Reports of early demise exaggerated

Anyone who occasionally - regularly - God help you it should be obsessively - looks at anything I write here should please note the above. It's been a meat-grinder of a month or two. Yahweh allow it, things appear to be settling down a little.

In the meantime, please note that the location of the very fine WSER/Silver Eel Radio has shifted to 173.2.90.103:8000/listen.pls

I have bought a copy of Frederic Prokosch's The Asiatics on the advice of Ellison and Vidal but have not yet managed to get further east than Whitby. On the other hand, Uncommon Danger by Eric Ambler is an effective wee thriller, his second novel, from 1937. There are no real surprises in it, but the moments of clunky writing are redeemed by others which are genuinely lyrical, and it all works and doesn't suffer from the sense of over-elaboration or artifice that I think undermines some of Ambler's other books: he just gets on with the story. Seemed to me it drew heavily on The 39 Steps, which in itself is no bad thing. What I find most intriguing is the degree to which it hasn't aged that much, either in literary technique and structure, or subject matter. Worth your time.

Free as a bird, poor as a mouse(r)

It is no great revelation to say that I was, until very recently, working for Bastardstone's, which was one of the reasons I blog anonymously and the secondary reason I didn't blog about work stuff - the main reason being that, actually, it warn't all that interesting. I prefer to focus on the things that sustain rather than those that sap.

However, in the light of my redundancy, along with a whole lot of other booksellers across the country, I am at least now free to say this:

[The body of this post has been editorially eviscerated due to excess venting of spleen. Vitriol of this kind will not be permitted. Fluffy bunny stuff like the following paragraph is okay - Ed. 05/06/09]

I enjoyed working with the books, and with a lot of the staff, and actually got to enjoy working with the customers a lot of the time as well - there's a simple but fundamental pleasure to be had from helping people.

But it's pretty clear now that the gargoyles have not only taken over the cathedral but have started pissing on the congregation and defacing the stonework. [Guess I missed this bit. Ed.]

In fairness to Bastardstone's, they are still trading where Ottokar's and Thin's aren't. But I can't help thinking of Mother Courage.

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One of the good things about working from home (and anyone who thinks looking for work isn't work in itself has either never done it, or isn't doing it hard enough) is that I've been listening to a lot more of WSER. It's bloody good.

Simple trumps subtle part deux

From Conversations with Isaiah Berlin:

Of course, I think that professional philosophers are needed because if they are any good they do clarify ideas; they analyse words and concepts and the ordinary terms in which you and I think, and this makes a great deal of difference to the progress of thought. Perhaps freedom from thought would make us happier, but it is not attainable. Still, it is the basic difference between human beings and animals. Let me tell you a story which is merely an anecdote. The late Harold Macmillan told me that when he was a student at Oxford, before the First World War, he went to the lectures of a philosopher called J.A. Smith, a Hegelian metaphysician. In his first lecture to his audience of students, this professor spoke as follows: "All of you, gentlemen, will have different careers - some of you will be lawyers, some of you will be soldiers, some will be doctors or engineers, some will be government servants, some will be landowners or politicians. Let me tell you at once that nothing I say during these lectures will be of the slightest use to you in any of the fields in which you will attempt to exercise your skills. But one thing I can promise you: if you continue with this course of lectures to the end, you will always be able to know when men are talking rot." There is some validity in that remark. One of the effects of philosophy, if it is properly taught, is ability to see through political rhetoric, bad arguments, deception, fumisme, verbal fog, emotional blackmail and every kindof chicanery and disguise. It can sharpen the critical faculty a very great deal.

Now to follow, here's a story told to me by a colleague. The scene is an Edinburgh pub. Colleague and a friend of his are sitting at a table with the friend's father, a retired miner from Fife. They get talking to a couple of men at the next table who, it turns out, are Americans on vacation, and the conversation goes something like this:

Ex-miner: So what d'ye dae then?
Yank: We're philosophers.
Ex-miner: Oh, aye. Aye. [Pause] So...what is it ye dae?
Yank: We're philosophers. We study philosophy.
Ex-miner: Oh, right, right. [Pause] But what d'ye dae?
Yank: Well, we think about things, about some of the big questions in life.
Ex-miner: Oh aye. What like?
Yank: Well, like the difference between right and wrong.
Ex-miner: [after considering this] How old are you, son?
Yank: Thirty-two.
Ex-miner: So, tell me...you're thirty-two...and ye dinnae ken the difference between right and wrong?

I thank you.

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Restored after much shameful delay, a link to WSER Silver Eel Radio, created and presented for your delight by the similarly Leiber-loyal mrdeadbob.

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Saw the film version of Christ Stopped at Eboli, directed by Francesco Rosi. Sadly, however noble the film-makers' aims, and however accurately the film itself reflects the book, it'll mean nothing to you if you haven't actually read the book first, as so much of the drama is internal. The memoir is basically about stasis: unsurprisingly, this doesn't translate very well to film.