Adrian Mole.

So I've not done much over the past four days, which is pretty much the central idea of (my) Christmas. I've left the house to go to the pub, go for a walk, and buy a camera. I can live with that, I've had man-flu!

It's after two and I'm still awake, thanks mainly to a combination of The Lives Of Others (ace film) and Adrian Mole & The Weapons Of Mass Destruction (ace book) which have consumed much of my evening. (Was meant to be at In The Trees tonight but I refer you to the above man-flu.)

Part of my evening has also been taken up by the BBC adaption of The 39-Steps, but I'd prefer not to dwell on that because it was A: pitiful, B: features Rupert Penry-Jones (who slid far too easily into the role of a right wing, militaristic toff/twat who is borderline Bond at the very best) and C: the admittedly good looking bastard kept his clothes on.

Frankly, the only decent Christmas TV has been Wallace & Gromit and Dr Who. The films have been sub-par selections, The Royle Family was disappointing, and most of the rest of it was forgetful. But at least I got to read The Tales of Beedle The Bard, which are a miniature joy.

Future Resolutions.

As it's the end of 2008 people are talking about New Year's resolutions. Not sure if I have any to make though. The whole get my life back on track / fresh determination thing happened last year and it's going swimmingly. I've paid off a load of my debts, written a book which I'm in the process of preparing to submit to agents, got started on some kind of career, and have started planning a move south.

On the other hand I've put on a bit of weight. Maybe Pilates is the answer? Because I'm sure as fuck not eating less food.



Hmmm, suddenly that looks like a lot of fun...

David Mitchell on Christmas

The man speaks a glorious truth, each and every word.

We of the Christmas-liking tribe will keep the Christmas-cynic tribe in perpetual subjugation - they will be made to join in whether they like it or not and particularly if not. They will never, if we can help it, be permitted to "get away somewhere hot" but, if they do, we can be confident that our allies overseas will besiege them with spray-on snow and piped-in Slade even as they sweat round the pool.

Gormenghast.

To north, south, east or west, turning at will, it was not long before his landmarks fled him. Gone was the outline of his mountainous home. Gone that torn world of towers. Gone the grey lichen; gone the black ivy. Gone was the labyrinth that fed his dreams. Gone ritual, his marrow and his bane. Gone boyhood. Gone.

There’s something startlingly unique about the language used by Mervyn Peake. He writes in ways I just can’t comprehend doing myself, and could only ever offer a hollow imitation of if I tried, but when I read his letters they just seem perfect. His sentences are slow, lengthy and weighted with adjectives, but they read so well. His descriptions are unlikely and shouldn’t work but they do. A favourite of mine in the first of his Gormenghast books, the knuckles of rock and blasphemous towers paint images so clear I actually found myself wondering just how the BBC adaptation ended up looking like it did.

Then again, though I quite liked the BBC version, it pales to the books because the books are so magnificently unfilmable. The vast and magnificent Countess Gertrude, the stick insect of Flay, the ungainly and sinister charm of Steerpike, even the wrinkled midgetness of Mrs Slagg; none of these things could ever be portrayed right, because Peake’s language conjours visions that could only ever work in the mind. Celia Imrie is an amazing actress, but (even fat suited as she was) Peake’s image of the slow dignity of the Countess as she escapes the library can never be matched on-screen to on page.

The final chapter of the first book (without a doubt the greatest ending I’ve ever read) when the city of Gormenghast is deserted, and Gertrude’s cats swarm in frantic horror among deserted halls looking for her... well, it’s impossible for me to replicate, impossible for anyone really. I’m thinking about this because I just picked up the third book and idly started reading, had to force myself to stop because it was sucking me in and I have other books to finish first. But soon (“my sweet” as the mountainous cook Swelter would doubtlessly add). Soon.

Silly dear.

According to BBC News an Austrian actor has slashed his own throat on stage after being given a real knife by mistake instead of a collapsable one.

The audience apparantly thought the special effects were brilliant

Stirling work from BBC 4.

I have had to literally tear myself away from BBC4 just now, because otherwise I simply won't sleep. But I've just had a very informative couple of hours courtesy of it, and I was so tempted to watch (for a second time) the latest Andrew Graham Dixon program on Giogio Vasari. But had I done that I would have been dead to the world tomorrow.

Screenwipe was first up, and I very much enjoyed this week's episode. Charlie Brooker has assembled a line-up of some of the best screenwriters working in British television right now, and I'm just thrilled to find I share things in common with Russel T Davies. It was interesting to see people talk about the process of writing, and to be assured that everybody has the same problems, and the same doubts, and the variety of ways you can work.

What probably made me happiest was realising I was in the luckier class of writers, the ones that don't have to plan ahead, but can just sit down and start to write and go from there. It's a process that's written me (so far just the first drafty of) a book I'm very proud of, and as I found this afternoon I actually found fun to read when browsing through in preparation for a second draft. So I must be doing something right.

Mind, the program didn't answer the question I most want answered, which is whether these second drafts / rewrites is just editing what's there already, or actually starting afresh. And how you know when it's ready, for that matter.

Following that was Mark Lawson's interview with John le Carre, an absolutely fascinating program which I think has actually told me a lot. Actually no, that's a lie, it's told me a lot about him and his books, what it's done for me is help confirm things in my head and give me a boost of self-confidence. Both programs did that actually. In particular his attitude towards the genre-fiction / literary-fiction divide was extraordinarily nice to hear, and in the same way as Neil Gaiman and Susannah Clarke (among others) he's almost become a standard bearer (to me) of just how brilliant genre fiction can be.

Also le Carre's talk of his earliest books (the two early Smiley books, the second of which I have recently finished) and his attitude to them is helpful (very similar to Philip Pullman's attitude to his earliest books to my eyes). They're learning exercises in a way (the phrase he used was something like finger-tapping) it's alright to make mistakes, and it's alright to be overly imitative of your influences (something I'm quite acutely aware of when I look at my own writings).

It all leads me to confirm to myself what I've long known, Smiley absolutely pisses on Bond.

The pleasure of short stories.

I know all about not judging a book by it's cover, and it's a sentiment I thoroughly agree with (I have an unfinished short story lurking in the innards of my iBook somewhere which is essentially a rant on this topic, thinly disguised as fiction). But allowing the eye to be caught by a pretty edition (this one, to be precise) can sometimes be a very good thing.

I was vaguely aware of Angela Carter but had very little knowledge of her work, but this book is magnificent, a beautiful collection fairy stories from all corners of the world. I'm becoming more and more attached to short stories, both in writing and reading them, I'm also (finally) stopping reading collections of them as though they were a novel, and ploughing through a full book. While this is sometimes fun (I recently read Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things as if it were a novel, and very satisfying it was too) it can deprive of another pleasure. Which is just flicking to a random tale, slap bang in the middle of a book, and enjoying it as it's own work, even if it's only a page or two long. Carter's book (actually two works, combined into one after her death) is something to be enjoyed in that manner, and look how pretty it is!



Short stories online are also catching my eye at the moment, I stumbled across a site I had forgotten about recently called Edit Red which I uploaded a number of short stories to a year or so ago. I quickly deleted most of what was there (because they made me wince) and uploaded Firebird this afternoon; and I already have a nice comment! Having a brief browse through Edit Red and it's promising, obviously quality is variable, but there's plenty of gems in the shit.

In a similar vein, the website East of the Web is also great for perusing random short stories. Like Edit Red its content is from user submission, but they have a fair bit of quality control and so generally the quality is better. I may be sending them some things shortly.

The very definition of self conscious.

This picture rocks my world. You can see the painful realisation on every face.



Tonight, old episodes of Frasier on Youtube are also rocking my world. I miss Ros and Niles especially.

I also took the opportunity to watch the overbearingly titled 24: Redemption (sigh, too much TV in a night, I was meant to be at a gig and everything!) in which the Africans were next in line to torture Jack Baur (or is it Bower?). I think I managed to make it half way through series 1 before I gave up, and to be honest this tv movie didn't exactly change my mind. Especially since Robert Carlyle got killed.

Simple fact is I can handle a cold, calculating bastard of an anti-hero, which is what people say Jack Bower is but actually isn't. Instead what we have is a sentimental tit who sneers at the UN (bit rich from a yank), shoots people (good in entertainment) and goes all gooey over a bunch of kids (bad in entertainment). James Bond would have left the bastards to die, and that is why I prefer James Bond.

Final thing, since posting the clip of Pair Bambi I've come across the MP3 of the full version of the song, which is ace because they only used two thirds of it in the film and I'd never heard the full thing.

For your listening pleasure.

Gosh, I am posting a lot today (though some of it is classed as tomorrow technically).

Speaking of the Alec Guinness effect I saw A Handful of Dust recently, a film I found very different to my expectations and which I ended up liking a lot more than the early scenes led me to hope.

It's a very stark movie under the sumptuous period drama styling, and it makes the world seem incredibly morally barren. The ending (the best part of which doesn't seem to be online, something I'll remedy if I get the chance) beats even The Wicker Man in its ability to disturb. I don't know if this is because of the lack of theatricality which Edward Woodward's screaming climax brought to Robin Hardy's horror, or just because Alec Guinness played so creepily against his type (or what is his type to me, at any rate).




On a slightly lighter note check out this little gem of a song from Ebirah: Horror of the Deep (Japanese title Gojira, Ebirâ, Mosura: Nankai No Daiketto), which still ranks as the best Godzilla flick hands down. A new (in the seventies at least) version of Mothra's song performed by Pair Bambi appearing as Mothra's twin priestesses.

This film was one of the lights of my childhood and it irritates me when people who've never seen a proper monster movie in their lives wax on about the original Godzilla, while sneeringly condemning the many ace films that followed it (until the horrendous early nineties revival which saw a tedious stab at darkness and realism not shaken off until the fabulously campy Final Wars). This is the kind of thinking that leads to Cloverfield people.

A Murder of Quality.

So I finished another John le Carré book, and in doing so I've noticed something a little peculiar about everything of his I've read, which is that I pay attention to chapters, and that's not normally something I do. In fact I usually tend to ignore the bloody things and put down a book at any random (often utterly inappropriate) point, but with le Carré it's finish a chapter and take a break, even if it's only for ten minutes before picking it up again. I find that if I don't I have to stop and go back to the start of that particular chapter.

But that's the first two Smiley books out of the way anyway, and I'm very tempted to just skip ahead to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (or even The Tailor of Panama, the film adaption of which I adored) but I think I'd rather read them in order of writing.

But that's the future, right now I have some Sherlock Holmes and Elizabeth Kostova to get on with (not to mention some uni work at some unspecified point of the future, if I'm ever going to free myself of the shackles of my own insipid attempts at academia). But George Smiley, you are truly something, and I don't think it's (just) the Alec Guinness effect.

The Butterfly Tattoo.

Speaking of Philip Pullman it seems he has a new film coming out, and while not exactly making up for the possible cancellation of The Subtle Knife (which admittedly could still happen) it does look rather interesting.

I like Pullman's expressed intentions for the book (well, one of them, I doubt it was the only one) to show an Oxford rather closer to its present day reality than an Oxbridge fantasy fueled by one too many wine fueled viewings/readings of Brideshead Revisited (the period drama of choice for those whom Pride & Prejudice just doesn't provide quite enough repressed homosexuality).

I'll be rather looking forward to this I think.

Philip Pullman on narrators.

Nice little snippet which makes a lot of sense, it's had me pondering about my own narrators (again) who seem to keep drifting from something quite neutral to a person in his/her (their?) own right.

I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites. So there are no limits, no areas, or characters, or sexes, or times, where these sprites can't go. And they fix on what interests them. I wouldn't dream of deliberately choosing this or that sort of person, for political or social or commercial reasons, to write a book about. If the narrator isn't interested, the book won't come alive.

Have a look here.