Jazzy D's Soul Notes

A. Alvarez "Night: An Exploration of Night Life, Night Language, Sleep and Dreams" (Vintage)





Alvarez brings a kind of journalistic quality to a subject that he apparently devoted four years to bring to fruition in this book. He looks at it from a bunch of different angles. The book takes on - dreams and nightmares, the fear of the dark, night shift work, the history of lighting, night motif's in painting and literature, and soon.


As a critic he analyses and reflects on what artists have had to say on the subject. The book starts with the poem, Acquainted with the Night, by Robert Frost and ends with a quote from Krapp's Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett. Many pages have passages from writers such as Stevenson, Freud and Coleridge, with Alvarez using them to examine a subject like the connection between dreams and surrealism.


The photographs and paintings that Alvarez chose to accompany his text are particularly haunting. One in particular: an untitled photograph by Roger Parry shows a dark room with a dull beam of light streaming in through a half-opened door. The photograph was taken from inside the room and a few objects can be dimly seen: a daguerrotype propped upside-down against the dark wainscoting; a length of rope that might be fastened into a noose. Alvarez has this to say about the photograph: "I no longer remember how I populated the darkness, but I remember the fear itself, particularly of the darkness that shrouded the upper floor, where I slept."

I found this a fascinating book.He's serious but playful, has a casual sophistication, a curious and sceptical mind, and a direct writing style.

Well worth seeking out.

Iain Banks "Stonemouth" (Abacus)







A long time ago i read his The Crow Road and before that The Wasp Factory. his is the first of his non science fiction books i have read for a considerable number of years. This one is a gritty drama played out in a small insular Scottish town, named Stonemouth. Stewart has come back to Stonemouth after five years away. The reason for his absence and the reason behind the local's reaction to his return are slowly divulged over the weekend. Through the use of flashbacks and Stewart's introspective thoughts of the events before his departure we gradually are drawn to the dramatic conclusion of the book. In other words,a highly recommended read.

Patti Smith "Just Kids" (Ecco Press)




This is the second book on music i have read within the last few weeks,but like Coltrane, Patti Smith is one of my favourites, and her story i guessed would be a fascinating one. I was not wrong. This autobiography is about her enduring relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and their development as artists during the 60's and 70's in New York City. It is as much about their special bond as it is about their work and how they came to be well known as well as how hard it was for them in the beginning. Often broke with insecure jobs and having to find money to pay for rent which was almost ninety per cent of their income, even in a low rent area of the city. Mapplethorpe eventually went to San Francisco but came back a changed man having had gay relationships, with his art taking a darker tone,and the relationship with Patti fracturing yet remained friends.

In a nutshell it is about how they found each other haphazardly. They shared apartments, studio space, and their souls with each other. The reader follows along on their paths of discovering their artistic callings and themselves as humans in the modern world. There are creative highs and lows - many examples of the "starving artist" are found in these pages - but together they weathered them all. Their deep friendship outlasted their romantic relationship and they kept in contact up until Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in the late 1980's.

While the memoir is incredibly heartfelt and moving, the way that Patti Smith chose to transcribe it is what makes it truly memorable. Each sentence has a power and emotion behind it, so that the writing is not only powerful but powerfully poetic. You share in the tragedies and triumphs, and really feel their world. I am now looking forward to reading her next memoir "M Train".

Dan Falk "Universe On A T Shirt" (Penguin Canada)





I was rather disappointed with this book assuming that it would be at the cutting edge of what we know about the universe or at least speculate on it.As such, it is mostly a rehash of the history of science, from Galileo to Bohr.However, it does include a few dozen pages on current efforts such as string theory but there is not enough meat on this to get the intellectual juices excited. I was hoping it to be better, and hence you cannot always judge a book by its cover.

Of course, whilst i was in Eastbourne the last shop i visited just had to be right next door to a Waterstones bookshop .I succumbed ,and having read one book on Thomas Cromwell from a historian who seemed to put all the blame on Thomas rather than the King (Henry VIII),this book is a more up to date revisionist account.

Ted Hughes "Poetry In The Making" (Faber and Faber)






This is a student friendly discussion of what Ted Hughes calls "imaginative writings" and are drawn from The BBC program"Listening and Writing". He selects various writings from contemporary modern poets to illustrate his essays and thesis,and in particular - Larkin, Dickenson, Eliot,Plath and himself, to convey a sense that poetry can be made by beginners and how to go about it. As a primer on how to write poetry and improve the creative process, this short book of 128 pages is ideal. It is also an effective introduction to his work and that of other poets who have influenced him.

Hanif Kureishi "Intimacy" (Faber and Faber)






The narrator was a repulsive character, and the topic is supposedly semi-autobiographical; however, the writing is quite good.

Jay, like the author, is a London playwright who has decided to leave his partner, who he has never married, and their two young sons, who he loves dearly. However, he is bored in this loveless relationship, and sees no hope that it can be salvaged. He is most happy when he is with his current girlfriend, a young woman who excites and challenges him sexually, though she is not his social or intellectual equal.

This short novel, set in London in the early 1990s, describes the mind set of one restless but decent urban professional approaching middle age, who is not ready to settle into a monogamous, steady relationship. I found Jay to be quite superficial, self-absorbed and immature; however, his desires and attitudes remind me of those of a cousin of mine, and couple of former acquaintances, and are spot on with their views. This book may not be for everyone, but it is a well-written, accurate work,

John D. Barrow "The Book Of Nothing" (Vintage)






He may use flowery language to convey his thesis on the aspect of nothing and that to some he tried to cover so much stuff that it never lingered anywhere but when you are dealing with the vacuum of space in a non technical way to lay readers then you have to take time (in both senses of it as well as spactime) to convey such complex cosmological information. It may be heavy going at times but i did enjoy this book.

Perhaps not the best book to describe such things as the vacuum state,inflation, black body radiation , the cassimir effect or the value of the cosmological constant (lambda), so with this caveat i would suggest other books to read first.

Julian Barnes "Levels Of Life" (Vintage)




This a short and beautiful book as well as an honest and forthright book on grief.

Julian Barnes became a widower in 2008 when his wife died of a brain tumour at age 68 . Pat Kavanagh was a brilliant and well respected literary agent. They had been together, off and on but mostly on, for over 30 years. In this auto biography Julian Barnes has used his considerable writing skills to portray the ongoing depth of his loss... and depth of his love. His writing is restrained and contained, harnessed to to give us the merest glimpse into his pain. Not easy.

That covers the third part of this book. However the first two parts are about ballooning. He conveys his passions such as France, photography and Ballooning. These parts are written with gusto, and they are exhilarating. The stories touch on many themes and motives that are known to have fascinated Barnes, and can be found throughout his life and work. They cover a 19th century French portrait photographer, a British balloonist,Fred Barnaby, who falls in love with Sarah Bernhardt and then he brings this altogether in the final touching sad and profoundly intimate exploration of grief.

This is an ibncedible book which i found deeply affecting.

Sun-Mi Hwang "The Dog Who Dared To Dream" (Abacus)




Wow - what a great little book and not just a shaggy dig story (pun intended).

The Dog Who Dared to Dream tells the story of Scraggy, the odd one out of the litter of pups born to a mother who’s life has been series of pregnancies. Scraggly slowly sees her family disappear for various reasons until one day there is just her left. Alone she sets off to see the world outside the gates of her home. We follow her as she encounters other animals and humans, and grows up with her owner Grandpa Screecher.

The novel shows the trials of life through the eyes of Scraggly, grief at losing loved ones, the importance of friendship and the cruelties that can lay at the hands we trust the most.

This is a charming and moving tale about the relationship between man and dog. The symbiotic relationship and the often times cruel one that can exist. It is also a sad tale, one of the loneliness Scraggly faces as her family leave her.

It is a parable about the vagaries of life, of hardship, sacrifice and love. Scraggly’s children leave, some dying, others sold, never to return and she pines their loss equally. I was soon caught up with Scraggly’s tale, pulled along by the narrative, and oddly moved by it.

This is a short novel, only 160 pages in length but it packs a lot of story into those few pages. There is a fairytale like sense to the book, helped not only by the canine lead character but by the translation, which I always find tends to lend an aura of magic to a story. It opens on the door a little on a different culture, one perhaps unknown and therefore a little mysterious offering a stunningly evocative description of Korean culture and village life, while keeping the world small and self-contained.

I finished this in a day it was that enchanting!