Maus Tails

Adam bought me this for Xmas, what a nice lad. I've always been a bit put off by any artistic work that takes as its source the Holocaust. This however is refreshingly different and dispenses with the mawkish Spielbergification of the Final Solution that I was worried about. The drawings are extremely simple, but effective, and the use of different animals to represent the different races is inspired. Doesn't present a very positive image of cats though.

Before And After Science

The ICA hosted a conversation between Steven Johnson and Brian Eno last night, taking as a starting point Johnson's new book The Ghost Map. This details the events surrounding a cholera epidemic in London in 1854, and its eventual diagnosis by a local doctor, this was posited by Johnson as a crucial event in allowing the continued urbanisation of the growing population. All in all it was a fascinating event, with the discussion tangenting off all over the gaff. Apparently by next year half of the worlds population will live in cities, with over half a billion of those folk being Chinese. Eno is part of something called the Long Now Foundation who promote thinking into
ideas around the sustainability of humanity over the next 10,000 years. Subjects touched on included the interface between the virtual world in Second Life, and the various spin-off financial interactions in the real world, the absorption of slum dwellings into urban centres in the third world, the voting patterns in the US elections (apparently urban centres are 70:30 in favour of Democrats).

Some members of the audience felt that Johnson and Eno were divorcing themselves from the real financial decision making process taken by governments (and the US in particular), and indulging in elitist intellectual pontification, but the level of response didn't allow the debate to deteriorate into the same old Political entrenchment, but genuinely tried to open people up to ideas of how socio-cultural systems develop independent of government intervention.

There was a signing afterwards, and on my way home I wish I'd asked Eno to sign a Christmas card, he was standing next to me in the lobby at the end, and chatting (in a rather stuck up way I thought) about where they were going to go and eat, when Ekow Eshun walked past after clocking off as director, without even noticing Eno as he shot by.

Goin' Back

One thing we missed when Guy and Ali were here was the re-launch of John Williams' new book. We dined with Jen and Sid instead. I bought a copy on Amazon though and read it on the way to and from Wales this weekend. It's a revised version of his first book, with 5 new chapters written on a trip last year around around the time of hurricane Katrina. It's good stuff, part travelogue, part crime writer interview/biography, and a soupcon of autobography mixed up with some pithy observations on pop culture. He's also set up a site which contains additional relevant material.

Dirty Utd

Claims to focus on Brian Clough's 44 day tenure at 'dirty' Leeds United in 1974, but is actually a pretty full career retrospective, just artfully re-arranged so the history is told in flashback. Couldn't decide if the staccato repetition worked or not, a strong sense of Clough's maniacal fear, loathing and twisted determination came through, but his character is so warped that even a conventional biography would have been a dark and ugly trip anyway.

Peace has written about the '70's quite extensively, which maybe explains why there's so little sociopolitical context here, apart from a few mentions of Nixon (another disgraced leader) there's no scene-setting nostalgic background chatter.

The Big Read

Well I finally finished a book, it only took about 6 months, but I stuck with it. and what a splendid sense of acheivement I now feel.

There was a time I was reading two books a week, but nowadays there just doesn't seem to be the time. Maybe it's the lack of commuting. or the rise in computing. Anyway this was largely excellent, the pop-cultural references, and the significance they have to the adolescent protagonists, and the impact they exert for the rest of their days, are superbly observed. I didn't realise until after I'd finished it that Lethem has a bit of a sci-fi leaning, which explains the rather obtrusive super-hero element that pokes out like an uwanted elbow in the ribs. It reads like an autobiography, and again afterwards I discovered it largely is. Like a Brooklyn based Philip K Dick, without the speed-freak intensity, but with added lyricism.

Cat-Sitting Batman..

While the new cat (commonly referred to as 'Little Cat') was recovering from his bout of cat-flu, and before he could be introduced to Pud, we were spending lots of time in the spare room with him trying to get him used to human company. A lot of the time he spends cowering under the sofa, so it's only natural for ones eyes to shift to the walls of books.

While struggling to read anything novel sized at the moment I have managed to get through a number of the Batman graphic novels which have been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years, following a particularly virulent eBay epidemic a while back.

Quality is variable, but the best of them are actually intelligently put together and genuinely explore the psychology of the misunderstood outsider, and the inner struggles between dark and light. What keeps you ploughing through even the dodgy ones are the recurrent mythological events and characters, that are always recycled in slightly different ways. There is a definite warmth of recognition as all of the pieces gradually fall into place - boy's wealthy parents killed in front of him/confused search for revenge/apocalyptic bat-shaped enlightenment /arrival of nemesis/final conflict and catharsis/recurring sense of doubt and doom.

If only there was an OU course available on this stuff I may be able to kick my endless gap year.