Category: Uncategorised

Originally reviewed for Amazon UK, in 2012.

I absolutely loved Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects, and was wondering what he’d do next. This excellent series follows a similar line, albeit through the prism of ‘The Bard of Avon’, and objects that can, in some way, be related to aspects of his life, times and work.

From a simple apprentice’s cloth cap to a coin/medallion map celebrating Drake ‘s circumnavigation of the Globe, the range and scope is once again fantastic. MacGregor’s as charming as ever, with experts on hand to flesh out and illuminate, and once again both the individual objects and the larger themes are engaging and compelling.

At first I wondered if the Shakespeare focus could possibly sustain interest across the whole series, but by the end (and the last episode is excellent, taking a slightly different approach, which I won’t give away) I was not only convinced, but dead keen to see more Shakespeare.

Excellent stuff, and highly recommended.

More dissection than penetration.

More archival reviews from the vaults. This one from 2014.

I got this book because I’m interested in sex. Who – if they’re being really and truly honest – isn’t? Oh, and art and culture, of course! Having flicked through the pages to have a quick look over the pics, I made ready to, erm, get stuck in, so to speak.

My view was immediately arrested by the bizarre pendant of fig. 1, pictured below: ‘Pet Phallus’, c. 100 BC… length 9.2 cm. Even amongst academics and custodians of culture it appears size matters!

However, any idea that this might be an erotic viewing or reading experience, never mind entertaining (a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour – steady! – might not have gone amiss), rapidly evaporates upon reading the text, which is worthy but, frankly, rather dull.

Caroline Vout displays an admirable breadth of erudition, and the text is very clearly and sensibly organised, but it feels a bit flat and lacking in passion. The potential eroticism of the objects and images is rinsed out with academic earnestness; comprehensive and balanced, perhaps, but – for me at least – flaccid.

The book itself, organised into six chapters over approx. 240 pages, and supported by nearly 200 crisp, clear images (as many of these are context-setting as are sexual), is a handsome and well made thing, but I’d say it was beautiful, as opposed to sexy. Some of the images and objects can, as Vout says, still shock and challenge us, despite the pervasive ubiquity of sexual imagery in what some might call our ‘permissive’ culture.

Vout traces the history of these objects, from their contexts and origins, inasmuch as we can determine them, via later fates, including their passage through the collections of private ‘antiquarians’ of the relatively recent past, such as Warren and Townley. It was the collections of such men that stocked the museums they now reside in, the material here being predominantly drawn from the stock of the British Museum, who also published the book.

Having examined how the Greeks and Romans may have related to this material, Vout eventually looks at a range of C18th ideas, from admiration to opprobrium. On the one hand Vout quotes an Enlightenment collector, enthusiast and apologist, who ‘argued passionately for sexual tolerance’, and talks of the ‘noble simplicity of the ancients’, whilst on the other we hear from one of the numerous critics of such collectors, who decries their collections for being filled with ‘generative organs in their most odious and degrading protrusion’!

It’s only very recently that many of these once relatively commonplace objects, and this is particularly true of the more risqué ones included here – which include fairly explicit depictions of bestiality, rape and homosexuality (some taboos evolve, others perhaps don’t) – have begun to emerge from the shadow of our more recent Christian heritage, and find their way into public view, beyond the esoteric confines of the ‘museum secretum’. These changing modes of display reflect evolving values, and the ‘Warren Cup’, for example, has enjoyed an odyssey from ‘controversial’ object of private admiration to British Museum shop souvenir!

For me this book, whilst undoubtedly really quite interesting, and filled with many beautiful objects and images (as well as some strange, some disturbing, and some weird or banal), dissects rather than penetrates its subject, and is, rather bizarrely perhaps, almost sexless.

Towards the end of the book, as she starts to sum up, Vout refers to a Barbican show called Seduced (fairly recent at the time of writing) which she describes as ‘a show which put visual stimulation over and above context’. Vout very avowedly does the precisely the opposite.

Another old review, transferred and updated in minor ways.

As Sam Harris attempts to make clear at the start of his book The End of Faith, what we believe is tremendously important. In Harris’ opening scenario he portrays a religiously motivated suicide bomber. This character feels that by killing a bunch of random strangers, who they – and this is the crucial bit – perceive to be their enemies, they are doing God’s work, and thereby also taking a direct short cut to heaven.

In this book Christian Ingrao is looking at something similar, in relation to what highly educated Nazi intellectuals believed, and how their beliefs became actions: hence his title phrase, believe and destroy. Like the infamous image – known as ‘The Last Jew In Vinnitsa’ – used on the books cover, this is a horrible subject.

But where Harris’ book is an easy read, clearly very much intended for the general reader, Ingrao’s book is based on a thesis written for fellow academics, and consequently is a rather tough slog for the non-specialist. Freighted with specialist jargon and many German terms, and neither written nor translated with ease of readability obviously foregrounded (although some terms are explained in a brief glossary, others in the index, and yet more via translator’s notes, overall the approach is haphazard and hard to follow); it’s interesting and worthy, but often feels like swimming through treacle.

One thread that came through strongly for me, albeit not brought out clearly or specifically by the author, is Nazism’s unholy blend of science and religion: in religious terms, Nazism offered believers faith in ‘the expectation of a racial utopia in which the elect would be made as one.’ This faith aspect was in turn founded on a pseudo-scientific biological racial determinism, in which the continued existence of a superior Nordic/Aryan race is threatened – both directly via conflict, and indirectly via miscegenation – by other races, including Asiatics and Slavs, but particularly the Jews, who are seen as ‘parasitic’.

The supposedly scientific side has several strands, some of these come from the unfortunately named area known popularly as Social Darwinism (unfortunately named because it’s based more on the ideas of Herbert Spencer than those of Darwin), including such ideas as ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘might is right’.

But Ingrao barely touches upon this side, and deals instead in the scientific side as manifested by academic professionalism, as in data-gathering, compilation, and extrapolation. This aspect sees the SS intellectuals using what might appear to be scientific principles or methods to bolster their own world views.

Actually this is more like ideology skimpily clad in the apparent trappings of science, as the scientific method is (or ought to be) very different: you study the world, and the results tell you what to believe. With these SS intellectuals, you study the world to confirm what you already think. So, effectively what you have in Nazism is the unholy marriage of two of the worst aspects of belief systems: pseudo-science – an ideological natural fallacy – believed in with religious fervour, written in the blood of those perceived to be enemies.

The siege mentality, based on the unfinished business that many Germans felt was the legacy of WWI – and this is a major theme in Ingrao’s book – allowed many German’s to follow the Führer in believing that their active, discriminatory aggression was a defensive act! I would say that this is precisely the kind of mentality shared by Christian crusaders or Muslim jihadists, and more religious and emotional in its basis than rational or scientific, despite the desire within the higher echelons of the SS and the Nazi machine to pass itself off as founded in science. The emotionally driven atavistic völkisch aspects of this toxic creed clearly trump any kind of rationalism.

Unfortunately, the overly florid, windily verbose academic language Ingrao chooses to employ – a typical sentence: ‘They were, in their very subjectivity, an exceptional source for the history of representations’* – clouds what are essentially simple issues, making it all rather tortuously complex. Also, as with Esdaile’s Napoleon’s Wars, or a book I read on Constantine fairly recently, the nature of Ingrao’s choices, in choosing to study the structural and administrative side of the phenomenon under the lense, make for rather dry reading. So, far from being without interest, this is good, solid academic work, but a pleasure to read it ain’t. Put bluntly: worthy but dull.

* This is, in fact, a short and relatively clear/easy example. But it sounds as much (or perhaps more?) like a phrase from a postmodern influenced art theory essay, as it does something that might be said of Nazi ideologues.

Tales of Two Tolkiens.

Another ancient review migrates over to ye blogge. This one must be 10-15 years old? I’m thinking that I’ll try and publish a chunk of Tolkien related posts over the next few days.

Like many, perhaps most, I found my way to The Silmarillion after reading The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. And, again, like others, it took me several attempts to get past the first few chapters. In fact it is only now, some 30 years after I first started reading Tolkien (and I’ve read both The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and other sundry Tolkien works, numerous times) that I’ve been able to read the whole book.

It is in fact a compilation of several writings, put together after J. R. R. Tolkien’s death by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien. It’s this fact that leads me to title my review as I have done: J. R. R. Tolkien’s achievements in creating the legends, histories, geographies and languages of Middle-Earth are truly staggering, but Christopher Tolkien’s work since his father’s death, is likewise monumental.

Evolution is a theory that has changed our understanding of the world, but that doesn’t make some chapters of Darwin’s Origin any easier to get through. But neither does it devalue the worth of the book. And, in his own very different way, Tolkien (and his son) have also contributed to changing our world, by inventing a new one.

Despite the above, I’m not really trying to compare Tolkien or Darwin in terms of their impact on our understanding of ourselves, I simply mention them together because both worked obsessively on their projects, and both produced writings some of which carry you along with rapid drama, and others of which can be a bit hard going.

The dense historical and mythological nature of parts of The Silmarillion can, in places, be pretty arduous, and the large amounts of names, genealogies, and detailed reference to Middle Earth’s topography, may be rather bewildering and hard to grasp (better and more comprehensive maps would still be great, and I for one would prefer that any such maps kept to Tolkien’s original style, but were expanded – at the very least – to include Melkor’s realms in the north of Middle Earth, since he and his lands figure so prominently in much of the narratives. But, like Darwin’s difficult chapter on pigeons, in The Origin, it’s a case of all the parts making for a better whole.

And there are some parts of the book, especially the stuff about Turin, Hurin and Tuor (of which tales Christopher Tolkien has subsequently brought his father’s work to us, to his great credit, first via Unfinished Tales, and more recently The Children Of Hurin, and other similar syntheses) which are fantastically easy reading, and very gripping and exciting, full of the best qualities of Tolkien’s more famous and accessible writings (if a little darker, which actually makes them somewhat more thrilling).

J. R. R. Tolkien’s talent and imagination knew few bounds, and beggar belief. And his son Christopher has played a massively important role in bringing the richness of Tolkien’s unpublished legacy (unpublished in his father’s lifetime, that is) to us. The Silmarillion is a truly and uniquely magnificent book!

NB – A related post of interest, regarding an illuminated version of The Silmarillion, can be read here.

“One morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green…”

More archival doings. Opening up a new (old!) chapter on Tolkienian Middle-Earthiness!

Whilst I’ve read very varied views on this adaptation, personally I love it. Anthony Jackson is good as the ‘Tale Bearer’, a story telling device of the producers (i.e. not of a strictly Tolkien-ian pedigree), Paul Daneman is a lovably flustered Bilbo (slightly posh and middle aged, which is as Tolkien wrote him), and Heron Carvic – more famous, perhaps, as the original author of Miss Seeton novels – is, for me, an excellent Gandalf.

A full-cast dramatisation, with excellent sound from the radiophonic workshop, this production also benefits from some highly unusual and individual music. This is an aspect of the production some find unattractive, according to my researches, but I’m with the actor Michael Kilgariff, who adapted the 1937 book for this 1968 radio play/serial, and agree that the music actually helps make the production.

Like the books, The Hobbit is aimed at a younger audience than the LOTR, and this version stands, in relation to the BBC LOTR, in exactly the right relation, like a younger sibling. There are aspects that I’m less keen on, such as the voices of some of the creatures, e.g. the Spiders of Mirkwood, or Roarc the old talking crow.* But, all things considered these are minor gripes. 

Even now, as ‘big kids’, we love listening to this. It’s atmospheric, fun, by turns ‘epic and homely’, evoking a world at once alien and yet familiar. Love it!

*AMENDMENT

Actually, I’ve changed my mind about these voices.

They’re rather like the Ents; so otherworldly to modern or contemporary minds (or mine, at any rate) it’s just plain hard to give them any kind of voice, without it seeming ridiculous.

I think the voices they come up with here are as good as one could hope for. Certainly Roarc is actually very good. The only one I really struggle with – and again, I think they do their best here – is the singing sparrow.

Initially aired on BBC R4, this series, like its predecessor [[ASIN:1408427443 Life Stories]], is also available as a lavishly illustrated [[ASIN:0007425120 book]]. This second instalment of enthralling, beguiling and wide-ranging stories, follows the same format as before: 20 episodes, spread over 3 CDs, each approximately 9-10 minutes long. A useful little booklet succinctly outlining each episode is also included. 

I love these little nuggets, and frequently listen to several at a time, most often whilst driving. The scope is massive, ranging across time, geography, species and subject with gleeful abandon, and, as the blurb on the box says, Attenborough’s “enthusiasm is as infectious as ever”. Personal favourites from this set include his homage to Alfred Russell Wallace, in which there’s a touching account of Wallace’s early relationship with Darwin, characterised (refreshingly) by mutual respect and admiration, in a situation where jealousy and antipathy could so easily have arisen (compare this with Leibniz, Newton, and ‘the calculus’, in Marcus Du Sautoy’s [[ASIN:1408469650 A Brief History of Mathematics]]); then there’s Attenborough’s own place (or lack thereof) in the story of Charnia, one of the world’s earliest fossils, a fractal form of life which evolution seems to have abandoned, as an early experiment in design.

‘Foreign Fare’ deals with the accidents of historical nomenclature: why are some widely different plants, e.g. the two types of artichoke, ‘globe’ and ‘Jeruslaem’, known by the same name? “The fault, if fault it is, can be traced back to Columbus”, says uncle David, before regaling us with a fascinating account of how some of these situations have arisen. With the very different films ‘Project Nim’ and ‘Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes’ both out at the time of this review, the ‘Chimps’ chapter is not just inherently interesting, but topically so, particularly as a dose of reality. Episodes on hummingbirds and butterflies are in places rhapsodic, as Attenborough eloquently conveys his sense of wonder: “astounded… the clearing beyond, was filled with a blizzard of butterflies”. Even simply listing the exotic names of hummingbirds, for example, the ‘sapphire spangled emerald’ (I’d love to see/own John Gould’s work on ‘hummers’, reference to which which seems to form the basis of this chapter), conveys this, but, as he tells how many hundreds of thousands of these beauties were butchered in order to adorn Victorian ladies headgear, he explains that, appalling as this was, it was “their spectacular beauty that accounts for this mania … their particular splendour is their iridescence”.

One thread that’s apparent in several of these stories is the tendency of humans to name animals: Jane Goodall did so with her chimps, Attenborough had his own chameleon, named ‘Rommel’, and there are numerous other instances in various other episodes. Attenborough reflects on this with a good degree of equanimity, allowing the listener to judge for themselves if there’s a difference between the patient scientific methods underlying Jane Goodall’s work with primates, and what Joy and George Adamson did, as foster parents of the lioness Elsa. ‘Quetzalcoatlus’, a giant pterosaur (or ‘winged lizard’), is as exotic as the name promises, and even the people – the eccentric founder of what may possibly have been the world’s first ‘nature reserve’, Squire Waterton, or the Adamsons of ‘Born Free’ fame – are peculiar and remarkable. The series ends on the rather sobering ‘Elsa’ episode, with Attenborough meditating on the difficulties of achieving the right balance in conveying the violence of the natural world (also touched on in the chimps episode), “of which we, after all, are a part.”

I always come away from listening to these stories both better informed about a myriad of interesting things, and with a smile on my face. Appetisingly interesting, this is another trove of treasures, well worth enjoying.

I guess I fall into the ‘human being’ category mentioned at the close of Professor Kitching’s excellent review of this very interesting book (on Amzon UK’s website), as I’m neither a science teacher or researcher (whilst he doesn’t specify the field, I’m guessing that’s who he’s alluding to!).

As an interested layman, learning about H and his work is both fascinating and yet also slightly frustrating: if, as Segerstrale notes, his ‘mathematical language remained obscure to many of his … colleagues’, and also ‘when writing, he was orientated strictly towards his scientific colleagues, not the general public’, is it any wonder he remains less well known than such popularisers of his own ideas as Dawkins and Ridley?

One of several very interesting aspects of this book that lie beyond the core aspects of Hamilton’s work itself, is how it shows that, despite the potential of an ideal paradigm of science as a disinterested sphere of ‘pure’ reasoning, in the real world things are much messier. The touchy issue of eugenics and its possible relation to H’s research into a genetic basis for altruism is, according to this book, a strong contender for one of the reasons H’s work and ideas were not always welcomed by the scientific and academic community at the time he was pursuing his work. In the post WWII climate, the idea of genetic root causes for human behaviours was decidedly out of favour.

As noted above, Segerstrale herself points out that BH wrote not for general readers but fellow specialists. The absence of a glossary of terms and the endorsements on the back cover suggest Segerstrale does the same. This was one of the first books in a glut of post Darwinian bicentennial reading where I felt I was getting either out of my depth, or just plain losing interest, or both.

a non ‘metal-head’ view (8 Oct 2007)

I felt compelled to write this review after reading about eight of the other reviews. As a quick preface: I’m not what you’d call a ‘metal fan’ as such. I grew up on a diet of classic rock (Zep, Cream, Purple etc), and even followed through to the metal of the ‘eighties (Maiden, Metallica, Slayer etc), but my chief musical passions lead me to music like Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, and jazz, funk & soul (Coltrane, Davis, James Brown, The Meters, Curtis Mayfield etc).

My two main points are, however, firstly: that this is – musically at least – phenomenal stuff. Not knowing (or even particularly caring for) genres such as ‘death metal’ etc I can’t compare Meshuggah with all the other bands in this area (e.g. I’ve never heard Fear Factory). As a drummer I can’t help but be awed by Tomas Haake’s incredible drumming, and, by way of illustrating some of my limited knowledge of contemporary metal, I find his whole approach (and that of the band as a complete entity) far more interesting and innovative than that of, for example, Mastodon, or their drummer, the much-lauded Brann Daillor. No offence to Daillor, who’s clearly a brilliant drummer too, it’s just that the Mastodon vibe is much more straight ahead and obvious, which goes for the rhythms and drumming too (and I really quite enjoy some Mastodon stuff by the way).

Before I get to point two, a quick aside re guitars: I think most jazz guitarists would sniff at the idea that the guitar solos are particularly advanced (especially in the harmonic sense: a true genius of the guitar, as long ago as the 1950’s, is Joe Pass, and if you need distortion and intensity, then check out John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu period stuff), but I doubt that many open minded jazz drummers could deny that Meshuggah’s rhythmic prowess and individuality is pretty awe inspiring. Their lead guitar sound is also so Allan Holdsworth-esque at times that the charge of it being derivative could quite easily be made to stick. It’s when the guitars are being used as rhythmic jack-hammers, to bludgeon the senses with the low-tuned and unusual meter angular riffs that one can sensibly talk of Meshuggah’s guitarists as being innovative and interesting.

So, on to point two: the vocals/lyrics. This a tricky and complex area, so I might not be that brief… I have to disagree with several reviewers here in commending the vocals. I mean no offence to the singer either, he does a sterling job. I absolutely love the music, but why is it mandatory in the metal arena to have guttural screaming and morbid lyrics? The music makes some very imaginative departures from the typical metal template… it’s a shame the lyrics and vocal delivery don’t go so far off the map. To qualify: the words are mostly at least interesting, intelligent and display a quasi-philosophical bent (it’s great to hear openly athiest views expressed in music without it being in the guise of pantomime paganism or satanism), which is better than some of the teenage death-core tripe some other ‘dark’ metal bands concentrate on.

I remember a member of Slayer (or was it Dave Mustaine of Megadeth?), possibly Kerry King, saying how lyrics about flowers being sung melodically just wouldn’t work in metal… why not? A subsiduary and related musical criticism is about variety. I like Vashti Bunyan and Meshuggah. Are there any artists (there’s bound to be a few mavericks out there – The Mars Volta kinda lean in this direction at times) who don’t plough such monorail furrows? Beck’s a good example of an eclectic and experimental contempoaray pop artist. Metal could do with being less of a specialist introverted ghetto (the intense claustrophobia of much metal music aptly puts one in mind of a teenage lad’s bedroom, probably one of the places where most ‘dark’ metal is consumed)… y’know, open up those doors and windows, let some fresh air in.

Anyway, ultimately Meshuggah are/were a blast of icy cold fresh air in their own way, and despite (and at times because of) their relentlessly heavy dark vibe remain a fairly unique and singular musical unit. I have my criticisms and all that… but I’m still giving this fantastic album the full five stars… ’cause it’s brain blattingly brilliant. ‘Nuff said.

Tantric Funk (18 Jul 2009)*

*This is a slightly edited version of my very old Amazon review.

I wrote a piece on this album for Drummer magazine (go buy it, it’s a great read!) some time back, and just now, listening to ‘Heaven At Once’ (track four) I thought ‘I bet if anyone’s reviewed this for Amazon this they haven’t mentioned this little doozy’. … I took a quick look, and it appears [at least at that time, pre 2018?] my suspicions were correct. 

Andy Edwards [who had a review on Amazon UK when I wrote this] has already said enough to justify any funk (or jazzy soul) lover flopping out their wallets or prizing open their purses for the better known tracks.

I just want to add that ‘Heaven At Once’ is a thing of nonpareil beauty, and yet another compelling reason to shell out for this masterpiece.

Kicking off with a languid and harmonious 16th note groove, a fabulous horn arrangement, with sax and vibes tootling away, a child’s voice then enters into a truly wonderful dialogue with superdude Kool, who ultimately reveals that he and his band, under the cover of being a completely groovy funky soulful outfit (not that he makes that boast), are actually “scientists of sound, mathematically putting it down”…

And what are these funky boffins (re)searching for? “The key to the light”. “What’s the key to the light?” You might well ask, as does the kid rappin’ with Kool… for the answer, go buy this deliciously fabulous peach of an album. 

It saddens me to say this, but, as far as I know, they (and by they I don’t mean Kool & The Gang, I mean anyone) don’t generally make ’em like this any more.

UPDATE (Jan, ‘25)

After crying like a big baby for hours, listening to their 80s hit Cherish, and the whole of Wild & Peaceful, for the umpteenth time, I felt perhaps I should address the rest of this awesome – six stars, no less! – recording.

‘The best ideas of the Beats remain as bracing, spirited, and subversive as in their heyday.’

My title for this review is Sterritt’s closing line, and I’d have to say I concur. In this very brief survey of the Beats, David Sterritt ranges over everything from the roots of Beat culture to its legacy, focussing in particular on the literary movement, via a glance over the novels, poetry and key authors and events. The links to other areas of artistic production, particularly music, painting and film are all of interest, but dealt with so briefly that it is a little frustrating. But, hey, that’s in the nature of this ‘Very Short Introduction’ series. 

Actually, given the very tight constraints of space, Sterritt packs a lot in. Some of it smacks a little of tokenism, as for example with the desire to include African American and female authors. I’m not saying these writers aren’t connected in the valid ways Sterritt puts forward, it’s just that I don’t see them as core Beat figures, and devoting space to them removes room for other material. Then, in addition to these moments of ‘inclusiveness’, there are the inevitable omissions or lacunae. Jazz singer Mark Murphy, and singer-songwriter Tom Waits, at least in his first decade or so (and even after that, albeit in a modified manner), are two great ‘men out of time’ Beats, for my money. Both Murphy and Waits have recorded specifically Beat material, and even, at times, endeavoured to live out a Beat lifestyle. 

It’s also worthy of note, I believe, that Kerouac literally wept over the disinterest of the horn players at his jazz/spoken word sessions, which, frankly (and I love a lot of both Kerouac and jazz) aren’t terrifically successful; Waits, on the other hand, has recorded loads of great recitative poetry with jazz-backing, effectively realising what Kerouac was originally going for, only far more successfully. One example of the latter being the superb ‘Jack & Neal’, on Waits’ superlative foreign Affairs album, which, like several of his earlier albums, is practically the Beat vision realised in musician terms. 

As a lover of many things Beat, it was fun to read this book and be reminded of a former self, and to be inspired to go back to some stuff I’ve read before, and read it again, or to explore some of the stuff I missed out on in my own ‘Beat’ days: I’ve always meant to but never got around to reading John Clellon Holmes novel Go. Must do it! Some of the stuff Sterritt covers, for example the Carr/Kammerrer story (which revolves around sex, obsession and death), was something I only learned about relatively recently, when the excellent Kerouac/Burroughs collaboration – apparently unfinished, acc. to Sterritt; tho’ I don’t recall attention being drawn to this in the book when I read it, and I read the peripheral stuff as well – And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks was published. This interesting chapter in Beat history finally came out only after an injunction put in place by Carr (or his estate) lapsed.

For me another essential contradiction in the Beat mindset or lifestyle, in addition to the introvert/extrovert one (as alluded to above, in Sterritt’s concluding remark that provides my title), and at the root of some of the sniffy reactions to Beat writing – Truman Capote famously dissed OTR, saying it wasn’t writing, but merely typing – is that between the intellectual and the physical, for want a better expression of duality or polarity. Kerouac himself was very much a tortured incarnation of this potentially troublesome bi-polarity, being both the literary ‘jock’ and Catholic Bhuddist. Neal Cassady certainly embodied the latter, the ‘cowboy crashing’, as Gary Snyder puts it, but, and I think this is crucial, Kerouac also saw an innate intellect in Ginsberg’s ultra-physical ‘cocksman and Adonis of Denver’, describing one of Neal’s epic letters as ‘the greatest piece of writing I ever saw’. And as is clear in On The Road, one of the best known products of Beat writing and culture, Kerouac sensed from very early on that, in Sterritt’s synopsis ‘the Beat ideal is unattainable’. 

Whilst there was a present and future focus of sorts and in parts of the Beat zeitgeist, certainly in Kerouac there was also a backwards looking, elegiac side, and I don’t think Sterritt really addresses this, although he does address much of both what is good and bad about the Beats, their work, and the culture it sprang form, and continues to influence. Returning briefly to the musical links, the role of jazz in the formation of the Beat aesthetic is covered well, but it was disappointing to hear, on the other side of the coin, in discussing Beat culture as a source for new music, only of Burroughs’ connections with punk, Laurie Anderson, and Tom Waits: I love the Spare Ass Annie recordings he made with The Disposable Heroes of Hip-Hoprisy! And rather as Waits succeeded where Kerouac often didn’t, in joining his words with jazz, I think Spare Ass Annie is a more successful presentation and collaboration than is the Waits/Burroughs album. I say this as a massive fan of both of the latter; but even Burroughs himself concedes that some creative experiments come off better than others, admitting that some of his own writing is ‘unreadable’.

When it comes to the Beats and film, Sterritt mentions and quotes from the superb documentary ‘Whatever Happened To Jack Kerouac?’ If Tom Waits first decade of recording is the Beat vision realised musically, then this film is the Beat vision, specifically regarding Kerouac in particular, realised as documentary. Similar but different would be Bruce Weber’s Let’s Get Lost, a dreamy biopic of Chet Baker. What the latter has in common with the former is the powerful evocation of a mood that is also part of the charm of the artist they depict. The Kerouac biopic – essential viewing for all true connoisseurs of Beat culture in my view – also succeeds incredibly well in invoking a time and place, indeed, a whole culture, that Kerouac was eulogising as it disappeared in the rear-view mirror.

I’ve still yet to see Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy, the only ‘truly’ Beat movie. I suspect Youtube will oblige! Ironically I suspect that, like his celebrated photo-journalist work Americans, which has a foreword by Kerouac, and is mentioned here, it might disappoint. Sterritt also mentions a number of movies made about the Beats, from George Peppard toting a sax in the Hollywood schlock reading of The Subteranneans (in which the female lead is changed from black to white) to Cronenberg’s ‘lumbering’ Naked Lunch. I don’t agree with all his appraisals – I like Heart Beat, and found the 2010 film Howl worthy and interesting but but ultimately unsatisfactory – and tend to feel that given the potential for great Beat movies, the era is ill-served, parody being the norm and serious treatments the exception.

According to Sterritt the Beats themselves yearned to realise ‘Hollywood magic … free of Hollywood commercialism.’ The wait goes on! In the meantime we must look elsewhere! And here one might think of the international legacy of the beats: what could be more Beat than some of Wim Wenders’ movies? Whilst Sterritt briefly addresses the notion of the Beat influence as a global phenomenon (via a William Burroughs quote from ‘Whatever Happened To Jack Kerouac?’) he doesn’t get much further than that. I’d argue that Wenders movies like Kings Of The Road and Paris Texas are Beat film making par excellence, as are some Jim Jarmusch films, such as Stranger than Paradise and Down By Law.

For such a short book I guess I’ve written a rather long review! I guess that just shows that the Beats still mean a lot to me. I hope this well-written and interesting book, for all that it can’t cover very much of what is a large subject, helps inform and enthuse others, because, for all that went wrong, whether it be Kerouac’s tragic descent into alcoholism and apron-string Catholicism, or ‘Bull’ Lee’s fatal shooting of his common-law wife – allegedly during a ‘William Tell routine’ – the best of the art and ideas of the Beats do indeed remain as bracing, spirited, and subversive as in they were their heyday.