Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Double Booked

SPECIAL ADDENDUM (IAN WALKER RELATED) - added 4th August, 2011

Hello there.

Nice of you to drop in. Enjoy the stay - however brief it may be.

I'm second guessing that you've found this six year old post because you've been looking on the net for information about the late, great British journalist Ian Walker.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate you on your excellent taste in journalism. However, I know, I understand, there's not a lot out there about him or his work on the net.

Fret no more. Click on this link for a selection of Ian Walker's journalism from the pages of New Society. Also, if you scroll down to the comments on this post, you'll find further information about Ian Walker's life and work.

Enjoy.

Stuart of From Despair To Where has thrown me a book survey meme. I've been looking longingly ay this survey doing the rounds in blogland for a few days now, but no bugger up to now had the good grace to think of me when passing it on. I'll remember you bastards when I'm Commissar of Catchcart.

1. Total number of books I own.
Tricky one. 'cos they are in at least three different locations. I would guess at about 1200. Like everyone else that has done this meme, I do try and do a cull every once in a while. That usually means that unless it is a novel that I especially like, I will pass on a lot of my fiction onto the nearest charity shop. Strange that I think it is more acceptable to get rid of fiction over factual books - especially when I consider that it is particular novels and collections of short stories that have had the greater impact on me down the years, but I guess I rationalise matters by thinking that I will always be more likely to find those books again on my travels, either in libraries or secondhand bookshops. I can't say the same for some of the more obscure lefty stuff.

I also used to collect political pamphlets and journals, and I have about 500 knocking about but I'm not obsessive about these things, and now that so many of these texts are online, I don't feel the need to get my grubby little mitts on the hard copies.


2. Last book I bought, and why.
John Sutherland's 'Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? Further Puzzles In Classic Fiction'; 'A Spiel Among Us: Glasgow People Writing'; & 'Edinburgh Review: Tom Leonard Number' (Has an interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in it.). Why these three books? Three ex-library books for a pound from my local library. God bless the non-reading public of Fife.


3. Last book I read.
I recently relocated a load of books from there to here, so I have been indulging in the pastime of re-reading old favourites. One of those books being 'The Other Britain', edited by Paul Barker; published in 1982, it is a collection of articles that originally appeared in the now defunct New Society magazine. A wonderful, wonderful book that I have read many, many times over the years. Featuring such inspiring writers as Jeremy Seabrook, Angela Carter and the late - and truly great - Ian Walker, as the blurb on the back of the books says: "This collection of social observations and reportage is written by some of the best of the younger generation of descriptive writers. All are associated with the magazine New Society in whose pages the essays first appeared and whose 20th anniversary is marked by the publication of this book. Together they document the way we live now, not just describing the 'problems' but celebrating the strength and variety of Britain and its people."


4. Five books that mean a lot to me.
Like Stuart, I probably covered a lot of this when I did this survey. I would in all probability include both Bulgakov and Gaitens in my top five, but rather than repeat myself, I will list five different books that mean a hell of a lot to me.

i) The Monument: the Story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain by Robert Barltrop
Stuart's already listed this - Christ, it was me that sold him his copy. He could have namechecked me ;-) - but there is no denying that reading this book had a formative influence in my becoming a member of the SPGB. It's a strange thing to admit, because in no way could it be described as a polemical or analytical work that can somehow prompt a person into becoming a revolutionary socialist. However, I do think that it contributed to me looking at the SPGB in a light in which I thought that this was an organisation I could be a part of. Barltrop is a wonderful writer - his biography of Jack London is also recommended - and though I've since learnt the strange history of the manuscript, and how it was the case that he was settling a few scores in the book along the way, I would have no hesitation in recommending the book to anyone wanting to get some sense of what the SPGB is, and the people who made it. Just bear in mind the subheading of the book; it's a 'story' rather than 'history' of the SPGB.

ii) The Zoo Station by Ian Walker
I love Walker's writings. As mentioned above, I discovered them via The Other Britain, and then spent many an afternoon going through old back issues of the New Society in college libraries when I should have been studying. I admired Walker's writings so much that years ago, when I had some spare money, I paid an arm and a leg for a load of old copies of seventies radical magazine, The Leveller, because I knew that he had been one of its star writers. I'd read about Zoo Station, his account of his time spent living in the divided Berlin in the early eighties, but I had never been able to get a hold of a copy until I found it on sale for fifty pence in Watford Market about ten years ago. Just the opening paragraph gives some flavour of his writing style:
"The maroon-and-caramel train ran all day back and forth between the systems, capitalism-communism-capitalism-communism the rhythm of the iron wheels lent itself to any number of repitive lyrics. I looked out the dirty window. A girl was waving. I waved back. There was something about trains that caused children to wave spontaneously at the passing faces, some idea that the strangers at the window were bound for adventure or romance, some idea about stories starting in trains."
Sadly, I couldn't find much on the net about either the book or Walker himself, but the link provided above - and the contrasting views about the book - give some sense of the book and Walker's style of writing. I think it was Walker's humanism - to borrow a term from Orwell, his "essential decency" - that resulted in Walker impacting as much as he did on me when I first read him.

Sadly he died much too young, and tragically just when he was about to reach a much wider audience. I remember that when Roy Greenslade took over as editor of the Daily Mirror in the late eighties or early nineties he hired both Walker and the late John Diamond as columnists. Walker died within weeks of penning his first column, and for reasons I now forget, Greenslade was removed as editor of the Mirror soon after. Shame that, I think that the Mirror would have been much the better paper for writers such as Walker, Diamond and Greenslade. I did have the cutting of Walker's obituary that appeared in the Mirror somewhere amongst my papers, and if I ever come across it again I will be sure to scan it in and place it on the blog. He is a writer that should be remembered by more people.

iii) Catch-22 by Jospeh Heller
Cue violins - we didn't have a lot of books in the house when I was growing up. I seem to remember a sideboard where in amongst the liquors, the ornaments and the LPs, there was a wee section given over to books. In amongst the handful of books, there was a biography of Elvis, a couple of Time Life books on Cowboys and Indians and a couple of Kojak novels that were obviously tie-ins with the TV series. I got into Orwell big time around about 1985/86, 'cos a lot of his books were republished after 1984 but, aside from Orwell, the number of novels I read before the age of 16 I could count on the fingers of one hand.

One of those five books I was fortunate enough to read was Heller's Catch-22. My sister's boyfriend of the time had bought it for her, and I ended up picking it up after she read it. I can't claim to have fully understood Helller's biting satire first time round, but re-reading it two times since I've come to enjoy the novel more at each time of reading. I'm always a bit wary when someone describes a book as 'anarchic', but in this case the label fits.

I can still remember laughing for ten minutes solid after reading a passage in the book that featured Doc Daneka. I mean real tears of laughter, where I ended up aching with pain. I don't usually laugh for that length of time unless it is one of my own jokes, so it must have been a good one.

I would recommend all of Carr's books, but I have a real soft spot for this novella because of its final few pages. I can't remember being affected so much by any other piece of writing before or since. The film adaptation isn't bad but it isn't a patch on the book itself.

An excellent primer on the majority of the currents that make up, in the late John Crump's words, "the thin red line of revolutionary socialism". Betraying its Eurocentric roots, there is no chapter on De Leonism or the Revolutionary Unionism of the IWW but, for all that, a very readable and accessible introduction to ideas that have hitherto been consigned to the footnote of history.
(Apparently it's for sale on Amazon for a minimum of $78 - the Monument not much cheaper. I think I have finally found my pension plan.)


5. Tag five more people
Fellow SPGBer, Piers, at Border Fever. It will be nice to meet you at the G8 thingymijig; Kevin the Scottish Patient. If he can't do this meme, he should hang his laptop in shame; Harry at Harry's Place. Not because I think he will get round to doing it but because he may mention me in passing un his blog - "An ultra-leftist is harrassing me. Call the cops." - and I could do with the hits. Glaikit Feartie as my random act of blogging kindness. No idea who they are, but I love the name of the blog; and, as an innovation, I'm going to offer a guest blog to Julian from the World in Common group. The bugger did have a blog, and it looked like a goodie but he came up to the notorious: 'Fourth post writers block syndrome'. Myself and others who have been through the same process tried to advise him on how best to get through the pain barrier: "Just link to a Steve Bell cartoon for chrissake." - "Lift a quote from Oscar Wilde, and call it your 'Thought for Today'." "Do a sub-Hornbyesque post where you recount in great detail your feelings when Terry Fenwick scored that goal for QPR in the 1982 FA Cup final." But to no avail, he's happier in his procrastination by reading - and understanding, the freak - John Hollway's writings; listening to sub Sub Pop records; and propping up bars in West London, where for a white wine and some pork scratchings, he will regale you with a stream of consciousness on where he was when Terry Fenwick scored that goal for QPR in the 1982 FA Cup final.

The blog floor is open to you, Julian.

11 comments:

Piers said...

Cheers Darren, I'll get on it.

Anonymous said...

Great blog Darren. You've shamed me into remembering that I should have said why those books meant so much. Maybe I'll go back to it...

Kevin Williamson said...

aye, awrite darren, soon as I get a spare ten minutes or so ...

1212121212 said...

On Barltrop's The Monument, you refer to "the strange history of the manuscript, and how it was the case that he was settling a few scores in the book along the way". Could you say more about this, or point to a website (or whatever) that does? It's a fascinating and entertaining book, but it's always seemed as if there were things missing from it.

ruediger said...

Nice to read that other people like Walker´s Zoo station too. Being a German with limited English knowledge I only can assure you that he perfectly and realisticly mirrowed the situation at least in East Berlin during the mid-80s. No lies, no cold war-propaganda. Was very disappointed to read that he has gone.

(Joseph Heller, several books by him were published in East Germany, seems a good choice to me too.)

greetings from Berlin
Ruediger

Imposs1904 said...

Hello Ruediger,

Thanks for rediscovering an old post of mine.

Ian Walker was a wonderful writer, as futher confirmed in the linked post 'Anarchy in the UK', and I'd recommend 'The Zoo Station' to anyone who wants a piece of writing that so perfectly captures a time and place.

As an aside, you might like to check out the Wiederaneignung blog, that is produced by a political colleague in Frankfurt.

all the best,
Darren

Unknown said...

I thought I'd leave something because Zoo Station means very much to me as well.

The Guardian (London)

December 11, 1990

A notebook Romantic: Obituary of Ian Walker
By MARTIN KETTLE


WHEN they say that a dead journalist was fearless, it conjures up images of macho war correspondents lurking in foxholes hammering out machine gun prose as the bombs explode all around.

Maybe Ian Walker did his turn at that kind of writing; he certainly spent long enough in Nicaragua during hot times in the mid-eighties to have had the chance. But he was a fearless journalist in a quite different sense, and his death so young is every bit as much of a waste as if he had died under fire.

I got to know Ian a decade ago when he worked, first as a freelance and later on the staff, of New Society. Under Paul Barker, New Society rightly prided itself on its ability to illuminate big social and cultural issues through vivid, direct and intelligent reportage.


Of the many fine journalists trained in that stable, Ian was the most vivid, the most direct and though he always pretended not to be an intellectual one of the most intelligent too. He gave the place life.

He wrote about shocking and unpleasant subjects like racism and sexual violence. He was indignant about them, but he wanted people to know exactly how racists and rapists talk, think and behave. So he immersed himself in their culture, writing brilliantly about individuals and behaviour which appalled both him and his readers.

Where lesser journalists used the cuttings, talked to the experts and kept themselves safe, Ian always preferred to talk unflinchingly to the people themselves. In his articles, the words and feelings of skinheads, bombers, dossers, winos, squaddies and a whole galere of twisted, bitter, angry and neglected victims came amazingly alive. He did his best writing from places which the middle-class hardly ever visit back street pubs, dance halls, squats and bomb-sites. He was a foreign correspondent in his own society.

He got interested in Berlin while he was at New Society; the upshot was a grim, truthful book called Zoo Station, which reflects the bleak and the romantic sides of his personality. How tragic and instructive it is that in the end he became one of the no-hopers about whom he wrote so well.

Of course, he liked to shock, but not like the later generation of journalists who like to shock in order to make themselves famous and talked about. Ian wanted to shock because he was shocked too.

He was a stylist not because he cared about style though he did but because he wanted to tell the truth to readers whom he believed should not be allowed to become detached from shocking things. Some people think he overdid it sometimes. The real tragedy is that most journalists underdo it all the time.

Martin Kettle

Sacha Craddock adds: We admired Ian so totally loved Ian for because of his relentless black-and-white characterisations: good, bad; rich, poor; boring, bright; dull; straight and street-wise. When everyone else had given up the idea of staying up practically all night and finding things funny for the sake of it, Ian never relented, insisting that that was the way to be. He could laugh like a drain.

Even when quiet, and he was sometimes, he would make something exceptional out of his love, home and hearth. The everyday could be elevated to the important, so long as there was never anything complacent about it.

Ian always lived in our communal home, on and off: Nicaragua, Berlin, Ireland backwards and forwards between writing about Wigan or spending time elsewhere, he would turn up and we would all drink without too much complaint.

'Pretty Boy' boyishly handsome he was fiercely loyal to his friends as long as they played along at the pitch set by his expectation - and need of rosy friendship. His family also made him gooey and happy. Oppression existed in the world Ian knew that but it would always come from outside. He had no time for psychoanalytical talk of dangers and personal fears nearer home.

We all met in Tolmers Square in the mid-seventies. Ian had come from Cambridge (the first boy from whatever school it was to have gone there) to help set up an 'unattached and independent' magazine called The Leveller. Our squatted house backed on to their office; both house and office barely recognisable as such.

Somehow Ian's marvellously excited and somewhat exhausting attitude was special then but not considered rare. We did have a brilliant time and of course expected it to last.

Evictions later, a decade gone, and still Ian did not stop. Fags and drink, good looks and clothes, continuous mirror readjustments, though constantly denied, somehow combined with serious seriousness about a range of international struggles. Organised politics were always a bit of a slog for him. He stood to the side, had his cup of tea, fried egg on toast, enchilada or whatever, wherever, and reported the everyday of the people making the struggle themselves; that was his way of taking part.

Writing about Berlin, what he caught perfectly was the fug and grey of the train between east and west, not the glossy kultivierte Leute at the Berlin Philharmonic concerts or the mind-stopping boredom of the Communist Party on the other side. What he loved was watching the dailyness of the place: he watched and he loved. Romantic was the word, romantic the method.

Ian Walker, born August 13, 1952; died December 8, 1990.

roderick_miller said...

I lived as an English-speaking expat in Berlin at the same period that Walker wrote about it. When I received his book as a gift in the late 80s, I realised I would never need to write about that period of my life, since Walker already captured it so perfectly. Strange feeling to read such a mirror of "your own" experiences written by another person.

Hunting up "Zoo Station" today to give as a gift to a friend (with plans to re-read it first, of course), I came across this web page of his obituary. No other book captures the spirit of 80s West Berlin as well as "Zoo Station." My next beer in some run-down pub in still run-down dodgy Berlin-Neukölln will be toasted to the memory of Ian Walker...

david john hull said...

So Somehow I've just got hold of a copy of Zoo station, I'm half way through it and I need to tell everyone how brilliant the book is. It totally captures the feeling of 80's Berlin. I myself arrived in 86 (still here). Yes I agree there's no need to write anything about Berlin, it's been totally captured by Ian.
I just found out that he died!! so young, what a shame. This book is a classic, I love it!!

david john hull said...

So Somehow I've just got hold of a copy of Zoo station, I'm half way through it and I need to tell everyone how brilliant the book is. It totally captures the feeling of 80's Berlin. I myself arrived in 86 (still here). Yes I agree there's no need to write anything about Berlin, it's been totally captured by Ian.
I just found out that he died!! so young, what a shame. This book is a classic, I love it!!

Terry Cowan said...

I bought a copy of Ian Walker's Zoo Station in 1990 in Seattle, and it instantly became one of my favorite books. This past week, I read the book again, finding just as relevant and impacting as I did when I read it 25 years ago.

Last Christmas, I hunted down three more copies, and gave one to each of my 3 young-adult children, so that they could each have Zoo Station in their libraries. On the inside of each jacket I wrote a note to them, saying that Ian Walker should be in everyone's library.

The book is an important one, and Mr. Walker is an important writer. I was saddened to discover that his life was cut so tragically short.

Many thanks for posting this page on him, where we are able to read his other work. He deserves to be remembered.