So last night I was torn between Raymond Chandler and Alice Munro, as the used place next to my office sold me The Chandler Collection Volume One (Amazon.ca doesn't have it but that one looks good too) and Open Secrets for 50 cents each last week. I almost feel guilty for paying so little for such good books. But I guess there's a steady stream of departing Anglo expats who let their apartments get cleared by the store, and if they're willing to spare the books for so little I'm willing to accept them for so little.
Alice Munro won, and that was nice. She's such a great storyteller. About what I was saying yesterday in terms of narrative voices - her narration may not be as punchy, convincing or unsettling as Graham Greene's or Ishiguro's; it's very apparently Alice Munro Narration from story to story - but it doesn't matter. The illusion she creates when she writes isn't just an illusion of reality. The stories are little worlds in themselves, even to the most uneventful. And her omniscient third person narration from the perspective of a non-omniscient character or even her omniscient first person narration - not a type I usually enjoy - is absolutely fine, even beautiful.
Because the stories are so good. Their structure is so good. And building on such a solid structure, she doesn't need to ponce about with every adjective in the dictionary and clumsy, clumsy, CLUMSY attempts to shock (I'm thinking very hard of Martin Amis and Zadie Smith) while she still describes things perfectly and occasionally shockingly. Even the stings in her tail feel gently right . . . what I'm saying is, her all-knowing narrative voice might sound contrived but that's not a bad thing because she's a good enough storyteller that I can unquestioningly accept her as the god of those worlds.
giovedì, agosto 30, 2007
mercoledì, agosto 29, 2007
Guilty of too little guilt
The F-word is away on a work retreat with his future colleagues for a couple of days (no retreats at my office, boo hoo, just the occasional subsidized drunken binge and trips to Portugal to stay in five star hotels - I love Europe) and of course I jumped at the chance to be immediately and violently unfaithful to him with Graham Greene. I devoured The Quiet American without once leaving the chesterfield and it was soooooo good.
What makes me love books is the narration - seems obvious - they're narratives, for heaven's sake. But while I can enjoy a film for its aesthetic beauty, I can't enjoy a book solely on the basis of beautiful imagery. The example that springs to mind is Girl with a Pearl Earring - I couldn't stand the book, couldn't stand the narrative voice - I didn't believe it for a second and I got bored fuckless. But the film was beautiful, and reading the book I could see how the beauty of the film came from the descriptive passages therein - although the lingering shots of Scarlet Johannson and the fleeting shots of Cillian Murphy, whose uncanny looks evoke some very sweet and sour memories for me, probably helped too.
That's a long way of getting to the point that The Quiet American is some of the best narration I've ever read. Fowler, who tells the story while having the most invested in it, variously sees and fails to see the limits of his own understanding while managing to get us feeling like our understanding of him is greater than his understanding of himself - a feeling that pisses him off no end when Pyle, the Quiet American, expresses it. But Fowler's perspective is all we really understand, since it's clear his understanding of Pyle is unreliable, maybe even in his own eyes. So finally, the narrative leads us to a climax where two people seem to do what they think is right and are murderous in the process without being sure what they're doing exactly.
But Fowler has lots of delicious guilt about that, and that's neat too, in a narrative voice. There's just not enough guilt in the media these days and certainly very little convincing guilt. Redemption up the ying-yang, though - have you noticed? I think we live in the Golden Age of Redemption; it's hard to find and book or film that doesn't end up with some sort of redemption. If I have anything good to say about the way The Sopranos ended, it's that it gave redemption a miss - but then it'd been giving guilt a miss over seven seasons with less and less conviction, so it can fuck itself anyways.
So we have redemption coming out of our asses but no guilt, or if there is any guilt it's just a plot device leading up to the redemption. It's ridiculous. Always with the cathartic money shots of people bursting into tears and emerging above their problems in one fell swoop. Bah. Imagine life was like that and we were all a bunch of well-adjusted types walking around basking in our own guiltlessness. It would be another universe . . . But The Quiet American is convincingly lifelike, in that there's guilt, anger, conscience and uncertainty and all those things that make our universe often ugly, always our own, and occasionally very, very good reading.
What makes me love books is the narration - seems obvious - they're narratives, for heaven's sake. But while I can enjoy a film for its aesthetic beauty, I can't enjoy a book solely on the basis of beautiful imagery. The example that springs to mind is Girl with a Pearl Earring - I couldn't stand the book, couldn't stand the narrative voice - I didn't believe it for a second and I got bored fuckless. But the film was beautiful, and reading the book I could see how the beauty of the film came from the descriptive passages therein - although the lingering shots of Scarlet Johannson and the fleeting shots of Cillian Murphy, whose uncanny looks evoke some very sweet and sour memories for me, probably helped too.
That's a long way of getting to the point that The Quiet American is some of the best narration I've ever read. Fowler, who tells the story while having the most invested in it, variously sees and fails to see the limits of his own understanding while managing to get us feeling like our understanding of him is greater than his understanding of himself - a feeling that pisses him off no end when Pyle, the Quiet American, expresses it. But Fowler's perspective is all we really understand, since it's clear his understanding of Pyle is unreliable, maybe even in his own eyes. So finally, the narrative leads us to a climax where two people seem to do what they think is right and are murderous in the process without being sure what they're doing exactly.
But Fowler has lots of delicious guilt about that, and that's neat too, in a narrative voice. There's just not enough guilt in the media these days and certainly very little convincing guilt. Redemption up the ying-yang, though - have you noticed? I think we live in the Golden Age of Redemption; it's hard to find and book or film that doesn't end up with some sort of redemption. If I have anything good to say about the way The Sopranos ended, it's that it gave redemption a miss - but then it'd been giving guilt a miss over seven seasons with less and less conviction, so it can fuck itself anyways.
So we have redemption coming out of our asses but no guilt, or if there is any guilt it's just a plot device leading up to the redemption. It's ridiculous. Always with the cathartic money shots of people bursting into tears and emerging above their problems in one fell swoop. Bah. Imagine life was like that and we were all a bunch of well-adjusted types walking around basking in our own guiltlessness. It would be another universe . . . But The Quiet American is convincingly lifelike, in that there's guilt, anger, conscience and uncertainty and all those things that make our universe often ugly, always our own, and occasionally very, very good reading.
martedì, agosto 28, 2007
In my day . . . well, actually 70 years before my day . . .
Saw A Night at the Opera last night and laughed until my face hurt. I'd heard their MGM movies weren't as funny as the older ones, of which I've only seen Animal Crackers, which was indeed funnier because it didn't have a story to distract from the funniness. The older I get the less I think movies, least of all comedies, are an appropriate medium for stories. Nonetheless, A Night at the Opera was very fucking funny, right until the last second.
We saw it in the cinema and although I was too busy laughing to think about it at the time, it was neat how everybody in the full salle was in pain laughing at 70 year old jokes. Though from time to time we'd be laughing at some Groucho gag the francophones hadn't got, and at other times the subtitles apparently aged better than the audio and they were laughing while we bemusedly awaited the next gag.
Not to sound like a codger so old I should be long dead by now after living out my four score and seven or whatever, but American comedy films have only suffered. I blame an industry-wide inability to work as ensembles. The funniest films I've seen out of there lately, like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Napoleon Dynamite, and, well, that's it because I hate American comedies so much that I avoid them altogether unless I'm on aeroplanes now, are so funny because people in them are funny together and not because there's a star. Because stars aren't funny. Like Ben Stiller, for example. He's not funny. An individualistic society with a celebrity fetish might be okay for standup but it sucks for funny movies. So does Ben Stiller.
Another thing about the Marx Brothers that has only suffered since in American comedy (although not so much in British comedy, for some reason, where you went on to see people like Dudley Moore or Hugh Laurie getting into it) is the musical moneyshot. When Harpo plays the harp and Chico plays the piano, and it's a little bit funny while being delightful. Imagine. A delightful comedy. Well, actually, don't imagine, just go rent a Marx Brothers movie. And enjoy this clip of Dudley Moore being slightly delightful.
BTW, Dudley Moore is much more delightful and also much more filthy with Peter Cook in Derek and Clive Get the Horn et al. But I'll leave off discussing the high (yet filthy) pinnacle of British humour until another day.
We saw it in the cinema and although I was too busy laughing to think about it at the time, it was neat how everybody in the full salle was in pain laughing at 70 year old jokes. Though from time to time we'd be laughing at some Groucho gag the francophones hadn't got, and at other times the subtitles apparently aged better than the audio and they were laughing while we bemusedly awaited the next gag.
Not to sound like a codger so old I should be long dead by now after living out my four score and seven or whatever, but American comedy films have only suffered. I blame an industry-wide inability to work as ensembles. The funniest films I've seen out of there lately, like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Napoleon Dynamite, and, well, that's it because I hate American comedies so much that I avoid them altogether unless I'm on aeroplanes now, are so funny because people in them are funny together and not because there's a star. Because stars aren't funny. Like Ben Stiller, for example. He's not funny. An individualistic society with a celebrity fetish might be okay for standup but it sucks for funny movies. So does Ben Stiller.
Another thing about the Marx Brothers that has only suffered since in American comedy (although not so much in British comedy, for some reason, where you went on to see people like Dudley Moore or Hugh Laurie getting into it) is the musical moneyshot. When Harpo plays the harp and Chico plays the piano, and it's a little bit funny while being delightful. Imagine. A delightful comedy. Well, actually, don't imagine, just go rent a Marx Brothers movie. And enjoy this clip of Dudley Moore being slightly delightful.
BTW, Dudley Moore is much more delightful and also much more filthy with Peter Cook in Derek and Clive Get the Horn et al. But I'll leave off discussing the high (yet filthy) pinnacle of British humour until another day.
Honey rush
No time, no time at all, except to point out I had sage monofloral honey for breakfast and it's delish. We found a honey store here so I am once more a fetishizing pig in shit. Actually we found it awhile ago, but Saturday was the first day I got my shit together to go there. Wheee!
Also would like to quickly point out that John Lennon's album Rock N Roll is really great. I heard it at Miss P's wedding for the first time because she loves it and now I love it. The Stand By Me cover is everything that's awesome about pop music.
Also would like to quickly point out that John Lennon's album Rock N Roll is really great. I heard it at Miss P's wedding for the first time because she loves it and now I love it. The Stand By Me cover is everything that's awesome about pop music.
domenica, agosto 26, 2007
The Red Dragon takes a field trip
We went to Liège this weekend to see what we could see. It's a neat city which somehow made me think of a blend of Liverpool and Italy, by which I mean it was pretty, dirty, seedy and surprisingly cosmopolitan. We liked it. One super-neato thing was the Musée d'art religieux et d'art mosan, which contained all the paintings and sculptures from monasteries and churches that had shut down in the area of the Meuse valley. It's one of those really cluttered museums - they just have so much stuff in it. One standout was a Virgin and Child from 1070 that looked like a dreamworld archetype. The Christian fixation on the mother/child image must be confusing to everybody else in the world but I bet it really helps us proselytize.
One of the attendants showed us around a bit to give us more historical depth on stuff, that was nice. It left me with the impression Liège is a really fucked up place - a sort of heaving commie stew - very North and South, except it was like the North that happened to be the South instead. Belgium's Manchester, in a word. And of course I like that.
Another nice thing about Liège was its geography. It's on a very nice river, and it's also at the beginning of the Ardennes so it's refreshingly hilly. That was welcome yesterday because I was as crampy as a moron who'd eaten a turkey dinner just before swimming the Channel, and climbing stairs really helps with that. And Liège has the mother of all staircases:
One of the attendants showed us around a bit to give us more historical depth on stuff, that was nice. It left me with the impression Liège is a really fucked up place - a sort of heaving commie stew - very North and South, except it was like the North that happened to be the South instead. Belgium's Manchester, in a word. And of course I like that.
Another nice thing about Liège was its geography. It's on a very nice river, and it's also at the beginning of the Ardennes so it's refreshingly hilly. That was welcome yesterday because I was as crampy as a moron who'd eaten a turkey dinner just before swimming the Channel, and climbing stairs really helps with that. And Liège has the mother of all staircases:
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