Old blog archive
Various posts from 2004 to 2006 rescued (thanks to Yahoo's and Google's cache), but not sorted into chronological order, styled or linked to outside URLs. Life's too short.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology | Posted by awrc to thinking, visiting at 18:43 on 21 Nov 2004
I'm not sure that LA is really my kind of place - but but but. It has the MJT (though the website can hardly do justice).
Think Sir John Soane's museum on those candelit Tuesday nights. Think Dennis Severs' house (though I *still* haven't actually been there...). Now forget all that and think Borges and Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Think Voynich. Think Serafini. Now forget all that and bloody well get on a plane to LA.
The MJT is too good to describe, but suffice it to say it is an incredibly atmospheric coup de theatre, a satire on all museums, a confounding of epistemology, an aesthetic delight, and it's next to a carpet warehouse.
This is definitely the best 'museum' I've ever been to, and I wish I had the money to set up something similar but different in Oxford. Give me a few million, someone, and I won't let you down.
Something to celebrate | Posted by awrc to browsing at 17:08 on 02 Mar 2006
I'm pleased to say that today, World Book Day, What Should I Read Next? has passed the 10,000 registered users mark - and within the next few hours we'll also pass the 300,000 visits mark too! Thank you, book lovers. Not bad for an idea I had in the shower!
Stoned again | Posted by awrc to thinking at 14:42 on 15 Jun 2004
I wonder if anyone has ever conducted a comparative study of the folklore connected with neolithic sites across the world...?
Earth mysteries | Posted by awrc to feeling, visiting at 14:38 on 14 Jun 2004
I think my new ancient site of obsession may be Silbury Hill. Hardly a new interest generally, and I still remember fondly ascending it at 5 in the morning with T. on our crop-circle-hunting holiday of years back, but H. and I now pass it on our route between Wiltshire and Oxford, and I love the journey partly just for seeing it.
I think it may be more mysterious than Stonehenge and Avebury, really, in the sense that they, although not entirely fathomable by any means, nevertheless yield certain information - the alignments give one at least some sense of their significance and purpose. Silbury is silent. As far as I recall (and I should really read up *before* writing this, but I will do it shortly...), we have almost nothing on Silbury: no significant burials, and of course it's hard to align a mound with anything in particular.
I was reminded passing it yesterday that it is actually notably recessed: although its crown is visible for some way (a Roman road nicely traverses a field towards it and then deflects), which is curious. But it seems too small - and too much effort to construct - for a defensive structure, and again perhaps too much effort for a purely ceremonial one. Though what else it could be I don't know. It's beautiful.
I was there | Posted by awrc to thinking, visiting at 23:03 on 20 Feb 2005
A trip to the Design Museum, for the splendid You Are Here exhibition. A festival for geekish poring. Along with the inevitable Tube map delights, highlights for me included:
- Adrian Frutiger's Symbols and Signs - Explorations foldout chart
- The works of Richard Saul Wurman, Otto Neurath (hurrah! my old chum Basic English) and Annegrete Moelhave
- John Adams' 1679 map of road distances between UK towns and villages
- Joseph Priestley's invention of "charts of biography"
- the unlabelled maps comparing metro networks across the world
Much Googling to be done, frankly, and much else of interest besides, but:
(a) no catalogue!!
(b) as J pointed out, er, didn't the design of the exhibition (not to mention the dreadful Design Museum website as H has already observed) somewhat let down the premise. A major missed opportunity, given that the structure of the exhibition itself was so blurred.
I also discovered the works of Edward Tufte, which I shall be tracking down, especially his essay about PowerPoint being the death of reason, a long-cherished philosophy of mine.
Strange pilgrims | Posted by awrc to visiting, feeling, thinking at 19:47 on 27 Feb 2005
H and I went to Walsingham a couple of weeks ago. I found it fascinating as a theological voyeur. The whole place turns on a series of fictions.
These began in the 11th century, when a Norman lady claimed to have a vision of the Virgin Mary - ever after known as Our Lady of Walsingham - and endowed a priory as a result. The truth is that at the time, there were no viable sites for humble Brits to go on pilgrimage (and weren't until a troublesome priest in Canterbury was despatched). It was simply a marketing exercise by the church - which clearly worked brilliantly until Henry VIII sent Cromwell's Dissolving Formula across the country.
Next stop is 1896, when a Catholic woman, Charlotte Boyd, bought the ruined 14th century Slipper Chapel and restored it, and suggested a pilgrimage to visit Our Lady (OLW) in her new home.
Jump now to the 1920s and 30s, when Anglican vicar Alfred Hope Patten secured land to build an *Anglican* shrine. It's an extraordinary place - typical 1930s architecture, and beautifully done, though also startlingly mawkish.
While building it, they found a mediaeval well, which has since been used (along with rumours of healing properties) to bolster the sacred credibility of the site.
I suppose I'd be hard pressed to say what I would regard as an *unconstructed* site for pilgrimage, but Walsingham doesn't even have some bones. Now legions of rotund sexagenarians travel from far and wide, all in fealty to an 11th century illusion.
Google by date | Posted by awrc to browsing at 13:02 on 28 Jun 2005
I know you can search Google by daterange (with its nasty Julian system) - but it would be great if search results could actually be ordered by date. Hello LazyWeb.
Clare as mud | Posted by awrc to reading, feeling, thinking at 14:41 on 18 Jan 2006
Last year I observed that I don't often read the same author one book after another - the exception was Iain Sinclair (see here and here). He's the exception again. Hot on the heels of Edge of the Orison I've felt compelled to read Rodinsky's Room (co-written with Rachel Lichtenstein).
The first follows John Clare's 'journey out of Essex' - ie his fugue from an asylum at High Beach in 1841, walking penniless, driven by lost (and unregainable) love, the 80 miles to his village north of Peterborough. I can't remember feeling so inspired and gripped by a book in recent times, such that I've fixed anyone who'll listen (or won't) with an ancient mariner's stare and proceeded to prate about it. Sinclair's form, for me at least, gets ever better with each new non-fiction book he writes - while his fiction (though I probably will tackle Dining on Stones when I have the stomach) gets more unwieldy and unfathomable.
The Clare book is self-indulgent at times, especially with a fruitless quest revolving around his wife's genealogy, but I loved it throughout nonetheless - the usual blend of coruscating sideswipes at modern blandness, fused with elegiac tones and swathed in his psychogeographic obsession with making connections: Sinclair is the real Dirk Gently.
I'm still in media res with the Rodinsky book - more on that some time soon.
Barrow boy | Posted by awrc to visiting, feeling at 16:54 on 16 Jun 2004
Went for a magnificent 25-mile cycle ride yesterday afternoon, although one 3-mile stretch was hell on earth: searing heat, strong wind, long hill all the way, very busy B-road...
The rest of it was glorious, however. The premise was to explore several long barrows and round barrows in the area, and put up details plus pics on the Modern Antiquarian website, which I have duly done. Some are marvellously well preserved, although a number are obscured by undergrowth, alas.
That formula at last | Posted by awrc to writing at 14:04 on 24 Mar 2006
Budding authors take note. The sensible way to assess your chances of writing a bestseller is of course to look at the qualities of previous bestsellers. It is with public-spiritedness in mind therefore that I have run a frequency analysis on the titles and authors of every bestseller (from the Publishers' Weekly lists) in the US from the whole of the 20th century. I can now announce the results:
Your best bet for a first name is JOHN, JAMES or MARY; and your second name should be STEEL, KING or IRVING (though other first names might work, such as ROBERT or DOUGLAS).
As for a title, as well as connecting words, you're really going to need MAN, HOUSE, TIME or WOMAN in there somewhere. My optimal suggestions would be THE HOUSE OF MAN, perhaps, or A WOMAN OF MY TIME.
I look forward to receiving a small royalty share when you've put this into action.
Sacred architecture | Posted by awrc to reading, thinking at 11:06 on 28 Feb 2006
The whole Da Vinci Code case worries me no end. Having composed a long comment on M's blog, I feel motivated to write largely the same comments here...
The big issue - and worry - with this case is whether Leigh and Baigent (hereafter known as Leigh Teabing) can establish that the 'architecture' of their book has been stolen, and whether this can be protected in law anyway - at present, copyright law protects the specific expression of an idea (in the form of words, designs) rather than the idea itself. 'Architecture' or 'structure' is altogether more nebulous - and if they win, it will be a potentially disastrous result for anyone who cares about creative expression. If common sense prevails, Brown (rather, Random House) can only lose if Brown has used direct chunks of their text.
Having read both books, I of course agree it's obvious there's a conceptual relationship between them, but why shouldn't there be? If anything, Leigh Teabing should be grateful that (a) Brown has taken their work to a wider audience (b) has acknowledged them both directly and indirectly in the text (c) they must have a pot of extra cash on new sales as a result of DVC anyway.
Say what you like about Brown (personally I think he's a crap craftsman but a great storyteller, and I'm happy to say I loved the book on its own terms, which I'd also say about HBHG), but I can't see what he or his publishers should be punished for - people seem to resent his success, that's all.
Anyway, what all this really shows is that Brown and Baigent/Lincoln/Leigh represent rival leadership factions at the Priory of Sion, which has decided the best way to preserve its knowledge is to bring it all out in the open! They merely differ about the mechanism: B/L/L wanted a 'controlled release' to a self-selecting community (heretics, conspiracy theorists, etc), whereas Grand Master Brown has opted to tell the world in the 'harmless' guise of fiction.
Metropolis, city, country | Posted by awrc to visiting, feeling at 10:13 on 04 Jun 2004
I've been overwhelmed with work, and illness, lately, so little time to write and reflect, but here are a few highlights from the last week...
1. A hugely and unexpectedly stimulating and excellent guided walk across the city of London with my friend A. We were led past Mansion House - and treated to a coincidental view of the decrepit Lord Mayor of London and his consort stepping out of their immaculate Rolls Royce Phantom (registration LM 0), followed by various nonagenarian friends hobbling out of taxis in their finest livery; and on through winding lanes of the city, punctuated with a great deal of history that, despite considering myself fairly well up on London history, knew nothing of. Also visited another old city wine bar (claiming to date from 1663, but this may be spurious - certainly early 18th century anyway) which I had no clue about - and a lot more authentic than the Jamaica Wine House.
2. A very enjoyable walk around the various buttercup meadows of Oxford with H., although feeling ill and therefore not at my best. Saw the ruins of Godstow nunnery, and failed again to determine the exact site of the ancient mound on Port Meadow.
3. A cycle from Salisbury to Coombe Bissett and back, plus a walk and pub lunch around that area with G. & S. Very good short walk: a quiet country lane, a stretch of Roman road (albeit not entirely clear at this stretch) and a riverside path (the River Ebble, yet another tributary of Salisbury's Avon) forming three sides of a triangle.
This Roman road is part of the one running from Old Sarum to Badbury Rings, near Wimborne Minster: known in mediaeval times as Ackling Dyke, the stretches south of where we were are apparently some of the best preserved in the country: the raised agger strikes clearly across the fields south of Sixpenny Handley. I'm hugely keen to walk this stretch soon, as I've yet to visit such a clear Roman road across fields, and this one has the added advantage of an enormous prehistoric cursus running near it. Hopefully a visit soon.
Ghosts | Posted by awrc to reading, thinking, feeling at 14:45 on 14 Jun 2004
I'm three-quarters of the way through John Crowley's Aegypt , kindly lent by DM after literally years of trying to find a copy. I was lukewarm to start with but now am more and more enthralled by its quiet subtlety. I particularly approve of the way so far it has reconciled a magical realist viewpoint with a secular materialism (not to mention all the stuff about my old chums John Dee and Giordano Bruno). As do many things, it reminds me of my favourite quote from Coleridge who, when asked if he believed in ghosts, replied 'No madam, I have seen far too many myself."
Stripped of charm | Posted by awrc to researching at 14:47 on 23 Jan 2006
Genealogy is always a double-edged sword. Within minutes of being entertained to find that one set of my great-great-great-grandparents ran a canalside pub in Middlesex... I discovered that it's now a strip joint next to an industrial estate.
Giant thoughts | Posted by awrc to feeling, thinking at 15:17 on 26 Jul 2004
The July issue of British Archaeology magazine has an article claiming that the Long Man of Wilmington and the Cerne Abbas giant both date only from the 17th century.
I admit I only skimmed the article, which was about things like remnants of brick, but I find this astonishing. I understand that the origins of these figures are hard to pin down, and that clearly much restoration or alteration may have taken place over the years - but what seems the strongest reason against the 17th century theory for me is their aesthetic.
The article rather lamely suggests that the Cerne figure's priapic state is some sort of satire against Puritans or whatever - but I can't really believe that someone in that age could have got away with such a stark image. And why, more importantly, would they have given an aesthetic with such an ancient feel to it? The Wilmington figure is weirder, less appreciable within a context of artistic development, perhaps, but the Cerne one in particular just doesn't look like something anyone would have created in the 17th century.
Perhaps I'm just disappointed and defensive because I want to believe these sites really are ancient. But I still do.
Manifesto | Posted by awrc to feeling, reading at 10:13 on 04 Jun 2004
The Old Man's Road
Across the Great Schism, through our whole landscape
Ignoring God's vicar and God's ape
Under their noses, unsuspected
The Old Man's road runs where it did.
When a light subsoil, a simple ore
Where still in vogue true to his wherefore
By stiles, gates, hedgegaps it goes
Over ploughlands, woodlands, cow meadows
Past shrines to a cosmological myth
No heretic today would be caught dead with
Near hilltop rings that were so safe then
Now easily scaled by small children
Shepherds use bits in the high mountains
Hamlets use stretches for lovers' lanes
then through cities threads its odd way
Now with gutters, a thieves' ally
Now with green lamp-posts and white curb
The smart crescent of a high toned suburb
Giving wide berth to a new cathedral
Running smack through a new town hall
Unlookable for by logic or by guess
Yet some strike it and are struck fearless
No like can know it, but no life
that sticks to this course can be made captive
And those that know it are not stopped
at borders by some theocrat.
- WH Auden
Stencil neck | Posted by awrc to reading at 18:17 on 16 Mar 2005
After a period of typical scepticism, I seem to have become a devotee of Banksy . I've bought his three little books (he boasted to The Guardian that the first two have sold 55,000 copies - so I'm not the first to line his pockets. Not everyone likes him (to the point of putting his picture on the net in this case), but I find him interesting, witty and talented. Best of all, the books slip perfectly inside my jacket. So he's lining my pockets too.
V for la Revolution | Posted by awrc to watching at 09:03 on 24 Mar 2006
So, that was V for Vendetta. It's hard to see why Alan Moore is so grumpy about it, other than because of his previous beefs with Hollywood. Some things have changed, notably Evey's career choice, but I find it hard not to think that the Warlock of Northampton is just a curmudgeonly old beardy who wants to have his cake and eat it. Much as I like the original V for Vendetta, Watchmen and so on, I'm also not that sure he's as clever as everyone says he is.
As for the film, it was neither a-micklin' nor a-mucklin' for me: enjoyable enough, with some good touches, but lacked a certain panache: the visual style was not strong enough, I think (after the stunning Sin City, surely adaptations like this have to work a lot harder to impress). The 1984 references seemed too much like references and not potent enough. And there's still no film in this broad genre to touch Brazil, I'm afraid. V might make a good double bill with the 1930s-fascism Ian McKellen film of Richard III, though.
More on Silbury Hill | Posted by awrc to thinking, feeling at 17:13 on 14 Jun 2004
There's a useful summary of recent work and thought here . It turns out that *some* bones were found in the 18th century, but nothing very dramatic - nothing has been found since, apart from a few fragments which help suggest a date of around 2500 BC, and mediaeval and Roman finds.
John Barrett and Paul Devereux have both suggested its use as a platform, commenting that it would raise people to a level just about equal to that of surrounding hills, and apparently people standing on a missing Obelisk at Avebury would *just* have been able to see people standing on Silbury, as if they were actually at the same level. Interesting - though they must have had a very good reason to go to all that bother.
What I'd like is a map showing exactly where in the surrounding area Silbury is visible *from* - it's largely hidden from south and east by natural hills. Oh for the time to do a circuit of it and make that map myself. Obviously what you can see from the hill itself would be interesting to tally, too. (Maybe a day off in July beckons...)
River redivivus | Posted by awrc to walking, visiting at 19:31 on 18 Jan 2006
Four years after I did the research and the walk itself (with my good chum A McG), I've finally used this website tweak as the motive to write up more coherently than before my attempt to rediscover the route of London's lost River Effra. Another lost river walk write-up (is the river lost - or just the write-up?) is on its way later this week.
Yes yes, I kneau that | Posted by awrc to thinking, watching at 11:35 on 07 Nov 2004
On Friday, I finally got to see The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.
If you don't know, I'm a Peter Sellers nut, and probably have about 15 of his films on video or DVD (plenty more to go...), plus lots of audio. I openly acknowledge that (a) a huge percentage of his output, or his directors' output perhaps, was dreck (b) he was a complete shit of a person. But.
In many ways it's a good film, though by no means a great one. Good things, of course, include a very plucky performance by Geoffrey Rush, and a great supporting cast, and some game quirks such as the bits where various people in Sellers' life transmute into Rush (an attempt to capture the spirit of all those films where Sellers, and Alec Guinness (his hero) before him, played numerous roles) and talk to camera. But.
Rush frequently captures the mannerisms of Sellers well, and if you squint, you can see the man. He also has a good pop at some silly voices, but at heart I think he's the wrong man for this job (who the right man is, I don't know, or modesty forbids ho ho). His normal voice, for one thing, is far too deep and growly - Sellers had a very hard voice to capture, and distinctive largely for its nondescript quality (with an affected twang of the d?racin?), in the same way that the 'ordinary' voice of someone like Rory Bremner is, well, ordinary. I could never quite let go of it being Rush, alas (plus no amount of prosthesis can disguise Rush's glaciated face).
And the mugging to camera - why? If you're going to have an element like that in your film, surely the point is to 'stylise' the subject's life in some way, with some 'theory' to interpret their behaviour. No such theory was ever offered, really, even in the relationship with his mother Peg, which was only sketched with the broadest brush. Sellers' family music hall background was ignored.
It seems the whole aim of this film (it must have been secretly backed by bitter Blake Edwards) was simply to say 'Peter Sellers was a complete shit'. It's absolutely true that he treated everyone in his life badly in one way or another, but the film never attempts to engage in any depth with why this might be, and the idea of him as a 'child-man' is nodded at without any sense of making it a real way to think of him. As ever, the real Peter Sellers remains elusive.
What saddens me most, really, is that for all its accuracy in biography and the extreme and appalling moments of selfishness in his life, the film fails to capture the positive side of him at all. It showed audiences smiling happily at his performances, but failed to make its own audience smile as they could have done. There is no sense in which this film is a celebration of Sellers' remarkable talent.
So, er, anyway. I think it *is* a good film, but clearly created in a spirit of loathing for its subject. Contrast Man in the Moon, another biopic of an intensely irritating, selfish and demanding comedian, which nevertheless makes you go away with sympathy and a smile.
But for general readers, the entertainment lay in the fact that the sound went two-thirds of the way through watching it, in Oxford's remarkable Ultimate Picture Palace, closely followed by the picture, leaving 12 people (count 'em) looking around the auditorium, at each other, and at glimpses of a white haired old gent in the projection room, somewhat baffled. The owner of the cinema has completely disappeared. I took the opportunity to annoy H with a couple of public Clouseau gags, and shone my bike light up at the projection room. Eventually the owner appeared and the film was rewound to the wrong place, then back to the right place for us to watch loads of it again, and eventually we got to see all of it, if not quite in the order intended. Marvellous.
Writer's bleak | Posted by awrc to writing, thinking at 17:28 on 18 Jan 2006
It's a weird thing to earn a living writing but without, in a legal sense, having much to show for it: the three main companies I currently write for all oblige freelancers to sign over their copyright. (The same happened with the full-length book I wrote five years ago.) Now, of course, a lot of this stuff is ephemeral, and hardly Pulitzer material, and I'm paid to do it - plus a staffer writing the same stuff would de facto have to give up their rights... but it still grates sometimes (particularly when trying to put copy on one's website).
What if I want to reuse this material in some way? it's not implausible, and the old 'first serial rights' approach to magazine writing took this into account. My only option, short of the weirdness of asking permission, would be to rewrite things - a dull prospect. (These companies are hardly likely to bother reusing the material themselves, I'd say.)
I could probably put things I've written - which amount to probably around 100,000 words a year - up here without the 'owners' caring all that much - but I don't feel inclined to try, if only because if I did still own the copyright myself, I suppose I'd want someone else to respect my rights.
I'm surprised it's worth the publishers' bother even to administrate all this - but they obviously think it might be. Sigh.
Darned dogooder | Posted by awrc to reading, feeling at 17:02 on 14 Dec 2004
I've been a fond reader of Utne for some time now, though occasionally I pass it by on account of the twee folksiness it can slip into. But there's always something interesting. And I was pleased, while in the States, to pick up a copy of Cosmo Dogood's Urban Almanac from the same stable. I like the idea of this: our lives are so citybound that we need to find an awareness of nature from within the metropolis rather than necessarily expecting to escape from it. Here in Oxford I have Port Meadow only yards away: but try stargazing there, and it's compromised by the sky being orange.
The almanac has all kinds of daft lore in it, and lots of celebratory ideas. Again, there's a bit of twee new agey stuff, but it's a good idea, and one in harmony with a lot of things that Common Ground are into. In fact, I may tell them about it. (I've just discovered the latest site connected to them is a celebration of corrugated iron buildings!
Polopolitan | Posted by awrc to writing at 11:55 on 10 Mar 2006
Invisible cities are spreading. Far, far away from Velocester, if you take the road east from Spindlemarch, you come to Polopolis...
The invisible city of Polopolis is half way, by most compasses, between here and Cathay. It has always been a place for meeting - cultures delicately touch one another there as the moon kisses the water on its river, known by the same name as the city's marketplace, 'Il Milione'. Leaders meet there, too, to discuss their affairs of state, knowing that this is a place of the moment and the record books will not judge them here - and that Il Milione will carry their words away if they regret them. So long are these moments that much of the city is populated by these leaders' descendants.
There are no record books in Polopolis, then: all is talk, and all history is oral. History is made most intensely at Il Milione, the marketplace, where thousands gather every day to trade, negotiate, accuse, reconcile or befriend. There, over there, are lost twins reunited after years at the opposite edges of the city (there are no gates, of course), smiling to discover their wives and children have completely different names; to their right, a carpet maker shows off his craftsmanship, so finely woven in so many colours one cannot tell where each thread begins or ends.
Polopolis has three quarters, known as Niccolo, Maffeo and Marco, though no two agents of estate can agree on where exactly their boundaries lie: that fine apartment building you see, with roof tiles the colour of the sky, is championed by one as being in 'Maffeo borders', and another 'where Niccolo and Marco meet'.
Il Milione itself is not one broad channel, but an endless series of bifurcations and rejoinings, sometimes ducking under the houses and at others flaunting itself in ornamental lakes; everywhere there are bridges, and each has its resident mathematician, frowning the long weary hours away as she contemplates the shortest route from one place to another. "We both step and do not step in the same rivers" is the old philosopher's inscription on the perfect masonry of the arch above the city hall.
I have been to Polopolis myself, and sometimes it feels as if I never left.
Villa knell | Posted by awrc at 19:02 on 16 Jun 2005
I cycled to Charlbury and back today as practice for the London to Brighton (albeit only half the distance). The highlight, apart from much glorious countryside, and seeing a hare closer than ever before, was North Leigh Roman Villa. Very well preserved foundations, many still with hypocaust intact - and the most astonishing mosaic, preserved in a locked shed, but with window views. It's enormous. The site is a beautiful, tranquil place, which I had all to myself in the grey drizzle, and I almost feel guilty for telling anyone about it.
Sherlock Holmes (1854-?) | Posted by awrc at 09:16 on 28 Feb 2005
Thanks to H, I now have the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, two enormous, hefty volumes of indulgent Victoriana. Beautifully produced with magnificent margin notes (far superior to footnotes and endnotes). The editorial premise is that Holmes was, of course, a real person, and there are loving cross-references to different periods of his life. Perfect bedtime reading, if a little heavy.
Rolling rightly | Posted by awrc at 12:15 on 07 Jun 2005
I've perhaps been unfair to Oxfordshire at times - I'm not hugely drawn to flat landscapes, but of course Oxon isn't all flat. Last night H and I went for a marvellous, and very restorative, cycle through what for me is 'proper' countryside, rolling, woody and clucking. There was more than just clucking: as well as muntjacs, we saw a herd of alpacas and, best of all, a fleet of piglets came running across their field to see us.
A week or so ago M and I went to the Rollrights, too - another inevitably uplifting megalithic site, largely unspoilt, surrounded by cow parsley and views.
Landor sea | Posted by awrc at 22:14 on 05 Apr 2004
I normally actively avoid reading two books by the same author in succession, but here I am, half way through Iain Sinclair's Landor's Tower. I think on balance I prefer his non-fiction, but there's enough of conspiracy theories and Welsh literary history to keep me going. And quite by chance I opened Kilvert's Diary at random the other night to find the bit where he talks about Capel-y-Ffin and Llanthony Abbey - places of personal significance to both Helen and me. (I may have to continue this literary trail and read Kilvert properly next: just those few pages I read were beautifully observed, and gloriously pagan as only the Church of England can allow its ministers to be.)
In the current catalogue of Postscript Books (an excellent mail order enterprise I may have to try and ally my incipient publishing company to), there's a collection of Walter Savage Landor's poems. The paragraph describing it says one of his poems has been described as the best short poem in the English language - and it doesn't bloody well say what it is.
And while I'm connecting everything up into my ever-growing Ubertheorie, editor and I were discussing Eric Gill (with his Sans) the other day. Gill lived at Llanthony for a while in the 1920s. (I wonder if the film Sirens - which the IMDB has the wrong poster picture for! - is based on Gill at all, albeit set in Australia rather than Wales..?)
You see, I was supposed to be at a pub quiz this evening, so now I'm pouring out random trivia (which surely should really be 'quadrivia').
Sinclair's Ring cycle | Posted by awrc at 11:18 on 05 Mar 2004
At last the chance to rhapsodise about Iain Sinclair's London Orbital. I love some of his earlier books (although the one novel I read was largely incomprehensible to me at the time), but this one works so much better (not that I've quite finished yet). It's Last of the Summer Wine scripted by Edgar Allan Poe; it's the Dark Side of Fatty Ackroyd.
(I haven't done any of this kind of lunatic perambulation for a while now - alas my fellow fugueurs now live elsewhere or have babies - and I damn well miss it.)
Only 10 pages left to go now - he's certainly rushing the last bit. Which is just as well, because most of it is about nasty Essex people chopping each other up and distributing the bits.
But the best bit for me, the most elegiac of all, was in the grounds of the erstwhile Joyce Green Hospital near Dartford, and with the old codgers wandering around the mud and salt flats. What made it particularly spectacular was that I read it in the great hall of Imperial College while H and the rest of the choir sang Elgar's Dream of Gerontius at me (and several hundred others) - perfect combination. Great concert, and something of an elegy for H, too, as it was the last one she'll do for that particular kwa.
I think there's a lot more subtlety in Sinclair's tone in this book: he's still very good at invective, but it's always tempered with a sort of metallic nostalgia. And although he hardly rhapsodises about the grey hinterlands that are being lost to developers, the whole thing is nevertheless pervaded with this sense of loss, and it's quietly moving to read of all these brutal sanitoria being transmuted into clocktowered Crest estates and all the rest of it. Corking stuff.