ALI SHAW

Brian Turner is a former infantry team leader from the US Army.  He toured in Iraq in 2003-4, where he wrote his first published collection, Here, Bullet.  That was an extraordinary set of poems, documenting the violence of Iraq’s troubled streets far more intensely than the indifferent reportage of newsrooms.  I discovered it through one of my occasional bouts of Keith Douglas obsession, finding a review in which Turner was compared to the Second World War poet.  The comparison was justified and didn’t just stop at the professional similarities of two soldiers encountering bloody conflicts.  There is something of Douglas’ style in Turner.  Its hallmarks are these: striking visual images, no authorial commentary or passing of judgement, an urgent sense of what it was like to be alive during events described, and – as Douglas  himself would have put it – absolutely no bullshit.  

Turner’s 2010 collection, Phantom Noise, sees him returned to his family in California, attempting to process all he has seen and done in Iraq.  I found it a huge step forwards from Here, Bullet.  It’s not just that Turner has improved as a poet – which he has – but that by juxtaposing further poems about the heat of conflict with both his childhood memories and difficult moments in which memory intrudes on his life in California, he creates a powerfully personal sense of a small world.  America and Iraq become emotionally entangled, as if Iraq is the uneasy subconscious of the West.

Below are some videos of Brian Turner reading his work.  I was hesitant about searching for them, since I felt like great care had been taken by the poet to construct a collection that would speak for itself, that would document the war from a personal level and not need a framework of explanation.  It turns out Turner reads brilliantly and lets the strength of his writing do his talking.  On a similar note I’d recommend reading this book from cover to cover.  Normally I enjoy the way you can dip in and out of poetry books, but in this one the placement of each poem is impeccable, some of them ricocheting off of what’s come before, some echoing on as you read forward. 

It will be interesting to see where Turner takes his poetry next.  He proves on many occasions in Phantom Noise that he doesn’t need the extreme drama of war to head straight to the emotional core of a situation.  I have a feeling he’s going to be a really important writer in the years to come…

~

That’s the end of my list for 2010 – thanks for reading.  Throughout January I’ll be setting sail for St. Hauda’s Land to write a series of posts about The Girl with Glass Feet.  In the meantime I hope you all have an amazing New Year.

This is probably the best book I’ve read this century.  If anyone is still hunting for a definitive Great American Novel, they can find it here.  It’s received a great deal of entirely justified acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. 

I read it a few months ago after a good friend lent me his copy.  It’s had such a sustained impact that I keep thinking about it.  In a nutshell it’s about a man and his boy walking south through an America devastated by an unspecified disaster.  The world as we know it has been destroyed and the remnant is an uninhabitable wasteland.  The cause and details of this apocalypse are never elaborated because they are entirely unnecessary, as are the names of the father and child.  The novel focuses exclusively on their relationship and their fears: the man’s fears for the boy’s safety, the boy’s fears for his father, their fear of fear itself.  I should warn you that it is enormously sad, but in a very reflective fashion.  It makes you appreciate not just the great loves of your own life, but things as small as clicking open the ring pull of a can of coke.

All this is sustained by McCarthy’s use of language.  He’s so gifted that in the following NPR review he is accurately described as being able to make something as mundane as a microwave operations manual read like the King James Bible. 

There are poets who would chop off their hands if only they could first write something as masterful as this book.  I have some more books by McCarthy piled up to read in the New Year and after The Road am seriously considering reading nothing by anybody else until I have got through his complete works.  I honestly do think he’s that good.  Random House have the first few pages excerpted on their site, so you can get a flavour of the book there.

There was a film of The Road last year.  It’s also very good, even if the trailer makes it sound a little like a zombie holocaust movie, not a haunting and beautiful struggle to find tins of baked beans among the ruins of civilization.  A better taster of the film, and also a fitting taster for the book itself, is the soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.  But read the book first – you won’t regret it.

Even back in the summer, when it was released, I had a suspicion that Gonjasufi’s A Sufi and a Killer might be my favourite album of 2010.  In the following months I became convinced that nothing would beat its mix of spooky sitar-sampling production and wild-eyed-prophet vocals.  Then along came The Caliph’s Tea Party, which was the same album only remixed, and I could no longer tell which record was my favourite.  They’re both exceptional and both very different, even though they originate from the same set of songs.  The Caliph’s Tea Party made me realise why I liked A Sufi and a Killer so much: both are good old-fashioned albums that are best listened to in their entirety.  In isolation few of the tracks are long enough to immerse you in the cryptic, soulful soundscape that you enter when you let the record play for half an hour.  Do that and the noise of the production becomes a kind of beat-rich spiritual rite, while Gonjasufi’s cracked voice – disintegrating here and there into a croak or a mad cackle – turns to a bizarre lullaby.  Imagine the sound of an Old Testament prophet recorded on a wax cylinder and you’re getting close.

Warp are offering a generous selection of tracks and clips on their website, which I’ve embedded below for your listening pleasure.

This time last year I put together a list of my favourite discoveries from 2009, and this year I’m going to do the same.  As with last year’s list these are things that were new to me in 2010, not necessarily new releases during the year.  They are also listed in no particular order – it would be impossible to choose a favourite. 

The first entry in the list, however, is from 2010.  Wilson, by Daniel Clowes, was published in April.  Like everything I have ever read by Clowes it is a true work of art.  He is an absolute master of subtext and has the same level of control over the medium of the comic book as Jimi Hendrix had over an electric guitar.

In brief – and I have to be brief because this book is so perfectly crafted that to elaborate would spoil so much – the book is about the titular Wilson, who we follow over the course of his early to late middle age.  Wilson is a slave to pessimism and self-hatred.  During the book he tries to get his derailed life back on track, but ends up sabotaging all of his own efforts.  Michel Faber wrote an eloquent review for the Guardian which you can read here, but he is also at pains to stress that reading this with as little knowledge of the plot as possible can only strengthen the experience.

I love the way Clowes structures his comics.  The size of each panel, the number of panels per page, the angle of the speech bubbles, each of these basic building blocks is used by him as precisely as a scalpel used by a surgeon.  In Wilson we get seventy chapters, each of which is withheld to a single page containing a single episode from Wilson’s life.  In the hands of a lesser artist this structure could have become bitty and episodic, but Clowes times everything to perfection.  I found myself speeding engrossed through the pages, then going back to admire them once I had completed the comic.  Many pages show mundane moments from Wilson’s day-to-day routine, but every now and then something appalling happens and Wilson responds with his customary cynicism, which only serves to make matters worse.  There is space and room for desolate contemplation in every chapter.

Then there’s the way Clowes draws.  Master of multiple styles, the default here is his trademark line drawing filled with pastel shades.  I had a sense that this style – the artist at his most realistic – was itself tormenting Wilson.  It records, for example, his gradual hair-loss in exquisite and unflattering detail.  During other chapters Clowes switches to a more caricatured, cartoonish style and draws Wilson as a sort of adult baby, curled up or covering his face with his hands.

Like Clowes’ previous comics, Wilson takes the reader to a dark and fraught emotional place.  But, just as with previous comics, it’s hilarious when you get there.  There’s a laugh on almost every page, albeit a sad laugh that’s one part pity and one part scorn.  In true tragicomic tradition it’s terribly clear that Wilson’s own failings are the principal force behind his raw deal in life.  It’s hard to know whether to love him or loathe him come the end.  One thing’s for certain, it’s not hard to know whether to love or loathe Wilson the comic book.  This was one of the best things I read all year.

Here’s a sample page, but I recommend that you click on it to be taken to Drawn & Quarterly’s pdf preview – three pages in glorious high res!