Today's cryptic

Commedia dell'arte

When Stephen Stratford broke from his luxury lifestyle to forward me Mick Hartley's complaint about the Saatchi Gallery I misinterpreted his sarcasm as a recommendation and attended the Newspeak exhibition myself. Entry to the Saatchi Collection is free, and if you get off the tube at Victoria you can enjoy a nice stroll through Knightsbridge past empty, harshly-lit designer outlets that resemble Moscow shops during a 1980s shortage.

My favourites in the exhibition were Robert Fry and Maaike Schoorel and Jonathan Wateridge because I'm an old-fashioned sucker for sticky stuff pushed around on canvas, although I accept that what appears to be aesthetics is just as likely to be conceptual. Artists nowadays swap styles in the way that Japanese teenagers change clothes - rockabillies one day, Goths the next - and I envy them for it. Nor did I need to be warned to avoid the gallery essays, the reading of which inevitably becomes a frustrating game of Spot The Verb.

But if you want a way in my cheater's tip is to head straight to the fifth floor and look at the artists' photographs for some good old-fashioned stereotyping. Pictures about pictures...

Queen of Horror. And Ingrid Pitt

Ingrid Pitt's resumé is the cult ultimate: from The House That Dripped Blood to The Wicker Man to Smiley's People. But can we pause in our sadness at her passing to recall her in the lavish Jason King? I could say they don't make them like that any more but be honest, you could throw a stone in Soho and hit a dozen like her. Which is precisely why Pitt was so special to British horror - she was a type. Three fingers of Glenlivit and some cheese to you, madam.

The incredible Fran Lebowitz

This interview is so good you could cut and paste the whole thing. It starts with FL talking about her appearances on Law & Order, then moves to Keith Richards...

Have you read the Keith Richards memoir?
I did. I did.

How'd it turn out?
You know, it's good. It's good. I mean first of all, James Fox is a good writer. It's very unusual to choose a writer like that, I think, to do that kind of book [...]

Somebody told me that Keith's book was going to be written by Nick Tosches at one point.
Is that right? He would've been a great choice. He's a great writer. He would've also been a great choice, but he's not English. You know Keith is very English. People forget that, and James Fox is English. Keith is really English in a way that people who are younger are not that strongly their own nationality, you know? Have you read the book?

No. Only excerpts.
When you read the book there's this tremendous connection to being English, especially in that era.

The war era?
Right. Every English person that age, always the first thing they tell you is they talk about rationing and what they're talking about is rationing of candy because they were children. This never leaves them. You would think they were survivors of Auschwitz, you know? "We only got this much candy ever!" I love Nick Tosches as a writer. I think he's a fantastic writer and he would always be a great choice, I think, but he's not English so maybe it's better to have an English person.

... and then only after this does the interviewer ask 'Are you still playing drums?'

Full transcript here at NYMag.com.

The low moon helps me sing

Fingers just flying across the keyboard now. But I still have time for James Ellroy interviewed in 1995:

ELLROY: Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it. This was his comment, I believe, on the 'tea-cozy' genre, and I think that's interesting, and I think that I would like to do that again. You're under a great deal of pressure, if you write crime fiction, which is what I used to write, to create serious characters, so-called sympathetic characters, with which the readers can empathize, so that you can build a readership. Of course, it can kill you because you have to write the same book over and over again. And I think that Chandler, who I have less affection for by the day, spawned an whole number of easy imitators. His style is easy to adapt to the personal prejudices of the individual writers, which is why you now have the gay private eye, the black private eye, the woman private eye, and every other kind of private eye. But I don't think that's the realistic archetype of twentieth century violent intrigue: to me, it's these legbreakers, these guys like Pete Bondurant, corrupt cops like Dave Klein, and I take a great deal of satisfaction out of putting these guys back in history.

Ron Hogan: When I read critics of your work, they often react: "Oh my god, he's writing these horrible homophobic, racist, misogynist, psychopathic books." And I'm thinking: "No, he's not writing from his perspective. He's getting into the heads of these ugly characters." You're not endorsing their world by any means.

JE: I think I know what's behind this, especially some of the views expressed by Mike Davis. These are fully rounded characters, and the racism and homophobia are casual attriubutes, not defining characteristics. These are not lynchers or gaybashers, toadies of the corrupt system. When you have characters that the reader empathizes with, who are carrying the story, saying "nigger" and "faggot" and "spic", it puts people off. Which is fine. I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers. That's what I want. There's part of me that would really like to be one of Dudley Smith's goons and go back and beat up some jazz musicians, and there's part of me that's just appalled.

(Photo c/- The Guardian)

Back to silence back to minus

I'm not one of the people who worship Chuck Palahniuk and I'm not that big a fan of the movie (I started liking David Fincher after Zodiac) but, credit where credit is due. Fight Club gave novels the same happy kick up the ass that Reservoir Dogs gave to movies. Here is Palahniuk talking about source material:

RH: Let me start by saying, and I mean this as a compliment, that you have a very twisted imagination.

CP: I wish it were just mine but it's really all of my friends. About eighty percent of Fight Club (1996) is received information. I can go to parties and say, "How many people have doctored food in the service industry?" and get their stories... people write the books for me; all I've got to do is remember everybody's stories and put them together. So, I can't take credit for most of it.

RH: So how did you first get interested in hearing these stories?

CP: I was always disappointed when I went to read anything. I'd go to the library and I'd pull fifty books off the shelf and none of them were anything I wanted to read. And I always thought, you know, I could do something better. And there's always stories that really stand out that make me laugh out loud when people tell them. People have fantastically funny stories. So I thought, why not collect these things instead of letting them be wasted, letting them go out in thin air. I collect them and put them together somehow and it seems to work.

Today's apropos of nothing

Quincy MD; Band à part; Miss Mosh; Sleepy Hollow. When I was flatting it was a good game to watch Quincy MD and take all the dialogue literally. The ep when Quincy yelled at someone 'Your father was my right arm!' was a particular hit. I'm always thinking Band à part. Miss Mosh who begat GaGa. A lot of Tim Burton's movies get better with age, which is interesting.

OK: day's a wastin'.