The Great Book Debate

Its fair to say that I am a bibliomaniac by now: when I am not walking I am reading and regularly spend most of the day reading script, not only from books, but also from computers, newspapers, and those weird words on the arses of girls in tracksuits: hence the significant investment I've made in my spectacles. Taking Royston's challenge here is a quaint list of some books that merit mention:

One Book That Changed Your Life

Has to be the wonderful Chants de Maldoror (1868), by the Comte de Lautreamont. I first came across this book while wandering around surrealism in first year arts and I immediately became hooked on the hallucinatory ramblings of Maldoror, a character who roams the world torturing infants, worshipping prostitutes, and shooting shipwrecked sailors - all in order to prove his luciferan notions of absolute freedom. Technically it did change my life as I became fascinated by its mysterious author, who disappeared during the Siege of Paris in 1870, and wrote a dissertation and thesis on the novel and its influence.

One Book That You Have Read More Than Once

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899) is a book that I always return to, and I invariably always find something amazingly new in it. Much more than a tale of imperialistic greed, Marlowe's journey through the Congo in search of the almost totemic Kurtz can serve to symbolise the descent of European civilisation itself towards the indescribable 'horror' of the twentieth century.

One Book That You Would Want on a Desert Island

A tough one for any bibliophile! On an impulse I would say Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) because it contains many memorable moments such as Fabrizio's childish disorientation on the battlefield of Waterloo, and as always is deeply infused with Stendhal's wit, sensitivity, and touching pessimism.

One Book That Made Me Laugh

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself actually laughing out loud at a Dickens novel a few years ago, but his Pickwick Papers (1837) is a fucking hoot! A madcap serialised plot involving the travels and titillations of a group of friends and a little funny bastard known as 'fat boy'. Highly recommended.

One Book That Made Me Cry

I think the fiction of Ivan Turgenev has been overlooked by Europeans interested in Russian literature who instinctively head towards Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Chekov, because in many ways Turgenev more accurately traced the dissonance and despair coming out of Russia after the emancipation of the serfs. His little novella Spring Torrents (1872), while it hasn't made me cry, certainly affected me as all good literature should. Being an autobiographical tale about Turgenev's hopeless infatuation with a smart bitch it includes the usual despair, ecstasy and a few duels. I find the author a very sympathetic figure, even though he felt sorry for the uncouth Dostoevsky who touched him for a few bob now and then.

One Book I Stayed Up All Night to Finish

Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials (2000), which I picked up as a bargain in 'Chapters' bookshop, was originally a presnt for my sister. But being an uncultured minx she rejected it and so I had to give it a read to recoup my loss. I found it an addictive read and one which blended High Philosophy with the pure wizardry of children's literature. Although I have opinions against Pullman's opposition to the notion of Original Sin and his unbridled humanism, we share the same enemies in all organised religions and their cohorts.

One Book That Took Me Too Long To Read

Arthur Schopenhauer finished his philosophical masterwork The World as Will and Idea (1819) when he was 31 and just out of university. Judging it to be a work of genius which could not be improved upon he resolved to put down his pen and accept the adulations of Europe. Unfortunately the garlands never really arrived for poor old Arthur who descended even deeper into his pessmistic philosophy, while his bitter rival Hegel rose to unparalelled heights. However his major work is well worth the effort (especially in abridged mode) and its musings on art, love and suicide have influenced many from Nietzsche to Mann.

One Book I am Currently Reading

Just finished Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf (1927) which is a typically German take upon the dialectic between the harsh jolts of modernism and the spiritual heritage of German Romanticism - here figured in the phantom of Goethe. An autobiographical work which predicts another World War if German militarism is not combated, I think it gives the reader an insight into the cultural politics of Weimar.

The Legendary Bono Rant

Spent the day monitoring anti-Bono statements on the Guardian. Not a wasted day.

ArthurCravan
May 22, 2006 02:40 PM
It seems Bonovox's dire influence has removed my rant from the blog. So, hastily creating a new identity, and mulling over the very fine points made in my absence, I insist upon venting my spleen again. Remember, this whiny shit DOES NOT PAY TAX in the Republic of Ireland - hardly a high-tax regime.

Dear Bono:
Just so everyone knows, you are a hated and despised creature in Dublin (remember that place? I think you own a few hotels there). You are hated even more because you begin every preaching session with a humble-crusader " i know you're all probably sick of a rockstar, a fool, a Dubliner, telling you what to do, but..." No, no but, you "non-political" Thatcherite post-catholic. You tiny, Tom Cruise-boot wearing, hair-dying, pompous gobdaw - you're ten times more irritating that that fellow charity neoconservative Bob "give us the fucking money" Geldof. Bono, fuck off with your 5 houses, property portfolio, clothes range, uber-expensive glasses that you wear to brunch with the latest pope, Chirac, and Bush - I hope you die to one of those interminable guitar riffs that "the Edge" has been hawking for twenty years. And just for calling Noam Chomsky "the Elvis of academia" i'm gonna pull off all your nails and mail them to brown-babies in my dreams tonight. At least "the Edge" has the wit to wear a beanie hat to cover up his baldness, Adam Clayton enough spunk to admit to being obsessed with Naomi Campbell lookalike whores, and Larry Mullin the stylists to look like an indifferent bouncer.So Bono, rot in your quasi-religious hell with Condi Rice telling you her top ten musical moments for eternity cos i've put out a bounty on you; Shane McGowan seems pretty interested.

On the Hangover

The hangover is that which is expected, that which is coming, is destined, and is, of course, deserved. Thus for the hungover person to lament his condition the morning after as if a bus had run over his leg, or his cousin declared she fancied him, totally shirks the responsibility which one simply has to take upon oneself for getting so inexplicably rat-arsed. And it is this double-loaded weight, that we are an absolute mess, and that we have willfully allowed this to happen through an excess of experience, an excess of the marginal experiences - not solely alcohol, but dance, drugs, laughter, sex, and fear - which really courses through the wilted and hungover body. Look at the symptoms of a half-decent hangover - apathy, irritability, shaky hands, aversion to light, inability to get comfortable, general disgust, lack of libido, menacing headache, melancholy, phantasmagoric memories - does this not suggest a concept list of some self-lacerating Existentialist International? The responsibility we are forced to face physiologically is but a reflection of what has occured experientially. It is my contention that the later Romans, the Nero's and Caligula's, did not experience the sheer angst of the hangover that the modern, necessarily elite, man experiences every weekend. With History ending every Friday, we fiddle and fiddle, drink undiluted wine, and spend ourselves upon marionette's, tasting all the liquor cabinet has to offer to find the blend which results in an awareness of being aware of being on the floor of an apartment, the remains of a party sticking to your ear with that peculiar sensation of heat and grog-melt-fuzziness in your head. Is this a radical affirmation of our youth, our capacity to drink, our ability to become intoxicated and liberated from the conservative-leaning mechanics of the human biochemical system? If so, then why, like Nietzsche's scholars, do we emerge from our hole hunchbacked, creep and crawl, shudder and stutter, ache and fret for home? Because in this age we cannot experience the decadence, the autumnal sense of decline, and the pre-televisual symbiosis between the body and the mind, which allowed for such unbridled intoxication in the past - the kind of intoxication which leaves one radically embodied, not unified, but multiplied within the shell casing, dispersed like a psychoactive mortar bomb. I write all this with an acute foreboding of the hangover to come this Sunday, for precisely such end-historical reasons - the celebration of an Irish identity wholly fictional, yet not mythopoetic, not libidnal, imaginary, or in anyway potential; just as is. Perhaps Kingsley Amis, writing about a milieu familiar to the kind of people who yearn for intoxication in 'Lucky Jim', expressed more accurately the condemned sensations of the hungover academic, or of post-war Europe. The hangover does not descend upon one but resides in our experience receptors, warning us that such expenditure is not part of the 'will to life', the purpose of which is, eventually, to die.

'Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad'.

Sanctus Damienus

Ahh those journo hacks always with the zitgist, or else they've been listening to me in UCD restaurant - cos, yes, there was a cool little article in the Evenin Herllllld t'other day. Goes something like this:

'After 13 years of being ignored, Dublin band the Frames are set to crack the UK. According to the London 'Independent', one of the music industry's most influential voices has said they are the next Radiohead.
So who are The Frames? Led by Glen Hansard, they are the embodiment of Dublin's 'matey' music scene revolving around Whelan's of Wexford Street. They are capable, reasonably popular...and unfortunately teeth-gridingly earnest.
But who was the voice likening them to the painfullt earnest Radiohead? None other than fellow earnest Whelan's graduate, the dreadfully earnest Damien Rice.
If we keep exporting our earnest young singers at this rate soon there will be nobody to whinhe down the mic in Whelan's'.

So there ya have it in print lads, a corroboration of my conversely earnest views upon the Damien Handsandwhich, Paddy 'I was a scumbag boxer' O'Rourke, and 'when, oh when will i be frameous...oh me', genre of songs from the other room - to be ranked alongisde 'Cold Keaneplay Patrol', 'Bowling for Avril McBusted 182 Day', and 'The Kaiser Ferdinand Party' for transgeneric intertextual cacophony (thanx johnathan-thesaraus).

An Abridged History of Man

This is the story of man through the ages:
The first men did not grow crops; they fucked animals. All the animals became insane. The men would hunt them and crucify them. They dug pits to watch the animals. When the animals were warm, the men began. They stroked them with their spears. Then they would cut them up with a stone axe. At first they used primitive contraception. Later, men learned to coitus interruptus. The first men used their fingers to explore each other's anuses. They had no knives or forks or plates or pots. The first men learned performance art. Sometimes they used a spear. Sometimes they danced in the water. They would do this in the place where the river was not too deep. The picture shows how this was done. The first men did not have the libido we have. They had no vibrators or vaseline. They had no prostitutes or pimps. They had only water to drink. After many years, men learned how to tame women. They learned coitus reservus. The women gave meat to eat and milk to drink. The women ate grass. They moved about from place to place. When the winter came, some women would be fucked to death. There would be not enough women to go around. After some time, men learned how to regulate the sex industry. They lived in one place with their women. They learned how to enlarge their penis. They learned how to perform self-phallatio. They learned how to have anal sex without causing injury. They learned that herpes was not a gift from the gods. When the Romans came to Britain they built fine brothels. Each house had women from all over the Empire. Slaves were abused beside charcoal fires. Instruments and toys were served on plates or in bowls. The Romans lay on couches when eating pussy. They did not sit at a table as we do now. The Norman's were fond of masturbation. Eunuch's aroused the Norman lords. The Norman's also enjoyed young Irish children. Poor people enjoyed flagellation on saint's days. But they did not always ejaculate. Some people were impotent. Honey was used to sweeten things because there was no sugar. Years ago people had no video-cameras. Sex was performed by the fire or in front of a priest. Women were shackled to a spit, which was turned round and round and round. Sperm was salted to make it keep. Herbs were used to make the sperm tasty. Rich people ate it with knives and spoons. Poor people used their fingers. Straws did not come until much later. After many years new methods came from abroad. The picture shows some of these. Transexuals came from the east. Syphilis came from America. Flavoured condoms, edible panties, and latex also came from abroad. Some of these things were not used a lot at first. Often they were too dear for poor people to buy. People would spend more time making their own equipment. They made their own handcuffs. They made their own abortions. They bottled their own periods. Nowadays we buy a lot of girls ready to fuck. We buy them in schools and markets. Some of them we buy are frozen. Girls that have been frozen keep fresh for a long time.

List of my music ratings on Yahoo Launchcast Radio

This post is really an aide memoire for my own benefit; the hacks at Yahoo seem to be on to my multiple identities scam which allows me to listen to my fantastic customized radiostation most of the day. I think, without blowing my own fiddle, that I have amassed the greatest most bestest playlist in the history of cultural history. So without further adieu - the doors have been sealed, the mic is now off - I present my tastes in music for general aquirement...and posterity.

Oeuvres Completes:
Aphex Twin, Autechre, Joy Division, Grace Jones, Interpol, Sparks, Devo, Boards of Canada, Sisters of Mercy, Beck, Mogwai, Brian Eno.

Only this album(s):
'Neu 75' by Neu!,
'Low', 'Lodger' and 'Heroes' by David Bowie - and maybe 'Labyrinth',
'This Modern Dance', by Pere Ubu,
'Pleasure Principle' and 'Telekon' by Gary Numan,
'Walking With Thee', by Clinic,
'Lunatic Harness' by Mu-ziq,
'Funky Christmas', by James Brown,
'Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts', by M83,
'Goldfinger: Soundtrack', by John Barry

Selected Songs:
'Age of Consent', 'Ceremony' by New Order,
'New Religion' by Duran Duran
'Whats New Pussycat?', by Tom Jones
'Just Fascination', by Cabaret Voltaire
'Corpses in Their Mouths' and 'Dolphins Were Monkeys remix' by Ian Brown,
'Melt', by Leftfield,
'Mojo Pin' by Jeff 'better off dead' Buckley,
'Airbag', 'How to Disappear Completely', 'Idiotheque', by Radiohead,
'Dancing in the Dark', (yeah!!) by Bruce Springsteen,
'Marquee Moon', 'See No Evil', by Television,
'This Connecting Flight', by David Holmes,
'Bela Lugosi's Dead', by Bauhaus,
'Barely Legal (E.P. version), by The Strokes,
'The Rat', by The Walkmen,
'Halcyon and on and on', by Orbital,
'Sayonara', by The Pogues,
'Perfect Pop Band', by Komputer,
'Patience' by Guns n' Roses,
'At Home He's a Tourist', by Gang of Four,
'Babies', by Pulp,

Somethin else, hah? Feel free to partake of the 'good vibrations' emanting from this blob - oh ho ho, i is good!

On the Leprosy of the Epic Film

Before you join the herd and file towards your local cinema for the latest Ridley Scott 'epic' - 'Kingdom of Heaven' - , permit me to launch into one of my patented (t)issues - luxurious and expensive, but also handy and re-useable. While the first phase of the epic film in the 1950s and 60s were lavishly reactionary and disgustingly religious, they did manage to keep Charlton Heston busy. Yet the new phase, begun in Synge Street C.B.S in 1997 when a 'Braveheart'/'Michael Collins' double-bill was shown during religion class, have no merits beyond mesmerising potentially violent scobie's for an hour and half. Yes, the ingredients of this epic genre were plain to see; swelling music, opening (minor) battle, major-battle interspersed with (romantic) events elsewhere, rousing nationalism/humanism, and appalling historical inaccuracies. Yet Ridley Scott, with his wank-fest 'Gladiator' introduced new 'epic' signatures such as the stroking of the wheat-field, the caressing of muck/sand, and the presence of black characters who spoke English to Russell Farell. His forthcoming devilry 'Kingdom of Heaven' is of grave concern to the anti-epic contingent here in Ireland. The lover's of the epic (Lepers) will wet themselves to see epic veterans Liam Glesson and Brendan Nesson both starring alongside Jeremy 'Irish tax-exile cos of that Lolita incident' Irons reprising his role as a cleric from 'The Mission'. With Mel Gibson as Jesus fighting the English in revolutionary America, Gandalf the White treating Brad Pitt's acne on the beaches of Troy, and Mick Lally showing Val Kilmer his favourite leprachaun suit, the history courses in UCD should be packed for generations to come. With at least two versions of 'Beowulf' on the way the leper-achauns will be haunting the cinema ailses for some time to come.