Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...

Some thoughts on why we need to look both to the past AND the future...

First off — apologies for the late post as this should have been posted on Saturday 14th! Even doing one a month, I still can’t keep track of dates, clearly… (In my defence, this month has been filled with events at Bute Noir, Hull Noir and others, so I don’t know where I am right now, never mind when…)

On Bluesky last week, there was a debate about recommending books. Which sounds odd on the face of it, but it did get me thinking about how – as readers, viewers, and even writers – we can get stuck in a certain view of the world.

(I still haven’t worked out alt text here but its a bluesky screenshot of the author John Scalzi saying the following: “Over on Reddit someone is asking for science fiction for their precocious young reader and there there are suggesting books that were old when that kid’s grandparents were the same age as the kid, for fuck’s sake if you don’t know any SF books from this millennium maybe sit this question out”)

And while there are maybe some things to be questioned about the absolutist nature of the post (this is social media — you need to make your point big and fast, so sometimes subtlety gets lost), it’s generally a fair point – when we’re asked for recommendations, we tend to go with what worked for us at a similar age, or we bemoan the fact that no one writes as good as “Author X” these days (add to that, music is all “boom boom boom” and cinema used to be art, not just multiplex fillers etc etc). But in reality, we’re often not recommending the book. We’re recommending the feeling it gave us.

There’s nothing wrong with talking about or introducing people to older fiction/stories/games/movies/music we used to know. My dad shared with me the Just William books when I was a kid, which he’d loved when he was a boy, but it was never about Just William replacing my – at the time – precious Roald Dahl books or getting me stop reading Anthony Horrowtiz’s Diamond Brothers books because Richmal Compton was “better”. Rather it was more about us bonding over his childhood and why he loved things. And beyond that, reading fiction from when he was a kid made his childhood seem alive and like a thing that happened. Through Just William I learned about the second world war from a kids’ perspective (and how people in the country had to put up with kids from the city being evacuated etc) and saw how things had changed between his day and mine.

But, again, it wasn’t about only reading what dad knew. He encouraged me to talk about books I discovered and together – as I grew older – we swapped old and new authors and discoveries we made. We also learned where our differences were. He tried – Oh, he tried – to read the SF I later discovered, but it was never his scene. But then I never quite got the western novels he loved, either.

One of his friends – also a voracious reader – learned I loved humourous books, and especially Terry Pratchett. So naturally he recommended Wodehouse and the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser.

A line can be drawn from Flashman to Pratchett -- apparently...

I can see now why he did that. The line from these authors to Pratchett is clear. But the books and the humour didn’t connect with me. The truth was, they felt dated. Pacing and voice wise they just didn’t work for me as a reader.

Bit more, I think, there was the sense that somehow these books were supposed to be “better” than Pratchett because they came first. The sense of books as “improving” in some fashion, or the idea that when something was older, that made it more highbrow or sophisticated (and yes, that counts for so many people even with comic books) was actually offputting to me. It made me feel like I was “supposed” to read them, and somehow that also took away the excitement.

When we recommend books out of some idea of “canon” or “learning”, we take away their essence. When we dismiss books because they seem new or different or we know their forebears and know how they connected to us, we’re denying the chance for new voices to grow.

That’s not to dismiss older books. I adore pulp novels from the 40s, 50s, 60s etc. But I also know they aren’t “better” than what we have now, and I also know that some of their attitudes (Good ol’ Shell Scott, with yer bushy eyebrows and eye for stacked dames, I’m lookin’ at you!) will not connect with a modern audience without the context to know why they are like that, and the ability to connect with texts on levels of entertainment without taking their attitudes on board (I still can’t get over the homophobia in the original Shaft by Ernest Tidyman novel, for example, but understand contextually how it got in there). The fact that there are these problematic elements does not necessarily detract from the entertainment value, I think, but it is something we need to bear in mind when reading, and if we’re not prepared for them, they can come across as unintentionally bad faith even if they were not written as such at the time. And, again, I have to wonder how I would feel as someone of the newer generations (I am somewhere between a Gen Xer and a “geriatric millennial” it seems) and not having experienced some of the contexts in which those books were written.

I also think that some of us older readers/writers/etc need to be more open, too, to new and unusual voices. As well as reading crime, I’m a lover of horror, and I’ve been delighting in some of the more diverse voices moving into the genre and telling stories that haven’t really been explored before, particularly with any authenticity. Tananarive Due, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Nuzo Onoh, Stephen Graham Jones, are all taking the genre in unexpected directions and with perspectives we wouldn’t traditionally have seen (especially during the very white and male horror boom of the 80s/90s). But if I only stuck to what I read when I was first discovering the genre, I’d be missing out on some incredible stories. And, yes, sometimes, it has meant I’ve had to readjust or rethink my own perspective, but that’s why fiction exists – to engage us in conversation and challenge our perceptions. Fiction, after all, is an empathy machine – it exists to tell us stories of other people’s experiences and to help us empathise with those.

And to return to my dad, as well – he’s always been, like me, a voracious reader and open to new voices… but its been a delight to see him recently exploring new voices in another medium. He passed on to me a love of jazz, but of very particular eras. He wasn’t sure – and to be fair, he had good reason to when it was overly experimental – about new wave jazz and so tended to avoid it. But recently he’s been discovering a whole new wave of artists he loves (in part because he’s been going through my collection when he looks after the cats whenever me and Lesley are away!) and has been taken with new wave London jazz in particular – Shabakka and the Ancestors, Nubia Garcia, and a whole bunch of new artists have entered his musical lexicon. And this is a man in his seventies, whose current favourite radio station is the beyond-nostalgic Boom Radio! -- https://www.boomradiouk.com/presenters/ -- a station that may represent a slightly older demographic…

One of my favourite albums of the last year or so (Also, check it — I think I worked out how to do alt text with this one!)

I guess what I’m saying is that we shouldn’t ignore older works – especially those that have influenced or helped birth new ideas – but we can’t constantly use them as exemplars when new and exciting work is being produced all the time – to simply dismiss something because it doesn’t chime with the norms we grew up with is insane, especially with fiction which, as I’ve said, is and always should be about empathy and exploration of new and interesting worlds and ideas of which we may have no direct experience, but can still access through these stories.

So keep reading, watching and listening to things you love and things you might never have experienced – you never know when you might discover something that makes you think about the world anew, whether perspective is fresh or a little more seasoned…

À tout à l’heure,

Russel

www.russeldmcleanbooks.com

This month, Russel read and loved (an incomplete selection):

Love and Other Poisons by Lesley McDowell (Yes, it’s my wife’s book, and yes, it’s a bloody superb slice of Victorian crime influenced by real life events and people – if you seek out just one of this month’s reads, do make it this one!)

Murder Takes a Holiday by Laura Lippman

Blood Like Ours by Stuart Neville

The Devil Raises His Own by Scott Phillips

A Simple Plan by Scott Smith

Play Nice By Rachel Harrison

King Sorrow by Joe Hill

The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani

Out of the Dark by Heidi Amsinck

House of Monstrous Women by Daphne Fama

Fiend by Alma Katsu

The Night of Baba Yaga by Akira Otani

Cold Eternity by SA Barnes

This Month, Russel watched and Loved (an incomplete selection):

Prince of Darkness (1987, dir. John Carpenter)

Superman (2025, dir. James Gunn)

A Prophet (2008, dir. Jacques Audiard)

I, The Jury (1953, dir. Harry Essex)

The Monkey (2025, dir. Oz Perkins)

The Long Good Friday (1980, dir, John McKenzie)

King of New York (1990, dir. Abel Ferrara)

Winter Kills (1979, dir. William Richert)

The Fog (1980, dir. John Carpenter)

Battle Royale (2000, dir. Kinji Fukasaku

Dark City (1950, dir. William Dieterle)