Sometimes people send me links to things, in the hope that I’ll mention them on the blog. Apparently they’re not terribly bothered whether I’m nice or nasty or indifferent about them, provided the product gets a mention. I will however take this opportunity to note that Anatomy of Norbiton is delightfully odd; and that High50 isn’t my sort of thing quite yet, thanks, although I did catch myself last night ranting about why people today are rubbish because they listen to Justin Bieber when they could be enjoying Marlena Shaw, so maybe I really should spend more time there. Oh, and I just got an e-mail to remind me to remind you that Rock’s Backpages will be 10 years old in November, but since that’s got some of my stuff on it, that’s hardly a disinterested plug.
A link, however, is just a link; every now and then someone sends me something analogue and meatyspacey. The estimable Howard Male, for example, who put my way a copy of his novel Etc Etc Amen. And I think the solidity, the realness of the book is what caught my attention, rather more than an e-book might have done. The author has had some copies made up through the auspices of lulu.com, but it’s fairly clear that this is just a means to an end: he wants a proper, old-school publisher to pick it up. And there are plenty of arguments to be had around that notion, and whether a book only becomes a book when a publisher says it is (and backs that up with hard cash) but we’ve been there, haven’t we?
Etc Etc Amen is a novel about rock music. Except that it isn’t of course, because plenty of people have attempted to write novels about rock music and failed: the best stab was, in my far-from-humble opinion, Nik Cohn’s I Am Still the Greatest says Johnny Angelo, but that’s another story, literally and figuratively.
The plot revolves around Zachary B, a glam rock star whose identity clearly owes much to David Bowie and Marc Bolan, but is specifically distinguished from either (Bowie lends him his Stylophone). He’s clearly clever and talented, but not as much of either as he thinks he is. Success makes him something of a petulant ponce; failure just makes him a self-pitying git. Male wisely avoids attempting to render the actual process of music-making in fictional form, apart from a deliciously bathetic comeback gig in Trafalgar Square. He’s far more interested in those that feed off rock’s festering corpse: the journalist who gets too close; the eerily calm stalker; the fans who turn his slightest utterances into a religion. And this is where things get interesting.
The narrative, which boogies back and forth between London in the 1970s and Marrakech in something approximating the present day, is broken up by philosophical screeds expounding the KUU, the Knowing Unknowable Universe. It’s a sort of fundamentalist agnosticism, and I personally found its details eminently skippable, but then I gave up on the poetry in Pale Fire, so what do I know? That’s not really the point, though. Just as the nature of Zachary’s music is all but irrelevant, so is the content of the KUU. It’s the effect that each of them has on people that matters, the ability of rock and religion to persuade people to do bloody stupid things. It’s not necessarily an original idea (think of Bowie’s leper messiah) but Male is more convincing than most in persuading us that fandom can snowball into something bigger and worse: the climax is like the Jonestown Massacre choreographed by the Marx Brothers. And who’s to say that’s not feasible? People must have looked on the early Christians in a similar manner to the way we see those Bolan fanatics who gather at Barnes Common every September.
Male hasn’t written the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll novel, but then I don’t think anyone ever will. What he has done is to write one of the smartest, most knowing books about fandom since Nick Hornby’s early stuff. The text could possibly do with a modest trim, and there are a few typos here and there, but that’s what publishers are supposed to deal with, right? So, publishers – deal with it.
A link, however, is just a link; every now and then someone sends me something analogue and meatyspacey. The estimable Howard Male, for example, who put my way a copy of his novel Etc Etc Amen. And I think the solidity, the realness of the book is what caught my attention, rather more than an e-book might have done. The author has had some copies made up through the auspices of lulu.com, but it’s fairly clear that this is just a means to an end: he wants a proper, old-school publisher to pick it up. And there are plenty of arguments to be had around that notion, and whether a book only becomes a book when a publisher says it is (and backs that up with hard cash) but we’ve been there, haven’t we?
Etc Etc Amen is a novel about rock music. Except that it isn’t of course, because plenty of people have attempted to write novels about rock music and failed: the best stab was, in my far-from-humble opinion, Nik Cohn’s I Am Still the Greatest says Johnny Angelo, but that’s another story, literally and figuratively.
The plot revolves around Zachary B, a glam rock star whose identity clearly owes much to David Bowie and Marc Bolan, but is specifically distinguished from either (Bowie lends him his Stylophone). He’s clearly clever and talented, but not as much of either as he thinks he is. Success makes him something of a petulant ponce; failure just makes him a self-pitying git. Male wisely avoids attempting to render the actual process of music-making in fictional form, apart from a deliciously bathetic comeback gig in Trafalgar Square. He’s far more interested in those that feed off rock’s festering corpse: the journalist who gets too close; the eerily calm stalker; the fans who turn his slightest utterances into a religion. And this is where things get interesting.The narrative, which boogies back and forth between London in the 1970s and Marrakech in something approximating the present day, is broken up by philosophical screeds expounding the KUU, the Knowing Unknowable Universe. It’s a sort of fundamentalist agnosticism, and I personally found its details eminently skippable, but then I gave up on the poetry in Pale Fire, so what do I know? That’s not really the point, though. Just as the nature of Zachary’s music is all but irrelevant, so is the content of the KUU. It’s the effect that each of them has on people that matters, the ability of rock and religion to persuade people to do bloody stupid things. It’s not necessarily an original idea (think of Bowie’s leper messiah) but Male is more convincing than most in persuading us that fandom can snowball into something bigger and worse: the climax is like the Jonestown Massacre choreographed by the Marx Brothers. And who’s to say that’s not feasible? People must have looked on the early Christians in a similar manner to the way we see those Bolan fanatics who gather at Barnes Common every September.
Male hasn’t written the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll novel, but then I don’t think anyone ever will. What he has done is to write one of the smartest, most knowing books about fandom since Nick Hornby’s early stuff. The text could possibly do with a modest trim, and there are a few typos here and there, but that’s what publishers are supposed to deal with, right? So, publishers – deal with it.
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