Renee has put up her first Booktalk podcast, which apparently replaces cars with books and involves Renee and some guy named Eli responding to various voicemails that people leave about books. In any event, do give them a call at 415-992-8622, tell them about “winter books,” and bemuse them with ten-cent words.
Author / Edward Champion
Taris, roi de l’eau
Lindsay Anderson’s Lost Documentary?
I’m a huge fan of the late underrated director Lindsay Anderson, best known for his remarkable trilogy if…, O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital (the first two are masterpieces and unavailable on DVD, a telling sign that the DVD format is inefficient at rectifying the gaping holes in film history, preferring such solid holiday sellers as Full House: The Complete Fifth Season). Lindsay Anderson, perhaps unable to get work in the 1980s, was reduced to helming puff pieces like Wham! In China: Foreign Skies. What I didn’t know was that, earlier this year, an archive of Anderson’s papers revealed the great director’s true intentions. Apparently, Anderson made a documentary showing the clash of Wham’s management with Chinese bureaucracy, hoping to show how Western values had an effect on China. Of the film, Anderson noted that it was made under “arbitrary orders from George Michael, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about …a young millionaire with an inflated ego. I was struck by his total disinterest in China. His vision only extends to the top 10.”
I wonder if Anderson was inspired enough by Jean-Luc Godard’s fascinating 1968 documentary, Sympathy for the Devil, which juxtaposed the Rolling Stones against a study of the revolutionary in Western culture, to make a similar film involving Wham.
[UPDATE: More information from the University of Stirling: “At the start of 1985 he had just returned from Washington DC where he had directed a troubled production of Hamlet which was plagued with problems and closed after a short run…..In a letter to a friend written in January 1986 he explained that he undertook the Wham! project ‘in a spirit of curiosity. Curiosity about China and curiosity about the odd confrontation of China and Wham! – and even a certain curiosity, not very great, about the phenomenon of Wham! itself.'” Also of interest: Anderson’s letter to the crew after Wham pulled him from the project. George Michael and Sony Music hold the rights to Anderson’s version and have prevented it from being seen.]
[UPDATE 2: Amazingly, someone has collected the whole of if.. on YouTube: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight (this segment has a corporal punishment long take with incredible blocking), Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven and Part Twelve.]
BSS #85: Kate Atkinson
Author: Kate Atkinson
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Investigating turns of an altogether different sort.
Subjects Discussed: Narrative flow, the difficulty of writing the first 100 pages, perspective, good sentences, discovering the internal monologue, writing about inept men, narrative sadism, similarities between T.C. Boyle and Kate Atkinson, technological references in One Good Turn, “guys” to call on for research, Google vs. libraries, dialogue, the influence of reading while working on a novel, “romps,” British prejudices against genre, the word “jolly,” Case Histories vs. One Good Turn, empathy through the omniscient voice, being pigeonholed because of the Jackson Brodie books, Kate Atkinson’s other voices, the exuberant voice, maintaining a sense of fun, a sense of order, theme vs. plot, morality within One Good Turn, and the Honda Man.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Atkinson: You’re working all day on words. Do you really want to then do words the rest of the time? What I would like to do when I’m not, when I’m really engaged with a book, is to just look at a tree really. But it tends to take the form of looking at television. I just want to look at something that’s not words. Because that’s what you’re doing all day. I mean, I’m really glad I read most of world literature before the age of twenty-one. I would never have time for it now or have the inclination for it, I think. I did my reading when I had the space. And now I don’t have that kind of space.
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Glen David Gold Thankfully Not MIA
Bookfox reports on a reading with Glen David Gold which answers a most important question: will Glen David Gold write a followup novel to Carter Beats the Devil? The answer is contained within the Fox’s sly report:
The highlight of the Evening was Glen David Gold, author of Carter Beats the Devil, who read from his new, as-yet-unnamed novel. He said it had been “kicking his ass for the last six years”, and read us the first chapter, which included a lighthouse-manning mother who wished for a disaster to relieve the monotony, her son as a rebellious idealist, and the sighting of a man in a sinking craft at sea who appears to resemble Charlie Chaplin. Afterwards, Gold said that because of the editing process and the period before printing, the novel won’t be out for another two years, give or take six months, which is too bad because we all can’t wait.