Weekend break

I'll be away for a few days. See you next week. Behave.

Here's something to look at while I'm gone.

Sick building

The university language centre, where I work, is on the seventh floor of one of Rome's ugliest buildings, halfway between the Pyramid and St Paul outside the Walls. Thrown up in the 1970s, it manages to seem both shoddy and hulking. It might have been modish at the time, with its matt grey panels and brutal silhouette, but time has done it no favours. It houses, among other things, Rome's traffic police, where people pay their fines, and the local tax offices. Not surprisingly, it's an unloved place. Which may explain why we all had to leave the building at 5 pm on Monday, following an anonymous call to say that someone had left a bomb. We stood outside for a while, then headed home.

Recreational drugs

This is painted on the outside wall of the basement of the building in which I work.The care with which the mushroom has been rendered, in all its - how shall I say this? - hallucinatory splendour is in stark contrast to the building itself, which seems to be held together by rusty wire, polystyrene and asbestos. All nine floors of it. I have photographs and I'll be posting them tomorrow. Prepare yourself.

Free speech

In today's Guardian, Brian Klug makes an interesting point about the brouhaha surrounding the Oxford Union's decision to invite two fascists - who shall here remain nameless - to participate in a debate on free speech. He points out that if these two have a right to contribute to the debate then so has he, and so have you, and so has everyone else. And if they don't have a right, then that right can't be denied them.

So what are they doing there? Other than advertise the Union and its attention-seeking president, whose name I shall also not provide.

Little Monsters update

1. Little Monsters has been described by a certain Caitriona (thank you, Caitriona!) as a tear-jerker on the Picador blog. The novel's made me cry in the past for a variety of reasons, but it's slightly disconcerting (and, of course, wholly wonderful) to discover that it can have the same effect on others. The post is called Everybody Hurts and is well worth a read, comments and all.
2. Little Monsters now costs £11.99 on Amazon. If you didn't pre-order it at the earlier price of £9.89 you have only yourself to blame. And don't say I didn't warn you. Get a move on before they hike the price up again...
3. That's it.

Music: Dolly Parton et al.

Have you ever combined two ingredients you're slightly iffy about and produced something rather wonderful? No, neither have I. I'd started to wonder if it was possible.

Until I heard Dolly Parton's version of Stairway to Heaven.

You can listen to it here. (Along with some other songs I like. I know, I've just discovered this neat little playlist thing and I think it's fabulous, but I'll get bored soon enough.)

Shadows

One of the most important, and useful, books to have come out recently in Italy isn't a novel, but an exposure of the role played by the Camorra, the international Mafia-style structure with its base in the organised crime of Campania, the region around Naples and, in many ways, a state within a state. The book's called, with a brutally neat play on words, Gomorrah. Written by Roberto Saviano (see right), it's sold 600,000 copies in Italy and earned its author the dubious privilege of needing police protection. He may be living abroad as I write this. Just last week, the newspapers published recorded conversations between a Camorra capo and his underlings, in which the capo expressed his hope that investigating magistrates hadn't read what the book had to say about him. It says something about the weird isolation in which these people live that he thought his secret might be safe.

Gomorrah has now been translated into English. There a review of it in the New York Times, where you can find the publishing details. Italy isn't just pizza and Piero della Francesca, as of course you know. The fact that a prime minister can control the entire television system to ensure that bad news doesn't happen ought to be proof enough. But the extent to which the country manages to live with its dark shadow, not only in Naples but throughout the nation, from Verona to Bari, from Milan to Palermo, remains a source of dreadful wonder. It's as though it were always noon and the shadow were a small tight circle hobbling the country's feet.

Obsession

If you think I'm Johnny One Note when it comes to harping on about gay issues, you should visit the wingnuts' answer to Wikipedia. It's called Conservapedia (they always did have a way with words) and you can find it here.

Conservapedia has published a list of its ten most visited pages. You have to see it to believe it.

Thanks to Joe.My.God for this.

Lies, lies, lies

Leaks from a police investigation into the suspicious bankruptcy of a polling company employed by former PM, Tony Blair, have uncovered evidence that the information broadcast by both the BBC and independent television was deliberately manipulated to present the prime minister and his government in the best possible light. Throughout his period in office, on a daily basis, those responsible for what was seen and heard on five out of the six national news programmes put their heads together and decided what to emphasise, what to spin and what to conceal. Lies were told and facts omitted. Thanks to Blair's financial control over the commercial networks, and his political control over the public ones, this was a mug's game.

Shocked? You should be. Except that it wasn't Tony Blair, the BBC and commercial TV. He never had the chance. It was Berlusconi, the RAI and Mediaset, which belongs to Berlusconi. Still shocked? You still should be. Berlusconi is. He's called the Repubblica journalists who published the story a couple of days ago 'jackals' and accused them of trying to interfere with the process of electoral reform. Next thing you know, we'll be told the RAI is now in the hands of the communists.

More information than you'll ever need

I've just worked out how to publish photo albums with Picasa. So if you'd like to see all the shots of last summer's Rome Gay Pride, including the ones that I didn't post, now's your chance.

Gay Pride Rome June 2007

Monkey business

This is the small gold monkey I gave Giuseppe for his 50th birthday. He doesn't normally wear gold - he prefers silver - but the monkey comes from the same people (Pomellato) as a similarly minute camel (they're more or less the size of a thumbnail), given to me by Giuseppe some years ago. Animal symbolism is problematic at the best of times, but Giuseppe does have a mischievous streak and you already know about my camel thing. The alternative was a flamingo because he paints flamingoes, but I love the way the monkey genuinely hangs from the ring, just the way a monkey would.

Pomellato does a whole series of small gold animals in a range they call their Dodo collection; you can just see the silhouette of a dodo on the monkey's chest. Part of the cost is donated to WWF, so they're not just pretty, but marginally useful. Well, maybe.

If you believe that the soul weighs 21 grams (and, of course, I don't, but still), it would take seven monkeys like this to make a soul.

Was Jesus gay?

A little something Alberto Ruggin's local priest might enjoy. Or Ted Haggard. Or Larry Craig. Or Archbishop Arsehole of Nigeria. Or Eggs Benedict. Or just about anyone, in one way or another.

And if you'd like to know more about Pat Condell, click here.

Bored Sea Captain Secretly Marries....

For the full story, click here. My thanks, as ever, to the Onion (and Pierre et Gilles).

Noblesse oblige

One of Italy's longest standing jokes, the ex 'royal' family Savoia, hits the front page again today. No, Vittorio Emanuele, the pudding-faced capo famiglia, hasn't tried to hire a few hookers for one of his 'business dinners'; he hasn't peppered anyone with shot from his hunting rifle and left him to die, or tried to open a semi-legal casino with dodgy funds and the help of a gaggle of pimps. No, his oily son, Emanuele Filiberto, whose only claim to fame is to have sold his regal aura to a pickle-making company, hasn't been arrested for rape in Geneva, his former home. He lives in Italy now. They all do, thanks to Berlusconi. They're back, from their down-lined gilded Swiss exile, to haunt us.

And what do the ungrateful minxes do? They ask the Italian state for damages. They've filed a claim for €260 million (with 54 years' compound interest) for the 'moral suffering' they underwent while in exile. Plus all their confiscated belongings. Their lawyers have written a seven-page letter to the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. Well, obviously their lawyers have written it. I mean, seven whole pages. The Savoia's Italian just isn't good enough. Maybe they should sue for linguistic suffering too.

By the way, the woman standing next to Vittorio Emanuele isn't Elizabeth Taylor. She's a fake. Still, he seems happy enough.

Ciao Darwin, Addio Alberto

Just when you thought the catholic church and I had agreed,amicably, to differ and go our separate ways, news arrives of a local priest, Don Paolino (Little Paul), who has expelled one of his choristers from the choir and excluded him from all further church business. What grievous sin can Alberto Ruggin, the fresh-faced young man in the photograph, have committed?

He came out during a TV game show called Ciao Darwin, in which two groups compete to see which is better adapted for survival. In the past we've seen men up against women, so to speak, priests versus atheists, nurses versus doctors, fatties versus skinnies. As you can, it's not exactly the Brains Trust, but it does have its moments. Last week saw a team of heterosexuals compete against a team of gays, including Alberto Ruggin. I didn't see the programme myself, so I can't imagine what was involved, but Don Paolino, no doubt attracted by the prospect of seeing so many perverts in one place, didn't miss a minute. And there was his choir-boy and Sunday school teacher, all six sinful feet of him, parading his shame. The only word for it, as far as Don Paolino's concerned, was 'disgusting'. Followed by Fuori! Surprising? Not really. As my father used to say, What can you expect from a pig but a grunt?

Ruggin, in the meantime, seems to have devoted the last few years of his life to the parish and Berlusconi's Forza Italia, a party not renowned for its gay-friendliness. He could spend a few moments of his newly acquired free time to ask himself whether his energies might not be more profitably channelled into organisations that don't regard him as a social pariah and sexual deviant.

Magari

All English speakers of Italian will know how useful the little word magari can be. It expresses regret or longing, irritation or delight, according to tone and context. Whatever it means, it means it more effectively than any single English word. Students who ask for a translation watch me squirm as I come out with a five-, six-, seven-word expression that works just once. They're generally too polite to say it, but their faces say it for them. How on earth do you manage?

Magari is one of a thousand words that don't have any simple linguistic equivalent in English. Italian, on the other hand, doesn't have a host of mundane, earthy terms such as, well, splodge. You can't skedaddle in Italian or faff around (I don't think) or squish. The range of Duh is only half-captured by the more historic Boh, immortalised by Moravia. In language, evolutionary niches always get filled but no one would seriously suggest that a giant terrestrial parrot has the elegance of a gazelle. Nor that a gazelle has the wonky charm of the now sadly extinct giant terrestrial parrot.

If you're amused by this kind of thing, as I am, you'll probably enjoy, as I would, a book called Toujours Tingo by the splendidly named Adam Jacot de Boinod. For more about the book, see this review. Here's the first paragraph, to whet your appetite and, possibly, if you're French, to wet your finger (Yes, I'm thinking chapponage):

Tsonga speakers who have had a fruitless day's labour know it simply as walkatia. For Anglophones, it is the act of throwing down a tool in disgust. Someone fluent in Bakweri might soothe his walkatia by looking at a womba – the smile of a sleeping child. But all would probably shy at a Frenchman's offer of a spot of chapponage – the act of sliding a finger into a chicken's backside to see if it is laying an egg.

For I will consider my cat.... (Tilly)

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he's a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

Christopher Smart

Homoeophobia? Common sense

This shouldn't need doing again, but just in case you still think homoeopathy might have something in it, read this fine new article by Ben Goldacre from today's Guardian.

As long as you're popping a pill that contains no trace of 'active' ingredient (or - gulp! - listening to homoeopathic music) to get rid of a head cold, no harm's done. But when people start suggesting that homoeopathy can cure Aids, like the goon quoted below, it's time we all reached for whatever in rational discourse might pass for a gun.

Peter Chappell, whose work will feature at a conference organised by the Society of Homeopaths next month, makes dramatic claims about his ability to solve the Aids epidemic using his own homeopathic pills called "PC Aids", and his specially encoded music. "Right now," he says, "Aids in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio."

Radio Gaga?

Oh yes, the forenamed Society has apparently threatened to sue bloggers who are critical of homoeopathic 'medicines'. Well, homoeopathy sucks.

Watch this space.

Giuseppe Mallia: Arum lilies

Something for the eye. It hangs in our living room, over a roughly-made probably Yugoslavian pale blue cupboard with very grand fluted columns on each side, and is partially concealed by bottles, an unused oil lamp we bought in Thessaloniki and a sculpture given to me on my 50th birthday by Daniela, made from a telephone directory, silver paint, two small cherubs and a piece of crimson cord.

I love it.

Pip-pipped at the post

Publishing news. Picador has decided to scrap the traditional first-hardback-then-paperback process for literary fiction and to bring out almost all its novels in paperback editions from the outset, producing only a limited run of luxury hardbacks for collectors. The first novel to appear in this format will be Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey. You can read more about why this move has been made on the Picador blog.

As a reader, I'm convinced that this decision makes sense. Most of my reading these days is done on trains or planes or buses, or in bed, and hardbacks are simply inconvenient. They won't slide into pockets or side-by-side in bags, they weigh too much. Some of them don't even fit comfortably on shelves (at least not on those of the bookcases I've had made to hold my extensive collection of paperback novels). Nobody really wants them. Their only advantage is that you can use the jacket flap to mark your place. Even that awful commercial compromise, the 'special airport edition', is unwieldy and unlovable.

So why am I slightly anxious about the move? Because my own, my very own Little Monsters will be the last (or last-but-one) novel ever to be published by Picador in the traditional way, first in hardback, and then in paperback. This might make it highly collectable in years to come, regardless of its immense literary merit (although I doubt this), but I'm worried that it might also make it feel a little bit like yesterday's loaf from the word go. It also means I'll have to wait months and months for the paperback, which, as Crumey says, is the edition the author's friends - and everyone else - actually want to buy. Hmm.

There is only one way to make me feel better about this. Scroll up and down the sidebar until you see a little box with the cover of Little Monsters inside it and the magic words Buy from Amazon. Click. You will be rewarded in heaven.

Warwick Collins: Gents

Cottaging – the use of public lavatories for fugitive sexual encounters – can be thrilling, titillating, dangerous, delusory, exquisite, sordid, debasing, indescribably erotic, and all these things at once. I should know. I spent a brief summer over thirty years ago as an habitué of the cottage on Jesus Green, Cambridge. Indeed, my first published story talks of the experience, and many gay writers have described their own, or others’, sexual encounters in cottages. But it had never occurred to me to consider the subject from the point of view of the people who work in public conveniences, as they used to be called, or restrooms, as Senator Larry Craig would have it. Warwick Collins, in his wonderfully engaging short novel, Gents, gives everyone the chance to see what goes on behind the door marked MANAGER.

Work as a subject is sorely neglected by fiction; few writers, with the notable exception of Magnus Mills who does almost nothing else, draw inspiration from the mundane tasks we perform or have performed for us on a daily basis. Gents, though, describes with lyricism and precision the working lives of the three men running a municipal public lavatory in London. The men, all three originally from Jamaica, have different attitudes to the use of the place by homosexuals – or, as they refer to them, ‘reptiles’. Jason the Rastafarian disapproves, but sees the problem in racial terms. Reptiles, for him, are white men:

“Whitey cold,” Jason said. “Cold inside.” He began to utter the dark poetry in his soul. “Colder than reptile. Don’ have no emotions. Come to de Gents for de sex wid another reptile. Don’ come for the wife, don’ wan family, maybe don’ even want de other man. Come. Afterwards go.”

The supervisor, Reynolds, is less judgemental. His main concern is that the council doesn’t decide to close the place down and put all three of them out of work. As he says: “We don’t keep their conscience, we only keeping order.” Later, he comments: “Reptile not dangerous. Danger come from man who hate reptile.”

The third man, Ez, who provides the novel’s main focus, is initially incredulous that such things happen, then, despite himself, curious and, finally, thoughtful. In one finely-written passage, he is described observing a cubicle in which two men are having sex:

Ez glanced at the cubicle. It seemed, in the fervent silence, that it was vibrating slightly, like a washing machine, as though various pieces of clothing were being thrown against the side. Then the machine seemed to switch itself off, to utter a soft sigh.

Talking to his wife, Martha, - and the relationship between Ez and Martha is one of the subtlest things in the book - he distinguishes between gay behaviour and what the reptiles get up to.

“Maybe these people not gay. Gay men mostly don’t have to come to dis place. Go to other places. Dese men family men, lonely men.”

As the novel develops, the complex, interdependent relationship between the two groups, each, in its way, oppressed and at risk, becomes more evident. When the ecological balance that enables the attendants and the ‘reptiles’ to survive is threatened by bureaucracy in the form of the implacable Mrs Steerhouse, something needs to be done. The solution the three men find – and I won’t reveal it here - is both humane and practical.

This short novel says more about racial tension, the economics of labour and sexual politics than many books ten times its length. It could have been anti-gay but contrives to have a grace and lightness of touch that distinguish it from more widely-known overtly gay-friendly books. As an ex-reptile I wholeheartedly recommend it.

You can buy it here.

Leg

At last...

...a charitable way to waste your time, and improve your vocabulary. Click here.

As you can see, the labels below are quite irrelevant and are merely attached to this post to draw in the unwary and allow them to do something useful for a few moments.

Hey! Save money!

I've just noticed, from the Amazon box in my side bar that allows you to pre-order LITTLE MONSTERS, that the price has dropped from £14.99 to only £9.89.

I'm not sure how Amazon works, so this may not be a good thing. But it would be a pity to miss the chance to save some money. Unless, of course, you've already paid the full whack. In which case your reward will be karmic but not, alas, monetary. Either way, I love you.

Right?

Squabbling over kippers

Finally, a story that combines great literature, down-and-dirty sex with minors, gratuitous violence and, er, cultural heritage issues. The house in London in which Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud loved, wrote and fought over smoked fish has been saved from property developers thanks to the pioneering work of the charity Poets in the City. They plan to turn the house into a rendezvous for the poets' admirers and creative offspring.

"It is probably going to be more tea and cake than absinthe," said Graham Henderson chief executive of Poets in the City. "A lot of people have been working hard over a long period of time to get the house saved.

"It is all on the drawing board at the minute, but we envisage a place that is a celebration of Verlaine and Rimbaud, where poets and enthusiasts can meet, do research and hold events."

The house is in Royal College Street, so if you're feeling vaguely maudit, you know where to go.

PS. By pure chance I spent two weeks last year in one of the buildings Verlaine lived in during his years in Paris, in rue Nollet, just round the corner from Place du Clichy. I don't have a photograph to prove this (and I'm sure you believe me in any case). But I do have one I took during my stay which captures something of the rather dark and perverse nature of the two poets' relationship.

Here it is.

Out of strength comes forth, er, strength

Grr! I don't know what else to say. Thanks to the generosity and impeccable taste of Ms Baroque, I've received the award A Roar for Powerful Words, initiated by The Shameless Lions Writing Circle in recognition of powerful writing. Naturally, I'm privileged and flattered by the award, and also, oddly, emasculated, as though everything I'll write from now on will be floppy and lamb-like and utterly unworthy. Such is honour.

And like most honours, it comes with strings attached. I have to: "list three things I believe are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs I want to honour, who in turn pass it on to five others, etc etc." Hmm. I'll do my best.

Three necessary things (assuming that one has something to say) for good, powerful writing:

1. Experience of other people's good, powerful writing. By which I mean that you shouldn't just write, write, write, but read, read, read, read. Read.

2. The ability to revise, ruthlessly, and to listen to criticism (which doesn't necessarily involve its blind acceptance).

3. An awareness that what you write might have weight, might hurt or flatter, or change someone's day or invite response; in other words, that what you are doing is not solipsistic, but social, and consequential. Be brave, be honest, but listen.

Five blogs I'd like to honour? This is much easier:

Writing Neuroses
Vanessa Gebbie
David Isaak
Chancelucky
Fictionbitch

Go forth and multiply.

War criminal bombs in China, seeks refuge in Vatican

If you've seen a British newspaper in the last couple of days, you can write this post yourself.

If you haven't, just google Blair + China + Catholic.

And then move on. After all, isn't that what Jesus would have done?

Taxonomies

Remember Dewey? The man who classified books in a meaningful way? (Because all taxonomies are meaningful.) Well… Browsing in the Wolverhampton branch of W.H. Smiths today, I noticed that the Biography section has a subsection entitled Tragic Life Stories - occupying, incidentally, slightly more than half of the section, for without tragedy we are nothing.

And there, among the various descendants of Angela’s Ashes, from Peltzer to whoever that man was who lied to Oprah and was subsequently execrated (A Thousand Pieces of Something? I honestly can’t remember), what did I find? David Blunkett (ex-Home Secretary) and Victoria Beckham (ex-Spice Girl).

What a fragile thing happiness is.

Camels

I have a thing about camels. I love their stoicism and superciliousness, as though their hump or humps contained not only life-maintaining fat but also life-enhancing forbearance. I have a small gold camel round my neck; I stroke it often, for inspiration. There are days, I admit it, when I aspire to camelhood.

So, I’m amused but also slightly hurt, to see that someone very important in Saudi Arabia has issued a fatwa (remember: short for fatuous waffle) against camel beauty contests. On the grounds that the camels, when asked what they most want, say “World peace”?

Mud

One of the saddest aspects of the way Silvio Berlusconi has skewed political and civil life in Italy is the arsenal he's chosen to vilify and discredit his adversaries. As long as these are politicians it’s part and parcel – unfortunately – of the way debate is conducted here, in no small measure thanks to Berlusconi himself – surely the only national leader in the west who would claim that communists not only eat babies, but boil them first – and to the gaggle of publicists and lawyers he’s surrounded by, mud-slingers all. But his vulgar ad hominem attacks have also been directed at two men, both journalists, both now dead, whose professional behaviour was never less than impeccable and whose political positions were far closer to any normal idea of what a respectable centre (-right) might be than is Berlusconi’s own: Indro Montanelli and Enzo Biagi. By attacking these men, Berlusconi has shown his contempt for the principle of a free press.

Montanelli died in 2001. Fiercely anti-communist, critical of the Christian Democratic hegemony, the target of a knee-capping attack by the Red Brigades, Montanelli had worked for Corriere della Sera until it veered left, after which he edited Il Giornale. Heavily indebted, the paper was bought by Berlusconi in 1977. In 1993, when Forza Italia was founded, Berlusconi apparently turned up at the editorial offices and informed the staff that the paper would support his every political move. Montanelli resigned, accusing Berlusconi of being anti-democratic. Berlsuconi’s campaign of vilification began, and continued until the journalist’s death.

Enzo Biagi died yesterday, after a 60-year career as a journalist in print and, subsequently, television. Berlusconi was gunning for the man long before he officially entered politics, after Biagi questioned his financial links with Bettino Craxi, the then-head of the Socialist Party, so it wasn’t surprising that he should have included Biagi’s name in his famous Bulgarian edict against those who made a ‘criminal’ use of the television. A feature of totalitarianism – and advertising – is that things rarely do what it says on the tin. Indeed, as Orwell taught us, they tend to do the opposite. So it’s wryly amusing – the kind of humour Biagi most appreciated – that Berlusconi should regard Biagi as criminal. What is less amusing is that the journalist was profoundly hurt by the supine way in which Italian state television simply turned its back on him, and kept it turned. By the time Berlusconi was once more in opposition, Biagi was too ill to do more than make a token come-back to TV.

It isn’t just mud on Berlusconi’s hands.

Good news

The website God Hates Fags has been down for the past few days. Let's do all we can to keep it that way. In the meantime, read this interview with 'pro-lifer' Neal Horsley, who may not like abortions but isn't averse to a touch of cross-species diddling.

And if you're hungry for more, click here.

Polls, suggestions for

After the phenomenal success of my toilet paper survey, I'm thinking about my next poll. I'm looking for something challenging, witty and, well, world-enhancing. A genuinely large question. And no filth.

Any ideas?

Good riddance to...

...Don Oreste Benzi, the smarmy sanctimonious little twat priest who took it upon himself to conduct funeral services for foetuses, said that scantily-dressed women had only themselves to blame if they were raped, pestered sex workers with his medieval twaddle about redemption (his greatest publicity stunt was to get JP2 to kiss a Nigerian prostitute with AIDS) and had this to say about homosexuality:

«Le relazioni omosessuali sono contro natura e sono nocive al Bene della società… L'omosessualità è una deviazione. Se uno non lo cura è un vizio... (translation: Homosexual relationships are against nature and damage society. Homosexuality is a deviation. If it isn't treated it becomes a vice).

If you speak Italian, you might find this interview instructive.

THE GOLDEN FLEECE

This is the third section in the sequence of poems dedicated to the Golden Fleece. If you want to know what happened earlier, click on one and two.

CHIRON

1

They’re pushing and shoving to get through

the gate, where darkness appears to be

calling the numbers out. He rides

in a Ferris wheel, wearing the hats of his

numerous god-like fathers. Erotic blockades

slow them all down for a second’s

check on the purchase of their sexuality

and they’re off! harried by waves

into lines of hysterical

bunting above the judges.

A scent of madness

is one thing they share with

the mythic world, which is perhaps

eager to see them gone. It walks

towards an open window without flinching

at the word ‘outside’.

Those waters run deep.

They have, it would seem, been somewhere else

and to drink

is to be alone with them.

To be alone

is one way of living with darkness.

To live with darkness

is one way of counting the flags in the breeze.

And then the breeze drops and the flags are still.

2

It does not always want to be heard.

We extend the untended colonies

just as the travellers

hung in suspension

like an uncut coil of piston rings

will spiral down a staircase

to possess the earth.

And isn’t that

the kind of spiritual miscarriage

only a man with imagination could father,

his long-range devices scattered

across a favourite landscape

whose colour is local to itself. Nostalgic barque.

The fruit of the pine.

This is where nothing need be named.

3

The least confusing thing

opens the voice to boredom and so the voice

becomes desperate, at times confused,

seeming to shut itself out of whatever is

likely to happen. As though I were on the point of

telling you a story about yourself

that has barely begun or describing the room

in which you read

or inventing a language whose logic

would be glass-like and open

onto a brighter garden than the one you know.

All that could be done. Like plaiting strands of

maidenhair

or waiting for the wind to lift or crawling

through the mouth of a cave towards the sound of

falling water and an unexpected, unwanted light.

Anything that doesn’t hurt is transparent

as finding an old

unanswered letter from someone who

signs himself ‘J’. A story

that does not ask to be told. All of its

trickily-guarded secrets are realised before the end.

It makes up a bed in the guest-room for the voice,

flirting before it dies.

4

Love becomes local and woven

into the webbing as dark wings

cover the cathedral square.

I think I am shelling peanuts

or leaving the floor to be cleaned

by someone else as a part of me

scrapes the earth and a part

of me dreams one plausible

end after another. Hopeless

languages are house guests here,

waiting to be entertained with

wine that loosens the tongue as a

prelude to the bird’s vain

silvery gift on your shoulder.

5

Nothing to be done to protect oneself from that

danger, I told him. He listened

as one listens to wind make small talk out of empty

withdrawing hours. The weight of a slow and reluctant

withdrawal into space,

out of the body, into the space of my own. Nothing

can be done. Do everything, emulate

everything. The weight of the city is only partly

disguised by its crimson balloon-like walls

and the voices you hear are truly the voices of

wanting to be possessed. The sadness and evasions

vanish or become

a crueller, more substantial element

than you are used to,

and what is left you can be had.

What wants to be possessed is soft and heavy

as soaking cloth or the terrible lack of

colour inside the body

and the bands that herald darkness are coming soon.

6

One day I shall be taken

into that darkness, and left with the drum.

I shall hold out my arms to be written on,

waking to silence.

This will happen

and no way of talking about it now

can stop me taking the slips,

unfolding them, calling the numbers out,

assigning them each to each.

But the events call out their own,

are pushy like people who make it

in small boats off the cold, unpopulated

coast, or lean on the rails of liners

staring down. The several skins

hold everything, howling, at bay as

small waves eat the moon.

The Scent of Cinnamon: sixth review

Another review that takes a look at a few of the O. Henry Prize stories (including mine!) can be found here. It comes from Inside Bay Area.

Keith Banner: The Smallest People Alive

This is an extraordinary book that finds its truths and lyricism in lives that seem to offer almost nothing. The stories are peopled by the clinically obese, retards, workers in dead-end jobs, the lonely, the handicapped: the smallest people alive. What's more, they're wise and self-aware enough to know who they are and how little they're owed. What saves them is love, or the possibility of it, of crumbs from love's table. Most of the stories deal with gay men or boys, but that should exclude no one from their power and, often, humour. I was touched and amused, and deeply impressed, by Banner's capacity to make the world he describes not only real but of value.

You can read a story from the collection here. And don't miss the links for other stories at the bottom of the page.