My Culture Fix - II

My favourite author or book
Flannery O'Connor for author, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke for book.

The book I’m reading
The Woods Are Dark by Richard Laymon, in the restored and uncut edition by the late author's daughter, Kelly. Laymon was a "splatterpunk" author, in his case essentially meaning that his books are extremely trashy, extremely nasty, non-literary horror. Comparable to splatter films, basically, like Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, Cannibal Holocaust, et al. I enjoy them because I get all the fun of a silly, shocking story without having to put up with screaming and loud bangs on the soundtrack.

The Woods Are Dark was his second "paperback original", and a botched editing job by his publishers meant that his career in the US was ruined for years, and only started to recover in the years before his untimely death. He survived on the UK market, which got the original book.

The book I wish I had written
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, simply because of the money it made.

The book I’m ashamed I haven’t read
Shame is a useless emotion regarding books.

My favourite film
The Exorcist. I saw it for the umpteenth time last year, but in a cinema, and on the big screen it blew me away all over again. It's a relentlessly beautiful and powerful, spiritual film. You don't watch it to be scared, at least not anymore, in an age where The Human Centipede and Hostel movies exist; you watch it for the story and the characters, which are fearfully compelling. It reminds me of what Flannery O'Connor said about her work and its reception: "When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."

My favourite play
I've not seen that many performed, but of those I have, The Woman in Black, probably. I saw it in the West End, and its only flaw was a ridiculous pound-shop Halloween mask that appeared for a second on the Woman. It was one of those witch's masks with bugged-out eyes and a long, crooked nose with a wart on the end.

My guiltiest cultural pleasure
I don't feel guilty about culture, and I don't think that anyone should. I like reading children's and young adult fiction that was popular when I was a child, however, as well as authors from that period/genre who continue to work now. Specifically, RL Stine, and other '90s "teen horror" writers. Maybe that's a little embarrassing.

The poem/song that saved me
When I was a teenager, my nan bought Anne Sexton's collected poems for me. I remember reading it in bed at her house, and there was a particular poem (I think that it was from her book Love Poems, though it may have been Live or Die) about her walking and becoming sunlight or something like that.

I think of that as my first truly authentic experience of poetry. To use a cliche, it blew my mind. Whether or not it "saved" me, I can't say, but it saved my interest in poetry from the poor teaching of it in secondary school English.

My favourite piece of music
Anything that could be described as Classic Jazz. Louis Armstrong, for instance.

The last TV programme that made me cry (and laugh)
When I was a teenager I cried at an episode of Emmerdale, a primetime soap opera. The episode involved a woman cheating on her safe-but-boring man with a sexy but heartless stud, and feeling terribly guilty about it, as she no doubt should have been. Maybe THAT'S my guilty pleasure!

As for laughter, Smiling Friends. There's a bit where one of the main characters finds his grandmother in Hell, and she says that she's there because she said "damn!" back in 1958, on seeing her husband being shot in the head by a burglar. That still makes me giggle.

The lyric I wish I’d written
"I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand / Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?" Ian Curtis, Joy Division.

I’m having a fantasy dinner party; I’ll invite these artists...
Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, and Carson McCullers; three Southern Gothic novelists who all had issues (I think) about being identified as such, and all of whom bitched about each other. I'd invite them all without telling them who else will be coming, and then watch them duke it out.

The play/film I walked out of
None that I recall. But I SHOULD have stopped watching Naked Lunch (the David Cronenberg film of William S Burroughs' novel) because it was shit. Man feels guilty about "accidentally" shooting his wife in the head, as he should. Proceeds to piss and moan for ages, and in the meantime, he's psychosexually blaming other people for his action. (The abuse of a young, queer male prostitute by what the main character conceptualises as a giant insect still annoys me.) Oh, and Roy "the sheriff in Jaws" Scheider cross-dresses for a bit, I think. By that point, I was too bored to care.