Monthly Archives: January 2010

by | January 29, 2010 · 21:47

We Love… J.D. Salinger (Anna’s version)

(Ben also loves Salinger dearly, so I’ll let him write his own obituary when he stops crying.)

Today I arrived at work to the news that J.D. Salinger had died aged 91, and also to the much more eagerly anticipated news that my very good friends Andy and Róisín have had a baby boy. Coincidence? I think it probably is…

Before I had read The Catcher in the Rye I was aware that naming this novel as your favourite was a bit of a cliché. I think the official statistic is that 1 in 3 people name The Catcher in the Rye as their favourite novel*. Being a facetiously contrary teenager who despised the thought of being a cliche I set out to dislike the book, or at least read it with indifference. I failed. I loved it intensely, as almost everyone does. Luckily though, I was stubborn enough not to give in and name The Catcher in the Rye as my favourite book of all time, but to read on through Salinger’s back catalogue and see if I could choose a more obscure title to rave about in the style of: “Yeah yeah, I liked Catcher in the Rye, but Franny and Zooey would have to be my favourite of his. What’s that? Oh, you say you haven’t read Franny and Zooey? Oh you must! and his short stories, they’re really something etc etc”.

So to anyone who stopped at The Catcher in the Rye, or who is a stranger to Salinger, my top recommendations would have to be: For Esmé, with Love and Squalor (also published as Nine Stories), and Franny and Zooey. (To be honest though, I haven’t read any others… I’ll let you know when I do though.)

The mysteries surrounding Salinger’s life are many, varied and uninteresting to me. He was a famously private person which I really respect. If he didn’t want people to know much about him, then I’m not going to go out of my way to delve into his life story. As a human I think you’re allowed to be whatever you like. Obviously I’m not suggesting you be a murderer or a rapist or anything, (though if you want to slash the tyres on 4x4s, you’re welcome) but you’re definitely allowed to be as eccentric, weird, batty, private, or pernickity as you like. Especially if you are producing some of the most wonderful, valuable art the world has experienced. Salinger may have been a right ol’ bat bag, but he was a brilliant, brilliant writer, and I didn’t have to live with him so I’m not really fussed.

Famously he has barred anyone from ever making films of his books, and he supposedly has dozens of unpublished novels lying about at home. He apparently couldn’t bear the attention that went along with putting them out. Fair enough. I wonder what will happen with them now? No-one even knows what they’re about. Does Holden Caulfield’s story continue? and what about the rich tapestry of the lives of the Glass family? I’m dying to find out! It’s unusual that an author’s death is what may signal the arrival of a bunch of new publications. It almost makes it hard to mourn him properly, although at 91, he had had a pretty good innings. Rest in peace Jerome David Salinger.

The last pages of Zooey have stayed with me more than any part of any work of literature. For anyone with a dissatisfaction with life, with others, and for anyone with a little bit of turmoil in their soul over the awful side of humanity, this book brings a bittersweet duvet of comfort with it.

I was going to paste the last few paragraphs of Zooey here. But instead I’m going to insist that you read it (if you haven’t already) I’ll even lend you my copy. I’ll leave you with this though:

“I see you are looking at my feet,” he said to her when car was in motion.
“I beg your pardon?” said the woman.
“I said I see you’re looking at my feet”.
“I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor,” said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.
“If you want to look at my feet, say so,” said the young man. “But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.”
“Let me out here, please,” the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.
The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.
“I have two normal feet and I can’t see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them,” said the young man.

from ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’, Nine Stories.

And to my newly born honourary nephew (who doesn’t have a name yet) welcome to the world! I hope we don’t completely trash it before you have the chance to grow up.

Anna Jacob

*Completely unsupported statistic

p.s. My current favourite book, in case you’re at all interested, is Cold Comfort Farm. Although Nine Stories is definitely my favourite short story collection.

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by | January 26, 2010 · 14:00

This Week: Top Five reasons why Obama is not Dr. King’s dream come true

by Ben Kritikos

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration just over a year ago, lots of people have bandied about the thoughtless statement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream, famously delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, has come true.

This is offensively thoughtless when you think about it.  Perhaps the people who say it don’t remember what Dr. King’s dream actually was?  Hey, come to think of it — what was Martin Luther King’s dream, anyway?

To start with, Dr. King dreamt that one day his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.  He dreamt that “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood”. These are things that have, arguably, come true to a greater or lesser extent.  They’ve certainly become important rhetorical points, about which much fuss is made.  The appearance of “equality” and “diversity” in American society is certainly a top priority to politicians and administrators of education — if today’s rhetoric is any signifier.

But what about Dr. King’s later, less popular argument that while America was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”, seeking to gain global supremacy through violence against “shirtless and barefoot people” of different colours on different continents, that nobody at home could be truly free?  What about Dr. King’s plan, cut short by his death, to raise up a “poor people’s army” to march on Washington and demand a radical redistribution of wealth, an end to the war in Viet Nam which aimed “to occupy it as an American colony”, as well as a redressing of race-related grievances?  What about Dr. King’s commitment to building a fairer, more balanced and just society, motivated by a higher ideal and not the relentless, unscrupulous pursuit of profit?  What about his dream “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: [...] that all men are created equal“?
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by | January 25, 2010 · 15:55

Apologies…

Sorry for the delay of this week’s Top Five. I have an excuse, though: it’s a big one. I’m currently doing lots of research to make sure my facts are straight (I don’t want to give you some half-baked bullshit to read). It should be finished by tonight, and posted tomorrow at the latest.

Thanks, and sorry for the delay.

-Ben Kritikos

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by | January 20, 2010 · 00:00

We Love… The Guardian

Ah, my beloved Grauniad, how often have I perused with dainty fingertips thy petal-like pages.

When I was 17 years old, it occurred to me that I knew jack shit about the world.  I decided to read the newspaper regularly and edumacate myself.  That very afternoon, I put a quarter in the box outside Dunkin’ Donuts on the Post Road in Greenwich, CT and entered the weird world of The New York Times.  After two weeks of regular reading, I wanted to hang myself.

It took me years to really enjoy reading the newspaper.  Sure, I would read the papers fanatically, frantically, desperately, cursing and spitting — even, in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, with what can only be described as gusto.  On 15 February 2003, when over 10 million people on four continents marched against a war that hadn’t happened yet, a march that shut down the whole island of Manhattan and didn’t manage to make the news, I gazed upon the NYT with a frustration matched only by Chinese water torture.

In those months preceding the invasion, when American people by some horrid miracle of propaganda were genuinely afraid of a country whose infrastructure and weapons arsenal were systematically devastated by over ten years of sanctions and the UN’s “Oil For Food” programme, I found the Financial Times more useful and informative than any other paper.  Of course, I had to drink myself half to death after reading it to wash out the image of the world through an FT reader’s eyes.
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by | January 18, 2010 · 17:43

This Week: The ‘Top Five’ Cheeseboard

by Anna Jacob

Ben has been very productive and written loads of ‘top fives’ at this point, so I thought I’d muscle in and write one of my own. I decided to stick to a subject I am truly passionate about, so here are five of the best of something very close to my heart (literally, clogging up arteries as we speak): Cheese. Delicious cheese.

You may have gathered that our leanings here on this blog are pretty green and lefty-ish. To be honest, with the impending global nightmare that our mass inaction on climate change is rewarding us with, I don’t see how I could lean any other way, especially if I intend to have children someday… which I might do… I definitely want a kitten. Anyway, you may have heard that meat and meat-product over-eating is getting us all in a spot of massive carbon footprint trouble. So as part of my 10:10 pledge I have given up beef and cut down my meaty meals significantly (I’m currently farting out the falafel-scented results of this new diet). Unfortunately, I am in no way willing to give up or cut down on cheese (an almost equally carbon-awful product). I feel I am already doing my bit, and I must be rewarded somehow. My carbon footprint is half that of the average Brit and about a millionth of the average American and they don’t even have decent cheese in America! (Ben will argue that point, but only because he’s American and loves to be contrary. He thinks Monterey Jack is a decent cheese. It’s not. It barely falls into the ‘edible’ category.)

So. I’m sleeping in 2 pairs of pyjamas, saving up for a wind turbine, cycling and waiting with abated rage for delayed and overpriced public transport, eating local potatoes and loving the Eurostar.  We’re even taking a boat to New York next year! I am thereby non-guiltily filling my fat little face with all the cheese I can afford. Here are the ones that I like the bestest:

(I can also buy all of these on our local highstreet, so at least that lowers the travel emissions… somewhat.  And they’re all European!)

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by | January 13, 2010 · 16:16

We Love… Special Agent Dale Cooper, from “Twin Peaks”

Yes, that’s right.  This week’s “We Love…” is a fictitious person.  Seriously, though, if you’ve seen Twin Peaks you know what I mean.  Dale Cooper is the coolest guy ever.  I wish I were Dale Cooper.  He makes me feel like I’m eight years old again, stomping around my room bare-chested with one of my parents’ towels wound up to look like a whip, tumbling and scaling granddad chairs and sofa-beds with Hollywood studio agility (in my head), pretending I’m Indiana Jones.

Dale Cooper is better than Indiana Jones, though.  He doesn’t need a whip, or a hat, or Steven Spielberg’s Nazi baddies.  And he doesn’t need adolescent, humourously Chinese stereotypes for sidekicks.  Coop dispenses with ethnic stereotypes.  Except in the case of Hawk, the enigmatic Native American deputy of the Twin Peaks police.  But he’s the Sheriff’s sidekick, strictly speaking.

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by | January 11, 2010 · 00:00

This Week: Top Five Pre-Cursors To Modern Lo-fi

by Ben Kritikos

Lo-fi means many things to many people.  Generally speaking, I’d argue that it’s any method of recording music which emphasises the limited capabilities of the recording process.  The resulting sounds from this loosely defined method are many and varied, but are usually characteristically harsh, rough, often intensely intimate (whether kindly or brutally so).  My first taste of low fidelity recordings came in the form of early Alan Lomax recordings of Woody Guthrie.  The grainy, crackley veneer couching the sound of the humble folk singer is forever linked in my mind with the man himself, and his music.

Fidelity, according to the dictionary, means faithfulness, accuracy, precision.  In terms of recording, I think the term “high fidelity” is meant to give one the impression of being an accurate recorded reproduction of the original sound.  However, as sound recording technology has advanced over time, it seems that “faithfulness” to the original sound has lost priority to rendering sounds with mass commercial appeal.  I see the lo-fi movement as a natural response, a corrective, to that.  I’d go so far as to say that lo-fi emphasises the easily forgettable fact that no recording, however technically advanced, is a true reproduction of original sounds.  Lo-fi reminds us that a sound recording is a sound all its own, not just a reproduction.  The medium itself becomes an element to be played with, adding to the character and texture of the listening experience — which is what music ultimately aims to achieve, right?

Before there was lo-fi recording per se, there were many rough rock and roll recordings of the 50s and 60s that indicated the future sound, or aesthetic, of lo-fi.  These are not the five best pre-cursors to lo-fi, necessarily; they’re just five of my favourite.  While the “lo-fi” effect of some of these recordings was completely accidental (Louie Louie), and some completely calculated (Barbara Ann), they all point to a direction some musicians would be taking in future.  And that, I think, merits some mention.

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by | January 7, 2010 · 12:59

We Love… Arundhati Roy

“We have to lose our terror of the mundane.  We have to use our skills and imagination and our art, to re-create the rhythms of the endless crisis of normality, and in doing so, expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things — food, water, shelter and dignity — such a distant dream for ordinary people.”

So, as the year begins, and with it my resolution to read women authors solely, I find my nose buried in a collection of non-fiction pieces by Arundhati Roy entitled An ordinary person’s guide to Empire.  May I just take a moment to say that Roy is perhaps the coolest living woman in the world?

Somehow, in this life, it’s easy to get caught up in stupid shit of little or no consequence.  All this despite the fact that we live in a world where one half of a percent of the world’s population owns almost 60% of the wealth, and almost one third of human beings live below the poverty line.  I could name facts and figures until the cows come home, but we all know what I’m saying: the world is in shreds.

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by | January 4, 2010 · 00:00

This Week: Top Five Sexiest Musicians (not according to appearance)

by Ben Kritikos

Hello again.  I’m back with some more unwanted opinions about things that don’t very much merit discussion.  It’s cold and rainy here in London town, the festive lights are up and the bank balance is down: ’tis the season.

At the end/beginning of every year, when we brace ourselves for heavy weather with thick layers of clothing, I can’t help but notice the disappearance of the most subtle means of human communication: namely the human body (this doesn’t include people who work in finance or advertising, and who, incidentally, are composed of recycled wellies and animated with four AAA batteries).  The upshot to this sudden exile of flesh is that I’m forced to get my sinister jollies elsewhere.

Good-looking people are nice to look at, and it follows that sexy people bring sex to mind; but what I find equally a turn-on is that brand of sexiness that tickles my auditory g-spot.  In fact, the select few whom I will herewith designate my top five sexiest musicians are the aural equivalent of porn stars, in my feeble-minded opinion.  The following lovelies have been judged without considering what they look like, because some ass-ugly motherfuckers make the sexiest music in the world.

Conversely, have you listened to the shit that pumps like over-flowing sewers from the likes of MTV these days?  I’ve forgotten the dawdlings of every booby-headed Mouseketeer because they’re ugly on the inside, and they insidiously persuade children to look and act like them.  God save the fate of the future, for it is Mickey Mouse’s sex dungeon. 

(Click on the title to see all seven pages of this blog)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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by | January 1, 2010 · 00:00

Ben Kritikos’ New Year’s Resolution: righting a literary wrong

Anna is always taking the piss out of me. More often than not, it’s silly (“Did you see they put a picture of you in the Guardian?”Points to a drawing of an ape).  Every now and then, though, the joke is poignant.  And the truth is often told in jest, as funny lady over here never fails to remind me.

So it was that I discovered a gaping void in my knowledge of books.  I’m a reader, you see.  In school, when others were failing miserably and being moved to basement classes in “special ed.” because of bad behaviour or drug abuse, I was failing miserably and being moved into basement classes in “special ed.” because of Fyodor Dostoevsky.  I read the majority of Notes From Underground in Psychology class, secretly, the book hidden under the table.  Imagine the irony when I was caught; the teacher scolded me, saying, “You’re supposed to be learning about psychology!”

Dostoevsky, Checkhov, Bulgakov — I love them Russians!  My teens were spent writhing in the shadows of the Beat Generation, writing bad poetry entirely in lower case, dispensing with “and”, “the”, etc.  Salinger was my God; I’ve read The Catcher In The Rye 14 times, and Nine Stories (published in Britain as For Esmé, With Love And Squalor) ten times.  Rimbaud stole a week from my life which I’ll never recover, or even remember.  Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Bruce Chatwin, and even D.H. Lawrence have been dearer fellows to me than most friends — and longer serving.

But female authors?  None.  I’ve barely read any.  Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things, Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, and Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird are the only ones that I remember blowing me away … or remember at all, to be honest!  Shameful, I know.

Well, what are New Year’s Resolutions for?  This year, I’m going to plunge into the deep end and combat a long-standing error on my part.  I expect the results to be deeply, profoundly rewarding: I will only read female authors in 2010.  This, of course, excludes the Guardian, which I devour at lenght on Saturdays, and peruse during the week.  I will, however, be especially conscious of how much I enjoy Lucy Mangan’s columns.

Think of all the goodies I’ve been missing!  I have a few in my possession.  They’re a good start: An Ordinary Person’s Guide To Empire, by Arundhati Roy (starting in the comfort zone, so to speak); The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer; The Second Sex, by Simone De Beauvoir (you see, I’m doing a sort of penance for gender equality, and re-educating myself); The Color Purple, by Alice Walker; Nightingale Wood, by Stella Gibbons (as well as revisiting Cold Comfort Farm); as well as the works of female titans like Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, The Brontës, et al.

Here’s the panic: can I go a year without re-reading my old favourites?  No Catcher or Nine Stories?  No Black Spring or The Time Of The Assassins?  No Season In Hell?  Oh my God, I’ve only read The Brothers Karamazov once!  And Ulysses twice — and I only sort of got it!  What about all those lesser-known Orwell novels I’ve been meaning to read, like Coming Up For Air or Keep The Aspidistra Flying?  For Christ’s sake, I’ve just been given a copy of Anna Karenina (loves me those Russians!), and I still haven’t read the copy of Middlesex my best friend gave me for my birthday in 2006!  How on earth will I manage?!

Be resolute!

I’ll keep you posted.

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