"I find Jewish things very funny. Apart from the Holocaust."- KJW
Saturday, 24 October 2009
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Further Thurber
Tout, as the French say, in a philosophy older than ours and an idiom often more succint, passe.- Further Fables for Our Time
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Monday, 12 October 2009
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Hauteur! Hauteur!
I find my name listed in the program of the Edinburgh International Festival among those of writers invited to take part in its Writers Conference.... Needless to say that I am supremely indifferent to "the problems of a writer and the future of the novel" that are to be discussed...- Vladimir Nabokov, letter to The Times, May 30, 1962
Saturday, 10 October 2009
American history wtf?
The New Press has a category entitled World History/WWII.
Everything you need to know about the American isolationist mentality...
Everything you need to know about the American isolationist mentality...
Too soon!
Anyone else think rewarding Obama for his hopes and dreams is on a par with giving the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to an undergrad with a daring hypothesis?
Friday, 9 October 2009
Hearing voices
A great authority on singing once wrote that when Everyman sang in his bath, it was Caruso whom he fancied he heard.- Frank Johnson, Best Seat in the House (not actually about music, ironically enough)
Which invites the question: when Everyman reviews his day's blog activity [ahem... - Eds.] whose work does he imagine he is reading? Nabokov? Fitzgerald? That idiot Joyce?
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
InDefinition - 10
dinner dance, n. prelude to a violent voiding of the bowels, usu. in the tropics (esp. if some distance from the nearest convenience). Ideally performed solo.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
World Teacher Day
I got a card today - "to the World's Best Teacher."
It had five spelling mistakes in it.
And was a day late.
It had five spelling mistakes in it.
And was a day late.
Gawd...
It is impossible for a man to read and earn money at the same time, unless he is a reviewer, and Ruggiero prayed never to fall so low.- Jeanette Winterson, Art & Lies
[Personally, I gotta say I've never found it possible to read and earn money even while being a reviewer. But there it is.]
Monday, 5 October 2009
I have a question
If a man who tells stories about his own adventures is branded an egotist and a bore, why is the man who spins fictions neither sectioned as a madman nor denounced as a liar?
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Friday, 2 October 2009
Fame, Branded
"My persona don't really work without fame. Without fame, this haircut could be mistaken for mental illness."- Russell Brand
Couldn't agrizzle more. Here's me today, writing:
Hmmm... Maybe need to work on my back-comb.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Unfavourable conditions
[Spiked by the director]
Stormy Weather
Punchi Theatre, Borella, Colombo
10th-13th September
Of course, as only befits our Fifties noir setting, the investigating inspector soon discovers that all of the women in Noel’s life had reason to be involved in its grisly termination – his sister and lover (two separate people, I hasten to add) are also in the frame.
Written and directed (twice over) by Jehan Aloysius, and presented by CentreStage Productions, Stormy Weather is a neatly ironic homage to the celluloid murder mysteries of yesterdecade, augmenting stage action with film flashbacks, and all underlaid by an exuberantly over-atmospheric score (also composed by the writer-director).
Playing off the clench-jawed and unpleasantly masculine Noel (Amesh De Silva), the three potentially fatales femmes were, in turn, suitably vampish, agonised, and just plain bitchy. Shanuki De Alwis strutted as Charmaine, Noel’s drunken and volatile sister, with boisterous aplomb; Michelle Herft steered Therese, his spurned wife, through grief and rage in consecutive moments; and Dilrukshi Fonseka no less than embodied the feline spitefulness of Noel’s lover, Avanti (thank heavens she’s fictional, eh?).
Individually, each of these women seemed like a handful; together, they actually made one feel sorry for Noel. Freud, I am sure, would have had something interesting to say about a scene in which a naked man is repeatedly knifed, in his bed, by three (three!) women, at least two of whom could be considered relatives. (And as for the fact that the playwright’s mother positively ordered your reviewer to give the show a good write-up – well…)
It is no surprise if, in productions of this type, style threatens somewhat to overshadow content (pardon the pun): in such noir projects, style is almost a character in its own right.
Stormy Weather’s stage action – itself rendered exclusively in black & white – had the posing at an appropriately statuesque pitch, with the requisite number of hands-on-foreheads, slightly too-sexy couture, and everyone smoking furiously (perhaps a little joke within a joke: latter-day public school productions infamously followed this pattern, replete with the growing of totally gratuitous facial hair and the addition of ‘romantic’ scenes at every opportunity).
The film element deftly introduced – and thereby sidestepped – the inevitable melodrama of the noir genre before the play proper had even begun. It also helped to dodge the accusations of hammy-ness that stage gore invariably attracts. And the unabashed projection (as it were) of the genre from the outset permitted a few of the more clichéd lines – “Oh, how I wished her dead!”, etc. – to go underided.
Some sassy one-liners also helped leaven the morbidity, as did a few knowing remarks concerning Hollywood’s love of stereotype. Every man has his sticking point, and personally I found the blatant reference to “Agatha Christie mysteries” a step (and a clumsy rhyme) too far. But for the most part I enjoyed the cheeky post-post-(post-?)modern “where were you, inspector?” moments, and the astutely self-serving comments about “playing roles”. And was that a conscious nod to The Usual Suspects – the greatest ‘twist’ movie of all time – or did I imagine the capital letters?
Through no fault of his own, Mario de Soyza’s beleaguered sleuth was the least well-developed of the (admittedly, purposefully two-dimensional) characters. He also never worked out whodunit.
In the end, though – or, rather, substantially before the end – who did it was relatively obvious. In a small cast, process of elimination (it wasn’t suicide; X, Y and Z are just too obvious; dramatic rules don’t permit “an outsider”…) didn’t leave many options. Moreover, the play being commendably short, there was little time for that other vital facet of any murder mystery, the second-guessing of one’s initial hunches.
But if, in this hyper-stylistic exercise, the identity of the killer was of comparatively little consequence to the unfolding of the story, the denouement was none the less chilling for that. It is an amusing reflection on the Colombo cultural circuit that the programme implored attendees to “keep the murderer a secret for future audiences to enjoy the show”. Still, now that the curtain has fallen for the last time…
One particular oddity. “Noëlle”, which I originally took to be a sarcastic inflection (and feminisation) of the anti-hero’s name, turned out to be simply a consistent mispronunciation. Over the seventy minutes of the play, the cumulative effect of this minor slip managed to convey the impression that, fancy names notwithstanding, the whole tumultuous business had been firmly rooted in Cinnamon Gardens.
Now there’s a thought!
Stormy Weather
Punchi Theatre, Borella, Colombo
10th-13th September
To die in one’s sleep may be considered a misfortune. To do so with fifteen stab wounds to the chest looks – more than somewhat – like murder.The morning after a bitter argument with his wife, ‘man about town’ Noel Richards wakes up dead.
– Smyth, after Wilde
Of course, as only befits our Fifties noir setting, the investigating inspector soon discovers that all of the women in Noel’s life had reason to be involved in its grisly termination – his sister and lover (two separate people, I hasten to add) are also in the frame.
Written and directed (twice over) by Jehan Aloysius, and presented by CentreStage Productions, Stormy Weather is a neatly ironic homage to the celluloid murder mysteries of yesterdecade, augmenting stage action with film flashbacks, and all underlaid by an exuberantly over-atmospheric score (also composed by the writer-director).
Playing off the clench-jawed and unpleasantly masculine Noel (Amesh De Silva), the three potentially fatales femmes were, in turn, suitably vampish, agonised, and just plain bitchy. Shanuki De Alwis strutted as Charmaine, Noel’s drunken and volatile sister, with boisterous aplomb; Michelle Herft steered Therese, his spurned wife, through grief and rage in consecutive moments; and Dilrukshi Fonseka no less than embodied the feline spitefulness of Noel’s lover, Avanti (thank heavens she’s fictional, eh?).
Individually, each of these women seemed like a handful; together, they actually made one feel sorry for Noel. Freud, I am sure, would have had something interesting to say about a scene in which a naked man is repeatedly knifed, in his bed, by three (three!) women, at least two of whom could be considered relatives. (And as for the fact that the playwright’s mother positively ordered your reviewer to give the show a good write-up – well…)
It is no surprise if, in productions of this type, style threatens somewhat to overshadow content (pardon the pun): in such noir projects, style is almost a character in its own right.
Stormy Weather’s stage action – itself rendered exclusively in black & white – had the posing at an appropriately statuesque pitch, with the requisite number of hands-on-foreheads, slightly too-sexy couture, and everyone smoking furiously (perhaps a little joke within a joke: latter-day public school productions infamously followed this pattern, replete with the growing of totally gratuitous facial hair and the addition of ‘romantic’ scenes at every opportunity).
The film element deftly introduced – and thereby sidestepped – the inevitable melodrama of the noir genre before the play proper had even begun. It also helped to dodge the accusations of hammy-ness that stage gore invariably attracts. And the unabashed projection (as it were) of the genre from the outset permitted a few of the more clichéd lines – “Oh, how I wished her dead!”, etc. – to go underided.
Some sassy one-liners also helped leaven the morbidity, as did a few knowing remarks concerning Hollywood’s love of stereotype. Every man has his sticking point, and personally I found the blatant reference to “Agatha Christie mysteries” a step (and a clumsy rhyme) too far. But for the most part I enjoyed the cheeky post-post-(post-?)modern “where were you, inspector?” moments, and the astutely self-serving comments about “playing roles”. And was that a conscious nod to The Usual Suspects – the greatest ‘twist’ movie of all time – or did I imagine the capital letters?
Through no fault of his own, Mario de Soyza’s beleaguered sleuth was the least well-developed of the (admittedly, purposefully two-dimensional) characters. He also never worked out whodunit.
In the end, though – or, rather, substantially before the end – who did it was relatively obvious. In a small cast, process of elimination (it wasn’t suicide; X, Y and Z are just too obvious; dramatic rules don’t permit “an outsider”…) didn’t leave many options. Moreover, the play being commendably short, there was little time for that other vital facet of any murder mystery, the second-guessing of one’s initial hunches.
But if, in this hyper-stylistic exercise, the identity of the killer was of comparatively little consequence to the unfolding of the story, the denouement was none the less chilling for that. It is an amusing reflection on the Colombo cultural circuit that the programme implored attendees to “keep the murderer a secret for future audiences to enjoy the show”. Still, now that the curtain has fallen for the last time…
One particular oddity. “Noëlle”, which I originally took to be a sarcastic inflection (and feminisation) of the anti-hero’s name, turned out to be simply a consistent mispronunciation. Over the seventy minutes of the play, the cumulative effect of this minor slip managed to convey the impression that, fancy names notwithstanding, the whole tumultuous business had been firmly rooted in Cinnamon Gardens.
Now there’s a thought!
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
My favourite* Colombo street address
Horton Place
Now, I'm no mathematician; but isn't that just No. 18?
--
* There is also a '00B' on Barnes Place, just one road behind - though, in fairness, someone has evidently stolen the '1'.
Philosophy doesn't repeat itself...
We live in an era of uncertainty, they say.
How can they be sure?
How can they be sure?
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Lock up your children: 1
Examining the portrayal of African social customs, religious philosophies, and political structures in fiction for young people, Maddy and MacCann reveal the Western biases that often infuse stories by well-known Western authors.- from the blurb for Neo-Imperialism in Children's Literature About Africa
Priorities
"I write for two reasons: partly to make money and partly to win the respect of people whom I respect."- EM Forster, interviewed by the BBC on his 80th birthday
Friday, 18 September 2009
Coetzee on Emants on Turgenev
In 1880 [Marcellus] Emants published an essay on Turgenev which describes his own philosophy rather better than it does Turgenev's.- JM Coetzee, Stranger Shores: essays 1986-1999
Ain't that always the way?
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Thought for the day
"On a good day, writing about my life is the most sublime, cathartic, godly, and honest thing I could ever imagine doing ... On a bad day, however, it’s narcissistic and unimaginative. My pathetic life plays back like some annoying Top 40s jingle that lodges in the head and won’t leave."- Jamie Brisick, in the latest issue of Five Dials.
For our American readers
Irony has to contain an element of suffering in it, (Otherwise it is the attitude of a know-it-all.)- Robert Musil, Diaries
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Criteria for entry into the writing 'profession'
Sick-Marcellus Emants, A Posthumous Confession
highly complex
neurasthenic
in some respects of unsound mind
in other respects perverse...
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
On essay-writing*
There is something undeniably boring about ordering thoughts long familiar to reasonably clever people for the sake of some external purpose.- Robert Musil, 'The Obscene and Pathological in Art' (1911), Precision and Soul
--
* Equally, 'On journalism'...
The great thinkers: part 1
"Tea tempers the spirit and harmonises the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens or refreshes the body, and clears the perceptive faculties."- Confucius, 8am Monday
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