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 | 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 | 3 May, 2014 | Narratives & Meanings
Something tells me this headline was from a fair few years ago…
A few years ago, after I won the European Parliament Prize for Journalism for a post on my politics blog, I told an interviewer that I believed that the arrival of the web heralded a new golden age for journalism (see below, or click to listen).
This – despite all the challenges that the industry still faces – I still believe.
In the last few weeks we’ve seen the launch of FiveThirtyEight, Vox and The Upshot, all trying new things that wouldn’t have been possible pre-internet.
In the last year or so, we’ve seen the rise and rise of Quartz, News Corp buy the excellent Storyful, the Mirror Group launch the interesting – and so far seemingly successful – experiments UsvsTh3m and Ampp3d, and Buzzfeed continue to expand into the realm of the serious (as well as other languages), fuelled by their success in the silly.
And that’s not to mention the increasingly experimental news apps, from Circa to Yahoo News Digest, Reuters’ WiderImage and Zite, all of which are experimenting with the vast, mostly still untapped potential of the splicing of internet and media.
Snowfall – the future, or overblown?
Over the last few years I’ve had the pleasure of attending a number of News:Rewired conferences, hosted by my colleagues at MSN UK and organised by the fine folk at Journalism.co.uk.
At these and other events, be they blogger meetups or the small number of Hacks/Hackers events I’ve managed to attend, I’ve met or listened to too many interesting people with interesting ideas to list.
At the same time, there seems to be more interesting coverage of the world of media now than ever – especially of that intersection of media and technology that is the internet. And with this coverage comes more interesting discussion. (I’ve been deeply envious of all those at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia at the moment, and have been avidly following on Twitter.)
Recently I’ve been enjoying posting the occasional comment on LinkedIn about the media/online world in which I’ve been earning my living for the last decade and a half. But the discussions on LinkedIn can be limited by the forum itself – people are reluctant to speak freely on a platform that’s little more than a glorified CV repository.
Using my existing blog to talk about my fascination with the ongoing evolution of journalism doesn’t seem quite right – that’s got 11 years’ worth of posts about European politics, with only occasional digressions on the media and the web.
And so I’m starting up this blog to give myself more space to work out my own ideas on the future of news (and how to fund it), as well as the web and communication than in any expectation of interesting anyone else. But all contributions and discussions will be most welcome – be they here (once I’ve got comments set up, at least, or elsewhere.
Journalists following the dodo?: Interview with James Clive-Matthews by tuulitoivanen
