New Voice

“to weigh and consider”, Francis Bacon (the essayist, not the painter)
“the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface”, Roland Barthes 

I cannot aspire to becoming one on whom nothing is lost but, by way of this diary I do hope to cease being one on whom almost everything is lost.  I will follow my fellow blogger Eugene in declaring my intention to make this a regular, perhaps weekly post, in an effort to shame myself out of idleness, and to catch hold of some of those impressions that flit by as I read my evenings away.     (continue reading…)

Whole acres of searing months have dissolved since my last post. Well, ok, just under two months has past with a distinct lack of writing on my part. I would obfuscate and manoeuvre and say things like – I was so busy, don’t you know how it is; or, My God, but where did the time go. Unfortunately, the truth is more accurate, I was finishing out a series of books that I had been plodding through and with no firm conclusions made on the subject matter I did not have any posts wandering around my mind. But, of course, now I do. Well, Newsweek, in all its genius, has helped. (continue reading…)

Faithful  readers, I hope you can forgive the rather prolonged period since we’ve added new content to these pages. Our excuses, as usual, are many and varied. The absence of new material on the site, however, does not arise from indifference or complete laziness, though drunkenness may be a factor. We, at New Voice, do not believe in forcing out a weekly post, just for the sake of it. We are a considered, reflective bunch, and so, over the last few weeks we have been reading, reflecting, considering themes and developing a store of comment, impressions, argument and aside to which we will be subjecting the reader over the coming months.  (continue reading…)

So, I eventually go around sitting down and watching the first few episodes of The Pacific. The build up to this programme was nothing less than Hollywood in its execution. Thousands of mini advertisements whistling across television; epic statements of the programme’s scope, appeared on celluloid and digital screens in cinemas; its status as the sequel to Band of Brother’s was made evident. The Pacific is a veritable beast of the television medium. In the UK it was attached to Sky, for syndication on their movie network of channels. I don’t think any television series has previously garnered that level of anticipation. It says a lot about the power of television at present. (continue reading…)

 In a number of my posts over the last year or so I’ve mentioned the difficulties writers have combining ideas and narrative – uneasy bedfellows as Coetzee writes in Elizabeth Costello. Coetzee himself is one who combines both well, lately adopting a kind of Centre Pompidou method – exposing the ideas he is attempting to explore, rather than attempting to hide them inside fictional scenario.  J.G. Ballard is someone whose daring and vivid ideas and imagination tend to outstrip his often pedestrian, flat prose and awkward plotting. Martin Amis often talks about the need for a writer to get a character from A to B – the details of mundane logistics that a writer, carried away by staging the big set-pieces that will dramatise his ideas, often ignores or stumbles over.  (continue reading…)

I endeavoured to follow through my readings of the Vietnam conflict, from my last post, with a shopping excursion to right my centre of gravity and ensure that I tackle the history from every angle – well, more than one. Being a historian first and foremost this is part of the obligation that is owed to the seriousness of the subject, apparently. I, of course, am not a historian, but I can read and do and pretend at the writing part.  My esteemed colleague, of the Secular Sundays posts, lent me his encyclopaedic knowledge of sixties and seventies American writings with a collection of Michael Herr-equalling shots of literature to vacuum up my soul into the US Armed Forces. Two things happened to impel a slight discursion on my Nam – centric world view. (continue reading…)

Secular Sundays would like to apologise for the lengthy delay since the last posting. The usual excuses apply – laziness, drunkenness, parenthood, obsessive running, existential angst, and sport on TV. Reading, however, is the main reason, and a new DeLillo is always a valid excuse for doing nothing else. Some may claim the size of the great man’s slim new offering is not sufficient to offer up as an excuse for keeping one from anything else, but as explained in David O’Connor’s post, there is more contained in the 115 pages of Point Omega than in most 300 page novels. (continue reading…)

 ”Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

There is a great deal to go on in Don DeLillo’s taut, contemplative new novel (or novella) Point Omega, only some of which I will comment on here.  I have no wish to review the book, or summarise its contents.  In the opening pages the author, always an accommodating if often misjudged, guide, teaches us how the book should be read, and how much can be gleaned from its apparently slim leavings.  A lone figure in the cool darkness of a gallery space is focusing on the art installation 24-Hour-Psycho: “It was only the closest watching that yielded this perception.  He found himself undistracted for some minutes by the coming and going of others and he was able to look at the film with the degree of intensity that was required.  The nature of the film permitted total concentration and also depended on it.  The film’s merciless pacing had no meaning without a corresponding watchfulness, the individual whose absolute alertness did not betray what was demanded” (p5).  His stillness is contrasted with the other visitors “wandering … in a daze” (p3).  (continue reading…)

Vietnam. A word that still to this day means many things to many different people. Travellers etch across its landscape throughout the year wandering its myriad paths and villages, soaking up its cultured cities. Its people are famous for their relaxed personalities and interesting take on life. But for several thousand Vietnam War veterans, this beautiful country remains a nightmare of ferocious memories, strange drug-addled flashbacks, and the emotions of fear and loss. Recently, I was picking through a history of America in the Twentieth Century and spent some time looking at this infamous war. One of the recommended readings, I was informed, was Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Herr wrote for Esquire Magazine during the late sixties and spent two years embedded with the US forces in Vietnam. A number of years following his return Herr wrote this book as a memoir of his time in the country and a scathing overview of the human catastrophe of the conflict. I was surprised, and deeply enlivened to the book before I even began reading, to find that Herr had co-wrote Full Metal Jacket – and indeed the crisp dialogue of that film is referenced significantly in the reality of his account of the war. He went further by writing much of the voiceover in Apocalypse Now – thus acquiring a central role in the two greatest Vietnam War movies. (continue reading…)

A World of Computers

Networking is a significant impediment on my life. I have been offline for what seems an age, in reality a shocking three and half weeks. Often the issue, when I am down and out from the interweb, is the catastrophic nastiness that is wireless networking devices. LAN is just so much more logical. Anyway, Happy New Year to one and all: may they be technologically flawless.

Before Christmas I was nattering on about the German soldier, which was jumping up all over my radar due to their involvement in Afghanistan. Similarly, there is a deal of talk these days about the return of the Russian to the forefront of international relations. Given this, I thought I might look at an aspect of Russian history that has always stood out to my mind. (continue reading…)