BACK LIST
As the suspense tightens. so does the pathos. for until meeting Alicia. the professor has been trapped. cut off from normal human contact by the rigid politeness that unfailingly isolates the deformed.
With disturbing realism. Anne Fine has probed into a sick and sophisticated mind. Laidlaw tells us that this is no story of Beauty and The Beast. yet like so many fairytales. 'l'lze Killjoy makes its point with shocking and skilful vividness. (Rosemary Goring)
0 Cuts Malcolm Bradbury (Hutcheson £6.95) Light. slight hyperbolic comic novella in which a backwaters novelist and academic is commissioned to write a Brides/fearl-type blockbuster for Eldorado 'l‘elevision and is soon merrily swirling in the media whirlpool.
Bradbury‘s satire squarely captures a world of penny-pinching producers. extravagant executives and variegated yuppie neuroses but his targets are obvious and unmissable. his method ofexecution the blunderbuss ofexaggeration rather than the rapier of fine wit. A brash. forgettable guffaw whose aspirations to more serious comment on the state of the nation are just that. (Allan Hunter)
0 Vivien. The Life of Vivien Leigh alexander Walker (Weidenfield and Nicolson £12.95) Fastidious. pernickety biography of the actress
. ".‘3‘ ‘—- ,¢_:.3r¢i ‘. l, V_ “1' "l 1/, .Vi“;
CKFOREST The aroma hits you well outside the door. Freshly baked bread, real bread at that—there's nothing that smells quite like it. This is Das Brot, the first retail outlet of the Bavarian Bakers, and the stuff of dieters’ dreams. Karl-Heinz Wichmann came from Bavaria to Glasgow with his Scottish wife and was dismayed by the proliferation of the plastic ‘pan breid’. ‘I couldn‘t find the bread I was used to at home, so with two sacks of flour and all my savings I set up business. At first I did everything myself— baking, ordering, delivering — but things have taken off so well that I now employ eight full time staff, although my wife and I still rarely work less than twelve
.4. r- _ -_ g ‘4! ‘K__* _;:.‘—"‘"“-1\: ’ '.“
CEM-
“)
Av"
Bight:George Square. Glasgow.
best remembered for triumphing over 1-100 rivals to attain the role of Scarlett O'Hara and who. as the first Lady Oliver. enjoyed a semi-Royal status in the post-war British theatrical hierarchy.
Walker is a resourceful and thorough biographer who has sought fresh testimony from those who knew Leigh and carefully composes a portrait of the woman Simone Signoret recalled as alternately ‘scintillatingor desperate'. Walker explores her manic-depressive condition in all its appalling fascination and trenchantly links her life and art by examining the parallels between her own character and those of the fictional Scarlett and. most pertinently. Blanche Du Bois in Streetcar Named Desire. Occasionally overwritten and over-obsessed with Leigh's sexual appetites this remains a dauntingly detailed and absorbing read.
(Allan Hunter)
0 Love is Colderthan Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder Robert Katz with Peter Berling ((‘ape £12.95) Until his death at the age of37 in 1982. his body ravaged by drugs abuse. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was nothing less than a cinematic phenomenon. Forty-one feature films in thirteen years. ranging from the highly acclaimed studies of post-war German life The Marriage of Maria Braun and Veronika Voss to the
. v » ‘2 i
'3
J
With a selection often different sorts of rye bread, twenty varieties of rolls, salt sticks, pretzels, croissants and a mindblowing 125 cake recipes (one of which I have to admit to cramming into my face as I write), has he found we Glaswegians receptive?
‘At first I though I was dealing with a specialised market, but the wee wifie
..g.. “a. , . .. . “ ‘
. I y , round the corner is as much of a
~. ‘~ . “'33” :‘Ei 'o,‘ \I ~ V.- “ . » "ffrtbarfig : “L. :3“ ,_
controversial Genet adaptation Querelle. put him at the forefront of the New German Cinema. At the same time his notoriously indulgent lifestyle made him a frequent target of the national press and consequently a household name for all that was scandalous.
Robert Katz‘s biography is the first to have been compiled by a seasoned investigative reporter ( RWF was an earlier subject for Sartre chronicler Ronald Hayman) working in collaboration with one of the director‘s close associates. as Peter Berling was his producer on several occasions. What emerges is a detailed documentation of an extraordinary. frequently squalid. chain ofevents. Fassbinder‘s early avant-garde theatre work in the late (ills. to his prodigious output of the 70s. the narcotics-powered final triumphs and pitiful demise. are lucidly captured by Katz. Not does he ignore the man's boundless energy and artistic despotism. and he painstakingly charts Fassbinder's tortured homosexual love life and eventually fatal appetite for stimulants of all varieties.
However. while strong on fact. Kat'l. seems a little ill at ease with RWF's abundant cinematic fictions. He glosses over such seminal productions as the massive Berlin Alexander/21m: and generally provides scant analysis beyond plot synopses ofthe singular aesthetic
i.
tight.- 5‘ ~
customer as the foodie. Everything we use is fresh- butter, cream, eggs. People aren’t daft, they know when they‘re getting quality.’
Karl-Heinz is providing all the bread lorthe Bavarian Beer Garden in George Square during the Festival, and for several of the restaurants. And those cakes, lemon cream roll, chocolate
-~ ; games“ > ~* ~. :figfai’éfi‘r’ ‘ 4‘ “v . J :35 “v i»st I I I ~ " “v, "l . ‘1 ‘At v
that made the Fassbinder canon one ofsuch widespread impact. Finally. the celluloid images are what made RWF a cultural icon and they will be preserved when the moral contortions of his often unhappy days have faded from memory. In this light. while it provides a repellently intriguing peek at the Wizard of Babylon's seamier exploits. Katz‘s book remains one of sensation rather than genuine insight. ('l‘revorJohnston)
0 Land of the Leaf .lamcs Barke ((‘anongate £4.‘)5)'l'here‘s a tear-drop on every page of this hefty saga. Jean and David Ramsay are (iallovidians imbued with the work ethic and a sense of fair play. Not everyone they encounter is similarly inclined and in the course of their travels they toil not only on the land but among envious mean-spirits. So they move from their damp heath to the Borders and then to File to a modern estate where David‘s way with cows is at last recognised. But the enlightened owner dies and the Ramsays take to the road again. this time landing in Glasgow just in time to catch the Depression. In scope and ambition this is an admirable novel. vivid and passionate. rich in dialect and local colour. Flawed it undoubtedly is. for Barke was nothing if not simplistic. but it has a real sense of time and place and you won't be able to turn the pages fast enough. (Alan 'l‘aylor)
rum log, real Black Forest Gateau
(there's a big difference), marshmallowey almond slices, cream horns, torten, bouchées, puffs . . . sorry about that!
So why the emphasis on purely Bavarian produce?
‘I could bake scones-l like scones— but I don’t want to take any business away from the local family bakers. Why take a slice of what I don't need?‘
Das Brot, 51 Hyndland Street, 041 334
FURSTENBERGFEST?
What's a Franconian Hut? It's a mobile, collapsible Bavarian chalet, that‘s what it is, and four of them will be landing on George Square for the duration ofthe Niirnberg Festival. The dear green square is to be transformed into a great big beer garden, serving food, wine and the mighty Fiirsfenberg. One of the huts is to be a German coffee house specialising in Lebkuchen, the renowned Niirnberg gingerbread. The dough, baker and even the oven are being flown in for the occasion, whilst the rest of the food is being organised by two chefs from the Sudhaus Restaurant in Niirnberg. Yes, we do have sauerkraut, sausages and potato salad. However, a number of the Bavarian wursts, schnitzels et al are being made right here in sunny Teutonic Cambuslang by a company called Charcuterie Continentale. There’s live entertainment, prices are reasonable, drink is plentiful and Lederhosen are optional. Prost!
44 The List 12 — 25 June