October 20, 2006

Growing up in Las Vegas, England seemed so far away

There’s lots of good pop-music news in The Guardian today. My favourite is the review of the new Robbie Williams’ album. Apparently “Rudebox” is not very good. I quote (rather extendedly, but it’s funny): “…it’s hard to think of a song more likely to curb the listener’s generosity of spirit than Rudebox’s closing “secret” track, Dickhead. A woeful sub-Eminem rant, it features Williams gallantly threatening to set his retinue of bouncers on anyone who dares to criticise his music. By the time it concludes, puzzlingly, with the singer shouting “I’ve got a bucket of shit! I’ve got a bucket of shit!”, one feels less inclined to say the kind thing than the cruel thing: you don’t need to tell me that, pal, I’ve just spent the last hour examining it.” An excerpt on Razorlight in Japan, which is exciting, because that’s where Stuart and I first saw them, and because their wonderful “America” is predicted to be the UK number one this week. And, finally, I had no idea the Killers’ new album was a mormon rock concept album.

I’m honestly so glad the forces conspired to send me two (2!) rejection letters in one day yesterday. No sense in dragging out my failures for weeks, and to buckle down and onward then. My big project has lately developed a new cohesion and I wrote a lovely little essay yesterday, and so I am not so disheartened. I’m still reading Nixon in China, and of course a novel on the side. Penelope Lively’s Heat Wave. She really is one of my favourite authors; she’s never aloof and it’s as though she conjures her stories from my preoccupations, but perhaps that’s a sort of self-absorbed way to regard them. Next up is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which is the most beautiful new book I’ve come across since The Middle Stories or Elegance. It has the most gorgeous endpapers. I can’t wait to read it.

Another article about the blighted East Midlands, Nottingham’s urban decay and suburban gangs (big ups the Basford massive!). Interesting from an urban development point of view, but all the same, we lived there and it wasn’t so bad.