The Thick of It

I watched In The Loop last night. I thought it was OK but not as good as the BBC series The Thick of It, the stable from which it sprang. The Thick of It is gloriously absurd, nasty and funny. Here's a typical episode from season 3 featuring the new, hopeless government minister, Nicola Murray under siege from the press, the opposition and her own civil servants. There is a lot of creative swearing so this shouldnt be watched at work.

The Burma Chronicles

A nice Christmas gift I got this year was the Burma Chronicles by Guy DeLisle about a guy married to a Medecins Sans Frontiers doctor who gets shipped out to Burma. He's a Canadian comic book animator and artist and the book covers the fascinating year he spent in Rangoon living under the Junta. Its a book I would never have considered getting for myself but I'm very glad I read it. It gets under the skin of a country that none of us really know anything about. Before this the last thing I read about Burma was George Orwell and that was somewhat out of date. However, if you haven't read Orwell's classic "Shooting an Elephant" you should and  you can do so here.

Take The A Train...Or Maybe Dont

After a somewhat harrowing 10 hour bus ride from Boston to New York on Sunday through a white-out blizzard, Monday offered the promise of blue skies and chilly but fair conditions. I was supposed to meet my mum off the Aer Lingus flight from Dublin with my 8 year old daughter, but early in the morning we learned that JFK was closed because of two feet of snow and ice. KLM, BA, Lufthansa and other airlines cancelled their flights to the US but Aer Lingus in the fine Irish tradition decided to go for it, taking off and heading for JFK even though it was closed to all traffic. My mum was supposed to arrive at the still embargoed JFK at four PM and in MidTown Manhattan I was told that no buses or taxis were being allowed out to the airport. Fair enough I thought and with my cheerful daughter in tow we hopped the A Train. Unfortunately there's where it all went wrong. At Euclid Avenue in Queens we were told that all A train service had been suspended in both directions. In effect we were kicked out into the street. It was now three o'clock and my mum was supposed to land in an hour. Ok, I thought, I'll catch a cab. We walked up the steps into the heart of Queens. The scene outside the subway station was apocalyptic. The roads were impassible because of 20 inches of snow, there were buried buses and taxis and crashed cars all over the place. Nothing was moving in any direction. Increasingly frantically we walked through the snow drifts to see if anything was moving. Nothing was. I went back to the A train stop and asked if we could get back to the city. We were told that train service had been suspended indefinitely. It was now four o'clock so I called up JFK to see if someone could meet my mother coming off the plane, after being on hold for half an hour with my phone minutes almost at zero I was told that JFK was closed and nothing would be landing there. This made no sense at all so I called my wife who was back in Boston and asked her to look into it. Meanwhile we went back onto the street to look for a cab. I saw a guy driving a car and flagged him down and offered him 100 bucks to drive me to the airport but he said that there was no way anyone could get to the airport. The wind was vicious now and the sun was starting to set. I may have used profanity at this point. 
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After hoofing through the drifts for ten minutes, by the intervention of some good angel I saw a taxi churning snow three streets over. I told my daughter to wait by the bodega and I ran to it. There was a passenger inside and I begged him to let us join him wherever he was going. He was from Jamaica and of course agreed. We picked up my daughter Arwynn, drove to his house and then we headed out to JFK. It was slow going and at five my wife called to say that my mum's plane had been diverted to Boston Logan but according to Aer Lingus they were going to refuel there and go onto JFK. As we got closer to JFK there were cops and state troopers telling us to go back because the airport was closed. Finally my wife called and let me know that Aer Lingus now appreciated that no one was landing at JFK and the passengers were deplaning at Logan where they were being put on buses (!) to JFK. But Logan was fine because my wife was still in northern Mass so we called Aer Lingus and told my mum not to get on the bus to New York. Meanwhile my daughter and I went back to Manhattan by taxi to stay with Leah's aunt Amy. 
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We decided to spend Christmas in America this year because my daughter - having been born in Denver and now living in Australia - missed the snow. We're on the Greyhound bus back to Boston and she tells me now that she is over it. 

The Ice Caps Are Melting!...in, er, three thousand years or so

I voted for the Green Party at the 1989 Euro Elections. They got 15% of the vote that year and became the fourth largest party in the UK. The Greens didn't have a formal leader then but their de facto leader and spokesman, former BBC presenter David Icke, was delighted: Icke noted that most of the Green vote was from young people and he promised an "inevitable Green revolution." In 1990 Icke said that wearing purple could help save the planet from evil rays. Later in that decade he told us that he was the son of God and that planet Earth was controlled by alien lizards living inside human bodies. Apparently he no longer believes that he is the son of God but he does still buy into the whole lizard theory. George Bush is a lizard alien and so is the Queen. I haven't read Icke's recent writings but I suspect that he believes that Obama also is a lizard. A lizard who was born in Hawaii (he's nuts but not insane).

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Not all greens are crazy of course, but most of them are alarmists. I do believe that the planet has been getting warmer. The evidence is quite clear if you look at it, especially in long term weather monitoring sites. Its also clear to me that man has been responsible for much of this warming since the industrial revolution. What isnt clear at all is whether this will have any noticeable short term or medium term consequences. By short term I mean our lifetimes, by medium term I mean the lifetimes of our children or other people's children. I dont believe the Deep Greens when they claim that a one or two degree increase in global temperature over the next century will cause famines, hurricanes and the end of civilization. The CET record I link to above proves that it doesn't.

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A little story went largely unnoticed in the Guardian this week. It was about the Greenland Ice Cap, the one that Greens are always telling us is about to slide off Greenland into the north Atlantic and subsequently melt and flood the world. Apparently yes, it is melting as the planet warms but to disappear completely will take at least three thousand years. Of course in three thousand years our current holocene era may be over and a new Ice Age might well have begun. We are due for an Ice Age right about now if the cyclical evidence of history is to be believed and if it isn't to be believed can someone please tell me why not?

Interviewing Mr. Nabokov

I've long been a fan of the Paris Review interviews. This one with Vladimir Nabokov struck me as pretty funny. Here's the first few questions (and it goes on like this for thirty more).

INTERVIEWER

One critic (Pryce-Jones) has said about you that “his feelings are like no one else's.” Does this make sense to you? Or does it mean that you know your feelings better than others know theirs? Or that you have discovered yourself at other levels? Or simply that your history is unique?

NABOKOV

I do not recall that article; but if a critic makes such a statement, it must surely mean that he has explored the feelings of literally millions of people, in at least three countries, before reaching his conclusion. If so, I am a rare fowl indeed. If, on the other hand, he has merely limited himself to quizzing members of his family or club, his statement cannot be discussed seriously.

INTERVIEWER

Another critic has written that your “worlds are static. They may become tense with obsession, but they do not break apart like the worlds of everyday reality.” Do you agree? Is there a static quality in your view of things?

NABOKOV

Whose “reality”? “Everyday” where? Let me suggest that the very term “everyday reality” is utterly static since it presupposes a situation that is permanently observable, essentially objective, and universally known. I suspect you have invented that expert on “everyday reality.” Neither exists.

INTERVIEWER

He does [names him]. A third critic has said that you “diminish” your characters “to the point where they become ciphers in a cosmic farce.” I disagree; Humbert, while comic, retains a touching and insistent quality—that of the spoiled artist.

NABOKOV

I would put it differently: Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear “touching.” That epithet, in its true, tear-iridized sense, can only apply to my poor little girl. Besides, how can I “diminish” to the level of ciphers, et cetera, characters that I have invented myself? One can “diminish” a biographee, but not an eidolon.

INTERVIEWER

E. M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command?

NABOKOV

My knowledge of Mr. Forster's works is limited to one novel, which I dislike; and anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

Do Fish Dream? . . . My Films of 2010

I didn't see many films in 2010, but here are several that I liked:

=1. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
=1. Winter's Bone
3. The White Ribbon
4. About Elly
5. I Am Love
6. Mother

Several that other people liked and I did not:

1. Inception
2. Toy Story 3
3. The Hurt Locker
4. The American
5. A Prophet
6. The Killer Inside Me

Several that I really want to see:

1. True Grit
2. Tree of Life
3. 127 Hours
4. United Red Army

And a couple that I watched again with great pleasure

1. Ghost Dog
2. My Best Fiend
3. The Thin Red Line
4. Dead Man
5. The Big Lebowski
6. Night of The Hunter

Merry Christmas From The Family

One Of My Favourite Travel Writers Interviews My Favourite Director

Plum Island

Before moving on again we're briefly checking in on my mother in law's house on Plum Island, Mass. I've been here dozens of times before and lived here in 2005 for six months. Winter is a terrific time to visit the place. The Merrimack River is choked with ice and the Plum Island basin freezes over. The bottom two thirds of PI is a bird and wildlife sanctuary and if you're a twitcher there are many interesting avian critturs this time of year. There are many species of geese and ducks down from Canada of course but also hawks, sparrowhawks and other raptors out of their range (according to the maps in the field guide). This morning I saw an enormous adult bald eagle. It must have had an eight foot wing span and when the geese saw it they panicked en masse and headed off in giant voleries for somewhere less terrifying. 
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Incidentally the spellcheck for this post hates twitcher, critturs, masse and voleries but I'm keeping all of them.

Killing Women

In the first few minutes of The American, George Clooney's latest film (not half as entertaining at the coffee commercials he does with John Malkovich here in Australia), Clooney gets ambushed by a couple of gunmen and once he deals with his attackers he shoots the innocent, unarmed woman he is with in the back of the head so she can't be a witness against him. From that point I had a hard time having any sympathy for Clooney's character. He murders an innocent woman and we are then supposed to care about him and his life after he falls in love with a prostitute. I kinda didn't.
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In the opening scene of The Walking Dead a Deputy Sheriff shoots a little girl in the head because apparently she is a zombie. (Although we don't actually know this at the time). The director hides nothing from us. We get to see the little girl take the bullet in her forehead and die.
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Of course killing women has been a Hollywood staple since the talkies began, but I wonder if some new line has been crossed here? Is there a difference between what these characters did and what Norman Bates does in Psycho? Clooney and Perkins are both playing anti heroes, right? And what about Casey Affleck in the new Killer Inside Me? Can we have any sympathy for him at all? I know I didnt. I have only questions. Not answers. Sorry.

Tin Tin In The New World

Like Tin Tin & Snowy we too are innocents lost somewhere in the New World. I've written this post in advance in case I still dont have access to a computer either because of death, plane crash on a mysterious island in the Pacific or a lack of internet cafes. If I do have access to a computer I'm going to delete this post so if you're reading it...well you get it. This means of course that I still cant respond to blog comments, however if its reasons 2 or 3 I will read all your comments when I get the chance so please keep em rolling in. And dont forget that I've still got a whole bunch of interesting (or possibly not) original blog posts lined up.
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On a side note I like the way Lichtenstein stuck that Matisse from the MOMA in the background there.

Deviant

Just like the #7 bus, you wait two years for a new Adrian McKinty novel and then two come along at once. Falling Glass from Serpents Tail will be out in early March and in late March Deviant from Abrams. The latter is a Young Adult noir (if such a genre exists) set in Colorado Springs.
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This is a little mock up of the cover done by me which wont look a thing like the real cover. It's a colour inverted photograph of a lighting storm in the Garden of the Gods (in the Springs) where chapter 1 of Deviant takes place.

Roger Ebert's Greatest Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes. Even Homer nods. Normally Roger Ebert is my go to guide for what's happening in the world of movies. His brilliant review of Peter Jackson's Lovely Bones was a treat. But sometimes the Great Cham of Chicago doesn't have his bap screwed on right. This is the first in an occasional series of blogs about movies that I disagree with Sir Roger about. I picked 8 because I couldn't think of 10 off the top of my head.

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8. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Ebert says: "[it] must have looked like a natural on paper, but, alas, the completed film is slow and disappointing." He complains about the casting, the famous 'who are these guys' chase scene (!) and the ending. If it's so bad why do we all watch it when we catch it on TV? Explain that.
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7. Millers Crossing. Ebert says: "This doesn't look like a gangster movie, it looks like a commercial intended to look like a gangster movie. Everything is too designed. That goes for the plot and the dialogue, too." He mostly complains about Leo's office and the fact that the dialogue is too good! Yes, you heard me right. And no, I don't know why he has that comma before too either. 
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6. Full Metal Jacket. Ebert says: "i[T]s more like a book of short stories than a novel. Many of the passages seem self-contained, some of them are masterful and others look like they came out of the bottom drawer. This is a strangely shapeless film from the man whose work usually imposes a ferociously consistent vision on his material. The movie is about Vietnam and was shot on stages and outdoor sets in England. It's one of the best-looking war movies ever made on sets and stages, but that's not good enough when compared to the awesome reality of "Platoon," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Deer Hunter." Ebert's comparing schlock like Platoon and The Deer Hunter to FMJ? Wow. In a notorious appearance on At The Movies, Gene Siskel nearly lost his shit when Ebert gave a thumbs up to Benji The Hunted and a thumbs down to Full Metal Jacket. Just think about that for a minute. Or better yet, watch it.
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5 Batman: The Dark Knight. Ebert gave this film four stars. The maximum. This is what he said:"Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production." The writing? The writing? The plot of this film was such an insult to the intelligence that I walked out before I had a heart attack from sheer annoyance. Very silly story telling, ghastly plotting and dialogue that made me laugh out loud in all the wrong places. Roger Ebert proves that he's in love with Christopher Nolan or something by giving four stars to every one of his films, even the childish teen fantasy Inception.  
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4. Dark City. Ebert gives this four stars too. Clearly science fiction is his achilles heel. He has no compass to navigate his way through the genre. Ebert says that Dark City "is a great visionary achievement, a film so original and exciting, it stirred my imagination like ``Metropolis'' and ``2001: A Space Odyssey." No it isn't. It's got no story, no original ideas. Its all about the set design. A set design that dated faster than a Flock of Seagulls haircut once The Matrix came along
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3. Blade Runner. Roger Ebert famously hated Blade Runner. He's been scrambling to explain himself ever since. Hence the over praise for things like Dark City which he hoped would redeem him among the Geekverse. Ebert says of Blade Runner: "The movie's weakness, however, is that it allows the special effects technology to overwhelm its story. Ford is tough and low-key in the central role, and Rutger Hauer and Sean Young are effective as two of the replicants, but the movie isn't really interested in these people -- or creatures. The obligatory love affair is pro forma, the villains are standard issue, and the climax is yet one more of those cliffhangers, with Ford dangling over an abyss by his fingertips." Jesus, he hated the scene on the roof with Rutger Hauer. Can you imagine? Your hate killed Philip K Dick, Roger. Killed the poor bastard! I hope you're happy!! (editor's note, PKD died well before the film was released and Ebert wrote his review). 

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2. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Three and a half stars Ebert gives it. It just missed perfection by half a star. I wont even quote Ebert here. His review is a travesty. The science fiction blind spot again or fear of being seen as uncool? Who cares. Look at RedLetterMedia's review on YouTube for the full magilla.

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1. Avatar. Another Four Star review. Honestly am I the only person who found this to be absolute drivel? Were you all hypnotised? Body snatched? Clunky acting, stupid plot, predictable story, embarrassing love scenes? Smurfs in a tree. WTF? Ebert says: "not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It's a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult." This is supposed to be a good thing? Sheesh...

12 Stories for Christmas

Ooops, wrong Chekov

Nice idea from the Guardian. The books editor called up twelve of his mates contacted twelve prominent authors and asked them to read their favourite short stories. There's a series of 12 free podcasts you can listen to on iTunes or on the Guardian's home page. I listened to the first one, Philip Pullman reading Chekov, and it was great. A strange minimalistic story about a chap seeing a pretty girl on a train, which reminded me of that bit in Citizen Kane where Kane's buddy is wistfully talking about a girl he saw once for a few seconds on the Hudson Ferry and can't stop thinking about her half a century later.

Hello America

Now that the school term is over, we're taking the family back to America for a month. We'll be staying at various locales on the road and I'm not sure if I'll be able to respond to all your comments as promptly as I would like. I plan to get one of those things that sticks into the side of the computer so hopefully that will work. I have optimistically scheduled a few blog posts in advance, so please do comment, I will certainly read all the comments but I might not be able to respond to them as quickly as I normally do.
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Thank you for your cooperation/opprobium.

Irish Poem of the Month

A new feature of the blog. I think Irish fiction since WW2 has been a little bit safe but Irish poetry has been booming since at least the 70's when, partially as a response to the Troubles, N Irish verse suddenly, er, exploded...The circle that formed around Queens University has produced Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners and winners of virtually every other important literary award. Among the poets from this circle are: Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon, Derek Mahon, Tom Paulin...to name but a few. I'll also include stuff that's being going on south of the border and the exciting new generation of poets from all over the island. This month's offering is Carson's Belfast Confetti:


Belfast Confetti


Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks,
Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the explosion.
Itself - an askerisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire...
I was trying to complete a sentence in my head but it kept stuttering,
All the alleyways and side streets blocked with stops and colons.


I know this labyrinth so well - Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street -
Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street.
Dead end again.
A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-talkies.
What is my name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going?
A fusillade of question- marks.

Freedom by Aretha Franz- er, I mean by Jonathan Franzen

I'm not going to give a long review of Freedom here. I think the book's been pretty much dissected to death and its completely critic proof now that Franzen has been beatified by The New York Times and canonised by Oprah. But I do want to talk about two aspects of the novel that got under my skin if you'll indulge me... 

I didn't hate Freedom but I certainly didn't feel the same level of engagement that I had with Franzen's previous novel, The Corrections; the tics and flaws that were present in that book (which I largely ignored because I was enjoying the story so much) overwhelmed me this time. And the humor was largely absent. (I can pretty much forgive a book anything if its funny).

I think my lack of engagement wasn't the dated eco plot (Franzen really needs to watch Hans Rosling on TED) but rather the fact that none of Franzen's characters talked or acted like real people, which isn't a problem in say, a science fiction novel, but in a book like this it's crucial. Everyone in Freedom, rich and poor, New Yorker or Minnesotan, Gentile or Jew, converses like a Brooklyn hipster. In general no one stuttered or had trouble with their words, no one used slang or colloquialisms. No one really cursed except for the cliched West Virginia racist. Sure they all have different points of view and agendas and locales but when they talk they all sound like Jonathan Franzen. This book makes me wonder if Franzen has a good ear for working class dialogue or indeed for dialogue not uttered by middle class college educated white collar white people.


One example. On page 238 Carol Monaghan the gauche, lower class neighbour (of course she had to be Irish) has the following conversation with the spoiled, preppie Joey who has been dating her daughter Connie:


"I'm not her boyfriend, we're on hiatus." 
"What is hiatus? What does that mean?"
"It means we're experimenting with being apart."
"That's not what Connie tells me. Connie tells me you want her to go to school so she can learn administrative skills and be your assistant in your endeavours."


Carol doesn't understand the word hiatus but she says "administrative skills" and "endeavours"? Hmmm. Ok, perhaps she was just asking for clarification from Joey as to what he meant by "hiatus" which is fair enough, but she still replies in fully formed sentences and uses such unlikely words as "endeavours" even as she boils with rage. Her husband's farting cracks her up but she talks like she's teaching English composition at Barnard. Carol is too poised, too aware. In fact everyone in Freedom is too aware, too cool, too post modern. This is America in the George W Bush Presidency? Who were you hanging with, Jonathan? The rest of us were scared shitless.


I didn't buy Carol and I didn't buy most of the other characters in the book. I don't believe they exist anywhere but in Franzen's imagination and I found this to be a big problem. If he wants to write a book about people who act and talk like that he should. Set it in Williamsburg and everything be fine. Except that everybody hates hipsters and no one wants to read about them. Disguising them as simple Mid Westerners doesnt fly.


For me Patty's journal was by far the most successful part of Freedom. I thought it was funny, charming and it often hilariously veered into the territory of romance fiction. I loved it. In fact I kind of wished the whole book had been Patty's journal and he'd cut everything else. We would have seen that she was not a reliable narrator and we would have bought her voice. But dipping out of the journal and seeing her in the context of the rest of the novel was jarring. Now Patty didn't really sound like Patty. Now she sounded like Jonathan Franzen self consciously attempting a tour de force. 


Of course everyone in a David Mamet movie talks like David Mamet, it's his signature style, but novelists can't coast on style for 500 pages. And although polyphony is very hard, it's worth trying to get right. Two novels Franzen name checks in the book are V and War and Peace. Franzen would no doubt cringe at the comparison, but Tolstoy and Pynchon both pull off polyphony effortlessly.
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The only other big issue I have with the book and with many of these attempts to produce a Great American Novel is that the world of work is never described. Work is a very important subject and is not something to be disdained or ignored, but I dont think successful novelists really know what it's like to have a job anymore. And the more successful they become the more they get away from everyday concerns. Yes you can sit in your office and think up snappy dialogue until the cows come home but if you want to describe America maybe it would be a good idea to experience America, listen to what people are saying, see what they're doing etc. And if you can't fake dialogue, next time you're out bring a tape recorder and leave it running in the diner and I think you'll be surprised by how people actually talk.

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One final final point: if you're going to diss The Ramones you really need to have some water tight arguments otherwise you'll come off like someone who doesn't understand The Ramones and that ain't a good look.

Pleasing Podcasts

When I'm driving the car or riding my bike I like to listen to audiobooks and podcasts. I've talked often here about the audiobooks I'm currently listening to but I don't think I've ever mentioned the podcasts. Let me rectify that: 
1. The BBC's newspod: 30 minute morning news bulletin from the Beeb. All the depressing news of the day in an easily digestible form.
2. The Guardian Science Weekly: exactly what it says on the tin.
3. The Kevin Pollak Chat Show. A long weekly interview show with - usually - someone pretty interesting. He used to start the show with a great corny joke but alas he doesn't do that anymore.
4. The BBC's Start The Week: Monday morning BBC arts show.  
5. Hardcore History: an intermittant history podcast, usually pretty good.
6. In Our Time: Melvyn Bragg and a panel of experts look at one particular event in history.
7. Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo's Film Reviews: can be quite fun or very irritating. Or both.  
8. The Bugle: John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman do a satirical news roundup for The Times.
9. Doug Benson's I Love Movies: His name is Doug and he loves movies.
10. What Would Herzog Do?: I've just started listening to this one. Its a monthly and pretty good so far. Two geeks try to live their life as Herzog would wish them to do.

Bread and Circuses

In a recent interview Werner Herzog explained why he lives in LA not New York: "LA generates culture, but all New York does is consume it." I thought of this when I read this depressing story in The New York Times about a Steve Martin talk at the 92nd Street Y. He was being interviewed about his new novel set in the art world and about art collecting in general. Sol Adler, the Y’s executive director was horrified. The Times takes up the story.

“Last night’s event with Steve Martin did not meet the standard of excellence that you have come to expect from 92nd St. Y,” Sol wrote in an e-mail to ticket holders. “We planned for a more comprehensive discussion and we, too, were disappointed with the evening. We will be mailing you a $50 certificate for each ticket you purchased to last night’s event. The gift certificate can be used toward future 92Y events, pending availability.” About 900 tickets to the event, which cost $50 each, had been sold; all ticket buyers received the offer. Perhaps the audience saw that message coming. Midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Ms. Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Mr. Martin’s career and, implicitly, less about the art world, the subject of his latest novel, “An Object of Beauty.” According to Mr. Martin, viewers watching the interview by closed-circuit television from across the country sent e-mails to the Y complaining “that the evening was not going the way they wished, meaning we were discussing art.”

It was, he said, “a little like an actor responding in Act III to an audience’s texts to ‘shorten the soliloquies.’ ” The audience cheered when Ms. Solomon read aloud the note. Still, Ms. Solomon said she had thought until that moment that things were going swimmingly. She said she was “appalled” to have their conversation publicly criticized by the Y and found deserving of a refund.

My friend Scott said this to me in an email: "I was an usher in college at the 92nd St Y, so I can attest that many of the people there are philistines. It's a lot of cranky old biddies who buy a whole series of talks or movies or whatever. I was always surprised when they would have a movie and then a talk with the director or actor. A lot of them would come, watch the movie, and then leave. When they had The Color Of Money and then an interview with Martin Scorsese at least a quarter of the audience left after the movie. You can't stick around to see Marty? Stuff like that amazed me."

The public evidently only wanted to hear about Steve Martin's "wild and crazy guy" persona and his comic turns in the movies. This is the audience of the 92nd Street Y, one of New York's cultural beacons. Sheesh. I guess that's why Charlie Rose, David Letterman etc. have on so many actors and so few poets, artists etc. - that's what the public wants and that's what they're going to get.

Steve Martin responded to the kerfuffle with an editorial in the Times, here. 

Perhaps he should have responded like this?

Favourite Books Of The Year & A Couple of Disappointments

Here's a little list of my favourite books of 2010. Some were published this year, some weren't, some I blogged about, some I didn't.

1. The Lamb Enters The Dreaming - Robert Kenny
A fascinating account of one of the first Aboriginal converts to Christianity and how he tried to reconcile two completely different ways of seeing the universe.
2. The Way Of The World - Nicolas Bouvier
Two Swiss guys travel from Paris to Afghanistan in the 1950's in an old Fiat. They make money along the way by writing newspaper articles and (I love this) organising art exhibitions.
3. The Rational Optimist - Matt Ridley
Funnily enough it turns out that we're not doomed after all.
4. Wind, Sand and Stars -  Antoine Saint Exupery
His plane crashes in the desert in the 1930's and because he's French he gets all existential about it. In a good way.
5. The Thin Red Line - James Jones
The classic story of infantry men on Guadalcanal.
6. Orchid Blue - Eoin McNamee
The crime writer's crime writer shows us all how it should be done by turning in his masterpiece. For some reason Australian customs kept this book in their office for four months but when it came it was more than worth the wait.
7. Sexual Personae - Camille Paglia
I had never read this before and I found it lying on a desk at the library and thought I'd flick through it. I can see how she would annoy some people (perhaps most people) but I found the book to be completely gripping. She says more outrageous things in the first twenty pages than most of us will say in our lives.
8. Through The Square Window - Sinead Morrissey
One of the new generation of Irish poets turns in her best collection yet. Morrissey is lyrical, funny and wise beyond her years.
9. Another Bullshit Night In Suck City - Nick Flynn
Flynn's compelling account of how he ran into his father while working in a Boston homeless shelter. Anybody who knows Boston will adore this book. (And if you don't you'll still like it).
10. Just Kids - Patti Smith
A beautifully written memoir about Patti Smith's childhood and her days with Bob Mapplethorpe gettaway driver...(sorry, a little Bottle Rocket humor there)...I mean Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer.
=10. Conquest of the Useless - Werner Herzog
I haven't actually read this book yet, but I'm putting it in my top 10 anyway because I'm getting tachyon signals from the future that when I do read it I am going to love it.
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Disappointments:

1. The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
The only reason I finished this book was because I was trapped in a plane for 8 hours. An unfunny, uninteresting, incompetent embarrassment. If I had been a publisher's reader I would have rejected this out of hand. It won the Booker Prize.
2. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
I haven't quite finished it yet and although it is certainly not a bad novel it is a disappointment after the brilliance of The Corrections. It's hard work to be in the company of these characters and for me its lacking much of the emotional depth and humor of Franzen's previous work. The reviews have been stellar. Perhaps I'm missing something? 
3. Life - Keith Richards
Everybody loves Keef, but I found this bio to be a tedious list of groupies, tours, chord changes and albums from a musical performer who was last relevant 37 years ago. Read Patti Smith's book instead. Please.

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Here's The New York Times's picks of the year. It's a pretty pedestrian bunch but I approve of the William Trevor and the Siddartha Mukherjee. And once again I am slightly baffled by Freedom.

Is The Harry Potter Thing Over Now?

I couple of days ago I read a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Harrows, on my old pal Girish Shahane's blog. Now, if I recall correctly, Deathly Harrows is the last of the Potter books! So that's it then is it? This is the last Harry Potter film of the last Harry Potter book? Is it all over now? If so I must say I'm relieved. I've never gotten on board the Harry Potter train myself whether at Kings Cross station nor anywhere else. The books bored me silly and the clips of the films I've seen on TV looked pretty dire: a bunch of obnoxious English boarding school kids pointing magic wands at each other...Hmmm. I'm glad children seem to enjoy these novels and I hope it's got a lot of them reading, but I've never understood the appeal they have for adults. Still I'm not complaining at the moment, I'm just glad that after ten long years it's finally finished. Unless Ms Rowling writes another one of course.
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On another topic entirely...Girish also has an interesting post about an incident from our college days here.