Stylesque

Alas, the usual hop-skip-jump, to clear my otherwise crystalline mind of clutter. I just finished and greatly admired Chuck Palahniuk's collection of straight reportage Stranger Than Fiction. Much to enjoy therein, particularly his ability to convey constellations of moral outrage without recourse to adjectives or adverbs or actual narration. I guess that'll be style, then.

Ah, Style, my man in the moon. Raymond Chandler called it the best investment a writer can make, and he spoke as a former oil man. Flicking through Stranger Than Fiction, even at its most Subject-Verb-Object Peter-loves-Jane stripped down, the prose seemed very quickly fingerable as Palahniuk, although I can't guess why. The clauses are so short and terse, there doesn't seem time for them to develop a characteristic rhythm. And why should it seem distinct from any other example of what might be unkindly deemed post-Hemingwayese?

Without answering that, in a similar but probably unrelated vein, Clive James starts his esay ‘The All Of Orwell’ thus:

“Who wrote this? ‘Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ But you guessed straight away; George Orwell. The subject stated up front, the sudden acceleration from the scope-widening parenthesis into the piercing argument that follows, the way the obvious opposition between ‘lies’ and ‘truthful’ leads into the shockingly abrupt coupling of ‘murder’ and ‘respectable’, the elegant, reverse-written coda clinched with a dirt-common epithet, the whole easy-seeming pose and compact drive of it, a world view compressed to the size of a motto from a fortune cookie, demanding to be read out and sayable in a single breath - it’s the Orwell style."

James' gloss seems sort of undeniable. I like that passage particularly because it's one of those bits of Orwell one can disagree with, and thus feel all big and clever and thinky. That saw about Political Language has endured in several guises and I still find it hard to get worked up about it in any guise. Suspecting the worst of non-literary language is one of the easier rides for literary people. I remember the otherwise estimable Steven Poole schilling for his book Unspeak on the radio, pointing out that “ethnic cleansing” sounds like it's a good thing but actually it isn't. Heavens, does Her Majesty know? I'm never clear who's supposed to be or have been gulled by such euphemism. Isn't this just rhetoric, and hasn't it been going on forever? Maybe I'm just narked that I found Poole's Trigger Happy impressively unreadable. Every time I see it on a shelf I quiz the owner and every man Jack and Jill of them admit its Vestal inviolability. Them Edge colums weren't no picnic neither, but the fiction reviews in The Guardian and the Crooked Timber posts are often boffo.

Military idiom (WMD, Peace-Keeping, Surgical Strike, Smart Munitions, Less Than Lethal weaponry etc) in particular seems to keep coming in for a shoeing from writers as if its euphemism was a deliberate almost neuro-linguistic programming-ese attempt at moral fraud. But how much sinister intent is there? Who was the original intended audience? Isn't professional slang always divorced from the moral universe - it's there to make usuful trade distinctions, not justify God's way to man.

I was going to tie these limp threads to games somehow, and game design terminology, but as usual my muse has pulled up, puffing, groaning and clutching at the stitch in her ribs. Just can't get the staff these days.

RIP, The Ligster

RIP, Gyorgy Ligeti.

The excellent Alex Ross of The New Yorker and his own www.therestisnoise.com has this to say, and back in 2001 wrote this appreciation of the Big Yyn.

Lest Ligeti be thought some dismal gloom-monging melodyphobe (although heaven only knows - now - how much he'd seen to be gloomy about), check out his amazing Concert Romanesc, abundance of energy, humour and delight composer's own.

A propos of absolutely nothing, Sir Harrison Birtwhistle's comments at the Ivor Novello awards:

"Why is your music so effing loud? You must all be brain-dead. Maybe you are. I didn’t know so many clichés existed until the last half-hour. Have fun. Goodbye."

The Naked Tooth

I am British, and consequently have British Teeth. In the company of my pearl-fanged American friends I answer to “Snaggletooth”, but amongst mine own here in Britain I pass unnoticed in bazaar and highway and meadow alike. My teeth are themselves reminiscent of the Stone Age tumuli of Stonehenge, albeit boasting a less impressive crop of lichen. They are at least a recognizable gang, not all of equal standing, but at least standing together. Some of my friends have teeth resembling the skyline of Easter Island. Moody, magnificent and seldom, their teeth are aloof Kings of gum, much grander in their way than my rowdy Parliament of incisors and molars, jostling for attention. And if they stand aloof, they do at least stand. Other of my friends part their lips to reveal transverse and oblique tusks, much like the bars of a broken old farm gate, or the half boarded-up entrance to the Old Haunted Gold Mine.

It’s unfair. Teeth are THE indicators of health. Our movie stars may have hair like hay, eyes like a surrounded chameleon and the posture of a question mark, but their teeth shine with integrity, wisdom and heroism. This is rubbish. I have heroic teeth. Every chip is an abysmal fall survived, every notch an enemy coolly despatched. I have world-weary, been-there done-that teeth. A mouthful of Bogarts, bidding Bergmanesque farewells, and reminders of our mutual possession of Paris. I am literally hardbitten, and there’s the proof in the shape of my teeth.

Of course, my sister is a dentist. Worse still, an orthodontist. My panicky tight-lipped embraces upon see her again lend new urgency to the old saw about the British keeping a stiff upper lip (and it's the teeth of that saw which my own gums so eloquently mime). She has nice teeth. Teeth you’d trust. But then you have to trust the teeth of those to whom you entrust your teeth.

My dental tendency is towards independence and away from tyranny. My teeth celebrate independence. I have nothing against the dull perfect conformist grins of my IKEA-mouthed counterparts. But their milky teeth betray no wisdom. Theirs are mouths without struggle. Their fat veal-calf teeth are crammed into their mouths are and forbidden to exercise or roam the earth. My teeth have clearly been places. My teeth have seen and done things beyond other teeth’s ken. On several occasions, my teeth only just made it back to my mouth.

My teeth parrot the whites and blacks of the piano keyboard, like the interlaced fingers of a mixed-race couple holding hands. My happy gappy smile reminds pianists to worry their instruments in practice, ensuring better concerts. My teeth would be a metaphor for the prettier, less conscience-wracked songwriters, if only they could see past the blinding glare of their own oral crenelations.

My teeth do their job, no more or less conscienciously nor complainingly than any other part of my frame. I occasionally tease them with an antique toothbrush or fret them with floss but apart from the few occasions when they play the innocent conductor for a roving lightning bolt of agony, they are contented guests in my head, helpful at mealtimes and a foe to all pen ends. Scrupulously egalitarian and prudent, my teeth hoard everything between them, only surrendering their shards of candy and slivers of fruit with graceful reluctance, like a wife shopping her kindly bankrobber husband. My teeth, Oh my teeth gone by, I love you so.

Absolutely no comment

The brilliant Lost Garden has this to say. Harrumph.

Games, Movies, Ebert, Kermode, Uncle Tom Cobbley

Some debates drain all sense and energy from those not in their very midstmost midst. Now that enough time has elapsed (i.e. I finally remembered I'd started but not even half-finished this vain wrathful excuse for a post), let us, you and I, gentle reader, arm in arm, glare like scandalised, seed-denied Ostriches at the Tasmanian Devil-esque furore that surrounded that Roger Ebert piece, that Mark Kermode piece in the Observer, and indeed this and e'en this. Modesty forbids that I pull the intemperate responses apart in any detail. Suffice it for the moment to say that Ebert appears immediately correct, and ever-righter whereas at first glance, the Kermode piece appears to have been written in haste, an impression that does not dispel upon further acquaintance. The title doesn't help, but that was presumably a Sub-Editor's contribution. Still, while a less considered piece than either of Ebert's, it's equally clearly True, and Right and The Case. Anyone who disagrees is a Poo-Pants, possibly a Poo-Pants Pie. I can see that the unforced eloquence of my rhetoric has won you over, and no further denunciations need be rehearsed here.

I'd turn your speakers down somewhat...

...but it's still utterly worth discovering what happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room full of loudspeakers.

Apologies for thinness-on-ground, have been off excavating enormous underground Lairrr.

Blogge, it is yclept.

As should have been marvellously clear by now, Geoffrey Chaucer has a blog. Nice to see the feller's still going strong.

All manner of shenanigans going on, so postage Intermittent to Not. It's the change in the weather.

I'll take the Llama, Bob...

Them Internets is agog and abuzz (with some justification) at the awesome Big Dog Meckanickal Mule. I like the saddlebags, but I love, deeply love, the gaitered legs. For some reason I'm thinking of Nineteenth Century waiters, or the great Max Wall, who as any fule kno, inspired Python's Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. The ever-excellent Defense Tech has a great comment, comparing the Big Dog unfavourably with, good friend to you and me, the humble Llama. After a brief comparison of payload relative to bodyweight, the commentatore concludes:

I'll take the llama because:

1. It doesn't require gas or batteries.
2. Service life of 15 years+.
3. No maintenance or spare parts required!
4. It's self aware.

You gots to admit, number 4 is a helluva Tech Spec selling point. Dang, I'd put it on the Front of the box. And then I recall a plausible yet slightly unconvincing story of the Israeli military using Llamas for Special Forces missions, which included the magic phrase "found to easily out-perform donkeys", which is of course my name among the Hopi Indians. Anyway, the point of this charivari is the mental click I got when "Llama" was mentioned. For then did I realise that the Big Dog is at last half or perhaps twice a Llama after all, for it is indubitably Doctor Dolittle's Pushmi-pullyu.

Life's Lessons...

The estimable Raph Koster (who wrote the only readable book on game design) has compiled an extensive teleo-log of what we know about the world from games. Per ejemplo:

• You can be the best in the world at your job.
• But so can everyone else.
• And you will all do it exactly the same way.

So far, so office-email. But Koster, rather sweetly, nudges further:

I realize this list may seem like a cutesy joke. But it isn’t. Go back, and re-read it. It’s actually a lament.

Amen. It's not entirely true that people who talk about games for a living insist that games are the full equal of other artforms, while people who actually make them know they're not. But it would suit this blogs purposes for that predicament to obtain, so I shall assume it is indeed the case in all further correspondence.

Corn-Fed

Re-re-re-reading Pauline Kael's essay Raising Kane, which still seems the best single essay I've read on anything. It's odd, I can't remember particularly liking any other Kael I've read, indeed I can't remember any other Kael, despite huffing and puffing through I Lost It At The Movies and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which isn't a good sign. But Raising Kane is driving me back to 'em, it's that good.

I keep on being impressed by Kael's ability to keep stepping back and back from Citizen Kane while keeping everything in focus. There's no point trying to sum up the whole essay, I might as well type the whole thing out. It's a bit like Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls in that it gives you not so much a new perspective on movies as a whole new behind the scenes at the sausage factory dimension, all the more shocking because it's stuff you really ought to have known, or worked out yourself, even if you've already dimly figgered that there's just no way that movies are made by individuals called Directors - unless they're Russ Meyer.

One of the many joys of Raising Kane is the insight it provides on where the movie came from - what now seems like a paleontology of 1930's cinema, after it calcified from a living culture to a petrified film studies topic. She calls Citizen Kane:

perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher. A great deal in the movie that was conventional and almost banal in 1941 is so far in the past as to have been forgotten and become new.

Kael's terrific on the individual talents involved in that era: Hecht, Mankiewicz, Perelman, Preston Sturges, Dorothy Parker, Moss Hart, et al - the vicious circles of 1920's broadway playwrights and journalists who moved West to play at Hollywood Hacks. I'm particularly charmed that not only did they write screenplays revolving entirely about East Coast journalists (especially Editors, now an endangered species, restricted to the breeding pair of Spiderman's J. Jonah Jameson and Harry Hacket in The Paper), they also re-wrote their own Broadway plays as "original" screenplays, and, even better re-wrote each other's old plays.

(Pause for brief shout for Ian Hamilton's brilliant Writers in Hollywood, 1915-1951 (Heinemann, London, 1990/Harper, NY, 1990), which has the best opening quote EVAH)

Anyhow, here's Kael on how Hollywood resisted the tough skepticism of the East Coast writers:

Ben Hecht said he shuddered at the touches von Sternberg introduced into Underworld: "My head villain, Bull Weed, after robbing a bank, emerged with a suitcase full of money and paused in the crowded street to notice a blind beggar and give him a coin before making his getaway". That's exactly the sort of thing that quantities of people react to emotionally as "deep" and as "art", and that many film enthusiasts treasure - the inflated sentimental with a mystical drip.

Inflated sentiment with a mystical drip? Yowsah! Another yelp of recognition and glee from yours drooly. This immediately velcroed itself to the gland in my brain still pulsing and smarting from the discussion of what is or isn't art, linking arms with Martin Amis' War Against Cliche. Here's to art and sentiment. They're not strictly opposed terms, but one extends wayyy beyond the reach of the other. Sentiment is no bad thing, but inflated sentiment (mystical drip optional, see your dealer for details) is Corn, arguably Hard-Core Corn.