What I've been reading, April-June 2011
Remake/Remodel: Art, Pop, Fashion and the Making of Roxy Music, 1953-1972 - Michael Bracewell
Another snappy title. I was crazy about Roxy Music from the time I saw them at a small gig at some London college in 1972, not long before Virginia Plain was a massive hit, to the release of Flesh and Blood in the early 1980s. I thought the creative spark had gone by then - I wasn't one of the RM fans who missed Eno after For Your Pleasure - and that Bryan Ferry was more interested in his solo career. Thankfully, as the title suggests, this book doesn't go anywhere near Flesh and Blood. Michael Bracewell does a neat job of veering away from style-over-content in this - he hasn't always been so successful at it before - and has come up with a very creditable history. It isn't just about RM, of course, but it is mostly about Bryan Ferry. MB covers his origins and childhood in 1950s Durham well, and gives the reader a great picture of BF's quest to make art. I think BF was more taken up with the theory of art rather than the practice, and for what he wanted to do, this approach was perfect. MB covers the art scene exhaustively, covers its main players, and the importance of Richard Hamilton in BF's development. By the time we get to the early origins of RM, there is very little left in the book for Eno, and even less for Andy Mackay and Phil Manzanera, and Paul Thompson is given a cursory few pages. However, if this looks like a complaint, it isn't, really. MB doesn't forget style and fashion, either, and its place in getting BF to RM and beyond. Roxy were the original art rock band, and this books tells you why and how.Not an easy read - it took me a year of dipping in and out - but certainly a worthwhile one.
McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers - Misha Glenny
Misha Glenny is a great journalist, who has made his patch the entire world in this look at organised crime. He ranges from the post-Soviet states to Latin America, Africa, and the Far East. What comes out of it is a genuine sense of the helplessness of governments when faced with crime so organised, and so prevalent, that it would take up all their time and resources to deal with it. Governments can only stop the odd trickle of crime and corruption, it is clear; while they're busy with that, the rest of it keeps flooding. There are individuals - a tough cop here, a brave judge there, a little man against the world - who will face the challenge in their area, but when they're gone (and they frequently, and inevitably, burn out, are killed or corrupted) we are on our own. Another book I took my time reading, just dipping in every now and then. My one criticism of it is its sameyness, but this is expected of a book with this kind of approach.
Fallen Angel: the Passion of Fausto Coppi - William Fotheringham
I love everything William Fotheringham writes, from his journalism to his books (I think I've read all of them). He's a classically good writer in that he is an expert in his subject (pro cycling, if that's not clear) but never condescends, never gets too geeky, and always puitches his work at exactly the right level. I had every faith that this biography of Coppi would be what I'd been after ever since I heard of Coppi. The bare facts are that Coppi, from a small village in Italy, was set for cycling stardom when the Second World War intervened. He didn't see too much action, luckily, and, again luckily, was captured by the British, who treated him tolerably, and even let him get back to riding while still a POW. The end of the war brought a risorgimento to Italian cycling in a divided, broken country, always on the verge of either bankruptcy or the dreaded communism, and it was partly Coppi's cycling triumphs that gave Italians something to be cheerful about. Coppi's marriage, to a woman called Bruna, who believed in him as a man and as a cyclist, fell apart when Coppi, notoriously, took up with doctor's wife Giulia Locatelli, known as the White Lady, though scarlet would have been a better colour in the moral scheme ruling Italy. Other figures fascinate: Fausto's beloved brother Serse, who died during a race, his blind masseur who had such an influence on him, and, famously, his rivalry with the other great Italian cyclist of the day, Gino Bartali. It's all there, and all told in such a way that I didn't want this book to end.
His Illegal Self - Peter Carey
Unfortunately, I was only too happy for this book to end. I was appalled at how dull it was, how incoherent, how carelessly written, how throwaway. Peter Carey has written some of the best novels I've read - I rate My Life As a Fake among the best ever written. HIS is muddled as to time frame, place and narrator, jumping back and forth between several points-of-view; not that this was hard to follow, as such, I just thought it was... inelegant, for want of a better word, kind of lumpen, kind of ugly. I wasn't concinced by any of the characters at all. I'm sure this is a blip in Carey's output, and I'm equally sure his next book will be better. I think there's only good writing - not good writers, as such - and this is an example of what I mean when I assert that. I think if an unknown had offered this to a publisher, they might have seen the potential but told the author to go away and brush up on some of the basics. This feels rather snide - some unknown writer like me dissing a giant like PC - but it's not meant to be, and I can't think, at the moment, of another way to think about this book. (I didn't like Bliss, either, but at the time I read it my expectations of Peter Carey weren't so high.)
Imperial Bedrooms - Bret Easton Ellis
Most people love or hate BEE, and I must confess to being a lover of his work. I've liked everything he's done except Glamorama and Lunar Park, in which he is the main character in his own novel, taking Martin Amis's cheeky, and artfully done, conceit to a ridiculous level. The meandering style of the books I like appeals to me, really, as I don't seem to like the ones in which he works to a story. Imperial Bedrooms picks up on characters from Less Than Zero and the Rules of Attraction, and shows us their still rather aimless, nothing lives twenty years on. As such, it's a bit of a wander through sinister-looking parts of LA, with mysterious cars and strangers - or are they all in the main character's head? They could be, in BEE's work. So I liked it, in general, but can't remember much about it, and probably won't read it again. This book is the first book I read on Kindle.
Fragmented - Jeremy Worman
I have yet again to declare that I know the author of this collection of autobiographical sketches and stories. Jeremy Worman has been peeling off some great ideas over the years, and while this may not be typical of him, it's Jeremy at his best: funny, to the point, and, a trick that a lot of life writers fail to pull off, modest. He is at the centre of most of the stories, but he's never self-indulgent, and he manages to fade himself into the background to become the narrator with great ease. I'm not a fan of what's called life writing, and I approached these tales with some trepidation, but all my fears were laid to rest once I'd started on the first page. Jeremy traces incidents in his life with humour and self-effacement. They are above all stories, with beginnings, middles and ends, so as long as this fundamental of storytelling works, the rest is kind of assured. Some of them he could have easily written as third-person tales, removing himself completely, and they would have been just as entertaining. I hope this book does well, and look forward to more from Jeremy.
The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceaucescu - John Sweeney
Great name, no relation... Published not very long after the events of 1989 when, as everybody knows, the Ceaucescu regime was the one that fell the most dramatically, the book has a very snappy feel – pure journalism, and no over-analysis. Much of it is the work of a competent historian, and traces the background to the fall of a man who not only overstayed his welcome, but trashed the place as well. There was a time, in the 1960s, when Nicolae Ceaucescu was seen to do no wrong – except by the Russians – at home or abroad. The basic character of the man was that of a control freak, however; he made the mistake of all tyrants – look at Gaddafi and the Assads in Syria– by creating a corrupt dynasty, missing the point, I always think, of ruling a country, which is that the best people should do it. An enjoyable book.
Blood on My Hands: a Surgeon at War - Craig Jurisevic
Jurisevic is a doctor from Australia with Serbian antecedents. He had seen the Balkan wars of the early 90s on TV, but was stung to action when the war began in Kosovo. Like a hero from a comic book, he upped and left his job and his family and went to become a doctor for the Kosovar forces fighting the Serbs. He crossed a moral line when he decided to pick up a gun and fight as well as perform his duties as a surgeon in the field. This is his memoir of his time there, and, whether you agree with the morality of it or not, it’s certain that he did a lot of good in Kosovo. He writes it very well, too, and keeps away from the self-aggrandising you might expect. Another of those books, like Anthony Loyd’s My War Gone By, I Miss It So, by people who have made a difficult choice and stuck with it, and, literally, lived to tell the tale.
Go - Simon Lewis
I liked this a lot, but unfortunately can't remember that much about it now. Does that make it 'throwaway'? Maybe. It's a decently-written and well-paced thriller centring on the interlinked stories of several 20-somethings with different reasons for getting out of Britain, mainly to avoid retribution for ill-advised crimes. The book ranges over the Far East beach and city cultures, and began reminding me very much of Alex Garland's The Beach, which is no bad thing.
The Lost Stradivarius - Martin Fine
A wannabe high-adventure yarn, but not, in my opinion, done very well. I may be wrong, but this seems to me like somebody who read something like The Da Vinci Code and decided they'd do something similar. A charity shop buy. I don't think I'd have bought it new. You expect this sort of thing to have a familiar plot, but the writing needs to be tight, and this wasn't, with far too many digressions, inconsequential scenes, painful dialogue and a bit too much research on show. But I finished it, anyway, so it obviously wasn't dire...
