David Peace: Tokyo Year Zero

Occupied City by David Peace
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In my review of this books predecessor (Tokyo Year Zero, I had a little rant about how much I admired Peace's ability to make crime (and its victims) matter. This book picks up on that theme early, with "The First Candle", written in the collective voice of victims of a mass killing:

"Do we matter to you? Did we ever matter?
Our mouths always screams,
already screams, screams
that mouth:
Your apathy is out disease; your apathy, a plague..." (p.6)

Notice a bit of repetition there? Just a smidge? Well hang on to your hats, people, because there is a lot more where that came from. Peace is not the first to use the technique, and while others have complained (and even satirised)it, until now I have always felt he uses it to good effect. With this one, though, I was cursing the geek who had ever invented the "cut and paste" function.  When I should have been hanging on every word while my head pounded with the rhythm, my eyes were skimming over paragraphs I had read one, two or three times before, thinking "Okay, Dave, okay. I get the point, already."

The book opens with a writer fleeing with an "unfinished book of unsolved crime" and the collective dead telling him that "we are here (...) because of you, our dear sweet, sweet writer dear, because of you..." (p.4). The theme of story telling, truth and lies runs through the book (and lends it a structure), suggesting Peace continues to grapple with the morality and motive of mining the annals of "true crime" for his work.

While these reflections should, in theory, enrich the novel in this case it didn't do it for me. I ended up feeling it was a valiant but ultimately unsatisfying attempt at a very ambitious project.

I can't help thinking that if Peace has come to the conclusion that in bringing the victims back to life the writer is "their wound", "their plague",(p.287) then perhaps the author's own ambivalence about the task is this book's biggest enemy.

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Tokyo Year Zero

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A very long time ago, someone close to people I cared about got murdered. For weeks, every lurid headline made me shudder, hoping they hadn't seen it. I swore off crime fiction for years afterwards, no longer having any tolerance for the death of someone's loved one being reduced to a plot device. And for exactly that reason, there's a lot of crime fiction I still really can't bear.

What I admire most about David Peace his ability to convey what is real about these events: grief and hurt and loss. Yes, there are murders, but in a David Peace book they matter. And the fact that they matter, that they are tragedies, means that reading Peace ain't no picnic. He is a master of his powers, its his skill that lets the reader understand tragedy. Characteristic stylistic techniques such as intruding internal voices, section introductions using different font, layout and voice in almost stream of conciousness flashes, and stark, short-sentence prose all work so effectively that there are bits that are hard to read, because you know that you probably should look away. And, perhaps because Peace draws from history to write his fiction (in this case a real case in immediate post-WWII Tokyo), redemption is hard to find. It you read crime for the satisfaction of justice and order being restored at the end, then this is not the book for you.

If there is redemption here, it is in a book rendered powerfully enough to make the reader see things they would rather ignore, the things that will continue for as long as we continue to look away.

I would rank it as good as GB84, better than The Damned United. The rest of the Japan trilogy is now on my list. (Might recharge the psychic batteries with something a bit fluffier first, though.)





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Bateman, you're a fiend

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis



My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A recent review (of another book) raised the possibility that this was another example of a narrator who was utterly unrealiable, and that Bateman never harmed a fly. Could this be true? I wish I had a copy handy so I could go and investigate. All I can say is that it has the distinction of being about the only book that has ever made me view my fellow commuters with a high degree of wariness and suspicion, nay, fear. It scared me.

Ultimately though, the driving force of this book is, in my view, a righteous rage directed firmly AT Bateman and all he represents. Very satisfying.

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Brasyl by Ian McDonald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars Who knew quantum physics could make such a good read. Slipping effortlessly as a Q-blade between the eighteenth century, an approximate present day and thirty years hence, this book is a great trip of sharp, riffing prose and well-rendered worlds (or should I say realities). Very much nestled in a S-F kind of tradition, and an enjoyable read. My only reservation is that I found the denoument did not quite live up to the impressive beginnings. View all my reviews >>

Bridget of Arabia

As you are probably aware, dear reader, before I turned thirty I had not stepped off the shores of the Great Southern Land. It was primarily laziness that did it. Not that I was too lazy to travel, I was just too lazy to do the working and saving required to pay for the tickets.

Anyway, in 2006 the stars started falling over themselves in their keeness to align, and I found myself suddenly in possession of a silver frequent flyer card. Fancy. And that was before I moved to Europe. Since then I have been doing my best to take advantage of the incredible proximity of wonders.

I am still a bit of a nuff-nuff as a traveller, I must say, but its not for want of opportunity. In fact, as I sit here procrastinating about finishing the three jobs I must finish before I head South on Monday, I am actually thinking rather wistfully about the idea of a good long stretch of solid, stolid stick-in-the-mudness.

Imagine my surprise, then, when on Wednesday a charming young man called Simon from Wanderlust rang me to say that I have won an 8-day trip for two to Jordon, courtesy of onthegotours.

Really. I am not making this up.

What makes is triply stupendous, is that it looks like there is a good chance that we will be able to book in for a trip that coincides with a very special event. I am not going to tell you what it is, though just in case all three of you that ever read this blog jam the switchboard and steal our spots before we have been able to snaffle them.

Stay tuned!

Now all I have to do is figure out which continent my copy of 'The Seven Pillars of Wisdom' is on....

Hackpacker's End of Melbourne Writer's Festival

I think this means I have lost the duel: Hackpacker's already outnumbering me on the blog front. Muskets at the ready for his latest cross-post from the Melbourne Writer's Festival.... As well as a beguiling name, Wells Tower has one of those author photos that promise much. It has the look of someone who is either hurt or about to throw a punch. His Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a blistering collection of short stories where you want to hear precisely what inflection the author puts on every word. His Friday free session was packed with folks who couldn't get one of the limited places in his Sunday workshop and although he spoke quietly he didn't disappoint. He was most interesting on his writing method citing the internet as 'lethal to writing and reading', because of its distracting power. He described his ideal writing day as working on creative fiction first thing in the morning when he was fresh, then giving the afternoon over to journalism then in the evening working on his screenwriting which he reckons comes easy to him. Sleep wasn't part of the equation. He emphaised the importance of revision by talking about the need the 'grad school' wisdom that that you begin thinking revision "is like cleaning up after the party, but you learn that revision is the party". Except for Wells there is no party. His hard work ethic and dazzling writing made me put a small note over my desk: WWWD (What would Wells do?) to stop me from goofing off on the web instead of writing. On Sunday there was a late (but free) addition to the program in the form of a chat with US editors hastily named "Are you a writer interested in submitting work to American magazines?". It just so happened I was, so I found myself in an audience of 50-odd other "interested" folks. Jessa Crispin characterised her Bookslut as for intelligent people "who won't be adjusting their monocle or putting on a faux British accent" while reading. She was intersted in writers with enthusiam and sincerity to write about books. McSweeney's publisher Eli Horowitz and The Believer editor Heidi Julavits talked enthusiastically about their publications. They found it difficult to characterise the kinds of writing they were after (Eli was influenced by some crocodile jerky he'd just been given and said he'd accept anything to do with crocodiles right now), but welcomed submissions. The Believer has 'a pathetically long lead time' of six months which means timely articles require a lot of organisation. Julavits pointed to the themed issues (around art, music and film) as good targets for publication and talked about her bias against the first person pronoun especially when the author intervenes in the story needlessly. A useful side point for publishers was that both areas had a good base of subscribers (Eli estimated that McSweeney's Quarterly had "about 8,000 subscribers" and "around 5,000" sales through bookstores). It means they know they're going to sell enough to pay the printer so they can swerve clear of advertising and can concentrate on content. As the festival rolls up its banner for another year, it's exciting to think of next year's fest with new director Steve Grimwade at the helm.

Melbourne Writer's Festival: Future of the Book

Today we are most honoured to be joined by Hackpacker, who sends us this missive fresh from the Melbourne Book Festival, as part of our duelling blogs series. Thursday the MWF got all digital. There were sessions dedicated to marketing in the info age and showing off the latest e-readers. I got along to three sessions but the whole day proved too much of a test of stamina and battery life. The opening was called the State of Digital Publishing. Victoria Nash and Elizabeth Weiss grappled with the huge subject from the publisher point of view. They were concerned about the rise of the $9.99 e-book and how it had pushed them into what Elizabeth refererred to as "Get all out books out there and have them competing" mentality. Victoria mentioned piracy and how they saw it as "protecting our authors' copyright and obviously our revenues". It all looked very industry-focussed and I felt like the author was out of the picture. Thirty minutes in Bob Stein got a word in about the future. He pointed out that more than a million books are available on public domain and that the book industry was facing the same challenges that video and music had online. He characterised it as seeing the book as something unique that allowed it "a free pass - I actually think it's going to be worse". It wasn't all grim as cloud computing would change the way we read and Bob pointed to newer shorter forms of writing that would thrive in this environment. Get your flash fiction ready now. The marketing session was interesting - apparently it's all about community and SEO. But no-one really had a good way to monetise community. Lonely Planet pointed to blogsherpa (sharing traffic with bloggers rather than pays them) and their new groups. While Brett Osmond pointed to sucesses they'd had like a Where the Wild Things Are Facebook page which offered fans (more than 40,000 of them last look) of the book new content. I couldn't help but thinking that a major movie might have pushed up the fan numbers a tad. The AirBourne project Random House conducted looked amazing with 28 chapters contributed by users and the whole manuscript bookended by thriller writer James Patterson. But again it was called "a marketing exercise" rather than a big moneyspinner. Thank god for Liner Notes' Thriller edition which ended the day on a high. Nick Earls mashed up Beat It with Masterchef while managing to sidestep Weird Al Yankovic's Eat It. But Melbourne's own shone out with Emily Zoey Baker doing a Jeff Goldblum impersonation, Sean M Whelan working his poetic alchemy on "Ma ma se mama sa ma ma coo sa" until the phrase had a new meaning and Ben Pobje told us how long lost twins getting it on was all part of Human Nature. A fitting tribute to the King of Pop that brought tears to the eye.

Books and Brits

My first Edinburgh Book Festival gig (the first I was let into anyway) was to see Ian Jack, who was impressively articulate and perceptive, as well as pleasingly rumpled, as a journalist shoud be. I could have happily listened to him chat with the venerable Ruth Wishart for some time, as I think could have the rest of the audience. Alas, it was not to be.The audience was completely white, mostly middle-aged, and entered with a kind of furrow-browed earnestness that said 'I'm not here to enjoy myself, my national identity is at stake.' It was wall-to-wall tweed and natural fibres. Until, that is, the speakers arrived. Enter stage left a very slim woman with perfect make-up, a blonde bob with edges as sharp as a knife, a short, red, body-hugging dress, heels and a broad patent leather belt. She had to be American.

She writes for the New York Times, apparently, but I have never read her. For a start,I don't read columnists in newspapers. If you want to witter on about nothing start a blog, I say. I did. I see no place for it in a publication whose function purports to be news. At least that's what I think until someone offers me a column, at which point I will be wholly and enthusiatically in favour.

Judging ONLY from the appearance at the Festival, one would conclude that her column consists of amusing little observations about those whacky English with their sexual hang-ups and refusal to use the word 'toilet' in polite company(really?). The overall impression was that she probably came from a part of New York that was solely inhabited by well-educated white people, and upon marrying an Englishman, now lives in an area of London solely inhabited by public-school educated white folk. Apparently, they love their dogs but have trouble expressing their emotions to humans. Well blow me down with a fucking feather.

Well, good luck to her, if she can manage to get a gig at Edinburgh festival to promote her collection of columns, she is clearly destined for great things. I am not sure that being part of a session billed as being a discussion of Britishness was the right place for her, though. In fact, having only glimpsed America through the prism of Vegas and Arizona (see above mentioned blog), I am not sure she was even going to be much use in a discussion of American identity. She claimed, among other things, that Americans - unlike the British - become Americans when they arrive on those shores, whereas the British are always looking back to their origins and staying exactly who they were in the first place (those naughty fundamentalist Pakistanis were cited as evidence).

The tweedy audience, feeling increasing hurrumphy, kept her on her toes. They have been quite feisty this year. One pointed out that both on the stage seemed to be speaking solely about some white, Christain, tea-and-biscuits version of Britain that no longer existed, if it ever had. Another pointed out that in her 15 years of living in America the people she met were constantly referring to themselves as 'Irish' or 'Italian', when in fact that had not been the case for four generations.'Well,' our American friend replied.'People got very interested in their heritage after Roots was on television.'

Please.

One small editorial note on the program. It described her take on the English as 'waspish' when they clearly meant to say 'W.A.S.Pish'. Regardless, the most eloquent statement of national identity remained the appearance of the red dress and the shiny shiny black belt.

Murderous Gulls and Eviscerated Pigeons

We were concerned about the pigeons from the start, but we had no idea just how deep and dark were the perils they negotiated every day.

There's a lot of them in Venice. You don't need to go to the Piazza San Marco, where tourists stand with bags of grain and enjoy the sensation of being shat on simultaneously by hundred of Rats With Wings, to know that your average Venetian pigeon does not work very hard for its supper.

Initially, our main source of concern was their health. The squares and alleyways were dotted with pigeons so rotund that it appeared that they really couldn't be fagged trying to get airborne. We nearly trod on one more than once, but it didn't seem to bother them too much. A slightly irritated flap was about the most response we could get. And not many cats around, with all that water. J queried a Venetian collegue about it later.

'Ah, yes,' the chap replied sagely. 'We are the only city where the lions fly and the birds walk.'

Then we found remains. Curious ones, though. The pigeon in question had met a very sticky end, but whatever or whoever had killed didn't seem to have eaten it, as most of it was there on the pavement. Its not like we lingered or anything, but you could help noticing that this flying fatsos had not met a natural death. Way too much gore. Perhaps it had a coronary and exploded in the spasm? Unlikely.

Anyway, we hurried to the nearest church to check out some more pleasant portrayals of murder and mayhem courtesy of Tintoretto, Giotto et al.: a little nailing blokes to a stick here, a little Judith decapitating someone there... You know the kind of thing. We forgot our murdered pigeon.

By the time we remembered, our sympathy had worn off. We were sitting in the rose garden having a rather nice prosecco in the afternoon sunshine, when the people at the next table decided to leave. (I believe they were a father and daughter on a custody holiday. Jim believes I am, in this respect, a niaive idiot.) They left behind a half-empty bowl of chips. Within about 30 seconds the delicate porcelain was full of porky pigeons climbing on eachother, scuffling and squawking and executing some quite impressive hip-and-shoulder action to get to sit in the chips, as if it was a salty, saturated fat birdbath. When sparrows do it its kind of cute. When overweight pigeons do it, you just feel kinda soiled for even watching. And a little nervous, a la Tippi Hedren..

We were wishing they would go away. Then suddenly they did. A big gull had arrived to take a seat at the table. We didn't know why, because it seemed completely uninterested in the chips. The pigeons weren't going anywhere near it. It just sat there, looking at them. They sat on the canal wall a good three or four metres away, looking kind of hunched, like they were trying not to be noticed, and staying unnaturally quiet. I can't honestly say they were trembling, but their beady (and it has to be said, not very attractive)little eyes never left that gull. They were so scared that it took a full minute after the gull left for them to start swarming again.

I have to thank John Berendt for the answer. According to his gossipy little tome about Venice, the gulls are doing the pigeons in. The glossy gulls are nearly as well fed as the fat pigeons, so they restrict their diet to delicacies, like the Doges of old. (Obviously no-one made them eat their crusts when they were chicks.) Apparently when they fancy a light snack, they chase down a lazy pigeon, stab it through the chest and eat its still-beating little pigeon heart, discarding the rest for the Rats Without Wings to clean up later.

I don't know why, but it all strikes me as oddly Venetian.

Check-In

The packing does it for the Hackpacker. My own realisation of imminent travel came with an impromptu purchase of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Its a book that I have long held close to my heart, and one of a very very few that I have read more than once.

The first time was at Uni, natch. The second was when I was doing a week long residential course on 'leadership' as part of a Masters. This basically consisted of a Gulag-style Canberra mind-fuck during which the presenters (who were a couple, incidentally, which made it creepier) seemed to have adopted 'No. of People Made To Cry Per Diem' as their main KPI.

Personally, I did not want to be made to cry. I was heading home from that little jaunt on the Friday to sell my house on the Saturday, under circumstances which had caused quite enough weeping for one year, thank you very much. It was not a time in my life when getting in touch with my Inner Sook was going to do me or my professional reputation any good at all. However, in a moment of all-too-rare genius (if I do say so myself) I took Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with me. At breakfast each day I filled up on caffeine, sugar, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Apart from being a great pleasure in itself, it was magnificent preparation for the days Programming. By the time I made it to the morning's first session, I had already dealt with hallucinatory bats and all manner of other adventures. After that, the rest of it was water off a duck's back. I did find myself imagining the presenter as a giant walking iguana a few times, but I don't think that was a bad thing.

Seeing me through that little trauma is reason enough to love it, but I also think it has one of the best opening paragraphs of any novel ever written. I haven't actually read every novel ever written, but you get my drift. If you have not had the pleasure, I urge you to turn off your computer and rush out and find it, right now.

I left all my books behind when I came North (it still smarts), but I was very pleased to find an edition with the same cover I had in the 80s in Waterstones, though it seems to be rather more 'flouro' than I remember. I stood there in the queue of the Princes street store, watery sunshine bathing the newly-hatched daffodils across the road, wearing only four layers of clothing (it is spring, after all)thinking, in three days, I will be there. I will actually be in Las Vegas. I am in delicious anticipation of fear and loathing ensuing forthwith.

I really wish I still smoked. Etcetera. I will just have to satisfy myself with rolling down the window and screaming:

"Holy Jesus! What are these goddam animals?"

"And then it was quiet again."