The case against Martin Buber...

There doesn't seem to be anybody around anywhere who can be bothered to stick their neck out and say that they love me. It has been a long while since someone without a shared drop of blood between us has said words to that effect at any rate, so long that I am starting to wonder if they ever will again.

I am not complaining really. I am, as they say, good on my own. Furthermore, I am on friendly terms with a lot of women; too many in fact, to a level which is almost symptomatic of the dysfunction... An acquaintance told me the other day that my whole trouble was that women don't perceive me as a threat, to which my wilful misinterpretation of an inward response was, is that really what they're after? Golly, I have been going about this the wrong way!

Don't worry about me though: humble, meek, self-effacing exterior aside, I am actually an incredibly humble, meek and self-effacing person who has big dreams about being a right bastard!!!

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air

Nothing much happens in Surbiton: the odd fire-drill at the station, fight outside a nightclub... Most of the buildings here have stood for over a century. It feels like London only as much as your second-cousin feels like family- you can see a vague resemblance, common traits but that is all.

As often as I can, I venture into the 'real' city (and it isn't all that often, my budget has been reduced to a mere £30 a week; not so much existing as subsisting- I am just waiting for Geldoff to get on the case, send me some Peaches). In the gaps between these little jaunts, I often forget how liberating London life is; the 'mighty heart' which Wordsworth describes is still beating and, no doubt, a lot more rapidly than when he was composing his poem on the bridge. I won't bore you all by reeling off the old Dr. Johnson quotation but, suffice to say, I am far from tired of London; I only desire to move inward, as far in and away from the M25 as is possible...

In the past few months, I have probably been into the centre more times than ever before, to the point where I am no longer even overwhelmed by it. I am not sure I like it all that much, actually. The point is, I suppose, that it is a major international city and it is there. In a lot of ways I wish I had grown up further away from it and then like Edinburgh, Dublin or even my beloved Killarney, it would be stuck on my desire with the alluring glue of the unknown. Again, once I get in to the city itself, as opposed to its Surrey-esque suburbs, I am certain that this little hang-up will vanish...

It is my suspicion, in fact, that the city is expanding and will thusly become more exciting yet. My friend came to stay over the weekend and when I dropped him off at Stratford Tube*, I couldn't help noticing that there were an awful lot of wrecking balls and rubble, as well as a number of cranes poised like mechanical vultures (please don't think about this simile too much, it is incredibly weak)! My Stratford experience, combined with a recent visit to North Grenwich (Philip K Dick couldn't have better realised a place so half-finished, eerie and dystopic in atmosphere: potted sapling, potted sapling, stretch of concrete, potted sapling, supermarket, nothingness, potted sapling etc ) makes me wonder if they are not just building a new and better London out there... The irony that the east of London may one day be its Wall Street.

Enough of this paranoid musing, anyhow, all I basically wanted to express in this article was my evolving relationship with the historic capital within whose borders I fall, at least ostensibly (and to the protestations of a number of my ill-informed, unsavvy friends). Also, I did plan to slip in somewhere that I had lunch with a mate of mine in the House of Commons yesterday but that would be bragging now, wouldn't it? I don't really go in for all that...

*Riding Shanks's pony

November in the Railroad Earth

Follow the link for an extract from October in the Railroad Earth by Jack Kerouac, read by the author...

I am a little melancholy today. The washing machine is taking on water, my room is a mess, I have a blemish on my nose that makes me look like Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer so can't even go down to the shop...

I have posted the above link because I need reminding that I am more than these trivialities. Kerouac's voice evokes memories of my 3,000 mile trip from New York to Los Angeles!

The nearest I get to the Railroad Earth now is when I walk across the bridge overlooking the cutting at Surbiton and the Waterloo line. It is not very exciting.

I did wonderful things, once. These days, I just sit in my pyjamas, eating biscuits until the sun goes down.

Western Pope Culture (sic)

I googled my name today, don't ask me why, and, guess what? Not only am I to be found here at the blog (eventually: entry 30, 000 or something) but I am also on the website of a nationally known chain of book-shops. I used to work at one of their branches and it was a great job. At some time in the distant past, they must have put up a number of my staff reviews on their website. Yipee! I am a reviewer of a kind at least; better than those Amazon saddoes, at any rate!!!

My only gripes are that the one at the top ("American Fascists") seems to have been copied up without my usual careful regard for grammatical convention (it wasn't me, I swear!), the reviews of 'Yes Man' and 'Let the Northern Lights erase your name' were not written by me but my good friend, Sarah and the word 'novel' is repeated in 'A Confederacy of Dunces' (although this was probably a heinous error commited by yours' truly).

One further point, Murakami does not make "buzzy references to western pope culture", as that would be very weird; although it would make a bloody good name for a band:

"Idolatry" the critically acclaimed new album from Western Pope Culture

Now read on: A review by N. F. Hampton

Palaces, mobs and world domination

For anyone out there expecting the profound, I have little to offer at the moment: I am caught up in a flow of essays and applications, the like of which the world has never seen. Well, one application and a piece of five hundred words but I am continuing my project, drastically redefining the word 'lazy'.

What has happened of note, recently?

I took an extended stroll up to Hampton Court Palace the other day, in beautiful, wintry semi-sunshine. I had a sausage roll at the Hampton end and then rode the train back to stolid, futile, old Surbiton.

Another thing, I went to watch "the famous CFC" and sat among the hooligan element. It all ended as quite a damp squib of a loss to a Championship side but my sense of enjoyment, as usual, was disproportionate to the event. It was good as both an insight into the more animal elements of the lower classes (the drunkards and the racists, especially), as a exploration into revolutionary potential (all that chanting, what would Marx make of it? Shame about the St. George's flags and their implied NFy False Consciousness) and, furthermore, it was a bit of bonding with my Dad.

Finally, I went on a kamakazee rampage in a game of Risk yesterday, before staging a come-back and consolidating three continents, proving, once and for all, that anarchists and freedom fighters can enter the democratic process.

It seems that I am turning a little to the left in my old age, perhaps owing to the fact I am rereading the Benn Diaries.

***

By the way, to those naysayers who maintain that this blog is a pile of shit, I've decided to forget about you completely and follow my own personal obsessions at the expense of any literary pretensions whatsoever. I need the writing practice, as you will no doubt delight in telling me at some point in the future...

Later chaps!

Minor victory / Dreams

Ha! I finally managed to remove the 'comments' facility. I can now pretend that you all exist with delightfully inverted solipsism.

I continue to dream of published poesy, a second undergraduate degree, this time from the London School of Economics and a world where my work (and my person) is both loved and respected, instead of mercilessly lampooned and insulted...

Last night, in my old bed in my parents' little bungalow, I actually dreamt of a large, old building (divided into flats), I wanted to be rid of a bag of rubbish and also smoke a cigar so I went out onto the balcony. It turned out I couldn't escape this place; perhaps I did, across the mountains then to beaches, seafronts, inexplicable woods and forests, long roads surrounded by formidable hills; the landscape of my dreams...

Were there many dreams in a single night or was my memory of one a trigger for an interconnected cycle of others? Some repeated, perhaps? I'm sure the slightly menacing, hilly coastal town and the corner shop have appeared before, for example, as have the estates (or are they the estates of this town?). The mountains seem further away, perhaps these were my Irish dreams; still somewhere near the surface of my mind, as the heart longs to return there.

For my part, this free association of images has been both eerie and enlightening but, upon proofing, to the general reader, I imagine, rather mundane. Apart from the aforementioned mountains, I seem to picture things no more exotic than fifty miles away. Sometimes I dream rather more darkly but that is all rather terrfying and can be omitted for the moment. The above outlined English-'Under Milk Wood' style nights are eminently more preferable...

The immortal wisdom of Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Johnny Cash

I have just been struck by the lyrics of Desperado, as sung byJohnny Cash. The plans which I am currently hatching; the radical break with the life of the past that I now seek; fears, desires, anticipations; I found all of it in these lines:

Now it seems to me some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones
That you can't get...

The song goes on and, like so many, in incredibly uncanny fashion, continues to describe every detail of my life, past and present. It is the message in the above lines that I will hold in my mind in the coming weeks, however...

P.s. For long term readers, my plans no longer involve Ireland but something far more radical and earth-shattering, as well as being doomed to the most comprehensive failure.

Out of the depths

I have just been to watch a production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman and it exceeded all my expectations. There is something particularly inspiring about watching talented people... I think I've touched on this theme before; it helps you to bridge the gap between the impossible and the impossibly mundane. It makes you a little giddy and you start to consider all sorts of things...

... From the depths of the suburbs, the maniacal laughter of a man who, even now, realises that it might not be too late...

My new compound fantasy, layered upon the memory of others

Give me a half a chance and I am using my money to buy a car, take a batch of an intensive driving lessons, insure myself and then away... Not just down to the supermarket to pick up the paper and a pecan danish, either; I mean, for good!

I know the way: out of London, beyond Reading and then on to Bristol and the Severn, through Wales, Fishguard at two in the morning and the ferry, off the ferry, Rosslaire, Cork and then Killarney; back where I belong, in the mountains. Gone the essays and estates and with all this unbearable, grey mundanity, a mere memory.

I swear to God I'll do it or, at least, something like it...

I'm not staying!

Misplaced optimism

I am forever waiting for the day I can write the words: I am a published poet. I write them now as a dress rehearsal, just to be sure that my fingers could find the keys should that glorious day ever come.

Political fireworks and fireworks generally

I found this quote from the late, great Hunter S. today, referring to the 2004 American election but it could equally apply to this one and extend to my interest in politics generally:

"Election Day -- especially a presidential election -- is always a wild and terrifying time for politics junkies, and I am one of those, too. We look forward to major election days like sex addicts look forward to orgies. We are slaves to it."

God, I love politics! I was doing a degree in the subject once, why did I quit? Every word from Andrew Neil's mouth on a Wednesday morning is, to me, a drop of heavenly ambrosia... Well, almost!

Like the majority of this continent's soppy liberals, I am going to get behind Obama tomorrow; if for nothing else than I have the sneaking suspicion McCainwould 'surge' in Afghanistan which would probably mean a lot more British lives. I may make my first bona-fide trip to a betting shop however and there place a sneaky tenner on McCain, just to make it interesting.

***

Now to a completely unrelated topic: fireworks. From my point of view, at least, they seem to demonstrate everything that's wrong with human nature. What people are basically saying is: I don't have a gun or any dynamite but I could have these things if wanted to; not only that, I would set them off indiscriminately and create a bloody great racket.

Humbug! Fie on their repressed pyromania! These so called 'normals' aren't fooling anyone.

***

Further advice, go and see the new Westfield centre in White City before the rest of the world begins to feel the effects of America's anticipated lurch toward protectionism. I went today and, let me tell you, it's the sort of shopping you could only previously have expected to find on a large space station.

A letter to the editor

As I am ill, neurotic and insecure, I have taken the executive decision to spare my readers a post today (Readers? ...A cricket is heard chirping in the distance). Instead, oh delight of delights, I thought I would upload a letter of mine to the magazine Poetry which didn't quite make the cut this time round.

To provide a little context, there was a feature in the magazine's October issue and also, at an earlier point, in the New York Times, laying into one of my all time favourite poets so, myself, in my new role as self-appointed defender of the deceased, decided to wade into the debate...

***

Dear Editor,

Although William Logan is entitled to his opinion of Hart Crane and has every right to defend these views ["The Hart Crane Controversy," October 2008], I take issue with the bitter and parochial tone of his attacks upon the poet. Furthermore, “A critic’s take on his critics” seems more concerned with addressing superficial objections to the original article, rather than tackling the manifest prejudice of that first piece.

Logan’s Times’ review was a lazy piece of character assassination, rather than an honest engagement with the poet’s work, taking issue with everything from Crane’s lack of formal education, to his debauched lifestyle and homosexuality; even his spelling. Need we forget that some of these criticisms can be levelled against several of the most prominent names in the canon, including Betjeman, Byron, and, in the case of the last, the patriarchal Chaucer? Personally, I would much prefer it if Crane’s ideas were lifted from ‘the daily paper’ or a ‘high-school textbook’ but if they are, then I have yet to locate them there. I also disagree that the well-travelled, cosmopolitan Crane is ‘closer to a peasant poet like John Clare’, taking this is an example of the most ardent snobbery.

The article’s formal criticisms included a vague complaint that the poems’ “showed more style than talent”, as well as the unsupported assertion that imagery such as “the pirouettes of any pliant cane” constitute deliberate “obscurity” and conspire to create a “dreadful mess”. In fact, the poem in question, “Chaplinesque” employs very specific imagery in relation to its subject matter and is among one of the most linear and concrete examples of the poet’s work. In my opinion, such an evocative line eclipses some of the much more blasé examples of imagery in modern American poetry, such as the line, “The morning was a painting” in Logan’s own poem, “The Ship”. In other places, Logan has wilfully misrepresented or else misunderstood Crane’s “Logic of Metaphor”, which focused on the sound and connotations of certain words, rather than their precise definitions; any unfavourable comparison with Elliot is thus, necessarily, void.

On the subject of “Chaplinesque”, I am also at a loss to understand why Logan chose Angelina Jolie as a suitable comparison for Charlie Chaplin in his discussion of the latter’s visit to the poet. One is a genius, an artist and a genuinely talented dramatist, the other is Angelina Jolie. Such an obvious incongruity strikes me as wholly unnecessary, except as a vulgar exercise in levity!

Whether or not Logan picked the right ocean, seems to me, the least of his problems...

NEIL HAMPTON
London, England

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Well, there we are! I'll write more in a few days...