Kerraway

The Prince of travel writing?

Michael Kerr — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:27:27 +0000

The Prince of Wales’s recent comments on GM food reopened the debate over whether he is fit to be king. But what else is he fit for? Paul Theroux has a suggestion. In his new book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he reports an encounter he had in India with the Prince, parts of whose diary about the return of Hong Kong to the Chinese had just been made public. Theroux writes:

He had mocked the handover ceremony, called some of the Chinese notables ‘waxworks’, spoken of the Chinese president’s ‘propaganda speech’ and scorned the goose-stepping Chinese soldiers. He also complained of being stuck in club class, rather than first, on his way out: ‘Such is the end of empire, I sighed to myself.’
What this proved was that though he may never be crowned king… he could still make a decent living as a travel writer with such breezy generalisations.

Pepe Carvalho’s Barcelona

Michael Kerr — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:30:54 +0000

Looking for an authoritative and frank guide to Barcelona? I’d recommend Pepe Carvalho, a former cop, former Marxist and constant gourmet. You can find him in the crime fiction of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the Catalan journalist and novelist. That enterprising publisher Serpent’s Tail is issuing this month, for the first time in English, Montalbán’s Tattoo. It is also reissuing a couple of other Pepe Carvalho mysteries, The Man of My Life and An Olympic Death. The latter, which I took with me on my last trip to Barcelona, is set in a city gearing up for the Games…

Revisiting Thirties America

Michael Kerr — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:11:02 +0000

The New York Times is time-travelling, Going Down the Road, revisiting states and landmarks covered by the American Guide Series of books, produced between 1935 and 1943 by the Federal Writers Project. Thousands of writers – including Studs Terkel, Saul Bellow and Nelson Algren – were sent out to pen what turned into a collective portrait cum national inventory of America.

John Steinbeck said of the guides in Travels with Charley (1962): ”The complete set comprises the most comprehensive account of the United States ever got together, and nothing since has even approached it. It was compiled during the Depression by the best writers in America, who were, if that is possible, more depressed than any other group while maintaining their inalienable instinct for eating.”

Eli Reed – a paperboy who’ll prosper

Michael Kerr — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:40:03 +0000

In an age when newspapers are folding or turning into multimedia “content” providers, there can’t be much of a future as a paperboy. Unless, of course you’re Eli “Paperboy” Reed, who with his band the True Loves played support to James Hunter at the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden last night.
What a voice! Reed’s a 24-year-old white boy from Boston (and most of the band, if I heard his introductions right, are from Massachusetts), but his heart, and his soul, are in Memphis, in 1966. Listen to a few tracks from his album Roll With You, and then consider that those are not covers of old, forgotten Stax numbers; they’re his and his bandmates’ own compositions. Backward-looking? Who cares when it sounds this good?

Arctic Monkey’s way with words

Michael Kerr — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:01:37 +0000

At an editorial meeting this afternoon, one of my colleagues, for a reason I can’t remember, had us reeling off names of the greatest lyricists in rock. Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman all got mentions. But what of the younger ones? What of Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, whose writing was championed recently in one of The Guardian’s series of pamphlets by the poet Simon Armitage? Turner deserves a mention for this alone, in From Ritz to the Rubble: “And one of em’s alright / The other one’s the scary one / His way or no way, totalitarian.”

End of the road trip

Michael Kerr — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:30:27 +0000

The New York Times asked several writers this week to reflect on the consequences of “really expensive” (ie, by British standards, still cheap) fuel. Michael Paterniti waved goodbye and, in his view, good riddance to the great American road trip. Of course he’s already had his fun. He’s the author of the wonderfully titled Driving Mr Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein’s Brain.

The stories not being told

Michael Kerr — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:12:29 +0000

Returning today from a memorial service for my old colleague Peter Wilsher, I read in the order of service this tribute to him from Peter Pringle, who was one of his correspondents:

“For me, Peter was one of the last great foreign editors of Fleet Street, always fascinated by stories not being told by others, and stories, therefore, that would tell you something you didn’t know.”

When, in our multimedia world of recycled content, was the last time you read one of those?

Springsteen scores on video

Michael Kerr — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:51:09 +0000

That Springsteen goalscorer’s slide I mentioned in an earlier posting — here is it is on YouTube:

A lawyer’s guide to jogging

Michael Kerr — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:53:49 +0000

My colleague Paul Mansfield, reviewing a new book about the States (Divine Magnetic Lands by Timothy O’Grady) finds evidence within it that American society is not as litigious as we think, and that Americans sue each other no more than they did 30 years ago.
Maybe, but American lawyers do put a damper on pretty well everything. On a recent trip to Seattle, I picked up a guide for runners and walkers left in my hotel room. It says: “This picturesque course [along the waterfront] poses the usual hazards of urban jogging/walking. Please take precautions to ensure your safety — including use of the route preferably during daylight hours. The Fairmont Olympic Hotel does not patrol nor maintain the course so assumes no responsibility for the safety of our guests who traverse it.”
Lewis and Clark would have had a dull old time if they had had to go exploring with a lawyer.

Iggy in the Isle of Wight

Michael Kerr — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:52:49 +0000

“So, who was good?” I was asked on coming back into the office after reviewing the Isle of Wight Festival for the Telegraph.

Iggy Pop, I answered immediately. I own one Stooges album, Raw Power, which hasn’t had a lot of play and probably won’t get much more. In terms of sheer spectacle, though, I thought Iggy and the Stooges were the highlight of the festival.

At 61, the original American rock’n’roll outlaw is still a man against whose attentions any father would lock up his daughters. He didn’t slash his bare chest with razor or bottle as he used to in his most drug-addled days in the ‘80s. He didn’t need to: shoulder-length hair sopping from constant dousings, he still looked like an Apache who at any moment might draw a knife and take a scalp.

Lunging into the crowd, he set up a call-and-response with the front row: “My idea of fun…/…Is killing everyone.” The security guards took him at his word. When he leaned briefly on the shoulder of one of them, she looked absolutely terrified.

The Isle of Wight was a place of mixed messages. The Police, the Sex Pistols, the Stranglers and Iggy were desperate to convince us that it was 1978 again. But at Smallfleet petrol station, any of the 55,000 festival-goers unwise enough to have brought a car were having to stump up £1.45 a litre. It was only 20p (79p a gallon) the last time these guys were strutting their supremacy over one another.

KT Tunstall – whom I didn’t have room to mention in my review – was a babe in those days, but she’s now man enough to hold her own with any of the punks. Halfway through her set, she dismissed her band for Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, the song with which she got her break, and stood alone, one woman with just her guitar, commanding a stadium.

Who else? The young Coventry foursome The Enemy showed a punkish anger that was less contrived than Johnny Rotten’s; and both the Kaiser Chiefs and N*E*R*D were much more impressive live than on record – though the batteries of lights they employed must have outweighed all the good done by the issuing of biodegradable tent pegs.