Writing Magazine April 2020

APRIL 2020 7

MISCELLANY

http://www.writers-online.co.uk

Agatha Christie traditionalists were left bemused

and confused by writer Sarah Phelp’s recent

atmospheric adaptation of The Pale Horse for

the BBC. Less cosy crime than folk-horror

hallucination, it was: ‘A place where scheming

murderous toffs get the rope, or locked in a

bunker, or condemned to a looping purgatory

nightmare in which they’re stalked by a 1950s

doo-wop hit and a giant turnip king,’ wrote

Digital Spy. The two-parter’s murky Wicker Man

ambience and an ambiguous ending left fans

of the original 1961 novel confused. ‘Another

Christie classic ruined by the BBC’, chuntered

one on Twitter. ‘Why even pretend this is an

Agatha Christie?’ offered another. But viewers

were divided in its favour. ‘If you didn’t like that

adaptation of The Pale Horse then stick David

Suchet on and be done with it,’ tweeted Debbie

Downer. ‘I thought it was great.’

It was either asking

for trouble or

shooting fish in a

barrel, depending

on which side

of the review

desk postbag

you sit. When

veteran book critic

Peter Conrad was given Inside the Critics’

Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times

by academic Phillipa K Chong to review

by the Guardian, he found himself adrift

in a world of academic argot. Phillipa, an

assistant professor of sociology at McMaster

University has a PhD from the University

of Toronto and her website biography says

‘her empirical focus has been on book

reviewers as market intermediaries in the

cultural market’. Her book about reviewing

books includes phrases such as ‘cognitive

heuristic’, ‘homophilious logics’ and ‘the

genderisability of the framework.’

‘I may be a shallow fellow, but I’ve

never worried about what Chong clumsily

describes as the “lack of groupness” among

reviewers,’ wrote Peter. ‘Who cares that

no certificates of “accreditation” enrol us

in “the institution of literary criticism” or

that we “inhabit nonprofessional spaces”? I

also hadn’t realised that I was supposed to

function as a “market intermediary” or –

with luck – as a “cultural consecrator”.

Peter, whose many books include The

Everyman History of English Literature and

a critical history of Orson Welles, has had

journalism published in the newspapers

and magazines including the Observer, The

New Yorker, the Guardian, and The New

Statesman. While Phillipa sucked all the fun

out of the critic’s art in her jargon-laden

prose, Peter put it all back in by tearing

her book apart. ‘If a book is bad it’s bad,’

he decided about Phillipa’s efforts. ‘And if

it’s merely an exercise in academic pseudo-

intellection it’s even worse.’

We’re no strangers at Miscellany Manors to
performers or artistes from other disciplines
deciding to try their hand at a bit of poetry,
or writing a soon-to-be-remaindered novel,
but you don’t often see the trend in reverse.
In this case, perhaps we could have
expected it – his memoir GigGig said it all said it all
in the subtitle, ‘The Life and Times of a
Rock-Star Fantasist’ – but the news that
Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has created
a post-rock band still came as something of
a surprise. Not least because we really rather
enjoyed it.
LYR sees Simon enlist musicians
Richard Walters and Patrick Pearson to
create a background for his spoken-word
performances of ‘ambient post-rock passages,
jazz flourishes and atonal experimentalism’.
The songs started out as ‘sort-of poems,
hybrid things between songs and lyrics and
poems’, Simon told the Guardian: ‘I quite

often read them at events, but I think they

were reaching out for tunes and musical

setting. This allows me to indulge an aspect

of lyricism which is generally not available

on the printed page.’

The debut single Never Good With Horses,

is out now, from Mercury KX. Watch the

video here, https://writ.rs/postrockpoet

Each of the ten tracks on the upcoming

album, Call in the Crash Team, adopts

the perspective of a different character,

‘monologues or soliloquies from people in

personal crises’.

‘We’re not the sort of band who are going

to be playing in the back of a pub on a

Tuesday night in Stalybridge,’ said Simon.

‘We want to make events out of the music.’

LYR are playing their first gig at the

Brudenell Social Club in Leeds. It is,

Simon will no doubt be happy to hear, on

a Monday.

It was either asking

for trouble or

shooting fish in a

barrel, depending

on which side

of the review

desk postbag

you sit. When

veteran book critic

Divisive

dark horse

Critic’s critique, criticised

Poet post-rock