A sign of no time

Not spending much time in high street bookshops, or even the Guardian's book pages, these days, I realise I've no idea what people are actually reading - or, rather than when I have, say, Suite Francais or that book about Tractors, I haven't the faintest idea what they're about. I think that's what we might start to lose (have started to lose?), the sense of the bookshop, the first few pages, not the sticker on the front saying "Beach read." Speaking to a tutor from MMU's writing school last week, got a sense that they're having a fantastic year, with regards to students getting published - perhaps useful, as its rival down the road gears up for Martin Amisisation - and, as if the world needs more, a real influx of poets... Ah, poets, there's so many of them, honest. I'm still enjoying my regular fix of America's "Poetry" magazine - lively, exciting poetry, and equally vibrant essays. In comparison, Steven Waling whose new book Travelator is out from Salt, makes the point about our Poetry Review"that since its recent flirtation with avant-gardism has gone scuttling back to its nice little suburban garden of verse." Which was the impression I'd got, but I thought I might just be disliking a few of its featured poets. I can't help but note that in a recent poem it had (non-ironically, I think) a verse called "How to Knit a Poem." More enjoyably, I've just received (it feels like a gift anyway), Ian Duhig's latest, "The Speed of Dark," - always a fan of his work, there's everything in here, from explicit George Bush-bating to medieval pastiche to Johnny Cash. Its on nice thick paper and makes a nice solid block despite being only around 70 pages, like one of those first collections you occasionally find in 2nd hand bookshops from the early-70s.

Live Albums

Its been wall-to-wall TV coverage of "rock music" the last few weeks, with Glastonbury, Concert for Diana, T in the Park and Live Earth. And, you know that these days, anything filmed will eventually end up on YouTube anyway.So if you missed Arctic Monkeys doing "Diamonds are forever", no worries. Last night's Glastonbury highlights did a better job of covering the festival than watching it live on multi-channel, picking out unique items like that one, and Lily Allen singing "Gangsters" with the Specials; which somehow made perfect sense - great to see Terry Hall again, and Lily seems a perfect addition to the pop landscape here. Amy Winehouse was remarkably good, of course, and I've liked what I've seen of the Pigeon Detectives, as well as the Artic Monkeys. In other words, there does seem a genuine crop of good young artists who've not only all arrived on the scene at once, but look like they might have a bit of longevity. It's all a matter of taste, of course, I could do without Rufus Wainwright as Judy Garland, and the Fratelli's pub singalongs. But, I digress. On the day that the Prince CD came free with the Mail on Sunday (not a patch on his previous two albums, but with a number of okay songs on a first couple of listens), I'm wondering if another "casualty" of the internet's ubiquity (joining Fopp records, Ash's album career, physical CDs and Saturday morning TV pop shows) will be the live album. Why on earth would anyone want to buy one when so much stuff is available on Youtube et all to download? And, I'm not even sure, that artists will keep releasing them - or rather, you'll be as likely to be able to get a "souvenir" of the show. I know the "live album" isn't always seen as one of the highlights of most discographies, but over the last few years I've got quite a taste for them - particularly those 70s double albums - if only to hear familiar songs in a different way, or to experience a band live I'd never had a chance of seeing. I'm just listening to Jeff Buckley's (excellent) Live at L'Olimpia and this morning had enjoyed Pearl Jam's Live at Beyanora Hall take on "Masters of War"; so here's 20 great(ish) live albums...

1. Live 1969 - Velvet Underground
2. Kick Out the Jams - MC5
3. Miles of Aisles - Joni Mitchell
4. Live at L'Olimpia - Jeff Buckley
5. Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape - Bauhaus
6. The 27 Points - The Fall
7. Live - War
8. The Name of This Band is Talking Heads - Talking Heads
9. Live at Rajis - Dream Syndicate
10. Live & Direct - Aswad
11. Live at the Counter Eurovision 79 - Misty in Roots
12. Live in Berlin - Au Pairs
13. Weld - Neil Young
14. Earth Tour Live - Parliament
15. Floating Anarchy - Gong and Here and Now Band
16. MTV Unplugged - Nirvana
17. Commodores Live - The Commodores
18. Live 87 - Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers
19. Hai! (Live Album) - Cabaret Voltaire
20. He Who Dares Wins - Theatre of Hate

Will Self's Surprising Masterpiece?

I loved "The Quantity Theory of Insanity", Will Self's 1991 debut collection, though it seems a long time ago now, and by 1998's "Tough Tough Toys for Tough Tough Boys", the pinpoint accuracy of his supremely imaginative conceits, had lost something of their sharpness. Initially, like Ian McEwan, he was a writer who struggled with the longer form, preferring novellas and short story collections to novels. I've passed on "Great Apes", "How the Dead Live" and "Dorian", high concept novels all, but may have to go back to them now, having spent the last few days enthralled by equally high concept "The Book of Dave." At well over 400 pages, its a long book, but rarely does it drag, and its conceit this time - a future London, virtually underwater except a few islands of high ground, where the religion is based upon "The Book of Dave", a buried tome written by a contemporary London cabby - was what drew me to the book. Alternating between different eras of that future, and the present and near-present, in choosing a cabby, Self has hit upon a near-perfect oracle for his satire. It is the London cabby's "knowledge", which Dave Rudman himself wants to pass down to his son, Carl ("the lost boy"), as he took it from his own Grandad, that becomes an immensely plausible psalter. Inhabitants of Nu London introduce each other with "Where2, guv?" and the various sequences of London streets as a litany. Like "A Clockwork Orange" the future sounds different, the inhabitants of Ham(pstead Heath) speaking Mockni, whilst the Nu Londoners speak Arpee. Self has great fun with his invented future, starbucks for drink and takeaway for food; the sacred texts of Dave's "book" - a scabrous rant written when he was going insane - providing a rule for all of life. But Dave is no benevolent carpenter, he's a man torn apart from divorce and tortured by the Child Support Agency. In the future, children are split between their mother's and father's as the natural state of being, half a week with each, as if adhering to the rigidity of a family court order. The Mockni, is initially hard to get used to, but its worth taking the effort, since it creates an otherwordliness that's also funny and familiar, Self's ear never deserting him. Sensibly going back and forth in time, the ideas pile up - this most fertile of minds having plenty of targets in his sights; from family breakdown to global warming. There are confusions - what are Daveworks? what, indeed are the half-human, half-animal motos? who is the Hack, the Driver, the Lawyer? Despite a glossary at the back (I found it half way through reading the book, and it might help - but only might) not everything works... yet enough does. You wouldn't want the book any shorter, even if some of the chapters seem written to confuse. Self's always been a popular writer, and I believe this book has done well - but I'm almost convinced that its a masterpiece, baggy and bloated in parts, and, perhaps its worse sin, occasionally sentimental for the broken contemporary man that is Dave, yet entirely convincing of its own satirical world. Self's own love of psychogeography pulses through the book, as well, the cabby's Knowledge a brilliant device: and yes, how would it be possible to create contemporary London from scratch hundreds of years from now? Not from Alastair Campbell's diaries, but from the ranting of a London cabby missing his estranged son. It is this sense of conviction - despite the buried book's "madness" - that gives the book its most pointed satire; for this future world is brutal, medieval, unforgiving, half Stasi-East Germany, half dark-ages fiefdom. Imagine, Self seems to be saying, a whole society basing itself on a fake doctrine of uncertain providence that even its author wanted to repudiate. Its the 2nd book I've read this year - after AM Homes "This Book Will Save Your Life" - where natural disaster is a key component; the global warming novel seeming to be a better genre than the post 9/11 novel; yet its decidedly contemporary in other ways: Fathers 4 Justice, the London Eye, even the wasting away of David Blaine in a box on the side of the Thames (surely an anachronism even so close to the event?)- given the sterility of so much contemporary English fiction, "The Book of Dave" is a brilliant poke in its sides, and far more appealing, in every way than the Booker lists of the last couple of years. One can only hope that one of our most interesting writers, is reaching some sort of peak.

Quiet for a reason

I've been quiet for a reason - or several reasons - (a) I'm reading a good book, a very good book, more of which when I've finished it (b) I've been writing, or thinking about writing the next bit of the thing I'm writing (c) work etc. In Manchester, the international festival has been slightly underwhelming, at least partially because of the rain. The one time I sat in the "tent" outside of G-Mex, it wasn't the minimalist avant garde sax quintet that drove us out, but the freezing cold. For an event that received quite a lot of public largesse, it was disappointingly private sector in its approach - Sell tickets and leave it at that. In my job, I talk alot about "added value", and MIF seemed to lack that. It did the PR bit really well, but nobody I knew was even aware that it was on. It palpably lacked the "street buzz" you'd find in the city at other times of year, for other festivals, for a lot less money. In fact, coincided with the smoking ban, pubs have seemed near empty - the annual student exodus taking its toll, just as much as the rain. Two years from now, they need to do a lot better. I'm sure some of the performances/events were impressive, but unless you'd booked in advance, I wonder if you'd even have noticed? More pleasing is the news that Gordon Brown has today set his face against Manchester's supercasino. I've been bewildered by our city fathers' continued addiction to this. I think if Manchester had supported Blackpool all along there might have been a "win", but this spurious municipal sparring has not been a pleasant sight. Back on literary message, there's a couple of interesting lit. events tomorrow - Fiona Campbell and Catherine O'Flynn at Manchester Library at 1.00 and Friday night at Islington Mill, an intriguing event with "sound poet" Phil Davenport.

The iPhone - it's not just a phone

For those of us who are yet to be convinced that Apple offer us anything other than a higher price...

Shakespeare & Co.

Reading that Shakespeare may no longer be compulsory for English undergraduates at Oxford ("Shakespeare in peril..." as the Independent has it)I'm tended to think it's a non-story. I studied English at Lancaster 85-8, and Shakespeare was nowhere to be seen in any compulsory sense, and I imagine that's true for the majority of degrees throughout the country. I did, it's true, take the one language course that included Shakespeare, but it was hardly a highlight of my studies. I was wanting to discover the British and American novel during those 3 years, and I did, without regretting that choice. Poetry in particular, and drama were minor interests at the time. Oxford undergraduates apparently have to study all 36 Shakespeare plays during their final year, which probably puts Shakespeare into the Readers Digest "condensed books" category. My in-depth study of a few Shakespeare plays at O and A level gave me a lifelong love for the bard, that I occasionally top up. Last week, I saw The Tempest for the first time at the Royal Exchange. It's absurd that I'd never seen or read it before - but, being Shakespeare there were few resonances I didn't notice. It's an absurd play, though a thoroughly enjoyable performance, and my real regret here was not having read it before, but not having the kind of classical education where I might fitfully place "The Tempest", surely one of his most Greek of plays? Recent books and films have tried to place Shakespeare in his historical context, and I like him all the more for it. Some of the pyrotechnics of "The Tempest" seemed like an old writer grappling with the new fangled "sensationalism" of younger writers. I've always enjoyed Webster, and have more recently enjoyed Ben Jonson and Marlowe - it seems that the less Shakespeare that an undergraduate gets, the more he or she may seek him out. Along with the King James Bible, the Complete Works is one of the twin pillars of English Literature. Of course, it may be that you can now go through from 13-21 without a sniff of Shakespeare, in which case, I'd have to ask, why are you doing an English degree? My own love of the 18th/19th century English novel or the 20th century American novel doesn't invalidate my debt to the great dramatist - nor stop an interest in his contemporaries.

***

I've not mentioned BBC4's wonderful 3-part series "Classic Britannia", a history of post-war British classical music. Brilliant archive footage, illuminating interviews, and a superbly realised story-arc have made this an absolute joy. Next week's closing part may cover a period too close to our time to be truly revelatory, but one couldn't help but be both amused and amazed by such performance pieces as Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning" (basically, a chorus of people er...hitting stones minimally). I'm glad that the "crossover" between the rock avant garde and contemporary classical music was acknowledged (Brian Eno's record label putting out Gavin Briar's "Jesus Blood", Taverner being an early signing to Apple records)and one can only despair at how the last twenty years have seen the rise of a "classical music lite." The audience who benefitted from music education in the 60s and 70s must be in their 40s and 50s now, and probably wonder why the only classical music they are encouraged to like is Russell Watson. Reviews for "Monkey: Journey to the West" have been generally positive, and I'm sure its a spectacle, and wish I had tickets, yet despite his fecundity, I can't help but think that Damon Albarn remains more commercially accessible than artistically successful. Better him, than Lloyd Webber or similar to write a modern opera, but better still perhaps a Mogwai or a Matthew Herbert. Albarn's perhaps become a British equivalent to David Byrne, who, admirable though his post-Talking Heads work has been, has never come close to the highs of those first 4 seminal albums (though his first foray into solo work, the score to ballet "The Catherine Wheel" was always a favourite of mine.)

Shakespeare & Co.

Reading that Shakespeare may no longer be compulsory for English undergraduates at Oxford ("Shakespeare in peril..." as the Independent has it)I'm tended to think it's a non-story. I studied English at Lancaster 85-8, and Shakespeare was nowhere to be seen in any compulsory sense, and I imagine that's true for the majority of degrees throughout the country. I did, it's true, take the one language course that included Shakespeare, but it was hardly a highlight of my studies. I was wanting to discover the British and American novel during those 3 years, and I did, without regretting that choice. Poetry in particular, and drama were minor interests at the time. Oxford undergraduates apparently have to study all 36 Shakespeare plays during their final year, which probably puts Shakespeare into the Readers Digest "condensed books" category. My in-depth study of a few Shakespeare plays at O and A level gave me a lifelong love for the bard, that I occasionally top up. Last week, I saw The Tempest for the first time at the Royal Exchange. It's absurd that I'd never seen or read it before - but, being Shakespeare there were few resonances I didn't notice. It's an absurd play, though a thoroughly enjoyable performance, and my real regret here was not having read it before, but not having the kind of classical education where I might fitfully place "The Tempest", surely one of his most Greek of plays? Recent books and films have tried to place Shakespeare in his historical context, and I like him all the more for it. Some of the pyrotechnics of "The Tempest" seemed like an old writer grappling with the new fangled "sensationalism" of younger writers. I've always enjoyed Webster, and have more recently enjoyed Ben Jonson and Marlowe - it seems that the less Shakespeare that an undergraduate gets, the more he or she may seek him out. Along with the King James Bible, the Complete Works is one of the twin pillars of English Literature. Of course, it may be that you can now go through from 13-21 without a sniff of Shakespeare, in which case, I'd have to ask, why are you doing an English degree? My own love of the 18th/19th century English novel or the 20th century American novel doesn't invalidate my debt to the great dramatist - nor stop an interest in his contemporaries.

Prince of Tabloids

Fascinated to read that Prince's new album isn't going to be distributed through anything as mundane as record shops, but on top of being available with his concert tickets, will be "free" with the Mail on Sunday. There's a bit of logic here, in that artists like Prince (like the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and the Who) can pack out any venue in the country but have problems shifting copies of their new albums without the sniff of a hit for years. Only reliable hit machines like Madonna seem able to keep the public buying their listening wares as well as seeing them. Yet, its somewhat troubling that someone somewhere has worked out that there is a close affinity between the demographics of Mail on Sunday readers and potential Prince fans. (This is the man who wrote a whole album called "Dirty Mind" - somewhat of a favourite of mine incidentally - with tracks called er... "Head" and "Sister".) Though I'm sure Mail on Sunday fans are going to be in for a treat, since his last two albums, the jazz-inflected "Musicology" and the taut pop collection "3121" were his best for a decade. As for me, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to stomach reading a whole issue of the Mail on Sunday.

Why I'm the best blogger in the world (part 1)

Why I'm the best blogger in the world ever is because I will talk about a number of different un-interconnected things and yeah, connect them. So here goes...

I was in London at the weekend ("What was it like?" a friend said, "Oh, a big city with a river down the middle" I replied), at the Taste of London festival in Regent's park. The food Glastonbury they call it, but probably first time they had mud to match!

There's a massive new Fopp on Tottenham Court Rd so I caught up on a few records/CDs and saw friends. One of whom has stood for Labour party candidate-ship a few times and so mid afternoon she got a phonecall from Manchester to say who'd won deputy leadership contest. She said guess, and I said John Cruddas - then Alan Johnson - and in some ways I was right, since apparently Harriet Harman ("the comeback queen" anyone?) got in above Johnson on the back of Cruddas's support. (He won the first round.)

Obviously Gordon Brown is now our Prime Minister. If he had better advisers I'm sure he'd announce a Minister for England on Wednesday, which would at one stroke devolve certain questions. I'm not a betting man (I lie, I am a betting man, but the sentence requires that start) but if I was I'd say that come Thursday there won't be a DCLG or a DCMS and the DTI is probably wobbling. If GB has any sense he'd take the Network Rail/BBC models of getting rid of problematic departments and give the Arts Council its independence (with all the responsibility THAT entails.) Any speculation or comments about any of this in our national press? Nope. They've been so obsessed with the Brown/Blair story that they aint got a story for when Blair's out of the pic!

I was in London, as I said, and friend's there are in Manchester next weekend. "Oh, its Manchester International festival" I said. "What?" they replied. Apparentlty publicity for this hasnt reached London yet, which is strange given that there's even a Virgin train festooned with it. But, the jury's out - I'm still puzzled by what the MIF is all about - I can't find a ticket office, for a start, and as it comes up to the festival I don't want to go throught their corporate website, I want to ask someone what's available! Not entirely sure it will leave an imprint on mine or anyone else's life....

... unlike the protagonists of "Classic Brittania". First episode of this astonishingyly good programme about post-war British classic music was a revelation to me. Apparently Manchester music didn't start with the Buzzcocks! Footage of astonishing pianist John Ogdon (winner of Tchaicovsky piano contest in Moscow in 1962 height of Cold war) Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies was wonderful. Manchester was where it was at! But when it comes to commissions, getting Benjamin Britten to write "War Requiem" for the reopening of Cov cathedral, or Oldham-born Willaim Walton to write the music for the Queen's coronation is somewhat more impressive than Damian Albarn and "Monkey Journey to the West" don't you think?

I have only one question for Alex Poots, who led on the MIF, did you even ASK Birtwistle or Maxwell Davies for a commission? If not, shame on you.

Best bit of the weekend of course was the amazing Ricky Hatton, rapidly becoming Britain's best ever boxer, winning a massive fight in Vegas in quite stunning fashion.

Opportunities

I was at Manchester Business School yesterday and was shown this very effective video as a "primer" for Web 2.0. Well worth a look - created by Mike Wesch, University of Kansas.



And any creatives working with new media may find this of interest....

"North West Digital Academies

www.digitalfuturesnw.com

Northwest Vision + Media is looking for the best and brightest undiscovered talent in the region for our exclusive Digital Academies. We want fresh ideas, new approaches and out-of-the-box thinking to develop innovative, new digital content.

The Digital Academies are intensive, three day residential courses at a top hotel in central Manchester. You will learn about the application of creativity, how to develop content, and crucially how to pitch and sell your product.

Live briefs have been set by the regions top production companies – Multi Media Arts, Hat Trick North, Channel M, Centini, Turn On TV and All Out Productions. Two Digital Academies will support up to 30 creatives and entrepreneurs with the best and brightest being selected to work with these companies to bring their ideas into production.

If you want to get into an Academy all you need to do is:

1. Read through the project briefs on their website
2. Draft a proposal for one of the briefs using the guidelines & application form
3. Email your completed application, proposal & equal opportunities form to digitalfutures@opening-doors.org.uk by noon on Wednesday July 4th

All proposals will be assessed by an industry panel and 30 successful candidates will be recommended.

The three day intensive course will help you develop your ideas with expert industry advice. On the final day you get to put everything into practice and pitch your proposal to the commissioners. And that’s not all, up to five of the academy graduates will be funded to continue their work on placement for up to nine weeks and receive over £2.5k for the project.

The two 3-day Digital Academies will take place in Manchester on:

Weds 18th, Thursday 19th and Friday 20th July
City Inn, Piccadilly Place, Manchester
And
Weds 25th, Thursday 26th and Friday 27th July
City Inn, Piccadilly Place, Manchester"

Bolton to Tokyo

Fiona Campbell, whose recent novel "Death of a Salaryman" was a very enjoyable debut, is reading from it tonight in Heaton Library, Bolton, and then again at lunchtime on 13th July at Central Library in Manchester, in one of their regular lunchtime readings. You can find out more information here.

Rushdiestani

I wrote a post about Salman Rushdie's knighthood, and then deleted it, coward that I am. So here instead is a poem I wrote a couple of days after the London bombing. Not that the two things have anything in common. Of course not.

Was the sequence unknown?

Was the sequence unknown?
Had they, perhaps, missed a turning?
Did they, in fact, know something else?
Or did another get there first –
Long after the incident.
With their civilian shoes and laundered notes
And a taste for Allah; yet human
With the sense and feeling of us all?

It sometimes seems the private days are here again.
That our innocence is misplaced,
Found in lost luggage, when the crime’s long gone.
“Yes, he lived here, But I never knew him.”
Our global village, a lawless west
With flowers amassed to mark the spot.

And life goes on. The build up of expected days
Where nothing as strange as love or death might happen.
You would think you’d sense approaching tragedy
Or thrills.
unhooking her bra in a terror zone,
for the first time,
Better, much better than nothing.
For we step too easily into loneliness,
And tread in the seeds of our hate.


Language always escapes us of course "tread in" in the last line is meant to be "tread" as in "treading grapes" rather than accidentally stepping in something.

The End of the Album?

40 years after Sgt. Pepper effectively invented the album as a standalone entity, I read that Irish band Ash have buried it, their new album, their last, and from now on, just recording and releasing single tracks as downloads. Which effectively takes us back to before Sgt. Pepper. Remember even the Beatles and Stones early albums were just collections of songs, reordered for different markets in the UK and US, singles kept off (and Sgt. Pepper would have been a better record remember if it had included Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever!)Anyone with a liking for pre-Beatles pop (the wondrous Shangri-las, much of early Motown, even Elvis), has long been frustrated that the "long player" doesn't do justice to those talents and we are left with a ragbag of greatest hits. What Ash are doing, is admit that bands like them, with a good fan base, and that good British tradition of being a "great singles band", can now forget about recording a "London Calling" or a "Revolver" and concentrate on what they were good at. Formats have always influenced the creative side - the album itself - 20 minutes each side - was originally developed for classical music, to replace a stack of 78s, and it took a decade for its possibilities to be fully explored. Yet, the CD - with its 80 minute playing time bowdlerised this - and there was no longer a concern about which song was at the start and finish of each side. I've never been that keen on the CD as an artistic statement/format - even great albums of the last 10 years ("Californication" say, or "Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space") seem to run out of road after 50 minutes or so. But this is something else, taking us back to a pre-album era, single tracks, e.p.s., clusters of tracks. God knows where the wondrous 12" will be in this new culture, for instance, back to the clubs from which it came I guess. I'm not convinced that bands will go for the radical options that gave us - love it or loathe it - "Bohemian Rhapsody", more likely that those identikit 5 minute songs all with the same dynamic that you find on Coldplay albums will become the norm - after all who'd pay 79p for a 2 minute slice of pop? But the jury is still out - and we could say the album's been dead for a while, yet, and modern classics like my favourite of last year, Midlake's "Trials of Van Occupanther" comes from another era entirely, a CD that wants to be an old fashioned long player. I think only in dance and post-rock has the CD been really explored for what it can do - think Orbital's "Snivilisation" or Godspeed You Black Emperor "F#A#Infinity" for instance - and maybe bands like Radiohead, with their album dynamic being like a particularly intense live show - taking you up, bringing you down. I guess "Dark Side of the Moon" was meant for CD rather than the other way round. I've experimented with the Download EP - and realise I never really took to the CD album format at all - the 23 or so "Albums" I recorded between 1984 and 1998 were all on cassettes that you got to turn over; I've always liked to have 2 sides to my argument!

Murder in the Cathedral

Interesting story about the Sony Playstation game that's partly set in Manchester Cathedral. Obviously everyone from T.S. Eliot down could have told you that murders and cathedrals weren't necessarily unnatural bedfellows, and I'm pretty sure it was chosen as a suitable venue after the endless crime novels and Hollywood movies that have used similar baroque backdrops. Obviously with the North West having such a vibrant games industry we can only hope that it was a local graphic artist who thought that Manchester Cathedral would be a good setting for the game. Perhaps the church has only itself to blame, after all, most people have probably forgot that cathedrals are working religious buildings rather than tourist destinations. And, I can imagine there's a bit of head scratching down south "Manchester? You mean its got a cathedral! Heavens!" I'm actually a great fan of the building itself, and can see why it might have been chosen as a model - and though I'm sure there wouldn't have been half the fuss if it had just been in a book rather than a video game, I do have some sympathy for the church. After all Sony Corporation probably wouldn't take kindly to a shoot-'em-up in Sony Towers (pictured on the left)it might given people ideas, remember), and, probably the clincher, can you envisage any scenario where they'd have dared have use a synagogue, a temple or a mosque? And, to offer a slightly more sober perspective on all of this, there were two teenagers shot in Moss Side last night, for real. Not, I may add, for the first time.

When I'm feeling dull and stupid...

When I'm feeling dull and stupid (hot weather, a busy week, hayfever) I'm prone to read something anything but. I've been reading some Borges - not just re-reading some of the great stories from "Fictions" but his earliest book, The Universal History of Iniquity, a series of pen-portraits of bad men (and women.) Its rich in everything you want, easy to read, playful, but also focussed, aware of its power. I've always been a bit of a "rationer" of Borges, because every story does have so much in it, you can gorge yourself on it a little bit. Its fascinating reading where he might sit, between Chesterton and gangster movies on the one hand, and Burroughs on the other. Its modern writing, even this far removed, and yet with its libraries, its learning, its great books and its Biblical references its also ancient. Not saying anything that anyone doesn't know - but its good to be reminded.

Mags Thru Doors

Good thing about subscribing to magazines is that its a nice surprise when they arrive. Lamport Court 9 came through the door this morning, and being a Saturday time to read it. When I was its co-editor I think I was always trying to expand both the contributors and the audience - a somewhat thankless task - but now its just got one editor it seems to have settled into having a few regular contributors, a few guests, a few strangers. For those who've not seen it, it's the most unpretentious magazine you can ever see, no letters, reviews or even an editorial (a Kenneth Rexroth poem suffices in this issue). It's a little on the "beat" side of things, now, with a few dips into the avant garde. But poets (and despite there being some fiction, its now mostly a poetry magazine)are given room to breathe. Given my previous posts about finding good poetry hard-to-find it does make you wonder when you read a well-edited magazine, why that is the case. Like a John Peel listener in the age of Wham! and Shakatak, you get the feeling that editors, publishers and the like aren't really doing their job well enough. The real find here is Simon Robson for his superbly realised "My Cleanliness Moron for a Union Rep." The contributor notes only state that Simon Robson "works for the post office." As did Bukowski of course.

And...

One reason given for the Orange Prize was that it would give an opportunity for the type of books that women wrote and read to be valued. Men, it seemed took on big subjects like war, and these were the kind of books that won prizes. Interesting that this year's Orange winner is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with her novel about the Biafran war. Already a bestseller, whatever one thinks of the Orange Prize, its undoubtedly a weighty prize these days, with a highly competitive shortlist.

Having a conversation with someone last night I started talking about a couple of interesting issues. Firstly, under the guises of "simplifying" our communication large corporations are increasingly looking at "controlling" how we contact each other in a work context - e.g. through all our phone/email numbers being centrally managed and being rung/sent simultaneously, and connecting us to whichever one we pick up first. I can see why corporates would want such a level of control, but I think we'll resist it. Increasingly our identity is becoming a precious commodity which we choose how we "distribute" - different emails/numbers for different purposes. Personalisation when it is mentioned by the corporates means selling to us personally - for us, I think its about choosing how our identity is communicated to. We can give permission - but also remove permission. But linked to this, I realised that for all the talk about "globalisation" and the speed at which the internet allows messages to be passed around, in an organisation or a community the knowledge is held, not at the centre but at the edges - and those of us on the edges are rich in knowledge BECAUSE we make connections with other communities. Therefore, in literature terms, probably the publishers (see post below on poetry) or critics or editors are actually a long, long way from the richest nodes of knowledge. I need to think about this more - and sure there's probably a "term" for it - but I think its true. True decentralisation is like during the Fall of Rome - the centre no longer holds.

What happened to poetry?

Baroque in Hackney's post about a new "poetry war" (between the young and the old) made me think that in the last few months, blinking, or not taking notice, or something like that, I've somehow lost sight of poetry. Not my own, (its mostly shy, but not extinct), but other peoples. Perhaps I've just disengaged again - but, on the other hand, what is there to engage me? Is it just that poetry only comes alive in the autumn - with festivals and prizes - or is that there's nothing particular interesting happening out there anyway? The magazines seem to be the same as they've always been. Local upstarts like Lamport Court and Parameter have new issues out but the poetry scene has a familiar look to it, The North, Poetry Review, PNR, Poetry London, Ambit et al, with, inevitably some (or alot) of familiar names. Poetry Review under Potts and Herd was an interesting beast, but under Fiona Sampson, I don't know, it seems to have reverted to its usual eclectic but non-polemical past, unthreatening to a dowager in Devon or a schoolteacher in Swindon. As Katy says in that Baroque in Hackney piece, she's not hearing anything particular interesting on (or under) the grapevine, and I doubt that she will in the near future. Too many poets perhaps, who'd become part of the education system over the last decade, probably frightened to death at across-the-board Arts Council cuts? (And nothing rhymes with "Olympics" anyway.) As she adds in the comments, those young firebrands of the past didn't just snap away at the heels of older poets, but compete, threaten, dominate, kill... The Faber-Carcanet-Bloodaxe axis is still there, but older, not necessarily wiser - and despite valiant work from Salt, and some others - Seren perhaps - it's not like there's anyone finding diamonds in the mine (and when they do, Daljit Nagra perhaps, he's on a transfer to ChelseaFaber FC before you can say broken pentameter.) I'm not sure that poetry MAs at universities have had quite the same impact as Oxbridge magazines and old boys' networks. Also, perhaps as female poets have rightly gained more of the audience (and become more of the audience), perhaps a whole different set of conventions have grown up. I'll be honest here, there's quite a few female poets, Carole Ann Duffy for instance, who I can admire, but don't really interest me with either their subject or language. This surprises me, I guess, in that I don't really believe in a feminised poetry as being gender-specific in any real way; yet there's clearly some connections between (some) female poets and some female audiences. (Yes, there might be the same man-to-man, but I don't think its necessarily so eyeball-to-eyeball.) More vitally, I think, where are the contemporary poets - male or female - who reject that easy audience? I stopped performing poetry live in no small part because I began writing poems that could get a laugh, could be easily read live. I still value the "voicing" experience that reading poetry live can give the poetry, but reading poetry live is different than a live poetry reading. All to say, in other words, is there someone there I'd get out of bed to see - who would be worth getting out of bed to see? (Or even buy the book...the pamphlet...) I had a feeling a few years ago that we were just in a bit of a dip, where we had decent poets, but of the more reflective variety, now I just wonder if our short attention spans, our performance culture, our litfests and prizes, our internet vagrancy, our regularly funded magazines, our reality TV shows (they're not allowed to take any books into Big Brother! Let them take poetry, I think...what harm would it do?), our veneration of the famous-seamuses and the like, our universal university education and probably a number of other cultural signifiers that I haven't enough E numbers in me to remember have all combined to turn a downturn into a permanent slide. In the future, all poetry will be mediocre. I do hope not.

100,000 words later

I've written over 100,000 words of this blog since August 2005, when I began writing it, which is rather frightening, considering that in that same period I've written perhaps half a dozen stories, and a novella, probably less than half that length. If only you could recycle words and make them into something more useful, like a candle holder from a wine bottle or something similar.

Control/Freedom

A recent (rejected) story came back with the pleasing comment that it showed "incredible control." Yes, I thought, that's what I'm aiming for. Yet, then I thought again, I write because I want some kind of freedom - not knowing where the narrative is going or what it might churn up. Which is it I want then? Control or Freedom? Is it even a choice or an either/or? I can see that Hemingway's stories or Joyce's "The Dead" or "The Great Gatsby" are remarkably controlled, but what of longer pieces? Its the glorious freedom of the language that makes me love "Tender is the Night" whilst I admire "The Great Gatsby." I remember a James Wood essay where he compared the control of (a better) Bellow with the flabby freedom of (a worse) Amis. Yet, his own novel, one would guess suffered from over-control, not enough freedom. Its freedom that I liked in "White Teeth" despite its faults - and yet "Life of Pi", essentially a fable, was baggy with freedom, to its detriment. What is it then? Control implies that the writer knows exactly what they are doing - freedom that they are doing anything they're capable of. Would I rather be someone who exceeds expectations - and talent - but risks falling on my face? or someone who controls every nuance, but fails to let the work breathe. I'd say control makes a good story, and freedom a good novel - but its not that simple - perhaps its that in a novel, a paragraph or a chapter can have as much freedom as you like, but without control, the novel can and will despair the reader. The same writer can do both - Amis is superbly controlled in "Night Train" or "Time's Arrow", yet his preferable writing is the freedom of "Money" and "London Fields." (If I recall, that Woods criticism was about his least successful novel, "The Information".) The best writing will do both - fitting the strategy to the flow of the race - which means control in the sprint of a short story, and periods of both in a marathon like large novel. I've been puzzling about this, and thinking that yes, maybe the answer to this question is important to me...

I Love 1982

I'd not had any great rush to read David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" since - him being two years younger than me - I had a feeling a book about being an adolescent boy in a small town in the early 80s wasn't exactly going to tell me anything I didn't already know. It's thankfully a little light on period detail - too many ra-ra skirts and rubik's cube and I'd have felt it was trying too hard - whilst far fuller with the remembered detail of everyday life, the what's it like to be a kid. The difference's with now are interesting - TV and video and video games are exotic possibilities only - whilst the kids in the novel are free to wander - only rarely been given a lift somewhere by their parents. School is a battleground, where you have to make sure you don't become one of the stricken, hated by everyone in the school. Mitchell's brilliant on the school hierarchies, and thankfully, and rare in English fiction, its actual a real school, a village comp, where this "fitting in" is all that really matters - not being clever, or good at football or getting on. The more rarified world of the middle classes is more seen in Jason's home life, where his elder sister dates boys with sports cars, and his parents, mired in a crumbling suburban marriage, are willing participants in their own facade. Honestly, I could have written most of the book, so uncannily similar are the school scenes - and in fact I think I did, in two novels I wrote for the Lichfield Prize. Mind, where Mitchell's backdrop is the Falklands War, I wrote about the Queen's Jubilee. With a lead character who is "triple invisible" because of his stammer, because he doesn't want to be bullied, and because his parents are falling apart, we have an observant narrator which is the book's real strength. Although it's about his life, he's neither important or unimportant enough to dominate. Like all of Mitchell's books, theres a sense that this is partially a collection of short stories - and I'm reminded of Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" for its interlinked stories of small town life. There's a fantastical element as well, seen through an adolescent's eyes, still not too grown up to make up stories, which serves the novel well. I'm reminded a little of Kate Atkinson, or even that master of adolescent fiction, Stephen King. What passes for plot is diversionary enough - very much a novel of the provinces - my old tutor Richard Francis would find much he recognises here. Though no tour de force like "Cloud Atlas" there is much to recommend it, yet in some ways it's likeability is perhaps its downfall. Jason so wants to be liked, to fit in, and so does the novel. The plot comes across as a little too pat, the middle England novel of early Kingsley Amis, with small details telegraphed across the pages to link the episodes, and though Mitchell sometimes able to be able to write beautifully and believably about everything, his gypsies are a particularly ripe charicature I could have done without. Its real strength is Jason himself, a sensitive boy on the verge of adolescence, toppling over into it, as the world around him gets increasingly confusing. The book often talks about "truth" and he is a true character; yet the world of Black Swan Green, so typically English, so neither one thing or another (in one telling detail: "Black Swan Green closes on a Saturday afternoon. England clsoes on a Saturday afternoon.), can never be the kind of canvas that might have made a better book. If the "I Love 1982" programmes are about nostalgia, it is this "safety" of the past that comes across as nostalgic in this book. Nobody (that matters) gets hurt. Like Zadie Smith, there seems an unwillingness in Mitchell - or perhaps in his readers - to delve into any real darkness. I recognise that cosiness, since I've used it in my own writing, but I guess what I'm looking for - as reader and writer - IS something darker, is something with a greater truth. There are some good jokes - his dad works for supermarket chain Greenland - and a few anachronisms, (was "a bit gay" really in use as a phrase then to describe things that are weak? Which Roxy Music album was he playing that included "Virginia Plain"? Must have been the TV advertised greatest hits...). I have a feeling this is a book that he had in his locker - even before success - two chapters appeared earlier in Granta and New Writing - so is more a byway than a follow up to "Cloud Atlas." Much to recommend it, but unlikely to blow you away. I love 1982 myself, but mine was a little darker than this. (Worth re-reading Lee Rourke's thoughtful review of it here.)

This book will make your evening

A. M. Homes' "This Book Will Save Your Life" has already made a bit of a splash, a surprise Richard and Judy choice, perhaps, for this established, but ironic American writer. I've always liked her short stories, full of splintered debris, yet with a kernel of real truth. The cover of this new novel is strewn with doughnuts, and it seems not an inappropriate - or inadvertent - symbol. Our "hero", Richard, is a man in his fifties with nothing in his life that is not paid for - his cleaner, his trainer, his nutritionist. The "hole" being his relationship with his apparently callous ex-wife and his son, Ben, who is just coming on a trip across America, to end up in L.A. In a Los Angeles that is both insane, and utterly plausible, a corruscating pain, whilst he's in his apartment is the signal for his life to start filling up again - with the detritus of people and events that he starts to find by simply going out and looking for them. He has been asleep, and opens his eyes to find that the world is raucous, overwhelming, and willing to engage with him. A whole cast of absurd but plausible characters come his way, each in their own way similarly yearning to fill the vast holes in their life. Richard recreates a new family, a new group of friends from nothing - his own wealth, and time on his hands, allowing for this fantastical reconnection. Yet he also needs to relocate, as his own house starts to fall into a hole, a precursor perhaps of L.A.'s inevitable dicing with the San Andreas Fault. Homes is both a true original, and sometimes irrevocably an echo of other writers. There is DeLillo's punchy New York dialogue, discussing everything with a quickfire wit, more Seinfeld in Homes, than Salinger; then there is an echo of Heller's grumpy satire of middle-age, the sardonic "Something Happened", and then again the pathos of Coupland's "Girlfriend in a Coma" - perhaps this books' closest twin - or Easton Ellis at his most flippant. Yet these precursors don't really do justice to her surface level joi de vivre - the "trip" is a vastly enjoyable one, as the insane minutiae of rich (of course) L.A. life is satirised and amplified. Richard - this non-involver - becomes the Good Samaritan, saving lives by chance in a post-Lost American interior. It's a long book though, and once the cast has been assembled, there's a sense of the book itself falling into a hole, as the middle section sags under its peculiarity. Yet as soon as his son arrives, the tone darkens, the plot thickens, and the modus operandi becomes focussed. The last third of the novel is astonishing, a tour de force of chance, serendipidity, hope and regret. Richard's own memory-free past - his own hole - is filled in, and the limp macrobiotic diet he's been existing on gives way to a more doughty doughnut filled existence. It feels like a book that is post-disaster - though the disaster's are personal, never spoken of, again, like Coupland's "Girlfiend in a Coma" - yet the novel also comes to a head. Not to give the game away, the tropes and tricks that have both entertained us, and at some point enraged us, fall by the way side as the bigness and insanity of this vast coastal city takes over. Its a powerful, rollercoaster of a novel, that even at its most infuriating, never fails to entertain - yet Homes is far more than a party trickster. If the "everyman" here is at times a little predictable in his past mistakes, and insecurities, it is his humanity, that in the end gives the novel its humanity and it's not inconsiderable power.

"The Distance Men Need in Their Love"

I'm finding each issue of the American "Poetry" magazine dropping through the letterbox an absolute joy. A reduced price subscription is still available via Ready Steady Book. I subscribed because of the lack of exposure to American poetry; and deciding that in the absence of any "guides" it was probably the easiest way to keep in touch. I was blown away by the opening poem, by a name new to me, Bob Hicok, "O My Pa Pa", a funny poignant poem about how "our fathers have formed a poetry workshop." "I don't know why it's so hard to write a simple and kind poem to my father..." he muses, before ending with that endless imponderable, about "the distance men need in their love." Incredible stuff.

Middle Aged Men (and Younger Women)

Is it just coincidence that the book I'm reading, and the book I've just read are both books about men having a mid-life crisis written by (younger) women? Fiona Campbell's "Death of a Salaryman" follows a "salaryman" who loses his job in contemporary Japan, through a series of episodes where he creates several new lives for himself. Lead character, Kenji, is entirely engaging, and you root for him throughout - even as the rug keeps being pulled from him - sometimes by the world, more often by those close to him, (his very unsympathetic wife, in particular). Like a modern day Candide, whatever befalls him makes him a little stronger, a little more optimistic despite the disasters. In A.M. Homes "This Book Will Save Your Life", the protagonist is older - in his fifties - financially rich beyond his needs, but emotionally poor to an equal degree, a literary equivalent of Bill Murray's unfinished character in "Broken Flowers." Here, the awful wife is (so far) out of picture. It's interesting that as the publishing industry becomes more feminised - predominantly female writers writing for a predominantly female audience - that this literary cross-dressing (and it doesn't go far - both books are 3rd person), is perhaps the more interesting option. Interesting to know what fascination the writers see in such fallible non-alpha males?

Ten Years On

With Tony Blair's expected departure being announced today, I thought I'd dig out the first chapter of my novel "High Wire", which begins on election night 1997 (and finishes 6 months later). This small extract sees the main character, Adam Challis, compelled to go to the Royal Festival Hall to see history in the making, as Blair arrives by helicopter from his constituency. It's a scene I pulled pretty much directly from memory - and wrote it hardly six months after the fact.

The radio was broadcasting from the Royal Festival Hall. Crowds waiting expectantly for the helicopter that was ferrying Tony Blair from Sedgefield to London, anointing Caesar.

'We've just had twenty cars from Millbank booked there,' the driver told him.

'Royal Festival Hall it is,' he told the driver. He stared out the window at London by night, taxis all heading to the river, everyone collecting there. He felt not so much alone as compelled by the mass, ant-driven.

He was on the Waterloo Bridge side, coming up towards the mass that was squeezed in at the front of the Royal Festival Hall. He thought momentarily: they weren't expecting many people, choosing here. He couldn't even see the podium. Around him people stood expectant, drunk, but mostly bored. Strange, at a time like this. He looked at the faces and saw students, tourists, many of them younger than himself, mostly the coming, and he already felt that he belonged to a missing generation. The beards and beer bellies that he remembered from Labour party meetings were curiously absent. He swigged on his blush wine as others shared bottles of champagne, or sipped Hooch slowly. It was like a Techno crowd after the electricity went, some still oblivious, most just stopped, obediently waiting the restart. This mob wasn't going to scream for anything. But that was where he was wrong - there had been the distant whirr of Police choppers inching in and out of the capital, but now the whirring was more insistent, our own Air Force One, and the whoop went up and off. He tried to make his way further into the crowd but he was pushed back, almost angrily, you won't get through mate, there's no room. Now it was a Live Aid crowd, a Billy Graham crowd, fierce, self-protective. He couldn't just stand there rammed in between jostling lines of people, seeing nothing, hearing only the echo. He turned and forced his way angrily out, pushing back the crowd to part them, moving with some force, oblivious to their complaints. He headed out towards Waterloo Bridge trying to find the way back down, past the Hayward and over by M.O.M.I. The numbers here were fewer, everyone who was coming was already here. Why had he even come?

Knob Jokes with Germaine Greer and Sam Mendes

A friend went to Stratford to see King Lear, last week, and mentioned that Germaine Greer was in the front row. She was on her own (Greer, that is), and was apparently looking around all the time, nervously, presumably to make sure that everyone realised that she was Germaine Greer. I said to my friend something I've noticed before, that people who are forever the centre of attention (whether on TV,the guys who stand up and make presentations, or ASBO kids) are almost incapable of just sitting there, being quiet and watching something. So, it probably wasn't a surprise, given her famous person's-ADD, that she gives Lear such a scathing review. It reads like she was always intending to - and, inevitably, to concentrate on one thing, the naked Ian Mckellen. (Which, of course, is probably why the Guardian sent HER to review it in the first place.) My friend thought it was a er...pointless and gratuitous display, and thought that McKellen clearly just gets off on this. Like a reversal of those old Hollywood "no nudity" clauses, it would be, "I'm only doing this if I can get naked," "can't we go for underwear Sir Ian?, or subdued lighting." "Stark bollock, or the deal's off." Thanks to Extras I think we can now believe the worst of every actor and actress and actually be not too far from the truth. However, I also just watched "Jarhead", Sam Mendes film about the first Gulf war (the one after the invasion of Kuwait - we've since renamed the other first Gulf war as the Iran-Iraqui war). Obviously taking a single soldier's view of the conflict - it's from a memoir - is limiting; but how limiting! I tend to like watching war films (and boxing movies and gangster flicks), clearly in some sort of macho over-compensation for my bookishness, (and yes, there's a guy with glasses, who kind of messes up, and writes porno letters for the Major back to his wife back home), but "Jarhead" was very weak. Mendes' direction is his usual mix of competent fluidity, and episodic predictability - Hollywood clearly sees him as a safe pair of hands, he's certainly no auteur - but, in a film with hardly a woman to be seen, being in the US Marines around 1990 clearly involved mainly around making and responding to knob jokes. (In the showers. "Hey, it's like a penis, but smaller.") As my recent novella begins with a man waking up with an erection, perhaps I shouldn't criticise, but it seems the spirit of Donald McGill is alive and well and in a theatre or cinema near you.

Who needs Tromatic Reflexxions?

Of course, there's avant garde and avant garde, and it always seems so much simpler in music. You just order it from Amazon and give it a listen. "Tromatic Reflexxions" by Von Sudenfed may sound like something from a Keston Sutherland poem, but in fact its a collaboration between Mark E. Smith and Mouse on Mars. Mouse on Mark, perhaps. Not heard any of it yet, but it adds to his rich, albeit occasional, series of electronic forays, that has existed both within and outside of the Fall. Interestingly, in the same way that having Harry Potter helped Bloomsbury widen their list, Mark E. Smith is now on the same label, Domino, as the Arctic Monkeys. Perhaps the Fall might end up on this growing mini-major?

So Much Everything

I bumped into the poet Steven Waling last week in the Cornerhouse and he had with him a new book which he's reviewed since on his blog. A handsome affair, "50 Heads" by Tony Trehy is a collection of pieces by the curator of Bury's Text Festival a couple of years ago. At the time he got some considerable press for complaining about how the poetry that is most recognised abroad is ignored at home. What always amuses me about the self-conscious avant garde is how they behave in EXACTLY the same way as they complain about, say, the more mainstream poetry scene. Despite the occasional fights over whether JH Prynne is more important than Carole Ann Duffy, what you see is a ghettoisation on both sides, with not a moment of crossover. Two Bald men fighting over a comb in other words, to nick Borges formulation on the Falklands War. Steven made the valid point that he liked going to avant garde events since it was rate for him not to be the most avant garde person in the room. It mirrors John Burnside's recent horror in Poetry Review at the disdain for American poetry he'd recently come across. For the common reader, and I consider myself one, (for God help someone who hasn't spent their whole life immersed in sub-genre of a particular clique), its clear there's no single anthology of either contemporary British or contemporary American poetry that tries to cover the waterfront. You might be able to dig out something like "Vanishing Points" on the experimental side of things, but we're well overdue a collection, say, of "English Poets born after 1965." Since that would include forty something's like myself in its age range, its likely a whole generation has been missed, or sidelined. Going back to Tony Trehy, I believe that you can only begin to give a value or otherwise to poetry like this, when you put it side by side with both its predecessors, and its opposites. Personally, an avant garde that doesn't engage, enrich or even fight with the mainstream is a self-intended failure, since its only acting within in its own "mainstream." A true avant garde would be rejected by those who have considered themselves avant garde for 30 years or more, as threatening to their little piece of land. That they guard it so carefully, and make it so hard for visitors, means it will eventually face the fate of the Shakers, compromised by the very purity of their beliefs. Just to add, that this isn't an attack on any particular writers, that I felt Trehy did a wonderful job with the Text festival, and that what I'm really asking for is that the diversity of poetry in this country - mainstream, experimental, performance, personal - needs to develop a common respect rather than being always either/or. A couple of nights later, I bumped into John Hall from Citizen 32, laden with the latest issue, complete with Lawrence Ferlinghetti poems in it. Having to get up at the crack of dawn for a 3 hour train journey on the Friday, meant that I couldn't come along to what sounded like a great line-up at the Briton's Protection on Thursday night, with George Wallace and Derry's the Poetry Chicks amongst others.

Skinheads & S***heads

I've read a few of the interviews about the new 80s film "This is England" and I'm not sure whether I'll go and see it. A good review here and elsewhere but I'm a bit alarmed by some of the things Shane Meadows has been saying in interviews. He's talked alot about the original skinheads being anti-racist and into reggae; all true enough; but Meadows was 11 in 1983, and I don't remember any reggae-loving nice skinheads in my part of Staffordshire (he was born up the road in Uttoxeter) by that time. I was 15 at the time, and the skinheads were, without exception, the troublemakers and the terrorisers in school. Seeing Suggs in a Madness video might have seemed harmless enough, but translating his leery cheekiness into playground thuggery, the skins were our schools brooding encapsulation of terror; so I'm always a little uneasy when I hear of anyone glamourising this particular cult. Perhaps if you were in it, it made sense, but outside of it? You had to watch yourself. Last year, I was horrified to find that the BNP polled second - over 700 votes - in the village where I grew up, and with local elections today, I just checked and yet again, the only ward with a BNP candidate in Cannock Chase is my old village, Norton Canes, and sure enough, on the list of "nominees" I recognise one name from my class of '83. Whether or not he was a skinhead then, there was always something wicked in our local woodpile, and I associate the skins with that - not with reggae music and helping old ladies across the road.

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Election update: the BNP fell back into 3rd place in Norton Canes, behind the Conservatives, and the winning Labour party, albeit still with 405 votes. Somewhat less than last year.

Vote Early, Vote Often

Just a reminder that there's a load of election's on Thursday. I've only a vague recollection of where my polling station is, but I'm sure I'll dig out the necessary information at some point tomorrow.

Ambient Electronica for Dummies

A 2nd EP of my new music, "The Secondhand Value of a Download" is now available to download. The result of 3 sessions over the last month or so, it contains 7 predominantly instrumental electronic tracks, which you might like, if you like that kind of thing.

Not recognising Gwendoline

I'd skimmed through yesterday's G2 in the Guardian about 3 times before I realised there was a 2 page interview with Gwendoline Riley about her new novel "Joshua Spassky." Not recognising someone from a picture, may mean its been a while since you've seen them (true), but her hair is darker, and that fools me every time. Though the web article includes the old, old picture. The interview's interesting, as ever, since she's a sparky conversationalist, even if the headline's concentration on graves and Morrissey seems a little out of place. Talking about "Joshua Spassky" she says "it's pretty obvious that the two characters are in love. What is in doubt is: so what?" which in itself makes me want to read it. Given the notoriously short, but never short-changing, nature of her work I was amused to read that she is one of our more "prolific" novelists, her youthful achievements, like Keats, Fitzgerald (or Wayne Rooney), giving her a relatively advanced c.v. Her next book, she says, is exploring misogyny, a subject I've often touched on myself in stories, (I was going to call a novel "The Misogynist" at one point), so I remain intrigued by one of Manchester's (by adoption) most interesting writers, though I'm not sure that next time I see her on the steps of Central Library I'd recognise her.

***

Lured here by the Gwendoline Riley piece, you can no doubt find a minute to sign the online petition to support the long-closed "Band on the Wall", in Manchester's regenerated northern quarter, in its quest to reopen.

The Bookerisation of American Fiction

We've long protected our own Booker Prize from America, believing, perhaps rightly, that American novelists would then dominate it. Yet, there's been a strange side effect. America, despite its Pullitzers etc., looks longingly at our Booker. The "type" of novel that has become a "Booker novel" has a certain respectability and seriousness about it, that America seems to respect in the same way it likes our Royal Family. That's my impression, anyhow, given the range of writers who have been picked by Granta for its latest Best Young American Novelists issue. Out in May, according to the Guardian (but already on 3 for 2 in Waterstones, according to me), the short biographies of half a dozen writers that the Guardian mentions seems to indicate that new American writers are increasingly like Booker writers - serious types picking exotic subjects, or other lands or peoples - for their novels. The affluent, educated traveller is a commonplace in Booker lists, (though America so far seems to have resisted that other Booker "lure", "the historical novel")and that's what comes to mind reading about the latest crop. "What leaps out of the new list, as the Granta judges have commented, is a heavy emphasis on things foreign." I would add, that this is not necessarily a good thing. Yes, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and even Bellow wrote about a world outside of America, but it was from an American perspective. In a globalised world, this kind of cultural tourism, though often commercially successful, has yet, in my opinion, to produce a literature as good as the indigenous. And though American writers have always embraced university posts, another British trait seems evident, when you read that "Gabe Hudson shares an office with Edmund White at Princeton, where he teaches creative writing. Joyce Carol Oates has an office over the corridor." Hudson sounds an interesting writer, but Edmund White was one of the judges, and like in Britain, it seems that the established literary tent likes letting a few writers in, in case its tent is blown down by a new wind down the street. I remain highly suspicious of writers who actually feel they fit in with the prevailing winds, rather than railing against them. Though, perhaps, given the iconoclastic urban writing of McInerney and Easton Ellis, the new generation feel more at home with such urbane writers as White and Oates. And its worth repeating, that with its cut off point at under 35, generations aren't what they used to be, from Updike, to McInerney to Foer 9/11 has been an alluring subject.

It's Monday morning and I don't want to go to work...

Perhaps its the early sunshine, but I've been waking earlier and earlier, and even getting some things done before I go to work. Today I'm delaying the Monday start, after all, I'm doing a presentation on webby things at Dukinfield Town Hall later on, so may not make it back to South Manchester tonight (or at all.) I went to see "Sunshine" at the weekend, and enjoyed it. Everything's post-modern these days even when it doesn't want to be, so its easy to criticise its sci-fi by numbers. If you've ever seen "Alien", "Appollo 13" and "Silent Running" and that episode of Dr. Who called "The Satan Pit" you've probably got most of the numbers. Yet, it would be churlish to complain, since it looked beautiful, had a certain can't take the eyes from the screen quality, was undeniably cinematic (perhaps a first for a film supported by the UK Film Council), and did touch on a few larger issues. It was head and shoulders above Boyle and Garland's "The Beach" as well. Next time you look up at the sun, it might send a chill through you, seeing how much we depend on that distant orb. Film, in this sense, is a poor substitute for the other arts, when it comes to wondering about our existence and that sublime body. Worth thinking about next time you start to write a poem - that maybe you've all the budget you need! I was in Waterstones at the weekend and came out without buying a book. Everything was so much more expensive than the internet, unless it was in a 3-for-2. Yet again, I was struck by the poor quality of most mass-produced paperbacks. You might as well buy them as an e-Book if that's the way things are going. Though I did pick up a remaindered biography of Muhammad Ali, which I'm looking forward to.

An artist friend came round, as I said I'd help him with a website for a forthcoming exhibition of his. I was impressed by Wordpress - which I used properly for the first time - but can see that for someone who just wants to "blog", blogger remains the less confusing option.

Going back to the bookshelves at Waterstones, its interesting how many novellas seem around these days. They don't call them that of course, but Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" and Philip Roth's "Everyman" are not the only short books out there. For such alpha male authors, size, it seems, doesn't really matter.

Death of a Salaryman, Live in London

"Death of a Salaryman" is the first novel by Fiona Campbell, another alumni of the MMU creative writing course. She's doing her first reading from the novel at Vox N Roll, at the Boogaloo Bar in London on Monday 23rd at 8.30.

The Pursuit of Happiness

An old friend comes to stay and reminds me of one or two truly obscure but great records from the past!

Its always the BBC

Its always the BBC that gets the mood wrong, errs on the side of caution, makes the wrong decision. It's hard to find myself on the side of the ill-conceived National Short Story Prize, a beauty contest with predictable contestants, but the news that one of the shortlisted stories, Hanif Kureishi's "Weddings and Beheadings" is not being broadcast because of sensitivity over the kidnapping of the journalist Alan Johnston in Gaza, seems to show, yet again, our national broadcaster is as parochial as a village fete. There is certainly time for some sensitivity, and one can only feel for Johnston's family and friends at this time. Yet, a short story, from a respected writer, written well before this event, and, moreso, in a context that Johnston was well aware of - was perhaps his reason for being where he was - seems a strange lamb to sacrifice. Do you remember before Gulf War I when Massive Attack became Massive and Bomb the Bass were removed from the playlist. The Kureishi story sounds hardly that original (consider the brilliant film "Fifteen Minutes" with its media-obsessed ultraviolence, on television only last week, never mind the photographer in "City of God") but given that every week there are atrocities and kidnappings in Iraq, the "sensitivity" seems misplaced. If the story is good enough to be in contention for winning this prize, then surely it can't be any kind of crass exploitation?

The great thing about Myspace...

...and perhaps the real reason for "social networking" is that you come across things serendipitously that you otherwise wouldn't have done. Therefore, friends round for dinner tonight, Tim's in a band that can be found here, which led me to here, the Manchester Mixtape and CD festival. Wonderful! And it happens without anyone's permission. I'm already itching over the pause button (which would, in itself, be a great name for a song).

PS "Life on Mars" was good as a self-contained episode but bad in its inexcusable playing of fast-and-loose that had come before. It used "The Others" technique at one point, and then turned back on that. It's not the trick endings that bothered me; but you always felt there was a reason that Sam Tyler had been spirited back (indeed, some episodes were particularly focused on this), and yet, unless I missed something, there was no reason. McGuffins all round, in other words.

Avoiding

All day I've been avoiding finding out what happened in "Life on Mars" in the hope that I can watch it a day late on Virgin on demand (not always certain - the last episode of Spooks NEVER appeared on NTL, spooky) and it seems the whole country was talking and writing about it. Let's say John Simms has always been a favourite, who deserves a successful series, and the idea was brilliant - but some of the episodes (particularly the Chorlton sex party one) have been the creakiest of recycled police procedurals. Whatever, as soon as I've finished here, I'll watch the last episode. I've also been avoiding reviews of McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" having read the first few paragraphs in the Observer, I was sure there was something dreadful and frightening about to happen despite the langurous prose. Suddenly read a review, Peter Wild's on Bookmunch and I'm none the wiser, hurrah! though I'm not sure I want to read the book. Wild is right that "Enduring Love" was his breakthrough - if only because it was his first truly successful novel (though I'm rather a fan of the earlier "The Innocent") - McEwan, before then, seemed a writer who was stuck: both in his forensic style, and his buttoned-up subject matter. "Enduring Love" seemed to unbutton him; and he's stayed that way. Yet, I'm not even sure I'm interested anymore. There was hubris in "Enduring Love" (the thriller element, the crutch his novels had previously leant on); but nothing compared with the slight "Amsterdam", the brilliant, but contrived "Atonement" and "Saturday", which was more enduring, than love. We're now in "late" McEwan I think, early being the tense short stories - the terribly stretched novels like "Child in Time" - middle being everything before "Atonement" (his "Birdsong"), and now we're late. He's an audience, and he's a novelist, and now he realises he should bring the two together. I find it hard to agree with Wild's conclusions - though I've not read "On Chesil Beach" yet - that this is a writer peaking; yet his caveat I can't disagree with, that McEwan is part of an old guard.

The web, music and Bonbon Experiment

Though there's a million Myspaces, a million blogs, it's fair to say that the web hasn't yet really delivered as a "content distribution" platform - or rather, it is too intimately wedded to the old ways. The difficulty is, of course, that we're used to getting things for "free" on the web, and yet the old business models remain. We also value what we pay for etc. etc. and the "value" of, say the new Arctic Monkeys song, is far more than anything most of us could dream up for our Myspace. That said, I've been spending much of my time making music recently. From the mid-eighties I would diligently mix my songs down on to cassettes, and maybe make the odd copy here and there (2nd generation, muddy sounding as hell). It was only in 1998 - by which time my music making had reduced to a trickle - that CD-R's meant you could "burn" a CD (at twice normal speed!!!!) and use one of those awful sticky labels to turn into a "proper" CD. Alot of time since has been spent turning my old cassette tapes into slightly less-hissy CDs. Yet, even this has been a slightly messy medium. I guess I've always wanted to make my music available on the web, for anyone who wants it. In the past, this has been "old music" repackaged, but I'm happy to say, the first EP of new material - oh, for years! - is now available to download, including the cover (with lyrics on the back), and, if you so wish you can burn it to a CD or add it to your iPod. "Fall of the Rebel Angels" consists of 4 songs, with 4 demos & alternative versions. The songs are entitled "Narcissus", "Sad Lovers of Twilight", "Fall of the Rebel Angels" and "No". Bonbon Experiment was the name I recorded under years ago, and I've resurrected it for my new tracks. There will be a 2nd EP - this time of instrumental music - available shortly, and I'll occasionally upload test tracks on Myspace. I'd love to see more artists make there work available in this way, but of course I don't get paid - but on the other hand, I doubt it would add up to a hill of beans anyway - and, in case you're wanting to get Girls Aloud to "cover" one of my songs, it is released under a Creative Commons licence.

***

P.S. The EP (Extended Play) is one of my favourite musical storage devices. In the 60s there was even an EP chart pulling together 4 or 5 songs on a 33rpm 7" by bands as popular as the Beatles or Elvis Presley. "Magical Mystery Tour" wonder of wonders was a double EP. I guess the format died about the same time that albums became pillars of wisdom around Sgt. Pepper. It was probably not till punk that you got a real renaissance of the form - something of the DIY ethos, and giving value for money to fans - again, on 7" - what was that one that Motorhead/Girls School did? Or do you remember that "Too Much Too Young" by the Specials was one track on an EP. At the same time, the "maxi single" - 12" singles - was being pioneered in disco, and EPs got a bit of short shrift after that - multiple formats began piling up (see Frankie Goes to Hollywood etc.) - yet the 12" single could sometimes be an EP - bands like Cocteau Twins didn't have a lead track and 3 b-sides, but 4 tracks of equal value. Some of my most prised possessions are early 80s 12" EPs. For new bands without enough songs for an album (and needing a regular income!) the EP offered value for money for fans and a good marker of the band's progress. And the EP sometimes got so long it had to be called a mini album. What was Sisters of Mercy's awesome "The Reptile House" - a long EP or a short album? Multi-formats ruined things of course, but in some ways, the CD single brought back the EP - sometimes in its old format. A band would release a new single and give you 3 of their hits as "presents". I used to scour the b-sides for these little "greatest hits" collections. But the real EP should be something that has a coherence or form to it - several live tracks for instance, or a number of remixes to accompany an album. (Think of A Certain Ratio's "4 from the Floor".) By giving it another title than the lead track, an EP had its own identity. I was pleased when the Arctic Monkeys released there "Who the Fuck are the Arctic Monkeys?" single last year - too many tracks to be a single, too cheap to be an album. An EP then! It seems that in the new download age an EP is the way to go. 79p or so for a single - you're not really going to shell that out again for a b-side or two? But 4 tracks or so for a few pound - now you're talking. My EP is rather long to be a true EP - in fact its probably 2 EPs, the 4 songs, then the 4 remixes, in old money. Yes, those aiming for the charts will surely continue to release singles with a dodgy b-side, a dubious dance mix, and a DVD promo for company, but for the rest of the world - surely the EP's day has come again. I'm beginning to think the Myspace limitation of 4 tracks is actually perfect. Here's the EP for the 21st century, not just a song, not quite an album. Find out if you like us, and, there will be another one along in a few months.

Plays on Words

I was reading in Poetry magazine about a competition for a verse drama, to help revitalise this particular art. I've been quietly interested in this form for a while, perhaps inevitably, as someone who writes poetry and drama, and is consistently interested in narrative. I've been reading Christopher Logue's Homer, Goethe's Faust (in English, Jarrell's version) and keep returning to Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes. It's always the great anomaly of English literature that our preeminent writer, Shakespeare, was a poetic dramatist. Every now and then someone has a go at something - I've been impressed by Simon Armitage's multimedia attempts - and it seems a worthy thing to attempt. I've had a drama idea for several years, which I'll keep for myself for now, which I long ago realised would be best done as a verse drama. I've gone back to my notes, and found that the structure I'd begun in 2004, has a lot going for it. The writing is another thing - but I'm finding it a fascinating challenge, albeit a big one. I think I'll complete the first act and see what comes from that. I do have form here; I wrote one a few years ago, a Mummers style rewriting of a story I'd written, but got somewhat perplexed responses from the playwriting competitions/services I sent it to. Maybe I have to approach this from the poetry end?

Mine's a 99p download

News that EMI are going to ditch DRM (Digital Rights Management) and encode their tracks at a higher bit-rate, but for a cost, reminds me of the old joke about whether you'd have "sex for a million pounds." Ok, if you say yes, we know what you are, now let's negotiate on the price. For the joke is that the music industry does already sell DRM-free digital tracks - they are called CDs. Given that they tend to translate 99p in the UK to 99 cents in the US (twice the price, thank you very much), I'm not sure this is exactly the revolution that will save EMI from the ditch in which its been driving. Let's now talk about price... a £5 back catalogue CD to download with 12 tracks will now cost you £12 from iTunes without a cover or any of that other nice stuff; and that its still in bed with the abysmal Apple doesn't make it any better. I prefer the 20p a track I'm paying with emusic, with no downloads, and a lovely excursion through the backwaters of independently released music. If EMI had any balls it would have made its entire back catalogue available DRM-free either through iTunes or someone else and had differentiated the price as it does in record shops - but totalitarian Apple wouldn't want that either, would it? It's clear that this "model" - higher quality, higher price - is to enable them to sell the Beatles catalogue in a little while, even if this wasn't their announcement today. This is, remember, a last throw of the dice for beleaguered EMI, that they've thrown it so tentatively shows how little faith they have in either their product or consumer. This one will run and run....

That Library Thing

You may notice a little dialogue box to the left with the words "See my books" on it. I've just been having a look at Librarything again, and it seems better than when I first came across it. A chance to catalogue your collection online. I've not done that, not all of it, not yet! But who knows, over time...type Kathy Acker or William Burroughs in the box, for now, and get a sense of what it can do. Neat. I think. Amazing how many books I've got that nobody else has (type in: Icelandic.)

Now Listening

No relation

I've said below that I've lost a bit of faith in Amazon, but I'm beginning to think it's now going slightly insane. (Yes, I know its not a real person, but even websites have personalities). Just look at its latest recommendation...

We've noticed that customers who have expressed interest in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell have also ordered Black Swan Green by D. Mitchell.

How strange, two authors with such a similar name! And so ubiquitous had "Black Swan Green" seemed (though I've not yet read it), that I assumed it had already been released in cheap paperback. £3.99 though; that's ridiculous - they have gone insane.

Reading bad novels

Orange judge Kathryn Hughes makes the point that to get to the good longlist for this year's prize, they first had to wade through too many bad novels. "The rural teacher syndrome" of scarcely concealed autobiography being a particular problem. (Which does make you ask, why do the publishers publish them then?) However, although I can well see that a prize judge might never want to read another bad novel again, I wonder about her point that even bad non-fiction teaches you something; whilst a bad novel feels just like time wasted. Obviously there's different layers of bad; I don't think I would willingly suffer a Reader Digest' condensed version of a Dick Francis novel again; (I was miles from anywhere - there were no other books in the house...), but, and maybe this is my own contrariness, I've often learned more from bad novels than good ones. For a start, as a writer, it makes you want to react against them; and second, there's something about a bad novel that clearly gets the blood running. Successful novels that I've disliked are a particular favourite - nothing would ever get me to read Ondaatje's "Anil's Ghost" or Jane Smiley's "Moo" again, yet I remember hating Carol Shield's "The Stone Diaries" so much that I had to read her equally ghastly "Larry's Party" just to see if I'd got it wrong. Perhaps I've been lucky - and avoiding novels about rural teachers might be where I've got lucky - or, more likely, any fiction has something going for it: the long, hard process of creating it in the first place.

And I was going to abolish them...

They may be unelected twerps, but every now and then the House of Lords comes up with the goods, rejecting the Manchester supercasino (and throwing out the other new casinos to boot.) Its highly likely that this little piece of contentious legislation, having now caused the government such problems, good disappear for good. The spurious arguments about "regeneration" (also, if you remember, Tessa Jowell's justification for any and every overspend on the Olympics) have clearly not worked in this case; since anyone with half a brain would at least question the logic of creating a gambling maelstrom in one of the most socially disadvantaged boroughs in the country.

Under submission

I'm never quite sure what to say about "rejected submissions." It's one of those things I guess. When we were running Lamport Court, because it was mostly poetry, fiction came in but rarely. Most of the things we rejected were obviously wrong for the magazine. What we didn't find was a wealth of good writers out there waiting to be published. Our range wasn't particularly wide, it's true, but the fiction we did publish was generally good, although it took about 5 issues before this was as good as the poetry. There aren't many outlets for fiction, its true, and I've a lot of respect for those literary magazines that trawl through that particular slushpile. Personally, though, it's really hard. I think most of my best writing is in my short stories, but, over the last few years, I'd have found it easier to get into the England team (hey, I'm left-footed), than to get a story published. I've sent a few stories to a particular magazine, and got rejected; but the latest thing I sent, I genuinely class as amongst the finest things I've written. I was giddy with excitement when I got the idea; giddier still when I finished executing it. In this particular case, I've somewhere else lined up to send it, but I think its true that a good story does lose a bit of its lustre when, like a kid at school, its had its confidence undermined a bit. As the writer of it, its very hard to see it for what it is. Publication gives a story justification: proves that "yes, it's a good story."

You Should be Ashamed - in praise of Toyin Agbetu

Is there anything more symbolic, in an event to recognise 200 years of slavery, attended by the main beneficiaries of that, the Queen and her ministers, to see a black man being manhandled away from the event by security guards. Toyin Agbetu, you are my new hero. A brave man in a cowardly world. (Nide handbag by the way.)

Obscurantist Raging

A combination of things. I seem to have quite a kaliedoscope of things flashing by me at the moment and I can only see the flash, not make out the shapes or the colours. People and places, first of all. Went to Lancaster, the city, on Saturday; the university was my alma mater; and though I've been back a couple of times in the last 5 years, this was the first time I've really walked around the city for over a decade. Everything was familiar, but nothing was exact. I walked up the Ashton Memorial, a glorious folly, overlooking the city, and was shocked by how few times - a couple? - I'd done that in my 3 years there. Then today, bumped into 2 people I've not seen for a while, in incongruous but utterly predictable places; a meeting, a bus stop. Yet, whereas I approached Lancaster like an old friend I'd not seen for so long, and could take it all in again, I realise how fragmented my friendships are these days; strangers who briefly become less than that, before, perhaps becoming it again. Yet, I sense other things - sometimes a massive empathy with someone I've only really seen in the street. In our fragmentary life, that's what passes for intimacy, I guess. It seems I'm having a heightened sense of emotions about things, people, places at the moment, in a world that is pragmatically opposed to this. It collapses in on itself. I got home tonight after a tiresome set of work-related annoyances, and the friend at the bus stop; a much-needed Cote du Rhone on getting back home; and the recently downloaded awesomely thrilling visceral punk of Nation of Ulysses' "13 point program to destroy America" seem to have done the bit for me. Anger is an energy, as John Lydon once sung. I was thinking about contemporary writing, and it struck me, as it has before, that we shouldn't limit our "writers" to poets, playwrights and novelists. Any review of British letters since 1980 has to include Richey Edwards, Mark E. Smith, Morrissey and Ian Curtis amongst its poets; screenplays for "Trainspotting", "GBH" and "This Life" amongst its drama; and Steven Bell's "If...", Alan Moore's "Watchman" and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" amongst its fiction; perhaps Fiona Banner, Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin amongst our avant garde writers. Take the literary artefacts of the last 25 years and its richer if you reach wider. A phenomenal task to think through all that (to watch, and hear all that...) but perhaps the only way to wander beyond the sterility found elsewhere. I'm at that point. Staring down the sterility. I once wrote this lyric whose chorus went "I don't want to be missed by inches," and it took me years to realise what I meant was that I didn't want the measure of my life to be so short, so easily measured. What now then? I see a need for a hyper-realism, a less-than-mundane, a dream of the absurd, and a willingness to burn...

The New McEwan

In a tradition that goes back at least as far as "Enduring Love", Ian McEwan's new novel, "On Chesil Beach" is trailed in the Guardian. How to review the extract? - so just a couple of points. I've felt for a while that McEwan is turning into Iris Murdoch, writing about the lovelives and other detritus of rich folk, and this seems even more in that territory, set on a wedding night in 1962 - pure Murdoch territory (though she was writing it as contemporary fiction then.) Yet, its a worrying model, since at her worst she can seem little more than Mills & Boon with a first class degree, and as we accompany Florence on her wedding night, McEwan duly gives us her "husband's enchanted gaze" - and later he's "nauseous with desire and indecision." You already feel that, pastiche or not, this isn't going to be a typical first night, or a typical marriage, with the husband's violent tendencies already telegraphed. This hidden dread is of course McEwan's primary skill, and the flat, methodical build up of prose detail is how he keeps hiding it; yet the writing in this first piece seems anachronistic, the detail's complacent. I'm only mentioning this because Ellis Sharp has expanded on his piece about the recent Josipovici talk, to speak of how the modern novel doesn't try hard enough. To illustrate this he uses a piece that James Woods did several years ago about "Enduring Love" as being an "efficient fictional engine" not a "true novel." McEwan, I think, has since perfected that engine, yet what I thought was exceptional about "Enduring Love" was that it did take some risks, in its structure, form and content (even its title with its dual meaning, of lasting and suffering.) We will have to wait and see if "On Chesil Beach" is another "efficient fictional engine" - I suspect it will be - but I feel that the more complex structures that McEwan attempted, partially successfully in "Enduring Love" are ones he has since shied away from. Notably, "Enduring Love" missed out the prizes, his work since, safer, less risky, has done far better.