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Tom McCarthy's C made the Booker shortlist and had lots of people talking about a rediscovered ambition in the British novel (by which they of course mean literary novel). And yes, OK, it's not about adultery in Muswell Hill, or indeed adultery among the Victorians. It's about sex, drugs, war and the birth of the modern, about secret connections and correspondences, and above all communications. It depicts a dizzying world underlaid by occult traceries. Does that sound familiar? It should, because it is quite blatantly a shorter, less lunatic Gravity's Rainbow. Is that really so impressive? There are some wonderful passages in here, paragraphs about codes, signals - and thus, implicitly, the novel itself - which sparkle with insight and poetry. But which also make me think that McCarthy might be a lot better off as an essayist.
Hallowe'en weekend obviously meant packing in as much spookiness as possible, starting on Wednesday with a trip to the Crypt Gallery on Euston Road. It's a wonderful space, which even saved work I wouldn't have found too interesting in the normal white-walled room, and made good pieces better; my friend's film piece had a caryatid's jug (not like that) outside its alcove door, and the rubbings of the Bank of England seemed like Rosetta stones. There was, however, one piece which in any setting could only have looked like a bell-end.
Friday was perhaps not that spectral; Ale Meat Cider did have on one cider called The Devil's Device, but it was overshadowed (de-shadowed?) by an incredibly cheerful dog called Jasper. Saturday I did my usual and dressed up as Dracula (the Christopher Lee version this year, thanks to Mark Gatiss reminding me of the joy of Hammer) for a trip to the Lexington. And Sunday was centred on the Psychoville special - I liked that they gave everything but the framing story to unreliable narrators, so freeing us from any worry about canonicity or resolving last season's cliffhanger, and leaving them free to concentrate on chilling the blood. Not that any of it could be quite such agonising viewing as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip last night. So uneventful, yet so very savage.
Solomon Kane is one of the other, less famous creations of Conan author Robert E Howard. He's a Puritan swordsman whose defining characteristic is his determination; he does what needs to be done. Solomon Kane is a film in which James Purefoy supposedly plays him. Except here he's a dithering arse, who having done evil in the past now thinks that only being peaceful - to the point of allowing children to be murdered in front of him - can save his soul. Now, these scenes have a valid point to make about the moral bankruptcy of pacifism, but they're deeply anachronistic for the morality of 1601 in general, nevermind the character of Solomon Kane. But this is not a film much bothered about anachronism or fidelity; we also see the great Puritan taking refuge in a monastery (itself a fairly rare commodity in England in 1601). Purefoy is also affecting what's meant to be a Devon accent but in fact serves only to extinguish his sex appeal, and several times we see pistols (one-shot weapons back then) used to put the wounded out of their misery, rather than saved for emergencies. On top of which, they make the same mistake as the Judge Dredd film; a character who is largely meant to be a force of nature ends up in an all too human plot about his family. It's not wholly worthless - the opening scenes in Africa get the authentically Howard feel in for some carnage both human and demonic - but it's still a massive misfire.
Hallowe'en weekend obviously meant packing in as much spookiness as possible, starting on Wednesday with a trip to the Crypt Gallery on Euston Road. It's a wonderful space, which even saved work I wouldn't have found too interesting in the normal white-walled room, and made good pieces better; my friend's film piece had a caryatid's jug (not like that) outside its alcove door, and the rubbings of the Bank of England seemed like Rosetta stones. There was, however, one piece which in any setting could only have looked like a bell-end.
Friday was perhaps not that spectral; Ale Meat Cider did have on one cider called The Devil's Device, but it was overshadowed (de-shadowed?) by an incredibly cheerful dog called Jasper. Saturday I did my usual and dressed up as Dracula (the Christopher Lee version this year, thanks to Mark Gatiss reminding me of the joy of Hammer) for a trip to the Lexington. And Sunday was centred on the Psychoville special - I liked that they gave everything but the framing story to unreliable narrators, so freeing us from any worry about canonicity or resolving last season's cliffhanger, and leaving them free to concentrate on chilling the blood. Not that any of it could be quite such agonising viewing as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip last night. So uneventful, yet so very savage.
Solomon Kane is one of the other, less famous creations of Conan author Robert E Howard. He's a Puritan swordsman whose defining characteristic is his determination; he does what needs to be done. Solomon Kane is a film in which James Purefoy supposedly plays him. Except here he's a dithering arse, who having done evil in the past now thinks that only being peaceful - to the point of allowing children to be murdered in front of him - can save his soul. Now, these scenes have a valid point to make about the moral bankruptcy of pacifism, but they're deeply anachronistic for the morality of 1601 in general, nevermind the character of Solomon Kane. But this is not a film much bothered about anachronism or fidelity; we also see the great Puritan taking refuge in a monastery (itself a fairly rare commodity in England in 1601). Purefoy is also affecting what's meant to be a Devon accent but in fact serves only to extinguish his sex appeal, and several times we see pistols (one-shot weapons back then) used to put the wounded out of their misery, rather than saved for emergencies. On top of which, they make the same mistake as the Judge Dredd film; a character who is largely meant to be a force of nature ends up in an all too human plot about his family. It's not wholly worthless - the opening scenes in Africa get the authentically Howard feel in for some carnage both human and demonic - but it's still a massive misfire.
