As you can see, I've fallen foul of the urge to "customise" my blog, with the result that it looks fucking horrible. Whoops.
Andrew Holmes has started the Secret Santa mixtape exchange festivities again. The first couple of reviews suggest an authorial bloodsport. It's not pretty. Neither my review or the review of my cd has yet been posted. Gulp.
March 14, 2007
March 13, 2007
March 04, 2007
Perec Anniversary
It was only by chance that I discovered that yesterday (Saturday March 3rd) was the 25th anniversary of the death of Georges Perec (Wednesday 7th is the 71st anniversary of his birth). I've rootled around a little on the internet but there seems to be nothing in the way of new tributes to the man and his remarkable work, even in French. I would have thought that this sad jubilee was worth marking in some way, so here are my thoughts, for what they're worth.
Georges Perec is, for me, one of the most important authors I've read. I can think of few other writers who combined formal innovation with emotional clout so effortlessly, so that nothing in his work ever seemed gratuitous or there for show. Or who were so self-effacing and generous to their readers, so that, despite an underlying note of sadness, you can take his books almost as you want.
But more personally than this, Perec occupies a crucial place for me as he rescued me as a wannabe-writer from a trap of my own making. In my time as a student I became increasingly obsessed by the strand of modernism that seemed to find its final expression in the late work of Samuel Beckett, the slow boiling down of language that led to "Worstward Ho," "All Strange Away" and, in particular, "Ill Seen Ill Said." I wanted to write but couldn't see where the room was left for me and, in particular, my desperate story-telling urges, which seemed a little vulgar when set against, "White walls. High time. White as new. No wind. Not a breath."
A friend of mine showed me "Life: A User's Manual" just after I left college and suddenly I could sense something like a way forward - a way to fold endless stories and tales in on themselves without sacrificing any of the rigour or, indeed, the emotional weight of those austere short novels I had been so affected by. It's probably the only book I've consistently re-read over the following seventeen years and each time I return to it I find new ways to view it, different aspects of its construction becoming clear, even the compulsive imagining of seventies furnishings becoming increasingly poignant as they (and I) age. As a writer I've failed again and again to come anywhere near the formal beauty of any of Perec's hugely broad body of work, the quality of its writing and, perhaps most damningly, the generosity of its vision. He remains a (profoundly humbling) inspiration.
Georges Perec is, for me, one of the most important authors I've read. I can think of few other writers who combined formal innovation with emotional clout so effortlessly, so that nothing in his work ever seemed gratuitous or there for show. Or who were so self-effacing and generous to their readers, so that, despite an underlying note of sadness, you can take his books almost as you want.
But more personally than this, Perec occupies a crucial place for me as he rescued me as a wannabe-writer from a trap of my own making. In my time as a student I became increasingly obsessed by the strand of modernism that seemed to find its final expression in the late work of Samuel Beckett, the slow boiling down of language that led to "Worstward Ho," "All Strange Away" and, in particular, "Ill Seen Ill Said." I wanted to write but couldn't see where the room was left for me and, in particular, my desperate story-telling urges, which seemed a little vulgar when set against, "White walls. High time. White as new. No wind. Not a breath."
A friend of mine showed me "Life: A User's Manual" just after I left college and suddenly I could sense something like a way forward - a way to fold endless stories and tales in on themselves without sacrificing any of the rigour or, indeed, the emotional weight of those austere short novels I had been so affected by. It's probably the only book I've consistently re-read over the following seventeen years and each time I return to it I find new ways to view it, different aspects of its construction becoming clear, even the compulsive imagining of seventies furnishings becoming increasingly poignant as they (and I) age. As a writer I've failed again and again to come anywhere near the formal beauty of any of Perec's hugely broad body of work, the quality of its writing and, perhaps most damningly, the generosity of its vision. He remains a (profoundly humbling) inspiration.
March 02, 2007
Fresan on Bolano
Those clever bastards at The Believer only give you the start of the articles online and then get you to buy the magazine. And I thought they were meant to be charitable or sutt'n? Anyway, there's the beginning of an essay by Rodrigo Fresan on Roberto Bolano up there at the moment and the opening is so good that I guess I'll have no choice but to purchase. I was lucky enough to meet Rodrigo Fresan after his excellent Kensington Gardens was published in English a year or two ago and he spent a considerable part of the evening extolling the virtues of Bolano, which was how I first came across his writing. You have no choice but to believe, I'm afraid...
What The Girl In The Headscarf Said Into Her Phone Whilst Riding The 69 Bus
You’re fuckin disgustin you are -
'Couldn’t handle 16 inches'.
Fuck off -
'What would ya do for twenty pound'!
She paused for laughter, then
Whateva
Whateva
Whateva
'Couldn’t handle 16 inches'.
Fuck off -
'What would ya do for twenty pound'!
She paused for laughter, then
Whateva
Whateva
Whateva
February 28, 2007
Their Office no.1
"So if I call you when I get to Liverpool Street can you go and get some cat litter?"
These are the first civil words I've heard from the office next door all day. There's a couple in there who I presume are married as well as running a small business together. I know when both of them are in their office because they argue, loudly and incessantly, with liberal use of the word "fuck" until he gets up and leaves again. It's distracting but also quite funny. Rather than wasting the best of their gems, I'm beginning an occasional series of them here.
These are the first civil words I've heard from the office next door all day. There's a couple in there who I presume are married as well as running a small business together. I know when both of them are in their office because they argue, loudly and incessantly, with liberal use of the word "fuck" until he gets up and leaves again. It's distracting but also quite funny. Rather than wasting the best of their gems, I'm beginning an occasional series of them here.
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