Enjoy Yourself
After last night’s post, I had a look at Birds Of Prey, a sequel of a sort to Suicide Squad. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn was the best thing about Suicide Squad so I thought it might be worthwhile. Alas…
***
We went for a walk down by the Forth this morning. The tide was fully in and terns were diving just off shore. Thanks to drizzled-up glasses I could tell if they were Arctic or Common terns though. The sea was grey, as was the sky, and for half of the walk my glasses were sprayed by drizzle. I loved it.
This afternoon, this week’s garden list added a pair of great-spotted woodpeckers. It’s getting crowded out there.
***
Pulp Fiction
Not much writing today, just some tidying up of what I did yesterday. I watched an old BBC documentary on YouTube (this one) about NEL pulp fiction of the early seventies, featuring especially ‘Richard Allen’ who wrote Skinhead. Allen was really James Moffatt who published at least 290 novels under 40+ pseudonyms, writing 10,000 words a day when needed. We are not worthy, etc.
There’s an interesting thing lurking beneath this: Skinhead, published 1970 probably had a much broader cultural impact than that year’s Booker Prize winner (J.G. Farrell, Troubles, I googled.) One of the books mentioned in the documentary, Sandra Shulman’s The Degenerates (also 1970) is well-written in 75,000 words or so of sharp, vivid prose, as commercial pulp fiction required to be. Neither would get a look-in when the usual suspects put together their lists of best fiction of the year/decade etc.
***
Music: the documentary plays out with the Specials; this is the original of the song from 1967, Prince Buster: Enjoy Yourself
Recent Comments