Sinister: twiglets and hedgehogs

[Kieran Devaney]

Dear sinister,

tis the season for end of year lists/polls, especially ones about your 
favourite records or albums of the year. there are lists of certain 
publications favourite 10/20/50/100 albums from this year all over the shop. 
am i the only one who finds them annoying and pointless? "but they're just a 
bit of fun" i hear you cry, well maybe. but i personally think that any list 
like that seems to stop people talking about the actual records in the list, 
and instead the conversation will turn to pointless 'this should've been 
higher than that' or 'wheres...?' type statements. such lists are not 
conducive to good conversation. plus these lists always ignore more 
left-field choices in favour of whatever has been fashionable this year - as 
shown by the strokes/white stripes topping almost every single list i've 
seen. so maybe the 'wheres...?' claims are not that unjustified, but what i 
mean is that people tend to start picking apart the lists rather than the 
records themselves. so neither the artists nor the music benefit 
particularly. why are the white stripes better than sparklehorse? because 
they are higher in the chart. seems rather silly and self-defeating if you 
ask me. nobody did ask me, but i'm saying it anyway. what i'd prefer is if 
people picked their favourite records of the year (whether it's just one or 
more than 500) and said what they like about them, rather than playing 
radically different records off against eachother.
am i being overly harsh on list compliers, or is the whole concept of best 
of the year lists inherently flawed?
are such things symbolic of a society obsessed with quantifying everything - 
having to turn art into sport?
do IPC subeditors dictate our youth?
answers on a postcard please

joe pancake/rachel vester
said something along the lines of: "Jeanette Winterson, who is the most 
abrasive and disagreeable author I can think of offhand. She writes in an 
irritating way and just takes herself far too seriously while generally 
being pretentious. And being a total bitch."

all of which seems fair enough. she is certainly abrasive and very 
pretentious (especially some bits of 'the passion' i found that book very 
difficult to get to grips with), though i would say someone like Joseph 
Heller was more disagreeable, not because of his politics or anything, but 
more because of his 'clever' style; which i find almost impossible to like. 
while jeanette winterson is definitely pretentious and abrasive, i think you 
have to admire the singularity of her vision - and i think her writing is 
very affecting at times. i'm not a huge fan of hers though, so perhaps 
someone who is could do a better job of defending her. i only mentioned her 
in my post because she seems the complete opposite of JK Rowling and her 
awful harry potter books which are so fashionable. i'd much rather someone 
like winterson was en vogue (though i don't think ms winterson herself would 
enjoy it). the kids reading harry potter could do with an injection of 
pretension i think, if only so they know what it looks like. JK Rowling once 
did a visit to the library where i work to promote the first harry potter 
book (before my time there though i'm afraid), apparently it wasn't very 
well attended or anything - whereas now just putting on a crappy 'harry 
potter activity day' basically consisting of the books on tape (the steven 
fry ones) being played at considerable volume, and an amateur party wizard 
bloke coming in draws out all the local kids and whips them up into a potter 
induced frenzy. how times have changed.

thats enough for now i think
i'm listening to autechre at the moment - thats not very twee is it?
i must try harder at that
yours faithfully
kieran




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