To the Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill for the launch of Any Human Face. Hugh Grant seems to have ceased employment there, so the paparazzi were not in evidence as I mingled before the event, trying – and failing – to look elegant on a sweltering evening. The very quaffable Italian wine, provided by our hosts certainly oiled the wheels, and I had the great pleasure of meeting Charles Lambert in the flesh for the first time. I also met Anne (A.C.) Tillyer, whose intriguing collection of short stories, An A-Z of Possible Worlds, comes, BS Johnson style, as a boxed set, and Simon Barraclough who read poems with an Italian connection from his collections Los Alamos Mon Amour and Bonjour Tetris. The event was introduced by Charles’s agent – and a considerable poet herself – Isobel Dixon. Simon read some of his thought-provoking poems first. More of these anon – suffice to say that I was ashamed not to have read his work before. Charles read three passages from early in the novel, one for each of the three narrative threads. I enjoyed revisiting the book, and people I spoke to who hadn’t read it were very intrigued- they were hooked by the thriller aspect, and reeled in by the superbly evocative language.
Charles Lambert
All in all, a lovely way to spend a balmy summer evening in Notting Hill.
After enjoying Charles Lambert’s Little Monsters so much, I was looking forward to his latest novel, Any Human Face, and I was not disappointed. Set in Rome, this novel is a fast-paced and dark tale of murky deeds in high and low places, recounted from multiple perspectives over a span of nearly three decades. What Hitchcock would call the McGuffin (and there is something Hitchcockian about this) in the tale, is a set of photos, entrusted by an investigative journalist to his gay lover on the night of his (the journalist’s) brutal and apparently homophobic murder. The photos come into the possession of Andrew Caruso, half Scottish, half Italian, whose shambolic existence centres around the secondhand bookshop he runs. Soon, he is involved in a frightening chain of events that may have something to do with the journalist’s murder, a quarter of a century earlier. Lambert handles a complex narrative with great authority, moving in cinematic style from the near present day (2008) to 1982, to 1985 and back, each time focalising his narrative through the perspective of one of his characters. One of the many things I like about Lambert’s work is that he doesn’t give the reader an easy ride. There is not here, or in Little Monsters, a character with whom we can readily empathise – all of them have their frailties and vulnerabilities. They are all too human in their failings, and Lambert’s unflinching and unsentimental portrayal of their interlocking lives is a fascinating exercise in close observation. Paradoxically, because Lambert is so good at unfolding the delicate nuances of individual behaviour, the reader soon becomes involved in this seedy world of clandestine affairs and shabby deals, and does indeed care about the fate of the protagonists. Indeed, I found that this was one of those books that demanded to be read through as quickly as possible, so immersed did I become in this world. There are dark hints throughout at institutionalised corruption, whether of the church or the state, but the focus throughout remains on the human story, and how we are all connected, in ways we can’t begin to comprehend. I was struck by one passage on this theme, where Alex, the journalist’s lover, reflects on the transient world he is part of:
“All these nameless friendships that entangled the city in a taut invisible web. A secretive web, because no one knew anything about it, or everyone pretended to know nothing about it. A web that stretched across hotels and galleries and studio flats in the richest parts of the city, from the Vatican to the senate to the station, of favours and small, sweet acts of generosity and asked-for, insisted-on violence. And then it went wrong and someone died, and the web closed to hide the rift so quickly no one would know it had ever been torn. Webs heal themselves.”
This novel is, in concept, an excellent, disturbing, stylish thriller, but one with aspirations beyond the working out of a criminal act. It uses most of the thriller conventions, but goes well beyond them, to offer a story which deals with universal themes, particularly of man’s inhumanity to man, and the dark heart of loneliness at the centre of many lives.
Chez Topsyturvydom, our Sunday morning news source tends to be Radio 5 Live, on the basis that Radio 4 is god-bothering until 9.00 a.m. Today’s top story was about the discovery of a car-bomb in Times Square, New York. Part of the report featured an admirably factual and concise statement from the NYPD police chief, who explained the circumstances of the car’s discovery, what exactly had been found in the car, what the police bomb disposal team had done, and that, as yet, they had no information on who might have planted the device. Job done, you might think. Time to move on to the next item. But no, we instead were taken live to New York where a British man who had been in Times Square at the time was waiting to be interviewed. What could he add to what we already knew? Well, er, nothing. He had been on his way to the theatre when a lot of police had appeared and cordoned off the square. He had been instructed to get out of the way quickly. He had heard that someone had been told by a police officer to run. “So, you’re saying the police told people to run away?” Well, that’s what he had heard, he said. Not him personally. It must have been scary, the interviewer prompted. Well, no, actually: in fact the theatres carried on, after a delay. Finally, the classic fatuous question – how did he feel? He felt OK. People seemed to take it in their stride. End of interview. So what was the point of this? Presumably to get the “human angle”. It’s another indication of the relentless tabloidisation of the BBC. Instead of being content to report the news authoritatively, we have to suffer the vacuous follow-up, itself longer than the original item, which reveals precisely nothing about the incident, because the interviewee knows nothing. Image: joiseyshowaa
My sharp-eyed reader will have noted that Topsyturvydom now proudly displays the badge proclaiming that we are the 2161st rated general blog in the UK and Ireland blogospshere. The estimable Dovegreyreader is at number 1 in culture and literature. She is veritably the Chelsea to my Forest Green Rovers. Unfortunately, there’s no prospect of a third round giant killing act, so I will just have to accept that we have a mountain to climb, Brian, we’ve got to take the positives, and take each game as it comes. Oh, and the ref was diabolical. Image: Nicksarebi
Here’s an example of how books are marketed these days. I’ve admired David Mitchell for some time, particularly for his brilliant Cloud Atlas. Thanks to my friend Anthony Levings for the tip.
In 1970-71, I had a Saturday job at a grocer’s on Oldham Street, Manchester. The shop, and the small chain it belonged to – Maypole – have long gone, of course, but when I bought some CDs yesterday, I was reminded of it. My wage, for a nine-hour day, was 25s, (£1.25) less 5d for my insurance stamp, so I took home 24s 7d, in a brown envelope, usually two ten-shilling notes, two florins, a sixpence and a penny. I remember going out in my lunch hour to buy an LP, probably Paul McCartney‘s first post-Beatles effort. It cost me 39s/11d, and would have cost that wherever I bought it because of retail price maintenance. So, for my younger reader, that’s all but £2. In other words, Sir Thumbs Aloft’s magnum opus cost me about as much as I earned in one and three-quarter days. If I were 16 now, I would have to be paid at least the minimum wage, which Dr Broon and his pals have currently fixed at £3.57 per hour, so I’d have been making about £30 for a day spent lugging boxes of tinned peas up from the cellar, swabbing down surfaces, making tea for my superiors, and so on. If I chose to spend this largesse on those quaintly old-fashioned CDs that old people have, even at top prices, I could afford three with my day’s pay, and more if I bought at the frequently available discount. In effect, then, my labour would buy at least five times the product it would have bought in 1970. What’s more, LPs, because of the restrictions of the vinyl format, rarely contained much more than about half – an – hour’s music: five or six three minute tracks per side. A forty – minute running time was rare. So with CDs routinely clocking in at an hour or more, I estimate that my day’s wage now would be worth about eight times the amount of music it was worth then. If I downloaded, instead of buying the compact shaving – mirrors, I could probably double that. Music can never have been as cheap as it is now. In Fopp yesterday, I spent a massive £7 – two hours’ minimum wage for a 16 year old – on two items. The first, costing the same as I spent nearly forty years ago on McCartney, was a double reissue of Count Basie’s two albums from the late fifties, The Atomic Mr Basie and the live album of Quincy Jones tunes, One More Time.
My other purchase, for £5, was the complete Ella Fitzgerald Sings Gershwin, from the songbook series. This was originally issued as five LPs, and is now presented as 3 CDs, each with about 20 tracks, so the cost is about eight of your earth pence per track. For that, you get Ella on absolutely sensational form, singing some of the all-time great songs from the Gershwin catalogue: “A Foggy Day”, “But Not For Me”, “Nice Work If You Can Get It”, “I’ve Got A Crush On You”, “How Long Has This Been Going On”, “Strike Up The Band”, “They All Laughed”, “Fascinating Rhythm”, “Embraceable You”….She recorded this in her forties, when she was arguably at the peak of her powers, and she soars effortlessly over the swinging Nelson Riddle arrangements. It is sublime. Both of these buys are new reissues from a company I’d not heard of before, the curiously named Not Now Music, from that hotbed of popular song, er, West Hampstead. They’ve done a great job here, so next time I have a few spare shillings, I’ll be on the lookout for more.
This is the kind of book that I don’t normally read. It is a book group choice, heavily discounted on the shelves of the supermarket, and promoted through its own website. But I heard the author David Nicholls interviewed on the radio, and he seemed a very engaging cove, so when I saw the book at a ludicrously cheap price in the supermarket, I thought I’d give it a go. I’m glad I did. Nicholls has had success before it seems, having written a bestseller that passed me by, and episodes for a “programme” that may be viewed on Mr Baird’s televisual apparatus. On this occasion, he has written a quirky love story whose central conceit is that, rather as in The Good Soldier, all the major events happen on a particular day. We first meet the protagonists on the night of their graduation on St Swithin’s Day, 1988, and revisit them on that day each year after that until 2008. Emma is a clone of the persona Lucy Mangan presents in her Guardian column: sassy, northern, funny, but consumed with self-doubt. Dexter is the middle-class loafer who has drifted through his degree, and whose ego never allows him to realise how fortunate he is. After a one-night stand, the two agree to remain friends, and we encounter them as they make their way through late Thatcherism and into the Blair years. Em has a succession of awful jobs before ending up as a teacher. The hilarious account of life as a waitress in a Mexican restaurant will put you off your enchilladas for a while. Dex lucks into a career as a vapid TV presenter, all Mockney accent and laddishness. The structure allows a kind of annual report on the vicissitudes of their lives, and affords also a running social history of the last twenty years. That’s the book’s great strength, to my mind: its sharply observed vignettes of popular culture and and fashion, from lattes to boutique hotels, from Islington’s yummy mummies to the cult of the DJ. It presents a very recognisable and at times painfully accurate portrait of the nation we have become in the last quarter-century. The tone is often jokey, veering from first to third person, with much interior monologue, and you get a real sense of the developing sensibilities and preoccupations of the main characters. There’s also an ending which I didn’t see coming, and which knocked me for six. Definitely a cut above what you might expect, given the ghastly front cover and torrent of endorsements on the endpapers from such authorities as Heat and Jenny Colgan. Recommended!
Ex-minister Stephen Byers is caught out demanding £5,000 a day – a day!- for securing access to government ministers and influencing policy on behalf of clients. Other friends of Tony are similarly caught bang to rights prostituting themselves for fat fees. Can anything illustrate better the moral bankruptcy of the political class in this country than Byers’s pathetic excuse: he was lying. So now we’ve reached the point where mendacity is seen as a perfectly reasonable position to adopt when you’re exposed as a moneygrubbing, amoral, unprincipled shit. And they wonder why we have no faith in our elected representatives. Image: Kodama
Is writing an email to Radio 4 the modern equivalent of an outraged of Tunbridge Wells-type letter to the Maily Torygraph? Possibly. I was moved to fire off an email yesterday whilst listening to the Saturday Live programme, usually with the delightful Fi Glover, but this week presented by the creepy Rev. Richard Coles(he always insists on the Rev., I notice) whose bizarre career has taken him from gay pop icon in The Communards and Bronski Beat to a comfortable living in the Anglican High Church surroundings of Knightsbridge. The guest on the show was Dreda Say Mitchell, writer and teacher, now working also as an educational consultant. She is clearly a formidable woman who has achieved a lot (“Listen to my inspirational interview with Jenni Murray on Woman’s Hour”)and I have no problem, as another listener did, with her glottal stops. She has deeply held, sincere beliefs about education, which she promotes with vigour and charm. What had me reaching for the keyboard was her insistence that a good way of engaging disaffected working class boys – particularly white boys – was to use rap in the classroom. I’ve used the tired and frankly juvenile line that “the c in rap is silent” too often to use it again -oh, I just did – but I do wonder why this violent, misogynistic and often illiterate form is considered appropriate. So I asked the question, and the oleaginous Rev Coles read it out. Mitchell’s answer was along the lines that this is a form that they like and it engages them. Well, I knew that. They listen to it all the time, on their phones and ipods, often making other people’s lives on buses, trains and in the street a lot less pleasant as a result. Shouldn’t school offer something different from what they experience every day outside? I know a bit about teaching disaffected white boys (and black boys and Asian boys) from fifteen years in secondary school teaching, and this advocacy of rap reminds me of the debate on “relevance” when I was training. The idea was that to get young people interested in reading, you had to present them with stories about people like them, leading difficult lives in modern urban settings. Thus, a slew of books about truanting inner-city kids with alcoholic mums and absent dads appeared to fill this niche, and were quickly forgotten. The biggest success story in children’s literature of recent years – of any years – is of course Harry Potter, a series which, as we all know, presents the gritty reality of life in twenty-first century Britain… I also wonder what happens to the class after they have rapped away with Ms Mitchell. Pity the poor teacher who follows, and who has to teach them the past tense in French or the properties of hydrogen. And what, exactly, do they learn through rapping? They can do it anyway, and they know more about it than their teacher ever will. If school is about expanding horizons, as Dreda Mitchell and I agree, then surely we should offer the children something outside their ordinary experience? Image: Nite Owl
