The story changes tack in the sense of timing. You can imagine the first story being set in the 1980s but this second section is clearly earlier. The subject is again a detective but in a clever play on words the main characters are White, Black and Blue.
White hires Blue to watch Black and send back weekly reports. All Black seems to do is sit in an apartment opposite Blue’s building and read and write. For the detective usually used to tracking down criminals and working on dynamic cases the ongoing assignment becomes frustrating.
He follows Black, gets to know his routine and starts to become changed by the experience with his appreciation of language increasing. That makes it not only more difficult for him to think and write in a limited police-speak type way for the purpose of his reports but also starts to open his eyes to beauty.
With a poetical yearning developing in Blue he starts to appreciate the local landscape. But his instinct and training remain intact and eventually he tires of the watching and as he meets his ex girlfriend and realises that his former way of life has ended forever he becomes slightly resentful.
Forcing the issue through disguised conversations with Black and attempted meetings with White he realises that he has been used and resorts to the sort of violence that you thought he had perhaps left behind.
You can see the links in terms of language, identity and the question of truth but because the stories felt disconnected by time it is with some trepidation that you turn to section three…
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
The New York Trilogy - post I
This book feels as if it has been around for a lot longer than it has. No doubt that is helped by the recent decision by Faber to reproduce the cover in a 1930s type design. But even inside the stories feel from the past.
Split into three stories the first is a strange and disturbing tale of a writer who answers a wrong call and decides to pretend to be the private detective that the caller is phoning for.
A tale of identity and language unfolds with the main character of Quinn losing his bearings completely as he struggles to solve the case. As he is hired to protect a man from his father after the former survived being locked up as a child by the later who was determined to see what language a child would produce if left sealed off from society.
The expectation is that left alone the vocabulary would come from communion with God and be the language of the Lord, the language probably spoken before the Tower of Babel incident.
Anyway Quinn follows, talks to and then loses the father who seems to be obsessed with the Tower of Babel concept. But Paul Auster introduces a character named after himself as the connection between Quinn and the private detective. The question of identity is constant.
Ultimately Quinn not only loses all track of those who had hired him but also of himself. His apartment, belongings and even name seem to disappear by the end. We are left with a man who has written his thoughts about the case and his predicament down in a red notebook and that is all that seems to remain.
Part II tomorrow…
Split into three stories the first is a strange and disturbing tale of a writer who answers a wrong call and decides to pretend to be the private detective that the caller is phoning for.
A tale of identity and language unfolds with the main character of Quinn losing his bearings completely as he struggles to solve the case. As he is hired to protect a man from his father after the former survived being locked up as a child by the later who was determined to see what language a child would produce if left sealed off from society.
The expectation is that left alone the vocabulary would come from communion with God and be the language of the Lord, the language probably spoken before the Tower of Babel incident.
Anyway Quinn follows, talks to and then loses the father who seems to be obsessed with the Tower of Babel concept. But Paul Auster introduces a character named after himself as the connection between Quinn and the private detective. The question of identity is constant.
Ultimately Quinn not only loses all track of those who had hired him but also of himself. His apartment, belongings and even name seem to disappear by the end. We are left with a man who has written his thoughts about the case and his predicament down in a red notebook and that is all that seems to remain.
Part II tomorrow…
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Holiday reading continues
Having read High Rise, a tale of violence and societal breakdown in a tower block, you have to be careful about where you go next. Something longer is in order because of the relative speed that was completed.
So next up is the second book purchased specially for the holiday The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. Recommended by various people I follow on Twitter and blogs this also has the feel of being a ‘dead cert’ in terms of being time well spent.
So next up is the second book purchased specially for the holiday The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. Recommended by various people I follow on Twitter and blogs this also has the feel of being a ‘dead cert’ in terms of being time well spent.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
High Rise - post II
As the high rise falls apart in terms of infrastructure with the water, lifts and power all becoming intermittent the lives of those inside also falls apart. Each floor becomes tribal hunting in groups to secure food and luxuries from those who live around them. The death, a fall from the top floor of a businessman, marks a watershed where violence is acceptable.
The cast of characters that Ballard describes have to question themselves as they start the slide back into a primeval state. Some fade quickly without the strength to defend themselves whereas others emerge as leaders.
The disturbing nature of the story is nnot just how quickly man can turn on man but the manner in which the residents are so determined not to break the world they are living in that external influences are kept at bay.
Ballard makes you think. As you move through a modern landscape surrounded by the everyday objects he uses as a backdrop you are challenged to think about the chances of his fiction becoming fact. In High Rise those chances are slightly more than extremely remote and as a result the book leaves you disturbed but provoked.
A review will come soon…
The cast of characters that Ballard describes have to question themselves as they start the slide back into a primeval state. Some fade quickly without the strength to defend themselves whereas others emerge as leaders.
The disturbing nature of the story is nnot just how quickly man can turn on man but the manner in which the residents are so determined not to break the world they are living in that external influences are kept at bay.
Ballard makes you think. As you move through a modern landscape surrounded by the everyday objects he uses as a backdrop you are challenged to think about the chances of his fiction becoming fact. In High Rise those chances are slightly more than extremely remote and as a result the book leaves you disturbed but provoked.
A review will come soon…
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
High Rise - post I
One observation that you have to make about Ballard before you even start is that he manages to get the names of his characters just right. A name in Ballard’s world has to stand for many things. Take an architect for example. The name has to conjure up the image of a successful man, someone who has a certain position in society and as a result someone who thinks and behaves a certain way.
So we are introduced to a character that lives just above the middle of a 40 storey tower block. On the 25th floor he can look out on the floors below but is within a quick elevator ride of the delights of the world above.
But slowly but surely Ballard starts to take the world of the high rise, with its swimming pools, schools and shops and turns it into a fearful world. A society based on floors, bands from 1-10, 11-30 and then above emerge. The tenants start fighting each other at first verbally and in terms of anti-social behaviour. But as the days go by society starts to break down.
As a reader you are constantly asking yourself how this could happen knowing that given the right circumstances and time it well might. Of course things are speeded up in Ballard’s account but otherwise the breakdown of society and the movement towards violence and animal behaviour is very believable.
More tomorrow…
So we are introduced to a character that lives just above the middle of a 40 storey tower block. On the 25th floor he can look out on the floors below but is within a quick elevator ride of the delights of the world above.
But slowly but surely Ballard starts to take the world of the high rise, with its swimming pools, schools and shops and turns it into a fearful world. A society based on floors, bands from 1-10, 11-30 and then above emerge. The tenants start fighting each other at first verbally and in terms of anti-social behaviour. But as the days go by society starts to break down.
As a reader you are constantly asking yourself how this could happen knowing that given the right circumstances and time it well might. Of course things are speeded up in Ballard’s account but otherwise the breakdown of society and the movement towards violence and animal behaviour is very believable.
More tomorrow…
Monday, August 10, 2009
The holiday reading starts
It is so important packing the right number and genre of books for a holiday. Sitting on a beach in Brittany you need to be able to get enjoy the reading.
As a result the holiday starts with something that is not only not too long but could almost have the words guaranteed enjoyable on the cover.
Already I know that this year is going to be the year of J.G.Ballard for me and the more of his books I consume the more I admire him as a writer.
His ability to question modern society and push the consequences of living in concrete boxes obsessed with class and money to beyond the limits are fantastically powerful. So after knocking off Millennium People and The Drowned World it is time for one of the books that some have described as his best, High Rise.
As a result the holiday starts with something that is not only not too long but could almost have the words guaranteed enjoyable on the cover.
Already I know that this year is going to be the year of J.G.Ballard for me and the more of his books I consume the more I admire him as a writer.
His ability to question modern society and push the consequences of living in concrete boxes obsessed with class and money to beyond the limits are fantastically powerful. So after knocking off Millennium People and The Drowned World it is time for one of the books that some have described as his best, High Rise.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
The Twelve Chairs - post IV
With the remaining ten chairs consuming both father Theodore, who is sent on a wild goose chase to the edge of Russia, and the pair working together the beginning of the end draw near as each of the chairs is discovered and found to be empty.
This search takes them across Moscow and then finally down to the Crimea. Ippolit and Bender survive being chased out of town by the chess club, an earthquake and other threats.
But the impact of chasing wealth and living like a beggar is that it changes the outlook from Ippolit and he turns from a former member of the landed gentry into a criminal. In the end he is determined to resort to extreme measures to get his hands on the jewels.
But in this tale of the madness of bureaucracy and of the collective against the greed of the individual the fates of Theodore, Ippolit and Bender are all cautions of how naked greed and tear apart the mind and soul. Although there are plenty of little shots at the soviet system and society it is that final message that presumably protected the book and the authors from the traditional Soviet censorship and spells in prison.
A review will follow soon…
This search takes them across Moscow and then finally down to the Crimea. Ippolit and Bender survive being chased out of town by the chess club, an earthquake and other threats.
But the impact of chasing wealth and living like a beggar is that it changes the outlook from Ippolit and he turns from a former member of the landed gentry into a criminal. In the end he is determined to resort to extreme measures to get his hands on the jewels.
But in this tale of the madness of bureaucracy and of the collective against the greed of the individual the fates of Theodore, Ippolit and Bender are all cautions of how naked greed and tear apart the mind and soul. Although there are plenty of little shots at the soviet system and society it is that final message that presumably protected the book and the authors from the traditional Soviet censorship and spells in prison.
A review will follow soon…
Saturday, August 08, 2009
The Twelve Chairs - post III
By using the figure of Father Theodore as the priest using a death-bed confession about hidden jewels as a chance to become rich there is a gentle contempt. The priest is happy to walk out on his flock and share his secrets of a candle factory and wealth with his wife.
It chimes in with the communist view that the church is an organisation with plenty of hypocrisy and with its fair share of wealth loving staff. But Theodore is perhaps more honest than the others making no secret of his determination to gain wealth and change his circumstances.
Meanwhile the pair are working their way through various chairs and are now at a stage where they have managed to get close to buying all remaining 10 chairs at a state auction. But the relationship between Ippolit and Bender changes when the former blows his money on wine, food and a woman.
From that point on, with the chairs lost at the auction to various buyers, the younger man takes control and Ippolit is losing his grip on the jewels.
More tomorrow…
It chimes in with the communist view that the church is an organisation with plenty of hypocrisy and with its fair share of wealth loving staff. But Theodore is perhaps more honest than the others making no secret of his determination to gain wealth and change his circumstances.
Meanwhile the pair are working their way through various chairs and are now at a stage where they have managed to get close to buying all remaining 10 chairs at a state auction. But the relationship between Ippolit and Bender changes when the former blows his money on wine, food and a woman.
From that point on, with the chairs lost at the auction to various buyers, the younger man takes control and Ippolit is losing his grip on the jewels.
More tomorrow…
Friday, August 07, 2009
The Twelve Chairs - post II
If you have any understanding of Russian history then there is delightfulness as the events unfold against a post-revolutionary background. There are still those that support the Tsar and there are many who dream of a different world to the one they face post 1917.
In the middle of that are the two conspirators, Ippolit and Bender, hunting for the chair. The old man who is chasing the vision painted to him by his mother-in-law on her deathbed and the young pretender.
They establish that the chairs have been distributed throughout Moscow and plan to head there to rediscover them. The problem is that to do so involves money and they have to beg and scheme to get the funds. The way they get them is to appeal to a group of those dreaming of a return to Tsarist days.
The jokes are directed at everyone in this book but for those that spend their days dreaming of an anti-communist uprising there is a degree of pity mixed in with the laughs.
Armed with the money they need those hunting the chairs head for Moscow…
In the middle of that are the two conspirators, Ippolit and Bender, hunting for the chair. The old man who is chasing the vision painted to him by his mother-in-law on her deathbed and the young pretender.
They establish that the chairs have been distributed throughout Moscow and plan to head there to rediscover them. The problem is that to do so involves money and they have to beg and scheme to get the funds. The way they get them is to appeal to a group of those dreaming of a return to Tsarist days.
The jokes are directed at everyone in this book but for those that spend their days dreaming of an anti-communist uprising there is a degree of pity mixed in with the laughs.
Armed with the money they need those hunting the chairs head for Moscow…
Thursday, August 06, 2009
book review - Millennium People - J.G. Ballard
It is a shame that it took the death of J.J. Ballard to get me to sit down and read his last short story about the collapsing tower of Pisa in the Guardian. In just a few hundred words he managed to take the blinkers of my eyes and show me that science fiction need not be about space men and aliens. It is about taking a scene of apparent normality and bending it through a refractor of great imagination.
As a result he tells a story that has a mixture of the mundane and the fantastical sitting alongside each other. The mundane is the Chelsea Marina, the baggage area at Heathrow and the long-stay car park at the airport. The fantastic is the bombs, middle class terrorists and the slide from respectability to the brink of murder and insanity of a corporate psychologist.
Millennium People is not just addressing the anxiety of the turn of the millennium but also questioning the society that has been built up and so ingrained that even a shift from one century to another has no impact.
In the middle is Dr David Markham who watches with incredulity as he first wife is involved in a bombing at Heathrow airport. Given the freedom by his relaxed and selfish wife to pursue his ambition to track down the bombers Markham becomes embroiled in a different world.
On the face of it this world is visible behind the curtains twitching in suburbia but the depth of the determination to unsettle the state and shake the middle class out of their stupor takes a bit more digging to locate.
But Markham does locate it and manages to not only find the bombers of his first wife but find himself. He gets to ask himself all sorts of questions about the lines he is prepared to cross as he is put in the position of taking lives as part of the cause. He is even given the chance to take lives in the spirit of retribution.
But this psychologist with a belief that God is a grand scheme invented to placate the masses is attracted to a similar view held by those arguing that the middle classes are equally led blind folded into believing their lives are alright. In fact they are propping up a failing system with their taxes and determination to make the world a better place. That middle class charitable attitude is in fact their weakness.
As Ballard gets his characters to strip that back he exposes some major questions that in this era of the war against terror could not be more topical. If no one listens to you quite how do you get attention? He also makes you think about the character and personality of those that manipulate and coordinate terror as much as he gets you to consider those allowing themselves to be dragged along.
Clever but also accessible and with healthy levels of humour as reintroduction to Ballard after many years absence after reading Empire of the Sun at school this was a real eye opener. This might well be one of my favourite books of the year but I have a sneaking suspicion that the more Ballard I read the more times I will be close to making that judgement call.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
The Twelve Chairs - post I
Unlike most Russian literature this story start pretty much from the off with the main character and his world introduced with light but penetrating brush strokes. By the time other authors might have got onto explaining the family tree and the situation of the village the main character Ippolit has gone through a day’s work.
As the recorder of births, marriages and deaths in a small village he has a clerks job and a clerks salary and his relationship with his mother-in-law reveals that he was married and widowed and lives in poverty.
In a town where the funeral directors are almost going bust through lack of deaths the moment when his mother-in-law dies is well known across Ippolit’s village. But before she dies she breathes the secret of her hidden jewels and in just a matter of pages a world, a character and now a mission have all become apparent.
More soon…
As the recorder of births, marriages and deaths in a small village he has a clerks job and a clerks salary and his relationship with his mother-in-law reveals that he was married and widowed and lives in poverty.
In a town where the funeral directors are almost going bust through lack of deaths the moment when his mother-in-law dies is well known across Ippolit’s village. But before she dies she breathes the secret of her hidden jewels and in just a matter of pages a world, a character and now a mission have all become apparent.
More soon…
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Slowing down
The rate of reading really seems to have slowed this year. Part of the blame has to be on doing more cycling as part of the commute but to compensate I had been reading more in the evenings. Maybe tiredness has kicked in.
But the other theory is that I have made a few duff choices this year so far and they have slowed me down because they are enjoyable. Without wanting to get into the debate about whether or not it is right to walk away from a book unfinished let’s just say I’m moving to a point of view that life is too short and the proof is in the number of books I’m reading.
With so many on the to be read pile I suspect that some hard choices are going to have to be made soon.
But the other theory is that I have made a few duff choices this year so far and they have slowed me down because they are enjoyable. Without wanting to get into the debate about whether or not it is right to walk away from a book unfinished let’s just say I’m moving to a point of view that life is too short and the proof is in the number of books I’m reading.
With so many on the to be read pile I suspect that some hard choices are going to have to be made soon.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Just Like Tomorrow - post III
At the end of this you are left with a sense that not only can good things happen in the bleakest of surroundings but also that love is an emotion that really can make the world go round.
As Doria watches her friends fall in love and former drug dealing hoodlums falling head over heels she is left to consider her own feelings for her friends. She decides to give love a chance and as the final few pages are turned this is a young woman who has not only maintained her optimism but now has someone potentially to share it with.
Funny and to use a youth term sassy this was a very enjoyable read. Review to come soon…
As Doria watches her friends fall in love and former drug dealing hoodlums falling head over heels she is left to consider her own feelings for her friends. She decides to give love a chance and as the final few pages are turned this is a young woman who has not only maintained her optimism but now has someone potentially to share it with.
Funny and to use a youth term sassy this was a very enjoyable read. Review to come soon…
Sunday, August 02, 2009
bookmark of the week
Bookmarks seem to be getting harder and harder to come by unless they are some sort of short-term merchandising campaign. I have shared the delights of the Beatrix Potter range but on a trip to a mainstream bookshop today was disappointed to see the same along with some other film tie-ins to promote the latest Harry Potter effort.
The bookmark as an actual page marker serves a very useful purpose and it’s a great shame that bookshops don’t sell a range starting from the very basic up to these expensive promotional items. Without even a torn corner of a ticket to mark my progress I would be lost reading most books.
The bookmark as an actual page marker serves a very useful purpose and it’s a great shame that bookshops don’t sell a range starting from the very basic up to these expensive promotional items. Without even a torn corner of a ticket to mark my progress I would be lost reading most books.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Just Like Tomorrow - post II
This book is written with great humour and has a very clearly defined tone of voice. As the main character weaves her way through the dissapointments of poverty, educational failure and indifference from various social workers things seem to be fairly bleak.
But what keeps you reading and what keeps the story going is an incredible sense of spirit. Even though there are loads of things going wrong for them the immigrants are determined to survive. They support each other and make it possible for a network of care to plug the gaps left by the French authorities.
It might not always work but the majority of the time Doria is looking upwards rather than down into despair. In that sense it is inspirational.
More monday…
But what keeps you reading and what keeps the story going is an incredible sense of spirit. Even though there are loads of things going wrong for them the immigrants are determined to survive. They support each other and make it possible for a network of care to plug the gaps left by the French authorities.
It might not always work but the majority of the time Doria is looking upwards rather than down into despair. In that sense it is inspirational.
More monday…
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