Kevin Walsh David Lodge’s latest novel, Thinks…, sees him return to familiar territory. Set in the fictitious University of Gloucester, it tells of Ralph Messenger, womanising cognitive scientist, who sets out to bed Helen Reed, a recently-widowed novelist who arrives on campus to teach a summer writing course. Written from three viewpoints – Ralph’s dictaphone […]
Pamela Stephenson – Billy
Kevin Walsh Pamela Stephenson faced a real challenge in the writing of this book: the viewpoint. She came to public attention as the peroxide-blonde Australian comedienne in ‘Not The 9 O’ Clock News,’ famous for its off-the-wall sketches. So should it be a funny woman’s take on the funny man’s rise to fame? But she’s […]
Lou Reed – Pass Thru Fire: Collected Lyrics
Edmund Hardy Lou Reed is the craggy man in black leather, a permanent member of rock’s avant-garde without trying. Popular in all his guises, as Velvet Underground punk progenitor, as Seventies glam decadent, or as Nineties eagle-eyed chronicler. Or maybe just as the guy who wrote the original ‘Perfect Day’. But a book of song […]
Cees Nooteboom – All Souls’ Day
Stephen Mitchelmore "The shortcut does not allow one to arrive someplace more directly (more quickly), but rather to lose the way that ought to lead there." Maurice Blanchot How does one deal with trauma? It’s a common question. Arthur Daane, roving documentary cameraman and protagonist of Cees Nooteboom’s latest novel, asks it too. He thinks […]
Tim Parks – A Season With Verona
Chris Rose At dinner recently with a group of other Brits now resident in Italy and the subject of Tim Parks comes up. "When will that Tim Parks stop writing those books?", "And the way he uses all the people around him to turn into characters, it’s terrible!". Behind the howling complaints and bitter objections, […]
Rachel Seiffert – The Dark Room
Sally-Ann Spencer We have all seen the photos – the terrible photos of skeletal corpses, the frightening pictures of uniformed killers. In The Dark Room, Rachel Seiffert returns to the horror of the Third Reich to reveal these and other, less familiar images. Alongside photos of concentration camps, we see pictures of a kindly mother […]
The Modern Fantasy Diet
Seán Harnett argues that fantasy fiction has become a bloated, pretensious caricature of its own possibilities It’s like looking at Marlon Brando as he is today and remembering what he used to be: he used to be slim, man. He used to be dangerous. He used to mean something. Heroic fantasy used to be slim, […]
Iain Sinclair : London Orbital : Width Of A Circle
Iain Sinclair walked the length of the M25 motorway to research his book London Orbital. Chris Hall hears why Listeners of Radio 4’s Today programme recently voted London’s M25 the worst of the “seven horrors of Britain” in a poll. One imagines that this refers to their experience of it as drivers; but perhaps if […]
Bruce Wagner : I’ll Let You Go : Loss And Reconciliation
Dan Epstein talks to Wild Palms creator Bruce Wagner about his new novel I’ll Let You Go I first met Bruce Wagner in Los Angeles around the middle of 1997. I was and still am a rabid David Cronenberg afficionado. I was walking along the Venice Beach walk when I passed two gentlemen wearing suits. […]
John Ridley : A Conversation With The Mann : A Real Comedian
Dan Epstein meets John Ridley, screenwriter and hard-boiled crime novelist John Ridley is a man of many talents and prolific with them too – stand-up comedian, screenwriter for Three Kings, Undercover Brother, Oliver Stone’s U Turn and author of Everybody Smokes In Hell, Stray Dogs, Love Is a Racket and, most recently, A Conversation With […]
Dante Alighieri: Inferno – translated by Michael Palma: The Poets’ Dante – edited by Peter S Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff
Stephen Mitchelmore “Translating is only a more intense and more demanding form of what we do whenever we read” – JM Coetzee Coetzee might also have added “whenever we live”. Unless, like the dead, one is perfectly at home in the world, a close reading of one’s environment is required to navigate and negotiate oneself […]
Christopher Miller – Simon Silber: Works For Solo Piano
Jonathan Kiefer talks to Christopher Miller about his debut novel Simon Silber: Works For Solo Piano Although the narrator of Christopher Miller’s debut novel is not to be trusted, the author himself seems very reliable. In person he is gentle and friendly, and wouldn’t think of putting you on, perhaps because Miller isn’t yet accustomed […]
Sonic Youth : Murray Street
Chris Byrd enjoys the reflective mood of Sonic Youth’s Murray Street During the first half of the ’90s, Sonic Youth capitalized upon their reputation as one of the preeminent groups born in the wake of the post-punk scene. Signing with Geffen Records’ DGC subsidiary, the band released Goo in 1990. Arty and intelligent but catchy […]
John Crowley – Little, Big
Seán Harnett Little, Big, first published in 1981 and winner of that year’s World Fantasy Award, has recently been re-issued by Orbit as part of its Fantasy Masterworks series. It’s both a welcome decision (the book has been out-of-print for ages) and a brave one: outside a small cabal of devoted fans Little, Big does […]
Philip Pullman – The Amber Spyglass
Seán Harnett Philip Pullman has frequently made the point that as a writer of "children’s" fiction he can tell stories that writers of adult fiction simply wouldn’t get away with. It’s a good point, but not the whole point, and Mr. Pullman is being a little disingenuous when he says it: it would be more […]
Charlotte Carter : Rhode Island Red, Coq Au Vin, Drumsticks : Red Hot And Blue
Chris Wiegand It’s hard not to fall in love with Nanette Hayes, the self-effacing heroine of Rhode Island Red, Coq Au Vin and Drumsticks – a trio of musical mysteries from African-American author Charlotte Carter. A sassy, streetwise, sax-playing busker, Nanette is funky, jazzy and soulful. She’s also no stranger to the Blues. Carter’s novels […]
Maurice Blanchot : The Infinite Conversation : The Absent Voice
Stephen Mitchelmore on the writing of Maurice Blanchot There are many remarkable facts about the long life of the French novelist and philosopher Maurice Blanchot. The strident – perhaps Fascist – nationalism of his pre-War journalism; his near-death at the hands of the Nazis during the war; his reclusive devotion to writing that is similar […]
Alan Massie – The Evening Of The World
Mark Valentine After a sly introduction in which the narrator purportedly gets a transcript of an ancient manuscript from the hand of a descendant of the character who was Greenmantle in John Buchan’s novel, this unusual and distinctive work next presents a translation of that document. This is said to be from the medieval Latin […]
Peter Vansittart – Hermes In Paris
Mark Valentine Peter Vansittart writes some of the most original, supple, coruscatingly erudite fiction available, usually drawing upon arcane historical eras to enact his unillusioned meditations upon fate and chance. Hermes in Paris, a new novel in his eightieth year, depicts the Hellenic god of magic, messages, thieves and trickery as a jaded dandy in […]
Timothy Clark – Routledge Critical Thinkers: Martin Heidegger
Stephen Mitchelmore The Routledge Critical Thinkers series is turning into something special. Maurice Blanchot by Ulrich Haase and William Large, published last year, is a profound and miraculously lucid guide to the French writer’s work. This year we have Timothy Clark’s introduction to the work of a major influence on Blanchot: the German philosopher Martin […]
Kenji Jasper – Dark
Chris Wiegand There is a fantastic scene in Martin Scorsese’s 1973 masterpiece Mean Streets. In a film packed with memorable moments, one sums up the dilemma faced by the central character perfectly. The scene is brief: Charlie and his girlfriend Teresa ‘escape’ the city (at her request) to take time out and spend the afternoon […]
Thomas Bernhard: The Making Of An Austrian and The Novels of Thomas Bernhard
Stephen Mitchelmore finds Thomas Bernhard to be elusive within two studies of the Austrian writer What if everything we can be depends on playing a role? Where would that leave us? Well, first of all, it would mean that the public self, the one presented to the world, is not “a mask” but the original; […]
Michael Gira : The Consumer And Other Stories : Flawed Beauty
Jordon Leigh Bortle talks to Michael Gira, SWANS frontman and author of The Consumer And Other Stories Michael R. Gira is most widely known as the driving force behind Swans, undoubtedly one of the most extreme bands to have ever graced the planet. Gira called time on Swans in 1997 after 15 years of sonic […]
Stefan Fatsis : Word Freak : Letter Better
Jonathan Kiefer discusses the torrid world of competitive Scrabble playing with Word Freak author Stefan Fatsis Sure, Stefan Fatsis is nice, but he’s also a freak. That is, a passionate aficionado – and an unusual specimen. Fatsis is a Scrabble expert. He has written a book about the game, and can speak authoritatively on its […]
Will Self : Feeding Frenzy : Biting The Hand That Feeds
Chris Hall serves up a slice of Will Self with the publication of his second collection of journalism, Feeding Frenzy Chris Hall: First off, congratulations on the birth of your new son, Luther. Will Self: Yeah, little baby Luther. He was born on August 8, so he’s a couple of months old now. CH: So […]
