The Art of Fiction

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

2012-05-29T11:58:00.001-07:00

F. Scott Fitzgerald remains one of the 20^th century’s most popular writers, and not just for “The Great Gatsby”, the short, iconic novel for which he is best known. His short stories have remained in print, and occasionally have a new lease of life – the film of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” – though it is for his novels that he is now best remembered; Gatsby in particular; but with only four completed, and one unfinished novel to his name, there are few writers who have quite so manageable an output. “This Side of Paradise” was his debut and the bestseller in his lifetime, but neither “The Great Gatsby” or the novel that belatedly followed it, “Tender is the Night,” sold sufficiently well in his lifetime for him to give up on more lucrative work: first magazine publication; then later writing for Hollywood.

Published in 1934 but set a decade earlier, in “Tender is the Night” Fitzgerald sees his self-proclaimed “jazz age” through a different perspective. If Gatsby is a novel that always seems to reconcile the dazzling follies of that age with a romantic fallibility, so that even in Gatsby’s tragedy, we can still (as no doubt Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming film adaption will do) be seduced by the trappings of fame; in “Tender is the Night” there are no such comforts.

I first read the novel at university, and although there have been two versions – it seems right now, as then, that it is not the chronological telling of Dick Diver’s life that best tells this story but the restored original text, beginning with Diver and his wife Nicole at the centre of a “moment” on the French Riviera.

Whereas we say Gatsby through the framing device of the amiable Nick Carraway, here it is Fitzgerald who is the observer; but for a brief moment in the first few pages, he chooses another lens, that of the beautiful and very young Hollywood starlet Rosemary Hoyt. As new to the world that her fame has brought her into as she is new to the pristine sands of the newly fashionable summer beaches, she is an ingénue unlike many of Fitzgerald’s knowing flappers. Compared to Nicole, the heiress wife of Diver, she is as unspoiled as the private beach areas where the three of them meet. But in Fitzgerald it is not enough to be a hero or heroine, the tale is one of a wider set: where the gradations between class, style, wealth and inheritance are played out beautifully scene after scene. This is rich America in old Europe and making it anew. The novel is full of Americans behaving appallingly abroad and hoping somehow that their money, their American identity, and mostly, their indignation, can get them out of all kinds of scrapes. The beach where we first see Rosemary is a stage on which Fitzgerald’s sets and sets up all kinds of rivalries. Money isn’t enough; nor where that money has come from; its how you behave with money. Dick and Nicole Diver are a golden couple around which everything else hovers. Rosemary, an American starlet, is allowed instant access into their inner circle but others aren’t – though Dick and Nicole, always keen on not just the attractiveness of their friends, but the distraction they bring, aren’t immune to rubbing a few different groups together. We’ll later find out why, of course.

What Fitzgerald gives us in these opening scenes is a virtually 3D picture of a time and a place. The writing is never less than dazzling, and never more so than when he describes a particular place. He uses description in a way that few others do, to either slow down or speed up a scene. In their languid idleness these characters wile away the summer in an approximation of happiness that, indeed, may actually be the real thing. Yet, nothing lasts for long.

Rosemary has come there for relaxation after the completion of the promotional tour for her film, with her protective but supportive mother, and only on meeting Dick and Nicole does she consider staying any longer; yet the Divers are themselves ready to go. Place cannot hold them. With a coterie of friends, servants and even two children (who Fitzgerald admirably never quite forgets are there), the Riviera is one staging post on a regular journey.

This is a Europe that is reminiscent in many ways of the West Egg grandeur we see in Gatsby; but whereas Gatsby creates a Xanadu from scratch in order to entice Daisy back to him; the Divers’ move through old Europe like a monarchic entourage.

Fitzgerald was one of the first subscribers to “Ulysses”, and though he is not often thought of specifically as a modernist, for me “Tender is the Night” brings to bear as much of the new sensibility that Joyce and others have been torturously exploring, and attaches it to the societal brilliance of his earlier writing. For despite the glamour of the Divers’ world it holds it own tragedies. Diver is a graceful southern gentleman, transformed into such a dazzling figure through his own charm, but also by his wife’s wealth. Yet Nicole’s story – and how she met the young Doctor Diver – in a psychiatric institution – is in itself a tragedy that we encounter almost from the first, when the nosey Mrs. McKisco accidentally comes across Nicole with the mask down.

For “Tender is the Night” is not a novel about surfaces; it is about how those surfaces are simply that. For Nicole is as much a victim of corrupt familial relations as the most broken of Faulkners characters; and Dick Diver, the knight in shining armour who rescued is as much a tragic idealist as that other Doctor, Lydgate in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”, a novel I’ve always seen to have certain aesthetic and emotional similarities to this one.

For though it would be easy in some ways to speak of “Tender is the Night” as a tragic love story it would be hard to know of which story we speak. Fitzgerald is a dangerous writer to read as a teenager, as he gives you both love’s fairy story, and its hidden despair. The only “happy” love in Fitzgerald is one that seems to be accepting of its peripheral nature. Carraway can happily have “his girl”; but Gatsby need that girl. And whatever he does is never quite enough. If Fitzgerald’s scathing comment on Tom and Daisy Buchanan in Gatsby – that they are “careless people” who “smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness” – isn’t enough then the path of true love in “Tender is the Night” is, if anything worse. Diver, our great romantic hero, is also proven to be all kinds of betrayer; but most of all of himself.

Having met and loved Nicole, though she begins ostensibly as his patient, which in itself is perhaps the most terrible betrayal a medical man can make; he falls for Rosemary for reasons that are that of every middle aged man (though he is hardly thirty), because he can. Yet so believable is this ménage, with Rosemary almost in love with obth Nicole and Dick, that we wish it to be so: even though what must come from it is hard to envisage. This, after all, is an age of promise; pointedly, even after the action of the novel is over, we are given no word on the foreboding truth of the great crash of 1929. Nicole’s old money, we must assume, like that of our contemporary rich, is immune. For Diver, a promising psychologist, with a successful primer already to his name, has already seen the best of himself when he falls for Nicole. That he becomes a socialite, only ostensibly working on his practice is another layer of the many tragedies in here. Yet, whereas Gatsby can sometimes be seen as superior melodrama – where we know not how he made his money, or, what might have become of him, if tragedy hadn’t struck – in “Tender is the Night” there is an observational honesty that in literature seems to be almost twenty or so years too early. For Diver’s story fades; Nicole’s fate is to run from her Fitzgerald-like figure to a gruffer, Hemingway-type. Tempting as it is to map “Tender” onto Fitzgerald’s life, the bits that seem closest are to do with the sensibilities that make us fall in and out of love; and make us do the things that destroy that love. Alcohol is never an unbitter taste in “Tender is the Night”, its dark side is shown to us early on in the form of the spent-talent of Abe North; a warning, ignored, to Diver of what he might become. Even Rosemary, given to us as a near-Lolita-like coquette, is later shown to be a wooden talent, hanging on to a facile career in the movies, and the teen-love of Dick Diver having either spoilt her forever, or been a single moment of truth in an otherwise dishonest life.

Nicole is fascinating – for she is a victim, who becomes stronger; and love, which she had unambivalently for Dick, becomes as much a sign of her malady as anything else. That Fitzgerald is writing this story of adult lives, whilst touching on so many of the societal shifts of the day is a marvel in itself. Reading the novel again after so many years, I’m struck by its modernism. Not its debt, so much, to Lawrence (in particular), and Joyce, but how he has learnt from their willingness to go so much deeper into the souls of their characters, how he might probe a little further himself. But there is never any solipsism in Fitzgerald; for he has always been the most honest of writers; honest in a specific way – observing the world as it is rather than how he might want it to be. Thus, Nicole’s horrific sister Baby Warren becomes almost bearable as the novel progresses – Dick’s fall being what she had hoped for, but in seeing it happen, her own silliness is put into some perspective.

Throughout the novel Fitzgerald subtley, and in my view, magnificently manages as mix of the brilliantly written orchestrations that we know from Gatsby, with a deeper, more piercing sensibility, that renders the characters as alive as any in literature. Trying to shepherd the ever drunken Abe North away from Paris, they become embroiled in one of several dramas that pepper the book – yet seeing North and Nicole alone Fitzgerald has the presence of mind to add that “unlike lovers they possessed no past; unlike man and wife they possessed no future.”

Away from the Riviera, away from Paris, the novel has to find different colours. We come to the young Dick Diver meeting Nicole for the first time. His tragedy, beginning even then, is that he is not the brilliant man he had hoped to be; is his love – or pity, for it may well be that – for Nicole reason enough for this, or would Dick Diver always have been looking for a brighter future than the one that beckoned as a psychological scholar? Compared to the rest of the novel, Diver’s medical years are somewhat underwritten, and it’s perhaps easy to see why. Here is a world that Fitzgerald only knew second hand – through Zelda’s travails mostly – but was already fascinating the 20^thcentury author. The “mind” not “God” is the new frontier of understanding and, to some extent, faith – yet Fitzgerald, a writer who, more than any other, always seems to believe in us – in men and women – despite our failings and frailties, is perhaps less suited to such a pursuit. Perhaps another lesson here from George Eliot; that Diver was to be no Casaubon forever trying to unlock the “Key to all Mythologies”, but someone dimly aware that the best he is to do, he has already done.

Re-reading “Tender is the Night” after a number of years – though I’ve frequently gone back to the glorious early chapters – I’m struck by what a modern novel it is; that it seems to absorb the modernist lesson, whilst only once or twice falling for its more clunky teachings. A writer as good as Fitzgerald struggled for years with “Tender is the Night” yet the writing within belies that. His own struggles, with an ailing wife and alcoholism, seem to find more than just echoes in the novel – yet it doesn’t feel like autobiography; for that we have “The Crack up”; more it feels like a mature work by a writer who has personally known both the worst than life can do, but also the best that it might offer.

The Hidden Music of Future Past

2012-05-26T04:26:00.002-07:00

In the week that Robin Gibb and Donna Summer both died there have been many articles about disco, and the sense that it has remained ubiquitous despite its startling fall from grace at the end of the 70s. Was disco really a “future music” as we hear in Summer’s number 1 smash “I feel love” or is it mired in its age inseparable from those images of John Travolta in the white suit? It seems when you have the likes of Paul Gambacinni and Mike Read wheeled out, that they are not responding to disco’s future-modernism, but its cheese. Gambacinni has never to my knowledge praised anything countercultural, whilst Mike Read’s credentials for discussing disco in any way are damaged by his absurd banning of “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

We love disco because of its nostalgic hedonism – and when we talk about it we talk primarily about the good time music that included everyone from ABBA to Zappa. (“Sheik Yerbouti” indeed.) The excellent crate-digging of the “Disco Discharge” series does return us to the future shock of disco – but is as often seen rummaging around the 80s as it is finding gems from discos heyday.

House music - which began, to all intents and purposes, half a decade later seems to me to still be the future music that disco promised to be, but without the cheesiness, and without the superstars or the iconic movie. It remained black, gay and urban enough to mean that though eighties stars like Paul Weller, Pet Shop Boys and ABC dabbled in it, you’ll look hard to find a rock band making any house moves. (Though it could happen, as the various U2 remixes show – but it was the “remix” that created that at one remove.) As the “future disco” series of contemporary compilations shows, there’s a thin line between the most processed of disco moves and the more soulful side of house. Modern incarnates like dubstep seem to weave in and out of genre, creating a hybrid electronic dance music.

Yet, house music – during the decade on from 1985/6 – remains the soundtrack to the late 20^th century without the attendant nostalgia of bands like the Stone Roses reforming. There’s a vast variety to the house music of that decade – and subgenres multiplied – but has there been a musical form as recognisable as house since rockabilly? Whether it’s the Shamen’s “Move Any Mountain”, Candi Staton and the Source’s “You Got the Love” or Underworld’s “Born Slippy”, these are clearly brothers and sisters in house. Underworld began as pseudo prog-pop band freur, Candi Staton’s voice was lifted and placed over a Frankie Knuckles backing, and the Shamen were a psychedelic indie band who went more house than the Roses or Mondays would ever dream of.

It is 30 years since the Hacienda opened – and the club was probably one of the first places in the UK to play house. Of course house didn’t come from nowhere. The underground disco of the early eighties was metronomic, machine music, at its best when flirting with electro beats like Shannon’s “Let the Music Play.” But house music simplified things as well as innovating in its own way. The innovations were stylistic and startling. For a start, house was the first music since the 1950s surf explosion to be primarily instrumental. Instead of verses and choruses, we had orchestral stabs, piano breaks, synthesizer breakdowns. Structurally these songs weren’t the blues. Hearing “Jack Your Body” and “Jack the Groove” (the first two breakout records) in 1986, at a disco in Preston I immediately heard a fracture with the jazz-soul-funk music that went for club music in the mid-80s. And that was probably the last time summer where anyone who really liked dance music went to a “disco” rather than a “club” or a “rave.” Hacienda was the first, but stark (and not so stark) house clubs turned up all over. It may have been particular drug-fuelled subgenres a year or two later that led to the phenomenon of the free party movement, raves and warehouse parties, but it was also happening in traditional night clubs – often turned over to house (and suddenly without a dress code) on a Monday or Wednesday night.

Whereas disco had Summer and the Bee Gees, a genuine superstar of the genre, and the most successfully crossover act to reinvent themselves as disco, house had nobody – not unless you count the “superstar DJs”. Even now, nearly 30 years later, it is clubs (Cream, Ministry of Sound, Hacienda) and DJs that are the most associated name with the genre – though to be honest the distinctions were always vague. A DJ could be become associated with a venue – a “night” might be more important than the venue where it took place – and early records by Frankie Knuckles or Marshall Jefferson or whoever, guaranteed a career for these luminaries for many years.

For despite its ubiquity – even now, house nights proliferate, and often fit seamlessly with dubstep and other genres – house music remains a “hidden music” in a way that few other genres have done. The lack of big names is part of it; and to some extent the nostalgic memories of Spike Island, the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and the Hacienda are as much about the scene that they ran parallel to as the bands themselves. I don’t think the young kids listening to the Stone Roses 20 years on would even relate to the band as part of the house movement. Indeed, I remember going to the Hacienda on a packed Saturday night in 1988 and you wouldn’t have heard a guitar all night. Cheaply packaged album series like Jack Trax and Warehouse Raves were the suburbanites way into this specialist genre; but at the same time the least expected tracks would jump out and into the charts. That house music can still surprise can be seen by the massive US number one, “Like a G6” by Far East Movement, a minimalist slice of acid house, two decades out of place.

A couple of years ago I digitised a few of my vinyl house records – thinking I’d put together a decent enough CD compilation – I ended up with 10 volumes and could probably have added ten more if I’d repeated artists, or included CDs. It’s a wonderful reminder of ten years of invention. Rave, acid house, techno, trance, ambient, even early jungle/drum and bass, are all there. There are brilliant songs (“You Got the Love”, “Promised Land”), great reworkings of pop hits (“Even Better than the Real Thing”) and exciting instrumentals. Listening to “No Way Back” by Adonis or “Alright, Alright” by Masters at Work or “Let’s Get Brutal” by Nitro Deluxe I feel like I’m still listening to a future music. Yet this would be like thinking Ray Charles’s wonderful “What’d I say?” was still the future sound in 1986!

Electronic music has always been part of my life – I was 14 when “Dare” came out – and so though I like guitars, I’ve always been suspicious of guitar-lovers insistence that theirs is the only “real music.” Yet as a genre, house, which to my mind existed in its pure form for about a decade (what comes after does seem nostalgic in some ways), remains refreshing and futuristic. It will never have a Paul Gambaccini gushing over the death of one of its superstars (though men in their late 40s might still come up to Dave Haslam or Paul Oakenfold or whoever and say “Tune!” when they play an old school classic) and, in looking which of my vinyl rips were on Spotify, I see its strictly limited: the pop hits and the tracks that have been recycled on compilation after compilation. As much 60s garage or Northern Soul, house was a music of delicious one shots and cash-ins; often the remixer on the title was more important than the original band. In a world where absolutely everything seems at hand and on the internet it’s quite nice to find there is a bit of a gap in the official record – only half of the tracks I’d digitised can be found on Spotify, and then often not the same mix. Wikipedia doesn’t give anything like the same reverence for one-offs as it does for bands. There are specialist sites where I guess you’ll probably find most things; and every charity shop has a pile of anonymous 12”s that are worth investigating – but despite the plethora of “Cream Classics” and other such compilations; it’s also a hidden future-past. Perhaps you had to be there, popping along to your local record shop each Monday morning (Ear Ere in Lancaster or Tracks in York, for me) and picking up whatever looked worth investigating. I was at University in 1986, and wrestling my friends away from “indie” music to listen to the “House Sound of Chicago” was an impossible task (most of them got it later, either through E, or through hybrids like Trance), and I’m a little jealous of those a bit younger than me who came of age when club culture was already in full swing. By the time I made it to the big city, Manchester, it was 1992 and house had almost become part of a bigger thing – or rather, it had gone a bit underground again, as bands like the Prodigy and nights like Megadog took it another direction.

I’ve kept up with dance music from afar – with R&B and dubstep appealing now and then – but away from club culture and with the demise of Record Mirror and other dance friendly magazines, its been a while since I’ve really took much interest. House is the music of my late youth if you like; that period when you suddenly feel too old for things, on the cusp of adulthood. Yet if I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic about this week, I don’t think it’s at all a nostalgic music. Crisp, minimal electronic music is a timeless style – and if most of it was produced cheaply in the late 80s and early 90s – it remains a somewhat hidden side of contemporary music; there is not, as far as I know, a “House Britannia” on BBC4.

Listen to My Spotify playlist

A Miscellany

2012-05-25T00:00:00.003-07:00

The blog-life balance has been wildly to the latter; which is good - of course - but time for reflection has been a little limited. I might go for a few vignettes rather than something more substantive.

***

NaPoWriMo was probably a bad idea as having written a poem a day, until the last few days when I ran out of steam, I've not been able to think poetry or read poetry since. The work itself lies forlorn and lonely in my notebook mainly. I need to structure my poetic thoughts as I'm reading in a couple of weeks in St. Ann's Square for the Manchester Book Market and I need a "new set." The book market will have a wide range of small presses and performers, and I'm reading on the Saturday afternoon.

***

FutureEverything festival was stimulating as ever. I was involved with organising elements of it, this year, in my work context, which meant I didn't catch as much as I wanted. I particularly regret missing the Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir since as well as being an activist and politician, she is a poet, and apparently read a poem as part of her keynote. However, I was lucky enough to have a chat with her outside the venue - without realising at first who she was - where we compared notes on reading poetry to different sizes of crowds. Iceland, that small, unique nation, that got so badly treated by the financial collapse of some of its overreached banks and companies, seems a canary in the capitalist coalmine. Its hardly a surprise that they value art and culture as important.

***

Chorlton Arts Festival continues over this coming final weekend. There are many things going on - and if the weather keeps as nice, it will surely be vibrant.

***

I've been thinking again about my artistic process. Malcolm Gladwell's writing that "genius" is the result of "10,000 hours" of work is one of those memes that once heard, sticks with you. As someone who writes short and long fiction, poetry and music, I've certainly put in the hours, but I'm wondering whether that's too diverse a field. Do you get better by writing more? Is there a limit? Many writers say they are "rewriters" but I'm not sure I've ever agreed that that's the most important thing. I've often said to musician friends that they should write and record as much as they can at an early age - and same for writers - in that the "spark" or "inspiration" - the ideas that you have often die out as you grow older: but if you've a large enough palette to go back to you can refresh and renew. I'm wondering if I'd have been a better/more successful writer if I'd kept writing novels? Its not that the ideas ran out, but that the energy involved seemed too great. I do know that I went from not really knowing what a short story was, to becoming a good story writer - and had, in the late 90s - quite a number published. Since then I've found it harder. Have I got worse? Have my ideas narrowed? I'm not sure. I've written over 100 stories yet have had very little success in the genre. Have I got worse? I don't think so - but perhaps I've got less focussed; or, here's another view, less brave. My stories used to be flights of fancy, written in a rush of inspiration - more recently they are worked over; sometimes painfully, sometimes over months. That said, I've read quite a lot of stories recently; there's been a resurgence in the publishing of the form; but I have to say I've been a little underwhelmed. I'm looking forward to the 2nd Salt anthology of "best short stories" as a snapshot of the art. So, is the issue that one needs to be single-minded about ones art to exclusion? I'm not so sure. A lot of poets/writers/musicians/artists I know want to diversify: whether its poets writing radio plays or stories or novels or whatever. Being very good in one genre doesn't necessarily lead to being very good in other areas of course, but something must survive, something must transfer. So, what to write next? I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it.

***

A friend's book group was unimpressed by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night", it was my favourite novel. But is it still? I picked it out of the cupboard and started reading it again; its been way too long. The copy I've got has pencil marks in the margin from when I was studying it at University (I've read it since, but at least a decade or go.) The reading group comments have been helpful actually; it is a novel not without flaws (as I've always known, and part of my fascination with it.) I could write 10,000 words just on this novel. Maybe I will.

Influence and Genre

2012-05-09T00:10:00.002-07:00

The always fascinating SF writer Charles Stross has written a blog post entitled The Death of Genre. Its well worth reading the whole post, but he starts by saying "Science Fiction literature is unusual in that much of the work within the field exists in constant dialog with other works." Unusual, but not unique of course; but what I call the "transmission mechanism" that allows ideas to populate is perhaps more integral to the SF community. Partly this is its future-sense: you want to know where the ideas are coming from, and where they might go to. Partly its the close relationship between SF readers and SF writers. All writers are readers first (at least, all good writers are), but in SF I imagine there's an intensity of the relationship that isn't as obvious in other genres. Hilary Mantel clearly likes history, but whether she likes historical fiction is less obvious - one could even argue that "Wolf Hall" is a refutation of so much of historical fiction's attachment to narrative.

That's an aside. But the SF reader = the SF writer in a way that is unusual in most other genres. The filter for ideas is other science fiction as much (or more) than non-fiction or other genres. Part of that is because it exists as cult as much as genre. But it's a big cult these days; witness film successes such as "Avatar" and the continuing repackaging of "Star Wars." Stross reminds us that "around 30% of the big budget movies to come out of Hollywood each year are recognizably science fiction" but its a particular version of SF, signifiers being aliens; spaceships - and "something is missing upstairs."

For the SF writer/reader doesn't come to it - or never used to come to it - because he or she wants relentless space opera. Its for the ideas, stupid. And here's the interesting thing about Stross's article it's that he explicitly acknowledges the dialogue that happens between SF writers - that they explicitly and implicitly respond artistically (intellectually, if you like) to what others are doing. This is interesting in itself - because I guess many writers in other genres probably curse when an idea they've been playing with gets taken up by someone else. The idea that you don't just respond to another writer because you're looking for a bandwagon to jump on, but because it has opened up an interesting artistic/intellectual pathway is a fascinating one. And of course, there's one other genre where it also takes place: and that is poetry.

But to remain with Stross for a minute; he's asking how e-books are changing things. The argument, I think, is that genre becomes more rather than less with e-books. Personalisation (whether through Amazon recommends or whatever) narrows rather than expands. The serendipity of the old bookshop is being replaced by an endless market place - where "the infinite bookshelf is already a problem for us." Choice in this sense becomes problematic. "There was so much less SF in the 1970s that it was quite possible for those of us who grew up reading the field back then to acquire a comprehensive coverage of it" concludes Stross and here is the nub of the problem as he perceives it. A genre that has, on the one hand become pretty massive and mainstream; and on the other hand has spawned imitation rather than conversation. In that space, he's arguing the lack of clear curation is going to have a debilitating effect on the future SF writer.

What struck me from reading Stross's piece - and re-reading it today - was that it echoes our field; poetry. Even as recently as 1995 when I had my first poem published in a small magazine it was possible to sit in the Poetry Library on the South Bank and pretty much read every magazine; get a sense of the "scene" from the few anthologies available; and memorise most of the names. There was a loss here as well; the British "scene" had narrowed quite considerably, so that you could read Peter Forbes' "Poetry Review" or your Motion/Morrison Penguin anthology and not even realise there had ever been anything like an avant garde. But still, that aside, by 1997 I'd found room for Les Murray and John Ashbery in my personal canon. It's perhaps no coincidence that 1996 saw the publication of the Sweeney/Shapcott anthology "Emergency Kit" which explicitly states something is wrong in the state of English poetry and looks wider.

The doors have come off since then. The rise of the MA (Poetry) (almost invisible in the late 90s) and a rash of cheap offline and online publications - as well as a revival in interest in new forms; and the continued baptisms of fire that the festival and spoken word scenes provide - has meant that whereas you might survey the scene in the 1990s and keep coming across the same names; get a sense of who was writing what - and have a dialogue with them; it may well be impossible to do that now. Add together the number of poets in Salt's younger poets or Nathan Hamilton's selections for the Rialto and the list of names stretches into the distance. Re-reading the Salt book yesterday, it was "Emergency Kit" that came to mind. These seemed to be poems that responded to that invocation of "poems for strange times." Along with the inevitable introspection and solipsism of young writing, there are myriad worlds of influence and style. The quality, I'd hasten to add, is pretty high - and, even more so, there's very few of those "I did this, I did that" poem that sometimes seemed to suffocate British poetry in a blanket of the overly-familiar.

So, on the one hand things are pretty good: that the transmission mechanism is not only there, but in a fully working order - and clearly there are poets who know each other; scenes within scenes - and there are clearly influences (Ashbery amongst them) that are to be welcomed. Ironically, our high priests, the Sean O'Briens, the Simon Armitages, the Carol Ann Duffy's seem less apparent as influence than one might have imagined half a dozen years ago. Cheap and on-demand publication has made it much easier to publish a wider range of poets. The letter I got a dozen years ago from an editor apologising that (I paraphrase), "a lot of poetry that would have got published, doesn't now, because our lists are full" thankfully doesn't still apply.

Yet, I've been reading Chicago's "Poetry" for the last three years in an attempt to get the temperature of American verse, and I've failed to. The names of poets come and go, they are all good, all more than competent - and there are so many of them. The better known names, I see now, seem to be from a slightly early group, and making sense of the many is harder and harder. Because that dialogue that Stross talks about in SF is also necessary in poetry. Does one jump across the generations to talk with Robert Lowell or Allan Ginsberg? Or does one talk in university common rooms or urban pubs with ones peers? Or does one peruse the internet - plucking out those pluckier poets who publish there? Shamefully, we've not seen a second northern poetry library to match the southern one. I was lucky enough to be living in London from 1996-7 and that helped in so many ways as I started taking poetry seriously once more, in my late 20s. Anthologies, magazines and nights offer their own entry-point: but though we are at a good point in so many ways; so many poets, so much of it a reasonably quality, so many different facets - I'm much less sure that one can keep the whole thing in one's mind. Pick out a poem or a poet that you quite like - say in the Bloodaxe anthology "Identity Parade" - and explore a little. Editors like Roddy Lumsden have been remarkably catholic compared with their predecessors (that Motion/Morrison book again), but reading more poems and more poets than I've ever done, I find it harder to pick it out the stand out poem of the year or the generation or even of the moment; I find it harder to use reading (at least reading of contemporary work) as a useful counterpoint to my writing.

In the US this "problem" (if it is a problem) is multiplied. The number of English-language poets writing in the world would make a small army now. Its possible to ignore (wilfully or accidentally) the big names, or the local scenes without even noticing. Over time, I wonder if this call for attention - that me, every other poet, makes - becomes a cry of loneliness? And if it is other poets that remain key to any poet's own development (even if its in rejection of their work), then I do think its the poem that is the thing that makes a difference. With a couple of exceptions, its hard to recall a particular poem of this last decade that either exemplifies the age, or stands beyond it. My sense is that I'm worrying too much; that Stross is worrying too much. But poetry and SF have a few things in common. They have both a popular image, and a hardcore following. The former can sometimes deafen the latter (We're still in a world where "If" is our nation's favourite poem!) - their advocates are passionate; their best writers are often their best readers. But also I wonder if both are accidental victims of the paradigm shifts of the information age? Where is SF in a world that looks so much like the future that it predicted? And where is poetry when it leaves behind the bearings of its age, and speaks only to and of itself? The answer, as ever, is in the works that are yet to come. Bring them on.

Coming Up

2012-05-04T23:28:00.001-07:00

Bank Holiday weekend and a few highlights.

I hope to finally get to hear Hungarian poet Agnes Lehoczky. I bought her debut collection "Budapest to Babel" a couple of years ago. She's reading with Menna Elfyn and with music from the intrigueing sounding Yiddle Sticks Klezmer Ensemble at the Whitworth Gallery this afternoon from 2.30pm in the latest Poets & Players

Tomorrow afternoon its time for Sounds from the Other City, Salford's multi-venue urban music festival. Hardly anyone I've even heard of, but that's part of the fun. Oh, and there is poetry and fiction squeezed in between the music - with Chris McCabe, Tom Jenks, the Bad Language crew and others.

On Tuesday night one of my all time favourite bands, the Three Johns play a rare gig at Gulliver's. The Three Johns were stalwarts of early 80s Peel and with robust psycho classics like "Death of a European" always seemed one of the eras most unquantifiable bands.

I'm pleased that the Castlefield Gallery fundraising auction has gone live and on time. The Gallery is an important part of the city's artistic ecosystem and has an exciting two year programme lined up following up on its temporary closure, and the auction is a clear sign of how highly it is regarded by artists who have been associated with it in some way over the years - and the donated work is stunning. You'll be able to visit the Gallery to see the work from next Friday, bidding is available online, and will continue on the night of 30th May, compered by Pavel Buchler.

A recent Facebook conversation - talking about the surrealists - was asking why writers and artists don't collaborate as much as they used to. A question raised again in the latest edition of Corridor 8, available from the Cornerhouse. The art magazine continues to intrigue, this time focussing on artist run spaces, and revisiting an iconic but forgotten publication called "Breakthrough Fictioneers". The magazine has focussed on the interface between literature and art beforehand (looking at Moorcock's "New Worlds" in particular) but again I'd ask the question: Where are the writers? Rather than artists-that-write it would be good to see some genuine interface...it was something we did with Lamport Court of course (2 of our alumni are featured in the Castlefield auction for instance!) and something I want to encourage with my new venture...

Yes, I'm planning on a new magazine, called, "A New Magazine". The basic details of what I'm looking for are here - and I hope to have the bones of the magazine together by end of May for an end of June/early July completion. Still very keen to hear from writers and critics.

No Political Theatre

2012-05-02T10:57:00.001-07:00

I can be a political junky at times. Though its a long time since I was a party member, (and briefly, ward treasurer!), that's more because of my artistic take on the world - like the most politically astute Marx, i.e. Groucho, I wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member. I'm temperamentally unsuited to following party lines; even if most of those point left. I cheered wildly when the coalition ditched the identity card plans for instance; yet stubbornly put my cross in the Labour box at the general election because I never had any illusions which side the coalition was going to be on.

At our last voting opportunity - for AV - my natural democratic instincts strongly supported, however flawed, a move to a slightly more democratic system - and was surprised, not just that the vote went for the status quo, but that the Labour party was so ambivalent about the issue. If Cameron/Clegg abolish an unelected House of Lords I'll be shaking my head with amazement that this wasn't possible in a decade or more of New Labour. Yet, there are few policies where I see eye-to-eye with either of those Arrogant Posh Boys, ahead of the younger Milliband.

Tomorrow, in Manchester, as well as electing a third of the council, the city has an opportunity to say whether or not it wants a Mayor. As a natural democrat, my instinct is always to support anything that improves choice, and makes up for this country's appalling democratic deficit - and will certainly vote tomorrow. However, the mayoral election has put me in a bit of a quandary.

I'm guessing that the Labour party in the city are against it - though the "no" campaign seems to have adopted a tactic of "don't mention it" probably wary of the last council-run referendum, on road pricing - but it's hard to find any real information on either side. A letter from the "no" campaign in the M.E.N. and some half hearted under-publicised debates aside, we're voting tomorrow on a question that hasn't exactly fired the imagination.

As I said, I'd usually choose any widening of the democratic franchise, but this one's more complex. For its uncertain what powers a mayor would have or how that would work with - presumably - an elected council executive. You could well imagine the current leader of the council standing and simply changing the job title on the door.

This coalition hasn't shown much interest in a region where it lacks any political mandate so it's hard to come to any other conclusion that the Mayoral referendum is a distraction deliberately pitched at Northern Cities to weaken rather than strengthen their say on the national stage. So, with no real sense of which way the vote will go, tomorrow I'll be voting against a mayor for the city; even as across the Irwell, Salford chooses its first elected mayor. I'll be looking at both votes with interest.

Kathleen Jamie

2012-04-28T02:17:00.001-07:00

I went along to the Anthony Burgess Foundation last night to see Kathleen Jamie read from her new book of "essays" (her word) "Sightlines." In conversation with Adam O'Riordan (whose quiet approach, more psychiatrist's prompt than interviewers interrogation was entirely appropriate), she read from the book and revealed quite a lot more about her artistic process than is usually the case as such events.

"Sightlines" is a book of essays - some, though not all, about the natural world - but as Jamie pointed out, she doesn't consider herself a nature writer. Indeed, like myself, she finds the tendency of some nature writing to block out the human as annoying. And what do we mean by nature? From the calm iciness of Greenland where she had deliberately gone because she felt she would never get to see an iceberg otherwise to the dual-microscope in the pathology lab peering at cells of removed tissue - this also is nature, darker, less pretty. If there is something missing in her narrative, as O'Riordan teased out, it is people, it is character. She is clearly not travelling alone but they are neither her subject or interest. Perhaps the person seen out of the corner of the eye is another way of adding perspective. If one of the worries of travel writing is that it can be seen as "tourism" perhaps one distinction is that you don't photograph yourself or others in the foreground of the Taj Mahal. And as she added, she would hate to be written about herself, so those who travel are fleetingly referred to if at all. One point that was made is that for all the "isolation" of remote landscapes, for a writer the time being on their own is often the writing; not the being there.

And for Jamie the companions in these journeys have another function. "I am lucky to have fallen in with a great group of ornithologists and naturalists" she says. Each ornithologist seems to refer in awed terms to someone who is better than them, like there is some God of seeing at the top of the tree they all aspire to. But this wasn't merely a throwaway line, but a way of emphasising that seeing (or hearing) is something we can do all do; that we can all learn to do. The naturalists have encouraged her to look, and to look carefully so that your eyes become accustomed to the normal - which means that when you see something different, in behaviour, in feather colours or whatever - you notice is because of that difference. Not so different to what a certain type of poet does, of course. This "looking" had its reward in the final piece she read, about seeing the gannet's in the sky on an abandoned Scottish island, and realising that they were flying low; that there were other signifiers of a new presence in the landscape. That presence was killer whales, and Jamie and her companion, in a piece read with real drama, rushed to the cliff's edge to see what unfolded.

These ideas of a landscape that is shaped by us, rather than outside of us, reminded me of Simon Schama's classic "Landscape and Memory"; and memory seems to feature strongly in this work as well - so that a piece, a deliberately written piece, about watching a lunar eclipse, is then followed up by something that could have been prosaic. For the next time she "encounters" the moon is from the window of an airplane - and she reminds us that she would never get used to this "wonder" of flight (which the woman across from her, with an eye mask on before the plane has even taken off, is clearly immune to.)

Why write essays at all? She wanted to take that word back from the academy, where such things may well be unreadable - but also, because as a writer who admits to being "useless at plot and character", it is the form of prose that she does feel able to do. Though it is not, of course, any easier than writing poetry - though she'd hoped it might be. Some of these pieces took years. She gives a wonderful analogy of the car maintenance book, the Haynes manual, where you have "exploded diagrams" showing how all the bits of the engine or the exhaust system fit together. These essays are "exploded diagrams" of topics that a poem is maybe the more compacted work - where you can't see the workings. Also, when asked whether she researches the essays, she said (a little disingenously I felt, for someone who has deliberately sat in a pathologist's lab and is naming the techniques and processes methodically), that though she takes a notebook with her, it remains unfillled; she relies on memory and fills in the gaps later - or, more accurately, the essays "soak up" twenty years of reading or experience from the recesses of the brain.

Certainly there were extracts last night that with a different emphasis would have been inseparable from poems, but though the essays use her "poet's tricks" they do seem to be much more than that. If in the early extracts that she read from, there seemed a little too much of that "I am here, I am experiencing" beloved of TV documentaries, her choice of subjects and the emphasis she puts on them seems far more deliberate - responding to deeper subjects (of mortality; of silence; of man's role in the natural world.) I very much look forward to reading the book.

Prose v Poetry

2012-04-27T01:36:00.003-07:00

On a recent Facebook thread, there was an interesting debate about "longeurs" in prose. Do people forgive poor writing in prose because its part of a longer work and so matters less? In a lively debate about the merits or otherwise I ended up standing up (as I often do amongst poets) for prose; or at least my belief that it is exactly what a good novelist attempts to do - write well in every sentence. Despite there being many competent poetry collections out there, the tendency towards bigger books (80 plus poems are not uncommon) makes me find most poetry books overlong. The whole here tends to be less than the parts, however competent the parts are. Ironically we can expect a poorly renumerated poet to be better edited by his poorly renumerated editor than a novelist by his. Or so it seems. Not just that long books like "Freedom" by Jonathan Frantzen needed pruning, or that "Wolf Hall" has passages that are utterly incomprehensible (in sense, its not about Mantel being too clever), but that many novels contain snippets of poor writing that get glossed over in a way that they wouldn't in a poetry collection. The "longeurs" of poetry books tend to be intellectual, rather than stylistic in my view. Too many poems about the same subject, or with the same worked-on feel. I've enjoyed reading my fellow authors in the Salt Modern Voices series at least partly because they seem books of about "the right length." Some Salt authors have been remarkably prolific over the years (and that goes for other imprints as well), but some of the Modern Voices are pamphlet plus in size; a nice length, more mini-album in an age of the double.

Yet the point made, which I didn't disagree with, reminded me of Pound's exasperation of the poetry of his day - and his desire that poets write with the same care as prose writers; clearly a hundred years ago some sea change had happened where the novel, that unruly ruffian, had usurped poetry in the quality of its writing. A lot of this seems to be about what we mean or don't mean by "style." I was away when the Late Review was talking about John Lanchester's "Capital" but from what I heard, there were opposing views about his prose style. There are no "darlings" to kill in "Capital", it reminds me of the utilitarian, non-showy prose of Jane Smiley or Yann Martell; every sentence perfectly okay in itself but doing a job, no more. Our best writers' prose does more than a job of course. And this seems perhaps a fundamental difference between poetry and prose. The "job" in poetry is also about the line, the words, the style - whilst in prose it can be "man walks through door." When the poet Sean O'Brien's novel "The Afterlife" was respectfully reviewed by other poets and others, they made a great play that there was no "showy" "poetic" prose. That it was a badly written novel was kind of glossed over, as if it was just a relief that a metaphorist had left that particular toolbox at home. Another poet-fiction writer, David Constantine imbues his stories with clear linguistic designs on the reader. His fiction is "doing a job" but not just a utilitarian job. His prize-winning "Tea at the Midland" uses style to withheld, to prompt. There's a question about whether, as a reader, one wants to be so manipulated, but there is no doubt that style is used here for a very particular purpose. I have sometimes found poets treat prose as being their "weekend art" - as if it doesn't matter if its sloppy. Worse though, I think, is where a workmanlike prose, perfectly adequate, but simply "doing a job" is then trumpeted as being literature. The prose stylist appears to be a rare beast these days - and can be a matter of taste. If the "workshop poem" has created a patina of glossy competence smoothing off the edges of many well-worked contemporary collections, then the "workshopped extract" has possibly done the same for prose. In a highly media-literate age, the fiction writer is asked, sometimes, to underperform, leave his linguistic tricks at home.

The "longeurs" are therefore less concern than a flatness that too many stories have. Part of this, I think, is the current dominance of the present tense and the first person narrative, often from an unreliable narrator. The sustained act of the non-authorial voice is in itself a triumph; and perhaps does so well because we want to hear "personal stories" but when I hear Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield speaking I hear something far more musical, far more messy, than the contemporary first person narrative - perhaps its the stuff of distance - but what Twain and Salinger give us is so much more than an everyman; more savant than idiot. In the sustained work that all novels are, the pursuit of "perfection" or the "right words in the right order" is a fool's gold, clearly... yet the tuned ear finds inconsistency more jarring than excitable prose. It is not, I'd contest, "your darlings" that need "killing" so much as your shopping lists, those pages and paragraphs written when your creative module is switched off and you're just concentrating on getting a job done - moving character from A to B. "He walked through the door." Martin Amis said his father said he should write more sentences like this, and that he thought his father should write less. Kingsley, of course, read "The Rachel Papers" (I think) and never bothered with any of his son's other novels. Despite more recent novels being disappointing, I'm glad we have John Self and Keith Talent.

Poetry - to me - seems in a fine old state; certainly in the 25 years I've been aware of it, its never seemed healthier - if only for its diversity, the panoply of voices and the range of opportunities. Many flowers bloom. I'm not so sure about prose - or the contemporary English novel.The stylist isn't dead, but he (or more likely recently, she) is hardly lauded. And style is something different than form, I feel. There is a type of well-bred English prose that cannot in all honesty be called bad writing; but the limits of what it can achieve are there to see in the well-bred English middle class novel. Writing better, at some point, means writing different.

The Age of Production

2012-04-21T01:03:00.001-07:00

I was reorganising my CDs recently and surprised to find I've got 9 CDs by Nirvana. Not because I'm not a big Nirvana fan - I liked them from "Bleach" onwards, though they were never quite my favourite band, and I was devastated when Cobain died, he's undoubtedly one of our most missed talents - but because they only actually released 3 studio albums. The rest of my Nirvana collection includes 3 live albums, 2 outtakes albums and a Greatest Hits (which includes a track not available elsewhere.) Nirvana are one of those bands whose detritus is greater than their production. The Stone Roses and the late Jeff Buckley also come to mind. And its not like I've got everything they did. The super deluxe "Nevermind" and the full outtakes box were for the mega-fan only.

I was thinking about this today at the annoucement that "Blur are to mark their 21st birthday with a 21 disc boxset." Now I'm not particularly a Blur fan, apart from "Park Life" and the odd single since then, I've always found them a little faux to me - and Damon's fauxness since then has continued unabated in the not unpleasant Gorrilaz as well as myriad side projects. But "a 21 disc boxset" for a band who released 7 albums? It seems overkill. After all, the "extras" on the "Nevermind" CD were hardly critical - and increasingly, in an age of deluxe editions, rather than the "deluxe" preference being reserved for the band's best album, its often trotted out for even minor releases. Its also a paradox, going back to the Beatles and "Let it Be" that the most outtakes can be found from the least interesting times of their careers. I've lost track of the times I've wished there was a live album of a band at the height of their powers, only to have to wait several years for some bloated "greatest hits" live album from long after they were interesting.

Of course the record industry can't be blamed for milking its golden cows. There's an audience for, say, a Pink Floyd boxset which doesn't necessarily exist for Bogshed. (But, to be fair, some of the best "boxes" I've got are far cult bands.) Yet is there also something of the "monument" building about this? Just as certain classic authors find their complete "scholarly" edition to far outnumber their key works (letters, articles etc.) so its coming to pass that the rock fan has 12 albums of dubious merit for every "Parallel Lines" or "Thriller."
As a perpetual archivist myself, of my own work in particular, it seems a bit rich to talk about "over production", yet I've always gone back to older work, whether music or writing, with a very specific aim, to remind myself of how I got "here" - of paths forgotten. Going through some 4-track cassettes last weekend I found 3 or 4 "unreleased" demos, two of which for songs that I don't even remember, from 1997. In 30 years of recording, I'm currently at 750 tracks - a number that would dwarf that Blur boxset! Thankfully I've only put a fraction online.

But product in itself is not a bad thing - I'm thinking of all of the nice books and boxsets I've picked up over the years. I've been very grateful that the Cure archived their near-forgotten "Carnage Visors" soundtrack on their "Faith" album; or that Bruce Chatwin's letters, so close to being first runs for his novels, were finally collected a couple of years ago; whilst as a Fall fan, the thirst for "material" seems unquenchable. However, for cult bands that doesn't seem so bad. Its not like there's one Fall album or one Zappa record that is a must have. Buy into the myth of those artists and you pretty much want everything. In a different way the "complete" sessions of jazz legends like Miles Davis and John Coltrane have been fantastically interesting.
As an artist, interested in the "creative" process, even the outtakes or alternative versions are interesting if the artist is interesting - and there's no doubt there are some people who would put Blur in that category. Perhaps, just as with Radiohead, I'd be almost interested in a more wayward version of the Blur story than the relentless Britpop hits of their greatest hits period?

It all begins to make the Dylan and Beatles industries look a bit restrained however. The sixties Beatles released pretty much everything good that they ever recorded, and so the brilliantly compiled anthology series were merely alternate histories of their fecund creativity - whilst the clamour for Dylan bootlegs hasn't died down even as the bootleg series heads for double figures. Bands like Pearl Jam and Fugazi have gone as far as making every show available as an audio souvenir - yet haven't released an entirely satisfactory live album. I'm pleased that I've got "The Name of this Band is Talking Heads" (compiled from a long period of recordings) and "Stop Making Sense" and don't really mind that I haven't got anymore live material to choose from. Yet last time I looked the fascinatingly rough document that is "The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl" wasn't available to buy. Pop acts are best experienced through a greatest hits or their biggest album, so I'd much rather listen to "Thriller" than Jackson's well-compiled boxset.

Perhaps its all one last flurry. Blur at least are a band we remember from picture sleeves - almost the last Smash Hits style pop act the country has had. That the marketing logic of the 90s insisted on 2 CD singles for every release means that bands like Blur, Oasis and Manic Street Preachers were quite prolific in what they released, though only Oasis is renowned for the quality of its B-sides. Does Adele or whoever record anything more than the dozen tracks that make the album that you buy or download? Are the "extra" tracks on iTunes special editions just the same thing but in a different age? There would seem something odd about downloading a deluxe edition - more to be looked at, than listened to - yet you can do so. I've often thought we'd be compiling our own books and albums now, through online tools, but the thing is, who has the time?
In the age of a virtual project I wonder to what extent we'll even think in terms of an album to reissue? Will a future Jessie J or Adele boxset be simply a collection of their most famous songs, like those pre-album acts like Elvis or Chuck Berry?

So what's the most inappropriate deluxe edition or boxset anyone's seen, where the product doesn't deserve all this kerfuffle?

On Parody

2012-04-20T01:26:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a poem a day for National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) mainly because a few other poets I know are doing so. There's been a "prompt" every day which I've pretty much ignored, but several days ago the suggestion was a "parody." Without going into detail about they thought by that, I decided to have a go - and in the "mini sequences" within my April writing.

I've now written half a dozen "parody" poems - quickly and without too much thought. Parody can mean different things, can't it? I guess Katy Evans Bush's "pirate Prufrock" would be an obvious example - taking T.S. Eliot's poem and writing it in the style of a pirate. This is obviously funny, a well crafted entertainment, that requires a knowledge of the original poem (the better you know it, the better the spoof). Yet "parody" doesn't have to be broad, I don't think. The Prufrock poem is done with love, both for the original and for the language of pirates (The internet has promoted "a talk like a pirate" day which may have led to this one).

Yet I like to think that "parody" doesn't necessarily have to be funny, but can be homage or critique as well. My parodies are loose ones - and I've deliberately not mentioned the poet I'm thinking of in each one (they are well known ones, and not necessarily ones I've read that much.) What struck me in writing this series was how "parody" is a little like Mike Yarwood or Rory Bremner's impressions. You don't necessarily know the parodied writer that well, but there has to be enough of "signature" (the equivalent of a facial tic or a particular prop that a Bremner or Yarwood might accentuate) for you to do something "in the style of" that is in itself a new poem. There are quite a number of prize winning poets that I'd find it hard to pull out what their USP was. Even with these, I do wonder whether a poem like "Playing with Guns" is "generic Irish poet" rather than the one I was thinking of.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

2012-04-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Mark Haddon's 2 million selling "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" has been recommended to me on a number of times, so when I saw a World Book Night copy in the charity shop for £1.25 I decided to pick it up. It's rather irrelevant to "review" a book from 2003, which won the Whitbread and was a bestseller - I may well be the last person to have read it!

Yet there are some interesting questions of literary worth and reputation hidden away in the novel that I might tease out. The novel, as most people know, is a story of a teenage boy who has some kind of autism that means he goes to a "special school" even though the nature of his condition means that he is studying for A Levels in his favourite subject - maths. Christopher is a particular kind of unreliable narrator - in that he doesn't register what other people are feeling, but at the same time is incapable of telling the truth. Fused with his condition, is a plot based around a murder-mystery - of Wellington, his neighbour's dog. Christopher likes "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and this is another dog that didn't bark in the night time (a sign in this case that he was killed by someone who knew him.) Happy in his own way, but very aware of his limitations (he has bad days when he doesn't say a thing because he's seen 5 yellow cars going past) its a lovely act of teenage ventriloquism. Christopher tells us lots about himself and (more importantly to him) his interests - as a bright child might always do to an adult inquisitor.

The book is set in the kind of low-grade suburbia that rarely makes it into adult novels, but is an ever-present in the suburban children's fiction from which the book comes. "A first novel" for adults by a writer who had previously written a dozen or more for children - Haddon uses all his skills of empathy to create an engaging narrative. More problematic are the adults in the book. It's almost as if, in order to make this book for adults, rather than children, he's simply added lots of swear words, and a few adult themes, around sex and adultery. Yet we're so seeing the world through Christopher's eyes that the adult world is almost as mysterious to us as for Christopher. Living just with his father, the subtext to the novel is the devastation a child with problems can have on the adults who have to care for them. Though not a political novel, there's a sense of the isolation which people in this situation find themselves in in modern Britain. However, because Christopher is in a special school (rather than, say, in a mainstream school with a statement of special needs) there's a sense of isolation here as well. Christopher has no peers; his fellow pupils are referred to only by their (more serious) problems.

What is interesting about the novel is the way that, despite its careful narrative - based around the threats to Christopher's "safe" world and his quest to beat his own limitations - Haddon gives us an insight into Christopher's life through pictures, footnotes and mathematics puzzles. Ostensibly the story that Christopher is writing at his teacher's bequest, he fills it with the thing's he's interested in. It's as digressive a quest novel as "Tristam Shandy" or "The Rings of Saturn" - yet this is the most populist of novels. It's fascinating how some of the tropes of more experimental fiction are now routinely deployed in an easy-to-read bestseller. Whether or not you merely glance at the math's problems or learn something by concentrating on them, it's a powerful way of getting into Christopher's head.

Yet despite this apparatus, the one thing that I came away with was doubting, in many ways, whether this is actually an "adult" novel at all. For Haddon's adults lack the very thing that Christopher is given in spades; they have no obvious motivation. In David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" a dissolving marriage is seen obliquely from the side - but here the marriage has already ended; and the implication, I guess, is that having a child with behavioural problems can break even a strong marriage. Poignant letters from Christopher's mother are badly spelt to such an extent that seems ridiculous in someone who is working as a secretary; whilst his dad, a plumber, is one thirds new man (looking after his disabled son with more patience than his mother managed) to two thirds misanthropic white van man. In teen-narrated fictions its always difficult to see the adult characters clearly, as teenage insight is at best, self-involved; yet the paper-thin characterisations wouldn't really stand up in daytime soap.

The success of the novel has lead to Haddon releasing two other books - another novel and a collection of poetry - and the children's writing has taken a backseat; but it's interesting that in a decade where the Harry Potter books have seen adults reading children's fiction without guilt, one of the bestselling books of the decade has been a children's book in all but name. Whereas novels like "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Tom Sawyer" have appealed to children because of the age of their protagonist, "The Curious Incident..." is a strangely innocent hybrid. It's closer to those massively successful Sue Townsend books, like Adrian Mole and "The Queen and I", the mundane background (Swindon in this case) providing an easy backdrop for an awkward life. What particular aspect of the novel caught the zeitgeist is hard to know - but its probably the winning directness of Christopher as a protagonist, letting us into his world.

Coming Up

2012-04-05T00:54:00.000-07:00

As usual in Manchester you could probably go to a literary event every night of the week - an art and digital event likewise etc. - though it's still annoying when two things clash such as on Thursday 19th when avant garde poetry and Chinese fiction go head-to-head. An unfortunate one this, as the Other Room is usually a Wednesday, but has had a change of venue, and for once, has moved to a Thursday - whilst the one off launch of a new anthology by Comma Press has probably been in the works for a long time. Then again, it might be, like I've said before, like the farmers and the cowmen in Oklahoma, "the poets and the fiction writers can't be friends!"

So makes your choice... Poetry Lovers here....

The Other Room 31

Fiction fans here....

Shi Cheng: Short Stories from Urban China

As I'd like to go to both, I'm perhaps quite relieved that the choice has been made for me. I'm at Schiphol airport returning from Amsterdam with work!

(But never fear, as you can see from the Other Room site they've a sterling summer programme - and the range of events coming up at Anthony Burgess is equally interesting and varied.)

National Poetry Lottery

2012-03-30T03:40:00.000-07:00

As ever there's been a bit of comment about the winners of the National Poetry competition. It is prestigious and usually finds a decent winner. I'm not sure I quite like Allison McVety's "To the Lighthouse" as much as Helen Dunmore's "The Malarkey" the superb 2010 winner; its a fine poem (particularly in the 3rd stanza) but depends heavily on its source material. The shortlist is interesting of course, and I smiled at Liz Berry's entry, as its written in Black Country vernacular; something I've done myself - years ago - but always felt was a bit faux; that she does it so well may make me try again!

Music 2012

2012-03-26T00:47:00.001-07:00

Looking after 3 websites and similar number of social media channels requires a little planning. I occasionally mention my music here, and will do again today.

I'm recording a downloadable "single" each month during 2012 - free to listen or £1 to own - so if you like lo-fi experimental electronic pop kind of stuff then give it a go. The 3rd monthly single is now online and you can download them as follows.

JAN - For All These Days
FEB - The Armenian
MAR - Clap Your Hands!/Red Deer Cave People

The picture is a montage of my equally lo-fi cut and paste tape and CD covers over the years.

Poetry of the Decade(s)

2012-03-25T06:39:00.001-07:00

Decades - like Centuries - are useful temporal borders. We can talk about the 19th century novel or the 1930s poet - and I think, within reason, we can use them with some validity. Just as terms such as "Victorian" or "Edwardian" are shorthands for a specific generation or more. In music we buy compilations entitled hits of the 70s or attend an 80s night. At some point there becomes a bit of a convergence of time and association so that - say, "the sixties" means something specific to do with the Beatles, the King's Road, Woodstock and the Vietnam War.

In reading "Poetry of the 1930s" one is struck by two things - the lack of women poets; and the specificity of the poetry chosen. Auden, a poet who wrote well for longer than most, is reduced by his appearance here, Spender and others are possibly improved. Yet as we not only live longer, but our public writers have longer public lives, I think we would be wrong to dismiss this "generational" sense. There are gaps in the record. The various Millennium anthologies (Bloodaxe, Penguin, The Firebox) close with poets younger than myself. Yet you would think my generation be poets of the "nineties" if at all? Possibly things take longer now. The Next Generation list published in 2004, included quite a few poets born in the 50s and early 60s as well as the late 60s and early 70s; Alice Oswald, I was surprised to see, being about the closest in age. (I'd probably thought her younger if anything.) It does seem to me difficult to imagine a poet who had been a teenager when the Beatles were still together, (as Jane Draycott and Pascale Petit were), being classed as the same "generation" - anymore than writers much younger than me who had debut pamphlets in 2010 as a generation that I belong to.

Mere age is no signifier of course: the homogeny of the 30s poets was more similar than their sex; it often followed that they had the same education; often the same sexuality; and certainly similar careers and backgrounds. Yet, at the same time I think that if we don't necessarily think of the poets of a particular decade being all born within a few months of each other, there is still something about the poetry of that decade being of and from that time. Though Seamus Heaney or Christopher Reid or John Ashbery still win prizes it would seem a little absurd to include any of them in any "post-2000" poetry anthology - has their best work happened since then? I somehow doubt it, yet they've clearly remained an impact. There's unlikely to be a "poetry of the 00s" now and one kind of thinks that if anything there is a certain uneasy modern poetry that was written before and after the millennium a little uncertain of where it actually stood. Oswald's an interesting example; easily one of the most successful poets of the last few years; yet "a nature poet" - one of the oldest and most popular strands of English writing.

There are plenty of poets who have been retrospectively placed in their age - whether Emily Dickinson, Gerald Manley Hopkins or Edwin Morgan; the latter being revered towards the end of a long productive life in a way that simply insists in his place in the canon going back forty or more years. Other poets, one realises, may become as historically forgotten as so many then renowned, now unremarked, Victorian poets.

There are some debates that seem to have been going from the first time I was aware of contemporary poetry. Where are the black and Asian poets, I wonder? whenever I see a grouping of young poets they seem absent - has marginalisation re-occurred? Or has the relative success of the "performance" poem created its own separate world? Possibly the same goes for explicitly gay and lesbian poets? Then again, the British and Irish poem of the millenial window seems primarily concerned with self, but not in a confessional way, more in the anecdotal or the observational. In a globalised world, one sees poetry that is often as narrow as Larkin's or Heaney's - the flipside being that the narrowness is a trick, that the poem's universality can be found in the localism of subject, as it can be in the poetry of a recluse from Amherst. In terms of form, a certain formal free verse has been de rigeur for so long now, that one is almost surprised when something tighter or looser strays into the pages of "Poetry Review." Then again, now is the first time - in the UK at least - we're seeing poets who have consistently been through the workshopping of the BA or MA programs - often run by that previous generation's poets; a process that started a decade or so earlier with MA fiction courses.

Social media, poetry festivals, readings and magazine launches provide platforms that bring poets of different groups and different ages together - the group of NW poets I'm part of stretches across the decades, location and willingness to share being the thing we have in common - and perhaps it needs something else: a world event or a poetic schism perhaps, to define a "generation." And for those of us who've been writing poems forever, one can see the connections between a poem written in the 80s, 90s, or more recently, but one also sees the differences - sometimes of world-view, but more often of capability. One doesn't necessarily get better; but one hopefully doesn't get any worse.

Five Stories High: Citizen Kane

2012-03-24T00:37:00.003-07:00

Film is undoubtedly the most remarkable artform of the 20th century and cinema history now rivals literary and art history in any discussion of that receding period. If film has supplanted theatre in many ways, it is not quite as simple a relationship as that. We've recently seen a play become a film become a play again ("The King's Speech"), films adapted for the stage ("Ghost", "Flashdance") and films and plays with similar source material. Like a written play the original version is often sacrosant, yet films are our contemporary myths - and as such - are as likely to be reversioned or parodied or re-interpreted as Shakespeare has been. There is the user "remake" of Star Wars for instance.

A few weeks ago I heard about an intrigueing project in Birmingham as part of the Flatpack Festival. YARN were asking for artists, writers and performers to help them recreate "Citizen Kane" live with each artist given a small section of the film to reinvent in their own way. It immediately appealed, not because "Citizen Kane" is one of my favourite films, but because its one of the most iconic and multi-layered stories that cinema has given us. A "drama documentary" about the fictional Kane, but based on a number of rich men, including Randolph Hearst. The American oligarch is one of the key figures of the 20th century and in Orson Welle's masterful movie it becomes his subject as much as Lear or Hamlet was Shakespeare's. Beautiful shot in black and white I last saw it at the Cornerhouse a few years ago and was shocked to realise it was filmed before cinemascope - so used are we to film's now being widescreen.

All the artists, myself included were given a timecoded section of the film to interpret with 7 days to prepare, and came together at the Custard Factory in Birmingham last Sunday - where we met each other and the organisers for the first time. Lined up in the rehearsal space all we shared were our cues for coming on and off stage. The finished work - a remarkable two hours with over a dozen artists - covered so much ground, interspersed with some small sections of the original film. Beginning and ending with the self explanatory "paper cinema" the story was retold in song, performance, art and digital media. Some performers took a particular tiny nugget and expanded on it; others told the full story but in an unusual way. I'd seen the film again only last week, but I'm sure even a casual memory of the film wouldn't have hindered understanding. I particularly liked the inventiveness of the digital interventions - a Twitter feed for the editorial meeting at Kane's newspaper; and a "live webcast" interview with Facebook and other interventions for the quizzing of Jed Leland. Special mention has to go to Deadly Serious Productions who managed to write, act and direct a short film in the mere 7 days since they got the commission - a Spaced-like spoof of Susan Alexander's opera career that had the audience in stitches.

My own section was at the very end - Kane and Susan in Xanadu as their marriage breaks up. I interspersed text from the film with half a dozen other sources - including information about the actress Dorothy Comingore (who played Kane's wife) refusing to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities committee and being blacklisted. It seemed to fit with the whole spirit of the event.

Many thanks to Gemma and her colleagues at YARN who did such a good job not only in putting such a thing together - but having the confidence in such a diverse range of performers, some, like me, they'd never met. I could well imagine a Manchester equivalent - anyone for "A Taste of Honey" or "A Clockwork Orange?"

Photographs from the event and list of performers can be found here.

NEW Magazine

2012-03-18T00:06:00.002-07:00

I'm starting a NEW magazine...

http://adrianslatcher.wordpress.com/category/new-magazine/

Capital by John Lanchester

2012-03-17T03:34:00.002-07:00

Includes some spoilers - but tried to not give too much away

The pre-release hyperbole for "Capital" by John Lanchester is to hail it as a novel for our times - finally a contemporary novelist getting his teeth into the cause and reasons for the credit crunch. Lanchester wrote a highly acclaimed book about the crash - "Whoops!" - but perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise, that on finishing this curiously old fashioned novel, that it is "capital" as in London, rather than "capital" as in money, that is Lanchester's fascination. Certainly a novelist who has kept his powder dry since 2002's "Fragrant Harbour" has clearly not been desperate to write a fiction for the age.

The structure of "Capital" is a clever one - but that's the old fashioned element as well - for it takes one street, Pepys Road, in London, where middling houses have become multi-million assets, and goes down the road focussing on a small number of the inhabitants. An "ordinary street" in the capital (I'm guessing Wandsworth but may be a little out), there is an old lady who has lived there all her life, an Asian family with a corner shop on the ground floor, a football agent who is renting out to visiting foreign footballers, and the Younts, a new money family - Roger works in the city, Arabella spends the money he earns. "Capital" is a satire, or at least, Lanchester's tone is satirical. The short chapters take us carefully through these lives, but also in a secondary selection of characters that are connected to the street - an optimistic Zimbabwean traffic warden, a taciturn Polish builder, a beautiful Hungarian au pair, a secretive performance artist. Yes, Lanchester doesn't go far in his hunting for stereotypes. When one of the Asian brothers turns out to have been involved with a terrorist group in Chechnya the only surprise is that Iqbal, who he knew back then, is a Belgian.

There are attempts at a broader humour in the novel, but that's not Lanchester's strong suit, he's far better at the minutiae of his character's lives. Like other recent big "state of the nation" books by Jonathan Frantzen and Philip Hensher, there's a lack of discrimination about what to include. Rather than being about the characters in Pepys road, it soon becomes about this wider cast - no bad thing, perhaps - but a lessening of the impact. We get to know far more about some of the peripheral characters (such as the policeman Mills) than the main ones. The linking thread is not the credit crunch, but a postcard campaign that starts mysterious and ends up sinister, "We want what you have" say the postcards. This is a MacGuffin of the first order, and once he's started with it, Lanchester doesn't really know what to do with it. We assume its an art prank - but then it becomes a confusion. Far stronger on character than plot, the novel has some of the disconcerting enjambements that are so common in contemporary novels, plot lines petering out, or tending to not be about that much. Iqbal disappears and never reappears and we only have the dealings of what happens in its wake; the police - more plod-like than you'd believe possible - chase one hare and end up with another one; the performance artist has his anonymity stripped from him just when its convenient to do so.

The central characters in some ways are the Younts - but the scenes at the bank and at their home don't endear them to the readers. Rich beyond everyone's dreams, they are still financially stretched, and relying on this year's bonus. When that doesn't come you think "oh", and when the bank itself collapses Lehman-like, it happens offstage and no longer matters (as Roger has already lost his job.) In "Bonfire of the Vanities" a "master of the universe" accidentally runs into the real world that his privilege helps him avoid with disastrous consequence. In "Money" Martin Amis talks of money as a force of nature - that is just there, regardless, until of course, his John Self finds himself as the victim of a giant scam - yet in "Capital" there is no jeopardy - one family sells their mother's home and become "rich", another has to sell up and downsize. Or rather there is no jeopardy for the middle classes. In the best bits of the novel Lanchester sides himself with the Zimbabwean, the Pole, the Asian shopkeepers. In the arbitrary cruelty of modern life it is the weakest who fall and fail.

Don't get me wrong, "Capital", despite its length is an enjoyable enough read, but it wouldn't be unfair to call it slightly cosey. Chapters end abruptly as soon as there's an action point, and often these happen off-stage. Our narrator is an omniscient one and seems to be content on adopting a wry tone as if telling an after dinner speech. There's clearly been quite a lot of research gone into the novel, but as much about the strangenesses of the asylum system as the financial mechanisms of the city. At times it feels like the ordinary people and their ordinary lives have been equally researched. The cultural signifiers seem dropped in, as if researched by an alien who is just checking out Earth-life for the first time. In many ways, its an accessible read - that weird thing, the literary blockbuster - I can imagine that the BBC or C4 has already optioned it for a 3-part series, probably using one of their producers' houses as a backdrop. It tells something of contemporary London life, but hasn't anything of the artistic or storytelling bravado of "London Fields" or Micheal Bracewell's excellent "The Conclave." There is much enjoyment to be had in Lanchester's cast of characters, but also something "upstairs downstairs" about the rich and the poor in their lives they hardly see (except when they're an attractive au pair.) The real clue to the book's purpose I think is in the name of the road he writes about - "Pepys Road" - for Lanchester, like Pepys, is at his best when he is being an interested chronicler of everyday London life.

The Novel or the Novelist?

2012-03-10T03:21:00.004-08:00

The Poorhouse Fair, Goodbye Columbus, Dangling Man.

What have these in common?

Of course - these are first novels (a novella in Roth's case) - by three writers who are amongst the most celebrated of American novelists. A book or three later you'd have...

Rabbit, Run; Portnoy's Complaint; The Adventures of Augie Marsh...

three novels which were profoundly influential on American literature.

Try again...

Metroland, the Rachel Papers, Grimus...

maybe a bit easier...of course, you'll soon have Flaubert's Parrot; Money and Midnight's Children.

Lets play the game slightly differently...

Alentejo Blue; The Autograph Man; Ludmila's Broken English; Us.

Second novels following highly successful or much hyped debuts by Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, DBC Pierre and Richard Mason.

Whereas I did know the early novels by Updike et al, I had to Google the latter list (with the exception of Zadie).

Though its inevitably selective, it does make me wonder about the first novel syndrome - the big book that launches a career. In music its also well known (it might almost be called Stone Roses syndrome) where a band appears fully-formed with a debut that everything that comes after is a mere shadow of. For a novelist it can be disastrous. After all, though there are some great one-offs (To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye) the level of fame that those books brought was possibly partially responsible for the lack of a follow-up. Whereas a rock band might spend five to ten years working on a debut - with all manner of false starts (the equivalent of the "bottom drawer" novel) often finding their way into the public domain after the "hit", you could argue that music is still a young person's game.

No novelist, I would think, would hope to have written their best work at 22 or whatever - and even those getting published a little later might hope that they get better with the 2nd or 3rd book. I wonder when Grimus or Dangling Man were delivered whether the publisher was bowled over, or rather, discerned promise that this book wasn't going to necessarily fulfil? Its not the whole story of course - Updike already had a bit of a name for short stories; Rushdie was a successful copywriter; Amis was already an enfant terrible. Yet there does seem a sense that writers were being published not because this was "the book" but because this was "the writer." In other words, old hands in the publishing industry felt that the 2nd, 3rd or later novel would be the one that went beyond the respectable reviews and small sales of a well-regarded debut. I don't know if you could actually predict the actual books from those debuts? Reading pre-Money Amis for instance I've always found disappointing as that was the book of his I've first read. I can see that they are decent enough books, but their ambition seems so much less.

As for the debut sensations they're all cautionary tales. Zadie Smith's debut brimmed with confidence - and yet the follow-up The Autograph Man seemed to be struggling to keep up with the young American writers she so admired. There's some doubt now, it seems, whether she wants to be a novelist at all - and though successful, her third, On Beauty, looked back to Howard's End for its inspiration. Monica Ali's post-Brick Lane books have confused her publisher and audience by taking place outside of the millieu which she'd mined in that debut; whilst Richard Mason had a backlash virtually from the moment The Drowning People was published. (Not surprisingly, it wasn't a good book.)

No doubt a big early "success" brings with it its own pressure. Monica Ali (who was in her thirties when "Brick Lane" was published) has written a diversity of books since her debut - but one imagines that they've not done anywhere near as well as her debut. It seems that the investment in a big "book" does no favours to writer or publisher - and, inevitably, few writers have "big books" in them every time. A writer such as Nicola Barker, for instance, seems to be consistently close to a breakthrough book - Wide Open did very well, and Darkmans was highly regarded - and David Mitchell has achieved something critically and/or artistically with each book. The idea of a "midlist" author always seems a particularly British phenomenon - but in the US, its worth noting that Frantzen had books out before The Corrections, for instance.

I'd like to say to publishers, invest in the novel and you may well have a big book, but invest in the novelist and you might have something much more. I'm sure it still happens, but I'm not sure to what extent. I've met quite a few writers over the years who are clearly "one book" authors. Everything they have is invested in this first novel - and (often because of its personal nature), one can't quite see where they'll dig another one for. Then there are other writers who live for the word, who have an idea a day, and, if they have a fault, its in not being able to get the ideas out quick enough - or in the right way.

And part of this is about the quality of the writing. My disappointment on reading The Drowning People was partly the flatness of its prose. Surely, a young writer should be brimming with something new? This was a polite, middle-brow debut. The Rachel Papers brims with the brio that we'd find in later Amis. Amis's reputation, one feels, will rest on a couple of books (Money and London Fields) and his prose style and persona, much as Anthony Burgess's does. Another successful debutant, DBC Pierre has failed to live up to his debut, (as, arguably did Irvine Welsh). Flashy writing can be as impotent as the workmanlike, (think of Henry Miller, for instance.)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

2012-03-05T01:16:00.004-08:00

I wonder if we are re-entering an age of ghosts and spectres. Human history has rarely been without its supernatural element. At times, that belief in God has been palpable, and found physical form in the nature of churches, books, and - as counterpoint - the murder of non-believers and sending them to an equally physically imagined Hell. In the 20th century a different kind of paranoid supernature seemed to emerge. Regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and others - (and though less murderous, McCarthyism in the USA, the deference to the British monarchy, Stasi-led East Germany) - had their own supernatural apparatus, even if the bogeymen here were very human. Perhaps our stories of ghosts and spectres are exactly this, a way that we dehumanise what some of our fellow citizens have done undertaken. One of my favourite paintings is Caravaggio's of the taking of Christ by the Roman soldiers in Gethsemene.

Here, Caravaggio reimagines the Biblical-historical scene as it must have happened. These are obviously men (as is Christ) but he gives them a sheen of the other world through the hard black shells of their uniform. This is a painting that we see echoes of in Epstein's monolithic "Rock Drill" or George Lucas's Darth Vader.

The supernatural is not just the belief of the ignorant, but may be a far more subtle way of passing on myths and warnings through history. There were the islanders who went to high ground because the colour of the sky had changed, and escaped some of the worst of the Indonesian tsunami for instance. And our nursery rhymes and fairy tales are often warnings about very human interlocutors.

It is not that the information age is an obvious candidate for "superstition" - surely everything is there to be checked and verified? But of course, as spurious Twitter deaths and social media witchhunts show, the transmission mechanism is what has changed, not the propensity of humankind to think the worst. There are two ways I think in which superstition will continue in this age of information. The one is one in which primitive cultures faced with new inventions have always responded - with suspicion about the magic of it all. The "machine" is full of ghosts now, and fewer and fewer of us know how it works. Could, in a few years time, it be impossible to find an averagely educated person who actually understands what this magic of ubiquitous information is? But second, I think, is the distinction between the physical and the virtual. Already some history is becoming unavailable (or appearing so) because it is not showing up in a Google search. I can well imagine a future where physical artefacts could be as impenetrable to the future citizen as certain things are for us. Part of the joy of Antiques Roadshow and other shows is how "things" give an insight into "how we lived."

For the writer in this age - and not just the writer, but the artist, or the musician - we live in an age of immense over production. Or rather, there's less of gap now between the "professional" and the "amatuer". For in the novels of Jane Austen or Henry Fielding characters wrote copiously every day; a vast, lost archive of people's lives and creativity. Poetry, art, fiction, music all required (and require) some ability - but the ability, now, to make them available, is more than ever.

There seems a vast pool of contemporary poets for instance; or contemporary short story writers; or artists; or musicians. None of these groups is "amateur" in the old sense, yet in whatever way we contribute to the discourse of the day, the possibility for this art falling silently in the empty auditorium seems greater than ever. I came across the catalogue for Becks New Contemporaries 97 the other day its new enough to be archived on the internet by some of its artists, but I wondered how many are still practicing? (All, one would hope, and it does take time....Forsyth & Pollard's website says they had their first major London exhibition only last year!) And to what extent "practice" is a market activity. Just as publishers and magazines need writers to contribute to, record companies need bands to put out, so do galleries need artists to show.

This flourishing of artistic endeavour, should, of course, be one of our great achievements as a nation, as a culture - every bit as much as the churches that stand in every English village (each with their diligent, educated parson. But if empty pews speak clearly of over-production of religious experience, a left over from a previous age, what now? Youtube is an endless fascination. Every video uploaded - for instance - requires skills, with a camera, with a computer, that though "simple" aren't to be dismissed. Faced with this abundance, this longest, flattest of tails, there's a real risk that outside careful niches, art - this semi-professional art - falls silently. We all know of cult artists who did something a long time before the mainstream; we may be doing it ourselves; yet the contemporary critical culture is so linked to the marketing machine; so linked to the economic case for art (for instance, ALL the 6 "shortlisted" for the Ted Hughes prize this year are "commissions" - 4 of them for the BBC - surely, automatically excluding new, younger or less established poets?) In other words, just a few years after saying that the internet would democratize, hear we have more examples of how "gatekeepers" are back in a very clear way. If we've long wondered about the Turner Prize shortlist, for instance, it's partly because it's criteria is a professionals' one. Although I regularly go to contemporary art I don't think I've ever gone to Turner-shortlisted show. I don't even know if there has ever been a Manchester one that has been shortlisted? It is when the shortlist is announced - and we see them exhibited together - that the general public is let in to the newly annointed. The process is as cloudy to most people as the appointment of a Pope. Yet, we perhaps want to keep it that way, be provided with the menu and then taste the food, not be given the ingredients and asked to forage for ourselves.

For arts that require a certain amount of investment - the art show, the short film, the vinyl album - the artefact can still have a power of legitimacy. It's why poets still crave books after all. Yet, views on YouTube are no more an arbiter of a fanbase than free downloads. The internet has given us many good things, but I'm not sure Ed Sheeran's career is the one we were expecting. Valiant activities from small presses are stymied by two things - an over-production that is their main way of creating scale, and a fracturing of a small, possibly hardly-existent audience.
It's entirely possible of course that the "80%...90% of everything is crap" formulae is just getting higher - yet at the same time we are being asked to buy more, consume more to keep the economy going. "More" in this case can include culture - whether its DVDs, cinema tickets, CDs or poetry books.

We don't yet live in a new age of superstition, but there's a sense that something might break. Rather than seeing as the "Occupy" movement or the summer riots as signs of an angered, engaged population, what surprises is how, compared with previous ages, how little is going on. Visiting the Manchester Histories Festival in the Town Hall on Saturday I was amazed by the amount (and the nicheness) of the local history groups present. What would "success" mean to each of them? A new member? Three or four conversations? A book or an artefact sold? Who knows? Looking for something to eat I ended up in the shopping district. A crowd gathered as there was some freestyle kids dancing competition on a packed Market Street. Elsewhere, the Arndale centre was hardly negotiable, so many people were out and about. There is nothing supernatural about consumption - and here we are, trained to do it, continuing to do it, finding a small bit of spiritual release in doing it.

I'm not sure what I'm saying - these posts are often first drafts of ideas - and I've conflated a couple here, without quite getting to the heart of either. The wondering where superstition will exist in an age where things become increasingly virtual (does the artefact become more important? Or do libraries become as empty as the church of an ancient sect?) - and the role of over-production of art in a culture that needs the over-production more than it needs the art?

In the last week, I've bought books by Laura Oldfield Ford, Philip Davenport, John Lanchester, Neil Campbell and others, yet not sure how much time I'll have to read them - or God forbid, write about them as well! Yet, I'm sitting here, with a week off, knowing that I need - for my own sanity; and because its what I do - to add to this stockpile of work, that at best might receive only a silent applause. I applaud those publishers, blogs and magazines that have carved out their own little coterie, their own little audience - its possible that that's enough; that it creates a shape and narrative around diverse work, and, in time, that will feed into the wider culture. Alternatively, it might be that we are all the followers of narrow sects, proclaimers of the true word, gathered together in dimly-lit basements, glad only that our solipsism is cast aside for a night a month, measuring out our achievements with other solipsists, always a little bit fearful (but possibly glad) that someone outside - some black-clad Roman will come and haul us from our self-designed cell and into the light of public testimony or punishment.

World Book Day in Bolton

2012-03-02T07:00:00.002-08:00

Once upon a time bands would launch their new album in out-of-the-way places and fly or bus journalists in. Presumably the move away from the metropolis would aid concentration. I thought about that yesterday as I headed to Bolton Octagon to hear Gwendoline Riley read from her long-awaited 4th novel, Opposed Positions.

There, of course, the comparison ends - for I've seen her read at the Octagon before, and this wasn't a launch as such - and her and Jane Rogers were reading as part of the Octagon's admirable "Literature Live" series. Still, as one of the best writers to come out of Manchester's writing schools, Riley's absence over the last few years has been keenly felt.

I'm glad I made the short trip north. Compered by short story writer Zoe Lambert, it was a lovely event. Jane Rogers is a writer I've long admired, even if her critical star seems to have waned a little in recent years. Her latest novel, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, a futuristic dystopia was passed up by her long-term publisher Little, Brown, and published instead by the tiny Sandstone press, who were rewarded with good sales and a Booker longlisting. In a world where women die in childbirth ("maternal death syndrome") a young woman is determined to take control of her own destiny. Reading from both the start and end of the book, we get a sense of a very contemporary precariousness thrust into a possible future scenario that is both recognisable for its jeopardy, and imaginative. Keeping the mothers alive long enough to have their children, the women become "sleeping beauties".

If there's a connecting theme between the two writers its about generational shifts and complex relationships between children and parents. For Riley's 4th novel, the Carmel of "Cold Water", a heroine who mixed self-destructivenss with self-awareness, is replaced by a narrator who talks us through the multi-layered complexities of her family past. Speaking of weekends as a child spent with an estranged father, this extract from the start of the novel is a weave of complex emotional memories. The narrator is highly sensitive to the language and emotional landscape around her, mimicking her dad's scouse idiom. I'm reminded a little of the multiple memories of Natalie Ginzburg's "Things We Used to Say", but its also got some of the emotional maturity of American writers like Updike and Moore. Whereas we already know Riley's work for its poetic honesty, here there seems a new confidence in her depiction of complex emotional worlds - lives that are messy and unpredictable, families enclosed and repressive family lives.

A second half sees Rogers' read from the end of the novel - and Riley reads a long short story, a dramatic monologue of searing intensity that was recently published in the Edinburgh Review. Here "Gwendoline Riley" is a character in a story of a dysfunctional relationship with a feral, tactile brutal partner brought to life by the narrator's sardonic retelling of the tale. Great stuff, that one felt a little uncomfortable applauding at the end. Men don't come out of Riley's work well.

Fiction readings are sometimes hard to pull off - as a novel has to be reduced to a few lines - but last night was impressive stuff, at least partly because they are both novels I felt I wanted to read. Riley's is not out till May, but Jane Rogers can be picked up now - though she shared with us a new cover for the 2nd edition.

Visible Art

2012-02-27T14:58:00.001-08:00

A few years ago I was diagnosed by my optician with an eye condition, glaucoma, which has meant I've been on medication to alleviate the problem; and also in 2010 had an eye operation. Glaucoma seems a particularly writerly disease, famously, in the case of James Joyce, whose writing of "Finnegan's Wake" was done in a race against the condition, with regular trips to Switzerland to "bleed" the pressure on his eyes with leeches. My nightly drops are a relatively minor inconvenience in comparison with that.

Does one write about a condition? Perhaps - but rarely directly. A poem I wrote called "Glaucoma" begins "something I can't see comes from the side" and that is the feeling I have, that I sometimes lose things in my peripheral vision. There's an irony in that of course, as writers frequently are about spotting the things in the peripheral vision and making it real. Ironically, my Knives, Forks and Spoons chapbook "Extracts from Levona" came out at this time - ironically, because the collection is set in a "dot matrix print" which is difficult to read. When Alec suggested it, I agreed, partly because of what I was going through.

For a few weeks after my operation I couldn't read books or watch films as the concentration on that white space was too difficult; the computer, oddly enough was easier.

I love visual art - have done since I was eighteen. In my list of obsessions it's certainly above poetry, though probably below music... yet I realise, as I grow older and this eye condition deteriorates, how my vision is suspect. As a critic, as an observer I haven't 20/20 vision. One of the reasons we like visual artists is because of their concentration on the intimateness of the canvas, what happens then if you can no longer see that?

For me, it's not that I am in any way blind, but that I find dark rooms or low light (which you often get in galleries)difficult. Also, I'm not sure what I can now visualise - the small canvas is difficult because of it's intricacies; the large canvas because of it's size. In other words, my appreciation of art is determined to some extent by my vision. In a gallery now I find myself reading up close the description before standing back and seeing the art work, and whereas in the past I may have just been wowed by it, increasingly I'm finding it a little difficult to process all the information. In terms of aesthetic I find myself leaning to the 3-dimensional or the non-visual. So hearing Mark Leckey's performance at Manchester Art Galley on Thursday was perfect for this... but even in visual art, I no longer respond to the picture (did I ever?) but to the shapes, the patterns. In J.G. Ballard's "The Drowned World" the protagonist stays on the reducing archipelago far too long, and what there is, is some sort of epiphany; god is found in extremis. In Laura Oldfield Ford's work at the New Art Gallery in Walsall, it's the lines and depth of her pictures that I really respond to. I begin to see post-impressionism even in the literal,and - perhaps - see that abstraction is often more meaningful to the visually impaired than representation. "Visual" art seems the wrong phrase in many ways - as it implies the eyes - and sculpture, sound art, whatever - become more important in this context of us losing sight.

For me, I realise that as one vision narrows, another expands - and, I do think, this probably goes into my artistic practices as well... that I stop seeing, and start hearing, that I can't live with the endless words of a novel, but require the specific shapes of a poem or a shorter piece. The thing that so many people take for granted - their sight - is something that is (and always has been, to some extent) transitory in me, and therefore I have over-compensated in my love of sound and music, or - even when I look at a painting - my desire to see depth, to contemplate the third dimension.

Best week ever?

2012-02-22T12:43:00.001-08:00

I've just realised all the things I've got planned in the next week and a half and its pretty exciting.

Saturday I'm at Walsall art gallery for Laura Oldfield Ford in conversation and talking about Savage Messiah.

Next Wednesday its one of the most anticipated Other Room events for a while with Andrea Brady, Tim Allen and nick-e melville.

Thursday I'm hoping to get to Bolton for the return of brilliant Manchester writer Gwendoline Riley, reading from her new novel "Opposed Positions", alongside the equally excellent Jane Rogers.

Then Friday its avant-art-pop legend Momus at the Anthony Burgess Foundation.

And if I'm not alt.cultured out by then - the highlight for me of the excellent Manchester Histories Festival is a session on the history of fanzines.

Manchester Poetry

2012-02-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

I picked up a copy of the Manhattan Review in Oxfam, an anglophilic American poetry magazine. The issue had a feature on Liverpool and Manchester poets for North American readers, edited by Chris McCabe and Philip Fried. The lead essay talks in depth about a Liverpool poetry scene from the 60s and 70s, The Mersey Sound et al, but struggles a little to define a similar Manchester one: repeating instead the musical story of the Lesser Free Trade Hall, the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, Tony Wilson and Morrissey et al.

I've lived in Manchester since 1991, and though Manchester has always had a literary scene, it would be fairer to say its had a series of poetry scenes, rather than just one, performance, mainstream, experimental, or based around bookshops, magazines and publishers.

There was a Manchester Poetry Festival - which has since morphed into the literature festival - but that grew out of spoken word and comedy; though it didn't ignore the role of Carcanet and the Universities in the city's scene. It's why any truly anthropological collection of Manchester poetry would surely include Chloe Poems' (aka Gerry Potter) "The Queen Sucks Nazi Cock" and Lemn Sissay's "Hardy's Well" poem alongside Morrissey's lyrics to "Suffer Little Children", "Beasley Street" and "The North will Rise Again." Then there's long term resident of the city and poet laureate Carol Anny Duffy, Staffordshire born, Liverpool-linked; not to mention the poets, academic and otherwise, Manchester based, and Manchester exiled, that circle Micheal Schmidt's Carcanet and PN Review - Jeffrey Wainwright and John Ash to name two. Several of the Manchester poets in the Manhattan Review collection, including Matthew Welton, and my publisher Chris (Hamilton) Emery, no longer live here, the latter leaving a long time ago; whilst is Accrington-raised, Withington-based Steven Waling "Mancunian" any more or less, because his accent is geographical closer, than someone like myself who grew up in the West Midlands? A genuinely Mancunian writer such as Lee Rourke (now based in Essex) or Neil Campbell (in the North East) don't necessarily define their poetry by their city of origin. There was an issue of Norfolk based The Rialto a few years ago which included Welton, Campbell, myself and a couple of other Manchester poets - which we joked about being "the Manchester issue." It's also far too easy to forget that the internationalist approach of more experimental writers, like James Davis and Tom Jenks, both living in the city, but through presses like ZimZalla and ifPthenQ seeing themselves part of a non-parochial movement, that nonetheless has a strong physical focus here in the NW.

I'm certainly more of a Manchester poet than a Birmingham one - though I'd say I was more of a Midlands poet than either, if only because I retain both the accent (which does come through in the speech cadences of my poetry) and the memories (that imbue some of my work - and I've never spent more than a couple of nights in the city of Birmingham, never lived there.) I've written substantially about Manchester, but more in fiction than poetry, and the city - I realise - is only explicitly mentioned in two poems in "Playing Solitaire for Money". But York, London and Lancaster where I collectively spent seven years of my life don't get a mention at all; I'm clearly not an Elizabeth Bishop writing of geography, or a Philip Larkin of particular English place.

And that I think is true of Manchester poets in general. There are Manchester poems in books by Les Murray (a frequent visitor to the city) and John McAuliffe (resident here), but defining a Manchester poet is a hard thing. David Constantine has written about the Salford slums where his grandparents lived; and the Manchester poets who wear there city heart on sleeve are those where the accent and the image is so much part of their work, like Mike Garry or John Cooper Clarke. The 2 books that were recently published by Puppywolf under the name "Best of Manchester Poets" have come from the spoken word scene, though making tentative efforts to be more wide ranging.

Whereas there are Scottish anthologies, Welsh anthologies and similar, where nationality can be seen as being something that is "real", I'm not so sure that city's have the same identity; Manchester writers may have been born here, or live here or study here, but they don't necessarily write about here, and why should they after all? New Order, Joy Division and the Smiths have a universality regardless of their postcode or subject matter. Only The Fall retain, through sound and subject matter, a vision that can be so explicitly linked to their city of origin. Parochialism is one of the city's great failings - and its those artists that transcend that, whether referencing their background or not, that make it a great city - and one that can attract writers as diverse as Martin Amis and Carol Ann Duffy. A truly representative Manchester anthology, I think, would struggle hard if it limited itself to writing about the city by residents or sons and daughters of the city; similarly I think the last thing any Manchester poet - whether born, bred or landed here - wants to be told is to write about the Hacienda, Coronation Street and Boddingtons. Identity is fluid, and good poetry reflects that. It matters not where the writer of "Adlestrop" was born or lived, after all.

Beatboxing with a Didgiridoo

2012-02-19T03:04:00.005-08:00

Some weeks are like makeshift festivals in your life, adrenaline rushes, exhausted collapses, highs and lows. Hard to get perspective. And sometimes the only thing to do is to "pull yourself out of the oxygen tent" and carry on, and carry on.

Starting a new project always involves a lot of work, and energy, particularly when the kick off meeting takes place in Brussels with a room full of 40 or more people. As an "old hand" you find yourself explaining, talking, explaining again. Brussels is my current favourite grey, rainy city, and nice food, good beer and wine, and a little bar where I danced with a panoply of European colleagues to "Exodus" by Bob Marley, was somehow fitted in between two flights, and 18 hours of meetings. Returning to Manchester on Friday afternoon, I felt tired, but reasonably exhilarated, but keen to get back to normal life whatever that is.

I'd said I'd pop to TV21 for the launch of the Death Jeans album by local band Monkeys In Love. I've only heard them briefly before and this was the first time I've seen them. Riot Grrrl meets Swell Maps, with an added bit of their own art school surreality would sum them up, all in a good, unpretentious way as well. Several support acts were also entertaining including the second (?) gig by Manchester writing stalwarts David Gaffney and Clare Conlon. Taking the short story places it doesn't know it wants to go, Gaffney has previously given Powerpoints a good name in his performance, and he's now gone further off piste, with Conlon reciting his words whilst he plink plonks on a portable keyboard, and in the background, images sail by. Gaffney's tragicomic stories of everyday life are funny and poignant at the same time, though afterwards he said that some people had complained about his Greggs-obsessed opener. I thought it was hilarious (and I went to a comprehensive, so there!) So a good, vibrant, only Manchester can do this kind of night... at least if you could screen out the dickheads and idiots that seemed to be out in full force in the Northern Quarter that evening. Thin-skinned after a tiring week, I remembered why I don't often go out in town. Not that anything bad happened, just the atmosphere was always walking that tightrope of the tense.

So, given that, and the dull reality of the mountains of work that await my return, I was feeling a little battered down; but dragged myself out of bed to go to Liverpool where our little group of "north west poets" met for the 3rd time. Always invigorating, was pleased to discover a little of the Welsh poet, David Jones, who's declamatory style seems to predate Geoffrey Hill, and brought me to musing over the lexicons we now use, and whether my generation - whether religious or not - are the last where the King James Version runs throughout our cultural identity. More of that another time. Coming back into Manchester, and with an hour before I met a friend I sat in Kro opposite the university, having walked down the carnage-zone that is Oxford Road. Manchester seems to have a particularly feral edge at the moment, and almost every town bar you go into has someone drunk and potentially dangerous. Over the road at Big Hands, the post-Kaiser Chiefs crowd wasn't there yet, but Guy Garvey of Elbow was, and seeing how gracious he was with the couple of young fans who came over for a chat and a photograph, was a reminder of what real Mancunia is.

But if I've felt pretty tired of our dysfunctional, self-obsessed, dog-eat-dog city this last couple of weeks, last night at the Contact Theatre remind me that I'd miss it if I was gone. Audio Visual Meditations saw Baba Israel and a number of musicians and video producers put on two sets of improvisational music and visuals linked by video conferencing between NYC and Manchester. With no noticeable latency, a sitar player and vocaliser in New York (Neel Murgai) jammed with a guitarist and double bass player in Manchester, with Baba providing electronic beats and a range of acoustic instruments. A warm, late night, ever evolving set that had numerous melodic highlights (such as when classical double bassist Micheal Cretu "duelled banjos" a little, "trade some eights," said Baba, with Murgai's sitar). At one point, conjurer Israel pulled out a didgiridoo from beneath the desk and preceded to beatbox through it, definitely a first. Overpinning it all, VJ-mixed visuals from the two guys who make up Albino Mosquito and a live visualisation by a New York artist, provided a visual accompaniment to the beautifully balanced sound palette.

It's strange isn't it - the experimental poetry crowd, the digital art crowd, the classical music crowd, the jazz crowd and others would have loved this live collaboration - but though free, the audience was mostly appreciative friends of the Contact Theatre. I'd say its one of the most unexpected and edifying musical experiences I'd had in Manchester for ages. I'm quite into the improvisational at the moment, and if at some times all improvisational music edges into King Crimson territory, this is more because Crimson were one of the greatest bands ever, than because of any tendency to cliche. The mix of electronic and acoustic instruments, and the willingness to use Schwitters-like vocalisations in the multi layered live mix, provides a salutory lesson for so called "real" or "live" music. A one-off collaboration - but hopefully something that will be regularly played around with. Next time, make sure you're there.

Sunday is therefore my shortened weekend, with a lot to come next week. I've writing projects to work on, as well as my February "single". The sun, unexpectedly is shining on this computer screen. All is well in Mancunia.