This isn’t quite a graphic novel, more a series of images with running commentary. The drawings cover the most memorable moments of Fitzy’s life, many of them illustrated anecdotes of his time in the services and beyond. The style is somewhere between squaddie jokes and raver jokes. Even during the Gulf war, there is a rim of canehead humour to it all, particularly the incident where Fitzy trips out on regulation meds under the desert sun. ‘[The commander] told me that the ones I had taken were for the likes of gunshot wounds and he also realised that I wasn’t fit to drive.’
Max Dunbar reviews Glenn Fitzpatrick’s Arts and Mines.
A recurring theme is the intensity of Ayn Rand’s fan letters. ‘Your novels have had a profound influence on my life. It was like being reborn…’ ‘You gave me the answers, and more important, a moral sanction for existing.’ ‘About a month ago I noticed how much I was talking about your books to my teachers and classmates. As a result of my enthusiasm I have now lost two friends. I am beginning to realise how unimportant these people are.’ If these sound like letters from disciples, that’s because they are; rejected by the establishment, intolerant of debate, Rand’s Objectivism became a fully-fledged cult, with an inner circle, show trails, a philosophy that went beyond politics and economics to dictate art, emotion, sexuality.
It’s a conviction of mine that had John been born in another place and time - America, say - he would now be a regularly published poet, garlanded with awards and recognition, teaching at a university in New York or San Francisco. As he was born in South Manchester, this was never going to happen. The mediocrities who run the arts in this country are good at looking after their own; the UK arts world is a golf club that certainly doesn’t admit big, shambling ex-trade unionists from the wrong side of the tracks. The club has its token working-class northerner in Ian McMillan. So John puts on packed, delerious spoken word nights in Fallowfield and on Oxford Road, edits the radical art magazine Citizen 32 and does free workshops in Fuel Withington and the Cornerhouse.
The book’s most telling sentence is this: ‘In fact, passion is to be distrusted.’ The worst thing is to take a side. Buruma goes out of his way to avoid a strong, coherent opinion or conviction. In this, he is a creature of contemporary discourse. Situating yourself between two opposing propositions can make you seem wise in a kind of Zen Buddhist way. Repeat the posture too often, though, and it leads to a kind of derangement, a wilful stupidity. Buruma sways on the fence, windmilling his arms.
Traditionally, the Situationists’ urban work has been seen as solely a concern of the early period of the group’s history, associated closely with members Asger Jorn and Constant Nieuwenhuys (known simply as Constant), who brought a theoretical acuity and practical architectural aspirations to Situationist urbanism. Subsequently, both members left the group, and Guy Debord brought in Raoul Vaneigem and Attila Kotányi, who significantly revised the Situationist view of the city. Urban space was now seen as less a site of possibility than a concretization of alienation – it was something to be overcome, destroyed, reconstituted in a radically different form. This form could never be defined, lest the group be accused of a retrograde utopianism.
The 2000s saw a cultural resurgence of enlightenment ideas. A few writers and scientists became intellectual celebrities through their thoughtful and passionate critiques of religion. The explosion of books like The God Delusion into public consciousness was staggering. Not since Payne had high philosophy been so popular with the man on the street. It seemed that a low, dishonest decade that began with 9/11 had made people more willing to question the impact of faith. The debate was not one sided. Religion has fallen back into liberal vogue, and the ‘New Atheists’ were subjected to a counterblast from innumerable pro-faith commentators, activists and broadcasters. They continue to rehearse their arguments long after the publication of the seminal atheist books, and what seems to aggravate them more than anything is that those books sold very well.
YBA was special because working-class artists from outside London were getting real money and recognition. The grants system allowed the talented poor to fight their way through prestigious art colleges. Muir: ‘The last working-class blip was working its way through higher education before the tide would be stemmed with student loans and other charges.’ Graduates had no money and little state support, but the solidarity of the class of ‘87 allowed its members to keep working and creating through the hard times and they should be given credit for that.
The ideology behind the Scientologist hatred of medical psychiatry is not something Marc Headley explores. The belief system is pretty much out there anyway; L Ron Hubbard’s bizarre creation myth has even been dramatised in an episode of South Park, with a flashing caption reading: ‘THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE’. In an interview with Paul Sims of the New Humanist, Headley explains: ‘I wanted to make this a book a Scientologist could read, to give them more information on what happens behind the scenes… if you attack the philosophy, the Scientologist will immediately reject the information. But if you talk about the organisation, then they might listen.’
Postmen are the laureates of the silly o’clock start and Roy Mayall’s postcard-sized book is full of lyrical passages about the times when shift workers own the streets. ‘That lovely, soft golden light of the early morning, listening to the birds singing, the suburban gardens all bursting with flowers. And there’s just you, the milkman, a few dog-walkers, and the occasional late-night reveller who’s winding his way home from the night before… It’s like the whole earth has grown bigger, like it has taken in a breath and expanded itself, is stretching itself to shake off the night.’
