‘Tec tonics….
May 24, 2008
“The detective novel is the art-for-art’s-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.” V.S.Pritchett
Ever wanted to write a whodunnit but found that your intended sleuth’s idiosyncrasies (for idiosyncrasies he – even, these days, conceivably she – must have) have already been pre-plagiarised? It’s tricky to find a niche that hasn’t already been stuffed with blood-stained corpses and dysfunctional ‘tecs. From mediaeval monasteries to contemporary colleges, any institution worth its salt must have on its roster some quirky soul with a backstory which allows him not only arcane knowledge denied to the usual authority figures, but also interesting faults just sufficient to hinder without totally preventing his solving of The Mystery.
Let’s not kid ourselves: the spoof list of Rather Daft Detective Ideas will have been done many times before….and I’d be surprised if the late Miles Kington hasn’t done his fair share….which lo and behold google confirms….nevertheless….whither the whodunnit….?
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Police in Stickshire are baffled by the seemingly unconnected deaths of three consecutive Chief Constables in their HQ on the same day (this being one county where the Appointments Committee is more than efficient)….the senior officer in charge doesn’t waste time investigating the deaths himself, instead standing at the main entrance scrutinising passers-by in a hopeful search for the senile old lady who can crack the cases….
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Dysfunctional ‘tecs are two a penny – until you read about Coma ‘Tec, the ultimate dysfunctional sleuth….suffering multiple organ failure and on life support in a hospital bed, unable to communicate, his mind is free to analyse each apparently insignificant clue and to find the connections which will crack the case….at least, that’s what his team hopes as they organise a rota to dictate their findings to him….
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A locked room is discovered which may or may not contain a dead body….Chief Inspector Schroedinger is undecided whether or not a crime has even been committed….
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A dead bee is found, disturbing the calm of the beehive. Inspector Busby investigates. Beefore long she has discovered a web of deceit and opened a can of worms. No flies on her though, so waspishly she earwigs on the colony. Something bugs her about this case; an atmosphere of pure weevil pervades. It’s just not cricket….
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The bodies of two elderly men are found swinging from a tree. Detective Superintendent Godot is assigned to the case; don’t hold your breath….
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An extremely gloomy Swedish Police Inspector spends six hundred pages solving a simple murder case. Every detail of the investigation is painstakingly set out…. Note: for extra verisimilitude and gloominess, this book, although originally written in English, has been translated into some Scandinavian language or other and then retranslated back into English….
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Chief Inspector Felix is called in to investigate the brutal murder of a dog. But he can’t be arsed and curls up in front of the fire and goes to sleep….
May 24, 2008 at 5:43 am
Whodunnit! Do you remember Steve? Did What?
Correct, it’s just not cricket.
I wonder what trees are being contemplated for topiaristic touch round thereabouts.
May 24, 2008 at 8:11 am
I’m just warming up, my interest as you may have gathered is centred on the invisible; as a slight diversion try the epic poem http-://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1-122html.
On Guardian’s cif ‘In a Parallel Universe..’ by Jim Al-Khali Ci on 1/12/07, was posted the old verse that turned up yet again more recently:
“As I was walkin’ up the stairs
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again to-day
Oh how I wish he’d go away”
I replied:
I’m not here I left
My ghost came back
You don’t know I’m here
My ghost can’t say
I’ve gone away
….
Returning to the subject matter
Yes, something was done!
Ah, but will it show in the material world?
May 24, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I do like these, dgg, a whole new line . . . and especially (on a first quick read):
‘A dead bee is found, disturbing the calm of the beehive. Inspector Busby investigates. Beefore long she has discovered . . .’
Have just posted again in your last thread.
May 24, 2008 at 1:39 pm
By the way Steve don’t know whether you saw some late comments on Poem of the Week commencing 18th Feb:
Comments 958574, 958599, 958643, 958726 posted on 25th Feb; I recall now that Wordy said it reminded him too much of Blowup.
I think though, both before and since, there have been some alterations to the script.
Did Coma Tec take sick again, that isn’t in my copy, suspect you’ve made a mistake; please confirm mistake made.
ps I don’t think it’s the electrical impulses that cause the problems, it’s words and the number of ‘heads.’
May 24, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I’m sure I’ve made lots of mistakes here, there and everywhere, Iamnothere, but I haven’t amended the post since it was first published….
….have checked out the cobwebby PotW thread to which you referred (link below, to save other interested parties the trouble of searching:)
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/02/poem_of_the_week_28.html
I’d wondered about a series of philosophical ‘tecs, with each following their own logic (or otherwise) on an appropriate case; but ignorance and laziness intervened….anyone more intimately acquainted with philosophy is invited to suggest suitable scenarios….or other daft ones….
May 24, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Steve – if I had to empathise with any of your dicks, I’d probably side with C.I. Felix (who can’t be arsed)… i mean who, in their right mind, wants to grapple with the underbelly for a living?
Favourite (small) screen detective is probably Sicilian police inspector Montalbano – broadcast with subtitles on Australian TV. Ring any bells in your neck of the woods?
May 24, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I’ve never heard of Montalbano, although that doesn’t mean he (or she….) hasn’t been on British TV….one obscure TV ‘tec I do remember (from the 80s) is the German “Derrick” who looked alarmingly like Dr Ian Paisley….
May 24, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Derrick…I remember him. What a laugh.
‘Ich hat keine arhnung, yunge!’, (I haven’t got a clue, mate), that was his catch-phrase.
He had one of those pathetic blood-hound faces and wore the world’s ugliest suits. He made the Politburo look positively stylish by comparison.
I rather liked Bulman, who repaired antique time-pieces, between solving crimes…and Jim Rockford, who wore the waist-band of his trousers up around his nipples, for some reason. Never stopped him cracking the case, though.
Be warned…I have lots more to say on his matter, crime fiction being a life-long taste of mine…sell your computer and emigrate to Oz, now, or suffer the consequences…
May 24, 2008 at 5:29 pm
that’s ‘junge’, not ‘yunge’…sigh…
May 24, 2008 at 5:45 pm
This book was at the back of my mind when writing this post:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1825875,00.html
….anyone here read it? It sounds fun….
May 24, 2008 at 6:00 pm
‘…without a doubt the best sheep detective novel you’re going to read this year.’
…or, indeed, any year…or millenium, come to that.
I’m sorry, I just can’t see it. Sheep catching baaaaad guys? Nonononononono…
May 24, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I’d hate to add any further musty thoughts, you clearly have your own different scripts (as evidenced by the rota; at any rate I’ve become quite familiar with the Drawing Room and did think I had managed to avoid the problems associated with ’solitary confinement,’ but likely held as one of your ‘daft’ scenarios.)
Meanwhile what is happening in the parallel universe?
(btw sorry about my inability to tee up correct links, http://www.straightdopes.com reference had two very good poems on electrons, and I think cats, attempted to find it again but couldn’t.)
May 25, 2008 at 8:43 am
Where does the Pritchett quote come from, Steve? More to the point, *when* does it come from. VS cannot have read Hammett or Chandler when he wrote it. There is, I believe, a clear dividing line in crime fiction, like the one in poetry- before Prufrock/after Prufrock. In crime fiction, it’s before Hammett/after Hammett.
The great Raymond Chandler wrote an essay in the 50’s called The Simple Art of Murder, in which he mocked the old dispensation, (Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers et al), and said that Hammett had given murders back to the people who actually commit them.
I agree entirely. I read lots of Christie and Sayers and co as a boy, and thinking back on them, I have to laugh. All those ‘country house’ murders, (so ably parodied by Stoppard in The Real Inspector Hound and a number of Monty Python sketches), all those absurd ‘detectives’ and amateur ’sleuths’, all those ‘locked room’ mysteries, all those murders committed for arcane and implausible reasons, (Col. Mustard in the library with the candlestick), all those improbable impostures, ( ‘I put it to you, Madame Furtwangler, that you are actually Baron Charlus…’).
Hammett was an ex-Pinkertons operative. His characters killed for the reasons that people really do- greed, lust, fear- and they didn’t use rare Asiatic poisons or blow-pipes; they used guns, knives and lead-pipes.
Further, Hammett was an admirable man, who went to prison rather than inform on friends to HUAC, unlike, say, Elia Kazan, who sang like a linnet, the prick. A shameful period in American history.
Surely, though, VS must have read Simenon?
May 25, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Mishari – I looked up Pritchett in the trusty ODQ (4th ed) out of curiosity which is where I found that quotation; it seemed mildly apposite so I tacked it on to the (half-written) ‘tec post. It’s apparently from a New Statesman piece of 1951, “Books in General”.
May 25, 2008 at 6:35 pm
btw Steve your speciality wasn’t entomology, was it? Perhaps Wordy really does have the ability to recognise significantly gifted artists; (note a statement conceded with much reluctance.)
…….
Mishari,
Would appreciate it if you could outline your plot i.e. your script, for the reader’s digestion. Have noticed a tendency to include a little of ‘the relic.’
……
Must be a few more contributors out there….
May 25, 2008 at 7:17 pm
“This book was at the back of my mind when writing this post”
Have picked it up a few times but always managed to find something better by the time I got out of the shop. There’s a hint of Jasper Fforde to it but while I liked the first couple of Ffordes the Next series (and the other series) fell off rapidly once he had to push one out every year or so. so I’m kind of put off the sheep for fear that it it won’t be as good as I want it to be.
The best funny tec I’ve read in recent years is the Welsh one, Malcolm Pryce’s Aberystwyth-set one. Well worth looking out if: a) you like Chandler / Hammett; and b) you find Wales funny.
May 25, 2008 at 7:18 pm
No entomologist I….except insofar as I would blithely bump off any creepy-crawly that dared to nibble my plants….
May 25, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Hey, insects have to eat, too. I like insects. Marvels of engineering and design. Certainly more useful than your petunias. Lay off….
May 25, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Not an entomologist! Then given the gift from Des’ believed source or perhaps Hermes/Mercury? I merely try to go to the original existing Source.
Mind you I respect that gifts/talents are to be used and to be added to.
May 25, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Iant, you are much given to vatic utterances, I find…
May 25, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Mishari,
‘vatic’ your learning beats me all the time; I need to check the dictionary to ensure all interpretations.
ps ‘vacant’, not noted, probably fits!
How’s the script coming along?
May 25, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Not vacant, my dear. Oracular, prophetic, mysterious…
Script? I didn’t know I was writing a script. Mind you, I gave up poking my nose into my own business, so…
May 25, 2008 at 8:08 pm
But I say ‘vacant’, as the best interpretation for my own being (at times), Mishari.
New Age likely describes it as ‘channeling’. I use Christ’s words – ‘not my will but Thine be done.’ That is when I can divorce myself from my self, (applies at limited times;) just don’t bother with me when I am the ‘I’. ‘I’ have no significance; known as a conscious fact.
Now back to the matter at hand, are you working on the script?
May 25, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Honey, if you’ll just tell me *what* script I should be working on, I can make a start…
May 25, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Just noted that smiley; not my insertion! Are WordPress doing interpretations? Little early I would think!
May 25, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Mishari,
An outline of one like Steve’s, but as you see things, not just as your own but for all.
May 25, 2008 at 10:00 pm
steve / mish: ever read Chesterton’s Defence of Detective Stories?
“When the detective in a police romance stands alone, and somewhat fatuously fearless amid the knives and fists of a thieves’ kitchen, it does certainly serve to make us remember that it is the agent of social justice who is the original and poetic figure; while the burglars and footpads are merely placid old cosmic conservatives, happy in the immemorial respectability of apes and wolves. The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies.”
May 25, 2008 at 10:15 pm
fmk, I have read it, but not in many years. I’ve always had a soft spot for the ChesterBelloc. I enjoyed his writing and his verse and his Father Brown stories are highly entertaining.
Father Brown, the seemingly simple, unworldly priest is always revealed to be far more sophisticated than anyone suspected while his perennial compananion, what was his name? Flambeau? Flammeau?..at any rate, the worldy former cat-burglar, is revealed to be more of an innocent.
Of course, one is always aware of GKC’s agenda, his Catholic propagandizing, but what the hell, a good read is a good read…like his pal Belloc, in fact.
May 25, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I keep meaning to read GKC’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Have come across references to it and bits from it and it always strikes me as something I’d enjoy, but I never seem to get round to it. The idea of a police corps formed of philosophers attending artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists amuses me muchly. As I’m sure the idea of discovering from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed and tracing “the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime” must amuse others round here.
May 25, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Oh, I do hate that lilac mosaic.
May 25, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Actually, I’ve just realised, the only Chesterton I own is a lovely old edition of the White Horse poem. There’s something about that piece that I like. I think it’s got a lot more to do with the place, which has kinda special memories for me, than the poem though. But there’s whole chunks of the poem I can recite from memory, it’s got that easy to remember school-poetry sort of beat to it (da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum da-dah – beaten out by the teacher with a ruler on the desk, or your head if you were unlucky): “For the end of the world was long ago, / and all we dwell today / as children of some second birth, / like a strange people left on earth / after a judgment day. / For the end of the world was long ago, / when the ends of the world waxed free, / when Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves, / and the sun drowned in the sea.”
May 25, 2008 at 10:52 pm
The Ballad of the Anti-Puritan
They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward–
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored–
I rose politely in the club
And said, `I feel a little bored;
Will someone take me to a pub?’
The new world’s wisest did surround
Me; and it pains me to record
I did not think their views profound,
Or their conclusions well assured;
The simple life I can’t afford,
Besides, I do not like the grub–
I want a mash and sausage, `scored’–
Will someone take me to a pub?
I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy shrub,
And goodness, that is God’s last word–
Will someone take me to a pub?
Envoi
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub–
Is that the last of them–O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?
-G.K.Chesterton
…amen.
May 25, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Hear, hear to the sentiments of Chesterton, but….
—
please, not the lilac!
May 25, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Iant, all you have to do is open a wordpress account, ( the WordPress.com link at the top of the page) and you can use any image you like. It only takes a minute…
May 25, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Iamnothere – all you need do to avoid the lilac is use a different email address when you post; a new pattern will be generated automatically….
fmk – no, I’ve not read any Chesterton; but will research (ie wiki/google….) his “Defence of Detective Stories”….
I like whodunnits (obviously) but won’t claim to be well read even in that sphere; for my (limited) money, by far the most interesting comtemporary ‘tec writer is Reginald Hill (the TV adaptations of Dalziell & Pascoe do him no favours, wonderful as Warren Clarke is to watch); each of his books is themed and full of in-jokes and literary references – there was even one based on rose varieties. Fun reading. Agatha Christie on the other hand, I can’t stomach, even though without her books we’d probably not have the crime writers of today. I know she wasn’t the first to write whodunnits, but even as the first big name in the genre I find her unreadable.
May 25, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Iant, thank you for sweeping the cobwebs off that delicious discussion, which proves that your memory is even more heffalumpine than mine.
. . . I don’t trust my own literary judgment when reading too fast. I agree that dgg is probably an entomologist manque, but this time I love the Schroedinger ‘tec most . . . Would actually be torture to have to choose just one. Dgg was soaring when he wrote these . . .
May 26, 2008 at 12:11 am
“Agatha Christie on the other hand, I can’t stomach, even though without her books we’d probably not have the crime writers of today.”
I don’t consider myself a dic fic reader, but it is one of my comfort reads, the sort of book I can read when I’m not in the mood to read much else. That said though, I’m a reader of post Hammet / Chandler dic fic, when I do read dic fic. Dic fic where the crime itself sometimes hardly seems to matter, it’s just a hook to hang the story on. The whodunnit doesn’t matter to me, I think I’m more interested in the scenery in the murky world of dic fic. Christie & co bore me, I think for the point Chandler made in the essay obooki mentioned. Sherlock Holmes I don’t much like on the page, but on screen and radio I kinda enjoy him.
mish: you come across Loren D Estleman? He does a modern-ish Detroit-set Chandler type of series, Amos Walker, as well as some western and Sherlock Holmes knock-offs. (Am not recommending him, I hate it when people do that to me. “Oh, you like Chandler? You simply *must* read Kinky Friedman / Elmore Leonard / James Ellroy.” And I have because I’ve been told I ought to and I haven’t liked any of them. Cause they ain’t nothin like Chandler.)
May 26, 2008 at 12:24 am
Seaking of Aggie. Doctor Who last week. A real hoot.
Sorry, probly should have warned you before admitting to being a Doctor Who fan. Please don’t hold it against me.
But it *was* great trying to spot all the Christie titles strewn around the script. Even without reading Christie it’s amazing how many of her titles you recognise on hearing them.
And, of course, it’s great to have a sci fi prog that constantly plugs books – I think the Doctor’s always been a reader, it’s not just a new series thing – and says they’ll be important even 5,000,000,000 years into the future.
May 26, 2008 at 12:29 am
I agree that whodunnits are comfort reading (and refuse to call them “dic fics”….); I suppose the well-trodden path of most is the key. For the best (and we’ll each of us have different views on these) there’s a bit more scenery than that, which we can appreciate or not as the mood takes us.
Last night I fantasised a scenario where each of the Eurovision singers was bumped off in turn, in a manner appropriate to their songs, with a European-wide team of idiosyncratic ‘tecs called in to investigate….natch, it was the evil mastermind Wogan whodunnit….700p minimum I estimate, and the opportunity for popular cultural references unlimited….
May 26, 2008 at 12:36 am
I’ve seen Estleman’s books but never read one. My post- Chandler crime fiction pantheon is populated by writers like James Crumley, James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard, Tim Dorsey, Robert Ferrigno, Michael Connolly, Richard Stark, Robert Crais…and others, all of whom absorbed the Chandler lesson- that the plot doesn’t really matter, that no-one gives a shit ‘whodunnit’..
It’s about creating atmosphere, mood, characters that live, dialogue that actually speaks in your ear, they write about ambiguity and ambivalence, about the fine line between the cop and the crook, the ‘good guy’ and the ‘bad guy’, about a world of grey areas…
There’s well-known story about Howard Hawks and William Faulkner, (who was writing the script), ringing up Chandler during the shooting of The Big Sleep.
‘Ray’, said Hawks, ‘ we have a small problem. We can’t work out who killed the Sternwood’s chauffeur.’
Chandler couldn’t tell them, because, in truth, it didn’t matter.
May 26, 2008 at 12:37 am
dic flics make them sound like gay-porn movies…
May 26, 2008 at 12:58 am
steve: “I agree that whodunnits are comfort reading”
Am not dismissing them generally as mere comfort food. For *me* they’re a comfort read. For others there’s a lot more going on in them. Slavoj Žižek for instance uses them in his introduction to Jacques Lacan through pop culture, Looking Awry and more recently has written about Henning Mankell. There’s as much going on in them as you want to find. For me, when I’m bored, there’s a nice surface to them. But I think I’m aware there’s a lot more going on beneath that surface, if only I had the energy to look.
mish: “It’s about creating atmosphere, mood, characters that live, dialogue that actually speaks in your ear”
Agreed. Funny, but I tend to think Damon Runyon’s influence gets neglected in the rush to reward Hammett and Chandler for ‘rescuing’ crime fiction. Runyon’s stories are crime fiction – from the inside though – and his dialogue and characters are just class and as much responsible for taking crime out of the drawing room as Chandler claimed Hammett was.
May 26, 2008 at 1:14 am
I think we’re on the same page, fmk….I didn’t think you were dissing the genre….I read ‘em in different ways depending on my mood too; in certain frames of mind (and with a book that I think may be worth it) I’ll read the ending first so I can appreciate the writing without worrying about whodunnit….
Recently re-read Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” which was much better than I’d remembered; howver, bear in mind that any comments mentioning the heretical, derivative and terrible Cadfael books may well be deleted….
May 26, 2008 at 1:20 am
“I’ve seen Estleman’s books but never read one.”
Sorry mish, I shoulda responded to this. I liked them on first reading, they – the Amos Walker ones – are very like Chandler (maybe too much so for some), Walker is very Marlowe and Estleman’s love for Detroit is very much like Chandler’s LA. But, crucially, they fail for me on the rereading test. I can reread Chandler any number of times and never get bored, the language alone keeps me going. Estleman though … I’m not finding they hold me on a reread. One nice thing about them though is the ones I have are recent editions, rereleases, which generally have an afterword from Estleman himself, explaining bits about the genesis of the book and the series in general, his love for Detroit and the like. It’s like one of those (rare) DVD extras that’s actually worth watching.
Take from that what you want – a reason never to read them or a reason to look one out once.
May 26, 2008 at 1:41 am
Yes, Runyon was very good. He wrote the great line, ’she gave me a look you could pour on a waffle…’, which is very Chandleresque, avant de lettre.
I, too, can re-read Chandler any number of times. Elmore Leonard at his best can be re-read over and over again, (his works from say, 1975 to 1995). I want to metion Don Winslow, who’s best known amongst other writers, but is terrific.
His ‘The Power of the Dog’ is an astonishing work, but keep an eye out for ‘California Fire and Life’ and ‘The Death and Life of Bobby Z’ as well. Another writer who can be re-read many times.
May 26, 2008 at 2:04 am
Billy’s Summer thread is worth checking out: an olive branch from Sir Foo-Foo for our good friend MM….
May 26, 2008 at 6:36 am
I collected some of Chesterton’s quotes some time ago; I think you will all appreciate the following (caution though, don’t take the first as a licence):
‘I believe in getting into hot water, it keeps you clean’
‘The thing that I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion’
Re the lilac and suggested remedial action: When I first entered my name I put on one of my email addresses, when I entered angela I put on ‘another’ – thereby hangs a tale….For various reasons I may be stuck with lilac!
May 26, 2008 at 6:53 am
Steve,
This is me; now do I get a different icon?
May 26, 2008 at 6:55 am
O lovely Iant, would you please let Angel do the talking sometimes? I miss her. Doesn’t she ever complain about *someone* being a bit of a bandwidth hog?
As obooki doesn’t seem to be around . . . pssssssst, everyone! . . . I wandered over to his blog for the first time for weeks (yes! I’ve been shamefully delinquent: there are just too many of you, now) . . . and I think it’s pretty clear that he’s Julian Barnes. See:
‘I always buy and acquire more books than I can ever possibly read. There are tottering piles in my study.’ (the putative JB’s confession at a straw-chewers’ convention in Wales)
Also found this evidence of a close relation of dgg skulking & lurking:
‘# notsocynicalsteve Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
The good news is that when the senility really kicks in, not only will you buy multiple copies of books, but you’ll read them blissfully unaware you’ve read them before….and when you get to a certain age, one whodunnit will probably keep you intrigued forever….thus solving the book mountain problem….’
hehheh, suddenly all the comrades are striving to outdo each other in improbable yarns about misplaced marbles . . . or reading glasses.
. . . When I next speak to obooki, I really must remember to tell him how much I enjoyed my visit to his e-joint. Like the doggerelist’s, his is an unmistakeable voice. Or do I simply mean that no one else can match his zeal for disinterring books by obscure exotics with unpronounceable names? . . . Anyway, my early summer resolution is to pop in there more often. . . unless this post makes me wordnerd/a non grata.
May 26, 2008 at 6:55 am
Oh Iamnothere,
I like that one!
ps. In future you are likely to note, yet again, we come as a pair!
May 26, 2008 at 6:57 am
Yes we know that you’re you, Iant, (duh) but WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ANGEL SINCE SHE SQUISHED THE SQUASH?
May 26, 2008 at 6:58 am
Mowbray Redux
The birds all sing in chorus,
And people flood the street,
Dear Mowbray used to bore us;
Now he’s been thrown a sweet.
May 26, 2008 at 6:59 am
My goodness, ANGEL! I’ve only just seen your post, . . .
.. .
. . .
too overcome to say any more . . .
May 26, 2008 at 7:22 am
Now,
I am the quiet one, I rarely make an appearance but Iamnothere fears that Wordnerd is becoming bored so she asked me to present myself and Angela has especially requested that I say ‘Hi Wordy’
May 26, 2008 at 7:45 am
Ah . . . Martha, you must be the third muse — or Fate . . .. ? . . . Sorry I couldn’t greet you more promptly, I went off to make red Madagascar vanilla tea . . . . If only it was kosher to ask personal questions in this medium. No chance of ever learning how the three of you met, the hemisphere you occupy, what you look like etc. etc., I suppose . . let alone how you decide who replies to whom about what. Phew.
. . . What Iamnothere said isn’t quite right. I am sometimes scorched or boring rather than bored, here (like M2, poor unloved soulie, obliged to prostrate himself at the feet of MR for a dram of praise) but never tire of reading the others . . .
Hmmmmm. You almost made me forget my train of thought. I only came back to say that I don’t know why it took me so long to work out the JB-obooki connection, so glaringly obvious now. What other writer in the entire Blighty Isles could have taken on Flaubert and his parrot so convincingly???!?
May 26, 2008 at 8:05 am
Well Wordy,
Hemisphere, it is Southern!
But back to Steve’s plot. My concern is Coma ‘Tec, has Busby visited? Horrified though that any questions could be formulated, other than those pertaining to the personal comfort of said patient.
ps. I have a particular affinity and empathy; spent too many hours in this area.
May 26, 2008 at 9:20 am
The King of Denmark dies under suspicious circumstances. Enter, to the tune of Air on a G String, his cheap cigar smoking detective son. He talks to himself a lot and prevaricates even more. Then another body is fished out of the river. It’s the ‘tec’s wacky girlfriend. Time to exhume the clown.
May 26, 2008 at 9:39 am
Oh dear, I see Iamnothere is vacillating between fiction and non-fiction; mind you examining empathetic non-fiction can produce best selling fiction…
however true life encounters far surpass any non-fiction.
May 26, 2008 at 10:22 am
A valuable cup goes missing in Camelot City. Hard-boiled private eye, Lance Knight goes hotfoot in pursuit.
May 26, 2008 at 10:27 am
Who was behind the wooden horse caper, and what are they planning next? Homer Nods is on the case, but can he crack it in time to save Troy? An epic story of love, death, and detection.
May 26, 2008 at 10:30 am
Joe K. is framed by corrupt police officers. He hires hard-bitten private investigator, Frank Kafka, to clear his name. Kafka fails but writes a best-seller about the case.
May 26, 2008 at 10:37 am
Why is ex-SAS man Aeneas on the run from Carthage City? Why did sultry torch singer Dido kill herself?
Private eye Virgil Georgic trades quips and punches as he races against time to crack the case.
May 26, 2008 at 10:49 am
The Pork-Pie Murders, (Hobbled & Stoatlike, £2.99)
Who’s bumping off makers of cellophane-wrapped mystery-meat comestibles? Suspicion falls on organic-food zealots.Tough, wise-cracking PI Melton Mowbray is on the case.
‘Zesty, piquant, with a nice flaky crust’- Grocer’s Weekly
May 26, 2008 at 10:58 am
Carpe Diem is doing a roaring trade in dodgy Babylonian horoscopes. Postumus is too old to do anything. Frustra cruento Marte carebimus fractisque rauci fluctibus Hadriae. Translation is impossible. Another case for Horace Carmina.
May 26, 2008 at 11:12 am
Billy, (64)
Angela has asked me to relay re:
Translation is impossible,
“Even with my ‘out of this world’ expertise I cannot comment…”
May 26, 2008 at 11:23 am
Farmer Quintus Horatius Flaccus is murdered by his Celtic bee-keeper William og Mills. Public Prosecutor Perrius Masonus calls in ex-centurion Phillipus Marlowus to track down the fugitive felon.
Marlowus catches up with Mills at a poetry recital in Camulodunum and brings him back to Rome. Mills is convicted and crucified.
‘ Hard-hitting, crime fiction. I loved it’- Cato the Elder
May 26, 2008 at 11:28 am
Celtic bee-keeper is about the nicest thing I’ve been called on this blog
. Should really be Liam Mac Muillean, for the authentic touch.
May 26, 2008 at 12:00 pm
The kids are watching The Land That Time Forgot (1975), (it’s pissing down with rain in London) and I watched the titles roll, whilst glancing through Michael Moorcock’s Mother London, a book I read 20 years ago and liked very much. Guess who wrote the screenplay for the film? Yes, Michael Moorcock. Synchronicity..
I watched the Golden Compass yesterday. The kids are big Philip Pullman fans, (they regard the Harry Potter books with disdain) and had already seen the film in the cinema but got the DVD for me to watch. I really enjoyed it. Mind you, I really enjoyed reading the His Dark Materials trilogy to them.
Has anyone else read Moorcocks Colonel Pyat sequence of novels, (The Laughter of Carthage, Byzantium Endures, etc)?
May 26, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Sorry mishari, after a short flirtation with the music of Hawkwind in my youth, I’ve never been able to take Moorcock seriously.
May 26, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I used to like Moorcock when I was a kid, the Cornelius Chronicles and the like. Haven’t really liked them as much when I’ve tried to reread them. But Mother London I loved. Moorcock himself – even allowing for Hawkwind – is someone I have a lot of respect for. He’s done a lot for other authors, not just worried about himself.
One recent author he plugged was Steve Aylett, who writes a very weird blend of dic fic, satire and sci fi. Look out for the Beerlight books in particular. He can be a bit of an acquired taste, he’s a bit out there and sometimes seems to be just writing nonsense, particularly in more recent books. But even among the nonsense there’s wonderful one-liners – have a look at some of these: http://www.steveaylett.com/Pages/aylettquotes.html
And here’s Moorcock on Aylett in the Gruan: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,,737521,00.html
Elmore Leonard I’ll have to try again. The few I have read (I’ll check the shelves later to see what they were) haven’t really worked for me. I’ll also have a look on the shelves to remind me of what dic fic authors I’ve read and which ones I rate worth reading.
May 26, 2008 at 1:36 pm
There’s a previous post with a couple fo links that’ll just have to wait fro Steve to rescue it from the spam-trap.
But, to raise a red flag to the bulls, yesterday I slagged two Gruan blog writers, Evers and Freeman. The Evers criticism has been allowed to stand. The Freeman one has been deleted. Funnily, the Evers one is the more insulting, but the insult is better wrapped in other comment. The Freeman one simply referred to previous articles from Freeman. Not sure what lesson I’ll learn. Probably to better bury my insults.
May 26, 2008 at 1:37 pm
That was quick Steve!
May 26, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I’m here to serve….
May 26, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Who is Stuart Evers anyway? Is he *somebody*? A *writer*? How could you take any writer seriously who would write, re 1st-person narratives: “How, for example, can you describe your narrator without recourse to looking in a mirror?”? – If the question even crosses his mind (let alone he has difficulty finding an answer), then it doesn’t strike me he’s going to be much good at this writing business.
In the latest article, I was going to take him up on the implication that Sebald was the first to use pictures as an integral part of his narrative, but I discovered that I couldn’t be bothered.
- And no, I’m not Julian Barnes. It would be far more logical to suppose JB is an avid reader of my blog and steals my ideas.
May 26, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Actually obooki, it was his belief that Sebald was the first that caused me to want to contribute. How myopic do you have to be to think a thing like that?
Maybe Evers is a believer in one of Steve Aylett’s dictums: “Let us forget the past – this is the only way to be genuinely surprised.”
May 26, 2008 at 2:29 pm
obooki, if he did his books would be better than they are.
May 26, 2008 at 2:53 pm
According to his profile on GU, “A former bookseller and editor, Stuart Evers is now a writer and reviewer. He lives in London.”
Yet (other than blog posts), Google doesn’t seem to believe he’s a writer either….
May 26, 2008 at 2:59 pm
But what does it matter? Whether he’s *someone* or *no one*, what you’re responding to are the words in the article, the author’s background is not really relevant. In fairness to the GU, they don’t insist that blog authors have to be *someone* before their opinions get aired; imagine how we’d all react if they did.
May 26, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Using pictures as an integral part of the narrative? Aren’t those called ‘comics’?
Billy, if the only Moorcock you’re familiar with is the Hawkwind/Elric of Melnibone writer, you’re doing yourself a diservice. Read Mother London, at the very least. It’s a fine novel.
May 26, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I’ll give it a try, mishari.
May 26, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Billy – don’t read Mother London. I recommend it too.
May 26, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Evers – he’s a mover and shaker:
http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2006/06/21/movers-shakers.php
He seems to have an extremely irritating website:
http://tomconnery.com/
Is this the same man? Still can’t find anything on Amazon.
May 26, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Evers has an exceptionally silly haircut. It colours everything else for me. Anyone who can make such disasterous tonsorial choices is not someone whose judgment I have any faith in.
Billy, I think Moorcock matured as a writer. He started out hoeing the Sci-Fi/Fantasy row but moved on to more straight-forward narratives about 20 years ago. And as fmk said, he seems like a very likable man. He was, for example, a great champion of Iain Siclair’s poetry when Sinclair was an unpublished and struggling writer.
He also championed the then unknown Bruce Sterling’s terrific Shaper/Mech stories and the equally unknown William Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer, ( the two became the godfathers of the ‘cyberpunk’ movement). Not, of course, that being a nice man has any bearing on the quality of his writing.
May 26, 2008 at 3:28 pm
The phrase ‘mover and shaker’ is tossed around with such uncritical abandon that it’s ceased to have any meaning. Evers, on what little evidence I’ve seen neither moves nor shakes, nor does he look likely to, unless he develops Parkinson’s Disease…
May 26, 2008 at 3:42 pm
“But what does it matter? Whether he’s *someone* or *no one*, what you’re responding to are the words in the article, the author’s background is not really relevant.”
You’re quite right Billy: I googled him only out of mere curiosity.
” In fairness to the GU, they don’t insist that blog authors have to be *someone* before their opinions get aired; imagine how we’d all react if they did.”
Might be better if they insisted that they had *something* to say….something other than “I saw X in a big tent today”….
May 26, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Now there we agree.
May 26, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Leaving the dick aside a moment, and drifting back to dic fic. Any fans of both Chandler and TS Eliot here? And aware of Martin Rowson’s comic / graphic novel version of The Waste Land? It’s done as a detective story, which in a way is how some approach the poem, ferreting out clues in it to find its hidden meaning. Rowson is also working from two Eliot-related quotes to be found in Chandler. It’s well worth the read. Even if you don’t much like comix.
May 26, 2008 at 3:48 pm
And nothing to do with nothing, but anyone here got any views on JP Donleavy?
May 26, 2008 at 3:50 pm
JP Donleavy: love the beastly beatitudes but struggled with the ginger man and then gave up. Anything else worth reading?
May 26, 2008 at 3:56 pm
The opposite for me, Billy. I liked The Ginger Man and found all his other work, (the Beastly etc, Darcy Dancer and so on), unreadable. I came to the conclusion that he was one of those writers who has one good novel in him and no more.
fmk, I’ve always like Rowson’s work, but never came across his Wasteland. I’ll see if Amazon has it. Sounds interesting.
May 26, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I read Donleavy so long ago I don’t really remember much, but I do remember enjoying him. There was a scene, wasn’t there, when he was sitting on a train and his penis was hanging out of his trousers, and he didn’t realise? Strange what sticks in your mind.
May 26, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I used to love that lit series Rowson did for the Sindy, way way way back when the Sindy was worth reading. I have a couple of them clipped somewhere, stuck in books. Thing is, I’ve forgotten which books they’re in. His Tristram Shandy I also liked. Some people probably object to translating such classics into comix, but I don’t think he’s damaging the originals the way he does it.
Thanx for the Donleavy comments. So I’m to read and not read Ginger Man and not read and read Beautiful Beatitudes. Clear as mud
May 26, 2008 at 4:12 pm
fmk: I’d say read the Ginger Man, as most people seem to like it. Personally, I found it dreary, but not always in the way the author intended. I mean, did we really need another story of a drunken writer walking the streets of Dublin? Maybe we did.
May 26, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I read most of JPD years ago and still have most of them. I tried a few months back to reread The Ginger Man, but couldn’t get into it – mostly because I couldn’t find any sympathy for the character. FWIW, I remember Schul(t)z as the most enjoyable, although BB and some others were pretty good too.
Re Rowson – read one of his a few years ago on the back of rave reviews and was very disappointed. I recall weird stuff about a time-travelling Channel Tunnel or similar….didn’t like it.
May 26, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I read The Ginger Man and the others over 25 years ago, so my views should be treated with caution. As you say, Billy, another picaresque novel about bibulous shenanigans in Dublin was probably superfluous, but it made me laugh.
obooki, your memory is correct. The scene occurs in The Ginger Man.
fmk, I used to like Rowson’s work in the Sindy, too. It used to be a much better paper.
May 26, 2008 at 5:27 pm
He, he….Hanif Kureishi: ‘Perhaps taking a swipe at Guardian Review’s weekly photographic series Writers’ Rooms, he said: “People come and take pictures of writers’ desks. They don’t,” he said, gesturing around the tent to his audience, “come and take photographs of your desks, do they? It’s as if the talent is in the desk.”‘
http://books.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2282239,00.html
May 26, 2008 at 5:32 pm
steve: was that Roswon one of his non-graphic pieces? I think the Waste Land and Tristram Shandy work for me because I’m familiar with the sources. And the thing I really like about the Waste Land one is how it takes two throwaway lines from Chandler and turns the poem into a proper noir story.
On Donleavy. Well, what I’ve got at the moment are A Singular Man, A Fairy Tale Of New York, his autobiography, Meet My Maker The Mad Molecule and The Ginger Man. I did actually read Ginger Man years ago (and yes obooki, it’s amazing the things that stick in your mind about a book – the only thing I recall from it is one similarly ribald scene). I’m probably going to end up reading all of them at the same time (well, not quite at the same time, but you know what I mean). I may feel the need to fill you in on what a ten-day binge on Donleavy does to one.
May 26, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Can’t remember the name of the Rowson book, but yes, it was a wordy book with a handful of pics scattered throughout rather than a “graphic novel” – not a big fan of picture books personally.
It’s hard to think of many scenes from JPD’s books in which penises *don’t* loom large, to be honest….
“I may feel the need to fill you in on what a ten-day binge on Donleavy does to one.”
Posting in incomplete sentences. In the present tense. Mostly.
And ending bits of writing
with obscure two-line couplets
May 26, 2008 at 5:42 pm
….not that most couplets aren’t two-liners anyway, he blushingly continued….
May 26, 2008 at 5:55 pm
“‘graphic novel’ – not a big fan of picture books personally.”
Snob.
May 26, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I loved comics as a boy, Marvel, mind you, not DC. The early Marvel Conan the Barbarian series were wonderful. They were drawn by a young English artist named Barry Smith and they beautifully captured Rober E. Howard’s brutal/sensuous prose and opium-dream scenarios.
I used to subscribe to AD 2000 until the late 90’s when I felt that quality fell off. Some of the art work was spectaular, (much of it by young Spaniards) and the prose was frequently a cut above the latest offering from the Grauniad’s latest flavour-of-the-month young novelist.
You’re a snob, Steve.
‘Comics? I leave that sort of thing to my butler.’
May 26, 2008 at 6:17 pm
…actually, I think it was 2000 AD.
May 26, 2008 at 6:34 pm
2000 AD, yes. I forget the others I used to read. Most of them ended up merging into 2000 AD. Remember the relaunched Eagle?
Knitting the the thread back to dic fic – 2000 AD’s version of Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat. Which is sort of dic fic, in the Raffles sense. I loved them as a kid. Read the books years later, but always kept thinking back to the comix version. Ezquerra’s version of the Rat sticks in my mind. James Coburn to Judge Dredd’s Clint Eastwood.
May 26, 2008 at 6:41 pm
fmk: it’s your lucky day. another 2 articles by John Freeman on GU!!! – The first seems to imply that Erich Maria Remarque was an American (or perhaps that the Americans were fighting on the German side in WW1) – anyway, it’s full of some pretty sweeping and contentious statements.
May 26, 2008 at 6:54 pm
obooki: I think the message I’m taking from being comment deleted (I didn’t get a mail, so I’m having to work this out for myself) is that I should stop reading Freeman’s pieces. The last one of his I posted some comment about his use of the word “pillowy” and had that edited out.
What kills me with Freeman is that he doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about. Or, I suspect, is trying to say something but using the most inappropriate argument to get his point across.
Listing his errors sounds like I have a vendetta against him but he is the guy who claimed there was no book shops in Las Vegas. Who claimed that American writers had given up on politics, then backtracked a few weeks later to say it didn’t matter that American writers were political, American readers were reading politics. Because the Republicans had dumbed down the literacy rates and made everyone too stupid to read. And – topping his list – he spent his first few months demanding more room should be given over to book reviews, and then as soon as he stepped down from the review body he was involved in, suggested that reviews were actually spoiling our enjoyment of books.
I’m sorry, but there’s only word word to describe the guy – prat.
(Yup, just reading that back, it looks like I have a vendetta against the guy, the fact that I’d actually link any two of his articles together.)
May 26, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Screw it, I’m too stupid to learn a lesson. Let’s see how long my comment lasts. obooki, if I get banned, I’m blaming you for leading me into temptation.
May 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Yeah, I felt a strange connection between the Freeman and the Evers piece. Also the claim that the English turn to Pat Barker to read about WW1. Does the world only have any meaning to these people if they read about it in a recent novel?
May 26, 2008 at 7:54 pm
That I sometimes think.
I think Freeman’s war piece though he misses the difference between the colonised and the coloniser. The colonised knows more about the coloniser than the coloniser knows about the colonised. Brits know about America because of cultural colonisation. Americans know next to nothing about the UK because the flow doesn’t work in reverse. So people like Freeman reduce British knowledge of WWI to recent versions of it, versions that he’s become aware of, like Pat Barker. Without realising how much it’s been part of British culture since even before the war itself ended. That’s the “context in which they are read” that Freeman is totally missing out on.
May 26, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Billy: you might be interested in this – http://www.cbl.ie/Exhibitions/Permanent-Exhibitions.aspx
May 26, 2008 at 8:23 pm
I’ve just turfed Michele off the computer, so have only just seen the “snob” comments….which I fully admit to in lots of areas – I used to be proud of being a plant snob….with picture books or graphic novels or whatever label one prefers – they’re just not my thing….possibly because I’ve always preferred long books to short ones; books I can read in one sitting have never appealed….meanness, I suppose, is the root cause there….
May 26, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Digressing I know, but I did see you raised the Embryo Bill last week Steve. I itched to make a comment on GU, yes on Survivor Siblings; had done so some months ago on a Science blog. A check though states that they will only use the ‘cord’.
The crossing of human/animal cells, another area. Stated period of survival I think three weeks for fetus. With the removal of government overseeing, one wonders. Don’t know whether you viewed the photos shown some time back, including Dolly, but it was the one of the monkey that got to me.
Herewith a quote from Lewis Thomas 1913-1993:
“The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.”
I wonder what he would have written if he had conceived the idea of the formulation and passage of certain aspects of the ‘Bill’ last week.
May 26, 2008 at 9:57 pm
“I’ve always preferred long books to short ones; books I can read in one sitting have never appealed”
But you read poetry. And, I presume, short stories? And there are some long graphic novels – look at Sandman for instance. All ten volumes could be read in a night (I’ve done it on reread) but it’s a long night.
And – sometimes – to properly appreciate even short graphic novels, you need to spend longer than a night with them, to catch all that’s going on in the graphics.
May 26, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Oh BTW Steve, before my Donleavy binge came up, I’d picked up a copy of the sheep novel to read. May try and squeeze it in before drowning in Donleavy. Interestingly, in light of the Evers article, each other page has at the bottom of it the image of a sheep, in various states of a leap. If you flip through the pages the sheep leaps up and down. It doesn’t take a lot to keep me amused, clearly.
May 26, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I guess that flick-book *technically* makes the sheep book a graphic novel
May 26, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I dunno, Steve. I assume you watch films. So I assume you have no problem, in principle, with presenting a narrative in the form of words and images. I suspect that, like many people, you associate ‘comics’ with children and simpletons.
Have you never looked at the work of artists like Art Spiegelman and Robert Crumb or Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, (Pekar’s actually just the writer)? Or the work of Frank Miller or Alan Moore?
As for the term ‘graphic novel’:
“It’s a marketing term. I mean, it was one that I never had any sympathy with. The term ‘comic’ does just as well for me. … The problem is that ‘graphic novel’ just came to mean ‘expensive comic book’ and so what you’d get is people like DC Comics or Marvel comics — because ‘graphic novels’ were getting some attention, they’d stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel, you know?”
-Alan Moore
“I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension — the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a ’sanitation engineer’ — and second because a ‘graphic novel’ is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine.”
-Daniel Raeburn
Neil Gaiman, responding to a claim that he does not write comic book but graphic novels, said the commenter “meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who’d been informed that she wasn’t actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening.”
In fact, comics are a rich and diverse field. I prefer a good comic to a bad novel. In fact, the need to refine, to whittle down the prose due to the constraints of space may have the same improving effect on writers that Hemingways years as a newspaperman, had on his prose. Hemingway was for years forced to distill by the demands of space and the cost-per-word of telegrams.
Explore comics with an open mind, Steve. You might find yourself pleasantly surprised.
obooki, did you ever read Remarque’s The Black Obelisk? I’ve yet to meet anyone aside from myself who has, or his Night In Lisbon, for that matter.
May 27, 2008 at 12:35 am
mishari: no, i haven’t. in fact, i was rather surprised, wandering on to a website about Remarque earlier, to discover he’d written any other books. All grist to the mill.
May 27, 2008 at 12:37 am
I think I thumbed through a friend’s copy of “Maus” years ago, and of course I’ve read the odd Asterix….not sure why people are so upset about this: they’re just not my thing….I don’t froth at the mouth each time I see blogs about these books; but nor am I inspired to read one….have almost finished VSP’s memoirs – next stop Powell’s Dance/Time series….I bought the first three in omnibus recently; if they prove palatable, I’ll look for the rest….still struggling with Justine, despite several abortive pick-ups….am wondering about working through Donleavy again (although I’ve given up on Ginger….) Otherwise it’ll have to be the international short story collection….
May 27, 2008 at 12:52 am
Oh, well, (shrugs), your loss..
obooki, although it’s been 25 years since I read Remarque’s lesser known works, I remember them well, especially The Black Obelisk. In it, a German war veteran is employed by a manafacturer and seller of memorials and tombstones. The salesman have a standing bet on who can sell the monstrosity of the title. Most of the men are veterans and the business of selling memorials to an exhausted nation is obviously a metaphor.
It’s a very funny book, in a dark sort of way, and I’d like to read it again , but I’ve never come across a copy since I first read it, ( a paperback bought while living in NYC).
Steve, I think perhaps The Alexandria Quartet is one of those works that has to be read in youth. I haven’t read them in 30 years, for fear of being disappointed. Many people I’ve talked to confirm this suspicion, as so many of them have said that they found them hard to re-read.
May 27, 2008 at 1:18 am
haha, for this computing course I’m doing, I’ve got to evaluate a website for its functionality, design etc. (God, like I haven’t done that before). I wonder what website I’m going to choose.
May 27, 2008 at 8:14 am
Thanks for the link, fmk; looks like I’m going to have to venture into the city centre next time I’m up. Looking forward to your JPD reports; I picked up the Ginger Man again for a look last night and put it down quickly.
The graphic novels thing; I’ve read some that were OK, but why the hectoring need to ram them down cs’s unwilling throat everyone? I don’t get it.
May 27, 2008 at 9:00 am
It’s Tuesday and the PotW hadn’t appeared. Detective Inspector Blake was puzzled. There was hay all over the writer’s room. Could this be a clue, he wondered.
May 27, 2008 at 9:13 am
Remnants of chewed woollen thread confirmed the unsubstantiated rumens: the whole case was unravelling before our eyes.
May 27, 2008 at 9:17 am
Billy, I had some 20 years of being hectored and having things rammed down my throat. It was called an expensive education.
Chief Inspector Coleridge was woken from a doze by his Sargeant. ‘Trouble in Porlock, Guv. Poem of he Week is missing.’
May 27, 2008 at 9:20 am
At this early stage of the investigation, there were a number of possible suspects. One, a freeman in a tent, could easily have been copycatting a recent novel. The second was the family GP, Dr. Rosen. He had the opportunity, but no motive. Blake discounted these two and turned his attention to his arch-nemesis, Windy Miller the jealous rival.
May 27, 2008 at 9:21 am
‘On offer for the winner is a one-off Hay deckchair, signed by the authors who pass through the Guardian’s House of Hay here at the festival.’
So subtle. When all else fails, try bribery . . . Now if there was even a prayer of such a chair making good kindling for my environmentally incorrect wood stove, I might have a go. But I’ll bet it’s made of plastic.
I suppose that this will out the Pavlovian woofs among us.
May 27, 2008 at 9:44 am
A fucking deck-chair. Jesus. You’d think they’d have the nous to offer a more appropriate prize…say, erm a BOOK. I think they could save themselves a lot of bother by dispensing with living writers altogether. Just hire a troupe of actors to impersonate dead authors. It couldn’t be any less interesting.
May 27, 2008 at 10:24 am
And yet the temptation to second Sam’s StevenAugustine nomination is great.
May 27, 2008 at 10:41 am
And also note “It will be available for the winner to collect either from Hay or from Farringdon in London. ” – fancy a trip to London to pick up a fucking deck chair Wordnerd? Don’t try too hard!
I read Beastly beautitudes recently as part of paying off a few ‘oh that looks interesting’ debts to whit buying a a bagful of books in a 2nd hand shop and then leaving them on a shelf for 10 years. It was alright, but felt a bit like the professional writer equivalent of a schoolboy’s story that runs out of steam. Did like the bit where he went to the hospital with an STD and found himself standing with his trolleys round his ankels in front of a packed lecture hall as the lecturer pointed out the main features of the disease.
May 27, 2008 at 10:44 am
hmmm, funny, didn’t notice mishari’s adjective before – we’ve both picked ‘fucking’ as the most appropriate description for said deck chair.
I have a vision of Lea and Marshall tittering as they sign ‘Julian barnes’, ‘Ian Mcewan’ and ‘Arthur Miller’ on the chair.
May 27, 2008 at 10:56 am
ldg, it is le seul mot juste…
Inspector Coleridge has cracked the case,
And returned our Carol to her rightful place,
No longer must we waste the day,
Reading witless guff from Hay.
Envoi
And now, I really must away,
To write a villanelle on Hay.
May 27, 2008 at 11:14 am
“It will be available for the winner to collect either from Hay or from Farringdon in London. ”
Sure I saw that. Ah kin reed, ldg, even after all them years in exile. Wos thinkin’ of havin’ it shipped to me by FedEx innit.
But like Mishari said, wot no BOOK??? . . . Guess @ru wasn’t joking about their view of us in her Dunciad.
May 27, 2008 at 11:46 am
is it just my computer, or has the booksblog gone completely insane and psychedelic?
May 27, 2008 at 11:51 am
Me too, but now it’s back to “normal”.
May 27, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I’m sorry I missed that…insane and psychedelic sounds like an improvement on all this Hay twaddle.
May 27, 2008 at 2:54 pm
It was insane and psychedelic and still all about Hay.
May 27, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Reliable sources inform that Major General Mowbray of Her Majesties Heavy Defaulters and lately of this parish, has gone all ‘queer’.
Since getting the nod from Herr Doctor Michael FooFoo, our beloved Mowbray has taken to wearing a tam o’ shanter the size of a family-pizza and parading up and down Ryde pier, declaiming away like the billy-o. He apparenly now insists on being addressed as ‘The Poet Mowbray’.
It’s all very distressing and I’m considering heading down there with my tranquilizer dart-gun. Perhaps it’s not too late to save him from himself.
May 27, 2008 at 3:51 pm
“declaiming away like the billy-o”
In all decency, you might have left me out of this.
May 27, 2008 at 3:55 pm
What’s MM done now? Has he posted something I’ve missed?
May 27, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Who is Toggins
a ‘Tec or a wreck?
May 27, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Nah, Steve. It’s just that since being patted on the head by Herr FooFoo, he’s gone missing. Doubtless busily cultivating his lyric gift…the swine.
BTW, did you ever read Angry White Pyjamas by Robert Twigger? I picked it up today and am already a third the way through. Terrific stuff. Twiggers won the Newdigate Prize in 1985 and writes beautifully.
May 27, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I’ve been waiting for MM to be around so I can tell him that his IoW sea-glass is flavour of the month on Michele’s blog….
May 27, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Mish – do you think you could turn that tranq gun of yours on me please? I’m arguing with ATF and clearly in need of the drugs. If I don’t stop soon, I’ll find myself arguing with SA as well. At which point please dispense with the tranqs and load some dumb-dumbs.
May 27, 2008 at 8:16 pm
yeah, if you’re talking about your attempts to disenfranchise Irish artists, I saw that. Arguing with ATF is like wrestling with a pig; You both get covered in shit and the pig has a ball. She’ll be calling you a bully any minute now.
Steve, the kids and I had a hunt for glass on the Thames fore-shore- no soap. Lots of broken glass, mind, but not the good stuff. Perhaps one has to be closer to the estuary. I’m planning to take them down to the Isle of Grain next week for a walkabout and we’ll have a look there. I can’t say I’m surprised it’s popular; it’s lovely stuff.
May 27, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Well called mish. ATF is pulling an SA and trying to get me banned for linking to her blog, a long, long, long time ago.
May 27, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Had a look at the sea glass, cs. Pleased that M found a use for it.
My wife surprised me (bday) with a trip to Farringford (formerly home to Alf Tennyson, on the west end of the IOW) for a couple of days. I’m not a fan (like some of the shorter stuff), but I’ve often expressed an interest in the place. It’s been a hotel for 60 years, so not much of the original layout still present, but what there is quite interesting. I thought the great man’s spiritual presence might inspire a summer poem, but no luck.
May 27, 2008 at 11:36 pm
‘A dirty man with opium-glazed eyes and rat-taily hair’. – Lady Frederick Cavendish on Alfred, Lord Super Tennants.
May 27, 2008 at 11:48 pm
There was a chap like that hanging around the croquet lawn at twilight last night. I thought he was a tramp. Now I’m not so sure.
ALT’s smoking cap and pipes are displayed in what used to be his study (now a ‘conference room’). I should have whipped them out and tried a toke.
May 28, 2008 at 12:30 am
You know, MM doesn’t look a day over 75. Must be that sea air…
May 28, 2008 at 8:43 am
mishari, your skills are required on Cif
there’s an open thread about Sebastian Faulks taking over the James Bond reins from Ian Fleming, and asking punters to outline in 70 words a new updated 007 plot. Sorely miss your heavily accented dialogue of yore.
I won’t post the link in case I end up in cs’s compost; it’s tagged ‘From Cif with love.’
May 28, 2008 at 9:07 am
I saw that, parallax, but after Cyril Connolly’s Bond Strikes Camp and Alan Coren’s piece, (title forgotten), about Bond in his dotage, I don’t really have much to add. But thanks for the kind thought..
May 28, 2008 at 9:23 am
” I thought the great man’s spiritual presence might inspire a summer poem, but no luck.”
A shame. My summer’s been a right damp squib.
May 28, 2008 at 9:52 am
hey – the deck chair thread’s been updated and Tim Winton’s linked to one of my posts yonks ago! yeehah!
May 28, 2008 at 10:38 am
“I won’t post the link in case I end up in cs’s compost…”
Reading the forums on WordPress, it seems that a lot of WP bloggers have the same problem – that comments from some people regularly end up on the wrong side of the Akismet spam filter. Akismet is supposed to learn each time a comment is rescued & marked as “not spam” – but the general opinion on the forums is that that simply doesn’t happen. Some people there say that contacting Akismet with details of the relevant email addresses which get caught erroneously will sort the problem, but again, those who’ve done this say it achieves nothing. Just one of those annoying things; Akismet’s fault, though, not WordPress. It’s not an option btw to turn off the spam filter as it regularly catches the real thing. I tweaked the settings here ages ago so that only posts with three or more links get held for moderation – but even those posts shouldn’t get dumped in Spamhell, just referred to my email. It’s a mystery….
May 28, 2008 at 10:48 am
Billy, I’ve become enamoured of the Ballade Royal and will try one on ‘Summer’. Can’t promise much…
May 28, 2008 at 11:01 am
Form before content….tut, tut….
On the other hand, I was thinking about a series of villanelles based on birds – or more precisely, lost birds….”I grieve for my Grebe in the grave”; “I seem to have mislaid the Emperor Penguin”; “My Blue-footed Booby done gone left me”….
May 28, 2008 at 11:41 am
Steve, I actually enjoy working in a set form. I find it leaves one free to concentrate on other aspects. In a way, it’s kind of liberating having a template to work with.
How about ‘My Great Auk appears to have gone for a walk..’
‘My plover has gone to cover…’
‘My quail is delayed on Virgin Rail…’
‘My bustard cannot cut the mustard…’
May 28, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Won’t you come home Bill Bailey,
I’ve cooked you a capercaillie.
I told you in my latest letter,
Protected species taste much better.
May 28, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Nice one, freep. Been away?
I’ve invited the hobbit Frodo
To dine on baked, stuffed Dodo,
But I don’t know what wine is drinked
With animals that are extinct.
…sorry
May 28, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Been to Cape Wrath, mish. There is no better place for taking one’s spleen. All there is to see is rock, air, the Atlantic, a few bedraggled deer, birds baffled by vast winds, some misguided persons in fleeces, and straggles of RAF personnel in sore need of gruntlement and drink.
To return to read about writerly folk at Hay requires readjustment of one’s cerebration.
May 28, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Sounds lovely. So you’re cultivating the artless, gale-blown, guano-spattered look, then? Lovely. Now, where’s your villanelle, you lazy sod?
May 28, 2008 at 1:10 pm
The problem with winning the chair
Is I’d have to suspend it in air
And sit four-storeys up
With my book and my cup
And hope that the rope didn’t tear.
May 28, 2008 at 1:12 pm
OK, you bully.
Will just consult my Audubon, then Shuttleworth’s alphabetical table of extinct birds. And perhaps Prendergast and MacNee’s ‘Rules for the Correct Construction of The Villanelle by Gentlewomen and Untutored Persons’ (Baltimore, 1837). Need a kick start, see. All this content over form stuff is cobblers.
May 28, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Oh, and you’d better write a ‘Summer’ poem for Billy. He’s offering a first prize of £10,000. Well, a glossy colour photograph of a rubber cheque for £10,000, which is almost as good, in a conceptual, post-modern sort of way. You know Mills. A post- modernist to his fingertips…
May 28, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Looks like freepoland took your advice – he’s written pretty much the best one there, IMHO….along with MM’s earlier one, which I liked, even if you-know-foo-who did too….
I was annoyed that having had (what I thought was) a great idea for a summer doggerel, I couldn’t realise it….hence the minimalist snippet….and how I wish I’d used “&” instead of “and”….
May 28, 2008 at 3:41 pm
If my proposal that I be asked to read ar Hay wins the deckchair, my pplan is to ask that each aoutgraph be cut out and used as individual prizes for best poem in class for future “call for poems” blogs. I’m sure you’re all excited.
I feel I’ve a strong case for wining, as my suggestion belends brevity, post-modernist wit and shameless self-promotion in equal measures.
May 28, 2008 at 3:58 pm
In terms of shameless self-promotion, you have a long way to go to match the (currently) last comment here:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/05/hay_festival_is_america_still.html
May 28, 2008 at 4:08 pm
‘…I recently won an award for my short story podcast in a non-literary awards from the UK.’
…Eh?
May 28, 2008 at 4:09 pm
freep’s is a cracker, alright. The boy has a real flair for the surreal…
May 28, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Nice to see freep back from Wrath. Are the grapes any good this year? Great summer poem.
WTF did they cut Mishari and self’s squibs?
May 28, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I think the dozy twats were under the impression we were really having a go at one another. Grauniad cluelessness continues apace…
May 28, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Steve: ‘&’ is sometimes the real icing on a poem. Monsieur Ampere is one of poetry’s unsung heroes.
Thanks for kind notings. MM, your nineteener v. polished; we must claim our shares of the ten grand from Billy.
Still working on deceased birds with long lines for a villanelle. Hard to be pithy when you have an Aepyornis and a short-toed nuthatch to squeeze in.
Do you know, there were precious few grapes at C.Wrath this year, so Morrisons will prob discontinue their Balnakiel Chardonnay. I had to leave my deckchair in the boot as well. Did manage to visit the Summer Isles for the first time, a geographical poem if ever there was one.
May 28, 2008 at 5:05 pm
BTW, MM, excellent summer poem. Lean, streamlined, elegant…mine was verbose and undisciplined..the photo of the £10,000 cheque recedes further into the distance…
May 28, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Um….hate to mention this, freepoland….but re your extinct bird poem….(little) auks and rheas haven’t snuffed it yet….
May 28, 2008 at 7:52 pm
They were Wiltshire Rheas and Large Tobago Auks. (Damn!) Well, that’ll teach people to look after them.
May 28, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Never mind,freep. I’m organizing a little auk and rhea cull, ( with extreme prejudice)..we’ll make your fine poem a self-fullfilling prophecy. So pish-posh to you, Steve…
May 28, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Meanwhile back at Police Headquarters they are being inundated with calls from neighbours vehemently complaining re stench from swinging corpses.
Permission is sought from Inspector Steve to unlock door…loud knocking heard coming from within.
Cat starting to smell a rat……
Busby’s impatience showing…foot tapping
May 28, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Poets need not worry about facts getting in the way of fine sounding lines. After all, who cares if a granny isn’t really dead, so long as her death is the opportunity for showing off…same goes for species….
Steve, you are right. I must be shut in a shed and drenched in creosote. You see, mishari, I have morals.
May 28, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Maybe just a slight rhea-rangement of lines….?
May 28, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I don’t know why I watch England matches. The train of events and carriage of emotions is so predictable it’s life-threatening. Keen anticipation. Frustration. Mounting anger. Despair. Shame. Put the kettle on. Not unlike the process of writing a villanelle.
May 29, 2008 at 7:07 am
re 179,
I personally think just the ambit of life until…
May 29, 2008 at 7:53 am
freep, never mind morals, what you need is a steely, adamantine inner poet. You don’t cultivate that by swanning off to exotic holiday locations, gorging on Cape Wrath grapes, ( and their famous honey-dew melons, I don’t doubt), and similiar beastly self-indulgences.
It’s all of a piece…decline of poetic fibre..different in my day…counry’s gone to the dogs…muttermuttermutter…
May 29, 2008 at 12:30 pm
“country’s gone to the dogs”, I thought that was my line…..
did one of these over ten years ago, (as a fund raiser,) before a paying audience; cast had never been together, each had been given a character. Audience applauded at the end (why wouldn’t they – it requested audience participation), believe also got a good write-up; never did one again!
btw on that occasion I was informed that it required acting and that I needed to do my own script.
May 29, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Mishari, loved the Ballade Royal on Carol’s; a summer one would be great.
May 29, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Looks like they’ve finally reinstated para-breaks in the Gruan. Woo.
May 29, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Aye, Billy, the Ballade Royal has a touch more gravitas than the Villanelle. I liked Mishari’s too, very deft. The form has the capacity to carry profundities; might have a go at a summertime one; suspect it needs gorgeous carriages, silks and trumpets. Hay has check shirts and beer, and might be better served by limericks.
May 29, 2008 at 2:20 pm
This Jeremy Bowes Lyon chappie now; I like the cut of his jib.
May 29, 2008 at 2:27 pm
We went to the books fayre at Hay,
To hear what the writers would say;
And apart the bitchins
of Christopher Hitchens,
All of us had a nice day.
May 29, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Oh now, come clean, who is J.B Lyon or do I have to …
yes Angela, I know, we are in the shadows, we are not seen nor heard…
May 29, 2008 at 2:35 pm
It should have been: “Everyone had a nice day”, which works better, but I changed it to “All of us” at the last minute because it seemed to make more sense overall.
May 29, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Another Hayrick:
All hail the hale hearty Hay-man!
Writing blog after blog for the layman.
The laymen, however,
Write comments more clever
Than the blogs by our dogmatic shaman….
May 29, 2008 at 2:53 pm
“Oh now, come clean, who is J.B Lyon or do I have to”
I thought it was pretty obvious from the comments on the short story article.
May 29, 2008 at 2:55 pm
And BTW, it’s not JB Lyon, it’s J Bowes-Lyon. Mummy would be proud.
May 29, 2008 at 2:56 pm
The trouble with philosophy
Is we sell it to people for free.
If we charged them instead
For infesting their head
We’d be wealthy, I’m sure you’d agree.
May 29, 2008 at 3:05 pm
This J B-L fellow sounds a bit deranged, frankly. Like some gin-soaked old Colonel, infesting Cheltenham and boring everyone rigid with his tales of Empire.
” I asked my bearer, Ah Sol, I said, boy, do you think the British have been good for Malaysia? He said, ‘Blitish all-same numbah one, sahib. Me likee too mass’, and it’s true you know. The beggars were grateful, as well they might be…’ blahblahblah. Christ.
May 29, 2008 at 3:21 pm
‘gin soaked definitely. and without the tonic.
May 29, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Please bear with me fmk, I am slow.
May 29, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“use ze liddle grey cells” as old Poirot would say (you say how easy it is to pretend to be on topic, even when you’re not?)
May 29, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Is your 197 directed to me, fmk,
if so, you are very definitely not aware how slow I am.
May 29, 2008 at 4:24 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bowes-Lyon
May 29, 2008 at 4:24 pm
And that’s not a clue. More a red herring.
May 29, 2008 at 4:25 pm
IANT And The Msytery Of Jeremy Bowes-Lyon. There’s a real dic fic story in this one.
May 29, 2008 at 4:35 pm
fmk.
Re J Bowes-Lyon,
for real? Can you possibly understand, I do not care.
May 29, 2008 at 4:46 pm
After only a week reading the Telegraph Paper Tiger blog, I’m ready to ditch it: low frequency of new articles, main page too slow to load, and, today, too many error messages….makes Greyandpinkian Unlimited look good, frankly….
May 29, 2008 at 7:55 pm
doggerelist,
what are you doing on the Telegraph, you can survive with this and Mishari, he takes many parts.
May 29, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Variety is the spice of life, Iamnothere….
May 29, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Some are too easily spotted!