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A Not-Book-Review*: “Recycling Reality,” by Nicky Almasy – an expat’s coming of age story, from NYC, Mexico, and London, to Shanghai, Thailand, HK, and Kuala Lumpur

July 2, 2026
bradspurgeon

Nicky Almasy

Nicky Almasy

Until early March of this year, when I shook his hand and exchanged words with him for about two minutes, I had only ever met or communicated with Nicky Almasy once. It is easier for me to know the exact date of our first meeting – which was 19 October 2008 – than it is for me to remember the second one, earlier this year. That is because the first was the Sunday night after the Chinese Grand Prix of 2008, and in Shanghai, a first step that fall of an experience that would change my life.   Having now made contact with Nicky again after nearly two decades, I have learned thanks to reading his memoir, “Recycling Reality“, (Earnshaw Books, Hong Kong, 2022), that not only was he also at that time shifting to a new reality in his life, but that we share far more experiences than I could ever have imagined for such a casual acquaintance whose path I had crossed only once until he handed me his book under the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur last March.

That last meeting was reduced to just a handshake as I had just spent more than an hour or two beyond our rendezvous time caught up in the offices of the Emirates airline trying to deal with a cancelled flight back to Paris – a gift of the man who trumped the world by starting a war in the Middle East. By the time I got to Nicky, he had to leave for another appointment.  But it was long enough for us to say hello, and for Nicky to surprise me by handing me this published memoir that I ignored the existence of.   I have now finished reading the book, and I wanted to talk about it here since without my earlier meeting with Nicky, this blog would not have been created 16 years ago.

In late 2008 I had been carrying around my guitar picks, capo, and songbook to all the Formula One races that I was attending as a reporter for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, as I had recently turned my life full-throttle into playing music when not writing articles about the world’s premier auto racing series. In my late teens and early twenties I had played in open mics as I sought to test the waters to see if I could possibly become the next Bob Dylan. Learning very quickly that I didn’t have a chance in hell, I decided eventually to focus on writing alone. But in 2008, after a tragic personal loss – the death of my wife, Nathalie – I felt the need to return to playing music. At the instigation of some musician friends, I then began to look around for open mics to perform at and see if I fared any better as a potential Bob Dylan than three decades earlier.

Recycling Reality by Nicky Almasy

Recycling Reality by Nicky Almasy

So it was that after several races, finally, in Shanghai of all places, one night returning to my hotel from a meal in a restaurant, I saw a nearby bar-restaurant called the Blues Room. On the glass of the door or other front window, an image in a poster jumped out at me: An old-fashioned, 1950s microphone and the words: Open Mic! I took a closer looked to find that it said, in English, that every Sunday night you could bring your instruments and go on stage and play some songs. Exactly what I had been looking for in the last races in Europe without success – although I had not really applied myself all that much, being somewhat skeptical of my abilities or needs to perform in public.

After the race – won by Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren, ahead of Felipe Massa in a Ferrari, setting up what would be an historic final race duel in Brazil shortly thereafter – I got on the media shuttle bus as quickly as possible to get from the circuit in Jiading, far outside the city – and arrived in town with time to spare before the beginning of the open mic. I had brought my pick, capo and songbook with me to the circuit, so went directly to the Blues Room. It turned out to be a very, very quiet night, with only one other musician. But there was this Hungarian guy, Nicky Almasy, who ran the event, and I was very pleased to meet him, as the F1 race in Budapest was among my favorites, and I always enjoyed the company of the Hungarians I knew. (My son had been training for years under a top Hungarian chess trainer, as well, and I always found the people gentle and interesting.)

The other musician was an American teenager who lived with his parents, expats working in Shanghai, and he was there with his sister, just slightly older than him. As an open mic experience, my first after 30 years absence, it was highly inconclusive, but probably also the best way for a middle-aged, aging rock star (in his own mind), to return to “the stage.” In fact, we played and jammed for hours, and at one point, Nicky immortalized the session by taking a photograph of me while standing at a table in some deep, purple-faced, Dylanesque chant.

Brad Spurgeon jamming at the Blues Room in Shanghai in 2008.

Brad Spurgeon jamming at the Blues Room in Shanghai in 2008. (Photo Credit: ©Nicky Almasi.)

I found no open mic in Sao Paulo, and anyway, with the championship being decided there and especially Hamilton taking his first title, I was far too busy writing and reporting to think about finding a place to play. It was only when I returned to Paris that I again began to think about finding an open mic. And it was only thanks to a small sense I had picked up at the Blues Room that I might find a deeply needed outlet that way, and then the persuasive words of my son, Paul, that I had to try again, that I ended up at Earle Holmes’s Monday night open mic at the Lizard Lounge, and my open mic, musical journey definitively began.  (From that moment onwards I brought my guitar to every Formula One race and performed at open mics or jam sessions at each Grand Prix from 2009 to the end of the 2016 season, starting this blog to write about the adventure from 2010 onwards.)

What all of these preliminaries are leading to is, believe it or not, back again to “Recycling Reality,” Nicky’s book. As we were not in touch after that night in the fall of 2008, and as the event was a much, much more important moment for me than for Nicky, I don’t think he had any strong recollection of who I was at all when I learned he was now living in Malaysia and that we would be visiting there for TAC Teatro, and could we meet? So for me, the first thing I wanted to read about in the memoir that he handed me, was everything he had to say about the Blues Room in Shanghai, and how that happened, and what the stories were. I was not let down.

Nicky had begun to run the open mic evening and other live music events at the Blues Room – which was located at the corner of Nanjing Road and Tongren Road – a year or so earlier, and it closed down not long after I played there, in early 2009. But during that time, surprise surprise, Nicky had not only been hiring bands to play there on the other music nights, but he had begun to exercise his other passion, which was photography. Yes, he had been photographing the bands that played there, and soon he had developed a business in Shanghai as a photographer of bands.

Before I continue about the contents of the memoir, another side note: As someone who likes to write, and even made a living out it, and who is currently writing a memoir myself, I am always interested in seeing what “works” and what doesn’t. The first thing I did when Nicky handed me this book, a 265-page paperback, was to check out who the publisher was. Had Nicky done what so many people do today, had he self-published his memoir? Because, otherwise, I wondered, who would want to publish, let alone read, Nicky-Almasy-of-the-Blues-Room’s memoir!?

I saw “Earnshaw Books” and immediately looked it up: “Earnshaw Books was founded in Hong Kong in 2006 and publishes a wide range of books across a growing number of fiction and non-fiction genres. A hub for stories, memoirs and history from China, Asia and beyond, and a nurturing platform for new authors, Earnshaw Books offers a unique and enticing glimpse into the world through words.”

I realized that not only was it not self-published, but that Nicky had found the perfect publisher for his memoir. As he has now lived in Southeast Asia since 2005, moving from one country to another, one expat experience to another, he has a story to tell that will interest readers of that publisher’s niche. It could not be more perfect. I soon learned something more: My own interest was held at a much higher level for all those areas of his life to which I could also relate most closely by my own parallel experiences, and it waned a little  – but not too much – on those I could not.

To summarize: I was absolutely hooked on his story of life in Shanghai, less so on his tales of traveling with malaria scientists in Thailand, and very much drawn in with his final chapters in Malaysia, especially his efforts to land a full-time job with Tony Fernandes’s AirAsia as a writer, photographer and videographer for its inflight magazine, Travel360. My interest there is not only due to Kuala Lumpur being one of my favorite places in the world as well, but because I too had crossed paths with AirAsia’s owner Tony Fernandes on several occasions when he was a Formula One team owner, and it was Fernandes who eventually gave the green light to hiring Almasy at the publication.

But to say that I could only identify with what I had myself experienced here would be doing a great disservice to this surprisingly well written life story that speaks for generations of people who seek something bigger, something greater, than the world they were brought up in.  I say “surprisingly” because English is Almasy’s second language, and you wouldn’t know it by reading this.  Almasy came from Debrecen, in Hungary, which is the country’s second largest city, but still only has around 330,000 total urban population. He grew up dreaming of the life he read about in imported music magazines like the New Musical Express – that “other” I mentioned above.

And if I say that it might require having shared the same experiences as a writer to get into their memoir, nothing could be further from that idea than the opening pages of Almasy’s story, when he writes about his wayward youth as an immigrant to New York City. There he set up a fabulously interesting life in a bar in Manhattan frequented by movie stars, before he returned to Hungary for a short visit and then found that he could not re-enter the US.  So he decided, at barely 20 years old, to go for the classic route of flying to Mexico and attempting an illegal border crossing!

The story of how he paid a people-smuggler to get him across, but he ended up robbed, beaten, and dumped over the fence into the arms of the American cops aiming their weapons at him, reads like pages out of the darkest of low-life Jim Thompson kind of noir fiction. Along the way, in what I think must come from his basic life view of some kind of hope or faith, he seems to carry luck on his side through almost every step of his career – despite endless seemingly insurmountable such trials. He gives up on America, but resettles in London, where he ends up writing album reviews for “Record Collector” magazine, and hanging out in Camden Town at the height of Brit Pop, rubbing shoulders with all the up-and-coming talent, including musicians from the band Suede, that he will return to later in the story when they again cross paths, but on a different plane of life all together.

To cut the story short, and to summarize again: He finally settles in Shanghai in 2005, spends a decade there, and that gig photographing bands transforms into a completely different photography career launched by his own passion for documenting the then world’s second tallest building during its construction: The Shanghai Tower. That leads to a friendship with the embattled architect of the building, Marshall Strabala. Almasy becomes, one way or another, basically the official photographer of the construction of that building.

In turn he ends up working for the That’s Shanghai city magazine, doing countless cover photos, and bit by bit, he becomes a highly respected, full-time, and international award winning photographer. A theme that runs throughout the book is what I would call his “meetings with remarkable men” through whom he seems to, in some ways, live vicariously as a journalist and photographer. (That, of course, might be called the essence of journalism, as we are all writing about someone else – a “story.”).

Another of these people is the Hungarian musician, Miklos Both, who he connects with and ends up writing about, photographing, and filming in several collaborations, as well as becoming a close friend. Tony Fernandes, in some sense, becomes a somewhat more distant such connection, but one who ends up providing him with his longest period of “stable” employment, as he lands the job at Travel360 that will only end with the advent of Covid that shook up not just AirAsia, but the entire Asian and, indeed, world, tourism experience and lifestyle for expats.

But by then, Nicky was reaching his limits on what had turned from the lowest level of border hopping illegal immigrant working in a bar in the US into living at the very highest of journalistic luxury travel while reporting for the inflight magazine and traveling uninterrupted for weeks on end year in year out around Asia:

Once you reach your limit, you begin to lose yourself altogether: When you’re on the road, your temporary homes, the hotels, meaninglessly click and switch like projected images one after the other behind the shadow that is you. Marriott, Crown Metropol, Park Hyatt, QT, Novotel, Hilton, Wyndham, you name it, are all just repetitious, ever changing but never-changing artificial backdrops, mere empty stages to dress up your solitude as a traveller. I often find that the more luxurious the hotel, fine art hanging on the walls, their one-of-a-kind décor, the more it enhances a sense of loneliness. There is a lack of human connection. Besides, they isolate you from the essence of your chosen destination with their ostentatious comfort-bubble and cut you off from reality altogether…..

….But when these momentary shelters become your everyday reality, if this is in fact all you have to fall back on each evening, when you live in them for weeks on end, these very same magically self-cleaning units are nothing more than bitter, blank reminders of just what an ungrounded life you’re living.

Any hardcore business traveller would reassure you that beyond the dazzling luxury decor, the exaggerated reception smiles that only last strictly until checkout time, nothing awaits but a dark reflection of your inner emptiness. It hangs over you like a sinister pendulum, and it intensifies at night as you sigh into the empty room before falling asleep. A traveller’s loneliness knows no distance, sneaks under your door, finds you in your fancy bathtub, stares back at you from the bathroom mirror, and it’s already there under the nicely creased bedsheets with the carefully folded towel swan on top before you even climb under the clean, crisp blankets. Endless business travel is like jumping through different dimensions as city skylines revolve outside your window; Nagoya, Osaka, New Delhi, Seoul, Guangzhou, Beijing. As exciting as they are to be in, from the hotels, these cities are all shimmering mirages of a seemingly projected reality.

This is where Nicky Almasy’s memoir touches home the most for me: His ability to cut through the gloss, the surface view, the sludge, and to express what we all, inevitably, face in life no matter how much success or lack of it we may meet with in our lives and careers. I could also deeply relate to his sentiment and career decisions to seek change, as I myself did after covering Formula One for more than 20 years and finally choosing to step off the weekly travel conveyor belt. Ultimately, I found this memoir to be a wonderful vicarious rollercoaster ride through another contemporary’s challenges as he tries to find his way to a self-sustaining and meaningful life and career, and one with which I could compare my own life choices. I would never, ever have suspected such a story that night I entered the Blues Room in Shanghai and took that first step in my own subsequent life’s journey.

(*A note on the “Not Review:” Years ago I decided to create a new feature concept for this blog. Because I believe in Ernest Hemingway’s dictum about writers not criticizing other writers in print as reviewers – “You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds,” he said – but because I love to read good books and talk about them, I decided to start this approach. The idea is that I do not place myself on a critical pedestal and dictate what is righteous or not about a book I read. I do not pretend to recommend it as a piece of literature or a consumer product. I do not play the role of the book reviewer. This blog is simply my space, Brad’s world. So what I do when I feel compelled, is to write about books I am reading or have read or feel a need to write about for any other reason. This “Not-Book-Review,” as I call the column, is only a reflection of how I felt about the book.)

Google’s Bard AI Chat Program Massacres Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” – Doing a Little Spoken Word at the Spoken Word Night of the Cabaret Culture Rapide

September 23, 2023
bradspurgeon

The Bard

The Bard

PARIS – I had intended to play a song or two at the Paris Lit Up! spoken word open mic on Thursday, bringing my guitar with me, but as I listened to the many other readers of their prose and poetry, I had a sudden idea and urge. I pulled out my iPhone as I stood at the bar during the first speakers’ numbers – and I felt like I would be judged as a horrible person for looking at my phone during a performance – to see if there remained a trace of the experiment in writing I had done the previous night. Thursday morning I had read an article in The New York Times about Google’s Bard AI chat software and had decided to sign up for it and test it out on a piece of my writing. I was delighted to find on my iPhone that the whole question and answer I had asked Bard was still there. I could present it to the audience at Paris Lit Up!

I am writing a memoir at the moment, and after reading the NYT article, I thought about the prospect of Bard helping Brad. Not to write my memoir, no way. But perhaps it could help me copy edit it. Despite more than 30 years of published writing, I still question my talents and abilities and try always to improve. (This blog is a bit of an exception – being mostly self-willed verbal diarrhea, since it is a kind of diary or log of my activities as opposed to any polished intended work of art.) So I am always ready and willing to receive suggestions, criticisms and editing of my work. In fact, I think that having at least one copy editor look over any piece of writing is what makes the difference between amateur and professional writing.

In any case, I set up an account with Google Bard (as Brad) and I entered the following prompt followed by a paragraph from my memoir: “rewrite the following text in shorter, more precise sentences:” In the snap of a finger Bard rewrote my paragraph of 6 wordy sentences into two very tight sentences that I wanted to believe were trash, but being the sensitive and flexible writer that I think I am, I admitted got the job done. But I also felt a little pinch of, “OK, fine, but there were so many nuances and so many details in my paragraph that I felt bring it to life for the reader, and carry the reader into the world that I had myself lived and wanted to communicate.”

Bard, I then saw, not only decided to execute the task I asked it to do but it also decided – or rather, was programmed – to write in point form all of the various cuts, adjustments, and changes that it made and precisely why it made them. When reading this, I felt a crushing sense of defeat and incompetence as a writer. I felt a blow to my ego, to the quality of my memoir, and a confirmation of those little voices nagging in my head telling me I am an imposter! (Yes, writer imposter syndrome.)

Why did I feel this way? Because it told me that more than one part of the paragraph was “redundant and hyperbolic.” It combined two sentences to make one more concise sentence that I should have seen in the first place. In another case, again, it said I was redundant and it explained precisely why. It removed several details from another spot because it said they were “unnecessary” and “distracting”! Finally, it added a phrase “to add a bit of poetic flair to the sentence.” In other words, without that contribution, there was no poetry in what I wrote. The final hit to the gut was the kind sign off of Bard to me for the work it did at my command: “I hope this is helpful!”

Helpful? Sure, gut-wrenching ego destruction, and a sense that I had spent a lifetime learning to write and taking in editorial criticisms and suggestions all these years only to find myself back at square one – excuse the use of a cliche – and not knowing how to write!

Then, my survival instinct kicked in. I came up with an idea for an experiment. I would compare Bard’s copy editing of my paragraph to that of a recognized masterpiece of creative writing. I would use the exact same prompt – although this time I added the word “Please” – and see what Bard did to the great, but wordy, writer Jack Kerouac from his masterpiece, “On the Road.”

The result was more than reassuring. It taught me a lesson. Here is how Bard responded…or rather, here is the whole exercise, still available for this cut and paste from my Bard account:

Google’s Bard AI Chat Program Massacres Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” masterpiece

“Rewrite the following text in shorter, more precise sentences: I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.””

Shorter, more precise version:

Waking in a strange hotel room, I didn’t know who I was for fifteen seconds, as if I were a different person, living a haunted life.

I made the following changes:

  • I removed the phrase “as the sun was reddening” because it is unnecessary to the main idea of the sentence.
  • I combined the two sentences “I woke up and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was” into one sentence to make it more concise.
  • I removed the phrase “I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel” because it is redundant. The word “traveling” implies that the speaker is far from home and tired.
  • I combined the two sentences “I was in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds” into one sentence to make it more concise.
  • I removed the phrase “and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds” because it is redundant. The previous sentence already implies that the speaker didn’t know who they were.
  • I removed the phrase “I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger” because it is repetitive. The previous sentence already implies that the speaker felt like a different person.
  • I replaced the phrase “and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost” with the more concise phrase “living a haunted life.”

I hope this is helpful!”

Real life lessons learned about creative writing from Google’s Bard AI Chat program

Yes! Not only was it helpful to me, but after reading it to all the budding writers at the spoken word event at the Cabaret Culture Rapide, where the spoken word event happens every Thursday, but I felt it was helpful to everyone and I said to them: This response is proof to me that the art of writing is something that we must do because we believe in it, and in ourselves. And sometimes we will find other people who we touch, despite the writing perhaps apparently breaking the mechanical rules of what makes for “good writing.” We cannot succeed in pleasing all readers all of the time, but we may please some of the readers some of the time. The important thing is that, ultimately, there are no rules. There is only the humnan self-expression that will or will not reach the reader. Or will reach some, but not others. Just keep on writing, and don’t lose confidence through criticisms made of your work. Try to improve, but don’t take every editor’s opinion to heart. The masterpieces often break the rules and create something new.”

Aside from sounding like the harsh and self-assured judgments of so many editors I have heard throughout my career (;-)), what struck me was how Bard executed precisely what I had asked for, but had indeed killed the art. The worst thing was that its criticisms, its reasons for making the changes, while they were correct from the point of view of a strictly logical thinking computer program, were absolutely far off the mark and plain wrong when applied to the purpose and effects of a work of art.

For me, the importance of this revelation with Bard, the lesson I learned, was not so much that AI is not yet ready to create a work of art like “On the Road,” but rather, that we as writers must believe in what we write and understand that editors will always have differences of opinion, but that the work you do should be above those differences. Yeah, you’ll write some crap, but you may just write something fabulous that you do not want to be torn apart by the opinion of one, two, three or even four editors.

Anyway, I am very conscious of this blog post being very long and wordy. So I am now going to ask Bard to sum it up in one paragraph (I will not publish the why it did its changes):

“Bard is a powerful tool for editing writing, but it is important to remember that it is a machine and does not have the same understanding of art and creativity as a human writer. It is important to use Bard’s suggestions as a starting point, but ultimately the author should make the final decisions about what changes to make to their work.”

Hmm…I am not sure that’s precisely what I said, but it’ll do!

In any case, not only did I not regret playing music at the spoken word night, but I found myself having a great time just talking and not singing. So I can thank Bard for that inspiration too!

Looking Back at Writing “Formula 1: The Impossible Collection” For Assouline During Lockdown

September 17, 2021
bradspurgeon

Formula 1: The Impossible Collection

Formula 1: The Impossible Collection http://www.assouline.com

PARIS – The point of this blog for me is usually to write about things happening right now in my life. For more than a year now, I have kept quiet here about one of the biggest things that happened in my life during most of the Covid period we are still living through. I was so busy first doing it – and keeping my mouth closed and fingers crossed about it – and then once finished, talking about it everywhere except for here, with one published interview or review after another – I will run a list of links of those at the end of this post – that I simply did not find the moment to talk about it here! In short, I am referring to the book that I had the opportunity to write about the 100 great, extraordinary, “impossible” moments in Formula One history, since the series began in 1950 and up to the end of last season. The first 70 years of the world’s most popular auto racing series summed up in words and extraordinary images and published by Assouline, one of the world’s top luxury book publishers. So, I am coming late to it here, but since I also see this blog as a personal record of important moments in my life, I have decided that it is better late than never to talk about it!

This book project was offered to me in August 2020, when I was in Sicily and like everyone, found myself in that momentary lull between waves of the biggest pandemic to hit humankind in a century. And, as many readers of this blog will know and be able to relate to themselves, I had one part of my life absolutely wiped out by the pandemic: Performing music and doing my other theatre-related activities in public. The performing arts, as everyone knows, were amongst the worst hit – well, of course, not to mention the restaurant industry, the travel industry, airlines and airports, etc. – since to perform in public was one of the easiest and most natural things to ban. And rightly so.

But that left me, like so many musicians and actors and performers, feeling as if we might not be able to breathe if we came down with Covid, but we were not able to breathe without our moments on stage, either! Fortunately for me, I had spent decades of my life devoted exclusively to my other passion of being closed up in my room – or a media center or newspaper office – and writing. Living through words. Living in the mind and not in the outside world or on a stage.

Formula 1: The Impossible Collection promo video by Assouline (turn up the volume!)

So when in August 2020 I was offered this opportunity of writing a book about Formula One for Assouline’s most prestigious collection – the Ultimate – in the series known as “The Impossible Collection,” I didn’t just jump at it, I instantly stopped feeling any regret, pain or other horror for losing that other aspect of my life, consisting in performing on stage. Here was a fabulous project offered to me by Assouline that thrived off the lockdown isolation as it required intense concentration, research and writing at just the very moment that the second wave of the pandemic came to hit us.

First Hungarian Grand Prix 1986. Photo Credit: Bernard Asset

First Hungarian Grand Prix 1986. Photo Credit: Bernard Asset

Suddenly, I came entirely back to life thanks to this project. I also felt a huge sense of responsibility: The task was much bigger than I expected when I said yes. I had to come up with the 100 greatest, iconic, most important, “impossible” moments of Formula One over 70 years. I had been hired for my experience of more than 20 years covering the series for the International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times, and I realized that I had a responsibility for a big book that would sell for 920 euros, and/or $995, not just for an article on a piece of paper that would be used to wrap up fish the next day! My choices of moments have to be as close to perfect as possible.

Responsibility of Choosing the Impossible Moments for Formula 1: The Impossible Collection

It’s not that I doubted my ability to choose those moments. But I knew that Formula One is a series that has millions of fans who are not only passionate, but are often just as knowledgable as many of the journalists who cover it their whole lives. I also knew that any choice for a great moment that I made would also leave out several other possibilities that some other journalist or fan might feel very passionate about and cry foul!

“HOW could you not put in THIS moment!” they might say.

But that is also when I decided that, in any case, any list of 100 moments over 71 seasons that anyone made would have to have an element of personal preference or style to it, and I would have to assume that. Still, it took months to make the final choice of 100 great moments. I narrowed an initial selection down to 150, and then began eliminating, or at the suggestion of my editors at Assouline, in some cases, joining moments together – such as when I did only one moment for the two times that Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost crashed into each other at the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka in 1989 and 1990, thus drawing their championship duel to a close.

McLaren Technology Centre team factory. Photo Credit: McLaren F1 Team

McLaren Technology Centre team factory. Photo Credit: McLaren F1 Team

I also said to myself that it would be absolutely necessary in a series like Formula One to include in the great moments not just sporting moments, but technical ones – the introduction of the Ford DFV engine in the 60s that would dominate for so many years, or the first rear-engine victory, etc. – as well as business advances or reversals, new venues, etc. Formula One has so many different aspects to it, that it would be impossible to do it justice while focusing on just one part of it.

While it was easy to make my first list – I started by working off the top of my head, then I went through several histories, timelines, collections of statistics, etc., to make sure I missed nothing that I might have overlooked – the most difficult thing was really what to cut out of the list. So many things had to go at some point. It was with great regret, for instance, that I did not include Jean Alesi’s sole victory in the series when he drove his Ferrari to win the Canadian Grand Prix in 1995 after Michael Schumacher, who led all but the last 11 laps of the 68-lap race, had to make a pit stop to change his steering wheel, and could not engage the gear, and so handed the lead to Alesi, who kept it until the checkered flag. It was a hugely dramatic moment during a season dominated by Schumacher, and involving the two teams that would exchange those same two drivers for the following year. (Schumacher went to Ferrari the following year, while Alesi and his Ferrari teammate, Gerhard Berger, both went to Benetton.)

Michael Schumacher's first win for Ferrari in the wet in Spain in 1996. Photo credit: © Agence de Presse ARC/Mario Luini

Michael Schumacher’s first win for Ferrari in the wet in Spain in 1996. Photo credit: Agence de Presse ARC/Mario Luini

There were countless moments like this that I loved, that were big, important, but it was impossible to use them all. One of the ways that I chose moments, in fact, was to try to choose them for their larger effect on the series. That applied especially, for instance, with the moments that involved fatalities. The early years were so full of fatalities, and each was as tragic as the other. As time went on and safety improved, there were fewer and fewer. But still, while I did not mention the death of Elio De Angelis in 1986 after a testing accident, I could not, clearly, avoid talking about the moment involving the death of Ayrton Senna (with Roland Ratzenberger having died the previous day) at Imola in 1994. Nor could I avoid talking about the death of Wolfgang von Trips and the 15 spectators at Monza in September 1961.

I could not, either, avoid moments that included the great records, Schumacher’s equalling Juan Manuel Fangio’s 5 world titles in 2002, and then beating that record. And how satisfying and beautiful it was for the book to end on the note of Lewis Hamilton equalling Schumacher’s record of seven titles – and beating his number of victories – in the final season that the book covered, 2020, which was unfolding as I wrote it.

Catharsis in Writing the Introduction to Formula 1: The Impossible Collection

It was the work on the moments, both selecting them and writing them – in all their minute detail – that would make up the biggest part of the job. When I took on the project, I had thought it would be the writing of what became a 65-page introduction – with lots of photos – that would be the hardest part. In fact, the introduction was probably the most fun part to do, as I saw it as an opportunity to sum up and focus all of my knowledge about Formula One accumulated over a lifetime of being a fan – the first race I attended was the first Canadian Grand Prix, at Mosport in 1967 – and nearly a quarter century of writing about it professionally. So in a way, the introduction – that even went into the previous era of Grand Prix racing, starting with the precursor auto races sponsored by the founder of my former IHT newspaper, James Gordon Bennett Jr. – was even cathartic, in a way.

It was an incredible bit of unexpected icing on the cake when after I submitted the completed book to the editors, I learned that both Jean Todt, the president of the International Automobile Federation, and Stefano Domenicali, the CEO of Formula One, had written forewords to the book. What an honor. (But just as great an honor was my having been the writer that Jean Todt recommended to do the book when Assouline asked for his advice on who to call.)

When Formula 1: The Impossible Collection Finally Arrives

Me at home with my advance copy of the Formula 1: The Impossible Collection book. Photo Credit: Ornella Bonventre

Me at home with my advance copy of the Formula 1: The Impossible Collection book. Photo Credit: Ornella Bonventre

But the day my advance copy of the book arrived – all nearly 10 kilograms of it – that was when I saw the reality that I could never truly have imagined for a book that is an absolute “bijou” as the French say for a jewel, and I could see immediately not only why it was being sold for 920 euros, but that it seemed worth much more than that in the paper and hand craftsmanship alone. Printed at a luxury quality printer in Milan (called Grafiche Milani, a favourite of Jimmy Page) and many of the photographs – the photographic research job, as well as many of the photos themselves, was done by Bernard Asset, a top F1 photographer, while the final choices of photos and images was done by Martine Assouline, of the husband and wife team that own the company – were separately glued to the pages. The cover had a soft feel to it, and a wafting sent of the printer’s workshop came emanating from the box when I opened the book package. Astounding!

Jimmy Page video of his experience with Grafiche Milani printer of Formula 1: The Impossible Collection

By the time the book was completed, and published in May, I had begun to think about playing music again, and I was, in fact, able to do so at a few places, as the pandemic died out a little where I live, and the vaccination process began – I got my second one at the end of May – and then I returned to Sicily, where I was able to perform a couple of times, as I have done back home in France since then.

On the other hand, I have also been working all out on another book project in recent months, which I will also only announce when the time is appropriate! (I’m entering a virtuous cycle here!) And again, I can thank this new project for taking me through the third wave!!!

The book “Formula 1: The Impossible Collection,” is available around the world in both Assouline’s own stores, as well as some select shops. It is also available to buy online at Assouline’s site.

Great Press Coverage of Formula 1: The Impossible Collection

Actually, I said the cherry on the cake were the two forewords, but there was another aspect to doing the book that I had not expected to this degree, and that was great coverage by some of the world’s top magazines, some of which involved several interviews with me…that once again showed me how difficult it can be to be on the other side of the journalistic table, as the subject of the interview rather than the interviewer!

Here is a list of links to a few of the major interviews and reviews of the book, so you can click on any one of them to read the review or interview:

  • Robb Report: Assouline’s New $995 Formula 1 Book Was 70 Years in the Making
  • MAXIM: A LOOK BACK AT FORMULA 1’S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS
  • MAXIM: RACE THROUGH F1 HISTORY WITH THIS HIGH-OCTANE COFFEE TABLE BOOK
  • BOSS HUNTING: ‘Formula 1: The Impossible Collection’ Is The Ultimate Coffee Table Book For Racing Fans
  • F1Total.ca : INTERVIEW l Brad Spurgeon and Assouline release ‘Formula 1: The Impossible Collection’, a one-of-a-kind $995 book
  • Motorsportweek: Feature: Writing the Impossible Formula One book
  • GQ Australia: 11 coffee table books you actually won’t be able to put back down
  • L’Automobile Magazine: F1: un livre collection sur les plus grands
  • L’Equipe: Un livre pour célébrer les 70 ans de la F1
  • Quattroruote (Italy)
  • Bunte (Germany)
    • Le Figaro Magazine (France)

    Le Figaro Magazine (France)

    L'Automobile (France)

    L’Automobile (France)

    FIA AUTO MAGAZINE ISSUE #34

    FIA AUTO MAGAZINE ISSUE #34

    The book was reviewed or promoted in many, many other parts of the internet, on many different kinds of sites, making me realize there is a landscape out there for talking about books and products of a size and kind that I had never even suspected existed (the landscape I mean, not the size of the books!). And so it was a fun, learning experience all over to have been blessed with this not impossible dream of writing a book about Formula One’s impossible moments for Assouline.

    A Not-Book-Review cum Memoir Cum autobiography etc. of Terence Rigby and his Memoir by Juliet Ace: Rigby Shlept Here

    August 11, 2021
    bradspurgeon

    Rigby Shlept Here

    Rigby Shlept Here

    CASTELLAMMARE DEL GOLFO, Sicily – He was one of the greatest British character actors of the end of the 20th century, early 21st century, one of Harold Pinter’s fetish actors and friend, just as adept starring in television, on stage or in cinema – a late career period with along with Julia Roberts and in Color Me Kubrick…the list of achievements go on and on for Terence Rigby. And I am proud to be able to say that for a few months in 1977 to 1978 we were briefly friends, while I was a bartender at The National Theatre in London, and he was acting in various roles as part of the company. In fact, he helped me audition for RADA, where he had started out 20 years earlier. But if my life completely changed after that, I always carried questions about who exactly was this man Terence Rigby. Many others who knew him asked the same questions. How delighted was I last week to discover a Memoir of Rigby’s life was published in 2014 and written by his good friend, the scriptwriter, Juliet Ace. Called, “Rigby Shlept Here,” it is a magnificent tale of an unusual man and a great actor. I have now written a long review-cum-memoir of my own of this book, and about this man. Follow the link here to my page in my Writers on Writers and Writing section about Terence Rigby and Juliet Ace’s memoir “Rigby Shlept Here.“

    The Political World of Jean-Hugues Oppel: Another In-Depth Interview With a French Crime Writer, this Time Talking at Semana Negra

    January 23, 2021
    bradspurgeon

    Jean-Hugues Oppel

    Jean-Hugues Oppel

    I am absolutely delighted to have found this interview I did with Jean-Hugues Oppel in 1997 at the Semana Negra mystery festival in Gijon, Spain, and to be able to post it on this site in my collection of interviews and articles I did in the 1990s and early 2000s about the French crime novel. This interview is definitely one of the best and widest ranging of them all. I think the environment of the crazy festival helped for it to be so much fun, and so deep. But ultimately, as you will see, it is the depth of Jean-Hugues Oppel’s own knowledge and approach to life and writing that makes the difference here in this interview.

    In Memory of Jim Haynes: End of an Era, but not of a Philosophy of Life

    January 12, 2021
    bradspurgeon

    Jim Haynes

    Jim Haynes

    PARIS – Not long into reading Jim Haynes’s autobiography, “Thanks For Coming!” in 1984, shortly after it was published, I said to myself, “I am certain I will meet this man.” I lived in Paris, as did he, I was interested in the expat literary and cultural world, and he was at the center of it, and my bookstore of choice was “The Village Voice,” on the rue Princesse, which it seemed impossible that he would not know. A meeting had to happen.

    As it turned out, sitting in the back of that same bookstore, drinking a coffee and eating a brownie, and reading Jim Haynes’s book, who should walk in but Jim Haynes. With his big moustache, and slightly drawling accent, he was easy to recognize. I wasted no time in approaching him and telling him of the coincidence that there I was reading his book at that very moment and in he walks! So began a 37-year-long friendship that came to an end two days ago when Jim died at the age of 87. In fact, as anyone who knew Jim knows, it was not just Jim who left us, but a whole chunk of cultural life in Paris (and dare I add a cultural life of the 1960s and 70s in Britain too), and a living, walking, smiling philosophy of life.

    Thinking about his life in the last few days since he left us on 6 January, it struck me that Jim was born in the same year that Hitler took power in Germany, and that he should die in a hospital in Paris at the same moment that the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. was being raided by violent haters, was very significant: Nothing could be further from Jim Haynes’s philosophy of life than the hatred that both Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump knew so well how to manipulate in their followers. Jim was all about love and togetherness and sharing; and if that sounds like some kind of 1960s hippie peace sort of dreamy approach to life, well, not only was it just that, but Jim successfully – and contagiously – lived by it right to the end.

    I will not spend time on this blog post reiterating the events of his life. That has been well handled all over the place, including in this obituary about Jim Haynes published in The Guardian, or on Jim Haynes’s own web site. The only thing I feel I can bring that would serve any purpose beyond what everyone else – and he himself in that autobiography as well – would say, is my own experience of Jim. And I look forward to reading many more such accounts by the other legions of people from every walk of life who knew him.

    Even so, in a nutshell: Born in the U.S., in Louisiana, after coming to Europe in the military, he decided to live in Scotland in the 1950s, where he created the first paperback bookstore, then helped found the now-famous Traverse theatre, before then moving to London where he founded the Arts Lab theatre space, and the International Times newspaper. He then came to Paris on a teaching assignment at the University of Paris, and stayed the rest of his life here, writing, holding Sunday dinner salons for more than 40 years, creating his publishing company, as well as many other manner of homegrown artistic thing.

    Jim Haynes Autobiography

    Jim Haynes Autobiography

    Jim also, by the way, wanted to meet and know everyone in the world, and it was for that reason that I had no qualms about introducing myself to him in that bookshop. After that first meeting, we had many different kinds of meetings or communications over the years, never as close friends, but always as welcome friends. In the early years he would periodically call me up while I was working in the library of the International Herald Tribune – a newspaper that he read daily – in order to find some clip or other fact that he needed for whatever purpose. We would talk for a while, I’d find what he was looking for, and life went on.

    I met him on occasion at the various book launches and small press nights at The Village Voice, at Shakespeare and Company or other meeting points during the period of the 1980s when it felt as if the literary expat world of Paris of the 1920s and 1930s or even the 1950s had returned. Several young expats from the English-speaking world decided to create their own literary magazines, and Jim, who had his own Handshake Editions at the time helped to encourage many of those young people with their literary magazines and actions. “Frank,” by David Applefield, was one of those, John Strand, who went on to have an excellent career as a playwright had another called “Paris Exiles,” and a woman named Carole Pratle had one called Sphinx. And, yes, Ted Joans, the famous beat poet was hanging around too. Jim had even helped advise AND occasionally work for Odile Hellier, the owner of that very same Village Voice bookstore where we met. (Applefield, by the way, who spent most of his life in Paris until he returned to the U.S. a couple of years ago, ran for Congress last summer, lost, and died suddenly the next day.)

    One of the astounding things about Jim was just how many people he did indeed know. And the range of the kind of person they were. From the famous to the unknown, it didn’t matter who you were or what you did. He just liked people. But more important, even his act of knowing people was not something only for him: He loved to introduce people to each other, to make connections, to start relationships. One of his ventures was a global address book, comprising many of the people he met. And his famous Sunday dinners in Paris were always an occasion for Jim to introduce people to each other, and I mean in a really, outgoing, almost formal way: “Brad this is so and so; so and so, this is Brad.” That sense that we were all there to meet and share was one of the first signals you would receive upon entering the dinner.

    On one of our early meetings at his home in the 1980s, I went because I learned he had some kind of recording studio at home and I wanted to record a couple of songs and a piece of prose writing I had done. I secretly hoped he would love it and use it in his then popular “Cassette Gazette,” a cassette tape collection of all kinds of writing and music and everything else you could put on tape. He showed no interest in the written piece, but he did sincerely and with some surprise in his voice, compliment my recording of the Raggle Taggle Gypsies song. At the time I was no longer playing music in public and had no ambitions to do so. So I was a bit pissed off he liked the song but not the writing!

    That recording, by the way, was done by his longtime friend, Jack Henry Moore, who I knew nothing of at the time, but who I would eventually learn was also very much at the center of the underground of the 1960s. Jim wrote a Jack Henry Moore obituary for The Guardian when he died in 2014.

    That, I believe in fact, was my first visit to Jim’s atelier at 83, rue de la Tombe Issoire, where one of his illustrious neighbours and friends was Samuel Beckett, by the way. Yes, Jim was friends with countless literary people, including Henry Miller, another one-time Paris expat, and he had a long running friendship with the book publisher, John Calder, with whom he founded the first Edinburgh international book festival. And to my delight and surprise, he had also corresponded with Colin Wilson, one of the original Angry Young Men of British literature, whom I would later meet, interview and befriend. I was delighted to be able eventually to give to Jim a copy of the interview book that I did with Colin Wilson. How strange the world is! (I recall now that I had also run into Jim at the Frankfurt Book Fair the one time I went there, which he attended regularly, and he introduced me to Calder.)

    From a coffee and brownie meeting while reading his book, and him calling me up as a librarian at the IHT, soon he would be complimenting me on “writing half of the IHT newspaper,” or however he put it, while referring to all my regular Formula One writings and multiple-page special reports in that paper. He had treated me with the same respect as a support staff member of the IHT as when I became a regular journalist for the paper. Over the years we would meet in various circumstances, maybe at an organized play attendance followed by a dinner with a small group of people whom he had encouraged to see his friends’ play – or at a Sunday dinner at his atelier.

    In another interesting Jim Haynes phenomenon, through the decades the number and kinds of people who I knew and who I learned also knew Jim Haynes grew and grew. They would, again, be from different countries around the world, and my relationship to them would vary completely, never being entirely to do with journalism or the arts, so vastly large was his relationship “footprint” around the world.

    Jim Haynes and Varda Ducovny, with host Grace Teshima behind. Photo © Seamas McSwiney

    Jim Haynes and Varda Ducovny, with host Grace Teshima behind.
    Photo © Seamas McSwiney

    One of our more recent meetings happened four or five years ago at a book launch of a friend of his, Varda Ducovny, in a home art space in Paris, in Montmartre. I had met Varda at one of the above mentioned dinners. At the end of the evening, he left a few minutes before I did, and as I descended the stairs of the building, I found Jim, sitting oddly on the bottom stair, with a couple of his friends either side. He had fallen and hurt himself; in fact, he had fallen before the start of the evening, and despite being in pain throughout, he stayed for the full launch and cocktail ceremony. By then in his early 80s, such a fall felt ominous. And as it turned out, it really was the beginning of a series of incidents that would remove from him his strong good health and easy mobility.

    One of our last meetings I now see in a short recorded interview that I did with him for some research that Ornella was doing, was in January 2018. Three years ago. While he was 100 percent there mentally – and morally, ie, in his usual good spirits – I seriously worried about how many months he might last. That he lasted three more years is testament to his incredible inner strength, which I put down to that Jim Haynes optimistic, happy, loving and thankful philosophy of life.

    Ornella found a key to that philosophy in the book he had given her that day three years ago, a copy of his book, “Everything Is!” She posted these words from the book on her Facebook page, and I agree with their profundity, so I finish this post with them too: “Some people say that when they are happy they sing and dance. But I say: when I sing and dance, I am happy!”

    Writing on Writers and Writing: a New “Salon” Space on this Blog

    December 29, 2020
    bradspurgeon

    Writing on Writers and Writing Photo: ©Brad Spurgeon

    Writing on Writers and Writing.
    Photo: ©Brad Spurgeon

    PARIS – The other day when I put up that article I did about Marc Villard, the French crime writer, I mentioned that I thought it was about time for me to create a separate space on this blog to hold together all my articles about the French crime writing scene. Sleeping on the idea, I came up with an idea I like even more, which is to create a space on the blog that will group together ALL of the writing on this blog about writers and writing. So it seemed natural to create a menubar, that you see above this post at the top of the browser, called “Writing on Writers and Writing.”

    Under that menubar you will find a collection of all sorts of bits and pieces of writing from this blog of stuff about writers and writing, books, bookstores, Not Book Reviews, etc. It is not an exhaustive collection of such writing that I have done over the years, by any means. It is just like the rest of this blog, stuff that I chose at any given time to devote a page to. As a result, I took away some of the articles previously held in certain other parts of the blog – like from “Blog Articles as Opposed to Posts,” and I gave them this their own home.

    I am hoping that it will inspire me to contribute regularly to them with many of the pieces of writing on writing and writers that I have done in the past, and perhaps, eventually, I will create subheadings for each area that may grow too big, such as the writings specifically about the French crime writing scene.

    Also, I decided that it was a good place to carry the definition of what should be linked there just a little further, by adding links in the menu to such things as my interview book with Colin Wilson, linking to its place on Amazon: Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism. Or the video interview that I did with Colin Wilson when a new edition of the book came out.

    Finally, I also decided to add to the Fiction menu the some of the translations that I have done of other people’s fiction, notably the three stories by Marc Villard, and a story by Jean-Hugues Oppel, that appeared in an anthology in the United States, and then later made its way to a BBC radio play, which is where the link goes.

    And so it is that under semi-lockdown I have finally found the time to do some long-required housekeeping on this blog! (You will have seen the huge lack of blog items in recent months about playing music in public! And you will not, coronavirus oblige, wonder why!)

    On the Paths of Michel Onfray’s Childhood, a Soirée and Film About – and with – France’s Popular Philosopher of Chambois

    January 18, 2020
    bradspurgeon

    Michel Onfray sur les chemins de son enfance
    Michel Onfray sur les chemins de son enfance

    The first time I wrote about Michel Onfray was in December 2006, and the story was published by The Toronto Star – because the newspaper where I worked did not have either the courage, the savvy or the understanding to publish the story about one of France’s most popular, but controversial writers.  Ultimately, I was overjoyed that the story made the lead, front-page, Insight section of the Star in its Sunday edition, which reached more than a million subscribers.  

    Even better, I had been worried – and told – that it was too long a story. But when finally after several rejections elsewhere, the Star accepted it, they asked me to expand it even more, and it ended up well over 2,000 words. I was then delighted when another editor at my own newspaper wrote me an email and said he had just read the article on a famous literary web site – I think it was based in Britain – that he subscribed to, which had picked up the story after the Star publication.  He said he was a fan of Onfray, and he asked me why had I not offered it to our newspaper?!

    Anyway, my own newspaper did, the following year, accept another, less deep article, from me about Onfray’s Université Populaire, and I ended up feeling a bit better about the original multiple rejections – from multiple editors – at that newspaper.

    https://www.facebook.com/michelonfray/videos/2445923395646892/

    The other day, I went to a projection of a film about Michel Onfray’s upbringing and home town, in a cinema not far from where I live. It not only brought me back to that period more than a decade ago, but it allowed me to meet Onfray again, as it was a special soirée with the film, a Q&A with Onfray, and then a party afterwards with wine and canapés. There must have been between 600 and 1,000 people present in the 7 Batignolles cinema, on the edge of Paris across from the new prefecture de Police, right next to Clichy.

    The documentary, “Sur les chemins de mon enfance,” (“On the Paths of my Childhood”) went way beyond my expectations. It was made by a couple of Onfray’s friends – also accomplished filmmakers – and filmed in his home town of Chambois, in Normandy – where he still lives. I assumed in advance that it was a small-budget, maybe no-budget, production. But the simplicity with which it was done combined with the depth of the material made it a fabulously genuine document that shows a lot to us of the connection between the writer and his environment. How Onfray became Onfray.

    https://www.facebook.com/michelonfray/videos/772038233293163/

    Upon returning home from the screening, I discovered in my computer archives that after my own visit to Chambois, and Onfray’s personal home itself (which, interestingly, does not feature in the film), in 2006, I had written a nearly 10,000-word diary item of my impressions, which I wanted to use as a basis for the eventual article I would write. Re-reading that account after seeing the film, made me realize how valuable the film is in showing how his childhood environment made Onfray who he is – which, of course, is true of us all.  I am very thankful to have seen the film as my own written account – and the memory of my visit – painted a picture of his world without seeing how that world was the stimulus of his existence.

    The structure of the film is simple: Onfray takes a walk on a circuit around his town and the neighbouring couple of towns, starting at Point A and returning at the end of the film at Point A, but after walking a large circuitous route, the “chemin de la Garenne.”

    Onfray draws our attention to how this microcosmic walk is actually representative of our whole existence, and how his garden is the center of the universe in that way. Of course he does not see his little world as the center of the world … except in how it IS the center of his own world and how it is representative of how the center of ALL of our worlds is also the center of the world.  (Ornella, who attended with me, was struck by how similar were so many things in her own childhood upbringing in Sicily.  When I pointed that out to Onfray, he said it had to do with the similarity of a rural upbringing everywhere, which we agreed was true.)

    Like one of the other philosopher writers whose works have influenced me in my life, Colin Wilson, one of the original Angry Young Men of British letters, Onfray is both massively loathed and massive loved by the public in his country. As I said in the beginning, he was France’s best-selling philosopher in 2005-2006 or so. Now, I have no idea what his position is in terms of sales, but like Wilson as well, he is mighty prolific.

    And his works and words and persona continue in France to elicit massive amounts of public attention – love him or hate him.

    What is fabulous about this documentary is how we see the simple, normal, but at the same time exceptional man behind the public persona. And we see the people who were important in his life: His mother and his most influential elementary school teacher are not only both interviewed in the film, but they were both present at the screening last night, and present until after midnight at the party. Both are pushing 90 years old or beyond!

    And this in itself is one of the most convincing aspects of Onfray that most people who dislike him probably have no idea about: What famous public persona philosopher would make his mom and school teacher of his childhood as welcome a part of his literary world?

    When I first met him in 2006 and attended a dinner with him and some of the teachers of his Université Populaire at a meal at his home in Chamois, I remember at one point in the evening his parents coming in to say hello.

    But, as it turns out, this aspect of Onfray’s life – connecting the real with the philosophical – is central to this thinking, and it was not entirely new to me – even if the film strengthens my understanding through the power of the images. One of the first books I read of his, was “La Puissance d’Exister,” or “The Strength to Exist,” in which he recounts how his life led to his philosophy. I find in my notes from 2006 this paragraph:

     

    “I told him I had finished reading the Atheist Manifesto, and then had started reading the Strength to Exist.  I told him that I was very surprised by the account of his youth, but said that I thought it worked very, very well to show where his philosophy came from, what inspired it.  He said that he had done this in many of his books, in fact, starting from a personal point and moving to the philosophy.  I then recalled the same had indeed been the case with “The Stomach of the Philosophers,” (his book “Le Ventre des Philosophes”).  But no sooner had we said these few words than his parents entered the house, almost on cue to put an end to the discussion about his unhappy childhood.”

    The documentary shows a man who is so deeply in touch with the natural world – the plants, gardens, streams and fields – of Chambois, that there is a sense coming through the film of this attachement to the earth that seems to feed his writing. Colin Wilson was often accused of existing ONLY in the world of books. But Onfray in this film makes it clear how in his life and world, nature came first, and the books came second. And the best writing is one that brings us back to the real world in which we live.

    We meet also his childhood friend, Ghislain Gondouin, who we learn introduced him to many minor poets, and also to politics. In fact, this is one of the shocking, interesting parts of the documentary: We learn where so many of Onfray’s seminal influences came from, and they were not coming from institutions or café culture, but from humble, simple, local people like the barber, butcher, school teacher, farmer or every place and person imaginable.

    There will be nothing in the film for critics of Onfray to like, or even for many professional journalists, as there is not a bad word said about him. But why should there be? As Onfray said in the Q&A after the film, “This was a film done amongst friends. I knew I could trust them.” And what’s wrong with that, when the result is such an important understanding of one of France’s most important modern writers and philosophers?

    The film, by Alexandre Jonette et Stéphane Simon, had appeared on local Normandy television once, and it is also now accessible on Onfray’s web site MichelOnfray.com.

     

     

     

     

    Fantastic Find of My Never-Before-Published Interview with A.S. Byatt, the Booker Winning Novelist

    October 30, 2018
    bradspurgeon

    A.S. Byatt

    A.S. Byatt

    I was quite astounded today as I was going through my huge archive of 35 years’ worth of my writing in my computer (my first computer was a 1982 Osborne), and I discovered an interview article I did with the Booker Prize-winning author, A.S. Byatt.  Strangely – or not, given the ravages of age – I had completely forgotten that I ever did it.  I performed the interview and wrote the article in 1991 and it was immediately rejected by an editor and immediately, for some reason, relegated to my archives as of no interest to anyone.  Because it was 1991, the only way it COULD be published at the time was to submit it to print publications, and I probably had gotten tired of all the submissions I had already made for the article that inspired it:  my article about the world’s most prolific writers of books in English (which was eventually published as the lead essay on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Book Review.  So I “trashed” this Byatt interview, which I also had tied in not only with the theme of prolificacy, but also with the centennial of George Gissing’s novel, New Grub Street.  In fact, finding it now, I see it was a lively, fantastic interview with an important British author who is still alive today, at age 82.  So no sooner did I discover it today than I decided to add it to my collection on this blog of “Brad’s Rejected Writings.”  Check it out, this 1991 interview with A.S. Byatt.  

    The Inspiring Steve Forbert Memoir, or Another Great Gift From Romeo: Big City Cat

    September 11, 2018
    bradspurgeon

    Big City Cat Cover

    Big City Cat Cover

    PARIS – I am so relieved to have just finished reading Steve Forbert’s memoir, “Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock.” I am a very slow reader, and I had been glued to it during every off-moment of the past three or four days since I downloaded it into my Kindle – wreaking havoc on the rest of my life. I had been waiting patiently for the book’s release date and the moment that came, I downloaded it and dug in. Were it not for other commitments I would have finished it in a single reading, if possible. As it was, I was forced to put down the Elvis Costello autobiography to read Forbert’s, but I couldn’t kill all of my commitments – work, family and social. So it took a few days. Why all the excitement?

    Let me use the Costello book, “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink,” as a point of departure. Forbert and Costello were born only four months apart in 1954, with Costello being the older of the two. I was born almost exactly three years after Forbert. They were born on different sides of the Atlantic ocean, and both became famous at almost the same time – Costello’s first album, “My Aim is True” was released in July ’77, while Forbert’s first album, “Alive on Arrival” came out in June ’78. I was living off my busking in London’s Marble Arch subways at the time Costello’s album appeared, and I was renting a bed in a crappy hotel in Notting Hill Gate. I remember seeing the posters all over the place for Costello’s album, with the photos of the nerd with the horn-rimmed glasses, and I remember thinking, “Who is this clown?” In time (years, really), Costello would become one of my favorite singer songwriters, and remains so today.

    Forbert, for me, was a completely different story. He was one of my early musical influences. But not from his album, it was from having attended open mic nights at Folk City in New York City in 1976 when he was starting out, and I met him there, and talked to him about himself a little as we stood in line outside in the cold, waiting to sign our names to the list for the night’s open mic. He uses the older term “hootenanny,” and writes extensively about this period in his life. It fills in a background for me not only of his life, but of the life I took part in at the time but only briefly, and only barely, and especially of all that I missed by not staying in NYC long enough before returning to Toronto.

    Alive on Arrival

    Alive on Arrival


    At the time, I was very interested in talking to him because, for me at 18, seeing this 21-year-old take to the stage and spread some kind of magic around the room, filling the place with a presence and a sound that I could not identify, I wondered what the hell was going on here? What was happening that the room changed when “Little Stevie Orbit” took to the stage? What orbit did he come in from? I was confused, particularly since I knew that my own efforts on stage as a musician at the time were so poor, and so many of the other musicians taking part in the “hoot” sounded simply human – not from another galaxy or time warp.

    So his influence on me was something in his performance that I continued to search for a long while and eventually started to grasp one evening while busking in London in the fall of ’77, the following year, and feeling something about how to use the whole body and express through the body and voice the fire of the emotion burning inside the gut. (It would take me many, many more years, even so, to get to any point where I could be in any way satisfied with a feeling of how to reproduce that thing at will.) So it is that I know exactly what Forbert’s eventual manager, Danny Fields, was referring to when he describes in the book what got him interested in the young Forbert:

    “I … loved the intensity of performance — I would say that most of all,” Fields is quoted saying. “I don’t remember words, just remembered he played, he sang and he played and he stomped with his boots, so he was like a one-man band and I liked that.”

    That’s a bit of a crude and simple description of the thing Forbert gave off – in addition to the rich, unique rasp of his young voice – but it does indicate it was this “thing” that was being communicated and reaching everyone that listened and saw him perform. There was a genuineness that came through it all, too. And in reading this autobiography, I realize where the genuineness came from: Forbert, who reached international fame in the pop charts in 1979 with “Romeo’s Tune,” is about as genuine as they come. This book is genuine. Unlike so many efforts at propaganda that show business personalities release as memoirs or autobiography, “Big City Cat,” gives several sides of the story.

    There is the beautifully told, laid back, easy voice of Forbert – his Mississippi voice comes through – telling the main narrative (in which he frequently talks about his own failings as well as his strong points and successes). But the book also gives space for several of the other people involved in his career, including the aforementioned Fields, who are given what appears to be freedom to talk about the bad side of Forbert as well as the good. (At one point Forbert just fired his whole entourage, without much explanation, including Fields – and it was for good. Oh, and he goes on doing the same with his managers for decades.)

    Forbert as “the new Bob Dylan”?

    And so, yes, it turns out, the “bad side” is mostly, possibly, bad for Forbert himself, who does not hide that he probably made some mistakes in his career choices that led to his career peaking in the late-70s, early ’80s before he completely disappeared from the pop firmament and never had another hit like Romeo’s Tune. He was one of a long line of singer songwriters who were cursed with the epithet, “the new Bob Dylan.”

    “I say to this day that, deep down, Steve Forbert wanted to be the new Bob Dylan and/or the new Elvis Presley,” writes Fields. “And, the cataclysm, you know, was when he woke up and he was not either the new Bob Dylan or the new Elvis Presley. It became apparent after the third album—he was not the new Bob Dylan—and he lashed out.”

    But here’s the beauty of the book, in Forbert’s immediate response in the main narrative:

    “Any career disappointments I had didn’t center around the cliché of being the “new Bob Dylan.” I never put any credence in that,” Forbert writes. “I knew enough to know that that tag put me in some pretty good company, John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, and Loudon Wainwright being three. I’m sure they would agree that what it basically conjured was a talent for poetic storytelling. As far as whatever literal expectations it might set up, it was nothing to be taken seriously. No one new was ever going to be able to bring about the radical changes the real Bob Dylan had brought to songwriting.”

    “In my case, my illusions were shattered when I didn’t manage to follow the success of “Romeo’s Tune.” I had been under the impression that I could accomplish pretty much anything I wanted to do. For a while I could. And then, lo and behold, I couldn’t.”

    This reminds me exactly – paradoxically – of the quote in Bob Dylan’s memoir, “Chronicles,” where after the producer Daniel Lanois beseeches Dylan to write some new songs like the epic greats he wrote in the 1960s, Dylan responds that he would love to, but that he can no longer do that – that that was another time, place and Dylan. (I am paraphrasing without returning to read the original quote.)

    But true to his genuineness, Steve Forbert has continued writing songs, playing music, loving music, being obsessed by music, to this day. And making albums. And touring endlessly, including around Europe and elsewhere. (I saw Forbert solo in a small town in England in 2013.) Here is, finally, a man who – after semi-serious alcohol problems in addition to the career problems – appears to be ultimately at peace with himself and his career.

    “By the time “Romeo’s Tune” was a hit I had already surpassed my personal level of comfort with, oddly enough, the very goals I’d set out to achieve,” he writes near the end of the book. “If it’s clear that I am not the type of personality that would ever be at ease with a household name–level of fame, then I should be pretty comfortable these days.”

    Beyond Romeo’s Tune: Or the Forbert behind it all

    For me, Forbert’s voice, his talent, his “thing” from Folk City suddenly made sense to me in the middle of October 1978 when I had just returned from one of the most painful episodes of my life, living in Iran during the Revolution, and I was taking a black London taxi from the airport back to the apartment where I had been living while in London for most of the previous year. All of a sudden, over the cab radio I heard a song, I think it was “Goin’ Down to Laurel,” and I instantly recognized the voice and the feeling. It was that guy from Folk City from two years earlier.

    All of my questions and confusion suddenly got answered and straightened out. He had simply been so fabulous and gifted that he was destined to be heard on the radio. It hit me with all the greater power because I was returning from the hell of the revolution in Teheran to the comfort of the West, and felt life opening up with endless possibilities. Forbert’s voice and performance seemed to fit right in with that sense of an optimistic future.

    And as life’s strange synchronicities would have it, the apartment where I was heading was that of Paul Gambaccini, the American BBC radio DJ and pop music writer, which was where I had lived before heading for Iran. Paul was unaware that I was returning – but I still had my key – and so he came home that afternoon to find me sleeping on the couch in the living room. It was a slightly awkward situation for a moment, as he had come home with a couple of people he was going to interview; a guy named Bob Geldof and his girlfriend Paula Yates.

    I had no idea who Geldof was – other than Paul telling me he was a singer in a band called the Boomtown Rats -, but when Geldof discovered I had just returned from the revolution in Iran, he was more interested in talking about that than doing the interview with Paul. His probing questions about the life of the people of Iran I would look at in future years as highly significant of his character: The man who eventually became famous and knighted for his charity concerts and philanthropy nearly a decade later to help people in need, was already interested in the needy people of Iran in 1978.

    All of that might appear like going off topic, but I don’t think it is: Whatever you do in life, it will be influenced by the character guiding the whole enterprise. The true “you,” that you are, the one that makes the decisions every waking moment. And reading Forbert’s book, I feel I have finally understood what made up this massively talented “one-hit wonder,” who has, in fact, had a lot more to contribute to the musical world than just “Romeo’s Tune.”

    And this draws us back around to the Costello book, which as reflected in its title, “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink,” is a completely different read from a completely different character. Where Forbert’s could be read in a single rollercoaster read (or ride) the Costello book, like his music, is a vast tapestry of stories, memories and impressions in a language that is much more involved than in the Forbert book. I saw an interview with Costello recently on YouTube where he says that the book is meant to be read very slowly (which made me feel immediately better about myself and my slow – but relishing – reading of his book). So I felt no problem dropping it for the Forbert rollercoaster, and I will now pick it up again. Suffice it to say, there could not be a bigger difference in philosophy between the two books – as I think there is in the two lives, and the two musicians’ music….

    By the way, in another strange twist of fate, in 1980 when I was back in Toronto and preparing to go to see Forbert in concert after the release of his third album, “Little Stevie Orbit,” I glanced into the window of the record store on the way to the concert and saw suddenly jumping out at me the name of the man who had written the liner notes to the album: Paul Gambaccini! How the hell did that happen?!?! Come to think of it, Paul might well have been the DJ who put the Forbert tune on the radio in London as I was in the cab on the way back.

    I highly recommend anyone who does not know Forbert’s music to get listening immediately, and go out and get this book. It’s a great read about the whole pop music world of the last 50 years. Forbert was one of the rare musicians who appeared to be equally at home at Folk City – and other Greenwich Village folk clubs – AND at the rock mecca of CBGB’s, where he opened for the budding band known as Talking Heads and others, including John Cale. (And don’t miss him as the boyfriend in Cyndi Lauper’s video of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun!”)

    What a life!

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