http://www.spannered.org/books/ Music, art, film and literature from outside the mainstream bubble, a platform for writers. Spread a little mp3 love. en-gb Copyright 2007 Spannered. All Rights Reserved. Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT 240 http://www.spannered.org/images/skins/spannered/RSS.jpg http://www.spannered.org/ http://www.spannered.org/books/1215/ http://www.spannered.org/books/1215/ Two young artists take an expansive tour of the Middle East in Henry Hemming's first book. … Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/1159/ http://www.spannered.org/books/1159/ Charming and ever so slightly camp, or retreating to the sexism of a bygone era? Judith Evans finds fault with the Iggulden brothers' recent publishing phenomenon. … Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/1114/ http://www.spannered.org/books/1114/ Self-publishers William Eckersley and Alexander Shields reveal the capital’s ragged edges and stale secrets. … Thu, 07 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/648/ http://www.spannered.org/books/648/ Difficult second novel syndrome? This sophomore effort isn't quite the great American novel, but Foer should keep trying... … Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/635/ http://www.spannered.org/books/635/ Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel is clumsy, awkward and often soporifically dull. So why does it feel this mysteriously good? … Fri, 13 May 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/607/ http://www.spannered.org/books/607/ Reason and unreason collide in McEwan's fine new thriller. … Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/577/ http://www.spannered.org/books/577/ A perfect coffee-table book for anyone who agrees that Dylan's canon of lyrics constitutes some of the most important poetry of the last half-century. … Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/578/ http://www.spannered.org/books/578/ Not, as one might expect, the original metaphysical detective story of 1985 (which is old news – but good news). Instead, the tale translated, transmuted, wrought in the language of comics by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli in 1994, and now published for the first time in the UK.Anyone familiar with Paul Auster's story, the first part of his justly famous New York Trilogy, will immediately recognise the ambition of this project. Within its pages we meet Daniel Quinn, disillusioned poet-turned-thriller writer, shocked out of his solitude by a late-night phone call. Down the line drifts an eerie voice asking for the Paul Auster Detective Agency. Intrigued, he accepts the assignment and is reluctantly drawn into assuming someone else's persona, and into a world … Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/579/ http://www.spannered.org/books/579/ Humphrey Jennings (1907-50) has long been recognised as one of Britain's finest filmmakers on the basis of his wartime documentaries, which, for many of his followers, reveal a rare poetic sensibility despite being ostensibly propaganda. Kevin Jackson, as editor of the somewhat inaccurately named but essential Humphrey Jennings Film Reader, recently reprinted, has made a forceful case for Jennings's work outside of film, placing his involvement in the British surrealist movement and his role as one of the founders of "mass-observation" near the centre of considerations of his work. Jackson's new biography consolidates this project, drawing together all of his subject's diverse achievements into an (almost) unified whole.In some ways the half-century of the Je … Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/586/ http://www.spannered.org/books/586/ Wrong About Japan is something of an oddity and, given that it comes from the pen of a double Booker prize-winning novelist, a bit of a disappointment. It's a slim but lavishly packaged memoir-cum-travelogue that recounts the journey of the author and his son to Tokyo, opening in New York with Carey junior's discovery of Manga and Animé. His father, on the other hand, is knowledgeable about Japanese history and traditional culture and is curious to know more about these startling new forms that hint at complex relations with the past. This proves excuse enough for a shared trip to Japan and a search for the intersection between the hyper-modernity of Charley's comics and the land of temples, engravings and swords. Their guide along the way is an immaculately dre … Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/540/ http://www.spannered.org/books/540/ It's the first decade of the 19th century, and societies of theoretical magic exist all over England – studying the history of magic with unspoken relief that the dangerous art is no longer practised. But by accumulating a magnificent library of books (much rarer things, of course, than they are today), the otherwise unadventurous Mr Norrell studies until he is able to revive the spirit of magic itself. Bringing his great news to London, Norrell proves himself by making stones speak and reviving a young heiress from the dead. He is soon employed to assist the government in the Napoleonic wars; but both his impulsive pupil, Jonathan Strange, and the eerie faerie magic Norrell invokes take the new English wizardry beyond the patriotic and wholesome and into treacherous ground. … Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/527/ http://www.spannered.org/books/527/ The Fit is a perplexing little novel. It's a complete contrast to Philip Hensher's previous effort, The Mulberry Empire, a Kipling-esque epic that sprawled, both in terms of its subject (19th-century Afghanistan) and in terms of its length. The Fit is a compact, stylised domestic drama about the mundane and aimless trials of a freelancer caught in a minor tragicomedy in suburban Wandsworth. Gone is Hensher's imperial, purple prose – abandoned for short, child-like sentences and basic, non-figurative language that give the whole book an air of childlike simplicity.The novel opens with John, the narrator, in his garden, beset by hiccups that begin after he discovers that his wife has left him. He then encounters a bizarre, ageless girl who persuad … Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/516/ http://www.spannered.org/books/516/ There is something about David Foster Wallace's new collection of short stories, Oblivion, that is irritating to the point of distraction. But I'm still not quite sure what it is.Wallace is the darling of contemporary American fiction. He was declared a genius, among other things, when he wrote Infinite Jest. (It's long, seriously long, and apparently very "clever" – although I haven't read it and I've only met people who claim they have, only to admit they haven't.) Listen to Zadie Smith effusing on Oblivion's cover: "[Wallace is] a visionary, a craftsman, a comedian... He's so modern he's in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us. Goddamn him."Goddamn him indeed. Smith's quote tells another story, … Fri, 24 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/515/ http://www.spannered.org/books/515/ The London Scene is a beautifully packaged sequence of six essays that Virginia Woolf composed for Good Housekeeping magazine in 1931. Collected together in this edition for the first time, these carefully sketched windows on London are so distinctively Woolfian you can almost hear her reading them aloud.From the first piece to the last, we are given contrasting impressions of the city that was always Woolf's first home. We see London as an abstract industrial machine in the first essay, inspired by a day spent watching the cranes and the ships in the Docklands in March 1931. And in the last, where Woolf paints a portrait of Mrs Crowe – an imagined londoner – glimpsed accidentally through a window, we see the whole of London embodied in an old woma … Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/502/ http://www.spannered.org/books/502/ What would you give to learn how to write at the feet of your greatest literary heroes? Sam Kashner was an aspiring poet who, to the bafflement of his accommodating parents, gave up a degree at a regular university to become an apprentice to his hero Allen Ginsberg at the 'Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics'. Kashner's highly readable and entertaining memoirs contain some valuable insights into the beats – those brilliant demigods of American literature. But Kashner successfully demystifies their enduring legend at the same time.The first question that arises is 'why?' Why add to an already over-crowded market of true accounts of life with the beats? More shelf space has been dedicated to covering their exploits than to any other literary circle before or since. … Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/501/ http://www.spannered.org/books/501/ From handling rats on Werner Herzog's Nosferatu to a peek into Lana Turner's bedroom, the new Granta collection (somewhat heavily titled Film) brings together an interesting if incoherent array of essays on cinema. With the exception of Atom Egoyan's cheeky piece on the career of Paul Thomas (promising actor turned prolific porn star), filmmakers do not really get a look in. Instead, Granta have assembled a collection of writers who pitch their views as bemused outsiders to the strange workings of film.John Fowles offers up some extracts from the diary he kept during the production of the French Lieutenant's Woman. His dry insights are fascinating in their noncommittal approach to the medium. As various different cinematic luminaries wrestle with the … Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/500/ http://www.spannered.org/books/500/ Nadeem Aslam's second novel Maps For Lost Lovers has just won a place on the Booker Prize longlist, after more than 10 years in the writing. The judges could have been forgiven for simply rewarding a lesson in perseverance – this was clearly an extreme case of the 'difficult second novel' syndrome with which only Donna Tartt's The Llttle Friend can compete in recent years. But if Maps wins a few more readers as a result of the publicity surrounding its difficult conception, they won't be disappointed. Just the right side of overwritten, this is a beautiful and angry book that deserves a wide audience.In one respect, the length of time it took aslam to complete Maps is of particular relevance. The teachings of Islam – which are the … Sun, 12 Sep 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/464/ http://www.spannered.org/books/464/ A young man wakes from a coma to a world that resembles the one he knows, but which differs from it in nightmarish ways. Alex Garland's strange new novella The Coma revisits the premise of his 2003 screenplay, 28 Days Later, except he's replaced the voracious zombies for the vagaries of an unreliable mind.Carl, the hero and narrator, is attacked by a gang of thugs on the tube late at night and kicked unconscious. Apparently waking from this state, he tries to pick up the threads of his life, but finds himself increasingly adrift from the reality he remembers. As carl experiences ever more bizarre shifts in time and place, he starts to believe that he hasn't woken up at all and that the 'life' he's leading is in fact an exploration of his subconscious. … Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/465/ http://www.spannered.org/books/465/ As memories of apartheid recede and South Africa becomes an increasingly stable democracy, books such as this one become ever more important. A Burning Hunger chronicles the deprivations of apartheid and the immense courage of those who struggled against the oppressive weight of the white nationalist regime, and reminds the world of a horror that must not be forgotten. Lynda Schuster's biography of a Soweto family and its involvement in the struggle for liberation traces the lives of Rocks, Tsietsi, Mpho, Dee and Tshepiso Mashinini, from the student uprisings of June 16, 1976, through the mobilisation of the black townships in the 1980s and the repressive responses of the white South African state. The narrative, largely constructed from newspaper reports and interview … Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/466/ http://www.spannered.org/books/466/ Anytime a novelist prefaces his book with a quotation from The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy alarm bells should ring and the reader should know he's in for a difficult ride. Of course, the difficulty of Jose Daramago's The Double may have as much to do with Margaret Jull Costa's translation from the Portuguese as with the constant, circuitous and often extremely funny digressions from the narrative, à la Sterne. Caveats aside, though, this is an enjoyable novel, written by an octogenarian Nobel prize winner who seems very much in control of his mental faculties. The book centres on the discovery of a secondary school history teacher, who's already somewhat overshadowed by low-level depression, that an identical copy of himself lives in his … Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/463/ http://www.spannered.org/books/463/ It's 1871, and Max Tivoli enters the world, wrinkled and withered, like any normal baby first blinking their way out of the womb. But max is different. The wrinkles remain and, instead of becoming a sweet-scented baby, he resembles a 70-year-old man. For Max is a victim of a rare disease – one that causes him to age backwards. whilst he has the mind of a baby, he has the body of an old man, and, as he grows older, his body will grow younger. This is the entrancing basis of Andrew Sean Greer's latest novel. It sounds mightily confusing, and is potentially a technical nightmare, but read on. It's mesmerising.The tale is told by Max, now almost 60 but with the body of a 12-year-old, as he sits in a sandpit in a loud school playground surrounded by 'real' children. He calls h … Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/469/ http://www.spannered.org/books/469/ British silent film, since the introduction of sound, has endured a dismal reputation. Kevin Brownlow wrote that British silents never advanced beyond the sense of technological astonishment visible in early experiments by GA Smith, Williamson's Kinematograph Company and RW Paul. The period's greatest director, Alfred Hitchcock, did not peak until his move to Hollywood, despite the success of The Lodger (1926); even Wyndham Lewis, the most iconoclastic modernist, declined to experiment with film, and the UK avant-garde did not involve themselves with cinema like Brecht, Dalí, or Mayakovsky. The failure of British directors to match DW Griffith's narrative skill, Murnau's technical mastery or Eisenstein's level of formal experimentation has resulted in its critical mauling, … Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/453/ http://www.spannered.org/books/453/ Does Hari Kunzru get you shelf-cred? His latest book, Transmission, oozes edgy cool. … Mon, 05 Jul 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/442/ http://www.spannered.org/books/442/ If you fancy a rendezvous with a half-cut Begbie, check out the latest Scottish rant novel from Booker prize-shorlisted novelist James Kelman. … Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/443/ http://www.spannered.org/books/443/ Part travelogue, part cultural history, Where You're At sees the journalist and novelist Patrick Neate undertake a journey into hip hop's dark heart, in an attempt to locate both himself and the music he loves within contemporary global culture. He begins in New York (where else?), confronting the powerful idea that 'hip hop is dead', overwhelmed by its own massive commercial success in both black and white America and undermined by its status as merely a 'hustle' or a 'game' for its principal exponents.Neate's mission to discover how it is that we have come to live on a hip hop planet takes him from New York to Tokyo, South Africa and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Whether questioning the authenticity of a Japanese b-boy's assertion that you've got to 'keep it real' o … Tue, 22 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/444/ http://www.spannered.org/books/444/ Find out if Marilyn Monroe was 'truly schizoid'. … Tue, 22 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/439/ http://www.spannered.org/books/439/ Benny Poteat is a watcher. He watches from the sidelines, through car windows, from the safety of his house – but mostly Benny watches from the tall metal towers on which he works when one day he sees a young woman walk into the big toe river and drown herself, and a new kind of watching begins.Having discovered the camera she used to video her final act and a collection of video tapes that document her recent history, Benny buys a VCR and slowly uncovers the woman's past and the various events leading to her death.Visits from the Drowned Girl, Steven Sherrill's second novel, is billed as a book about the destructive capacity of secrets, but it seems equally concerned with the act of watching – and, more specifically, with its passive nature. … Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/440/ http://www.spannered.org/books/440/ Martin Amis and pornography go together like a hand inside a lubed-up, latex glove. Think of the succession of set-piece fantasies in his cocksure debut the Rachel Papers, after its narrator embarks on his quest to get laid. Think of Money, where stockings, garter belts, silks and straps festoon the naked body of the glamour girl Selina Street like bunting at a fair. Think of the 'murderee' Nicola Six in London Fields, the jezebel vamp who loves to take it up the 'black hole' from which babies don't emerge. 'Good sex seems to be something that writing can't manage,' says a character in his latest novel, Yellow Dog. Trashy sex, though: that's where Amis excels.It's predictable, then, that he would contribute an essay to a book of photography e … Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/441/ http://www.spannered.org/books/441/ Who won between Madonna and musical cyber-pirates? And is Richard Branson really a tightwad? … Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT http://www.spannered.org/books/454/ http://www.spannered.org/books/454/ How Pornoland inspired Martin Amis' latest novel, Yellow Dog. … Sun, 20 Jun 2004 00:00:00 GMT