Eyeing the enchanted duck

So I'm about halfway through Fall on Your Knees and it's better. Looks like we'll make it to the end. I would have read farther but my boss lent me a copy of Private Eye, an English satirical magazine focusing on politics large and small and on the media - it used to be partly owned by Peter Cook. It was neat. There's a similar thing in France - le Canard enchaîné - half the price and twice as frequent, though electronically incompetent, ho hum, isn't that the continent versus the Green and Pleasant Isle for you. Anyways. Both of them get sued for libel a lot and it doesn't stick and I like that.

I can't think of any other finger-poking mags of their circulation and at the moment that's a problem because of how tame and shitty mainstream media is. What's happened to muckraking journalism anyways? I mean real, dirty, filthy muckraking journalism. Going around and nosing out a problem or a situation and crying foul. Maybe I'm just reading the wrong papers.

Although to be honest with you since I started reading fiction again I haven't wanted to read anything real, even the Economist. Maybe that's why I had to stop school - for the kajillion years it took on my masters I don't think I read or had the desire to read one single work of fiction, and now that I've found a cheap and lovely used bookstore my desire to understand the political world around me has gone on holiday, satirical muckraking rags notwithstanding. Of course I'm still dealing with that feeling of impending doom I mentioned last week and that always steers me away from the papers a bit.

BTW, the F-word thinks I should become a muck-raking journalist. I'm still thinking massage therapist, but less so now, since that's only practical if we move to Australia and after last week I'd rather move to Portugal. Any votes?

Anyways. Switching gears completely.

Work is very, very busy right now because I have two market reports in the next week and a half. The research for them is 80% done so that means I spend lots of time typing and listening to music. And the 2004 Nick Cave double CD which I just got, finally - okay, listening to it while you work isn't the best way to appreciate it because he's so wordy, but The Lyre of Orpheus half of it is really good, at least. Abattoir Blues has been harder to listen to with half a mind but that sounds good as well. Now I will beat a path to buy the Grinderman album. I love being financially solvent.

And yesterday I got the new Benjamin Biolay CD, Trash yéyé, to see if overall I like the man enough to go to his show here at the end of October. The first few tracks were shitty. And the last half was great. I've come to accept that singing talent is not a feature of this genre of French music, and Biolay is so good at using instruments to make very pretty combinations of sounds - I wish he'd let his voice fade into the background more . . . okay, he's wordy too, and they're poetic words, sure, but I wish he'd listen to the Arcade Fire and let his raspy immelodious voice out of the limelight. We'll read the lyrics, for heaven's sake, don't be so pushy. Anyways, I'll just mess around with my speakers until I can't hear him much anymore.

Off to work and then Dusseldorf for the weekend.

I

love

Europe

If I make it to tomorrow I'll be surprised

Losing patience with Fall on Your Knees at the 1/4 point of 500-some pages, which is a really yeeeeergghy place to lose patience as I already have a bit of a commitment to it. Sort of like breaking up after you've met their really nice parents. There has just been an orgy of violence, death, and incest that has left me disgusted, dislocated, and disgruntled.

Disgusted, because it was gross, and the casual approach to the incest was the grossest of all. Dislocated, because it was such a sudden shift from the style of the book to date that I feel like my relationship with all the characters snapped. Okay, all the events that happened were the natural conclusion of events that had happened previously, including a very non-casual build up to the casual incest. The story hasn't betrayed me. But this sudden jump from linear narration to record-skipping between revolting and disturbing scene upon revolting and disturbing scene just feels wrong and I don't know who I'm reading about anymore. Not least because character's characters have slipped by the waysides. The final days of Materia especially left me totally unconvinced that MacDonald wasn't just using her cast cynically and unfaithfully as a way to deliver us a steaming platter of blood and guts.

Finally, disgruntled, because as I was going through the gross bit my mind flashed back to the balls MacDonald had had in bringing in Wuthering Heights in the opening aphorism or whatever you call it when people quote someone else's book or a poem right before starting a chapter (five shiny new Euros to anyone who can tell me the name for that device - Americans, that can buy you a house, so I really want to you try on this one). Because Wuthering Heights also had a mid-point orgy of violence as Cathy died of brain fever - or was it from her child? - as Hindley died of a rotten liver - or was it at Heathcliff's hand? - as a pregnant Isabella Linton ran for her life across the moor with a headwound, and as all the other icky, creepy suggestions stayed with us from earlier in the book (Cathy and Heathcliff were raised brother and sister! and what is this Heathcliff anyways?)

But you know what? In that whole sequence, the only blood we saw was Isabella's, which she was remarkably light-hearted about. The only account we had of Cathy's death was a comforting second-hand narrative within a second-hand narrative. And Hindley - his death is practically reported to us as hearsay. What's more the whole nasty episode came out seemingly in a linear fashion, though not really, since we heard about events as Nelly learned about them or told them, and not as they happened. Good god, that book is well-told. Maybe the best ever.

My point is - little blood, no guts. And roughly one million times more effective than the blood and guts in Fall on Your Knees. Okay, fine, we can't all be Emily Brontë. But you know, don't evoke Emily Brontë and then give me V.C. Andrews with better sentence structure.

Anyways, Melbine and Dale, I know you've both read the book already, so advise me about whether or not I should continue and if it gets better. After an unbearably twee two page chapter with italic fonts and little flowery decorations and declarations about the things we mutter while we're fucking our first love, MacDonald has just switched gears to Frances, Mercedes and Lily, and I have to say so far I'm really not caring. Does it pick up if you stick with it?

Benefit . . . or Else

Yesterday, Melbine had this to say:

Yes, your world, or my world, might be a lot more insulated than lots of other people in the world - but I don't think that it means that you can't feel an empathy towards the people in 'less' insulated situations. I think that people like yourself and the people who surround you have a strong capacity to understand and appreciate all of the complexities and horrors of the real world. Does this mean we should be doing more to make our world less insulated? I don't know. Is it something that we should feel guilty about or unhappy about? I don't know. I do know that I feel very blessed and fortunate in this life.

And it made me think, and my response ballooned, so here it is formatted:

I don't think feeling guilty should enter into it. Some of the things we insulate ourselves from - things that are undoubtedly real - from the genuine love of the junkie for the needle to the mass conviction of former enthusiasts that Britney Spears is fat (which helps them deal with the facts that she has always been nothing but a shitty performer doing naive burlesque to musically worthless accompaniment, and that the attractions of that act had a shelf life exactly as long as her first, semi-legal flush of youth - thereby revealing uncomfortable truths about America's sexual relationship with children) are really lousy things that everybody should be spared.

And therein, I think, lies the difference. The existence of safe, deferential and respectful cocoon in which my conference-mates were ensconced relies on the fact that they are the only group of people in it; indeed, that it feel as much as possible as though their personal success is valued above the success of the people who wait on them or the women around them. But a good person, which I'd love to be, would like everyone to benefit from the good things he or she benefits from - loving parents, a relationship that makes one's life better instead of worse, education, financial security, unpasteurized milk, non-addictive drugs, and an emotional and imaginative life rich enough that one doesn't need to have make-believe relationships with celebrities.

You know, all I'd need to do is add 'trains that run on time' to that list and I'd start wondering if I should start campaigning to be a fascist strongwoman. My slogan can be 'Benefit . . . Or Else!' Sweet.

Anyways - as promised -

Books I Read on Planes:

Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, and The Little Sister. He has fantastic similes. The stories don't always quite make sense and one gets the impression they were written for money in a hurry but they're tearing yarns with colourful language and great characterization anyways. The Big Sleep was my favourite.

Haruki Murakami: Underground. A collection of first-hand accounts of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack carrired out by Aum Shinrikyo, followed by accounts of former and present Aum members and commentary from Murakami himself about how Aum represented a part, even an integrated part of Japanese culture, no matter how evil and bizarre it was - an inevitable response to the accepted violence of the Japanese way of life, which wears men down to nubs and isn't so easy on the ladies either. Fantastic, and not just Japanese, if you know what I mean.

Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory. Call me crazy, or ascribe it to my own prejudices rather than anyone else's, but whenever an Anglo man writes a novel set in a developing country, or even developed but dago-type country (Italy, Spain, etc.), it ends up looking less like a tearing good yarn about real people and more like a collection of archetypes forcefully combined to make a POINT. I see that as a running theme from the wops in Where Angels Fear to Tread (although not the Indians in A Passage to India - an absolutely marvellous book - I like E. M. Forster, including Angels, but I love A Passage to India - super good) through to the Old Man and the Sea. And now even to Graham Greene, whose realism I usually enjoy.

Explorations of the Vietnamese characters in The Quiet American was different because of the first person narration from an English opium addict who understood there were gaps in his understanding and bigger gaps in other people's understanding. But the Mexicans (that is, almost everyone) in The Power and the Glory are described by your standard God narrator. And to me this nudged The Power and the Glory towards being a Catholic parable rather than a proper novel - an almost opportunistic use of the upheavals of the Mexican state as a way to illustrate the supreme difficulties of morality AND of immorality - the search for reasons to remain Catholic when it's patently such a silly and unfair church . . .

That's not to say it wasn't good, though. It's a very atmospheric and engaging parable that makes you feel like you're wandering, too hot, around Mexico. But A Man for All Seasons it ain't.

Anyways, now I'm reading Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald to wash all the testosterone out of my aching-jawed mouth - the Murakami translation wasn't rough but a one-two of Chandler and Greene has left me feeling bruised and manhandled - and so far it's good. Very atmospheric in a creepy, visual way, but not too laboured. Has she written anything else since? No time to check, for I am off to work.

Coccooning

Guess what? Mircea Eliade used to live in the place my conference was. Here's where he stayed.

I stayed in a brand spanking new five star, and I know it was new because they were busily knocking down the old version right next to it. That means I got to look at some construction workers. I love construction workers in Mediterranean countries. Sometimes their skin is just the prettiest colour human skin can be and their muscles ripple. And it's too hot down there for them to get fat. Purr.

Now, this five star. It had deferential staff, as I wrote yesterday; while they weren't obsequious or anything like that, they were very attentive and very respectful to a degree I had really only seen in movies. And the five star was in a beautiful place both the attendees and their wives could enjoy. 95% of the attendees were male and the chairman closing each day's talk would mention 'our wives will join us at such and such a time and then we will be ferried to such and such a staggeringly beautiful location for a top notch dinner' or some such. Lots of jokes were made about shopping, etc., but I'd seen the 'social' programme that had been set up for the wives and it was lovely - tours and tastings and all the rest, oh my . . .

What I mean to say is that everything at this conference was taken care of, and that the experience was one of overwhelming comfort and safety. Reassurance. An atmosphere had been created that didn't allow for discomfort, disrespect, rejection or even marital discord since the wives were kept appropriately busy doing beautiful things. I suppose the safety and reassurance of it all came home to me on the last night at the formal dinner rounding off the conference, when I was on a dance floor full of beautiful women - or women who had invested a great deal in being beautiful - and, well, ugly men (and me, to whom none of the above categories applies). There were some attractive men at the conference but for the most part they didn't go to the formal, or else didn't dance once they were there.

They used the relative safety to pose, you see - lots of the men did. On the last night they flaunted their wives, as they'd been flaunting their BMWs, 39 foot boats, horses, Harleys, and knowledge of Michelin starred restaurants for the last few days. What it came down to in the end, for me, was that this was a group of men who had a safe environment full of deference and respect created for them which allowed them to be judged not by who they were, but by what they had done. I admit it disturbed me, probably because I got a couple of passes made at me which made me feel that these men who were making the passes - much older men than me, and not the George Clooney type of much older man - seemed to really expect me to go for it. And honestly, I was much less rude than usual about turning them down, so the environment of safety of deference and respect even extended over me.

And I know in a broader sense why the insulation disturbs me - that sort of world seems so insulated from reality, so removed from real things like love or disappointment or happiness or mercy or heartbreak or elation - all the most beautiful and staggering emotions that spontaneous life makes us feel and that we all have in common, that make us human. But that sort of insulated world seems to be the reward men get when they become successful and powerful in the normal sense of the words. These are the men, the insulated men, who run our world . . . it doesn't do to forget that . . .

But it's all very confusing to me because it has made me really think about how insulated my own world is, even within the framework of the prosperous West. I've surrounded myself with people who like books and don't like television, people who have the sophistication to analyze celebrity instead of having some bizarre emotional relationship with it, people who try to vote with their brains instead of their insecurities - that's not the real world either and periodically that comes home to me when I go to MSN and everything on the home page is about Britney Spears being fat on national TV, or when I'm in a Portuguese restaurant that had apparently been recommended in a French guide book listening to the asinine Gallic conversation of the people around me, or - you know, in any number of circumstances. We are all so far apart from each other.

Anyways. The morning after the conference, I walked a couple of kilometres down the coast the the Boca do Inferno and stared at the fishies you would see milling around in the clear blue water next to it, and felt pretty damn good in any case. Here is the mouth of hell, and the fishies:

Five days of summer

I've been in Portugal for work - first a conference and then a weekend basking in the Romanticism of Sintra. It was hot and lovely and I went to the beach and the mountains and didn't wear socks and got a tan and ate bacalhau and pasteis de nata until I felt like I would explode.

I wish I had more time this morning to get into the work part of it, which was fun and interesting - for example, it turns out I can indeed schmooze in my fashion and even find a way to enjoy it; if I remind myself it's my job, then I don't feel like such a goof for talking to people I'd never ordinarily talk to or want to talk to - though there were also people there I ended up genuinely liking, including my boss, which is awesome.

I'd like to tell you about the beautiful five star we stayed in that made Canadian five stars look like shit, and how that was tied to a dignified slavishness on the part of the staff which couldn't be managed in a richer country, and I'd like to explain to you that everything I've ever bothered thinking about rich men is more or less true - my prejudices have been beautifully reinforced by this trip. The conference was for a very traditional sort of industry, with traditional black tie dinners and music and gender roles. But there is no time. Maybe later.

The big news from this trip, according to how I feel this morning at least, is that after one year of studying its poetry and eight years of ignoring it completely I have finally discovered the essence of Romanticism after staying in Sintra, one of its capitals and a favourite of Byron and suchlike, and that is to twist your ankles in the most beautiful surroundings possible. Sintra is very, very, very beautiful and the hills around it are full of well-tended paths leading from one beauty spot to another. All of the well-tended paths, however, seem designed to snap the tendons of anyone who dares traverse them without Tevas. Luckily I was wearing my Tevas. Here are a couple of pictures:

This is a view from Sintra up to the Castelo dos Mouros. It is a very pretty castle. I knew because I walked and walked and walked up the snap-ankle paths to look at it.

See? Anyways, the whole thing was lovely. It was lovely to have some time to myself mooning around a beautiful, warm area and I loved the people and food. I nearly cried when I realized I had to come back here instead of being able to fetch Figaro there and living a Romantic, sore-ankled life in the sun. Oh well. Later, maybe. Tomorrow I will write about the conference, and the day after about all the books I read on aeroplanes or while I was waiting for them. You've been warned.