Counago & Spaves

Started reading DBC Pierre's prize-winner and must confess I was initially impressed with the originality and style of the book. It was well-observed and the metaphors were amusing, even though the characters were a bit cliche'd. Things were going fairly well until about page 86, by which point fuck all had happened and I got tired of wading through every tortuous simile and trying to keep track of who was doing what.

I also heard Ewen Bremner reading the audiotape version of it, and that put me right off. Maybe it was just Bremner's voice - I'd have preferred Rory Bremner, maybe - but it drew attention to how contrived the whole project is. I'm sure it's worth persisting with, but I've already put it down in favour of Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Andrew Wilson. I do prefer nonfiction to fiction most of the time, and Highsmith comes across as much darker than anything in VGLittle. Moreover, she was highly photogenic as a young lesbian, and I'm looking forward to the graphic Sapphic bits, especially when followed by depression, guilt, envy, and cruelty. She seems like someone I'd have loved to meet.

Or the other way round in my case. In the space of five minutes, one of my writers phoned in to tell me her father had died, then the husband of another e-mailed me to tell me his wife had given birth to a baby girl, 10 pounds 6 ounces. Some birth!

All we need now is some sort of spooky birthmark or coincidental name-choice. I'll keep you posted.

I love Harper's magazine.

The following items were among those found in the last two years during California's Coastal Cleanup Day, an annual event in which volunteers remove debris from the state's shorelines. Since the program began in 1985, 8.5 million pounds of garbage have been removed.

4-foot-long stuffed toy salmon
horse's head
urinal drain
cat's headstone stating "Your soul is safe now! The spirit is home. Rest in God's Peace."
baby bird in a jar
2 phone booths
styrofoam Tiki god
home pregnancy test
Barbie doll with a nail through its hand
pit bull chained to a tree
Scooby Doo underwear
10 dead leopard sharks
plastic eyeball
wooden duck
"Just Married" sign
half a bowling ball
Led Zeppelin album
preserved jalapenos
fuzzy dice
check written to Taco Bell for $8.78
Dracula teeth
crutch
foam foot advertising a fungus cream
half a turtle shell with leg attached
bird burial box stating "My beloved Chico is dead in this box. He died of old age."
porcupine bones
divorce papers
dead goats in a bag

On Abu Ghraib, taken from Eric Alterman's article in The Nation (he is not endorsing this view, by the way).

"... all the while saying, as the Daily Show's Rob Corddry so brilliantly put it, 'Remember, it's not important that we did torture these people. What's important is that we are not the kind of people who would torture these people.'"

Just to sustain the animal imagery in the titles.

Marvel Comics have created a new version of Spider-Man for the Indian market. Check it out!!

The only new phrase I didn't recognize in Word Spy: The World Lover's Guide to Modern Culture, by Paul McFedries. One of the hazards of my job, I suppose, is exposure to all the neologisms smart-arse American journalists invent to describe new forms of social phenomena (empty-nesters, soccer moms, blogging, etc.), but I was surprised how little I'd missed. It wasn't until around page 200 that this phrase appeared, and there were only another 50 or so pages to go.

Ok, no more suspense: It's the nickname for a gluelike substance the military sprays over sand in the desert to prevent sandstorms whenever helicopters are landing or taking off. Underwhelming, eh?

What a fucking hero.

Ted Rall, who was featured in The Guardian as America's most offensive man yesterday, tells it like it is about Reagan.

Back from two weeks in beautiful, unspoilt (except by earthquakes) Cephalonia, or Kefalonia, or Kefalinnia, whichever you want. Didn't do much other than lie by the pool or on the beach reading or going for lengthy, loafing lunches featuring Mythos beers and lots of olives.

Lourdas is largely populated by exceedingly congenial Brummies, but there was the odd objectionable Cockney pissing in the pool and discussing cricket at the top of his voice. God, what arseholes some people can be.

Anyway, I owe you several book reports:

Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson: Despite being set in the vast open spaces of the Himalayas, an oddly claustrophobic book thanks to all the intimate details provided of practically every step taken up and down the side of the mountain. Some sections of the book are impressive and get the adrenalin going, whereas other parts are dry and technical. I suspect that once you see the film, you decide "What a pair of morons they are, doing something as daft as climbing up the side of a mountain. Not even for charity."

Exile and The Kingdom, by Albert Camus: No one writes more plainly and more evocatively than our Albert. A series of short stories set in Algeria that brought to mind Raymond Carver but without the weltschmerz or the crappy pretentiousness.

The Life of Pi, by Yann Martel: Loved it. A story about a young Indian boy trapped at sea on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Who'd have thunk you could write a detailed 400-page book about something as unlikely as that? And be entertaining to boot. I was slightly disappointed by the 'alternative' ending: It would have been better treated as a straightforward narrative. Recommended nevertheless.

Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer: Some of the writing in this book, too, is original, inventive, and imaginative. I can understand how these two books won awards. Ths one didn't work quite so well, but it was Foer's first book and he was only 27 so kudos is due. Wait to see if he can repeat the performance . . . or will he write anAutograph Man?

Interesting Times, by Eric Hobsbawm: Okay, I should have realized when I picked this up that it was going to be an autobiography by an academic and therefore incredibly tedious, but Hobsbawm has had, one would have thought, a life less mundane than most academics. Well, you wouldn't know it from reading this tedious piece of reminiscence. The dullness was only relieved by my pleasure at reading how the antipathy of Welsh nationalists drove him and his academic mates from their idyllic second home in North wales (and reading his subsequent self-justification, "Marxists are internationalists, not nationalists," ignoring altogether (and missing the irony of that, too) the class issues involved in a bunch of Oxbridge academics holidaying in the midst of depopulated poverty. I was also delighted to read that one of his good friends for many years was Dorothy Wedderburn, who was president of my college in London and with whom my dear friend Mark Waller had an infamous run-in.

After I'd left Bedford College and before producing Timperley Village Anarchist, there was the abortive Rent Grenada magazine, which never saw the light of day. However, one of the completed pages featured a large photo of the Queen Mother and the lyrics to a song called Bessie's Bag, by a schoolmate of Martin's, the subject of which was the Queen Mother's colostomy bag (I know, I know, but it was very punk rock). The QM was made patron of the college after I left and was due to attend a ceremony there; Mark was still a student there at the time. I gave him a copy of the offending page, which he photocopied and distributed en masse around the college on the day of QM's arrival. Unfortunately, he was identified as the perpetrator and dragged before Wedderburn, who was obviously embarrassed by the affair and threatened Mark with expulsion. He survived, of course, and went up in everyone's estimation for carrying out one of Bedford College Anarchists' few actions other than getting pissed in the bar.

Happy Days.

Virtual Light, by William Gibson. Started off promising but has now become a standard sci-fi book full of gadgetry and unimpressive futuristic prognostication. I'm halfway through and that's as far as I'm going. I just don't care what happens to the characters.

That's about all for now. Except that I'd always promised that when Reagan died I'd throw a party. Sadly, I didn't find out till this Saturday that the fucker had cheated me but not the grim reaper, so I missed all the dancing in the streets that must have taken place across the country. Still, he was on my list, wasn't he? We can double up when Thatcher goes and have a real hullabaloo.

I mentioned Reagan's death to my mate and work colleague Tom this morning. "Ah yes," he said. "Reagan's status is reported to be satisfactory."