notion 034 2008
NOTION 0 3 4
Music . Lifestyle . Fashion
www.planetnotion.com NOTION 034 / 2008 / UK £3.95 Us$9.99 / aus $13.50
ELLEN ALLIEN
B IM ! BA M! BO OM !
Hidden Meaning ALE X
T R O CH U T
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www. a l extroc h ut . c o m
WORDS: michael c lewin
Alex Trochut, in what appears to be a counter-
I understood – I’d always thought that he was an artist. It
The Vulture finds intriguing the manner in which Trochut,
intuitive statement, tells the Vulture, “I’m not trying to
made everything better, in a way – I like that I follow his
ahem, deconstructs the linearity of words. By which, I mean
communicate meaning – I am trying to make people enjoy
profession. It feels magnetic.”
to say that the traditional, straight-forward form – one
the image of words.” A glance around this here spread
letter follows another to form a one word which follows
should illuminate that statement: in the world of the
Pure typography seeks an anal balance ‘twixt all characters
another, on a level plane – is told to go fuck itself. Not
Vulture-enobled “commercial arts”, Trochut is an arch,
and is for highly rarefied (cf. anal) minds; Trochut and a horde
revolutionary, per se, but understanding that allows us to
nouveau-grotesque baroque sensualist at odds with a
of up’n’coming and already-come designers – Si Scott, Ray
see how Trochut enjoys the interplay of individual letters
world too often lazily minimal. Hark at him:
Fenwick, Chris Ware – a collection of designers both hipper
outside of their obvious order, so constructing an image
and more indolent (the two are often seen together), have
rather than a phrase.
“I like to let go with the visuals – concepts are specifications.
reaped delicious aesthetic and fiscal rewards recently,
Sometimes, it’s easier, quicker and better to just do what
from the development of existing fonts through illustration.
“I like the obscure and I like ambiguity,” Alex tells the
you want and what you feel is right without worrying how
Says our boy: “I’m not really a typographer. I am more into
Vulture when pressed on his intense style. “Sometimes I
it is right.” Perhaps, the Vulture muses, the Barcelonan,
the lettering and the complete images. I am concerned
am hiding the meaning, drawing on something dark in that
through immersing himself and so enjoying the process of
with the second level of the image – the first is to convey
obscuring way. It is intuition, I think – I feel close to it.”
creating his magnificent illustrated lettering, conveys just
the meaning, and then there is the pure visual sense, the
Opaque, certainly – though darkness one struggles to find
that dark-hearted fun to the viewer of his designs – and so
enjoyment of an image. This is what I am working in.”
in much of his work. Rather, there is hinted-at sexuality
achieving that goal of having people “enjoy it”.
and a sense of uncanny movement that one almost winces …And so the Vulture returns to that seeming counter-
at, reminiscent of bodily fluids or the Medusa’s hair of
The Vulture asks you: do you enjoy it? You do, don’t you?
intuition: a designer/letterer/illustrator primarily known
snakes. He says of his influences that “I like a lot of things
You love the slick, glossy sexuality and fluidity of those
for type-based work who does not particularly care for
that are not trendy. I like to find my own sources, things not
images, and you think fuck it if it takes four looks to work
meaning? It spits in the eye of the literary-minded Vulture’s
from our times. Nature – you are always copying nature.”
out what it says. He is proud of your development.
sensibilities, at least on first parsing. Trochut admits to the Vulture on questioning that he does indeed love type, and
Perhaps that is why the Vulture is put in mind of a line from
Trochut is a young man, mid-20s, a Spaniard who was
has a relationship with the form of letters, words. He claims
Hamlet, out of context – “In form and moving how express
instinctively drawn to illustration without knowing that
this, rather than a relationship with meaning and language,
and admirable!” Meaning can take a jump. In Alex Trochut’s
his Grandfather, Juan Trochut (who died just a year
is where he finds solace and pleasure. He describes it as
work, words come to uncanny yet natural life – they seem
before Alex was born), was something of a legendary
“expressive typography”. Cast your eyes around the spread
to move, ooze, breathe; at once beautiful and grotesque;
Catalan typographer in his own right. “It was only when
once more and comprehend that. A sensibility is conveyed
absorbing and consuming and, somehow, alive.
my university professors started bugging me about it that
(or, aptly, expressed) before any meaning is.
068 | N O T I O N
C R E A T I V E PROFILE
Alex Trochut
www.planetnotion.com | 069
Noise Ar t
WORDS: MICHAEL C LEWIN
The
Merz b o w @ U L U (1 9 . 0 4 . 0 8) K l i n k e r C l u b @ D a l s t o n , N u n h e a d a n d A r c h w a y ( R e g u larl y ) B o a t T i n g @ n r . T e m p l e , L o n d o n E m b a n k m e n t ( R e g u larl y ) Cildo Meirelles @ Ta t e M o d e r n (1 4 . 1 0 . 0 8 – 1 1 . 0 1 . 0 9)
Francis Picabia somewhat sagely – and certainly mockingly – once said: “You have
complete piece was played, a commentary on evolution and decay. And at times, of course, it
to see and hear something for ages before you can like it, you bunch of idiots.”
was ball-achingly loud and painful though ultimately brilliant – like colonic irrigation.
(An aside: the Vulture hopes you had opportunity to visit Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia @
Merzbow is neither the first nor the last noise artist, of course. They emerge from most
Tate Modern. A sublime history lesson of an exhibition, truly, which is enhanced when one
conceivable disciplines and take in most of them, as well. Classical composers are the most
revels in the reverence with which these apogees of irreverence and their practical jokes are
obvious candidates, of course – and the 20th Century is rife with the bastards. Schoenberg and
treated, and imagines what they might have thought of it. Presumably, that they won.)
rival Stravinsky’s serialism pathed the way, as did the former’s Emancipation of the Dissonance, while Stockhausen’s electronic work, like Stimmung, can be blamed for most electro-Noise
The Picabia quote puts the Vulture in mind of his acquaintance with JapaNoise artist Merzbow.
artists from Kraftwerk through Eno to Merzbow and beyond. Gyorgy Ligeti’s piece Atmospheres
“SHIT! CHRIST! MY AVIAN EARS! SUCH NOISE, SUCH UNSUFFERABLE, CLANGOROUS,
begins with the largest ever cluster chord – every note in the chromatic scale is played at once
APOCALYPTIC-BASTARD NOISE KILLMEKILLMEKILLME GOD ARE YOU THERE THE NOISE!!!” …
over five octaves. He then wrote Musica ricercata (loosely - ‘Music Rediscovered’), which really
is an approximation of one’s initial reaction to a track aptly called “Bastard Noise”. Picabia was
is, as it claims, the process of rediscovering music. It begins with the least complicated possible
right, however, and over “ages” the Vulture grew to love Merzbow works (though perhaps not
movement involving two notes, and over eleven pieces adds a note each time until the full scale
all 200 odd of them). During the 80s and 90s, Masami Akita took music to its final, brutal edge
is in play. The perfect illustration of that rebirthing process. Before this, of course, was John
– only silence lay beyond, as John Cage proved with 4’33”. Listening to Tauromachine or Pulse
Cage and that (now clichéd) composition 4’33” – four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
Demon is an immersive, cleansing experience, an awful advantage earned in a distressing manner similar to colonic irrigation. Braced, listeners must try to survive the first fifteen
There are, of course, actual artistes associated with noise art, or sound art or what have
minutes as vicious static and pounding course throughout their bodies; by this diligence, they
you, the kind who are Granted Status by such noble institutions as our aforementioned
will achieve a blank enlightenment; new thoughts and fresh realisations occur once banal
Populist Southbank Revue (formerly: Tatemodern). You may remember multi-discipline
expectations of music have been flushed out like so much shit; they are born again, clean. It is
man Bruce Nauman’s Turbine Hall installation, the one with the speakers saying “Work…
very much like flagellation in medieval Christianity or those odd leg things in Opus Dei.
Play… Whatever…” that hardly anyone remembers. On reflection, the Vulture thinks perhaps you don’t remember it. The PSR (formerly: Tatemodern) later this year hosts an
Noise music, of which we’re holding up Merzbow as its paragon, is thoroughly in love with the
exhibition by the delicious Cildo Meirelles (14.10.08 – 11.01.09), a Brazilian installation
potential of man’s creations since the Industrial Revolution: in its century or so it has used
and conceptual artist. In a large, dim room, the mesh net forms a square from floor to
as instruments scrap metals and junk objects, tape cassettes, laptops, pneumatic drills and
ceiling; inside it is a wooden crucifix and the same two wood blocks deconstructed, on
other workman tools, the voice, the hands, real instruments, anything electronic and anything
scales; on the floor are dozens of big metal balls of differing weight. In the room, the sound
else. Paradoxically, Noise also hates everything industrial man has wrought. Its artists are in
of those balls being dropped at different distances from a microphone is played on a loop:
love with beauty and seek to destroy it. It is a sonic form with an astonishingly physical aspect.
dull, heavy, irregular thuds are heard. The sound makes sense of the sight before you,
Noise is the final, balls-out conclusion to the formalist endeavours of the 20th century.
lending static objects sensual presence in time; the sonic aspect suggests bodily intimacy and awareness you’ve never known, elucidating, via its abstraction, physical sonic power.
Noise, and its practitioners, are also laughing at you. There’s that wonderfully-titled Merzbow
The work is Eureka/Blindhotland, and the Vulture would like you to see it.
track, for instance: ‘Bastard Noise’. There is also the fact he is a renowned expert on bondage and S&M – practices which the Vulture has often considered inherently amusing (at other
There’s a quaint, pleasant little scene around the country which relates to our Noise-
times: merely appealing). The scene he is from, Japanoise, is a (crap) pun in both English
mongers: a collection of men and women of pleasantly homely and shabby appearance:
and Japanese. The artists involved are very serious about taking the piss, but they’re taking
incredibly talented musicians and performance & spoken word artists in a network of
the piss nonetheless. They are very similar to the aforementioned Dadaists showing at the
rundown pubs throughout the country, united to their very serious devotion to being
Populist Southbank Revue (TateModern): “As a work of art I submit to you… a pisspot. I’m
hilariously absurd. The two best examples of these anarcho-absurdist pseudo-hobos in
joking. But also it is actually revolutionary art. Ha!” And likewise: “As music I present to you…
London are Boat Ting at the Yacht Club – on a boat (mais oui!) on the Embankment near
static. I’m joking. But also it is actually revolutionary music. Ha!”
Temple tube – and the Klinker Club, run by freeform improve jazz legend Hugh Metcalfe: a man of humour, great ability and a series of tea cosies worn on his head. As a description,
As the Vulture described the listening process for you earlier: take something to its extreme,
the Pythons, Allen Ginsberg and John Zorn in a room, drunk, with broken pianos, gas masks,
and then we might begin again anew. Since that extreme period, Merzbow has experimented
dildos, buckets, flutes and oscillators comes nowhere near being as entertaining as these
with such radical concepts as melody and structure. When the Vulture saw him at Cold
events. They are indescribable, monthly, numerous, and buzz with more pure joy than any
Spring’s ULU night in April, the above was all very much in evidence. He played a laptop
other music-orientated event in London. The denizens of this scene embody every sensibility
and many other “equipments”, including a junk guitar with springs for strings. (Springs =
we have discussed but are greatly enjoyable, surprisingly educational and, crucially, are not
Strings! See the humour? See it?!) He was an intense figure on stage, static and sweating and
dead. As the Klinker’s flyer once stated: “Improvisation – Film – Musics – Vocal Acrobatics –
concentrated. The set showed evidence of his new found palatability and structural sense – a
Contraptions – Right Weird – Pants”. Do go sometime. Just… dress down for the occasion.
066 | N O T I O N
I m a g e : C y T w omb l y , Wilder
Shores of Love (Bassano in Teverina) 1985 Cy Two m bly Collection © Cy twombly Oil-based house paint, oil paint [paint stick], coloured pencil, lead pencil on wooden panel 140 x 120 cm. F R O M T H E C Y T W O M B L Y R E T R O S P E C T I V E @ TATEMODERN (19.06 - 14.09.08)
MERZBOW.NET
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TATE.ORG.UK
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COLDSPRING.CO.UK
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IOTACISM.COM/KLINKERIZER/INDEX.SHTML
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BOAT-TING.CO.UK
NOTION
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THINK TANK
No v el Idea; ,
Or why the fuck would anyone write a novel anymore? TEXT: MICHAEL C LEWIN
A
ILLUSTRATIONS: ADAM DURRANT
RATHER ILLUSTRATIVE STORY about the
Such questions are commonplace in these days of
(Yeah, I know – balls. But who amongst you hasn’t
working practices of legendary theatre
“no-one-has-a-clue-what-is-going-on-so-just-panic”.
been young and thought you were the first to discover
critic Kenneth Tynan which Think Tank is
The most high-profile industries on suicide watch right
something? If you haven’t, you weren’t young.) We
going to share with you (you have no say in this) should
now are newspapers and recorded music; publishing,
dreamed about new literary salons while evoking the
serve as suitable introduction. Tynan was famed for his
though, is perhaps in a worse state than both. Apart from
names of authors illustrious and dead; talked of this
astonishing prose style: nimble and floral yet biting and
(inexplicable) marquee name Ian McEwan, last year’s
meme and that narrative, those experiences, some people,
acerbic, it flowed easily and was enviably effortless. No
Booker short-listed novels barely, if at all, managed
certain events, appropriate styles and tones – enough
one realised, until his wife’s memoirs, what this cost
sales in five figures. Sure, children’s books by Spice
to make ears burn, throats hurt. In those days, you could
him, how it damaged his very constitution. His writings
Girls sell, as do sex-orientated histories of the medieval
still smoke, too. Rather cliché, a little gay, but indulgently
didn’t actually ripple from his finger tips like pearly notes;
peasantry – but good fiction? Does it even really exist?
enjoyable: wrapped up in the romance of authorship and idle youth, protected against cynicism, drunk.
rather, he pulled them out like fingernails: the product of intense bouts of isolation, locked in a study for days and
Think Tank talked to some debut novelists and tried to
nights with naught but nicotine, ink, scotch and soup. He
work out why they write, and if we really have reached
Six months later, Think Tank saw Christiana again. She’d
would emerge “dracula-like”, causing “smoke, as if from
the end of our affair with the novel.
actually written the book we talked about, had a publisher
a nuclear blast, to shoot out” when he finally opened the door. At that moment “he always looked very strange; rather insane.” Later, he would actually go rather insane; earlier, he’d develop sado-masochistic sexual appetites; finally, all that nicotine would, via emphysema, kill him.
T
and was in the process of finishing and editing it. One HINK TANK FIRST MET Christiana Spens some time ago, in a dingy gig venue on New Oxford St. Across the road, people queued round
(and round… and round…) the block for the last night of Trash; in the bar, we all toyed with the idea of going, but
person still thinks writing worthwhile, at least.
T
HE NOVEL today (ha! What an awful phrase!) is not the form it was. As a recent literary review in Private Eye had it, “you have to feel for publishers.
Think Tank acknowledges that Tynan is not a novelist;
on seeing the queues thought otherwise. The evening
he is, though, one of the most talented writers of the
actually turned out to be more pleasant than it would have
probably imagined spending the rest of their days publishing
20th Century so suck it, he’s relevant. He embodies
been were we sardine-packed and sweating in The End,
delicate literary novels… Instead, they must clamber over
those eternal qualities of writers and rock stars we
observing mildly-famous indie rockers gurn. There was
each other to buy misery memoirs by lesser known Nolan
persist in romanticising: chain-smoking, good-looking,
space to move around in and to talk. So talk, we did.
Sisters. It can hardly be the most dignified way to live. You
hedonistic and narcissistic; ridiculously talented,
Armed with their diligently acquired 2:1s in English, they
might as well sell yourself to the white slave trade.”
destructive, doomed and so – immortal. And yet, despite
Christiana and Think Tank, it turned out, both wrote
such rewards – who would put themselves through
for the same cult online music site Rockfeedback.com.
There’s your dichotomy: pitted against “delicate novels”
such torment now to be a writer now? Who would hurt
Also, as young writers are wont to do before realising
– the ghost-written memoirs of I-don’t-care-who-you-
themselves or even destroy themselves writing a novel
how silly they are, we both harboured the desire to
are-go-away. Books are bought as last-resort presents at
when, frankly, no one would really read it? Why not make
write a novel. Specifically, we thought that being young
the counter of HMV; reading novels is the preserve of the
it into a film? Why not a blog? That way you might make
internationalists in London – that heady, intoxicating
bored holiday maker or the fusty and old, for the most;
money. And honestly, hasn’t someone infinitely better
home of creativity, the capital of the 21st Century, blah
owning them is another way of getting laid, so long as you
than you already written something similar? Who reads
blah kill me now – we had an opportunity to authentically
read the Wikipedia entry to blag having read them. Novels
these days, anyway? What immortality for writers now?
document and fictionalise a narrative that, up to then,
retain a patina of worthiness smeared by trepidation:
What rewards? Ultimately, why fucking bother?
had been treated in such a tacky way.
herein are Important Thoughts that you will never know
NOTION
| 073
THINK TANK
because you will never finish. Invest yourself in this
To conjure Art and so make better the world? To scratch
Sacher-Masoch verbalised something personal to him
novel and it will become an albatross around your neck:
some feisty itch? Live a dream? Keep a promise to your
that he felt had been left unspoken (hence: partly-
whenever you look at it you will feel a duty you cannot
younger self? Or even some combination of all the above
autobiographical) and his romanticisation was rewarded
muster energy to fulfil. You will grow to hate it because it
designed to assuage a giant ego? Hmmm.
with devotion and acclaim; as for part-prophetic: he was
reminds you that you are lazy and stupid. Burn it.
also rewarded with a wife. A girl named Aurora Rumelin A more concrete (or, at least, more anecdotal than exegetic)
approached him claiming to be Venus in Furs’ heroine
It is curious to think that the novel, through history, is
example of what we’ve talked about, have this in your face:
Wanda von Dunajew, who would fulfil his desires of a
often considered to be the great prole art form, first
Sacher-Masoch and his novel Venus in Furs. Both novel
merciless wife. Writing, evidently, brings on the good shit.
and foremost a commercial product. It was the derided,
and novelist might seem familiar. The novel shares a name
satirical sibling of verse and the romance, the high form of
with a Velvet Underground song. Venus in Furs deals with
That a novel might be first to voice an illicit, unstated desire
literature. Not until the 19th Century is it widely accepted
what we now, but only since its publication, know as a
today seems unlikely – especially considering taboo is rather
as an art, by which point its purpose had divided: those
masochistic love affair. See that? MASOCH-istic. Perhaps
passé as a concept – but for one to have such immense
who felt it should titillate the reader; that it should serve
it is best explained by its protagonists:
impact socially is, disappointingly, probably inconceivable.
some moral or didactic purpose; and those who believed
Why, though? It is not a case of collapsing literacy levels, in
in l’art pour l’art, the beginnings of formalist endeavour
“I was seized by a sweet intoxication. ‘You’ve aroused my
spite of what some would say. That is what we are here to
that would probably result in the reluctant, dutiful way we
most cherished fantasy! To be the slave of a woman, a
explain (and then possibly refute, for the hell of it): the novel
approach novels now. (By the by: anyone who objects to
beautiful woman, whom I love, whom I worship–!’
has been cast into vagrancy by circumstantial intrigues.
Think Tank’s blasé parsing of history, do get in touch. It’d
Wanda broke in, laughing: ‘And who mistreats you for it!’”
Certainly, the 20th century saw the rise of maybe five or
be nice to know someone read this far, at least.)
more cultural and entertainment forms that were more Hands up who else here is a masochist? …Anyway… the term
readily accessible than the novel, but it remains too facile
Anyway: we could be way-laid by so many undergrad
was introduced in 1890, 20 years after Sacher-Masoch’s
to accuse mass idleness alone for, say, the preference
theses, or we could press ahead. It’s important to bear in
partially-autobiographical, partially-prophetic novel was
of TV over book. The ‘high’ novels, those with artistic or
mind that the novel’s rise is parallel to that of the printing
published, by an Austrian psychoanalyst called Krafft-Ebing
didactic value, continued to find the same small, pretentious
press. It is, and always has been, principally, a market-
in a study of sexual perversity. (The Austrians back then, FYI,
audience of corduroy wearers while everyone else began
orientated consumer product – indeed, perhaps the first
were wild. Much wilder than you club kids. You got nuttin’
scoffing at the idea of their being entertaining. Subjects and
great cultural/entertainment product to break from art’s
on them.) Venus in Furs’ depiction of a man’s desire to be
stories seem better served by other art forms, at least as far
unique aura and into mass-reproduction – and, as such,
whipped, enslaved and tormented by a beautiful woman was,
as audiences are concerned; there is a surplus of writers’
has its share of detractors. Still, it is perhaps difficult
understandably, controversial at the time. It wasn’t simply
gazing and rarely do those gazes feel fresh. The themes
to imagine a time when the novel was scandalous and
that Sacher-Masoch honestly portrayed his “alternative”
and stories and characters of entertaining novels are
corrupting like GTA, though such has regularly been the
lifestyle; more astonishing was the very personal response
better served by and already familiar from TV, from cinema
truth. Women used to faint reading Stendhal late into the
to the author’s predilections: Krafft-Ebing’s Case Studies
and from the internet, as well as real life; moreover, the
night; now, we all faint watching Saw 3.
(read: Perverts) repeatedly referred to being charmed
dictatorial linear narrative doesn’t really do justice to a world
by “sadistically-inclined women like Sacher-Masoch’s
of events which intersect without progressing, a world where
arious are the ambitions of the novel! Those of
heroines” and having the “passion to play the slave, referring
we are used to making our own hyperlinked stories as we
the writer, however… what of them? To teach
as example to Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs”. But then…
travel the internet. Still, while we may have fallen out of love
and instruct their readers? To entertain them?
Austrians. I know. Basements and genocides.
with the novel, we’ve yet to fall out of love with the writer.
V
074 | NOTION
A
pril: on the eve of the launch of Christiana’s
why I want to get away from it for a while, until I can say – ‘it is
The problem the novel – or novelists – face is today’s
debut novel. We meet up. It seems like the
what it is’.” I think, rather than the book, she’s just found in the
omnipresent shrug. Everything needs to be secret,
thing to do. We talk about books, her book and
literary life the same disenchantment she found that summer.
accessible and revolutionary. These things must allow
other books. We get drunk again. “It’s not about a decade,
audiences to gorge on the vitality of something fresh
more about an age you reach,” she tells me when I bring up
The Irishman, Michael, is full of tears and proclamations
and new which is theirs alone, which makes them feel
those ideas we had about capturing our generation. “It’s
and lyricism. He reminds me of a line I heard once, about
superior, feel vital, sensations which must not come at too
about a summer. How it was, how I wished it was. It fell
politicians: “You queue up one behind the other like school
high a price (but if they suggest that they have, that’s just
short. In London, particularly, there’s something fake about
boys, ready to make your proclamations about changing
fine). More tangibly: novelists deal with an audience not
summer. Everyone has an ideal and never reaches it.”
the world in big, booming voices – only when it’s your turn,
so willing to invest themselves in a novel while needing to
it comes out in a falsetto.” Our Michael plays the part
(for no good reason) restate the case for the whole form,
Her novel, The Wrecking Ball, sees hipster debutantes on
of Writer perfectly: the Irish heritage; the drunkenness;
yet not in some arch, formalist way that renders the whole
a downward spiral into their own navels amidst drugs and
the theatrics; the unpublished bildungsroman. It seems,
point obscure and the reading experience unpleasant.
drink, in a world where “rebellion” scans as “care-free”
somehow, a little sad.
and the search for oblivion is a lifestyle choice. At a casual glance, it appears an indulgent book: the world needs a fictionalised Peaches Geldof like it needs the real one. It’s an unfair approximation, however: The Wrecking
T
Furthermore, is the novel, for the most part a linear he problem faced by The Wrecking Ball: why isn’t
form, capable of dealing with a world which no longer
it a film? It would work well as a film. It is very
resembles a story? Events intersect, but don’t progress.
filmic: a pulsing, elliptical narrative about music
Who would read an epic hyper-linked fiction when they’re
and dirty, pretty things. Christiana’s lyrical writing might be
already engaged in their own, constructing their own banal
Ball charts a rose-perfumed, rosé-swilling descent into
replaced by the stylistic direction of a David Gordon Green,
Wikipedia? Borges obsessed over the labyrinth; Faulkner
disenchantment, as its author observes the all-consuming,
say. It would be a very good film.
was in raptures at mazes. There’s no particular distinction between the two, but they come in two forms: one, the
self-sufficient dystopian playgrounds of early-20s life: untouched by responsibility or adults, we play and we fight
A French screenwriter Think Tank used to work with was
unicursal maze, one long winding path in and out of itself;
and then we break - break from that world or just break
fond of bemoaning the glut of young confessional films
and the multicursal maze with many paths and many
ourselves, dazed, confused and distant. Christiana offers that
about adolescence. He would say, “Enough of zese stories
dead ends before its exit. It would be trite to suggest the
while “it might seem decadent, it’s framed by a lot of unspoken
that are, ‘When I was 14, I touched a titty; when I was 17
internet is a multicursal maze, though the cap fits. The
negatives.” I’d offer that it is just framed: a unit of beauty,
I had a blow job in a toilet; when I was 21 – no more blow
same applies to the novel and the unicursal. André Gide
sublime horror unuttered, hanging on a wall to be looked at. “I
jobs! I am sad so I write a story, then maybe I get more
had the right idea: he wrote of a straightforward maze you
wanted there to be a communal madness,” she says.
blow job.’ SHIT! Enough of this! Where is glamour!? Where
had to follow a path through blindly, submitting yourself
is elegance?! Where is ze imagination?!”
to the maze-maker’s will, but which, by the burning of
The next time we meet is on a random night in Soho. We end
narcotic plants, would cause “each man to create his
up going to a gentlemen’s club with an Irishman inebriated in
First, we had the spoken word – that was how we told
own hotch potch, and so lose himself in his own private
the way only Irishmen can be. He’s a playwright; we meet his
stories. Then, we could write it down. Now, we’ve a wealth
labyrinth.” Even a straight-line might be a-mazezd by
Welsh friend, a novelist. Our Irishman is also writing a novel.
of ways to tell them. And so: CHOICE! That thing we just
the introduction of human consciousness. To refute our
Stage direction: more us being drunk. Christiana has grown
can’t deal with. Which form is representative? Which is
hyperlinked problem: a great novel is likewise. A to B is
disenchanted with her book, briefly – “I don’t regret it. There are
most accessible? Which most sympathetic to art? Which
defined as a straight line, but reader makes their own
things I notice now that I didn’t appreciate a year ago. That’s
will get me a blow job? Why am I doing this, again?
maze of it. The shortest journey is not necessarily the
NOTION
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most pleasure. As another author told me: “Taking every
romantic parallel universe, in which the utopian ideals
If the novel were actually to die, then at least we wouldn’t
path is the joy of the pedant. There is only one right way.
behind the construction of the ruin thrive and even rein. As
have to read the turgid, celebrated works of today: no more
As I learned in Japan: there is only one right way to drink
with all things these days, there is a word for this manner
enduring the sight an entire tube carriage reading the same
a cup of tea. There are several schools, each with their
of looking at ruins: ruinophilia. (When you say it slowly, it
lowbrow genre travesty; no one telling us why, actually, Ian
right way. It’s multiplex.” So to return to the beginning of
sounds like a favoured pastime of Hamlet.)
McEwan is a modern genius in the vein of Graham Greene;
this paragraph: emphatically yes, is the novel effective at dealing with today’s silly new media world.
no more sensationalist essays by Martin fucking Amis; There’s plenty post-millennial end-time prophesying around
no more fanfare for bright young hopes with tales of the
which is about as helpful as a cat on a stick. Obituaries for
Yemeni communities in Aberdeen; and, blessedly, no more
Publishing big-mouth and nefarious chancer Scott Pack
industries, media and ways of life appear daily, filled with
wet, insipid, pretentious graduates like Adam Thirlwell or
has said, meanwhile, that “if you asked ten publishers
Larkin-like laments about the brutality and thoughtlessness
Keith Gessen and their awful self-reflexive novels and titles
what the future of publishing is, you’d get ten different
of the great unwashed for causing their decline. It’s all
like All the Sad, Young Literary Men. Man up, fuckers! The
answers”. That’s industry for you; just because Starbucks
premature, obviously – so many under-serviced hacks blowing
world would be a better place without them. If the novel
have a record label, music is not going to suddenly ‘die’. It
loads at the merest glimpse of red-hot splash-headline action.
were to die, we could comfort ourselves with the great
now seems, after all this, somewhat foolish to even think
works of dead men whose knowledge and lessons have
of the novel as being under threat from these forms in
There remains, though, an atmosphere and a mindset
already passed into trite aphorism. They would be safe
their infancy, much like laziness. As another put it: “It’s
which allow this shitless doom-mongering to continue,
and comforting and add precisely nil.
like saying, ‘does a hammer’ go out of fashion?”
prevail and thrive. One reason, obviously, is that it sells. As a recent Onion article had it: “Dying Newspaper
The novel is no less likely to disappear than music or,
he word “Ruin” means, literally, ‘collapse’.
Trend Buys Newspapers Three More Weeks: The glut of
well, words. It may not be strictly necessary in the digital
‘Ruins’ offer more than that simple meaning,
recent feature stories about the death of newspapers
age, but it isn’t going to go away. Like any art form it is
however: they are imbued with emotional,
has temporarily made the outmoded medium appealing
essentially a tool, or an engine, a format for collating and
sensual and intellectual qualities; they completely
enough to stave off its inevitable demise for another 21
expressing an idea or series of ideas – any ideas, small or
disrupt our ways of seeing. Looking at them breaks our
days.” The other reason, of course, is that times really are
grand. A novel is only as good as the ideas behind it – on
relationship with history’s grand march, momentarily.
changing. In response to [insert cause apocalyptique du
its own it is pure air, or maybe airlessness. If a novel or
Suddenly, instead of half-finished or half-destroyed
jour], we all need swaddling and comforting in nostalgia;
novels generally at a specific time don’t stand up, it’s not
monuments, we see the past’s potential futures; we are
we like to succour at the tit of the familiar, or rather
the fault of the novel: it is our woeful misapplication or
tantalised by might-have-beens and fallen dreams.
bask in the rays of the memory of having done so. This
lack of ideas. Why write? Because you have an idea.
T
premature ruining of perfectly serviceable forms seems to Our romanticising of ruins is recent; it corresponds to the
be a way of resigning ourselves to vast change by casting
recent changes to nostalgia, and that nostalgia which
off everything that is old, regardless of its potential value
inflects our gaze changes ruins. Suddenly, we exist in a
– a new spin on “an inch is as good as a mile”.
076 | N O T I O N
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