Clive James on books and civilisation

There's a very good defence of the importance of books and libraries to any civilized society at Lecture: Our First Book, which is also hilariously funny.

Clive James and me

Me and Clive James go back a long way- back to the mid 1970s, when his weekly TV reviews in The Observer were the cleverest and funniest critical writing to be found. I was surprised to discover his credentials as a literary critic, characterised by deep knowledge and common sense (not as common a pairing as one might think). And his Unreliable Memoirs were a definitive roman a clef of adolescence, if a little self-indulgent. Self indulgence, alas, was to become the theme of his later work, including an embarassing comic/satirical poem for the Royal Wedding in 1980, and then his TV series. Initially, his elaborate sardonic riffs applied to popular culture were refreshing, but solidified into a pose. And he admitted that he was star-struck by Hollywood. The point at which I switched off was when he interviewed Jane Fonda, smirking at his good fortune to be spending time talking to such a personality, having forgotten, presumably, that he once wrote that Jane Fonda as an activist was a superb consciousness-raiser, on the grounds that if he found himself sharing an opinion she held he immediately examined it.

But to judge from his website www. clivejames.com, he is now back in the land of the sane, and his literary reviews are amusing and perceptive. As he says on the home page "It might seem strange to say so, in the face of the evidence, but this project is not meant entirely as an ego trip, although I suppose the Pharaohs said the same when they were approving the designs for their individual pyramids." His poetry has improved, too.

Thoughtcrime

I have always been rather wary of those advancing arguments to restrict freedom of speech. This may have started out, a long time ago, as simple self-interest, since I was once more radical than I am now, and wished to retain the opportunity to express my views (whatever they were: I'm not sure now, and may not have been sure then). It seemed to me obvious, though, that this freedom is as near-as-possible absolute, since as soon as you start restricting it, you are effectively imposing censorship by the government, the police and the courts, and while one would not of course suggest that this was their intention, the principle, once established, that politicians have a right and mechanism to gag their electorate, seems a dangerous one. For of course it is easy to allow freedom to those who agree with you: the test for a liberal democracy has to be its willingness to allow its citizens to voice dissent. I can remember in the 1980s that the Anti-Nazi League sought to prevent right-wing politicians from addressing student meetings under the banner of their "no platform for racists" policy. I can remember at the time being dubious of this argument: freedom of speech should not be so lightly surrendered just because you don't like how it is used. For the same reason, attempts to beef up prohibitions on racist and religious bigotry have caused alarm. Comedians have rightly quetioned whether the government really wants to get involved in deciding which individuals or groups of people can be safely lampooned and which cannot. And now with the anti-terror legislation, we are facing a government intent on stopping people saying some things as "incitement to commit terrorism" and even "glorifying terrorism".

This is wrong, as the opposition parties have noted. Identifying and punishing new criminal acts is one things. But the government is effectively criminalising the holding of certain beliefs. In doing so, it is making up law to suit its own agenda. One of the threadbare rights of a UK citizen is to complain about the government, or even to argue that the system is wrong and should be changed, if necessary by completing the works of Guy Fawkes, "burnt in effigy to remind the Parliament that it would have been a Good Thing", as those notorious anarchist subversives Sellars and Yeatman put it in 1066 And All That. These thoughts can be expressed through speech, letters, pamphlets, letters to newspaper editors written in green ink, or in the manifestos of new political parties. I would rather the BNP were open in their racism than for them to adopt the appearance of being a reasonable right-ist anti-European party whose members just happen to be white skinheads.

Because what the government is trying to do by targetting the rhetoric of terror is to control people's beliefs. I would say that rhetoric of war and imperialism (ie officially approved rhetoric) does not provide the basis for confidence in the application of common sense. There is a world of difference between saying that cars are crimes against the environment and blowing up a motor factory. A sensible view would be that people are allowed to think what they like as long as their actions remain legal. To do otherwise is to actually reduce the culpability of the terrorists, since they can argue "it wasn't my idea- he told me to!" as if this was some excuse. If we want people to take responsibility for their actions, then we must focus on their choice about whether to follow a belief into practice, not on some inflammatory preacher they once heard speak. If only Tony Blair were a lawyer, or knew one.*


* A note for non-UK readers. Blair was a lawyer, is married to a lawyer, and his best friends are lawyers.

A computer interface for real life

Things you wish your computer had:

http://www.tobynopoly.com/wish/computer.html

That's entertainment

One thing they say about the film industry is that "Nobody knows anything". It is impossible to predict which of the under-written over-hyped star vehicles that Hollywood churns out will turn into a billion-dollar money spinner and which will be a Heaven's Gate or Waterworld. Everybody says it, everybody knows it, but nobody wonders why. The reason why is simple: nobody knows anything because nobody learns anything. It seems just a week ago (but is in fact two years) that the BBC decided to re-launch Top of the Pops on Friday night to halt the decline in audience and in particular to recapture the elusive hip young audience (aka the dim and ignorant); their secret weapon was Fearne Cotton, who is as intelligent as she is talented (see my Live 8 post for details). Unfortunately, the radical redesign only accelerated the decline, and so the programme was moved: new channel, new time, new day, new look, new--no, same presenters. And what happens? New TOTP loses half its audience. If there's a common factor, I just can't think of it.

This reminds me of the story of the man in the hospital talikng to his wife "You were with me when I lost my job; you were with me when my dog died; you were with me when the roof fell off the house; you were with me when I was in a car crash; and now you're with me when I'm sick. Face it, woman, you're a f***ing jinx!"

NASA sure make a fuss about the Shuttle launch-

I mean, it's hardly rocket science.

Change and decay - work in progress 3

I woke the next morning to the scraping and chattering of birds on the roof-ridge above the skylight. The thin curtain muted rather than blocked the sunlight, and it shivered in the draught. My back ached. The bed had proved to be old, damp, and broken; the blankets, starched, rough and dubiously scented. I dressed and crossed the landing to the bathroom, and then made my way downstairs. The house was scattered with furniture in that strange aristocratic manner, where a writing desk is placed in the hallway in case a visitor needs to compose a letter before removing their coat, and where chairs are placed around the rooms for the comfort of those who wish to pause on the journey from one door to the next. As I descended, I passed shabby cupboards, brass instruments of obscure and ill-omened purpose, landscape paintings of brown fields under khaki skies.

The kitchen was empty. Margaret had said that she usually rose early, taking the dogs around the grounds; Charles seldom stirred until 11. I cut an uneven slice of bread from the loaf and jammed it into the toaster. In contrast to the rest of the house, the room was clean and modern, apart from the heavily-muddied floor. The instant coffee proved to be cheap and bland. I didn't linger; it was time to get started.

All about meme

1. Why did you start blogging?

I realised that I was only spending 8 hours a day staring at a computer screen, and was hoping to double or triple that.

No, I started blogging as a creative outlet. I had always felt that I would like to write a weekly column in a newspaper or magazine, since I discovered early in life that I was blessed with large numbers of strong opinions and the desire to share them with an audience. Although I had found platforms for various bits of technical writing, there was still a gap.

2. Are the reasons you blog now the same as when you started? If not, what's changed?

Pretty much. I take writing more seriously. I never really planned to do the daily journal "had cornflakes for breakfast" thing, but I am keener to exploit the freedom of the format to include interesting/funny websites I come across and silly jokes alongside more serious and considered pieces.

3. What would make blogging better for you?

More readers. More comments. Reading blogs like Monster Sarcasm Rally, the Hot Librarian, and Poetic Acceptance, half the fun is the regular commenters and their dialogue with the author.

4. Do you have comments on your blog? Why or why not? Do you comment on other blogs? What motivates you to post a comment?

Yes, at the moment, although I hate spam comments. I like to have debates about what I've written. Sometimes, I get things wrong. Shocking, huh? I comment on other blogs when I can think of something relevant, clever, and funny, so not that often. I occasionally comment to dispute something really wrong-headed, but I try not to get into it. I can't single-handed save Western democracy from its defenders. I don't comment much on poetry because I find I have to think about and re-read a poem before I get a grip on it.

5. What is your philosophy of the blogroll?

I don't have time to surf the blogosphere regularly, so I just have hard links to my 'daily fix' blogs. If I have time, I follow the blogrolls from them to my other favourites. I have to discipline myself to stop reading and start writing. But the more linking-in the better.

Adelaide Crapsey: The Warning

I have written about Crapsey previously , and that post has led to a steady trickle of readers who find that there are few other Internet references to her (partly because a lot of longer literary content can only be accessed by typing queries into the search pages of individual resources, which is therefore invisible to Google's crawlers which can only follow hyperlinks, and is part of the 'hidden' or 'deep' web).

Judging from the specific terms searched for, it appears that many of these searchers are doing so because they have been given an assignment to interpret her poem 'The Warning'. So I thought I'd have a go.

The warning

1 Just now,
2 Out of the strange
3 Still dusk . . . as strange, as still . . .
4 A white moth flew. Why am I grown
5 So cold?

It is a characteristic of Crapsey's work that she manages to condense a great deal of meaning into a very short form, and evokes very specific locales (as Alkalay-Gut notes about the poem 'Niagara'). To deal with practicalities first: it is dusk (l3), in autumn (moth in l4) she is indoors ("out" in l2), looking through an open window (moth flew in: l2). But this is not a single moment in time: there is an implied sequence of events, which goes: I dusk II moth flies into room III poet becomes cold.

This prepares us to look at the more mysterious elements in the poem. In l3, we have the fragmentary "as strange, as still", echoing the "strange still dusk" of l2&3, which requires as a complement "as strange, as still, as something", something like an autumn dusk, an ending, a quietude: Death. The moth is The Warning of the title, of the coming of death.

Why would a moth fly into the room? To go towards a light or a flame. What was in the room that would attract it? Possibly a real lamp, but possibly not. In lines 4 and 5, stage III of the sequence, the poet's body is becoming cold in a way that is mystifying to the poet. What is happening? The spirit is leaving the body after death. It is the light of spirit that attracted the moth; the warning is not of approaching death, but of the start of the after-life.

*

It would be easy to read the poem as mundanely autobiographical; no doubt in her last year, dying of tuberculosis and writing cinquains, she did indeed often sit with the window open to the evening, despairing. (As an aside, in the 1930s it was discovered that TB bacteria could not survive in cold dry air, leading to the creation of "Fresh Air" hospitals where TB patients' beds would be wheeled outside during the day, and large windows would be left open whenever possible [ BBC story ]. Crapsey died before this).

But the poem is better than that. It is a warning to all that time is short, and a reckoning will come. Let that guide your life.

*

Virginia Woolf, probably independently of Crapsey, wrote about moths and death in The Death of the Moth :

Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.

*

A note to students. This is MY interpretation, not yours. And it might not get many marks, anyway.

Overheard

I just want to finish putting the washing out on the line before it starts raining.

Change and decay - work in progress 2

Part 1.

The taxi turned round in the turning circle and sped off in a cloud of dust- there as clearly some urgent sitting next to the station to be done. I admired the main facade, cleanly elegant and Classical inspiration, apart from the bow window, which lent a suburban air to the whole. Off to the left was a stable block, now a car park and junk yard. I looked back at the facade to determine which entrance to approach: the large, multi-paned door with a portico in the centre, or the small door off to the side. The main door looked unused, so I went to the other. I tried the doorbell, with no audible effect, and then knocked on the door. I heard the sound of barking approach, interspersed with shouts, and befre long there were a pair of dogs swirling around in the doorway, leaping and barking in excitement. "Oh shut up, Bugger! Shut up, Rugger!", the approaching woman scolded, pausing for breath after every few steps. She was middle-aged, dressed in a faded brown housecoat and Wellington boots. She peered out at me and then started to unlock and unlatch the door.

"Hallo there! You're the archive chap?"

I said I was, and asked if the Shelons were home. She snorted and shrugged.

"Sorry, forgot to say- I'm Margaret Sheldon. Follow me through- we're just having tea".

I stepped in, pushing the door to behind me, and fended the dogs away from my legs with my bags. We shuffled down a stone-flagged passage and into a high-ceilinged room at the back of the house. An electric fire singed the air. Margaret called out.
"Charles- here's that fellow- move the dogs".

Charles, sat in a decrepit winged chair, turned and rose, kicked a dog from his feet. "Ah, Mr Williams, Derek, is it?". We shook hands and he looked around for a chair. "Good to see you. The Trust grant came through, then?"

"Yes, Mr Sheldon- I believe they wrote to you?"

Charles' vague denial was countermanded by Margaret, who told him clearly that the letter had arrived, and that indeed it was a result of it that I was expected.

"Sorry about the mess- in the winter, we more or less live in here. The other rooms get too cold. You would have thought it might have crossed someone's mind that translating a building style from southern Italy to England might have had some serious disadvantages!"

Margaret sorted out the tea things on a tray, much interrupted by the need to toss snacks to the digs.

"There's just us here today- the children are out and about- you'll meet them soon enough. But I suppose you'll want to get on with looking at the papers?"

I said I did, but ended up listening anyway to a long and disjointed discussion of forthcoming social events, not helped by the participants' use of nicknames and poor grasp of dates and places. But eventually Margaret broke off to show me up to the bedroom they'd sorted out for me, at the top of the house.

The poetry of acceptance (Book review)

Poetic Acceptance by Erin Monahan (2005, Meeting of the Minds Publications , Pittsburgh PA, USA, $10, 30pp)

The term 'Internet poetry' sprang into existence as a pejorative, and is felt by some to be an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The explosion of post-anything forums, like the earlier vanity press anthology scams, has shown that the previous restrictions on publication by economics and reasons of space was keeping out not a small pool of competent but ignored poets, but a mass of would-be poets without either something to say or the means with which to say it. Interestingly, this has been recognised by the online poetry community, which is beginning to establish ground rules of literacy and coherence, to the annoyance of those who feel that poetry is self-expression which need take no notice of the views of readers.

But quality will prevail. One of the virtues of the internet is that it allows people's work to be judged on its merits, without preconceptions about whether it ought to be good or important. Another virtue is the possibility of fine-tuning from user feedback, so that confusions and complexities can be resolved dynamically before the poem reaches its final form.

Monahan is a beneficiary of both these factors. Her education was cut short by early marriage and motherhood, but she was inspired to return to writing poetry after the post-natal death of her child, and she has developed a distinctive style of allusive, emotionally-tough, short narrative poems, derived from her experience. The title of her collection reflects her moral stance: she realises that the world is not perfect, and there is no other, but aims for an equanamity of spirit through active engagement with it. This is not to say that her poems are doom-ridden or depressive; quite the opposite. Although she references the Beat poet Charles Bukowski and Sylvia Plath, she establishes a distance from despair and sorrow, through a forward-looking enjoyment of life in the moment. Thus "Saturday Morning Flea Market" describes a shopping expedition in simple terms, but manages to define a moment of luxuriating in the exotic appeal of foreign things and words; "Anchored" recounts a moment of reflection:

"Karma kills / like broken air conditioners and broken / hearts".

Other poems deal with love, sex, and lust: in "Absentia", she says

"There is an absence / in the room tonight- / it is the want / of your lips on mine"

, closely allied to her explorations of the connections between words and feelings (From "Permanent": "I suppose it's all about / being needed").

But the core of this collection is the series of poems addressing the death of her child. These display a range of approaches and responses, from her anger at her mother's Christian platitudes ("Mother's love", perhaps more shocking in the God-fearing USA), bleak despair ("Free": "There were: / no miracles/ in the desert"), to comfort in fantasy ("Fantasia": "She smiles in rock-crystal / and giggles on the breeze"), and closure ("Wisdom": "You were never in pain"). In 'Time: A study in grief', the longest, most ambitious, and best poem in the collection, she traces her reactions from (literal) speechlessness:

"Now there is nothing/ and it's too much, / everything, and not nearly enough / at the same time, and the words / come out wrong, because there are / no words at all."

through anger, to the acceptance of her title, shown to be not some unconsidered optimism but an accommodation of reality which allows for both grief and future happiness.

Monahan's work reflects the development of her skills as a poet to set out her responses to personal tragedy but is not limited to the ghetto of therapeutic writing. Her poetry is funny, sexy and clever, and deserves to reach a wide audience.

Change and decay - work in progress

The train muttered and grunted to a halt, and the doors hissed open. I stepped out onto the deserted platform- none of my fellow-passengers were inspired to alight. I walked through an archway, leaning to even out the weight of the laptop case and suitcase, past spare mail trolleys queued for an unexpected pre-Christmas rush. A bus timetable yellowed behind a cracked glass display, ready to be sold to some transport museum as a bygone. I began to wonder how I'd get to the Hall, but luckily the taxi rank outside wasn't completely empty. There was a beat-up car sporting a TAXI rooflight. The driver was reading a tabloid paper, or at least staring at the three-inch-high headlines with an uncomprehending frown. He looked up at my approach, and told me to jump in. I aimed for the back seat, rather than the front passenger's seat, because I'm told this discourages conversation. It didn't work, though.

After his questioning quickly established that I was visiting on business and that the weather was fine and that I had come by train, he launched into an ill-digested re-run of the paper's views. Since we weren't in London, he didn't need the Knowledge to be a cabbie- he had the lesser, more general, requirements, though: the Ignorance, the Bigotry, and the Stupidity. Perhaps, to be fair to taxi drivers across the world, their views are coloured by the people they have to deal with, the lack of respect they enjoy, the constant wheedling needed to turn a starvation wage into a living one. It reminded me of my Marxist days at university- my disbelief when I was told that the petit bourgeoisie promoted and defended the system which enslaved them. It had taken a little longer to realise that much the same was true of the proleteriat; it is a sad truth that the common factor between all hard-socialist revolutionary workers parties is that their memberships belie their title as "Popular" and that the few they can muster are students, not workers.

My reverie was interrupted as the car turned off into a grand gateway, and crunched along the gravel track. The drive was lined with trees; sheep lurked in the shadows. The view opened out and we arrived in front of a large Georgian house.

Mel Gibson, actor ordinaire

Well actually he was ok in Mad Maxes 1-2, and maybe What Women Want and that French one with Goldie Hawn that's so memorable I can't... oh, Bird on the Wire. But Write your own Mel Gibson film is cruelly accurate.

Amis on memory

Memory's a funny thing, isn't it. You don't agree? I don't agree either. Memory has never amused me much, and I find its tricks more and more wearisome as I grow older. Perhaps memory simply stays the same but has less work to do as the days fill out. My memory's in good shape, I think. It's just that my life is getting less memorable all the time. Can you remember where you left those keys? Why should you? Lying in the tub some slow afternoon, can you remember if you've washed your toes? (Taking a leak is boring, isn't it, after the first few thousand times? Whew, isn't that a drag?) I can't remember half the stuff I do anymore. But then I don't want to much.

Martin Amis, Money: A suicide note