Writing Magazine April 2020

(Joyce) #1
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

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