Keegan/Ashley: Whose psychological flaws?

Talk is cheap, as we all know, and I'm writing from London, among the southrons, so I defer to my honourable friends at nufc.com and true faith in terms of the smartest and most felt on-site reportage of today's hateful bloody shambles at Newcastle United. I'm not interested in what the national press have to say, unless they have more luck in getting either Keegan or Ashley/a crony of this on the line tonight. The Mail, though, says Keegan has been in heavy session with m'learned friends.

The nationals will give Keegan a good few digs, of course, some sharper than others. There's a certain crying-on-the-inside aspect to KK's personality that is like fresh meat to the ravening pack. But unlike a lot of NUFC fans I don't think there's a southron vendetta against the club: it's just the natural born schadenfreude of football fans, most of whom spend a lot of their time depressed over a lot of nonsense and need to get a laugh out of some other lot who appear worse off. And we do give 'em no end of material to work with.

Five words, but: 'Dennis Wise', 'dugout', 'next match.' No way. I hereby endorse any strategy of supporter-driven resistance to this skin-crawling prospect. If Ashley has the slightest understanding of that kind of broad-based sentiment, then he should get his effing jumbo-sized black-and-white shirt on and go explain his rationale over a pint to any fan he can find who doesn't feel like nutting him.

Xisco is a Geordie

Well, someone on the Barrack Road was listening to me because apparently they just put out an announcement, for Xisco and Gonzalez both. And I'll just say this for the Xisco lad right now - he doesn't need to get his bloody hair cut, and these days that's a blessed relief to see in a young player. Good proper short haircuts mean bags of goals, in my lengthy experience.

Late Transfer Window Drama: fans yawn, scratch heads, gloomily...

I was definitely cheerier this morning: I thought we had this guy Xisco from Deportivo. And there's a name to make headlines and t-shirts out of. But if we had him this morning, why did midnight pass without confirmation? Hell's teeth. And everyone thinks we have this Gonzalez on loan, but again, it's not official as of 00:15. Other names have vanished like breath off a razor-blade. Meanwhile texters report desperate Toon bids for defenders at Sheffield and Derby, both knocked back. It's not what it said in the brochure, no sir. But I see Antoine Sibierski's off to another club - good luck to him, he was the butt of great Mag frustration on Window day in January 2 or 3 years back. As they always say, it's the hope that kills you.

Poem for the Day: Briggflatts (Bunting)

Since he's been on my mind for the purpose of an essay I'm currently writing, perhaps I might set down a stave or so from his most famous work - this eminent Northumbrian, who refused that he was a Geordie since he was actually born in Scotswood...
"A mason times his mallet
to a lark’s twitter,
listening while the marble rests,
lays his rule
at a letter’s edge,
fingertips checking,
till the stone spells a name
naming none,
a man abolished.
Painful lark, labouring to rise!
The solemn mallet says:
In the grave’s slot
he lies. We rot."

Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0

I daresay I should take the bloody rough with the smooth and resolve to note down each of this season's league results, be they good or ill. (Though I skipped the Coventry game midweek just because it never helps to get lathered about any early Toon progress in the League Cup - it can't last.) Typical of Arsenal to rediscover their groove today but, again, that's the Toon for you, forever freely handing out good vibes to opposing teams and their fans - e.g. your ropiest striker who hasn't scored in two-dozen starts is nailed on for a brace against Newcastle, as is that hamstrung ex-NUFC player you have on your books, so the manager might as well get him off the bench. If mugs like that can do it, Robin Van Persie can do it in his sleep, which is kind of how he did it today. Next up, Hull at SJP. Wigan put 5 past them today. But come next Saturday will we have any strikers fit to start? Or is Nicky Butt expected to bang 'em in, on top of everything else?

Obama v McCain: somewhat more interesting...

However snarky by nature I may be, I'm still wont to use words like 'maverick' and 'outsider' when it comes to describing John McCain; so why should I have been surprised by his VP pick? I wasn't, not hugely, though I know of Governor Palin about as much as you do if you aren't from Alaska and don't work for McCain 08. But anyhow, the deed is now done, so let's get it on, the last 8 weeks of this interminable campaign are now morally obligated to be lively at least.

Ten Bad Dates quiz #3 @ Curzon Soho 16.09.08

Crusaders writLOUD/RADA Write-Up

At least for the time being there's an amusing little account online here of the reading I and three other writers gave at writLOUD a fortnight or so ago. My reading itself can still be listened to if you follow the link that is the writLOUD logo in the right hand margin below. And the photo herewith finds me (right) alongside writLOUD's James Vincent, who was MC/Q&A facilitator for the evening.

Nice review of Crusaders in the Irish Tribune by Tom Widger

I'm pleased to have featured in the Tribune's paperbacks round-up of last Sunday 24th, possibly the first mention the book's really had over in Eire. Tom Widger describes Crusaders as 'a state-of-the-nation's-soul novel, Russian in tone, certainly nodding in the direction of Dostoyevsky, and Russian in bulk, 10 years in the making and highly rewarding.' Grand so, say I. On paper I could maybe be mistaken for a Russophile, perhaps, but then I've never been there, and these days I find myself deferring that long-promised trip to St Petersburg onto a very far-distant To Do list...
Then again, I suppose if someone made me an offer...

The Story and the Truth: a new blog

An interesting new blog can be found here courtesy of Dan Hartland and Anna French, promising to feature "novels, history, education, politics, football, fashion and travel". The first substantive post is a very smart one on Obama's 'issues', with heavy reference to David Cameron and the grounds of his starting-to-look-unassailable poll lead over Labour.
I couldn't agree more with TS&TT's general critique of the Democrats' sanctimonious and rather slack-jawed campaigns of recent vintage: 'Dedicated to a rationalism that expects voters to respond to debating rhetoric, they have ceded term after term to the Republicans, allowing their opponents to define the rules of the game.'
I should say that the blog also has some kind words for Crusaders in a sidebar books feature called 'Words We Like': to wit, "A state of the nation novel without the po-faced worthiness, this has everything - gangsters, Parliament, Anglicanism and council estate soap opera. A formidable - and wryly written - treat."
In all, one to watch, as they say.

James Milner: Divvint Gan, Man!

When you watch your team these days do you have moments (while they're losing, or otherwise performing substandardly) when you count on your hands those players on the park whom you consider Fit to Wear The Shirt? I've had that feeling a fair bit with NUFC over the last 10 years, barring a couple of Bobby Robson seasons where nearly all of the first-choice XI were either canny-gifted or triers at the very least. But part of the reason I cheered when Kevin Keegan returned to SJP back in February ('Third, actually, I came as a player...') was because here in the midst of a bit of a shower was a man who was Worthy and Proud to Wear the Shirt, even if he'd only be doing so figuratively, kicking every ball from the touchline.

James Milner hasn't got the greatest pair of shooting boots and his delivery from wide can be erratic, but at 22 he's hardly the finished article, and still he's absolutely the sort of player I want to see in black-and-white. But it looks like he's on his way to Martin O'Neill's Villa, so epitomising the very vexatious one-step-up two-steps-back culture of the Barrack Road.

Saw the BBC News today, oh boy...

On BBC2's Newsnight earlier Kirsty Wark succeeded in giving George Bush’s edgy press secretary Dana Perino a much stiffer and ruder talking-to than she handed out to the seasoned (male) charge d’affaire of the Russian Embassy in London. Manners and predispositions, I guess... As part of the same lead item Newsnight gobsmackingly gave airspace to some young Russian twerp of a journalist, in a shiny jacket and shinier t-shirt, who tried to sound a lot bigger than he looks in dismissing the views of the British government as Washington’s poodle, etc, yawn.
Miliband did well today. The Telegraph reports his saying that "the sight of Russian tanks in a neighbouring country on the 40th anniversary of the crushing of the Prague Spring has shown that the temptations of power politics remain." But check out the Telegraph readers’ posted comments (scroll down) if you want to get yourself massively dispirited: thin streaks of would-be testicular contempt for Miliband and ‘Bliar’-‘Nu’ Labour/pseudo-sophisticated hatred for the faltering US imperium/veiled admiration for far-flung Russian ‘toughness’.
Cameron has applauded Miliband for going to the Ukraine but tried to up the ante in talking to BBC News: "I think the only language a bully understands is when somebody stands up and says, 'Look, what you've done is wrong...' Prime ministerial, do you think? Sky News further report him as saying “Having Russia as member of the G8 at a time when her troops are still on the sovereign soil of another country I think is inappropriate.”
The 10 O’Clock BBC News decided to follow David Davis and 'shadow immigration minister' Damian Green in giving Neighbourhood Wardens a hard time, soberly repeating the Tory allegations of ‘cheap policing’, with a slight implication of the advancing horrors of the so-called surveillance state. The focus seemed entirely upon the punitive potential of wardens, not on their value to those local people who might know them as individuals, trust them and welcome them. Personally I have observed these Wardens to be of plenty good use to the deprived wards of Scotswood and Benwell in West Newcastle. (One Stewart Carse from Co Durham was the Warden the BBC hit upon to make his case in less than ten seconds.) Online I see the BBC reporting Damian Green to the effect that ‘the government should be freeing up regular police to tackle serious crime.’ Okay then, if you’re running on a law and order auction, you Tories, I look forward to your bids.

Having cast doubt on the government’s concern for our ailing urban 'communities', the 10 O’Clock News then offered some plaintive noises about people who invested in buy-to-rent barely-built second properties in Spain – now suffering from the catastrophe in the building trade which has followed the credit crunch as night follows day. For sure, I hope these punters get out of the hole they dug for themselves, just for their own sakes, but honestly, how many of us – in turning on the nightly national/world news at a time of geopolitical turmoil, only to hear about such essentially private misfortune – could give an effing toss?

Hang the DJ and YouTube's great video jukebox

I've just been looking through a finished copy of the previously mentioned music lists book Hang The DJ (Faber, ed. Angus Cargill), and it's been giving me great pleasure, along with the inevitable individual pang of regret for how much more I could have said were there the space, time, or interest on anybody's part in what very little music I listen to these days. Thankfully I have this blog...
On which note, here in no real order are ten tunes that I don't actually own on either vinyl, cassette, CD or MP3, but which I find myself looking at quite regularly on YouTube. Some are obvious gems, others are what connoisseurs might tactfully describe as guilty pleasures, whereas I am far too old for that sort of nonsense now:
Richard Thompson, Needle and Thread: In my mind I did buy his last album and yet I find no evidence about the house.
Stewart Copeland & Stan Ridgeway, Don't Box Me In: From the soundtrack of my favourite movie c. 1984, amazed I never bought it.
Sinead O’Connor, Jealous: before she took the veil, a characteristically Beautiful Love Song
Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street: where did he get it from? And where has he taken it to?
Wall of Voodoo, Mexican Radio: Shaky Stan Ridgway again (pictured) - and he should have been in pictures.
Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kiss Them For Me: I know she's a legend and that, but who knew she'd scrub up like so, and move so sinuously to boot?
Lou Gramm, Midnight Blue: If you want to feel like Bret Ellis's Patrick Bateman... REM used to cover this tune, in naked envy.
The Blue Nile, Tinseltown in the Rain: A fine singer who's got better and also sorted out his hair and shirts.
Black Uhuru, Great Train Robbery: the matchless power of Sly and Robbie.
Level 42, Something About You: to be viewed alongside its diptych 'Leaving Me Now' in which Mark King also plays a crying-on-the-inside clown.
I will play this game again...

Russia, and a fresh fight for the anti-imperialists

Having lured Georgia’s foolish President into a little war he couldn’t afford, Russia are now playing Stage II of this great game and recognising the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, with its plucky 70,000 populace. ‘If you hate us’, Russia says (in effect) to the UN, the US and EU, ‘we’re glad, and we don’t care. What are you going to do about it?’ Well, I hear Bush is sending Vice-President Cheney to the region, so that will doubtless raise the tone of the debate…
You will have seen/heard that Russia currently does have some really angry is-anyone-listening?-type Western apologists, who didn’t like the Kosovo war of 1999 and didn’t think Milosevic was unusually despicable, and do think that NATO sewed dragon’s teeth with that military action. An FT leader makes what I think is a (perhaps ‘the’) salient distinction: “The Abkhaz and Ossetian populations have not been threatened with anything remotely approaching “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” by the Georgians. If anything, the danger is in the other direction, with ethnic Georgians fleeing both regions to escape the Russians and the Russian-armed secessionists.”
As the FT suggests, this flawed and dishonest logic of Russia’s might yet bite her back or otherwise embarrass her, encoraging “the restive republics of the north Caucasus, such as Ingushetia and Dagestan, as well as Chechnya, to determine their own destiny.” As books by Bob Woodward and Alistair Campbell have shown us, it was over his attempted crushing of Chechnya that Putin really reached out to the Western powers, in search of common cause against what he called as an Islamic menace; then after 9/11 Putin shook his head, reckoned he’d told ‘em so, and decided to focus his efforts entirely on never having to seek common cause with anyone ever again. As Christopher Hitchens writes in Slate, “overt Russian imperialism is back, after a very short absence from the scene, and it is no more amiable or benign from the many toxic resentments it acquired during its period of decline and impotence and eclipse.” Any statesman who quite fancies being a hated pariah - would indeed wear such status like a crown - is a tough opponent to weather.

Made in Heaven (US 1987, dir. Alan Rudolph)

Following on from my lament of a few nights ago about having failed to squeeze an entry on Tourneur's Build My Gallows High into Ten Bad Dates, I've been reminded of a commensurate failure to build a spot in the book for Made In Heaven, one of the movies I really love from the mid-1980s: an affection possibly enhanced by its unavailability on DVD, which left me clinging to vague, fond memories - until, that is, I found some lovely clips on YouTube, such as this trailer...

At the final reckoning Alan Rudolph's career will probably come to be seen as one founded on the cultiest of cult movies (obviously, with Dorothy Parker and Gordon Liddy among his diverse interests, and Keith Carradine and Kris Kristofferson his favoured leading men.) And bittersweet romance has always been one of Rudolph's strongest suits. So Choose Me (1984) may end up getting counted as his masterpiece. Whereas Made in Heaven is one of those movies that most critics considered a would-be-commercial misfire, and the release version was chopped about without Rudolph's consent. But it's definitely the picture of his that I'd take to my Crusoe island.

It's a celestial Love Story that moves from funny/rueful to unashamedly cute/winsome - and then abruptly becomes a Loss Story, with terribly wrenching effect. The excellence of the narrative and its structure is the power of its metaphor.

Lovelorn Tim Hutton dies before his time saving some kids from drowning and goes to an oddball but charming Heaven, where God is Debra Winger in drag (we might indeed all find this to be the case one day...) In Heaven Hutton meets and falls in love with Kelly McGillis, and she with him. Natural justice, the viewer might say. But McGillis was 'made in heaven' and is there only to be gone from there, en route to earth: 'I'm going to be somebody's baby.' Hutton appeals to God/Winger, and is told that's his hard luck: such is life, and death. (You can watch this bit actually.)

But, the rules have one loophole - Hutton can be sent back after McGillis, reborn as a babe himself. The catch is that he won't know where in the world he's going, or anything of why he willed this to be: he'll just be an average Schmo like we all are, stumbling around in the dark. If he can find (or rather, run into) McGillis within 30 years, their fine feelings for one another will be restored like magic - 'love at first sight', you might say. If not, then love will never find either of them: the rest of their lives will be doomed to sadness, and unfulfillable ache.

Now then - did you spot the metaphor? The sense in which this obvious whimsy actually throws a sharply slanting, possibly painful light onto what is a crushingly familiar romantic preoccupation to a great many human beings? That's the wonder of this lovely movie. And YouTube preservation aside I hope it's reincarnated in a proper home format one day.

This is the ending, and if it seems especially to make no sense I believe that's because it was one of the passages most aggressively recut against Rudolph's wishes so as to sweeten an otherwise downbeat end. Still quite gorgeous, though. Contains for me the most fabulous focus-pull-plus-slight-pan in any movie. The score is Mark Isham and the final song is Neil Young's 'We Never Danced', again laid on thick as they did in the 1980s, but such is the way to High Emotional Content.

Good Crusaders review in today's Observer by Robert Collins

Another good notice for the Crusaders paperback today, I'm very happy to report. The Observer's Robert Collins describes Crusaders as "big, boisterous and brazenly old-fashioned", likens me to "a Balzac of the pre-Blair era" (a nice touch that I will take in the spirit doubtless intended) and ends by saying that "for sheer scope and rambunctiousness, it's irresistible." Those are terrifically generous sentiments.
As have others (passim), Collins does point out my "hijacking the antiquated prose of the Victorian social novel", and says that he finds this has "mixed results." And as previous, I've absolutely no quarrel with that view: one makes one's choices in this manner at the outset, and lives with 'em thereafter, and I respect the way Robert Collins has expressed his opinion of same.

Newcastle United 1 (Owen 71) Bolton Wanderers 0

Paul Newman in The Color of Money remarks that money won is twice as sweet as money earned. Why aye Paul, and 3 points stolen are twice as nice as 3 won at a stroll. 'Steal' sounds like how it went at St James's today, even if it's doubtful that Bolton oozed class and attacking verve, since Given had to save a Bolton penalty and Owen's winner (another header!) came in the final quarter. But they all count, lads and lasses... I look forward to assessing what was the balance of play when we get shown, last as usual I expect, on Match on the Day.

Crusaders nicely reviewed in today's Times by Christina Koning

I'm really gratifying by this paperback review of Crusaders in today's Times by Christina Koning: she refers to "Kelly's accomplished debut", says the book is "intensely gripping" and "particularly good on the internecine wrangles of the Labour Party." (Hope that point proves sufficiently alluring to Times readers...)
And the one or two reservations she expresses are all perfectly reasoned too. To note that Crusaders "reads, at times, like a piece of sociological analysis, rather than a work of fiction" is more than fair in relation to a novel of this length, with so many leisurely digressions from the main dramatic through-line. There seems to have been a critical consensus from the get-go that Crusaders has a good strong plot, especially for an allegedly 'literary novel' - the main issue for individual taste is whether that plot is too much swaddled within reams and reams of big-canvas socio-political realism etc. As usual, I just think these arguments are well worth having, and frankly I can see both sides.
Having named Christina Koning I should also cite the other reviewers who have done me a good turn with considerate reviews of the Crusaders paperback: James Smart in the Guardian, Sally Cousins in the Sunday Telegraph, and Nick Rennison in the Sunday Times (not online, alas).

Obama v McCain: increasingly less interesting...

When America goes to the polls for a President, Europe quite properly doesn't have any say in the matter (despite the fact that we Euros generally end up getting 'taxed' for America's choice in some way or other...): that's why the Guardian were so foolish in trying to influence the voters of Cook County back in 2004. It's possible, though, that some supposedly sophisticated Democrats think that having a few cheerleaders for their candidate across the Atlantic is a big deal; and that may be a dangerous delusion, just as Willie Whitelaw used to warn Margaret Thatcher that electorally it was no good her being adored and feted in Washington while the streets of London were boiling with Poll Tax rioters.

I'm still not sure what Barack Obama thought he was doing grandstanding in Berlin earlier this summer, and in my eyes he certainly extended his record of not having said anything interesting in his candidancy other than a few well-aimed shots at Mrs Clinton. On the whole the Euro tour looked to me like his version of the standard Democrat delusion, last displayed by that Boston brahmin John Kerry, who started off on the stump touting his admirable grasp of foreign languages (indeed of American-English, compared to the incumbent), then wound up being photographed out duck-hunting with buddies, while promising to 'fight and kill' the 'terrorists' overseas. Americans don't find these flip-flops too convincing on the whole.

Has Obama said anything useful lately about Russia, or Iran? I've only hearsay of what McCain's been saying, but the impression I have is that he says more of what a majority of swing-state American voters want to hear, and says it quicker and without palaver. So that's a problem for Obama right there. This is looking like a tight election, which I always imagined it would be, but the final calculus could be very boring and predictable indeed.

Oh, and now Obama has picked Joe Biden for VP. I really hope Biden's reputation in the US is based on a good deal more than the main reason why we know of him in the UK: a reason intimately related to the oratory skills of Neil Kinnock, a man who realised too late that, when in search of the highest political office, you can't afford to change your mind in public on a host of key issues and burning convictions.

Larn Yer'sel Geordie (Man): Volume XIII

Earlier tonight I got wrong off my 2½ year-old daughter after I – abruptly, because a bit irritated – called her ‘man’: to wit, ‘Aw pack it in, Cordi man.’

‘I’m not a man, Daddy’ is (roughly) how Cordelia replied to me, in her 2½ year-old way, a bit vexed and perplexed. And she was quite in the right. After all, what did I think I was doing passing down to my daughter a slovenly colloquial habit, liable to obscure for her the very concept of gender difference?
The simple answer is, of course, that it’s a Geordie thing: one to which I paid no real mind until about 6 years ago when Dick Clement’s and Ian LaFrenais’s Auf Weidersehen Pet came back on the BBC, and I persuaded My Darling Wife to watch it with me. In an early episode Neville (Kevin Whateley) was arguing with his wife Brenda (Julia Tobin) in their patented manner; and when, exasperated, he addressed her as ‘Brenda, man’, my Darling Wife seemed to find this one of the oddest and funniest things she’d heard all week. And, suddenly, I saw it in the same light, even though beforehand it had seemed to me as natural as rain.
Such stuff is on my mind because this week I happen to be writing about the north-east and its literary lineage, at the invitation of the excellent New Writing North. Consequently I’m thinking again about the linguistic habits and rich and varied dialects of the region – or what Alan Plater calls ‘the notoriously tricky accents of the north-east, where speech patterns change almost street by street.’
For a different part of the same purpose I’ve also been revisiting the north-east bits of coverage of Crusaders, including this very early interview for the Journal, which suffers from a few mis-transcribed errors of fact but was a great boon to get at the time, and got me off to a good start in trying to express my particular debt to “this fantastically rich and dynamic region that has nevertheless suffered economically, so it has this grandeur to it but also this background of problems…”

Ten Bad Dates with De Niro in Flak magazine

Very interesting and eloquently engaged response to the film list book just posted here by Matt Hanson for Flak. Really enters into the spirit of the enterprise. And I will have to tell Nev Pierce that he has a fan.
I don't know if I've had a single film-list-related thought since the book was completed 18 months ago, but maybe that just means it's time to get started again. Only this morning I found myself scouring YouTube for clips from Out of the Past a.k.a. Build My Gallows High (1947, dir. Jacques Tourneur)... And now I think of it, I can't believe nobody managed to smuggle a single mention of that film noir beauty into Ten Bad Dates.

Edinburgh Book Festival: Richard T Kelly & Nick Harkaway

I had a splendid time up in Edinburgh, thanks for asking. The Book Festival's set-up in Charlotte Square is really handsome and well-organised, the team first-rate, the hospitality lovely (streams of single malt...), and they draw great big crowds of curious book lovers.

I did my event with Nick Harkaway, author of The Gone-Away World, who is a top man and also blogs here. Festival director Catherine Lockerbie took the time to greet Nick and I before we went onstage, on a Saturday when a lot was going on for her, which was a touch of class. I was also pleased to make the acquaintance of Stuart Kelly, literary editor of Scotland on Sunday, who chairs various EIBF events and wrote very generously (not to say wittily) of Crusaders here.

On the Friday night I took in an LRB panel on The Novel wherein Andrew O'Hagan made some perfectly familiar and reasoned critical comments about our literary culture and its commercial obsessions, comments that were then reported Everywhere.

Archived Richard T Kelly film reviews for Sight & Sound

I first started reviewing movies for Sight & Sound magazine in the Autumn of 1998, just after my first book Alan Clarke was published. Actually I'd never much fancied the idea of reviewing: I just wanted to write a long piece about Warren Beatty's movie Bulworth which was due for release around then too. In order to do so at S&S (no other outlet would have me at that point) I had to first earn my spurs by synopsizing and commenting on a few other new releases that I was less keen on. So I did that, got to do my Bulworth piece (it was less than I hoped...), and carried on reviewing duties there for a further 9 years. As they say on CBBC's Me Too, where did the time go?
I see that some of those old reviews have been archived at the BFI site, and some of them still read ok. I include links as follows so you can decide for yourself. I speak of ones I did on the Brad Pitt version of The Iliad, Troy, Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday, Michael Winterbottom's In This World, Le Fils by the Dardenne brothers, and Like Father by Newcastle's Amber collective. Above all I'm glad I got to write about The Darkest Light by Simon Beaufoy and Bille Eltringham, which is an absolute treasure of a movie that ought to be far better known and celebrated.

Newcastle United: Full of Surprises

YouTube is a great platform for enthusiasms and I see many of my own reflected in this black-and-white compendium that was evidently put together after Sunday's massively unlikely point at Old Trafford. Keegan may be onto something if he signs more Argentines with hairdos akin to his own c.1978. That year, after all, was when a pretty good Argentina side won the World Cup.

Review of From A To X (Berger) in Financial Times

Yup, I filed this review of John Berger's new and Booker-longlisted novel for the Financial Times this weekend past. I had the pleasure of picking up a gratis copy of said FT on Saturday morning as I checked into the excellent Channings Hotel of Edinburgh. You have to respect an establishment for which the FT is the staple side-table giveaway. For some the FT will always be the paper that serves as the punchline to the immortal quip, 'What's pink and hard in the morning?' For others, me included, it is the only newsheet of this day and age where everything therein feels truly serious - even the bits that happen to be funny.

MP3 of Crusaders reading at Writloud 11.08.08

You can follow this link to hear me reading a selection of shortish bits from Crusaders at RADA this Monday night past. The MP3 starts with an explanatory preamble, but you can skip that if I hereby explain that what I read was 4 chunks from the 'back-story' of Stevie Coulson, concerning his bitter childhood and bullying stepfather, his discovery of 'the iron' that will make a behemoth of him, and the forging of his mettle on his first night as a professional doorman at a Gateshead disco-pub. There are 4 main characters in Crusaders but on the face of it if you had to say one was the protagonist, based upon word-count alone, it would likely be the Rev. John Gore. However an early review in the Tatler alerted me to a viewpoint held by a good few other readers subsequent, namely that in terms of the level of drama and the gravity of actions and consequences then Crusaders is really The Steve Coulson Story. So there you go. You write something and then a year later, if you're lucky, somebody tells you what you actually wrote.

September Esquire now on stands. Includes Adam Sandler.

Yes, that's James Corden on the cover of the new Esquire. Much other fine stuff within, de rigueur. My contribution is a review of You Don't Mess With The Zohan, in cinemas across the UK as of this Friday. Decide for yourself if that constitutes a correct use of available media space in which to comment on the state of the Seventh Art. But I am unashamedly a fan of Adam Sandler's, if not of all The Work in equal measure. Still, friends and acquaintances give me a lot of stick nonetheless. I don't think I can make the Case For Sandler any more extensively or straight-facedly than I have in this month's Esquire - my wife, in any event, has heard and watched enough, and that includes Mr Deeds and Reign Over Me. So this be my final word on the subject. For this year.

10 Bad Dates praised at PopMatters

This is a lovely US review of 10 Bad Dates With De Niro by Rodger Jacobs for PopMatters.com. The book is described as one "to obtain and keep on one’s nightstand or easy-to-reach shelves for years to come." Naturally I am also flattered to hear I've done anything 'masterfully', knowing all too well where my limitations lie. And I'm extra pleased that so many of the book's top-ranking contributors have had their work singled out, including Matt Thorne for his list of movie drunks, and in particular the selection of Sterling Hayden (shown here, through a glass darkly) as Roger Wade in Altman's The Long Goodbye - still the very model of a cult movie, one that rightly got several citations in the book, and a picture I could sit and watch straight through anytime.

Crusaders at Wigtown Festival 05.10.08

I'm in Edinburgh this weekend and looking forward to it greatly, but it's now online that come Sunday 5 October I will be back in Scotland, this time for the Wigtown Festival: an event set for 15:00 pm at County Buildings and costing£6.00. Programme details are here. I've heard fine things about Wigtown and look forward to the craic.

The Times extols Wigtown as "a small, friendly festival in Scotland’s official Book Town – which has about 20 bookshops... in rolling countryside by the sea, near salt marshes and Britain’s largest local RSPB bird reserve. It is also the only book festival with a local whisky distillery, Bladnoch." Trebles all round then.

Yes, Crusaders paperback review in the Sunday Times...

My publisher thoughtfully sent along the quotable bit from the Sunday Times, so I will make do with that, and leave the rest to fond imagination:
"Kelly succeeds in making the story of a troubled Anglican priest struggling with the problems of a sink estate the unlikely focus for an ambitious and absorbing state-of-the-nation novel."
That said, I do rather wonder who was the author of this short review... Perhaps a trip to the library after all, then.

My Breton Holiday, As Foreseen By Somebody Else

This lovely still of the beach at Val Andre taken from Flickr represents the composite dream/reverie version of how me and my family spent the last week... My Cybershot camera is broken at the moment, so how nice that the web allows one to whistle up instant holiday snaps, however unpeopled! But in fairness ours did involve a good deal of sand-castles and ice-creams, so the spirit is there.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, little did I know how bloody awful things were getting while I was filling those buckets with sand...

Crusaders paperback reviews in the Guardian, Telegraph... and Sunday Times?

I was on holiday in France all of last week but heard from one or two kind friends that the Sunday Times of August 3 wrote kindly of Crusaders in their paperback round-ups. It's not online so I'll have to go a-hunting in the library, most like... Today, though, I'm very pleased to see that the Guardian and the Sunday Telegraph (scroll down) have also printed positive Crusaders reviews. In one of those funny-peculiar bits of timing, the Saturday Telegraph ran a negative write-up yesterday, one that slightly suspiciously echoed one or two others from the past by complaining of one noun in particular, i.e. my attributing to Steve Coulson a feeling of 'tristesse'. But then you will see this sort of thing from a certain caste of English book reviewer: the certainty that proletarian characters in books (and life?) can't possibly have complex or profound emotions. Which is interesting stuff, in its own way...

This Is My Brain. But Which Is My Good Side?

The week before last I had the intriguing experience of calling on a neuroscientist at her Bloomsbury laboratory, and having my brain scanned by an fMRI machine, the results of which you may see herewith.
Yes, just like in the movies, I removed all metal about my person, including my wedding ring, lay on a gurney to which I was then strapped, and was then rolled slowly by remote control into a dark and confined tubular space that consumed me as far as my chest. Then, to muted sounds rather like the pulse of monotonous machine-made 'dance' music, my brain was laboriously imaged by magnetic resonance. It was a fairly peaceful 12-minute experience, as pensive a time as I've been allowed in recent months... Admittedly my thoughts turned once or twice to William Hurt as Eddie Jessup in the movie Altered States but it was all over much quicker, and I didn't regress to a primordial state.
So what is there to be said of my brain, relatively speaking? Hardly anything. I'm told it's a fairly normal boring brain, albeit with less space in the skull cavity than a man younger than I would have - apparently that's another aspect of ageing that can't be avoided, but can also prove useful in the event of serious head injury...
Still, all in all an interesting evening's pastime, free of charge.

David Miliband: Invitation to a Beheading?

The Times reports, "Mr Brown may garner some encouragement from a YouGov poll in today’s Daily Telegraph, which records that Labour support would decrease from 25 per cent under Mr Brown to 24 per cent under Mr Miliband. With Tony Blair back as leader, Labour would leap to 32 per cent against the Tories at 41 per cent. Mr Brown faces an acute dilemma about what to do with Mr Miliband in the reshuffle... [A] senior figure added, however, that the “nuclear option” of dismissing Mr Miliband had not been discounted."

None of these stats or mutterings make warm and fuzzy reading for Mr Miliband, though Mr Blair might feel a rush of the old self-sustaining pride in his blood. As for Mr Brown, it would be a risible thing to see if he now did to Miliband what Blair as PM always lacked the ruthlessness to inflict upon his grousing Chancellor.

Alex Cox interview on www.filminfocus.com

My write-up of the on-stage conversation event I did with Alex Cox at London's Barbican earlier this month is newly online at Film In Focus, where you can of course find a whole load of other great stuff about film and filmmakers past and present. The evocative photo of Senor Cox herewith is by el_rengozamora over on Flickr. I seem to have lost my old audiocassette of the Repo Man soundtrack and my aged and worn ex-rental VHS of the movie, so I think it's time for me to invest in a no-doubt eminently affordable DVD plus features...

David Cameron: His To Lose...

I hope to be writing about this at length in print quite soon, but after Glasgow East are we looking at a slow grind to the succession circa 2010, as we had after Blair won the Labour leadership in 1994 while Major and his lot fell apart? If so, what are the possible impediments? Depends where you're looking from. The estimable Denis MacShane MP (Labour, Rotherham) wrote in the Telegraph at the weekend, "David Cameron's problem is that nearly all his senior shadow ministers and aides come from a narrow elite of wealth with no worries about mortgages, pensions or education costs." But then how many of the Labour front bench these days can claim to be Of The People in this manner either? To discuss...

Richard T Kelly/Crusaders reading @ Writloud, 11.08.2008

Writloud is a monthly readings event in London showcasing both new writers from Birkbeck College’s Creative Writing courses, and established authors. (Writloud guest authors to date have included Jonathan Coe, Hari Kunzru, Russell Celyn Jones, Peter Hobbs, Benjamin Markovits, Kate Pullinger and Helen Simpson.)
Their next event they kindly bill as being with "guest writer Richard T. Kelly, author of the acclaimed debut novel Crusaders (Faber, 2008) and of four non-fiction books on film and film makers."
Time and place is Monday 11 August, 6.30-8.15 pm, RADA Foyer Bar, Malet Street, London WC1E 7JN. Admission is free of charge, but with a suggested donation to Oxfam of £3.50. To reserve places in advance, email writloud@aol.co.uk.

Review of Sashenka (Montefiore) in today's FT

In this weekend's edition of the Financial Times I've reviewed the new novel by the prize-winning historian who gave us Young Stalin and The Court of the Red Tsar. The narrative of Sashenka will come as no surprise to admirers of those histories, as its main action takes the reader back into the close circle of the Georgian Man of Steel (pictured here in stone.) And undoubtedly there is no end of dramatic material to be found in the Soviet archives: "What fascinates (Simon) Montefiore is the degenerate world of the tyrant’s court: fanaticism, self-interest, treachery, paranoia."

Hang the DJ: rock scholars start listing...

The Bookseller reports on a forthcoming title from Faber and Faber in which I'm pleased to declare an interest:

"Faber fiction editor Angus Cargill has drawn on his personal love of music to produce a book of music lists chosen by high-profile literary names. Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists (Faber, October) contains eclectic top 10 song choices from writers such as Jonathan Lethem, Hari Kunzru, Patrick McCabe and Michel Faber... Lethem contributes “10 Smutty Moments from Bob Dylan”, David Peace offers his “10 Favourite Japanese Bands”, and Cargill has also included his own list of “10 Songs of Heartache, Misery and Woe”, which include “Let Me Down Easy” by Betty Lavette and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. Cargill said: “We did a book last Christmas called Ten Bad Dates with De Niro [by Richard T Kelly] which was a film compilation and did nicely, so we had the idea of doing a musical equivalent.”

Great idea! I can't wait for the finished item. I contributed a list of my own to the book by request, a canon of the best 10 'power ballads', that dubious term narrowed by definition to mean tunes that reveal the sensitive side of otherwise extremely hard-rocking turn-up-to-11 artists. I won't waste time being coy on Who is my #1: see photo above. This brilliant image of the 'Orrible 'Oo is by Richard E. Aaron, and you can find it on his Flickr photostream.

Ten Bad Dates Film Quiz II: July 22, Curzon Soho

Crusaders in paperback / audio interview & readings online

I could be wrong, but I think the 'mass-market' B-format paperback edition of Crusaders is published into shops on July 31 2008. Forgive me if one more time I plough through the press cuttings. You only get to pitch your first novel once, or - in this case, allowing for the 'second-bite' principle of the mass-market edition - twice. So, what they said was:
‘A magnificent state-of-the-nation epic.’ Financial Times
‘A powerful, assured literary debut that will create loyal congregations of devoted followers.’ Independent on Sunday
'The most impressive, most important literary debut in yonks ... Dostoyevskian in scale and ambition… gets to the cantankerous heart of modern Britain.' Tatler
‘A terrific debut: an intelligent state-of-the-nation epic.’ Mail on Sunday
`An almost Tolstoyan seriousness of purpose... a weighty achievement in every sense.’ Guardian
'A refreshingly ambitious and strikingly accomplished first novel' Independent
‘In Crusaders, the north-east has found a new champion.’ New Statesman
‘A bold novel, one well worth quarrelling with.’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Its narrative force and the drive of its characters (even the bit parts), so sharply realised as to be utterly engrossing.’ Scotland on Sunday
‘A very good novel. And it is radical too.’ Glasgow Herald
‘A big, generous fiction debut that resurrects a whole tradition of British writing - the state-of-the-nation’s-morals set piece, more familiar from Victorian literature - and breathes new life into it... A novelist to watch.’ Sunday Times
‘Ambitious, truthful, perceptive and heart-breaking... It has sat well alongside The Brothers Karamazov on my bedside table... I admired this novel more than I can say for tackling some big, important, impossibly complex issues boldly and full-on... It is a book with a heart and a soul and courage and conviction and I commend it to you.’ Susan Hill
Crusaders' dedicated page on the Faber website is here. I'm also most grateful for the presence on the Faber site of some very extensive MP3 files related to Crusaders. Here is a long-ish interview between myself and George Miller about the writing and the themes and true-life context of the novel. And then there are four short-ish readings from the novel, by myself. Here is a bit from the early chapter describing Reverend Gore's return to Newcastle by train in September 1996. Here is a bit from one of the 'flashback' chapters: 'Big Steve' Coulson, in the summer of 1988, struggling with unplanned parenthood and a new threat to his authority as Newcastle's number-one doorman and tough nut. Here is an extract from Gore's first fractious audience with Dr Martin Pallister MP, at Pallister's flashy Newcastle office. And here is something from one of the many lovers' spats between Gore and Lindy Clark.

New Sight & Sound on sale. Includes Sean Penn.

As discussed previously, Sean Penn's account of his jury presidency at Cannes back in May, "as told to" me, appears in the new Sight & Sound now at newsagents near you. 'President Alpha Dog' is the headline they sportingly plumped for.
The expression 'alpha dog' is one I first heard from Penn's lips, applied to the redoubtable director Bob Rafelson, who didn't work in pictures for a few years after an altercation of some sort on the set of Brubaker. Nick Cassavetes, son of John, with whom Sean worked on She's So Lovely, went on to make a picture called Alpha Dog, released in 2006. (In my brief experience of him Cassavetes too would qualify for the Alpha Dog label, as would a lot of the guys who work with him.) But if I remember rightly from some time spent wandering round Marin County where Penn resides, in one picturesque little hamlet there is also some kind of prestige salon/boutique for canines called... you guessed it. So who can rightly say where it all began?
The picture herewith includes Catherine Deneuve, who is definitely not an alpha dog, more of an exquisite cat, maybe a little more zaftig these days but still setting the aesthetic standards in multiple categories. As Penn told me in respect of the special palme she was awarded, like that also bestowed on Clint Eastwood, "we all benefit from the endurance and quality of those two peoples’ contribution to film."

New Esquire on sale II

Just for the sake of form, or in the name of promotion, here's the cover of aforementioned August Esquire.

New Esquire (UK) magazine now on sale. Includes good writing.

The August issue of Esquire is now out on the stands, and I am privileged and enthused to say that it includes my first contribution as the magazine's new regular monthly film columnist. The piece in question is a joint review of two newly released documentaries taking as their subject the Coalition invasion and occupation of Iraq - these being Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Standard Operating Procedure. Among the cultural references dropped clunkily therein are the luminous names of Keith Moon, Pablo Neruda, and Seymour Hersh. And midway I make gratuitous reference to my IFC/Channel 4 documentary (I say 'my' because I wrote and presented, but actually Saul Metzstein directed, and very well) The Name of This Film is Dogme 95. (Online I can't see any of the fine reviews this doc received after its UK broadcast premiere, but here's a nice notice from Chicago's Ray Pride.)

Back to the August Esquire: which of the two Iraq pictures under review did I prefer? Guess... Either way - and, frankly, regardless - it will be worth your while picking up Esquire this month.

Alex Cox @ The Barbican, Friday July 4

Alex Cox's work is screening in a partial but essential retrospective at the Barbican this month, to tie in with the publication of his excellent new book X Films from I.B. Tauris, and I will be chairing a Barbican Q&A session with Senor Cox this coming Friday night July 4, 8.30pm. Do get along if you can.
Some of the flavour of the book can be gleaned from Cox's provocative blog: it's not a memoir so much as a highly detailed, hugely compelling tour through the making of each of the items in his body of work - beginning with his graduation project at UCLA, through Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Walker et al, up to the current Searchers 2.0. As such it is a workbook for any would-be cineaste of the independent stripe, and a vital contribution to film history, insofar as it records with honesty and exactitude what were the creative decisions behind some bold and unclassifiable films made by a huge talent.
I'm really looking forward to this event, and hope there'll be a lively cinephile crowd, as befits the man and the occasion. If I can dig them out of whatever box they're currently in I will take along my shabby shop-bought VHS of Repo Man and my cassette (cassette!) of the movie's awesome soundtrack, as talismans, if you will. You will recall that repo men, unlike the rest of us in general, spend their lives getting into tense situations (esp. while getting cars out of "bad areas") and we should all try to do likewise now and then...

Daren King, and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads

I'm very pleased to share literary representation (that's Tibor Jones & Associates) with Daren King, whose fiction, from Boxy an Star to Jim Giraffe to the recent Manual, has been delighting and defying classification among readers of taste for most of the last ten years. And I'm fairly pleased to have got my boat-race onto the picture section of Daren's website by way of the shot herewith of myself and the editor whom Daren and I also share, the famous Lee Brackstone of Faber and Faber. The main reason for a smile is that I remember the particular Night In The Pub when the photo was taken - it was the Princess Louise on High Holborn, always a canny boozer but recently remodelled to an even higher standard. And it was, of course, just a night in the pub, not a photo session. The ales will have been Samuel Smith's, since that's what you get in a Samuel Smith's pub. Lee has a look - does he not? - of a man just beginning the evening, one that will surely see him progress from the arm down to the chair itself. As for me, what about the state of that bloody cardigan?

10 Bad Dates: Salon Critics Pick

A nice write-up here (scroll down some) from Louis Bayard in Salon, which I used to read very regularly but seem to have spent less time with in recent years, the more fool me. "It's been a long time", the man says, "since I've come across a set of lists quite so piquant and entertaining as Ten Bad Dates With De Niro." That was the intention, sir, glad to be of service.
I'm in good company among the Critics Picks in question, since there's also citation of Anthony Mann's Man of the West on DVD, and the new documentary about Roman Polanski's rape conviction, an affair from which the shadows seem at last to have properly receded.

Peter Gabriel: The Rhythmatist

Last weekend me and my family had the great good fortune to stay a few days in the country cottage of one of England’s finest composers. Quite apart from the lovely living arrangements, I even got to do a little writing in his office, having carefully cleared a space to spread my things, between the piano and the sheets of notation and the pocket metronome… The bookshelves in the cottage were fairly choice too, replete with good fiction and non-fiction, but I was especially interested in the selection of books on music. Typically, though, I zeroed in on a volume called Good Vibrations, about the history of rock/pop production techniques.
One section therein that grabbed me concerned the introduction to musical possibilities c. 1980 of the Fairlight, an early sampler which loaned itself to terrific aural experimentation. The first two musical types to invest their own money in this expensive device in the UK were Peter Gabriel, and Durham’s own Trevor Horn. And I remember, as if it were yesterday, the autumn/spring of 1982-83, running out to three separate long-playing records (vinyl, of course) that made stunning use of the new technology: Kate Bush’s The Dreaming, Peter Gabriel’s fourth self-titled solo album, and Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock, produced by Horn. (That last one, an early experiment in world music piracy, had some marvellous tracks, only partially marred by the presence of McLaren himself, such as the juju-inspired Soweto.)

Prior to those bits of shopping one of the big musical revelations of my young life was in late 1982 when I saw a South Bank Show on the recording of aforementioned Peter Gabriel IV. The picture it presented, enforced by amazing music, of Gabriel’s genius-like marrying of rhythmic and melodic and lyrical/cerebral qualities, was incredibly powerful to an impressionable youngster. I suppose I was particularly gripped by the description of how Gabriel’s bookish idea for a song provisionally titled ‘Jung in Africa’ became this thunderous track, The Rhythm of the Heat.

A few years later Alan Parker persuaded Gabriel to remodel the IV songs and a few others from his back-catalogue into a score for Parker's movie of William Wharton’s novel Birdy. This Birdy trailer - which also brings back a horde of memories for me in the proverbial Proustian rush - is a showcase for some of Gabriel’s choice cuts and the imagery of the film to which they were terrifically matched.

As it happened, Alan Parker went on to do me a couple of great good turns in life which I won’t ever forget. Gabriel, meanwhile, has remained one of my absolute favourite artists. This weekend I note there’s a new release forthcoming from Gabriel and Real World – Big Blue Ball, essentially a record of some diverse and glorious jam sessions at Gabriel’s studio over various summers 15 or so years ago. I’ll be buying that one, then.

Regime Change and Zimbabwe

I guess I'm just among millions of people the world over this weekend, wishing all the harm in the world upon the awful Mugabe, his Zanu-PF mafia, and those goons of his who have been running around Zimbabwe this week advising citizens that a vote cast against the Chief will be the last thing they do on this earth. (Speaking of dictators: my bedtime hour was poisoned last night, having watched news pictures of that newly ordained Man of Peace Kim Jong-il, slouching across his imperial balcony in one of his tiny jumpsuits, so as to wave a fey hand at a parade in his honour somewhere beneath him...)
Zimbabwe, but. What is to be done? I've found myself recalling (you may too) that in the run-up to the Coalition invasion of Iraq some of the loudest voices in opposition sounded not so much opposed to regime change as desirous of setting the global agenda on same (i.e. why Saddam before Mugabe?) But let's assume that was just a minor element of a bigger rhetorical argument, and that no serious parties have the appetite, will or means for knocking Mugabe off his perch. On that note I can't quite bring myself to see what the right-wing press are saying at the moment, because rightly or wrongly I fear I'll have to read some nostalgia for Ian Smith and the Good Old Days. Thickening the moral soup on this point is a piece in the New Statesman by Mark Ashurst, director of the Africa Research Institute, and Gugulethu Moyo, a Zimbabwean lawyer. They write:
"The collapse of the post-colonial pact between Mugabe and his erstwhile enemies - the Rhodesian farmers, Britain, capitalism and Empire - has triggered a keen appetite for historical vindication among western critics. Mugabe's fiercest critics are often the same people who, in the early 1980s, turned a blind eye to the notorious "Gukurahundi" slaughter of 20,000 Ndebele loyal to his rival, the late Joshua Nkomo. But in Zimbabwe today there is not much appetite to indict Mugabe for human rights abuses - if only he would go quietly."
Well, he's not going quietly today. So what next? Timothy Garton Ash had a few suggestions in the Guardian yesterday: a new UN resolution, non-recognition of the results of today’s non-poll, no US/UK investment in a new Zimbabwean platinum mine, the rescinding of Mugabe’s honorary knighthood, a petition to Thabo Mbeki, attendance at a demonstration at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party in Hyde Park today - and good old sanctions, as once seemed to work in South Africa and Poland. Maybe throw into that a shot of red-blooded socialist solidarity, like the case I read highlighted by Christopher Hitchens in Slate of South African dockworkers who refused to unload a shipload of Chinese weapons bound for... guess where?
So, a few encouraging thoughts for a bad day, perhaps. Others in the London area can be more active in their expression and get along to Hyde Park.

Faber and Faber online in style

My esteemer publisher's brand-new and redesigned website is now available for public scrutiny, with lots for the browser to mull over and enjoy, including an exclusive Q&A with James Bradley, author of The Resurrectionist, which is a 'Summer Read' pick of the Richard & Judy show. There's info on the recently launched and much admired Faber Finds imprint whereby long-unavailable works of distinction are brought back into print. And currently there's a link to me and my stuff from the Authors page.

How Andrei man, have yuh hurd o' tha Toon?

Per my previous thoughts on Euro 2008 - the Germany/Austria match the other week was probably the last we will see of Mario Gomez in this tournament. So does that shorten the odds of Newcastle making a daft bid for him? In the Freddie Shepherd era, perhaps. But nobody knows quite what Mike Ashley wants to do with his money in these belt-tightening times. Much may depend on the charm and world-renowned acumen of Dennis Wise...
Belatedly, I learned that the Toon's crack scouts (or scouts on crack?) had been keeping an eye on Andrei Arshavin. But the Russian lad's own belated but bloody electrifying entrance to the tournament has been as good as a kick in the eye to any such pipe-dreams. As the fella on ITV said the other night, Alex Ferguson should take the £60 million he could get for Ronaldo and use about one-third of it on Arshavin.