Narrow Dog to Carcassonne by Terry Darlington

Give or take Driving over Lemons or French Revolutions, I very rarely read travel books, though there are a vast quantity of them out there. I also hardly ever touch humorous writing, because it doesn’t tend to make me laugh and is more likely to make me depressed. Call me contrary.

For some reason, Narrow Dog to Carcassonne caught my eye, and it appealed to me. I enjoyed Tim Moore’s attempt to “do” the Tour de France, and I always enjoy reading about the foibles of the French. After all, I married a French girl and I have to deal with the foibles of my in-laws all the time. There are things I still haven’t got used to, even after 15 years, such as the need to personally greet every single person in a room and then personally say farewell, even if you are only popping in to drop something off or pick something up. I know I should appreciate the slower pace of life, but I’m English and impatient and for me a slower pace of life means having more time to do stuff that I want to do, not filling hours with endless greetings.

Also, I can never quite get my head round the opening hours, something Terry Darlington notices, too:

The town had a restaurant but it was shut, because it was Tuesday. We had not realised that on Mondays, and sometimes Tuesdays or Wednesdays, or at weekends or at lunchtime, or in the late summer, or in the winter, everything is shut in France.

Il exagère, slightly, but the point is well made.

I liked Darlington’s style, and his technique of not bothering with punctuation for speech, and his clever literal translations of some French expressions, a habit I follow myself. I am desolated, I said, as I ordered a coffee, I have only a twenty-euro note. No problem, monsieur, said the patron, I beg of you.

The premise is this: the Darlingtons, retired, take their Whippet Jim and their English narrowboat Phyllis May across the channel and brave the vast French waterways (canals and raging rivers built on a scale that is alien to these shores) in an attempt to travel from Staffordshire to Carcassonne, in the Languedoc. Taking a narrowboat across the busiest shipping lane in the world is madness, they are told, but they do it anyway, and in defiance of all good sense and advice they follow their ambitions to the South of France.

The strength of this book is that half the time you wish you were there, and the other half you swear you would never try. You find yourself idly thinking about hiring a boat for a week or two and exploring the Burgundy Canal, or the Saône, and then you read about the locks (one every km on the Burgundy) or the scariness of rivers like the Rhône, and you decide against.

Many of the places the Darlingtons mention in the text are hard to find on a map, because they’re little places on the river/canal as opposed to the bigger place you’ve heard of that’s slightly further away, so you get an impression of a less well-known part of France, but not enough of one, I think. The journey is impressionistic, and the long hours spent between these places are not mentioned. I’m not even sure how long the whole journey takes, or how long a given stretch of canal/river might take. It’s a two-year trip, in two halves, and the Paris to Carcassonne stretch takes from Easter to September. Once I got to the bit about the forty locks in two days on the Burgundy canal, or the staircase locks at Fonsérannes, I had decided against all boating holidays.

An enjoyable read, and fairly amusing. There’s a sequel, in which they take the narrowboat across to the Eastern seaboard of the USA, but I don’t fancy that one.

Bob Dylan – Chronicles Volume I

This review by Rashbre.

Holyhoses Rob’s review is Here.

Dylan has been in my soundtrack for the last few weeks; when I recently stayed in SoHo I bought an album in Union Square and I just finished Bob Dylan’s Chronicles autobiography. The UK media is ready to celebrate Dylan’s portrait film by Martin Scorsese, and my co-incidental update prepares me for some interesting coverage.

No Direction Home is the Scorsese title including new rare footage. In the book, Dylan talks about the Gaslight Club, the areas around NYC’s SoHo, Greenwich Village and West Village where he played and hung out and references Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk and Allen Ginsberg.

I liked the beginning and end of his book a lot. The middle details Dylan’s recording work in an enthusiast’s way. The ends were more evocative, conveying the inner voice of Dylan. He makes good witness to his own life, candid and laconic.

There are some great book moments, like his description of his visit to Woody Guthrie’s home, wading across a swamp, meeting a young Arlo Guthrie whilst trying to track down manuscripts of additional Guthrie songs. He ultimately returns empty handed. Fast forward to Billy Bragg and Wilco some 40 years later using those manuscripts for the Mermaid Avenue album. All of Dylan, Bragg and Wilco treating it as a pilgrimage.

Scorsese’s film includes the famous performance from a militant Manchester Free Trade Hall, when a voice from the audience shouts “Judas!” Dylan leans into the microphone. “I don’t believe you,” he says and then after an electric pause – “You’re a liar.” As he blasts the Telecaster into “Rolling Stone” there is confusion, defiance and the start of another chapter.

Don’t look back.

Tag: music, guitar, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan: Chronicles Vol. 1

I've just about finished The Dylan's Chronicles Vol 1 now, and I really enjoyed it. One thing I'd say about it is that his style hasn't changed much. It's quite reminiscent of his early sleeve notes and even, dare I say it, Tarantula, which I read avidly (several times) as a teenager. Tarantula is seen as an embarrassment now, but I enjoyed it. I don't think I'd feel the same about it now, but that was then.

His narrative skills are deceptively brilliant. He starts, really, at the end of this initial "unknown in New York" stage, talking about meeting his song publisher. Then he drifts back to his amazement at being signed by the legendary Hammond, then back again to his arrival in New York, only then moving forward, mentioning the Cafe Wa? and the Folklore Centre.

There's always a sense that he wants to leave space around a subject. He'll approach it from angles, getting to the edge of a definition, and then he moves away and comes at it again. There's a natural ebb and flow to it. This is especially evident with his character sketches. He's allowing you to make you own mind up about somebody, without ever being so crass as to say something definitive. This is right, I think, because otherwise he'd be like one of those people who has to explain why the joke is funny.

It seems like a pretty skimpy book, to quote Holden Caulfield, but at the same time is so agreeable, like a meal with lots of different flavours and textures, that to read one or two pages at a time is satisfying.
He's saltatorial, he hops around. He writes a sentence and then contradicts it. He sees everything from all sides. And he puts you on, constantly. I mean, he's still very, very funny. Which it's easy to forget I think, with the media image of him. The media has a tendency to focus on things like, Blood on the Tracks, with liberal application of the autobiographical fallacy. Or they hear the tone of the voice in "Like a Rolling Stone" and they portray him as an angry young man, spitting venom. Actually he's probably quite easygoing, and sees humour in everything.

A typical example of this comes where he talks about some of the social changes that happened in the 60s; he talks about nuclear proliferation and the women's movement. He says how some women didn't want to be called "ladies" or "girls" any more. And then he says that there were changes for men, too. Some white religious men didn't want to be called "The Reverend" anymore. They wanted to be called just, "Reverend."

Anyway, I think it's a great book. He tells you so much stuff that's of interest. He concentrates on not the "20 pounds of headlines" Dylan, but the Dylan who is actually a person in the world, who has opinions and enthusiasms, same as anyone else. And for those who want him to talk about his bike crash and his failed marriages and all the empty hype, I say, pay attention. He's telling you all about his influences, his formative years, how it was that he came to formulate his way of writing songs. He talks about two instances of what were portrayed as "comeback" albums, and what was really going on for him at those times. He reveals the mystery behind his "never ending tour" and what exactly it was he was trying to do. And he talks about working with Daniel Lanois, and gives you a good deal of insight as to why he so often leaves the best song off the album.These are some of the most enigmatic things about the Dylan, and here he is talking about them in great detail. It's both fascinating and fantastic.