Nothing to do with your Vorsprung Durch Technik

The past few months have been a quiet time for the Mint Custard Book Club (membership one and counting, slowly). After ripping through A Streetcar Named Desire I got bogged down in Cloudstreet. This is less a reflection on Tim Winton’s Miles Franklin Award winning masterpiece than on the fact that I scored myself a free iPhone. Instead of bettering myself by diligently sticking to my mission to read at least one piece of literature a month, I’ve been distracted by the gaudy thrills of mobile internet, Angry Birds and pseudo-Scrabble, Words with Friends.

Yes, a mere three years after the launch of the iPhone I’ve finally caught up with technology. I say only because despite assurances from gadget enthusiasts that just six months can be a lifetime when it comes to technology, up til now I have spent my life separated from modernity by a continual seven year buffer of which phones are just a minor detail.

Much of this spans back to childhood and a general lack of gadgetry in our house. We got our first video - a VHS Ferguson Videostar – in 1987. It was my grandparent’s old one, donated to us because even Grandad wouldn’t be seen dead with a top loader by then. We had a hi-fi, one of those housed in an MDF wood-effect cabinet and sealed behind a darkened glass door, but it was a strictly tapes and records affair. 1985 may have seen Dire Straits become first band to sell a million copies of an album on compact disc but it was 1992 before I got around to buying my first CD player. Add another ten years to those two dates for DVDs and you can see a bit of a trend.

Despite their circumstances mum and dad always did their best to get us all what we wanted. Unable to afford the Atari 2600 games console I wanted they got me Astro Wars, a single game table top space shoot-em-up they probably couldn’t afford either and which I clocked several hundred times. I still have it and, in keeping with my temporal techno buffer, I eventually got my 2600 and a sackful of games for my eighteenth birthday in 1993. Mum got it on the cheap from a local second-hand shop inundated with Ataris thanks to Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. Again, still have it and still love it. I bought Raiders of the Lost Ark for it last week.

Games consoles have become a bit of a yardstick for my gadget delay. Despite spending the entire summer of 1996 playing Worms on my friends’ PlayStation, it was 2003 - three years after the launch of PS2 - before someone took pity on us and gave us their old one. Having never seen a PS2 in action our old machine was still a revelation, and even better, the games were ridiculously cheap. A similar thing happened in 2008 when a kindly soul gave us a Nintendo GameCube. Leaping several years into the future in a single bound we were amazed by the graphics and game play – happily ignorant that kids of all ages were in similar thrall to the Nintendo Wii. I look forward to getting one… in 2015.

After slagging off mobile phone users for several years I got my first mobile in 2003. It was (naturally) a hand-me down from Mrs Custard, and even that had been given to her by a friend. I left it at home a lot and got told off for not answering it when people rang, but I did like the primitive version of Snake which kept me busy on the bus. I kept it for three years, updating to yet another pre-loved phone in exchange for a six pack of beer. It had a dodgy joystick and perhaps the worst camera ever made, but it did have a great mini-golf game. I finally signed a proper contract in 2008 and was given a free phone for my troubles. It had a rather pointless Walkman feature which didn’t let you use your own headphones, but the mini-golf had better graphics and the at least the camera worked. I felt modern, even though most of my friends had long since moved on to iPhone.

Anyway so finally, after so long at apogee of technological innovation here I am, at its artificially beating heart. For once in my life I can look people in the eye without shame, without a shrug of ‘ahdunno’ when discussing matters telecommunicational. I may have forgotten how to read a book but I can feel the same sense of smugness and self-satisfaction that I am more cutting edge than the general populous. I speak the language of Gates and Jobs. I - with my iPhone 3G - am of the moment. I am now. I am 2010. I am… sorry... hang on... there’s a what? When? Oh balls…

Amazing Adventures (Part 3)

In which someone (me) talks about a period of reading fiction to anyone who’ll listen (you) by talking about a work of non-fiction. This is significant because it’s the fourth book I’ve finished this month, a feat of page turning unseen in my world since I tore through my junior school library’s entire collection of Asterix books in a couple of weeks when I was 9.

I may give the impression that I don’t like books, which is probably a bit misleading. I’ve always been a big reader. It’s just in recent years I’ve devoted a lot of time to magazines, the internet and - when I do buy books - non-fiction, with music biographies in particular my default setting. This isn’t just George Martin syndrome (‘and I remember John turning to Paul and saying “why don’t we stick this tape recorder up your bottom and then play it the tape backwards and “hoop-la, Penny Lane!” ’) it’s just that I like reading about creative people who have ideas and some of them happen to be musicians. It’s also a fact that books like Everything, Simon Price’s passionate and meticulous dissection of all things Manic Street Preachers and Bill Drummond’s 45 are as inspiring, romantic and fantastical as any fiction.

Anyway, so after 650 pages of Kavalier and Clay and having whipped through David Walliams’ entire literary oeuvre I felt like I deserved a quick break from fiction. My palate cleanser of choice then was Things the Grandchildren Should Know by the Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett; better known to his friends as simply E. This is him here, with his dog Bobby Jr.

It should be said from the off that had the tragic events of E’s life been presented by an aspiring author to a publishing house as a work of fiction they’d probably be criticised for being a) highly unlikely and b) bit bleak. “Well, it’s an interesting story, but does everyone in his family have to die?” or “this stuff about an awkward introverted loner is understandable but it’s a bit far fetched to think that he’d become a famous rock star.”

However, these are the facts. Yes, everyone (and I mean everyone) in E’s family dies before he hits 40, plus a few friends too. They die tragically, often painfully, sometimes pointlessly and E has to deal with it all. And yes, this troubled soul with a teenage delinquent past, little in the way of an education and an aversion to the trappings of rock superstardom has indeed managed to carve himself a beautiful and unique little niche in the music world. Which, as anyone who has even dabbled in the world of professional musicianship will tell you is all the more remarkable because rocking out on stage, trying to appear friendly yet deep and meaningful in interviews, living on a bus full of musicians, coming up with new marketable material and appearing on television can be challenging at the best of times, never mind when you've just come back from your only sister's funeral or you have to fly home between gigs to help clean shit off your dying mother.

It’s probably fair to say that Things the Grandchildren Should Know (named for one the songs on the 2005 album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations) will never win any literature awards, with E pointedly eschewing flowery language for a straight-ahead four to the floor telling of the facts more in keeping with his constantly failing attempts to lead a down-to-earth approach to life. For fans there are also some odd omissions (no mention at all of MC Honky, E's hip hop alter ego, and no real mention of ideas and inspirations behind his always interesting videos). Still, his tale is told with heart on sleeve frankness and precious little rock star ego which only renders it all the more compelling. This is a distinctly human story and instead of the usual 'I-wish-my-life-was-like-that' after-effect of rock bios, one is left with a distinct feeling of being a little blessed ourselves.

Interestingly E's experiences - good and bad - have taught him a similar lesson; that life has some downs but they usually lead you to some ups and you really don't ever know what's coming next. That might not seem like much in the way of philosophy for a lifetime of fascinating, thrilling joys (E's own personal fandom is never far and his pride at meeting Tom Waits or playing London's Albert Hall after first hearing about it via the Beatles' A Day in the Life is just lovely) and deep personal losses (I even lost count of the amount of friends and neighbours who died in what is a relatively short book) but it's refreshingly honest and thankfully avoids the Jerry Springer's Final Thought summation.

Whether you're a fan of the work of Mark Oliver Everett and his ever-changing band of troubadours or not there is much to gain from reading Things the Grandchildren Should Know. If you're new to him then I'm sure there's enough to pique your interest to explore his wonderful back catalogue (still growing with his 2010 release End Times garnering great reviews). For those already familiar with E's brand of beautiful blues, be assured this is one of those rare bios that will only add to your listening pleasure. All right? Goddam right.

Amazing Adventures (Part 2)

... or the continuing adventures of the Mint Custard Book Club (membership of one but always looking for friends) or stuff about someone who is rubbish at reading fiction but is trying hard. This includes reading children's books - to which this particular post is dedicated...

The Boy in the Dress / Mr Stink – David Walliams

Ah cross-dressing; it's an English tradition. I love it, you love it, David Walliams loves it and (perhaps unsurprisingly given the title) so does Dennis, the 12 year old hero of the Boy in the Dress. Writing his first book for children Walliams sympathetically taps into his own longstanding interest in feminine finery and in the process repairs some of the gentle damage he did creating Little Britain’s Emily ‘I’m a lady’ Howard.

David Walliams and the Quentin Blake drawn cast of The Boy in the Dress

Although teenage transvestism might appear unlikely fodder for a children's book, Walliams manages it deftly. He is clear that Dennis's predilection for women's fashion has no impact on his footballing abilities nor does it prevent him having a lustful crush on Lisa, the school fashionista Lisa who encourages his interests in increasingly involved and daring ways.

Yet far from being just a book with a pinky leftie commie message the Boy in the Dress is full of the type of humour you'd expect from one half of the Little Britain team, with local newspaper shop owner Raj a particularly constant source of laughs. Unphased by Dennis' nervous purchase of Vogue magazine Raj is more interested in selling half eaten chocolate bars, old christmas wrapping paper ('eleven rolls for the price of eight!') and bags of out of date pickled onion Monster Much ('a British delicacy!')

I have no idea what the 9 to 12 year olds this funny, energetic and ultimately rather sweet book is aimed at would think, but to me Dennis’ lone-parent family troubles were well handled and didn’t feel at all contrived. Whilst the same couldn’t be said of the slightly silly ending the Boy in the Dress’ big idea – be who you are and not who other people want you to be – seems like a good reason to write a children’s book.

The biggest coup for Williams is the inclusion of Quentin Blake’s always-wonderful visuals. Having Roald Dahl’s illustrator onboard immediately adds to the impression that the Boy in the Dress is somehow part of the Dahlian canon and it’s fair to say that give or take one too many contemporary references to reality television and a plot mostly grounded in the real world Walliams succeeds in emulating his idol’s knack for escapist pre-teen thrills.

Dennis (a boy)... in a dress

The same is not quite true of Walliams’ second children’s book, Mr Stink which whilst infused with a similar infectious energy and cheeky breaking of the fourth wall, as well as Blake’s wonderful drawings, feels a little more forced. This time our hero is Chloe, another twelve year old with parent-induced self-esteem issues who finds friendship in the form of a putrid-smelling homeless man called (aptly) Mr Stink.

At war with her revoltingly overachieving younger sister Annabelle, bullied by school colleagues and put down by her mother for carrying a bit of extra weight young Chloe hides away from the world, devoting herself to her creative writing that she dare not share with anyone. No-one that is apart from Mr Stink who encourages her to tell him night time stories as he beds down in the family shed. Chloe spends the rest of her time letting her imagination run riot about Mr Stink's past, imagining several histories for his each time they meet.

The evolution of Chloe and Mr Stink’s relationship is nicely done, but her politically ambitious Hyacinth Bucket-like mother and down at heel ex-rocker father don’t feel quite as plausible. Perhaps this is part of the point as Mr Stink sees Walliams let his own imagination loose more than Boy in the Dress, resulting in helicopter rides to meet the Prime Minister in Downing Street (an untrustworthy, slightly smarmy man called Dave, interestingly for a book published long before the 2010 election) and a flatulent appearance on Question Time.

Mr Stink and the Duchess ('she wasn't any particular breed of dog, she was just a dog')

There is another welcome outing for Raj (this time trying to offload a crate full of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stationery sets) and some lovely descriptions of Annabelle's daily diary ('2am Learning Arabic; 3am Dance Lesson - breakdance, hip hop, krumping; 4am Oboe; 5am Tour de France cycle training etc) but overall there was less joy than his first volume.

It is possible that Walliams has nothing left in his children’s literary locker, but in Mr Stink, and especially the Boy in the Dress he can at least boast two highly likeable, endearing and above all fun books to add to his growing list of achievements.

Yet more Mint Custard Book Club tomorrow (I know, whoda thunk it...?)

Amazing Adventures (Part 1)

So after a book-barren 2009 my 2010 continues to be full of page turning action. As promised back in January I’ve been riding the fiction-train to try and understand what it is that makes folks devote hours of their own lives to the adventures of people who don’t exist.

I’ve been progressing at a rate of a book a month (more impressive than it sounds given it took me over 18 months to read On the Road) so I’m pleased to report that the Mint Custard Book Club (membership of one) got a few more than that under its belt this past month (albeit with a little stretching of the rules as you’ll see over the next couple of posts) starting with…

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon

Despite being the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001 I’d never heard of Michael Chabon or this wonderful book until it was recommended to me by a fiction-aficionada. Now I’m on a mission to share the love, something that’s hard to do without making The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay sound trite or spoiling the treasures contained within. Still, here goes…

Let’s start with the big news; this is the only book that has ever made me cry. Not huge sobs or rivers of tears, but certainly a big lump in my throat and an emotional breakdown that delayed me from eating my vegemite on toast one morning to the point where it went cold. No mean feat, Mr Chabon.

Kavalier and Clay is broadly about the eponymous heroes, Josef (Joe) Kavalier and Sammy (Clay) Klayman, two young Jewish cousins whose lives are brought together when Joe is forced to flee his native Czechoslovakia for New York because of the Nazis, leaving his family behind.

Sammy is an obsessive devotee of the burgeoning world of comic books, whilst Joe is both a gifted artist and amateur magician. Merging their talents and interests they create the Escapist, a costumed super hero for their times, dedicated to ‘the liberation of all who toil in chains, whether of iron or ideas.’ When their comic book starts to sell they cement their fortunes and reputations but whilst the fictional Escapist is liberating the people of Europe from Hitler and the Nazis, Joe and Sammy struggle to escape from their own personal demons.

To say anymore would risk spoiling the many twists and turns that Chabon skilfully sets up and reveals with the occasional swish of his magician’s cloak. Part social history, part war epic, part mystery, Kavalier and Clay is fundamentally a fractured but beautiful love story which leaves you caring passionately about the fates of all concerned.

The book’s strengths lie in the complexity of emotions behind the actions of Sammy, Joe et al as well as an impressively researched and wholly believable recreation of the 1930s and 1940s. Neat tricks like referencing the Escapist as an actual comic contemporary of the newly-created Superman (similarly dreamt up by two young Jewish Americans) and mirroring Joe’s escalating personal battles with the build up to America’s involvement in World War II mean the period setting of the book is integral to the plot rather than just a device to talk about the war again.

Anyway in summary, if you want a startlingly original, emotionally engaging, multi-dimensional book that reinvents several dead genres and stops you eating toast so you can have a cry, then this is it. I’ve already added it to my favourite books on my profile – I can’t say fairer than that …

Epilogue: if you’re not the type of person to latch onto something ten years after everyone else and have actually read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay you may still be interested to know that in 2004 Chabon teamed up with those clever souls at Dark Knight comics and a number of contemporary comic artists for the Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a collection of graphic stories echoing and inspired by those created by Joe and Sammy. It’s worth picking up volume one of the collected works for the cover art alone (see pic) and I got a brand new copy for just A$22 which is a bargain considering the love that has gone into making it…

(more Mint Custard Book Club tomorrow…)

Mr C's Beautiful Blues

I like lunchtimes. A small midday wander around the block to clear my head this week led to the surprise discovery that Daniel Clowes has released a new graphic novel. Within ten minutes I was walking out of a nearby bookshop with a brown paper bag full of beauty and strangeness bound together under the name of the latest Clowes anti-hero, Wilson.

I think you need time for Clowes work to sink in (you can read some reviews here at the Drawn and Quartley website) but so far so great. Wilson is a continuous story in a similar vein to Ghostworld and David Boring but eschews their chapter format for a series of page-sized self-contained scenes of six panels. Each page has been beautifully drawn in a different style, each recognisably Clowes, but varied enough that they draw your attention to different elements of the story.

Wilson himself is a balding middle-aged American who (thanks to his dying father) recognises that his best days are probably behind him. Blessed with the usual Clowes-character misanthropy, he sets out on a journey into his past to follow up on his couldas, wouldas and shouldas. This leads to encounters with his down-at-heel ex-wife (and the daughter she put up for adoption after their split) with unexpectedly harsh consequences.

Despite some improbably nasty displays of disgust towards the general public, Wilson’s bitter, self-righteousness is easy to believe. Curiously it was made more tangible by an interview I’d read earlier that day with the eerily similar-looking Mark “E” Everett (from the Eels*). Both Wilson and Everett seem to share similar disdain for modern mores (one memorably poignant scene sees Wilson struggling against his inner Luddite by using Skype for the first time) as well as bushy beards.

Wilson is perhaps Clowes most linear and uncomplicated long-form work since Ghostworld. Whilst keeping up his trademark mistakes, misshapes and misfits worldview, it contains little of the savage weirdness of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron or the dark paranoia and sexual dysfunction David Boring. As such it’s a great place to start for newcomers to Daniel Clowes although bear in mind this is a bit like saying you should watch Blue Velvet before Lost Highway.

* as an aside the cover art to Eels new album End Times features a Clowes-eque portrait, actually done by Clowes’ Drawn and Quartley label-mate Adrian Tomine.

Inside of a Dog it's Too Dark to Read*

For anyone following, the Mint Custard Book Club (membership of one) is still going strong although what with the Comedy Festival, silly deadlines at work, applying for jobs, gardening, watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Lost and looking after our puppy I'm not finding the time to keep up my early 2010 pace.

This is not for want of trying. After polishing off Michael Tolliver Lives back in March I surprised myself by ploughing through Michel Houellebecq's Atomised in under a fortnight. On the surface there might seem to be little in common between the most recent in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series and the second novel by French enfant terrible Houellebecq, I can assure you that they share an almost uncomfortable obsession with shagging in all of its pan-sexual glory. Both books devote entire chapters to scenes of masturbation, oral sex, orgies to the point where you start wondering just who they are being written for.

Interestingly for all of Atomised's controversial reputation, it is Maupin who (ahem) comes out on top with some genuinely filthy boy on boy (and in some cases on another boy) action. What makes it less in your face (oh stop it) is the way Michael Tolliver Lives is sugar-coated in syrupy romance. Clearly delighted just to be alive (the last time we saw Michael Mouse in 1989's Sure of You he had just discovered he was HIV positive) our thinly disguised hero may be pushing sixty but that doesn't mean he can't have a muscled partner thirty years his junior who he coos after like the heroine from a Mills and Boon romance. I lost count of the amount of time they slapped each other on the arm/ass/back or snuggled their sleepy heads into each others' thick hairy chests.

This is a shame because whilst there was always a romantic side to the Tales series, it was as punctuation between exciting mysteries, unexpectedly brutal deaths and deeply implausible plot twists. With all the adventure and surprise removed what we are left with is something akin to those reunions of casts of your favourite old television shows: it's nice to see everyone again but the magic that made them special has long since gone.

There is some romance in the unflinching bleakness of Atomised but it's hard to come by and doesn't last. That said it throughly absorbed me for a while and its 2001: a Space Odyssey conclusion (with our perspective endlessly pulled back until we're actually sharing seats with the deus and all their machina) was dizzying. For a while I thought I was going to come away loving this book - a kind of scientific Sophie's World - but I think in the end I just read about one wank too many.

Still, I'm on track for a piece of fiction a month but since I'm only 200 marvellous pages into Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (with 400 to go) I may have to find more time for reading to keep up.

(with thanks to Groucho Marx*)

Nice Moments in Life - Part 13756

Sitting in the cafe twenty minutes ago eating toast reading Michael Toliver Lives (Armistead Maupin's latest in the Tales of the City series) and Fake Tales of San Francisco by the Arctic Monkeys came on the stereo. South Yorkshire and California in perfect harmony.

For anyone interested in the Mint Custard Book Club (membership of one) I finished Oscar and Lucinda last night but am far too traumatised to write about it...

There’s More to Life Than Books, You Know (But Not Much More)

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit it but 2009 marked a new cultural low for me; in twelve months I only managed to read two books from cover to cover. To further my shame let me add that I read both of these in December.

In my underwhelming defence I did start a number of books this year. I got about halfway through Bill Drummond’s The 17, and was enjoying Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road before it went missing in the move. I also finished another book this year – a beautifully dog-eared 1960s Livre de Poche copy of Albert Camus’ L’Etranger that Mrs Custard bought for me off the internet. Sadly I started that in August 2008 so can’t add it to last year’s tally either.

Anyone bored enough to scan through the favourite books on my profile will notice that fiction doesn’t rank too highly in my list of pleasures. There are one or two things on there that I really love (especially Donna Tartt) but most were read years ago. Prior to L’Etranger (which most people read when they are about 16) I can’t actually remember what the last piece of fiction I read was. Maybe the Life of Pi or Tom Robbins’ Villa Incognito (“Pla-bonga pla-bonga!”) - whenever they came out… This has been a cause of great distress for many of my book-loving chums who insist that one cannot live on non-fiction alone.

Ever one for grand empty gestures I have decided to redress the balance in 2010. Not only do I pledge to read more books (though reading three books would be no more impressive really) but I promise that almost all of them will be fiction. I say almost because I’ve already started on Michael Palin’s latest book of diaries and can’t wait to get stuck into Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis (which has possibly the finest cover to grace a book since Pooh and Piglet Go Visiting and Nearly Catch a Woozle).

To prove that I mean it, not only were my two December books both fiction (Stephen Fry’s debut The Liar and Truman Capote’s original novella of Breakfast at Tiffany’s) but I’ve already gone back and finished the brilliant Revolutionary Road (Frank Wheeler as model for Mad Men’s Pete Campbell anyone?) Just so I don’t get stuck in the 1950s I’ve turned to Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda. And before you ask no, I’m not just reading books that have been turned into films – I haven’t seen any of the adaptations either.

One outcome of my return to fiction has been experiencing anew the transportation effect that a truly great story can have. The ability of good writers to send readers on out of body experiences to other times, places, ages and genders can be somewhat disconcerting when the train pulls into the station of a morning and the book covers are temporarily closed. Real life tends to lose a bit of gloss in comparison. When I raised this with one fiction worshipper she suggested that the opposite were true, and that without that 30 minutes of escape ‘how else do you think we’d get through the day?’

So I publically swear to do better in 2010 and I may make the odd reference to my reading habits in this corner of the internet. I shan’t try and review any of the books I read but if anyone would like to start a virtual Mint Custard book club then feel free leave suggestions below. It would be lovely to hear from you. Now if you'll excuse me I must get back to Victorian England; there’s a church to build and cards to play.