On Mozart, Crab Cakes And Literary Snobs

I had that conversation again last week, the one that many crime / mystery readers and writers are familiar with when the topic turns to books and a certain kind of reader feels the need to assert his or her literary credentials. It included the phrase, “Oh, I don’t really read that sort of thing …” and contained a class of a sighing smirk between the ‘Oh’ and the ‘I’, and just the featheriest of light emphasis on the ‘I’, all of which was designed to promote the idea that said person was above all that robbery and murder and rape, but – in the interests of harmony – too polite to remind me of their innate superiority.
  I genuinely feel sorry for these people. I mean, it used to bug me. Now I just feel sorry for them.
  The reason why crystallised about forty minutes later, on the bus heading home. I’m on a bit of a classical music binge at the moment, and was listening to some Schubert on the iPhone, and it occurred to me that anyone who says they read only literary fiction – crime, romance, sci-fi or whatever being beneath them – is akin to someone saying they love music, but only listen to classical music.
  Now, I can understand why someone might say that. You could spend a whole lifetime listening to Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert and Chopin and Rachmaninov, et al. The music is fabulous – beautiful and awe-inspiring and heartbreaking and everything music should be.
  And yet, if you confined yourself only to classical composers, you’d miss out on The Stones and Dylan, The Beatles and Hank Williams and Dusty Springfield and Leonard Cohen and The Smiths and Antony and the Johnsons and Rollerskate Skinny and the Sex Pistols – well, you see where I’m going. And that’s without getting into soul, the blues, jazz, etc.
  Or what if someone was to say to you, “I love art, but only the impressionists. That Renaissance stuff is all a bit gaudy, isn’t it?” I mean, you’d be entitled to believe they simply didn’t know what they were talking about, wouldn’t you?
  And on it goes, in virtually any realm of the arts you want to choose. How could you call yourself a movie fan, say, if you confine yourself to a single genre?
  Ironically, anyone who tells you that they read only literary fiction is also conveying a subtext relating to their superior intelligence. That their sensibilities are so delicate and refined that only the finest of prose can tickle their fancy. The truth is a little more prosaic, and rooted in ignorance.
  The brain, that very fine organ, is a selfish bugger. And it’s in its best interests to make you as much of a moron as it can. That’s because the brain is designed to conserve energy at every opportunity in order to prolong its longevity – this is why humans are creatures of habit, slaves to routine and schedule. The brain hates it when we encounter new scenarios, thus forcing it to map new paths through the maze, get a whole heap of fresh synapses fusing. The brain much prefers it when a reader, say, sticks to a particular kind of book, a distinct kind of storytelling. And if the brain needs to persuade the reader that sticking to that kind of book means that he or she is a superior human being, well, the brain only needs to map out that particular path once.
  Personally, I’m of the opinion that life’s too short to read only one kind of book, or listen to only one kind of music, or eat one kind of food, or look at one kind of art. I’m a bit greedy that way – I want a taste of everything. I’ll be a long, long time dead, and I’d hate to be out there drifting in the vast, trackless wastes of eternity thinking, ‘Crap, I should’ve tried the crab cakes, just once.’

Welcome To Ireland, Ma’am

Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Ireland today, and naturally there’s more of a fuss being made of her visit than if she were the Queen of Sweden, say, or Swaziland. Eight hundred years of oppression, the Famine, the Black and Tans, Bobby Sands, yadda-yadda-yadda. I know that some handful of headbangers are apoplectic about the fact that the Republic of Ireland is welcoming the Queen of England to our country, and I also know that there are people who are fairly a-quiver with excitement at the prospect. Most people, as far as I can make out, are pretty blasé about it all - history is a fine thing, certainly, but it don’t boil no potatoes.
  It’ll be interesting to hear what the Queen has to say when she visits Croke Park, for sure, and there’s no doubting the historic importance of the optics of her visit, but really, very little will change. Ireland will go on treating Britain like some kind of older sibling, vaguely resentful of the bullying that went on years ago, a little envious perhaps of its self-confidence, all the while stealing its clothes and playing its games and supporting its teams - unless, of course, it’s England that looks like winning a World Cup - and tapping it up for jobs and the odd five billion now and again.
  As an Irishman, it should go without saying that if I could wave a magic wand, as Declan Kiberd said during the week, and erase the colonialism, the Famine, the Partition and the Troubles, I’d do it in a heartbeat. But I can’t. The world is the way it is, and what’s gone, to paraphrase the song, is gone and lost forever. The question is whether we want to live in the past or look to the future. Some people are happier wallowing in the mire of history, given the certainty of its prejudices; some people are happier looking forward. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m one of the latter.
  I’ve liked most English and / or British people I’ve met, and I love the culture - I support Liverpool FC; I love The Stones and The Beatles, The Smiths and Joy Division; I love the novels of David Peace, Lawrence Durrell, William Golding, John Fowles, Graham Greene, and many, many more. I grew up on a steady diet of Enid Blyton, Match of the Day and Top of the Pops. Any time I’ve visited Britain, I’ve been treated with the kind of courtesy and good manners that the Irish are supposed to be famous for. I’ve never been particularly interested in the monarchy, and I’m opposed in principle to the idea that people are born to rule, even in a titular sense; but that’s neither here nor there for the next few days.
  The Queen of England has come to visit the Republic of Ireland, and there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be treated with the same respect and courtesy she offered Michael Fagan, when she chatted with him for ten minutes when he dropped by her bedroom unannounced. Welcome to Ireland, Ma’am - I sincerely hope you enjoy your stay.

“The Beatles And The Stones / Sucked The Marrow Out Of Bone …”

The Grand Viz puttled off to the theatre on Monday night, as is his wont, to see Big Love by Charles Mee at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre. Big Love is based on Aeschylus’ (right) The Suppliants, plus fragments of the second and third part of a trilogy since long lost, which allowed Mee a large dollop of artistic licence. Anyhoo, the general gist is that 50 Greek brides are coerced into marrying their cousins, and agree a pact to murder all 50 husbands rather than submit to force. Racy stuff, no doubt, and something Quentin Tarantino is no doubt looking into as you read.
  But what caught the Grand Viz’s attention was the programme notes, in which Mee ventures a rather radical idea thusly:

‘There are those who take their Greek tragedy very seriously – so seriously that they believe if this trilogy [The Suppliants] of Aeschylus had survived, rather than his Oresteia, that the world today would be an entirely different place, with a foundation myth that would have made us much better off. The story of the Oresteia is that a dreadful act is committed and a cycle of revenge put in place, brothers murdering nephews, fathers murdering their children, children murdering their mother – until finally the goddess Athena comes down to earth and convenes a trial, renders a verdict, and a system of justice is established, and the cycle of revenge is ended.
  ‘The story of the trilogy of The Suppliants is that, after an immense bloodbath, Aphrodite appears, and absolves the homicidal 49 brides-to-be of their crime – suggesting that, as dreadful as their acts had been, no purpose was served by a cycle of revenge or even by a system of justice. Rather, the brides-to-be should be forgiven. The world should be governed not by the principle of ‘justice’ but by the principles of mercy, forgiveness, compassion and social love.’

    The world would be a better place if the consequence of murder and rape was compassion and forgiveness? To the Grand Viz’s way of thinking, this is – not to put too fine a point on it – balderdash. Or is the Grand Viz simply conditioned by 2,500 years of patriarchal programming? And here’s a thought – would Mee be so free and easy with his mercy and social love if the original play had been about fifty brides-to-be who slaughter their prospective husbands? And – lawksamussy! – what would happen to the crime-and-punishment narrative of crime fiction were notions such as justice and revenge to become obsolete?
  Personally, the Grand Viz tends to think that all that ’60s peace-‘n’-love and social justice is a very good idea, but only in theory and with the benefit of hindsight, too much dope and a soundtrack of The Beatles and The Stones. His emotional reaction to issues of crime and misdemeanours, on the other hand, harks back a couple of thousand years, predates Aeschylus, and can be gisted thusly: an eye for an eye.* The question then becomes what kind of society you want to live in, one governed by logic or emotion.
  A final question – is it possible to write a crime novel according to Charles Mee’s suggestion that, ‘The world should be governed not by the principle of ‘justice’ but by the principles of mercy, forgiveness, compassion and social love’?
  Answers on the back of a used fifty in the usual box, please. The vid, by the way, is of the House of Love doing The Beatles and The Stones. Roll it there, Collette …

* It doesn’t make us all blind, by the way. It leaves us keeping an eye on one another.