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Reviews of Martin Foreman's works
In short... Bow down, bow down... Every so often you come across a book that takes your breath away. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose did that for me when it first appeared, as did Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory when I was a callow sixteen (and several more of his books have done since). Now, after ploughing my way through Bruce McNichols' repetitive and distinctly unhelpful Timor: A Nation Reborn, Kerry B Collinson's amateurish The Timor Man (if you detect a theme here, you're right; I'm writing this in Dili, of which more in a later column), and Bill Bryson's occasionally entertaining but more often snide The Lost Continent, I have been rapt by Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God; A History of Fundamentalism. I have poured over it over dinner and long into the night. With the exception of Alan Watts no other writer on religion has so adroitly gripped me (no, it's not entertaining - it's gripping, a much stronger sensation). No-one with any interest in religion or rationality can afford to miss this book, or any other of her works. Bow down, bow down... 12 July 2004 What is it about me and modern literature? I don't go into raptures over Jonathan Franzen, I believe that Stephen King could be a first-rank writer if he, or his editors, ever cured his logorrhea. Now, increasingly irritated, I'm coming to the end of Michel Houellebecq's Platform, which had rave reviews in the British press last year. Minor criticisms, apart from the fact that the book is full of typographical errors - whoever is responsible should do the honourable thing and resign or change jobs - include the style of a writing-school graduate who gives background information as if it were a school text book, a description of the tourist industry that is part accurate and in part laughably unrealistic (unless in France you really can launch and sell out a new product in three to six months...). More seriously, this is a novel which never reaches its potential - its characters are vague, its various premises interesting but little explored and its connections between the physical and mental elements of sex barely touched on. Only the last few pages impress, and it is not worth ploughing through the rest of the book to reach them. At least the translation is competent, although the dissonance between the overall text and the sexual language jars in English as much as, if not more, than in French. 12 January 2004 I'm halfway through Darin Strauss's Chang and Eng, a fictional account of the first "Siamese twins". The style is pedestrian and the characterisation insipid, but what irritates most are the repeated references to Bangkok lying on the Mekong river. If the author could not take the trouble to get such a basic fact right, I suspect that much else he has written is wide of the mark. and... isn't life too short to read more than one Harry Potter book? 23 June 2003 The Moral Maze, for non-Brits, is a discussion programme on BBC Radio that tries to disentangle the moral issues underlying contemporary problems. The theory is that resident panellists interrogate partisan witnesses and try to strip away the prejudices to get at the most appropriate response. Last week's topic was the Israeli-Palestinian "road map"; the programme was appalling, with the panellists, in particular Melanie Phillips, who writes for the London Daily Mail. using the programme, not as an opportunity to strike a moral balance, but to display their own prejudices and to refuse pointblank to consider any point of view but their own. Half-way through, it became clear that three of the four panellists were Jewish. The discussion might have worked if there had been two Jews and two Arabs or an Arab panellist putting the opposing extremist view to counter Ms Phillips' prejudices. Four atheists, four Chinese, or at the very least a couple of neutral observers would have been better than the mess we heard. Ms Phillips, it is clear, can't help herself. The producer, on the other hand, should be ashamed. Please, please, please, in future choose panellists who are more concerned with the argument than promoting their own point of view. If I wanted rant radio, I'd live in the USA. May 2003 The film Laurel Canyon is less engrossing than the wealthy but bohemian part of LA in which it is set. The script and acting are wooden, with the exceptions are Frances McDormand, who is always worth watching and whose mid-forties rock producer gives the movie its life-force, and Alessandro Nivola, a relative newcomer playing a rock singer with a gleam in his eye. Brits should not be misled by the inclusion of the film in the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. One reference to a female lover and two women kissing does not a dyke film make... April 2003 |
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