Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Bitter, Drunken, Mirth




Feeling a bit righted, this morning after yesterdays common cold compromise. I just finished up my third Kingsley Amis novel.  “The Old Devils” published in 1986, is lauded to no end.  It won the Booker Prize, the BBC adapted it for television and his son Martin suggests that it was his “masterpiece.”  And while I appreciated the writing and laughed out loud at certain points, one of which I’ll quote below, I can’t really say I enjoyed spending three hundred pages in Wales, drunk with the aged set who are drinking themselves to death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Devils

"Alun came hurrying back as the drinks were being handed round by a wine-waiter who came out of the same sort of drawer as the barman and was got up in a fancy jacket with clusters of grapes depicted on the lapels.  The cheese was there.  Charlie took a bight of the Cheddar. "What is the vintage port?" asked Alun.  "Port is a fortified wine from Portugal" said the waiter having perhaps misheard slightly, 'and vintage port is made from - ' 'I didn't ask for a bloody lecture on vinification, you horrible little man', - Alun laughed a certain amount as he spoke.  'Tell me the shipper and the year and then go back to your hole and pull the lid over it.'  The lad seemed more or less unabashed by this, 'Graham, 1975 sir.' he said in his Ruritanian accent and withdrew.  "It's no use just relying on respect to get good service in a restaurant,' Alun explained, still grinning, 'There has to be fear, too."

Reading his first novel, “Lucky Jim”, (1954) which catapulted him to fame, we get to spend time with an angry, young protagonist Dixon, who is also drinking himself to death, which is rather more fun, perhaps because young pain is sharper:

"Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth has been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by a secret police. He felt bad.



In “One Fat Englishman” from 1963, the only other book of his I’ve read, we spend time with a drunken, bitter middle aged Englishman, on sabbatical in the greater New York area.  Roger is on a desperate, drunken search for Helene and her decidedly Jewish writer beaux, Macher. 

            “Is there jazz taking place in this city tonight?”
            “Yeah.  I reckon so.  Yeah, you could say that.”
            “Take me to where it’s being played”
He was driven to Broadway at great speed and set down in front of what they called in their language, a marquee.  At the entrance two Negro women behind a window told him that that would be one dollar and eighty.  He explained that he only wanted to see if some friends of his were inside and had not come to listen to the music.  They said that he was very welcome to do just as he pleased and that that would be one dollar and eighty.  He told them that that was extortion and that he was going in and be damned to them.  Two of the biggest, most muscular men he’d seen in his life, both Negroes, came over and stood and looked at him. He handed over a dollar eighty and moved towards the strange and dreadful noises coming from the interior of the establishment.  These grew sharply in volume as he entered the main auditorium and seemed to acquire a faint tactile quality, like a continuous shock wave.   

Roger Micheldene is not a bop fan.  There are steady drum of slights against Chinese, Jews, Americans, Danes, and just about anyone who isn’t Roger, and of course a steady pawing at any woman in a dress within reach.  What was Kingsley so bitter about?  Why so consistently 痛心疾首[1], whether as a handsome young, vaguely leftist outsider,  a recognized writer and newly minted Tory or plump, sexagenarian old man of letters, this general dissatisfaction with everyone is a constant.  It's funny to hate people artfully, but enervating exploring an oeuvre with so much bile for bile's sake. 

All this to say, on the balance, its good fun to spend time with a masterful British stylist, who is generally angry and drunk.  And I’m sure I’ll sit down with “the King” for a few rounds again sooner or later, but I think I prefer a bit more self-deprecation with my bitter tea, as one finds with Evelyn Waugh.  That or some more redeemable fiber to my drunken Englishness, as with Orwell or Hitchens.  Then again, it’s inane to complain that someone isn’t someone else. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_Amis



Hank Jones will never be his younger brother Thad the trumpet player with a street named after him in Copenhagen, nor his other sibling Elvin the drummer who drummed on “A Love Supreme.”  Nor will he be any of the other comparatively more recognized jazz pianists who spanned the big band era to bop.  It is a gentler, less time consuming and certainly more melodic discovery spending time with him this morning than with Alun and the ‘old-devils.’

I had been enjoying the Kenny Dorham set “Jazz Contrasts” on which the elder Mr. Jones was on keys.  This led me over to see about all that he had done and that I needed to learn about.  I have on a 1958 date called “The Talented Touch” and “If I Love Again” sounds so subtle and confident it feels like it could break through even Kingsley’s sneer.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Jones

Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, grew up in Detroit, he lived until the ripe age of 91 when he passed in NYC.  He played, seemingly with everyone over his long career, spanning the classic Billy Eckstein band, seminal playing behind Ella, bop sets galore as well as a stint on the Ed Sullivan show and even the classic supporting role behind Marilyn Monroe as she sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy in 1962.  Later, when perhaps it mattered less, he was recognized with five successive Grammy awards.  This may be the first time though, he’s been asked to accompany three selections of Kingsley Amis.




[1] tòngxīnjíshǒu:  bitter and hateful (idiom) / to grieve and lament (over sth)

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