Words Are My Matter - Ursula K Le Guin

 WORDS ARE MY MATTER - URSULA K LE GUIN

So impressed was I with Ursula K Le Guin after reading her The Word For World Is Forest that I thought I should investigate further. So, following the advice given by friend and top man Lawrence Burton from his hacienda in Texas, rather than reading another of Le Guin's novels, I picked up a collection of her essays entitled Words Are My Matter - Writings On Life And Books from of all places the Arnolfini arts centre in Bristol, where on entering the building a copy was there on prominent display as if waiting for me to arrive. It was serendipity, obviously, particularly as I've always had issues with the Arnolfini staff for being ignorant about aspects of art and culture that they disguise through snobbery. But that's a whole other story.

Words Are My Matter is a collection of essays, talks, book introductions and book reviews all from the pen of Ursula K Le Guin, all on the subject of literature and its meaning and purpose in our lives. From the start she writes 'The imagination is the single most useful tool mankind possesses, it beats the opposable thumb', and then goes on to explain exactly why. It's a no-brainer, really, but Le Guin takes it further by saying 'Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making.' Before then adding 'In the market place, the word 'creativity' has come to mean the generation of ideas to make larger profits. This reduction has gone on so long that the word 'creative' can hardly be degraded further. I don't use it any more, yielding it to the capitalists and academics to abuse as they like. But they can't have 'imagination'.'

These words were written in 2002 and they tell us that Le Guin was very much ahead of the curve, particularly in regard to creativity. Nowadays, there's no end of people who call themselves 'creatives', 'content providers', and 'digital creators' - and frankly, it's embarrassing. The terms are meaningless because essentially it's just people on social media grifting. Let them go ahead. Let them 'create', let them entertain, let them grift but don't let them tell you it's 'imagination' because it's not, for as Le Guin explains: 'The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human'. 

The imagination is not for grifting.

In regard to Le Guin's book introductions, one of them is for Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, a book that just happens to be a favourite of mine and the film of it by Andrei Tarkovsky one that is easily in my Top Five. Her insights into Lem's book are both interesting and enlightening, particularly on the period it first appeared in an English translation in 1970. I didn't know, for example, that when Lem was made an honorary member of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1973, many members of the association disapproved due to him being a citizen of a Communist nation. Never mind that Lem was actually a Pole, not a Russian. His honorary membership was withdrawn and in objection to this, Le Guin refused the Nebula Award voted for her by the members of the SFWA. It going instead to Isaac Asimov who, Le Guin tells us, was a vociferous Cold War Warrior.

Other introductions take in among others works by Philip K Dick, Huxley, Paternak, the Strugatsky brothers and HG Wells, all of which offers insights galore that could only come from a fellow writer.

And then there's the slew of book reviews, many of them being of works by authors I've not heard of before but by this time because you know where Le Guin is coming from, you trust her judgements. For example, when she says of one book that it's 'a classic, and should be cherished as such', you know she's not just saying it as a favour to the author and to promote sales. She's saying it because she means it.

'I like book reviewing,' Le Guin tells us. 'It's an interesting and demanding form. And one can say a good deal in a review that has to do with wider matters, literary and otherwise.'

I agree with this totally. It's the reason I'm writing these very lines. These very words. It's ended up as the very reason for this Art Of Exmouth blog. And in the same way that Le Guin sees imagination, a good book review is not for profit-making. It's not for providing content, and it's not a way of being 'a creative'. And it's certainly not for grifting.

John Serpico

The Hellfire Club - Daniel P Mannix

THE HELLFIRE CLUB - DANIEL P MANNIX

'The rise and fall of a shocking secret society whose sole interests were perversion and politics.' So says the blurb on the front cover and it's almost as if this book had been written especially for me. The Hell-Fire Club? Where do I join? But then I remember the Oscar Wilde quote with him saying 'I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,' and I'm stuck.

The Hellfire Club by Daniel P Mannix, first published in 1961, is the story of an elite club of men founded in the 18th Century by Sir Francis Dashwood whose main emphasis was on sex, drugs and the ridiculing of religion. A club that attracted the supposed brightest and the best minds of England that would secretly direct the fate of the nation, operating behind the scenes of government.

Members of the club included the Earl of Sandwich (who did indeed invent the sandwich), the Earl of Bute (who later became Prime Minister), Thomas Potter (the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury), William Hogarth (the English artist), Laurence Sterne (the novelist), John Wilkes (the British libertine), and Frederick, Prince of Wales.

The book is composed of large swathes of conjecture though based on a lot of facts that can easily be cross-checked. Amusingly, there doesn't actually seem to be any proof that any of these people were members though that doesn't stop Mannix from having a lot of fun with what is known.

When George III became king, his first act was to make Bute his prime minister, Sandwich the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Dashwood the Chancellor of the Exchequer. "I'll be the worst chancellor England ever had," Bute is reported to have told his friends, to which one of them disagreed: "But you have considerable experience with figures, My Lord. You have often helped chalk up how often each of us have had a go at the nuns."

Ah, the nuns. These were 'special' nuns, of course, who attended the parties and black masses held by the Hell-Fire Club where they would 'service' the attendees. Demonstrating, for example, new positions not found even in the Kama Sutra. Parties where sex and drink of only the most involved and esoteric kind would be served. Parties held under the maxim 'Do what thou wilt' and guided by the words 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'.

I know what you're thinking. It sounds like just a typical night down your local pub except there you've got Guinness on tap and a pool table to mess about on and then back to whoever's house is available that night until the sun comes up. And you wouldn't be far wrong, actually. Debauchery isn't the sole reserve of the ruling class. They might well have more money and be more lavish but when it comes to imagination, inventiveness and indulgence of extremes, they do not hold a monopoly. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the upper class and even the middle class so dislike the poor and the working class. Because the working class naturally know how to enjoy themselves, whilst the middle and upper class can only buy enjoyment. They cannot invent and make it themselves.

The thing of note about this book is that it shows the workings of such elite clubs as the Hell-Fire Club, Eton's Bullingdon Club and the goings-on at Epstein's island is nothing new. Secret societies, elite clubs, nepotism and the old school tie have been with us for centuries. So too has the machinations and the corruption of power and the way it's clung to and wielded for the benefit of the few and the exploitation of the many. And that is where the difference in debauchery lies. Not in the quality of it or in its highs and lows but in the level of the power games that go with it.

John Serpico

Hombre - Elmore Leonard

 HOMBRE - ELMORE LEONARD

The book on which the film starring Paul Newman is based of course, and I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff where a film is based on a book and vice versa. It's the interplay between the two mediums and the 'compare and contrast' that comes into play. It's only natural to match one medium against another and to let the best man win and though both have their own very unique strengths, nine times out of ten 'Het boek is beter' as the Dutch say. Which brings us to Elmore Leonard and I didn't realise just how many films have been made from his books - 23 in total - including 3:10 To Yuma, Valdez Is Coming, Jackie Brown, and this one, obviously - Hombre.

First published in 1961, Hombre by Elmore Leonard is concise, succinct and to the point. It's an example of storytelling in a very precise way. Lean, mean and clean in its structure though set in a hot, dirty and unforgiving landscape. One of the major themes running through it is the subject of racism, specifically in regard to the treatment of Native Americans, accentuated by the main character having spent half his life living with the Apache.

Without going into too much detail, the story involves a stagecoach holding a mixed-bag of passengers being held up by outlaws and them being left to die with no water in a barren, Monument Valley-type environment. A turn of events then leads to the passengers being chased-down by the outlaws across this same hostile landscape. The only one of them who has any survival skills and of any use with a gun is, of course, the one raised by indians so it's him they come to depend on for their survival even when only a day earlier they didn't want him in the stagecoach with them.

The vast amount of the story is centred on the play-offs and stand-offs between the characters, with the indian-raised character - the 'Hombre' of the book's title - being the pivot around whom everything circles. It's a familiar trope, admittedly, but what grips the attention is the masterly way the story is told and the suspense maintained.

But is the book better than the movie? Well, one of the major flaws in the film when watching it nowadays is seeing Paul Newman dressed as an Apache, which unavoidably doesn't really sit right. There's also the feeling when watching the film that it's an ensemble piece but usurped by Newman. So yes, the book - as ever - is better. Or again, as the Dutch say: 'Het boek is beter'.

John Serpico

Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version - Marian Kester

 DEAD KENNEDYS - THE UNAUTHORIZED VERSION - MARIAN KESTER

Another one of those scrapbook-type books but this time on the Dead Kennedys. Vocalist Jello Biafra has recently suffered from a stroke though by all reports he's slowly but thankfully recovering, so now is probably as good a time as any to revisit this: Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version, written by Marian Kester.

Jello is 68 years-old now and the last time I saw him was around the year 2000 when he appeared at the London Anarchist Bookfair, down at the Conway Hall. The night before, he'd stayed at a friend's house in Bristol who told me he'd found Jello to be a bit strange, though that was okay by me because after all - it's Jello Biafra!

I was manning a stall at the bookfair and the place was heaving. I knew that Jello was there but I thought he'd maybe just come along to pick up a few books or at best to do a talk in one of the meeting rooms? What I didn't expect was for him to get up on the stage and deliver a long speech-type rant to the assembled hordes. And neither did anyone else. Unannounced and (as far as I knew) uninvited, there he was: some guy with a funny American accent up on the stage telling the largest, genuinely anarchist crowd he'd probably ever encountered in his life just what was wrong with the world and what we all needed to be doing about it. I looked around and it was obvious that most people there didn't have a clue who he was and were thinking 'Who the fuck is this?' It was pretty embarrassing.

Maybe it was a cultural misunderstanding thing? Maybe Jello felt he was at just another concert? Maybe he genuinely felt that he knew best and needed to enlighten us? But did he not think it strange that of all the people there, that he was the only one important enough to mount the stage and explain everything to us as if we were one of his audiences? To put it gently, there was a slight lack of self-awareness on Jello's part that day, it seemed to me.

Relaying this anecdote is not to diminish the brilliance and even the importance of the Dead Kennedys as a band, but it's just to show we all have our flaws - though most us us don't usually choose to flaunt them in a self-important fashion from a stage in front of our peers in a weird-sounding Walt Disney-character-type voice.

Musically, the Dead Kennedys were really good. Politically they were... interesting. You think of the Dead Kennedys and you think of East Bay Ray's distinctive guitar-playing. You think of the Dead Kennedys and you think of Jello Biafra's politics as amplified by his vibrato vocals. The music carried the politics, the politics supported the music, and combined a force of exuberant energy was created.

Printed in 1983, Dead Kennedys - The Unauthorized Version is, unfortunately, a bit of a cash-in. A vanity project, even. It's a muddle and a bit of a mess due to appearing not to know quite what its purpose is. A lot of the photos are lacklustre and the reproductions of Winston Smith's artwork are uninspiring. The interesting thing about it, however, is that it's almost a meditation on the Dead Kennedys. An attempt to try and understand what the Dead Kennedys are about and what they might represent. The writer, however, is on a hiding to nothing.  

Tucked away in the text of the book there's a line that acts as a clue as to why trying to pin down the Dead Kennedys is a fruitless task and to my mind it says a lot about them as a band: 'Perhaps being political in the US means choosing which conspiracy to believe in?'

For a band whose name rests on one of the biggest conspiracy theories in the world, led by a singer whose whole trip was to raise conspiracy theories as semi-alternatives to the New World Order and then shoot them all down; well, to try and come up with a viable explanation of what the band meant is like trying to nail-down jelly. Or jello. 

For all that, I'll say again, the Dead Kennedys were a brilliant band whose impact has been significant. Moreover, their song Police Truck is sublime: 'The Left newspapers might whine a bit, but the guys at the station they don't give a shit. Dispatch calls, "Are you doing something wicked?" No siree, Jack, we're just giving tickets. Let's ride, how we ride. let's ride, low ride.'

And not to mention, the lyrics to Holiday In Cambodia still stand as almost perfect punk lyrics, up there with the best of them: 'Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz on your five grand stereo... You're a star-belly sneech, you suck like a leech, you want everyone to act like you. Kiss ass while you bitch so you can get rich, but your boss gets richer off you...................      Pol Pot!!! 

John Serpico