Neverwhere

I re-read Neverwhere, after chatting to Luke, who was reading it for the first time. I love this book quite madly, probably due to the combination of loving Neil Gaiman and loving London madly as well.

I love the way the hugely different worlds of London Above and London Below overlap, yet don’t quite merge, at stations of the London Underground. The Gap is a ravenous predatorial pouncing fog if you’re from London Below, as opposed to the minor hazard we’re told to Mind by a disembodied voice that’s become background noise to most of us. If you get off at British Museum (long-closed to London Above), ads for moustache wax and two shilling seaside holidays are still plastered on the walls.

There’s something about London, and the London Neil Gaiman presents in Neverwhere, that makes it almost easy to believe that in London Below there are black friars at Blackfriars, an actual angel in Islington, shepherds in Shepherd’s Bush who you should hope you never have to meet, Coke and chocolates from platform vending machines are served if you are a guest at Earl’s Court, and you have to get to the floating market at Harrod’s (the previous one was in Big Ben – it floats from place to place) by crossing Night’s Bridge.

Excerpts: Writing Home (Alan Bennett)

Writing Home is one of John’s favourite books, and I’m glad he made me read it despite my complete unfamiliarity with Alan Bennett’s work. In some ways it’s an experience akin to reading the very best (I use that word loosely, and won’t bother to clarify it) blog/online diary combinations, except that you can curl up in bed with this, and it is consistently charming. Thought I’d put a few favourite entries up here before I return the book to John (with many thanks!):

1982
5 April, Yorkshire. I walk round the village at half past ten, the shadows from the barns sharp and clear under Larkin’s “strong, unhindered moon”. “This must wait”, is my foolish thought, “until I have written something that permits me to enjoy it.”

1983
20 December, New York. I am reading a book on Kafka. It is a library book, and someone has marked a passage in the margin with a long, wavering line. I pay the passage special attention without finding it particularly rewarding. As I turn the page the line moves. It is a long, dark hair.

1984
25 September. Gore Vidal is being interviewed on Start the Week along with Richard (Watership Down) Adams. Adams is asked what he thought of Vidal’s new novel about Lincoln. “I thought it was meretricious.” “Really?” says Gore. “Well, meretricious and a happy new year.” That’s the way to do it.

7 December. To a party at the Department of the History of Medicine at University College. I talk to Alan Tyson, who’s like a figure out of the eighteenth century: a genial, snuff-taking, snuff-coloured, easy-going aristocrat – Fox, perhaps, or one of the Bourbons. He is a fellow of All Souls, and when Mrs Thatcher came to the college for a scientific symposium Tyson was deputed to take her round the Common Room. This is hung with portraits and photographs of dead fellows, including some of the economist G.D.H. Cole. Tyson planned to take Mrs Thatcher up to it saying, “And this, Prime Minister, is a former fellow, G.D.H. Dole.” Whereupon, with luck, Mrs Thatcher would have had to say, “Cole, not Dole.” In the event he did take her round but lost his nerve.

1986
4 March. Read Winnie the Pooh to an audience of children at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn. Many have never been in a theatre before. I battle against the crying of babies and the shouts of toddlers and end up screaming and shouting myself hoarse. It is Winnie the Pooh as read by Dr Goebbels.

On Deciding Not To Engage Zadie Smith In Conversation

I can’t guarantee it really was Zadie Smith I saw coming out of Bookhouse (lovely discount bookstore off Tottenham Court Road) on Saturday, but it certainly looked a lot like her. Thoughts of saying hello skittered briefly across my mind, but disappeared almost immediately. I figured even literary celebrities might get tired of being recognised, and what with loaded Tesco’s bags in my hands and a bad hair day, I didn’t really feel I was in optimum mode for meeting anyone anyway.

What would I have said, anyway? Do you come here often? Lovely bookshop, isn’t it? Hey, liked your book. You really do like Salman Rushdie a lot, don’t you? Not that I’m saying your book’s derivative. He should be flattered, really. And so should you, because his writing style’s so tough to copy, I mean, emulate, no, I mean…er…lovely day, isn’t it?

I was probably right to keep all that for the inner monologue. But I really do like White Teeth, even if a large part of that liking is derived from loving Rushdie.

[Indulge me on a tangential analogy here: I like And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead largely because they manage to incorporate a ridiculous amount of all that is good about Sonic Youth in their work, and avoid the bad (Kim Gordon vocals, for example). Perhaps it’s completely arbitrary of me to say Trail Of Dead’s Madonna and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth are influenced but not derivative, but somehow that’s how I intuitively feel about them. The realm of artistry is theoretically open to both the Velvet Undergrounds and the Velvet Underground-influenced, although in practice we may justifiably bicker about the door policy. (There is no guest list.)]

[Footnote to above tangent: I probably diss Kim more than necessary. She takes a lot of getting used to, but it wouldn’t be the same without her. Love Kim, really.]

Anticipating Endless Nights

From Neil Gaiman’s journal:

“I finished Miguelanxo Prado’s story for Endless Nights yesterday — a very strange story, in which we get to see one of Dream’s first relationships, and learn weird things about the DC universe at the dawn of time (so there will be some people who will find it really cool that Killalla of the Glow is from Oa, and some people will simply go “What a short name for a world”). The strangest thing was writing a two page scene for Delight – who is, obviously, in a hundred million years or so, going to be Delirium, but isn’t her yet.”

The information above will mean nothing to you if you’ve never read Sandman, but if you have, please join with me now in responding: I WANT.

Never Mind The Backlogs

Cryptonomicon is still good going whenever I have time to pick it up, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel an ongoing and recently gnawing need to feed greed. Which is rather absurd, given that American Gods has languished, unopened, for far too long on my bedside table and needs a lot of TLC, The Prince really should get reread soon so I can return it to the guy I borrowed it from six months ago, and I really want to finish Love In The Time Of Cholera some day instead of reading it halfway three times and inexplicably abandoning it each time despite liking it very much.

So I suppose that means I shouldn’t go out and buy Atonement today then.

Of course there is also the small matter of all the other books that remain unread and completely unfamiliar, such as Cases And Materials In Company Law, Cheshire And North’s Private International Law, Dworkin’s Law’s Empire, Shaw’s International Law…

I think this all boils down to an acute case of eyes bigger than brain.

Memory Hole

A character in Cryptonomicon (435 pages down, 918 minus 435 more to go!) referred to a “peace dividend”. It took about 10 seconds for me to remember what that was and where I’d learnt about that from (preparing a case on disarmament for the World Schools Debating Championships in ’98). In a Dublin cafe Alec described Singapore as “monetarist” (amongst other things) to a friend of his and for at least a few seconds I couldn’t remember what that meant either.

Passing thought: how much have I forgotten and don’t even remember ever knowing? Facts, ideas, people?

One Liners + Poetry Jumble

Newsmax.com’s daily updated archive of one-liners from late night American talk show monologues is an invaluable service to the Lenoless and Conancraving worldwide. Continuing in the vein of shallow low-brow things that I unashamedly enjoy, I watch these on cable in Singapore, and was sorely missing them last night when I lost ten minutes of my life to Jonathan Ross and his mission of boredom.

  • The U.S. military says that even though Osama bin Laden may have left Afghanistan, they will continue to bomb as long as Geraldo is there. – Leno
  • If you don’t laugh, that means the terrorists have won. – Leno
  • The Olympic Torch completed its 13,000-mile journey tonight in Utah. Unfortunately, local Mormons thought the torch was a cigarette butt and stomped it out. – Conan
  • Next week on Sesame Street they are going to air a series of shows to explain the war on terrorism to kids. That’s a good idea. This also explains why Oscar The Grouch is being held in a trash can on Guantanamo Bay. – Conan
  • Happy New Year! If you’re watching this at home, you are having one lame party! – Conan
  • Osama bin Laden is planning a televised suicide. I call that hosting the Academy Awards. – Letterman

Rather less low-brow is plagiarist.com, which has a pretty damn fantastic range of poetry available, including many favourites I haven’t put up here [my old site] yet.

Try some e.e. cummings if you never have, and even if you have make sure you’ve read these:

Variation On The Word Sleep and Postcards are Margaret Atwood discoveries which remind me I really must go buy some of her poetry, despite not always being keen on her prose (loved A Handmaid’s Tale, abandoned Alias Grace, am somehow completely uninterested in A Robber Bride).

No Simile Intended

From Cryptonomicon:

“The taxi stops. The driver turns and looks at him expectantly. Randy thinks for a moment that the driver has gotten lost and is looking to Randy for instructions. The road terminates here, in a parking lot mysteriously placed in the middle of the cloud forest. Randy sees half a dozen big air-conditioned trailers bearing the logos of various Nipponese, German and American firms; a couple of dozen cars; as many buses. All the accoutrements of a major construction site are here, plus a few extras, like two monkeys with giant stiff penises fighting over some booty from a Dumpster, but there is no construction site. Just a wall of green at the end of the road, green so dark it’s almost black.”

I reread this paragraph a couple of times, struggling to figure out the simile. Then I finally realized there wasn’t any. He meant real monkeys.

Poem: After RM Rilke (Primo Levi)

Just like that, a week gone and nothing written here about it. Cue inevitable cliche (time, fly, fun, blah).

Get thee behind me, Real Life.

For now, have some Primo Levi, who I’ve been enjoying these days in rare moments of solitude:

After R.M. Rilke

Lord, it’s time; the wine is already fermenting.
The time has come to have a home,
Or to remain for a long time without one.
The time has come not to be alone,
Or else we will stay alone for a long time.
We will consume the hours over books,
Or in writing letters to distant places,
Long letters from our solitude.
And we will go back and forth through the streets,
Restless, while the leaves fall.

(You might also want to read Rilke’s Autumn Day, which the above poem was written in response to.)

Sholipshishism With Seamus

As is often the case when work and various other things start encroaching on my usually satisfactory sense of mental stability and general well-being, I’ve been feeling an ever-increasing compulsion to do anything but everything I should be doing.

Hence: tendencies towards extreme offensiveness at debating committee meetings (this would involve interrupting the President’s incessant whinging and acute martyrdom complex by shouting “Well, BOO HOO!”, and then collapsing in helpless cackles), rather too much time and money spent at the hall bar drinking dodgy £1 vodka alcopops, and a general longing to just get out of the hall, the law library, the debating chamber, the entire UCL locale altogether.

Except that most of the time my inertia and disorganization means I end up retreating to my room and music and books, which are all far cheaper forms of escapism than the alternatives that come to mind, but this tends to steep me in solipsism after a while, which I don’t like.

[Speaking of solipsism (or perhaps not, because I don’t think the poem is entirely solipsistic, but it did somehow get associatively recalled by my use of that word) please read Personal Helicon (Seamus Heaney) because I just love it.]

[You could also do with reading Anahorish and Death Of A Naturalist, and pretty much everything else he’s ever written, while you’re about it.]

[You could also buy me Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, if you’re feeling generous.]

[Or you could buy it for yourself, which would admittedly make me less happy than the above option, but would nevertheless make me quite happy, all the same.]

Where was I? Oh yes – solipsism. :)