BritLitBlogs

Daniel Green is -- quite correctly it seems to me -- cross about the Middlebrow Mediocrity of many contemporary novels:
Everything that keeps our current literary culture mired in midddlebrow mediocrity is exemplified in Amy Bloom's novel, Away, and its reception by mainstream book reviewers when it was published last fall. The novel itself is not per se a "bad" novel -- many worse ones are published and reviewed every season -- but it is entirely undistinguished, to the point that my most immediate reaction to it was to wonder why it needed to exist in the first place. Moreover,... read more

Good pal of ReadySteadyBook, Ken Worpole, writes about children's street games and the importance of play in underpinning a free society (via Booksurfer):
As the events of 1968 are commemorated, it is worth noting that it was the postwar celebration of children's play that anticipated the reclamation of the street as a domain of political liberty. Even the Opies realised that many children's games were an implicit form of political protest, as when they saw that dangerous games of risk such as Last Across the Road were an "impulse of the tribe" against the encroachment of the car into their... read more

Booktrust's Translated Fiction site is worth a look -- not an RSS feed in sight, however!
Booktrust, which runs the translated fiction website, is committed to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to discover and enjoy reading. We are proud to be able to expand our work into the world of translated fiction and believe we are well placed to celebrate and broaden readers’ awareness of these amazing novels.

We also want to support the authors who wrote the books in the first place, and the publishers who have committed themselves to publishing these books in a... read more

Last Thursday, I attended the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize awards at the Serpentine gallery in London (currently showing an exhibition of Maria Lassnig's dreadful paintings). As you'll all know by now, Paul Verhaeghen's massive Omega Minor (Dalkey Archive Press) -- vexing for me -- won the day.
Why my problem? Well, The Liberal magazine ("devoted to a renaissance in liberal politics and the liberal arts. First founded in 1821 by the Romantic poets Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, the magazine is committed to regenerating liberalism and reinvigorating the public sphere") asked me to review whatever was the winner -- so... read more

The latest book review here on ReadySteadyBook, by RSB debutante Sarah Hesketh (welcome Sarah!), is of The Blue Fox by Sjón:
Rarely does an author come loaded with such impressive indie and establishment credentials. As Björk’s long time collaborator, Sjón was nominated for an Oscar for his lyrics for the film Dancer in the Dark. Renowned throughout Iceland for his numerous plays and poetry collections (the first of which was published when he was just sixteen) in 2005, Skugga-Baldur (The Blue Fox) was awarded the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize – the Nordic equivalent of the Booker. Bile might start to... read more

Nicholas Murray gets involved in the debate about literary biography that continues to rumble 'round the 'sphere:
The always stimulating blog of Stephen Mitchelmore, This Space, is currently growling [correction: see Stephen's post below, he was not 'growling' merely demurring] at a recent defence of literary biography, citing Proust, who in his essay Contre Sainte-Beuve, attacked the famous French critic for his belief that the biographical method was the only one for critics. Proust disagreed, arguing memorably that his work proceeded not from the bundle of accidents that sat down for breakfast in the Proust household, but from "l'autre moi".... read more

We all know about Pushkin Press’s sterling work in recovering lost classics of European literature, but they also publish contemporary European fiction. The slightly creepy cover of Alain Elkann’s Envy (despite the French forename, he’s Italian) drew my attention - though it’s only when you turn to the back and see long curling hair growing from the wooden head that it really makes you shudder. (The image is of La Poupee by Hans Bellmer.) Does the book catch the brain as easily as it catches the eye? Envy succeeds through clarity, brevity and a sort of disarming... read more

I’ve read a handful of books by Philip K Dick, the author with the name most likely to make schoolboys snigger*. He’s terrific, but I know he wrote so much that the quality must be variable; and any time I look out more, reliable sources always seem to recommend the ones I already know. The Man in the High Castle; The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch; Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Ubik. What I definitely thought I knew was that his non-science fiction wasn’t worth bothering with. Then that young turk Scott Pack came... read more

As usual there are three stages in getting to read this book: wanting to, acquiring, and actually beginning. I wanted to read it when it was published, partly because I’d heard of the author but didion’t know much about her, and partly because I loved the way the cover of the hardback expressed the subject of the book - Didion’s grief over the sudden death of her husband John Gregory Dunne - so cleverly and movingly. But I didn’t buy it until last year, when the less beautiful paperback was on sale for half price in a local bookshop’s... read more

Beryl Bainbridge - the ‘Booker Bridesmaid’, shortlisted five times but never a winner - is an author whose books I always want to love. About ten years ago I read a couple of her early novels - The Bottle Factory Outing was one - and I remember failing to get through two of her (then) latest titles, Every Man For Himself and Master Georgie. It was as though there was a sheet of glass between her writing and my reading: I could see what she was doing, but couldn’t make contact. Like Margaret Atwood, only shorter.... read more

When Muriel Spark was mentioned in recent comments on this blog, I realised how long it is since I read anything by her. A few years ago, I worked my way through most of her novels, and probably overdosed. I found her brilliant but frustrating, her fiction paradoxically crystal clear but at times as hard to grasp as fog. She has a coolness toward her characters - and the reader - which wouldn’t appeal to everyone. But there were so many great things - the bold opening move of having a character in her debut,... read more

Cat’s Cradle was the first Kurt Vonnegut book I read, probably 15 or more years ago. It inspired me to read everything else he wrote, and as I worked my way through his output, I omnivorously ignored advice that his later work wasn’t really worth the bother. It turns out that advice was wise (though I’m still glad I found out for myself). So if you’re a Vonnegut virgin, and more susceptible to advice than I was, my tip would be to read all his books from the 1950s and 60s (particularly the likes of Player... read more

The Forbidden Planet Blog on the Jeff Smith Bone and Beyond exhibition in Ohio + Johnny Ryan on restrictions imposed by Vice Magazine: “No boners and no Nazis, so I did ‘Chief Sitting Bullshit Versus Nazi Penis.’ That one never made it to print, but it did go up on the website and I remember there was a lot of feedback.” + Dazed & Confused go to the zoo with Tony Millionaire and ask him why cartoonist are fond of humanising animals: “It’s hard to explain why something works. If it happens to be funny that a duck is shooting... read more

New Poems
By Jack Brewer, Thurston Moore, Matthew Wascovich. A LASTING THOUGHT FOR A DYING CELL I remember counting on you
to count on me
when I never did.
You live the earth like cows in pasture,
obey your hunger like dog to master.
Waiting and wondering
about an alternative
that never was.
Who needs a cause?
Live and live and die and learn.
But for what?
The past did clash but it’s no surprise-
nothing was sacred; all was compromise.
Looking for someone to understand you:
what a poor excuse to be renewed.
I remember looking for you.
I remember staring... read more

“People Envy Happiness Dogs Though Sense Courage Knowing Jubilation Means Better Ass-ets. Pretty profound.” The guiding word of Tom Waits‘ US summer tour: PEHDTSCKJMBA (pronounced ‘pesskah-jumbah’). Let the man himself explain: European dates, from Spain through to Dublin, will follow.... read more

Continuing the “My Favourite Author” series, 3:AM columnist Sophie Parkin loves this writer so much, she named her daughter after her: Further: The Offbeat Generation / The Offbeat Generation Film Channel / Matthew Coleman reads ‘Dream Poem’ / Heidi James reads two pieces / Adelle Stripe reads 3 poems / Ben Myers reads four Brutalist poems / Matthew Coleman reads from Her Naked Self / Lee Rourke reads Everyday / Andrew Gallix talks Offbeat / Tony O’Neill reads ‘Mark Twain & I’ / Heidi James: My Favourite Author / Lee Rourke: My Favourite Author / Tom McCarthy: My Favourite Author /... read more

Tao Lin provides Book Notes for his new poetry collection Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Here, he introduces his Book Notes choices: I wrote Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy while on tour with my band “Spanish Rilo Kiley” in Taiwan and Japan. I played drums and my friend played keyboard and “sang.” Taiwan has a 24-hour mall and we lived there for four days. I slept inside a circular display of clothing. Just kidding, our band has not toured Taiwan or Japan. Taiwan has places where people pay money to sit indoors fishing from a small concrete “pond” and then grill the fish that they catch and... read more

By Victoria Trott. i feel sad
i like comfort so much i keep seeing myself talking to my dad
about like, jesus or something
or being uncomfortable of mr. sheikh
and acting all civilised
to avoid discomfort i won’t ever be able to do anything or realize life is meaningless
i’ll just be a bullshit person
like everyone who made me in my family
i’m gonna be a bullshit person
an asshole i do not want this to happen
i already am an assshit bullhole
fuck i can’t even use concrete images blue flower
dyed industrially that was not connected to anything
it was an image
a... read more

When, the other day, I quoted two bloggers' headline summaries of Thomas Bernhard and his work in order to report on the dedicated PEN event, and then said I didn't recognise my Thomas Bernhard in their descriptions, it wasn't meant as a criticism. Only after Bill Marx replied did I hear negative overtones. (One thing that annoys me about my hampering passion for concision is the countervailing demand for clarification and qualification flaring from every bloggin' sentence). Instead, I wrote it as an expression of puzzlement. Another example: The novel seems the perfect form to examine what has happened in... read more

In the last couple of days, wood s lot has offered links to downloads of very desirable books in PDF. One of them contains a translation of Blanchot's "How is Literature Possible?", his landmark review-essay of Jean Paulhan's The Flower of Tarbes or, Terror in Literature.

As Michael Syrotinski explains in his profile of Paulhan, the book explores the opposition between Terror in literature - summarised as "the endless necessity of writing against the literature and language of one's predecessors" - and Rhetoric - "conventional language, commonplaces, and literary clichés". It's an opposition that still inspires English-speaking writers.... read more

Corny trash, vulgar clichés, philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic and dishonest pseudo-literature. Yes, welcome to PEN World Voices!

Not Thomas Bernhard's words - though they suit him - but Nabokov's (quoted in link via The Literary Saloon). The Millions and The Arts Fuse report on The Art of Failure, the panel discussion of Bernhard that hasn't quite received the coverage as those featuring our finest purveyors of said pseudo-literature.

As a confessed newcomer to Bernhard, Garth Risk Hallberg on The Millions can be forgiven for accepting unchallenged phrases... read more

In February, I said here that I hoped to be back to normal within two weeks. In March, the medical estimate was closer to six months. The paucity of posts confirms who was right. And while returning to work and the unrelenting fatigue associated with a serious brain injury are the obvious causes, there is another.

It's not like there haven't been provocations to post. From Nigel Beale's continued defence of literary biography, to Jeremy Adler's review-essay on Novalis and, most recently, the middlebrow fear of literature at PEN World Voices in New York, the blogging throb was... read more

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I talk about the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos...
He nods, and murmurs thoughtfully:

-- And Job...

I mention the mystics: Saint John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Ruysbruck..., and ask him if he ever rereads them, if he likes the spirit of their writings.

-- Yes... I like... I like their... their illogicality... their burning illogicality... that flame... that flame... that burns away filthy logic.
... read more

...because I bagged five books (yes, five!) for just £4 (yes, £4!) from my university library's duplicate book staff auction.  And what wonderful, expensive books they are.  I calculate that they would have cost me at least £150 if I had purchased them all online.  The two hardback volumes of The Novel, edited by Franco Moretti, are worth £65 each! I'm so happy I could cry. Aren't they beautiful? ~~Victoria~~ ... read more

It is difficult for me to write that I don't like Patricia Wood's debut novel Lottery.  It is such a sweet, generous, kind-hearted book, with such an inevitably happy ending, that saying you don't like it is a lot like saying you don't like puppies, or cookies, or sunshine.  You're apt to sound cynical at worst, disingenuous at best.  But, here goes. I don't like it.  Or, I do, but only because it is cute. I like it against my will.  It has tricked me into liking it with narratorial whimsy and a simplistic moral view of the world in... read more

I'm not even half way through my Orange Prize reading yet (4 down, 5 to go!) and I have my first Archives assignment due in 3 weeks, so this may not seem like the best time to start making summer reading plans.  But we have just had our first week of glorious sunshine here in the UK ... and I can't help myself.   I love the anticipation of setting myself a challenge, and I think it can work very well as a focusing tool, even if I don't always stick to it to the letter.  I'm very pleased with how... read more

I started reading Charlotte Mendelson's third novel, When We Were Bad, when it first came out in hardback in May last year.  After twenty pages, I put it aside.  I was in the middle of the Orange shortlist '07, and had just finished Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, which I'd found difficult to read (the less said, the better), and something about Mendelson's book - the domestic pitch, the glib neatness? - made me squirm.  Picking it up again, I was initially surprised at my last-years-self.  I thought: could this possibly be the same book I discarded? ... read more

This will be the third year in a row that I have read the Orange Prize shortlists, both for the main prize and for the New Writer's Award.  I think it would be true to say that of the two lists, I have found the latter the most challenging, the most consistent in quality and the most satisfying.  Of course, the main lists have had their highlights, but the New Writer's Award has proved itself far more interesting in pushing boundaries and extending the traditional remit of women's writing. Last year's winner - The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly, set... read more

Black Man by Richard Morgan(Gollancz S.F.)This news in a text message from Nic, who is currently hobnobbing at the ceremony.  I'm sure there will be a full report from her in a few days time, when she has properly recovered from a) the manic review writing of the last few days, and b) the beer she is currently imbibing. EDIT: Niall Harrison now has some photographs from the ceremony online. --Victoria-- ... read more

You may not remember this but I do.
Last year I had a spectacular failure as I attempted a reread of My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier after a gap of forty years. I recounted it all here and to my complete mortification the entire nation was then informed of my disaster via the Guardian Around the Blogs feature. I was trying hard to celebrate Daphne's centenary and it all went horribly wrong, but have no fear, I'm back in time for her hundred and first birthday today.
The party's a bit quieter and the Cornish pilchard canapes have... read more

Rocky Jeeves is in topping fine form and practising hard for the forthcoming Wodehouse Prize draw which will be held on Wednesday.
He has perfected the art of the knife-edge trouser crease and is calling us all abysmal chumps and nincompoops so things are looking entirely promising.
I can hardly believe the bounty of this draw but lest there be any doubt here's the evidence, it's a real be-ribboned hamper and yes, there really are eighteen books. We've been putting the names into the hat as they appear and though it is filling fast, don't let that put you off,... read more

A dither while I catch up with myself. Here's my version of one of those lists we used to spend hours on as children and thanks to Simon at Stuck in a Book nicely revived for the book blog world. In the end it all got ridiculous and I had to set myself boundaries.
How could I possibly let Bronte Charlotte push Barry Sebastian out of the running who was in turn eclipsing Barker Nicola ?
Or Eliot George exclude that wonderful book by Erdrich Louise or should it be Enright Anne?
The playing field was most unlevel so... read more

Fowey looking radiantly nay dazzlingly beautiful in that hazy, misty Cornish coastal way yesterday, and very warm. The river sparkled, all the boats were heading for their summer moorings and soon it will be that time of year when those of us who live down here stay in the garden and let everyone else come down and enjoy it.
But not this weekend.
It was so good to meet Justine Picardie, especially taking into account her responsibility for my resurgent bout of Daphneitis and we'll be meeting up at a couple more events in the coming months. News on those... read more

Making connections with textiles and reading as my mind always seems to, I'm thinking it might be the same bit of my brain that engages both, and each time I ponder Daphne and a quilt that would match the books I return to the fabulous work of Dilys Fronks.
Dilys,( who kindly gave permission for me to use this picture,) has adapted the technique of reverse cut and sew applique to create a style of her own based on garden gates.To see one is to want one, to make one looks like a life's work, but wouldn't one of these done with the Rebecca Manderley gates be sheer... read more

I hope you are all geared up for a virtual trip to Justine Picardie's Daphne event at Fowey this weekend if you can't be there in person, and even more Daphne du Maurier treats over the next few days. Justine will be talking to Rupert Tower, Daphne's grandson and Henrietta Llewelyn Davies the great grand-daughter of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, Daphne's aunt and mother of the famous Lost Boys.
I make no apology for the Daphne-fest on here, it's quite a luxury to focus my reading on a single author and I am so steeped in Daphne that I've booked yet... read more