tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18497364834942149342024-02-08T08:31:50.391-08:00August Jordan DavisAugust Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-61318750923519496232010-04-28T07:02:00.000-07:002010-04-28T07:08:04.923-07:00Closure of Philosophy Dept. at Middlesex Uni.I am so shocked and saddened (and angered) to hear that Middlesex University has made the short-sighted (and what can only be called political) decision to axe their entire Philosophy Department. Next year (Sept. 2010 to May 2011) will be the final intake of full-time MA students - no further part-time intake will occur; but current part-time students (like my husband) who are just now completing their first of two part-time years, will be allowed to complete next year.<br /><br />This is the end of their undergraduate, MA and PhD programmes. Who knows what will happen to the publication 'Radical Philosophy' as its editorial board is comprised of the staff from this department. This is one of the finest collections of academics working on contemporary continental philosophy today and they are just being chucked on the scrap heap, regardless of their accolades, high RAE rating (the highest for the whole uni.!), academic contributions, or huge recruitment numbers.<br /><br />Just incredible. Peter Hallward's email informing of the situation reads in part:<br /><br />"Dear all,<br /><br />"Late on Monday 26 April, the Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities, Ed Esche, acting on the instructions of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Enterprise <br />Waqar Ahmad and the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic Margaret House, informed staff that the University has decided to close down all our Philosophy programmes. <br /><br />"The Dean explained that the decision to terminate recruitment and close the programmes was based on the fact that the University believes that it may be able to generate more revenue if it shifts its resources to other subjects. (As <br />it stands, with the highest RAE rating of any unit in the University, Philosophy and Religious Studies contributes just over half of its income to the central University administration, after the deduction of School admin costs. To the best of our knowledge the MA programme has grown to become the largest in Philosophy in the UK).<br /><br />"The MA will run as normal for the last time next year, September 2010 through to September 2011, but without any new part-time students. All current part-time students will be able to complete the degree next year, and the Dean has <br />promised us that the University will 'guarantee the student experience.' We will continue to admit full-time applicants next year, so there should still be a good number of students on the modules. <br /><br />...<br /><br />"Needless to say, all of the CRMEP staff very much regret this decision, and its likely consequences for Middlesex and for the teaching of Philosophy in the UK...."August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-11108838234043860052009-11-27T02:09:00.000-08:002009-11-27T02:13:30.231-08:00Dylan Moran's Overview of Life in a Nutshell...This is from his <a href="http://bit.ly/4nZNWx">newest DVD</a> from a gig in Australia, 15 May 2009, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0602836/">Dylan Moran</a> in the 27th minute encapsulates life and death in a nutshell:<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><b><span style="line-height:115%; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SAfont-family:";font-size:11.0pt;">“So, yes...death.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>When you’re young you...don’t really think about it; you know, you have the intelligence of raspberry jam, you’re not thinking about anything.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, it’s there as a motive force, making you do things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Go and get a job.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Go and find a flat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Find somebody else, put them in the flat; make them stay.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Get a toaster, go to work.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Get on the bus.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Look at your boss, say ‘fuck’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sit down; pick up the thing, go blank.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Scream internally.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Go home.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Listen to the radio, look at the other person, think, ‘Why?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why did this happen?’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Go to bed, lie awake at night.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Get up, feel all groggy; put the things on – your clothes – whatever they’re called.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Go out the door, into work.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Same things, same people, again; it’s real, it is happening to you.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Go home again: sit, radio, dinner, hmm.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Gardening, gardening, gardening!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Death.”</span></b></span></span></div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-7472726351672282712009-03-28T07:52:00.000-07:002009-03-28T07:54:29.699-07:00The Hen Run - c. 1993<p class="MsoNormal">From the Alan Partridge show on Radio 4, January 1993 (Episode 6) list of trendy women in UK mentioned in an interview sketch re: ‘The Hen Run’. Very Ab Fab:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yasmin Le Bon</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Annie Lennox</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Katie Puckrick</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Juliette Stevenson</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fay Weldon</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Janet Street Porter</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Pamela Stephenson</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Cholmondeleys</p>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-27156623314757469562009-03-26T12:05:00.000-07:002009-03-26T12:33:54.378-07:00Zadie's SensibilityBritish author Zadie Smith (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">White Teeth; On Beauty</span>) is teaching a seminar this spring at Columbia University in New York. The seminar is entitled 'Sense and Sensibility'. You can read about it on several on-line sites:<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://emdashes.com/2009/03/syllabus-columbia-university-w.php">Emdashes - The New Yorker Between the Lines</a> (good site)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://sarahsalway.blogspot.com/2009/03/zadie-smiths-sense-and-sensibility.html">Sarah's Writing Journal</a> (nice blog)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://bookculture.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/what-zadie-smiths-students-are-reading/">Book Culture </a>website</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2009/03/zadie_smith_col.php">The Village Voice</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://wwwapp.cc.columbia.edu/art/app/arts/writing/courses.jsp">The Columbia Writing Courses site</a> (about 2/3rds of the way down)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Below is the course description supplied by Columbia, together with the list I've compiled from all sources of the reading list's books (22 books in all; although Book Culture states there to be only 15 - hmmm...).</div><div><br /></div><div>First is the list on Columbia's website, followed by the reported additional works to be read over the course of the seminar.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black">"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Sense and Sensibility</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black">Seminar<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black">Zadie Smith<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black">What does 'having a sensibility', literary or otherwise, mean? Is it something one acquires, something innate, or something else again? We're going to read a selection of very good 20th century novels (and one book of poems) concentrating on whatever is most particular to them, in the hope that this might help us understand whatever is most particular to us. The reading list is long* and heterogeneous in the hope of encouraging sympathy for a broad range of literary sensibilities regardless of what our own natural inclinations may be. Students will give short presentations, and at the end of the course will write a piece of fiction, or a piece of literary criticism, of at least five pages.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black">The course will be punctuated by secondary readings of literary criticism and philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black">* Most of the novels are short.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Among the books we will read:</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">A Room With a View</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - E.M. Forster<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">The Complete Short Stories</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - Franz Kafka<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">Pnin</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - Vladimir Nabokov<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">Frost</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - Thomas Bernhard<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">The Book of Daniel</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - EL Doctorow<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">Pastoralia</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - George Saunders<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">Remainder</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - Tom McCarthy<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">Brief Interviews With Hideous Men</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - David Foster Wallace<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">The Rings of Saturn</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - W.G. Sebald<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">The Atrocity Exhibition</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - JG Ballard<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">Selected readings from</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - George Orwell<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";color:black">My Loose Thread</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif";color:black"> - Dennis Cooper<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <span class="apple-style-span"><i><span style="font-size:11.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Eleven Kinds of Loneliness</span></i><span style="font-size:11.0pt; line-height:115%;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;color:black;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language: EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA"> - Richard Yates</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: black; ">"</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Additionally reported to be on the reading list:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif"">Catholics</span></i></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""> - Brian Moore</span></span><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Crash</i> - J.G. Ballard<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">An Experiment in Love</i> - Hilary Mantel<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader</i> - David Lodge<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Screwtape Letters</i> - C.S. Lewis<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie</i> - Muriel Spark<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Loser</i> - Thomas Bernhard<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Reader's Block</i> - David Markson<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family:"Georgia","serif""><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Quiet American</i> - Graham Greene<o:p></o:p></span></span></p></div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-23734328748820361632009-03-06T13:25:00.000-08:002009-03-06T13:28:34.997-08:00Mrs Tsvangirai, RIP.<div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/world/africa/07zimbabwe.html">Has Mugabe tried to assassinate Morgan Tsvangirai?</a> Mrs Tsvangirai has been killed in the suspicious car accident which has hospitalised her husband. Mrs Tsvangirai, RIP.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a tragic day for Zimbabwe - a country already choking on a surfeit of tragedies.</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-35196279065295867152009-03-04T19:19:00.000-08:002009-03-04T19:21:36.259-08:00Thatcher’s Children (Lyrics) – by Wild Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire<p class="MsoNormal">"Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Have inherited the Earth</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ronald Reagan was there</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He gave the curse</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">What Can You Do?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When Every Little Smile</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Has To Shine BRAND NEW</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">They came from afar</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now even rock ‘n’ roll’s</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Just floggin’ a car</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Only tied to the purse</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It ain’t gettin’ better</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s just gettin’ worse</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And nobody’s ringin’</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The ice is getting thin</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And terrorists might get ya’</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The tunnel’s cavin’ in</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The countdown’s beginnin’</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The winner can’t win</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Save your own skin – </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Everyone’s a LOSER</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You said it’s punk rock</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now we’re on our knees</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And we’re all sucking cock</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Who’d believe it’s true</p> <p class="MsoNormal">But what she did to them</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Well, they’ll do it to you</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The headlines will grab ya</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Don’t go outta your homes</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Or your children might stab ya</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You said it would be fun</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now we’re staring down the barrel</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of our own gun</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And nobody’s ringing</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The air is getting thin</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The terrorists might get ya</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The tower’s caving in</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The Countdown’s beginning</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The winner can’t win</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Save your own skin</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Everyone’s a LOSER</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">What can you lose?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">You could all be famous</p> <p class="MsoNormal">On You Tube</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">[I’m afraid I can’t make out what Mr Childish sings in these two lines!]</p> <p class="MsoNormal">They just couldn’t resist</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Aren’t you glad you came?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Preaching a gospel of</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Greed and Gain</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thatcher’s Children</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Won’t you give me a smile?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For the CCTV cameras</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Recording you for mile, after mile, after mile, after mile"</p>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-45702021791108932732009-01-28T16:04:00.000-08:002009-01-29T05:38:48.459-08:00Mark Lawson Talks To Bill Bryson - transcript<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">“A latter day Henry James?”<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The following is my transcription of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lawson">Mark Lawson</a>’s interview for BBC Four with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bryson">Bill Bryson</a> (available on the BBC iPlayer for viewers in the UK during the next few days).<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bryson echoes many of my sentiments regarding life in Britain as an American ex-pat.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as it has been a labour of love for me to transcribe it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One last word before I hand over to Mark Lawson and Bill Bryson.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the interview, mention is made of famous American ex-pats in the UK, and the unique position Bryson holds amongst them:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">* Of course, there are many popular US citizens resident and known within Britain: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Spacey">Kevin Spacey</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Soul">David Soul</a>, <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DOGi_4MWhSM">Katie Puckrick</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonnie_Greer">Bonnie Greer</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Wax">Ruby Wax</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Hall">Jerry Hall</a>, the late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Middleton_DeCamp">Caroline Benn</a> (wife of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn">Tony Benn</a>), and the late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_McCartney">Linda McCartney</a>, to name but a few.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>However, few of them do hold the position in the hearts and minds of the Brits as held by Bill Bryson.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He seems to be the most doggedly British in his habits and outlook.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He is the closest we have today to a modern Henry James – except this Anglophile comes without the snobbish hauteur and by accident rather than design.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This Henry James is a humorist and a gentle soul whose observations often leave him rather than others on the floor flayed by gaucherie, poked by the sharp stick of satire.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">---<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal">Mark Lawson Talks to: Bill Bryson – transcript<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">(NB: I have not undertaken to transcribe all the pauses and ums and ahs that appeared in this conversation in order to protect the ease of exchange in written form)</i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[Intro: Mark Lawson’s voice-over with apposite instrumental from Talking Heads’ <a href="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/This-Must-be-the-Place-Naive-Melody-lyrics-Talking-Heads/89EE5F5AD195A567482568B0002E19CD">‘This must be the place (Naive melody)’</a>]</p> <p class="MsoNormal">[Mark Lawson:] In the opening line of his first best-seller, Bill Bryson was rude about his hometown.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“I come from Des Moines, Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Somebody had to” begins <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i>, the story of his return to explore the USA, fifteen years after first immigrating to Britain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The town forgave him to the extent of making him a freeman, recognition of the huge success of his books about culture and language, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid</i>, and most recently <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Shakespeare: the World as a Stage</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bill Bryson, though, continues to live in Britain, where he holds several positions at least equivalent to the freedom of Des Moines.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He has become the UK’s most popular US citizen*.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mark Lawson (ML):<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You’re an honorary member of the Order the British Empire, President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which is probably quite an unlikely outcome for a boy from Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Are you surprised by the way it’s turned out?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Bill Bryson (BB):<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely; obviously.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean when I grew up the summit of my ambitions was to be a copy-editor on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Chicago Tribune</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean that’s where I thought I was going, really, until adulthood that’s where I thought I was going.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And ended up living in England entirely by accident, I didn’t have any expectations of living here; much less getting to do all the things that I’ve got to do since I came here.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, yeah, total surprise.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s interesting comparison with Alistair Cooke, because you’re a kind of reverse – he was an Englishman who became effectively American, and to some degree, you’ve done the opposite.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Tessa Jowell [then New Labour’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport] in the citation when you were given your honorary OBE, she said, ‘Despite having been raised in the US, he has become a true British institution.’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Were you happy with that eulogy?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[BB laughs] Yeah, yeah, no I mean, this is home to me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve physically lived roughly half my life in this country and I’ve been really continuously attached to it in a sort of spiritual sense since I first came over here in the early seventies.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, yeah, this is, you know, this is home to me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it’s something that I almost never think about except in circumstances like this when somebody raises it in an interview or brings it to mind.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because I don’t go walking down the street thinking I’m an American living in Britain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, I’m just me here, this is where I live; this is where I’ve lived for a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It feels perfectly natural to be here.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What specifically prompted that decision to come here?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, in those days the actual coming over was what everybody was doing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was the days of, you know, Europe on $5 a day.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And everybody had this Arthur Frommer’s guide and it was what you did – you came over and you got a big backpack and you hitchhiked all around the Continent.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it was essentially what everybody was doing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And – but for me, I landed and I just – and all of those National Geographic articles all suddenly became three dimensional all around me; and it was just hallucinogenic .<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was totally captivated from the first moment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean really, really just loved it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, I remember writing home to my mom and saying, you know, I won’t be home, actually won’t be home, I won’t be going back to Drake, university, for the first semester.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I’ll be back after Christmas; you know I’ll go then.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In fact, you know, between the beginning of the first semester and the ending of the first semester, is when I met my wife, and started dating her and thinking ‘I really like it here’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So...</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But some people do – who have done what you did – they define themselves as being exiles or, but you never think in those terms.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean I don’t; privately I might think in that way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s a very convenient thing to have – it’s a real privileged position.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, when things are going well here, I can join in the celebrations and be part of it all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, you know, if you get knocked out in the first round of the World Cup [ML laughs] I can stand back and I disown it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>These poor people they just can’t play football.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so you have this – you can kind of pick and choose to what extent you belong to things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And there is always a kind of distance between you and the society that is mostly good.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It just, it gives you a certain different perspective that is mostly valuable, particularly if you are a writer.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But what I always found very striking about the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i>, your first travel book, is it was much more – to use a loaded phrase – anti-American than most writing by Americans is.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean there is a particular passage, which is comic exaggeration, but: “There is something deeply worrying and awesomely irresponsible about this endless self-gratification, this constant appeal to the baser instincts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you want zillions off your state taxes even at the risk of crippling education?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Oh, yes the people cry.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you want TV that would make an imbecile weep?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yes, please.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[BB and ML laugh]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Shall we indulge ourselves with the greatest orgy of consumer spending the world has ever known?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sounds neat, let’s go for it.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So you can’t run for President now [BB laughs] because that would be brought up in the New Hampshire primaries, I think.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, in that sense you are absolutely right; I mean I do have, I get very wearied by America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I am very critical of America in that sense because, you know, America by being the wealthiest country, by having all this stuff, by having been so successful, it could build any kind of society it wants.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it’s chosen, over the course of my lifetime, to just shop.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>To just have consumer society.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And there is no real dedication to quality of life or enriching experiences nationally.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You can have all those things if you choose to.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the kind of tenor of the nation is just let’s just make a lot of money and let’s spend it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And let’s supersize everything.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I just think there is something quite sad about that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, in that sense I have rejected America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean I get tired of that side of things very quickly when I’m over there – I don’t want to live there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I can see why it would appeal to some people, they go over there and they’re just dazzled by the convenience and the ease and the availability of everything.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I think because I grew up with that, I’d actually rather be in a more European sort of context where it, life isn’t anything like as easy, but it is, I think it has better quality to it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it is also interesting in terms of the response to your books, because that first book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i> was much loved in Europe partly because it did reflect the European prejudices against America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think, remembering the reviews in America but also I’ve been looking at some of them, they were really quite touchy about that first book weren’t they? [BB laughs]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well it’s a strange thing, and a lot of it has to do with just sense of humour.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One of the things you can do in Britain is you can make a joke that on the face of it seems quite harsh, but everybody knows you don’t really mean it seriously; and in America I discovered when that book came out that a lot of people will take these remarks [ML sniggers] absolutely literally.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the one I remember is that I was at the Little White House in Georgia the place where FDR – Franklin Delano Roosevelt – had gone for treatments for his polio.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it had been this little resort and I was there and I was there all by myself and I was enjoying this very nice experience.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And then a whole coach load of pensioners came and they all came off the coach and they all came swarming into this little museum and sort of displaced me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I just made some remark, I said something to the effect of, ‘I stood back and contented myself with the thought that soon they would all be dead.’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And nobody in Britain would think that I really was wishing for a coach-load of pensioners to die. [ML laughs] <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whereas in America, I mean I remember the review – I think it was for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Washington Post</i> – but it was for an important newspaper, said something, cited that as an example, and said effectively this man doesn’t need a publisher, he needs psychiatric treatment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML robustly laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because they took it completely seriously, and I think you run into that a lot in the States that people get offended very much more easily there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It also raises another question because as you know there have been recent scandals in America in publishing about fake memoirs, particularly involving the writer James Frey, and now if anyone publishes anything that is autobiographical there are lawyers and fact-checkers going through it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You were before those years, but, in general, I mean there is a, there is a trick you use quite often in the early books, which is you say something and then you say, ‘I just made that up’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, in general, how fictional were those early books?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Oh, all my books are – everything is based on an actual reality; the basic things happened.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know if I say; my latest book was a memoir about growing up in Iowa in the ‘50s, and all of those things – I mean all of the stories, all of the anecdotes, really happened.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But of course I am then describing them in ways that really essentially fictionalise them; I mean intentionally without trying to fool anybody, because I describe them in terms that are clearly intended to be comical, rather than be taken literally.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean there is one in this memoir, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid</i>, where I talk about this friend’s dad who dives off the high board at a place called Lake Iquawbe [sp?] and has the most spectacular belly flop, which is absolutely true, he did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, that happened.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I talk about he was moving, actually started to glow red he was moving so fast, and things like that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean there is so much exaggeration attached to it that it effectively becomes a fictionalised account of a real incident.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think that description could apply to almost anything I have written in terms of the travel books and memoirs.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But having met you over the years, you’ve always seemed to me a rather shy person and courteous.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But in the books, the Bill Bryson is this, very often, this very quick, wise-cracking, guy with the come-backs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that is, there is literary exaggeration there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it’s complete alter-ego.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I say those things, sometimes, but I kind of mumble them and then flee.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whereas when I come to write about myself, I suppose it’s natural to make myself look a little bolder and more assertive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, no, in reality, I’m, I’m, I am very shy and very inclined to slip into the shadows and I can’t – I really can’t do anything about that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean I’ve tried to make a virtue of that as much as I can.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What I do when I go places is I don’t interact much, I don’t take part, I’m not in the foreground, I’m sitting at the back eavesdropping.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And most of what I write about is things that I’ve overheard, not that I’ve been part of.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that thing about fact-checking is that I interviewed David Sedaris recently who writes comic autobiography as you know, and he said he’s found increasingly, particularly with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The New Yorker</i> magazine, that they now will ring up the people involved in a family anecdote for example, if he says my dad used to hit us with a spoon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They rang up his dad and said ‘Were you in the habit of hitting your children with a spoon?’ [BB laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Have you suffered that kind of attention?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, yeah, when you write for American publications like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The New Yorker</i>, which I have done, you get fact-checked.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s a really humbling experience, because you didn’t realise you were making an error.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean usually it is an error of fact that you said somebody was born in 1947 and in fact it was 1948.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, I mean, they are generally fairly trivial things, but it’s the accumulation of them that makes you realise that just how fallible you are, and how much more care you could probably exercise when you do this.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, in that sense I think it is probably a really good thing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It can get ridiculous when they start asking your dad if he hit you with a spoon.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that’s always been the famous, famous generalisations about British and American journalism, which is that British journalism is all made up but it was funny, and American journalism was accurate but is humourless.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But there is something in that isn’t there?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That you can end up – with fact-checking you can end up removing the life and humour from a piece.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>As the writer you can end up spending just huge amounts of your time trying to satisfy these people, in pointless ways.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I remember once I did an article, a travel article, for an American magazine, and one of the – and I had said something about – I think I was in Charleston, South Carolina.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I talked about these, all the houses have these tiny, tiny front gardens but every front garden had a little Vietnamese gardener, just sort of doing things with little scissors.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And they phoned me up and they said they’d looked into this very carefully and they couldn’t confirm that these people were Vietnamese.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML and BB laugh]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you’d just think, well okay, you know just; I didn’t ask them myself, I just kind of assumed.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so you can, it gets to a level of ridiculousness very quickly if you’re not careful.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We know quite a lot about your childhood, which we are going to talk about now, but we know a lot because there are flashbacks in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i> and then there’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid</i>, which tells us a lot about your childhood.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The attitudes were interesting to me because the first book is really about how dull the place was, how terribly dull it was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But in the latter one we get a sense of boyish excitement about the same kind of things, but that really, that’s just the different perspectives of an adult and a child.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB: Yeah, and what’s happened is that when I wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i> that was the first book I ever wrote really.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it was the first narrative book with chapters and a real structure to it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, so I’d never put together a whole book before, I’d never written humorously before, and so it was a kind of learning experience for me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And part of the way I made, found the humour was to be really quite nasty or aggressive kind of humour.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And there’s a lot you can make fun of in a place like Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But as I aged and mellowed a little, I realised that actually I had been way too hard and part of the reason I wanted to go back and revisit all of that with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Thunderbolt Kid</i> was to have another chance to actually say, well, you know, Iowa is ridiculous, and a lot of these things are quite inherently comical.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But there was also a lot that was really good and nice and sweet about it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I wanted to have a chance to just kind of make amends and I think I did with the book, because you know there were a lot of really, really wonderful things about growing up in that period.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And in a lot of ways I’m extremely lucky to have come from Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I grew up thinking that I was somehow terribly disadvantaged by being out in the middle of nowhere, but when I look back on it now, I actually in a lot of ways ; I couldn’t have had the life I’ve had if I’d grown up somewhere different.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the writing of memoirs has caused problems in some families; I mean there are Irish families where they’ve ended up in court and suing each other.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, your siblings and your mother, how did they take to the two books and memoirs?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Really, really well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, if you’re writing that kind of book and it involves real people, you know you just have to have their goodwill.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And because you can disguise an awful lot of identities, I mean, first, all the names of people in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Thunderbolt Kid</i> are fictionalised names.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So you can disguise identities.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>All the people that are in that book will recognise themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Willoughby family, the Willoughbys, they know who they are, even though that’s not their real name.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Has anyone objected to the portrait of themselves?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, but the interesting thing was, there was, in one of the, there was a girl; I can’t even think of what name I gave her in the book now, but a girl that was really absolutely lovely, and everybody was, I mean, I was just completely besotted with her, as everybody was; she was just really beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, and the whole story in the book is again absolutely true, but we used to play doctor, or something, strip poker [ML sniggers] in a tree house when we were eight years old.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And get naked in this tree house, and of course the girl – I can’t remember what name I gave her – but I wanted her to, I wanted to be there when she did, and she always refused to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And then I went away on vacation and came back and discovered that she had, she had stripped off in the tree house [ML laughs] and I had missed it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, so anyway, there was just this little episode in the book about this kind of early infatuation with the female body.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And what I discovered after the book came out: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>there are at least four different girls, women who think that they are that person [ML and BB laugh].</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So there was a lot of strip poker going on at that time?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, I suppose, I’ve always assumed that was the way it was in most childhoods; but there certainly was there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well there was a woods and a tree house in it and we built it really just essentially to go over there and take our clothes off.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The Thunderbolt Kid this fantasy superhero alternative to your childhood, was he a literary conceit when you came to write the memoirs, or had he really existed?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it was essentially as I described it in the book that there was this wonderful oiled wool jersey that I found in the basement that had a very small thunderbolt, a very faded satin thunderbolt on the cover.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was just at the age where I was extremely susceptible to superhero stuff; but also old enough to be able to kind of use my own imagination to create alternative worlds and existences.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And this thing to me became, this jersey became the thing that gave me superpowers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it was my father who dubbed me the Thunderbolt Kid just in a kind of moment of passing affection.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And from time to time after that he called me that for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it wasn’t a real recurring motif in my childhood, but it was a, it did actually happen more or less as I described it in the book.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s always interesting the superpowers that people would choose.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Actually, I think some newspapers have a column now where they ask celebrities which superpower would have if you could have one.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But it’s always interesting the one that you chose, it was to do with, I suppose the time as well, the sense that you were growing up in quite a dull place as well.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, well, no I’m pretty sure whatever the circumstances were growing up I would have chosen and indeed would the ability to see under people’s clothing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML and BB laugh]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you’re going to choose a superpower, what else would you go for?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, certainly at that age I was – and it probably was a function of the period – because there was, it was nearly impossible to see naked female flesh in those days.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s so easy now, but when I was a kid, I mean it was really – you could look in an art book and see a painting by Rubens or something or, or that was it; I mean there wasn’t, there wasn’t any possibility.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I suppose now we’d want the superpower to put clothes onto people.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[BB laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Underwear onto actresses as they get out of taxis and that kind of thing... [BB laughing]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Possibly, yes [BB laughs]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was an interesting time – people think it isn’t an interesting time the ‘50s – it’s a much mocked decade, that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But one of the things that you address particularly in the second book is that you have to put it into context.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean now we realise quite topically those people were coming out of this terrible depression and then there was the fear that the world might end.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the fifties in that sense that people dislike about it of being pinched and colourless, it comes from that being stuck in that historical context.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, it is, but also you’re talking about it being pinched and colourless because you’re talking about the 1950s in Great Britain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, when you still had [rationing], when it still was pretty colourless.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whereas America, you know the great thing about America that I dwell on in the book is that the war ended, America had no bomb damage to repair, it had all of its factories were there and you just, they just had to stop making tanks and bombers and start making washing machines and Buicks and things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And they did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So overnight America became hugely prosperous and the war was the best thing that ever happened to America in terms of the economy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that was absolutely the world I was born into.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know I was born in 1951 and into a house that had, you know, a television and a telephone, and refrigerator and all of these things that you know, so there’s never been a time in my life when I didn’t have those things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Whereas with my wife, who was born in 1953 in Britain, most of those things that I’ve just mentioned, and lots more, she didn’t have until she was well into the 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Her dad didn’t have a car until she was in her early teens and things like that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so America was really sunny and bright and cheerful in terms of the economy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But then going running on alongside it was this strange paranoia and fear, the Cold War and all of that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That is something that fascinates me, because that it was oppressive in terms of – you know, it’s so hard to try and interpret that age, because on the one hand there was this great optimism and everybody had lots of money in their pockets.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>At the same time, there was this real feeling that we could all be dead next month, because there could be World War Three.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And as a child you were conscious of that were you?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You were conscious of it, but I don’t think anybody, I don’t really think anybody took it very, very seriously at all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Certainly as a child you could easily overlook it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t know how much my parents really worried when, you know about the Cold War, and worried about Khrushchev and things like that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I think the time when these two opposing realities clashed was the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that certainly was when for the first time in my whole life that a real chill went down my spine and I thought – [ML interrupts]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You were eleven presumably?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, I was eleven years old.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I can remember watching President Kennedy coming on television, interrupting the programme I was watching, and coming on and he looked ashen; he looked really scared – the President looked quite worried.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And saying, and he was talking about exactly what was going to happen now about firing a warning shot across the bow of a Russian ship and that if it kept on going, well essentially, you know, prepare for the worst.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you realised that actually this – we could die.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, when you’re that age you don’t think about dying at all, but the idea that we could all die together, all collectively, was really quite chilling.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think, certainly for me, that was when it all came to a head and I think for a lot of other people too.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The attitude to your father in the two books, as a child in Iowa, because in that first book William McGuire Bryson, Senior is really the butt of a lot of it and he’s this rather dull man.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And then it’s a surprise, it was a surprise to me, to discover in the later book and other things I’ve read – and he now has his own Wikipedia entry even – that he was actually quite exotic as parents go because he was a distinguished sports writer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But you are much harder on him in the first book.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, yeah, well again and the second book really was an intention to make amends with that because although my father is absolutely the person that appears in both books, you need to read both books to see that he was a rounded human being, and he was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the first book he’s just this sort of Dagwood Bumstead kind of comic one-dimensional comic character who is essentially there just to always get us lost on vacations.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it’s exactly what he did, I mean we spent whole, my whole childhood was spent going on vacations to places that only my father found interesting and were dreary and far-flung and anyway we got lost going there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he was the world's cheapest man.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So, all of those things are absolutely true, but there was this whole other side to him, which was that he was a very, very gifted writer and a great baseball writer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And in America, as you’ll know, that is really saying something, to be able to write well about baseball is something to be able to say.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he was, I think people – you know, he was known, and that’s quite an accomplishment for somebody who works for a provincial newspaper in Des Moines, Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The other thing that has never been in any of the books is that he was actually a jerk too.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the reason I became I writer was that he was – I mean when I look back on it was because he was really quite dismissive of me and my brother and sister and I think I became a writer to sort of show him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Just to – so I mean in a sense I’m deeply indebted to him.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the reason I grew up with an ambition was because he wasn’t a particularly nice man.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Everything in the house revolved around my father and my mother’s whole life was about making him happy.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he was also fairly depressive which is again something that I’ve never – it’s not a condition that I’ve ever experienced and also I tend not to be as sympathetic with it as I probably ought to be.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I take more after my mother.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so I always saw him as being a depressive as a kind of self-indulgence, which she was really bolstering and supporting, when I thought really what he needed was just someone to kick him up the ass.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs] And I particularly started to feel that way as I got into my teenage years.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What would he have expected you to become or wanted you to become?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, I think, I mean, I don’t, I mean I don’t really know what went on in his head, but I think he recognised fairly early on that I was pretty good at English and that, you know, that this was, I was following him in some sense and that this was the thing that I was able to do.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And as I got older, you know, as I got into my teenage years, I think that I – I don’t know, maybe reading my school essays or something, maybe he saw that there was something there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think part of him would have been – if he’d lived long enough – would have been very proud of me, but also part of him would have been kind of threatened by it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But my relationship with my dad was not on the whole a very, a very good one.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he tended to be – he was one of those people, he’d come, when I played little league baseball, he’d come to the games and watch, and then afterwards he’d always tell me everything I’d done wrong; it just wasn’t very supportive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It wasn’t nasty exactly, he just was – it was a bit more, it was a bit more to do with a kind of gruffness that he wasn’t able to show affection and be positive; his way of parenthood was essentially by pointing out all your inadequacies.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And because I was more sensitive than my brother and sister I think my response to that was to be fairly rebellious.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean for years I didn’t, I didn’t dine with my family; I took a tray up to my bedroom and watched television.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean I became quite reclusive, but not in a, not in a sort of clinical sense, I just you know, I preferred to go eat upstairs.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I wasn’t withdrawn or anything.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One of the comic exaggerations in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i> that I always loved is that even the car was so big that in effect you were in different worlds there, the children and the parents.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, yeah, yeah, you can do that in America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I remember very clearly that, because none of that seemed very strange to me and kids in America, I think because they can drive when they are sixteen, they tend to fly away much sooner. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I remember coming over here and when I started to date my wife and we went to her parents’ house on a Sunday afternoon and just thinking, we’re spending the whole of Sunday afternoon sitting here with your parents watching television?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I thought that’s so bizarre.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I hadn’t spent that much time with my parents for, you know, since I was eight years old.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, and that’s what people did here, and still do. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I mean I think it’s, I’ve warmed to the idea now, but to me, coming from the circumstances I came from, it just seemed very strange that you would want to socialise with your parents once you got to a certain age.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One of the recurring riffs in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i> is the – from the very first page – is the risk of being trapped and having to spend your life, and indeed your death, your eternity in Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[BB laughs]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[Laughing] Did I say that?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[Laughs] Yes, you do.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What [BB and ML laugh]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[Laughing] It was a long time ago.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well you make the point that your father never escaped it even in death he’s still there, so he can’t get away from it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, at what stage did you start, did you have a sense growing up of the risk of marrying a girl called Bobbie and being trapped here forever?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, I don’t think, I mean I really do think from a really very early age I knew I was going somewhere else.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And some of my earliest memories, you know, fully formed memories that I can recall clearly are of reading or of looking at pictures in National Geographic and having this very positive feeling that the world outside Iowa was very exciting and interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You kind of read an article about Tahiti or Samoa or something and think, oh, wow I’d love to go there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or the next one would be about Belgium or Ireland or someplace and you’d think, oh that’s really; so it just made everywhere look really good and so I had this very powerful desire to go out and see this other world.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you’re a few years younger than that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush generation that had to get out of Vietnam, find ways out of it; but were you ever at risk of being sent?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, I was, but right at the very end of being at risk.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, they had an annual lottery and it was, it was this bizarre event that was televised nationally, and as I recall, there were two drums, one of them was a birth date, and the other one was an order of being picked.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, so they’d pull out, and my birthday was December 8 and they pulled it out and the number that they matched it up to was 335.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So you knew that there were going to be 334 other birthdays likely to go before mine.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I knew right away I was safe.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But if your birthday came out and the number one came out, you knew that there was a very... [ML interrupts]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, I’ve read memoirs of that and novels, that thing of people would talk about whether they had a higher or a lower draft number.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that is what that was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you only had to go through this the once.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was everybody who was going to be eighteen that year, so all of us, you know, everybody knew, everybody from your school year – all the millions of other eighteen year olds from all over the country were watching television that night to see what number they were getting.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One of the paradoxes for people who read the memoirs, I think, is that you embody one of those ‘60s / ‘70s words: ‘drop-out’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, you were a drop-out; you left, you left college.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, well, I went to college with great reluctance, I wanted to go off and see the world and I didn’t want to hang around anymore and my mother – it was very important to her that I go to university and so she used up all her inheritance – which was quite modest – to pay for my tuition at the local university in Des Moines, which is Drake University.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I did keep dropping out and coming to Europe and hitchhiking around and one time I came and didn’t come home at all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, I stayed for two years; that was when I got a job here and met my wife who was a student nurse and stayed on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So it took me overall it took me seven years to finish university, although I eventually I did; mostly to please her.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You present yourself as a rather bad student and scholar and not even particularly bright, and yet we have particularly these recent books which have the complete history of the entire world in them and you have even Stephen Fry saying this guy knows a lot, and that kind of thing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So what happened?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Are you misrepresenting your school days or were you a late developer in that way?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, no, I was a terrible student; and it wasn’t, it was mostly to do with attitude than sort of intellectual limitations.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, it was, I was very reluctant to go to school.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I wanted; I don’t like structured learning and I don’t like people telling me, you know, this is how, this is what you’re going to be learning now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I just wasn’t very good at being a student.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But in terms of being brainy, I’m not particularly; I mean I’m really not particularly.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean all I really do with these books is to just; I see myself as a reporter.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I do exactly what you do when you are doing the job of being a reporter – just go out and ask questions and essentially, you know, I’ve never pretended to be expert at any of these things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What I’m doing is just going out and asking so how does this work; tell me what happens. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The fascination with words, which has gone through several of your books specifically.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That must have been helped by moving between two countries and then indeed living in Yorkshire where again English becomes different again.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because we become much more aware of accent and vocabulary when we’re away from it or we hear foreigners speaking it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My initial interest in language as something to write about was a direct outgrowth of working on newspapers here.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, I worked as a sub-editor here and I was kind of right at the front of the coal face.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I used to wonder why, so why is it that all these words like humour and colour do I have to put a ‘u’ in and make sure; why are there these differences and why, and I just got curious to know and why, why, what happened?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean we both speak the same language and yet, you know, why do you not say ‘gotten’ normally, but you will say ‘ill-gotten gains’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So why do you have this sort of little fossil ‘gotten’ in your usage but you don’t use it routinely; whereas we use it routinely.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And if I look at a map of Iowa when I’m driving through there and I see a place called [Madrid] Ma-DRID to me, why do they say MAD-rid?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it’s all those kinds of things.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And what you find out when you look into these things – there’s one in Kentucky: Ver-SAILS, Versailles it’s pronounced Ver-SAILS.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you go there and you sort of think – you sort of chuckle, and sort of snicker at these people because you assume that they’re too backwards to realise they should be saying Versailles, or Madrid, or so on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But actually very often those are reflecting ancient or very old pronunciations.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>That everybody may have been saying Ver-SAILS at that time and that’s how you get from Firenze to Florence, and so on, that these are actually historical reflections of pronunciations that very often were current at the time the town was named.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But also American language because we’ve been quite hard on America in this interview, but the sort of, the sense of wonder there comes across in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Made in America</i>, is this sense of a young country being made up as they went along.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There’s a chapter about names and you have the story of: “Soon after the Milwaukee railroad began laying track across Washington State in the 1870s, a Vice President of the company was given the task of naming thirty-two new communities that were to be built along the line.”<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s amazing; you say he named them after everything from Poets – Whittier – Plays – Othello – to common household foods – Holstein and Purina.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And there’s still a Laconia there which it turns out to have been a mistake.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He just, he thought he’d seen it on a map and he hadn’t.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>He thought he’d seen it on a map of Switzerland and he says on going back to the map and on looking more closely, he discovers that it doesn’t seem to exist at all.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But he still names the place Laconia; which is wonderful.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And all these places that really aren’t interesting like New Madrid or New London, and you think, did they really think that this was going to be the new London?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Or what were their hopes?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And probably very often they did.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean when these places were planted nobody knew that one day this place will become one day Chicago.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean there’s a whole part of northern Michigan where they eat pasties because they had tin mining there and they brought people over from Cornwall.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it’s the only place in America where you can go and buy – not only go and buy pasties – but go and say pastie and people know what you’re talking about.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The job you did before you started writing the books – sub-editor – it’s a strange profession.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Sitting there late at night, eating banana sandwiches for some reason a lot of them [BB laughs] did in my experience.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You’re correcting the facts and grammar of star columnists who really don’t thank you for it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is a clear hierarchy between the sub-editors and the writers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Did you find that experience, I mean were you thinking I want to be a writer?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>No, not exactly, I didn’t want to be a writer on a newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, as far as I was concerned, people who did the writing on newspapers, they spent a lot of time having to stand outside in the rain [ML sniggers] waiting for somebody to come out and make an announcement.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So in that sense I had no desire at all to write for newspapers; I liked being inside, being comfortable and having regular hours and all that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But a part of me did want to write, kind of on my own terms, I mean I wanted to write featurey type things and what I was doing, what I did was in my spare time I did start writing travel articles and things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Mostly as a way just to supplement my meagre salary.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And we should fill in younger viewers or people who have forgotten the newspaper history at that time, because it was very bloody. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Rupert Murdoch had broken the print unions, taken his newspapers to Wapping and, it will seem extraordinary this now to people who weren’t involved in it, but journalists would go in under police escort.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There would be stones thrown at the coaches.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Often wouldn’t be allowed out because the police said it wasn’t safe to come out; and were producing newspapers in those circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But you were right in the middle of all that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, yeah, it was an awful; it was just an awful time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was really, it was really, it was sometimes quite scary, I mean you; I did get my car kicked in once.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it all happened very suddenly and like everybody else I never saw it coming.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, it was almost literally overnight, wasn’t it?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It was.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, I mean, I learned about it the night before we went.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it was I mean it was very bizarre: you go to Wapping the next day and there is this whole enormous building.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it seemed positively enormous.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it’s full of all these people who had quietly left Grayson Road and had disappeared.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And they’d quietly vanished.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>They’d been setting everything up.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And people who used to work there and had gone back to Australia, you thought, had actually just moved across town.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so you’d go in and there’s this whole newspaper all ready to go.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was in, like many people I was in a position, I had a young family, I was too cowardly to be unemployed, it was not a good time economically to be out of work.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I didn’t have any savings.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the NUJ, the union I belonged to, rather cravenly on reflection, decided that it wouldn’t, that, you know, it wouldn’t resist the move.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think, you know, looking back over the longer period, it was, this was a change that was necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, you know, it had to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The NUJ had resisted technology – new kind of technology for too long.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So it just had to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I thought when it was happening; I’m never going to get in this position again.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The first thing I did was I started saving money, so that I would always have some kind of money I could, in the bank.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I made a real conscious effort to save some money so that I would have some kind of cushion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And then as soon as there was an opportunity to go somewhere else – like lots and lots of other people – I left and went to<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> The Independent</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it was a complete change for me; it was the happiest place in the world in the early days.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Independent</i> and I remember when you left.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is this romantic fantasy, and it remains a fantasy for most journalists, of leaving, becoming a full-time writer, writing best-selling books.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think people, a lot of people were quite cynical when you left, they thought it’s not going to work like it’s not worked for so many people; he’ll have to come back doing subbing shifts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Were you apprehensive when you left?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, yeah; I mean people were – and see this goes back to what you were just saying a little while ago about journalists and reporters and so on, I think a lot of people felt particularly it wasn’t going to happen in my case because I was a sub-editor, [BB and ML laugh] I wasn’t a proper journalist.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I knew that there was a risk involved, but as I say, all the time that I was working as a sub-editor, in my spare time I was doing quite a lot of writing.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I had built up a number of contacts.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was beginning to get books published and I was beginning to have, to make pretty good money.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I thought well if I can just if I can just do this full-time, and if I can make – I can’t remember what I needed, if I can make £800 a month, I think that was what I needed, so something like £14,000 a year or something – we can make it work.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I think I can do that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I wasn’t thinking, I’ll go off and I’ll be on the best-seller list and I’ll become rich and famous, I was just thinking can we actually afford to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I thought there was a pretty good chance of it and in fact we could, I mean it wasn’t that hard to make a living.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There was a certain amount of scrambling that went on in those early years and you have to adjust to the fact that you might sell eleven articles in a six-week period, but you’re not going to get paid eleven times; I mean the money will come in over months – a longer period.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So you have to be a lot better with relying on savings and kind of replenishing it when money comes in.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And in fact, although some people I think think that the linguistic books came later, the first book you ever published was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words</i>, which had come out of being a sub-editor.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Exactly, it goes back to what I was saying about just being curious about why are there these differences, what, and.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And the only thing that existed in terms of help for sub-editors was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Fowler’s</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Modern English Usage</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Which is, you know, a fantastic and incomparable book, but it’s not a very handy book, and I felt that there was a real need for a book like that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I suggested it to an editor at Penguin and to my amazement they commissioned me to do it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML: And the book that really started it all off, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Lost Continent</i>; this idea for a travel book which was – which is how it reads now – a travel book which was also a memoir, but what, what was the concept when it arrived?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB: Well, the way I sold it to the publisher was exactly that idea was that I wanted to go back and see how America had changed since I had been growing up there in the ‘50s.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And my whole idea was just to travel around the country and kind of just look at the country, from the unusual perspective of being an American who had lived away from it for some time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I didn’t think of it as the start of a career as a travel writer at all; I mean, I didn’t even really think of it as a travel book, I was just going back and looking at my own country and my own circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And what I did was I wrote the first chapter without having gone anywhere near America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>If you read the first chapter you’ll see that it doesn’t: it’s all reflections; it’s all history.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I sent that and said, you know now I’d like to go make the trip and I sent it to a whole bunch of publishers and two of them got interested, interested enough to look into it more.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Both of them essentially said what is the least amount of money we can give you to allow you to do the research to do the book.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I very carefully calculated, my mom promised to lend me her car, and I worked out the cheapest budget I could come up with.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I can’t remember what it was, but it was like £1200 to do a five-week trip across America.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And one of the publishers then dropped out. [ML and BB laugh]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The other gave me that kind of money and the book eventually did pretty well.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But not immediately; it wasn’t until it came out in paperback and was read on Radio 4 that it suddenly took off in a fairly big way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But the reason it probably got onto Radio 4, it was one of those genuine word-of-mouth books, wasn’t it?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There were good reviews, but then people started telling each other that they’d read it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB: Yeah, and it was such a lucky time to be starting out as a writer.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it was a real word-of-mouth age back then.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And there were so many more things you could do to get started.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I think it’s become a lot harder now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it was, you know, things like readings in bookshops were just coming in, they were big occasions.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>People used to go to a reading just because, just for the glass of wine and a night out, [ML laughs] you know.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And now people, I think, have just, there’s this sort of fatigue there – that there are so many events.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I came along at a very lucky time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML: The Bill Bryson we get in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Lost Continent</i> is an interesting comparison with Paul Theroux: that he, he was the suave, waspish American abroad, and although you can be quite waspish, you’re very different; you’re kind of bumbling and slightly fumbly [sic] American abroad.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, I mean that is me; that really is me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, as, you know, as I was saying to you earlier, these things were all based on a reality that I, you know I – well, I remember an occasion once when I completely, just completely brought disorder to a check-in line at an airport because I couldn’t find our tickets.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And this was – we were flying to England and in those days I smoked a pipe and because I knew how expensive pipe tobacco would be in England I brought an enormous tin of pipe tobacco.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I couldn’t find the tickets and as I was pulling all the stuff out of this carry-on bag, and getting kind of flustered and everything because I was holding up a queue, I pulled out the tobacco tin came out and the lid popped off [ML laughs] and this tin just rolled all the way across the concourse, you know, empting itself of its contents as it went.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And my wife looked at me and just said: ‘I cannot believe that this is what you do for a living.’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it is true, I am just completely hopeless, and I’ve just learned to survive doing that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I would give anything to be like Paul Theroux.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Seriously, I would give anything to be able to do what he does in his books, which is just strike up these relationships with strangers.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I am totally inept at that and can’t do it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I have to write from a different perspective. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML: So when you have to be in your role as Chancellor of Durham University, you have to put on your robes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And do you have a sense of the ridiculous and you’re so shy – that must be quite a hard thing to do, is it?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB: Well, it’s not hard so much as strange.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s, it’s unnatural, every bit of it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Putting on the robes really reinforces the personal preposterousness of this situation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because, I mean, as your very first question to me in this interview, you know, I am a guy from Des Moines, Iowa.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Suddenly, I’m in Durham Cathedral and I’m presiding over this very grand occasion.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it never escapes me that this is just ridiculous – what am I doing here?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>How did I end up here?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m really pleased to be here but this just doesn’t make sense.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>This is totally – you couldn’t have forecast it that this is where I would end up when I left Des Moines.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And putting on the robes is part – I felt very self-conscious when I first did it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And, of course, at Durham I had the additional, the additional factor that I was following in the footsteps of Peter Ustinov who was born to be a university chancellor and was, you know; the greatest storyteller of the 20<sup>th</sup> century.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And all of those things that you would hope to find in a university chancellor, he had them in spades.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, better than anybody else.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And so I’ve been acutely aware that I’m not Peter Ustinov. [BB and ML laugh]</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And recently the books they’ve been more in the genre of popular education than travel.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There is, to use one of those words that has always been very peculiar to me, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">pedagogic</i> instinct: you do have one of those?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, it isn’t so much, it isn’t so much that I want to teach; it’s that I want to learn.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, generally, there are things that I’m really curious to know about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I suppose the only part of it that is pedagogic is that I have this real instinct when I read something that I think is amazing or cool, I want to share it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, why didn’t they teach me this in school?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’d have paid attention to physics if I’d known this or, you know; and then I want to just go and find just any other human beings and say, ‘Did you know this?’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I suppose that’s the kind of instinct that motivates me when I write the books.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But then your readers...so you create this chain, because your readers, like when I read about Laconia and how it got its name and so on, I want to tell somebody else that; so you create a sort of chain of education in a way.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What a nice thought!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that isn’t really what I’m thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s really just I’ve found this amazing fact about Laconia, or something like it, and I, you know, I want to get it out there, I mean I want to share it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And it doesn’t really matter whether I put it down on a page in a book or whether I’m just telling somebody in a pub.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The great thing about putting it on a page in a book is that you get paid for it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You make a living from it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But, but it isn’t, that isn’t, that isn’t really why I’m doing it in a sense.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I do it because I feel I have to get it out and share it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What are you writing at the moment?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, I’m doing a book at the moment – I’m never quite sure how much you should tell people about what you are doing at the moment, so perhaps I shouldn’t say too much.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But I’m doing, it’s a history of private life.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s looking at everything... My starting point was a curiosity; I was sitting at the kitchen table once and the table was cleared away of all the eating things, but there was still the salt and pepper on the table.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I just thought why is it always salt and pepper?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, why not salt and cinnamon or pepper and cardamom?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Why these two particular?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I kind of looked around the house sitting in this chair in this moment of idleness and thought I don’t really understand why any of these things are the way they are.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So I just started looking into why do we live the way we do, why all the structures of life – all of the things that go on in our household, domestic sphere.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Is there an interesting history behind these things, are there reasons here that I never really stopped to think about?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Quite a big subject, though.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Turns out it’s just huge!<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs] <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean it just goes on and on and on.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m having the most wonderful time.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve been really, really enjoying the research and the learning.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But trying to make it all fit together is turning out to be quite a challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I haven’t quite worked out how to structure it all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML: <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Away from the books, one of your other roles is President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In which you’ve focused particularly on litter or garbage as you would once have call it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you were called by a newspaper the Chief Womble, a reference that would be completely mysterious to Americans and people under a certain age.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But why litter, why is litter so important?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, litter is just one of those things.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, it’s not, I mean, you know, it’s not more important than curing cancer – or there’s lots and lots, it wouldn’t be hard to name lots and lots of things that are more important than litter.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But litter is something that I – you know I can’t do anything about curing cancer, but I just felt that litter is something that I can manage.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I just, I think it’s a great shame that a country as beautiful and that has been historically as clean and loved and well looked after as Britain, should be so kind of casually, thoughtlessly moving down this road in which litter is becoming increasingly a feature of the environment.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I really am convinced that lots and lots of other people feel the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I just felt like we really ought to do something about this and I’d never been involved in any kind of a campaign in my life at all and I just thought, okay, for once in my life before I die, I will try and do something.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And part of that may be just trying to persuade politicians to act more vigorously, or local authorities to act more vigorously.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And part of it may be trying to think of a way or actions we can take as a society to make this less of a problem.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you intervene if you catch someone in the act?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Yeah, I do, I mean I know that you shouldn’t, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And what I always do is I try first of all to sound very American because that seems to provide you with a bit of a shield.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>[ML laughs]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I always say to them, you know, I don’t ever say, ‘you should be ashamed of yourself’ or anything like that.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>What I just say to them is, you know, ‘you’ve got a really beautiful country, you should love it, and you shouldn’t do that’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I make it more like a question of what are you thinking, what are you doing?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And that generally works.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Still quite brave though.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Well, it’s impulsive and there have been occasions – there was one occasion not too long ago when I thought I really was going to be clobbered.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I was just walking in Victoria and a young man ahead of me had been eating fish and chips – this was the middle of the afternoon – and he wadded up the paper and kind of looked around and, and sort of slyly threw it into a doorway of a shop that was shut.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>You know, a business had gone out of business.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And again, I slink up to him and said the same thing, ‘you’ve got a lovely country you shouldn’t do that’.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he looked at me kind of through narrow eyes and I really thought I am now – now’s when I get hit and he’s going to hit me now.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he just said to me in this very strong Glaswegian accent, he said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I just very, very drunk’. [ML and BB laugh]<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And he went back and picked it up, totally ashamed of himself, knew that he had done the wrong thing, he went back and picked it up and took it and put it in a bin.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And we parted as – I said ‘good boy’ or something: ‘you should be proud of yourself – do that all the time now, you will feel better for it.’</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>In the, your travel books so far, you’ve touched on at least all the continents but are there still places that you would like to go?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There are loads of places I’d love to go, but not necessarily write about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve never been to Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’ve never been to China, except for a couple of days in Hong Kong.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that isn’t to say necessarily that I would want to write about those places.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The problem I have is that the kind of books I write, it’s assumed that, they’re totally predicated on the idea that I’m going to be taking the Mickey out of the culture I’m writing about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And you can do that with big, modern, First World nations comfortably, but if I were to go to India, say, I don’t know how much I, how I could possibly write comically about people sleeping under bridges or, you know, living on the edge of culverts; you know, suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>There’s not the scope there; not only is it not funny stuff innately, but then also if you somehow strained to make it comical there’s a real risk of seeming racist or insensitive – things that I’m not.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And yet you could easily blunder into that sort of territory.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>So there is a lot of the world that I cannot write the kind of books that I would be expected to write about.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But that doesn’t mean that I’m not interested in seeing them or being there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Finally, often with ex-pats the desire to go back gets very strong as they get older.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>We see it in Australians, for example, who have come to Britain.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Do you think, is there any chance that will happen to you or is it Britain forever now?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Oh, you know, I think I’ll always live here, as long as you’ll have me.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But there is, I do find that not the United States overall, but Iowa where I come from, I have a real attachment to it.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I’m kind of: I appreciate it a lot more than I did when I was growing up there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s a strange place.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean the beauty of a place like Iowa takes some getting to know.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s a little bit like Norfolk where I live now, because it is flat and pretty featureless.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And what makes it lovely is a lot more subtle than something like the Rocky Mountains, or, you know, some more dramatic type landscapes.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>And I do love to go back there and see that; I do feel a kind of ‘at home’ there.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But not once in the thirty years since I left there have I ever thought that I would like to come back here and live.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I mean, I come back and visit it regularly, but that doesn’t mean that I want to live there.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">ML:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Bill Bryson, thank you.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">BB:<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Thank <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i> very much, Mark.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">[Credits roll] – Time 58 minutes, 29 seconds in total – © BBC – MMIX</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Broadcast on BBC Four, 10:30pm Sunday 25<sup>th</sup> January 2009</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">This transcription made by August Jordan Davis from Monday to Wednesday 26<sup>th</sup> to 28<sup>th</sup> January 2009 from the video available on BBC iPlayer.<o:p></o:p></i></p><p></p>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-84656660051763034952009-01-27T13:11:00.000-08:002009-01-27T13:28:49.120-08:00Rush to judgementLast week Jon Stewart showed a clip of <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5l3E8j8SXZE">Rush Limbaugh hoping that President Obama will fail</a> in his policies. Stewart asked if Bill O'Reilly - according to his 'he's our President like it or not' attitude during the Bush years - would think Limbaugh un-American for not getting behind our President. (This is really worth watching - a fantastic 4-minutes)<div><br /></div><div>And in today's 'Comment is free' op-ed section of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span> comes an interesting piece on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/27/barack-obama-rush-limbaugh">Obama calling Limbaugh out on this demagoguery</a>. It would be nice to think that not only are the Reagan-Bush years possibly behind us, but that with it might swill down the drain the obnoxious hate lines of Rush Limbaugh. I know living in Texas with a reduction in his popular influence would make life a bit easier to take there...</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-57449638484523064562009-01-26T05:47:00.000-08:002009-01-26T05:53:48.759-08:00Man or Superman (III)The usually profanely mordant Charlie Brooker recently allowed himself to reveal his soft side when discussing the passing of British children's telly legend <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/dec/13/charlie-brooker-screen-burn-oliver-postgate">Oliver Postgate </a>(responsible for such national treasures as Bagpuss, The Clangers, and Noggin the Nog).<div><br /></div><div>Today, in his usual Monday column, Brooker again shows something of his underbelly, giving us a wonderful depiction of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/26/charlie-brooker-obama-inauguration">global hopes and fears for President Obama</a>. I love his vivid analogy with Superman III.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also in today's <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian </span>is this item about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/26/usa-carbonemissions">Obama's upcoming CO2 moves</a> - I'll keep you posted.</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-58753423008089755572009-01-25T13:27:00.000-08:002009-01-25T13:33:28.354-08:00You Tube 'fireside' chat #1<div>President Barack Obama has posted the <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RDfpd8GV9dI&feature=bz303">first of his weekly video addresses</a> to the citizenry of America via You Tube.<br /></div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-64715151560474682702009-01-24T09:11:00.000-08:002009-01-25T13:33:39.986-08:00On it drones<div>President Obama has okayed Predator drone unmanned planes <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/24/pakistan-barack-obama-air-strike">bombings within Pakistan</a> against supposed militants tied to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>On it continues.</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-6006114035441328352009-01-23T09:10:00.000-08:002009-01-25T13:33:58.198-08:00Rolling...rolling back the Bush years...Rolling...rolling<div>On it goes - rolling back the Bush years:<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>President Obama has <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/barack-obama-foreign-abortion-aid">revoked the no foreign aid to family planning clinics</a> (i.e., where abortion is even mentioned as an option) to return us to a sensible footing in terms of advocating reproductive health and family planning in the Third World / throughout the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div>Also today, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">The Guardian</span>'s Charlotte Higgins brings us news of the quartet's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/jan/23/obama-inauguration-barackobama">pre-recorded</a> performance for the inauguration (tiny echoes of the Chinese Olympics' opening ceremony 'fireworks' - I said TINY echoes). There's nothing sinister to it, just meteorological - but an interesting titbit, nonetheless...</div><div><br /></div><div>Plus, though Higgins finds the composition schmaltzy, it is great to see that she has even greater opprobrium for the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/jan/21/elizabeth-alexander-obama-inauguration-praise-song">'poetry' from the inauguration</a>. It was like one of those cringy occasions where you're at a friend's wedding and they've let another of their friends air their 'poetic' skills to mark the blessed day... Usually a load of embarrassing crap issues forth and everyone has to act like it worked and was apposite and moving - ugh....</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-69200713620611944002009-01-22T06:33:00.000-08:002009-01-25T13:34:17.570-08:00The Road Not Taken<div>Well, the Oscar Nominations are in:<br /></div><div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/22/full-oscar-nomination-list-2009">http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/22/full-oscar-nomination-list-2009</a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Aside from a paltry Best Supporting Actor nod for the chap playing John Givings (the man who has to be committed to an institution) - there is nary a look in for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0959337/">Sam Mendes's seemingly highly sympathetic adaptation</a> of Richard Yates's moving novel <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/sep/18/featuresreviews.guardianreview26">Revolutionary Road</a>! I am very surprised by this...</div><div><br /></div><div>Have read the novel - truly a monumental work; anticipating <a href="http://www.revolutionaryroadmovie.com/">seeing the film</a> (not yet out in the UK); but the trailer looks very faithful to the book - I just can't understand it...</div><div><br /></div><div>It's a real head-scratcher.</div><div><br /></div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh, and the 'always-a-bridesmaid-never-the-bride' nomination for 'Achievement in art design' - one of those: well, it looked pretty award (right up there with best cinematography and best costumes / makeup) for pity's sake!</div><div><br /></div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div>And there ya go: also one for Costume Design! Talk about damning with faint praise...</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-92085162273554773662009-01-22T02:26:00.000-08:002009-01-25T13:35:01.333-08:00And so it begins...<div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-inauguration-address">Remaking America:</a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/barack-obama-oath-inauguration">He's had to re-take his oath</a> (to placate the Fox News crowd who would be happy to say that 2000 and 2004 weren't a stolen and a dodgy election respectively. BUT would try to claim that the performative speech act of the Oath taking on Tuesday was what J.L. Austin might have termed 'an unhappy performative' - though to be fair, the Fox News crowd don't tend to be <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">au fait</span> with either Austin or Jürgen Habermas).</div><div><br /></div><div>But our 44th President - <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/20/obama-inauguration1">Barack Hussein Obama</a> - has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html?ref=us">already begun</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_Out_the_Jams">kicking out the jams!</a></div><div><br /></div><div>- To <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/21/guantanamo-obama-white-house">close Guantanamo</a> Prison Camp <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22gitmo.html?hp">within 12 months</a> at the latest</div><div>- To ensure while it is in the process of being closed that the Geneva Conventions are followed</div><div>- Suspend military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees</div><div>- To <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22gitmo.html?_r=1&hp">close the CIA's secret prisons</a> around the world</div><div>- To<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/23/obama-rendition-torture"> stop use of torture</a></div><div>- Not to undertake <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/us/politics/23blaircnd.html?partner=rss">illegal surveillance</a></div><div>- Wants troop withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months<br /></div><div>- Wants a diplomatic relationship with Iran for talks without preconditions<br /></div><div>- To lead bi- and multi-lateral disarmament for a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/22/obama-white-house">'nuclear-free world'</a></div><div>- To disallow the seal of ex-President's papers in perpetuity a la Bush</div><div>- To expedite the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html?ref=us">making public of official documents</a></div><div>- Wants to make the Israel / Palestine conflict top priority</div><div>- Wants to address immediately bailout funds and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/21/barack-obama-first-full-day">economic recovery</a> plans</div><div>- Instituted a pay freeze for White House staff earning over $100,000 a year</div><div>- Is trying to distance the administration from the lure of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/22/barack-obama-salary-freeze-lobbyists">lobbyists</a></div><div>- And might get a 'super encrypted' <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/21/barack-obama-blackberry-national-security">Blackberry </a>after all!</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of these are steps that will require congressional oversight and validation to become enacted, some are executive powers to be executed, most will <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/22/barack-obama-nuclear-weapons">have to be watched</a> over to ensure they are not later reinstated when it becomes expedient or desireable (or if not when, then when it becomes expedient or desireable for someone - i.e., the who factor...). These are not absolute victories - but of course what ever is? We always must remain vigilant against the rolling back of gains and a regressive Draconianism reasserts itself. But these are the kinds of CHANGE(s) we HOPE(d) for from Obama - long may it continue!</div><div><br /></div><div>PS: President Obama's first proclamation was for a day of <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/a_national_day_of_renewal_and_reconciliation/">Renewal and Reconciliation</a> does that mean that we could be due a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa)">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> as in South Africa? That would help with dealing with 9/11 and the Bush Administration and with race relations in the US. Perhaps - who knows...</div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012109dnmetobamagetstowork.15cffa87.html">The Dallas Morning News reports</a> (excerpted):</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 13px; font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;"><span style="font-size:-1;"><b><span class="vitstorybyline" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: bold; font-size:11px;">By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News <br /><a href="mailto:tgillman@dallasnews.com" style="color: rgb(41, 55, 90); text-decoration: none; "><strong>tgillman@dallasnews.com</strong></a></span></b></span><span class="vitstorybody" style="margin-top: 5px; "><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; font-size:1.1em;color:initial;"></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; font-size:1.1em;color:initial;">"WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama began dismantling the Bush legacy Wednesday, using his first full day to overturn an order that let ex-presidents seal their papers forever.</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; font-size:1.1em;color:initial;">It was one of a number of big and small steps by the new president that, taken together, amounted to a slashing denunciation of his predecessor – from an order halting military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to one meant to make unclassified records more readily available to the public."</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; font-size:1.1em;color:initial;"><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; font-size:1.1em;color:initial;">---</p><p style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; font-size:1.1em;color:initial;"><br /></p><p size="1.1em" color="initial" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia;font-size:16px;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22gitmo.html?_r=1&hp">The New York Times reports</a>:</span><br /></p><p size="1.1em" color="initial" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia;font-size:24px;">Obama to Shut Guantánamo Site and C.I.A. Prisons</span><br /></p><p size="1.1em" color="initial" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 2px; margin-bottom: 13px; margin-left: 1px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border- line-height: 1.4em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; font-family:Georgia;font-size:12px;"><nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "><div class="byline" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-size: 80%; ">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Mark Mazzetti" style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: none; ">MARK MAZZETTI</a> and <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/william_glaberson/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by William Glaberson" style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: none; ">WILLIAM GLABERSON</a></div></nyt_byline><div class="timestamp" style=" font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:80%;">Published: January 21, 2009</div><div class="timestamp" style=" font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:80%;"><br /></div><div class="timestamp" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="80%" style=" font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); ">"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 22px; font-family:Georgia;font-size:15px;">WASHINGTON — President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Central Intelligence Agency." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Central Intelligence Agency</a> to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/guantanamobaynavalbasecuba/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about Guantánamo." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Guantánamo</a> detention camp within a year, government officials said.</span></div><div class="timestamp" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="80%" style=" font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 22px;font-family:Georgia;font-size:15px;"><br /></span></div><div class="timestamp" style=" font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:80%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 22px; font-family:Georgia;font-size:15px;">The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/george_w_bush/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about George W. Bush." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">George W. Bush</a>, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They would require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.</span><br /></div><div class="timestamp" style=" font-weight: normal; color: rgb(128, 128, 128); font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:80%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 22px;font-family:Georgia;font-size:15px;"><p>And the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.</p><p>But the orders would leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantánamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/osama_bin_laden/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Osama bin Laden." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Osama bin Laden</a> or another top-level leader of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about Al Qaeda." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Al Qaeda</a> were captured.</p><p>The new White House counsel, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/gregory_b_craig/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Gregory B. Craig." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Gregory B. Craig</a>, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military.</p><p>Details of the directive involving the C.I.A. were described by government officials who insisted on anonymity so they could not be blamed for pre-empting a White House announcement. Copies of the draft order on Guantánamo were provided by people who have consulted with Mr. Obama’s <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/us/series/the_new_team/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about potential members of President-elect Barack Obama's administration." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">transition team</a> and requested anonymity for the same reason.</p><p></p><p>The executive order on interrogations is certain to be received with some skepticism at the C.I.A., which for years has maintained that the military’s interrogation rules are insufficient to get information from senior Qaeda figures like <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/khalid_shaikh_mohammed/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Khalid Sheikh Mohammed</a>. The Bush administration asserted that the harsh interrogation methods were instrumental in gaining valuable intelligence on Qaeda operations.</p><p>The intelligence agency built a network of secret prisons in 2002 to house and interrogate senior Qaeda figures captured overseas. The exact number of suspects to have moved through the prisons is unknown, although <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/michael_v_hayden/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Michael V. Hayden." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">Michael V. Hayden</a>, the departing director of the agency, has in the past put the number at “fewer than 100.”</p><p>The secret detentions brought international condemnation, and in September 2006, President Bush ordered that the remaining 14 detainees in C.I.A. custody be transferred to Guantánamo Bay and tried by <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/detainees/military_commissions/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the Military Commissions Act." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">military tribunals</a>.</p><p>But Mr. Bush made clear then that he was not shutting down the C.I.A. detention system, and in the last two years, two Qaeda operatives are believed to have been detained in agency prisons for several months each before being sent to Guantánamo.</p><p>A government official said Mr. Obama’s order on the C.I.A. would still allow its officers abroad to temporarily detain terrorism suspects and transfer them to other agencies, but would no longer allow the agency to carry out long-term detentions.</p><p>Since the early days after the 2001 attacks, the intelligence agency’s role in detaining terrorism suspects has been significantly scaled back, as has the severity of interrogation methods the agency is permitted to use. The most controversial practice, the simulated drowning technique known as water-boarding, was used on three suspects but has not been used since 2003, C.I.A. officials said.</p><p>But at the urging of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 authorized the agency to continue using harsher interrogation methods than those permitted for use by other agencies, including the military. Those exact methods remain classified. The order on Guantánamo says that the camp, which received its first hooded and chained detainees seven years ago this month, “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.”</p><p>The order calls for a cabinet-level panel to grapple with issues including where in the United States prisoners might be moved and what courts they could be tried in. It also provides for a new diplomatic effort to transfer some of the remaining men, including more than 60 that the Bush administration had cleared for release.</p><p>The order also directs an immediate assessment of the prison itself to ensure that the men are held in conditions that meet the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Convention. That provision appeared to be a pointed embrace of the international treaties that the Bush administration often argued did not apply to detainees captured in the war against terrorism.</p><p>The seven years of the detention camp have included four suicides, hunger strikes by scores of detainees, and accusations of extensive use of solitary confinement and abusive interrogations, which the Department of Defense has long denied. Last week a senior Pentagon official said she had concluded that interrogators at Guantánamo had tortured one detainee, who officials have said was a would-be “20th hijacker” in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.</p><p>The report of Thursday’s expected announcement came after the new administration late Tuesday night ordered an immediate halt to the military commission proceedings for prosecuting detainees at Guantánamo and filed a request in Federal District Court in Washington to stay <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/habeas_corpus/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="Recent and archival news about habeas corpus." style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">habeas corpus</a> proceedings there. Government lawyers described both delays as necessary for the administration to make a broad assessment of detention policy.</p><p>The cases immediately affected include those of five detainees charged as the coordinators of the 2001 attacks, including the case against Mr. Mohammed, the self-described mastermind.</p><p>The decision to stop the commissions was described by the military prosecutors as a pause in the war-crimes system “to permit the newly inaugurated president and his administration time to review the military commission process generally and the cases currently pending before the military commissions, specifically.”</p><p>More than 200 detainees’ habeas corpus cases have been filed in federal court, and lawyers said they expected that all of the cases would be stayed.</p><p>Mr. Obama had suggested in the campaign that, in place of military commissions, he would prefer prosecutions in federal courts or, perhaps, in the existing military justice system, which provides legal guarantees similar to those of American civilian courts.</p><p>Some human rights groups and lawyers for detainees said they were concerned about the one-year timetable. “It only took days to put these men in Guantánamo; it shouldn’t take a year to get them out,” said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has coordinated detainees’ lawyers.</p><p>But several groups that had criticized the Bush administration’s policies applauded the rapid moves by the new administration. Mr. Obama’s actions “reaffirmed American values and are a ray of light after eight long, dark years,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/american_civil_liberties_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)" style="color: rgb(0, 66, 118); text-decoration: underline; ">American Civil Liberties Union</a>.</p><nyt_author_id><div id="authorId" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; "><p>Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and William Glaberson from New York. Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington."</p></div></nyt_author_id><p></p></span></div></span></p></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>---</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/21/barack-obama-president-first-day-in-office">The Guardian reports:</a><br /></div><div><br /></div>From Ewen MacAskill in Washington - <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Guardian</span>, Thursday 22 January 2009: <div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 19px; font-family:arial;font-size:14px;"><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">"President Barack Obama yesterday devoted his first full day in office to ditching one discredited Bush administration policy after another - proposing the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison and offering a new relationship to Iran.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">Sitting behind the desk at the Oval Office at 8.35am after a late night of inauguration balls, he set about trying to live up to the daunting expectations for his presidency both at home and abroad.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">He gathered his military commanders to set new missions for Iraq and Afghanistan, and met his economics team to discuss a proposed $800bn spending package to combat recession. He also phoned world leaders to emphasise that a new president is in charge, with a completely different agenda and world outlook.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">Although Obama's team is reluctant to be compared with Franklin Roosevelt's famous 100 days that brought in the New Deal - the measurement for all subsequent presidencies - it wants his 100 days to be just as historically significant.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">Addressing assembled White House staff, he said he had been inspired by the estimated two million who gathered to watch him being sworn in. He told staff he expected a higher ethical code at the White House than had existed under his predecessor, and issued executive orders imposing strict rules governing dealings with Washington's lobbyists. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," he said.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">He also issued a pay freeze on staff earning more than $100,000. "Families are tightening their belts and so should Washington," he said.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">In an unsual move - described by the White House as an "abundance of caution" - he was administered the oath of office a second time because a word was out of sequence when he was sworn in on Tuesday. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath in front of reporters.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">The most symbolically significant act of the day was to release a draft executive order to close Guantánamo within a year. The camp, site of torture and other abuses, came to define the Bush administration. The draft executive order which Obama is expected to sign today, says: "The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than a year from the date of this order."</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; "></p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">In two other executive orders, he is to ban torture by all US personnel and initiate a review of the cases of all those still held at Guantánamo. He ordered judges to suspend trials under way there.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">The most important meeting of the day was the one with military chiefs. He wants to fulfil campaign promises to withdraw US troops from Iraq within his first 16 months in office, and to send new troops to Afghanistan. His top commander, General David Petraeus, flew from Afghanistan to be present.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">On the international front, Obama's team posted on the White House website a new direction for foreign policy, of which the most startling was an offer to negotiate with Iran. Although such a policy was a prominent feature of his campaign message of engagement with America's enemies, the White House said such negotiations would be "without preconditions".</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">That could pose a problem for Hillary Clinton, who was confirmed as secretary of state by the Senate yesterday by 94 votes to two. She clashed with Obama in 2007 during her battle for the Democratic presidential nomination on this issue, saying it would be a mistake to sit down with the Iranians without first setting conditions.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">The Bush administration had refused to negotiate with Iran until it first suspended its uranium enrichment programme, suspected by the west as a move to secure a nuclear weapons capability.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama made a point of ensuring that his first telephone calls to world leaders were to key players in the region. He spoke to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah of Jordan. The fact that he called them first suggests the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Obama "used this opportunity on his first day in office to communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term".</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; background-repeat: no-repeat; margin-bottom: 13px; padding-right: 0px; ">Some members of Obama's team are known to be privately angry with Israel over the death toll and destruction in Gaza, despite Obama's expression of sympathy for Israel over Palestinian rocket attacks."</p><p></p></span></div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-90895622023209609442009-01-20T06:26:00.000-08:002009-01-21T15:56:56.638-08:00Radical Change? Yes, you can...Today is the day - the eight years are over; the several post-election victory months are at an end: today is the inauguration of Barack Obama. Understandably - much jubilation worldwide. BBC24 is on with full coverage here in my London flat. I have so many hopes for what Obama's change might bring. I try to be realistic and look at the economic disaster in the middle of which America and the world find themselves - where we are all locked down in financial crisis. Trillions spent on the two wars which continue. The atrocities in the Gaza Strip and the UN hamstrung yet again. So what can we hope for from Obama's presidency? Well, here's what I would like to see.<div><br /></div><div>Withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Insistence that a two state solution be immediately and actually pursued in Israel / Palestine. Diplomatic engagement; no unilateral military adventures; active participation in the UN. Address of Global Warming and Climate Change initiatives; real oversight and regulation on industry regarding environmental protection BUT ALSO real oversight and regulation on the financial / banking industries to disallow capitalism from eating itself yet again (of course, that's a tricky one for a number of reasons). Address of universal healthcare needs and to buck the insurance lobby in favour of humanitarian care of all people. Address of housing and education needs; tackling inner-city crime by addressing what life chances there are for young people (diverting them from gangs, etc). Address of the 'food products' industry (a la Michael Pollan and In Defence of Food) and a real food revolution to help deal with the obesity and health crisis in the US.</div><div><br /></div><div>End extraordinary rendition and use of torture; close Guantanamo Bay; revoke the PATRIOT act; restore / strengthen civil rights; sign-up to the International Criminal Court and revoke the idea that America is immune from its remit. George W. Bush should be prosecuted as a war criminal for the invasion and occupation of Iraq (along with Tony Blair). Ensure separation of church and state. Allow for gay marriage or civil partnerships at the very least. These are a few of the more radical, but just, moves which Obama should also undertake.</div><div><br /></div><div>These are just the first few things which come to mind. It's a large spectrum of issues, but all of them are achievable. What Obama must remember is that he has a huge mandate specifically for change and progressive change at that - there is much ground to cover, but huge enthusiasm to see it through.</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't be sheepish President Obama - yes, you can: now get down to business!</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-72227415221383672482008-11-18T13:23:00.000-08:002008-11-19T12:14:48.100-08:00Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose<strong></strong><br /><strong>It's January 1951 and Alistair Cooke muses on the burgeoning American TV industry.<br /></strong><br />Broadcast on: BBC Radio 7, 1:45pm, Tuesday, 18th November 2008<br /><br />Duration: 15 minutes<br /><br /><em><strong>NB: I made this transcription whilst listening to the programme on BBC iPlayer<br /></strong></em><br /><br /><br /><strong>Letter from America, January 1951<br /></strong><br /><br />“Well the winter is really on us and the life of anyone living in the North Eastern States is settling down to a routine very, very different from the life of last summer and autumn. I mean the cyclical life, not just because they’re air raid shelters going up and signs all over town. The Department of Sanitation in New York, for instance, once again has its night staff on call in case of a blizzard. It has, as usual, a whole new set of gadgets, some new style snow ploughs with electronic buzzers out front that thrash through snow drifts and pile everything in neat rows on the side along the gutter. The newspapers are running their perpetual winter series on the common cold, which, for all the wonderful advances in bacteriology of the past thirty years, defies any form of treatment but hacking, and snuffling, and watching and waiting.<br /><br />"For the third year in succession, New York is full again of sun-tanned young beauties from the West Coast. Girls who have given up struggling up the Hollywood ladder and have come to New York – or have come back to New York – where there are jobs galore for them in television. For the first winter in history, the papers print a daily half-page, in fine print, of television programmes; just as long as the radio list. It used to be a little corner in a single column, with the stations opening for business around five in the afternoon and going off at ten. Now, they start at nine in the morning with a programme called Morning Chapel, and the news, and then end at midnight with the news.<br /><br />"These new habits sneak up on you so slyly and quickly that it’s rather hard to realise what morons we were a couple of years ago. In those primitive days, a housewife had to make her own mind up after breakfast where to shop and what to buy. But now, after Morning Chapel comes: The Television Shopper. There was a time too when housewives, busy sweeping, and washing dishes, and vacuuming, used to have to amuse the baby on the side. But – presto! – 10:00 a.m. – The Babysitter Show, meant to rivet the baby’s wayward attention while Mother gets on with the chores.<br /><br />"The conscientious housewife, once she’s through the daily dusting and cleaning, used to look over a couple of mixing bowls, an egg beater, and whatever meat was in the ice box, and think about the old man’s supper. Now, between eleven and noon, she has a choice of advice – new wrinkles [sic?], new recipes, all being demonstrated, mixed and cooked – usually looks like lava – on two programmes: Kitchen Fare, and Kitchen Capers.<br /><br />"If she should begin to feel lonely any time before lunch, there’s no excuse anymore for calling on Mrs Brown next door. Mrs Brown has come to the television screen; and with other unemployed matrons, can be seen prattling over this and that on a programme called The Coffee Club. From noon on, if the housewife isn’t through her work, she ought to be. The networks give themselves over unashamedly to amusement: The Cathy Norris Show; The Joe Franklin Show; The Johnny Olsen Show; and then a few more half hours of intensive cooking lessons and demonstrations and the news is beginning to rear its ugly head.<br /><br />"Then music, and comedy shows and music and Homemakers’ Guide and interviews with celebrities and models and dress shows and advice to parents. Evening is coming on, naturally. And then, as the twilight falls, a barrage of news programmes. And then, Hopalong Cassidy, and puppet shows and cowboy films and the Weather Man from Chicago. And a quarter hour at the zoo. At this point, by which time, Mother has either turned the darned thing off and gone back to life, or gone into arthritis and lost her wandering baby through the bedroom window.<br /><br />"At this point I ought to say that one of the discoveries of American television has been an assortment of odd, anonymous characters, usually middle aged and Middle Western, with a genius for rambling on in a fascinating way about some scientific specialty. There is a man out in Chicago who loves animals like nobody since Noah and comes up with little shows about ___ (?) and pandas and racoons and snakes, with all the easy wonder and the proud knowledge of a father of quadruplets.<br /><br />"The Weather Man is another who comes over one network every night – he’s also from Chicago. He turns to a great empty map of America, empty that is except for the mountain ranges lightly sketched in. He talks about the weather the way some people talk about football and others about murder trials. Of course, he has a continent to play with. And for anybody interested in weather, America is a rich playground. Cattle may be going down for the third time in oceans of snow in Montana, while blondes are frisking in the warm green waters of Florida.<br /><br />"The Weather Man always licks his lips and cocks his eyebrows, not in an annoying, actorish way, but because he has a genuine relish for the surprises he has in store. “Well,” he says, and he takes a menacing brush – I mean a paint brush, about five inches wide, in his hand: “Well”, he says, “there’s trouble ahead for you people who live in the, uh, North West there, and, uh, up all the way along the Mid-West to the Great Lakes. A full sized blizzard came roaring in from the Pacific last night.” He takes his brush and he paints, in I’m told red paint, a stream of roaring blizzard across the Pacific Northwest and across the Cascades and the bitter routes [?].<br /><br />"He says, “It’s across the Great Plains today, and it’ll be here in Iowa, and Illinois and Wisconsin tomorrow. But here’s good news for you people on the Lake Shore,” he sweeps his brush right across the western half of the nation and lets it stop short of Lake Michigan. “Seems,” he says with a foxy smile, “there’s a high pressure belt, just an itsy bitsy high pressure belt stuck somewhere north of Milwaukee down through Indiana; it’s gonna hold off that blizzard, it may even divert it north, but for a day or two. So you folks here in town or up in Wisconsin, you don’t have to worry about a thing till I see you again. You oughta be right snug inside that high pressure belt.”<br /><br />"Isotherms and equinoxes are just a couple of baby bears to this man. And I swear that he teaches more people – adults as well as children – more about how weather is made than all the text books they never looked at. He saves the mean punch-line. Jus before he goes off he remembers something, “Oh, yes,” he says, “the temperatures. Well, let’s see now, through the Midwest it’ll be around twenty degrees tonight, that’s twelve degrees with frost,” a form of expression never used, by the way, in the United States. A number means above zero, thus thirty or twelve; ten below means below zero. Then he rattles off a few significant figures: “Chicago, twelve tonight, up around thirty in the day tomorrow; little higher away across New England. In the Northern Great Plains, it’ll be between twenty and twenty-five below zero. Great Falls, Montana, somewhere down around forty-five below. Miami,” he says, “eighty-five by day, around seventy at night. Goodnight.”<br /><br />"Television, as you may have noticed, is a great thing to kick around and have fun with. But I think I’d better tell you that, although for hours, it is possible to drown in mediocrity. There are by now quite a lot of first rate programmes, not so much plays and ballets, which are obvious stuff, but nonetheless fascinating, if done thoroughly with lots of rehearsal, something that American television doesn’t go in for so far. The really outstanding things in American television are group discussions of all sorts, big and small; news programmes; and comedy shows. The best comedy shows are not necessarily the ones done by comedians who were famous in radio, or on the stage, though two or three of those big evening shows are incomparable.<br /><br />"For another animal the television has thrown up is the young man, usually in his early thirties, who is glib, inconsequential in a Groucho Marx sort of way, and very much at home with a microphone wandering around a big studio audience, interviewing people and sometimes the crew, the television crew, talking back at them, insulting them. Now, there’s no point in my mentioning any names, because they would mean nothing to you; they meant nothing to us six months ago. There are about a half dozen of them: spry, easy going, irreverent, who just have a natural sense of irony and rely on it to fill a nightly hour or half hour with a studio audience. Nightly.<br /><br />"One of them the other night had no set routine, couldn’t think what to do with his audience and just ordered his dinner up. It came in with real, non-actor, waiters and he sat and ate it for half an hour and thought aloud and kidded the waiters in one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.<br /><br /><div>"Now, it’s obvious by this time that television is murder on anybody who must rely on a writer, on a script. And just as the talking picture doomed to sudden death the beautiful profiles with rasping voices, so television has already registered a high mortality among actors and actresses and comedians who must learn lines; the race is to the quick witted, and there’s already a fine crop of such.<br /><br />"The news programmes, I think, are just about the best achievement of television so far. The news commentators are beginning to throw away their news tape and talking about the news, some of them, swiftly, easily, and accurately without script. In fifteen minutes, one network opens with its news announcer, he gives you the main headlines, then they switch to Washington for a movie of Congress that morning, and then to a studio in Washington for a couple of minutes with a couple of Senators thrashing over the topic of the day. Then back to New York for spoken news, read against still pictures, maps and diagrams of Korea. Then a three minute shot of Korean news reels flown in that day. And then out to Chicago for movies taken last night of a blizzard, a mine disaster, the British Ambassador making a speech, or whatever. And then back to New York for the late flashes, and so an end.<br /><br />"There has been quite a bit of comment here in the last week or two on Mr T. S. Eliot’s comment that Britain should beware of television as a grave threat to – these were not his words, but I think his sense – as a grave threat to leisure, to intelligence, and culture in general. The great question: “What will it do to our children?” rocked around the nation last year. A lot of us sympathise with Mr Eliot, but honestly see the facts going against us. For instance, mediocrity practically doesn’t exist to a child. Mediocrity is in the eye and the judgement of the beholder, and I would hesitate to say what is good or bad for a ten year old. I know what’s educational, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the same thing as what is good or bad.<br /><br />"However, to the dismay of us conscientious, culture-conscious, and perhaps slightly hypochondriacal parents, Northwestern University has just published the results of its survey on what television does to the child. And its answer is: nothing. Nothing that hadn’t already been there or been done before. Television it seems is a reflector of what’s in the child, not a poisonous snake infecting him from outside. They found for instance that the amount of time spent on television by anyone or any hundred of children has no sort of correlation with their marks in school. Perhaps it does, after all, go in through one eye and out through the other, causing no pain, and, I must confess, a lot of pleasure.<br /><br />"The rising generation then is going to the dogs just as fast, or as slow, as you and I did, remember? It’s a hard world for us moralists, isn’t it?”<br /><br />--------------------------<br /><br /><em>NB:</em> It seems that the zoo show was called <em>Zoo Parade</em> with a Mr Perkins who was director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the programme aired on NBC. Additionally, I would like to note that it would be interesting to compare these statements on television to those aired by Edward R. Murrow (as dramatised in the film <em>Goodnight, and Good Luck</em>), those written by Raymond Williams in 1974 in his book <em>Television</em> and by Pierre Bourdieu on French television and transcribed in his book <em>On Television</em>.</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-70713087221689886932008-11-07T06:31:00.000-08:002008-11-07T08:48:15.281-08:00Obey HopeLet me begin by saying that I am elated that Barack Obama is our new President (well, currently, President Elect). Let me also state emphatically: the man is neither the Second Coming NOR <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/uselectionroadtrip/2008/oct/27/barack-obama-muslim-antichrist">the Anti-Christ</a>. Should it not be obvious, I'm originally from Texas - I suspect a fair few there harbour secret fear that our 44th President is in fact the harbinger of end times (and in such a scenario, does this cast Oprah as the whore of Babylon?). As I said on Wednesday to John, 'Ah, look, Texas didn't go for Obama.' John's reply: 'August, if Texas had gone for Obama, that would have been the headline.'<br /><br />And he's right - Texas remains one of the most conservative states in the Union. There are many people in that state of many affliations and attitudes and I am not tarring 22 million people with the same brush. But even all the cool folk of Austin can't outweigh the predominance of Bible bashers (I should know - some of my nearest and dearest are; even if, as my friend Marc assures me, they are of the 'liberal' end of Evangelicals. And I suppose, as with my mother, it is rare to find <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker">Dorothy Parker </a>fans who also believe in the literalism of the good book...).<br /><br />So to the emotional histrionics: the Obama victory was so desired by so many of us. People who wanted to expunge the eight years under George Walker Bush. People who wished the illegal war in Iraq had not been waged as we had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest">demonstrated in our millions on 15 February 2003</a>. People who, post-9/11, had wanted justice not vengance. We see in Obama the potential for a President who has lived outside of the USA and grew up out of the contiguous 48 states (it was as if McCain felt - okay the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_United_Means_Action">PUMAs</a> want a woman at all costs, hmmmm, and Obama grew up in Hawaii - aha! Palin - female and Alaska - that'll do!). Someone whose life experiences have shown him more than the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868">internal myth-making machines any American child grows up shaped by</a>: someone who sees America in relation to the rest of the world - not someone who sees America as the world.<br /><br />We see in Obama, the potential for an intelligent, diplomatic engager who voted against attacking Iraq. We understand that he was running to be leader of a still highly conservative country and that concessionary postures would be forthcoming once the nomination was secured. But even for someone looking for a real Left to revitalise in the US, Obama promised a chance for a radical departure from the fascistic policies we'd faced under Bush (even if some of this radicalism was restricted to the level of identity politics; nonetheless, the thought that, after the<a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oU_yQRs3gVs"> poaching of the 2000 election by the Bush family</a>, a non-dynastic mixed race new politician with roots as a lawyer who opted to work as a community organiser in the city of (the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/01/studs-terkel-usa">now late</a>) <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/23/history.usa">Studs Terkel </a>could be the head of our state was thrilling).<br /><br />And yet. The hysterical response to Obama's victory has smacked of the verso to the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/august/31/newsid_3186000/3186299.stm">Death of Diana as experienced in the UK</a>. Or a positive verso to the recto of the witch-hunting over BBC presenters <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/03/jonathan-ross-russell-brand">Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross </a>and their upset to Andrew Sachs (who, as John said, is not a 'national treasure' as some have said, but an actor reknowed for <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o8DngrgIpS0&NR=1">playing a racist stereotype </a>on 13 episodes of a 1970s sitcom!) over his <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/30/russell-brand-ross-baillie-sachs">'Satanic slut' </a>granddaughter. It's band-wagon emotionalism. Can't there be jubulation, relief, pleasure and rational thought all at once? Can't we be a nation that eschews the hooting and shouting of the football field or wrestling match when in the arena of politics?<br /><br />I know emotions are manipulated and pursued throughout campaigns and have been for dozens of decades. But shouldn't we want to rise above the level of infantile attachments and remain at the level of considered thought? Must everything remain childish like never ending high school pep rallies? <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc&feature=related">Does everyone want the tyranny of the Ballmer world</a> of '<a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE&feature=related">developers</a>, developers, <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE&feature=related">developers</a>'? Where everyone's a cheerleader or vocally opposed to the baddies of the piece, as if the real world were one real <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime">pantomime</a>? Why must everything become a performance? A comedy in which we are all the <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7JqEOmPZfvo">live studio audience</a>?<br /><br />Why must melodrama be our bathetic genre of choice when the going gets tough? Why do we need to amuse ourselves to death and reduce real issues to punchlines? Why must we engage with a politician's views - whether we identify with them or find them abhorrent - on the level of <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FdDqSvJ6aHc">sexist or racist abuse couched as jokes and jibes </a>and love nothing more than someone who can laugh at themselves? Why are we thrilled when politicians take a night off the stump and engage in a <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NXKaAQ-6BiU">formal white tie and tails event where they mock themselves and each other</a>? Is light relief that important? Must we tamp down our terror in the face of wars and economic collapse and global instability through limp satire and raucous laughter as we push further and further towards trivialising the world's most pressing concerns into a daily show of <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=C1sE1E3z7jU">idiocracy</a>?<br /><br />Why do we find inspiration in <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ari/2238959127/">Fairey's Hope Obama </a>and Progress Obama posters? These are developed out of his <a href="http://obeygiant.com/">Obey Giant programme</a>. One developed from a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/">'They Live' </a>John Carpenter film inspiration about manipulation and selling - combined with a wrestler's visage of Big Brother styled staring eyes - <a href="http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28602/street-cred/">to create a purposefully enigmatic and compelling image</a>. It is a provocation - and yet the Obama work is meant to be straight-forward, uncomplicated advocacy? How does that work within visual communication / cultural terms? Does no one find this troubling or worth discussion?<br /><br />Obama's campaign made an emotionally manipulative / <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EcRA2AZsR2Q">affecting music video which is on YouTube. It is called signs of hope and change.</a> It is a montage of 'ordinary Americans' holding - a la <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2-xIulyVsG8">Bob Dylan </a>or <a href="http://espumadosdias.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/gillian-wearing-im-desperate.jpg">Gillian Wearing </a>- signs which simply say either Hope or Change. And it is set to a loop of the rousing instrumental opening to the song <a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DKWKRMxXB0M">'Fake Empire' by the band The National</a>. Even the names of the band and the song seem pointed; yet not too didactic or polemical. It's a frustrating video because it sucker punches you on the level of the emotions.<br /><br />After eight years of intensified imperialistic militarism and rampaging global greed for resources and power - Americans were desparate for precisely such signs of change and hope. Yet it feels so vapid - Change; Hope; Progress. Change we need. Yes we can. Can what? What change? Are we talking about African Americans finally reaching beyond the <a href="http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/96/71296-004-0B8CB497.jpg">years of segregation and racist denial of their right to exist freely in their own country</a>?<br /><br />Are we talking about change from the fascism of surveillance and dirty wars and torture and extraordinary rendition and blacksites and <a href="http://safeliving.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/january_jan11guantanamobayarrivalproc.jpg">Guantanamo Bay </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse">Abu Ghraib </a>and <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trial-Henry-Kissinger-Christopher-Hitchens/dp/1859843980">Kissinger leading </a>the <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E5D6103AF930A25751C1A9649C8B63">inquiry</a> into 9-11 and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre">Colin Powell </a>(rewarded for helping to initially keep quiet My Lai by Nixon appointing <a href="http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/112604.html">him to a White House role </a>and thereby launching his career via this nasty backhander) with his slideshow to the UN to push for the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Change what - hope for what - progress from what and towards what?<br /><br />And then one day it struck me. I was reminded of a piece Fred Orton wrote on Jasper Johns (sic: actually, it seems it was <a href="http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/KatzPages/KatzCamp.html">Jonathan Katz </a>on Johns and Rauschenberg; he's written several pieces on this). He said that Johns had to develop a kind of visual code within his work of the 1950s - that it was an encryption of real intentions and real meanings, tied up with his situation as a gay man in a world where such identities had to stay on the level of the hidden and merely hinted at; where overt expressions were physically and legally dangerous. And this is when all the euphemistic discourse came into focus.<br /><br />It was not the vacuous talk of ad-speak - where new and exciting and improved are bandied about without concrete specifications so that we are bedazzled into opting for unnecessary purchases. It was the password at the door - it was the underground railroad in the world where Big Brother is watching and listening and the Patriots Act as though they'll round you up at any minute. Where everyone is insecure about what they can and can't say or do. Where overt expressions feel physically and legally dangerous. Where <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/jun/05/usa.weekend7">short story writers get detained at airports </a>and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43282-2004Sep22.html">Cat Stevens packed back onto a plane </a>and disallowed entry to talk to Dolly Parton. Where people are deported and disappeared and no one talks about it: they just carry on shopping.<br /><br />That's when I understood the need for signs of hope and change. Let's just hope that the change we need is what he delivers.<br /><br />----<br /><br />PS - this is quite funny: <a href="http://www.bestofyoutube.com/video.asp?videoid=1412">Palin & Bush</a>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-62448227960963870912008-09-09T07:08:00.000-07:002008-09-09T07:32:21.021-07:00Hither and thither<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:-43.7pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:-27.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:-43.7pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:-27.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Stephen Fry currently has a series on BBC Radio 4 entitled, 'Fry's English Delight',</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt">which is a delightful look at changes to the English language! Yesterday's episode</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt">was a fascinating exploration of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Cliché. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So good in fact, that I went to all the bother of</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">transcribing the majority of the episode. Now this actually does serve a purpose as at least one</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">little bit of it will surely appear in at least a footnote in my doctorate - so, time well spent, I'm</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">sure! :-)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Since I did go to all this fiendishly nerdy trouble for myself, I decided to share. So here (with a</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">few added hyperlinks to make it good and properly bloggy (is that an adjective? It is now!), for</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">your delectation, I bring you the abridged:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00d8p82/b00d8p4n/">“Fry’s English Delight: </a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00d8p82/b00d8p4n/">Cliché</a></i><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00d8p82/b00d8p4n/">”</a><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Hosted by <a href="http://www.stephenfry.com/">Stephen Fry</a><o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Monday, 8 September 2008, 9.00 a.m., <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bbc_radio_four">BBC Radio 4</a> (30 minutes’ duration)<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">NB: The BBC website renders </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">cliché as cliche (whereas I keep the accent ague [the acute accent] mark but don’t italicise it as a foreign word – a half-way house which probably satisfies only me).</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">PS: the webpage for Fry’s English Delight on the BBC website, does, however – as do I , provide cliché with the acute accent but no italics.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Hurrah! </span></span><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Wingdings;mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings"><span style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">J<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; "></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Wingdings;mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings"><span style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Wingdings"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; "> </span></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Now, of course, you wouldn’t catch me dead using a cliché, except of course for knowing, ironic purposes.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But let me get straight to the point as <a href="http://www.dameshirleybassey.com/">Shirley Bassey</a> so memorably sang.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Cliché is part of language; regrettably unforgettable, and often unforgettably regrettable.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">It grows like topsy, ineradicable, and probably indefinable.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Writer and language expert,<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penguin-Book-Cliches-Reference-Books/dp/0140514279"> Julia Cresswell</a>: </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(JC) Cliché is, effectively, whatever anybody says is a cliché; it’s almost impossible to define clichés.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">That itself is a cliché of writing on clichés.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Julia is author of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The Penguin Dictionary of Clichés</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, although the book has been given a brand spanking new makeover as we’ll hear in a minute.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But it is true to say, she is a cliché collector.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(JC) I wanted to write a book about the history of the weird and wonderful expressions we use.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">A cliché is something automatic, like something that’s printed out in mass form, over and over again.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But one person’s cliché is another person’s everyday turn of phrase or colloquialism, or idiom or quotation.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">One of the things I think that makes an expression a cliché is if it effectively does your thinking for you.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And this, of course, is what politicians exploit, it’s what advertisers exploit, and it’s what bores drive you mad with.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And one of the reasons, I think, why we use clichés is actually they’re very efficient.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">This is particularly obvious if you look at the sort of clichés that are used by journalists or politicians.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So they say a lot more because of their social associations and people’s experience of how they’ve been used in the past.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">They build up to very effective ways of getting at your emotions or channelling your thoughts in certain directions.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">People get so worked up about clichés and think that they’re bad when perhaps they’re not necessarily all bad?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And, certainly, they do give us a history of our culture.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Some of them are extraordinarily old, some of them very new.</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And almost all of them are borrowed and some of them, to continue in Julia’s poetic vein, are blue.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Goodie!</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">First though a definition: </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">from Dr David Penfold of The School of Printing and Publishing at <a href="http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/about_lcc.htm">The London College of Communication</a>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Printing press sound effects in background] (DP) Cliché is a term that describes the manufacture by printers probably starting in the Eighteenth Century of a version of type which allows them to use this cliché over and over again to keep printing.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">It’s a version of </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">clicher</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, so it means ‘to click’.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I’m not quite sure whether it was clicking into place or the sound of it, but it came from the idea of when the – French presumably – used to </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">papier</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">-mâché</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">over the type, which had been set, and then they formed a mould and then into the mould they created a metal reproduction of the type so it was no longer moveable, it was, it was fixed then.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So like, like this one here, this is a curved one, but you can see the same principle: the type’s been set and so you then have something which is no longer moveable type but it’s it’s something you can keep reproducing, hence the cliché.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(JC) It actually comes from a French verb meaning ‘to click’ and the correct English translation of this is stereotype.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(DP) And you can see why stereo because the type actually stands out, coz it’s three dimensional.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Now, often, derivations aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on; but in this case, the fact that cliché starts life as a printers’ term – a forerunner of ‘cut and paste’, a way of preserving and regurgitating freeze-dried phrases – is worthy of note.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So a stereotypical phrase, infinitely reproducible at the click of a printing plate – and later, the click of a mouse.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">In the days of moveable type, individual letters made of metal – the very physical ingredients of bespoke words – had to be treated as a finite resource: treasured.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So, a cliché was a handy ‘cut-out and keep’ one-click-affair; no compositing, no thought, no tying up of language into anything original – the very definition of cliché is coined by people for whom words are a stock in trade.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So, I blame the media.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Cliché dates back to Eighteenth Century printing, but the oldest cliché in the book is older even than that.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(JC) The oldest cliché in the book is ‘hither and thither’, which, perhaps, is a bit dated now.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But it has reason to be since the earliest example I found goes back to 725 in Old English; which is not the only Old English cliché actually.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But is ‘hither and thither’ a cliché?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Does not its great age and old-fashioned vocabulary exempt it from the lingo-bin?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I mean, if you are going to turn round and say clichés are in the eye of the beholder, then we’re going to be all over the shop.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(JC) ‘All over the shop’?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">No, I would call that slang, perhaps, rather than a cliché.</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Alright – one man’s cliché is another man’s – no, no that’s no good….</span></p> <div style="border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-right: 64.3pt"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt; padding:0cm;mso-padding-alt:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt; padding:0cm;mso-padding-alt:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[EDIT]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt; padding:0cm;mso-padding-alt:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> </div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Now it goes into the segment about football-derived clichés </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">1908 and Tottenham Hotspurs journey at sea and the parrot and then in 1919 the arrival of Arsenal from Woolwich, ‘stealing Hotspurs place’ and ‘sick as a parrot’.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Football journalist <a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/contacts/page/0,,505085,00.html">Amy Lawrence</a> talks about Jose Mourinho’s </span></i><st1:city><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Chelsea</span></i></st1:place></st1:city><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> playing the same game week in and week out and the lack of inspiration such invokes – couldn’t we just wire in the same story as last week.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Additionally, the Internet’s demand for instant copy also works against the time for original inspiration…</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Julia Cresswell talks about how the Internet changed her dictionary – from a reference dictionary, changed to a thematic collection of clichés.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Reference books need to be narrative now within the publishing industry JC reveals.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">What to call it and initially going with ‘The Best Thing since Sliced Bread’ but it would be very difficult to produce an attractive eye-catching cover for.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The designer came up with a great illustration of ‘<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cats-Pyjamas-Penguin-Book-Cliches/dp/0141025166/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220970133&sr=1-4">The Cat’s Pyjamas’</a> and they went with this instead.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Goes into expressions coined to mean ‘excellent’: The Cat’s Pyjamas; The Bee’s Knees; The Dog’s Bollocks:- trends and derivations explored.</span></i></p> <div style="border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .75pt;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-right: 64.3pt"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;mso-border-bottom-alt:solid windowtext .75pt; padding:0cm;mso-padding-alt:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> </div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Resumption]</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF:</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> This turns out to be a rare example of a vulgarity and a piece of jargon and a slang term and a cliché and a pictogram!</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">David Penfold of The </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">London</span></st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><st1:placetype><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">School</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> of Printing:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Printing press sound effects in background] (DC) ‘The dog’s bollocks’, which is a colon followed by a hyphen, is interesting because it was very popular at one time, but nowadays I don’t think you’d find a publisher’s style that would include that:- it just wouldn’t be acceptable.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">It’s used in some languages, I mean the French use it a lot, but in English you won’t find that colon followed by a dash that printers used to call ‘the dog’s bollocks’ used any longer.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Not only did this, or rather these, fall into disuse in the closed world of printing, it didn’t work very well in everyday speech.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(JC) The problem with this was because it got shortened to ‘the bollocks’.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But the problem is if you’re saying, ‘That’s the bollocks’ – meaning ‘That’s really good’ – it’s very easily confused with, ‘That’s bollocks!’ meaning it’s rubbish.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And I think that’s probably what led to it dying out.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF:</span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The world’s first self-cancelling cliché.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But, ‘Dear Feedback, Why is that nice Mr Fry stooping to such low allusions?’</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Point taken.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Let’s go upmarket.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Sportswriter Amy Lawrence says, tellingly, about the repetitiousness of putting into print accounts of even the best football.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(</span></i><st1:state><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/contacts/page/0,,505085,00.html">AL</a></span></i></st1:place></st1:state><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">) It’s like going to see ‘Hamlet’ every week, twice a week.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Okay, there might be a different actor playing Hamlet, obviously there’s a slight difference in that the result might be slightly different from one Hamlet to another, but essentially you are seeing a similar script time after time after time.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So, therefore, there are only so many ways you can describe the ball hitting the back of the net.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">There are only so many ways you can describe a fantastic right-footed cross.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF:</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And there’s only so many ways of saying ‘To be or not to be’; Catch-22 really.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">That, by the way, is a reference to the paradoxically existential dilemmas of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Heller’s Yossarian.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And a reference to the fact that a brilliant, life-changing line of poetry or novel, can, by dent of association football style repetition, have a simultaneous life as a clunking great cliché.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And it’s enough to make you want to draw a <a href="http://www.marcelduchamp.net/L.H.O.O.Q.php">little moustache on the </a></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.marcelduchamp.net/L.H.O.O.Q.php">Mona Lisa</a></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, it really is.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Cliché collections in one form or another have been amassed to serious effect by the great lexicographer Eric Partridge, the Eighteenth Century satirist Jonathan Swift, and the novelist Gustav Flaubert.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Dr <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/people/academic/barrydrliz">Liz Barry</a> is Senior Lecturer at the </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">University</span></st1:placetype><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> of </span><st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Warwick</span></st1:placename></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(LB) The critic Hugh Kenner writes about Flaubert, as he writes about later writers like Joyce and Beckett, and calls them Stoic comedians.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">They’re commentators who are looking at society and thinking about the dilemma of writing in an age of a print culture, where everything that one says has been written somewhere before, where literature is distributed immediately to the masses.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The problem that Roland Barthes, the critic, calls déjà lu – um, not déjà vu anymore – but déjà lu, already read; everything that one says has been already read somewhere.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And how does the writer respond to this situation? And one thing that these writers are exploring is the way in which their characters are trying to live their life </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[sic] </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">by the clichés that they read in books.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">They are trying to apply these received ideas to the world and there’s always a gap they never quite fit – their experiences never quite fit to the experiences that literature tells them about.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So Madame Bovary is destroyed – you know, psychologically and literally – in the end by the fact that her love affairs don’t match up with the romantic clichés that she reads about, that she can’t reproduce those experiences in her own life.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Flaubert’s very aware that the writer isn’t immune to cliché, so he writes about the way in which writers are afraid to open his </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[sic] </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">dictionary in case they find their own words – or what they thought were their own words – there.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Or he comments on the way in which the, the banalities that he collects amusedly in his books he actually also finds in his own love letters to Louise Colet.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So he is very, very aware that that the writer in some sense is in crisis in not ever being able to produce the perfect new idea.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I think that we hear the dead hand of the printing press in language.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">As we know, the etymology of cliché is connected to the sounds that the printing press makes, the click that the printing press makes.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Like I say, I blame the media.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">All clichés, poetic and otherwise, start life as metaphors.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And, according to linguist <a href="http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/guy-deutscher">Dr Guy Deutscher</a> of </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Leiden</span></st1:placename><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><st1:placetype><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">University</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, metaphors either get ground into common or garden anonymity by repeated use, or repetition popularises them and turns them into long-lasting clichés.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(GD) So the reason why clichés remain clichés and grate rather than just being ground down like most common metaphors, is that they were so powerful probably to start with that they refuse to bio-degrade and they just pollute the landscape; like the big lumps of plastic that pollute the beach.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF:</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">But if these nasty looking lumps of plastic can be recycled in a really clever way, if they have a second life as art – how do we rate them?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">‘Tell me, where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?’</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Famous, magical lines from the casket opening scene in ‘The Merchant of Venice’.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Too famous perhaps for James Joyce’s Bloom, the advertising man in </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Ulysses</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, whose head is teeming with this kind of stuff.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">He can’t resist a recycling opportunity and he already has ‘fancy’ and ‘bread’ at the back of his overdriven mind because of the enchanting smell from a local bakery.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">This is his instinctive pun about his own fancy and where it is bred:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(?) ‘Tell me where is fancy bread? At Rourke’s the baker’s it is said.’</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">A pun, a slogan, a satire on slogans, a satire on Twentieth Century culture, an image from inside a man’s head, a nifty bit of Shakespeare recycling.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Dr Liz Barry:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(LB) Joyce is playing there with a Shakespearean allusion, but also showing us how Bloom makes his own meanings.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">For Joyce as well, these very constrained and very debased kinds of language are brought to life again and, and given all sorts of significance in his writings.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">In one sense he’s not frightened of the circulation of these meanings, because in the rich and rather crazy world of Bloom’s head, the associations that they will have will be completely unexpected and completely individual and personal to Bloom. Um, so there is a way in which the, the individual citizen can resist the kind of homogenising influence of advertising – you know, wanting to make us all the same, wanting to make us buy the same product at the same time everyday or same time every week.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The big question about cliché perhaps is that it questions the distinction between the highbrow and the lowbrow.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">For Joyce’s Bloom, the allusions to Shakespeare and the advertising jingles are on a par in his mind, they’ve become detached from their context – they are circulating in his mind; they’re chiming off all sorts of things that he’s encountering in everyday life.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So there’s a question about how one preserves the idea of high culture – and this is a question that is exercising the critics of postmodernity – how does one preserve a distinction between high and low culture if the idea of originality is no longer as powerful as it once was.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">If there is this anxiety about everything already – the already read – um, everything always having been read before – how does one create that or preserve that distinction between the high and the low?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">And does it matter?</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF: </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Does it?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Search me.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">They always say, though this is a bit of a cliché, radio has the best pictures.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">So think Andy Warhol’s self-conscious cliché, <a href="http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=warhol%20marilyn&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi">the repeated silk-screen print of Marilyn Monroe: click, click, click</a>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Opening chords of The Kinks’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAQ8gqb3Zxk">‘Till the end of the day’</a> resound]</span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF:</span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Makes you think, eh?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Or not.</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Did any of this matter or was it just excuse for me to say ‘bollocks’ a lot, at the end of the day?</span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">There, I’ve said it.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Kinks: ‘Baby, I feel good / from the moment I rise / feel good from morning…till the end of the day / till the end of the day]</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">SF:</span></i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">I’ve left it till the end of the programme, if not the day, </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Britain</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">’s favourite or least favourite cliché.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">[Kinks: ‘From when we get up till we go to sleep at night / You and me we’re free / We do as we please, yeah / from the morning…till the end of the day / till the end of the day /yeah]</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Fry’s English Delight was:<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Presented by Stephen Fry<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">Produced by Nick Baker<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><o:p> </o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">And at the end of the day it was A test bed production for Radio 4 © 2008<o:p></o:p></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><o:p> </o:p></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Transcribed by August Jordan Davis, </i></b><st1:date month="9" day="9" year="2008"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">9 September 2008</i></b></st1:date><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">!<o:p></o:p></i></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0cm;margin-right:64.3pt;margin-bottom: 0cm;margin-left:54.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p></p><p></p><p></p>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-68887434475091857452008-09-09T01:22:00.000-07:002008-09-09T01:50:19.298-07:00The Devil's BJBe under no illusion regarding the nature of our universe - it is disinterested; unjust.<div><br /></div><div>Otherwise, explain to me how 14 years after the sad demise of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_hicks">Bill Hicks</a> we have to suffer the ignominy of a reformed <a href="http://www.nkotb.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">New </span>Kids on the Block </a>- botoxed and face lifted into some simalcrum of youth.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkA6zugNMQ">These soul-sucking voidoids of Satan</a> (as per Monsieur Hicks) are surely a harbinger of true deja vu: late '80s / early '90s financial and musical crisis.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/09/09/mistress_palin/">Sarah Palin</a> hasn't returned us to the Culture Wars, folks - that's the job of five 'boys' from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118766/usercomments">Southie</a>...</div><div><br /></div><div>Shudder to think: <a href="http://www.billhicks.com/">Bill Hicks, </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.billhicks.com/">RIP</a></span>.</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-73742450210193394782008-09-02T12:26:00.000-07:002008-09-09T01:51:04.342-07:00Go Chrome!Just a quick post to say - Google's new browser <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome">'Chrome'</a> is now available to download in its beta release.<div><br /></div><div>I've got it up with six tabs open: my twitter page; my Facebook page; this blogger page; my AOL email page; my webmail Outlook page; and the Guardian all open. This is the fastest browser I have EVER used. Yes I'm gushing, but it's valid: this is sleek, stylish, FAST, easy and makes for non-stop browsing and surfing like it ought to be.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the net we've always been promised: the future is finally starting to turn up on time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't worry about the hype, the viral 'leak' cheerleading which is, frankly, yes, most likely to have been purposefully orchestrated - but it's all worth it. Google Chrome is far more elegant than my previous sentence AND it delivers the goods.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hurrah!</div>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-77634952101422726092008-08-26T11:21:00.000-07:002008-08-26T14:57:15.951-07:00Tech-savvy allureIt's so easy to fall for it. The idea that you too could indulge in some of the glamour of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/21/aeronautics.sciencenews">Fusion Man</a> if only one were to buy, say, a <a href="http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/commerce/servlet/gben-server-PageServer?article=MAIN.UK.INTERNET.STATIC.APPLE.APPLEIPHONE">3G 16GB iPhone</a>. Last Friday at the <a href="http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/897.aspx">London Liverpool Street Station</a> <a href="http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/">Carphone Warehouse </a>(about 6pm) a slightly inebriated city-type was in asking for just such a phone - in white. He assured the staff that their website vouchsafed that such an instrument was presently on-sale at their shop. The staff assured him that the website lied: an unusual case of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eipfw9mQegg">'the computer says "yes"'</a>.<br /><br />I, myself, had seen this same in-stock assurance earlier that day. But unlike the happy hour imbiber, I was not lurking in the small kiosk-sized shop for an actual purchase, just a torment visit (where I go to wallow in my desire for the purchase knowing full well that I won't make it for a variety of reasons). The man again averred that the website had said such an item was available only to be reassured that it was not and that the website was 'lying'. Such a sweet idea, that the staff had been shortchanged by some kind of overly enthusiastic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeOHEU7Ykyg">war-games styled computer </a>(maybe like the anthropomorphised one in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dreams_(film)">Electric Dreams </a>- remember that silly little film?), rather than left short by a fault in the supply chain - i.e., human error.<br /><br />And such is the chink in the dream of the glossy 'future': we may be able to invent the tools and put them to use, but it's still we -<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human"> human beings </a>- who are using them. The future is only as slick as the fallible homo sapiens. The allure of going <a href="http://www.promotionalcodes.org.uk/410/25-ways-tech-savvy-but-frugal/">tech-savvy</a>: striving to be a <a href="http://www.xtract.com/clients/case-studies/alpha-users%E2%80%99-influence-within-a-community/">hub, an alpha user</a>; to get abreast and keep abreast of developments is all well and good but to what effect? Unless one is prepared to adjust, fundamentally, one's habits and routines at a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_structure">'deep' level</a>, it is unlikely that a new gadget will utterly transforms one's life (i.e., a <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/61/76/S0137675.html">schlub</a> is not going to be magically streamlined with the addition of just a bit of kit; the iPhone is not the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone">philosopher's stone</a>).<br /><br />My friend <a href="http://thereasonband.co.uk/">Jamie</a> - amidst the first wave of my 3G iPhone release mania (earlier this year) - made a sagacious suggestion. Rather than rush to buy an <a href="http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39030093,39194717,00.htm">ultraportable laptop </a>and a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone">smartphone,</a> why not just make better use of my <a href="http://images.google.co.uk/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GFRC_en___GB213&q=nokia%202650&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi">current mobile </a>and <a href="http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GFRC_en___GB213&resnum=0&q=toshiba%20laptop%20sp4600%20PIII%20700&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi">laptop</a> (buying only a mobile broadband stick at most - a <a href="http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/guides/what_is_a_mobile_dongle/">dongle</a> Jamie called it; you can see that I've not bought even one of these yet!). Then if I indeed prove a <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/category/charlottehiggins/">Charlotte Higgins</a>, Jr, then invest in some <a href="http://www.apple.com/macbookair/">new, lovely kit </a>(otherwise, it's just a kind of <a href="http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/">Glamour-magazine type lust </a>for the new 'it-IT' rather than really needing the new equipment).<br /><br />Of course, he's absolutely right. As is my husband who kindly pointed out that signing up for any kind of new monthly contract (given that we are planning to move from UK to USA shortly) isn't fiscally responsible. I know, I know - none of it makes much sense, rationally speaking that is. But the sense of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Bataille">desire</a> is irrational, emotional, prone to suggestibility and temptation. It can be preyed upon and whipped up; it can become obsessive and a driving force. I know all of this rationally. I am aware of the <a href="http://www.storyofstuff.com/">consumerist impulse </a>which has been cultivated by my American upbringing and which I have indulged expertly for three decades. And yet I am still eaten up by it when <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/">a shiny bit of metal / plastic</a> is flashed before my eyes. There's a potent part of my imagination that turns its back on all <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia">dystopic</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lW0F1sccqk">Blade Runner </a>prognostications and still knows I'm only one bit of kit away from <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artandthe60s/">that future we were promised</a> (Fusion<em>Woman</em>?).<br /><br />Yours,<br /><em>August Jetson Davis</em>August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-21328906735548828872008-07-29T23:40:00.000-07:002008-07-30T04:24:06.626-07:002008 sucker punchSo, I thought 2008 would prove an exciting year; it has certainly provided unexpected (and unwanted) twists. Things were off to a good start with a very good <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/activities">Zizek masterclass </a>in February. We joined the ICA in January and were busy with members' previews, private views, concerts, talks and films (<a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/A20Promise20to20the20Dead202B20Q26amp3BA+16206.twl">Ariel Dorfman </a>and <a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/Fuck20Buttons202B20Alexander20Tucker+15747.twl">Fuck Buttons </a>being just two of the highlights). The PhD work was ticking over nicely and in April attended Martha Rosler's opening talk for her installation of the <a href="http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/site/roslerlibrary/index.htm">Martha Rosler Library </a>in its first UK site at John Moores University, Liverpool. In May, we attended <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/activities">Etienne Balibar's Birkbeck Masterclass</a>, which was also very engaging. It was the same two weeks as his daughter, the actress <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/gallery/2008/may/14/openingnight?picture=334152526">Jeanne Balibar </a>was on the jury panel of Cannes.<br /><br />Then came the day we went to see <a href="http://www.ica.org.uk/Winter20Soldier+16604.twl">Winter Soldier </a>at the ICA. Saturday 17 May, I believe. The day of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_FA_Cup_Final">FA Cup Final</a>. First the film and then off to a pub to watch the match; then home. Home, where we found a message from my mom telling me of a family member's serious illness. Five days later I was in Dallas trying to help for a fortnight. When I left 6 June, all seemed much improved with happy prospects all round. Less than two weeks later, my loved one had died and straight back to Dallas we went.<br /><br />I've been devastated and in shock ever since. It feels like trudging through treacle. Part of my enfeebled attempts to 'deal' with this situation has been to distract myself as much as possible with various displacement activities and inquiries. So I got obsessed with the release of the 3g <a href="http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/">iPhone </a>(I don't own won, but now <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/26/iphone.apple">know all about its spec </a>nonetheless). I decided that like <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/07/introducing_my_new_blog.html">Charlotte Higgins </a>of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/"><em>Guardian</em> </a>(with her inspiring laptop on the knee mobility) I would become a diligent blogger. I bought <a href="http://www.wired.com/"><em>Wired</em></a> and read up on the coming of the <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_intro">cloud, server farms </a>and the paradigm shift of the <a href="http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory">petabyte age</a>. I got into <a href="http://www.shirky.com/">Clay Shirky </a>and his web2.0 revolution. I decided to join the Real Food Revolution and bought <a href="http://www.michaelpollan.com/">Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food </a>(along with three new cookbooks: <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gordon-Ramsays-Healthy-Appetite-Ramsay/dp/1844006360/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217402092&sr=8-1">Gordon Ramsay's <em>Healthy Appetite</em></a>; the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Revolution-Time-money-saving-Recipes/dp/009191373X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217402135&sr=1-1"><em>Kitchen Revolution</em></a>; and the new <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/CHINESE-FOOD-MADE-easy-find/dp/0007264984/ref=pd_sim_b?ie=UTF8&qid=1217402135&sr=1-1"><em>Chinese Food Made Easy</em> by Ching-He Huang </a>from her BBC programme). Did you know <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan">Michael Pollan is Tracy Pollan's brother </a>- brother-in-law to Michael J. Fox, therefore? Betcha didn't. Such are the tidbits of grief-distraction.<br /><br />But last Friday it all just hit me. Came crashing in. I stoically had managed even the unfortunate coincidence of having in February bought tickets for the final night's performance of Vanessa Redgrave at the National Theatre in a one-woman production of Joan Didion's <a href="http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/magicalthinking">"The Year of Magical Thinking"</a> (the play she wrote to transform <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Magical-Thinking-Joan-Didion/dp/000721684X">her novel </a>of the same name at the urging of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/05/theatre">David Hare</a>). A performance which we attended three days short of the one month 'anniversary' of my loved one's death. A play which is all about the attendant disbelief and shock and eventual coming to terms with the loss of the two most loved ones in one's life. This I handled beautifully. What finally did for me, I couldn't even tell you. The floodgates didn't open, but the box began to leak. That box I'd stuffed all my disbelief and grief and rage and unhappiness and shear shock into had obviously corroded and toxic seepage had commenced. Maybe it was like <a href="http://ask.metafilter.com/32438/Patching-an-air-mattress-leak">the leak from an air mattress,</a> slow and so soft as to go undetected as the bodies lay upon it for the first few hours, but such that by morning there was little support left.<br /><br />So on I soldier with my to-do lists mockingly nearby, their multitudinous tasks frolicing gaily on the pages, taunting me with their un-done-ness. I'm sure I will again be able to subdue my pain with escape into practical chores (as in the very first days and weeks). But for now, I am suffused in the cotton wool numbness that cossetts me between the rounds of buffetting winds gusting out of that nasty box of pain.August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1849736483494214934.post-75698494967134227862008-03-04T10:32:00.000-08:002008-03-04T10:40:05.922-08:00The MARCH of timeThis desperate cry emits from my lips each year - "How is it already March?!" Aside from two bouts of flu (not colds, not flu-like colds, but the actual dreaded lurgy), I've actually been very busy in the first quarter of this new year.<br /><br />Very soon, I'll post an update on all such events and so forth (including There Will Be Blood at the luxurious Electric Cinema, followed by excessive spontaneous record buying at Rough Trade; the ICA Private View for Double Agent; the Fuck Buttons gig; MUCH recent record buying, in fact; Lars and the Real Girl; Zizek masterclass at Birkbeck; tickets bought for Yeasayer, My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Etienne Balibar masterclass in May; and Jude Law as Hamlet opening night in 18months...; and much, much more)...<br /><br />Hello, 2008. How do you do?<br /><br />August.August Jordan Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04935931260957090477noreply@blogger.com0