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Carnal: To the point of scandal
A veritable multiverse of odd scribblings, encompassing forgotten British filmmakers, cartoons and comic strips, rigorous French theorists, the occult, street art, and internationally renowned photographers, presented in playful essays that are at-once compulsively readable and formally sophisticated.
Kevin Flanagan in the Introduction
I have heard it plausibly suggested that were the last 1,000 years of Western literary culture, and all of its cinematographic culture, to disappear from the earth, one of the things you'd need to be able to recreate it would be the contents of Kevin Jackson's brain. Quite true; and it would moreover be a very interesting kind of Western culture: maybe a bit more vampire-heavy, more geared towards the esoteric than the canon has traditionally admitted; for although clearly a child of the Enlightenment, he has none of the disdain of the superstitious and (to use a word that he borrowed off the late John Peel, when the DJ imagined how George W Bush might mangle the word 'spooky') enspookulating that often comes with the territory.
Nicholas Lezard, in the Preface
Illustrated by Hunt Emerson.
Kevin Flanagan in the Introduction
I have heard it plausibly suggested that were the last 1,000 years of Western literary culture, and all of its cinematographic culture, to disappear from the earth, one of the things you'd need to be able to recreate it would be the contents of Kevin Jackson's brain. Quite true; and it would moreover be a very interesting kind of Western culture: maybe a bit more vampire-heavy, more geared towards the esoteric than the canon has traditionally admitted; for although clearly a child of the Enlightenment, he has none of the disdain of the superstitious and (to use a word that he borrowed off the late John Peel, when the DJ imagined how George W Bush might mangle the word 'spooky') enspookulating that often comes with the territory.
Nicholas Lezard, in the Preface
Illustrated by Hunt Emerson.
484 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 2015
15 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Jackson
106 books16 followersThere is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.
Kevin Jackson's childhood ambition was to be a vampire but instead he became the last living polymath. His colossal expertise ranged from Seneca to Sugababes, with a special interest in the occult, Ruskin, take-away food, Dante's Inferno and the moose. He was the author of numerous books on numerous subjects, including Fast: Feasting on the Streets of London (Portobello 2006), and reviewed regularly for the Sunday Times.
From: http://portobellobooks.com/3014/Kevin...
Kevin Jackson was an English writer, broadcaster and filmmaker.
He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After teaching in the English Department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, he joined the BBC, first as a producer in radio and then as a director of short documentaries for television. In 1987 he was recruited to the Arts pages of The Independent. He was a freelance writer from the early 1990s and was a regular contributor to BBC radio discussion programmes.
Jackson often collaborated on projects in various media: with, among others, the film-maker Kevin Macdonald, with the cartoonist Hunt Emerson, with the musician and composer Colin Minchin (with whom he wrote lyrics for the rock opera Bite); and with the songwriter Peter Blegvad.
Jackson appears, under his own name, as a semi-fictional character in Iain Sinclair's account of a pedestrian journey around the M25, London Orbital.
Adapted from Wikipedia
Kevin Jackson's childhood ambition was to be a vampire but instead he became the last living polymath. His colossal expertise ranged from Seneca to Sugababes, with a special interest in the occult, Ruskin, take-away food, Dante's Inferno and the moose. He was the author of numerous books on numerous subjects, including Fast: Feasting on the Streets of London (Portobello 2006), and reviewed regularly for the Sunday Times.
From: http://portobellobooks.com/3014/Kevin...
Kevin Jackson was an English writer, broadcaster and filmmaker.
He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After teaching in the English Department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, he joined the BBC, first as a producer in radio and then as a director of short documentaries for television. In 1987 he was recruited to the Arts pages of The Independent. He was a freelance writer from the early 1990s and was a regular contributor to BBC radio discussion programmes.
Jackson often collaborated on projects in various media: with, among others, the film-maker Kevin Macdonald, with the cartoonist Hunt Emerson, with the musician and composer Colin Minchin (with whom he wrote lyrics for the rock opera Bite); and with the songwriter Peter Blegvad.
Jackson appears, under his own name, as a semi-fictional character in Iain Sinclair's account of a pedestrian journey around the M25, London Orbital.
Adapted from Wikipedia
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June 30, 2020Since I started reading this essay collection, not only has the bookshop where I bought it closed down (and this is even before they all did), but of the people whose blurbs inspired me to pick it up, I've gone off one altogether, and spent some months sitting next to another's daughter at work (which itself was back when work took place in, well, another place, and could not be reached in one's slippers). Adding another gloss of distance to what already felt like a catalogue of a lost world. The subjects go further back (not least to the even more capacious, but in some ways not dissimilar, Anatomy Of Melancholy), and occasionally a little forward, but for the most part it feels like an ark preserving that peculiar bohemian-intellectual world which was one of the 20th century's ornaments. Some of the canonical stuff is here, but mostly it's the people a little off-centre (Anthony Burgess appears more than once), if not the concepts right at the limit of respectability ('pataphysics; vampires; the conceptual kingdom of Redonda, in whose ludicrous succession struggles I am considering investing myself as both less stressful and less stupid than the real news). Already I've bought one book, occult cider oddity It Never Gets Dark All Night, off the back of the introduction reprinted here. Several more have been noted down for if I ever resume book-buying. In the meantime, I suspect Jackson's descriptions will often have been more enlightening and entertaining than a first-hand encounter would have been anyway.
June 14, 2015
Kevin Jackson had me at "Hello".
(It's tempting to say that he had me at "Perge, scelus, mihi diem perficias" (p. 129) - of which more anon - but it's not strictly true. He got me roughly 128 pages sooner.)
Carnal is a collection of essays spanning the last twenty-odd years, essays on film and photography and writing and more besides. Individually, they are sparkling vignettes of people and the worlds they create. Assembled, they are a powerful, penetrating commentary on the social and cultural forces that have shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
It may save you time if you just accept that Dr Jackson knows everything. It is probably true, though unprovable, since the scientific instrument has not yet been invented that can accurately measure the scope of his knowledge. (In the words of the Preface: "I have heard it plausibly suggested that were the last 1,000 years of Western literary culture, and all of its cinematographic culture, to disappear from the earth, one of the things you'd need to be able to recreate it would be the contents of his brain.")
It can go one of two ways, that kind of omniscience. It can lead either to insufferable one-upmanship or, as in Jackson's case, to an unparalleled generosity. He is neither brash nor self-effacing about his omniscience; he has too much to share with us, and is having far too much fun sharing it. He moves fluidly, effortlessly, from the Simpsons to the occult, from graffiti to vampires to money, from George Melly to Georges Méliès. He is a true polymath among polymaths; he describes one of his subjects as "only interested in everything"; it is an epithet which applies equally well to Jackson himself.
He has a knack for treating every subject, however populist or arcane, with equal respect and without fear (witness, for example, his treatment of Maya Deren's research into voodoo, or his essay "The pataphysical Flook"). Moreover, however mainstream or obscure his subject matter, he has a gift for explaining both it and its cultural context to a reader who, whilst moderately well-educated and well-informed, may have little or no previous frame of reference for some of the material under advisement.
Items on my newly- and vastly-expanded bucket list include... well, I think to do them justice I would need to be kidnapped and held hostage in an undisclosed location, with unlimited access to his collection of books and films. Films too numerous to mention, from Kind Hearts and Coronets (which I last saw when I was a skinny youth) to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (which I last saw... er, to my shame, never). Paul Auster's novel Leviathan; William Hayward's It Never Gets Dark All Night. Gilbert Adair's Buenas Noches, Buenos Aires (not least for the tantalising statement that it is "the only novel I can think of in which the emotional power of the last line - which is considerable - turns on a question of typography"). Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Donald Davie and Charles Cuddon. The entire literary and musical output of Anthony Burgess... Enough to keep me going for a lifetime or two. And, of course, Jackson's own films, starting with Exquisite Corpse (yes, I promise to read the book too).
Three particularly delicious morsels stand out amongst this smorgasbord. There is the inspired parody of Prufrock - The Lahv Song of J. Arfur Rank - which concludes his essay on Eliot. There is the opening of "Cocktails with Genesis", describing his encounter with Genesis P-Orridge. Both led to helpless laughter in public places, and the latter resulted in extensive coffee-damage to my shirtfront. You have been warned. No spoilers for either: buy the book and see for yourself.
And then there is the revelation that Sir Christopher Frayling (another polymath, of course, lately Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chairman of the Arts Council) had, upon being knighted, selected as his motto "Perge, scelus, mihi diem perficias", translated by the College of Heralds as "Proceed, varlet, and may the day be perfected for my benefit", and by Clint Eastwood as "Go ahead, punk, make my day". I have had huge respect for Sir Christopher since hearing him speak at the RSA ten years ago, and I would go more than a few miles out of my way to hear him again, but this little nugget makes me see him in an entirely different light, and really did perfect the day for my benefit.
It's important stuff, this, for two reasons. Firstly, because Jackson's vocabulary - like Russell Baker's - is the language of wit, not of hate. He can and does deploy his huge critical talent without needing to belittle, snipe or trivialise. Secondly, because his commentary on the cultural oxygen we all breathe - whether or not we are aware of it - is an essential counterbalance to the omnipresent online narratives of social entrepreneurs and political commentators - always passionate, sometimes coherent - who would otherwise have us believe that the entirety of human experience can be defined in socio-political terms. (Pergite, sceli…)
I come back here to Christopher Frayling, who first introduced me (in that RSA lecture in 2005) to Ruskin's statement: "Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. ... [O]f the three the only trustworthy one is the last..."
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kevin Jackson's Carnal, the book of our art. It is an entirely trustworthy book.
(It's tempting to say that he had me at "Perge, scelus, mihi diem perficias" (p. 129) - of which more anon - but it's not strictly true. He got me roughly 128 pages sooner.)
Carnal is a collection of essays spanning the last twenty-odd years, essays on film and photography and writing and more besides. Individually, they are sparkling vignettes of people and the worlds they create. Assembled, they are a powerful, penetrating commentary on the social and cultural forces that have shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
It may save you time if you just accept that Dr Jackson knows everything. It is probably true, though unprovable, since the scientific instrument has not yet been invented that can accurately measure the scope of his knowledge. (In the words of the Preface: "I have heard it plausibly suggested that were the last 1,000 years of Western literary culture, and all of its cinematographic culture, to disappear from the earth, one of the things you'd need to be able to recreate it would be the contents of his brain.")
It can go one of two ways, that kind of omniscience. It can lead either to insufferable one-upmanship or, as in Jackson's case, to an unparalleled generosity. He is neither brash nor self-effacing about his omniscience; he has too much to share with us, and is having far too much fun sharing it. He moves fluidly, effortlessly, from the Simpsons to the occult, from graffiti to vampires to money, from George Melly to Georges Méliès. He is a true polymath among polymaths; he describes one of his subjects as "only interested in everything"; it is an epithet which applies equally well to Jackson himself.
He has a knack for treating every subject, however populist or arcane, with equal respect and without fear (witness, for example, his treatment of Maya Deren's research into voodoo, or his essay "The pataphysical Flook"). Moreover, however mainstream or obscure his subject matter, he has a gift for explaining both it and its cultural context to a reader who, whilst moderately well-educated and well-informed, may have little or no previous frame of reference for some of the material under advisement.
Items on my newly- and vastly-expanded bucket list include... well, I think to do them justice I would need to be kidnapped and held hostage in an undisclosed location, with unlimited access to his collection of books and films. Films too numerous to mention, from Kind Hearts and Coronets (which I last saw when I was a skinny youth) to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (which I last saw... er, to my shame, never). Paul Auster's novel Leviathan; William Hayward's It Never Gets Dark All Night. Gilbert Adair's Buenas Noches, Buenos Aires (not least for the tantalising statement that it is "the only novel I can think of in which the emotional power of the last line - which is considerable - turns on a question of typography"). Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Donald Davie and Charles Cuddon. The entire literary and musical output of Anthony Burgess... Enough to keep me going for a lifetime or two. And, of course, Jackson's own films, starting with Exquisite Corpse (yes, I promise to read the book too).
Three particularly delicious morsels stand out amongst this smorgasbord. There is the inspired parody of Prufrock - The Lahv Song of J. Arfur Rank - which concludes his essay on Eliot. There is the opening of "Cocktails with Genesis", describing his encounter with Genesis P-Orridge. Both led to helpless laughter in public places, and the latter resulted in extensive coffee-damage to my shirtfront. You have been warned. No spoilers for either: buy the book and see for yourself.
And then there is the revelation that Sir Christopher Frayling (another polymath, of course, lately Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chairman of the Arts Council) had, upon being knighted, selected as his motto "Perge, scelus, mihi diem perficias", translated by the College of Heralds as "Proceed, varlet, and may the day be perfected for my benefit", and by Clint Eastwood as "Go ahead, punk, make my day". I have had huge respect for Sir Christopher since hearing him speak at the RSA ten years ago, and I would go more than a few miles out of my way to hear him again, but this little nugget makes me see him in an entirely different light, and really did perfect the day for my benefit.
It's important stuff, this, for two reasons. Firstly, because Jackson's vocabulary - like Russell Baker's - is the language of wit, not of hate. He can and does deploy his huge critical talent without needing to belittle, snipe or trivialise. Secondly, because his commentary on the cultural oxygen we all breathe - whether or not we are aware of it - is an essential counterbalance to the omnipresent online narratives of social entrepreneurs and political commentators - always passionate, sometimes coherent - who would otherwise have us believe that the entirety of human experience can be defined in socio-political terms. (Pergite, sceli…)
I come back here to Christopher Frayling, who first introduced me (in that RSA lecture in 2005) to Ruskin's statement: "Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art. ... [O]f the three the only trustworthy one is the last..."
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Kevin Jackson's Carnal, the book of our art. It is an entirely trustworthy book.
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