Lillabullero takes the knee

We do, we do. And will continue to do so.

I’ve just started reading Martin Amis‘s 500 page opus Inside story: a novel (Cape, 2020), his ‘autobiographical novel’. The page before the title page gives Inside story: How to write. In the Preludial – oh, yes, he’s a clever bastard that Martin (not that I hold that against him) – he suggests: “Ideally I’d like Inside story to be read in fitful bursts, with plenty of skipping and postponing and doubling back – and of course frequent breaks and breathers.” So that is what I am going to do. I’ve disappointed myself in making no significant progress in reducing the ‘to be read’ pile these pandemic lockdowns and feel like giving some of the others a chance.

Before proceeding to other matters, let us celebrate without further ado that hint of a return to normality and celebrate the Stony Stratford Theatre Society‘s defiant Shakespeare on the Green production of bits of the Warwickshire Stratford’s bard, punctuated with song (The Not Two Bees) and period instrumental interludes. A grand socially distanced time was had of it for this sole surviving event of the initial (now twice postponed) StonyLive! programme. And deservedly, the sun chose to disprove the weather prophets.

Big fan of Carl Hiaasen‘s comic crime novels set in Florida. Do yourself a favour and read him. Comic, yes, but it’s righteousness – green, anti-big bucks, anti-establishment – that drives the humour, ranging as it does from scathing satire and laughaloud one-liners to often violent slapstick and all the way back again. Great characters combine with the skillful weaving of narratives that come delightfully together as the pages rapidly turn in your hands. What I would say, though, is, if you haven’t read him before, don’t start with Squeeze me (Sphere, 2020). Because the character of Donald Trump, a figure who might previously have materialised out of a Hiaasen novel (before things took a really nasty turn), known here by his secret service codename of Mastodon, is a big part of the story, along with an interesting take on Melania (or, Mockingbird); this can be a bit jarring, given the storming of the Capitol in Washington in January, happening long after the book was written. Still well good enough, though: a plague of giant pythons is one of the plot drivers. Regular readers can also look forward to the the re-appearance of Skink, one of the great inventions of twenty first century American literature; no spoiler, he had to be back.

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Also to be mentioned in dispatches

One of the reasons I’ve read so few books the last year or so? The marketing strategy of the folks at the London Review of Books. Here’s what they do, a classic drug dealer’s operation: someone, let us say X, subscribes, and that person can nominate a friend, Y, to get it free for a year; at the end of that year Y is offered a dead cheap sub to continue to get it, and they can then nominate someone else, Z, to get a year’s worth for nada; another year on and Y (that’s me) is hooked enough – oh the intellectual self-kidding kudos! – to pay a full subscription (still not bad value, actually). Some issues hardly read a thing, others more, enlightening enough to …. carry on?

I did read Liz Lochhead‘s wide-ranging and accessible A choosing: selected poems (Polygon, 2011) straight through. I’ve had it for a while now, but only dipped in occasionally. Enjoyed it a lot, from her intro, sad and struck dumb by a schoolboy asking her, “See, when you wrote that poem about the bull, what were you really trying to say?” through all the experience and insight in play right through to the last poem, that kicks off: “Poets need not be garlanded.” The autobiographical – many of the pieces are – The choosing, the sort of title poem, is a haunting 1960s social realist novel in a page and a half. My rival’s house, a heartfelt mother-in-law moan, made me think of probably my favourite sitcom of them all, the splendid and addictive Everybody loves Raymond. So full of potential jifs – “Idiot!” – it’s a relief the legal team is so hot at stopping them, otherwise social media would be swamped by them to the show’s detriment. Skipping through it again now, I can see A choosing deserves a swift reprise.

I first encountered Liz’s work a while back at a seminar, one of a series designed to get public librarians to support contemporary poets and poetry. I didn’t need convincing, but it was a day out, and I was impressed as hell when the man from the Poetry Society bravely started the session by reading her sense-tingling What the Pool Said, on Midsummer’s Day – a poem as erotic as you want to make it – as a metaphor to encourage us to take the poetic plunge. (here’s a link – pirate – to the text).

And it was with my librarian’s hat on that I met Eleanor Bron, and took her down to the Reserve Stock stacks of Swiss Cottage Library to see what she could find in the older books on English myths and legends. Pretty sure there was a sketch on TV a while later that was the fruits of that visit, and it’s mentioned – the sketch, not my role in it – in The Pillow Book of Eleanor Bron, or, an actress despairs (1985 – from the time when women actors were still called that). I bought a cheap, battered old copy because Craig Brown had said nice things about it in his Beatles book (she was in Help!). It’s an entertaining, intelligent mix of very short pieces – biographical, things that interested her, doing Rep – but what stays with me are the professional insecurities you might have thought she was established enough not to worry about – employment, interpretation – she’s incredibly open about.

Before we go, a bit more of a tentative return to normality with …

IF: Milton Keynes International Festival 2021

Luke Jerram‘s awesome Gaia, turning over Middleton Hall in centre:mk (as no-one calls it). A replica of our planet 7 metres in diameter, constructed from detailed NASA imagery. The accompanying soundscape included Neil Armstrong looking back from space, telling NASA: “blue” – incredibly moving still, in context. You knew it, but when you see how big Africa is … and where’s Europe? As the world turns there’s a time when all you can see is sea, cloud or ice and Australia. I stayed a long time, and went back again later.

In between I’d spent time in Anna Berry‘s fantastic Breathing Room, the concept given this year the opposite of a slight return (it’s a new structure) from 2019’s successful takeover of a small vacant lot in Queen’s Court in the City Centre (aka centre:mk), now outside – look at the light coming through and playing on the green carpet. It moves!

Quoting now from the welcoming rubric: “a beautiful and delicate large-scale kinetic artwork that people can move through. Framed by an intriguing mechanical exterior, the tunnel-like structure invites you to travel through its gently moving interior for a unique multi-sensory, immersive experience. Tens of thousands of … cones line the tunnel and move as if the structure is breathing, powered by ingenious mechanics, creating an otherworldly experience.” Yup. Give that woman the Turner Prize! Take a bow, Anna: annaberry.co.uk

And (really) finally, back to the really local …

First showing of the Thread Thread Wine ‘Join Me: Our 2020 Events’ memorial quilt at York House as part of the socially distanced Made in Stony event. It’s an ongoing project Soraya Hussein Tate has been working on from the first Covid lockdown onwards – theme of things we’re missing. Related proceeds to MIND.

[Right click on the image to see it bigger].

No ponderous trudge, but …

First off, thank you, Dr John Cooper Clarke. For many things, but in this specific instance, for setting my mind to rest in the matter of Shredded Wheat for I was beginning to doubt myself. But no, I was not imaging it. After a bit of a shaggy dog story about his aversion to Weetabix comes the revelation:

… I’m a Shredded wheat guy, although it is only made edible by the addition of hot milk and sugar. For some reason, cold milk will not assist its swallowability. At some point the Welgar marketing department tried to introduce exciting new serving suggestions which, if the full-colour illustrations on the side panel of the box were any indication, required no milk at all. One was a fried egg on a neat row of Shredded Wheat.

I’ll pass on the hot milk, but while we’re here, I’m pretty sure I looked for images toconfirm this unlikely suggestion years ago and found nothing. Still no reproductions of the packet, but try putting ‘shredded wheat fried eggs’ into a search engine these days (I may not have been so direct back then) and all sorts of horrors appear. There’s one guy (not a Scot) who actually deep fries them. Here’s ‘guacamole egg bowl’ for your delectation. Apologies to the squeamish.

About my title: I’m quoting from the man’s Prologue to his autobiography of last year, I wanna be yours (Picador, 2020):

Poetry is my first language, so forget the static data, I’m not on trial for murder. Rather than a ponderous trudge through the turgid facts of an ill-remembered life, to fleetingly call up various events that best illustrate the flavour of my existence at any given point, this is my aim.

Fair enough, but to which I feel obliged to add a big BUT. I had not realised John Cooper Clarke’s heroin usage pre-dated the successful first studio album, Disguise in love of 1978. So we get plenty of episodes from three decades’ worth of ways and means of scoring to feed his habit in various locations. Not that he’s glorying, wallowing or overly-preachifying about it, but like the habit itself – “It’s the death of the soul” – it becomes tedious, and something of a ponderous trudge to read about. In those years he didn’t write anything after 1982’s patchy Zip-style method – on which the life-saver, the much anthologized GCSE chosen text I wanna be yours appeared – until the love of a good woman, Evie – who “had overheads and consequently her concerns were that of an intelligent, developed member of society” – was the spur to his getting clean; thank you, Evie, for this resurrection.

Anyway, in the opening chapters of I wanna be yours, John Cooper Clarke, takes us on a highly entertaining tour of his extended family while painting a veritable ‘all our yesterdays’ of a background to his youth. I find it interesting that the two poets most readily associated with Punk either side of the Atlantic were actually boomers: JCC was born January 25, 1949, while Patti Smith was December 30, 1946. “At twenty seven,” he says, “I was too old to be a punk, really. As it turns out, I was one of the few who didn’t lie about my age.” Adding, with typical mordant humour, “You find out how old people actually are when they die.”

You want cultural markers? How about a neighbour and drinking partner of his dad’s who was a professional musician, the “resident pianist on the popular radio programme Have a go, starring Wilfred Pickles and his wife Mabel.” (Yes, I really do remember that programme.) Later JCC’s financial jeopardy was held at bay by a private ‘let’s not involve the insurers’ deal after a motorbike accident, when “The driver offered up a couple of grand, which at the time was twice the top prize on ITV’s popular quiz show Double Your Money.” And when Pam Ayres wins Opportunity Knocks and his mates complain: “My irritation, however, was tempered by the engaging personality, and her continued success on the show was a great inspiration. Now I could point to Pam Ayres as an example of a poet making a living. How could I kvetch? She wrote from her life, I wrote from mine. At last here was a successful contemporary.” Didn’t realise he was interested in football, disappointingly, a ManU fan to boot, though in mitigation it must be said he was a regular at Old Trafford with his dad in the late 1950s.

A pre-Beatles early adolescence , then, when “everybody had a comb. Quiff adjustment was necessary, possibly every ten minutes. I blame Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes.” And you would be right. I too would be guilty as charged. The ‘hip’ young co-star in the (to us) wildly exotic private eye show 77 Sunset Strip had a lot to answer for.

Then the young teenage JCC was a mod, no sorry: a Modernist:

The Modernist ethos was exclusive, judgemental, and wrong. Virtues almost entirely absent today. It appealed to a snobbish part of our identity that defied easy definition. And yet, we would never have dreamed of calling ourselves Mods … Give anything a name and very quickly its more obvious elements will be plundered by the plebs.

As such he declares “loyalty to the 38 gram 3-button suit“, because, “Whatever your build, whatever your age, whatever your social situation, the three-button suit will make the best of any man.” A shame, then, much to my continuing chagrin, that the tyranny of the 2-button suit has reigned for practically a decade unchallenged in the off-the-peg marketplace. Capitalism, we are told, is all about choice; tell that to the fashion industry.

For someone who left school at 15 to profess, as he does on page one, “All my life, all I ever wanted to be was to be a professional poet …” was (and is) a mighty claim, but you can see where it comes from. Like his mum, “a lifelong card-carrying library member and a great reader of books“, he was a dedicated library user. And a broad consumer of the whole spectrum of comics. Mad magazine was important, too (obviously), and, like Bob Dylan and, indeed, your humble scribe, it was Classics Illustrated that lit the literary blue touch paper:

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Before the entrance of Uncle Dennis and his collection of pulp fiction, I had acquainted myself with the cream of European and New World letters courtesy of … Classics Illustrated, an improving comic book imprint from America ‘Featuring stories by the world’s greatest authors’, with great covers and illustrations in very diverse graphic styles. […] Even though I’d only read the sixty-four page comic-versions, it didn’t matter: they gave you a flavour of the original tone, and the final frame carried the Classics Illustrated line of intent, ‘We strongly urge you to read the original.’

And then there was that English teacher, take a bow John Malone, “a rugged outdoors type … [not] one of those ‘down with the kids’ teachers you get today; there was none of that spooky nonsense.” Palgrave’s Golden Treasury was the text, and he and the young Cooper Clarke had “a soft spot for the Romantics … Wordsworth’s daffodil number, natch.” The big lesson he learned from Mr Malone was, “The main consideration is what a poem sounds like. If it doesn’t sound any good, it’s because it isn’t any good,” a creed he has righteously lived by. The ‘exquisite poetry of the young Cassius Clay‘ was another big influence.

“Somehow Mr Malone’s classes became a feverish hothouse of literary endeavour … It wasn’t just me and the rest of the nerds either …
From that day to this, poetry has kept me from hanging around on street corners.

As to the school itself, a secondary modern “It had all the facilities one would expect of a school: qualified teachers, blackboards, forty children per class. It was a tough school. Put it this way – we had our own coroner!” A joke he also deployed to great effect in his wonderfully sparky Desert Island Discs appearance, which – though the music may come a s a bit of a surprise – really is worth a listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000701x

I’ll take a short break here to acknowledge the luck involved in one’s passage through school as far as inspirational teachers go. And give a nod to John Pearce, head of English at BGS in the mid-1960s (and beyond): my friends and I have much to be grateful for.

He left school at 15, “already determined that somehow I was going to be a professional poet.” He was in a band with mates that achieved little (not that that matters). There had been no paper round for him earlier, a bookie’s runner he (his father had “often had a financial interest in the outcome of various equestrian events”). He quickly failed as a motor mechanic (and certainly never told them he was a poet), but completed a printing apprenticeship where modernist he favoured non-serif typefaces and developed a nice sideline providing the Belle Vue Aces’ motorcycle racers with business cards, employing his “newly acquired revolutionary Bauhaus take on typographic self-hype.”

Somewhere in there, too, is a marriage to Christine and a spell in the realms of Plymouth hippydom; he worked as a fire-watcher in the naval docks. As in his poetry, JCC’s scorn is a thing of wonder, particularly here: “It was as if they’d all watched the wrong bit of Easy Rider“. Christine had introduced him to Van Morrison’s Astral weeks and Beefheart’s Safe as milk, for which he was thankful. But short of money – he’d already sold his ‘good 3-button suit’:

… some of Christine’s vinyl had to go. I knew she would never agree to it, but it wasn’t up for discussion: while she was out, I gathered up all her Incredible String Band and Roy Harper albums and took them down to the shop where I’d sold my suit. I flogged the lot, killing two birds with one stone: we had money and I had rid myself of the stereo torture I’d had to endure on a daily basis. I don’t think Christine ever forgave me for that. [Sorry, Pat]

Back in Manchester, his performing poetry in local pubs and clubs – nay, anywhere – and working at Bernard Manning’s club before ‘punk’ fame is a familiar tale for those who know his work, and have read the interviews, but it’s good to hear it again in some detail. Interstingly, he was never a great fan of the musical enhancements Martin Hannett gave him on the records. (Just thinking about it I am taken back to a flat in Tufnell Park and me and David G reciting along: “Fuck me, a monster from outer space”. A poem, as JCC says, he couldn’t get away with now, with the line previous to the one just cited) .

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I wanna be yours covers a lot of ground. As with most autobiographies, it’s the early days, how it all came about, the discoveries on the way up, the surprises when you get there, that hold the interest. Given the addiction years, later it’s not so engrossing, with depressing interludes, but hey, this is Johnny Cooper Clarke and tours and things were still happening. The clean – and writing again – years, after meeting Evie – get only 30 pages out of 470; they almost approach standard show biz fare. Nice corny Epilogue: Sunday Night at the Palladdium too, though, where he – “a half-arsed grafter with a rich vocabulary” – contemplates the big deal it was for the family on TV back in his youth:

Well tonight it’s the venue for a star-studded evening of poetry and who’s the headliner? Yes, the bargain basement Baudelaire himself, Dr John Cooper Clarke.

I said earlier that it was ‘good to hear’ the story of his rise again, because it’s almost impossible to read I wanna be yours without a saggering Mancunian accent. No bad thing, but as Stewart Lee wrote, analyzing one of his own jokes recently in the Observer (May 16), about the joke being funny on a third level, ” because it includes a rhythmically and musically satisfying plosive obscenity, in this case the word “fucking” … and swearing is innately amusing if deployed correctly”. Deployed too much, John, on the pages of a book, it starts to grate …

I started with food, I’ll end with food. In the notorious Brixton years – a squalid drug den shared with Nico, she of the first Velvet Underground album (who eats Rowntrees jelly by the cube) – “when it came to sensible food my go-to meal of choice was a can of plum tomatoes on toast.” It needs to be said that he denies sharing in the squalidity, here. And you’re thinking, ‘straight from the can … ?’ But no:

I’m happy to share my recipe for the first time. I’d cut a couple of really thick slices of Hovis (for me, the only acceptable brown bread) and toast them. Then, in lieu of butter, I’d apply a vinaigrette made with lemon juice, olive oil, and mustard, and maybe the odd crush of garlic. Meanwhile, I’d warm the tomatoes over a medium heat. I’d then pour them onto the Hovis doorsteps, add salt and pepper to taste, and a final drizzle of olive oil.

Might even give it a go.

Of books, bullets & two Bobs

Bear with me. On the letters page of the latest London Review of Books (cover date May 20, 2021), Galen Strawson praises a poem by Michael Hoffman that appeared in a previous issue, but picks him up on the specific attribution of a ‘coo’ referred to in the poem to a wood pigeon; apparently, apparently by the sound and syllable of it, a collared dove deserved the credit:

The coo situation, as far as I know, is this. Feral pigeons or rock doves do two coos. Collared doves do three … Wood pigeons do five, with a clipped sixth on the last call in a series …
The wood pigeons in Virginia Woolf’s The years were Welsh, and said: ‘Take two coos, Taffy, Take two coos, Taffy, Tak …’ This for some reason has haunted me.

There’s a wood pigeon in my locality that frankly I wish would change his tune – its monotony is tedious – though from the above it would seem they has no say in the matter. The thing is, I hear its coo as, “The whole world’s watching” – no less than the chant taken up by the anti-war demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago as the police laid into them with billy clubs and tear gas.

So I can’t say that I’d forgotten what had happened then, but watching Aaron Sorokin’s award-winning movie, The trial of the Chicago 7, stirred a lot of memories of the time, and I was reminded forcibly of the mendacious bloody-mindedness of the Nixon administration’s reaction to the various countercultural forces of the late-1960s – that they saw as threatening their narrow idea of the American way – all flavours of which were represented in the group chosen for prosecution on a bunch of trumped-up politically motivated charges.

It’s a great film, well worth seeing: prepared to be appalled, but also to be at times amused. However, director/writer Aaron Sorkin has messed around with the chronology of events to great dramatic effect. The film shows Fred Hampton, of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, supporting Seale until police killed him in his home, in his bed, on December 4, 1969. The film also shows Bobby Seale, a co-founder of the Black Panthers, being gagged in court the day after Hampton was killed. In fact he had been gagged on October 29, and was granted a separate trial on technical legal grounds on November 6; so the original Chicago 8 became the rhetorically superior Chicago 7 a month before Hampton’s murder. Matthew Dessemat, in Slate, says Sorkin “plays pretty freely with characters and events to ensure his clockwork screenplay hits exactly the right beats in exactly the right order.” And it sure does get the spirit of the times.

For shame, I had pretty much forgotten about Fred Hampton, the young, capable and charismatic chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, who, as a rising star in the wider opposition movement, was seen by the authorities as a real problem. I say ‘for shame’, because it was a very fine piece of reportage, by American novelist Richard Stern – The books in Fred Hampton’s apartment – that, newly qualified as a librarian, I adopted as my unofficial mission statement, an inspiration, as to what I was there to do. Stern’s report is a graphic description of the notion of the public library’s potential as the people’s university. Here’s how he starts:

A few days after the lethal predawn police raid on the Chicago apartment of the young Black Panthers, I went down with other perturbed, inquisitive history sniffers and shrine makers to see what was what.

from the book of the same name – US: Dutton, 1973; UK: Hamish Hamilton, 1974

Stern describes the apartment (there are plenty of photos on the internet of the mattress that, in Stern’s words, bore the horrible relief map of Hampton’s blood”, but I’ve spared you that) :

An ugly, characterless, nameless place, the rapidly assembled nest of people who would not be here long, people who did not sink their passions into furniture.

Characterless, to me, except for one thing: a few books scattered here and there in the apartment, some open, as if reading had been interrupted and were to be resumed the next day.

To a bookish man the books changed almost everything …

You can find the full text of The books in Fred Hampton’s apartment on a page of its own, here. It has more chance of being found by others on its own. It’s not long; it still moves me.

Talking of Bobby Seale …

Thinking again about Bobby Seale I recalled a passage from his Seize the time: the story of the Black Panther Party (US: Random House, 1970; UK: Arrow, 1970), and – lo and behold! – I found it. The full text is up on the internet at: https://libcom.org/files/STT.pdf

The book derives from tape recordings made by Bobby Seale in the early autumn of 1968 and the autumn and winter of 1969-70, during some of which time he was in jail. All this was, of course, decades before the age of Black Lives Matter – a depressing thought. In this passage he, Huey P. Newton (“Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, the baddest motherfucker ever to set foot in history” as the book’s opening rubric says), and others are putting together a newspaper, ” because there were so many lies about the Black Panther Party, and the Black Panther Party in Sacramento. Lies by the regular mass media – television and radio and the newspapers – those who thought the Panthers were just a bunch of jive, just a bunch of crazy people with guns. Many and many an Uncle Tom and our backward brainwashed black men had a misconception about the whole thing, when you get down to it.”

What follows is edited down from the chapter HUEY DIGS BOB DYLAN (starting p105 out of 234 (not sure which edition, though). What it was like to read these words in 1970 for a vaguely radicalised young white man fresh out university! So, here’s to Bobby Dylan turning 80! And regardless of what happened subsequently to the Black Panthers this piece is still worth its weight in gold.

Huey digs Dylan

While we were laying that paper out, in the background we could hear a record, and the song was named “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Bob Dylan. Now the melody was in my mind. I actually heard it, I could hear the melody to this record. I could hear the sound and the beat to it. But I really didn’t hear the words. This record played after we stayed up laying out the paper. And it played the next night after we stayed up laying out the paper. I think it was around the third afternoon that the record was playing. We played that record over and over and over. Lots of brothers stayed right over there with a lot of shotguns for security. It was a righteous security in those days. There wasn’t any bullshit.

Huey P. Newton made me recognize the lyrics. Not only the lyrics of the record, but what the lyrics meant in the record. What the lyrics meant in the history of racism that has perpetuated itself in this world. Huey would say: “Listen, listen – man, do you hear what he is saying? ” Huey had such insight into how racism existed, how racism had perpetuated itself. He had such a way of putting forth in very clear words what he related directly to those symbolic things or words that were coming out from Bobby Dylan. The point about the geek is very important because this is where Huey hung me.

I remember that the song got to the point where he was talking about this cat handing in his ticket and he walked up to the geek, and the geek handed him a bone. Well, this didn’t relate to me, so I said: “Huey, look, wait a minute, man.” I said, “What you talking about a geek? What is a geek? What the hell is a geek?” And Huey explains it. He says, “A geek is usually a circus performer. Maybe he was an experienced trapeze artist who was injured. He’s been in the circus all his life and he knows nothing else but circus work. But he can’t be a trapeze artist anymore because he’s been injured very badly, but he still needs to live, he needs to exist, he needs pay. So the circus feels very sorry for him and they give him a job. They give him the cruddiest kind of job because he’s not really good for anything else. They put him into a cage, then people pay a quarter to come in to see him. They put live chickens into the cage and the geek eats the chickens up while they’re still alive . . . the bones, the feathers, all. And of course he has a salary, because the audience pays a quarter to see him. He does this because he has to. He doesn’t like eating raw meat, or feathers, but he does it to survive. But these people who are coming in to see him are coming in for entertainment, so they are the real freaks. And the geek knows this, so during his performance, he eats the raw chicken and he hands one of the members of the audience a bone, because he realizes that they are the real freaks because they get enjoyment by watching what he’s doing because he has to. So that’s what a geek and a freak is. Is that clear?

“Then to put it on the broader level, what Dylan is putting across is middle-class people or upper-class people who sometimes take a Sunday afternoon off and put their whole family into limousine, and they go down to the black ghettoes to watch the prostitutes and watch the decaying community. They do this for pleasure, or for Sunday afternoon entertainment. Of course the people are there and they don’t want to be there. The prostitutes are there because they’re trying to live, trying to exist, and they need money. So then that makes the middleclass and upper-class people, who are down there because they get pleasure out of it, freaks.

“And this goes into the one-eyed midget. What is the one-eyed midget? He screams and howls at Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones doesn’t know what’s happening. Then the one-eyed midget says, give me some juice or go home. And this again is very symbolic of people who are disadvantaged. They’re patronizing Mr Jones, the middle-class people. You know, they’re not interested in them coming down for entertainment. But if they’ll pay them for a trick, then they’ll tolerate them, or else they’ll drive them out of the ghettoes. This song is hell. You’ve got to understand that this song is saying a hell of a lot about society.”

The white society and the middle-class society are surprised to see that black people will pimp chicks on the block. They come down that way because they looked at black people as freaks. They thought black people were in a big freak bag. They thought they had niggers all figured out. But black people were not even niggers. Black people were not backward and apathetic.

Huey says that whites looked at blacks as geeks, as freaks. But what is so symbolic about it is that when the revolution starts, they’ll call us geeks because we eat raw meat. But the geek turns round and hands Mr. Jones a naked bone and says, “How do you like being a freak?” And Mr. Jones says, “Oh my God, what the hell’s going on?” And Bobby Dylan says, you don’t know what’s happening, do you, Mr. Jones? And to hand him the naked bone was too much – was really too much.

[…]

Cassius Clay would brag. People misunderstood the bragging. All Cassius Clay was saying was that he was defying all this omnipotent, racist bullshit by stepping forward and saying, “I’m the greatest! I can’t be hit.” He beat on his chest, and when he said that, the white racist omnipotent administrator who had a hold on the string had to ask himself, “Well, if he’s a man then what the hell am I?” And that’s what Bobby Dylan meant by the geek handing Mr. Jones the naked bone and saying: “How do you like being a freak?” And that’s the whole meaning of the question. If he’s a man, if he’s not a freak, and he tells Mr. Jones he’s a freak, then Mr. Jones has to ask, “Am I that?” That’s symbolic of saying that if he’s a man, what am I?

This song Bobby Dylan was singing became a very big part of that whole publishing operation of the Black Panther paper. And in the background, while we were putting this paper out, this record came up and I guess a number of papers were published, and many times we would play that record. Brother Stokely Carmichael also liked that record. This record became so related to us, even to the brothers who had held down most of the security for the set.

The brothers had some big earphones over at Beverly’s house that would sit on your ears and had a kind of direct stereo atmosphere and when you got loaded it was something else! These brothers would get halfway high, loaded on something, and they would sit down and play this record over and over and over, especially after they began to hear Huey P. Newton interpret that record. They’d be trying to relate an understanding about what was going on, because old Bobby did society a big favour when he made that particular sound. If there’s any more he made that I don’t understand, I’ll just ask Huey P. Newton to interpret them for us and maybe we can get a hell of a lot more out of brother Bobby Dylan, because old Bobby, he did a good job on that set.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

… but it’s getting there

When you write about a guy’s books for over a decade it’s hard not to repeat yourself, but with Peter Robinson‘s 27th Alan Banks crime novel, Not dark yet (Hodder, 2021), we get to the conclusion of The Zelda Trilogy, the end of a sequence of novels that started with Careless love and continued with Many rivers to cross, both of which had left us with cliffhanger endings as to what was happening with Zelda next. It was like watching a big TV series finale, and just as frustrating. Not dark yet leaves us with a different set of questions.

Okay, briefly: Zelda (not her real name) is a really interesting character, the partner of the father of Banks’s colleague, ex-lover and friend, Annie Cabot, Ray, a successful artist. If it weren’t for the circumstances, Banks would fancy her. She has a hell of a past – sex trafficked from a Moldovan orphanage, where she developed a love of classic English literature, rising to high class Parisian whore with powerful secrets enabling her to escape her vicious pimp (well kill, actually) to England, where she met Ray. Ray, has an interesting past of his own (Cornish hippy artist commune), but we won’t go into that; I’m sorry we won’t be seeing any more of him (sorry, bit of a spoiler, I guess, but I want to express my regret).

Not dark yet starts with Zelda in Moldova:

What the hell was she doing here, running away from the good life she had found, despite all the odds, and from a good man, who was more than she deserved, seeking God only knew what. Revenge? Atonement? Reconciliation? (p5)

As it turns out, all of the above. Back in the Yorkshire Dales DI Annie Cabot and DC Gerry Masterson are beavering away at the visceral Conor Blaydon & factotum murders at one of those rich dodgy developer / criminal contacts / handful of celebs parties. Banks is occupied with the aftermath in London of the antics of Zelda and the Albanian OCG. As per the Robinson modus operandi, it looks like the two investigations could well be linked. But there’s a video of a violent rape at the party that sends Annie and Gerry off on a round Britain trip (well, Durdle Door, York and more) and a plot line revolving around an adoption twenty years ago. In a nice touch, although certain characters are part of both investigations, the Blaydon murder is found to have been personal – almost an old fashioned whodunnit. (For what it’s worth, I am tired of the East European crime gang takeover of a lot of crime fiction).

Meanwhile, Zelda, back up north, is forcefully abducted, and Banks not long after, all leading to a violent and exciting climax of that part of the tale. This is where Peter Robinson excels, in his handling of physical jeopardy. His skillful juggling of plot lines is undiminished, and the investigative dialogue has been sharpened (has he been watching television?). Never far away, either, is the moral concern, the eternal debate between justice and the law’s letter; in the twenty-seventh novel in this fine sequence, Alan Banks’s behaviour has never been more compromised.

Of course, Not dark yet – the title nods to Time out of mind, Dylan’s cheery ‘comeback’ album of 1997 – comes with Robinson’s customary soundtrack, active listening and background both. As usual, all over the place, though with a little less jazz (maybe because he can’t annoy Annie so much, as he spends so little time with her in this one).

Naturally he doesn’t shy away from obscurities, though I have to admit I thought he was making it up – having a laugh – with Jan Dukes de Gray, with their Sorcerers, Mice and rats in the loft and Strange terrain albums.

Seemingly not. According to Wikipedia, “a short-lived English psychedelic/progressive folk and progressive rock band that was primarily active in the early 1970s. Despite a relatively meager total output and a lukewarm contemporary reception in terms of sales, the band has attracted a cult following…” (Banks only has the last two, Old hippy Ray Cabot has the lot.) Methinks I’ll not be rushing to check them out.

Whereas the previous two books that make up the Zelda Trilogy left us with, as said before, cliffhangers leaves us with a conundrum. Not really a spoiler, honest, but right at the end, Banks is on leave in Croatia, guided there via Paris by what he’s read in Zelda’s notebook, the notebook that he had taken from a crime scene and withheld from evidence. Zelda has just admitted she killed four people:

‘Are you going to arrest me?’
Banks looked at her for a long time, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. I’ve had enough of all that. More than enough.’

What are we to make of that? Where do we go from here?

Peter Robinson is not top of my crime novelist tree, but the systematic treatment I’ve been giving to each novel here on Lillabullero, detailing musical and literary references, alcohol consumed, Banks’s love life etc. is probably the most visited part of the whole website, so I’m committed to him.  Here’s the link:  Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks Mysteries.

The bare necessities

Impossible to say those words these days without that bloody tune bouncing – oh, come on: Jungle Book, the movie – unbidden into one’s head. Personally I have to thank Dodo Bones and Stephen Ferneyhough, for that. Of all the jolly songs you could have picked to play … (how I miss beer-assisted live music). (Apologies for the earworm).

Here’s what Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov’s packs for the journey he takes near the end of Amor Towles‘ A gentleman in Moscow (2017):

… the Count dug to the bottom of his old trunk in order to retrieve the rucksack that he had used in 1918 on his trek from Paris to Idlehour. As on that journey, this time he would travel only with the bare necessities. That is, three changes of clothing, a toothbrush and toothpaste, Anna Karenina, Mishka’s project, and, finally, the bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape that he intended to drink on the fourteenth of June 1963 – ten years after his old friend’s death.

Helluva rucksack, then, unless he means underwear. And socks. But look, hey, a big book! The man has his priorities. On page 100 of the paperback of A gentleman in Moscow Towles gives us a two-page footnote starting, “Among readers of European fiction, the character names in Russian novels are notorious for their difficulty” and expanding on the difficulties involved before reassuring us we won’t have to bother remembering the name of a character he has just introduced, a musician agreeing a meeting with the Count that doesn’t happen because of his and his tutor’s sorry soviet tale, only to tease in the final sentence of the footnote that perhaps we should. He has fun, does Towles, throughout – all the chapter titles begin either with an indefinite article or words beginning with the letter ‘A’ for starters – even as bad things are happening to good people. But I get ahead of myself.

A gentleman in Moscow became something of a word-of-mouth hit last year. It was urged on me from two different directions, and in a Zoom meet with old school buddies at least half of us half dozen had read (hi, Paul) or were about to read it. It was a surprise, then, to find a publication date as far back as 2017. Something to do with the pandemic and lockdown, then? As a quote from the Count has it on the back cover of the paperback: “By the smallest of one’s actions, one can restore some sense of order to the world”. I’ll not waste adjectives and judgement here, just mostly agree with what it says on that paperback front cover: yes, it sparks joy and display great charm, intelligence and insight; dunno about it being ‘utterly mesmerising’ (it has its languors, can be bit repetitive) but it does have claims to be, as it says on the back ‘a comic masterpiece’ (even though it’s the Daily Express saying it), and it is certainly ‘abundant in humour, history and humanity’ (unlike a lot else in the Sunday Telegraph, but there you go).

On the one hand it’s a fantasia revolving around the importance of little things, on the other it’s reminiscent of Stephen Poliakoff’s television epics – faded grandeur, the maintenance of dignity – with no hectoring but a constant backdop of Soviet Russian extremes reflected in individual characters’ stories; Stalin gets no name-check till very near the end. It can be a bit Disneyfied (as we used to say) – that ‘charm’ the critics quote invokes – but I appreciated its quiet morality – all the more powerful for it – reflecting the invariably inevitable consequences following successful revolutionary movements, and enjoyed it well enough on the whole, especially the building adrenalin rush towards the end … that I just didn’t see coming at all (despite the clues – why was he trapped in the Italians’ wardrobe? – you’ll have to read it)..

Russian gentleman aristocrat Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, born 1890, is officially “a former person”, condemned to house arrest in a small room on the sixth floor of Moscow’s once prestigious Metropol Hotel, where previously he’d had a suite. He takes on the job of head waiter in the restaurant. He has escaped the firing squad because of a long poem – Where is it now? – attributed to him back in 1913, a call to action that still impresses “those within the senior ranks of the Party who count you among the heroes of the pre-revolutionary cause“. After some lines from that poem, A gentleman in Moscow is prefaced with the court transcript, (in Courier font – what fun! – no, really) of his droll 1922 appearance (as “a man so obviously without purpose“, as the prosecutor puts it) in the dock:

How do you spend your time then?
Dining, discussing. Reading, reflecting. The usual rigmarole. […]
And you write poetry?
I have been known to fence with a quill. […]
… this long poem of 1913: Where is it now?
It has been attributed to me. […]
… many considered it a call to action. Would you agree with this assessment?
All poetry is a call to action. […]
Why did you come back? [from Paris]
I missed the climate. […]

How to resist, eh?

He’s there in the Metropol for the next 32 years, until just after the death of Stalin. In that time the hotel briefly functions as something of an administrative centre for the revolutionary government (“tireless typers of directives”), until the Kremlin (the building) has been suitably refurbished for that task, and comes back to something of its old life as the Kremlin (the government) admits its need to take up a more regular place in the wider international diplomatic community – or as Towles puts it early on: “Across the way was a table occupied by two stragglers who picked at their food while they awaited an era of diplomacy.” There is delicious comedy to be had when Osip, a Soviet diplomat, comes to him to be educated in the culture of the West in order to do his job better; they end up watching movies.

In the hotel he is dedicated to keeping up what standards of old is possible in the hotel’s Boyarsky restaurant alongside brothers in arms chef Emile and maître d’ Andrey. Even as a vegetarian I could savour the tastes and fragrances of one year’s description of the preparation of the triumvirate’s conspiratorial annual attempt a bouillabaisse with whatever was available. The Mishka mentioned in my opening quotation, is an unlikely childhood friend, a proletarian poet who gets gulagged over the inclusion of one of Chekhov’s letters in an anthology he is charged with curating.

His existence is enhanced over the years by liaisons with Anna, a “willowy” actress who goes in and out of favour professionally (remember that “willowy” if you read it, to help clear things up at the end). But his life is given purpose and fun by his friendships with two young girls.

He first meets Nina, aged 9, early on, the daughter of the hotel manager. She is keen to learn all there is to know about princesses from the Count. They have fun and games observing proceeding with the aid of her access to her dad’s pass key. Her enthusiasm shifts as a young woman to the collectivization of peasant farms which takes her way out of town: “and then [she] walked across the square in the general direction of historical necessity”. The Count is worried – “It’s just that to hear Nina talk of her upcoming journey, she is so passionate, so self-assured, and perhaps so single-minded, that she seems almost humourless” and It does not end well; she has to leave her young daughter Sofia in the Count’s – at first temporary – care. He becomes her dad, they have fun, and she becomes a concert pianist. And I think that’s as far as I’ll go with the plot. A fine book, and I’ll freely admit I wasn’t expecting the exhilaration (and that twist) at its end.

Meanwhile …

As if Culture Wars were anything new, here’s woke, 1920s Russian style …

“A complaint was filed with Teodorov, the Commissar of Food, claiming that the existence of our wine list runs counter to the ideals of the Revolution. That it is a monument to the privilege of the nobility, the effeteness of the intelligentsia, and the predatory pricing of speculators.” (p142pbk) … so all the labels are removed from the contents of the Metropol’s cellar

The Count’s proletarian poet friend, Mishka, is talking to a statue of Gorky in the Square about “… the establishment of Socialist Realism as the sole artistic style of the entire Russian people ..”

‘And what had been the fallout of that?’ Mishka demanded of the statue.
All but ruined. Bulgakov hadn’t written a word in years. Akhamatova had put down her pen. Mandelstam, having already served his sentence, had apparently been arrested again. And Mayakovsky? Oh, Mayakovsky …
Mishka pulled at the hairs of his beard.
Back in ‘22, how boldly he had predicted to Sasha that these four would come together to forge a new poetry for Russia. Improbably, perhaps. But in the end, that is exactly what they had done. They had created the poetry of silence. (p269)

The Count is called upon to educate career diplomat Osip in the ways Western culture, knowing the enemy. Despite Osip concluding that “Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle”:

When Fyodor Astaire danced with Gingyr Rogers, his fingers would open wide and flutter about his waist while his feet shuffled back and forth on the carpet. And when Bela Lugosi emerged from the shadows, Osip leapt from his seat and nearly fell on the floor. Then, as the credits rolled, he would shake his head with an expression of moral disappointment.
“Shameful,” he would say.
“Scandalous.”
“Insidious.”
(p294)

A post with no name

Lockdown, locally wandering

The River Great Ouse in Stony Stratford has flooded twice so far this winter. It’s meant to – managed flood plain and all that – though not as much as it did on Christmas Eve, to the dismay of those poor souls living the North End of the High Street. This was a bit further up river:

The Wolverton Mill Balancing Lakes didn’t rise much, but the mud on the usual route round was perilous underfoot – I went flying, got up muddy and wet. Paradoxically it was easier to walk nearer the water than higher up the bank. Some goosanders graced the lakes with their presence for a few days:

I think this ghost of a heron was in the MK Floodplain Forest. Another day I saw a great white egret, a little egret and two of these magnificent creatures without moving my neck.

Public art installation or forgotten farm furnishings?

Stumbled on a fantastic woodpile but the photos did it no justice, so here’s a nearby wounded tree:

Just up from the public sculpture featured above, the foiling of the Hole in the Wall Gang tells a tale or two, and makes redundant a well-known Leonard Cohen line. Something there is about this composition:

Back with the water and the second flood, taken from on the Iron Trunk aqueduct, where the Grand Union canal crosses the River Great Ouse near Cosgrove:

Why you should trust Alison Graham

… on crime dramas on the telly in the Radio Times. Television being another feature of lockdown, of course. Here she is on the second series of ITV’s Marcella:

Tuesday 26 Jan
You might remember Marcella, she was the cop who had fugue states when she did bad things then couldn’t remember anything … she’s back … Though she’s not called Marcella any more … deep under cover … with a Northern Ireland crime family … Imagine The Sopranos meets Mrs Brown’s Boys. (…)
Anna Friel – variously naked in the bath, in a lacy black bra or a see-through nightie – is the self-hating cop who, as her handler says, “breaks every rule in every book” in this nasty, violent crime drama.  Of course she does.
Tuesday 3 Feb
As this preposterously grim, violent drama trundles on … […] It’s hard to care about any of this, though Keira’s surreptitious chats with her low-talking handler are deliciously clichéd.
Tuesday 2 March
This barmy crime drama ends with a full-on demented double bill as the monstrous Maguires battle each other for supremacy and Keira/Marcella changes her hair colour.

Late Chronicle

The annual StonyWords literary festival was a while ago now (mid-to-late January, to tell the truth) but, you know,, better late than never, and Rob & Liz Gifford deserve praise for keeping the flag flying with a great variety of events rescued on Zoom, where it worked really well. I logged in for four:

• Isabel Greenberg‘s talk about Glass Town – her quirky multi-layered graphic novel starting from the imaginative world to be found in the early writings of the young Brontë siblings – was so fascinating I subsequently bought it.
• Emma Smith‘s topic was What made the Elizabethans laugh? ‘Comedies’ then not so much comedies as sit-coms (with a happy ending); laughter not seen as such a rewarding thing in itself then, as opposed to the notion of ‘delight’.
• David Reynolds‘s Island stories: Britain and its history in the age of Brexit broadened the context to make the situation right now part of an ongoing story; note plural ‘islands’, plural ‘stories’.
• Paul Lay‘s Providence lost; the rise and fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate opened up lesser known details of a period that my A-level History didn’t cover for all its supposed1603-1660 timeslot; among other things, why and how they blew it.

Traditionally part of StonyWords, there was no Bardic Trial this year to elect a new bard, so tenth Bard Andy Powell gets an unprecedented second term: twice the Bard any of the others could possibly be. Instead The Virtual Bardic Bash zoomed along nicely with only a couple of ex-Bards not contributing to the fun. You can see what all the fuss is about (and find some works inspired by lockdown) here: Bardic Bash – THE BARD OF STONY STRATFORD (weebly.com)

A couple of the regular music and spoken word events in Stony – Scribal gathering and Vaultage – kept the ball rolling online during lockdown, Zooming or YouTubing: take a bow Jonathan & Jill Taylor, take a bow Pat ‘the Hat’ Nicholson. How we all yearn for a live return …

Over and out. Can someone please show me the way to the murmuration?

Given the chance …

Everybody behaves badly: the true story behind Hemingway’s masterpiece The sun also rises (US: Mariner Books, 2017) eloquently delivers what its sub-title promises and more. Lesley M.M.Blume takes her title from something the Jake Barnes – the Hemingway alter ego – says in the novel, that “Everyone behaves badly – given the chance.” And with a couple of honorary exceptions they really do, not least the man himself. For here we are deep in Lawrencian territory: “Never trust the teller, trust the tale,” as D.H.Lawrence wrote in, as it happens, his Studies in Classic American Literature, published in 1923. And for all the bad behaviour and bad faith exposed, Lesley Blume never suggests that it is anything other than a true classic in the making she’s talking about here. This book about the book is an engrossing tale, tellingly told.

Not that everyone was thrilled by The sun also rises when it came out in 1926, least of all those very thinly disguised in its pages. Maxwell Perkins, an editor at Scribners, had to fight to get the hot new novel he’d acquired past his boss at the conservative publishing firm’s board meeting:

Perkins marched into the meeting, determined to defend his acquisition as important literature, not mere profanity.
“It’s a vulgar book,” Charles Scribner Sr declared. “There are four-letter words in it that I never would permit on the page of any book that enters a gentleman’s home.” (p164)

After what was effectively a case study in early modern publishing marketing hype, which Blume makes interesting in itself, most of the reviews were extremely favourable. There were exceptions, though:

The New Masses ran a review that must have felt like a kick in the crotch to Hemingway. John Dos Passos reduced his friend’s book to “a cock-and-bull story about a whole lot of tourists getting drunk.” […] Dos Passos did concede, however, that the cock-and-bull story was well written. (p201)

Which is, on one level, a fair summary of the action, an account of a road trip – hey, a road novel – that hadn’t lived up to expectations. Not so much the cock-and-bull though, given that some involved thought Hemingway had practically written a non-fiction account – with the names changed – of an actual journey out of boho Paris down to Spain for the start of the bullfighting season. Like Donald Stewart, who …

… wasn’t particularly impressed by the book’s artistic merits. Back in California, he got a copy and found himself uneasily transported back to the Pamplona misadventure.
“It was so absolutely accurate that it seemed little more than a skilfully done travelogue,” he later recalled. “What a reporter, I said to myself.” (p208)

Thing was, Hemingway hadn’t told his friends what was coming, and with the success of the book a couple of the originals for the closely drawn lead characters had cause to date their lives as either pre- or post- the book’s publication.

Ernest Hemingway has been one of my favourite writers since I read A farewell to arms for a course many years ago. Ultimately it was the sadness that got to me then – never mind the rhythm of the pared-down prose – after that perilous journey across the lake. I’ve stuck with him in the face of all the macho celeb bullshit that comes with the image; I’d say it doesn’t pollute the writing as much as some wilfully find – it’s not that simple. True, vegetarian me has shied away from Death in the afternoon, but it’s still in the pile, and I still expect to take something from it. The first time I read The sun also rises it was called Fiesta. More booze, liaisons and bullfighting than sex and drugs and rock and roll but with the immediacy with which it’s written it felt like I was there. For what it’s worth, I also think To have and to hold is underrated as an innovatory literary thriller. These covers take me back (mind, I’m not that old – the older ones were bought second hand):

Hard to think now of Ernest Hemingway as avant-garde, but that he was. When he and his wife Hadley moved to Paris – centre of the creative universe at that point in time – they shared a fully fledged bohemian experience, living cheaply in dodgy accommodation and patronising all the right cafes and bars. Armed with letters of introduction from an established novelist friend, who he later cruelly satirised in a short novel even Hadley thought was “detestable”, Hemingway got to be mentored by Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, the intellectual heavies of the Parisian émigré literary scene. But his eyes were on a bigger prize. Touting In our time, his first mainstream collection of short stories, he predicted (wrongly as it turned out at first) …

It was going to sell well […]. Unlike the work of his other experimental contemporaries, his writing would have wide appeal. “My book will be praised by highbrows and can be read by lowbrows,” he assured [his first US publisher].

There was a growing buzz, though. What was necessary was a big novel. Scott Fitzgerald, a big supporter, was already successful, but it was his subject matter – the post-war Jazz Age – that distinguished Scott from the Henry James legacy, rather than a new way of writing. The sun also rises was that novel:

“People watched Hemingway and watched what Hemingway was doing and cared deeply about it, as I did, and weren’t too much impressed by Scott,” recalled Archibald MacLeish […]. “Scott doesn’t exist when you’re talking at the level of Picasso and Stravinsky.” But Hemingway was about to reach that stratum, and his peers sensed it.

In her introduction to Everybody behaves badly, Lesley Blume makes the suggestion – fodder for a hell of a modern EngLit exam question – that, “Some other novels that have earned voice-of-a-generation status – Jack Kerouac’s On the road, for example – feel dated in comparison.” Discuss! And I’m not going to argue – though I will cringe a bit at the words ‘sexy’ and naughty’ – when she sums its perennial attraction:

The sun also rises still banks on the same dual function that made it a craze the moment it was released: it remains at once a vanguard work of modernist art and also a depiction of a sexy, glamorous world rife with naughty behaviour – and little of the flawed human nature depicted in the book’s pages has changed.

The Lost Generation

The book’s original working title was The lost generation, and Hemingway retained Gertrude Stein’s “You are all a lost generation” quote as an epigram. So he only really had himself to blame when it was welcomed as if its purpose had been to, in Blume’s words, “depict definitively his damaged generation”. Never mind that its eventual title on publication in the US came from the Old Testament, from Ecclesiastes: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever, the sun also riseth …”. (In the UK Jonathan Cape chickened out and went with Fiesta, losing the resonance). Blume again: “… it fit neatly with Hemingway’s belief that each generation was just as lost as any other:

“Nobody knows about the generation that follows them and certainly has no right to judge,” Hemingway insisted. “I didn’t mean the book to be a hollow or bitter satire but a damn tragedy with the earth abiding for ever as the hero.”

Like Bob Dylan, he was still protesting, spurning his voice-of-a-generation acclamation decades on. Regardless of the disclaimer (how gorgeous is the phrase ‘moving towards capitalised status, by the way?):

… the idea of being part of a “lost generation” took hold hard and fast. The epithet was quickly moving towards capitalized status. In subsequent generations, similar umbrella identities would be ascribed to each era’s under-thirty crowd: the Beat Generation, Generation X, the Millennials, and so on. But the Lost Generation was the forerunner of modern youthful angst banners, and The sun also rises was its bible. That said, no one in that demographic seemed particularly glum about being “lost”. Membership in this new club had an undeniable glamour. (p209)

[Compared with Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age] … Lost Generation decadence had nothing to do with dinner dances and eating clubs. Rather, it was all about purposeful dissipation. With Jake and Brett as their lodestars, self-fashioned Lost Generationers were spiritually obliged to defy convention, embrace hangovers as holy, and indulge in sexual adventures. The more ill-fated the better. (p210)

Hadley Hemingway nee Richardson

There was someone who played a huge part in the launching of Ernest Hemingway on the wider world, but who doesn’t appear in The sun also rises: his wife, Hadley Richardson. That’s her in the middle of the photo on the cover of Everybody behaves badly. It was her modest trust fund that had seen them through the years of striving, and quite simply, Hemingway dumped her when success came – a theme not unusual in music, sport and the arts in general. He expressed regret in his later memoir of the time in Paris, A moveable feast, and it all seems sad, disappointing. Ernest, you rat.

As she observed her circumstances that summer, it must have dawned on Hadley that Hemingway had already made the choice between her and Pauline, and that decision carried a weighty symbolism. There on the Riviera, surrounded by their new friends’ beautiful villas, with her husband’s fashionable mistress perpetually on hand, it must have become painfully clear that Hemingway had moved on. They were already in the physical world of his future – a glaringly bright, illustrious realm far away from the naive, hungry aspirations of their carpenter’s loft in Paris. Hemingway and Hadley were no longer allies defying the idle, ignorant rich while taking refuge in the joys of a warm bed, simple food, and uncomplicated love. (p183)

In the process of trying to find details of a novel I’d read and liked about Hemingway’s wives (all four of ’em) I came across an article that made me see the end of the marriage in a different light. (That novel was by Naomi Wood, and called Mrs Hemingway; I wrote about it here – an impressive piece of work). Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman had always disliked her first name, even more so after she’d been advised to read A moveable feast. We will gloss over some, ahem, controversial opinions aired here; I laughed regardless of the potential insult, because of the way she says it:

This point brings me to another problem I have with my name: I hate Hemingway. His gratingly self-conscious style – all brutalised declarative sentences – has, to my ears, the rhythm of a pub bore sounding off. More repugnant than his style is his mentality. He is the literary version of the worst of Bob Dylan, purveying that tired cliché of a man as solitary figure, necessarily selfish and the sole protagonist of his story, for whom women are either spoilt sluts or sweet saints, there to look pretty, subjugate themselves and then, eventually, be left behind so he can find another girl in another town wearing a lace dress. It’s such a boring, sophomoric view, one almost excusable in a twentysomething man, less so in a fiftysomething, and it explains why, in my experience, so many men love Hemingway (and Dylan, come to that). And why I don’t.

The thing is, she becomes reconciled to her name after reading another novel telling Hadley’s story. That novel is The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, which I shall doubtless be reading soon. I not going to say precisely what changed Ms Freeman’s mind, except to reassure you the ex-Mrs Hemingway had a good life after the events described in Everybody behaves badly. If you’ve read this far you’ll probably fancy reading the article in full: Hadley Freeman: Me and Mrs Hemingway | Books | The Guardian

While we’re here I’m going to leave a link, too, to a fine performance from another favourite, the excellent Mary Chapin Carpenter, of her fine song Mrs Hemingway, about the Paris years. Enjoy (sorry about the ads):
Mary Chapin Carpenter : Mrs Hemingway – YouTube

I’ll leave you with this photo, just for comic effect – the newly married Hemingways, Switzerland 1922:

Hazard management

“Lock Out, Tag Out (LOTO) is a safety procedure used in industry and research settings to ensure that dangerous machines are properly shut off and not able to be started up again prior to the completion of maintenance or repair work.” [Wikipedia]

Somewhat at a loss as to how to approach writing about Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire‘s Left out: the inside story of Labour under Corbyn (Bodley Head, 2020), I checked if there were any other LOTO acronyms around, given there aren’t too many pages in the book that don’t sport that formulation – it stands for the Leader of the Opposition’s Office (not a perfect acronym, I know, but there you go). Despite what the sub-title says, Left out is mainly about how LOTO, embodying ‘the Project’ – to give the party back to its members, and in so doing seek to transform the British Labour Party into an instrument of socialist change – how they managed to go from the surprise high point of the 2017 election (and the consequent hung parliament) to “the most disastrous Labour campaign of any election since 1935“. I leave it to you, dear reader, to further elaborate on the metaphor.

Left out makes painful reading for democratic socialists (guilty, m’lud). They blew it, for the Project, for us all. The 2019 election campaign was a shambles; LOTO, like the country, was riven with personal and policy differences, never mind Brexit, and the great leader simply failed to provide a lead (especially on Brexit). The authors talked to an awful lot of people inside and outside the Project, and despite what some reviewers have implied, they have no axe to grind. What we get is a stylish and engrossing account of the events and personalities involved as things unfolded, delivered with some élan.

They sum up the flaws in LOTO’s approach in the two years between elections thus:

At points in the narrative, Corbyn is a felt absence.
The Project’s weaknesses and its internal divisions … all flowed directly from Corbyn’s own. Power was not something he pursued. At times it felt like he was a man living in anticipation of another lucky accident.

The Shadow Chancellor, without whom the Project would have never existed, was the opposite. For four years he worked himself ragged in the pursuit of power. He set aside his sectarianism and moderated and mellowed, or at least had the good sense to pretend to. (p359)

News to me, was that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell had a big falling out over Corbyn’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge problems in his public stance on the antisemitism controversy and international affairs in the summer of 2018:

‘It was clear they were estranged,’ said one senior LOTO aide … ‘It was absolutely true that they weren’t talking,’ said another LOTO staffer. ‘They were walking past each other in the corridor and blanking each other, it was that level of not talking.’ (p124)

In the wake of all this their wives were “entrusted with making peace between the warring families. They went to the theatre together to clear the air.” Shame that we are not told what they went to see. ” It did not lead to the full reconciliation that some had hoped for. ‘Laura never, ever changed her mind about John after that, never,’ said one senior Corbyn aide.” Laura Alvarez, Corbyn’s Mexican (and third) wife, a regular reader of the partisan Canary website, is seen by many to have been a big influence on her husband, particularly in the 2019 election; “Aides noted with some concern that she regularly read the hyper-partisan Canary website …“). I acknowledge there are reasons why I should not take a certain glee from what follows, but nevertheless:

Others feared that Laura Alvarez was encouraging her husband’s worst instincts in order to protect him from the pressures of campaigning. Such was the disintegration of trust within LOTO that aides nicknamed her ‘Yoko’. (p319)

Compare & discuss

A neat little cameo of the times and a Groundhog Day of a dilemma. Not that I’m saying what Boris Johnson did was a good thing, but as the leader of his party he did do something. Andrew Murray was one of JC’s policy advisers:

The day before the vote, Andrew Murray had undergone surgery after a heart attack. He was lying in his hospital bed self-administering morphine when his daughters came bearing news from Westminster. ‘The Tories have taken the whip away from Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke, and from Winston Churchill’s grandson,’ they told him. It was so implausible that Murray believed he was hallucinating. (p234)

Reshuffles of Corbyn’s lacklustre Shadow Cabinet were perennially discussed in LOTO but never carried out, thanks in no small part to his hatred of confrontation inherent in giving shadow ministers the chop. The verdict out of Monday morning’s management team was always the same. ‘Let’s do it next week. Let’s finalise it next week.’ And then, one senior aide says, ‘it would just not happen.’ (p246)

Leadership

Here’s a selection – a lot of it had to do with Brexit – reflecting the vacuum at the top. Believe me, there are no balancing moments available:

• … To LOTO it appeared that he had lost sight of his responsibilities as an emotional and existential funk set in. “He couldn’t see that he was the leader of a political party any more … it was just silence, and political mistakes.” (p124)
• … [he became] either unwilling or, as time went on, psychologically incapable of leading. It would fall to his warring court to articulate exactly what Brexit meant to the Labour Party. (p191)
• At his best he was Delphic, at his worst he was gnomic. It fell instead to his team to decode and debate what little he did say, in the hope that they might claim victory for their own conflicting agendas. (p198)
• Radio silence from Corbyn had become an increasingly common feature of life in LOTO. (p256)
• Yet there had been another characteristic failure of communication on Corbyn’s part. [X and Y] went on their way believing, as so many of those who engaged the leader in conversation did, that he had agreed with them. (p277)
• The decision that for many of them amounted to a political death sentence was, for Corbyn, a release from the stifling, procedural drudgery his leadership had become. (p294)

Election 2019

A smooth campaign? Not. And you begin to feel sorry for JC. For a start there was another problematic bus:

• Antagonism set in early and festered until polling day. The day before the campaign got underway, Corbyn had what one aide described as a ‘tantrum’ when he learned that – unlike the bus propelling Jo Swinson and the Liberal Democrats across the country – his campaign wheels were powered not by an electric battery but a diesel engine … (p310) [So he didn’t use it, despite the plans in place]
• Corbyn’s seemingly trivial objections spoke to deeper dysfunction. His detractors at Westminster often contended he had no idea what he was doing. For once, the jibe was accurate – though not for want of trying on Corbyn’s part. Strategy for the campaign he was supposed to be leading had been largely decided – or, more accurately, disagreed on – in his absence. (p310)
• Said one aide: ‘Nine-tenths of my bloody day was spent communicating on behalf of people who wouldn’t communicate directly with each other.’ (p312)
• Andrew Gwynne [Campaign Co-ordinator, no less], whose patience had been nearly entirely eroded by the secrecy and obfuscations of Corbyn’s inner circle, was one of Labour’s many MPs who knew nothing of [a big new policy statement] until he read the Observer early front page that Saturday night. He knew as much about the campaign he was notionally overseeing as the owner of his local newsagent. (p318)

Another man, another planet

And here, for me, we have the problem. Try any combination of right/wrong man in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time and what you don’t get is three Rs. JC is not so much a politician as a moralist, so not made for what one close aide called “the hamster wheel of leadership”. As the authors put it, “Moral certitude had always been his lodestar. It had … catapulted him to the leadership in 2015” (p356). But now it wasn’t enough. He had his own little political bubble, and he was stuck there :

That he loathed confrontation and disappointing friends is testament to the deep well of kindness that existed within Corbyn. Unable to rewrite the rules of the game as he had promised, he preferred to ignore them. When in doubt, he sought solace from from those he knew would support his judgement no matter what, be they Laura or his friends in Islington. It was understandable and human. But it was not what the Project or the Labour Party wanted or indeed needed from its leader. (p357)

And it’s not like, as you might have gleaned, he had an efficient group behind him. As if to emphasize how the Left, those of The Project, were not the power in their own patch of the land they believed they were, the authors describe in some detail the slow start and first ballot failure of their campaign for the election of a new Party leader. (Good luck Keir, you’ll need it).

A brief word on style

You have to applaud when a major chapter describing an internal dispute that had “toxified life and electrified the ugly factionalism in Corbyn’s office” concerning the controversial figure of close Corbyn ally Karie Murphy – strong character or bully? – is entitled Karie on regardless; those who know it will be singing that Beautiful South refrain in their head right now?

Here’s Seumas Milne: “Given the unease and irritation about the patrician languor with which LOTO’s most senior public schoolboy went about his work … “, while John Mann is “the PLP’s patron saint of indignation”. Don’t know what some of my younger Corbynista friends will make of JC’s “aversion to partying was such that aides feared coming into work hungover.”

A personal observation

Not exactly original, but I want to give a plug here to Bernard Crick, one of my heroes from student days. Pogrund and Maguire don’t go into ancient history and the genesis of Corbyn’s personal politics, which – I’m sorry, but – I would characterise as still showing their roots as early 1970s student politics … even though he couldn’t last two terms at North London Poly. There is a problem with the hard left, and of course the Trots, in understanding the practicalities of democratic socialism and the speed at which change is possible. Politics as the art of the possible.

Bernard Crick, the first biographer of George Orwell, spells this out in his classic In defence of politics. Five editions since 1962, though sadly out of print as I write (it was even published in a series of Forgotten Books in 2012) though there’s only one copy on Abe Books at less than a fiver as I type. Such was the dismay in certain circles that he had to add a don’t-give-up Appendix to the 2nd edition – A footnote to fellow socialists – that is still a crucial text for me that deserves wider circulation again now. Just sayin’.

For what it’s worth, other ways I was thinking of starting this piece were:

• touching on the immediate ancestry of Corbynism, or the Project, out of Tony Benn’s less than successful Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD); their aim, to give the party back to its members, and in so doing seek to transform the British Labour Party into an instrument of socialist change; see also Thatcher landslide. Some of us had been through this movie before.
• reflections on how a number of my younger friends were/still are Corbynistas: forgive me for simplifying, but basically because Corbyn was saying hopeful things that they’d never heard from a prominent UK politician before? Untouched by power, he had a certain integrity intact
• a resumé of my personal history in the Labour Party: ’83 to ’97, Thatcher landslide to Blair landslide; neither a Bennite nor Blairite, I. But Corbynsceptic, for sure.

Ruso in hot water

I suppose I should thank Covid indirectly for my finally getting round to read Ruth Downie‘s Memento mori: a crime novel of the Roman Empire (2018), the 8th in the splendid Gaius Petreius Ruso sequence of novels. Given the context, shame about the title. These ingenious tales of a Roman medicus-cum-reluctant detective and Tilla, his native North British wife, have at their heart one of the great double acts in contemporary crime and any other fiction. I’m a big fan – as you’ll see if you put her into that little search box top right – she’s such an enjoyable, intelligent read. But between library laxity and a publisher’s cock-up I had to purchase Memento mori for myself, to read on the iPad Kindle app, a medium I’m not that keen on. I’d tried a few times and not got very far, what with all the ‘real’ books available to me.

So when I had to take my partner for an evening hospital appointment and because of the Covid restrictions in place had to hang around waiting for her in the half-light of a semi-deserted hospital car park, the Kindle text had its moment to shine. I made enough progress that there was no turning back, even though I’d found myself a bit less entranced than of yore. This could well have been down to the medium; I don’t care what you say, it’s different. But what I will say is – Yes, please do read Ruso and Tilla’s tales, but don’t start with Memento mori (start at the beginning, of course, with Medicus). Though I was, I must say – hurrah! – back in cheerleader mode well before it concluded. Among her many strengths as a writer, Ruth Downie really does do physical jeopardy superbly.

Aquae Sulis – Bath to us – AD 143. Ruso’s best buddy’s wife has been murdered; he, Valens, is the top suspect, and not without good reason as it turns out (no – not necessarily a spoiler). That’s all you need to know plot-wise, really. What is involved here is property development and the tourist industry in the context of the coming together of the two cultures (aka the nuanced Romanisation of Britannia) as Romans seek to expand further their bath-building on the ancient sacred healing spa. Its Celtic deity, one Sulis, is these days known to Romano-Brits as Sulis Minerva.

One of the delights of this series is the culture (and gender) clash, and the increasing accommodation reached between a rational medical man (“Given the gods’ lively reputations for seduction, betrayal, and murder, Ruso had never understood why honouring them involved such a lot of tedious recitation and meandering around“) and Tilla, who “had an unhealthy fascination with anything that combined the religious, the optimistic, and the slightly mad. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage her.” Here she’s paying her respects:

When [her hands] were as clean as she could manage, she raised them to the skies and spoke a soft prayer to Sulis Minerva and to the native goddess of the earth and god of the harvest and then one to Christos as well, because Christos had more cheerful things to say about the next world than any of the other gods seemed to offer.

This lovely gentle sardonic tone is another characteristic of Ruth Downie‘s fluid prose. Here’s the Poirot moment (oh yes, have I said Memento mori is a decent whodunnit into the bargain?):

Glancing sideways, he saw his own wife gazing at him in something alarmingly close to admiration, as if he were about to perform a miracle in front of them and make everything clear at last.
Except he wasn’t.

Here’s the shopping mall: “The soft lamplight that displayed astrologers and scribes and jewellers and a late-opening shoe mender was attracting customers and moths.” Ruth used to live in Wolverton, part of Milton Keynes, so a moment to savour (with a double whammy to conclude):

“This is a very strange town,” she told him. “Neena went shopping and she says there are lots of bars and places to buy souvenirs and jewellery but it is very hard to find anywhere to buy a cabbage.”
Silence. Then, “What did she want a cabbage for?”
So he was listening. “You know what I mean.”

I said at the start of this piece that I had a bit of a unexpected struggle initially with Memento mori. As well as the digital medium I think there might have been a couple of other factors, and I feared series fatigue. First there’s the Midsomer/Marple syndrome at play – if you’re a friend or relative of Ruso you’d better watch your back, because it seems you’re well in line to be a potential victim or suspect. Second, I’ve always liked the way contemporary parallels to the action are sneaked in (like the cabbage episode above), but personally found the property development aspect too obvious – maybe my problem. But then there’s this:

“You may have realised I’m a local man, sir. It’s not a Roman name, Kunaris. I’m a full citizen of Rome and you might think I’m well established in the town, but it’s always a bit … well, perhaps your wife could explain it better than I can.
Ruso did not need his wife to explain it. “You never feel fully accepted by either side,” he said. “You always feel people are expecting you to prove your loyalty.”

Long may Tilla and Ruso’s friends and relatives be troubled by circumstance.

Here’s a link to Ruth’s website: Ruth Downie | Crime Novels of the Roman Empire

Stephen Hobbs’s Top of the Poetry & Spoken Word Pops 2020

Tis that time of the year again, and sixth time around for Mr Stephen Hobbs‘s Top of the Poetry & Spoken Word Pops roundup for Stony Stratford and environs.

Normally the ceremony takes place at the Xmas Scribal Gathering Christmas bash (mince pies provided), but 2020 being 2020, this year it was done online, initially as part of the live event which fell foul to technical gremlins and actually froze at the moment Steve was about to say who No2 was (though we had plenty of clues there) … and leaving us high and dry as to the the reveal of the winner of this year’s giant lollipop; now there was a pregnant pause. Luckily JT decided to re-run the recorded parts of the show – there’s a link at the end of this post – and ‘ere is the text of Monsieur ‘Obbs’s presentation (which fills from 8.37 to 15.03 on the full show)
Over to you, Steve:

Hello Pop Pickers! What a crazy year it’s been. This is my Top of the Poetry & Spoken Word Pops for Covid-2020.

Take it away Phil….

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

[Here it should be explained that traditionally Mr Hobbs is assisted in his presentation by Phil ‘Powerpoint’ Chippendale vocalising the countdown riff (no – not that Countdown) familiar to viewers, nay – pop-pickers – of the original BBC Top of the Pops, itself a bastardisation of Led Zeps’ Whole lotta love riff. Sometimes the audience would join in. For the video Phil was filmed in a number of locations, outdoors and in. (Filmed by Phillip, edited by Jonathan Taylor). Here are some stills; I have not included the shower scene. Consider this a health warning (link at the bottom)]

• 

• 

• 

From 20 down to 11

It’s:

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, and Zoom.

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 10!

Three guys who are endlessly creative when it comes to word play. Opinionated, gobby, but always original. It’s the three Pauls: Paul Eccentric, Paul Rainey, and Paul Moss (aka Mossman). [You can find samples of their work – with the Eccentric one as his half of the esteemed Antipoet – in the video of the Scribal Xmas bash, linked to at the end of all this.]

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 9!

They were about to celebrate their 5^th birthday but coronavirus put paid to that. But storytellers need to perform, and through the good services of Mistress Zoom (Terrie Howey) they have maintained their monthly events. It’s Richard York and the Storytelling at the Feast of Fools team in Northampton!

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 8!

On the 3^rd of July this year we lost a fearless musical performer, a keen storyteller, and a wonderful friend. When our world returns we will still expect to hear her say “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done” and do that nervous laugh. It’s Sandy Clarke!

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 7!

At a time when doing nothing was a very real possibility these people have refused to keep quiet. They’ve added their skill and talents to some crazy ideas. I would like to thank: the Bards of Stony Stratford!

Bardabing Bardaboom! Danni Antagonist, Phil Chippendale, Pat Nicholson, Vanessa Feck Horton, Sam Upton, Mitchell Taylor, and Andy Powell! [You can find more info, and see their Lockdown poems project at THE BARD OF STONY STRATFORD – Home (weebly.com)]

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 6!

When you’re the new kid on the block in the world of storytelling clubs and you have a good first year, coronavirus restrictions are the last thing you need. And then you lose one of your founding members – Sandy Clarke. Do you accept the inevitable and give up? Do you hell! From Tales Tattled &Told it’s Lynette Hill!

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 5!

A regular Scribal performer, a talented poet, and the Bardic godfather of Buckingham. It’s the very first Bard of Buckingham Dean Jones!

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 4!

Pandemic? What pandemic? This open mic lives on in YouTubeLand providing a unique platform for music and the spoken word. It’s The Vaulthead himself, Pat Nicholson!

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 3!

He’s risen from the dead (again), plucked the stake from his heart and looked about in defiance. Our very own Dracula of the Stony Stratford open mic scene – it’s Jonathan Taylor and the Scribal Gathering elves!

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 2!

When he came to his reward the wicked coronavirus tore his gig diary to shreds, but he was not downhearted. Through real and virtual gigs he has been a true hero of the Bardic tradition. He has cast aside the devil’s banjo and embraced poetry. He’s even got a poetry book coming out! Who would have thought that – probably not even him! It’s the 10^th Bard of Stony Stratford Andy Powell! [Andy also features in the full Scribal Xmas bash video, to which there is a link at the end of this post.]

Da da da da dan dan dan [Phil]

At Number 1

… and my Top of the Poetry & Spoken Word Pops for Covid-2020:

Someone who’s consistently facilitated the performances of other people. In this the Year of Covid-19 the storytellers of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire have been dragged into the brave new world of Zoom. Instead of being furloughed, we’ve all been cajoled into using Zoom to achieve things we would not have thought possible. Youth drama continues, the Panto was written in a day, and signed copies of “Buckinghamshire Folk Tales” are on sale in Odell’s – the perfect Christmas gift! The PhD thesis has been submitted, the Bardic Council is relevant and you will even see poetry on the otherwise empty notice boards of Stony Stratford. And the storytelling – wow! [website: Red Phonenix Storytelling – Home (redphoenixstory.com)]

Stony has a fine tradition of producing community stalwarts – fill in the names. Ladies and Gentlemen here’s another – it’s Terrie Howey! And it gives me great pleasure to present her with this giant lollipop!

[Present lollipop]

Thank you and goodnight. Thanks again Phil – Da da da da dan dan dan

And here’s …

… that link I promised to the vid of the Second Coming of the virtual Scribal Xmas shindig

Steve’s presentation runs from 8.37 to 15.03.

Happy Christmas and a much better New Year for you all from Lillabullero.