Amis a miss

Recently I saw Roman Polanski's excellent film of The Ghost - the excellent novel of Robert Harris.
The protagonist is a hack writer, and in the establishing scenes, he is asked to 'just have a look' at a manuscript he would rather not, especially as he flicks swiftly to the final page to register with horror that it is 'page 624'.

This came to mind as I slammed shut the 470 pages of The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis.
Amis is, apparently, 'the finest English fiction-writer of his generation', but I suspect that quote really means 'of all the English writers born in 1948' - which must be no accolade at all. I have sought this novel merely because a character in it is a renamed Christopher Hitchens whose memoir Hitch 22 I have just read twice and simply wallowed in every phrase, every clause, every quote.

Any book-cover quotes must be read with caution. On the Amis cover, Jonathan Rabin of The Observer raves - 'first rate, inventive, shocking' (Jonno must not have read any Elmore Leonard, poor thing) and The New Statesman says of Amis "he is original". Pretty funny to read that after reading the author's Acknowledgements of quoting throughout his novel: Ted Hughes, Eric Hobsbawm, Franz Kafka, Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow, William Blake, William Shakespeare, (I may have left one or two quotees out of my list, due to my bored state) but Jane Austen is quoted so extensively that she deserves a cover credit.

Amis refers obliquely to 'Cielo Drive' and at least credits his reader with that level of cultural frame of reference, which reference brings me back to the film of 'The Ghost', titled The Ghost Writer in case the audience is too dumb to think.
Do pay attention, when you see it, as you must, to the nerdy lumpenfrau receptionist in the Norman Batesian motel, as she is played by Morgane Polanski.
The other joke in the very bleak film is the line by Our Writer to the marvellous Pierce Brosnan playing an energetic ex-PM : " oh I know a writer on The Guardian who works out".

Christopher Hitchens writes frequently in Hitch 22 of his love for Amis, so MA must be OK on a personal level, but I wouldn't give any of his novels as a gift.
A bit silly of this Nobody from Nowhere criticising an apparently Great Novelist, but I am encouraged by my UK blogpal Prof. Norm Geras, who is brave enough to similarly ask 'why oh why do people want to read Anita Brookner stories?'.

I love Norm, and I met Pants at his place. She gave me the Hitchens book so I love her too.

(For those of you who read 'Cielo Drive' and could not immediately understand, it is the address where Mr. Polanski's bride, and his unborn son Paul Polanski, were viciously stabbed to death by lunatics allowed to roam free.)

Virtually de luxe re 24-8-48

Welcome friends - this is a fabulous Virgo blogger party and

we are drinking the Dom Perignon -

and it won't run out

and this is our venue - a garden restaurant at cocktail time. Virgoan Food Nazi approves of our other divine treats -

The one and only elegant professor of melody and rhyme, Mr Randy Newman

is blessing us with a recital of his music -

I Love L.A.,

Mama Told Me Not To Come,

Rednecks,

Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear, culminating in the irresistible

'You Can Leave Your Hat On', and we are singing and dancing and laughing.

When Mr Newman leaves, we console ourselves with karaoke requested by Virgoan Miss Boynton. Plenty of Torch Songs and some Cole Porter too - What a swelegant elegant party this is, and after our virtual good time,
here is your Thank-you-for-coming lolly-bag.

On the road

Leaving ...

I will miss the chickens.

I will miss the kangaroos.

I will not miss the creeps who logged away the kangaroo dormitory, and hope they go bankrupt for gouging the earth and spewing diesel fumes 12 hours every day.

I will miss these calves

that I meet every morning at the mailbox.

(poor things live 12 freezing weeks before slaughter so some dolt can get bowel cancer having a 'Parma & Pot $12' at the pub).

I will really miss seeing the sun the very moment the horizon meets it in the morning - it is magically different every time:

... and now I am in Ballarat the city built on gold, leaving slag heaps everywhere

 

Beatrice Kitty Von Harlot

 

Please go to this link Beatrice in Whiskas contest

and vote for the gorgeous Kitty of Baron Alexis Von Harlot blogger.
Initially I was misinformed about the voting close, and apparently we can all vote every day so get cracking she is at 232 on 8th August.

my own Midsomer Murder

This is Cairn Cottage, on Market Square, in Hanslope Buckinghamshire.

Hanslope is in The Domesday Book.

My ancestor was the cottage tenant in 1779, leasing it from the Lord of the Manor Edward Watts, who owned everything in Hanslope, except the two houses opposite this one, owned by my ancestor's brother - the local butcher.

The Hanslope church of St. James The Great has a huge spire and my lot William Law and Frances were married there in 1728,

their son Richard was married there in 1777 to another Frances and those two were the cottage tenants.

They had a daughter named Frances and her wild sons Elijah and Eli were swinging machinery smashers in the Aylesbury Swing Riots of 1830.

So Eli, my grandfather's grandfather got a free cruise to Tasmania for that one (his brother got 2 months in the local slammer).

After his pardon he came to Victoria, where his daughter married in 1859 and had my great grandmother named ... Frances.

(Clearly my ancestor's had a names issue. My other side had this guy Robert Lyon Milne b.1854 Adelaide, who had used several variations of it and is well-documented. I must discuss this with Bwca Brownie and Marshall Stacks.)

The Lord Of Hanslope Manor's grandson fared a lot worse than our above tenants - his was a mid-summer murder in 1912, walking home from church with his wife when he was murdered in front of her. Maybe C.I. Barnaby's grandfather investigated it.

The victim had the same name as his father and grandfather. You could do that when one's circle was only the immediate village and they all knew who was who; and this was a snip in the days before credit cards connected Debt to ID and made it more meaningful.

Here's a photo of my great-grandmother Frances with her husband William Brown and his brother George Brown.

They were all born in far western Victoria in the 1860's. Frances never set foot in a pub, and nobody ever mentioned the ex-con.