The Blog
Leonard Cohen. You Want It Darker.
It is easy, and tempting, to see the eighty-two-year-old Leonard Cohen’s magnificent fourteenth album as a farewell. As is often the case with Cohen, though, it is not quite that simple. ‘You Want It Darker’ may seem to be the singer’s farewell to his life, his work, to us, but throughout the album the nature … Read more
‘A’ for Ian McEwan’s ‘Nutshell
Well, Ian, what can I say? You’ve done it again – out smarted your clever class-mates and dazzled your teacher with a real tour-de-force. Your classmates chose a more predictable approach. Many wrote as Gertrude (the closet scene being a particular favourite). Some opted for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, despite my warning that this had … Read more
1971 — The Greatest Year in Rock — Never A Dull Moment
Whoever said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture (and I still can’t work out who it actually was) clearly hadn’t read ‘1971’, a brilliant book which shows that when David Hepworth writes about music it’s like losing yourself on the dance floor to your favourite song or admiring a particularly beautiful building. Hepworth’s thesis … Read more
Je Suis un Rock Star. The Stones at The Saatchi Gallery
Exhibitionism, the Rolling Stones exhibition at The Saatchi Gallery, is all show and no tell. Fair enough for an exhibition, you might say, and especially for an exhibition which draws attention to its own showiness by giving itself that title. That’s not to say that it’s unenjoyable. In many respects it’s great. There’s a … Read more
What’s So Funny ’bout Love, Peace and Understanding? The end of Mad Men
(SPOILER ALERT) The ending of ‘Mad Men’ is deliberately ambiguous. It’s not frustratingly ambiguous in the way that the ending to ‘The Sopranos’ is – this finale’s ambiguity is far more satisfying, and its satisfaction lies in the way that, whichever way you choose to read our last sight of Don Draper (and they are … Read more
Paul Weller — Sheerwater’s more famous son
As I watched Paul Weller perform at Glastonbury last night my wife said that he ‘was looking good’. Being a secure kind of guy I had no problems with this undoubtedly true observation, but when she followed it with the question ‘how old is he now?’ I felt a little more uneasy, as contemplation of … Read more
Beware Hipsters! Beware Hipsters! Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young
Noah Baumbach’s latest film While We’re Young fires comic warning shots at both the young and the old. For the old, represented by failing documentary film-maker Josh and wife Cornelia, it suggests that if you’re about to have a mid-life crisis it’s best not to have it in the company of hipsters ( Beware Hipsters!) … Read more
The Year of Reading Dangerously
‘The Year of Reading Dangerously’ by Andy Miller reminds me of the great game in David Lodge’s brilliant comic novel ‘Changing Places’ – Humiliation. It’s a game played by English Literature academics – you name a work of literature you haven’t read and get a point for everyone else who has. It’s ages since … Read more
‘Funny Girl’ — the highs and lows of the 60s
In what must have come as a surprise to many, John Carey, in his review of ‘How To Be Good’, compared Nick Hornby to Dostoevsky. Talking about ‘The Idiot’, Carey observed that Hornby’s novel is ‘shorter, funnier, just as sharp in its human observation, and more realistic.’ High praise indeed, and coming from Carey, a … Read more
What I don’t get about ‘Not Now Bernard’
There are many books I don’t get ( see, for example, ‘What I don’t get about Stoner’ – https://www.bernardokeeffe.com/?p=262), but I was surprised last week to discover that I might have been misreading my all-time favourite for many years. The book in question is David McKee’s ‘Not Now Bernard’, and it’s my favourite for several reasons: 1. It … Read more
Boyhood, Hydra, and Leonard Cohen
Watching Richard Linklater’s brilliant ‘Boyhood’ left me asking the impossible question posed in that old Fairport Convention song -“Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” The film shows a boy growing into a young man, but it does so by filming him and his family in real time. They all, literally, age before your eyes and … Read more