Two irreverent authors who share a taste for breaking taboos make for an entertaining evening.
Simon Crump studied philosophy at Sheffield University and then fine art which he taught. He is still a visual artist but it is his writing that is taking centre stage tonight. He is an iconoclast; he has a penchant for taking what’s holy in the entertainment industry and rendering it ridiculous. His latest book Neverland: The Unreal Michael Jackson Stories took the legend of the golden boy of pop and merrily took the piss out of the pomp surrounding him via a series of short scenarios in which he and his entourage – from his monkey Bubbles to his celeb friends such as Uri Geller – are mercilessly lampooned. With bad taste timing that couldn’t have been fabricated he finished the book a few hours before Jackson’s untimely demise. His previous works include My Elvis Blackout, Twilight and Monkey’s Birthday.
Ewan Morrison, meanwhile, is an art school grad turned film director turned hot young Scottish writer. His career as director was brought to an end through circumstances outwith his control including being on location in New York to make a wry film at the wrong time – he arrived two days after 9/11. The paymaster then went bust, so after a few videos for bands including Arab Strip and some corporate work, he turned his hand to writing. His book of short stories The Last book You Read was critically lauded and followed by three novels, Swung, Distance and Menage. The first of these garnered attention not only for Morrison’s writing but for its racy subject matter and cover. Distance covered a long-distance relationship between two of the most revolting characters I’ve ever come across in fiction.
After brief introductions from chairman Ally Barr, Morrison takes to the stage first. His foppish curly fringe does its best to hide a pair of eyes that are pure naughty schoolboy; you can tell Morrison loves taking on the establishment. He explains that his latest project has been to compile a collection of real-life stories about shopping malls. He first interviewed people developing, working or shopping in malls as research for a novel but yielded such rich results that he decided the stories deserved a compilation of their own. He spoke to the full hierarchy in terms of workers and, as tonight’s offering shows, the most jaw-dropping stories often came from those at the bottom of the pile, the cleaners.
Morrison explains why he chose to work on stories from shopping malls. ‘The mall only entered our vocabulary in the last ten years,’ he says. ‘Before that, shopping centres were often council-owned. They were bought out by independents.’
He then recites some statistics about malls. Every three weeks is the rate at which a new mall opens in the US. Every three months is the rate at which a mall dies. Malls set out to kill each other - new malls find out how to steal customers from existing ones. Malls came to mind as an important issue for him because in his native Glasgow there is a mall in the south, the east, the north and the west. There are two in one street. A new Tesco World is planned for Partick. Because they are so ubiquitous, there are a great number of people who work and shop in malls. He was interested in the impact on the psychology of people and he set off with a microphone to talk to consumers and staff. The stories he was told, he says, often included detail that could not be made up. Furthermore, people in malls love telling stories about their superiors or customers.
As an audience member it’s easy for me to believe this; malls must function like other microcosms teeming with drama such as hospitals; there must be so much suppressed emotion that can’t be shown to superiors in the working hierarchy, so much conflict between individuals, so much love, rage, sex, loneliness, joy and sadness.
The malls project, Morrison explains, includes short stories and films. There have historically been similar sorts of observers , Baudelaire’s idea of being a flaneur, most recently exhibited by Will Self in his latest project. Morrison mentions a writer who wandered through the Arcades, the shopping precursor to malls, decades ago and wrote down his thoughts including such archaic gems as ‘There is no mystery to the fact that whores feel drawn here.’ Morrison wanted to psychoanalyse what was so appealing about retail.
He then relates a story from his collection. Too much information about it would ruin what is a delicious story of a down-trodden employee wreaking revenge on his fellow mall workers. It is the detail that is so riveting – the petty rules such as the one decreeing that collectors of shopping trolleys – ‘trolley dollies’ – are not allowed to engage in conversation of any sort with customers, leading to outrageously frustrating situations where these workers are unable to prevent a spillage through a few simple words but must stand back, allow the spillage to happen, speak to their supervisors through their headphones and then have the super arrive to make the cleaners mop up the spillage. The supervisors are often ex prison or police employees so they enjoy and savour their power over the trolley dollies. The story, concerning a poor deaf cleaner known by his fellow workers as Beethoven, is fascinating and hilarious. On the basis of it I am greatly looking forward to Morrison’s collection.
It’s then time for Simon Crump to take the stage. Crump has a similar scruffy charm and sardonic tongue as his fellow Sheffielder Jarvis Cocker. There is also an analogy with Cocker in memories of Cocker’s fabulous deflating of Michael Jackson’s pomp years ago at an awards ceremony, where Cocker’s disgusted response to Jackson’s performance involving himself as a Christ-like figure bestowing benevolence and love on grateful children of all colours was a flash of the lily white, bony Cocker behind in a mooning spectacular.
Crump then reads several of the stories from Neverland. These are madcap, surreal, witty and wickedly funny, and made more so by Crump’s deadpan presentation. Jaws drop as he parodies and ribs Jackson. An extract from Neverland may be read online here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/24/simon-crump-neverland-not-booker
Afterwards, Crump is asked if he had any reaction from loyal Michael Jackson fans. He says that he publicised the book by joining Michael Jackson forums and complaining about the book to bring it to other people’s attention. The other fans quickly joined him in condemning it. This is typical Crump, he doesn’t take himself too seriously and is not averse to mischievous pranks. He says that when he published My Elvis Blackout a few years ago, he joined an Elvis forum to bring his book to the fans’ attention in the same way. He remembers one German Elvis fan writing forbiddingly ’We do not know who is this Simon Crump but he is not welcome in this town.’
We laugh. We love them. Enfants terribles – the world would be a pompous and boring place without them. They’re always welcome in this town.
