The rain fell on Londontown this weekend which suits me as I hate the sunshine
Anyway, I sat at home and did some light reading. I’m still working my way through the new translation of Don Quixote mentioned before, but I also finished reading this book of my girlfriend’s which had been hanging around for a while. It is actually quite an interesting tale, all about the Indian Rope Trick and how it never existed in India but was invented by some American journalist and subsequently picked up by conjurers in India. But it is what would be a diverting long article in a magazine turned into a bloody long book.
That said, there are some interesting things about Victorian magicians and in particular, the Society for Psychical Research founded in 1882 who were very influential in their day. The theory goes that the death of Prince Albert led to that era’s obsession with mediums and spirituality, an idea explored in depth in this excellent book by Matthew Sweet about the Victorians, too much to go into here, but fascinating stuff, definitely.
And I can’t let mention Indian conjurers without alluding to Wilkie Collins’ corking novel the Moonstone - and as pointed out in John Sutherland’s wonderful The Literary Detective, what on earth are those Indian conjurers doing at the Varinder House?!
All this India Rope Trick reading reminded me of this record - specifically the song ‘Indian Rope Man’. Brian Auger is still working today and Julie Driscol - perhaps best known today for recording the theme to Absolutely Fabulous - now works under her married name of Julie Trippets, all good stuff I’m sure. There is also a great version of ‘Light My Fire’ on the record, though I think it was illegal to release an album in the late sixties with a cover of it. I loathe the Doors, they’re surely the most-overated band ever. But I’ll go into that another day.
And finally, not really cultural runnings - though no change there - but the confusion about Theirry Henry’s transfer to Barcelona took up considerable quantities of my head space over the last few weeks and I found this really helpful site assisted me in reading far too much speculation around it. Useful site, whatever you’re interested in.
