Forget about roads not travelled, there's an increasing number of debates I've not been contributing to. The travails at the Poetry Society (details are all over the web but here's one of the more reliable summaries) seem sad, because small organisations can have an impact far beyond their size, and good corporate governance is as important here, as it is at News International. The devil makes work for idle boards to do it seems. As neither subscriber to Poetry Review or member of the Poetry Society, its the kind of club that brings out the Groucho in me, but I'd hoped at some point in the future, as a poet at least, to have some nodding acquaintance with either.
As for the Booker longlist, announced yesterday, its the old and the new, as ever, and it increasingly seems the novel's top contest is as open as a Golf major in the post-Tiger Woods days. (Tigers do well in the Booker by the way, so its not a totally spurious analogy!) Great to see small publishers on there, again. I've not read any of the books, so I can't really comment. I have a sneaking suspicion that the "big names" might not make it to the final six, if only because quite a few of the new books seem quite interesting and original in subject matter (if not in style.) A judging panel including the ex-head of MI5 and the writer of "The Woman in Black" is likely to be going for a good story or two, I'd think.
What's clear - or has been for a few years - is that there's no new broom to the Booker, no new generation of writers taking all before them, and proclaiming the irrelevancy of those that have gone before. History features strongly, as ever, the Indian subcontinent seems to have fallen a little out of favour (or maybe it's just this year), and there's a welcome return to the list with Jane Rogers indepedently published pseudo SF novel.
I like the Booker, its quirks, its annoyances, and spits and spats - and also its occasional ability at picking out some of the better books of the year. I've read 7 of the last 9 winners, but only one ("Wolf Hall") genuinely seemed the best of the bunch.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
In Residence
I'm at a "writing residency" today, for 2 and a half hours at least. This is part of a project called The Reading, and takes place in the Untitled Gallery, which is a tiny room underneath the Friends' Meeting House in Manchester. 72 writers are contributing and I'm following on from Kay Boardman, who I don't know, who may well be (one Google search later, so may not be!) an editor of a book on "Popular Victorian Writers".
So, all being well, from 12pm I'll be avoiding the sunshine and the jazz festival and sitting at a screen waiting for inspiration - my words being simultaneously broadcast to the Cornerhouse and other venues about town. Best keep it clean then.
Tweet me at @adrianslatcher if you've any words you'd like me to inculcate into the text and reception willing, I'll see what I can do!
So, all being well, from 12pm I'll be avoiding the sunshine and the jazz festival and sitting at a screen waiting for inspiration - my words being simultaneously broadcast to the Cornerhouse and other venues about town. Best keep it clean then.
Tweet me at @adrianslatcher if you've any words you'd like me to inculcate into the text and reception willing, I'll see what I can do!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Performing Seals It!
The Manchester International Festival finishes today, and although its a bit difficult to be objective, given that few people will have been to more than a couple of shows, because of the cost and the variety, it seems to have been another success. There were tickets still on sale as late as yesterday afternoon for the remaining shows - which, though surely not ideal, at least let people make choices after the reviews came in.
I popped into "11 Rooms" at Manchester Art Gallery yesterday - I simply hadn't found time and opportunity before - and the place was packed, and indeed closed its doors early. Performance art, that mainstay of TV comedy skits on art, has clearly come of age. Maybe it was already there... David Blaine in a box, or the hourly stints on the 4th plinth at "One and Other." I don't think I'm being elitist when I felt that I didn't want to be crammed into a small space watching this or that performer. The performers I have seen this last couple of weeks - Rickie Lee Jones, Paul Heaton, Lonelady - have been of the musical variety. In each case, although seeing them live seems a privilege it is the work that got me there. Classic albums from Rickie Lee (she took us through her first two albums in the order they were recorded), familiar songs from Lonelady, a brand new ensemble piece by the Beautiful South frontman.
I could (and perhaps should) have gone to something every day and night this week, but I've had to limit myself. In all of this "performance" you wonder where anyone gets the time to do any work nowadays. Bjork apparently doesn't speak for a day after the performance; yet everyone's been hoping to "star spot" round town, as if seeing someone outside of their show, drinking beer in Albert Square or coffee in the Cornerhouse, is somehow a more authentic experience. After all, its no surprise that you might bump into Damon Albarn out and about, as he's garrisoned in Manchester for a few weeks. The more authentic experience, of course, is the performance; but even more than that - it's the creation of the art, and that, so often happens outside the performance space.
I'm thinking of this because next Sunday I'm going to be in a "performance" space, one of a relay of writers in "residency" for a couple of hours at Untitled Gallery, a subterranean space under the Friends' Meeting House (run by Metallica fans if the typeface is anything to go by!) Jane Chavez-Dawson's "The Reading" is being broadcast onto screens across the city, including the lobby of the Cornerhouse. A full list of writers is here....
This piece appealed to me on a number of levels. Firstly because it is about writers doing what they do, usually in silence and isolation. Secondly because of its democratic nature - which has appealed to a wide range of Manchester's writing community. And thirdly because the chance to sit down and write something in "residency" even for just a couple of hours, feels a real privilege. In other words, it amazes me that any work at all gets done these days, so inculcated are we in the primacy of performance.
As a poet, as a well as a fiction writer, I know how long it can take for a poem to make it from first draft, to being ready for the world, to being published. For our art, I think this has implication, in that its only when a book or record or film is completed that the world sits up and takes notice. Our instantaneous culture is one of over-production, yet for an individual artist or writer this is so difficult. No wonder there's a trend in the art world towards minimalism, it's all people have time for.
Yet if you make art in isolation, it can be hard sometimes to know where it might fit in. There are writers who are fixtures in certain magazines, or who are an obvious fit for this or that project. Yet if you follow your own path - wondering where it might lead - it can sometimes seem out of synchronisation with the times. A disinclination to be a "celebrity" is anathemic to modern culture. Bookselling demands not only your presence, but your performance. In our cultural zoo it is the creatives who are best at being performing seals who often are most successful, at least in the short term. But all this activity is often counterproductive. I've read more about the Poetry Society in the last month than in the previous ten years, and all of it is to do with their administration and nothing to do with poetry (though there are poets involved.)
Anyone who is interested in contemporary art can find themselves invited to previews every week of the year - yet it is the silent contemplation on a wet Wednesday afternoon that offers the real communion with an artist, just like the real communion with a writer is in private, with the work. Anyone who has sat there uncomfortably as a friend asks to read your latest poem knows how irrelevant your presence is to the reading - after all the "presence" is all in the work. All art is performance, but when everything is performance, I fear a little for the art.
I popped into "11 Rooms" at Manchester Art Gallery yesterday - I simply hadn't found time and opportunity before - and the place was packed, and indeed closed its doors early. Performance art, that mainstay of TV comedy skits on art, has clearly come of age. Maybe it was already there... David Blaine in a box, or the hourly stints on the 4th plinth at "One and Other." I don't think I'm being elitist when I felt that I didn't want to be crammed into a small space watching this or that performer. The performers I have seen this last couple of weeks - Rickie Lee Jones, Paul Heaton, Lonelady - have been of the musical variety. In each case, although seeing them live seems a privilege it is the work that got me there. Classic albums from Rickie Lee (she took us through her first two albums in the order they were recorded), familiar songs from Lonelady, a brand new ensemble piece by the Beautiful South frontman.
I could (and perhaps should) have gone to something every day and night this week, but I've had to limit myself. In all of this "performance" you wonder where anyone gets the time to do any work nowadays. Bjork apparently doesn't speak for a day after the performance; yet everyone's been hoping to "star spot" round town, as if seeing someone outside of their show, drinking beer in Albert Square or coffee in the Cornerhouse, is somehow a more authentic experience. After all, its no surprise that you might bump into Damon Albarn out and about, as he's garrisoned in Manchester for a few weeks. The more authentic experience, of course, is the performance; but even more than that - it's the creation of the art, and that, so often happens outside the performance space.
I'm thinking of this because next Sunday I'm going to be in a "performance" space, one of a relay of writers in "residency" for a couple of hours at Untitled Gallery, a subterranean space under the Friends' Meeting House (run by Metallica fans if the typeface is anything to go by!) Jane Chavez-Dawson's "The Reading" is being broadcast onto screens across the city, including the lobby of the Cornerhouse. A full list of writers is here....
This piece appealed to me on a number of levels. Firstly because it is about writers doing what they do, usually in silence and isolation. Secondly because of its democratic nature - which has appealed to a wide range of Manchester's writing community. And thirdly because the chance to sit down and write something in "residency" even for just a couple of hours, feels a real privilege. In other words, it amazes me that any work at all gets done these days, so inculcated are we in the primacy of performance.
As a poet, as a well as a fiction writer, I know how long it can take for a poem to make it from first draft, to being ready for the world, to being published. For our art, I think this has implication, in that its only when a book or record or film is completed that the world sits up and takes notice. Our instantaneous culture is one of over-production, yet for an individual artist or writer this is so difficult. No wonder there's a trend in the art world towards minimalism, it's all people have time for.
Yet if you make art in isolation, it can be hard sometimes to know where it might fit in. There are writers who are fixtures in certain magazines, or who are an obvious fit for this or that project. Yet if you follow your own path - wondering where it might lead - it can sometimes seem out of synchronisation with the times. A disinclination to be a "celebrity" is anathemic to modern culture. Bookselling demands not only your presence, but your performance. In our cultural zoo it is the creatives who are best at being performing seals who often are most successful, at least in the short term. But all this activity is often counterproductive. I've read more about the Poetry Society in the last month than in the previous ten years, and all of it is to do with their administration and nothing to do with poetry (though there are poets involved.)
Anyone who is interested in contemporary art can find themselves invited to previews every week of the year - yet it is the silent contemplation on a wet Wednesday afternoon that offers the real communion with an artist, just like the real communion with a writer is in private, with the work. Anyone who has sat there uncomfortably as a friend asks to read your latest poem knows how irrelevant your presence is to the reading - after all the "presence" is all in the work. All art is performance, but when everything is performance, I fear a little for the art.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Vault by David Rose
Reading David Rose's debut novel "Vault" I didn't quite know what to expect. After all, Rose has been a writer of unusual, terse short stories for decades, and this - his first longer work - is novella length, and described as an "anti-novel." I shouldn't have worried.
At its heart, "Vault" is a noirish thriller, and Rose provides both the tension and the detail that such a description deserves. It strikes me that if you play with genre fiction of any kind - the war novel, the spy novel - then the best way is to play the genre bits as straight as you can. In the hands of a careful stylist, and Rose is certainly that, details are both spare and appropriate. Our lead character is a cyclist, a World War II sniper, a Cold War accidental spy, and defiantly the "hero" of his own life. McKuen is himself a character in a novel, which dramatises the life of this fascinating maverick, yet in "Vault" the "real" McKuen is also commenting on that life, correcting the errors, puncturing the mythical. What might seem a gimmick is far from one. In fact, the dual perspective provides a powerful way to tell a life from two different perspectives. We are given the action scenes through the novelist - who plays up the heroism, creates an atmosphere, and creates an anti-hero. Then, through the narrator, the myth is punctured, the man seeps through.
If not a unique way of telling a story, "Vault" is cetainly more explicit about its dual narrative. Usually it would be the narrator who inflates his own importance, and up to the reader to do the puncturing. A fictional life told through the key moments seems a rich model - it's not so far from Anthony Burgess's "Earthly Powers" or Jim Crace's "Aracadia" after all - but given the subject matter, I think Rose gives his subject a depth and perspective that a less postmodern treatment would hardly do justice to.
After all, this is, ostensibly, a historical novel. Our main character is a minor player in large events. We get a very personal story. His two main skills, as sniper and cyclist seem wonderfully complementary, and in both the war scenes and the racing scenes we get the sense of a talented loner having to learn how to be part of a team effort for the greater good. That's as far as Rose goes in spelling out any deeper meaning, and the novel is the better for it. I've written before about a certain kind of contemporary "mock noir" which takes the conventions of genre fiction and adapts them to other scenarios, and there is an element of this double-take in "Vault", yet at the same time, Rose stays true to his character's life. There is no retrospective analysis; no attempt to contemporarise the past. I'm no cyclist but the descriptions of racing seem lived, real. Isn't sport so often praised for being a metaphor for war? Here the link is made explicit. The myth busting real McKuen never stops mentioning his busted knee and what it prevents him doing.
There's much pleasure to be had in this short novel, and though its easily read in one sitting it seems more substantial than many longer works. What it takes from the short story is a purity of vision. There are no subplots, no side issues. the dual narratives (with chapters named 1a, 1b etc.) is used for a reason, rather than strictly adhered to. Only when reality and fiction are far apart do we get two different accounts of the same story, elsewhere, Rose uses the method to drive forward the story. I wondered about a few of the details in the war scenes, with references to "no mans land" and "trench warfare" being associated with the First, rather than the Second world war; though I imagine they are accurate enough, they cause a jolt with a reader accustomed to certain conventions, and perhaps should have been removed. Generally the war scenes are very powerful. The sniper is such a tiny cog in the big wheel of battle, that his decisions are both "life and death" and hardly relevant to the bigger picture. Chasing through Europe after the German retreat, he comes across latent horrors, and it brings out his own dark side in a way that the tumult of war doesn't. This haunts him in civilian life, and cycling, one feels, is both escape - and in what it takes out of the competitive rider - penance.
There's something of Calvino's appropriation of genre writing in "Vault", and inevitable echoes of Graham Greene; whilst the bleak south east of post-war Britain reminds me of the same landscape in McEwan's noir novel "The Innocent", yet these are echoes rather than signature themes. McKuen listens to Mahler, and there is something musical about this book. The clank of the bike chain, the silence after a sniper's kill; Rose seems acutely aware of the auditory possibilities of the worlds he is documenting. It's a wonderful little book, that is a pleasure to read.
At its heart, "Vault" is a noirish thriller, and Rose provides both the tension and the detail that such a description deserves. It strikes me that if you play with genre fiction of any kind - the war novel, the spy novel - then the best way is to play the genre bits as straight as you can. In the hands of a careful stylist, and Rose is certainly that, details are both spare and appropriate. Our lead character is a cyclist, a World War II sniper, a Cold War accidental spy, and defiantly the "hero" of his own life. McKuen is himself a character in a novel, which dramatises the life of this fascinating maverick, yet in "Vault" the "real" McKuen is also commenting on that life, correcting the errors, puncturing the mythical. What might seem a gimmick is far from one. In fact, the dual perspective provides a powerful way to tell a life from two different perspectives. We are given the action scenes through the novelist - who plays up the heroism, creates an atmosphere, and creates an anti-hero. Then, through the narrator, the myth is punctured, the man seeps through.
If not a unique way of telling a story, "Vault" is cetainly more explicit about its dual narrative. Usually it would be the narrator who inflates his own importance, and up to the reader to do the puncturing. A fictional life told through the key moments seems a rich model - it's not so far from Anthony Burgess's "Earthly Powers" or Jim Crace's "Aracadia" after all - but given the subject matter, I think Rose gives his subject a depth and perspective that a less postmodern treatment would hardly do justice to.
After all, this is, ostensibly, a historical novel. Our main character is a minor player in large events. We get a very personal story. His two main skills, as sniper and cyclist seem wonderfully complementary, and in both the war scenes and the racing scenes we get the sense of a talented loner having to learn how to be part of a team effort for the greater good. That's as far as Rose goes in spelling out any deeper meaning, and the novel is the better for it. I've written before about a certain kind of contemporary "mock noir" which takes the conventions of genre fiction and adapts them to other scenarios, and there is an element of this double-take in "Vault", yet at the same time, Rose stays true to his character's life. There is no retrospective analysis; no attempt to contemporarise the past. I'm no cyclist but the descriptions of racing seem lived, real. Isn't sport so often praised for being a metaphor for war? Here the link is made explicit. The myth busting real McKuen never stops mentioning his busted knee and what it prevents him doing.
There's much pleasure to be had in this short novel, and though its easily read in one sitting it seems more substantial than many longer works. What it takes from the short story is a purity of vision. There are no subplots, no side issues. the dual narratives (with chapters named 1a, 1b etc.) is used for a reason, rather than strictly adhered to. Only when reality and fiction are far apart do we get two different accounts of the same story, elsewhere, Rose uses the method to drive forward the story. I wondered about a few of the details in the war scenes, with references to "no mans land" and "trench warfare" being associated with the First, rather than the Second world war; though I imagine they are accurate enough, they cause a jolt with a reader accustomed to certain conventions, and perhaps should have been removed. Generally the war scenes are very powerful. The sniper is such a tiny cog in the big wheel of battle, that his decisions are both "life and death" and hardly relevant to the bigger picture. Chasing through Europe after the German retreat, he comes across latent horrors, and it brings out his own dark side in a way that the tumult of war doesn't. This haunts him in civilian life, and cycling, one feels, is both escape - and in what it takes out of the competitive rider - penance.
There's something of Calvino's appropriation of genre writing in "Vault", and inevitable echoes of Graham Greene; whilst the bleak south east of post-war Britain reminds me of the same landscape in McEwan's noir novel "The Innocent", yet these are echoes rather than signature themes. McKuen listens to Mahler, and there is something musical about this book. The clank of the bike chain, the silence after a sniper's kill; Rose seems acutely aware of the auditory possibilities of the worlds he is documenting. It's a wonderful little book, that is a pleasure to read.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Toibin
Colm Toibin's acclaimed late 90s novel "The Blackwater Lightship" is a story about three generations of an estranged Irish family brought back together by the news that Declan, brother to Helen, is dying. In an arresting opening scene, Helen is acting as a party host for her husband, whilst preparing for him to take their two sons away for a week. As soon as she has seen them off, she has a visitor. Her brother Declan has asked for her to go and see him in the hospital. Declan has AIDS. This elegant opening is used by Toibin to set up a contrived setting, where Declan is taken to his grandmother's where 3 generations of the women in his family are brought under the same roof, alongside 2 of his friends. We discover that Helen doesn't speak to her mother, and that her mother and grandmother also don't get on. The silences of broken families are filled in by them all being brought under one roof for the first time. Of Declan we learn little, other than what he was like as a child, he is defined almost entirely by his illness - the friends who have tended to him, and now, reluctantly, at his request have let his family back into his life. We find out more about their lives than Declans. Toibin's adept at describing the replacement family a gay man builds around him when his real family exclude, or are excluded.
The setting, on a crumbling coastline, where the Blackwater Lightship is a metaphor for what has been lost (there were once two lighthouses, looking at each other, like lovers across a room). Over the course of the novel, which follows the trajectory of Declan's illness, the three women are asked to confront their hostilities to each other. Whether or not you are taken by this novel depends, I think, on how easy you are with Toibin's manipulations. The only straight men in the novel are dead (Helen's father) or absent (her husband), and the story - an unwrapping of past hurt, missed opportunities - is played out through the women in the family, with their shared love for Declan, being the glue that starts to bring them together again. Helen is a successful head teacher, her mother is a thriving business woman, yet they cannot see their similarities. Rural Ireland is played out as a place that has to be got away from, else it will draw you in and strangle you - yet there are no great events in this family's life, the betrayals are unspoken, perceived. Helen's husband tiptoes around her past, and decides not to delve too deeply when she doesn't invite her family to her wedding. Yet, Helen has estranged Declan as well. Here is hurt left to grow over the years.
The other Toibin I've read, "Brooklyn", takes a similar theme, but the millieu is different, an oppressive Ireland of the 1950s dominated by poverty and priests, with power maintained through silence. In 1990s Ireland, Toibin seems to be saying that the silence is what remains.
It's undoubtedly an elegant novel, and Toibin's prose is much praised, yet he writes in a transatlantic style that though it travels easily (to Booker shortlists and to American universities) isn't really strong enough to carry what is, in many ways, a long short story. If the Jamesian languidness of "Brooklyn" (and presumably "The Master") aren't quite formed in his prose at this point, there's still a pointing towards it. Like Ishiguro you feel that there has been a deliberate excising of a more emotional style. Yet, transatlantic as it might be, its also a very middle-class novel. These characters would easily fit into the mainstream of British literary fiction. Like in Mike Leigh's film "Secrets and Lies" you only really feel they exist within the parameters in which we see them. The backstory is just that, in the background, to illuminate points of difference between the claustrophobic cast of characters.
Family and death - perhaps "The Dead" retains a hold over Irish fiction even now - yet this novel seems almost pathological in its self-imposed misery. Unlike Anne Enright's similarly themed (but differently structured) "The Gathering", there is not much fun to be had. I can't remember another novel that so dwells on the illness of one of its characters, another pathology - perhaps the end of the 20th century allowed the "taboo" to be not just lifted but explored? There is resolution of a sort, after all there has to be, given the novelist's contrivance, though its of a tentative sort. Helen's mother would very much like to come and see her and her children, but she promises not to stay "overnight." Certain proprietaries are necessary it seems, not to mend the past, but to retain the truce. Toibin seems to be saying that in a very modern Ireland, nothing much has really changed, underneath it all - but perhaps the reader, or at least this reader, requires a bit more convincing. "Get over yourself" you feel like saying, but in this novel, nobody would have the language for it; and, unusually for an Irish writer, neither does the novelist.
The setting, on a crumbling coastline, where the Blackwater Lightship is a metaphor for what has been lost (there were once two lighthouses, looking at each other, like lovers across a room). Over the course of the novel, which follows the trajectory of Declan's illness, the three women are asked to confront their hostilities to each other. Whether or not you are taken by this novel depends, I think, on how easy you are with Toibin's manipulations. The only straight men in the novel are dead (Helen's father) or absent (her husband), and the story - an unwrapping of past hurt, missed opportunities - is played out through the women in the family, with their shared love for Declan, being the glue that starts to bring them together again. Helen is a successful head teacher, her mother is a thriving business woman, yet they cannot see their similarities. Rural Ireland is played out as a place that has to be got away from, else it will draw you in and strangle you - yet there are no great events in this family's life, the betrayals are unspoken, perceived. Helen's husband tiptoes around her past, and decides not to delve too deeply when she doesn't invite her family to her wedding. Yet, Helen has estranged Declan as well. Here is hurt left to grow over the years.
The other Toibin I've read, "Brooklyn", takes a similar theme, but the millieu is different, an oppressive Ireland of the 1950s dominated by poverty and priests, with power maintained through silence. In 1990s Ireland, Toibin seems to be saying that the silence is what remains.
It's undoubtedly an elegant novel, and Toibin's prose is much praised, yet he writes in a transatlantic style that though it travels easily (to Booker shortlists and to American universities) isn't really strong enough to carry what is, in many ways, a long short story. If the Jamesian languidness of "Brooklyn" (and presumably "The Master") aren't quite formed in his prose at this point, there's still a pointing towards it. Like Ishiguro you feel that there has been a deliberate excising of a more emotional style. Yet, transatlantic as it might be, its also a very middle-class novel. These characters would easily fit into the mainstream of British literary fiction. Like in Mike Leigh's film "Secrets and Lies" you only really feel they exist within the parameters in which we see them. The backstory is just that, in the background, to illuminate points of difference between the claustrophobic cast of characters.
Family and death - perhaps "The Dead" retains a hold over Irish fiction even now - yet this novel seems almost pathological in its self-imposed misery. Unlike Anne Enright's similarly themed (but differently structured) "The Gathering", there is not much fun to be had. I can't remember another novel that so dwells on the illness of one of its characters, another pathology - perhaps the end of the 20th century allowed the "taboo" to be not just lifted but explored? There is resolution of a sort, after all there has to be, given the novelist's contrivance, though its of a tentative sort. Helen's mother would very much like to come and see her and her children, but she promises not to stay "overnight." Certain proprietaries are necessary it seems, not to mend the past, but to retain the truce. Toibin seems to be saying that in a very modern Ireland, nothing much has really changed, underneath it all - but perhaps the reader, or at least this reader, requires a bit more convincing. "Get over yourself" you feel like saying, but in this novel, nobody would have the language for it; and, unusually for an Irish writer, neither does the novelist.
Business as Usual
Dragging myself away from the News International scandals (and trying to wonder why since everyone I know has been suspicious of the "Digger" and his nasty little newspapers for as long as I remember, the political class are only just realising it. Reminds me (as many things do) of the tale of the frog and the scorpion).... as I say, dragging myself away.
In Birmingham on Monday I had a long-overdue visit to the magnificent city Art Gallery. As well as sitting there enthralled by Epstein's "Lucifer" I spent some time with their pre-raphaelites, read about the progress of the Staffordshire hoard (which was dug up a couple of miles from where I grew up), and had lunch in the wonderful Edwardian Tea Rooms. The real reason for going was to see the "Home of Metal" exhibition in the basement. Something strange hearing Black Sabbath, Diamond Head and Napalm Death in an art gallery. Birmingham's attitude to culture always seems a little ambiguous. I looked in vain in Waterstones for any Roy Fisher. Still writing at 80, he seems a nearly invisible figure, even in the city where he came from.
I'm writing about the West Midlands - partly about my own past, but partly the landscape, partly trying to uncover the somewhat hidden literature of the city - and it strikes me that there remains a literary hole of sorts, despite the usual preponderance of literary festivals etc. The Lichfield festival this week has brought in Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke as the main poetry event. The recovery of the Staffordshire Hoard reminds us that Mercia was once a powerful kingdom. I wonder what its "national" literature would look like?
There's a sense of overstimulation elsewhere as the Manchester Festival continues in the city. I've hardly had a chance to see the main events, never mind the fringe, though was so glad I went to see one of my musical heroines, Rickie Lee Jones, on Sunday night.
There's quite a lot of static on the poetry airwaves at the moment. Like buzzing fly at the window I can't quite ignore the furore over the Poetry Society/Poetry Review whilst realising that it has little relevance/resonance for me, either as a poetry reader or writer. Poets, despite the popular perception, do seem to like a scrap - a shame that this one appears to be about the administration rather than the art. The Forward Prize shortlist is the usual mix of the well-known and the new, and you get the sense that "prizes" are now the poetry equivalent of patronage, great if you get them, furiously derided if you don't.
Little pleasures continue: there's an Oxfam "book jam" on Sunday night in the Northern Quarter at Apotheca ; there's a competition to write "quickies" (adult flash fiction - that's what happens when you let the Chorltonites into the Didsbury festival!); the Other Room returns with its packed summer programme, next Wednesday; and Kate Feld is running a workshop on creative non-fiction leading to a competition for this year's literature festival.
In Birmingham on Monday I had a long-overdue visit to the magnificent city Art Gallery. As well as sitting there enthralled by Epstein's "Lucifer" I spent some time with their pre-raphaelites, read about the progress of the Staffordshire hoard (which was dug up a couple of miles from where I grew up), and had lunch in the wonderful Edwardian Tea Rooms. The real reason for going was to see the "Home of Metal" exhibition in the basement. Something strange hearing Black Sabbath, Diamond Head and Napalm Death in an art gallery. Birmingham's attitude to culture always seems a little ambiguous. I looked in vain in Waterstones for any Roy Fisher. Still writing at 80, he seems a nearly invisible figure, even in the city where he came from.
I'm writing about the West Midlands - partly about my own past, but partly the landscape, partly trying to uncover the somewhat hidden literature of the city - and it strikes me that there remains a literary hole of sorts, despite the usual preponderance of literary festivals etc. The Lichfield festival this week has brought in Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke as the main poetry event. The recovery of the Staffordshire Hoard reminds us that Mercia was once a powerful kingdom. I wonder what its "national" literature would look like?
There's a sense of overstimulation elsewhere as the Manchester Festival continues in the city. I've hardly had a chance to see the main events, never mind the fringe, though was so glad I went to see one of my musical heroines, Rickie Lee Jones, on Sunday night.
There's quite a lot of static on the poetry airwaves at the moment. Like buzzing fly at the window I can't quite ignore the furore over the Poetry Society/Poetry Review whilst realising that it has little relevance/resonance for me, either as a poetry reader or writer. Poets, despite the popular perception, do seem to like a scrap - a shame that this one appears to be about the administration rather than the art. The Forward Prize shortlist is the usual mix of the well-known and the new, and you get the sense that "prizes" are now the poetry equivalent of patronage, great if you get them, furiously derided if you don't.
Little pleasures continue: there's an Oxfam "book jam" on Sunday night in the Northern Quarter at Apotheca ; there's a competition to write "quickies" (adult flash fiction - that's what happens when you let the Chorltonites into the Didsbury festival!); the Other Room returns with its packed summer programme, next Wednesday; and Kate Feld is running a workshop on creative non-fiction leading to a competition for this year's literature festival.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
The Cult of Beauty
Our relationship to the Victorians is always an intricate one. We still live in and love many of their houses; we are sniffy about "Victorian values"; we have a Commonwealth when once we had an Empire. Victoria was on the throne for so long, however, that it is the later part of her reign that we are seeing in our minds-eye when something is described as "Victorian." Yet Albert died in 1861, and the museum that bears her and his name, the Victoria and Albert (or "V&A") only took that name at the end of the 19th century.
It's an appropriate place for an exhibition on late Victorian art and design. "The Cult of Beauty" is billed as the first comprehensive exhibition of "the aesthetic movement 1860-1900." The V&A may well be my favourite British exhibition space, and as ever with their major shows its a curatorial triumph. At its best, the V&A augments its remarkable exhibits with a vast sweep of historiogaphy, and the Cult of Beauty is no exception. From paintings, to artefacts, to a whole range of late Victorian social and cultural histories, the show is in some ways breathtaking.
What was the "aesthetic movement" then? This is an exhibition that takes in the Pre Raphaelites, Whistler, Leighton and other late Victorian painters; finds room for designers such as Morris and Liberty (whose shop still exists in Central London), and still find time for the fin de seicle decadence of Wilde and Beardsley.
If "The Cult of Beauty" has an agenda it is to revitalise our interest in this familiar, yet increasingly distant time. In parts it succeeds. Our 20th century middle classes are stubbornly enamoured of the late Victorian aesthetic, whether its willow pattern China, or Morris's wallpaper. The examples given throughout the show are luscious, pristine, but at the same time trite. This "aesthetic" was one of a very particular, and peculiar design. New materials and techniques provided artists with the means to produce things of beauty, to their own design; yet this was also a precursor for the "mass produced". The arts and craft movement, as idealised in William Morris's utopia "News from Nowhere", would end up influencing the mass-produced.
The four spaces given over to the exhibition take a chronological and thematic approach. The Pre-Raphaelites, though towering over the exhibition in terms of their influence and quality, are seen in the context of their times, their influence extending beyond their own work. But though the exhibition shows their influence, it is not theirs alone. The vivid colours and even more vivid life that we saw in the recent "Desperate Romantics" TV show comes to mind; the set designers of that show had clearly done their homework. I loved Millais's "Esther", where General Gordon's coat was turned inside out producing the vivid patterns you see in the Biblical character's beautiful gown, and the red-haired heroines of PRB legend return again and again in the art that follows. I was fascinated as well by the story of the Grosvenor Gallery, which was opened as a rival to the Royal Academy and became something of a home from home for the Aesthetic movement. It was here that Ruskin famously slammed Whistler's painting for "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."
This exhibition was full of such historical gems as this - and you realise how febrile the capital's artistic scene must have been during the late Victorian period, even as Victoria herself stayed in secluded mourning following Albert's death. The riches of the Empire were finding their way directly into the homes and tastes of London's middle classes. Whereas the Pre-Raphaelites had worked with carpenters to design furniture to their taste, or had scoured London for 17th century eastern pottery, by the 1880s and 1890s, the wealthy middle classes were keen on showing their own ostentation. Pottery from Stoke-on-Trent emulated Chinese willow patterns; whilst furniture makers and metal workers created elegantly designs. The exhibition even imports a pair of iron gates, which were built to show off the skills of the craftsmen who made them.
A reader of Quiller-Couch's first edition of the "Oxford Book of English Poetry" (1900) is struck by how well-formed is the English canon, up to the age which has just finished. Yet the last 50 or so pages of the book are full of tedious versifiers, reminiscent of Tennyson, but without the great man's brilliance. Few survive in our memory. Modernism was not just the period that followed, but a necessary reformation, and the same is true elsewhere in the arts.
The British painters that came after the PRB seem minor. After all, in Europe a revolution in painting was being undertaken. Whistler seems a bridging figure, both between old world and new, but also between the tastes of late Victorian England and the revolutions on the continent. Other painters we look at now for their decorative powers. Leighton's Flaming June for instance (not featured in the exhibition - but there are other examples of his work), or Albert Moore's luminous "Azaleas." (My favourite painting in the show.)
The natural world is popular with the Aesthetic Movement, but its the peacock that dominates, the exotic beauty of its feathers, becoming a leitmotif, particularly in Whistler's the Peacock Room, which is recreated via audio visual display. One can only admire such attempts at bringing art to the centre of life, but we also see how increasingly these attempts are part of "fashionable society" rather than an art for all. Art for Arts Sake, as Whistler's regular pamphlets would have it, becomes a stick which Punch cartoonists can beat the asethetic movement. In Oscar Wilde, we have both an exemplar of the aesthete and the period's most lasting criticism. Few dramatists are revived as frequently. If Wilde was very aware of the absurdities of the movement, as is clear from "The Importance of Being Earnest", he was mocking his own friends and circle, for the benefit of a wider, more conservative audience. Today, we share the laughter, mocking the pretension, whilst still admiring the decoration. It is the pre-Victorian imagination - the romantic poets, J.M.W. Turner - that still dominates British aesthetics, yet Victorian kitsch casts a long shadow.
The "decadent" 1890s end the show. We see revolutions in book design, exemplified by the Beardsley illustrated "The Yellow Book." Here we have a vibrant literary journal, and an enthusiastic educated audience for its writers and illustrators. Yet if, from the distance of a century or more, we are looking for "decadence", its not in the "shocking" illustrations of Beardsley, or stories of the trial of Oscar Wilde, but in the bourgeois sensibility of the times. Wonderful as this show is, I think it falls short of rehabiliting its art. There is something a little too mesmerising about this "cult of beauty", that seems to reflect the technological advances and great wealth of the late Victorian British Empire. You will look long and hard for the real Victorian England, particularly the non-Metropolitan world. Aestheticism brought a certain European sophistication to the galleries and drawing rooms of London, but quickly became commoditised by the class who embraced it - who, in turn, felt morally outraged by the artists (such as Wilde) who had provided their guilty pleasures. For all that Rosetti, Millais, Morris and others were dedicated to illustrating truth through beauty, at some point their innovations became little more than bourgeois fashion. In the end, it is in the history of design and home furnishings that the Aesthetic movememt influenced, rather than the history of art. At its best, the paintings of Hunt and Millais, "Goblin Market", or "The Portrait of Dorian Gray", late Victorian art and literature has a fragile magic to it. It is no surprise that we still admire their buildings, and their interiors. In this exemplary show at the V&A, we see an earlier age of commerce than our own, and the echoes are very clear. Yet we have forsaken beauty for expediency, satire for prurience, Whistler for Emin. The exhibition's title is a clever one for a "cult" can mean two things; an obsessiveness about something which others don't share, and something that appeals to a small group of people. In calling the aesthetic movement "the cult of beauty" the curators of this show are noting only how strange we would now think it to want to design our lives along aesthetic purposes. Modernism, a far more European movement, never really took hold in Britain, as a previous show at the V&A amply demonstrated; and the strong hold that the aesthetic movement still has on our visual imagination is perhaps one part of the reason why.
Monday, July 04, 2011
American Account
The last of Martin Amis's Public Lectures tonight at the Martin Harris Centre at the University of Manchester was an independence day special, with him being joined by Erica Wagner and Will Self to talk about America. As Ian Mcguire, from the Centre for New Writing, made clear in the introduction, its a big subject. Too big in the end.
All three speakers were a little bit American. I didn't know that Self had an American mother (but British passport, which delayed him somewhat in one post-9/11 visit, "Are you an apple or a pear?" the customs guy asked him, repeatedly.) Wagner, an American by upbringing and accent has lived here since her late teens. Amis, of course, writes American, however English he speaks, specifically in the accented "Night Train", but also in his attempts to bring the full American hubbub of U.S. prose to his British writing. (He also emigrates on Wednesday, with his American wife and American children, becoming a - very - Englishman in New York.)
The big subject was a problem. Amis talked of the discovery of America across the frozen Baring Straits; Self, accidentally given the anti-American role (not really necessary, I thought), preferred personal anecdote to historical relativism, though smirking at the space mission naming of its Atlantis after a mythical, sunken continent, whilst Wagner seemed almost apologetic of her accent; whilst conceding that being an American in England had given her immediate authority on its literature, even if she didn't quite know it. One of her first book reviews was of a Western... so, hell, she'd better know a bit more about Westerns.
It seemed a given that we should talk about America in the context of anti-Americanism, the post-9/11 dislike and misadventures across the world. I'd have preferred a debating point on "why America matters" rather than another going over the decline of Empire. Certainly, on July 4th, it was interesting to hear an overview of America that crossed time and nation. There were some interesting points. "America is a world", said Amis, "India is a world, Brazil is a world," disagreed Self, "not America." It could have made an interesting debate in itself, but wasn't followed through. It was, Wagner, I think , who talked about American literature being better for embracing a multiculturalism it had found in British literature. I'd have liked more on that. Is it true that the British + authors like Rushdie and Ondaatje have made America think more about cosmopolitanism? I'd dispute that, but I think she was hitting at a larger truth, that in a globalised market place, authors are now hybrids. Books like "The Kite Runner" or authors like Junot Diaz are American +. But as Amis pointed out, Bellow (as a Jew) and others were always American + anyway.
The beauty of tonight's talk, looking back on it, was that there was a certain joie de vivre about it, despite the concentration on America's myopic world view. There were a few open goals missed, I felt. That there's been a Reagan statue unveiled in London today, for instance. The post-Iraq, post-Blair worldview seemed a little too easy. Everyone's a little disappointed in Obama it seems; but Britain, and its own neo-con coalition was not mentioned. Talking about Blair seems easier somehow. Misadventures abroad have longer consequence.
Yet, when we did touch on novel writing, the three speakers were mostly acute. The instance response to 9/11 of writers hasn't been that great. As Amis said, DeLillo got terrorism much better in "Mao II" and "White Noise" than "Falling Man." Self's dismissal of Jay Mcinerney's "The Good Life" (though he didn't mention it by name) seemed the wrong choice. Mcinerney tries to incorporate 9/11 into the early 21st century contemporary sequel to "Brightness Falls" and though it does feel contrived in parts, I actually think he is doing the very difficult task of being too contemporary, which meant that 9/11 had to be incorporated. The incorporation seems trite, but I don't think he ever exploits the subject.
But that conversation, like a lot tonight, didn't go much further. After all, Amis is one of those who has written extensively post-9/11, and readers of "The Second Plane" are quite rare. The audience questions were, in that uniquely Manchester way, as random as you might expect. I've often felt a "Question Time" format with submission before the event might work well at this kind of event, but, for these public lectures the University of Manchester have stuck with a slightly dull format that could probably benefit, as gracious as Mcguire was, from a more pro-active chair, or a more mediated public response.
As ever it was good to pull out the best thoughts from our esteemed speakers. I'd have liked to hear more from Wagner on literature, as I've always been impressed by her editing of the Times book section, but she was relatively quiet on the subject. It was Amis who mentioned most books by name. Self was funny, particularly when asked to respond to the maddest of the audience's questions (something about drugs and religion that none of us really understood), and made a good case for reading Kafka's "America" if you really want to understand the country. Amis got his best response when he quoted Larkin; Manchester audiences always enjoying the erudition (I think it was Milton last time I saw him here.)
If tonight felt a bit like a missed opportunity, I don't think the audience were too minded. I didn't recognise a single person from the Manchester literary scene, yet the Martin Harris centre was virtually full. Here, it seems, is a very different audience than you see elsewhere at literary events in the city. The slightly null feeling I had at the end of the evening probably came from this juxtaposition. Finishing his four years in Manchester, Amis has proven there is an audience for this kind of event, and it will be interesting if he's left some kind of legacy on the city, with the students he's taught, the conversations he's had. Perhaps even in what he writes next.
With Colm Toibin replacing him in the Autumn there's clearly more than a change of "manager", like when Derby County replaced Brian Clough with Dave Mackay: the styles were very different, but they got a similar result.
All three speakers were a little bit American. I didn't know that Self had an American mother (but British passport, which delayed him somewhat in one post-9/11 visit, "Are you an apple or a pear?" the customs guy asked him, repeatedly.) Wagner, an American by upbringing and accent has lived here since her late teens. Amis, of course, writes American, however English he speaks, specifically in the accented "Night Train", but also in his attempts to bring the full American hubbub of U.S. prose to his British writing. (He also emigrates on Wednesday, with his American wife and American children, becoming a - very - Englishman in New York.)
The big subject was a problem. Amis talked of the discovery of America across the frozen Baring Straits; Self, accidentally given the anti-American role (not really necessary, I thought), preferred personal anecdote to historical relativism, though smirking at the space mission naming of its Atlantis after a mythical, sunken continent, whilst Wagner seemed almost apologetic of her accent; whilst conceding that being an American in England had given her immediate authority on its literature, even if she didn't quite know it. One of her first book reviews was of a Western... so, hell, she'd better know a bit more about Westerns.
It seemed a given that we should talk about America in the context of anti-Americanism, the post-9/11 dislike and misadventures across the world. I'd have preferred a debating point on "why America matters" rather than another going over the decline of Empire. Certainly, on July 4th, it was interesting to hear an overview of America that crossed time and nation. There were some interesting points. "America is a world", said Amis, "India is a world, Brazil is a world," disagreed Self, "not America." It could have made an interesting debate in itself, but wasn't followed through. It was, Wagner, I think , who talked about American literature being better for embracing a multiculturalism it had found in British literature. I'd have liked more on that. Is it true that the British + authors like Rushdie and Ondaatje have made America think more about cosmopolitanism? I'd dispute that, but I think she was hitting at a larger truth, that in a globalised market place, authors are now hybrids. Books like "The Kite Runner" or authors like Junot Diaz are American +. But as Amis pointed out, Bellow (as a Jew) and others were always American + anyway.
The beauty of tonight's talk, looking back on it, was that there was a certain joie de vivre about it, despite the concentration on America's myopic world view. There were a few open goals missed, I felt. That there's been a Reagan statue unveiled in London today, for instance. The post-Iraq, post-Blair worldview seemed a little too easy. Everyone's a little disappointed in Obama it seems; but Britain, and its own neo-con coalition was not mentioned. Talking about Blair seems easier somehow. Misadventures abroad have longer consequence.
Yet, when we did touch on novel writing, the three speakers were mostly acute. The instance response to 9/11 of writers hasn't been that great. As Amis said, DeLillo got terrorism much better in "Mao II" and "White Noise" than "Falling Man." Self's dismissal of Jay Mcinerney's "The Good Life" (though he didn't mention it by name) seemed the wrong choice. Mcinerney tries to incorporate 9/11 into the early 21st century contemporary sequel to "Brightness Falls" and though it does feel contrived in parts, I actually think he is doing the very difficult task of being too contemporary, which meant that 9/11 had to be incorporated. The incorporation seems trite, but I don't think he ever exploits the subject.
But that conversation, like a lot tonight, didn't go much further. After all, Amis is one of those who has written extensively post-9/11, and readers of "The Second Plane" are quite rare. The audience questions were, in that uniquely Manchester way, as random as you might expect. I've often felt a "Question Time" format with submission before the event might work well at this kind of event, but, for these public lectures the University of Manchester have stuck with a slightly dull format that could probably benefit, as gracious as Mcguire was, from a more pro-active chair, or a more mediated public response.
As ever it was good to pull out the best thoughts from our esteemed speakers. I'd have liked to hear more from Wagner on literature, as I've always been impressed by her editing of the Times book section, but she was relatively quiet on the subject. It was Amis who mentioned most books by name. Self was funny, particularly when asked to respond to the maddest of the audience's questions (something about drugs and religion that none of us really understood), and made a good case for reading Kafka's "America" if you really want to understand the country. Amis got his best response when he quoted Larkin; Manchester audiences always enjoying the erudition (I think it was Milton last time I saw him here.)
If tonight felt a bit like a missed opportunity, I don't think the audience were too minded. I didn't recognise a single person from the Manchester literary scene, yet the Martin Harris centre was virtually full. Here, it seems, is a very different audience than you see elsewhere at literary events in the city. The slightly null feeling I had at the end of the evening probably came from this juxtaposition. Finishing his four years in Manchester, Amis has proven there is an audience for this kind of event, and it will be interesting if he's left some kind of legacy on the city, with the students he's taught, the conversations he's had. Perhaps even in what he writes next.
With Colm Toibin replacing him in the Autumn there's clearly more than a change of "manager", like when Derby County replaced Brian Clough with Dave Mackay: the styles were very different, but they got a similar result.
Festival Season
Manchester International Festival began on Thursday. Counterintuitively I went down to London Friday, as I'd long planned to, to see "The Cult of Beauty" at the V&A (more of which later.) MIF (or #MIF11 on Twitter) isn't a festival that you can take the full two weeks off for, as it would probably bankrupt you. Most people I know have booked for one or two events and will see what else they might catch. Yet there's also a festival pavilion in Albert Square, many of which events are free. So, over the next week or two I'll be catching a few things I'm sure. Its also spurred its own fringe, this time with quite a large, coherent programme. The "Not Part of" festival takes its name from the somewhat dismal community offerings of the first MIF, but has thankfully grown into a welcomed little brother of the main festival. As ever in Manchester, the city is a diverse beast, and events not associated with either festival of fringe are going on at just the same time. So tonight I'll be going to the last of Martin Amis's public lectures as Professor of Creative Writing at University of Manchester.
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Administration of Poetry
The worst thing about my job is the endless administration and bureaucracy it entails. You come to learn that it will never all be done, that all bureaucratic systems have their own inbuilt tendency to multiply. All you can ever do is mitigate it, say enough is enough.
Having a day off after an overload of necessary administration over the last two weeks, I feel I've earned a bit of time to get back to being creative. So, here I am, looking through the fifty or so poems I've written in the last year and a half, wondering which work, which don't, which need more work, which don't. And you know what? I've spent several hours this morning on the administration of poetry. I've been a bit slack on some things recently, but have mostly typed up my handwritten poems as I've gone along; thank God for that. But you can't revise poetry on the screen, so my printer's been spewing out pages for most of the morning, and then I had a pleasant hour, reading through, and putting them into 3 piles: almost there; those worth returning to; and those probably not. Its the first time I've done this ordering since last year putting "Playing Solitaire for Money" together, and the experience of doing that has helped here. Poems need to find friends, rather than stand alone - whether that's form or subject.
Then, what am I going to do with these poems? I kind of stopped sending out randomly to magazines quite a while ago; though there are certain magazines I'd love to get published in. So, I've done what Kirsty Maccoll apperently did in choosing the tracklisting for "The Joshua Tree", put them in order of my favourites. I needed a dozen or so - there's a couple of poetry competitions with deadlines next week (Bridport Prize and Lightship poetry competition) and though I've never even got shortlisted for a poetry competition I thought it worth choosing a poem for each - then there's two of my favourite magazines, one online, one offline, and I've sent a batch to each of those.
It's not that the other poems in the pile aren't worth sending off, but they're perhaps requiring a bit more TLC. Noticeably, a lot of the poems I've been happiest with are 2010's batch, rather than 2011's. Takes a while you see. So, it's mid-afternoon and apart from a brief coffee with an old colleague in Didsbury's ever pleasant Art of Tea, and a brief scavenge through the charity shops, all I've done today is the Administration of Poetry. Stamps. SAEs. Online payment systems. Hole punching. Printing. Ring binding. A satisfying day off, but in some ways, something of a Busman's holiday.
Having a day off after an overload of necessary administration over the last two weeks, I feel I've earned a bit of time to get back to being creative. So, here I am, looking through the fifty or so poems I've written in the last year and a half, wondering which work, which don't, which need more work, which don't. And you know what? I've spent several hours this morning on the administration of poetry. I've been a bit slack on some things recently, but have mostly typed up my handwritten poems as I've gone along; thank God for that. But you can't revise poetry on the screen, so my printer's been spewing out pages for most of the morning, and then I had a pleasant hour, reading through, and putting them into 3 piles: almost there; those worth returning to; and those probably not. Its the first time I've done this ordering since last year putting "Playing Solitaire for Money" together, and the experience of doing that has helped here. Poems need to find friends, rather than stand alone - whether that's form or subject.
Then, what am I going to do with these poems? I kind of stopped sending out randomly to magazines quite a while ago; though there are certain magazines I'd love to get published in. So, I've done what Kirsty Maccoll apperently did in choosing the tracklisting for "The Joshua Tree", put them in order of my favourites. I needed a dozen or so - there's a couple of poetry competitions with deadlines next week (Bridport Prize and Lightship poetry competition) and though I've never even got shortlisted for a poetry competition I thought it worth choosing a poem for each - then there's two of my favourite magazines, one online, one offline, and I've sent a batch to each of those.
It's not that the other poems in the pile aren't worth sending off, but they're perhaps requiring a bit more TLC. Noticeably, a lot of the poems I've been happiest with are 2010's batch, rather than 2011's. Takes a while you see. So, it's mid-afternoon and apart from a brief coffee with an old colleague in Didsbury's ever pleasant Art of Tea, and a brief scavenge through the charity shops, all I've done today is the Administration of Poetry. Stamps. SAEs. Online payment systems. Hole punching. Printing. Ring binding. A satisfying day off, but in some ways, something of a Busman's holiday.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
U2: They May be Wankers, but they're OUR Wankers
U2 played Glastonbury last night, to two different controversies. The first being that because U2's tax affairs are now in the Netherlands, Bono is a "debt denier", not paying his fair whack. Given that he's not a British citizen, I'm not sure that its any of our business anyway (Irish Uncut rather than UK Uncut, if such a thing exists might have a view.) Bono, who lectures the world on debt, is being lectured himself. Fair enough. The second controversy is that they shouldn't be at Glastonbury - that they are an out-of-date rock behemoth.
Its mostly the second of these that has me writing a blog post. Its always seemed to be musically the most conservative of festivals (the main reason that I've only been the once.) The "ironic" Sunday night act (Tom Jones when I went in the mid-90s), a selection of big name headliners, hip indie bands relegated to 2nd, 3rd or 4th stage; and black music almost invisible (except when they make a big fuss that isn't - i.e. Jay Z), its amazing it still has any reputation for music at all. That is has, is because of that collective experience of 50,000 people in a field celebrated in Pulp's "Sorted for E's and Whizz", and, nowadays, supplemented by a healthy BBC audience. Glastonbury's headliners are big news. Yet whereas Coldplay, Radiohead and Primal Scream appear to be Glastonbury regulars, U2, like the Cure, (and Morrissey, who also appeared last night) come from an earlier era. The Glastonbury of the 80s was still a hippy leftover as much as a cultural icon. U2 are, as well, the "biggest rock band in the world" TM. The one thing that Glastonbury has never really done much of is basic, all out rock music. I'm wondering whether, in a world where the rock band has become an actual rather than metaphorical dinosaur, it was this as much as anything that caused my twitter stream to be full of anti-U2 ranting last night (even as they kept watching!)
I don't mind that at all, but culturally its fascinating. The anodyne reformed boyband Take That can wow millions with a spectacular show, below average songs, and an enormous sense of good will, despite never having, as far as I can recall, ever expressing an opinion about anything other than partying, having a good time and er... making shed loads of money, whilst U2 get pilloried. Somehow we still care about U2, and when we see and hear the unrepentant Bono in trademark shades and World of Leather 2-piece, his still taut band hanging behind him looking more like his roadies than his bandmates, we're angry about something inarticulate about ourselves. For if U2 are wankers, they are most definitely OUR wankers; that's those of us in our forties and early fifties.
I first heard U2 in the 5th year at school. I knew the name and had heard "I will follow" (that soulful/soulless early single) on Peel, whilst preferring the more adventurous music of the Cure, Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order. I don't think anyone had these overly serious, tune-light young men from Dublin as inheritors of the term "biggest band in the world." So whereas better frontmen died (Ian Curtis) or lost it (Ian McCullough) and better bands split (The Smiths, Bauhaus) or became irrelevant (The Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs). U2, in 1983, were about to raise the bar. Their third album "War" impressed the knuckleheaded at my school. Anthems were probably going to go down well with a generation heading for the dole or the infantry (as happened in my school.) Amongst these guys, (and it was always guys at that point) U2 were second only to the mighty Alarm... "New Years Day" and "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" though songs that I was tired of from the very first time I heard them, I now listen to with a certain wry nostalgia. "How long will we sing this song?" they asked rhetorically, perhaps knowing the answer was going to be "for a very long time." And, in the dire years of sixth form discos, towny nightclubs and even ironic student nights that followed over the next 3-4 years, the only rock records you'd often hear in the "student" section of a club night were "Pride (in the name of love)" and Simple Minds' "Don't you forget about me."
U2 spent a lot of time in the US, and the "Under a Bloody Sky" mini-album was a gateway drug to the band. I've never seen them, partly because they've always been massive. If The Smiths can rightly be called "our Beatles" then U2 are surely "our Rolling Stones". Yet if they never had that band's late 60s originality, and were always more in the pay of Christ than the Devil, they have tried to remain relevant in a way that Jagger and co. long gave up on. "The Joshua Tree", their 5th album, catapulted them to true greatness and it still seems a remarkable record, channelling their love of America and creating not just a spiritual record, but an enormous bestseller. It was the first album where U2 actually wrote songs, rather than sang statements. There are few covers of U2 songs from their previous 4 albums, their are endless versions of the songs like "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for" and "One" that followed.
U2, never my favourite band at school, were never my favourite band at college, and I only even heard "The Joshua Tree" because Richard from the hockey club used to play it incessantly. Over the long summer, I realised I was missing it, and bought the CD. And its been like that ever since, I'm an accidental U2 fan. Hearing a great track out of context ("Even Better than the Real Thing", "One", "The Fly", "Vertigo") and finding myself with another of their CDs, or, more recently picking up "The Unforgettable Fire" cheaply and wondering why I never bought it at the time? U2 are the rock band for people who don't much like rock bands. They've occasionally tried to be cerebral - the brilliant Eno/Berlin-inspired triple of "Achtung Baby", "Zooropa" and "Passengers: Original Soundtracks" - in a way that clearly inspired both Radiohead (in their leap sideways from "Ok Computer" to "Kid A") and Coldplay (in hiring Eno to revamp a tired brand after "X & Y") and even Oasis (the next rock band to make it big with non-rock fans, though only in Europe.)
I'm not sure that even rabid U2 fans (and I've never actually met one, though they probably exist)are full of joy at the news of a new album coming out; though there's always a track or two worth saving. When U2 are good, they are often very good. There's hardly a modern rock track this century as potent as "Vertigo" or a modern ballad as genuinely poignant as Bono's song to his dying father, "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own." The heart-on-sleeve passion that can seem embarassing occasionally gets smiled on by the rock and roll Gods.
In an age of spectacle performances - whether the bloated and tune-free Muse, the empty Lady Gaga, or the all-inclusive Take That - U2 have remained the spectacle-band to see, with their endless touring being frequently seen as the biggest, and biggest grossing tour on the planet. Yet, at Glastonbury last night, despite a phone call in to the International Space Station, the set was pared down. At the heart of it was a pretty simplistic rock and roll band. They were never the best, the most sophisticated, or the most original, but they often had the best songs, they've stayed together - the four of them - in a way that we'd all wished the Smiths or the Roses had done, and at the heart of it is the visceral simplicity that makes the best rock and roll the soundtrack to our lives. All those people watching on TV last night, and slagging off Bono and the band on Twitter, are actually doing so because U2 have always been there for us - a somewhat awkward soundtrack to our lives; coming to the fore in drunken dancefloor moments ("New Years Day") or at times of emotion in our life ("One"). I tend to play them at Christmas, something about their mix of melancholy and spirituality, or the snow in their videos.
When you have the mediocre sound du jour of Mumford and Sons (aka Brian and Micheal) "triumphing" earlier in the evening, Bono and band have something of the uncle at a wedding about them. Neither Lauren Laverne or Zane Lowe, usually so full of froth, knew what to say, this wasn't Tinchy Stryder after all. The Edge still plays guitar like he's just learnt his first riff, and thinks "this will do"; Bono still hasn't learnt to laugh at himself - at least not on stage - in the way that Morrissey, on earlier in the evening has done, but in 1985 Morrissey had a much better band - the last dozen years he's put up with a group of pub musicians. I found myself watching, but mostly listening last night. And lapping up the U2ness of it all, from the leather trousers, to the snippets of "Yellow" (surely U2 have never wrote a song as bad as that?) and "Jerusalem", to the phonecall (stolen from the band's iconic Zoo TV tours of the late 80s) to an astronaut on the International Space Station. There were plenty of things for non-U2 fans to turn over for, but the "oh my God" nature of the tweets increased as time went on. They've always been there in our lives, and they've never been hip, never been a cult band. They are U2. And so are we. They may be wankers, but they're OUR wankers.
Its mostly the second of these that has me writing a blog post. Its always seemed to be musically the most conservative of festivals (the main reason that I've only been the once.) The "ironic" Sunday night act (Tom Jones when I went in the mid-90s), a selection of big name headliners, hip indie bands relegated to 2nd, 3rd or 4th stage; and black music almost invisible (except when they make a big fuss that isn't - i.e. Jay Z), its amazing it still has any reputation for music at all. That is has, is because of that collective experience of 50,000 people in a field celebrated in Pulp's "Sorted for E's and Whizz", and, nowadays, supplemented by a healthy BBC audience. Glastonbury's headliners are big news. Yet whereas Coldplay, Radiohead and Primal Scream appear to be Glastonbury regulars, U2, like the Cure, (and Morrissey, who also appeared last night) come from an earlier era. The Glastonbury of the 80s was still a hippy leftover as much as a cultural icon. U2 are, as well, the "biggest rock band in the world" TM. The one thing that Glastonbury has never really done much of is basic, all out rock music. I'm wondering whether, in a world where the rock band has become an actual rather than metaphorical dinosaur, it was this as much as anything that caused my twitter stream to be full of anti-U2 ranting last night (even as they kept watching!)
I don't mind that at all, but culturally its fascinating. The anodyne reformed boyband Take That can wow millions with a spectacular show, below average songs, and an enormous sense of good will, despite never having, as far as I can recall, ever expressing an opinion about anything other than partying, having a good time and er... making shed loads of money, whilst U2 get pilloried. Somehow we still care about U2, and when we see and hear the unrepentant Bono in trademark shades and World of Leather 2-piece, his still taut band hanging behind him looking more like his roadies than his bandmates, we're angry about something inarticulate about ourselves. For if U2 are wankers, they are most definitely OUR wankers; that's those of us in our forties and early fifties.
I first heard U2 in the 5th year at school. I knew the name and had heard "I will follow" (that soulful/soulless early single) on Peel, whilst preferring the more adventurous music of the Cure, Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen and New Order. I don't think anyone had these overly serious, tune-light young men from Dublin as inheritors of the term "biggest band in the world." So whereas better frontmen died (Ian Curtis) or lost it (Ian McCullough) and better bands split (The Smiths, Bauhaus) or became irrelevant (The Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs). U2, in 1983, were about to raise the bar. Their third album "War" impressed the knuckleheaded at my school. Anthems were probably going to go down well with a generation heading for the dole or the infantry (as happened in my school.) Amongst these guys, (and it was always guys at that point) U2 were second only to the mighty Alarm... "New Years Day" and "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" though songs that I was tired of from the very first time I heard them, I now listen to with a certain wry nostalgia. "How long will we sing this song?" they asked rhetorically, perhaps knowing the answer was going to be "for a very long time." And, in the dire years of sixth form discos, towny nightclubs and even ironic student nights that followed over the next 3-4 years, the only rock records you'd often hear in the "student" section of a club night were "Pride (in the name of love)" and Simple Minds' "Don't you forget about me."
U2 spent a lot of time in the US, and the "Under a Bloody Sky" mini-album was a gateway drug to the band. I've never seen them, partly because they've always been massive. If The Smiths can rightly be called "our Beatles" then U2 are surely "our Rolling Stones". Yet if they never had that band's late 60s originality, and were always more in the pay of Christ than the Devil, they have tried to remain relevant in a way that Jagger and co. long gave up on. "The Joshua Tree", their 5th album, catapulted them to true greatness and it still seems a remarkable record, channelling their love of America and creating not just a spiritual record, but an enormous bestseller. It was the first album where U2 actually wrote songs, rather than sang statements. There are few covers of U2 songs from their previous 4 albums, their are endless versions of the songs like "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking for" and "One" that followed.
U2, never my favourite band at school, were never my favourite band at college, and I only even heard "The Joshua Tree" because Richard from the hockey club used to play it incessantly. Over the long summer, I realised I was missing it, and bought the CD. And its been like that ever since, I'm an accidental U2 fan. Hearing a great track out of context ("Even Better than the Real Thing", "One", "The Fly", "Vertigo") and finding myself with another of their CDs, or, more recently picking up "The Unforgettable Fire" cheaply and wondering why I never bought it at the time? U2 are the rock band for people who don't much like rock bands. They've occasionally tried to be cerebral - the brilliant Eno/Berlin-inspired triple of "Achtung Baby", "Zooropa" and "Passengers: Original Soundtracks" - in a way that clearly inspired both Radiohead (in their leap sideways from "Ok Computer" to "Kid A") and Coldplay (in hiring Eno to revamp a tired brand after "X & Y") and even Oasis (the next rock band to make it big with non-rock fans, though only in Europe.)
I'm not sure that even rabid U2 fans (and I've never actually met one, though they probably exist)are full of joy at the news of a new album coming out; though there's always a track or two worth saving. When U2 are good, they are often very good. There's hardly a modern rock track this century as potent as "Vertigo" or a modern ballad as genuinely poignant as Bono's song to his dying father, "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own." The heart-on-sleeve passion that can seem embarassing occasionally gets smiled on by the rock and roll Gods.
In an age of spectacle performances - whether the bloated and tune-free Muse, the empty Lady Gaga, or the all-inclusive Take That - U2 have remained the spectacle-band to see, with their endless touring being frequently seen as the biggest, and biggest grossing tour on the planet. Yet, at Glastonbury last night, despite a phone call in to the International Space Station, the set was pared down. At the heart of it was a pretty simplistic rock and roll band. They were never the best, the most sophisticated, or the most original, but they often had the best songs, they've stayed together - the four of them - in a way that we'd all wished the Smiths or the Roses had done, and at the heart of it is the visceral simplicity that makes the best rock and roll the soundtrack to our lives. All those people watching on TV last night, and slagging off Bono and the band on Twitter, are actually doing so because U2 have always been there for us - a somewhat awkward soundtrack to our lives; coming to the fore in drunken dancefloor moments ("New Years Day") or at times of emotion in our life ("One"). I tend to play them at Christmas, something about their mix of melancholy and spirituality, or the snow in their videos.
When you have the mediocre sound du jour of Mumford and Sons (aka Brian and Micheal) "triumphing" earlier in the evening, Bono and band have something of the uncle at a wedding about them. Neither Lauren Laverne or Zane Lowe, usually so full of froth, knew what to say, this wasn't Tinchy Stryder after all. The Edge still plays guitar like he's just learnt his first riff, and thinks "this will do"; Bono still hasn't learnt to laugh at himself - at least not on stage - in the way that Morrissey, on earlier in the evening has done, but in 1985 Morrissey had a much better band - the last dozen years he's put up with a group of pub musicians. I found myself watching, but mostly listening last night. And lapping up the U2ness of it all, from the leather trousers, to the snippets of "Yellow" (surely U2 have never wrote a song as bad as that?) and "Jerusalem", to the phonecall (stolen from the band's iconic Zoo TV tours of the late 80s) to an astronaut on the International Space Station. There were plenty of things for non-U2 fans to turn over for, but the "oh my God" nature of the tweets increased as time went on. They've always been there in our lives, and they've never been hip, never been a cult band. They are U2. And so are we. They may be wankers, but they're OUR wankers.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Manchester Book Market
FRI 17 & SAT 18 JUNE
Literature Northwest: THE MANCHESTER BOOK MARKET
St Ann's Square. 10am-5.30pm. Both Days.
The popular Manchester Independent Book Market returns to St Ann’s Square for its fourth outing, offering book lovers the chance to sample new titles by the UK’s most exciting independent presses.
In a climate where major corporate publishing is becoming all the more conservative – banking on celebrity memoirs and novelty titles - the UK's independent publishing sector is leading the way in producing intelligent, original and challenging books and magazines.
The North of England in particular boasts some of the UK’s most innovative publishers of novels, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction, and the Manchester Independent Book Market brings them all to your doorstep. This year's market will feature over 30 publishers including Peepal Tree, Route, Comma, Crocus/Commonword, Dreamcatcher, Flapjack, Nightjar, Satchel/Suitcase, Thanatos Books, Hidden Gem, and many others.
Situated in the bustling St Ann’s Square, just off Deansgate, the market’s a great place to browse, grab a coffee, listen to live readings from a selection of talented performance poets and authors, and find the perfect gift for the book lover in your life.
It’s also a great opportunity for aspiring writers to network, and make face-to-face contact with representatives from the North’s independent publishers.
There’ll be live readings on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th June, from 12pm-5pm.
More information to follow.
FRIDAY READINGS
12-1.30pm
Dominic Berry
Steven Garside
Tony Walsh aka Longfella
Gordon Zola
Mike Duff
Copland Smith
John Darwin
Maria Roberts
Peter Wild
Eleanor Rees
2 - 3.30pm
Peepal Tree showcase compere by Adam Lowe
Seni Seneviratne
Nii Parkes
Desiree Reynolds
Simon Murray
Angela Barry
Sabeen Hussein
Baba Israel
Tim Lees
Conor Alwood
John McAuliffe
4 - 5pm
Marvin Cheeseman
Max Seymour
Claire Massey
Zahid Hussain
Alison Littlewood
Bill Rogers
Steph Pike
Ade Jackson
SATURDAY READINGS
12 - 1.30pm
Penultimate feat. Martin Stannage, Ben Mellor, Ali Gadima and others
Anna Tuck
Mark Mace Smith
Anna Percy
Chris Jam
Helen Clare
Conrad Williams
Chris Woods
Adrian Slatcher
2 - 3.30pm Flap Jack showcase
Jackie Hagan
Dave Viney
Tony Curry
Fergus Evans
Dermot Glennon
Gerry Potter
Annie Clarkson
Rod Tame
Rosie Lugosi
4 - 5pm
Michelle Green
Anne Caldwell
Emma Jane Unsworth
Nabila Jameel
Zoe Lambert
Amanda Milligan
Literature Northwest: THE MANCHESTER BOOK MARKET
St Ann's Square. 10am-5.30pm. Both Days.
The popular Manchester Independent Book Market returns to St Ann’s Square for its fourth outing, offering book lovers the chance to sample new titles by the UK’s most exciting independent presses.
In a climate where major corporate publishing is becoming all the more conservative – banking on celebrity memoirs and novelty titles - the UK's independent publishing sector is leading the way in producing intelligent, original and challenging books and magazines.
The North of England in particular boasts some of the UK’s most innovative publishers of novels, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction, and the Manchester Independent Book Market brings them all to your doorstep. This year's market will feature over 30 publishers including Peepal Tree, Route, Comma, Crocus/Commonword, Dreamcatcher, Flapjack, Nightjar, Satchel/Suitcase, Thanatos Books, Hidden Gem, and many others.
Situated in the bustling St Ann’s Square, just off Deansgate, the market’s a great place to browse, grab a coffee, listen to live readings from a selection of talented performance poets and authors, and find the perfect gift for the book lover in your life.
It’s also a great opportunity for aspiring writers to network, and make face-to-face contact with representatives from the North’s independent publishers.
There’ll be live readings on Friday 17th and Saturday 18th June, from 12pm-5pm.
More information to follow.
FRIDAY READINGS
12-1.30pm
Dominic Berry
Steven Garside
Tony Walsh aka Longfella
Gordon Zola
Mike Duff
Copland Smith
John Darwin
Maria Roberts
Peter Wild
Eleanor Rees
2 - 3.30pm
Peepal Tree showcase compere by Adam Lowe
Seni Seneviratne
Nii Parkes
Desiree Reynolds
Simon Murray
Angela Barry
Sabeen Hussein
Baba Israel
Tim Lees
Conor Alwood
John McAuliffe
4 - 5pm
Marvin Cheeseman
Max Seymour
Claire Massey
Zahid Hussain
Alison Littlewood
Bill Rogers
Steph Pike
Ade Jackson
SATURDAY READINGS
12 - 1.30pm
Penultimate feat. Martin Stannage, Ben Mellor, Ali Gadima and others
Anna Tuck
Mark Mace Smith
Anna Percy
Chris Jam
Helen Clare
Conrad Williams
Chris Woods
Adrian Slatcher
2 - 3.30pm Flap Jack showcase
Jackie Hagan
Dave Viney
Tony Curry
Fergus Evans
Dermot Glennon
Gerry Potter
Annie Clarkson
Rod Tame
Rosie Lugosi
4 - 5pm
Michelle Green
Anne Caldwell
Emma Jane Unsworth
Nabila Jameel
Zoe Lambert
Amanda Milligan
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Lets Not Talk About Sex
Something's been niggling me over the last couple of weeks regarding "gender and writing." Firstly, why am I even interested in this "old chestnut" again? It's come around again, though. Silly old Naipaul thinks no women are worth reading, easily offended Bidisha gets her calculator out and adds up the X and Y chromosomes of recent literary prizes; the Guardian runs a "guess which gender" game and in the midst of it all, there's another Orange Prize winner.
Nothing sees opinions solidify so quickly into camps as this one, it seems. It was the same a few weeks ago when Philip Roth won the "international" Booker to much chagrin from Virago founder Carmen Callil. Yet, what have we learnt over the last week or so? That we only discuss the issue when the Orange Prize is on the horizon? That Bidisha's got a point (as always) but its so predictable as to be ignorable? That V.S. Naipaul hates everything?
The original Orange came about for a very valid reason; the all-male shortlist for the 1991 Booker list. Its notable that Bidisha no longer includes the Booker in her list of Prizes that doesn't recognise women, after all 3 of the last 5 winners were female, even if only one of those years had a majority of women on the shortlist. I'm not sure what one can say about prizes - other than that the "Orange" is a good thing. Its not as if it takes all the air out of the literary system, allowing no men a look in. It seems to me that the Orange, by virtue of its internationalism (it admits American women, which Booker doesn't), has done a good job. Its the only British prize that a writer of Barbara Kingsolver's calibre, for instance, will be mentioned in - surely a service to the British reading public?
What has concerned me about these various discussions of women writers, male winners, is that the arguments seem to no longer hold water. I haven't the stats to hand, but aren't more books bought by women? Aren't more novels now published by women writers? Weren't there more women than male poets in "Identity Parade?" Don't girls do better at school? To criticise Roth or Heaney or even, god forbid, Naipaul for being male seems to be attacking the wrong targets. None of those formidable figures have slipped from their perch yet; but though I only like the first of these, its their writing not their gender that has kept them there. Are there are any female poets of Heaney's generation that we equally revere? Perhaps not, but then he was always the "famous" one; but go on a generation - we have a very popular poet laureate, who probably sells more tickets to more readings than any of her male peers. We have a female editor at Poetry Review. And, if we are looking for a list of British contemporary writers who might appear to have staying power, its surely as likely to include Nicola Barker, A.L. Kennedy, Ali Smith and Sarah Waters as David Mitchell, Tom McCarthy and Hani Kunzru.
In other words, are we choosing our arguments selectively? I certainly don't envisage - or want - an "all male" prize to rival the Booker, but if a random male finds himself at a random railway station looking for a book, he may look in vain, unless he's got a particularly liking for Wilbur Smith or Chris Ryan. The rest of the book jackets are aimed at the female traveller, even if the books themselves aren't. For a variety of reasons, the book trade has increased, rather than decreased, the likelihood that a man will only read male authors. Us literary types, particularly those of us brought up in the egalitarian 80s, are as likely to be picking up the new Atwood as the new Amis. A "good male read" award might be a better idea - but if it does, then like a Labour party safe seat, a female quota might be advisable.
Is it true that women writers only write about certain "female" subjects? There's a bias, certainly, towards inward narratives and domestic dramas, but then again there isn't - depends where you look. I think its just that men rarely write about these things; or if they do, its freighted with intellectual concerns or billed as a Bildungsroman, or, as in the hospital scenes in McEwan's "Atonement", as much concerned with the mechanical as the human. And women also write about conflict and wars, whether its the Congo in Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" or Leningrad in Helen Dunmore's "The Seige."
The book - whether novel or poetry - is always in "crisis", but there plenty of new writers. Last night I went to a talk by the American artist Judy Chicago, who has just written a book about Frida Kahlo, entitled "Face to Face", where she looks at the whole of Kahlo's life and work, but with the emphasis on the latter. It was a fascinating talk, and the book is lavish. Despite only having an oeuvre of around 140 paintings, many of the ones shown were new to the audience. For Chicago, this unwillingness to look at the "whole work" of a female artist is detrimental. She herself suffers from having one work, "The Dinner Party", revered above all others. An interesting problem for any artist; but she makes the point that with artists from the past, if we know so little of their work, then chances are that little of the work will have been preserved, or collected. Many of the pieces that were exhibited in Manchester Art Gallery's "Angels of Anarchy" surrealist women artists, were from private collections. Chicago also pointed out that for women artists to move on, and to not keep repeating the same ideas or images, they need to know the lineage of women artists that may not be part of the canon.
It was this last idea that stuck with me. "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it," we say, knowingly, about politics, but surely it is also true of art? The drug novels of the late 20th century that came in the wake of "Trainspotting" seemed to be unaware of a rich history, and added little to it. (Welsh's book, in contrast, was well aware of a lineage of Scottish writers, using Scottish idiom and dialect.) There's a very real sense, that because the overriding narrative remains patriarchal, that even those "gains" that have been made in entering women writers into the canon may again be lost. We are lucky, in other words, that Lessing and Atwood and Drabble and others are still writing.Chicago's audience was a mix of those who knew her work well, and those who didn't. The audience was, predominantly female; perhaps the audience was predominantly male when Amis was discussing Larkin? The rediscovered women writers of Virago's green-spined list now seem to be in every charity shop. The appetite for those books, those writers, which was clearly there thirty years ago, now seems on the wane. The many women writers who have been published over the last 30 years or more, some, I'm sure, have long gone out of print, or have stopped writing.
The market for novels is increasingly a female market, and its no surprise that writers such as Kate Atkinson or Suzannah Dunn have moved from general fiction to more marketable genres, such as crime or historical novels. Male writers have always done this, even if sometimes under different names. A writer of my age, of either sex, could not, I think, ignore female writing. Angela Carter, Kathy Acker, Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood are more acute influences on me than David Lodge or William Boyd. But I think what Chicago said, and what Bidisha hints at, is that it is not just the gender of our contemporary writers or readers that we need to consider, but the gender-bias of the culture. It was, as I say, impossible to ignore female writing in the 80s, just as it was impossible to ignore gender politics. It formed me, it formed my peers. Whether it had the same trickle down effect on people who had not been to university is harder to say. The majority of the city's women were enjoying the spectacle of the 5-man Take That last night, not a talk by one woman artist about another. The men may well have been at home looking after the children last night, which in itself would be some kind of triumph.
It seems to me that the "dog whistle" gender politics makes headlines but it not helpful. Wise feminists realised that their struggle was part and parcel with the class struggle, whilst more than aware of feminism being an achilles heal for an often male-dominated labour movement. Contemporary thinkers need to be wary of playing to a gender bias which will always find an audience, whilst ignoring the larger power games that are defining our contemporary world.
Nothing sees opinions solidify so quickly into camps as this one, it seems. It was the same a few weeks ago when Philip Roth won the "international" Booker to much chagrin from Virago founder Carmen Callil. Yet, what have we learnt over the last week or so? That we only discuss the issue when the Orange Prize is on the horizon? That Bidisha's got a point (as always) but its so predictable as to be ignorable? That V.S. Naipaul hates everything?
The original Orange came about for a very valid reason; the all-male shortlist for the 1991 Booker list. Its notable that Bidisha no longer includes the Booker in her list of Prizes that doesn't recognise women, after all 3 of the last 5 winners were female, even if only one of those years had a majority of women on the shortlist. I'm not sure what one can say about prizes - other than that the "Orange" is a good thing. Its not as if it takes all the air out of the literary system, allowing no men a look in. It seems to me that the Orange, by virtue of its internationalism (it admits American women, which Booker doesn't), has done a good job. Its the only British prize that a writer of Barbara Kingsolver's calibre, for instance, will be mentioned in - surely a service to the British reading public?
What has concerned me about these various discussions of women writers, male winners, is that the arguments seem to no longer hold water. I haven't the stats to hand, but aren't more books bought by women? Aren't more novels now published by women writers? Weren't there more women than male poets in "Identity Parade?" Don't girls do better at school? To criticise Roth or Heaney or even, god forbid, Naipaul for being male seems to be attacking the wrong targets. None of those formidable figures have slipped from their perch yet; but though I only like the first of these, its their writing not their gender that has kept them there. Are there are any female poets of Heaney's generation that we equally revere? Perhaps not, but then he was always the "famous" one; but go on a generation - we have a very popular poet laureate, who probably sells more tickets to more readings than any of her male peers. We have a female editor at Poetry Review. And, if we are looking for a list of British contemporary writers who might appear to have staying power, its surely as likely to include Nicola Barker, A.L. Kennedy, Ali Smith and Sarah Waters as David Mitchell, Tom McCarthy and Hani Kunzru.
In other words, are we choosing our arguments selectively? I certainly don't envisage - or want - an "all male" prize to rival the Booker, but if a random male finds himself at a random railway station looking for a book, he may look in vain, unless he's got a particularly liking for Wilbur Smith or Chris Ryan. The rest of the book jackets are aimed at the female traveller, even if the books themselves aren't. For a variety of reasons, the book trade has increased, rather than decreased, the likelihood that a man will only read male authors. Us literary types, particularly those of us brought up in the egalitarian 80s, are as likely to be picking up the new Atwood as the new Amis. A "good male read" award might be a better idea - but if it does, then like a Labour party safe seat, a female quota might be advisable.
Is it true that women writers only write about certain "female" subjects? There's a bias, certainly, towards inward narratives and domestic dramas, but then again there isn't - depends where you look. I think its just that men rarely write about these things; or if they do, its freighted with intellectual concerns or billed as a Bildungsroman, or, as in the hospital scenes in McEwan's "Atonement", as much concerned with the mechanical as the human. And women also write about conflict and wars, whether its the Congo in Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible" or Leningrad in Helen Dunmore's "The Seige."
The book - whether novel or poetry - is always in "crisis", but there plenty of new writers. Last night I went to a talk by the American artist Judy Chicago, who has just written a book about Frida Kahlo, entitled "Face to Face", where she looks at the whole of Kahlo's life and work, but with the emphasis on the latter. It was a fascinating talk, and the book is lavish. Despite only having an oeuvre of around 140 paintings, many of the ones shown were new to the audience. For Chicago, this unwillingness to look at the "whole work" of a female artist is detrimental. She herself suffers from having one work, "The Dinner Party", revered above all others. An interesting problem for any artist; but she makes the point that with artists from the past, if we know so little of their work, then chances are that little of the work will have been preserved, or collected. Many of the pieces that were exhibited in Manchester Art Gallery's "Angels of Anarchy" surrealist women artists, were from private collections. Chicago also pointed out that for women artists to move on, and to not keep repeating the same ideas or images, they need to know the lineage of women artists that may not be part of the canon.
It was this last idea that stuck with me. "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it," we say, knowingly, about politics, but surely it is also true of art? The drug novels of the late 20th century that came in the wake of "Trainspotting" seemed to be unaware of a rich history, and added little to it. (Welsh's book, in contrast, was well aware of a lineage of Scottish writers, using Scottish idiom and dialect.) There's a very real sense, that because the overriding narrative remains patriarchal, that even those "gains" that have been made in entering women writers into the canon may again be lost. We are lucky, in other words, that Lessing and Atwood and Drabble and others are still writing.Chicago's audience was a mix of those who knew her work well, and those who didn't. The audience was, predominantly female; perhaps the audience was predominantly male when Amis was discussing Larkin? The rediscovered women writers of Virago's green-spined list now seem to be in every charity shop. The appetite for those books, those writers, which was clearly there thirty years ago, now seems on the wane. The many women writers who have been published over the last 30 years or more, some, I'm sure, have long gone out of print, or have stopped writing.
The market for novels is increasingly a female market, and its no surprise that writers such as Kate Atkinson or Suzannah Dunn have moved from general fiction to more marketable genres, such as crime or historical novels. Male writers have always done this, even if sometimes under different names. A writer of my age, of either sex, could not, I think, ignore female writing. Angela Carter, Kathy Acker, Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood are more acute influences on me than David Lodge or William Boyd. But I think what Chicago said, and what Bidisha hints at, is that it is not just the gender of our contemporary writers or readers that we need to consider, but the gender-bias of the culture. It was, as I say, impossible to ignore female writing in the 80s, just as it was impossible to ignore gender politics. It formed me, it formed my peers. Whether it had the same trickle down effect on people who had not been to university is harder to say. The majority of the city's women were enjoying the spectacle of the 5-man Take That last night, not a talk by one woman artist about another. The men may well have been at home looking after the children last night, which in itself would be some kind of triumph.
It seems to me that the "dog whistle" gender politics makes headlines but it not helpful. Wise feminists realised that their struggle was part and parcel with the class struggle, whilst more than aware of feminism being an achilles heal for an often male-dominated labour movement. Contemporary thinkers need to be wary of playing to a gender bias which will always find an audience, whilst ignoring the larger power games that are defining our contemporary world.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
I write, therefore...
My friend, the novelist Fiona Campbell, invited me over to Liverpool in the week to speak to the creative writing group she's running. They were half way through a ten week course, and she'd asked me along to talk about getting published, and in particular, how social media can be useful for writers. Its easy to forget that although many writers have taken to the web like a duck to water, its not always an obvious fit. Everyone was on email, but few had read many blogs, or thought about using the many literary resources of the web. Our open system can sometimes still seem like a closed shop.
Its always nice to talk to people who are just starting out on their writing journey, if only because it also brings back echoes of your own experience. But a couple of the questions were particularly acute. "When did you know you were a writer?" asked one, and "how do you keep going, with a day job?" The first question made me stop for a second. "Very early on," I said. I'd always written, but looking back I probably felt I was serious about it whilst I was university. I remember writing a story that I was particular proud of, the subject was serious, and so was the execution, and I liked it enough to painstakingly write out a good copy of it, which I gave a friend to read. It made me think about what "validates" you as a writer. It's not as simple as "I write, therefore I am a writer." There have been several stages of validation. Yes, the first time I had a poem published, yes, when my unpublished novel was shortlisted for the Lichfield Prize, yes, when I got on the MA at Manchester, and yes, when my Salt book came out. But actually, those external validations are far less important than the internal ones.
And this led me on to the second question - keeping going, when I've got a busy day job. For me, its always been the work, and the validation is the validation you get from a piece of work well achieved, or completed. I look back on old work and don't regret that it wasn't better; rather I'm often amazed by the amount of energy that went into it. I might know more about what I'm doing now, and things might seem "easier" in some ways, but in reality, it was always hard, and I was always willing to put the work in to finish the work. The sparseness of my published CV, makes me keener than ever that the work that is published is stuff I'm proud of. And, though keeping going when you have a demanding job is quite hard, I've always worked, I've always written, so it doesn't seem unusual. In the list of enemies of promise, it's not the worst.
***
That demanding job has been driving out everything else this last week, so I only vaguely noticed the furore about V.S. Naipaul's views on women writers. He's the one "great" writer who has always puzzled me. I can hardly remember, and certainly didn't much enjoy, the one book I read by him, "A House for Mr. Biswas", and all I really know about him is his apparently disagreeable personality. Is he really worth the fuss? Saying that Jane Austen has a "sentimental sense of the world" is such a misreading of that arch social satirist that its almost worth a blog post of its own.
***
This week ahead has even more cultural delights: Social Media Cafe Manchester on Tuesday; The Other Room on Wednesday; new artists responding to Anthony Burgess on Thursday; a new exhibition by Hilary Jack, an artist we published in Lamport Court, also on Thursday and a lecture/book reading by Judy Chicago on that brilliant artist Frida Kahlo on Friday.
Its always nice to talk to people who are just starting out on their writing journey, if only because it also brings back echoes of your own experience. But a couple of the questions were particularly acute. "When did you know you were a writer?" asked one, and "how do you keep going, with a day job?" The first question made me stop for a second. "Very early on," I said. I'd always written, but looking back I probably felt I was serious about it whilst I was university. I remember writing a story that I was particular proud of, the subject was serious, and so was the execution, and I liked it enough to painstakingly write out a good copy of it, which I gave a friend to read. It made me think about what "validates" you as a writer. It's not as simple as "I write, therefore I am a writer." There have been several stages of validation. Yes, the first time I had a poem published, yes, when my unpublished novel was shortlisted for the Lichfield Prize, yes, when I got on the MA at Manchester, and yes, when my Salt book came out. But actually, those external validations are far less important than the internal ones.
And this led me on to the second question - keeping going, when I've got a busy day job. For me, its always been the work, and the validation is the validation you get from a piece of work well achieved, or completed. I look back on old work and don't regret that it wasn't better; rather I'm often amazed by the amount of energy that went into it. I might know more about what I'm doing now, and things might seem "easier" in some ways, but in reality, it was always hard, and I was always willing to put the work in to finish the work. The sparseness of my published CV, makes me keener than ever that the work that is published is stuff I'm proud of. And, though keeping going when you have a demanding job is quite hard, I've always worked, I've always written, so it doesn't seem unusual. In the list of enemies of promise, it's not the worst.
***
That demanding job has been driving out everything else this last week, so I only vaguely noticed the furore about V.S. Naipaul's views on women writers. He's the one "great" writer who has always puzzled me. I can hardly remember, and certainly didn't much enjoy, the one book I read by him, "A House for Mr. Biswas", and all I really know about him is his apparently disagreeable personality. Is he really worth the fuss? Saying that Jane Austen has a "sentimental sense of the world" is such a misreading of that arch social satirist that its almost worth a blog post of its own.
***
This week ahead has even more cultural delights: Social Media Cafe Manchester on Tuesday; The Other Room on Wednesday; new artists responding to Anthony Burgess on Thursday; a new exhibition by Hilary Jack, an artist we published in Lamport Court, also on Thursday and a lecture/book reading by Judy Chicago on that brilliant artist Frida Kahlo on Friday.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Self Publishing for the Famous?
Marillion fans are a unique bunch. The 80s progressive band briefly hit the mainstream with the "Misplaced Childhood" album, but after singer Fish left, so did their presence in the mainstream. Yet, year on year, Marillion continued, with a new singer and - I gather - much less of the progressive stylings. The only people looking forward to a new Marillion album are, I'd guess, other Marillion fans and since 2001 they've been getting pre-orders for their albums in, in order to finance their new records.
It's an old story then - ten years old at least - and online sites such as Kickstarter have acted as similar "angel" sites for new ideas. Whereas in the past you may have gone round your friends to find the money to finance a "start up", in this age of "online friends" why not go to the web.
Anyway, the idea has now reached publishing. This week at the Hay Festival, a new startup, "Unbound", was launched with much fanfare. The idea is simple: bringing authors and books together. For £10 for pre-ordering of an e-book to £250 for lunch with the author, there are a range of sponsorship levels - each of which gives you access to the author's workings in progress. A book of short stories by legendary Monty Python member Terry Jones? A new novel from missing-in-action This Life creator Amy Jenkins? These are just two of the initial projects being offered. With some kind of audience, and some kind of presence, these are exactly the sort of people that you would imagine traditional publishing was always giving advances to for their next project - but just as freelancers in the digital industries have decided they'd rather go it alone, these writers have decided to give "Unbound" a go.
"If you’re a novelist, historian, philosopher, economist, biographer, scientist, journalist, comedian, filmmaker, gardener, cook, academic, traveller or have lived an interesting life or done extraordinary things, we’d love to hear from you.Each proposal has the potential to become the book you really want to write, pitched to the people who really matter: your potential readers", says the website.
It will be fascinating to see if this is a success - or where it works and where it doesn't. There have been quite a few publishers recently who have released expensive deluxe editions knowing there will be a "subscriber" market for these - but here we have the equivalent of the famous person's self publishing venture. It will be interesting to see how it compares with the music industry's similar ventures. Author loyalty is there for big names, but does it extend beyond genre? Did Grisham fans buy his non-crime novel with gritted teeth? Did he accept a lesser royalty? Did Mark Haddon's "Curious Incident" audience mop up his following book, a book of poetry?
One wonders about the levels of incentive, of course, given that the modern writer is expected to sign everything, be on tour constantly, and probably go out for dinner with his or her fans (its the only way they'll get a square meal on those royalties!) It would be interesting to see some more interesting incentives - perhaps, Terry Jones' personalised ringtones or Tibor Fischer sharing his unprintable reminiscences about Martin Amis for instance. One boggles a bit about the math - Tibor Fischer's already written stories require 1,477 subscribers (which at £10 a pop, gives a not unreasonable budget of £14,770)- but one appreciates the idea.
I guess I'll keep an eye on Unbound, and hope that it signs up, say, Jeff Noon to write a new novel or for the Cocteau Twin's Liz Fraser to write an autobiography.
***
Not unrelatedly, I'm giving a workshop this week to a writing course, and quickly put together a document of "social media" resources, hints and tips for writers. As it might have wider use I've put it online here.
It's an old story then - ten years old at least - and online sites such as Kickstarter have acted as similar "angel" sites for new ideas. Whereas in the past you may have gone round your friends to find the money to finance a "start up", in this age of "online friends" why not go to the web.
Anyway, the idea has now reached publishing. This week at the Hay Festival, a new startup, "Unbound", was launched with much fanfare. The idea is simple: bringing authors and books together. For £10 for pre-ordering of an e-book to £250 for lunch with the author, there are a range of sponsorship levels - each of which gives you access to the author's workings in progress. A book of short stories by legendary Monty Python member Terry Jones? A new novel from missing-in-action This Life creator Amy Jenkins? These are just two of the initial projects being offered. With some kind of audience, and some kind of presence, these are exactly the sort of people that you would imagine traditional publishing was always giving advances to for their next project - but just as freelancers in the digital industries have decided they'd rather go it alone, these writers have decided to give "Unbound" a go.
"If you’re a novelist, historian, philosopher, economist, biographer, scientist, journalist, comedian, filmmaker, gardener, cook, academic, traveller or have lived an interesting life or done extraordinary things, we’d love to hear from you.Each proposal has the potential to become the book you really want to write, pitched to the people who really matter: your potential readers", says the website.
It will be fascinating to see if this is a success - or where it works and where it doesn't. There have been quite a few publishers recently who have released expensive deluxe editions knowing there will be a "subscriber" market for these - but here we have the equivalent of the famous person's self publishing venture. It will be interesting to see how it compares with the music industry's similar ventures. Author loyalty is there for big names, but does it extend beyond genre? Did Grisham fans buy his non-crime novel with gritted teeth? Did he accept a lesser royalty? Did Mark Haddon's "Curious Incident" audience mop up his following book, a book of poetry?
One wonders about the levels of incentive, of course, given that the modern writer is expected to sign everything, be on tour constantly, and probably go out for dinner with his or her fans (its the only way they'll get a square meal on those royalties!) It would be interesting to see some more interesting incentives - perhaps, Terry Jones' personalised ringtones or Tibor Fischer sharing his unprintable reminiscences about Martin Amis for instance. One boggles a bit about the math - Tibor Fischer's already written stories require 1,477 subscribers (which at £10 a pop, gives a not unreasonable budget of £14,770)- but one appreciates the idea.
I guess I'll keep an eye on Unbound, and hope that it signs up, say, Jeff Noon to write a new novel or for the Cocteau Twin's Liz Fraser to write an autobiography.
***
Not unrelatedly, I'm giving a workshop this week to a writing course, and quickly put together a document of "social media" resources, hints and tips for writers. As it might have wider use I've put it online here.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
The Last Poet
To call Gil Scott-Heron a poet, just as to call him anything else, was to overvalue one part of this unique artist above and beyond another. Gil, who passed away overnight, aged 62, is unequivocally deserving of the term "legend" but I'd also say he's one of those few unique artists who is "sui generis", and his passing means we will not see his like again.
His first writings and music were published and released at the start of the 1970s - he was a young man, 21 as the decade opened - and in the fervent of that decade, the rare talents he showed, as a writer (he was a novelist before he was a musician), singer, poet and performer were eminently necessary. Scott-Heron's place in American culture is hard to quantify from this distance, but what is fascinating is how his stock has always been so high in Britain. I must have first encountered him via his funk classic "The Bottle", but also, in the carcrash of the Reagan administration political rap-funk tracks like "Re-Ron" got played on UK radio. His music was hard to find, yet when he came over to play a tour with his jazz-inflected Amnesia Express, around 1990, myself and a friend headed to Leeds Irish centre to hear a fantastic two and a half hour set, with lengthy improvisations of "Angel Dust", "Winter in July" and others. I saw him several other times, in small venues in Manchester, and each time the set was staggering. In those days, where smoking was allowed indoors, what people was smoking was partly herbal, and you saw the great man through a cloud of it; his languid, but always wonderfully courteous onstage persona, providing a contrast with the tight band and fantastic wordplay.
His return to the recording studio and critical acclaim with last year's "I'm New Here", was again prompted by his British fan-base, and he was always welcomed ecstatically in the UK, particularly those times when he'd had issues with immigration in getting into the country. Its hard to offer a critical summary of an artist who, at times, seemed to be the only radical voice in American music, but whose message was equally inclusive and universal, and whose songs will only grow in stature in the years to come. Everything's he's ever recorded is worth seeking out, even if his back catalogue has only been patchily available over the years; pick up the individual albums if you can, as the compilations available have often downplayed his more political work.
The sign of an artist who has gone beyond his fanbase is when their words get spoken out of context. "The revolution will not be televised," he sang early on, and the phrase has been used and misused ever since, as this most remarkable of writers found the words to describe our contemporary condition even as we looked on it with ignorance and indifference. He will be missed.
His first writings and music were published and released at the start of the 1970s - he was a young man, 21 as the decade opened - and in the fervent of that decade, the rare talents he showed, as a writer (he was a novelist before he was a musician), singer, poet and performer were eminently necessary. Scott-Heron's place in American culture is hard to quantify from this distance, but what is fascinating is how his stock has always been so high in Britain. I must have first encountered him via his funk classic "The Bottle", but also, in the carcrash of the Reagan administration political rap-funk tracks like "Re-Ron" got played on UK radio. His music was hard to find, yet when he came over to play a tour with his jazz-inflected Amnesia Express, around 1990, myself and a friend headed to Leeds Irish centre to hear a fantastic two and a half hour set, with lengthy improvisations of "Angel Dust", "Winter in July" and others. I saw him several other times, in small venues in Manchester, and each time the set was staggering. In those days, where smoking was allowed indoors, what people was smoking was partly herbal, and you saw the great man through a cloud of it; his languid, but always wonderfully courteous onstage persona, providing a contrast with the tight band and fantastic wordplay.
His return to the recording studio and critical acclaim with last year's "I'm New Here", was again prompted by his British fan-base, and he was always welcomed ecstatically in the UK, particularly those times when he'd had issues with immigration in getting into the country. Its hard to offer a critical summary of an artist who, at times, seemed to be the only radical voice in American music, but whose message was equally inclusive and universal, and whose songs will only grow in stature in the years to come. Everything's he's ever recorded is worth seeking out, even if his back catalogue has only been patchily available over the years; pick up the individual albums if you can, as the compilations available have often downplayed his more political work.
The sign of an artist who has gone beyond his fanbase is when their words get spoken out of context. "The revolution will not be televised," he sang early on, and the phrase has been used and misused ever since, as this most remarkable of writers found the words to describe our contemporary condition even as we looked on it with ignorance and indifference. He will be missed.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Every Day is Literary
Literature fans are spoilt for choice this week. You could have gone and seen Carol Ann Duffy and Friends at the Royal Exchange on Monday; or last night gone to an Ambit magazine launch at the Anthony Burgess Foundation. Tonight, there's Bad Language at the Castle, and tomorrow a choice - or a double header - August Kleinzhaler at Burgess, and as part fo the Chorlton Arts Festival, a Flash fiction event at Dulcimer. I missed the exciting sounding Station Stories last weekend, as had other things on, but heard Nick Royle's story, "The Royal Fusilier", a pitch perfect piece of gritty northern sentiment, at the Ambit launch.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The Noble Roth
News that Philip Roth had been awarded the Man Booker International Prize should have been the moment when the prize came of age. After all, the Nobel Prize has been continually and consistently reluctant in awarding its laureate to Americans. Rather than being a nice counterpoint to the Americanisation of the world, this has sometimes seems absurd: particularly when it comes to rewarding the novel, rather than other literary forms. The American novel is one of the wonders of the 20th century, and Philip Roth has been one of its finest proponents. Its rare to find, on reading his 90s masterpiece "American Pastoral", that you are reading an instant classic, a defining piece of work at the moment it comes out and, moreover, recognising it as such.
This new Booker prize, by rewarding Roth, was, one would have thought, being as uncontroversial as one could be - that was until one of the judges, Carmen Callil, disassociated herself from the award. That would have been fine - though surely an achievement award like this could have found one of its 13 writers that all the judges could agree on - but she went on to say "I don't rate him as a writer at all. I made it clear that I wouldn't have put him on the longlist, so I was amazed when he stayed there."
Callil's opinions are her own, and all judging panels are going to have differences of them, but as Jonathan Jones pointed out, you can dislike his work, but you can't discount it, and by doing so, Callil comes across as silly. Stuart Evers has written an excellent blogpost on why Roth matters.
Defending herself, Callil writes that "to give this prize to yet another North American writer, when we had such great writers to choose from (the previous winner was the truly great Canadian writer, Alice Munro) suggests a limited vision, to say the least." Its an absurd argument, made the more so by her next line "this is not a matter of nationality." The rest of her argument, about the judging process, is perfectly valid, but her issue has been with Roth as a writer, and that is where any damage is done.
The domestic Booker has loved its spats, but the international award was surely trying to be Golden Globe to the Nobel's Oscars. Roth's chances of winning that are probably neither impaired or improved by this result, so mysterious are the workings of the Nobel committee - but as quixotic as the Nobel's choice has occasionally been, the Omerta of the judging committee might be something that Man Booker could learn from.
My brief thoughts on Roth and other links are here.
This new Booker prize, by rewarding Roth, was, one would have thought, being as uncontroversial as one could be - that was until one of the judges, Carmen Callil, disassociated herself from the award. That would have been fine - though surely an achievement award like this could have found one of its 13 writers that all the judges could agree on - but she went on to say "I don't rate him as a writer at all. I made it clear that I wouldn't have put him on the longlist, so I was amazed when he stayed there."
Callil's opinions are her own, and all judging panels are going to have differences of them, but as Jonathan Jones pointed out, you can dislike his work, but you can't discount it, and by doing so, Callil comes across as silly. Stuart Evers has written an excellent blogpost on why Roth matters.
Defending herself, Callil writes that "to give this prize to yet another North American writer, when we had such great writers to choose from (the previous winner was the truly great Canadian writer, Alice Munro) suggests a limited vision, to say the least." Its an absurd argument, made the more so by her next line "this is not a matter of nationality." The rest of her argument, about the judging process, is perfectly valid, but her issue has been with Roth as a writer, and that is where any damage is done.
The domestic Booker has loved its spats, but the international award was surely trying to be Golden Globe to the Nobel's Oscars. Roth's chances of winning that are probably neither impaired or improved by this result, so mysterious are the workings of the Nobel committee - but as quixotic as the Nobel's choice has occasionally been, the Omerta of the judging committee might be something that Man Booker could learn from.
My brief thoughts on Roth and other links are here.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The Shadow Line
Its been a while since there's been a real "event television" outside of the live shenanigans of the X-Factor and the like. But having caught the first two episodes of "The Shadow Line" I'm pleased that I've come to a new series as it goes out for the first time, rather than later down the line. Our much-loved HBO imports come second-hand (at least for the first series), so its great to see the BBC not only commissioning a serious multipart drama, but promoting it with some fanfare.
Christopher Ecclestone and Stephen Rea would be hooks to watch any new show of course, but "The Shadow Line" does seem a genuinely risky proposition. Its clearly not a show developed by committee, but with a vision from the writer (Hugo Blick) that has, in the first 2 episodes found its way onto the screen. Like "Internal Affairs" or "The Wire" the simple expedient of putting us in both camps - the good guys and the bad guys - works well; we are more than just voyeurs, we have a multi-dimensional view of a story that two episodes in is muddy as hell. More than that, the bad guy (Ecclestone) cares for his wife who has early onset Alzheimers, whilst the police are leaking information for money and the lead cop, (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor)has his own series-full of secrets.
The wonderfully haunting theme tune, Pause by Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo, has been following me round from the last episode but I'm also impressed by some of the staging in the show. The brilliant scenes at the end of episode 2 which saw bad guys, good guys, and a 3rd person who could be either, all trying to get hold of a witness to the murder, was psychologically thrilling. Whether or not the show is one great big shaggy dog chase, I hardly care at the moment - and look forward to the next five weeks as the story unravels in unexpected ways.
Christopher Ecclestone and Stephen Rea would be hooks to watch any new show of course, but "The Shadow Line" does seem a genuinely risky proposition. Its clearly not a show developed by committee, but with a vision from the writer (Hugo Blick) that has, in the first 2 episodes found its way onto the screen. Like "Internal Affairs" or "The Wire" the simple expedient of putting us in both camps - the good guys and the bad guys - works well; we are more than just voyeurs, we have a multi-dimensional view of a story that two episodes in is muddy as hell. More than that, the bad guy (Ecclestone) cares for his wife who has early onset Alzheimers, whilst the police are leaking information for money and the lead cop, (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor)has his own series-full of secrets.
The wonderfully haunting theme tune, Pause by Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo, has been following me round from the last episode but I'm also impressed by some of the staging in the show. The brilliant scenes at the end of episode 2 which saw bad guys, good guys, and a 3rd person who could be either, all trying to get hold of a witness to the murder, was psychologically thrilling. Whether or not the show is one great big shaggy dog chase, I hardly care at the moment - and look forward to the next five weeks as the story unravels in unexpected ways.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Everything Future
We live in an age of competing realities. Our individual "villages" are colliding, in a way that SF has long prefigured. The dual cities in China Mieville's noir future detective "The City and The City", the video game un/reality of David Cronenberg's ExistenZ, even the melting walls of psychological space and memory in Lessing's "Memoirs of a Survivor" are in some way our recognisable realities.
At this year's FutureEverything conference, a yearly collision of art, digital ideas and music, the 2-days of debate is a shifting dialogue. Strangely enough, the conference eschews the unconference format for more formal keynotes, panels, and presentations. Yet one of the defining mediums of our current age is the keynote talk, exemplified by the online archive of TED videos. There's something nicely ironic about FutureEverything's format, where people who spend most of their lives online, go offline for a couple of days, share coffee and pastries, and put up their powerpoint presentations just like the regional sales rep conference that you see satirised in TV comedy. Knowledge transfer - one person speaking to a roomful of people - is a hard thing to reinvent.
The debate then, this year, was one that didn't start, lead or end in a linear place. Across three rooms, there were different cross-currents, as ever. Taking place in a central Manchester venue, this year's conference brought the art onsite, was near Piccadilly station, and made it alot easier for serendipitous jump cuts through the city. Not that many people will have had the stamina for four days AND four nights. By Friday afternoon's coda, given by an ebullient caffeine fuelled Bill Thompson, the debate was beginning to take form; and Thompson captured it, then, with his own inimitable magic made it fly. Thompson theorised that we are no longer offline beings, but the online is part of us. That switching it down is a deliberate act of mental sabotage, as our brain synapses are being made to rewire to include these new external limbs. Like Neo in the Matrix we are part of the machine. For Thompson, this is not just a liberation, but a victory in a war. The geeks (or, at the very least, the information workers) have won the war, and the losers, though they should not be ignored or treated unfairly, are as disenfranchised as the Anglo-Saxon farmers who were stripped of their lands by the Norman Earls.
We, "the digital", are no longer the future; this is no longer a bet that could have gone either way (like Betamax v. VHS), but are inheritors of the present. What we do with it is the wider subtext. There's a moment for pleasure, of course, as all victories taste better than defeat, but also a sense that now is the time to accept this reality, and make sure it works better for us.
The day before, a provocative presentation from James Bridle, spoke of our new urban space, that is being designed, not for people, but for machines. Machine-logic, whether in the placing of goods in Amazon's mega warehouses, or the windowless bunkers of server farms, is increasingly the design principle, just as the 19th century pithead was less designed for its human workers, than the buckets and trollies that brought the coal to the surface.
Where are we in all this? Thompson is older than me, from an analogue generation that dreamed of (and dreamed up) this digital future. For those who are younger, it is no longer negotiable, or even a question - social networks, always-on devices, dual-screen activities (watching, tweeting) are embedded in them every bit as much as those cyber-pioneers who are experimenting with chips under their skin. The 20th century organisational structures that Bill, and many of us, work in (or work with) are potentially in collapse, yet as the furore over public sector cuts has made clear, the human cost of this (for workers, for users of services) is what makes us angry. The robots that control our lives are currently primarily data modellers - the decision making software behind online loan applications; the sensors that order new stock for the shelves as soon as they detect an absence as our supply chains become ever more "just in time" (and, it has to be said, ever more vulnerable to disruptions such as the winter snowfall).
In his Lancelot Andrewes' quoting poem "Journey of the Magi", the Anglican-convert, T.S. Eliot, characterises the Magi as exhausted followers of an debunked religion, "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,with an alien people clutching their gods", able to see the future world that they had long hoped for, but too old to be part of it; the ties of family and homeland too great. It is interesting that Eliot used the word "alien", for its otherworldly meaning (not the one he'd have meant) seems entirely appropriate.
Perhaps those of us who are able to turn a trick through our engagement with this "digital culture" can leap ahead by bridging the analogue and digital cultures; though surely the logic of this is that the bridge won't be there for long? Thompson told us that we were now all playing "the game" which only ends when we've forgotten that we're playing the game. In other words, how can we remember or recall what we've forgotten? The statue of Ozymandias in the desert; the great pyramids of Egypt with their secrets as immortally entombed as their pharoahs; the language of Jesus himself, spoken today in only a few small Syrian hill villages; even the key to "reading" redudant computer languages and technologies. The speed at which technology is changing may only be matched by the speed at which we are forgetting.
At a conference like this their are few naysayers, few Andrew Keen's wondering whether this makes us more stupid, few fearmongers seeing technology as the enemy. Instead we are asked to embrace the "robot", make him our friend. A nice coincidence that this week's Dr. Who should see one of our favourite cultural machines, the TARDIS, "humanised" in the Neil Gaiman-penned episode "The Doctor's Wife".
All revolutions have consequences though: I began to see again not the "virtual" but the "physical" representation of the internet. An earlier speaker had played the scene from the IT Crowd where the geeks hand a small box to their boss, and tell her "This, Jen, is the internet." We want the virtual to have a physical presence, just as much as those deep in faith built their churches, prized their relics, and made sure that Knock in Ireland has its own airport. The physicality of all those virtual financial transmissions is now played out in the worthless housing estates in Ireland and Spain; the "just in time" network that feeds the Western world is mapped through millions of containers, each one individually tagged, its contents unknown and unknowable until someone opens it up, like the "can of dead girls" that opens Series Two of the Wire.
In our digital victory, we have to take care not to be like the bourgeoisie who handed over the revolution of 1789 to the very bloody terror of the Robespierrists... I begin to wonder if as we speed forward, our very frailties, and our loss of understandings, and our beginning to forget the analogue world to the extent that our "bridges" to it fall away, leaves us vulnerable to the machinations of the technocracy that can (and does) make money from this new world.
The "digiterati"'s love of the new needs to be used for revelation, rather than revolution, and it was reassuring that the conference ended with the award of the FutureEverything prize, not to a technology, but to an "idea", the "Macon money" bonds that created a new "social currency" that could only be redeemed through collaboration, networking and human interaction.
In the whirlpools of ideas that FutureEverything brings to Manchester every year it is these still lilies in the centre or at the side of the pool that provide sufficient contrast; articulates a human side to what can often seem to be disconnected and specialised concerns. It was there in the Macon Money prize, it was there in Bill Thompson's "victory" speech, it was there in Kimchi and chips LITTree artwork, and there in bearhugs that US hardcore band Fucked Up gave their audience at Islngton Mill on Thursday night.
Find out more:
FutureEverything Festival Portal (social media links etc.)
At this year's FutureEverything conference, a yearly collision of art, digital ideas and music, the 2-days of debate is a shifting dialogue. Strangely enough, the conference eschews the unconference format for more formal keynotes, panels, and presentations. Yet one of the defining mediums of our current age is the keynote talk, exemplified by the online archive of TED videos. There's something nicely ironic about FutureEverything's format, where people who spend most of their lives online, go offline for a couple of days, share coffee and pastries, and put up their powerpoint presentations just like the regional sales rep conference that you see satirised in TV comedy. Knowledge transfer - one person speaking to a roomful of people - is a hard thing to reinvent.
The debate then, this year, was one that didn't start, lead or end in a linear place. Across three rooms, there were different cross-currents, as ever. Taking place in a central Manchester venue, this year's conference brought the art onsite, was near Piccadilly station, and made it alot easier for serendipitous jump cuts through the city. Not that many people will have had the stamina for four days AND four nights. By Friday afternoon's coda, given by an ebullient caffeine fuelled Bill Thompson, the debate was beginning to take form; and Thompson captured it, then, with his own inimitable magic made it fly. Thompson theorised that we are no longer offline beings, but the online is part of us. That switching it down is a deliberate act of mental sabotage, as our brain synapses are being made to rewire to include these new external limbs. Like Neo in the Matrix we are part of the machine. For Thompson, this is not just a liberation, but a victory in a war. The geeks (or, at the very least, the information workers) have won the war, and the losers, though they should not be ignored or treated unfairly, are as disenfranchised as the Anglo-Saxon farmers who were stripped of their lands by the Norman Earls.
We, "the digital", are no longer the future; this is no longer a bet that could have gone either way (like Betamax v. VHS), but are inheritors of the present. What we do with it is the wider subtext. There's a moment for pleasure, of course, as all victories taste better than defeat, but also a sense that now is the time to accept this reality, and make sure it works better for us.
The day before, a provocative presentation from James Bridle, spoke of our new urban space, that is being designed, not for people, but for machines. Machine-logic, whether in the placing of goods in Amazon's mega warehouses, or the windowless bunkers of server farms, is increasingly the design principle, just as the 19th century pithead was less designed for its human workers, than the buckets and trollies that brought the coal to the surface.
Where are we in all this? Thompson is older than me, from an analogue generation that dreamed of (and dreamed up) this digital future. For those who are younger, it is no longer negotiable, or even a question - social networks, always-on devices, dual-screen activities (watching, tweeting) are embedded in them every bit as much as those cyber-pioneers who are experimenting with chips under their skin. The 20th century organisational structures that Bill, and many of us, work in (or work with) are potentially in collapse, yet as the furore over public sector cuts has made clear, the human cost of this (for workers, for users of services) is what makes us angry. The robots that control our lives are currently primarily data modellers - the decision making software behind online loan applications; the sensors that order new stock for the shelves as soon as they detect an absence as our supply chains become ever more "just in time" (and, it has to be said, ever more vulnerable to disruptions such as the winter snowfall).
In his Lancelot Andrewes' quoting poem "Journey of the Magi", the Anglican-convert, T.S. Eliot, characterises the Magi as exhausted followers of an debunked religion, "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,with an alien people clutching their gods", able to see the future world that they had long hoped for, but too old to be part of it; the ties of family and homeland too great. It is interesting that Eliot used the word "alien", for its otherworldly meaning (not the one he'd have meant) seems entirely appropriate.
Perhaps those of us who are able to turn a trick through our engagement with this "digital culture" can leap ahead by bridging the analogue and digital cultures; though surely the logic of this is that the bridge won't be there for long? Thompson told us that we were now all playing "the game" which only ends when we've forgotten that we're playing the game. In other words, how can we remember or recall what we've forgotten? The statue of Ozymandias in the desert; the great pyramids of Egypt with their secrets as immortally entombed as their pharoahs; the language of Jesus himself, spoken today in only a few small Syrian hill villages; even the key to "reading" redudant computer languages and technologies. The speed at which technology is changing may only be matched by the speed at which we are forgetting.
At a conference like this their are few naysayers, few Andrew Keen's wondering whether this makes us more stupid, few fearmongers seeing technology as the enemy. Instead we are asked to embrace the "robot", make him our friend. A nice coincidence that this week's Dr. Who should see one of our favourite cultural machines, the TARDIS, "humanised" in the Neil Gaiman-penned episode "The Doctor's Wife".
All revolutions have consequences though: I began to see again not the "virtual" but the "physical" representation of the internet. An earlier speaker had played the scene from the IT Crowd where the geeks hand a small box to their boss, and tell her "This, Jen, is the internet." We want the virtual to have a physical presence, just as much as those deep in faith built their churches, prized their relics, and made sure that Knock in Ireland has its own airport. The physicality of all those virtual financial transmissions is now played out in the worthless housing estates in Ireland and Spain; the "just in time" network that feeds the Western world is mapped through millions of containers, each one individually tagged, its contents unknown and unknowable until someone opens it up, like the "can of dead girls" that opens Series Two of the Wire.
In our digital victory, we have to take care not to be like the bourgeoisie who handed over the revolution of 1789 to the very bloody terror of the Robespierrists... I begin to wonder if as we speed forward, our very frailties, and our loss of understandings, and our beginning to forget the analogue world to the extent that our "bridges" to it fall away, leaves us vulnerable to the machinations of the technocracy that can (and does) make money from this new world.
The "digiterati"'s love of the new needs to be used for revelation, rather than revolution, and it was reassuring that the conference ended with the award of the FutureEverything prize, not to a technology, but to an "idea", the "Macon money" bonds that created a new "social currency" that could only be redeemed through collaboration, networking and human interaction.
In the whirlpools of ideas that FutureEverything brings to Manchester every year it is these still lilies in the centre or at the side of the pool that provide sufficient contrast; articulates a human side to what can often seem to be disconnected and specialised concerns. It was there in the Macon Money prize, it was there in Bill Thompson's "victory" speech, it was there in Kimchi and chips LITTree artwork, and there in bearhugs that US hardcore band Fucked Up gave their audience at Islngton Mill on Thursday night.
Find out more:
FutureEverything Festival Portal (social media links etc.)
Saturday, May 07, 2011
The Ebony Tower by John Fowles
"Is this your first book?" Tom Maschler recalls asking John Fowles on reading "The Collector." "Good God, no," Fowles replied, telling Maschler he'd written 9 full novels before his "debut", two of which, Maschler disovered later, were "totally rewritten as The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman." I'd been coming back to Fowles for a while, following a couple of conversations with writer friends, and reading this anecdote in Maschler's gossipy autobiography, "Publisher". Fowles has always struck me as a polarising writer, but what is it that polarises? One of the few English writers of the sixties and seventies whose work stands up to renewed scrutiny, the polarisation appears to be betwen those earlier books, and those later less successful ones. Though there might be things to admire in his odd piece of Victoriana "A Maggot" or the misanthropic "Daniel Martin", it is those earlier books on which his reputation depends.
The novella "The Ebony Tower", thankfully belongs in the earlier camp. A young abstract painter, who also writes art criticism, has an opportunity to visit an older master in isolation in the Brittany countryside. Arriving, fortuitously, without his wife; David Williams finds that Henry Breasley is not quite alone - but attended to by 2 young nymphs, "the mouse" and "the freak," frequently found naked, and with an ambiguous relationship with Breasley, his art and his bed. The scene is set for an elegantly staged psychodrama, but the subtext is "what is art?" Breasley never forgets a painting, but is in articulate, and rude and boorish when drunk. Williams is exactly the sort of painter that Breasley has no time for. Yet Breasley represents for Williams the losing side of an argument - however great his work might have been.
In this strange menage, Williams is stripped of his pretensions, the young girl - "the mouse" - who had brought him here, (though he hardly knew that at first), leaving him with an indelible impression. Here, it seems, is life, whereas his work has abstracted itself from it. Is this the ebony tower? The contrast with the "ivory tower" ruminations of critics and intellectuals is clear. Breasley, in life, is inarticulate, but watching him paint - and Fowles provides brilliant depictions of the artist at work - all pretense falls away. Its as if the old man has escaped from the irrelevance of being "judged" according to the contemporary mores of the day and has become part of his own history - and of the history of art itself. Williams, in contrast, is as uncomplex as his everyman name, with limited talent, not just in his work, but in his life. The story is both short enough to maintain the intensity of this brief encounter, and long enough to be a psychological character study. The older Breton couple who are Breasley's housekeeper and gardener hover in the background; whilst Williams absent wife, and his life back in London becomes increasingly dreamlike as the story progresses.
Here in a small nugget of his fiction, are all Fowles strengths - his layering of meaning; his beautifully descriptive prose; his characterisation of larger-than-life, but highly believable gargoyles; and his psychological probing. Published in 1974, it was made into a film in the 80s with Lawrence Olivier, inevitably, in the Breasley role.
The novella "The Ebony Tower", thankfully belongs in the earlier camp. A young abstract painter, who also writes art criticism, has an opportunity to visit an older master in isolation in the Brittany countryside. Arriving, fortuitously, without his wife; David Williams finds that Henry Breasley is not quite alone - but attended to by 2 young nymphs, "the mouse" and "the freak," frequently found naked, and with an ambiguous relationship with Breasley, his art and his bed. The scene is set for an elegantly staged psychodrama, but the subtext is "what is art?" Breasley never forgets a painting, but is in articulate, and rude and boorish when drunk. Williams is exactly the sort of painter that Breasley has no time for. Yet Breasley represents for Williams the losing side of an argument - however great his work might have been.
In this strange menage, Williams is stripped of his pretensions, the young girl - "the mouse" - who had brought him here, (though he hardly knew that at first), leaving him with an indelible impression. Here, it seems, is life, whereas his work has abstracted itself from it. Is this the ebony tower? The contrast with the "ivory tower" ruminations of critics and intellectuals is clear. Breasley, in life, is inarticulate, but watching him paint - and Fowles provides brilliant depictions of the artist at work - all pretense falls away. Its as if the old man has escaped from the irrelevance of being "judged" according to the contemporary mores of the day and has become part of his own history - and of the history of art itself. Williams, in contrast, is as uncomplex as his everyman name, with limited talent, not just in his work, but in his life. The story is both short enough to maintain the intensity of this brief encounter, and long enough to be a psychological character study. The older Breton couple who are Breasley's housekeeper and gardener hover in the background; whilst Williams absent wife, and his life back in London becomes increasingly dreamlike as the story progresses.
Here in a small nugget of his fiction, are all Fowles strengths - his layering of meaning; his beautifully descriptive prose; his characterisation of larger-than-life, but highly believable gargoyles; and his psychological probing. Published in 1974, it was made into a film in the 80s with Lawrence Olivier, inevitably, in the Breasley role.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Royal Fiction
The current Royal Family have often been portrayed in fiction, though they hardly need it, given how soap operaish its been over the years. I particularly liked Sue Townsend's "The Queen and I", and the gin-drinking Queen Mother in Spitting Image. But nobody actually does fiction like the British aristocracy. For those of us who've never seen a Debrett's or think the "season" relates to football or racing, there's probably a vague sense that this country is run according to ancient precedent, fixed forever and unchangeable like something predestined from Lord of the Rings. What yesterday proved yet again, is how risible this view of history is. The Royal Family are arch writers and re-writers of the so-called "traditions" that are then utilised for retaining the family firm.
Two items from the wedding yesterday struck me as the kind of loose ends we're getting used to in Stephen Moffat's version of Dr. Who, but if you delve a little too deep unravel. I'm sure that soldiers and sailors and airmen frequently get married in their dress uniform, however inappropriate that might seem to the rest of us who don't want our work gear in our wedding photos - what's wrong with Moss Bros? - but they announced with all gravitas that William was going to wear an Irish Guards' Colonel outfit rather than his own outfit. It turns out he's an honorary colonel in the guards since February. What happened? Did he look through a set of uniforms with Kate and go "that one looks good, I'll ring granny and see if she can sort me out a commission?" I have no idea; but if the dressing up box of military uniforms can be used so arbitrarily then maybe the rest of us should look for a nice uniform next time we get married. We wouldn't, of course, because it would be seen as crass in the extreme; but given that his brother was wearing his own appropriate uniform, where on earth does this fiction come from?
Secondly, this Duke and Duchess of Cambridge nonsense. I'm sure there's some logic to the titles that the Royal Family dish out - its one of the perks of their job, of course - but the Dukedom (if that's the word) has a patchy heritage as it is, and has been in disuse for years. So, our King in waiting gets married in someone else's uniform and now, with his new wife, sports an imaginary title - both things having been conferred since the start of the year. The 19th century business men who would buy a stately pile to get hold of a title had nothing on the family who run this ridiculous pyramid scheme. One of the many pleasures of reading Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" was her shining a light on the pork barrel politics of the day; a time when royal patronage and political power were so clearly linked - in 2011, we have Labour Prime Ministers missed off the guest list because they are not "privy councillors" (whatever that is), and new titles for the 2nd in line to the throne and his wife which may as well been ordered up mail order from the United States.
Of course, if the Queen cannot create such trinkets and baubles, then who in the country can? But it highlights the absurdity of the British class system (which I referred to in a recent poem as "a repeating lie") in a way that would make the most florid of romantic novelists blush. Simon Schama, on the BBC yesterday, made the interesting point that the troubles in the Middle East are all about getting rid of family dynasties. The fascinating history of the British Monarchy is that the family has remained potent, even as its been rightly stripped of more and more of its power. Without belittling yesterday's marriage in any way, these "grace and favour" powers - whether creating a new Dukedom, or turning a small Wiltshire town "Royal", seem to me to have little place in a modern country. I'm not sure whether I felt sad for him, or vaguely proud of his chutzpah, that David Beckham proudly wore his OBE on his dress suit; not everyone can be a soldier, and the gongs they get are one symbol of a nation's gratefulness that one should never disparage, but surely our most famous footballer missed a trick by not dressing himself up in all his winning medals from his illustrious playing career - he'd have looked more like a pearly Queen than Elton John in his heyday.
Two items from the wedding yesterday struck me as the kind of loose ends we're getting used to in Stephen Moffat's version of Dr. Who, but if you delve a little too deep unravel. I'm sure that soldiers and sailors and airmen frequently get married in their dress uniform, however inappropriate that might seem to the rest of us who don't want our work gear in our wedding photos - what's wrong with Moss Bros? - but they announced with all gravitas that William was going to wear an Irish Guards' Colonel outfit rather than his own outfit. It turns out he's an honorary colonel in the guards since February. What happened? Did he look through a set of uniforms with Kate and go "that one looks good, I'll ring granny and see if she can sort me out a commission?" I have no idea; but if the dressing up box of military uniforms can be used so arbitrarily then maybe the rest of us should look for a nice uniform next time we get married. We wouldn't, of course, because it would be seen as crass in the extreme; but given that his brother was wearing his own appropriate uniform, where on earth does this fiction come from?
Secondly, this Duke and Duchess of Cambridge nonsense. I'm sure there's some logic to the titles that the Royal Family dish out - its one of the perks of their job, of course - but the Dukedom (if that's the word) has a patchy heritage as it is, and has been in disuse for years. So, our King in waiting gets married in someone else's uniform and now, with his new wife, sports an imaginary title - both things having been conferred since the start of the year. The 19th century business men who would buy a stately pile to get hold of a title had nothing on the family who run this ridiculous pyramid scheme. One of the many pleasures of reading Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" was her shining a light on the pork barrel politics of the day; a time when royal patronage and political power were so clearly linked - in 2011, we have Labour Prime Ministers missed off the guest list because they are not "privy councillors" (whatever that is), and new titles for the 2nd in line to the throne and his wife which may as well been ordered up mail order from the United States.
Of course, if the Queen cannot create such trinkets and baubles, then who in the country can? But it highlights the absurdity of the British class system (which I referred to in a recent poem as "a repeating lie") in a way that would make the most florid of romantic novelists blush. Simon Schama, on the BBC yesterday, made the interesting point that the troubles in the Middle East are all about getting rid of family dynasties. The fascinating history of the British Monarchy is that the family has remained potent, even as its been rightly stripped of more and more of its power. Without belittling yesterday's marriage in any way, these "grace and favour" powers - whether creating a new Dukedom, or turning a small Wiltshire town "Royal", seem to me to have little place in a modern country. I'm not sure whether I felt sad for him, or vaguely proud of his chutzpah, that David Beckham proudly wore his OBE on his dress suit; not everyone can be a soldier, and the gongs they get are one symbol of a nation's gratefulness that one should never disparage, but surely our most famous footballer missed a trick by not dressing himself up in all his winning medals from his illustrious playing career - he'd have looked more like a pearly Queen than Elton John in his heyday.
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