On the Brink of Death, but Still Performing

Arts NEWS VOICES TV IQ BUSINESS SPORT WEDNESDAY 36 2-27 12-16 28-29 30-39 40-43 45-54 i 13 FEBRUARY 2013 37 Victim and perp: Rachel Cusk (main image); On the brink of reviewer Camilla Long (far left); George Eliot (right) and Charlotte Brontë (far right) GERAINT LEWIS; death, but still GETTY IMAGES performing Wilko Johnson’s not the first to play on when dying, says Simon Hardeman hen – let’s not tempt spurred such bouts of creativity fate by saying “if” from many acts. Lee Hazlewood, – R’n’B guitar hero who wrote and co-performed Wand inspirational per- “These Boots Are Made for Walkin” former Wilko Johnson takes the and “Some Velvet Morning” with stage for his farewell mini-tour at Nancy Sinatra, only went back to the beginning of March, he will be the studio in 2005 after he was told the latest artist to have taken a ter- his cancer had gone too far. Of the minal diagnosis as a prescription to record, Cake or Death, he said, “if carry on doing what he does best. [it’s] not what you like, hurry… get Johnson has pancreatic cancer, your money back, because that’s as the same disease that laid low the good as it’s going to be”. Meanwhile, man who made the Cincinnati Pops George Harrison showed gallows Orchestra famous, Erich Kunzel. humour when he wrote what was eviewing a particularly graduates in their late 20s, who found- a HobNob. We judges met the Omni- The celebrated conductor knew he reportedly his first song for 10 terrible musical in the ed the Omnivore website to monitor vore founders for lunch at the Cavalry was dying and yet also kept going. years after doctors gave him a grim 1930s, the American newspaper reviews. Their weekly and Guards Club in Piccadilly and “He was crying,” said principal prognosis on his cancer. He noted theatre critic Percy inspections led to their establishing, headed into the final analysis. horn Elizabeth Freimuth of the the publishing credit for “Horse Hammond wrote: “I last year, the Hatchet Job of the Year The judging proceeded by a proc- final concert in 2009. He died a to the Water”, which he sang for see that I have knocked Award “for the writer of the angriest, ess of elimination. Craig Brown’s month later. a Jools Holland album in 2001, to Reverything about this production but funniest, most trenchant book review masterful detective work had discov- The man who wrote “Were- “R.I.P. Ltd”. He died the same year. the knees of the chorus girls – and of the past 12 months”. It’s sponsored ered that Richard Bradford’s joint bi- wolves of London”, US singer- Film great John Huston directed Nature has anticipated me there.” by the Fish Society, who offer the prize ography of Kingsley Amis and Philip songwriter Warren Zevon, was his last movie from his wheelchair. The best hatchet jobs are wholesale of a year’s supply of potted shrimps Larkin was a shameless piece of self- diagnosed with inoperable cancer He died before the film’s release. It demolitions, performed without any (the connection is that shrimps are plagiarism, bolting together two of his in 2002. He refused treatment was called The Dead. judicious weighing of strengths and natural “omnivores”). Last year the earlier works. But did that make it a he felt pointless, as Johnson has, One of the most extraordinary If you’re weaknesses, and carried off with prize was won by Adam Mars-Jones hatchet job or a good exposure? and not only began recording his performances by an actor on the murderous glee. Like John Lockhart’s Delicious for his magisterial, but humorous, Richard Evans’s review of A N final album,The Wind, with guests brink of death comes from Edward staying famous review of Endymion in Black- evisceration of Michael Cunning- Wilson’s biography of Hitler, which including Bruce Springsteen and G Robinson in the 1973 filmSoylent wood’s Magazine that almost stopped ham’s precious novel By Nightfall. identified a series of misjudgements Tom Petty, but also featured in a Green, where he plays an almost in... Keats from writing any more poetry: This year I was one of the judges, and inept researches, radiated aca- documentary for VH-1 and a David impossibly poignant euthanasia “The frenzy of the Poems was bad alongside the journalists and authors demic contempt.. It was a demoli- Letterman show special devoted to scene. The only person who knew enough in its way; but it did not alarm poison Lynn Barber and Francis Wheen. We tion. But it lacked, we thought, the him, where he sang, and offered the he was dying was his co-star Charl- us half so seriously as the calm, set- had to take a longlist of 30 displays of breezy manner that makes the per- advice, “enjoy every sandwich”. ton Heston who wrote: “I’ve never tled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy book-reviewer bile and reduce them fect hatchet job. Jazz great Stan Getz knew he heard of an actor playing a death of Endymion. Mr Keats… is only a boy to a shortlist. Over croissants and Zoë Heller’s 5,000-word review had liver cancer in 1987, and car- scene in terms of his own true and BOOKS of pretty abilities, which he has done A bad review may be agony for the sparkling wine, we set to, noticing of Rushdie’s memoir of life in hiding ried on performing and recording imminent death… Eddie knew it Fanny And everything in his power to spoil… ” some odd circularities about authors under the fatwa was, we agreed, the when the end was clear, almost to was truly his last.” It’s shocking to consider that good author, but it should be bliss to read. and reviewers. Several books (Martin best-written of all the reviews we’d his death in 1991. His last render- Five years later, John Cazale Stella reviews seldom make history. Bad re- Amis’s Lionel Asbo, Salman Rushdie’s read, but was more a critique of the ings of Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood played his part in The Deer Hunter BY NEIL McKENNA views, however, reverberate down the John Walsh describes how he and his Joseph Anton, The Divine Comedy by author’s pronouncements, over the Count” are hugely poignant for after being diagnosed with cancer. years. We read George Eliot’s airy dis- Craig Raine, Vagina by Naomi Wolf, years, about art and its political con- both their playing and because it He was nursed through the shoot In 1870, two missal of Charlotte Brontë’s dialogue Aftermath by Rachel Cusk) had at- text than a focused book review. The was a tune that Strayhorn had fin- by his partner and co-star, Meryl young cross- (“I wish her characters would talk a fellow judges chose a winner for the tracted more than one hatchet. Some Washington Post’s Ron Charles made ished while in hospital in 1967 in the Streep. Like Huston, he never saw dressing Lon- little less like the heroes and heroines reviewers appeared several times, as a gory mess of Amis’s Lionel Asbo, but last stages of his own cancer. the finished film. don clerks, bur- of police reports”) with a sigh of cen- Hatchet Job of the Year Award if writing abusive copy were meat and leaned a little too heavily on Ameri- As well as playing live, Johnson The screenwriter Dennis Pot- lesque artistes tury-defying pleasure. We read John drink to them (Philip Hensher, Craig can TV shows when discussing his has said he wants to record again. ter, was interviewed at length by – and part-time prostitutes Hollander in the Partisan Review los- Brown). Some knocking reviewers shortcomings as a satirist. Terminal diagnoses have Melvyn Bragg for Channel 4 in – were prosecuted in a sen- ing patience with the leading Beat were authors whose books had been And so a winner emerged. Camilla 1994, only a month after being told sational trial. With careful poet (“It is only fair to Allen Ginsberg savaged in turn (Lionel Shriver rub- Long’s Sunday Times review of Af- that his pancreatic cancer, like research underpinning to remark on the utter lack of deco- bished Lionel Asbo while her book The termath by Rachel Cusk, about the Johnson’s, was inoperable. Potter his zest and brio, McKenna rum of any kind in his dreadful little New Republic was hatcheted by Scar- break-up of her marriage, sank its told the world that he had called his tells their singular story, volume. Howl is meant to be a noun, lett Thomas, A N Wilson whacked fangs into her subject from the first cancer “Rupert” after Rupert Mur- which challenged Victorian but I can’t help taking it as an impera- Salman Rushdie and was thumped in sentence and wouldn’t let go. She doch, whom he despised for what morality, and the astonish- tive”), and still delight in that silky, “It turn by Richard Evans). homed in on Cusk’s “whinnying de- he had done to the media. ing outcome of their case. is only fair…” We began to narrow down our se- tail,” her “mad, flowery metaphors and Hatchet jobs are a joy to read, not lection. We dropped Julie Burchill for hifalutin creative-writing ex- DVD because we love to see a writer’s new attacking the author (Frances Os- periments,” and remarked on her Madagascar 3 baby stabbed through the heart, but borne, wife of the Chancellor) rather presentation of herself as “a brittle because we admire the breezy wit than her book, about the Suffragists.

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