...sod Passage to India for a little while more. I was doing some washing up and a train of thought began. I didn't want it to thunder off into the night with me making sad attempts to leap on the footplate.
I often sound apologetic about the football stuff, about my love for something which often doesn't seem to be redeemable even via the mediations of thinking (or blogging) about the irrelevance, or non-existence, of a discrepancy between 'low' and 'high' culture. I often feel like it is the one interest or concern that I can't really justify, even to myself.
Now, I write about Henry Green, and about the relationship between fiction and historical and national identities, and about the role of affect in the literature of the 40s, and about nostalgia. Green, perhaps, is a way into explaining, and hopefully assuaging, my anxieties regarding this matter. In broadly Lacanian terms, Green's novels often dramatize the interplay between the Imaginary (the attempt to capture an identity through identification) and the Symbolic (the letting-go of identification and submission to the fluidity of signification). I won't mention the Real here, by the way. Of Lacan's interlocutors, I think Malcolm Bowie gets it right by arguing that 'good' maturation involves an affirmative response to the inevitability of the Symbolic, particularly because he alights upon the political ramifications of such a reaction. One might well argue that many of history's most shocking aberrations have been perpetrated in the pursuit of identification and fixity, or against the potential amorphousness of the subject as it is (relationally) constituted in the Symbolic.
For Green, the concept of identity reveals its true potential in its solubility, or in the possibility that it might quite literally 'give up the ghost'. Plots turn on the capability (or lack of) a character to reject an (often sexual) identification and embrace instability. By and large, they don't, or don't fully. While recommendations for the Symbolic burst out all around them, and inside them (this may or may not mean the same thing, but they will not grasp the positive implications of the fact), they attempt to keep hold of that which transfixes them. No-one moves. Narratives move full-circle, encompassing a poetry which erupts at the cost of a misidentification on the behalf of the characters.
In The Future of Nostalgia, the contemporary critic and playwright Svetlana Boym seems to hint at such a distinction by embedding Jean Starobicki's definitions of 'restorative' and 'reflective' nostalgias within a covertly psychoanalytic argument. Realising that contemporary culture is incurably nostalgic, Boym seeks to find a pathway for the affliction which will prevent it being mobilised by a conservative, 'restorative' politics. Like the early Derrida, she hypothesizes a way in which the significations of nostalgia might be motivated kaleidoscopically, towards undefined, and therefore not strictly nostalgic, ends. The identifications which one forms in the spirit of nostalgia might, therefore, become productive, benign, and even spontaneous.
So, football, to which I relate in a fundamentally nostalgic fashion. It seems to me that we 'happen' as the nexus of complexly stratified identifications. While the primary identifications are, at least in a pragmatic sense, necessary and desirable, certain cultural choices are more visibly contingent. We pick things up, we roll them around in our hand, we let them go as and when it becomes possible or providential to do so. While it is frequently providential, possibility doesn't show itself quite so often. Neurotically, pathologically, we clutch tightly onto our symptoms.
And the football, and the Darlo, is one that I do hold onto. It is utterly Imaginary, until I pick up on the fact and put more of myself back into play, as it were. Can I have the significations of my symptom on my own terms? I think I'll dawdle towards that conclusion, ever so slowly. But I don't see a predilection for football, or boxing, or flat racing as being more of a secondary identification than, for example, a predilection for critical theory, Tarkovsky movies, Gauloise or organic food is. I don't see why I should have to be significantly more distanced from my optional cultural affiliations than people who appreciate contemporary dance should be. And I think that this argument is one of the most profound that emerges from Green's novels: we live, and love, in a state of absolute delusion, and it is only the missed encounter with the delusion itself that makes this problematic.
Wednesday, 13 February 2008
Promotion?
I should be writing a lesson plan on Passage to India right now, but I'm somewhat exhausted after a two hour research seminar on 'Data Relations and the Ontology of Wisbech' (!) that I co-organised. The speaker, Robert Clark, pointed out that when one talks of Wisbech, they refer not to a point on a map but to a range of historical, political, cultural and emotional transactions. Fair point: I couldn't help but be reminded of Bill Drummond's 'Hull: Twinned With Your Darkest Thought' signs. For me, 'Wisbech' is a referent which gestures towards something similar, though I've never been there. I've heard the stories.
Today's tenuous link: Wisbech is near Peterborough, and well within the 'fan catchment' for League Two moneybagses Peterborough United. Peterborough United will, in all probability, be one of Darlington's main rivals during the imminent 'business end' of the football season. Darlington themselves are looking scarily like pulling it off this year. A football truism dictates that teams need to be able to 'win ugly' if they are to be successful, and the performance I witnessed at home to Barnet on Saturday certainly suggested that the Quakers have the right credentials in that area. A sweet strike by Julian Joachim, one of those odd forgotten men of football in the Nii Lamptey or Paul Warhurst mould, gave us a lead which was maintained by a sharp penalty save by ever-more-valuable goalkeeper David Stockdale, some atrocious finishing by Barnet's forwards, and the referee's inexplicable decision to allow meat-and-tatties centre-half Alan White to remain on the pitch after a clear professional foul. Other than that, we were rubbish.
My optimism became slightly less tentative when I returned from seven-a-side last night (two goals: one Linekeresque poach and a first time volley) to discover that we'd done a smash-and-grab raid on Notts County. One-nil again. We never win at Meadow Lane, ever. On this occasion, it was 'unreconstructed' midfielder Ricky Ravenhill who got the goal. Our next two games are at home to lowly Mansfield and the currently woeful, terminally in-crisis, Chester City. I refuse to make predictions.
As I'm going to post more about Darlo as the season draws to its squeaky-arsed climax, I thought I'd give a quick, pen-picture, summary of the squad. Being as I'm going to be largely chained to the desk for the next seven months, odds are I won't be getting out much to find other things to write about.
David Stockdale (GK)- Young goalkeeper who I thought was going to be rubbish and isn't. Has six different goalkeeper kits, each more garish than the last. On Saturday, he looked like a packet of Wrigleys. Said to be attracting interest from bigger clubs.
Przemyslaw Kazimierczak (GK)- The most unpronouncable Darlo player since rarely-seen Canadian keeper Lucas Papaconstantinou. Hasn't played yet.
Andy Oakes (GK)- Was supposed to be first-choice at the start of the season, but since being usurped by Stockdale has taken on the countenance of the stoic veteran in a Roy of the Rovers story who is forced to accept that the young guns are taking over.
Neil Austin (RB)- Tall full-back who looks like the pictures used to illustrate the 16th-century yeomanry in GCSE history.
Ryan Valentine (R/LB)- Has just returned from a spell in purgatory (Wrexham). A bit of a hero amongst the Loids, for the usual League 2 reasons: thundering challenges, short back and sides, stern expression.
Tim Ryan (LB)- Dave Penney, our manager, calls him 'Rat'. I call him 'injured'.
John Brackstone (LB)- Came from Hartlepool, our local rivals. Is reputed to be rubbish, but no-one can tell as he never plays.
Scott Wiseman (RB)- Came from Hull, like my girlfriend. Is definitely rubbish. Dave Penney seems to agree with me.
Ian Miller (CB)- Former non-leaguer who was professionalized in a fit of philanthropy by Ipswich Town. Joined us and surprised everyone by being rather good. Tends to be a sub, though.
Stephen Foster (CB)- 1950s throwback captain, as honest as the day is long etc etc. Looks a bit like Droopy Dog. He's really very good, and has marshalled the defence into becoming one of the tightest in the country.
Alan White (CB)- Local boy finally playing for his hometown club. Scores highly on the 'Valentine Scale'. Gets booked nearly every game, unless he goes that extra mile and gets sent off. Weighs in with his share of goals.
Neil Wainwright (L/RW)- Has been around for a very long time, like a much-loved labrador. Fans' favourite, for reasons pertaining to application/ longevity rather than outrageous skill. Hasn't been seen too much this season. Uses his Myspace to promote his love of 1990s guitar bands.
Richie Foran (LW/ST)- Versatile Irishman with a bit of a temper. Is strictly speaking on loan from Southend, but his promising showings have made most of us forget this troubling fact.
Rob Purdie (anywhere on the pitch, it seems)- Ex-Hereford captain with a slightly public-school appearance. Never plays well when I'm there, but does when I'm not.
Julian Joachim (RW/ ST)- Was supposed to be the future of English football at one point, but drifted off the map in the late '90s. Not as quick as he was, but still capable of scoring some lovely goals.
Ricky Ravenhill (M)- Tenacious, enthusiastic, guileless midfielder. Loved by my brother, inspires ambivalence in me.
Clark Keltie (M)- One of our most naturally talented players who, unfortunately, gets slated by the fans when he's not playing too well. Has a tendency to convince himself that he's Michael Carrick at times. Once featured in a sub-Cosmopolitan magazine article, and has had a sequence of amusing haircuts.
Micky Cummins (M)- Good player, but a confidence player. Technically better than this level, but sometimes seems a bit lost.
Guy Ndumbu-Nsungu (ST)- Hasn't played since his return to the club as he's been injured. Another player who is technically proficient but prone to flights of fantasy where he's playing in the World Cup final.
Gregg Blundell (ST)- Scouse journeyman who runs after everything and occasionally gets a break. Seems to enjoy playing for the club, and has a good rapport with the fans.
Pawel Abbott (ST)- Big-money summer signing from Swansea who has represented Poland at U-21 level, despite hailing from the slightly less exotic locale of York. Gets injured all the time so we're yet to see the best of him, but is in a different class to the majority of League 2 players in terms of his footballing brain. Will have a big part to play next season if we go up.
Tommy Wright (ST)- Former Leicester striker and leading scorer. Tommy is a 'classic British centre forward' from the Duncan Ferguson school. Seems to be the victim of a refereeing conspiracy since a flailing arm at Barnet last season saw him expelled from the pitch with less than a minute on the clock. Given all this, it's kind of predictable that he's another terrace favourite.
Martin Smith (Mercurial Forward)- Like most mercurial forwards, Martin Smith is always in the treatment room, which is sad because he's a genius. Was once predicted to become Britain's first £10 million footballer. Out for the rest of the season, sadly.
Kevin Gall (ST)- Our prodigious injury situation has demanded yet another striker, so we've signed Carlisle squadder Kevin Gall. Was once great for me on Championship Manager, but doesn't look so good in real life. Wears blue boots, suggesting his allegiances might still belong on the other (wrong) side of the Pennines.
There. That's my boorish football article out of the way. There'll be something more intellectually stimulating later in the week, I promise. Time for coffee, and Passage to India.
J
Today's tenuous link: Wisbech is near Peterborough, and well within the 'fan catchment' for League Two moneybagses Peterborough United. Peterborough United will, in all probability, be one of Darlington's main rivals during the imminent 'business end' of the football season. Darlington themselves are looking scarily like pulling it off this year. A football truism dictates that teams need to be able to 'win ugly' if they are to be successful, and the performance I witnessed at home to Barnet on Saturday certainly suggested that the Quakers have the right credentials in that area. A sweet strike by Julian Joachim, one of those odd forgotten men of football in the Nii Lamptey or Paul Warhurst mould, gave us a lead which was maintained by a sharp penalty save by ever-more-valuable goalkeeper David Stockdale, some atrocious finishing by Barnet's forwards, and the referee's inexplicable decision to allow meat-and-tatties centre-half Alan White to remain on the pitch after a clear professional foul. Other than that, we were rubbish.
My optimism became slightly less tentative when I returned from seven-a-side last night (two goals: one Linekeresque poach and a first time volley) to discover that we'd done a smash-and-grab raid on Notts County. One-nil again. We never win at Meadow Lane, ever. On this occasion, it was 'unreconstructed' midfielder Ricky Ravenhill who got the goal. Our next two games are at home to lowly Mansfield and the currently woeful, terminally in-crisis, Chester City. I refuse to make predictions.
As I'm going to post more about Darlo as the season draws to its squeaky-arsed climax, I thought I'd give a quick, pen-picture, summary of the squad. Being as I'm going to be largely chained to the desk for the next seven months, odds are I won't be getting out much to find other things to write about.
David Stockdale (GK)- Young goalkeeper who I thought was going to be rubbish and isn't. Has six different goalkeeper kits, each more garish than the last. On Saturday, he looked like a packet of Wrigleys. Said to be attracting interest from bigger clubs.
Przemyslaw Kazimierczak (GK)- The most unpronouncable Darlo player since rarely-seen Canadian keeper Lucas Papaconstantinou. Hasn't played yet.
Andy Oakes (GK)- Was supposed to be first-choice at the start of the season, but since being usurped by Stockdale has taken on the countenance of the stoic veteran in a Roy of the Rovers story who is forced to accept that the young guns are taking over.
Neil Austin (RB)- Tall full-back who looks like the pictures used to illustrate the 16th-century yeomanry in GCSE history.
Ryan Valentine (R/LB)- Has just returned from a spell in purgatory (Wrexham). A bit of a hero amongst the Loids, for the usual League 2 reasons: thundering challenges, short back and sides, stern expression.
Tim Ryan (LB)- Dave Penney, our manager, calls him 'Rat'. I call him 'injured'.
John Brackstone (LB)- Came from Hartlepool, our local rivals. Is reputed to be rubbish, but no-one can tell as he never plays.
Scott Wiseman (RB)- Came from Hull, like my girlfriend. Is definitely rubbish. Dave Penney seems to agree with me.
Ian Miller (CB)- Former non-leaguer who was professionalized in a fit of philanthropy by Ipswich Town. Joined us and surprised everyone by being rather good. Tends to be a sub, though.
Stephen Foster (CB)- 1950s throwback captain, as honest as the day is long etc etc. Looks a bit like Droopy Dog. He's really very good, and has marshalled the defence into becoming one of the tightest in the country.
Alan White (CB)- Local boy finally playing for his hometown club. Scores highly on the 'Valentine Scale'. Gets booked nearly every game, unless he goes that extra mile and gets sent off. Weighs in with his share of goals.
Neil Wainwright (L/RW)- Has been around for a very long time, like a much-loved labrador. Fans' favourite, for reasons pertaining to application/ longevity rather than outrageous skill. Hasn't been seen too much this season. Uses his Myspace to promote his love of 1990s guitar bands.
Richie Foran (LW/ST)- Versatile Irishman with a bit of a temper. Is strictly speaking on loan from Southend, but his promising showings have made most of us forget this troubling fact.
Rob Purdie (anywhere on the pitch, it seems)- Ex-Hereford captain with a slightly public-school appearance. Never plays well when I'm there, but does when I'm not.
Julian Joachim (RW/ ST)- Was supposed to be the future of English football at one point, but drifted off the map in the late '90s. Not as quick as he was, but still capable of scoring some lovely goals.
Ricky Ravenhill (M)- Tenacious, enthusiastic, guileless midfielder. Loved by my brother, inspires ambivalence in me.
Clark Keltie (M)- One of our most naturally talented players who, unfortunately, gets slated by the fans when he's not playing too well. Has a tendency to convince himself that he's Michael Carrick at times. Once featured in a sub-Cosmopolitan magazine article, and has had a sequence of amusing haircuts.
Micky Cummins (M)- Good player, but a confidence player. Technically better than this level, but sometimes seems a bit lost.
Guy Ndumbu-Nsungu (ST)- Hasn't played since his return to the club as he's been injured. Another player who is technically proficient but prone to flights of fantasy where he's playing in the World Cup final.
Gregg Blundell (ST)- Scouse journeyman who runs after everything and occasionally gets a break. Seems to enjoy playing for the club, and has a good rapport with the fans.
Pawel Abbott (ST)- Big-money summer signing from Swansea who has represented Poland at U-21 level, despite hailing from the slightly less exotic locale of York. Gets injured all the time so we're yet to see the best of him, but is in a different class to the majority of League 2 players in terms of his footballing brain. Will have a big part to play next season if we go up.
Tommy Wright (ST)- Former Leicester striker and leading scorer. Tommy is a 'classic British centre forward' from the Duncan Ferguson school. Seems to be the victim of a refereeing conspiracy since a flailing arm at Barnet last season saw him expelled from the pitch with less than a minute on the clock. Given all this, it's kind of predictable that he's another terrace favourite.
Martin Smith (Mercurial Forward)- Like most mercurial forwards, Martin Smith is always in the treatment room, which is sad because he's a genius. Was once predicted to become Britain's first £10 million footballer. Out for the rest of the season, sadly.
Kevin Gall (ST)- Our prodigious injury situation has demanded yet another striker, so we've signed Carlisle squadder Kevin Gall. Was once great for me on Championship Manager, but doesn't look so good in real life. Wears blue boots, suggesting his allegiances might still belong on the other (wrong) side of the Pennines.
There. That's my boorish football article out of the way. There'll be something more intellectually stimulating later in the week, I promise. Time for coffee, and Passage to India.
J
Tuesday, 12 February 2008
Things I promise to do to this blog...
...just as soon as I've finished writing my lesson plan for A Passage to India. Said novel was something of a nadir as regards my Literature in History classes in 06/07, especially when a group turned up with literally no-one having read it. I'm not a huge fan of Forster- for some reason I always imagine him as being a bit like Richard Curtis, if Richard Curtis was partial to quoting Wittgenstein- but I felt the need to leap to his defence during today's lecture when long-term bane 'Virginia' was mentioned as castigating him for not feeling the need to clog his work with the 'spiritual', which I increasingly come to think is interchangeable with one of my least favourite literary phenomenons, vague spookiness. I once met an American academic at a conference who told me she frequently met women (yes, it was always women) at Woolf conferences who claimed to have been the subject of nocturnal visitations from 'Virginia' herself. If I woke up to find her sat on the end of my bed I'd pass her a David Peace novel and go back to sleep. This is not to say that I've turned into a mangy historicist this year, BTW.
Anyway, what was I going to do?
- Write something about vague spookiness, pet hate extraordinaire.
- Post one or two poems up here, irrespective of the fact that people might actually read them.
- Do something more boorish about football, because I like it.
- Make clear my opinions about certain magazine columnists in a certain Manchester-born newspaper.
- Say something about music. I'm listening to it like I actually care again.
- Update the links.
- Pictures, in all of their mishandled glory (off-modernism, baby...)
- Angst-ridden quotations from Archive Fever, or from blogs about Archive Fever, or from blogs about blogs about Archive Fever
- Articles brimming with all of my barely-repressed insecurities/neuroses regarding the intellectual acumen of my peers/friends.
I'd love to be able to engage in a relaxed and competent manner with elements of critical theory on here, like all of those self-proclaimedly 'Deleuzian' or 'Lacanian' bloggers who fight their amusing little fights on the internet, but I'm really quite inept at articulating myself in that manner. Furthermore, I'm slightly suspicious that the internet Lacanians are actually, pre-dominantly, a troupe of performing neologists who feel the need to ex-hibit themselves under a (putatively) Lacanian rubric in a form of Symbolic compensation for the Real grades of Masters essays in which they argue that the Real is reducible to that which is beyond the Signifier exhausted by relationality.
See what I did there?
Joe
Anyway, what was I going to do?
- Write something about vague spookiness, pet hate extraordinaire.
- Post one or two poems up here, irrespective of the fact that people might actually read them.
- Do something more boorish about football, because I like it.
- Make clear my opinions about certain magazine columnists in a certain Manchester-born newspaper.
- Say something about music. I'm listening to it like I actually care again.
- Update the links.
- Pictures, in all of their mishandled glory (off-modernism, baby...)
- Angst-ridden quotations from Archive Fever, or from blogs about Archive Fever, or from blogs about blogs about Archive Fever
- Articles brimming with all of my barely-repressed insecurities/neuroses regarding the intellectual acumen of my peers/friends.
I'd love to be able to engage in a relaxed and competent manner with elements of critical theory on here, like all of those self-proclaimedly 'Deleuzian' or 'Lacanian' bloggers who fight their amusing little fights on the internet, but I'm really quite inept at articulating myself in that manner. Furthermore, I'm slightly suspicious that the internet Lacanians are actually, pre-dominantly, a troupe of performing neologists who feel the need to ex-hibit themselves under a (putatively) Lacanian rubric in a form of Symbolic compensation for the Real grades of Masters essays in which they argue that the Real is reducible to that which is beyond the Signifier exhausted by relationality.
See what I did there?
Joe
Monday, 4 February 2008
Monday
Football was, for me, three goals and two bruises. The bruises aren't quite bad enough to say that I'd have settled for one goal and no bruises. I was disappointed when, a couple of months ago, I got a return of no goals from a split chin and a trip to A&E.
I'm teaching first-years undergraduates again at the moment. This week, it's Heart of Darkness. Apparently, a check of the citation index will show me that Heart of Darkness is the most academically written-about text in the entire field, which is no small feat given the weight of criticism on every aspect of the minutiae of (for example) Joyce or Woolf. Anyway, if one goes beyond the 'Chinua Achebe Argument' about Heart of Darkness (that the novel is racist because it reduces Africa to the status of a colourful backdrop against which the crisis of identity in modernity might be staged) it is a wonderful work. This isn't to say, of course, that some of Achebe's argument doesn't hold up under certain conditions, but to make an argument about Conrad's poetic achievement. I might even be tempted to argue that to reduce the endlessly proliferating inferences of the text to nothing more thajn racist dogma is to inadvertently collude with any defamatory intentions Conrad might have held, as the novel, motivated by an uncanniness or extimacy (the furthest inside is always outside; reaching 'meaning' is always a beginning-again), crystallizes as a logic only through the supplementary activity of reading.
What I find particularly fascinating is the rhythmic movement of the novel, which develops an emergent para-metre out of disguised repetitions. On the page and 'inside' the narrative, the writing lingers at various staging points and stations, which might be best thought of in terms of temporary, unplanned postponements of movement and more extended periods of time in which progress is arrested according to plan. Each station acts as a staging ground not only for the receipt of information but for its digestion or interpretation, the transformation of the impressionistic and sensory flux of what Walter Benjamin termed erlebnis into the more stabilised, if provisional, solution of ehrfahrung. As the narrator, Marlow can be seen as the locus of rhythm in the novel even as the musical material originates from a putative elsewhere. Time after time after time, Marlow interrupts the flow of his tale to lend emphasis via the repetition of a particular word or phrase, particularly- and strikingly- when his topic of discussion is auditory phenomena.
Sound, for Marlow, seems to be the point at which the strange and familiar intersect. Nicholas Royle has insisted on the (ellided) significance of the auditory in discussions of the Uncanny (especially in Freud's essay itself) and it strikes me Heart of Darkness would be a good place to begin redressing this problem. Marlow's apparently idiomatic repetitions- in the sense that he might, as a seafaring storyteller in the literary tradition of the Ancient Mariner, be prone to lapses into a melodramatic register- are really indicative of the length of time it takes him to address the alien with a more familiar repertoire of sound-images, or images of sounds (at one point he remarks on how the noises emitting from the jumgle may well have the same function as church-bells in Europe). This, however, is not an extension of the imperial arm, but an acknowledgement of difference based on a projecting forward of time, or a lingering on the linguistically liminal in anticipation of a pending political epiphany which is already halfway 'home'. The ultimate emptiness of the novel's 'heart', or the failed command of the figurehead of progress which is somehow sounded again through the lack of an incorporated meaning, suggests to me both a vital recognition of the ethical implications of extimacy and a consolatory note to the fact of thinking oneself as an individual, or of thought, being ultimately grounded in sound-images. Therefore, I think out loud now, and perhaps don't have to do so on Thursday morning. As I say though, the emphasis on the sonic in the novel, which seems to be both preceded by and in anticipation of a rhythm one locates only formally, is one of the qualities of Heart of Darkness that truly bears analysis as (prose) poetry and, perhaps, elevates the work from the kind of political or ethical economies that the injunctions made by Achebe perhaps leave it stranded in.
I'm teaching first-years undergraduates again at the moment. This week, it's Heart of Darkness. Apparently, a check of the citation index will show me that Heart of Darkness is the most academically written-about text in the entire field, which is no small feat given the weight of criticism on every aspect of the minutiae of (for example) Joyce or Woolf. Anyway, if one goes beyond the 'Chinua Achebe Argument' about Heart of Darkness (that the novel is racist because it reduces Africa to the status of a colourful backdrop against which the crisis of identity in modernity might be staged) it is a wonderful work. This isn't to say, of course, that some of Achebe's argument doesn't hold up under certain conditions, but to make an argument about Conrad's poetic achievement. I might even be tempted to argue that to reduce the endlessly proliferating inferences of the text to nothing more thajn racist dogma is to inadvertently collude with any defamatory intentions Conrad might have held, as the novel, motivated by an uncanniness or extimacy (the furthest inside is always outside; reaching 'meaning' is always a beginning-again), crystallizes as a logic only through the supplementary activity of reading.
What I find particularly fascinating is the rhythmic movement of the novel, which develops an emergent para-metre out of disguised repetitions. On the page and 'inside' the narrative, the writing lingers at various staging points and stations, which might be best thought of in terms of temporary, unplanned postponements of movement and more extended periods of time in which progress is arrested according to plan. Each station acts as a staging ground not only for the receipt of information but for its digestion or interpretation, the transformation of the impressionistic and sensory flux of what Walter Benjamin termed erlebnis into the more stabilised, if provisional, solution of ehrfahrung. As the narrator, Marlow can be seen as the locus of rhythm in the novel even as the musical material originates from a putative elsewhere. Time after time after time, Marlow interrupts the flow of his tale to lend emphasis via the repetition of a particular word or phrase, particularly- and strikingly- when his topic of discussion is auditory phenomena.
Sound, for Marlow, seems to be the point at which the strange and familiar intersect. Nicholas Royle has insisted on the (ellided) significance of the auditory in discussions of the Uncanny (especially in Freud's essay itself) and it strikes me Heart of Darkness would be a good place to begin redressing this problem. Marlow's apparently idiomatic repetitions- in the sense that he might, as a seafaring storyteller in the literary tradition of the Ancient Mariner, be prone to lapses into a melodramatic register- are really indicative of the length of time it takes him to address the alien with a more familiar repertoire of sound-images, or images of sounds (at one point he remarks on how the noises emitting from the jumgle may well have the same function as church-bells in Europe). This, however, is not an extension of the imperial arm, but an acknowledgement of difference based on a projecting forward of time, or a lingering on the linguistically liminal in anticipation of a pending political epiphany which is already halfway 'home'. The ultimate emptiness of the novel's 'heart', or the failed command of the figurehead of progress which is somehow sounded again through the lack of an incorporated meaning, suggests to me both a vital recognition of the ethical implications of extimacy and a consolatory note to the fact of thinking oneself as an individual, or of thought, being ultimately grounded in sound-images. Therefore, I think out loud now, and perhaps don't have to do so on Thursday morning. As I say though, the emphasis on the sonic in the novel, which seems to be both preceded by and in anticipation of a rhythm one locates only formally, is one of the qualities of Heart of Darkness that truly bears analysis as (prose) poetry and, perhaps, elevates the work from the kind of political or ethical economies that the injunctions made by Achebe perhaps leave it stranded in.
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Recent Reading and Listening
I haven't done this for a while, either- this is a truncated reading list for the last month or so:
David Peace, GB 84: Peace is just mind-blowingly good, and I'm not going to add the diminutional qualifier 'at what he does' here just because his books are, nominally, crime fiction. I think he's very similar to Iain Sinclair in a lot of ways, in that his focus is on the way in which we lose our imaginative relationship with history in the detail, and come up with these paranoid reconstitutions after the fact. If that doesn't make much sense yet, it's because I love the man's writing so much that I can't really explain why. I will get there. My addendum to this is that Peace's novels are, rather surprisingly, great to read in companion with the work of Yorkshire/ 'Cambridge School' (I'm not affirming the existence of one, necessarily) poet Michael Haslam. Again, this notion is still at the intuitive stage.
Elizabeth Taylor- At Mrs Lippincote's/ A View of the Harbour: More 'Forties Mafia' stuff, and very good it was too. I might say more about this elsewhere.
Russell Hoban- Ridley Walker: Thought this was largely brilliant but for the fact that spending the last few years concentrating of 'after-modernist' rather than 'postmodernist' fiction has left me finding ergodic literature rather difficult. The ingredients are right, though: post-apocalypticism, Punch and Judy, not-quite-overwrought theology. I'll probably go back to it.
Eric Ambler- Passage of Arms/ Judgement on Deltchev: What's not to love about Eric Ambler? Have to say, though, that neither of these were in the same league as Cause for Alarm.
Graham Greene- The Heart of the Matter: I have a love-hate relationship with Graham Greene.
Dennis Potter- Ticket to Ride: So does Dennis Potter.
Can't really remember what else I read in January. I know there was more than that, though.
January listening included lots of Sonic Youth, Autechre, Broadcast and most Warp stuff. Best January not-my-normal-weekend activity was a trip to White Hart Lane to see Spurs take on Reading in the FA Cup. My Berbatov-worship is approaching the silly level now, to the extent where I've found the extravagant sulking creeping into my Sunday and Tuesday seven-a-sides. Ah well, there's a good, overdone closing thought: one 'plays' football like they 'play' a role in the theatre and that all footballing identities are fundamentally performative, especially the Roy Keane characters. I suppose we wouldn't need Judith Butler to tell us that....
David Peace, GB 84: Peace is just mind-blowingly good, and I'm not going to add the diminutional qualifier 'at what he does' here just because his books are, nominally, crime fiction. I think he's very similar to Iain Sinclair in a lot of ways, in that his focus is on the way in which we lose our imaginative relationship with history in the detail, and come up with these paranoid reconstitutions after the fact. If that doesn't make much sense yet, it's because I love the man's writing so much that I can't really explain why. I will get there. My addendum to this is that Peace's novels are, rather surprisingly, great to read in companion with the work of Yorkshire/ 'Cambridge School' (I'm not affirming the existence of one, necessarily) poet Michael Haslam. Again, this notion is still at the intuitive stage.
Elizabeth Taylor- At Mrs Lippincote's/ A View of the Harbour: More 'Forties Mafia' stuff, and very good it was too. I might say more about this elsewhere.
Russell Hoban- Ridley Walker: Thought this was largely brilliant but for the fact that spending the last few years concentrating of 'after-modernist' rather than 'postmodernist' fiction has left me finding ergodic literature rather difficult. The ingredients are right, though: post-apocalypticism, Punch and Judy, not-quite-overwrought theology. I'll probably go back to it.
Eric Ambler- Passage of Arms/ Judgement on Deltchev: What's not to love about Eric Ambler? Have to say, though, that neither of these were in the same league as Cause for Alarm.
Graham Greene- The Heart of the Matter: I have a love-hate relationship with Graham Greene.
Dennis Potter- Ticket to Ride: So does Dennis Potter.
Can't really remember what else I read in January. I know there was more than that, though.
January listening included lots of Sonic Youth, Autechre, Broadcast and most Warp stuff. Best January not-my-normal-weekend activity was a trip to White Hart Lane to see Spurs take on Reading in the FA Cup. My Berbatov-worship is approaching the silly level now, to the extent where I've found the extravagant sulking creeping into my Sunday and Tuesday seven-a-sides. Ah well, there's a good, overdone closing thought: one 'plays' football like they 'play' a role in the theatre and that all footballing identities are fundamentally performative, especially the Roy Keane characters. I suppose we wouldn't need Judith Butler to tell us that....
The Departed
Okay! Tentatively, I'm going to try writing on here again. This is largely because I'm well into what is known, with an appropriate yet chilling sense of finality, as the 'writing up time', and I need to keep in practice. Furthermore, it's early on a freezing Sunday morning, when I always get up at an ungodly hour to go and play football so there's nobody to talk to.
Looking out of the window of my flat into one of the houses opposite, I can see an extremely small cat, coloured like a Frisian cow, pawing a Beware of the Dog sign. Poetic justice, perhaps. It's significantly more endearing than the couple a few doors down who don't see the need to close the shutter in the bathroom whenever, erm, 'bodily functions' need attending to. I can't make up my mind as to whether or not they're extremely absent-minded or just particularly sadistic exhibitionist perverts.
Okay, I'm leading the witnesses. I just couldn't work out how to get from the delightful view out of my window to The Departed, which I watched last night, without going down the 'they're perverts, and so is Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed' route, which would have been rather cheap. Kwik Save continuity, if you will. Instead, therefore, you've got the 'disingenuous male twenty-something blogger' (cf. ironic sweeping pan shot) approach.
The Departed is heavy on non-ironic sweeping pan shots of Boston, a city which has always exerted a strange fascination over me: largely, I think, because it's a six point Gamma World City named after a small cabbage farm in south Lincs. Now I don't want to get too Soccer Am about it, but I was enjoying the thought of this remake of 2002 Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs being plotted around corruption and quasi-existentialist tensions in the Boston (Lincs) 'PD'. Matt Damon (who plays the mob's 'man on the inside') could sit and stare moodily out of his window at the Boston Stump, and Jack Nicholson's crime boss could be reconfigured as a Yellowbelly gangmaster.
More seriously, this is Scorsese doing what he does best (except with the added benefit of a clearly expensively-assembled ensemble cast). Nicholson is, as usual, excellent, and I can't help but feel that he should stick to the demented evil-guy roles rather than doing bumbling Victor Meldrew impressions like in Anger Management or As Good as it Gets. Scorsese's humanisation of mobsters is achieved in this case through Nicholson's character being (as I understand it) a sex addict with a secretly-harboured desire for a true son and heir. The perplexingly similar-looking Damon and DiCaprio- who plays Damon's counterpart as the cop inside the mob- both seem to occupy the filial role to Nicholson at times, when DiCaprio isn't being taught all about sacrifice and redemption by Martin Sheen's police captain.
As the above paragraph might indicate, the film is perhaps indicative of how Scorsese doesn't need Paul Schrader to make films that are ever-so-slightly overwrought on the 'morals and masculinity' front. Nevertheless, the taut, suspenseful plotting at least compensates for this, and the action (well, the violence) is done tremendously on both sides of the camera. Ray Winstone, of all people, gets the 'Joe Pesci' role (I'm not sure Scorsese thought we'd believe Pesci as an Irish-American) and does a terrifying job. Balancing up the unstable psychopath quotient on the side of the cops is none other than Marky Mark, who actually gets to have the last laugh for a change.
Okay, that's my dilettante's go at film reviewing. Time for some football.
Joe x
Looking out of the window of my flat into one of the houses opposite, I can see an extremely small cat, coloured like a Frisian cow, pawing a Beware of the Dog sign. Poetic justice, perhaps. It's significantly more endearing than the couple a few doors down who don't see the need to close the shutter in the bathroom whenever, erm, 'bodily functions' need attending to. I can't make up my mind as to whether or not they're extremely absent-minded or just particularly sadistic exhibitionist perverts.
Okay, I'm leading the witnesses. I just couldn't work out how to get from the delightful view out of my window to The Departed, which I watched last night, without going down the 'they're perverts, and so is Jack Nicholson's character in The Departed' route, which would have been rather cheap. Kwik Save continuity, if you will. Instead, therefore, you've got the 'disingenuous male twenty-something blogger' (cf. ironic sweeping pan shot) approach.
The Departed is heavy on non-ironic sweeping pan shots of Boston, a city which has always exerted a strange fascination over me: largely, I think, because it's a six point Gamma World City named after a small cabbage farm in south Lincs. Now I don't want to get too Soccer Am about it, but I was enjoying the thought of this remake of 2002 Hong Kong flick Infernal Affairs being plotted around corruption and quasi-existentialist tensions in the Boston (Lincs) 'PD'. Matt Damon (who plays the mob's 'man on the inside') could sit and stare moodily out of his window at the Boston Stump, and Jack Nicholson's crime boss could be reconfigured as a Yellowbelly gangmaster.
More seriously, this is Scorsese doing what he does best (except with the added benefit of a clearly expensively-assembled ensemble cast). Nicholson is, as usual, excellent, and I can't help but feel that he should stick to the demented evil-guy roles rather than doing bumbling Victor Meldrew impressions like in Anger Management or As Good as it Gets. Scorsese's humanisation of mobsters is achieved in this case through Nicholson's character being (as I understand it) a sex addict with a secretly-harboured desire for a true son and heir. The perplexingly similar-looking Damon and DiCaprio- who plays Damon's counterpart as the cop inside the mob- both seem to occupy the filial role to Nicholson at times, when DiCaprio isn't being taught all about sacrifice and redemption by Martin Sheen's police captain.
As the above paragraph might indicate, the film is perhaps indicative of how Scorsese doesn't need Paul Schrader to make films that are ever-so-slightly overwrought on the 'morals and masculinity' front. Nevertheless, the taut, suspenseful plotting at least compensates for this, and the action (well, the violence) is done tremendously on both sides of the camera. Ray Winstone, of all people, gets the 'Joe Pesci' role (I'm not sure Scorsese thought we'd believe Pesci as an Irish-American) and does a terrifying job. Balancing up the unstable psychopath quotient on the side of the cops is none other than Marky Mark, who actually gets to have the last laugh for a change.
Okay, that's my dilettante's go at film reviewing. Time for some football.
Joe x
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Railway Stations
I'm fiddling with the end of the chapter on Caught now. My supervisor's response to it was reassuringly positive so I'm trying to give it a meaty conclusion, while also trying to figure out how to trim it down for publication. On that note, there may be some exciting news in that field soon: as the semi-secretive blogger's cliche runs, watch this space. I've also been winding up the term's teaching, which (anti) climaxes tomorrow with a revision session which I have little doubt will be attended by the sum total of absolutely nobody.
Concurrently, I've been throwing myself into the chapter on Green's Party Going (1939). A brief summary:
It's sometime in the late 1930s, and war looms ominously upon the horizon. Max Adey, a wealthy playboy, has invited a number of his social set to travel to the south of France for a long vacation. The party are to assemble at London Victoria station, from where they will catch the boat-train for the continent. Unfortunately, as they begin to congregate a thick fog falls upon London, immobilising all transport out of the city. As the station becomes dangerously crowded with commuters, the station officials decide to barricade the entrances, effectively meaning that no-one (with a few unexplained exceptions) can enter or leave. Initially, this does not trouble Max who is flush enough to take a couple of suites at the station hotel in which he and his (increasingly charmless) friends can relax, drink and play cruel pranks upon one another. This unfolds against the backdrop of three hermeneutically challenging sub-narratives. Firstly, the oldest member of the party (who has only turned up to say goodbye) has been taken ill, ostensibly as a result of a dead pigeon she picked up, without good reason, upon arrival at Victoria. The second concerns the party's malicious gossip about a mysterious character called "Embassy Richard", who has developed an unwelcome habit of gatecrashing society parties. Thirdly, an unidentified man who speaks in a range of regional accents has attached himself to the party: they believe he is a detective of some description. The waiting rolls on through a variety of permutations until it is interrupted by the slightly inexplicable arrival of one of Max's paramours, a vaguely obnoxious model. The older lady recovers, Embassy Richard arrives to stake a place on the trip, and the fog begins to lift.
Well, that's as brief as I can do. It probably doesn't emerge from this description, but Party Going is as close as the pre-war English novel comes to the unfixable pseudo-allegories of Kafka that I think Deleuze and Guattari describe in Towards a Minor Literature. That, nevertheless, is a version of Kafka that's been filtered through a lens that is one-part Evelyn Waugh, one-part Agatha Christie. There's touches of Joyce, Baudelaire, Pirandello, Swift, Blanchot and even Zola in there for good measure, though I'm primarily reading it as an allegory that, contrary to the habit of Green's far-travelling contemporaries such as Waugh, Robert Byron and Cyril Connolly, steadfastly refuses to go anywhere, least of all towards its exegesis.
That said, it's still a novel in which things happen in a nominally real-life environment, so I've been thinking rather a lot about train stations lately. I don't drive, and I'm not enormously keen on flying, so I'm rather familiar with them. Here's a list of some of my favourites, in no particular order:
Lisbon Santa Apollonia
This night still be Lisbon's international terminus, as it was last time I was in that ever-so-strange city (see John Berger's last collection of short stories for an idea about what it's like there). This is great, because you expect an international terminus to be like Waterloo, a kind of Hollywood vision of shiny post-iron curtain Europe, and instead you get something that looks like a house in which a young Eva Peron may have lived.
Florence Santa Maria Novella
Continuing the slightly tasteless dictatorial theme, SMN couldn't be more different: it's all Italian modernism with a Viennese twist (thanks, Wikipedia). The building is far more palatable than the builders, in this case, with an ersatz-seeming marbled concourse which gives one the impression of being in a Star Trek set designed by Fritz Lang.
Budapest Nyugati
Really low platforms add 1 point onto any station's quota, and they have these at the evocatively named Nyugati. It's stock-footage central European- I know I'm overworking the cliches here, but one expects Harry Lime to turn up at any moment- and they sell cheap pizzas on the platform. Take that, Whistlestop Food & Wine! All of this pales into insignificance when you look at the Kraftwerkian temptations offered by the departure board: Bucharest, Kiev, Moscow, Venice, Belgrade, Lausanne. You couldn't feel any more like a citizen of Europe than in a place like this.
Edinburgh Waverley
Slightly more prosaic, I guess, but I always associate this one with trips to the zoo when I was a kid. For some reason, I equate it with those teal-coloured 125s from what James Murphy calls "the unremembered 80s".
Darlington North Road
My home town isn't really what you'd call an extravagant place. In the town's west end, with a population I would conservatively estimate at 8-9,000, there isn't a single pub because Quakers paid for all the houses to be built. Darlington makes Norwich look like Barcelona during Sonar. That said, the town is ostentatious enough to have two stations- well, it is the birthplace of the railways, as the up-against-it tourist board never tire of telling everyone- and the smaller of them has a little museum attached. Now, you know that feeling when you're a kid and you can't imagine how happy anyone would be to live next to a station/ football ground/ adventure playground and when someone actually does it feels a little uncanny? I had two separate family members that lived dead near this place, so this place is tinged with magic. The kind of magic that can come only by being dwarfed by one of the biggest B&Qs you're ever likely to clap eyes on.
Paris Gare d'Austerlitz
Loads of underground tunnels painted green that are virtually impossible to escape from give this station an exciting atmosphere akin to being in a horrible nightmare. Normally, when you awake from a horrible nightmare your alarm is ringing and you've got to go and do something unpleasant but essential. At Gare d'Austerlitz, you emerge from the dream to find yourself on the all-night party train to Spain.
That's quite enough favourite stations for now, I think. I should perhaps add that Peterborough is my least favourite station on the planet, because I spend half my life there and seems to be permanently inhabited by goth teenagers and psychos. Interestingly, in the time it's taken me to write this blog, Roman Abramovich has almost certainly finalised the terms of Jose Mourinho's p45...
Jx
Concurrently, I've been throwing myself into the chapter on Green's Party Going (1939). A brief summary:
It's sometime in the late 1930s, and war looms ominously upon the horizon. Max Adey, a wealthy playboy, has invited a number of his social set to travel to the south of France for a long vacation. The party are to assemble at London Victoria station, from where they will catch the boat-train for the continent. Unfortunately, as they begin to congregate a thick fog falls upon London, immobilising all transport out of the city. As the station becomes dangerously crowded with commuters, the station officials decide to barricade the entrances, effectively meaning that no-one (with a few unexplained exceptions) can enter or leave. Initially, this does not trouble Max who is flush enough to take a couple of suites at the station hotel in which he and his (increasingly charmless) friends can relax, drink and play cruel pranks upon one another. This unfolds against the backdrop of three hermeneutically challenging sub-narratives. Firstly, the oldest member of the party (who has only turned up to say goodbye) has been taken ill, ostensibly as a result of a dead pigeon she picked up, without good reason, upon arrival at Victoria. The second concerns the party's malicious gossip about a mysterious character called "Embassy Richard", who has developed an unwelcome habit of gatecrashing society parties. Thirdly, an unidentified man who speaks in a range of regional accents has attached himself to the party: they believe he is a detective of some description. The waiting rolls on through a variety of permutations until it is interrupted by the slightly inexplicable arrival of one of Max's paramours, a vaguely obnoxious model. The older lady recovers, Embassy Richard arrives to stake a place on the trip, and the fog begins to lift.
Well, that's as brief as I can do. It probably doesn't emerge from this description, but Party Going is as close as the pre-war English novel comes to the unfixable pseudo-allegories of Kafka that I think Deleuze and Guattari describe in Towards a Minor Literature. That, nevertheless, is a version of Kafka that's been filtered through a lens that is one-part Evelyn Waugh, one-part Agatha Christie. There's touches of Joyce, Baudelaire, Pirandello, Swift, Blanchot and even Zola in there for good measure, though I'm primarily reading it as an allegory that, contrary to the habit of Green's far-travelling contemporaries such as Waugh, Robert Byron and Cyril Connolly, steadfastly refuses to go anywhere, least of all towards its exegesis.
That said, it's still a novel in which things happen in a nominally real-life environment, so I've been thinking rather a lot about train stations lately. I don't drive, and I'm not enormously keen on flying, so I'm rather familiar with them. Here's a list of some of my favourites, in no particular order:
Lisbon Santa Apollonia
This night still be Lisbon's international terminus, as it was last time I was in that ever-so-strange city (see John Berger's last collection of short stories for an idea about what it's like there). This is great, because you expect an international terminus to be like Waterloo, a kind of Hollywood vision of shiny post-iron curtain Europe, and instead you get something that looks like a house in which a young Eva Peron may have lived.
Florence Santa Maria Novella
Continuing the slightly tasteless dictatorial theme, SMN couldn't be more different: it's all Italian modernism with a Viennese twist (thanks, Wikipedia). The building is far more palatable than the builders, in this case, with an ersatz-seeming marbled concourse which gives one the impression of being in a Star Trek set designed by Fritz Lang.
Budapest Nyugati
Really low platforms add 1 point onto any station's quota, and they have these at the evocatively named Nyugati. It's stock-footage central European- I know I'm overworking the cliches here, but one expects Harry Lime to turn up at any moment- and they sell cheap pizzas on the platform. Take that, Whistlestop Food & Wine! All of this pales into insignificance when you look at the Kraftwerkian temptations offered by the departure board: Bucharest, Kiev, Moscow, Venice, Belgrade, Lausanne. You couldn't feel any more like a citizen of Europe than in a place like this.
Edinburgh Waverley
Slightly more prosaic, I guess, but I always associate this one with trips to the zoo when I was a kid. For some reason, I equate it with those teal-coloured 125s from what James Murphy calls "the unremembered 80s".
Darlington North Road
My home town isn't really what you'd call an extravagant place. In the town's west end, with a population I would conservatively estimate at 8-9,000, there isn't a single pub because Quakers paid for all the houses to be built. Darlington makes Norwich look like Barcelona during Sonar. That said, the town is ostentatious enough to have two stations- well, it is the birthplace of the railways, as the up-against-it tourist board never tire of telling everyone- and the smaller of them has a little museum attached. Now, you know that feeling when you're a kid and you can't imagine how happy anyone would be to live next to a station/ football ground/ adventure playground and when someone actually does it feels a little uncanny? I had two separate family members that lived dead near this place, so this place is tinged with magic. The kind of magic that can come only by being dwarfed by one of the biggest B&Qs you're ever likely to clap eyes on.
Paris Gare d'Austerlitz
Loads of underground tunnels painted green that are virtually impossible to escape from give this station an exciting atmosphere akin to being in a horrible nightmare. Normally, when you awake from a horrible nightmare your alarm is ringing and you've got to go and do something unpleasant but essential. At Gare d'Austerlitz, you emerge from the dream to find yourself on the all-night party train to Spain.
That's quite enough favourite stations for now, I think. I should perhaps add that Peterborough is my least favourite station on the planet, because I spend half my life there and seems to be permanently inhabited by goth teenagers and psychos. Interestingly, in the time it's taken me to write this blog, Roman Abramovich has almost certainly finalised the terms of Jose Mourinho's p45...
Jx
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