comichael

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a business man

Lovely quote from Roald Dahl (thanks Sonantic)

“The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a business man. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” — Roald Dahl (Boy - Tales of Childhood)

A man at night on a dead-quiet street

I love this picture, by Gregory Crewdson. I feel as though I could stare at it for hours. It makes my mind sing. I need a print.

It makes me feel deeply sad - suggesting regret, loss, alienation, dispossession; but it also makes me feel exhilarated - it seems to speak of free will;  the strange uniqueness of people, places, life, and our endless capacity to experience these.

Complicity by Julian Barnes

Possibly my favourite short story in The New Yorker this year.

I love how intimate the story is, how artfully Barnes draws you into it with his narrator’s digressions and remembrances; how he makes you complicit in his story (complicit per his definition, which I also prefer!)

Some great insights too - like the best fiction, it is true.

haven’t read any Julian Barnes before, but intend to now.

District 9 (2009) (Neill Blomkamp) 8/10

District 9 has a well-drawn story, which despite my fears, does not lose its way at the end. As ever in Sci Fi, there are some plot holes, but I will not bore my reader with these.

It features as its protagonist a yokel South African everyman, played by rookie film actor Sharlto Copley, who has a rollercoaster story arc. At first I thought him comical, but I grew to root for him very much.

Despite its themes of race and tolerance, its South African setting, and its name, which points us to District 6, District 9 tells us nothing new about Apartheid. To my mind, its allegorical subjects – if specific political interests are even intended – are immigration and refugees.

District 9 made me think of many other films – ET, The Fly, Men in Black, Enemy Mine, Starship Troopers. Nonetheless it is fresh, and best of all unashamedly South African, which is rare in these days when American actors are made to play every nationality.

Not outta the woods yet: sovereign defaults, rising interest rates, unemployment

Interesting article in The Telegraph.

Biblical comedy: Hipster Job

Hipster Job

S’funny.

The printed page is the best place for words

Anyone who knows me will recognise the black bag I carry with me anywhere and everywhere (FYI: it’s always a black bag from my favourite comic shop Gosh!, but not always the same bag). The bag contains the novel I am reading at any point, and I am always reading a novel.

In fact, I have a fierce aversion to going on public transport without a book. It isn’t so much that I have a short attention span as that I hate to waste time I could be using to read (I read while brushing my teeth). Anyway, this morning - horror of horrors - I somehow (who knows how) - managed to leave my book at home.

Luckily, in anticipation of just such an eventuality, I have saved several books in electronic form on my iPhone, and so I read a chunk of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson which I thoroughly enjoyed, not having read it since I was nine or ten.

However, I didn’t enjoy reading it half so much as I would have if it had been in paper format. Call me a sad old technophobe, but I love books in printed, paper format. The late, great John Updike said it best here. The printed page is the best place for words.

I don’t need books to be printed forever. Just another 50 years or so.

Perhaps I’ll just never buy property

I read this very interesting article in the Daily Telegraph this week and the author - Tom Stevenson - makes some excellent points. I don’t think the UK property market is anywhere near the bottom yet… so I’ll just continue to rent, then, shall I?

35 Rhums (2008) (Claire Denis) 2/10

Slow, interminable, lingering shots of people doing mundane, trivial things until you beg them to stop. Watch as they unwrap rice cookers, ride trains, cook dinner, eat it, walk, dress, drive; all to no discernible purpose. I have read some reviews which try to sell this as a deep and thoughtful study of family relationships. It is not. It is a study in dullness. There is no art in it, and no substance.  Avoid, at all costs.

The debt is still there

I read this article in the FT today, and it struck a chord. The financial crisis isn’t really going anywhere… all of that debt has just been transferred from the balance sheets of banks to the balance sheets of world governments. At some stage it will need to be paid back, and no one is providing a compelling explanation as to how.

Also read today about Goldmans and the likelihood that they will pay out billions in bonuses this year. I have no problem with high bonuses, provided that they are paid within a context where there are appropriate regulatory mechanisms to protect a bank’s customers and the wider market. What rankles with Goldmans is that the US government bailed them out just months ago. The government really should get a higher return in exchange for the bailout, but in America, nationalisation is a dirty word,  and so we have the ridiculous situation where losses are socialised and borne by the many, while profits accrue to the few.