The game’s up

Book: The Steep Approach to Garbadale by Iain Banks
Rating: 4/10 … this was one for the bin, Iain.

The appearance of an Iain Banks novel (with or without the “M”) is an event to look forward to. Or was. This disaster is a great dose of disillusion for me and could make me think twice about the next one. The story is unoriginal and without interest and the characters are dull and insipid.

Based around a family whose wealth is founded on a board game, we’re supposed to care if the business is sold to an American game editor. Worse, we’re supposed to understand why likeable black-sheep-of-the-family Alban, who has already sold out his interest in the business, now wants to take a stand, and why anybody else is interested in his opinion. Banks has used games in previous books and they always suggested modern strategic pursuits. Not this time; this time we get the impression of a dull pre-Monopoly kind of game and we couldn’t care less about it.

Alban is the most wooden Banks’ character of all time. Painted as charming, decent, honest, cynical he is a goody-goody quite beyond belief. With a negligible shareholding in the family business, we’re expected to accept that they hang on his every word and listen with reverence to his foolish company-saving speech (more about American imperialism than business as it happens!). He’s living with down and outs in a tenement when we meet him (presumably just to show how liberal and decent he is) one of whom gets an inexplicable (and plaintive) first person voice in the novel. For some reason (a typo perhaps?) the first person voice slipped into the visit to Doris and Beryl when our drug addict was absent!

The book has some of Banks’ usual wit and imagination (I especially liked girlfriend VG’s background as a tsunami survivor and the “School Bus Siege”) but overall this is a trite heap of rubbish not worthy of the author of such masterpieces as The Bridge and The Algebraist. If you’ve loved everything he has written so far, do yourself a favour and pretend this one never appeared.

If at first you don’t succeed … give up!

Book: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
Translated from: German (Austria)
Genre: Classic Novel
Rating: between 4 and 8 out of 10; impossible to say!

My first shot at TMWQ was almost twenty years ago. Fifty pages into it I knew it was my kind of book. One hundred pages in and I was losing my way. I put it aside for later. Returning to it a couple of years later, the experience was identical. And the patern continued again and again with the passage of time; each times I abandoned it, but not definitively. I had the feeling it was a book that could please me a lot. Here’s a revealing line from it:

one thing … could safely be said about Ulrich: he loved mathematics because of the kind of people who could not endure it.

Some months ago, in compiling a list of books for different occasions, I selected TMWQ for the honour of one book you’ve been meaning to read. Then it made it to the status of new year resolution.

Sadly, the saga ends here. After 800 pages, I’ve abandoned again. I can’t see myself getting back to it; it’s too big an undertaking.

So how was it? Great, amusing, provocative, ironic and dull by turns. The English, presumably consistently with the original German, is beautiful but not exactly vernacular. I found myself reading passages from it to friends and family and recording a page-full of them here in my blog. But it was too long and frequently too dull or, perhaps, too learned for me and so it’s official: I’m moving on with my life. It has been compared with James Joyce’s Ulysses and it has received the same fate on my bookshelf.

Sense of honour?

Don’t you just love what passes for honour among our betters? I refer to that group of people who believe they contribute so much more than the rest of us and annually vote each other salaries and bonuses the size of telephone numbers.

Last week I was rather taken by a comment arising out of the resignation of BP CEO Lord Browne after he acknowledged that he had lied to a High Court judge. Referring to the resignation, BP Chairman Peter Sutherland came up with a particular gem that I’ll remember. He said it was “a tragedy that [Browne] should be compelled by his sense of honour to resign in these painful circumstances.”

Show me the man you honour, and I will know what kind of man you are

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Lord Browne had asked the court to belive his version of events on the basis of his reputation and distinction and the various public honours he had received. In his finding, the judge deplored “his willingness casually to trash the reputation of [his former lover] and to discredit him in the eyes of the court”.

Be careful, there’s a [foot-tapper] in the house

Concert: Loudon Wainwright III
Venue: Olympia, Dublin, May 6th, 2007
Support: Lucy Wainwright Roche
Rating: 7/10, indulgent father-daughter affair.

God, how I hate concerts! Not the performers, but the audience. You pay for a (very) expensive seat (typically north of €100 in Dublin) and then you have to stand because everyone in front of you stands. Often that’s not enough because some stupid girls with no education think it’s okay to sit on the shoulders of their boyfriends, blocking the view of even the tallest spectators behind them.

With Loudon, you expect it to be better. His following is, like me, a little long in the tooth and we should prefer to sit in our much more modestly priced (€35) seats. Alas, I’m sorry to say that standards have plummeted. The Olympia now allows alcohol be brought into the theatre in plastic cups, thus negating the need for an intermission, which they nevertheless went ahead with anyhow. Sections of the audience repeatedly left their seats during the performance to get refills or empty their bladders. Then there were the eejits who can’t resist clapping their hands or stamping their feet (or both) to show that they’ve (more or less) figured out the rhythm.

So much for the audience. Thankfully Loudon is worth putting up with a lot for. Unlike many ageing stars who never put Dublin on their tour circuit until their voices crack with age, Ludo is a regular visitor to Dublin and he has a devoted fan base here. This time, as always, he was great though he let his family pride get a little in the way of his professionalism by sharing the stage with his daughter Lucy. Lucy is a nice singer with a bit of personality, but she’s not star quality. She played for about 40 minutes before dad came on.

Dad is a real treat. He mixes the old and the new, the sentimental family histories and the hilarious ballads based on everyday observations and the audience loves every minute. It’s a bit like stopping to listen to a busker in the street, well illustrated by the smashing autobiographical Primrose Hill:

I used to sing and play down in the Underground
But a few years back they started cracking down
Now I’m living on the side of Primrose Hill
I’m no tourist attraction but I give them a thrill

He talks to his audience as if we’re the same audience that comes every time he visits Dublin (some certainly are!) and we call out to him with requests and general remarks. One fun exchange ended with Loudon playing the music and his fan singing the verse until he ran out of words. Top number of the night goes to a song which Loudon didn’t pen. Peter Blegvad’s Daughter took me by surprise with its beautifully-honed structure.

That’s my daughter in the water
Everything she knows … I taught her … everything she knows
That’s my daughter in the water
Everything she owns … I bought her … everything she owns

I’m certainly going to look him up and find out what else he’s written.

This was a great evening, marred by an uncouth element in the audience and an overly-indulgent dad (but who can blame him for that?).

Ageing stars:

Barbara Streisand, who never played Ireland when she was worth listening to, is coming in July with ticket prices ranging from €120 to €550. The Irish should return the snub but it goes without saying that fools will fall over themselves to queue up for the tickets. One can only imagine where the cheap (!!) seats will be.

God Save England!

Film: This is England by Shane Meadows
Rating: 8/10.  Raw and moving.

The last Meadows film I saw was Once Upon a Time in the Midlands and I knew then I’d have no objection to seeing another. Though it’s been some time since then, I remember a witty and amusing film which, in spite of a string of clever allusions to the Western genre, managed to convey a gritty and affectionate feel for working class life in the English midlands.

This is England is an altogether different kettle of fish. I’m still high 3 hours after quitting the cinema. Meadows approaches this with no attempt to soften reality with humour; the affection is still there but this film seethes with anger. It opens and closes with newsreel from Thatcher’s 1980’s Britain. Shots of Thatcher and the privileged are interspersed with the Falklands War, a mix of body-bags and jingoism.

Shaun, the 12 year old hero has lost his dad in the war. Bullied at school he winds up finding friends in the most agreeable bunch of skinheads ever to grace the screen. Role-playing in their Crombie coats and Doc Martens, Meadows undermines stereotypes without losing any credibility, making us question our quick judgements of people from the wrong side of the track. However, we also get to meet Combo, an angry, racist, ex-convict skinhead and follower of the British National Front Party. Combo is probably mentally ill, switching from friendly to vicious and back in seconds. Leave around for only a short while and you can expect fireworks.

As good as the best of British social drama.