The Booker Prize

It’s Booker shortlist time once again, meaning that whenever I walk into Waterstones I am greeted by six proud hardbacks flaunting their assured credibility. But do I trust the fair laid before me? Call me a predictable cynic, but the Booker track record is riddled with disconcerting pot-holes and road-kill. We all have our personal gripes when it comes to the Booker and mine is shared by many. It goes something like this: how on earth has Martin Amis never won? More urgently, how is it that he has only made it onto the shortlist once (and by no means for his best work)? Professor John Sutherland has summed this fact up, in fantastically hyperbolic terms, as “a national disgrace”.

Moreover, how can it be that a novel now widely considered as the definitive fictional work of its generation (Money) wasn’t even deemed worthy of the shortlist for one measly year? That same year (1984 – a momentous one in literary history) also saw the snubbing of another ‘modern classic’ (slippery though that phrase is), now firmly planted in university syllabuses nationwide: Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. Two other hugely important books that were shortlisted (J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun and Julian Barne’s Flaubert’s Parrot) would lose out to Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac, the whipping boy of all Booker winners. Such concerns wouldn’t have weighed heavily on Winston Smith’s nightmarish experiences of 1984, but they are dystopian in magnitude for lovers of literature.

Of course we can’t expect a Booker judge to be as formidable and incisive as old Judge Time. Far from it – like most human beings, Booker judges are a fallible and occasionally pernicious bunch. To return to the case of Amis, his London Fields (another fin de siècle classic) was notoriously left from the 1989 shortlist after judges Maggie Gee and Helen McNeil accused the author of misogyny (a ridiculous and lazy proposition considering how Amis's male characters invariably take a far heftier battering) and threatened to boycott the award if his novel was included. Despite chairman David Lodge’s advocacy of the book, it was pulled. Lodge has since gone on to lament the passing over of a literary gem, unique amongst its classmates.

John Carey’s new biography of William Golding reveals how judge Claire Tomalin was dismayed by chairman Professor David Daiches's unqualified dismissal of Anthony Burgess’s hotly tipped Earthly Powers in 1980 (“well I suppose nobody here wants to spend much time considering Burgess”). Having informed the judges that he wouldn’t attend the ceremony unless he had won, Burgess had to be informed that indeed he hadn’t. He spent the night getting drunk in the Savoy instead. It is precisely these prejudices and quibbles that make the Booker so exciting and so dubious. Of course, the fact that Golding’s Rites of Passages won over Earthly Powers doesn’t mean that Golding’s book is ‘better’, or that punters won’t read Burgess’s masterpiece. Victory may increase publicity and sales (it certainly guarantees a table in Blackwells and Borders) but it shouldn’t mould literary standing.

So what purpose does the Booker serve? Or, more interestingly, what are its politics? It doesn’t possess the hardline dedication to enabling new artists as, say, the music industry’s Mercury Prize – only four first-time novelists have ever won the Booker and the fact that two-time winner J. M. Coetzee is odds-on favourite to bag this year’s award speaks volumes. The Booker shares more logical affinities with the Oscars. The latter is renowned for handing out statues appeasingly to longtime deservers/sufferers, awarding the individual rather than the performance (Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman is a prime example). There’s plenty of that to be found in Booker land: Iris Murdoch winning for The Sea, The Sea and Margaret Atwood for The Blind Assassin. Tellingly, Amis’s forthcoming The Pregnant Widow is already being tipped for Booker success despite no one having actually read it yet. Hopefully Amis will pull a Martin Scorsese (a la The Departed) and enjoy a victory that is both long overdue and deserving in its own right.

All in all the Booker Prize is undoubtedly a good thing. It should open debate (although for many

less conscientious readers it probably closes debate, telling them which are the ‘best’ books) and bring awareness to strong, gutsy fiction. As long as readers and reviewers remain alive to the fact that the prize is awarded by four very subjective and therefore limited judges, and cautiously differentiate market ploy and hyperbole from true literary merit and critical analysis, the Booker Prize will remain a valuable aspect of the publishing world. Ask Martin Amis, however, whether he would prefer the ‘Winner of the Booker Prize’ printed on his covers, or the exalted praise of John Updike and Saul Bellow (which does appear), and his answer would be instant.

Humbug

Image from Wikipedia

Disappearing to Dorset down sun-bleached dual-carriageway, unimaginative asphalt yawning before me, torched cardboard graffiti grass sloping stiff from the banks, I’m tucked behind my insect body-bag windscreen, clogged in baying bank holiday rush. I have just one CD in the car, soundtracking me through slow-lane fast-line duality: Humbug.

Playing this album on constant repeat is the way to do it. It’s an album’s album, no singles in sight. Like Pearl Jam’s No Code or The Smiths’ Strangeways, Humbug is an album to allow under the skin (let it in, let it in); an album that repays close attention and persistence; an album that needs to be appreciated in whole before the individual gems will begin to sparkle. It’s a particular way of doing an album and it may well prove the best when you’re as gifted as the Monkeys. It’s their talent album: the album where they disregard formula and mass appeal to trust their inner voice. It’s easy to imagine their Greatest Hits (in however many years), dominated by their first two LPs and little from Humbug. But fans will say ‘ah yes, that was the one.’

Humbug is the sound of a band that won’t stand still; a band that will always seek evolution and transformation. And if any band can pull it off, it’s this lot. The justification for this is that they don’t subscribe to a scene. Like Radiohead, they know the value of existing in a vacuum. Now, they might not be as extreme a case as Radiohead, and many people would associate them with a particular sound and fraternity… but they’d be wrong. Other bands have aped Arctic Monkeys and tried to leech a scene from them, sure, but the Monkeys themselves have had none of it. Just think of the influences that the band flaunt: Richard Horley, Nick Cave, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Queens of the Stone Age, etc. Not the artists your average indie scenester would associate them with.

The band’s appreciation of QOTSA and Josh Homme’s hands on the knobs are noticeable throughout. But it’s not a controlling influence; rather, a subtle spin, playing out in the background somewhere, disinterestedly leaving traces and hints (though the guitar effect at the end of ‘The Jeweller’s Hand’ is straight from Homme’s pedal). No, the ingenuity is all their own.

They begin opener ‘My Propeller’ with a chord progression and walking bass line reminiscent of the Kinks (ah yes, we think… that makes sense… heritage), to then ditch it five seconds in for an 80’s-era Metallica arpeggio (where did that come from?). Unexpected and astonishing… and it works. It’s instantly clear that the Monkeys don’t feel any restrictions. The circus sounds of Favourite Worst Nightmare (aqua licks and carnivalesque horrors) are still there, but more integrated and deft (see ‘Secret Door’). So is the knack for teasing us with potentially huge riffs and then holding them in check, allowing them to become something more intangible and oddball (see ‘Dangerous Animals’ and imagine it in the hands of Homme’s own band for instance… a different prospect). Note: six or seven albums in they will make an album of heavies and it will be superb. But not for now. The quirks and soft touches are just too good at the moment. The only song not worth shouting about is ‘Potion Approaching’. It’s not very good, yet already has the status of live staple. Alas, it’s better than most stuff out there.

The high point is ‘Dance Little Liar’ (which, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be on their favoured set-list). It has it all. Slow, fast, soft, heavy, and stunning lyrics (more on the lyrics in a bit). The riffage three-quarters of the way in is the best thing they’ve ever done. The build-up is patient and gentle, like a knowing lover’s measured foreplay. And then it comes, sparkling and fizzling with guttural joy. This is the kind of thing Arctic Monkeys are made for.

The lyrics: yes, everyone loves Turner’s lyrics. And for good reason too. They’re enviously good. But thankfully, like the music, they’ve advanced. Gone is the social observation of Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not, (Smirnoff Ices and trackie b’s could only go so far, and Turner knew it: leave that to lesser bands who mistake it for the poetry of the everyday). The lyrics on Humbug are less immediate; more glancing and opaque. The words on their first album (and to a lesser extent its follow up) had a charming quality of leaving instant impressions through precision of reference and wry wit. These, on the other hand, linger and puzzle. They are oblique and mysterious and will live on longer. Turner is a true lyricist. He has different modes and registers, and knows how to operate them to stunning effect. He’s not a poet. He’s one of our greatest lyricists.

Leaving Dorset in the Monday evening drone of hung-heads, weighed by returning thoughts of offices and deadlines, of aches and pains, I hit play and fondly re-ingratiate myself with good company. It’s been two days apart and there’s been much pining and remembrance. The songs got under my skin on that first journey and are there to stay. I return to them with delight and confidence.

Broken Embraces

Image from Wikipedia

Penélope Cruz is at her best when she plays the endearingly tempestuous, hot-headed type; zany and likely to combust. See Vicky Cristina Barcelona as a case in point. With Broken Embraces she finds herself in a film that takes on all these qualities itself, but to self-defeating ends.

It’s not the complex interweaving of narrative strands nor Pedro Almodovar’s trademark self-referentiality and dense intertextuality that pose the problems. It’s the general feel of the film which does it (vague as that may seem). At times far-fetched and often hard to believe, its style is one to stub your toe on: all poking elbows and clunky transitions. Once again we are reminded that cinema doesn’t do shifts in time particularly well (for that the novel remains master): the younger Harry Caine is the older Harry Caine in a wig (and what an unsettling hybrid of Sting and Robin Williams he makes) and the transformation of Ray X from floppy haired loser to sleek young sophisticate is laughable (admittedly, at times, intentionally so).

Indeed, there is humour to be found: Ernesto Junior and his pantomime campness, or the hilarious description of a vampire with a “tooth erection”. But there is also an amateurness hovering awkwardly about, flickering between a knowing kitsch and just poor film-making. Penelope Cruz falling down the stairs is one such confusing example.

The film does have its redeeming features (namely Cruz, and a strong performance from José Luis Gómez) but it doesn’t come close to Almodovar’s and Cruz’s last collaboration, the superb Volver. The latter held its comedy and drama, its oddball fancy and weighty truths, in masterful balance. Broken Embraces is less finely controlled and realised, although its obtrusive storyline can be basely intriguing at times.

Having heard many good things about the film beforehand, I can’t help but think that many treat foreign cinema with an unqualified and indiscriminate level of respect; as though a subtitled film, through its otherness, is inherently exquisite and accomplished; and that to appreciate such a film is a self-awarded pat on one’s cultured back.

Paint me a Poem

I went to the current J. W. Waterhouse exhibition (Royal Academy of Art) as literary buff rather than art aficionado. I went to meet in person the famous Waterhouse women that have lurched at me all these years from my editions of Tennyson and Keats. I went to see Tennyson’s floating lady. I went to be taken to Keats’s elfin grot. I went to tirra lilla! about the halls. I went to say, yes, ‘she has a lovely face’. I went to see poetry.

Imagine my delight then, to find that ex-Poet Laureate Andrew Motion was giving a talk on the exhibition, that very night, in a room just off the gallery. After a bit of sweet-talking and hanging-about I managed to procure one of the no-show seats, and found myself in a small but ornate private chamber (all gold lavishings and marble surfaces) with a pretentiously large glass of white wine. Show me the poetry! I implored. To be sure, there was little of it to be found among the sixty-strong audience: predictably middle-upper class; predictably middle-upper aged. Hold on to your seats boys, this one could get wild! Maybe Motion would bring it. All signs pointed yes when he lumbered in with Keats and Tennyson headlocked under his arm.

Having not long relinquished his hallowed title to Carol Ann Duffy (and what a supreme job she has done already, giving the role some bite and venom), I thought the once laureate might be newly buoyant; visibly insouciant. But no. He appeared as burdened and pensive as ever, slouching in his chair, hand wrapped around jaw, wearing the classic pained grimace of constipated poet (you know the one). And I was glad. A beaming poet would invariably be sickening (and rubbish).

Off the bat he confessed insufficient knowledge of Waterhouse and a vast knowledge of poetry. We were there for similar reasons then. Not long in, he set to reading Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot in a fantastically mellifluous grumble (oxymoronic but true). As one artist masterfully swept us to the climax of another’s work (wanting us to bear in mind the paintings of our primary artist throughout), a fourth decided to add his two cents: a piss artist, freshly returned from the toilet. SLAM went the door as the latter snuck back in, the exact moment Motion breathed his final “the Lady of Shallot”. The two noises reverberated around the silenced room in a violent grapple. The poet noticeably cringed, his spell shattered, and I half hoped he would jump from the stage and brawl in the audience: bludgeon the adversary with his Penguin Tennyson; rip a portrait from the wall and smash it over his head. But he didn’t.

This precious Lucky-Jim kind of moment was a grateful reminder of how near the comic intellectual posturing and hobnobbing can swing. I wanted to applaud the event, ever appreciative of that rare skill: comic timing. The next actual applause, however, was utterly without humour, all earnest and knowing, congratulating Motion’s reading of Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The crux of the event may have been to celebrate artistic influence and cross-fertilisation, but this was a step too far. This time I wanted to jump up myself, railing “you do realise he didn’t write that don’t you? I could read it to you!” But I didn’t.

Admittedly, Motion was embarrassed, blushing and awkwardly telling the audience “you’re far too sweet” (precisely code for “you do realise I didn’t write that don’t you?”). It was chilling to hear him read the poem though, and set me thinking (once again) that had Keats lived beyond 25 he would be regarded the greatest poet after Shakespeare.

But how did Waterhouse treat poetry? How did he read it? Did he go to his annotated editions looking for seeds for paintings, or did particular scenes come back to him after the act, further down the line? And how does literary-to-painting influence work? It can’t be the same as the anxiety of influence felt from poet to poet – the job of recasting and outdoing the older poet; of fighting the father to the death. The forms are too far apart for that. Motion highlighted thematic and experiential connections (shared symbols and emotions), but had me asking whether there might be a stylistic interchange; vaguely equivalent or corresponding techniques?

Probably not. And my scant knowledge of painting doesn’t cast me as the man to attempt an answer. But we might venture in the right direction by considering the remarkably condensed quality of Waterhouse’s paintings and his poetical influences (especially Keats), most noticeably through the intense sensuousness of their work. Think of Keats’s silky use of synaesthesia (the experience of one sense via another) and how Waterhouse’s subjects merge into their landscapes through melting colours and unsharpened lines; then compare their respective Lamias and la belles.

When he emulates their scenes, Waterhouse certainly aims for the gusto of Keats’s and Tennyson’s poems – gusto in William Hazlitt’s sense of the term: intensely realised objects that press on the senses conjunctionally. Yet, of course, he is independent of them. He must speak in a different language and be faithful to his painterly perceptions. Like Motion and the rogue pisser, the paintings and the poems are self-sufficient. But also like Motion and the rogue pisser, they come together magnificently.