by James Clive-Matthews | 3 Sep, 2017 | Narratives & Meanings
4/5 stars
The author is one of those irritatingly lucky people who stumbles through life being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people. Deep envy.
Some small oddnesses and cultural misunderstandings, though – such as a passage describing the interpretation of a painted scene. He reads the image from left to right (making it about the moment before glory) rather than right to left, as Japanese people would read it (making it about the transient nature of life and success, a much more Japanese concept). Small things like that make me wonder whether, despite the author’s long years living in Japan, and his close familiarity with many aspects of its culture and history, he really does understand the place.
But then, as he says, that’s the beauty of Japan – it can’t really be explained in words, it mostly has to be experienced. And, to be fair, he has a good stab of explaining it.
The book itself is an engaging overview of the crisis of cultural identity Japan’s still going through, though mostly from the boom years of the 60s to 80s. Makes a lot of the oddness of modern Japan make a lot more sense than most other books I’ve read on the place, and so well worth a read for anyone interested in trying to understand the place.
by James Clive-Matthews | 24 Aug, 2017 | Narratives & Meanings
4/5 stars
Flicked through before, this time read kinda cover to cover over a few days. Skipping bits, for sure, but reading most of it. Main observations:
1) It’s going to date badly – too much speculation about meanings, and too many interpretations that feel very of a particular moment.
2) Despite thinking it’s being critical and analytical, it’s actually kinda teleological, and definitely has an agenda. It’s an agenda I agree with and support, pushing a global, multicultural view of the world, but just because I agree with the agenda doesn’t mean I can’t see that some of the points are stretched very, very thin.
3) It doesn’t function as a linear narrative, but the thematic sections also don’t make much sense to me – largely because they’re also kinda chronological. It would make much more sense to have the first coins followed by the first ledgers and the first bank notes, but instead these objects are all grouped into other sections, to facilitate a more semi-chronological approach. Thematic makes more sense.
4) There’s a huge amount of unjustified historical equivalence, making some things sound more important than they are for world history to ensure a good geographic spread – often accompanied by enthusiastic hyperbole about the significance. But there’s also still a number of significant gaps: nowhere near enough China or Greece in particular.
That’s not to say it’s not a good book. It is. And it informed me abiut a bunch if things I never knew. But history is about selection, and here the selection was limited by the British Museum’s own collections. How would other major global museums have approached this differently? I’d be keen to find out.
by James Clive-Matthews | 3 Aug, 2017 | Structures & Models
3/5 stars
I’ve come away convinced that this would have been infinitely better as a 400-page standalone novel with an optional 600-page sister volume of semi-related spin-off short stories as a kind of DVD extras disc, rather than this incoherent mess of disjointed interconnected short stories.
Even though I understand *why* he structured it this way (to fit in with his new, fun, central concept of the nature of nonlinear time), and though he makes it clear enough he doesn’t really care what his audience thinks (this is ART, darling – and if you don’t like it you’re an idiot and can fuck off), I kinda prefer novels to have some kind of coherent narrative to them, as well as a thematic point.
All that said, there are bits of this vast, meandering not-really-a-novel that are five stars. There are some genuinely great bits in it, where Moore is at his very best. The 350-odd pages of straight narrative in the middle, written as a kind of heightened, metaphysical Enid Blyton Magic Faraway Tree for adults, is good fun – the sort of thing fans of Promethea, Top 10, Tom Strong and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will love. Even the Joyce pastiche chapter is very well done – albeit an appropriately hard slog that adds little, if anything, to the overall narrative.
But it’s far too self-indulgent. Too smug. At points – especially towards the end as he builds up to the conclusion (which isn’t really a conclusion, because – thematically appropriately – the promised one never comes), he starts breaking the fourth wall via his characters, dropping more and more hints as to his book’s grand design.
Eventually he gives up, and taps on a final “postlude” chapter to smugly, patronisingly, and still vaguely obscurely, explain the entire thing, positioning himself as a weirdo artistic genius who doesn’t really care if you understand it or not.
I did understand it. I did enjoy much of it – including many of the bits I think should have been cut. I just didn’t think it was as clever as he does, and didn’t think it holds together as a narrative whole. Because it doesn’t, pretty much by design.
Glad to have got it over with. Glad to have read it. And now know far more about Northampton than I ever wished to.
by James Clive-Matthews | 20 May, 2017 | Marginalia
5/5 stars
As ever with anthologies, some variation in quality of writing (from excellent to competent) – but consistently raw and compelling in emotion and insight for those, like me, lucky enough not to have to live with racism every day.
Horrible to say, but at first as a Brit I kept comparing to something like Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Between the World and Me and the US experience of racism, and being slightly proud of the UK for there are fewer stories of naked aggression or direct violence, or even of fear.
But then that’s the point. The worst racism isn’t necessarily the extremes, the exceptions, the stuff we can all (even our racist relatives) safely disassociate ourselves from and loudly disapprove of – the shit through the letterbox, the defacing of Jewish graves, the random assaults – it’s the daily, mundane slog of unspoken assumptions and unconscious bias. The stuff us privileged white people, even well-meaning ones, barely notice – even when we’ve realised it’s there. Constantly. Inescapably. With no end in sight.
To better appreciate the all-pervasive impact of that kind of everyday racism, this book is essential.
by James Clive-Matthews | 12 May, 2017 | Narratives & Meanings
3/5 stars
Decent and interesting, as far as it goes – but this is a history of religious myth only, and then only really of ancient Near East and Judeo-Christian religious myth. China is breifly touched on, but no India, no Africa, no Americas, no Asia-Pacific. No national myths, no folklore (bar some Chinese ones), no attempt to define the difference between myths and legends (that I remember).
Why no myths of the likes of King Arthur or Robin Hood? Why no discussion of folk tales, ghosts, genies, goblins, faries, and the like? Why no mythical creatures like the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and the like?
As much as I like Armstrong, the only answer that I can think of is that it doesn’t fit the narrative of the rise of rational thought – because the appeal of these kinds of non-religious myths have endured. If anything, the rise of the urban myth and appeal of TV shows like The X-Files and its successors show we’re still looking for unbelievable things to believe in.
But while Armstrong keeps talking about humans being attracted to myths, her explanation leaves out any real psychological discussion. Instead, it’s all about “spirituality”, a concept she fails to define (that I can recall).
Not her best book, in other words. Too limited in thinking, not just in length. But still interesting enough for a quick read. Sparked a few ideas, at any rate – and that’s all I ask for.
by James Clive-Matthews | 15 Sep, 2016 | Narratives & Meanings
4/5 stars
Rather liked this. Told from multiple perspectives (including those of animals, dead people, and abstract concepts), it’s a rare historical murder mystery that didn’t violently irritate me by being an historical novel that’s a murder mystery, one of the most frustrating clichés of the historical fiction genre.
Underlying it all is a melancholy exploration of the Islamic rejection of art, and the Turkish identity crisis that’s continuing to this day, making this a wonderfully contemporary book, even while being set five centuries ago. Reads well too – a solid translation.
Four stars primarily because it’s deliberately written in a way that makes it hard to keep track of some of the characters’ identities, which may well help maintain the murder mystery, but occasionally makes for a confusing reading experience.
by James Clive-Matthews | 3 Sep, 2016 | Structures & Models
5/5 stars
“events! if you want those, you’d best stop reading now)”
Extremely readable – finished in one sitting – and a perfect piece of postmodern contemporary anthropology of a particular kind of existence in c.2012-2015 London that felt all kinds of familiar. I can see how some would find it pretentious, but it felt so much like a more accessible, less thesaurus-prone mid-90s Will Self that I couldn’t help but like it lots.
Two passages in particular sum up the book, for me:
“It will find its shape, he’d said; I leave all that to you… What if, rather than *it* finding its shape, the age itself, in all its shape-shifting and multi-channelled incarnations, were to find and mould *it*? What if the age, the era, were to do this from so close up, and with such immediacy and force, thay the *it* would all but vanish, leaving just world-shape, era-mould? I started thinking thoughts like this… Beneath their vagueness, I felt something forming”
And:
“Certainly, the fact it came from me, and the context within which it was presented, would imbue it for him with all kinds of cryptic meaning. And besides, I felt with real conviction that it *was* full of this already: meaning of a genuinely deep and intense nature, whose sense eluded me but whose presence radiated, pouring into everything around it.”
Yes, I can see how some would find it pretentious, pointless. Because it is. But knowingly so. Which is, as far as I can tell, the entire postmodernist point – and one that I greatly enjoyed.
by James Clive-Matthews | 29 Aug, 2016 | Marginalia
4/5 stars
An excellent achievement, original in conception, convincing in execution – a kind of reconstructed autobiography from a dauntingly chaotic array of manuscripts that gives an intriguing new perspective on the much-covered intellectual circles of mid- to late-17th century Oxford and London. It’s a perspective firmly from the sidelines, written by a bit player, a kind of hanger-on.
And that’s why only four stars. It’s fascinating for people interested in the period, and novel-like enough to be worth reading anyway. But Aubrey is so self-deprecating, so timid, so uncertain of himself, so seemingly incapable of atanding up for his own interests, so prone to prevarication, that he can become a depressing, frustrating companion. You feel like shaking him, telling him to sort his shit out and get on with it, to write that damned book at long last.
Yes, I see much of myself in Aubrey, which made this book all kinds of existentialist. I should stop prevaricating myself. Life is short. In three hundred years will they remember me as they do him?
by James Clive-Matthews | 2 Apr, 2016 | Marginalia
5/5 stars
A short, readable book, well worth a read for anyone interested in the media – specifically how to tackle the ongoing challenge of funding news, and the role of journalism in democracy.
The solution proposed for the ongoing challenges of monetisation and the maintenance of independence from vested interests is an interesting one. Plausible too – if governments can be persuaded that news is a public good, that is.
And even if you don’t buy in to the news as public good argument that underpins the entire thesis, along the way come a number of interesting – often surprising – nuggets about the media industry across various countries that make this worth a look by themselves. I was particularly intrigued by the finding that an increase in the number of newspapers leads to a decrease in democratic engagement – initially counterintuitive, but makes perfect sense once explained.
by James Clive-Matthews | 17 Jan, 2016 | Narratives & Meanings
5/5 stars
In the acknowledgements, James describes the book as “A novel that would be driven only by voice.” It’s an excellent description. Multiple characters, multiple perspectives, but each with a such a distinctive written style you can tell whose chapter it is even when they’re unnamed.
On starting, I was told it’s like James Ellroy, and it really is. Complex in places, but fairly easy to keep track, even without knowing pretty much anything about Bob Marley. But unlike Ellroy, (or, at leasy, the Ellroy I’ve read, which can get a bit monotonous after a while), the multiple voices and short chapters keep the pace fast, even when very little is happening. And the atmosphere. Excellent stuff.
Not my usual sort of thing, but may well make me look out more novels that aren’t my usual sort of thing.
by James Clive-Matthews | 3 Jan, 2016 | Narratives & Meanings
4/5 stars
I’m not convinced that Mishima really works in translation, as it’s all about the beauty of the language he uses rather than the narrative. For this book in particular, with the concept of beauty at its heart, this is especially the case, and this translation was at times a little too clunky to work. In places terrible, in fact.
That said, I enjoyed it. The introduction compares it to Dostoyevsky, and that’s a fair one – strong hints of Turgenev as well.
The book sums itself up nicely, though again this would likely work better in the original Japanese (I mean, “adumbrated”? Really, translator?):
“If one examined the beauty of each individual detail… the beauty was never completed in any single detail… for each detail adumbrated the beauty of the succeeding detail. The beauty of the individual detail itself was always filled with uneasiness. It dreamed of perfection, but it knew no completion and was invariably lured on to the next beauty… Such adumbrations were signs of nothingness. Nothingness was the very structure of this beauty”
by James Clive-Matthews | 8 Mar, 2015 | Narratives & Meanings
4/5 stars
Finally got through the whole thing, and am frankly not much the wiser, and still not sure how to explain what it’s about.
A plot made of innumerable MacGuffins and deliberately incoherent sidetracks, writing that is at once beautiful in its flow and incomprehensible in its meaning, packed with schoolboyishly deliberate attempts to shock through the gamut of sexual taboos (paedophilia, coprophilia, incest, bestiality) and postmodernisms piled so densely on top of postmodernisms that you can’t help feeling that Pynchon was, at least in places, taking the piss. (Hell, the plot centres on magical erections, so…)
Did I enjoy it? For the most part, and in places I loved it. Did I understand it? Well, I think I get the overarching point, which is something.
But as much as I like “difficult” books and have enjoyed every Pynchon I’ve read so far, (including the much-maligned Vineland), there’s something to be said for plots that can be followed. Mason & Dixon is similarly episodic, yet works as a narrative as well as a concept. Against the Day has significant flaws, but its multiple narratives are at least internally coherent and enjoyable to read. V becomes hard to follow in places, like reading while drunk, but always pulls you back.
Gravity’s Rainbow, meanwhile, works as a concept, but I’m not convinced that it does as a novel. It’s simply too sprawling, too vague, too unconcerned with helping the reader to keep up, or in delivering a satisfactory resolution. Which is, of course, part of the point that the book’s trying to get across about the meaning and nature of life, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
by James Clive-Matthews | 31 Dec, 2014 | Narratives & Meanings
5/5 stars
As ever with Pynchon, I loved it even while I struggled to get into it at first. Episodic, confusing, beautifully written, dreamlike, near impossible to follow, and definitely deserving to be re-read – it was only with a passage on page 610(!) that my inability to keep track of what it all meant started to make sense, as Mason speculates to his companion about the purpose and meaning of the titular duo’s lengthy mission into the American wilderness:
“None of this may be about either you or me. Our story may lie rather behind and ahead… never here in the Present, upon the Line, whose true Drama belongs to others… and when ’tis all done I shall only return to Shapperton, no wiser, and someday wake up and not know if any of this’ happen’d,’ or if I merely dream’d it, even this very moment, Dixon, which I know is real…”
Dixon’s response to this may be that of many when approaching this book: “Oh dear…?”
It certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, but a postmodern 18th century pastiche was never going to be. Hell, if the first sentence hasn’t put you off, you’ve got no excuse not to make it to the end, I say. At which point you’ll want to return to try it again, to try and understand the bits you missed the first time around:
“Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr’d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,-the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking’d-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel’d Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax’d and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.”
Glorious stuff.
by James Clive-Matthews | 28 Sep, 2014 | Narratives & Meanings
3/5 stars
Interesting, but frustratingly messy in places.
Bookended by the author’s personal experiences hunting for Genghis’ final resting place, and explaining the persecutions the Mongol people have experienced in the last century or so along the way, the majority of the book is a fairly straight narrative of the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire, constantly at pains to point out that they weren’t a bunch of bloodthirsty barbarians.
As someone new to the subject, this was all interesting enough – but a) I was reading this to understand the post-Mongol impact on the world (as promised by the title) , not how they achieved power, and b) there was consistently far more emphasis on the eastern branch of the Empire in China than on the Middle Eastern, Indian or Russian wings.
This seems especially odd considering that:
- the author emphasises how much of the Mongols’ innovations in China were deliberately suppressed after their fall,
- the Indian branch lasted the longest,
- the Middle Eastern angle could have surely been tied in to the instabilities and rivalries in that region that have lasted to the present day, and
- that he starts and ends with personal accounts of Soviet repression of Mongol memory, implying that there remains some deep Russian connection.
None of these things are elaborated on at any length, which is a real shame, as the author is mostly good on his supposedly central thesis of how important the Mongols were on the creation of the modern world (although he is decidedly shaky on specifics in some areas).
I ended up left with the distinct impression that the book the author wanted to write was about the life, culture and history of the Mongol people, but his publisher insisted on something a bit more sellable, so tacked on the modern world pitch. The two parts may well have worked better as separate books.
by James Clive-Matthews | 9 Sep, 2014 | Systems & Technology
Here it is. The new, multiplatform MSN.
Engadget has a solid overview piece.
The content proposition is fairly straightforward – a customisable mix of useful tools and the best content from many of the world’s biggest publishing brands across a bunch of key topic areas or verticals, curated by teams of in-market editors.
The aim on a technical level is actually the most interesting part of it – we’ve been developing a cloud-hosted CMS that enables single-publish across all devices and platforms, for both web and apps, running across 55 markets in 27 languages, with a coherent look and feel no matter your screen size or operating system. That’s properly ambitious.
Most of my input has been procedural (improving multimarket and multiplatform publishing processes) and hidden in the back end (I was part of the CMS superuser group that’s been working on back-end UX and workflow). I’ve not had as much involvement in the front-end design, architecture, or overall content strategy as I’d like, but still – a most definite improvement on one of the web’s longest-running major publishers (20 years old this year, and still doing a good 22 billion pageviews every month).
by James Clive-Matthews | 6 Sep, 2014 | Marginalia
This is exactly why I always try to muscle in on the design process:
“what are the ethics of platform design? …When designers create a… news app, they aren’t just designing software. They are creating a platform that participates in constructing an *idea* of news.”
by James Clive-Matthews | 6 Sep, 2014 | Systems & Technology
The filtered feeds of Facebook (and LinkedIn) are the things I dislike most about them, the unfiltered most recent first approach of Twitter what I love about it, so this possibility that Twitter’s going down the algorithmic-filter route worries me – and not just because of recent concerns voiced over how algorithms can affect net neutrality and news reporting.
I very much hope Twitter at least retains the option of turning on the firehose, though I fully get the need to tame the chaos with some kind of algo or filter to pull in new users. Not everyone can get to grips with lists and Tweetdeck – too confusing for the newcomer.
Now don’t get me wrong: algorithmic filtering has its place. One of my favourite apps is Zite, and I was an early adoptor of StumbleUpon (well over a decade ago) – precisely because of their ability to get to know my interests and serve me up interesting content from sources I’d usually not discover by myself. For Facebook to offer up this kind of service, with its vast databases of its users’ Likes, makes perfect sense (though I’d still prefer a raw feed, or category feeds, so I can split off news about the world from news about my actual friends – a new baby or a wedding is not the same as a terrorist attack).
This is why I love Twitter – it is raw, unfiltered. And at 140 characters a pop, it’s (more or less) manageable. Especially if these old stats are still accurate, suggesting the majority of Twitter users only follow around 50 other accounts. If you end up following a few hundred, you’re already a power user, and likely know order them via lists. If you end up following a few thousand, then frankly you no longer care if you miss a few things.
Could Twitter be improved with a bit of algo? For sure. Why am I only ever shown three related accounts when I follow a new one? Why isn’t MagicRecs built in?
But the fact is we’ve already got this option on Twitter – it’s called the Discover tab. And I never use it, because it somehow manages to feel even more random than the raw feed. The problem isn’t a lack of algorithms, it’s a lack of intelligent algorithms, intelligently integrated.
by James Clive-Matthews | 4 Sep, 2014 | Marginalia
I loved the concept when I first heard about it, and love that it seems to be working. Proof of concept done – now it’s time to take that concept and expand. Preferably globally.
In short, it’s a cunning system that allows you to pay for individual articles from publications, thus avoiding the constant fustration of not being able to read that great piece from the likes of the FT, Times or Economist because it’s hiding behind a paywall.
If this sort of thing takes off, it could be a whole new business-model – making paywalls more viable, while allowing monetisable ways around them.
But there’s also an interesting quote from Blendle’s founder:
“People want to read articles or want to follow specific journalists but aren’t particularly interested in the newspaper that it comes from anymore.”
This is especially true in the age of social, where URL-shorteners are so endemic that half the time you have no idea which site you’ll end up on.
I’ve got used to reading content that’s been de-branded via a hefty RSS addiction. That’s been replaced in recent years with an addiction to aggregation apps like Zite, Flipboard and Feedly, where what matters is the content itself, not the packaging, or where it’s from.
If the content is good enough, it will stand on its own – it won’t need to hide behind the brand. In fact, the brand can sometimes be a disadvantage, because it leads to preconceptions that can skew the reader’s opinion before they’ve even started to read a piece. There are some publications I avoid simply because I assume that they have nothing to offer me, for reasons of politics, prejudices, or whatever – and I know I’m far from being alone in this.
Remove the publication’s branding and present me with their content as is, would my preconceptions be different? Of course. And if I like the content, this could win them a new long-term reader.
by James Clive-Matthews | 2 Sep, 2014 | Marginalia
Useful look at how detailed, adaptable, *tailored* performance data (and people who know how to analyse and explain it) is essential if you want to be successful in modern media. As so often, Buzzfeed seems to be ahead of the curve.
It never ceases to amaze how often online publishers get het up about the wrong metrics. Tools like Omniture are obscenely powerful, yet all we tend to use them for is to find PVs, UUs, occasionally time spent, and sometimes how particular headlines are performing. Used properly, web analytics can help us keep our sites in a state of constant evolution, adapting to the tiniest shifts in user behaviour through minor design/code tweaks.
This isn’t about becoming Keanu Reeves and learning how to read the Matrix – it’s just knowing how to use the tools that are available to us.
by James Clive-Matthews | 29 Aug, 2014 | Marginalia
*cue thousands of SEO experts desperately trying to work out what this means*
