Fresh back from my brother’s graduation ceremony (long, but proud of the shaggy-haired one) and about to pop off for dinner. Feel the vicarious triumph and sadness of a good thing coming to a good end.
Off to the graduation dinner now. Gravy-tastic. Have a good weekend, y’all.
Finished both American Gods and Absolution Gap now; both very enjoyable for very different reasons, and very clever/dumb for others.
American Gods, Gaiman’s exploration of what it means to be America (not really an American, but the spirit of the country, kind of thing, only less wishy washy and crap than that – something more visceral), sees a war between the Old Gods and the New. The Old Gods being those from the Norse, Egyptian, Hindu, Amazon etc., Pantheons (there are about a thousand references I didn’t get through inadequate knowledge of different mythologies and faiths) and the new, predicatably, being Media (who at one point takes the form of the eponymous character in “I love Lucy” and offers Shadow, the human protagonist, “a flash of Lucy’s tits”), Technology and the like. The novel twists, turns, flips you upside down and carries you in a kind of bewildered haze, much as it does to Shadow, the book’s hero. Shadow (we learn no other name for him), fresh out of prison and recently broken to the news that his wife has been killed in a tragic car crash, finds himself adrift. Circumstance, fate, and scheming manipulation lead him to the mysterious Mr Wednesday – and chaos seems to break loose. Other than an occasionally wavering narrative structure (Gaiman likes his set pieces a bit much), the book is deeply entertaining and really quite moving at the end, even if an absence of any real faith in anything and a lack of experience of America and the American Dream made it difficult for me to fully appreciate, I got the sense there was something big there, something good.
Absolution Gap, the fourth in Alistair Reynolds’ Inhibitors series, is a brilliant hard-science fiction novel for the first 500 of its 550 pages. Reynolds completely loses the plot in the end; Deus ex Machina utterly ruins his careful and brilliant characterisation and plot development, and he concludes a series which could have gone on for another entire book in 50 disappointing pages. The plot of this series is, essentially, (and bear with the far-fetchedness, it is science fiction, after all), that a group of black cubic smart-robots (or something) called the Inhibitors, have detected humanity’s presence in the universe (through the actions of a particularly precocious human, Dan Sylveste, in an earlier book in the series) and have concluded that they are at the threshold of self-destruction. That is to say, they have reached a point of Spacefaring where it is inevitable that they will eventually turn all their technology on each other and lay waste to the universe. To that end, the inhibitors (or whoever created them) deemed that it would be necessary to blank the slate by “inhibiting” the further development of the species by the methodical elimination of every single human. Absolution Gap sees several of the protagonists from the earlier books in the series battle the inhibitors and find the only forces in the universe that can stop them. Lovable characters include Clavain, the “Butcher of Tharsis”, Scorpio, the man-pig warrior, Remontoire and Skade, Conjoiner “Spiders”, and Captain John Branningan, who’s sentience has been absorbed into the galactic cruiser (Lighthugger) the “Nostalgia for Infinity” following a nasty case of the Melding Plague. Apart from anything else, Reynolds has a great talent for spinning out memorable names.
Anyway, I’d recommend the former to anyone, and the latter to anyone who likes Sci-Fi and has read and enjoyed the (generally superior) preceding novels in the series.
On Wednesday I went to see my brother perform at the Bloomsbury festival, as part of an ABCTales promoting-affair, which saw a couple of other ABCTalers reading their work, as well as the luminescent performance poet Zena Edwards, the amusing and quirky former resident of the Bronx Michale Donaghy (who recited a wonderful poem called “Black Ice and Rain” and inexplicably played the flute at us), and they hysterically entertaining John Hegley, on stage with all his vibrant humour, his ukelele, and his tales of his Luton Bungalow.
Arvind was fantastic; dressed in his Lex Luthor jacket he presented his very emotive story “Her London Bed”, and while his Indian/Malaysian accent didn’t hold entirely, he moved the audience, including me, despite having heard/read the story a number of times before.
It’s been a good weekend; the exact kind that leaves a man in the long dark tea-time of the soul on Sunday evening, and in the recently blogged-up age, he finds himself pontificating on the Internet rather than re-reading the papers.
Friday was an attempt at drinking with the pagans on Primrose Hill; sadly, though, it seems that the pagans are actually waiting for the Solstice on Monday rather than celebrating early on the Friday (evidently pagans don’t have an issue with a Tuesday morning hangover). Still, Gemma was on stirling form and coaxed and cajoled us all into night time frisbee, and we polished off a bottle of Pimms and adventured home through the park; a very satisfactory evening.
Saturday saw Matt and Damian warming their house; another great evening, this one characterised by cold grolsch being poured on my head (SHTOP! I’m not ready yet!) and ice-cold sambuca from frozen shot glasses. And Darby being a bad influence (Do me a favour – we go way back – what kind of a friend are you – sss s sss sss sss).
Sunday, Lisa did us proud by getting 13 of us a table at a great Dim Sum restaraunt (Phoenix Palace), where we had one of the best lunches I’ve had in recent memory for the very affordable eight-fitty each. I wish I spoke Chinese sometimes…
Now, I’ve blogged myself to exhaustion and am going to collapse and dream of pale blue scrubs…
Ok, I feel the need to demonstrate that I’m not just wallowing in self-pity musing on the shape my life is taking, so I’m going to write about Ideologues and Activists, something that the last election drew my attention to and this argument made me think about.
I’m what I’d like to call a pragmatic ideologue (in political, and moral terms). That is to say; I have ideals, but I’m incredibly aware of my limitations, and (to a lesser degree) am slightly cynical about the mechanisms in place to preserve my morals/politics.
I didn’t vote in the last elections. I wanted to, but essentially it was a hectic work week and voting got dragged to a low priority; even if I’d managed to make it to the polling station before it closed, I would have had no idea who I was voting for. I mean, I would never vote BNP or UKIP; there’s limited need for hesitation there; I am at least that liberal. Beyond that, I would have had no information.
In the argument I link to above, Chris, who I think of as a slightly idealistic activist, is accused, essentially, of letting his middle class sympathies (re; the War in Iraq) take control over his rationality in his view of the Labour Party, and their man Tony.
I say, even if this is true (and while I do think that Chris would have been slightly emotional about it, that there is a core of reason and evidence sitting somewhere that sustains his position quite rationally): so what? I’m completely aware that my ideal world is occasionally unsustainable, internally inconsistent or simply impossible. I’m aware of my mental state, which like me is “affluent but left wing”, but I don’t think that politics is predicated on pure rationality in any case.
I think I’m beginning to lose the thread somewhat; the point I wanted to make was simply this: ideology and political activism (even if its just democracy) are often incompatible, and irreconcilable. I think being a wishy-washy ideologue is absolutely fine because part of the politician’s job is to get you feeling that they’re doing the right thing, as well as doing it themselves.
But maybe that’s just an excuse for my general apathy. Who knows?
Another thought, on the same subject, but slightly distinct, that might go someway to further describing my state of mind, would be to draw an analogy, and given the exact type of Gareth Ian Michael Peter that I am, I’m going to do that by reference to that last son of Krypton we all know and love; Clark Kent/Kal-El.
Now, Superman, as the Crash Test Dummies observed, never made any money whilst saving the world from Solomon Grundy. But that’s really neither here nor there.
One of Superman’s most genuine dilemmas, as explored by the TV-series Smallville and a couple of the comic lines (although not recently) is the conflict between his homeworld and his adopted planet. In many ways, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster (Kal’s creators) had a pretty good feel that nurture won out in the n/n debate. Kryptonians were self-centred, soul-less and emotionless creatures; although Kal’s parents are generally depicted as anomalous, they were products of an entirely alien civilisation.
So what should Clark feel? Sure, a loving upbringing, good education, super-powers – but did he ever feel he belonged? Like Peter Parker, and so many other heroes (these are amongst the observations my brother made recently made in a paper he wrote on Superhero mythology, not currently available online, but go read Joseph Cambell’s Heroes with a Thousand Faces for an indication of where he’s going with it), Clark never belonged anywhere; not at school, not at the Daily Planet, only just with the Justice League… (ok, I sense I’m taking this too far, but you get my point).
I don’t think my current state of mind is particularly different or special from anything that anyone goes through, but there are obvious parallels (although my genetic heritage is kinder than Kal’s – except in the super-powers department, obviously). Born with so many cultures attached that I’m incapable of sustaining a single accent, have absolutely no idea who to support in the football (or any other sports), and can never say “we” when referring to a nationality or people. All I have is a general sense of obligation to the greater good, my family and my friends.
So, in a lot of ways, I really am Superman.
Sorry this is all a little weird. I should probably have got a little more sleep this weekend.
I’ve been suffering a little lately from thinking too much and writing too little. And obviously a complete inability to express any of my feelings or frustrations to real people (well, this isn’t usually a problem, but I only really like doing it when I’m in a good mood). So its time for a vent, and, well, a return to the good old form, so I’m going talk about me for a while.
At least part of the result of my recent pent-upness was my nearly breaking down while watching the finale of Scrubs tonight. I always joke when I talk about my reactions to watching films; saying that the last time I was genuinely moved [to tears] while watching a film was when I was six and Optimus Prime died in Transformers: the Movie. Not wanting to denigrate the poignancy of that moment (I’ll never forget the passing of the Matrix to Ultra Magnus), but truth be told, particularly recently, a number of books and films and television programs have had a disproportionate effect on me. Or maybe I’m just getting soft in my middle-middle-age.
But (and most of these I’ve blogged about recently), the MASH finale, the Friends finale (least of these), Kavalier and Clay, and tonight, the season finale of Scrubs, all drove me far further into emotional exposition than I’ve gone in a while.
I don’t really know what the specific causes of my sudden empathy is; there are specific aspects of each that struck a very powerful chord with me; with the MASH finale it was Hawkeye’s breakdown; with Friends it was the fantastical closing of the Ross/Rachel deal (tired, but I was touched), and with Scrubs it was the much more real and much more tragic failure of JD and Elliot to normalise their friendship after the love yous/love you nots came out uneven. With Kavalier and Clay it was the travesty that Sammy Clay’s life became (at least as I read it).
The common thread, and it may sound tenuous, but I guess that’s why this is about me, is the sense of alienation that surrounds each of the narrators (other than Friends, which I just don’t rate highly enough to attribute depth of character to any of the six. Except maybe Chandler). Hawkeye, JD, Sam Clay; despite the friends, teams and family that surround each of them, the stories are theirs: they are at the centre, their struggles are our struggles and ultimately they are alone.
I guess this mirrors a sense of isolation I’ve been feeling lately. It’s kind of hard to explain; despite living with my brother and having a (large) set of generally incredibly supportive friends and a job which provides both intellectual and social stimulation and continuing sense of affirmation, I’ve been feeling increasingly… well, just, separate. Distinct.
It’s a bizarre sensation. I am getting a lot more mileage out of my fiction, but it’s damn tiring. Methinks a thought-free vacation is called for.
I’m afraid I’m going through that phase of my life that every young adult goes through where the excitement of work coupled by a visceral need to not miss out on any of the weekend antics of my friends is leaving me little time for sleep, much less blogging, so readers enamoured of my self-involved, luke-warm egoistic writing style will be left frustrated by the frequency of my posts.
I’ve said this before, but normal program will resume.
Incidentally, I have a Gmail invite remaining, and if one of my more regular readers would be interested in it, I’d be more than happy to supply it.
…was possibly one of the most profoundly entertaining, moving and, well, I’ve run out of superlatives, but really BEST books I’ve read in, um, ever. Seriously. See the below post, buy the bugger.
I’ve had the same favourite book since I was sixteen years old travelling through Poland (“Catch 22”), which has now been superceded.
Am reading an awesome book at the moment, which I thought I’d heartily recommend to the interweb at large: It’s called the Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and its by Michael Chabon. Telling the story of a couple of Jewish boys during the second world war, determined to cash in on “Opportunity” when it comes along and write a comic book that makes them “kill” (i.e. a lot of money – its not obvious in the book’s context, either).
Joe Kavalier is a Czech immigrant to the US, who’s recently escaped Hitler’s grasp, and is a prodigious artist and trained escape artist. Sammy Clay, Joe’s cousin, is an ambitious, but mediocre, artist, with a strong entrepreneurial bent, a gimpy leg from a childhood bout of polio, an extremely creative mind and a big heart. “What is the why” is Joe’s question to Sammy when wondering about the motivation of the hero of their comic book.
It’s a fantastic tale, and makes me excited about Spider Man 2, which according to Tom is written by Mr. Chabon. Tom should know, he tried to win a writing competition which the big MC adjudicated.
Of course, which such a great name, and such a good story behind it, it was merely a matter of time before they made a movie.