NOTION magazine 034: A Few Contributions

Page 1

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

|

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

|

TATE.ORG.UK

|

COLDSPRING.CO.UK

|

IOTACISM.COM/KLINKERIZER/INDEX.SHTML

|

BOAT-TING.CO.UK

NOTION

| 067



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

| 075


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

THE WRECKING BALL BY CHRISTIANA SPENS IS OUT NOW THROUGH BEAUTIFUL BOOKS


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.