Marina Lewycka: A Modern Great

Marina Lewycka's comic tales of the troubles of immigrants moving to the UK are the most accurate depiction of our country in the 21st Century.

That's quite an outlandish statement, considering some of the fantastic writing that has been published in the early part of the new millenium but one I feel justified in suggesting.

Across the ages, the best writing reflects the generation that it came from. Think of a Dickens novel and you think of Victorian Britain and a very particular British environment. The same goes for Oscar Wilde or F. Scott Fitzgerald who pin-point a particular time in UK and US society before and after the turn of the 20th century. You can argue this continues right the way through to modern authors like Nick Hornby or Zadie Smith - they all sum up a particular micro-period of British history and a particular place (in both Smith and Hornby's case this is London).

I can't help but feel that Lewycka is currently doing that now. Both of her two novels Two Caravans and A Short History Of Tractors In Ukranian are superbly written and exquisitely funny depictions of the effect of immigration on the person themselves as well as the society around them. The proliferation of migrant workers have become one of the key changes to multi-cultural Britain in recent times.

This topic is difficult to write about (it is all to easy to offend) but it is something that has affected British society in both positive and negative ways. What I particularly like about her books are that they tackle both sides of the coin - in Tractors, the main plot is about a Ukrainian woman coming over to this country for its riches (and marrying an elderly man to achieve this) whereas in Two Caravans, the characters come over for the same riches but end up being mistreated and taken advantage of.

What links both books together is the way that the characters (despite their numerous collective flaws) are so loveable and how entertaining a read it is as a result.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what a book represents when it is so damn fun to read. There is a quote from Nick Hornby that says "If reading books is to survive as a leisure activity then we have to promote the joys of reading, rather than the (dubious) benefits". What I think he is basically saying is, why force your way through Russian literature or literary novelists like Ian McEwan when you can breeze through the entertaining ride that writers like Lewycka can provide.

On the other side of this coin, it is often suggested that books that are easy to read are somehow lightweight; easy entertainment for the throw-away culture that we live in. In reality, the skill of writing in such a page-turning style is something that is incredibly difficult to achieve; just as difficult as creating the literary masterpieces described in the previous paragraph. There are merits for both.

Only time can ever tell how a work of art will age, but it wouldn't surprise me if people are still reading Lewycka's comic masterpieces throughout the 21st century.

The Orchestra As Pop Decor

On Sunday night I ventured out to see the Last Shadow Puppets in concert at the Manchester Apollo. The band is the side project of Arctic Monkeys front-man Alex Turner and Rascals singer Miles Kane which resulted in their Mercury Music Prize nominated album The Age Of The Understatement.

The band is also notable because it contains the 22-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra.

On the record, the orchestra adds an extra, lush dimension to the songs, helping to bring out the 60s-fused melodies into the forefront. I was hoping that the live experience would be a similar affair but it was ultimately a disappointing exercise.

In their defence, the biggest problem was probably that of the venue; I'm sure that the cramped housing at the back of the stage and the acoustics that were more geared towards your traditional guitar/bass/drum did not help to bring out the best of the orchestral sound. At a more appropriate place, like the Royal Albert Hall or in Manchester, the Opera House or Bridgewater Hall it might have been pushed to the forefront a bit more.

In reality however, all that the orchestra did was provide an expensive and visually arresting piece of decor. It was a bonus rather than an integral part of the music, which is the usual way that pop music seems to treat its more sophisticated cousin. Even songs with beautiful orchestral refrains, like Standing Next To Me, seemed to be washed away by the energy of the guitars and the crowd, rendering it largely devoid. If they weren't so obviously stacked up at the back of the stage, you would not notice they were there at all. Perhaps more damagingly, they wouldn't be missed either.

In recent years, this fusion between the classical and the pop nearly always ends with the same result of a superfluous and largely without merit gimmick. The arrangements are usually dull and devoid of inspiration while in live performance, such greater prominence is given in the mix to the other core pop instruments that it hardly seems worth the bother.

The question of the performance, or the energy of the performance is perhaps just as important. It remains easy to whip up an atmosphere whilst playing a guitar that you can jump around with rather than the rather static positions that the violinists have to adopt, for example. The sit-down and observe nature of classical concerts is simply over-powered when put on the same stage as the pop performer.

The only example of the two styles merging successfully that I can think of recently was that of Elbow on their Mercury winning album The Seldom Seen Kid, where the orchestra had become the driving force of a number of tracks. The other instruments had become the secondary part of the makeup of tracks like One Day Like This or Friend Of Ours and this is what makes it work.

Perhaps it all boils down to the simple equation that there isn't enough room (both physically and aurally) for the orchestra on a pop stage.

Unpleasant Weddings

I watched Noam Baumbach's second film, "Margot At The Wedding" last night, the critically panned follow up to his critically loved debut "The Squid and the Whale".

The main bone of contention in all of the reviews in the British press was that none of the characters - specifically the adult ones - are in any way likable. In actual fact, they are all distastefully selfish and egocentric characterisations of middle class bourgeois.
Despite that and unlike many others who have seen it, I still believe that it is a good film. It's just not particularly pleasant to watch.

With regards to Noam Baumbach's two films; they are telling similar stories but the key difference is the perspective. "The Squid and the Whale" is the story of two kids going through the divorce of their neurotic, unpleasant parents from their point of view. "Margot at the Wedding" is telling a similar story - albeit with a sideline of sibling squabbling - but is told from the perspective of the neurotic, unpleasant parents.

To me, this raises two interesting points. Firstly, why as human beings do we need to feel empathy with film characters to enjoy a movie? We need someone to root for; to be able to decide who's side we're on. We also need to feel that there has been some change in the characters by the end; that they have learnt from the mistakes made and have grown.

A great example of this, albeit in a different medium, is the third album by The Streets, "The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living". The main character of the record was a self-obsessed celebrity who was out of touch with reality and, consequently his fans. The success of the two earlier Streets records had been the way that everyman listeners could relate to the lyrics, describing stories of life in working, binge-drinking Britain. These same fans couldn't relate to the third album, once Mike Skinner had disappeared into a world of celebrity culture - but does it make it any less of a work of art?

It has been said that cinema is the truest of all art forms; but if that was the case then we would be able to objectively look at it without the gratification of having to like the characters. When you go to an art gallery and look at a work by another modern narcissist painter, you do so because you can take something away from it, even if you don't like the ideas behind it.

This links into my second point which relates to the way that we consume films. There is a much bigger focus on entertainment than there is in books or music or art. We go to the cinema expecting to be entertained, even when watching an art-house picture or bleak documentary. Faced with unpleasant characters telling unpleasant stories and we tend to come away thinking that we have seen a bad film.

There are occasional exceptions - the films of Michael Haneke for example are afforded a certain critical and cult success despite being bleak and immeasurably unpleasant, but invariably this is because the audience goes into the cinema knowing roughly what to expect and also because the craft of the film is so good. In any case, Haneke remains a love/hate figure for many cinema-goers.

So to take this back to "Margot at the Wedding"; I came away with a particular dislike for all of the main characters (and quite especially Nicole Kidmans) but equally, that the general critical response to the film was undoubtedly harsh. It is unfortunately quite true to life that a lot of people are unpleasant and sometimes their stories still need to be told.

The balance isn't always in offsetting the bad guy with the good but in remaining true to the characters themselves. Too often we are left with the clear conclusion that Character A was an unpleasant dickhead but - Praise Allah! - he/she has become a better person by the end of the film. All they needed was to fall in love, etc etc.

In reality, people don't change overnight. More often than not, when bad, life-changing things happen, we respond in the same screwed up way that we have always done. Perhaps this is why our natural reaction is to respond badly when art mirrors life in this way; we need change, growth, fulfillment and people we can root for.

Ultimately, the cinema is our escape; whether the film we're watching is a work of art or not.