I really wish that there was more Peter Altenberg in English: that collection (Archipelago-published) is very good
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 03:10 (seven years ago) link
Sueurs Froides by Boileau and Narcejac; the material Vertigo is based on. They also did the original novel of Les Diaboliques.
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 10:13 (seven years ago) link
Both those have been republished in english in the last couple of years, by Pushkin Press
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 13:02 (seven years ago) link
Just started Lanark.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 15:05 (seven years ago) link
Cool. Are you listening to Belle & Sebastian as you read it?
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 15:17 (seven years ago) link
Hahaha, no, but I could dig some out.
― emil.y, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 15:30 (seven years ago) link
Because I think I know someone who did just that.
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:03 (seven years ago) link
*raises hand*
Of course, this was during the Sinister days.
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:04 (seven years ago) link
Not that I was on Sinister or knew of its existence, but I must have sensed its presence across the Atlantic.
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:05 (seven years ago) link
What's the connection? I don't know b&s too well
― briscall stool chart (wins), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:07 (seven years ago) link
I started in on Lanark v skeptical and still think the second part drags a bit but the back half is so so great.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:08 (seven years ago) link
No connection other than being Scottish, as far as I know.
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:20 (seven years ago) link
I read Lanark in a malarone fug in a hut in Senegal. No Belle and Sebstian was consumed.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 17:23 (seven years ago) link
Lanark is way too weird to be compared with B&S. It also has one of my favourite book covers
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cf/49/cc/cf49cc215e3112125ba79a717e80cf42.jpg
― Well bissogled trotters (Michael B), Wednesday, 12 April 2017 18:19 (seven years ago) link
idk there is a shared repressed, artsy Scottish gloom in common
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 18:21 (seven years ago) link
lanark is more the second half of 'the red thread' imo
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 12 April 2017 21:59 (seven years ago) link
Shakey otm
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 13 April 2017 01:15 (seven years ago) link
Gray is a precursor of B&S as a voice of art school Glasgow, but by about 40 years - he started writing that book in the 1950s.
There was ultimately supposed to be a genuine connection as he was set to do some kind of illustration for them but I can't now find reference to it. Also a member of B&S played in the stage version of LANARK, this decade. There is a general parallel in their becoming West End icons and also, I think, agreeing about Scottish independence (as do Deacon Blue, Hue & Cry, et al).
The Real Glasgow sections of LANARK have some relevance to B&S or any other subsequent vision of Glasgow but I don't think the resemblance in tone is very close.
The SF / Fantasy / Gothic sections, I think there is still less connection.
Overall - of all the things Gray has done, I'm not sure that LANARK is the closest to B&S.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 06:51 (seven years ago) link
I always wanted to like the book a lot but found it actually very stodgy to read, except the Prologue (?) 3/4 of the way through which I thought the most dazzling section.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 06:53 (seven years ago) link
Actually the Gray work that IS closest to B&S is his Hillhead mural.
http://www.sadlergreen.com/_images/_versions/l/164.jpghttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-19612581
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 06:56 (seven years ago) link
I wanted to read Lanark because I thought it would be about a wonderful fantasy Scotland where Belle and Sebastian don't exist
― Bernie Lugg (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 13 April 2017 08:09 (seven years ago) link
I agree that Lanark is kinda stodgy. I loved the section with the mural, but the Kafka/sci-fi bit felt interminable.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 13 April 2017 08:13 (seven years ago) link
Ward Fowler: it is -- a Scotland prior to c.1981.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 09:01 (seven years ago) link
Thank you Pinefox, I was being a wee bit cheeky, as they say up here.
Actually, I have been trying to think of other Scottish performers who seem closer to A Gray than B&S, and the nearest person I could think of was Ivor Cutler.
― Bernie Lugg (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 13 April 2017 09:06 (seven years ago) link
I'm reading Darian Leader's Stealing the Mona Lisa, which is a kind of avuncular take on Lacanian views of art. It's taken a while to get going, and there's a LOT of passive/subjunctive mood waffle, but it's hitting it's stride and slowly pulling me in.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, 13 April 2017 09:11 (seven years ago) link
Xp Long Fin Killie?
Cutler without doubt! Very close.
But I think there is a tendency for a great swathe of 'Scottish alternative artists' to get rolled together, either by themselves or by others -- so eg: I am sure that B&S will have talked about Cutler (maybe even collaborated with him somewhere), and Edwin Morgan --so it all gets implicitly connected.
For that matter I'm sure that Deacon Blue (who were not so Alternative) repeated Gray's most famous slogan re 'the early days of a better nation' on a record sleeve.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 09:13 (seven years ago) link
Cutler and B&S both on this record.Will stop now and remind myself that this is ILB not ILM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colours_Are_Brighter
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 09:14 (seven years ago) link
Thanks for following up so diligently on my derail, the pinefox:) If you want to keep it ILB, you could talk about Gray contrasted with Muriel Spark- TS Glasgow vs. Edinburgh- although perhaps that is a too facile, classic New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure Section-style comparison.
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 13 April 2017 11:15 (seven years ago) link
James Redd -- the thing there is: I get how Spark is Edinburgh / Morningside ... but I don't really get how Gray is Glasgow in a directly contrasting way. The big contrast would surely be Spark vs Kelman (or Leonard or Torrington) - the really gritty working-class-tenement writers -- rather than Gray's tendency to fancy, whimsy, Gothic, history, etc.
(this has always been a general point for me - I get that Gray and Kelman and Leonard are pals and have similar politics -- but I don't see the literary, stylistic, generic link between Gray and the others)
In fact this would lead back to the B&S idea in that eg: Kelman = gritty Govan and Gray = whimsical Hillhead -- more the B&S world / era.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 12:33 (seven years ago) link
Or put another way: Gray, unlike Kelman or Leonard, is the great writer of the *Glasgow School of Art* - maybe you can draw a contrast with something in Spark, but it doesn't feel like a traditional Glasgow vs Edinburgh contrast. Maybe it's a more interesting contrast.
The Art School side is partly why Gray seems to link forward to B&S, perhaps via 'The Postcard Scene' et al.
The other B&S connection (so I am now confirming your original idea) is religion -- LANARK describes, very autobiographically as I recall (cf A LIFE IN PICTURES), a long period of painting a mural in a church, which is very Stuart Murdoch.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 12:36 (seven years ago) link
years ago i gave a copy of "the fall of kelvin walker" to my friend bill as a bday present (glasgow born and bred, was briefly in a band w/pat kane, who he has little time for)
bill said it was MUCH TOO PROTESTANT and he was unable finish it
― mark s, Thursday, 13 April 2017 12:38 (seven years ago) link
that is my helpful anecdotal contribution to this chat
The Art School connection also tends to make me connect Gray back to Mackintosh - but I don't know that Mackintosh was a writer.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 12:40 (seven years ago) link
The origin of Kelvin Walker, according to the pinefox:
https://flic.kr/p/8T1Aqy
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 12:42 (seven years ago) link
"I wanted to read Lanark because I thought it would be about a wonderful fantasy Scotland where Belle and Sebastian don't exist."
I read Lanark well before Belle and Sebastian did exist, which makes that sentence jar a bit.
Like Pinefox I wanted to like it but didn't much. Belle and Sebastian are even more completely not my thing, but for very unrelated reasons. Not that I know much about B&S, but I do own at least one barely played album. Before reading this thread it would never have occurred to me to connect the two.
― frankiemachine, Thursday, 13 April 2017 14:04 (seven years ago) link
everything scottish is the same
― mark s, Thursday, 13 April 2017 14:08 (seven years ago) link
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2015-02/23/8/enhanced/webdr08/enhanced-32054-1424697475-5.png
B&S are my thing.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 14:33 (seven years ago) link
It is true that as there are only 5.3 million people in Scotland, in a relatively small space, in theory they could be more the same than other things eg: the populations of China, Russia or the US.
But I doubt that Scottish people would accept that view.
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 14:35 (seven years ago) link
Mark is that your idea of "the B&S aesthetic" ?
― the pinefox, Thursday, 13 April 2017 14:36 (seven years ago) link
there is no aesthetic it can't illustrate
― mark s, Thursday, 13 April 2017 14:54 (seven years ago) link
http://cheapsurrealism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/kul.jpg
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 13 April 2017 15:42 (seven years ago) link
I have started reading Junkie by the noted non-Scottish author William Burroughs.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Thursday, 13 April 2017 16:31 (seven years ago) link
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 13 April 2017 17:22 (seven years ago) link
All this scottish chat makes me wish the once-great Canongate Classics series, full of great scottish lit, was still a going concern
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Friday, 14 April 2017 07:44 (seven years ago) link
― TS Hugo Largo vs. Al Factotum (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 14 April 2017 13:12 (seven years ago) link
Reading Giovanni's Room, which is beautiful and heartbreaking. I'd not read any Baldwin in a while, and I'd forgotten how mannered and 'European' his sensibility is - albeit a Europe refracted through Henry James: the exaggerated, almost sacred, sense of the minutiae of communication, the precision of each paragraph (despite the savagery and chaos of what is often being described), the elegance. And I'm totally conscious of my age as I read, and how young Baldwin was when he wrote it - at times, by dint of age alone, I feel like a seedy voyeur like Jacques or Guilliame.
― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Sunday, 16 April 2017 13:48 (seven years ago) link
was on a bit of a tiresome walk round a park with my brother and his wife, but passed a second hand bookshop along the way, all paperbacks one pound. found a collection of peter reading's first three books of poetry - diplopic, C, Ukulele Music. Sitting in a pub enjoying the caustic violence and wit set in a sort of deep pastoral (in itself bloody and sexual).
"kiddies" are "(sinister dwarfs, next issue's parricides)". skinheads throw 280 million year old fossilised desert at nesting kittiwakes - that desert in itself an unpleasant compression:
Arid hot desert stretched here in the earlyPermian Period - sand dune fossilsare pressed to a brownish bottom stratum.
arid hot desert - sand dune fossils - brownish bottom stratum
labouring trochees + guttural speech of birds - "'uk-uk-uk and a plaintive 'ee-e-eeh' - and teens - 'Gibbo, gerrofal getcher yaffuga'.
― Fizzles, Sunday, 16 April 2017 14:00 (seven years ago) link