Yesterday's News

Friday June 20, 2008

Gordon Burn wrote the much celebrated novel Alma Cogan. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, although deeply disturbing. He’s an extremely talented writer who’s always tempted to blend reality with his fiction. His latest, Born Yesterday, is an attempt to publish a novel featuring a backdrop of topical events. Covering England in 2007, the year of the summer floods, Gordon Brown succeeding Tony Blair and the disappearance of Madeleine Mcann, Burn has attempted to produce a work that lives and breathes a recognisable yet complex and uncertain climate. He succeeds.

Gordon Burn: Born Yesterday

Subtitled The News as a Novel, Born Yesterday may be uncomfortable for those expecting a work of fiction. It’s more a work of journalism, but some of the best topical writing I have ever read. Burn has a talent for recognising coincidences and parallels in events that only appear to share time and place in common. He follows several obsessions, primarily the Madeleine Mcann media frenzy and the fate of a handful of Britain’s Prime Ministers. Maggie Thatcher, old yet still stately, spotted walking in a London park with her minders. Tony Blair and his often comical relationship with George Bush, and most of all Gordon Brown – a man who although often labelled as dull proves an excellent candidate for analysis. He really is a fascinating, odd character and Burn writes superbly about him; this is critical of the man but it is also touching. I think Burn has a sneaking admiration for him, although I suspect he would be the first to deny it.

Gordon Burn subtly blends apparent coincidences into his writing where others would appear to be trying too hard to forge connections. He tracks down the soap star who sat in the same London restaurant where Blair and Brown supposedly made their famous deal. Their meeting doesn’t result in any insight into the Blair/Brown relationship, but it offers a wealth of insight with the fresh glimpses of life it reveals. He strips away apocryphal media tales, although managing to convince that things are often linked in the way that the press suggests – they only lack the talent or insight to report it with any justice. And they remain blinkered – Burn allows us to think a little and read around subjects.

Born Yesterday is a book about 2007, published in February 2008. It’s still resonant, although its importance may fade. Or shift – I think it will remain a valuable insight of Britain in this decade. Ditch your tabloids, your broadsheets even. This is the best, most thoughtful, reporting I’ve read of recent history.

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Paul Weller

Wednesday June 18, 2008

This one’s only for the fans. That’s not to say that Paulo Hewitt’s biography of Paul Weller is worthless. It isn’t. However, Hewitt is much enamoured with the singer-songwriter. A close friend for over quarter of a century (a friendship that ironically ended with the publication of this book), his depth of knowledge is unquestionable – as is his appreciation of the music. But the writing is spoilt by the presence of the author in the timeline. There’s too much of the sycophantic “me and Paul” stance in this biography, which made me understand just a little why Weller perhaps ditched this supposedly close friend.

Paulo Hewitt: Paul Weller

No matter. He’s a strange man, and his odd character is one of the reasons why I warm to him so much. Growing ever-grumpy with age, now to almost Van Morrison proportions, Weller has always been weirdly inarticulate. He’s never come across too well in interviews, especially in the Style Council days where he attempted to experiment with humour. Hewitt attempts to drill into us the fact that he was having a great laugh, although my memories of the 80s Weller are uncomfortable. As are the interviews with his Council cohort Mick Talbot at the time, a bit part player strangely almost completely absent from this book. But Hewitt also exposes his mood swings, erratic choices in life and cruelty of character, which somehow works in his favour. An archetypal artistic temperament perhaps, but Paul Weller is certainly a great artist.

It all began for me in 1979/1980 where as an English schoolboy amongst millions of English schoolboys I discovered The Jam. Looking back, the popularity, artistic brilliance and sheer excitement of this band is possibly second to only The Beatles. Sure, other bands such as The Smiths were subsequently bigger in my life, but The Jam hit me at the right time. It also helped that there was a huge Mod contingent at my school in south London, helped also by the fact that Mick Talbot and his band The Merton Parkas were ex-pupils (some of our Mod contingent later starred in a Style Council video for heaven’s sake). Weller became a huge talking point, and although I wasn’t as big a fan as my friends in the Mod contingent (a friendship that sat uncomfortably with my closeness to the New Romantic contingent) I was kept awake at night by Weller’s creative cleverness, and the brilliant run of singles that included Eton Rifles, Going Underground, Start!, Absolute Beginners and the rest.

Paulo Hewitt dwells, as you might expect any Weller biographer to do, on the fact that Paul split The Jam in 1982. They were at the height of their success at this time and he was only 24 years old. He could have kept it going for another five years at least (this is probably a mean prediction; the ex-members of The Jam are now touring 26 years later with From the Jam and with some success). Crazy perhaps at the time, although it all makes a kind of perfect sense now. Through experimentation with different musical styles throughout the 80s to his mature solo career from the 90s onward he has, as Hewitt rightly points out, outlived all of his contemporaries. The elitist punk bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash, who looked down on him as he came from Woking and not within the square mile radius of The Kings Road, through to Elvis Costello, who he has rightly usurped as the long lived elder man of music.

Most telling in this portrait is who Weller’s fans are and who Weller, a difficult man on a good day, himself likes. Alongside his obvious influences such as The Beatles and The Kinks, he’s also a big Syd Barrett fan, and has recently expanded his horizons to include Nick Drake. He’s also embraced Acid House music, although Polydor records refused to release the final and very experimental Style Council album in the late 80s. But, at least within the music business, Weller’s admirers are select. Of his contribution to Band Aid in 1984 Hewitt reports that nobody chose to speak to him on the day of recording. And thinking of the self-congratulatory images of Bono, George Michael, Simon Le Bon and the rest I love him more for it. He’s had run-ins with the likes of Pete Townsend, and mysteriously refused to meet his idol Steve Marriott. The journalist Paul Morley, who can only enthuse about that square mile radius of The Kings Road and its enduring effect on Manchester, is not a fan.

But I am. Read this for interesting anecdotes and facts, but otherwise listen to the music. Start with Wild Wood, then flip back to The Jam stuff. His latest, 22 Dreams, is fantastic too. And if you’ve read this far it isn’t just boy’s music. Driving back from a conference today with a work colleague we listened to a few Weller songs and quietly enthused about the greatness of man. And this with a girl. From an all-boy, semi-Mod school this meant a lot to me.

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Dog Days

Saturday June 14, 2008

Six months ago I read Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Around the same time, a new film version of the 1950s novel appeared starring Will Smith. Now I’ve finally seen the film on DVD so I can write a belated sequel to my original post.

I Am Legend

It’s often quite refreshing to come late to films. I Am Legend received mixed reviews, at least I remember it doing so. There’s also enough time passed after reading the book to prevent me from comparing it too closely, and it’s years since I’ve seen the 1970s cinema adaptation The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston. I Am Legend is no Omega Man, although it’s not really I Am Legend either. It is nearer to the three great science fiction virus-disaster movies of recent years 28 Days Later, its follow up 28 Weeks Later and Children of Men. It’s not as good as any of them, but I was pleasantly surprised nevertheless.

Firstly, Will Smith has improved tremendously as an actor. Thankfully he has left the jokey persona seen in Independence Day and Men in Black at home. Age is on his side, and the grey-stubbled Smith shows some real promise now as an actor. Secondly, it looks like brainstorming sessions in the movie planning stages quickly concluded that, whilst Matheson’s novel is a great piece of sci-fi writing, audiences have moved on. So talking vampires just don’t wash any more, and abandoned post-apocalyptic cities full of slobbering nasties has been done to death in the cinema, so be careful. The vampires, prominent in Matheson’s novel, therefore don’t take centre stage in the new film until way into the story. Instead we see the empty city, shoulder high grass and prowling wild animals. Fittingly, all of the same things seen in a recent Channel Four documentary that attempted to predict how our cities would look if all the people abandoned them. Add to this Smith, proving he can act quite well as the last non-slobbering man on Earth, although he is almost acted off the screen by a very good, semi-slobbering, Alsatian.

Perhaps I Am Legend could be criticised for attempting to pull all of the right emotional strings. Lovely dog. Lovely dog dies. Cute family glimpsed in flashbacks. Shop dummies to highlight Smith’s loneliness (although providing a good plot device). The radio message broadcast to the empty world. Smith, away from human contact for so long, talking in sync to a DVD of Shrek. And so on. Perhaps it just caught me in the right type of mood. But I enjoyed it, and if I now went back to revisit The Omega Man I might judge this the superior film.

For purists, this film is Richard Matheson’s novel in bullet-point form only. A general idea of what the book was about, although an ending that, although still suitably downbeat, results in a completely different effect from the novel (and searching on YouTube will result in an alternative upbeat ending to the movie which is worth catching). Happy/sad, up/down, who knows? But they could have made worse choices about the overall direction of this film during the early brainstorming, and top marks to the man who said “keep the dog!”

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Now's the Time

Thursday June 12, 2008

When interviewed, Doctor Who supremos Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat always say that they judge a good Doctor Who story by the reaction of children. In 1963, playgrounds were full of kids screaming “Ex-terminate!”. Ten years later, when I was a small child, the playgrounds were full of the less remembered but still absolutely terrifying Green Death, where my little gang played at escaping from giant, deadly Welsh maggots. Three years ago, when the series was revived, the sound of “Ex-terminate” echoing from a school playground as I strolled past brought a small tear to my eye. Since then, the playground has cowered to the cries of the Moffat-penned terrors “are you my mummy?”, “don’t blink” and now “hey, who turned out the lights?”.

Doctor Who

Moffat, who is about to replace Davies as head writer on Doctor Who, is writing some of the best television of recent years. I began to realise that the new Doctor Who was something quite special with the Moffat two-parter of series one The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances which introduced the “are you my mummy?” line. It also introduced Captain Jack Harkness, and the dark WWII-themed story suggested that Doctor Who could be much more than screaming metal monsters. Moffat followed this in the second series with The Girl in the Fireplace, an imaginitive story that nicely played on the woes of time travel, but the writer made his mark in series three with the BAFTA award winning Blink. The Doctor as a DVD extra, more time woes and capers and some very scary stone statues, Blink deserved all of its praise that has already made it classic tv.

Blink has given Steven Moffat a level of writerly fame, and his two-part story for series four was long-awaited. I was anxious about Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead as he’d raised the stakes so high. Luckily, I got the setting just right in order to calm my nerves. Strangely, for reasons beyond the boundaries of this post, I came to watch Silence in the Library with three children in a small … library. A perfect, eerie and uncannily – quiet – setting. Well written, brilliantly acted, odd, confusing, clever but most importantly scary, the episode had me transfixed along with my three small companions. I was even treated to a pre-playground frenzy on the Sunday morning, with cries of “hey, who turned out the lights?” and “now you be the monster!”

Forest of the Dead confirmed Moffat’s greatness for me. This was a beautiful, multi-layered episode, that has me thinking about the themes it had introduced on the next Sunday morning, where kids were still running around scaring eachother. David Tennant’s portrayal of The Doctor is really something special, and Catherine Tate, who I admit to having doubts over, is also impressive as Donna. What’s best about it is that Moffat et al are really trying hard to make this good; rather that producing a visually impressive yet simple programme, Doctor Who dares to challenge its own mythology and its own audience. And The Doctor certainly carries some mythology, the mysterious 900 year old who we’ve known since 1963 yet we don’t even know his name. Although that’s reserved for people really special…

Doctor Who. Certainly my favourite television since 2005, and possibly since The Green Death in 1973 too.

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Help, I'm a Fish

Tuesday June 10, 2008

It wouldn’t be right to say that I fully understood The Raw Shark Texts. And it would be wrong to pretend that it’s an outstanding piece of work. Steven Hall’s novel begged me just a little too much to be loved for its wackiness. But I will hand it to him for writing a very refreshing piece of fiction, and one where greatness does on occasion shine through very brightly.

Steven Hall: The Raw Shark Texts

Eric Sanderson suffers from a rare form of memory loss, leaving gaping holes in his timeline. Eric Sanderson is haunted by a previous Eric Sanderson, a man who teases Eric (our Eric) with glimpses of the past. Letters arrive, featuring instructions and code. Snatches of journal entries (from the old Eric) tell us that he is bereaved by the death of his former lover in a scuba diving accident. The new Eric stumbles on, meeting and falling for an enigmatic young girl called Scout and a cat called Ian. There’s a mad professor with Einstein hair, a meme fish called a Ludovician and an interesting homage to Jaws.

Steven Hall is a talented writer, although ever looking to impress. Infuriatingly so. This novel veers too often into absurdity. The author Mark Haddon described it as being similar to The Matrix. I would describe it as being closer to the films written by Charlie Kaufman that include Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Interestingly, it is easier to compare The Raw Shark Texts to cinema than it is to literature. But unlike most films, that wrap up in under two hours, this novel is far too long. It’s worth spending time on if you have the patience to; I found the ending quietly moving, although largely I was disappointed.

Dare I say it, a weird kettle of fish.

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