I should have said, quimby that despite my opinion, I do appreciate you choosing this. It's definitely something I wouldn't have chosen for myself and I do welcome seeing some different or experimental methods of telling a story. Sometimes experiments work and sometimes they don't, but it's still interesting to see.
Just finished it. The best I can say is that it's written in a language I haven't learned and am not going to try to learn at this stage in the proceedings.
I did like it a little better as it went along and other voices came in, providing a few additional dimensions.
Sex and drugs and rock and roll, and the 1970's - this is where I come in. I mean: Dave at school bought NME each week, and Andrew was a punk, and a right-royal PITA to prove it. As for drugs - well it wasn’t all magic mushrooms and dried banana skins - John got some THC oil, which was probably the start of the slippery slope of him becoming a merchant banker. And Jason had had sex; or said that he had. Oh, OK, its 1983 and its post Punk - still probably lots of transferrable experiences; rites of passage, teenage anger, that sort of thing. So "This is Memorial Device" should have some zinging flashbacks.
Actually, I was up for a story of rock groups - I loved the "Rock Family Tree" series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljjm1A7OCNs
(John Peel - I know, I know). The personalities, the egos, the rebellion culture, the outfits, the rivalries, the self-destruction, surely there's a story based in all that?
But TIMD didn't evoke, explain, or explore for me. Maybe I was supposed to assemble something from all the bits, work out who all the characters were and what they were in the band Memorial Device. Or maybe just a sequence of loosely related stories, hung round a central conceit. Too late I found the appendixes with lists of people at the back, which would've helped. Maybe the detailed index would let me re-research the band. But is it worth it? Er, no.
And I am grateful for Quimby suggesting this - I really did enjoy using Youtube to follow up the real-life bands. And working out the book I wanted to read, I found that Viv Albertine had written a story of her life "Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys." I've got that on order, for her view of a cultural change that I lived through, but was only dimly aware of. Part of where we now are and how we got here. Not sure it’s going to be a "nice" read, but nice was hardly the point of Punk. So definitely an interesting choice.
Clothes, Music and Boys is really good. I recommend (have credentials as working class art school girl who played in a band and likes clothes - and boys of course)
Struggled quite a bit with this book. The fractured nature of the narrative meant I struggled to work out what was going on and keep track of the characters. I didn't feel that there was enough differentiation between the different accounts at the beginning. Maybe it was meant to be like this as one of the main characters had memory issues? Although I still don't really know why he was like this!
I found it quite depressing, possibly because it reminded me of how grim the late 70s and early 80s could be. It didn't help that I was a bit stressed by other stuff when I was reading it.
I did find the latter parts of the book better. The different sections seemed to have more clearly defined voices and there some parts that were beautifully written with some interesting ideas and images. Especially loved the bits about the sunken ships, which reminded me of the Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars.
The ending was very abrupt and I feel as though I've been left with lots of snippets that don't quite add up to a complete novel. Perhaps it would have made more sense if I knew more about the music scene there were describing.
The book as a whole was probably a 4 while the bits I enjoyed would have been an 8 so I gave this book a 6 as a compromise.
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Book Group
Nov 2024
