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Recessional
Published in 2009 (and now out of print): a collage of text and photographs, fact and fantasy, rant and reflection, capturing the mood – angry, confused, resilient – of the UK in the early months of recession.
The publisher has made the complete text freely available at their website
http://www.cbeditions.com/userfiles/f...
The publisher has made the complete text freely available at their website
http://www.cbeditions.com/userfiles/f...
58 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
2 people want to read
About the author
Jack Robinson
8 books5 followersJack Robinson is a pen-name of Charles Boyle, editor of CB editions.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 14, 2017
CB Editions is another of the UK independent publishers to which I find myself increasingly drawn. It publishes short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’.
I have previously read Will Eaves’s striking (Goldsmith’s shortlisted 2014, my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Diane Williams’s Fine Fine Fine (Republic of Consciousness shortlisted 2017 – less to my taste https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and, best of all, the absolutely stunning The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels by Agota Kristof.
CB Editions is a one-man operation, run by Charles Boyle, who has also written stories, novels and poetry under his own name, as Jennie Walker, and, here, as Jack Robinson.
Recessional was Jack Robinson’s first work, described by the publisher/ author as
http://www.cbeditions.com/userfiles/f...
As suggested by the blurb, the book (novel?) consists of a series of brief vignettes, usually centered around a Sebaldian black and white photograph, combining literary references with aggrieved polemics, all centred around the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis.
Three examples will illustrate:
The first from which the book takes its title:
Overall, an interesting read - if somewhat painful for someone who is ultimately the target of much of the book's ire.
For 2017 Jack Robinson has a diptych of two titles forthcoming – An Overcoat basded on the life and work of Henri Beyle (aka Stendhal) – see Guardian review here - https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... - and Robinson, with a similar state-of-the-nation focus as Recessional, but this time focused on the repurcussions of the 2016 Brexit vote, using Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as its starting point. A review of the latter, which I await eagerly in the post, to follow in due course.
I have previously read Will Eaves’s striking (Goldsmith’s shortlisted 2014, my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), Diane Williams’s Fine Fine Fine (Republic of Consciousness shortlisted 2017 – less to my taste https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and, best of all, the absolutely stunning The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels by Agota Kristof.
CB Editions is a one-man operation, run by Charles Boyle, who has also written stories, novels and poetry under his own name, as Jennie Walker, and, here, as Jack Robinson.
Recessional was Jack Robinson’s first work, described by the publisher/ author as
a collage of text and photographs, fact and fantasy, rant and reflection, capturing the mood – angry, confused, resilient – of the UK in the early months of recession.Recessional is now out of print and the publisher has kindly made a pdf freely available on their website and it is certainly a worthwhile and relatively quick read:
http://www.cbeditions.com/userfiles/f...
As suggested by the blurb, the book (novel?) consists of a series of brief vignettes, usually centered around a Sebaldian black and white photograph, combining literary references with aggrieved polemics, all centred around the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis.
Three examples will illustrate:
The first from which the book takes its title:
‘Lo, all our pomp of yesterdayThe second more personal, and bitter:
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!’
– Rudyard Kipling, ‘Recessional’
Nineveh and Tyre – not to mention Antioch, Babylon and Zanadu . . . Far from looking on their works with despair, we join sightseeing tours and queue to gawp at their artefacts at the British Museum: because right now it’s we who are winning, we are alive and they are not. We gloat. We preserve ruins because they tell us that we are not yet, for all our idiocies, ruins ourselves. And the best of them – not the tedious imperial arches; I mean the way a line renders a hip-bone, or the otherness of an animal – suggest what we might still be capable of. But the new room at the Bank of England Museum (opening hours 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, closed on Bank Holidays) is disappointing: a few printed-off expense accounts and a scale model of a black hole.
This is my father driving in the 1940s, before I was born.The third more playful. The character of Jack, who eventually marries Jane - his personal debt adviser - having spurned the affections of Jill - the banker who ended up owning via a CDO his house - flows through the book as a story of sorts:
He left school at fourteen to work in an iron foundry his own father had helped establish; he eventually became joint managing director. We had a comfortable life without my mother having to work; single-income households were common then. He liked cars: I remember waiting at the front-room window one afternoon, when I was four or five years old, to see him arrive home in a brand-new olive-green Riley. Fifty years on from pressing my face against that window, I know that at no time has my own income been sufficient to raise a family in similar comfort, nor will I ever own a brand-new car; and my children will, if they go to college, be already mired in debt before they even begin to earn their own money. The car I can do without, but strip away the mirage of affluence offered by cheap credit and it’s clear that in my generation, despite the huge increase in productivity enabled by computers, more people have been working for less real money than before; while profits and the pay bundles of CEOs have soared; and imposing a few regulations on the banks is chickenfeed.
This is the house that Jack bought.Further literary references include Dickens Little Dorrit (whose description of a complex tangle of debts is remarkably apposite) and Wind in the Willows with a dialogue between Toad and Badger, except all Toad’s words are from the transcript of Fred Goodwin’s testimony to MPs.
This is the mortgage lender from the bank that lent Jack the money to buy his house.
This is banker 1 who lent the mortgage lender money to lend to Jack to buy his house, and thus bought a debt – or rather, looking ahead, an asset, being the rights to the repayment of that debt.
This is banker 2 who borrowed money from banker 3 to buy the debt/asset from banker 1 and a few others besides, and wrapped them up nicely and tied them with a pink ribbon and sold them on to banker 4, who bought them with money borrowed from banker 5 and in turn carried on spreading the joy.
This is the big chief banker who raised interest rates because of inflation.
This is Jack again, whose mortgage payments have risen and who can’t keep paying them.
This is Jack’s house again, back on sale for less than he paid for it because no one will lend anyone money to buy it – either because they can no longer borrow money to lend or because they don’t believe they’ve a cat’s chance in hell of ever getting it back.
These are various bankers who joined in the game but are now in pain because they’ve stubbed their big toe on a synthetic collateralised debt obligation.
Overall, an interesting read - if somewhat painful for someone who is ultimately the target of much of the book's ire.
For 2017 Jack Robinson has a diptych of two titles forthcoming – An Overcoat basded on the life and work of Henri Beyle (aka Stendhal) – see Guardian review here - https://www.theguardian.com/books/201... - and Robinson, with a similar state-of-the-nation focus as Recessional, but this time focused on the repurcussions of the 2016 Brexit vote, using Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe as its starting point. A review of the latter, which I await eagerly in the post, to follow in due course.
November 16, 2017
I am working my way through Jack Robinson’s books. Jack Robinson is a pseudonym of Charles Boyle and Charles Boyle is the man behind CB Editions. I have read An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B. and Days and Nights In W12 by Robinson and I have also read The Absent Therapist and Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine from the publisher. All of these are unusual books that I know will not be to everyone’s taste (I struggled with Fine...). Jack Robinson is, however, becoming a firm favourite of mine!
Recessional is a very short work. It was Robinson’s first book and is no longer in print. It is, however, available for free from CB Editions’ website. Like it’s successor (Days And Nights In W12), which I read first but on the same day (both books take very little time to read), Recessional takes the form of a number of black and white photos with text. In Recessional, however, there are pages with no picture and there is more of a flow to the overall work, rather than the distinct (but sometimes cross-referenced) pieces in W12.
As it’s title suggests, Recessional focuses on the economic situation in the U.K. It was published in 2009 and it seeks to capture the mood across the country in the early stages of recession. It
This is the house that Jack bought.
This is the mortgage lender from the bank that lent Jack the money to buy his house.
This is banker 1 who lent the mortgage lender money to lend to Jack to buy his house, and thus bought a debt – or rather, looking ahead, an asset, being the rights to the repayment of that debt.
This is banker 2 who borrowed money from banker 3 to buy the debt/asset from banker 1 and a few others besides, and wrapped them up nicely and tied them with a pink ribbon and sold them on to banker 4, who bought them with money borrowed from banker 5 and in turn carried on spreading the joy.
This is the big chief banker who raised interest rates because of inflation.
This is Jack again, whose mortgage payments have risen and who can’t keep paying them.
This is Jack’s house again, back on sale for less than he paid for it because no one will lend anyone money to buy it – either because they can no longer borrow money to lend or because they don’t believe they’ve a cat’s chance in hell of ever getting it back.
For those of who lived through this period, the whole book feels like a darkly comic but accurate depiction of its time.
Recessional is a very short work. It was Robinson’s first book and is no longer in print. It is, however, available for free from CB Editions’ website. Like it’s successor (Days And Nights In W12), which I read first but on the same day (both books take very little time to read), Recessional takes the form of a number of black and white photos with text. In Recessional, however, there are pages with no picture and there is more of a flow to the overall work, rather than the distinct (but sometimes cross-referenced) pieces in W12.
As it’s title suggests, Recessional focuses on the economic situation in the U.K. It was published in 2009 and it seeks to capture the mood across the country in the early stages of recession. It
This is the house that Jack bought.
This is the mortgage lender from the bank that lent Jack the money to buy his house.
This is banker 1 who lent the mortgage lender money to lend to Jack to buy his house, and thus bought a debt – or rather, looking ahead, an asset, being the rights to the repayment of that debt.
This is banker 2 who borrowed money from banker 3 to buy the debt/asset from banker 1 and a few others besides, and wrapped them up nicely and tied them with a pink ribbon and sold them on to banker 4, who bought them with money borrowed from banker 5 and in turn carried on spreading the joy.
This is the big chief banker who raised interest rates because of inflation.
This is Jack again, whose mortgage payments have risen and who can’t keep paying them.
This is Jack’s house again, back on sale for less than he paid for it because no one will lend anyone money to buy it – either because they can no longer borrow money to lend or because they don’t believe they’ve a cat’s chance in hell of ever getting it back.
For those of who lived through this period, the whole book feels like a darkly comic but accurate depiction of its time.
September 3, 2011
One closes this book and involuntarily thinks, "Shall I kill myself now? Is there any hope for the world?" Since I'm writing this, I escaped the direst fate, but it is certainly not an uplifting book -- unless it is. As with Days and Nights in W12, these are prose vignettes, illustrated with nice fuzzy or grainy black-and-white photos, by a poet, offering a gentle but devastating review of our times.
April 11, 2018
2.5, Rounded up.
Impelled to read this due to the praise from my GR friends Neil, GY and Paul (who comprise the majority of ratings of this title!), I found it an interesting experiment in a Seboldian mode, but not having any terrific interest in the subject matter (ummm ... recession!), I can't say it was particularly revelatory nor inspiring... but worth the 45 minute investment, nonetheless.
Impelled to read this due to the praise from my GR friends Neil, GY and Paul (who comprise the majority of ratings of this title!), I found it an interesting experiment in a Seboldian mode, but not having any terrific interest in the subject matter (ummm ... recession!), I can't say it was particularly revelatory nor inspiring... but worth the 45 minute investment, nonetheless.
January 25, 2019
A friend once described me as, 'vaguely obsessed by the financial crisis'.
So I loved this book.
So I loved this book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews