Accepting Reality: The University Years

 Cover illustration by Sofia Lindgren.

Accepting Reality is the long-awaited (awaited by four or five people…) sequel to Confronting Reality. It was written during Saimon A.’s undergraduate studies, between 2011 and 2014. Although there is veneer of surrealism and absurdity in these stories, Saimon A. has furthered his scope. There is more satire. Warped mysteries. Dollops of pornography. There are obsessive characters. There are neuroses and psychoses. Saimon A. throws a lot of disparate elements together. Sometimes they gel, sometimes they don’t. In the preface, Saimon A. writes that ‘there is an acceptance of reality’ instead of an ‘assiduous scepticism.’ Many of these stories can be said to be an attempt to reconcile the subjective with the objective, the macro and the micro. They are interested in the ways in which broader legislative political decisions affect the ontology of individuals. A lot of these stories are set in obscure moments in history and foreign countries, continuing with Saimon A.’s interest in what he calls ‘cosmopolitan literature.’ Many of these stories are based on real life figures. Some deal with Saimon A.’s obsession with classical, jazz and experimental music. Some deal with Saimon A.’s burgeoning interest in philosophy. Saimon A. continues to be interested in outsiders and those people who subject themselves to the outer extremes of human experience. All in all, this is another eclectic and eccentric collection from one of the most eccentric writers. Whether the world is ready to accept this unusual and unclassifiable book remains to be seen.'

Preface                                                                                                                                                9

Eight PM in Buenos Aires                                                                                                        15

Francisca Franzen                                                                                                                    18

Letters to Camila Vallejo                                                                                                         24

The Murmurings                                                                                                                      27

The Hermit and the Despot                                                                                                      33

The Bridge of Time                                                                                                                 40

Desperate Lives                                                                                                                       44

The Second Death of God                                                                                                       48

Burned Manuscripts                                                                                                                 54

Consigned to Mythology                                                                                                          57

Quartet for the End of Time                                                                                                     63

Rose of the Fair State                                                                                                               66

Alone in the Cyber Age                                                                                                             70

Hit the North!                                                                                                                          73

The Sleep of Reason Produces Wonders                                                                                    76

The Tea Boy                                                                                                                            79

Valparaíso                                                                                                                               83

My Vinyl Fetish                                                                                                                       85

The Death of Labour                                                                                                               96

The Thing in Itself                                                                                                                   99

Afterword                                                                                                                                101

One copy still available to any one who shows the faintest interest. 104 A4 pages printed and bound. Completely free, including postage. This even applies if you are a complete stranger.

My vinyl fetish

I have grown to adore vinyl. I have grown to love its raw, full sound. It especially suits classical music. It feels so compressed when digitised. I inherited about forty or so classical records from my deceased Anglo-Chilean grand-uncle. My collection has grown considerably since. I scour charity shops for bargains.

I wrote a theatrical sketch recently called 'My Vinyl Fetish.' In the sketch, five surrogates of mine, and a woman (named 'Pussy'...) listen to seven of my records and discuss them. One of my fantasies is to stay up til the early hours of the morning, drink wine and listen to records with a group of people.

Below I will select a few corkers and offer brief comments. I didn't select any of the seven vinyls I wrote about in my sketch...

The collection, as seen from a distance...

This is an edition of Captain Beefheart's debut album Safe as Milk. It is retitled 'Dropout Boogie,' apparently because British distributors thought it'd more marketable/user-friendly as such.

Coltrane's Love Supreme. It is not at all controversial to say that this is quite likely the greatest jazz album ever made. It is a reissue. As such, it's digitised and it's not analogue.

Lovely packaging. These are recordings of Jelly Roll Morton at his prime (late 20s). New-Orleans/swing-inflected jazz is such a joy to listen to.

Frank Zappa's Lumpy Gravy. I believe that this edition is from the 60s! Sound-bites of verbal nonsense interspersed with Zappa's orchestra music.

This is a selection of Bach organ music. My lord, it sure is a treat to listen to this. It includes several of Bach's masterful toccatas and fugues.

Bach music for harpsichord, performed by George Malcolm. It includes 'Concerto in F major,' which is a particular favourite. 

Bach's violin concertos. Part of the canon and with good reason, too. I could have the second movement of the first concerto on repeat for hours.

I have all of Bartok's string quartets vinyl, performed by The Fine Arts Quartet. They're the cream of Bartok's music (and the cream of quartet repertoire, too). They're all exhilarating to hear and they chart the development of Bartok's career as a whole. My favourite is the 4th.

Bartok's 2nd and 3rd piano concertos. The piano parts are devilishly intricate. The pianist effectively must grow extra fingers to play them.

Beethoven's chamber music is so rich. Quite likely superior to the symphonies. These are sonatas for cello and piano.

Ach, just realised that I broke my own rules! I wrote about the 15th quartet in the sketch My Vinyl Fetish! This includes the 14th and 15th quartets. The former is one single movement, the latter a brilliantly crafted piece in A minor.

Blood and guts! This vinyl includes music by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. I must say that I have never taken to much of Schoenberg's stuff - his disciples' music I find more interesting. Webern's concise, muted and atonal miniatures are fascinating stuff. This is classed under 'B,' 'Berg' (generally because I have more vinyls by Berg than the other 2).

These are pieces for orchestra by Elliott Carter and Aaron Copland, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein did much to promote American serious music. I love Carter's piece - a scintillating atonal feast.

These are madrigals by Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo. A composer who anticipated the development of chromaticism by more than two centuries. He was an unpleasant character - I wrote a short story about him called 'Desperate Lives.' This is an issue from the 50s promoted by Aldous Huxley! (He wrote about listening to Gesualdo whilst taking mescalin in The Doors of Perception...) To think that I bought this for 49 p!

These are several works for piano, in different genres, by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. They are performed by Arthur Rubinstein. These pieces are delightful.

These are two choral pieces for orchestra by the contemporary German composer - Muses of Sicily and Moralities. It comes with Henze's own liner notes. This was a real find.

This is one of Liszt's literary programmatic pieces. It is based on Dante's Inferno. A real innovator as to what a symphony could do. (Like Beethoven in his day, he was regarded as a bit of a noise maker...)

Messiaen's colossal Turangalilla Symphony. There are lovely tone colours here. Messiaen includes several unusual instruments, including a theremin and a keyboard he himself built.

Debussy's and Ravel's string quartets performed by Julliard. I believe that this is an authoritative recording. I much prefer Ravel's chamber music to Debussy's (the converse is true for their orchestral music). 

Scarlatti's music for harpsichord. Baroque music at its best.

Schubert's string quartets are an emotional powerhouse. I have an awful lot of Schubert on vinyl - more than any other composer, I believe - but this is top of the pile. Schubert really broke the mould of the staid classicist forms - he pretty much wrote music just as he saw fit.

Sibelius' 4th symphony. I love the ominous first movement and the resolution of the motifs in the 3rd and 4th movements. It builds up and up and then whittles down.

Ah, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring! If some one you know is convinced that classical music is purple music for blue haired ladies, play him or her this! Classical music is wild and young! It's all the more apparent here.

These are a few pieces by Toru Takemitsu. Wonderful composer. Some of these pieces are more influenced by Oriental music, others draw more Western music.

This vinyl includes some of Edgard Varese's most important pieces. His is a truly exhilarating, oblique soundworld. Just imagine hearing Ionisation in the 20s!

Hugo Wolf was one of the greatest songwriters. Beautiful pieces. This lieder is drawn from Spanish poets - Lorca et. al.

I have quite a few vinyls which are anthologies of early music - Renaissance, early baroque. This is from Spanish medieval times, played in the - highly unusual - original instrumentation.

This is an antology of modern British piano music. I can't remember any of the composers, but certainly none of them are house-hold names. Some of the pieces here are fairly accessible, others are very harsh on the ear. They're all highly exciting, though.

Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom is my favourite record of all time. So, I feel indebted to write about it. I heard it when I was a dreamy 15-year-old. I decided then that it was my favourite record and I still have not rescinded that claim! At the time I was fed up with my formal education and had little motivation to do anything. The only thing I really felt motivated about was listening to music. Wyatt's lugubrious undulating tones, his whiskery voice and his formless structures made an irrevocable impression on me. Wyatt himself is an avowed 'dreamer' and seems to have determined never to have grown out of this state of mind.

At the time Rock Bottom was made, Wyatt's world had turned on its head. He had been the drummer of the prog-rock/jazz fusion group Soft Machine. A very free-spirited character, he was always prone to volatile experiences. He was fired from the group and dabbled in other jazz fusion projects. Around 1974 he started to contemplate recording songs for a solo project. He met 'the love of his life' Alfreda Benge. They were spending a sojourn in Venice when Wyatt, after imbibing a toxic cocktail of alcohol and drugs, jumped out of the third floor of a building. He paralysed himself.

Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge

He has since jokingly called this experience 'a good career move.' After being hospitalised, and awakening from a comatose state, he tinkered on the keyboard and wrote lyrics. The songs he wrote were influenced by his partner Alfreda, their experiences with their coterie in Venice and Wyatt resuming his life post-accident. The songs he wrote for this album spelled out the trajectory of his later career. It was a stripped down sound borne out of Wyatt's £40 keyboard. The songs are usually built from basic minor keys. A touch of instrumentalisation from guest musicians is added. There is some tribal drumming. And the most endearing touch of all: Wyatt's whiskery voice and idiosyncratic lyrics. 

The tones from Wyatt's keyboard have a lugubrious quality (in a positive sense) and they have the quality of awakening from a dream. The music was also borne out of his experiences in Venice and there is also a nautical feel to the album. As such, it is somewhat reminiscent of the impressionistic music by Debussy and Ravel. The songs certainly remind me of Debussy's pan-tonal orchestral textures from La Mer. There are also abrasive sounds derived from free jazz. The album was borne out of Wyatt   hitting 'rock bottom' and his later recovery. 

In 'Sea Song' Wyatt reminisces about long nights in venice with Alfreda. He whimsically muses how when she's drunk, she's 'quite all right.' He goes on about 'how your lunacy fits neatly with my own.' He plays lovely sustained tones on his keyboard. When one hears the record, one feels as though one is in a trance, a kind of stupor. There are jazzy major chords at the end of the song and Wyatt scat-sings alongside the music. In 'A Last Straw,' Wyatt sings as to how plunges 'into the water we'll go head over heel' and becomes a sea creature. Water and dreams are synonymous in that both have are a transient and have a sense of profundity. 

'Little Red Riding Hood' is a colossal track, with an overlay of trumpets either played in real time or reverb. Wyatt rambles on with some decidedly non-sensical lyrics. The next two tracks are especially stimulating - Alfib/Alfie. There are the same undulating tones from Wyatt's keys, which pulsate endlessly. There are brash tones added from a bass clarinet. Wyatt sings utter nonsense ('Nit nit not, folly bololey') The song gains some urgency and seagues into 'Alfie.' A saxophone squawks dissonantly. The song ends with menacing clusters from Wyatt's keyboard whilst Alfreda Benge tries to instil some sense of normalcy into the proceedings ('I'm not your dinner, you soppy old custard. (...) I'm not your dinner, you soppy old custard.')

In the final track, 'Little Red Robin Hit the Road,' Wyatt returns to England to lead a peaceful existence with his wife. There is a sense of renewal and rebirth. He talks about 'dead moles lie inside their hole,' a reference to his finished career as a jazz drummer and his defunct group Matching Mole. Fred Frith appears playing some quaint passages on the viola. Ivor Cutler recites some brilliant abstract lyrics. The album ends on a note of wilful lunacy, exaltation and optimism. So, there is some light in the tunnel after emerging from 'rock bottom.'     

I have been thinking about my fondness for this record recently. I just finished my BA at University of Kent. This is where the Canterbury scene took place, where Wyatt and Soft Machine were its members. In my second year I lived in Herne Bay, by the coast. Every Friday I would take the day off to go for fish and chips and coffee at the adjacent town Whistable. In this town, full of quaint little shops, there is a vinyl store named Rock Bottom! Wyatt used to frequent the area to visit the cafés, like me!

Poignantly, in my graduation ceremony, Wyatt was given an honourary doctorate. Sadly, this took place in a ceremony the day after mine when I left Canterbury. (In my ceremony it was Harry Hill that received an honourary docorate...) I felt frustrated by this. Out of all the graduates, there is no doubt that out of I am his biggest fan. It is likely that no-one in the ceremony would have heard of him. I toyed with the idea of staying in Canterbury for another day. If I had stayed, I would have seen a guy in a weelchair and I would have been shy and reluctant to approach him. I would have said one of those platitudes like 'Geesh, I really love your music.' Still, it would have really been nice to let him know just how important his music had been during my difficult formative years in which I had also hit 'rock bottom.' I recovered, graduated with a First Class degree and very nearly met one my musical idols!

The Sound and the Fury on film

It's odd. Out of all the William Faulkner novels you would consider to take to the screen, The Sound and the Fury might well be bottom of the list. Strangely, I have fancifully fantasised about my own  adaptation. As it happens, James Franco's adaptation is already in production. He beat me to it.

How can a book you have to read twice to understand make a good film? Literary novels, on the whole, generally make poor films. Literary conceits/devices are difficult to emulate. It is usually the pulpier books which improve on the screen. It is only when you get an auteur who is equally brilliant on his own right - think of Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg and Vittorio de Sica - that the film can make its source justice. I am not too convinced Franco - incidentally, I hardly knew anything about him before - has the pedigree to see this through.

It would seem that the only natural thing to do would be a linear recreation. Apparently, the 1959 adaptation did just that. The plight of the decadent Compson family, who find their fortune and emincence turned on its head, is a universal theme. It shares parallels with Orson Welles' masterful The Magnificent Ambersons. Whilst the book's technique is literary, the themes can easily be transplanted into the big screen.

Not to mention, the book has startling images that leave an indelible dent on the mind of the reader. The book germinated with a mental image Faulkner had of an innocent dread-locked girl dangling from a tree, with her brothers gazing from below. He called it an image of 'purity.' From there developed the conflicted, even incestual, relationship all three Compson brothers have with their sister. Similarly, there are images of Benjy screaming which would make stellar cinematic moments. When he clings to a fence, inarticulately beseeching his sister to return. The ending of the book, where he screams with all his force has the potential to become on the most searing endings of the history of cinema. They are very loaded moments which are not that difficult to dramatise. They hark back to Shakespeare's phrase, the novel's namesake, 'Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

The opening chapter, narrated by the mentally impaired Benjy, has a cinematic quality of a montage reminiscent of Terrence Malick. Yet one of the most distinctive aspects of the chapter is that it is about Benjy's defamiliarising and idiosyncratic language. There are a number of oxymorons and tautologies which characterise his unusual perceptual process. For instance, he repeatedly describes the smell of colours. The use of a voice over would never work, namely because Benjy cannot speak.

The second chapter is the most difficult of all. Again, Faulkner uses language very in a very specific way, this time recreating a mental breakdown through disintegrating syntax. Most importantly, the chapter is pretty much a treatise on the nature of metaphysical time and the decline of social patriarchies. There also a series of ruminations about his family. You cannot dramatise any of that. If he were to discuss these themes with his peer Shreve, it would feel stagy. There are a sequence of images of Quentin with an errant child which would work well cinematically, but placed after a delirous Malick-like montage it would turn the film into a cluttered mess. I think that this chapter would make a good film in its own right if it were treated in an austere way. We could follow Quentin introspecting, travelling on a train, the recurrence of ticking clocks, etc.

The third chapter I guess is less problematic than the two chapters above.  Following Jason in his perambulations would work well, I guess. Yet, once again, the chapter is very subjective. Jason's unlikeable traits are as much evinced by his razor-sharp language as they are by his actions.

The fourth chapter is the most cinematic. I already described how well the ending would well. One of the most pivotal roles of this chapter is that it ties all everything together. Everything coheres in the end and you return to the preceding chapters until everything makes sense. A film would struggle to pull that off because most of the ambiguities and asperities the reader encounters beforehand are to do with Faulkner's opaque language. The ending in the film would not resolve everything, it would just make matters more confusing.

Yet I would certainly attend a screening of this whenever it comes out. Faulkner is my favourite writer and it would be intriguing to see these neurotic, brooding characters on screen.

Music and literature

Music and literature, in many ways, seem antithetical. Whereas music is a non-representational form, literature is. Literature connotes concrete meanings. Music, as Stravinsky controversially once said, cannot really express anything other than itself. It is pure form. If a pop/rock combo claim that their latest album is a social critique, that has much more to do with the lyric sheet than with the musical arrangements.

I think that music trumps everything in the end. When literature approaches its greatness it is usually when it is like music. My favourite novels are those which are ambiguous, open-ended and self-negating (in the sense that there are elements which do not fit and which contradict each other). The feelings it elicits are close to music: what does it mean? In the case of modern/post-modern literature, you can analyse the text and offer an interpretation. The text itself has no single meaning. Music can be analysed in terms of its use of harmony, metre, motifs etc., but semantically you cannot impute a meaning onto it.

When you listen to music, you do experience those kind of mystical moments.   In many ways, science is also driven by a desire to unravel the mysterious. Quantum mechanics is especially exciting in that its field of study keeps growing and growing. Even its experts scarcely know half as much as about it as we lay-men. Yet, whatever desires lead to its practice, science classifies and codifies. The ultimate aim is to solve the mysteries which make us scratch our heads. What can music ultimately say? Not as much as literature and certainly not as much as science. When I listen to J. S. Bach pieces I feel an overwhelming urge to grab hold of something and I am unsure what it is exactly. Literature should try to elicit those reactions.

Words in many ways are inadequate. Samuel Beckett wrote 'Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.' Words often try to ascribe meaning to a world without meaning. There is no God; everything is one big mistake. If this is the case, who should care about that big teeming novel I'm keen to write? Who should care about the writing by the masters - Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Proust, etc. - when their insights are ultimately the attempt to make sense out of this meaningless wasteland called Earth?

Sadly, literature has not borrowed from music all that much. There are not that many novels about the lives of composers. The masterpiece on the subject is Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, based on the life of Arnold Schoenberg. This is the consummate novel about music in that it captures the ineffable, psychological and spiritual torments associated with it. Anthony Burgess wrote a novel - I haven't read it - about the structure of Beethoven's Eroica symphony in which he mimics the sounds of the music through language and onomatopoeia.

Before I got into writing, my desire was to become a composer. Sadly, time dragged on and on until it became too late. Composing is a lot of hard work. Also, I do not really have the kind of mathematical aptitude required. I turned to writing. Just as J. G. Ballard includes frustrated pilots because flying was his adolescent desire, my stories are crowded with frustrated composers. If I have never been able to write music, at least I have been able to pay tribute to it in some way. I have written stories about Alfred Schnitkke (my only published piece; available to purchase on the navbar to the right), Carlo Gesualdo (titled 'Desperate Lives'; available on the navbar to the right) and Olivier Messiaen.

Thoughts on Woody Allen

I have had in mind writing this post for several weeks. Woody Allen has of course been in the news of late for all the wrong reasons. Even if has been a child molestor, this should still not taint his great body of work. Rapists, murderers, sodomites can make great artists. We should learn to separate the life and the work. I don't mean to be disingenuous - if the allegations are true, then he is by no means an honourable man.

When I bring the name 'Woody Allen' up when talking to another devoted cinephile, it summons the same reaction as when I bring the name 'Frank Zappa' with a devoted fan of classical music. I receive a bemused reaction. He has made some funny films, but what has that to do with the likes of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Truffaut, etc.?

Others see him as a one-trick-pony who churns out the same film year in and year out. Even though several of his films overlap, and there can be predictabilities in his scripts, there is a lot more variety and breadth than people acknowledge. Even if many of his films might superficially appear to be similar, there is often an a priori concept behind it - a desire to reinvent himself and try something new.

The persona of Woody Allen is deeply ingrained into the popular consciousness. The nebbish, neurotic New York intellectual who has spent years in therapy. For people of a certain temperament, he is the celebrity one most readily identifies with. For a quirky neurotic like myself, I can look at Woody Allen dithering on screen and think 'By God, this is me!' And I am not alone - he elicits the same reaction from swathes of nervous people.

I will run through my favourite films of his and give comments. Of course, one cannot forget his early years as a stand-up comedian, where he provided the world with a repartee of witty one-liners. The comedy was sharp and incisive, though it was always very gentle. His skit 'The Moose' has me in stitches.



His early films has been self-described as 'the early, funny ones.' My favourite of these would have to be Sleeper. A failed clarinetist who runs a grocery store awakes in a topsy-turvy Orwellian future. The film is strewn with great one-liners and the slapstick comedy is hilarious. The rest of the films from this period - Bananas, Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex - have their moments though feel as though they are novelty films. There are great moments, though several other scenes do not really hold together.

Allen would reinvigorate his comedic films with Love and Death. Although it is a comedy, it deals with the big themes of Russian literature. It is slapstick for lit undergrads. There are hilarious scenes between Keaton and Allen which spoof the writing of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. 'I don't love you, I love Sonya and Ulalov' and proceeds to list a number of endlessly long Russian names. (Often, the most cumbersome thing about the Russian writers is having to remember the names of the characters). If they happen to have run into some kind of mishap, Allen invariably turns to the camera and philosophises about the meaning of life.

The major turning point was, of course, Annie Hall. It is the first film where Woody Allen consciously wrote three-dimensional characters and where his film had a dramatic arc. That's not to say that it isn't littered with great jokes - it is. And, of course, you get the charming relationship between the two ditsy neurotics, Allen and Diane Keaton.

Allen made a major statement of intent when he made a film completely shorn of comedy - Interiors. It was a tribute to his idol Ingmar Bergman. (I haven't seen it.)

Then would come another classic, Manhattan. Since I saw the film, it is difficult for me to hear George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue without picturing New York shot in monochrome. In this film we get the intellectual enclave of New York, where refined people go to art galleries and discuss whether Mahler or Mozart were overrated. The initial sequences are exhilarating. Allen stutters onto a tape recorder notes for literary projects. They are all perfunctory until he arrives at a phrase he likes, the Gershwin climaxes and there is a montage of precipitous Manhattan skycrapers. My favourite scene in the film is when Allen considers what makes life living. For all the meaninglessness of the universe, Allen can still find a few items here and there that makes up for it.



I've heard a few people say that, following Manhattan, Allen became inordinately indulgent. For me, he was only getting started. My favourite period in his career are his films in the 80s.

Just as Interiors was his Bergman homage, Stardust Memories was his homage to Fellini's 8 1/2. We see a star comedian beleaguered by the media papparizi. It is a meta-fiction film that Allen would revisit in the future. People were put off by the narcissistic self-absorption, but the film is magical and playful.

Woody Allen would meet his next muse Mia Farrow and they would go onto make my favourite films of his. Zelig is about an eternal chameleon. Shot as a mockumentary, it champions individualism and going against the grain. The Purple Rose of Cairo is a masterful film about the pleasures of fiction and how it trumps reality. Too much fiction can still create torments. Mia Farrow goes to the cinema every day to watch the same film, besotted by the male lead. The fictional lead jumps out of the screen and they start a romance. This leads to the ire of the real actor who wants the character to return to the movie! Broadway Danny Rose is a quirky comedy about a failed manager of entertainment acts.

Hannah and her Sisters is a novelistic narrative about three New York sisters and their predicaments. The pacing of the narrative is deft and we get as much drama as we do laughs. Allen contemplates committing suicide, but attends a Groucho Marx film and concludes that life is too precious. Allen proved in this film that the best parts he writes are for women. The sisters in the film are the most fully-formed characters in his work. The film was his most substantial insight yet into his neurotic/intellectual New York milieu.

The same narrative structure was preserved for my favourite Allen film (and a top 20 all time entry), Crimes and Misdemeanours. Whereas earlier films felt somewhat contrived whenever he ventured into serious cinema, the existentialist elements fit snugly here. There are touches of Bergman here and there, but this is wholly Allen's film. An esteemed dentist arranges the murder of his lover who vows to bring his reputation to an end. This runs in parallel to another Allen character who has a failed career as a documentary filmmaker. Once more, despite the horrors and setbacks, the film is very life-affirming. Whereas Allen thought the ending of Hannah and her Sisters was a tad bit sentimental, here there is enough doom and gloom to counterbalance that. Allen also makes stellar use of Schubert's 15th string quartet.



His relationship ground with Mia Farrow ground to a halt (the repercussions of which still sprout out in the media today). The break-up is painfully evident in Husbands and Wives. Modelled on Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, and shot with hand-held cameras, it feels like a fly-on-the-wall documentary of the acrimonious break-up. This is one of the few Allen films without the slightest semblance of the feel-good factor - it is harrowing from beginning to end. Whilst it does of moments of humour, it is very black.

Following this he made more light-hearted films which I think are very underrated: Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets in Broadway (another favourite), Mighty Aphrodite and Deconstructing Harry. Bullets in Broadway deals with the sheer shallowness and pomposity of the artist-as-genius. A gangster type writes a broadway hit which is wrongly attributed to an aspring playwright. Deconstructing Harry is another meta-fiction film which examines the creative process. There are a few skits which are racously funny.

Following 1997's Deconstructing Harry, Allen's films faced a gradual and steep decline. His working aesthetic - shoot quickly without rehearsel - now led to films which felt hackneyed and shoddy. The only exception for me has been Midnight in Paris, a whimsical jeu d'spirit wherein a literary enthusiast meets his literary heroes in 1920s. (I had a somewhat epiphanic experience when I saw the film in a cinema in Buenos Aires. I was so excited that I resolved to write a story on the experience, but it turned out turgid.) The critics were hasty to canonise Blue Jasmine, but to me it suffered the same problems as the rest of his late-period work - patronising, dated scripts and too much explanatory dialogue. Cate Blanchett gave an assured performance, but the film still felt like counterfeit currency to me.

However much I may despair over the quality of his recent films, Woody Allen's status as one of the greats in the history of the medium is incontestable. What I most like about his films is the comfort we find in fiction and stories (for instance, how seemingly innocent women fawn at the feet of nervous wrecks.) When you start watching a film and you hear the same new Orleans 1920s swing, you know you are about to enter a world which is so familiar yet so reassuring.

Primordial heaven

Manfred and the Alpine Witch (1837) by John Martin