Hello

July 5th – not Independence Day, but nonetheless a day that will go down in history as the day when Roger Federer finally won 15 grand slam tennis titles – saw another historic milestone. Yes, that’s right: book club no.30! If only we’d realised this at the time we might have made more of an effort to celebrate it.

The text before us was “The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell” – two separate, short works of non-fiction prose (our first foray into this genre) by renowned English bohemian and all-round literary dabbler, Aldous Huxley.

The group was reduced to a core of four personages – Owain (host), Sophie (hostess and sous chef), Pete (watching the tennis) and Ed (late). Nonetheless – and despite a certain amount of trepidation about how to approach these tricky, ambiguous books – the session was immensely fruitful and thought-provoking.

Debate started by considering Huxley’s motivations for writing the book, a description of a mescalin trip he took in 1953 and its impact on his thinking about mystical or visionary experiences. Pete argued that Huxley in some sense through this book helped give birth to the Californian movement (which has been so important in the modern West) which focused on self-realisation and consciousness expansion, and that this book was particularly influential in giving credence to the drugs movement that became emerged during the 1960s. When considering why these books remain in print and are regarded so highly, we felt that Huxley’s status as an outsider – an English aristocrat arguing for drug legalisation – was significant.

We also discussed how Huxley’s attitudes to drugs in these books seem to differ from that in “Brave New World”, where his invented drug ’soma’ is used to keep the masses in a state of soporific acquiesence. And we considered the relationship of this book to previous book club authors, including JG Ballard (who wrote a cursory introduction to our edition of the text) and Thomas Pynchon, the former developing Huxley’s interest in how drugs began to permeate mainstream, ‘respectable’ society during the second half of the twentieth century, while the latter was clearly influenced by Huxley’s description of the paranoia that drug trips could bring on.

However, despite the interesting ideas raised by both books, the group found them on the whole rather disappointing. “The Doors of Perception” – with its greater narrative drive – was agreed to be the stronger of the two, but “Heaven and Hell” came in for particular criticism, especially from Ed who commented on Huxley’s pro-drugs stance and the distinct lack of a “hell” in his description of what drugs such as mescalin do to people’s minds and behaviour.

Owain (who chose the book) was particularly let down by it, finding the narrative description of Huxley’s trip – though its strongest part – still weak and unexciting, while he felt the other sections looking at the role of mysticism in art and religion were simply poorly argued, biased and subjective. We also agreed that the pieces of art shown or played to Huxley during his trip by his wife and friend – Cezanne, Mozart, Botticelli, Van Gogh – demonstrated a canonical bias of Huxley’s time and place without shedding too much valuable light on the impact of the drug trip itself.

All in all, there was much to discuss – including genre, the status of the book as ’scientific’ or otherwise, its Western bias and Orientalist attitudes, and its wider cultural impact – but our feeling was the book was not all it was cracked up to be.

The baton is passed over to Fleming (host of one of our favourite ever book clubs) even though he couldn’t be bothered to turn up this time.

Pete

The following passage from a 1984 interview with the writer J.G. Ballard is fascinating reading for anyone who likes the broad range of specialist information that Twitter provides:

“For years, Dr. Christopher Evans, a psychologist in the computer branch of the National Physical Laboratory literally sent me the contents of his wastebasket. Once a fortnight, a huge envelope arrived filled with scientific reprints and handouts, specialist magazines and reports, all of which I read carefully. Another close friend, Dr. Martin Bax, sends me a lot of similar material. The sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi is a restless globe-trotter who culls Japanese and American magazines for unusual material. Vale, the San Francisco publisher of the Re/Search series—with excellent volumes on Burroughs and Gysin, and the latest Industrial Culture Handbook—is a one-man information satellite beaming out a stream of fascinating things. Readers of mine send in a lot of material, for which I’m grateful. The leader of the rock group SPK, who visited me a week ago, told me that he believes that there is a group of some two or three thousand people in Europe and the States who circulate information among each other. Sadly, modern technology, which ought to be so liberating, threatens all this.”

The cross-fertilization of scientific investigation, different art mediums, and different cultures, provided these writers, artists, and scientists with countless new ideas and insights. However, technological limitations meant that the only way to share was literally to send the contents of a wastepaper basket. Now, each piece of wastepaper is a link on twitter, each referral a re-tweet. Such access to information was a faraway dream in 1984, and, interestingly, Ballard is sure that technological change is (in practice) a threat to such information-sharing and collaboration.

The post-bureaucratic age is absolutely not confined to government. As so often, art, culture, and science lead the way, only for government to labour behind, digging in its heels. Ballard and his (global) circle recognised and profited from the practice of sharing information cross-discipline and cross-continent. Hopefully government can follow their lead.

Le Off

L’heure a changé, et contre les ténèbres, alors que la fête, mais laquelle, est finie (depuis le temps que ces nuits sont tristes), Emma, votre invention dans ses mots, a allumé les loupiotes et assorti la mantille à sa jarretière, résille pas résignée d’Andalouse Lover Forever, main tendue vers le premier jour, premier soir, deuxième nuit d’une tendre amie avec qui la vie est un Lynch.

Joli Conte-Offert 1 / L’hommage à un discret

Philippe Thomas - Nouveau Festival Beaubourg. Photo: E.R.

De l’Hommage annoncé au fondateur des Ready Made appartiennent à tout le monde, votre correspondante, jamais en rupture d’idéalisme, espérait la consolation de la légende, et peut-être le sourire de visages qu’elle n’avait pas oubliés, lointaine époque vécue main dans l’amour. Elle fut déçue, bien sûr. Il manquait quelqu’un, d’ailleurs, cela elle l’a remarqué, comme le signe du droit aux chemins qui s’écartent. Mais trêve de confidences, c’était une conférence… “Pour un art de société. Conférence de Philippe Thomas.” et “Philippe Thomas décline son identité. Une pièce à conviction en un acte et trois tableaux” ont été montrées sans montage, la pigiste n’a vu que la première, dans toute l’obscurité de ce qui pouvait apparaître hors contexte comme un verbiage parodique – archives, alors, pour le (maigre) public “extérieur”, là où d’autres témoins purent ressentir la rémanence, bien vivante, aussi, pour quelques-uns et c’est tant mieux. A la librairie Flammarion, le texte – série limitée, oeuvre d’art, tiré-à-part historique – était disponible… mais pour 280 euros… oh, c’était trop pour la note de frais CultEnews. Emma gardera, alors, l’écho d’une leçon particulière d’art conceptuel à jamais numérotée 097130, et, cette leçon-là n’a pas de prix.

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L’interlude classique de la semaine

“Διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν.”

ou encore: “C’est pourquoi la poésie est plus philosophique et grave que l’Histoire.”

entonnait Aristote, repris par Martin H. dans ses Remarques sur art – sculture -espace, Petite Bibliothèque Payot 2009, livre qui a charmé une Héraclitéenne aussi superficielle que motivée.

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Joli Conte-Offert 2 / La voix d’une colère

Roberto Zucco - Théâtre de la Ville 2009 - Photo: E.R.

Vendredi@20h31, mise en lecture du Roberto Zucco de Bernard-Marie chéri Koltès par Georges Lavaudant, théâtre de la Ville.

Mea Maxima CultEnews, la renvoyée spéciale, fatiguée de ses talons avec ses raisons, a somnolé entre les scènes 4 et 7, à peu près. Il faut dire que la lecture avait commencé très lentement, c’était un enregistrement pour Fictions, autant directement sauter à la case dimanche soir, et ça sonnait, oui, très France-C*l à l’heure où on la met en sourdine parce qu’on dîne paresseusement la fin de semaine… Mais Bernard-Marie, et Georges et aussi Nicole Garcia, ça vous réveille une pigiste sous Hypnovel bien plus délicieusement qu’une Matinale. La fin, où les didascalies se déglinguent pour laminer la médiocrité, a somptueusement explosé, et Roberto, sans autre mise en scène que la voix d’Eric Elmosnino, s’est détaché imperceptiblement vers la figure de Bartleby. Oh oui, la copiste prenait des notes, aller au théâtre aide à gagner en répartie,  et là, elle a attrapé au vol: “La France est un excellent détergent”, qu’elle se réserve de détourner à usage corrosif contre un prétendu débat paraît-il en cours, mais comme dirait un philosophe qu’on apprécie et pas que pour ses beaux yeux,  ”ça ne vous regarde pas“.

Bernard-Marie Koltès n’était bien sûr pas là pour recevoir les Bravi du public plutôt enchanté, à 5 euros la place ça a moins toussé que d’habitude… “tout le monde” sait que Koltès est décédé du sida le 15 avril 1989, deux mois avant la fondation d’un groupuscule qui se fit connaître sous le nom d’Act Up-Paris. Cet été, les Belles en Avignon aimèrent lire sa Correspondance, publiée en avril dernier, et ont appris sur le bout du coeur quelques phrases comme celle-ci: “Je ne souhaite qu’une chose : c’est d’être capable toute ma vie de prendre des risques et ne jamais vouloir m’arrêter en chemin. N’est-ce pas cela, “avoir toujours vingt ans ?”, et quelques autres, aussi, pour nourrir les lettres d’amour ah l’amour, et surtout celle-là…

“Biche, Quand arrives-tu pour mettre des fleurs dans ma chambre et un foulard autour de mon cou ? Quand pourrai-je t’offrir un chocolat à la pâtisserie des Vosges ? Quand ?”

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L’interlude Actu – La Vérité sur Jean-Philippe

Faute de savoir solliciter un service de presse et en raison d’un très grand nombre d’appels, les hydres ivres du service Littérature, en cent-trentième semaine de thèse, ont mené des choix drastiques dans leur sélection d’automne, écouté deux ou trois conseils, et décidé une fois pour toutes que cette rentrée serait Toussaint, ce qui tombe bien pour un 1er novembre veille de Goncourt (edit du 2/11@12h49 – ça aura donc été Le Prix de Marie plutôt que sa Vérité).

Sans aucune exclu, mais tout éclat de rire tendre, les Doctorantes un tout petit peu mauvais esprit ont voté à l’unanimité et sans aucune abstinence la sélection pour le prix CultEnews de l’extrait suivant, merci Jean-Philippe:

“Elle ouvrit les yeux, étonnée, endormie, assoupie d’alcool et de fatigue, et elle se rendit compte qu’elle avait surtout sommeil, la seule chose qu’elle avait vraiment envie de faire maintenant, c’était de dormir, éventuellement dans les bras de Jean-Christophe de G., mais pas nécessairement sa bite à la main.”

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Joli Conte-Offert 3 / La réminiscence 33 Fbg Saint-Antoine

Vue de l'exposition 169A2 - Fayçal Baghriche - Photo: E.R.

L’expo confidence de la semaine, aussi délicieusement snob que l’accentuation exacte du grec ancien dans un commentaire Facebook, c’était 1 69 A2, chez Eric Stephany et Xavier Mazzarol, très réussie dans le genre, après une première à Berlin – évidemment et nulle part ailleurs – il y a quelques temps. Toute l’idée était de reconstituer l’appartement d’un collectionneur imaginaire, avec le goût du défi: pas moins de 117 artistes (dont Nicolas Moulin, Jordi Colomer, Agnès Turnauer, Pierre Leguillon et tutti quanti ès qualité) dans un trois-pièces parisien, c’est un exploit que ça n’ait pas eu l’air de trop en faire, joli accrochage (jusque dans l’évier), sens de l’humour et bière compris. Aveu corruption CultEnews: la chineuse a adoré être complimentée pour son manteau – oh, quelle bêcheuse!

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Brèves de trottoir

L’événement de la semaine vu d’un nez de CultEnews, c’est (A)pollonia au Théâtre de Chaillot (du 6 au 15, complet). Deux Jansénistes des avant-scènes, qui pour une fois ont prévu dans les délais leurs négociations au guichet, seront de l’expérience à la Première, et en espèrent la gifle des grandes oeuvres qui font fièrement relever la tête.

L’experte ès Correspondances, qui vous écrit trop, elle le sait bien et ce n’est pourtant pas qu’elle s’ennuie, reconnaîtra qu’elle a été déçue par les lettres d’August Strindberg, dont elle attendait pourtant beaucoup mieux, tout juste sorties chez Zulma.

Dans la série des “Laissez-tomber”, Emma l’injuste par principe parfois est en désaccord profond avec l’exposition Deadline, au Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, pas vue plus loin que son affiche au coin de la rue de Tolbiac qui promet “des artistes ayant produit au bord de la mort”… Ggggrrrrrrrrrrr, a commenté une apprentie Wwwartiste qui décida un matin qu’elle vivrait mieux pour ne jamais oh surtout jamais “survivre”, ce définitif trop souvent prononcé par quelques bien-portants, et aussi grâce à d’autres qu’elle vit et voit faire de même et bien mieux encore.

La plume cinéma Lysa réfléchit pour signaler qu’en terme de réflexion sur la mort, Irène, d’Alain Cavalier, sorti la semaine dernière, mérite son visionnage méditatif. Ah, elle n’est encore revenue de la projo. Bon, le BAT doit partir, on corrigera si elle n’est pas d’accord.

Lysa, ni tout-à-fait une autre ni tout-à-fait la même, a également repéré la traduction des Nouvelles de J-G Ballard chez Tristram, tout juste parues au grand bonheur de bien plus que les mauvais Anglicistes, car la langue en est parfois difficile. OK, peut-être pas pour un tombeur de claviers.

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Francisco de Zurbarán Sainte Agathe - 1630

Le Baiser de la fin
“Nous sommes infinis. Donc soyons infinis, éternellement.”

Jacques D. comme Dear.

Remerciements particuliers pour cette édition: November.

Crédits phonographiques: Belle and Sebastian, Electronic Renaissance.

In the name of full disclosure, but not having a heck of a lot to say about them, in recent weeks I also finished:

• Octave Mirabeau, The torture garden

A florid novel of 1899, concerning colonialism, social and political satire, horticulture, libertinage and torture.

• Thomas M. Disch, The man who had no idea

Late collection of SciFi(ish) stories that I picked up in a bag of pulps for $5 (also including J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the sun) from the Friends of the Merril Collection at Word on the Street. The guy behind the counter talked me into the books I bought partly on the strength of this volume and claimed Disch was “better than Dick.” I’m not entirely convinced, but this was an excellent, superbly-written and clever bit of writing nevertheless.

Post-script: while idly googling Disch, I found his blog. Disch committed suicide in on 4 July 2009, the last entry being just a couple days before this.  Makes me kinda sad.

Lit.

Wallace Shawn (above),  the guy who was in The Princess Bride is the son of former New Yorker editor William Shawn?  Wallace Shawn, the guy in Clueless, has a book of essays out?  What awesome weird universe have I woken up to this morning?

Everybody thinks Joyce is a fricken genius.  I still don’t get it.

The Millions releases the group of nominated books that did not make it on their best fiction of the millennium list.  James Wood, Margaret Atwood, and Gary Shteyngart all make appearances.

Three Guys One Book discuss The Complete Stories of JG Ballard.  Mention the Jonathan Lethem essay.

Tobias Carroll reviews Those Bones, a chapbook by David Ohle.

What do Coolio, Nabokov, and Captain Beefheart have in common?

Politics

The Daily Beast discuss Obama failing to deliver the Olympics to Chicago.

“Intellectual bankruptcy” and the right.  Is the right fucked?

Music

The Rumpus pick possibly one of my top three favorite songs of all time as their tune of the day. (Hint, it’s a Kinks song)

Grouper played ATP, WFMU wrote about it.

New Built to Spill album being streamed!

DJ Mr. Magic died.

Film/Theater

Scallywag and Vagabond are the only site that are giving us the Polanski updates we care to read.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is BOMBING! Vol. 1 Brooklyn is rooting for ya Phil!

Guys from Mighty Boosh are going to be in a film called “Bunny and the Bull”

We are getting settled into the new place and making pretty good headway against the walls of cardboard boxes. I’m finding stuff I haven’t seen in years. There has been a lot of moving in the last 5 years and it’s good to finally be someplace that I don’t feel unpacking will be a waste of time. As I mentioned before this will be the first time I’ll have my full studio set up since I finished recording “The Aberrant Laboratory” in 2006. There will no doubt be some new music in the works before too long. Whether it’s Gruntsplatter or something else I don’t know yet.

It has been a beautiful thing setting up the new bookshelves and loading them up. I went on a bit of a bender and picked up several new titles to get me through the looming Oregon winter.

Omens by Richard Gavin
The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon
The Book Of Days by Steve Rasnic Tem
Poe’s Progengy Anthology edited by Gary Fry
Tales Of Terror by Guy De Maupassant
Stories from A Lost Anthology by Rhys Hughes
Sesta & Other Strange Stories by Edward Lucas White
Edgeworks I: Over The Edge, An Edge In My Voice by Harlan Ellison
The Complete Stories of JG Ballard by JG Ballard
Writers Workshop Of Horror edited by Michael Knost

Most of those were acquired from The Horror Mall, everything except the Ballard book I think… It will be a long, gray winter of weird tales around here.

Jag har ett tämligen komplicerat förhållande till cyberpunkgenren. Å ena sidan känns den hopplöst daterad och bara väldigt 80-tal, precis på tröskeln för att bli retrofuturistiskt häftig, å andra sidan känns den, fortfarande, aktuell och dagsfärsk. För mig ÄR cyberpunk William Gibsons författarskap (om man bortser från the difference engine, där prefixet “cyber” bör ersättas med “steam”). Även om exempelvis Bruce Sterling och Neal Stephenson med flera gjort sig namn inom genren är ändå Gibsons debutroman Neuromancer från 1984 för cyberpunksubgenren vad Sagan om Ringen är för fantasylitteraturen. Och trots att Gibsons två senaste böcker utspelar sig i en förhållandevis verklighetstrogen nutid, har jag svårt att se honom som någonting annat än just cyberpunk av en enkel anledning: det som på åttiotalet var fräscht nytänk är nu vardagsmat – det är i viss mån omöjligt att skriva om nutiden utan att influeras av cyberpunkarna på ett eller annat sätt. Vår värld har nämligen kommit ikapp dessa framtidsvisioner, vår värld har nämligen blivit cyberpunk i sig. Verkligheten har kommit att imitera konsten.

För den oinvigde ska jag försöka definiera subgenren. Cyberpunk som litterärgenre kan ses som såväl  fortsättning på, och reaktion mot science fiction-litteraturens “nya våg” som kom att dominera fältet under 1960- och 70-talet. Dessa så kallade ”new wave”-författare bröt mot föregående årtiondens stelt konservativa, teoretiskt trovärdiga och vuxet rationella framtidsutopier – hård SF ersattes av en mjukare variant och man lät gladeligen 60-talets zeitgeist spilla över i fantastikens prosa. In kom helt plötsligt stilistisk experimentlusta och ett nytt sätt att betrakta SF-litteraturen (många new wave:are såg sig som en naturlig del av mainstreamlitteraturens varierande flora, inte några exkluderade genreförfattare); in kom detaljerade samlagsscener, homosexualitet, droger, anti-auktoritärism och humaniora. De torra skildringarna av framtida rymdstifelser och positronhjärnor fick lämna plats för dekonstruktioner av kön, anti-imperialism och pseudo-religiös myticism.  
   Men det som börjat som ett uppbrott och ett revolutionerande nytänk i form av avandt-gardistiska utsvävningar hade lagom till 1970-talets slutspurt blivit norm och uttjatade upprepningar. Leklustan och upproret hade muterats till ett sorts självförverkligande, onanistiskt flum och det progressiva tycktes förlorat. 1977 kom den anarkistiska punkrocken, och gick tillbaka till rockmusikens treackordssimplicitet. 1979 kom filmen Alien, snart följd av Blade Runner, båda filmerna regisserade av Ridley Scott. Även George Lucas första Star Wars-film kan vara värd att nämna i sammanhanget, då denna enorma kassasuccé såg till att flytta fram sicence fiction-genrens positioner och visade att det här minsann fanns stora pengar att tjäna. SF var vid det här laget inte kittlande undergroundkultur, utan urvattnad semi-mainstream.
   Cyberpunk var en sorts återgång till femtiotalets hårda SF, men tog samtidigt också till vara på nya vågens gränsöverskridanden och ursprungliga vitalitet. Precis som ovan nämnda musikgenre omfamnade man det nihilistiska, framtidspessimistiska, slet högteknologin ur vetenskapsmännens händer och gav den till laglösa hackers, ungdomsgäng och rovgiriga, multinationella företag. Estetiken lånades från 40-talets nattsvarta film noir och författare som Raymond Chandler, JG Ballard och William S Burroughs. Framförallt började man spekulera i informationsteknologins och datorers roll i samhället, något nya vågen-författare mer eller mindre struntat helt och hållet i (därav prefixet “cyber”).

Cyberpunkarna definierade om science fiction-genren och gav ett halvt förmultnat kadaver elstötar under regnvåta neonljus. Cyberspace, virtual reality, hacking, cybernetiska implantat och globalisering kom, tack vare denna subgere att bli fraser på var medelsvenssons läppar inom en tioårsperiod. Vi minns väl alla hur jargongen gick på nittiotalet?

Nu har det gått så långt att vi inte ens tänker på det. I dokumentären No maps for these territories (ja, det var härifrån jag snodde bloggens förra namn) jämför Gibson prefixen “cyber” med det ännu äldre ”elektro” och kommer fram till att det inte längre finns användning för någon av dessa. Efter några årtionden in på nittonhundratalet var det inte längre exotiskt med elektricitet – på samma sätt iakttar vi inte någonting uppkopplat ellet internetkompatibelt med häpnad idag.
   Men världen ser som bekant inte ut som den gjorde under 80-talets första hälft längre. Mycket har därför en omisstaglig känsla av ostighet över sig: i Neuromancer känns ett gig nästan ogreppart stort (och futuristiska begrepp som ROM och RAM duggar tätt) - min minnessticka här bredvid mig innehåller fyra gånger så mycket och kostade hundra spänn på webhallen: här är det inte direkt tal om att bemöda sig med att radera minnet av hela barndomen som i filmen Johnny Mnemonic. Varför släpa runt på kilotunga VR-deck man pluggar in i uttag i bakhuvudet när det finns Wi-Fi? Gemene WoW-fantast eller Second Life-användare skulle väl heller aldrig banga på att byta plats med Neo i The Matrix – varför göra uppror mot simulationen är det är typ som en patchad version av verkligheten, dessutom utan leveltak? För att inte tala om dessa stora, onda, multinationella företag som inte bara förstör utan titt som tätt också tycks styra hela världen i den generiska cyberpunberättelsen – dagens ekonomiska kris visar på en annan verklighet, där bail-outs och statliga lån känns viktigare för företagen är genetiskt förbättrade nano-samurajer. Tuffa, gatsmarta cyberpunknamn som typ Ryker, C-girl eller Yonderboy känns bara…fula.
   Som jag inledningsvis nämnde är detta snart i klass med strålpistoler, flygande bilar, robotbetjänter och sommarhus på månen. Jag tippar på att de som är födda efter millennieskiftet i vuxen ålder kommer att skratta lika högt åt Sterlings antalogi Mirrorshades (det är tufft med uppkavlade ärmar och pilotglasögon med spegelglas) som folk gör åt Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers eller femtiotalets pulp-tidningar idag.

Däremot är genren fortfarande väldigt relevant: även om surfande på nätet i form av tredimensionella VR-världar känns hopplöst förlegade får vi alla ändå förhålla oss till internet på ett eller annat sätt idag, och kommer förmodligen fortsätta med detta under vår resterande livstid. Det kanske inte längre är hackers som är den uppkopplade anarkismens spjutspets, men väl upphovsrättsbrottslingar, fildelare och andra sorters pirater. Och även om storföretagen inte är odödliga är de ändå nog så seglivade. Globaliseringen tycks ju utgöra någon sorts världsomspännande överideologi: reklamen tar allt större plats i vår tillvaro och många av Asiens större urbana centran verkar mer eller mindre omöjliga att urskilja från t.ex. Los Angeles i Blade Runner. Jämför själva.

Summa summarum: Det är svårt att förhålla sig till cyberpunk, till hälften hipp och i tiden, till hälften lika död som en himmel i samma nyans som myrornas krig. Den är typ zombie och livs levande på en och samma gång.

We all know what’s so great about web 2.0. It’s democratic, user driven, community based, open, user-friendly… like the internet just opened up a whole bulk sized can of awesome. I started to rethink this line of thought after reading Nick Dyer-Witheford’s book chapter “Cycles of Net Struggle, Lines of Net Flight” in Information Technology in Librarianship, and his overview of the development of web communications viewed through a Marxist lens. Contrary to popular conceptions of web 2.0, his notion of this movement is viewed as a “re-appropriation of immaterial labor”; in essence, 2.0 is a form of digital sharecropping, adding a deeper dimension to web 2.0 that underlies the surface of its community-led ethos. Basically, while everyone contributes their labour for free, the running dogs and absentee landlords of the net sit back and rake in the profits.

While Dyer-Witheford proposes this perspective of the appropriation of free labour, he also acknowledges that monetizing 2.0 and mobile applications has been notoriously difficult (even by selling that digital presence to advertisers and dataminers), a serious problem for the capitalist end of things. I still remember when I was giving presentations about youth usage of online applications, being frequently asked, “Yes yes yes, but how are we going to make money off these unapologetic pirates?” Well, maybe not in those exact words. The industry was pretty much stymied when it came to figuring out how to generate a decent revenue stream, irritated that young users defied the application of older business models, reduced to hawking ring tones and little icons.

It seems to me that in addition to the structure of the net, which as Dyer-Witheford describes, favours models of openness over property and constantly circumvents state/centralized control, a certain evasiveness is a key component of internet culture itself (that is, cultural artifacts generated completely online) and is also a factor in resisting appropriation/commodification. The lifeblood of the Intarweb, its various memes, viral videos, and bizarre and often highly specific subcommunities are so fleeting, so random/aberrant, and so dependent upon the sharing/community aspect of web 2.0 that commodification of popular user generated content is perhaps, nigh impossible.

Whether all these evasive efforts can in their totality, aggregate into a form of networked/swarm resistance a la emergent, optimistic Multitude cited by Dyer-Witheford remains questionable for me. The pillar of exploitative production must be matched by its twin:  rampant, optimistic consumerism. Despite internet culture’s inanity, or perhaps because of it, I can’t help but be reminded of JG Ballard’s Kingdom Come which offers by contrast a different kind of optimism: an emergent mass voluntary insanity of consumerism and violence driven by immaturity and boredom:

“Modernism taught us to distrust and dislike ourselves… Modernism was driven by neurosis and alienation… [Consumerism] celebrates coming together… It’s driven by emotion, but its promises are attainable, not just windy rhetoric. A new car, a new power tool, a new CD player… Consumerism is a collective enterprise. People here want to share and celebrate, they want to come together. When we go shopping we take part in a collective ritual of affirmation…”

“And reason? No place for that, I take it?”

“Reason, well… It’s too close to maths, and most of us are not good at arithmetic.”

Right now, web 2.0 represents that kind of Ballardian bored, compulsive, addictive and wholly irrational levels of consumption that are a venture capitalist’s wet dream even if we have amputated a critical part of the capitalist equation of alienation by consuming in a frenzy what we have ourselves directly produced… Can web 2.0 really be a platform for organization and resistance, when so much of it seems to reproduce values of consumptive desires and instant gratification?

Well, these are some preliminary thoughts, I apologize in advance for their haphazardness. I’ll have to go back and reread some Multitude and ponder over this a bit… Also, I know this post is (and future ones will be) on the long side. I’m afraid I have a minimum word limit for posts for class so bear with me and I’ll think about making little exec summaries before the cut or something!

L’exposition de fin de guerre. Travis assistait au vernissage de l’exposition. A l’intérieur de la galerie, les invités visionnaient un ensemble de films pornographiques projetés sur différents écrans, disposés partout dans l’installation. Une musique stridente était diffusée, des guitares anguleuses venaient attaquer les oreilles de Travis. Il demanda alors ce que c’était, « At Action Park de Shellac », lui répondit un spectateur avisé. Travis remarqua alors que des photographies de séances tortures exécutées dans la prison d’Abou Ghraib étaient incrustées en images subliminales dans les films pornos. Il commença à avoir un affreux mal de crane, au moment où la basse rouleau compresseur du producteur Bob Weston se retrouva seule avec la batterie mathématicienne de Todd Trainer. Sur le film, Saddam Hussein était en train de se faire sodomiser par George Bush, alors que l’autre producteur, Steve Albini, hurlait « My Black Ass ! ».

Le dernier jour des musiciens morts. Nathan avait acheté un nouveau jeu vidéo, une simulation de la mort de nombreuses rock-stars. En jouant sur sa console, Nathan pouvait être Kurt Cobain s’enfonçant un canon de fusil de chasse dans la bouche avant d’appuyer sur le détente, Jeff Buckley qui se noie au fond de Wolf River, Ian Curtis qui décide de se pendre après avoir écouter “The Idiot” d’Iggy Pop et vu « La ballade de Bruno S » de Werner Herzog, Bon Scott qui s’étouffe dans son vomi, John Lennon qui se fait tirer dessus par un fan, Buddy Holly qui meurt dans un crash d’avion, Elliott Smith qui se plante un couteau dans le cœur. La bande son du jeu était constitué d’extrait de morceaux de Shellac, on y entendait Steve Albini scander “It’s all right, if it’s make you feel better” sur Song Of The Minerals ou encore “It comes as no surprise he’s taken by surprise / That’s man who says it’s your turn in the barrel” sur The Admiral. La puissance sonore du power trio rendait encore plus réaliste le jeu vidéo.

Rapport d’épidémie. Le virus s’était propagé plus vite que les prévisions des autorités. Travis, toujours vivant, se promenait dans les décombres de la décharge. Les survivants y avaient enterrés les premières victimes, avant de les recouvrir de leurs biens. Au milieu de ces vestiges mortuaires, Travis pouvait voir un tas d’ordinateurs et de téléphones portables ; certains fonctionnaient encore, animés par les dernières réserves de leurs batteries. Travis pouvait entendre la guitare de Steve Albini qui jouait en boucle Il Porno Star. Avec Bob Weston et Todd Trainer, ces trois musiciens produisaient une musique acérée qui prenait Travis à la gorge, cadrant ainsi parfaitement avec cette atmosphère annonçant la fin de tout.

Par Mathieu

PS: Pour ceux qui ne l’auraient pas deviné, c’est en lisant “La Foire aux Atrocités” de J.G Ballard que m’est venu l’idée de cette chronique …

Photo by suburbanslice, under creative commons

Time for a catch up on the reading front, I think. It’s been a while, and I’m no longer sitting through those long old bus journeys to work. This hasn’t diminished my reading time as much as I thought though, as I find myself less and less attracted to evenings in front of the television, and more and more interested in lounging around with a book. A positive development, I think.

The major accomplishment has been finishing a Pynchon, something I’ve never managed before – if you’ve read Mason & Dixon you’ll probably tell me it’s the least challenging of his novels, but I defy you to deny it’s still an accomplishment to finish the damn thing. When a book requires a wiki, you know it’s big. I actually enjoyed it far more than I suspected: it’s atmospheric and interesting like a historical novel should be, as well as funny and sweet and romantic and occasionally (alright, mostly) mental. I have to confess, reading it was a far quicker per-page experience than most books (although it took weeks to get through the 700-odd pages), because get bogged down in the detail and you’re screwed. I can’t imagine trying to pick it apart for an English lit class: potential exploding-head effect, I should think.

I also read through Mike Parker’s Map Addict (which seems to be partly about me, so I recommend it), and then JG Ballard’s Empire Of The Sun. I’ve not read Ballard before, and thus haven’t built up the sort of dedication that he inspires in some. I imagine this work is not really representative of his oeuvre – no urban decay, dystopia or fetishism here, but it’s marvellously written all the same. I’ve always loved the film, and it clearly captured the feel of the written work perfectly. The viewpoint of the story remains, throughout, Jim’s unthinking trust in the adult world, even against the most substantial evidence.

This was followed by Jonathan Raban’s Coasting. Following a line of tradition, Raban took himself off in the early eighties for a jaunt around the British Isles in a little boat. Raban has a real way with this sort of thing – I really admire travel writers but am far too scared of strangers to ever be one.

Right now I’m coming to the end of Lynsey Hanley’s Estates – An Intimate History. I started off being a little annoyed by its descriptive tone, which seemed to consist of, “I had it really bad I just didn’t know it so I was fine as a child”. In actual fact, it’s far more interesting than that; personal yes, but it needs to be to work, and I’m now really enjoying it. Next, as recommended by Hanley in fact, Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier.

“O filme Crash, de David Cronenberg, foi lançado no Festival de Cannes em 1996. Foi o filme mais polêmico do festival, e a controvérsia continuou durante anos, em especial na Inglaterra. Políticos do Partido Conservador desesperados, prevendo a derrota nas eleições gerais iminentes, atacaram o filme tentando ganhar créditos como guardiões da moral e da decência pública. Uma ministra, Virgínia Bottomley, pediu que o filme (que ela não tinha visto) fosse proibido.

O Festival de Cannes é um extraordinário evento de mídia, capaz de intimidar profundamente um reles romancista. É possível que os livros ainda sejam lidos em grandes números, mas os filmes são objeto de sonho. Eu e Claire (esposa de Ballard) ficamos assombrados com as multidões aos gritos, as festas suntuosas, as limusines exageradas. Participei de todas as entrevistas publicitárias do filme e fiquei impressionado ao ver como os astros do filme estavam comprometidos com a elegante adaptação do meu romance feita por David Cronenberg.

Eu estava sentado ao lado da atriz principal, Holly Hunter, quando se aproximou um importante crítico de cinema de um jornal americano. Sua primeira pergunta foi: “Holly, o que você está fazendo nessa merda?” Holly saltou da cadeira e partiu para uma apaixonada defesa do filme, acabando com esse crítico por seu provincianismo e sua mentalidade estreita. Foi a melhor atuação do festival, e aplaudi vigorosamente.

Em poucas semanas o filme estreou na França, com muito sucesso, e depois passou a ser exibido em toda a Europa e no resto do mundo. Na América houve problemas quando Ted Turner, que controlava a distribuidora, achou que Crash poderia ofender a decência pública. É interessante notar que na época ele era casado com Jane Fonda, que reanimou sua carreira representando o papel de prostitutas (como em Klute) ou fazendo malabarismos nua em uma nave espacial forrada de peles (em Barbarella).

Na Inglaterra o lançamento foi retardado por um ano quando as autoridades de Westminster o proibiram de ser exibido no West End de Londres, e várias municipalidades do país seguiram o exemplo. Mas quando o filme por fim estreou não houve nenhum desastre de carro tentando imitá-lo, e a polêmica acabou morrendo. David Cronenberg, um homem muito inteligente e profundo, ficou completamente perplexo com a reação dos ingleses. “Mas por quê?”, ele vivia me perguntando. “O que está acontecendo por aqui?”

Depois de cinquenta anos morando no país, eu não tinha resposta alguma para lhe dar, nem de longe.”

***

A coincidência: antes de ler esse trecho da autobiografia de Ballard, Milagres da vida (que é fantástica, recomendo), pensei muito em Crash enquanto assistia ao Confissões de uma garota de programa, do Steven Soderbergh. Faz muito tempo que não vejo o do Cronenberg (um dos meus favoritos dos anos 90), mas tudo o que o Soderbergh tenta encenar (relações afetivas frias/mecânicas/despaixonadas) não chega nem perto das minhas lembranças daquele outro filme, de como Cronenberg foi fundo no mal-estar de uma época. Crash me perturba até hoje – o filme até mais que o livro. E talvez todo o problema do cinema de Soderbergh (ou pelo menos o que me incomoda nele) esteja aí: no medo de dar um passo para fora da zona de conforto e arriscar seriamente.

Approaching this book in a spirit of naivety I thought I was going to learn about the second world war as it occurred in the Far East.  I wanted to understand how it had been possible for the Japanese to treat prisoners of war and interned Allied nationals as they did.  I do not find myself significantly better informed in either respect, but I have learnt a great deal about survival.

In a brief synopsis, Empire of the Sun opens with eleven year old Jim living in Shanghai on the eve of Pearl Harbour.  A masterful setting of the scene reveals British nationals effectively fiddling as Rome burns, oblivious. Not to mention treating the native Chinese rather badly. (Although this is in no way condemned by our young hero.)

Subsequently, the Japanese act swiftly to round up enemy nationals living in Shanghai, and Jim becomes separated from his parents.  The rest of the story concerns his struggles to survive alone in Shanghai and, later, in the custody of the Japanese.

Unlike some other Ballard, Empire of the Sun is written in a fairly straight forward style, and does not puzzle the reader unduly.  But the style is deceptively simple; there are a couple of small quirks which have a great deal of impact.

The first is in the constant referral by the narrator to “Jim.”  Jim is only described as “boy” when viewed through the eyes of others.  It is as though the narrator is talking of himself in the third person.  The effect is a very immediate story, unfailingly convincing.  Semi-autobiographical struggles to retain the semi, and at the end I had to make a conscious effort to recall that it was fiction.

The second feature is that some parts seemed to be ungrammatical; sentences that didn’t quite make sense, or paragraphs which appeared to be missing some essential information.  It is always possible that this was a simple case of the reader (ie me) being a little slow on the uptake.  Or a deliberate device illustrating the confusion of a small boy lost in a war.

It is well that Jim’s youth is emphasized, because some of his conclusions are difficult to accept; not in keeping with how we are taught to remember.  His observations slip under the radar because the reader does not expect that a young boy would have been able to fully comprehend all the implications of what he witnessed.  There is also a dream-like quality to the narrative; stemming largely from Jim’s often unconcerned and fatalistic approach to his own well-being.

I would question the propriety of using the word “enjoy” in conjunction with this book, but it is a book which I liked very much, and would strongly recommend.  There was one part in particular which will stay with me;

“If Mr Maxted was always accidentally falling into swimming-pools, as indeed he always was, why did he only fall into them when they were filled with water?”

Recognising the presence of water; a valuable ability.

Empire of the Sun – JG Ballard

In a terrible breach of reading etiquette, Empire of the Sun, from a position somewhere beyond my reading horizon, has taken up residence in the immediate foreground. Literally, in my face.

Last week we visited the National Memorial Arboretum, at Alrewas, Staffordshire. One of the memorials we saw was a cultural and memorial building commemorating the Far Eastern Prisoners of War. The visit was intended to reinforce in my daughters the importance and significance of remembrance, but I was startled to realise how little I knew about the impact of WWII on the Pacific, and those natives of the Allied nations who lived or were stationed there.

So I hope I may be excused for temporarily overlooking my birthday bounty in this worthy cause.

Books bought:

• Players, Don DeLillo
• The Names, Don DeLillo
• Myths of the Near Future, JG Ballard
• Poems & Tales, Edgar Allan Poe (Library of America)
• The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy
• Outer Dark, Cormac McCarthy

Books read:

The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles: Lorem ipsum

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling: Lorem ipsum

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling: Lorem ipsum

The Dying Animal, Philip Roth: Lorem ipsum

The Human Stain, Philip Roth: Lorem ipsum

Unfinished

• Mr Sammler’s Planet, Saul Bellow

And this is why I worry when I pick up a J.G. Ballard book. Crash had some interesting aspects to it, but I’m just not that interested in reading about semen, orifices and jutting out pubises. My favourite line in the book came from the introduction when Ballard says “in a sense pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way.” And I guess I’m just a romantic since I hate the idea of the words “use” and “exploit” being anywhere near human relationships. Which kind of sours the whole experience of this one. I have a hard time believing that people could possibly live in a manner at all approaching what is portrayed in here. Which isn’t that surprising since I have my doubts about how a lot of lives are lived.

But I read the book. It was similar to Millennium People in that there’s a mysterious figure manipulating a fringe group of weirdos. The main character tries to learn more about the mysterious figure, gets drawn into his world and then the figure leaves him alone to deal with the aftermath. These two books were written 30 years apart but felt practically the same except Millennium People had fewer people masturbating to car crashes and fucking armpit wounds. Millennium People was also interesting whereas Crash might be important and leave me with more to think about since it took me out of my comfort zone, but I didn’t really like it much at all.

This is the End (again): the New Apocalyptic Sublime

Kevan Manwaring

The destruction of Vulcan? No, The Great Day of his Wrath, by John Martin, c. 1853

From the scenes of planetary cataclysm in the latest Star Trek revamp to the Coppola’s napalm-reeking Apocalypse Now, Hollywood has revelled in the aesthetic of beautiful destruction. And with the long-delayed released of Cormac Mccarthy’s wrist-slitter The Road finally hitting the screens later this year, the latest in a string of post 9/11 gloomfests, Doomsday never seems more popular. The media whips up fear about the New Bad: another pandemic to push ink. Yet concerns about plagues and famines, about geopolitical and religious tensions are nothing new. A spin-off of the Romantic art movement became known as the Apocalyptic Sublime, and in the dramatic paintings of Biblical catastrophe by John Martin we see precursors of today’s big screen Armageddons. Put on your Kilgore shades and don your darkest clothes as we wander through cinema’s gallery of the end of the world.

JJ Abrams 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise dwells lovingly on intergalactic carnage – notably the ‘controversial’ destruction of Spock’s home planet Vulcan, although a planet named after a Roman god of fire was perhaps doomed, like the unlucky member of the away team in the red shirt: you just know they’re going to get it. But the apocalyptic aesthetic the special FX maestros were conjuring up on the big screen with state of the art technology – the planet’s surface breaking up in cataclysmic upheaval – is in fact nothing new.

The Apocalyptic Sublime, a sub-genre of the Romantic art movement academic Morton D Palely defined in his eponymous book (Yale 1986) emerged out of the Romantic Movement, directly as a result of political and religious tensions and scare-mongering that took place throughout the period stretching from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Between these paradigm-shift poles, when old certainties were being challenged, art began to mirror both the zeitgeist of Terror and the ever-deepening wonder of the universe.

The sense of the sublime (the “exalted”, the “awe-inspiring”) was increasingly used to bridge the gap between the limited human faculties of understanding and the unimaginable infinity of the physical universe’ [Introducing Romanticism, p19]

Man was being overwhelmed by the infinite complexity of nature. Poets like John Keats decided to accept the limit of human consciousness, in what he called negative capability, but to scientists of the day, such fathomless enquiry gave them night terrors. The light of reason only served to illuminate the extent of the endless darkness. Sir Humphrey Davy, scientist, expressed this frustration:

Though we can perceive, develop, and even produce by means of our instruments of experiment, an almost infinite variety of minute phaenomena,yet we are incapable of determining general laws by which they are governed; and in attempting to define them, we are lost in obscure though sublime imaginings concerning unknown agencies.

‘Obscure though sublime imaginings concerning unknown agencies…’ This seems to sum up much of the art of the Apocalyptic Sublime – from the painting of the 18^th Century to the cinema of the Twenty First. A sense that not only are ‘there more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in most people’s philosophies’, but forces, vast and inconceivable, could sweep us away at any moment. Since the invention of the A-Bomb this has been a reality. The events of September 11^th 2001 presented the world with a living image of the Lightning-struck Tower from the tarot. Nothing was certain, nothing was sacred, nowhere was safe.

Romantic artists, notably John Martin (1789-1854), captured dramatic scenes of the end of the world in his large paintings. Romantic writers also dwelled on this e.g. Mary Shelley’s lesser known sci-fi novel, The Last Man (1826). This trope, the last man on earth, offers cinematic opportunities for eerily abandoned urban centres. There is something both chilling and sublimely beautiful about such empty vistas – after fears of baby boom-fuelled fears of over-population, the image of a post-Malthusian world is strangely comforting. Richard Matheson’s 1954 sci-fi novel I Am Legend was first made into The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price; then The Omega Man with gun-toting, Charlton Heston in 1971, before being remade in the big budget Will Smith vehicle in 2007, which created, at huge expense, the memorable image of the ‘concrete jungle’ of New York reclaimed by nature – escaped gazelles and lions gambolling gamely along the overgrown avenues, pursued by man the predator, who himself has become ‘food’ to CGI-zombies.

Scenes of urban devastation in films, (eg Saving Private Ryan; The Pianist) echo the Romantic penchant for ruins. Painters loved them. Poets loitered around in them. They symbolised something about the impermanence of life, the folly of man’s vaulting ambition. This was captured most memorably by Shelley in his poem ‘Ozymandias’, inspired by the temples dedicated to Ramses II he had beheld: ‘I met a traveller from an antique land/Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,/Half sunk, a shattered visage lies…’ This foregrounding of scale, to emphasise insignificance – life on an ungovernable scale – is captured also in the nightmarish city-scapes of Piranesi, whose hellish visions of dungeon-like metropolises were brought to life on the silver screen in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927); Things to Come (1936), and on to Blade Runner, Brazil, Minority Report, etc. Gormenghastian edifices which baffle the human inside an endless maze. Films with giant starships (2001: a space odyssey; Alien; Event Horizon; Sunshine) offer the same aesthetic in space. The human animal trapped within an artificial world. In an increasingly urbanised and over-populated world, this became increasingly the reality for many.

The 1970s saw a whole swathe of gloomy Sci-Fi movies mirroring contemporary concerns about over-population, pollution, congestion, etc: Soylent Green, Silent Running, The Cars that Ate Paris, Mad Max, THX1138. The world had ‘gone wrong’ somehow. Environmental issues were starting to drip-feed into popular culture, although it would be a decade or more before such concerns were seen as more than the fears of a few green Lefties and the chronic fantasies of sci-fi writers.

Ridley Scott’s first film The Duelists (1977) captured memorably the stark aesthetic of Europe rendered by the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Scott’s later films, especially Blade Runner (1982) brought the Apocalyptic Sublime into the cyberpunk era. The opening shot of the tech-noir classic, of a smog-darkened Los Angeles, illuminated by spouts of infernal flame seemed chilling when first it was seen on the big screen, yet a decade later similar images of burning oil wells were being beamed back from the first Gulf War.

Flame seems to be a common image of apocalypse, perhaps not surprising after two millennia of hellfire and brimstone. What preachers brought to life by the power of the spoken word, churches and abbeys did through imagery. Aesthetically, cinema – with its moving stained glass, rows of seats and hushed reverence – provides the modern experience of the medieval cathedral and the nearest many of us get to a collective religious experience. The effect can be terrifying and awe-inspiring. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1978) itself a reimagining of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, cited as being the first modern novel of the Twentieth Century, began the main narrative of the film in a plume of napalm to the lugubrious incantations of Jim Morrison.

The apocalyptic warnings of the 1950s, a culture having atomic kittens, seem to have come true, but in a way unforeseen by Beatnik Cassandras. The classic British doom-movie, Val Guest’s intensely atmospheric 1961 film, The Day the Earth Caught Fire, appears, in hindsight, to be the most on the money, and was eerily echoed in real newspaper headlines when both the Stern Report came out (‘The Day That Changed the Climate’, The Independent, 31 October 2006) and then the IPCC report (‘Final Warning’, front page of The Independent, 3 February 2007):  life mirroring art mirroring life – because the film is set and filmed in actual Fleet Street offices… In it, the Earth is jolted eleven degrees off-kilter by Russian and American nuclear testing – ‘Cold War’ brinkmanship ironically causing the planet to heat up. Now we are told the world is only six degrees away from devastation – and the thermometer is rising.

Max Ernst, Europe After the Rain, 1940-1942

‘Europe After The Rain’ by Max Ernst  (1942)

Flood is equally likely to bring about apocalypse. Richard Jeffries, prescient Victorian post-apocalyptic parable, After London, or Wild England (1885) depicts a future primitive scenario of a flooded England reduced to a feudal Mediaeval state, where animals have turned feral and roam the overgrown landscape. Later artists continued this tradition into the Twentieth Century; such as Max Ernst’s Europe After the Rains, which Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow (2004) emulated, albeit in a far from subtle way…The poster of that old fashioned ‘disaster’ movie, masquerading as an eco-fable, was of an inundated Statue of Liberty. Ever since the classic ending of the original adaptation of Monkey Planet, The Planet of the Apes (Schaffner 1968) with spaceman/caveman Charlton Heston striking the sand in despair at the Ozymandian Statue of Liberty, half-buried in the sand, has this icon of American been used as a visual metaphor for ‘democracy’ (read Western Civilisation/humanity) under siege, as in the post-humous Kubrick project AI (Spielberg 2001). Here, it was preserved in the ice. In Cloverfield, the whole head was blasted across the screens, landing in front of a shell-shocked twenty-somethings. In the adaptation of The Road, it is a beached oil tanker, like a great white whale, which provides a stark short-hand for apocalypse, the Moby Dick of Peak Oil which man, Ahab-like has hunted down to the bitter end, at the cost of everything he holds dear. His doom, it seems, is to be tied to it as it goes under. In this vision of a burnt America, (the cause of the catastrophe is not elucidated in the book – as though Mccarthy is saying ‘take your pick’), ‘The fragility of everything is revealed at last.’

The late, great, master doomster JG Ballard used his own childhood experiences in the decaying splendour of the Post-colonial Far East to shape his dystopian vision of the future in his quartet of environmental disaster novels, The Wind from Nowhere (1961); The Drowned World (1962); The Drought (1965); The Crystal World (1966). His later novels explored a similar aesthetic of entropy and ennui. So far, only his memoirs, Empire of the Sun and his ‘auto-erotica’ cult novel Crash have been translated significantly onto the big screen – by Spielberg and Cronenberg respectively. It would be good to see a version of The Drowned World, but perhaps life has overtaken art.

In another instance of art mirroring life, it has just been announced that Will Smith will star in a dramatisation of the notorious 2007 Flood of New Orleans, which scandalised America, playing real-life Katrina hero John Keller. Spike Lee has already chartered this in sober indignation in his documentary on the event, When the Levees Broke (2006), which used news-reel footage and interviews with witnesses.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, John Martin 1852

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, John Martin 1852

Donnie Darko’s (Kelly 2001) quirky Eighties-esque rites-of-passage worked far better than the OTT over-hyped Blair Witch on cocaine, Cloverfield (Reeves 2008). And let’s mercifully forget the uber-expensive flop of Southland Tales (Kelly 2006) – a ‘difficult second album’ scenario for the Darko director, written in $200 million. The studio have decided to go back to their original cash cow, with a sequel, S. Darko (Fisher 2009).

One could argue that these mega-budget movies, and the industry that supports them, is actually contributing to the eco-apocalypse. One of the reasons Daniel Day Lewis was reputedly said tohave given for declining the role of Aragorn in Peter Jackon’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is because of the environmental impact of such cinematic behemoth. He instead chose to deconstruct the environmental agenda in the low-budget Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005) directed by his partner, Rebeca Miller Arthur Miller’s daughter. And in There Will be Blood (2007) based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1920s novel Oil!, he played the oil magnate turned monster, Daniel Plainview. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic film provided visuals of a burning oil well, echoing the burning of the oil fields in the first Gulf War, which in itself seemed to be referencing Blade Runner…The second in Godfrey Reggio’s art-house Qatsi trilogy Powaqqatsi (1988), from the Hopi, ‘parasitic way of life’, dwelled hypnotically in such scenes.

Of course with the charnel pyres of Foot and Mouth, floods, and the traumatic events of 9/11 played at the time continuously across the world, we had a very real example of the Apocalyptic Sublime – so much so, that for a while Hollywood went (even) softer than usual, (Chicago winning Best Picture in early 2003). Since then it has learnt to cash in on the doom and gloom zeitgeist with films like Right At Your Door (Gorak 2006).

Plagues, pandemics, zombie-inducing viruses, are always good cinematic standbys. In The Andromeda Strain (Wise 1971) a group of scientists investigate a deadly new alien virus before it can spread. This now seems a cosily sedate affair compared to the hyper-kinetic offerings by Boyle and Garland who, in 28 Days Later (2002) cranked up the gore to 11, imagining a Great Britain decimated by a ‘rage virus’, and left to fester and fend for itself. The sequel, 28 Weeks Later (Fresnadillo 2007) shows the Isle of Dogs being carpet-bombed by US occupying forces, alerted to Code Red, in a nod and wink to Coppola’s vision of hell and the very real footage of the Gulf Wars.

Ever since Fat Boy dropped on Hiroshima, the mushroom-cloud of the A-Bomb has become to symbolise a very real apocalypse. A-Bomb beasts became stock-in-trade of low-grade drive-in schlock of the 50s and 60s. Japanese movies especially revelled in noisy battles between garish mutants, men in suits and dodgy models duking it out above mini-cities, Godzilla looming largest of all.  Yet from the 80s onwards, the reality of the Cold War started to appear on the screen in a more ‘realistic’ way. James Cameron, in Terminator 2: Judgement Day featured a famous ‘nuke’ scene emulated in endless substandard films, all starring Nicolas Cage it seems: Next, etc and in Zac Snyder’s Watchmen movie this year.

The Road (2009) starring Viggo Mortensen (dir: John Hillcoat) The Proposition director’s take on Cormac McCarthy’s uber-bleak novel of the same name is still awaiting release – now scheduled for Jan 2010 – was postponed so as not to dampen the feel-good factor in Obama’s America – but also eerily mirrored by the devastating Queensland fires in Australia earlier this year.

Roland Emmerich continues his super-sized assault on planet Earth with his next uber-doom fest 2012, inspired by the Mayan Prophecy – the new source of apocalyptic fever (think Y2K with astronomy…). Yet Emmerich’s big screen armageddons, however spectacular, are ultimately unsatisfying – full of sturm-und-drang, signifying nothing.

The end of the world has always been big business. Expect a whole swathe of Mayan apocalypse movies. Mel Gibson has already got in on the act with his kinetic Apocalypto (2006). Even dear old Auntie has shown her black stockings – with the so-so ‘re-imagining’ of Terry Nation’s Survivors and with another remake of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids ‘heavy plant crossing’ its way onto the small screen in 2010.

Earlier this year, unlucky cinema audiences endured the ill-judged remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still (Derrickson 2008). It seems Hollywood is caught in its own event horizon, remaking its own remakes, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

It seems the Apocalyptic Sublime is in danger of becoming Apocalyptic Ridiculous. Maybe The League of Gentleman’s big screen disaster, Apocalypse, was closer to the truth. The world won’t end with a bang, it seems, but with a snigger.

But sometimes, the effect can be deadly serious.

The harrowing near-future Britain of Children of Men (Cuarón 2006), based upon PD James novel, depicting a bleak world of mass infertility, ends with a Viagric dose of Christian imagery. Escaping dystopia, refugee camp UK, the black Madonna and child await salvation, Biblically adrift in a small boat, thanks to the sacrifice of the cynical protagonist played by Clive Owen, Theo, an unlikely, but believable reluctant Messiah figure, who dies to save the gurgling bundle that is the future of humanity. Their leap of faith pays off, as the Human Project boat, the Tomorrow, appears out of the Cloud of Unknowing. This device, the sudden unexpected ‘happy ending’, Catholic writer JRR Tolkien termed the Eucatastrophe.

Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings – notably The Return of the King (Jackson 2004), with its la grande morte climactic plot orgasm at Mount Doom – brought the Apocalyptic Sublime back to the big screen and took it to another level. Here the true poetry and pathos of the apocalypse was finally realised. ‘I am glad to be with you here, Sam, here at the end of all things,’ Frodo says as lava oozes around them. But the eagles come to save the day, plucking the diminutive heroes to safety. The darkest of circumstances are redeemed by an act of grace – which in Tolkien’s Catholic imagination, is Divine.

This is illustrated in Vincent Ward’s visionary posthumous fantasy, What Dreams May Come (1998) (Academy Award winner for Best Special FX). The Robin Williams character has to descend, Orpheus-like, into the lowest part of hell to win back his late wife, who has been consigned there after committing suicide. When it seems all hope is lost, the eucatastrophe occurs, and as the Annabella Sciorra character declares: ‘Sometimes … when you lose, you win.’

Visions of the afterlife – of heaven and hell, paradise and purgatory – have provided movie-makers with inspiration and challenges for decades. There has been early visions of the works of Dante, Milton, the Bible… Although seldom has the technology and vision of those involved been able to do justice to the worlds conjured up by pen and paint, with a handful of exceptions. The sublime staircase sequence in What Dreams May Come was alluding to the famous ‘stairway to heaven’ scene in A Matter of Life and Death (Powell, Pressburger, 1946). In an earlier film, The Navigator: a medieval odyssey (1988), Ward had medieval pilgrims from Northumbria stumble upon an Antipodean Celestial City in the 20^th Century, Auckland, NZ. The black comedy In Bruges (McDonagh 2008) despite its down-to-earth tone and bloody violence, ends with a sublime recreation of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. It is hard to depict heaven without it seeming anaemic or unintentional comic. No doubt Peter Jackson’s version of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (released December 2009) will take up the challenge with his usual directorial aplomb.

It seems the Apocalyptic Sublime is not going away. In modern cinema it is there to remind us of the frailty of civilisation, the wonder of the world, the folly of humanity … or to sell popcorn.

In Wise’s original, and infinitely superior sci-fi parable The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), the ‘good alien’, Klaatu’s warns humanity:  “Join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration…the decision is yours.”

Whether these cinematic visions of doom inspire us to act, change our ways or just change channels, the choice is ours.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) observed that:

When danger and pain press too nearly, they are incapable of any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be and they are delightful, as we every day experience.

Heath and Boreham conclude: ‘Obscurity, vastness and irregularity, whether in mountainous landscapes, Gothic architecture, “romantic” literature or the new structures of industrialisation, gave the individual a “sublime” sense of his own limited capacity, hence his own mortality, and at the same time a vicarious frisson of delight in observing the source of danger from a safe distance.’

From the safe distance of the cinema auditorium modern audiences will (for the foreseeable future at least) continue to watch the end of the world for years to come.

Selected References

Palely, Morton D, The Apocalyptic Sublime, (Yale 1986)

Heath & Boreham, Introducing Romanticism, Icon 2002

Reading J.G. Ballard books is an activity I find fraught with danger. There are some I really like and some that I really hate. I was pleased to find Millennium People fell into the former category.

The story is of a revolution of the middle class who are the new proletariat, stuck in their unaffordable mortgages, forced to pay outrageous school fees and for parking at meters outside their homes. There are terrorist acts that are designed to be pointless and a person caught up in all this looking for clues to the killer of his wife (she died in an explosion at Heathrow). It reminded me a bit of Fight Club, but without being focused on masculinity as the revolution’s driving trait. There were many Ballardian touches, like the protagonist’s wife who used crutches and a car with modified hand controls even though she didn’t need them any more, loads of smashed up cars a scene at a flight school.

The biggest impediment to my enjoyment of the book was its Britishness. Not knowing the geography I felt like all the neighbourhoods should have been more recognizable, like I was missing reams of information by not having an idea of what Twickenham was like. And the class stuff in general didn’t resonate with my experience of life, though again, we try to ignore that kind of stuff in North America, right? So every time they’re making these impassioned speeches about school fees and stuff, I feel slightly out of it, going “that doesn’t seem so middle-class to me.”

Um dos meus posts favoritos de um dos meus blogues favoritos, o BLDGBLOG, descrevia a maneira como, em Manhattan, onde o espaço é cada vez mais caro e os apartamentos cada vez mais pequenos, os habitantes começavam a sonhar que as suas casas cresciam, com quartos ou mesmo outros apartamentos aparecendo onde, durante o dia, só havia um armário ou uma parede. Apropriadamente, e por mais que procurasse, nunca mais consegui encontrar esse post, levando-me a pensar que talvez tenha sonhado com ele[1].

Aquilo que me agradava na escrita de Geoff Manaugh, o autor do BLDGBLOG[2], era o modo oblíquo como falava sobre arquitectura, conseguindo, a partir de uma observação banal, uma frase solta num jornal, um detalhe num livro de ficção científica ou no cenário de um jogo de computador, extrapolar uma visão excêntrica mas sedutora do mundo. Um post podia descrever um hipotético clube de pescadores que se reunia em certas caves da ilha de Manhattan para, através do uso de alçapões, tirar partido dos rios subterrâneos da cidade. Outro sublinhava uma observação solta no livro The World Without Us, de Alan Weisman, onde se dizia que, devido á queima de combustíveis fósseis, se tinha deslocado uma camada geológica inteira para a atmosfera, sendo este “redesign” um dos maiores e mais duradouros artefactos produzidos pela humanidade.

Muitas vezes me perguntei se seria possível – ou até interessante – produzir artigos deste género em relação ao design gráfico. Numa das poucas vezes em que o tentei conscientemente, imaginei o que seria uma fonte onde os acentos teriam mais destaque que as letras, arrastando-se atrás delas como insígnias ao vento. Seria inteiramente banal quando usada em Inglês, mas tornar-se-ia flamejante em Português, Castelhano ou Francês. Em outra ocasião, ainda como aluno, imaginei uma paginação feita apenas com guias do Freehand e que ficaria invisível se fosse impressa, uma mensagem secreta que só poderia ser lida por designers.

As poucas coisas deste género que vi em outros blogues, revistas ou livros resumiam-se também a ideias mais ou menos humorísticas como estas. Um bom exemplo são os posts do blogue Ironic Sans, cujo próprio nome vem da ideia de uma hipotética fonte serifada que seria – ironicamente – sans. O resultado destas experiências é, em geral, divertido, mas não consegue, de forma alguma, alcançar a complexidade das fantasias urbanas de Manaugh.

Seria interessante se o design gráfico conseguisse inspirar a ficção do mesmo modo que os espaços urbanos mais banais inspiraram as distopias de escritores como JG Ballard – uma das influências de Manaugh. Por exemplo, num dos melhores livros de Ballard, Concrete Island, uma versão do Robinson Crusoe, um arquitecto que volta para casa ao fim do dia despista-se num triângulo de vegetação no meio de uma via rápida nos arredores de Londres, acabando por ficar a viver lá indefinidamente.

Este tipo de exemplos pode levar à conclusão prematura de que a arquitectura e o urbanismo são melhores temas de ficção porque afectam a vida das pessoas de uma maneira mais importante que o design gráfico. Contudo, e como é possível ver no cinema de ficção científica, a construção do design gráfico de uma sociedade inventada é tão importante como a sua arquitectura, chegando a ser, por vezes, um elemento decisivo na narrativa – no filme They Live, de John Carpenter, por exemplo, uma invasão extra-terrestre só é revelada através de publicidade subliminar em cartazes e outdoors. No entanto, e apesar de tudo isto, parece improvável que apareçam formas de ficção inspiradas em serifas e jpgs, onde “espaço negativo” não seja o nome de uma estranha dimensão onde as leis habituais da física não se aplicam.

Ainda assim, mesmo escritores tão respeitáveis como Jorge Luís Borges construíram muitos dos seus melhores contos especulando sobre a forma dos livros, imaginando o que seria um livro infinito, um livro combinatório ou um livro circular. Outros autores, como Grant Morrison, escrevem bandas desenhadas onde a narrativa assenta na descontextualização dramática de formatos clássicos de design. Numa das suas histórias, por exemplo, uma sociedade de piratas sem-abrigo vivem nos túneis do metro de Nova Iorque, usando carruagens como navios para abordar outros comboios ou tomar de assalto estações. Os capitães de cada tribo têm nomes como “All Beard”, “No Beard” ou “False Beard”, e procuram um mapa das linhas de metro secretas de Nova Iorque que já só existe como uma tatuagem nas costas de um dos sem-abrigo, uma espécie de mapa do tesouro gravado em pele humana no mesmo estilo do diagrama do metro de Londres de Harry Beck.

[2] Que editou recentemente um livro.

Let’s continue my list of my favorite novels from last post.

The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas. I’m not enough of a douche to write out the French title instead. I’ve been recently rediscovering this book; it’s absolutely fantastic. For me, what makes this one great is the way in which it satisfies so many wishes at once. It’s an adventure story, a sprawling epic with lots of great characters, and a pretty serious revenge tale. I love this story so much that I’ll unconditionally love almost anything that models itself after it. If you haven’t read this one, check it out… it’ll be the fastest 1200 pages you ever read.

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller. It took me a while to get around to reading this classic, but it completely belongs on this list. It might be the funniest book I’ve ever read. It’s a strange kind of a funny too, that biting and revealing kind of funny that can be depressing to some. The book does take a turn towards the end as it becomes more serious and the full impact of the story sinks in, so just be prepared for that. This book did make me want to run out and read more of Joseph Heller’s work, since I don’t get the feeling he’s a one hit wonder, but I have yet to read anything else by him.

Perdido Street Station – China Mieville. What!? A fantasy book that ISN’T the Lord of the Rings on the same list as so many literary powerhouses!? Yup, it’s my list. I’m rather picky about my fantasy books, but as far as I’m concerned China Mieville is the best thing to happen to the genre in a long time. If you haven’t heard of this book, it’s an adventure tale set in a completely new universe that has equal parts fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Part of why this book lingers with me is Mieville’s ability to conjure up beautifully gross images. There are many many moments from this book that will stay with me for a long time.

High Rise – JG Ballard. I’ll be honest, this one was a total toss up between High Rise and Crash. High Rise wins only because it has what is probably my favorite opening sentence of all time : “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Liang reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months”. I’m just going to leave it at that, if that doesn’t make you want to read the book, nothing else will. I hear there’s a movie being made by the guy that directed Cube… awesome!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick. I really don’t get most of the appeal of Blade Runner. There is kind of a legendary mineshaft post that is waiting to be written on that subject. I do like the source book quite a bit though. It’s one of those stories where even the little throwaway ideas are intensely interesting. One of these ideas, the concept of “kipple”, or junk and nonsense that just builds up endlessly is a really cool one. This is a must read for any appreciator of sci-fi.

Okay so that’s my list of my favorite 10 novels… I left a few out, but that’s what you have to do in a list I guess. It is subject to change, since I could be forgetting some, or I could find new ones in the future. I have a list of short stories as well, but I’ll save that for later.

I hope a few people go away from this with a tip or two as to what to read this summer.

Robert Maitland är framgångsrik arkitekt på ett kontor i centrala London. På väg hem efter en helt vanlig arbetsdag sladdar han plötsligt av vägen och blir strandsatt på en ö av betong mellan tre överlappande motorvägar. Han skadas allvarligt i kollisionen och upptäcker snart att det är omöjligt att lämna platsen – förutom de fysiska komplikationerna är den aldrig sinande strömmen biltrafik som ett veritabelt hav av krom, gummidäck och stelryggade förare. Istället får Maitland ta itu med sin situation bäst han kan och tvingas förlika sig med rollen som en sorts urban, nutida Robinson Crusoe, skeppsbruten bland betong och symmetrisk arkitektur.

Betrakta den mening du just nu läser som en spoilervarning.

Efter tappra försök att signalera efter hjälp genom att antända vraket efter den kvaddade jaggan och nedtecknade rop på hjälp kommer han, likt Crusoe, såsmåningom också i kontakt med andra människor: en förståndshandikappad f.d. akrobat och en pundande ung kvinna som båda gjort betongön till sin boning efter problem med ordningsvakten blir sällskapet, båda med egna agendor och planer. Inom gruppen uppstår snart en maktkamp och räddningen glider bara längre och längre bort, trots att tusentals människor hela tiden passerar bara några meter ifrån karaktärerna. På äkta Ballardianskt manéer lär sig dock karaktären att bejaka katastrofen, söka sig till oordningen och släppa loss den hämmade, undermedvetna längtan efter förintelse varenda människa bär på (hela vårt medvetande är ju i grund och botten bara lika delar förträngd åtrå och minnen, om man skall bli lite freudiansk) och de tre personernas förhållande utvecklas till en sorts absurdistisk, grotesk parodi på den småborgerliga kärnfamiljen (dominant patriark, mentalt frånvarande, underkastad hemmafru och psykiskt/fysiskt misshandlat barn). De inre föreställningarna och drifterna smälter liksom samman med det externa, fysiska landskapet och personerna i berättelsen projicerar sin inre värld på den yttre – betongön med allt sitt skrot och bråte blir en fond, en sorts målarduk där karaktärerna skapar sina egna regler och sammanhang. Även denna ständiga förväxling av inre och yttre rymd är typiskt Ballardianskt.

Jag minns inte särskilt mycket av Krash, Ballards kanske kändaste skönlitterära verk som jag gav mig på någon gång i grundskolan efter att ha sett delar av Cronenbergs filmatisering. Boken passerade mig dock inte helt obemärkt, det kanske tydligaste ekot av berättelsen är min nu rätt tveksamma relation till trafik och bilism, som jag helt och hållet tillskriver/skyller på Ballard. Jag kan knappt åka bil längre utan att med jämna mellanrum föreställa mig våldsamma hypotetiska kollisioner; det kan ibland räcka med att ett fordon i närheten är litet sen med att sätta på sina blinkers eller liknande, och vips rullar snuttar med frontalkrockar, kvaddade bilar och krossade vindrutor upp på min inre filmduk. Frågan är vilka spår Concrete Island kommer sätta. Jag tycker redan att jag allt oftare kommer på mig själv leta efter eventuella skeppsbrutna satar vid väggrenen, iförda söndertrasade designerkostymer och täckta av blod, glassplitter och kylarvätska , men det kanske bara är någonting jag inbillar mig. Den här boken måste nog smälta in litet innan den påverkar mitt vardagliga beteende, om detta nu överhuvudtaget kommer att ske, jag vet inte.

En sak vet jag dock säkert: James Graham Ballard var ett geni. Få författare har påverkat mig lika starkt som Ballard, och han var verkligen en sådan där konstnär med förmågan att inte bara underhålla, skrämma eller stimulera, utan också förändra betraktaren i grunden. Bara för det tänkte jag därför slänga upp en bonus – ett sorts hyllningskollage (Ballard var otroligt inspirerad av surrealisterna, dada och William S Burroughs, därför känns just kollageformen verkligt passande) till den nyligen avlidne författaren. F.ö. känns filmen inte bara som en rätt passande sammanfattning av Ballards estetik, ämnen och stämningar (ohämmad sexualdrift möter psykopatologi möter konsumism möter kändiskult, massmedial fiktion och kommersialism möter mänsklig anatomi möter ultravåld i slowmotion möter geometriska vinklar, ungefär). Filmen nedan skulle dessutom lika gärna kunna ersätta i princip all historieundervisning om 1900-talet: århundradets kärna finns liksom här; man kommer osökt att tänka på de komprimerade romanerna i Ballards mästerverk Skändlighetsutställningen, allt ovidkommande är bortskalat, kvar är bara det allra mest betydelsefulla. Kvar finns bara den förträngda sexualiteten, det djuriska våldet och minnesfragmenten.

• Routes 86, 165, 287, 238 (3 hours, 16 minutes)

Today is the fourth anniversary of London’s winning Olympic bid, so it is appropriate, if accidental, that my routes start and finish in Stratford, within a couple of javelin throws of the Olympic Stadium.

The station is certainly impressive enough, far grander than any other in the area that I have seen, and money has clearly already been spent on the surrounding area ahead of 2012. All the noises coming from the planning committee are positive and the IOC also recently said they were very impressed with Londond’s progress.

But I am heading east today and am eager to see if this huge cash injection for Stratford has had a positive knock-on effect away from the Olympic site and in those areas not on the tourist maps. I begin with the 86, which starts outside Stratford station before heading through Ilford to Romford. It is a simple beast. Its instructions are to find Romford Road and remain on said road until, well, Romford. It sticks to its task with admirable obedience.

Unfortunately, Romford Road is a seemingly endless succession of fruit stalls, second-hand car lots and those ominous black-fronted nail, beauty and tattoo parlours that look like torture chambers to the uninitiated such as I. Green Street, the location of the abysmal film of the same name, passes as a man behind me completes a strangled version of ‘Man in the Mirror’ in between grotesque nose and throat snorts. God knows what he’s doing with the product.

Progress is interminable, our progress halted at every stop and I quickly tire of the endless parade of unappetising shops. Finally though, they give way to a tree-lined road and over the roadside hedge lies a field. A field belonging to a farm. London is gone. We are in Essex, although it could be Surrey, Kent or Middlesex. It ist the landscape of JG Ballard’s Kingdom Come, of that bland no-mans-land between genuine countryside and urban sprawl – the 10-mile band that runs around the inside of the M25 – where creativity goes to die.

Romford.

A town of dual-carriageways and roundabouts, of manicured gardens and immaculate playgrounds eerily deprived of any children. A town of vast, soulless shopping centres filled with chain restaurants. I have two fellow passengers who have also been on the whole way and have stayed until the bitter end. I eye them suspiciously, before feeling sorry for them – they are making this journey because they have to, whereas this is all my choice. Perhaps it is I who needs their sympathy.

Tucked away next one such shopping centre is Romford Snooker Club. With a nod and a wink it proclaims itself the ‘most famous snooker club in the world,’ but there is little else to keep me here and as I have mentioned before, I shall be back at least seven more times before this thing is done. However, getting out of the place is not as straight forward as I first thought. I need the 165, which is to take me south to Rainham, but the roundabouts are confusing me. I ask a couple, but they have no idea, so I pop in the police station and they point me confidently in the right direction.

It’s the moments when you are sitting at a stop on a dual-carriageway in Essex that your mind starts to play tricks on you. The 165 doesn’t show and I am in danger of sinking into a funk, but I quickly snap out of it. This is what this quest is all about, I tell myself. Sitting, walking, standing in places I would never otherwise visit in my life, no matter how mundane. Finding interest in the inane. The traffic roars past me. There isn’t another pedestrian in sight. I perfect my thousand-yard stare. Finally, the 165 arrives.

Infinite suburban streets drag past. Hornchurch passes. Then we reach a road called Brian Close, and this route is instantly validated. Brian Close was the youngest player to ever play Test cricket for England when he made his debut in 1949. It must be a sign. The Ashes start on Wednesday – a fact I am inordinately excited about – so surely this glorious stop somewhere between Hornchurch and Rainham is a sign of another equally glorious summer ahead.

The 165 eventually deposits me in an estate at the back end of Rainham. There is nothing else here, save a couple of teenagers wondering what I am doing taking photos of myself in front of buses. A few years ago I would have worried about them, but one of the best things about not being in your twenties is not giving a monkeys what other people think. Anyway, the 287 arrives swiftly and I am soon on my way west to Barking.

It is here that I must apologise to Streatham for my treatise against the place, for it has nothing on Rainham and the road out through Dagenham. In 2002, Ken Livingstone announced a plan to regenerate the area along the river between Barking Creek and Rainham marshes, but from my brief and amateur view, progress looks horribly slow, if not stagnant. Again, horizontal rain doesn’t help, but if Streatham can be bleak, the road to Barking is positively lunar. The landscape is desolate, so utterly without redemption.

Behind me, the conversation between two young men is of temporary accommodation, teenage dads and attack dogs and there’s nothing for it but to retreat back to my Adam and Joe podcasts. Now all I have to do is avoid laughing like a loon at an inappropriate moment so that the unfortunate lads behind me don’t think I am mocking them. Unfortunate. Yuck. What a patronising wanker. These two boys are obviously struggling, but don’t need my pity. They have to live in the miserable place that I am attempting to shutout by listening to a couple of middle-class comedians on my ipod.

Mercifully, we reach Barking in reasonable time. Now, I hate myself, but Barking is mad. There is something in the air, lurking. Like a school playground, the unpredictable never feels far away. A woman staggers past me muttering ‘Dawn? Old hag. Prostitute.’ One of her eyes is looking at me but the other is away so I sidestep and let her continue to talk to thin air. Elsewhere, a group of youngsters are larking about on the steps of the Magistrates Court, crate of Fosters at the ready. Clearly they have a mate inside being meted out some justice, but they seem in good, if borderline psychotic, spirits.

Much like Sutton, the standard of shops declines as you walk down the hill of the high street, but at the bottom sits a 1,400-year old sanctuary – Barking Abbey. I cross the road and wander into the pretty grounds. The noise of the traffic and high street seems to disappear. Founded in 666, the Abbey was used by William the Conqueror after his coronation exactly 400 years later and is a beautiful little place. Almost incredibly, I am alone, so I savour the peace for a few minutes.

Then it is back up the high street, which is starting to resemble an urban League of Gentleman, to catch the 238 – a short hop north-west back to Stratford. The bus squeezes its way up Newham’s main shopping drag, where a clown that matches Mr Jelly from Psychoville for malcontent menace stalks the poor children who walk his way. Newham Town Hall, flush from its Olympic prize, stands tall, as does the gleaming Stratford station as we return to base.

The countdown clock next to the station says 1119 days, 17 minutes and 18 seconds until the Games begin. So far so good with the Stadium and Stratford. Let’s just hope no one gets lost heading east, but I will be back plenty of times to check on progress. For me, today’s routes have taken seven hours door-to-door and I’m glad to be home. Bring on the Ashes.

The Drowned World is a 1962 science fiction novel by J. G. Ballard. In contrast to much post-apocalyptic fiction, the novel features a central character who, rather than being disturbed by the end of the old world, is enraptured by the chaotic reality that has come to replace it. The novel is an expansion of a novella with the same title published in Science Fiction Adventures magazine in January 1962, Vol 4 No. 24. (Nova Publications.) This novella as referred to above is now out of print.

(Source: Wikipedia)

My enduring love of all things Ballardian is well known. I’m now starting to read some of his earlier science fiction work which I hadn’t read before.

I don’t read a lot of sci-fi but this was good. Set in the future in a ‘drowned world’, it focuses on three main characters who – rather than escape the blistering heat and floods that sweep the world – seek to embrace them. One of the key concepts (which Ballard also believes, I read in an essay at the back) is that our brains carry ‘archaic memories’ of primeval times. As the ‘de-evolution’ begins, those memories come back to haunt us.

When you start to get into reading Ballard you will quickly begin to pick up the key motifs which are apparent in everything he writes. Start with Empire of the Sun and you’ll know what I mean. He was brought up in a kind of ‘post apocalyptic world’ of his own (in his case an internment camp outside Shanghai) having lived a very privileged expatriate life before the war. Everything that happened to him during this time informs everything he would go on to write. Rather than hate that time of his life – he sees it as utterly visceral, real, colourful, alive. All that is the opposite of grey, anodyne, dull, lifeless, controlled, conventional.

I am totally attuned to his way of thinking, for many reasons.

A good read, doubly so if you like sci-fi.

And if you’re interested in Ballard and want to know more about him and his motifs, read this article in The Independent which is good.