3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Guilty as Charged, April 7, 2010
This review is from: Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There (Paperback)
There comes a time in every love affair when the emotions finally release the optic nerves, letting you see your partner as they really are, when last night's date becomes this morning's hangover, when you stop locking the bathroom door and start cutting your toenails in front of one another. It's surviving that moment, more than any other test, that makes or breaks relationships.
That moment arrived for me and AA Gill about a third of the way into "Previous Convictions". I'll save you from skipping to the end: it turns out all right, we're still together, but it was a close-run thing.
Partly it was my fault. I was quick to overlook Mr Gill's faults. At first, I knew him only vaguely by reputation, as a witty and acerbic columnist for the UK's Sunday Times newspaper. The first book of his I read was "Angry Island", and I was hooked. The vitriol sometimes fell wide of the mark -- he seems to have a personal animus against the Welsh, for instance, which seems to be about as sensible as being against quilt-making or the color green. But he was always original, always fun to have around. His travel writing collection, "AA Gill is away", sealed the deal. It's like pumping ten thousand volts through your literary nerves, blowing all your preconceptions of what travel writing should be. I had it bad, as you can see.
"Previous Convictions" started out right. Oh sure, there was a bit of pretentiousness in his division of the articles into "Here" (the UK) and "There" (everywhere else). The first piece though, on the Glastonbury music festival, had me in hysterics. The high point arrives when the police attempt to escort away a naked, elderly woman noisily masturbating in front of the stage. "Come quietly, love".
But then, I started to notice the little things. How his heart really wasn't in it sometimes. The line about Africa waking up with such promise? That's from "AA Gill is away". The paean to India, ditto.
Sometimes, he was so self-indulgent, like he couldn't even be bothered trying. Like the article devoted entirely to a phone call to his 11-year-old son. Worse yet, he started throwing his own relationship in my face. Here's AA Gill and Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson in Texas. Here's AA Gill and "Jeremy" in Iraq, in Mykonos, in Amsterdam. Other than as showcases for Jeremy's asinine prejudices and Mr Gill's love of name-dropping, there's not much to recommend about any of these pieces.
I was almost in tears. How he let me down. Then I went back, reread the better pieces, the middle stretch especially. Wait, the magic was still there. The piece on mining in South Africa, that's pure gold, you get a real sense of the oppressive heat, the stifling dark, the hellish noise. His take on the essential loneliness and desperation of fitness clubs ("As close as most of us non-Hindus will ever get to knowing what it's like to be a hamster") has the disturbing ring of truth, his anger at the massacre in Darfur feels genuine (the book was pusblished in 2006, before Darfur became a cause celebre).
His bleak portrait of Haiti is timely given the recent earthquake, and a reminder that it will take more than money to get this basket-case country on its feet again. The trip to Peshawar, near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, is nicely balanced, a human look an inhuman conflict that has dragged on through British, Russian and American occupations for over a century.
In short, "Previous Convictions" is patchy, baldingly uneven, but when Mr Gill gets it right, it shines. Brilliantly.
Sometimes you just have to close one eye, accept the other's faults, and learn to appreciate the good times. Luckily, in "Previous Convictions" there's still plenty of the latter. I just pray that's the last I've heard of Jeremy Clarkson.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Gill, July 14, 2008
This review is from: Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There (Paperback)
If you are, as I am, a confirmed despiser of Celine Dion, Siegfried and Roy, and Las Vegas in general, you'll love the tone and humor of this book. I had to read his chapter on Las Vegas twice. Gill's description of Dion's personal theater at Caesar's and her over-rehearsed, mock-sincere act, not to mention the vicious rapier-skewering of the German animal-act duo, are spot on.
I have to say the same about his summary of the sink-or-swim, bike-lest-ye-die mentality of the New York health club scene. Dipping a toe into the latest fad workouts from African dance to mega-spinning to an Indian guru's sweat box, Gill endures every humiliation to report on the competitive culture of America's dog-eat-dog metropolis. I could only shake my head at the futility of people who just don't see it - and am thankful that Gill, always the astute observer, isn't afraid to point out the emperor's lack of clothes.
His tale of the hippie festival at Glastonbury is hilarious, as is the chapter on Texas - despite the comments of the America-bashing colleague who accompanied him on the trip through the heartland. The humor is balanced by sensitive reporting on such diverse topics as working conditions for gold miners in South Africa and seal-hunting Eskimos in Greenland. Some chapters I couldn't relate to, such as the one on golf; and the story about stag hunting in Scotland didn't particularly interest me. That's a matter of personal taste. I'm not a sailor, either, but found Gill's essay on sailing a vintage boat out of Capri simply captivating.
Those familiar with the author's work will not be disappointed. Newbies will find something of interest with this diverse collection of subjects. Some of the descriptions are the best I've read, summing up a place or person with concise, witty language that leaves you hungry for more. Too bad Mr. Gill doesn't write for a newspaper in the States so we can enjoy his prose on a regular basis.
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