Chekhov and Nico

 An unlikely pairing, you might think, but there are always points of comparison to be found. Not that I'm going to look for them here.

There's a lot to dislike about The Shooting Party  - the characters. But plenty to admire in it otherwise. It works like an episode of Midsomer Murders except the murder comes later on than usual. None of the potential suspects are likeable and neither is the victim but Chekhov points up clues by way of footnotes to what is ostensibly the text of a novel framed within the novel itself. So, quite how much of a 'big reveal' it is at the end, I'm not sure, and we don't really need the Conclusion, or much of it. It is counted as Chekhov juvenilia and maybe isn't quite proper Chekhov. We might label as 'juvenilia' any work that isn't quite like that which the artist became known for rather than early work because there are those who begin with their best and fail to follow it up in which case a word is required for the later work to identify it as not the best stuff. Artists ought to be credited with a reputation based on their best work. We/they all have lesser items in the back catalogue that might have seemed good ideas at the time but don't last. The best are, of course, those that leave an oeuvre of some consistency with not much that we could do without.

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I wouldn't say that one needs all of Nico's limited output. You don't want to listen to too much of it at once, anyway. In a rare excursion into the pop CD's, I dug out the Innocent & Vain compilation - and why isn't These Days on it- to accompany James Young's Songs They Never Play on the Radio. I had thought James might be one of those intrusive authors who makes themselves too much a part of the story they are telling but he has some right to do so because he was and he soon becomes an acceptable guide to the downbeat glamour of post-Velvets Nico, being clever and on the right side of a thin divide between someone to enjoy and one to be irritated by.

She must have been hard work in real life and those of us who admire her so much are best left to do so from this safe distance. But she genuinely doesn't seem to care, which is the heroin addict in her, it's easy to diagnose. If the Velvets didn't like her it was probably more because Lou and John were put out by Warhol putting her at the front but since he was providing their opportunities they weren't in any sort of bargaining position.

The outrageous glamour is as illusory as glamour usually is although Nico's way of doing it is the equal and opposite of Diana Ross's. She has no money, is in Manchester, ageing and not dyed blonde any more. That is the monochrome, monotone sort of glamour that might look 'cool' from the outside but the emptiness is less attractive if you are the one that has to live it. Those appear to be the terms on which Nico was 'glamorous' and it isn't so glamorous on closer inspection. Dismissive, bored and aloof, it makes one wonder what's so cool about 'cool'. I'll report back after the full 207 pages.

That shouldn't be long. It looks like being captivating and it might be short enough not to get on my nerves. Longer books about Lou tend to do that given time. As ever there is some disparity between the great art and the personality that made it.