Infotainment > THE (OTHER) BIG READ - Intellect

W O R D S
from left
THE BURNED CHILDREN OF AMERICA > Edited by Marco Cassini and Martina Testa, 2003
THE CROW ROAD > Iain Banks, 1992
MORE SCIENCE MAGIC > Kenneth M. Sweetey, 1952
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Infotainment > THE (OTHER) BIG READ
THE BURNED CHILDREN OF AMERICA • I’m cheating really, since I’m choosing this book purely on the strength of pages
283-292 but get yourself a copy, read those ten pages and I’m sure you’ll find it in yourself to forgive me, because although I’d love to have
chosen Of Mice and Men or Catcher In the Rye and I’d have enjoyed telling you why they’re so special, chances are you already know. And
while you might have learned a little about my literary preferences, I’d have lost the opportunity to tell you that the last ten pages of The
Burned Children of America, written by the prodigious Jonathan Safran Foer are probably ten of the best pages ever printed. It’s that fucking
good. The rest of this collection of new short fiction by young American writers is pretty patchy, there’s an obligatory stand-out piece
from Dave Eggers, Letters from Steven, a Dog, to Captains of Industry – a good-humoured concept piece that should fall flat on its face
but raises more than a giggle due to the delectable off-screen sub-plot – and the book’s opener, I Can Speak, by George Saunders is a
nightmarish comedy worth ten minutes of anyone’s time. Oh, and there’s a lengthy, mainly irrelevant, intro by Zadie Smith. But those ten
pages, those ten pages, make it all worthwhile.
Originally published in the New Yorker in 2002, A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease is about familial communication and its
failures, or more specifically about the author’s love for his father, who has suffered twenty-two heart attacks, the words that pass between
them and the words that should pass between them. Imagine if the should-haves and could- haves of conversation were given symbols and
could pepper a transcript like commas and full stops. Foer leads us gently through his theory of punctuation: _becomes a silence, na willed
silence, † a low point, Ja corroboration, –Q an ‘I love you’ and {}, words not spoken that should have been. It may sound a touch gimmicky,
but Foer’s humour is as delicate and as entertaining as ever and by the end of the story he leaves you aching with sadness for his
family, and most likely your own. Like all great literature it’s gently transformative, it bends your mind sweetly to its way of thinking and is
as likely to make you laugh out loud as it is to make you cry. Read it and weep…and smile. > Paul Cunliffe
THE CROW ROAD • As a writer, reading Iain Banks was a real shot in the arm. I first came across his work when I was fifteen, right
at the time when I was starting to wonder if all those horror and sci-fi books weren’t actually really shit, and whether they were not just
what I wanted to read, but what I wanted to write. Banks showed me you could write about real human dramas – about love, life and death,
about families and questions and God. I’d simply never realised it before. The Crow Road, from 1992, got a bad reaction from Banks’ fans,
though it ended up being his most successful to that date. Fans into the punky violence of his debut The Wasp Factory or the narrative
bending non-sci-fi of The Bridge didn’t like this warm, good-natured coming-of-age tale. I connected with it in a big way. I liked Prentice
– like me, he was young and horny and full of questions and tended to get drunk too easily – and I liked his big, eccentric Scottish family,
couldn’t help compare it to my big, eccentric family from Yorkshire and Derbyshire. I liked the way it jumped back to points in his family’s
history – beautiful little stories about his father, his uncle, his in-laws –which first seemed random, but was actually all part of the sinister,
slowly developing plot, wherein Prentice has to unravel the puzzle of how his uncle Rory disappeared nine years earlier...
The Crow Road (the title comes from an old Scottish slang: someone who’s died is ‘away the Crow Road’) can be enjoyed on many levels:
multi-generation drama, murder mystery, social commentary, lyrical micro-history of Scotland itself. And it can be enjoyed as all these
things at once. Very much a product of its time (Prentice listens to the Pixies and watches the Gulf War unfold on TV with disbelief), its
themes and issues resonate down to today (the Pixies are mooted to be reforming, while in Iraq...). You can read it cover-to-cover – at 500
pages, it’s a big read – or you can dip in, find your favourite story and read about how Prentice’s parents met as a tale in itself. It’s a marvellous
achievement, which Banks has not yet bettered. > Jake Webb
decode > january | february

DEADKIDSONGS • My favourite book was gonna be Christine by Stephen King which I read when I was 13 and from
that point on I’m sorry to say I read nearly every Stephen King novel I could get my hands on. However, I thought I’d decide on
a more contemporary book to show I’ve (arguably) grown up a bit ; Toby Litt's Deadkidsongs, which is coincidentally reminiscent
of Stephen Kings ' Stand By Me. Deadkidsongs is about four pre-pubescent boys growing up in the 70s in Devon. Driven
by their over-active imagination they form 'Gang', complete with mission statements, strict rules, top secret meeting places and
covert operations against a fictitious German army. At first this is harmless fun but after one of them dies everything takes a turn
for the worst and soon things get out of control. Litt captures the thoughts of young boys perfectly; gossiping, planning revenge,
backstabbing, bitching, the boy's utter hatred of their parents and the distance they feel from them which took me right back to
how I felt then. As an adult reader you are immediately excluded too, you laugh at their naivete and youthful stroppiness, yet
feel shocked at their behaviour and ideas. Scary, sad, dark and funny, in my opinion Toby Litts best work. > Gabs Stackpool
THE MAGUS • Actually my favourite book is The Lord of Rings, but that’s been, like, so ‘done’ recently (over, under
– you name it.) However, The Magus isn’t far behind in my all-time greatest reads list. It’s the kind of book that sucks
you in totally – I read its 616 pages in one sitting, staying up until 8 a.m. to do so (and on a school night too!) I felt
anger, relief, despair, and attraction with Nicholas the narrator as he is put through the reality wringer on a secret-filled
Greek island. The Magus outrages the reader through its treatment of both ourselves and the narrator – keeping us in
the dark and offering us a succession of cruel red herrings. For ages afterwards, I plotted Nicholas’s moral and physical
victory, alternative endings and plot spoilers – how I, had I been in Nicholas’s shoes, would have triumphed over my tormentors
and turned their world on its head. Hindsight is a beautiful thing. The Magus is both a Jungian nightmare and
a storyteller’s masterpiece; the result is rather like the aftermath of a horrific car crash – we are appalled but allow ourselves
to be sucked in nonetheless, and eventually we pull away with our appetites still unsated. > Theo Berry
MORE SCIENCE MAGIC • When I was a kid I used a twelve-volt power pack, crocodile clips and a length of
nichrome wire to set fire to my science teacher’s desk. I did this for a very good reason – I was bored. Setting fire to
things and conducting ‘experiments’ of my own seemed to make science a lot more fun and interesting,
Unlike schoolteachers, More Science Magic (first published in the early 50s) actually encourages this approach to science
in a good old-fashioned, (no fear of death by fire,) carefree way. In fact, if the national curriculum had included how
to use a cigarette to start a ‘chemical fire race’ or how to harness the atomic energy of a wristwatch, I’m certain that I
wouldn’t have even considered setting fire to my science teacher’s desk. This book even encourages kids to smell the
fumes from burning plastics in order to identify their type. It’s brilliant. Reading through the experiments, you become
aware that publishing something like this nowadays would end in a lawsuit with some stupid kid who wasn’t told that fire
could burn his face off, and as a result, it did. > Luke Livesey
BURNING IN WATER DROWNING IN FLAME • Favourite books resurface in my memory every time
I’m reminded of what made me love them at some point in my life. This book has stuck in my mind to the point where
I can open the familiar orange cover and be certain that my mood, however foul, will improve with the words inside.
When reading this poetry you are not able to look beyond the words as he gives them to you, he doesn’t write for an
audience and doesn’t care about who you, his reader is, or what you might think of or read into his work. Unlike the
majority of authors, Bukowski’s words are entirely honest – his hand only inking in what his eyes have seen and his mind
has thought – and inherently poetic. Really they are just scribbled notes, dashed off unblinkingly, but written by him,
the words are natural and powerful. More than anything, he fills you with the satisfaction of knowing that sometimes just
to get one’s thoughts down is enough. Only, don’t ever get the idea he’s a poet, you can see him at the racetrack any
day half drunk. > Andy Bull
Covers top, left to right
THE MAGUS > John Fowles
DEADKIDSONGS > Toby Litt, 2002
BURNING IN WATER DROWNING IN FLAME > Selected Poems of Charles Bukowski
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decode > number 11
GALLERY ONE
EXHIBITIONS
Eric
Gill
Engravings
An exhibition of engravings
by Eric Gill for illustrations,
pamphlets and bookplates.
Plus
John
Neilson
Letter carving
January 10th to
February 10th 2004
Black Swan Arts
2 Bridge Street
Frome
Somerset BA11 1BB
Tel: 01373 473980
Opening Times
Galleries, Craft Shop
and Studios
10am-5pm
Arts Café
9:30am-5pm
Harem Eric Gill