Writing in Elsewhere
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MAN OVERBOARD by TIM BINDING: Underwater . . . and undercover?
26 Sep 2008 | 1 min read
Novels based on historical characters are always fraught: one weakness in important detail or tone of the period and the whole structure collapses. Binding’s novel therefore treads in dangerous waters: it is based on the 1956 disappearance of Commander Lionel Crabb, a British war hero and frogman who was last seen near Portsmouth where a warship carrying Soviet premier Khrushchev had... > Read more
AUTHOR RICHARD PRICE ON CLOCKERS: The book, the movie and the money-go-round
26 Sep 2008 | 9 min read
Richard Price barely has to open his mouth and you know where he’s from. The voice is direct with a “yeah, well” shoulder shrug delivery and nothin’s like, too exact, you know? Words get bitten off, sentences sprinkled with streetwise epithets and answers come before the question is finished. Fast talk because it suits the faster life. Welcome to the Bronx. This... > Read more
MADONNA UNAUTHORISED, BOOK REVIEW AND AUTHOR INTERVIEW (1992): Personality as art
16 Sep 2008 | 5 min read
Two years before she had a hit record, Madonna told her friend Erica Bell: “I don’t just need attention. I need all the attention. I want everybody in the world to know who I am and to love me.” And the game plan for Madonna Ciccone – an all American cheerleader with an IQ of 140 – was to “travel through people”, to use them to fulfil her own needs... > Read more
THE MOTEL LIFE, a novel by WILLY VLAUTIN
16 Sep 2008 | 1 min read | 1
This dark and depressing novel is an impressive debut by Vlautin, the frontman and songwriter for the American alt.country band Richmond Fontaine whose music is, unfortunately, little known here. The band’s melancholy album The Fitzgerald was a result of Vlautin living in the rundown Reno casino of that name and is peopled by marginal, stale cigarette characters who live whisky-soaked... > Read more
Richmond Fontaine: Exit 198B
FROM HELL BY ALAN MOORE AND EDDIE CAMPBELL (book review) 2002
15 Sep 2008 | 3 min read
That there's yet another version of Jack the Ripper in cinemas - From Hell starring Johnny Depp, and based on this graphic novel - is hardly surprising. The mysterious Jack has fascinated generations of film-makers for three reasons: location, location, location.Think London in the late 19th century: narrow cobbled streets barely illuminated at night by flickering gas lamps; thick mist to cloak... > Read more
ANCIENT MARINER, BY KEN McGOOGAN REVIEWED (2005): Ice cold and Coleridge
13 Sep 2008 | 1 min read
In the middle of the 18th century only 20 per cent of ordinary sailors in the Royal Navy were volunteers, the rest had been press-ganged into service. The reasons why so few willingly joined were simple: the money was lousy, the conditions woeful - on a typical frigate there would be two or three floggings a week. A Navy career also tested the immune system. During the entire Seven... > Read more
THE BOOK OF THE FILM OF THE MAN (2006): From silver screen to serious stuff
12 Sep 2008 | 4 min read
You know how it is, you see Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea and you think, “Man, I should read that book. It looks kinda neat.” Or you watch Michael Jackson: The E! Hollywood True Story and decide you’d love to read a biography of that troubled and troublesome soul. Right now there is a glut of bio-flicks in cinemas which, by the very constraints of film, sometimes... > Read more
COMIX ARTIST ART SPIEGELMAN INTERVIEWED 1991: The Maus that Rawed
30 Aug 2008 | 9 min read
Art Spiegelman – like many authors one suspects – can’t resist looking for his book in stores. But the categories bookshops have are seldom very useful he says, and his book Maus, a 160 page paperback-sized comic, defies convenient pigeonholing. Store owners think it is “humour” because it’s a comic (”people looking there certainly aren’t... > Read more
PETER ACKROYD, DICKENS BIOGRAPHER, INTERVIEWED (1991): The big life in small details
22 Aug 2008 | 8 min read
It was an afternoon in June 1846 when Charles Dickens finally broke the writing block which had been troubling him. It had been two years since his previous novel, but these last weeks walking in the hills of Switzerland above Lausanne had allowed him to sketch out the framework of a book. In his study overlooking the lake, Dickens – a man of curious personal superstition who... > Read more
POSITIVELY GEORGE STREET BY MATTHEW BANNISTER (2000): Rocking and popping in Flying Nun
3 Jul 2008 | 3 min read
Credit Giles Smith’s hilarious Lost in Music if you will, but recently there has been a proliferation of stories about bands which, if not exactly losers, didn’t quite get a seat in the Business Class of Life alongside Bono. Smith’s story of his time in the ill-fated 80s band Cleaners from Venus (“one man’s journey into rock and back home to his... > Read more
Sneaky Feelings: Husband House
1968: THE YEAR THAT ROCKED THE WORLD by MARK KURLANSKY reviewed (2004)
2 Jun 2008 | 3 min read
With this 2004 year about half gone we appear to be in a volatile time. Some days you just don't want to get out of bed. In politically precarious North Asia both South Korea and Taiwan are suffering internal ructions. Islamist terrorism has cast a shadow of fear over the "coalition of the willing", there have been bombs from Baghdad to Madrid and southern Thailand, and the... > Read more
CRAIG UNGER INTERVIEWED 2004 : Inside the house of Bush and the house of Saud
26 Apr 2008 | 5 min read
American author Craig Unger doesn't sound the lefty conspiracy-theory nutcase his opponents paint him. Back in New York after a European speaking tour supporting his House of Bush, House of Saud -- which persuasively lays bare the complex relationship between the ruling dynasty in Saudi Arabia, and the family and friends of the first and second presidents Bush -- Unger is credible, jocular... > Read more
THOMAS KOHNSTAMM INTERVIEWED: Finding comfort and hell on this Lonely Planet
6 Apr 2008 | 4 min read
Some years ago I was invited by Lonely Planet to write for them. This was flattering and exciting, but there was a catch: I would have to undertake a research trip at my own expense and write it up within their strict guidelines. Around the same time the American writer Thomas Kohnstamm was also approached. He abruptly quit his boringly corporate Wall Street job, threw his cellphone in the... > Read more
TONY PARSONS INTERVIEWED (2004): About a Man in the Family Way
4 Apr 2008 | 26 min read
British author Tony Parsons used to take drugs with Johnny Rotten but now prefers taking his two-year old to the park and writing about families in the suburbs. He now lives the life of a best-selling author with blockbusters like Man and Boy behind him, and reflects with some wry amusement on his former life. Hello Tony, thanks for your time. How are you? I'm alright, how are... > Read more
HILLARY AND BILL CLINTON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES CONSIDERED (2003, 2004): Sax, lies and soundbites
4 Apr 2008 | 24 min read
Last week, late-night US television host Jay Leno quipped about a matter diverting American attention - the long-awaited US$8 million ($13.85 million) memoirs of Hillary Rodham Clinton. "Hillary Clinton's book hits the stores this Monday," he said. "Oh boy, it took her a long time to write it. But in her defence, every time she tried to use the desk, Bill was always using it for... > Read more
ANTONY BEEVOR INTERVIEWED (2003): The Anatomy of War; Berlin 1945, Baghdad 2003
4 Apr 2008 | 10 min read
In the final weeks of the siege, battle-weary troops defending the capital were forced back through the inner suburbs by tanks and artillery. They fought out of fear of capture, and some from loyalty to a failed ideology. They were outnumbered and outgunned.By day their city had been bombed into submission by American planes taking advantage of their unchallenged freedom of the skies. At night,... > Read more
ALAIN DE BOTTON ESSAY (2006): The Sin of Being a Populariser
4 Apr 2008 | 5 min read
As someone with an amateur’s enthusiasm for architecture and design, I was disappointed to miss the recent talk by the English essayist Alain de Botton, author of the popular book The Architecture of Happiness. I call him an essayist because that is what he is: as someone who travels often and writes about it I had previously enjoyed his provocative little book The Art of... > Read more
MARK KURLANSKY INTERVIEWED (2005): The author and his wide, wide world
2 Apr 2008 | 13 min read
Mark Kurlansky is the writer many others want to be: his career in journalism took him to Europe, China, the Caribbean and Middle East, and he lived for a time in Mexico City. His award-winning books are enormously popular despite addressing unusual subjects, notably the complex histories of cod, salt, and the Basques. He has also written an acclaimed novella, and has a column in Food and Wine... > Read more
BILL WYMAN, STONE ALONE REVIEWED (1990): Insider looking out
30 Mar 2008 | 7 min read
It’s probably a bit cruel to destroy people’s faith in myths -- like telling a six-year old the truth about Santa Claus -- but the reason there are so few decent autobiographies and biographies in rock music is simple: the central characters aren’t that interesting. Being a musician at that fascinating interface of low art and high commerce doesn’t necessarily bring... > Read more
The Rolling Stones:I'm Free (1965)
PAUL McCARTNEY'S OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY REVIEWED (1997): Still can't buy the love?
4 Mar 2008 | 6 min read
Paul McCartney is the Beatle old fans love to hate: his sins are manifest in Silly Love Songs, a Linda and not a Yoko, the permanent Mr Thumbs Aloft attitude, the knighthood which his old colleague John Lennon would doubtless have declined …. But there is worse. This past decade, by quiet incremental steps, we have witnessed the rehabilitation of Paul McCartney; mostly at his own... > Read more