BritLitBlogs

Via Spurious (where else?)
He was, said Derrida, involved 'body and soul' in the Events. Michel Leiris, in his journals, laughed at him: what was he doing running along with the students? Couldn't he see it would lead nowhere? Levinas, his closest friend, wrote, without identifying him, of an eminent man of letters who "participated in the May Events in a total but lucid manner." "Blanchot is not an ordinary man, a man whom you can meet in the street," says Levinas in an interview. But there he was on the streets (more...)... read more

In Procrastination Lit (via the Literary Saloon) Jessica Winter looks at "great novels about wasting time" -- though she includes non-novels such as Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage. Lots of Thomas Bernhard too!
Anyone out there know anything about John Edgar Wideman's Fanon which is mentioned in the piece? Looks interesting. ... read more

I interviewed the excellent Clay Shirky the other week over on the The Book Depository. And I heartily recommend Clay's book Here Comes Everybody to anyone interested in web-culture. Indeed, go and see how impressive he is by watching the video I've just posted over on Editor's Corner (which I sourced from LibrarianInBlack) where Clay talks about gin, sit-coms and "cognitive surplus".... read more

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

I feel that Joseph Roth has had a sort of invisible presence on this blog - through his lover Irmgard Keun and his devoted translator Michael Hofmann - so it’s about time I wrote about one of his books. A couple of years ago I read and enjoyed The Legend of the Holy Drinker, which apparently was the last book Roth wrote and was published posthumously. The daunting question when delving into any new author then is: where next? My semi-logical solution: get the next last book, and stick to translations by the reliable Michael Hofmann.... 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

3:AM: I believe you studied politics at Manchester University: why not the more obvious choices of literature or creative writing? When did you become serious about writing? JS: By the time I left home, I hated literature. I (stupidly) thought it frivolous and only wanted to read politics and philosophy. I don’t study creative writing. I’m a Fellow of it in Manchester. I became serious about writing at about ten. 3:AM: You have described Friction, your debut novel, as a warning addressed to a society that is at risk from “too much leisure, too much fun, too much playful rubbish” so there... read more

“The only book I ever banished from my library was Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, which I felt infected the shelves with its prurient descriptions of deliberately inflicted pain. I put it in the garbage; I didn’t give it to anyone because I wouldn’t give away a book I wasn’t fond of. Nor do I lend books. If I want someone to read a book, I’ll buy a copy and offer it as a gift. I believe that to lend a book is an incitement to theft” Alberto Manguel on his personal library of 30,000 books, American Psycho-free and housed... read more

So, the Turner Prize shortlist has been announced. Big. Fucking. Deal. Of more interest, to me at least, is the news that artist Steve McQueen has directed his first feature film and like ‘Deadpan’—his Buster Keaton mis-en-scene film that took the prize and raised the boring “is it art?” question—Hunger, given its subject, sounds no less controversial: An uncompromising new film that examines the last six weeks in the life of Maze prison hunger striker Bobby Sands has drawn criticism from those who see it is an untimely celebration of the martyrdom of a terrorist. The 96-minute film, Hunger, which has been... read more

“No Wave was a short-lived but influential art music and art scene that thrived briefly in New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk subculture. The term No Wave is in part satiric wordplay rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre. The term also highlights the music’s experimental nature: No Wave music belonged to no fixed style or genre. In many ways, No Wave is not a clearly definable musical genre with consistent features. Various groups drew on such disparate styles as funk, jazz, blues, punk rock, avant garde, and experimental. There... read more

Granta are showcasing writing by an emerging writer every two weeks and on-line. The most recent in the ‘New Voices’ series was Evie Wyld who, you’ll remember, contributed ‘The Building Opposite’ to 3:AM London, New York, Paris. As well as publishing ‘Something Close to Heaven’, an excerpt from her novel After a Fire a Still Small Voice, Granta interview the author: When did you start writing fiction? And why? I always wanted to be a painter, but I wasn’t very good at painting. When I was at school I found I received the same satisfaction from writing a short story that I... 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

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

Goldy is wearing his polar-bear jammies, the height of retrospective chic for an Alaskan Jewish kid. [...] Snowflakes, yes, the Jews found them here, though, thanks to greenhouse gases, there are measurably fewer than in the old days. But no polar bears. No igloos. No reindeer. Mostly just a lot of angry Indians, fog, and rain, and half a century of a sense of mistakenness so keen, worked so deep into the systems of the Jews, that it emerges everywhere, even on their children's pajamas.Books that should have been on the Clarke Award shortlist, part 1: Michael Chabon's hugely enjoyable... 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

I needed more sock wool like I needed more books I suppose.
In other words I need never buy any ever again.
I've got more than enough to last several lifetimes, but sometimes the temptation subsumes all reason and this hank turned out to be quite the saver of the day in a strange and roundabout way.
Colinette Jitterbug is my new best knitting friend, fabulous to knit up, snug to wear and now I discover it survives the washing machine, so I just thought I'd head to the website and look at the colours.
Only look.
Then... read more

The Celebration of the 30th anniversary of Virago Modern Classics event at the du Maurier Festival brought together Virago editor Donna Coonan, Stella Duffy (left) and Linda Grant (right) staged in a very intimate little offshoot tent so we were all close up and friendly.














The space filled with Stella's fabulous laugh constantly, the best when Linda cited her university lecturer in the early 1970's who had flagged up D.H.Lawrence as the only writer who understood women.
Stella was hard pushed not to fall off her... read more

It's Sunday and we're back again after the excitement of Saturday for three events and more unusually hot and relentless May sunshine down in Fowey.
Du Maurier's Cornwall at 10am and again Helen Taylor in the chair. Alongside Helen are Cornish experts Helen Doe and Ann Willmore. Helen Doe is a maritime historian whose book Jane Slade of Polruan charts the life of a family of Cornish shipbuilders and it was from Jane Slade that Daphne took her inspiration for Janet Coombe in The Loving Spirit. The lovely Ann Willmore is the owner of Bookendst that most delightful Fowey bookshop... read more

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Doesn't Polruan look perfect? Up and out early on a simmeringly hot Devon morning which, just two miles from home, becomes a Cornish morning as I cross the ancient little fifteenth century bridge over the Tamar. There's something innately right about entering Cornwall via Horsebridge. I was parking in Fowey in record time to meet up with Justine Picardie before her event on Daphne and it goes without saying this was all a great pleasure and also to be introduced to Henri Llewellyn Davies, the great grand-daughter of Sylvia, mother of the Lost Boys. Henri is... 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