Every once in a while, I will grab a book off the library shelf at random. I will not recognize the title, and know nothing of the author. I do this to break out of ruts. I also like surprises. 

The latest volume consumed in this fashion Two Eerie Tales of Suspense by Paul
Torday. Admitedly, its selection was not completely random: I was actively looking for some eerie stories to augment my October reading. But the author was new to me: I knew nothing of nor had even heard of Paul Torday (or the record: a British writer who’d turned to writing rather late in life, found quick success, then sadly died of cancer at 67). 

What did I find? Well, while it’s true you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can learn a lot by how the publisher tries to market it. Here we have a dark cover, an illustration of a church steel and little graveyard, text alternating between pale beige and dark purple. Jacket description (that which is not obscured by the placement of the barcode) includes words “mysterious and sinister events”, “unexplained happenings”, “enigmatic”, “unique and compelling”. Words like “horror” or “supernatural” are carefully avoided, as is the insufferable cop-out “magic realism”. My diagnosis: a mainstream writer, realizing he’s got nothing to lose, tries his hand at genre writing. Nervous publishers try and reassure snobby mainstream audiences that it’s still worth reading. Possibly they’re hoping for crossover audience. 

Having finished the book (and Torday’s obituary), I’m convinced I wasn’t far off the mark. 

The two titular tales are “Breakfast at the Hotel Deja Vu” and “Theo”. The former is the most successful – it’s more complete, and more satisfying. Appropriately enough, I spent most of the story wondering where I’d read it before. There are shades of Dead in Venice, but only shades rather than real similarities. Possibly an episode of Twilight Zone. Whatever it was, the whole thing felt deeply familiar. Possibly the theme has just been dealt with time and again.  Seasoned genre readers will recognize fairly early what’s going on, and I do think they’re meant to – I don’t think the scenario’s meant to be a surprise. Rather, I think we’re meant to get caught up in the character’s journey and see the whole thing as symbolic of his inner struggles. 

Paul Torday

“Theo”, is a more conventional horror story, though I’m not sure the author would appreciate the appellation. It certainly feels like a horror story, not too different from any title in Mammoth Book of Horror anthologies. Not least because it shares their apparent allergy to denouement . Modern writers of supernatural really seem to really hate climax, preferring to end stories mid-stream. Where the old masters like Poe and Lovecraft liked   

to tell their readers things, Modern writers insist on telling us nothing. They don’t want us to feel shock or awe or surprise or even pleasure at having read a well-written story – they want us to scratch our heads and say “wtf?”. 

This is the Modernist curse, and “Theo” is not immune. I allowed myself to get pulled into the story of a reluctant vicar in an indifferent small town confronted with a potentially demonic phenomenon with a reasonable amount of curiosity an appreciation for the sympathetic an believable characters. But as the story continued and I noticed the page count, I had a sinking feeling that I knew exactly what was going to happen: absolutely nothing. Nothing would happen, nothing would be revealed, and I would have nothing to show for having read the story. 

As it turns out, it isn’t quite so bad as that, though I will say (without fear of spoilers) that Torday was apparently an adherent of the “show don’t tell” bullshit, with emphasis on the “don’t tell”. I suppose we’re meant to ponder and speculate what went down, but it’s hard to care enough to do so.  It’s disappointing because a great deal of time is spent establishing a recognizable world populated with believable and sympathetic people. It deserves a better narrative than the cop-out demanded by Modernism. 

I do wonder if Today had ever read The Green Man by Kingsley Amis, or anything by Ramsey Campbell, both of whom “Theo” somewhat reminded me of. I recommend reading them instead. Or maybe give “Deju Vu” a try. Maybe you’ll remember where you’d read it. 

Mikhail Sholokhov and the allure of fame. . .

 

Stalin’s Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival: The Life and Times of Mikail Sholokhov by Brian J Boeck.

 Mikhail Sholokhov's main claim to fame in the west was winning the 1965 Nobel Prize for literature. I don't know if this means anyone in the west actually reads him, but you can find his book(s) in libraries if you look hard enough. He is still mighty popular in Russia, and required reading in a lot of schools. 

I've not read much of his stuff, but his story interests me as much as his stories. I believe that the Portrait of the Artist Under Authoritarianism can teach a lot. So, I dove headlong into Stalin's Scribe by Brian J Boeck. 

Reading Stalin’ Scribe, one thinks of Mikhail Sholokhov with both pity and contempt. Contempt because by the end of his life he gave up any pretence of writing and gave himself over totally to the needs of the regime. Pity though as well, because in Boek’s telling at least, fate really left no other path open to him. Circumstances made the man. If circumstances had been different, so too would have been the man, less famous perhaps, but with his soul intact. There is tragedy here.

 

Sholokhov owes his legacy to a single he wrote early on in life: Quiet Flows the Don. He never wrote anything of consequence after it; most scholars (including Boeck) think it was plagiarized. Stalin though loved the book, and made Sholokhov the literary face of the Worker’s State. He was showered with money, roomy apartments, country dachas, access to exclusive restaurants and fine foreign liquor. On the basis of that book, Sholokhov enjoyed privilege and luxury for the rest of his life.

 

In the early days, he would try to use his influence for good: he got friends out of the Lubianka, and managed to shield his home-village (or was it his adapted home-village? I forget which) from the worst parts of collectivization. As he grew older though, he became shill for the regime, reliably denouncing dissidents on demand, and sucking up to the Party. He churned out sickeningly sychophantic poems and speeches for whoever happened to be at the top, first Stalin, then Khrushchev than Brezhnev. He feuded with Solzhenitsyn. Quiet Flows the Don would win him a Nobel Prize, but it seems pretty clear this was more of a political sop to the USSR, who’d been grumbling that only Russian dissidents like Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak got the prize.

 

Brian J. Boeck

The Soviet Union could be very generous to writers it found useful. Stalin fancied himself a literati, and paid close attention what was being written. His recommendation could mean a lifetime of luxury for a writer, or imprisonment and execution. Often a combination of all three. He liked Quiet Flows the Don, even if it did humanize the Cossacks more than any good Bolshevik book strictly should have done. His blessing freed Sholokhov from such petty concerns as making a living or staying artistically relevant. Sholokhov got to travel widely and live lavishly off the public purse. But it came at a price.

           

Scrutiny from Stalin tended to be a protracted death sentence. It meant every word and deed was closely watched and anything at all could be a pretext for one’s liquidation. If at first Sholokhov tried to use his influence for good, he did it knowing that with one false move he’d be finished. He walked a razor thin tight-wire, tying to please this most hard to please of masters, outmanoeuvre his rivals and give his enemies no excuse to take him down. He had to second guess every damn thing he said or wrote, all the time never really knowing what was expected of him. There wasn’t a minute of any day that couldn’t be disrupted by a visit from the secret police.

 

Kremlin intrigue was a game few players survived, and yet Sholokhov did. He outlived Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. But the pressure tore him apart inside. He became a raging alcoholic, at one point downing up to three bottles of cognac a day, and would frequently embarrass himself at Party conferences. During his international travels he would be under strict instructions to abstain, so as not to make an ass of himself and his country in front of the foreign press. Once he even missed an important appointment with Stalin by stopping at the bar along the way and never making it out. How he survived that one is a miracle Boek doesn’t get into.

 

Under the circumstances though, one can hardly blame him. It was a nerve shattering existence. If he rarely wrote anything during this time, one has to remember that writing the wrong thing in the USSR could get you killed. Why risk it?

 

Sholokhov stayed alive by learning how the game was played. He realized early on that his survival depended on the good favour of the elite. So when Stalin died, Sholokhov ingratiated himself with Khrushchev, and when Khrushchev died he ingratiated himself with Brezhnev. And when Brezhnev died, Sholokhov himself was just too old for anyone to take notice. He played the game, and he won. His prize was the only one that mattered: he survived. Many in Communist Russia did not.

 

Sholokhov was not a particularly admirable figure. He was not a Pasternak or a Solzhenitsyn. But he wasn’t a Gorky either. He did what he needed to do to survive. If we wish that he hadn’t quite so vigorously supported the powerful against the powerless, or abetted the oppressors against the oppressed, we may ask ourselves if we would have done any better in his situation.

Doctor Doctor and the Halloween Apocalypse: In Which the Author Damns with Faint Praise

 I've got to say something about the Doctor. 

The new era's the pits - we all know that, (except for a bunch of really hysterical Twitterati, who protest too much methinks). So let's not dwell on it. I'm tired of complaining - at this point in life, I'm resigned to the probability of this little franchise never again doing what I most want it to do or most want it to be. So let's just put our expectations aside, take disappointment for granted, and just accept it for what it's become - a rather mindless children's program - and we'll all be much happier. 

Having done that, I can say I rather enjoyed it. 

John Bishop as Dan

It was fun and it was funny. Most of the one-liners came off, the deadly menace felt
thoroughly menacing, and I liked the new companion Dan (John Bishop). I liked the cliffhanger, an am anxious to see how it turns out. I liked all the different story threads it established. I thought the pacing and the tone were fine. What was there to complain of? 

Well, I thought the Kavinista (my North American ears kept hearing "Cabinet Minister") were daft. I do not think that slapping the head of a household pet onto a humanoid body is a great way to invent alien species (and don't go throwing the Garm from Terminus at me because I thought he was daft too).  I thought species bonding, with the resultant 7 billion ships, was a silly idea. It struck me as hasty, self consciously quirky. I wish they'd give up that cutesy crap and give a moment's thought to what kind of alien species might actually evolve on other planets. But the show's not about speculation, is it? It's about explosions. And there were plenty of those. 

Species bonded doggies

There I go again. 

I liked the return of the Sontarans. They looked appropriately ugly and sounded appropriately blood-thirsty. They do need rescuing from Dax. (While we're on the topic of "Looking at the Positives", can I just say I rather liked what Chibnal did with the Cybermen. . .) 

You know who. 

They seem to be doing something rather unprecedented this time around, which is establish all the storylines up front, presumably with the intention of resolving them later. I think it's a great idea. It piqued my interest. It tickled my curiosity, which is the thing I want most from a Doctor Who episode. It is the thing which will probably ensure my returning next week. (Though, to be honest, grouchy as I get, I could never intentionally miss an episode of Doctor Who. I'm rather stuck with it.)

So, there's plenty to love. Let's celebrate that and not worry that's it's become irretrievably unintellectual. Intelligence doesn't bring ratings, so we can forget about that.

Funny. I had indented this to be a positive review.  Is being better than what came before a celebration of the present or an indictment of the past? I suppose I'm still bitter over that Timeless Child nonsense, and it will take a really big bouquet of flowers to make me feel better. A full fledged Sontaran invasion might help. . .

Zappatistas. . .

 

So on the weekend I watched Zappa, the 2020 documentary by Alex Winter (whom you may remember as Bill S. Preston, Esq from the Wyld Stallions) . I wasn’t a huge fan: the first half seemed a bit dis-jointed for me, cribbing together footage from other documentaries, and interviews strung together in what struck me as a kind of haphazard fashion. I mean, it’s great to hear from  ______________, Ruth Underwood and Steve Vai, but they pop up without a whole lot of context – did they actually perform in the songs we just heard, or appear in the footage we just saw? An newcomer might be forgiven for missing who these people were or where they fit into things.

            That could go for most of the imagery and sounds from the first half of the film. What is all this? All these backstage antics, this decadent rock-pig excess, this random stock-footage, these crazy sounds – what are we watching? What are we listening to? Where was this filmed and is this even Zappa’s music? The intention seems to be creating a mood rather than informing an audience. And, in the spirit of the Lemmy[i] film, the focus is definitely the man rather than the music: at no point is a piece identified and allowed to run for more than a few seconds. From a crass commercial perspective, this is understandable - audiences prefer character to plot, as do judges at prestigious film festivals. They did the same thing with Last Days Here about Pentagram’s Bobby Liebling, and Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Leave the music out (especially if it’s niche music), concentrate on the personalities, and then maybe people who don’t like the music might still like the documentary. On one level it makes sense, but it does seem kind of perverse when the subjects are people who dedicated their lives to music. Doubly so with Zappa, as single-minded a musician as ever there was.

            I suppose it’s a matter of personal taste. As documentaries go, I preferred the Classic Albums installment for Over-Nite Sensation, which covered a lot of the same ground, but was firmly focussed on music. [ii]

              This could also be because that era and that line-up remain by far my favourite of the Zappa oeuvre. For my money, One Size Fits All is the cream of the crop, the jewel in the crown. It’s here where all the elements really gel, the absurdist humour, the subversive politics, the experimentation, and most all, the brilliant musicianship. Like a Swiss clock, filled with innumerable, interdependent bits, it all just fits. Every moment is fascinating, leading irresistibly to the next one, and over all too soon. Like a really good movie you just can’t tear your eyes away from.

            The legendary early period, really doesn’t do it for me. The early Mothers were indeed subversive, unpredictable, experimental, shocking etc, insert what adjective you will. But I can’t listen to much of it with any amount of pleasure. A lot of it feels like a prank rather than any coherent musical statement. I can’t help feeling we’re not really meant to enjoy it; after all, we are all the targets of the satire. 

        “Go home and check yourself. You think we’re singin’ about someone else.”  

            Yes indeed: look yourself in the mirror and question everything. You are not apart or above society after all. An important message, an important reminder, no question. But at the end of the day, it’s well-crafted songs and music one wants to hear.

            For all of Zappa’s silliness, there was unshakable sincerity at his core. This mostly came out in the instrumentals. “Watermelon”’s just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. And I defy anyone to miss the serious intent of “Strictly Genteel”, his long evolving classical piece.

            Some did of course. Hipster godfather Robert Christgau proved once again his uncanny ability to Absolutely Wrong about Absolutely Everything when he wrote that Zappa’s songs were “as hard to play as they easy to forget”. He must have had amnesia or dementia or both, for, love it or hate it, no one with a fully functional frontal lobe can forget a Zappa tune.  

            It's the music that made the man, more so than most when it came to Zappa. And yet, kinda like Lemmy, folks want to hear about the lifestyle. If it keeps the spotlight on the man, then this may yet be a necessary evil. 

           

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[i] On a semi-related note, we learn here that Zappa did very nearly give his fist child the same name as a certain English Rock-band emerging at the time, who would begin to make waves right around the time of this child’s adolescence. Moon-Unit dodged a bullet.

[ii] Not to be confused with the aforementioned English Rock band’s album of the same name. Ah, the unintentional connections continue. . .