By Friday life has killed me

Call me parochial, but firing guns in the air at all major social events seems inherently stupid to me at the best of times, and even more so when your country is in a state of civil unrest and being patrolled by ground and air forces who might (inexplicable though I know this seems) assume you're firing at someone.

The new Morrissey album is now in my possession thanks to Mr Valentine; based on two listens I'm mostly very impressed indeed. I think its main problem is that it begins with its one unequivocally bad song, 'America Is Not The World', thereby inclining the listener against the album from the off. The rest of it doesn't really go anywhere new, but then it doesn't really need to; it's the king reasserting his dominion over the old realms, not leading a new conquest.

Spent four hours getting a cathode tan last night. I know that's probably less TV than the average child watches in three hours, or something, but I still feel slightly seedy for it, even though it was all carefully chosen viewing and no vegging. The latter half of the previous night's Bosch documentary impressed me; most art TV feels like a half-hearted effort at 'accessibility' by people who'd rather be writing articles, but for some reason this worked. Firefly remains as brilliant as one expects Whedon TV to be, with the same perfectly-judged mixture of action, angst and wit which made his name. And Wild Things...all the reviews emphasise what a well-constructed thriller it is. OK, I didn't notice any gaping plot holes, but it's no Third Man or Usual Suspects. I suspect they just don't like to admit that it's a wonderful film to watch because it's utterly trashy, in the best possible sense, and very, very hot. I have no such qualms.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (finally, and sans spoilers)

GK Chesterton's first novel was written exactly a century ago. Since the action begins in 1984, and then flashes forward a generation, most of it must be set pretty much now. Its key conceit is that across that eighty years, nothing much changes. That's not what happened, obviously. But it's as true as it is untrue. For every advance that Chesterton misses (we travel by car now, not horse-drawn coach) there's a futurist trap into which he doesn't fall (we still travel around London on roads, not in perspex tubes). The London he describes is still recognisably the London we inhabit; at times, echoes of the real twentieth century seem to flash across the novel's surface, as when it refers to "a Notting Hill riot", for instance. Or in its description of a state of political entropy so advanced that bureaucracy runs all and the leader is chosen by lottery...though perhaps that last applies to Washington more than London.

It is a book about the danger of taking everything too seriously, and the danger of taking nothing seriously; I think I know which of these Chesterton finds the greater threat, and I'm not sure I agree, but his portrayal of them both is ripe with wry power. It's a book about London, and the magic that lurks even in its unlikeliest areas.

"Shallow romanticists go away in trains and stop in places called Hugmy-in-the-Hole, or Bumps-on-the-Puddle. And all the time they could, if they liked, go and live at a place with the dim, divine name of St. John's Wood. I have never been to St. John's Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir-trees, afraid to come upon a blood-red cup and the beating of the wings of the eagle. But all these things can be imagined by remaining reverently in the Harrow train."

"He was a genuine natural mystic, one of those who live on the border of fairyland. But he was perhaps the first to realise how often the boundary of fairyland runs through a crowded city."

And a hundred more such lines. If it is not quite, as I supposed it to be from the opening chapters, one of my ten favourite books ever, it is not very far off. Few books wiser or more wondrous are known to me.

(no subject)

"Beauty is like wealth. It increases over time, yet its distribution remains unequal."
-my last quote from Mutants unless I end up posting an archive of all my reviews here.

I'm going to need a jacket this evening, aren't I? Marvellous.