The Workshy Fop Awards: 2011

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 in 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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

UPDATE: Catch Magazine is no longer available online, so here is the article in full.

“We said we would be coming for you and we are”

The riots which broke out in London on August 8th ignited a public debate about modern policing tactics. Questions had already been raised about the policing of political protests, ‘kettling’ and the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson, as well as the mass arrests of UK Uncut demonstrators in Fortnum & Mason’s. More recently, the Met was reeling from the revelation of its close ties to the Murdoch newspapers, and had to prove its ability to effectively manage the 2012 Olympics. At a time when the mainstream press demands a robust approach to containing disorder (see the student fees protests), it was a shock to see images of riot police effectively standing by whilst looters created havoc in the streets of the capital.

Further north, the Greater Manchester Police had more time to consider their actions. They were able to monitor social networking sites to gauge the likelihood of copycat violence, and felt confident enough to send reinforcements to the Met. The role of social media went beyond information-gathering; the official GMP Twitter feed was able to reassure local people: “No disorder or riots – speculation about ongoing riots completely inaccurate”. As public opinion became hardened against the riots, however, there was a significant change in the tone of the GMP feed. What caused this, and was it an appropriate reaction to the situation?

GMP has made innovative use of Twitter in the past to improve relations with the public, such as the GMP 24 hour feed, which kept followers up to date with a typical day for officers around the region. This initiative was a massive success, attracting positive media coverage, award nominations, and over 15,000 followers. The feed was described as a ‘work of genius’ by followers, and praised as an example for other emergency services to follow. The updates were neutral in tone, and avoided any personal details, purposefully demonstrating the mundane daily activities of the police (and the odd ‘loose horse in Atherton’).

The benefits of building community links through social media are obvious, as is the usefulness of an official feed to counter alarmist rumours. Clearly, though, it is vital to maintain a dignified stance when representing a public service. This is where so many social networking experiments fall down.

As the riots spread from Tottenham through London and then to the North, the dominant media discourse moved away from a discussion of police brutality and the death of Mark Duggan towards a venomous condemnation of disorder; leading politicians were pilloried for their media silence (and in Cameron and Johnson’s case, absence), as the public (or at least those members of the public given a media platform) demanded an authoritative response. At this stage, after one night of disorder in Manchester, the tone of GMP’s tweeting turned from reassurance to revenge.

The first sign came at 12.49 on the 10^th: ‘Things quieting down now… if you have been using social networking sites to incite disorder, expect us to come knocking on your door very soon’. This was followed later by a new message: ‘We are monitoring Twitter 24 hours until the message sets in – if you use it to incite any violence, you’ll be arrested.’ Here we see the development of an authoritarian presence within the wild west online community. The utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham developed the idea of the Panopticon, an ordered social space in which citizens could be watched by central authority at all times, without being aware of whether they were being observed at any given time. The monitoring of social networks by police can be seen as a similar effort at influencing behaviour through surveillance, and was rigorously reinforced by the courts, as in the case of the ‘Facebook rioters’ receiving 4 year sentences.

Immediately there was a backlash, but GMP were confident: ‘courts v clear, justice should be done publicly’. This is where mission creep began to affect and undermine the police’s efforts. The police do not decide justice, courts do. Therefore, publishing details of individuals before they have been charged or tried is unacceptable in liberal society. At this stage, a worrying tone began to affect the GMP feed. An Assistant Chief Constable described rioters as ‘locusts’. Another update boasted ‘just locked up another man after he bragged on Facebook he couldn’t be caught. Wrong’. Later, (8.23 on the 12^th), the police made public the arrest of a 14 year old.

The police were bolstered by the ‘fantastic support’ they received (about 70,000 new followers by midnight on the 12^th), but did not wonder whether many were simply looking for factual updates, rather than messages that ‘we said we would be coming for you and we are’ (9.55 on the 13^th). Would rioters be following the Police blog? If not, then the messages were pure authoritarian PR, designed as a show of strength and reinforcing an image of police omnipresence which had been damaged by their seemingly ineffectual initial response to the disorder.

The mark was truly overstepped with a gloating message regarding a mother of two ‘not involved in disorder, jailed for FIVE months… there are no excuses’. After a flurry of protests, the tweet was deleted, ‘not to hide it, but because it was not appropriate to comment on a sentencing’. Later messages backtracked: ‘agree no personal opinion needed… changing tack slightly’. The courts likewise reversed their decision once sober reality crept back in.

The furore sheds light on our attitude to modern policing. Many would agree that police officers on the street are essential for solving crimes, and apprehending perpetrators. However, the police officer is also a symbol of the state, enforcing a desired form of behaviour. This role is recognised by the present government to the point where they want officers to wear their uniforms to and from work, for greater visibility (even if these officers would not intervene in incidents).

It is this role which the GMP Twitter feed bought into the public eye, and which caused such consternation. We are happy for factual details of an officer’s day, and for public service announcements (8.02, 12^th August – ‘no disorder at all, people out enjoying a Friday night’). On the other hand, the foregrounding of riot police (posting photos of ‘officers equipped to face disorder’ on 17^th August) and Orwellian tactics (‘another has handed himself in… his face was everywhere and he could not hide’ – 12^th August) and partisan gloating are still not palatable for the majority. As the politicians failed to muster a response to the riots, the GMP and other civic authorities stepped in. Let down by politicians, they overstepped their area of responsibility, shedding light on a worrying aspect of modern society.