3 New Lights

When Gill came back the other night from taking the dogs to their run she remarked on a couple (it turned out to be three) new lights on the opposite ridge of the valley. At first we thought it might be a late night silaging session but the following night they appeared again - and they stayed.

A little thinking and a little investigation revealed that the council have installed road lighting on the Kastellos to Dramia road that runs on the other side of the ridge and in one place the ridge dips sufficiently to reveal 3 of these lights to our gaze.

Light pollution! When we first moved into this house there were no lights visible from our balconies save one or two in Kastellos village which is a good 5 kilometers to the south. In fact the first time we switched on a light here we attracted every moth and light loving insect for a 20 kilometer radius. The balcony soon disappeared beneath a blanket of insect life. We had to extinguish the light and go out to a taverna until they left.

A year or three later the roads authority erected massive sodium lamps on the main highway a kilometer or so to the north. This was the beginning of the end of our isolation although it took them a good year to get them working reliably at night rather than during the day.

And this winter the local council put road lights on our track - just 3 of them but ...

OK, we can still see more of the milky way than we had ever seen before moving here. Yes, we do have hundreds of thousands of stars visible on a clear night. Yes, we can navigate our garden by moonlight at full moon and check out the roof fittings in its shadow.

And as I write this it occurs to me - who else would notice 3 new street lights more than a kilometer away? We are lucky.

One more summer?

No more false hopes.
No more unreal expectations.
No more miracle cures on distant horizons.
This, my love is it.
This, my darling, is the start of our goodbye.

But how do we arrange this parting?
When both of us were younger we
parted from other lovers
but now?
how?
Parting is for youngsters
Departing is for old timers
For us.

In all these years together
I have loved you

No less over time
More if anything

And if the years have raddled us
still our tatterdemaillion suits us well
and can take nothing from this love

I cry bitter tears
my mouth is full of ashes
but this has to be

One more summer my love?
and then goodbye.

Torrents, Pirates, Demons and assorted others

Given the frankly bizarre judgment handed down against the guys who run The Pirate Bay can we now expect the parasitic, bloodsucking, moneygrubbing dickwads who run the film and music "industries" to go after Google. Yahoo and their ilk? Given that not one of those guys actually hosts any copyright protected material on their own machines then as far as I can see they all do pretty much the same thing. 

Type "there will be blood" torrent into google or any reputable search engine and you will be able to download a copy of the film ideirectly from links they provide ( google wil give you 429,000 results). 

So come on guys (RIAA etc) take on these giants in court and lets see how you do.

Western Justice

So let's get this straight:
you host links to files that other people want to share and you go to prison for a year and cop a £3m fine
you torture innocent civilians in order to prove that they are neither innocent nor civilians and you walk away
you leak state secrets and you walk away
you beat peaceful protesters or innocent bystanders on the streets of London and you get suspended from work on full pay
anything else or will that do for now?

Hold on thought there are couple of others:
you host and train Al Qaeda and Taleban forces, you oppress the women in your state, you take the piss out of any idea of proper western democracy and you get given $5 bn dollars to stop it - well, to stop the terrorist training thing anyway
you invade all of your neighbouring states, seize their lands, drop white phosphorous on innocent civilians and refuse to allow them free movement, and you ignore all UN sanctions against you and you get, every year, in perpetuity the largest slice of US foreign aid

That's justice!

Eye don't believe it!

So we went to the oculist on Wednesday - no appointment just sit and wait - we waited maybe 40 minutes and both went in for our full eye tests - the works - field of vision the lot - twenty five minutes later we have 2 new prescriptions for the reading glasses and a bill for 50 euros which is 10 less than what it cost us 2 years back.

Take the scrips to the optician we used 2 years ago and he takes a note of the necessary - the lenses will be here tomorrow at 11 - bring your frames in and it'll take 35 minutes - whenever suits you - top notch lenses - 130 euros for the lot - yes we're open on Good Friday - and off we go.

Went back this morning at about 11:20 with our frames - oh I'm so sorry the technician doesn't come in until 12:00 - come back at one and they'll be ready - we go and do our things - have a coffee and wander back at around one - the shop is heaving - every Greek and her husband is trying on new season's sunglasses and Mr Optician is under great pressure - he leaves his customer and comes over to apologise - sorry they aren't done yet - we've been so busy - come back in 15 minutes - I promise! We fight our way out past bespectacled bubble cuts and drift off to the mosque - which is shut this being Good Friday and all. 20 minutes later we fight our way through an ever growing crowd of potential sunglass purchasers and still they aren't ready - Mr Optician is profuse in his apologies and rushes to the back of the shop where we assume the technician is working - we wait - Mr O apologises several times - each time more desperate than the time before - and so it goes on we wait - he checks back and apologises - until ... finally he brings the newly minted specs over with an eye chart at about 2 o'clock. Perfect vision. He apologises or rather doesn't - I cannot apologise, there are not the words! We get ready to pay and he waves our money away - no, no, not after all that waiting - I couldn't take your money! We try but he is adamant.

We have our new specs for free! Where else in the world?

Book Review - RED THE FIEND by GILBERT SORRENTINO

Gilbert Sorrentino has long been on my list of great American writers. He's been at the top of that list for quite a while now and so when a great friend of mine sent me a copy of Red The Fiend I was keen to read this later work (1995). This is the latest of his works that I have read and yet he produced 5 more books before he died in 2006 so I still have 5 treats in store.

Since Steinbeck effectively laid down his pen in 1962 few American novellists have addressed themselves to the issues of the American working classes even though it is arguable that the working class plight now is worse even that it was in Steinbeck's time.  Bellow, Roth and Updike all produced middle class novels for the American middle classes. Sorrentino and his great friend Hubert Selby wrote of the working classes though I doubt that the working classes read their work. Red The Fiend is a novel about a small, tight, american working class family.

Red The Fiend is a brilliant novel that examines, dissects, documents and observes the creation of a monster or fiend. In his trademark elegant sentences, with his unfailing ear for dialogue, and with the inventiveness that marks him as a genius Sorrentino invites us to watch, and smile, as a young boy is turned into Red The Fiend. Only Pynchon can handle the grotesque with humour anywhere near as well as Sorrentino. At times I felt as though I was watching a train crash happen as I read this book and felt almost ashamed that I was laughing openly.

Red's grandmother may well be the most unpleasant character in all of literature but despite this she is frighteningly convincing - no caricature this - this is the real thing and all the more terrifying for that realism. Red The Fiend is in fact peopled by a fair few very nasty pieces of work.  I cannot imagine that anybody who has read this book will ever forget it.

Despite the genius of the narration, the polished brilliance of the language, the darkness of the subject matter, and the unforgettable nature of the things that happen in this book the truly stunning thing about this novel is the fact that it is so easy for the reader to fail to notice just how exceptional it is as a novel. Sorrentino wrote some of the greatest 20th century novels but in Red The Fiend he wrote a genuine 21st century novel and yet you could be forgiven for not noticing - he does it so well.

Red The Fiend runs to only 213 pages but contains 49 chapters. 49 chapters that could probably be read in almost any order. It is direct. It is unforgettable. It engages immediately and lastingly. It achieves what B S Johnson once described as the only point of the novel - telling the truth by telling stories. And it does so in an almost entirely new way. Red The Fiend points the way ahead for the novel.

Book Review - The Busconductor Hines by James Kelman

James Kelman is the only Brit shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2009. His novel A Disaffection which I reviewed here previously was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. His novel How late it was, how late won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1994. With the possible exception of J G Ballard he is probably the finest Brit writer of English active today.

There are no heroes in Kelman. There are no massive plot arcs, no tricksy twists, no gratuitous redemptions. Kelman specialises in real life - and brilliant clear prose. His ear is acute for ordinary Scottish Glasgow dialect and he records it in such a way that it rings from the page. His eye for the telling trivial vignette is piercing and he puts these snatches of dialogue and fragments of life together in such a skilled way that you slow down your reading pace to savour them. I am always sad to finish a Kelman work be it a short story or a a novel - The Bus Conductor Hines is no exception.

Rab Hines is a bus conductor. He is not a great bus conductor - his record is poor. He hates the job.Rab Hines is a husband and father. He is neither a great husband nor a wonderful father. Rab is just like you and me - pretty ordinary. Rab gets by. He does his best. He makes the most of what he has - even the no-bedroomed tenement flat under threat of imminent demolition that he and his family inhabit uncomfortably.

Quite simply put James Kelman does what few novelists these days can do - he describes the ordinary and makes it true. He chooses and uses his language to convince you of the humanity in all of us. Long may he continue so to do.

The zen of olive pruning

How does one prune olives? Do you prune your own? Would you prune mine for me - I'll pay you? In that case, would you show me how to prune mine? So ... clean the middles so the sun can get in, and remove and crossing branches, and cut out anything growing straight up. That's it? OK ... and bring the canopy down if we want to pick by hand? How far down? I need to take about 2 metres off? Are you sure? And take off any suckers. Like an umbrella? OK.

The only thing certain about olive tree pruning here in Crete is that there are as many opinions about it as there olive farmers or maybe as many as there are trees. I spent 3 years asking people about how to do it. I spent 5 years asking "experts" to do it for me. In the end I bit the bullet and decided to do my own. It could not be put off any longer - our ladders no longer reached the upper olives. I began with the oil trees - we have 12 eating olive trees and 80 oil trees.

I started with all of the wisdom incorporated in paragraph 1 above and a simple summary sentence from a Californian web site dealing with the knotty subject of olive tree pruning - "a badly pruned olive tree is better than an unpruned olive tree". I wish I could attribute that pearl but I've lost the link. I decided to eschew the use of a chain saw - too traumatic for the trees I felt: and I hoped that standing before a majestic and ancient tree with just a handsaw would make me think carefully before making that first fateful stroke.

My first tree truly daunted me as I stood before it for perhaps 40 minutes. I must have looked almost paralysed - maybe dumbstruck. I could not help thinking of those stories about painters, frightened and awed by a blank canvas, tentative, and considering all of the possible first brushstrokes knowing that there is only one correct first move. That everything flows from there.

In time I overcame the fear and inertia and entered the tree - literally stood in the middle of the tree feeling the rough bark of that timeless life force against my back and gazing skyward - and so I set to. Every tree was different - unique. Every tree was a new problem to be solved and with every tree I became more confident: I cut more boldly. When the last tree was done I went back to the beginning and redid the first half dozen with my new confidence.

And I was pleased with what I had wrought. But what did I know? Five weeks later a local olive farmer came to visit and remarked on how good the trees looked - " ... who pruned them? ... and would he perhaps do mine?" When I explained that I had in fact done them myself there was a palpable wave of admiration, a hearty slap on the back and a loud "Bravo". We drank some rakis on the strength of it.

In the following year this scene replayed itself time and again - locals loved my pruning and admired my "brutality". Men I admired heaped praise on my efforts and slapped my back. And then came the harvest. Despite my ministrations we had a decent crop and they were so easy to pick - everything within easy reach - no ladders required. But the cherry on top of the cake was when the organic certification people came for our first farm inspection and congratulated me on the trim of the trees - "... the best in the valley".

There is now something strangely satisfying, something oddly creative, almost spiritual for me about pruning olive trees. This year it has been the turn of the eating olives and they, I think, have been neglected for longer than had the oil trees. They are bigger and have a different configuration and even a different habit - they have posed a new challenge.

For the past two weeks I have been studying each tree as I have passed it. Cutting bamboo for the last week has allowed me to study every one in some detail. By the time I am ready I have a sketch of an approach in my head. I walk around the tree several times eyeing it from all angles. I check my mental sketch and adjust my start point if necessary. I absorb the treeness of this particular tree and take it on board. When I am at one with the tree I step inside it and clear any obstacles to my view and freedom of movement. From there on in it is a simple, matter of taking away all those parts that are not of the essence of the tree that I know is in there. I once heard a wood carver being interviewed on radio and the interviewer asked him about how he began carving for example an elephant from a hunk of tree. His reply stuck with me and I understood it artistically without taking it properly on board - "... the elephant," he explained, as if to a child, "is inside the wood. All I have to do is to take away the parts that are not elephant". Now I know exactly what he meant.

What is it you don't understand Ed?

"Schools Secretary Ed Balls has asked the chief schools adjudicator to look at how widely random selection is used and whether it is fair to children."

This one had me shouting at the radio "What is it you don't understand Ed? Random selection is, by definition fair - any other system just isn't". The different guises that selection for secondary education establishments has taken on since UK governments started talking up the idea of parental choice - including "faith", economic ability, locations and any other nonsense that they can come up with have been blithely accepted but when schools decide to make at least some of their selection truly fair the ubergruppenfuhrer f schools goes ape. It has to be stopped! So, deciding on a child's educational options based on which nutty religion his parents follow or profess to follow is OK - deciding the same thing on how close his or her parents can afford to move to the required school - that's fair but making a random selection isn't? Did this Balls guy not have an education?  

Maybe, just maybe, his objection to this incredibly fair system is that his middle class pals cannot rig this system to suit their spoiled little bratty kids. You think?

BookReview - The Lavender Way

Somebody over at LibraryThing (a guy called Larry Riley) reviewed The Lavender Way this week and I'm reet made up about it. Read it now - and then order yourself a copy of this amazing book from the LuLu link on this page:

LibraryThing review by Larry Riley (US)

GAG reflux - competition done

One of the reasons that it's been quiet here (maybe not the chief reason but one of them) is because I have been taking part in an online novel competition over at the Telegraph. Well it's done now. I posted the last episodes today and while I'm not over the moon about the result, it was worth doing. I stayed within all of my self set constraints and, of course, meets all of the competition requirements. It comes out at about 20,000 words and I have already started thinking about how to make it available as an e-book using Sophie. I'll let you all know when it's ready in that format but for now I'm posting a list of relevant links in the order in which episodes were posted. Be aware that there are hyperlinks out from some of these episodes - follow whichever ones take your fancy (or none at all - or all of them - it's up to you). Enjoy

Opening Gambit

Next Moves

Third Part

Uncoverings

Super5

Balcony Xania Harbour

The Makeshift Morgue

Good and Gone

Unravelling and Ravelling

Calling...calling...calling...

Flies

Happy Like Killers

Blood Insect

Found and Lost

Unveiling

Ceramic Beheading

Job Jobbed

Book Review: Moon Palace by Paul Auster

Moon Palace is novel of searching. When we discover that our hero's name is Marco Stanley Fogg the signpost is well and truly planted. Marco Polo, Henry Morton Stanley and Phileas Fogg could hardly be associated with much else. When we then discover that he refers to himself as MS we get the secondary reference: man as an unfinished book - writing himself as he goes. Now, given that M S Fogg is an orphan it is quite clear that we shall be having a story of a man seeking his father and his identity that will feature book quite heavily - Auster likes his heres literary where possible. And so it goes. Auster's twist here is that he finds not only his father but his father's lost father too. Auster is in love with the list of three and the trilogy as an idea so the fact that we end up with the father, the son, and the grandfather is no surprise. Auster takes us and his hero through adventures with books, adventures in the wild west, and adventures with his father to arrive at M S Fogg finding himself having lost his antecedents.

Paul Auster is a very good writer. I was going to refer in this review to two previous reviews that I have written of his works: New York Trilogy and Oracle Nights but it transpires that while I wrote the reviews (in my head - which is where my composition actually happens) I have never written them down or should that be written them out, or published them. Which is a shame but not a disaster. To summarise I loved New York Trilogy which is a trio of novellas and I felt that Oracle Nights while good would have been better as a set of novellas. The same criticism, if it is a criticism applies to Moon Palace. It is essentially three novellas telling what is essentially the same story. After 90 pages or so I felt that the point was made and the text complete. I could see the joins where Auster has glued the three stories "together" into a "novel" and I resented it as a a writer. I suspect that Auster's publishers encourage him to write novel length fiction when his real strength is the novella. Alternatively he has not come to terms with his own metier. By all means tell me the same tale 3 ways - I'm happy with that but don't gussy it up and tell me it's a traditional novel.

Oh ... Bah ... Humbug

The inauguration today of yet another american president is not an historic moment. The world has not changed. And nor will it - in any significant way.

We are told that he is to be the first black president of the US. He is not really black. He is of mixed race and as far as I can make out had he been born in his father's country and not his mother's (and Hawaii has only been in the US for two years when he was born) he could not have even run for president let alone been elected.

We are told that he is an inclusive politician but then that's what we were told about his predecessor the idiot George W Bush.

We are told that he is a new broom in the middle east despite his pledge to back Israel all the way during his campaign. He may be but do not kid yourself that he will change anything very significantly. He is just another politician made in the mould of all politicians and as such is simply the most recent mouthpiece of the forces that actually run the systems that punish us all daily.

So go on Obama prove me wrong - change the world significantly for the better. You have 4 years. If you get 8 years it means you will have failed - nobody gets a second term unless they have proven that they aren't going to do anything to damage the systems.

  

Sorrentino meets B S Johnson on the fridge

Book Review - The Bloomsday Dead by Adrian McKinty.

Adrian McKinty is great addition to the noir genre. This is apparently his fourth novel featuring Michael Forsythe a particularly unlikable fellow originally from Ireland but whom we find managing an hotel in Peru under the witness protection program. McKinty swiftly transport him, and us the readers, to a post-ceasefire Ireland on Bloomsday 2004 to find and recover the kidnapped daughter of an Irish American lady gang boss. So there you have the opening - fast and mobile - a great start to any book and especially a thriller.

Besides leaking more and more plot and background to us as we go along McKinty also tests our knowledge of modern Irish literature with his references to Flann O'Brien and reminds us on every page, with a subtle typographic device, of James Joyce. McKinty is knowing and knowledgeable, as is his anti-hero Forsythe, and one gets the impression that he is smiling to himself as he writes. I found myself smiling along with him.

Apart from a dreadfully contrived opening line that had me reaching for the sick bag I have only one quibble with McKinty and that has to do with the length of this novel - 50 or 60 pages shorter would have made it a much better book. He needs, in my opinion, to edit himself more harshly to get up there with the top flight.

Book Review: Nightmare in the Street by Derek Raymond

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU ARE STUPID


Derek Raymond was a great writer. Together with Colin Wilson, Derek Raymond invented British noir.  HIs books are beyond hardboiled. He takes the reader into deep and dark territory. The Factory Series that he wrote between 1984 and 1990 will enter the worldwide canon of noir novels and I Was Dora Suarez may go down as the acme of noir.

That said, Nightmare in The Street is awful. It is not just bad - it is terrible. But ... that is not Derek Raymond's fault, the typescript for this travesty was discovered after his death and in my humble opinion it should have been immediately destroyed. It is so clearly not a finished work - probably a first draft in fact - that it cannot be counted in his ouevre. The publishers do not even appear to have employed an editor familiar with his style. This text is so rough, so unpolished, so unpared that it is an insult to his memory and talent and a cynical moneymaking con on his readers. 



Read any other Derek Raymond novel but do not read this.

Books for Xmas, books for birthday, books from xmas bazaars - books are wonders

I told you I might

Today's efforts - and context (click on the photos for large versions)

Wordplay

This xmas I asked for and received (tip of the hat to Charlie and Frank) a set of 40 lower case magnetic letters. I had spotted these on Lindz's (one of my blood daughters) amazon wishlist (a great idea from amazon the wishlist) and immediately stole it (that's what good ideas are for - theft). My idea was to fiddle around on a daily basis with this limited set of letters to create idea generators but I find myself much busier than that with them - they have become almost addictive - they cry out to me from the fridge (and the cooker hood, but more of that later) and beg to be shuffled into more or less obscure phrases - even whole sentences. The psychology of this new, self induced, behaviour probem must surely be fascinating to someone other than me? No? No pathological scrabblers out there who don't play scrabble? No wordsmiths - or should that rather be lettersmiths? The humour and the mental exercise I get is fun though I'm unsure as to whether it will last (the obsession not the fun) and frankly who cares?

Hey guy, what about the cooker hood? You said you'd get to it and you haven't - don't leave us wondering.

OK - the cooker hood is right by the fridge door and since we don't have one of those enormous american fridges the letters and phrases first cast were looking cramped and overcrowded and the base of the cooker hood started to beckon - looking surprisingly like a musical stave and offering typographic nuances so nowadays as the letter shuffle discipline devlops the cooker stave is the first line thought/product and the fridge door is the remaindered letter section.

I think I'll post photos of the game in progress on an occasional basis - maybe I'll comment on them - maybe not ... (the preceeding sentence is purposely ambiguous - it's how I feel right now) ...

 

Book Review: A Disaffection by James Kelman

There are a number of ways to write a book review but by and large I stick to the simple, selfish formula: I write reviews in a straightforward way that I would like to read. I like to read reviews that allow me to make up my own mind about whether what's reviewed is for me or not. Mostly that suits me: I have no axe to grind - I'm just telling the reader what I thought of a book.

This time though I have an axe - I really want you to read this book - I want to share it with you - this is a great book, not just a good book but a great book. This book demonstrates what the new novel can be - should be. Kelman is a true successor to Joyce and Beckett: he is the British Sorrentino but whereas it is difficult to find Sorrentino's influence flowing through American literature Kelman's legacy is set already with writers like Agnes Owens, Roddy Doyle and Irving Welsh.

I could bore you with a list of writers who influenced Kelman directly or indirectly but that would be pointless, simply accept that Kelman did not arrive at his style from nowhere, a broad wealth of British experimentation with the novel preceded his breakthrough.  

Kelman uses dialect (Glaswegian) and vernacular throughout his prose and not just in the dialogue which is possibly difficult for anybody who has never heard a Scots accent but for those who have it is a simple matter to read tricky bits out loud to understand. HIs eye and his ear are nearly 20/20 and pitch perfect and, although there is little in the way of plot there is such a wealth of insight and nuance that one sometimes has to consciously draw breath and take pause to digest.

He has one ploy that I particularly enjoy and that is to have his protagonist form and partly answer a question (usually about himself or his trajectory) and then leave the reader to complete the response for himself or herself - in this way Kelman draws the reader into the very soul of the protagonist and by the end of this wonderful novel you have a very good understanding of the very  nature of disaffection.

Kelman is very good and this is a fine example of the modern novel - I urge you to read it.