Our stuff has just arrived from the UK, after a game of mime & bowing with the delivery men, I opened the battered cardboard boxes. I thought we'd got rid of a lot of junk but it seems to have followed us. I stripped out the books - my argument being that it would make manhandling the boxes easier - really, I just wanted to get them stacked until we buy bookshelves. I can't stand rooms without books in them. So, a quick system - contemporary authors (remember Wallace & Bolaño are dead); modern classics - Kerouac, Miller, etc.; classics - for some reason DH Lawrence is the cut-off point for me even though he's only 6 years older than Miller; Japanese authors; history; non-fiction & philosophy. Four main piles: contemporary authors the tallest; modern classics next - oh, shit Ballard's dead as well - have to shift those; classics with Japanese books on top - the reason that Akutagawa is a Penguin Classic makes this an easy decision; then history, non-fiction, & philosophy in one pile - making for some weird bedfellows: Heidegger snuggling on top of Brian Masters, Iain Sinclair pressing down on Roland Barthes. Damn - I need another pile for books I'm reading or will read soon - OK, just in front - Amélie Nothomb's Tokyo Fiancée (reviewing), Jacques Roubaud's The Great Fire of London (reading & reviewing), & Denis Johnson's new novel Nobody Move - reading next. I've tried to cure myself of this addiction - it's a sort of paraphilia - bibliophilia. But it's no good. They amass. Fuck it. Bring 'em on.
Weird T-shirt: "Fire and the Bad News Cats" ? Saw a guy dressed in a whole smörgåsbord of animal costumes, wearing a dog mask, & a yellow afro wig going into a porn cinema in Shinjuku.
Check out the new edition of Lee Rourke's Scarecrow - s'good.
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