Best of this funny old year’s reads: Reads of, if not from, 2016

Tags

Book Review, Books of The Year, Soapbox

A strangely old best of the reading year: Top reads of 2016

It has been a very weird year, both ‘out there’ within the wider world – which, of course, paradoxically seems set on being a smaller, narrower, meaner world obsessively devoted to self-harm in a foolish attempt to numb its pain – and, reflected in my reading world

I have read (though in some cases, abandoned in disgust) 113 books. Now some of them are still to be reviewed on here : I am regrettably behind on my reviews. But I haven’t posted anywhere near treble figures on reviews. My ‘won’t make the blog unless it is at least a CLEAR (not rounded up) 4 star’ tells its own story. And a goodly number of the books read have not been reviewed anywhere. Books so drearily derivative or, just so abysmal, that I abandoned time spent with them as soon as indecently possible. And that included any time spent explaining their dreariness. Better to head off quickly to time spent with a wonderful book.

I note that a goodly proportion of my ‘best ofs’ were not just reads, but re-reads: books so good half a life-time ago, that it was a treat to dust them off and say hello again. And also, books by authors never read at their time of writing: older writers, discovered.

I think what has, in some ways, sadly, impressed me about those mainly dead and gone older writers is their discipline and craft with language, character, setting, style and narrative. Writers with things to say, and the ability to say what they said memorably and with authenticity. We have a fast-book culture, and sometimes I think, that like fast-food, we have surrendered ourselves to ersatz, sitting heavy in the gut, and with little memorability or feeding much at all.

Now I HAVE read some most enjoyable new books this year, and a small number have crept into my ‘best of’ but, in the main those older reads were more powerful at keeping me thinking and admiring, weeks after closing their final pages.

But I’m still quite shocked to discover (getting into the stats thing) that despite reading 41 books published this year, only 1 of the 2016 novels got into my top fiction reads. Though I race to also say I read some very very good new fictions indeed. It’s just those earlier writers took centre stage

I also had to leave it at top 9 and top 8, as they were clear, and having spent several days agonising over which titles should get the final places, particularly the fictions, as some 5 or 6 were together at the finishing line, I thought I’d podium place the smaller number. If I had to rank, I’d still be here by midsummer 2017, constantly rejigging!

So In no ranking order, just in the order they were read :

Non-Fiction – I had a great NF year, including, inevitably some NF standout re-reads (Oh, Virginia! Oh, George! You delighted me a lifetime ago and you delight me more, and still)

Bee Wilson is an utterly engaging writer on matters historical and foodie – together. I love the history of the domestic, but with First Bite, she soared to new heights, as she wove other passions of mine together – the psychology of food, the relationship we have with food, the politics of the food industry, childhood and the development of taste

Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City as ever, with her reflective, soulful writing about the arts and her relationship with them, delighted me. This book explores mainly American artists, some known to me, some not, and the role of solitariness, alienation and the ability to observe both one-self, and the society one inhabits, in artistic creation. It was also a book which had me blessing the internet as I could search for every artwork she was describing so eloquently

Martin Stevens’ Cheats and Deceits was a fabulous book about the evolutionary ploy of Cheating and Deceiving, and the myriad ways in which it manifests and works. In a year where cheating, deceiving political figures appear to be on the brink of taking us to regrettably dangerous places, it has been quite salutary to think of Trump, Farage et al as particularly obnoxious blister bug larvae, and the populace as a sadly duped Habropoda pallida, taking (to mangle a metaphor beyond recognition) these vipers to the bosom of their children’s nests. Whaaa? Habropoda Pallida is a bee species, and the obnoxious blister bugs hop onto the duped HP, so that they will get carried back to bee nest. Their favourite food is young bee grubs – i.e. they destroy the next generation and its world

On the heels of my snucking in the politics of the present, came a re-read of the wonderful George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Orwell, like many in his generation with a sense of idealism enlisted for the left in the Spanish Civil War. This was part of Kaggsysbookishramblings 1938 Club. I have loved Orwell’s writing since first discovering him in my teens. And I loved what his writing revealed to me of the man. He still seems an unusually honourable figure

Svetlana Alexievich’s harrowing Chernobyl Prayer allows those most directly affected by the blowing of the nuclear reactor, ordinary Belarusians, to tell their own stories and the land’s story. This is compassionate journalism as witnessing.

I needed some non-fictional joy, following a couple of painful recognitions of what our worst can lead to, and I got it in John Powell’s enthusiastic, playful, erudite Why We Love Music. Another read outrageously enhanced by the benefits of the internet, as I could roam around listening to snippets of illustrative sound

The January Man, which I read in the summer as an ARC from Amazon Vine has not yet been reviewed on here, as there seemed little point to whet appetites when its publication day is the 12th January 2017. The link therefore is to my Amazon UK review. Suffice it to say Christopher Somerville’s wondrous book is much more than a book about walking through the landscape of these isles, it’s a journey through time, through relationship, through music, and it made my heart sing even whilst it made me weep. Curiously, it also reminded me, in the compassionate tenderness of Somerville’s writing, of the very first Olivia Laing book I read, To The River. It will be appearing here closer to publication date with some entrancing media

Jeanette Winterson was my big find of the year. How could I have missed her, how? Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is the autobiographical story which provided much of the material which formed the narrative of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. Here is a woman with a childhood start which is unbearable to contemplate, but whose fierce, fierce, glittering intelligence, and whose capacity for joy sing out. She had me laughing so hard through my tears and anger

And my non-fictions end with Virginia. It’s easy to think of Woolf through knowing her end, and the mental illness she suffered. But she was another who burned with intelligence, humour, joy. A Room of One’s Own takes to the barricades of feminism; singing, wit, creativity and incisive argument its weapons. Again, one I devoured in my twenties, and though much has been achieved since its writing unfortunately it still has relevance, and is not a purely historical read

So to the fictionals – and, as you will see, Virginia and Jeanette take their places on this podium too

It seems kind of fitting that Virginia Woolf should have been my last top non-fiction, and turn out to be, late in February, the first of my top fictions. I re-read – or probably re-re-re-re read To The Lighthouse, as part of Ali’s Brilliant Woolfalong. What can I say? Any time I re-read this one its going to make a best of list. Is it possible (yes!) that it continues to get better, that I continue to find more, with each read. Looks like it,

Alain Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes, first read, most potently, in my adolescence, was another re-read. I approached it slightly nervously, as with any book which had glowed out, and been remembered, for decades. Could it speak to a much older reader, or would its delights be limited to youth. Well, good heavens, there was again so much to discover and to re-discover. A shifting focus, a little more ability to stand outside so that, on this read, Fournier’s extraordinary craft and magic delighted my more critical, intellectual appreciation.

Meaulnes led me to another favourite, more modern author – John Fowles, whose The Magus owed a deep (and expressed) debt to Fournier. The French Lieutenant’s Woman plays majestically with the novel’s structure. He was using ‘meta-fiction’ devices quite early. Everyone does it now, but it was a wonderfully playful, sly thing, when I encountered it first (yes, another re-read)

Finally we get to a fiction published this year, Eowyn Ivey’s To The Bright Edge of The World. In part, her inclusion is because her first, The Snow Child, was such an extraordinary first novel that she had set herself a dangerous peak to attain with her second. So I was delighted to find that this book was both very different from her first, but had elements of the strengths of her first – the potency of myth and magic, and, oh yes, the wonderful, cold, mysterious setting of the frozen North

H.E.Bates was an author I thought I had read but in fact, never had. Love for Lydia (which had been a TV adaptation which I never saw) was a sheer delight. Luscious writing, restrained writing, in this story of the interwar years.

Christopher Isherwood’s Mr Norris Changes Trains was another re-read. Once again, I think in part it is the lurch to the right which has made many of us think uneasily of those major conflagrations of the twentieth (and of course we are moving through the hundredth anniversary of the 1914-1918 War To End All Wars) Isherwood’s part autobiographical part-fictional narrative of his time in Berlin as the world of the 30s was doing its own inchings to the dark places, as dangerous demagogues were making their appeals to hatred, fear and castigation of ‘the other’

Oh, Virginia again! Her magnificent cross-gendering historical fiction Orlando was my very first Woolf, in my teens. And this romp from Elizabethan England to the twenties crossing geography and gender, mixing historical personages with invented ones stays so pleasurable – another book where I wasn’t only re-reading, but re-re-reading

I discovered Jeanette Winterson’s 1997 novel through some chance or other, this year. Gut Symmetries was my first Winterson, in late August. I am currently reading my fourth, so, perhaps, expect more Winterson’s to imperiously demand inclusions in best ofs, for 2017. A marriage of the story of an affair and the Grand Unified Theory of particle physics. Rarely does a writer make me think about maths and physics so delightfully, and force a mental work-out without making me whimper

And there, sadly I have to leave it. There were just too many books fighting really really hard for the final two places. I could briefly decide to place one or two, but the others started screaming ‘Me! Me! deservedly, so I would substitute, but the screaming never died down.

At least all the ones chosen meant that the unchosens stayed respectfully silent and stopped yelling at me that they deserved the podium instead.

Duelling Banjos were menacing enough, with or without the presence of Voight and Reynolds, without the nervousness of duelling books at dawn, fighting for places!

And, of course, I wish you all the very best for you, yours and all your books, in 2017. I hope we might have some chance of living in ‘less interesting times’ as far as ancient Chinese curses go. I wish you all a harmonious year, and excitement, derring do and much ‘interesting’ firmly within the pages of your books!

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William Butler Yeats – Vacillation

Tags

Poetry, Reading Ireland, Vacillation, William Butler Yeats

I

Between extremities
Man runs his course;
A brand, or flaming breath.
Comes to destroy
All those antinomies
Of day and night;
The body calls it death,
The heart remorse.
But if these be right
What is joy?

II

A tree there is that from its topmost bough
Is half all glittering flame and half all green
Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
And half is half and yet is all the scene;
And half and half consume what they renew,
And he that Attis’ image hangs between
That staring fury and the blind lush leaf
May know not what he knows, but knows not grief

III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,
And yet upon these maxims meditate:
All women dote upon an idle man
Although their children need a rich estate;
No man has ever lived that had enough
Of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.

No longer in Lethean foliage caught
Begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb.

IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

V

Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.

VI

A rivery field spread out below,
An odour of the new-mown hay
In his nostrils, the great lord of Chou
Cried, casting off the mountain snow,
`Let all things pass away.’

Wheels by milk-white asses drawn
Where Babylon or Nineveh
Rose; some conquer drew rein
And cried to battle-weary men,
`Let all things pass away.’

From man’s blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What’s the meaning of all song?
`Let all things pass away.’

VII

The Soul. Seek out reality, leave things that seem.
The Heart. What, be a singer born and lack a theme?
The Soul. Isaiah’s coal, what more can man desire?
The Heart. Struck dumb in the simplicity of fire!
The Soul. Look on that fire, salvation walks within.
The Heart. What theme had Homer but original sin?

VIII

Must we part, Von Hugel, though much alike, for we
Accept the miracles of the saints and honour sanctity?
The body of Saint Teresa lies undecayed in tomb,
Bathed in miraculous oil, sweet odours from it come,
Healing from its lettered slab. Those self-same hands perchance
Eternalised the body of a modern saint that once
Had scooped out pharaoh’s mummy. I – though heart might find relief
Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief
What seems most welcome in the tomb – play a pre-destined part.
Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
The lion and the honeycomb, what has Scripture said?
So get you gone, Von Hugel, though with blessings on your head.

I have had, for a time, an uneasy relationship with W.B. Yeats. He was an early (though, thankfully not lasting) casualty of academia. Yeats was an intensive and obligatory part of my degree, and the detailed dissection with literary scalpels killed the life in the poetry stone dead. Yeats and Chaucer lay side by side, dismembered. Yeats was lucky, he inhabited only a shallow grave, but my resistance to digging up Chaucer’s bones continues to this day.

I was probably one of the luckier ones: some perhaps found it impossible to approach literature with joy and excitement ever again. One permanent corpse seems like a small price

Yeats began to rise and speak again to me quite soon, and this particular poem, Vacillation, from his 1933 Collection, The Winding Stair and Other Poems, was one of the ones which brought me back to hear his complex, beautiful voice

I was going through the almost obligatory early twenties state of existential unease, reading Sartre, Camus – and alongside, a lot of Colin Wilson’s non-fiction – starting of course with The Outsider, which focused on some writers I loved. But Wilson, alongside alienation was also looking at its opposite – connection. His writing introduced me to the work of American psychologist Abraham Maslow – which immediately struck a chord.

Western psychiatry, like Western medicine seemed focused on the damage, the lesion, the woundedness of the psyche. Maslow was championing a focus on the health. I suppose he was an early proponent (or a hangover from a much older tradition) of what might be called holistic medicine. Maslow was interested in studying the psychology of the healthy, recognising that this might be something which might be emulated, and, in terms of psyche, found within us all.

Maslow referred to the ‘A-Ha!’ moments, what he called Peak Experiences – that sense of coming right, being in the flow, somehow expanded into a world of meaning, connection. It’s the other side of the coin to that alienated disconnect, the sense of sickness, wrong, discomfort in one’s own skin and the skin of the world.

What has this to do with Yeats? (I can hear the muttering at the back)

Well, as Wilson was writing about Maslow, and Peak Experiences, he illustrated this with four lines from Vacillation, which resonated, profoundly, with me, and not only sent me back to Yeats, but have also been lines rather carved into my being

Yeats wrote the poem, a long and complex one, in middle age. In his 50s, he had long moved away from his sojourn and sympathy with Revolutionary Ireland, away from the lilting misty green lyricism. Politically he had moved rightwards (another reason for falling out of my favour!) in many ways. His poetry felt difficult to me.

In Vacillation, Yeats is looking back and forward on his life. He manifests much cynicism about the world – look at that cynical snarl in the first 3 lines of stanza III

Get all the gold and silver that you can,
Satisfy ambition, animate
The trivial days and ram them with the sun,

But, it is that 4th stanza, for me, the heart of the poem, and a wrenching into reality, that flames into clarity, particularly the last four lines, which are so potent – and something which resonated most powerfully for me:

My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

The language is unerringly simple, almost trite with its rhymes, but the meaning, profound.

And the placement of it, in the midst of some complex dialogues between Heart and Soul, within classical allusions Attis, Lethe, not to mention the Lord of Chou and von Hugel, the reference to whom is by all accounts linked to a book contrasting Homeric and Christian symbolism, is also potent.

There is the complicated surround, a kind of tangle of intellectual, philosophical themes, which almost pushes away and alienates the casual reader – and then, suddenly, in stanza 4, there is the recounting of the most ordinary of events, a prosaic normality, sitting in a café in London – and suddenly , blazing, being blessed, being able to bless.

By setting the A-Ha! The Awake! In the middle of the prosaic, Yeats acknowledges the absolute ordinary extraordinariness of those rapturous, graceful moments where suddenly we arrive at a sense of meaningfulness.

Those four lines have become a kind of mantra for me – a sense that however dark and alienated and full of ‘trivial days’ the world can sometimes seem, or us within that world, those pockets of twenty minute blaze are as much of reality as the sense of alienation. And, I believe the ‘blaze’ trumps the alienation, because the blaze also enfolds and acknowledges the alienation, the sense of blessed and could bless encompasses the knowledge of disconnection, whereas the disconnected moments cannot remember and hold the possibility of the other

And, in an irreverent conclusion, Yeats is clearly advising all of us to keep reading, and to keep reading in cafes: they are clearly excellent for the bless bless moments of awakening!

So, this Irish poet, reminds me, in Reading Ireland Month, how poetry is one of the provokers of the ‘super-reality, awake, awake!’ experience

Here is Yeats, near the end of his life, reading three of his own poems

Drum roll for the top 10…11….10….11 of 15

Tags

Book Review, Books of The Year, Reading, Soapbox

Another terrific year of reading, and a hard choice to get it down to 10 + 1. In the end, the criteria for inclusion came down to the fact that all these books continued to make me think about them and talk about them and be not quite ready to let them go and start something else. Book nags, the lot of them!

In no particular order, but more or less the order I read the books in, though two of the books I found were in, out, in, out with each other, and by the time Ginger finished a final decision was not forthcoming, which would seem to make them joint 10, as none of the others budged a millimeter from inclusion. 4 of these books are non-fiction, the rest fiction. Books by dead Americans loomed large this year.

Links to original reviews within the text.

C.J Sansom’s Lamentation was the first of two books in my list this year which gave me certain nightmares about what it might have been like to live in the reign of that much-marrying man Henry VIIIth. A terrific book, a proper page-turner, and one which had me worrying intensely for the central character and his friends, as much as if I was back in the day, and Sansom’s characters were real. This was a book which made me cry, lots, and also terrified me, was instructive, and gave much exercise to the heart too

Helen MacDonald’s extraordinary book, H is for Hawk, winner of the Samuel Johnson prize was a clear and unforgettable inclusion in my list. Written in searingly powerful prose, MacDonald’s book encompasses grief at the loss of her father, a transcendental exploration of the natural world, an assessment of T.H. White, and, most of all a kind of intensity about what it means to be human through engaging as searchingly as possible in attempting to inhabit the being of a non-human living creature.

Patrick Hamilton was described by J.B Priestley as one of the best minor novelists writing in the interwar (and beyond) years. That sounds like being damned with faint praise, though I don’t believe it was meant in that way. I think, over time, his stock has risen, and that perhaps his difficult personal history may have prevented his peers from seeing quite how good his writing is. He is particularly fine in being able to give authentic voice to ‘little people’ – and, especially, to women. The Slaves of Solitude, set in 1943 is wonderfully funny, as well as making the reader wince with true empathy and recognition, often in the same moment. A light touch writer

American author Dorothy B. Hughes 1963 Golden Age Crime Thriller The Expendable Man makes my list for similar reasons to the three other American books. Not just a well-crafted book, and a strong narrative, but a book which lays bare much of how society, in specific times and places, is faring. Novels, creating the imaginary lives of imaginary individuals, can really bring home, powerfully, something which statistical analyses of information about attitudes from questionnaires and studies, fail to do. I can’t say too much about Hughes book. There’s a journey the reader needs to make for themselves with it, but I do recommend it highly. The fact that it was re-published by the excellent Persephone Press is also a recommendation!

Sean Michael’s Us Conductors was a delight. Canadian Michael’s between the two world wars and beyond, USA and Russian set novel, won Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s Man Booker equivalent. It is a kind of fictionalised biography of Leon Termen, a scientist and inventor who invented the teremin, an electronic musical instrument played by the performer’s hands between the circuits of two oscillators. The book, like the instrument, and like Termen’s life, is a weirdly wonderful thing. This was another book which was instructive, as well as being beautifully written, thoughtful and engaging. It was one of two books I had my in/out tussles with. I couldn’t bear to drop it, nor could I bear to drop the other which was as equally needing inclusion. Published 2015 in the UK

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath , a flawed, raging, book about the exploitation of migrants, the disenfranchised, an impassioned polemic for the righteousness of socialist politics, and against the putting of profits above fair pay and working conditions, was always going to be high on my list. Published in 1939, as war began to provide a terrible solution to the stock market crash of the late 20s, this is another book which uncomfortably drags the reader to the mirror, making us examine ourselves, and the society we live in. Steinbeck pulls no punches, and his writing is sometimes sublime and sometimes punches the reader round the head to ensure he gets his point across. It’s a far from comfortable, far from easy read, but good heavens, it is an awakening one

And I’m staying Stateside with Richard Yates Revolutionary Road. Originally published in 1961 Yates’ book is a portrait of a suburban marriage, and of corporate America, the American Dream and its underbelly. It is set in the mid-50s, in Connecticut. Though it was made into a fine film, directed by Sam Mendes, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio, which at some point I mean to positively review, what the film can’t do (outside using dialogue taken from the book) is to do justice to Yates’ stunning use of language, and the way something which is described in the book, like the building of a rockery path in a garden, encapsulates, in a very unforced way, metaphors as well as close description. In this, there is a kind of poetic sensibility in his writing, which is full of layers, whilst being absolutely accessible

Having spent quite a lot of time on fictions set earlier in the twentieth century this year, it became time for two non-fiction books about history to occupy my ‘best books’ slot. Alison Weir’s The Lady In The Tower connects back to my first read book of my top reads, the C.J. Sansom. Weir explores the last few month’s of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. This is history, not historical fiction, and she uses the book to also explain what historians can and cannot do with their research. As well as piecing together documentary evidence she also explores how the thinking of the times in which a later historian is writing, will influence interpretations of meaning. So history has changed its view of the principal players, over time

And then there is the wonderful children’s history book, A Little History of the World, written by the art historian E.H. Gombrich in the 30s, which follows ‘history’ right from prehistoric times with a wide-angled view of the world. It has been updated to end with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the recent translation into English. Less about a view of an individual country across the millenia, there’s a global view of ideas, dreams and nightmares of attempts at world domination. It’s like the historical version of the evolution of mankind. Gombrich may have written it for children, but it proves to be a book of immense interest and edification for adults

I returned to Stateside reading in the first book in my ‘Reading the Twentieth’ Challenge. And what a book Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie turned out to be. Dreiser was looking at concerns which would come to dominate again, later in the century – how women (and men) are exploited by capital, the hypocrisy of society towards women’s sexuality, how much we can be said to have free choice, given the power of the unconscious, and the need for peer acceptance, toeing the line, fitting in: the influence of the thinking of the times upon us. A great, rich, weighty tome of a book. I’m keen to engage with Dreiser further, if I can ever penetrate further into the century!

And my final book, one published this year, was also the other one of the in/out tussle. Sara Taylor’s assured debut novel The Shore is a collection of interweaving stories about a community within the geography of islands off the Virginia Coast. Told in distinct voices, and in a back and forth timespan between 1876 and 2143 this is a strange and powerful book. Violent at times, it is never gratuitous, though punches are not pulled. I found myself quite amazed at the strength and assurance of the writing. Taylor is certainly a writer to watch; this is a first novel of great finesse, brutal and beautiful all at once

It only remains to wish you all a very happy 2016, and may your TBR’s grow ever more unwieldy, as magnificent books demand to be added!

Peter Doggett – Electric Shock

Tags

Book Review, Culture, Electric Shock, Modern music, Music history, Peter Doggett, Pop Music, Popular Culture, Soapbox

The medium and the message

Peter Doggett’s comprehensive, detailed and engagingly written account of 125 years of pop music, was an immersive and fascinating read for someone whose main musical interest is in classical music, and mainly in dead classical composers at that, so I expect this would be an even more wonderful read for someone whose passion is some, if not all of the musical history he covers.

This is more than just a history of pop music though – it is a history of what happened to music when a method of recording performance happened. How did music itself, and our reaction to it, begin to change once we could recreate what once could only have been heard  as it was being performed. How did the medium of recording and storing music begin to change that music, and how did musical demands change the machines themselves?

Doggett throws down an important gauntlet, right at the start :

The invention of recorded sound transformed music from an experience into an artefact, with physical and psychological consequences which reverberate to this day. It imposed a distance between the moment when the music was made and when it was heard. It allowed for endless repetitions of what would once have been a unique performance.

This is an extremely powerful truth.

Once, we were only able to hear music as it happened, and unless you were a musician yourself, would not be able to create or recreate it from sheet music. Perhaps a more musically silent world (hiss, boo) but perhaps also a world where the power and effect of music hit an audience more potently.

Familiarity does breed contempt. Hear a piece of music which hits the heart, the guts, the soul once, and its power is astonishing. Play it again and again and it begins to diminish. And then if it is picked up and becomes part of a background when you are no longer actively listening to it – used in ads, heard in lifts and shopping malls, belted out from passing cars, then it gets quickly reduced to wallpaper

Every marvellous gift has its sting in the tail, and ubiquitous background music noise means, I suspect, we settle for easy hearing, but may not be listening. Surrounded by constant musical noise, there is no longer a space without music for the freshness of music to arise from. Doggett refers to the earbud generation wrapped in their random playlists as users of ‘the technology of solipsism’ Cool is no longer the music, but the technology.

A queue: not for bread, not even for music, but for a kind of freshly baked pie and custard

But, back to Doggett and his great journey. Something which comes up, again and again, throughout this book, is the wonderful subversion of popular music, right at the start of any new movement, be it blues, jazz, swing, rock, punk, hip-hop or techno. When the sound is underground, when the sound is on the streets, as it were, the music beats out a new rhythm, it arises in reaction to what has gone before and has become tame. There is an electiricity there. Part of that electricity is sex, pop music is an invitation to the rhythm of movement.

The book is crammed full of wonderfully outraged quotes from ‘the parents’ and ‘the moral guardians’ of church, state and media, bemoaning the disgusting and dangerous effects of new music on the young.

As an example, in 1902

As a habit, ragtime ranks with cocaine and morphine

Right up to 1992’s jacket quote

Rap music has no place in our society

In fact, another marked trend in that 125 years is the evidence of unease which the establishment felt about music arising from black communities.

And, there is a ceaseless watering down of the subversion of a constantly new and evolving pop music. The shock of the new starts from the bottom up (except when technology creates changes from the top down) and is cult-y to begin with.

Then, as it becomes clear that this ‘new’ is tapping into the pulse of the young and rebellious, business moves in. The new becomes sweetened, toned down, softened, blander, homogenised into the basics of its nature – and grows indulgent, stale, sellable.

Sorry, Pink Floyd : this is tired, with every strum and strobe. Self-indulgent spectacle excess. Strip away the shimmer clad dancing girls and the megabucks light show: is this really listenable to for 7 long minutes?

And a slightly younger group of teens will be looking to find something else. And so it goes on

Doggett works through the initial excitement of practically every musical genre from the 1890s to date. Not to mention, amongst the small evolutions of musical change, the moments of seismic shift

And, as said previously, there is also the relationship between the medium of recording – shellac, 78 rpm discs, through to vinyl, the alteration of speed, 45 rpm for singles, 33 rpm for the LP, moving on to tape, reel to reel or cassette, through to the CD, and then to the whole revolution of the internet age, MP3, streaming, the rise of video and MTV, techno, synthesisers, as new ‘instruments’ the rise of the DJ, the VJ, dubbing, scratching, – the technology itself changing the music – and the tie up of music as dance, something not to be listened to, something to be moved to.

With more evidence of that truth of ‘no such thing as free lunch’ or ‘gift with a sting’ Doggett points out that the restrictions of vinyl – approximately 20 minutes a side, 40 minutes of music in all, and having to turn the record over, whilst a pain, did impose a certain discipline on the album. Enter the CD, and inevitably, knowing MORE music can be carried, means that the consumer may indeed resent paying the same price for 40 minutes as for 80, and the result may be a surrender to musical self-indulgence, bloat and filling

This is a fabulous book.

I have one criticism (which won’t knock me down from love to like) – pictures would have made this perfect. And this book definitely needed to exist in some sort of new reading experience, – a dedicated eReader but with embedded links so the reader could play the music they were reading about, preferably with pictures of the musicians as well!

Sure, I know the internet can be searched for all of this, but, maybe by the time the second or third edition of this comes out, that technology will exist!

A strong suggestion to those wanting to buy this book, which I was lucky enough to receive as an ARC – indexing, sourcing and bibliographical information on a non-fiction book with LOTS of this, which this is, is far more easily done in hard copy

Now, all you eager readers out there will have to wait. This marvellous book is not released until August 27th in the UK, and likewise in the States, and is only showing on that date as a Kindle release in the USA. But I’ll do a ‘publication day’ to remind you all! I was a lucky popper and got this as an ARC from Amazon Vine UK

Peter Doggett Electric Shock Amazon UK
Peter Doggett Electric Shock Amazon USA

Gordon Burn – Alma Cogan

Tags

Alma Cogan, Book Review, Gordon Burn, Rants

Fine writing and theme – but is it quite a novel? And, perhaps more pertinently, is it quite ethical?

I read this first quite a long time ago, when it was first published, 1991, and it stayed on my shelves as I thought at some point it might be a re-read. A recent book club choice, its time came, and I found myself not quite so sure the second time around.

Burn was certainly a writer of intelligence, provoking unease in the reader, in part to do with his often unsettling subject matter, but I suspect he is more of a sociologist, a philosopher exploring themes, and, of course, an insightful, incisive journalist (he was) more than a writer of novels.

Alma Cogan was, in the 50s and early 60s, very much a star, in a kind of wholesome family entertainment way which hardly seems to exist anymore. Known as ‘the girl with the giggle in her voice’, she was 4 times the winner of The New Musical Express’s Female Vocalist of the Year competition. Born in Whitechapel in 1932 to a fiercely ambitious Romanian Jewish stage mother, Alma was quickly winning contests, and famous for her glamour. By the early 60’s, with the rise of The Beatles, R+B and teen culture, she was falling out of mainstream favour, though once she had been at the epicentre of popular culture high society. She died young of ovarian cancer in 1966. Quite quickly, a fan culture grew up around her, and she was seen as iconic of a time and place – a little search online reveals her fan industry is still active.

Burn’s book assumes she did not die, and is, in the late 1980s, living a fading, out of the limelight life. The Alma of Burn’s book looks back on her own life, examining a Britain which has gone, where the glamour of the limelight hides the darker side of celebrity and the voracious, obsessive world of fandom. What has gone is not the darker side of celebrity – that has, of course, grown, it is the innocence that believes the shiny face of glamour is real. This Alma is a more intelligent, self-aware and even self-mocking voice than the ‘real Alma’ image presented at the time.

The book disturbed me for a couple of reasons, despite Burn’s brilliance as a writer analysing the spirit of the times through a cleverly structured invention. The book won the Whitbread Prize in the year of its publication. Although he doesn’t play fast and loose with the real Alma’s life, and although it is absolutely made clear at the start of the book that she died in 1966 so all else is invention, the less than flattering making fast and loose with Alma and her relationship with her mother, may well have been highly disturbing to surviving family members.

The second reason, is that as part of Burn’s examination of the darker side of celebrity itself – not so much the darker side of the celebrities, more the dark nature of us, our obsession with it, and our obsession with the seamy and the sordid – obsession with those who become famous for their misdeeds, rather than their talents – he weaves in The Moors Murders of 1966, and particularly the murder of one of the children, Lesley Ann Downey, with a song of Alma’s. The use of a real event – and even the transcript of the tape of her killing which Hindley and Brady made, within the book, seems distasteful, somehow a further abuse of a life cut terribly and violently short, used as a novelist’s device

This book is a very pertinent examination of the whole industry of fame, celebrity culture and how it has changed and developed, and a microscopic dissection of the shadow side of celebrity, the vicarious and slightly sinister quality of fandom. It certainly fulfils one purpose of art – to shock out of complacency, and to force those who encounter it to think, reflect, ponder, and become discomfited, uncomfortable. It does not, at all achieve another purpose which is found in some art – that is, to raise, inspire and aspire to something finer in our nature.

3 ½ rounded to 4 – it is a much more superior novel than ‘okay’ but ‘like’ is not really an appropriate response!

Addendum to review published on the Amazons

It took me an age from reading the book, firstly, to review it at all, because I needed some time to disentangle myself from the reading and reflecting experience enough to assess it. And then it took longer to decide whether it would make this blog or not.

Regular readers know I only review here what I recommend and say ‘read/listen to/watch this’ about, and that I don’t post reviews on here for what I’m personally neutral or negative about – though that indeed may happen on the Amazons.

The problem with the Burn book is that though there is much I admire about it, the reading experience raised a lot of discomfort, distaste and often painful reflection and analysis, which has continued to disturb and perplex me. It is that, the undeniable potency of the book, what Burn is saying, and how he says it, that in the end earns a guarded place here.

I’ve spend days wrestling with that old chestnut which I’m sure we all do to death in our heads not to mention in the cups discussions, essays, dissertations and the like ‘What Is Art FOR, what Is Its Purpose’

There are of course a multiplicity of answers, but one, for me, IS that it makes me look, think, feel, reflect, experience anew.Sometimes that experience may be uplifting, life-enhancing, about growth, development and possibility – and sometimes it may be absolutely the reverse, a kind of diminishment, a kind of distaste, despair – but also a daring to stare into the face of a teeming darkness which is also part of our complex humanity; perhaps a place too terrible to visit often.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
Damien Hirst website

Unsurprisingly, Burn was a friend of that artist who has never been afraid to shock (is he charlatan, is he some kind of truth teller?) Damien Hirst

Burn was a lacerating writer whose work is always dark. He was notable for writing not only fiction (which he used to explore cultural and ethical themes, reflections on the times, the role of the media, spin, fake and deception, as here) but true-crime investigative journalism books. He focused on those whose psyche was indelibly dark and steeped in psychopathology, such as the Wests, the Yorkshire Ripper. These are places I have no desire to go, a darkness too far for anything which might be personally necessary to know.

I am much more interested in the nuances of crossing the line, rather than the extremes which I can’t, or don’t want to, in any way, examine. That is why crime novel about psychopaths and extreme aberrant violence does not interest me. And crime novels about how those who are cut from recognisably the same cloth as I am, do. That, I find fascinating, in a kind of more day-to-day exploration of shadow.

Extreme pathology presented as entertainment is not for me – but Burn is not really doing that. So he throws me back on that old chestnut – why did the writer write this, and does a better purpose excuse unspeakable horrors in art. Pass. Pass, Pass on that one, caught on the fence of don’t know

King Lear has the power to shock because the blinding of Gloucester is meant to provoke our pity and our horror, not just fill us with half revulsed half indulged delight in the gruesome. Plus, I suppose also, the safety of knowing this is unreal, and the blinded one and the blinder are actors, after all. But, what about the newsreel and selfie pictures of horrors as they unfold? We need to know what happens, and the knowledge may shake out out of innocence, may wake us to positive response and action – but how quickly do we end up crossing a line where we are viewing the horror of real agony and suffering for some sort of titillation, some sort of over indulgence of our feelings of revulsion, some kind of version of sentimentality, even?

Maybe we are only the thinnest of whiskers away from the crowds who filled the Coliseum to watch gladiators fight to the death for our entertainment, from those who gathered on Tyburn Hill and at the foot of the Guillotine to watch public execution.

So, I do believe this book should be here, for the days and days it has snarled at me, snagged me, needled me, and continues to do so still to produce something half book review and part unresolved rant

Alma Cogan Amazon UK
Alma Cogan Amazon USA

A little previous, but books of my year……………

Tags

Book Review, Books of The Year, Reading, Soapbox

Someone in my on-line book club suggested we compile a Top Ten list of the fiction, and the non-fiction books we read this year – and re-reads counted too, if the re-read was this year. This gave me much happy thinking time, though I was pleased that we were satisfied with just the two lists, rather than ranking WITHIN those lists, else the arguments with myself and the shufflings up and down could have taken me into daffodil time next year. All, being books I loved, were reviewed on here, follow the links for those gushy, enthusing reviews

So, in no particular preference order but more or less the ‘as I read and reviewed’ order here are, Ta Daa………..The Fictions

1) The Wall. Marlen Haushofer. This has nothing to do with Pink Floyd, though it was also made into a film!

Marlen Haushofer was an Austrian author who wrote this rather extraordinary post-apocalypse book in the 60s, later made into an equally wonderful movie, prompting the welcome reissue of the book.  It has been mis-described as an eco-feminist Utopian novel. Eco-feminist it may well be, but some people have a remarkable idea of Utopia, is all I can say!

2) Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. This is a chiller/thriller set in the far far North. And how I love books with a setting in the freezing cold of Nordic isolation. Beautifully written, Madness, class and utter isolation and things which can’t be named, set in the 30s. Genuinely terrifying, a one for the short days as long as there isn’t a power failure!

3) Night Film Marisha Pessl What to say! Donna Tartt’s michievous younger sister (not really, but that is what her writing is like) She has Tartt’s intelligence, but is infinitely more playful. Here are noir god games and solving a mystery all hooked in with indie film making

4) Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See is a beautifully written book, with some ‘magical realism’ touches, set in the second world war in Paris and Berlin The central character is a young blind French girl, and a rather gentle young boy in Germany who is swept up by the Nazi machine, into being part of the invading army. The story is told in alternate chapters by the two protagonists, and is wondrous, heart wrenching and stunning

5) The Magus John Fowles I have been reading and re-reading this every 5 or 10 years. This year was one of those years, as reading the Pessl sent me enjoyably back to it. Iconic book, hugely influential. A literary page-turner, I recognised its influence in the Pessl book. Yes it has the flaws of the time, a rather patriarchal elitism but Fowles a novelist who was absolutely extending the literary form, whilst creating a page turner. This was also made into a film. A dreadful one.

6) Bodies of Light Sarah Moss. I’d read her earlier Night Waking, with some reservations, but she had fallen off my radar, till a book club member  raved about this one. Which grabbed me without any reservations. Indeed it sent me on to further Moss reads. Stunning. Feminism and much more 1850s-1880s and the fierce women who fought for us to get education

7) The Visitors Rebecca Mascull This might almost be my favourite of the year because it took me so by surprise. Nearly missed it as the dust-jacket makes it look a bit marshmallow. Anything but. Set mainly in Kent and South Africa, at the time of the Boer war, the central character is a wonderfully fierce deaf-blind girl, and how. I’m chomping at the bit for Mascull’s second book to come out in 2015. With this book, she joins the ranks of writers whom I find myself on literary crusade for. I was so impressed by Mascull that offered the chance to interview her by the publsiher, I jumped

8) The Bone Clocks David Mitchell Not his best, but I can never pass a Mitchell book by, and he always leaves me thinking hard. Some real pyrotechnics, a mash-up of times, places, genres and some absolutely stonking writing A writer who seems to have a whole army of voices inside him. A huge novel in scope, style and genre-bending. Some of the sections miss the mark, but others are extraordinary. He hits the bulls-eye so unerringly that the fact that sometimes he clumsily breaks things is forgiveable

9) The Narrow Road To The Deep North Richard Flanagan The Booker this year, and one of those lacerating reads about war – this time Australian POWs in Japanese camps, and the building of the Burma railway, but there is much more to it than that, despite the real horror there is a huge sense of humanity and tenderness rolling through it. Curiously, though I have no stomach at all for the inventions of gore, I continue compelled to read books about the evidence of our atrocities. Writers making us look into the mirror of who we are, for good and ill.

10) This is Life Dan Rhodes As a complete break to my preferred diet of heavy lit fic, this is a delightful bubble, set in the art and performance world in Paris. it’s some kind of romantic fantasy, fabulously written, audacious, utterly joyful and good-humoured and I grinned, smiled and laughed my way through it, which makes a change from weeping my way through a book!

Non-Fiction
I was fairly shocked to see that I hadn’t read that much non fiction this year – and a lot of the books I had read (or re-read) were biographies or autobiographies, particularly – most of which were written by fiction writers. Even so, I did have to work hard to whittle down to 10 specials. I think the autobio subject matter reflects the fact that I am inveterately curious about individual stories, and the way one life can illuminate many. I need to be grabbed by the warmth and immediacy of heart, and the felt sense of in-the-gut truth, as well as the wrestles and weighings up and judgement of mind. So, reflections and stories written by writers, about aspects of their own lives are more likely to engage me than a more academic and distanced study. It also probably illustrates that though i have been through academia, I lack the intellectual rigour of academia, and remain greedy for the subjectivity of individual story

1) To The River Olivia Laing A combination of nature writing (which I love) and writing about literature (which I also love!) Laing walked the length of the River Ouse (where Virginia Woolf drowned herself) there is a lot about Woolf, and other writers and artists with a connection to the area, but also the history, geography and culture of those connected to where the river runs. And as with my love of the immediate story of the author within the subject (providing you resonate to the authorial voice) I like Laing’s relationship to her subjects

2 A Spy Among Friends Ben Macintyre This is the closest I get, in this list, to conventional biography, where the author does not engage in relationship with his subject matter but tells a story (Kim Philby’s) via traditional journalistic research, whilst standing outside the subject (which of course we can never completely do, as the writer/researcher of course arranges material and writes from their own subjectivity

3) Foreign Correspondence Geraldine Brooks Brooks is an Australian author who sets out to discover the penpals she had corresponded with from the 60s, some 30 years later. Lots about history and culture across the world. Its a bit of a detective investigation into her own past, and the lives of those penpals. Full of individual life stories.

5) My Salinger Year Joanne Smith Rakoff. Rakoff worked in an old fashioned literary agent’s – Salinger’s agent and this is a lovely meander around the changing face of publishing, a great book for someone who loves reading about writing, publishing, and all things bookie.

6) Listening to Scent – An Olfactory Journey Jennifer Peace Rhind Okay, a brilliant book about an area I specialise in, lots of stuff about chemistry and developing olfactory skills. I was delighted to find a book which taught me a huge amount of new information in an area I think I know quite a lot about! Probably not so compelling for wider audiences though

7) The Spirit In Aromatherapy Gill Farrar-Halls. Another ‘with my professional hat on’ This time, it’s actually more about the nature of the therapeutic relationship than anything else, even though the title says its about the oils. She’s been a Buddhist most of her life, and there’s a lot of very pertinent stuff about how that has profound effects on how the client/therapist relationship cab be handled. I do like books written from a Buddhist perspective which are not overtly ‘about’ Buddhism

8) Limonov Emmanuel Carrere Back to the territory I normally keep for fiction – disturbing ambiguity. Limonov is an extremely complex,Russian political activist, criminal and writer, often deeply unattractive in some of his actions and ideologies. Carrere is a campaigning French journalist, of Russian ancestry, and uses Limonov’s life to explore Russia in the twentieth century – and also approaches his subject matter from a Buddhist perspective. It’s not a traditional biography, since the writer inserts his own autobiography into the mix

9) How to be a Heroine Samantha Ellis Wonderfully witty account by Ellis, a playwright, of the fictional women who shaped her. It’s another book about reading, the power of literature and would make a great book club read, as you can’t help arguing with Ellis about YOUR favourite heroines which she missed out!

10) Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee (this was a re-read) In some ways reading the Olivia Laing sent me back to Lee, who also later set out on an epic walk, this is about the Gloucestershire he left, and is one of those wonderful books where the connection to ‘what it means to be English’ is passionate and beautiful, a sense of landscape and culture, a recording of ways of life and community  which were already dying when Lee recorded them, in the 30s. A pride and ownership of the roots to time and place, without jingoism

So…………did any of these make your ‘best reads of the year’ lists? And, as pertinently, will any of them have a chance of making your 2015 lists!

Bret Easton Ellis as a launching pad for a Rant on the beauty of dapple!

Tags

Bret Easton Ellis, Chaim Soutine, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Patrick Flanery, Soapbox, Stephen Sondheim, William Blake

I have just finished reading Bret Easton Ellis’ Rules Of Attraction, which will not appear as a review on this blog, as I only blog what I am recommending (for the interested, the Amazons do carry reviews of what I disliked as well as what I raved about)

And I cordially loathed ROA. The choice of adverb is crucial – I loathed it through the heart, because it has no heart. Yes, I see what Easton Ellis is doing, laying out the spoils of a wasted, superficial, whining, shallow, self-obsessed, privileged group of Fratters at an American campus university in the 80s, but the problem is that Easton Ellis exposes their puerile, meaningless, unlikeable mass persona through an endless and superficial sneer mask.

One thing my reading did do, however (so well done, Ellis, there) is that it gave me days of impassioned debate and self-reflection on many things, thus fulfilling one of the purposes of art – to awaken, to make the reader/listener/observer notice, to make them think, respond, debate, engage.

And sometimes, what is perceived as ‘not good’ by the consumer of the art-work challenges much more than what reinforces or deepens one’s existing philosophies

Rules of Attraction is an unending expose of superficiality. The unlikeable characters are unvarying in their endless progression of barfing, whining about getting meaningless leg-overs or not getting meaningless leg overs. Pretty loathsome, there is no sense of the writer engaging with them, going below their surface. I guess he dismisses his characters as being no more than their boring and self-indulgent self-obsessions. A couple of thoughts surfaced on this, Firstly, I have never met anyone who is unremittingly one-note.

What is fascinating about living creatures, and the more complex those creatures are, the more they become fascinating in this way – and a self-aware being most of all – is the ‘dappleness’ of them. For what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls ‘Pied Beauty’

All things counter, original, spare, strange

No one is either/or; all are and, and, and then more and. Take the time to explore any individual, and this leads to constant surprise, and anyone and everyone will yield they are more, much more, than the sum of their perceived parts – whether you have placed them on the side of the angels or the devil-with-all-the-best-tunes.

Where I say my loathing of Easton Ellis’s book is ‘cordial’ it is precisely through its shallow, superficial view. I really don’t like or have much time for those anguished over-privileged souls who are going through that stage where they are living in a constant in your face scream of over-indulgent self-mutilation. But Tell me, or better still, show me something NEW about them Mr Ellis – dismissing the ‘other’ is so very easy to do, smugly judging from my own superior sensibility is effortless. What I want from art is to shock me out of complacent dismissal of other – and make me see and feel them, make me walk some distance in their shoes. Take me to that uncomfortable, challenging place, rather than the easy, superior dismissal.

Great writing, in my book, humanises the subjects being written about – however base or noble they may appear, they need fleshing with the complexity of us all. We all know that we are not ‘just’ whatever facets of ourselves are visible, even to ourselves. Complex living creatures are full of surprise, and self-surprise

One of the facets I most valued in a sadly underrated, under-hyped book I read earlier this year, Patrick Flanery’s Fallen Land, is that he was able to take an extremely unlikeable central character, and without in any way condoning him, wrote him (indeed, possesses the gift to write all his characters) from within their experience, rather than the lordly creator god in judgement. Flanery writes ‘dapple’ – inhabiting a character both from outside (through the eyes of other) and from inside.

Ellis is writing, I think, from a sensibility of ‘life is nasty-brutish-and-short’ – and moreover, sometimes ‘life is nasty-brutish-and-short-but-feels-as-if-it-endures-painfully-for-an-aeon’

And, of course, this is  A truth – this is indeed (the awareness of our mortality, existential despair and unease, sometimes overwhelming) part of what drives the nasty, and the brutish (the endless barf, the endless meaningless leg over as an attempt to deny that awareness, or escape it), but is only a very partial truth. The Hollywood bows and happy wrap ending is, sure, superficial and childish, immature – BUT so is the unremitting savagery and wastedness. The all dark and the all happy clappy equally missing – by miles, the infinitely more complex and difficult, challenging and confusing, nature of reality

I am more interested in art which makes me see within the surface of ugliness to find the surprise of beauty. The French painter Soutine, endlessly painting decaying meat, performed this  feat, rendering the response of disgust into seeing  something new, some vibrant life in death

Sometimes it seems as if our tastes have become so very jaded that all we are able to respond to is the shock of being relentlessly beaten over the head with a hammer. Shock is relatively easy to achieve – just shout  ‘Boo’ in the ear of the unwary – surprise is something rather more subtle.

Sometimes it seems as if being edgy, in your face and shouting a lot gets mistaken for the voice of authenticity; reality seen as only the nasty.

Show me the maggot at the heart of the Rose, the invisible worm, fine. But do at least show me the Rose as well.

Life affirming art is neither the chocolate boxy saccharine nor the unremitting display of meaningless degradation. Rather, life affirmation connects with reality (whether in that affirmation as lived, or created in art to show us the affirmation) precisely because it accepts the all-that-is – the deep despair that lies beneath the curiously unquenchable joy, the sweet intensity of an incandescent moment which is incandescent precisely because ‘this too will pass’ We are all on borrowed time.

kuddlyteddybear’s 2004 photostream, Flicr, Commons

What is it that is so compelling to us, about sunsets but the sense of blaze and despair combined, at the dying of the light – something primeval gets touched. I believe in oppositions, rather than the easy way of this OR that, as I see the oppositions and the reconciliations which they contain, all around.

I think of the wonderful, life affirming musical by Stephen Sondheim, Sunday In The Park with George, which captures so beautifully what it is that is important – the embracing of the fullness of the moment, finding a way to touch, with meaning, the little space and time allotted to us. The song ‘Children and Art‘ illustrating this perfectly

And (how wonderful) – someone has uploaded the TV version of the production, starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, in its entirety on You Tube! What i appreciate about Sondheim is the edge between the pain and the joy of the moment, and the acceptance that both ARE.
(the music does not start till after the titles and scrolling introduction)

However, it took the ire I felt at the dead inhumanity (as i see it) of Ellis’ vision to bludgeon me into a meaningful (for myself, at least) reflection on reality, and creative vision. So, if not quite respeck, at least thanks.

Singing from the same hymn sheet, jargon, and the poet’s view

Tags

Philosophy, Reflection, Soapbox, Writing

I’m currently reading a book written by a Western Buddhist, and struggling with it a lot. It is not, however, the teaching which is the source of my struggle and irritation. It is the writing.

More and more I find it is less and less what something is ABOUT that matters to me; it is the voice itself. This may mean that in the end I am doomed to be forever style over substance, and on one level this is true. However another way of experiencing this is that what interests me is the story, and can the storyteller make me experience the story.

This is as true for me in ‘texts about facts’ as it is in fiction. It is always an illusion to say a fact is devoid of an interpretation of it. Our subjectivity is always within the objective.

What has this got to do with the book about Buddhism?

It is this – any ism way of viewing the world, faith based, political, philosophical carries its own jargon within it, which means something to the cognoscenti, and is of course a very useful shorthand. But one of the major problems of jargon is that over time, its well-worn grooves move further and further away from the immediacy which caused their initial creation. And so the writing connects less and less with the experience.

There is a particular strand I come across in a lot of Western Buddhist instructional – I suppose vaguely ‘self-help’ writing which is intensely (I really mean over intensely) pragmatic salt-of-the-earth writing (or speaking) It’s the ‘monkey mind’ ‘loving instruction of a puppy’ the ‘be-here’ which is all about the (apologies to the easily offended) ’you have to smell the shit, taste the shit’ approach. Once, maybe with the first person who spoke those words or wrote those words, their effect was immediate, direct and wake-up. Now (for me) they are without power and jaded. Singing from the same hymn-sheet can mean singing by rote on auto-pilot, a mindless musical mumble of a well-worn groove.

The best writers, it seems to me (on anything) are those with poetic sensibilities. And by that I am not talking about intensely lyrical writing. What the poet does, because of the strictures imposed by form, is to carefully make words work. The best writers (in any medium) do not take their words lightly. Writing can be extremely plain and pared down to the bone, and yet be poetical in immediacy. What poetry and poets (if they are skillful!) does, and do, is to freshly mint the experience for the reader or listener. Poets (whether they write poetry or not) shake us awake into sharing the experience. They take the cliché of Moons/Junes/Hearts/Flowers used as symbols of love (or whatever) and break them apart.

Back to the self-help Buddhist book. What I suppose irritates even more is the unremitting focus on being pragmatic, on escaping the trap of illusion, facing things as they ARE. Well, life may be full of shit – but it is also full of stardust, mystery, the unfathomable. Personally, as reader, neither the shit nor the stardust in writing will work when their description relies on cliché.

Which is not to say the writer needs to try and forever shock or be ‘new’. But the writer does need to find a way to make sure they have not placed cliché between the thing itself and their truthful experience of it

I do like reading books which come from various – vexed word – ‘spiritual traditions.’ Which I suppose means books which grapple with what is not ultimately tangible. And some of these are written by atheists.

Perhaps in the end it comes down to personality – who finds the words that ignite you into really being here, waking up, and being able to hold (metaphorically, I think!) the shit and the stardust together.

Nothing is new, everything has been said before – but maybe a way of saying what has been said before makes it new enough to be heard, or seen, as if for the first time.

Paradoxically, some of the writers who have connected most with the ‘is-ness’ have not been writing from any ‘spiritual’ or instructional place. And the one I come back to, as sure pointer, is the Scottish poet Andrew Grieg, whose At The Loch of The Green Corrie is a deep delight. Michael Mayne, a Christian cleric, and Richard Holloway, one time Bishop of Edinburgh, and now atheist, are others. The nature poet and writer Kathleen Jamie is yet another. None say anything which has not been said before (philosophically) except, through the immediacy of language which is from their own tongues, this reader experiences the matter of their writing in immediacy.

Why won’t they leave Will alone?

Tags

Authorship, Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, Soapbox

William Shakespeare was William Shakespeare

Sorting through a pile of read-but-won’t read-again books to take to the charity shop – lack of available walls and shelf space means ruthless rules apply for real books, and they have to earn their places. Around 1000 is the limit to books I can home and a one-out one-in restricted policy is in operation. Not enforced as rigorously as needed, but that’s another story. What’s so wrong in sitting on a pile of books because the chairs have become bookshelves?

Anyway………….I discovered amongst a stacked pile, an as yet unread book, a novel in the form of a long narrative poem, called The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber.

I got this originally because a novel in poetic form seemed interesting. And I believe is well written. But, but……..I discovered that it is yet another book (albeit in interesting and imaginative, rather than scholarly research form) attempting to prove that Shakespeare was NOT Shakespeare, but some other. In this case (not AGAIN!) Christopher Marlowe.

And this explains why I haven’t yet embarked on the book, distracted by the sound and fume of rapidly boiling blood and spitting invective (mine)

Why? WHY? and even WHY is so much scholarly effort designed (wasted?) on attempting to disprove one William Shakespeare, from being The Onlie Begetter

To me, it smacks first of all of the steeped-in class prejudice of British society – as many of those whom researchers claim to be our Bard were Lords and Knights – Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, William Stanley, Earl of Derby are three. The ‘Shakespeare is NOT Shakespeare’ arguments did not arise at the time – or anywhere near the time – not in fact till about 250 years after his death, in the mid-nineteenth century. I wonder what it was about the zeitgeist of THOSE times that began this (to me) bizarre idea that Shakespeare was a cover for a lordling. Now that might make for an interesting project – why did those denizens of THOSE times (and do those denizens of ours) doubt the man himself when no whiff of this existed previously?

The arguments are basically around ‘how can someone who is not a member of the aristocracy with formal classical education have the wide knowledge shown in ‘Shakespeare’s’ plays’. They claim that WS was some sort of stooge to hide behind so that the powerful, great and good, could espouse views which maybe they would be a little fearful of owning so close to the seat of power as they were.

Sadly, it seems ’twas ever thus, the disparaging of the idea of brilliance arising outside a background of privilege. In fact, although i would never devalue education, or formal education, like everything else it can have its drawbacks as well as advantages. And one drawback can be thinking which is TOO disciplined, too rigid, too received, and curiously the inhibition of wild creativity and originality.

And this is no sour grapes – I’ve been through the whole educational process, and am a product of an Eng. Lit degree. However, I somehow seem to meet people who self-educated. are intelligent, thoughtful, and often seem to think outside the box. Obviously, at its best, education does challenge students to original thought, but there is a strong toe-the-received-thought-of-the day also at work. My modern experience with original thinkers from unusual backgrounds. absolutely squares up with Will being Will, and not Sir Earl of somewhere or other

It is Shakespeare’s origins from outside the court and the University which makes him able to write both the courtly and the common man (and woman)

And, more than all, it seems to me that an actor is well placed to be a playwright. The actor tastes the playwright’s words, gives the two dimensional words weight and viscera, embodies them. The actor has to be able to imagine and inhabit ‘other’ from within. Who better than an actor to create words that ‘speak’ differently, character upon character. 

As for Marlowe………….well,  sure, some fine and elevated language, particularly Dr Faustus, but, really!  Where is the evidence in Marlowe’s known wirting of the wonderful complexity and difference of character found in Shakespeare. Sure the ‘stories’ Shakespeare uses are from others (most stories are) There is a limit to the variations on Boy Finds Girl, Boy Loses Girl, or even King Finds Crown, King Loses Crown that narrative gives – but what really makes narrative sing is the textured complexity of character

Commons Wikimedia

However Beautifully Ros Barber writes, I am back to feelings of unease when literature abuses real characters. And even more so when a kind of arrogance denies genius, depth, and astonishing psychological and philosophical perception to the common man.

Okay, must go and do some work on my scholarly thesis proving that Samuel Pepys was really Sir Christopher Wren, Charles Dickens was really Edward Lear, and that the author of Wuthering Heights was really Karl Marx. My thanks for this valuable aid to research (and, who knows, gentle reader, your chance for some similarly unscholarly research of your own) goes to openplaques.org

Protesting The Rights of Abused Fictional Characters!

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Reading, Soapbox, Writing, Writing on Reading

As some may know, I recently read a book which I felt was exceptionally poor. I don’t get pleasure out of ripping a not very good book to shreds, and normally would have abandoned it within a few pages and therefore never have bothered to review it anyway

But as this was an ARC, and the trade-off for the freebie WAS to write a review, I persisted (getting crosser and crosser) till I felt sure I had enough good reasons to explain my dislike of the book

But interestingly, that very poor book, in its own way has served a useful purpose – it has given me as much food for thought as a very good book – and probably more than a pleasantly okay book, about various aspects of the writing of fiction

ozjimbob’s photostream; Flicr Commons

Something I found offended me deeply was the using of a character like a pawn, to be whisked round here there and everywhere and made to do all sorts of things to serve the author’s purpose. Well, of course all characters in a novel, or a play, or a story, MUST serve a purpose – but the best writers seem to create characters that you feel have almost become a little bit alchemical, and seem to exist outside the writer’s mind. Who is writing whom? Many writers talk of a sense of a character taking on its own life. They started with one idea of the character, but somewhere along the line it gets to feel as if maybe the writer got possessed, and manipulated, by his or her creation.

Then we start to hear not just the AUTHOR’s voice – but the character’s clear and true voice.

The author needs to in some way to surrender to his or her characters, allowing them to breathe for themselves

THAT book was the absolute reverse. Characters served some fixed and sloppy idea the writer had – and were made to do things which were totally implausible and totally wrong. I felt angry on the character’s behalf. Or, more properly, not THE character, as I had no sense of empathy with any character, but was angry on behalf of truthfulness of time, place, culture and character itself.

The book was set in Victorian England, and virtually every major female character, including the unmarried middle class ones, were casually having sex. This felt utterly disrespectful of truth. Of COURSE I’m not saying that people at that time did not depart from ‘approved morality’ – but if you do step outside society’s norms, there is bound to be some sort of internal struggle or conflict between flouting upbringing and received ideas. Sure, ONE character might challenge norms because of who they are individually, but if everyone is doing it, the writer has not properly inhabited time or place. His or her failure is a severe failure of imagination. And what is being imagined, when time, place and character are created. Why – it’s an act of some sort of empathy. Can I imagine how THIS person might feel, being themselves, in this time, this place?

And of course, that act of empathetic imagination doesn’t necessarily just end up confined to human beings in real times and places. It’s JUST as important when new worlds and creatures who don’t ‘really’ exist are created.

I remember, very fondly, a book from childhood, one of Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll series, Finn Family Moomintroll. What made this work so magnificent was the reality of the characters. The vaguely hippo looking Moomins and Snorks, the earthwormish Hattifatteners and the rest never existed, but, oh my, they were true to themselves and their nature.

Of COURSE outlandish words can escape from a dictionary, once placed in a waste-paper basket which is not really a waste-paper basket at all – but, heavens, a magician’s lost hat. And you WOULD end up clearing the words from crevices and the floor for WEEKS, wouldn’t you?

I still remember (and can inhabit) Moomintroll’s pain that the solitary and self-sufficient Snufkin (a happy introvert) will need to go off on his own exploring for 6 months. And Moomintroll (and I) will miss him and be listening out for the returning sounds of ‘All small creatures have bows in their tails’ I learned a lot about loss and enduring it from Finn Family Moomintroll. AND the part of me that is forever Snufkin as well as Moomintroll!

And then…………from the worst, there are the best, who perform that act of imagination and empathy so well, that they can force you to see the world through the eyes of the very worst of people. They can make you inhabit those who make horrific choices, without excusing or condoning those people in any way.

I’m still (more than 6 weeks on) unable to let go of Patrick Flanery’s Fallen Land, and the extraordinary ability he had to write a monstrous character from the inside, without ‘commenting on him’ so that whilst knowing from the off that we had someone ‘evil’, I understood from inside the drives that had created that evil, how what was good and even noble turned bad.

As in performance, so in writing. Actors may play villains (or saints), or writers write villains (or saints) but the best performers or writers do this without commenting. We make sense of ourselves TO ourselves and so, I expect, do the villainous.

It’s why, much as I love Dickens, he sets my teeth on edge with his ‘sainted’ female characters. Dora and Agnes in David Copperfield feel much more stuck inside an unreal sugar picture of women on a Victorian pedestal (an illusion) than an act of imagination by an author writing from the inside of their real lives. A painting of the surface, by an author at a distance, rather than an inside looking out.
Perhaps, at the time, it was a myth everyone longed to believe in. Our own time almost seems to function in reverse; we find it easier to understand the shadow side, and search out the flaws. But that is another story……………