Reviews
- the sedateness of durban verses the magic of improvisation
- WELCOME NELSON REVIEW
- DRUMSOUND WILLOWVALE HOTEL
- Avatar
- SMS Sugar Man
- the bow project
- Music Today fund raising concert
- Watchmen
- Wasted
- Bicky, Pristina, Babylonia
- Burn after reading
- POP - Splat
- Lesbian scene in SMS Sugar Man
- The Wallets
- Isiqalo: Dr. Zakes album
- 12shooters
- A Dream of Life
- Jesus and the giant
- The Kiss that Kisses the Kiss
- The Dark Knight...
- Velvet
- Derek
- He WAS out of control
- I'm not there
- SMS Sugar Man 2 (an analysis)
- the diabolical bulk
- The Walker
- Horton Who's a What?
- La Vie en Rose
- No Country For Old Men
- into the wild
- Across the Universe
- The Devil's Labyrinth
- Hannibal Rising
- 300
16
Oct
| 12shooters |
| Reviews - Film - Music - Book |
| Thursday, 16 October 2008 06:58 |
| There is one film I have viewed more times than I can remember. It is Frederico Fellini's 'Satyricon'. Apart from astounding visuals of extraordinary power and depth there is a scene which (there are many) blew me away. An extraordinary beautiful youth is contemplating suicide and is just about to do it, when the building he is in, begins to collapse: suddenly he is fighting for his life! It is this extraordinary turn of events which underpins 12shooters - an aimless person, doing his utmost to drink himself into oblivion, night after night at a bar, skimming within the very belly of despair, without hope, refusing to work, yet believing totally in his self, succumbs to......life!! He is demonstrating the indomitable human spirit. He is demonstrating how being informed by literature, how being anchored in the self, sum into liberation! I have decided to live my life in fine style. This does not involve being clever. It involves authenticity. My subject matter will find me. As such, this novella floats through the beerlight of an alcoholic's hangout and shoots into the realm of the light-reflecting myriad mirrorball in the dance-hall part of the bar. This is the infuriating part of Kaganof: he is seemingly footloose and fancy free, shallow and flippant, yet never far from his ultimate life goal - to shake you up, to set you free! Those unable to access the compact and enlightened truths which emerge on virtually every page, are likely to dismiss this book (if not Kaganof himself) as being lightweight and of no consequence: Some dumb-fuck alcoholic waster is sitting around in a bar writing nothing and now publishes it as a novel! His libido, a sure sign of his aliveness, (nice erotic cover: 12shooters*) never leaves him even when he is in the throes of attempting to process the fallibility of the human condition. He vigourously slams you in the jaw with sudden and uncomfortable truths, zaps you between the eyes with the ordinary depravity of human behaviour. He is never holier than though - if anything he stoops to some rather low shenanigans himself - but he is also saying he who is without sin, cast the first stone. The previous publication of this novella as Stones again therefore takes on a languidly cycnical depth when viewed in this context. (And yes, I know it was named after a bar in Melville.) What I have found extraordinary in a literary sense about Kaganof is that there is no hidden agenda in his writing. He does what any artist aspires towards: to enlighten. As an author/artist he has absolutely no need to convince you of anything. He lays it bare. He takes you into the nth of consciousness. It is up to you to see what is inherently there. It may not be pretty, but it is loaded.
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