Books
Reviews
POETRY COLLECTION LIZ NIVEN Burning Whins (Luath PreSS) eeoo
Ll/ Niven's latest poetry collection is the kind of stumbled-upon gem that should be kept handy and dipped into again and again. The range of Niven's observations and the eloquence of her verse
ALSO PUBLISHED
Niall Griffiths Wreckage An examination of violence and the humanity it destroys. set in sunny nOrth Wales and Liverpool. Jonathan Cape. Will Ferguson Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw The 'extra-terrestrial Satanic love child of Douglas Adams and PJ O'Rourke' (according to the LA Times) brings us his ‘Travels in Search of Canada'. Canongate. Stephen Leather Soft Target The Manchester-born, Bangkok-based. ex- Hera/d journo brings us a tall tale of drug trafficking and contract killing in Glasgow and Miami. Hodder 6’. Stoughton.
Sabina Murray A Carnivore '3 Inquiry A fictional exploration into our disturbing appetite for weirdness and ruthless capacity for survival. all wrapped up in the cannibalistic Katherine Shea. Hamish Hamilton. Michael Simmons Hearing Loss ‘From Stigma to Strategy' takes us on a trip into the world of deafness. Peter Owen.
are remarkable. The opening section. ‘An Turas'. was inspired b, a nine-destination tour of the Highlands and Islands to VJhICh the poet has applied her keen eye for the multifarious stories that can arise from the seemingly mundane drudge of air travel. ‘Merrick Tae Kriffel' showcases Niven's talent for exploring Scotland's language and Culture in startling new ways. including an ingenious conversation between two peaks, bemoaning the fallout from the Foot and Mouth epidemic. ‘Picasso's Timeshare' contains some astute reflections on art; and, in ‘Found Objects. the poet has fun picking apart and reassembling overheard fragments. phrases. cliches and remembered conversations from the banalities of airline magazines to the cold. hard demands of a child seeking a really excmng bedtime story. (Allan Radcliffe)
TRAVELOGUE DRAMA RON MCLARTY The Memory of Running
(Time Warner) see
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Thankfully bypassing the saccharine and the grandiose, Ron McLarty’s debut is cringingly candid instead. This veteran actor (he's been on Broadway and around the broads in Sex and the City) charts one man's pushbike odyssey alongSide his memories of a childhood scarred by the self-destructive and hateful acts of his sister's ‘v0ice'. A self- confessed. self-loathing blimp. Smithson lde has been wedged in a rut for much of his adult life. When his parents are killed in a car crash. he finds himself cycling the breadth of the US on a )0urney of self- rediscovery.
32 THE LIST 17 Feb—3 Mar 2005
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FILM BIOGRAPHY
CLINTON HEYLIN
Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the
Hollywood Studios (Canongatel 0.0
Given the enduring myth that Orson Welles shot his load with his first film, Clinton Heylin makes a laudable attempt to redress the view that the great filmmaker failed to apply himself after Citizen Kane. Where numerous commentators — critics Pauline Kael and David Thomson among them - have suggested the mercurial Welles was the cause of his own downfall (from abandoning The Magnificent Ambersons to tinkering endlessly with his Don Quixote), Heylin argues his defendant was the victim of the Hollywood studio system and the cut-throats who populated it. Having written off the likes of biographer Simon Callow as mere rumourmongers, Heylin proceeds to set out his reassessment as solidly fact-based. However, seemingly exhaustive
Along the way he hits upon the wonders of fruit. exercise and the occasional company of others while laying some ghosts to rest. As a man awakening to the world. the ride is packed with self-conscious and humble observation rather than grand wisdom, and owes a genuine air of Sincerity to the deeply personal tone and a refreshing, if often brutal, honesty. Life is. apparently, not a box of chocolates. (Mark Edmundson)
SHORT STORIES YLVIE SIMMONS
Too Weird for Ziggy (Atlantic) so
What do Lemmy. Slash. Marianne Faithfuli and Sharon Osbourne have in common? Apart from making up the best Abba tribute act ever (sadly. not true) they've all written enthusiastic blurbs for the cover of this book. SyIVIe Simmons has rightly been acclaimed for her
rock and pop Journalism over the last 20 years. but this debut collection of fictional stories demonstrates that one writing skill is not automatically transferable to the other. The tales here are al! loosely interconnected. and concern the vaCuous nature of rock'n'roll celebrity and the idiot extremities of pop star culture. As it goes. it's mildly diverting initially, but With no character depth and nc stories beSides rather cliched rock excess (clearly based on Simmons" experiences
investigation into how Ambersons was infamously cut to ribbons by RKO while Welles was in Brazil shooting a documentary for the government, for example, gives way to the very kind of supposition Heylin accuses Callow et al of. The words ‘probably‘ and ‘presumably' begin far too many sentences, while the argument that RKO executive Charles Koerner ‘wasn‘t looking to salvage the movie [Ambersons], he was looking to savage it‘ is plain ridiculous.
Worse, Heylin descends into wholly unprofessional pettiness, writing off the later directing career of Welles‘ editor Robert Wise by describing West Side Story as a ‘terrific stage show he managed not to louse up‘. In fact, Heylin blames everyone from Mercury Theatre collaborator Joseph Cotton to William Shakespeare (l) for the downward spiral of the man and his movies. And so by ranting rather than reasoning, Heylin blows his own wad.
(Miles Fielder)
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