BOOK REVIEWS ~ Life is a cabaret
Willkommen
‘Welcome
to
cabaret ..’ intones oscar-winning Joel Grey at the beginning of
the eponymous musical. Against a backdrop of circus mirrors that
distort the audience’s image of themselves the garish assortment of
entertainers reflect on their decadent interwar society. Singers,
comedians and musicians act as social commentators, interweaving
personal with political while moving seamlessly from the particular
to the general.
Clive
James and Billy Bragg are two contemporary entertainers whose
material both feeds off and informs our current culture. Their two
autobiographies conspire to cover the last 50 years; ‘North
Face of Soho’
is Clive James’ fourth volume of unreliable memoirs and takes us
from his marriage in 1960 to the demise of Fleet street in the 80s
when Murdoch moved to Wapping. Billy Bragg’s book is something
else altogether.
One
of Bragg’s signature songs evokes the ‘Cabaret’ era. ‘Between
the Wars’ is
more Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil than Christopher Isherwood but the
inter marriage between poem and polemic works well. ‘The
Progressive Patriot’
uses the bare bones of his life as the skeleton on which to attach
his sometimes didactic anti-establishment diatribes. Bragg builds a
body of social comment that neatly dovetails his life story with
contemprary British, and particularly English, society. The bookshop
customer is as likely to find Bragg’s book amongst the politics
titles as among the music books or the biographies.
‘I
was a miner, I was a docker, I was a railwayman between the wars’.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Bragg’s prose style echoes his lyric
writing; unashamedly proletarian in appeal, direct in style and
economic in structure. But his music is not all Dave Spart posturing
and nor is this book. Bragg’s best known track, ‘A
New England’,
is a love song in which he explicitly affirms that personal emotions
have primacy over political agenda. Likewise ‘The
Progressive Patriot’
makes room for adolescent inadequacies and the poignant first
experience.
His
musical awakening strikes a chord. At twelve years old he catches a
snatch of a song that touches his emerging sense of self and he then
spends months tracking it down. ‘I
am just a poor boy, ‘though my story’s seldom told ..’ A
working class lad from Barking hears a universal truth from another
continent and a world of opportunity opens up.
Money,
money
Known
now principally as a TV critic Clive James’ early witing efforts
were also as a lyricist. When he arrived in 1960’s London from
working on The Sydney Herald he wrote in every form known to pen and
paper; book reviews, film reviews, stand-up, song lyrics. sketches,
poetry, and literary biography. He wrote, directed and produced mock
epics in rhyming couplets. He even corresponded with friends in
verse letters. In ‘North
Face of Soho’
James spares us such pyrotechnic poetry and recounts in standard
prose his desperation to earn a crust from his fecund gift as a
wordsmith.
Graduating
from Cambridge and directing Footlights James set about acquiring an
income by not saying no to any literary work offered him. This meant
saying yes to poorly paid, short-deadline book reviews and on
occasions working for free. His new wife was not impressed. However
Grub Street embraced him and soon he was accepting poorly paid,
short-deadline cinema and radio reviews as well.
James’
arrival and progression as a media observer and contributor coincided
with the social and technological revolution of the 60s; in
particular looser social mores and mass entertainment for TV
audiences. In time Clive James was to prove not merely a rider of
this tiger but also the guy with the top hat and whip. TV criticism
was looked down on by snobbish literary hacks until James dragged the
broadsheets down the cathoray tube and into the light with his highly
popular Observer column.
A
lifelong journalist Clive James knows that one picture is worth a
thousand words and his great talent is to construct phrases that
paint a unique and unforgettable image. His favourite and the one
widely quoted as his signature witticism was describing Arnold
Swartzenegger as ‘a brown condom stuffed with walnuts’. James
includes it here alongside other self-congratulatory examples of his
abundant linguistic gymnastics. He blows his own trumpet with as much
charm as skill and we forgive him the indulgence.
Except
it is not a trumpet. He leaves that to Spike Milligan in one of the
many name-dropping anecdotes - Clive James drops names like Billy
Bragg drops aitches. James blows less of a trumpet and more of a
didjeridoo, an instrument that requires the respiratory skill of
circular breathing. Whether or not this anatomical trick is on the
Australian Schools Curriculum James has mastered it anyway. Each
ego-inflating inhalation is paired with an equal exhalation of self
deprecatory humour. He boasts of dining with Meryl Streep only to
puncture his pride and his palette with a mouthful of needle-sharp
fish bones. He persuades his publisher to proceed with his first
autobiography precisely because he has achieved nothing in life.
Tomorrow belongs to me
The
sparks that combined to ignite the touch-paper to Bragg’s
incendiary book were the July 7th
London bombing and the election of British National Party councillors
onto the authority in his native Barking. Bragg’s self perception
is as an interventionist entertainer and he has chosen his
autobiography as the instrument to initiate debate and change in our
national self-perception. He is arguing for the left to adopt a
progressive patriotism to undermine the knee-jerk appeal of the BNP
in times of volatile social change.
In
one of the early autobiographical chapters Bragg describes the
seismic shockwave that blew through Britain when his generation found
their identity and musical voice via Punk. An early adherent to The
Clash, Bragg recalls his first self-conscious political act in
marching through the East End of London to the 1978 Rock against
Racism concert in Victoria Park. He has remained a committed
anti-fascist ever since and the BNP electoral success on his own
manor patently hurts.
Bragg
explores Englishness by portraying the classic idyllic models from
the past alongside his own family’s experience over generations on
the banks of Barking Creek. He quotes Kipling and Orwell alongside
his grandfather’s wartime diary. The growth and development of
trade unionism is told through his great grandfathers employment at
the nearby Beckton Gasworks. His view of Englishness is
fundamentally romantic; fuelled by nostalgia for the Trade Union
‘banners of the days gone by’ as much as by George Orwell’s
‘The Lion & the Uncorn’. Onto this traditional core Bragg
attempts to graft a modern multicultural identity – not altogether
successfully as he admits ‘multiculturalism’ means many different
things to many people. Collectivism and tolerance are key – ‘sweet
moderation, the heart of this nation’.
Frustratingly
we hear only fragments of Billy’s own contribution to the radical
tradition, literally one passing reference to the founding of Red
Wedge and a guest appearance at an anti BNP rally in the west country
and that’s it. This is a real shame as his story and his actions
speak louder than his agitprop words on the people’s history. Too
many times the energy and interest generated by creative, imaginative
and personally inspired writing is disipated by a pedantic lecture.
Yet his multiculturally inclusive solution to the rise of the extreme
right is beautifully simple – all England should gather under the
flag of St George, thus reapproriating our identity and
simultaeneously disenfranchising the fascists.
Cabaret
These
two books provide sketches and snapshots of English life and culture
over the last half century. We witness the liberalising of society
during the 60s, the rise of the mass media and the television age,
the consequent counter revolutions by punks in the street and by
Thatcherism in the body politic during the 70s and 80s, and Bragg’s
attempt to address the new world post 9/11 and 7/7.
Clive
James never set out to write an illuminating manuscript of social
history. 'The
North Face of Soho'
is a deeply personal, honest and reliable memoir by an entertainer
and devotee of words. He has his cake and eats it with glutoness
pleasure - he had such fun, and has fun telling us what fun it was.
Having tried his finger in every literary pie he plums for Cabaret –
he likes the scale of it.
Billy
Bragg still has a story to tell and on this evidence he has the
skills to one day tell it well. ‘The
Progressive Patriot’
applies more to his notion of a model citizen than an account of
himself. His song ‘Between the Wars’ is beautifully crafted,
summoning up a nostalgic era of banners and a belief in the ‘fellow
man’. A safe sepia-tinted period piece you think until Billy
headbutts you in the chest with the final line:
‘Sweet
moderation, heart of this nation, desert us not we
are between the wars’.
First published in 'THE Book Magazine' Winter 2006
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