This book began very readably and I enjoyed the schooldays section of Logan’s life. Boyd captures the know it all nature of late youth, the burning desire to enter the adult world and be serious and the way naive new ideas and values are taken up with fervour, tried on and then discarded for something else. There are some funny incidents too during this era.
As we follow young Logan Mountstuart up to Oxford the portrait remains intriguing. However, as far as I remember, it is also during our hero’s university days that the author introduces the practice of name dropping. It is a very boring and a cheap, pretentious trick. The Garsington Manor incident, if not the first, is certainly the most gratuitous. It felt strange to be reading caricatures of famous people, wheeled in to perform their party trick, in the midst of what had been a fairly engaging story. It felt like the author didn’t think his characters were sufficiently interesting, which they were, or couldn’t be bothered to think of more material for them so instead resorted to the introduction of a bizarre array of cultural celebrities replete with hackneyed cameos. Sadly, it continued throughout the book. I felt it added nothing and sullied the whole story with a kind of autograph hunting, celebrity obsessed, gossip column ambience.
The character of Logan also suffers from a dip in quality around this time too. While at university he starts fucking his best friend’s girlfriend. Things continue in this vein when he begins an affair immediately after his wife has given birth and continues to live a dual life with his mistress in London until he is discovered. All this gives me the impression that Logan is a deeply selfish and extraordinarily self-satisfied. There’s plenty of evidence for this later on in the book. The worst is perhaps totally ignoring his son from his first marriage after his divorce for about a decade! Against this, he is faithful to his former mistress, Freya, and seems dedicated to her and his daughter until they are both tragically killed in the war. Just because he is pretty detestable individual doesn’t necessarily make Logan a bad character. But coupled with the thin stories and name dropping, it began to grate a bit. His career also seems to be conveniently designed for name dropping because he is an author in London 30s and then an art dealer in NY in the 60s allowing the author to mention even more famous people. If you chuck in Logan’s time as a spy, recruited by Ian Fleming of course, during the war then you can begin to develop some sense for the overblown nature of the narrative. Logan’s war was surprisingly forgettable given it ostensibly contains so much action. This is perhaps less surprising when I consider that the author would have had no direct experience of this environment, making it much harder for him to render it effectively to the reader. From reading his brief biography, it is clear he has first hand experience of minor British public schools and Oxford University and these sections are correspondingly more vivid. The African section of Logan’s life wasn’t especially good in spite of the author’s upbringing in Ghana. Equally, the scenes of old age are well drawn and he was only 50 when wrote them although it is conceivable he had experiences with more elderly family members or friends. It seems that this theory has its limitations but in general I felt he is stronger on familiar ground and seeks to include as much of it as possible.
There were some good bits as the book progressed. There was some excellent criticism of boring toffs (mainly his first wife’s family) but it lacked teeth coming from someone as unprincipled as Logan. His later years in London were, on the whole, more engaging and had some vivid scenes of Logan’s own, geriatric Down and Out in Paris and London style experiences. I kept wondering how he had managed to squander so much of his money. Then I began to wonder why he didn’t just sell his flat and live somewhere cheaper and stop eating dog food. In this sense, I didn’t think there was a lot of narrative logic or justification for this era of his life but it was better than the New York years and the interminable name-dropping! Mountstuart’s retirement in France is decently drawn, especially the landscape and light, but this section also contains a half baked story about a war criminal’s daughter returning to the region. The section where Mountstuart nurses his dying friend Gloria is also poignant.
Two other minor gripes I had with the book were that there were too many peripheral characters and it was hard to keep track of them when they only pop up once every hundred pages. His first cousin who he kisses as a teenager and then appears about three times in the next 70 years is a good example. There will be plenty more that I can’t even remember now. The second is that, although Logan speaks Spanish, there is barely a word of it and instead book is full of untranslated French, which is a pet hate of mine! In a Victorian novel I might forgive the assumption of French knowledge but not in a book from 2002. I can’t comprehend this decision and it really annoys me! The Spanish is translated though, which is at least something!
On the whole I found this a pretty superficial book. It was easy to read but left little lasting impression on me. The narrative felt a bit disjointed and lots of the material was thin. That having been said, there were certainly some good sections and it was not badly written in terms of style. I suspect my extreme hatred of the celebrity cameo tipped my bias against this book! It is definitely a fairly disparate collection of material, too much so in my opinion, but it could be argued accurately mimics some lives. However, I found I didn’t like or empathise with the main character and thought the narrative was patchy and inexpertly assembled.
Tuesday, 18 June 2019
Thursday, 14 February 2019
Min Jin Lee - Pachinko
This is a good book but my enjoyment of it progressed quite patchily. Initially, it was a little stilted and it took me a while to engage with the characters in the boarding house in Korea. Reasonably quickly, the book became more vivid and engaging as the characters and the narrative developed. It remained this way for majority of the book but I felt like my connection to the book began to unravel around two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through. As the book moves through the 100 odd years of history it covers, the generations inevitably multiply until I felt like I didn’t really have any connection or interest in the new characters that were being introduced. This reminded me of ‘100 Years Of Solitude’ a bit but the proliferation of characters and subsequent confusion aren’t as extreme as they are in Gabo’s classic. However, the quality of some of these characters did deteriorate later on in the book and this is not something I remember thinking about ‘100 Years Of Solitude’. Unlike the core characters whose personalities are build up slowly and at an enjoyable pace, the later characters feel rushed and haphazard. They’re less skillfully drawn and didn’t live up to the high standard I had come to expect from the book’s earlier passages. In this sense I feel the book is too long and that the latter sections aren’t as good as those in the middle. I thought I’d come up with a witty analogy for this book insofar as it is a tiny bit slow to get started, then really good and then becomes a bit of slog by the end. Unhelpfully, I have since forgotten the analogue! Was it going for a really long run? Was it the trajectory of enthusiasm for a new hobby or such like? Who knows? Who cares?
Besides the deterioration in quality as the book progresses, one of my biggest gripes about this book was the author’s use of dialogue as a vehicle for narrative. I’m generally of the opinion that dialogue is so hard to get right that less is usually more. More specifically, if there has to be dialogue it should definitely not be used to convey pieces of narrative to the reader. This almost always results in the dialogue becoming very clunky and I struggle to remember examples where it’s been done well. In a film or play, where options are limited, I can understand the need to have characters revealing parts of their backstory or narrative via dialogue but in a book I don’t see why the narrative can’t be kept in the prose, which avoids almost unbelievably clunky phrases like, “You’re leaving me in ten minutes to meet him. You do this on the first of the month.” I use this example from quite late on in the book as I happened to have highlighted it but the book’s opening passages has many other examples. Given that it always sounds so bad, I don’t see the reason or benefit of using dialogue in this way.
Sunja’s story is the best part of the book in my opinion. Her love affair with Hansu, her pregnancy with Noa, her marriage to Isak, their journey to Japan, their subsequent lives as Christian Korean immigrants and the birth of her second child are all engaging and well portrayed. This section of the book deals skillfully with a whole heap of interesting topics like marriage and infidelity, immigrant life, the Second World War, poverty, illness, religion and identity. The relationship between the half brothers Noa and Mosazu is another high point and is an interesting commentary on life as native born sons of immigrants. In spite of this richness, it never feels heavy handed and the story continues with admirable fluidity and pacing. The fact that Hansu remains an important part of the family’s life even after Sunja has rejected his offer to be his mistress adds a lot of complexity and interest. Whether or not this is ultimately beneficial for her and her family is debatable and seemed one of the central questions of the novel. In one practical sense, Hansu saves them from almost certain death by moving them to the countryside during the bombing of Osaka. On the other hand, it is the existence of this secret, illicit father and benefactor that seems to precipitate Noa’s suicide. Sunja appears to reconcile herself to these facts with reference to Christianity saying, “In the moments before her death, her mother had said that this man had ruined her life, but had he? He had given her Noa; unless she had been pregnant, she wouldn’t have married Isak, and without Isak, she wouldn’t have had Mozasu and now her grandson Solomon. She didn’t want to hate him anymore. What did Joseph say to his brothers who had sold him into slavery when he saw them again? “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” This was something Isak had taught her when she’d asked him about the evil of this world.” There are a lot of Christian characters in this book and while it is true that most of them are portrayed as good and kind, with the possible exception of Yacob in the later stages of his life, I wouldn’t say it was an overtly Christian novel. As with most of the themes, it’s handled sensitively enough not to encroach on the story although Christianity is given a benign treatment overall.
I was left a bit confused by Noa’s decision to kill himself rather than be reunited with his family. It seemed to me to be quite out of character for the scholarly and talented lover of literature who I would have expected to have a more nuanced understanding of identity, honour and status. Furthermore, he appears to love his mother and brother earlier in the book and has a family of his own when he commits suicide. The only conclusion I could draw was that he must have been utterly devastated by the discovery that he was illegitimate child to the point that this feeling overwhelmed all competing and contrary sentiments. I also felt perhaps someone else might have noticed the similarities between them earlier or found out about the story another way. I would probably locate Noa’s later life alongside the later characters in terms of their quality. By the time Noa kills himself, I felt like the book had already started to unravel in terms of narrative structure and character development.
Alongside Noa’s suicide, there are increasingly outrageous and hastily sketched plot developments. A character whose identity I can’t recall has a sexual awakening in a cemetery and, for good measure, also finds her husband there sodomising a male prostitute! I think it is Mosazu’s school friend the policeman’s wife. This school friend hardly plays a role up to this point and doesn’t feature after it either. Whoever it is, the scene feels rushed and disconnected from the rest of the book. Equally, the characters of Solomon, Mosazu’s son, and his girlfriend’s daughter, Hana, have the same feeling of an afterthought. When I compare them to the earlier parts of the book where Isak, Sunja, Kyunghee and Yoseb struggle with poverty and racism while attempting to raise children and remain faithful to their religion it feels like a different book altogether. The characters feel so hastily thrown together and the narratives that surround them feel like they have been cooked up by someone running out of ideas but still wanting those ideas to carry maximum shock value. The earlier parts of the book are nowhere near as attention seeking and gaudy. The earlier characters are painstakingly built up over long stretches. The later ones feel like they have been crammed into as few pages as possible with half baked, lurid plots to match.
Solomon is probably the best example of this. There isn’t much information about him until it is time for him to take part in two equally bad parts of the plot. First, he sleeps with his father’s girlfriend’s daughter Hana - shock, horror, taboo - and the daughter then proceeds to go off the rails and become a hostess / prostitute in Tokyo and die young - shock, horror, taboo. Secondly, he is involved in a really badly drawn investment banking storyline that serves no real purpose except to reinforce ideas about racism which are made far more poignantly and skillfully in other places. For instance, Isak’s imprisonment or Isak and Mosazu’s experiences growing up. The scenes from high finance never really ring true and seem to me to be well outside of the author’s area of expertise. The clunkiest part is probably the poker game he plays with his colleagues. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author had never played poker. The rules are set out but then ignored as Solomon hits a full house by discarding two cards and receiving two unwanted ones from his neighbour. Nevermind that the author has, only a page or so earlier, told us that next each player must give away a further card! The fact that the rules are mentioned only then to be completely ignored was really sloppy. This section also suffered from the, not unusual but completely false, presentation of poker as a game that a skillful player can win or lose at will. To anyone who has played even a small amount of cards, this is a ludicrous and wholly inaccurate simplification. I really wonder why this section was in the book at all as it is so badly done.
There is a tension between worldly characters, like Hansu and Mosazu, and more idealistic, often religious, characters like Isak, Noa and Yoseb. Both are presented in positive and negative lights and this even handed treatment is one of the book’s stronger points. I found myself quite drawn to the misanthropic, somewhat nihilistic and highly individualistic philosophy espoused by Hansu. This is probably best summarised by a passage of dialogue he delivers, “I’m a businessman. And I want you to be a businessman. And whenever you go to these meetings, I want you to think for yourself, and I want you to think about promoting your own interests no matter what. All these people—both the Japanese and the Koreans—are fucked because they keep thinking about the group. But here’s the truth: There’s no such thing as a benevolent leader. I protect you because you work for me. If you act like a fool and go against my interests, then I can’t protect you. As for these Korean groups, you have to remember that no matter what, the men who are in charge are just men—so they’re not much smarter than pigs. And we eat pigs. You lived with that farmer Tamaguchi who sold sweet potatoes for obscene prices to starving Japanese during a time of war. He violated wartime regulations, and I helped him, because he wanted money and I do, too. He probably thinks he’s a decent, respectable Japanese, or some kind of proud nationalist—don’t they all? He’s a terrible Japanese, but a smart businessman. I’m not a good Korean, and I’m not a Japanese. I’m very good at making money. This country would fall apart if everyone believed in some samurai crap. The Emperor does not give a fuck about anyone, either. So I’m not going to tell you not to go to any meetings or not to join any group. But know this: Those communists don’t care about you. They don’t care about anybody. You’re crazy if you think they care about Korea.” I found it hard not to agree with most of what he says. However, at the same time, there is a sense in which Hansu is responsible for suffering because he doesn’t spend enough time thinking about other people’s interests or ‘the group’ as he puts it. Alternatively, Noa and Isak both suffer for their principles and beliefs in a way that seems absurd to a pragmatist like Hansu. However, these same principles seem to lead them to a more disciplined and happier personal relationships. The ultimate cost of Hansu’s ruthless self-interest may be Noa’s suicide and all the misery that goes with it. The book itself appears to reserve judgement and, if anything, probably suggests that such judgements are beyond the scope of human understanding; as expressed in Sunja’s concluding thoughts quoted above.
Some of this book is really excellent but I feel like it overstretched itself in terms of length, historical scope, number of characters and storylines. The core story of Sunja, her family before her and her sons after her, are well paced and well written. The narrative functions independently as a good story with good characters and also as an example of far larger forces like war, race and poverty. Later on, the story becomes too lurid with too many hurried characters. These characters aren’t much good as stories on their own and nor do they add much to the general themes that are already extensively covered in other parts of the book. If I was the editor I would have tried to cut a good portion of the last couple of hundred pages as I think it clouds and confuses an otherwise excellent narrative and set of characters.
Besides the deterioration in quality as the book progresses, one of my biggest gripes about this book was the author’s use of dialogue as a vehicle for narrative. I’m generally of the opinion that dialogue is so hard to get right that less is usually more. More specifically, if there has to be dialogue it should definitely not be used to convey pieces of narrative to the reader. This almost always results in the dialogue becoming very clunky and I struggle to remember examples where it’s been done well. In a film or play, where options are limited, I can understand the need to have characters revealing parts of their backstory or narrative via dialogue but in a book I don’t see why the narrative can’t be kept in the prose, which avoids almost unbelievably clunky phrases like, “You’re leaving me in ten minutes to meet him. You do this on the first of the month.” I use this example from quite late on in the book as I happened to have highlighted it but the book’s opening passages has many other examples. Given that it always sounds so bad, I don’t see the reason or benefit of using dialogue in this way.
Sunja’s story is the best part of the book in my opinion. Her love affair with Hansu, her pregnancy with Noa, her marriage to Isak, their journey to Japan, their subsequent lives as Christian Korean immigrants and the birth of her second child are all engaging and well portrayed. This section of the book deals skillfully with a whole heap of interesting topics like marriage and infidelity, immigrant life, the Second World War, poverty, illness, religion and identity. The relationship between the half brothers Noa and Mosazu is another high point and is an interesting commentary on life as native born sons of immigrants. In spite of this richness, it never feels heavy handed and the story continues with admirable fluidity and pacing. The fact that Hansu remains an important part of the family’s life even after Sunja has rejected his offer to be his mistress adds a lot of complexity and interest. Whether or not this is ultimately beneficial for her and her family is debatable and seemed one of the central questions of the novel. In one practical sense, Hansu saves them from almost certain death by moving them to the countryside during the bombing of Osaka. On the other hand, it is the existence of this secret, illicit father and benefactor that seems to precipitate Noa’s suicide. Sunja appears to reconcile herself to these facts with reference to Christianity saying, “In the moments before her death, her mother had said that this man had ruined her life, but had he? He had given her Noa; unless she had been pregnant, she wouldn’t have married Isak, and without Isak, she wouldn’t have had Mozasu and now her grandson Solomon. She didn’t want to hate him anymore. What did Joseph say to his brothers who had sold him into slavery when he saw them again? “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” This was something Isak had taught her when she’d asked him about the evil of this world.” There are a lot of Christian characters in this book and while it is true that most of them are portrayed as good and kind, with the possible exception of Yacob in the later stages of his life, I wouldn’t say it was an overtly Christian novel. As with most of the themes, it’s handled sensitively enough not to encroach on the story although Christianity is given a benign treatment overall.
I was left a bit confused by Noa’s decision to kill himself rather than be reunited with his family. It seemed to me to be quite out of character for the scholarly and talented lover of literature who I would have expected to have a more nuanced understanding of identity, honour and status. Furthermore, he appears to love his mother and brother earlier in the book and has a family of his own when he commits suicide. The only conclusion I could draw was that he must have been utterly devastated by the discovery that he was illegitimate child to the point that this feeling overwhelmed all competing and contrary sentiments. I also felt perhaps someone else might have noticed the similarities between them earlier or found out about the story another way. I would probably locate Noa’s later life alongside the later characters in terms of their quality. By the time Noa kills himself, I felt like the book had already started to unravel in terms of narrative structure and character development.
Alongside Noa’s suicide, there are increasingly outrageous and hastily sketched plot developments. A character whose identity I can’t recall has a sexual awakening in a cemetery and, for good measure, also finds her husband there sodomising a male prostitute! I think it is Mosazu’s school friend the policeman’s wife. This school friend hardly plays a role up to this point and doesn’t feature after it either. Whoever it is, the scene feels rushed and disconnected from the rest of the book. Equally, the characters of Solomon, Mosazu’s son, and his girlfriend’s daughter, Hana, have the same feeling of an afterthought. When I compare them to the earlier parts of the book where Isak, Sunja, Kyunghee and Yoseb struggle with poverty and racism while attempting to raise children and remain faithful to their religion it feels like a different book altogether. The characters feel so hastily thrown together and the narratives that surround them feel like they have been cooked up by someone running out of ideas but still wanting those ideas to carry maximum shock value. The earlier parts of the book are nowhere near as attention seeking and gaudy. The earlier characters are painstakingly built up over long stretches. The later ones feel like they have been crammed into as few pages as possible with half baked, lurid plots to match.
Solomon is probably the best example of this. There isn’t much information about him until it is time for him to take part in two equally bad parts of the plot. First, he sleeps with his father’s girlfriend’s daughter Hana - shock, horror, taboo - and the daughter then proceeds to go off the rails and become a hostess / prostitute in Tokyo and die young - shock, horror, taboo. Secondly, he is involved in a really badly drawn investment banking storyline that serves no real purpose except to reinforce ideas about racism which are made far more poignantly and skillfully in other places. For instance, Isak’s imprisonment or Isak and Mosazu’s experiences growing up. The scenes from high finance never really ring true and seem to me to be well outside of the author’s area of expertise. The clunkiest part is probably the poker game he plays with his colleagues. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author had never played poker. The rules are set out but then ignored as Solomon hits a full house by discarding two cards and receiving two unwanted ones from his neighbour. Nevermind that the author has, only a page or so earlier, told us that next each player must give away a further card! The fact that the rules are mentioned only then to be completely ignored was really sloppy. This section also suffered from the, not unusual but completely false, presentation of poker as a game that a skillful player can win or lose at will. To anyone who has played even a small amount of cards, this is a ludicrous and wholly inaccurate simplification. I really wonder why this section was in the book at all as it is so badly done.
There is a tension between worldly characters, like Hansu and Mosazu, and more idealistic, often religious, characters like Isak, Noa and Yoseb. Both are presented in positive and negative lights and this even handed treatment is one of the book’s stronger points. I found myself quite drawn to the misanthropic, somewhat nihilistic and highly individualistic philosophy espoused by Hansu. This is probably best summarised by a passage of dialogue he delivers, “I’m a businessman. And I want you to be a businessman. And whenever you go to these meetings, I want you to think for yourself, and I want you to think about promoting your own interests no matter what. All these people—both the Japanese and the Koreans—are fucked because they keep thinking about the group. But here’s the truth: There’s no such thing as a benevolent leader. I protect you because you work for me. If you act like a fool and go against my interests, then I can’t protect you. As for these Korean groups, you have to remember that no matter what, the men who are in charge are just men—so they’re not much smarter than pigs. And we eat pigs. You lived with that farmer Tamaguchi who sold sweet potatoes for obscene prices to starving Japanese during a time of war. He violated wartime regulations, and I helped him, because he wanted money and I do, too. He probably thinks he’s a decent, respectable Japanese, or some kind of proud nationalist—don’t they all? He’s a terrible Japanese, but a smart businessman. I’m not a good Korean, and I’m not a Japanese. I’m very good at making money. This country would fall apart if everyone believed in some samurai crap. The Emperor does not give a fuck about anyone, either. So I’m not going to tell you not to go to any meetings or not to join any group. But know this: Those communists don’t care about you. They don’t care about anybody. You’re crazy if you think they care about Korea.” I found it hard not to agree with most of what he says. However, at the same time, there is a sense in which Hansu is responsible for suffering because he doesn’t spend enough time thinking about other people’s interests or ‘the group’ as he puts it. Alternatively, Noa and Isak both suffer for their principles and beliefs in a way that seems absurd to a pragmatist like Hansu. However, these same principles seem to lead them to a more disciplined and happier personal relationships. The ultimate cost of Hansu’s ruthless self-interest may be Noa’s suicide and all the misery that goes with it. The book itself appears to reserve judgement and, if anything, probably suggests that such judgements are beyond the scope of human understanding; as expressed in Sunja’s concluding thoughts quoted above.
Some of this book is really excellent but I feel like it overstretched itself in terms of length, historical scope, number of characters and storylines. The core story of Sunja, her family before her and her sons after her, are well paced and well written. The narrative functions independently as a good story with good characters and also as an example of far larger forces like war, race and poverty. Later on, the story becomes too lurid with too many hurried characters. These characters aren’t much good as stories on their own and nor do they add much to the general themes that are already extensively covered in other parts of the book. If I was the editor I would have tried to cut a good portion of the last couple of hundred pages as I think it clouds and confuses an otherwise excellent narrative and set of characters.
Thursday, 17 January 2019
Mike Skinner - The Story Of The Streets
This is an inspirational story documenting Mike Skinner’s refusal to compromise his self expression and the development of a highly distinctive sound. The story of the creation of ‘geezer garage’ from Skinner’s background of US rap, house, speed garage and breakbeat is fascinating. One of its best aspects is its honesty. Skinner includes lots of things that others might airbrush out from their story and is willing to recognise that not everything he’s done is brilliant - both musically and in life more generally. A few things he does seem to have done really well are staying true to his creative vision, working insanely hard and making music with an authentic sense of time and place. For someone like me who was born in the 80s, a song like Blinded By The Lights describes the ambience and experience of teenage British clubbing as well as anything else. It’s a truly iconic tune; accurately encapsulating a time and place. Against this idea of The Streets as highly authentic music, some people might say that Skinner is a wannabe cockney. He addresses this in the book, but in my experience almost anywhere in the South of England is aspiring towards a London aesthetic in some way. So this doesn’t make him any less authentic for me, probably it makes him more so, even though he raps more like a Cockney than a Brummie and I associate his music with London more than Birmingham.
Skinner is obviously someone with extremely good self-knowledge. He recognises that he’s more of producer than a rapper, has an extremely good sense of what characterises the environments he’s inhabiting and isn’t afraid to express himself honestly. For example, he writes about the experience of discovering that most of the people listening to his music once he becomes popular weren’t really the kind of people he was writing it for. In a roundabout way, I think he is saying that when he first became big he didn’t like the hipsters and upper middle class kids who made up the majority of his fan base. That said, he comes across as someone who is open minded enough to be able to see people individually and not as the stereotypes he might have taken the piss out of before he was famous. Equally, he talks about the importance of live performance money to his success and a lot of lower to lower middle class people simply don’t have the money for this kind of extravagance. That’s not to say that this demographic don’t rate his music, I have no idea about this, but rather that they might be less visible in terms of attendance at shows. He’s also self aware enough to admit that after 5 albums and 10 or more years on the scene that people have probably had enough of his voice and that he’s no longer as myopic about his music as he gets older.
Skinner is obviously an incredibly hard worker, to the point of it becoming a problem. I especially enjoyed the section on his mental breakdown when he writes about how this probably happened because he wasn’t taking as many drugs or drinking as much. Prima facie this seems like a ridiculously counterintuitive assertion but when you read the book you realise that he is basically a workaholic who’s only way of switching off was getting fucked. Once he stopped doing this as he got a bit older, he seems to have been unable to switch off. It’s another good example of his X-ray self-knowledge. To me it seems like knowing himself so well has probably contributed positively to expressing himself so authentically and relatably through his music. Alongside his relentless work ethic, it seems like he is a bit of a musical savant. He says he can’t read music but when he starts to explain how it’s all quite easy actually because you just have to think in terms of vibrations and their fractions I got completely lost! It might seem simple to him but to a musical muggle like me it may as well be Urdu. However, you can tell from his music that he definitely knows what he is talking about and I don’t have to know anything about music to know this. He describes being very interested in how electronics worked when he was a child and how he liked to take things apart and you can see how this might translate into an intuitive technical understanding of the rules of music.
To my delight, Skinner also seems to be a bit of a reader! He writes extensively about reading about storytelling, song writing and narrative structure with an admirably eclectic breadth. This is probably most evident on the album ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’, which is a highly structured story. This is another example of how hard he seems to have worked at his craft and how much time he has dedicated to getting better. As I wrote before, he probably did this in a pretty myopic and obsessive way, which seems to be common amongst highly successful people. Of course, there are downsides to this too. At one point he writes about how he doesn’t know what his Dad’s parents did for a living, which obviously isn’t essential to staying alive, but did strike me as a bit odd! This could be a glimpse of how little time Skinner dedicated to finding out about anything not directly related to his goals when he was younger because his knowledge of music is impressively extensive.
He writes interestingly and perceptively about the process of becoming famous and the effect it had on his mindset and personality. He also includes details of his spread betting addiction, which lots of other people might have left out, and is philosophical about his losses and what the experience signified. To quote, “On the one hand you’ve achieved all you’ve ever wanted; on the other, you’ve lost the hope of a different and better life that wishing you could achieve that goal used to give you.” (p210) I thought his reflections on success and achievement were poignant and one of the better parts of the book.
Skinner is obviously a man with lots of ideas and this comes through in all sorts of different ways in the book. Ideas about music, ideas about himself, ideas about history, science, society, football. Pretty much anything you can think of, in fact! In one way, it’s obvious how this abundance of ideas could have helped him creatively. It’s also obvious that he has a brain. However, some of the assertions he makes have more than a whiff of coked up ramblings delivered across a kitchen table at 7am! To give a few examples, he claims high levels of Scandinavian social care are due to oil revenues when really it is only Norway that has any oil, that Richard Dawkins is really Christianity dressed up as atheism, he gives a bizarre half page argument against the NHS and presents an equally bizarre two sentence, Niall Ferguson inspired summary of the American War Of Independence! He also goes on a strange rant about how supporting Manchester United is meaningless because of its international ownership, ever changing cast of players and the merciless commercialisation. He tries to contrast this with supporting Birmingham City even though this club’s ownership is arguably even more international, staff turnover is just as high and is only slightly less commercialised because it is less successful! In short, alongside the interesting ideas Skinner has about music, success and creativity there are quite a few half baked ones it feels like he’s cooked up on a bender!
Another strange part of the book was Skinner’s settling of scores, which thankfully are quite rare! He seems to take offense that Aphex Twin called his music shit once and so takes the opportunity to reciprocate. He also takes it upon himself to defend Chris Martin from ‘upper middle class’ music journalists who are jealous of him. Martin is, according to Skinner, a good bloke because he was going to be on a Streets song until his label intervened and stopped him. Most people, myself included, would probably see Chris Martin as heavily odds on to be a wanker given that he was married to Gwyneth Paltrow for 13 years! These unsubstantiated outbursts struck me as a bit petty and seem to have been tossed into the book for no particular reason as they’re not discernibly linked to any broader narrative about the two celebrities in question. It’s the worst example of Skinner’s propensity to name drop, which thankfully isn’t too apparent on the whole!
One aspect of the book I really disliked was the editor’s decision to suspend random quotes in larger font in the middle of the page every couple of pages. Of course, I’m familiar with this technique from reading magazines and assume its function is to catch the reader’s eye as they flick through the pages. However, I see this as totally redundant when used in a book. If you’ve already bought the book then it’s probable you’re going to read it and not just flick through and look at the words in big letters. People don’t thumb through books like they do magazines so it is just frustrating to have your eye distracted from the text you’re reading to read a quotation from a different page, which you then come across later in the text anyway! It’s infuriating and an inexplicably bad idea. If they absolutely HAD to do it then I would have preferred it if the quotes remained in their original position and weren’t torn out of their context and suspended in a completely different position. It definitely spoiled the reading experience.
On the whole, this was a readable and enjoyable reflection on Mike Skinner’s career. It had some really good parts and was only let down by a few half baked theories, a bit of name dropping and score settling and one truly dreadful editing decision!
PS - it just occurred to me that Skinner has a go at Blur in the book as well, which I found strange given that the song ‘Parklife’ is surely the closest thing you could find to a ‘The Streets’ track before they actually existed!!
Skinner is obviously someone with extremely good self-knowledge. He recognises that he’s more of producer than a rapper, has an extremely good sense of what characterises the environments he’s inhabiting and isn’t afraid to express himself honestly. For example, he writes about the experience of discovering that most of the people listening to his music once he becomes popular weren’t really the kind of people he was writing it for. In a roundabout way, I think he is saying that when he first became big he didn’t like the hipsters and upper middle class kids who made up the majority of his fan base. That said, he comes across as someone who is open minded enough to be able to see people individually and not as the stereotypes he might have taken the piss out of before he was famous. Equally, he talks about the importance of live performance money to his success and a lot of lower to lower middle class people simply don’t have the money for this kind of extravagance. That’s not to say that this demographic don’t rate his music, I have no idea about this, but rather that they might be less visible in terms of attendance at shows. He’s also self aware enough to admit that after 5 albums and 10 or more years on the scene that people have probably had enough of his voice and that he’s no longer as myopic about his music as he gets older.
Skinner is obviously an incredibly hard worker, to the point of it becoming a problem. I especially enjoyed the section on his mental breakdown when he writes about how this probably happened because he wasn’t taking as many drugs or drinking as much. Prima facie this seems like a ridiculously counterintuitive assertion but when you read the book you realise that he is basically a workaholic who’s only way of switching off was getting fucked. Once he stopped doing this as he got a bit older, he seems to have been unable to switch off. It’s another good example of his X-ray self-knowledge. To me it seems like knowing himself so well has probably contributed positively to expressing himself so authentically and relatably through his music. Alongside his relentless work ethic, it seems like he is a bit of a musical savant. He says he can’t read music but when he starts to explain how it’s all quite easy actually because you just have to think in terms of vibrations and their fractions I got completely lost! It might seem simple to him but to a musical muggle like me it may as well be Urdu. However, you can tell from his music that he definitely knows what he is talking about and I don’t have to know anything about music to know this. He describes being very interested in how electronics worked when he was a child and how he liked to take things apart and you can see how this might translate into an intuitive technical understanding of the rules of music.
To my delight, Skinner also seems to be a bit of a reader! He writes extensively about reading about storytelling, song writing and narrative structure with an admirably eclectic breadth. This is probably most evident on the album ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’, which is a highly structured story. This is another example of how hard he seems to have worked at his craft and how much time he has dedicated to getting better. As I wrote before, he probably did this in a pretty myopic and obsessive way, which seems to be common amongst highly successful people. Of course, there are downsides to this too. At one point he writes about how he doesn’t know what his Dad’s parents did for a living, which obviously isn’t essential to staying alive, but did strike me as a bit odd! This could be a glimpse of how little time Skinner dedicated to finding out about anything not directly related to his goals when he was younger because his knowledge of music is impressively extensive.
He writes interestingly and perceptively about the process of becoming famous and the effect it had on his mindset and personality. He also includes details of his spread betting addiction, which lots of other people might have left out, and is philosophical about his losses and what the experience signified. To quote, “On the one hand you’ve achieved all you’ve ever wanted; on the other, you’ve lost the hope of a different and better life that wishing you could achieve that goal used to give you.” (p210) I thought his reflections on success and achievement were poignant and one of the better parts of the book.
Skinner is obviously a man with lots of ideas and this comes through in all sorts of different ways in the book. Ideas about music, ideas about himself, ideas about history, science, society, football. Pretty much anything you can think of, in fact! In one way, it’s obvious how this abundance of ideas could have helped him creatively. It’s also obvious that he has a brain. However, some of the assertions he makes have more than a whiff of coked up ramblings delivered across a kitchen table at 7am! To give a few examples, he claims high levels of Scandinavian social care are due to oil revenues when really it is only Norway that has any oil, that Richard Dawkins is really Christianity dressed up as atheism, he gives a bizarre half page argument against the NHS and presents an equally bizarre two sentence, Niall Ferguson inspired summary of the American War Of Independence! He also goes on a strange rant about how supporting Manchester United is meaningless because of its international ownership, ever changing cast of players and the merciless commercialisation. He tries to contrast this with supporting Birmingham City even though this club’s ownership is arguably even more international, staff turnover is just as high and is only slightly less commercialised because it is less successful! In short, alongside the interesting ideas Skinner has about music, success and creativity there are quite a few half baked ones it feels like he’s cooked up on a bender!
Another strange part of the book was Skinner’s settling of scores, which thankfully are quite rare! He seems to take offense that Aphex Twin called his music shit once and so takes the opportunity to reciprocate. He also takes it upon himself to defend Chris Martin from ‘upper middle class’ music journalists who are jealous of him. Martin is, according to Skinner, a good bloke because he was going to be on a Streets song until his label intervened and stopped him. Most people, myself included, would probably see Chris Martin as heavily odds on to be a wanker given that he was married to Gwyneth Paltrow for 13 years! These unsubstantiated outbursts struck me as a bit petty and seem to have been tossed into the book for no particular reason as they’re not discernibly linked to any broader narrative about the two celebrities in question. It’s the worst example of Skinner’s propensity to name drop, which thankfully isn’t too apparent on the whole!
One aspect of the book I really disliked was the editor’s decision to suspend random quotes in larger font in the middle of the page every couple of pages. Of course, I’m familiar with this technique from reading magazines and assume its function is to catch the reader’s eye as they flick through the pages. However, I see this as totally redundant when used in a book. If you’ve already bought the book then it’s probable you’re going to read it and not just flick through and look at the words in big letters. People don’t thumb through books like they do magazines so it is just frustrating to have your eye distracted from the text you’re reading to read a quotation from a different page, which you then come across later in the text anyway! It’s infuriating and an inexplicably bad idea. If they absolutely HAD to do it then I would have preferred it if the quotes remained in their original position and weren’t torn out of their context and suspended in a completely different position. It definitely spoiled the reading experience.
On the whole, this was a readable and enjoyable reflection on Mike Skinner’s career. It had some really good parts and was only let down by a few half baked theories, a bit of name dropping and score settling and one truly dreadful editing decision!
PS - it just occurred to me that Skinner has a go at Blur in the book as well, which I found strange given that the song ‘Parklife’ is surely the closest thing you could find to a ‘The Streets’ track before they actually existed!!
Thursday, 27 December 2018
Eka Kurniawan - Vengeance Is Mine All Others Pay Cash
This was a thoroughly enjoyable book full of interesting juxtapositions, images and ideas. On the one hand, it is a careering journey through a world of mobsters, whores, truck stops, extortion, hitmen, vengeance killings, fights and gangs. The atmosphere created is similar to a very violent cartoon or the sinister stylisations of a Tarantino movie. The prose and structure are simple and staccato. The story is told in snatches; sometimes a couple of lines of conversation, other times a more extended retelling of a series of events. The cast of characters is limited and the overwhelming focus is on the impotent hero Ajo Kawir. The disconnected paragraphs jump around geographically and chronologically and while this is never confusing sometimes it was a bit disjointed.
The book also had a funny, absurd side with Ajo constantly pulling down his trousers to consult his penis in front of other people, angry exchanges between posturing protagonists and pulse raising games of chicken in trucks at the dead of night. However, the book was far from superficial and also dealt with some weighty themes without ever becoming self conscious or explicit in examining them. I thought this was a significant achievement and the best aspect of the book.
Amongst other things, it was a commentary on corruption and authority in Indonesia and portrayed evocative scenes from this lush, lawless land. The roles sex and violence play in growing up and shaping definitions of masculinity were also integral to its story. The mercurial natures of sexual desire, love, fidelity and anger also played an important part in the story. At times, the relentless, gory violence was overbearing but it found a counterpoint in Kawir’s transformation and ability to philosophise and reconcile himself to his life. I found myself impressed by his cool simplicity and dedication to his chosen path. He’s in some senses stoic but also allows his emotions room to evolve and change. He is dispassionate but not, ultimately, to a sociopathic and destructive extent degree that he is at the beginning of the book. These attempts at extreme dispassion only end up in angry demonstrations of a different kind of passion, as the story shows. I felt I could sympathise with the raw, uncontrollable desires that many of the characters portray but was far more impressed and interested in Ajo’s ability to overcome them. This may be a matter time and experience, exemplified by the relationship between Ajo and Mono and the differences between them. While Mono is taking his first steps in his career as a tough guy, Ajo is retiring from his. It could also be more to do with the interplay between chance, circumstance and disposition which is expressed in the different actions Ajo and his wife take at the end of the book. One settles down to raise a child that isn’t his while the other goes out to seek revenge that isn’t hers. The chance appearance of Jelita in Ajo’s truck and the role she plays in his recovery of his erection also seem to point to the fact that large portions of what happen to us may be outside of out control. This kind of determinism also has a physical expression through Ajo’s penis, his consultations with it and his eventual acceptance of his powerlessness.
In the end, I found the book reassuring and reflective. In a world full of dark, traumatic experiences and savage abuses it is still possible to navigate, however circuitously, towards peace and acceptance. The book makes this point in an unromanticized, unsentimental way. Even though many of the scenes and people featured fall firmly in the category of caricature it ended up feeling far more profound and meaningful than I could have imagined when I began.
The book also had a funny, absurd side with Ajo constantly pulling down his trousers to consult his penis in front of other people, angry exchanges between posturing protagonists and pulse raising games of chicken in trucks at the dead of night. However, the book was far from superficial and also dealt with some weighty themes without ever becoming self conscious or explicit in examining them. I thought this was a significant achievement and the best aspect of the book.
Amongst other things, it was a commentary on corruption and authority in Indonesia and portrayed evocative scenes from this lush, lawless land. The roles sex and violence play in growing up and shaping definitions of masculinity were also integral to its story. The mercurial natures of sexual desire, love, fidelity and anger also played an important part in the story. At times, the relentless, gory violence was overbearing but it found a counterpoint in Kawir’s transformation and ability to philosophise and reconcile himself to his life. I found myself impressed by his cool simplicity and dedication to his chosen path. He’s in some senses stoic but also allows his emotions room to evolve and change. He is dispassionate but not, ultimately, to a sociopathic and destructive extent degree that he is at the beginning of the book. These attempts at extreme dispassion only end up in angry demonstrations of a different kind of passion, as the story shows. I felt I could sympathise with the raw, uncontrollable desires that many of the characters portray but was far more impressed and interested in Ajo’s ability to overcome them. This may be a matter time and experience, exemplified by the relationship between Ajo and Mono and the differences between them. While Mono is taking his first steps in his career as a tough guy, Ajo is retiring from his. It could also be more to do with the interplay between chance, circumstance and disposition which is expressed in the different actions Ajo and his wife take at the end of the book. One settles down to raise a child that isn’t his while the other goes out to seek revenge that isn’t hers. The chance appearance of Jelita in Ajo’s truck and the role she plays in his recovery of his erection also seem to point to the fact that large portions of what happen to us may be outside of out control. This kind of determinism also has a physical expression through Ajo’s penis, his consultations with it and his eventual acceptance of his powerlessness.
In the end, I found the book reassuring and reflective. In a world full of dark, traumatic experiences and savage abuses it is still possible to navigate, however circuitously, towards peace and acceptance. The book makes this point in an unromanticized, unsentimental way. Even though many of the scenes and people featured fall firmly in the category of caricature it ended up feeling far more profound and meaningful than I could have imagined when I began.
Wednesday, 19 December 2018
Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian - Tiger Woods
The overwhelming impression I got from this book is that Tiger Woods is a nasty guy. From dumping his high school girlfriend while at college by letter without explanation and refusing to speak to her - to abruptly severing long standing relationships and ‘friendships’ - to his self-centred and dismissive treatment of people he deems less important than him (everyone). Everything revolves Tiger and must take place on his terms or not at all. He seems socially disconnected, pathological and sometimes sociopathic. This is before you even consider his adultery, which is the most gratuitous example of this kind of behaviour. His attitude seems to have been, ‘I’m so good at golf and such an important person I should be allowed to do whatever I want’.
But beyond acknowledging how atrocious his behaviour was, why did he behave like this? And why did, and do, the public love him so much in spite of the highly unattractive side of his personality? Obviously, his exploits on the golf course and dominance of his sport are the most likely explanations. Here, the two questions - why was he so good at golf? why did his life become such a mess? - may share some common ground. Tiger Woods seems to have been raised as a golf machine and not a human. Both mother and father dedicated themselves to him to a startling degree and there seem to have been very few, if any, distractions from the all encompassing pursuit of golfing excellence. While other children learned how to play with each other and socialise, Tiger’s parents were concerned with creating a ruthless, competitive killer. The book reports that his father used to try and distract him while he played to help prepare him for this eventuality in tournaments. In extreme circumstances he would shout racist insults at his son in a tactic designed to build psychological strength. Meanwhile, his tiger mom would tell him to ‘kill’ opponents and ‘take their heart’. All told, this sounds like pretty good preparation for becoming an amazing golfer but also a good recipe for creating a sociopath. Tiger was almost unbelievably mollycoddled growing up but had to submit himself to an equally inconceivable and all encompassing schedule of training. Both parents and Tiger talk extensively throughout his life about how golf was his choice but it rings utterly hollow in light of the facts of his junior golfing career. As such, a young Tiger Woods would have grown up in an environment that valued golf, mental toughness, compliance with a schedule and, above all, performance as measured by a very limited set of narrow factors. Caring for other people was definitely not one of those factors. It is chilling to imagine that Woods played some of best golf while cheating on his wife and young family with multiple other women. This cold hearted lack of emotion might have served him well on tour but in a family context it has a more sinister and unsettling character.
Added to this already considerable burden to perform were the ideas and opinions of his father. Earl Woods regularly told people that Tiger would have a huge socio-political impact because of his status as a black player in the overwhelming white world of golf. When Tiger started playing their were courses that hosted the US Open that would not admit black members. While Tiger actively tried to defuse racial questions, his father seems to have wanted to turn his son into a living ‘fuck you’ to the white sporting establishment that may have curtailed his own baseball career. So, on top of the pressure to be the best golfer and to always win Tiger was also expected to be a symbol of black success in the face of white domination and to change the world. The weirdest expression of his father’s desire for their to be a racial significance to Tiger’s career comes in the form of a story he told about how Tiger was tied to a tree and stoned by his classmates while at school, which the book debunks fairly convincingly. So, Tiger grew up in a maniacally focused, aggressive, hyper virile, super competitive environment, which bore striking resemblance to the military world of the marines his father came from. However, his father quit his job to focus fully on managing his infant son’s career. At one stage, Tiger recalls how his father told him he had a choice of being a marine or being a golfer. Tiger’s obsession with the marines pays testimony to how deeply he had absorbed his father’s philosophy. The pressure to perform, to not let his parents down, to be a symbol of racial change and to change the world must have been unbelievably difficult to deal with.
The book is strong on Tiger’s amazing achievements on the golf course, albeit with a few too many misty eyed descriptions of clutch putts and famous tournament victories. His capacity for practice, his mental and physical toughness and his extreme competitiveness are truly breathtaking. Perhaps what stands out the most is the fact that he won the 2008 US Open only three weeks after being unable to walk and with no cartilage left in his knee. Less spectacular, but equally fascinating, was Tiger’s decision to remodel his swing after winning his first major in 1997. When most people would have been basking in the glory of victory, Tiger had his eyes on far bigger, longer term goals.
Tiger is a personification of modern, competitive, professional sports. Trained since early infancy for a sole purpose, he dispensed with fairplay, sportsmanship and etiquette in favour of a warlike, win at all costs mentality that made everything subservient to his golfing success. However, rather than gaping in awe at the achievements this strategy had yielded, as I would have done before reading this book, I finished the book feeling sad. What kind of life had this created for Tiger? What kind of person had emerged from this regime? Had the extreme micro management of his life ultimately helped or hindered him? Indubitably, he dominated golf in a way that’s never been seen before and made huge amounts of money. Nonetheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tiger grew up in a cold, loveless world focussed on what he could do rather than who he was. This seems to have created an equally cold, loveless man with little capacity for empathy or warmth. The fact that Tiger is still so popular and such a huge star says something about society. It made me think that Tiger is the quintessential example of the corrupt and questionable SportsWorld that Robert Lipsyte describes in his eponymous book. In this world, sports are not played for the development and enjoyment of the athlete as a person located in the context of broader society. Rather he plays for the benefit, more specifically the financial profit, of his parents, his school, his agent and his sponsors. Jack Scott’s 'The Athletic Revolution', which I am currently reading and hope to write about soon, is excellent on this topic. Modern sports, far from encapsulating and teaching the best principles essential for broader life, as is often claimed, teaches the philosophy of unshackled aggression akin to the mindset that predominates in war. In the same way that America, and much of the rest of world, glorify the fundamentally tragic character of war and combat; so too in commercialised sports. Dubious actions and morals are embraced in the pursuit of all-important victory while concepts of fairness, justice and wellbeing are thrown out and laughed at as soft and outdated.
Perhaps the most poignant part of the book is the story of Tiger’s record breaking third straight victory at the US Amatuer championships at the age of 20 in 1996. On the final round, Tiger and Steve Scott are neck in neck. Scott has a putt with Tiger’s ball in the way, Tiger marks it and moves the marker out of his opponent’s line. When he replaces his ball, he forgets to move it back to its original position. Scott points it out to Tiger and saves him from forfeiting the title. Tiger doesn’t even thank him.
Reflecting back on the event and his life afterwards, Scott said, ‘I think I am walking proof that you can win in life without winning’. Scott went on to have an underwhelming tour career and became a club pro. Of course, I can’t judge what a successful life constitutes and even if I could it would vary wildly depending on the individual. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would much rather be Scott, with his kids and his marriage of 18 years, than Tiger, with the chaos of pressure and media attention swirling around him. In spite of the 14 majors and a billion dollars, Tiger’s life as represented in this book reads like a tragedy. I don’t know if Tiger’s upbringing created his problems later in life or if his success lead him astray or if everything is pre-determined genetically; surely the question is too complex to have an easy answer. However, Tiger’s reckless adultery and possible sex and drug addictions do not strike me as the actions of a happy and healthy man.
This was an interesting and well researched book. It was a bit sentimental in places and undoubtedly glorifies his sporting exploits. While it doesn’t question the values and ethics of professional sport explicitly, I feel like it contains all the raw material required to start asking these questions and presents a fascinating case study of a true modern sporting icon. I really feel I got more out of this book because of reading 'SportsWorld' and 'The Athletic Revolution' at around the same time.
But beyond acknowledging how atrocious his behaviour was, why did he behave like this? And why did, and do, the public love him so much in spite of the highly unattractive side of his personality? Obviously, his exploits on the golf course and dominance of his sport are the most likely explanations. Here, the two questions - why was he so good at golf? why did his life become such a mess? - may share some common ground. Tiger Woods seems to have been raised as a golf machine and not a human. Both mother and father dedicated themselves to him to a startling degree and there seem to have been very few, if any, distractions from the all encompassing pursuit of golfing excellence. While other children learned how to play with each other and socialise, Tiger’s parents were concerned with creating a ruthless, competitive killer. The book reports that his father used to try and distract him while he played to help prepare him for this eventuality in tournaments. In extreme circumstances he would shout racist insults at his son in a tactic designed to build psychological strength. Meanwhile, his tiger mom would tell him to ‘kill’ opponents and ‘take their heart’. All told, this sounds like pretty good preparation for becoming an amazing golfer but also a good recipe for creating a sociopath. Tiger was almost unbelievably mollycoddled growing up but had to submit himself to an equally inconceivable and all encompassing schedule of training. Both parents and Tiger talk extensively throughout his life about how golf was his choice but it rings utterly hollow in light of the facts of his junior golfing career. As such, a young Tiger Woods would have grown up in an environment that valued golf, mental toughness, compliance with a schedule and, above all, performance as measured by a very limited set of narrow factors. Caring for other people was definitely not one of those factors. It is chilling to imagine that Woods played some of best golf while cheating on his wife and young family with multiple other women. This cold hearted lack of emotion might have served him well on tour but in a family context it has a more sinister and unsettling character.
Added to this already considerable burden to perform were the ideas and opinions of his father. Earl Woods regularly told people that Tiger would have a huge socio-political impact because of his status as a black player in the overwhelming white world of golf. When Tiger started playing their were courses that hosted the US Open that would not admit black members. While Tiger actively tried to defuse racial questions, his father seems to have wanted to turn his son into a living ‘fuck you’ to the white sporting establishment that may have curtailed his own baseball career. So, on top of the pressure to be the best golfer and to always win Tiger was also expected to be a symbol of black success in the face of white domination and to change the world. The weirdest expression of his father’s desire for their to be a racial significance to Tiger’s career comes in the form of a story he told about how Tiger was tied to a tree and stoned by his classmates while at school, which the book debunks fairly convincingly. So, Tiger grew up in a maniacally focused, aggressive, hyper virile, super competitive environment, which bore striking resemblance to the military world of the marines his father came from. However, his father quit his job to focus fully on managing his infant son’s career. At one stage, Tiger recalls how his father told him he had a choice of being a marine or being a golfer. Tiger’s obsession with the marines pays testimony to how deeply he had absorbed his father’s philosophy. The pressure to perform, to not let his parents down, to be a symbol of racial change and to change the world must have been unbelievably difficult to deal with.
The book is strong on Tiger’s amazing achievements on the golf course, albeit with a few too many misty eyed descriptions of clutch putts and famous tournament victories. His capacity for practice, his mental and physical toughness and his extreme competitiveness are truly breathtaking. Perhaps what stands out the most is the fact that he won the 2008 US Open only three weeks after being unable to walk and with no cartilage left in his knee. Less spectacular, but equally fascinating, was Tiger’s decision to remodel his swing after winning his first major in 1997. When most people would have been basking in the glory of victory, Tiger had his eyes on far bigger, longer term goals.
Tiger is a personification of modern, competitive, professional sports. Trained since early infancy for a sole purpose, he dispensed with fairplay, sportsmanship and etiquette in favour of a warlike, win at all costs mentality that made everything subservient to his golfing success. However, rather than gaping in awe at the achievements this strategy had yielded, as I would have done before reading this book, I finished the book feeling sad. What kind of life had this created for Tiger? What kind of person had emerged from this regime? Had the extreme micro management of his life ultimately helped or hindered him? Indubitably, he dominated golf in a way that’s never been seen before and made huge amounts of money. Nonetheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Tiger grew up in a cold, loveless world focussed on what he could do rather than who he was. This seems to have created an equally cold, loveless man with little capacity for empathy or warmth. The fact that Tiger is still so popular and such a huge star says something about society. It made me think that Tiger is the quintessential example of the corrupt and questionable SportsWorld that Robert Lipsyte describes in his eponymous book. In this world, sports are not played for the development and enjoyment of the athlete as a person located in the context of broader society. Rather he plays for the benefit, more specifically the financial profit, of his parents, his school, his agent and his sponsors. Jack Scott’s 'The Athletic Revolution', which I am currently reading and hope to write about soon, is excellent on this topic. Modern sports, far from encapsulating and teaching the best principles essential for broader life, as is often claimed, teaches the philosophy of unshackled aggression akin to the mindset that predominates in war. In the same way that America, and much of the rest of world, glorify the fundamentally tragic character of war and combat; so too in commercialised sports. Dubious actions and morals are embraced in the pursuit of all-important victory while concepts of fairness, justice and wellbeing are thrown out and laughed at as soft and outdated.
Perhaps the most poignant part of the book is the story of Tiger’s record breaking third straight victory at the US Amatuer championships at the age of 20 in 1996. On the final round, Tiger and Steve Scott are neck in neck. Scott has a putt with Tiger’s ball in the way, Tiger marks it and moves the marker out of his opponent’s line. When he replaces his ball, he forgets to move it back to its original position. Scott points it out to Tiger and saves him from forfeiting the title. Tiger doesn’t even thank him.
Reflecting back on the event and his life afterwards, Scott said, ‘I think I am walking proof that you can win in life without winning’. Scott went on to have an underwhelming tour career and became a club pro. Of course, I can’t judge what a successful life constitutes and even if I could it would vary wildly depending on the individual. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would much rather be Scott, with his kids and his marriage of 18 years, than Tiger, with the chaos of pressure and media attention swirling around him. In spite of the 14 majors and a billion dollars, Tiger’s life as represented in this book reads like a tragedy. I don’t know if Tiger’s upbringing created his problems later in life or if his success lead him astray or if everything is pre-determined genetically; surely the question is too complex to have an easy answer. However, Tiger’s reckless adultery and possible sex and drug addictions do not strike me as the actions of a happy and healthy man.
This was an interesting and well researched book. It was a bit sentimental in places and undoubtedly glorifies his sporting exploits. While it doesn’t question the values and ethics of professional sport explicitly, I feel like it contains all the raw material required to start asking these questions and presents a fascinating case study of a true modern sporting icon. I really feel I got more out of this book because of reading 'SportsWorld' and 'The Athletic Revolution' at around the same time.
Monday, 17 December 2018
Andrew Sean Greer - Less
I was quite taken with the first 50 pages of this book. Our hero, Less, is a graphic character and the sketch of his years as the lover of an older, famous poet are well drawn. Equally, the narrator’s voice and the writer’s eye for detail are pleasing. I particularly enjoyed a reference to, ‘the quilted sides’ of food carts in NY. Less’s impending world tour seems like an good way of setting up the plot structure and, without further ado, we are off on an adventure with the engaging Less; our interest piqued by the narrator’s anonymity.
Sadly, it was largely downhill from there. I did think the author was good at doing scenes from the literary world like writing retreats, academic departments, publishers, book awards, drinks parties and receptions. However, he also had a Franzen-esque penchant for tossing long, pretentious words into his prose for no obvious reason other than to show how erudite he is. Some of these words defied even the definitive power of Google so he really must be extraordinarily clever! For example, I couldn’t work out what the phrase ‘groupe en biscuit’ meant in either English or French. And ‘sesh’? Not an abbreviation for session judging from the context. Alongside this tendency towards elaborate vocabulary there are some really sloppy mistakes in the prose. For example, Less puts his shoes on before his trousers at the beginning of the book, there is a poorly researched poker game and the contradiction, ‘Roman generals hire slaves’; a oversight that really annoyed me! I’d have preferred clearer vocabulary and closer proofreading.
The book seems to have been written, at least partially, as a work of comedy but it isn’t very funny. From the Mexican tour guide who says everything is closed to the lame jokes about Less’s grandmother’s vagina, the attempts at humour are hackneyed and puerile. The problem is compounded by repetition. Some of the travel writing is too cliched with caricatured bell boys, taxi drivers and tour guides. However, the worst aspect of the prose was definitely the dialogue. It wasn’t universally poor but some of the central sections are very clunky. For example, Less’s first meeting with his lover-to-be the poet and his wife. The reader is in the dark about who this mysterious straight couple on the beach, recollected from Less’s 20s, are. But when the foolhardy man wants to take a dip in the stormy ocean, his wife implores young Less to go with him saying, to a background noise of narrative sections being dropped noisily into place, ‘please look after him, he’s a wonderful poet but a lousy swimmer’! Oh, the cruel irony of her inviting this seductive homosexual predator into their marital bliss! Oh, the tragedy of prose so bad that it reads like a plot summary transposed into the mouths of the characters. The whole thing felt awkward and unrefined. Less’s big chat with Carlos at the luxury resort in India is almost as clunky and equally facile. Here too, Less inexplicably doesn’t want to hear more about Freddy’s wedding even though he is allegedly mourning the love of his life. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the novel where Less pines for his lost lover. Additionally, I couldn’t quite work out the root of Carlos and Less’s animosity, which continues throughout the book but is never really explained.
There were several minor aspects of how foreign languages are presented in the book that I didn’t like either. Some of the German in this book is written in German. None of the other languages are attempted for more than a sentence. The German that is contained in the book is not translated. This is a pet hate of mine, translate it in the footnotes for goodness sake! Alongside this, there are conversations that take place in German for the purposes of the story but appear in the text as broken English literally translated from the supposed German conversation. This wasn’t attempted in any other languages. It wasn’t particularly funny and was another example of an insipid reworking of an already overworn theme - ‘the things non-native speakers say’!! It was especially unsuccessful as to really get the jokes one would have to know the German words that are being mistranslated. The fact that this was only done for German was explained by Less only being able to speak this language but, taken as a whole, the book had a weird and unpleasant mishmash of presentations. As it progressed, the structure of the world tour itinerary started to get a bit stale as Less repeated his routine of turning up somewhere, blundering about a bit, learning something very precursory about the culture, having a romantic encounter or recalling one from his past and then stumbling on!
Less, who is initially drawn as hopelessly unknown as an author, surprisingly meets lots of fans of his work during his travels. Besides these minor massages to Less’s ego, he also wins an award and has several sexual encounters that no doubt help boost his confidence in the aftermath of his breakup with Freddy. However, like the acerbic woman who’s birthday party Less attends in the desert who comments on Less’s latest protagonist, I found myself asking, ‘who cares?’ The character of Less, who had started out with such promise, had turned out to be a bit boring and shallow. The prose and the narrative, that I had initially liked, turned out to be repetitive, cliched and full of empty humour. The more interesting aspects of Less, like his feelings about his past loves and the meaning of his life, are drowned out by clunky dialogue, bad jokes and superficial travel details.
To round off the disappointing experience of finishing this book, which ended up feeling like another episode of a middling sitcom - this week on ‘Less Flounders In Foreign Lands….’ MOROCCO! - the mystery narrator was revealed as Freddy. ‘REFEREE!’, I felt like shouting, ‘surely that’s not allowed’. Freddy the narrator had described himself in the third person earlier on in the book, which excludes him from being the narrator in my mind! The narrator’s voice also felt much older than Freddy’s mid-thirties when I was reading it. It was a sloppy, half-baked end to a sloppy, half-baked book and I felt cheated! The ending was also very neat and tidy with Less returning from his travels to be reunited with his lost lover leaving me wondering what the upshot of Less’s trip was ultimately. Is the moral of the story - if you are deeply in love but your lover marries someone else then don’t say anything and go away for a bit and then he’ll realise how much he loves you? Everything seems to fall effortlessly into place for Less in the end and I found this mawkish and twee.
Sadly, it was largely downhill from there. I did think the author was good at doing scenes from the literary world like writing retreats, academic departments, publishers, book awards, drinks parties and receptions. However, he also had a Franzen-esque penchant for tossing long, pretentious words into his prose for no obvious reason other than to show how erudite he is. Some of these words defied even the definitive power of Google so he really must be extraordinarily clever! For example, I couldn’t work out what the phrase ‘groupe en biscuit’ meant in either English or French. And ‘sesh’? Not an abbreviation for session judging from the context. Alongside this tendency towards elaborate vocabulary there are some really sloppy mistakes in the prose. For example, Less puts his shoes on before his trousers at the beginning of the book, there is a poorly researched poker game and the contradiction, ‘Roman generals hire slaves’; a oversight that really annoyed me! I’d have preferred clearer vocabulary and closer proofreading.
The book seems to have been written, at least partially, as a work of comedy but it isn’t very funny. From the Mexican tour guide who says everything is closed to the lame jokes about Less’s grandmother’s vagina, the attempts at humour are hackneyed and puerile. The problem is compounded by repetition. Some of the travel writing is too cliched with caricatured bell boys, taxi drivers and tour guides. However, the worst aspect of the prose was definitely the dialogue. It wasn’t universally poor but some of the central sections are very clunky. For example, Less’s first meeting with his lover-to-be the poet and his wife. The reader is in the dark about who this mysterious straight couple on the beach, recollected from Less’s 20s, are. But when the foolhardy man wants to take a dip in the stormy ocean, his wife implores young Less to go with him saying, to a background noise of narrative sections being dropped noisily into place, ‘please look after him, he’s a wonderful poet but a lousy swimmer’! Oh, the cruel irony of her inviting this seductive homosexual predator into their marital bliss! Oh, the tragedy of prose so bad that it reads like a plot summary transposed into the mouths of the characters. The whole thing felt awkward and unrefined. Less’s big chat with Carlos at the luxury resort in India is almost as clunky and equally facile. Here too, Less inexplicably doesn’t want to hear more about Freddy’s wedding even though he is allegedly mourning the love of his life. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the novel where Less pines for his lost lover. Additionally, I couldn’t quite work out the root of Carlos and Less’s animosity, which continues throughout the book but is never really explained.
There were several minor aspects of how foreign languages are presented in the book that I didn’t like either. Some of the German in this book is written in German. None of the other languages are attempted for more than a sentence. The German that is contained in the book is not translated. This is a pet hate of mine, translate it in the footnotes for goodness sake! Alongside this, there are conversations that take place in German for the purposes of the story but appear in the text as broken English literally translated from the supposed German conversation. This wasn’t attempted in any other languages. It wasn’t particularly funny and was another example of an insipid reworking of an already overworn theme - ‘the things non-native speakers say’!! It was especially unsuccessful as to really get the jokes one would have to know the German words that are being mistranslated. The fact that this was only done for German was explained by Less only being able to speak this language but, taken as a whole, the book had a weird and unpleasant mishmash of presentations. As it progressed, the structure of the world tour itinerary started to get a bit stale as Less repeated his routine of turning up somewhere, blundering about a bit, learning something very precursory about the culture, having a romantic encounter or recalling one from his past and then stumbling on!
Less, who is initially drawn as hopelessly unknown as an author, surprisingly meets lots of fans of his work during his travels. Besides these minor massages to Less’s ego, he also wins an award and has several sexual encounters that no doubt help boost his confidence in the aftermath of his breakup with Freddy. However, like the acerbic woman who’s birthday party Less attends in the desert who comments on Less’s latest protagonist, I found myself asking, ‘who cares?’ The character of Less, who had started out with such promise, had turned out to be a bit boring and shallow. The prose and the narrative, that I had initially liked, turned out to be repetitive, cliched and full of empty humour. The more interesting aspects of Less, like his feelings about his past loves and the meaning of his life, are drowned out by clunky dialogue, bad jokes and superficial travel details.
To round off the disappointing experience of finishing this book, which ended up feeling like another episode of a middling sitcom - this week on ‘Less Flounders In Foreign Lands….’ MOROCCO! - the mystery narrator was revealed as Freddy. ‘REFEREE!’, I felt like shouting, ‘surely that’s not allowed’. Freddy the narrator had described himself in the third person earlier on in the book, which excludes him from being the narrator in my mind! The narrator’s voice also felt much older than Freddy’s mid-thirties when I was reading it. It was a sloppy, half-baked end to a sloppy, half-baked book and I felt cheated! The ending was also very neat and tidy with Less returning from his travels to be reunited with his lost lover leaving me wondering what the upshot of Less’s trip was ultimately. Is the moral of the story - if you are deeply in love but your lover marries someone else then don’t say anything and go away for a bit and then he’ll realise how much he loves you? Everything seems to fall effortlessly into place for Less in the end and I found this mawkish and twee.
Monday, 3 December 2018
Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games
There were lots of parts of this book that reminded me of other books, films or cultural reference points. It hung together well enough but I was a bit unsure about the overall effect. The most obvious parallel, for me, was to a film called ‘Battle Royale’ (2000), which in turn is based on an earlier book. The film is about a group of students who are taken to an island and forced to fight to the death by the Japanese government. There were also parallels to be drawn with the Roman Empire, Stoic philosophy, Romeo and Juliet, 1984, My Girl and many others, I’m sure. This pastiche approach reminded me of ‘Ready Player One’ (2011) although that book approaches cultural referencing far more explicitly, which I prefer. The two have other similarities - dystopia, a rise to fame, an exciting, dangerous adventure, a love story, both became films. I think I enjoyed ‘Ready Player One’ more because its content is aimed at middle aged geeks while ‘The Hunger Games’ is aimed at adolescent women. The PG rated love, looking beautiful in pretty dresses and worrying about popularity exemplify the young adult level this is pitched at. On the other hand, it’s violent, dystopian goriness would also appeal to adolescent boys so perhaps I have more of an issue with it because I am the wrong age rather than because I’m a man.
The love story is a bit cringe-worthy but it was saved by the intrigue over whether her relationship with Peeta is genuine and if she prefers him to Gale, her hunting partner back in the Seam. The fact that all the girls at school love Gale, and it’s heavily implied that he’s in love with Katniss, but Katniss has no idea is a bit sentimental and corny. As I mentioned earlier, all romance is very tame and Katniss has never kissed anyone in spite of leading such a deeply adult life and seemingly having many admirers. Similarly, the interviews before the games where Katniss apparently struggles because of her unlikeable personality are a hard to believe. In the end everyone loves her and Peeta declares his love for her in front of everyone; it is a bit vomit inducing. On the whole, I felt the strength of the central plot and the excellent pacing of the narrative saved the book from becoming too twee. I had read in the PLR, where this book was recommended and reviewed, that the pacing was outstanding and this proved to be the case.
It’s just as well because the plot was too facil and, in places, downright hackneyed. The character of Katniss was a slightly unhappy mixture of hardened hunter and ditzy school girl. Her almost inconceivable level of ability and suitability to the games are coupled with some equally inconceivable moments of stupidity. For example, she forgets to loot the bow and arrow from the girl who dies in possession of it even though she has been coveting it since the start of the games and it his her best chance of survival. Equally, it takes her a minute to work out what the sedatives she is gifted should be used for when she needs to subdue Peeta to go to the feast. I was also surprised that ‘the Careers’ didn’t train using more survival skills like Katniss’s given they work so well in the arena! The sponsorship meted out to the players seemed a bit unfair as well. While Katniss got a couple of meals and some burn cream, one of the other player’s got an impenetrable suit of armor! It’s mentioned in the book that gifts are very expensive but it’s also mentioned that the residents of the Capitol bet heavily on the event so I was expecting the gifts to play a much bigger role. The treatment of whether there was going to be one or two victors was a bit clunky but did set up the mutual poisoning scene at the end, which was good, and allows the is-it-real-is-it-not-real? storyline of Peeta and Katniss’s love to continue into the next book.
The themes of this book also saved it from becoming too saccharine or sentimental. Inequality, exploitation, subjugation of a population using the media, humanity’s bloodthirstiness, the morality of murder and the cruelty of consumerism and entertainment culture. These are all weighty topics for young adult fiction and they’re, for the most part, sensitively and subtly handled. In truth, the issue of murder isn’t nearly gory enough for my liking. Contestants help each other and behave in a remarkably civilised manner during the Games whereas I’d have thought they’d be ripping each other limb from limb and screwing each other over at the earliest opportunity. To me, this would’ve been a more faithful representation of human nature although perhaps I’m overly pessimistic!
The strong points of this book were the pacing and the subject matter of the Games. I didn’t really enjoy the way the story was framed or how things developed in the arena. The love story was corny but had interesting angles and some good twists. Overall, it was enjoyable but facile and I probably wouldn’t recommend it.
The love story is a bit cringe-worthy but it was saved by the intrigue over whether her relationship with Peeta is genuine and if she prefers him to Gale, her hunting partner back in the Seam. The fact that all the girls at school love Gale, and it’s heavily implied that he’s in love with Katniss, but Katniss has no idea is a bit sentimental and corny. As I mentioned earlier, all romance is very tame and Katniss has never kissed anyone in spite of leading such a deeply adult life and seemingly having many admirers. Similarly, the interviews before the games where Katniss apparently struggles because of her unlikeable personality are a hard to believe. In the end everyone loves her and Peeta declares his love for her in front of everyone; it is a bit vomit inducing. On the whole, I felt the strength of the central plot and the excellent pacing of the narrative saved the book from becoming too twee. I had read in the PLR, where this book was recommended and reviewed, that the pacing was outstanding and this proved to be the case.
It’s just as well because the plot was too facil and, in places, downright hackneyed. The character of Katniss was a slightly unhappy mixture of hardened hunter and ditzy school girl. Her almost inconceivable level of ability and suitability to the games are coupled with some equally inconceivable moments of stupidity. For example, she forgets to loot the bow and arrow from the girl who dies in possession of it even though she has been coveting it since the start of the games and it his her best chance of survival. Equally, it takes her a minute to work out what the sedatives she is gifted should be used for when she needs to subdue Peeta to go to the feast. I was also surprised that ‘the Careers’ didn’t train using more survival skills like Katniss’s given they work so well in the arena! The sponsorship meted out to the players seemed a bit unfair as well. While Katniss got a couple of meals and some burn cream, one of the other player’s got an impenetrable suit of armor! It’s mentioned in the book that gifts are very expensive but it’s also mentioned that the residents of the Capitol bet heavily on the event so I was expecting the gifts to play a much bigger role. The treatment of whether there was going to be one or two victors was a bit clunky but did set up the mutual poisoning scene at the end, which was good, and allows the is-it-real-is-it-not-real? storyline of Peeta and Katniss’s love to continue into the next book.
The themes of this book also saved it from becoming too saccharine or sentimental. Inequality, exploitation, subjugation of a population using the media, humanity’s bloodthirstiness, the morality of murder and the cruelty of consumerism and entertainment culture. These are all weighty topics for young adult fiction and they’re, for the most part, sensitively and subtly handled. In truth, the issue of murder isn’t nearly gory enough for my liking. Contestants help each other and behave in a remarkably civilised manner during the Games whereas I’d have thought they’d be ripping each other limb from limb and screwing each other over at the earliest opportunity. To me, this would’ve been a more faithful representation of human nature although perhaps I’m overly pessimistic!
The strong points of this book were the pacing and the subject matter of the Games. I didn’t really enjoy the way the story was framed or how things developed in the arena. The love story was corny but had interesting angles and some good twists. Overall, it was enjoyable but facile and I probably wouldn’t recommend it.
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