tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-323009672024-03-13T11:20:46.003+00:00"Oh my god look at its little face!"Ned Beauman's blog.Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.comBlogger318125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-77201143450818667702023-10-03T13:37:00.017+01:002023-10-05T11:13:38.103+01:00<p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Rick Owens SS24 Lido at Paris Fashion Week</span></b></p><p>Off the back of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/22cf9bac-67e4-4ea0-9d24-6532248ede8f">my interview about Rick Owens</a> in the <i>Financial Times</i> I managed to score an invitation to his womenswear show at Paris Fashion Week. Obviously there wasn't the slightest possibility that I wasn't going to go, but all the same, Eurostar prices being what they are these days, the trip felt like a bit of extravagance: I’ve been to a handful of fashion shows before and generally it’s a lot of rigmarole just to watch people walk back and forth for ten minutes. (See also my <a href="https://nedbeauman.blogspot.com/2023/06/japan-may-2023-arrival-i-have-conquered.html">recent misgivings</a> about travelling eighty miles to glimpse a flying squirrel.) As it turned out, though, none of that prior experience was relevant, because a Rick Owens show is an entirely different beast.</p><p>The woman sitting next to me on the Eurostar worked for Alexander McQueen, and I kept wanting to ask her: how early can I get to the Rick show without looking like the kind of loser who get tos a nightclub right when the doors open? I often watch the livestreams of the shows, so I knew that they begin at least half an hour late and nobody who matters gets there on time, but I also wanted to be there soaking up the atmosphere for as long as possible. In the end, I headed to the Palais de Tokyo for about 5:10pm, i.e. twenty minutes early, thinking that if the place was empty I could just turn around and wander along the Seine for a while. From a distance, I saw a huge throng milling around outside, and thought to myself “Wow, I really didn’t expect the door situation at a Rick Owens show to be so disorganised, I'm surprised the fashionistas put up with this, and also why are they here so early?” Then as I got closer it dawned on me that this wasn’t the door situation — this was just the people who’d come to gawk at everybody coming in, like at a film premiere — i.e. they’d come to gawk at ME!!!!!!!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi61kfQmPm-eo2lQzN_wq5crYoTsuZjtqRJ3D2Zwqh7N-HGaqyJN5M0fwst_m6wI4nPyyL4PPgT2zL5Ht0GxIRfo0hYzDAr-x4AWy_7O8PW_0IH9q3n14Bu1R7gm_XTHG2B_sdLdmNxuHNanqcxSIpsbO7OpT3rQq6Xug9RQPCE91sKN5PGDZWS/s4032/PXL_20230928_151207580.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi61kfQmPm-eo2lQzN_wq5crYoTsuZjtqRJ3D2Zwqh7N-HGaqyJN5M0fwst_m6wI4nPyyL4PPgT2zL5Ht0GxIRfo0hYzDAr-x4AWy_7O8PW_0IH9q3n14Bu1R7gm_XTHG2B_sdLdmNxuHNanqcxSIpsbO7OpT3rQq6Xug9RQPCE91sKN5PGDZWS/w400-h300/PXL_20230928_151207580.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I had no idea this happened at Rick shows, but it probably helps that (unlike most brands) they’re in the same location every season, so everybody knows where to go. Of course, I can’t help but have mixed feelings about it, because that throng is the physical embodiment of Rick becoming a celebrity fashion designer; I’m pretty sure nobody was waiting outside his shows a decade ago when I first got into him. I don’t have any inherent objection to Rick breaking through into the mainstream — he deserves it, and it hasn’t diluted the work — except for the fact that it’s caused a huge rise in prices, both retail and second-hand, that has made it impossible for me to actually buy the clothes. Thinking of that throng as the people I am now competing with to snag a pair of trainers off Grailed makes me somewhat more coolly disposed to them.</p><p>So I showed my invitation at the door and strolled in past the slathering looky-loos, honouring one or two of them with a regal glance which they will no doubt cherish to their deathbeds. I found my seat, but I was reluctant to sit down right away, because the seat was a long way from the entrance, and the truth is… I too am a slathering looky-loo! I wanted to gawk at everyone coming in as well! So I hung around at the front for so long that two different staff members asked me if I needed help and then a third had to politely instruct me to sit down because I was getting in the way.</p><p>But it was worth it. A Rick Owens show is the only place in the world you can go wearing head-to-toe Rick Owens and still feel abjectly underdressed. There were lots of gorgeous new-season outfits, and it was fun seeing how different people dealt with the impractically long trails of their Luxor gowns: one woman carried hers in her hand while another just let hers drag on the ground. But I also noticed archival pieces dating back fifteen-ish years. Obviously for a Rick obsessive all this was a thrill to see in person, but even if you didn't know a Geobasket from a Mega Creeper I think it would still be dazzling: it was, in the best sense, an absolute freak show. The single funniest look I saw was a guy dressed all in black Rick except for his bright purple Neon Genesis Evangelion baseball cap. It was an unseasonably warm afternoon and a lot of people must have been melting inside their leather tunics, but what are you going to do, take off the outfit you’ve been planning for weeks??</p><p>Finally I did sit down, and fell into conversation with my friendly seatmates. I am not usually a person who either takes or posts selfies, but the thing is, people often ask me what the life of a novelist is really like, away from the readings, away from the literary festivals…</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg20P8o7AE-Us_-0d6c4xCfVMNNPXgDuRDNfozGcRXgjQCxn0NbqHwRPFUVJkqdu-DW_e3cgiCOXcmIvzpnZ6kJ5PzFBC8kq1boA180tpP6re0ND_EII9dNDQhs_VsUFwO1vX7Ml05zm0fEZrFgrWl0tg1rP5lQx82m4AHJNsH35V0BiHicF6rU/s3280/PXL_20230928_154916234.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2464" data-original-width="3280" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg20P8o7AE-Us_-0d6c4xCfVMNNPXgDuRDNfozGcRXgjQCxn0NbqHwRPFUVJkqdu-DW_e3cgiCOXcmIvzpnZ6kJ5PzFBC8kq1boA180tpP6re0ND_EII9dNDQhs_VsUFwO1vX7Ml05zm0fEZrFgrWl0tg1rP5lQx82m4AHJNsH35V0BiHicF6rU/w400-h300/PXL_20230928_154916234.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>And the answer is, it’s like this. This sums it up. This is the bread and butter, the basic situation. Fundamentally this is what we are referring to when we talk about 'the writer's life.' In fact the one sense in which this image fails to reflect my everyday existence as a literary novelist is that it shows me next to only two beautiful women wearing the famous Rick Owens Prong dress whereas normally I am with upwards of five or six beautiful women wearing the famous Rick Owens Prong dress.</p><p><a href="https://youtu.be/TOM1BPTNFA8?si=rlc4_nTqD_qHbo3L">The show began with pink smoke, a Diana Ross remix, and confetti cannons showering us in rose petals.</a> Now, as Rick shows go, this wasn’t one of the <a href="https://youtu.be/GxXehL90tWA?si=JGNL13rTuv10kuwL">historic spectacles</a>, either in terms of stagecraft or in terms of the clothes themselves: in this later period of his career we more often see incremental changes from season to season, and so it was here. Nevertheless, it was <a href="https://www.rickowens.eu/en/US/collections/women-lido-ss24">a gorgeous collection</a> and to be there watching it in person was, for me, heart-stopping. No doubt a lot of the fashion-industry people had been to dozens of these and were a bit numb to it, and I’m happy that will never happen to me. Also, numbness was not at all the prevailing atmosphere. Unless I was imagining it, there was a shared awareness and excitement amongst the audience that we were in the presence of genius: obviously I believe Rick is the greatest fashion designer of modern times, but even if you aren’t as much of a cultist as I am you could not with a straight face put him outside the top five.</p><p>One thing you really don’t get a sense of in the livestreams is the way the models at a Rick show walk, which is totally different from the pouty arm-swinging stride you might imagine when you think about models on a catwalk. These shaven-headed figures in their veils were slow, sepulchral, their faces at once vacant and grim, their gaits at once shambling and steady, like a zombie in a deportment class, or a sleepwalker dreaming only of revenge. Of course as an onlooker you know on some level that they are not these things, in fact they are just nice young women thinking about where they’re going for apéro, but I suppose walking the runway is a bit like sex: above all it’s about maintaining the persuasive illusion that there is nothing going on in your head beyond the physical act that you’re engaged in.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzgpkUx3gZFDeMn6aF7z8Aau8jbXRvwpZtGdxw2l4puM6Hyjl_p6cRP-9QhGmvwe1neiyCcD4gy86EQDNDquKkVRPkcCXWi_Mif1EzDKKi2EwhIlMWxtzjH0OzvinKFnfyJgaas0xo8F27WrLPFDL2XiA_DImr7L2MSvGN_bMY6UNjPDzN38N9/s4032/PXL_20230928_161844156.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzgpkUx3gZFDeMn6aF7z8Aau8jbXRvwpZtGdxw2l4puM6Hyjl_p6cRP-9QhGmvwe1neiyCcD4gy86EQDNDquKkVRPkcCXWi_Mif1EzDKKi2EwhIlMWxtzjH0OzvinKFnfyJgaas0xo8F27WrLPFDL2XiA_DImr7L2MSvGN_bMY6UNjPDzN38N9/w400-h300/PXL_20230928_161844156.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The show ended, but, again, I wanted to stretch the experience out for as long as possible, so I just hung around. And under the auspices of a shockingly nice Rick Owens PR woman — I say shockingly because the Paris fashion industry is not exactly known for its friendliness; then again, the PR team is based in New York, and the Rick Owens store in SoHo is famous for being by far the most welcoming experience of its kind even if you wander in dressed like a normal person with no intention of buying anything, so maybe there’s some special penumbra of interpersonal warmth around the whole Rick Owens NY operation (sorry, I may be getting too deep in the weeds here…) — because of her, I managed to get into the post-show drinks, which take place in the area where the models are dressed and styled. By this point, Rick himself had left and the champagne had run out, plus I didn’t know anyone so once again I found myself just sort of loitering around, but it was still extremely cool to be in this place I recognised from so many backstage photos. And then the afterglow continued even down in the Métro afterwards, because the same way when you’re going home on the Tube you can tell who’s just been to the same gig as you, I could easily pick out the stragglers from the Rick show.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgauLqZTa-W5MXBejK1sxYOaqQAcmFXp8BFIZILQQyYs6teNSrghZMIFTbKBTKl1hbWrIIxq2VSqR0AbEOd9J9lPEPkqpS_AjbKoaBRrDGJZWs2roX30nxXarFe1LE559-d8dGsjQhxgmcL4Lwmf3LfEsqAgeESMKe0jRzSkid7PLmLC5oC80tT/s4032/PXL_20230928_170815170.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgauLqZTa-W5MXBejK1sxYOaqQAcmFXp8BFIZILQQyYs6teNSrghZMIFTbKBTKl1hbWrIIxq2VSqR0AbEOd9J9lPEPkqpS_AjbKoaBRrDGJZWs2roX30nxXarFe1LE559-d8dGsjQhxgmcL4Lwmf3LfEsqAgeESMKe0jRzSkid7PLmLC5oC80tT/w400-h300/PXL_20230928_170815170.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>During my trip to Paris I also went for the first time to both the <a href="https://www.fondationcartier.com/en">Fondation Cartier</a> and Francois Pinault’s refurbished <a href="https://www.pinaultcollection.com/fr/boursedecommerce">Bourse de Commerce</a>. Both of these buildings are in some sense monuments to how luxury goods companies, which have some of the most outrageous profit margins in the world, keep piling up so much money that they barely know what to do with it all. Of course, I’d rather the money was spent that way than on another super-yacht, but all the same I don’t see how you could walk into the Bourse de Commerce carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag without thinking ‘Am I a chump? Am I being milked?’ And yet the Rick Owens show is the same. Who’s paying for all that spectacle? Me! I've been paying it for ten years! All I am is a goth chump! But after experiencing it for myself, I never want to be anything else.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNDRrnlpKCazZFNuRth2MRyrTwmGArcJ1jSiSyJzBEkDflbSrwgVBm3T0sSkyEVSEdfwB6W-ibd8ZewA16lHxx2Bu_WVzrU9HXdM5HAy9SytBh1AYfK2Wv5Yoo4HIlCmq2F0KCZigiRZf_xAQJ7uXYQs-75sCImReH8kMZ4A02YqEeW5lhOZKK/s4032/PXL_20230928_162722723.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNDRrnlpKCazZFNuRth2MRyrTwmGArcJ1jSiSyJzBEkDflbSrwgVBm3T0sSkyEVSEdfwB6W-ibd8ZewA16lHxx2Bu_WVzrU9HXdM5HAy9SytBh1AYfK2Wv5Yoo4HIlCmq2F0KCZigiRZf_xAQJ7uXYQs-75sCImReH8kMZ4A02YqEeW5lhOZKK/w400-h300/PXL_20230928_162722723.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-78680939314662631412023-06-13T18:55:00.015+01:002023-06-15T19:32:22.154+01:00<h2 style="text-align: center;"><b>JAPAN, MAY 2023</b></h2><h2 style="text-align: center;"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz9d4-lpJ3RZ9lvELDS6jKM5YCQD0zuxHwikd9lRIM8uvHkQk6HBYgLmfTkq6aAxR5ZhWJCdJHOLNZXChGMBHKiksRTcAkaqAHKgFireQK-Ah0Z0wOLkPLFwlDrq-xID29dnmHUjANw83uXlvt95ZTEkJfJGBBNC5YIFHbnAjQ3Tme_BpaDw/s4032/PXL_20230523_013720310.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz9d4-lpJ3RZ9lvELDS6jKM5YCQD0zuxHwikd9lRIM8uvHkQk6HBYgLmfTkq6aAxR5ZhWJCdJHOLNZXChGMBHKiksRTcAkaqAHKgFireQK-Ah0Z0wOLkPLFwlDrq-xID29dnmHUjANw83uXlvt95ZTEkJfJGBBNC5YIFHbnAjQ3Tme_BpaDw/w300-h400/PXL_20230523_013720310.jpg" width="300" /></a></div></b></h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><b>Arrival </b><br /><br />I have conquered nature. I have trampled the laws of earth and heaven. I have stared God in the face and laughed. By this I mean that I managed to get from London to Tokyo without any jetlag. None. None! On my first morning there I woke up refreshed at 7am local time after exactly eight hours’ sleep. Although this was my first flight in nearly five years, I remain a jetlag obsessive, and so nothing could be more satisfying to me than peerless triumph. And my method was a trifle: I simply prepared for two weeks in advance by moving back my morning alarm time 15 minutes a day until by the day of my flight it was 3am, whereupon I ate a protein bar for breakfast and then consumed nothing but glass after glass of water for the next 25 hours until I was in Shinjuku eating ramen.<div><br /><div>OK, maybe you hear that and think the cure sounds worse than the disease. But it’s worth noting that I overshot. The fact that I experienced no jetlag whatsoever actually makes it harder to gauge the success of my technique: could I have carried on to Papa New Guinea and still been fine? Scientists are desperate to know, but I don’t have the data. However, I am reasonable person (what could be more reasonable than shutting the blinds at 6pm as outside England was experiencing its first sunny evening in about eight months, incidentally leaving my dog stranded on Central Asian time even though he wasn’t travelling anywhere?) and I would be perfectly willing to tolerate, say, a day of mild jetlag. So maybe next time I could just prepare for one week in advance. Regardless, the depth of my satisfaction here was such that it didn’t really matter what else happened while I was in Japan, this was already definitively a great holiday.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUuCKy7B3x4tiUIex_WpnOZ1CxbGum_cYCRac6dxVpuhYanm-vJU0u864JDeURlPm0lCyJMq810HIZNeH-EGaow0K13cyXDuBCpuo3o-74CC81fmlfnf3FRjAVTWrh2BGceA1EbpfGO1oczyQtSEuvcl4BQymUTEiKCDE_WumsruzmVGPTzQ/s4032/PXL_20230525_053314934.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUuCKy7B3x4tiUIex_WpnOZ1CxbGum_cYCRac6dxVpuhYanm-vJU0u864JDeURlPm0lCyJMq810HIZNeH-EGaow0K13cyXDuBCpuo3o-74CC81fmlfnf3FRjAVTWrh2BGceA1EbpfGO1oczyQtSEuvcl4BQymUTEiKCDE_WumsruzmVGPTzQ/w300-h400/PXL_20230525_053314934.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div><br /><b>The Japanese: their habits, their national character <br /></b><br />I went a place in the Sendagi neighbourhood of Tokyo called Players Bar R. When you walk in you see a gleaming mahogany bar; a record player connected to a vintage tube amp and two huge speakers; an enormous collection of jazz records; and a shelf of rare Japanese whisky, unfortunately unavailable for purchase because each bottle is tagged with the name of the regular it belongs to. In other words, it’s the coolest place in the world, except in Tokyo it’s not the coolest place in the world, in Tokyo it’s just another neighbourhood bar. <br /><br />As I ordered a beer, Nina Simone was playing, and the barman, who was in his sixties, asked me ‘Do you like jazz?’ He didn’t speak much English, so rather than equivocate — ‘Well, yes, there are some jazz albums I’m into, but most of them are fairly recent and I wouldn’t say I <i>like jazz</i> in the way that the people who come here probably <i>like jazz</i>…’ — I just said yes. Whereupon he passed me the catalogue of records in his collection and told me to make a request. Seeing the names of dozens of Blue Note luminaries who I had heard of but knew nothing about, I panicked: vaguely I remembered that at some point I had enjoyed an album called<i> Out to Lunch</i> by Eric Dolphy, so I asked for that one, and he put it on.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MzNGM6Xu-emrOP-3nV6w4faBSyW_h8_bvvgO3NVNwoi3tqS5DvcLnD7L-ryYJpTIAXotlL5n5qDAVNnRodGLkeElb5vypaYN_w1Pox6OP4-pNIs3DNIZKDthKs6mjGaU5uDhjakVJRh_sMG8jNsqCECL3Iyux-r_chiCTMHmjd4JgTpB0w/s4032/PXL_20230519_102329986.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MzNGM6Xu-emrOP-3nV6w4faBSyW_h8_bvvgO3NVNwoi3tqS5DvcLnD7L-ryYJpTIAXotlL5n5qDAVNnRodGLkeElb5vypaYN_w1Pox6OP4-pNIs3DNIZKDthKs6mjGaU5uDhjakVJRh_sMG8jNsqCECL3Iyux-r_chiCTMHmjd4JgTpB0w/w400-h300/PXL_20230519_102329986.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />Unfortunately, what I had not remembered is that <i>Out to Lunch</i> is a transmission from the 1960s avant-garde that has been described as ‘an effort to break our expectations about the very nature of jazz’. In other words, very much not Nina Simone. As Dolphy and his saxophone began assaulting some expectations over the very loud sound system, I looked around thinking, ‘I’m not sure <i>I</i> even like this, so what do <i>they </i>think of it?’ — ‘they’ being the barman and the two patrons other than me — one of whom, to my horror, soon got up and walked out, leaving the other guy, who was sort of nodding along a bit, but in a way that looked more polite than anything else. <br /><br />I felt that leaving the bar before <i>Out to Lunch</i> had finished would make my choice look even more terroristic, and so, knowing that I was trapped there until all 42 minutes of banging and squawking were over, I ordered a whisky. It was at this point that the barman looked up something in a translation app on his phone, scrupulously copied it out into a notebook, and passed it to me to look at. ‘Please make yourself at home,’ it said. <br /><br />This incident sums up my time in Japan. I wouldn’t care in the least if some French waiter didn’t like me, but here I was gripped with anxiety because I felt I would rather die than have a single Japanese person find me rude or clumsy… which is completely perverse, since the Japanese are so fathomlessly hospitable and forgiving. It’s very funny to me that Japanese culture is often compared to English culture: sure, maybe both countries are repressed and hierarchical, but the Japanese are repressed and hierarchical <i>and also</i> helpful and nice, which is a really quite significant difference!!! Significant enough in fact that I think the analogy has to be left for dead.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0As83uPuXze63dv2l5uw_owdmBLwd21HVYY-sjifvIa1ykV1TcgU68iaZNY46l05BuIRFWeI-yuSdvy5Bz-EI4KlYw53n1ieQjEcFZPNYAG_XNxrfaEobqTkv3OKzdVK_r-LSV16nEd38NUUHpXz7VWNgy3HzR_SYhHTYgib-dIHcY4gq4A/s4032/PXL_20230525_033945932.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0As83uPuXze63dv2l5uw_owdmBLwd21HVYY-sjifvIa1ykV1TcgU68iaZNY46l05BuIRFWeI-yuSdvy5Bz-EI4KlYw53n1ieQjEcFZPNYAG_XNxrfaEobqTkv3OKzdVK_r-LSV16nEd38NUUHpXz7VWNgy3HzR_SYhHTYgib-dIHcY4gq4A/w400-h300/PXL_20230525_033945932.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br />I concede that people who’ve spent more time in Japan, and indeed the Japanese themselves, don’t have such a rosy view of the culture. Scratch the surface and it’s much more complicated. But surfaces are not nothing. By contrast, a well-educated French person may seem quite snooty at first but when you make the effort get to know them you find out they’re <i>really </i>snooty. (I realise the French are coming in for a lot of attacks here, and to any French people reading this, I apologise. Croissants and Jacques Becker are good.) <br /><br />My terror of putting a foot wrong in Japan came not, I think, from any sense of the country as a minefield of rules and expectations, but rather from the feeling that it would be horribly ungrateful to test the good graces of these people who’ve already given us so many gifts. By which I don’t just mean Masaki Kobayashi and <i>Elden Ring</i>, Tadao Ando and <i>Neon Genesis Evangelion</i>, Rei Kawakubo and shiba inus, but rather a much more general impression that the Japanese improve <i>everything </i>they touch — an impression that is compounded with every minute you spend in the country (including even the time you’re in the airport, a place that we tend to bracket off from our first impressions when travelling, but in this case an opportunity to experience the unbridled joy of operating a Japanese ATM). <br /><br />Again, even as a Japanophile, I know it’s important not to pedestal-ise the Japanese too much. Otherwise you can end up shrinking them into something distant, untouchable, not fully human, the way men who haven't known many women growing up often regard women. (Not me, though — I'm actually the only living man who went to boys' schools for twelve years who ended up with a totally healthy attitude to the gentler sex. You can tell from my books!) On this trip I read <i>Breasts and Eggs</i> by Mieko Kawakami and <i>Bending Adversity</i> by David Pilling, both in their different ways good antidotes to this caricature of modern Japan as a place which has optimised all dysfunction out of existence. <br /><br />One such dysfunction, as Pilling discusses, is the country’s somewhat gouty economy. Teizo, a volunteer tour guide and former banker who spent a few hours with me one Saturday, explained to me that the Japanese pursuit of perfection, though so attractive to outsiders, is from some angles a symptom of their economic problems; Japan must improve its worker productivity, and in a higher-productivity economy, it may no longer be realistic for someone living in Tokyo to devote himself completely to serving the finest imaginable bowl of miso ramen at an eight-seat ramen bar that’s open five lunchtimes a week. <br /><br /> Of course, that sounds like a tragedy to me, and I won’t be the first person to point out that certain economic metrics seem to miss the point of human existence. All the same, I suppose a high-productivity economy with robots cooking the noodles is still better than what we have in the UK, a low-productivity economy and Pret for lunch, all of the downsides with none of the upsides.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAHn1P0RXTXzRGLPRB5jz2rboadJDtG_jWoSrGI9AInCXyb2JLOgRKsxUN5JlueD9KP_C37oPo8KqjfiK-6oeucvuMphAEhC9LXWJeMeDvM1OZcCsH_R6q5LSBc9WNM3pSiIei3-0CkKhz219WSh4e5ztPjyUPh_XrPuFJ8RaDQV5q783P7w/s4032/PXL_20230519_010757827.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAHn1P0RXTXzRGLPRB5jz2rboadJDtG_jWoSrGI9AInCXyb2JLOgRKsxUN5JlueD9KP_C37oPo8KqjfiK-6oeucvuMphAEhC9LXWJeMeDvM1OZcCsH_R6q5LSBc9WNM3pSiIei3-0CkKhz219WSh4e5ztPjyUPh_XrPuFJ8RaDQV5q783P7w/w300-h400/PXL_20230519_010757827.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Above: wax models of parasite eggs at the Meguro Parasitological Museum</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><b>My grandmother’s soba <br /></b><br />I was a bit disappointed by the food in Japan. I know, I know, that’s blasphemy! Part of it is, my expectations weren’t just sky high, they were out past Neptune, and Japanese food for me was merely somewhere in Saturn’s rings. I’m not saying the food I had was bad — of course I’m not saying that — Japanese food culture is clearly wildly superior to anywhere in the white Western world. But I didn’t feel the same sense of blinding revelation that I did when I first visited Thailand or Mexico or South Korea. I don’t know to what extent this was just personal taste (I happen to prefer khao soi to ramen etc.), to what extent it was bad luck (although it will surprise no one when I say that I do research where I’m going to eat pretty extensively) and to what extent it was that Japanese cooking just exports better, leaving less room for revelation — by which I mean that (for instance) before I visited Mexico for the first time I’d never had anything remotely resembling the barbacoa tacos they sell in the Mercado de Abastos in Oaxaca, but before I visited Japan for the first time I’d already had some pretty good ramen, some pretty good sushi, and so forth. Yes, nearly every bowl of ramen I had in Japan was better than any bowl of ramen I’ve ever had in the West, but it didn’t feel like an entirely different category of thing.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyV2yiSH9SB87P1r0GtUiQnfqEtq1o7t1Gc6hWgQwJmOgkQVfBh1lk9ezl1zsvHJRV4BLGyFnB_HPvr5zUbgsJAcPQlmeGluUz8klhCZ5Y8iM1BlW-6i-i8XF6I-rWsVQWTH7t5QEEd4oZPwtXBwuIirkghHlaZBiPK20-5wmBjp3VayztMw/s4032/PXL_20230518_033624956.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyV2yiSH9SB87P1r0GtUiQnfqEtq1o7t1Gc6hWgQwJmOgkQVfBh1lk9ezl1zsvHJRV4BLGyFnB_HPvr5zUbgsJAcPQlmeGluUz8klhCZ5Y8iM1BlW-6i-i8XF6I-rWsVQWTH7t5QEEd4oZPwtXBwuIirkghHlaZBiPK20-5wmBjp3VayztMw/w400-h300/PXL_20230518_033624956.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />My favourite meal was at <a href="https://toukyou-dosanjin.com/">Dosanjin</a>, a soba restaurant not far from the famous Gotojuki Temple where they have all the cat statues. Dosanjin is almost a parody of what you want a restaurant in Tokyo to look like: a beautiful room looking out through floor-to-ceiling windows on to an even more beautiful private garden. Along with your basic scallop and vegetable tempura I had two seasonal specials: minced duck in burdock miso and their famous sudachi soba, sudachi being a citrus fruit from Tokushima prefecture in the south of Japan. All of that was great (it’s true what they say about tempura being different in Japan; it didn’t feel like the vegetables had been deep-fried so much as they had just grown like that). But the high point was <i>after </i>I’d finished the food.</div><div><br />Because that was when they brought me a little teapot full of the water the soba noodles had been cooked in, and told me to sip it from a cup, adding, if I wanted, some of the soy sauce I’d been dipping my tempura in. Now, when I say Dosanjin is a soba restaurant, I mean in this case that they source buckwheat seeds directly from a farm on the coast, then shell them, grind them, and make the noodles fresh each morning (I could see the machine from where I was sitting). And this soba water — well, it took me straight back to my childhood in Shinshu in the 1950s, when my doting grandmother would make soba noodles for me even as I could see her arthritic fingers were growing more and more… <br /><br />No, obviously I didn’t have a childhood in Shinshu. In fact I have no nostalgic connection to soba whatsoever. But at that moment, it felt like I did! This soba water hit me on what I can only describe as an autobiographical level. It made me want to start writing earnest personal essays. I could not believe how good it was, given that it was basically just pasta water! The only other time I’ve experienced this was in Xi’an, another place with a big emphasis on hand-making the noodles on site, <a href="https://nedbeauman.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-best-thing-i-ate-in-xian-was-this.html">where at one hole-in-the-wall restaurant they, likewise, brought me a cup of wheat broth afterwards</a>; I would love to know if this practice has a common ancestor somewhere or whether it developed independently in China and Japan. Anyway, that was fantastic too, but the Dosanjin one was even better, because adding those few drops of soy rounds it off so perfectly. <br /><br />This was only my second full day in Japan so it did cross my mind that I was just getting carried away with the excitement of it all. But a few days later, in Takasaki, I had lunch at a well-liked local soba restaurant, where they also gave me a teapot full of soba water afterwards, but this time the soba water tasted of absolutely fuck all! So I know I wasn’t just imagining how special Dosanjin was. Meanwhile, in Osaka I went to yet another excellent soba place called Enishi, and there they bring you your cup of soba water at the beginning of the meal and then top it up as if it were a cup of coffee, but that wasn’t as good as either. <br /><br />There’s one more thing to add about Dosanjin: how expensive are you imagining this meal to be, what with the hand-made noodles, the seasonal specials, the immaculate room, did I mention the restaurant is decorated with ceramic works by the late master potter Yukio Kinoshita etc. etc.? Well, guess what — my lunch cost me the equivalent of £23.64 all in. Unbelievable!</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvsZZOIeAMu-OVx3hfi5_PMGanI8_MQW4ZwNpdj59wFEa6s-68arHUVrLjsc_tmoXWzrN8UPUFXxaZYZ-dtBG5KWnL46D2gWCZ0vncYGkqNMXRNdFU9xlJfO_7ZpGcskhoxv6uC577qRMH0YBvX12YjkbjVRCUq9MnJGZo5Nj9w23zVBNuAg/s4032/PXL_20230527_053714567.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvsZZOIeAMu-OVx3hfi5_PMGanI8_MQW4ZwNpdj59wFEa6s-68arHUVrLjsc_tmoXWzrN8UPUFXxaZYZ-dtBG5KWnL46D2gWCZ0vncYGkqNMXRNdFU9xlJfO_7ZpGcskhoxv6uC577qRMH0YBvX12YjkbjVRCUq9MnJGZo5Nj9w23zVBNuAg/w300-h400/PXL_20230527_053714567.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><i>Above: the Shibakawa Building in Osaka (1927) with its Mayan Revival architecture</i><br /><br /><b>Fleeting pleasures</b><br /><br />After Tokyo I travelled up to Karuizawa, a resort town in the mountains where a lot of wealthy Tokyoites have second homes. I was there because the <a href="https://www.wildlife-picchio.com/">Picchio Wildlife Research Center</a> run flying squirrel tours in the bird sanctuary nearby. The tour lasted an hour and in my imagination that entire time would be spent standing in the pine forest gazing up in wonder as dozens of flying squirrels soared and swooped and looped-de-looped. But after we arrived at Picchio (a low curved building with panoramic windows overlooking an artificial lake; of <i>course </i>the Japanese make their wildlife research centres look as elegant as their soba restaurants) our guide sat us down for enjoyable but quite protracted lecture on the world of the flying squirrel, using both videos and props. And I started to feel suspicious. Because it almost seemed like stalling for time. Why were we not already out there watching as the very stars were extinguished by the unbroken canopy of airborne mammals? Well, I soon found out. The guide led us to one of the nest boxes that Picchio have placed in the woods, where a video feed from inside showed a flying squirrel nursing her two kits. Flying squirrels are, like Japanese trains, extraordinarily punctual, so we only had to wait a few more minutes until the mother left the nest box to gather food, as she does every night exactly half an hour after sunset. And then… <br /><br />The briefest image that the human eye can perceive is one that lasts for about 13 milliseconds. I don’t know how long it took that flying squirrel to glide from that nest box to the nearby copse of trees into which she immediately vanished forever, but I don’t even really have any memory of motion in that drizzly half-light, just of two or three flashes of something overhead. It’s one of those memories so gossamer-thin that I can now never even risk watching a YouTube video of a flying squirrel because I know the video would irreversibly overwrite whatever I have in my head. I had made a 24 hour round trip to Karuizawa for this experience that lasted well under a second.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKARrTjwKO99YWvtQ4BTKiSOyVt_SncBIq9UTyIxfwPR_hwfFc0Hsc_m-IjxQbG0v-GCMF-m625DkxjgF5M_XXHuRFwPUqDHrbpbEe6opbAi6xMyqkCQ81QGoEclwl-qVQ8F1n4uyGEtnJKv5EZoSiagxBxyDkjQiLqMAvNc2y9Si8fPA7Dw/s4032/PXL_20230605_155824465.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKARrTjwKO99YWvtQ4BTKiSOyVt_SncBIq9UTyIxfwPR_hwfFc0Hsc_m-IjxQbG0v-GCMF-m625DkxjgF5M_XXHuRFwPUqDHrbpbEe6opbAi6xMyqkCQ81QGoEclwl-qVQ8F1n4uyGEtnJKv5EZoSiagxBxyDkjQiLqMAvNc2y9Si8fPA7Dw/w300-h400/PXL_20230605_155824465.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br />Was it worth it? Three days earlier I’d had lunch at <a href="https://www.udatsu-sushi.jp/en">Udatsu Sushi</a>, a Michelin-starred sushi counter in Nakameguro. Udatsu Sushi offers a lunchtime omakase menu for 13,500 yen, which sushi obsessive regard as a fantastic deal for a restaurant of this quality. I’m inclined to agree because unfortunately I had a second omakase in Tokyo that much more expensive and nowhere near as good. Just seeing Hisashi Udatsu make nigiri was riveting; it had a prestidigitatory quality where no matter how closely you watched you simply could not follow what he was doing with his fingers. And somewhere in the middle there was a run of four of these nigiri — mackerel, sea urchin, squid and lean tuna — that were by far the best pieces of sushi I’ve ever had, or probably ever will have. But everyone knows nigiri has to be eaten in one bite. And so I found myself hunched over, staring at nothing, desperately trying to prolong the experience of each of these mouthfuls, gripping them like a clenched fist, the full unfolding of each taste almost more agonising than pleasurable because that unfolding only heightened the anticipation of its loss. The rest of the meal was pretty good, too, but it didn’t really stick in the mind, so in effect I booked a month in advance and sat there for almost two hours in order to eat four mouthfuls of food. <br /><br />Well, this is what holidays are about, right? In a recent <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-barbie-summer-cover-2023-interview"><i>Vogue </i>interview</a>, Margot Robbie reveals that she queued for three-and-a-half hours to eat at an udon place in Tokyo (which is not named in the article but probably has to be Shin Udon in Shinjuku). Although I am certainly the <i>type </i>of person who might do that kind of thing, I actually, in practice, don’t do that kind of thing, because I can’t imagine queueing all that time for something that’s over so quickly. And yet you get to enjoy your bowl of udon for at least a few minutes, so arguably it’s more rational than either the flying squirrel tour or Udatsu Sushi. The Japanese are known for their appreciation of fleeting pleasures; the reason to value cherry blossom season so highly is precisely because it’s so ephemeral. In the words of the eighteenth-century poet Yosa Buson, ‘The cherry-blossoms having fallen/ The temple belongs/ To the branches.’ But even cherry blossom season lasts a couple of weeks, which is plenty of time to write a haiku! I think my rule in future is that I’ll consider any fleeting pleasure that lasts at least fifteen syllables. But nothing that lasts less than one.</div><div><br /><b>The Sanja Festival in Asakusa <br /></b><br />I haven’t seen that many tabis since the last time I had dinner at Toklas!!!!!! (Sorry, I just really wanted to make that joke.)</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhccwkF6FV-EF7rXr4Svjr5EAaYfMPfVPiH-O7eQilT-UiRxCb1M6PSqKMPG1_Xiha6pjqO59-JyK03yIQ2UNv0w7cadDEhwIRH_9iIR6QXDxya-vcr-xgb6TKqztoLVv9uIOwYvlSVjPmsgd8Fueb9P4QzJ4ugpFnk_7jK-opPnFu6AnVB8A/s4032/PXL_20230525_094532967.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhccwkF6FV-EF7rXr4Svjr5EAaYfMPfVPiH-O7eQilT-UiRxCb1M6PSqKMPG1_Xiha6pjqO59-JyK03yIQ2UNv0w7cadDEhwIRH_9iIR6QXDxya-vcr-xgb6TKqztoLVv9uIOwYvlSVjPmsgd8Fueb9P4QzJ4ugpFnk_7jK-opPnFu6AnVB8A/w400-h300/PXL_20230525_094532967.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><i>Above: chicken sashimi at Matabei at Okayama</i><br /><br /><b>MY OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS</b></div><div><b><br /></b>I do want to note here, for anyone wondering how all this extremely carnivorous content fits with the novel I’ve just published, that at home I eat no more than two or three non-vegan meals a month. But when I’m travelling, all bets are off. If that makes me a moral weakling, so be it. <br /><br /><b>Soba</b>: <b>Dosanjin </b>in Tokyo and <b>Enishi </b>in Osaka, as described. <br /><br /><b>Sushi</b>: <b>Sushi Udatsu</b> in Tokyo, as described. <br /><br /><b>Ramen</b>: my favourite of the many bowls I had, bearing in mind that for reasons outlined above I didn’t go to any of the famous and oversubscribed ones, was probably at <b>Do Miso</b> in Kyobashi, Tokyo. I also want to mention a place called <b>Kubo Champon</b> in Tottori, which had the richest chicken broth I've ever tasted, although as it says in the name, it's champon, which is technically a different dish that I've never tried outside Japan.</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj2r4oH5ywIr-_iVywTfeY2hX556XbESbJ9nBVwLAZ5HADr42L225406zgs8-19RMq_ILShEV6miXLoNQz2REorN2SaoE63jsAgJKADjmeKYtz4N_1UB8ze2SE9bKs7SonVmfM0hS2XRUo_45pD225T_BIBp1FpMBTH6ZNVVM_YHdVnNUtxg/s4032/PXL_20230518_084907837.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj2r4oH5ywIr-_iVywTfeY2hX556XbESbJ9nBVwLAZ5HADr42L225406zgs8-19RMq_ILShEV6miXLoNQz2REorN2SaoE63jsAgJKADjmeKYtz4N_1UB8ze2SE9bKs7SonVmfM0hS2XRUo_45pD225T_BIBp1FpMBTH6ZNVVM_YHdVnNUtxg/w300-h400/PXL_20230518_084907837.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div><br /><b>Yakitori</b>: <b>Toriki </b>in Shinagawa, Tokyo. If I’ve ever had better fried chicken it’s not coming to mind. Please note that there is also a Michelin-starred restaurant called Toriki in Kinshicho, and that may well be good too but it’s not the one I’m talking about. At this Toriki, which is very much not Michelin-starred, they don’t have room for a deep fryer behind the bar so when you order karage a phone call is made and some time later a woman comes through the front door with a plate of it under some newspaper. I also want to mention <b>Sumisu </b>in Osaka, not so much because of the food — although the tsukune I had was excellent — but because it’s open 7pm to 5am and even at 7:30pm on a Saturday the atmosphere was effervescent so I cannot even imagine how much fun this place is at 2 in the morning. Osaka and Tokyo, like Seoul and New York, are cities that very much seem built around giving people what they want, as opposed to London, a city built around grimly withholding it. <br /><br /><b>Ice cream</b>: <b>Hio Ice Cream Atelier</b> in Setagaya, Tokyo. This place is only open Saturdays and Sundays between 1pm and 6pm, so in addition to the terrific ice cream there is a considerable sense of accomplishment in having managed to get some. <br /><br /><b>Patisserie</b>: <b>Acidracines </b>in Osaka. <br /><br /><b>Bar</b>: <b>Players Bar R</b> in Tokyo, as described. <b>Rogin’s Bar</b> in Osaka, which you can read about <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-japan-copied-american-culture-and-made-it-better-180950189/">here</a>. <b>Bar Comptoir</b> in Okayama.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7t6q9X85BJrnnWYqEs2u1g86dy7PX1Vj9KFAzs6UfKBMT19FLNUWRmooD4JY8TQy0u7-0mTpjV5svHUR12E8qG0Cd1hK7ZtubobgJHCN9dXairKAx1hdHZI5rIH_VvsGximPdkAwW1xX3evOBKE19Q8hla6hx1X7_2vkdSWsRtUswFvirA/s4032/PXL_20230526_121033777.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7t6q9X85BJrnnWYqEs2u1g86dy7PX1Vj9KFAzs6UfKBMT19FLNUWRmooD4JY8TQy0u7-0mTpjV5svHUR12E8qG0Cd1hK7ZtubobgJHCN9dXairKAx1hdHZI5rIH_VvsGximPdkAwW1xX3evOBKE19Q8hla6hx1X7_2vkdSWsRtUswFvirA/w400-h300/PXL_20230526_121033777.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Three places to go if you like feeling like you're in Denis Villeneuve's <i>Dune</i>:</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><a href="https://www.ktr.mlit.go.jp/edogawa/gaikaku/index.html"><b>The Metropolitan Area Underground Discharge Channel</b></a> in Saitama, north of Tokyo; if you're doing this, do also go to the <a href="https://www.bonsai-art-museum.jp/en/">Omaya Bonsai Art Museum</a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBUmfoxt1hwq2TcsX7asgMqzchh5bi6dUPsoklgs46Ywtp9k6xi9pK5pv-zTAKHdMdIT35awKaB-MPc0Pi-kgdbjtWh38m2B0YlIVznOwEec9qGU0yUClRm8jCDVx6sda-lw37_lj9Knhx4VsElzEZBnJgiSFRiMsTTv9W3oEUqb1Xyqr7QA/s4032/PXL_20230520_043243787.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBUmfoxt1hwq2TcsX7asgMqzchh5bi6dUPsoklgs46Ywtp9k6xi9pK5pv-zTAKHdMdIT35awKaB-MPc0Pi-kgdbjtWh38m2B0YlIVznOwEec9qGU0yUClRm8jCDVx6sda-lw37_lj9Knhx4VsElzEZBnJgiSFRiMsTTv9W3oEUqb1Xyqr7QA/w300-h400/PXL_20230520_043243787.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://reservedcruise.com/en/yokohama-cruise/fact/"><b>The Night Factory Jungle Cruise</b></a> in Yokohama, south of Tokyo</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivBYKYxLLdEbEncLaRihSzNtdkPn14u1xB5Np1Omlr6rHitDKbLgkgHhNYJ1HO8_lrMIU70J5pvPQf3Ke5bhxTTO5pEOUQt9tuxv0KtksQOUrEy6EgiX6FSqZ3u65PHyzP17hg_IJlLjUFREROBW78cULPQvjAgdOf9ciYg13YjXVdxrpUPA/s4032/PXL_20230521_102408486.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivBYKYxLLdEbEncLaRihSzNtdkPn14u1xB5Np1Omlr6rHitDKbLgkgHhNYJ1HO8_lrMIU70J5pvPQf3Ke5bhxTTO5pEOUQt9tuxv0KtksQOUrEy6EgiX6FSqZ3u65PHyzP17hg_IJlLjUFREROBW78cULPQvjAgdOf9ciYg13YjXVdxrpUPA/w400-h300/PXL_20230521_102408486.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://osaka-info.jp/en/spot/sayamaike-museum/"><b>The Osaka Prefectural Sayamaike Museum</b></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMfWH0DuqB_g4M_YzHzs_uwlI9r8S6XojxSSe74bvJGdsz3qMTcwU-plsXuKdsUAf6nqYz2xoFAQ0kl5PBA81-R2fwUgoyPg-tAXIjvJgUvL1DNPGl1cL_lHpH8aK4b7cVtQhv-6um6YI4K3LMa2xOI5jVryvXyXJrtJsYKknOPCgk_mmyWA/s4032/PXL_20230528_012355033.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMfWH0DuqB_g4M_YzHzs_uwlI9r8S6XojxSSe74bvJGdsz3qMTcwU-plsXuKdsUAf6nqYz2xoFAQ0kl5PBA81-R2fwUgoyPg-tAXIjvJgUvL1DNPGl1cL_lHpH8aK4b7cVtQhv-6um6YI4K3LMa2xOI5jVryvXyXJrtJsYKknOPCgk_mmyWA/w400-h300/PXL_20230528_012355033.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></div>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-20031230354161903932022-03-02T08:44:00.001+00:002022-03-04T15:44:45.842+00:00Julie Hankey on <i>Othello</i>: <br /><br />"In fact, so intense has been the sympathetic engagement of audiences, that it has spawned a mass of anecdotes about people fainting, calling out, warning the characters, and threatening Iago. It is as though <i>Othello</i> bursts the limit between reality and fiction more readily than Shakespeare’s other tragedies. In 1825, when the American actor Edwin Forrest played Iago to Edmund Kean’s <i>Othello</i>, a man in the front row was heard to say, ‘You damn’d lying scoundrel, I would like to get hold of you after this show is over and wring your infernal neck.' Margaret Webster heard a girl in the audience whispering to herself over and over again ‘Oh God, don’t let him kill her . . . don’t let him kill her . . . ’ On the whole, it’s the women who cry out for Desdemona and the men who offer to fight Iago. As for the soldier on guard duty at a Baltimore theatre in 1822, it was presumably some potent combination of his profession and his racism that made him shout, as Stendhal reported: ‘ “It will never be said in my presence a confounded Negro has killed a white woman” ’. Whereupon he shot the white actor of <i>Othello</i> and broke his arm."<br /><br /><div>From <i>Revelations of a Boston Physician </i>by Charles Wistar Stevens:</div><div><br /></div>"Mr. Blenkinsop watched attentively the scenes, and seemed to feel the reality of the fiction. I spoke to him several times; but he made me no answer, so much he was absorbed. And when Othello, having taken off his sword, takes up the feather-bed to smother the traduced Desdemona, and she, with the pathos of innocence, exclaims, “Kill me to-morrow, but let me live to-night! ” young Blenkinsop suddenly leaped over the railing (we were in the lowest box) and jumped over the footlights upon the stage. He then ran forward, and seizing Othello’s sword, which he had laid down, rushed at the jealous Moor, with murder in his eyes. Othello was at first stupefied, and gazed speechless at the intrepid avenger of Desdemona. Blenkinsop made a lunge at the actor and wounded him in the arm, while the actor, now starting up from his panic, took his only weapon, the feather-bed, and throwing it with full force and pressing it home, brought the madman to the ground; then following up his advantage, jumped upon it, and would have accomplished upon the poor maniac what he intended for Desdemona, had not the cries of the audience brought out the other actors,—lago, Gratiano, and Ludovico,—who drew away Othello and the feather- bed, and seized the supernumerary actor, who was playing in earnest. It was a terrible scene."Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-4782128430982103812022-01-01T09:10:00.001+00:002022-03-02T09:17:52.427+00:00<p><b> Best non-2021 films seen for the first time in 2021</b></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Bright Star </i>(2009)</li><li><i>The Legend of the Stardust Brothers </i>(1985)</li><li><i>Light Sleeper </i>(1992)</li><li><i>I'm Thinking of Ending Things </i>(2020)</li><li><i>Blind Shaft </i>(2003)</li><li><i>Midnight Family </i>(2019)</li><li><i>Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World </i>(2003)</li><li><i>Clifford </i>(1994)</li><li><i>The Sweet Hereafter </i>(1997)</li><li><i>A Touch of Sin </i>(2013)</li><li><i>Welfare </i>(1975)</li><li><i>The Assistant </i>(2019)</li><li><i>Rosewood </i>(1997)</li><li><i>Casque d'Or </i>(1952)</li><li><i>They Made Me a Fugitive </i>(1947)</li><li><i>Streets of Fire </i>(1984)</li><li><i>Paradise: Love </i>(2012)</li><li><i>Scarlet Street </i>(1945)</li><li><i>Da 5 Bloods </i>(2020)</li><li><i>Missing </i>(1982)</li></ol><p></p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-42324927928760372232021-01-01T09:40:00.000+00:002021-01-01T09:40:13.533+00:00<p> <b>Best non-2020 films seen for the first time in 2020 (out of 113 total)</b></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><i>Babe </i>(1995)</li><li><i>Matewan </i>(1987)</li><li><i>Jane </i>(2017)</li><li><i>Rachel Getting Married </i>(2008)</li><li><i>Holy Flame of the Martial World </i>(1983)</li><li><i>Minding the Gap </i>(2018)</li><li><i>When Harry Met Sally </i>(1989)</li><li><i>My Cousin Vinny </i>(1992)</li><li><i>I Wanna Hold Your Hand </i>(1978)</li><li><i>Déja Vu </i>(2006)</li><li><i>Red River </i>(1948)</li><li><i>Death Becomes Her </i>(1992)</li><li><i>Unstoppable </i>(2010)</li><li><i>Heaven Knows What </i>(2014)</li><li><i>The Small World of Sammy Lee </i>(1963)</li><li><i>Thunder Road </i>(2018)</li><li><i>Birds of Passage </i>(2018)</li><li><i>A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors </i>(1987)</li><li><i>Contagion </i>(2011)</li><li><i>King of New York </i>(1990)</li></ol><p></p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-53939221559372813212020-08-27T18:04:00.005+01:002020-08-27T18:04:52.025+01:00<p>The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that changes in the way people are employed have facilitated the rise of Corporate Psychopaths to senior positions and their personal greed in those positions has created the crisis. Prior to the last third of the twentieth century large corporations were relatively stable, slow to change and the idea of a job for life was evident, with employees gradually rising through the corporate ranks until a position was reached beyond which they were not qualified by education, intellect or ability to go. In such a stable, slowly changing environment employees would get to know each other very well and Corporate Psychopaths would be noticeable and identifiable as undesirable managers because of their selfish egotistical personalities and other ethical defects.</p><p>Changing companies’ mid-career was seen as being questionable and inadvisable and their rise would therefore be blocked both within their original employer and among external employers who would question their reasons for wanting to change jobs.</p><p>However, once corporate takeovers and mergers started to become commonplace and the resultant corporate changes started to accelerate, exacerbated by both globalisation and a rapidly changing technological environment, then corporate stability began to disintegrate. Jobs for life disappeared and not surprisingly employees’ commitment to their employers also lessened accordingly. Job switching first became acceptable and then even became common and employees increasingly found themselves working for unfamiliar organisations and with other people that they did not really know very well. Rapid movements in key personnel between corporations compared to the relatively slower movements in organisational productivity and success made it increasingly difficult to identify corporate success with any particular manager. Failures were not noticed until too late and the offending managers had already moved on to better positions elsewhere. Successes could equally be claimed by those who had nothing to do with them. Success could thus be claimed by those with the loudest voice, the most influence and the best political skills. Corporate Psychopaths have these skills in abundance and use them with ruthless and calculated efficiency.</p><p>In this way, the whole corporate and employment environment changed from one that would hold the Corporate Psychopath in check to one where they could flourish and advance relatively unopposed.</p><p><b>from "The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis" by Clive R. Boddy</b></p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-42513905290441149802020-08-20T12:57:00.005+01:002020-08-20T12:58:29.751+01:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gakouoX9VqE/Xz5lIputLDI/AAAAAAAAZC8/CaBXqWBRc9IPufCyJo2a217r_g0gVePoACLcBGAsYHQ/s512/unnamed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="267" height="328" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gakouoX9VqE/Xz5lIputLDI/AAAAAAAAZC8/CaBXqWBRc9IPufCyJo2a217r_g0gVePoACLcBGAsYHQ/w171-h328/unnamed.jpg" width="171" /></a></div><p></p><p><b>A fun Wikipedia loop</b></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJ_Harvey">PJ Harvey</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stewart_(musician)">Ian Stewart (musician)</a> –></p><p><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exile_on_Main_St.">Exile on Main St.</a></i> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stones_Mobile_Studio">Rolling Stones Mobile Studio</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargroves">Stargroves</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Mark_Palmer,_5th_Baronet">Sir Mark Palmer, 5th Baronet</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Moraes">Henrietta Moraes</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi_Hambling">Maggi Hambling</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_and_vulva_in_art">Vagina and vulva in art</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig">Sheela na gig</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela-Na-Gig_(song)">Sheela-Na-Gig (song)</a> –></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJ_Harvey">PJ Harvey</a></p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-13713839487524061702020-08-20T11:14:00.001+01:002020-08-20T11:14:22.171+01:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v1BrCWRe1Dc/Xz5M4E1xk8I/AAAAAAAAZCw/JkXXrY9bVToUdQx4mYdFshYz_0HENcgTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/23NUKES-superJumbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="274" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v1BrCWRe1Dc/Xz5M4E1xk8I/AAAAAAAAZCw/JkXXrY9bVToUdQx4mYdFshYz_0HENcgTQCLcBGAsYHQ/w410-h274/23NUKES-superJumbo.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><p></p><p><i>from</i> Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance <i>by Donald MacKenzie</i></p><p>"Apart from the general prejudice that the true driving forces must be grander things, there is a particular difficulty for those who are not intimately familiar with it in keeping the ordinariness of nuclear politics in mind. Like the politics of any office, to an outsider it seems intricate, devious, and boring, difficult to understand in comparison with the memorable but misleading simplicities of technological and macropolitical determinism. So it is perhaps worth substituting a single striking example for all the details. It may not even be altogether accurate, as it is not well documented, but if true, it vividly shows how the same sort of mundane considerations can shape nuclear war plans as can shape, for example, a local authority budget. If nuclear war had broken out early in 1961, Moscow was to have been the target for no fewer than 170 American nuclear weapons. This was not because that many were needed to destroy it: even a tiny fraction of that number would have been more than sufficient. Nor was it primarily because of worries that technical failure, a Soviet preemptive strike, or Soviet defenses might lead to attrition of the attacking force. The chief reason was the reluctance of the various branches of the armed services to give up the Soviet capital for a less prestigious target."</p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-53566753546598858102020-08-17T13:41:00.006+01:002020-08-17T13:42:10.351+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jJE8Vz3t9mw/Xzp64YE7hnI/AAAAAAAAZCg/M4F7IbHXQxIXi7K8KY58Q7XFV7UhbNPhgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1410/download.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1410" height="261" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jJE8Vz3t9mw/Xzp64YE7hnI/AAAAAAAAZCg/M4F7IbHXQxIXi7K8KY58Q7XFV7UhbNPhgCLcBGAsYHQ/w410-h261/download.jpeg" width="410" /></a></div><p>"The sad fact that few conservationists care to face is that many species, perhaps most, do not seem to have any conventional value at all, even hidden conventional value. True, we can not be sure which particular species fall into this category, but it is hard to deny that there must be a great many of them. And unfortunately the species whose members are the fewest in number, the rarest, the most narrowly distributed — in short, the ones most likely to become extinct — are obviously the ones least likely to be missed by the biosphere. Many of these species were never common or ecologically influential; by no stretch of the imagination can we make them out to be vital cogs in the ecological machine. If the California condor disappears forever from the California hills, it will be a tragedy: but don’t expect the chaparral to die, the redwoods to wither, the San Andreas fault to open up, or even the California tourist industry to suffer — they won’t."</p><p>from "Why Put a Value on Biodiversity?" by David Ehrenfeld</p>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-48381118775576117302020-08-10T12:04:00.004+01:002020-08-10T12:04:48.101+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u4nvRTM33vI/XzEpvN2zXbI/AAAAAAAAY_Q/iqQ5KvQkEIg1Jkdncc0HH4htLPFsoYt1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s961/434%2BRough%2Bon%2BRats_0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="961" data-original-width="700" height="512" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u4nvRTM33vI/XzEpvN2zXbI/AAAAAAAAY_Q/iqQ5KvQkEIg1Jkdncc0HH4htLPFsoYt1ACLcBGAsYHQ/w373-h512/434%2BRough%2Bon%2BRats_0.png" width="373" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on “Conjuring Rats,” printed in <i>The Journal of American Folk-Lore</i> (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a specimen of such a letter, dated, “Maine, Oct. 31, 1888,” and addressed in business style to “Messrs. Rats and Co.” The writer begins by expressing his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street, uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they “can live snug and happy” in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use “Rough on Rats.” This threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the Church.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>from </i>The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals <i>by EP Evans (1906)</i></div>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-54379258350613274832020-04-24T12:29:00.000+01:002020-04-24T12:29:06.596+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SIPfIBXy6u0/XqLMuVsLVEI/AAAAAAAAXEc/QjMp0NovXcI7reR1aoOQ2zXlb22rOMRpQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/thediplomat_2015-03-23_07-22-20.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="807" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SIPfIBXy6u0/XqLMuVsLVEI/AAAAAAAAXEc/QjMp0NovXcI7reR1aoOQ2zXlb22rOMRpQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/thediplomat_2015-03-23_07-22-20.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
<br />
<b>Sir Halford Mackinder, one of the founders of the London School of Economics, executes several porters during an expedition to Mount Kenya in 1895</b><br />
<br />Mackinder ‘practised with my Mauser in the afternoon against a tree trunk' and kept discipline within his own group of porters by regularly shooting off rounds from his gun. The 'moral suasion of my Mauser' was for Mackinder an effective physical representation of the social contract on safari: '[i]t was a strange experience to be thus brought face to face with the ultimate sanctions of society'. Mackinder regularly rejected pleas from his porters to stop for the day with the observation that: “[i]n the interests of discipline I determined that my will must prevail'. When Mackinder refused to stop, he noted that the whole body of Kikuyu porters tried to desert, and were only checked by a display of firearms. His notebooks recorded that 'Cam[pbell Hausburg and the Swahili] Sulamani got ropes for a chain gang, I walked about with a loaded revolver, the Swahilis exhibited some 50 firearms, and at length we got the Washensi [Kikuyu) into line.' Another show of force accompanied negotiations for food with a village chief: 'our Swahilis cleaned their rifles ostentatiously and drilled one another.' Elsewhere, a village Chief, Ngombe, was kidnapped and held hostage until their food needs were met. A brother of Ngombe, Wangombe, killed two Swahilis who had been sent on another food foray. '[M]uch against natural impulse', Mackinder refrained from retaliating since he was not sure he had better than 'demoralised forces and, after all, [w]e were a scientific expedition, and had reached the scene of our work.'<div>
<br />In addition to the two murders and the death from dysentery, at least eight other porters were 'shot by orders'. We know this by the list supplied by Hausburg to the Zanzibar company, from which Mackinder had hired the Swahilis.<br /><br />Mackinder's own journey down from the mountain, after the exhilaration of the final assault on the summit, was equally desperate. He had twenty-five African men (fourteen of the Swahilis from Zanzibar, an interpreter and two tent boys hired at Mombasa, and eight Kikuyus hired from Kikuyu Fort Smith) and four Europeans with him. During this part of the journey he reflected that 'I could not help comparing the Swahili to a human camel'. Mackinder had to cope with porters who, to conserve their strength, threw away part of their load. He ordered twenty lashes for one Swahili who had thrown away a bottle of specimens in spirit', adding that there was 'an epidemic of this'. On another day, two men collapsed and had to be 'forced to continue', and Mackinder said that the day had been spoiled by the sick man'. He recorded that he 'did not like this slave driving, for that is what it really was.'<br /><br />His two alibis at this point were local custom and necessity: ‘[i]t was all done according to the dasturi (= custom) of the African safari, and we could not stay, for supplies were running short.' His threats perhaps escalated for he noted that the 'Swahili [...] did not cling to life'. A few days later, he found that three-quarters of the botanical specimens had been thrown on the fire to save carrying them further. This time he ordered a number of kiboko (lashes with a leather whip) unspecified, uniquely, in the typescript but given in the notebooks as thirty, the highest recorded. The lashings were for Musa, a Swahili who could speak French and that Mackinder trusted with a gun despite his not having been hired as a soldier, or askiri. Mackinder felt betrayed, referring to the culprit with surprise as 'the trusted Musa'. Musa was one of the porters recorded as 'shot by orders'.<br /><br />On arriving at Naivasha, Mackinder telegrammed his wife that he would get back to Marseilles on 14 November, and this was in fact when the other Europeans got there, but the day after sending the telegram, Mackinder instead began a furious dash to the coast and arrived in Marseilles on 29 October. He was surely eager to get back to Oxford since he was in dereliction of his academic duties but, perhaps, he recalled the small print of the contract for hiring the porters. It allowed that in ‘a case of “grave emergency" ’, the leader of the caravan might go beyond flogging to whatever was required by the safety of the caravan or the members of the caravan”. However, it also reserved the right that ‘a competent Court may be called upon to decide whether (the leader had] improperly exercised their discretion'.</div>
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<i>from </i>Geopolitics and Empire: The Legacy of Halford Mackinder<i> by Gerry Kearns</i></div>
Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-74045141106694612262020-04-22T11:04:00.000+01:002020-04-22T11:30:19.409+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Cleaning oil off sea otters after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989</b><br />
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"In total, 357 sea otters were captured and delivered to rehabilitation facilities. Of these, 123 died in captivity. Thirty-seven of the 234 survivors were judged unsuitable for return to the wild and were transferred to aquaria and other permanent holding facilities; 25 of these animals were still alive 10 months later. The remaining 197 survivors were released by August 1989, 45 of them with surgically implanted radios. Twenty-two of the instrumented animals were dead (11) or missing (11) the following spring, thus indicating relatively low post-release survival of the captured and treated animals.<br />
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"Some otters captured for rehabilitation were unoiled, and others were so lightly oiled that they may have fared better if left in nature to their own devices. About 70% of the animals brought to the rehabilitation facilities were determined to be uncontaminated (61), lightly oiled (123), or of unknown status (68). Finally, rescue efforts probably caused some mortality in and of themselves because otherwise healthy captive sea otters suffer a 5 to 10% stress-induced mortality rate under the best of circumstances.<br />
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"Capture and rehabilitation costs for sea otters alone was $18.3 million. Assuming that 222 otters were saved (the maximum possible), costs exceeded $80,000 per animal."<br />
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<i>from "Catastrophes and Conservation: Lessons from Sea Otters and the Exxon Valdez" by James Estes</i></div>
Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-74680838070681338772020-01-07T10:17:00.000+00:002020-01-07T10:49:23.444+00:00<b>On the Konds of India and their earth goddess Tari</b><br />
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"The Konds also related a certain myth, in which Tari made a revelation to humankind by taking the form of a woman, called Amali Baeli, one of their first ancestors. The myth runs as follows. At the time when the earth was created, every place was simply a swamp and the whole countryside swayed and shook continually. At this primeval time there was a Kui house shaking in the morass; a woman and a man lived there and their names were Amali Baeli and Bumi Kuari. When the man was out one day, Amali Baeli was peeling vegetables for the pot. She cut her little finger and the blood oozed out, not falling on the vegetables, but on the ground. Then the heaving earth solidified and became very fertile. Amali Baeli said, 'Look, what a good change! Cut up my body to complete it!', but the Konds refused. Thinking she was a Kond, they were unwilling to sacrifice her, instead, they resolved to purchase victims from other peoples. Believing that without the falling of human blood on the ground there is no fertility, Kond's ancestors sought a way of burying human flesh; and so began the mrimi sacrifice.<br />
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"According to the tradition of the Konds, men still complained to Tari that they were poor and troubled in many ways. The goddess therefore demanded an extension of the human sacrifice, which had to be performed on many more occasions, with new ceremonies and new arrangements for the provision of victims. In addition, she told them that she would no longer limit the value of human sacrifice to her worshippers, but would extend its benefits to all humankind. The Tari worshippers thus believed that they became responsible for the well-being of the whole world, with the result that they practised human sacrifices in great numbers."<br />
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<i>from "Human Sacrifice among the Konds" by Lourens van den Bosch</i>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-45716734277779624072020-01-01T09:02:00.003+00:002020-01-02T21:55:45.913+00:00<b>Best new films of 2019</b><br />
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1. <i>The Irishman</i><br />
2. <i>Gemini Man </i>in 120fps 3D<br />
3. <i>Little Women</i><br />
4. <i>Monos</i><br />
5. <i>Can You Ever Forgive Me?</i><br />
6. <i>Marriage Story</i><br />
7. <i>Support the Girls</i><br />
8. <i>Her Smell</i><br />
9. <i>Midsommar</i><br />
10. <i>Us</i><br />
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<b>Best non-2019 films seen for the first time in 2019</b><br />
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1. <i>Bloody Sunday </i>(2002)<br />
2. <i>Big Night </i>(1996)<br />
3. <i>Swing Shift </i>director's cut (1984)<br />
4. <i>Mikey and Nicky </i>(1976)<br />
5. <i>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs </i>(2018)<br />
6. <i>Salesman </i>(1969)<br />
7. <i>Melvin (and Howard) </i>(1980)<br />
8. <i>High Noon </i>(1952)<br />
9. <i>La Verité </i>(1960)<br />
10. <i>Golgo 13: The Professional </i>(1983)Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-68680221918230409002019-01-07T21:01:00.002+00:002019-01-20T10:55:15.381+00:00<b>Best new films of 2018</b><br />
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1. <i>Mission Impossible: Fallout</i><br />
2. <i>Roma</i><br />
3. <i>The Old Man & the Gun</i><br />
4. <i>The Post</i><br />
5. <i>Phantom Thread</i><br />
6. <i>First Reformed</i><br />
7. <i>The House That Jack Built</i><br />
8. <i>Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse</i><br />
9. <i>The Favourite</i><br />
10. <i>Cold War</i><br />
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<b>Best non-2018 films seen for the first time in 2018</b><br />
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1. <i>Sense and Sensibility </i>(1995)<br />
2. <i>Sorceror </i>(1977)<br />
3. <i>Frankenhooker </i>(1990)<br />
4. <i>Josie and the Pussycats </i>(2001)<br />
5. <i>Grand Hotel </i>(1932)<br />
6. <i>Heathers </i>(1988)<br />
7. <i>Thor: Ragnarok </i>(2017)<br />
8. <i>Hunger </i>(2008)<br />
9. <i>Onibaba </i>(1964)<br />
10. <i>Society </i>(1989)<br />
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<b>Best albums of 2018</b><br />
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1. Mitski – <i>Be the Cowboy</i><br />
2. Ice Age – <i>Beyondless</i><br />
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3. Dilly Dally – <i>Heaven</i></div>
4. Cardi B – <i>Invasion of Privacy</i><br />
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5. Son Lux – <i>Brighter Wounds</i></div>
6. Iglooghost – <i>Neo Wax Bloom</i><br />
7. Rival Consoles – <i>Persona</i>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-12159252433904055072018-06-07T17:57:00.001+01:002018-06-07T17:57:44.760+01:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"The New Testament (NT) recalls Jesus as having experienced and shown behavior closely resembling the DSM-IV-TR–defined phenomena of auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, delusions, referential thinking, paranoid-type thought content, and hyperreligiosity. He also did not appear to have signs or symptoms of disorganization, negative psychiatric symptoms, cognitive impairment, or debilitating mood disorder symptoms. NT accounts about Jesus mention no infirmity. In terms of potential causes of perceptual and behavioral changes, it might be asked whether starvation and metabolic derangements were present. The hallucinatory-like experiences that Jesus had in the desert while he fasted for 40 days (Luke 4:1–13) may have been induced by starvation and metabolic derangements. Arguing against these as explanations for all of his experiences would be that he had mystical or revelation experiences preceding his fasting in the desert and then during the period afterward. During these periods, there is no suggestion of starvation or metabolic derangement. If anything, the stories about Jesus and his followers suggest that they ate relatively well, as compared with the followers of his contemporary, John the Baptist (Luke 7:33–34)...<br />
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"There is a 5%–10% lifetime risk of suicide in persons with schizophrenia. Suicide is defined as a self-inflicted death with evidence of an intention to end one’s life. The NT recounts Jesus’ awareness that people intended to kill him and his taking steps to avoid peril until the time at which he permitted his apprehension. In advance, he explained to his followers the necessity of his death as prelude for his return (Matthew 16:21–28; Mark 8:31; John 16:16–28). If this occurred in the manner described, then Jesus appears to have deliberately placed himself in circumstances wherein he anticipated his execution. Although schizophrenia is associated with an increased risk of suicide, this would not be a typical case. The more common mood-disorder accompaniments of suicide, such as depression, hopelessness, and social isolation, were not present, but other risk factors, such as age and male gender, were present."<br />
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<b>from "The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered" by Evan D. Murray, Miles G. Cunningham and Bruce H. Price</b>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-77523870773795962712018-02-25T04:10:00.000+00:002018-08-24T18:58:13.143+01:00<b><span style="font-size: large;">The best things I ate recently during five weeks in Thailand</span></b><br />
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<b>OUTSIDE BANGKOK</b><br />
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<b>Laap ped at Somtum Jinda in Ubon Ratchathani</b><br />
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This is my number one. I spent time in Ubon Ratchathani and Khon Kaen, two towns in Isarn province in north eastern Thailand, because I wanted to eat Isarn food, and specifically I wanted to eat laap ped, or spicy minced duck salad. (<a href="https://thaifoodmaster.com/thai_food_recipes/thai_salad_recipes/laab_recipes/4019#.WpIWohNuZ-U">This</a> is a very thorough explanation of laap.) At Somtum Jinda I had the best laap of my life, far better, even, than any of the other laaps I ate in Isarn. Although 'salad' is the consensus translation of laap into English, most of the time it feels like an awkward misnomer; this dish, however, really did feel like a wonderful salad, in the sense of a carousel of distinct ingredients whirling across your tastebuds. On another night I had a curry of fish belly with fish eggs, which was almost as good.<br />
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Although I went all over Ubon Ratchathani in search of laap, Somtum Jinda was directly opposite my hotel – clearly, a higher power led me to this restaurant. They even have a menu in English, which is surprising: no Western tourists come to Ubon Ratchathani, because there isn't really anything to see or do there. And that's the problem with a recommendation like this – realistically, none of you are ever going to go to Ubon Ratchathani. But if for some reason you do, you must eat here.<br />
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<b>Grilled pork neck at Gai Yang Rabeab in Khon Kaen</b><br />
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There may be no better place to eat the classic Isarn lunch of grilled chicken, som tam (papaya salad), and sticky rice. And on weekends, they also serve kor moo yang (grilled pork neck, above). Mark Wiens has written about this place on his useful website <a href="https://www.eatingthaifood.com/grilled-chicken-khon-kaen-restaurant/">Eating Thai Food</a>. Everything was superb, including the chilli dip – in Khon Kaen they serve a dip that tastes a lot like a Mexican chipotle en adobo, so it presumably must involved smoked chillis. If you ever go to Khon Kaen – again, there's no reason why you would apart from the food, but I don't know, perhaps you'll get embroiled in some baroque scheme to accumulate air miles which <i>requires </i>you to fly to Khon Kaen – and you want to eat kor moo yang, but it's not the weekend so they're not serving it at Gai Yang Rabeab, I can recommend a restaurant on the main drag with the straightforward name of Kor Moo Yang Khon Kaen.</div>
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Can I note at this point that I am not a person who takes photos of all my food? Only when I have a hunch that it's going to be amazing.<br />
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<b>Nam prik ong at Sorn Chai in Chiang Mai</b><br />
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The best thing I ate on my prior trip to northern Thailand, a year ago, was the nam prik ong (spicy pork and tomato dip) at at a little place called Sorn Chai which I heard about from Robyn Eckhardt's blog <a href="http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2010/04/hidden-in-plain-sight.html">EatingAsia</a> . But I was there on my first day in Thailand, and at the time I couldn't be quite sure that the sheer exhilaration of being back there wasn't distorting my judgement. So on this trip I went as far as to book a hotel near Sorn Chai, and block out a whole day on my calendar, for the express purpose of verifying this nam prik ong. (Obviously it didn't take a whole day, but I just couldn't leave anything to chance.) And it was just as good as I remembered. In fact, if not for Somtum Jinda, this would have been the best thing I ate in Thailand for the second year in a row (which would have been pretty boring, so I'm especially grateful for that laap).<br />
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<b>Khao soi at Khao Soi Loong Prakid Gard Gorm in Chiang Mai</b><br />
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Khao soi is egg noodles in yellow curry sauce with beef or chicken. There are certain khao soi places in Chiang Mai that come up again and again, and this isn't one of them, but I think it's my favourite I've had there. This has apparently been featured on the recent Netflix series <i>Somebody Feed Phil</i>,<i> </i>BUT I WENT BEFORE THAT AND I CAN PROVE IT.<br />
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<b>Mango sticky rice 'nigiri' at Fruiturday in Chiang Mai</b><br />
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I don't think I've ever eaten a dish that was such blatant Instagram bait, but to be honest with you I really enjoyed it.</div>
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<b>Boat noodles at Chen Long Boat Noodle in Hat Yai</b><br />
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Kuaytiaw reua, better known as boat noodles, are rice noodles with meatballs in pork broth. This is one thing I never realised about Thai street food before spending time in Thailand – on the whole, Thai people are not eating pad thai, tthey are not eating green curry, they are not eating anything you've ever eaten in a high street Thai restaurant – they are eating boat noodles. Boat noodles <i>everywhere</i>. In a lot of places you see as many boat noodles stalls as you see all other kinds of stalls put together. In practical terms, boat noodles is the national dish of Thailand. And yet it hardly exists in the west. Personally, I'm not a big boat noodle guy, but I think this one is the best I've ever had.<br />
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<b>Bak kut teh at Ko Ti Ocha in Hat Yai</b><br />
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Bak kut teh is pork rib stew. Yes, that is an entire head of garlic in the bowl. This might be a good place to note that Hat Yai was my 'discovery' of the trip. As with Isarn province, almost no western tourists go there, but I found it an enchanting place: it's the fifth biggest city in Thailand, and the closest major city to the Malaysian border, which makes it very multicultural, 40% Muslim but also full of Chinese influence. If you've ever been to Penang, it's quite similar – not as beautiful, but almost as stimulating to walk around. And the food is spectacular. This, characteristically, is a Malaysian-Chinese dish, which I heard about from Austin Bush's <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=13.75283903402859%2C100.49972200000002&spn=0.007983%2C0.011652&hl=en&msa=0&source=embed&ie=UTF8&om=1&mid=1VLMMPEQP9piCBLnMKBYb-gBG3rE&z=16">Thai Eats map</a>.</div>
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<b>Curries at Khao Gaeng Khong in Hat Yai</b></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Txt2LlDDcA/WpImhPASzAI/AAAAAAAAMtA/sBd7ZnjBzCoOMy-zMrUvf09XRoWyDaYvwCKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180206_193622.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Txt2LlDDcA/WpImhPASzAI/AAAAAAAAMtA/sBd7ZnjBzCoOMy-zMrUvf09XRoWyDaYvwCKgBGAs/s400/IMG_20180206_193622.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Thailand is full of khao gaeng – rice and curry – shops, but this is the only one I've ever been to that operates as a buffet. They give you a plate and you can just serve yourself anything you want! My hands were shaking I was so intoxicated with possibility! I suspect it's down to the Malaysian influence, because the only other self-service curry place I've eaten at in south east Asia was in Penang. I went here twice and everything I tried was fantastic. It's only open after dark, and it's on Google Maps under its Thai name ข้าวแกง5โค้ง – just copy and paste that if you want to find it.</div>
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<b>IN BANGKOK</b></div>
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<b>Pad si ew at Nai Lao</b></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1GuaWP4-ZSk/WpIpwQHHJsI/AAAAAAAAMtk/wm4jh_3US6k7LJMbB3W3Ugu1MCHPCP_DwCKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180218_120204.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1GuaWP4-ZSk/WpIpwQHHJsI/AAAAAAAAMtk/wm4jh_3US6k7LJMbB3W3Ugu1MCHPCP_DwCKgBGAs/s400/IMG_20180218_120204.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Pad si ew is flat rice noodles stir fried with pork, egg and Chinese kale. I read about this place on <a href="http://www.tasteofbangkok.com/pad-see-eiw-nailao-lad-na-yod-pak/">Taste of Bangkok</a>, and I think it was the best thing I ate all week. You can't tell from the unflattering photo above, but somehow it looked like something you'd get served in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and it tasted like that too. It cost 40 baht, or 91p, and the place wasn't even <i>busy</i>. Bangkok is an extraordinary place.</div>
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<b>Goat biryani at </b><b>Muslim Restaurant</b></div>
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This is only available on Mondays and Fridays. The texture of the goat meat was just uncanny, like they'd put it through some kind of experimental matter transmuter from <i>Star Trek</i>. More about this on <a href="https://www.eatingthaifood.com/halal-muslim-restaurant-bangkok/">Eating Thai Food</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eTC3Wi1goNI/WpI0iNdBEdI/AAAAAAAAMuI/wf_GKEZxY2AVL9df0zc3_tJwIFbR1pDAgCKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180220_165611.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eTC3Wi1goNI/WpI0iNdBEdI/AAAAAAAAMuI/wf_GKEZxY2AVL9df0zc3_tJwIFbR1pDAgCKgBGAs/s400/IMG_20180220_165611.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Yellow chicken curry at Krua OV</b></div>
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Extremely good. More about this on <a href="https://www.eatingthaifood.com/royal-thai-food-at-bangkoks-classy-krua-ov/">Eating Thai Food</a>.</div>
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<b>Green catfish curry at Jio</b></div>
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Also extremely good. I read about this on Leela Punyaratabandhu's blog <a href="http://shesimmers.com/2017/02/bangkok-rice-curry-shops-ran-khao-kaeng.html">SheSimmers</a>. It's only open for breakfast and early lunch.</div>
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<b>Mango sticky rice at Boon Sap</b></div>
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This is the closest thing I've ever tasted to a perfect mango sticky rice, although I wasn't able to compare it to the nearby Sor Boonprakob Panich because that was closed for Chinese New Year. More about this on <a href="http://www.streetsidebangkok.com/boon-sap-thai-delicious-mango-sticky-rice/#17/13.72055/100.51586">Streetside Bangkok</a>. The first time I tried to go, around lunchtime, they'd already sold out, so go early. I cannot recommend making the trek out to the much-praised Maewaree, which I found unexceptional. This is an illustration of the perverse and Sisyphean reality of being a 'foodie': when I first visited Thailand, I was thrilled by any random mango sticky rice from Chatuchak Market, but now half the time I just feel mild disappointment at the pudding's faults. What a way to live.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_2B0Uf9ncc/WpI0OZqMMLI/AAAAAAAAMuA/lLn9PjfDdVw8dHrDEWJlHgXVJ6kbLJ0MgCKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180218_124747.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_2B0Uf9ncc/WpI0OZqMMLI/AAAAAAAAMuA/lLn9PjfDdVw8dHrDEWJlHgXVJ6kbLJ0MgCKgBGAs/s400/IMG_20180218_124747.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Pork satay at Jay Eng</b></div>
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Until I ate at this stall in Chinatown, I'd thought of satay as something you only ever eat in situations when you wish you were somewhere else having a real dinner: the canapés are coming round at a boring launch party, or you're in an awful central London bar with an 'Asian' menu. But here I learned that satay can be a remarkable thing. I came across it using Wongnai, the Thai version of Yelp.</div>
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<b>Pad thai at Thipsamai Pad Thai and Orawan Pad Thai</b></div>
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I queued for almost an hour to eat the famous pad thai at Thipsamai. Yes, it was impeccable, but the thing is, there are neighbourhood places you can eat a pad thai which is <i>almost</i> as good and you don't have to wait at all. One of them is Orawan, which I read about on <a href="http://www.streetsidebangkok.com/bangkoks-best-pad-thai-orawan/#13/13.7739/100.4851">Streetside Bangkok</a>.</div>
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<b>Egg noodles with roast duck and roast pork at Prachack Pet Yang</b></div>
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This wasn't on the level of what I ate in Hong Kong and Macau in January, but it was still pretty great. More about this on <a href="https://www.eatingthaifood.com/prachak-pet-yang-duck-bangkok/">Eating Thai Food</a>.</div>
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<b>Nang Loeng market</b></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RUX_4Olca1Q/WpIx3apVa5I/AAAAAAAAMt0/Hvc5xDvKdmg-VVteLDBs_M0bIvfLPCojgCKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180220_114704.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RUX_4Olca1Q/WpIx3apVa5I/AAAAAAAAMt0/Hvc5xDvKdmg-VVteLDBs_M0bIvfLPCojgCKgBGAs/s400/IMG_20180220_114704.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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There was no one thing at this market that would have made this list on its own. But if you eat 1. a couple of curries at Khao Gaeng Ruttana, 2. saikrok pla naem (pork sausage with fish powder) at Mae Lek, 3. khao kluk kapi (fried rice with shrimp paste) at Sonthaya, and then 4. kanom gluay (banana cake) at Nanta, you may find yourself, as I did, almost tearfully grateful for the sheer beneficence of Thai cuisine. Three of those four are listed on <a href="http://bk.asia-city.com/restaurants/news/best-street-food-nang-loeng-bangkok-old-town">BK</a>.</div>
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<b>Special mention: banana leaves</b></div>
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Most days in Thailand, my breakfast would be something wrapped in a banana leaf from a street vendor. I say 'something' because I don't speak Thai, so the contents were a surprise every single time; sometimes it would just be sweetened sticky rice; sometimes, best of all, it would be sticky rice with coconut milk and banana; once it was full of tiny sardines cooked with chilli and herbs; once it was just a wad of seasoned raw pork mince! (I was told by a nearby Thai person that although you're normally expected to put one of these in a microwave, you can, if you want, just eat it raw; so I had a taste, but it wasn't delectable enough for me to take the risk of eating the whole thing. After that I learned to check that the banana leaf was darkened by steaming or grilling.) I wish all breakfasts could involve unwrapping a mystery.</div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uGRzdVkcKDw/WpI5-jBH6LI/AAAAAAAAMuY/KwUEpH_G8aIbtwD5ir4ZGuJ1KIxtcDjBACKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20180127_114209.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uGRzdVkcKDw/WpI5-jBH6LI/AAAAAAAAMuY/KwUEpH_G8aIbtwD5ir4ZGuJ1KIxtcDjBACKgBGAs/s400/IMG_20180127_114209.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-56498460750876137742018-02-05T10:34:00.000+00:002018-02-05T10:34:14.848+00:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uu8Q4qr8TgA/WnbhdBury8I/AAAAAAAAMNE/PP0Giz1_Py8ztjNI6WK_FLbac8ekoK-lQCLcBGAs/s1600/Artemisia%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="465" data-original-width="650" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uu8Q4qr8TgA/WnbhdBury8I/AAAAAAAAMNE/PP0Giz1_Py8ztjNI6WK_FLbac8ekoK-lQCLcBGAs/s320/Artemisia%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>Why were the 1860s the most boring time in history to take a long voyage from England?</b></div>
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"Prior to the 1850s, it was common for ships sailing to India and Australia to stop en route for water and provisions, and many passengers were thankful for the break at Cape Town. In the 1870s, with the advent of the steamship and the opening of the Suez Canal, the journey not only became shorter, it had to be interrupted for frequent coaling stops. But for most of those traveling during the third quarter of the nineteenth century—and only a minority traveled on the celebrated clipper ships—the voyage was made nonstop and out of view of land for almost the entire distance. For those going all the way to Australia, the average journey took one hundred days. <br /><br />"Additionally, whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many voyagers had been thrilled to make natural and scientific observations, by the mid-nineteenth century, most of what there was to identify had been identified – and how much more was there to say about the albatross? In short, by the third quarter of the nineteenth century, oceanic travel had become much more monotonous: it was less dangerous, the route was well known, there were few if any stops, land was rarely in sight, and there was little novelty in seeing birds and fish that had been seen and described before. This routinization of travel parallels the bureaucratization of work."</div>
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<i>from "Imperial Boredom" by Jeffrey Auerbach</i></div>
Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-53222678647959293122018-02-04T08:14:00.001+00:002018-02-04T08:14:57.614+00:00<b>Two remarkable stories from <i>Bioterrorism and Biocrimes </i>by W. Seth Carus</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
"In early 1991, several French physicians reported on a case in which a 41-year-old woman tried to commit suicide by injecting herself with two to three milliliters of HIV-contaminated blood taken from a friend who had AIDS. Two hours after the event, <a href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199104113241512">she went to a hospital emergency room</a>, where she was treated with zidovudine. Despite the treatment, three months after the injection laboratory tests indicated that she was infected with HIV."<br />
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"According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/22/nyregion/long-island-lab-may-do-studies-of-bioterrorism.html">an official</a> of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mexican contract workers involved in a screwworm eradication program may have deliberately spread that pathogen among livestock. Although the perpetrators were never charged, the workers apparently spread the screwworm because they were seeking to protect their jobs, which would have disappeared once the parasites were eliminated. The releases apparently took place in an area of Mexico about 50 miles south of the border with the United States."Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-44937659803916001962017-12-21T01:38:00.003+00:002017-12-31T23:16:09.321+00:00<b>Favourite new films of 2017</b><br />
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1. <i>Logan</i><br />
2. <i>The Florida Project</i><br />
3. <i>20th Century Women</i><br />
4. <i>Dunkirk</i><br />
5. <i>Jackie</i><br />
6. <i>Blade Runner 2049</i><br />
7. <i>Raw</i><br />
8. <i>Lady Bird</i><br />
9. <i>Good Time</i><br />
10. <i>The Handmaiden</i><br />
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<b>Favourite non-2017 films I saw for the first time in 2017</b><br />
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1. <i>A Face in the Crowd </i>(1957)<br />
2. <i>Cutter's Way </i>(1981)<br />
3. <i>Paterson </i>(2016)<br />
4. <i>The Bad Seed </i>(1956)<br />
5. <i>The Color Wheel </i>(2011)<br />
6. <i>A Letter to Three Wives </i>(1949)<br />
7. <i>Lincoln </i>(2012)<br />
8. <i>The Overnighters </i>(2014)<br />
9. <i>Dark of the Sun </i>(1968)<br />
10. <i>Christmas, Again </i>(2014)<br />
11. <i>Michael </i>(2011)<br />
12. <i>10 Rillington Place </i>(1971)<br />
13. <i>The September Issue </i>(2009)<br />
14. <i>In the Heat of the Night </i>(1967)<br />
15. <i>Incendies </i>(2010)<br />
16. <i>River's Edge </i>(1986)<br />
17. <i>California Split </i>(1974)<br />
18. <i>The Whole Shootin' Match </i>(1978)<br />
19. <i>Chuck and Buck </i>(2000)<br />
20. <i>Tampopo </i>(1985)<br />
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<b>Favourite albums</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
1. Lorde – <i>Melodrama</i><br />
2. Jay Som – <i>Everybody Works</i><br />
3. Run The Jewels – <i>Run The Jewels 3</i><br />
4. Vince Staples – <i>Big Fish Theory</i><br />
5. King Woman – <i>Created in the Image of Suffering</i><br />
6. Kllo – <i>Backwater</i><br />
7. St Vincent – <i>MASSEDUCTION</i>Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-36139993906588247562017-12-15T13:57:00.003+00:002017-12-15T14:02:35.376+00:00<b>The five best things I ate during two months in New York recently</b><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mb2ntOotMkY/WiFw-gOQxEI/AAAAAAAAKbU/w16eQT-Ji9Y75xGXJSkv_Dem6q6rJd9vACKgBGAs/s1600/IMG_20171123_211245.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mb2ntOotMkY/WiFw-gOQxEI/AAAAAAAAKbU/w16eQT-Ji9Y75xGXJSkv_Dem6q6rJd9vACKgBGAs/s320/IMG_20171123_211245.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Veggie burger at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/dining/restaurant-review-superiority-burger-in-the-east-village.html" target="_blank">Superiority Burger</a><br />
Hot chicken sandwich at <a href="http://www.endlesssummerbrooklyn.com/" target="_blank">Endless Summer</a><br />
Tuna carpaccio at <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/06/tables-for-two-the-four-horsemen" target="_blank">the Four Horsemen</a><br />
Char kway teow at <a href="http://therestaurantfairy.com/2016/04/04/taste-good-malaysian-elmhurst-nyc/" target="_blank">Taste Good</a><br />
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Big plate chicken at <a href="http://chopsticksandmarrow.com/2013/11/henanese-big-tray-of-chicken-is-perfect-cold-weather-fare/#more-1396" target="_blank">Nutritious Lamb Noodle Soup</a><br />
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<b>Five non-food establishments I also enthusiastically endorse</b><br />
<b><br /></b><a href="https://www.gq.com/story/metrograph-wes-anderson-alexander-olch" target="_blank">Metrograph</a><br />
<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/john-m-mossman-lock-collection" target="_blank">The John M Mossman Lock Collection</a><br />
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/style/elsewhere-club-brooklyn-cabaret-law-bushwick.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Elsewhere</a><br />
<a href="http://twistedlily.com/about-twisted-lily/" target="_blank">Twisted Lily</a><br />
<a href="https://creators.vice.com/en_au/article/43dndg/vr-world-largest-virtual-reality-experience-center-new-york" target="_blank">VR World</a></div>
Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-91267944894185512002017-12-07T16:12:00.000+00:002017-12-07T16:12:48.573+00:00<b>Salt smuggling and cholera in the Ottoman Empire</b><br />
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"On the sea coast, the government salt monopoly had to compete against daring smugglers who brought in salt from the salt pans of Cyprus and Crimea. In some interior regions, such as Aleppo and Yemen, the salt works were exposed to incessant depredation by nomad tribes due to the proximity of the desert. Particularly in Yemen, the revenue had almost entirely disappeared.<br />
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"In the Black Sea region, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration itself assumed responsibility for the transportation of salt from İzmir to reduce its price in the region and wipe out the contraband. However, it failed to compete with the Crimean salt smuggled into the region and asked for the government’s cooperation to guard the sea coast. The government often ignored the smuggling activities until 1892, when the Porte was forced to establish a sanitary cordon along the Black Sea coast due to the prevalence of cholera in Russian Black Sea ports. To enforce the quarantine cruisers were sent to patrol the open sea. The Annual Report of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders in 1892 notes that ‘the smugglers were unable to elude the vigilance of the cruisers or break through the sanitary cordon’. As a result, the OPDA’s salt revenue in the Black Sea Region increased by approximately 50 percent within a year."<br />
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from <i>The Political Economy of Ottoman Public Debt </i>by Murat BirdalNed Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-71351448732689111722017-10-03T20:19:00.000+01:002019-08-22T16:17:29.146+01:00<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>London: the Ned Guide</b></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sXYu_x3bfaA/WdPiMXiLujI/AAAAAAAAJz0/z7ohXEeLH_sbz1YwwVgT7YNOIknInTSngCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_20160508_180353.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="537" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sXYu_x3bfaA/WdPiMXiLujI/AAAAAAAAJz0/z7ohXEeLH_sbz1YwwVgT7YNOIknInTSngCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_20160508_180353.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<i>Above: BYOB champagne at Needoo Grill, my favourite restaurant in Whitechapel</i></div>
<br />
Ever since I published my <a href="http://nedbeauman.blogspot.com/2014/12/new-york-ned-guide-i-am-not-worlds-most.html" target="_blank">guide to New York</a> – which is now severely out of date, so I wouldn't recommend planning a holiday around it – people have been asking me if I was going to do the same for London. I've scarcely been able to keep up with the requests, which have been coming in at a rate of one, sometimes even two a year.<br />
<br />
I wasn't sure about it, though, because I knew I would have less to offer. Firstly, I am not as tireless an explorer of London as I was of New York. Secondly, even when I do venture out, I don't find as much that I like: London is one of the worst cities in the western world to drink in, and although the food there is getting pretty good these days, New York is still way ahead.<br />
<br />
However, since the most recent phase of my life in London has just come to a close – I've moved out of Clerkenwell and I'm going to be abroad for several months – I thought I might as well offer a reckoning. <b><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-NcIJL8Lq_DiGA7BwhGJUKduneQ&usp=sharing" target="_blank">So here is a Google Map of my favourite London establishments.</a></b><br />
<br />
"Favourite" in this case means I've been at least twice (with visits counted across both locations in the case of two sister restaurants, such as Salvation in Noodles or Berber & Q. Further to this topic, I've left off <b>Dishoom</b>,<b> Tonkotsu</b>, <b>Pizza Pilgrims</b> and <b>Franco Manca</b>, because there are so many branches of each they would clog up the map, even though I do endorse them).<br />
<br />
There are seven bars on here, but I decided to leave off pubs completely. I have a complicated relationship with pubs – complicated in the sense that I detest them, but I am also an Englishman, which makes that a fraught attitude to go through life with. For the record, the only pubs in London for which I feel any real fondness are <b>the Exmouth Arms</b>, <b>the Scolt Head</b> and <b>the Palm Tree</b> (the last of which is likely to close).Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-38344754845693095742017-07-19T09:54:00.002+01:002017-08-23T10:09:11.532+01:00<b>Some events</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>August 14th: </b>with Martin Macinnes at the <a href="https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/ned-beauman-martin-macinnes" target="_blank">Edinburgh Book Festival</a><br />
<b>August 15th: </b>at <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/events/an-evening-with-ned-beauman/manchester-deansgate" target="_blank">Waterstones Deansgate, Manchester</a><br />
<b>September 13th: </b>at Waterstones Gower Street, London<br />
<b>September 18th: </b>at <a href="http://5x15.com/" target="_blank">5x15</a>, London<br />
<b>September 26th: </b><a href="https://www.inkacademy.co.uk/masterclasses/how-to-master-plot/" target="_blank">Ink Academy masterclass</a> at the Library club, LondonNed Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32300967.post-25112766065580731632017-07-01T14:51:00.001+01:002017-08-23T10:09:25.791+01:00My fourth novel, <i style="font-family: inherit;">Madness Is Better Than Defeat</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, will be
published in a bit less than two months, and I've written a
Frequently Asked Questions about it. I did this with <i>Glow</i>, and the
same preamble applies. Because the book isn't out yet, most of these
Questions I haven't even been Asked once, let alone Frequently. And
it might seem a bit too early to start talking about it in detail.
However, plenty of proof copies have already gone out, and I'm told
that reviews are already being written. So the following FAQ is mostly for
interviewers and reviewers, anticipating some of the more obvious
questions that they might have.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">How did you get
the idea for this book?</span></b><br />
<br />
Like many people, I'm fascinated by the production histories of
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Apocalypse Now </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and
</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Fitzcarraldo </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">– the
sense that, if you set out to make a film about white men who go into
the jungle and fall victim to tyrannical hubris and latent insanity,
you are yourself doomed to have the exact same thing happen to you.
In this book I wanted to ask, what if there's a </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">secret
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">reason for that </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">seemingly
inescapable pattern</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, beyond
the</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">morass</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
of </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">overstretched</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
budgets </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">and </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">tropical
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">storms</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
and colonial </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">legacies</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Also,
in 2010 I did some research into the construction of the Panama
Canal. The Canal Zone, with its workforce of thirty thousand, had
courthouses, post offices, a newspaper and an army, like a </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">miniature
independent nation</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
The chief of the project, the former army engineer George Washington
Goethals was described as 'an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent
ruler.' </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
made me think of Coppola and Herzog </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">ruling
their film sets.</span></span><br />
<br />
<b style="font-family: inherit;">T</b><b style="font-family: inherit;">hree of
your four books have been set in the 1930s/40s/50s. Do you have any
misgivings about that?</b><br />
<br />
Serious misgivings.
It's a pretty monotonous output for a writer whose jacket copy
advertises him with words like 'eclectic' and 'imaginative'. However,
<i style="font-family: inherit;">The New Adventures of Tarzan</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">,
the first Hollywood film ever shot on location in the </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">rainforest</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">,
came out in 1935, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">so t</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">he
book couldn't </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">realistically
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">have taken place any earlier
than that. And it couldn't have taken place any later, I think,
because with each successive decade of the twentieth century, the
events herein would become even less plausible.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Other
reasons:</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> I wanted </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">to
catch the last years of the robber baron era, when the names of
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">living </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">individuals</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
like Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hearst</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
and Ford </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">resounded more</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
than the names of </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">limited
liability </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">corporations; </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the
Second World War had </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">various</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
useful functions in the background of the early part of the plot; and
I liked the idea that the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Hearts in Darkness</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">,
the </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hollywood </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">screwball
comedy </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">that begins filming in
1938,</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> had a provenance in
common </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">with</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
1940's </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The Philadelphia Story</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">,
my favourite comedy.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: normal;">'</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Beauman,
clearly chastened by the mixed </span><span style="font-style: normal;">reception</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
for </span><i>Glow</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (2014), his
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">sole</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
venture into the present day, has </span><span style="font-style: normal;">now</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
retreated to the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">safer ground</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
of the interwar era in the hopes of recapturing his earlier critical
success.'</span></span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I had the idea for this book in
2010, I </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">started it in late
2012</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, and by the time </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Glow</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">
was published in hardback I was already about half way through, so I
couldn't possibly have </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">reacted
to </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
–</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: normal;">'</span><span style="font-style: normal;">BEAUMAN,
CLEARLY CHASTENED BY THE MIXED </span><span style="font-style: normal;">RECEPTION</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
FOR </span><i>GLOW</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (2014), HIS
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">SOLE</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
VENTURE INTO THE PRESENT DAY, HAS </span><span style="font-style: normal;">NOW</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
– </span><span style="font-style: normal;">'</span></span></b><br />
<br />
OK, don't let me stop you.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also, there is
once again a Nazi involved.</span></b><br />
<br />
This is the last time, I swear.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">To go back a bit,
how is it possible that by the time Glow was published, you were
already half way through your next book? Is it because you dash off
your novels in between suit fittings and croquet matches?</span></b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Although
that does seem to be the general perception, the </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">reality</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
is that Glow took about eighteen months to come out </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">after</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
I delivered a first draft, so I had time to make plenty of headway on
</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">the next one</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">.
Subsequently, my progress flagged for various reasons, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">so
a</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">ll in all I was working on
</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Madness is Better than
Defeat</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> for </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">a</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">bout</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
four years </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">before I sent a
first draft to my editors, </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">and
several more months of editing followed.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Look,
I write pretty fast, but I'm not a freak of nature. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jonathan
Franzen wrote <i>Freedom</i> (570 pages) in 14 months. Marilynne Robinson
wrote <i>Home</i> (352 pages) in 18 months. Nell Zink wrote <i>The Wallcreeper</i>
(200 pages) in three weeks! </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">As
I've said before, I am in good health, I have no dependents, I have
no day job, I don't leave long gaps between projects, and I don't
make many false starts. Given those factors, I don't think there is
anything especially impressive – or discreditable, depending how
you want to look at it – about my productivity.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">What are some
central influences on this book?</span></b><br />
<br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Heart of Darkness </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">by Joseph
Conrad</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Apocalypse Now </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dir. Francis
Ford Coppola</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(and
</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Hearts in Darkness </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and
</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Notes</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">)</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Fitzcarraldo </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dir. Werner
Herzog</span><i style="font-family: inherit;"> </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">(and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Burden
of Dreams </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The
Conquest of the Useless</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">)</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Bioshock </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dir. Ken Levine</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Fordlandia </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">by Greg Grandin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">'</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">'
by</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> R. A. Radford</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">The Sweet Smell of Success </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dir.
Alexander Mackendrick</span><br />
'The Aleph' by Jorge Luis Borges<br />
'Monadology' by Gottfried Leibniz<br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">American Tabloid </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">by James
Ellroy</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Gravity's Rainbow </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">by Thomas
Pynchon</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Citizen Kane </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">dir. Orson
Welles</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">Declare </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">by Tim Powers</span><br />
<i style="font-family: inherit;">The City and the City </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">by
China Miéville</span><br />
'The Horror at Red Hook' by HP Lovecraft<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-style: normal;">W</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ill
this book be impossible to enjoy if I haven't read </span><i>Hearts
in Darkness </i><span style="font-style: normal;">or seen </span><i>Apocalypse
Now </i><span style="font-style: normal;">or </span><i>Fitzcarraldo?</i></span></b><br />
<br />
I hope it won't make much of a difference. I deliberately didn't
re-read or re-watch any of the three while I was writing this book in
order to ensure that it wouldn't be too larded with references.
However, if you have never experienced one or more of them, then
under no circumstances should you read my book yet, because a much
better use of your time is available.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">How
much did you plan in advance?</span></b><br />
<br />
Although I get asked this question constantly, I've never been able
to come up with a very interesting or useful answer. I knew many of
the beats I wanted to hit, as screenwriters say, but I also left
myself a plenty of gaps and flexibility. I wouldn't say I was
improvising, because there was always a margin of planning, so I knew
in detail what was coming a certain distance ahead; and of course a
host of essential things were in place from the very beginning. But a
lot of what ended up in the book – the prominence of certain
characters, for instance – would have been a surprise to me when I
started it.<br />
<br />
OK, how was that? Riveting?<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Did
you set out to write a complicated book?</span></b><br />
<br />
Yes, in the sense that I chose to write a novel about a large cast of
characters, over a long period of time, under the sway of various
shadowy and baroque agendas. Given that, it would not only have been
structurally impossible to make the book 100% streamlined, it would
also have been a mismatch between material and approach. Obviously, I
didn't want to explain everything right away, because I wanted to
preserve some suspense for the reader, and also because I wanted to
evoke, as viscerally as possible, the sense these characters have
that they are in the mouth of some enormous dark beast.<br />
<br />
But, no, beyond that, it's not supposed to be confusing. The plot was
originally going to be even more expansive, but it got trimmed down,
both in the planning stages and in the editing stages, because I was
acutely conscious of this issue (and so were my editors, of course).
I do find it interesting sometimes to prickle or confound the reader,
but I don't want to alienate anybody for good. If you get lost at any
point, you can just email me. I'm serious! Just tell me what page
you're on and what you don't understand, and I'll fill you in.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Did
you go to Honduras?</span></b><br />
<br />
No. I also didn't go to Burma for <i style="font-family: inherit;">Glow </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">and I didn't go to
Berlin until I'd written most of the Berlin chapters of </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">The
Teleportation Accident</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. It's just not my approach. These are not rigorous or reportorial books.</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why
does the narrator refer to 'CIA' and 'OSS' without a definite
article?</span></b><br />
<br />
That was how employees of these two organisations often used to talk,
and indeed still do. For instance, the very first paragraph of the
CIA's internal style manual remarks that 'the information CIA gathers
and the analysis it produces mean little if we cannot convey them
effectively.' For comparison, we wouldn't say 'the MI5'. (Conversely, however, the narrator refers to the CIA as 'the Agency', when really he would have referred to it as 'the Company'. I felt I had to sacrifice authenticity here to avoid confusion with the United Fruit Company, which also has a role in the book.)<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Do
you use a lot of long obscure words just to show how clever you are?</span></b><br />
<br />
Sometimes, there is a word which conveys the meaning you are trying
to convey more precisely and economically than any other word in the
English language, and that word, although an exquisite specimen,
happens not to be in common use. I refuse to say, 'Well, nobody else
is using that word, so I can't either.' If you think like that, the
only trajectory for words is towards death – once a word falls
below a certain threshold (or never reached that threshold in the
first place), it might as well be purged from the dictionary. But no
word is <i style="font-family: inherit;">inherently</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> obscure or difficult – we use technical
words and long words and foreign words all the time – some of them
are just more familiar than others, partly as the net result of a
long series of usage decisions by writers at their desks. In the OED
there are thousands and thousands of fabulous, irreplaceable words
that deserve a chance to shine – and if a literary novelist can't
give them that, who can? The only words I won't use are words marked
in the OED as 'obsolete' or 'archaic', even though I often want to.</span>
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Ned Beaumanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10270948016861653610noreply@blogger.com6