Mark Bold

There are few subjects that Colin Wilson does not feel compelled to write a book about. His output over the last fifty years, since the momentous release of his existentialist handbook The Outsider, has been over 100 volumes on crime, the occult, science fiction and fantasy, the paranormal, pop psychology and just about any cranky subject that approaches his radar. What marks these books out is that they are usually argued from Wilson’s New Existentialist standpoint as he manages to shoehorn in his obsessive concepts of optimism and heightened consciousness. Yesterday he was in Stratford to talk about his next book, this time taking on Shakespearean scholarship. Just how he’s going to fuse his “peak experience” philosophy with the work of the “second-rate” Bard remains to be seen.
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John Gray is writing in the Guardian about fundamentalist atheists (again). “It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion.” It is an excellent critique of zealots like Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens, and the progress and eventual new dawn for humanity that their atheist project seems to promise, using the same tilts against secular humanism that were found in Straw Dogs and Black Mass. Very enjoyable and thought-provoking, but I always wonder what sort of solution Gray would offer to the problems he identifies. He’s assured at corroding others’ arguments and pointing out contradictions, creating a terrible pessimism in his writing, but how does he assure himself that it’s worth getting up in the morning?

(For a little balance, and to refresh your belief in progress, try AC Grayling’s criticisms.)

The gaffr blog is today dealing with a subject that maybe more than anything rekindled the nation’s footballing spirit at the beginning of the millennium - the famous 5 -1 scoreline against Germany in 2001. gaffr looks back at how it happened…

gaffr blog - retrospective

There is blood, and it’s all over the floor just at the end of the movie, just when I thought Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance had somehow lost its way, and the story had arrived at an all too abrupt ending.

Day-Lewis is easy to criticise because he is so far beyond the abilities of just about every other actor making a living in the movies. Every one of his films is a must-see simply because each one of his performances is entirely compelling. And especially so Daniel Plainview, the silver prospector turned oilman in There Will Be Blood. The entire film is about him, and that it is billed as an epic, takes place across decades of time and every shot is a giant historic panorama only serves to underline the enormity of this man’s talent.

The best aspect of the film is what we don’t know about Plainview. What we do know about him we know immediately from the silent opening: the hazardous solitary work in grim mines, the injuries and determination, the wordless acceptance of the struggle of life. And this grim determination grows throughout the film, it’s his calling card, it’s why he becomes so malignantly successful. But what we never really understand about him is the best part of Day-Lewis’ subtle performance. It is the battle with the religious fervour of Eli Sunday, from the initial refusal to join hands in prayer, through beating him up in a seeming revenge attack for the injuries to Plainview’s adopted son, to the final bloody confrontation that adds such a depth to the character. A facile filmmaker might have contrived a source for this anger; Paul Thomas Anderson leaves it to the towering abilities of his leading actor to create a truly complicated human subject.

But the contradictions implode at the end, out of all proportion; the millionaire languishing in a lonely mansion until fateful visits from both his adopted son and then his preacher adversary push the subtlety aside. The madness, the slight quirkiness and determination of Plainview explode in apparent overacting, and there’s blood, “milkshake” and an Oscar.

In the second section of Straw Dogs, John Gray makes a suggestion that is perhaps the aim of his book: ‘to discover which illusions we can give up, and which we will never shake off’ (p83). It is a fact, he says, that human beings cannot live without illusion. The belief that we can is just one of the illusions we need to shake off, and Gray traces the roots of this misconception through a sustained attack on the over-rational, anthropocentric beliefs of liberal humanism.

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