New Voice

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…)

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…)

The team at New Voice would like to wish our readers all the best for the Christmas, and we hope that there was some decent literature under the tree, or at least a book voucher or two. I would also like to announce the arrival of the newest voice on the team – Ruadhán Tomás Farrelly – nearly two weeks old and already showing clear signs of being a literary genius.

I am too full of turkey, and there are too many unopened bottles of Tyskie in the fridge, (not to mention the fact of a new baby demanding attention) for me to spend too much time typing this week. In fact, I just want to alert readers to some Christmas TV – the excellent Orson Welles season on BBC 4 continues this evening and ‘The Dead’, John Huston’s fabulous rendering of, arguably, the complete (perfect?) short story is on RTÉ tomorrow evening. As Fintan O’Toole wrote last week in the Irish Times, it is impossible now to read ‘The Dead’ and imagine Gabriel as anyone other than the magnificent Donal McCann.

Finally, some words from James Joyce to end 2009 – chosen, from ‘The Dead’, for absolutely no reason other than their simplicity and beauty:

The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres. (Dubliners, Triad/Grafton p230)

The subject of today’s sermon, brethren, is last night’s programming on BBC 4 – a selection of doucmentaries on selected, British poets. Incidentally, BBC 4 is, increasingly, becoming a good reason to stay in on Saturday nights (well, that, the recession and a god-awful hangover from the night before). Anyway,  we had Paxman on Wilfred Owen, the most interesting part of which was an opportunity to view drafts of poems, complete with Sassoon’s suggestions. This documentary, though, put me in mind, not only of Owen and his brilliant poetry and tragic, ironic life and death, but of Owen as portrayed by Pat Barker in the exceptional Regeneration trilogy. (continue reading…)