I loved that book and would love to read it again. Even just the fact that it's notionally a memoir that's, what, 80% over by the time the narrator and main subject is even born is funny to me. One of very few famous humorous novels that actually makes you laugh out loud, rather than just smile occasionally, in common with Don Quixote (parts of it, at least), Flann O'Brien and Jerome K. Jerome.I loved Tristram Shandy... it's really quite a unique book, I can't think of anything else like it. In a way it feels really (post-)modern but someone (in fact now I come to think of it it was @Mr. Tea's wife) told me that you can see it as part of a style of writing that existed at the time, it's just that through our eyes that style has certain elements that we see as post-modern and I guess we sort of interpret those in a different way and fill in gaps and ultimate misinterpret it.
Either way, I've heard most people give up at the bit about the huge fake(?) nose so press on past that and you're golden.
As for me, just about to board a flight for Belgrade and I have my book of Ballard short stories to accompany me.
Currently reading the Penman as well. Been reading him since the NME - I got to meet him when he was promoting his previous book - very sharp and funny but also utterly self deprecating.Penman's Fassbinder book and just finished Red Harvest.
The former's clobbering me over the head with references to things I'm into to the point it feels like it's been written for me. I'm about thirty pages in and he's already mentioned Thief, Sorcerer, Tangerine Dream and Gravity's Rainbow in the space of a couple pages.
Apparently he set himself some Fassbinder-esque deadline and bashed the thing out quickly. It's mostly numbered fragments where he writes about Fassbinder or things which were going on in that particular period, either generally or in his own life. It's really good. There's a footnote where he sends you forward a few hundred pages to a longer fragment where he just talks about Michael Mann.
I remember Channel 4 showing Berlin Alexanderplatz late at night for what felt like months.
Was hugely important to me. First saw Performance, Fat City, Man Who Fell to Earth, Rumblefish and a host of others via Alex CoxMoviedrome was very important- basically curating a whole cinema aesthetic for a generation
TV as unashamedly intellectual? Idk, don't we still get the same thing with Adam Curtis and the buzz around him? Is he a complete outlier?This Channel 4's completely alien to me. I watched a clip of Mark Kermode talking to Alex Cox the other night and had the same feeling when they mentioned Moviedrome on BBC2. It's almost unthinkable now.
Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar