| "Two Ideas, Hitting Each Other Head On" |
Critical Christmas Cracker |
| Things That Were Said & Written , Political, Performance & Literary Life in 2022 , December 22, 2022 |
Every day brings a swirl of information. Each year I keep a note of things that were just a bit different. So in 2022.JANUARY The commentators had their merriment with a Welsh Government declaration. “We've just launched our first space strategy! We want to create more stellar jobs and become the galaxy's first sustainable space nation by 2040. Learn more about Wales' "out of this world" space sector.” * * * * FEBRUARY Ann Applebaum is a serious figure. She was in Aberystwyth a few years back to talk about Gareth Jones. She wrote in the Atlantic with some truth: “If we drive all the difficult people, the demanding people, and the eccentric people away from the creative professions where they used to thrive we will become a flatter, duller, less interesting society.” * * * * Reading Harriet Devine about meeting dramatists. Terry Johnson gets what it is about: "two ideas, hitting each other head on and throwing you into a world in which you immediately know there's a dynamic" Conor McPherson is modest: “I can't really say anything because I don't know anything. All I do is make a picture of the confusion.” * * * * MARCH A copy of Richard King's book “Brittle with Relics” has arrived for review. History books do not usually include the drugs trade. Dewi “Mav” Bowen on acid tabs: “you'd buy them for half a crown each, you'd lay them on people for five bob each, and they'd sell them for ten bob.” LSD, the reader learns, was Wales' most successful export business ever. APRIL Reading Richard Eyre who mentions Laurence Olivier being once asked what his policy was for the National Theatre. "To make the audience applaud" he said. * * * * In London to see “The Corn is Green”. The aural clutter on the underground is escalating. “It's the little things we do that help protect the little things we love” is surely the most annoying. * * * * MAY Receive a book on travel to review. The pieces are mainly the literary equivalent of selfies, complaints about the world substituting for observation and empathy. The Editor is much taken with the notion of a persistent privileging of the male “expert’” This would be a surprise to the many readers of Dervla Murphy, author of 26 travel books who died aged 90 on 22nd May. It would be a surprise too to Gertrude Bell, Isabella Bird, Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, Isabelle Eberhardt, Amelia Edwards, Mary McCarthy, Rose Macaulay, Beryl Markham, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Maud Parrish, Vita Sackville West, Freya Stark, Frances Trollope, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, Mary Wollstonecraft. In Wales Catherine Hutton (1756-1846) reported in a lively voice in her “Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century”. Would that publishers in Wales employed editors who had a bit of knowledge of their genre. * * * * JUNE Watching “Shakespeare in Love”. I liked this exchange: “Allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.” “So what do we do?” “Nothing. Strangely it all turns out well.” “How?” “I don't know. It's a mystery." * * * * Sent a piece described as being by “one of Wales’ most exciting new voices”. The background is a sea of grants and residencies, not a lot of actual publications. Orwell in 1948 was inveighing against vagueness, obscurity, stale metaphors, dead phrases and worn-out metaphors. What to make of this? This is political writing: “So, where to begin? I propose a single change to enact such a grand scheme: schools must be empowered to extend into their communities again. In an age of mass connectedness, we seem most-desperately in need of human interaction. Perhaps our need to communicate could be allied with nursing homes....redesign our cities and our schools around our acute need for positive encounters with the arts, with nature and with one another.” * * * * JULY Johnson falls and receives many a comment. “He mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfect casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy.” That was former Cabinet Minister Rory Stewart * * * * AUGUST Peter Brook is remembered and quoted extensively. This one is nice: “But what does touch me is when people come up to me in the street and talk about some experience that has remained with them. That for me is the only real legacy: the idea that one has left a lingering trace in people's memories. In the end, that's all a director can hope to do." * * * * SEPTEMBER At an exhibition by Howardena Pindell. She is clear on her status: “I am an artist. I am not emerging.” * * * * Come across a small piece of cinema history. “True Memoirs of an International Assassin” on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer scores an audience rating of 0%. * * * * OCTOBER At a literary get-together skim a how-to-write book and read: “If the atmosphere is to be foreboding.” The author thinks “foreboding” is an adjective. Jerome Stern, the author of “Making Shapely Fiction”, holds a professorship in creative writing. * * * * NOVEMBER Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivers a strong Reith Lecture: “What are we losing and what have we lost? The death of curiosity, the death of creativity. To create one needs a formless roving of the mind to go everywhere. It is from that swell that art emerges.” * * * * A new announcement on London underground: “Be sure your shoe laces are securely fastened.” DECEMBER The cold weather at last arrives. There are still rural homes with coal. A busy van goes by, the business name is “Sion the Sweep.” * * * * Read about Scottish playwright David Greig going to a production of his play "Europe" in Chemnitz. He is surprised to see inflatable root vegetables. A scene in which refugees are attacked by far-right thugs includes an inflatable carrot. “When I asked why the carrot was there, the director said, 'David, don't you see the carrot is communism?'" |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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