Brian

Product Information

As much a love letter to the lost art of letter-writing as it is a thirty year-long dialogue of familial love, Cooper has produced an understated book that nonetheless resonates powerfully. He sticks to routine, obsessively, "coping with the general business of living, and feeling that so many others find life easy, or at least give the impression of doing so. Selective movie lore and habits appear in the text and, because of the wide focus of Brian’s interests, Brian is incidentally informative about film history. Other Brian connections are a fictive mix of my experiences—such as Lorenzo at Il Castelletto, where Brian has lunch every day, drawn from four Italian cafés I enjoyed at different times during my thirty years living in London, in Clerkenwell, Kentish Town, Bethnal Green and Bloomsbury.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper — solace in cinema in London - Financial Times Brian by Jeremy Cooper — solace in cinema in London - Financial

He had joined a book-reading club, mostly of women, jolly, middle-aged, who ridiculed his proposals of novels to read, listened in silence to his halting comments on the book-of-the-month and moved promptly on to topics of their own concern.I find it satisfying to learn that that perception by knowledgeable readers of the difference between fact and fiction can is so liquid. The combined anonymity, camaraderie, and enthusiasm for film encourage Brian to approach the group and comment on a film.

Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Goodreads Brian by Jeremy Cooper | Goodreads

Cooper has maximised the potential of this literary convention to achieve a work of great depth and quiet power. A magnificently gentle and poetic meditation on isolation mitigated by cinema, the subtle effects of trauma, and the odd pathways open to us, the damaged … all of us. The book is at its strongest in portraying the comeradeship, if not really relationship, Brian enjoys with his fellow buffs, many of them socially unconventional, and indeed Brian looks down on some of them in the same way that Beavis has contempt for Butthead. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. I did find myself skipping over the film analysis, though, which felt a little repetitive at points, but the fact that I (very much not a film buff!

In my final year of university, I discovered the local independent cinema, which at the time had its own twice-monthly discussion group with discounted tickets. I was completely empty, without pain, without pleasure, without longing, without love, without warmth and friendship, without anger, without hate. The necessary questions to ask, in my opinion, are: do depictions of the characters and happenings convince in themselves; and does the text construct a fictional edifice which functions effectively within its own terms? This type of book can work on many levels: on one it’s a look at how film and the film buff have evolved: from attending cinemas to streaming, plus the availability of global culture became more accessible by the 2010’s and so a wider variety of films were being screened with the technology to clean them up as well. Becoming a buff puts him in contact a small group of other dedicated filmgoers and the novel charts the tentative development of friendship with one of the regulars.