Bits and pieces: Culture June 16, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
First up for the week and day that is in it, some might be interested in a reading from Joyce and cheese and wine at the National Print Museum in Beggars Bush, it’s behind the Labour History building on the right hand side. It’s a great spot in and of itsel but this event is day long (and costs a fiver in). The reading will only be about 10 minutes long today and is at 2pm.
There was mention of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy recently, that being the original BBC version. It’s actually a weird experience watching it, as if one had been thrust down a time tunnel. The first few episodes are interesting in a late 1970s sort of a way, but then, episode 3 arrives and we make it all the way to the centre of British intelligence. Now, even allowing for artistic/literary license and constrained budgeting during that time there’s something jaw-dropping about the depictions of security, or even of equipment, in the programme. Primitive is the word that springs to mind. No personal computers, no real security (albeit the depiction of that may be way off beam), limited communications above and beyond ordinary telephones. And the skyline and built environment in exterior shots is of a London starkly at odds with the architectural trends of the past three decades.
How the the recent film treats this is of real interest – because for the film this assumes something of the level of a construct, whereas the original programme was filmed in that environment.
Most of us have probably never heard of Thomas Kinkade, a US painter who died in April. But a recent Slate Culture gabfest dealt with him. His stuff has to be seen to be believed. It’s amazing – though, well I’ll let people make up their own minds as to why – and it’s difficult not to feel that some of the time he spent in Ralph Bakshi’s animation studio had a greater effect than might be expected (albeit not in a good way or, one suspects, in a way Bakshi would have liked), but this… this is an interesting cultural collision.
Speaking of thrillers… Welsh thriller writer Craig Thomas died last April after a short illness. He’s probably best known for Cold War uber thriller Firefox, later filmed and starring and directed by Clint Eastwood. Thing about Thomas was that, unlike Deighton or Le Carre, he was never even slightly equivocal about Communism. Not that it was entirely un-nuanced, just he knew which side he was on and it wasn’t the one under the Red flag.
Rereading one or two a few years ago it was notable how of its time it was in terms of technology – which in a way returns to the points about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy made above, and yet how little that mattered. He’d vanished off the radar some years back after a few books in the late 1990s which sought to work in a post-Cold War world with varying degrees of success. It’s interesting how few genuinely good political thrillers are written these days. The end of the Cold War stripped that away entirely and for all the heroic, and not so heroic, attempts to find substitutes (China! Terrorists! China and Terrorists!) nothing has quite filled the gap.
Speaking of which I was listening to BBC Radio 4 the other day and an interview with Lionel Shriver, author of We Have to Speak about Kevin. Her latest book is about terrorism, and waxed she did at length about how in the 1990s she was unable to get it published and how books on terrorism didn’t get published before 9/11. Well perhaps true of literary fiction, but as noted above, the fall of USSR and Warsaw Pact brought a scurrying around for a different antagonist. But what was so striking in the interview was the sense of how constrained the definition of fiction was.
Though just thinking of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, telling that that’s been revisited. I wonder what the dynamic underlying that is.
And here’s two links from Slate, a fine piece by astronomer and science populariser Phil Plait of the excellent Bad Astronomy blog on the issue of science education which will, perhaps, resonate for a fair few of us. And this which will bring a pang of nostalgia to at least some of us.
I think Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy holds up as a book because Le Carre isn’t a thriller writer but a very good novelist who sets his books in a certain world. My favorite example is the scene where a decision has to be made on an operation, with Treasury, FCO, MOD, and the spies present. Le Carre describes the ties they wear, high end private schools and the better Oxbridge colleges for Treasury and FCO, minor public schools and mediocre regiments for MOD.
A big fan of Le Carre. ‘The Looking Glass War’ is my favourite of his as it’s an example of the complete amorality of much of the ‘intelligence community’. The final part is particularly bleak. That community which, post Cold War, is going from strength to strength and, to tie in with WbS’ observations above, is now equipped with the most advanced technology for, capacity for and hunger for extensive surveillance of the citizens of a supposedly democratic society.
A bit of-its-time, though. I remember large amounts of detail but not very much happening.
The film of Tinker Tailor didn’t impress me much (why the extra murders?) but the TV series is deservedly legendary.
Michael, very interesting thought. Though I would say that A Small Town in Berlin and even The Spy Who Came in From the Cold as his early works would fit easily into genre conventions of the time. By The Honourable School Boy something else is happening and there’s a distinct self-consciously literary component. But whatever way one categorises him or not he’s a great writer.
CMK, The Looking Glass War is excellent too. I think that’s very true, the hunger point you make. And it’s all nonsense to a degree.
ejh, I’m looking forward (with reservations) to watching the film. Just to see what it’s like.
Lionel Shriver has been doing lots of media for her book – don’t know if I heard the same interview you did. She lived in Belfast during the nineties and when Mariella Frostrup asked her what she learned about terrorism her short answer was that it works and she offered the GFA as proof. Paramilitaries on both sides, she said, were criminal gangs first and last and there were very few ideals. These opinions, she implied, were commonplace among journalists covering the ‘Troubles’.
You can hear the Shriver interview that crocodile refers to here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/b01jqb94
She is in the first part of the prpogramme