MDA’S BOOK NOTES
This was a somewhat short-lived book review column, only appearing in issues 19 and 20 of the Idler. This was back when the Idler office used to be inundated with new book releases.
Pink
by Gus Vant Sant
Somewhere inbetween final score and the onset of Blind Date, I read this jumbled novel, though very little of it stuck to the walls of my mind. The faint remaining impressions were of a quite unspectacular, overly tricksy approach, laden with film in-jokes (the narrator is failed industrial film director) The narrator reminded me of a training film director I once met. He insisted that I did not follow his mistake and go into television because he was broke with a five year old son and approaching retirement. His proudest career moment was a three minute film of trains rolling through black and white stock with a voiceover reading Auden poetry. It was a training film for the post-office, as it turned out.
Blue Mondays
By Amon Grunberg
Young author’s misadventures in Amsterdam. Is there anyone who goes to Amsterdam and doesn’t have misadventures?
Arkansas
By David Leavitt
Contains a story about a gay writer who accepts a university post and demands sexual favours from his students in return for writing their essays. The students he ‘works’ with are predominately straight jocks, who say things like ‘I have a large penis. Isn’t that what gay people like?’ This ripe savouring of the members of young students caused a furore in America, when the story was pulled form US Esquire allegedly for fear of offending Chrysler, a big advertiser. The rest of Arkansas is gay short fiction of the usual, immaculate form – somewhat hampered by the throbbing vacancy at the heart of Gay culture.
Joystick Nation
By JC Hertz
A history of video games that doesn’t include Tomb Raider, and utterly fails to grasp the significance of the Playstation. (See my own paper on this subject: Why Women Don’t Play Playstation: a Socio-Freudian analysis of the digital circle jerk.) I am still working on my latest video games paper: From Primitivism to Representation: How the journey from space invader aliens to Lara Croft is an encapsulation of the history of art, from iconic image to realistic art. This book does not discuss any of these ideas: instead it is a re-tread of familiar histories and notions. The origins of computer games in the mainframe monolith Space Wars, to the Pong revolution, mainstreamed into Space Invaders, the collapse of home console gaming due to lack of software quality control, the influence of the ZX Spectrum in creating a fertile base of programmers, the return of gaming via the Sega Nintendo 16 bit revolution etc. I could have written it out of my nerdy alter-ego. There is a sly and witty approach to video games. This is not it.
A Five Year Plan, Philip Kerr
So bad, it is almost enough to make you regret you ever learned to read.
Star Factory
by Ciaran Carson
In the Iain Sinclair, psychogeographical mode. A study then, of the way in which space and memory and mind are entwined. A landscape is a state of mind, as an obscure poet once wrote, and here Belfast is the landscape. Well-written if episodic work. Digresses so much it resembles a tree. Still, some of the leaves are beautiful.
Mrs Chippy’s Last Expedition
Never got round to this one. Who wrote it? Something about Antartica expedition seen through the eyes of a dog/cat. Typical Bloomsbury whimsy
This was a somewhat short-lived book review column, only appearing in issues 19 and 20 of the Idler. This was back when the Idler office used to be inundated with new book releases.
Pink
by Gus Vant Sant
Somewhere inbetween final score and the onset of Blind Date, I read this jumbled novel, though very little of it stuck to the walls of my mind. The faint remaining impressions were of a quite unspectacular, overly tricksy approach, laden with film in-jokes (the narrator is failed industrial film director) The narrator reminded me of a training film director I once met. He insisted that I did not follow his mistake and go into television because he was broke with a five year old son and approaching retirement. His proudest career moment was a three minute film of trains rolling through black and white stock with a voiceover reading Auden poetry. It was a training film for the post-office, as it turned out.
Blue Mondays
By Amon Grunberg
Young author’s misadventures in Amsterdam. Is there anyone who goes to Amsterdam and doesn’t have misadventures?
Arkansas
By David Leavitt
Contains a story about a gay writer who accepts a university post and demands sexual favours from his students in return for writing their essays. The students he ‘works’ with are predominately straight jocks, who say things like ‘I have a large penis. Isn’t that what gay people like?’ This ripe savouring of the members of young students caused a furore in America, when the story was pulled form US Esquire allegedly for fear of offending Chrysler, a big advertiser. The rest of Arkansas is gay short fiction of the usual, immaculate form – somewhat hampered by the throbbing vacancy at the heart of Gay culture.
Joystick Nation
By JC Hertz
A history of video games that doesn’t include Tomb Raider, and utterly fails to grasp the significance of the Playstation. (See my own paper on this subject: Why Women Don’t Play Playstation: a Socio-Freudian analysis of the digital circle jerk.) I am still working on my latest video games paper: From Primitivism to Representation: How the journey from space invader aliens to Lara Croft is an encapsulation of the history of art, from iconic image to realistic art. This book does not discuss any of these ideas: instead it is a re-tread of familiar histories and notions. The origins of computer games in the mainframe monolith Space Wars, to the Pong revolution, mainstreamed into Space Invaders, the collapse of home console gaming due to lack of software quality control, the influence of the ZX Spectrum in creating a fertile base of programmers, the return of gaming via the Sega Nintendo 16 bit revolution etc. I could have written it out of my nerdy alter-ego. There is a sly and witty approach to video games. This is not it.
A Five Year Plan, Philip Kerr
So bad, it is almost enough to make you regret you ever learned to read.
Star Factory
by Ciaran Carson
In the Iain Sinclair, psychogeographical mode. A study then, of the way in which space and memory and mind are entwined. A landscape is a state of mind, as an obscure poet once wrote, and here Belfast is the landscape. Well-written if episodic work. Digresses so much it resembles a tree. Still, some of the leaves are beautiful.
Mrs Chippy’s Last Expedition
Never got round to this one. Who wrote it? Something about Antartica expedition seen through the eyes of a dog/cat. Typical Bloomsbury whimsy
"I do nothing and then I do something. But it's taken years of investigating idleness in all its forms to be able to achieve this. My discipline is borne out of concerted study of idleness."