David Belbin

This week I've read two books that stuck in my mind. I picked up The Suspicions of Mr Whicher after seeing it discussed on Late Review. It was as engrossing as the panel suggested - keeping me fully occupied on a flight to and from the lovely Polish city of Krakow. The subject is a Victorian murder mystery that fascinated and inspired Wilkie Collins (leading to 'The Moonstone') and Charles Dickens, meticulously told by Kate Summerscale. Today Which resident of the locked house killed the toddler? is a mystery that can be solved with a little googling, but Summerscale takes the story further and comes up with chilling suggestions.

I've been a big fan of the 33 1/3 series of short books about rock albums since its early days. There are over fifty now. Hardly anybody would want to read them all, but a good way in is to buy the two 'best of' anthologies that, between them, collect extracts from the first forty books. As soon as I read the extract from John Niven's factional novella inspired by the Band's 'Music From The Big Pink', I had to order the book. This is the story of the making of the seminal American album told from the point of view of the Band's local drug dealer, the fictional Greg. It's primarily the story of Greg and the the Band's piano player, singer and songwriter Richard Manuel, who had the sweetest, most haunted voice in the group (they backed Bob Dylan on and off between 1967 and 1974). Niven takes us up to Manuel's 1986 suicide. The other Band members have a smaller role, though Robbie Robertson, unsurprisingly, emerges as the villain. The details about Dylan are convincing and enigmatic. It's a love story, a drug story and a Dreiser-esque American parable. Niven catches the context, the atmosphere and the importance of the Band's first album at the time it came out. Great writing. I'll be checking out Niven's full length novel, Kill Your Friends, which also has a music theme.

for the link to this video that she posted a couple of weeks ago, but I've only just caught (the blog's updated even less frequently than the one you're reading). This ought to be shown before every movie at my local Cineworld. That said, it must be an old video, as it doesn't mention the special circle of hell reserved for people who send or receive text messages during movies, as if to say 'I can't be bothered to follow this, so I'm going to distract you, too'. Oh and do read Forkspit, soon, I believe, to be a book. But be warned, as with the video, explicit content yada yada yada

For thirty years, my favourite novelist has been the Irish writer, Brian Moore, who died in 1999. I love the way he never wrote the same kind of novel twice, his brilliance with writing female characters, his mastery of suspense and, most of all, his unshowy yet graceful, clean, tight prose style, which I would encourage any aspiring writer to learn from, as I did.

Authors tend to drop into popular and critical decline in the years after their death, so I've been interested to see what happened to his reputation this century. Recently, a blog dedicated to discussing his novels appeared (they're currently up to the out of print 'Emperor of Ice Cream', his most autobiographical novel) and another book blog, Asylum, has been discussing 'Fergus', which I've always considered his weakest novel.

As I mention in the post below, I collect signed first editions, but perhaps I should clarify that these are generally bought new, and signed by the author for me. I don't go into collecting first editions generally (and signatures can easily more than double the cost) as it's too costly a hobby and I don't have the room to store them properly. Why does anyone buy first editions? I hear you ask. There's nothing quite like reading a book in the way it was first presented to the public. The experience of rereading Bellow's best, 'Augie March' in a coverless first that I picked up cheap in the States was far superior to another go at the Penguin I first read or, I suspect, the more sumptuous Everyman reprint. It's psychological, sure, but it's also about the space around the words, and the type face, and the quality of the paper. Even the smell... Don't get me started on why downloads will never replace paper books.

The exception, the author whose first editions I have collected over the years, is Moore. Of course, I bought more than half of them as they came out. I have a signed, limited edition of 'Lies of Silence' by Moore which I look forward to rereading - it's probably the best of his later literary thrillers - which cost me thirty quid or so on eBay. His earlier ones have never been cheap, but, apart from his first ('Judith Hearne') have never been ridiculously expensive, either. The first five are hard to come by, but I think I paid less than a tenner for a first of 'Fergus'. (There's a bibliography here if you're interested in the order they came in). I buy first editions to read, so I thought it was time to test my reaction against John Self's, and I promised John I'd tell him what conclusion I came to. I finished the novel in bed last night. It's funny how memory plays tricks on people. That's partly what 'Fergus' is about. 'Fergus' is a novel that presents a Hollywood scriptwriter (his situation based very firmly on Moore's then life - he wrote a script for Hitchcock, though it wasn't a very good one) who spends a day being interrupted by ghosts from his past. Only they're not ghosts, exactly.

When I last read this novel, I was 22 (my undergraduate dissertation was on Moore's fiction, so I read all of the novels and stories at least twice) and I remember being frustrated by this novel's slight story. Maybe now that I'm older than the protagonist, I'll relate to his situation better? No. The plot interest was even slighter and the hallucinations no more involving that the first two times around. Yet the writing is great and the novel's position in Moore's canon is pivotal. He's working his way out of his childhood Catholicism and through a period of preoccupation with Wallace Stevens that begins with 'Emperor of Ice Cream' (titled after the Stevens poem, which includes the line 'let be be the finale of seem') and continues until his most whimsical, most Stevensish novel, 'The Great Victorian Collection'. The other strand of his work at the time begins with the book before 'Fergus', 'I Am Mary Dunne'. Mary's memory obsession is similar but has far more purpose. This novel is a close precursor of his masterpiece, 'The Doctors Wife'. Before that, though, there was a sidetrack into the non-fiction novel, 'The Revolution Script' and the short, precise novel where he came to grips with faith and how art, for the artist, is often a replacement for religion, 'Catholics'.

Sorry, that last bit was rather dense if you're not a Moore enthusiast. What I'd forgotten about the end of 'Fergus', which follows a kind of dream logic, is the author's guilt over having forgotten so many people from his earlier life. Can I relate to that now I'm older? Only to an extent. I often remember people who I've only met briefly. The other day in the greengrocers, I saw a young woman who I'm certain I taught twenty years ago, and it bugged me that I couldn't precisely remember her surname. I often wonder what became of childhood friends - but how many of them have I forgotten? Dunno. So, yes, I do relate to the novel's memory theme, though I don't think it's done too well. The other thing that occurred to me as I reached the end is that I'd half inched part of the effect of the novel's finale for my most Moore-like novel, Love Lessons, a dream trial scene that I dropped when I rewrote it from an adult novel into a Young Adult novel. Seems I'm so big a fan that even his clunkers influenced me...

I wouldn't recommend that you start reading Moore with 'Fergus'. The later 'Cold Heaven' deals with similarly metaphysical areas in a more interesting, gripping way. But do read him, whichever novel you come across first. I just pulled out a pale carbon copy of my 1980 dissertation and I note that the chapter on 'Fergus' and 'Great Victorian Collection' is titled after another Stevens poem, 'Notes Towards A Supreme Fiction', one of my favourites. 'A rehash of themes dealt with more subtly in earlier books' I write. Aren't we harsh when we're young? Which is not to say that we aren't right.

I saw Leonard Cohen twice in the 70's, once on my own in Liverpool and four years later with my then girlfriend in Birmingham. Both times, hearing about the tour, I posted off a cheque after the tickets went on sale. A few days later, great stalls tickets arrived. That was how it worked last century. Unless an act was absolutely huge, like Led Zeppelin, you could always get tickets. The only time I missed out was when i sent off for a Joni Mitchell ticket at a theatre in London, for a gig that was, anyway, subsequently cancelled. Never did see Joni. I'm going to see Melanie for the first time, next month. She was huge in the 70's, probably bigger than Leonard Cohen in the first half, but I rang up the Leicester Y theatre (capacity, 250) a few days after tickets went on sale and got a pair in the middle of the third row. There are still plenty left.

Melanie's star might have fallen but Leonard's stature has soared into legend. Before I get to the ticket saga, another story. After the first time I saw Cohen, in '75, I tried to get his autograph after the show. Leonard was already on the tour bus, waving to us as he left. A guy I met at the stage door said to me 'you know that bit in the show, before 'Bird on a Wire', where he said about how he could see the Liver Birds from his hotel window, and they're chained down? Well, there's only one hotel near there. Do you wanna...? So this guy and I ran down to the Liver building, and a hotel whose name I never knew, and walked into the lobby. As we looked around, Leonard got out of the lift, accompanied by his manager and band. He greeted us graciously and signed both my programme and autograph book. 'What should I put?' he asked, and the other guy suggested that line from 'Famous Blue Raincoat', sincerely, L. Cohen so that's what he wrote. He even made a little conversation before his manager guided him away to eat. We shook hands goodbye. I hurried to get my train and Leonard's manager, thinking I was following them, asked me not to. I explained where I was going and fell back a little, ending up alongside one of the backing singers, who I had a long conversation with. That was Jennifer Warnes, who later had a number one with Joe Cocker and recorded a fine album of Leonard's songs.

I've still got that autograph somewhere. It's the last one in the book (I've not grown out of autograph collecting, only now I go for signed first editions). Last summer, I took a look at his home on Hydra, but I never expected to see him play again, especially since his most recent album and the tribute film about him seemed to indicate that he didn't have much voice left. But circumstances conspired to make him tour again, at 73 (see below and do watch the video). A friend said he'd get the tickets but called me half an hour after they'd gone on sale to say he'd given up. Only three of the four nights in a theatre were on sale and the website kept crashing. At one point, he'd had gallery seats (the worst ones) then the site crashed. I tried and failed, then logged on to eBay where the seats were already going for in excess of £200 (I don't buy from touts, on principle, never have, but I was curious).

There was one more chance to get tickets. All of the seats for the Thursday show were being sold through an offer in today's Guardian newspaper. So, at a minute before they went on sale, I rang the number and logged onto the website. My journalist friend Mike (who hates Cohen) kindly went on the website at the same time, precisely as tickets went on sale. And this is what happened. The phone number was 'temporarily unavailable' but the website worked without crashing. After filling in a couple of codes and waiting about a minute, I was offered three tickets in row D of the gallery (ie the worst area, although the tickets were still at the top price). Mike, at the same time, was offered three in row J of the same area, which, since we didn't need them, he let go. There's already a pair of better seats on eBay. I expect the seller bought the extras to sell on and effectively make his own tickets free. Loads of people do it, but I say, if so, shame on him (the comments box is open if he wants to respond).

In a way, it's good that live music is at such a premium that you have to be on the ball and still enter a lottery if you want to see your favourite acts. Maybe it's a partial consequence of the way that anyone with a little technological know-how can get all of their recorded music for free these days. People want and expect to pay. And the irony is that Leonard probably won't be all that good. But he's welcome to my £75 plus booking fee. And according to the Leonard Cohen forum, all seats were gone by 10.02AM, so we did well to get some. I'll be watching L.Cohen from on high, hoping that he's laughing all the way to the bank, and lives a long time to enjoy the proceeds.

When I wrote about iPod farming four weeks ago, I meant to tidy up a letter a day on my iTunes, a schedule which would have got me through my entire library by the time term starts again next week. But I didn't reckon with a three day trip to Derbyshire or the length of certain letters. So, a confession, so far I've only go to M. Or, to be precise, 'Ma'. Yesterday I cleared a few of Madonna's lesser tracks. At the moment I'm in the middle of deleting one of several Manu Chao albums that I downloaded as research before going to see him last year (he was disappointing and exhausting. Mike and I left independently but at the same time, about 70 minutes in, even my student who's a big fan left before the end).

I started this process when I passed the 14,000 mark and the good news is that I've deleted hundreds of songs. The bad news is that I've downloaded or imported loads more, so I'm still on 13,925 tracks, and that doesn't include various folders of obsure Robert Wyatt and Kevin Coyne that I haven't opened yet. It does include albums by the Raconteurs, Long Blondes and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy that I haven't actually listened to yet. In other exciting news, I've bought a posh lead to connect the iPod to my new amplifier which will stop me burning stuff to CD and reduce my carbon footprint by a miniscule amount. Oh, and we've had a new path laid which takes you through our garden to the allotment behind it.

Sorry, not much of a post this, and I've started work on a new book today so updates will be even less frequent. Are you still here? OK, then, why not head over to this reactivated children's books blog or, if you're musically inclined and bittorrent proficient, register at this relaunched recordings of indeterminate origin downloads site. Enjoy.

After reading the UK press coverage of David Mamet's Village Voice article about why he is no longer a liberal, one might assume that he has become a rabid right winger. I just got round to reading the article that inspired the fuss and it turns out that, in writing his enjoyable farce, 'November', which I saw on Broadway last month (probably the first and last time I'll be able to write that), he learnt to appreciate the importance of the marketplace and came to some mild, entirely logical conclusions about the hypocrisy of all politicians and why having a balance of power within government is a good thing. To wit: 'The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long. Rather brilliant.'

And rather unexceptional, but that wouldn't have made for much of a news story.

Niki Monaghan's second novel Starfishing is a different kettle of fish from her first, which was about life on a Nottingham council estate, but is equally autobiographical, in that she spent several years working in the city of London financial markets before doing her Creative Writing MA at Nottingham Trent. Having said that, I hope it's not too autobiographical - you'll know what I mean if you read it, and no spoilers here. I read some early versions of material from the book in Fiction workshops on the M.A.but her writing has evolved considerably since then and I barely recognised them in what is a pacey, very sexy, drug fuelled dazzler of a novel. No knowledge of financial markets needed. I do hope that her third novel isn't about her Maths teaching years, though... In an interesting new angle on metafiction, 'Starfishing''s narrator has a (fictional) blog here.

The new R.E.M., out in a fortnight, has leaked. Most of the songs are ones that they played when I saw them twice in Dublin last year and they sound great - slicker, more polished but no less energetic. 'Horse To Water', after two plays, remains the most thrilling number, but there are at least three other really strong ones and nothing that's less than enjoyable. Their best album in at least a dozen years. To celebrate, here's them playing my favourite new song in one of last year's 'working rehearsal's.

I thought seeing Lou Reed play 'Berlin' was excitement enough for June. Now comes news that Leonard Cohen is to tour for the first time in nearly thirty years. Regular readers will remember that I visited his home on Hydra last September. I saw him play Birmingham on the last tour, in '79, and briefly met him in Liverpool in '75, after his show at the Empire (I'll save that story for another time). If his performance with U2 in the recent film is anything to go by, Leonard hasn't got much voice left, but if he just recites his lyrics (many of which started as poems) as he does in the video below, I'll be happy. That is, if I can get a ticket for his Manchester Opera House residency. In the meantime, here's a 10 minute clip of his induction at the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame last night. There's a brief biog, then you get to see Uncle Lou induct Laughing Lenny. No joke, that nickname - far from being a prophet of doom, he's one of the funniest performers I've seen. The drag about the tour is that, in his 70's, Leonard only needs to tour because his accountant stole all of his money (several million dollars) while LC was on Mount Baldi being a buddhist monk. No joke that.