OverCultured

Whichever way I look at it, I go to on average one cultural event a week, and that's often enough, or all that I can manage. I feel very uncultured sometimes - not catching this programme, reading this book, or going to this concert or play. I'm almost pathologically allergic to festivals - all those options in such a short space of time - oh, and I've got a day job. But last Saturday went to see Hoi Polloi at the Lowry, Monday caught "Atonement" (the movie) and last night saw Chuck Prophet and the Mission Express at the University. Theatre, film 'n' rock then. No wonder I don't get time to write much. How on earth does Mark Lawson do it? Does he clone himself or something? Ah, think of all the cultural roads less travelled through making those particular choices. So, its with some foreboding that I've preregistered for the Liverpool 08 festival of culture, putting my hat in the ring for concerts by John Taverner, and, excitingly, Britten's "War Requiem" at the Anglican Cathedral. I rang a friend up to say, what are you doing next June? And she said, "why, are you getting married?" Yep, booking a ticket that far in advance is long enough to meet someone, fall in love and arrange the wedding. I could be anything or anywhere by then. But I guess its good to plan ahead. Start thinking like this and I could get my cultural itinerary fixed for the next year or so.

The IT Crowd's Over

I quite enjoyed the 2nd series of the IT Crowd but it was the most uneven comedy I think I've seen since the first season of "The Young Ones". Set in the systems department in the basement of a large company, the first series was full of knowing jokes about nerds, the tension being caused by them having a female (and non IT literate) boss. Why the 2nd series was better because the dynamic between the 3 came centre stage - Jen was, in her own way, nerdy, and yet trying to be sophisticated. The first episode when shes goes on a date, that turns into a works outing, to a musical called "Gay - the gay musical", was genius, as was the Dinner Party episode - but the rest of the series, moored to the office, was far less convincing. All sitcoms have their ups and downs, but rarely have I seen a show that was so variable in both its tone and quality - yet, it only ran for 6 episodes. Last night's final episode was the worst of the series, a real disappointment, but its obvious why, Jen and the nerds were in different parts of the building for most of the episode, and the comic tension was totally dissipated.

Juxtaposition

On the side of a bus in Manchester yesterday was a big advertisement for the film "Run, Fatboy, Run." And on the back another advertisement for "Wayne Rooney - the Story so far", which I felt was a bit unfair on the Man Utd player. Such juxtapositions can be an advertisers' nightmare, and the web makes it worse, as those advertisers who used Facebook found themselves advertising on a BNP page. So much for affinity marketing - after all fascists need moble phones as well. You can read the Guardian's book pages and get opposing views in different articles - say, if there was an avant garde poet cheek and jowl with the new Carole Ann Duffy, you might find both reviewers would talk about them in glowing terms (different reviewers, more than likely). When this happens is an editor being merely mischievous or is it healthy? I'd say the latter, of course, though I bumped into a poet who attended the Amis/Banville/Self "debate" on Monday, who felt that they were all singing a little from the same hymn sheet, and a contrarian voice (or perhaps someone younger - or without a penis) might have made a it more of a debate. I wasn't there of course, so there might be other interpretations. The literature festival, coming up, and you look a little in vain for contrarians, and yet, in a small way this must be a victory for the sense of literature as community and for the programming of what is a relatively small lit fest on only its 2nd year. Yet I crave a bit of juxtaposition - David Peace on the Booker list, or M.I.A. vs Amy Winehouse in a tag wrestling match perhaps. One of my reasons for a continued obsession with Fitzgerald/Hemingway's friendship/falling out, is because, though supportive, both American writers, and clearly forging a new fiction together, they are so different - if there wasn't the friendship it would be hard to put the books side by side. Even when your comparing the French literary community of "Tender is the Night" and "A Moveable Feast" your coming up against contradictions, in style, in attitude and finally in personality. If "The Old man and the sea" and "The Last Tycoon" had both been their first rather than last books would we have ever even put them on the same page? And what I'm getting to here of course, is the work itself, that though we perhaps crave coherence and stability in our lives and friendships, in love and art it can be opposites attracting, and the juxtaposition is what we want. How else can you explain our new way of listening to music - random play on an iPod - so you can have Carl Cean's disco anthem "I was Born this way" (I'm happy/I'm carefree/I'm gay) next to some cock rock from AC/DC. What I want, I think, is safe old literature to begin embracing juxtaposition, taking a John Ashbery poem like "How much longer must I inhabit the divine sepulchre" with its endless juxtapositions, and saying, "yes, this is the model, this is literature."

Amis in St.Anns

I'd kind of forgotten that its a "new era" at my alma mater, University of Manchester, where a newly minted (and suddenly taken serious Creative Writing school has been established.) Martin Amis begins to earn his crust in a debate (sold out, and I'm busy anyhow) with Will Self and John Banville at St. Ann's church this evening. As an alumni of the old creative writing course, wonder if we're being written out of history, Stalinist style? Perhaps not, the events are on their website if you can find them, and I can get ready for Christmas with a further dose of Amis, this time on "Literature and Terrorism", perhaps proving that my idea for a "9/11 101" course wasn't too far fetched. It will be interesting to see what he covers. I'm always a little dubious of thematic books/courses/lectures etc. since inevitably you go hunting around for works that fit the theme, rather than necessarily what's good, what's bad. Of course, you often get a better sense of how writers are wrestling with issues from bad books as good books. Back to tonights event I'd have loved to hear what they've got to say, "literature in the 21st century", being the theme. In about 1998 I wrote an essay about the fiction writer in the 21st century, calling for more stories, more engagement with the times, more proper books, big and small, rather than the fag ends of postmodernism and the like. I suggested as well, that the era demanded the earnest Edwardians, rather than the shock of the new that would come with the modernists. In retrospect I was complaining about a literature that doesn't engage, that avoids the issues of the day, and which hides behind new orthodoxies of "literary fiction." The prediction pretty much came true, of course, from "The Life of Pi" to "White Teeth", from Michael Faber to Sarah Waters, from "The Corrections" to "Atonement", "proper novels" have been in vogue. Even David Mitchell's valid success is based upon a love of the story, a lack of obfuscation. It will be interesting to see what Amis - with a decade out of the fictional world before his more recent "Yellow Dog" and "House of Meetings" - Self, masterly in "The Book of Dave", but with a few years when his drug habits were more important than his literary habits, and Banville, belatedly given an award for "The Sea", and in many ways, the kind of post-Joyce novelist I felt whose time had gone, will think about the 21st century novelist. All of them, of course, are 20th century novelists. Will they be predicting the future? Tearing up their own books in despair at the Young Turks? Or upping the drawbridge against anything that doesn't conform to their own ideal. I hope that someone who goes feels able to post on their own blog, or in reply here.

700 Penguins and no cold feet

I was in Waterstones today and saw a book that was a real pleasure. 700 Penguins does what is says on the tin, and takes the covers of 700 Penguin books and compiles them in a single book. I'm not alone in finding Penguins iconic, but what's great is the range and the quality of the work. You begin looking at your Penguins again! I flicked through and found a few iconic ones I loved, but, though coffee-table art books are well down my list, I'm sure I'm going to invest in this one.

On Tour

I feel like I've been on tour the last week: London, Luton, Cannock, Cambridge, Bury, finishing off in Wythenshawe tomorrow. Work mostly, but you end up with a bit of a screwed up sense of perspective and place. A mix of meetings and presentations, so the only time I've spent at home seems to have been over an ironing board. I've not listened to any music, read anything more exciting than a newspaper, and I need a break from it. That's why I've got a little culture lined up, going to the Lowry to see a theatre piece "Floating", and have finally arranged to go and see "Atonement." Was almost put off by the half price copies of the novel, with its pretty-film-people cover, that was the most prominent thing on offer at all those railway stations I'd passed through. Obviously the week's most exciting news was that Roman Abramovich had bought Northern Rock - or have I got that wrong? Oh, that was it, Portugeuse police have made Jose Mourinho an Aguido. Something like that. "Aguidos" will make a great title for a song, of course, "We are suspects/but there's no crime".

Forty-Seven Years in the Universalist Ministry and other rare books

Fascinating to read the list of "most sought after" rare books from Bookfinder.com - truly bizarre, some of them!

Booker & Mercury

Yeah, I know it sounds like a team of fictional detectives, dour serious Jim Booker and flighty, intuitive Liz Mercury, but given that the shortlist of one and the winner of the other were both announced this week, I thought I might try and put a bit of perspective on things. I used to devour news about the Booker - and the BBC used to show the ceremony every year, possibly the only time it ever gave ANY time over to books. Was it last year or the year before it gave up on the show - and just shoved it into Newsnight or something? I actually complained to them and got back one of their "we know better than you" responses. I pointed out they could put it on BBC4 if they cared that little about it. Fact is, the Booker show was a really nice format - small extracts of the novels, a panel discussion, a chat to the Bookies, and then to the ceremony itself, all over in half an hour. Since "Life of Pi" won it in 2002 there seems to have been a little uncertainty about what it's about now. That book, DBC Pierre and a few others on the shortlist, were clearly enjoyable one-offs, rather than debut novels by potentially great writers. The last couple of years - with Banville and Hollinghurst - a new seriousness has returned, and seems as misjudged as those "one offs". I guess the comments about "On Chesil Beach" reflect this. McEwan may well be our most consistent novelist, but that every work should be automatically a Booker nominee seems to miss the point somewhat. I'm pleased that Nicola Barker is on the shortlist, I've not read "Darkmans" yet, but think her previous short novel "Five Miles from Outer Hope" is an unacknowledged little masterpiece (and quite a bit longer than "On Chesil Beach" for that matter). The longlist was quite historical and there are times when you think the Booker is becoming our "best history novel" prize. Part of the question over McEwan is whether his best books are past, present and future. My favourite novel of his is "The Innocent", a cold war thriller, closely followed by the contemporary "Enduring Love". The most disappointing I've read was Booker winner "Amsterdam" and his sci-fi novel "Child in Time." I think "Atonement" is a great popular work, but is a bit of a shaggy dog story at heart and "Saturday" is an interesting but minor work. I'd be surprised if any of this year's list is as good as David Peace's "The Damned United" or Will Self's "Book of Dave" or Magnus Mill's "Three to See the King", which are among the best eligible novels I've read in the last few years. In other words, where I once found a good number of writers and novels from the Booker list, I think its an uncomfortably mix these days between agreable lit-lite ("Life of Pi", "Fingersmith") and something worthy, but somewhat old-fashioned, ("The Line of Beauty", "Never Let Me go"). Old fashioned is perhaps not something the Mercury can be accused of - Klaxons winning over more traditional bands. Though, much as I like their album - its full of hits, very of its moment - it reminds me of bands like Lo Fidelity All Stars, Carter USM, even Mansun, rather than being quite as futuristic as the band claim. But then when I've been listening to "Kala" the new album by M.I.A., as well as the shortlisted "Maths & English" by Dizzee Rascal (inevitably, far better than his debut, which won), pretty much everything else sounds old fashioned. I'm presuming "Kaya" will be eligible for next year's prize, which, in any sane world it will win.

The Beach Boys and Science Fiction

I'm belatedly (say, the last 5 years) a massive Beach Boys fan. I'd had "Pet Sounds" for years and loved it, though perhaps not as "the best album ever" that it sometimes gets called. My pastoral days - of Cherry Red records and the Cocteau Twins - are long gone, and "Pet Sounds" sometimes fits a bit too neatly into that. Yet over the last few years I've been picking up Beach Boys CDs, which have all been exemplarily reissued (good liner notes, remastered, 2 short albums on 1 CD), and enjoyed them all. I'm as likely to like the pre-Pet Sounds songs of "All Summer Long" as the swish early 70s soft rock you find on "Holland" - and it hardly matters whether Brian Wilson was present or not (heresy, perhaps, but its true, here was a band that his spirit was always there, even when his presence wasn't). There's always been a darker side to these exemplaries of a sun-bleached California, as with their covering of a Charles Manson song (he'd struck up a friendship with Dennis Wilson), or the post-Smile breakdown of Brian. I'm fascinated to find out (thanks Wikipedia!) that there's a novel about "lost masterpieces" that centres on the unfinished "Smile", Lewis Shiner's Glimpses. I'll have to get hold of a copy. The slim rock n roll/sci-fi crossover genre expands - there's "Disaster Area", the made-up band in Douglas Adam's "Hitchhikers..." series, Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship's Heinlein-influenced, "Blows Against the Empire" album, the Moorcock-Hawkwind thing (never quite got this, I'm afraid), Bowie's "Diamong Dogs", and possibly that's all. I'm sure there are plenty of sci-fi novels that include rock and roll stars (time travel helps, of course) but I've not really come across any.

The State of Things

Has the 21st century begun yet? I was wondering this - not the "numerical" years - but the sense of what it is,what it might become. There are some themes: global warming; environmentalism on the one hand; and on the other religious fundamentalism, globalisation, the inter-connectedness of all things; the "internet." But in the scheme of things these aren't the great rumblings of the nation states at the end of the 19th century - and the accompanying technological revolution - that only really made its mark after the first world war. Our concerns with the environment (belatedly) and global warming seem, to these eyes and ears, a culmination of sixties-seventies-eighties green movements - the difference being that now the Baby Boomers are top of the tree (Al Gore, Gordon Brown et al), they've lived with these things a long time, like women wearing trousers, gay men holding hands, and Yes Albums, they no longer shock the powers that be.

Wherefore art in all this? I suppose visual art has been a bit obsessed with decay for a couple of decades now - whilst the written word has remained solidly middle-class, middle-ground. There's an agelessness to our literary culture, which, though good on the one hand (writers who would once have been marginal, are now seen as national treatures), does mean that its concerns are sometimes a hotch-potch of those issues of the sixties-seventies-eighties, and the newer commodification of them. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" would be a good example of this. One of his better books, for two reasons: one, never that comfortable with the long haul of the novel, here, his Mini-novels are stitched together better than ever; and two, he seemed to reach back into a comfortable millieu - that of a military family, looking through the eyes of history (in other words, its unashamedly middle class.) There's now a film - inevitably, given that this is costume drama, albeit of a higher class - and unlike some of his previous involvements in the medium, this time, there's a real sense that it could be a blockbuster. In other words, McEwan is now, in every sense the establishment writer: writing about its themes and concerns, and also, benefitting from the cultural significance that gives him - in both intellectual cachet (his long story, "On Chesil Beach" has just been longlisted for our premier novel prize - I can't imagine any other writer getting a novella through that process) and commercially (this year's "The English Patient" seems to be the anticipation levels for "Atonement.") I liked the book, and mostly, I like the writer. Yet part of me goes back to that opening remark - has the 21st century begun yet? I'd say if our cultural high water mark is a film adaption of an historical novel from Ian McEwan, then the answer is "no."

Yet, one can feel a little sympathy for the concerns of late 20th century liberal England coming through, if only because of the scorched earth policy of Thatcherism - that the Baby Boomers didn't get the worst of it (thats left for those who left school in the midst of it, and those, a generation down the line who've never escaped it) probably allows them to feel belated victors, at least in the sense of our national priorities. A conservative nation has, far too belatedly, become a liberal nation, a delayed enlightenment you might think. It may stay that way - (America, that liberal nation has spent the last twenty years as a conservative nation, but seems to be turning back, which will help our own cause) - but, possibly, our liberals will just become more illiberal as they get older, and those who've grown up in the last twenty years consumerist years might be more hard-nosed and conservative then we'd think.

Though I think words like "liberal" and "conservative" - political distinctions, once only applied to a small voting elite, then spread out to include general opinion during some of the egalitarian advances of the 20th century, are less important now. What I see, in terms of "attitude" is determined far more by work, career, ambition, money, purchasing power, house prices, than other factors. We're 19th century mercantiles transplanted into a technocratic 21st century. Think "X Factor", think Ryanair and Primark.

One sign of an age that is unwilling to confront its demons - or one that is waiting for those demons to settle down into a more manageable form - is a retreat into the fantastic. I'm not just saying the light fodder of "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" - but in the number of writers now dabbling with science fiction. Recent novels by Sarah Hall, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Attwood, Will Self, David Mitchell and Michael Cunningham have all been literary takes on the future. Faced with this, I've started taking more of an interest in the genuine fabulists. For if these writers sometimes aren't convincing in their futures (sometimes they make a very good job of it), the fabulists are only unstuck when it comes to character and language. I'm reading China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station", a massive novel set in an undisclosed world (future? parallel? distant? for the fabulist it doesn't matter - its an accepted place, that's all), which continues the dark humour and fecund imagination I've found in a couple of his short stories. Where it falls short, perhaps as always, is in the characterisation, ciphers from penny dreadfuls, cor blimey Cockneys reminiscent of a 50s sci-fi movie. Its miles stronger than "Specimen Days" or "The Book of Dave" on its imagined future creations, yet its the humans who suffer as a result - like they're not interesting enough.

Not that you can blame a fabulist for this - given the travails of our modern technocracy, the feeble storytelling of our reality TV - humans must seem the least interesting creature in our modern menagerie. In this, we find common ground between communist utopianists, death-cult fundamentalists, environmental mavens, information-heavy technocrats and solipsistic celebrities.

Given all this, I'm increasingly unsure I've got anything particularly useful to say. Sci-fi at least offers an escape from this vacuum.

Forgotten and Unfinished

There's a remarkably fascinating article about Ralph Ellison's legacy, in particular his unfinished second novel, in the Washington Post, courtesy of the ever-excellent Arts and Letters Daily, a length and depth of article that would be a rare appearance indeed in an English newspaper. What fascinated, as well as the literary detective tale, of piecing together the intentions of a dead author, was the detail on how Ellison's writing had become Casaubon-like in trying to get it right. The success (and financial success) of "The Invisible Man" would obviously mean his next novel had to be special - and better - and became, it seems, an impossible task. Even more fascinating was that Ellison moved to writing by computer at some point and immediately the options available to him to revise were suddenly endless. A friend complained about the wonders of modern sequencers such as Cubase - that they offered endless possibilities - whereas in the past he'd painstakingly created sounds or made edits, taking time and often irreversible. It seems that Ellison's novel had took over - and became, I think, an unfinishable work. Yet his literary executors are finishing it anyway. Whether this is a good thing or not is a moot point. In one part of the article it compares several lines - pre-and post-computer and Ellison had apparently always rewritten to expand, rather than to contain. In a recent post, Elizabeth Baines talked about the "over expansive" latest Harry Potter, and its need of an editor. Yet as a writer we all sometimes think we could write more and in depth about what we've only touched. These made up characters and made up scenes can have the depth and dimension given by a Proust, a Joyce, a George Eliot.

So it is, that I decide to check that I've "backed up" my own writings (of course, I haven't - not recently) and also to order them in some manageable way on the computer. We live in a world of hard not soft disks these days so I guess its worth saying something about folder structure. In "My Documents" (I'm PC, not Mac) you'll find a folder called "Writing" and within that sub-sections, "Poetry", "Plays", "Short Stories", "Other Novels" and a few other categories. I've got reasonably good at storing things accordingly but still something's get lost. I've not written any drama for a while, and decided to have a bit of a trawl through the "plays" folder to see what it contained. Astonishingly, for such an "occasional" side to my writing, I came up with 11 completed "dramatic works". Half of these are short film scripts, but there's a full length screenplay, a couple of potential TV dramas, a play, a verse drama, and 2 episodes of a radio sitcom. Amongst all this I found a dramatisation (for TV? who knows?) of a children's story I wrote years ago - that I simply have no recollection of turning into drama. I'm assuming I must have written it for a competition of some sort, but I simply can't remember! Also, a short script I wrote a couple of years ago refused to make itself known - and I couldn't remember the name, or the character's names. All I could remember was that there was a "sofa" in it as a prop. A laborious search of my hard disk brough up about 50 documents containing a "sofa" (Okay, I'm clearly no hard-boiled street writer), and luckily one was the one I was looking for. Ralph Ellison's executors make the point that it wasn't only the finished typescripts that held clues to the work but backs-of-envelopes, scribbled papers. How very true. For if a writer can't remember everything he wrote, why, and when, and where it is or in what state - then what hope the literary detective? Lesson to self: catalogue better.

You can be the next K. R. Jowling....

For those who don't get to read anything other than the Guardian, the Times is running a children's author competition.

"Peace" in our Time

David Peace's "The Damned United" doesn't really need my kudos to add to the many its already recieved, but I thought it was remarkable. Taking the 44 days that Brian Clough was in charge of Leeds United, and interlacing this real-time narrative with what had got him there - the past that drove him on to that fateful union with the team he most hated - is a piece of remarkable impersonation. I've been in Brian Clough's head for a week, and it's not a pleasant place to be - but endlessly fascinating. Importantly it feels real, with Clough a mixture of fear and arrogance as he knows that his dreams are only ever one bad result away from being dashed. For many people of my age - the football of that decade following the 1966 world cup - is a period of dashed hopes. English football would turn into the desperate hooligan-ridden debacle that would lead, finally, disastrously to Heysel and Hillsborough. But Clough's vision - of winning fairly, beautifully - "the beautiful game" is chronically juxtaposed against the realities of winning; of referees who turned a blind eye, of players not yet rich enough, and only a kick away from losing their liveliood, and of small-town directors who gained their power from their municipal football club. It's a brilliant decision to take this "small canvas" and use it to delve deep into the male psyche, the potency of sport, and the decline of England in the seventies. Yet, most of all its a portrait of one unique individual - and through him, an insight into what sport can mean to people, can achieve for them. If the book has a fault, then perhaps like all "biographies", its that the denouement is already known, that this chapter is destined for failure from the moment it begins. Peace doesn't quite know how to get out of the book; after all, Clough's real triumphs are poignantly there for all to behold - yet tantalisingly, in the future, in Nottingham Forest's triumph in the league and back-to-back European cups. In the "real time" of "The Damned United" there's no way of doing anything more than glimpse this. Its a perversity, to concentrate on the one abject failure of the most successful football manager of his time, yet it works, in no small part because of Peace's fascination with not only Clough but the small ponds that he trod in, of drink-sodden football journalists, smoking, swearing centre halfs, and local political businessmen on the make. Read it.

Getting Religious with Rickie Lee Jones

I've finally got a copy of the God Delusion, and look forward to reading it, but its strange, when one of your all-time favourite artists records a religious album, and, more shocking, its brilliant. So for now, here's the incomparable Rickie Lee Jones singing "Falling Up" from "Sermon on Exposition Boulevard."

Don't walk in silence

They say you don't really miss people till they're gone. Tony Wilson, founder of Factory Records, self proclaimed "Mr. Manchester", and a unique individual, has died of a heart attack aged 57. I've been in the same room as him, though never personally met him. A few years ago Ra Page was going to set up an online music/poetry download store with him and I contributed to the idea, though it never came off. He's played - brilliantly - by Steve Coogan in the only true film about Manchester in the late 20th century; 24 Hour Party People; which was essentially Wilson's life story. When he compered this year's Big Chip Awards, on stage walking with a stick after his cancer, the very fact that he was there at all brought the biggest cheer of the night. Manchester was a grim place when he emerged in the late seventies, and he did so much to make it lighter. Today, its a little grimmer again.

Pop genius

I rarely hear/see something that kind of makes sense on every aesthetic/emotional level but this is pure pop genius. The video is even better....

TV Party

I've always been fascinated by the way New York in the 60s/70s saw no contradiction between different genres being thrown together, and its a surprise that today was the first time I'd heard of TV Party, a cable show from an acolyte of Warhol with Chris Stein from Blondie as co-host. The DVD is only released in America (note to self: get multi-region DVD player!) though I'm assuming I'll be able to get some of it on YouTube (Klaus Nomi! Debbie Harry!)



Now, of course, there's a real split between the REAL famous people, and the wannabes. (See: Manchester International Festival et al). I'm reminded of this with a feature on "On the Road" - 6 years for it see the light of day, whilst Kerouac continued in obscurity. I was probably the wrong generation for "On the Road", since we were being told to "get on our bike" by Norman Tebbit at the time, oh, and get a job, and not be creatives - but I read it a couple of years ago, and its freshness, honesty and directness give it a continued artistic validity. Friends went "interrailing", but I don't think they ever stayed anywhere long enough to write a novel about it, probably thankfully. And, there's something about America's vastness and its pioneer history, that, probably until very recently, made it the ultimate "On the Road" experience. I'm a bit surprised that the Observer got a non-fan to talk about its influence, in the form of Hari Kunzru, who says: "To me, the lives were often more interesting than the writing." Indeed, Hari, indeed.

Oh shit, I'm now going to spend the next half hour watching Klaus Nomi videos on YouTube.

The Classics

I was recently given a lovely art deco style cabinet, which was just dying to be filled with books, but which ones? A consignment of forgotten gems from the Midlands solved the issue, and I've filled it with "classics" - half a row of those austere black-spined Penguin classics - a fair run of "modern classics" with that much loved Picador white-spines - and a sprinkling of odd and old editions of other books to fill it up. I'm still camera-free at the moment, else I'd take a photograph and post it up here. But trust me, its made me feel all grown up and serious at last. Probably a good job too, since I've been spending the last couple of days sending "virtual" fish to friends as I grow to embrace my Facebook persona. I'd thought it was a social network too far, but now I'm finding it quite fun. Heavens.

Boy Wonders & Small Publishers

When asked to name a forgotten classic that nobody else ever mentions, I tend to say "Boy Wonder" by Robert James Baker. It usually falls on deaf ears, so imagine how pleased I was to see Baker as the recommended obscure writer on Scott Pack's Me and My Big Mouth Blog by writer Sebastian Beaumont. I've generally been a fan of Wikipedia, but its limitations are seen here. I'd read two of Baker's books but never in a million years thought he was a writer of "gay-themed transgressional fiction," but then I never do. I've got the opposite of a gaydar - it just never seems to occur to me. In fact, I never expect to find anything about an author from their writing, and I'm mildly shocked when I find out is all about them! Though had I picked up Baker's posthumous "Testerosterone", the title might have given me a clue. I'm now in a quandary - do I try and adapt Wikipedia's entry on the basis that I once read two of this obscure writers books, or am I just glad that he's there at all?

***

Sebastian Beaumont is published by a small publisher, and Scott works for a small publisher, and friend of mine has just been published by a small publisher. Ruth Estevez's debut novel "Meeting Coty" is just coming out from Kings Hart Books. A number of friends have got books out this year, and this one's particularly pleasing, since Ruth read it as a work in progress to my small, select writing group, not that it needed much help. Its a historical novel, based around a large London-based Spanish family in the early 20th century, the Coty of the title, being the perfume manufacturer Francois Coty.

Small subjects, small chances

I've been so out of the loop of what publishers are looking for over the last few years, that on the couple of times recently where I've sent a story or a manuscript out, I've found myself a bit non-plussed by the response. I've had a couple of things read recently which have been liked for the writing, but have been seen as being too "small" a subject. In both of these cases, there's a character who works in an office and is stultified by bureaucractic idiocy. Work, in other words, as a background, and one that has always been a bit under-represented in fiction (so many protagonists not er...working.) I guess I was a bit surprised that it was the scenario, the "smallness", for want of better word, of the story that was pointed out as a flaw. Female writers used to complain that they were undervalued for writing about the domestic rather than the global. I wonder if nowadays there's a tendency to want either the exotic location, the tormented background, or the ostensibly rich and interesting? With the latest letter, I also thought, echoing points that Elizabeth Baines has made in the past on her blog(s), that my work might be being undervalued for being humorous. Thing is, I thought I was writing about the big subjects (growing old, divorce, childlessness, modern life) and was deadly serious in the way I was doing it! I've recently started on a longer project - and in many ways it appears "bigger" than my recent novella and stories. I'll have to reflect carefully on how I get the point over (and probably cut the jokes.)

Books vs. Wizards

Much has been written about how the book trade won't make much out of the new Harry Potter book; well today it lost a few sales, I'm sure. I couldn't be bothered queueing behind a load of people clutching their Deathly Hallows.And that was after I'd managed to find 3 for 2 in the Waterstones holiday reads. Oh well, it's not like I'm short of reading matter. Interested to see Salt publishing so well represented on this years' Forward list, much being made of the youth of Luke Kennard, shortlisted for The Harbour Beyond the Movie at a callow 26; though on a 2nd collection, with various prizes behind him and a PhD in motion he's clearly an experienced hand in many ways. Liking the poems I read on the Salt site, I went to buy it from their online shop - but after several frustrated attempts, (e.g. it insists I gave a county, but doesn't list Greater Manchester as an option), I bought it from Amazon instead, where it was cheaper anyway. Oh well. Kennard's poems seem to be sparky and surreal, like a more playful Mark Ford. I look forward to reading the book. It seems to have come from a different direction than other heralded young poets - his work championed by more experimental magazines such as Succour, for which he's an editor.

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?