I got Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles Volume One, for Christmas, having restrained myself from buying it when it came out in the autumn. Given his track record (musical and non-musical) and his recent erratic form, I feared the worst. But it turns out that, no, it is not as bad as it could easily have been, nor as bad as might reasonably be expected, nor even good considering remembering his past has never been one of his interests or strengths and writing prose didn't suit his style; no, it's actually good full stop. He writes tangentially and episodically, concentrating on establishing the mood of a particular time and place economically. He describes the Minnesota communities' repsonse to fallout shelters: "But salesmen hawking the bomb shelters were met with expressionless faces".
His account of songwriting and recording is prosaic and matter-of-fact (and unenthusistaic compared to his treatment of books and people); you can see in his description of the New Morning and Oh Mercy! sessions his growing frustration that the sounds they were making were getting further away from the sounds he had envisioned, and that he, as well as his critics, was unhappy with the final result. So, surprisingly, the book takes a dip in interesty the closer it comes to "the work".
The only groanworthy moment is the appearance of Bono and the two-page eulogy Dylan gives to Bono's genius, knowledge and wisdom. But as Dylan says himself, noone should rely on his judgement! Otherwise, it's clear that, despite fears to the contrary, he is still sane and capable.
Whether Volume Two will cohere as well as this does is doubtful, since it will inevitably cover better-documented parts of his life, and will also have to deal with a lot of touring and recording, but I'd recommend Volume One to anyone with an interest in Dylan.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Written in your heart - a radio play
I have mounted the script for an unproduced radio play at http://locock2.blogspot.com
I think it's quite funny, but the BBC didn't. Or not funny enough.
I think it's quite funny, but the BBC didn't. Or not funny enough.
When ruthless megalomaniacs turn bad
A university historian complained recently that these days undergraduates only know about two things: Hitler and Stalin. Apparently, everones does them, first for GCSEs, and then again for A levels. So people who are interested enough in history to take a degree in it arrive with no eal knowledge of anything that happened before 1900.
You can see why this happens, though: the Second World War and related matters seems to be the one reliably-popular period, reflected in TV series, like Timewatch, whose remit is broad in both time and space, but chooses WW2 at least every second programme, and indeed entire channels: if you took WW2 and Egypt out of UK History (which would be no bad thing), you'd be left with just the adverts (which would). And there is a steady stream of semi-popular biographies of Hitler, Stalin, and Hitler-and-Stalin, presumably because they are in demand. Not by me, though. The biographical approach to history tends to emphasise narrative at the expense of analysis. Even if one could examine people's motives, this would be unsatisfying, as unsatisfying as the parlour game these biographies become: who was the maddest? most evil? My snap answer would be that Stalin was maddest because he was prepared to act directly contrary to his long-term interests: imprisoning or executing all of he army officers just before a war. I'm not sure about evillest, since it covers both the moral content of your intentions and the acceptability of the means used to carry them out.
There is a much more interesting moral question to be addressed, though. Hitler and Stalin were unique, generating massive suffering. But they didn't do it alone. It is conveneient to see their actions as a one-off (or two-off). This would be wrong. The 20th century is full of genocides, from the Armenians to Pol Pot and Rwanda. Genocide is not an aberration in modern politics - it seems endemic. More important than the issue of what a dictator thought, or did, is the issue of how so many other sane, reasonable, people, helped them. And helped them with gusto. Even if it difficult to stand up to a totalitarian regime and say "no", it is much less difficult to work inefficiently in carrying out its more repellent instructions. Or so you'd think.
There is a genocidal rhetoric which makes it easier for people to do things that they would otherwise find deeply troubling. The key element is the denial of the humanity of the target group: literally 'demonised', 'inhuman', 'bestial'. If they are outside the pale, incurable, not susceptible to reason, all you can do is lock them up, or kill them. Otherwise you will always be threatened.
When the first photos from the Iraqi miltary prison appeared, there was, as well as shock and disgust, a general feeling of surprise: why did they even think of doing it? To me, it wasn't surprising, since it fitted in with the rhetoric of the war on terror, and the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If you start off by saying a group of people cannot be afforded human rights, then it takes only a small step to say that they are hardly human at all.
There's a pernicious piece of Jesuitry from Lenin : ""Liberty is precious, so precious that it must be rationed." http://encarta.msn.com/media_461577172_761562790_-1_1/Vladimir_Ilich_Lenin_Quick_Facts.html Who is doing the rationing? Do you trust them?
You can see why this happens, though: the Second World War and related matters seems to be the one reliably-popular period, reflected in TV series, like Timewatch, whose remit is broad in both time and space, but chooses WW2 at least every second programme, and indeed entire channels: if you took WW2 and Egypt out of UK History (which would be no bad thing), you'd be left with just the adverts (which would). And there is a steady stream of semi-popular biographies of Hitler, Stalin, and Hitler-and-Stalin, presumably because they are in demand. Not by me, though. The biographical approach to history tends to emphasise narrative at the expense of analysis. Even if one could examine people's motives, this would be unsatisfying, as unsatisfying as the parlour game these biographies become: who was the maddest? most evil? My snap answer would be that Stalin was maddest because he was prepared to act directly contrary to his long-term interests: imprisoning or executing all of he army officers just before a war. I'm not sure about evillest, since it covers both the moral content of your intentions and the acceptability of the means used to carry them out.
There is a much more interesting moral question to be addressed, though. Hitler and Stalin were unique, generating massive suffering. But they didn't do it alone. It is conveneient to see their actions as a one-off (or two-off). This would be wrong. The 20th century is full of genocides, from the Armenians to Pol Pot and Rwanda. Genocide is not an aberration in modern politics - it seems endemic. More important than the issue of what a dictator thought, or did, is the issue of how so many other sane, reasonable, people, helped them. And helped them with gusto. Even if it difficult to stand up to a totalitarian regime and say "no", it is much less difficult to work inefficiently in carrying out its more repellent instructions. Or so you'd think.
There is a genocidal rhetoric which makes it easier for people to do things that they would otherwise find deeply troubling. The key element is the denial of the humanity of the target group: literally 'demonised', 'inhuman', 'bestial'. If they are outside the pale, incurable, not susceptible to reason, all you can do is lock them up, or kill them. Otherwise you will always be threatened.
When the first photos from the Iraqi miltary prison appeared, there was, as well as shock and disgust, a general feeling of surprise: why did they even think of doing it? To me, it wasn't surprising, since it fitted in with the rhetoric of the war on terror, and the treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. If you start off by saying a group of people cannot be afforded human rights, then it takes only a small step to say that they are hardly human at all.
There's a pernicious piece of Jesuitry from Lenin : ""Liberty is precious, so precious that it must be rationed." http://encarta.msn.com/media_461577172_761562790_-1_1/Vladimir_Ilich_Lenin_Quick_Facts.html Who is doing the rationing? Do you trust them?
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Unreasonably funny jokes
Two motorways are drinking in a bar. One says 'Watch out for him in the corner - he's a real cyclepath!'.
Did you hear about the anarchist who went to the toilet?
He was crushed by the cistern.
What's brown and sticky?
A stick.
Did you hear about the anarchist who went to the toilet?
He was crushed by the cistern.
What's brown and sticky?
A stick.
Into the silent prison
The closing gates muffle the sounds
No cries can be heard
I enter the halls
Where slippered guards pace
Led to my solitary cell
I'm invited to reflect and repent
Notes
All based on fact. The silent system was one of the bright Victorian ideas for prison reform. Instead of leaving prisoners to rot for years in hulks or on hard labour with their fellow-criminals, the silent system was supposed to reform, quickly. By keeping everyone separate and (as it says) silent. Even when taken to the exercise yard, proisoners were forced to walk a measured 5 yards from their fellows, and wear a peaked hat that obscured their face. Guards would call prisoners by number, not name, and wore slippers so as not to distract them from their self-examination. It wasn't a great success, since there were many sent insane or suicidal, but few were reformed. A bit of medieval cruelty might seem like a holiday in comparison- which goes to prove the old rule - sadists are dangerous, but zealots are worse.
No cries can be heard
I enter the halls
Where slippered guards pace
Led to my solitary cell
I'm invited to reflect and repent
Notes
All based on fact. The silent system was one of the bright Victorian ideas for prison reform. Instead of leaving prisoners to rot for years in hulks or on hard labour with their fellow-criminals, the silent system was supposed to reform, quickly. By keeping everyone separate and (as it says) silent. Even when taken to the exercise yard, proisoners were forced to walk a measured 5 yards from their fellows, and wear a peaked hat that obscured their face. Guards would call prisoners by number, not name, and wore slippers so as not to distract them from their self-examination. It wasn't a great success, since there were many sent insane or suicidal, but few were reformed. A bit of medieval cruelty might seem like a holiday in comparison- which goes to prove the old rule - sadists are dangerous, but zealots are worse.
He smiled ironically
It's not just me that hates emoticons : c
Irony alert!: the emoticon at the end of the first sentence was used ironically; )
The online world has its own cliches and truisms, none so haggard as the belief that reliable written communication is impossible without frequent use of
>
emoticons, better known as the "smileys."
...
Irony, it seems, is like nitroglycerin: too tricky to be good for much, and so best left in the hands of fanatics or trained professionals.
...
It is as if the written word were a cutting-edge technology without useful
precedents. Some hackers actually go so far as to maintain, with a straight face
(:-I), that words on a computer screen are different from words on paper--implying that writers of e-mail have nothing useful to learn from Dickens or Hemingway, and that time spent reading old books might be better spent coming up with new emoticons.
Read it all at http://kumo.swcp.com/synth/text/text.smileys
Irony alert!: the emoticon at the end of the first sentence was used ironically; )
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Elvis (Costello) is king
"She told me she was working for the ABC news
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use"
'Brilliant mistake'
"Somewhere in the Quisling clinic
There's a smart young typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line-
She's picking out names: I hope none of them are mine"
'Green skirt'
It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use"
'Brilliant mistake'
"Somewhere in the Quisling clinic
There's a smart young typist taking seconds over minutes
She's listening in to the Venus line-
She's picking out names: I hope none of them are mine"
'Green skirt'
Friday, December 03, 2004
The joy of cliche
There was a report from the Plain English Campaign http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/pressrelease.html bemoaning the prevalence of cliche, particularly in broadcasting. Particular hates were footballer-ese like "a game of two halves" "at the end of the day" etc, "Don't go there". I must admit I don't really share this complaint. Eloquence is a rare thing. I am not at all sure what feats of Churchillian rhetoric it is reasonable to expect when you ask someone how they have managed to run 100m a little bit faster than the others, or how they feel after having scored more or fewer goals than the other team.
It's not that the language is misused so much that the topic is not sufficiently complex to merit more than this. And in any case, cliches are what people say; all people. Much better this than the sort of ponderous circumlocutions favoured by those in the past who were placed in greater public prominence than normal for their class and education, such as trade union leaders, taking refuge in long words to sound more like their "betters".
And anyway, the language is changing. These days the buzzword for web design is usability: designing user interfaces so that people can use them (as opposed to the old way, create an immaculate site that users find impossible to navigate, use, and in extreme cases, even load!). As a result, the focus is on making text as universally readable as possible, by using simple short sentences and avoiding esoteric terminology (when Madonna was preparing her pornography book and album, at the very last minute they changed the title to Sex, since they found a large part of their target audience didn't know what 'Erotica' was). FAQs ought to be genuinely frequent, rather than the spurious ones like "How can I send a message to Tony Blair congratulating him on his stance on Iraq?" or "Can you make sure you give my email address out to spammers?".
Much more pernicious than popular usage is what passes these days for educated prose. I glanced at a paper about standards in Law education, and was horrified to see that it was all about 'evaluated outcomes' and 'acquired skills' and 'performance criteria'. This style of writing is usually adopted when people wish to either soften their judgement (poorly-performing schools, challenging behaviour) or else to make what is obvious sound more complex and worthwhile. It is sad to think that the best legal minds have to tolerate this rubbish just as much as market researchers into a new dog food. They should have put a red line through the report and sent it back with the note "translate into English".
I'm not very good at committees because I don't have the patience to "say the words that must be said" - "It's a good draft except for sections 1-10 and the appendixes"; "Thank you for your witless and interminable contribution to the debate; I didn't want to get home before midnight anyway"; "I think the main point here is that everything you've said is wrong".
When reading Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage, I'm amazed how many contemporary hates have been around for years (for example, the usage of "infer" for "imply" and "refute" for "deny", which I had though a modern horror, is in fact current from the 18th century and therefore arguably equally correct); I am also amazed at the long articles about abuses where I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. You almost conclude that you only need grammar for Latin - anything will do in English! (perhaps one could amend a quote I had as a Geography essay title once: "England has no climate, only weather"; "English has no grammar, only words").
It's not that the language is misused so much that the topic is not sufficiently complex to merit more than this. And in any case, cliches are what people say; all people. Much better this than the sort of ponderous circumlocutions favoured by those in the past who were placed in greater public prominence than normal for their class and education, such as trade union leaders, taking refuge in long words to sound more like their "betters".
And anyway, the language is changing. These days the buzzword for web design is usability: designing user interfaces so that people can use them (as opposed to the old way, create an immaculate site that users find impossible to navigate, use, and in extreme cases, even load!). As a result, the focus is on making text as universally readable as possible, by using simple short sentences and avoiding esoteric terminology (when Madonna was preparing her pornography book and album, at the very last minute they changed the title to Sex, since they found a large part of their target audience didn't know what 'Erotica' was). FAQs ought to be genuinely frequent, rather than the spurious ones like "How can I send a message to Tony Blair congratulating him on his stance on Iraq?" or "Can you make sure you give my email address out to spammers?".
Much more pernicious than popular usage is what passes these days for educated prose. I glanced at a paper about standards in Law education, and was horrified to see that it was all about 'evaluated outcomes' and 'acquired skills' and 'performance criteria'. This style of writing is usually adopted when people wish to either soften their judgement (poorly-performing schools, challenging behaviour) or else to make what is obvious sound more complex and worthwhile. It is sad to think that the best legal minds have to tolerate this rubbish just as much as market researchers into a new dog food. They should have put a red line through the report and sent it back with the note "translate into English".
I'm not very good at committees because I don't have the patience to "say the words that must be said" - "It's a good draft except for sections 1-10 and the appendixes"; "Thank you for your witless and interminable contribution to the debate; I didn't want to get home before midnight anyway"; "I think the main point here is that everything you've said is wrong".
When reading Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage, I'm amazed how many contemporary hates have been around for years (for example, the usage of "infer" for "imply" and "refute" for "deny", which I had though a modern horror, is in fact current from the 18th century and therefore arguably equally correct); I am also amazed at the long articles about abuses where I have absolutely no idea what the problem is. You almost conclude that you only need grammar for Latin - anything will do in English! (perhaps one could amend a quote I had as a Geography essay title once: "England has no climate, only weather"; "English has no grammar, only words").
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)