Le Flâneur

Here is a lazily cobbled together list of likes and dislikes that have been sustaining me over the past few weeks. Other stuff has been happening, it’s just well, y’know…

Hates

1. That advert that features a guy using a car for a skateboard. I can’t begin to describe how much this advert annoys me. The thought of thousands of gawpers sat in their homes transfixed by this singularly empty imagery fills me with despair. I think it’s the tinkly piano music cynically employed to try and lend it some air of nuanced grace or profundity that gets to me. There was this jerk I went to University with who works in advertising and I imagine this to be exactly the kind of unadulterated crap he’d come up with.

Actually I can’t think of any more hates right now (aside from moaning about the British weather and my personal gripes with the department of work and pensions with whom I’ve had some regretful yet necessary dealings with lately), so I’ll just move on to more positive things instead.

Loves

1. Cosmos by Carl Sagan. I’ve been watching this seminal series from 1980 on tv links and believe it to be the best effort of its kind I’ve seen on television. Though they cover mostly things I’ve encountered before somewhere, the shows have a remarkable way of clarifying ideas and explaining them in a simple way. This must in part be down to the sympathetic and affable narrator himself, (though bizarrely I’ve noticed how a Sagan has a strong resemblance in speech to Agent Smith from the Matrix films). It also has a kind of retro appeal reminiscent of a gentler and more subtle time. A contemporary rendering of the same ideas would no doubt bombard you with impressive visuals but at the same time it would spoon feed you information and generally insult your intelligence.

2. The Adventures of Augie March. This is the most difficult but rewarding novel I’ve read in a long time. I’ve struggled with Saul Bellow in the past but once you get into the flow of this one it’s really compelling. It reminds me a little of Felix Krull by Thomas Man. Both novels follow a young man into maturity and both central protagonists seem to have a similar quality of being empty vessels able to alter themselves chameleon-like to each new situation that presents itself. Though not having finished it yet, I’m sure its full off great insights into the the nature of the American experience. For instance, the way in which Augie’s brother Simon marries into a family of money despite being from a poverty stricken background. It is the very quality of having come from a modest background and being a self-made man that is seen as an attribute by the new in-laws, who themselves were once poor. This is the very opposite of the European way where almost invariably the monied marry the monied and the nouveau riche are to be looked down upon. The way immigrant families picked themselves up and carried on after the great depression is at the heart of the American myth and a prelude to its becoming the undisputed superpower in the second half of the twentieth century. The text is peppered with references to European literature and history that, though perplexing and obscure at times, throw into the relief the human drama playing out in the New World. I’m also enjoying the rather lost quality of Augie as he tries to find a place in the world for himself.

3. The Office (US Vesrion). Like most people I was a bit prejudiced when I heard that there was to be an American version of the classic British comedy, and this probably explains why I’d not given this show a try until very recently (again through the generosity of tv links). I’m pleased to be able to report that it works! Sometimes marvelously so; I have on occasion uttered forth proper belly-laughs when viewing it. It fills a gap left by the end of the brilliant Peep Show 4. Once you get over the fact that it’s just different actors playing the same parts, and realise that they’ve achieved more or less the same formula its really very enjoyable. ‘Michael Scott’ i.e. David Brent is played by Steve Carall who is as we all know a gifted comic. Give it a try.