Time Capsules

I was quite taken by Brian Appleyard's feature on "time capsules" in the Sunday Times. Commenting on Warhol's habit of creating various time capsules to tell the truth of his life - many of which remain unopened - he asks quite a few luminaries what they'd save for the future. An interesting side-point he takes from James Lovelock, that we should be creating a "bible" for our times, also made me think. I'm not sure that " a year of Radio 4" buried on a memory-stick would be quite the thing the future wants or needs. It struck me that one of the problems about what is deemed to survive is the famous, the already mediated. There's been a few fascinating programmes recently around old colour films and photographs and what's perhaps most interesting is that in the days before mass media, there was less of a consensus about what should be filmed or recorded.

My own time capsule would be - as I think all should be - a bit of a personal thing. I'd probably include some of my writings - some of my stories set in contemporary Manchester perhaps, or "High Wire", the novel that I wrote starting with election night 1997. Although fictional - I was trying to write the truth as I remembered it, not something re-discovered through research or artefacts. It's what spoils books like David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" for me; too many cultural signifiers. I reckon our own cultural signifiers are personal, perverse, non-universal. I'd probably include a CD of my favourite songs of say, last year, which already seems out of date, but the future probably needs to hear "With Every Heartbeat" by Robyn next to something by Thurston Moore. One of the NOW series would only tell a quarter of a story. I'd also include half a dozen literary magazines of the last few years that I've read or had something to do with - and more importantly, kept around. Again, I'd probably include some of my own poems rather than someone else's - they have a particular truth about them, that I find hard to uncover in much contemporary poetry. I don't think I'd include this blog - or any other for that matter - though perhaps this is the ephemera that one should be looking to preserve. Perhaps a few YouTube videos. I'd also find room for the Aldi brochure or an Argos catalogue. Surely more historical truth in there than in any official statistics or the like? Brian Appleyard includes series 4 of "The Wire" and the iPhone. I guess if the box was big enough you might put this Dell computer in it - I think the future will probably think we all sat there with our laptops and our tiny devices, it might come as a surprise to see the hulking beasts that still dominate the home and the office. As for "The Wire," love it as I do, I don't think its anyone in this country's job to try and "get" America. I'd probably choose a DVD of something relatively unloved; BBC3's "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" perhaps, alongside probably the best satire of the last few years, the first Christopher Ecclestone-led series of "Dr. Who." As for novels of the last few years, I'd probably pick Will Self's "The Book of Dave" if only because it has a buried time capsule at its own centre - and, something by Magnus Mills, probably "All Quiet on the Orient Express."

Now all I need is a tin box....

World enough and time...

Its been interesting to see how many fellow literary bloggers have normal summer holidays, as if its a given. Perhaps its when you've a family, or work in education. I've a fortnight off, soon, but its a moveable feast in terms of what I'll be doing. Of course, chances are, I'll spend at least half of it doing my real "work", writing, reading etc. - and, I have to say, the easiest place to do that is here, at home. Particularly given that I'm going to be buzzing off quite a lot from mid-September in my day job. I marvel at the piles of books that people take away with them, but guess, I've my perfect library here. Last weekend - was it so long ago? - I read 2 novels. Unheard of. They were short which helped. But that means I should easily get myself going with a few others that are waiting me. Yet, in Liverpool on Thursday, on the way to see the Klimt exhibition, I picked up "Terrorist" by John Updike and "Then we came to the end" by Joshua Ferris, as well as "The Black Swan", by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, all remaindered hardbacks for £2.99 each. The Updike I want to read as part of my ongoing (and somewhat pyrhhic) attempt to read all the 9/11 fictions that have come out; the Ferris was a recommendation, whilst "Black Swan" theory - i.e. using evidence of what has happened in the past is a flawed way of predicting the future, since just one "black swan" can blow away the idea that all swans are white - fits in with a few ideas I've had/got myself. Add to those a belated purchase of Gwendoline Riley's 3rd novel, "Joshua Spassky", and the must-read but haven't books by Catherine O'Flynn, Junot Diaz, Anne Enright and Ian McEwan (yep, still haven't gone "On Chesil Beach"), never mind a number of poetry books, and I might as well give up now. I would almost pray for rain, except that yesterday's heavy skies gave me the foggiest of heads. And of course, you only have to step off the steps of your treadmill for a minute, and you've all these other ideas swimming around - I felt that there wasn't enough context in the Klimt exhibition, and I want to know more about the history, about Vienna at the end of the 19th century, about the Viennese "Secession". (Surely, there's some connection with Richard Strauss's "Salome" in there?) I re-watched the lovely movie "Ghost World" last night, and wikipediaing both the film and the comic book, realise I want to know what the original comic was like, and that reminds me of all the other comics I've either got and haven't read, or haven't got, but feel I ought to - given its such a productive strand of the modern literary/artistic firmament. And then there's "Hellboy" on Five tonight, which if I'm going to ever watch the sequel, I need to get my head around... We live in rich times, no doubt about it, with all of artistic, literary, and musical history lying around just waiting to be picked up and run with. And I've not even mentioned the Olympics or the new football season...

An Author's Entitlement

I'm not sure whether to laugh, cry, or just despair at the news that the chick lit author Jenny Colgan, was advised to change the title of her new novel, from the rather excellent "Cinderella of the Old Kent Road", to the rather terrible, "Diamond's are a girls best friend," partly because it won't play well in Australia (clearly their Monopoly is full of Wagga Waggas and Ayre's Rocks) and partly because Tesco preferred it. Yes, Tesco! We all know that authors get very little say in their covers, their marketing campaigns etc, but you kind of think you can get a say in your title. Poor Toby Litt, up to "I" in his alphabetical titles, imagine, if the supermarket gets iffy about his "J" or "K"? Authors - being - like - the people who write the words would, you think be able to claim an entitlement to er...titling those works. Mind you, Fitzgerald's titles for "The Great Gatsby" included "Trimalchio at West Egg" which sounds more like an album track by the Hold Steady than one of the classics of American literature. I'm a great fan of titles, whether writing a song, a story, a poem or a novel, and can't imagine giving them up to a 3rd party, though I've changed a number of story titles where the original gave too much away. Put that down to laziness. When you nail a title, I sometimes think you nail the piece, or at least tie it a little less precariously to the earth. Anyway, I reckon Shane Macgowan could write a great song called "Cinderella of the Old Kent Road," - Jenny should give him a call.

Why the Gulag Speaks to Us

Ashamed to say I'd never read Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died this week. So, with a free morning, I realised I'd a copy of his short novel "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". I'm a great fan of shorter novels - it's a format that seems perfect to certain subjects. Everything in the novel was familiar, I guess, though whether its a case that all prison camps are to some extent the same, or because over the years I've imbibed enough Russian history to recognise what the novel, when it was first published, exposed to the world for the first time. You wonder whether a Guantanamo Bay novel would have a similar effect today - particularly, as the Olympics starts in Beijing, with George Bush, talking about the right to speak freely. Ivan Denisovich is an everyman, and the detailing of his day, with only the briefest of passages about his past life, is a highly effective vehicle to talk about a regime - about our humanity. I recently read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and it is the survival of humanity amidst simply staying alive, which connects the two books. Denisovich, at least in this translation, is a particular type of European literary figure - recognisable from Hamsun's "Hunger" to the workers in Magnus Mills' "The Restraint of Beasts." Even in the straits of his condition there is some dignity in labour - yet at the same time, the worker has to deal with the Kafkaesque absurdities of their bosses. Apparently, it was the dignity of Denisovich's labour that convinced Krushchev of the novel's worth. It seems strange in the modern world, in our advanced, and recently deracinated version of capitalism, how "work" remains such a problematic subject for a novel. I'm not so sure about the dignity of labour; for Solzhenitsyn, I think, in this short novel, its more a case of where work is all there is to keep mind, body and soul together, then it becomes a metaphor for life itself. Denisovich ponders how he, who once provided for his whole family, can now hardly provide for himself. Every step he takes in the novel exposes another absurdity, another compromise.

Publish and Be Damned

In these days of "Twitter", its not particularly a surprise to be eavesdropping on the minutiae of a life, but Chris Hamilton-Emery's recent blogs about the multitude of tasks in "a day in the life" at Salt Publishing, have been particularly fascinating. So much for the myth that men can't multitask (perhaps poets can? publishers certainly must?). And - on previous blogs - he reminds me that publishing is also a seasonal business, with so much relying on the next few months. A credit crunch Christmas, with a winter of heavy heating bills aheads, won't do much good for most of us. Yet, sitting at home with a good book perhaps is what's needed. And I'm reminded that Salt's books are good and I've not bought one for a while. Is this guilt marketing? I'm not sure - but like that little record shop you used to visit before bypassing it for Amazon, or the butcher's you'd queue at before driving to Tescos - its probably a case of use 'em or lose 'em. I remember Michael Schmidt at Carcanet saying that if everyone who sent him poems also bought one of their books they'd never have a problem. I've been doing some work with the arts recently, and orchestras, theatres, cinemas etc. have the same problem. At certain points in your life you might be a loyal, regular theatre/concert/cinema-goer, then ask yourself. When did you last go? There's 2 films on at the Cornerhouse next week I want to see, "Man on Wire" and the Brazilian "Empire State". Blink and I'll miss them. When you think of the cost of the Olympics, not just this one, but the next one in London, you have to also think... support your local sheriff! Or...Salt Needs You! Particularly in the summer.

Summer Is

I'm not entirely sure why it is that everything goes so quiet in August, not just the students, but other people as well. Surely as many people are returning to Manchester, and/or visiting? The bars seem busy at least. I hesitate to invite people to the Old Abbey Inn on Wednesday for the next - the third - night of The Other Room, since the previous two have seen the bar nicely filled. However, it is summer, and we can always spill out onto the street between poets.

***

The Forward Prizes for Poetry shortlists have also been announced. Forward's website seems to still think its 2006, so they don't get a link, we just have to rely on the Guardian's word for all of this!

***
...and the Booker longlist slipped out without me noticing, on Thursday. A baker's dozen, yet again featuring a few of the unflashy mid-list authors that have dominated the last few years, and, of course, the return of Rushdie, and, in "Child 44", what is surely that least Booker of genres, a thriller.

The art of brevity

In his panegyric for Penelope Fitzgerald, reviewing a book of her letters, Julian Barnes certainly brings out some interesting points, but, boy does he go on, giving close on 5000 words to this renowned miniaturist of a novelist. I'm sure there's probably some kind of literary equation, where the shorter the books, the longer the critical encomiums. And some of it just seems silly. Surely his detailed story of travelling back to London with her from a reading in York is the least interesting literary anecdote that's ever been shared? I've not read Fitzgerald so I can't comment on her place in the rankings of our top novelists, and certainly, there's much in this review that makes one interested to read her, but perhaps a little too much. To be fair to Barnes, I've got enough of a sense of her personality from his piece, that had she been able to read it, she'd have seen how overblown it was. In future, perhaps, less is more?

Mercury and Mad Hatters

I was in the Portland Basin museum in Ashton-under-Lyne yesterday afternoon, and amidst the depictions of ye olde Tameside life (long before it was called Tameside of course), and examples of industrial heritage, there was a little display case that pointed out that the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland wasn't purely fiction, since hatmakers frequently became poisoned by the mercury used in the hatmaking process, and would appear drunken, and incoherent. Which seems a nice segue into this years Mercury music prize, for drunken and incoherent are some of the epithets flung at this mid-yearly attempt to boost sales of some of the years best British albums. But as always, far better that it's drunken and incoherent than boring and respectable. I've already been listening to four of this year's shortlist, so I can hardly complain about it, even if the one glaring omission, M.I.A.'s "Kala", seems a little inexplicable, unless, since its been around a while now, its wilfulness had gone from sounded fresh to sounding annoying. Judge Jude Rogers (which could be a good title for a tv series...) has entered robustly into the debate in the Guardian, praising the number of albums on the list this year, not by first-timers, but by artists who have always been well-respected, but only now are getting into their stride, such as Elbow and British Sea Power. It's a good point, well-made, though perhaps notable that neither of these albums have ever had a "Chelsea Dagger" style singalong hit. The hit, I think, can sink even the best of bands. My favourite on the list is Rachel Unthank and the Winterset's folk album "The Bairns" not least because of its inclusion of Robert Wyatt's "Sea Song", but I'd put your fiver on Burial. whose 2nd album "Untrue", though perhaps not as much "shock of the new" as his debut, has enough about it to become a 21th century "Blue Lines" or "Screamadelica," though Elbow's introspective melancholia might be just what Britain in 2008 is looking for.

The Apocalypse is Now

The 2-part eco-thriller, "Burn Up", of which I saw the first part yesterday - the final part's tonight - is a classier beast than other recent BBC dramas, though at one point you forget which drama you're actually in since there's Marc Warren (Hustle/Dr. Who) Rupert Penry-Jones (Spooks) and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing). I half expected Torchwood to appear at some point and introduce some extra-terrestrial element. Probably having its narrative squeezed into 3 hours has helped it somewhat. I said its an eco-thriller, but its really a techno-thriller with a bit of "greenwash" to use the term the oil industry uses here to talk about "renewables." Penry-Jones playing Tom McConnell, young oil exec, manages to sum up the climate change debate as "either we're right, or they're right", which certainly saves you having to watch "An Inconvenient Truth." The convenient truth here of course is that catastrophic as most of the numbers appear regarding climate change, for a writer - whether in fiction, or in a teleplay - catastrophe is always a box office winner. The apocalypse, once nuclear in nature, is now ecological, and though even less reduceable to a human narrative than an atomic bomb, it gives any number of writers something a little more malleable to play with than, say, 9/11. In a post-biblical age, it seems we are drawn more and more to biblical stories, of floods and apocalypses. It's somewhat surprising, watching "Burn Up", to find that the writer is Simon Beaufoy, most famous for "The Full Monty." I'm looking forward to tonight's conclusion. My standby button remains off.

***

Part Two wasn't quite as exciting as part one. Being set entirely at "Kyoto 2" in Calgary (why didn't they just call it Calgary then?) it was a bit of an uneasy mix between an episode of the West Wing (lots of scenes drafting documents) with an episode of "Spooks." I'm not sure I cared by the end, which of the "powers that be" won out. It was clever, but required quite a lot of suspension of belief. In the end, I guess it was wanting it both ways - to be a bit of a polemic on the one hand, and a thriller on the other. You only have to compare with Channel 4's classic "Traffik" to see how this kind of thing can be done. Worth watching, particular in the desert of summer viewing, but a little disappointing.

When you were great

Was there ever a time when you were great? I think there was actually, even if I'm not sure who exactly I'm talking to at this point in time. I've long been of the view that musicians - at least rock and pop musicians - are touched with something remarkable for only a short time, and its what they do with that, then and later that matters most. In it's simplest form, I'm talking about individuality - and in doing so I'm talking about musicians who contribute something more than just their playing (though that can be part of it as well.) We've all seen bands who are looking for the latest wagon to jump on (which is probably why it's called the bandwagon!) and there are whole record company departments devoted to this. Yes, I know there's sometimes something in the air - whether in Laurel Canyon in '68 or the lesser Free Trade Hall in '76 - but whether this or not, doesn't seem to make too many odds. Individuality shines through, and you've only got so long to mine that seam whether it comes to you early or late. Of course it doesn't mean that all good music is made by teenagers and twenty-somethings, just that if you spend enough of this time doing what you should be doing (living, thinking, writing about it) then you'll probably be good for life. It allowed Morrissey to always have a store of thoughts, ideas, tropes and concepts to come back to for "You are the Quarry" or Bowie to wipe the memory of his dreadful eighties with the half decent albums that came after.

They say poets are best when they are young - though the current poetic career path is such a hard climb you wonder how many would get anywhere in five years, ten years whatever. A book of poetry could have a ten year curve to it - the writing, the acceptance, the path to publication, the wait for reviews and prizes, and finally, the sense that this has found a readership, however small and select, and, if its any good, or if tells a new story, or finds a new way of telling an old story, then it will have an impact on what comes next. But what if you start late?

I can well believe that one's world view is formed early, that one's influences are embedded in adolescence, and that one's preoccupations are at least beginning to form before your twenties, whether they are sex, or work, or politics, or nature. Yet for a fiction writer to build on that framework? There's life to be lived, for a start. The writing doesn't always come first, and sometimes comes very last. It's why there's more than a few good fiction writers who began after their children were over; or after they gave up some other career; or had a breakdown of some sort. Is the older fiction writer - telling stories with all the experience at his/her control? - as valid a model as the young poet, the young songwriter? If so, are these lives mirror opposites - with the "store" that a poet draws on later in life only a simulacrum of what's before, no different than the rough drafts, failed attempts and abandoned manuscripts of the young fiction writer? Or, is this the very stuff, the very thing, that the writing life is both afraid of and needs - the essential individuality that every artist must possess if they are going to do anything worthwhile.

An old friend has asked me why my music never progressed - or rather, he wondered if that was in fact the case - that the "sound" I make is the same, near enough, now as twenty years before. It has the same voice, the same-ish instruments, and the same homemade production. I was trying to explain to him, that since I'm not a "proper" recording artist/musician, I'm less interested in sounding like everything else on the radio, and more interested in some exploration of a small plot of land that I've made my own. I'm not even sure if its real - or whether, my musical interest, is itself a simulacrum, a version of myself that is forever going back over certain things: music as art project on the one hand, music as psychological examination on the other. I wasn't sure what I was writing about, and so I went back to some of the music I recorded in 1984-5, and yes, I'm there in my more recent stuff, almost exactly as then. The same preoccupations, the same aesthetic questions (or: if they're not questions - the same answers). I've recently been trying to synthesize my poetry into a single book-length volume, and though there's progression, there's also it's opposite. A hall of mirrors or a version of myself that's all about closing the door on a room and looking only at what's inside. I don't think that poetry and songs are necessarily adolescent, but I wonder, if away from a gaze that expects a progression - an increased sophistication with each iteration - something different can go on, than otherwise. When we look at the career of an Emily Dickinson or a Nick Drake, we are saddened that they never had the success that the work deserved; but part of me wonders if we need more of these hidden careers, the disappointment providing an opportunity to concentrate not on the career, or even on the work, so much as the inspiration that makes the individuality.

When you were great, I never knew your work. Now I do, I'm not so sure...

John Wilmot

Just watching The Libertine starring Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester aka John Wilmot aka the Libertine. Great film, actually. Not sure whether it was successful or stuff. My old friend Samantha was a great fan of Rochester, and she was always entirely accurate in her taste, and liked a bit of older stuff. I realise I'm a bit naive about the 17th century, and if the film has done nothing else, it will make me investigate. What's really scarey, is, that apart from the whores, the aristocracy, the arrogance, the theatre, the insensitivity and the nastiness, I really related to him. More, I AM him. Bloody hell. Proof, I guess, that I'm having a bad week. But, I'm beginning to think that it's a good week. The Libertine shows Wilmot as a flawed person, but an honest one, whose main problem was against the world he lived in. I realise I keep referring to things as Puritans and Cavaliers without really knowing what I mean by that. So, Spain beating Germany in the European Championships was a victory for the cavaliers, though it looked, for a while that the puritans were going to win - equally, Man Utd rather than Chelsea last year in the league and champions league. It's not one way, is it? Coldplay - a puritan band if there ever has been one - are doing well. I've a puritan in my head, with a cavalier mind, and the film made me think about what I really am. In a puritan age - which is where I think we are now - I'm Lord Rochester. There is a cost, there is a cost. I'm beginning to think it's worth paying.

When the avant garde comes will I be invited?

I have often wondered, and its appropriate to think about again following this blog post in the Guardian from Lee Rourke, whether I would ever be thought of as part of a new movement? I've always felt I'd be more of a John The Baptist or an T.E. Hulne than the messiahs that followed, still, I like to think I know an avant garde work when I see it - or indeed write it. A bit like being a goth, if you call yourself avant garde, you're probably not, if you deny it, maybe you are. All you avant gardeists out there - you're just Iris Murdoch with more anal sex.

The Future of the Book

I'm not sure anyone can truly accurate in talking about the future of the book, when they never even asked my opinion. That said, they did ask the opinion of a few people I would have told them to speak to (though not everyone), and a few more I've not heard of, for a report for the Arts Council called Read:Write. See what they did there? Computer style terminology. Interesting stuff, though I've only just been sent it, so you get to read it before I do. Isn't that clever? Funnily enough I was just reading Douglas Coupland's "JPod" which is fun, but a little too arch for its own good. Its not quite as original sounding as his older fictions, perhaps because so many people have copied his style (something he makes a play on in the novel.) But it is fun. Just skip the computery bits.

I'm sure there are a million things I want to share with you, beyond that link, but after a couple of works working way too hard, I'm not sure whether my literary soul has died or is merely flattened at the back of the cupboard again. I was amazed and fascinated at a Redeye photography event last week by the blogger/photographer/generally good guy, Christian Payne, aka Documentally, who (pause for breath) live-streamed to the web from his Nokia N95 his conversation with me, which I'm sure wouldn't be easy for mere mortals as the digital evangelist that is Christian. If I look a bit worse for wear I'd just rushed back in the pouring rain from a hospital appointment. I feel I now need a smart phone!

Writers aren't sports stars

Watching the Williams sisters compete in the Wimbledon final today, it was a rare moment when victory in sport would be tinged with sadness, and defeat tinted with pride. Usually in sport, its "winner takes all", the loser forgotten; but hardly possible when the winner and loser will be sharing Thanksgiving and Christmas together? I only mention this, in contrast to writing, which whilst also a pursuit of solitary excellence, hasn't got quite such an easy measure of "success" and "failure." "It doesn't matter what you think about your work," writes Anne Enright in short, perceptive piece in today's Guardian, the finished work is just as is, whether you thought it good or bad. In a completed story are the opportunity costs of all the roads not travelled. Enright is sceptical of poets who "just know" when something is right, putting it down to something melancholic in the poet's spirit.

Of the more melancholic poets, seeing Morrissey in Hyde Park yesterday cheered me up no end. An exemplarily chosen set, mixing Smiths songs, obscurities, solo hits and a wonderful Buzzcocks cover, ("You say you don't love me", turned into a Billy Fury-style piece of crooning, a massive hit, I reckon, if he ever releases it), Morrissey was not just in a good mood, and fine voice, but seemed at one with both his place - on stage, a showman - and his career, ranging all over the shop, with his fine band able to do justice to such rarely played songs as "Death of a Disco Dancer." How strange, that Beck, preceding him, and about to launch a new album, was so perfunctory, coming on like a curmudgeonly still-young Neil Young, with black hat, shades and coat. Last time I saw Beck - in about 2000 - he was an impish, glammy glittering uber-popstar, yesterday, despite a few flurries from his varied back catalogue, it felt like he was going through the motions.

And for some other points of view on the Amis religious debate blogged about below, try Fictionbitch, Richard Madeley, and even the Guardian. Read them all and pretend to your friends that you were actually there.

Finally, this year's national short story prize is having the shortlisted stories broadcast on Radio 4 next week. Still a little sceptical about identifying "best of breed" in this way, but pleased that two of the writers I met in Norwich last week, the established poet and novelist Adam Thorpe, and the Canadian short story writer, Erin Soros, are on the list.

God and Amis in the Same Room

To Manchester University for the latest public lecture from Prof. Amis, this time with James Wood, and on the relationship between literature and God. A reasonably full Whitworth Hall, and I was remembering that the last time I was there, I was officiating at a graduate ceremony handing out scrolls. It's too big a subject of course, and the debate wasn't helped by the design - three men on a stage - and a vast hall ahead of them. Interesting that Amis quoted from Milton, Greene and Herbert; this was Amis the academic rather than Amis the satirist. The argument - a valid one - that literature is essentially secular, particularly the novel, but where the world in which it exists is a religious one, or rather where there is a struggle between the religious and the secular, then art inevitably reflects that society, that struggle, is a subtle one. As they were introduced to us as Professor Amis and Professor Wood, I got the sense that its not literature that wants to be an alternate religion, but academia itself. What is wrong with Martin and James? The professorial monikers hanging as heavy as ecclesiastical robes. Not, one thinks, an appropriate soubriquet for the writer of the scabrous "Yellow Dog." If the argument from the top table was both allusive and elusive, the audience let us down. Regulars at Manchester literature events knows the mad question is due at some point; where the questioner gives a partial biography, mentions their unpublished novel, and asks a question so oblique that the room appears to be on its side. Tonight we had pretty much five in the row, as evangelical hands shot up from the cheap seats. You have to feel a little sorry for evangelicals, not that they're the one section of society that is treated with withering contempt, as much as that they have an inability to recognise that their view of the world is a narrowcast one. It is impossible to imagine a novel that takes the evangelical seriously, after all, they take themselves so seriously - and the satirist is left with Chaucerian grotesques. Amis makes the point that even Greene's religious schematic creates an unreality that weakens the novels. For the second time in a fortnight, Cormac MacCarthy's "The Road" is a point of reference - and I have to squeeze my ears closed at the "spoilers" from the stage, I'm currently half way through it. Religion, in terms of tonight's meeting is very localised, Western, Christian, and it is Genesis and Revelations, with a nod to Job, that get the namechecks. The Bible is far richer a source for stories than its alpha and omega, but of course, it is original sin - and its fearsome opposite, eternity, that intrigues the novelist and the critic. A few interesting points were lost in the echoing space -: where are the secular novels that incorporate some kind of religious death? I wanted to bring up Louise Erdrich's "Tales of Burning Love" where the native American wife, walking out in the snow, becomes a metaphor. We live in an age, in Britain at least, where its almost impossible for a writer to give us a directly Christian story, since such a life and world would be unrecognisable in our low-key religious country. Yet, spiritualism, whether native American, or otherwise, has become the pick 'n' mix metaphor. Will Self creates his own inverted religion in "The Book of Dave", yet most novels remain both conservative and moral. Secular fiction - and Amis and Wood both seem to be hinting at this - loses out when it disconnects from the very human need to "believe."

Blogs and Biogs

The Guardian used to do a bit of a Saturday round-up of the blogs, but perhaps because it's got such a well-used blog itself now, or simply realised the absurdity of taking the online offline, its given up the habit. It's a bit of a relief, really. This blog, amongst others, used to occasionally get a quote, and I wasn't then sure whether I should mention it in this blog, before realising that if you were reading this blog you'd probably already read what had been extracted in the Guardian. Such circularity! There is some point to this point, of course - in that the print/online relationship goes two ways. There's been a move over the last few years to put "online" (or at least on DVD) magazines from the archive. so that, for instance, the hard-to-find final Salinger Glass family story, Hapworth 16, 1924 is now easily retrievable, the complete "New Yorker" having been available as a boxed set for a few years now. I guess that's the idea behind the Google (and others) digitisation projects, though I'm not sure that scanning books en masse is as important a job as preserving printed materials. Moreover, who - and to what extent - is preserving the cyberspace only words that fill the blogs? The letters of Julian Mclaren-Ross has just come out for instance, a virtually forgotten writer who died in 1965, and is more famous for his lifestyle than his works, it seems almost ridiculous that 43 years after he died, that a well-edited selection of his letters should be given so much floorspace in our literary pages; yet that's the point. As DJ Taylor points out in his Guardian review, "even half a century ago the life of the rackety freelance, a feature of English literature since the days of Johnson, was growing steadily less tenable. Here in the age of Richard & Judy and the Waterstone's three-for-two, it is virtually extinct." The rackety freelance now will, I'm sure have a blog, and instead of begging letters to editors, will have a brisk, businesslike email conversation with commissioners, as well as whatever day job is necessary, still trying to carve out enough time to write "the novel". It's not that this stuff isn't being stored away, but that it could, indeed, take 43 years to identify what blogs are worthwhile. In a world where every new graduate - and every job - seems to be something to do with "marketing", it takes quite a lot of conviction to do something as economically useless as write a poem, a song or a story. Yet, it is these things, not the conferences, seminars, think-pieces, or reality TV shows, which have the only continuing value. Think of all the footage of old European Championships and Wimbledons, its always the shots, the games, not the comment, that gets repeated. Kathryn Hughes writes quite a considered, but somewhat redundant piece on "what happened to the golden age of biography?" Or rather she doesn't. The "crisis" is only really in the headlines, the piece itself is far more even-handed, bemoaning only the lack of time (and resource) that is being given to biographers these days to research their subjects. I think- at least in terms of literary biography - there is something else. Not just that everyone of stature has been done, as she says, but that our long-lived writers these days seem to fade away, not forgottten, not yet discovered. And, more than likely, with their literary archives bequeathed to one or other university. What will the blog generation have to bequeath, I wonder? A USB stick?

David Bowie in the Mail on Sunday....

...there's definitely something wrong there. Yes, this coming Sunday you can get a free David Bowie CD, his own selection of favourite tracks, rarities etc. I know, its the Mail on Sunday. Prince was one thing, but David Bowie? The Thin White Duke? Aladdin Sane? Ziggy Stardust?...and middle England's weekly bible of misery-porn? But that's the world today, you see. No certainty anymore. There's probably some demographic I'm missing here - perhaps its the "Lets Dance"/Serious Moonlight era Bowie fans - as for me, well, its good to read what the enemy think now and then. Still, I'm shaking my head with some kind of disbelief. Whatever next? Slipknot in Hello Magazine? My Bloody Valentine in Vanity Fair? Fuck Buttons in FHM?

Talking, more talking

Something about this time of year sees every activity under the sun taking place at the same time. I've another window open, with the Tony Wilson Experience going on live at Urbis, and the composer Steve Martland and poet Simon Armitage speaking, twenty hours into a twenty four hour period. Armitage has just written a book about his interest in music, "Gig." He's recently formed a band, and kind of sees his poetry life as a replacement for him not-being-in-a-band. As he says, his reputation nowadays depends on the poetry, so it creates a pressure that's perhaps not there when he's doing music - that's just fun. Last night, Paul Morley and Irvine Welsh talked about how the "middleman" and the "media" are being so damaging these days - as a stop on talent, and that other models; print-on-demand, ebooks etc. will work around the edge of the mainstream.

It's interesting, all this talk... I've spent the last week in a different talking environment at New Writing Worlds in Norwich ; and how different it was. The Tony Wilson Experience came about as a way of "passing on" from old talent to new talent; and though I've been enjoying the talks, despite the low-band video streaming, it has been a bit one-to-many. Manchester's a highly creative city, in terms of the amount of people making good quality material, but it still seems to lack something in terms of the opportunities. In terms of the arts, its only really music - whether classical or contemporary - where there seems real opportunities. Manchester's publishing scene, for instance, is tiny and subsidised; and the university creative writing courses have been as likely to import the talent as use what's already around. Later today, hurricanes willing, the Poets & Players garden party creates another city subset: readings from Carole Ann Duffy and Matthew Welton amongst others.

Armitage, now, is talking about how writers need to have passion - and also need to read, as well as to write. It's the simple advice that's the best. When I first read Armitage, it gave me a reason to start reading poetry again, after university had turned me off poetry. I'm still wrestling with some of these conflicts.

Latest posts from New Writing Worlds

Busy blogging at New Writing Worlds. Catch my posts here....

Nature and Nation

My new post on today's literary salon at New Writing Worlds is here.

New Writing Worlds 2008

Tuesday night at New Writing worlds, readings and a debate... details here.

Flatlands

I'm in Norwich, looking at out on a flat, tree-lined landscape. The train journey down was pleasant, uneventful. I wasn't the beneficiary of Whitsun weddings or similar phenomena to write about; though every town I passed through did seem to have a cathedral high on the brow; but the medieval cathedrals were built fortified and high for many reasons, not least protection and security. All around and in between these towns you get to see things not dissimilarly to how they'd have been forty, fifty years ago. Farming in this country was industrialising a long time ago, and though the polytunnels and rural structures of Thanet Earth are a more recent thing; I guess the difference now, compared with around World War Two, would be how few people now "work the land." During the war my grandparents had an army of their own; land girls (and boys). The other sign of the times, I guess, would be the redbrick sprawl as you come into Margaret Thatcher's Grantham, and then, next to the station, a massive supermarket. In Norwich itself, coming from the station, the traffic was busy as it is everywhere these days, and on reaching the university, I found myself queueing in the rain behind a conference party of Spanish students. It gave me a chance to find the campus Waterstones. With such a range of readings over the next few days, I'm sure I'll be back there as purchaser. Tonight sees readings from Mimi Khalvati and Adam Thorpe, with a debate "Future Imperfect?" later on, which I hope will be a bit of a scene-setter for the next few days. Everything, as New Order once had it, has gone green these days - the next thing is to tease out the contradictions, and work out that means. I could, have course, have flown to Norwich; my pleasant and relaxing train journey was an appropriate start.

Version Control

"Version control" is a term from software development; but it's not something new to writers. And like software, writing has it's development and production phases; yet, just as a "software release" isn't necessarily the final say, neither is publication. In the past, it was the technical and human limitations of turning a handwritten script into a fair copy or typescript and then again, into the moveable type of a book. I'm always quite surprised when I read of writers - even younger writers who still write initially by hand, or even continue with a heavy manual typewriter long after they've fallen out of favour elsewhere. But if the technique's not broke then don't look to fixing it. It was still a surprise to read in the Sunday Times that Nietzsche used a typewriter. So says Andrew Sullivan pace Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic. I've long argued that the tools of your trade can effect the work - whether its Hemingway's heavy-duty Remington or Kerouac's continuous scroll. When I write poetry the page length can be a determinant (which is why when writing longhand I tend to steal the blank white space of copier paper), as can whether I write it direct to the PC (landscape) rather than in a notebook (portrait.) As Sullivan points out, Google, for all it's advantages, can give us "pond skater minds." Yet, it's not just that. Finding yourself without the internet nowadays, seems to make using a PC almost impossible - yet for years we used the computer as little more than a glorified typewriter anyhow. Tomorrow, on a long train journey, I'll have a choice: laptop whilst the batteries last or longhand. I think I might get a few thousand uninterrupted words on the former if I'm lucky, since without the distractions of my Google and Facebook and whatever else, there'll be nothing else to concentrate on. Yet, going back to my initial point: about "version control" - in a connected world, the distinction between "on" and "off" line is becoming less certain; and in the same way, the internet gives us (mostly) the latest version. A future literary sleuth may well find themselves going over the log files of a writer's wiki, to see what he or she changed, and when. I think its different for poetry, where a number of different versions of a poem can probably co-exist quite easily - the poem you read at the reading; the manuscript version; the one in the little magazine; the first collection; the selected etc etc - and I'm often surprised when I see a poet reading armed with nothing more than the published book. It seems a little disappointing in some ways, yet one assumes a well-edited collection will be the definitive version; but disappointing in a way that a gig that sounds like the album is disappointing, no surprises. I prefer the Roger McGoughs and Les Murrays of the world skipping through the career, picking plums, and armed with some recent manuscript poems. Fiction though, it's usually error or commerce that creates the different versions, at least these days. Whenever you read a work in progress in Granta, I doubt it changes much before the final version - and this, again, disappoints me a little. I think that "publishing" something gives you a sense of closure on the piece - perhaps "sets it" for you, even if you'd perhaps have gone back and changed it later. It's perhaps indicative of my preference for flux, that my favourite novel, "Tender is the Night" by Fitzgerald exists in two very distinct versions. The original - and restored version - begins with the moment when Dick Diver begins his fall, whilst the revised version (that was the popularly known one for so long) is chronological. It's clear to me that the chronological one isn't the right one - but picking up, at last, a copy of this secondhand earlier today, I'm looking forward to reading the wrong version at some point.

Next stop Norwich

After a very hectic few months, weeks, days, I'm able to relax a little, and looking forward to visiting Norwich next week for New Writing Worlds, part conference, part literary salon, part festival, with this year's theme of "Human:Nature". I've only once been to Norwich; in 1997 I had an interview with Andrew Motion for the UEA MA. It seems a long time ago. The previous year, having been shortlisted for the Lichfield Prize for my novel "Lineage", I'd decided to apply for this prestigious course. I sent off a short story I'd written set the previous summer in Northern California, where I'd been on holiday, and got a slightly gnomic response, about the course being busy, and I should try next year. Next year I did, and presumably they still had my story on file, since I wasn't asked to send anything else. I went along for the interview and sat there with 5 other hopefuls. Hard as it is to believe, I'd never actually met any writers until that day, and here were lots of them. One of the candidates, Francis Liardet, I even bought her novel from the UEA campus bookshop after the interview, a little puzzled, I admit, why a published novelist would be wanting to go on a creative writing course. "The Game", her novel, was excellent, but I don't think she's ever published a follow-up, though she got on the course, and was featured in the next year's UEA anthology. I didn't get on that year's MA, but it convinced me that this was what I wanted to do, and I applied and got accepted for the Manchester one. A friend had recently moved to Norwich, and I think I was more interested in catching up with Ruth, than I was in the interview. So it will be interesting to spend a few days there, in a half-remembered city.

Something about Manchester

I'd had one of those worst of days, and you almost regret that you've tickets for a gig that night; but I can't remember the last time I bought a ticket without thought - as in, I've got to see this singer. The singer of course being Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) the Atlanta, Georgia singer that earlier that day I'd vaguely described to colleagues as Marianne Faithfull meets Amy Winehouse; but actually, she's more Patti Smith meets Otis Redding - confirmed by a sublime cover of a sublime Try a Little Tenderness late in the gig - but more than that, and the reason I'd bought the ticket so far in advance, is because she's Cat Power. Shame on Manchester that the concert wasn't sold out (unlike, say, the Editors or such like), but the Academy is a bit of an unforgiving venue when it's full, and although I've seen some of my favourite gigs there its the first time I've ever seen the Academy aspire to intimacy. The first few songs were disappointing; there wasn't a thing that caught fire. I was wondering why I was there? Surely there was more emotion in my day than in these limp things? Yet, hold on there, she has to release a bit from her crack band, and when, a few songs in, she sings the self-written "Song for Bobby" (Dylan) off the recent "Jukebox" covers album the gig leaps into the stratosphere and never comes down. This famously fragile perfomer is enjoying herself, jigging on stage, and as the gig progresses you get the feeling - as so often happens - that because Manchester so loves its fragile singers, so loves it music, those singers and musicians start loving it back. By the end of the concert, she's still on stage, on her own, after nearly two hours, throwing a bouquet of flowers into the audience. It's a gesture from an indie-music past, but in indie-Manchester is entirely appropriate. As I say, the Academy doesn't usually run to intimacy; tonight it did. I'm sure in the context of her latest tour it was nothing special, but its the first concert I've been to for ages that has legitimate company in my list of the all the time greats.

Music is worthless

The first album I bought with my own money cost £3.99. I can't remember what the first single cost, but it was certainly more than a pound. That was in 1981-2 when music was anything but worthless, and you had to make some decisions about where you spent your money. The first CD -was "Brotherhood" by New Order and it cost me £11.99, in later 1986. So, excuse me, if I'm a little heady with excitement when I get the chance to buy "Los Angeles" by X for a fiver, or "Disintgration" by the Cure for three quid - and baulk at paying £7.99 or more for the Ting Tings album. And I feel quite sad about it all, really, that you don't have to worry too much about the cost anymore - after all, you can probably download it for free - and I think that maybe my giving my music away for free is the better way after all, cos after tax and the record shop costs, how does any of this make sense? Somehow I think we've got something terribly wrong, but I'm not sure what exactly, or...what I could have done about it. I buy my £3 CDs and wait for the end of the w0rld, that's all.

A week out

A busy week...was in Liverpool on Monday and went to see the comedian Jason Cook, whose show "My confessions" was perhaps a Geordie "My Name is Earl". Funny, painful, honest, and in the end comedy with a bit of soul. Highly recommended. Then Tuesday Redeye, Manchester's photography network had two very different photographic takes on Northern Ireland, Jill Jennings' photo essay on the dismantled Maze/Long Kesh explored its uniquely troublesome history through the random remains that were there on her restricted visits, prisoners' graffiti, handwritten notes etc. whilst C.J. Clarke's black and white pictures of the increasingly out-of-time loyalist community is an ongoing ethnographic portrait of a community almost as strange as an undiscovered Brazilian tribe. Then, at the 2nd night of the Other Room, on Wednesday for 3 poetry readings. the highlight for me being Alex Middleton's translations and reading of Danish poet Inger Christiensen.

Finding Your Aesthetic Centre

There's been quite a bit of debate about creative writing courses, after Kureishi's remark that they are "like mental hospitals." I can't entirely disagree (our course had its own tragic death a few weeks in to it, and another student who suffered from panic attacks), but more interesting was his comment that he gives everyone 71%. It feels about right. I can't remember now whether I was just below that or just above... that ballpark. More interesting is why do people go on creative writing courses? I think, simply, the time it gives you to write your novel, has to be invaluable - it certainly helps the prevaricators by giving them a target, and for those of us who were going to write a novel anyway, it allows us to have another answer when people ask "what do you do?" I recall at one of my interviews saying: "I want to find out what kind of writer I am." Oh, the naivety of the thirty year old! It came to mind this week, when someone suggested I should concentrate a bit more on one thing or another. Spreading myself thin. Yet, I'm not sure I am in that I've had quite a lot of consistency over the years - my aesthetic centre, if you like, has broadened, but hasn't changed that much. I was re-reading Motion's biography of Larkin - suitably entitled "A Writer's Life" - and its fascinating to read of Larkin at Oxford, so unimpressed by the Anglo-Saxons and others that he's supposed to read as part of his English course, even noting in the margins of the library copy of Spenser that it's the most boring poem in the language. Larkin, never a good example in some ways, knew what he liked - even as his influences changed from Yeats to Auden, and then went elsewhere - and also what he didn't like. If it came a bit too much of a fixed idea for him, then at least he backed up those limitations with the quality of his work. (Lowell loved his work, for instance, but it was hardly reciprocated, how could it have been, knowing what we know of Larkin's "centre"?) - and railing against a set orthodoxy, can be a powerful way of defining your own art. Whether its music, art, fiction or poetry, I've not changed massively in what I consider important - both in others, and in my own intentions. If I have a dilettante streak, its because I know how difficult it is to actually create an art that fulfils all of one's aesthetic desires. My creative course reconnected me with my aesthetic centre in a way that I hadn't really expected. Ten years on, the importance of having that centre, however wayward it might seem at times, remains critical, I think.

Culture & Creativity

I've had a divebombing mood this week, just a lot of things going on in my head, and around me, and without the time to really do what I needed to do, which was to have a break, get away, see friends, clear head etc. Yet, not for the first time, waking with a dark cloud over me, sometimes allows me to get down to writing something after too long prevaricating. It's with some astonishment that I've written two short stories this morning, and it's not even 3 in the afternoon yet. One's a sci-fi story, the other was meant to be, but ended up a little more grounded. The latter was an idea I'd had for a while, but the former, follows on from my thoughts about how the internet requires "water" and "electricity" to survive. I'm trying to write a range of so-called sci-fi/slipstream fictions to explore ideas like this.

And a good job I've done something this weekend, since next week's looking a little hectic. I'm hoping to get to the 2nd night of experimental poetry night The Other Room, at the Old Abbey on Wednesday, for instance.

Still the book...

I met the Guardian's games blogger Aleks Krotoski at Futuresonic a few weeks ago, and she was far more than just a "games blogger." In today's paper she turns her thoughts to fiction, and says: "there's a shift afoot in storytelling, one unavoidably inspired by computer games and new technologies." And well, there might be, but as she also indicates, you won't find it at Hay-on-Wye or in the literary pages. Hanif Kureishi was dismissive of her question regarding interactive literature, which would all be well and good, if I wasn't still trying to get through his latest highly disappointing novel (more of which when I've finished it). I've long bemoaned the fact that the web hasn't really thrown up much interesting in the way of literature, even if the critical culture of which I hope this blog is part, has benefited from the move to cyberspace; but perhaps it's just taking time. As a mass medium, I'm sure that the big web writing successes, interactive or otherwise, are likely to be at the populist end of the spectrum, at least for some time. Part of the problem is technological of course: it's only now that the average writer can do something with all the Web 2.0 tools available, without furrowing his/her brow over HTML (not usually a writers' primary skill); and though writers have always been asked to Hollywood I'm not sure they're as welcome in the plot development rooms of Grand Theft Auto IV. Yet, I agree with Aleks, that games offer quite a few useful tricks for would be innovative writers. I've a number of projects I've half tried over the years, but without a specific audience for them - I've never really invested the necessary time (and it is time) - to make them happen. As for collaboration, I've a book of Jerry Cornelius stories before me, "The New Nature of the Catastrophe", very few of which are written by his maker, Michael Moorcock. Nothing new under the sun it seems. Over the page (and I'd advise all literary types to stray to the Guardian's technology section now and then), Victor Keegan points out that "books are thriving on the internet." Which is one way of saying that the nature of the catastrophe facing the publishing industry isn't necessarily the same as that which the music industry has failed so badly to deal with. The reading experience - i.e. the book - has both "first mover" advantage and is, I'd suggest, still a "killer app;" though "Kindles" etc. are likely - eventually to have some kind of niche. Keegan mentions audio books and the success of audible.com and wonders about rivals - there's quite a range at eMusic, he might want to try. A few years ago I was roped into a project that Tony Wilson was planning, allowing downloads of stories (as well as music) for a few pence, and I even went as far as writing and recording a first "episode" of a continuing narrative . It's an idea whose time may well have come... yet, like everything on the web, the time it takes to make it good, is something that a writer needs to be paid for, just as much as a software engineer. All of this comes a few days after Robert McCrum's farewell soliloquy from 10 years at the helm of the Observer's literary pages. At least 3 of his 10 "highlights" were technological, and yet I wonder about that. Blogs, Amazon and ebook readers don't any kind of revolution make. It's hardly, Picasso, Stravinsky and Joyce, is it? If you're still calling it technology, I guess, you're still scared to use it. Aleks point, extrapolated, is that these are tools, and writer, use them. One final point, that came to mind reading another article in the Guardian, saying that the Olympics' need for power is going to limit the economic growth of the city of London, particularly in relation to data centres (i.e. banks of computers). We are so blissfully unaware of the real cost of "cyberspace" - all those servers running our blogs, eShops and videos - are served by water and electricity; and in the future, as those costs rise, then just as people are beginning to question the diversion of land to biofuels instead of wheat; what happens if we are more concerned with keeping our web servers running than our water and electricity? I'm going to go stock up on the candles.

A Sad Passing

Though I'm usually perplexed when overly popular artists/writers are lauded, the news that Beryl Cook has died proves an exception. Whenever I see her work, I can't do anything but smile. Her burly grotesques have more humanity than you'd find in a Lowry for instance, and I kind of think theres an affinity with the kitsch of Jeff Koons; though no doubt no art critic would deign to make the link. Koons is an interesting comparison, because although there's a sense that he must be "ironic" his work, when it works, works without irony - Michael Jackson and Bubbles; the glorious "Puppy". Cook's work is both instantly identifiable as hers, and also not that far removed from her contemporaries - and the humanity of her characters, scenes and the unstereotypical nature of her stereotypes puts her head and shoulders above similarly stylised painters. "The best that can be said is that Cook celebrates ordinariness," says the Guardian, quoting Adrian Searle, which, I have to say, misses the point of her paintings. There's nothing ordinary about her crowded tableaus - the very crowding is surrealist in instinct - and nothing ordinary about her grotesques either. All human life is there.

Zadie in Middlemarch

On my way to the Tatton Park Biennial art exhibition yesterday, I enjoyed reading a long essay by Zadie Smith on "Middlemarch" in the Guardian. I've long been of the opinion that Middlemarch is not only the peak of Victorian novel-writing, but a major innovative work in itself, every bit as radical in the possibilities that it gives a novelist as "Ulysses" or other later works. Smith agrees, and, given the length of a masters essay she gives it close reading, historical context, and a certain quirky take on it. I imagine its the first time David Foster Wallace has been mentioned in an essay on George Eliot, for instance. Reading the essay made me want to go back to the book again, not least because Smith concentrates some of her attention on the least showy of the books 3 main romantic relationships, that of Fred and Mary. She admits it would seem the least important of the 3 - but that Eliot gives it equal value. I'm not so sure, but its a long time since I read the novel. What is certain is that Eliot was always demotic in her approach to her characters - even more so in "Daniel Deronda" where the egalitarianism leads to some occasionally bizarre concentrations (less Gwendolyn, more Mordechai, as the novel progresses) - so that it is the ultra-serious Casaubon who becomes ridiculous, not because Eliot has told us, but because he has shown us; whilst the comic Mr. Brooke becomes a little tragic. That Eliot took as much from life as she did from philosophy, a point that Smith labours a little, should be self-evident - and its perhaps important that the most formidable of our Victorian novelists remains with a little of the reputation as an intellectual's favourite; when any reader will know that her light touch makes even her more lavish novelistic schema, a page-turner. George Eliot, Smith reminds us, reminds us about life lived, as well as life studied, and in Dorothea she is making fun of her younger self. Smith, despite her own celebrity status, sometimes, you feel, revels in a little Dorothea-envy herself. There's something seductive about the life of books; though, as Eliot knew, and Smith reminds us, nothing is as seductive of the book of life. It's surprising to read an essay on "Middlemarch" that hardly mentions Casaubon and his "Key to all mythologies", one of Eliot's more cautionary tales, and, by pressing so hard for the book's humanism, Smith almost entirely misses - or, perhaps, as someone less interested in history and politics, than in people and novels, doesn't see as important - that the novel came out after - and was written during the 1870 reform act; yet is set at the time of the more momentous 1832 act. Our greatest chronicler of the 19th century's age of political reform, and how it affected the average man and woman in every town, was, it should be remembered, never permitted the vote because of her gender. "Middlemarch"'s radicalism - and its challenge for future writers impressed by its range and depth - is at least partly because it was, and is, a political novel.

Cinema of the Damned

The destruction of Manchester's past continues, even on a weekend when Martin Parr's photographs of the city graced the Guardian; this time with yesterday's half-demolition of Cine City in Withington. Not sure when it started; always a little suspicious when they start demolishing something on a Saturday - so all that's there at the moment is the outershell of the ground floor, and the sign "Cine City." It's been closed, as has the next door White Lion, for some time, and though no reprieve was ever likely, it's more than sad to see it go. In a sane world, this would have been redeveloped as a South Manchester arts centre, but no, I'm sure we'll see it replaced with some bland residential shed, that will offer nothing distinctive to the local urban landscape. "Cine City" was a wonderful place to see a film - they used to have to change the reel half way through - me and my friend used to always smuggle a few cans of lager in to the late night showings - and I saw plenty of great films there, most notably that most modern of movies, "Natural Born Killers." Whenever anyone on Coronation Street went to the cinema they seemed to film it outside Cine City, since in the warped nostalgic logic of the show, the idea that Wetherfield residents would go to the multiplex like anyone else, simply defied belief. It's added to a certain melancholic anger I've had all week; not so much the hoards of Rangers fans drinking all day on Wednesday, but the inevitability of both the violence, and the public handwringing afterward, as the city indulges football, yet remains timid in the face of art. I've always liked Martin Parr's photographs, but the collection in the Guardian, though all well-composed, had an inevitable aurra of the tourist, up in Manchester for a week, almost a total opposite of the immersive technique that has made so much of his work classic. Yet, as the city continues its veneration of my beloved Joy Division/Factory Records/Tony Wilson (this week alone: the Tony Wilson experience in honour of his memory, Joy Division the documentary, and, Man Utd fans in O'Sheas singing "Giggs, Giggs will tear you apart again" during their league winning game against Wigan) its fascinating that Salford's the Ting Tings have just entered the UK charts at number one; probably the first genuine breakout act to really make it big from Manchester since Badly Drawn Boy. I didn't get tickets, but one of his - and Twisted Nerve's - iconic gigs was in Cine City. The Ting Tings grew out of the hotpot of artistic endeavour happening in the "other" city of Salford's Islington Mill. If the city had really wanted to honour Tony Wilson, then perhaps developing Cine City - a step away from the original Factory records address in Palatine Road - in some creative way, would have been applicable. It joins the list of ghostly venues in the city, alongside the Hacienda, the Boardwalk, the Banshee and many more before my time. I sometimes think of the ghosts that have been released by this destruction/regeneration as not being freed, more dissipated - into the air - and the spirit with them sent elsewhere, perhaps to Salford's Islington Mill, or another place, where the true possibilities of a creative city can make itself known. In the seventies Martin Parr decamped to Hebden Bridge where the cheap accomodation and mystical landscape led to it becoming a bohemian enclave away from the urban sprawl. These architectural deaths are totems, yet the modern creative spur - its X-factors, its "Mamma Mias", its international festivals - obscures any real renaissance. The city continues of course, with talk of Carol Ann Duffy or Simon Armitage - both some time of this parish - as the next Poet Laureate, and with a 12-year old from Chethams music school, the youngest ever BBC young musician of the year.

Ideas 0 Poetry 1

Baroque in Hackney, as ever, pulling out the better nuggets, mentions a lovely quote from Robert Rauschenberg, in response to the question "don't you ever run out of ideas?" he says he finds them limiting - and they don't go that far. There's quite a discussion in response to the post that I was going to enter, but realised, it was becoming a "post" in itself. I'm a little concerned that in the dismissal of "ideas" - not by Katy, but in some of the comments that follow - there's a confusion between an "idea for a poem" (which is kind of what Rauschenberg's questioner was asking, in relation to his paintings), and the "idea expressed by a poem." You can, of course, have hundreds (thousands?) of ideas for poems, and still never write a good one, yet, I think if your poetry (or painting or fiction or music) is trying to express an idea, then if the idea is good (or at least, important enough to you to be expressed), then the likelihood of the artwork being good is increased. This is not to say that I'm advocating an art of ideology, but that I feel we could do with more writers, artists, poets, musicians etc. expressing rather than just having an idea. One of the (many) reasons I like Robert Lowell is that his poems both have a strong "idea" for the poem, and, importantly, a larger idea that he is trying to express; "For the Union Dead" being one supreme example.

Kingdom of the Blind

One of my favourite novels of the last few years was Jose Saramago's "Blindness", and I'd always thought it would make a brilliant, if difficult film. Telling the story of a blindness contagion that passes from person to person; leading to the blind being quarantined, and then left, as the world outside becomes equally sightless, it's obviously rich in metaphor. Yet, the novel is also a thriller, and a philosophical novel about what it is to be human. I am very much looking forward to seeing it in the cinema, now that it has opened at Cannes to good reviews.

Rare Football Post

So, can't say I'm disappointed that Birmingham City are relegated; being a Villa fan it's not bitterness, more a sense that I've never quite seen what Birmingham City were about - half owned by a porn baron, never done anything etc etc - and the real rivalry returns with West Brom back in the top league; all we need now is Wolves. Missed the "South Bank Show" on football fiction because it clashed with the end of season match of the day - apparently, half David Peace and his excellent "The Damned United" - half "why aren't there (m)any good football novels?" I've got a good football novel in me, same as I've got a good music novel - but doubt they're really the calling card for a new novelist, more's the shame. I see that the Booker of Bookers list has been announced - all very colonial - and I've written before that you'd get a better list from the shortlist than the winner. Yet again, Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" is there, I've still got a copy unread, and I really should one day; yet the only Rushdie I ever read - "The ground beneath her feet" - was not just a very poor novel, but awfully written, and seriously in need of decent editing, that I've bene put off ever since. Sure, shouldn't judge a writer by his lows; but without any real interest in Rushdie's subject, it may remain bottom of my pile for a while yet. Can I add, that I'm disappointed, though not surprised, that Coetzee is in there for "Disgrace" rather than "The Life and Times of Michael K." Both books are good, but I feel the earlier novel is remarkable.

Post-Amisian Misogyny in Female Characterisation

I've been watching the sitcom "Peep Show" - it's now on its 5th series but somehow it had passed me by. Back in 1998, whilst studying on my MA, our tutors got one of the students from a previous year, Sam Bain, and his writing partner, Jesse Armstrong to come and talk to us. They were a "comedy duo" in the they finished each other sentences, and were writing together - with quite a clear sense of this as a career path. They had something in development or as a pilot. It was interesting, but a little offcentre given that ours was a novel writing course, but both of our tutors tended to prefer their students "funny". Anyway, that pilot (a Jane Austen spoof, if I remember rightly) may never have got them anywhere, but I'd hear mention of Sam now and then as the years rolled by. Then I read about the new series and there was a big feature with the writers. For despite starring Mitchell and Webb, its Bain and Alexander who write the majority of it. So I've been enjoying watching past "Peep Shows" these last couple of weeks; but its also been a little too much . These are definitely Men Behaving (a little bit) Badly, but its slightly darker, slightly more surreal, certainly more misanthropic. These are males in that great dysfunctional British comedy tradition; yet, with, I guess, a London-centric 21st century view of sex as something that's always on tap. And this is where I've felt a little soiled having watched the shows back-to-back. The female characters in the show, though well-acted and important foils for the dysfunctional males, are all, I realise, sex objects. There's not a single female on the show who is not primarily there as a possible shag for the boring Mark or lazy Jess. Whether its a fifteen year old at a party, the mother of your friend's fiancee, or the girl in the shoe shop, every woman in the series is a potential shag. And yes, I know that its a comedy, and the joke's so often on Mitchell and Webb, but I'm wondering if this is what we've ended up with, a certain post-Amisian misogyny in female characterisation. Compare with the much-derided "2 Pints of Lager and a packet of crisps" where the actresses are generally funny, have a voice, want sex on their terms, have relationships (and children), and aren't on a perpetual stag weekend, and there's something a little queasy about "Peep Show's" relentlessness. It's a little too dark to be generally funny - and though one has to admire the general tone of the show (it pioneered the idea of leaving large bits of the story out, so, for instance Mark and Sophie's relationship we only see in snippets), I'm reminded of meeting the writers all those years ago, and the jokey mateyness, the metropolitan self-confidence, the TV mentality, and feel a little saddened that what is in many ways a sophisticated sitcom has an inbuilt flaw similar to lads down the pub on a friday night; whilst at the same time knowing that in its portrayal of the contemporary male it may be overdone, but it's not entirely untrue. But then again, I never quite understood how Frank Spencer got Betty to marry him in the first place. And yes, I do know its a comedy.

Boredom & Intelligence

I don't know if it's an excess of excitement last weekend, or whether the warm weather has one hankering after better things to do, or just a combination of things, but this last week I've just been excruciatingly bored. And...given boredom, what else is there to do than go for a drink? Actually, what I should be doing of course, is write, since I guess one of the reasons one writes is to stave off boredom - or rather writing fiction at least is probably the most highly charged intellectual pursuit I've got. You don't have to be intelligent to be a writer, of course, but I think if you are intelligent, or shall we say, easily bored - then writing is a stimulation of that intellect. I'm not an academic or musician or scientist or craftsman, so without creativity I'm reduced to paperwork, administration, watching TV, sitting in bars. All well and good, of course, but not really doing anything for the intelligence quotient. Dilletante that I am, I do find quite a lot of things in my life at the moment, not "easy" as such, but eminently doable, and, more than that, not exactly stimulating me intellectually. Perhaps I could learn a language or develop a computer system or something equally absurd, but no, I'm not just bored, I'm a little jaded. I feel a need to stretch my wings, yet I'm feeling particularly grounded at the moment. Whereas I tend to write poetry to emotional order, fiction is primarily intellectual with me, not that I'm wanting to write something particularly complex, just that the whole job of writing fiction is like building a large house from scratch, with the writer as architect, surveyor, designer, bricklayer, roofer and labourer all in one; and, though there are plenty of Barratt books and Wimpey Stories, I'm probably more interested in a one-off, a building without a particular template; something that will give me the "wow" factor; which will stop me feeling this boredom.

Changing Times

I'm thinking that this blog might be changing shortly; both in format, and content. But a few thoughts for now, based upon a heady few days in the maelstrom of the Futuresonic Festival

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Wire, punk band? art band? In conversation with John Robb, they were articulate, at least when allowed to get further than 1977. (Lesson to promoters: never get an old punk to interview old punks, you'll never make it to the 80s.) An interesting - if ultimately flawed career(or is that careers) - 3 albums in the late 70s, then a brief poppy-dancey comeback in the late 80s/early 90s, then a more recent flurry of more experimental material. I got the sense that Wire still are an art project version of what a rock band is. And hence: breaking up or reforming isn't really the point. They rocked, kind of. And were the sonic Future, as seen from, say, 1978. They never had a hit, either, unless you count Elastica's "Connection." By the way, I'd seen both Elastica and Oasis in the same venue, at the time when they'd seemed the future (or, in Oasis's case very much the instant present.) The future is, of course, overrated, or already here. Or gone. Anyway, what has a punk ever done for us?

***
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, legend of software development (though GNU is not Linux, and Free Software is not Open Source; Google if you need to), spoke about the importance of freedom in terms of software. That battle's over of course. The network has destroyed it, in many ways. Our data is stored on massive servers, Google, Yahoo, wherever. This blog is probably now the property of Google corp. Like a lot of things: I guess a "trade" takes place; in our case convenience for freedom. If you are a software developer, freedom outweighs everything; for the rest of us, perhaps its convenience, perhaps its even the access to a medium that allows a voice (and can Google censor us? will it? can it?), perhaps its portability. Basically, Stallman's a hippy; and remember, what have hippies ever done for us?

***
Thomson & Craighead are exhibiting their latest works at the CUBE gallery as part of Futuresonic. They gave an interesting artist talk on Saturday, alongside other artists showcasing at Futuresonic. I like how they take existing data, content, ephemera even, from the web, and tame it, box it, coerce it, make it look pretty. Make art out of it, in other words. A criticism came from the floor: "but your work is closed, it doesn't allow interaction." They defended this. After all, it wasn't what they did. The interaction is in the response to the work, not in a participatory involvement with it. I was recently at the Tate Liverpool, and a lot of the international works were politically engaged; participatory; and I hated them all. I want work that is of a higher level. Also, by making something still, elegant, beautiful, and new out of the chaotic information flux of the internet, I think they are more useful commentators and artists. Without the internet they would, I felt, still be artists. But then, what have artists ever done for us?

New Narratives

I'm so far away from literary matters this week, attending the Futuresonic conference/festival in Manchester. A celebration of art, music and ideas all with a "digital" side, I guess the one thing that does seem to be missing is the "literary" - or at the very least, a narrative strand, that could pull all this together. I'm sure there's a novel there somewhere based around a conference; though I kind of think there probably already is one - I just can't remember it. (Surely David Lodge's campus novels went there at some point?) The conference is about "social media", of which, dear reader, this blog is one. It's funny really, but inevitable, that writers have taken to blogs like fish to water, they are after all a written medium - but not for the first time, I'm quizzical about the absence of "literary matters" from any discussion of the digital future. Do writers just accept the new tools, and move on? Yes, there's plenty of hang-wringing around the Sony eReader or the Kindle, and I guess if I was an audiobook publisher I'd be wondering what the future was for their unabridged boxsets - yet the book remains an advanced storage and retrieval device, not easily replicable (at least not in fiction) digitally. Yet most of the discussions and events of the conference are stubbornly analogue anyway; people in a room (actually not interacting that much - the academics tend to dominate in a very traditional lecture theatre format - though this will be challenged a little this afternoon); gigs; clubs; art exhibitions; public art. Oh yes, there is, somewhere a blog, a Flickr group, a Twitter group, a wiki, a Second Life space; but I get the feeling that most people who wanted to be at the event would be at the event. Of course, one of the reasons why literature doesn't feature, or get involved, is how - with a few exceptions - "experimental" narrative or form is hidden within the stubbornly traditional literary scene. Yet I was there with colleagues from New Writing Partnership, and Lancaster Litfest, and we all feel, I think, that the nature of discourse is at least one thing that the "digital" agenda can address. But how to energise that discussion in the digital space - as opposed to the physical space of a symposium or similar - remains a question, that I don't think we'll answer until we at least make an attempt to. Whether writers, agents and publishers are wanting that - that's another question. I kind of think that we shouldn't be approaching discourse about writing in a linear way, journalistically, academically etc. but more dynamically, through some kind of narrative exposition.

Towards a first collection

The Poetry Trust, who I've been doing some work with lately, run a course called "Towards a First Collection", which if I ever did go on a poetry course, might be the one I went on. I suppose I don't want a course to get me to write poetry, since I seem to write poetry without ever having been on a course (in ebbs and flows, but it always returns); yet something about structuring these "single things" into a something coherent is a challenge that I'm not sure a poet should do on their own. I'm perhaps of the Whitman school, where my "selected poems" should be revised every year or so as "the leaves of grass" were, rather than the formal stricture of the slim volume. The latter has never really appealed, though I'd perhaps like to be a good enough poet to write these curiously static works; static in the sense that often the gap between completion of a manuscript and publication is closer to forever than not. Since we mostly read poems in the singular - or as a career summary - the poet is more akin to the pop band than the serious artist, more Girls Aloud, Blur or Madness than Portishead or Pink Floyd. I like picking up slim volumes, old and new, to see poems in their original context - it can make an old poem seem unfamiliar again. So, I'm in the process of putting together a "first collection" or a "selected poems" via the print-on-demand publishers Lulu.com and wonder when it became such an immense job to do so. Every poem requires something... some reformatting perhaps, even - heaven forbid! - a small revision - or a slight change to the title, or nothing at all, other than its placing next to the poem before and after. I'm being vaguely chronological, but even that has its downsides, something to do with balance - a series of similarly styled poems can suddenly dominate - and what of those lovely little one offs (the between album songs, the b-sides, the for-the-soundtrack moment), how to squeeze them in without squeezing them out. There are, I guess two types of collection - the one that narrows, the one that widens. A first collection should probably be the first of these, a selected the second. This is both and neither. It could take some months.

Things I like and dislike about Litt

Things I like and dislike about Toby Litt:
Likes... his short stories; his appropriate name; his spare, but imaginative prose style, his Englishness (he takes archetypes and brings them home),
Dislikes... his novels, that spare style when it goes all new puritan, his Englishness (he makes archetypes little and parochial), that his book titles are alphabetical.

Actually, I'm joking a bit, because I like Toby Litt but only seem to come back to him when he has some short stories out. But the book title thing did annoy me a bit, okay, its a nice OuLiPo like conceit, but it kind of plays fast and loose with something that's a bit close to my heart, that a book finds its own title in the writing of it. Anyway, I'm reading and enjoying his addition to the rock and roll fiction genre "I play the drums in a band called okay"; and it highlights all of the above really. I've always enjoyed these stories when they've come up in anthologies, and packaging them together this way, with a discography of the band, and some kind of chronological order, is the kind of thing I like in an author. Yet, there's also something very English (or now I come to think about it: Canadian) about his choice of band. For "okay" are a Canadian emo band. It's that littleing down of things (a bit like Beatniks was "On the Road" for Gap year students or something) that I'm talking about. Rock and roll doesn't get much less interesting than a Canadian emo band. And of course, its the fucking drummer writing it! (Even worse). But that's because its not a book about rock and roll at all, but about love, about failure, about maleness, about success, about a group of mates. I'd like to think that in this postmodern world there will be a band formed called okay, featuring 4 guys called Crab, Mono, Syph and Clap (yeah, I know!) who will set themselves the task of writing and recording okay's discography just as it says in the back of the book. And it would be crap, as only a Canadian emo band can be. Books about music can either take the fall from grace of a megastar (see Espedair Street) or something little (the Commitments), and I guess - a bit like the Cameron Crowe movie Almost Famous - Litt has gone for a middle ground, a band believably second tier, so with the potential to be Spinal Tap, but without inevitably settling into that absurdity. I reckon, pace Simon Armitage, most writers wish they could have been rockstars. Perhaps its a failure of imaginative nerve, when they invent one only to be the drummer in okay, but then anyone will tell you, a good drummer's worth his weight in gold. This isn't as good as Motley Crue's "The Dirt" of course, but then what Canadian emo band could be?

No new paradigms - just old gimmicks

The Friday Project formed a couple of years ago with a unique and interesting proposition - taking the best of the web, and making these sites into books. I've just read that its no more, having gone into liquidation. The new paradigm - getting books to the market, quicker, and sourcing them directly from the bloggers and other sites doing innovative stuff on the web - doesn't seem to have helped in the way that mattered: selling books in shops. Dreadful news for hopeful writers such as Nasim Marie Jafry, and Caroline Smailes, as well as bookseller turned blogger-editor-agent Scott Pack, whose amusing blog gave a sense that all was well in the world of the Friday Project. I guess I hoped that this small publisher, punching above its weight, would grow, and be successful, but I have to admit to always having my reservations. The bulk of their books seemed to be "toilet books" of one sort or another, seasonal stocking fillers such as Velcro Cows and TV Cream Toys; in other words gimmicky books with a short shelf life that we've all got a few off (Lost Consonants, the Meaning of Liff, Schott's Miscellany) but rarely add more than a bit of gaiety to life. No crime in itself; and I was looking forward to their list growing to include more fiction, and more interesting books. But, case in point, I've not bought a thing they've published. There's no crime in small publishers - as well as large publishers - publishing this harmless tat, and, I guess if you get a big hit (The Little Book of Calm perhaps), then it can help keep other more cerebral parts of your list going for years. However, I'm wondering if this is the very problem: by trying to grow as a publisher through selling on the internet's more gimmicky ideas, you need to have more hits than misses. And books like this, though they can become brands, are - like hit videos on YouTube - transitory one-offs, and none, ironically, had really "gone viral." The Friday Project was - at the end of the day - publishing the kind of books that every major publishes ad infinitum perhaps without the capitalisation (or the hits) to make their independence a virtue. Maybe with its assets and staff under the auspices of a major(HarperCollins according to Publishing News) the Friday Project will find some kind of future; but there's no new paradigm here, just the same old publishing business. Ouch. I'd like to be think here's something to be said for the old fashioned idea, of investing in authors rather than gimmicks.Whether this is a cautionary tale for serious (but niche) publishers also using the internet, like Salt and Snowbooks we'll have to see.

Music & F(r)iction

I'm always keen on finding the occasional confluences of literature and music; but the latest gives particular pleasure. A few years on from "Manchester, England" and the City Life Book of Manchester Stories, and over a decade since "Disco Biscuits", Manchester's demi monde is probably overdue a literary overskating, and who better to do it than Joe Stretch, who when he's not been writing "Friction", his well received debut, is playing with the band Performance. They appropriated the early eighties electronica that has since - through everyone from Dfa records to New Young Pony Club - become a de rigeur of cool; but typically, perhaps because they always delved in the deeper, more blood-soaked end of the pool, they've remained on the edge of both Manchester (and pop's) vision. All the better then that Stretch has moved into a more (or less?) respectable career. I've never really met him or the band, though used to read poetry at the same venues/same nights as they were around, but a few years ago, they were asking for stories written about their songs, and I wrote a short piece called "Architecture and police", which was, for a while, on their website. I look forward to reading his fictional debut.

If being in a band qualifies you to write about the city life, then being a (youngish) (male) writer seems to make you wish you were in a band. Simon Armitage has been all around the papers with "Gig", a prose memoir both about performing, and about not being in a band - whilst Toby Litt has collected his music stories together in a new book , "I play the drums in a band called okay"- so there's two books by writers who weren't in bands, and one by someone who was. Featured in that long ago City Life book was Mark E. Smith of the Fall of course, and his own long-awaited autobiography is out shortly, with an extract in today's Guardian. Following in the footsteps of that other hard-to-figure punk-poet Dylan; one's tempted to think that literature and music might mix after all. It just depends which side of the album you want to play first.

The Accessibility of Inaccessibilty

I've been to more poetry readings than a sane man should have ever been to. Yet I've rarely had a happier time than at the Old Abbey tonight, when Alan Halsey, Geradline Monk and Tom Jenks read, as the first of a regular reading of so-called avant garde poets. I'm not so sure. Halsey made fun, as an ex-bookseller might, of Ashbury's "Tennis Court Oath", and its value to collectors, "it always seemed to be the 4th edition, so we wondered if there ever was an earlier one; there was..."; Geraldine Monk confronted Mary Queen Of Scots head on, to great effect; whilst Tom Jenks managed to fit in both religious and secular saints (The Magic Band, thanks, Tom!). Reading from his very visual new collection, A Priori, you relished the words, whilst hankering for the visuals. My reluctant friend (there for a beer), enjoyed it thoroughly and bought the book. Go figure.

Various Things

With a new official biography of V.S. Naipaul coming out, there's been quite a lot of features about the venerable writer. He always gets referred to as our best prose writer, yet, apart from reading "A House for Mr. Biswas" many years ago, I've never read him. Probably not surprisingly, Biswas, wasn't the kind of book that really floats my boat, but I might try one of his other novels one of these days, to assuage my ignorance!

Tomorrow sees the first night of "The Other Room" with Tom Jenks, Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk. I'm intrigued to find how it will differ from readings with more traditional writers.

Torchwood, Dr. Who etc.

Torchwood finished its second series this week, just as Dr. Who begins its 4th (since being revived.) I was an avid watcher of this season's Torchwood, which was pretty consistent in tone, had good stories, and was quite clever in its use of back stories. That's the model of course, probably originated in the X-Files, where "stand alone" episodes are slotted into bigger story arcs. It's the latter story arcs that create the real emotional buy in, I think, and Dr. Who is certainly better when it does them, rather than too many episodes seeing Rose or Dawn or Martha being chased down another corridor by another alien. I know its inevitable these days, but there's so much other stuff that goes on around the TV series - from the "making of" documentaries shown incessantly on the digital channels, to the tours of the TV studios. I felt like I already knew the story for the new Dr. Who episode after having seen the extended clips on breakfast tv. I think we lose something when this happens - and also, I guess, when you get to know the actors and actresses too well. (This morning there was the actor who plays the Dalek's voice. Surely a little unecessary?) There's also been a bit of rewriting of history with the new doctor - with Christopher Eccleston's original series almost forgotten, as a result of David Tennant's success. Yet Eccleston was in many ways a more interesting doctor, a deeper character. I could see both shows going on for years, so infallible is the premise in both, and so "flexible" is the science fiction apparatus. I think there are literary archetypes for Captain Jack and the current Doctor, for instance Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat or Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius. There does seem to be an insatiability for sci-fi type shows; I notice that there are spin off TV series to both Total Recall and The Terminator series for instance. Much as I like such things, I guess I still prefer something original, which is why stories and novels remain so important. I'd never seen "The English Patient" till last weekend, for some reason, and I thought it was very good. The "framing" of the story being what made the film work. Probably what attracted to Minghella about it in the first place. Mind you, both this and The Talented Mr. Ripley are intriguing in their concentration on dysfunctional male emotion. "The English Patient" like "the Kite Runner" had its fair share of melodrama, but these books make good films, however disastrous the male stoicism is that they portray. Remember, Dr. Who and Captain Jack are also in this club.