Bauhaus… back from the crypt

I remember twenty years ago the staff at Gisborne’s combo sporting goods / record store introducing me to the definitive goth-rock band, Bauhaus. By then clashing egos had already caused the band to implode, but their albums ruled my world for years to follow.  The proto-dub rumblings of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, Daniel Ash’s searing guitar sound on “Double Dare”, the drums in “Lagartija Nick”.  Nobody else came close.

Twenty five years after the release of their last album “Burning From The Inside”, THEY’RE BACK!!

After reuniting recently to play California’s Coachella Festival, the band put aside their differences for long enough to spend 18 days in a studio recording new album “Go Away White”.  Yes, these band-splits-up-but-reforms-twenty -years-later-to-play-again kind of things are usually best avoided (The Police at Live Earth anyone?). but this is BAUHAUS (and, well…  maybe I’m a little biased).

Recording each song live in the studio in single takes, “Go Away White” still retains the rawness of their 1980 debut “In The Flat Field”. Lead single “Adrenalin” is easily on a par with their best songs. Peter Murphy’s vocals still sound just as ghoulish two decades after their peak. And that crystalline guitar line that comes in mid-way through “The Mirror Remains” …

 A fitting epitaph from one of my favourite bands (in case you hadn’t guessed already).

 

Book into movie

One of the biggest selling novels of recent years is The memory keeper’s daughter by Kim Edwards. It raced to the top of the bestseller list and became a staple of book groups worldwide. It has now been made into a film - featuring Emily Watson and Dermot Mulroney in  the leads - but it won’t be coming to a theatre complex near you as it has been made into a television film as part of the Lifetime network.

Interestingly, Jodi Picoult may be one of the top writers of female fiction yet three adaptations of her novels have ended up as television movies (which usually means less well known actors and not the prestige and the publicity of a cinema release). Ditto for Sue Monk Kidd and her bestseller/book group favourite The mermaid chair - it became a television vehicle for Kim Basinger.

Five Nora Roberts titles also ended up as Lifetime Television movies and Rosamunde Pilcher may be a library and bookshop favourite but you will not have seen the majority of the many television films of her novels and short stories: this is because they were adapted for German television as co-productions of Germany and the U.K. and mostly filmed in Britain with second string English names alongside German actors. They have now mostly run out of material and have now turned to the novels of Mrs Pilcher’s son Robin.

Once upon a time these books would have ended up on the big screen and it is interesting to speculate on why they haven’t. Do women watch more television than men?  Given that some of the top popular male authors - Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum - have ended up as big budget franchises on the big screen, it has been suggested that women will go along with a man to a film he wants to see but he will be reluctant to go along to something she particularly wants to see.  It may be just that stories with a domestic focus might never be first choice for the bigger screen while stories that demand huge budgets, action, stunts, explosions and lots of noise may be more suited to a night a the multiplex.

 

Two little boys

Deano and Nige are best mates who’ve had a falling out.  However when Nige has a bit of an ”accident” that results in the death of a backpacker it’s Deano he turns to for help.  Unfortunately Nige is a complete twit and Deano…well, he’s got issues of his own.  And so begins a sort of twisted boys-own adventure with drugs, alcohol and the occasional corpse (both human and feline).  Penned by former Dunedinite Duncan Sarkies, best known for his Otago based films Scarfies and Out of the blue, Two little boys is just the thing if you like your humour dark and your protagonists gormless.

While the book isn’t laugh out loud funny, it’s consistently amusing if only for how well it portrays the emotionally retarded qualities of its two main characters.  Sarkies does an extremely good job of committing to print that strange, shuffling creature known as “the Southern man”.  Two little boys is a entertaining mix of bad driving, mateship, and perfectly drawn “kiwi blokism” (yes I just made that phrase up).  The only downside is that you might get that song stuck in your head for a few days (I know I did).

If you’re in “the big smoke” later this month you can hear Sarkies talk about his debut novel at the Auckland Writers and Readers festival.

 

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 2008 - 14-18 May

It barely seems like a year ago since we started this blog … but it must be, because next week the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival for 2008 kicks off. We launched the blog there last year by bringing you all the literary action of the 2007 festival.

This year we are heading back with an expanded team of contributors to bring you interviews, report backs on sessions, and an idea of all the literary flavours of Auckland.

To whet your appetite, take a look at our interview with festival director Jill Rawnsley, our page on authors at the festival and the Festival’s pages.

As a fan of a good biography, I’m particularly looking forward to the sessions focusing on biographies and memoirs. Simon Sebag Montefiore has explored the life of Young Stalin and Hermione Lee who has written about intriguing characters like Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton. I’m also keen to hear from Sarah Hall after having been thoroughly captivated by her novel The Carhullan Army.

Other sessions on my must see list: Addicted to the Dark brings together Duncan Sarkies, Luke Davies and Heather O’Neill with Festival creative director Stephanie Johnson chairing the session. “Like any good drug, dark literature makes you laugh and cry, makes you fly and pulls you down”.

History and the Novel chaired by Fiona Kidman: “War and Peace is perhaps the greatest historical novel of all time. Was Hardy also an historical novelist? Why is the term faintly pejorative when these great works aim to eviscerate the past?” Simon Montefiore, Luke Davies and Sarah Hall make up the panel.

 

What’s true and what’s not

The recent publicity over various books which had been marketed and produced as true stories but turned out to be either partially false or totally fabricated has led to people (mostly staff) asking that the book be classified as “fiction.” In all these cases we have replied that we can’t do that as the book is not fiction.

Norma Khouri, that shrewd character whose bestselling book, Forbidden love, is the best example. She had certainly read the market right when she concocted a tale of the sad and sorry lot of Arabian women and the book became a bestseller. Shame it was all made up. Shame too that James Frey’s A million little pieces upset Oprah when she found that a book about a terrible childhood told things that weren’t necessarily true - or as terrible.

And, most recently, we have Margaret Seltzer’s Love and consequences which was an eye-opening account of gang life in L.A. The problem was whose eye as the author came from a very different background.

There’s also the book about the girl who trekked 1,900 miles across Europe with a pack of wolves in order to find her parents. Okay, it wasn’t exactly what happened said the author but she found it was hard to differentiate what happened with her imagination.

Where does all this end: are all the truckload of so-called misery memoirs coming out of Britain all true? As the ante is constantly upped with memories of horrible childhoods becoming more and more outlandishly horrible, questions are being raised about whether the decision to publish so many of these is purely commercial: the market is there so let’s supply it.

It is true to say that libraries can only categorise books by the intended genre of the book and a novel is written as a work of fiction and therefore something intended as a nonfiction title (however made up it is) can’t be a novel. Hopefully the books that are almost totally fabricated may die out but I wouldn’t hold my breath: the dreaded Tuesday Lobsang Rampa is still in print despite the fact that he wasn’t really a Tibetan lama but a plumber’s son from Devon and everyone accepted that the Baptist minister who had his hugely bestselling 90 days in heaven wasn’t making it up.

See also our post on Autobiographical Honesty: fact or fiction.

 

Risky Business

The decision to send art collective et al to represent New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2005 created the kind of controversy which is too boring to write about here.  One outcome was the lack of official New Zealand representation at the biennale in 2007.  In this climate, with the future of our participation in the biennale uncertain, a group of eight curators decided to respond with a publication rather than an exhibition.  The idea behind Speculation is straightforward and good - which New Zealand artist now or in the future could be sent to the Venice Biennale and exhibit in the New Zealand pavilion?  Each curator nominated a list of artists, and the artists in turn present pages of their work.  I really like the simplicity of this concept, and the book has nice images and not too much over-the-top art writing.  I’m not sure how I feel about some of the choices, but the range is diverse, including established names like Billy Apple and Bill Hammond, plus some of the best younger artists like the awesome Andrew Mcleod.

 

 

 

Cult books

What makes a cult book? It’s a hoary old chestnut and hard to pin down. The latest commentators to have a bash at defining Cult Classics are the team at The Telegraph in the UK with their 50 best cult books. They get tangled up in defining a cult classic, but end up with this:

In compiling our list, we were looking for the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem. The book that rewires your head: that turns you on to psychedelics; makes you want to move to Greece; makes you a pacifist; gives you a way of thinking about yourself as a woman … 

There’s the usual suspects - Catch-22, The Catcher in the Rye, Dune (he he) and the comments field is a jungle of suggestions, objections, and just plain orneriness.

And this kind of fevered debate is just what you’d expect from a discussion of cult books - I’d say a good definition is a book that inspires a devotion and almost religious fervour in its admirers - and a similarly loathing in others, writing that takes on a life and symbolism beyond the page.

Here’s a couple of cult authors/titles I’d like to throw into the mix:

J T Leroy - The Heart is deceitful above all things and Sarah created a stir when they came out. Their lowkey lowlife transgressive meanderings were very readable and touched with autobiographical authenticity. As blogged previously, it turned out the narrator wasn’t a crossdressing teenage hustler, but its cult appeal might endure.

American Psycho Bret Easton Ellis. It’s gruesome and clever and probably the most disturbing book of fiction I’ve ever read. Don’t read if you are at all squeamish. It was made into a movie starring Christian Bale, and this wonderful business card scene gives an indication of the awful Gordon Gekko-ness of it all.

See our list of cult reading for more ideas.

Any you’d like to add?

 

Frock stars

I’m loathe to be another librarian who writes about fashion, but a couple of gorgeous new books have got me excited.  Resurrecting a dead or dormant fashion house under the direction of a hot new designer has been a trend in the fashion world over the last couple of years.  Amongst others, Balenciaga, Halston and Biba have all been revived to varying degrees of success.  I’m not sure whether this trend is a result of the huge interest in vintage clothing  that has also been the rage in recent times, or whether it’s a symptom of the whole noughties nostalgia obsession.  The success of a revived line is reliant on the talent of the designer at the helm, and also the motivation behind the revival. In my opinion, the Biba resuscitation seemed an ill planned bandwagon jump, but one of the most successful comebacks has been Alber Elbaz at Lanvin.  He’s a designer who clearly understands and interprets the history of his predecessors.  He has quite a history to draw on (Lanvin was started by Jeanne Lanvin in 1909) as shown in a beautiful new tome on the house.  Lanvin is presented in a nice chronological order, and packed with tons of stunning illustrations, so you can see how Elbaz’s work has been informed by the designs of  Jeanne Lanvin. 

One of the other big successes in the fashion rebirth world is Balenciaga under the guidance of Nicholas Ghesquiere.  Ghesquiere writes the foreword for a new book celebrating the design work of Paul Poiret.  Published to accompany the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute exhibition last year, Poiret is another dazzler.  The essays shed light on a designer who was incredibly influential in his time, but is somewhat overshadowed today by Chanel.  A pioneer of the anti-corset movement, Poiret had an interesting relationship with modernity.  In the early part of last century his designs were viewed as very free and modern, and the theatricality and intricacy of the garments made them popular with avant garde women of the time.  However, his unwillingness to adopt the short skirts and less opulent creations that Chanel popularised meant he ended up looking a little old-fashioned. His fascinating wife/muse/model Denise left him, and Poiret ended up broke, working as a bartender and making his suits out of tea towels.  It looks like his time has come though, and history will be kind to him.

 

Bibliophiles - Mashing up books, authors and literary characters

I’ve just read a delicious review in The Observer called The Romantic Librarian. It looks at Alberto Manguel’s new book The Library at night. There is a nice comment on librarians:

Alphabetising their stock or relying on fractionalised decimals like Dewey, librarians are obsessive classifiers who impose on chaos an order they know to be fictional and false. Their crazed logic makes libraries, as Manguel says, ‘pleasantly mad places’.

The Library at night reminded me of Ex Libris: Confessions of a common reader by Anne Fadiman. A Salon review sums up its appeal:

an unapologetic confession of raging bibliophilia … a modest, charming, lighthearted gambol among the stacks. It serves up neither ideas nor theories but anecdotes about the joys of collecting and reading books.

It seems to me that the natural outlet for a bibliophile author is to play with books and authors and even literary characters in your writing. Jasper Fforde’s exuberant books do well in this arena - fiction, fun and favourite literary figures getting to cut loose from the page and take on new roles. Where else could you get to see an army of thousands of Mrs Danvers clones (Mrs Danvers is that grim housekeeper in Rebecca) wreaking havoc?

Funnily enough I saw this tshirt called Attack of Literacy yesterday. It looks a zombie Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare and Jane Austen etc look ready to lay the smack down (by the way, Peter Ackroyd, one of the world’s best biographers had just published Poe: a life cut short).

Authors are easily commandeered into literary characters. I’m not sure about the trend for making them into detectives … there’s a fictional Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter and even a Dante out there solving mysteries.  And the industry of making sequels, prequels and other additions to famous books continues on apace (but never say never because I do enjoy Emma Tennant playing with fiction classics). It makes sense in our mashup culture to play around with what’s gone before and make it new.

 

Warrior Women - Soldiers and Supergroupies

I’ve been reading two books that seem to be poles apart - but both are about strong women …

The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall is the vein of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and other dystopian tales. Narrator Sister escapes from the regimentation of a life in a factory with a loveless relationship and her fertility controlled by The Authority, to “The Carhullan Army”, a sisterhood of women living off the land and learning to fight. It’s a brutal existence with strong relationships forged. The physicality and psychology in this book make it hard to put down, and harder to forget.

Author Sarah Hall is going to be at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, and I am looking forward to hearing her speak now I have read this book (and the interview Why I write in The Guardian):

… romantically, I’d love to work through the dogwatch of night, but my brain shuts off after 7.30pm. There’s nowt doing after Corrie.

Let’s spend the night together : backstage secrets of rock muses and supergroupies by Pamela Des Barres looks at the lives of a whole different set of strong women. I’d heard of legends like Cynthia Plaster Caster and Bebe Buell (mother of Liv Tyler) and their relationships with various rock gods but there are plenty of interesting characters here. Tura Satana was a burlesque dancer, starred in a Russ Meyer’s movie and had a fling with the King. Cherry Vanilla has some great tales about Bowie and Iggy Pop - and the nucleus of The Police played in her group The Cherry Vanilla Band.

I’m fascinated by the rock star names which come up and how the different women talk about them. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page seems to have got most of them hot under the collar, and I was surprised to see one girl promoting her liaison with Rick Springfield. Pamela Des Barres is a charming raconteur and it is easy to picture her and the women she interviews laughing and gossiping up a storm. That’s how it reads.