Five-ring circus

I could boycott the Olympics, but I don’t think the Chinese would notice. At least it is now safe to watch on New Zealand television again, with the Bowzer of the TVNZ sports department finally out of our living rooms.

The last Olympics I actually cared about were those in Munich in 1972, before I was old enough to realise that politics and sport are always intertwined, no matter what sports administrators claim. (Recent example: the IRB saying that New Zealand shouldn’t host the rugby world cup, as that will only be preaching to the converted rather than evangelising the cult to new territories.)

But the Black September terrorists changed that, and the compelling documentary One Day in September brilliantly shows how the world suddenly lost any vestiges of post-war naiveté. Then the tit-for-tat Olympic boycotts started, and the IOC greed became even more vulgar – which is saying something after the dictatorial dominance of IOC head Avery Brundage - and it all seemed like a giant propaganda exercise.

So I thought I’d do some homework, and watching the 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl seemed a good place to start. Because one thing these Olympics will have in common with those in Berlin of 1936 is that they will be spectacularly visual. China is a nation whose art direction knows no bounds: even Cecil B DeMille wouldn’t have tried to alter the actual atmosphere to get a better shot. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles missed a grand opportunity, even with the sensibility of an actor in the White House; all I remember is Stevie Wonder at the nadir of his career, closing the show.

Riefenstahl was 91 when the documentary was made: feisty, defensive, and as unpleasant as a witch-like version of Winston Peters. She was still in denial about the political motives behind her film-making, claiming that she was just an artist, and besides, she believed in the rise of Hitler because he promised peace and security. But her film-making is still breathtaking, be it in the Tyrol mountains or her balletic, slow-mo shots of high-divers.

During this year’s Olympic torch relay fiasco, many people made the point that it was all a Nazi construct invented for the 1936 Olympics, rather than something that dated back to Greece. At that point no links had been made with Riefenstahl’s Olympia but I’m sure they’ll come thick and fast after a billion flags get waved in unison later this week. (Riefenstahl claimed that Hitler wasn’t behind her film, in fact he wasn’t even into the Olympics at all, as it meant that other nations would have to be portrayed as being occasionally victorious over the master race.)

Years ago Susan Sontag – writing of Riefenstahl’s “fascist aesthetics” – made a connection that rings true: how the German director’s work paralleled that of Busby Berkeley, working at the same time over in Hollywood on his mad, epic musicals. As Dave Kehr, reviewing Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will – about the Nazis’ Nuremburg rallies – summarised,

Berkeley’s abstract musical numbers, with their own geometric patterns and tendency to absorb individuals into standardized, idealized groups, seem to apply the characteristics Sontag listed in her essay “Fascinating Fascism”: situations of control, submissive behaviour, endurance of pain, domination through pageantry, turning people into things, multiplications and “orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets.” Rather than smartly tailored military uniforms, Berkeley placed his performers in scanty costumes that emphasized the symmetry of legs and bosoms; the uniform platinum wigs that many of his chorines wore invite comparison with the caps and helmets of Hitler’s massed forces at the Nuremberg rallies filmed by Riefenstahl in 1934 (filmed one year after Berkeley’s best film for Warner Brothers, Footlight Parade).

Yesterday in his New Yorker blog, George Packer made a different connection between Berlin and Beijing. He is currently reading Victor Klemperer’s I Shall Bear Witness, the diaries of a Jewish academic living in Dresden during the rise of the Nazis. The New Yorker excerpted these 10 years ago, in its 27 April 1998 issue, and it was deeply moving because of its very mundanity. Day by day, bit by bit, another element of human rights was withdrawn for Jews. For me, the most unforgettable image was the moment when Klemperer, elderly and starving, spotted a tiny piece of salami that had been left on a table. Just as he reached out to pick it up and eat it, a cat leapt up and got there first. (Later, the Nazis decreed that all pets belonging to Jews had to be put down: not given away, put down.)

Here is Klemperer writing in his diary on August 13, 1936:

I find the Olympics so odious because they are not about sport—in this country, I mean—but are an entirely political enterprise. “German renaissance through Hitler,” I read recently. It’s constantly being drummed into the country and into foreigners that here one is witnessing the revival, the flowering, the new spirit, the unity, steadfastness, and magnificence, pacific too, of course, spirit of the Third Reich, which lovingly embraces the whole world. The chanted slogans on the streets have been banned (for the duration of the Olympics), Jew-baiting, bellicose sentiments, everything offensive has disappeared from the papers until August 16, and the swastika flags are hanging everywhere day and night until then too.

Packer emphasises that he’s not equating the Chinese with the Nazis, he is making the point that the IOC’s decision to award them the Olympics is a reminder that it’s all politics, and that the Chinese leadership want it both ways: quick to criticise others for commenting on their sovereign affairs, while “eager to cash in on all the geo-political benefits that the Olympics will bring. China didn’t even bother to abstain last month but instead vetoed sanctions against Robert Mugabe at the U.N. Unlike Germany in 1936, China is prettifying its streets without pretending to prettify its foreign policy.”

If you can’t stomach The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl there are plenty of excerpts of her work on YouTube, or this insightful obit from the New York Times. At 180 minutes, Horrible Life includes a lot of Aryan posturing and self-denial, but it’s still well short of the 220 minutes of the original Olympia. And probably the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Sprat or prat

First the publishers took away the editors. Then they came for the sub-editors. Now, it is rumoured – and these days, rumours are so often true – that they are coming for the books pages.

Soon, all that will be left are the publishers on mahogany row, and a few underpaid, junior writers filing from home. What will the publishers do when – not “if” – they get a letter like the one below? I know what sub-editors would do: the next time this writer makes an error, they would be very tempted to “miss it” and leave it in. But then they would think again, remember their professionalism and loyalty to a publication, even if it wasn’t respected or rewarded by management.

The letter is by Giles Coren, the restaurant critic of the (London) Times, abuser of the shift key, winner of a Bad Sex in Fiction Award, and occasional host of TV programmes on topics like retro-food. He is clever, but not nearly as clever as his father Alan, the genius at Punch for so many years. (Apologies in advance for the foul language; I wouldn't want to cut any of his darlings.)

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

“Jack Sprat” image by B Clarke.

Grease is the word

Continuing this musical gastronomy theme, I just found this memoir of the 1960s Australian rock band the R’Jays. It includes an entertaining (if dumb) chapter on their mid-60s sojourn in New Zealand and, elsewhere, this account of the legendary New Zealand jazz singer Ricky May:

A week at the Brighton with Ricky May was a musical treat. Ricky had a great casual attitude to life and was beloved by musicians one and all. His incredible sense of time and an uncanny ear for chords always kept you on your toes, and the band never knew what was going to happen next. I had played many times with Ricky before in a sophisticated nightclub situation so it was always going to be fun to see what he would to do with the pub crowd at the Brighton. Ricky wasn’t too pleased when he found out from his manager, Barry Ward, that as well as doing a spot every night he was also required to do one on Saturday afternoon. Ricky had just been around to the fish shop and returned to the bandroom with about twelve pieces of fish and a giant pile of chips and scallops.

When Mick Leyton introduced him we played his usual till-ready chaser and Ricky came on still wiping the grease from his hands. He then went amongst the Saturday afternoon audience and prompted them to clap along to the chaser. When he succeeded to get them all clapping in time, he ran through the audience and disappeared out the front door. We continued on with the chaser for about ten minutes until Barrie finally waved the band to stop. Mickey Leyton went out the front and apologised. “Look I’m sorry about this but I don’t think he’s coming back!” said an embarrassed Mick.

Followed by a few boos, we slunk back into the bandroom only to find Ricky sitting there with his feet up on the chair, gorging himself on fish and chips. Ricky smiled broadly and threw up his hands. “I’m sorry guys, I was so hungry I went round the block and came in the back door. I had to come back and finish my lunch,” said Rick.

Which reminds me that the Hardest Working Man in the Musical Fish & Chip Shop even called his group the Grease Band. This will be familiar, but maybe not as translated for a birthday feast:

Sticky Fingers

Hat-tip for albums to: Our Lady of Perpetual Obsolescence Vinyl Rescue Mission and Orphanage