Marginal Gloss

This blog is really great. Moments like I just spent considering the possibility that the arts can be reduced to simple escapism, or actually numb us to reality, are really valuable to me. I remember when I had all day to consider things like this, and it's a source of constant regret that my ability to do that kind of thinking hasn't been practiced very often since finishing studying. It's a bit of a blog to aspire to I reckon.

Vote for policy

This is quite good. I did it this morning and had an interesting result - 60% Labour, 20% Lib Dem and 20%, ahem, UKIP. No idea how the latter crept in there since I'm firmly pro-Europe and opposed to everything their leader has been saying on the radio. Apparently lots of people have been getting surprising results. The friend who told me about the site said that a hippie girl at his work ended up with a strong BNP percentage. Hippie in hypocrisy shocker. Who'd a thunk it.

Ronnie O'Sullivan

He's out again, in a classical, borderline sulky fashion. Once he'd lost the lead he seemed to get fed up, and sink back into smacking shots around without giving them enough time. It's always very dangerous when he gets like that - unless he finds himself in abrupt top form, the shots go in and he gets re-invigorated. Most of the time (all of the time for any other player, really) if you start playing like that, you won't last long.

I don't like Mark Selby. He's very good in the reliable, robotic way that Hendry or John Higgins are, but he thinks his youth and hairdo make him the new Ronnie O'Sullivan. He has none of the flair or attitude, and as such he's nothing like as thrilling to watch.

Of course, it could just be sour grapes on my part.

Paris Suit Yourself

This is just amazing...

U-Turn

I went on a 20 mile(ish) bike ride on Saturday, with two friends. One is a bear-shaped bike obsessive with what the other referred to as 'split calves.' I gather that's something to do with having noticeably muscular lower legs. Anyway, I ended up borrowing one of said friend's fixed gear bikes. Now, I've been ranting about these for months to anyone who'll listen, ever since every hipster with a silly 'do and facial hair started wobbling around London Fields on bright pink examples, their spindly, none-split-calved legs creaking with the effort. Now I'm thinking about buying one. Maybe a single speed bike anyway, probably not set to fixed gear... The thing was, it was just very easy to cycle on such a light bike, and one that you're forced to peddle constantly. My other friend was on a mountain bike, and he was just visibly slower (sorry big man.) Anyway, it wouldn't be my first u-turn. I like to think of them as a sign of an open mind.

I can promise though, here and now, that I will always, always ALWAYS hate Banksy.

Bret Easton Ellis and David Foster Wallace

Yeah yeah, I know I go on about these two a bit. Ellis tweeted his latest reading the other day, and it turns out he's getting stuck into Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, by David Lipsky. Interesting, as Ellis was one of the people Wallace used as an example of (roughly) what was wrong with modern fiction. The interview will be online somewhere, excuse my laziness. To be somewhat simplistic, Wallace had a fairly conservative view of literature in many ways, and felt that it should have some sort of moral centre or message. Ellis, he felt, had none. It's the same thing friends who've read the latter's books have said to me afterwards. 'Yeah I liked it and all that, but what's it saying?' Personally, I don't think anyone has a responsibility to 'say,' anything, as long as they write good books.

Paris Suit Yourself and Mazes

We've just signed Paris Suit Yourself, the singer and bassist of whom you can (sort of) see above. I'm really excited about them, and it's great to be working on a genuinely thrilling guitar based band. The other band I've been listening to all the time recently is Mazes. They're very different sounding - more Pavementish than PIL-ish - but very good as well. Happily, they're both playing tomorrow night at The Macbeth in Hoxton, for free. More info on Big Dada's site.

Planes

Due to my self-induced personal strife, I'm writing in exactly the same spot I used to until almost exactly two years ago. It's a very weird experience. Last time I was sitting here I was working on a practice-run novel, the one before last. It all feels like a long time ago, and uncomfortably familiar. I haven't often experienced this sense of regression. Anyway, as I sat staring out of the window last night (I'm on the eighth floor and very high up) I suddenly remembered my main distraction last time I was here. Planes. I used to waste good periods watching them flying along their set paths, left to right across the window, disappearing behind the skyscrapers in the City at one angle and emerging again at another. Last night, of course, there were none. It only struck me just then how strange the sky was without them. There they are again now, blinking and moving, on their set paths, distracting me once again.

Bad advice

Heard the guy who runs this blog on Radio 4 the other night, saying that Nick Clegg should have marched on Parliament, prior to his debate win, to really capture the imagination of the country and get some attention. That seems an incredible misunderstanding of the British voting public on the part of a blogger held in apparent high regard. Marching on Parliament seems to me to be the surest way to get written off as a nutter by middle England. Incidentally, that's the line on Clegg the Tories are presumably planning to take, perhaps using Clegg's pledge to scrap Trident as the main angle. Clegg must be feeling relieved that a bunch of generals have come out asking questions about it themselves...

Heavy drinking

Is no answer.

David Foster Wallace: The Broom of the System

So after ditching the Peace I reverted to unpatriotic type. The very few people who read this blog regularly will know that DFW is one of my very few favourite writers, so it might seem weird I hadn't already read this. I think I worried it wouldn't be very good, as he wrote it so young and amidst his academic studies. I imagined it as a sort of over-learned, derivative-without-knowing-it kind of thing. Very stupid and odd to have thought that, really, especially as I remember being really keen to read Pynchon's 'Slow Learner,' for example.

Anyway, I'm glad I hadn't already read it, because it's brilliant and I feel both thrilled and comforted to be back in safe hands. Does that mean I'm on the 'comfort the disturbed' side of Wallace's fiction teacher's equation about good fiction? Anyway, like Pynchon and Perec, he's such a nice writer to be living with. It does feel like the work of a young man, but it's also reminding me just what a great writer he was, just in the traditional sense of ideas, character, plot, dialogue and prose.

I know from reading interviews with him years back that he only rated about a quarter of Pynchon's work, but the influence here seems really strong - no bad thing for me. There's the potentially signifying names; Biff Diggerence, Stonecipher, Rick Vigorous, and even at the early stage I've reached, there's the slightly shadowy Stonecipheco organisation.

It's long too. Nice and long.

David Peace: Occupied City

I've read David Peace's 'The Damned United' and 'Tokyo Year Zero' previously, and thought they were both brilliant. Given I love Yorkshire, Ellroy and British writers doing something ambitious, how could I not. I'd planned to pick up Occupied City for a while, but I read a worryingly negative Times review last year - something along the lines of 'if only he'd stop believing so deeply in his own genius.' Strangely, the main press quote on the front of the paperback is from The Times.

Anyway, for me the review proved correct. I very rarely put a book down after starting, but I have done this time. It just feels like he's pushed the repetition and 'I'm transcending prose' thing much too far this time. The opening was dull, overwrought and portentous. It just shows that the kind of writing that was so successful in Tokyo Year Zero walks very close to the line.

I'll probably give it another go soon, just in case it's me.

Further to that...

...the writing about Israel (and maybe by some sort of extension, Western Jewishness) via Sam's visit to Jenin seems to me to be as serious, unflinching and fascinating as Phillip Roth's. A big claim I know, but you'll just have to read it.

All The Sad Young Literary Men - Keith Gessen

Is turning out to be a goodie. I thought that, given the title, it might be a bit of a modish, US emo-lit type of thing, but it's far less pretentious than that. It tells the stories of Sam - a failed writer of the great Zionist epic, Keith, a failing writer of Democrat political commentary, and Mark, a failing historian of the Mensheviks. Sad is the right word. All three men move from the promise (and the loves) of their twenties into loneliness and disappointment in their 30's. They make a mess of their love lives, put on weight, go bald, obsess over and alienate more women. I'm only two thirds of the way through, so things might improve, but there's a background hum of melancholy that verges on bleakness.

Gessen has a really likeable, honest voice, and the book is often funny and is very compelling.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) it's sort of painfully timely for me, reading this book. Just hopefully not in the literary failure half of things.

Christ, this entry really was book review-ish.

The Soft Pack

Will put me onto this band, formerly known as The Muslims. I guess it's understandable they got scared about that one. Their eponymous album is fantastic. It's just spirited, loud, power pop really, but it has that extra something. My current favourite is Answer To Yourself, a sort of manifesto on how to live and fulfill talent. It should be cheesy, but it isn't. The singer sounds a bit like an indie-rock Bob Dylan, but in a good way. I know it's a good way, because I don't like Bob Dylan, and I do like The Soft Pack.

Dum Dum Girls: I Will Be

The album's every bit as good as I'd hoped. Just the right balance between dreamy and raw; catchy as hell and lyrically convincing. Current highlight is 'Rest of Our Lives.' The singer is called Dee Dee, and her voice is knowing and sweet all at once, and sort of sounds... experienced? I've been avoiding finding anything out about her or the band - to break the habit of a lifetime - in order not to break the spell.