March 2023 – Hors Catégorie

Abdicating Responsibility

In 2018 I moved back to Dublin after four years marooned in New Jersey. I made a practice of reading the weekend edition of the Irish Times from cover to cover, to get a sense of the public psyche of the country (or at least that of the bourgeois strata of the south Dublin suburbs that spawned me). After several few months I gave it up, fearful that prolonged exposure to Pat Leahy might lead to irreversible brain damage. Often it was the obituary page that gave the most interesting view of the state of the nation.

Throughout that year, Rob Doyle had a column in the Culture section, revisiting some of his favourite books. In that determinedly middlebrow milieu, his invocations of Nathalie Sarraute and E M Cioran offered a revivifying dash of vinegar and pretension. A couple of years later, Swift Books published the full set under the title Autobibliography, buttressing each one with rambling author’s notes that often ran ten or twenty times the length of the original entry. In all honesty, it’s thin stuff — the original reviews are too brief to merit the elaboration — but the list is the thing.

There is a certain release in abdicating responsibility in the face of overwhelming choice. There are more books in any shop than I could hope to read in the years that are left to me (hell, there are more books already in this house than I could hope to read etc.) Why prefer one book over the next? How to choose between incommensurable goods? Submit to the dictates of some arbitrary authority: the recommendations of n+1’s annual Bookmatch fundraiser; Anthony Burgess’s 99 Novels; the inexplicable selections of the other people in your book club. I filleted Autobibliography for anything that raised a flicker of interest, discarding half the list to leave sixteen titles I wanted to read and another dozen I would reread.

Thus, I read Quartet, the first novel by Jean Rhys. Prior to this Jean Rhys had a shadowy existence in the lumber room of my mind, where undigested and often contradictory scraps of information gather dust, undisturbed by the intrusions of reality. I knew that Rhys had returned from years of obscurity with Wide Sargasso Sea because Diana Athill devotes a chapter to the story in Stet, but no image had formed of the earlier career to which this constituted a comeback. For that matter, I had not read Wide Sargasso Sea, on the doubtless specious grounds that I had never read Jane Eyre either.

“The room was full of men in caps who bawled intimacies at each other; a gramophone played without ceasing; a beautiful white dog under the counter, which everyone called Zaza and threw bones to, barked madly”.

This, on page 4. Rhys’s prose is littered with these lightly paradoxical phrases (“bawled intimacies”) that nonetheless encapsulate perfectly some detail of life, the amicable bedlam of a busy Parisian cafe. Her spare, economical style might read too quickly were it not for these arresting turns of phrase. Quartet is a short book (Doyle disarmingly admits that many of his choices were driven by exigency — with only seven days to come up with the next instalment, I too might have picked Bolaño’s inscrutable Antwerp over 2666) but it covers a lot of emotional experience. Its portrait of a young woman increasingly unmoored and alone in interwar Paris reminded me in some ways of Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion (also one of Doyle’s picks).

Penguin Modern Classics recently reissued Rhys’s four early novels (After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, Voyage in the Dark, and Good Morning, Midnight are the others). Their edition of Quartet is typical of their routine high quality: sharp jacket design incorporating a Lee Miller photograph, clean typography, and a solid contextual essay thoughtfully placed after the text. I’ll read the lot. I might even finally get to Wide Sargasso Sea.

Laragh (89km, 1310m)

RideWithGPS

Categorised Climbs: Edmondstown Road, Lough Bray, L1059, Oldbridge (E)

This is classic Wicklow cycling: the windswept bogs of the mountains, the quiet roads through sloping pastures in the lowlands. The route is packed with climbing, from the headline ascent to Sally Gap to the rollercoaster roads around Oldbridge, finishing with the uncategorised duo of the Poggio and the Scalp. Reversing it gives not just another perspective on the countryside but a different, no less satisfying, rhythm to the day.

Navigationally, the route is very simple: only two turns separate the start at Five Points and the halfway point at Laragh, and there are only a few more on the return leg. You climb to Sally Gap in two stages, taking the marginally gentler Edmondstown Road route up to the Featherbeds, then dropping down to Glencree before tackling the climb past Lough Bray. After the Gap you descend gradually for 15km to Laragh. Immediately after leaving Laragh take the left turn onto the backroad to Oldbridge. This road is perhaps the highlight of the route, quickly leaving the village behind to take you past tranquil fields lined with hedgerows and dry stone walls. Jink right at the R759, then left for Ballinastoe. After descending the Old Long Hill, there’s the quick kick of the Poggio and then the gentle slopes of the Scalp before the descent back into the city.

There are a few hazard points to watch out for. As you are picking up speed towards the top of Glenmacnass waterfall, the road swings left — you will frequently round this bend to find a slew of blithe tourists milling around in the road. Be ready for an emergency stop. The second is the descent into Oldbridge. There is a trio of warning signs, starting with an arresting (but unhelpfully unspecific) “!”, then one showing a bike sliding, and finally one warning of a 10% gradient (a gross underestimate, as you will find out if you ever travel it in the opposite direction). It would be pretty easy to come a cropper here. Finally, the descent of the Old Long Hill ends with a tight left-hand bend ending abruptly at a T-junction. Ignore the warning sign at your peril.

Laragh is the obvious place for a cafe stop — there’s nothing before it, and nothing afterwards until you reach Enniskerry. The route runs you straight past Glendalough Green (aka the Hippie Cafe), the traditional stop for cyclists. On a warm day, the outdoor seating will be thronged with the lycra-clad hordes, basking in the sunshine like seals on a rock. Lynham’s does a reasonable pub lunch, and there’s also a food truck doing barbecue in their carpark on summer weekends. There is a petrol station shop just off the route on the Glendalough Road.

There’s some scope for variation: if you’re already jacked by the time you get to Laragh, you may prefer the gentle drag along the R755 through Annamoe to Roundwood over the focused ramps on the L1059 to Oldbridge. Bear left as you exit Roundwood to get onto the road for Ballinastoe. Gluttons for punishment can turn left at the R759 (56km) to take on the steepest approach to Sally Gap, the road above Luggala Estate, and return to the city from the Gap.

View of a valley, across a field, framed by gnarled trees on either side and an old stone wall at the bottom. — The view across the valley to Trooperstown Hill from the Oldbridge Road.

“The light came from candles, and in December 1755, [Eddystone Rocks lighthouse] keeper, Henry Hall, found the lantern room on fire. No lives were lost that night but Hall himself died twelve days later, after complaining that his insides felt as if they were burning. It was not, as his friends had supposed, some form of post-traumatic shock. While gazing up in open-mouthed horror at the conflagration he accidentally swallowed some molten lead that was falling from the roof. A postmortem found seven ounces of it in his intestines.”
—Rosemary Hill, “Coiling in Anarchy”, London Review of Books

A Great Variety of Morbid Symptoms

Over on Retromania, Simon Reynolds notes a couple more symptoms of this lingering syndrome, before finishing up with this:

But there’s also an impulse to sort through/tie together/make sense of one’s life in loving music/film/books. Winnow down to the essentials and peaks. Create a map of a journey through taste; a consumer-biography. I can’t help sensing a morbid impulse lurking beneath this—almost like getting one’s affairs in order in readiness for death.

I don’t know that it’s growing awareness of the Grim Reaper standing at my shoulder but I’ve certainly been spending the last few years taking stock. I spent my thirties casting the net wide. The creative energy of jungle and post-rock ebbed and, spurred by the eclectic coverage in The Wire, I started to explore the wider world of music. At the same time, the reissue boom driven by compact disc reached its peak—an incredible range of music, from reggae to afrobeat to Ethiopian jazz to drone, was unearthed and put into general circulation. I gorged myself for years.

But eventually I realised that I didn’t care that much about a lot of the music I was listening to. Much of it I had barely listened to—some discs made the player just long enough to make sure that they were working, some I didn’t even listen to while I was ripping them (that Stravinsky box set). I had gone exploring, had gained a sense for the contours of the landscape, but I didn’t have a strong sense for where I wanted to be.

I cut way back, eventually trashing the music library on my computer and exiling all the files to a massive hard drive, and began to rebuild. It seems absurd to say, but after nearly four decades of listening to music, I am still figuring out what it is that I actually like. I haven’t entirely given up the search—I still hold out hope that some day I will hear the album that will unlock the pleasures of Brazilian pop for me—but I buy only a couple of albums a month, spend the rest of the time getting to know better the music I already own.

…

While I’m on a (blog)roll, my old comrade Ian went to see a clatter of films at the Dublin International Film Festival. For reasons known only to himself he maintains two versions of his blog, one on WordPress, one on Blogger, posting the same content to both. But sure, we all have our little foibles.

The Hill of Tara (2.9km, 103m, 3.3%)

Strava

For all its cultural significance, the Hill of Tara is not much of an eminence — in order for it even to scrape into Category 4, you have to include the road approaching the climb proper. At the top of the initial ramp, take the left turn, then right at the next crossroads; both turns are signposted for a cycle route. From there it’s a straight line to the top — it’s a pretty road, lined with hedgerows and mature trees, but it’s so narrow that it will be a tight squeeze if you meet any cars coming in the opposite direction. The steepest gradient comes in the middle of the hill, at around 9%.

The view looking north-east from the Hill of Tara — green fields under a blue sky with scattered cloud — Looking north-east towards Drogheda from the car park at the summit

The Hill of Tara (118km, 798m)

RideWithGPS

Categorised climbs: The Hill of Tara

I ride this route about once each year, early in the spring when the training plan calls for longer rides but the mountain roads might still be sketchy. Running through the gentle farmland of north county Dublin and county Meath, it’s eminently suitable for fixed gear riding.

The most tedious aspect of the route is getting out of the city centre — it’s a full 14km of urban traffic until you get to St. Margaret’s. After that you’re mostly on quiet minor roads until you cross the Royal Canal on the way back into Dublin — even then the run through Castleknock and Phoenix Park is one of the more pleasant ways back into the city.

Keep your wits about you when making the turn off the R156 at 85km — it’s on a sharp left-hand bend and you need to go most of the way around to get any view of oncoming traffic.

There are plenty of refuelling opportunities on the way out — there are shops in Oldtown, Garristown, and Duleek, and a petrol station just after you cross the N2 around Balrath. Maguire’s cafe at the top of the Hill of Tara is ideally placed for a lunch stop, more than halfway through the ride, and an easy start afterwards so you can digest a little. It’s probably bedlam during tourist season though.

There’s not much after that — the only business in Dunsany is a piano tuner — but the post office in Kilcloon (88km) has a small shop if your stomach is rumbling.

Yellow Robin Reliant three-wheeler van in the livery of Trotters independent Trading from the sit-com Only Fools And Horses, parked in front of a pebble-dashed pub wall in Ardcath — New York – Paris – Peckham…Ardcath

O Tempora, O Mores

Back in the day, it was de rigueur for your blog to sport a sidebar stuffed with links to the other blogs you read, admired, commented on, considered your peers. Early versions of the WordPress CMS had a dedicated function for the care and maintenance of these links. That function has long since disappeared, replaced by a plugin, then by widgets.

It is now so far divorced from the operations of the typical site powered by WordPress that even the solutions I found when I searched online rely on a legacy widget that will doubtless be deprecated in another release or two. The article describing the workaround I’m using also warned gravely about the foolishness of pissing away your search-ranking juice by improvidently linking to sites that are not your own. Different times, indeed.

Still, we persevere, and the sidebar of Hors Catégorie now sports a larval collection of links, under the heading Essential Reading. Perhaps it says something that these four could have appeared on any such list I made in the last ten or fifteen years, the hardiest of survivors from a once-febrile blogosphere.

{ feuilleton } — John Coulthart recently marked his 5,000th post, demonstrating a work ethic I could only dream of. The steady accretion of posts over seventeen years has built into a massive reef, wide-ranging yet coherent: illustration, comics, psychedelia, surrealism, Ballard, Lovecraft, the occult, industrial music, animation, cinema…whether he’s writing about Thomas Köner or Tom of Finland, it’s astute, informative, thorough.

Blissblog — Ground Zero for Simon Reynolds’s blog empire, he lists ten more in the sidebar. Reynolds was maybe the first music journalist I learned to look out for, after his Melody Maker review of Flying Saucer Attack’s second album, Further. Energy Flash and Rip It Up And Start Again remain two of my favourite books about music, read and reread countless times. Our tastes have diverged over the years (I’ve never grasped the appeal of hauntology) but it’s still interesting to watch the endless flicker of connections and signifiers across his mind, the mulch from which his finished work emerges.

The Blue Moment — Richard Williams is nowhere near as prolific as Simon Reynolds, but his posts tend to be more polished and coherent, finished articles rather than unedited notebooks. A long career in the business (editor of the Melody Maker, A&R for Island) means that he brings impressive first-hand knowledge of some of the artists he’s writing about, but it’s the way he shares a lifetime of listening that shines. I might not listen to much of the modern jazz or vintage soul that he writes about, but I always enjoy reading about it. The blog is legacy from his book of the same title, which is long overdue a reread.

The Inner Ring — I have no idea who the anonymous author of the Inner Ring is, but it hardly matters: whoever they are, they know professional cycling. During the season, the bulk of the posts are race previews: analysis of the route, predictions of the likely protagonists. In the off-season they delve more into the wider pro cycling scene, the economics, the politics, the history. The Roads to Ride posts, detailing the climbs that any dedicated cycling fan dreams of tackling, are one of the inspirations for this blog.

Hat tip to MDonaldson → — this is indeed a great piece about the Meat Puppets and growing up in Phoenix, AZ.

Following the link trail a little further — a fat stash of Meat Puppets soundboards and other live recordings.

Ballinascorney (2.9km, 191m, 6.3%)

Strava

Ballinascorney is a solid climb but it doesn’t inspire genuine love in me. The lower section is nice, winding upwards on a smoothly paved, tree-lined road, but it’s also very narrow, and the quarry at the top of the hill means that you often find yourself being monstered by impatient gravel truck drivers. Further up the road opens out but the surface is harsher and you’re more exposed to the wind.

Nonetheless, I ride it dozens of times every year, and I’m often battling it out for the Local Legend on the Strava segment because it’s the best way out of the city towards the south-west. The Embankment (N81) will take you to many of the same places but traffic is far heavier and there’s no hard shoulder despite it being an N-road. Ballinascorney gives you access to the picturesque roads behind Bohernabreena reservoir, and to essential climbs like the Firing Range and McDonagh’s Lane. It’s usually salted in the winter and carries enough traffic for any frost to melt off quickly so it’s often usable when other mountain roads aren’t.

The road starts climbing as you pass the Bohernabreena Reservoir car park and if you’re lucky enough not to have any cars for company the first kilometer or so is very pleasant. It briefly hits 14% but the road is so smooth that you’d barely notice it. There’s a respite section as you pass the foot-golf course on the left before the road kicks up again and the surface turns into giant sandpaper. The next half-kilometer is the meat of the climb, a steady 9% gradient. The gradient eases off as you swing left and you’d like to shift up but this is usually the moment when you discover where the wind has been hiding, and you crawl the remaining 500m to the top.

I wish you the very best of luck in stealing Nico Roche’s KOM on this segment.

Road sign warning of "Severe Gradient Next 3km" next to road, Dublin visible in the background — Brother, have you heard the good news?

Ballinascorney comes into its own as a descent. At the crest of the hill you get a brief glimpse of the city spread out below you* as you get into full aero tuck for the ski-slope first half. The lower half is more sinuous and narrow but the curves are still loose enough that you can rip through them faster than cars can drive them. After the shank over the bridge at the bottom of the descent proper the road continues gently downhill all the way back to Rathfarnham and you often have a tailwind into the bargain — you may have been on your hands and knees before then but you’ll feel like a king, big ringing it all the way home.

*Like a patient etherized upon a table.

First Love

There’s something concentrated, claustrophobic, about Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, such that it comes as a relief that the book is only 167 pages long. The prospect of spending more time in the company of bullying, self-pitying Edwyn feels intolerable, the reader just as trapped as Riley’s protagonist, Neve. The liberal use of italics for emphasis in the dialogue should feel heavy-handed but Riley’s pitch is perfect, capturing the leaden sarcasm and sullen aggression of everyday speech. Her acerbic observation of modern British manners recalls Rachel Cusk’s trilogy, Transit in particular, but with immediacy and intensity in place of Cusk’s glassy distance.

Neve’s relationships with her parents seem to foreshadow those in Riley’s subsequent novel, My Phantoms, as though she realised while writing First Love that there was rich material there that couldn’t be explored thoroughly without losing the essential focus on the central relationship between Neve and Edwyn, unbalancing a very tight novel. Which is not to say that Riley repeats herself — the shift in focus develops the father beyond the thumbnail sketch in First Love, and if Neve’s mother is memorable, Hen in My Phantoms is indelible, one of the great comic monsters of recent years, needy, self-regarding, oblivious. What unites Riley’s characters is their uncertainty about what is normal, what one can reasonably expect of other people, or of life. It feels a very modern anxiety.