Depression, creativity and some more linkage
Posted on | April 26, 2009 | 1 Comment
I’ve not seen it yet, but the print edition of Saturday’s Age has an extract from my Griffith Review piece on depression and creativity. If it ever turns up online I’ll link to it, but in the meantime, just a reminder I’ve posted the complete, unedited version on this site, or you can download it as a pdf from the Griffith Review site. And please remember you can subscribe to Griffith Review by visiting their website, or purchase individual copies of Essentially Creative from Gleebooks, Readings or bricks and mortar bookshops everywhere.
Meanwhile, following on from Friday’s post about The Second Pass, I thought I’d link to another site I hadn’t seen until very recently, The Millions. A group blog with a very impressive list of regular and guest contributors, it offers intelligent – and substantial – commentary about books, arts and culture, and has recently offered a series of excellent articles about the future of book coverage.
That short piece about The Second Pass (and more particularly Genevieve, of Reeling and Writhing’s characteristically generous comment on it) reminded me that when I set this site up, one of my aims was to share links to articles and sites I thought were worth reading. That ambition rather fell by the wayside, largely because I found the tone of the site as it developed didn’t really suit a lot of linking and aggregation. I’m currently working on a major redesign which will allow me to aggregate links more effectively (a redesign which may also involve a name change, since I’ve rather taken against the name), but in the meantime, I though I’d offer a link to another site, and in particular a piece, I think everybody with an interest in the future of media should read, which is Clay Shirky’s ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’. It’s a month or so old now, but if you haven’t read it you should – it’s probably the most significant piece of writing the blogosphere has seen in the last twelve months.
And finally, my apologies if the content on the site has been a bit rackety recently. I’ve had a bit of a messy few weeks health and work-wise, so I’ve not really been on top of things (the Wordpress system’s decision to eat my long post about the death of J.G. Ballard didn’t help either). But I’ve got good things planned for coming weeks, so stay tuned.
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Tags: Clay Shirky > Creativity > Depression > Griffith Review > The Millions > The Second Pass
The Second Pass
Posted on | April 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
Image by Richard Eriksson
A while back, I was musing about the future of the book review in an online world, and whether as the print forums for reviewing folded, we would see the rise of new, online forums. What I missed then was the launch of The Second Pass, a new and extremely impressive online book review which attempts to merge the best of the old with some of the new. As its editor, John Williams, explains in his Editor’s Note:
“There are many very good literary blogs out there (several of them can be found on our Links page). But most of these feature writing by one person (and perhaps an occasional guest), and, understandably, aren’t always updated daily, blogs being a full-time job for very few people. My occasional byline will be just one of many in the reviews sections: Circulating, which will review newly released titles; and The Backlist, which will focus on older, sometimes unfairly neglected books.
“The Blog will be updated several times every weekday. It will include, among other features, links to noteworthy reviews published elsewhere, great opening sentences, book covers both lovely and horrific, excerpts from books we admire, “anti-blurbs,” and roundups of what’s happening on other blogs.”
Meanwhile, for those of you after yet more writing about books, Critical Mass’ Rigoberto Gonzalez offers a list of eight blogs about books and writing he thinks are indispensable. Some, such as Maud Newton’s, are likely to be familiar, others, such as Ron Silliman’s, may be less so, but they’re all worth a look. And closer to home, Meanjin now has a blog.
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Bionic penguins
Posted on | April 23, 2009 | 2 Comments
New Scientist is reporting that German engineering firm, Festo, has unveiled a flock of bionic penguins at the Hanover Messe Trade Exhibition. Designed around a system of flexible glass fibre rods, which allow them to twist their heads like real penguins, and equipped with sonar and a limited form of autonomy, they can swim as gracefully as their biological counterparts. And there’s even a helium-filled flying version which “swims” through the air.
Go on – tell me the sight of bionic penguins coursing through the water doesn’t make you grin like an idiot as well.
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The future begins now: first Caprica reviews
Posted on | April 22, 2009 | 5 Comments
Although I’m still waiting for my copy to arrive, the first reviews of the DVD-release version of the Battlestar Galactica spin-off/prequel, Caprica
Created by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, the driving forces behind the revisioned Battlestar Galactica, Caprica looks like being a very different creature from its parent, even as it explores similar – and similarly troubling – territory. Set 60 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica, and starring the man with the charisma bypass, Eric Stoltz and Polly Walker, who lit up the screen as Rome’s scheming Atia, it focuses on the creation of the first Cylons (or the first non-Final Five, Earth that wasn’t Earth Cylons, but we won’t go there) and the lives of two families, the Greystones and the Adamas. Like the troubled Ian McShane vehicle, Kings (which has already been shifted to Saturday nights in the US, usually the prelude to a show being taken round the back and put out of its misery) it depicts a science fictional version of contemporary America, a place of almost unbridled wealth and decadence riven by religious extremism and the perils of technology. These are of course questions explored with great power and suggestiveness in Battlestar Galactica, but as the trailer below suggests, Caprica has ambitions to be more than a simple companion piece to its parent series, even as it draws on its aesthetic and mythology.
I’m sure more reviews will appear in coming days, but thus far the word is broadly positive, if not actually ecstatic. Wired’s Underwire gives it a 8 out of 10, suggesting it’s a little on the slow side but praising its intelligence and preparedness to tackle difficult issues. Wired’s Geekdad is similarly positive, saying that while “it’s not the kind of action-packed, thrilling, anyone-really-could-die-at-any-moment kind of show Battlestar Galactica fans have been, well, fanatic about these past four seasons,” it is “a very good drama, with good science fiction thrown in”. Slashfilm goes further, saying it asks “some deep questions about the morality of creating artificial life,” adding that while “[i]t’s rare for a sci-fi show to attempt drama with very little action . . . it manages stay compelling without much reliance on ’splosions”. And io9’s resident smart cookie, Annalee Newitz, thinks it ”works incredibly well, despite a few hiccups, helped along by some brilliant worldbuilding and terrific acting from stars Esai Morales and Eric Stoltz”.
Perhaps almost as interesting as the release itself is its nature. The version just released is not a pilot, but a special DVD-only movie release, complete with R-rating. And while the series itself is already in production, and is currently scheduled to screen in 2010, the version available now will not be seen on television. Instead the producers will reshape the television pilot (and presumably the series) on the basis of responses to the DVD version. Whether you see its release as a cynical cashing in on the gaping hole left in many fans’ lives by the end of Battlestar Galactica or an interesting use of the different delivery technologies is proably a matter of perspective.
Caprica is available from Amazon.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccHORot0vNA]
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Tags: battlestar galactica > BattlestarGalactica > Caprica > Cylon > David Eick > Eric Stoltz > Ronald D Moore > Science Fiction
On Fairy Tales
Posted on | April 16, 2009 | 5 Comments
Jan Pienkowski, Sleeping Beauty, from Jan Pienkowski, Fairy Tales
Hiding from Monday’s downpour in the Bondi Junction Westfield, I came across the new Puffin edition of Jan Pienkowski’s Fairy Tales in our local Borders. Originally published in the 1970s, it was a book I loved as a child, as much for its stunning illustrations as for its text. Taken with my discovery I bought it, and brought it home, thinking I could read it to my daughter when she is a bit older.
Clearly I didn’t do much of a job of hiding it, because last night she found it, and bringing it into the kitchen, demanded my partner, Mardi, read it to her. Because she’s not three yet we’ve generally shied away from reading her fairy stories, wary not just of their violence, but of the often complex ideas they involve. At first Mardi refused, telling her it was too long, and too complicated, but Annabelle insisted, and so Mardi sat down and read her ‘Snow White’. I was cooking dinner, so I could see Annabelle listening as the story unfolded, completely enthralled. Once or twice she asked questions, or pointed to a picture, but for the most part she was spellbound, despite the story running to more than 40 pages, and being filled with things she had never heard of, such as dwarves and spells, and kings and queens. And, once it was done, she asked for another, and then another.
Anyway, this morning before childcare I came into her room to find her seated on the floor with her teddy on her lap, and the book open in front of her. Turning the pages carefully she pointed to the pictures, explaining to teddy, ‘that’s a bad lady,’ and ‘that’s a dwarf,’ and ‘that’s a witch casting a spell’. And as she did I was struck anew by the thrilling power of old stories, of the way they seem somehow to be already there, somewhere deep inside of us, waiting only for us to call them back, into the light.
Update: This post reminded me of this piece, which I wrote in 2007 to coincide with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
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Tags: Fairy tale > Fantasy > Folklore > Harry Potter > His Dark Materials > Philip Pullman > Sleeping Beauty > Snow White > Tales > Tolkien
Meditations in an Emergency: Some thoughts about Mad Men
Posted on | April 16, 2009 | No Comments
With two series already in the can in the US and a third well into production, AMC’s multi-award winning Mad Men finally makes it to Australian free-to-air tonight. And, to celebrate, the hype machine has been running hard for several weeks (I hope regular visitors are taking note of my restraint in not going on about the pathetic and disrespectful attitude of Australian networks towards their viewers, but I feel like a broken record on that score).
The most recent – and substantial – addition to the promotional material filling the newspapers is a long piece by Clive James in The Australian Magazine (and which is, I suspect, a repurposing of a piece he wrote for the TLS a while back). Sadly it isn’t online, but if you can lay your hands on the hard copy it’s well worth a look.
James’ piece is constructed around two points. The first is a desire to deconstruct the sociologial significance of “quality” (or what I’d call the “new”) television in general, and Mad Men in particular. James rightly points to the manner in which these shows have been embraced by audiences traditionally averse to what they perceive as the downmarket pleasures of television (and particularly American television).
It’s a point that’s been made before but it’s a valid one (that said, please, please check out Stuff White People Like’s take on The Wire and Mad Men). As James rightly observes, at least part of the appeal of shows such as Mad Men and The Sopranos is the reassuring sense that they are written and produced with the cognoscenti in mind, a feeling that is only reinforced by the fact that much of their success has been driven by DVD sales, which in Australia and the UK at least, suggest one is seeking one’s pleasures away from the great unwashed.
I think it would be naive to think television networks didn’t factor these sorts of considerations into the structuring of their programming. But James wants to tie this argument to a second argument about Mad Men in particular, which is that there is something essentially dishonest about the show itself. Like a number of other commentators in the UK, perhaps most notably Mark Greif, he believes the show trades in a sort of inverted nostalgia, in which contemporary vanities are flattered by the show’s careful airbrushing of the past:
“The media world we live in now has generated mad men, and it’s a high end product, with a sure sense the smart audience would rather find it than be hit over the head with it. Even when they are hit over the head with it by an adroit international campaign of promotion they are still convinced that they are finding it all by themselves. But what they are finding is another illusion, though a remarkable nuanced and fascinating one. The illusion is of a past where even the smartest people weren’t quite as smart as us. There is much talk in the press about how the secret of the show’s appeal lies in nostalgia – nostalgia for a time when a man was a man, a woman shaped like an hourglass had no ambition but to stay home and cook, and everyone smoked like a train, with not thought of ever hitting the buffers. But the show does better than that. It doesn’t make the mistake of presenting life on the avenue as a fairground. Indeed it’s a prison, and young Peggy will have to fight her way out.
“But nobody will think their way out, and the awkward truth is that a lot of them, in reality, were already thinking. They just hadn’t figured out what to do next, mainly because they were involved in a paradox: it was the wealth they produced that would give them the freedom to question their lives. Stuck with the same paradox, we revel in the opportunity to look back and patronise the clever for not being quite clever enough to be living now.
“Mad Men is a marketing campaign: what it sells is a sense of superiority, and it sells it brilliantly.”
While I suspect there’s something to be made of the markedly different responses the show elicits on opposite sides of the Atlantic, what’s interesting in James’ argument – and indeed in Greif’s – is the notion that Mad Men fails because it declines to do justice to the vigour and intelligence of the world it ostensibly inhabits. Both argue that its historical account of one of advertising’s most innovative periods is shortchanged by what James describes as its “lingering emphasis upon character”, a failing both also see as intrinsic to its appeal to elite tastes.
The problem with this analysis is that it fundamentally misunderstands the show. Mad Men is not a show about advertising any more than The Sopranos is a show about gangsters. One only has to watch the almost photo-realistic recreation of the fashion, architecture and even cinematography of the period to be reminded of the show’s fascination with surfaces, their ambiguity and, ultimately, their deceptiveness. Not for nothing, I suspect, does the show’s portrait of the 1960s often more closely resemble a film set of the period than the period itself. The stillness of the show, its refusal to spell out meanings, even its oddly static storylines all speak to its fascination with the mystery its characters’ inner lives offer not just to each other, but to themselves.
The mistake, it seems to me, is thinking that the drinking and smoking and sexual anxieties the show depicts in are its true point, when in fact the true point is the fragility of the world the characters inhabit. They might be the Masters of the Universe, but the universe they rule is one the viewer knows is about to be swept away. Not for nothing does the series move in fits and starts forward in time, jumping from 1960 in the first season to 1962 in the second, and on again in the third (this time to 1965 if reports from the set are to be believed) revealing each time the deepening cracks in the facade of the world it inhabits. Seen from this perspective there’s something of the memento mori in the way the characters live, oblivious of what lies just around the corner.
Indeed if the show is nostalgic at all, it’s nostalgic in a quite different way to the one James and Greif accuse it of being. Clive James may remember the early 1960s, but Mad Men’s creator, Matthew Weiner, who was born in 1965 does not, except in the way any of us who were born in the 1960s remember it, which is through the medium of our parents, and our memories of early childhood, childhoods that were lived against the backdrop of precisely the upheavals the action of Mad Men prefigures.
It’s usual, of course, to see the shadow of John Cheever and Richard Yates hanging over Mad Men, but I wonder whether it doesn’t owe more to novels such as Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm. For in some powerful sense it is less about what we see and more about what we know is coming, and about trying to make sense, from the vantage point of the children who grew up in its aftermath, of the dislocation and confusion the 1960s and 1970s engendered.
The children of the 1960s – X-ers – are often accused of being judgemental, even priggish. But whether we are or not, I don’t think there’s anything priggish about Mad Men, nor even what Mark Grief acidly describes as the “whiff of Doesn’t That Look Good” that lies beneath the “Now We Know Better”. Instead there is a ruefulness, a sense of loss. As we watch the world begin to come apart at the seams, we cannot help but anticipate the damage these characters will do to one another in the years to come.
Admittedly this is less evident in the early episodes, which are rather too insistent in their foregrounding of the sexual politics (it’s actually the racial politics, which are largely unspoken, which are more disturbing, presumably precisely because they are pointed out to us less deliberately), and in the constant drinking and smoking. But it is very obvious by the final episodes of the second season, in which Don vanishes to California, and into a sort of Paul Bowlesian fantasy of freedom, and in the deeply uncertain tone of the season’s wonderful finale, ‘Meditations in an Emergency’, which plays out against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Mad Men begins Thursday 16 April at 8:30pm on SBS.
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Tags: Clive James > Don Draper > Jon Hamm > Mad Men > MadMen > The Sopranos
Grieving for Dummies
Posted on | April 15, 2009 | 1 Comment
I kid you not . . .
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On depression and creativity
Posted on | April 13, 2009 | 5 Comments
I’ve just realized the full text of my essay about depression and creativity, ‘Never real and always true’ is available for download on the Griffith Review site. Unfortunately it’s only in pdf format, so I’ve taken the liberty of cutting and pasting the text onto this site. And remember you can subscribe to Griffith Review by visiting their website, or purchase individual copies of Essentially Creative online from Gleebooks, Readings or bricks and mortar bookshops everywhere.
‘Never real and always true: on depression and creativity’
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Tags: Anatomy of Melancholy > Creativity > David Foster Wallace > Depression > James Bradley > Melancholy > Mood Disorders > The Resurrectionist
The truth about Area 51?
Posted on | April 11, 2009 | No Comments
Today’s LA Times has a story which purports to explain the truth (or should that be “Truth”?) behind that Holy Grail of conspiracy theories, Area 51, and it’s almost as improbable as the crazy talk of flying saucers and alien technology. That crashed UFO? A disk shaped, Lockheed-designed stealth aircraft called OXCART. Those reports of secret engineering? True, but they were reverse-engineering Soviet technology. And there’s even sodium pentathol-fuelled interrogations and men in black dumping drug-addled test pilots on their wives’ doorsteps. And why are we hearing this now? Because the US Government wants to set the record straight. Hmm.
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Ah, Adelaide . . .
Posted on | April 7, 2009 | 2 Comments
I have nothing to say.
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City of Tongues is the online home of James Bradley, author of Wrack, The Deep Field and The Resurrectionist.