Oh and I'm also reading Absolute Beginners. There's a film of course with the song and cameo by Bowie. A strange film that starts quite well and then, well then it feels as though the filmmakers got bored with it, the second half is completely lacklustre, not even lacklustre, it really does feel as though they just ran out of ideas and didn't care so just had a big riot that lasts for about forty-five minutes and then the film finishes. I've often read critics say of some film or other that it ran out of steam in the second half but I've never experienced it so strongly as I did with Absolute Beginners. I found it a truly strange experience to see a film that at one point had characters and conversations and stuff being just abandoned so utterly like that. I was genuinely bemused. Just sitting there thinking what the hell is going on and why? And then concluding that there was absolutely no reason. It really seemed that they reached a point and stopped, they just couldn't be bothered to make any effort with the story after that point. It's only the story, the actors are all running around doing stuff but for no reason. The difference between the first half and the second is like.... imagine a football match in which the first half was normal, a red team is playing a blue one, you can follow it, it makes sense. In the second half, there are still the same people there and the ball but imagine that instead of football they are just doing what they want, walking and running randomly. Kicking the ball or not, picking it up or whatever - at a casual glance it still looks like a football match but when you look properly it is totally different, there is no sense to get hold of, it's just a mess. That's what I thought of the film of Absolute Beginners. In the second half it's not really a film although if just glanced casually it would look a bit like one.
Anyway, let's hope the book is better, every single thing I've heard or read about it suggests that it will be. If you don't know, it's a book about a kid living in 50s London, meeting junkies in Soho cafes and taking photos of pretty young people to sell to perverts. I've often heard it said that the concept of the teenager was invented last century sometime around the 50s, that before "the teenager" came into being you were either a child who went to school and did kid type things or you were an adult who had a job and did adult type things. But then rock n roll came along and it changed and they invented this in-between stage which gave everyone a few years of grace in which one was no longer a kid yet didn't have to start work - one could be interested in clothes and music and probably drugs and sex - and, it wasn't just that one could do it but the rest of the world started noticing these people and selling them things. And the last bit is the most important. Teenagers existed AND they had a little spending money - whether from indulgent parents or a paper round - and they spent it on records and clothes. And so youth culture was born. Now I'm sure that that is a massive oversimplification, I'm sure youth cultures existed before that, I'm sure teenagers did too, I don't know if I'm correct in linking this to rock n roll... the point is I've read something about this some time....
... and that's quite handy cos, massive oversimplification or not, it seems to be the main theme of the book. The narrator is a young guy but he's got some money (from the photos he sells) and he's the first generation where that has happened and it pisses people off. I mean this is explicitly what they talk about, he goes in a pub and someone will say that it's not right for someone of his age to be able to afford to buy things and he'll tell them it happened as a direct result of policies the party they voted for brought in.
I'm not surprised he pisses people off to be honest, he pisses me off too, his descriptions of people and places are annoying, his philosophies are annoying and his vernacular is annoying and it all seems kinda dated and tame*. I mean it is dated, lots of things are dated because it's hard to future-proof what you write, so saying it feels dated isn't a huge criticism, it just means the author hasn't managed to do something which is really difficult. But I'm glad that I started writing this down cos I hadn't realised how much I was hating the book until I did. I've been trying to like it and grabbing the odd bit and saying to myself "That was almost clever" because I've heard it's good and the film looked as though it was a bad rendition of something much better but... the fucking book is so annoying. No wonder it takes me a day to read a few pages in total contrast to Game of Thrones.
*For example there is a bit where someone from abroad asks for his opinion on the queen. I sighed. 'No, please, not that one' I said to him politely but very firmly, 'Really, that's a subject that we're very very tired of. One which I just can't work up the interest to have any ideas about at all.' - which is a perfectly normal, reasonable way to feel of course but here it kinda feels as though it's being presented as something interesting, or new, maybe even radical. The book is presented a very old idea as a new one - that is literally what dated means isn't it?