Culture - December

Books read:

Hunter S. Thompson - 'The Rum Diary'
Will Self - 'Great Apes'
Franz Kafka - 'The Trial' (re-read)
Nicholas Tomalin & Ron Hall - 'The Strange Voyage of Donald Crowhurst' (non-fiction)

The remarkable story of Donald Crowhurst, the ambitious amateur sailor - lends itself so absolutely to narrative retelling that its hard to believe in its actual truth. Despite having no prior experience of competitive sailing, Crowhurst entered the 1968 Sunday Times Round-the-World Race, setting off in a ramshackle trimaran and ending up as a hapless composer of a grand deception, convincing everyone that he was on cause to win whilst in actual fact never leaving the Atlantic Ocean.

The gravity of his duplicity steadily took over Crowhurst's sanity, leading him to record what he believed to be his uncovering of a 'divine philosophic truth' before finally taking his own life. Crowhurst is the quintessential Herzogian protagonist - a Fitzcarraldo or an Aguirre - psychologically flawed yet imbued with vast ambitious delusions that eventually consumed him.

Fiction-wise this month I was fatigued by the effort of wading through the turgid gloop that was 'Great Apes'. Will Self is perhaps my favourite living author (of which there sadly aren't that many), yet I found this book to be a quite tedious work. The premise, of a man who wakes up one morning after an alcohol/drug binge to discover the world has undergone a biological inversion - apes are now the dominant species - was initially intriguing. The thematic tropes explored - the consistent mating, the pant-hooting dialogue, the hierarchical structures - were promising as a work of satire, and would have worked perfectly well had Self being able to rein the whole thing in to a more succinct novella-length of around 100 pages. As it is, he instead strings out the puns, the cheap gags and the repetitive imagery to near-500 pages, with little in the way of a discernible narrative arc, dragging the whole thing out until its tired and withered conclusion.


Films Watched:

'Boogie Nights' (Paul Thomas Anderson)
'Rita, Sue and Bob too' (Alan Clarke)
'The Special Relationship' (Richard Loncraine)
'A Man Escaped' (Robert Bresson)
'Black Christmas' (Bob Clark)
'Prometheus' (Ridley Scott)
'Lawrence of Arabia' (David Lean)
'Spartacus' (Stanley Kubrick)
'Casablanca' (Michael Curtiz)
'All Quiet on the Western Front' (Lewis Milestone)
'Soylent Green' (Richard Fleischer)

As it was the lazy festive season I enjoyed some old classics this month, from 'Spartacus' to 'All Quiet on the Western Front' to 'Casablanca'. Conversely, I found 'Black Christmas' to be a surprisingly worthwhile watch; a reminder of just how interesting horror cinema was back in the early-1970s, as the slasher subgenre took its primary footsteps, laying the groundwork for 1978's 'Halloween' and the 1980s splurge of imitations.


Albums played:

Toy - 'Join the Dots'
The Album Leaf - 'A Chorus of Storytellers'
Boards of Canada - 'Music has the right to Children'
The Fall - 'The Remainderer' (EP)
Happy Mondays - 'Bummed'
Deftones - 'Adrenaline'


Gigs Attended:

Happy Mondays at O2 Academy, Bristol

As evidence of just how introspective and terminally nostalgic modern culture has become, the experience of going to see the Happy Mondays - a group so closely identified with the now-hyperbolic acid house/Manchester rave movement of the late 80s/early 90s - should be enough to prohibit anyone's dignity from emerging unscathed, band or audience.

And yet, taken on its own terms the gig is perfectly enjoyable. Shaun Ryder looks healthier than he has in years (not saying much mind), being as he is in the midst of his mainstream renaissance what with chasing UFOs around for TV; the band play well, locking together all those infectious grooves and guitar melodies that enabled them to bridge the gap between acid house dance and rock so memorably.

The band dynamic is rather amusing to observe. Brothers Paul and Shaun Ryder barely glance at each other throughout the set, and Rowetta frequently looks embarrassed to be there, but Bez, the shamanic master of ceremonies, still manages to distract and hold attention despite now being in his 50s. You can't help but think that in any healthy, self-respecting culture this kind of shameless retrospective flatulence just wouldn't be happening, but one cannot begrudge them this mid-life opportunity to recoup some earnings from the music they made together, nor deny it being quite good fun at the same time.


Exhibitions:

Dino & Jake Chapman - 'Come and See' (at Serpentine Sackler Gallery)
'Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain' (at British Library)