Hamster Dam

 Hamster Dam - Quentin S. Crisp

Unsettling is the word that came to mind when making book diary notes for this one, and the nib was hovering above the page for quite some time. Hamster Dam is quite the perspective shifter. 

In the book, Hamster Dam is a sort of Gordon Murray/Oliver Postgate kids' TV series from the 1960s or 1970s, set in a community of anthropomorphic hamsters. Or it is according to the memories of Gary, who is taking leave of absence from psychiatric work. His story is narrated by Brian, a colleague and case worker, and he seems uncertain if Hamster Dam ever existed in reality, and, increasingly, what reality even means for Gary, and him, and everyone else.

The writing has multiple hilarious (to me) moments that leaven a weird horror/science tone. There's nothing like a finely-timed bit of whimsy to take the sourer edges off a sober and fairly intense gaze at modern life. The narrator's uncertainty also provokes a constant sense of discomfort about how events might unfold. 

So, yeah, unsettling.

I don't know much about Quentin S. Crisp other than what I've gleaned from various interviews that have popped up with him, including this super effort from the Kulchur Kat blog, and the other bits and pieces of his work that I've scoured dutifully since reading Hamster Dam and being mighty impressed with it. He's definitely now one of those writers where I'll be 'just getting their stuff'.

Hamster Dam is also among the books that tilted me and a fellow tomehound into doing a podcast, watch this space. Crisp and Hamster Dam will almost certainly feature in the inaugural episode.

Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead?

 Do Humankind's Best Days Lie Ahead?

Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley, Alain de Botton, Malcolm Gladwell

An almost definitionally shallow sixth form debate level exploration of a feeble motion. This transcript from 2015 presents four riff-heavy bigwigs trading sententious barbs, book-ended by a self-important introduction and reflection sections that add nothing.  

The book is a particular snapshot of a particular moment in time where "71% of people view progress as a continuing thing". Such vague  optimism seems particularly anachronistic in 2023. 

I think I might have enjoyed this more if John Gray and Thomas Ligotti had participated.
 

The Night Clock

The Night Clock

Paul Meloy

 Another book picked up at a library sale. I liked the look of it. It seemed to fit in with other stuff I'd been reading or had on the pile. 

Unsettling from the opening, the horror/sci-fi of The Night Clock presents psychological dreamscapes jostling with grimy urban sink estates. Escape hatches between the two shift and clatter. It has several memorable characters and set pieces: the bit where a mobility scooter gets a diabolical chop shop makeover worked especially well. Also, Meloy does a fine line in dry dialogue.

With cosmic automachy, psychopomps and an uber-villain known only as the Junction Creature, it's got a lot of mass beneath the main narrative. This is to its detriment on occasion for me: a fair few "the what now?" moments with back stories, parallel mythologies and new characters. Sometimes it seemed like it was part of a greater whole, but in a kind of sketch-like, unfinished way, where the ideas might have suited a more leisurely unfolding. I can see it working as part of a comic series, for example - it reminded me of something from Vertigo I might have devoured.

Having said that, the dislocated and weird fragmentation aspects are part of the appeal. They suit the dream themes and ideas of fractal mirrorball otherwhens behind the fabric of what we call reality.

Definitely a thumbs up from me, though a volume that has now moved on from the stack.

 

...and it's goodnight from him

The Authorised Biography of Ronnie Barker
Bob McCabe (2005)

Ronnie Barker was an actor who made the step into 1950s radio, and then 1960s TV performance, specifically mostly comic roles in popular shows like The Navy Lark and The Frost Report. He then became a bit of a legendary character actor across various mostly hugely successful series, including Porridge, Open All Hours, and the at-one-time seemingly-inescapable sketch show The Two Ronnies

He was also a prolific writer, often selling sketches to the shows he was in without the production teams being aware, which is pretty sneakily cool. 

 As to the book, I found this in a charity shop. As a biography, it's not in the slightest bit "warts 'n' all", with a focus on Ronnie Barker's professional life. As McCabe points out in his notes, this was apparently a precondition of Barker's cooperation, perhaps understandably, given Barker's lifelong aversion to personal celebrity, as well as some family laundry he did not wish to air any further than it already had been. 

It's quite vanilla, in many respects, then, and the BBC Books imprint does give it a sort of, "well done, thou good and faithful servant to the Beeb" air. 

However, it has some genuinely interesting insights on theatre, 1950s radio, 1960s-80s TV, ye Ronns, of course, and Barker's writing ideals.

One thing I Did Not Know was that the Ronnies made their long-running shows in advance, dumping any sketches that flopped and "recording their entire series before any of it was broadcast so they could edit and arrange each week's show to make it as strong as it could be". 

In the days of entire seasons of shows being buffed to a high sheen to "drop" in a one-er on Netflix, this is perhaps nothing so amazing, but in 1970s BBC terms, it must have been quite revolutionary. This, with comparable nuggets in the book, reveals a quietly experimental spirit at odds with a cosy reputation, and keen critical eyes behind the famous spectacle frames. 

(The biography was originally published in 1999, then reprinted in 2005 after Barker passed - I read this version in March 2023.)

Beastly

 Beast  - Paul Kingsnorth

Having read a lot about Kingsnorth's writing, getting approving nod from various directions, I was pleased to pick this up in a library sale for a pound or something. 

When it came to it, I was underwhelmed. It seemed a pretty obvious journey of midlife crisis, dressed up with some haunted landscape psychodrama. Completely unsympathetic narrator wandering the flanks of a dark mountain looking for their anima. A "Northern Lights" inversion for ageing fans of Morrissey. 

After the first 20 pages or so I pretty much skim read it, yawning like a big cat. 

Storyland

 Storyland - Amy Jeffs

While on a pile, this was a library book I picked up and whizzed through enthused in a couple of days. Myths and legends of Britain re-told, plus lino cut art - just my jam at this moment. 

The book pieces together a sequence of tales from antiquity for "A New Mythology of Britain". It takes special care to note the political expediency embedded in mythic traditions. 

Jeffs was particularly adept at representing the ways in which each story, complete in itself, was interpolated and adapted by people (rulers) into succeeding myths, self-forming into a coherent sequence creating their own truths. The journey of the artist-author, explored in part in the intro etc,  was also of great interest.

One of those volumes where I immediately start scouring abebooks for the hardback version...

Project Attempted Deck Clearance

A few years ago the loft looked like this:

 

 

14 - FOURTEEN - boxes of books, as detailed on t'other blog, with five full sets of shelves downstairs. 

Clingy! And unfathomable now. I mean, we've moved house, actually AND figuratively. 

Them boxes is well gone. Now, after reading, books are either integrated into the shelves or moved on with gratitude (cf Marie Kondo etc).

Still, after quite a sea change, and although engaged in a quite modish regimen of micropiling, there remain, nonetheless, quite a few piles of books. 

So in an attempt to accelerate this particular reader, and to inaugurate this blog recommencement, I'm working through a strict regimen of No New Books* Until All The Unread Books Are Read.  The great Attempted Deck Clearance Project!

And you can read all about it here! 

 

*possibly scuppered by deep-seated affection for second-hand books