Listing

Just got to the end of a long to-do list for the day. Now thinking of what will need to be on the list for tomorrow. There's some small joy in crossing the items off. I just wish the joy was a bit bigger.

Yet Another Bloody Emperor

Found an outlet of sorts for my anger at stuff in the news through music today. It's always good to get up close and personal with VdGG, and listening to Peter Hammill's excoriating Every Bloody Emperor was happily therapeutic. Some wonderfully acid lyrics from the master of genuine angst: 

Yes and every bloody emperor's got his hands up history's skirt / As he poses for posterity over the fresh dug dirt. / Yes and every bloody emperor with his sickly rictus grin / Talks his way out of nearly everything but the lie within / Because every bloody emperor thinks his right to rule divine / So he'll go spinning and spinning and spinning into his own decline.

Also I found playing Dimitri Shostakovich's 10th Symphony in the car this morning a useful way of entering into the jittery anxieties of those threatened by the idiot emperor in a vaguely cathartic manner.

I was driving, as it happens, to the Botanic Gardens for a morning walk with Boon and Mei and the Missus - possibly the best therapy of all.

Torn

Gripped by events in Eastern Europe and wishing I wasn't. Feeling something close to despair, which is pointless as that does nobody any good. It would be nice to wake from the nightmare of history, but in the meantime we can only seek to stumble helpfully in the darkness.

Changing Times

Not sure what made me think of this, but it just occurred to me that I never ate pizza until I went to university. The first one I had, courtesy of my mate Steve Cannon, made me feel queasy it tasted so rich. I reckon it was only in my final year that I actually got used to them.

The world massively changed in 1974 - 1975, but only I noticed.  

A Tiny Bit Wiser

Just finished Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. Gosh, he was a strange writer. I think I gained some understanding of the popular appeal of the novel from the central sections. Once Bond is chasing the villain and then finds himself being savagely tortured by the bad guys the narrative builds real momentum. The violence is genuinely gripping and extremely disturbing in terms of the full-on sado-masochism of it all, and I can see a dark power at work here. There's some surprisingly expressive writing in those segments.

But once the number one bad guy is almost casually eliminated Fleming turns to what on one level is just trashy romance, replete with tin-eared dialogue. Plot seems to disappear for pages, even though it's obvious that the girl Bond has fallen for double-crossed him. And that naivety is entirely out of character for the hard-bitten, sceptical agent, except that he doesn't have any consistent character as far as I can make out. I mean, the intensely intelligent and clear-headed gambler of the game that dominates the first third of the text sort of vanishes the moment he's won and decides to behave in supremely dumb fashion. Oh, and the description of the game, which goes on for pages, is not exactly compelling, except for experts at baccarat. 

I suppose Bond is just Fleming in ill-fitting fictional disguise, and the weirdness of the writer translates into an odd power for those who like this sort of thing. I kept thinking that a good editor would have cut at least half the text and insisted it be reshaped - but then it sold gazillions in the strange shape it has - so what do I know?

A Confession

Cleaning up the desktop on my laptop helps me feel more in control of things.

(Earlier today I jotted a list of 10 sad things about myself in response to someone praising something they thought I'd done really well. It's a useful way to stay grounded. The item above came in tenth place, so you can imagine how embarrassing the other 9 are. In fact, you'll have to imagine them as I've got no intention of opening up any further on this stuff.)

No Joking

Finished watching Joker on Netflix yesterday afternoon. Found much to admire about the film. The acting was uniformly excellent. Joaquin Phoenix was sensationally good as Arthur in the titular role and De Niro fascinating in what could easily have been a throwaway performance as the oily talk-show host. The script was intelligent, dealing with its dark themes with a genuine respect, and the movie was beautifully shot with a kind of low budget aesthetic that was very appealing. So why didn't I enjoy it at all? ( - which accounts for the fact that it took me over two weeks to bring myself to watch the whole.) Perhaps I wasn't intended to?

No Wiser

Not exactly sure why I'm reading the first of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, Casino Royale, but I am. For some reason the library at work features quite a number of the series and I picked this one, which I never read as a teenager, at the same time I took out the Stephen King novel that wonderfully occupied me until I finished it yesterday.

I can't say I'm gripped by Fleming's debut fiction but there is a sort of fascination in trying to figure out why a lot of other readers were fascinated by it circa 1953. The sense of sophistication is wafer thin, but I suppose it beguiled his readership in those early post-war years. Even as a younger reader I could never figure out why it was that talented writers like Kingsley Amis were fans of the series and I'm certainly no wiser now.

Nay-saying

Lots of articles have been appearing just lately on James Joyce, especially with regard to Ulysses, this being the centenary of the greatest novel in English (and possibly any language) of the twentieth century. I'm certainly not complaining, though suffering mild irritation over the fact that my actual copy of the novel, which I feel inspired to re-re-re-read is on the shelves of Maison KL and so remains out of touch.

A particularly useful piece for those needing some kind of introduction to the works of the great man appeared in today's Graun online. Entitled Where to start with James Joyce it lives up to its billing with some enthusiastically common sense recommendations, and the comments BTL also prove quite illuminating, though, as usual, there are plenty of nay-sayers as to Ulysses as a readable text (and, of course, Finnegans Wake) and to Joyce as a writer of any stature at all.

It's a fascinating mystery to me as to why this kind of commentator should even bother - but they always do. I mean, why go to the trouble of announcing you find Joyce unreadable? What possible benefit is there in that for anyone reading the comment, except to make those who belong to the fraternity of non-readers-of-Ulysses feel better about their failure? And why are these people reading an article about the pleasures of reading Joyce? Funnily enough, you can guarantee finding the same kind of comments under any on-line article relating to the genius of Bob Dylan.

I must say, when I was at university I regarded Finnegans Wake as unreadable - because I couldn't get beyond the first page - and felt that Joyce had gone in the wrong direction after 1922. But I didn't go around telling the world this and attempting to stymie anyone's attempt to attend the Wake, partly because I suspected there might well be some kind of deficiency in myself as a reader. And now my position on Joyce's final work has changed. I still haven't read it, but I have a vague plan to make an attempt come retirement and I'm keenly aware from hearing the text performed that I might well enjoy the effort as long as I accept I'm not very likely to really get to grips with a novel that's surely intended to escape the reader who tries to pin it down.

I wonder if that's what fuels the annoyance of the nay-sayers, since annoyance does seem to characterise their offerings, or, rather, lack of offering anything remotely constructive? A feeling that what I can't grasp must be rendered as unavailable to all?

Catching Up

Shared a cuppa this evening with old friends and colleagues from the school I taught at from 2004 - 2006. The memories came flooding back. Here's an odd thing: this is the school at which I spent the least number of years in any I taught at and it's the school of which I have the most vivid and warm memories. Noi often says those were the years in which I worked the longest hours and had the most stories to tell.