Winner of the 1977 Guardian Fiction Prize

Ok, it's Book 4 of The Jerry Cornelius Saga and maybe you better start with the first one, but I just reread this one and it's still a very impressive piece of work. Moorcock is still one of the greatest writers out there.

'The Condition of Muzak considers the process of living as a harlequinade and is, for me, a most moving summation... Here we move through Mr Moorcock's obsessions, the serials of Fantomas, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Arthurian legend, through chronos-zones - behold the pun! - to bi-sexuality, with a small sideswipe at Stanley Kubrick on the way. The realisation comes that Jerry is seeking sanctuary in different universes of Time in separate private mythologies. As indeed, is the implication, are we all.' -TOM HUTCHINSON, THE TIMES

Excellent article by the old man himself. Uhura, could you please bookmark this for the Captain?

Excerpts:

"Though certain techniques borrowed from commercial science fiction and fantasy, have been employed in the mainstream, they have primarily worked to supply a spark of life to existing popular forms as, for instance, magic was introduced to the old-fashioned English school story to give us Harry Potter. I believe that the success of The Lord of the Rings is symptomatic of middle-brow conservatism in reading. Fundamentally, such books, with, say, Martin Amis’s current output, are generic, quite as rigid in what they can say or try to say as the popular generic work of Ian Rankin or Iain Banks. Indeed, apart from Iain Sinclair, fewer and fewer technically ambitious novelists are published in the UK mainstream and even those associated with innovation seem to have fallen back on self-imitation. Only in America do a few ambitious novelists such as Roth, DeLillo, Eggers and Chabon continue to offer work questioning middle-brow assumptions and finding a broad readership but even in America is a tendency to return to safer and more predictable forms. If, as I believe, the medium is the message, this means that in conventional publishing we see little in the way of innovative ideas or analysis and are forced increasingly to search through the internet to find small print publishers, POD publishers and those publishing direct to the web, few of whom can afford to pay an author a reasonable advance.

(...)

   It seems to me that authors as well as publishers will have to take the same risks Dickens took when he published his books as cheap part-works, the same risks authors took when they let their books be published at six shillings, instead of <ampersand/>#8356;1.10.6d, the same risks some of us took when we ignored the posher literary magazines of our day and preferred to see our work appear in vulgar newstand magazines with exotic and brightly coloured covers.  At present POD and other electronic publishing are considered by literary journalists and others to be an inferior form of delivering fiction to readers, on a par with vanity publishing.  This can only change rapidly if we make it change.  In my view we should not merely be seeking new markets for existing forms of fiction, such as the short story.  We should be seeking  personal forms of expression taking risks equal to those of electronic publishers who present us with the means of reaching a growing popular public."

Via that hip multimedia-writer from England

Another one of those books 2.0 projects: "Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers' favourite books (over 32,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next."

What Should I Read Next?

They're also working on a FILM & MUSIC SITE.

Some really cool books!

Wikipedia

That's when we will be performing next, for those who simply cannot wait for the 5th of december...

Photo by Nathan Wright

Over here! He's got MySpace and Facebook too. So if you wanna be friends with a famous author....

This could be interesting for some of the teachers out there: Visual Dictionary Online

22-25 November 2007 INSIDE THE SIMITHS will be shown at The Ghost of Independent Music Festival CHECK OUT THE LINK

Tuesday 20 November 8:30 pm Once Upon a Time in America (1980)

The uncut version of the film gained widespread critical acclaim and a large following. James Woods, who considers Once Upon a Time in America his finest work, and he mentions in the DVD commentary that one critic dubbed it the film the worst of 1984, only to see the original cut years later and call it the best of the 1980s. Ebert, in his review of Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, called the original uncut version of Once Upon a Time in America the best film depicting the Prohibition era. Sight and Sound magazine placed it among the ten best films of the last 25 years when it attempted to do a poll on recent films. from Wikipedia

Wednesday 21 November, 8 pm

British Council Reading Group at Another Country bookshop (Facilitator Jeremy Dunn) "The Brooklyn Follies" by Paul Auster

Bookshop Recomends: Sister Chain and Brother John shall join a great many fellow impoverished artists and talented paupers at the Wallywoods Jukejoint in Weissensee. It is somewhat off center but the airing will surly do you good. 20 is the time, and we charge not a dime!

*BRUNO & MICHEL ARE SMILING WITH SKIPPERRR (HAMBURG) MARGARETH KAMMERER (ITALY) KADILLAC LOBSTER (ITALY) BRöCKEL (BERLIN) CHARYOU TREE (NZ) BIG DADDY MUGGLESTONE AND THE MUGGLESTONE JUBILEE SINGERS (USA)

Gallery Wallywoods, Kulturhaus Peter Edel (side entrance) Berliner Allee 125, Weissensee, 13088 Berlin Trams M4 (>from Alex) M13 or 12, to Berliner Allee/Indira-Gandhi Strasse

Thursday 22 November TV Night (tba)

Friday 23 November 9pm Day Late Thanksgiving Dinner and Sing-a-Long Film around 11pm Kim will be guest cook for Thanksgiving Dinner tonight so come taste a real American Thanksgiving.

The Wizard of OZ (1939) Victor Fleming This will be our second sing-a-long following the great success of The Sound of Music last month, Come sing with Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion.

Return to OZ (1985) Walter Murch Dorothy can not forget OZ, There is only one cure to stop these delusions, Auntie Em sends Dorothy for shock treatment!

Sunday 25 November 14:00 Wireless, Bridge, Brunch, and Games - Card Games, Board Games and Word Games

Monday 26 November 9pm Bookshop Recommends; Magic Monday at Hazelwood Beatstreet ...feel performance poetry Featuring: Robert Grant, Mike Haef, Lady Gaby, and with special guest Kelly Tsai (HBO´s Def Jam Poetry) Hazelwood Casual Dining, Chorinsrstr. 72 10119 Berlin tel. 030 44324635

Tuesday 27 November 8:30 pm The Godfather (1972) Francis Ford Coppola "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse"

A message from Aaron (executor of the Mugglestone Family Trust):

The Mugglestone Family Trust Presents: WALLYWOODS JUKE JOINT - THIS WEDNESDAY - FREE of CHARGE

with: BRUNO & MICHEL ARE SMILING WITH SKIPPERRR (HAMBURG) SISTER CHAIN & BROTHER JOHN (UK, ISRAEL) MARGARETH KAMMERER (ITALY) KADILLAC LOBSTER (ITALY) BRöCKEL (BERLIN) CHARYOU TREE (NZ) BIG DADDY MUGGLESTONE AND THE MUGGLESTONE JUBILEE SINGERS (USA)

featuring:

Big Daddy Mugglestone (yrs/his truly) as host and DJ (and yes I will sing also)

You know what I do, but here is something you may not know About Me::>

Big Daddy Mugglestone, born to a bible-bred family in the west of the new world, has been a philip (horse lover) ever since his father taking him to the horse track every Saturday at a young age. He developed a taste for bad whiskey and fast horses that slowly drew him into juniors competitions starting at the age of 15. Condemned by his colleagues for his unorthodox equestrian methodologies, Mugglestone continues to stun audiences and the traditions of the sport with stunts and jumps that no horse and man have ever accomplished. His most recent feat, 'jump over the candlestick', named for the line in the children's fable, involves him jumping over a 3 meter wide by 2.5 meter high flame. When he performed it at the famed Glastonbury festival last spring the fear and awe of the audience was palpable. In his spare time he works in his banana tree arboretum and kills cats that wander through the back door.

www.valisrecords.com

+++

Bruno and Michel Are Smiling with Skipperrr (Hamburg)

"Meet the apart duo, named after the uneven brothers of intellectuals guru Houellebecq and Barbies little sister: An entertaining mutant disco pop music with no chance to snip your fingers, a catching performance with no chance to take a breath: the slick gentleman and the breathtaking showgirl dont play any instruments, they play on your nerves. The pomo melange between sampling and collage, digital and guitar hardcore kills any rhythm as soon as you discovered one. "

www.myspace.com

+++++

Sister Chain and Brother John (UK, Israel)

This original music is minimalist, raw and intentionally naked – no drums, usually only one instrument – electric guitar or bass – accompanying the vocals. The lyrics are stories about L.A. women, teenage day-dreams and cheap feels. In the guitar tracks the vocals are clear and the riffs cutting. The bass songs are smoother, close to the ear, intense. On stage Sister Chain and Brother John are glamorous, tight and non-compromising. The recordings of the forthcoming album "Darkness To Warm Your Heart" were done on four-track tape, with hardly any effects and extras.

www.myspace.com

++++++++++++

Kadillac Lobster (Italy)

KADILLAC LOBSTER is a cover-songs trio formed by zelda panda (vox, toykeyboard), seby ciurcina (guitar, vox, kazoo), marcello silvio busato (drums). we love to play songs by hank williams , lydia lunch, peppino di capri ,giant sand, the velvet underground ,nicola arigliano, paolo conte, margareth kammerer, cccp, the beatles...

www.myspace.com

+++++++++

Margareth Kammerer (Italy)

This mistress of the mic unravels haunting melodies around poems by e.e. cummings, anne carson, etc. using the guitar as ivy uses a wall, to climb and grow. Her varied interests and skills take her deeper inside the voice, making more a demonstration of will than an exercise in faith.

www.discogs.com

+++++++

Bröckel (Berlin)

on a cold new years eve in a warm chalet in an oh so beautiful valley in a secluded countryside somewhere in the snow-covered south of germany we destroyed a chair and named us 'bröckel'.

broeckel.xxlblasphemy.com

++++

Charyou Tree (NZ)

The Berlin debut of this bass and drum fantasy prog rock duo! With songs that ripple through varied time signatures and chordal structures, CT carve a story of epic proportions, sculpting and dismantling landscapes that are at home in any world that is ruled by a mad mathmagician.

www.Wallywoods.com

Gallery Wallywoods

Kulturhaus Peter Edel (side entrance) Berliner Allee 125, Weissensee, 13088 Berlin

Trams M4 (from Alex) M13 or 12, to Berliner Allee/Indira-Gandhi Strasse

All the Newsfeeds have moved to new pages. I will create more individual categories soon.

SO PLEASE VISIT OUR MIGHTY NEWS AGGREGATORS:

           <a href="http://www.anothercountry.de/berlin-news.html"><img src="http://www.anothercountry.de/buttons/news-button.jpg" width="161" height="36" border="0"></a></p>      <p ><a href="http://www.anothercountry.de/cool-news.html"><img src="http://www.anothercountry.de/buttons/cool-button.jpg" width="131" height="34" border="0"></a></p>      <p ><a href="http://www.anothercountry.de/kreuzberg-news.html"><img src="http://www.anothercountry.de/buttons/kreuzberg-button.jpg" width="202" height="35" border="0"></a></p>

There is a new widget created with Dapper. It's listed in the official Directory of Google Gadgets. Add it to your personal Google-Homepage, Blog, Homepage, MySpace, Facebook etc. and you will automatically get the latest stories and links from over here. You can easily change the size and the color of the frame to make it fit into your page.

There's a preview in the first comment for this story.

You can also subscribe to this Blog via Email. See that box on the left? Just enter your mail and you will receive a daily newsletter with all stories and links.

Or, much easier, you can subscribe to the RSS-FEED with Google Reader or something like that.

Or you can use the other Widget over here. It looks nicer than the one for IGoogle, but it loads a little slow.

5 people are using that one already. 8 people added the Popmoderne Widget and 19 people added our Berlin International Widget.

Which reminds me, the new design will be there soon plus a great new feature will go online soon. Maybe tonight...

And, by the way, if you're in Second Life, visit the "The Berlin Bar", our official outpost in the metasphere. Sit underneath the virtual "Another Country"-poster, look at virtual books, drink virtual drinks, listen to WFMU and do whatever it is you people are doing in that world...

today the north american rehearsed his imminent december in earnest in churlish old berlin, slippered and robed in the sublet kitchen, shivering a prayer for the errant heat. sleet flicked the windows like mean-spirited fine print, fall's premonition of winter's predicament. Val brooded over

eggs (his humble use of the birds’ unlived-in truth), juice, homeopathic fad pills and Al Camus' American Journal, a moody notebook posthumously fobbed off as lit (edited by friends) (he’s sure they kept) (the screwing out of it), the whole long day ahead of him to fritter as his divorce-diminished bank account saw fit, the dishes tombed amnesia-clean in kitsch-infested cabinets to rest. the sky became

not luminous, nearly temperate, muddled as a puddle reflecting it, he dressed all gray to honor this and met the sun’s sharp glittering glass amidst rainsick grass at the Gendarmenmarkt’s benches. from which

he stared at scary Schiller and Schiller’s musey mass of wenches thick at the base of his plinth, each so cruelly Presley-lipped, Hera-hipped and toothsmashing stone- breasted big and vivid enough to lumber down suddenly shattering a path across the pavement stones like derailed trains to shoo the shitty pigeons and snap the tourists’ necks. he respects the quasi-autistic bluntness of the populace, for far more truth inheres to insult than to ‘Murrican-style blandishment. his third wife, from

Minneapolis, trafficked in that language-unravelling style of viral euphemism; for perma-smile Liz fat was full-figured, crippled: mobility reduced, and the optically challenged with their swinging sticks and elevated chins were never just blind. the Germans frankly speak of the “geistig zurückgeblieben” and he is sure the fatherland’s retarded don’t mind.

(Photo by Wolfgang Sünderhauf/Umbruch-Bildarchiv )

Here's a great video with english subtitles. Don't know the source, but it's pretty authentic.

You can see the border crossing of "Bornholmer Strasse", the first point of the "DDR" that opened it's gates to the West on the 9th of november 1989. The video documents the moment when the first border crossing fell and the first people crossed the guarded bridge (Bösebrücke) to West Berlin.

After Günter Schabowski made a sensational announcement on TV (Video of the press conference on "Tagesschau", the main news show at 8 pm), everyone ran down to the border crossing, but the people you see in that video were the ones who started it all.

How did this happen?

1989. November the 9th. East Berlin. A huge room filled with press people not expecting anything special. It was late already and everybody just wanted to go home. An old and tired man entered the stage and sat down. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Lenin died. The man took a sip of water before he started reading from his papers. His name is Günter Schabowski and he is a big kahuna spokesman in a country formerly known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR) Nobody expected anything important, but it was a special time and the world was watching. Back then, this region was also known as the German ”zone” in the western world. A phantom zone—a sort of shady, undefined void with trapped inhabitants, commenting on current events without participating.

The press room. Schabowski, the poor idiot. This was the biggest crisis the country has ever faced. The GDR decided to send their best man to this press conference. They sent Günter Schabowski, the man who ended the Cold War by accident.

Schabowski sat down to answer questions by members of the international press. He was tired and confused. He just sat there and talked when somebody handed him a paper. It was only a proposal to be discussed with the central committee the day after.

Nobody really knows why he read out an unofficial document. He doesn’t even remember it himself. It must have made sense to him in some way. The topic of the press conference was freedom of travel and it was broadcasted live in East Germany. There was nothing special to talk about.

Schabowski got the paper while somebody asked whether there might be any changes considering visas for the west. He looked at the paper for a second. Then he said: ”I guess we have solved this already. It says here, ‘from now on every citizen of the GDR may get a visa to visit West Germany without any further restrictions.’ Yes, that’s what it says here...”

Silence.

Somebody from the back of the pressroom said: ”When will this start?” Close-up. The old man looked at the paper again, slowly realizing what he just said. ”It says, as of now” he repeated. This was only a description of a new visa-law that was considered far too radical to be actually ratified. Schabowski mistook it for a memo to be read out right away because it seemed to answer the question.

Silence.

”But, if everybody gets a visa.....” ”But, but, does that mean that the Wall is gone? Schabowski looked like he was in trance. He was used to controlling the media and now all these impending cameras looked at him. Even the official eastern media-representatives were getting naughty.

It was 8.14 p.m. The information was out there. Everybody had seen it on official state television. Everybody, including most of the guards at the Wall and the soldiers. Well, everybody except for the big guys upstairs and the CIA. The government of the GDR was in a late night meeting and they had no idea what was going on behind their backs at this time. And the CIA didn’t have any East German TV.

”As of now”, Schabowski said. He was referring to the start of the negotiations for a new visa-law, but it was easy to misinterpret him.

Things happened too quick after the press-conference and the media reported the end of the GDR right away. On November 10th, the ”New York Times”, ”The Los Angeles Times” and ”The Washington Post” already reported the GDR had opened it’s borders. By then it was too late anyway.

The checkpoints at the border had no idea how to handle the situation for the night. To get the official visa, you had to receive a stamp. ”Schabowski read it out, didn’t he? Everybody gets a visa, isn’t that what he said?” But there were no new orders given yet. The guards were confused. The soldiers started to nag. Somebody had to come up with a plan. One of the officers made a decision. ”We just let them wait in line,” he said. ”That’s what we always did.” Without the stamp you didn’t get the visa and if you had the visa, you wouldn’t be able to come back with that stigmatizing stamp. The GDR would allow you to leave, but you could never return to the warm womb of socialism. That’s the way it was supposed to work until the next day. Nobody expected any trouble.

At this point it’s appropriate to pay tribute to Oberstleutnant Harald Jäger and Oberstleutnant Edwin Görlitz, members of the Stasi and responsible for the opening of the Checkpoint at Bornholmer Straße, East Berlin. They are the heroes in this story

The authority of the GDR had always been based on the power of the Soviet Union. The Stasi was founded by members of the KGB to supervise the border of the Cold War.

Now the Soviets simply didn’t care anymore. It didn’t look like they would send some tanks to help a few underpaid East German soldiers at some cold checkpoint. It was over. They had to fight it out themselves.

Harald Jäger and Edwin Görlitz were responsible for stamping passports in the upper lefthand corner and controlling the crowds at Bornholmer Straße. They had heard of a riot in Dresden the night before. People had attacked the cops and injured quite a lot of them. Suddenly they were scared. The people were turning against them.

Bornholmer Straße is in Prenzlauer Berg, traditional neighborhood of artists, punks and other members of the brave freak-opposition. The guards expected the worst. After the big news at 8 p.m., the first daredevils approached the border with a new type of courage. The punks were having a party and soon other hoodlums followed them..

By 10 p.m. the guards could no longer control the masses. Stamping the passports became pointless. It was too late for any new orders. Thousands of citizens simply wanted to take a walk on the western side and come back. It was impossible to make clear the visa wasn’t supposed to be a round-trip ticket.

A handful of soldiers with guns couldn’t stop thousands of citizens in front of the checkpoint. Without clear orders they were helpless.

Picture the guards at the Bösebrücke on Bornholmer Straße that night. If everybody could get a visa, would that mean they were all unemployed now? ”Why can’t we all go home afterwards? We just want to go window shopping along the boulevards of West Berlin,” they said. Standing in line was something you were used to in the east and people were just going along with what was happening. Those who were making a lot of noise got their stamp right away to avoid further trouble. They ran over the border into the west and started to cheer to their fellows from the other side of the Wall, making the first Westerners realize that something was happening.

The stamping procedure had to be dropped at some point. More and more people stormed the checkpoints. Oberstleutnant Jäger and Oberstleutnant Görlitz were afraid of getting trampled by all the workers’ boots. Around 11 p.m., Jäger and Görlitz made the historic decision to save their asses, open the barrier and let everybody go wherever the fuck they wanted. They were overwhelmed by too much confusion and too many people.

The dam was open. It just happened. ”Fuck this”, some guard said and ran into the west too. In the middle of a minor scuffle, some other guard lost his cap, raised a hand and yelled: ”now, will all you just shut up and hold up your passports or you wont get anywhere. Believe me, the west wont run away.“ The guards stepped aside and watched their prisoners call out an amnesty for the entire country. A West German TV team raced down to the checkpoint after the first reports came in. They went live right away and fed the pictures into the international market. The news broke.

CNN sent a team to Bornholmer straße and when they went live, you saw a big crowd of Easterners running around in the West already. CNN managed to be there just in time for the evening news in the US. The border was opened around 11.30 pm and CNN had the pictures on the air about five minutes later.

The pictures from Bornholmer Straße convinced everyone that the borders were open for real. The guards for the other checkpoints thought, they must have missed an order or a memo. Everyone else in East Berlin thought, hey let's go west and have a party.

Thousands and thousands of people went down to their local checkpoint to check out what was going on. Around midnight the first drunken Westerners started dancing on the wall. When the first ones had to be rescued after falling down on the eastern side, the border guards had to cooperate with western police for the first time.

By then they could only make sure nobody gets hurt.

The Berlin Wall - More Videos

berlin

Over at Cracked.com

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