Someone Else Would Have Broken Both Of Her Arms

I'm having one of those days. You know how it is. Woke at 5:45am to make the girl a cup of tea before she went off to work, & I thought, "Maybe I'll go back to bed & ponder the mysterious email from Lola saying she would be in England at 11pm the previous evening - I take it that's New York time, so that meant she was here now. But, no, I was still sort of buzzing from going to see Julian Schnabel's film of Lou Reed performing Berlin at St. Ann's warehouse in Brooklyn, which is weird cos that's where Lo lives (not the warehouse... but then again...) The film was good, sort of 21st century Warholian (ie beautifully produced & not in black & white) & the music - orchestrated rock - orchestratally rocked. Berlin (& I can't remember what Paul Morley said about it) is the musical chronicling of the traumatic & violent break up of a doomed relationship. I bought the LP when it first came out - I was 12 & had no idea what most of the lyrics meant & - until last night - actually thought Berlin was the "real" setting - I also thought that Nico could be Caroline - but Reed hadn't visited the city at that point & Berlin is a metaphor (divided city, surrounded by enemies - as Caroline's nickname is Alaska - cold & remote). Berlin is a masterpiece but I'm worried how much the lyrics may have affected my attitude to women & relationships... Thanks to Paul for the ticket & Gary & Rob for being good company while watching Spain beat Germany - & I saw two of my heroes on one night: Lou Reed & Fernando Torres. So, I'm having one of those days where I can't get going. I went back to bed to see if a couple of hours more sleep would set me right. Finished reading David Mamet's Goldberg Street, eventually fell asleep only to dream about slugs in the bed & dogging in the streets around Harrods. Woke again at 11:30 - woah! way late for me, I'm a pre-7am guy - & thought "OK, I have these things to do: finish that Tokyo story, move on with the play I started, edit CJ's novel, research my Sergeant Bertrand book, write that academic article." So, I'm doing this...Meeting the girl later to maybe buy that Vivienne Westwood shirt for the wedding in a couple of weeks (not mine). Now for lunch.

Book Report - June 2008: Part Two

A little early, I know, but the book I'm reading at present will take me into July, so I thought I'd get it down. I'm going away next weekend & I'm already stressing about what books to take - two should do the job - maybe Roberto Bolaño's Last Evenings on Earth, or some David Mamet plays, or Daniel Davies' much-hyped (comparisons with Ballard & Houellebecq) Isle of Dogs. So...

Roberto Bolaño - Nazi Literature in the Americas: sort of metabiography in which Bolaño studies the lives of fictitious right-wing writers in North, Central, & South America. At times creepy, violent, & funny, Bolaño is a direct heir of Borges; his writing is crisp & clear, his thinking engaged, & his sense of how we live our lives challenging.

Henry Miller - Sexus: What can I say? When I was 16, this book was my bible. I'd stuff the small orange paperback into the back pocket of my Levi's & stroll around Feltham drinking Newcastle Brown ale looking like a right twat. I've read it a few times since then & it remains a powerful, exciting, & driven piece of autobiographical fiction - Miller's ego is as relentless as his desire. For me, this book is better than the Tropic novels.

Willy Vlautin - Northline: Vlautin's second novel is as good as his first. The grim but gentle tale of Allison Johnson. A twenty-something with a drink problem, Allison escapes an abusive boyfriend; pregnant, she runs away from home & starts work in a diner - a prose poem of the lost & lonely.

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez - Tropical Animal: The further dirty adventures of Pedro Juan - this time in Havana & Sweden. This book is more writerly than the trilogy, more aware of its status & place in the literary canon - like Miller, Gutiérrez's ego is sometimes out of control - the man's 50 - I hope in three years' time, I have a cock like a rod of iron & am able to shag for ten hours straight - I'll let you know - worth a read: a Caribbean Bukowski.

Book Report - June 2008: Part One

According to Wiki: June is the sixth month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with a length of 30 days. The month is named after the Roman goddess Juno, wife of Jupiter & equivalent to the Greek goddess Hera. So there. June has been a down-&-dirty month reading-wise. Otherwise, it's been busy, culminating in me reading at Foyles on Friday & going to see Stewart Home talk about Richard Prince at the Serpentine on Saturday.

Richard Price - Clockers: This is an easy one - you can go to Mikael Covey's Lit Up for a contrast with The Wire.

Billy Childish - My Fault: I came late to Childish. He's two years older than I am & we share very similar backgrounds - but his flair for self-promotion, ridiculous moustache, & antipathy to conceptualism (I did once work for Richard Long) put me off. Things have changed recently & My Fault is a coruscating memoir - an honest, well-written account of Steven John Hamper's early life in Chatham, at St Martin's, & his early affair with Tracey Emin. A sort of Kent Gothic - brilliant - & I don't like memoirs. Looking forward to Notebooks of a Naked Youth.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Journey to the End of Night: Apart from being one of the best titles for a book in the history of literature - I challenge you to better it - Journey is what writing should be - brutal when it's needed, beautiful when it really shouldn't be, honest - the narrative moves from the First World War to Africa to the USA & to the slums of Paris. If you've never read Céline, this is the place to start. Without Céline, the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, & Bukowski would be very different.

Willy Vlautin - The Motel Life: Last year, I was lucky enough to discover the works of Daniel Woodrell. This year, Vlautin's my big find. This novel is beautiful, sad, & addictive. The simple tale of two brothers living out their lives in motels in Reno. Imagine condensing your favourite Dylan, Springsteen, & Neil Young songs & then writing them out in sparsely poetic prose. Uh-huh.

No Doubt, Indeed, Mos' Def

What a great secondhand-book expedition yesterday. Walked up to Stoke Newington after finishing off (I hope) the Ramones story I've been writing for a year - up Pentonville, down Upper, along Essex to Newington Green, onto Albion & Stokey Church Street. Stokey has two very good secondhand bookshops - Church Street Books at 142 & Ocean Books at 121 - they're both reasonably priced - between £2 & £4 for a paperback - rather than £4-£6 you'll pay in Charing Cross Road & Camden Lock. I picked up a long-sort-after edition of Henry Miller's Sexus (£3.50), Tropical Animal by Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (£1.95), & Willy Vlautin's Northline (£2.50) complete with CD soundtrack. Geezers!

I've just finished Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas - Bolaño was a genius - & I don't use that word lightly. Every book I've read by him pushes the limits of fiction. Nazi Literature in the Americas comprises imaginary biographies of South & North American right-wing authors. The writing is as tight as a bullfighter's jockstrap, funny, Borgesian in all the right ways. Can't wait for his immense 2666 coming in November this year. Here's a hint - if anyone's stuck for a title for a novel, story, poem, song, band name - check out the bibliogaphy of Nazi Literature - some great titles.

& I have part two of "Isle of Bones" here on Word Riot & a piece comparing & contrasting The Wire & Richard Price's Clockers here on Lit Up Magazine. No doubt.

Behemoths, Bastards & Bards

I've nearly finished Willy Vlautin's excellent first novel The Motel Life and am looking forward to his second - Northline - Willy is lead singer with alt-country band Richmond Fontaine. Tomorrow, I'm going to pick up a copy of Nick Cave's Complete Lyrics (well, I'm going to do more than pick it up, I'm going to buy myself a copy). Oh, digression: "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend on reading it." - Grouco Marx. Regression: & then I got to thinking about rock/pop stars who wrote short stories, novels or poetry. So I did a bit of research & found out that the Guardian blog page & Ben Myers beat me to it & you can find it here. For what it's worth, my favourite books written by rock/pop stars are: Willy Vlautin's The Motel Life; Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One; Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel - Faulkneresque or as if Johnny Thunders had written McCarthy's Suttree; Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers; & that's about it. The lyrics of Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, & Bob Dylan don't fall into this category, nor do crossover artists such as Billy Childish (is he poet, novelist, painter, or musician?) & Jim Carroll (poet, writer, or musician?). But then how many writers make good rock stars? Stephen King? Next: novels & short stories about the music industry. Give me some ideas. Indeed.

First Line Last - A Cut-Up

Tristan Tzara, Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, David Bowie & now Yu-Han Chao, Joe Dunthorne, Paul Ewen, Steve Finbow, Amy Guth, Stewart Home, Travis Jeppesen, Paul Kavanagh, Haidee Kruger, Toby Litt, Melissa Mann, Martin Millar, Ben Myers, Kevin O’Cuinn, Joseph Ridgwell, & Adelle Stripe on a new site - Parasitic 101.

Oh, and I have a new piece of fiction on Everyday Yeah - it's about Dick Emery and Doctor Dee.

Book Report - May 2008: Part Two

I'm very busy. Tokyo story to write, must get started on that Sergeant Bertrand thing, a Pop Stars in Hotel Rooms to do for Yankee Pot Roast, something I'm putting together for parasitic101 - an offshoot of The Beat; not to mention finishing the Kelman thing, putting some questions together for a Martin Millar interview, & ploughing on with TWG. But for now, here's part two of May's book report.

Dan Fante - Spitting off Tall Buildings: the further adventures of Bruno Dante, our down-at-heel, drink-sodden anti-hero. Fante's prose is lean & mean, Bukowski-esque but without the ego. This is a New York we forget still exists: flop hotels, basement rooms, & decrepit taxicabs. Fante's good. This could have been called Thirst - it reminded me of Hamsun's Hunger.

Howard Sounes - Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life: An OK biography of Bukowski. A little hagiographic for my liking - Bukowski admitted on several occasions that he was an asshole. Sounes's book is well researched & maintains one's interest - unlike many literary biographies. At least Bukowski had an interesting childhood. The one thing that put me off was the introduction by Sounes in which he basically slags off every other Hank biographer - & the quip about Barry Miles - ooh, miaow!

Charles Bukowski - Tales of Ordinary Madness: Now, I used to have every Bukowski book published by Black Sparrow Press & more. Huge Bukowski fan but haven't read him for a while. This isn't the best - sloppy short stories written for softcore publications & newspapers. For a better feel of Bukowski's short stories, try South of No North. Ham on Rye, Women, & Post Office are his best novels.

Joel Rose - Kill Kill Faster Faster: If you like your thrillers pacy, literary, & just plain different - try this. It's a brutal love story with Joey One-Way as hero & villain.

Pedro Juan Gutierrez - Dirty Havana Trilogy: Been meaning to read this for years. Fantastic evocation of Havana & Cuba (not that I've been there but now I feel I have). A Caribbean version of Bukowski's Women or Miller's Sexus but with heat, passion, & rum. Gutierrez's writing is pared down, tight, & erotic. If nihilism was sexy then this would be its bible.

Alexander Trocchi - Young Adam: if you like Camus's L'Etranger, Houellebecq's Whatever, or Handke's The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, you'll love this. Trocchi's a Caledonian Camus, a Glaswegian Gide, & an underground legend.

Daniel Woodrell - Tomato Red: My admiration for Woodrell is well documented & this book only adds to my fandom. This novel is in a genre of its own - sort of country-gothic-noir; a backwoods Gormenghast, or an Elmore Leonard novel re-written by Carson McCullers on crank. Brilliant. But why does it have that awful cover?

Cheers

Finbow on Eyeshot & Beat the Dust

Over the past four years, Lee Klein has published six of my stories (and not published a few others); from the first: Tougher Than Anything in the Animal Kingdom to the most recent: Let's Do It. Eyeshot is one of the most innovative, challenging, & intelligent literary zines out there. Check out the rejections page - very funny. Tougher Than... was the first short story I had published on the internet and Let's Do It is my fiftieth piece of web-wide fiction. Cheers, Lee.

A relative newcomer to the litzine world, Melissa Mann's Beat the Dust showcases underground writers from around the world. It's great looking, has podcats, chapbooks, & videos; it's experimental, has brains as well as balls, & this month includes fiction & poetry from Tony O'Neill, Ben Myers, Robert Warrington, Mikael Covey, Justin Hyde, Anne Goodwin, & my not-so-good self.

Oh, and the picture is of Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Book Report - May 2008: Part One

This isn't a headline. What did they expect to find? Aardvarks made from jelly? Artifacts of the mythical Soblowme tribe? Anyway, as a helicopter buzzes noisily overhead, on to May's book report. In two parts because I read a shedload of books this month - mostly on holiday.

Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night & Sunday Morning: I read this years ago & enjoyed it. It's even better second time round. Arthur Seaton (great name) is an English rebel without a cause. He drinks, he fights, he smokes, he shags. The Americans have Henry Miller, John Fante, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Dan Fante, & Mark Safranko chronicling the lives, loves, & brutality of working-class males. What happened to the British counterparts? Sillitoe & Storey &... er... er...

Alan Sillitoe - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner: great title & a fine collection of short stories covering borstal life, petty crime, schools, & working class mores, morals, & ethics. Some stories match & even better Raymond Carver - & if that's not praise, then, well, it's not... Homegrown existentialism. Mucky realism.

David Storey - This Sporting Life: Arthur Machin's (how many Arthur's do you know?) life as a worker, lover, rugby player - brutal, realistic, honest - the prose is as tight as a scrum-half's jockstrap, the voice pitch-perfect - classic.

Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach: Now, I used to be a huge McEwan fan & I'm not going to go in for McEwan bashing but this nove(ella) is poor, its premise dodgy, & its execution sloppy. In fact, this book is so sensitive, the pages came out in a rash, the cover inflamed with hives. The book's basic premise - I won't spoil it for you - is that expectations about marriage, love, sex, etc., were & are confusing & less than idealistic. So far, so dull. Set in 1962, before the onset of the swinging '60s, the novel's characters are confused by sex, by desire, by their own bodily functions. Now, is McEwan saying that before the existence of free love & tie-dyed cheesecloth shirts a university-educated couple would not have discussed sex, would not have explored their desires (physical or mental) before their wedding night? They would only have to have read Alan Sillitoe (above books 1958 & 1959) & David Storey (1960) - not to mention DH Lawrence - to get an idea of what goes where. There are also some clunking similes.

John Harvey - Flesh & Blood: This is the first Harvey I've read & I needed it to get the sickly-sweet taste of the McEwan out of my mouth. The first of Harvey's Frank Elder (retired police office/private detective) novels. Great atmosphere, tight plot, & well written. I'm not usually fond of these type of thriller/crime novels. Hooked. Better than Ian "uptown top" Rankin. But, then, I've never been able to finish any of his novels.

John Harvey - Darkness & Light: See? It was so good, I scoured the secondhand bookshop of Fuerteventura to find another. This is the third in the Frank Elder series. Not as good as the first but definitely worth a read. He's good at female characters, which a lot of crime writers aren't. Name a memorable (living) woman in a James Ellroy book, apart from his mother in My Dark Places.

Junot Diaz - Drown: Been after this for a while & it was worth the wait. It comes with the usual puffs & plaudits on the back cover &, mostly, lives up to its billing. Stories of Dominican families, children, criminals, lovers, set in the Dominican Republic & New Jersey - a fresh & welcome change from the usual Central/South American fiction - free from the fetid & humid prose of Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, & Cabrera Infante. Reminded me somewhat of Borges's "Man on Pink Corner".

That's part one - part two in a few days.

Oh, & anyone who knows me knows how much pain I went through to post the accompanying picture.