Praiser of things present

I like this post from Michael Gilleland very much, although I feel something of a hypocrite in recommending it. Being job-free (for the present) is not unlike feeling oneself popping back into one's natural shape, like Tom moments after he's been flattened by a dustbin lid or an ironing board.

The King's up against it

"He can't fight with a crossbow hand-to-hand, son. A crossbow's a range weapon, not a melee weapon. Get him a sword."

This is not the language in which one should talk to four year-olds, but it seems to be coming out of my mouth anyway. Once a gamer, always a gamer. Break out the d20. *Sigh*

God save me from my friends

David Langford, winner of multiple Hugo awards for his fiction and fan/critical/review writing, is being interviewed by a local television station during an SF convention. He is being asked about the geeky/unwashed/weird/social-misfit thing, or about poor writing or silly covers or unpronounceable names. And he goes on to give a reasoned and articulate defence of science fiction, pointing to the fine writing of Le Guin and Leiber and Ellison and Aldiss and Ballard, the classics like 1984 and Brave New World and We which the gatekeepers won't acknowledge as SF, the way SF reflects the contemporary concerns of modern society and is the only branch of fiction really to get to grips with technology as the defining force of the 20th century. He points to the number of scientists now working in their field because of the inspiration they got from people like Asimov and Clarke and Pohl. And he is beginning to wind up by saying, with a slight chuckle, "I mean, you mustn't assume that we're all - "

- and at that exact moment, someone wearing a Darth Vader mask walks behind him, repeatedly pulling the trigger of one of those guns that fires ping-pong balls and shouting "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

At which point the interviewer, and the audience, assume that we are indeed all.

(With apologies to the original teller of this anecdote in Interzone.)

Bastardstone's part deux

Something about an earlier post was bugging me so I've cut it back. Whereof one cannot speak without foaming at the mouth, therefore one must be silent. Anyone who hasn't been shouted at recently is welcome to email me on the subject. Earplugs will not be supplied.

Who?

In defence of anonymity...

When I began this blog, or its predecessor, in 2005, it was as little more than a response to Joe's occasional pestering encouragement. I had no idea what blogs were and didn't really see the point in trying to write one, particularly as I didn't think that my opinion really counted for much.

Four - good grief - four years on, and I get the blogging thing, and I still just about manage to write one; I do so mainly to pass on something which I think is intriguing or entertaining to whoever might pass by, or to try to figure out what I think. In other words, for the usual reasons people write, in whatever medium.

I still don't think my opinion is worth much. That's my, my opinion, the person writing this. I really don't matter to anyone who doesn't know and care about me, and I don't want to. My life is my own, and small though it is, it ain't really any of anyone else's business. But the argument, the case, the choice of words, I believe matter a great deal, and they stand and fall on their own merits.

It's a question of the voice being important, not the speaker, and in a curious and intriguing way I find the voice of 'The Silver Eel' (the blog) has taken on a life of its own. If this seems like an abdication of responsibility I can only reply that I don't think it is. The (rather thin) anonymity puts the reader's and writer's focus on what is written, and therefore encourages a greater responsibility, a greater loyalty, to the text.

Medieval copyists left their work unsigned - they worked for the glory of God. Ideally, so should writers - no names, no covers, just works.

Of course, the above could all be horseshit; I have a rotten cold which is keeping me from sleeping, and possibly from thinking very clearly as well.

Alexander the Greedy

Some years after having bought it, I am reading Michael Wood's In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great. I saw at least one episode of the TV series during its original run in 1997, and remember enjoying it. The book seems to have been worked up from Wood's TV notes; as travelogue it's pretty thin, but it seems a good introduction to the story and I'm happily eating it up. I am curious as to how Alexander beat the Persians three times - at the battles of Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela - with what to my untrained eye appears to have been exactly the same strategy: attack the right flank at its weakest point and then veer left into the body of the Persian forces. You'd have thought they'd get wise to it.

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.

Modern myth-making

From the introduction by Declan Kiberd to the Penguin Modern Classics edition of Ulysses:

The human need to make myths is very deep-rooted, since myths are symbolic projections of the cultural and moral values of a society, figurings of its psychic state. The French Revolution, which purported to put an end to all myth-making, instituted the myth of modernity, the notion of perpetual renewal which animated spirits as diverse as those of Ezra Pound ('make it new') and Leon Trotsky ('permanent revolution').

Standing on the verge of modernity in 1800, Schlegel [...] foretold the emergence of a new mythology, which would be less a radical act of creation than a 'collaboration' between old and new. Ancient myths embodied people's immediate response to their physical experience and were not seen as fictive by their adherents; but the new mythology would be abstract and aware of its own fictive status.

There is much more in Prof Kiberd's introduction which I find both interesting and useful (and some which I find simply baffling), but this part struck me as an excellent description of Alan Garner's work in Strandloper and Thursbitch. Strandloper even has what seems to me to be a self-referential line where one of the characters foretells the writing of the book, with an oblique nod to Garner himself.

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I don't feel the reading of Ulysses is going too badly - seven chapters out of the way, though that only comes to about 150 pages. The more I read of it, and around it, the more I think I'm getting out of it; nevertheless, it feels less that one is reading it, more that one has engaged with it - or that it's moved in. I feel a little like Deep Thought - irrevocably committed to thinking about the ultimate question and unable to deal with anything else until the answer's been found. I am certainly finding that it changes the way you think and perceive, though I'm not sure I can articulate in what way. A Joycean way, I suppose. Whatever else, it's certainly an excellent whetting stone for the faculties - I'm reading Bleak House for light relief and finding that an absolute doddle by comparison.

Admittedly Martin Amis poses a good question - who on earth reads Ulysses? Not researches it, studies it, consults it - who actually curls up with it in bed?

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Ulysses came top of the 1998 Random House Modern Library board's list for the 100 best novels published since 1900. A little pointy-headed, you might say, and I'd agree, but still preferable to the readers' choice of Atlas Shrugged. And if that gars ye grue, the non-fiction list is positively frightening. That's your argument in defence of pointy-heads and gatekeepers right there.

Room at the Bottom

We all know the joys of degradation. Perhaps I should rephrase that: We must all have lived through times when we discover it was pleasurable, even relaxing, to run ourselves down. […] Then we find ourselves in a place where we can wallow blissfully in our existence, our smell, our filth, our habits, the place where we can abandon all hope of self-improvement and stop trying to nurture optimistic thoughts about other human beings. This resting place is so comfortable that we cannot help feeling grateful for the anger and selfishness that has brought us to this moment of freedom and solitude.

From Chapter 36, ‘Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground: the Joys of Degradation’, in Other Colours by Orhan Pamuk:

A film still veiled his eyes but they burned no longer. A power, akin to that which had often made anger or resentment fall from him, brought his steps to rest. He stood still and gazed up at the sombre porch of the morgue and from that to the dark cobbled laneway at its side. He saw the word Lotts on the wall of the lane and breathed slowly the rank heavy air.
- That is horse piss and rotted straw, he thought. It is a good odour to breathe. It will calm my heart. My heart is quite calm now. I will go back.

From Chapter 2 of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.