David Peace, Novelist

Given how much they simplified the various evil men down into a few compound characters, I'm surprised they didn't signpost the shifts in chronology a bit more in the last one

i thought that episode was the best by far.

although was quite confused that Piggott's father didn't actually feature in the earlier episodes as far as i could remember.

i was confused by more than that, right enough.

also, sakia reeves is v hot.

ok I just also read the last 30 pages of the book.

they did a bit of a blade runner on that

there was something magnificently grotesque about Mark Addy's bloated curry swilling turn in this

I was like how jealous of how fat he was

That was the best episode for sure, partially coz the acting was better. Mark Addy was great and really caught the smoking-pot-with-northern-girls-too-young-for-you vibe to a tee.

The ending was nothing like the ending to the quartet. I don't think I'm spoilering anything for anyone saying that.

For a minute I thought Sean Bean was still alive in the TV adaption!

yes, you had to look out for david morrissey's very subtly different glasses to know whether you were in the 70s or the 80s.

I think that the photoshopping here (with the alt-text Brian Clough gives a seminar) might be way better than the Damned United flick.

Also presence of Warren Clarke = 1974.

I wonder how Peace feels about the newly chipper ending tacked onto his masterpiece, particularly given his express distrust/hatred of all visual media

having not read the quartet (thouh have read gb84, which was impressive but hard work), is there any spoiler-free way of explaining how the book ending differs?

Take any happiness out for starters.

It's pretty much diametrically opposed. Martin Laws still dies but somebody else kills him.

Also a guy who was mostly ignored in the films reappears for a creepy/redemptive moment with Maurice

Also in the books Martin Laws is just the string puller/ringleader; the people who actually do the murders in the book aren't in the films at all

yikes... well, something to look forward to when i read the books, anyway. is the role of piggott's father explained any clearer? and, in fact, are the circumstances clearer in the book than, say, GB84, which lost me a couple of times.

GB84 is a model of clarity compared to the twisted mess at the end of the quartet.

I was thinking of doing a flowcahrt of all the connections between people in the books. Seeing how messy it would get.

was going over some of it in my head earlier and realising I will never be explain it to anyone ever and gave up

re: cheerful ending, the book also hammers home the impending doom of 1983 increased Tory majority while all the bad things are happening, in case you might be tempted to think that people outside Yorkshire were probably doing fine

weird, david peace had a poem in the guardian earlier but now i can't find it.

saw the rest of the trilogy 1980 was good. 1983 was shite.

A Prediction for the Year 2009

One fine and awful day, thirty years too late, in a full and empty Abbey, to a society that is no society, a great and stupid man, he says:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out her coffin, let the mourners come -

For Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message She is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves -

For Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

She was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song:
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong -

For Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good -

For Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

Now suddenly, as if by magick, the doors of the Abbey swing open wide and a corpse down the aisle he strides, followed by another, and another, and another; the great British people resurrected, they shout:

Start all the clocks, re-nationalize the phones,
Give back to us dogs our juicy bones,
Strike the piano and bang the drum
Scatter her bones and let the morning come -

Now Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

Let yer aeroplanes circle cheering overhead
Scribbling on the sky their message She is Dead,
But there'll be crepe nooses round the necks of all you leaders,
For our gloves are off and so now you will heed us -

Now Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

For WE are your North, your South, your East and West,
A once working week for your Sunday rest,
Your noon, your midnight, your talk, your song:
You thought hate would last for ever: you were wrong -

Now Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead.

And the stars are here now, but they are every one,
So stop all this mooning and bring back the sun,
Pour away our tears and mop up our blood;
For nothing now can ever stop The Good -

Now Maggie, Maggie, Maggie is dead, dead, dead,
Maggie! Dead! Maggie! Dead!
Maggie, Maggie, Maggie - she is dead, dead, dead.

'shite' is a bit harsh: the lawyer was good.

but for all the hype, and there was a lot of hype, it was not significantly better than (say) that ciaran hinds/kelly reilly thing earlier this year that the prime suspect woman wrote.

been reading '1977' and though the adaptation argument is never-ending and usually tedious, it's fair to say they didn't catch peace's tone in any of these films. up to a point: good, he overdoes it a bit. but i don't think any of the directors 'got it' and went for the pretty safe option of being 'classy'.

I'd love to have been able to read The Damned Utd from the persepctive of having no knowledge of football or who Brian Clough was, wonder how it would read

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Tom D.), Thursday, January 8, 2009 7:07 AM

I fact, I still don't know how to pronounce the guy's name. Today I'm assuming it's "Cluff" in order to rhyme with "enough."

Right. Think of him as the Mark E. Smith of Association Football.

Because of his accent or because of his leadership style?

The latter.

And Peter Taylor is the Brix?

Nah, there's not really an equivalent of Peter Taylor. Craig Scanlon is John McGovern though.

To be honest, not knowing anything about the story made it better it some ways. I couldn't figure out how exactly he was going to get from Derby to Leeds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_EHlzd63R8

There is one scene in the book where he tells a story about Frank Sinatra and he says something like "I don't want to namedrop but he met me once, you know."

So, Occupied City is out now. Haven't read it myself, but Mark Sanderson has reviewed it for the Telegraph. I'm guessing this is the first David Peace book he's dipped into:

"Fans of David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet will be hugely disappointed[...]What really sinks the novel, though, is the endless repetition. 'I am falling, I am falling, I am falling,/I am falling, I am falling,/I am falling’, bleats a survivor, but the words could equally apply to Peace himself."

The repetition can get wearying, and definitely approaches self-parody at times (the "Guilty feet got no rhythm. Guilty feet got no rhythm." bit in GB84 took me straight out of the book), but at this stage - eight books in - you kinda know what you're getting with Peace. "Endless repetition" is part of the deal, for better or worse.

He does ramp it up a lot in the Tokyo ones to the point where you can't really bring yourself to read over a page of the same phrase repeated just to let it have whatever awesome effect he thinks it'll have on you.

Amazon reviews for Peace's book are frequently funny, like housewives going "I was led to expect some quality crime thriller but this is just an excuse for foul language!!! Disgraceful", like they saw an advert for it on the tube and expected some mildly edgy Patricia Cornwell shit.

There's a long review in the new LRB that has some good points but you need to be a subscriber to see it online.

BAD FUCKING BOWIE

i don't think i like him much, got one and a half books into red riding and gave them away. but whenever i am reminded of him the phrase 'bad fucking bowie' pops into my mind, and i am so pointlessly amused that i can't bring myself to actually dislike david peace

I've only read 1974, is this repetition thing something he developed later on or am I just that oblivious?

In the very beginning of that one there is a kind of repetition when Eddie Dunford is mentallly writing his article about the family's "emotional plea."

I like what MPx4A has to say. I just don't find the repetition particularly well done, let alone effective "voices" for his narrators. I think he actually works best when he's tackling something more mundane and less crimey like Damned Utd. I'd like to see him do a Houellebecq-style novella about a bored computer programmer, rather than read about a detective or other crime-solver or committer who seems impossibly driven on every page to vaguely plow forward through some kind of murky affect and vague illness. It sometimes reads less like a character's mind going in loops than an author kind of ostentatiously talking over his own characters' voices.

Red Riding films will be playing NY Film Fest. First I've heard of em.

I thought this was going to be an RIP Gordon Burn revive.

I just read a Joyce Carol Oates book called Beasts and for a while near the end it turned into a David Peace novel. I starting hearing the phrase "B. F. Bowie" in the back of my head. It was really kind of chilling to think that he had reappeared yet again, this time in college town New England.

Heavy manners coming down
Heavy manners coming down
Heavy country matters coming down

Or something like that.

PROSTITUTE MURDER SQUAD

so red riding is good or what? have a chance to go see a press screening next week and it sounds right up my alley

I found them a massive disappointment in the end, but might have felt differently if I'd never read the books, or if I was a US dude who wanted to see how massively grim Northern England could be in the 70s.

And what a massive cliche "massively grim Northern England in 70s" has become. The 80s were grimmer.

just watched the first one--wayyyy over the top w/ all the "grittiness" signifiers, felt pretty self-parodic at times. the fairly well-trodden storyline was actually a plus since it allowed me to follow the movie despite understanding 60% of the dialogue at best.

even so--camerawork was beautiful and ill watch sean bean in anything