For anyone who knows the Etienne’s story cafes are a recurring theme. The theme’s remained, but the angle’s changed. Now there is a genuine concern that a central part of the Etienne’s mythology is disappearing, particularly from central London. It’s another recurring theme: brave individualism and family tradition disappearing in the flood of familiar franchises and an expensive, confusing coffee hegemony. Let’s hear it for the small guy who refuses to kowtow.
I have to confess to sharing the Etienne obsession with the London café. It is I guess the bohemian spirit that Bob Stanley self-deprecatingly refers to in his sleevenotes. The sense that by sitting there you are part of some wonderful literary or artistic tradition. A tradition that touches upon everything from the boho Soho demimonde of the modern jazz and the birth of British rock’n’roll through the mod uprising and Absolute Beginners via all those Godard movies where beautiful girls smoke endless cigarettes and Sartre’s Nausea through to Dexys and all those Liverpool groups sitting around in cafes.
And I still love cafes. I can still get enthusiastic and incredibly loyal about London’s cafes. Me and the love of my life have a particular favourite called Wot The Dickens down Woburn Walk, near Euston, where the tuna and spring onion focaccia is particularly addictive and the staff very sweet. Just opposite is the Aquarium Gallery where they are just about to start a Jamie Reid exhibition, and copies of the highly recommended Nude magazine are in the window.
Nude contains an excellent piece on the kitchen sink fiction of the ‘50s and ‘60s. It’s something I was so close to at one stage. “Remember Arthur Seaton said he won’t be beaten”, and all that. I have to confess I had become more interested in the London literary lineage Iain Sinclair has diligently promoted as an alternative to the Angry Young Men. The litany we’ve been learning: Alexander Baron, Gerald Kersh, Derek Raymond. Why he’s never mentioned Shena Mackay I’ll never know.
Sinclair is rather like Saint Etienne in the way he ferociously sticks by his obsessions. Reading his new novel is really a disorientating experience. It is almost a trick with mirrors. Sinclair seems to play with us, rehashing themes from previous texts, from White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings through to Lights Out for the Territory and Liquid City and on to London Orbital. It’s all very odd. It gets to the stage where the book almost becomes a list of reference points.
I have to confess I got to the stage where I was flicking the pages of Dining On Stones picking out the signposts and clues. It’s hardly what you’re meant to do with a novel is it? Maybe Sinclair is stuck in a locked groove. Maybe Sinclair is absolutely obsessed with the London writers, the hidden stories there, the London litany, and will not resist the opportunity to promote these.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’ve lost the will to concentrate. It’s the culture of the remote control. Pick it up, fast forward through. It’s all too easy. And so I reduce a novel as large as Dining On Stones to a long list. But I like lists. I still haven’t worked my way through Paul Morley’s Words and Music, but I’ve repeatedly thumbed through the lists and footnotes at the end. They’re fun, and they’re clever. Yet I do worry.
I worry unnecessarily. If the book is good enough I will read every word, and savour them. One I did read recently was Julian Maclaren-Ross’ Of Love and Hunger. A tawdry tale of time wasted. And a tale written by one of the genuine London literary bohemians. The real thing, what we wanted to be part of, and still fondly feel so protective of in these strange times.
In the meantime, back to that Saint Etienne compilation. It’s wonderful stuff, and something that should be playing in the background of every café. There are some songs here like Donovan’s 'Sunny Goodge Street', Tammy St John’s gorgeous 'Dark Shadows and Empty Hallways', and Ruth Copeland’s 'The Music Box' which I do associate with the Etienne and café culture. Elsewhere there is the sweetest of soul sounds from the ‘60s and ‘70s, some reggae, beat and oddities. It all fits together and is eerily reminiscent of the sort of tapes we would once put together for friends and shyly pass across the table to loved ones while over in the corner of a café a bit part actor from Grange Hill would sit under a signed photo of himself.
The collection is culled from the Sanctuary archives (let’s not underestimate the great salvage work people like John Reed there have been doing), but that’s entirely appropriate as cafes should be sanctuaries. Sorry!
© 2004 John Carney