This one’s only for the fans. That’s not to say that Paulo Hewitt’s biography of Paul Weller is worthless. It isn’t. However, Hewitt is much enamoured with the singer-songwriter. A close friend for over quarter of a century (a friendship that ironically ended with the publication of this book), his depth of knowledge is unquestionable – as is his appreciation of the music. But the writing is spoilt by the presence of the author in the timeline. There’s too much of the sycophantic “me and Paul” stance in this biography, which made me understand just a little why Weller perhaps ditched this supposedly close friend.
No matter. He’s a strange man, and his odd character is one of the reasons why I warm to him so much. Growing ever-grumpy with age, now to almost Van Morrison proportions, Weller has always been weirdly inarticulate. He’s never come across too well in interviews, especially in the Style Council days where he attempted to experiment with humour. Hewitt attempts to drill into us the fact that he was having a great laugh, although my memories of the 80s Weller are uncomfortable. As are the interviews with his Council cohort Mick Talbot at the time, a bit part player strangely almost completely absent from this book. But Hewitt also exposes his mood swings, erratic choices in life and cruelty of character, which somehow works in his favour. An archetypal artistic temperament perhaps, but Paul Weller is certainly a great artist.
It all began for me in 1979/1980 where as an English schoolboy amongst millions of English schoolboys I discovered The Jam. Looking back, the popularity, artistic brilliance and sheer excitement of this band is possibly second to only The Beatles. Sure, other bands such as The Smiths were subsequently bigger in my life, but The Jam hit me at the right time. It also helped that there was a huge Mod contingent at my school in south London, helped also by the fact that Mick Talbot and his band The Merton Parkas were ex-pupils (some of our Mod contingent later starred in a Style Council video for heaven’s sake). Weller became a huge talking point, and although I wasn’t as big a fan as my friends in the Mod contingent (a friendship that sat uncomfortably with my closeness to the New Romantic contingent) I was kept awake at night by Weller’s creative cleverness, and the brilliant run of singles that included Eton Rifles, Going Underground, Start!, Absolute Beginners and the rest.
Paulo Hewitt dwells, as you might expect any Weller biographer to do, on the fact that Paul split The Jam in 1982. They were at the height of their success at this time and he was only 24 years old. He could have kept it going for another five years at least (this is probably a mean prediction; the ex-members of The Jam are now touring 26 years later with From the Jam and with some success). Crazy perhaps at the time, although it all makes a kind of perfect sense now. Through experimentation with different musical styles throughout the 80s to his mature solo career from the 90s onward he has, as Hewitt rightly points out, outlived all of his contemporaries. The elitist punk bands such as The Sex Pistols and The Clash, who looked down on him as he came from Woking and not within the square mile radius of The Kings Road, through to Elvis Costello, who he has rightly usurped as the long lived elder man of music.
Most telling in this portrait is who Weller’s fans are and who Weller, a difficult man on a good day, himself likes. Alongside his obvious influences such as The Beatles and The Kinks, he’s also a big Syd Barrett fan, and has recently expanded his horizons to include Nick Drake. He’s also embraced Acid House music, although Polydor records refused to release the final and very experimental Style Council album in the late 80s. But, at least within the music business, Weller’s admirers are select. Of his contribution to Band Aid in 1984 Hewitt reports that nobody chose to speak to him on the day of recording. And thinking of the self-congratulatory images of Bono, George Michael, Simon Le Bon and the rest I love him more for it. He’s had run-ins with the likes of Pete Townsend, and mysteriously refused to meet his idol Steve Marriott. The journalist Paul Morley, who can only enthuse about that square mile radius of The Kings Road and its enduring effect on Manchester, is not a fan.
But I am. Read this for interesting anecdotes and facts, but otherwise listen to the music. Start with Wild Wood, then flip back to The Jam stuff. His latest, 22 Dreams, is fantastic too. And if you’ve read this far it isn’t just boy’s music. Driving back from a conference today with a work colleague we listened to a few Weller songs and quietly enthused about the greatness of man. And this with a girl. From an all-boy, semi-Mod school this meant a lot to me.
It wouldn’t be right to say that I fully understood The Raw Shark Texts. And it would be wrong to pretend that it’s an outstanding piece of work. Steven Hall’s novel begged me just a little too much to be loved for its wackiness. But I will hand it to him for writing a very refreshing piece of fiction, and one where greatness does on occasion shine through very brightly.
Eric Sanderson suffers from a rare form of memory loss, leaving gaping holes in his timeline. Eric Sanderson is haunted by a previous Eric Sanderson, a man who teases Eric (our Eric) with glimpses of the past. Letters arrive, featuring instructions and code. Snatches of journal entries (from the old Eric) tell us that he is bereaved by the death of his former lover in a scuba diving accident. The new Eric stumbles on, meeting and falling for an enigmatic young girl called Scout and a cat called Ian. There’s a mad professor with Einstein hair, a meme fish called a Ludovician and an interesting homage to Jaws.
Steven Hall is a talented writer, although ever looking to impress. Infuriatingly so. This novel veers too often into absurdity. The author Mark Haddon described it as being similar to The Matrix. I would describe it as being closer to the films written by Charlie Kaufman that include Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Interestingly, it is easier to compare The Raw Shark Texts to cinema than it is to literature. But unlike most films, that wrap up in under two hours, this novel is far too long. It’s worth spending time on if you have the patience to; I found the ending quietly moving, although largely I was disappointed.
Dare I say it, a weird kettle of fish.
Devil May Care is a new James Bond novel written by Sebastian Faulks to mark the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth. Where many authors might take the opportunity to apply a modern makeover to 007 this is very much Faulks writing in the style of Ian Fleming. He is ever careful to avoid slipping into parody, and reading the opening chapters confirms that Faulks has done his homework on Bond’s history. He’s also a wise choice for the job, his diverse back catalogue including such stunningly different novels as Birdsong, On Green Dolphin Street and Engleby prove he’s keen to turn his hand to most things. And we can now tick spy fiction off as another of his successes.
Like the Fleming back catalogue, Devil May Care isn’t great literature but it’s a great spy novel. Faulks effortlessly recreates the 1960s to follow where the original series ended. The Cold War comes to life, and the technology of the day charmingly shines through (agents having to make landline calls, and double agents cunningly pulling telephone wires out of their sockets). There’s also all the ingredients of classic Bond – the beautiful girl, crazed Oriental assassin, super villain with a grudge and a deformity. Add to that the wining and dining, a dozen trademark Bond hot showers, and a classic train-bound fight to the death. And throughout Faulks manages to plant the image of Sean Connery in my mind. At least his physique and looks; the action scenes reminded me of the recent authentic version of Bond as portrayed by Daniel Craig.
Tired, broken and in need of a drying out period James Bond is enjoying a well earned sabbatical. But as with most Bond novels, holidays are cut short by a call from M. Returning to London Bond notices the young, long-haired and carefree on the streets and smells the tell-tale aroma of cannabis. It’s 1967, and drugs have a firm foothold in Devil May Care. Bond is on the trail of a criminal mastermind who is planning to maim England badly through drugs. The novel takes time, there’s long passages of dialogue and an excellent early stand-off in the form of a tennis match between Bond and his enemy before things pick up. Faulks sets the scene wonderfully. There’s also the international flavour you might expect. As well as London, the action shifts from Paris to Iran and Russia.
Published by Penguin, the end papers of the book add Devil May Care to the Bond canon that includes Fleming’s fourteen original books and, interestingly, Charlie Higson’s four young Bond novels. The Kingsley Amis Bond effort from the late sixties is not included, nor the various novels that appeared in the eighties and nineties. If Sebastian Faulks is the official heir to Fleming then it’s unclear if he’s willing to write any more novels. If he isn’t, then this is a shame. Devil May Care is highly enjoyable, and I fully expect the paperback blurb to include the cliché “enjoyable romp”. Add to that “Bond is back – at his best”.
When I was 20 I worked briefly as an assistant in a record shop. It was easily the worst job I’ve ever had; the oppressive concrete of Hammersmith Broadway, the rude, insistent, positively insane customers I had to face. And the odd types who work in record shops. And the sheer monotony of a job that somehow fails to meet the romanticism you first attach to it. So I was interested in reading Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost, the first novel of a writer who’d endured the same job as me and chosen to set her debut work in a huge, sprawling shopping centre.
What Was Lost reminded me a lot of Jonathan Coe; similar in writing style and similar in how a mystery spanning two decades lies at its heart (although it’s years since I’ve read it, I was reminded a lot of Coe’s House of Sleep). O’Flynn’s mystery surrounds the disappearance of a young girl who, we learn from the opening chapters, daydreams through her waking hours as a would-be detective. Essentially we are in Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time territory, but the novel begins to pick up speed when it jumps from 1984 to 2003. A long time after her mysterious disappearance we follow some of the shopping centre staff who are all, as you might expect, linked in some way to the girl.
Laura is our record shop assistant enduring the nightmare customers and staff, whose own brother also disappeared after being linked to the disappearance and questioned by the police. Kurt is a security guard, who sees a mysterious girl on the CCTV late a night, apparently lost in the empty, labyrinthine corridors. The novel manages to successfully combine humour with sadness; there are some very funny scenes surrounding Laura’s working days (her aggressive, burnt out colleague in the easy listening section is quite hilarious), and there are also many moments of dashed hopes and regret in Kurt’s background story. But best of all What Was Lost offers a very subtle and eerie ghost story, and whilst the solution of the “whodunnit” is not particularly surprising, the explanation of the “whydunnit” is very well constructed. A fine debut.
Then we Came to the End by Joshua Ferris gave me one of the strangest reading experiences of recent years. My reaction to the book slid from liking it to hating it in only three stages.
The novel begins as a well written and amusing study of office life in Chicago. The style reminded me very much of Joseph Heller, especially his novel Something Happened, which many fans prefer to the more celebrated Catch 22. A sort of White Album vs Sgt Pepper debate. Anyway, Then we Came to the End starts promisingly and I liked it a lot, although there was the nagging doubt at the back of my mind that the book was far too Hellerish. So a word of advice to anyone who’s not a fan of Joseph Heller: don’t read this book.
The first section is quite lengthy and begins to grate because the story doesn’t really go anywhere; there’s no real story at all – simply a series of dryly observed views of office life overshadowed by the depression of the workers facing the onset on redundancy. There’s funny passages – very funny in places – and some excellent dialogue that captures the pettiness and absurdity of office life. Ever stolen somebody’s chair after they’ve left the job because it’s a far better chair than your own? You’ll be hesitating before doing it again after reading this novel.
Ferris does something interesting by changing gear for what I’m calling the second section. This is an althogether more sombre series of chapters following a single character – the office manager as she faces breast cancer. I found it an outstanding piece of writing that surprised me in its sadness and insight. Unfortunately once this section is over Ferris returns for act three and he appears to have lost interest in proceedings. The last 150 pages or so of the novel was one of the biggest struggles I’ve had with a book for a long time. I didn’t want to trawl through any more of the Hellerish style and Ferris appeared to have lost focus. The novel became more of a drag than getting up for work on a winter Monday morning.
So a curate’s egg; funny and incisive but a little too close to the style of a classic author, and really just too long. Where are editors when you need them? At half its length this would have been much better, possibly an outstanding debut novel, but it’s ultimately boring and repetetive, undoing all the good done in the early chapters. And very overrated.
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