A Red Letter Day

Red Letter days were originally the highlighted saints' days in religious calendars, but I'm nicking it for literature. Today seems quite a popular one for Canonical (see what I did there) births and deaths: Descartes, Gogol and Fowles were born on this day, while Donne, Charlotte Brontë and Anne Frank died (or were killed) today. If I could suspend my disbelief for a second, imagine the conversations they'd be having in heaven… Though I suspect Fowles is headed for The Other Place. Donne, I imagine, would be explaining to the prettier angels why he wrote sexual religious poetry and religious sex poetry.

Gogol, of course, wrote Dead Souls, a weird and hugely funny sort-of-novel which uses Dante's Inferno as an intertext to examine the lives of Russian serfs (in part), so imagining his afterlife isn't too offensive.

In reality of course, they live on (or not) through their books. That should be enough. Unfortunately, my memorial will be this blog: lots of lo-fi and some cheap shots at a mediocre MP.

O Tempora, O Mores

Album of the Day: Beirut, Gulag Orkestar

This was a present from my fencing mate, John, who has a much more eclectic musical tastes than I. I'd never heard of Berlin, whose real name is Zach Condon. In all honesty, I didn't play it for ages because John's into mostly laptronica, which I can take or leave, and because the album's name annoyed me.






When I did play Gulag Orkestar, I was pleasantly surprised. It's not hugely innovative (gentle indie plus bits of East European folk stylings, like a light version of Gogol Bordello) but it's cool as long as you don't examine the lyrics too closely. Unless you're a hippy, in which case you'll be fine singing along. It's a fine album - lots of accordion and good arrangements with some striking steals from all sorts of folk traditions (the Klezmer bits are excellent) but the album slips away without establishing much hold on my tune detectors.