A, when the director receives some rather unjust criticism. I have a theory about cinema Q&A’s, which is that crap questions are asked because the good ones are too busy being thought through. Unfortunately this thinking time allows idiots to get their hands up first. One lady admonishes Olson for giving Farrakhan more time than Malcolm X, which forces the embarrassed director into explaining when the demise of “Mr X” took place. Thankfully, Olson is humorous, insightful, and self-deprecating; he responds to one critic with “hey, I’m obviously a lousy filmmaker”. It’s clear by now that this is palpably untrue.

The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides

2011-10-21T13:46:00.002Z

Jeffrey Eugenides has seen his stock rise dramatically since his first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published in 1993. At the time, The Virgin Suicides seemed like a cult book at best, perfect for angsty teens, but not the work of a heavyweight. In retrospect, the writing is unremarkable, and the worldview seems rather trite. However, the success of the film adaptation, and the broader scope of his Pulitzer-winning follow up, Middlesex (2002), have massively enhanced his reputation, and the publication of his latest novel, The Marriage Plot, has become something of a literary event. He has been chosen, along with Alan Hollinghurst, as a writer of sufficient stature to bookend the Manchester Literature Festival, and has enjoyed excellent reviews in the broadsheet arts supplements.

Much has been made of the shifting narrative focus of Eugenides’s novels. The Virgin Suicides is essentially a domestic drama, seen through the eyes of a group of boys, trying to piece together evidence in retrospect. Middlesex employed an omniscient narrator, blurring gender divides, crossing continents and mapping a family’s history over generations. The Marriage Plot seems more self-contained, focussing on the lives of three students in the build up to their graduations in the summer of 1982. Whilst the book focuses on a love triangle, though, Eugenides gradually widens his remit, as he delves into the characters’ pasts, and follows them into Europe and Asia.

Again, we see characters haunted by a deeply rooted problem. For the brooding, brilliant Leonard, it is the Manic Depression which has affected him since childhood. Mitchell, his competition for Madeline’s love, struggles with his religious faith and self doubt. The main focus of the book, Madeline, appears well-balanced, but is forced to adjust her worldview to accommodate the problems presented by her suitors, and the thought that her principles and tastes are outdated in an age of academic revolution.

The first difficulty faced by Madeline is the challenge presented to her love of traditional English literature by the radical notions of semiotics, which have ripped through academe, and filtered through to her sleepy Eastern college. This section is the most enjoyable part of the novel; Eugenides has an excellent ear for the pretensions of undergraduate seminars and Union bars. Semiotics is a perfect context in which to describe the self-conscious, hyper-analytical world of the final year student, trying to find an ideology to inhabit, and recreate their personalities in readiness for adulthood and independence. Whereas Tom Woolf, in his 2004 campus novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, described college life in anthropological terms, Eugenides penetrates further into the minds of his subjects, bringing to life their self doubts and taking a less critical tone.

The novel contrasts the essentially cosy nature of campus life with the harsh realities of the world outside. To force this point, characters are sent to Europe, where Madeline is confronted by the realities of Leonard’s mania, and India, where Mitchell comes face to face with poverty and disease in Mother Theresa’s Home for the Dying. Interestingly, Eugenides quotes a passage from Malcolm Muggeridge’s ‘Something Beautiful for God’, in which he ascribes a miracle to the nun, and which was torn apart, at length, by Christopher Hitchens in God is Not Great. The use of this discredited text foreshadows Mitchell’s own disappointment in Calcutta.

The action of the novel drifts geographically, but the reader’s interest is maintained by the ever-changing set of allegiances formed by the central characters, and their struggles to adapt to circumstances. This combination of broad narrative scope with detailed emotional descriptions is Eugenides’s major strength, which was not permitted by the closely confined setting of The Virgin Suicides. The Marriage Plot is affecting, funny and well-judged. You suspect that he particularly enjoyed writing the Campus sections, as reflected in the gently humorous tone of the opening chapters.

Maybe there is another reason why Hollinghurst and Eugenides are appropriate choices to open and close Manchester Literature Festival – both writers are able to create novels with real substance, scope and literary quality, which are also readable enough to ensure they achieve popular as well as critical acclaim. Maybe The Marriage Plot isn’t as great an achievement as Middlesex, but it is still well worth your attention.

Moonlighting

2011-10-20T09:39:00.003Z

I've been popping up in a couple of other publications this week. Firstly, there's an article I wrote about the Greater Manchester Police's use of social networking during the UK Riots, for Catch magazine, an independent quarterly publication. The whole thing can be read online here: This is Catch

I have also been blogging some events for the Manchester Literature Festival. The last event I attended was 'Words to Image', an evening of poetry inspired by the works of Ford Madox Brown at Manchester Art Gallery. My review can be read here: When Poets Reflect Art.

A Cruel Bird Came to The Nest and Looked In - Magnus Mills

2011-10-15T18:36:00.004Z

I'd heard people talking about Magnus Mills a long time before I read any of his books. A typical conversation would go:

'I've just finished the new Magnus Mills'
'Oh, right. What happened in it?'
'Nothing at all'.

It's hard to understand how a man can forge such an impressive literary career on the basis of nothing at all happened, until you read one of his novels that is. Not for him, plot twists, explosions or conspiracy theories. Instead, each of his books takes us into a Beckettian world of understatement and mordant humour - the only disappointment is that they are over so soon.

His latest novel is a case in point. The opening passage, a roll-call of the astronomer royal, comptroller of the admiralty, 'pellitory-of-the-wall' and more, is typical of the way Mills presents Gormenghast style fantasy in a totally deadpan tone. The author is immediately presented with a cast of characters striving to behave in an everyday manner, but with no clear idea of their ultimate goals, and insufficient resources. This sums up Mills' worldview entirely, as he takes the confused inefficieny of the minor bureaucrat to darkly comic extremes.

Mills rarely gives a precise geographical location for his novels, and here the 'action' is based in the Empire of Greater Fallowfields. The emporer is missing, and his court are sleepwalking into a crisis, unable to think innovatively, react to their new situation, or display any level of carpe diem spirit. This is a subversion of traditional narrative history - rather than an empire falling in battle, or through a disaster, it is gradually and painlessly being eroded. You sense that not even the officers are truly sad to see it go.

The threat faced by the maritime Empire is represented by the arrival of the Railway, linking them to the mercantile new City of Scoffers. The Scoffers send recruiting parties to lure the Empire's workforce away, and soon even the high officials are transported from the court.

Mills uses the later stages of the novel to demonstrate his dexterity as an author; The City of Scoffers is a Kafkaesque world, although his subtle humour remains present. Modernisation is represented by clocks and railways (the passage of time has always been a preoccupation for Mills, mainly bus timetables). He plays with the reader, offering hints that the book will become a satire on Iraq, a political commentary, a holocaust allegory or a reworking of 1984, but we are only offered glimpses of each. Typically deadpan, Mills remains inscrutable to the last, and as always, leaves you wanting more.

Michel Houellebecq: The Map and the Territory

2011-10-13T15:04:00.002Z

The last few years have been turbulent ones for Michel Houellebecq, although true to form he has not been far away from the headlines. He has inspired music by Iggy Pop and Carla Bruni, won the Prix Goncourt (while being publicly slammed by one of the judges), directed a terribly-received film and been the subject of a virulent literary attack by his own mother. All this in addition to the regular controversies over the treatment of women and immigrants in his work, the rap album and the death threats.

A translation of his follow up to 2005’s The Possibility of an Island has been long-delayed, but was finally released in the UK two weeks ago. On first glance, the novel appears to follow a more conventional narrative structure than its predecessor, and early on Houllebecq gives the appearance that he is returning to familiar themes. In fact, everything you might hate about Houellebecq is present in the opening chapters; the first female character to be discussed is an ‘escort’, we are presented with urban decay resulting from an influx of immigrants. Houellebecq seems to be lapsing into his Lovecraft-ian worldview, as the wealthy create bunker-like defences for their living space, surrounded by the chaos of the modern city.

As the novel develops though, the reader realises that more of the narrative is internalised than it has been in Houellebecq’s previous work; familiar tropes (dogs, immortality) crop up, but as minor concerns of the characters, rather than authorial obsessions. The Map and The Territory contrasts elegiac reflections on ageing with a subtly worked critique of the Spectacular society of the modern West.

The narrative centres around an artist, Jed, who achieves massive popularity despite his disconnection from the art world. Rather than chasing fame and fortune, in the manner of Damien Hirst (who features in the text), he is mainly preoccupied with a broken boiler, and the awkward relationship he has with his ageing father. Houellebecq himself features as a character, contacted by Jed to write the text for an exhibition catalogue. Houellebecq’s self-portrait captures the myth of the author rather than the reality, a path also taken by Bret Easton Ellis in Lunar Park. This Houellebecq is a dissolute loner (‘It was rare for him even to say a word to his dog’).

This suggests Houellebecq is tiring of his notoriety, whilst also capturing the disconnect between narrative and reality which permeates consumer society (a phrase he returns to throughout the novel). This is the main theme of The Map and the Territory. Jed and his father (an architect) both create temporary, idealised realities, and the chasm between commercialised ideals and banal experience is highlighted again and again, most comically through the high-flown, ridiculous prose of the Michelin guides which inspire the early phase of Jed’s artistic career.

By focussing on this contradiction between experience and aspiration, Houellebecq presents his criticism of the Spectacular society, in which the map is always more fascinating than the territory it describes. The novel’s worldview is weary and pessimistic, summed up best by Jed’s father who idealises William Morris. Morris’ socialist worldview, he argues, would not be utopian if all men were like Morris; however, theories are let down by the reality of human nature. Jed’s father himself attempted to restore concepts of beauty to public space through his work as an architect, but failed, and was restricted to creating gaudy holiday resorts for the wealthy. Later, we see a jaded policeman, hoping to find evidence of a unique crime, but worn down by the reality that criminals, like the rest of society, are motivated exclusively by material gain.

The Map and the Territory may lack the explosiveness which bought Houellebecq to prominence, but in many ways it is his most satisfying work to date, presenting a cogent worldview tempered by mordant humour. He may focus on the gloomier side of life, but his characters are more than just means of progressing an argument, and his dialogue feels more genuine than in the past. You suspect the author cares rather more than usual for his creations (aside from the portrayal of Houellebecq himself). The novel is only let down by a somewhat sensationalist epilogue, which feels like the work of an author feeling the obligation to shock or disgust; but this should not distract from a mature, sophisticated, intriguing and affecting work.

Alan Hollinghurst and Colm Toibin - In Conversation

2011-10-11T09:18:00.004Z

Manchester Literature Festival. Martin Harris Building, University of Manchester

Although it wasn’t advertised as such, we could have guessed that homosexuality would dominate the conversation. The opening event of the Manchester Literature Festival, co-presented by the University’s Centre for New Writing, bought together two leading gay writers to discuss their work and the culture in which they operate.

Rather than sticking to the traditional format of readings, each author began by presenting a short talk, discussing what gay literature meant to them, and how they saw homosexual culture developing. Their contrasting methods of delivery told us much about their respective authorial styles. Toibin went first. Speaking without notes, he regaled the audience with anecdotes from his Irish upbringing, discussing the complex process of negotiation, whereby gay culture existed subtly under the surface of society, recognised by some and ignored by those who did not want to see.

He contrasted this with his experience of Buenos Aries, in the 1980s post-Junta reconciliation process. Here, he said, gay men were entirely closeted, which he compared to the silence which had also existed around the deposed regime’s campaign of torture and disappearance (he was also able to make a number of wry remarks about the takeover of the country by the IMF, ‘the people who now walk the streets of Dublin, in broad daylight’). Touchingly, he mentioned that Hollinghurst’s The Swimming Pool Library had found its way to Argentina, in English, and been taken up as a liberating text for this voiceless subculture.

The process of negotiation, of adopting one’s persona to situations and striving for acceptance, had heavily influenced his own writing, and it was also a theme which Hollinghurst touched on. Unlike Toibin, he spoke from a prepared text, but still managed to mix personal anecdotes about boarding school with literary history, to discuss an old-fashioned, hidden, gay culture, represented through secret symbols. In particular, he discussed EM Forster’s decision to give up writing due to his inability to publicly discuss his sexuality.

The discussion session was hosted by David Alderson, of Manchester University, who opened with a rambling question which went on for so long that most people had forgotten how it started by the time he came to an end. The first question from the audience also came from a lecturer, giving the dread impression that this whole evening represented a faculty night out for the English department. However, the range of questions did broaden out, and the authors spoke wittily and openly about their work. Surprisingly for such a great stylist, Hollinghurst stated that he didn’t think about his own writing style at all, although he admitted that he enjoyed writing the ‘bad poetry’ and false journals of The Stranger’s Child, perhaps more than he enjoyed writing in his own narrative voice.

Both authors were asked why they hadn’t tackled the subject of AIDS in their work. Rather bravely, Hollinghurst replied that he simply hadn’t found an artistically satisfying way of addressing the issue, saying that it would feel like ‘documentary’ instead of literature. Both seemed wary of the expectation that as homosexual authors, they were required to write on certain themes; indeed, they saw a potential end to the need for gay writing, as barriers were broken down. Toibin mentioned that female writers such as Anne Proulx were now writing great fiction about gay men, adding with mock horror, ‘We’ll have to start writing about straights!’

Alan Hollinghurst was clearly one of the Literature festival’s big hitters, and he didn’t disappoint, forming an entertaining partnership with Toibin. As someone who had never read any of Toibin’s novels, I was particularly impressed by his wit and enthusiasm – he certainly seems to be a greater asset to the University of Manchester than Martin Amis ever was, and I will definitely be ordering some of his books. The authors engaged honestly with the questions asked of them, and it was a great opportunity to watch two prominent literary figures bouncing ideas off one another. To end the event, Toibin asked Hollinghurst about the use of architecture in his books, sounding genuinely fascinated by his answer.

In many ways, I think it is fringe events which make a festival truly entertaining, but this event set a high standard for the commercial side of MLF, and both authors are well worth seeking out at public appearances.

Manchester Literature Festival

2011-10-10T10:52:00.004Z

Manchester Literature Festival starts today, and I'll be blogging as many of the events as I can get to - some on the official site, some on here. Sadly, there's no opportunity for outdoor boozing by the town hall, which was such a highlight of the Manchester International Fest this summer, but we do have some very exciting events coming up.

The festival is bookended by 'in conversation' events featuring Alan Hollinghurst and Jeffrey Euginedes, two authors who have managed to combine prize-winning literary merit with popular appeal. I admire the way that both authors remain deeply readable whilst creating work with impressive scope and ambition, and I'll be looking forward to seeing both.

In between, I'll definitely be attending 'Crime in a Cold Climate', a discussion focussing on modern Scandinavian crime fiction, and 'Ford Maddox Brown: Image To Word', which features poetic responses to the current Ford Maddox Brown show at the Manchester Art Gallery, and should be as good a way as any to see this excellent exhibition.

Time allowing, I'll also be seeing the excellent Emma Jane Unsworth in conversation with John Niven on the 15th, and a celebration of the great post-modern writer BS Johnson's work (hosted by the greatest writer from the heydey of Select magazine, David Quantick) at the Anthony Burgess Foundation.

Let me know what events you're looking forward to.

The Glass Menagerie - New Vic Theatre

2011-10-04T14:14:00.004Z

The plays of Tennessee Williams seem somehow resistant to change. While the prologue to The Glass Menagerie hints at contemporary parallels with its mention of economic downturn, strikes and foreign wars, directors and audiences alike are drawn back to Williams’ world of tram cars, tenement buildings and faded Southern belles. Whereas the New Vic’s previous production, Carmen, updated the action from Spain to a modern shopping centre, The Glass Menagerie is firmly located in the faded glamour of the 1930s American South.

The Glass Menagerie was produced in association with another fine rep theatre, the Oldham Coliseum, and unusually for the Vic, the action of the play is entirely contained within one set, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere from which the characters struggle to escape. The cast of four is also small, placing a lot of responsibility on some inexperienced young actors, especially Laura, who begins the play as a marginal, timid figure but grows in significance during the second half, sharing a great deal of the dialogue, and undergoing the greatest emotional disruption.

The Glass Menagerie is considered to be Williams’s most autobiographical play, and the first half is deeply introspective. Amanda, a shrill old Southern Belle, frets over the future security of her daughter; Tom, played with wry assurance by James Joyce (not that one), broods, restlessly, straining against the responsibility of providing for his female relatives; Laura exists in the shadows, distanced from life by her shyness and her crippled leg. The only hints of a world outside are provided by the strains of the Charleston from the dance house across the road. Each character seeks escape through their own means, in memory for Amanda, the movies for Tom, and for Laura, her collection of glass animals.

If there is a problem with the play, it is that the first half can seem like a non-event; Tom’s opening monologue makes clear that the real action of the play will occur in the second half, and this sense of anticipation overshadows the first half like a Pinter villain. While the domestic squabbles of Tom’s family are essential to the plot, the characters’ sense of frustration and entrapment can cause a feeling of ennui in the audience.

It is in the second half that the play picks up in pace, and Laura comes into her own as the character with the greatest depth, assisted by an energetic and charismatic Jim (played by Harry Livingstone), who breathes the fresh air of ambition into the staid Wingfield household. Lacking their sense of disappointment and frustration, he briefly opens up the possibility of a different kind of life, before Laura’s dream is cruelly crushed.

The play is well staged, adapting comfortably to performance in the round, and the set is designed with great eye for detail, creating a compact domestic space without appearing cluttered. It is also encouraging to see excellent performances by three young actors; James Joyce has a knowing air, and good comic delivery, Harry Livingstone is engagingly self-assured, and Katie Moore takes on her character superbly, transforming from a hand-wringing wreck in the first half to a complex and interesting lead during the second. Louise Bangay as Amanda is entertaingly hysterical, with her ‘Oh ma lawd’ mannerisms. The Glass Menagerie lacks some of the dramatic punch of plays such as A Streetcar Names Desire, but the script is beautifully crafted. This may be the play’s weakness in fact; the script possibly offers more to the reader than to an audience. Overall, however, it is a play and a production worth seeing.

Things: A Story of the Sixties - George Perec

2011-09-30T13:47:00.002Z

George Perec is increasingly being recognised as an innovative and important writer in the UK, and this new edition of his debut novella is one of a series of re-releases this year. Perhaps best known for the flamboyantly stylish tour de force A Void, a murder mystery in which absence of the letter ‘e’ is a key plot point, Perec is a technically brilliant novelist capable of taking on a range of styles. By contrast to his better known works, Things is a more subtly experimental book which, in retrospect, seems extremely mature and prescient.

Like Huysmans, Perec was a career civil servant, who kept up his day job even as his literary work became celebrated. As an established author, he became part of the OuLiPo movement, but Things was written outside of their guidelines. It is still far from conventional, though. Things does not have a plot, in the traditional sense. Instead, Perec gives the reader a montage overview of the lives of two Parisian university drop-outs, defined by the interaction with commodities.

In the first section, we see two young people aspiring to a lifestyle beyond their means, suffering the anxiety of not being able to afford the items which will define their social status. They work casually in market research, and attempt to maintain the bohemian lifestyle of their student friends. Perec details their daily activities, their aspirations and interactions, without ever presenting the reader with dialogue; Things is a minute description of lives in which every facet of existence is defined by the relationship of the individual to commodities. This is DeBord’s spectacle in practice.

Although the characters are clearly alienated in their society, and the lack of dialogue alienates them from the reader, Perec’s narrative never lapses into hostility towards his creations. They are interchangeable, part of a mass of directionless young people in an atomised urban environment. Paris itself is presented as a series of arcades and shop fronts. Like the flaneurs described by Walter Benjamin, Jerome and Sylvie wander through the streets of this consumer paradise, lost in the crowd; but their focus is not on their fellow shoppers but the products themselves. Perec depicts the defeat of society by the city - lifestyle is prioritised above interaction, and communities are replaced by loose networks of acquaintances, essentially interchangeable.

In Part Two, Perec moves the characters to Tunisia. Having failed in their quest for material satisfaction, they attempt to find a more spiritual lifestyle away from the city. However, they lack the basic skills to adapt to life in a country which has not reached the stage of Western decadence. They fall back into dull routine; location is essentially unimportant, they cannot escape their sense of materialistic ennui.

Essentially, Things is an illustration of dislocation; Jerome and Sylvie do not fit anywhere, lacking the capital to thrive in bohemian Paris and unable to adapt to the more primitive rural lifestyle. They attempt cut loose from friends who follow a career path, before eventually bowing to the inevitable and taking respectable bourgeois roles in marketing firms. The theme of young people struggling to afford the material goods which they hope will define them, clinging to the lifestyle of their university days, and pursuing a peripatetic career, will be uncomfortably familiar to many, and indeed seems ahead of its time - Things is an excellent, cynical contrast to the freedom seekers portrayed by novelists such as Kerouac.

More than its message, though, Perec’s great achievement is to allow the reader such complete access to two characters’ mindsets without dialogue or interaction. Focussing on the things which they fetishise gives us greater insight in 120 pages than many writers achieve in a career. In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis used objects to signify the absence of personality; Perec uses them to pierce to the heart of his characters, implying sadness and longing. This may be an even greater achievement.

Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew - Shehan Karunatilaka

2011-09-27T12:42:00.003Z

Gonzo novels about cricket, missing persons and Tamil terrorists may be a niche genre, but it has found its masterpiece in Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman. The tale of one sports reporter’s search for the great lost star of Sri Lankan test cricket, Pradeep Mathew, Chinaman uses cricket as a metaphor for the corruption and intransigence which plagued Sri Lanka throughout the eighties and nineties. The cricketing authorities, corrupt and riven by patronage and ethnic divisions act as a perfect microcosm for the state itself.

Dissolute, downtrodden and disgracefully partial in the best traditions of the cricket hack, WG Karunasena has months to live, his liver destroyed by years of abuse. His last days are dedicated to searching down Mathew, and restoring him to his rightful place in the Sri Lankan test pantheon. Mathew himself, a spinner with a fiendish repertoire including the flipper, doosra, the eponymous left arm chinaman and even a double bouncer, is an elusive presence throughout the novel. Former acquaintances deny knowledge of him, or grossly inflate their role in his career. His statistics are erased from the record books, and his greatest achievements (including a world record for wickets in one test) are invalidated when bad weather stops play. Some feel that his talent was never allowed to flourish as he was Tamil, others that he caused his own downfall through his arrogant behaviour.

For Karunasena, the pure talent embodied by Mathew elevates him to the level of Test great, as does the winning mentality he bought to the team, being the first Sri Lankan to respond to sledging from more aggressive opponents (Sri Lankan players previously being told that they were ‘gentlemen first, cricketers second’). His reappraisal will counter the corruption that has plagued the sports administration, who attempt to block any attempts to highlight Mathew’s achievements, forcing WG to pursue unofficial and illicit sources of information, from gangsters and secret tapes.

The novel is well-written and ambitious, but Karunatilaka’s great achievement is his realisation that the figure of the spinner, primed to deceive opponents in a game of cunning and attrition, can be the basis of a great dramatic character. Likewise, the five day test is team sport’s great test of mental stamina, endurance and toughness, making it an ideal substitute for politics. Matches are picked over forensically, and cricket’s histories are guarded as jealously as court reports or laws; Wisden has, for sports fans, all the authority that Hansard holds for constitutionalists.

Karunatilaka captures the bickering and bias of cricket ‘experts’ with a great ear, and his sprawling narrative covers betting scandals, infighting between touring colleagues, the ex-players’ television gravy train, corrupt selectors and all the other issues which have tarnished test cricket in recent times, whilst maintaining an enthusiastic, childish love for the purity of the game itself. Likewise, his attacks on the system which has held back Sri Lanka’s development in the political world are motivated by a desire for a better future.

Chinaman is a shaggy dog story, a narrative propelled loosely along by a drunken and unreliable narrator and an elusive subject, taking in paranoid midgets, terrorists, Geordie child abusers, retired test cricketers, and many more unlikely characters along the way. It brings to mind the later days of Hunter S Thompson, had he tried his hand at noir, or tuned to Test Match Special more often. It is almost certainly a unique read, and one which I urge you to track down.

For another view on the book, try this review in the Guardian, particularly the comments from Msmlee below the line.

Carmen - New Victoria Theatre

2011-09-23T12:01:00.002Z

More than 20 years into his career, and 2 years after succeeding Alan Ayckbourn as Artistic Director at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, there are certain things we have come to expect from a new Chris Monks production. These include performance in the round, irreverent updates to librettos, imaginative re-settings, and a versatile cast capable of taking on multiple roles, singing and playing instruments. His name is a big draw at the New Vic Theatre in Staffordshire, where plays such as The Mikado, Sweeney Todd and Don Giovanni have enjoyed great success.

His production of Carmen has a shorter than normal run, but has been playing to big houses at the Vic. This is not opera in a traditional, grand sense; dialogue is still sung, but the music is largely provided by keyboard rather than orchestra, lending the overture a slightly Clockwork Orange feel. Members of the cast assist with instrumentation. Meanwhile, the action is transposed to a modern shopping centre, with Carmen becoming a shop girl, and her lover, Johnny G, a security guard with a dark past. The bold seducing Matador becomes Tony Amor, a Sicilian football star, with a Berbatov haircut and a coke problem.

There is a large cast for a Vic production, although most actors take more than one role, and their performances are full of energy. Unusually for a Chris Monks production though, the level of vocal ability is variable, possibly a reflection of his preference for actors who can sing, rather than singers who act. In the round, some words will inevitably be lost, but a couple of performers stood out in terms of clarity and range. The main characters are excellent – Amor oozes louche charisma and arrogance, while Carmen has a perfect The Only Way is Essex swagger. Unfortunately, Johnny G comes across as something of a wet blanket, and his murderous rage is unbelievable. He is also a character in search of an accent, struggling between Welsh, Scouse and Geordie.

Carmen is definitely a bold production. The Vic can seem a little sedate and traditional at times, and the average age on the night I attended must have been comfortably over 50. However, the exuberance of the production carries the audience through an expletive-laden libretto and urban setting, the jokes are well received, and the applause at the curtain is enthusiastic.

Chris Monks has been producing excellent operettas in the North of England for decades now, and is just starting to receive the recognition he deserves. Carmen isn’t his finest hour, but is still worth a watch, and you can rely on him for an enjoyable night out, with a couple of surprises along the way.

We Need More Bad Books

2011-09-12T10:58:00.005Z

In this guest post, author, poet and 'literary curator' Dan Holloway looks at the potential for self-publishing to enable a punk revolution in publishing, and explains why we need more bad books. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below.

I have been writing a lot about editors recently. It’s odd, because my own relationship with editors has been wholly positive. They’ve made the books I’ve had edited infinitely more reader-friendly than they would otherwise have been.
But in a way I’d argue that those books are part of the problem, even though they’re mine.

And the problem is this. Working with a good editor is the best way to produce a very good book. We don’t need any more very good books. If there was never another very good book published, it would be no real loss. We need more bad books. A *lot* more bad books. People who dismiss the self-publishing boom because of the “unexpurgated dross” or whatever else they decide to call it have sort of missed the mark.

I remember reading a piece about induction during my time as an undergraduate studying Philosophy and Theology. Inductive reasoning is using the past to predict the future – the more times you’ve been to KFC and they’re out of wipes in the past, the more likely that if you go in the future they’ll be out of wipes then. That kind of thing. One of the problems with induction was archaeology. Specifically the kind that went digging up bones looking for the Missing Link. The problem was that induction told you the more bones you dug up that weren’t the missing link, the less likely any future bones were to be the missing link. But any MissingLinkologist worth their trowel would tell you that – so long as the wrong bones were the right kind of wrong bones then the opposite is true – the more you found of them the *more* likely you were to find the right right bones eventually. As it were.
You can see where this is going.

It’s going back to punk. And the '70s. Most punk music was dreadful. Really dreadful. First up, that didn’t matter. Punk wasn’t about being good. In fact, once the bands started caring what they sounded like, punk was pretty much dead. And second up, without the 99% of rubbish, the 1% of mind bending brilliance wouldn’t have existed.

And it’s the same with literature. The next great voice, the next Big Movement that comes along, will come out of the mire of slush swilling unfiltered around the internet. It will come from people who haven’t been taught How Not To Be Creative. It may well come from someone who can’t spell for toffee and doesn’t know an adverb from their arsehole. But it sure as anything won’t come from the “I want my manuscript to be so polished it sings into the ear of potential agents” school of writing.

Of course, literature doesn’t have to be “new”, and there’s more than a place for highly-polished, ultra-slick books. I love to indulge in a Lee Child or a Val McDermid as much as anyone. But I also want books that take me where I’ve never been, that turn my world upside down and shake me to my core. I want books by writers who believe in something, and for whom that belief, that hunger, that need to turn the world on its axis is as strong as their need to get a advance or hit the Amazon bestsellers list. I want to read their work before it’s been checked and balanced and OK'd and run past marketing.

There are theoretical reasons why I think editors are inimical to art that have to do with my “art is confessional” approach, but the practical reasons are as strong. Sometimes I want to sit down with a book and feel like the author is inside my head with all their filth and fury, screaming at me until I listen. I don’t want their dial turned down, I don’t want them more palatable, I don’t want their edges knocked off.

And there’s a moral in there for the cultural media as well. If you’re going to pretend to bring us, the reading public, the new, shocking, daring, dazzling, unmediated fist-fighting, pogo-dancing reality of contemporary literature, you have to broaden your horizons and look what’s happening in the world of 'zines and self-publishing. It’s fine if you don’t, but in that case at least have the decency to admit you’re playing it safe and don’t patronise your readers. And realise that it’s actually rather dangerous to our cultural well-being to take the watered-down and the acceptablised and pretend it’s the edgiest edge.

Dan Holloway is a spoken word performer and the author of several novels including the absolutely unedited The Man Who Painted Agnieszka’s Shoes and the unedited and unexpurgated collection of his performance shorts and poems (life:) razorblades included and is the curator of the literary project and publisher eight cuts gallery

Want More? Find out what Workshy Fop contributor and For Books' Sake Deputy Editrix Alex Herod had to say about eight cuts' recent publication, Zoom Zoom by Penny Goring.

“I’m not an artist, I’m a librarian” – The Travelling Suitcase Library

2011-08-26T14:40:00.004Z

Guest post from Alex Herod, Deputy Ed. of For Books’ Sake

I love books. I love talking about them, writing about them, buying them, seeking them out at the library, sharing them, touching them (they all feel different, trust me!), falling asleep under them, staying up all night glued to them, feeling their weight in my bag…“Wherever I lay my book, that’s my home.” That’s how the song should’ve gone. But where Marvin Gaye failed, Jess Haigh succeeds; not with a song, but with a suitcase!

Jess is the founder of Travelling Suitcase Library (which is just that!), a librarian and self-proclaimed BookElf. She both loves and lives books. I doff my cap to her, raise a glass or five to the TSL, dance the merry dance of books...and ask some questions:

AH: When did you set up Travelling Suitcase Library, and why?

JH: I set up the TSL in February 2010. Honestly? It was because I was bored, had just started a full time job that meant me giving up my pub job so was missing my friends, and because I wanted to meet more people who were also into reading and books and that. I named it the Travelling Suitcase Library because it’s in a suitcase and its a library, and, in my honest opinion, its the tweeness of the name that makes people love it.

Originally it was a suitcase full of my old books that I took to the pub on a Sunday afternoon. This evolved into a book swap and due to a little bit of marketing started being invited to various events. I also hosted a World Book Night event at Arcadia, Leeds, in March which was really successful. Now I get donated about 20 books a month on average, and go to at least three events, including the regular book swap in Arcadia. In July I was going to a different event every weekend. I've taken August off!

AH: What kind of places and spaces do you take the TSL to?

JH: So far I've been invited to local lit fests; LadyFest Ten in London, which was amazing; a couple of local arts festivals including I Love West Leeds, a music festival that unfortunately I had to cancel due to being horribly ill; a beer festival, a regular cultural night in Leeds called Bettakultcha; and loads of book clubs. I still go to the pub every month as well, and have started a book swap in local city centre bar Aglassto. Other sister-TSL's (it has had babies, which is ace!) have also gone to Hay Festival. I've also advised people about setting up TSLs across the UK, Australia and Canada.

AH: What kind of response do you get to TSL?

JH: I could literally play TSL Bingo with the phrases "what a good idea", "I've got loads of books", "I never have time to read", "oh I've read all of them", "why are you doing this?", "why don't you just sell them?" and "can I take more than one?". It’s mostly positive, though I have got into one fight about the nature of altruism - it was just after I'd read The Fountainhead though so I wasn't really in the best place for that one!

AH: Do you think the trend for 'pop up' libraries is just a fad, or does it (should it) have a future?

JH: There is a trend for pop up libraries at the moment because it’s twee, and twee is in. Seriously, people get really upset that I don't come with a vintage case decorated with frills and old luggage stickers. My case is my Gran's old one from the ‘90s that is battered, but works. Have you tried lifting a case full of books? It’s on wheels for a reason! I've even had one man complain that I'm not petite and pretty enough to get away with something that sounds as twee as the TSL does, especially considering my online name is BookElf! I'm not into the idea of doing anything for fashion and the amount of pop up libraries that have sprung up in the last couple of years makes me feel a little weary; I don't want people thinking I'm doing this because its cool, or arty, or whatever. I'm not an artist, I'm a librarian.

What worries me the most is that people will start supporting a pop up, and not a public library. Public libraries are massively under threat and I always, always, say to people, “go there first”. My entire ethos is that reading should be taken into public spheres and social places in order to get rid of the stigma that reading is uncool. I really don't want book swaps to be a middle class, arty movement that only serves a minority of the 'community'. I know I've failed massively in spreading the TSL to more venues but I work full time and it’s a hard commitment; if you are going to do something similar you need to really work hard on it, and be prepared for books to literally take over your life. That’s why I'm trying now to get people to host their own book swaps, and to donate their books to people who have none. The best thing I've done this year in my opinion isn't a book swap, it was a blog piece on the fact that 3/10 children do not have their own book, that got people to send their books to a primary school teacher in inner city Birmingham, who gave the books to the children. She said the impact was amazing, and that the children loved their books. That’s what I'd like to do more of.

Interested in finding out more, donating some books or setting up your own TSL? You can catch Jess on Twitter, over at the TSL blog, or scribbling away for For Books’ Sake and Leeds Book Club.

Jess and the TSL at the For Books' Sake Mad Hatter's Tea Party, July 2011. Photo courtesy of Sam Evaskitas

Elizabeth Kostova - The Swan Thieves

2011-08-18T11:23:00.002Z

All Men Have Secrets

Elizabeth Kostova’s follow-up to mega selling debut The Historian comes at a time when bookshelves are groaning under the weight of conspiracy thrillers. Dan Brown and Steig Larsson have opened the thriller genre up to a younger, more female audience, and instituted new clichés – now, the non-professional detectives must be artistic and academic, the conspirators are shady cultural entities, not governments or rogue agents. Meanwhile, train station posters advertise ‘emotional thrillers’, focussing on the angst of the victim.

Kostova’s debut was a sensation, and although her writing has been attacked as wooden, she can still consider herself a cut above the ‘the important man picked up the red cup’ prose stylings produced by Brown. Unlike Larsson, she is able to create a male protagonist without the ludicrous wish-fulfilment sexual magnetism of Kalle Blomkvist. Her new novel, The Swan Thieves takes multiple narrative viewpoints, and features a nineteenth century sub-plot. Yet it never grips in the same way as the Millenium Trilogy did.

Part of the problem is the lack of an engaging protagonist. The novel focuses on the emotional destruction of the artist Robert Oliver. Oliver is a brooding, silent presence throughout the novel, repeatedly sketching an idealised female form, based on a woman he encountered once. His psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, also an artist, embarks on a quest to understand his patient, tracking down the women in his life, and investigating a series of letters sent by a female Impressionist painter in the nineteenth century.

We see a variety of narrative viewpoints, including Marlowe, Oliver’s first wife, and another art teacher with whom he had a relationship. These are interspersed with translations of 19th century correspondence between an ageing Impressionist and his niece. Unfortunately, Kostova only really convinces and engages when writing from a female viewpoint. The first twelve chapters are entirely narrated by Marlowe, with his banal references to soup, his amateur view of art, and his unfortunate lapses into Langon-esque exposition: ‘What had happened in France in 1879? Hadn’t there been the Paris Commune? Exactly when had Baron Haussman designed all those great boulevards?’

There is promising material in The Swan Thieves – Kostova sets us up for the forensic analysis of a life in progress, and establishes a brooding, Pinter-esque central figure. The opening section, an artist attacking a painting with a knife, promises drama. But the pacing is poor, and the novel is at least 200 pages too long. Meanwhile, her attempts to create a literary mystery along the lines of Possession are foiled by her inferior skills of mimicry.

Ultimately, The Swan Thieves is a disappointment, an opportunity missed. Kostova may have been trying to do the right thing, exploring the psyche of the artist, the taciturn man capable of wildly demonstrative work, but the novel is misjudged. Simply put, too many chapters fly past with no activity, no revelations or new insights. Oliver’s presumed psychosis never feels real, and Marlowe is little more than a cipher. The women, Mary and Kate, are more interesting, as we are allowed to see more of their lives, through monologues, but even they are not memorable. As a novella, this may have been fine, but Kostova is unable to sustain the narrative over 600+ pages.

Suggested Further Reading
If you like the literary mystery element of this story, then AS Byatt's Possession and Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child offer far superior versions. If you like the idea of novels which begin with paintings being destroyed in art galleries, I heartily recommend Christopher Fowler's The Seventy Seven Clocks, which starts in the same way and is far more fun, with 80 year old detectives, and a series of increasingly unlikely murders including Bengal tigers, snakes, ice cream vans and the Savoy Hotel.

Oh, You Can Prove Anything With Facts

2011-08-16T18:33:00.003Z

Cretinous article by Dominic Lawson in today's Independent. Essentially, he tries to flesh out David Starkey's Newsnight outburst, and argue that 'patois' drives down attainment and aspiration (probably a surprise for Derek Walcott or Benjamin Zephaniah. He's got some facts to back this up, which I shall list, for the purposes of clarity:

- 50% of black boys aged 14 have a reading age of 7 or less
- 63% of white working class boys have a reading age of 7 or less
- Chinese children have lower illiteracy rates (including girls, and all economic backgrounds, presumably, and not giving us any figures)

So, we have 3 sample groups, which are all subtly different (all black boys, poor white boys, all Chinese children). Here are his explanations:

- Fewer Chinese children are raised by lone parents (we have a figure for blacks, none for whites), so they do better.
- Whites are dragged down by their proximity to black culture (this is a non-sequiter, and I don't think he even tries to justify it with reference to facts / statistics).

What I would like to know is:

- If blacks are such a bad influence, how come they are doing 13% better than whites?

Review: Ali Smith - There But For The

2011-08-10T14:36:00.003Z

The first full-length fiction for four years, from a writer who can mix critical acclaim and popular appeal, many people considered it strange that Ali Smith’s There But For The was omitted from the Booker longlist when it was announced in July. Ironically, the book itself deals with strange absences.

Ms Smith is a writer with a gift for wordplay and puns, and her work successfully straddles the line between whimsicality and feyness. There But For The begins with a fairytale motif (‘There once was a man…”), and Smith’s most perspicacious character is a precocious child, able to cut through adult obfuscation. This gentle tone disguises the story’s sharp, satirical edge, as Smith explores the strange disconnections of modern life through the motif of a mysterious interloper in a suburban spare room.

The novel hinges around a strange, unsettling tale. A dinner party guest, Miles, a friend of a friend, slips off before dessert, and barricades himself in the spare room, refusing to leave. He communicates with the outside world only through notes passed under the door. This conceit allows Smith to dwell on the fractured nature of modern middle class existence. She portrays ‘rueful adulterers’, minimalist interior décor, individuals hiding behind meaningless job titles, skilfully describing the discomfort which occurs when silence descends.

For Smith, the resonant connections formed in childhood carry far greater weight than the atomised world of adults can offer. Her characters rely on the soothing nature of possessions, property providing far greater comfort than inscrutable human behaviour can offer. Even social occasions become resolutely futile. None of her characters are willing to move beyond their self-imposed cultural parameters. Communication is simpler than ever on a surface level, but this convenience appears to reduce all discourse to its most banal form.

At first, the silent stranger in the home brings disquiet; the Pinter-esque presence broods over the host family, the husband moves out, the wife reduced to a sobbing wreck, indulging in petty cruelties (passing ham under the door to the vegetarian Miles) before realising that her situation can be exploited. Television crews are invited into the home, to document the strange situation, and a range of merchandise is produced. Crowds gather, hoping for a glimpse of this neo-Hermit, and mediums charge £30 a go for ‘messages from Milo’. Smith allows us glimpses into the minds of the characters who have become part of Miles’s story – much of the novel focuses on memory and internal monologue. We realise that the child has the greatest understanding of the goings-on, and the most honest connection to Miles.

While reading There But For The, I was reminded of a nineteenth century novella, Bartleby the Scrivener. In this, a clerk brings disquiet to his co-workers with a similar form of quiet rebellion, manifested through the phrase ‘I would prefer not to”. Like Bartleby, Miles opts out of the bourgeois world into which he has been invited, and his simple rejection of his hosts’ values is enough to cause chaos.

There But For The is a highly enjoyable novel, with real literary merit. Like Booker favourite Alan Hollinghurst, she writes a good party, and demonstrates a confident mastery of prose, teasing the reader with her light-hearted word-play. This novel may not have the scope of The Stranger’s Child, but it is a very effective satire, puncturing many of the assumptions of the modern middle class. It is a shame the Booker judges have overlooked Ali Smith on this occasion, but hopefully readers will not make the same mistake.

Summertime...

2011-08-10T11:08:00.002Z

...and a young man's thoughts turn to setting bins on fire and looting tracksuits from JD Sports. For some knowledgable and even-handed coverage of the legal issues surrounding the riots, I thoroughly recommend the Old Magistrate.

For a more ignorant and totally disrespectful account, try @theworkshyfop, and for some riot soundtrack music, try I Prefer The Second Album.

Cailtin Moran - 'How to be a Woman'

2011-08-04T13:58:00.001Z

Sometimes the text is impossible to distinguish from the cultural artefact. On the one hand, we have an engaging memoir, the story of a woman rising from an impoverished Black Country background, through the pages of the Melody Maker and a boho London squat, to the rarefied surroundings of the Times arts pages. On the other, you have a mess of hype portraying the author as a twenty-first century Greer, dispensing her strident feminist philosophy from a metropolitan barstool. This has given ‘How to be a Woman’ far greater significance than it may otherwise have achieved, and yet it is also its greatest drawback.

‘How to be a Woman’ veers from story-telling to sermonising. The first two chapters deal with Moran’s coming of age; later, she will devote consecutive chapters to why women should and should not have children. The style is anecdotal throughout. When discussing her own life, the style draws the reader in; when the message veers towards the philosophical, the same tone undermines her arguments. The thought that ‘you really haven’t done much research, have you?’ pops up in the back of the reader’s mind. And this is a shame, as much of what she says makes sense.

It is easy to caricature Caitlin Moran. Like Christopher Hitchens, she feels the need to drop reminders of her louche lifestyle into the text at every opportunity. At points, you can virtually smell the red wine and stale cigarettes emanating from the page. There is an air of ‘first world problems’ to the book; for example, we have half a chapter on why it is okay for a feminist to hire a cleaner, compared to one paragraph on the burka. But then she can change tone dramatically and write with real effect; her description of childbirth packs huge emotional impact, and can resonate with anyone who has had a similar experience.

The whole book is a high wire act. As I have said, a lot of issues could be classified as first world problems, but at her best, Moran can drag wider implications from personal anecdotes, using her life as a microcosm and exploring the wider societal impact of individual choices. She is funny without being flippant, and generally manages to talk about her own life without coming across as a liberal arts London elitist. Her position could broadly be summed up as ‘libertarian feminism’, and she makes a great go at having her cake and eating it too.

There are plenty of faults with her arguments. For example, I am deeply uncomfortable with the fag-hag feminism of the middle chapters, where she equates women and gay men as being united in oppression. Many gay men will object to being regarded as essentially feminine, whilst I’m not aware of any significant pay gap between hetero and homo males. There’s also a totally uncynical take on Lady Gaga, which seems to get disproportionate space, especially when previous chapters have discussed the negative impact of fashion on women’s choices.

It would be unfair to say that Moran takes on easy targets, though. It is important for a woman with a mainstream voice to focus their ire on raunch culture, to damn the proliferation of strip clubs and the all-reaching monoculture of pornography. Time after time, readers will find themselves agreeing, and may well be inspired by the strident nature of Moran’s arguments. There are few times when you think ‘she’s got that totally wrong’. The problems come with the presentation. This is not ‘The Female Eunuch’. It’s not even ‘Living Dolls’, as far as a manifesto goes. Unlike Natasha Walter, for example, Moran doesn’t interview women who have been affected by the issues she explores, and she very rarely seems to take recourse to actual research. This is very much feminism through the filter of personal experience. As a memoir, this doesn’t diminish its strength at all. It’s just that this isn’t how the book is sold.

In terms of a broader reading, How to be a Woman fits in with a school of thought which is beginning to move feminism away from academic waves towards an analysis of individual choices. As in Living Dolls, we see how women have been sold short by the free market concept of freedom. For example, she presents a strong argument on the way in which fashion has sold women a proscribed and limiting version of freedom, akin to the post-Soviet assurance that Eastern Europeans were now free to buy as many pairs of Levi’s as they liked, if they could afford them. As in the former Soviet world, the freedom to purchase the consumer dream is beyond the majority, whose lives are as circumscribed as ever. But the book works best on a personal level. It is funny, touching, moving, hugely readable, accessible to both sexes, and deserves a large audience. Just don’t expect a lifestyle guide.

The Reading: Part One

2011-07-29T14:26:00.004Z

The Reading is an art project conceived by Jane Chavez-Dawson, and operating in tandem with husband Mike’sRe-Covering installation. Over a seven week period, 72 creative writers are engaged in creating a text. Each participant writes for a three hour shift. They see only the final paragraph from the previous writer’s work, and are asked to follow on from this to create a group narrative. Authors are encouraged to use the ambience of the Untitled Gallery, where they are based, to influence their work, and their writing is projected in real-time to venues around Manchester, including Cornerhouse, John Ryland’s Library and the Chinese Arts Centre.

Other writers who have taken part in the project thus far include both Chavez-Dawsons, and Claire Massey, of Mad Hatter’s Tea Party fame, along with numerous figures from the Manchester lit scene. When the project is completed, the text will be edited for publication by the Manchester University Press. The object is to create a ‘textured text’, a piece of literature created by multiple minds in one location.

I took my place at the Untitled Gallery yesterday at 3 o’clock. The gallery is located in the cellars beneath the Friends’ Meeting House, near to the Town Hall. Outside, the sun is beating down, and people are noisily enjoying the beer tent at the Jazz Festival in St Anne’s Square. By contrast, the whitewashed interior of the gallery is cool and still. The writers are set up in a small alcove by the door, a keyboard and monitor set up on an old school desk. To my left, there is a series of reference books (thesaurus, grammar guide, dictionary). At the end of the long, narrow room, a screen is set up, onto which your writing is projected, and the walls are lined with the creations from Mr Chavez-Dawson’s exhibition. The gallery’s Director brings regular cups of tea, otherwise conditions are perfect for quiet contemplation.

I had spent some time in advance thinking about how to approach the writing. I decided that it would be best not to have a specific topic in mind, and to improvise a story rather than try to twist a pre-arranged idea to suit whatever paragraph I was given to work with. I did think of a couple of potential styles to use; the potential for using my day-job experience to produce three hours of corporate-speak, ‘cascading briefs’ and all, for example. It occurred to me that character names should be avoided, as they were unlikely to match up with names that had come before, or would follow.

As it turned out, the strangeness of the paragraph I had to work from negated any pre-conceived ideas of what I was going to be writing. I sat down to a word document topped with the following:

So the Stingers took over. Not just the Council but they repopulated
the whole species and made sure there were no Impotents to
weaken the swarms. Now everyone could defend themselves
against the humans. But, being a proactive kind of bunch,
their philosophy was a case of 'attack is the best form of
defence'. Not much was achieved in those years. Certainly
no cultural or social development. No security of safety from
the flip flop of death. Survival of the fittest and strongest was
not necessarily the best outcome in this case (sorry Darwin).
The species is persecuted even more now they actually hurt
people. We don't like that, that's our job.

I don’t want to post my work until the project has finished. In the meantime, maybe you could give us an idea of how you would have followed on from this paragraph?

Rage Actions: Hour Zero (Theatre in the Mill, Bradford, July 23)

2011-07-25T13:16:00.003Z

A black-clad, shaven headed young man recites the names of the Jonestown victims, whilst being struck about the head and body by a blindfolded woman. A third woman, also blindfold, scrubs away at the flour-covered floor, carefully delineating performers and audience. In the background, an electronic hum plays slightly too loudly for comfort. The crowd huddles against the back wall. This is Rage Actions: Hour Zero.

Over the 70 minutes of the performance, the performers take part in harsh, repetitive actions, exploring the effects of physical trauma on vocal performance, and the effects of brutality on the viewer. Each action is stretched over 12 minutes, giving the piece a durational aspect, whilst also taking the audience beyond its comfort zone, making the viewer question their tolerance for the harsh scenes played out before them; at what stage does a sight become too unpleasant, and what happens when it becomes normalised through repetition?

The workspace is sparsely decorated – the floor is coated in flour, with the fourth wall scrubbed out in front of us with rags. The lighting consists of four harsh bulbs, and the only prop is an old tin bath, half filled with freezing water. The stark, hostile atmosphere is augmented by the atonal soundscape which pervades the entire show, altering almost imperceptibly as the performance progresses.

The first action explores master/slave relationships, and the effect of repetitive, pointless activity on the disempowered individual. One performer, blindfold and kneeling, scrubs the floor; as she does so, the other company members strike at the floor with improvised weapons (tights, filled with flour and coated in golden syrup). The kneeling victim must scrub away at the spots where contact is made. As we watch, we see the aggressors growing more cruel, arranging the contacts to disorientate and startle their victim, who is becoming visibly more exhausted, frustrated and resentful.

This is followed by a scene in which the performers manipulate one another’s bodies in order to provoke involuntary changes in speech; each of the performers takes a turn at glossolalia, whilst their colleagues massage or strike them, pressing fingers into mouths and eyes to alter the sounds they make. After the silence of the first scene, the outbreak of howling, fractured noise is startling and effective; however, there is a weakness in the staging, as the performers spend too long with their backs to the crowd.

This experiment is developed further in the next scene, as the female performers take turns to sit in the ice-cold tin bath, surrounded by fragments of text, and continue to speak in tongues as they are doused with freezing water. Here, the effects are even more dramatic, and the audience’s discomfort reaches a pitch, as we are presented with a lengthy tableau of the performers back to back in the bath, muslin cloth covering their faces, tensed up against the cold.

Finally, the third group member returns, bearing sheets containing prayers, which the audience members had been asked to compose when they arrived at the venue. He reads the supplications in a flat monotone, screwing them up, and tossing them dismissively to the floor. The prayers are interposed with the names of the Jonestown dead. As he reaches the conclusion of his list, he removes six pins that he has worked into his forehead during the previous scene. In the most explicitly confrontational aspect of the performance, he bleeds over the audience’s words, challenging their complicity as voyeurs in the at times horrific spectacle presented to us. Finally, in another echo of Jonestown, we are handed a syringe filled with ‘kool-aid’, as a hypnotic loop of Jim Jones’s words fills the air.

The spectre of Jim Jones looms large over the performance, as the scenarios presented by the Rage Actions company are bookended by loops of his speeches. However, there is a more modern relevance to the piece, as the sight of group rage and torture evoke news footage of Abu Ghraib and the war on terror. Beyond these media images, the piece also forces the audience to explore the boundaries of what they are willing to experience, taking an uncomfortable scenario and stretching it to breaking point.

This first in what is scheduled to be a series of performances over the remainder of 2011, Rage Actions is a provocative, effective piece. The pacing and staging of the performance is clearly well-thought out, and avoids self-indulgence or pretension. There are issues to be developed in further performances; setting the piece in the round may help to engage the audience more directly in the events they are witnessing, and the distribution of the ‘kool-aid’ syringes could be improved, as many were left confused. However, this is an extremely promising start, and it will be interesting to see how the piece develops.

Not Part Of: The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

2011-07-22T14:28:00.003Z

The folk at For Books’ Sake bought their own brand of literary mayhem to Nexus Art Café in Manchester, to round off Not Part Of festival in style with their Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Hosted by Alex Herod (Mad Hatter) and Jane Bradley (Cheshire Cat), the event featured readings by local authors, raffles, drawing contests, poetry, an appearance from the Travelling Suitcase Library and Nexus’s usual fine range of teas and cakes.

The event offered a more communal feel than many of the Not Part Of shows, as the audience milled around happily whilst waiting for the festivities to begin. At half past eight, the Mad Hatter stepped up to the microphone, and welcomed us to the event with a reading from Jeff Noon’s Automated Alice, a modern, Mancunian update of Lewis Carroll’s classic. This reading set the theme for the evening, as the For Books’ Sake editors used Alice in Wonderland as a starting point from which to present modern, magical tales, firmly rooted in the North West.

The first reader of the night was Claire Massey, an acclaimed local short-story writer. Her first story told the tale of a woman who chose to remain in her village after it was flooded to make way for a dam; the narrative is beautifully understated, and the subject matter fits the event superbly, as Ms Massey takes her audience on a journey down below the world we normally inhabit into a surreal, buried habitat, where everyday tasks are fraught with practical complexities.

This reading is followed by a performance by Sarah Thomasin. Ms Thomasin performs a series of short poems mainly on feminist themes, in an engagingly clumsy and humorous way. Her words never come across as bitter or spiteful, and draw her audience in, as does her between poem banter.

After a break, during which we were invited to draw our own rendering of a Jabberwocky, the raffle prizes were announced, and Jane Bradley made a second reading from Automated Alice, drawing laughs from the listeners with its references to rainy, gloomy Manchester. After this, Claire Massey returned for a second reading, enrapturing the crowd with her magical realist stories, set in decaying Lancashire towns. We meet supernatural creatures such as ethereal women clothed in grass, and the story creates a fairy-tale atmosphere.

Our final reader was Emma Jane Unsworth, reading from her newly-published novel Hungry, The Stars and Everything. The novel is narrated by a food critic who uses the memory of tastes as a springboard for reflections on the major events of her life. In the passages she presents tonight, Ms Unsworth shows she is well capable of creating deeply evocative prose, and she presents an interesting account of coming of age. Again, we have touches of magical realism, as the devil crops up, described in an entirely matter of fact manner, and again there is a strong North Western identity, as the book is rooted in the old, dull Manchester.

It is to the organisers’ credit that they were able to use the event to present two such talented and well-suited authors, whilst remaining true to the theme of the evening. Each reading took listeners on a surreal journey, and each had a strong sense of location, in a faded memory of Manchester, pre-IRA bombing and reconstruction. For Books’ Sake has done excellent work promoting female writing, and this event is another success for them. The evening was friendly and warm, and the organisers’ enthusiasm was obvious. Guests were showered with free books and prizes, and responded by showing great warmth and appreciation to the performers. A fine way to round off Not Part Of 2011.

Greg Saxton: How I Went Insane

2011-07-22T13:07:00.003Z

New contributor Ms Jennie Truman reviews Greg Saxton’s new show, How I Went Insane, which will be showing at Preston Tringe Festival, Lassfest 2011 and more…

The upstairs room of the Lass O’Gowrie, to my mind the smallest venue in town, has a tiny lit stage, and rows of around forty chairs, to which Greg Saxton steps up boldly. Introducing his one-man show, How I Went Insane, Saxton informs us, with Victorian candour, that what follows will be a series of ‘revelations’ pieced together from memories, diary entries and letters to parents. He apologises that these aspects of ‘human frailty’ can be ‘obtruding on our notice’.

A monologue of drug-induced moments of euphoria, of multiple epiphanies and their rapid (and as quickly forgotten) succession is absorbing, even allowing for the trance music backing. But this feeling is curtailed from the offset, where he describes himself as ‘staring up at the ceiling of my friend’s flat, again’. This follows his father’s advice to be with friends, and Saxton’s letter stating he is ‘crucified’. So, clearly his sanity, emotional state, and drug taking are not healthy, as he and the audience are projected into a world of opiate-fuelled parties and club scenes. Here, his increasing exasperation is fuelled and he unleashes a deluge of anger and dismay, targetting the world at large, including amongst others consumer society’s charity bids from ‘Bob Fucking Geldof’.

Before the inevitable comedown to the lonelier recesses of a dishevelled room and mind, his journey home is bombarded with billboards in a cold concrete jungle. Familiar to anyone feeling deadbeat after a night out, let alone a cocktail of mind-bending drugs (or so I am lead to believe), they meet his mind’s eye as onslaughts of futility, of ‘what we have become’ as the despairing thoughts of fragile sanity spiral into meltdown.

Aside from claiming to have left his head in the toilet cubicle of a former club, described as ‘vacant’, How I Went Insane is wrongly billed as ‘comedy’ drama. His performance is compelling, not least due to the fact that he has created an intense portrayal of curtailed mental health condensed into twenty minutes of engaging yet dark poetry and prose, performed to an atmospheric and well composed soundtrack, worthy of the £2 entry fee. A party of chance latecomers, however, were clearly disgruntled.

Southpaw Junction: Time Frame

2011-07-15T09:41:00.002Z

A radio conversation between a Mayday-ing fighter pilot and a female radio operator back at base; a bride and groom on their wedding day; a couple discussing photography in an American bar; a lovelorn cowboy sniffing his beau’s shirt. Time Frame presents us with a series of romantic tableaux from Hollywood, and then skilfully undercuts the clichés with wry and playful asides.

The show, conceived and performed by Southpaw Junction, three recent graduates from De Montfort university, engages its audience from the off, involving us in the creation of each scene they present. The fourth wall is repeatedly broken, and the actors are extremely naturalistic as they discuss how the play is progressing. They also display fine comic delivery as they bicker over the direction scenes are taking, and engage in rambling monologues on the stages of relationships.

For example, the second scene features a bride and groom, recruited from the audience. They sit side by side, each taking direction from a member of the group. As the scene progresses, they seem progressively more downcast, until the third group member interrupts, with a rambling monologue on the progress of relationships:
- ‘This is supposed to be the happiest day… two months ago, you’d never met, now you can’t bear to be apart… eventually, you start wondering whether he’s listening… and then there’s the comfort-eating and binge-drinking, and you’re lying in bed alone… then you start eating healthy, and seeing your friends more… and you forget they ever existed’.
-‘Ok, I think we should move to the next scene. Are you ok? Do you need a moment?’

Taking audience members for each scene is a brave move, especially for such young performers, and it could easily misfire. However, Southpaw Junction create such an intimate and friendly atmosphere that they avoid any embarrassment. By the end, their volunteers are suggesting ways to expand their roles, and collaborating in their scenes.

The performance has an air of lovable charm and bumbling amateurish, but is clearly underpinned by tight scripting, skilful performance and intense practice. Time Frame has been one of the surprise highlights of Not Part Of festival. It has a genuinely feel-good air, and packs plenty of highlights into a short running time. This is a really promising piece of theatre, and I would strongly recommend catching Southpaw Junction when you can.

MIF 2011: The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic

2011-07-14T09:07:00.004Z

A first for Workshy Fop, we are publishing a guest review from Alex Herod, of For Books' Sake.

One of the biggest draws at MIF2011, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic brings together the self-proclaimed 'Grandmother of performance art', Abramovic, Wooster Group founder member and Hollywood A-lister, Willem Dafoe, and ethereal songbird, Antony Hegarty, under the direction of the visionary, avant-garde director, Robert Wilson. Phew! With a line-up so impressive, it's no wonder there have been disappointed mutterings amongst the critics (The Telegraph: "a travesty"). As I took my seat in the front row on Monday night, I was giddy with anticipation - surely setting myself up for similar disappointments?

But I am not a critic, these are not my mutterings, these are my memories of a performance I'll never forget.

Eye spy

“Go as you would to a museum, as you would look at a painting… Listen to the pictures” – Robert Wilson

Entering the space, the audience is greeted by a haunting tableau: 3 geisha corpses, motionless in raised coffins (Abramovic has made legal arrangements to have 3 coffins on her burial - one for her and two for 'fake' corpses - placed in 3 different cities) and 3 dogs roaming the stage, curiously sniffing at bones scattered on the floor. For a show costing around half a million, outstanding production design is possibly something people will take for granted, but the aesthetic beauty of this show - down to Wilson’s creative vision, hugely talented team and intensive rehearsal period –transcends mere spectacle.

Video clips of skulls, of shaving and of an unblinking eye play at intervals on a large screen suspended above the stage. The visuals don't add all that much to the performance, dragging my mind away to Un Chien Andalou, but a looped shot of Marina breathing life into a skeleton is like an intimate embrace.

5 minutes in

And I was having doubts. The show opens as a strange John Waters pastiche (not a bad thing, but not what I was expecting): polka dots, back-combed hair and plastic dresses, pencil moustaches and garish make-up, girls in washing machines, domineering mothers (Abramovic as her own mother via the evil Queen in Snow White) and mock-shock gesturing… but somehow, the performers, the drawl and narration of Willem Dafoe from downstage left and the batshit-craziness of it lead to some of the most beautiful moments I’ve experienced as an audience member.

Come together

Here I must make mention of the performers and artists who make up this motley crew ensemble of Marinas and memories...

“To work with Willem and Antony is like a fascinating chemical reaction” – Marina Abramovic

Willem Dafoe is . Really, he is. As the narrator of the piece and performer with the most stage time, the weight of the show is on his shoulders. He not only carries the show, but gives it its heart and depth. He displays a vulnerability and sensitivity often missing from his on-screen roles, along with a burning intensity and some fine darkly comic chops. The last time I was so seduced by an individual performance was on seeing Ofelia Popii as Mephistopheles in Silviu Purcarete's triumphant production of Faust (another show making use of live-dog-as-performer and hailing in part from Central/Southeatern Europe - maybe that's the key!) Popii's performance was truly mesmerising, and more physically and vocally demanding, but hear me now when I say Willem Dafoe is incredible! His is an accomplished and nuanced performance, but for illustrative purposes, I saw flashes of the MC in Cabaret, the Joker and Drop Dead Fred (find those reference points in any other Abramovic review and I’ll give you a fiver!). Erm. I mainly blame the shock of flame-red hair adorning his bonce, his army attire and ability to grin and wiggle in a way that was equally terrifying and beguiling… Can I have one, please?

Antony Hegarty only sings on stage a couple of times, but each time, goose bumps covered my whole body, his otherworldly vocals bringing myself (and judging from sniffling behind me) and other audience members to tears. In any other show, and coming from any other performers, some of the lyrics might have elicited stifled groans from yours truly - "Why must you cut yourself?/...Are you hungry for my guilt/are you eating my guilt?", “Salt, salt in my wounds/ To dull more pedestrian pain / To sting transcendentally” - but here they seem sincere and open, childlike yet wise. Hegarty was unsure how to approach the project until Lou Reed advised, “Just make it personal.” He does just that, pulling together a collection of talented musicians and composers to create the perfect soundtrack for “Marina’s life and work [and] sense of her story as a woman.”

The various ‘Marina’s in the piece are played by a number of international performance artists (including Kira O’Reilly who reprises Stairfalling, a piece that I adored when I saw her perform it in 2009), all of whom bring different qualities to the role, exposing aspects of Abramovic’s life through their own practice and through negotiating the performance space as a group: Angles, ravens, chanting, congregations, Serbian folk dances, funeral songs, drag queens, lizards, mothers, daughters, lovers, corpses - that's what little girl artists are made of.

The first half of the show mainly consists of anecdotes about Marina’s deeply troubled relationship with her mother, the physical and psychological abuse manifesting itself here in a series of darkly comic, grotesque routines. Under curfew until she was in her late 20s, Abramovic returned one night to have a glass ashtray launched at her head – someone had informed her mother that Marina had been ‘hanging naked from a gallery wall’; as a child she was desperate for a new nose and flung herself into the corner of the bed in the hope it would result in reconstructive surgery, but it only resulted in a slap from her mother. Both parents slept with pistols under their pillows. The audience is told a lot about Marina’s life, her childhood, but not necessarily who she is. For me, the most emotional and revealing moment comes towards the end of the show when the once manic narrator sits, melancholic, amongst piles of crumpled paper trying to make sense of Marina’s recent history. This is the time when she truly found love, lost it, grieved for it and lost hope; she lost her parents; MOMA hosted a retrospective of her work – The Artist is Present – spanning over four decades.

A few reviews I have read said it is uncharacteristic of Abramovic to hand over control in her work (though she does often blur the boundaries of control – see the performance where she allowed an audience member to hold a loaded gun to her head). She has surrendered her story, yes, given it over to Wilson so that he might remix and reimagine it, but she hasn't handed over control. It is her story, her life, and The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic originated from her own funeral plans. She has allowed Wilson to manipulate her story so that she may see and experience her life anew, but she is present in every aspect of the performance; only this time, she isn’t alone.

“The deeper you go into yourself the more universal you become” - Marina Abramovic

As an exploration of The Artist, authorship and creativity, this show is exquisite and profound; an unashamed attempt to ‘transfer personal feelings and thoughts into a universal language’.

You have 3 days left to catch it at The Lowry. 3, 2, 1, GO!

Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger's Child

2011-07-12T14:05:00.007Z

It’s been a long wait for Hollinghurst fans, since the release of The Line of Beauty in 2004 elevated our man from highly regarded stylist to Booker Prize-winner and bestseller, with TV adaptations to follow. So what has changed? Hollinghurst’s style was already too developed to be significantly altered, and The Stranger’s Child doesn’t suggest that he has been tempted to experiment. Instead, he has attempted to broaden the scope of his writing. His most successful novels, The Line of Beauty and The Swimming Pool Library have explored a particular period of time, using an individual character to explore the zeitgeist. Now, he plots the course of two families through the twentieth century, tracing strands of a secret history through three generations, all linked by their relationship to a poem.

As A.S. Byatt did in Possession Hollinghurst explores the way in which changing contexts can alter the meaning of literature, and the use of dead authors to exemplify apparently contradictory cultural modes. We are first introduced to Cecil Valance, a wealthy young Cambridge poet, holidaying with his middle-class friend George Sawle in his suburban home, Two Acres. His entrance into the home transforms the lives of the Sawles, who are all intrigued by him in their own ways. So far, so Brideshead Inverted. Whilst at Two Acres, Cecil composes a poem, which becomes a symbol of a lost Britain after its author’s death in the First World War. The remainder of the novel tracks the lives of the Sawles and Valances over the course of the century, as the families are bound together by their attachment to Cecil, and the fight for ownership of the poem between individual family members and critics who wish to claim Cecil as a symbol of doomed Edwardian youth, a military hero or a homosexual icon.

As you would expect, Hollinghurst’s prose is a joy to read. He is excellent on the subtleties of social interaction. As ever, there is a strong sense of gay identity in the writing, and the author explores the ways in which notes and poems are used to create a kind of intimacy which would not be socially or even legally acceptable before 1967. All characters have their secrets, and these are revealed in the dark, whether by playing footsie under a dinner table, or enjoying illicit cigars after the meal. Strands of culture and taste are carefully wound throughout the novel’s five sections. As ever with Hollinghurst, identification with the past is a crucial signifier, and characters ally themselves with subcultural groups through shared tastes.

Hollinghurst is well known for his party set-pieces, most notably the Fedden’s country house affair in The Line of Beauty, graced by Prime Minister Thatcher. In The Stranger’s Child, there are a number of similar scenes, but there is a melancholy undertone to the affair. Cecil’s appearance at Two Acres undercuts pre-war innocence by pitting the Sawles against each other for his favour. In the second book, the people who knew Cecil gather at the Valances’ ancestral home to meet with his first biographer. The moonlight creates a carnivalesque atmosphere as the guests spill out into the grounds, but the night-time holds horrors for those who have known comrades to fall to sniper fire. A frantic tone takes hold, as Cecil’s brother drinks and plays at the Pianola, in a scene reminiscent of Waugh’s Vile Bodies.

The middle sections of the novel have a strong tone of decay, as Cecil’s memory is fought over, and those who survived him find their circumstances reduced. Marriages break up, homes are converted into schools, grounds are sold off, the characters retreat to the suburbs. Meanwhile, strong, athletic Cecil is memorialised in marble, but his hands become ‘girlish’, and his poetic talent is traduced. The characters are battered by modernity, and we see the impact of the end of an era on the individuals. For Hollinghurst, however, traces of the past remain; there is a gradual sense of the hidden gay culture of the pre-war period being revived. The formerly idle rich are reinvented as dons and writers, and these relics of a bygone age re-emerge with dignity intact.

The subtext of the novel explores the way in which literary history can be distorted by the vested interests of relatives and biographers. We see intimate notes destroyed, and facts twisted to suit the prejudices of researchers. The necessary secrecy of gay culture is problematised, as the notes and coded symbols may be hidden or overlooked. This is exceptionally well handled by Hollinghurst, who is expert in drawing meaning from flippant asides and dealing with nuances in tone and phrasing.

This is a broad and ambitious work, especially for a novel which can be seen advertised in train stations. The story may appear simple at face value, but the author’s craftsmanship creates levels of depth and meaning for every reader. This may not be the novel to make you fall in love with Alan Hollinghurst, but it does cement his position as a major figure in modern literature, a writer who can create sculpted text which is never less than readable.

Suggested Further Reading:
For readers who are interested in the gay subcultural elements of this novel, I strongly recommend Neil Bartlett’s Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall. Brideshead Revisited shares certain levels of scope and tone. The themes of disputed literary history are explored in AS Byatt's Possession and also Peter Ackroyd's fantastically enjoyable novel Chatterton.

Manchester International Festival: 1,395 Days Without Red

2011-07-11T10:46:00.004Z

A film without dialogue, following a woman on a typical trip across her home city, has become one of the surprise successes of the Manchester International Festival. 1,395 Days Without Red is an existential drama, fraught with dramatic tension and beautifully scored, exploring the effects of the Siege of Sarajevo on the daily life of the city’s inhabitants.

The path walked by the un-named lead (played by Spanish actress Maribel Verdu in a superbly understated performance) became known as Sniper Alley. The boulevards and intersections of the city were targeted by gunmen who would target civilians, creating an air of terror which pervaded daily life. At each crossing, we see groups of citizens gathering at the edge of the pavement, mustering up the courage to pass to the other side. Individuals deal with the ordeal of crossing in their own ways, taking time to gather their thoughts and make their peace, before rushing or walking across. The tension is not diminished by repetition; every crossing is fraught with danger. The emergency of a life and death situation is ever-present. Gunshots are rarely heard during the film, but their early foregrounding means that the audience is ever aware of the threat.

1,395 Days Without Red presents a genuinely existential situation, where civilians must continually be aware of their own potential death. Dialogue is replaced by exhalation, and humming, as individuals attempt to master their fear. Open spaces, once used as communal meeting points for atomised city-dwellers, are now places of terror and tension, where each person must confront what is in their own minds, with no heed for the actions of those around them. The individual is alone under the watchful eye of fate, manifested by the snipers.

The ever present possibility of mortality forces the viewer to confront their own conception of death, and the need to live in the moment. The citizens of Sarajevo were forced to make their peace with themselves before embarking on the most banal of trips; this is an uncomfortable thought for most in the West, where such ideas are put to the back of the mind. The success of the film lies in its ability to employ simple techniques to create a genuinely challenging air of tension, confronting the viewer, whilst also creating a beautiful piece of cinema. Our relationship with the city and attitude toward death is turned upside down, and yet the film still manages to feel affirming, partially due to the cut-in sections of an orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique.

The film runs until September 4, and is essential Festival viewing, especially in conjunction with Steenbeckett, an instillation based on Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, also showing at the Whitworth Gallery.

Greg Saxton - Kim Noble Gave Me A Fiver

2011-07-08T21:15:00.002Z

Greg Saxton’s contribution to Not Part of Festival explores the dilemma of wanting to perform, without having clear ideas of what to perform. Throughout the half hour performance, Mr Saxton manages an impressive feat of wire-walking, treading the thin line between knowing post-modernism and smugness, honesty and parody. He continually undercuts his own aspirations; he aims to surprise his audience by arriving onstage on a skateboard, but can’t skate, so ends up being pushed by a friend.

The show opens in a hesitant manner, as Mr Saxton plays with different styles of delivery, demonstrating the artificiality of performing, even when delivering his own words. However, this is a tightly crafted and rehearsed act. Greg’s delivery begins to flow, with lyrical, poetic speeches; no attempt is made to present this performance as true life. There are elements of the drama student at times (Greg takes the PoMo/Brechtian step of informing us that this is scripted and rehearsed, in the opening moments), but the performance manages to avoid irritating self-consciousness, and seriousness is undercut with a wry smile.

The downstairs bar at Apotheca is an excellent space for performers, the leather sofas and dark red walls giving an air of luxurious intimacy, and the space is used well. Greg makes clever use of projected images, dodging aliens from an 80s Space Invaders game as he discusses the problems he faced in creating an honest piece of work. He is not afraid to use his muscularity, as demonstrated in this section, and begins his performance with a series of warm-up routines you might normally expect to see from a sportsman.

The show is short, clocking in at just over half an hour, but well paced and structured. After toying with conventions of performance, and breaking the fourth wall during the opening section, with his warm-up routine and references to rehearsal, Greg embarks on a monologue about the search for inspiration; first he travels the world, looking to meet his muse. Then he retreats into his past, and doesn’t find anything to explore there either. As you wonder whether he’s going to come to a point, a muffled drum beat starts, and Greg is suddenly on the microphone, allowing his stream of consciousness to become more and more poetic as he raves about the emotions of performance. The music builds to a peak, and the projector flashes images of student riots, Nosferatu, Batman and The Libertines on the wall behind him. Finally, as the audience is fully committed to the act, the rug is pulled from under them again; Greg is being pushed off stage again on his skateboard, the houselights are back up, and the 70s rock from the upstairs bar seeps through the floor.

Within the constraints of a half hour performance, Greg Saxton reveals himself to be a confident and versatile performer, capable of excellent, poetic delivery and an engaging wit. He shows great discipline to create such a well-honed performance, and not least of his achievements is to incorporate so many drama school influences without becoming insufferable. This is well worth catching if you get chance. And yes, Kim Noble did give him a fiver – he has the photo to prove it.

Milliband and Milly Dowler

2011-07-05T10:03:00.001Z

From The Gruaniad

Pressure is growing on News International after the prime minister joined in condemnation of the News of the World over the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.
David Cameron said it was a "truly dreadful act" and urged police to "pursue this in the most vigorous way".

Labour MP Tom Watson called on Monday for the prime minister to act over the phone hacking, but also laid some of the blame on his own party leader.
"Surely now we should hear from David Cameron and Ed Miliband," Watson said. "It's utterly disgraceful that they've let this scandal run on for as long as it has. No more cowardice – we want action."

Miliband later said "The government has behaved in a reckless and provocative manner. It is time for both sides set aside the rhetoric and get around the negotiating table to make sure this doesn't happen again. The strikes are wrong."

Not Part Of Festival: Matt Smith, Peterloo

2011-07-05T08:51:00.005Z

A busy main road, with trams passing every couple of minutes, a building site on one side, and a particularly vile piece of 60s office design on the other, might not be the most promising venue for an outdoor solo show. But this is what remains of St Peter’s Field, and it is still the site of debate between Mancunians and the state. The audience gathers by the war memorial, a popular monument which the Council is attempting to shift out of view to make for a wider tram stop. This has provoked a furious reaction, with everyone from Private Eye to Carol Batton voicing their opposition. The proposed move is the main subject of pre-show chat, with a small knot of locals united in their condemnation of the Council’s plans.

Matt Smith bounds towards us, with a welcoming cheer of ‘Comrades!’ He is an engaging host, with a bouncy enthusiasm, as he leads us from the memorial to the Peace Gardens – ‘Its too noisy here, and the Council wouldn’t give permission anyway’. Matt has the army surplus jacket and Converse trainers which immediately categorise him in the ‘lefty-student’ bracket of national stereotypes, and displays the sort of single-minded passion that precludes any eye contact with his audience.

Matt’s show takes the Peterloo Massacre as a starting point for a discussion on political engagement and modern policing. As a result, his facts are somewhat fast and loose, but it’s a nice change from the dry recital of facts and pedantry which can bog down discussions of this epochal moment. Mr Smith is clearly a Lee and Herring fan, and is strongly influenced by the 80s alternative comedy scene, although his babyface suggests he may not have been born at the high point of the movement.

The show begins strongly, as our host explains the economy and the background to Peterloo through a series of cartoons drawn on cue cards, like Rik Mayall recreating Subterranean Homesick Blues. His has the audience onside, and we are willing to forgive any minor stumbles. Matt’s delivery is pretty good, and the jokes are warmly received.

Halfway through the show, we run into problems. It becomes apparent that Matt is now going to do an impression of a Tory MP. Even more concerning, he is conducting a conversation with a sock puppet Lib Dem, about Coalition politics. I have to confess, a little piece of me died at this point; I could barely watch. It’s to Matt’s credit, though, that the show does recover from this potentially fatal blow. An impassioned defence of UK Uncut, and call for greater democratic engagement, is followed by a Stewart Lee-esque riff about pissing on posters of David Cameron, and he even manages to close on a poem without completely ruining everything.

The outdoor setting aids the show, creating an intimate atmosphere. Curious passers-by stop to listen to sections of the performance, and the sound of trams doesn’t manage to drown out the performer. The events of Peterloo were probably extremely familiar to the majority of the audience, and the show may have sold itself short on the festival website, sounding like a dry historical piece. It makes a change to hear someone relating the events of 1819 to the modern day, even if his politics occasionally verge on Rik from Young Ones territory.

Overall, this was an engaging hour, and a welcome addition to Not Part Of. Comedy hasn’t featured too highly in this year’s programme, and it’s always good to see this sort of lively, engaged performance, especially when the Festival pavilion is just around the corner and the sun is out. Next stop for me at the Festival is the literary quiz at Barcelona Bar on Wednesday. More festival reviews over the next two weeks.

Thanks to Alex Herod of For Books' Sake for the photo.

Not Part Of

2011-07-05T08:06:00.000Z

Manchester International Festival seems to finally be achieving some real credibility this year, with excellent reviews for the big ticket appearances by the likes of Bjork and Damon Albarn. The Festival Pavilion outside the Town Hall has become a lively meeting place, and the city centre seems somehow continental all of a sudden. Chloe Sevigny is being spotted here, there and everywhere, and the sun is shining.

I’ve been heartily cynical about the MIF in the past; events have been over-priced (£45 for De La Soul at The Ritz?), and the whole event has felt rather artificial. This year, though, the Festival finally has the lively Fringe that it deserves. Not Part Of has put together a great programme of art, film and literary events, and I’ll be attempting to keep on top of this over the next couple of weeks. Obviously, I can’t get to everything, but here are some recommended events:

Wednesday July 6: Flash Language Literary Pub Quiz

Friday 8: Kim Noble Gave Me A Fiver

Wednesday 13: Time Frame: Southpaw Junction

Friday 15: For Books’ Sake: Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

And some ongoing events:

Re-Covering

11 Rooms

1,395 Days Without Red

Re-Covering

2011-07-03T19:47:00.003Z

Curated by performance artiste and man about town Mike Chavez-Dawson, Re-Covering examines the interactions between literature and the physical world which it inhabits. Artists, comedians and musicians were invited to create their own cover designs for favourite books onto oak reclaimed from a Birmingham school library and fashioned into paperback-sized blocks. By removing the books from their branded, published forms, and the physical spaces which society reserves for literature, Re-Covering allows for unique, personal relationships between reader and text.

The Untitled Gallery is located in the bowels of the Friends’ Meeting House, behind the closed Central Library in Manchester. The visitor enters a space a little bigger than an Anderson shelter, with a shelf on each of the walls, displaying the re-covered texts. In the corner, they will find a writer typing away, their words projected onto a screen at the far end of the room in real time. The space is ideal for quiet, unrushed contemplation.

Each participant takes a personal approach to their chosen text. Some deal with the book’s content matter, for example Nicola Dale’s Farenheit 451, which sees paper flames rising from the solid wood. Others feature more emotional reactions, such as Lean Horsey’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where the cover is hacked into the ‘book’. Mr Chavez-Dawson himself adorns A Clockwork Orange with an impressively penile graffiti tag, whilst Harry Hill turns the Old Testament into a block of Swiss cheese.

There are some extremely impressive and intricate designs on show. A Wittgenstein book has its back cover spiel minutely carved in, and a Velvet Underground biography features an etched cover. Italo Calvini’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller becomes a decorative, multimedia piece, as the playfully post-modernist text is reflected by a design which rises out of the woodblock, adding a further dimension to the text.

Although there may be a political angle to the exhibition, as artists create new meaning from the literal bare bones of deconstructed reading spaces, Re-Covered has a more personal feel, focusing on the relationship between reader and text, rather than the Big Society.

This exhibition runs alongside a project by Jane Chavez-Dawson. ‘Network Aesthetics – A Reading’ further explores the interaction between text and public space by presenting authors as performers. Seventy two writers will each spend three hours writing in the Untitled Gallery, with their words being projected in locations around Manchester, including The Cornerhouse and The Chinese Arts Centre . Each writer will take the final paragraph written by the last shift as their starting point, to create a linked text. Again, sense of place will infuse the writing, as authors are encouraged to take their location and the people around them as an aid to their work.

These projects will run until July 31, admission is free. Both form part of Not Part Of, Manchester's fringe arts festival.

Some more examples of Jane and Mike’s work:

Jane and Mike take inspiration from low-budget regional news shows And That’s All From Us

Jane directs your author in Billy Ruffian’s I Love You When You’re Not Masterminding My Downfall promotional film. Spot Workshy Fop on the Flying V Ukelele.

Mike’s alterego Robin Nature-Bold

Twitter

2011-07-01T09:26:00.002Z

@TheWorkshyFop

A Catch-Up

2011-06-30T11:55:00.003Z

From the beginning of 2011, I have been trying to instil a bit of guidance and discipline into my reading habits – no re-reading old novels, no more non-fiction, and no more true crime. I am also introducing a pattern – every other book I read has to have been written in French. Friends suggested Russians; my official line is that Russian authors are passé. The real reason is that I can’t cope with the character names.

I haven’t been keeping notes, so this won’t be a wonderfully detailed account, but here’s an overview of what I’ve read so far:

George Perec: A Void

So, a member of high-brow French Lit group Oulipo (Workshop for Potential Literature) writes a novel without using the letter ‘e’ at any stage. To clarify, that’s no words which include the letter ‘e’. This might not sound like an enticing prospect for light reading. And yet, and yet… A Void is an absolute joy to read! Swept up in the exuberance of his own verbosity, Perec (and his translator) create a superb murder mystery, moving beyond traditional dogmatic discourse (he, she, were, where, there, here, the, ever) into a linguistic playground. This would be a superb novel to hear aloud, as the writer’s enthusiasm shines through in every sentence. Experimentalism has never been so rewarding.

Marguerite Duras: The Lover

Documenting the end of French empire through the eyes of a young girl in 1930s Saigon, whose awareness of class and cultural anomalies is heightened by her relationship with a wealthy young Chinese man, Duras packs a lot of information into a reasonably short novel. Slow paced but well-written, Duras reveals the gradual shift in attitude and expectation, without drifting into the sentimentality which often affects English novels dealing with the same era.

Jean Paul Satre: The Age of Reason

My contribution to existentialism was to throw this turgid nonsense into the River Goyt.

Albert Camus: The Plague

Just to demonstrate that existentialism isn’t incompatible with stylish writing, sympathetic characters, engrossing narrative and empathy. I found the allegories on collaboration and the Holocaust particularly interesting, and admired the way Camus found multiple viewpoints within what was largely a first person narrative.

Sylvie Germain: Days of Anger

A more recent novel, available in the UK thanks to the fantastic Dedalus Books, this is a dark fairytale of love and revenge, set in a primitive woodland setting. The writing is highly symbolic. Families are torn apart by betrayals; a wealthy farmer is abandoned by his wife, and murders her in his rage. A poor farmer finds the body. Overcome by lust for the corpse, he blackmails the killer, marries his daughter, and takes his riches. The daughter is kept in splendid isolation, expected to conform to an ideal of her mother. The blackmailer’s son is disgusted by the changes in his father, and goes back to the soil, marrying a peasant girl and raising 12 sons, each with semi-mystical qualities. This is a rich, elusive tale, worthy of serious consideration by anyone with an interest in magical realism.

Andre Gide: The Immoralist

A Heart of Darkness style novella, in which our anti-hero rebels against the constraints of academic learning and social norms following a life-threatening case of pneumonia. There are stylistic flourishes from Gide, but charactterisation is generally wooden, and the first person recitative narrative really doesn't appeal to me. The Immoralist lacks the splenetic rage that makes, say, The Torture Garden such a compelling read, and instead the reader is left with the impression of Gide as a posturing student.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Woman Destroyed

This triptych of stories deal with the impact of ageing on women in the second half of the twentieth century. We see an academic, stung by reaction to her latest work, and fearing that she doesn’t have the strength to break new ground, and a furious, lonely monologue from a woman left alone in her house on new year’s eve. The most memorable section of the book, though, is The Woman Destroyed itself, a gripping account of a woman’s attempts to deal with her husband’s adultery with a younger woman. Passing through desolation, acceptance, attempted reconciliation and rejection, Monique is a superb creation, lovingly and empathetically crafted by an exceptional writer.

Jean Teule: Monsieur Montespan

In this novel, Teule attempts to resurrect the reputation of Monsier Montespan, a nobleman in the time of Louis XIV who married for love but was cuckolded by his King. While the rest of the court envied his luck, Montespan reacted furiously, devoting his life to exposing his ill-treatment. Taking to the streets in a carriage mounted with stag’s horns, Montespan was viewed as a ridiculous figure by history, but to a modern eye emerges as a deeply sympathetic character. Teule writes extremely well by the standards of historical fiction, and revels in the dirt and squalor of the period; pungent smells and insect infestations abound, in even the highest circles.

Alain-Fournier: Le Grand Meaulnes

The jacket presents this as a 1913 version of Catcher in the Rye. However, despite a few high points (carnivalesque descriptions of children roaming wild in abandoned farm buildings) I found this novella largely unengaging, and surprisingly hard to pick up for such a short book.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: The Little Prince

Heartbreaking, beautiful, and somehow extremely relevant in the modern day. Wonderfully written through childish eyes, free from cynicism, deeply poignant.

Any suggestions for the rest of the year are gratefully received, particularly more modern novels, and female authors.

Ron Athey: Gifts of the Spirit – Manchester Whitworth Hall, June 27

2011-06-29T14:32:00.002Z

Acclaimed American performance artist Ron Athey’s latest project uses hypnotism and suggestion to explore the idea of a collective unconscious. The piece utilises organ music, dissonant piano and autobiographical readings to create a suitable atmosphere in which 16 volunteers, under hypnosis, create ‘stream of unconsciousness’ text on scrolls laid out on the floor of the hall. These texts are typed up and delivered to readers on the altar-like high table, and reincorporated into the performance.

The stated aim of the piece is to explore the possibility of a group unconscious, through the power of hypnotism and suggestion. The effects are certainly dramatic – the combination of funereal music, murmuring voice and manual typewriters is irresistible. The first half of the performance is structured and formal; Mr Athey, sat on a table on the stage with five accomplices, reads aloud; as he finishes each piece, the hypnotised volunteers on the floor begin to write their response. This is repeated three times, as the writers move towards a central point in the hall.

The intensity is suddenly cranked up - the organist dons boxing gloves, and begins hammering at an old piano; the typewriters clatter ever faster, and the performers at the stage erupt into a call and response demonstration of glossolalia, jerking backwards and forwards in their chairs, howling and barking. The writers respond accordingly, some creating elaborate patterns for their words, others scribbling frantically.

It’s strange to experience an experiment such as this with no possibility of judging the outcome; without being able to examine all the writers’ efforts, we have no way of knowing whether any sort of group experience was created. Sad to say, the written output was probably the weak point of the piece. I have a low tolerance for stream of consciousness, and the main themes I could see were a lack of relative clauses and an obsession with nipples. On the other hand, The Whitworth Hall was a magnificent setting, and the event was dramatic and gripping. An attendance of over 100 was heartening as well.

This was an interesting performance, and gave an insight into the use of music and text to influence the unconscious mind as practiced in various religions down the years; the call and response structure of the readings and the low drone of the organ were closely observed from Mr Athey’s religious upbringing. The outbreak of speaking in tongues added another element of religious fervour to the event.

It will be interesting to see what uses Mr Athey has for the writings, and what conclusions he can draw.

Gifts of the Spirit

For Books' Sake

2011-06-29T10:29:00.003Z

If any of you lot have missed me at all, I've been travelling the country, setting up a series of Branch Davidian compounds. This important and secret work has necessitated a lengthy absence from the old blog. It's all been going very well, as you can imagine.

I recently bumped into Alex of For Books' Sake fame. Once she'd helped me out of the gutter and finished wiping the vomit off my lapels, she said, 'Why not restart your blog? That should get you back on your feet, restore your self-esteem...'

So here I am, dear reader. And here is a review of my favourite bookshop, from said website.

More from me soon.

This is What I Get for Listening to Women's Hour I Guess

2007-09-20T15:24:00.001Z

This morning, on Radio 4, Jenny Murry and friends were having a rather heated argument about a school text book (on music, since you asked). There's a campaign to get it banned from being used in schools? Why? It was written by a convicted paedophile.

This sparked a wider debate on whether the private lives of authors or artists should colour our views of them. In the basics of the case in hand, I'd be inclined to suggest that the book in itself commits no crime. To use it in the school where the author was active, and the surrounding region, would be in very poor taste, and likely to cause offence, sure. But the author is not a famous man, and surely in the wider area, the book (which even those calling for the ban said was 'very good') can be used to benefit children? This isn't to mitigate or offset the hurt caused by the author, of course, but should children be denied a useful learning tool? The discussion did not reveal any subliminal messages in the text, so can a book be harmful just because of its (obscure) author?

For me, though, there was one moral issue which could be used against the book - since royalties from sales would go to the author, there is a sound case for arguing that schools should not buy new copies, thus funding a convicted paedophile. I wonder why this was not mentioned?

What do you think, readers? Verily, tis a moral maze.

It's Always the Quiet Ones

2007-09-11T08:37:00.001Z

Intrigued to learn, from today's Guardian, that famous stoat-resembling football manager Sven Goran-Eriksson owns 150 suits. I suppose a man who effectively received £13,000 a day in unemployment benefits from the FA has little better to do than purchase endless numbers of identical bespoke whistles. Like a northern housewife who just can't give up the tabs, Sven obviously suffered from a serious tailoring problem.

Now this isn't something I can begrudge him; given equal resources, I would do exactly the same I think. Although I can't help but wonder how much more interesting life would be if he branched out a little from his usual blue flannel. A zoot suit would lend a real air of unspoken, mafiosa menace to his half-time team talks, for example. Accessorizing with a cravat could add a sense of louche bravado that has been sorely lacking in Manchester City's play over the past few years.

The article compares Sven to Beau Brummel - this is true, in the sense that both men were rejected by England, and spent their last years as outcasts, living off the kindness of foreign benefactors. Whether Beau Brummel had carnal knowledge of Ulrika Jonsson is not a matter of historical record, but we can only assume that he probably did - another link is formed!

Interestingly, Beau Brummel used to rub his trouser legs with cut glass, to give them that 'worn' look. He also used to wash his boots with champagne, something which the Topman crew have yet to take to heart in the same way.

Thus the Seeds of Our Downfall Are Sown

2007-09-07T10:39:00.000Z

You know what really fucks me off? Writers who put 'an' in front of words that begin with 'h'. 'An' historical event, is it? I've only noticed this hideous practice creeping into general usage over the past few years, and it needs to be crushed with an iron fist, before we all turn into cheeky cockerney sparrows, talking like Russell Brand.

Five years in a Cornish tin mine. That'd sort these people out.

Christopher Hitchens: God is Not Great

2007-09-06T14:28:00.000Z

When Hitch first revealed plans to release a diatribe against religious beliefs, the idea was mocked in Private Eye. A spoof of the book ended: ‘This is not written to show that religion is wrong; it is written to show that I am cleverer than Richard Dawkins.’ However, while ‘God is Not Great’ cannot be evaluated seriously without referral to Dawkins’s ‘The God Delusion', there is a significant difference in emphasis between the two works.

These differences will tell the reader a great deal about the relative characters of the two writers. Dawkins presents a clear, well-structured and elegant argument, striking at the root of religion, and the implausibility of an omnipotent creator. Hitchens, on the other hand, is wide-ranging and angry, focussing not so much on the existence of otherwise of god, but on his personal hatred of the effects of religion. To sum up the two books, Dawkins’s is the equivalent of a fascinating lecture; Hitchens’s book is the literary equivalent of a drunken rant at closing time.

Obviously, Hitchens is a figure who provokes extreme reactions, from those who laud him as ‘our generation’s Orwell’ to those who loathe his carefully cultivated public persona and deplore his support for American interventionism. For those who dislike Hitchens, ‘God is Not Great’ will provide plenty of grist for the mill. He is very much a figure in his own text, with constant references to sex and drink, and unnecessary sentence constructions (‘a showbiz woman bizarrely known as Madonna’). It must be said, though, that Hitch does show some restraint in the ‘intellectual arrogance’ department. He waits until page 5 to call Dawkins ‘cringemaking’.

Likewise, for fans, Hitchens includes passages on Mother Theresa, the Kurds and Islam which must be the literary equivalent of a touring rock band playing ‘the hits’ early in their show.

Although Hitch states that he has been writing this book ‘all my life’, the early chapters especially are written in the shadow of September 11. His writing occasionally lapses into tabloidese, for example referring to Saddam Hussein’s ‘atrocity weapons’. What exactly is an atrocity weapon? I’m sure there have been atrocities committed with clubs, or bare hands, in human history. I am sure that if ‘weapons of mass destruction’ had ever been found in Iraq, the terminology Hitch employed would have been much more clear.

As you might expect, Hitchens is not as strong as Dawkins when it comes to evolutionary theory, and other scientific detail. The sections in which he cannot avoid dealing with such issues feel rather fumbled. However, when he is on the more comfortable ground of textual criticism, historical analysis and editorialising, the book takes off.

The fact that Hitchens attempts to deal with the effects of religion rather than the central prop (the existence, or otherwise, of god) allows his book to take on a wider range of issues than ‘The God Delusion’. While his views on Islam are fairly predictable, it is interesting to read about atrocities carried out in the name of Buddhism, from the Tamils of Sri Lanka to the Japanese emperor-cult of Hirohito, complete with ‘kamikaze’ suicide bombers.

Possibly the greatest achievement of the book is the way in which Hitchens analyses the lessons totalitarianism learned from religion. After pointing out the Vatican’s collusion with Italian and Spanish fascists, and compromise with National Socialists, Hitch goes on to show that while Russia and China ostensibly rejected the church as a symbol of an oppressive past, the ruling elite learned from the past when it came to dominating their subjects.

Hitchens points out the iconoclastic renderings of Lenin, the creation of ‘relics’ through embalming, the use of ‘sacred texts’ for indoctrination, and most importantly, the persecution of ‘thought-crime’, which had previously been the sole preserve of religion.

Having first read ‘The God Delusion’, it can sometimes be hard to fathom the purpose behind this book. When Hitch gets round to tackling the issue of ‘can morality exist without religion’, you can’t help but think, ‘yes, we know, we’ve already been through this.’ The fact that his book came second does Hitch no favours either – his pamphlet-y style means that his arguments feel less full than those put forward by Dawkins. Furthermore, Dawkins is better equipped to give us a view of the universe in all its magnificence; some passages on the natural world and cosmos in ‘The God Delusion’ are genuinely awe-inspiring, which is not something you can say for ‘God is Not Great’.

Also, I would argue that while Dawkins may not win huge numbers of converts, the angry rantings of Hitchens are likely to prove less persuasive still.

Still, this is not to say that ‘God is Not Great’ is not an entertaining read. Hitchens’s style keeps the book moving on at great pace, and anyone interested in textual analysis of the ‘sacred texts’, and indeed their historical providence will find the mid-section of the book informative and interesting. The anecdotal style also helps to bring several important messages home for the reader.

As I said at the start of this review, the individual readers’ reactions to ‘God is Not Great’ are likely to be coloured by their prior opinion of the author. If you’re the sort of person who will donate to ‘buy Hitchens a drink’ campaigns, then you’ve probably already bought it, read it and loved it. If you’re on the ‘drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay’ side of the argument, then you’ll probably have his pronouncements on American foreign policy niggling away in the back of your mind throughout the book, and you’ll eventually fling it out of the window after the umpteenth reference to sexuality (something of an obsession for our Chris, here).

As a drink-soaked (anti-war) Trot myself, I’m fairly ambivalent about the Hitch. His iconoclastic persona is somewhat ridiculous, but then again some of my best friends are ludicrous iconoclasts. Is ‘God is Not Great’ an essential book? No. Is it well-argued? Yes and no. Is it entertaining, stylish? Yes, very much so.

Hand Me My Travelling Shoes – Michael Gray

2007-08-31T14:37:00.000Z

Half biography, half travel-guide, respected music writer Michael Gray’s journey in search of Blind Willie McTell can tell us as much about the condition of blacks in the southern states of America as it does about the life of one individual.

Blind Willie McTell (born William McTier) is generally regarded as one of the finest blues players of all time. His songs have been covered by the Altman Brothers and the White Stripes, and Bob Dylan sang ‘Ain’t no-one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell’. Unlike the musicians of the Mississippi delta, McTell’s playing is upbeat on the whole, and his repertoire spanned numerous genres, including gospel and ragtime.

Blacks of McTell’s era lived a peripatetic life, with few records and details surviving. Even censuses were incomplete or inaccurate, and it is easier to find comprehensive lists of lynchings than of black weddings. In order to build up a complete picture of McTell’s life, then, Gray must search out relatives, and the descendents of those who knew him. In doing so, and uncovering the most basic scraps of information that can add colour to a history, Gray’s story broadens in scope to give a fascinating account of life in Georgia for a people for whom slavery was a recent memory, and segregation a fact of life.

Blind Willie himself faced fewer of these depredations than many of his race and class. As a musician, he was able and willing to ‘play the game’, and was sometimes engaged as an entertainer from whites. Blind from birth, perhaps he was also regarded as less of a threat than other blacks, and thus treated preferentially (to a degree). However, the world in which he lived was vicious and squalid. Segregation was ruthlessly enforced by ‘lynch law’, and Gray details the routine sexual exploitation of black women by young white men.

This disenfranchisement (literal and metaphorical – blacks were denied the right to vote in Georgia’s Democratic primaries, effectively removing any political say from them) led to the rise of violence among the coloured underclass, which was reflected in the violent imagery of blues lyrics. This link between urban poverty, social alienation and hostile musical imagery can still be found in modern American cities, and increasingly too in the UK.

While a lot of the book focuses on the early part of McTell’s life, he also manages to place the singer in a modern, post-World War II context, which contradicts the traditional image of the wandering bluesman. Although Blind Willie died too soon to be ‘rediscovered’ as so many of his contemporaries were, he received some recognition in his lifetime from enthusiasts, who made some vital late recordings of his work.

The man himself is a slightly shadowy figure, and our picture of him is coloured by hearsay. Those who knew him are often keen to attribute supernatural powers to him. While it seems that he had a remarkable capacity to travel unaided, despite having been blind from birth, and was gifted with superb hearing, tales of his being able to distinguish between denominations of paper money by touch are embellishments. Perhaps such tales show how streetwise and proud the man was, determined to show himself to be every bit the equal of his sighted peers.

Many of Gray’s interviewees are unreliable, thanks to the passage of time or their own agenda, but the author’s frequent quotations provide the story with the feel of an oral history that is appropriate to the subject matter. The book serves to preserve the dialect of the Southern states, and is richly evocative.

While Gray struggles to pin down exact historical details, thanks to slovenly official record-keeping, he finds that the Southern establishment is much keener to recognise Blind Willie now than it was during his lifetime. Thomson and Statesboro, the towns most readily associated with him, are locked in a struggle for his legacy, and whatever advantage it can bring through tourism or prestige. McTell’s image stands tall in a hotel he could only have set foot in as staff, and the railroads he trudged along have been turned into a tourist trail.

Throughout the narrative, we are bought closer to an overall picture of Blind Willie McTell, and a wider understanding of the life he would have lead, as a wandering musician. Gray is a skilled writer and researcher, and can wring meaning from apparently tiny details. The practical nature of his research also makes for good reading. For example, his attempts to take a photo of the hospital in which McTell died (now a prison) turn into a heavy handed encounter with southern law enforcers, and the boredom of weekends in small town Americana are woven into a reverie on the historical forces and events which shaped this culture over the past 250 years.

Gray’s willingness to collaborate with local archivists and historians also bear fruit, as he is exposed to both crankpot theorists and smalltown researchers who can point out flaws in conventional wisdom.

Blind Willie McTell is essentially a nostalgic figure. A minor commercial artist at the time, able to scratch a living and provide a decent funeral for his wife, before dying in poverty, McTell’s legacy is inverse to his ability. His 12 string, relaxed playing style did not influence future generations in the way that Robert Johnson or Lead Belly did. Aside from clusters of devotees, he has never received popular acclaim.

There are those who recognise his importance, however. In his song ‘Blind Willie McTell’, Dylan uses the singer as a starting point from which to explore the condition of Southern blacks, from the ‘slavery ships’ to the ‘chain gang’. In this book, Michael Gray again shows us that, aside from being a musical genius, McTell can act as a gateway to a greater understanding of race relations in the US, in the pre-civil rights era.

A deep knowledge of McTell’s work is not essential to the enjoyment of this book, although I can’t imagine anyone reading this and not wanting to hear more. Gray has managed to bring together social history, travelogue, culture and politics into a fascinating, interweaving narrative, richly evocative and full of human interest.

They Called it Passchendaele – Lyn MacDonald

2007-08-21T14:32:00.000Z

They Called it Passchendaele is the first in Lyn MacDonald’s series of books on the first world war. Aimed at a populist market, MacDonald’s primary resources are eyewitness reports, and she weaves long witness statements into her narrative to create an immediate style, with a hint of reportage.

This approach ensures that the reader’s attention is focused on the conditions of the combatants, and the book is never bogged down in the sort of technical detail which can blight military writing. That said, the book is still a serious piece of writing, which could not be accused of ‘dumbing down’. Rather, the focus on individual experiences democratises the process of writing about the war; the Imperialist aims of the conflict are unimportant here, the story lies in the effect of the war on the ordinary soldiers.

MacDonald’s narrative at times slips into a working-class vernacular, creating a continuity between her writing and the soldiers’ memories. As a consequence, the book is quite firmly centred on the British point of view. However, the book still manages to give the reader a fascinating and often overlooked insight into the way the opposing soldiers viewed one another.

Whilst there are stories of fierce, ‘to the last man’ encounters, They Called it Passchendaele also shows a high level of mutual respect between the armies. Many of the German troops had lived in London, and the trenches were close enough for conversation between the soldiers. There are many examples of humanity, as German soldiers refused to fire on the wounded or stretcher bearers, and British troops ensured the safety of wounded opponents.

MacDonald also highlights the lack of morale, particularly in the German army, which would often lead to men surrendering without making the slightest effort to fight. As they were marched back behind the lines, prisoners and captors would equally curse the war, and the conditions. From these small examples, it is possible to extrapolate that there was a notable level of class solidarity between the opposing armies, which was not limited to the more famous ‘Christmas truce’. It was vital for the ruling class to squash this consciousness, before it irrevocably damaged their war effort.

On the other hand, when the actions of those planning the campaign are scrutinised, they are often found wanting. The blame for this protracted and bloody battle can be laid at the feet of Lloyd George, who saw the campaign as a sideshow for a planned invasion of Italy, and General Haig, who was inflexible and stubborn, pressing ahead with a plan where the benefits were unlikely to offset the losses. Caught in the middle of this, the commanders in direct charge of the troops, who saw the attack for the futile slaughter it was, were overlooked and ignored.

Certain elements of the planning beggar belief; time, and the opportunity to attack in good weather, were wasted as soldiers were diverted from the front to re-enact the original attack for the benefit of King George. As the battleground turned into a swamp, soldiers polished buttons and paraded endlessly, allowing the German army to regroup.

In the end, the gains made by the Allied forces over the course of the 3 battles around Ypres were abandoned shortly afterwards. One general had suggested abandoning the ground at the beginning; only after several years, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, was this course of action taken.

MacDonald’s writing style is strong, and few demands are made of the reader in terms of prior expertise. They Called it Passchendaele combines a strong, dramatic narrative with a fascinating collection of witness accounts, building up a rounded picture of life as an Allied soldier during the latter stages of the war, and also an evocative glimpse at a wider working class culture.

The Chocolate Bar Theory of Economics

2007-08-21T08:32:00.000Z

Just thought I’d share something that came up in conversation the other day. When Alexei Sayle was writing a column for Time Out, he mentioned a new method by which the man in the street could accurately judge the economic situation of the country they live in. This involves chocolate bars.

Essentially, the strength of the economy is inversely proportional to the size of chocolate bars. Thus, in the Tory recession years, we began to see Toblerones that weighed more than new born babies, and mars bars the size of dogs. A couple of years of Labour, and suddenly we’re all eating ‘fun-size’.

There are probably some strong underlying causes for this; in an unstable economy, with little job security and the family budget coming under pressure, we want value for money; alternatively, if you’ve just been made redundant, maybe you want to sit on your sofa for a week or so, working your way through a mountainous Dairy Milk and quietly grizzling.

On the other hand, under young and vibrant Labour, suddenly it’s all dinner parties and gym membership – only underclass slobs would be seen with full-size choc. A box of Celebrations is essentially yer Noughties Ferrero Rocher. The full-on metropolitan decadence of the new millennia can be summed up pretty succinctly by the appearance last year of ‘low fat’ chocolate bars, which were the same price as before but half the size. Not, ‘I’ll have a nibble now and stick the rest in the fridge, for later’ – no, I’ll just shovel cash down the drain, and pretend my Kit Kat is nouvelle fucking cuisine.

I’m sure this assumption on the part of the chocolate manufacturers that their customers don’t have the willpower to just, you know, eat what they want and then save the rest could also be read as an allegory for the overbearing paternalism of the Blairite government. The chocolate bar which tells you ‘just say no’ could only be the product of the decade which bought us the smoking ban and the lamp-posts which shout at you for dropping litter.

So what next for the humble chocolate bar then? There seems to be some sort of equilibrium in the confectionary world at present, with nothing too extreme on either side. But in future, when you want to know what’s really going on, put down the Financial Times and head to your nearest newsagents.

Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan Came From The Stairhead

2007-08-13T08:31:00.000Z

Why I love the Guardian's sports coverage: I don't know any other newspaper which would include the following reference in its live commentary of a premier league football match:

Anyway, Reading. This should pretty much guarantee a rout for the home side, but Steve Coppell's team gave United a good going over at certain points last season, even if they never managed to come away with a positive result. In the league they were less than 20 minutes from victory at home and scored twice at Old Trafford, while in the FA Cup they came back to earn a worthy draw in Manchester, then were by far and away the better side for 84 minutes in the replay, although in fairness the other six minutes of that game saw them ship three goals and I've just noticed this sentence is getting way too long and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Chris Dillow: The End of Politics

2007-08-10T13:39:00.000Z

Blogger and economics journalist Chris Dillow takes on a daunting subject with his first book. The End of Politics challenges conventional methods of governance, specifically focussing on the failure of 10 years of Blairism to adequately address issues of equality and efficiency.

Dillow characterises the present system of British politics as being driven by what he terms ‘managerialism’, or the theory that one dominant figure can use their own initiative to guide the nation, solving problems and providing solutions. This approach results in an almost situationist approach to governance, as politics is presented as a series of individual crises to be managed, rather than as a coherent, inter-dependent progression.

The managerialist approach has also narrowed the political landscape; rather than engaging in ideological debates over policy, the major parties converge around a broad consensus. The political struggle consists of each party’s attempts to assert itself as the dominant manager, which can impose its solutions with maximum efficiency. Thus, whereas the 1945 Labour government may be defined by the ideals of the welfare state, Blair will be remembered for his responses to events such as September 11, Foot and Mouth, and the fuel protests.

The managerialist philosophy was best expressed by Blair in a speech to Murdoch’s News Corps, at which the Prime Minister exhorted his audience ‘Above all else, lead’. Has managerialism made a positive effect on the lives of the British population though?

For Dillow, there are major problems with the philosophy. Managers identify themselves closely with innovation, meaning that they cannot dispense with failing policies for fear of losing face; in fact, needless innovation is often rushed into practice, as managers seek to justify their salary and position. Hierarchical structures discourage workers from taking initiative, and lead to breakdowns in communication. Dillow points to successful enterprises such as Tesco’s as examples of organisations which have thrived through dispensing with layers of management, while bureaucratic public sector bodies are wasteful.

Much of The End of Politics examines New Labour’s chief declared goal, to twin social equality with economic efficiency. Flagship policies such as working tax credits and the national minimum wage face close scrutiny. Dillow suggests that managerialism has left the party without sufficient expertise to effectively deal with economic policy measures.

According to Dillow’s exhaustive research, Labour’s desire to appear decisive, and cement its ‘legacy’ has led to muddled policy making, which often works against the very people they declare support for. The expansion of government apparatus has encouraged the development of a massively complicated system of benefits, where take-up is low and fraud and error are high. Many measures, such as the minimum wage, penalise as many as they benefit, by making it harder for the unemployed to find work.

Books such as The End of Politics are always likely to be measured against Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics, and Dillow’s book satisfies a similar aim. Where Levitt used non-partisan, sometimes seemingly trivial examples to encourage his readers to approach information from a certain perspective, Dillow uses a theoretical approach to major issues to challenge received wisdom, such as the pursuit of economic growth as an overriding objective, or the justness of utilitarian politics.

In place of managerialism, Dillow proposes a co-operative approach to public services, the rolling-back of corporate hierarchies, and a referendum-based approach to national policy, tempered with adequate compensation for those whose opinions are over-ridden.

Many of his suggestions make sense. Who knows what hospitals need in order to run better than the people who deal with patients every day? When the main requirement of a train service (to help people get to work on time) hasn’t changed in 100 years, why do we need managers creaming off a layer of income, in return for spurious innovation?

For me, the primary cause of disillusionment in the Labour party has been their emphasis of Government OF, rather than FOR, the people. Labour politicians have had little compunction in pushing through unpopular policies in the face of public protest, due to their paternalistic attitude to the electorate. When politicians talk about voter turnout, this is a significant factor. Dillow is right to point out that, despite the emphasis on ‘spin’, Blair’s government has haemorrhaged votes, in contrast to the governments of the 40s and 70s.

While Dillow’s slightly libertarian attitude toward free markets may unsettle some on the left, it presents a realistic and workable proposal for increasing equality and social inclusion in a 21st century nation. Some chapters are hard going for those of us without a background in economics, but the author’s tone is strong enough to keep the reader engaged, and he makes good use of analogies and practical examples to explain theories.

The End of Politics is a fascinating conversation piece, and hopefully the issues raised can become part of the wider political debate. Read Chris Dillow at: http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com

So Very Tired

2007-08-10T09:14:00.001Z

As something of a connoisseur of rock n roll euphemisms, I was delighted that Amy Winehouse's 'people' tried to pass off her drug-induced hospitalisation as 'exhaustion' the other day. It's such a plausible excuse - after all, who among us hasn't been so worn down from work that only an adrenaline shot to the heart could get us though the day?

Other favourites of mine include:
'mystery virus' - drug overdose
'emotional' - arseholed
'creative differences' - singer shagging the bassist's wife
(of a new album) 'a raw vibe' - we ran out of money to pay for studio time, so we had to release the demos
'archive tracks from the vaults' - too rubbish to fit on the original double lp
'eclectic' - equally rubbish, whatever the genre
'crossover appeal' - we really hope Pepsi decide to license this
'this tour takes us back to our roots' - we couldn't sell enough tickets to fill a single decker bus, let alone an arena

Feel free to add your own suggestions

Oxfam's Transvestite Nights

2007-08-08T08:20:00.000Z

Vintage baby-doll nighties and oversized stilettos were among the items on offer in a Leeds Oxfam shop's inaugural night for transvestites and transgender people.

Turnout and sales on the first night were disappointing, said Stone, but she hoped things would pick up when word got around. "A lot of the more flamboyant types may have been put off by the press interest," she said.

I'm not sure whether to applaud the initiative or lament the patronising tone - maybe people would have been more likely to show if the event was presented in a positive light, rather than just 'killing two birds with one stone' by flogging rubbish you can't sell and ticking a diversity box at the same time.

Still, if they handle the PR a bit better in future, and maybe include a few more tempting items to get people through the door, this could be a really good idea.

Peter Ackroyd: Albion (The Origins of the English Imagination)

2007-08-02T13:19:00.000Z

In this ambitious tome, Peter Ackroyd sets out to identify an essential English imagination, and chart its development from neolithic times to the present. He searches for continuities in sculptures, art, literature, architecture and verbal traditions, and attempts to link them to a ‘national consciousness’.

Examples of the continuities he discovers include spiral patterns, found in ancient Celtic monuments and modern cathedrals alike and the alliterative line in poetry; in more general terms, he explores the influence of catholic art and morality plays on port-reformation English creatives.

Ackroyd is at his strongest as he describes the genesis of the imagination, from early poetry such as ‘Beowulf’ to the chronicles of monks like Bede. He presents the early English as being penned in on all sides by an unruly and frightening landscape, and suggests that this mindset inspired the character of Grendel in Beowulf and later manifested itself in the popularity of the Gothic novel.

The rural lifestyle of early communities also, says Ackroyd, planted the seed of the veneration of the natural world which would later be exemplified by the romantic poets, and influenced Shakespeare’s extensive use of pathetic fallacy.

From the times of King Alfred onwards, Ackroyd also identifies an antiquarian trait, as the English establishment sought to justify themselves through the development of a ‘glorious island history’ to rival the European powers. Thus, old manuscripts were painstakingly researched and restored, the myths of King Arthur spread like wildfire, and national symbols such as Britannia and the giant Albion became almost paganistic idols.

This rural isolation, combined with the antiquarian instinct, seems to have imbued the English psyche with an innate conservatism, possibly giving birth to the notion of the English as reserved and traditional. The thesis does, however, rest on the assumption that attitudes formed centuries before the common era can be inherited, generation upon generation.

Ackroyd’s book is, of necessity, a classicist work. However, his conclusions and comparisons are not always well backed-up. Is it simply enough to give two examples of writers describing trees, centuries apart, and from that assume that the Oak has had a major effect on the English consciousness for over 2,000 years?

The author’s sheer enthusiasm for his subject is both Albion’s main strength and weakness. Ackroyd admits in his introduction that there will be mistakes in his writing. This is excusable, but I feel the book would have been better served by detailed comparison of certain examples, rather than the ‘kid in a sweet shop’ approach he has adopted.

Theories which may well be sound are presented haphazardly, with little to back them up, and ideas fall over themselves in the author’s enthusiasm to get them onto the page. Inevitably, some statements become unreliable or inconclusive.

Furthermore, the classicist bent of the book unfortunately lends itself to repetition, which is why the opening section, dealing with the Anglo-Saxon imagination is the freshest and strongest. My one complaint here is that the book’s publishers don’t seem to know whether to position Albion as an academic resource or popular work; in the confusion, we find some Old English passages are translated for the modern reader, and some are not, forcing non-expert readers to guess at the meanings.

Whether Ackroyd’s conviction that there can be such a thing as a national imagination is correct is probably a matter for the individual reader to address; I suspect there is no right or wrong answer here. The book is certainly useful in illuminating large stretches of English history that are seldom (if ever) covered in school curricula or the popular media, and I would say that the opening section is essential reading; whether the narrative can sustain the reader’s interest beyond that stage is less certain.

The Scheme for Full Employment

2007-08-01T14:42:00.000Z

In my other life, in the learning industry, I’ve been hearing the words ‘full employment’ being bandied about increasingly since Brown came to power. The latest initiative designed to bring England closer to this state is known as Employability Skills; the scheme will provide basic skills training for the unemployed.

No-one can argue with the usefulness of such a scheme; however, I’ve yet to be convinced that full employment is inherently A Good Thing.

So far, Labour’s attempts to put more people into work (primarily the New Deal) have come at enormous cost to the taxpayer, and if Tom Bower’s book on Brown is to be believed, the government has been forced to be very ‘creative’ with statistics in order to present them as being in any way successful.

Spokespeople talk of a ‘culture of unemployment’, and demonise a section of society as hardcore recidivists and fraudulent money-grabbers. Thus far, however, there has been little serious debate about the rights and wrongs of full employment.

Brown’s instinctive support for full employment in natural enough; his hometown was hit hard by job losses under the conservatives, and anyone who grew up Labour in the 1980s will be aware of the devastating consequences of mass unemployment for communities, particularly in the North, Scotland and Wales. In my opinion though, full employment is an overly-simplistic response to a real issue.

Firstly, we need to ask whether employment guarantees a higher standard of living? At a time when job security and worker’s rights are being eroded, and trade unions are weak, work does not necessarily bring with it dignity. Forcing more and more people into work, while also penalising those who cannot find jobs, will increase the number of poorly paid, physically demanding and demeaning positions, while also potentially creating an unregulated black-market in work for those denied benefits.

While politicians in today’s climate might not be overly concerned with such issues, they may worry about the following: will forcing people into low-paid work reduce the motivation (and opportunity) for developing innovative answers to unemployment?

The ranks of the unemployed also include a large number of people who will add cultural value to Britain. There’s a famous story about Liam Gallagher telling the dole office that he wanted to be a lumberjack, so as to avoid serious job offers, while rehearsing with Oasis. While I, personally, think lumberjacking may have been a more appropriate vocation for him, its hard to argue that he hasn’t contributed something to the worldwide image of the country. Add to this any number of musicians, painters, poets, actors, film-makers and so on.

The most sensible solution seems to be actually increasing the level of benefits from their current punitive state, to a level which will allow the unemployed to live with a degree of dignity, meanwhile saving Jobcentre staff the trouble of having to deal with individuals who have no interest in work, and allowing them to concentrate on claimants who are seriously looking for employment. Meanwhile, unemployed people will not be faced with the choice between taking poorly paid, unpleasant jobs or not being able to feed their families.

To drag the issue round to a literary theme, we can look back at Magnus Mills’s The Scheme for Full Employment, which portrays a future in which all adults in the UK are signed up to ‘The Scheme’, transporting mysterious goods from depot to depot in return for a Government-sponsored wage. More and more elaborate schemes, Beckettian in their pointlessness, are devised to keep the workers busy, while producing nothing whatsoever of any worth.

If Brown genuinely wants to improve living conditions in poor areas, this is not the way. His priorities must be: providing genuine equality of opportunity (more funding for schools in poor areas, better community facilities, no tuition fees); setting a minimum living wage, particularly in London; and fighting employers, to impose minimum standards of job security, safety and dignity.

Adult training schemes can bring great benefits, but for many people, who have come through the education system without basic numeracy and literacy skills, this will be too little, too late – poor schooling and poor communities will have robbed too many of their aspirations and potential by the time they reach 16.

Yan Lianke - Serve the People

2007-07-27T11:02:00.000Z

Banned in China, Yan Lianke’s latest novel, Serve the People, tells the story of a brief affair between a low-ranking army orderly and his commander’s wife, during the time of the Cultural Revolution. Spontaneous and passionate, their relationship forms an ironic counterpart to the events going on around them, and ultimately leads to the end of their way of life.

Lianke is quick to highlight the massive social engineering which took place under Mao. Quotations from the Red Book are emblazoned everywhere, like a low-tech version of Orwell’s Telescreens, and Maoist slogans become part of everyday speech (‘Serve The People – sit down and rest’). Women may be considered attractive as a result of their ability to ‘recite a hundred quotes from Mao’. The individual is subliminated into a wider ‘chain of revolution’ as a result of the relentless theory. Even the most banal domestic acts become ‘revolutionary chores’.

On the army base, theoretically the apotheosis of conformity, Wu Dawang and his lover Lui Lian become truly subversive figures, as they indulge their personal passions. Symbolically, as they become more uninhibited and animalistic, the paintings of Mao and engraved slogans that fill Lian’s lodgings are trampled into dust. Although their affair is brief and discreet, its after-effects shatter their surroundings; as rumours spread of the flagrant individualism of their act, Dawang’s entire battalion is disbanded, to prevent similar acts of defiance.

Although Dawang is regarded as a ‘Model Soldier’ and is able to recite Mao with great fervour, he has always had rather bourgeoise aspirations, to escape his rural background, and move his wife to the city. To do this, he must join the army, and win promotion. Lui’s influence can make a significant impact on his status. As he becomes more assured of his security, and his prospects, he finds that more and more of his superiors, including the Political Instructor, share his goal of individual advancement, although this must be shrouded by an ostensible dedication to collectivism.

The army, and Chinese society in general, is presented in Feudalistic, hierarchical terms. Liu is completely dominant over Wu, and he must call her ‘aunt’. There is a massive divide between rural and city life, and women are subservient to men for the most part. It is significant, however, that the novel contains no criticisms of any specific aspects of Maoism. Wu suffers no outright oppression, and collective farming is treated neutrally.

The book takes a stronger approach than simply attacking individual policies. Lianke is arguing that details can cloud our judgement, when an entire regime is based on faulty principles. The lack of detailed criticism gives the book a more internationalist appeal, beyond the specifics of Chinese history. The book attacks the imposition of a rigid dogma on a people who don’t believe it, and the destruction of individual values; this charge can be held against all totalitarian regimes. The key to happiness, suggests the author, is to find a way of escaping this mindset, smashing the statues and slogans.

‘Serve the People’ has parallels with 1984, with its focus on didactic authoritarianism, and its invocation of passion as an antidote to proscribed modes of behaviour. There is a similar sense of anticlimax also, as the affair ends and both parties return to their designated roles in society, as factory worker and diplomatic wife. Serve the People shows men as impotent (Lui’s husband) or powerless (Wu), all agency taken from them by the state. Lui, like Julia, must incite Wu to take power and responsibility for himself. Lianke does not write with Orwell’s pessimism though; Serve the People is warm and humorous at times; maybe historical distance removes the need for Orwellian paranoia.

I’m sure that Serve the People will mean different things to each reader; it could be taken as a paean to Western capitalism, but is not necessarily so. It argues against totalitarianism, remember, without arguing for either capitalism, socialism, or any other form of political belief. Primarily, Lianke argues for the importance of autonomy and individual beliefs and ideals. It is not a surprise that the novel is banned in its country of origin. It can still be effective in helping western readers to examine their own mindsets and outlooks though, as well as being a funny and at times uplifting piece of writing.

Neither Sane nor Reasonable

2007-07-26T12:16:00.000Z

Haven’t been able to concentrate this week. Too worried about whether Tintin in the Congo is racist or not.

For those of you who have missed it, the Campaign for Racial Equality has called for the book ‘Tintin in the Congo’ to be removed from sale, due to its depiction of Africans. Borders has agreed to pull the book; WH Smiths continues to sell it, and sales have increased by something like 400% on Amazon.

As is traditional in these circumstances, a war of words has broken out between pro- and anti-PC types on the internets. Examples can be found at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/12/ntintin112.xml. To these people, I say: ‘It is neither sane nor reasonable to equate a 70 year old comic book with the war in Iraq or the Danish ‘Mohammed’ cartoons.’

The book itself does appear pretty unpleasant, but I think it might be worth suggesting to the CRE that they get their priorities in order. There are greater threats to our society than old cartoons. Kicking up a storm has simply increased the numbers of people buying the book, and made you look childish and petty. It is not possible to strip the whole of pre-1950 literature of racism, and some would argue that it is not desirable either. You can’t learn about past attitudes by banning cultural artefacts.

On the other hand, I find the motives of the people who have rushed out to buy the book to be somewhat dubious, and it is worth pointing out to some of the angrier libertarians on the Telegraph site that asking a chainstore not to stock a Tintin book isn’t actually an assault on your civil liberties: the right to read books depicting Africans as monkeys is not an inalienable one.

I blame the internet; years ago, this would have been a minor squabble. Nowadays, hoards of angry men (almost always men) stalk the internet, searching desperately for something to shout about. To quote Harry Hutton, ‘They started angry, and then worked backwards from that looking for something to be angry about’.

Mark Steel identified the beginnings of what the right would call ‘political correctness’ (or ‘fairness’) in the 80s, as leftist councils were neutered by Thatcher’s government. Since they no longer had any power to change things that actually affect people’s lives, they began spending their money on adverts that said ‘Are you a racist? You’d be a nicer person if you weren’t’. I suspect similar reasoning lies behind the CRE’s decision to protest against Tintin.

To sum up, this is a fucking non-issue if ever I saw one. No, I wouldn’t trust someone who rushed out to buy Tintin in Congo, and I don’t think it should be prominently displayed; at the same time, I’m not going to be picketing Smiths. I’m not sitting on the fence – I just don’t have time in my life to get worked up about this.

Best Quote Ever

2007-07-25T09:14:00.000Z

"But despite Birmingham New Street's well-deserved reputation for ugliness, the plans have not been met with universal approval.

Peter Hughes, from the campaign group Railfuture, has been lobbying for a Birmingham Grand Central, a larger purpose-built station based in Eastside, to replace New Street.

"The council missed a trick," he said. "It (the new New Street) won't add an inch of track. We must have more rail capacity.

"We want to see a better infrastructure and not just cosmetic change."

However Mr Hughes did concede that a revamped New Street would be better than sticking with the current eyesore.

"Poor thing, it never had a hope. It was buried under a shopping centre and a car park.

"If you were buried under a car park you'd look ugly too." "

There's something unnervingly Mafia-like about that last sentence. I can imagine Michael Caine saying it.

A Literary Hoax

2007-07-24T13:41:00.000Z

On Sunday, The Observer chose to reheat the story of the decade’s most interesting literary phenomena, the rise and fall of JT Leroy. As a quick summary, Leroy exploded onto the literary scene in 2000 with the novel Sarah, the story of a young boy, living a transient and deprived life, subsisting by turning truck-stop ‘tricks’ with his young mother.

The book, with its mixture of naivety, experience, hard-edged reality and fantasy, was accompanied by outlandish and arresting PR statements - the author was a ‘working boy’, who was advised to write by his psychiatrist; the manuscript was typed up by his clients, who came to him for domination. Leroy’s media persona was reclusive and shy, although not shy enough to prevent him hob-nobbing with pop-culture icons like Winona Ryder and Carrie Fisher. The book itself garnered applause from the oh-so-hip likes of Dave Eggars and David Cooper, whose style he was clearly influenced by.

Sarah was swiftly followed by ‘The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things’, which was identified even more closely with Leroy’s own upbringing, like a cross-gender ‘Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’. The book was made into a film, and enjoyed good sales, boosted by further association with just the right cultural arbiters. Again, the author was a distant figure, glimpsed fleetingly at awards ceremonies and rarely speaking in public.

Rumours began to spread about Leroy’s true identity, before finally and definitively surfacing in the New York Times – the books were written by a woman, Laura Albert, and the public ‘Leroy’ was performed by Savannah Koop. The myth was imploded; the film company and her publisher both severed connections, and threatened legal action. The press, which had lionised ‘him’, immediately turned.

Musician and flaneur Dickon Edwards has written excellently on the importance of Leroy’s identity in The Mind’s Construction Quarterly. To whit, in all literature, the storyteller-listener relationship is crucial, particularly in the ‘abuse-lit’ genre; readers are desperate to identify with the author, to have a figure they can trust and who has shared their experience. Leroy’s books featured an email address, encouraging still further personal identification. To invite vulnerable readers to form this sort of attachment to an author, and then kick the crutch away, seems the height of cynicism.

The writer of the Observer’s piece, James Stafford, claims a personal friendship with Laura Albert, the real author, formed whilst the Leroy charade was ongoing. At the time, Albert was posing as an assistant to ‘Leroy’. Stafford presents her as being trapped, forced into a false identity by the weight of the deceit. Despite the court cases, she seems quite liberated by the unmasking, and defiant. The article is also keen to highlight her own problems (molestation, psychiatric hospitals).

It is interesting, in fact, that this attempted vindication concentrates on Albert’s merits as an icon of suffering rather than as the writer of two fine novels (and one extremely indulgent novella). For me, the attempt backfires. If Albert has experienced such a lifestyle, then she should have been aware of the likely consequences of her fraud being discovered. Furthermore, the whiff of cynicism remains. Publisher’s lists are currently overwhelmed with this ‘abuse-lit’ – it’s not like her tale was unsellable in real terms. If she wanted scandal, or intrigue, she could have, say, operated anonymously, rather than inventing this pop-culture icon.

It seems unlikely that she will write again, which is a great shame, as a career full of promise has ended. It also seems that she may be bankrupted, as her backers fight to claw back their investments. The film of ‘The Heart is Deceitful’ sunk without trace, and is available to buy for £1 in my local Blockbuster. All of this may seem too harsh a punishment. It does, however, show the danger of stamping the dread phrase ‘based on a true story’ to works of artistic license.

Individuals will always look to put trust in storytellers and artists, whether it be in literature, music or film – there’s always a character, a song, an artist who understands them. Maybe this link is a psychological result of our being read to as children, and identifying the storyteller with the parent figure.

The most extreme example of the danger of abusing this link concerns the Coen Brothers film ‘Fargo’. The directors light-heartily appended a ‘based on a true story’ tag to what was plainly a knockabout work of fiction. However, one viewer took them at face value, and froze to death whilst searching for the buried money left by a character, near the Canadian border. No-one can seriously blame the Coen Brothers for this – they simply hadn’t realised that someone, somewhere, wouldn’t get the joke.

I think, though, that the deliberate misleading of an audience, on serious subjects such as prostitution, abuse and street-living, is a different matter, especially when the deceit is practiced in such a stage-managed, ‘pr’s wet-dream’ manner. The people responsible for the charade cannot possibly have thought that the readers they had sucked in would react well to their unmasking. What was their long term plan? Retire with the cash? A Kiss-style ‘masks off’ revelation? Further false identities?

By all means, read Leroy’s books again. As novels, they do stand up to the likes of Dennis Cooper, and have far more literary merit than the likes of Dave Pelzer. But there’s always going to be that nagging doubt…

Read Dickon’s superb article at: http://tmcq.co.uk/articles/how-very-dare-you-the-cathexis-of-jt-leroy/

His diary (possibly England’s longest-running blog) is linked from the top of this page.

News News News

2007-07-20T08:11:00.000Z

I was going to post something about the 'cash for honours' investigation collapsing, but it's just too bloody predictable. Like anyone was ever going to prosecute Blair, what with political patronage and all. I don't think people who put ex-Prime Ministers in court generally get rewarded with knighthoods and seats in the Lords, do they?

Also in the news, an Ofsted report says that history lessons in school focus disproportionately on certain events (World War II), and that children should be provided with a greater overview of British history, with more attention paid to developments in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

I agree with this; I think it's sad that there are perfectly well educated and intellegent young people in the UK who have no idea when Agincourt was, or what Magna Carta meant - it's not to do with building up a patriotic sense of 'Britishness', but understanding the country in which we live. A basic understanding of the formation of our political system is just as important as learning about troop movements in the build up to D-Day.

At secondary level, and GCSE, my school taught projects on events such as the Vietnam war, with a lot of attention paid to America; if we want to look at 20th century events moulding our society, how about the post-war independence movements, or the Irish Troubles? A deeper understanding of these issues could seriously affect the way we behave towards different groups living in Britain now.

Going further back, movements such as chartism, the 'glorious revolution' and so on would surely all help us to develop a better rounded view of early c21 Britain.

And finally, I'm off this weekend for gigs in Newcastle and Glasgow - I'll be at the Dog & Parrott tonight, and Nice & Sleazy tomorrow. Feel free to come down and say hello.

Catherine Arnold – Necropolis

2007-07-18T09:44:00.000Z

Books on London can be generally separated into two categories. Firstly, there is the weighty, intellectual guide to the capital, exemplified by the likes of Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair. These books will generally weigh about as much as a dog, and will almost certainly reference ‘psychogeography’. The second category plays host to books which are considerably lighter, both in terms of subject matter and physical heft.

Necropolis sits in the latter category. It has a quirky subject matter, and could be read on a long bus journey, making it perfect for the London dilettante. Whilst lighter on jokes than, say, Tom Moore’s books on London, it is an easy, light read, big on anecdote, with plenty of opportunities for picking up trivia.

As the title should make clear, Necropolis focuses on London’s dead, from the Anglo-Saxon settlements through to Victorian funeral rituals, the Blitz, and ultimately Diana Spencer’s funeral. Catherine Arnold hopes to use the development of attitudes towards death to paint a wider social picture of London society.

Arnold is strongest, and most comfortable, in talking about Victorian funerals. This is possibly down to a paucity of materials regarding earlier ceremonies, and a lack of physical evidence, which may in itself suggest a less reverential attitude to the dead. She writes strongly on the plague, where she may borrow from Defoe and Peyps, and on royal funerals, but common deaths are largely passed over, pre-nineteenth century.

Her writing on Victorian funerals and the development of London’s great cemeteries is certainly interesting. The strict caste system of Victorian society is underlined here by the separate train carriages used to transport upper and lower class corpses to the great suburban graveyards near Woking. The sections on the development of the great London cemeteries, such as Highgate, and the conversion of dilapidated burial grounds into municipal parks are also informative.

Arnold surmises that the Victorians embraced death, and funerary rites, as a means of cementing ones status, with even paupers spending well beyond their means to afford a ‘decent’ burial. According to her thesis, this elaborate ‘packaging’ of death fell out of favour in the wake of the appalling slaughter of the first world war; suddenly, the death of one individual seemed far less important.

Other points of interest include Arnold’s account of the titanic struggle for the acceptance of cremation as a legal form of funeral, and the treatment of suicides. According to Arnold’s research, the practice of burying suicides at crossroads with a stake through the heart carried on until the early nineteenth century, and gruesome evidence is occasionally unearthed during excavation work.

In its latter stages, Arnold points to a recent trend away from sombre burials towards a more celebratory event, with black garments expressly banned. The author doesn’t really present an explanation for this development (a fear of mortality, a desire to hide away from the reality of death, changing attitudes towards the afterlife?), which is frustrating. In fact, beyond suggesting that the funerals of those killed in the 7/7 bombings in London are proof of London’s cultural diversity, Arnold really fails to get to grips with the post-war world.

Her account of Diana’s funeral feels somewhat tagged on, and the paragraphs on 7/7 are a little clichéd. The section on Diana brings me to my next complaint: why can’t sub-editors apply decent grammar to the books we read? And how did a professional publisher have the nerve to release a book which gives the title of the biggest selling single of all time, ‘Candle in the Wind’, as ‘Goodbye England’s Rose’? It’s not hard, is it? Mistakes like this, and missing full stops from the end of sentences, can’t fail to annoy the reader.

Whilst Necropolis doesn’t have the sustained quality of Steve Smith’s ‘Underground London’, it presents plenty of information for a casual reader, and is written in a fairly engaging style for the most part. Maybe it falls between stools a little at times, being not weighty enough for the expert, and slightly dry for the beginner, but on the whole, it’s diverting enough, and I suspect that’s the point.

Hunting With Dogs - A Sure Remedy for the Blues

2007-07-13T10:49:00.001Z

Germaine Greer is on tour again, with all the hotel-trashing, TV-out-the-window rock and roll debauchery that doubtless involves. The last time she toured, she spoke about how she didn’t mind the idea of foxhunting. Germaine’s very clever point was that, as the fox is chased by a slavering pack of hounds, its brain releases endorphins. Endorphins make us happy – ergo, the fox must enjoy the whole experience!

To think all those silly hunt sabbers were just spoiling foxy’s fun all along.

My only comment is that, if her statement is true, then next time Germaine Greer is a bit down in the dumps, we should chase her through London on horseback, and let wild animals rip her to pieces. She’ll have perked up in no time!

A photo of Ms Greer in happier times:
Germaine Greer 'Yoga'

ACHTUNG!
I wouldn’t click on that link if you’re at work, by the way. Or if you value your eyesight.

Bandits, Knaves, Highwaymen

2007-07-13T08:10:00.000Z

From the Times Higher Education Supplement newsletter:
“A legal contract that would restrict students' rights to seek compensation over inadequate teaching has been prepared by senior university administrators.”

Can I be the first to point out that, considering the vast sums universities charge students nowadays, this is absolute shite. It’s like Tesco’s arbitrarily deciding that they won’t be offering refunds on damaged items any more. University administration offices are a haven for bandits, rogues and privateers.

Times Higher Education Supplement

Michel Houellebecq: 'HP Lovecraft, Against The World, Against Life'

2007-07-11T14:26:00.000Z

In the tradition of Camus’s L’Etranger, and looking forward to his own Platform, Houellebecq begins his account of the life and work of HP Lovecraft with a dramatic statement of existentialist ennui: ‘Life is painful and disappointing’. This gauntlet, thrown down to the reader with supreme intellectual arrogance, provides the basis for Houellebecq’s ‘cerebral mash note’ to the ‘recluse of Providence’.

Houellebecq presents Lovecraft’s genius as a rejection of the external world, and the values of the society in which he lived. Lovecraft often used to date his letters 200 years prior to the time they were written (ie in the time of the pre-Independence American Colonies), and never deigned to create realistic situations within his work (capitalist society’s twin obsessions, money and sex, are never once mentioned within his stories).

The genesis of Lovecraft’s story-writing career was his nervous breakdown, at the age of 18; while his contemporaries dived headlong into the world of adulthood, HPL immersed himself in fantasy, rarely interacting with the society which existed on his doorstep. The 8 stories classed by Houellebecq as his ‘great texts’ were written following his divorce and retreat from New York (where he was a painful misfit), back to the place of his birth and the confines of his family.

Lovecraft’s writing is singular in style. Whilst most horror stories will begin by painting a picture of banal urban life, and slowly revealing the cracks and contradictions within it, Lovecraft wastes no time in plunging his reader into a scene of primal, howling terror. His world is insecure, assailed on all sides by monstrous forces capable of crushing it at any moment.

It is a peculiar characteristic of Lovecraft’s writing that while no effort is made to develop characters beyond the stock ‘academic from Arkham University’, a great emphasis is placed on scientific theory and accuracy. His stories use the latest developments in the scientific world, for example discussing the new theory of relativity, and are fussily detailed, providing exact latitudes and longitudes to establish locations. This technique presents the reader with a sense of horror rooted in the very essence of the universe.

So how did Lovecraft see the world, and what caused him to shun society so vigorously? HPL presented himself as an old man even when still in his 30s, an Anglophile who in many ways was typical of the ‘gentleman amateur’ of Victorian England. While he was not wealthy (a particularly affecting sentence reads simply ‘he began to sell his furniture’), he would not chase late payments for work, and frequently offered his rewriting services free of charge. When he was forced by circumstances to apply for work, in New York, he was turned down for literally hundreds of roles, despite the strong economy of the time.

Lovecraft reacted violently to any analysis which attempted to impose rational explanations on the workings of nature and of the mind. He described Freud’s work on the meaning of dreams as ‘puerile symbolism’, resentful of the modern world’s incursion into the unconscious world. He also showed a clear understanding of the process by which the importance of individuals was subsumed in early capitalism by the economic efficiency of machines, and divided labour.

The horror in Lovecraft’s writing is produced by the almighty clash between primal nature and modern existence. There is a great emphasis on the antiquity of Cthulhu, Yog Sogoth, and the other ‘Old Ones’, who lurk in the shadows, or under the seas, ready to rise up and crush humanity. That these ‘old gods’ are worshipped only by ‘degenerate races’ in ‘uncivilised’ pockets of humanity, is taken by Houellebecq as a sign of Lovecraft’s racism. While Lovecraft undoubtedly shows in his letters a racist attitude which would have been common at the time, I think this reading is somewhat flawed.

That the ‘unspeakable rites’ of Cthulhu take place in remote clearings, in ancient tongues, away from the white man’s metropolis, indicate Lovecraft’s belief that chaos is an essential facet of human existence, as old as time, and untameable. The power of the old gods may be hidden, but there is no doubt that it will rise up, and modern civilisation will not withstand its assault.

The ‘recluse of Provident’, then, exists in a world hemmed in on the one side by the rise of the machine, and modern capitalism, and on the other by the ‘swirling chaos’ of human nature. His response is to turn his back on realism, and enter a dream-inspired world where the two opposing forces conspire to destroy one another. This rejection of reality, this literary escapism, argues Houellebecq, is the only reasonable response of an artist to the twentieth century world.

Indeed, echoes of Lovecraft’s supernatural horrors can be found in other important artforms of the twentieth century; the ‘unnatural geometry’ of Great Cthulhu’s tomb bears a passing resemblance to Futurism, and surrealist art would also use unnatural imagery to explore the darker reaches of the human psyche. The influence of his ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ has been acknowledged by many horror writers, musicians and film-makers, some of whom have attempted to expand and develop his universe, in a way that, according to Houellebecq, has not been paralleled since the followers of Homer.

Whether ‘life is disappointing’, or whether Houellebecq is guilty of literary posturing is down to the discretion of the reader. It is without question, however, that Lovecraft provided one of the great literary howls against the flaws of his society – a cry for human intellect and agency in a world which had come to be dominated by machines and factory processes, finding its ultimate expression as a generation was cut down by mass-produced weapons of war in Europe. This world, which sought to invade and categorise even the innermost thoughts of the individual was fulsomely rejected and torn apart by Lovecraft’s fiction, which still retains a vital power at the dawn of a new millennia.

Alastair Campbell can Fuck Himself

2007-07-11T07:57:00.001Z

Loaded Phrases, Unnecessary Details

2007-07-10T14:52:00.000Z

From the Gruniad's account of the storming of the 'Red Mosque' in Pakistan:

'Gen Arshad said the militants were firing on security forces from the mosque's minarets, armed with machine guns, rocket launchers and petrol bombs, and had booby trapped several areas. By mid-afternoon 76 children and women had escaped the mosque, some fleeing under burkas, according to officials.'

a) Why shouldn't women and children be 'fleeing', while the students and army are creating a bloodbath between them?

b) In a mosque, is it that surprising that 'some' women are 'under' burkas?

This appears to be a deliberate reference to the media scare stories about criminals and terrorists using burkas as disguises; it has no purpose in this story, other than to subtly remind the reader of racist scare stories which they have been fed in the past. The use of the term 'fleeing under' is also highly pejorative.

In the local press, we had stories about women who wear burkas sharing bus passes. This caused a major outbreak of tutting, when it in fact causes about as much economic damage as me saying 'Fallowfield' and then getting off in Withington.

Stagecoach are the real criminals, if you ask me.

Week 10: Tom Bower - 'Gordon Brown, Prime Minister'

2007-07-09T13:51:00.000Z

Rush-released to cash in on Gordon Brown’s ‘coronation’ as Prime Minister, Bower’s 2004 biography is appended with new material detailing the ‘coup’ which finally pushed Blair from power. ‘Gordon Brown, Prime Minister’ is something of a misleading title, since it does not offer us any direct prediction of what Brown will offer, and nor, obviously, is there a chance to report any definite policies.

What the book does offer is a dry, detailed account of Brown’s life and work, from his upbringing as a ‘child of the manse’ (Bower frequently refers back to Brown’s religious upbringing, and the stolid nature of his faith), through to his rebellious university days, opposition, and eventually, government. Bower is a skilled biographer, and he blends interviews, news reports, speculation and Whitehall gossip to produce what looks to be a comprehensive overview.

After such a long time in the public eye, there is little to surprise us in any portrayal of Gordon Brown. His tempestuous relationship with Blair, his dictatorial attitude towards fellow ministers, his contempt of the civil service, and his propensity for fits of rage and sulking, have been tirelessly documented in the press. If there is anything to surprise us, it is maybe the detailed account of the chancellor’s many mistakes.

Bower is a pedant, with a find eye for detail, and is thus able to give accounts of the terrible mistakes made by the treasury during Labour’s time in office. Lesser known cases include his selling of significant amounts of Britain’s gold reserve, just before a dramatic spike in prices, costing the country billions. Ironically, ‘Gordon Brown, Prime Minister’ is also one of the few places where you will read (and believe) that the poorest people in Britain have actually seen their income increase by around 5% since 1997.

What lets this book down is the sheer vindictiveness of some of Bower’s writing. This is a criticism which has long been levelled at him, particularly with regard to his latest work, an attack on the hateful Conrad Black. Here, in his desire to portray Brown as the ‘austere workaholic’ of popular belief, even the chancellor’s hobbies are imbued with air of drudgery, for example his ‘endless watching of football matches’. His son John is referred to as ‘Sarah’s second child’, as if Brown is not capable of a happy partnership, or parental joy.

Most of all, I think that Bower fails to connect with the mindset of a young activist. Brown’s youthful idealism, his appearance at meetings (late, with over-flowing bags of paper), his one-track mind, his inability to understand why the whole world does not share his beliefs, are presented as symptoms of a personality disorder. This may or may not be so, but if it is, the asylums of England will soon be overflowing with young people with the rosettes of Labour, Tory, Liberal and every other shade of political hue.

While the book paints a largely unflattering picture of Brown (whilst admittedly hinting at a more gregarious, attractive side, which is hidden from the cameras), its larger significance may have been unintended by the author. ‘Gordon Brown, Prime Minister', acts as an excellent argument against what Chris Dillow would describe as ‘managerialism’.

Dillow posits that the practice of appointing managers to oversee government and business is flawed; having one man in charge of a department leads to the stifling of groupthink, and often prevents bold ideas from being tried. One man, argues Dillow, cannot have the expertise to run a government office. Furthermore, managerialism encourages the identification of personalities with politics, meaning that crucial but unpopular decisions will not be made.

Nothing could support this argument better than Bower’s portrayal of a man with no business experience, who does not look after his own family finances, being entrusted with the job of running Britain’s economy. Decisions are made with the goal of achieving personal political capital; good ideas are blocked because of power battles with the likes of Mandleson and Milburn. Civil servants with years of experience are overlooked, and hostile reports are ignored.

Most people will have formed their opinions of Brown the man already. As a politician, we are told his ‘true’ beliefs will soon be revealed. This book is possibly too late, and certainly too obviously biased, to colour existing opinions too much. However, as an account of the harmful effects of managerial culture and personal politics on Britain’s economy and political life, it is an enlightening and worthwhile read.

Year 2038 Problem

2007-07-05T12:47:00.000Z

Sam Atkinson has bought this to my attention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

My question is this: so what if a computer's clock/calender is wrong? Mine is 5 minutes fast, but it hasn't fired any missiles at the Russians yet.

A lot of fuss over nothing if you ask me.

Irony Overload in London

2007-07-04T13:14:00.000Z

The Conservatives plan to make a bold bid to secure the 'ironic' vote by announcing Boris Johnsons as a prospective candidate for next Mayor of London.

Speaking at a press conference, party leader David Cameron told the media: 'Aaah - you weren't expecting that, were you?'. Johnsons, meanwhile, stumbled around behind him making incoherent comments, until his trousers fell down.

It is expected that 20 something Londoners who look like students and have never read a newspaper will form his core support, with some crossover into 50 year olds who quite like Stephen Fry, but don't think he's right wing enough.

Sexual Economy in Platform and Heading South

2007-07-03T14:17:00.000Z

As the most lurid example of the consequences of the developing world’s exploitation by America and Europe, it is perhaps surprising that there has been little artistic focus on the effects of sexual tourism. While mainstream films such as Blood Diamond examine the brutal effects of western capitalism on Africa, there have been few artists willing to take on the sex trade.

Two of the most notable works on the subject have come from France; these are the 2005 film ‘Heading South’ and Michel Houellebecq’s novel ‘Platform’, published in 2001. Both explore the motivation drawing the West’s middle aged and middle class to countries such as Thailand and Haiti on the trail of sexual pleasure.

Heading South’s action takes place in Haiti, in the late 1970s. In the background of the film, Baby Doc Duvalier’s dictatorship grows ever more decadent, while petty officials take on greater powers to dominate and exploit the local population. The undertones of violent exploitation are foregrounded from the off, as an ageing woman begs a hotel bar-manager to take her daughter, and protect her from rape and murder.

On the island’s beaches, however, there is another story. Wealthy older Western women gather here, surrounded by lithe young men who pander to their every whim. This is a genteel form of exploitation; offers of money would be crass. Instead, gifts are exchanged for sex. The women are liberated from the societal norms of their home-countries. They smoke grass, and frolic in the surf, in a way which would surely be judged inappropriate by their peers.

That the behaviour is indulged reveals an important truth; the young black men, though adult, are infantilised by the women. Dependent on handouts for clothes and meals, they are robbed of all agency. Romanticising this process, the women create a myth akin to that of the ‘noble savage’ – they would not consider a flirtation with the black underclasses of Europe or America, but here, ‘close to nature’, the young men are imbued with almost heroic qualities. The exotic is infantilised, fetishised and commercialised.

There is an important truth for the women as well. As they approach menopause, and retirement, their economic value to their own society is in steep decline. Once they have lost the ability to produce wealth, or produce children, they will be cast aside. In order to validate their continued existence, they must move from the harsh West to the South, where they still have the capital to excite desire; the economy of sexuality has driven them to Haiti.

The focus of this desire is a Haitian called Legba. Almost preternaturally handsome and determined, he is also headstrong and charming, and the women compete to buy his affections. The nomenclature is important; in Voodoo mythology, Legba is a symbol of youth and virility. In Haiti, however, Legba is seen as an old and faded power. In Heading South, Legba is killed because of his association with the whites. In reality, the Haitian tourist trade collapsed in the early 80s, and thousands of such young men would no longer have been able to live off their wits and attractions.

The film’s strength lies in its skilled handling of characters. The women are allowed monologues which explain their motivations, the alienation they feel in their own countries, whether it be a repressed sexuality or the frustrations of low-paid work. The Haitians meanwhile are never allowed to become stereotypes of poverty and superstition. Legba’s back story shows the island’s history of pride, and he fights fiercely to protect his culture from the tourists, only allowing them to experience a watered down version of Haiti’s music.

In Houellebecq’s novel, a middle-aged French couple, both with respectable, professional-class jobs, embark on a business venture, creating sexual pleasure palaces for European tourists across Africa and Asia. This is capitalism at its sharpest edge, all aggressive promotion and ruthless exploitation of its resources – in this case, young natives. The venture is an enormous success, attracting sexual tourists from across Europe on a grand scale.

For Houellebecq’s characters, again, their failings in domestic life drive them to seek fulfilment in exotic, poor countries. His protagonist, Michel, complains that French women are ‘too hard’ on men. He is effectively impotent in the workplace, a cog in a machine. His clients are largely German, for whom the author reserves special vitriol, as a nation lacking entirely in culture and imagination. They have become addled by late 20th century capitalism; they are fit only for sex and exploitation.

As Platform has a broader timeline than Heading South, we see Houellebecq’s grim prediction of the consequences of this sexual trade; the couple’s Balian resort is blown to pieces by an armed gang, presumably (though not explicitly) linked to Muslim extremism. The exploitation of the country’s natural and human resources is bloodily avenged, and the decadent Europeans are destroyed by an enemy they never thought capable of defending itself.

Together, these two works portray Western culture sliding into decadence; as individuals lose their cultural capital, and become increasingly alienated, they embark on their own heart of darkness journey. The only interaction is exploitation, the only relationship is competition, as the women holidaying in Haiti struggle to dominate the ‘pack’. In both works, sexuality, like every other function, has been reduced to an asset, and like every other asset, the market for it is heading to poorer countries, which will be stripped bare by the powerful. What remains to be seen is the reaction.

Week 9: ‘Perfume’ – Patrick Suskind

2007-06-29T13:02:00.000Z

First things first; ‘Perfume’ is not a beautiful book. While Grenouille, the protagonist, is possessed of highly developed sensory apparatus, he is no aesthete, and Suskind’s long, poetic sentences are used to depict the harsh realities of eighteenth century life. Grenouille’s world is one of early death, illness, poverty and all the stenches associated with this.

The novel deals with the adaptation of primal senses into modern life. Grenouille is born on the cusp of the modern age. His Paris is a city in flux; we are not yet in a time of revolution, but there is a surge in secular thinking, and the old institutions are under threat. Commerce is also changing; the master parfumier, Baldini, under whom he serves his apprenticeship, finds himself threatened by upstarts with no respect for hierarchy.

Into this mix is thrust Grenouille, a young man of hideous appearance, a low background and no social skills, yet in possession of the finest sense of smell in human history. It is important that Suskind chooses to use smell; regarded as a base, animal sense, smell generates primal feelings, cutting through logic and social norms. Grenouille is in search of the essence of things; a search that becomes murderous as he plots to harvest young girls for their ‘essence’.

According to criminologist Colin Wilson, the rise of the serial murderer, and sex crime, can be charted in parallel with the rise of industrialisation. Although pre-industrial Europe had its monsters, such as Gilles de Rais, these were exceptions. The first notable examples were Jack The Ripper, and France’s Joseph Vacher, both of whom operated in the late nineteenth century. In literature, such ruthless killers have become useful in exemplifying the fears of society in change; Dorian Gray is a notable example of this technique.

Suskind carefully presents Grenouille as an archetypal serial murderer, his childhood a tapestry of neglect and rejection, his bitterness at the rest of society, from which he is isolated through a curious lack of personal odour, and his use of animals as a proxy, to practice on before his attacks on humans begin.

Suskind does not strive for realism in his narrative, but rather to transcend it. Thus, there is an extra-sensory avalanche of scent, and Grenouille is imbued with un-human traits; a strange imperviousness to pain, for example. ‘Perfume’ has an almost fairy-tale quality, being episodic and analogous. Grenouille’s quest to create the perfect scent leads him into trade, into isolation from the world, into criminality, into redemption, and finally into rejection of the material opportunities at last afforded him.

Throughout the novel, Suskind highlights the disguises adopted by members of society, and the shallowness of public perception. Bandini plots to develop unique fragrances for the high-born, to mask their own individual essence; Grenouille is able to develop a series of scents which mask him, allowing him to pass un-noticed, or to win trust and adoration, depending on his whim. His extra-ordinary olfactory skill is used to unmask hidden corruption and to cut through dissemblance.

These masks, argues Suskind, are a corruption of human society. They are a tool of social control, causing some to be exalted, and others to be reviled. Grenouille’s unique ability to manipulate these masks, and the vicious depths to which he descends in order to do so, highlight the hypocrisy inherent within hierarchical systems.

Scent is presented as a primal force, older and more powerful than modern social skills, which are developed later. Grenouille’s first words are all nouns. He has no use for description, or words of equivocation, as he cuts to the very nature of the world around him. He has one purpose, to which he is dedicated, and is able to shun human society, using people only as a means.

‘Perfume’ is not a novel without flaws; the middle section, in which Grenouille ascends the highest, most remote mountain in France, and remains there for seven years in a sensory paradise of his own imagination, is maybe over-long, at the expense of the more gripping aspects of his time in Paris and Grasse. Suskind’s skill, though, is in the evocative nature of his writing, which is conveyed through the excellent translation, and the timeless quality of the plot, which is rooted in archetypes. Neither of these features were adequately conveyed by the film adaptation released earlier this year, which I must urge you to avoid; the book itself is a delight.

Thanks to Dug Williams for the book.

Week 8: 'Redemption Song' - Chris Salewicz

2007-06-27T13:06:00.000Z

There’s an awful lot written about the Clash these days; two editions of Marcus Grey’s ‘Last Gang in Town’, Pat Gilbert’s ‘Passion is a Fashion’, road manager Johnny Green’s tour diary, a Mescaleros tour diary, two photo books… in addition, we have five compilations (Essential, On Broadway, Singles, Singles Box, The Story Of…) and two films, ‘Westway to the World’ and Julien Temple’s latest, ‘The Future is Unwritten’.

So what can a book focussing on frontman Joe Strummer tell us that we didn’t already know? Salewicz enjoys insider status, giving him unprecedented access to Joe’s family members and non-music industry friends. As a journalist, Salewicz had often encountered Strummer, and built up a strong rapport – there is a frequently quoted anecdote in which author and subject fight off two thieves who have rushed into Strummer’s house.

From this mixture of interviews, recollections, original material and observation, Salewicz can draw up an interesting character study of the man who many saw as the voice of a generation. The book opens with an extremely vivid account of Strummer’s funeral, followed by an exploration of his Scottish roots which give us a new insight into the private life of a very public figure.

The book also manages to shatter much of the perceived wisdom surrounding Strummer; as an example, his father, so long labelled a typical middle class foreign office bureaucrat, is shown as a man who dragged himself up by the bootstraps, with politics which were to the left of his son’s.

While the author obviously regards his subject very highly, Redemption Song is no hagiography; Salewicz does not shy away from Strummer’s infidelities, his battle with depression (his ‘Big Chief Thundercloud’ moods) and alcohol, and his capacity to operate ruthlessly. He is also unafraid to point to Mick Jones as the ideological heart of the Clash, and criticise Joe for coming too far under the spell of manager Bernie Rhodes. Rhodes comes across particularly badly, with his unnerving insistence that Joe ‘needed me, to be me.’

Particularly of interest to many readers will be the chapters dealing with 1995 onwards, an area not particularly detailed in the past. Strummer in his 40s is shown to be a conflicted figure; on the one hand, creating enjoying enormous artistic success with the Mescaleros, and creating ‘Strummerville’, his all-inclusive festival campfire, while on the other raging out of control, drinking heavily, barely sleeping, and insecure to the point of being cowed by his studio collaborators.

Joe’s depression lead to a surprising insecurity, in turn making Joe curiously dependent on others; he is distraught to hear that Damien Hirst has quit drinking, as he needs others around him to support his own lifestyle. His political views at this stage may also surprise many fans, particularly his views on the war in Afghanistan.

The book is not without flaws; as in many other 500+ page books written by journalists, certain stories and phrases are retold or overused, and Clash fans may find that the account of their career is somewhat rushed through, in contrast to detailed sections on his less significant soundtrack work. However, the access to Strummer’s family and friends makes this an important book for any fan, and offers a new perspective on the former John Mellor. There are sections which are obviously sourced from contemporary articles by Salewicz, which give an entertaining feel for the times, and there is a fan-like enthusiasm throughout the writing.

That said, while Redemption Song does not even approach the occasionally vindictive tone of Last Gang in Town, neither does it put Strummer on a pedestal. Salewicz acknowledges that he could be a ‘piece of work’, and does not gloss over his flaws, from his vainglorious statements to his occasionally authoritarian behaviour, from his depression to his womanising.

There’s probably room for one more Clash/Strummer book (unless any surviving members are tempted to put their experiences into print); distance may bring some extra perspective to the telling. Until that time though, Redemption Song is invaluable, a fascinating portrayal of a modern icon.

On Dress Codes in Music

2007-06-25T15:33:00.000Z

Watching the BBC's coverage of Glastonbury, I was horrified to note that the drummer from the Arctic Monkeys was wearing tracksuit trousers on stage. Without rushing to knee-jerk over-reactions, the man should be shot.

Honestly, what sort of message does this send out? I hate slovenly musicians. The audience spend their time before a gig worrying about what to wear, getting excited, doing their hair, whilst you, Mr Musician, are safely ensconced in some luxurious backstage area, surrounded by whores and material trappings... and you have the temerity to wander onstage in tracksuit trousers?

I think it is no coincidence that Neil Hannon's worst work came when he decided to trade his suits in for jeans. 'Like trousers, like mind', as Joe Strummer said.

This may sound like the ravings of some deluded, style-over-content, post-romo fop, and frankly, it is. But I think it is fair to say that walking out in front of an audience looking like you've just been scavenging in bins, Badly Drawn Boy, is a direct insult to the people who have come to see you. 'You may have paid good money to be here,' says the bobble hat, 'but you're not worth the effort.'

To qualify, not even a fine pair of Oxford Bags could save Mr Doherty's exercable performance on Saturday - I choose to believe that the effect of said trousers was countermanded by the band's atrocious head-wear. Or maybe there is a scientific principle: not even the highest quality tailoring can survive a talent vacuum.

But this misses the point. If you are a musician who is considering going onstage in his sunday morning house-wear, pull yourself together man, and sort your wardrobe out! We don't go to work in boxer shorts and vests, so what makes you think you can get away with it?

(Also posted on Billy Ruffian's blog)

Arise Sir Salman

2007-06-18T14:53:00.001Z

Another honours list, another example of steaming hypocrisy, as that scourge of empires finally takes his comfy seat in the establishment ranks once and for all.

Still, anyone who supported the blitzkrieg tactics of ‘shock and awe’, including the cluster bombing of civilians and flagrant breaches of the Geneva Convention, clearly has a weird definition of honour to start with.

From 'Stating the Bleedin' Obvious Monthly'

2007-06-18T12:58:00.000Z

I was doing some research this morning when I came across the following headline:

Coastguards warn of dangers of jumping from cliffs

Yes, thanks for clearing that one up.

Week 7: Ian McEwan – On Chesil Beach

2007-06-15T13:35:00.000Z

While I was away in Italy last month, I got talking to a man called Dug about books and so on. Dug isn’t keen on Ian McEwan, because he’s too analytical. This can really be a blessing or a curse for readers, as anyone who has flicked through a McEwan novel will know. In particular, Saturday was criticised for its over-attention to surgical detail.

This has not always been a feature of McEwan’s writing, however. For all that Enduring Love and Saturday catalogue the minutiae of metropolitan life, books such as The Cement Garden show the author’s ability to create an unsettling, edgy atmosphere, and bring lethargic stories to unpredictable and unsettling conclusions.

On Cheshil Beach is certainly closer in style to The Cement Garden than Saturday. A short work, there is very little in the way of incident. The scene is a hotel room by the coast; the cast, Flo and Edward.

Although the novella is set in 1966, the couple are clearly mentally stuck in the time before the end of the Chatterley ban and the first Beatles ep. They have yet to be physically intimate; indeed, Flo feels revulsion and fear at the very thought. The couple uncertainly grope towards the dreaded moment of contact, knowing that their success, or otherwise, will define the rest of their lives.

McEwan’s characters are trapped by their own stifled upbringing (Ed a country boy with a dependent mother and overworked father, Flo growing up in that very English mix of wealth and reserve). They simply do not have the language to convey their hopes, or to discuss issues. Uncomfortable silences abound, and they are hopeless at interpreting each other’s feelings.

The novel also returns to a familiar McEwan theme, attempting to impose order on chaos. Ed’s family choose to indulge his mother’s domestic fantasies, papering over the essential chaos of her existence. Flo, meanwhile, takes a straight-backed, rigid and domineering approach when faced with difficulties. It is only when she allows uncertainty to take hold, during their meal, and deviates from her plan of action, that disaster strikes.

On Chesil Beach is an affecting and effective examination of the consequences of poor communication in relationships, and offers an interesting glimpse into the generation which was born too early to benefit from the liberal 60s. The novel’s conclusion, which I won’t reveal, is a masterpiece of understatement, where so many others would veer into melodrama. Another fine work from one of Britain’s best writers.

10 Books Which Defined a Century?

2007-06-12T08:43:00.000Z

A vote held at the Gruniad’s Hay Festival has attempted to identify the 10 books which define the twentieth century. The list is as follows (in chronological order):

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

On the whole, I’m happy to go along with this, very pleasing to see The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists get a look in. I suspect that people forget the impact this book had on a literate and organised working class.

In terms of the ‘canon’, one of these books will not be being read in 50 years time, and I think you know which that is; but as far as zeitgeist goes, I guess Bridget Jones summed up what the metropolitan media classes were up to in the 90s. Irvine Welsh must be feeling a little hard done by though.

Other points of interest; I was surprised at the preponderance of Dead White European Males in the list; wot, no Salman? In fact, there is only one female novelist in the top 10, which leads me to my next point – should Anne Frank be in there? On its own merits, then I’m not going to argue against it, but is it fair to have non-fiction books competing in a ‘sum up the century’ competition? I suppose Diary of a Young Girl has transcended the traditional non-fiction-reader category, and I’d hazard a guess that its just about the most-read book of the ten.

Finally, what about the 35 year gap between the final two books? Surely there must have been something worth voting for between 1961 – 1996? Any suggestions?

Week 6: Charlotte Keatley - My Mother Said I Never Should

2007-06-11T15:29:00.000Z

Four girls, the same age but clearly from different times, dressed in the clothes of their generation, gather on some wasteland to play, gossip, and cast spells to curse their mothers, and rage against the family they were all born into.

This is the opening to Charlotte Keatley’s first major stageplay, which made its debut at Manchester’s Contact Theatre in 1987. An essentially domestic drama, the play cuts between scenes in the lives of four women, four generations of the same family. As the non-linear plot skips between the years, Keatley skilfully portrays significant incidents in the childhood of each woman, showing how their past impacts on their present.

Through the play, we see how the expectations of the young women have changed in the post war period, with developments in social attitudes, from post-war austerity through the 60s and ‘liberation’ to a supposedly empowered present. At all stages, daughters are presented as estranged from their mothers in some way; most notably Rosie, born in 1971 and abandoned to her grandmother’s care.

Gradually, the tight family unit of the 50s splinters, as Jackie moves down south and claims her independence, working in the bourgeois arts world, and embracing hippy idealism. However, her northern working class background will not release its grip on her, and she is dragged back into domestic chaos following the death of her mother, Margaret, and the revelation of Rosie’s true identity.

The portrayal of northern life never veers into corrie/brookside territory, and there are some fantastic set-pieces for the cast, notably Doris’s closing speech, delivered on the day she got engaged, setting the entire story in motion.

A demanding play to stage, the script requires the actresses to play women at various stages of development, from childhood to maturity, and even old age, with minimal time for make-up or costume changes between scenes which may jump decades at a time. Keatley also demands much from her audience, willing them to suspend disbelief as the children play together in the fantasy wasteland, and asking them to follow her characters from decade to decade; despite this I would strongly recommend seeking out any production of this play you can.

By The Way

2007-06-07T13:30:00.000Z

Don't let that last post fool you, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal. I think Marat was about right when he said that France could be sorted out overnight if 287,000 people he'd chosen were executed.

As for the Big Brother contestants, I don't think they should be evicted. From what I've seen of this series, most of them act as though they were raised by wolves. I say bolt the doors, and slowly fill it with water, or introduce a Bengal Tiger into the house, perhaps.