Doghead Book Club II - Night Train

Here's what happened. A woman fell out of a clear blue sky.

Night Train is going to prove difficult reading for some. Not difficult through verbiage or structure, but difficult on a metaphysical level. Night Train is, to all intents and purposes, a crime novel. The main character Mike Hoolihan, is a homicide detective in an unnamed American city (my gut was telling me Boston when I was reading it, not that it's especially important). Hoolihan is an ex alcoholic, large framed, and female, and is investigating the suspicious suicide of the police chief's daugher. So far, so straight forward.

The intriguing thing about this short work is the direction it takes. Before even getting to the halfway point it turns from a whodunnit into a whydunnit, leaving the characters, and the reader for that matter, to face up to some difficult truths about the world. I wouldn't describe night train as revelatory, as a good deal of Martin Amis' work can be, but for a short piece of writing it gets to the point eloquently enough.

I anticipate a lot of the animosity that attracts itself to Night Train comes from a deliberately unsatisfying conclusion. Those who expect a run-of-the-mill detective yarn will be disappointed on a number of fronts. Firstly, it seems Night Train is a playful response by Amis to critics that often label him chauvanist (I've never seen it to be honest), and while I wouldn't go far as to call Night Train a work of feminism, I would say that Amis portrays the women in this book famously, and writes with warmth and sensitivity, factors not usually associated with either Amis or crime novels. Secondly, while the language, setting and foundation of the book is very much in the style of the pulp crime novel, the development thereafter will likely confound and frustrate anyone who wants a bad guy caught and punished. The evils of Night Train are existential and totally out of grasp, and the only way this book could have ended really is badly.

It's not a good starting point for someone who wants to read Amis. I would recommend Money before all else, followed by something like Time's Arrow or Yellow Dog, but at 150 pages you could quite easily read this in an afternoon and take something valuable away from it.

Here's an extract from Night Train, with a train of thought I would have loved to have seen explored in more detail above and beyond the 150 pages:

Homicide can't change - and I don't mean the department. It can evolve.
It can't change. There's nowhere for homicide to go.
But what if suicide could change?
Murder can evolve in the direction of new disparity - new dis murders
Upward disparity:
Sometime in the fifties a man made a homicidal breakthrough. He planted
and detonated a bomb on a commercial airliner: to kill his wife.
A man could bring down - perhaps has brought down - a 747: to kill his wife.
The terrorist razes a city with a suitcase H-Bomb: to kill his wife.
The president entrains central thermonuclear war: to kill his wife.
Downward disparity:
Every cop in America is familiar with the super-savagery of Christmas Day domestics. On Christmas Day, everyone's home at the same time. And it's a disaster... We call them 'star or fairy?' murders: people get to arguing about what goes on top of the tree. Here's another regular: fatal stabbings over how you carve the bird.
A murder about a diaper.
Imagine: a murder about a safety-pin.
A murder about a molecule of rancid milk.
But people have already murdered for less than that. Downward disparity has already been plumbed - been sonar-ed and scoured. People have already murdered for nothing. They take the trouble to cross the street to murder them for nothing.
Then there's the copycat, where the guy's copying the TV or some other guy, or copying some other guy who's copying the TV. I believe that copycat is as old as Homer, older, older than the first story daubed in shit on the wall of the cave. It precedes the fireside yarn. It precedes fire.
You get copycat with suicide too. Fuck yes. They call it the Werther Effect. Named after some melancholy novel, later suppressed after it burned a train of youth suicides through eighteenth-century Europe. I see the same thing here on the street: some asshole of a bass guitarist chokes on his own ralph (or fries on his own amplifier) - and suddenly suicide is all over town.
There's a recurring anxiety, with every generation, that a shoah of suicides has come, to blow the young away. It seems like everybody's doing it. And then it settles down again. Copycat is more precipitant than cause. It just gives shape to something that was going to happen anyway.
Suicide hasn't changed. But what if it did change? Homicide has dispensed with the why. You have gratuitous homicide. But you don't-

Doghead book club I - If I die in a combat zone

Given that chaps have been, and are, dedicating their time to cataloging all manner of records, trainers, tattoos, art prints, etc for the blogosphere, I thought I'd make a contribution with something that I hold a little closer to my own heart: bookywooks. Knowing me this will be updated once every 7 years, so don't hold your breath.

The first book I would like to share is If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O'Brien, purely because it's the last book I read. I last read If I die... about 5 years ago, when I was studying peace and conflict resolution at university. Reflecting back, I was rather disheartened with the course, and with my life in general, and think that my way of thinking tainted the reading experience. I disregarded it entirely back then as liberal toss, and remember getting into a little bit of a heated argument with Dave'o (no relation) over it. Long story shortened, I gave it another chance the other night and read the whole thing in about 6 hours.

If I Die in a Combat Zone is an autobiographical account of Tim O'Brien's tour of Vietnam. Before even going he was fairly liberal minded, and even did his best to get out of active service. What's refreshing about O'Brien's account is his emotional honesty (I say 'honesty' while appreciating that no work of writing can ever be truly honest, but here is not the place to dissect such an idea). This passage quite succinctly sums up O'Brien's account:

Men are killed, dead human beings are very heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

And war stories are what you get. Poetically told, with at times stunning insight, but war stories are what this book contain, ranging from his frustrations in training, his self-sabotaging of going AWOL, through to his violent, bloody, and almost entirely useless tour of 'Nam. You can tell O'Brien is both left leaning, and against the war he's fighting in, but so is almost everyone fighting there, on all sides. It always seems to be a recurring theme in almost all Vietnam books I've read. Noone ever really seemed to know what they were there for. If I were recommending a book on Vietnam, I would suggest Dispatches by Michael Herr over any other, but this book taps into much the same moods and sentiments, and is certainly a useful companion piece with a different perspective.

Here's an excerpt in lieu of an MP3 or youtube clip. The following passage really stood out. It could well be a standalone piece in its own right, and in an abstract sense sums up a great deal of human struggle:

10: The Man at the Well

He was just an old man, an old Vietnamese farmer. His hair was white, and he was somewhere over seventy years, stooped and hunches from work in the paddies, his spine bent into a permanent, calcified arc. He was blind. His eyes were huge and empty, glistening like aluminium under the sun, cauterized and burnt out. But the old man got around.

In March we came to his well. He stood and smiled while we used the water. He laughed when we laughed. To be ingratiating he said 'Good water for good GIs.' Whenever there was an occasion, he repeated the phrase.
Some children came to the well, and one of them, a little girl with black hair and hoops of steel through her ears, took the old fellow's hand, helping him about. The kids giggles at our naked bodies. A boy took a soldier's rifle from out the mud and wiped it and stacked it against the tree, and the old man smiled.

Alpha Company decided to spend the day in the old man's village. We lounged inside his hut, and when re-supply brought down cold beer and food, we ate and wasted away the day. The kids administered back rubs, chopping and stretching and pushing our blood. They eyed out our C rations, and the old man helped when he could.

When the wind stopped and the flies became bothersome, we went to the well again. We showered and the old fellow helped, dipping into the well and yanking up buckets of water and sloshing it over our heads and backs and bellies. The kids watched him wash us. The day was as hot and peaceful as a day can be.

The blind old farmer was showering one of the men. A blustery and stupid soldier, blond hair and big belly, picked up a carton of milk and from fifteen feet away hurled it, for no reason, aiming at the old man and striking him flush in the face. The carton burst, milk spraying on the old man's temples and into his cataracts. He hunched forward, rocking precariously and searching for balance. He dropped his bucket, and his hands went to his eyes then dropped loosely to his thighs. His blind
gaze fixed straight ahead, at the stupid soldier's feet. His tongue moved a little, trying to get at the cut and tasting the blood and milk. No one moved to help. The kids were quiet. The old man's eyes did a funny trick, almost rolling out of his head, out of sight. He was motionless, and finally he smiled. He picked up the bucket and with the ruins of goodness spread over him, perfect gore, he dunked into the well and came up with water, and he showered a soldier. The kids watched.

it all went downhill from here...

Backstory, circa 2003 this dude used to throw drinks at us in star in leeds when we used to windmill to hatebreed and arkangel, we then dedicated a good year to winding him up, ended up in him picking a fight with tommy minns outside while the dude was wearing zebra stripe jeans. He was crying and screaming, 'don't you know who I am?' to which minns said 'aye, yer a cunt' to which captain spammo said 'no I'm vivian westwood's son'.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: xchrisfilthx
Date: Apr 15, 2006 12:07 PM

this sounds like good stuff guys-when you getting a
demo out there? also- i'm putting an alldayer on in leeds sometime in september if you guys are up for it.
sorting a venue but bands who are playing so far:
not dead yet,
break a sweat,
xnervous wreckx,
trying to get pointing finger over if diogio sorts some stuff out and also an american band depending on who'll be over at the time. there will be no bad modern metalcore bands playing as im trying to keep it within the style of what i like and love in hardcore. all the bands will also be straight edge.
it's my first forray into putting on a gig let alone an alldayer, but i'm getting alot of advice from other promoters who've bin around a bit and want to put the effort in to make it something special.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Deal With It
Date: Apr 16, 2006 4:48 AM

OH KEWL FUMBLES IN LIFE

we don't want to play your shitty show, you're everything that's wrong about hardcore. Hope you get drunk soon so people stop thinking you're in any way shape or form like myself. You're a five minute flash in the pan and the sooner you drop out and leave us alone the better.

xget fuckedx

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: xchrisfilthx
Date: Apr 16, 2006 5:02 AM

i'm just a guy trying to put something into what i love. if you didn't want to play you could have just said-theres no need to send messages like that. whoever replied originally i thought seemed nice and helpful.just because yeah you've probably been in the scene for ages, doesn't mean i feel any less passionate about hardcore than you. you don't own the music and who can like it or can't. everyones got to start somewhere.
good look with your future.


----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Deal With It
Date: Apr 16, 2006 5:15 AM

you don't love it, you're just in it cos you think its some fucking little social clique you can worm yourself into. I can see right through you, so can everyone else, you're as fake as jordan's tits.

it's a shame someone replied being nice and helpful, cos it probably gave an inkling anyone likes you, you don't belong here, you belong at panic at the disco shows. Believe me, you are a LOT less passionate than me or any of my friends. To you, passion is some fucking buzz word that you bat around to make yourself seem like some fucking genuine dude, when in reality you're just out to get your dick sucked and enlarge your social clique. You're a poser, I see you standing there at shows trying to get your fucking stance right or something, I mean, the very fact that you're trying so fucking hard to blend into some aethetic shows how shallow you really are.

There's nothing wrong with being a new kid on the block, there's everything wrong with being a new cunt on the block.

STRAIGHT EDGE BELONGS TO US, AND YOU WILL NEVER BE ACCEPTED.

your's truly

vegan meich

ps fight me

The Sorrows of Young Bernard

Is it appropriate to give a name to the cells that make up your colon, beyond calling them 'colonic cells'? Should we individually call each of our skin flakes after things that take our fancy? Do we name the hairs on our head, or the veins that run to our heart, or the cancer growing in our bowel? 'Of course not!' the people cry. Then why name the collection of cells that we flush out with a morning after pill? It was no more a being than our femur. And yet...

It was nothing. A fusion of two reproductive cells, that in a short space of time gathered a scientific idea of what it was to become and set to work building and forming. Unbeknownst to the diligent cells, this formation was unwanted. After six weeks of furtive construction and realisation, the cells were stopped in their path, and killed. The reasons for this are unimportant, but if it makes the moral purists out there feel better it was because the pregnancy in question stemmed from the incest rape of a minor, or for the social cohesionistas, it was rape of the financial kind, a couple incapable of raising a child in a cruel, uncaring, bourgeois world. Like that, building stopped, cells stopped in their tracks and withered away. The mass came out, in its own humiliating way, punishment enough to the mother who had to watch her instinctive calling flush down the toilet quite literally. And that was that. Back to the checkout counter, or the law degree, or life on jobseekers. But the tale is not over for the thing that could have been, not by a long shot. On the contrary, the story is neither just beginning nor ending, but floating somewhere in the infinite inbetween. To better illustrate, it would be provident to follow the cell mass into the toilet, beyond notions of purgatory and afterlife, into a future more plausible and infinitely more exciting than any notion of heaven or hell.

Travel, traverse, transcend. Onwards and upwards. Take one step forward and two steps back. The trick is not in the destination, but in the journey itself. Upon that toilet flush an opening is made to bigger and better things, far beyond the ken of mere mortals. This abortion is privy to the workings of the known universe. Don't believe the lies spun by the pro-life lobby, a terminated future is far greater than any tangible time-lined concept of life.

To tap out is to tap in, the stream full of the gazelles of the plains, those who have given their throat to the fangs of death. They know, in their dying moments, what is waiting beyond their death, beyond the meal that sustains the predator for a week or so, beyond the scraps that the buzzards pick.

Energy.

I'm thinking of doing a spoken word recording, some stories I've written and that, but would really like a soundtrack accompaniement (sp?) to go with it. Something that sits in the background for the most part, but serves to unnerve the listener further. Later swans records spring to mind especially.

If anyone is interested, or knows of anyone who is interested, please get in touch, I am eager to get started with this as soon as possible.

fortress_of_solitude@hotmail.co.uk

Kingdom of Fear compilation - out now!

I Am Legend

I never really thought of myself as a writer, more like someone who wrote things every now and again to pass the time. But now, for my sins, a writer is what I am. I received in the post yesterday my first 'official' piece of published work, in a journal called Abraxas Unbound. The story is entitled Chorus and is a story in the style of Edgar Alan Poe, maybe a bit of Raymond Carver thrown in (just because its brief and gets to the point). It's not a particularly long or adventurous story, but it's mine nonetheless and I'm happy beyond words to be able to have something on my bookshelf with my own words inside.

If you're interested, you can pick Abraxas Unbound up from here: http://www.lulu.com/content/4617742

There's essays within by Colin Wilson as well as academia on all sorts of subjects. It's quite poetic in a way that the first issue of Doghead was almost entirely dedicated to Wilson's first book, and now here I am sharing pages with him. It's a funny old world.