Vernaland

Zip It - free ebooks for all...

2010-07-16T13:28:00.002Z

Inspired by the example of the mighty Wiley and in particular his assertion that "I've got all this music sitting on hard drives, and in the end it started to make me feel sick," I've decided to give away everything I've written since my last published book, "The Heritage".

You can download the whole lot in both .epub and pdf formats in a zip file from this link.

Actually, I'm exaggerating slightly, I haven't been able to collate all the short stories and other bits and pieces, so what you get is three novels...

Monsterboy - very strange, still and almost unreadable. Not for the faint of heart.
work - you'll probably enjoy the first two thirds or three quarters and then decide it's all gone Horribly Wrong.
After The Non-Event - no idea what you'll make of this as very few people have read it.

That's the order they were written in, if chronological integrity is of any importance to you...

If you like anything feel free to pass on to friends, colleagues, randoms.

You see...

2010-06-29T13:47:00.002Z

...as soon as I say I've shut it down I start posting again. I'm contrary like that.

Anyway, the reason is as follows. I'm one of the smugerati who have an iPhone and last week I got hold of iBooks, Apple's new app (see what they did there?) for reading ebooks. It's excellent, taking the best elements of the doughty Stanza, the look of another app called Classics and fitting it all seamlessly on your computer within iTunes. The big advantage of this is that we're all familiar with iTunes. Figuring out how to find or download or load an ePub file into Stanza was always a long thing, but with iBooks all you have to do is drag and drop into iTunes and it appears in a nice little folder labelled Books.

Anyway, to celebrate this momentous change in reading habits I'm giving away an ePub file of a short story I wrote a year or so ago called "Taking The Biscuit". I don't think it's been published before, although I read it rather badly at the Book Club Boutique and was met with a combination of indifference, disgust and mild nothingness. Ah well. Anyway, I transformed it into an ePUb file sometime last year and this morning I added a natty 'cover'.

There's nothing more to say. Don't just stand there, download now.

As you may have noticed...

2010-06-16T13:14:00.004Z

...I've killed this blog. Or rather, starved it to death. Or let it go feral. Anyway, what I mean is I'm not posting on it...

In the unlikely circumstances that you've come here because you want to know something about my writing, you can either read this 2008 article from The Independent (there hasn't been a huge amount to report since) or try some of my work for free using the Power of the World Wide Web and your best clicking finger:

"The Heritage" - a direct download link for the pdf of my second novel for Faber & Faber. No, I'm sorry, I don't have it in ePub or similar formats but I am giving it you for nothing, so stop complaining.
"The Worms" - short story on Dogmatika. Don't remember much about this one. I think I was pleased with it at the time.
"Tale" - short story on 3:AM. Tales of The Unexpected eat your heart out.
"Cops" - short story on Scarecrow. No one gets this one. Maybe there's nothing to get..?
"Doorsteps" - a short story for the March 2009 issue of Beat The Dust. Quite odd, if I remember rightly. Possibly lacking in any sense.
"Camera" - a very short story on the 3:AM site. A popular choice, sir...
"Hole" - a short story I wrote for Radio 3's The Verb now downloadable as a neat, tidy and free pdf. No, no ePub on this either, but maybe someday soon...
"Once Upon One" - a flash fiction on my main page. Rejected for some lame flash fiction comp, this poor orphan needs your love.
"Clear Water" extract - downloadable from the Faber & faber website (this link may be dead by now. I would imagine so, anyway).

If you wanted anything else, I'm afraid I can't help you at the moment. Unless it was to give me money or praise me or offer me a book contract, in which case email me: willATvernalandDOTcom

Shoddy Diagrams Stolen From The Internet

2009-11-26T14:18:00.009Z

Don't blame me, blame Google... (one day they are going to eat you).

Lee Harwood, Marginal Gloss & Synchronous Mottramisation

2009-11-22T21:13:00.004Z

Here's a good enough excuse that I can justify my theft (re-blogging?) from my dear, anonymous, unknown online source of refined literary youngsterism, Marginal Gloss. Outside my bathroom is a big pile of books which were on some shelves which had to go somewhere else. Near the top is an old collection of Lee Harwood's poetry, "Monster Masks," that I bought many years ago. The other day I sat on the floor reading it while I waited for my son to finish on the loo and go to bed. It includes the excellent "The Beginning Of The Story," which Marginal Gloss has now discovered a pdf of online (you have to scroll down through the other piece. Or read it and discover that you have it in a book you've found piled up outside your toilet...). I interviewed Lee Harwood around sixteen years ago when I lived in Brighton. He had me round for tea and was absolutely lovely. I was trying to be a poet but luckily I was far too bashful and awed to ask him to look at anything I'd written, despite (because of?) the debt it owed him. I was very pleased to find out, years later, that the article ended up on file in King's College as part their Eric Mottram archive. Mind you, he had a lot of magazines. I hate to think what the hall outside his bathroom looked like...

Superb Diagrams Stolen From The Internet

2009-11-19T16:21:00.008Z

Part 1 of a series of diagrams stolen from across the World Wide Web... In this case, their theme is the superbity. Stay tuned...

News, You Lose

2009-11-16T11:49:00.003Z

Just in case you care, I wanted you to know that my Twitter story, Trundlespike, is once again All Systems Go. I'm up to 80 tweets on that bad boy, so don't miss them. I like, in particular, that none of them make any real sense in isolation, so they are kind of anti-tweets. Anyhow...

In other 'news,' I'm writing again, properly, with some real sense of forward momentum and purpose. I have been working on a book in some form or other constantly since summer 2001 when I started "Clear Water". Then this February I finished a draft of something and just... stopped. I fiddled around with an idea, did a couple of months of research, began writing and then realised my heart wasn't really in it. Truth be told, I felt like I was doing it more because I felt it was the sort of book people would feel I should be writing than because I wanted to write it. Since then I've been dabbling with an idea which I've been thinking about and developing for years, an idea which, I've often felt, may well signal literary career suicide. But I guess I don't have much of a career in any case, and it's only in the last week or so that I've developed enough momentum to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile (from my point of view). It's such a great feeling and one I've missed. It will all vanish again, shortly, of course, and I'll be left with upward of a year's worth of plodding towards the end, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. Updates to follow...

In the meantime, revel in my Boredom playlist on the Evil Empire of Spotify. It does exactly what it says on the box.

Thatcher Dead...

2009-11-13T14:15:00.002Z

Funny yet disappointing all at once...

Free Ebooks - Tony White Bridled

2009-11-13T09:48:00.005Z

James Bridle of booktwo.org has launched his new venture, Artists' eBooks, with three short stories from Tony White, all available for download to read online, on your mobile or iPhone, or an an e-Reader (though not the Kindle, haha). They're in the ePub format which it is generally hoped will become the industry standard, as, unlike the aforementioned Kindle's AZW, it's an open, non-DRM format.

All three stories "grew out of a residency at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London, and are part of an ongoing series called Balkanising Bloomsbury. Each story was written using a process which included cutting-up, remixing and renarrativising fragments from a number of sources including travel writing, Hague tribunal transcripts and mass media texts, to create completely new works of fiction which explore ideas of European identity." Mr White's work is always superb and Mr Bridle is a whizz-bang techno animal, so I'm off to download them now.

Apologies, Excuses, then Greene, Lin, Conrad, Bolaño, Vila-Matas, Marias & Barker (N)

2009-11-10T17:25:00.005Z

I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. Not only have I failed to stick to my seven-posts-a-week rule with my twitter story, Trundlespike, I haven't posted anything on here for ages either. I looked at Marginal Gloss last night and thought of ripping off some of his posts, but I tried to load some flash game called Small Worlds he had said was "one of the most unlikely, thought-provoking online experiences I’ve had in some time" and it crashed my browser, which can only be taken as A SIGN (and not even a very unlikely one).

This morning I rowed half-heartedly with my little-but-good-peoples publisher and then we all made up again and agreed to Battle Onward. I did an interview about the record label with the esteemed Stevie Chick for a book about Ninja Tune. I read some Graham Greene.

I haven't read Graham Greene for absolutely years - over 20 I would think. But I went to a gig a few weeks back (the most-excellent Juice Aleem, who reminded me why hip hop will never completely die) and on my way to the tube I walked past two dodgy geezers laying out secondhand books next to the Cafe Nero on Tottenham Court Road. In the dark... I bought "The Honorary Consul" for £2 because it looked at a distance like it might be a first edition (WRONG! It was a Book Club edition) and because I thought I'd read somewhere that it was his darkest and best work (WRONG! That one had something to do with World War II and this one is set in Argentina in the '70s). But mainly because you don't often come across mobile booksellers at 11.30 at night on Tottenham Court ROad so I felt I should. Anyway, I haven't got to the Catholic Bit yet, so I'm quite enjoying it.

Before that, I read "Shoplifting From American Apparel" by Tao Lin. Hmmm. Dunno what to say really. I really loved "Eeee Eeee Eeee" but in his attempt to stop himself inserting the stuff which he says he deliberately inserted to "ruin" that book (in particular, the animals) he's made something which is maybe more true to his aesthetic but less sympathetic with my head. It works. It does work. He's still a million times better than all the Tao Lin imitators (and he must be doing something right to have spawned these bastards, who remind me of the lesser lights on anticon). But it doesn't catch me in the same way as it did with the bears. I really liked the bears.

Before that I read "Lord Jim," by Joseph Conrad which was strange and marvellous, oscillating between the sheer magnificence of the first section, the slightly odd colonial fantasy of the second section and then the fiendish denouement of the third, which makes sense of the second and casts the first in a completely different light.

Further back before that I knocked off "Skating Rink," the latest Eng-lang mini-masterpiece from the Bolaño estate. Familiar characters (minor South American poets ending up as exiles/immigrants in Spain and, in particular, working on a campsite) but here roped into the clutches of a murder mystery of some sort, in which the murder is the least important aspect.

Now we're working back into the mists of time and "Montano" by Enrique Vila-Matas, his follow-up to "Bartleby & Co". While I loved that book, Vila-Matas got a little too European on my ass this time around. I still read it all and bits were really funny but I'm not sure I wanted a book on literature sickness and the death of literature etc etc. I haven't got a degree in English Lit so I don't see why I should be subjected to this stuff now. Nevertheless, it has something - just maybe something a little too intellectual for me. I could kind of see why it had never made it into paperback, though.

Ooh, it's getting dark, or grey, or just hazy. I read the first part of "Your Face Tomorrow" trilogy by Javier Marias (I believe the last part is about to come out). I quite liked it but the sentences were all too long, which made it far more exhausting than it needed to be. That and the fact it was about memory (whilst purporting to be about predicting people's future actions) account for the reference to Proust on the back. But blimey, how many sub-clauses can I hold in my head at once..? Less than Javier, obviously. I like a nice full stop, me.

And I reach full stop with "Darkmans" by Nicola Barker, read some time last century (or maybe at the end of the summer?) which I absolutely loved. A big book made to seem short. She's a very unassuming writer - full of ideas and theories but wearing them lightly, slightly in love with all of her characters, amiable but tough, too. Much darker and odder than the summaries of it suggest. It's a really good book and shows, for that year at least, that not all Booker shortlists are full of unadulterated bollocks. Huzzah!

Twitter Chain - or, How To Kill Yourself Slowly Through Insignificance, You Wasteman Twit

2009-10-23T11:51:00.004Z

I've discovered a great new way to waste time (actually, it's probably only new to me). You click on your most recent 'follower' on Twitter and look at their most recent tweet. Then you click on the person who appears bottom right in the square of people who they're "following." You look at that message then you move on to the person at the bottom right of their square and so on (okay, for it to be conceptually consistent, you should click on someone you're following in the first place. But I ain't following anyone, just dribbling out a kind of story - which is why no one knows it's there...). Anyhow, what you end up with is something like this:

sevensnaps: added #camerakit and #focallab to my iPhone apps, thanks @twin_arrow
glennjersey: New Be-mag Interview http://tinyurl.com/yfh7kvt
SuicideGirls: Win an iPod Touch from SuicideGirls! See who gets closest to dating a sexy girl who lives inside their iPhone. - http://tinyurl.com/yfo2jj8
dla35: This person has protected their tweets.
HMXkfan: Almost too busy to write here about how busy I am.
whiskeyfingers: This person has protected their tweets.
alyankovic: Documented proof that I’ve suffered vandalism at the hands of @rainnwilson: http://bit.ly/ccs2F
SklarBrothers: Performing tonight in Ann Arbor, Mi. At Live At PJ's. Come by to hear us expound on a new VH-1 Dating Show For Mike Vick: Vick of the Litter
michaelianblack: Idea for invention: a koi pond you pee in called "The Koilet."
marcmaron: @DaveTitle I'll give you a tshirt if you subscribe--maybe a couple of stickers.
enKirkman: @PFTompkins please remove me from this list.
nottjmiller: The Detroit airport is like hell but with a worse layout.
MarkBomback: finally i have a story for 'unsolved mysteries.' my son awoke this morning with a lone sock stuck to his head by a piece of duct tape.
MartinAmis: I need to work on my work-work balance.
vintagebooks: ...of someone famous buried in Highgate Cemetery plus the name of Diana Evans' prize-winning novel about twins
AnaBanana83: Miss Frank - more than the sum of their parts, deffo in my top 3 but that wasn't a great song for them #xfactor
marshawrites: Sod Blogger; I'm going to get my writing done for the day now! Ciao!
KwanaWrites: @ritzberries Hey you!
BlazeAuthors: I'm blogging on the 20th at the Blaze Authors Blog...on the "S" word and what to do about it.
TawnyWeber: New blog post: Quick Six with the Awesome Jeanne Adams http://bit.ly/6pvTg

I guess the real question is whether this is in any way interesting. I don't know. In a weird way it kind of is. Or maybe I'm just really bored...

Philip Roth on Philip Roth Tour

2009-10-20T10:44:00.002Z

First the techno record and now this. I blame Global Warming...

"I Love The Darkside"

2009-10-13T21:44:00.003Z

Speechbreaker is the best web-toy I've found in ages. You get to cut up and paste together the recent conference speeches of the three party leaders in the same style as Chris Morris's famous George Bush skit, then you can upload them straight to YouTube. What could be better? There are various glitches, like the fact that you can make you speech longer than it allows you to upload, but despite these irritations it's great fun. The first half of my attempt is above... The second part won't bloody upload. Tories in the machine...

Twitter, Ellroy and DeLillo's Swimming Trunks

2009-10-08T08:28:00.003Z

Have been a bit crap at adding to this blog recently, for a number of reasons, but mainly because I'm having so much fun with my Twitter story. There are 35 tweets now, making a huge 4,900 characters-worth of prose to read. If you don't join up soon you'll have no idea what's going on (and if you do, you might not either). Thanks to the founding fathers, by the way - my 22 current, noble followers. That's more than Jesus had, for heaven's sake.

Meanwhile, if that doesn't entertain you sufficiently, check out Jame's Ellroy's promotional trailer for his new book. Jimmy Cash sent me the link but we can't agree as to Ellroy's levels of sincerity. I think he comes over as an egotistical dick, Cash thinks he's hamming it up for laughs. You'll have to decide for yourself (incidentally, Cash also says the book is great). The Ellroy publicity machine is obviously cranking up, as the man was also in this morning's Guardian, writing about Ed Ruscha. And while we're on the subject of book trailers - first Pynchon, now Ellroy..?! Is a film on YouTube now considered the must-have marketing tool for the heavyweight male American novelist? I look forward to DeLillo in his trunks, a tour of JD Salniger's kitchen, Philip Roth releasing a techno record. Oh, that one already happened didn't it?

Hyperkinetic Q+A

2009-10-02T11:20:00.004Z

I've contributed a story to an anthology called "Hyperkinetic: High Velocity Tales From The Inner City. " (I actually live in the outer city, or possibly the outer inner city, but that wouldn't have made such a good title). As part of my punishment (possibly for living in the worng part of the city) the editors have made me fill out a questionnaire about who and what I am. They didn't tell me they'd posted said Q&A up because of my anger management issues but I found it anyway. Now, as part of your punishment, you can read it. Not sure when the collection is coming out. Thought it was this November but now I'm unclear. Anyhow, you can find out more here or here.

Techno Techno Techno Techno (part 2)... and Lispector

2009-09-28T11:31:00.004Z

So, the good persons of 3:AM Press have started a Facebook page. By becoming a fan you can find out stuff about my upcoming book and what else they have planned. But you don't have to take the "fan" part too seriously...

While I'm feeling technologically empowered I've begun a story on Twitter. I don't really know how long I'll keep it up or where it's going yet. The only two rules are that I have to post at least seven times a week and that each entry has to be exactly 140 characters long. So have a look or follow it or whatever people do on Twitter. Oh, and remember to start at the bottom if you want to catch up...

And another thing. There was quite an interesting piece in the paper at the weekend - Lorrie Moore on Clarice Lispector. You can read it here.

New Book Coming Soonish!

2009-09-21T19:31:00.004Z

At the end of last week I signed a contract in blood with 3:AM Press to publish (one of) my new book(s), called "work". It'll be coming out some time towards spring/summer in 2010. I'm absurdly excited. A few years ago, a particularly astute (if occasionally rather mad) friend and music business associate read one of my books and told me that I had made "the classic mistake. You're an indie artist and you signed for a major." At the time I told him that there weren't any real indies in UK publishing (a point which I could expand on and explain, if anyone were interested..). But now there is and suddenly the process of publishing feels a little more like I always felt it should. Oh, and the double-headed Andrew has even started a dedicated Twitter so follow it, follow it, follow it now (it's fun to have fun but you have to know how).

Officially an SF Writer

2009-09-21T13:15:00.003Z

That's me, that is. At least, it must be because none other than the BSFA (or rather, Martin Lewis, sometime BSFA cohort) asked me to contribute to a pamphlet called "SF Writers On SF Films: From Akira To Zardoz". I'm presuming mine's in there though I haven't seen a copy yet. And you can't either, unless you're a member. The BSFA is hardcore like that. I will post my contribution here soon. Promise.
(Incidentally, should that title be "Officially an SF writer" or "Officially a SF writer"..? If I really were one I would surely know...)

Speech Debelle @ The Mercury Music Prize

2009-09-09T13:01:00.001Z

What a long, messy and rather lovely night...

Bob Mortimer - We Salute You!

2009-09-02T13:07:00.006Z

Was bored and tired last night and trawled iPlayer for something to watch and there it was - the return of "Shooting Stars"! Apparently they stopped making it cos Bob got fed up with it but now they is back. And I still love Bob Mortimer. Vic always played the evil dictator and Bob his angelic stooge. It's great to have him back on screen, particularly as he has gone bald and has his hair unfashionably long at the back, whereas Vic is all bleached and styled and celebrity-knickers. A quiet telly genius. Vic needs Bob. Him on is own is a bit like watching an Ernie Wise special. Even that Matt Lucas is funny when basking in Bob's glow. Bob for Prime Minister!

Attack! Attack! Attack!

2009-09-02T12:53:00.003Z

Most of the obituaries for Steven Wells focussed on his role as angry music journo for the NME (I know, an almost inconceivable notion in the era of Conor McCorporate of Top Gear future-fame). But he was also the man behind brief-supernova pulp-punk publisher Attack! Books. So the good people at 3:AM have organised a tribute to the man featuring readings (rants? sperm and blood-spattered ravings?) from the entire Attack! Books roster: Mark Manning, Stewart Home, Tony White, Tommy Udo and Stanley Manly. And it's free to get in. Should be fun.

16 September 2009
From 7.30pm
Basement, Zebrano 3am Bar, 18 Greek St, London W1

More Morrison

2009-09-01T11:31:00.001Z

There's a big interview with Ewan Morrison over at 3:AM. It's very interesting. Read.

Drug-Driving - The Truth Shall Be Told!

2009-08-27T14:53:00.003Z

What the fuck is this advert supposed to be telling us? That taking "drugs" (any drugs, or presumably any illegal drugs) turns the imbiber into a Large Grey Alien?? That a policeman driving a police car at night in the rain will be able to spot you, you mutant scum-dribbler? That he will then come and arrest yo' ass FOR HAVING UNFEASIBLY LARGE EYES?? Personally, I'm tempted to go out and score right now so I can spend all evening staring in a mirror and giggling at my ocular munificence. You twats, you've spent my taxes on this drivel...

(Incidentally, I once met the rather marvellous screenwriter - and possibly director? - of "Buffalo Soldiers," the Joaquin Phoenix-starring US army satire. Anyway, she told me an excellent story about Rick Rubin's predilection for hunting Large Greys. So now you know... Want to be America's Greatest Rock Producer? Being a Buddhist is not enough - chase other life forms in your spare time).

Ashes To Ashes, Bring Back Bopara, Cunning Cricket Chat, Deathly Dull, Delusional...

2009-08-27T10:18:00.007Z

I feel, having posted on the very first day of the Ashes series that I should say something at the end, preferably something which reveals me to be a perceptive and deep-thinker on the game and sends cricket fans from all over the blogosphere rushing off to read "Clear Water," a book which features a former spin bowler and hence should be top of their reading lists for days when only unremitting bleakness will do. So here we are.

It wasn't as epic and scintillating as 2005, more about two brittle teams, each hoping to implode less than the other. But it was pretty compelling, if in a similar way to watching two drunken tramps trying to bend down to see who could pick up a 2p coin first. (England seem to have got their implosions down to about one per series). My man of the series is poor old Ravi Bopara, who not only had a nightmare but wasn't even invited to the players' celebratory party at the end. Oh, and Ricky Ponting, who I must admit to having booed - strictly panto-style - at Lords, which I've felt guilty about ever since. And Michael Clarke was fantastic. Last time he was over he had long hair and the Aussies would make a seat out of their arms for him between overs in order to stretch out his dodgy back, which made him look like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Now he looks like a dour Australian but has batted brilliantly. As for the England team, while I'm glad they won I haven't really warmed to any of them. And please, please, tell me that Ian Bell will be dropped again..?

(I know, not that perceptive or incisive - I'm hoping my cheap and politically incorrect joke about the tramps will paper over the cracks...)

Pynchon, "Inherent Vice" and Other News From The Sixties

2009-08-27T09:55:00.004Z

So, yeah, like, this actually is the Voice of Pynchon, man, pretending to be, y'know, like the character in his new novel. It's been proved by some straights at the freakin' Wall Street Journal. Crazy, man, crazy...

(The book is wonderful, by the way. Very funny and affectionate and beautiful. Enough to make you like hippies).

In other Sixties throwback news, Harvey Pekar has begun publishing his first web comic here. The first episode is him and Robert Crumb on the telephone going on about the evils of the avant garde. Bleurch.

Crumb, meanwhile, has gone all the way back to the Book of Genesis to get his kicks (men with big beards and women with... well, we all know what the women will have). Due out in the UK in October, this is old news. But then I'm old...

Holiday Reading - Pynchon, Berry, Vila-Matas, Barker, Marĺas, Macdonald

2009-08-05T12:01:00.006Z

B
I'm off on my jolly ol' hols soon so I've been stockpiling books to take with me. I always take more than I can possibly read in the time available. I like getting them out when I arrive at my destination and piling them all up. I like humming and hawing over which to start on. I like having the option to switch or read two or three at once. It's an essential part of holiday luxuriousness to have an excess of books to hand. So, these are the books I've decided to take with me:

"Inherent Vice" by Thomas Pynchon. Got it on Sunday, have already started it. It's like being on holiday early. Very funny, very good fun - Pynchon's Cali books are always a blast. Like, dude.

"The Manual of Detection" by Jebediah Berry. Read an article about it ages ago, I think, and stuck it in my basket on Amazon. So have now bought it, in hardback, without knowing much about it. That's holidays for you. The booktrade is relying on poor suckers like me. This means that William Heinemann can limp on for another, erm... hour?

"Montano" by Enrique Vila-Matas. The follow up to his excellent "Bartleby & Co," I meant to buy this shortly after I read the aforementioned but decided to wait until it was out in paperback. Which it never was. Sounds strangely familiar...

"Darkmans" by Nicola Barker. Have decided not to hold its Booker shortlisting against it - it might still be interesting, well-written, clever, possibly even innovative. It might. It really might. Also, having just read and enjoyed the considerably shorter "Reversed Forecast" I promised myself and an expectant world (haha) that I would. Also Jimmy Cash rates it. Incidentally, do authors have to write a big, long book before they're taken seriously?

"Your Face Tomorrow. 1: Fever and Spear" by Javier Marĺas. Someone else who I've been meaning to read. This one seemed to have the worst reader reviews on Amazon so is undoubtedly his masterwork. I found out recently that Marĺas is now King of Redonda. The first king having been M.P.Shiel, whose "masterpiece", "The Purple Cloud" I failed to finish on my last summer holiday. I hope it's not an omen...

"The Galton Case" by Ross Macdonald. There was a piece in the Guardian Review at the weekend saying he was better than Chandler and Hammett. A bit like saying that eating creamed cockroaches is "better than sex" (you know what these weekend supplements are like...) so I thought I'd better give him a go... arker

Recent Reading

2009-08-02T20:02:00.000Z

Apologies for the alliterative title and uninspired subject matter - I can't think of anything worth writing about, so I'm going to list the books I've read or failed to read in the last couple of motnhs or so (a lot of failures on my part in here - no idea why). (Also in no particular order):

"The Widow" by Georges Simenon. Another nasty and marvellous roman dur from Mr Simenon. This one has the introduction from Paul Theroux that I thought I blogged about previously but can't find. If you wanna read it (the intro), the link is here.

"Woman's World" by Graham Rawle. This should have been sensational but somehow it wasn't. Graham Rawle used to do the "Lost Consonants" cartoon in the Guardian but when he wasn't he was writing this book, pieced together entirely from the words found in women's magazines of the sixties. This constraint made graphic by actually chopping up said magazines and then pasting the pages together. So it looks great and seems like a great idea. But somehow it didn't take flight for me.I don't know why. I wanted to love it and instead I admired the idea more than the execution.

"Berlin Alexanderplatz" by Alfred Döblin. I read that the translation was terrible but bought it anyway (it's Archimboldi's favourite book in "2666"). The translation is terrible. Or if it isn't terrible then the original is. You can sense that it should be great, but I gues it's a little like trying to read "Ulysses" in a bad translation. Anyway, I had to give up. Failure.

"The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector. Very short and strange novella narrated by a man writing a book about a young peasant woman from the north of Brazil. After the first thirty or forty pages - which are a little hard going in that modernist way - it builds to a rather beautiful little climax.

"The Black Insider" by Dambudzo Marechera. I read a short piece about Marechera by China Mielville so I bought this, as the title he'd recommended was unavailable. It comes with an introduction about how the bookn was originally rejected for not being "African" enough. I think it might have been rejected for being too bloody difficult. It has a cracking opening - the central character is living in a war-torn future London inside a bombed out university building - but then the story gets more and more lost in diversion and digression and mind-bending difficulty. I got lost. Must try again.

"Give + Take" by Stona Fitch. Amiable read about a travelling jazz musician and jewel thief. It was the first release from Fitch's free-publishing venture, Concord Free Press and is enjoyable and fun without being life changing. Good on jazz.

"Hard Rain" by Ariel Dorfman. Then again, maybe I don't have the powers of concentration to get through something life changing. "Hard Rain," from what I read of it, seems to be a series of reviews or essays of non-existent books, written by Dorfman as he waited for the inevitable coup which deposed Allende. It starts brilliantly but then becomes very... difficult. I must try again. Maybe on holiday..?

"The World Doesn't End" by Charles Simic. Short prose poems by the Serbian-American. He makes a really good introduction to them in this film at around 9 minutes 30, although it's worth starting from 7 minutes 30 to watch his anecdote about Venus, the Goddess of Love. Anyway, the poems are fantastic - wide open, allusive, funny and strange.

"Menage" by Ewan Morrsion. I already wrote about this here. It's still really good.

"Printer's Devil" by Stona Fitch. More Fitchiana, this time published by Scottish-based indie Two Ravens Press. Set in a post-apocalyptic future and concerning a member of a printer's guild (something like a gang), it's dark and well-written. But I wonder whether post-apocalypse actually limits a writer's imagination - they all seem to be much the same. Perhaps we all have the same nightmares...

"Reversed Forecast" by Nicola Barker. Nicola Barker's first novel, which I found on the bookstall of my daughter's school's Christmas fair (classy bookstall innit?). Have been meaning to devote some reading effort to Barker for a long time and didn't regret it. I loved this book - the quality of the writing, the affection for her characters, the ordinary oddness, everything. Am going to read "Darkmans" now, having been previously put off only by my dislike of sans serif fonts (Something, I'm glad to say, she has made no attempt to justify, despite so many people commenting on it).

Emil Hakl - "Of Kids & Parents". Published by Czech publishers Twisted Spoon, and bought by a friend of mine in Prague, it's the funny and well-paced story of a middle aged man and his father going out on the piss one evening, which manages to deal with the topography of Prague, communism, war, drink, sex, ornithology and a whole heap of other stuff, without feeling like it is. Oh, and despite its origin it's in English, too.

Speech Debelle - Mercury Business

2009-07-22T08:59:00.002Z

Yesterday was a good day. Speech Debelle got her album nominated for the Mercury Music prize (or, as we are meant to put it, was made a Barclaycard Mercury Album of The Year). Spent the afternoon in the pub. Am feeling fragile today. Hence nothing to say for myself. Hold tight for fascinating updates soon.

Infinity and beyond!

2009-07-20T13:38:00.003Z

I've been immortalised in art. Okay, not me, personally, but my name. Crazy-man about town Infinite Livez currently has an exhibition, "Salvador Dali Was Half-Bengali," at the Pebbledash Gallery in Stoke Newington and he has named one of his new pieces Will Ashon Style And Pattern. The exhibition is on until the 31st so you can go and see it, if you want, or buy the art online, via my name link above. You know it makes sense...

Pebbledash Gallery, 2 Leswin Place, Stoke Newington, London N16 7NJ

Jon Baskin on David Foster Wallace

2009-07-10T09:00:00.005Z

Excellent essay about David Foster Wallace's work and legacy here. Jon Baskin claims in "Death Is Not The End" that "with the benefit of time, it will be recognized that Wallace had less in common with Eggers and Franzen than he did with Dostoevsky and Joyce." Baskin argues that we should read Wallace's work as a series of Wittgensteinian therapies designed specifically to cure us of our addiction, the most fundamental of all our addictions, "to a highly reflexive and indulgent way of thinking." In particular, he seems to suggest, Wallace uses the machinery of post-modern writing and thought as the only way in which to connect with readers weened on this type of literature. "Many people in America already knew that AA worked; Wallace, however, was the first to propose it as a solution to the problem of postmodern thinking. This problem had the structure of addiction, he suggested. That was why it took a sophisticated, difficult novel like Infinite Jest to make the people who tend to read sophisticated, difficult novels think hard about things that were meaningful and true."

Test Match Cricket & The End of Work

2009-07-08T10:31:00.002Z

So, the Ashes has begun. I'm listening on my computer. Already my mind is becoming mulch. Really, I may as well write the whole summer off now. Any writer worth his or her salt spends around 90% of their working day looking for an excuse not to write anything and what could be better than the gentle application of psychological pressure which is Test Match cricket? I am not going to write my masterpiece with this going on. Someone appears to be playing "Radio GaGa" on a melodica in the back of the commentary box. Two Aussies are chatting about the pitch. Nothing much is happening and that's just what I'm after. Shit. Cook's out, just as I was relaxing into a soporific stupor. Do these bastards never rest?

Recessions Sessions - Part 2

2009-07-06T11:11:00.002Z

I got asked back to do the next "litgig" organised by Beat The Dust and all those good folk. If you can't be bothered to watch the rather smart "video flyer" above then I'll tell you that it's at the Betsey Trotwood again on July 31st from 7.30ish, I'll wager. Better hurry up and write something...

Portrait Of The Novelist As A Dead Butterfly

2009-07-03T09:46:00.014Z

I've been thinking of novel writing as a kind of minor utopianism. While I'm working on a book, the one in my head is always perfect, a masterpiece, a kind of personal Heaven on Earth. Then I get to the end of my draft and read through the one I've actually created and it's a repressive regime. Flawed, dusty and restricted, with dog shit all over the pavements. And I polish and change and clean it and move it a little nearer to the ideal which motivated me, but it remains a disappointment. So I start again on a new novel and immediately convince myself that this time I will achieve something impossible, almost through belief alone.

Now, my question is this. Is this a necessary condition of writing novels (for me, anyway)? Or is it just immature delusion? i.e. will I only actually be able to write a truly great book (play along with me here) when I stop thinking in these terms? Part of the reason I ask is because I recently started writing something and I don't have that usual feeling at all. So I'm wondering whether this is a Bad Sign, an indicator that I'm not truly excited enough by what I'm trying to do to pull if off in any satisfactory way. Whether what I produce will be, in fact, dowdy, worthy and safe, lacking in spark. Or whether, on the other hand, due to multiple disappointments, I'm finally able to write without becoming blinded by my own excitement and so will manage to keep control of the material instead of setting off on the kind of maniacal flights of fancy which seem to come to me when I feel the burn of "the star on the forehead" (to quote poor ol' Raymond Roussel).

Of course the truth is that probably whichever way I write I'll never come close to producing what I would hope to produce. In which case why do I keep on going? There are two possible answers, I guess. One is that it's the struggle to create that ideal which is important, that it's better to spend your life chasing after a beautiful impossibility than grinding through a grim reality. That, in fact, chasing a beautiful impossibility is maybe what a good life is about. The other is less cheering. A friend told me about research which shows that cult members become more committed to a cult after the events the cult leaders have predicted fail to come to pass. I'm either a beautiful butterfly or a one man cult. My one man jury is out. He's staring through the window at an empty playing field when he should be trying to reach a decision. It's cold and wet and not even butterfly season. It hasn't, now he thinks about it, been butterfly season for years.

Mike Nelson - "A Psychic Vacuum"

2009-07-02T21:02:00.003Z

Back in 2007, Mike Nelson built a huge installation in the derelict Essex Street Market in Lower East Side New York. Now Creative Time, who made the thing happen, are publishing a book of the installation. You can read an interview about it here. Nelson says that his next project will be, "hopefully some major demolition of a small part of London — but we have to find somewhere first." Boom!

Ewan Morrison - "Ménage"

2009-06-30T09:01:00.005Z

I was lucky enough to get sent a copy of this and would recommend people checking it out - I believe it's published this week. It's described on the back as "a Jules et Jim for thejJilted generation," but I think the latter bit is only there for the alliteration. It is, unsurprisingly, about a menage a trois, the story of Owen, Dot and Saul, set in the early days of the YBA art boom, remembered from the crash of early 2009. So it manages to combine a fair amount of Withnailesque debauchery, a whole slew of Morrison's trademark fucking and sucking ("Penises are everywhere!" as Dot puts it), some digs at the art world ("it was rumoured that Saatchi was looking to buy online Islamic web porn as art") and much more into a quite genuine, if unconventional, love story which keeps you gripped right up until the end. And that actually sells the book a little short. Morrison uses his various trinities to explore the nature of art, relationships of power, friendship, mental illness and all that BIG SHIT without ever making the reader feel as if it's being forced down his/her throat. It's a novel about late nights, best read late at night, a strangely redemptive book which, despite a sly ending, is more about what can be than what might have been.

If you want more information about the book and what Ewan is up to, check his site.

p.s. I kind of know Ewan in that we worked on a short story with some other folk and he gave me his top tips for last year, but we've never met and I wouldn't have written anything at all about his book unless I'd enjoyed it. We are not the metropolitan elite. For one, Ewan is Scottish and for two, I'm a liability.

Michael Moorcock on Arthur C Clarke

2009-06-26T09:14:00.004Z

I'm off to the woods for the weekend for a 48 hour vegetarian survivalist school run, but I leave you with this delight - Michael Moorcock remembering Arthur C Clarke. I was talking to Jimmy Cash (fresh back from the Ozarks or some such and sporting a "Guns, Trucks, Gurls" tattoo) about Moorcock's reminiscences of Ballard, wot I posted the other day and it reminded me of this piece from last year, which is very, very funny. Enjoy!

(Picture taken from efanzines.com)

Eggers On The Brink

2009-06-24T10:40:00.004Z

I sent my treatise of despair to Mr Eggers and got an immediate reply! Unfortunately it was an automated reply:

"Hello!
Thanks for writing to this address. I set up this new email account about three weeks ago to answer what I thought would be a handful of messages from attendees at a recent Author’s Guild event. Since then, this address has become far more public, and the volume of mail sent to this address has been a bit too much to handle. So as not to imply that this is a frequently checked address, we’re closing this email address down. But if you have questions about the upcoming issue of McSweeney’s (that which will be in the form of a newspaper) email Jesse Nathan at _________. If you want to send a message to me, best to send it to Michelle Quint at __________ (I’m a slow emailer so she’ll make sure I get back to you promptly). If you have questions about 826 National, write to Ryan Lewis at ___________. And if you’re in the mood to send anything on paper, our address is 826 Valencia, San Francisco, CA 94110.
Thanks again for writing,
Dave "

So what I feared has come to pass. The outpourings of horror, fear, self-loathing and doubt from the literary commonwealth have pushed Dave to the very edge. Poor lamb. I picture him lying, spent, on his therapist's couch, a print-Pangloss overwhelmed by electronic letters of DOOM.

(I took out all the email addresses cos I don't want to be responsible for some evil spambot blocking the collective McSweeney's/826National inboxes with messages about how you can "Gaive youur waife all the esex eshe ne-eds and desreves"... If you want them - the email addies, not the esex you desreve - well, email me)

Tom Phillips - "A Humument"

2009-06-23T08:56:00.003Z

I was looking at my copy of "A Humument" last night. Back in the mid-sixties an artist called Tom Phillips bought a copy of "A Human Document" by W.H.Mallock and began drawing and painting on the pages, leaving chosen words intact to make strange poetry across and down the pages, embedded in the pictures he built around them to illustrate, comment on, decorate or attack those words. Since he finished the first edition in 1973, various volumes have been published and he has gradually replaced his original pages with new versions. Anyway, I wondered if there was much about the project on the internet and, lo and behold, I found Humument.com, Phillips' rather slick and informative site, including a slide show of the complete 4th Edition.

Norwich (and Sebald)

2009-06-22T09:30:00.000Z

Somehow I happened across this rather good W.G.Sebald blog and was a little shocked and surprised to find that its French equivalent (with posts on Jacques Roubaud and others), goes by the name of Norwich. I'm not being a snob or a Londonist. Some of my best friends live in Norwich (honest!). I just thought it was funny. Blame Steve Coogan.

Cor Blimey - Vintage UK Hip Hop Stuff

2009-06-19T18:35:00.003Z

Got all nostalgic today and began looking up classic UK hip hop on YouTube. Really, how good is this stuff..? (The answer is VERY GOOD, smartarses).

Sindecut - "Live The Life". The Sindecut were just so good. Here, Crazy Noddy rips through his verses and all is right with the world.

London Posse - "Live Like The Other Half Do". Pure class, though overshadowed for sheer rarity value by London Posse - 1987 live

Gunshot - "Social Psychotics". Never one of my favourite acts, but a good representation of what would become Britcore.

Demon Boyz - "Rougher Than An Animal". Not their finest moment (which must be "Glimity Gamity") but fun...

Blak Twang - "Queen's Head" - From a later era than the rest, but Tony Twang and early Roots Manuva verse, plus guest cameos from Sean T etc... 1995? Seems like yesterday...

American Chutzpah part II - Eggers, Nice Books and Brand

2009-06-19T09:06:00.004Z

After the fine feelings stirred in me by Concord Free Press, I came across the latest example (or maybe an earlier example) of US publishing chutzpah, you guessed it, the one and only Dave Eggers. Eggers recently offered sweet succour to the US publishing industry, giving out his email address and saying that "if you are ever feeling down, if you are ever despairing, if you ever think publishing is dying or print is dying or books are dying or newspapers are dying... If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong."

So Ron Charles of the Washington Post wrote to him and printed the reply. This morning I wrote asking further questions, but haven't actually sent the mail. It's hard not to sound sucky without sounding aggressive (for me, anyway). But here is what I thought of sending, or intended to send, or thought anyway, without sending:

"Hi Dave -

"No rush to reply to this (I'm not on the roof edge), but I read first the blog of your speech in the New Yorker and then your response to Ron Charles from the Washington Post, in which you said, 'My faith in print is buoyed by our own experiences at McSweeney's, for one thing. Our sales haven't really dropped off in the last few years, and of course we spend no money on ads or promotion. So my weird theory, or one of them, is that we need to invest in print, instead of cutting away all the value of print over the web.'

"It's an argument I've come across a lot in the music business - that in order to survive we need to be adding value over the the basic ones and noughts which make up the delivery of the music. Although I think it's easier to apply to books, which are still an analogue product, making the choice similar to that between downloading an mp3 or buying vinyl (CDs really muddy the argument as well as looking ugly).

"But I was interested in this because I thought it could be just as easily claimed that the success of McSweeney's rests on the strength and clarity of its brand rather than people finding any intrinsic value in "nice books and magazines" (and don't get me wrong, you do produce nice books and magazines). This brand in turn, relies to a large part, on your fame/celebrity (which, once again, I'm not denying you've put to good use). That being the case, though, doesn't the success of McSweeney's rest on your high profile as a mainstream published author whose books have been heavily promoted and marketed by those giant publishing conglomerates who are now laying off staff and indulging in the small joys of despair - the weeping and gnashing and pulling out of hair?

"That being the case, is there really a broader lesson that other people can take from what McSweeney's have done? Or are you an exception, much like Radiohead giving away an album (lauded for revolutionising the music industry but a useless model for mere mortals)?

"Here's hoping that you can strongly argue the opposite and convince me that all is, if not right with the world of books, then not entirely wrong either. Sorry to add to the mountain of despair you are no doubt wading through. Hoping above all that it isn't starting to get to you. You seem like a basically upbeat individual and it would be awful if you drowned in the outflow of other people's shit.

"All the best
Will"

Maybe I should just send it instead of printing it online? Oh well, too late now...

Concord Free Press

2009-06-17T08:50:00.003Z

I ordered a free book yesterday. Concord Free Press (based in Concord, Mass) are currently shipping out copies of "Push Comes To Shove" by Wesley Brown for free to anyone, anywhere in the world. All they ask in return is that you make a "voluntary donation to a charity or someone in need" and that, when you've finished the book, you pass it on to someone else who might be interested so that the process can repeat.

It's a fantastic idea. The 2000 copies of Brown's book are almost guaranteed to go, and get passed on, generating much more interest and many more readers than most novels can muster, plus some Good Causes get some money. The cover looks great (as does the site) so now I just have to hope the contents are excellent as well. The whole thing seems rather marvellous - it's like getting a present.

My only slight bugbear, is the quote on their site from the Independent on Sunday who, in an article on novelist and Free Press founder Stona Fitch, said that it is a "project that could revolutionize the publishing industry."

I love this idea but I'm struggling to understand how it can transform the publishing industry because I'm struggling to see how the books and the postage get paid for. I understand it's not-for-profit and that the people involved give their time for free, but print runs of 2,000 books still cost, as does postage, especially to countries on the other side of the world. Maybe I'm just being a spoilsport. I am looking forward to getting my book and making my donation and taking part in something different, anyway. As Fitch puts it, "publishing books is not hard, it's making money from publishing that's really hard. We're blessedly relieved of the burden of profitability."

"Turn It Loose"

2009-06-16T20:15:00.003Z

Alastair Siddons, who has worked on some storming documentaries in his time as well as directing Roots Manuva videos for us (and for The Streets, Kano and various other folks), finally has his documentary feature debut coming to cinemas very soon. It's about the World Breakdancing Championships in South Africa in 2007 ('08?), but, from what I've seen, it's more "Spellbound" than "Save The Last Dance" - an exploration of how hip hop has impacted on and inspired people all over the world. It's also quite sumptuously shot. You can watch the trailer here.

Friday Links

2009-06-12T10:00:00.003Z

Download a brand new Anti-Pop Consortium track for free!

Look at Abebooks most expensive sales for May...

Gape at the most expensive Thomas Pynchon title on Abebooks...

Read an already-old tribute to JG Ballard from Michael Moorcock (found while thinking about Stewart Home's comment that Moorcock is better than Ballard, anyway...)

Chortle with delight at Dilshan's bizarre but effective scoop shot (this is one for the cricket buffs).

Stare at Chris Ware.

Befriend Marcel Duchamp on Facebook (just don't think about it too hard...)

Watch "Please Say Something" by David O'Reilly, winner of the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlin Film Festival (stolen from Marginal Glossagain, but what the fuck? He should stop putting up such good stuff...)

The Horrible Truth About The Internet (and Everything (and me))

2009-06-08T16:58:00.005Z

It occurred to me after I wrote my cheerful piece about the futility of my blogging in particular, that I was nudging towards a wider point about the internet in general. Once again, maybe it's just me, but don't we all spend our time on the internet - making friends on Facebook, watching people jump into frozen lakes on YouTube, tweeting about our breakfast cereal - in order to be doing something? Partly to fill the gaps when we're bored, but more importantly, to feel like we're doing something significant, or that we're involved in something important. We're constantly being told that the internet is revolutionising our lives, our culture, our social relations. Like most parties, everyone else seems to be having more fun. So we hang round the edges of these various virtual dancefloors hoping that someone - Fate, Celebrity, Sex, Friendship - will notice our unique character, our Inner Light, and invite us out onto the floor.

Is this profound or insightful or just more internet bullshit, more striving for significance? The latter, probably. In which case, why post it? Go back to the top and start again.

This Is The Life

2009-06-05T16:10:00.003Z

I maybe don't write about music enough (and particularly hip hop) as it's probably the only thing I have any right to claim any feel for. So... The best doc I've seen for quite some time, "This Is The Life" tells the story of the Good Life cafe in Los Angeles. In the early nineties, in the aftermath of the LA Riots, and in a situation where public space was being increasingly privatised and young Black men and women had nowhere to meet, this wholefood cafe in South Central started a Thursday night hip hop slot which acted as a crucible for acts like Abstract Rude, Volume 10, Chillin Villains Empire, Jurassic Five and, most importantly, Freestyle Fellowship. It's an incredible document, fuzzy VHS footage of the nights mixed in with extensive interviews with all the key players. It reminded me how good these performers were all, how innovative, how technically sharp and daring. These were great technicians of word and rhythm, beautifully brave and idealistic people and, as such, anyone interested in the huge input into world culture emanating from the African-American diaspora should watch this film - even if they don't think they like "rap." No, especially if they don;t think they like "rap."

The Discrete Lameness of the English Novel

2009-06-04T13:59:00.003Z

Good post from Mr Gloss on Tim Lott's recent "Why-oh-why-are-English-novels-so-shit?" piece in the Independent. He is cleverer and younger and spends more time thinking than me (and Tim Lott) so I have nothing to add...

The Horrible Truth About (my) Blogging

2009-06-02T20:28:00.009Z

I was asked today by another writer how I found the whole blogging thing and whether it was bringing the punters in. Below is a slightly revised and expanded version of what I wrote. I only post it up because I can't think of anything else to post, which kind of proves or at least reinforces my theory:

As for blogging, I'm not sure it does any good at all beyond the palliative effect of feeling like you are doing something. I guess I get about 4-500 people a month looking at my blog and probably less than ten of those people are actually there because they're interested in "Will Ashon". Most of them are interested in Roberto Bolano. A quite staggering amount are interested in dog sex (having a post with those words in definitely boosts your hits from Iran*).

Certainly, sales of my books support the idea that whether I blog or not makes no difference at all, but then I've only really done it seriously (i.e. frequent posting) since last September/October, by which time both of my published books were already dead in the water. I think overall I would say it's pretty pointless, but then that's how I feel about the whole book writing business at the moment. So I think the truth is that my attitudes to blogging mirror fairly accurately my attitudes to writing as a whole - or at least to that part of it which involves selling a book as opposed to making it.

In fact, overall, I think the internet is a perfect mirror. It doesn't create, it reflects, or perhaps, at best/worst, amplifies. If you have a big rep and people know who you are then your blog will probably be a great success. If you're as obscure as I am, then it will probably be a complete waste of time. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Which, once again, makes it very much like publishing.

So really, as I started by saying, the only reason to do it is to feel like you're doing something. It goes some way to filling those moments of panic when you can't write and no one seems to be interested in what you're doing and you can't imagine that any publisher will ever take on another of your books. Though, of course, with time, the blogging or the lack of blogging becomes part of the panic itself, only on a toned down, less abysmal level. A more manageable and slightly less painful form of panic, in fact, and hence, as a result, that lesser, misdirecting panic becomes a reason to do it (and not do it) in itself.

*I'm afraid this is true.

Lindsey Kent on Clarice Lispector, China Mieville on Dambudzo Marechera, Me On My Inadequacy (WARNING: This post contains exclamation marks)

2009-05-29T13:47:00.005Z

Am feeling ig'nant today, if not as hungover as I should (for which, before my god Neurofen, I bow down). While trying to finish a short story which I have been avoiding for a month or so I have been surfing round tinternet and reading the newspaper. I've submitted a story to a collection called Hyperkinetic and they are doing these author profiles of the people involved and today I read the one belonging to Lindsey Kent. Having chosen Mr Pynchon as her favourite author she was then asked who we should be reading and alongside Cortazar she went for Clarice Lispector, who I must admit I'd never heard of and who turns out to be Brazil's most famous and wonderful modernist, a woman who, if Wikipedia is to be believed, "looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf". Anyway, I've ordered "Hour of the Star" from Abebooks because it's the most readily available, so I will soon be able to nod and look sage at the mention of her name.

I was only just recovering from my dullardity qua non-Anglo-European modernism and all that jazz, when who should I read in the Indie but China Mieville on Dambudzo Marechera, a Zimbabwean "gutter modernist". So I have bought a book by him, too, tho' not the one Mieville recommends, cos like he says, it's really hard to find it. I am a consumer! I have bought off my feelings of inadequacy! Then parlayed them into a post on my fuck-boring blog! Life is sweet!

Ewan Morrison - Ménage in the Random Ape House

2009-05-27T09:47:00.003Z

Ewan Morrison has recently taken up virtual residence on Random House's new Author's Place. He is devoting his time to readings (with visuals) from his forthcoming book, "Ménage," which is out this July. It looks/sounds good. Go look.

New Story at Scarecrow - "Cops"

2009-05-23T20:23:00.005Z

I've got a new story, "Cops," up at Lee Rourke's Scarecrow. Enjoy..?

Bas Jan Ader at Ubuweb.com

2009-05-13T08:24:00.007Z

To celebrate the fact that the mighty ubuweb now allows you to imbed video, I hope you enjoy these selected works (all from 1970/71, I think) from Bas Jan Ader. Apparently Mr Ader disappeared in 1975, having decided to cross the Atlantic in a 12 foot sailing boat. The work the journey was meant to form the middle part of was called "In Search of The Miraculous" and perhaps he found it. Anyway, his series of "Falls" are excellent. I particularly like "Broken Fall (Organic)".

[Unfortunately, my html skills are too rudimentary to sort out the various problems with Ubuweb's coding for embedding, so it's all wonky. You might be better off watching it at the site itself!)

Aleksander Hemon - "Love & Obstacles"

2009-05-12T14:11:00.004Z

There's a new Hemon on the way, a collection of interlinked short stories apparently similar in tone to "The Question of Bruno" (still my favourite of his books, I think). You can read the title story of the collection in The New Yorker, or check his new website here.

Question: can you ever get bored or frustrated with being compared to Nabokov and Conrad, or does it feel creamy and good every single time?

Marginal Gloss

2009-05-12T11:27:00.002Z

I'm really liking this blog and not only because there was a very sympathetic write-up of "The Heritage" on there a few weeks ago (though that helped).

Recession Session - fallout

2009-05-10T20:17:00.002Z

So, the post-quake rumblings from the Recession Sessions slowly die down. You can look at the prepossessing bunch of wordniks who read here (I chose Paul Ewen to illustrate my piece here cos of his sad eyes) or alternatively you can read Sam Jordison's "review" here (although I must warn you that it's mainly about how much his shoes hurt and how much nicer Norwich is than London). You can also read the story I read (and many of the pieces other people read) at Beat The Dust. Whateva.

Book Club Boutique - reading May 18th

2009-05-06T09:45:00.003Z

I've not been very creative with my posting recently and once again, this one is more informational than inspirational. Nevertheless, it remains the case that I'm reading a story at the Book Club Boutique on May 18th at a night organised and curated by Tony White... Here are the details...

BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE PRESENTS...

LONDON SHORT STORY NIGHT
WITH AUTHORS WILL ASHON, LANA CITRON, MATTHEW DE ABAITUA, SALENA GODDEN AND TONY WHITE.

Plus Live Music:
THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE resident band and DJ

Monday 18 May, 7 to midnight
Location: 'DICKS BAR', THE GREEN FINGERNAIL
Street: ROMILLY STREET, SOHO
City/Town: London, United Kingdom

It's the month of May and Beer Street beckons. There's a heatwave in Hackney, chaos in South Ken, and taking photos is close to a capital offence unless you're behind a CCTV camera, BUT 'Wherever the readers of this INVITE find themselves, it may be assumed that we all agree an interest in the streets of London...' and there's a plentiful supply of ales and wines at Dick's Bar on Romilly Street for LONDON SHORT STORY NIGHT presented by THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE

Monday, May 18, 2009. 7-midnight

Featuring readings that are pop-song length from:

Will Ashon (I've cut the rest, cos I figure if you're reading this you can probably work out who I am).

Lana Citron is author of five novels, Sucker, Spilt Milk, Transit, The Honey Trap and The Brodsky Touch. Her writing has been described as ‘wicked but affectionate satire,’ Daily Telegraph, ‘genuinely witty and original,’ Literary Review, and, ‘totally compelling,’ novelist Scarlett Thomas. Not one to blow her own trumpet, Citron's other works include short stories, poetry, plays and the award-winning short film, ‘I was the Cigarette Girl.’

Matthew De Abaitua's debut novel The Red Men (Snow Books) was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award and described by Will Self as, 'Sumptuously written, with prose that glitters with a dark lustre like a Damien Hirst fly collage.' Matthew is interviewed by 3am Magazine here.

Salena Godden almost needs no introduction here, google her if you don't believe us: poet, singer with Saltpeter, producer and host of the Book Club Boutique. Her myspace page is here.

Tony White is the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber & Faber), described by Toby Litt as 'one of the best London novels you'll ever get to read'. More on Foxy-T Mhere. Last year Tony was writer in residence at the Science Museum and he'll be reading from Albertopolis Disparu, the short story pamphlet they've just published for free. Here's what the Londonist said: 'Weirdly brilliant steampunk thing... Anyone who loves alternative versions of London a la Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore should get their hands on Albertopolis Disparu.'

So quaff Thy balmy Juice with Glee, and successfully advance to LONDON SHORT STORY NIGHT at Dick's Bar on Monday, May 18, 2009 as part of THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE. (Guardian recommended!).

Doom & Gloom - a post for Spotify users

2009-04-28T09:20:00.003Z

It started as a collection of the work of MF Doom, but when I realised there wasn't enough on Spotify for a really good overview it transmuted into a recession-themed Doom & Gloom playlist. "Enjoy"!

Recent reads - Aira, Waugh, Akutagawa, Nabokov, Hamilton, Boll, Achebe and a badly-dressed Fitzgerald

2009-04-26T19:38:00.010Z

I've not really been keeping up with my reading, or at least, not on reporting it. So here is a brief series of highlights. (A completely pointless exercise as I never say anything interesting about books, but, ah, sigh, there you are...):
Cesar Aira - "How I Became A Nun." I was very taken with this book. It's very funny and disturbing but not in any of the ways those words are usually applied. It's a little like a slightly inconsequential dream you almost remember but which makes you feel weird all day. All the same, I don't think even cover quotes from Bolaño are going to make Aira a household name - too weird (for which, more power).
Evelyn Waugh - "A Handful of Dust". I've always been a bit sniffy about Mr Waugh (blame that whole 80s Brideshead thing) but Ms Melissa Xrabit said it was her favourite book and I read it and I have to say it was fucking storming. Funny, strange, upsetting and all those good, unsettling things.
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - "Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories". A superb collection of Akutagawa's short stories, moving from his early recasting of Japanese folk tales up to his final, painful, suicidal, autobiographical works like "Spinning Gears" and the cold-as-ice "Life of A Stupid Man". Thanks to StuB for the gift.
Vladimir Nabokov - "Laughter In The DarK". I'd only really ever read late Nabokov, but someone up the road from us was giving away books and I got this. As you'd expect it's beautifully written, very funny and really quite horrible and, if the neatness of the ending gives it a genre feel, that's all the better as a cautionary tale for middle aged men contemplating going off the rails...
Patrick Hamilton - "Hangover Square". I can't honestly say that it's beautifully written, but it's very, very sad.
Heinrich Boll - "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum". According to my wife, when she did it for her German 'A' level it was meant to be about the mass media and tabloids etc, but it seems pretty tame on that level these days. Best read, instead, as a kind of compressed, capsule view of Germany in the early '70s. Very concisely written and also very funny...
Chinua Achebe - "No Longer At Ease". A kind of generational sequel to "Things Fall Apart." On one level a book about corruption and how we become corrupted but more than that, a book about being lost. "Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever."
Now I'm reading "The Great Gatsby" in an edition with the very worst book cover you've ever, ever seen, truly contradictory packaging... Classy stuff.

If you've been following past posts (you few, you unhappy few) you'll be shocked by the lack of detective fiction. Well, new year's resolutions are made to be blown asunder. I would apologise, but I can't...

"Tale" - new story on 3:AM

2009-04-22T09:01:00.003Z

Another (very) short story up this week, this time over at 3:AM. I am pumping 'em out, though hopefully without any dreadful and catastrophic drop off in quality. Anyway, enjoy...

The Recession Session

2009-04-19T19:11:00.001Z

I'm reading as part of the "Recession Sessions" this Friday night (April 24th) at the Betsey Trotwood. The evening runs from 7.30pm to 11pm and I'll be done by about 8.05pm, so get down there early if you want to catch me. If not, come later for everyone else...

The Worms - new short story

2009-04-13T18:54:00.003Z

I have a new short story up at Dogmatika. It's called "The Worms" and, the first time I opened the page, Google had helpfully added an advert for vet services for dogs, hence allaying my fears about the awesome artificial intelligence they are building. Anyway, have a read, enjoy or fail to enjoy, complain vociferously abut the minutes of your life I have wasted. That alone should make it worth your time...

Random Links Galore

2009-04-03T10:36:00.003Z

I'm not going to be posting for a wee while so I thought I would bombard you with a bunch of links to explore or ignore.

Check out Farafina, a Nigerian literary/cultural magazine, available to read online and with an interesting piece about Tayeb Salih, amongst other things.

Head to East London for a trip to Donlon Books for all your arty, political and theoretical needs (plus glass cases stuffed with rarities). They even have a rug on the floor.

If you read my post on Tony White's Science Musuem exploits, download Al Robertson's Pynchonian riffing on Mayan computing and then visit his blog for more.

Go to the Spill Festival, with highlights including Tim Etchells' That Night Follows Day.

Wait, barely daring to breath, for my new short story to appear on Dogmatika (if I remember to send it off.... And they still want it...)

Listen to random wibble on Spotify.

And that's it.

Tony White, Albertopolis & Green Beer

2009-03-31T12:52:00.005Z

Went to the launch last night of a new pamphlet/book/story which Tony White has written as part of his duties as Writer-in-Residence at the Science Museum. Tony is probably best known for "Foxy T," which is generally considered to be one of the best books ever written about London. He is perhaps less well known for "Charlie Uncle Norfolk Tango" which is one of the best books ever written about ignorant, evil grunt policemen being abducted by aliens. His new story, "Albertopolis Disparu," is a sly and funny little pastiche of steam-punk, taking in Moorcock, difference engines, early telegraphy and the idea of the Listening Post (derived from this excellent installation, in front of which the launch took place and which the story is partly a response to). Five thousand copies have been printed, to be given out free at the Science Museum, but you can also get a pdf of it here. But that is not all (no that is not all). Tony also ran a series of workshops with writers during his residency and four of them read from the work that resulted. I haven't read them in their entirety yet, but the tasters were good and you can also download them from the same place. Ended up going to the pub afterwards, witnessing the horror of green beer and arriving home drunk and hungry. My stomach is a cauldron of regret.

Bolaño, N+1 - The Bad and Ugly

2009-03-27T11:58:00.003Z

Two slightly contrasting pieces from N+1, which have been around for a while, both of which seem as interested in the US "canonization" of the dead Chilean as they do in the work. There's a proper bit of Devil's Advocacy going on here, though this one decides he's worth it and this one decides he ain't. Full marks for contrarian zeal, but I can't help feeling that the "No" camp gets a little carried away, making much of what a hard read the book is and spouting this kind of vile insult: "2666 is a desert of negative space covered with smudges and chaotic scrawls." To me that just makes it sound even better. Maybe that's where I part company from both the sanctifiers and hired oppositionalists.

Post-Lasdun & Post-Apocalypse

2009-03-26T10:27:00.005Z

So the next James Lasdun story on R4, "Totty," was a disappointment after the magnificence of "Annals of the Honorary Secretary". It was fine as a fairly conventional short story, I guess, but, unless I missed something, offered little more. Mind you, it was read by Greta Scacchi and she wasn't a patch on Bill Paterson's deadpan delivery, so maybe the comparison is unfair. Shame, I guess, but not the end of the world...

Incidentally (what a segue!), AbeBooks have just put up a mini-feature on post-apocalyptic fiction. What larks!

James Lasdun on't radio

2009-03-25T11:49:00.006Z

It's not often you hear anything that doesn't set your teeth on edge on Radio 4's Book at Bedtime. However, last night I happened to hear a short story called "Annals of the Honorary Secretary," brilliantly read by Bill Paterson. It was superb. You can listen to it here, plus Monday's story. There are also three more to come this week, at 10.30pm each night, or on the same link. The stories are by James Lasdun, who I think I have confused in my head with someone who wrote airport novels about samurai. I don't really know anything about him, but he apparently won the National Short Story Award last year and lives in New York. His new book is called "It's Beginning To Hurt" and seems like it should be worth a look. Though, as he's all over R4 he hardly needs me to tell you that...

César Aira - "Ghosts"

2009-03-24T15:37:00.005Z

So, I finished "Ghosts" this morning - my first César Aria - and I'm not completely sure what to make of it. The book tells the story of a family of Chileans living on top of a high-rise set of condos being built in Buenos Aires. The father of the household is one of the builders and is paid a small additional sum to live there and guard the site. He lives in a small two room apartment on the roof of the building with his wife, four children and his step-daughter Patri. Oh, and a lot of ghosts, who are all male, float around naked, apparently covered in building dust, laughing a lot. The story takes place on New Year's Eve and follows the family from morning until midnight. And over the course of the book, these ghosts begin to take a special interest in Patri and she has to decide how to respond... The first fifty pages were pretty plain sailing, the tone reminding me of Queneau - funny and erudite and unpatronising about "ordinary people". But from page 57 to page 67 there is a very strange meditation on "the unbuilt," kind of disguised as Patri's dream. Now, I have no head for theory so I don't know whether it's accidentally gobbledegook or supposed to be gobbledegook or genius-level philosophy. It certainly made no sense to me. But once I'd got used to it making no sense the story got going again and I enjoyed it right to the end (which, I won't spoil). Sticking to Aira's principles about the necessary inexplicability of stories I feel under no pressure to make sense of the book for you. "How I Became A Nun" is next!

César Aira, The Quarterly Conversation, Rodrigo Fresan etc

2009-03-19T17:20:00.003Z

A huge series of fortuitous coincidences here. I'm somehow on the emailing list for something called the Daily Dose, which is affiliated to flavorpill.com,which is a listings guide to New York (where I lived for zero years some time in the early no-ties). Anyway, the Daily Dose is a rather good cultural supplement and ran a piece about César Aira, a new translation of one of whom's books is/was about to be published by my old friends (in the sense that publishers of books you like are your friends, not in the sense of people i know and go and have drinks with when i'm - not - in New York) New Directions. With it was a link to a piece about Aira from Bomb magazine, which I enjoyed so much that I googled him and found this essay about him by Marcelo Ballvé on a site called The Quarterly Conversation, which turns out to be just about the best literary website I've ever come across. Not only is there that Aira essay (which I'll come back to in a moment), but I immediately stumbled across a really interesting piece about Rodrigo Fresan's Mantra, a book which, unfortunately no one has yet had the good sense to publish in English. And before I'd even done more than dip into that I found an essay on Enrique Vila-Matas' excellent Bartleby & Co, a book I think I've blogged about here before... (ah yes, here). And that was just the essays about Spanish-language writers...

Anyway, back to Aira. Beyond his books (which I'm waiting for Amazon to deliver, so maybe more on them later), his immediately most appealing trait is that he rarely gives interviews and when he does he tells lies. This may sound a little tired, but in the BOMB interview he lies quite heroically, expending considerable imaginative juice on how he sources his writing paper from a particular, high class supplier (I can imagine Safran Foer wanking vigorously and repeatedly over this passage - although I do not want to imagine it, if you see what I mean) and going on to say how little and rarely he writes. Yet, in the Quarterly Conversation piece it transpires that he has so far published 63 books (only four so far translated into English). But the Quarterly Conversation also offers a potential reason beyond mischief for this tactic of mistruth which ties directly back to his work. Ballvé quotes Aira saying that “the real story, which we have grown unaccustomed to, is chemically free of explanation... The story is always about something unexplainable."

This chimes with me, both as a reader and a writer. I don't read novels to understand them or for them to explain things for me - a war, poverty, emotions, marital breakdown, the stockmarket, the 16th century coffee industry. That seems an intensely reductionist attitude to the true pleasures of reading. Nor do I write to explain, or expect what I write to be explicable. That's why, on the few occasions I've been interviewed about my writing (both less often and more often than I would have liked), I've either fended off questions about what my book is supposed to "be about" and come over as surly, unhelpful and confused or, even worse, I've tried desperately to play along and, like a puppy with a very long neck, ended up biting off my own tail. Pynchon's solution to this problem is clearly the most elegant of all, but for those of us too needy (and too poor) to turn down all offers of publicity, here's another solution: lie. And in this act of setting out to lie - baldly, obviously, almost honestly - maybe you can hope to do yourself some sort of justice. Or have fun, anyway.

J. Robert Lennon on David Foster Wallace

2009-03-13T16:19:00.004Z

Great post from J. Robert Lennon on the death of DFW: "The lesson to take away from this, for all of us who write fiction, is to stop being such wimp-assed pencil pushers and get out of our comfort zones once and for all. Wallace isn't going to cover us anymore. If contemporary literature is going to be taken seriously, we're going to have to make literature worth taking seriously, even if it fails, as so much of Wallace's brilliantest stuff did. Otherwise we'll be relegated to the cultural footnote the film industry has been stuffing us into for years. Fiction writing should not be an amusing affectation. It should be the ultimate expression of being human, as Wallace thought it should be. Try harder. That's what we all have to do."
Read the whole thing plus much more at the blog he shares with Rhian Ellis and Ed Skoog, Ward Six.

Empty Woolworths

2009-03-13T10:35:00.001Z

Irving Brecher and the Brothers Marx

2009-03-13T10:17:00.002Z

There was a fantastic (if that's the right word in the circumstances) obituary of Irving Brecher in yesterday's Guardian. Along with many, many other jokes he was the sole writer on two Marx Brothers pictures, "At The Circus" and "Go West!" The latter included this cracking line for Groucho: "Lulubelle, it's you! I didn't recognise you standing up."

More Scutenaire

2009-03-09T15:00:00.004Z

So, I posted a few months back about Belgian Surrealist and mate of Magritte's Louis Scutenaire. The post was spotted by Robert Archambeau who, as well as being a poet and critic whose books include "Home and Variations," "Word Play Place," and the forthcoming "Laureates and Heretics," is Professor of English at Lake Forest in Chicago (I think?) and blogs at samizdatblog.blogspot.com. Anyway, in his spare time Mr Archambeau is something of an authority on the Belgian Surrealists (or, at the very least, more of an authority than me) and he and Jean-Luc Garneau bashed out a rather fine translation of this document... Remember, it was the catalogue essay for Magritte's Periode Vache paintings, painted in 1948 apparently with the sole aim of pissing off the Parisian art world...

Putting a Foot in It
Louis Scutenaire

Essay to accompany René Magritte’s “Period Vache” Exhibition in Paris
translated by Robert Archambeau and Jean-Luc Garneau

However you run the race — on foot, on horseback, in a car — you win some, you lose some. This time, we win.

We’ve had it with this living deep in the forests and in our grassy pastures. We said — without the usual hangups, the envy, inferiority complexes and our other asshole attitudes — we said to each other “Well, those guys with their fancy paved streets, their indoor plumbing, their trellised gardens, they exaggerate. They want to lick our asses? To suck us off? To massage our temples? The nerve! Still, it opens our asses and swells our heads.”

And then it happened: Mag found it, the thing that really worked. No matter how much you guys play with your own balls, try to whitewash your shacks, shake the shit down in your shit-bucket, aggravate your ulcers, play lovebirds, poke at your adverbs and ablatives, bleach your straight jackets, or spit-shine your dirty dreams, your shorts still have skidmarks. So you can’t give us any shit. Not any more. So there!

Don’t worry, guys. Don’t freak. See, we don’t want to hurt you. That’s why we put on our big, black, American minstrel show. It puts you at ease. We’re willing to talk shit to you politely, in your fake-ass language. Because we, the cow turd-munching peasants, we don’t understand etiquette, right? But we want to be nice, and speak to you like your little kids: gaga purty tinky, rinkyroo and picopoo, coochee be-bum zim-boom tra-la-la, itty bitty Célinie doggy missus kitty mister ah ah kiss kiss oh but but but but butt butt see you ploppy-plop!

So you’re okay, right? Still with me? Don’t get crazy and think we’re Dadas. We ride the little rocking horse Dada gave us, right? Real cavaliers.

So, Mag grabs me one day (not by the ass, don’t misunderstand me — just because we speak the same language doesn’t mean we go around fucking each other the same way), and then he lets me go, saying:

“It’s as good as done. We go down to Paris (“city of slights”), we show them our work, a good little show. I’ll make an effort, and you’ll really kick it in gear.”

“Glue and bird-lime!” I answer, “Screws, bolts, and sticky jam! Let’s do this!”

And voilà.

We lay it on and lay it on, then we double it. So we’re happy. Everything’s cool.

We know, we know: you look at it with your heart in your mouth, your pupils dilated, your eyeballs rolled into your head, your fingers fanned out in shock. “That isn’t something you see at any old circus,” you’ll say, “It can’t be! This hayseed? You can do something with this! Seriously—it puts the capital to shame! Ah! Yeah! Right there! But then again, who is this monkeyboy coming to eat our lunch? And what about tradition, revolution, research, revelation, proportion, irrationality, concretization, systematization, and the subconscious, and analysis, and reality, and myth, what does this eccentric do with them? No, it’s not kind to say so, but, all the same, why do we make it so easy on lowlifes like this nowadays? I mean, really: don’t you see how they exaggerate the forms and the nuances? They couldn’t find their own cocks, or their assholes, even if they fell into them. See, General? Put your nose up to it and have a proper look. It’s just politics, that picture. We don’t want politics — that’s over with. Long live Franco-Pança, long live Proutman, long live John Foster Dullness, long live Saletzariste and the Great Turk, but down with the politics, right darling? Yes, my little treasure, let’s go back to our public urinals, and to our cruxifixes.”

It’s sad, how weak your public urinals and your cruxifixes will look after this parade of fire, these skies of gold, myrrh and wine, these roads of ebony, of milk and of rose-wood, these sumptuous emeralds and rubies, these objects whose freedom shows us how we should carry ourselves. They’ll look so bad that you may just throw up on them, the way Ned Beaumont used to puke in the gutter after eating someone’s fist for lunch.

And you will vomit, if you are not completely rotten, and after vomiting you’ll say: “Yes, it’s over. Someone has won, and not us. We lost. But why? How?”

Why? How? We have no idea. And, anyway, fuck it. Because this time, we know there’s nothing left to prove. We have eyes. We can see. This one time out of a thousand we don’t have any doubts. We ask the questions. You tell us why you’re the losers. We’ll be honored to hear it. And a little surprised.

Freedom guides our steps. We laugh at all the busted corsets, broken rhetorics, blown-out trouser-seams, and all the burst belts and terrors.

That being said, let’s set aside these earthly sorrows and end with good-humor: painting, like salt, the trapeze, flowers, and Madame’s thighs, is a means of knocking the universe over. That’s the way Magritte sees it.

Let me tell you another little story that has more to do with my argument than you might think. Mr. Man was saying to Mrs. Woman: “I heard your husband’s a painter — I bet he makes beautiful things!” “Oh no,” she said, “he just does portraits.”

New Short Story

2009-03-07T19:10:00.001Z

I have a new short story up at Beat The Dust. It's called "Doorsteps" and is rather odd. Please read...

Twitter for Depressives

2009-03-06T14:49:00.005Z

My dear old friend Nymal kindly introduced me to the joys of FML aka fuckmylife.com, a site dedicated to the confessions of Americans whose lives are going down the pan in short, sharp bursts of humiliation and stupidity. A kind of Twitter for depressives, every terrible incident is relayed in a sentence or two, with the sign off "FML" at the end - an Amen for fuck-ups: "Today, at the dentist, I was getting my teeth cleaned. Looking up at his nose, I saw runny snot dripping onto his lip. I tried to slowly move away. He told me 'Stop!' The movement of his lips caused the snot to fall right into my mouth. FML." At first it's very funny and also formally rather beautiful, as if Perec has been reincarnated as a fat girl somewhere in the Mid-West who can't get a date for the prom. After a few pages, though, it begins to make you feel a bit queasy. Everyone has terrible body image and their insecurity is constantly being reinforced by friends and family. Everyone's boyfriend is cheating on them, usually with their best friend. On the other hand, it is kind of great. "Today, a creepy man on the subway said he liked my eyeballs. It was the best compliment I've received in months. FML."

New Foster Wallace

2009-03-05T11:28:00.005Z

Many thanks to my dear friend J-Credit for pointing out the story I missed in the Guardian despite reading it every day. It seems that David Foster Wallace's wife found a 200 page manuscript of an incomplete novel in the garage when she was going through his stuff. Called "The Pale King," it's set in a tax office in the mid-West and is slated to be published in full early in 2010. The New Yorker have printed an extract, "The Wiggle Room," which deals - in those long, snaky, rollercoaster sentences - with boredom. Once you've oriented yourself it's very funny (and very Pynchonian). Apparently, it's supposed to be a move away from the "audacious 'maximalist' style" of his earlier work to "a new, more straightforward technical direction," but it still reads very much like David Foster Wallace to me (which is no bad thing). There's also a very long accompanying essay by DT Max which I only just found. I haven't read it yet, but it seems, if the Guardian is to be believed, that it paints Wallace's decision to quit his medication (which ultimately led to his suicide) as an attempt to break out of a "creative impasse" and finish the book. Maybe I'll check that and come back to this. Or maybe I won't.

The Longest List

2009-03-04T12:17:00.004Z

For one rather disorientating moment I thought that "The Heritage" had made the long list for the Arthur C Clarke Award. Which it has. In a way. You see it's a very, very long long list. That's because the long list is the list of all the books which are eligible for an ACCA. So I may well have come last of all eligible books. Which is probably worse than being ineligible (take a bow, all those prizes for youngsters which I undoubtedly would have won - haha - if I weren't already TOO FUCKIN' OLD). However, the screen doesn't lie and I'm up the top, thanks to the marvel of having a surname that begins with an 'A'. I'm sure Malcolm Gladwell has something to say about this but I'm not sure I can be bothered to wait and find out what it is. Anyway, I have no chance of reaching the short list, so tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999. i.e. hide under the bed with my industrial cache of baked beans and wait for all the computers to crash.

Uncrushed, Non-recyclable (and still angry..)

2009-03-02T17:14:00.003Z

I've been really surprised and pleased by the reaction to the download of "The Heritage". Thanks to all the people out there who have linked to it, to all those who have downloaded it and even to those who have complained about the formatting. I hope those of you who can cope with A4 pages enjoy reading it, too... And if not, well, it's free innit??! What have you lost?

I've particularly enjoyed all the "shame on you, Faber" stuff, mainly because it's so funny. Come on, people, what are you all so surprised about? The book didn't sell so they decided not to waste more money on trying to build me an audience. What would you have done if it was your money? And if you feel like that now, wait until you've read it...

What else? Have been on a break from the crime books, instead reading Pankaj Mishra's "An End to Suffering," "A Handful of Dust" by Mr Waugh (came highly recommended, don't ya know?) and something else which I seem to have forgotten. Ooops. I expect it was very good, anyway. Meanwhile, have been listening to "Checkmate Savage" by the Phantom Band, a promo of the superb Micachu album and Ornette Coleman's "Complete Science Fiction Sessions," the last courtesy of Spotify. Oh, and I finished a first draft of a new book, which, as I haven't sat down and re-read it, I'm still very pleased with. And now I'm listening to the new record from Juice Aleem, one of the true veterans of Big Dada. Pure pleasure. So don't worry, my friends, I am not crushed!

Download "The Heritage" for free!

2009-02-10T11:04:00.006Z

So, the good burghers of Faber & Faber have decided against publishing a mass-market paperback edition of "The Heritage". I would've been pissed off, anyway, I guess, but I think would have understood this hard-headed business decision. After all, if you wanna kiss the ring of the Leather Pope then corporate capitalism's where it's at and fuck any of the considerations (art, literature, quality) you may pay lip service to. But I think my sense of fair play was piqued by being told less than two weeks before said paperback edition was supposed to be out. I mean, really, how shit is that? Sorry? Pardon? What was that I heard about putting authors first? Anyway, as the only way left to me to build any sort of a readership for what I think is a pretty good book (not a great book by any means, but not as bad as a lot of the shit out there), I'm posting it here for you to download. The file is only 853.5 KB and it downloads as a pdf direct from this link.

Take a copy, tell friends or associates who might be interested, or just email it on to them. The only thing I ask is that you forget the title 'printed' on it and think of it as "OLIVIA". This was what I'd originally named the book until I was told I needed to change it because the Faber sales and marketing people didn't feel it was "strong enough". I eventually settled on "The Heritage" almost by accident and was never happy with it as the title (I couldn't say it without adopting the tones of the guy who voices adverts for Hollywood movies). But everyone there "loved it" and, as we can all now see, it made a huge difference. What are you waiting for? DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD DOWNLOAD before they make me take it down...

Walser, Brothers Quay, Schulz, McBurney, Lowry and Safran Foer - name-tag from the sublime to the ridiculous

2009-02-05T16:07:00.004Z

Was thinking of another post I could write about Robert Walser when I came across the Brothers Quay's film of "Jakob Von Gunten," which is called "Institute Benjamenta," hence (presumably) explaining the previously-referred-to name change of the book. From there I checked out other things they had done and came across their much-praised and admired stop motion film of version of "Street of Crocodiles" by Bruno Schultz. Which set me thinking about Simon McBurney and Complicité, whose stage version of "Street of Crocodiles" I saw more years ago than I would prefer to discuss. From there I ruminated on Complicite's new production at the Barbican which I'm going to see a week on Saturday, how I think they should do a production of "Under The Volcano" (McBurney would be an excellent - if slightly old - Geoffrey Firmin) and whether they've fallen off a little in recent years (I know everyone went mad over "A Disappearing Number" but I thought it was a bit thin, really, in particular the over-emotive ending, which seemed to be put there to disguise the fact that they didn't know how to pull it all together - "make 'em cry and no one will ask..."). Anyhow, I looked at this piece on the Times Scabline and all my worst fears were confirmed - McBurney and co are about to work with Jonathan Safran Foer. God help them.

Random Blither - McBain, Simenon,Walser, Esser and the horror of "Have Your Say"

2009-02-03T10:33:00.006Z

So I gave up on Ed McBain. Partly it was the film star description thing. Partly I thought I'd be better off watching "The Wire". Partly it was an example of false economy - I bought an edition with three novels in which was then too big to fit in my pocket when I went out. As a result I switched to reading more Simenon last week - "The Blue Room," which while not as good as "Dirty Snow" was still pretty remarkable.

I've been wondering how to find out what to read next by him (I'm less interested in the Maigret side of things, though this could be because I was made to read a short story for EngLit "O" level many many years ago) and in the process stumbled across an essay about him by Paul Theroux, which has endeared the man to me even more. Anyway, I finished "The Blue room" and started on "Jakob Von Gunten" by Robert Walser, which a friend gave me 13 years ago but which I've never got round to reading (very poor...). It's commonly called "Institute Benjamenta" now, which confused me enough to ask someone to buy it for my birthday. Have only read Walser's short fiction in the past and not all that much of that. But it's great, even if, after Simenon et al, I'm reading it as a murder mystery without a murder. In between finishing "The Blue Room" on the train, I saw a band called Esser performing on a freezing cold bandstand on Sunday. I liked them enough to Google them, hence the video above. Last but not least, my worthy constituent Jimmy Cash sent me a link to spEak You’re bRanes, a website devoted to ripping the piss out of idiotic, xenophobic and dumb posts on the BBC's "Have Your Say" forums. Very funny.

Jeff Keen - Instant Cinema

2009-01-30T15:49:00.004Z

I'm not going to pretend I knew too much about Jeff Keen (my bad...), but apparently he's been making his collaged, animated, weird and wonderful super-8 films for forty years, from early 60s beatnickery, through psychedelia on into punk and beyond. Anyway, the BFI are running a season of his films at the end of February, following that up with the release of a 4 DVD box set, GAZWRX. For a more personal insight, check his Prisoner of Art edition, being sold from his own site. Plus there's more film clips up there, too...

More on the "Big Books of the Decade"

2009-01-29T11:37:00.003Z

I've come to realise that my theory of the "Big Book of the Decade" is utterly flawed, based as it is in my own personal taste and blindness to certain books by certain folk. So, considering it's won every Booker of the Booker going, I'm sure that there are some who would argue that Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" (1981) was the Big Book of the 80s. Didn't do much for me, but there we are. Or how about Bolaño's Oedipal father-figure (or perhaps his Claudius), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who would get the nod from some for both or either of "100 Years of Solitude" (Spanish in 1967, English in 1970, so I guess we could squeeze it into the 60s..) and/or "Love In The Time of Cholera" (1985/1989)? (Mind you, they're both relatively 'short' - more big books in the ground covered than in length). So, yes, I lose. Again. More big books to follow soon. Ooh, Don DeLillo, "Underworld," 1997, hmmm... Vollman, "You Bright And Rsien Angels," 1987, hooray..! etc etc

More on Fresan on Bolaño on... everything

2009-01-27T09:03:00.000Z

I finally got around to buying the issue of "The Believer" with Rodrigo Fresan's piece on Bolaño in it. It cost almost nothing for the magazine and an absolutely unconscionable amount for the postage, which is odd as it took about 6 weeks to get to me. Do they pay an orphan to deliver it by hand? Anyway, now I've given "2666" a little time to go down I've started picking away at it. It's a big, broad piece of writing and I must admit that so far I've mainly filleted it for direct quotes from Mr Bolaño himself, as there is very little Eng-lang coverage of what he directly said about his writing (and as some of the quotes are taken directly from emails Bolaño sent to Fresan, you aren't going to be finding them anywhere else...).

"About my work, I don't know what to tell you. I suppose it's realist... But that isn't what matters in the end; what matters is the language and structure, the way of looking at things."

"The truth is that I don't really believe in writing. My own least of all... I use the word writing as an antonym of waiting. Instead of waiting, there's writing. Anyway, it's quite likely that I'm mistaken and that writing is another form of waiting, of putting things off. But I'd like to believe that's not the case."

"I don't know how there can still be writers who believe in literary immortality. I understand those who believe in the immortality of the soul, I can even understand those who believe in Heaven and Hell and the touching waystation Purgatory, but when I hear a writer talk about the immortality of certain literary works I want to slap him. I'm not talking about hitting him but just slapping him once and then probably hugging him and comforting him... a kind of slap for the person's own good, like the kind they give hysterical people in the movies so that they snap out of it and stop screaming and save their lives."

Considering the amount of second rate exposition and commentary there has been around the release of "2666" it's a shame no one has re-published this piece - preferably a newspaper or magazine with a web presence where it would be freely available for everyone to read... (Incidentally, I don't agree with the pull line that "the only protagonist of Roberto Bolano's work - the authentic heroine of his books - is literature itself" and I'm not convinced Fresan does, either....)

James Ellroy - Drugs, Corruption, Death, Mutilation, Perversion & All That Jazz

2009-01-26T10:33:00.006Z

So I take it all back about James Ellroy. Finished "White Jazz" last week and while it still remains true that all his books are basically identical, you can't deny the sheer, adrenal energy and excitement of them. I don't know where "White Jazz" rates in his canon and wonder whether the fact that it was published just after the LA Riots meant that commentators ascribed more significance than it was capable of supporting. But if you want to spend a few days locked into a world where every cop and crook is as fucked up, grasping, perverted and evil as the next, then you could do a lot worse. Not sure if the plot matters in Ellroy but the sudden addition of EYEBALL MAN, while definitely a rather clunky "rabbit-in-the-hat" moment, makes for a fittingly gruesome, funny ending...

Have started in on Ed McBain now, which is Wire-style good, although I'm not sure about his descriptions of people, particularly his way of comparing them (the women) to famous female movie stars. Although I guess it's the cops doing that, dunderhead...

Bolaño and "The Big Book of the Decade"

2009-01-23T11:15:00.008Z

I'm slightly taken aback by the wave of Bolañomania sweeping the English-speaking world. Like the indie-elitist I am, I tend only to like books or records if they're unknown or unloved by everyone else. The misfittery is part of what makes them loveable. Now I find myself caught up in the giant shitstorm that is the international Bolaño bull market. Was he a heroin addict (who cares?)? How many more "lost" books did he have hidden on a campsite in Southern France (how many can the Jackal write?)? And so on... It's a "buy Bolano, sell DFW" situation. He's the only dead-author stock that's going up.

It's funny how once a decade we get a huge "totalising" book that everyone goes nuts about (even James Wood, who will then spend the next ten years slagging off every book that follows in its wake). There was "Gravity's Rainbow" in 1973, "Life A User's Manual" in 1987, "Infinite Jest" in 1996 and now "2666" in 2008/9. And the rest of the time this sort of writing (which Woods famously termed "hysterical realism," calling for a post-9/11 return to the smaller canvas of books about the sons of vicars writing books about sons of vicars just as his own first novel about a son of a vicar came out...) gets sneered at, mainly by the likes of Alfred Hickling at the Guardian (who said that "Savage Detectives" was masturbatory. Dunce). It's as if one exception is allowed every ten years or so, and everyone waxes lyrical about it before returning to write neat and tidy books with very little ambition at all. So, as the likes of Vollman have found out, if you're going to write "the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown" (Bolaño) you'd better make sure your timing is spot on. And if you're about to embark on such a work now, make sure you spend the best part of a decade on it...

Robert Frank - Come Again and on the Train

2009-01-23T09:50:00.003Z

I've been crap at posting for the last couple of weeks due to tax returns, my daughter's birthday and the wheedling brutality of the publishing industry, hoho. But yesterday I received through the post my copy of Robert Frank's Come Again, which gives me an excuse for writing something. Apparently it's been out of print for a few years, until the publisher found some additional unsold stock, which they've now made available. The photos are polaroid collages (usually just 2 photos per collage) shot in Beirut in 1991. The book is produced as a facsimile of the notebook Frank stuck the pictures in, the photos spot-varnished against the blue-squared lines of the notebook pages. It's beautifully done and a bit of a bargain. The pictures themselves are of derelict (bombed, shot up) buildings, completely devoid of people - very post-apocalyptic and still raw, what with recent events in Gaza. Just to add a bit of moving picture I've posted a clip above of Frank talking about trains: "I'm sorry about the movements but... it's all symbolic. It's all how much you get beaten up while being on that train. And then you hope when you get older that you can really enjoy it, y'know, and not have to fight anymore..."

Crime and Rehabunishment

2009-01-19T11:26:00.004Z

An update on my crime-writing reading progress (if you catch my drift). Quickly read Daniel Woodrell's "Give Us A Kiss" between finishing Simenon and starting "White Jazz" (which turned up in the post the next day). It was lying around the house so I thought I'd give it a go, but couldn't for the life of me figure out what was supposed to be noir about this "country noir". I found it full of hokey hillbilly sentimentality and if he'd mentioned the red cowboy boots of the 19 year sexpot love interest again I would have wrapped the thing in a plaid shirt and burnt it. Anyway, I'm now well into "White Jazz". It's a long time since I read Ellroy and though I'm enjoying it, I've also remembered why I stopped.

Instinct: they're all THE SAME.

Luckily, the Gurniad is currently doing one of those "1000 Books You Must Read Before We Come Round And Beat You To Death With a Newspaper" supplements and Sunday was Crime, so that should furnish me with a few hundred more ideas...

And while we're on the subject of "Crime & Rehabunishment," my second novel "The Heritage" is due out in (cheap) trade paperback on February 5th. I can't really tell you much more, as no one at Faber has told me anything (images of baby chicks nudged from nests and left to starve, cheeping pitifully...). I will try to make more of a fuss about it between then and now, so if you haven't bought it, just get on and purchase now to shut me up. If I get to number 1 on the Amazon pre-order charts I promise to stop.

(THAT INSTINCT big: lies. Just lies.)

Oh, to make it up to you,another unsurprisingly excellent Bolaño story courtesy of the New Yorker...

Spotify

2009-01-19T11:16:00.004Z

As someone who works in the music business (on some level, anyway) I'm not sure I should be recommending Spotify, but there you are. It's one of these new music streaming services, there's no buffering, it's free in return for listening to a crappy advert every half hour or so and the catalogue on there is pretty remarkable. Not perfect, but not bad at all. Was talking to a computer-literate friend and he says it's The Cloud. I say it's the shit. Anyway, don't take my word for it: click. Apparently it won't work if you're in the US. Sorry. Least you got Baz...

Roberto Bolaño - "Meeting With Enrique Lihn"

2009-01-13T09:55:00.004Z

"I found two books, one a classic, like a smooth stone, the other modern, timeless, like shit".

An apparently previously unpublished Bolaño story (or previously unpublished in English) is in the New Yorker this month. Either a dream or a fictionalised dream (if that distinction holds), it's classic short Bolaño - a litany of Chilean poets you've never heard of (and who may not even exist), the fractured logic of exile and the onward march of the dead, terrifying and beautiful all at once. (Thanks, once again to Las Obras... for the link...)

Detect & Survive

2009-01-09T11:08:00.003Z

I've declared 2009 the Year of the Detective. Or of the Murder-Mystery. Or the Police Procedural. Or something. It all goes back to my late night (and half cut) Bolaño revelation: if all novelists are like homicide detectives, then all novels are like murder-mysteries. Yeah, I know, it doesn't really make any sense, even on its own terms. But there seems to be something like a sliver of insight in there and it gives me a great excuse to buy a pile of new books. I'm currently nearing the end of "Dirty Snow" by Georges Simenon, which is a complete revelation. I'd always had Inspector Maigret down as a Hercule Poirot figure and, by extension, I'd assumed that Simenon was a cosy detective novelist. But "Dirty Snow" (not a Maigret book anyway) is something else - perfectly written, very dark and very bleak. It's a real find. Plus, the brief bio of Simenon reveals that he had a long term affair with Josephine Baker which he eventually ended because she was interfering with his productivity - he'd only written 12 novels that year. That, my friend, is style. Next on my list are "White Jazz" by James Ellroy (I've read other books by him, but someone once told me this was his "Ulysses," by which they may have meant it was incomprehensible) and Ed McBain (a compilation of three 97th Precinct novels). And last night I was recommended "The Black Dahlia" as the definitive Ellroy plus Derek Raymond's "I Was Dora Suarez" (and there's another writer I've been meaning to read for years). At some point I think I should throw in some Wilkie Collins, for history's sake, but am open to all additional suggestions...

"Two Serious Ladies" - Jane Bowles

2009-01-06T08:49:00.005Z

I read this marvellous little book in a rush after finishing "2666". The impetus was an old interview with Harry Mathews I came across about his (at the time) new book, "Cigarettes" (incidentally the first book I read to use Oulipian techniques of creative contstraint). Sadly, having read it I still can't think of a better way to summarise it than using Mathews' words from that interview: "She achieves miracles by just putting one ordinary sentence after the other and she never indicates the way you’re supposed to feel about it." A good example of what he means is offered by the introduction to the edition I read, which was from Virago. It made a very strong case for the book as a feminist classic, whereas to me it seemed to be a book about rich eccentrics. Anyway, it's very funny. I think. Though it may not be to you. Either way, highly recommended...

(Please note, also, that I've finally sussed out using Blogger's labels, which means if you click on the categories listed at the bottom of each post, you can read all related posts. Hurrah! Haven't yet managed to go back and add them to the whole archive of nonsense what I wrote, but I will, I will...)

Roberto Bolaño - "2666," "Part 5 - The Part About Archimboldi"

2009-01-03T18:43:00.015Z

The last part of "2666" concerns the life story of the author who the critics were chasing in "Part 1". We follow Hans Reiter (who will later take the pen name Benno Von Archimboldi) from his birth on the North Prussian coast, through a childhood diving down to the seabed, his first job in the local aristocrats' semi-deserted home, his time in Berlin and then, for what feels like the bulk of the book, his conscription into the German army for the Second World War. Reiter fights on the Eastern front, pushing forward and then being forced into retreat, finally being interned by the Americans. Here, in perhaps the central action of this book (SPOILER ALERT!) he strangles a Nazi bureaucrat who confides that he has killed 500 Jews who were accidentally sent to the town he was running. Having left the camp, he begins writing, meets Ingeborg, his lover, who dies a little later and then lives in exile in the mediterranean whilst pumping out a succession of increasingly well-received books. Only during the final pages of the book do we find out that Klaus Haas - the German-American imprisoned in Santa Teresa as a serial killer - is his nephew. The book, the whole book, finishes with Archimboldi setting off for Mexico to try to help Haas.

My initial feeling is that this is the weakest section of "2666" (which, considering the general standard, is fairly mild criticism). In amongst the superb story telling (and once again, a succession of marvellous stories are folded into and pegged onto the basic narrative) there's something like wish fulfilment in the character of Archimboldi, the perfect outsider writer, who Bolaño presents as a kind of idiot savant, unaware or uninterested in the war he has been caught up in. He has to have Archimboldi kill the German bureaucrat almost to exculpate the character from his acquiescence up to this point. As for Archimboldi's publisher, Mr Bubis, he is so perfect, so supportive, so sure of his author's genius that for decades to come authors will be asking their agents to "find me a Bubis". I've already made the call.

But I can't help thinking that there must be more going on here than finishing with a panegyric to the writer as outsider and the publisher as loving parent. If the "Part About The Crimes" is the centre of the book - what the book is about - then is "The Part About Archimboldi" an epilogue of some sort? Because it seems a little strange to draw back from the brutality of the murders to this more bookish section, seeming, as it does, to undermine the feeling that when the critics come to Santa Teresa they've got it all wrong.

The connection can be drawn, I suppose, through a comparison Bolaño makes between Archimboldi and a detective: "he derived pleasure from writing, a pleasure similar to that of the detective on the heels of the killer" (p817). The detective appears to be a key idea in Bolaño's work, from the various poems in "The Romantic Dogs" named for or about them and, of course, "The Savage Detectives," his other 'big' novel. So writers are detectives and novels are murder-mysteries. This certainly holds true for "2666" and "The Savage Detectives," which are both murder-mysteries seen from another angle.

I can't really draw any conclusion, which seems partly the aim of a book which ends with an anecdote about a great German botanist who ends up being remembered only as the name of a particular type of ice cream. But I think a further clue as to how to look at "2666" is provided in an afterword from Ignacio Echeverría in which he offers Bolaño's explanation for the absence of Arturo Belano from the book: "The narrator of 2666 is Arturo Belano." Or to put it another way, "2666" is the great book that Belano has been writing during his own exile in Europe - an exile that, we have learnt in "The Savage Detectives," has been brought about by Belano's own involvement in a killing in Sonora. If we think of Belano as the hidden character in the book, then we have to reconsider how we've viewed everything in it. It's not Bolaño's background story which we should expect to illuminate "2666," but the subtly different one of Belano. It's not Bolaño's wish-fulfilment but Belano's.

"Behind every indisputable answer lies an even more complex question. Complexity, however, makes him laugh, and sometimes his mother hears him laugh in the attic, like the ten year old boy he once was." (p736)

Anne Hardy - 2008

2009-01-02T21:14:00.004Z

Two of the exhibitions I enjoyed the most this year were at the Whitney Museum in New York. Buckminster Fuller, ‘Starting with the Universe’, presented Fuller's visionary approach to an integrated practice of architecture, engineering, visual arts and sustainability, much of which seems both as relevant and as futuristic today as it must have been at the time. Also on show was Paul McCarthy: Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement Three Installations, Two films; this spare and minimal show powerfully articulated complex relationships between physical and psychological space surrounding the body, and engaged me with his practice in a completely new way. I also truly enjoyed John Bock's film ‘Palms’, which was included in ‘Laughing in a foreign language’ at the Hayward Gallery in London. JG Ballard's ‘Miracles of Life’ was another high point for me as it gave such great insight into the source and root of so much of his fiction writing, which is fascinating for an avid reader of his fiction writing, as I am, and was also incredibly moving, making me want to write to him immediately upon finishing. Another great discovery for me this year was Ryu Murakami, whose ‘Coin Locker Babies’ I found accidentally whilst looking for something else, and loved.

Anne Hardy is a visual artist. Her most recent exhibition was at the Bellwether Gallery in New York and she will be exhibiting at Maureen Paley in London in 2009.

Tim Etchells - 2008

2009-01-01T12:12:00.004Z

Looking back, 2008 seems somehow completely tangled up with dance - weird to admit for a bloke like me whose starting position used to be pretty much "I don't like dance". In Vienna I saw Fumiyo Ikeda (with whom I'm working with at the moment) in Zeitung, the new piece of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and loved it - went back a second night just to try to get a fix on what it was exactly. Still don't know if I grasped it, a fact I'm really happy to report. I kind of lost touch with De Keersmaeker some years back at the point when the work seemed overly in thrall to the ethereal and the beautiful but this new work had a disjuncture, a sense of trouble and darkness to its fragmentation, formal restraints and twisted bodies that spoke much better to me. Music starting in the middle of movements, lighting that shifted drastically and apparently at random mid-sequence and a fragile slow burn dramaturgy really made their mark on me too. Later in the year I got to see an old work of Anne Teresa for the first time too, the incredible Phase, in which two dancers mirror each other in a brutally beautiful restrictive and delicate choreography that creates a third shadow body hovering, gliding and spinning between them - sustained trick of light and bodies danced under the tight rules of Steve Reich's Piano Phase. Breathtaking. You can find it on YouTube, in pixelated form.

Before those treats even it was Jerome Bel's highly self-conscious / reflexive masterpiece The Show Must Go On (I have seen it so many times in the last six or seven years that the cast take the piss out of me), Jerome's film of Vèronique Doisneau which I saw for the first time (another really good work) and a real blast from the past in Pina Bausch's Rite of Spring. Weird to watch something (in the latter) where you feel so distant from the aesthetic, so aware of its date, so aware of the other-time and place from which it sprang and yet - almost at the same time - to feel it vault into the present and grip you, a knife to your face, and a hammering heart pressed to yours.

Later (and much more now, aesthetically speaking) I saw the duets of Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion (at Saddlers Wells in London, like much of the above) and a revival of Jonathan's Stop Quartet (at Kaai in Brussels) which I'd never seen before. I loved all of these, esp. the sense, in each, of narrative emerging from task and system, of the borders between moving and dancing, gesture and abstraction, of the blankness, comedy and delight in being and doing, moving and stopping - in the simple human acts of negotiation, counting, joining, leaving, watching thinking.

What it may be (searching to explain all this dance!), is that for a person so entirely wrapped up in words (reading them, hearing them, writing them, banging them into the internet, into email, into the keyboard 24/7 it seems sometimes) I found a lot of space in the 'silence' of these pieces, which of course, is not really a silence at all. I felt the same thing, or something like it watching Guido van der Werve's film Nummer Acht. Everything is Going to be Alright, in Manifesta 7 - the whole work a long single shot of him, walking on the ice about ten metres in front of an icebreaker, the ship following behind him, breaking the ground over which he has just walked, his progress slow, metronomic, constantly shadowed by the dark ship, the whole piece a kind of dream-made-concrete and his walk in it an index of the cold, human frailty, simple resolve.

Reading- wise for me it was the year of Denis Johnson - I got myself well and truly immersed in Already Dead and Tree of Smoke, both vivid, scary, super intense. I re-read Russell Hoban's Mouse & His Child and Philip Pullman's Dark Materials books with my son S. who's ten and we just totally fucking delighted in them - strong worlds, emotional highs and lows, playful language, full of ideas. There were times in the last week or two - tag-team passing Pullman's The Subtle Knife to S's mum and back as we took turns to read, S. curled up on the bed, staring at the ceiling and watching the world go by in his head - when I really re-connected to language and narrative and what they do or can do in us, what a strange force these things have - in us and outside of us at the same time.

In the end though for me it was probably more than anything else, the year of David Simon's The Wire which produced a related feeling of re-revelation concerning TV drama. Thanks to P2P I finally got round to watching the whole thing and then spread the files around amongst friends like a virus run out of control. My friend H. watched all 5 series in just over three weeks (that's 65 hours worth of laptop TV). Great characters, Dickensian storylines and layers, real politics, and great great great great language. That's how we do.

Tim Etchells does too much stuff too well for me to explain (including fiction, his work for theatre company Forced Entertainment and visual art). Go to his site to get the proper deal... His novel, The Broken World, was published in 2008.

New Year Extended

2008-12-31T16:57:00.003Z

I'm extending New Year until January 2nd because I still have stuff of the year to come from Tim Etchells and Anne Hardy. Soon after that, I'll complete my uninformative book-by-book non-analysis of "2666". In the meantime, check Las obras de Roberto Bolaño, the best Eng-lang site I've found about the fellow so far... Have a good one...

Susan Tomaselli - Books of the Year

2008-12-31T14:23:00.009Z

Not six degrees of separation (there are only five), more a nod to Ariel Manto's 'Free Association' column (though not as clever), my favourite reads of 2008 happened in a sequence; that is, one book lead me to another. Only two of the books on the list are new, as in published this 2008, but they are important as they restored my faith that the year wasn't a dead loss; perhaps publishing isn't totally fucked? These six books were a good run: from the new Nabokov, to the old Nabokov, to the pretend Nabokov, to a different type of word [virus] master, to the new junky on the block, my "fiction" books of 2008 are:

The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon, always different, always the same >> The Enchanter, Vladimir Nabokov, the original of Lolita & read in anticipation of his new one >> Novel with Cocaine, M. Ageyev, "decadent and disgusting," said Nabokov >> Junky, William Burroughs, his finest >> Down and Out on Murder Mile, Tony O'Neill, always good for a quote Sebastian Horsley nails it when he says "a well-written life is almost as rare as a well spent one. And what a life..It is a map of hell with directions showing his readers exactly how to get there."

Susan Tomaselli lives in Dublin, is the editor of Dogmatika, and is a
contributing editor to 3:AM Magazine.

Pete Shenton's Mainly Live Events of the Year

2008-12-30T19:02:00.003Z

Phil Kaye.
Sparkling, fast, funny, imaginative, beautiful, cruel and hilarious. The funniest, most courageous storyteller on the planet. His story about the tooth fairy brought me to tears. Like a babbling speed freak who somehow manages to create sense and wonder out of the most circuitous of journies. His energy makes me want to be him. If you can get to see him you should do it without fail.

John Hegley, In Our Kennel.
The master of the audience. Moving between short, sharp and funny two line poems to dreamy tales about the ever growing world inside the kennel. Somewhere between tender hippy friend and slightly cross schoolmaster.

Probe, Magpie.
A collection of dances by different choreographers danced by two of the most talented people working in contemporary dance.

Anna Theresa De Keersmaker’s Rosas dancing to the music of Steve Reich.
The perfect marriage of minimalist masterpieces of music and Dance. Some chaff from the choreographer but its worth sitting through because also some absolute gems.

Office Party.
Incredible office party experiential performance. Members of the public join in and some of them strip naked. It's crazy shid. Excellent cabaret style performances from the likes of Ursula Martinez, who, if you haven’t seen you should (she’s also in La Clique in the West End at the moment). Funny and fun, and warm. Like a really good night out with loads of mates who you don’t actually know. Seems strange but it works.

Don Paterson – The Book of Shadows.
Not strictly from this year but I’ve been reading and rereading it all year. A magic book of aphorisms. Splendid bedtime philosophy.

Gabi Reuter
Young, UK-based German choreographer/performer doing philosophical stuff about space and the imagination. With humour, imagination and, of course, space.

Nine Finger by Fumiyo Ikeda, Alain Platel, Benjamin Verdonck.
Belgian-based, politically-charged, emotionally powerful and intelligent dance theatre based on Uzodinma Iweala’s novel Beasts of No Nation. A show that kicks the narrative around in such a beautiful way that both keeps you following the action whilst at the same time feeling like you don’t know quite what’s going on. An amazing performance from Benjamin Verdonck.

Greg Fleet.
Aussie stand-up who tells the most excruciating story about meeting Stephen Fry and using the word gay inappropriately. Definitely my funniest moment of the year.

Edmund Welles Quartet.
Bass Clarinet heavy metal jazz. It may sound shit on paper but in my ears at least it sounds awesome.

Pete Shenton (shouting on the left, with Tom Roden) is a dancer, choreographer and Co-Artistic Director of New Art Club.

Nicholas Blincoe - Books of the Year

2008-12-29T22:33:00.003Z

Les Murray, The Biplane Houses
This came out in 2007, though I only read it in 2008. My timing might be off but at least I got there, which I often don't with poetry. This collection is intelligent, raucously enjoyable, cranky yet stately. Imagine Philip Larkin hooked on surrealism, and if that doesn't excite you, then read it anyway and work out your own comparison.

Geoff Dyer, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
This will come out in 2009, so again my timing is off. Geoff Dyer has not written a novel since Paris Trance, over a decade ago. Some might argue that he still has not written a novel, and that JiV/DiV is really two autobiographical novellas that set out from where Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It left off. Either way, it is great, conjuring up a weirdly uplifting kind of everlasting depression.

Hussain Agha, Ahmad Khalidi, A Framework for A Palestinian National Security Doctrine
This came out in 2006 so, again, time is out of joint. Palestinians are so scattered and so vulnerable, this short book only sets out the parameters of the problem: How can the Palestinian leadership offer security to Palestinians in the occupied territories? In camps in neighbouring states? inside Israel? or in the wider diaspora? What is the best army/security apparatus that the current quasi-state of Palestine could hope to get up-and-running, while still under occupation? Questions like this.

Simon Lewis, Bad Traffic
Simon was the quietest of the writers who took part in the New Puritan project, ten years ago. He did nothing at all, then came out with this, a great thriller and perhaps the best novel of 2008 - a tough Chinese cop searches for his daughter across an alien landscape he cannot hope to understand - mostly Essex.

Nicholas Blincoe is a novelist and critic.

New Year, New Thomas Pynchon

2008-12-29T22:24:00.004Z

I'm so slow it's embarrassing, but there we are. The news you all already know is that there's a new Thomas Pynchon to look forward to in 2009. Called "Inherent Vice," apparently it's a detective novel set at the tail end of the sixties. Anyway, according to the Penguin catalogue (via The Ampersand"), the "cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists." At this rate Mr Pynchon will start hammering out a book a year like Mr Roth. Just give him the Nobel now, for heaven's sake!

Doug Nufer - The First Star Spangled Banner

2008-12-26T20:58:00.004Z

Doug Nufer in acapella vocal mash-up mode. Why? Because it's there...

(Finished "2666" last night. Whoosh. More when I have time to write properly...)