BritLitBlogs

Indulging in listening to sad music is one of life's finer pleasures, I think. From Strauss's Four Last Songs, Schubert's Winterreise, Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs (the song based on Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci, sung in Russian, is -- almost literally -- to die for) through to David Sylvian's Let The Happiness In, the better (i.e. most melancholic) moments of This Mortal Coil, The For Carnation or Dakota Suite or parts of Jacaszek's Treny album, miserable music is a vital part of my armoury against the world. I'm always on the look out for me -- and this thread... read more

I'm certainly not the person to write anything insightful on Michael Jackson, but k-punk has stepped up to the plate:
The death of this King - "my brother, the Legendary King Of Pop", as Jermaine Jackson described him in his press conference, as if giving Michael his formal title - recalls not the Diana carcrash, but the sad slump of Elvis from catatonic narcosis into the long good night. Perhaps it was only Elvis who managed to insinuate himself into practically every living human being's body and dreams to the same degree that Jackson did, at the microphysical level of... read more

Last Thursday, I spoke at Legend Press's first Publishing Laid Bare Conference. Basically, I said, "the internet is good, bloggers are fab" -- so nothing particularly newsworthy there then! But thanks so much to the good folk at Legend Press for inviting me to speak and thanks to everyone for the warm reception I got from those in attendance on the day.... read more

Oh, when am I not busy! Anyway, today I seem even busier than ever... So, a few web goodies to tide y'all over:
lots of Ezra Pound links from orbis quintus (I've always been an Eliot man rather than a Pound-head, but I'll be taking the Cantos away with me on my next trip to London so maybe that'll change soon...) did Joyce coin 'blog'? John Self on Zweig Stefan (as my bloglines feed has it!) John Berger archive at the British Library anyone else going to the TLS party on Thursday? email me if you are... ... read more

I interview novelist, critic and Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Birmingham University, David Lodge, over on The Book Depository:
Mark Thwaite: Is Deaf Sentence based on your own experiences David?

David Lodge: The portrayal of the central character's deafness is closely based on my own experience, and it is exceedingly unlikely that I would have thought of writing a novel about this condition if it I hadn't I suffered from it myself. From my late forties I was afflicted with gradually worsening high-frequency deafness, the most common form of hearing impairment, which makes it difficult to distinguish consonants,... read more

World Literature Weekend -- 19th to 21st June 2009:
The idea of dedicating a weekend of talks and discussions to foreign and translated literature has evolved over the six years since the London Review Bookshop first opened and began holding events that have earned it a proud reputation. Looking back at those events, I notice one thing immediately: how lucky we have been in attracting writers from all over the world. This festival is our way of celebrating that; several of the distinguished authors who have agreed to take part are travelling from abroad especially for the festival. (More.)... read more

In 2003, when the Observer newspaper compiled a list of “the 100 greatest novels of all time,” one title – Housekeeping – stood out. What? It was the only one from the last century that I hadn’t heard of. Who? Marilynne Robinson sounded like a new Harper Lee: one bang a quarter of a century ago and then silence. Now, six years later, she needs no introduction: two more novels in quick succession, a Pulitzer, a Bessie, and overall as much orgiastic praise as you can eat. I’ve read Gilead but not Home, but was pleased recently when... read more

When Vintage Books relaunched their previously elegant Classics line a couple of years ago, they adopted the asinine branding practice of replacing the author’s forename on the cover with the word Vintage. Irritating yes, but also baffling when applied to writers who aren’t household (sur)names, such as Rex Warner. The Aerodrome was one of the first titles they issued in the new design, which by some form of logic I presumed that meant they thought it was one of the very best. Certainly it has its followers: Anthony Burgess named it as one of the 99 best novels written... read more

Hard to believe that it’s almost a year since I last read a Stefan Zweig. He’s one of those writers, like Richard Yates, who was invisible for years and is suddenly – if you’re looking for him – everywhere. The admirable and unpredictable Pushkin Press are reissuing his stories in English, with two volumes this year already (Journey into the Past, and Wondrak and other stories). That made me realise that it’s about time I read an earlier volume of his I’d bought, Amok and other stories. This edition was published in 2007, translated by Anthea Bell, but the... read more

I always feel a little uncomfortable when I read a review which calls a book (something like) “not great literature, but a good thriller.” I’ve probably done it myself. Why the defensiveness? Hardly anything is great literature, and we can judge everything else on how well it meets its intentions, or surpasses its limitations. In addition, thinking a book might be ‘just a good thriller’ can helpfully lower expectations. So it was when I read Eric Ambler’s Journey into Fear (1940), recently reissued by Penguin Modern Classics along with four other early novels, to coincide with the centenary last... read more

After reading three books in a row that I had mixed feelings about (and one or two more that I didn’t even finish), I needed a palate cleanser. Melville House came to the rescue with their ‘Art of the Novella’ reissue of Guy de Maupassant’s astonishing The Horla: a wonder in a few dozen pages.
This volume contains three stories: two versions of ‘The Horla’ from 1886 and 1887, and ‘Letter from a Madman’, first published in 1885. The two earlier stories work at the themes but only in the final version of ‘The Horla’ – presented here... read more

Two weeks ago I wrote about Hugo Wilcken’s second novel Colony, and was surprised and delighted by it. It’s a book of high literary ambition – fully achieved – but also with a compelling story. To me that meant it should appeal to a wide audience, rather than the audience of hardly anyone that it actually reached on publication in August 2007. I was delighted to see so many people buying copies after my review went up (and slightly alarmed that for once my recommendations will be held to account). If you’re one of those... read more

A new feature at Buzzwords, a companion piece to our ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’, if you will. Every Friday, writers and 3:AM editors will discuss clips of pop promos of note (worthy of their love, no less.) First up in the series is Kitchens of Distinction and ‘Drive That Fast’. KOD always sat uneasy among many bands of their day, the music press didn’t quite know what to make of their name, the fact that frontman Patrick Fitzgerald pushed his homosexuality to the fore lyrically and in interviews, and that such melodic noise could be made by three... read more

By Joseph Ridgwell. The Roaring Twenties I don’t know why, but there were many times
in my twenties
when I was plagued by the blue blues,
a strange, re-occurring black cloud of depression
that followed me around for months and years
and as a good chunk of my twenties was spent in Australia,
these thoughts often occurred while I pounded
those sun-baked Sydney streets
or along those rat-infested back alleys of The Cross.
Kings Cross.
I lived in a succession of cheap apartments.
I can remember the names of the streets;
Bayswater, Roslyn, Ward, Macleay, Elizabeth,
Darlinghurst, Kellett, Barncleuth, Orwell, Victoria,read more

The Sohemians leave the claret fumes of Fitzrovia behind by organising a guided walk (led by Benedict Newbery), a literary journey in Hampstead to be precise, following in the footsteps of Le Carré’s George Smiley. The walk will trace the action in the novel Smiley’s People, introducing key landmarks from the book on, and around, Hampstead Heath. Those wishing to participate should rendezvous at Hampstead underground station (Northern line) at 10.45 on Saturday July 11. The contact will be carrying a copy of Punch magazine under his left arm and will be wearing a quizical look. The contact will then... read more

July 8, 7pm
KGB Bar, NYC Rob Plath is a 39 year old poet from New York. He is a former student of American poet Allen Ginsberg. Rob has published 7 books of poetry: Ashtrays and Bulls (Liquid Paper Press 2003), An IV Bag Full of Bile (Scintillating Publications 2007), Whiskey and Clay (Pudding House Publications 2008), Squeezing Blood from the Alphabet (erbacce press 2008), Tapping Ashes in the Dark (Lummox Press 2008), There’s A Little Hobo In My Heart Who Forever Gives The Finger To Humanity (d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press 2008) and Nicotine Stained Scribblings From A Hammock In The Void (Good... read more

3:AM Asia contributor Roland Kelts will be in conversation with acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away/Howl’s Moving Castle) on July 25 at the Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley. Roland tells us it will be the first (and likely only) time Miyazaki has consented to such an interview/conversation in public (and probably his last trip outside of Japan.) Tickets for the event are available from UC Berkeley ($25).... read more

(Me and Swells at an anti apartheid gig sometime mid 80s (I reckon it was with the Redskins) Cheers to Paul Woodwright for the photo.) By Attila the Stockbroker. Just about to leave for Glasto last Thursday morning, one final email check…among the spam a message from my footie mate Alan. Title: ‘Have you seen this?’ Open it. Link to Philadelphia Weekly: ‘In extremis: Steven Wells says goodbye.’ Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Two days previously I’d emailed him a poem I’d just written. Must have arrived in his inbox hours before he disappeared off this earth. Swells, I always thought you’d... read more

On a Monday morning soon after sleep I wrote out a fragment of a dream. Its violence and purity provoked an impulse to record. Why was this apparent non-event so much more vital and haunting than the remote disturbances of consciousness? It's a question such writing asks between night and day.

The hope is that violence and purity will emerge in the scribbled commentary; words containing, as Beckett put it, "the integrity of the eyelids coming down before the brain knows of grit in the wind". However, once written, the breeze dies; estrangement from the purity of the... read more

In response to this post at RSB.... read more

A new online literary and arts journal Cerise Press has posted its first issue. The site says it is based in the United States and France and aims to build "cross-cultural bridges by featuring artists and writers in English and translations, with an emphasis on French and Francophone works."

Despite that, in this issue you can find translations of poems by the Russians Akhmatova, Mandelshtam and Tsvetaeva as well as those from the French of Apollinaire and Abdelwahab Meddeb.

Under fiction there's Robert Kelly's Letter to Thomas Bernhard, which begins by addressing an obvious issue: I don't... read more

In early 2010, Fordham University Press is publishing Zakir Paul's translation of Maurice Blanchot's Ecrits politiques: 1953-1993. This posthumously published volume collects his political writings from 1953 to 1993, from the French-Algerian War and the mass movements of May 1968 to postwar debates about the Shoah and beyond. A large number of the essays, letters, and fragments it contains were written anonymously and signed collectively, often in response to current events.


While political writings as such do not interest me, Blanchot's are an inevitable exception. When read together, these pieces form a testament to what political writing could... read more

The falling chestnuts hit the ground with a dry sound. Detonations. It’s nature massed in the air that turns and rolls like bursts of a meteor.
— So it is possible that the earth is a limit to the infinite of language…

After a long silence punctured with noise, he continues:
— The world is... read more

Apparently we read only because what is written is already there, laying itself out before our eyes. Apparently. But the first one to write, the one who cut into stone and wood under ancient skies, was hardly responding to the demands of a view requiring a reference point and giving it a meaning; rather, he was changing all relations between seeing and the visible. What he left behind was not something more, something added to other things; it was not even something less – a subtraction of matter, a hollow in relation to a relief. Then what was it? A... read more

I haven't had time yet to finish up my review of Edward Hogan's Blackmoor, which I read as part of the Desmond Elliott prize shortlist (which I haven't finished entirely. No suprise there).  But I'm very, very, very pleased to see the announcement that it has won the Award and the £10,000 that goes with it. Hurray! I can't stress enough what a worthy and entirely beautiful debut it is.  I will be writing about it very soon, but in the meantime you can see short reviews here and here.  And of course, you could buy it and read it for yourself. ... read more

The Desmond Elliott shortlist has gotten off to an incredibly good start.  Thus far I've read Edward Hogan's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Blackmoor (which is settling in my mind before I write about it) and Nathalie Abi-Ezzi's excellent long-form debut A Girl Made of Dust.  I couldn't have asked for two more striking and ambitious novels. Both are predicated on a world composed equally of incredible violence and blessed grace. I think they both go some way to capturing that essential contradiction of our universal nature: that we hurt and even kill each other out of love.  And they both do it with... read more

Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness is a terrifying and ambitious novel.  Terrifying because it is about the disintegration of the human mind, and ambitious because it is predicated on that old chestnut, the fallible narrator.  I'm of the opinion that fallible narrators are difficult creatures at the best of times - do it right and you question the very foundations of a reader's experience; do it wrong and your novel is a big fat fake - but a narrator with Alzheimers is something else altogether.  The question is not 'has it been done well?' but 'can it be done at all?'  Jake is a... read more

So, it's official: Marilynne Robinson has won this year's Orange Prize for Home.  Which is, of course, the only book on the shortlist that I haven't yet finished reading.  Still, after a mere 40 pages, I'm not surprised that it has triumphed. Or rather, I am surprised but pleasantly so, because books like Home (densely woven, unabashedly intertextual and theologically rich) don't usually win prizes.  It is a 'difficult' book certainly, since Robinson's peculiar genius is distilled to a single malt perhaps not to everyone's taste.  Already it is clear to me that it is less accessible than Gilead but just as brilliant, just as beautiful.  I... read more

"You're a very special young lady, Abigail Gentian," was what my mother told me on one of the many occasions when her ageless face addressed me from one of the house's panes. "You're going to do great things with your life."She had no idea.Somewhat belatedly (busy month), here is my final post on this year's Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist. (Previous posts are all linked here; the winner, announced at the end of last month, was Ian R. MacLeod's Song of Time.) Last but not least, then - more sort mid-table - comes the widescreen, epoch-spanning space opera House of Suns, by Alastair... read more

  I'm supposed to be writing a review of my first three Orange Prize reads today. It is on my To Do List and everything. But having sat down I find that I can't concentrate - it is an absolutely beautiful day outside and the sun is shining directly on my garden bench. It seems wrong to sit inside and type. Very wrong.  Instead then, a lovely little meme that I stole from Niall at Torque Control (and which he stole from various other peoples). The idea is to list the books that most shaped your reading life as... read more

You'll know from here that I adore Port Eliot, and you now know that I'm taking you all along to the entire Port Eliot Literary Festival, because the blog is going to sneak across the border into Cornwall and we'll be there for the whole weekend, with a laptop, a wireless signal, a camera and a very big picnic basket and we are going to have one very great big amazing time.
You don't even need to ask if I'll be sleeping in a yurt because you already know the answer, it's a no. Canvas is for painting on not sleeping under etc etc,... read more

I've been reading One Million Tiny Plays About Britain by Craig Taylor, and published by Bloomsbury, for several months now because it's not a book I wanted to read cover to cover in a week or so.The book's been picked up, put down, a few more plays read, left for a while, back to it again, but it's been a constant on the book circuit around the house.
These little dramatic encounters first appeared in the Guardian and many readers were justifiably fooled into thinking they were 'snippets of dialogue snatched from real life.'
It's hard not to read and feel... read more

July dawns and measured plans are afoot here for getting to some literary festivals.
Having already realised that I won't manage quite as much of Ways With Words at Dartington as I did last year, I've had a good browse through the programme and picked out the events I absolutely can't miss; writers I've read and written about here and others in progress.
It will be an early start to get across the moors in time for a 9.30am start on July 11th to hear William Fiennes talk about The Music Room,'Books like this leave a feeling, a resonating mood, for... read more

I had decided I daren't pick up anything new until I'd conquered my forthcoming litfest stack, but rules are made for a bit of easing and stretching here and there and then there's this book which gave me every excuse and is distracting me hopelessly along the way.
I saw it shrink-wrapped in a book shop window in Crediton, couldn't look at it so didn't buy it,  but by the time I got home I knew I had to have it and quickly ordered it. Women Who Read Are Dangerous by Stefan Bollmann and with a Foreword by Karen Joy... read more

I am so pleased to welcome Lilian Pizzichini to the virtual armchair and the gentle inquisitorial glow of the standard lamp today.
I think, unless you've been away for a month or so, or perhaps this is your first visit to dovegreyreader, you can hardly have missed my renewed enthusiasm for reading the novels of Jean Rhys since I read Lilian's wonderful portrait of Jean's life, The Blue Hour. I can't quite believe what a reading trail this one book has opened up for me as I work my way towards a re-read and a new understanding of Wide... read more

Names in comments here for a chance of winning a copy of The Blue Hour by Lilian Pizzichini.
Himself will choose the winners later this week as he's now recovering from the exertions of yesterday.This book can go worldwide and I'd love to think that three of you will find that Jean Rhys door opened much as I have after reading it. ... read more