celticman's blog

It was Old Pesky who put me onto John Niven. He said he was Scottish and very funny. Well, two years down the line, I took him at his word. First I read his thriller (by John J Niven) Cold Hands. There wasn’t that much laughs and in that intuitive way that you do I worked out quite early who the killer was. I mentally patted myself on the back. That kind of malarkey only works if you’re right. Otherwise you can hold your hands up and say it wiz...

I’ve got a crap memory. I kept trying to remember Offred’s real name before she became a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. I don’t know if the book told me and I forgot or the book never told me and I never forgot, but forgot not to remember. I’ve read the book before but couldn’t remember what happened. In truth nothing much happens but everything changes. Women become things. Men remain men and battle for status and power all in the name of...

Sometime I think about how people’s names suit their jobs. I used to have a writing tutor called Elizabeth Reeder. I probably spelled her name wrong, but it wasn’t her fault. Grosz would understand. He’s distilled over 50 000 hours of psychoanalytical insight into just over 200 pages. I’ve just read it in one gulp and I’m cured. I understand myself better and I understand humanity. The only difference between me and you is I’m better looking and...

The author describes this as ‘A Novel Based On A True Story.’ The true story is The Great Moonshine Conspiracy of 1935. The true story is of the great depression and Prohibition and of dirt poor farmers scrambling to get enough to eat and keep their land. The true story is of the author’s forefathers and their family: Granville Bondurant who on the death of his wife, sons and daughter in the great flu epidemic of 1919 claimed: ‘All the goodness...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/feb/02/inequality-for-all-us-economy... I don't usually review films I've not seen. I don't make the rules. 'Reich calls "the hugh lie". That the free market is good. And government is bad. Government makes the rules...it decides who benefits from those rules and who is harmed. And increasingly that boils down to the rich and poor. This is inequality imposed from the top. 42% of those born in poverty in the US...

This is a story about possession, obsession and the search for perfection. Nina Sayers (played by Natalie Portman) is all of these things and a bit more as well. Her life is ballet and is being relived vicariously through her mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) an ex-ballet dancer. In a telling exchange Nina reminds her that she was 28 when she gave birth to her, so her claims of having to give up ballet…In a prior scene Erica offers her a slice of...

The stories we tell ourselves tell us who we are. ‘I got George Bush elected…it wasn’t strictly legal, so I don’t want to talk about it.’ ‘I don’t want to kiss some old hag.’ David Seigal aged around 74, says of his wife Jackie 43. ‘She’s like another child.’ Jackie: ‘Seven [kids] by birth and one inherited.’ ‘My husband told me he was going to trade me in for two twenty year olds when I got to 40.’ ‘When I grew up I never knew you could have a...

The snooker was on TV and this kept getting put back until the session was finished. And at one point I doubted it ever would. My partner couldn’t stay awake to watch the film. She asked me the next day what it was about, and in a classical Freudian slip, I said , ‘trust’. Trust is the Janus face of doubt. Fling in the fairy dust of a little Catholic faith and, trust me, we have combustion. The best storylines are often reducible to a single...

Glen Campbell is the Doris Day of Country and Western, or indeed American Music. He’s the ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ who came from a humble background, musically a child prodigy that could make a guitar and most other instruments sing and his voice was good too. He’d the hunky wholesome good looks that spoke of apple pie and living the good life for Jesus. Sure he got lucky. It’s not enough to be talented. Even Doris Day before she was a virgin got...

Sir Trev tell us in voice over that Indiana State Prison is about an hour’s drive from Chicago and had around 1900 inmates. The average sentence is 52 years, so none of the prisoners are in for dropping bubble-wrap in the street. It’s advertised as he meets 12 prisoners on death row, but by my calculations 1900 prisoners are on death row. Tom Harrison is a case in point. He’s already spent 18 years on death row. He killed three people and...