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

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!

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

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.

"Two Serious Ladies" - Jane Bowles

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...)

Nufer Madness

Yes, it's official, I have a new favourite author. Step forward please, Mr Doug Nufer, Seattle-based purveyor of ultra-constrained genius. I can't remember exactly how I came across it, but there's a fantastic interview with Nufer on Madinkbeard's blog and having read it, I had to get hold of one of his books.

The easiest to come across in the UK was "Negativeland," a regressive road trip following former back stroke champion Ken Honochick as he doesn't discover the meaning of life. The chapters count down from -6 to 0 and every sentence in the book contains a negative. But if you didn't know you wouldn't care. It reads brilliantly. It's sad and elegaic as well as funny and clever and it says much more about America and contemporary life in general than any novel Tom Wolfe ever wrote.

His other books include "Never Again," a 200 page text in which no word is ever repeated (and I thought I was clever when I sustained this for the full 100-odd words of a flash fiction...) and "On The Roast," in which "On The Road" is warped into the corporate memoir of a character eerily like the founder of Starbucks (and of which, Nufer reports, Harry Mathews said that it was really great that Nufer had so much time on his hands). I think there's a CD called "The Office," too, but I haven't been able to find out too much about that yet.

And, just to add the final stroke of fortuitous beauty (though probably not for Mr Nufer, who spent years trying to get his work into print), all four were published in the same year by four different publishers.

Gwyn Thomas

Picked up "The Dark Philosophers" by Gwyn Thomas over the summer (from the excellent Library of Wales series). It's been a real revelation, like a missing link (for me) between Halldor Laxness, Alan Warner and Marxism. Very funny and very sad tales of the valleys, unemployment and grotesque bosses. Oddly appropriate at the time we're remembering the Aberfan disaster, as Thomas' eulogy, recorded for the BBC exactly 40 years ago today, is available on the internet here

Alma Dreams Come True...

Don't know much about new publisher Alma Books but what I've seen I liked. I recently read Tom McCarthy's "Remainder" which I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly its Bartleboothian opening half. Now I see that they've released the new book from the mighty Mr Vollman and still more intriguingly, the latest from Colson Whitehead. His first, "The Intuitionist" was superb and if "John Henry Days" never matched it, it was nevertheless an intriguing book. Anyway, if anyone at Alma comes across this post and wants to send me some books, that would be beautiful. Failing that, I'll carry on buying them...

Talking of serious and high-minded independent publishers, New Directions are planning to release seven (count 'em) books from sadly-deceased Chilean legend Roberto Bolano over the next couple of years. I guess Harvill will be releasing over here, but don't wait. "Last Evenings On Earth," a collection of short stories, was definitely the pick of my summer reading, though I find it hard to explain why...