Posts by Chris Bell
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You're a braver man than I, Graham. I thought about the London Bar poetry readings... just thought about them, not about actually taking part myself, you understand. It made me feel ill. Truly terrifying. I guess my own verse - placing, as it does, new emphasis on the word 'blank ' - is just not suited to the Poetry Slam-type event, which always sounds like the kind of thing a sumo wrestler would do to a poet.
Nobody Important wrote:
And speaking of Olde Auckland I was very disappointed to return to NZ to find the seaview I enjoyed when driving down Princes Street from the Maidment to Shortland Street (yes kids, it was named after an actuall street!) was defiled by The Scene Apartments.
I have wailed about it on NZBC.
Chockasunday wrote:
It seems like there's way too many people in New Zealand who complain for the sake of complaining.
I wish to complain about that comment in the strongest possible terms.
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Charles Mabbett quoted from Wikipedia:
Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee
...snip...
though supplies are obviously limited<
and Angus Robertson wrote:
<quote>Wondering how many coffee beans they can productively cram into each civet to make the exclusive coffee before said civet expires?You can almost a imagine Civet coffee becoming the new fois gras. I'm hearing that noise the coffee grinder makes in your local café as another payload of coffee beans drop into the dilated throat of the civet cat, ready for another perfect extraction...
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As I would expect, a reasoned post from Graeme and intelligent comment. Not much to add, really, except perspective.
In 1980s London, as a 23-34-year-old, I reviewed (vinyl) singles and albums for a freesheet called Soundcheck! that was given away outside gigs like the Hammersmith Odeon and at Boots the Chemist, which then had a record department. Reviewers weren't paid for these reviews, 'only' got to keep the records (a lot of NZ publications still work on the same principle, I believe).
I soon learned it was possible to take some snarky notes about the latest new romantic offering in the time it took to listen to the single - three minutes, usually - having already set aside those records that interested me for special treatment. I rarely bothered to re-listen to a record if I didn't like it on first listening, just went away and typed up my notes, which were then submitted to the editor.
Years later, while living in Germany, I'd attend the playlist meetings at Radio Hamburg (for which I briefly contracted as a consultant and interviewer) and remember being appalled that the head of programming would decide whether the station was EVER going to play a single based on his thoroughly unmusical review of the song's intro, before it even got to the chorus in most cases. Egos were involved, so were prejudices against certain artists and, of course, ignorance. I can think of cases where I and one or two savvy DJs protested that a song the programme chief had heard perhaps 25 seconds from (Jerry Harrison of Talking Head's song Drive comes to mind) deserved a thorough listening and ought to be on the playlist. This was in the days before radio playlists were created and maintained by computer and rotation was maintained entirely through human intervention.
These days - on NZBC, for example - I only review music, books and art that I like more than I dislike, and I'm slightly ashamed of the youthful arrogance that led me to believe I could say anything intelligent about a record in the time it took me to listen to it. Nevertheless, although I don't consider myself a critic, I agree with Graeme that I have heard (and like) a much broader range of music than most people I know and do now feel qualified to comment on some of it. Strangely, though, my 'hard drive' is full and I find myself just not caring about most new music... Go figure.
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merc wrote:
Ben, could you please clarify your point there, because I think it's a good one.
WRT Blade Runner, is this universal nature of humankind thing questioned or affirmed? And I guess we need to define Universal Nature of Humankind in this context, no?I agree. Ben, please clarify; I'm intrigued. Because I don't believe that's what Banks is saying at all. Hoban maybe... but I promised not to mention him again.
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As less of an "aside of an aside" to this thread, if I'm not mistaken Scott and Sam and anyone else who has so far commented on Iain Banks has been praising only the "Menzies variant" (i.e. the sci-fi chunk) of the novelist's body of work. It's worth adding, I think, that The Bridge is an extraordinary novel and may eventually come to be considered a modern classic (alongside Martin Amis's London Fields, say; although it's a quite different kind of book).
Did anyone else who watched the first season of the BBC's Life on Mars notice the similarities? Man has car accident; goes into a coma; cannot escape from it or a strange alternative world not of his choosing... I've commented on this elsewhere and, while it might easily be coincidental, you do have to wonder.
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Simon Grigg wrote:
As an aside, the first (and easily the best IMO) Split Enz album, Mental Notes, opened with the line "stranger than fiction / larger than life / full of shades and echoes" lifted verbatim from the Penguin back cover of Gormengast. The album also had the track Titus.
British prog band The Strawbs (more accurately, the Hudson-Ford component thereof) also had a beautiful Gormenghast-inspired song, called Lady Fuschia (misspelt on the iTunes Store), available here.
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Simon Grigg wrote:
Mervin Peake....not only the Gormenghast trilogy but Mr Pye and his wonderful children's work. His flights of, sometimes, medieval merged with gothic fantasy enthralled me for years. I remember the three pages he took in Titus Groan to describe two steps taken on a staircase by Steerpike. The TV adaptation could not, and didn't do it justice. That said, I haven't revisited it in recent years as I think I'd be disappointed.
I'm really glad you mentioned Peake, Simon. A lot of readers hate that laborious, drawn-out aspect of his (and other writers') work, and the internet and short attention spans may - temporarily, at least - have killed it. It's what I'm always saying about how great writing makes an impact on me: it's not tight or convoluted plotting or cleverness that makes it memorable. It's atmosphere. Peake understood that, and perhaps it was his past and his work as an illustrator that made creating such vivid imagery so important to him.
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I think it's pertinent that you cite Huckleberry Finn, Rob, since Riddley is often mentioned in the same breath.
I do intend to give Vernon God Little a try. But oh, for more time to read... I've just about finished Part One of Don Quixote and hope to conquer the rest before I crawl off to die. :-)
I'm also halfway through Alan Bennett's fabulous Untold Stories - not the sort of book I'd mention in a list of supposed 'greats' (whatever that actually means), but I do love reading perceptive people's diaries - the experience reminds me greatly of Brian Eno's A Year With Swollen Appendices (not as painful as it might sound), which I also recommend. These books might not be great in the spirit of many of those mentioned by others in this thread, but they are such 'cosy' reading - in the absolute best possible meaning of that word - that you just don't want to put them down. I've been carrying the Bennett around with me from room to room a bit like a security blanket...
My final word on Riddley (really, I promise everyone!): Try reading the first paragraph aloud to yourself. It becomes a living thing and, once you've heard Riddley's 12-year-old voice in your head, it's unforgettable - you don't really need another reader.
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Stephen Judd wrote:
although I enjoyed Riddley Walker, I spent so much time trying to figure out all the allusions that I started treating it less as a story and more as a puzzle. I couldn't engage with it or suspend disbelief.
I can see how that might happen, Stephen. It has in part to do with the reader's expectation of writers and books. The first time I read Riddley, the first of Hoban's books I'd read, for some reason I trusted him to take me where he wanted me to go. I didn't spare a though for allusions or imagery that time, just enjoyed the ride. I missed a lot, but I've made up for that since - I don't think I have read any book more often.
Other writers fail miserably to win my trust in the same way, almost from the first word. Almost everyone raves about Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, so I was positively predisposed. But I found it excruciatingly contrived to read; DBC Pierre's Ludmila's Broken English almost as contrived. Strangely, the style of Riddley doesn't get in my way nearly as much.
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Rob Stowell wrote:
Chris- yeah, they are all good books Pilgermann, or Kleinzeit, or The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz - and Riddley Walker is a classic... but not, for me, a loved one.
I agree of course, Rob, that it's a matter of taste. Also, that there seems to be a 'library card' for certain books written into one's DNA.
For me, the culmination of a life that has somehow been built on the idea of Hoban's books (in most cases, before they were even written) was a pilgrimage to Canterbury in 2005, to coincide with Hoban's 80th birdthday. Our group was led down into the crypt of the cathedral and, in the Jesus Chapel, a fellow Riddley fan, Eli Bishop, read us the "Eusa Story" (Chapter 6), followed by the part of Chapter 15 where Riddley is in the crypt with its "stoan trees":
"I opent my mouf and mummering only dint have no words to mummer. Jus only letting my froat make a soun..." etc.
I am by no means a religious person, but my face is still rusty from that experience.
On the matter of poetry, two words: Billy Collins.