Tag: Iain Dale

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Zolabytes

Book Burners and Antipodi

Publisher Chris Gruppetta gives us his thoughts, prophecies and ideas on the forthcoming Vella Gera novel “L-Antipodi” along with a few lessons to the “book burning brigade. Enjoy this Zolabyte.
Don’t worry, it’s not yet-another-article on Li Tkisser Sewwi …
The Maltese Book-Burning Brigade must be in a pickle right now. You see, one of their lead arguments when inciting and applauding the prosecution of author Alex Vella Gera and editor Mark Camilleri for the short story Li Tkisser Sewwi, was that this was not literature, but smut. “ ’tis vulgar and obscene, unredeemed by literary merit” — “It can’t be compared to Irvine Welsh, whose books are works of literature” — “this is just obscenity for the sake of titillation and disgust”

What on earth, now, will they make of this? On the 22nd August, Vella Gera will be launching his latest novel, L-Antipodi, the first chapter of which is circulating on the internet. And having read this teaser, I dare anyone to say this is not literature. Beautifully crafted, with pitch-perfect dialogue, smoothly executed time-shifts, and an underlying sadness and maturity that haunts, this first chapter will be a tough act to follow. Of course, not having yet laid my hands on the rest of the novel, it could well turn out to be a hopeless anti-climax. It could, but I’d be extremely surprised if it were.

I am not necessarily a Vella Gera fan. I passed on his first novel, and subsequently I vehemently argued against the censorship of his short story in Realtà, but not on the grounds of artistic merit. If anything, my point was that we should not seek to defend his right to freedom of expression by hiding behind “artistic merit”, as if only great writing were allowed to be explicit and direct.

Yet this first chapter includes – though not in the quantity and intensity of Li Tkisser Sewwi – a number of explicit phrases, including the dreaded “ħexa” word and stuff being shoved in and out. So now I am looking forward to hearing the Taleban Brigade’s take on this. Will they deem this novel acceptable because its bona fide literary value cancels out the occasionally explicit language? Unlikely. Or will they furiously backpedal, now claiming that even in the case of works of literary merit, a Disney-level curfew should be imposed? “No kissing unless it’s a caste peck on the lips.”

Whatever they say or do, Vella Gera’s new novel will fly off the shelves. Irrespective of content, that was bound to happen the minute Realtà got slapped with the ban. That, dear Book-Burning Brigade, is the ultimate utilitarian reason for not banning books: it tends to backfire, giving the author reams of free publicity and ensuring his presence in the bestseller lists. However it would be a great pity if L-Antipodi were to sell out merely because of the curiosity effect. The first chapter at least, is a solid work of literature – ranking among the most interesting novel-openers this year – that deserves to be read by all Maltese literature fans.

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Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.

Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Mediawatch

The Strongest Link

While we are on the subject of links here are two blogs from the UK Big League that featured J’accuse this week.

Iain Dale – writer, speaker, broadcaster and politician – gave J’accuse a mention on his blog’s feature “the Daley Dozen” on Wednesday. Here is an extract from Dale’s bio:

Iain Dale is one of Britain’s leading political commentators, appearing regularly on TV and radio. Iain is best known for his political blog, Iain Dale’s Diary and football blog, West Ham Till I Die. He is a contributing editor and columnist for GQ Magazine, writes for the Daily Telegraph and a fortnightly diary for the Eastern Daily Press. He was the chief anchor of Britain’s first political internet TV channel, 18 Doughty Street.com and is a presenter on LBC Radio. He appears regularly as a political pundit on Sky News, the BBC News Channel, Newsnight, Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live. He is the publisher of the monthly magazine, Total Politics and the author or editor of more than twenty books. He is managing director of the new book publisher, Biteback Publishing.

Yep a Tory AND a Hammer… still, he did appreciate our critique of his Telegraph article (internet elections) – enough to grant J’accuse a second appearance on the Daley Dozen.

Then there was Charles Crawford, fresh from his latest encounter with the darker side of Maltese blogging. The former FCO diplomatic servant and speechwriter now blogs regularly at charlescrawford.biz and has had a scrape with the Maltese net media thanks to the Conspiracy Theory of the Foreign Consultant. Crawford revised his blog post Malta’s Dramatic Blogosphere to include a reference to both Blogs of Malta and J’accuse.

Not bad for a week of links. Who said netiquette is not useful?

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Internet Elections?

An interesting article by Iain Dale in the online Telegraph queries whether the UK is really having an “internet election”. Dale comments that:

This was supposed to be the election when internet politics came of age, when the blogosphere and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook had a real impact on the campaign. But it hasn’t turned out like that: far from being an important player, the internet has become all but an irrelevance. So why has the web been the dog that hasn’t barked?

But has it? Dale’s analysis turns out to be mostly party centered -one that seems to expect party politicians to be using the internet as their main medium. We made the same assumption with The Malta Chronicle when we started to monitor politicians’ blogs in the last national election in Malta.

In a way it is a justified assumption to make – here’s the tool to send information and so we expect those who have been channeling one-way information to just take their seat at their keyboards and do the same – only with a much faster, much more easily accessible medium than your average TV (expensive time slots), newspaper (controlled by editor) or radio (last seen at crime scene – suspected murder by video).

Follow politician’s blogs, tweets or facebook pages and you will reach what should have been an obvious truth. The class of politicians that has become pampered at controlling the message and its delivery (with the conniving assistance of the PR folk) are loath to engage with an audience that can react in real time. The most poignant example of this was GonziPN’s personal blog. Aspirant Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi set up a blog with comments disabled. Not a blog. Not a medium of interest.

At most politicians will pander to the Big Brother use of the internet. Cue the “days in the life of David Cameron” youtube stunt and things of such trivial sort. Not exactly mind-boggling debate over policy. So what use for the internet? Dale uses the words “echo chamber” to describe the twitter and facebook effect. Propaganda thrown into the cacophony of voices will be crunched and retweeted – to the point that it might not recognise itself at the end of it. Webb 2.0 is the crudely powerful New Media enhancing the grapevine, the bar chat and the streetwise cracks by a zillion.

And what of the promise of interactive debate? Well, there is the battle of the blogosphere that has been resolved in some way. Dale’s take is interesting. He believes that the blogs (or at least those that count) have been taken over by journalists:

Will the internet recover its voice after the election? I hope so – but it is also possible that we have seen a high water mark in terms of new media’s influence. Yes, the mainstream press calls on bloggers such as Tim Montgomerie, Will Straw and myself to play the role of political pundits. But the fact that so many bloggers are, effectively, professional journalists creates the impression that we’re not online insurgents, breaking down the gates of the Westminster village, but just another part of the establishment. It’s rather like a scene from Animal Farm: “The voters outside looked from blogger to journalist, and from journalist to blogger, and from blogger to journalist again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

I wonder if there is some truth in this assessment. Or could it be that a “successful” blogger still gets validated the moment he becomes a MSM journalist? The debate is open. Change is happening and this too will be of considerable importance in the next election in Malta.

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Addendum: Cheers to Iain Dale for featuring this post on his blog’s The Daley Dozen.