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ABSOLUTE_BEGINNERS

                                             March 19, 2007
                                             April  3, 2009

 Colin MacInnes
 "Absolute Beginners" (1959)


    I've always liked the phrase
    "Absolute Beginners": there
    was a time before there was
    such a thing as a "teenager",
    and when the teenager was                  The novel is disappointing: a
    invented, they weren't just                meandering travelog of a book,
    beginners, they were the                   gradually leading up to a race
    *first* beginners...                       riot climax without much of a
                                               sense of drive along the way.
    This is a story about the first
    generation to come of age after               The main character is a
    World War II.                                 rather middle-aged 19
                                                  year old -- we're never
                                                  told his name, though
                                                  the film version calls
  I've long been familar with the                 him Colin, for obvious
  film version, which has a                       reasons: he's the
  different set of problems and                   author's mouth piece for
  virtues.  It's a funny attempt at               various and sundry
  doing Broadway musical on film:                 opinions and judgements.
  It seems too much like West Side
  Story in many places, but it does                       HOME_PLANET
  have some some decent music-video
  schtick:                                        His grand passion for Suzette
                                                  seems rather muted, in part
      A pov-shot from inside of                   because of the narrative
      a stand-up base, the strings                choice, putting it all in a
      vibrating across the scene.                 distant past tense, a man
                                                  talking about the way things
      The drunken boy falls backwards,            were when he was a child --
      his head between two mirrors--              though the novel is set in
      he looks back and forth for                 '58, and was published in '59.
      a moment as his reflections
      talk to each other ("How far                But then, this grand passion
      you going, boy?"; "All the way!").          itself seems to fizzle at the
                                                  end, where the main character
  There's a good number by Sade                   decides to cut-and-run and
  (you know, "sharday") --                        leave his old 'hood to it's
  "Killer Blow". It's the only                    race riots...
  thing she's recorded that I
  can listen to.                                     Possibly the author
                                                     thought he was being
         And the film has                            "existential", or
         a role for David                            "realistic" or some
         Bowie, which would                          such, but this sudden
         redeem a worse                              shift into anti-heroism
         movie.                                      doesn't work.

                                                     Though, the film
                                                     version has a converse
                                                     problem: it leads up to
                                                     a cheesy fight scene
                                                     that wouldn't really
                                                     resolve much, with
                                                     a pat assertion that
                                                     it did.







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