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SCENES FROM A LIFE

Irving Wardle — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:30:14 +0000

From a first visit to the Little Theatre, Bolton, to the role of chief theatre critic on the Times and beyond, few people have seen as many plays as Irving Wardle. In this memoir, he distils what he has learnt... read more »

TWO MURDOCH BOOKS IN ONE

Robert Butler — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:08:48 +0000

~ Posted by Robert Butler, May 16th 2012

Hard to think of a better example of two books squeezed into one than "Dial M for Murdoch", published last month, a fascinating account of the hacking scandal and the cover-up at News International. The book has two authors—the Independent's Martin Hickman and the Labour MP Tom Watson—and both make appearances in the book, where each is referred to in the third person. But there's a big difference: Hickman is an observer and Watson is a main character.

For most of the book, the tone is what you would expect: good clear reporting, the facts—shocking as they are—presented in a reasonably detached fashion. But every now and then, "Tom Watson" makes an appearance in the story and the tone can suddenly veer off. We hear about some of his thought processes as if he were a character in a novel and this leads, inevitably in this context, to moments of bathos. We learn for instance that Watson "watched every episode of the American detective series 'The Wire' and decided to follow the advice of one of its characters". (This was the moment the detective Lester Freamon, played by Clarke Peters, repeated Deepthroat's line: "Follow the money.") The quality of the information changes too. We get the little details that thriller writers like to use to locate characters. "At 10am the next day, as he drank black coffee at the Fire Station in Waterloo, Tom Watson was called by Ed Miliband's office..."
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FUENTES ON TIME AND SPACE

Carlos Fuentes — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:57:19 +0000

The great Mexican novelist and essayist Carlos Fuentes has died aged 83. Two years ago, he wrote this piece for our series Authors on Museums. “Museums, like lovers," he said, "can lose their charms”, but when he returned to an old haunt in Xalapa, Mexico, he found he was smitten all over again... read more »

TRANSLATOR IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Simon Willis — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:21:46 +0000

~ Posted by Simon Willis, May 15th 2012 read more »

THE SHAPES WE'RE IN

Isabel Lloyd — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:18:21 +0000

Are you a leggy Edwardian? Or a nip-waisted New Look? With help from four actresses, Isabel Lloyd matches bodies to decades... read more »

MAN CITY'S GREAT ANTI-CHOKE

Tim de Lisle — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:43:49 +0000

~ Posted by Tim de Lisle, May 14th 2012

A funny thing has happened with Manchester City’s last-gasp Premiership triumph. It is being seen as the start of an era, even a dynasty. Both words were tripping off the lips of their players and manager yesterday. You might expect that, in the dazed aftermath of a stupendous drama. But even the pundits seemed to agree.

There is only one thing to say to this: hang on a minute. Manchester City’s last league title came 44 years ago. The previous one was 31 years before that. One of sport’s eternal verities states that it is harder to stay at the top than it is to get there. Look what happened when City were way ahead in this season’s title race: they choked.

Luckily for them, Man United promptly did the same thing. But even when City went back to the top, and had only to beat QPR at home to wrap it all up, they managed to choke again, conceding two goals against ten men.

Look at how they did in the other tournaments this season: they crashed out of Europe, twice, to modest opponents; they lost in the third round of the FA Cup, at home, to United; they reached the Carling Cup semi-final but lost at home to Liverpool. Dynasty? What dynasty?

We are making an elementary mistake here. Because City come from Manchester (or are based there), we are assuming they will now do a United. But doing a United is a very rare thing: in the 44 years since City’s last title, only United and Liverpool have managed it. read more »

RESCUING "ALIEN"

Nicholas Barber — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:16:38 +0000

This Season: Nicholas Barber selects "Prometheus", Ridley Scott's bid to save the "Alien" franchise from its sequels... read more »

WRITERS IN THEIR OWN HAND

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:56:58 +0000

~ Posted by Emma Hogan, May 11th 2012

“Writing Britain”, which opens today at the British Library, traces how writers from Chaucer to Zadie Smith have used the British landscape—from its rolling dales and hills to its inner-city tower blocks—in their work. With over 100 items from the library itself, and others on loan from America or other parts of Britain, it is not lacking in jewels. There is a delicately-wrought manuscript of "The Canterbury Tales", an original illustration from Tolkein's "The Hobbit", a psychedelic cartoon of "Alice in Wonderland" by Ralph Steadman and the wonderfully pulp-like cover of Alan Sillitoe's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning".

But the real gems are the manuscripts. Looking at these exhibits—from Laurie Lee's draft of "Cider with Rosie" written on the back of a BBC script to a list by W.H. Auden of his favourite names of lead mines in Derbyshire—another theme emerges, which brings these authors even closer: their handwriting. The only manuscripts on display by Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot show them writing in clear, straight, evenly spaced copperplate, Eliot's few markings and changes as coolly confident as the progress of "Middlemarch". Looking at the handwriting of these two women, they suddenly seem unshakable, and you can understand how they took on the whole host of male Victorian writers. read more »

MAN OF MANY PARTS

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:06:42 +0000

Notes on a Voice: this year marks Charles Dickens's 200th anniversary. Emma Hogan tunes into a mind teeming with other people's thoughts... read more »

LEONARDO HAS THE BEST APP

Simon Willis — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:04:26 +0000

~ Posted by Simon Willis, May 10th 2012

More and more galleries are producing apps for their exhibitions. Some are modest, like the one for the Lucian Freud show at the National Portrait Gallery, which doesn't go beyond the exhibition itself. Others have bells and whistles. For its Abstract Expressionist exhibition in 2010, MoMA in New York produced an app with videos, interactive maps and audio commentary on the paintings. The problem was that artists like Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock made very big pictures, and the scale is lost on screen. The other problem is that if you're looking at a dark painting by Rothko on an iPad, you also see your own face reflected back at you.

The app for "Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist", which is on at the Queen's Gallery in London, is the best yet. You get illustrated mini-essays about every stage and aspect of Leonardo's career as an anatomist, each one ending with a video from a curator, historian or surgeon. You get animated comparisons with modern anatomical understanding, which occasionally show where Leonardo went wrong, but more often show how right he was. read more »

SOUND AND REVISION

Matthew Sweet — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:42:09 +0000

Mood Music: With the exam season approaching, Matthew Sweet picks tunes to go with hard work—or blind panic... read more »

THE ART OF THE FAIR

Hazel Sheffield — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:54:23 +0000

~ Posted by Hazel Sheffield, May 9th 2012

Where in New York would you put a very big tent? As Frieze’s co-founder Amanda Sharp said, “The true story is that I opened Google Maps and looked for big green spaces.” The one she found was on an island that nestles under the hulking Robert Kennedy Bridge between Manhattan and Queens. Once home to a mental asylum and public burial ground, Randall’s Island is now best known for its parkland, tennis academy and athletics track.

For a tent, the New York-based architects SO-IL created a snaking marquee whose curves follow the contours of the island. Tumbleweed rolled around in the grass outside the tent (installed by Latifa Echakhch) to heighten our sense of the wild. The festive tone was struck by artist Joel Kyack, who had worked in booths at state country fairs as a child. He manned a game truck, inviting people to roll a ball into the lips of a yawning mouth.

This will be the 10th year of Frieze in London, and demand from New York's gallery owners for something similar persuaded Frieze's founders to try their first one here: of the 180 galleries participating from 30 nations, 60 are American. But the location also provides a powerful new context for the art. In the "Frame" section, reserved for galleries less than six years old, Night Gallery from Los Angeles showcased a nightmarish bedroom installation concocted of black tape, video and mirrors by Samara Golden called "Bad Brains", a reminder that Randall’s Island still houses a psychiatric ward.

Going round, there were plenty of fun moments too: a huge plaster nose protruded into the aisle; a blue plastic Disney dwarf grinned at us from one of the nooks; up close, a wall of chicken wire by the Romanian cartoonist Dan Perjovschi turned into a mesh of tiny drawings of people. read more »

WHERE THE WIND HOWLS

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:42:10 +0000

A Walk on the Wild Side: in a new series, Robert Macfarlane, acclaimed author of “The Wild Places”, walks the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland, formed 60m years ago... read more »

DON'T MENTION SKIN COLOUR

Patrick Barclay — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:14:12 +0000

It's been the most exciting English Premiership season for years, but the game has been marred by two racial incidents. Patrick Barclay shows how football can move on... read more »

LENA DUNHAM'S DEBT TO "PEANUTS"

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:46:36 +0000

~ Posted by Tom Shone, May 8th 2012

Critics have been busy naming the various influences that have been stirred into the pot of "Girls", Lena Dunham’s bruised, brazen new comedy for HBO about the growing pains of a group of Williamsburg Millennials. In New York magazine, Emily Nussbaum compared Dunham’s candour to that of the stand-up comedian Louie CK: “They’re Mr Magoos of the dating world, stumbling into mortification, then exploiting it as material.” In Vulture Matt Zoller Seitz found the show “precise and aesthetically modest, like a female-centric cousin of movies by Whit Stillman...and late-seventies Woody Allen.” Halle Kiefer in Rolling Stone opted for "Seinfeld", while the New York Times’s Alessandra Stanley went for "Sex and the City".

I would like to propose another antecedent: Charles M. Schulz. Where else have we encountered Dunham’s preoccupation with ill-matched couples, self-abasing love and self-basting humiliations than in "Peanuts"? Admittedly, Charlie Brown’s love for Little Red-haired Girl never got him as far as an actual date (“You know why that little red-haired girl never notices me? Because I’m nothing! How can she see someone who’s nothing!”) whereas Dunham’s Hannah achieves regular, monkeyish intercourse with an artsy Prospect Heights carpenter who likes to take her from behind on his dirty sofa. But the look on Dunham’s face as he does so, squished into the sofa so that she almost seems to be turning out to face the viewer, seems to cry out for a fluffy thought balloon above her head containing the words “Good grief”. Or better yet: *sigh*. read more »