Stealing time

The Guardian today voiced an oft aired opinion that the myriad distractions hurled at us by the media and modern life in general is stealing precious literary reading time. A gazillion TV channels, celebrity culture, 24-hour news coverage, DVDs, social networking websites not to mention the recession, debt crisis and longer working hours "has meant the very theft of our thinking space."

The economic strains under which we are all currently languishing and the subsequent efforts required to survive are obviously going to consume our thoughts and time, especially if you have children to raise and a mortgage to pay off, but suggesting that the many forms of entertainment and social communication vying for our attention are "stealing" our leisure time that might be otherwise spent reading strikes me as absurd.

It's not as if mischievous little demons sporting Steve Jobs masks are sneaking into our homes and planting tripwires so that we end up falling in front of our TVs, computer screens and copies of Heat magazine. Facebook, YouTube and Flickr don't surreptitiously transmit hypnotic waves to keep you mentally shackled to the computer screen. You are not forced at gunpoint to update your Twitter feed every fifteen seconds and read every damn tweet posted by everybody on the planet. You choose how much time you devote to these things. You choose how much of a slave you become to the information superhighway. They all have their own benefits but how much they encroach upon your consciousness is entirely up to you.

If you wish you had the time to sit down with a book then how hard would it really be to switch off your laptop and iPhone for just an hour?

Another headline splattered across the press today was the link between excessive internet use and depression. It's true, there's been a study dontcha' know?

Leeds University canvassed various social networking sites asking questions on how much time people spent online and for what purposes. The participants were also asked to complete the Beck Depression Inventory, a test designed to measure severity of depression. Of the 1,319 respondents, 1.4% - i.e. eighteen people - were classed as internet addicts and showed signs of "moderate to severe" depression. The article's lead author, Dr. Catriona Morrison, concluded thusly:

"Our research indicates that excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don't know is which comes first – are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?

"What is clear is that, for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies."

I'm no psychologist but I would have thought that addiction to anything could be a warning sign for depressive tendencies. Also, measure the depressive tendencies of any group of people - people who eat bananas, people who knit, people who re-enact historical battles, people who collect toenail clippings - and the odds are that a "small subset" of them will show signs of moderate to severe depression. Would it therefore be fair to say that eating an awful lot of bananas or knitting piles and piles of socks could be a warning sign for depressive tendencies? Or does it simply show that 1%-2% of any arbitrary group of people will show depressive tendencies and that such people are prone to addictions of any kind as a means of escape from their problems?

Does this survey actually prove next to nothing?

But that isn't spectacular enough for the press so they plaster sensational headlines about the absolute definite link between internet usage and depression.

You'd better stop reading this post now before you succumb to an irresistible urge to kill yourself.

Catcher caught

JD Salinger
1919—2010

Happy Bloomsday!

Damn, the whole thing almost passed me by. I was down at the beach, see, cracking one off behind a sand dune while spying on this really cute chick. OK, so she had a gammy leg but I'd have still done her.

Off To Kingdom Come

J.G. Ballard
1930—2009

At rest, remembered

John Updike
1932—2009

Put this book in your ear

This week's Book At Bedtime on BBC Radio 4 is Out Of A Clear Sky by my good chum Sally Hinchcliffe, an unusual thriller about obsession, stalking and bird-watching. Sally is a wonderful writer and a fine human being to boot so be nice and tune in.

Broadcast details: Monday 22 September - Friday 3 October, 10.45pm - 11.00pm.

If you miss the broadcast (which is likely because the first instalment is going out right now as I write this - whoops) then you can listen again for seven days after broadcast at BBC Online here.

And if you miss the whole lot then why not buy the book? Let me rephrase that: Buy the book.

Why doesn't this list get any shorter?

The "to read" shelf of my bookcase, that is. No matter how many books I read the list never gets smaller. I can only assume that my books are now interbreeding and multiplying of their own accord. I may never have to buy another book ever again

No, I do know the reason: Packing up my stuff when I moved revealed a whole bunch of unread tomes that I had long forgotten about, cunningly hidden away behind all the books I had read, waiting patiently, stifling giggles, for the day when I'd unearth them and they could pounce on me shouting, "Ha ha! Thought you'd caught up on your reading? No chance, pal. You still have us to get through yet. Hahahaha!"

Cheeky bastards.

Having said that, there are those books that I am well aware have been sitting there tapping their feet, examining their nails and huffing loudly for ages.

This, then, is what my never-diminishing "to read" pile currently looks like (and any longstanding readers of this blog will probably recognise half of it):

Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Pesthouse by Jim Crace
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Devils by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
Luis Bunuel: New Readings by Peter William Evans
On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt
Plays And Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin
Dispatches by Michael Herr
Other Voices by Andrew Humphrey
The Aspern Papers by Henry James
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Amerika by Franz Kafka
The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
Writing to the Moment: Selected Critical Essays, 1980-95 by Tom Paulin
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel: Anthology of Shorter Fiction by Kay Sexton, Lucy Fry & Heidi James
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Major Works by Jonathan Swift
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time by Hunter S. Thompson
Three Things About Me by Aliya Whiteley
La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola

I'm currently reading The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick which is proving to be reliably bonkers.

One Day In The Death Of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1918—2008

REVIEW: Living With The Truth

It can be difficult to face up to the truth, and many people avoid it at all costs, but it's difficult to avoid when the anthropomorphic personification of truth decides he is going to hang out with you for a few days.

This is the premise of Jim Murdoch's debut novel Living With The Truth.

Jonathan Payne is an aging bookseller who has all but withdrawn from the world when, one Tuesday morning, a young man turns up on his doorstep, introduces himself as, "Truth. Mister Truth. Or you can call me 'The' if you like. Or even plain ol' Truth," and makes himself comfortable as Jonathan's companion. Jonathan is initially overwhelmed by this stranger's effrontery and doesn't believe he is who he claims to be; but then the stranger demonstrates an uncanny knowledge of Jonathan's private life, his dysfunctional family, his lamentable love life, what books are on his shelf and where, his favourite type of coffee and the fact that every time he sees an attractive young woman on the street he habitually thinks, "It's not fair."

Truth's presence is a bane at first as he openly discusses the embarrassing minutiae of Jonathan's personal life in public and scrutinises aspects of his character that he has avoided confronting for years. Over time, though, Jonathan's strange new companion forces him to realise that many of his perceptions of people and events in his life are or were mostly superficial, that if he had been less self-absorbed and a little more communicative then he would have had a deeper understanding of their feelings and motivations. He also learns, however, that the truth is that a deeper understanding of those close to him may not have necessarily improved his relationships with them: knowledge can be both a blessing and a burden.

Truth himself is a mischievous character who fluctuates between tactlessly discussing taboo subjects out loud, such as Jonathan's masturbatory habits and pornographic preferences, and humouring people's secret aspirations - thanks to Truth, Jonathan is astonished to learn about his estranged sister's creative side. Truth, however, makes no distinctions between good and bad - there is only the truth: "I am not hampered by pity or anything like that. She does her job and let me do mine." This abstract-concept-made-flesh is not a new idea, one thinks of DEATH from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels or Neil Gaiman's Sandman (indeed, there is a sly wink to Gaiman's creation at one point) - but Murdoch's novel is less a fantasy story than a down-to-earth examination of facing up to the reality of untapped potential and failure. Despite that, the book is very funny and Murdoch tackles his heavy theme with a lightness of touch that, although uncomfortably honest at times, retains a mostly positive outlook.

Jim Murdoch's debut is an intelligent, funny and moving novel that any discerning reader should enjoy.

Living With The Truth by Jim Murdoch is available to buy from the publisher, Fandango Virtual.

Or you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk via my own humble web store.

Stuff and... things

Bloggity bloggity blog blog blog... come on Steve, gotta' blog about something. Haven't blogged anything for over ten days; surely you can't be suggesting that nothing has happened in that time? Well, admittedly, not much has happened what with your last temp job assignment finishing last Friday and taking a bit of time off to investigate the work/accommodation situation in Glasgow, but that's not especially interesting, is it? It's not as if you've spent the time partying and whoring your way around the seedy underbelly of Oxford. Does Oxford have a seedy underbelly? Must do - everywhere does. Maybe that could be a little project for you.

Still, doesn't help with the immediate problem of not having much to say. I suppose you could mention your ongoing obsession with your Last.fm stats, especially since you discovered that damned eclecticism test and have been trying to listen to as many different genres as possible to bump your score up. Come on, you know you have eclectic tastes, you don't need validation from a bunch of database statistics. Tragic, really, and not worth sharing with the world.

You could talk about why you failed to note the passing of Charlton Heston the other week given the fact you often post photo-memorials for cultural figures. He was, after all, a genuine old-school movie star. You could have commented upon your ambivalence towards his death given the fact that, for example, he was a vocal supporter of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the 1960s but his latter day public advocation of gun ownership was deplorable; that and the fact that you never warmed to him as an actor despite his star status. True, he was in A Touch Of Evil, one of your favourite films of all time, but the reasons for it being one of your favourite films of all time have absolutely nothing to do with him. Anyway, it's old news now - no point in mentioning it.

Oh well, if you haven't got anything to blog about then you haven't got anything to blog about. Never mind, it's Sunday: why not make yourself a nice strong cup of coffee, curl up with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and listen to some Otis Redding... or Alban Berg... or Muddy Waters... or Fudge Tunnel... or Sly & The Family Stone... or Ramones... or Luke Slater... or... oh, just go and check your Last.fm stats and then decide. Pathetic. It really is.

Finally...

I did it, I finally did it: I finally finished reading that damned Shandy novel.

So... what to read next?

• Other Voices by Andrew Humphrey
• The Complete Enderby by Anthony Burgess
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• L'Assommoir by Émile Zola
• La Bete Humaine by Émile Zola
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Turn of the Screw / The Aspern Papers (Omnibus) by Henry James
• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
• Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart
• Continent by Jim Crace
• Pesthouse by Jim Crace
• In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin
• Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin
• The Major Works by Jonathan Swift
• Palm Sunday / Welcome To The Monkey House (Omnibus) by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
• Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel by Lucy Fry, Heidi James and Kay Sexton
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• Plays And Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
• The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
• Luis Bunuel: New Readings by Peter William Evans
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
• River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Writing to the Moment: Selected Critical Essays 1980-95 by Tom Paulin
• How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin

Or maybe I'll watch some films for a bit.

The final odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke
1917—2008

Sunday babble

About 100 pages into The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne. Hard work but I think I've settled into it verbosity and mad digressions. Keep telling myself that I've read Ulysses so, hey, I can fucking read anything.

---

I went to the The British Fantasy Open Night last night on the flimsiest of pretexts - my chum Jai Clare invited me. Got drunk, talked to some interesting fantasy writers, chatted up a nice auburn-haired film producer, joked that I could be the next Hugh Grant or Jude Law, gave her a phone number, possibly mine. Feeling a bit sluggish today.

---

Had a dream that the house I lodge in was some sort of boarding school except the internal layout was completely different - but it was the house I lodge in. Anyway, the cleaner managed to utterly humiliate me in front of my fellow pupils by pointing out that my bed linen stank of cum.

---

My resolution to stop buying books until I substantially reduced my "to read" pile has failed abysmally. Awaiting my attention once I have concluded my business with Mr. Shandy are:

• Other Voices by Andrew Humphrey
• The Complete Enderby by Anthony Burgess
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• L'Assommoir by Émile Zola
• La Bete Humaine by Émile Zola
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Turn of the Screw / The Aspern Papers (Omnibus) by Henry James
• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
• Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart
• Continent by Jim Crace
• Pesthouse by Jim Crace
• In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin
• Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin
• The Major Works by Jonathan Swift
• Palm Sunday / Welcome To The Monkey House (Omnibus) by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
• Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel by Lucy Fry, Heidi James and Kay Sexton
• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• Plays And Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
• The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
• Luis Bunuel: New Readings by Peter William Evans
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
• River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Writing to the Moment: Selected Critical Essays 1980-95 by Tom Paulin
• How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin

Utterly ridiculous, isn't it. Still, it makes for an artificially long blog post.

The Coens on fire, Camden burns

I was very shocked to wake up this morning to the news of a major fire at Camden Market. I'm not intimately familiar with the place but I have strolled around the market and drunk in many of the pubs around there. There are several great gig venues in the area too like Koko, the Electric Ballroom and the Roundhouse that I visited several times last year.

Damn, a real shame, that.

---

In an attempt to rekindle my interest in films, I made the effort to go and see The Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country For Old Men. And what a relief it was. After two disappointing films, Intolerable Cruelty and the utterly pointless (if beautifully shot) remake of The Ladykillers, No Country For Old Men sees the Coen boys on cracking form. I read the novel last year when I heard that The Coens were making a film of it and I immediately realised that McCarthy's sparse, violent and melancholy neo-Western was perfect material for them. And how. It is reminiscent in tone and pace of the brothers' first film Blood Simple but in an older and wiser way. Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones are all wonderfully understated in their roles, Kelly MacDonald is strong too.

I can understand why the ending has pissed people off but, having read the novel, I was prepared for it. I don't think I would have minded anyway: I wouldn't have expected a nice, tidy and typical thriller-style ending from the Coens anyway - that is not what the film (or the novel) is about.

To find out what it is about, I suggest you go and see it, think about it for a while, see it again and then read the book. Or read the book first; I always prefer to read the book first for some reason.

Anyway, the film is good enough to make you think that it should be law that all McCarthy adaptations are made by the Coen Brothers. Having said that, The Road is currently in production under the directorship of John Hillcoat, the fella who made the Nick Cave scripted The Proposition, a powerful film that stayed with me long after I left the cinema even though I didn't really know whether I liked it or not as I was watching it. I think Hillcoat and McCarthy will be a good match. Also, Blood Meridian (which is on my ever-growing "to read" shelf) is on the slate for Ridley Scott. McCarthy... Ridley Scott... hmm, it could work; Ridley is nothing if not eclectic in his choices.

A little Light Reading?

Hello chums. What's that? You're at a bit of a loose end? Hmm, maybe you could read a book. What's that? You don't have anything to read? Ah, well, I can help you out there. It just so happens that my great close personal friend* Aliya Whiteley has a new novel out called Light Reading. What's it about? I'll tell you (or, more accurately, I'll cut 'n' paste the blurb here for you):

Welcome to Britain’s most sinister seaside resort...

Prudence Green is a troubled woman. Stifled by her existence as an RAF wife, she’s dying for a bit of excitement. When one of the other women on the base commits suicide (having discovered that her husband is having an affair with a male comrade in Iraq), Pru and her best friend Lena are prompted to set off on a memorably surreal journey – a criminal investigation, a search for love and an exploration of Pru’s own dark past. The discontented pair escape the base and arrive in a blighted seaside town, Allcombe, determined to find out the truth behind the supposed suicide of one-time TV star Crystal Tynee. But as they explore the lawless town, Pru and Lena find that Allcombe hides more than one hideous secret. Light Reading is a wickedly clever detective story and a pitch-black mystery, seething with grotesque and unforgettable characters, and concluding with a twist that will leave you breathless.

If that floats your toast then you can order Light Reading from Amazon UK (and if enough people use this link to buy from Amazon then I might get a 23p referral fee or something - yes, I am a whore).

On the other hand you could go one better and get your copy signed by the lovely Aliya in person. But how? Simply pop along the Light Reading launch party at Goldsboro Books, 7 Cecil Court, London on Thursday 28 February between 6.30pm - 8.30pm. (And here be a map for your convenience.) Sadly, I cannot attend as I am going to the UK premiere performance of Penderecki's Symphony No. 8 at the Barbican. I never thought I would ever say anything like that.

And while you are in a book-buying frame of mind, why not grab yourself a copy of Jai Clare's** The Cusp Of Something? You know you want to, you goat-baiting flan spanners.

* Well, OK, I've never actually met the woman but she did once send me a bookmark and I've played Scrabulous with her on Facebook. She's quite good at it. Sometimes.
** Jai genuinely is a great close personal friend of mine. We've been drunk together and I have crashed on her sofa and everything. And she's a damn good writer too so buy her book or, you know, puppies... woof woof...bang bang.

In Review (finally): 2007

2007: The year I stood up in church during a friend's wedding ceremony and read out an extract from The Velveteen Rabbit - a moment I will always remember with great fondness.

2007: The year we lost Kurt Vonnegut. The discovery of his work in my late teens was pivotal in my development as a serious reader. Having gobbled up Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett I felt the desire to adventure deeper into the literary landscape. I was in the habit of picking books at random from shop shelves, reading the blurb, scanning a few pages, impulse buying. One book I found using this method was Jack Womack's Random Acts Of Senseless Violence, a disturbing and vivid vision of social breakdown. I enjoyed it immensely. One of the quotes of praise on the dust jacket likened Womack to some guy called Kurt Vonnegut so I went out and bought Slaughterhouse 5, the title of which sounded vaguely familiar.

The book was a revelation. Funny, serious, wise, angry and compassionate, a moving story of war and the bombing of Dresden that somehow involved time travel and extraterrestrial zoos. Reading this book I realised that serious fiction could be funny and stories didn't have to be told in chronological order. I was amazed how effortlessly Vonnegut took all these fragments, all these disparate threads, and somehow tied them all together on the final page. Most of all I was won over by Vonnegut's wry charm and humanity; reading him was like being taught life lessons by a favourite uncle. "Come here, son, I want to tell you a few things about the world."

Reading Vonnegut is liberating in that he shows you that you can do anything you damn well please in fiction - his books are like permission slips. I'm very sad he is gone but I'm happy that he was here at all and gave us so many wonderful words.

2007: the year I read Ulysses and I finally finished Boccaccio's Decameron. I experienced something of a reading renaissance in 2007: I always have a book on the go but for some reason my appetite became particularly voracious (which maybe explains my resolve to conquer James Joyce's colossal tome). I read a lot of excellent stuff including Pamuk's My Name Is Read, John Fowles' The Magus, Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, several Richard Brautigans (what a beautifully quirky turn of phrase that man had), The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, Slow Chocolate Autopsy by Iain Sinclair and José Saramago's Blindness, the last of which affected me the most with its harrowing vision of the ease with which "civilised" society could collapse.

If my appetite for reading increased in 2007 then my interest in film waned considerably. I know I've complained bitterly about Hollywood remaking every good Asian film barely five minutes after its released but it now it seems studios are cannibalising every nation's celluloid history including their own. We're going to get Paul W.S. Anderson's remake of The Long Good Friday pointlessly relocated to contemporary Miami, Ron Howard doing Michael Hanecke's Caché (Hidden), Michael Hanecke doing an American remake of his own Funny Games (why Michael, why?), The Taking Of Pelham 123 and Fritz Lang's Metropolis for fuck's sake. What happens when you've flogged a franchise to death with increasingly shite sequels? Why, you simply start again by remaking the original! Hello Halloween! And talking of John Carpenter, hello Assault On Precinct 13 remake! Hello Escape From New York remake! Apparently John Carpenter is happy to piss all over his own back catalogue of DIY cult classics by endorsing uninspired remakes.

The event that epitomised this trend for me is the fact that Martin Scorcese finally won his long-deserved Oscar for his laziest, most derivative film. Not only is The Departed inferior to its Hong Kong progenitor but it also feels like Scorcese simply imitating his own past glories. You'll say I am taking this far too seriously but watching The Departed and witnessing the subsequent praise and adulation Marty received actually kinda' hurt.

Thank Whoever, then, for David Lynch who delivered three hours of magnificent dread and weirdness in the form of INLAND EMPIRE. It doesn't matter that I didn't follow the half of it, I loved every damn digitally videoed frame of it. Even when I had no idea what was going on I never felt that Lynch was wasting my time with mere self-indulgent waffle - which, coincidentally, was exactly how I felt reading Ulysses. I seemed to be in that kind of mood in 2007. The only other films I enjoyed at the cinema were Zhang Yimou's Curse Of The Golden Flower which, despite the lukewarm critical response, I really enjoyed, and Hot Fuzz, the most gloriously absurd and entertaining film of the year.

Never mind, I procured lots of good music this year. I got stuck into two genres that I have long-intended to investigate properly: Post-punk and classical. By "classical" I really mean "orchestral", I suppose, because the era I have been drawn to has been that of 20 Century modern composers. Yes, I'm loving all that dodecaphonic atonal shit.

Best albums released this year? Chicago, Detroit, Redruth by Luke Vibert, Book Of Dogma by The Black Dog (well, OK, I admit that this is a compilation of previously released material but much of it has only appeared on vinyl so it still counts), Whisper Me Wishes by Kettel, Oblivion With Bells by Underworld, Foley Room by Amon Tobin and the magnificently barmy Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed.

I managed to keep a New Year's resolution for once by going to some gigs, something I hadn't done for a long time. I went to see Aim, Bonobo, Underworld and Amon Tobin and I'm so glad I made the effort. Music really is one of the things that makes life worth living - a world without music doesn't bear thinking about.

But otherwise 2007 sucked. Let's see if I can get my shit together in 2008, eh?

Ha. I say that every year.

Slappy Poo Smear

Jeez, 'bout time I wrote sumfink on this 'ere blog o' mine.

Well, I hope you all had an above average Christmas and an adequate New Year. I've already had my first anxiety attack of 2008! That's got to be a record even for me. Never mind, I got better.

Let's get down to the important bit: summary of Crimbo stash!

• Blade Runner 2007 Final Cut Collector's DVD box-set (only one problem: I can't decide which of the five included versions of the film to watch first).
• Jan Svankmajer - The Complete Short Films DVD box-set. Fantastic and surreal animations from the mad Czech genius Svankmajer.
• The Orb's Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld Deluxe Edition CD. Owned this on cassette years ago but finally got it on CD with an extra disc of remixes. I'd forgotten how brilliant this album is.
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (I loved No Country For Old Men and I can't wait to see the Coen Brothers' film adaptation).
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sachs.
• The Gospel According To Jesus Christ by José Saramago. I've been reading this over the Christmas holiday - seemed appropriate.

A most excellent haul, I think you'll agree. Now, which bloody version of Blade Runner shall I watch first...?

Sundry Saturday gubbins

Walking home from the shop along Walton Street in Oxford and who passes me? Only Jeremy bloody Paxman. S'true.

On an utterly unrelated note, I saw Amon Tobin do a DJ set at The Forum club in London. Fuck me if the bass in that place didn't almost cause a prolapse. A bloody good night only marred by slightly higher than usual Twat Quota in the audience, four Shoreditch yahoos wearing sunglasses in particular. Never mind, it was still a blinding show with Tobin mixing up his own stuff with music that has inspired him into one big jazzy drum 'n' bass pudding. He even played Second Bad Vilbel by Autechre, my favourite track by them and one I never thought I'd here in a DJ mix.

Other than that, nothing else exciting to report. The job still sucks and I'm currently reading The Magus by John Fowles which doesn't.

Come!

"The Cusp Of Something" by Jai Clare - Launch Party
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
2:00pm - 4:00pm

Filthy McNasty's Whiskey Cafe
68 Amwell Street
London
United Kingdom

Whoops, I did it again...

Curse Blackwell's bookshop and their "3 for 2" deal on Oxford University Press World Classics. I've resisted for so long, so long, but today my will foundered and I bought the following:

• The Life & Opinions Of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
• La Bête Humaine by Émile Zola
• Major Works by Jonathan Swift

Oh well, I'll just add them to the pile of unread books waiting patiently for my attention. I shall post a list of all the books in my library I have yet to read. I shall do this for two reasons: firstly because it will make for a nice long blog post and make it look like I've made the effort; secondly because seeing all the bloody books I haven't read yet in a written list might prevent from me buying any more:

• The Magus by John Fowles
• The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time by Hunter S. Thompson
• Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
• The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
• Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell
• The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
• So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away by Richard Brautigan
• Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel: Anthology of Shorter Fiction by Lucy Fry, Kay Sexton & Heidi James
• London Orbital by Iain Sinclair
• Slow Chocolate Autopsy by Iain Sinclair
• Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami
• River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life by Richard Dawkins
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin
• Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality by John Gribbin
• How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now by William H. Calvin
• Nature's Numbers by Ian Stewart
• Writing to the Moment: Selected Critical Essays 1980-95 by Tom Paulin
• Luis Bunuel: New Readings by Peter William Evans
• The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers by Henry James
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

Yes, yes, I know, I know...

Random ramblings of a Sunday afternoon

Boy, this blog is dying on its arse, isn't it? I can barely manage one post a week and even then I seldom have anything interesting to say. Ugh. For what it's worth, here are some headlines to tide you over:

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Attended an Underworld gig on Thursday night at the Roundhouse in London. All kinds of awesomeness. Despite their latest album, Oblivion With Bells, being a more relaxed and ambient affair than previous records, they still know how to get people's butts movin' on the dance floor. And singer/guitarist Karl Hyde, bless him, is one of the best frontmen in the business. He bounces around the stage with such joyful abandon that you can't help but grin like a fool and cheer like a lunatic. His enthusiasm is not only infectious but also possibly lethal.

Highlights must include Two Months Off into Kittens into Moaner into Born Slippy [NUXX] into Shudder/King Of Snake - I was flippin' knackered once that little mix came to an end; and Rez/Cowgirl/Rez/Cowgirl was bloody brilliant too.

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For reasons that are far too convoluted to go into, I seem to be engaged in cyber-sex with a pair of sock puppets

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Current cultural artefacts entering my head via various orifices and organs:

• Aram Khachaturian's Gayane ballet suites (Suite No. 3, Gayane's Adagio - used by Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey to introduce the Discovery One on its way to Jupiter - is a sublime piece of music).
• Talking Heads, the early Eno produced stuff: funky, arty, post-punk goodness, yeah!
• Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec. No, not a self-help book but a wonderful French novel that describes a Parisian block of flats, its occupants, their lives and tales relating to their possessions. Funny, inventive and sad. Highly recommended.
• The TV show Heroes - enjoyable, well-written sci-fi/fantasy although it does sometimes take an awful long time for anything to happen. Addictive stuff nevertheless.

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I am also preparing for National Novel Writing Month by trawling the internet for information about bizarre sex fetishes and reading a critical study of the films of Luis Buñuel.

Don't ask.

Never mind the puppies - just buy the damn books

Two books for your consideration:

The Cusp Of Something by Jai Clare (released 1 November 2007).

From Elastic Press: Jai Clare’s stories are filled with the disaffected, those who kick against their everyday lives, who crave the mystic when seeking their spirituality, and who are desperate to be alone as much as they are desperate to be with someone. Whether in North Africa, Greece, or Britain her characters’ concerns remain the same. To find meaning in the universal and the personal, through transient sex or emotional depth. All told with a fluid intensity of prose that cuts to the heart of them, lays them bare to misfortune and fortune, and stands them waiting on the brink of discovery.

Two Tall Tales And One Short Novel by Heidi James, Kay Sexton & Lucy Fry (out now).

From Apis Books: Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel, is a collection of stories by three of the UK's brightest new writing talents: The Mesmerist's Daughter by Heidi James, Smokin' the Queen by Kay Sexton, and In the Clear by Lucy Fry. Together the stories transport the reader into the minds of three very different characters.

It just so happens that both Jai Clare and Kay Sexton are close and personal friends of mine and not only are they fantastic writers but also lovely, beautiful people. So if you don't buy these books then you are effectively pissing on my grave. You wouldn't piss on my grave, would you? I thought not. To make things easier for you, here are some clicky things you can use to buy these great books (because you are going to buy them, aren't you, rather than piss on somebody's grave, namely mine).

Pre-order The Cusp of Something from Amazon UK
Buy Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel: Anthology of Shorter Fiction from Amazon UK

OK, I'm done pimping my friends. Time for coffee and cookies.

Ulysses: my incoherrent analysis

Right, I won't pretend for a second that I can give you a comprehensive or, indeed, accurate interpretation of what Joyce's novel is about. I must also apologise that I completely failed to articulate my feelings towards the novel in a coherrent and grammatically conventional manner. Here then I present my uneducated thoughts on Ulysses in the manner of Molly Bloom's internal monologue:

Language its all about language the history of language the evolution of language but also the failure of language people say that Ulysses was a book written to endear itself to the lords of academia and maybe it was to a degree but Joyce also hated "bookish" types the elite the custodians of the literary canon so he wrote a novel full of base human behaviour nose picking pissing shitting wanking fucking which at the same time made grandiose allusions to classic literature of all periods politics religion in the most prosiac prose imaginable Joyce having a laugh revelling in words creating puzzles to be puzzled over for years and yes so much of it went over my head and so many words phrases sentences I struggled to unravel but maybe that too was Joyce's point that so many words are often used to say so little or to conceal the truth language that deceives or fails to communicate and yet the energy of it was infectious and drew me in and how proud I was when I understood something it didn't matter how baffled I was for the most part because I could feel the cogs in my brain moving exercise for the mind excited me with possibilities of art I haven't felt since David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE

Remarkable also the depth of characterisation Leopold Bloom is no stereotype a genuinely complicated and real character with strengths and weaknesses intelligent but pedantic compassionate yet distant a common man yet aloof decent yet tosses off at the sight of a young girl from behind a rock courageous in the face of anti-semitism but fearful of intimacy due to the suicide of his father and death of his eleven day old son Molly Bloom too could have so easily been depicted as a shallow adulteress but in the space of the final sixty pages of unpunctuated monologue Joyce shows her to be loving sensual bitter jealous sad frustrated angry guilty nostalgic resentful of her husband still in love with her husband so despite all high-falutin games the complex alusions the complex structure the impenetrable prose Joyce ultimately presents the reader with a poignant and compassionate portrait of common people in all their complexity and ambiguity

Fucking masterpiece

A momentous occasion

After many months of dedication and determination against seemingly insurmountable odds, I have just this very moment completed a long, arduous but rewarding journey.

Yes, my friends, I can announce that I finished reading Ulysses.

I think I even understood some of it.

[EDIT] ... I will in the very near future write up my thoughts on what I think Ulysses is about or, at the very least, the many ideas that the novel has inspired in my brain. My head has been buzzing all day; I haven't felt this mentally stimulated and excited by a work of art since I saw INLAND EMPIRE.

Half started, half finished?

Having made a real push and forsaking all the other unread books on my shelf, I am happy to report that I am exactly halfway through Ulysses!

Um... that's it, really. Look, it's a big deal to me, all right?

By the way #1

My omnibus edition of Richard Brautigan's Revenge of The Lawn, The Abortion and So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away smells not unlike sawdust and hamster poo.

The tyranny of ideology

Psychotherapeutic counsellor and novelist Sebastian Beaumont chooses his top ten books about psychological journeys in The Guardian. Discussing Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Beaumont comments

"We can never step outside ideology, but Pirsig makes it clear that if we really face it, we can radically reduce its tyranny."

The tyranny of ideology: the phrase encapsulates several ideas that have preoccupied me recently albeit in a very vague and inarticulate way. Beaumont's comment has crystallised those ideas, given me a focus that has been absent for so very long. Funny how one sentence, one simple combination of words, can kickstart long-dormant creativity.

I must go write.

Lonesome no more

Self portrait from 'Breakfast Of Champions'

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1922—2007

For your consideration... or the puppy gets it

Here are a couple books that you may like to consider purchasing lest I send the boys round to acrimoniously divorce you from your limbs...

First up is A Gentle Axe by R.N. Morris who is none other than Roger Morris, author of last year's Taking Comfort (you all bought that, right, because you know how angry I get when people don't take heed of my recommendations - I have a basement of dead puppies to prove it).

A Gentle Axe is a murder mystery set in St. Petersburg, 1867 and features the character of Porfiry Petrovich, the detective who investgated the Raskolnikov case in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. If that isn't enough to convince you then I'll add that the novel involves a murdered dwarf packed into a suitcase. Come on, what more do you want from your fiction?

The second book is Rachael King's novel The Sound of Butterflies. Set in 1903, the novel tells the tale of Thomas Edgar, an enthusiastic butterfly collector. He embarks on a scientific exhibition to the Amazon in the hope of finding a mythical butterfly that he can name in honour of his wife, Sophie. When he returns, however, he is haggard, gaunt and his experiences have rendered him mute. He gradually attempts to tell Sophie the truth of his voyage, an expedition that descended into a lurid tale of wealth, greed and murder.

Rachael is not only a lovely women who I have had the pleasure of meeting but she also dropped a sprog a few months ago and needs the extra pennies to keep her newborn in nappies. So click on the cover and buy the book or else.

Thought for Sunday

This from a review of a book called Only A Promise Of Happiness (Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University Press):

Not only professional philosophy but large swaths of culture begin to look different once we've included desire and uncertainty in our idea of beauty. When, for example, we talk about beauty in purely formal terms — as Modernist critics did — we must conclude that beauty will always be a rare thing, its appreciation inherently difficult. But if instead we agree with Mr. Nehamas that beauty is identical to desire, that desire longs for engagement, and that such engagements are invariably risky, we might talk about beauty as we would talk about friendship: not as a verdict of something's worth but as indication that a relationship with the beautiful object will continue to give us unexpected pleasures over time.

I like the sound of this interpretation of the word "beauty", a word with which I've always had a difficult relationship.

Anyway, why not go and read the full review and, in the meantime, I'll stick the kettle on and we can have a chat about it when you get back:

"The Uncertainty Principle Of Beauty" - review by Gideon Lewis-Kraus.

On a side note, the review of Nehamas' book compelled me to meander over to the Princeton University Press' website where I discovered a book with the utterly magnificent title of On Bullshit. The book is written by Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, and the the blurb reads:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."

This is how all academic tomes should be written. My copy is on order.

Crimbo stash

Sod peace and love to all humankind: Christmas is about getting cool pressies. In a manner of speaking, I didn't actually get any. I sent my Amazon wish list to the the parents as per usual (they have long since given up any pretence of knowing what books, films and music I like) but due to a technical difficulty that arose from trying to install Internet Explorer 7, my dad's computer simply refused to log into any secure sites which meant no online shopping. Seeing as there was no way he would be able to find any of the stuff I asked for in any of the local consumer outlets in the parents' little corner of Devon, I ended up getting a cheque on Christmas Day accompanied by many humble apologies. (Actually, Dad could have probably got a fair selection of the stuff on my wish list if he had popped into Exeter but he didn't think of that).

But never mind. Cheque was paid into bank account, stuff was ordered (managed to get around Dad's inability to use secure sites by installing Firefox on his computer - fixed the problem immediately) and most of it was waiting on my doormat today when I returned to Oxford.

So, here is the booty I have treated myself to:

• Lost Highway 2 Disc Special Edition DVD
• Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? 2 Disc Special Edition DVD
• Don't Look Now Special Edition DVD
• Mirrormask DVD
• The City Of Lost Children DVD (the edition which finally includes the subtitled French language version so you don't have to suffer the awful, awful, awful English dubbing)
• The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

And because all of the above were available dirt cheap in various winter sales, I still have some Crimbo dosh left to play with. I predict a pleasant Sunday afternoon browse of Oxford's bookshops and music emporiums tomorrow. Nice one.

More hot meme action

The delectable Suw has tagged me with the following all-action meme thingie:

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence.
3. Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the book and the author.
5. Tag three people.

So, here we go...

He hesitated, watching the technicians lift the plastic motorcyclist - 'Elvis' - on to his machine, and then strode on towards us, beckoning to Helen Remington and myself. He scanned the visitors with a somehow offensive gaze. Once again he struck me as being a strange mixture of personal hauntedness, complete confinement in his own panicky universe, and yet at the same time open to all kinds of experiences from the outer world.

- Crash by J. G. Ballard

There you go. It took me a few minutes to decide if Crash was hanging over the edge of my bookshelf a little more than Jack Womack's Random Acts Of Senseless Violence (a wonderful book, by the way, which you should all read).

Right, I think I'll tag Jai, Kathryn and Em. Job done.