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.
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.
Caroline Vout at the Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology.
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.
The author.
* 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.
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 but very different way, Tolkien (and his son) have also contributed to changing our world, by inventing a new one. I’m not trying to compare Tolkien or Darwin in terms of what it was that they achieved, 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 of a slog.
The dense historical and mythological nature of parts of these writings can, in places, be quite arduous, and the large amounts of names, genealogies, and detailed reference to Middle Earth’s topography, can be 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!
“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!
Clear and pertinent insights. But, poss’ stating the obvious & preaching to the converted?
Originally published on the Amazon UK website, a number of years back, it seemed to me that this would sit well here, now, along with my recent reviews of a few other more recent books critiquing capitalism.
I like the idea behind this book a lot – what Sandel calls the ‘marketization of everything’ is indeed a cause for concern. And I remember hearing and enjoying his Reith lectures, on BBC Radio 4, back in 2009, on the theme of ‘a new citizenship’, in which, if memory serves, he mentioned some of the ideas discussed in this book.
However, this is a rather thin book in terms of concepts and arguments (I read it in one evening), whilst considered in terms of lists and repetition it is, as several other reviewers have noted, rather fat. When Lyell or Darwin do this, in their books on geology or evolution, one feels the cumulative weight of their evidence was entirely necessary. By comparison, Sandel’s examples seem limited and almost entirely anecdotal. And if, as some reviewers suggest (and I suspect they may be right) this book is preaching to the converted, do we need so many examples?
His opening question, the two principles of ‘coercion’ (relating to fairness and choice in an unequal world) and ‘corruption’ (the corrosive effect that supposedly neutral markets can have in valuing goods), along with the closing statement (actually just a reiteration of the opening questions: ‘Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?’), supported by a few examples, could’ve made the same case in just a fraction of the space.
An Amazon reviewer calling themselves Sphex has said elsewhere that ‘We all know of public figures who scoff at the idea of progress and make a good living bemoaning the current state of the world’. My guess is (the Sphex quote comes from a review of Stephen Pinker’s Better Angels book) he’s referring to John Gray. Whilst one hopes and imagines that Sandel does at least believe we might be able to do something in the face of ‘market triumphalism’ he offers no ideas whatsoever here: this is really just a long (and, at £20, expensive) litany of woes. Whilst Sandel might not be blowing a dirge on the trumpet of pessimism in quite the same way Gray does, he does appear to be trading in gloom.
Although I’m in more or less complete agreement with him that rampant deregulated capitalism running amok in every walk of life is doing immense amounts of harm, I found the parade of morally repellent practices he adduced as evidence, well… frankly, depressing. And on the evidence given here current trends look resolutely headed towards ever more of life being colonised by commerce. Certainly a debate on these issues is needed. But, as Sandel quite correctly points out, neither debate nor engagement on such issues are in a healthy way.
Sandel is American, which is evident not only in his spelling, but also most of his substantive focus, and I feel this book would have benefitted from casting its net wider. I would like to have given the book more stars, but I don’t think it will change many minds, and amongst its readership the litany of gloom might even prove de-motivational. It didn’t really tell me anything new, other than a few specific details of how awful modern capitalism can be, and how frighteningly amoral or immoral its apologists often are, adding a few gory details to the minutiae of horror that its ever spreading tentacles of doom represent.
As whistle-blowing, or acting the role of the boy who shouts ‘the emperor’s butt naked!’, the points Sandel makes are a necessary element of a debate that needs to be happening. Catch-phrase economists passing off their ‘expertise’ as morally neutral, and the oxymoronic concepts that suggest economics is at one and the same time both scientific and yet also clairvoyant are myths more deserving of deconstruction than, for example, Gray’s pet hate, progress. But as well as the critique, the negative, we need positive suggestions, and there are none to be found here.
Transferred, and very slightly amended, from an old Amazon UK review.
This tiny 20 or so page pamphlet is not really a book.
As well as containing the essay boldly if drably emblazoned on the cover, there’s also a very brief review of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. An odd pairing at first glance, but less so when one considers the subject of the first essay in broader terms. In fact Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf is a succinct example of the clarity and concision advocated in the main foregoing essay.
I’ll not say any more about Orwell’s review of the book that helped launch Hitler on his ill-started career here. So, to the main event. In discussing the relationship of politics to the English language, Orwell begins by using five examples of what he deems to be turgid, pretentious and, in several instances, largely meaningless prose, thereby attacking pretentiousness and politicking. Having given examples, he extracts five principles of poor English usage – his ‘catalogue of swindles and perversion’ – giving them such names as ‘dying metaphor’, and ‘pretentious diction.’
He also puts forward six principles he feels writers ought to follow. Essentially it all boils down to clarity, honesty, concision and simplicity, as basics, with freshness and vividness, should you choose to use metaphor, as the icing on the cake. As some other reviewers of this little publication have observed, Orwell is oversimplifying things drastically to make his points, and even admits he’s guilty of the sins he’s throwing stones at. But this remains a pretty well written case for clarity, honesty and transparency in writing and thinking.
Despite this, and despite some rather unconvincing caveats from Orwell himself, this has the salty tang of Canute against the waves about it. And if he’s right about some things (say for example ‘politics and the debasement of language’) he’s flat wrong about others: both the clichés he refers to on p. 17 (read it to find out they are!) are still alive and well and, whether by the same rules as biology or not, languages and their usages certainly do evolve, an idea he doesn’t seem entirely happy with.
Ultimately I disagree with his reductive and proscriptive stance. Yes language can be and often is political, and yes it can be and often is used to ‘humbug’ us, and ‘give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’ (his objection to lazy off-the-shelf language and its anaesthetic affect on human consciousness is put beautifully, and remains a challenge to us now, perhaps even more so in our info-saturated cyber age). But language is also a rich, evolving, free-flowing mode of human expression, and to seek to control it as Orwell seems to want to do here, is to sit Canute like, before the waves.
Certainly I’ll be thinking about his list of rules, and trying perhaps to employ some of them; clarity and concision – basically the trimming away of verbal fat – being the most obvious and compelling aims. But, unlike Orwell, I won’t be consigning any phrases (except perhaps the new-speak of business culture?) to any kind of literary dustbin.
As others have noted, given the subject, and the slightness of this publication, the typos (particularly egregious is ‘turning’ rendered as ‘turmng’, in a note on p. 7.) are inexcusable!
Stimulating and thought provoking, but something of a flawed oddity, both in itself, and in this tiny, slim format.
Judith Herrin’s Byzantium is an engaging read, which is exactly what I want in a popular history book.
She puts it well in her concluding statement when she summarises all the possible reasons why one might naturally be fascinated by the story of Byzantium – as a bulwark against Islam for nascent Western Europe, as the inheritor of Greek and Roman legacies, as the Eastern half of Christendom, or countless other things ranging from the creation of new alphabets to the use and roles of eunuchs – concluding that it’s not any one of these things, but the combination, what she calls “a rich ecology of traditions and resources”, that make for such a fascinating history.
She does seem to have a bee in her bonnet about the “systematic calumnies” perpetrated against Byzantium by the West, and she pinpoints the root of this as being the sack of Constantinople in 1204 during the Crusades. I was, personally, unaware of this allegedly jaundiced view, but I can quite easily see that she may well be right. Diarmid McCullough, in his History of Christianity makes a similar special plea for the re-evaluation of Eastern Christendom, so she’s certainly not alone in taking this position.
Byzantium is delightfully pleasurable straightforward reading on the whole (although I think a glossary would be a good addition), structured in easily digested bite-sized thematic chapters.
One minor irritation was the way the supernatural side of religion (Christianity in particular, naturally, given the subject of the book) was related as if factual (e.g. p 107, ‘Leo’s defence … intercession of the Virgin’, or p 103 ‘Sometimes the icons … powers.’ This last is immediately followed by a short section couched in two lights, first as if the supernatural were factual (‘Patriarch Sophronius … witnessed’ etc), and then in a more historical/rationalist vein; ‘individuals who believed themselves cured’ etc. I find this double-standard a little odd.
Herrin explicitly states in her intro that she’s deliberately emphasising the role of religious belief (and in particular her feel for the historical weight of Christian belief: ‘an intensely personal view’ founded in work done on her previous book The Formation Of Christendom) in a history where she feels ‘secular scholarship and popular appreciation’ may be in danger of forgetting or overlooking this.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, yet there is a dissonance when religious experience (and by that I mean the supernatural aspects of religious belief) is couched in exactly the same terms as any other ‘fact’.
And indeed I was really struck by how little rational qualification of such ‘data’ there was, and how late it started putting in its rare appearances. So much so that when, roughly a third of the way through the book, on p101, she actually qualified a statement (‘Visions and … were alleged … icons.’), I felt like saying ‘at last!’
Quite what her exact personal position is, in religious terms, is then, potentially, an important and relevant issue to the proper understanding of the book.
I only saw one episode of the TV series Marcus Du Sautoy recently had on TV (must see if I can track it down on iPlayer!), and it was very interesting. So when this came up on Vine I jumped at the chance to get it.
Engaging for his boyish enthusiasm, Du Sautoy has a wonderfully straightforward, unpretentious delivery. This is very much a popular series for the uninitiated layman, although one hopes the boffins will also enjoy hearing their subject getting a popularist boost.
More than being an exposition of the hardcore technicalities of maths itself, this is a story of the people involved, and their contributions to the evolution of a branch of human inquiry that has, as time goes on, proved ever more intriguing, baffling, and yet also practical and enlightening. Du Sautoy makes some extravagant claims for maths, the “queen of the sciences”, quoting or paraphrasing Galileo, and portraying maths as the light that will illuminate us in our understanding of the otherwise dark and obscure maze of the world. Not being a mathematician, I can’t go as far or as confidently as Du Sautoy, but I think it’d be churlish not to agree that, whether you go all the way with him or not, maths is clearly hugely important in human development, and in the evolution of scientific understanding.
Over ten episodes Du Sautoy covers numerous stars of the mathematical firmament, starting with the controversy over ‘the calculus’, and who got there first; Leibniz or Newton? Whilst Newton voted himself (via his position in the Royal Society), official winner of the debate, Du Sautoy is, one feels, more in Leibniz’s corner. The story behind this is fascinating. He then goes on to cover such characters as Euler, amongst whose many achievements was a definitive solution to the ‘seven bridges of Königsberg’ conundrum, which has, so the series tells us, become fundamental to the workings of the internet!
Fourier’s work, as one of Napoleon’s “army of intellectuals”, on his ill-fated (albeit productive: the Rosetta stone was part of the booty) Egyptian campaign, was initially about the study of heat, but ultimately enlightend us about all kinds of waves, including light and sound. Brian Eno is brought in (each episode features a guest expert or two) to explain and demonstrate how Fourier analysis can be used in modern music, which, as a musician, I found very interesting.
I was aware of Gauss from my work as an illustrator (using Gaussian filters in Photoshop, for example), but learning how Gaussian distributions on graphs help statisticians model realistic patterns in apparently muddled data, and how this has become so useful in such areas of applied science as modern medicine, was very interesting. I always like to hear the back-story of great achievements, and Du Sautoy is “pained” that figures like Bolyai, Loachevski and Riemann, on whose shoulders Einstein (apparently not the greatest mathematician himself) and his theory of relativity rest, are not better known. Whether I’ll remember these new and obscure names, I don’t know, but their story is fascinating.
Du Sautoy always get most enthused when the maths is at its most ‘pure’: he loves Cantor and his infinity of infinities. This is an example where the concepts are easy enough for the general layman to understand, and yet touch on ideas that are either mind-blowing, or mind numbing, or possibly both (but in a good way). And then there’s Poincaré, whose errors in a theory submitted to a prestigious maths competition (set up by the then king of Sweden) ultimately gave rise to chaos theory. Here we touch on a subject we love so much in Britain: the weather! The systems work according to rules, but tiny variations in the variables can produce great differences in outcomes.
Some of the characters are tantalisingly, excitingly tragic, adding unexpected romance and pathos to the story of maths, such as the young Évariste Galois, killed aged 20 in a duel, whose insights have subsequently proven useful in physics, apparently working very well for the study of sub-atomic particles. Another touching story is that of Hardy, a pure mathematician who apparently didn’t care too much for the practicality of his maths (a trait of ‘real’ mathematicians Du Sautoy claims is of the utmost importance: practical benefits may come hundreds of years later), and his correspondence and working relationship with a self-taught Indian mathematician, Ramanujan. Both were to driven to despair, indeed, both attempted suicide (unsuccessfully) at different times in their lives, driven half-crazy by the ‘demonic’ primes. The fruits of their struggles? The complex codes that protect our personal data on the internet. Would Hardy have been pleased about this grubby commercial use of his obscure mathematical musings? Du Sautoy thinks not. But, whatever, the story is fascinating.
An excellent series from the good ol’ Beeb, proving that the license fee is still worth paying. I just wish there was more of this sort of thing on TV and radio. Well worth shelling out for.
NB: This is an archival review, first written 10 or more years ago, as part of the Amazon Vine programme. Sadly Amazon booted me off the program and deleted all my (thousands of) reviews!* Some of them I had back ups of. So I’m putting those up here, slowly but shirley!
* No explanation given, either!
There’s a lot here of real interest: some obscure artists, old and new, get some much merited exposure, and some seemingly divergent strands of musical interest are drawn together into an interesting if somewhat patchwork narrative.
Like the author’s barnet (see the cover of Song Man), this is a messy affair, and at times I really wanted him to go deeper into whatever it was he was relating, but he would always be off on the next leg of his journey.
Given the scope of the project, and the bewildering range of ground and style he covers, this isn’t surprising. In fact knitting it all together at all is quite an achievement. He does a good job of accessing all kinds of disparate (and on the whole ‘outsider’) voices, and navigates tricky territory – the minefields of opinion – with skill, relating the views of those he meets whilst ultimately keeping his own counsel, mixing candour and balance laudably.
The use of the road trips themselves to bind the book together is quite clever, though at times it did intrude on the ostensible subject: music and the ongoing evolution of musical culture in Britain. By way of illustration I can insert myself into this review as he does into his book:
Despite having had several bangers myself (including a knackered old Astra), and even leaving caps off crucial parts of the engine by mistake (the oil tank in my case), leading to the decease of a beloved jalopy).
Also, being a mildly technophobic musician – because of these shared experiences perhaps I should be more sympathetic? – I found the threads relating to his car and Zoom digital recorder occasionally irritating. Perhaps this is ’cause I’m used to books on music that are more conventionally academic? Focussing solely on the subject, without the author becoming a noticeable part of the fabric of the book.
Having said this, it was a fascinating read, and he is working in territory that sorely needs more light shining on it. When he occasionally muses on the wider cultural setting: the implications of our current state, both socially and musically, and in terms of how these might relate, and where we’re heading, it’s quite interesting: music is, or can be, or perhaps ought to be, something related to the fabric of our daily lives, as opposed to no more than product that we consume.
Perhaps as time progresses we will see, as he says, “that what we need in life is right there in front of us” and, perhaps, as the old markets and models collapse, a new climate of organic micro-scenes will become more normal, and we’ll all be able to enjoy a more egalitarian and participatory musical experience?
But there’s a note of the melancholy that he sees in his subject in the book itself: he admits (as do I) that the music of the sixties and seventies holds a particular fascination for him, and there’s a constant sense that he has to go digging out all this obscure stuff because the mainstream so ill serves us.
At the end of the book I have to confess I felt a little deflated: he covers loads of really interesting stuff (I love The Wicker Man references, and the history of early folk song collectors is fascinating), and succeeds in avoiding any glib over-arching conclusions or pronouncements. But he kind of leaves the reader hanging mid-air, with all kinds of loose threads flapping about in the windy rainy autumnal collective consciousness that he sees as the melancholy and cyclic heart of British music.
