King Lud's Revenge

Please Say Something

2010-06-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

This weekend a friend of mine introduced me to the work of an animator called David O'Reilly. His short film 'Please Say Something' is below.

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Unemployment: The New Freemasonry

2010-06-10T09:47:00.000-07:00

In that fabled Age of Plenty before the recession, when money-sprouting trees lined every street and the rude health of the Pound was the envy of the world, the prevailing stereotype of an unemployed person might have been articulated as follows:

Of or beloging to the family Sapiens Unemployedicus, the oft-sighted Homo Jobless stands in a slouched position at all times and is identifiable by his pungent and long-fermented bodily odour. His outer garments appear to have been slept in and furthermore bear the remnants of the various processed foods which consist his diet. While he often frequents public houses and betting saloons, the primary abode of Homo Jobless is a bedroom-cum-rubbish heap whose curtains are permanently closed and whose floor is obscured by a yellowing mosaic of out-of-date tabloids. He is technically defined as a state-sucking parasite who does not have a job because, by his own admission, he 'can't be bothered'.

In 2010, however, attitudes towards these undesirables have noticeably shifted. Unemployment, once a dirty word, seems to have lost its social stigma - which is no surprise, when you consider the sheer numbers involved.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of UK residents currently unemployed rose to 28% in the first months of this year. That's over a quarter of the population; a significant milestone. With so many people out of work, the old stereotype of the lazy, epicurean reprobate who sponges off unemployment benefits rather than getting off his fat arse to work, has gone out the window. Now (as I have discovered from personal experience), unemployed people can enjoy a generous amount of sympathy from those very people who might previously have looked upon them with scorn.

Perhaps the most significant upshot to this shift in attitudes is the effect it has on the psyche of the unemployed person. While looking for a job remains perhaps the most depressing, degrading and demoralizing activity known to man - especially in these belt-tightening times - not having one does have some unexpected consolations.

Last night, visiting a friend at an end-of-degree show at the RCA, it dawned on me that being unemployed makes you a member of a new, exciting and entirely contemporary social network - one that has a membership amounting to a rather impressive 28% of the population. As I began conversations with a number of people I had never met before, and they made the obligatory enquiry as to my profession, I found that I instantly had something in common with all these fledgeling jobhunters. Rather than shame, confessing to being a jobseeker opened up a giddy new field of shared experience.

We traded stories of breakfasting on Haribo sweets, drinking John Smith's while watching The Daily Politics in our underwear, and being rejected from the position of 'Trainee Shelf-Replenisher' at the local supermarket. We compared notes on the pretentiousness of our CVs and the nuanced phrasing of generic rejection emails. We scowled in conspiratorial glee at all those middle-aged bastards with jobs and cash and security. They'd never be like us, with our thrift-store chic and our defiant insouciance and our cavalier, renegade outsiderness.

Perhaps it was all that beer which I couldn't afford, but it seemed to me that with all these fantastic and inspiring layabouts to talk to, being a bona-fide waster might not be so dreary after all.

Underwood Part 2: The Drum

2010-06-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I stumbled across a website-based literary magazine called The Drum, which publishes ten issues per year in audio format. Like Underwood (see post below), they are embracing new ways of packaging and distributing fiction.

The key difference here is that while Underwood are taking a faintly Luddite approach by releasing their stories on deluxe, original edition vinyl, The Drum are embracing (relatively) new digital media by publishing their journals in the form of Mp3s, or podcasts.

Here's what they say:

"Each of The Drum’s ten annual issues brings you new literature you can weave into your daily life. Listen online or download the audio to listen to on your mp3 player and/or to share with up to five friends. Use our tags to choose a story as long as a dog-walk, or an essay that will last you for your ride to work."

I've only just stumbled upon this website so I haven't yet had a chance to gague what sort of quality the writing is at, or whether the individual recordings can be said to form a 'whole', in quite the same way as a printed, bound and paginated magazine. (Or perhaps the point is that, like a playlist, you can rearrange the order as you please?)

But this is a further telling example of the direction in which publishing seems to be heading. By beginning to assimilate new technologies in order to adapt to the current digital environment, it's possible that the industry will be able to expand the very notion of what 'publishing' means, thus widening the array of potential formats on which to distribute written work - in the case of Underwood and The Drum, not written down at all. Podcasts may have been around for a few years, but their widespread use as a means of publishing fiction remains limited. That could be set to change.

Underwood

2010-06-07T03:32:00.000-07:00

Interesting news from the publishing world, especially following Garrison Keillor's recent obituary for the industry, as discussed in the last post.

Named after an old make of typewriter, new imprint Underwood (tagline: 'Stories in Sound') has published the first in a highly ambitious, twice-yearly series of short stories. Published in May and November with two stories in each, this first installment comes from Granta-listed novelist Toby Litt and winner of the BBC short story prize, Claire Wigfall. What makes the whole enterprise unique is their choice of format. Rather than publishing the as a book, e-book, blog, magazine, or anything so familiar, Underwood are recording the stories being read by their authors and publishing them on vinyl.

It's an intriguing experiment, and the sort of venture that seems so counter-intuitive that it just might work. By directly subverting the mass migration from physical-to-digital formats in publishing, Underwood are clearly hoping to establish a niche as a publisher not only of short stories (an oft-maligned form in modern fiction), but of nostalgic, physical 'originals' which are beautifully presented and illustrated and can thus be cherished as objects in their own right - something you can't do with an Mp3 or an e-book file.

Again, it's going back to that old argument against digital formats: by removing the physical element, the product becomes less tactile, less sensuous, less 'human', and thus the overall experience is diminished in a key way. With digital music, as any vinyl fanatic will tell you, you lose that inimitable warmth of sound emerging from the vibrations of a physical object, that enveloping, soothing crackle. With books, you lose that faint musty smell and the feel of a book's rough paper as you turn the page. Personally, I've always had a fondness for the way your thumb makes the edge of each page ever so slightly grubby as you turn it, and you are thereby able to tell how much of a novel you have read simply by looking at its pages and spying that faint-grey watermark that works a little further along the book each time you read. In an interview for Notes from the Underground, Toby Litt, unsurprisingly, describes this allure of the physical as one of the key reasons for his involvement in Underwood's first publication (or 'release'?):

'I remember the first record I ever bought, and the excitement of putting it on the turntable … Vinyl has presence; it’s fragile and unique, and it deteriorates and crackles, unlike CDs. I think people are also more likely to make the effort to listen to something they’ve bought on vinyl – you can’t just stick it on your iPod, you have to put the stereo on and pay attention.'

So Underwood is an interesting proposition, not least because it seems to be appealing to a nostaligia for vinyl and, indirectly, for literature in a physical format. It's a slightly uneasy marriage, perhaps, sitting uncertainly somewhere between literature and music, the content of the former presented in the format of the latter. But therein lies its appeal: it's not an either-or product, but is desirably both to record and fiction fans alike, and in a subtle way seems to be doing something with publishing which is entirely new.

Given the current economic climate, it remains to be seen whether there are enough people out there hankering for new fiction in original editions to sustain the venture. Underwood's expensive (£23, including shipping), boutique, limited edition originals are certainly desirable objects, both beautifully presented and highly unusual. Here's hoping they succeed.

http://www.underwoodstories.com/

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

2010-06-04T05:10:00.001-07:00

A short while ago, American novelist and broadcaster Garrison Keillor wrote this prophetic announcement on the imminent demise of publishing, quality fiction, and sentient life as we know it. Apparently, Keillor also recently discovered that the Pope is Catholic, and is busy penning a scandalous exposé on the subject. The epiphanies keep on coming.

There is of course an kernel of truth in what he says, but will the rabid doom-mongers please put some relaxing music on the wireless and take a well-earned break already? It seems that not a day goes by without someone writing a hysterical lament about the state of modern publishing, which, we are led to believe, is fatally wounded, shall never recover, and will die a slow death even as we cradle it in our cherishing arms.

The internet, e-books such as Amazon's Kindle (more recently, Apple's iPad), the blogosphere and, of course, the inherently degenerate practice of text messaging are all supposedly to blame, and it is at these usual suspects that Keillor points his finger. The big irony is that these people are often lamenting the very format through which they are disseminating their views: the blog. And were it not for online publishing, I never would have read Keillor's piece in the first place.

Keillor's main beef is with that confounding contraption, the Internet. This new-fangled work of technological wizardry enjoys nothing more than shredding decent, proper experiences such as reading a Garrison Keillor novel into a meaningless shotgun spray of diversions. As he puts it: 'surfing around from Henry James to Jesse James to the epistle of James to pajamas to Obama to Alabama to Alanon to non-sequiturs, sequins, penguins, penal institutions, and it’s all free'. Which sounds like quite an exciting read, actually.

Thus the 'Old Era' (Keillor's capitals) of publishing is gone; those halcyon days when honest, salt-of-the-earth Midwesterners such as Keillor could bash out a novel on an actual real-life typewriter and send the manuscript off in a 'manilla envelope' (some sort of horse-drawn vehicle, I believe) all the way to the bright, bold lights of yonder New York City, where those fabled Publishers resided in their emerald towers. This time-honored system ensured that writers such as Garrison Keillor were published and read, while other, lesser writers who didn't deserve to be published were not.

Now that everyone can self-publish a novel online if they so choose, Keillor seems to believe that everyone will self-publish a novel ('18 million Americans' is his statistical stab in the dark), leading to a suffocating slurry of third-rate prose that will swamp legitimate writers like him. Well, let's be realistic here: not everyone has a novel in them, despite the cliché, and while the option is out there to self-publish a novel, the probable truth is that hardly anyone will - at least not in the numbers Keillor predicts.

The whole rambling argument has clearly been motivated by Keillor's fears of an imminent disruption in the status quo to which he has grown accustomed. It's all hot air and hearsay, knee-jerk responses to changes beyond his control in a world which, by his own admission, he isn't a part of.

That Keillor isn't a part of the publishing world is obvious: he hasn't managed to employ a single fact or statistic (apart from the made-up ones) to support his piece. Having said that, perhaps his Tiresian gift is so acute that visions of the future present themselves as some sort of shimmering hallucination, and thus speak for themselves...? To round the whole debacle off nicely, Keillor commits the cardinal sin of condescending prose in his closing paragraph, and addresses his readers as 'Children'. Jesus wept!

All in all, it's no surprise that Keillor's article met with a widespread backlash from all those un-jaded writers and editors who couldn't have disagreed more. And what website did they choose to air their disagreements? Twitter, of course.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with a brilliantly succinct comment by writer and editor Maud Newton (featured in this response article on Flavorwire), which pretty much says it all: 'Yes, publishing will change, but it will also continue to exist. And so, unfortunately, will ill-informed kids-these-days rants like [Keillor's].'

Ps. If you want a genuinely interesting article on the decline of publishing, read THIS.

We've Got No Money, Which is Nice

2010-06-02T02:52:00.001-07:00

It's funny. Back in early 2009 the Credit Crunch seemed to be hitting - from a personal perspective - at the worst possible time. There is never such thing as a good time, obviously, but having recently graduated, it became abundantly clear that any attempts to acquire employment over the next few years would be rendered almost unprecedentedly difficult - the worst time in a hundred years. Job-hunting, never anyone's idea of fun, was beginning to resemble some sort of Sisyphean punishment, all futility and restless anguish.

But just as I was least expecting it, I began to feel excited. While most thoughts were of the doom and gloom variety - imminent unemployment, lingering debt, the truly horrifying image of living under my parent's roof until I was thirty - there was also a sense, however desperate, of liberation. Applying for one of those 'proper' jobs so fabled by career advisors, with proper salaries and proper offices and pension plans, was more of a time-waste than ever. Now, I realized, if I tried to get such a job I wouldn't stand a chance, especially considering all those newly redundant CEOs and MDs and VPs who would be groveling for whatever jobs they could find, and for which they were monstrously over-qualified.

THIS recent Guardian article by artist Grayson Perry reminded me of those weird few months when it seemed that everything and nothing were simultaneously possible, when my future appeared at once bleak and full of potential.

His argument, nestled among a cheerfully bitter rumination, is that 'aesthetically and conceptually, this is a really healthy moment for art.' He's referring here both to the disastrous economic climate and the recent shambles over the elections, which saw the Conservatives rise to unconvincing power.

By way of explanation, Perry reiterates some familiar critiques of rampant consumerism, which he blames almost exclusively for a decline in the depth and meaningfulness of modern art. As a result of the fickle and pernicious influence of consumer culture, he argues, the pervading expectation of modern art is that it should provide 'a five-second ride down a chute', a swipe at Carsten Holler's recent family-friendly instalation at the Turbine Hall. It shouldn't ask anything of us, and it shouldn't take up much of our time. But now that money, consumerism's fuel, has gone, Perry believes that the vapid urges associated with it will cease and, by implication, we shall see a resurgence in the popularity of more 'meaningful', if taxing, art.

While the recession has stripped much of the glamorous shimmer away from consumerism, not least because people can no longer afford to buy stuff, it's difficult not to detect a hint of sour grapes in Perry's argument. It's never easy to pin-point the exact reasons for shifts in attitude to art (not to mention the supposed audience attention spans), but to suggest that a massive recession will somehow reverse that shift seems motivated more by premature relief than considered opinion.

Having the spending cut-driven Conservatives in power will certainly provide political fodder for a generation of disaffected young people, and as history tells us, disaffected young people are often responsible for some of the most iconoclastic and invigorating cultural movements of modern times (think, for example, of the rash of young musicians and artists galvanized by a shared hatred of Thatcher into writing rallying protest songs). Likewise, the pervasive lack of any real cash will drive artists to make the most of their means, to be inventive, to improvise, to create art in unexpected places and by unexpected means.

So, like Perry, I'm excited about the new art, music and writing that is no doubt already in gestation, out there in the Ether. I'm just not so convinced by his suggestion that this period of collapse will result in a return to old attitudes, old attention spans, old preferences, and that these will wash away the damage wrought consumerism and restore us to some pre-lapsarian state. Surely this new climate will encourage artists to move forward, rather than back?

Four Tet: Bloody Marvelous

2010-06-02T01:57:00.000-07:00

Four Tet, Villiage Underground, Bank Holiday Sunday

Four Tet's new album, which for some reason he decided to call 'There Is Love In You', is a marked change in direction for the musician known for his genre-defying blend of warm acoustic instrumentation and laptop trickery. Moving away from the plaintive lo-fi textures in favour of the kind of thumping four-four beats more often associated with techno, Four Tet has clearly been inspired by his recent DJ sets to try his hand at dancefloor fillers.

The new club-happy direction has definitely paid off, not least because the prospect of a live gig that you can actually dance to - as opposed to merely listen to, in statuesque appreciation - becomes much more appealing of a bank holiday weekend. Following a slightly lacklustre set in Dublin a few years ago, which was the first and only other time I'd seen Four Tet live, I was looking forward to hearing how the new album would translate into a live set, especially in the club-like confines of Village Underground.

Laced throughout with dizzing sci-fi sound work that would have done the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop proud, yet never straying far from an eminently dancefloor-friendly tempo and driving beat, Four Tet's new live set manages to be both appealingly direct and refreshingly experimental. Highlights included the epic 'Love Cry', all droning keys and strident vocal samples, and the understated and hypnotic 'Plastic People' - both of which are personal highlights from the new album. Taking Kratwerk-esque synth workouts, enveloping sound textures and an unexpected burst of 90s 2-step, this was dance music at its intelligent best, without ever straying into the dubious waters of chin-stroking IDM.

Click HERE for a good quality recording of his recent New York gig, which is not as good as the London set, but well worth listening to. And here, because I never get bored of it, is 'Love Cry' (gotta love the 'House Music' logo, too):

Another Blog

2010-05-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

It's about time I provided y'all with a link to my friend's blog. The being known on Earth as Aengus Walton is a friend from my university days who was known for being the only student lateral enough to combine Computational Linguistics with German in a half n' half course. No one else had ever studied that particular combination of subjects at the University, apparently.

He has since gone on to remain admirably unemployed somewhere in Ireland. His blog can be found HERE and covers such topics as politics, music, photography, and, personal favourite, how much he despises yoko ono. You can also freely download some of his self-programmed, er, programs which I don't fully understand but look very cool. Check it out.

Twilight: Is There a Possibility That It's Actually, In Some Convoluted and Highly Paradoxical Way, Quite Good?

2010-05-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

Heathrow, 23rd March. British Airways' finest 747, hull quivering in panic after three days of strikes by Unite, paused momentarily on the runway before it embarks on a draining long-haul flight across half of Planet Earth. Here I am, seated in utmost discomfort, fondling a plastic satchel of conciliatory freebies (flimsy blanket, flimsy headphones, flimsy travel toothbrush that bears an alarming resemblance to a vibrator), and wondering what in God's name I am doing flying to Delhi.

Seated beside me are two of my oldest friends, both of which are in exactly the same boat, or plane, whatever. We listen to the distant sounds of the twin engines whir ominously to life. We ignore the animated safety talk which we've heard ten thousand times already. We stare over the lip of a rabbit hole which, after eleven hours, will spit us out in Delhi early the following morning, stripped naked of every cultural and social norm which has thus far given us solace and context. I'm sort of shitting my pants.

But in the midst of this gloaming there is shining beacon of comforting light, the pole star of our darkest hour, and it is known in the business as In-Flight Entertainment.

The last time I witnessed IFE, the entire cabin had to squint at a thumbnail screen that folded down from the overhead compartments. Not so today. In a utopian 2010, you get your own touch-screen television, lovingly embedded in the headrest of the seat in front of you, which places at your fingertips a selection of films which, joy of joys, are so new as to still be on at the cinema. You can pause them while you desperately guzzle a complimentary gin and tonic. You can even adjust the brightness of the screen, in case you want to watch the film without removing your sunglasses. It's all systems go, in the world of IFE.

So in order to defer attention from the fact that I am about to embark on a two-month leap into the unknown, the process of deciding which film to commit to becomes increasingly important and engrossing. Should I choose the Coen brothers' new comedy, 'An Ordinary Man', or Tom Hank's latest joy ride, inspired by one of Dan Brown's faultless masterpieces, 'Angels & Demons'? Just when my finger is poised over the latter, after much deliberation, the chirpy air hostess commandeers the tannoy system to inform us that the IFE is, regretfully, broken.

It's not long before the runway judders are over, and we're up in the air. Bugger.

Our journey has inexorably begun. Through the double window I watch England fall dizzyingly away like something formerly bolted to the underside of the suspended plane. After much kerfuffle, the tinny tannoy system announces that films will be shown after all, although the touch-screen system is out of action. The relief is palpable. How else were we meant to survive eleven grueling hours without the soothing distraction of miniature movies? I plug in my headphones, turn on the screen. There's a moment where it coyly withholds the image, booting up, until suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Robert Pattison is on the screen.

I've heard about this, it's impossible not to. Twilight: the four-part vampire fantasy that is inducing feverish, slobbering devotion in thousands of pre-pubescent girls. Just when you thought the Harry Potter tsunami had subsided, another wave of mass hysteria is washing out the wallets of adolescents everywhere.

As with all things that are incredibly popular for no good reason, I find myself intrigued by the Twilight franchise. I want to know if my aloofness is justified, or if, less likely, I'm merely denigrating pop culture in order to shore up the walls of an ivory tower. Is there a possibility that I've missed something here? Is Twilight actually good? Surely those millions teenagers can't be wrong.

The plane continues its flight, though up here in the baffling clouds it's anyone's guess as to where we are. At some point we are served a plate of styrofoam pseudo-food in metal trays that give each mouthful the metallic tang of a sucked coin. I sit and watch the film, grimly fascinated, strictly in the name of research.

On the face of it, 'Twilight: New Moon' has no obvious redeeming features. The liberally talcum-powdered Pattison, perhaps appropriately for a creature who is basically a corpse, delivers his lines with all the vigor of a heavily sedated octogenarian on the brink of all-out liver failure. The dialogue is so excruciatingly 'emotional' that watching it unfold feels curiously like staring into the sun. The plot just about glues together, but only just... All in all, I remain tragically unable to see what the fuss is about.

But I still watch the movie from beginning to end, and still sort of enjoy the experience, in some deeply perverse and masochistic way. There's something undeniably compelling about the film. Maybe it's precisely the reasons I've given: the weird, fetishistic appeal of the truly naff.

Or perhaps, though I can barely say it, it's something else: something which cannot be reduced to the sum of its mediocre parts, a magnetic aura that pervades the work and renders you unable, however much you want the experience to end, to turn the thing off. As the credits roll and the plane continues its journey into the unknown, I find myself thinking the most magical thoughts. Maybe, just maybe, the whole experience of watching and judging and grandly pooh-poohing 'Twilight', oddly satisfying as it is, renders it in some peculiar way, and on however abstract a level, good.

DFW's Undergrad Thesis

2010-05-28T02:57:00.000-07:00

This announcement will come as interesting news to fans of the late American novelist David Foster Wallace, who, like a literary 2-Pac, is set to have a fruitful career beyond the grave. I'm all for the publishing of his unfinished 'The Pale King', by all accounts a typically encyclopaedic novel that obsessed and frustrated Wallace right up until his death (his last act, reportedly, was shuffling the copious draft manuscripts, running to several hundred thousand words, into some semblance of order). But an undergraduate thesis? Most writers, I imagine, would baulk at the idea of publishing something which they wrote many years ago in order to impress someone with a PhD and a comb-over. I know I would.

But then again, Wallace's first novel was largely written as an undergraduate... So how does the excitement of a new publication by a favourite (dead) author chalk up against my reservations?

Set for publication in January 2011, 'Fate, Time and Language: An Essay on Free Will' is to give an unprescendented insight into the philosophical grounding of Wallace's fiction. As a fan of Wallace, it's hard not to get excited at the prospect of there being more work to discover, more books to read, more ideas to be challenged by - not least because, as a sometimes obtusely philosophical writer, 'Fate, Time and Language' could provide a 'key' to unlocking some of the more opaque philosophical ideas explored in his fiction. That said, it's almost certainly going to make your brain hurt.

As Zadie Smith and others have argued, the reason Wallace chose fiction over philosophy is the former's capacity for creating an empathetic bond between reader and character. In other words, you care about the people you read, in a very real, morally active sense; whereas in philosophy, you're just grappling with abstractions, and abstractions can distance you from real people. The greatest horror in Wallace's universe was solipsism: the moment you replace empathy with intellect, you begin to sever the all-important links between you and other people. So it's interesting to hear Columbia describe the thesis as a 'moral' victory: a critique of overtly philosophical, abstruse thinking, which is itself rigorously philosophical. A Wallacean paradox, perhaps.

Which sort of brings me to one of the most important aspects of Wallace's writing: style, tone, and how it affects the reader. Even in his most high-brow moments (I'm thinking of the essays really, his frankly exhausting work on lexicography in particular), Wallace was keen to cut his vaunting intellect down to size with slang, self-deprecation and irony. Dave Eggers described him as 'rigorously unpretentious', and, in terms of tone at least, the way he addresses the reader, this is spot-on. It's what enables you to defy Infinite Jest's monumental size and draw real enjoyment from the process of reading a work so intricate and convoluted and dizzyingly stimulating. That tension between the desire to be intensively intellectual, and the desire to engage and make connections with his readers, is what makes his work so fascinating.

But I digress. In summary: do I believe there to be an element of cynicism to the posthumous publication of a minor undergraduate work by a major author? Probably. And do I think Wallace would have been entirely happy with it being published? No, not really, in the same way that Nabokov's corpse is probably still doing the rotissery chicken following the publication of a fragmented half-novel, 'The Original of Laura'. In the end, this book will probably - probably - compare to a forgotten B-side or home recording by Jimi Hendrix: far from the real McCoy, but an interesting digression for those passionate enough about Wallace's work to want to know more about his thought, and his intellectual development.

So the crucial question, I guess, however begrudging my answer might be, is this: will I buy it, and will I read it? 'Fraid so.

BrokenCYDE: A Pop Cultural Nadir

2010-01-12T09:25:00.000-08:00

Over the years, I have often become fascinated by a perennial question: who are the worst band on the planet? Much to my dismay (it was, after all, a perennial question, one which I could return to again and again with caustic relish), it seems to have been answered, with deafening finality.

It began, as bad things often will, with an email. A friend recently sent me a youtube link to single by an american band known by the randomly capitalized soubriquet, BrokenCYDE. An 'alternative' rap-metal band, BrokenCYDE are famed for their day-glo headbands, androgynous haircuts, and mortifying attempts to appropriate hardcore black culture into middle American teen angst. They auto-tune their seventh-grade voices, promote 'getting crunk' at every available opportunity, and have a fondness for tinny, niggling synth lines that make you feel like there's a wasp inside your head. Once bitten, forever smitten. The moment I saw BrokenCYDE's video, I knew my understanding of modern music - namely the depths it can sink to - was in for an overhaul.

Let us arrive now at the heart of the matter. The reason BrokenCYDE are so horrifyingly compelling is easy to explain on intellectual grounds but difficult to absorb emotionally. Hailing from Satan's arsehole, via New Mexico, BrokenCYDE have created a hybrid genre so self-evidently abominable that it seems to defy logic - specifically, the logic that says "please don't do that, it's obviously wrong". That genre, an unholy splicing of hip-hop and punk, is known as "Crunkcore". Even the name sits awkwardly in the mouth...

Crunkcore is driven by the painfully incorrect assumption that putting dutty crunk riddims together with emo angst is going to result in some 'good' music. In other words, its driving ethos is that by putting together two of the worst aspects of two of the worst genres in contemporary music, you'll somehow create something good. I'm afraid that in this instance, as in every instance, two wrongs do not make a right. Like Faustus, BrokenCYDE have raised hell, and with any luck it will eventually destroy them.

Here is the (official) video of their single, Freaxxx. Judge for yourselves.

Total Recall

2009-02-10T05:02:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched Total Recall. It ticks all the right boxes: Arnold, gratuitous ultra-gore, outrageous shoulder pads, baffling attempts at James Bondian one-liners, a winning "shoot everything" irreverence for human life, robots that explode when you tell them to shut the fuck up.

But as an actor Schwarzenegger is like King Midas in reverse: every thing he touches turns to lead. Like the proverbial Irish terrier, whether happy, angry, indignant, or depressed, in Arnold's hands the entire kaleidoscopic gamut of human emotion is rendered uniform by the rictus of the face, the deader-than-deadpan Austrian drawl, the mechanized auto-acting. And this is why we love him: he is the meat-head's meat-head. His moral universe is so clear-cut it's monochrome. And, balancing the scales righteously in his favour, are bullets, bombs, big bangs. It's everything you want from an action film, in other words.

(Arnold goes through some changes)

Total Recall is based upon a short story by Sci-Fi auteur Philip K Dick called "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (always great with titles, was Dick). So, despite the fact that Arnold's radiating beefcake mentality, there are some speculative themes explored amidst the gleefully nonsensical carnage - and not just about women with three tits either. In a plot line that features so many twists and anti-twists that the accumulative effect is one of strobe lighting, invincible Arnold discovers that he is the real him, then he isn't, but oh no he is, but actually he isn't... and so on and on until, by the end, you're left feeling about as confused as Arnold looks.

But the main theme of the story, and the main commodity in Philip K Dick's story, is memory. This is an age where memory can be bought and sold, where the recollection of personal experience, which to a large extent constitutes and informs who we are, or believe ourselves to be, is about as personal as movie rental. It dramatises a fear that global techno-industries could develop to such a point of sophistication that they infringe upon the inner sanctum of memory, turning our identities into yet another market and disintegrating the reality/virtual distinction in the process. At the end of the film Arnold, ever the pithy philosopher, turns to face his frazzle-haired beau as the Martian sky is purged a symbolic baby blue, and asks her: "But whad ef dis is awell a dreeam?" He's got it in one.

Which brings us to that question I'm sure you've been asking yourselves all along - what kind of film would Total Recall have been if, instead of Arnold, we had Proust? He would, I'm sure, have a thing or two to say about all those memory-swapping identity crises, not least because the plot would take him on a quest to rediscover lost or buried memories in the protracted hope of discovering who he really is... More importantly however, he'd add the dapper touch with his decadent French mannerisms and devastating wardrobe.

"A la Recherche de Temps Mars", anyone?

Vs.

52 Stories

2009-02-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

Great news for fans of the short story, Harper Perennial have begun a new short story website called 52 Stories, which features a new story each week by new and established authors - in some cases, namely Tolstoy's, more than established.

The short story has always taken a backseat to the novel, and perhaps rightly so. The short story is shorter, for a start; less capacious, less ambitious, less likely to sweep us off our feet. But, on the other hand, it is arguably easier for a writer to attain perfection in a short story than anywhere else in fiction. A good short story is gem-like. You can't imagine adding to it or taking anything away. The writer seemed to discover the story, fully-formed, rather than go through the aduous process of draft and re-draft to attain that polish, that calm control. There is no novel I know of, on the other hand, which is not marred by some imperfection, however trivial. 'Of Mice and Men', perhaps. But that's sort of a long short story.

But for all that they are short, one night stands which do not demand the long-term commitment of a novel, short stories remain strangely unpopular. Perhaps it has something to do with the mentality that states a short story is an apprentice form, lesser than the novel because they are written by aspiring writers hoping to hone their craft before tackling something more serious.

In the UK, The Sunday Times Magazine runs a weekly short story, which is otherwise unheard of in the major papers. (The New Yorker, of course, continues a long tradition of supporting the form.) Outside of that, you'll need to look at specialist literary publications such as Granta, Ambit, Pen Pusher etc. for your fix.

I hear that publishing a short story collection is a publisher's idea of suicide: they simply do not sell, and hence the drought of them in recent years (with notable exceptions). So it is uplifting that Harper are putting their efforts behind this website. Some of the stories are quite good, too.

Some words you never knew you loved:

2009-02-05T02:39:00.000-08:00

inchoate

adumbrated

froideur

onanistic

raffish

hustings

midden

bosky

recidivism

apostate

perorate

moistly

ultracrepidarian

chiaroscuro

Book Digestion

2009-02-04T04:09:00.000-08:00

What am I currently reading? Oh! Well, since you ask...

Bubble bubble, toil and trouble: the amorphous spew of London. There's very little plot to speak of. Linear constraints are rejected in favour of flickering episodes that leapfrog history, from the Blitz and beyond to the 80s aftermath, memory biting protagonists on the arse, "coming to terms" with this ridiculous capital. Kicking off at a day group for mentally unstable Londoners, the book lurches uncomfortably back, forth, back again, sideways, any which way to examine flickering episodes in the life of its born-and-bred protagonists. Never the same yet ever the same, the same old city, ever changing: Moorcock's lumbering novel explores this paradox.

Joseph Kiss: giant, fleshy, verbose, either psychic or schizophrenic (what's the difference, Moorcock seems to ask), is one of a confused trinity of central characters. Mary Gasalee is the female element: bombed out by the Blitz, shell shocked into submission, she's spent decades in a coma exploring a London of the mind, until inevitably she wakes. David Mummery is the kid of the group: psychically disturbed (psychic disturbance being the motif), bullied and bruised but not beaten. Like Moorcock he is a writer of histories of a hidden city, its overlooked nooks and crannies. His project is to codify. Their three lives, messily tangled together, are revealed incrementally but in no particular order, like archaeology gone wrong. Schizophrenia is Mother London's subject and method.

Tha language is dense at times, not quite Mervyn Peake's gothic slurry but thick, viscous, confounded with voices. (Lots of unpunctuated voices in italics - what is it with unpunctuated voices in italics?) Much of the detail is meaningless, skip-able - but it serves its purpose. Ephemera accumulates and before you know it there's a city, a history, an unlikely sum of parts. A novel undoubtedly indebted to Ulysses, as all city novels are bound to be, Mother London is ambitious and sprawling. It isn't neat or pretty. It heaves, the centre does not hold. Iain Sinclair calls it "a great, humane document". I'll tell you when it's finished.

It is difficult to imagine that there was a time when the world didn't have nuclear bombs. I remember a time before global warming. I remember a time before the internet (which makes me feel instantly old, like some fossilized and technophobic granddad). But nuclear weapons, "WMDs", have always been there, hovering vaguely like apocalypse, more a notion than a threat. It's too big a concept to swallow, nuclear war.

In the opening essay of this collection of short fiction Amis, with pathological morbidity, rams home the message: we're fucked. Forget Prometheus, forget Pandora - it's Einstein we should be worried about. Although undoubtedly tinged with a Cold War paranoia, and although, these days, nuclear proliferation has given way to global warming as the shit-your-pants zeitgeist, nuclear war is still a possibility, however distant.

I'd rather not consider it. It's too ugly. But, Amis as ever swaggeringly points out, it's also silly. It's absurd! We could obliterate life on Earth millions of times over - that's not just a fact, it's a joke.