Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

Julian Barnes's England, England is twenty years old now but still pertinent if not alarmingly prescient in some of its litany of satirical vignettes.
And, yes, I do sometimes write sentences like an Oxford undergraduate but only for a laugh.
It is a satire on theme park reproduction England in which the Isle of Wight is bought up and made into a tourist attraction of all the English things tourists come here for, except in replica, which doesn't matter, and it replaces the original, which subsequently declines into perceived backwardness. Barnes just piles up point after point in what is another variation on his theme of the 'played-out'.
There is a problem with the reproduction smugglers, which is that they start smuggling, but the most telling part is where England is foreseen as having left the EU, and in the end were so much trouble in negotiations that Europe paid us to go.
Perhaps we could pay Farage, Gove, Rees-Mogg and Boris to go and that would be the best way of making progress but Barnesy wasn't far off the mark twenty years back when Leave seemed unimaginable.
The culture is by now further down the line but fake news, the celebrity of celebrity itself and post-post-modernism of so much knowing fakery is implicit in England, England and no different from 1984 being written in 1948 and regarded as 'science fiction' only by those who didn't realize it had happened already.
 

Rather different but more impressive, if anything, was Mina Loy's novel, Insel, not published in her lifetime but available since 2014 from Melville House. I found it a few months ago and it has remained in the 'to do' pile for a while because although Loy is a big hero of mine, pin-up girl of the avant-garde in both Europe and New York, her poems are forbiddingly difficult. The novel proves to be anything but and is a glorious virtuoso performance of rich, evocative prose. The trepidation of attempting it was immediately rewarded with an impressive account of the art dealer's relationship with the dilinquent genius painter, Insel, who is the last word in being in the gutter but looking at the stars.
It is best read not only as a traditional examination of the divide between the bohemian and the bourgeoise but, giving it more credit, as a satire on surrealism as well.  Mina Loy's standing is enhanced by some yards by having read this. What one would really like next is a copy of her essays and stories in that half-hearted way that I'm never a completist but like to have most things that matter by anybody that's any good. However, £118 for one book. I have my limits and it would be cheaper to buy a kindle and download the kindle edition. But I'm afraid nothing is important enough to make me buy a kindle.  
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But one can be grateful for the far too many television channels there are when, having been created, they then have to trawl the archives for material to show. Not just Julie Christie, Alan Bates and the dastardly Terence Stamp in Far From the Mading Crowd that I happened upon last night - what can you do, you can't not watch it even if Julie Christie was a bit too perfectly manicured to suspend disbelief with any conviction- but New York Rock at the BBC on the Yesterday channel. I didn't see it all but John Cale, David Byrne and the gorgeous Antony Hegarty, as well as the entirely to-be-expected Lou and Patti, more than made up for the entirely unworthy Strokes that were less of a grand finale but a reason to flick over to see what else was elsewhere. Regrettably, though, I'm not adventurous enough. What I really wanted was a couple of John Cale albums but there were too many to choose from. So I ended up with another copy of the Velvet Underground banana CD in case I only have it on LP and Songs for Drella. The trouble is I never play such things and by the time they arrive I won't be feeling anywhere near as New York.