Jargoneer Occupies LT

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40. Matt Wagner - Madame Xanadu: Extra-Sensory
39. Bruce Campbell - If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor R
38. Simon Armitage - Black Roses: The Killing of Sophie Lancaster R
37. Rutu Modan - Exit Wounds
36. Simon Mawer - The Glass Room R
35. Junot Diaz - Drown
34. Edith Grossman - Why Translation Matters R
33. Joyce Carol Oates - A Widow's Story R
32. Fritz Leiber - Our Lady of Darkness R
31. Howard Blum - American Lighning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making and the Crime of the Century R
30. John Updike - Rabbit, Run
29. John Banville - Ancient Light
28. David Ashton - Shadow of the Serpent R
27. Beryl Bainbridge - Every Man For Himself R
26. Dashiell Hammett - The Dain Curse R
25. Simon Reynolds - Retromania
24. Organ Pamuk - The White Castle R
23. Spike Milligan - Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall
22. George Orwell - Coming Up For Air R
21. Malcolm Jack - Lisbon: City of the Sea - A History R
20. William Trevor - Children of Dynmouth
19. Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars R
18. Charles Simic - Master of Disguises
17. Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge
16. Shirley Jackson - The Haunting of Hill House R
15. David Abbott - The Upright Piano Player R
14. Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol.2
13. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and the Damned
12. Tim Powers - The Anubis Gates R
11. Eric Newby - Love and War in the Apennines R
10. Imre Kertesz - Detective Story R
09. David Thomson - The Whole Equation
08. Ian Rankin &Werther Dell'edera- Dark Entries R
07. Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
06. Robert Silverberg - A Time of Changes
05. Craig Thompson - Blankets R
04. (ed) Nicholas Royle - Best Short Stories 2011 R
03. T. F. Powys - Unclay
02. Natasha Hadjidaki - The Others R
01. George & Weedon Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody R

Reading Summary 2011

Total Reading
non-fiction 6
novel 38
drama 2
short stories 9
graphic novel 18
poetry 3
plus individual stories, poetry, etc.

Twelve were by women, 10 of 38 novels (the two novels that I didn't finish this year were also by women - Joyce Carol Oates- Bellefleur and Hilary Mantel A Place of Greater Safety
Twelve were translated works.

Best Novel
Orhan Pamuk - Snow
Ford Madox Ford - The Good Soldier
Franz Kafka - The Castle
Kobo Abe - The Woman in the Dunes
Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night

Best Collections
John Crowley - Novelty
Lucius Shepard - The Jaguar Hunter

Best Stories
John Crowley - Novelty
John Crowley - Great Work of Time
Don Delillo - Baader Meinhof
Arthur Machen -The Great God Pan
Lucius Shepard - R&R
Robert Aickman - Pages from a Young Girl's Journal
Sheridan Le Fanu - Carmilla
John Cheever - The Swimmer
Shirley Jackson - The Lottery
Theophile Gautier - The Beautiful Dead

Best Non-Fiction
Milan Kundera - The Art of the Novel
George Rosie - The Flight of the Titan
Harry Pearson - Achtung Schweinehund: A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat
The last two I choose for personal reasons as much for their general values.

Best Poetry
As well as the three collections of poetry, none of which I completely enjoyed, I read a lot of poets for classes - the best of which were Louis MacNeice, Frank O'Hara, and Seamus Heaney.

Placeholder 3

Love your thread's name. Wish I'd thought of it!

Famous comic novel by the Weedon brothers.

First published as a book in 1892, The Diary of a Nobody initially appeared in installments in Punch during 1888-9, where it had to take second place to the cartoons. (So much so that it went missing for 6 weeks in late 1888, a joke that Grossmith builds into his narrative, having Pooter wonder what happened to the missing weeks in his diary). When published in book form extra chapters were added, especially at the end, creating a more rounded narrative. (To call it a narrative could be pushing a point, it is essentially a series of set-pieces - only the antics of the son, Lupin, provide any momentum and that's not much).

Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I do not happen to be a ’Somebody’ - why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth.

The Diary of a Nobody was a response to the plethora of memoirs and diaries published by well-known Victorians, which probably proves the publishing industry has always been the same. As Charles Pooter writes he is a nobody and his adventures reflect his status as nobody: they are banal, often about class and respectability, and mainly about Pooter falling flat on his face (metaphorically).
The humour is very gentle - Pooter's attempts at DIY backfire, his pomposity is always deflated and he doesn't understand his son because he can't contemplate the possibility of change. This is the classic sitcom family - the 'contented' father, the long-suffering wife, and the child(ren) who cause 'conflict' by embracing new ideas. The trick to succeeding in this model is to make the characters, essentially the father, sympathetic - we may laugh at him but we also understand where he is coming from. Pooter may be the butt of most of the humour but we are never made to despise him - in some ways he is actually rather heroic, a man for whom life constantly provides a custard pie in the face who always wipes his face and keeps up the good fight.
Two factors influence how much the modern reader will find this funny - firstly, the nature of jokes. As I said this is gentle humour so when Pooter finds how paint rejuvenates he paints the most inappropriate places - including his bath red which leads to the usual consequences. If we laugh it is not necessarily with surprise but rather with recognition, many of the jokes have been replayed through countless other books and, later, film and television.
Secondly, as the introduction discusses, the way we read this novel is different from the original audience. For them this was an accurate portrayal of lower middle class life in the 1880s - they could pick up all the nuances of the action whereas for us we can see appreciate why something is as it was but not the context. For example, we can see that Lupin is a young man who is embracing modern life but we can't really appreciate how his language could not be understood or be shocking as that specific context has gone. Some of the humour therefore has bled out of the book and in its place is background colour. Not that it really matters, it still remains enjoyable.
Nobody is not just about the prose though, the illustrations (by Weedon) probably provide the book with its real character. Characters that are appear vague in prose are captured perfectly in the drawings. This is a book where words and pictures dovetail perfectly.



This is simply a book for pleasure, a gentle amusing read to wile away a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Over the Xmas-New Year period I also watched a few programs related to the Dickens bicentenary - the BBC are going mad over it.

First up there was yet another adaptation of Great Expectations. While it passed the time this was a little disappointing - for a three hour series it lacked substance, too much plot advancement and too little on the characters. The casting of the two main female characters seemed a little strange - Gillian Anderson appeared a little young and attractive for the role of Miss Havisham, while Vanessa Kirby as Estella was not charismatic enough. The main problem however was the use of slow motion at key moments. It's disturbing how many directors now use slow motion thinking it conveys some extra level of importance - nintey-nine times out of a hundred it doesn't, it's just naff, and it was naff here.

There were also two documentaries on Dickens - Mrs Dickens' Family Christmas and Armando's Tale of Charles Dickens - both of which were presented by comedians. Comedians have become the presenters of choice on British TV for factual documentaries - they make them so viewer friendly unlike those professors who know what they are talking about. The former programme was essentially about how Dickens wasn't always the family man he was portrayed as, leaving his wife for a much younger woman, an actress as well. The latter was based on the premise that Dickens was Britains greatest ever comedian. They weren't bad but I can't help feeling that the money could have been spent on a more insightful all-encompassing portrayal of Dickens but the BBC is now petrified of alienating their audience by being 'too clever'.

My biggest bugbear with the whole BBC Dickens programming is that we have been here so many times before. Did we really need another version of Great Expectations? That money could have been spent on promoting new writing or even another Victorian writer who never gets a look-in, Mrs Oliphant for example. The BBC will use these programmes as evidence of their committment to books while all they have to do is re-instate Bookmark or a programme where writers, academics and critics sit around and discuss books intelligently. (The once-a-month Late Review book review special doesn't cut it).

Hear Hear. Great rant, and review of the Dickens blow out. I revere Dickens, and although I'm pleased to see him getting the attention he deserves in his centenary, I agree that a lot of it is daft and/or bland. Mrs Oliphant is hilarious! A series of one of her books would be great, as long as Andrew Davies doesn't get his stick-to-the-formula paws all over it.

From the picture much much too young for Miss Havisham. Thanks for the review I won't bother catching up with the BBC's latest Great Expectations.

I loved Diary of a Nobody and am now reading The Eliza Stories which is in a similar vein, but neither is quite as funny as Augustus Carp. All three main characters share a level of self-importance and self-delusion that makes you cringe as you laugh.

>6 Jargoneer: hmmm. Sorry to hear that about the new adaptation. I thought Gillian Anderson quite good in House of Mirth and Bleak House. This one sounds like, as you say, a casting mistake. Good grief, with actresses like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith and others still active, they went with Anderson? Regarding your later question. No, I don't think we need another adaptation.

>10 avaland: - Maggie Smith was probably too busy with Downtown Abbey - one of the big Xmas specials over here.

Also listened to -



Or technically this - Cat-Women of the Moon. (To listen click on this link).

A two-part BBC R4 series on aspects of women in SF - episode 1 was about all-female societies (hence the title) while episode 2 was about procreation. Obviously a little superficial due to length these were still very good serious programmes about gender in SF. Hosted by Sarah Hall, writers interviewed include Banks, Mieville and Griffith; works discussed include The Female Man, Herland, and Perdido Street Station.

ps...for those who have too much time on their hands you can watch the (atrocious) film that gave the programme it's title here.

>11 Jargoneer: I would have liked to listen to that BBC R4 program. How exactly did Perdido fit into that conversation?

Based on the picture, yes, Anderson is a miscast. But the set looks pretty fabulous!

>12 avaland: - due to my mistake. It was Embassytown that was mentioned with regard to Mieville's take on cloning.
One of the interesting ideas mentioned was that feminist writers of the 70s and 80s often portrayed societies where men have taken control of birth either through technology or a new societal structure. This would appear to be the opposite what you would expect - that removing the need for pregnancy and birth would liberate women.

>13 Nickelini: - at times it looks great - good sets, nice use of filters - but if anything it is too focused on visuals.
Here's Howard Jacobson's take on it - Charles Dickens has been ruined by the BBC. (Unfortunately he reminded me of the scene where Pip is taken to a brothel - strangely missing from the novel).

>12 avaland: interesting...
>14 Jargoneer: We watched about half of the first episode of Downton Abbey II when it was aired last night on television (we've seen it already; we bought the UK DVD back in November) and this time around we noted some interesting use of color in some of the shots. It could have been coincidence, but, for example, when Mary has said goodbye to Matthew at the train, there is a shot of Matthew in the train car that has a decidedly sepia cast. Mary, on the other hand, is in more or less vivid color on the platform. Another was when Carson and Lady Grantham are looking into the kitchen at Sibyll cooking, both are framed by the window mullions, but the background color in each is different.

I went to see The Artist at the weekend. Is it a great film? Probably not. Is it an enjoyable film? Certainly, unless you can't accept silent movies. The story is hackneyed - silent film George Valentin star can't accept the onset of talkies and loses his fortune on making a silent film; meanwhile starlet Peppy Miller who Valentin helped to get into films is on the up-and-up; and then there is the love that binds them.
A loving homage to silent cinema down to using the editing style of the 1920s and keeping the over-the-top melodrama it succeeds as a film because it is not done cynically. The stars are excellent (Dujardine brushes up his OSS117 persona), the music fits nicely, and there is even a lovable comedic dog. Some of the critical appreciation and Oscar talk is definitely down to its freshness, somewhat ironic for a silent movie - there are no big stars, stunts, explosions, no reliance on the lowest common denominator, and such like. Depressingly, it also has a better screenplay than most of the films I've seen recently.

This was published in the Guardian - Are You Ashamed of Skipping Parts of Books?. (Also posted on the Interesting Articles thread).
I don't really do skipping, the worst I can say is that occasionally I find myself reading pages without taking anything in. I used to skip, when younger, as I wanted to find out what happened next, and the next book I had lined up looked so cool.

I would be ashamed If I did skip parts of books.

This was last year - contains spoilers.



Anita Brookner winning the Booker Prize in 1984 was a huge surprise even in Booker terms. The shortlist contained Ballard's Empire of the Sun and Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot; Amis' Money and Carter's Night at the Circus didn't even make the cut.

Edith Hope is a romantic novelist who has sent to the Hotel du Lac by her friends after she did something terrible at home. The hotel is winding down before closing over the winter and its few remaining guests are there because there is nowhere else to go.
Edith at first is 'taken under the wing' of Mrs Pusey and her daughter, Jennifer, who are the ultimate cosumers, dealing with all aspects of their life by shopping. Mrs Pusey drones on her about the lifestyle her 'adored' husband supplied them with, while Jennifer sits in the background, a younger, tackier version of her mother.
The tall, thin, elegant Monica has been sent to the hotel to recover her health by her husband, a minor aristocrat. He wants a child and she knows that failure to provide one will result in her replacement. She spends her time feeding herself, and her dog, cream cakes.
Mme de Bonneuil has been dumped in the hotel by her son because his wife doesn't want her around. Unable to speak to the other guests she exists in isolation waiting for her son to visit.
The only other (named) guest is Philip Neville, a successful intelligent businessman, who, in a manner, courts Edith.
From very early on it is revealed that Edith has been having an affair with a married man (David), an affair that none of her friends knew about. They worry about her being lonely and eventually set her up with a respectable man, which results in the scandal that sends Edith to Switzerland.
The narrative moves between events at the hotel and Edith's past, mainly recent but touching on her parents. Although it is primarily in the third person we occasionally get more direct glimpses into Edith as she writes (unposted) letters to David.
Inevitably Edith is given a chance to change her life when Philip Neville proposes to her. This is not a proposal of love but one of mutual understanding and benefit - they will both be able to live their individual lives but when needed provide support for the other. Having convinced herself its for the best Edith then spies Neville coming out of Jennifer's bedroom and realises it will never work. The novel ends with Edith sending a message saying she is 'Returning', notably not 'coming home'.

How the reader reacts to this depends on how they react to Edith. She is an incredibly passive character who constantly allows herself to guided into positions that she would rather avoid, most notably her marriage. Even at the hotel she falls in line with whichever guest she is with at the time. She is an individual who has separated her public and private lives - while she enjoys her quiet live she feels obligated to be social, or is social simply to stop herself becoming bored. At the back of her mind however is the idea that if she doesn't do something soon she will remain a spinster and will gradually be left lonely. (Brookner obviously wants to us to contrast Edith with the other female guests but there is fundamental difference between them - while they have all been abandoned, in one way or another, Edith abandoned her 'man').
Her affair with David is important because it is hers, no-one else knows about it, giving her real companionship but is tainted by the knowledge that he won't leave his wife for her, that a couple of days a month may be all he offers, that he may even have another woman elsewhere. This stay in Switzerland is for Edith to clear her mind, to return to her friends as the same meek individual, however in this process Edith may move closer to embracing change for herself.

This book is often criticised for what it is not, i.e., it is not Empire of the Sun and it winning the Booker was a farce. This is not a novel dealing with big events, it is a quiet unassuming piece. The fact that it criticised for this asks questions about the perceived importance of the 'woman's novel', that its smallness, its domesticity it is of less significance. (Of course, the counter argument would be that the woman's novel is an artificial construct, that woman write a variety of novels just like men and you have to look no further than Angela Carter for evidence of that).
I would argue the real difficulty with Hotel du Lac is less its smallness than the feeling it is somehow displaced in time. Although written and set in the early 1980s this novel could have written and set in virtually any of the previous six decades; indeed it would be seem to be more appropriately set in the 1950s or early 1960s. This then is the kind of novel that writers like Ballard and Carter were actively writing against - a polite tale of small misdeeds among gentlefolk. But then this brings us back to looking at the novel in terms of what it isn't.
Brookner has spent her career writing polite novels of society while society has become increasingly impolite; she has, in effect, become her own cottage industry keeping alive a small corner of England's heritage. While it is fair to call her novels similar and slight it is also fair to call them well-written and enjoyable. This is no exception.

Great comments on Hotel du Lac! Thanks for posting that.

That's a terribly perceptive review, Jargoneer.

Fantastic review! Hotel du Lac seems like a book that would appeal to me.

Excellent thoughts on Anita Brookner. Let there always be room for slight well written and enjoyable novels, I would use little, rather than slight to describe her novels.

Nice review! I just mentioned Brookner on the 'questions' thread. I read a Brookner novel in 1981 (or so I thought), I thought it had been her first, and a small novel. I remember the story mostly taking place in a room, or at least figuratively on a small stage; but, clearly, my memory is not to be trusted. It must not have been Brookner, or not 1980 or 81...

>24 avaland: - actually that ties up. Hotel du Lac was Brookner's fourth novel and it was published in 1984 so 1980/1 seems fine for her debut.

The Tree of Knowledge by Jo Clifford (Traverse Theatre, 2011)

This was the Traverse's alternate Xmas show, one where three dead people are brought to life again in 2011. Two of the three are major Scottish figures, Adam Smith and David Hume; the third, Eve, an ordinary Scottish women.
On re-awakening the two men have distinctly different reactions: Hume is decidedly not happy as he refuted the idea of an afterlife and now there seems to be one; Smith, however, is overjoyed, now he can do everything he ever wanted to but couldn't due to the restraints of his time, and he was also right, the market prevails.
After Smith disappears to check out the (gay) night life of Edinburgh Eve appears to Hume. The most interesting part of this sequence was when Eve demonstrates the job she did testing computer chips - Hume is dismayed by the mindlessness of it, the reduction of a person to an automaton but Eve is adamant that this was a good job, better than the traditional options.
This is all good stuff and hopes are high for what's coming next (discussions on the nature of existence, the good life, etc) but Clifford can't help dropping back into cliche - Eve has been abused by her husband, just like her mother was; Smith returns high on drugs declaring how everything he said was true and it's great out there. He also has a smartphone and cannot contain his excitement about a device so small and light that grants access to all of human knowledge. They he uses it to make a date for sex.
Hume now just moves around being disapproving. Eve recounts more of her abuse, she gets pregnant, tries to get rid of it but can't, then she loses it by being thrown down the stairs. (Just before this happens the audience should have called out "Don't go near the stairs" because we all knew what was coming next). Smith returns, his sexual encounter was cold, functional and he has decided the (completely) market may not be the best thing ever after all, that it deprives us of our humanity - look at everything on this phone, isn't it so?. He returns to his chair and returns to death, despondent.
Hume picks up the phone but doesn't see despondency, he sees new knowledge, how amazing the modern world really is. Unfortunately, his conclusion is played out to music just like Vangelis as in Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which was very distracting. After he dies again Eve spouts some middle-of-the-road platitudes and we all go home.
This was such a missed opportunity, a decent premise is demolished by a paucity of imagination and over-simplification. Why does every Scottish play have to female characters who have been abused and characters who take drugs, get drunk, and have regrettable sex? How can you create any kind of dynamic theatre with such a small palette? Scottish theatre more often than not closes the world down, rather than opening it up.

Seems to me that Ian Banks gets a lot of the action in his books from people drinking, too.

27 - it's true that Scottish do drink quite a bit but only because there's nothing worthwhile on at the theatre.

Superb review of Hotel du Lac!

Oh dear jargoneer a depressing night at the theatre.

From The Best British Short Stories 2011:

David Rose - Flora
A gardening connosieur keeps bumping into a young girl at various events and the library, where she is drawing, or copyings drawings of, plant. Since he has an excellent collection of rare horticultural plants, not to mention some excellent specimens he invites her to visit, eventually giving her free rein.
Initially it is difficult not to think this is going result in romance but it never develops that way, the narrator simply believes he is helping a girl with the same interests as him. The story meanders along until the surprising ending but never really amounts to much. I did wonder if the author really meant to suggest that you can't trust young people but that is the message it portrays.

Hilary Mantel - Winter Break
Another story with a twist ending. A middle-aged childless couple are being driven to their remote hotel by a local taxi driver. The outside terrain is harsh, fit only for goats; the road is rough, visibility is poor and eventually they hit something. 'A kid', says the taxi driver, which he places in the boot. When unloading the luggage the female passenger sees something horrifying packed away.
Mantel does rather give the game away rather early in this tale, with the female character meditating on their childlessness, the husband is portrayed as being too selfish, no room for children but this could a mask. This aspect of the story is well done and is even more interesting in light of Mantel's own childnessless (but then you shouldn't confuse author and character), which makes the 'shock' ending a little disappointing. I was expecting more from Mantel. Well-written though.

Lee Rourke - Emergency Exit
Straight off, I loved this story offbeat but with a valid point. An office worker gets up from her desk, goes to the emergency exit where she breaks out into the stairway. After descending a few flights she meets a man clutching a briefcase, staring into space. He then starts smoking an imaginary cigarette. She keeps asking him what is he doing then. He ignores her question a number of times before answering that he doesn't know.
Anyone who has worked in an office will understand the sense of frustration, the futility and meaninglessness the characters experience in this piece. The truly frightening aspect of this story is that this is an accurate assessment of the environment that so many of us work in.

The truly frightening aspect of this story is that this is an accurate assessment of the environment that so many of us work in.

That rings a few bells.

Edward Bryant - giANTS

Edward Bryant is a SF writer who built a good reputation on the basis of his short stories through the 1970s but more or less stopped writing fiction in the mid-1990s. This story won the 1979 Nebula award.

Dr Paul Chavez, a Nobel Prize winning chemist, is haunted by a dream of his daughter being killed by a giant ant but this never happened. He never had a daughter, his eight-month pregnant wife died in anaphylactic shock, brought about by being attacked by fire ants.
Laynie Bridgewell is a young freelance journalist on a mission, she wants a story that will break her into the big-time and she thinks that may be the New Mexico project, led by the reclusive Paul Chavez. The aim of which is create giant ants.
Like any plucky journalist Bridgewell doesn't take no for an answer and so breaks into Chavez's house, awakening him from the aforementioned nightmare. Chavez sees something of his 'lost' daughter and decides to tell all.
In Brazil Eciton, army ants have been mutating into a radically different form, breeding insanely, rampaging through the jungle, unstoppable. And it's only a matter of time before they board a freighter or plane and make to the US. Yes, he is working on creating giant ants but -

Do you know the square-cube law? No? It's a simple rule of nature. If an insect's dimensions are doubled, its strength and the area of its breathing passages are increased by a factor of four. But the mass is multiplied by eight. After a certain point, and that point isn't very high, the insect can't move or breathe. It collapses under its own mass.

This is a decent enough story for the most part, one that appeals on two levels to a SF fan: firstly, as a homage to the great 1954 B-movie, Them, and secondly, utilising the fact that all these menacing giant insects and spiders are scientifically impausible.
I say for the most part due to the ending. I'm not a particular fan of stories that end the main action only to then provide a short summary of what happened next. It strikes me that this is due to a lack of faith in the reader, that they can't accept an open ending and require to be led to a conclusion.
Still, not too bad.

For more info on the writer see the SF Encyclopedia - Edward Bryant

Interesting review, Jargoneer. Hadn't heard about Edward Bryant, but this doesn't sound bad. I also dislike it when the writer has to take the reader by the hand at the end of a book - sometimes, an ambiguous or open ending can be much more satisfying than a conclusion that is too neatly wrapped up.

Your comments on the Lee Rourke story suggested to me that you would appreciate Magnus Mills' deadpan, comic take on the futility of work. I see from your library that you do.

Turner - just now catching up with your thread. You're comments on Emergency Exit have caught my imagination. Interested in that assessment of office work. Also, lots of other great stuff here. I'll try to keep up from here on...

The rest of the Best British Short Stories 2011 -

Leone Ross – Love Silk Food
An older West Indian emigrant woman goes for a walk to avoid her husband who is seeing other women. On her wanderings she comes across a man from the old country and guides to his daughter's house where she accused of being a 'loose' woman.
Of all the stories this felt the most like a shaving from a longer work, probably because it contained more than it needed.

Claire Massey – Feather Girls
A man meets a woman who is also a bird for a regular drink. Years ago he had the chance to catch her and make her fully human and his wife.
The 'supernatural' elements of this tale detract rather than add to the story of lost opportunities.

Christopher Burns – Foreigner
An ex-serviceman visits his ex-wife for a haircut and old wounds surface about the death of their son in Iraq. This is a terrible story – it is just so cliched, everything feels like it comes from the pages of a tabloid.
Just awful.

Adam Marek – Dinner of the Dead Alumni
A man out shopping thinks he sees the 'love of his life' and chases after her forgetting about his wife and daughter. Meanwhile the ghosts of dead Cambridge alumni are gathering for their dinner. Despite this premise this story just doesn't deliver, ending up being a damp squib (both literally and metaphorically).

SJ Butler – The Swimmer
A writer decides to go for a swim in the river at the bottom of her garden, it is so liberating she returns again and again, and she is fascinated by a swan that she shares the water with, eventually freeing it from fishing twine.
A decent story but nothing more, like the river herein it just drifts away.

Heather Leach – So Much Time in a Life
We start with a woman with three children but then the story starts to deconstruct around her until she is left alone.
Interesting but not fully successful experiment.

Alan Beard – Staff Development
An older man is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, slowly coming apart in the office.
Didn't care for this, felt like a poor 'Radio 4' story – bland and predictable.

Kirsty Logan – The Rental Heart
A woman gets a new heart each time she starts a new relationship but then she settles in one, only to check her heart later on and find it empty.
Reminded me a little of Philip K. Dick's The Electric Ant, perhaps due to the end, but unlike Dick this was an story that irritated more than enlightened.

Philip Langeskov – Notes on a Love Story
A four page romantic vignette is followed by seven pages of notes on the story – the literary references, the real-life incidents, etc.
I enjoyed this but I can imagine that some readers will just be annoyed by the “aren't I clever” approach.

Bernie McGill – No Angel
A woman is haunted by her father, not in a creepy way but he is just checking up on her.
Although dangerously close to (poor) whimsy at times this wasn't too bad.

John Burnside – Slut's Hair
It's Scotland therefore there must be a down-trodden woman abused by her drunken husband. Burnside is a very good prose writer but we have been here so many times before I'm beginning to wonder if there is some unwritten law that states all Scottish literature must be about drinking, poverty, abuse, etc.

Hilary Mantel – Comma
A woman looks back on her younger self and her, to her parents unsuitable, friend. To her they are just friends having adventures but then one day she is gone.Years later they meet in the street but the gap between them is now huge.
This is a well put together piece but I didn't quite believe the reminincse of the encounter with the handicapped boy. I also can't help thinking that Mantel got two stories simply because of the success of Wolf Hall, in an attempt to pull the punters in.

Robert Edric – Moving Day
In a post-apocalytic world, in a huge apartment block a single man is told he has to move to a smaller apartment because he can no longer occupy a family unit, which triggers memories of the beginning of the environmental changes and the death of his wife and child.
Interesting but not fully satisfactory, the tone just seems a little strained.

Michele Roberts – Tristram and Isolde
A strange story which leads to believe you are reading about lovers but then reveals that is not the case.
Poetic and unsettling.

Dai Vaughan – Looted
A soldier in WWII takes a painting from a derelict building. Years later the original owners reclaim the painting and Eric seems to suddenly age, as if giving up the painting has meant he has given up the right to be part of this world.
Never quite bought into the premise but OK for what it is.

Alison Moore – When the Door Closed, It Was Dark
A young woman goes to an unnamed country to work as an au pair only to find that she has become a slave. Like most tales of this sort it ends with Stockholm Syndrome settling in.
One of the better stories in the collection.

Sally Vickers - Epiphany
An actor finally tracks down his father when his mother is dying which results in him re-evaluating the past.
Not particularly original but decent enough.

"Best" is always a subjective term: one person's favourite may be another's unfavoured; so a best of anthology should always be treated with a pinch of salt. What I do expect though is stories of a certain standard, i.e., decent writing, etc, and for the most part this collection does deliver that.

There were a few stories that offered something extra: those by Lee Rourke, Philip Langeskov and Michele Roberts. One of the Hilary Mantel contributions, Winter Break contained some powerful writing about a woman who desired a child but never had one - it was only let down by the fact the ending was so easy to guess. (The John Burnside piece, Slut's Hair, was also very well written but the subject matter was just so predictable that I found myself getting annoyed by it).

On the other hand there were only a couple of real clunkers - Christopher Burns Foreigner was decently constructed but nothing more than cliche from beginning to end; and, Adam Marek's Dinner of the Dead Alumni which failed to be funny and clever by a long way.

The rest of the stories fall into the middle-ground - not great, not bad - mainly decent readable stories that you forget shortly after reading them.

Royle, to his credit, did try to cover most of the bases - there was one SF story, four that could be called magic realist (interestingly all ultimately disappointing), a couple that tried to do something different, etc. (Strangely there was no crime). There is also a decent mix of better and lesser known writers. What Royle could have done is vary the length of the stories more, the maximum page count was 16 which seems rather limiting, although I understand that he probably wanted to get as much in the available space. (Much like we should take into consideration the budget of the collection and the availability of stories).

Do I think these were the best stories published in the UK in 2010? Probably not (there were better stories in Interzone, for example) but this is an admirable exercise worthy of everyone's support. I certainly will seek out the 2012 volume.

And so those were the BEST short stories of 2011? I guess it was an off year for writing in the UK?

Well the rest do not sound very good

>37 Jargoneer: So can one assume that the stories are truly less than stellar and you are not having a cranky day? (lack of caffeine, missed the train, cat peed in your favorite chair...etc) If it is the former, it begs the question, why? Terrible selections by the editor/s, lousy selection to choose from...any speculation?

>41 avaland: - I think being the first of a series may have affected Royle's choices with him trying to cover a number of different styles and modes. Also the availability of stories may have influenced his choice, I find it strange there wasn't a crime story but perhaps he couldn't afford or get access to one he wanted. I will pick up the next volume (it's available in April) to see how it develops, whether Royle stamps more of a perosnal ideology on it. One thing he has to do is to increase the page count from 250 to 300-320, to allow him to choose some longer stories - the longest story in the current volume is 16 pages and it would be nice to see some longer pieces (which would also reduce the bang bang bang feel of the collection).
I also think that one of the problems is that the UK doesn't have the same level of small literary magazines that the US has so the pool of the short stories is significantly shallower. (This also means that writers are less likely to concentrate on short stories because there is nowhere to publish them).

On the other hand, it could be that I am just being cranky - the cat peed on the bed (it turns out she is quite ill) and I was informed my job would end in a month. But if the stories were excellent wouldn't I forget my worries?

>true true. I follow Tania Hershman's 'short story' blog occasionally http://titaniawrites.blogspot.com/ and I saw she had a list of UK lit mags on it.

When people say that graphic novels (or comics) are about more than superheroes and adolescent fantasies this is undoubtedly one of the books they reach for in support of their argument. A long (almost 600 pages) autobiographical novel about a young boy growing up in small town Wisconsin. Superheroes it ain't. It isn't even in colour.

The artwork is rather lovely black and white: beautifully naturalistic but when required bursting out when conveying emotion or inner thought. Thompson isn't afraid to use a whole page to portray a single moment. My only issue with the artwork is a minor (and strange one) - Craig's nose, from certain angles it looks like someone has stuck a wedge of cheese on his face.

The basic story is familiar, boy is unhappy at home and school, then finds happiness with a girl, only to lose it again but emerge changed, starting the first movements of breaking out out of his cocoon.
In this case, when I say the boy (Craig) is unhappy I am understating the facts - his parents are emotionally distant Christian fundamentalists, borderline abusive; he is bullied at school and the babysitter is sexually abusive. In the wrong hands this could quite easily have been a misery memoir. However Thompson focuses on the three main relationships in his life - his brother, his first love Raina, and God.

The segments with his brother are in flashback, to a time when they shared a bed. They have the feel of a genuine brotherly relationship: they bicker and fight but there is affectation (the 'pee' is particularly amusing), there is also acknowledgement that age can create distance (when talking to Raina Craig admits that he doesn't know if Phil still draws). In some ways it is disappointing that Thompson didn't explore this more but when older brother is really just a shadow character, as are his parents in most ways. Ironically Raina's parents seem more real than Thompson's.

The heart of the novel is Craig's relationship with Raina, a young girl he meets at bible school/camp. She is a bit outsider as well but unlike Craig she has friends (the other outsiders) and is confident, outgoing. They hit it off instantly and spent the rest of time cutting classes and enjoying themselves outdoors. (There is an Arcadian strain running through the novel). After they have both returned home Raina invites Craig to visit her the next break, both families agreeing due to the other being good Christians. To a background of domestic anguish, Raina's parents are divorcing and her (adopted) brother who has learning difficulties dislikes Craig, their relationship develops, the emotional closeness eventually mirrored physically. It's not easy portraying the all-consuming aspects of first love but Thompson has an advantage here, the passion is represented by 'ecstatic' drawings rather than the cringe-worthy purple prose often found in a traditional novel.
Then Craig has to return home and they have to deal with the difficulties of maintaining their relationship, the bubble they existed in for a fortnight has burst and there are pressures at home and school - what they are going to do in the future? Inevitably cracks start to appear and then...

What makes the novel more interesting is the way religion is woven through the imagery and Craig's outlook on life. Craig sees his everyday life and his relationship with Raina as extensions of his Christian belief - his belief in God is genuine rather than a Sunday event.
However, as readers we know this belief won't survive and therefore we are waiting to see why and when he loses his faith rather than if.
The cheap option would have been for Craig to lose his faith as his relationship with Raina is failing - the 'how can God be so cruel and heartless' option, if you like but Thompson travels the knowledge road - the more I learn the less I can belief. (Most of this road is travelled in a lengthy coda wherein Craig moves to the city to make a life for himself.


When it comes down to it this is a standard coming-of-age novel - the strength of it comes of it comes from the freedom of the art and Thompson's non-judgemental approach; the weakness is that most of the characters are flat, given no life of their won, and a certain lack of depth to the material - it is inherently more difficult for art to fill in the psychological and philosophical aspects of life than prose.

Overall though, well worth the effort. A graphic novel I would give to those who are dismissive of the form.

I am way behind the times as I thought most graphic novels were under 150 pages. They are very popular in France and often literary reviews will have a section for Bandes Dessinees. I read them occasionally to help with my French. Blankets seems a whole new ball game.

44 - Great review!

Very interesting about Blankets. I was expecting you to bash this, as some other reviewers have. It's been on my wishlist awhile...or, really more of my if-I-happen-to-stumble-across-it list.

>45 baswood:
The French and Belgian albums are very different from the American comics (the non-superhero, mainstream variety... the type of Blankets) both as format and as execution... I like both styles generally but it does not make them comparable. :)

>44 Jargoneer:
Nice review :)

Ian Rankin's take on the character of John Constantine, star of the Hellblazer comic, unfortunately played by Keanu Reeves in the film, Constantine.

For those you still in the dark, John Constantine is a detective with a difference in that he investigates demonic/supernatural events. (I may be stretching a point calling him a detective with a difference since this now seems to be a difference he shares with half the detectives out there. PS - a visual reference is a young Sting, on whom he was based). Ian Rankin is, of course, the best-selling author of the Rebus detective novels set in Edinburgh. Werther Dell'edera is an Italian artist who made a name for himself in crime comics.
Dell'edera's art is grainy black and white, obviously attempting to create a film noir type atmosphere; in which he is moderately successful.

I say moderately because, reminiscent of the British comics of my childhood, the art varies between the excellent and panels that look as if they dashed off in order to make a deadline. Still I prefer the Dell'edera's rough approach to the super-slick garish art that graces many US comics with it's pneumatic humans that are more flexible than pipe-cleaners.

The problem is Rankin's story. Constantine is called in by a TV producer to investigate strange events at a Big Brother style environment. The twist is that this Big Brother is supposed to be in a haunted house but that the producers haven't started with their tricks yet - these events are outside of their control. In order to investigate Constantine has to sign a contract and enter the house as a new contestant. Once inside he finds a group of young people who all haunted by specific visions. Constantine's housemates are young, bickering and all with a strange story to tell. At this point I started to reminisce about those Amicus portmanteau films of the early seventies where a group of disparate people exchange (linked) tales that end in their death. It seems that Rankin may have seen these films as well for Constantine quickly deduces the fact the storytellers are no longer living, and the house is not on Earth and that the prize to the winner is an escape. Outside, the denizens of Hell are getting restless, especially one who wants Constantine dead. Only by working together, overcoming their fears and sacrifice will anyone get out of alive.

Ever since Rebus ended Rankin has looked like a man with no real sense of direction and this feels like the work of someone treading water. Plodding and predictable, and not particularily imaginative, Dark Entries is a disappointing run-of-the-mill fantasy. As one of Rebus' colleagues may have said, "Move along, nothing to see here."

This is a film that plays less like a feature than a good arts programme. Based around Allen Ginsberg's eponymous poem the film consists of Ginsberg's (played very well by James Franco) initial reading of the poem, the poem read over animation (inspired by the poem and other Ginsberg work); an interview Ginsberg gave in 1957 and the obscenity trial of the same year (both based on transcripts). There is nothing particularly dramatic about any of this, even the trial feels lopsided due to the weak nature of the prosecution. But none of this really matters - Howl is a much better poem heard than read, while both the trial and interview produce interesting insights in the work and literature in general.

Recommended.

First novel by highly successful (now retired) marketing executive.

In chapter one we meet Henry Cage in 2004, a broken man due to the death of his only grandson, a death that he feels responsible for. Cage left Hal in the car while picking up items in the local garage, seeking a opportunity a junkie decides to steal it but when he pushes the child out the seatbelt captures Hal's foot and he is dragged along the road at 50mph. His son tells him it wasn't his fault but an anonymous phone call, from presumably his daughter-in-law, says he is to blame, and then....

And then the novel backtracks to 1999 and Cage's 'retirement' from the Management Consultancy he had founded. Alone, estranged from his ex-wife and son, the story follows Cage as he re-connects with them, brought together by his dying wife.
Running aside this strand is another of Cage being persecuted by a young sociopath, Colin Bateman, who he 'attacked' by while attempting to return home after a party to celebrate the Millennium. From this anonymous assault Bateman wages a low-level campaign against Cage just for fun - he claims not to like Cage but he doesn't know him (although this could be class-based). This culminates in a confrontation one night when Cage catches Bateman cutting down the rose plant that covers the front of his house, and which he associates with his ex-wife.

The writing is slick, almost too slick, marketing slick, making the pages turn quickly but this reader couldn't help thinking about something he heard on a pod-cast recently - the realist novel is dead. (As everybody knows everything is dead in the book industry and literature - short stories, poetry, novels, paper books, etc - it makes you wonder why they don't round off the top corners of books so that they resemble tombstones). One aspect of the argument is that the realist novel no longer effectively reflects the real world, that the real world is now so complex that it is impossible to capture in a realistic novel and that the only really effective way to approach it now is through post-modernist techniques. This crossed my mind while reading Abbott because I kept wondering what is the point of this novel - it is a decent enough story but it doesn't really have much to say. You could say it is in the fine tradition of the English novel - one about the trials and tribulations of rich people, who would have perfectly idyllic lives if it wasn't for the pesky poor.

Some of the problems of the novel can be explained by the fact this is a first novel. Abbott can't resist his characters meaning that everyone gets a voice, often to no great effect. For example, Cage has an affair with Maude, someone who was employed as mature graduate at his company although leaves because she feels is not suited to the role; leaving aside the wish-fulfillment of this, Maude is there to help Cage re-attach with people, which is fine but then near the end she gets a chapter that follows here despite the fact that the relationship with Cage has already ended. If you were being kind you could argue that Abbott gives everyone a voice because he creating a kaleidoscope view of the state of England but this is short (220 pages) novel, it is not Trollope. The effect of constantly changing the viewpoint from character to character reduces focus and intensity, diffusing the novel's impact.

I'm also not sure that Abbott should have kept referencing other writers (like James Salter) or musicians (Bill Evans) directly, it's almost as if he is trying too hard to be cool, but then again perhaps his characters have exquisite taste to go along with money.

This all sounds like I hated the book. I didn't, I thought it was OK, an easy read. Perhaps not a keeper but not a waste of time.

The Dreams of William Golding, BBC.

From the BBC site:

The Dreams of William Golding reveals the extraordinary life of one of the greatest English writers of the 20th century.

With unprecedented access to the unpublished diaries in which Golding recorded his dreams, the film penetrates deep into his private obsessions and insecurities.

Well, yes and no. We did get readings from Golding's dream diaries, predominately ones of foreboding or disaster but who wants to hear about bunnies bouncing freely round the meadow? Do dreams really provide an insight into a person or are they just the waste disposal system of the brain? And if dreams are symbolic how do we know what the symbols mean? Just because a white bat symbolises death to person A it doesn't necessarily follow that it symbolises death to person B - what something means is determined by cultural and personal influences.

The real meat of this film was a relatively straight-forward biography of Golding but that's fine - how many 90 minute profiles of serious literary novelists have been broadcast on BBC recently?

The picture presented of Golding was interesting, here was a man who used to open a door as wide as possible before entering a room to let out any spirits within. His parents consisted of a supersititous mother and scientist father and Golding appeared to be rational and irrational depending on the situation.

He certainly believed in God at one point - possibly due to seeing action in WWII. As the captain of a rocket boat Golding saw action at Walcheren where he provided rolling cover for the invading forces. The Germans had said civilians had been evacuated but this was not the case and Golding was haunted by the fact that he had killed innocent bystanders.

After the war he returned to being a schoolmaster, writing 20 odd unsuccessful novels before producing Lord of the Flies. Even this was immediately, having been rejected by a number of publishers before Faber accepted it - Faber's reader recommended it was rejected but one of the editors decided to take a chance on it on the basis that all the references to the supernatural were removed. It did relatively well on publication but it's real success came in the USA in the early 60s where it was adopted by the counter-culture and in Vietnam.

In between Golding wrote 3 other novels, two of which are worthy of serious attention - The Inheritors (his biographer John Carey claims this is his best novel) and Pincher Martin, a strange fantasy about a personal purgatory. (To help, Golding used to get his pupils proof-read the manuscripts).

Then came The Spire, a work also claimed as his best by many, but which was savaged at the time - his daughter remembered her father listening to the BBC and the book being torn apart. This experience, plus the freedom due to his new financial status, an increasing problem alcohol problem, and his son's traumatic mental collapse all conspired to keep Golding more or less quiet. (There was one novel in 1967 and a short collection of tales, mainly written earlier).

The novel he came back, Darkness Visible, was his response to his son's condition, the main character being a version of him. After this Golding found a new lease of life as a writer, producing his acclaimed sea trilogy, the first of which, Rites of Passage won him the Booker.

​​In 1983 he was unexpectedly awarded the Nobel Prize. This caused some controversy with one Nobel judge claiming he was just a little English phenomena while at home experts thought it should have gone to Graham Greene or Anthony Burgess. Interestingly, when the Times drew up its best 50 British writers since 1945 Golding was third, Burgess was 17th and Greene was nowhere to be seen.

Personally every time I have read Golding I have been impressed and this documentary made me think it was time to read another.

Collection of Greek poetry translated by Thom Nairn and D. Zervanou.

I read somewhere that European and Anglophone poetry had split following modernism - English language poetry embracing the personal, the confessional while the European strand delighted in games and surrealism. Like most generalisations it is easy refute by pointing at pieces that don't fit the model but likewise there may be an element of truth at the heart of it.
Hajidaki is a Greek poet who, according to the information I could find on her, has published five (probably more now) collections in her homeland. Despite living in England for five years this is her only collection available (and I use the word loosely) in English. It was published by a small press based in Edinburgh which made a number of Greek poets available in English but which may or may not now have folded. (I can't quite figure which from the details of them on the web).
Which brings us back to the idea of European vs English poetry. The actual poetry still could be autobiographical but not in a manner of most English poetry - this is illusive and surreal, sometimes downright odd but as often as not fascinating and mesmerising. Her poetry mixes classical mythology (is that de rigeour for Greek authors?) and modern cultural iconography - Hollywood, pulp fiction, television, etc; the everyday with flights of pure fancy. Even when baffling the reader can't help feeling they are experiencing something unique. At the same time I can appreciate that other readers may find this frustrating, even baffling.
But you can resist a collection when the poems have such great titles - For No Reason A Sixteen Year Old Girl Imagines Her Father Dead While Waiting At The Airport For Him To Return From A Long Journey, Portrait Of A Woman Who Has No Wish For The Love In Her Heart To End But Anticipates It, Scenes From The End of Matriachy, etc.

Portrait of an Ex-Lover

You are a Scythian town.
Which the pick-axes of Assyrians have just dredged up.
You're hauled out as wreckage.
With your intestines intact. Along with slimy utensils. Pots
Marine organisms. Cetaceans and rose-windows.

An Invisible Universe preserved you.
You're no Icarus still falling. You would
Need a lenient Dedalus - an endless thirst-mania for the heights.
Don't barter with chaos. Before you: the tail of a peacock,
A decomposed tail stolen from a meteorite.
Cool champagne, a hot frappe, before you.

Even if you're sought out
And hauled up, you exist as a wreck,
Only the Sun ia more of a reservist than you.
This night the most distinctive Star escapes.
The most palpable monotony will resort to existing flesh.

Shake yourself. Admire the precipice.
The bracken.
The island.

Insects grow in your hair.
Spit out the fat. And die.

Portrait of a Woman Waiting for Her Guests

Something happens to me.
People are coming for dinner.
For two days I've gauged the
proportions with black lace.
Tenaciously I wash the platters with soap.
The blue bowls from Staffordshire
Their tiny flowers are immortal
for they still have their blue leaves
their blue roots
their blue earth.
I wash my cheeks in the photographs with soap
and I plant different eyes on them.
I go to the shops
and do some window shopping.
I try on hundreds of bras
and long skirts.
They will come on the Saturday already passed.
I must remember exactly what I intend to cook.
N will come with her triangular red beg.
she will bring her body,
she will wear her tracksuit with all its zips
or a Chinese dress with openings everywhere
especially on the sides.
She pockets all the bottles of red wine
then she pulls all the zips.
E will come with in Robin Hood boots
her blue eyes, her stifling blouses.
I will come
I will wear a dress with padded shoulders
and a desperately tight skirt.
I will serve them with sharp clips on my ears
and I will throw back my hair
with a lively flick of my shoulders.
H will come from a great distance
with her bald baby on her back, a captive
of her curved body
her grey coat
her earrings from Thibet
and her triplets never to be born.
K will not be coming
because she is always here
with her pink tights
and her high heels which impale
whole city block
when she passes.
Why is it she's never cold in her pre-Spring outfits,
Why is it she never secretly grows, never fades
on her cold Australian legs?
I wash the tea with soap
I wash the butter with soap
I wash the slaughtered lamb with soap
I wash the sugar and the coffee with soap
so they will be pure.
I will come for dinner.
I wash my Croton plant
with very hot water
my plant named Leopard Lily
and my tough Ficus Robusta.
as well as the half-dead Lapithia
without her western pediment, without the other E.
I wash the Eiffel Tower, the view of Palais de Chaillot
I wash the harbour of Spetses black and white.

Something happens to her.
They will come for dinner.

- and one not in the collection -

DARK RED

Tonight I am Theda Bara
lying on lion's skin
in a Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer set.
It is Autumn and my sewing machine
has rusted, but I'll come to find you
as soon as my heart beats reach
their natural height.
I am Dorothy Lamour
as I float on a sea made of pearls and seagrass
behind the groves of Ecstasy.
I am Jane in the arms of Tarzan
and at the end of the comic strip
the child of the jungle will thrust
his knife in my back.
I am Anna-Maria Pierangeli and
I'm sitting with my legs open
on James Dean's silver shining Porche
just before he turned for the final
California Dreaming.
I am Daisy Buchanan
in this dirty hotel lobby
just before Jay Gatsby starts talking.
I am Natalie Wood drowned in the
red dress of Splendor in the Grass.
I am Janet Leigh naked in my bathtub
and I'm waiting for Anthony Perkins
on this rainy American night of Psycho.
I am Charles Manson's wooden chick
and I invite you tonight for a blood bath.

(Translated by Kimon Farr)

Lots of interesting stuff here Turner. I enjoyed the poems by Hajidaki who seems pretty hard on her ex lover. (assuming of course it is the poets voice). I thought Portrait of a woman waiting for her guests was very fine.

Interesting details about William Golding.

A few years ago flicking through the channels I found film In Love and War. It was a Hallmark film so it wasn't particularly challenging but pleasant, charming, helped significantly by the leads, Callum Blue and a rather lovely Czech actress, Barbora Bobulova. It told of the exploits of a commando as he attempted to evade re-capture, helped by the local populace. As the credits rolled I noticed this was based on a book by Eric Newby so when this book became available cheaply at my local Waterstones I grabbed it.

The story starts when Newby was part of failed raid on a airbase on Sicily. He was moved about Italy until finally coming to rest at Fontanellato, a small town 20km from Parma. There POW's were held in an adapted orphange - Newby describing the situation as similar to an English boarding school and rife with class distinction - Newby just managing to scrape into the 'better' people. When the armistice (with Italy, 1943) is the declared the colonel in charge of the prisoners sets them all free. Unfortunately for Newby he has a broken ankle so he is left with a farmer, hiding in a hayloft. A local doctor treats him, sending to a convent to recover. It is there he meets Wanda, where she teaches him Italian and he helps with her English. (Wanda is a Slovene. Slovenia was under Italian control pre-war and Mussolini wanted the children to learn Italian so he brought the Slovenia teachers to Italy, replacing them with Italians. Wanda's father was a teacher). As they teach other they start to develop a strong bond.

With the fascists regaining control of the government Newby finds himself placed under guard. Fortunately they are not the brightest and he is able to escape by faking stomach cramps, crawling through a window in the toilets. The doctor takes him to a farmer but the farmer loses his nerve and asks him to leave. This begins numerous moves over the next few months as Newby evades capture. Some of these stays last a day or two but others, as when he stays on a farm on a high plateau last weeks (his job there is to clear rocks); some he stays in a nice clear bed but at other times he hides in a hole in the ground. When he is on the plateau farm he is so comfortable that he is able to go trekking on his off day and at one point even attends a village party, although it is broken up by policia searching for him; this time he escapes. In the end he meets up with a fellow escapee from the orphanage and both are hidden in a specially built dwelling, hidden in the rocks. There they are helped by the local villagers supplying food and Newby even gets to meet with Wanda again. Eventually however one of the villagers informs the militia and they are recaptured.

The book is obviously a tribute to those who helped him and it is interesting seeing the attitude of those involved - some do it because they are anti-fascist, others because they are sons on the Eastern front and some form of karma seems to be involved. The people are mainly peasants eking out a living on subsistence farms; helping Newby just doesn't mean risking reprisals from the fascists, it also means doing without, stretching little a little further. These are hard people with hard lives, with little time for sentimentality and the finer things in life, who are incredibly resourceful, and decent, and brave.

The most incredible part of the story happens when Newby is out exploring on one of his day's off. Falling asleep in a alpine meadow he wakens to find a German officer nearby. The officer, who is out butterfly hunting, quickly realises that Newby is not Italian but an escaped British officer. He tells Newby that he is an information officer, teaching other officers about culture that they don't care about and about which he knows little (it is outside of his field but he was appointed to role on the basis of being educated),, he wishes that he could sit down and talk to the locals about their lives but he realises that they all despise him. And that he hopes Germany loses the war, that the Germany waging this war is not a Germany he wants to belong to.

I enjoyed this book but not as much as I expected to. Newby was a highly respected travel writer and there are parts of the book where he describing the mountains, the surrounding areas, etc, which while well-written and not without merit were of less interest that the sections dealing with people. The other reason I enjoyed it less was that there wasn't enough of Wanda - in the film we Wanda is much more than the occasional presence she is here, the romance is much more central which gives the film more focus than the book. (I have now found out that Newby wrote another book about returning to Italy after the war and the problems encountered when marrying Wanda - perhaps I should read that).

Not essential reading but worth reading nonetheless.

ps...I don't really have much shame when he comes to television, I'll quite happily watch the Hallmark Channel, and I'll always have a soft spot for it because it showed the Gilmore Girls when no other UK channel would touch it). Oddly I wouldn't put on a crappy record or pick up a run-of-the-mill bestselling books.

pps...Newby mentions a Michael in one of the early chapters - this is Michael Gilbert, the well-known crime novelist.

During my silence on this thread I did something I swore I would never do - I acquired an ereader (the Kobo touch, to be specific). Too things finally swayed me - first, the fact that books were in danger of colonising too much of the flat (not something to endear you to your partner) a secondly, I needed to come with an idea for a present. Once books were out, and it being increasing harder to find CDs I want (and storing them), and coming in within budget, I plumped for an ereader.

I'm surprised by how enjoyable I find it - I thought it would sit in my pile of "technical items that I thought were a good idea at time but turned out to be a waste of money", and that I would stick to books. With straight text it is as easy read to as paper plus it has one big advantage - I can highlight text and make notes without de-facing the book.

I'm still not sure the ereader has any real future though.

>53 Jargoneer: Read the poem over on the poetry thread, and yes, though it dallied with the surreal. Thanks for your review of the collection. Are there theories why one went one way and the went the other?

>57 avaland: - if I remember correctly, and this focused on English poetry, the idea was the literary establishment and the Oxbridge mafia were not fans of modernism and so championed a return to traditional poetic values, attacking Dylan Thomas (the main 'European' poet) as pandering to the general public, being a poetic dead end, etc. This escalated during and after the war, until the traditionalists found a figure-head in Philip Larkin, someone who could be singularly described as an English poet.
With this came a side-lining of experimental or modernist-influenced poets, failure to include them in anthologies or on university poetry courses. It also meant that less European poetry was translated as the insularity grew. Inevitably it was doomed to fail but the consequences are that the development of English was skewed, operating outside the general development of European poetry.

>52 Jargoneer:, 53 I enjoyed your reviews of the film on Golding and the Hajidaki collection.

Enjoyed your review of Love and War in the Apennines. Eric Newby was a very readable travel writer.

ereaders are great. I love my kindle - it feels such a comfort to have it in my man-bag.

>58 Jargoneer: Interesting. Ah, the literary establishment. It needs a good revolution once in a while to keep it from becoming inbred. BTW, I've read a little of Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction and was interested to read how the British fixed book prices (high) in the 19th century.

>58 Jargoneer:,

Interesting about Larkin. I love his poetry, but it doesn't seem particularly traditional, at least compared to Thomas.

The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchis, adapted by DC Jackson; directed by Mark Thomson (Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 23/03/12)

Another preview night at the Lyceum but the first I can remember the director appearing on stage beforehand to issue a request for the audience to be understanding of any teething issues. To be honest there were one or two but none of them made much difference; indeed, one of them, when a desk failed to turn-up on stage, Stuart Bowman improvised to such laughter that they should keep it in the 'polished' version.

The story of Figaro, in this version, is one of lust, love, misunderstandings and high finance. Figaro (Mark Prendergast) and the beautiful Suzanne (Nicola Roy) are due to get married, just after they pull off a merger that will make the new company the largest financial instituition in Scotland. Just in time as their ethical bond business is on break of collapse, what they don't know is that The Chief's bank also has some financial problems, linked to 'sub-prime' type bonds.
And then there are the personal issues: The Chief wants to shag Suzanne (in a nice twist he is the man who fought for a no-tolerance workplace but has gone bad); Margery, the Chief's PA, wants to marry Figaro and has a contract signed by him that states if he ever owns the financial organisation in Scotland he will marry her; Barry, the accountant, loves Margery (they once had an affair and a child who was put up for adoption) and knows the financial truth about Figaro's company; the Chair (-person of the bank board) is married to the Chief whom she loves but is tiring of his escapades; and finally, Pavlo, the 18yo office boy, and retired Ukranian miner, loves the Chair.
Cue misunderstandings, cunning plans and relevations which all add up to a fun night.

It took a little time to warm up but once it the laughs came fast and furious (only petering off a little near the end). The cast was uniformly good but special mention must be made of Mark Prendergast who also revealed a good singing voice, giving us bursts from the opera as the set was changed behind him, and especially, Stuart Bowman, who chomped his way through the play, really getting his teeth into a buffoon-ish amoral, larger than life character.
This isn't a play that is going to change people opinions or raise a debate in the bar afterwards but very few will leave the theatre without a smile on their face, and that is some kind of achievement.

Karine Polwart, Greyfriars Kirk, 28/03/12.

The unusual setting of Greyfriars Kirk (yes, the home of Bobby) was host to Karine Polwart in a fundraiser for the Scottish Green Party.

First up, though, was Lorraine McCauley & the Borderlands (consisting on of a violinist and an accordionist). McCauley is at the beginning of her career, having just released an EP, although an album is due later this year, and it showed. She wasn't bad, she just wasn't very good, the main problem being a complete lack of identity in music, voice or song. There were small hints though that may be capable of better in the future, if she is willing to leave the safety of generic folksinger. (She also has to stop stretching words so often - no-one should ever sing 'longerer' again).

The choice of Karine Polwart was my partner's, she listens more to the folk scene than I do. I, for my part, had heard of Polwart but had her tagged as another run-of-the-mill hey-nonny-nonny singer. After the first half of her concert (it was a very civilised gig, she broke so we could go and get a drink, which being in a church was paid for a donation basis) I got my drink and then bought a couple of CDs. I was just so impressed by the quality of the songs and her singing; her band consisting of her brother on guitar and Inge Thomson on accordion and percussion, providing excellent backup.

The second half of the concert picked up where the first ended - more good songs, singing and playing, until we all had a singalong to I'm Gonna Do It All to end the evening. This was one of those gigs where by the end of it everyone feels part of a greater community, that they have shared something special. Entirely appropriately for a church I went in a sceptic and came out a believer: I'm already looking forward to her album launch later this year and the subsequent tour with a full band, including a brass section.

Nice shoe and loved your review of the Karine Polwart concert. You were lucky to get a drink in a church........ still I suppose it is Scotland.

Although published in Hungary in 1977 this slim work didn't see an English translation until 2008. Without Kertesz's Nobel Prize status it is unlikely that this work would have found its way into English.

The premise is simple enough - in an unnamed Latin American country, Antonio Martens, a former police officer, is awaiting trial for murder following regime change; the likelihood being that he will be executed. This is confession of his time working for a mysterious unit just known as the Corps and their dealings with the Salinas, which end in tragedy. And like much tragedy the events are farcical: Federigo and Enrique, father and son, meeting their fate not due to actions aimed against the state but an non-existent plot dreamt up by the father to protect the son. Kertesz shows how the machinery of a totalitarian state functions separately from truth, that once a path has been embarked on there is no turning back regardless.

Martens confession is both confirmation of events and a distancing - that he didn't participate in the torture and violence but only did the paperwork. The real guilty parties were his colleague, Rodriguez, who took a sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain; his boss, Diaz, who calmly gave Rodriguez the OK to proceed with as little thought as answering a question on where he wanted coffee; and the Colonel, who ran the department and would do anything to hang onto power. Of course, Martens could be lying, who can tell when truth is an optional component. What we do see is how fear is the common element between the victim and the representatives of the state - the victim lives in fear of what they state can and could do, the representatives of the states live in fear of being found out, of being replaced, of becoming the victim.

While this novella raises interesting questions it still feels slight, as if it is the bare bones of something larger but that is probably Kertesz's intention, to portray a single event in an environment where events like this are commonplace. The problem with this approach is that the characters never attain any flesh, they remain in thrall to the plot.
There is also the issue of deja vu - when I was reading this I couldn't shake off the feeling that I have read similar things before. Of course, that could due to the post-modern affection for using detectives, false confessions and interrogations as a method for constructing a story. And then there is the Kafkaesque approach to the state, that bureaucracy is an end in itself, a machine that once in motion cannot be stopped or turned. Thirdly, by setting it in Latin American the reader can't help recalling all the great novelists from that continent who have dealt with dictatorships. Of course, we have to acknowledge that Kertesz couldn't set it in Eastern Europe as that would have been too close to home for the authorities of his homeland, and that it took 30 years for the novel to be translated, during which other works discussing the same subject area have multiplied significantly.

Worth reading but not indispensable.

The Hebrides Ensemble, Quartet for the End of Time, The Jam House, 29/03/12.

The story of Quartet for the End of Time is probably better known the music itself - that Messiaen met three other accomplished musicians while in a POW camp and wrote the piece for this unusual quartet of piano, violin, cello and clarinet. It was then premiered for 400 hundred prisoners and guards, outdoors in the rain, in January 1941.

The piece is heavily influenced by Messiean's strong Catholic beliefs: the eight movements being roughly split between angelic announcements of the end of time (for all four instruments) and paenas to Jesus (combination of two or solo instruments); with an introduction and interlude.
The pieces for the quartet are generally full-on, representing as they do an angel announcing the end of the world. This means that they contain more dissonance, challenging the listener more as the power of the instruments collide, break and then collide again.
The pared back movements, for piano and cello, solo clarinet, and the concluding one for piano and violin are much more melodic, at times very lyrical. I especially liked the solo clarinet, possibly because it is so unusual to hear in this situation and which at times reminded me of modern jazz players who have utilised the instrument, like Eric Dolphy. The piano and cello movement was lovely while the piano and violin was the most haunting. The amount of sustain that the violinist found made his instrument almost sound like a theremin at its most eery.

I'm not an musical expert by any stretch of the imagination so I can't really comment on the technical abilities of the players but only say I was very impressed and thoroughly enjoyed it. (On the other hand my partner said that if she had been one of the prisoners at the premiere she would have thrown herself on the barbed wire).

As well as the main piece the Ensemble also played two new works by composers based in Scotland. The first by Mark Bowden was a tantalising piece that teetered on the edge of becoming something more, strong ensemble that threatened to break into a more modernist soundscape only to return to a melodic point. The second piece by Suzanne Parry was a lyrical piece that was enjoyable enough.

Between the two new and the old there was a short talk by Richard Holloway, writer, broadcaster and the former Episcopalian Bishop of Edinburgh. This talk about the fleeting nature of life and the power of art and memory was unusual for referencing the film Blade Runner (the PKD novel was notably not mentioned). He took the basic idea of androids have only four short years as the introduction to the brevity of life, etc, etc. After discussing the power of the human mind to create art, to escape, in a manner, from death he returned to Blade Runner. Specifically he returned to the scene in which Roy (Rutger Hauer) saves Decard (Harrison Ford), telling him -

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

People seem to love this quote, finding it profound. Me, I just find it hammy.

Enjoyed your review of Detective story but enjoyed your review of The Hebrides Ensemble even more. The quartet for the end of time sounds enthralling and I did not know the story of its premier.

I know many people have set ideas about music and find it difficult to enjoy music that they would not normally hear. I am fortunate, I will listen to anything as long as its reasonably well played, but I can understand that 20th century classical music can be some of the most demanding. There are a couple of things that might make me want to throw myself on the barbed wire; real finger in the ear unaccompanied folk singing or perhaps an Abba imitation band

The covers of the first edition and the recent Penguin Classics edition.

Classic planetary romance novel first published in 1912 and now a big budget blockbuster.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this - it's not particularly well-written (to describe it as functional would be polite) and some of the ideals are more than a little dodgy but it zips along and Burroughs' Barsoom (Mars), despite the years, still has an imaginative grip (though it's best to leave idea of science behind while bearing in mind that much of Burroughs' view of Mars was based on the ideas of Percival Lowell which were prevalent then).

The novel follows the, already, well-worn path of the 'found' manuscript - the author describing in the introduction how he knew Captain Carter and how this strange tale came into his hands.

John Carter, a Civil War veteran, is prospecting for gold in the West. Having struck gold his partner Powell decides to register the claim but while he riding away Carter sees traces of Indians chasing him. Following after the doomed Powell Carter himself becomes the subject of the chase. Taking to the hills he finds a cave; investigating the large strange chamber he begins to feel very drowsy. And when he awakes he's no longer in Arizona. (Ah, the good old days when you could just fall asleep and wake in another realm - beats the stress and strain of space travel any day).

On Mars Carter finds he has, more-or-less, the powers of the Incredible Hulk, without having to get angry or turn green, which is helpful as there already are large green creatures on Barsoom. These creatures are the Tharks: 15 feet tall, a double torso complete with two sets of arms, and large white tusks. These are also the first creatures that Carter encounters on Mars and who take him captive, rather than kill him, on the account of his physical powers. The Tharks are intelligent and possess a structured society but are brutish, cruel and warlike. On the other hand their society is governed by a strict code of honour. It is naturally not difficult to view the Thark culture as reflecting a common view of Native American society.

While a Thark captive Carter is assigned a ugly beast to watch over him (in the manner of guard dog) but Carter soon wins the affectation of this creature which he has christened Woola, who comes to his rescue a number of times. Carter also soon masters the large riding animals, thoats, by using the method - being kind in place of cruelty. During his time with the Tharks Carter also masters the Martian language, telepathy and basically anything else. As the song says 'anything you can do I can do better'.

The key moment of his captivity however comes when a fleet of ships fly above the Tharks and they instantly begin hostilities, the result of which is the capture of Dejah Thoris, a Princess of Mars (of Helium, to be precise). Dejah is red, beautiful and naked (clothes are an optional extra on Mars), which probably caused some consternation among Burroughs' illustrators as, for once, they had to cloth the heroine. The reaction of adolescent boys to Dejah is not documented but we can say with some certainty that they welcomed this departure.

Slowly she drifted to the southeast, rising higher and higher as the flames ate away her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her. Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until finally she was lost in the dim vistas of the distance. The sight was awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty floating funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through the lonely wastes of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death and destruction, typifying the life story of these strange and ferocious creatures into whose unfriendly hands fate had carried it.

Soon afterwards Carter escapes with Dejah and Sola, the one (female) Thark that shows signs of emotion. However they are separated when the Tharks give chase, with Dejah being captured by the Zodangans, the hated enemy of Helium, and who want to subject her to fate worse than death - an unsuitable marriage. Carter tires to save her with the help of Kantos Kan, a Helium spy, but he is unsuccessful and forced to flee Zodanga. At which point he falls back into the hands of the Tharks but with some quick thinking he engineers a fight between Tars Tarkis, a fierce but honourable and loyal chief, and Tal Hajus, jeddak of the Green Martians. Tarkis naturally defeats the old unfit leader and once installed in his place joins his human friend in a crusade against the Zodanga. Arriving just in time, the wedding ceremony in process, Carter and his allies manage to sack the city and save the princess. Carter returns Dejah to her father in Helium where both of them are rewarded with a suitable marriage.

And they all live happily ever after, even producing a nice egg, until ten years later the Martian atmosphere starts to thin due to the failure of the ninth ray power station. Carter embarks on a (literally) last-gasp mission to save Mars but while in the plant succumbs to unconsciousness and finds himself back on Earth, forever desiring to return to Mars and his love. (From the ending it seems that Burroughs hadn't planned any sequels. On initial serial publication, as Under the Moons of Mars, feared ridicule so chose the jokey pseudonym Normal Bean; a typesetter thought this was an error and it was changed to Norman Bean).

It could be argued that A Princess of Mars is one of the first SF novels to be deigned as 'a western transported into space' but while there are Western aspects to the tale this, to my mind, seems incorrect. John Carter, to me, is more of an Americanized Victorian adventurer - he shares the same characteristics of strength, intelligence and morality as someone like Allan Quatermain. He also possesses the rugged individualism of American myth and the ability to master technology. What Burroughs does with Carter is to provide a prototype for the American SF hero of the coming decades. While British SF leant more heavily on Wells, creating characters that are often overwhelmed and powerless by events, American SF created heroes that resembled Carter, individuals who rise to the challenge of the unknown, overcoming the odds and emerging triumphant.
There is a definite Imperial edge to this difference, as the US grew more powerful and Europe lurched towards war, a change of Empires was on the cards. While Britain still ruled over vast tracts of the world there was still a feeling that the Empire had become a burden and would eventually fall while America was creating a new Empire, not through rule but through economics. As the British Empire reached evening, dawn was breaking on the new American one. John Carter embodies the confidence of a young Empire - anything is achievable, the natural state is one of authority, that you are not conquering or subjugating other races but civilising. It is notable that Carter changes Thark culture not through power but by challenging their brutishness, by showing that emotions can have positive effects and are not merely a point of weakness. He is performing the role of the missionary - humanising the savage.
Carter also embodies the sordid side of Empire, the imposition of one authority over another regardless of the cost. When Carter allies with the Tharks to attack Zodanga his plan is fundamentally not one of rescue but one of genocide. Carter openly acknowledges that this will be the case but as the Zodangans are in the way of his goal they must be taught a lesson, which is complete destruction (not unlike Rome and Carthage). Carter may humanise the Tharks but he de-humanises the Zodangans.

While it is fun to analyse Burroughs' world the novel still can be read purely as rip-roaring adventure with a larger than life hero and strange creatures, both beautiful and fearsome. For that reason it will appeal to any young boy and anyone else who still has a little of the child they once were still inside them.

Your review of Princess of Mars brought back memories. I can remember reading any Edgar Rice Burroughs book that I could get my hands on. I was surprised to discover that it was published in 1912. It didn't seem 50 years old when I read it. It could now be considered as a YA novel I suppose, but I am going to read it later this year.

Orwell's third novel, often overlooked.

In 1939 MGM released a new Greta Garbo film, Ninotchka. The advertising campaign boldly announced "Garbo Laughs".

Garbo had cultivated such a image of seriousness that the mere idea of her laughing was a selling point in itself. I mention this because I couldn't helping thinking that Orwell's publishers could have advertised this novel with "Orwell Does Jokes". (Although that could be pushing it - Orwell does humour would be more precise).

Coming Up For Air is the story of George Bowling, a fat 45 year old insurance salesman earning £7 a week, married to the penny-pinching Hilda, father of two young children. George isn't unhappy but he fancies a change and he has £17 that Hilda doesn't know about. He has no delusions about himself -
I'm vulgar, I'm insensitive, and I fit in with my environment.
He has been unfaithful but not since he put on all the weight - it's hard to pick up women when you're a 'fatty'. He loves his children asleep but is not so keen when they are awake. He lives on Ellesmere Road, part of the Hesperides Estate in the London suburbs. He likes his job, is good at it but he has an idea, the exact nature of which isn't completely clear but as George says, "Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea."

One morning on his way to get his new false teeth George spies a reference to King Zog in a newspaper which begins a series of remininsces about his upbringing in the small rural town of Lower Binfield (there isn't an Upper Binfield only the old Hall at the top of the hill). George guides us through his childhood; his father in the shop (seed trade), his mother in the kitchen and his no-good brother dossing about before robbing the till and doing a runner. George spent most of his time rampaging over the countryside blowing up frogs with bicycle pumps, stomping on chicks before discovering the joys of fishing and the quieter life. (The descriptions of nature are excellent and it is difficult not to think that there is a little of writer George in character George). Fishing is important to George, it was when he was truly content, and he still dreams of buying a rod and casting off again, especially at the unfished pond near the Hall, brimming with huge carp. He never got to fish it as a boy as his parents needed him to go to work and earn money as the business was starting to stutter due to a new shop opened by a large corporation. (Which proves that the sole trader was always at risk, even in the halycon days before WWI). George likes work, likes the money and starts to like girls. One especially, Elsie, who he loses his virginity to but then war intervenes. George signs up and never returns to Lower Binfield except for his mother's funeral. His father dies during the war, thankfully just before the business fails completely.

Father died in 1915. I was in France at the time. I don't exaggerate when I say that Father's death hurts me more now than it did then. At the time it was just a bit of bad news which I accepted almost without interest, in the sort of empty-headed apathetic way in which one accepted everything in the trenches. I remember crawling into the doorway of the dugout to get enough light to read the letter, and I remember Mother's tear-stains on the letter, and the aching feeling in my knees and the smell of mud.

George has a good war, relatively speaking. He gets wounded in 1916 but finds himself an officer in charge of a non-existent goods depot for the rest of it, with nothing to do but read books -

At any rate that year of reading novels was the only real education, in the sense of book-learning, that I've ever had. It did certain things to my mind. It gave me an attitude, a kind of questioning attitude, which I probably wouldn't have had if I'd gone through life in a normal sensible way.

That 'normal sensible way' is a good example of the dry humour that pervades the novel. As George later states, you don't find any real meaning in books, at least not useful meaning. After the war George finds himself a job in an insurance company, meets Hilda and settles down:

Well, Hilda and I were married, and right from the start it was a flop. Why did you marry her? you say. But why did you marry yours? These things happen to us. I wonder whether you'll believe that during the first two or three years I had serious thoughts of killing Hilda. Of course in practice one never does these things, they're only a kind of fantasy that one enjoys thinking about.

The years fly by, then after attending a talk on the evils of fascism and the prospects of impending war, George decides to spend his £17 returning to Lower Binfield.
The novel is constantly referencing the impending war: "1941, they say.", repeats George. War is coming and nothing can stop it but for George the after-war is even more important:

ut it isn't the war that matters, it's the after-war. The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching you while you sleep. And the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke. It's all going to happen. Or isn't it? Some days I know it's impossible, other days I know it's inevitable. That night, at any rate, I knew it was going to happen.

It's almost a flash forward in Orwell's own career, to 1984.

George returns to Lower Binfield, as we knew he would, and just as predictably, the town he knew is almost completely gone - the small town of 2,000 souls is now almost 25,000 strong with houses and factories stretching in all directions. The town he remembers is sit there in bits, surrounded and crushed by the new but George is pragmatic, he realises that people need places to work and live. He follows his old girlfriend, Elsie, to the corner shop she now owns with her husband but she doesn't recognise him, and she has gone completely to seed. He buys a fishing rod and visits the old Hall in search of the mythical pond of his childhood only to find a new estate, one built for distinguished citizens. George meets one of these citizens, who follows the latest fads, talks about keeping the riff-raff out, and respecting nature. They have turned the pond into a rubbish tip.
Ideas of class run through the novel. George, in some ways, had a chance to move up the classes but choose where he would be most comfortable. His wife comes the class above but from a family of ever decreasing fortunes - in George's opinion that's why she is so penny-pinching, why she can't take any joy in spending money, having been brought up in an environment of genteel poverty and constantly worrying about money. That doesn't mean this is a novel about class war, there are no upper class villains here. In fact, there are no villains at all, only George.

I'm finished with this notion of getting back into the past. What's the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don't exist. Coming up for air! But there isn't any air. The dustbin that we're in reaches up to the stratosphere. All the same, I didn't particularly care.

Back in the town George hears a radio broadcast stating that Hilda Bowling is seriously ill and could her husband please return. Deciding this is a ruse by Hilda George decides to stay a little longer, at which point he is witness to an accidental bombing of the town. Later the MoD makes a statement saying how disappointed they are at the damage the bomb did. That is the end for George and he is starting to worry about Hilda so he races home only to find her perfectly well but very angry as she uncovered the ruse that allowed to go off to Lower Binfield.

There doesn't really seem much to this novel, it is certainly well-written, and despite his flaws, George is good company. The main thrust of the story, that you can never go back was probably a cliche even by 1939 but we are never bored with with George's story. Obviously Orwell wanted to write a novel warning of war and that is shot through the piece. However, that could be the main flaw of the book, that sometimes these warnings feel superimposed on the main story. It is also quite difficult to see what Orwell's main thrust is - the character ends up exactly where he started. Is that life is mediocre and that's the best you can hope for? It doesn't feel that way. George for all his flaws, knows he is leading a small life but he can accept that. When push comes to shove he even admits he cares for Hilda.
I wonder if the novel could have been called England Endures, that when George returns to Hesperides he is returning to the garden of immortality. Orwell once wrote that the true culture and spirit of England was in the working class. George knows the war can't be prevented but is Orwell saying that England will survive as it always has because of people like George and Hilda and their children.

Worth reading.

Enjoyed your thoughts on Coming up for air.

As the title says - a history of Lisbon.

After finishing his history of Sintra (fairytale like town outside Lisbon) Jack decided he had gathered enough research to embark on a history of Lisbon. It is set out as a thematic history but in reading it is more-or-less chronological.

Jack takes us (in around 150 pages) from pre-history (the Lisbon area was very fertile so was settled early) through the beginnings of Lusitania, the blossoming of the Roman city of Oulispo, the coming of the visigoths, the Christianisation of the country, the conquest of the Moors, and the recapture of the city through a long siege in 1147. And that doesn't even take us to the end of chapter one!

From the 13th century on Portugal becomes a world power based on her sea-faring exploits. Being on the west coast of Europe but close to the Mediterranean means that Lisbon especially is well-placed to boom from trade and it does, growing in numbers and splendour until 1755.

Until reading this I had no idea that in 1755 Lisbon suffered one of the great natural disasters - a devastating earthquake which was followed by a tsunami and then a great fire leaving large parts of the city completely destroyed including the royal palace and aristocratic/merchant homes filled with great art and treasures from around the world.
The aftermath of the earthquake led to the de facto dictatorship of the Marquis of Pombal usually just known as Pombal, one of the most divisive individuals in Portuguese history. Pombal used his power to build a new Lisbon and start a period of modernisation but he also used it to crush enemies, executing members of a number of prominent families. Also among his enemies was the church, Pombal was a rationalist and saw the church as agents of the supernatural - he managed to get the Jesuits thrown out of the country (starting a domino effect elsewhere in Europe) because he couldn't stand their leader and his claims that the earthquake was retribution for the sins of the citizens. He also took an unique approach to churches in his new city, hiding them away so they look like apartment buildings, existing above a first level of shops, etc.
(Pombal's engineers built the new city to be earthquake proof, creating the new buildings with a complex wooden structure both strong and flexible. Modern changes have now put these buildings and large parts of the city back at risk, removing walls, and more importantly draining the earth to build a tube system so that the wooden supports which were kept strong by water are now drying out causing major problems).

Throughout the 19th century Portugal's power waned but Lisbon found itself as one of the cities that the literati would visit - William Beckford, Robert Southery and Byron (who has a street named after him in Sintra). The city itself now was in parts a little like Byron - mad, bad and dangerous, with the gangs of brigands roaming the streets.
This social instability also led to increasing political instability, as the century moved on republican sentiments grew until 1910 a revolution finally unseated the monarchy. Rather than leading to stability the country became even more unstable with governments falling in weeks (by 1926 they had been 46 different ones) assassination, etc. Despite this the city continued to grow and modernise but in a much more haphazard way than before. Things couldn't continue and in 1933 Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, a former professor of economics, seized power, resulting in a dictatorship that lasted until 1974 (although Salazar himself died in 1968). Much like Franco in Spain Salazar is still a figure who divides opinion - he did stabilise the country but made it an economic backwater and used all the power at his disposal (secret police, torture, etc) to silence opponents.
Now 38 years later Lisbon finds itself again in a period of turmoil, the Portuguese economy has collapsed and despite bailouts there are doubts about its future within the Euro-zone.

Whether Jack offers much more than a decent guidebook would is debatable but what makes this a more engaging journey is that he often looks beyond the obvious for his history. When discussing the siege of 1147 he uses Saramago's novel about it; he describes the golden age of the Portuguese Empire as much through its writers as its politicians; in general, Jack, coming from a literature background, utilises other writers, rather than historians, to shine light on the development of the city.
Whether this great history depends on whether facts and figures are what you want but it does lead to some interesting asides such as the story of George Buchanan. Buchanan was a Scottish historian and humanist, an intellectual who is generally regarded as the greatest 16th century writer in Latin, and who came under the scrutiny on the Inquisition in Portugal but who outwitted them at all turns. (The Inquisition in Portugal owes as much to the machinations of royalty aiming for control of the Spanish throne as well as to any religious mania). Or the fact that Rose Macauley moved to Lisbon in 1943 following personal loss (including her library) in the blitz, and fell in love with the city.

This is why I would recommend this history, it covers all salient points in the city's development but is never dry due to Jack's approach. (That's not to say I wouldn't recommend other cities - I would like to read more about the earthquake, the end of the monarchy and the birth of the republic, and Lisbon during the war when it was a city of spies and hope).

Portugal prides itself on being a "land of poets" and in this land one man is king - Fernando Pessoa.

Pessoa is one of the most interesting characters in 20th century literature. A man who, in later life, barely left a small area of Lisbon (between Chiado and the Tagus) but who had been brought up and educated in South Africa and who dreamt of replacing Shakespeare as the pre-eminent writer in English.
His first published work was in English including a collection of 35 sonnets (number V, a random choice, is below) -

How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,
When the miserly press of each day's need
Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction
My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?
How can I pause my thoughts upon the task
My soul was born to think that it must do
When every moment has a thought to ask
To fit the immediate craving of its cue?
The coin I'd heap for marrying my Muse
And build our home i'th' greater Time-to-be
Becomes dissolved by needs of each day's use
And I feel beggared of infinity,
Like a true-Christian sinner, each day flesh-driven
By his own act to forfeit his wished heaven.

Pessoa returned to Lisbon in 1905. aged 22, but failed at his studies. Over the subsequent years he read widely and became a leading light in the Lisbon literary scene, launching magazines, getting involved in disputes about modernism while drinking absinthe in the cafes in Chiado.



Fernando Pessoa wasn't alone in writing poetry in Lisbon at this time, there was also Bernardo Soares, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro, and many others. Nothing unusual in that except that all these people were Fernando Pessoa. They weren't pseudonyms but in Pessoa's own term, heteronyms - they came complete with backstory and published poetry in different styles. This is led to one wag stating that the four best poets in Portuguese are Fernando Pessoa.

OXFORDSHIRE

I want the good, I want the bad, and in the end I want nothing.
I toss in bed, uncomfortable on my right side, on my left side,
And on my consciousness of existing.
I’m universally uncomfortable, metaphysically uncomfortable,
But what’s even worse is my headache.
That’s more serious than the meaning of the universe.

Once, while walking in the country around Oxford,
I saw up ahead, beyond a bend in the road,
A church steeple towering above the houses of a hamlet or village.
The photographic image of that non-event has remained with me
Like a horizontal wrinkle marring a trouser’s crease.
Today it seems relevant...
From the road I associated that steeple with spirituality,
The faith of all ages, and practical charity.
When I arrived at the village, the steeple was a steeple
And, what’s more, there it was.

You can be happy in Australia, as long as you don’t go there.
Alvaro de Campos, 1931

AUTOPSYCHOGRAPHY

The poet is a faker
Who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.

And those who read his words
Will feel in his writing
Neither of the pains he has
But just the one they’re missing.

And so around its track
This thing called the heart winds,
A little clockwork train
To entertain our minds.
Fernando Pessoa, 1931

(Both the above are translated by Richard Zenith).

Pessoa died in 1935 but he is everywhere in modern Lisbon, from the museums to the street corners, and he is not alone -


When Pessoa died he left behind a trunk which allegedly contained 10,000 unpublished pieces and which took on almost legendary status within the world of Portuguese literature -


Much of his work was published after his death including his best known work in English, The Book of Disquiet, so what else lurks within. (By this time the answer should be nothing but Pessoa's handwriting was so bad that scholars are still trying to decipher the scraps of paper and notebooks left behind.

Not that there is any shortage of books for the modern reader -


Let's give the last word to Pessoa, in this case in the guise of Ricardo Reis - a poem first published in 1993 -

Since we do nothing in this confused world
That lasts or that, lasting, is of any worth,
And even what’s useful for us we lose
So soon, with our own lives,
Let us prefer the pleasure of the moment
To an absurd concern with the future,
Whose only certainty is the harm we suffer now
To pay for its prosperity.
Tomorrow doesn’t exist. This moment
Alone is mine, and I am only who
Exists in this instant, which might be the last
Of the self I pretend to be.

* with the exception of the statue of Pessoa the other images are from the exhibition currently running at the Gulbenkian Museum.

Fascinating reviews of Lisbon: City of the Sea: A History and Fernando Pessoa, Jargoneer. I recently purchased The Book of Disquiet and you make me anxious to dip into it.

Classic haunted house novel.

Shirley Jackson is not as well known in the UK as she is the US, with her work often being out-of-print, including this, her best known novel. That's not to say the story is unknown, the classic 1963 film of the novel, The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise, has been shown regularly over the years. It's always been a novel I planned to get round to it because the film was so good.

Let me start by saying that book and film are relatively close cousins with the latter following its source material quite tightly. Both focus on the character of Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman who has spent most of her adult life looking after her invalid mother and who is now viewed by her sister as cheap childcare. (So if you have seen the film you will know the story: unless you have seen the 1999 version starring Liam Neeson - then you should be ashamed).

Eleanor has been invited to Hill House by Dr John Montague, an investigator into the paranormal who hopes to find scientific evidence of its existence at Hill House. As well as Eleanor only one other person has accepted the doctor's invitation - Theodora, who is the opposite of Eleanor - outgoing, flamboyant, an artist, possibly lesbian. The fourth person to stay at the house is Luke Sanderson, who is heir to the property and has been forced on Montague by his aunt. Sanderson is open and friendly but has been linked to petty thefts in the past.

Of course, it could be argued that the character that really shares the novel's focus with Eleanor is the house itself. The house was built by Hugh Crain for his first wife but she reached it, being thrown by a horse on the way there. Marrying again Crain deserts the house for Europe leaving behind his two daughters, who become involved in a bitter row about the house. One sister inherits and on her death leaves the house to her companion who is hounded to her death by rumour and litigation and haunting? Since then it has been empty.
But there is the suggestion that this house could never just be built by human hands -

This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity.

The architecture of the house seems to taunt humanity, it makes no concessions to any inhabitants with the dark forbidding décor, doors that mislead, etc. It reminds me of William Burroughs statement about America - "America is not a young land....The evil is there waiting". Something that Montague suggests later -

“You will recall,” the doctor began, “the houses described in Leviticus as ‘leprous, ‘ tsaraas, or Homer’s phrase for the underworld: aidao domos, the house of Hades; I need not remind you, I think, that the concept of certain houses as unclean or forbidden-perhaps sacred-is as old as the mind of man. Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad.

From her first sighting Eleanor knows she should leave but where can she go? Montague and Luke and Theo are the only real family that Eleanor knows or has ever known. She could leave but only to return to the miserable life she was running away from so she tells herself, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness.
It is only late in the novel that she dreams of living near Theo and actually creating a life for herself.
This idea leads to an interesting debate about the novel - does the relationship between Eleanor and Theo have deliberate lesbian undertones? When this was suggested to Jackson she took real umbrage at it but it is hard not to read that way, at times there relationship as the kittenish aspect of a new love. Jackson does try to give Eleanor a crush on Luke but it is so half-hearted that she shouldn't have bothered. (The film moves Eleanor's crush more successfully on Montague). This is a valid question since Jackson has Eleanor constantly repeating the phrase "journeys end in lovers meeting". Obviously some of this is down to Eleanor's dreams and desire but it is repeated so often that the reader is forced to ask exactly what Jackson is driving at - if it is not Theo Eleanor meets and we can discard Luke due to the lack of authorial interest is the house Eleanor's lover. In some twisted way does the house 'love' Eleanor and that's why it can't let her go. 'Journeys end in lovers meeting' and Eleanor's journey ends in meeting the house.

Even from the beginning it is Eleanor that the house is interested in, she is at the heart of all the major 'supernatural' events, as in the classic scene in which she and Theo are trapped in the bedroom while something tries to get in -

...So suddenly that Eleanor leaped back against the bed and Theodora gasped and cried out, the iron crash came against their door, and both of them lifted their eyes in horror, because the hammering was against the upper edge of the door, higher than either of them could reach, higher than Luke or the doctor could reach, and the sickening, degrading cold came in waves from whatever was outside the door.

Naturally there is the suggestion that Eleanor is somehow causing these events herself - Montague chose to invite her because she was involved in a possible poltergeist event as a child. This possibility seems more likely as the events multiply and Theo even suggests that Eleanor may be behind to gain attention. This obviously both hurts and makes her angry. Shortly afterwards Theo finds her room covered in blood. Is this due to Eleanor being hurt, being jealous at Theo's friendship with Luke? Or is the house, jealous of Eleanor's relationship with Theo?
The idea that Eleanor is behind it all leads us to question whether we are reading a haunted hill novel or not. A number of critics have suggested that Hill House is actually a psychological novel exploring the narrator's breakdown. They often point to the author's breakdown a couple of years later after probable evidence, confusing the real with the fictional. While there is something in this, we are within Eleanor's head for the whole novel, it also requires some very loose thinking in order to ignore the supernatural element. After all, it is not just Eleanor who experiences these events.
But does she cause them, even if unconsciously? There certainly is scope to argue that she could be responsible but there is the strange event when Eleanor and Theo quarrel over Luke and stalk out of the house together. At this moment they are closer than ever before-

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question—as “Do you love me?”—could never be answered or forgotten.

Walking hand-in-hand along a tree-lined path they eventually reach a garden where they see a vision of picnic party,laughing children, amused parents and then Theodora's screams "Run" and tells Eleanor not to look back. So what does Theodora see? Jackson never tells us. Is a manifestation from Eleanor or the house or the evil that dwells within?

From the first line, No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality... we know that nothing good can come of this exploration of Hill House. Eleanor's fragile sanity is stretched thinner and thinner, she begins to lose her own sense of identity -
No; it is over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.
or she gets confused about her situation -
I have waited such a long time, Eleanor was thinking; I have finally earned my happiness.
Both of these point to a common misconception about the novel and, to a lesser extent , the film - that Eleanor commits suicide, deliberately driving into the tree so she will be joined to the house forever. In the house Eleanor's mental state is influenced by her surroundings, she cannot think of being anyway else, that she and the house belong together but in that brief moment or realisation she cries out in despair -

I am really doing it, I am doing this all by myself, now, at last; this is me, I am really, really, really doing it by myself. In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?

Whether you believe this is a haunted house novel or a psychological novel it can't be disputed that this is a great novel.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore (Lyceum, Edinburgh, 20-04-12)

By Martin McDonagh, scriptwriter of In Bruges, first performed in 2001.

Mad Padriac has left his beloved cat with his father, Donny. Unfortunately Davey has just found the said cat with dead in the road. Donny believes that Davey has killed Wee Thomas by knocking him over with his bike but Davey protests his innocence. No matter, says Donny, we'll both done for when Mad Patriac finds out.
When Donny phones Mad Padriac he is in the middle of torturing a local drug-dealer but he is so upset by his news that Wee Thomas is poorly that he can hardly continue. His victim suggests that the symptoms sound just like ring-worm which can be treated with tablets. For putting his mind Padriac frees his victim and gives him the money to get the bus to hospital.
On Innishmore Davey is trying to fix his bike when he is shot in the cheek by a air rifle. At the end of it is his sister Mairead who idolises Mad Padriac and wants to join the cause beside him - she also shares his love of cats. A sinister man appears saying he is a friend of Patriac and asking when he will return.
Unable to find a black cat to impersonate Wee Thomas Davey has kidnapped his sister's cat and he and Donny are using shoe polish to make him black.
The sinister man and his two colleagues are overhead by Mairead making plans to kill Padriac, because he has been heard making talk about forming his own splinter party and the drug dealer he was torturing works for the cause.
Donny and Davey, now drunk and tired, decide to have a nap before Padriac returns. They will get up early and finish the job later but Padriac arrives early, finds a grave marker and flies into a rage. Waking the two misfits he demands to see his cat at which point they show him the blackened one whom he blows away. The INLA trio then burst in just as Padriac was about to execute Donny and Davey and tell him it is his time to die for his actions against the cause. There are shots and the three would-be executors stagger back into the cottage, blinded. Shortly afterwards come Padriac and Mairead, who has fired the shots that blinded them, and they kill two of the men before their leader apologises to Padriac for killing Wee Thomas. Padriac then drags him off stage and tortures him.
When the curtain rises the audience is greeted with a set littered with body parts: Donny and Davey dismembering the corpses when Padraic and Mairead make out. In-between Padriac pets his the corpse of his headless cat while Mairead wonders what happened to Sir Roger. When the truth is revealed she finds that her of cats is greater than her love of Padriac so she shoots him, leaving her as the lieutenant of Innishmore.
In the end Davey and Donny are left as they started, dealing with corpses. And guess who turns up - Wee Thomas.

I've encountered Martin McDonagh's work before: the film, , which was OK and the play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which I enjoyed. But this was awful. It's hard to not get the message within minutes of the pointlessness of it all, that violence begats violence, and that people who love their cats can still be psychopathic killers. Yes, it's a crazy mixed-up world full of crazy mixed-up people. I didn't mind the over-the-top aspects of the play, I just minded that it wasn't particularly funny. With no-one to relate to the audience needs something to fill the gap and there is too little humour to successfully do that.

I don't completely blame McDonagh though, this staging was very poor. The accents were all over the place, the actors didn't seem overly engaged with their material, and the pacing was all wrong - farce, which this play essentially is, should be played faster and this felt sluggish. The sets, as usual, were excellent but you can't spend 2 hours looking at them. Overall, it was a disappointing end to a relatively disappointing Lyceum season.

Enjoyed your brief tour through the history of Lisbon/Portugal. I had heard of the earthquake, which features in Voltaire's Candide, but was not aware of much after that until the dictatorship of Salazar(this I picked up from reading "Night train to Lisbon") A history through novel reading perhaps.

I had not heard of Fernando Pessoa, but really enjoyed the poetry that you posted here. Particularly the final one: living in the moment is what I would like to do more of, even being aware of being in the moment is a good start, but so hard to achieve.

Great thread Turner.

73
Welcome to my lovely adoptive city...

I'm curious to know why you picked up this book -- are you by any chance traveling here soon?

I would like to read more about the earthquake, the end of the monarchy and the birth of the republic, and Lisbon during the war when it was a city of spies and hope.

I can recommend A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire by A.R. Disney -- it's well-written, and gives quite a good background not just of Lisbon, though it is where most significant events took place of course. Disney manages to pack a lot in just over 300 pages, and never becomes tedious through too much detailed information. This book differs from Jack's in that it is written by a historian so the usual analysis and bigger picture are there. This volume, however, covers only until the late 18th century so you would need another reference for the birth of the republic. A lot has been written about this period here in Portugal, but very few translated have been into English and available outside the country. I'll let you know, though, if I come across anything. As to Lisbon during the war -- check out Neill Lochery's Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light: 1939-45.

In fiction, there are some books which portray Lisbon at different periods in its history all of which I recommend: Erich Maria Remarque's The Night in Lisbon set during the war, that of Saramago's which you already mentioned, Antonio Tabucchi's novels (especially Pereira Declares set during the fascist period), Antonio Lobo Antunes's writing (after the colonial wars). Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon also set during the war (Portugal as Nazi Germany's source of tungsten, vital for their weaponry is the context), has gotten good reviews though I've not read it.

74
Thanks for posting these photos. There is another place, even more interesting than the Café A Brasileira (your first photo) though less known (to tourists at least) which Fernando Pessoa frequented. It's a café looking across to the river Tagus called Martinho da Arcada, named after the arcades it's located in forming part of the emblematic buildings and huge square that Marques Pombal built, and was a meeting place of intellectuals, artists and writers.



The place still stands, but its clientele is now much less illustrious.

Here are 2 more books where Lisbon figures which I can recommend: Richard Zimler's The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon set during the Inquisition; and a more contemporary one, The Moon Come to Earth: Dispatches from Lisbon by Philip Graham, a delightful account of his one-year stay in the city.

And lastly, for a visual and musical tour of the city, there is Wim Wenders's Lisbon Story...there is nothing not to love about this film, I guarantee :-). Enjoy!

>80 deebee1: I just saw that Zimler has a new book coming out, though set in Berlin in the 30s (might be out already). I read and enjoyed his Hunting Midnight, which was mostly set in Portugal. He lives in Lisbon, doesn't he?

Almost too much to comment on. The plays sounds awful, The Haunting of Hill House freaky, Pessoa terrific, and the history of Lisbon fascinating. Strange that such a devastating earthquake/tsunami is mainly confined to local history. Wondering whether any other major city European city has experienced any similarly destructive natural event (since Pompeii)?

Why does the kindle make it so easy? After reading your review of Coming Up for Air, I headed straight for amazon to do the "One Click."

Bainbridge's sinking of the Titanic grabbed her the Whitbread Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize and a Booker Prize nomination. (Although I have no hard proof it is hard not to believe that artistic recreations of the Titanic disaster have now totalled one award for each death).

My shocking revelation is not that I knew nothing about the Titanic but rather I had never read a Beryl Bainbridge novel before. I'm not quite sure why but when her name came up in book group discussions it seemed time to take the plunge (and the Titanic anniversary made it doubly so).

This novel was first published in 1996, a year before James Cameron's monstrosity was released, so any similarities are purely coincidental except, obviously, for the sinking of the ship. To be honest they don't have much in common except the background - where Bainbridge produced a small perfectly formed bildungsroman, Cameron produced a behemoth that should have sunk like the ship but made billions, driving a handful of nails into the coffin of intelligent cinema.

Bainbridge's novel focuses on Morgan, adopted nephew(?) of J.P. Morgan, a young man with a troubled past and uncertain about his future. Morgan wants to know about his mother and the events that lead to his adoption but few are willing to discuss these matters. He has stolen one of his uncle's paintings, a portrait by Cezanne that could be his mother. That and troubled dreams is all he knows of his early life. Morgan is a man seeking both his past (what happened to his mother? how did he end up with his uncle?) and his future (how can he do something useful?). In effect he is searching for his own identity.

His present life is one of affluence and dissolution, stumbling from party to party, from drink to drink. Morgan, however, is dissatisfied with his life, he believes he should be doing something: he worked on the Titanic, designing taps, which put him into contact with 'real' workers and socialist ideas. Even others see something more in him, as he told by Rosenfelder ‘You are different. You have a conscience. The others will remain perched on a dunghill of money piled up by those who climbed out of the gutters of Europe.’
Bainbridge's approach to the rich reminded me of Fitzgerald - the rich are callous and careless but scattered among are good eggs. And like Fitzgerald the good ones tend to 'in the world of the rich but not of it'. These are the ones that try to give Morgan good advice, to get him to leave his dissolute friends behind. At the same time they puncture his idealism but they don't destroy it, the real danger to it comes from the actions of his drinking friends. Will Morgan become one of the wasted youth or choose a more meaningful path?

As well as his drinking buddies and social acquaintances Morgan befriends a Jewish tailor, Rosenfelder, who carries around a dress he has designed and which, he believes, will make his name in the land of opportunity; Adele, a beautiful young woman who has been abandoned by her lover; and Scurra, of which more about later. (One of the problems facing Titanic writers is that the classes were fairly well segregated in real life but they want to keep mixing them to create conflict - this is Bainbridge's partial solution. She also has Morgan come into contact when a sailor who has little time for his class).

Having finished this novel I started to ask myself why I didn't enjoy it more. It is a well-structured, well-written novel. The narrative voice (the book is told from Morgan's standpoint) is a little strange because it is so tightly focused. While the reader knows that Morgan has survived the tragedy we never see outside the ship which makes it feel slightly artificial and a little frustrating; but I can overlook that because the skill in the presentation is so high. The real issues lie elsewhere.

Firstly, the Titanic itself. I'm almost certain that the day after the disaster a writer sat down at his desk thinking he had a great idea for a novel/story/play. The disaster appears tailor-made for a storytellers high and low - excitement, heroism, cowardism, hubris, love - you name it, it's there. However there is a rigid framework and one that is well-known by the general public - no matter how you construct your story you have to work in, and around, the facts. It's a little like re-arranging the deck chairs. The final third of Bainbridge's novel deals with the disaster and it is the least satisfactory of the sections because we have been here so often before - the band playing on, the lifeboats being launched half full, the good (i.e., Morgan) trying to do the right thing, the bad trying to save their necks - while the author is attempting to bring complex story-lines to a quick neat conclusion. It is almost as if the author (or film-maker) has to be fight in order that their fiction isn't dragged down with the ship.

My other problem was the character of Scurra. Scurra is one of those enigmatic characters that appear to fit in any social environment, have knowledge about everything, and generally project an other-worldly presence. (He even has one of those scars that launch a thousand stories). I understand why Bainbridge needed Scurra, he links everything together, while providing the foil for Morgan - he is father-figure, potential biological father (he knew Morgan's mother after she had fallen), guru, and betrayer. Scurra, while fascinating, undercuts the realistic tone of the novel, haunting the corridors and gangways of the Titanic, a more-or-less benign spirit. (This could almost be literal, when the ship is sinking it is revealed that no-one knows where Scurra's cabin is - does even have one?). As well as detracting from the realism the mystery of Scurra threatens to divert the reader's attention from Morgan.

It does sound like I didn't like this much but that is not the case, Bainbridge is without doubt a skillful writer and I will definitely try another one of her books, my frustration comes from the feeling that Bainbridge's talent is squeezed so tightly by the constraints of the Titanic.

Enjoyed your review of Everyman for Himself

I have read a couple of Bainbridge's novel based on historical events; According to Queenie, which is about Samuel Johnson and his set and The Birthday Boys which is about Scotts expedition to the South Pole. I have come to the conclusion that Bainbridge is a very good writer, but certainly not a great writer. Her stories are good enough and the characters well drawn, but she doesn't quite seem to evoke the historical events that she is writing about. There seems to be something missing; there is no new angle or anything much to lift the storytelling of the historical events out of the ordinary; perhaps a bit light weight.

>85 baswood: - I'm going to try An Awfully Big Adventure some time in the future to see if her non-historical works offer something more.

A couple of weeks after reading this book I had forgotten that I had even read it, never mind the plot details. It was only when I was looking for something else to read that I noticed this book and my memory was jogged. This relevation by itself may sound like a dismissal of Pamuk's novel but that's not completely fair. It is true that it plodded along in a rather desultory manner compared to later works like My Name Is Red or Snow but it wasn't without interest. (I was surprised how much I'd highlighted when I looked again).

The narrator is a Genoan who has been captured by Ottoman navy who has been given as a slave to the learned Hoja because of his (hinted at) knowledge of the new arts and sciences available in Renaissance Italy. What is remarkable is the uncanny resemblance the two men have to each other. (Except that the doppelganger is a well-trodden path in post-modernist fiction). The narrator dreams of being free and returning to Venice while his master dreams of new discoveries and wealth and prestige.

Hoja wants to win favour with the Sultan so he can build an incredible new weapon, one that attacks men's minds. Hoja is obsessed with understanding who he is and who they are, how they think - why do they not want to learn, why do they want to hold back progress -

‘I’m thinking about the fools. Why are they so stupid?’ Then, as if he knew what my answer would be, he added, ‘Very well, they aren’t stupid, but there is something missing inside their heads.’ I didn’t ask who ‘they’ were. ‘Don’t they have any corner inside their heads for storing knowledge?’

Since the narrator is from Europe it is assumed he has vital information (he passes himself off as a physician to escape the worst of slavery) that Hoja can use, although Hoja quickly realises that the narrator understands less than he pretends to. Initially they make some progress with firework displays but it is only after they turn to writing that they make any real progress, the more outlandish the more progress they make. Of course, this is the old post-modern discourse of what is the purpose of writing -

He said he’d written a story to distract the sultan which was so meaningless that no one would be able to conclude anything from it. A few days later he asked if it were possible to make up a story that had no moral or meaning other than the pleasure of reading or listening to it. ‘Like music?’ I suggested, and Hoja looked surprised.

Eventually Hoja is given the resources to make his incredible weapon but he is scuppered by one thing - the reality of having to make a weapon. A weapon that destroys minds is alright in theory but how does it exist in theory. Obviously it can't and this project is doomed from the beginning. (One of the interesting aspects of this work is that no matter Hoja produces the Sultan believes that the narrator is always behind it, as if he can't believe that one of his own people is capable of creating something new and modern).
At the same time they are producing stories for the Sultan they are also writing stories for themselves -

He said we must sit at the two ends of the table and write facing one another: our minds, confronted by these dangerous subjects, would drift, trying to escape, and only in this way would we start on the path, only in this way could we strengthen each other with the spirit of discipline. But these were excuses; I knew he was afraid to be left alone, to feel his own solitude while he was thinking. I saw this also by the way he began to mumble, just loud enough for me to hear, when he came face to face with the blank page; he was waiting for me to approve beforehand what he was going to write.

This writing has a more profound effect, it moves them closer to the other. If we take the narrator and Hoja as respective Others then the novel can be read as a parable on the nature of identity - the more they write and tell each other the closer they come to understand the nature of the other: but Pamuk takes this further, eventually (inevitably) their understanding crosses and they become the other (or a composite of both self and other). Yer it is also a warning not to get lost within -

But we should search for the strange and surprising in the world, not within ourselves! To search within, to think so long and hard about our own selves, would only make us unhappy. This is what had happened to the characters in my story: for this reason heroes could never tolerate being themselves, for this reason they always wanted to be someone else.

I'm not sure precisely why reading this novel slipped my mind - I did find it a little turgid but my annotations show that I was also intrigued by it. Perhaps it is because there is little plot to hang onto, that the novel is so busy searching within itself that it forgets the world is strange and surprising and thereby becomes forgettable in itself.

Excellent review of The White Castle, Jargoneer. It's interesting how the impact of some books is felt only after they have a chance to 'settle in'.

Enjoyed your review of The White Castle I might even enjoy the book. Did I see the slave had knowledge of arts and sciences in Renaissance Italy as well - might well be worth a look.

>89 baswood: - the narrator does have some knowledge - as I said when he is first captured he passes himself off as a physician to escape worse treatment - but it is limited.

It just struck me that Pamuk's breakthrough, and much superior, novel My Name Is Red is similarly set at the end of the renaissance (mid to late 17th century). In some ways both novels are about knowledge and imagination - in The White Castle Hoja demands to know why people are the way they are and why they won't embrace the future; in the later novel the discussion is about perspective in art - the Islamic artists cannot paint as the Italians because the images start to resemble real objects and therefore are an offence to Allah. When reading The White Castle I did wonder if Pamuk was making a point about modern Turkey looking to the West for solutions/informations, etc, but then rejecting it as incompatible with the indigenous culture once presented with it; while rejecting possibilities that arise from within.

As part of the BBC's Olympic charter which means that the BBC have to mention the Olympics 54 times an hour they broadcast Bert and Dickie last night. (Yes, I know it sounds like an Anglofied muppet show). Bert and Dickie were Bert Bushnell and Dickie Burnell who won the gold medal in the double sculls at the last London Olympics in 1948. The hook in this story is that they were only put together as a team a mere 6 weeks before the games - this sounds incredible but it is worth noting that Burnell was already in one of the double seats and Bushnell was Britain's fastest single sculler.

The BBC obviously were aiming for a feel-good Chariots of Fire film but it lacks the depth and skill of the earlier film, merely being pleasant while CoF managed to be uplifting. The acting was decent - Sam Hoare as Dickie & Matt "Dr Who" Smith as Bert (what happened to the good old days of Dr Who actors being typecast, now they seem to get automatically picked for BBC roles), with Gregory (I thought you were dead) Palmer and James Frain as the respective fathers. The drama of the piece, other than will they will gold which we already knew, drew on the father's ambitions for their sons. The relationships were your typical emotional distant demanding ones which were resolved by winning the gold medal.

There was also a sub-plot on the hosting of the London games, how it was done on the cheap but represented a triumph for the country. This was a waste of time and felt like padding, distracting from the main drama (which needed some extra time to develop some meat) - arguably there is a good comic story about hosting the 1948 games in a time of rationing and government bankruptcy (so some things don't change) but this wasn't it.

Despite the fact that the opening ceremony isn't until tomorrow night I am already starting to get Olympic fatigue and I had hoped this would raise my interest but it was merely pleasing. Film-makers are drawn to sport because it seems ready-made with dramatic highs and lows but the real highs and lows have already happened, in the sporting arena, which is why in all the best sporting dramas the actual sport takes second place to the human drama.

I sympathise with the Olympic fatigue, perhaps it should be a gold medal event based on the most number of hours somebody can watch the Olympics on TV.

Mixing up the flags was a funny story, perhaps there is a BBC film/documentary already lurking in the background.

>92 baswood: - I did hear it described as the worst possible mix-up but I'm not certain, I still go for the Australia-Israel football match where the hosts played the German national anthem instead of the Israeli one.

Enjoyed your new posts. Your post on athe White Castle is excellent. Sounds like a curious book and an important for understanding Pamuk.

Depending what you read John Carter is one of the biggest flops of all-time, with Disney blaming it for turning a quarterly profit into a loss. (Like most movie accounting this should be taken with a pinch of salt).

The film did seem to suffer from studio politics, Disney almost contributing to it's failure with various announcements. There is no technical reason why this film failed when lesser films have become blockbusters - the reviews weren't terrible and neither was the reaction of those who make the effort to see it. (Was it a victim of the curse of Mars? Before it came out there were rumours that Disney had dropped 'of Mars' because in recent years films with Mars in their title have bombed).

So what is good about the film - the CGI of Mars and the Martians is excellent; the film-makers, for once, seemed to understand, and appreciate, their source material; and, amazingly for a blockbuster, the film was coherent.

The plot is a ramped up version of the ERB original, there was the dispute between the cities of Zodanga and Helium but behind it is the Therns, who actually appear in the second book, The Gods of Mars (The film is actually a melange of the first two books). They control the ninth ray which provides immense power and don't want anyone else to get their hands on it. This is the biggest question mark about the plot - if they don't want anyone else to know about the ninth ray why do they give a weapon that harnesses the ray to Zodanga. Then everyone will see the power of the ray and want to discover it. Anyway they are manipulating the other races to protect their own interests but they didn't count on John Carter.

As a feature it was either too long or too short. I'll explain what I mean. The cinema version is over 2 hours and does drag a little at places, while at the same time it needs some space elsewhere to develop. (Another rumour suggests that the director handed over a 3+ hour version but that the studio cut it - you can squeeze more 2 hour showings into a day being the logic. No doubt we will see this director's cut at some point).

A bigger problem with the film lies with the casting. Taylor Kitsch (an unfortunate surname) is adequate but can't quite generate the charm required to carry the film (he probably isn't helped by the script that wants to give me some gravitas, having him haunted by a murdered Earth wife). Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris is more disappointing. This is not because she wears a lot more clothes than the original (although I have no doubt this did disappoint a lot of viewers) but, and I feel terrible saying this, she was too old - less a vivacious princess than someone who has already been round the block a couple of times. The rest of the human is full of distinguished British actors who were obviously doing it for the money, and didn't really have much do, including Mark Rylance and Dominic West as the villains. The Tharks and Woola outshone them all.

This isn't a great film but it's not a disaster, it's a decent sf action film, recommended to those who like the original novels or those who just like an occasional popcorn film.

Well I will probably go and see it, or at least catch it on TV in a year or two's time.

"I am James McLevy, inspector of police. My parish is Leith in the City of Edinburgh." Thus James McLevy, voiced by Brian Cox, introduces himself on the BBC dramas, of which eight series and a couple of specials have been produced.

There was a real James McLevy, born in County Armagh, he moved to Edinburgh in 1830 to become a labourer's assistant before joining the police in 1833 and becoming Edinburgh's first detective. Over the next thirty years he handled over 2000 and became so famous that the UK Parliament asked his advice on how to deal with criminals. In the 1860s he published a number of books based on his exploits, and it has been suggested that these works influenced Arthur Conan Doyle.

David Ashton is the writer behind the radio dramas (and one of the actors, playing McLevy's harassed superior, Chief Lieutenant Roach): this is his first attempt at a novel and it shows. There is a world of difference between a 45 minute play and a full-blown novel and Ashton struggles not just with content but structure. In the radio plays Ashton usually stands with the crime, and then brings in McLevy (and his ever-present assistant, Mulholland) to investigate; over the subsequent length of the drama we usually forward McLevy with occasional cut-aways to the criminals or Jean Brash (owner of Edinburgh's premier bawdy house, The Holy Land) to help fill in the details. Ashton continues this technique with the novel but it doesn't work, the book becomes too fragmented as we bounce between numerous point of views.

This isn't helped by Ashton's decision to supersize his plot. In the dramas McLevy investigates local murders and thefts that may lead up Leith Walk to Edinburgh itself and into the homes of more distinguished citizens but rarely further. In this novel we have a plot that involves a general election between Gladstone and Disraeli and making sure the right party wins. This allows Ashton to do scenes between Disraeli and the Queen that makes the PM seem almost like her teenage admirer, while she worries about his losing and the vile Gladstone. Gladstone, whose family came from Leith and seat was in the Lothians, becomes a suspect as McLevy is led a merry dance by the Serpent (a deranged follower of the queen who wants to see that nothing upsets her) and his female assistant. I think the point I wondered what what the hell is he playing at is when the narrative switched to the killer's viewpoint musing about queen and country, women and (violent) fetishes. It was less a case of over-egging the pudding than getting every ingredient in the kitchen and throwing it into the mix. (To be fair Ashton does say on his website he did throw in everything bar the kitchen sink - he is wrong not only did he throw in the kitchen sink, he threw in the next door's kitchen sink as well).

This novel would have been better if Ashton had jettisoned all the conspiracy and produced something smaller, based around the core characters - that is why the dramas work, the interaction between the key characters. There is not enough of that here, and too much of everything else (even when dealing with the main characters he stumbles - giving McLevy as back-story of being a young constable whose mistake costs the life of his mentor is in the cliche top ten). Why is that films and novels now believe that viewers and readers require a storyline to be larger than life to hold your interest.

Of course, a smaller more intimate novel may have taxed Ashton's literary skills to breaking point, his prose is functional at best. I wasn't expecting much from this book but I was expecting more than I got, perhaps I should stick to the audio dramas in the future - those I do enjoy and recommend.

* I should say that I live at the borderline between Edinburgh and Leith and there was a certain enjoyment in being able to follow the action around the city.

** Re Gladstone and the Midlothian Campaign - Gladstone did make a number of pre-election speeches in Midlothian. These were mainly on foreign policy (and up to 5 hours long!) and are sometimes credited as introducing the modern political campaign. However they took place in 1880 which would make McLevy in his 70s or possibly even his 80s judging by his real time-line.

Ides of Toad (27/7/12), Henry's Cellar Bar.

This singer-songwriter night was supposed to headlined (if is an appropriate expression for something so low-key) by Frances McKee, formerly of uber-cult band The Vaselines, she had to put out at the last minute. Her last minute replacement was one of Songbytoad's (the promoters and small Edinburgh record label) own acts - Yusuf Azak.



I think I have seen YA before but can't be certain. He is a Glasgow-based singer, through from Aberdeen originally, with family roots in Turkey. His set is just him and an acoustic guitar.
Although obviously influenced by Nick Drake He doesn't gently strum his guitar but rather picks it with some vigour, which gives his music a rough angular quality. This much I enjoy. His voice is OK but lacks that little something extra needed to grab you (some people may find the accent the little different but who cares). My real problem with his music is that he is a terrible lyricist (I can't be 100% certain but I think if I made my cat work over my keyboard for a hour or so the outcome would be superior) and that really detracts from the rest of the performance. When his performance ended a friend asked if one of his songs was about meat, I could only reply "Who knows?"

You can download/listen to a free EP of YA here (this is much more Nick Drake-like) -
http://yusufazak.bandcamp.com/

Next up was Scott Rudd. Rudd may be from New York but he too seems to be influenced by Nick Drake.



There were actually too Scott Rudds. The first played the songs, which were (virtually) all minor-key and miserabilist. Not they were bad but it's difficult to really get into songs like this live. These are late-night songs for the broken-hearted. (When Jo Schornikow joined him, just the counterpoint of another voice or instrument perked things up a little). The second Scott Rudd was the person between the songs, engaging and funny. If he can somehow blend the two versions of himself then he may be onto a winner.

You can listen to SR here (as I said, best late at night or when in a quiet environment) -
http://scottrudd.bandcamp.com/

Last up was the aforementioned Jo Schornikow, better known as half of the NYC band The Shivers.



When she picked up an electric guitar my hopes were raised but she made less noise than Yusuf Azak, mainly playing gentle arpeggios. It was all so gentle and pleasant. Every time she started a song I thought this sounds nice and then 30 seconds later my interest would drift away - to the Olympic opening ceremony or what I was going to have for breakfast tomorrow. Mainly what was going through my mind, and this has happened a few times recently, was "what happened to joy in music?" I seem to see lots of up-coming musicians take the stage and then be miserable for 30 or 45 minutes. I understand that miserable is easier to play, and you can re-cycle all that poetry who wrote as a teenager, but in the live environment it is hard to captivate an audience by just being so low-key, and I, personally, would like to see artists who at least try to spread a little happiness.

Jo Schornikow's music can be found here -
http://joschornikow.bandcamp.com/

On the 1st October 1910 the Los Angeles Times building was completely destroyed by an explosion with the loss of twenty-one lives. There were witnesses who thought they could smell gas but the editor, Harrison Gray Otis, was in no doubt - a special one page edition of the newspaper announced UNIONIST BOMBS WRECK THE TIMES.

In history we are taught that Russia was the land of revolution and that the US was the land of free enterprise but in the first decade of the 20th century the US was in as much turmoil as anywhere in Europe-
The nation was locked in an intense struggle over its future and over the quality of American life and justice. But nowhere in the country did the opposing armies of unions and employers collide with greater frequency than in Los Angeles. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the city had become “the bloodiest arena in the Western World for Capital and Labor."
It was no surprise that the LA Times was a target - Otis was notoriously anti-union, believing that the unions were a scourge on 1890. In 1890 he had brought all the dailies together and demanded that the typesetters accept a 20% pay-cut or else. The workers accepted the "or else". Two months later the railway workers came out in sympathy and nothing could get in or out of the city. The LA Times building became the focal point of the dispute -

Blood spilled for an entire week. Union men and sympathizers attacked “scabs,” ambushed paper carriers, and destroyed press runs before the issues could be distributed. Wielding ax handles, paid strikebreakers sought out union members and went after them with a professional, methodical violence. The fighting was hand to hand and unforgiving. Six armed U.S. infantry companies had to be deployed on the streets before the bloodshed could be stopped.

For Otis this was the beginning of a war. While the LA Times editorials spewed out anti-union propaganda Otis joined with other businessman and promenient citizens to create Merchants and Manufacturers Association, commonly known as the M&M, the unwritten law ot it being 'never a union man'. At the time the Otis and his cronies were obsessed with stopping Los Angeles becoming a second San Francisco, which, as far they were concerned, had effectively become a union town.
This antagnonism between industry and worker continued through numerous up-and-downs, resulting in a bombing campaign against anti-union companies in late 1910 that eventually led to the death and destruction at the LA Times. (It does seem likely the bombers didn't mean to kill anyone, unless it was Otis and his son-in-law, but rather to knock the paper out of circulation - sabotage having been a regular union tactic - but Otis had been prepared and had a back-up facility).

The man called in by the mayor of LA to investigate the bombing was William J. Burns, commonly known as Billy. Due to all his successful cases Billy Burns was known as the 'American Sherlock Holmes' but had the advantage of being real. He wasn't a popular choice for the M&M - Otis having virtually called for his murder during a previous industrial dispute where Burns had helped prove the owners guilty. Indeed, if we are to believe Blum, who in his appendix claims to have taken all his details from accounts produced by the participants, Burns did have suspicions that businessmen may have been behind it, to cover up a water scam that cost the tax-payers millions and would net investors the same level of gains. However, after quickly examining the evidence and linking the bombing to other bombings Burns came to the conclusion that it was the work of anarchists, or unionists, and eventually through a process of examining the evidence, following the smallest leads and surveillance Burns was able to track the conspiracy to the top of the Structural Steel Workers. (Burns' techniques feel incredibly modern for the times - slow an painstaking, following all types of leads, especially the money (where was the dynamite bought), and using forensics, matching explosions, types of devices, etc. It is no surprise that Burns was later chosen as the first head of the fledgling FBI, the surprise was the disaster he made of it).

While the bombing investigation is the heart of the book Blum has split his book into three threads: one following Burns, another following Clarence Darrow, who represented the bombers, and a third, D. W. Griffith.

Clarence Darrow is someone most of us know from the Snopes monkey trial, the famous evolution trial memorably adapted onto film as Inherit the Wind, with the part of Darrow played by Spencer Tracy. Darrow was famous well before this landmark case though, well-known for fighting for lost causes and the little man. However, following major illness (in California), financial setbacks and the ending of a love affair (Darrow had one of those strange marriages where he had affairs but wouldn't leave his wife, while she knew about his indiscretions but wouldn't leave him) he'd settled down taking cases for money, representing big business, etc. Eventually he is seduced back into the good fight and into defending the bombers despite the overwhelming evidence against them - this is almost precipitates his downfall. Desperate to get a foothold in the trial Darrow is reduced to offering money to potential jurors but is trapped by Burns' men, which results in him being brought to trial. (To be fair to Darrow he is not the only one using underhand tricks - Burns by this time had effectively kidnapped the suspects and held them captive, not mention bugging the jail so he could hear all the conversations between defence and client. Note - it seems the bug was Burns own invention, building on an Alexander Graham Bell dictaphone device).

While the Darrow does make sense, the D. W. Griffith one stretches the remit of the book. Griffith never gets involved the bombing or the trial and the three men only come into contact once, at Darrow's trial. Griffith did help Burns once a few years before the bombing but that is it as far as links go. Blum's thesis is that the turmoil affecting (infecting?) was reflected in the new medium of film-making and that Griffith was the greatest of the early cinema pioneers. (He sees film-making in purely American terms which in the silent era was not completely true). Since he is at pains to make links to main body of book Blum is constantly making references to Griffith being in sympathy with the working man, which is reflected in early works such as A Grain of Wheat where the Grain King gets his comeuppance for starving his workers but it all seems a little strained.
That's not to say there isn't interest here, the letter Griffith sends to his wife after she finds out he has been having an affair is a classic -

“There were others before her, and there are sure to be others just as objectionable in every way after her . . . I am better off morally, and all ways, outside of marriage and so will you be . . . Don’t think there is some other woman in this case. It is not one, but many.”

He didn't even have the thoughtfulness to change hotels, he merely moved to another floor.
I don't want to suggest that Blum is completely incorrect in his thesis about the impact of cinema, it's just that he has gone about it wrong-headedly. Both sides used cinema, when the bombers were caught the unions grouped together to make a mawkish film based on the early lives of the bombers, portraying them as victims, and products, of the system. Likewise there were films showing unionists as anti-American, violent, etc. All this could have been worked into the main narrative rather than lumping on the Griffith story.

Blum could have lost the Griffith chapters (and some of the Darrow ones) and used the space to expand the historical background of the crime or to attempt some analysis of the situation. Blum is not a historian and it shows, what he is good at he quickly drawing characters and providing forward momentum. What he is weak at is providing an overview of the economic and social milieu of the times.

This can be best illustrated by the chapter detailing what happened to the main protagonists next. Blum starts it thus -

America began to change. With the verdict and the end at last of the McNamara case, it was as if the national equilibrium had been restored. Politics became less rancorous. Terror no longer seemed a sustainable ideal. Strikes continued, but the class war had eased; a new civil war pitting labor against capital no longer seemed a possibility. Entrepreneurial opportunities took shape, and they spread through the nation’s cities and towns as a more hopeful alternative to the desperation of violence. Another harbinger: Just three months after the acquittal in Los Angeles, the progressive idealist Woodrow Wilson was elected president. The country was on its way to becoming a different place

This just seems absurd, it's almost as if Blum had written "and then everyone lived happily ever after". I'm not an expert on American history but I would have thought that this bombing and trial probably had a more profound effect on labour relations over the next decades, undermining the aims of trade unions while creating a more favourable environment for employers. There just doesn't seem to be any depth of analysis here but rather the urge to push the story through, which is probably a result of his journalist training.

I'm glad I read this because I knew nothing of the situation in the US at this time but I found myself hankering for a more detailed approach to the subject. Recommended though, with reservations.

Excellent review. Why is it that there is so little written about the American labour movement from the point of view of the worker? Other than the United Mine Workers, who seem to have a small library of books devoted to them (a good thing, not a criticism), I don't often see this area of study in print, although it does appear in novels.

There was only one Nick Drake (as they Say) so easy to imitate but so hard to get anywhere near the artistry. Listened to a few clips on youtube and certainly got a feeling of intense introspection from those appearing at Henry's cellar Bar and thought it a pity the songs were not that good.

Fascinating article on "American Lightning" a whole era of history that I know very little about. I feel I know a bit more now - great stuff.

Classic detective novel (actually a collection of three related stories) by the pioneer of the hard-boiled style.

I could try to explain the plot of this novel but I'm not completely sure I can, there is no much blood and mayhem that after a mere 150 pages the reader is left a little battered and stunned. But here goes anyway.

Section one is called The Dains and this introduces us to the family of that name. The Continental Op (the never named narrator) has been called in by an insurance company to investigate the theft of some diamonds. The Leggatts don't seem to like his snooping around, and try to have the case closed, but by then the Continental Op is already uneasy about the Leggatts' past and their daughter's, Gabrielle, present (she is a morphine addict). Theft however soon escalates to murder when Mr Leggatt is found shot through the head in his laboratory. The Contintental Op then uncovers, with the help of the writer Owen Fitzstephan, a trail of death back to France. Leggatt has escaped from Devil's Island, where he had been sent for murdering his wife, so that he could be with her sister (no points for guessing who that is). Once on the run he finds that making a new life for himself is that easy, with his past constantly catching up him and leading to more death. However the Continental Op is on hand to wade through the blood and bodies to find solution.
I was a little stunned by the end of this section as it felt so final - this was definitely the end and couldn't understand where Hammett could go from here.

Where Hammett heads off to is The Temple. Gabrielle Dain has fled to a religious cult followed Eric Collinson, her rich, not particularly bright boyfriend, who wants to get her out. Her lawyer, Madison Andrews, while admitting that Joseph & Aaronia Haldorn, the cult leaders, obviously helped Gabrielle coming to the terms with the earlier events it doesn't look good for her legal guardian to let her join a cult, so he calls in the Continental Op on the basis of him already being au fair with the case.
Shortly after coming back on the case Gabrielle's doctor is found stabbed in the cult's inner sanctum and soon the Continental Op is being drugged to stop him solving the crime and revealing the darkness at the heart of the cult.

By the beginning of section three, Quesada, the name of a small town where Eric & Gabrielle have moved to get away from everything the later is not in the best state of mind while the former is starting to have doubts of his own. Despite contacting the Continental Op about his worries it is too late and by the time the CO can get there a murder has occurred.
As well as solving this murder the Continental Op helps Gabrielle overcome her drug problem, cope with a bombing that leaves a friend a wreck and deal with incompetent local police getting in the way of his investigation. In the end what he finds overturns much of which has happened previously but still makes sense enough to be satisfying.

I did enjoy this novel but at the same time found it a little exhausting as the bodies started to mount up. What was surprising was how modern it felt - the writing was sharp and funny, in a punchy masculine way that made you want to read it in your best Humphrey Bogart voice.

Some quotes of the classic hard-boiled kind -

He was young, blond, tall, broad, sunburned, and dressy, with the good-looking unintelligent face of one who would know everything about polo, or shooting, or flying, or something of that sort—maybe even two things of that sort—but not much about anything else.

"Remember once I offered you a set of my books as a present?” He had always liked to talk that way. “Yeah. But I never blamed you. You were drunk."
“I was afraid I’d read them and understand them,” I explained, “and then you’d have felt insulted."

“We’re different,” I said. “I do mine with the object of putting people in jail, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should.” “That’s not different,” he said. “I do mine with the object of putting people in books, and I get paid for it, though not as much as I should.

Two men were inside, sitting with their feet on a battered desk behind a battered counter. One was a man of fifty—and, with hair, eyes, and skin of indefinite, washed-out tan shades—an amiable, aimless-looking man in shabby clothes. The other was twenty years younger and in twenty years would look just like him.

The Edinburgh Festival has started. This year I was going to give it a miss but I relented and decided to go to a couple of things because I couldn't think of anything else to do.



Re-Animator the Musical
(George Square Theatre, Friday 3 2012, 2240)
Book by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and William J. Norris
Music by Mark Nutter
Directed by Stuart Gordon
With George Wendt, Chris L. McKenna, Jesse Merlin, Rachery Avery & Graham Skipper.

First, a short history lesson. In 1922 H.P. Lovecraft published a short story called Herbert West - Reanimator. In this tale Herbert West invents a serum that when injected into a corpse brings them back to life, only to find that these creatures turn violent, after failing to return to their grave. It doesn't take a brain scientist to work out the ending. A mere 63 years later a low-budget shocker, directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Jeffrey Combs, was released. In the time of home video boom cheap horror flicks were ten-a-penny but Re-animator stood out from the pack due to it being played straight but having it's tongue firmly planted in it's cheek. It was followed by a decent sequel, Bride of Re-animator in 1990 and then thirteen years later a third film, Beyond Re-animator, made in Spain, and that should have been that but rather like the anti-hero of their own films the producers can't let the dead remain dead. Hence we have Re-animator the Musical.

The musical is essentially the film, it too was directed by Stuart Gordon, who obviously thought why change a winner. So what we is blood and guts and songs. The front few rows of the theatre are designated a splatter zone, those who sit in are issued a plastic poncho to keep the blood and guts off their clothes.

There is nothing remotely deep, or even thoughtful, about this show, it is simply fun. The songs are light and breezy (the accompaniment is piano and/or synth) which makes them more effective as the music plays off the lyrics - the cast cheerfully singing about people or cats being dead, reanimation or about whether an apartment comes with a basement. While the songs bounce along nicely it would be equally fair to say there are no show-stoppers, none that will appear on the next Streisand or Midler album (although the thought of them singing Cat Dead does make me smile). (The re-animation of the cat is one of the highlights of the show - very funny).

What makes this real fun is the gusto the cast bring to the roles. Arguably the weakest link is the most famous face, George Wendt (Norm from Cheers), who plays Dean Halsey, he does have the voice of the others but you do get see him as a crazed zombie. The young couple, Dan & Meg (McKenna & Avery) achieve the unusual distinction of being romantic leads that you aren't hoping are going to torn limb from limb. Graham Skipper is excellent as West, one of those quiet mad scientist types who really want to play God and who gets his comeuppance in one of the more bizarre death scenes (with song, of course). The star of show however is Jesse Merlin who plays the villainous Dr. Carl Hill, who plans to steal West's invention from him, despite being handicapped by head and torso not being in unison - he is just wonderfully sleazy and over-the-top.

I would recommend that you see this show if you get a chance, it's just really enjoyable fun, but I realise this is one of the shows that people will already have decided whether they want to see it or not.

* for those of a nervous my partner is not good with horror films and she only had to turn away once so the squeamish may make to the end.

The official websirte - http://www.reanimatorthemusical.com/
Clips from the songs - http://marknutter.com/song_lyrics.html

In tribute to Norm from Cheers a few quotes -

"Can I draw you a beer, Norm ?"
"No, I know what they look like. Just pour me one."

"How's a beer sound, Norm?"
"I dunno. I usually finish them before they get a word in."

"What's shaking, Norm?"
"All four cheeks and a couple of chins."

"What's new, Normie?"
"Terrorists, Sam. They've taken over my stomach and they're demanding beer."

"Whatcha up to, Norm?"
"My ideal weight if I were eleven feet tall."

"Would you like a beer Mr.. Peterson?"
"No, I'd like a dead cat in a glass."

Off The Ball (BBC Potterow, 04/08/12)
with Stuart Cosgrove & Tam Cowan
Guests - Des McLean & Colin McCredie; Matt Forde & Andrew Maxwell



This is a Scottish radio show about Scottish football, although at the Fringe it becomes more of a comedy show. It would be a fair shout to call this parochial as Tam Cowan found out when he asked if there was anyone from anywhere other than Scotland. The number of hands on show equalled zero.

First hour had Des McLean & Colin McCredie, the stars of I, Tommy as guests. I. Tommy is a comedy drama about the former Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan who ended up in jail for perjury following a successful suit against the News of the World for defamation. (They claimed he visited swingers clubs, he said no and won, and then evidence was found that proved he had). It's a typical political story, a man of the people makes good and is brought down by his own failings.
It also turned out that McCredie's young daughter was involved in a scandal - fishfinger-gate. She plays a character on a children's TV show who likes fishfingers which resulted in top chef, Nick Nairn, saying it was a disgrace, where were the vegetables, blah blah blah? As it was pointed out fishfingers used to be one of the healthiest children's dishes in Scotland - in response the presenters, guests, listeners and audience reminisced about their childhood food. The delights included Cremola Foam, Goblin Burgers, a sugared piece (buttered pan bread sprinkled with sugar), a stalk of rubbarb with bag of sugar, a Glasgow oyster (a Scotch pie in a roll), and various other culinary delights.

Part Two had two comedians (Forde and Maxwell) with shows to plug, who looked a little out of place. Forde at least was a real football fan, a supporter of Notts Forest which played well to the audience - much better than his statement of liking Blair and supporting the Iraq war did. Fortunately there were more jokes to ease the tension and everyone left happy except Matt Forde who was probably worried that he had killed his own show.

A sample joke -
A camp man walks into a butcher and asks, "Can I have a mince round?"
The butcher replies, "Go ahead but I'm closing in ten minutes."

Chris Difford with Dorie Jackson and Norman Lovett (Assembly Teviot Nightclub, 2240, 05/08/2012)

The Fringe always throws up oddities but most of them are deliberately odd - doing Macbeth while dressed as fruit, for example. This show is just odd despite it being perfectly straight, it's odd because it feels like two shows being stuck together - Chris Difford's story of Squeeze complete with songs and Norman Lovett's gentle observational humour.

With an acoustic guitar, an iMac to show images/videos, and accompanied by Dorie Jackson on vocals Chris Difford takes an easy-going look through his career, mainly focusing on the (successful) Squeeze years. It starts with him with posting an ad for a guitarist claiming that he has a record deal already and that he can play guitar (neither of which are true). The person who replies is Glenn Tilbrook, and he has a friend called Jools Holland and hey presto a band is born. Skip to the studio and John Cale falling asleep to their playing claiming that he's bored but perhaps more due to the amount of alcohol he was consuming. A couple of days later Cale is gone and the first album is underway and the audience is treated to the first song, Take Me I'm Yours.

After that the albums came fast and steady as did the songs, Labelled With Love, Is That Love, Up the Junction; Tempted had the audience singing the chorus, while Another Nail in My Heart had them doing harmony vocals.
And then Norman Lovett came on and told a few stories which were funny but stopped the flow of music. Difford sang a couple of later tracks including a song called Cowboys Are A Weakness which he tried to give to k.d. lang but who rejected it for some reason (any takers). (Pity it could have a hit). Norman then told another story. Chris decided to end with Cool With Cats which he stopped halfway to let Norman tell another story before finishing the song off.

I left thinking why was Norman Lovett there but it seems that they have done shows before, usually comedy followed by music, and that they probably just wanted to do something together as friends. On the other hand I was also reminded what great singles Squeeze released in their early years, as good as any band out there for a short while. When I got home I searched out my copy of Greatest Hits and played it in full. Wonderful.

Great review of The Dain Curse, Jargoneer. Hammett is one of those authors that I have always been aware of, but have never read. I need to rectify that one of these days, but may start with one of his others.

>107 Linda92007: - any of the three major novels (The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest or The Thin Man) are probably better places to start. And the films aren't bad either.

This is a Scottish radio show about Scottish football, although at the Fringe it becomes more of a comedy show You can't say that about Scottish football - can you?

I remember cremola foam - I thought I was the only one who had to drink it.

Squeeze - yeh great songs and I love the vocals, although I always though he sounded like Gerry Rafferty.

I posted this in the interesting articles thread but I thought I would post it here as well. Top 10 difficult books from The Guardian.

It's interesting how people seem fascinated by difficult books. As times this fascination seems less about literature and more about one-upmanship, more like passing an entrance exam to Oxbridge or becoming a member of the Groucho Club.

Also posted on The Guardian is Paulo Coelho's attack on Ulysses - Too Much Style Is Bad For You

To celebrate the Olympics the Guardian did a series of 50 stunning Olympic moments - this one for Emil Zatopek is among the best. Some champions are even greater off the track.

Thats a nice story.

However Morrissey has a point.

As the memoir is the most seductive of literary genres, so the memoir is the most dangerous of genres. For the memoir is a repository of truths, as each discrete truth is uttered, but the memoir can’t be the repository of Truth which is the very breadth of the sky, too vast to be perceived in a single gaze.

There is no purpose to a memoir, if it isn’t honest. As there is no purpose to a declaration of love, if it isn’t honest.

Now I am beginning to realize—this memoir is a pilgrimage. All memoirs are journeys, investigations. Some memoirs are pilgrimages. You begin at X, and you will end at Z.

These are some of the musings of Joyce Carol Oates on the nature of the memoir, of which this is a remarkable example. Memoirs exist between two poles - the political and the personal. The political memoir is one which someone in the public eye produces a work explaining their role in certain situations, usually in the form of an apologia or self-aggrandisement. Often these are the products of politicians but equally they can be produced by those caught in story that captures the public imagination. At the other is the very personal, often books about terrible abusive childhoods or traumatic events, misery memoirs that almost reduce the reader to voyeur. Memoirs produced by writers tend to the middle-ground, the interest to the reader being as much how does the autobiography fit with work. Oates memoir is not one of those, it is at times almost painfully personal, to the point that the reader feels like they are intruding.

On February 18th 2008 Joyce Carol Smith's husband of 47 years died due to complications following a bout of pneumonia. It is that event that triggers this memoir, one of raw grief and doubt and love. While this has been published under the name of Joyce Carol Oates it's actually the story of Joyce Carol Smith. This may seem disingenuous but the author herself talks about the distinction between her private and public personas: JCO is out in the world, teaching, publishing, promoting while JCS is the person who exists at home, with friends, and after in hotel rooms after JCO has done her talk. This is an odd experience for the reader, we think we know writers because we read their books and attend their talks only to find that we don't know them at all. It is interesting that JCO is purely a writer of the imagination: her novels come from a completely different place than the calm successful life she had with her husband.

This actually leads to one of my difficulties with the book. At times I found my sympathy strained simply because the author and her husband had such a charmed life. There were instances I wanted to say to the author - look how marvellous your life has been, how lucky you were to meet your husband and stay together so long. (One of the oddities of the book is that it probably has more name-dropping than any other book I have ever read - the Smiths seem to know every major writer in the US). Stop wallowing and pull yourself together. You may refer to your husband as middle-aged but he was 78 and that's a good innings. JCS is so wrapped up in her grief that this is difficult to see and this internalisation makes this a difficult book as Smith works through the same feelings and emotions again and again. This is a book of repetition but that makes sense, Smith is constantly replaying events, asking the same questions - what if, why, how do I go on. This self-obsession almost puts a barrier between writer and reader but the raw way Oates tackles her subject is important - this is not a polished memoir but an outpouring of grief.

The author does attempt to step outside herself and is prone to make statements like -

A widow is compelled to say marginally “witty” remarks as a widow is compelled to speak of her husband, to utter his name as frequently as possible, in terror lest his name be lost.

What is actually going on here? Is this Oates the writer talking about Smith the wife or is Oates/Smith making a definitive statement about the nature of widowhood? If it is the latter then it is patently ludicrous; if it is the former then do we not have to question the veracity of the memoir. If this was a fiction we'd be discussing the nature of the narrative, is it unreliable or a postmodern game on identity but this isn't the case. I believe at times that Oates has become so focused on the internal that she confuses the personal with the universal, that what she thinks and feels must be what others think and feel.

The epigraph in section three is Camus' famous quote -

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The possibility of suicide is a thread through the book. Outliving your partner is a terrible thought and many console themselves with the hope of dying together but that is unlikely so the survivor has to decide whether to continue to live or to die. Oates hoards pills (sleeping, painkillers, tranquilisers) just in case she will need them. Out of the corner of her eye she is haunted by a basilisk that is urging her to do it. While suicide remains an option Oates never just gives up, she fulfills her teaching duties (she is actually told to take some time off), she meets friends and deals with what is needed. Perhaps this is really a memoir of surviving.

This all makes the book sound bleak and it is, sometimes intensely but there are moment of hope and friendship and love. Later in the book there is a chapter when JCO tries to deal with all the letters of condolences that she has been sent (up till now she has stuck them in a big bag) and the reader is privileged to read parts of them. This outpouring of friendship and love is deeply moving. Oates follows this with a chapter about her and husband moving to Beaumont, Texas in 1961. Fish out of water they are forced to pull together JCO, unable to get work (she's a wife after all) begins to write and gets publishes, while her husband fails more students than anyone before because he introduces real standards. This chapter is so full of humour and love and is joyful. It feels like a turning point in the book when a real light shines through the darkness.

The most enjoyable chapters in the book are when JCO writes about her life with Ray. These chapters are just full of genuine affectation yet Oates is troubled by the fact she never really knew her husband, how can you ever really truly know someone, even someone who has shared your life for 50 years? Inevitably this is an unanswerable question. Ray Smith sounds like a man of his generation, one who didn't really want to discuss any issues he had with his father or family or church (Strangely both Smith and Oates came from families where one of the siblings ended up in an institution - Oates sister because she was severely autistic, Smith's sister because she was 'difficult'). One of the last acts JCO can bring herself to do is read her husband's abandoned novel, Black Mass. In his notes she finds out that he had a breakdown at 19 and had an affair (before they met) he never mentioned. She also soon realises that the young poet is not just based on Sylvia Plath but has some of her characteristics, and that her husband has used some real-life incidents. This is a surprise because JCO thought that he had abandoned the novel in the early 60s but had obviously still been writing well after they were married. There is no doubt enjoyed his role as an editor but did he shelf his own ambitions to be writer to support his wife? It is a question that can no longer be answered, perhaps it never really could be.

Towards the end JCO mentions meeting a man at a dinner party, a few months later (beyond the timescale of this memoir) Joyce Carol Smith married him and this caused a minor ruckus in the literary world. Essentially JCO was portrayed as untruthful - how can you say so much about the loss of your husband and then re-marry so quickly. I think this is unfair as the reality of Oates situation is written through this book - she is an individual who is not good at being on her own. I don't believe JCO stopped loving Ray because she found a new companion, and I'm equally sure that Ray would be happy to know that his wife is OK.

I don't really know whether to recommend this book or not. I do think it is a remarkable study of grief but not necessarily a 'good' book. The sheer interiority of much of it may appeal to some but leave many general readers wishing that JCO had taken some time to edit and consider. On the other hand when it is good it is insightful and full of love. Perhaps it is best to leave the last words to the author -

Though I am writing this memoir to see what can be made of the phenomenon of “grief” in the most exactingly minute of ways, I am no longer convinced that there is any inherent value in grief; or, if there is, if wisdom springs from the experience of terrible loss, it’s a wisdom one might do without.

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre in Boo Lingerie: A Socky Horror Show (Assemly Teviot Balcony, 2240, 8/8/12)

My partner loves this act which consists of a man (never seen) and two sock puppets. The premise is a classic - one puppet (with the normal eyes) wants to produce something serious while the other puppet undermines him in his attempts). It is silly, anarchic and sometimes very funny. This show was nominally about horror but that was just a hook to hang on some sketches and bad jokes. For example, the anarchic puppet has never heard of Halloween and believes that it is a festival to say hello to Ian (Beale, Duncan-Smith, Ogilvy, etc) or to dress as Ian - it's all in the delivery. (I will from now on think of Benedict Cumberbatch as Bendy-bus Cumbernauld. The show also contains the best bucket list ever and the best list of horror films with British PM names in them). What surprised was how good the SFSPT were good improvising, far faster than most comedians on the go.
They/he also does a children's show which is not surprising as this appeals to your inner child.

Some of the theatre's work on Youtube (there is a lot of it) -
Romeo & Juliet
The London Riots
Period Drama

James Kelman (Edinburgh Book Fringe, Wordpower Books, 1900, 10/8/12)

If you believe the publicity about Kelman the audience should prepare to be shocked by a stream of expletives but Kelman the writer is not his characters. On Friday he launched the Edinburgh Book Fringe (the free alternative to the official book festival - unfortunately most of it is in the middle of the day when I'll be in the office) with something unexpected. Nominally there to promote his new novel Mo Said She Was Quirky he explained that it didn't lend itself to extracts so he had prepared something more political, which went done well with those attending. (Wordpower is an alternative bookshop and sponsors the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair).

The talk, which can be read on Wordpower's site, The British Council and the Edinburgh Writers Conference by James Kelman, encompassed Scottish identity and literature, English literature, the 1962 Edinburgh International Writers Conference and the British Council. The British Council, for Kelman, is the state's literary arm - go abroad and promote the United Kingdom, English literature. As the talk ducked and dived it became apparent it was about the freedom of literature -

For the political authorities "the role of literature" is primary. For writers it is beyond that, way way beyond. Literature has no 'role'. Literature is art and art is life. "Primary' implies 'secondary'. Once we talk about art as primary we are talking about life being primary; at this point we are no longer discussing humanity but bodies that are either dead or of another species altogether. Either that or we are engaged in a discourse that allows 'us' to dispense with 'them'.

.
It wasn't the most coherent of arguments, meandering somewhat, but he had been finalising it on the train over from Glasgow. Interesting even (more so?) for those who don't agree.

Afterwards he took questions from the floor, most of which focused on his writing. He admitted that he doesn't research his books since the narrative voice tends to be set in the present. Does the fact that memory features importantly in the new book suggest a change in his approach, as he gets older does memory become more important? Cue admission that he started this book twenty years and just never found the time to finish it. Will he write any more plays? No, it's not worth it (2 new plays 3 or 4 years made £800 despite months of effort). The theatre is for younger writers, he doesn't want to collaborate any more, etc.

All in all, good evening - fantastic value when you realise that book fringe is all free.

Great review of A Widow's Story, Jargoneer. I have become more interested in JCO the private persona since reading an essay where she indicated that her husband rarely read any of her works, in progress or published. Such complete separation of the roles of wife and writer is fascinating.

The freebies are the best.

I agree with Linda - a superb review of A Widow's Story and I was wondering how difficult it was for her to write. You talk about her private and public persona's and their must have been a meeting/or clash between the two when she wrote her book. Perhaps she was able to step outside of herself and let her professionalism take over when she needed to do that.

>117 baswood: - I think stepping out of herself is key to her writing. As one point she mentions that nothing particularly exciting had ever happened to her and that her books come completely from the imagination. (Although that could be countered by pointing out the imagination is another way at looking at reality - now knowing about her sister, and her husband's, the prevalence of lost girls in her fiction takes an interesting turn).
One thing I forgot to mention was that her husband never read a word of her fiction although he would read and help edit her essays.

A sad day for British comics as DC Thomsons announces that The Dandy's circulation has dropped below 8000 and it may have to close - Why The Dandy still matters

...sometimes people tell me there’s no such thing as supernatural horror any-more—that science has solved, or can solve, all mysteries, mat religion is just another name for social service, and that modern people are too sophisticated and knowledgeable to be scared of ghosts even for kicks.

Despite successes including two Hugo awards and Conjure, Wife which has been filmed at least three times Leiber never seemed as comfortable with the novel form as he was with the short story. This, his last published novel, is almost certainly his best.
First published in 1977 this novel is not only a homage to the writers he read when when younger (Lovecraft, London, and especially Clark Ashton Smith who is a key character in the story) but also feels like a valedictory to supernatural horror. With the appearance of younger writers like Stephen King the horror novel was about to under-go a major change, with atmosphere and nuance replaced by the visceral.

Franz Westen is a horror writer reduced to novelising episodes of a successful TV series, Weird Underground. Apart from that (Leiber wrote one sanctioned Tarzan novel) much of Westen's background mirrors Leiber's - recovering from three years of alcoholism brought on the loss of a wife and living in San Francisco being the most obvious examples. His support group, for want of a better expression, all share the same apartment building - Cal, a classical musician with whom he slept with a couple of times and seems on having a more meaningful relationship with; Saul and Gunnar, best friends who may or may not be gay; the building supervisor, Dorothea, her daughter, Bonita, and brother, Fernando, a handyman who can barely understand English. Despite these individuals Franz there stills feels slightly alone and has constructed a 'bed-mate' out of books and magazines that he refers to as his "scholar's mistress".

At a loose end one morning Franz looks out across the city, past the TV tower which fascinates him, to Corona Heights, a park that looms over the city. Using his binoculars he notices a figure dancing on the Heights and decides that it is time to investigate this part of SF more. Once on the hill Franz tries looks for his own apartment and to his horror sees a nondescript figure in brown waving back at him. Obviously unsettled Franz returns home only to find that no-one has been in his apartment but when he repeats the exercise something reaches out to him.

As much as it is a supernatural this is also a novel of paranoia. Western owns a copy of an obscure work by Thibaut de Castres called Megapolisomancy: A New Science of Cities which argues that as cities increase so do the paramental forces at work in them.

anonymous—no signs or names, no pinnacle statues or weathercocks or crosses, no distinctive facades and cornices, no architectural ornament at all: just huge blank slabs of featureless stone, or concrete or glass that was either sleekly bright with sun or dark with shadow. Really, they might well be the “gargantuan tombs or monstrous vertical coffins of living humanity, a breeding ground for the worst of paramental entities

Just living in a large city puts you at risk, a paramental (supernatural) could be round the next corner or in your stairwell or stalking you at this very moment. It is a fantastic idea, that the city itself, the icon of modernity through history, is a breeding, or play, ground for creatures that come from the darkest parts of our mind. This reflects the general uneasiness that often comes with dwelling in large cities - the convenience of being close to work and leisure environments is offset by the fear of isolation and violence.

Westen also owns a journal written by Clark Ashton Smith around the time he was living in SF and had fallen under the spell of de Castres. And not the first writer to do as Westen discovers from Jaime Donaldus Byers, an old hippy and expert on Smith. De Castres had appeared in SF at the turn of the 20th century, surrounding himself with a group of writers and artists that included Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Nora May French and George Sterling, all of whom died by their own hand or in unexplained circumstances. The implication being that de Castres was actually able to practise megapolisomancy, the details of which are contained in his lost book, his fifty-book, a cypher to understanding the processes of the magic. Byers also reveals that Westen was followed to the US by a veiled woman, his lady of darkness whom he threatened to unleash upon those who displeased or disappointed him - what exactly lay behind the veil is an unanswered question. When Smith arrived in SF de Castres believed be had found a new acolyte but he was madder now than ever, attempting to find and destroy all copies of his book, and as Byers finds hidden in Smith's journal had placed a curse on the writer. The more Westen learns about de Castres and his theory the greater his paranoia grows, feeling that there is really is something out there but how do hide from a creature that draws it's power, if not it's very existence, from the city itself. Byers also feels the same fear, in this case knowledge does not necessarily mean power but danger, and so he lives in a state of hedonism - live today, for tomorrow we die. Westen, on the other hand, wants to find answers and as the story moves to a conclusion we are introduced to one of the most imaginative of all paramentals.

At the beginning of this review I called this a valedictory to supernatural fiction and it does feel that way. The book is shot through with melancholy for the whole style of fantastic tale. Leiber is direct link to the Weird Tales writers (he corresponded with Lovecraft) but this novel also echoes with earlier voices, especially M.R. James. (In a letter after the novel was published Leiber stated that it had started as Jamesian story and just grew). The scenes where Westen is looking though his binoculars and sees a strange figure dancing or waving is pure James; Westen even thinks of the doctored pair in the James story, A View from a Hill. What Leiber shares with James is the ability to make the mundane sinister: James with The Ash Tree or The Mezzotint, Leiber with the Smoke Ghost or advertising in The Girl With The Hungry Eyes. The ghosts aren't 'out there', they're everywhere surrounding us. That's what's truly frightening about James and Leiber.

I don't get H.P. Lovecraft: to get to an interesting idea you have to wade through reams of turgid over-wrought prose, and yet he now published by Penguin Modern Classics. Leiber, on the other hand, quickly overcame Lovecraft's influence to become the best American supernatural writer of the post-war period. His reward is to constantly fall out-of-print (with the exception of his sword-and-sorcery series set in Lankhmar, which also rises above the usual genre mush) or be maltreated - recent e-book editions (including this one) of his work appear to have skipped the proof-reading stage. What Leiber deserves are decent collections of his best stories and decent reprints of his novels (since they are usually short an omnibus of his best would be convenient). And while we're here, can we do the same for Robert Aickman, the best British supernatural writer of the same period.

Recommended for those who like to travel along paths less taken.

Intriguing review, Jargoneer, and interesting comments about H.P. Lovecraft. For some reason I bought an e-book version of his complete works (it was cheap and looked interesting), but have yet to read any of it.

Alasdair Gray (Edinburgh International Book Festival, 1800, 12/08/12)

It you were to define Alasdair Gray's role in Scottish literature it would probably be 'the eccentric but lovable uncle' - you're always glad to see him and in return he usually keeps you entertained. Over the last years events with Gray have begun to feel like Sinatra farewell concerts - it feels like it could be the last one but there always seems to be one more. At almost 78 each volume that he launches sums up another aspect of his life - A Play Book containing all his drama, A Life in Pictures combining his artwork (Gray is a first-rate artist who also designs his own books which gives them a unique feel) and now a Complete Tales collecting his short stories. It was this latter volume that he was at EIBF promoting, which was slightly problematic as the actual book isn't available for another two months. Not that that seemed to dampen the enthusiasm, everyone was just happy to see Uncle Alasdair one more time.

Some Alasdair Gray art -

Faust in his study, 1958

Detail of May in White Bodice

Eden and After

>121 Linda92007: - Lovecraft is like Marmite, an acquired taste - most people don't acquire it but the ones you do love it.

The Jewabadour (Mood Nightclub, 1615, 11/08/12)

The Jewabadour is Daniel Cainer who sings songs about his Jewish family and upbringing in Leeds. (This used to be called the Jewish Chronicles which may have been generic but I can't really warm to his new title). In his introduction he explained that he gotten interested in his Jewish heritage as he grew older although he suggested that his religious stance could be seen by the fact he was playing on the sabbath. At this point he stated that if God didn't want him to play on a Saturday he would make his feelings known - as he started his first song his lighting fell over - twice!

Ignoring this, and the burning bush in the corner, he decided to press on offering the audience a sequence of warm and witty songs about such topics as his his aunt Nora leaving the Jewish faith and becoming an evangelical Christian; 'Bad Rabbi' about a rabbi who liked ladies of the night and cocaine, and his father having an affair and his parents marriage breaking down. The subject matter sounds depressing but the audience was more likely to be laughing than crying, singing along rather than sitting in contemplation.

Cainer isn't a great singer but he delivered his songs with charm and enthusiasm which won over most of the audience. They were definitely more standard show tunes than pop or rock which did give the impression that you listening to a dry run for a musical. (If he could work out how to do this I think he would be on a winner). The only issue I had, apart from the venue being soulless than a crypt, was that the songs occasionally over-stayed their welcome, tending to meander somewhat.

If you get a chance I recommend you give Daniel Cainer a chance - he may not rock your world but you will leave with a smile.

His website - Daniel Cainer
His Myspace page which is probably a better place to hear some songs -Daniel Cainer Myspace

Enjoy reading about your passion for supernatural horror.

Rereading is always a risk. Those beloved childhood books can turn to dust before your eyes. I first read The Glass Room when it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, I enjoyed it but would it stand up to a second reading?

Wealthy Czechs Viktor and Liesel Landauer commission the German architect, Rainer Von Abt, to build then a special house, a wedding gift to themselves. The house Von Abt designs for them is resolutely modern, situated on a hill above the city of Mesto (which actually just means place), dominated by a large glass room. This fictional house is based on a real house - the Villa Tugendhat, designed by the real German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, overlooking Brno. The history of the house in the novel mirrors closely reality - from Czech society commissioners to German and Russia occupation to a gynasium for children with polio in Czechoslovakia. The only real difference being the German occupation - in the novel it is used as a reaserch centre into ethnic differences whereas it was actually used as Gestapo offices. (This change makes perfect as it allows Mawer to highlight the ludicrous ideas the Nazis held about being able to identity non-Aryan races by their physiognomy).

There is much that is still worthwhile about this novel and it remains an engaging read but there were two factors that irritated me second time around.

Firstly, just because a book deals with serious issues - WWII, anti-semitism, communism - it doesn't necessarily make it a serious work of fiction. While Mawer is able to drag in most of the lowlights of the 20th century there is very little intellectual discussion about them. It could be argued that what Mawer has produced is a family saga for the chattering classes, one that sweeps through the century but only ever touches the surface. That's not to say there aren't interesting ideas here but they are never pursued - a glass room raises questions about voyeurism, both inward and outward, of the blurring of the divide between personal and public, etc. There is also much made in the first section of how modern the house is but there is never any link between modernity and historical events. (Perhaps the real difference between a great writer and a good one is most apparent in the section set in Czechoslavkia, which reads like a pastiche of Milan Kunera but lacks Kundera's intectualism).

Some of this lack of seriousness comes from the characters. Virtually every adult relationship in the novel is sexual. Perhaps Mawer's aim was to portray the decadence of pre-war society among the upper classes but then was it also to portray the decadence of communist society thirty years later? While there is no dispute about the role of sex in human society it is not the be all and end all. I was reminded of Prefab Sprout's song about Bruce Springsteen, Cars and Girls, with its refrain, "But look at us now, quit driving, some things hurt more much more than cars and girls".

Despite these reservations I would still recommend this novel - it is a good read but on re-reading I came to the conclusion that is all it is. However there is one thing that Mawer needs to do in further editions - remove the last chapter, it is pure movie-of-the-week material.

Edith Grossman is a respected translator of Spanish language literature, mainly Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa & Mayra Montero but also of Cervantes' Don Quixote. This book is the result of three lectures Grossman gave at Yale on translation.

The book often betrays its origins as the introduction and first two chapters essentially cover the same ground answering the eponymous question. The answer is as straightforward as could be expected, translation allows non-native speakers to have a conversation (as all books are between author and reader) beyond their native language. Everyone benefits from translation for even the most adept at foreign languages can only master a few and there are hundreds out there. Of course, much doesn't get translated, not enough gets translated into English - the dreaded 3% figure (although 3% of a lot of books is still not insignificant - a voracious reader would struggle to read all the translations published in a year). By not translating the Anglophile world is cutting itself off from the greater discussion going on in world literature. None of this is debatable, none of it is anything less than self-evident.

The other major thread in Grossman's book is that the translator deserves more respect. Currently they are barely mentioned in reviews or summarily dismissed as mere messenger boys (and girls) passing on the missives. Grossman argues that the translator is much more than this, that the act of translation is not merely changing sentences from one language to another but an act of creation itself. The translator's alchemy is not one of slavish copying but of rewriting the original work to create a work that is both a representation of the original text and also an original text in its own right.

This becomes an interesting argument itself - what is a translation? If the translator is not merely a changer of words but a creator in their own right what is the reader actually experiencing? With regard to Grossman what does that mean that when we read her translation of, say, Marquez? Are we reading a work by Marquez or one by Grossman and Marquez? If is the latter then how does this new work relate to the original? I remember when Gilbert Adair translated George Perec's novel without the letter e, A Void, the final translation was a third longer than the original as Adair replicated the missing letter. Who is the writer of this work? Perec or Adair? Is a translation the literary equivalent of the cover version - some faithful, others radical re-workings but where the latter can often be closer to the original than the more faithful version because they capture the spirit at the heart of the work. Can we ever know the true worth of a translation without being able to read the original?
Grossman pulls up reviewers for this - which is means that she berates them ignoring the translation and then for not being able to read in the original language therefore incapable of any meaningful analysis of the standard of the translations? What are reviewers to do? Even if editors were to choose bilingual reviewers for each translated work would it make any difference? Since Grossman argues that translation is a creative act then the reviewer could read both works and then disagree on how the translator has interpreted it.

Grossman gets annoyed at everything -

'I have discovered to my horror, that far too many British publishers insist on Anglicizing texts that have been translated by those of us who, to their minds, are little more than semi-literate American ex-colonials who flatter ourselves into thinking that the yawp we speak and write is actually English.'

That the that the British public don't always like Americanisms never enters her mind; she also says wrongly that many American publishers don't interfere. Fortunately she gets a clause in her next contract stating no changes - that puts the limeys in their place.
This raises a question that the champions of translations don't discuss enough - what is the role of the reader in the translation debate? The success of Henning Mankell's Wallander novels has led to a boom in Scandinavian crime novelists in English which shows that the reading public will read translations but other genres are virtually translation free. Literary fiction is hit-and-miss, some translations sell well but most fail; however the same could be said of works in English. In such a cluttered market most books will fail. What we don't know is whether readers are intrinsically prejudiced against translations (with a few exceptions) or are not getting access to the vast majority of them.

The odd chapter out in the book is the last one where Grossman discusses her translations of various poems from Spanish into English with both versions printed side-by-side. How much the reader enjoys the technical and creative aspects of this chapter may be determined whether he or she can follow both languages.

This is a hard book to recommend, not because it is bad but there is not enough here. The first three chapters could have been reduced to a single essay and comfortably make all the valid points. Condensing the arguments would also see less of Grossman's self-aggrandisement, which I found both distracting and distancing. Rather than read this book you could always read a translated work.

3% is scary. This summer I learned that despite the apparent influx of books on the store shelves, only about five percent of the Tibetan Buddhist canon has been translated.

There is no doubt that translations are an interesting topic.

I suppose it is stating the obvious to say that I would not read a translation if I could read the original version. I therefore rely on the translator to have done a reasonable job with their translation and I do appreciate an introduction from the translator to say how they approached their task. For example did they seek to do a literal translation or were they more inventive in trying to get across the sense of the words in the original language.

I think translations of poetry are the most problematical as in many cases it is impossible to replicate the rhyme/and or the metre of the original and still produce a poem that makes sense.

It doesn't sound like Grossman adds much to the debate.

>130 baswood: - in the last chapter she does discuss her translation of poetry quite technically. Early on in the book she mentions that Erza Pound is the interpreter par excellence while Nabokov fails because he is a literal translator. (It should be noted that Grossman is guilty here of what she berates reviewers of - commenting on the standard of the translation while not knowing the language).

The basic problem with a book like Grossman's is who is it written for. The people who will read it are almost certainly those who currently read translations so will only nod their heads in agreement so she is only preaching to the converted. Grossman berates publishers for not publishing more translations and yet we all know that publishers would do so if they made more money. Of course, we reach a chicken and egg scenario: do publishers publish so few translations because they don't sell or don't they sell because readers have little choice in what's available. (Actually, Grossman's moaning about the treatment of translators - i.e., lack of respect and money - is more likely to discourage any potential translators).

Kevin Barry & Etgar Keret (EIBF, 1900, 16/08/12)

One of the strands of the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year is the short story (I say this lightly - the EIBF's new director's attitude is that if an author doesn't have a book to promote they are surplus to requirements so strands tend to be created on that basis). This is an odd teaming of Irish and Israeli probably owes more to the fact that neither could sell tickets on their own than any other reason, and even then there was no shortage of empty seats.

Barry opened the proceedings with a extract from one of his stories from Dark Lies the Island. Barry's writing is your typical modern day foul-mouthed Irish humour that owes more than a little to the absurdity of Father Ted. (When asked about his influences he openly admitted that TV was probably the main one - you have to admire his honesty, how many writers would admit to that?). It was amusing without offering much else.

Keret then took to the lectern and apologised for his stories being so short. In order to fill up his time he'll have to tell us about where the idea for the story came from. A few years he had a chance to go to Berlin which he thought would be great, somewhere to part, but once he was there the reality was that he was alone most of time, knowing no-one. When his publisher, based on Munich, suggested meeting up he jumped at the chance of some company. He then found himself in a huge cafe in Berlin without any idea what his publisher looked like. Seeing a man in a cravat he decided that must be the man and he seemed to reciprocate the welcome. Once sitting this stranger stated I can't pay you 300k Marks, only 250k. At which point Keret replied fine while thinking how successful his books must be in Germany. Then the stranger asked him to see the diamonds.
The story based on this incident was warm and witty, about a lonely man who starts acknowledging strangers as they enter a cafe resulting in various experiences. Even at the end of the story when an irate husband demands he ends the affair with his wife and attacks him when he says he won't (this despite not being the other man) he realises that even the pain is good, the consequence of his having started to live.

Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman's literary editor, presented the event, asking a few questions before turning to the audience for feedback.

One of the first topics was surrealism (this has been a topic running through events I have seen) and how it relates to reality. Is surrealism a way to deal with the hyper-real, that some forms of reality can't be captured in straightforward terms?
For Barry surrealism was something that happened at the edge of his stories, that they were essentially realist but pushing at the limits of reality, which would occasionally break and become unreal. This wasn't because of topics but the nature of the story which determined the outcome.
Keret had a slightly different take - for him reality was a subjective experience. When he first met his wife she told her flatmate she had someone nice but he was a complusive liar. He pointed out that he wasn't a liar, it was just that reality did strange things around him. To illustrate this he revealed that his brother had been jailed for paganism (kneeling in front of a totem pool) and that his sister's neighbours poked fun at her because she only had 11 children. Since my writing reflects me they embrace surrealism.

Kelly then asked about the 'failing man' in their books - why are so many books written by men now about this?
Keret stated obviously stated that you write about yourself, then added that his stories are there to comfort people but in order to do this you first need people to recognise how pathetic they are.
Barry agreed that you are in your own stories, that there is an underlining sadness under the human condition but that we endure because something is better than nothing.

In a discussion about language Barry said that it sometimes felt that everything in Ireland had already been done but when developing future Irish in his novel, City of Bohane, he based it on the Limerick working class dialect.
Keret said that he wanted to write in colloquial language, that writing in Hebrew was a very odd experience because the language itself was both very old and very new. Hebrew being the language of the bible gave it great weight and solemnity and yet there was also a younger strand that mixed this language with slang, and it was latter strand that represented modern Israel best.

At the end politics had to be touched on - Barry made a few generalisations but Keret delved more deeply. He told a story about trying to explain Israel to a Korean person - the first time he tried the individual responded 'like Iran', the second time the response was 'like San Francisco'. Keret's own take was that Israel felt like a reality TV show - that the strange twists and turns in the country could only be explained by an oddball producer chasing ratings, which also explains why people exit in such dramatic fashion. How else can you explain the hyper-reality that is Israel?

Well worth the worth, especially for Etgar Keret, this summary doesn't do justice to how funny, intelligent and engaging he was. (He also has the most bizarre signature - on one book he drew a ship, "that is me coming to visit you", and because he thought he spelt my name wrong the first time the second book has his special flying saucer apology).

Two pieces of advice regarding writing short stories came across from this event - the great Irish short writer William Trevor suggested that you should try to write one a month to hone your skills; Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, suggested that you should write one a week on the basis that you are unlikely to write 52 bad ones in row.

Just catching up and envying you for being able to go to the book festivals. Great news that there is a new James Kelman on the way. Wonderful picture of Alasdair Gray himself, maybe someone will publish a book of his drawings sometime.

Also liked your review of The Glass Room and adding it to the list.

127 - I enjoyed your review of The Glass Room. It's been near the top of my TBR for some time now, and I really want to get to it this year.

Barry agreed that you are in your own stories, that there is an underlining sadness under the human condition but that we endure because something is better than nothing. Oh dear! this is almost enough to make one religious - almost.

Etgar Keret sounds a gas.

>134 SassyLassy: - it is available (this also functions as a kind of autobiography) - A Life in Pictures. As you can see it is not cheap though.

On 11 August 2007 Sophie Lancaster was walking home with her boyfriend when they were attacked by a group of youths. When she tried to protect her boyfriend they turned on her, knocking her to the ground and then repeatedly kicking, and stamping on, her. Both were left unconsciousness, unrecognisable. Sophie never woke up and died two weeks later. The perpetrators, who had boasted about giving a right seeing to a couple of freaks, were later jailed for 15 years or more. The reason for this crime was simply hate - they didn't like goths.

This short book, a mere thirty pages, is taken from a BBC programme of the same name, based on the life, and death, of Sophie Lancaster. In the radio version the ten poems were intertwined with Sophie's mum, Sylvia, remembering her daughter's life. The book contains the ten poems.

It's difficult to say much about this. Simon Armitage is one of the best poets in Britain but this isn't his best work, although it is still occasionally very good - the later poems especially. However the radio presentation is superior as the poems lose (some) context without the input of Sylvia Lancaster - it is a pity that a deal couldn't have been done to release the book with a CD.

A third of the profits of this book go to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

This poem is taken from the BBC website - it is worth bearing in mind that is probably one of the weakest in the sequence.

I didn't do sport.
I didn't do meat.
Don't ask me to wear that dress:
I shan't.
Why ask me to toe the line,
I can't.
I was slight or small
but never petite,
and nobody's fool;
no Barbie doll;
no girlie girl.
I was lean and sharp,
not an ounce of fat
on my thoughts or my limbs.
In my difficult teens
I was strange, I was odd,
- aren't we all -
there was something different down at the core.
Boy bands and pop tarts left me cold,
let's say
that I marched to the beat
of a different drum,
sang another tune,
wandered at will
through the market stalls
humming protest songs.

I wore studded dog leads
around my wrist,
and was pleased as punch
in the pit, at the gig,
to be singled out
by a shooting star
of saliva from Marilyn Manson's lips.

But for all that stuff
in many ways an old fashioned soul,
quite at home
in my own front room,
on my own settee.
I read, I wrote,
I painted, I drew.
Where it came from
no one knows
but it flowed. It flowed.

Junot Diaz & Nathan Englander (EIBF, 1900, 18/08/12)

More short short action from writers who are probably better known for their single novels.

Englander read a story about a character, who turns out to be him, telling his girlfriend that he doesn't have any stories about his family only to realise that the more he denies it the more he reveals to himself exactly how many stories he does know about his family. It's an interesting technical as it starts almost cinematically as the narrative voice is in the third person before closing in on the characters of the man and woman, who are then revealed as the writer and girlfriend, somewhat in the manner of a camera slowly focusing in.

Diaz read a story about a Dominican boy (a character called Yunior who also appears in other stories) and how he screws up his relationship with girlfriend. Diaz's stories tend to be short and punchy, told straightforwardly in the language of the characters.

Afterward Stuart Kelly hosted a talk before the audience was invited to join in.

As you can imagine the issue of ethnicity came up. Englander pointed out that was sometimes a Jewish writer and sometimes an American writer -It depended on who was commenting. Where is the line as well? 'I am a Mayflower Jew,' he said, 'so am I more Jewish or more American?'
Diaz said that the same happened to him while pointing out a writer like Jonathan Franzen seemed more concerned with his 'whiteness' than most 'ethnic' writers did about their backgrounds. Your identity as a writer is something that other people try to pin on you but has little effect on your own idea of a being writer.

This lead onto a discussion about voice. Englander said that when he first started all the characters he created sounded like old Jewish women with sentences back-to-front. His re-writing consisted of switching the sentences front-to-back.
As Diaz pointed out, "You need just enough voice to make the story work." The idea of voice and ethnicity is bound up with the modern obsession with authenticity, which is in itself a failure of the imagination. The desire for authenticity fails to acknowledge that by its very nature fiction is always a construct - a successful voice is not one that sounds exactly like the real one, it a voice that works in literary terms.

Is surrealism one of the ways of dealing with extremes? (This seems to be one of the standard questions this year). Both of them agreed that it was but Diaz went further and pointed out that the reason science fiction should be read and studied more is because it provides the tools to analyse humanity in an unique way, to ask and investigate the questions that mainstream literature can't do. Sometimes we have to look outward to look inward.

When asked about where he got the idea for linked stories mentioned a writer I never heard before - Michael Martone. In his collections like Fort Worth is Seventh on Hitler's List he showed not only how effective the linked collection could be but also how you can focus on something very small and produce something worthwhile. Naturally the advantage to the reader of a linked collection is that they don't have to enter and leave the writer's world with each other, although admittedly that can also have advantages.

When asked why he liked the short story format Diaz mentioned that the short story is a form that achieve perfection, something a novel never can. It's length is such that a whole story can be kept in the mind, so that when working the writer has complete control over all aspects of his work. This can be contrasted with a novel where a writer may retain 10% - both agreed of this, describing writing a novel is an act of faith where you hope it all fits together. Diaz expanded on this (when asked about distractions when writing) - the novel is a slow form that belongs to another age and it is struggling to get heard in ours - he said when he asked students what had happened in the novel they had just read they would look blank but be able to tell you all about the last tweets, messages, and Facebook entries they had consumed.

That's why you need a good editor. Although Diaz did reveal he rarely spoke to either his editor or agent, once in seven years in the latter case - since they shared an agent Englander said he balanced it out, phoning 70 times a week. Both of them agreed that a good editor was necessary - they pick what what you miss, make you see things anew. When asked about blind spots in their writing Diaz said he knew exactly what his blind spot was - a hole shaped exactly like him. And that's the hole every writer has - the one that contains all their ticks and hang-ups, their shortcomings and foolishness. Which brings us back to needing a good editor.

If this sounds like the Junot Diaz show it's because it sometimes felt like it, even Englander looked to Diaz to answer some of the questions. Was this a bad thing? No. Nathan Englander was interesting and at the signing afterwards he and I were found to have the same anally retentive attitude to keeping books in good condition but Diaz was something else. I came to this event having read Diaz's first collection thinking it was OK but he was simply one of the sharpest, most interesting interviewees I have ever seen or heard - I keep thinking this man must write a book of essays, he must write a book of essays...

I loved reading about the Junot Diaz and Nathan Englander talk, Turner. Thanks for sharing it. I will have the opportunity to see Junot Diaz in October, both in an informal Q&A style seminar and at a reading. I hope before then to read both Drown, which I own, and his soon to be released This Is How You Lose Her.

>140 Linda92007: - I was so impressed I bought the new collection (it was specially released for the festival) but haven't gotten round to it yet.

Which reminds me - when did a short paperback book start costing £12.99? French flaps or not that is ridiculous.

When you consider what rubbish makes it to the big screen nowadays it seems incredible that no-one has taken a chance on filming Powers' novel. This is a intelligent well-crafted rip-roaring adventure tale of time-travel and magic. On the other hand perhaps we should be grateful - who knows what kind of monstrosity Hollywood would produce? (The concept of an intelligent blockbuster now seems an oxymoron).

London, 1801, the powerful gypsy magician, Amenophis Fikee attempts to raise the god Anubis for his ancient Egyptian master. He is aided in his mission by the ka Romanelli, a golem-like doppleganger of one of the master's other minnions, Dr Romany. The summoning fails and Fikee runs off into the night.

Almost two hundreds later Professor Brendan Doyle has been invited by billionaire J. Cochran Darrow to come to England as he requires an expert on Samuel Coleridge. Doyle, while knowledgeable is not an expert but accepts so he can carry out research on William Ashbless, an obscure Romantic poet, on whom he is writing a biography. Upon meeting Darrow he is told that the billionaire has developed time-travel and that he organising a trip to see Coleridge lecture in 1810, and he requires someone to provide an introduction for his paying guests. Doyle is naturally sceptical but he meets a former star pupil of his, Benner, who works for Darrow and assures him that everything is on the level. Doyle accepts Darrow's invitation and the group travels back to 1810 but then things start to go wrong, specifically Doyle is left behind, having been kidnapped by Romanelli's gypsies.

Doyle regains consciousness in the Romanelli's tent in the gypsy camp, whereupon he is subjected to torture; Romanelli wanting to know how he and his colleagues were able to 'come-and-go'. Fortunately Doyle is able to escape and finds himself on the streets of London. Doyle initially believes that his superior knowledge will allow him to flourish in the 19th century until he can find a way back but he soon realises that his knowledge is of little value. The only solution is turn to begging and he is invited to do so by a demented clown but fortunately he intercepted by a young boy, Jacky, who introduces him to another beggars guild. This is just as well for Doyle as the clown Horrabin helps his beggars get into character by making improvements in his laboratory.

Jacky, who not whom he seems in a number of ways, is posing as a beggar to track down Dog-Face Joe, a werewolf-like creature that passes from body to body, leaving the old body when all the hair starts grow. This creature is responsible for the death of someone Jacky loved, and as Doyle also finds out is responsible for Darrow returning to this time - he has cancer and believes that he will be able to escape death by the same means as this creature.

From this point it's your everyday story of changing identities and bodies, death and rebirth, more time travel, magic, action and adventure. With guest appearances from Bryon (both real and doppel-ganger) and Coleridge, who in his opium addled state almost becomes the hero of the hour.

What makes this novel worthwhile is the skill with which Powers presents all this. Since we follow Doyle at the start and we know history is not changed we know what happens at key points in the story, or rather we think we know, as Powers keeps pulling another ace from the pack (not that all the aces are unseen, some are out in the open but that doesn't make them any less satisfying). The sheer tightness of plot and intelligence that Powers displays lifts this novel far out of the fantasy sludge.

When Powers utilises magic it is not your usual potions or amulets it is a clearly thought-out device. Magic has been decline for thousands of years with the result that the practitioner plays a cost for using it, essentially losing some substantiality. Likewise since earth grounds a person the magician must not touch it so we have Horrabin the clown on stilts and Romany on spring-heeled shoes, both utilised to create very strong images. (The villains are first-rate in this tale - Horrabin is one of the latest, and of the best, of terrifying clowns in literature and film; Romany/Romanelli is suitably vicious and aloof; only the Master, Muhammad Ali sic, lacks real substance but then he literally does so).

There are flaws - the novel loses some momentum when Doyle is kidnapped and transported to Egypt: the London that Powers creates is both vivid and menacing, whereas the Egyptian scenes are not up to the same level. However this excursion does make sense in terms of plot. The only real misstep is with the damaged Romanelli who for reasons best known to the author starts spouting 1950s type sayings - this not only grates but actually punctures the world that Powers has created. I'm sure the author probably thought it would be amusing but it is completely wrong-headed.

I'm not going to argue that this is a great novel per se but it is a great read, one that truly does deserve the tag "Fantasy Masterwork". This is the kind of novel that gives fantasy a good name written by writer of no little skill and intelligence. It may not change your world-view but you will look long and hard to find another fantastical adventure as good as this.

Really enjoyed catching up here (over 40 posts behind when I started) - thought provoking throughout.

I love a good time travel yarn. I can just about read the title I think The Anubis Gates, yes that looks right.

The Sophie Lancaster case is a real horror story, but it is a shame that Simon Armitage does not quite do it justice.

Diaz expanded on this (when asked about distractions when writing) - the novel is a slow form that belongs to another age and it is struggling to get heard in ours - he said when he asked students what had happened in the novel they had just read they would look blank but be able to tell you all about the last tweets, messages, and Facebook entries they had consumed. - Frightening stuff from M. Diaz

>144 baswood: - it is The Anubis Gates. I should start putting author and title below the cover.

Blackwell's Writers on the Fringe IV (Blackwell's, Edinburgh: 1930, 23/8/12)

As a sidebar to all the official events Blackwell's play host to a number of nights for local writers (this year there are five but this is the only one I have had a chance to go to).

There were five writers this time around.

First up was Rodge Glass, who isn't local but has lived in Scotland for 15 years and also was Alasdair Gray's secretary for 3 years which gained him honorary membership. He read from his latest novel, Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs, about a ex-Man Utd youngster who only got couple of minutes action in the first team but he still had time to put in a tackle that gets him sent off and seriously injured. He subsequently blames Ryan Giggs for giving him a bad pass.
Looking at the audience Glass obviously made the decision to (a) avoid football and (b) skip bad language. The couple of extracts he read made it sound like a young adult novel. Perhaps the language was simplified to reflect the character but that doesn't hold up when the second eaxtract was a piece written in the second person (surely the advantage of this is that author can expand outwidth the limited consciousness of his character).
I wasn't sold on this but to be honest I didn't expect to be - much as I like football it doesn't lend itself to be fictionalised very well, perhaps because the reality always seems to usurp the fictional. The one exception to this that I have found is the great Robin Jenkins novel, The Thistle & the Grail.

Next up were Tom McKerley & Ingrid Schippers with their genealogical mystery, Bloodlines. This is the blurb - In 1895 a Scottish laird of the Macpherson clan disappears under mysterious circumstances from Ballindalloch Castle in the Scottish Highland. This sets in motion a chain of events that affects future generations on both sides of the Atlantic.
Over a hundred years later, Homicide Detective Cathy Stewart, from North Carolina, finds herself at a clan gathering at Ballindalloch Castle and is reluctantly yet irreversibly drawn into a murky family history.
I could be polite about people realising their dream of writing a novel but I'm not going to be - this was complete and utter crap. Every basic writing appeared in the three extracts they read. The prose was cliched and the text was unnecessary explication: he said, she said, he smiled, she smirked, etc, every time someone spoke; as well as stuff - "She came down the main stairs, crossed the hall and opened the large solid wooden door to the dining room. The room was emptry but the long table had been set and breakfast was laid out on a huge sideboard. She went over and poured some coffee from a black enamel pot decorated with the family crest into a matching cup. The coffee was warm and strong. The jolt to her tastebuds also jolted her memory. She remembered last night...'
(This isn't actually from their novel, it's just something it to give a feel of it - to be honest, this is better than the novel).

Third up was Moira McPartlin and my initial thought was 'have I worked with this person?'. This was something different as she brought with her two actresses from the local amateur dramatic group. Her novel, The Incomers, is about the experiences of a black woman who moves to Fife in the 1960s with her (white) husband. In order to incorporate what the village thinks rather than openly says McPartlin uses the idea of a party line (a shared telephone line) which allows characters, and the readers, to overhear more intimate and honest conversations. The two actresses dramatised these sections and the author read a short chapter.
This novel has received good reviews and I can see why - some of the audience was laughing away at parts of this and being about racism makes it more worthy, harder to criticise. Personally I thought it was dully written and full of cliches - the character of Ellie seemed to be lifted directly from Hortense in Andrea Levy's Small Island, not exactly a ground-breaking work itself.

Gradually losing the will to live, and beginning to understand empathise with Tony Scott, I perked up a little with the appearance of Alice Thompson. I've read a couple of her books and enjoyed them. She read a couple of extracts from her latest, The Existential Detective, and one from her forthcoming nove, Burnt Island.
The standard of writing certainly went up a few notches but I'm never quite convinced that she completely overcomes her influences especially J. G. Ballard. The extract from her new novel actually sounded good so perhaps she is finally coming into her own as writer.
(Thompson was almost a pop star, having been a member of The Woodentops in the 1980s who released a great debut album but the world took little notice).

The final writer of the night was Clare Askew, the only poet on the bill. A recent winner of a Scottish New Writers award Askew clearly has talent but she needs to spend more time editing, her poems clanked with some lumpen imagery (especially when using similies). Also she read one poem about Allen Ginsberg's mother claiming that not much was known about her, which makes me think she has never read Ginsberg because one of his best known poems is Kaddish about his mother.

In spite of everything I think you had fun at Blackwell's - enjoyed your review of the evening. I hope you were not the only one there.

>147 baswood: - it was relatively well attended but it's always difficult to know what many of the audience are friends and family at these events. It's still worthwhile supporting local artists when given the chance - occasionally you do find a golden apple.

Nile Rodgers (Unbound, EBIF, 2100, 18/0/12)

When I heard that Nile Rodgers was doing a free event at the book festival I thought count me in. The Chic productions of the late 70s and early 80s are some of the best pop music ever released - even if they had only released 'Good Times' their place in pop history would have be assured.

The format of Unbound is usually a mixture of music and spoken so I think most people turned up thinking that is what Rodgers would do - tell a story and then do a song. While people filed in Rodgers treated them to some jazz doodlings - (it turns out his first love is jazz) - but as soon as everyone was seated he put the guitar down and started talking. And he kept talking. He started with his birth and upbringing - his mother had him at 14, he has five brothers (all with different fathers), everyone was a heroin addict, and that he set the national truancy record of 75 days. While interesting it wasn't necessarily what the audience wanted to hear - where are the stories of rock and roll excess?

Rodgers must have picked up on some of this because he started to skip on - getting his first job on Sesame Street (he thinks he got it because he could read music and most guitarists can't, and because he had a green tinged afro), getting a job at the Apollo (a great story involving Screaming Jay Hawkins) before having a Damascene moment in England. The name of the band that inspired this change - Roxy Music. He phoned Bernard Edwards saying I have seen the light, we need to be a "truly immersive musical experience", to which Edwards replied with a few choice words. But that was the beginning of Chic.

At this point the guitar reappeared and he explained why the first Chic single 'Everybody Dance' has some usual chord changes. Essentially he didn't want to write simple chords because he loved jazz and so the progression isn't completely natural. Even in the later big hits he said he couldn't help throw in different chord sequences.

We got the drug rehab story - the result of a bad binge at a Madonna party and reading an article on Keith Richards which said he was going to kick drugs. If he can kick it then so can I. After overstaying the 28 day plan by 7 months he was kicked out of the rehab centre and quickly returned to New York. Despite telling no-one except his manager and housekeeper he got a phone call in a restaurant on the first night - it was Keef asking if he had any drugs!

After that it was onto Diana Ross and trying to convince her that 'I'm Coming Out' had nothing to do with the gay scene, etc.

Rodgers had talked for 90 minutes but decided he needed a break and so did I. Much as I had enjoyed it I didn't really need to hear the last 20 minutes or so.

>149 Jargoneer: - as an addendum to the Nile Rodgers talk. There is one thing that does interest me that doesn't get talked about - where did it all go wrong? Rodgers and the Chic Organization were unstoppable for 6-7 years - not only did Chic sell by the bucket-load, so did Sister Sledge and Diana Ross album they wrote & produced is the most successful of her career. (In a bizarre move they also wrote & produced one for Johnny Mathis but the record company moth-balled it claiming it could kill his career - a couple of tracks have appeared recently and they are good Chic tracks so who knows). Rodgers also produced Bowie's Let's Dance and Madonna's Like A Virgin albums which sold millions. Then it all stopped.

Or rather it didn't stop but the inspiration did. Nothing Rodgers has done in the last 25 years comes close to the music of his heyday. There has been good stuff and some million sellers (especially production-wise in the late 80s and early 90s) but it hasn't felt the same - almost as if he has been happy to coast for the last two decades. It feels a little like a waste, he is clearly a talented musician and has written some great songs.

Bruce Campbell - If Chins Could Kill: Confessions a B Movie Actor

Despite trips to the Edinburgh Book Festival to hear leading literary writers talk about the novel and short stories the only book I have been able to finish recently is this one - the memoir of Bruce Campbell, B Movie Actor.

For those who don't know who Bruce Campbell is this is unlikely to be a book you are interested in, but if you are still interested he is the star of the Evil Dead movies. Those who do know who Bruce Campbell is would probably add Bubba Ho-tep, The Adventures of Brisco County,Jr, My Name is Bruce, and Burn Notice to the list. For connoseurs of the less travelled paths of American cinema is not just an actor, he is a star.

This memoir is a relatively straightforward affair, starting with his upbringing in Michigan and ending with him in Hollywood or near enough. The early chapters about his family and revelling in the feardom that children used to have are OK but I find childhood hi-jinks pall quickly for me. (One of the criticisms I have of the book as a whole is the recounting of practical jokes - I'm sure they were hilarious at the time and those involved but they fall flat on the page. However I do appreciate that recalling these japes does give an insight into the 'all-lads together' atmosphere that prevailed in making the early films with friends).

After trying acting with the local dramatic company Campbell decides that is what he wants to do. Meeting up with a group of like-minded people (Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, Josh Becker, etc) they start making Super 8 films and showing them to the local community, via schools, universities, etc. Bhoyed by some early success and with ambition to make a feature film they then embark on filming what will eventually become The Evil Dead. For many, this will be the most interesting part of the book, as the friends try to raise funding (from anywhere - companies, parents, dentists), and have overcome conditions and technical issues, and bad food, to finish the film. (It's a little like a down-to-earth variation on Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical - "Hey gang, let's put the show on right here."). Because of the explosion of independent films over the last two decades stories like this are now two-a-penny but this is happening in the 1970s when dreams more often than not had to overcome infrastructure and technological realities.

After reshots (rarely involving the same actors) and editing, etc, The Evil Dead was successfully released, so successfully that the investors finally recouped their money six years later. It did give an opportunity to Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead director) to make a real Hollywood film though and that reality hit home quickly as the studio said no to Campbell in the lead - Raimi eventually got Campbell another role which has lead to the try to spot Bruce Campbell game in all Raimi's films. (The film also finished badly for Raimi as it was taken off him in post-production). Crimewave also introduced the Coen brothers to Hollywood and they too often still cast Campbell in small roles.

Campbell soon finds Hollywood less welcoming that it initially seemed - the life of a jobbing actor can be a bit of a drudge with a week here and another there, which contributed to the break-up of his first marriage. Campbell eventually found some consistent employment on a TV series, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, a comedy action series in which he played the lead - despite good reviews it was cancelled after one season. TV is where Campbell has made the biggest impact though: Jack of Trades may have fallen flat but guest roles in Hercules and Xena played well (all three of these produced by his own Super 8 friends, Raimi & Tapert) as well as giving him the chance to direct (to make ends meet Campbell has done quite a lot of behind the camera work, again often with the same group of people as before). And after the book came-out Campbell found more sustained success in the still running Burn Notice.

Campbell is refreshingly down to earth about acting - you turn up, know your lines (although this can be a problem on TV shoots as the lines make not be written until just beforehand - queue lines taped around the set) and respect the other people involved in making the film. He has little time for method actors and primadonnas with their quirks and demands. It is probably easier saying these things when your career is decidedly average. The one time Campbell made a play for the big time was with the film The Phantom - after audition followed by audition followed by audition and screen tests, and contract negotiations (this are agreed on before you are offered the part), etc, the choice came down to between himself and Billy Zane. They chose Zane. Campbell states it was then that he realised that he was happier with B than A.

This is not your standard actor's autobiography, about how great he was and she was, and how I battled my way up to stardom. Campbell would probably laugh that he battled his way down to acting but it is obvious that he loves what he is doing and feels very lucky he has been able to keep on doing it. The fact that he has been able to keep on doing some of it with childhood friends makes him even luckier.

It is recommended to people interested in how an independent film is made, those who want a sideways look at Hollywood, and Bruce Campbell fans.

For those who will like to experience the thrill of Bruce Campbell acting I would recommend either Bubba Ho-tep, where he plays Elvis, stuck in an old folks home battling a mummy, or My Name Is Bruce, where he plays the conceited B movie star, Bruce Campbell, who this time has to fight real evil.

Joyce Carol Oates (EIBF, 1130, 20/08/12)

As I looked round the packed auditorium I realised I was very much in the minority - the audience being 95% female and 90% over sixty. It is enough to make you worry about the future of reading.

Joyce Carol Oates is so slight that it looks like a strong breeze could carry her away, especially given the way her clothes billow around her forming natural sails. She talks like she writes, words just cascade from her.

She is at the EIBF to talk about her latest novel, Mudwoman, which it turns out partly owes its existence to Edinburgh as the last time she was here she had a dream about a woman whose face is layered, like makeup, with mud. She has decided to talk about the structure of the novel, illustrated with some readings, so she starts with the first chapter - set in 1963 it is a memorable scene of au unwanted baby being dropped into a swamp to drown in mud, written almost as a fairy tale. The second chapter takes place 50 years later as the child now a woman running a prestigious university starts to suffer the early effects of a breakdown. The prose in this section is clear and modern but as the two time-periods alternate chapters the prose moves to a unified style.

Landscape and setting are crucial to her in writing a novel, becoming like characters themselves: knowing where something is set can influence the development of the characters and style. She also needs the first and last line before any novel is begun.

Although she has began talking about structure she is now talking about style. She met the Scottish writer James Kelman on this trip and picked up a short story collection by him. She was so impressed by the way he keeps his style in the present, creating real suspense, making the reader feel an instense relationship with his characters. A real stylistic achievement.

This led onto a confession that she has never finished Finnegan's Wake, that Joyce's rich claret-like style is a special taste. Hemingway, on the other hand, seems superficially simple but his writing is like chiselling in ice. Faulkner however offers the eloquence of drunkeness.

The we are back with Mudwoman but this time with politics. It is a political novel, one that looks at the Iraqi war and the failure of American democracy to stop, to do something better. Politics in America seems to be in almost terminal decline, the campaign this year is worse than ever, with both sides just openly lying. And with that depressing note it was time to move to the signing tent.

Fascinating summary of JCO's remarks, Turner. I love attending and reading about author talks. Thanks for sharing!

Carlos Gamerro & Laszlo Krasznahorkai (EIBF, 2030, 20/08/12)

You have wonder how this double-bill came about. The most likely reason is that someone at the EIBF looked through the list of writers appearing and decided to throw them together because they had something in common - they are both foreign. Beyond that there does seem little to connect them - Gamerro is an Argentinian who produces esoteric novels that mash genres and are packed to seams with ideas; Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian who writes novels in long convoluted sentences (sentence?) that demand the reader pays attention to detail. Gamerro is a cult author while Krasznahorkai has become flavour of the month in some literary circles. Both speak English: Gamerro fluently, precisely; Krasznahorkai in long meandering sentences that have been described as lively if not completely comprehensible.

Gamerro opened this talk with an extract from his novel The Islands. An everyday tale of evil, artificial insemination, the beliefs of alchemy, etc.

Where do get your ideas? Gamerro is troubled by self-expression, the desire to write from within. He feels his writing is more a conduit, that is channelling something from beyond although he later admits that in order to write about his villain (who has also appeared in his next two books) he had to find his inner villain. Fiction is autobiography in reverse - the like we did not lead. The lead character in his novel fought in the Falklands War but he was in Argentina at the time, he is was in Mexico watching the situation from afar. It is difficult to do realism any more, often it is difficult to get people to believe in what really happened - they will more readily accept the strangeness of imagination than the strangeness of reality. (The idea of the failure of the realist novel to address aspects of reality was a thread that ran through all the talks I went to - fantasy, SF, the surreal give writers processes to deal with the unreality of the real world).

Krasznahorkai never wanted to be a writer, just produce one work. In my mind I aimed to make a process with words, I wasn't driven by characters until later. If there was a basis for the novel, it was the sad rain that falls in Hungary. When it was suggested that he didn't like paragraphs he protested "I like but not in my case". I write in my head and my sentences walk in there. Budapest is a beautiful city but I hate it, I love the countryside and in the countryside speak only with a comma. The comma belongs to is, dots belong to God.

At the end Krasznahorkai read from Satantango, which was his first novel but only now translated in England (I asked him why later and he said that everyone was waiting for George Szirtes) and it was mesmerising.

Still trying to imagine a JCO X JK cross and what kind of fiction that might produce.

I have always had an irrational aversion to Joyce Carol Oates, so haven't read much of her, but your review of Mudwoman makes me think that might change.

Interesting theory about the idea of the failure of the realist novel to address aspects of reality... the surreal gives writers processes to deal with the unreality of the real world. One to keep in mind.

After I go to these events I usually look the authors to see what they have been saying elsewhere. Krasznahorkai is very bleak on the future of literature (this is extracted from The Quarterly Conversation - Krasznahorkai interview

AD: You mean it’s not just the authority of literature that’s finished but literature as such?

LK: The so-called high literature will disappear. I don’t trust such partial hopes that there will always be islands where literature will be important and survive. I would love to be able to say such pathos-filled things, but I don’t think they’re true.

AD: And those who are still reading today, what will they do then?

LK: They probably won’t read. Could it be that people will once again begin to think for themselves? By thinking, I mean original thinking, without someone holding their hand. If I read the works of thinking people, they inspire me to think, but at the same time they give me categories and don’t set me free. Between them and Heraclitus’s rippling stream, they interpose a book. Maybe at some point in the future, there will be nothing between them and the rippling stream. And they’ll get nice and soaked.

AD: You mean we’ll lose the habit of reading because we’re too lazy. But it takes more energy to think than it does to read.

LK: You’re forgetting that human history is full of catastrophes, and it’s the catastrophes that force people to think. But I have another suggestion: we will return to a post-post-postmodern kind of sacrality. The spoken word will once again have a sacred force, which the written word will serve to record. I don’t mean some kind of archaic world, where we’re going to moon about by Stonehenge; on the contrary: the circumstances having changed, a completely transformed view of the world will be considered natural. I can imagine many possible scenarios, except that things will go on the way they are.

Enjoying your blogs on the author's evenings, or mornings in the case of JCO. She must be the biggest star in the literary world at the festival. Were you tempted by any of the author's books? The Krasznahorkai might be difficult.

>158 baswood: - I bought at least one book by all the authors (I like to get a signed copy as a memento) so I now have a small pile to get to. What was odd about Krasznahorkai was now good the reading from the novel was - it was a man addressing a crowd in a countryside bar that started about how he was going to get to the bottom of young girl's death from a few years ago but which ended up with him trying to sell them the idea of an utopian community he had dreamt up. The way Krasznahorkai read it it was as if he was trying to sell us this dream.

Great stuff in these posts. I wonder how you manage to remember all these details from live presentations. And, I'll second your recommendation of Bubba Ho-tep . It's been a while since I've watched many movies, so with this I managed to three rarities at once - to (1) see a movie in theater, (2) see an non-major movie and (3) see a good movie.

>160 dchaikin: - I have started taking quick notes when I'm at the talk just to jog my memory for later.

Tam O'Shanter (Assembly Mound, 25/08/2012)

How do you stretch a 10-15 minute poem out to 90 minutes and not become a boring mess? Communicado's answer to have song and dance, puppetry, video and a rhyming script that mixes the new with the old. The result is bawdy, riotious and very enjoyable. The whole cast sing and dance and play (the band are on stage, one minute playing an instrument, the next part of the cast) and it's all presented with such energy that it wouldn't be a surprise if the actors just leave the stage and collapse.

The whole poem of Tam O'Shanter is buried throughout the play as are other Burns poems and songs. The body of the play is build round the relationship of Tam and Kate, and the drinking of Tam, Soutar and various cronies on market day, where various bawdy tales are recited. It's full of humour, verbal and visual, and in a democratic touch every actor gets a chance to shine. (The band which mixes traditional instruments such as accordion, fiddle and whistle with keyboards were excellent).

The company use the stage and props imaginatively - a cart one moment becomes a bar the next, Tam's horse Meg consists of an actress and the actor playing Tam linking together to make rider and horse, etc. It's amazing how accomodating an audience can be watching a show where the actors walk off with a wall.

The finale of the poem where Tam spies on the meeting of the witches and ghouls in Alloway Kirk was suitably dark and sexy, with the chase cleverly done in slow motion. Most would have ended the show here but Communicado threw in one more scene: an older doubting Burns is visited by his muse - it could have been mawkish but it turned out to rather moving.

My one proviso is that it was very Scottish - the whole play was in Scots so many of the tourists in the audience may have missed some of the humour and wordplay,

The poem can be read here with an English translation alongside.

You did get to go to the festival then. Tam O'Shanter sounds great.

Gore Vidal - The City and the Pillar

Vidal's third novel caused a scandal when first published in 1948 due to his portrayal of homosexuality. Rather than the standard model of bookish effeminate men Vidal's homosexuals were masculine and athletic, and most damningly for the time some were also in the army. In 1948 being homosexual in a bookshop was one thing but being homosexual in the army, that was completely unacceptable. (How far this has changed and should change is a debate outside the scope of this review). While this scandal managed to sell copies of this novel, even meriting a cheap paperback copy, something that hadn't happened before to a work of 'gay literature', it had more far-reaching consequences for Vidal's career. In the ensuing years his novels weren't reviewed, creating an effective boycott on sales, and he had to look elsewhere to make his living - in television and film, and in writing pot-boilers. As the closeted fifties changed into the more permissive sixties Vidal moved back into literature, publishing a revised a copy of this novel in 1965.

This revision was not a minor one, it was effectively a rewrite. For example the title of the novel derives from the two sections, city and pillar, that the original was comprised of; the revised version has three sections, none of which are named. Vidal also changed the tone of the work, playing down the melodrama and cleaned up the prose. Notably the ending was significantly altered. As the 1965 version is now the standard edition it means that we are no longer reading the original 'ground-breaking' novel written by the twenty year old Vidal but one revised by the author as he approached forty.

Vidal also changed the tone of the work, playing down the melodrama and cleaned up the prose. Notably the ending was significantly altered. As the 1965 version is now the standard edition it means that we are no longer reading the original 'ground-breaking' novel written by the twenty year old Vidal but one revised by the author as he approached forty.

The story is a simple, oft-told tale, albeit with a gender twist. Jim Willard is a young athletic boy, not the brightest but very good at tennis, and a little shy about girls. His friend Bob is a year older and just graduated, a hit with the girls, is about to leave their small hometown and go to sea. They spent a weekend down at the cabin by the river and one thing leads to another. From this moment on Jim fantasises about a life with Bob, following him to sea a year later, and constantly trying to contact him, until after seven years they meet again with dire consequences.

In the time between meetings Jim spends time at sea before jumping ship after an unsatifactory leave with a colleague who tries to set him up with a woman. He then finds himself in Hollywood, becoming a tennis coach at a hotel before moving in with Ronald Shaw, a matinee idol who likes young men. This relationship ends when he meets the writer, Paul Sullivan, at one of Shaw's parties, with whom he moves to New Orleans, where is introduced to Maria Verlaine. The three of them go to Mexico where Jim and Maria attempt to consumate a relationship which Jim is incapable of doing. Returning to New York at the start of WWII Jim volunteers for the army but never sees action, being moved about the US on training duties before becoming ill and getting discharged.
When ill he writes letters to Ronald, Maria, and Paul, wanting to meet up again which they subsequently do. Shaw has been forced to marry a lesbian by the studio and his career is starting to decline; Maria has found herself a stable straight man; while Jim and Paul, at loose ends, resume their relationship again. Then Jim returns home for his father's funeral and finds Bob there, now married. While surprised Jim doesn't see this as being a real stumbling block to fulfilling his dream and so arranges to meet Bob in New York when he next gets shore leave. As you can imagine that meeting doesn't exactly go to plan.

It surprised me that Vidal had re-written this novel because at times the writing is surprisingly clunky, especially at the beginning where it reads like sub-Hemingway. (Vidal claimed that his initial stylistic inspiration was James T. Farrell, creating a social document with 'flat gray prose'). This 'flatness' extends to the main character, Jim, who is necessarily simple with little inner life - Vidal needs the character to focus on Bob rather than analyse the life he actually living. This makes him a little hard to sympathise with and you do have to wonder if Vidal is having a joke with the stereotype of the American jock here.

The life of the novel exists in the characters that Jim hooks up with, especially Shaw and Sullivan. Vidal, even at that early age, knew the worlds of Hollywood and the New York literati. In the former we get a glimpse behind the movie magazines at the life of gay Hollywood, how the studio shield allowed a certain amount of openness as long as it didn't rock the boat. Shaw himself is action star who constantly worries about ageing, his credits, and about the upcoming competition, some of whom are young men he introduced to the studio. (Of course, they are the worst). Later when he announces his retirement from films to tread the stage we can't help but think nothing has changed, especially when his theatre debut is a flop and he announces a triumphant return to the movies.

In New York we get campness and bitchiness, parties are about promoting yourself and denigrating others, preferably with a smile. Sullivan is probably the interesting character in the novel, a writer who has had some success but never enough, he ploughs on writing novels but can never make the big break through. However he almost wallows in his misery, as when he with someone he is constantly thinking about how they will leave him, even to the extent that he creates situations that encourage Jim to leave.

The gay life Vidal portrays in Hollywood and New York is not the seedy closeted life so often shown (the closest we come to that is when Jim frequents bars between partners) but relatively open, as long as people are careful. Perhaps that's why the novel didn't go down well in the 1950s, these were gay people who had parties and could enjoy themselves. That, and the army, where Vidal shows that relationships could happen, if you were careful. It is interesting that the only truly predatory gay man in the novel is a sleazy sergeant - were parents worried about what would happen to their sons when they enlisted.

**major spoiler**
The idea that gay men could have 'ordinary' lives in the 1940s was almost certainly shocking. Gay characters in many earlier novels were troubled tragic figures who lives are blighted by this 'disease'. This is what makes the ending of Vidal's book so interesting. After showing this lifestyle to be normal and healthy he choose to end the novel with Jim murdering Bob after being rejected. The commonly held belief is that Vidal was pressured into a downbeat end by his publisher but Vidal has said that was not the case.
Even if it were true that was not the case when Vidal rewrote the ending in 1965. The murder is gone but the new conclusion is actually more shocking - after being rejected Jim rapes Bob. When the reader departs Jim is slowly getting drunk in a gay bar. This seems to go back to the idea of the homosexual as tragic and troubled - it is true that it also achieves Vidal's aim of showing gay men as strong and athletic (in this case stronger and more athletic than his heterosexual equal) - but is this a failure of nerve?
Why do we expect a writers who belong to a minority to positively portray the group they belong to? (Especially since most writers say they belong to only one group - that of being a writer). Vidal could have shown Jim dancing off in the sunset at ease with himself, which would have created a more positive role model for certain readers, but making Vidal himself unease.

An important novel if not necessarily a great one.

Re Vidal's style - only twice do we get the kind of bon mots that he later became known for: "Boasting to a friend is one of life's few certain pleasures." & "The real horror of war is the novels that are written about it."

Dexys (Queens Hall, 18/09/2012)

First, a brief history lesson. In the summer of 1980 a new group appeared on the scene: with a look based on Mean Streets and a sound based on classic soul they stormed to No.1 in the UK charts with Geno. The subsequent album Searching for the Young Soul Rebels was a classic but already the band was in turmoil. They fell out with their record label, eventually stealing the masters in order to renegotiate their contract. More fundamental was the falling out of the two Kevins that lead the band, resulting in Kevin (Al) Archer leaving to form The Blue Ox Babes.
Rowland liked Archer's new idea of mixing soul with folk and promptly stole it, and his fiddle player. The resulting album Too-Rye-Ay was another classic but the bizarre tinker look and overwhelming success of Come On Eileen almost gave the impression of a novelty band.
Three years they returned, down to a trio and dressed as university chaps, a look that went down even worse than the previous one. The album, Don't Stand Me Down was a classic but with Rowland initially refusing to release a single it flopped, as did the subsequent tour and Dexys were no more.
In 1988 Rowland released the pop focused The Wanderer to deafening silence before getting lost in a haze of drink and drugs. In 1999 Creation Records offered him the chance to record again, a decision they would soon regret. The album, My Beauty, was comprised completely of cover version and came with one of the truly bizarre covers of recent years:

The album allegedly cost 250k and sold 700 copies, helping push Creation into bankruptcy. (For the record it actually contains a couple of great moments - the only decent version of The Greatest Love of All and an eight-minute over-the-top version of Rag Doll).
Then in 2003 they was a half-hearted Dexys reunion that resulted in a lukewarm tour and two old tracks reworked for a new greatest hits package. And that was that or so everyone thought. Until in 2012, to everyone's surprise a new look Dexys released an album, One Day I'm Going to Soar, that was well-received, with all the newspapers and magazines falling over themselves to say much they have always liked the band. The album, which is a concept one of sorts following Kevin Rowland's life from Ireland through a failed relationship to an acceptance of his life alone (as always Rowland's lyrics are incredibly personal), is probably their fourth best but at times it is very very good. (It could have been great but the drums are a little oddly recorded).

This brings me to the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 18th September 2012, and Dexys tour on the back of the new album. The new version of the band has three of the original members Rowland, bassist and vocalist Pete Williams and trombonist Big Jimmy Patterson; they are joined by, among others, Mick Talbot, once of the Style Council on keyboards, Lucy Morgan on violin, and Madeleine Hyland on vocals. The first half on the concert is a run through the new album - the songs are slightly expanded (including one great trombone solo by Patterson) but are essentially the same, highlights including the two duets by Rowland and Hyland (if the charts still functioned properly everyone would have spent the summer singing Incapable of Love). The band and presentation were great and 90% of the audience thankfully knew the new stuff.
The second half of the concert started with a storming Tell Me When the Light Turns Green before launching into a version of Until I Believe In My Soul which included a skit with Rowland and Williams as accused and officer. By now the band were really cooking. A ten minute plus version of Come On Eileen had everybody up and the building shaking. They ended with the majestic This Is What's She's Like. Four songs fifty minutes of sheer enjoyment.
I don't know if they'll be another Dexys album or tour but who cares, for 2 hours in Edinburgh on a cold September night they were truly magnificent.

Pawel Huelle (EIBF, 2030, 27/08/12)

One of the last events of the EIBF was the appearance of Polish writer, Pawel Huelle. He was there to talk about his new collection, Cold Sea Stories. Fortunately he brought along his translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who interpretated the questions and answers instantly.

The event started with Huelle reading one of his stories in Polish while most of the audience craned their necks to read the English translation of the story projected onto a large screen. Despite the language barrier Huelle was an interesting, and garrulous, talker. The book came about because he had lived his whole live by the Baltic sea - the cold sea had shaped him, both culturally and through the melancholic landscape.

Huelle sees himself as a writer of lost cultures - 19th century Poland was a true multi-cultural state while WWII changed it to a mono-culture. Although he was brought up in a traditional educated/intellectual Polish family his roots lie elsewhere - his grandparents were Polish, German, Jewish, and Ukranian. After 1945 you had to be a Pole Pole Pole but he found traces of lost cultures in Gdansk which fascinated him. He talked about the mennonite community that used to exist in Poland and how he believes that you can't achieve salvation by isolating yourself from the rest of the world.

One of the most famous paintings in Scottish art is this one -

The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch
The Reverend Walker makes an appearance in one of Huelle's stories and he explained how in search of another painting he came across this one at the National Gallery of Scotland. From him it combines irony and a celebration of the minister's great role while being jolly. Back in Poland he summoned up his ghost and sent him skating across a Polish lake.

He spoke of Borges who was criticised for not being Argentinian enough, too metaphysical, to which Borges replied that the library is my homeland. Huelle agrees and took it further - for me my library is sometimes my bedroom. When working late I sleep in my library and I can hear my books talking to each other. Literature is both a conversation between writers and between books - my David Weiser is a dialogue with Gunter Grass, for example.

I end with this piece of Huelle wisdom - without cats there would be no literature.

Turner, sounds like a love affair with Dexys. Of course I have a well played copy of The Young soul rebels in my collection (anybody would be crazy not to have), but after that they dropped off my radar. That is a very strange album cover.

Great review/history of The City and the Pillar

I had heard about a house in Edinburgh that hosted concerts but before this one I had never been. Less a house and more a flat this is as intimate venue as you are going to find - it is literally in someone's living room (albeit one that can squeeze in 80 people). Douglas Robertson, who hosts these nights, takes nothing in return, the whole amount of the ticket going to the artist. When we arrived we sat down at a sofa in front of the stage and ended up in a conversation with an older woman who turned out to be Emily Scott's mother-in-law. Taking no chances we plied her with wine. (Bizarrely Emily Scott's husband plied the audience with cupcakes).

Having seen both these acts before I knew what to expect. Neil Pennycook (Meursault) opened with a short 30 minute set. As Emily Scott acknowledged, in normal circumstances she would support Meursault (probably the biggest 'local' band in Edinburgh). If there was any justice in the (musical) world this man would be a star, blessed with an amazing powerful voice, he also possesses good songs. His tribute to his grandmother, Mamie, is beautiful, while singles like Flirtin' and the older William Henry Miller are number one in an alternate universe. If there is a reason why Meursault haven't broken through, it's simply that none of their recordings has really captured the live intensity of Pennycook and co.
(Click to experience Meursault)

Emily Scott plays the ukulele, not like George Formby strumming away but gently plucked, and is accompanied by three string players - violin, viola, and cello. Her songs are all gently melancholy which is one the downside of her set, there is a lack of variation in her material which she does acknowledge hence one attempt at incorporating a beat via an omnichord. Fortunately her humour and warmth between songs make up for some of the similarity, and she does have a beautiful voice, reminiscent of Joni Mitchell (in a good way) at times. By the end of the night she had run out of songs but no-one really bothered, it had been a great night.
(You can listen to Emily Scott's latest album by clicking here)

>167 baswood: - strangely enough when they were around the first time I dismissed them, I was trying too hard to be cool to like a band that popular. It was only hearing the albums years later that changed my mind.
I think Kevin Rowland is one of those mavericks that British music throws up from time-to-time, following a truly singular vision, who can be brilliant but as often are difficult and self-destructive.

Nathan Englander - The Ministry of Special Cases

Englander's eagerly anticipated first novel focuses on a Argentinian Jewish family in 1976 at the moment the Junta came to power. Kaddish Poznan, the father, makes his living chiselling off names from headstones, paid by respectable Jews erase their disreputable pasts. Kaddish, a hijo de puta himself, drags his son, Pato, on his after dark excursions into the walled off cemetery belonging to the closed synagogue that was once peopled by pimps, whores and gangsters. Kaddish and his son have a stormy relationship and Pato doesn't want to have anything to with his father's work. This antagonism reaches a peak one night when Kaddish attempts to force his son to chisel off a name and ends up chiselling off the tip of one of Pato's fingers. Trying to keep the peace between the two is Lillian who supports the family through her work in a travel agent - though she loves Kaddish she is disappointed in his choice of 'profession' and his style of fatherhood.
The first part of the novel focuses on this triangle and their trials and tribulations. Kaddish thinks he finally has hit the big time when Mazursky, a leading plastic surgeon, employs his services, only to find that Mazursky has no cash - so payment is made in kind with both Kaddish and Lillian getting new noses. In Kaddish's case he becomes handsome but Lillian's surgery is botched by a student.

The second part of the novel deals with the aftermath of Pato's disappearance. Lillian puts her faith in official channels, turning up at the Ministry of Special Cases only to find herself trapped in a bureaucratic hell straight out of Kafka. The police even doubt her being Pato's mother because her nose doesn't match up (when there is a problem with her new nose Mazursky agrees to fix it because of Pato's disappearance - she wants it returned to the way it was, Mazursky gives her a perfect one). When she does make progress and believes Pato is going to be released the police hand over a young woman instead - if a young woman is the cell then that must be the right person. Frustrated she tries to use the influence of a general who claims he do nothing, the head Rabbi who offers to put Pato's name of the list of disappeared, and a minister who takes her money to grease the official wheels but offers little concrete in return.
Kaddish, who feels responsible for Pato's disappearance (and is partly blamed by Lillian), tries other, less official avenues. He attempts to lean on people trying to break them but how can you break the broken? Eventually he meets with a man who claims to be a flight navigator employed on night flights to through the drugged bodies of young people into the river.
From then on Kaddish believes Pato to be dead but Lillian won't accept him as a husband if he accepts that truth and the rabbi won't let him have a burial because he has no body - if there is no body how can you be certain he is dead? There is only waiting.

Does Kaddish bring this tragedy on his family? Englander seems to be suggesting that by disavowing the past you risk the wrath of the present. The authorities follow Kaddish's opus memorandi by erasing the existence of individuals. How, they ask, can your son, Pato, exist if you have no papers to prove that he exists? (Papers that they have removed). The dumping of the bodies is merely an extension of this - with no papers (evidence) and no body people are written out of existence. The only defence is memory.

This is a good book - well-written, interesting, tackling big issues - but I just didn't warm to it. Part of the problem is that the first section is significantly less interesting than the second. Initially the book gets tied down to minutae which creates a sense of inertia in the reader which isn't helped by the themes being so obviously chiselled into the reader's brain. Once Pato disappears the book regains some momentum and Englander successfully pulls everything together. It is true that the details of life under the Junta feel a little second hand but in some ways that in itself is a truism - all dictatorships in the end resemble each other regardless of political creed - so if you have read other books on the same theme you may recognise the machinations of the plot.

Despite my reservations I recommend this and will be looking out for other Englander books in the future.

Don't think I could get 80 people in my sitting room but what a lovely idea.

Excellent review of The Ministry of Special Cases, Turner.

Great review. I'll be looking out for this book.

Enjoyed the Emily Scott CD, lovely vocals with some interesting arrangements behind her songs. Gentle melancholy is just my scene.

Fascinated by huelle. A long back I read a short story collection by Nathan Englander and wasn't impressed. I'm hesitant to try his novel, but enjoyed your review.

I don't expect anyone to read the next entry.

From Page to Screen: Scottish Writers on Film
(NLS in conjunction with the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 1800, 27/09/12)

Complementing the current exhibition on the cinema in Scotland the curator and NLS expert Andrew Martin's talk was supposed to be a whistle-stop tour of Scottish writers whose work had been adapted for screen. In reality it focused on the four big names - Scott, Stevenson, Barrie & Buchan - with a coda for a Spark and a brief look at the future.


Sir Walter Scott, as befits one of the most popular novels of the 19th century, was quickly off the mark in silent films, with 18 productions between 1909 and 1915 including two each of Ivanhoe and Rob Roy, three of Lochinvar (ideal for early silents due to it's lack of length), and four of The Bride of Lammermoor. (Virtually nothing of these films exists any more). After WWI adaptations of Scott's novels slowed, perhaps due to changing tastes, and there none after 1928 until MGM's version of Ivanhoe released in 1952. Despite a very American knight* and an unhappy Elizabeth Taylor, who felt she was miscast and viewed the film as little more than a western in armour, the film was a huge success, MGM's biggest of the year and number two overall. This resulted in a couple of other films based on Scott's work but the 1955 flop, Quentin Durward, ended Scott's cinema run.
Scott didn't completely disappear though as BBC have regularly produced adaptations over the last 50 odd years. What is interesting is that they took have stuck to the same few novels - Ivanhoe, Rob Roy & Kenilworth have all been adapted more than once. There has been an adaptation of Waverley itself nor of his masterpiece, The Heart of Midlothian. Given how far out of fashion Scott now is any more adaptations of his work currently seems unlikely.


Like Scott Robert Louis Stevenson was an early favourite of the silent era with versions of Treasure Island and Jekyll & Hyde being released in 1908, with another four versions of the latter appearing up to 1914. (Stevenson's popularity extends beyond the major novels, there were 3 versions of the short story The Suicide Club over the same period. After WWI the adaptations kept coming thick and fast, notably 1920 version of Jekyll & Hyde starring John Barrymore (famous for Barrymore doing the first transformation without the aid of effects or make-up). Eleven years later there was another prestige version of the same novel this time netting Frederic March an Oscar for the title roles. A decade later MGM pulled out all the stops with a new version starring Spencer Tracy which didn't do as well as expected. (When visiting the set Somerset Maugham was heard to ask, "which one is he now?" whill probably says all you need to know about the Tracy's performance). These weren't completely faithful to Stevenson's novel, adding a love story, but they were major films - bizarrely there hasn't been a major version of the story since, Jekyll & Hyde being relegated to the B-Movie horror and works "suggested" by the original. (One of my personal favourites is Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde, a 1971 Hammer production).
Treasure Island is one of the other big Stevenson works filmed early - the first notable version however was in 1934 when MGM decided to re-team the winning team from 'The Champ' - Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper - replacing much of the action and darkness with sentimentality. The next big version was Disney's 1950 version starring Robert Newton as Long John Silver, a performance that redefined our understanding of over-the-top. That amazingly was the last major version of Treasure Island until The Muppets travelled there in 1995. Again there have been numerous TV versions some of which have been very good.
The third big Stevenson novel as far as films were concerned is Kidnapped, with major versions in 1938, '48, '60 & '71, none of which managed to cast a Scottish actor in the main role of Alan Breck. (If Scotland gains independence Michael Caine may have to stand trial for his attempt at an Scottish accent). None of these versions are particularly great but the 1960 is probably the best, although the 1971 could be the most interesting in political terms.
Arguably the best Stevenson adaptation is a little known RKO 1945 film - The Body Snatcher starring Boris Karloff in a tale inspired by Burke & Hare. This was the one of last of the great Val Lewton sequence of chillers and well worth seeking out.


We now know J. M. Barrie almost solely for Peter Pan but he was a highly successful writer before that work, The Little Minister and The Admirable Crichton being especially popular. The level of his success can be gauged by the fact he turned down $100k for the rights to Peter Pan before WWI. When he eventually agreed to Pan being filmed he kept control over who would play his most famous character, choosing a little known actress - Betty Bronson. He was disappointed in the final feature as he thought it stuck too closely to the play.
His work was filmed continuously from 1913 and the advent of the talkies only increased his appeal. He joked how much he liked Paramount - they gave lots of money and thoughtfully changed all the titles of his plays. Come the 1940s adaptations of his work ceased and only a few have reached the big screen since - much of his work did see light on TV being ideally suited for the new medium, until eventually they dried - there hasn't been a non-Peter Pan Barrie work made in the last 30 years. While some of this can be down to changing tastes the bigger problem is the debate about Barrie's sexuality that has arisen over the same period. Like Lewis Carroll Barrie stands accused of paedophilia, like Carroll there is no real strong evidence to verify any of these allegations but nothing sticks like mud.


The final of the big four is John Buchan, one of the most successful authors of the first half of the 20th century, who has had a total of two novels adapted for the big screen - Huntingtower in 1928 as a vehicle for Harry Lauder and The Thirty-Nine Steps three times. Given that so many of his works are adventure stories and were popular this is odd.
The first version of The Thirty-Nine Steps starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, is a classic film that actually improves on the novel. Hitchcock did discuss filming the fourth Hannay adventure, The Three Hostages, for many years but some reason never did - it has been suggested that in North By Northwest he created his own Buchan adventure.
There are two other versions of The Thirty-Nine Steps, neither as good as Hitchcock's but OK films in their own right. (There was also a BBC version in 2008 that was so forgettable that I forgot that I had watched it). The star of the second one, Robert Powell, also went to portray Richard Hannay in a fairly low-budget TV series which I have fond memories of.
And that is Buchan on screen. It is strange that so little Buchan made the big screen considering his popularity and the adventure aspect of much of his work but sometimes the face doesn't fit, and Buchan had a very austere face.


The most successful Scottish writer of the Golden Age of Hollywood was A. J. Cronin, a successful medical doctor who turned to fiction when recuperating from illness. From the word go he was successful and Hollywood released a film a year, from the mid-30s to mid-40s, based on his novels. His biggest success was The Citadel, which highlighed the inequalities of 1930s health care and argued in favour of a national health service as a way of providing the same high quality service to all. (It should be noted that this novel was very well received in the US but 75 years the US they are still having the debate that everyone else settled decades ago). Now Cronin is probably best known for Dr Finlay's Casebook.


Martin then discussed two individual films - Whisky Galore!, the Compton Mackenzie novel based on real events following the shipwreck of the SS Politician with a cargo of 50000 bottles of whisky. Mackenzie forced Ealing studio to make the film on Barra which caused numerous problems for the production but helped to create a work that improves on the source material and like good whisky seems to be maturing nicely with age.
The second film was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which despite the title is not actually based on Muriel Sparks' novel but on the play of the novel. I'm with Martin on this one - it misses the nuances of the novel and is surprisingly turgid, enlivened only by career-defining performance by Maggie Smith in the title role.


So what is the future? The rumours are that Terence Davies is going to make Sunset Song. Much as I some of Davies work, and I imagine the Scottish scenery will look dazzling, he doesn't strike me as the director I would choose for a novel that deals with the gritty realities of small town Scottish life in the early years of the last century. The fact that the model Agyness Deyn has been cast as Chris Guthrie borders on the blasphemous.

While an interesting talk I wonder how others found it. I was fortunate that I knew most of the films and so pace of the overview didn't bother me but others may have found it a little too fast. If I was doing it I probably would have changed the method and looked at a few specific adaptations by major writers but each to their own. As it I enjoyed but I've had more enlightening discussions in the pub.

*this was a common occurrence at the time - the worst two, without any doubt, are Alan Ladd in The Black Knight and Tony Curtis in The Black Shield of Falworth.

Read it all! Great summary and love the picture of RLS...he always looks like trouble.

Glad to defy your expectations, what a wonderful summary. Presumably there is much more to cover - Trainspotting is a significant miss.

Of course I read it

No mention of Spielberg's Hook http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102057/ A 70 million dollar film with a mega cast. Mind you I wouldn't want to mention a Spielberg film.

Groanbox (42 Royal Park Terrace, 31/08/12)

Groanbox are duo comprising of Michael Ward-Bergeman, a classically trained accordionist (I didn't even know you could be a classically trained accordionist except in Russia) who also plays occasional flute and provides percussion with a mass of shells wrapped across a knee, and Cory Seznec, a guitarist/banjo-ist/harmonica player, who play a mix of folk, blues, and cajun, with just a touch of soul. The kind of band that always sound better live than on recordings, the slightly ragged live sound giving their music more punch. Groanbox may be drinking from the same well as a number of Americana bands but recording outside the USA has also added British folk and French chanson to the mix, and at times they sound closer to Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart (minus the distinctive voices unfortunately) than the traditional influences. They are fun, more than capable musicians, possess some decent songs and are engaging live. I would go and see them again.

From the house concert -
http://house-concerts-42.posterous.com/the-rather-brilliant-groanbox

Can be heard here -
http://www.myspace.com/groanboxmusic

During the break between sets I decided to buy a CD or two (best to encourage the music you want to hear) and ended up in a conversation about standing stones and Julian Cope, so here's hoping that their next album has a cover of Safesurfer on it.

Michael Sims (editor) - The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime

As Michael Sims points out in his introduction the 'gaslight era' is a fluid term, technically the gaslight age began in 1807 and was beginning to end in the 1880's (the filament lamp being invented in 1879), bearing this in mind he settled on the period from the 1890's to 1920:

For me gaslight invokes a mood and a voice, both of them romantically luminous with distilled scenes from Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The term implies an urban setting, minus the honking stench of our modern highways; sophisticated characters, but not twenty-first-century cynics.

I tend to agree on this - Sherlock Holmes must be the epitome of the gaslight character - but I'm not sure I would have progressed to as late as the early 1920's. (For me, the beginning of WWI is the key break with the romantic period).
Not all the thieves are gentlemen but most are and there is only one woman (Sims states that the heyday of the female crook was yet to come, beyond the scope of this book). In most cases it is usually the undeserving rich who are fleeced, which probably appeals as much today (given the current economic climate) as it did back then, and which also has the benefit of removing sympathy from the victim. Added to that is the fact that most of these stories are about the appropriation of property - diamonds and paintings, mainly - and we have a genre crying out for a Marxist critique but these revolutionaries eschew violence in favour of the intellect.

Grant Allen - The Episode of the Diamond Links (1896)
Allen was one of those well-educated Victorian gentlemen who appear to have taken an interest in everything. He was a leading science writer of his day - a defender of evolution who also did important work in the field, an early psychologist, etc, etc. He turned to fiction to make a living and also it gave him a platform to air his more free-thinking ideas: his most famous novel, The Woman Who Did, portrays a well-educated who decides to have a child out of wedlock; his time-travel novel, The British Barbarians, highlights the hypocrisy of Victorian marriage and promotes adultery/free love. In fact Allen wrote and wrote and wrote - "Allen worked so hard that his severe writer’s cramp became a cautionary fable among fellow writers."
(For the trivia buffs - Allen gets a mention in Wells' The Time Machine).
The Colonel Clay stories were among his most popular (and were serialised by the BBC as recently as 2001) - in them the Colonel Clay robs the same person, Charles Vandrift a South African diamond millionaire. This is the second of them.
While in Lucerne the Vandrift party befriends a nice little parson with a nice wee wife, he a cricketing Oxford fellow, she a bonnie Scotch lass. One evening, Amelia Vandrift, the wife, notices that Jessie is wearing a necklet with two diamonds that match her own necklace which has two stones missing. They then try to take advantage of the young couple only to have the tables turned on them.

Guy Boothby - The Duchess of Wiltshire's Diamonds (1897)
While Colonel Clay was the first villain to be the 'hero' of a series, Boothby's Simon Carne was the first 'gentleman thief' - a man independently wealthy and accepted in the right social circles who does it for the thrills. Boothby also created the master criminal Dr Nikola, who appeared in five novels, and who influenced later villains such as Fu Manchu and Dr Mabuse. (I've always wondered why they are called master criminals when all their nefarious schemes are thwarted).
In this over-convoluted tale Carne moves to London, next door to the great detective, Klimo, who is not what he seems, and promptly sets about stealing the duchess' diamonds. If I tell you it's the old false bottom trick I won't be revealing too much. This is one of the longer tales in the book and one of least interesting, simply because it is too detailed and told with a lack of humour.

E. W. Hornung - Nine Points of the Law (1898)
Hornung was Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law and it is often said that his criminal hero Raffles has as a close relationship to Sherlock Holmes. As Holmes has Watson, Raffles has Harry 'Bunny' Manders. Raffles even has a pre- and post- death career with fans similarily stating that the first tranch of tales are superior. (The reason for killing off their characters were radically different - Doyle did it because he was fed up of Holmes, Hornung did it because of the criticism relating to Raffles being a hero and a criminal - he had to be punished).
Raffles is the most popular of all the gaslight criminals, and growing up I loved the TV series starring Anthony Valentine in the title role, although it could look a lttle dated now. Despite his status as a gentleman, and one of England's best cricketers, Raffles steals because he needs the money (with the occasional theft to test his abilities). In this tale he spots an advertisement for a risky job with a £2000 reward. This task turns out to involve the return of a painting to it's rightful owner whose son stole it and sold to an Australian QC in order to pay his debts. Being a cad the Australian refused to sell it back. Raffles, on finding out the painting was sold for £5000 proposes a double-or-nothing deal which accepted on the basis of the solictor handling the case being a fan of his bowling. If you can fool the Aussies on the pitch you can fool them off it as well. Since we know Raffles will succeed half the pleasure of this tale is how Bunny will get in the way. Enjoyable.

Robert Barr - The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds (1904)
Barr was another prolific writer who wrote in a number of different area but may be best known none for co-founding The Idler and finishing Stephen Crane's last novel. This story concerns his French detective, Valmont, who may or may not have been an influence of Agatha Christie's Poirot.
This is an unusual tale in that it tells of Valmont's failure from his point of view while technically there is no crime committed. Valmont's remit is to protect a valuable diamond necklace following its sale at auction until it leaves the country. When the necklace is bought and paid by an American everyone in the room is held at gunpoint for five minutes to let the agent of the purchaser to get a clean start. The rest of the story is Valmont trying to piece together everything to come up with a solution. It can be read as a satire on the clever detective, Valmont following false leads to come up with culprits when the true solution turns out to be frightening simple. Fun for what it is.

Arnold Bennett - A Comedy on the Gold Coast (1905)
Bennett, despite what Virginia Woolf said, proved himself to be a first rate novelist with works like The Old Wives' Tale and Clayhanger. In his down time he liked to dash off the occasional crime story.
Cecil Thorold takes us back to the millionaire gentleman crook who gets involves in schemes to ward off boredom. Simeon Rainshore, American businessman, objects to the attachment his daughter Geraldine has made with Harry Vaux-Lowry, who is currently impoverished but heir to the rich Lord Lowry. Rainshore has stated Vaux-Lowry can marry Geraldine if he can get $500k from his uncle, which he knows won't happen. Thorold decides to play matchmaker and supply the lovelorn boy with the money, which he raises through trickey and manipulating the stock market, which gives the tale a certain modernity. This is a smart story, told with gusto, and unique in that Thorold partakes of that modern money-trading method of making a fortune out of speculation.

William Le Queux - The Story of a Secret (1906)
Le Queux was a pioneer of two genres, the spy story and science fiction, the latter being future war novels warning the Empire about threats to it. Le Queux's villain/hero is Count Bindo di Ferraris, although the stories about him are narrated by his English
chauffeur, George Ewart, who is often in the dark about his employer's plans despite participating in them.
Although this is a book about crime technically this tale is an espionage one, with Ewart playing the part of a husband to a beautiful actress, whom Bindo is using as bait to trap a German officer into revealing vital military secrets. OK but could have done with being tighter.

O. Henry - The Chair of Philanthromathematics (1908)
There isn't really much point mentioning anything about O. Henry as everyone probably knows who he is and what type of short story he is famous for.
Having read a story in the newspaper about a gift of $50m being left for the cause of education the narrator's friend, Jeff tells him of the time that he and his friend, Andy, got involved in pilanthromathematics. Having made $25k prospecting silver the two friends find themselves in Floresville, a small town with nothing to recommend it, where they set up a university from scratch, in the process spending virtually all of their fortune. Andy meantime has hired a professor of mathematics at $100 a week, when all the real money is getting spent in a Faro bank, and then....
With an O. Henry story you know what you get and there is a certain amount of skill in the way he delivers but I can't help feeling that most twist stories are a litte unsatisfying.

George Randolph Chester - Get-rich-quick Wallingford (1908)
Chester's tall charismatic con-man was a very popular character in the early years of the last century, appearing in a number of books, films and a successful stage play. Wallingford's method is to create a business, get the gullible to invest it and then pocket the money, not unlike much late 20th century businesses or banks.
What is included here is not really a short story but the first two chapters of the first Wallingford novel. Still we get to see him snare his prey by carefully preparing the ground and then closing the cage on them. His idea of creating carpet tacks with different coloured heads to blend in with the environment doesn't sound that mad which probably helps. I didn't really warm to Wallingford but I can see why others did.

Frederick Irving Anderson - Blind Man’s Buff
Besides the Infallible Godahl who we meet in this story Anderson also created series around a female thief, Sophie Lang, a detective, Deputy Parr, and a mystery writer who is too clever for his own good, Oliver Arniston. Lang was his most successful, appearing in three films in the mid-1930's until morality put a stop to her cinematic exploits. Anderson also mixed and matched his characters, Parr investigates crimes by Lang and Godahl, and, in a early postmodern touch, has Arniston create Godahl.
This story concerns the blind magician, Malvino, a friend of Godahl - both experts in their field.

Godahl had known Malvino first in Rome. The great of the earth gravitate toward each other. No one knew how great Godahl was except himself. He knew that he had never failed. No one knew how great Malvino was except Godahl. Once he had attempted to imitate Malvino and had almost failed. The functions of the third finger of his left hand lacked the wonderful coördination possessed by the magician. Malvino knew Godahl as an entertaining cosmopolitan, of which the world possesses far too few.

Malvino has been engaged by the Pegasus Club, a group of fifty millionaires (one of whom is Malvino), to perform a trick for them - to escape from their sealed vault - but who also have plans to unmask the magician as a fraud. In a battle of wits only one side is ever going to win and that both Malvino and Godahl will end the night enriched is more than likely. This is one of the best stories in the collection, Anderson is a better writer than most: clever and amusing.

William Hope Hodgson - The Diamond Spy (1914)
Hodgson is now remembered for his supernatural tale: the first-rate The House on the Borderland, the sprawling The Night-Land, and tales of the ghost-hunter Carnacki. His Gault stories, of which this is one, involve a ship's captain who also dabbles in crime, and are told in the form of his log.
Gault, who is possession of a number of diamonds, realises that one of passengers, Mr. Algae, whom he refers to as number 17, is a spy for customs. With the help of some chickens and some pigeons Gault manages not only manages to outwit the spy but has him brought to heel by his superiors. Not bad but not one of my favourites.

Sinclair Lewis - The Willow Walk (1918)
Lewis doesn't really need an introduction, the first American Nobel Prize winner, author of novels such as Main Street and Elmer Gantry, it is a little surprising to find him in this collection but as Sims points outs Lewis' books are full of characters with less than pure motives.
Jasper Holt is the pinnacle of respectability, a gentleman through and through, working as Senior Paying Teller at the Lumber National Bank. He has a twin, John, who is a odd bod, a hermit writing a religious treatise, except that there is no twin: Jasper is John. Having created dual identities Jasper is able to rob the bank and get away with it but that's when the problems start - his conscience won't let him get away with his crime.
While in some ways this is a decent if overly familiar story the premise behind it runs counter to the rest of the book. The other stories are all about gentlemen (or lady) criminals gleefully getting away with their ill-gotten gains. For this reason alone it is the worst choice in the collection.

Edgar Wallace - Four Square Jane (1919)
Wallace wrote an incredible 175 novels, not to mention plays and articles, and the original screenplay for King Kong, all before he died at the age of 33. Despite earning £50k a year in the 1920s and 1930s when he died his estate was in debt to the tune of £140k (approximately £7m in today's money).
Four Square Jane eventually appeared in enough stories to make a collection, published in 1929, but this is her appearance. I use appearance lightly as we never really get to 'see' Jane as the story is told from the point of view of the detective. Jane is a little different from the other criminals on show in this collection as she is more of a Robin Hood figure, robbing the undeserving rich to give to deserving poor. In this tale she manages to steal a valuable painting from under the nose of the police and owner, blackmailing the latter to give £5k to a children's hospital for its return. The actual revelation of how she did it is a little silly but the story itself is diverting enough.

At the time I picked this up I wanted a book that would divert and entertain and that it did - better than expected writing and some dexterous plotting add up to a pleasurable read.

Wow. That sounds interesting, and I love the term "gaslight crime." (Although the term gaslight to me means "To manipulate events and situations in order to make a person believe that he or she is crazy.")

Great and extensive review of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime. Normally, I am cautious to buy anthologies. I had seen this book on line, but your review makes me want to buy and read it.

Ah, gaslight, crime and there must be some fog in there too. Sounds like a wonderful book for in front of the fire this winter. I agree with you about the break being at the start of WWI.

>183 Nickelini: - I've heard that before as well so I looked it up. The term 'gaslighting' is derived from the Patrick Hamilton play, Gaslight (1938) in which a husband tries to drive his wife insane. (Most people know it from the 1944 Hollywood film featuring the first screen appearance of Jessica Fletcher, I mean, Angela Lansbury. The film itself got involved in a scandal - MGM tried to suppress the 1940 British version to the point of trying to destroy the negative).
I think the editor may have picked up the idea from an earlier book - Dover Thrift Editions published a book called Detection By Gaslight in the 1990's.

>185 SassyLassy: - now that I think of it there are no scenes in fog-drenched streets where every shadow and noise contains menace. Most of the crimes take place in rather nice places, these are criminals who prefer to dine at Downton Abbey than stalk their prey through the streets of Whitechapel.

Another history-of-literature lesson. Enjoyed your review.

Enjoyed your journey through Gaslight Crime. All good harmless fun? Nice to see an Arnold Bennett story in the mix. The collection reminded me of the Margery Allingham novel Tiger in the Smoke, but this was written in 1952 and apart from the fog and smoke bears little resemblance to the short stories in the gaslight crime collection.

I will pass on Groanbox, - I hear far too many accordion players in this part of the world and its not my favourite instrument.