Looking Out To Sea

Right, since I’m getting complaints from my mother that I don’t update my blog often enough, you have to suffer my thoughts on the two most recent books I read —

The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins

You might well think, “another in Richard Dawkins seemingly endless variety of books explaining evolution which will be ignored by the people who need it most”. And you’d be right. I really enjoyed The Selfish Gene. Climbing Mount Improbable was an interesting new take on the matter. But The Extended Phenotype was a bit too extended for my liking — so why did I think my book shelf needed this one?

It was mostly because of the fundamental premise of using The Canterbury Tales, a pilgrimage with varied storytellers, to tell a backwards story of evolution. I liked the idea of each animal telling a story — a scientific story, about what we learned from its fossils or its DNA or its behaviour. And it works very well. Starting from present-day Homo sapiens we step back in time through our recent ancestors, learning the problems of differentiating species across time and how it is we can say that humans are brainy for their size. At some point we reach our first waypoint, where the chimpanzees meet us. This is our common ancestor, some 6 million years ago, and we learn a little about common chimpanzee and bonobo social behaviour and why these can’t be generalised to find “human nature”.

Then we step further back in time to the common ancestor between us chimpanzees (naked and hairy) and the other great apes. And so on, learning what each animal probably looked like and where they fit into the wider scheme. At times I felt slightly overwhelmed by the names, which got worse as the book travelled further back in time — I could never tell when we were meeting several varieties of obscure worm or sponge or something else entirely. To say that the obscuriae family contain the thingimiumins and the whatchacallioids was not so enlightening.

Each chapter had a prologue and sometimes several ‘tales’ but sometimes the prologues dwarfed the actual tales. Sometimes a section seemed little more than an excuse to reference other tales without saying anything substantive. At many points I felt confused by the sequencing — I couldn’t really remember if a particular Tale was still to come or had already passed. At many points an interesting discussion is omitted because it is covered in another of Richard Dawkins’ books.

The flaw in the idea of delving backwards through time is that while we can follow the slow ‘regression’ of our line, occasionally another entire troupe would arrive that utterly dwarfed our own. The common ancestors of humans and insects is a long way into the past, but when we reach that point in the past all the interesting speciation of the insects has been ‘undone’ since they now look just like us! And so on for other major groups. There is great variety in fishes and plants and fungus but their interesting recent stories have to be ignored for the sake of scale. Which I guess is another way of saying that there are at least half a dozen further books to made from this idea, but not starting at the human leaf on the tree.

Borderliners by Peter Høeg

Peter Høeg’s a slippery one and no mistake. It is not surprising that this book is quite different to his others, though there is still a common style. The narrator is an orphaned(?) boy growing up in the institutions and child homes of 1970s Denmark. Seemingly by chance he ends up at a prestigious private school run on strict disciplinarian and ideological lines. He has trouble concentrating and keeping to the exacting timetables of his life. He becomes friends with an older boy and a younger girl, all outcasts and misfits in this school, and they try to find out why they are tolerated at the school despite being “defective”.

Alongside this story of institutional life is a strange dissertation on time, written by the author as an older man, but weaved into the main parts of the story in many places. It’s largely incoherent and contradictory, and what it tries to say comes across as either obvious or obviously wrong. At one point the author, or the narrator (the young boy’s name is also Peter Høeg), get to the point of denouncing all progress, much like the miserable people with their digital watches:

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

If you’re willing to sit through the babble there’s an interesting story in there, but it’s largely been smothered.

On Friday I sped through to Glasgow with my green jumper to meet Helen and see Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra play at the art school venue.

Efrim was quite talkative — and Glasgow was naturally talkative back — and he even told us exactly what they were going to play before each piece. Nice! Of course that doesn’t mean I can remember everything they did. I guess:

• I Built Myself a Metal Bird, I Fed My Metal Bird the Wings of Other Metal Birds
• God Bless Our Dead Marines
• 1,000,000 Died to Make This Sound
• ‘Piphany Rambler
• There is a Light
• 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons

The ordering is probably not right but that’s how it felt at the time. I enjoyed it all, though I wish I’d been more conscientious about listening to the new album before we went.

There were a lot of big cameras in the audience, including one guy about two rows in front of me who basically spent the whole gig shooting. From the position he was standing, I think it’s this fellow here.

After however many pages and words and months I finished reading the last volume of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, The System of the World. Back in August I was effusive with my praise of part one but never got round to saying anything when I finished part two (The Confusion). So let this entry mark as my feelings on both.

Brilliant! Read them now!

Ahem. The two books that comprise The Confusion are the intertwined tale of piracy on the high seas, and political intrigue in the court of Versailles. They follow on from the events of Quicksilver though many other characters drop out and others become more important. It’s in The Confusion that many of the important links to Cryptonomicon become obvious — many of the family names which appear in that latter book first make an important appearance here — the Hacklhebers, Gotos and so on. It’s also in The Confusion that Stephenson lets his nerdy side really come to the fore. The chapter about the creation of phosphorous from urine was exciting and informative and hugely enjoyable — all that from chemistry, you ask, but it really was damn good reading.

The events which unfold at the very start of Quicksilver aren’t mentioned again for the remainder of Quicksilver and the entirety of The Confusion. All that is basically flashback. The thread is picked up again in The System of the World as one party attempts to reconcile the deep philosophical rift between Newton and Leibniz while another attempts to sabotage Newton’s work at the Royal Mint. Again we’ve got political intrigue combined with stunning action sequences that would overwhelm the audience of most heist movies.

Rather unusually for Neal Stephenson he manages to end everything too. Maybe given 2500 pages of writing he has finally worked himself into the right position to pull it all together. His other books have disappointed me on the last page, but I was very thankful that such an epic series ended right.

Make that investment! Read these books!

We got to see James Cameron’s new epic on Tuesday night, Avatar in 3D.

The three-dimensional aspect was very well done — much better than Beowulf in 3D which was hampered by terrible graphics. It looked fabulous and, who knows, maybe the added depth helped to make the action clearer.

Unfortunately the plot was fairly boring and the characters were about as shallow as it’s possible to get. In fact, it was largely the characters from Aliens — including Sigourney Weaver herself — fighting the Corporation and their unethical ways. They had a knuckle-head military guy, who appears to be a subtle blend of Duke Nukem and Kilgore from Apocalypse Now. No, I tell lie, there was nothing subtle there at all. They had a sleazy company guy and they had a mining operation set up to gather Unobtainium. I couldn’t help but snigger that they actually called their precious metal unobtainium. I wonder if they use it to make MacGuffins?

I read Jane Eyre and now I finally understand The Eyre Affair. The “original” ending in The Eyre Affair is not the real one, and the one which gets created is the real one (to some approximation: there are no time-travelling super-villains).

I was getting worried as the book went on because it seemed so much like the rubbish ending from The Eyre Affair was going to be the real one. That Jane really was going to India to be a missionary’s wife to the detestable St John Rivers. But she pulls it back from the brink.

So now that I’ve thoroughly spoiled the book for you, what’s it actually about? Well, it’s your standard fare of feisty young lass being brought up by an aunt who hates her. She’s sent off to school to have some docility and meekness beaten into her, which thankfully doesn’t work. Then there’s stuff about growing up and falling in love. It sounds bland in these terms but it’s pretty riveting when you’re inside it.

I picked up two books at last month’s book group but it’s taken me a wee while to get through this first one. It wasn’t the rollicking read I was hoping for.

Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs is about a group of programmers in the early 90s who leave Microsoft for a Silicon Valley startup. It’s populated by the usual nerdy stereotypes — bearded millionaires, basement dweebs, greasy marketing guys and social misfits.

microserf (day 99)
© Jenny Spadafora

Tragically, none of it seems remotely interesting. All these smart people say nothing very interesting at all. The computer game which they create is not very interesting. Nothing very interesting happens to them in the creation of the game. It reaches completion without any hitches or even much in the way of work, as far as I can tell.

Along the way the characters have uninteresting conversations about… well, anything that strikes their fancy. As long as it remains uncontroversial and shallow they’ll talk about it — TV series, junk food, roads and buildings. But if there’s anything to be gleaned from these conversations it’s probably wrong. Even the one topic of conversation you would assume the techies could manage, computers, remains strangely beyond them. Who could seriously say something like “your body is your hard drive” who knew what either was?

The book is written as a diary, interspersed with pages of stream-of-consciousness word association. Nothing else irritated me quite as much as the word-association pages, because nothing else was quite so explicity saying look how goddamn deeeeeep I am.

In the last dozen pages the shallow characters of these people is thrown into stark relief, as something truly emotional and affecting happens. This really just illustrates how pointless the previous couple of hundred pages was, as we really know nothing about these people other than their ability to make dull conversation.

If you want to compare this tedious nonsense to something that is at least a real diary of a real programmer at a real startup, Jamie Zawinski has published diary excerpts from the early days of Netscape (then Mosaic). He at least mentions the programming once in a while.

So, now that this disappointment is over I’m going to start something which has been recommended by more people, Jane Eyre. This will also help me to put another recent book into its proper context.

One of the great discoveries we made when we saw Thea Gilmore live was her support act, solo acoustic guitarist Dan Arborise. I bought his album Around in Circles at the merchandise stall because I was particularly taken with his song To The Sea. It is a really beautiful collection of songs which I can totally recommend.

I bought his second album for Helen’s birthday. It’s called Of Tide & Trail. I haven’t got totally inside it yet but it seems a bit more vicious than his previous disc. Some swearing and pointed lyrics in songs like You’ll All Get What’s Coming To You. You have to listen carefully to find them though: on the surface it’s still beautiful music.

Of course you could say the first album wasn’t short of shocking thoughts: “what do you do when you find that everything that you’ve been taught to love is a lie?”.

Last weekend Mat invited us round for an evening of bad — nay, terrible — movies, centred around his bargain purchase of Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus. We also saw a bit of Batman & Robin that was telly at the time, and I Know Who Killed Me, a horror movie.

Mega Shark really was as bad as we all imagined. The acting was just short of terrible, but the overall artistic vision was disastrous. It’s amazing how many “armed guards” there were in this movie, standing in the background in laboratories and offices, all wearing dark glasses despite the moody lighting.

I took particular enjoyment from the “science” scene, in which the marine biologists mixed arbitrary liquids in test tubes until they found that right combination that luminesced. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t all taxing science in the laboratory: there was time for a sex scene in the supply cupboard. Unusually, it’s legitimate to say that it was a necessary part of the plot.)

The shark and octopuses were a bit lacklustre. I was hoping for some old-school giant rubber tentacles reaching over boat decks and maybe some stop-motion or something. Instead we were treated to the same three clips of shark swimming, shark fighting octopus, octopus swimming, in various combinations. It was just like watching Saturday morning cartoons again.

The sizes and capabilities of the monsters are ludicrous to say the least. How fast does a shark have to be swimming when it leaves the water in order to overtake — and maul — a cruising 747? Answers on a postcard.

The title Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus doesn’t hide any aspect of the film from you. It’s exactly as you imagine. I Know Who Killed Me is another daft title but this one was apparently meant with all sincerity. Lindsay Lohan is abducted by a serial killer and then Lindsay Lohan turns up a few days later claiming to be a different Lindsay Lohan but bearing all the wounds which identify this particular serial killer.

This film wasn’t as bad as I expected. I don’t know if that’s because of drastically lowered expectations, or whether the elements of goodness shone through the rubbishness. Lohan did win two Golden Raspberry Awards for it, tying first and second place for Worst Actress, which I think is a bit harsh. She was far from the worst thing about this film.

Last night I saw a pilot for a modern version of the 80s classic Knight Rider. It was about as rubbish as you’d imagine, though the Hoff got a little cameo as the main dude’s absent father. And they ended on the original theme tune. But the rest of it was still crap. Reimagined, reworked and rebooted series can work very well — see Star Trek: TNG, Battlestar Galactica — but the real work is not done by the computer graphics people. You need good stories, believable plots, interesting characters! Wikipedia reveals that the series had one (shortened) season and was dropped. Hardly surprising.

I’m looking for more so-bad-it’s-good movies if you have something to recommend(!). Fixed in my mind is Battlefied Earth. Any others?

We’ve been pretty rubbish at doing stuff in the Festival this year. We’ve seen a couple of things and only managed that because Helen’s dad arranged everything. In the last fortnight we saw:

• Looking for Eric

  This doesn’t really count as a Festival event because it’s just a film which was on at the Filmhouse. But it was really good so I’m putting it here.

  It’s got Eric Cantona guest starring as Eric Cantona, as the fairy godmother/spirit guide for a struggling postman. It’s directed by Ken Loach, and is that typical triumph-over-adversity plot which makes for funny and warming cinema.

• Polly Paulusma et al.

  An acoustic night at Medina, and all the acts were completely unknown to me. Polly headlining and support from various others including local newbies Mayhew. I’m sure I recognised two of the band members.

• Nick Harper

  The second unknown. I really enjoyed his show, though I’m easily drawn to an artist who’ll sing the intro to a song unaccompanied while restringing their guitar. He played with just an acoustic guitar, and a mixture of floaty, shoegazing songs and angry, energetic songs.

  He was a bit pissed and very garrulous, but wasn’t nearly as drunk and annoying as some of the audience. I can kind of forgive Helen and Ken not enjoying themselves so much because of the twerps sitting behind, stomping out of time on the ricketty seats. I had a lot of fun though.

Have you seen any interesting new musicians lately?

I’ve just come to the end of Derek Robinson’s Goshawk Squadron, a sort of Catch 22 for First World War pilots in the Royal Flying Corps.

It’s a short book that drops the reader straight into the scene: an airfield in France, some miles behind the Western Front; unreliable planes; barely-trained pilots; jolly good chaps. It’s about well-educated English fellows who like cricket and wanted to do medicine and couldn’t dream of shooting someone in the back or taking part in something that’s not a fair fight. (Think Lieutenant George from Blackadder.) And how these men learn that war isn’t a fair fight and die regardless.

It’s not a harrowing book. There is no great trauma or emotional knife that gets twisted inside you. The characters drift through the book in a surreal manner very similar to the action of Catch 22. But slowly the force of the story picks you up and carries you aloft. So the inevitable fall at the end still leaves you a bit winded. It’s a completely compelling book. I’ve had trouble putting it down lately. Now it’s done and I don’t really want to read anything else until I’ve recovered a bit.