Having been wrong about the Brexit vote, and then wrong about Trump, I went into last week’s election with a sense of optimism that I knew full well verged on the perverse. I’m now trying to sort out what I based that optimism on, so here are some disjointed thoughts. Continue reading
One of the interesting moments – I wouldn’t call it a highlight – of Wednesday’s debate was when Nuttall threw the “taking us back to the Seventies” canard at Corbyn and a large part of the audience responded with immediate vocal contempt. I don’t know if it was simply a recognition of that line as part of lazy and condescending scaremongering – see also “magic money tree” and Amber Rudd’s bizarre idea of what a game of Monopoly entails – or if it means the recent questioning and debunking of several myths of “the Seventies” are gaining traction, or if the audience was just young enough that the Seventies mean little to them, or if we’re at a point where the changes in geopolitical context since “the Seventies” are so glaring as to render such a reference to them absurd.
I’ve not properly been out in Soho for a while. So much of it is now being knocked down and replaced with offices and/or extortionately-priced apartments – sorry, “regenerated” – that it’s disorientating. The landmarks of my past decade here – “I’m in this pub; I’ll meet you outside so-and-so” – are vanishing. Even the handful of harmless off-licences and newsagents are closed up, shuttered and rotting. To add insult to injury, the block where Madame JoJos et al were is now scaffolded and shrinkwrapped with glossy pictures of what used to be there, the area’s legacy presented as a reason why you should patronise its upcoming unaffordable incarnation. “Here’s an appropriated snap of a legendary Soho character [who we evicted and are currently concreting over all trace of], please make a note to spend your money on this site soon.” Been coming for several years of course, but confronting it is still something.
(signed, an acutely self-aware has-been)
I wouldn’t say ‘mistake’ or even ‘tragedy’ (since that seems to imply an absence of responsibility), but this is excellent: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47
I can’t get over what – in all applicable senses – a dick move this sort of thing is. Elena Ferrante’s pseudonymity was harming no one, and anon/pseudonymity has historically been an acceptable and sometimes a necessary option for writers – especially for women. The Neapolitan novels have never been presented as strict autobiography. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of a pseudonymous male author whose identity has attracted so much intrusive interest edged with a certain sense of pique. The preoccupation with “unmasking” her seems to be tied up with the idea, the demand, that every aspect of a woman must be publicly accessible and available for scrutiny and evaluation. It seems as if her choice to be anonymous was a provocation, for which she’s being punished through public exposure. This as one example of the general overriding of a woman’s stated desires, the insistence that the way she wants to do things can’t be done and must be interrupted, breached, brought back around to the accepted path, is unsettling at the least.
Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible is my next book, co-written with Daniel Lukes and Larissa Wodtke, coming out in February next year from Repeater Books.
My bit looks at the politics and pop culture of 90s Britain, growing up in post-industrial Wales, class and gender and the rest of my usual stuff, and how the album fit or didn’t fit into that context.
(Obviously a cultural materialist analysis of the Manics’ least commercial album is the one thing the world needs right now.)
