New Weird/ neo-realist/ literary occultist/ father of Yorkshire noir/ northern Ballardian/ modern-day Zola David Peace talks to a French TV show about the composition of The Damned United. I'd love to know what the French made of this:
'So, right, there's this football manager, and he's got this sweary interior monologue where he thinks about murders and the devil and occasionally comes out of it to tell Johnny Giles or Billy Bremner where to stick it, and he's obsessed with numerology and prophecy, and it fits into a previous sequence of novels in which Millgarth police station in Leeds is a kind of Lovecraftian omphalos and another which links Margaret Thatcher to a neo-Nazi conspiracy.'
'Could you not just have written a 90 page novel in which someone sits in a hotel room smoking- chuck in one very vivid description of S&M and some unreadable musings on the Hegelian Dialectic or the impossibility of writing.'
'No, I think I'll do the novel about the demonically-possessed football manager instead, if it's all the same to you.'
Obviously, a bit unfair on both parties there. Peace seems to have the French transgressive classics- Bataille, Guyotat and (particularly, I think) Celine- behind his work as much as his avowed influences in British social realism and the likes of Derek Raymond or James Ellroy. I think it would be so easy for him to claim this lineage and come across as a bit more hoity in interviews, but he's from Ossett so instead you get him identifying his significant precursors as people like Stan Barstow. Peace's work is vastly, vastly superior to Barstow and John Braine.
On another note, I'd love to find out what the novelised history of Leeds United (AKA 'we all hate Leeds scum', as the fans of every club in in the ridings would have you believe) would have looked like. As Peace doesn't do normal, or pleasant, I'm willing to be that hooliganism would have figured rather heavily, plus the liquidation of the earlier club, Leeds City, and the current financial shenanigans. It probably wouldn't have been quite as visceral as the Clough book though, and might not have tucked in with the comprehensive vision of a post-industrial, mid-apocalyptic 70s/80s Yorkshire that emerges from a reading of the 'Red Riding' quartet and GB84. I just hope they don't bugger the movie version up entirely.
Saturday, 31 May 2008
Friday, 30 May 2008
D-U-C Travel Writing Awards Spectacular...#1: Comedy
Well, not that spectacular. I've just found two sections from an unpublished post from last year. The idea had been to make a feature about my favourite pieces of travel writing sorted by category. Given that I was making it up on the spot, I'm not sure the winners are actually correct, but what can you do. Anyway, the first award in this very occasional series is for travel writing of a comic bent:
* * * *
COMIC
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
I often get the feeling that many travel writing afficionados look down on Bryson somewhat. The glossy covers, the mass readership, the sheer mid-Atlantic breeziness of it all - unlike the frequently heavy-handed Paul Theroux, Bryson is predominantly interested in mining the comic potential of the American abroad - all seem to conspire to put people off. What I think is great about Bryson is the unadulterated childishness of his writing, meaning that he seems to locate some kind of Burkean sublime in everything from a Swedish Roll-on Roll-off ferry to a waste paper basket in Dover to an epiphany on the Bosphorus at dusk. Bryson spoils himself in A Walk in the Woods, choosing as his subject matter the mindbendingly lengthy Appalachian Trail, a hiking footpath which wends and winds all the way from northern Georgia to the Canadian border in Maine. The path passes over some of the highest mountains in the eastern United States, and through some of the vastest wildernesses on that side of the Rockies. There's bears, snakes, poisonous deer ticks and unhinged hillbillies to deal with along the way, as if the strenuous walking, sub-zero camping and endless stove food wasn't enough.
Bryson, clearly a capable traveller, would probably have breezed it if he'd gone alone. However, shortly before setting out on his expedition, panic set in, and he decided to footnote all of his Christmas cards with an invitation to accompany him on the walk. Clearly, the gods were looking kindly on his publishers, as the only respondent was an old, seriously overweight college friend with alcohol and drug "issues". "Hilarious consequences" ensue.
However, the jokes (many of which, unsurprisingly, come at the increasingly "tested" accomplice's expense) are matched by a sensitive affinity for the environment in which he finds himself, in both a natural and a human sense. There's a measure of quiet outrage towards the American government over the "secret" poverty of the rural South, which is backed up by a warmth towards its inhabitants (a favourite scene depicts an exhausted Bryson and friend hitching a lift off a just-wed pair of drunkards). On top of this, the book is full of unexpected nuggets of American history which are imbued with the kind of ironic touch The Guardian would have us believe is not commonplace over the pond.
* * * *
COMIC
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
I often get the feeling that many travel writing afficionados look down on Bryson somewhat. The glossy covers, the mass readership, the sheer mid-Atlantic breeziness of it all - unlike the frequently heavy-handed Paul Theroux, Bryson is predominantly interested in mining the comic potential of the American abroad - all seem to conspire to put people off. What I think is great about Bryson is the unadulterated childishness of his writing, meaning that he seems to locate some kind of Burkean sublime in everything from a Swedish Roll-on Roll-off ferry to a waste paper basket in Dover to an epiphany on the Bosphorus at dusk. Bryson spoils himself in A Walk in the Woods, choosing as his subject matter the mindbendingly lengthy Appalachian Trail, a hiking footpath which wends and winds all the way from northern Georgia to the Canadian border in Maine. The path passes over some of the highest mountains in the eastern United States, and through some of the vastest wildernesses on that side of the Rockies. There's bears, snakes, poisonous deer ticks and unhinged hillbillies to deal with along the way, as if the strenuous walking, sub-zero camping and endless stove food wasn't enough.
Bryson, clearly a capable traveller, would probably have breezed it if he'd gone alone. However, shortly before setting out on his expedition, panic set in, and he decided to footnote all of his Christmas cards with an invitation to accompany him on the walk. Clearly, the gods were looking kindly on his publishers, as the only respondent was an old, seriously overweight college friend with alcohol and drug "issues". "Hilarious consequences" ensue.
However, the jokes (many of which, unsurprisingly, come at the increasingly "tested" accomplice's expense) are matched by a sensitive affinity for the environment in which he finds himself, in both a natural and a human sense. There's a measure of quiet outrage towards the American government over the "secret" poverty of the rural South, which is backed up by a warmth towards its inhabitants (a favourite scene depicts an exhausted Bryson and friend hitching a lift off a just-wed pair of drunkards). On top of this, the book is full of unexpected nuggets of American history which are imbued with the kind of ironic touch The Guardian would have us believe is not commonplace over the pond.
That Was The Week That Was (By Turns Underwhelming And Heartrending)
Underwhelming, because I've got the post-handing-in-a-chapter disorientation. Because 'editing' old chapters feels like hard work. Because I marked 55 exam scripts which did nothing to convince me that the A-level curriculum is any kind of preparation for a specialized study of English Literature. Because it has been cold and wet.
Heartrending because Poppy, our retriever ('our' as in my family in Richmond), died this week at the relatively young age of 12. It all came as something of a shock- I last saw her just under three weeks ago, and she was at her best, tearing through newly-planted hedges and digging up flowerbeds and so on. She was a very 'doggy' dog, in the best sense of that word, which is to say that she was chiefly motivated by food and paid little regard to the niceties of human etiquette. That isn't to say that she wasn't affectionate, or wouldn't play with humans: rather, she was something of a connoisseur of the dirty pawprint on the newly-mopped floor, the underwear stolen from the room of a little-known guest, the surreptitiously 'tasted' baking. The latter speciality was the case in one of my favourite Poppy anecdotes of all time. When I was about sixteen- maybe even fifteen still- and she was in that interim stage dogs go through where they're too big to be called puppies and too immature to be anything else, I was walking up the step out of the kitchen into the living room. Everyone else was through in the office, or whatever that room at the back was at the time (I admit the geography here only makes sense to people who ever visited West Terrace) and I heard a slurping noise. I turned around to find Poppy, with her paws up on the surface, licking- not eating, just licking- a plate of newly-baked flapjacks. The detail here is in the licking, I think. Anyway, there are many others in that vein, which is why she was such a good dog. I can't see the point in dogs if they don't misbehave. So, thanks for all the comedy and other good times (which mostly featured at least a soupcon of hilarity.)
Anyhow, bit gutted this week. Twenty to six? Friday? It's almost a quarter to pub!
Heartrending because Poppy, our retriever ('our' as in my family in Richmond), died this week at the relatively young age of 12. It all came as something of a shock- I last saw her just under three weeks ago, and she was at her best, tearing through newly-planted hedges and digging up flowerbeds and so on. She was a very 'doggy' dog, in the best sense of that word, which is to say that she was chiefly motivated by food and paid little regard to the niceties of human etiquette. That isn't to say that she wasn't affectionate, or wouldn't play with humans: rather, she was something of a connoisseur of the dirty pawprint on the newly-mopped floor, the underwear stolen from the room of a little-known guest, the surreptitiously 'tasted' baking. The latter speciality was the case in one of my favourite Poppy anecdotes of all time. When I was about sixteen- maybe even fifteen still- and she was in that interim stage dogs go through where they're too big to be called puppies and too immature to be anything else, I was walking up the step out of the kitchen into the living room. Everyone else was through in the office, or whatever that room at the back was at the time (I admit the geography here only makes sense to people who ever visited West Terrace) and I heard a slurping noise. I turned around to find Poppy, with her paws up on the surface, licking- not eating, just licking- a plate of newly-baked flapjacks. The detail here is in the licking, I think. Anyway, there are many others in that vein, which is why she was such a good dog. I can't see the point in dogs if they don't misbehave. So, thanks for all the comedy and other good times (which mostly featured at least a soupcon of hilarity.)
Anyhow, bit gutted this week. Twenty to six? Friday? It's almost a quarter to pub!
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
D-U-C Sartorial Manifesto #1- Crocs
Having finished (well, almost finished) a humongous heap of exam marking yesterday- I must be one of the few to have breathed a sigh of relief at the great East Anglian Bank Holiday washout- I decided to give my Dad a call. I hadn't spoken to him for a little while and he doesn't mind if you call him at half past ten. The problem with calling Dad at half past ten is that his brain still works at that time, whereas mine often seems to have short-circuited, a state of affairs that becomes particularly probable if I've spent all day marking. Anyway, he asked me to define 'polemic'- I don't quite recall why- and I mumbled/ rambled about Juvenal, Jeremy Clarkson and A.A. Gill (who I believe I referred to in a piece of writing that at least engaged the polemical last week).
I also made the slightly- okay, extremely- contentious claim that most, and certainly the best, polemicists are politically inclined towards the right. In the harsh light of (to)day, I'm not entirely sure that that's correct: it's more the case that the right-leaning essay, with its autocommission to penetrate the perceived Doublethink of liberal opinion, has a sense of entitlement when it comes to wearing the obvious garb of polemic. The conservative essay, the terms of which are more or less set out by Juvenal, is always performative. It turns on particular gendered notions: the conservative is 'independent', the conservative 'has the balls' to flick his fingers at cultural consensus. Real men, men of the right, don't mince their words or equivocate or shilly-shally. No, they get in their bloody cars and break the speed limit, never mind the bloody speed cameras! The police should be out catching the real bloody criminals anyway!
Having ruminated a little on this, it strikes me that the anti-ruminatory rhetorical trajectories of right-wing polemics impose the terms of a different kind of performativity on the left-wing polemic. I'm not suggesting that Slavoj Zizek is the natural intellectual opponent for Jeremy Clarkson- let's face it, you're not going to catch Clarkson or Richard Littlejohn wasting precious petrolhead minutes by burying their heads in the New Left Review and getting to know their enemies- but I'm of the opinion that the capacity for demonstratively polemical writing on the modern left has been circumscribed by the willingness of the intellectual, and not so intellectual, libertarian right to stake a claim to the heritage of Juvenal, Swift, and Orwell. I enjoy engaging with the intricacies and verbal shimmies of Zizek et al but it often seems a shame that there is a gap in the ranks of the intellectual left (as opposed to the intellectual centre-left) for an Orwellian straight-shooter.
I'm sure Peter Hitchens would have us all believe that this is because of the intellectual elitism of the left manifested as a tendency to create verbal Chinese walls in order to keep out the proles they purport to speak for. This isn't the case, as far as I see it, though such an analysis pertains to the reason. I think that it's more to do with anxiety. If the voices of the right have inveigled themselves into a particular rhetorical genealogy, I think it's fair to say that they also have a monopoly on the calling of hypocrisy. In Britain, since Thatcher, the left has been expressively hamstrung by the fear that its polemics will be speared on this particular argumentative device. No left-wing speaker ever came off the podium- or, more likely, the soapbox- without the allegation of hypoctisy ringing in their ears either from a real listener or from the the internalised political superego...
...but that all goes somewhere rather different from where I intended. It doesn't matter what one's political proclivities are- everyone should be allowed a slice of the classical pie and, in particular, everyone should have the right to set their internal monologue to 'Juvenal' once in a while without worrying about hypocrisy. I can, however, say one thing for certain in absolute confidence that no-one shall rail against my hypocrisy. I will never, ever, wear Crocs.
I don't want to put a picture of a pair on here because I fear it would threaten the aesthetic unity I've tried to achieve with this blog. If you don't know what they look like- which is probably the case if you come from a southern European country in which stylistic aberrations are not made acceptable on pseudo-ethical grounds- then I suggest you go on Google Image Search. When you find out what they look like, imagine them on a grown man's feet. You probably won't recover until tomorrow.
Now, I really don't care if Crocs are digging wells in Tanzania, replanting rainforest, or forging George Bush's signature on the Kyoto Accord. If they're in one of those space-scraping planes, all grinning like an eco-aware charabanc of Shoe People as they mend the hole in the ozone layer, I still don't care. They could all make like Bruce Willis in Armageddon and do some good work in the field of asteroid deflection and I still would not care, nor be inclined to put my feet into them. Crocs are rank.
Fathers are supposed to wear sensible brogues or, if they're of the County Durham beer-and-tabs variety, winkelpickers. They can wear wellingtons, walking boots, smart shoes for work or a pair of dirty trainers for bike rides and runs.
Mothers are allowed more flexibility in shoe choice. In fact, it's hard to prescribe the right shoes for mothers. I mean, there's plenty of choice, isn't there?
Girlfriends also have plenty of choice in the field of shoes. They probably shouldn't wear the same trainers as their boyfriend has on that day, because that looks weird, but otherwise anything goes.
Boyfriends should wear smart shoes or a decent pair of trainers.
Babies should wear booties or endearingly miniatuised versions of adult Converse hi-tops.
These rules stick. So why oh why oh why oh why do I repeatedly see whole families- mother, father, son and girlfriend, daughter and boyfriend, smaller children, grandchildren, grandparents- all out together wearing Crocs? What message is this supposed to convey? Are they really saving the planet by walking around en masse wearing so-called shoes which make them look as if they belong to a particularly pathetic religious cult? They might be preserving resources by wearing recycled shoes, but if any aliens with fashion sense that extends beyond high tensile body armour and bulbous space hats ever sees the Crocs family on their intergalactic telescope, it won't take them long to decide that we're an aesthetically bereft race who need to be eliminated from the cosmic gene pool. Just don't do it. They might be watching up on Teletraan 8.
A lot of people these days get stick for dressing in cliched gear, even though they look pretty good. It takes something to wear a nice suit out and about, or to dress like James Dean or Marlon Branco or Gene Vincent. You'll probably get a lot of people who wear Crocs looking at you if you do, as if you were unbalancing their eco-karma in your 'efforts to look cool'. If you do dress like John Cale or Humphrey Bogart or Eva bloody Peron, please take some consolation from the fact that your sartorial statement doesn't read 'my house smells of yoghurt and bananas'.
One last thing. I've been pleasantly amused by the appearance of cut-price (ie, snide/ knock-off/ not actually recycled) Crocs on markets recently. Nothing enlivens a hangover more than watching ecobores excitedly handing over cash to opportunistic criminals and thereby exacerbating the problem they think they're addressing. Idiots.
I also made the slightly- okay, extremely- contentious claim that most, and certainly the best, polemicists are politically inclined towards the right. In the harsh light of (to)day, I'm not entirely sure that that's correct: it's more the case that the right-leaning essay, with its autocommission to penetrate the perceived Doublethink of liberal opinion, has a sense of entitlement when it comes to wearing the obvious garb of polemic. The conservative essay, the terms of which are more or less set out by Juvenal, is always performative. It turns on particular gendered notions: the conservative is 'independent', the conservative 'has the balls' to flick his fingers at cultural consensus. Real men, men of the right, don't mince their words or equivocate or shilly-shally. No, they get in their bloody cars and break the speed limit, never mind the bloody speed cameras! The police should be out catching the real bloody criminals anyway!
Having ruminated a little on this, it strikes me that the anti-ruminatory rhetorical trajectories of right-wing polemics impose the terms of a different kind of performativity on the left-wing polemic. I'm not suggesting that Slavoj Zizek is the natural intellectual opponent for Jeremy Clarkson- let's face it, you're not going to catch Clarkson or Richard Littlejohn wasting precious petrolhead minutes by burying their heads in the New Left Review and getting to know their enemies- but I'm of the opinion that the capacity for demonstratively polemical writing on the modern left has been circumscribed by the willingness of the intellectual, and not so intellectual, libertarian right to stake a claim to the heritage of Juvenal, Swift, and Orwell. I enjoy engaging with the intricacies and verbal shimmies of Zizek et al but it often seems a shame that there is a gap in the ranks of the intellectual left (as opposed to the intellectual centre-left) for an Orwellian straight-shooter.
I'm sure Peter Hitchens would have us all believe that this is because of the intellectual elitism of the left manifested as a tendency to create verbal Chinese walls in order to keep out the proles they purport to speak for. This isn't the case, as far as I see it, though such an analysis pertains to the reason. I think that it's more to do with anxiety. If the voices of the right have inveigled themselves into a particular rhetorical genealogy, I think it's fair to say that they also have a monopoly on the calling of hypocrisy. In Britain, since Thatcher, the left has been expressively hamstrung by the fear that its polemics will be speared on this particular argumentative device. No left-wing speaker ever came off the podium- or, more likely, the soapbox- without the allegation of hypoctisy ringing in their ears either from a real listener or from the the internalised political superego...
...but that all goes somewhere rather different from where I intended. It doesn't matter what one's political proclivities are- everyone should be allowed a slice of the classical pie and, in particular, everyone should have the right to set their internal monologue to 'Juvenal' once in a while without worrying about hypocrisy. I can, however, say one thing for certain in absolute confidence that no-one shall rail against my hypocrisy. I will never, ever, wear Crocs.
I don't want to put a picture of a pair on here because I fear it would threaten the aesthetic unity I've tried to achieve with this blog. If you don't know what they look like- which is probably the case if you come from a southern European country in which stylistic aberrations are not made acceptable on pseudo-ethical grounds- then I suggest you go on Google Image Search. When you find out what they look like, imagine them on a grown man's feet. You probably won't recover until tomorrow.
Now, I really don't care if Crocs are digging wells in Tanzania, replanting rainforest, or forging George Bush's signature on the Kyoto Accord. If they're in one of those space-scraping planes, all grinning like an eco-aware charabanc of Shoe People as they mend the hole in the ozone layer, I still don't care. They could all make like Bruce Willis in Armageddon and do some good work in the field of asteroid deflection and I still would not care, nor be inclined to put my feet into them. Crocs are rank.
Fathers are supposed to wear sensible brogues or, if they're of the County Durham beer-and-tabs variety, winkelpickers. They can wear wellingtons, walking boots, smart shoes for work or a pair of dirty trainers for bike rides and runs.
Mothers are allowed more flexibility in shoe choice. In fact, it's hard to prescribe the right shoes for mothers. I mean, there's plenty of choice, isn't there?
Girlfriends also have plenty of choice in the field of shoes. They probably shouldn't wear the same trainers as their boyfriend has on that day, because that looks weird, but otherwise anything goes.
Boyfriends should wear smart shoes or a decent pair of trainers.
Babies should wear booties or endearingly miniatuised versions of adult Converse hi-tops.
These rules stick. So why oh why oh why oh why do I repeatedly see whole families- mother, father, son and girlfriend, daughter and boyfriend, smaller children, grandchildren, grandparents- all out together wearing Crocs? What message is this supposed to convey? Are they really saving the planet by walking around en masse wearing so-called shoes which make them look as if they belong to a particularly pathetic religious cult? They might be preserving resources by wearing recycled shoes, but if any aliens with fashion sense that extends beyond high tensile body armour and bulbous space hats ever sees the Crocs family on their intergalactic telescope, it won't take them long to decide that we're an aesthetically bereft race who need to be eliminated from the cosmic gene pool. Just don't do it. They might be watching up on Teletraan 8.
A lot of people these days get stick for dressing in cliched gear, even though they look pretty good. It takes something to wear a nice suit out and about, or to dress like James Dean or Marlon Branco or Gene Vincent. You'll probably get a lot of people who wear Crocs looking at you if you do, as if you were unbalancing their eco-karma in your 'efforts to look cool'. If you do dress like John Cale or Humphrey Bogart or Eva bloody Peron, please take some consolation from the fact that your sartorial statement doesn't read 'my house smells of yoghurt and bananas'.
One last thing. I've been pleasantly amused by the appearance of cut-price (ie, snide/ knock-off/ not actually recycled) Crocs on markets recently. Nothing enlivens a hangover more than watching ecobores excitedly handing over cash to opportunistic criminals and thereby exacerbating the problem they think they're addressing. Idiots.
Friday, 23 May 2008
The clock ticks...
...but I'm getting there. Just handed in 13,000 words, the last 'new' chapter before the big edit begins in earnest. Continuing the temporal metaphors, I reckon the sun's over the yard-arm!
Thursday, 22 May 2008
He Thought of Cars, and Where, Where to Drive Them
Just before leaving the house today for a very pleasant walk to UEA (a walk that was indulgently complemented by a Thorntons toffee flavoured ice cream, hark at me) I heard the sad news that Murray Walker is resigning from the Formula 1 coverage because of his failing hearing, a problem brought on by the cumulative effect of thousands of motors buzzing in his ears. I was inspired by this to scribble an envelope's worth of notes about Walker, J.G. Ballard, Evelyn Waugh and Max Mosley, but I haven't had time to turn it into a real article yet. That'll be the PhD calling, won't it?
Anyway, file this one under promises.
Anyway, file this one under promises.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
