Frogfather’s Cultural Despatch

Here’s the thing – I bought this in a charidee book sale at work, and I didn’t really know what to expect but you can’t go far wrong when it’s a pound a go for the kiddies, or cancer, or whatever. And lo and behold, it’s another novel based on the life of a real person, just like The Pornographer of Vienna. One of the big differences here is that I have actually heard of Harold II, the eponym. And not only that, but I would probably have been interested in his story if I hadn’t heard of him, because it’s part of the history of my country – quite an important part. He’s not just some dude who liked to paint hookers in the nuddie.

And further than that, the last time I read anything about him I was probably 9, which is when we did the Normans in school. More or less. So some bits may have been missed out – i.e. the sex and violence, i.e. the interesting bits. All I knew was that he became King because he was supposed to, and he had to fight two invading armies in a week, and he only lost to the second lot because he got shot in the eye. Everyone knows this, everyone is wrong.

The novel actually takes up a long time filling in backstory – all about Edward the Confessor (now I know what he confessed to, I’m not surprised they didn’t mention it at Catholic primary school) and the various shady dealings to engineer the succession, which was a good deal more complicated back then, with about 90 people having a reasonable claim to the throne, and the winner being whoever was close enough to the King when he died to be able to pretend he’d said “I want this dude to be King”.

And William and his army weren’t exactly the noble race of Viking-descended heroes I was led to believe either – at least, according to Rathbone, but he seems to have done his research. Perhaps their nobility was played up in my school because they brought a brand of high-pope christianity with them, which eventually crushed the pagan brand of religion that had been keeping the people of England amused until that point. Or maybe it’s because they eventually founded the aristocracy, who invented schools and learning shit. History – it’s written by the winners. For at least 1,000 years. Anyway, they are depicted in this book as a right shower of gits, I knew there was a reason I didn’t like toffs.

So, there’s all this richness of information, explained in a way that’s easy to understand and quite entertaining, but… I found the style of the novel irritating. The main character, Walt, was Harold’s sworn bodyguard – a housecarl – and had failed to give up his life to save his master, and so was wandering around Europe, telling his story to some other dude, who just happened to be there and interested (seriously). They also meet someone who was in the Norman camp, and was also ashamed of his part in the whole thing, and he told his story. And there’s some interaction between the group (including some rich ginger woman, for some reason) but it all screams “device”. And a fairly creaky one, at that. It’s a pretty old trick – Chaucer did it, for one – but I think you need to have better characters to make it worthwhile. The guys the story is actually about – Harold, William, The Confessor, various relatives – are all clear and well drawn, but the little group of made-up dudes, not so much. Oh, and some of the jokes are weak. What’s the point of having a Bob Dylan impressionist in a book about the Norman Conquest? So we can all have a giggle? It’s not funny.

Anyway, in spite of that (and the fact that it takes quite a while to get going, what with Walt being in a fever and just plodding around northern Europe aimlessly) I found it entertaining and fun, which is much more than can be said for the Egon Schiele one.

See also:

The Pornographer of Vienna – about someone I don’t care about, and not particularly well written.

The Damned Utd – about Ole Big ‘Ead

Due to conditions beyond my control (big shout out to BT) I’ve been without internets for a couple of months. Should pick up again round here from now on.

A confession: I first attempted to read this book about 11 years ago and got no further than the first 3 pages.

It was so dense and I didn’t really know what the hell was going on, I decided it was clearly far too advanced for little old me, and I went back to reading Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin. Then I managed to read Umberto Eco’s most recent book – The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna and thought “this dude ain’t so fricking badass”. Also Ryan recommended it. And I knew my dad still had a copy lying around, so I borrowed it and when a slot in my reading list came up, I got on it.

Let me tell you: it didn’t get any less dense. And a lot of it doesn’t really make much sense. I guess it’s probably all really well researched – there’s certainly a lot of quotes from relevant primary sources at the top of the chapters – but it’s so dull. Stupid secret societies, feuding and bumping into each other. The Templars, Hospitalers, Rosicrucians, Rosy Crosses, neo-Templars, Baconists, on and on. So many lists, timelines, daft bloody theories, and it’s all a massive jumble. It’s impossible to hold the whole thing in your head at once, so I didn’t really bother. I’m pretty certain you could write a digested version of this book in 200 pages, instead of the 641 (I was counting down towards the end) that it takes up.

Which makes the quotes on the back more mystifying. “Eco… really loves popular culture… This is an extremely funny book.” No, it’s not. It’s far too long and confusing, the jokes are far too far apart and not very good anyway. It (unsurprisingly) reminded me a lot of Queen Loanna in that it mostly consisted of lists of stuff copied from other books, linked together with a semi-decent plot. As far as I can tell, Eco doesn’t have a writing style, he’s some kind of photocopying machine with a random plot generator attached.

I think I had the right idea when I was 19.

See also (see instead?)
54, Wu Ming – more Italian literature, similarly obsessed with fascists and partisans, but funnier, pacier and starring Carey Grant.

The Brentford Trilogy, Robert Rankin – a lot of the same secret knowledge, magic is real and operating behind the everyday world, but infinitely funnier and a hell of a lot shorter. Well, each book is shorter, but there were 5 of them last time I counted, so as a whole, probably longer.

The Da Vinci Code, Brown – don’t read it (I haven’t), but it’s all about Templars and Grails too. Possibly ripped off from Foucault’s Pendulum… who would ever know?

I always think: you know, this is like that thing I read three years ago, only with more elves, or with a disco beat, or whatever.

So I decided to add a “see also” bit that lists what whatever it was I was writing about reminded me of. And then maybe you can check out the other stuff too.

Not High Culture, because I don’t do any of that. I have been accused of reading just about anything, though, so that’ll go in here. And I like music too (there are people that don’t?) so if hear something good, I’ll stick something up about that. And films, maybe, although I don’t like cinemas much, so they’ll be several months behind (unless I get a hook-up with the dodgy chinese dude selling DVDs in the pub, although he’d sold out of Iron Man the other day…wtf?).

And probably not much on computer games, paintings, restaurants, opera, or any of that guff. Unless I find some by accident.