The other day, I stumbled across the rather splendid Backlisted podcast – the most recent episode features a look at JL Carr's How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup. As they say on the podcast, it's one of his more straightforward novels in many respects, and as they also rightly point out, it has a fantastic blurb (Carr wrote his own).
The rest of the episode focuses on Jilly Cooper. I've never read anything by her, but I have to admit it actually made me rather intrigued. They also mention that the very first episode looked at JL Carr's A Month In The Country, so I've gone back and downloaded that one too (plus the Raymond Chandler and Tolkien episodes). Very enjoyable listening for the daily commute.
NB You can also buy JL Carr's novels (and his many wonderful pocket books), from his own Quince Tree Press (now run by his son, I think).
Showing posts with label Novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Novels. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 January 2019
Wednesday, 26 September 2018
Does happiness 'write white'?
The other day, I came across this review of JL Carr's A Month In the Country. It's a novel (well, more like a novella) that I've loved for many years, ever since coming across a copy in Coalville Library, and Ingrid Norton does a wonderful job of capturing what's so special about it.
I like what she has to say about how Carr writes about happiness. Henry De Montherlant's oft-quoted aphorism 'Happiness writes white' (actually 'happiness writes in white ink on a white page') has some truth in it, of course, in novels, poems and song lyrics, but there are ways to avoid it. Carr, as Norton describes here, does just that. Interestingly, his other novels are often much more pessimistic in outlook.
But anyway, I'd like to hear suggestions of other writers, or pieces pf work, that avoid the problem De Montherlant identifies. Over to you...
I like what she has to say about how Carr writes about happiness. Henry De Montherlant's oft-quoted aphorism 'Happiness writes white' (actually 'happiness writes in white ink on a white page') has some truth in it, of course, in novels, poems and song lyrics, but there are ways to avoid it. Carr, as Norton describes here, does just that. Interestingly, his other novels are often much more pessimistic in outlook.
But anyway, I'd like to hear suggestions of other writers, or pieces pf work, that avoid the problem De Montherlant identifies. Over to you...
Wednesday, 3 January 2018
Starting as I mean to go on
I thought I'd make a few New Year resolutions for a change, one of which is to finally try to write a novel that's been rattling round my head for years. I'm setting myself to write 3000 words a week until it's done, which sounds manageable until you actually sit down and attempt to write it.
Another is to knock something resembling another poetry collection into shape – I've got most of it reasonably finished, but there are maybe half a dozen key poems that need serious work.
But, and you'll have to excuse me for bringing my day job into things here, I'm also trying to complete the My200BirdYear challenge, as featured in Bird Watching, and the Walk 1000 Miles challenge, as featured in our sister magazine, Country Walking.
I've made a slow start to both, with a lunchtime walk today logging a couple of miles, and 24 species, mainly from my own garden and from the daily commute. Things will really start in earnest at the weekend.
I downloaded the OS app to log all my walks on, and also came across this, rather appropriately given that it's JRR Tolkien's birthday today. It's a much bigger challenge, especially if you have to walk across the Dead Marshes with the Eye of Sauron on you, but still, it's worth a try.
Another is to knock something resembling another poetry collection into shape – I've got most of it reasonably finished, but there are maybe half a dozen key poems that need serious work.
But, and you'll have to excuse me for bringing my day job into things here, I'm also trying to complete the My200BirdYear challenge, as featured in Bird Watching, and the Walk 1000 Miles challenge, as featured in our sister magazine, Country Walking.
I've made a slow start to both, with a lunchtime walk today logging a couple of miles, and 24 species, mainly from my own garden and from the daily commute. Things will really start in earnest at the weekend.
I downloaded the OS app to log all my walks on, and also came across this, rather appropriately given that it's JRR Tolkien's birthday today. It's a much bigger challenge, especially if you have to walk across the Dead Marshes with the Eye of Sauron on you, but still, it's worth a try.
Saturday, 27 February 2010
The Anthologist
Earlier in the week I finished reading Nicholson Baker’s novel The Anthologist. To be honest, it struck me as an intriguing and always fascinating essay on poetry, rather pointlessly dressed up as a novel.
In brief, the anthologist of the title is Paul Chowder, a middle-aged
And there, I suppose, was my problem. The story and characters just weren’t involving enough to make me really care – I found myself plodding grimly through those parts and waiting for the bits where he digresses into his own theories of poetry.
That part of the book is excellent. Even when I didn’t agree with him, Baker made a great case for his ideas, but some of his theories, especially on rhythm, seemed to make perfect sense.
Which is all a long way of saying that any poet will probably find something to enjoy in this book, but they might also find themselves wondering why Baker chose to frame his ideas in quite this way.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
A classic
I’ve just finished reading David Peace’s much talked-about novel The Damned United (I might make it to see the film this weekend). It’s excellent, and part of the enjoyment, I think, is wondering just how much is fact and how much is fiction. I can understand why the Clough family might be a bit annoyed at the portrayal of Brian Clough in it, but I don’t think he comes out of it badly (in fact, I reckon only Don Revie, his backroom staff, and Billy Bremner really do). In essence, the book seems a sort of love story, or rather two love stories – between Brian Clough and football, and Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. It’s as a portrayal of a platonic male friendship that it works best.
But anyway, at the back of the book, Peace includes a list of sources and background reading. On it is The Goalkeeper’s Revenge, by Bill Naughton (best known as the writer of the Michael Caine film Alfie).
When I was a kid, I reckon I read that book more than just about any other. It’s a collection of short stories, mostly set in industrial Lancashire between the wars, although one or two also draw on Naughton’s family background in Ireland. And although they’re aimed at children, they work well enough for adults too. I started reading them again last night, and they didn’t disappoint. A little unsung masterpiece, I reckon.
But anyway, at the back of the book, Peace includes a list of sources and background reading. On it is The Goalkeeper’s Revenge, by Bill Naughton (best known as the writer of the Michael Caine film Alfie).
When I was a kid, I reckon I read that book more than just about any other. It’s a collection of short stories, mostly set in industrial Lancashire between the wars, although one or two also draw on Naughton’s family background in Ireland. And although they’re aimed at children, they work well enough for adults too. I started reading them again last night, and they didn’t disappoint. A little unsung masterpiece, I reckon.
Sunday, 30 December 2007
The Best of 2007
I don't intend to do any sort of comprehensive personal literary review of 2007 - my memory is far too poor for that. Instead, I'll just pick out a few highlights...
Of those actually published in 2007, I've got two contenders. First is Canadian poet Karen Solie's Modern And Normal, which I've read again and again since it came out. It's a hard-to-place book, sitting somewhere between the mainstream and the more experimental, but it's confident and assured in its own little niche. Secondly, I'll go for Colin Simms' Gyrfalcon Poems. I've only had my hands on it for a few days, but it's absolutely superb. Simms is a very fine naturalist and observer of birdlife, and writes about it in a style that owes something to Basil Bunting. It's not always easy going (although it's rarely tough either, and never wilfully obscure), and at times the delight in words is every bit as dizzying as the flight of one of these uber-predators. Honourable mention to Luke Kennard's The Harbour Beyond The Movie - a really dazzling book.
Of poetry collections I read this year (but which were published previously), favourites included Jane Routh's Teach Yourself Mapmaking, Helen Macdonald's Shaler's Fish, and The Great Enigma: Collected Poems of Tomas Transtromer. Macdonald is a real one-off, but well worth the effort, while Routh's book is a lesson in how to patiently develop themes throughout the length of a collection.
I didn't get through many novels, but I thought Jon McGregor's So Many Ways To Begin (actually published last year) was excellent, while where non-fiction was concerned, Ron Powers' Mark Twain: A Life beat all-comers.
And that's it. I'll do a poetry chapbook round-up on Tuesday (I thought it was a good year), but in the meantime, Happy New Year!
Of those actually published in 2007, I've got two contenders. First is Canadian poet Karen Solie's Modern And Normal, which I've read again and again since it came out. It's a hard-to-place book, sitting somewhere between the mainstream and the more experimental, but it's confident and assured in its own little niche. Secondly, I'll go for Colin Simms' Gyrfalcon Poems. I've only had my hands on it for a few days, but it's absolutely superb. Simms is a very fine naturalist and observer of birdlife, and writes about it in a style that owes something to Basil Bunting. It's not always easy going (although it's rarely tough either, and never wilfully obscure), and at times the delight in words is every bit as dizzying as the flight of one of these uber-predators. Honourable mention to Luke Kennard's The Harbour Beyond The Movie - a really dazzling book.
Of poetry collections I read this year (but which were published previously), favourites included Jane Routh's Teach Yourself Mapmaking, Helen Macdonald's Shaler's Fish, and The Great Enigma: Collected Poems of Tomas Transtromer. Macdonald is a real one-off, but well worth the effort, while Routh's book is a lesson in how to patiently develop themes throughout the length of a collection.
I didn't get through many novels, but I thought Jon McGregor's So Many Ways To Begin (actually published last year) was excellent, while where non-fiction was concerned, Ron Powers' Mark Twain: A Life beat all-comers.
And that's it. I'll do a poetry chapbook round-up on Tuesday (I thought it was a good year), but in the meantime, Happy New Year!
Monday, 10 December 2007
An autobiography of America
If you mention the American author Thomas Wolfe to anyone in Britain, you will almost certainly have to stop two sentences later to explain that no, he isn't TOM Wolfe, the 'New Journalist' chronicler of the seismic social upheavals of the 1960s and author of 'Bonfire of the Vanities'. No, not at all; someone very different, in fact.
Born as the 20th Century got under way in 1900, Thomas Wolfe wrote during a period that many Americans regard as the 'Golden Age' of the American novel. He began as a playwright, and also wrote short stories, but it is his four long, unashamedly autobiographical novels that he is remembered for.
Packed with adjectives and adverbs, his opulent language communicates the life he saw through the shapes, textures, sounds, colours and odours around him. His writing career lasted a mere nine years, but during that time he produced a body of work quite unlike anything else in American literature.
Wolfe's books are highly lyrical, and his vast vocabulary can sometimes be overwhelming, but any effort required in reading the four volumes is more than repaid.
And the skin wrapping around the books, binding them all together neatly if not entirely coherently, is Wolfe's own life in a very light disguise.
Standing in 2007, Wolfe's books now seem like a huge autobiography of America itself in the early years of the 20th Century, during some of its darkest times. Somehow, he gets under the surface of that huge country and manages to show us what is going on there.
Sprawling is a word that is often used pejoratively, but in his case it would merely indicate how the books capture the enormous variety and diversity of American life during the Depression.
From his native North Carolina to the political excesses of 1920s and 30s Europe as seen by an American abroad, and back again, Wolfe's books present a vista of life at that precise moment, yet ever-changing. Huge, shifting, yet dependable; presented with an eye that captures detail incredibly.
Yet, despite the worst of all he sees, there is never a sense of despair in Wolfe's writing. At the end of 'You Can't Go Home Again', he sums things up honestly but with defiance: "What befalls man is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way. Mankind was fashioned for eternity."
Seemingly making more of a criticism than a comment, Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner once said of Wolfe that he was "trying to put the entire history of the human heart on the head of a pin".
Ironic in a way, when you consider that the books that Faulkner read were far shorter than those Wolfe had originally written.
In a prescient foreshadowing of the current debate surrounding the 'restoration' of Raymond Carver's short stories, the books on which Wolfe's reputation rests were the result of long hours spent by editors with judiciously applied blue pencils.
His first novel 'Look Homeward, Angel' began life as a much longer work called 'O Lost' and was more experimental in nature than the work we know.
His last three novels - 'Of Time And The River', 'The Web And The Rock' and 'You Can't Go Home Again' - were all edited sections of an enormous multi-volume work called 'The October Fair'. The original was in fact of a similar length to Proust's 'A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu'. And that's a lot of pages.
The final two novels were culled from this enormous manuscript following Wolfe's death in 1938 from tuberculosis of the brain.
'O Lost' has since been 'reconstructed' and published. 'The October Fair' has gone forever, so scattered among various editors at the time that we will never learn the shape that Wolfe intended for it.
Following Wolfe's death, at the tragically young age of 38, Faulkner spoke up again. This time he praised Wolfe as his generation's best writer, placing himself a mere second.
The Great American Novel is something that has obsessed the American literary etsablishment for longer than anyone can remember. There are those who claim that that fox had already been shot by the time of Wolfe's death - that he had done it and all bets were off. Others disagreed, and the debate still continues.
But Wolfe's prose, its elegant, impressionistic grace and at times its almost uncomfortable honesty, will live on whether that particular medal is pinned on its proud breast or not.
Though his name is not so well known this side of the Atlantic, the scope and breadth of his work deserves your attention and I urge you to pick up a copy and read.
Mark Howard Jones
Born as the 20th Century got under way in 1900, Thomas Wolfe wrote during a period that many Americans regard as the 'Golden Age' of the American novel. He began as a playwright, and also wrote short stories, but it is his four long, unashamedly autobiographical novels that he is remembered for.
Packed with adjectives and adverbs, his opulent language communicates the life he saw through the shapes, textures, sounds, colours and odours around him. His writing career lasted a mere nine years, but during that time he produced a body of work quite unlike anything else in American literature.
Wolfe's books are highly lyrical, and his vast vocabulary can sometimes be overwhelming, but any effort required in reading the four volumes is more than repaid.
And the skin wrapping around the books, binding them all together neatly if not entirely coherently, is Wolfe's own life in a very light disguise.
Standing in 2007, Wolfe's books now seem like a huge autobiography of America itself in the early years of the 20th Century, during some of its darkest times. Somehow, he gets under the surface of that huge country and manages to show us what is going on there.
Sprawling is a word that is often used pejoratively, but in his case it would merely indicate how the books capture the enormous variety and diversity of American life during the Depression.
From his native North Carolina to the political excesses of 1920s and 30s Europe as seen by an American abroad, and back again, Wolfe's books present a vista of life at that precise moment, yet ever-changing. Huge, shifting, yet dependable; presented with an eye that captures detail incredibly.
Yet, despite the worst of all he sees, there is never a sense of despair in Wolfe's writing. At the end of 'You Can't Go Home Again', he sums things up honestly but with defiance: "What befalls man is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way. Mankind was fashioned for eternity."
Seemingly making more of a criticism than a comment, Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner once said of Wolfe that he was "trying to put the entire history of the human heart on the head of a pin".
Ironic in a way, when you consider that the books that Faulkner read were far shorter than those Wolfe had originally written.
In a prescient foreshadowing of the current debate surrounding the 'restoration' of Raymond Carver's short stories, the books on which Wolfe's reputation rests were the result of long hours spent by editors with judiciously applied blue pencils.
His first novel 'Look Homeward, Angel' began life as a much longer work called 'O Lost' and was more experimental in nature than the work we know.
His last three novels - 'Of Time And The River', 'The Web And The Rock' and 'You Can't Go Home Again' - were all edited sections of an enormous multi-volume work called 'The October Fair'. The original was in fact of a similar length to Proust's 'A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu'. And that's a lot of pages.
The final two novels were culled from this enormous manuscript following Wolfe's death in 1938 from tuberculosis of the brain.
'O Lost' has since been 'reconstructed' and published. 'The October Fair' has gone forever, so scattered among various editors at the time that we will never learn the shape that Wolfe intended for it.
Following Wolfe's death, at the tragically young age of 38, Faulkner spoke up again. This time he praised Wolfe as his generation's best writer, placing himself a mere second.
The Great American Novel is something that has obsessed the American literary etsablishment for longer than anyone can remember. There are those who claim that that fox had already been shot by the time of Wolfe's death - that he had done it and all bets were off. Others disagreed, and the debate still continues.
But Wolfe's prose, its elegant, impressionistic grace and at times its almost uncomfortable honesty, will live on whether that particular medal is pinned on its proud breast or not.
Though his name is not so well known this side of the Atlantic, the scope and breadth of his work deserves your attention and I urge you to pick up a copy and read.
Mark Howard Jones
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Big, bad Wolfe
I recently bought a secondhand copy of this. It's great. I vaguely remember reading about Thomas Wolfe (not the white-suited gobsh*te - that's Tom Wolfe) years ago, but why's he not better known in this country?
Friday, 20 July 2007
Pottermania
Good piece on Todd Swift's blog, Eyewear, about the whole Harry Potter brouhaha. I've not read any of the books, and consequently don't have any strong opinions on their literary merits, but I have been getting progressively more hacked off hearing a massive exercise in marketing being justified in terms of 'preserving the magic for children'.
Monday, 16 July 2007
Digging deep
I rather enjoyed last night’s South Bank Show about Ian McMillan. I can’t honestly say I’ve read or heard an awful lot of his poetry, although I do remember him reading on Mark Radcliffe’s Radio One evening show years and years ago. And there was a poem of his in The North a couple of years back, in one of those issues where you have to turn to the back to see who has written what, and I loved it, so I must dig it out tonight.
Two things about the programme were particularly interesting. One was Rachel Cooke, of The Observer, saying she thought that sometimes he rather overdid the Barnsley accent (she also claimed to have a Yorkshire accent herself, though God only knows what part of Yorkshire. Farnborough, by the sound of it). The thing is, how on earth does she know? I’m willing to take him at his word when he says that he talks on the radio exactly how he does at home – I’ve got a couple of Barnsley-born and bred mates, and if anything their accents are even stronger than McMillan’s. And why are regional accents STILL worthy of comment?
Second was hearing him talk about the Miners’ Strike. For some reason, it’s been playing on my mind recently, and last week I wrote a poem – 1984 – partly about it, or rather about how it touched my little corner of the world. I’ve started another, too. I think, as time goes on, it appears more and more to have been a real turning point (unfortunately for the worse) in recent British history. I’ve read plenty of poems about it, but have there been any novels on the subject? Or maybe there’s a rich vein of them waiting to be uncovered just about now…
Two things about the programme were particularly interesting. One was Rachel Cooke, of The Observer, saying she thought that sometimes he rather overdid the Barnsley accent (she also claimed to have a Yorkshire accent herself, though God only knows what part of Yorkshire. Farnborough, by the sound of it). The thing is, how on earth does she know? I’m willing to take him at his word when he says that he talks on the radio exactly how he does at home – I’ve got a couple of Barnsley-born and bred mates, and if anything their accents are even stronger than McMillan’s. And why are regional accents STILL worthy of comment?
Second was hearing him talk about the Miners’ Strike. For some reason, it’s been playing on my mind recently, and last week I wrote a poem – 1984 – partly about it, or rather about how it touched my little corner of the world. I’ve started another, too. I think, as time goes on, it appears more and more to have been a real turning point (unfortunately for the worse) in recent British history. I’ve read plenty of poems about it, but have there been any novels on the subject? Or maybe there’s a rich vein of them waiting to be uncovered just about now…
Thursday, 31 May 2007
Remarkable things
I’ve just finished reading Jon McGregor’s If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things, and liked it a lot. I enjoy the passages of prose-poetry, I like the way the author slips seamlessly between them and some very matter-of-fact sections, and I like the fact he resisted the temptation to thicken the plot, or draw the characters more thoroughly. Normally the latter might be a problem with a novel, but I think the whole point is that the characters are supposed to stay vague, half-known, like the people in your own street who you see every day but never really know.
There are plenty of people writing reviews of it on Amazon who disagree, mind you, although I’m slightly at a loss as to why people actually feel angry that a book has ‘wasted their time’. If you loved everything you read, wouldn’t life be slightly boring? I'm also baffled as to why one calls it appalling and says she could write better herself, and then still gives it three stars out of five!
I’m trying to work out where the book’s supposed to be set. A couple of reviewers suggest Nottingham (McGregor’s from there), but it doesn’t feel like it to me. I was guessing at Sheffield or Bradford. Not that it matters…
There are plenty of people writing reviews of it on Amazon who disagree, mind you, although I’m slightly at a loss as to why people actually feel angry that a book has ‘wasted their time’. If you loved everything you read, wouldn’t life be slightly boring? I'm also baffled as to why one calls it appalling and says she could write better herself, and then still gives it three stars out of five!
I’m trying to work out where the book’s supposed to be set. A couple of reviewers suggest Nottingham (McGregor’s from there), but it doesn’t feel like it to me. I was guessing at Sheffield or Bradford. Not that it matters…
Try, try again
Rob Mackenzie posted this at his Surroundings blog earlier – it’s enough to give any writer hope. It’s not a novel I’ve read yet, but I might give it a try now.
I got a rejection letter myself yesterday, from The London Magazine, but never mind. Nothing ventured and all that.
I got a rejection letter myself yesterday, from The London Magazine, but never mind. Nothing ventured and all that.
Monday, 21 May 2007
Future reading
One book I've been saving for a while, and didn't quite get round to starting, was Mike Stocks' White Man Falling. If I'd finished the McGregor book quicker I would, but I got sidetracked after reading the Twain biography into finding out more about the aftermath of the American Civil War. It's an exciting life I lead.
Over the weekend, though, it got an appreciative review in either the Daily or Sunday Telegraph (can't remember which, or find it online), so I'll save it for a long train journey (always my favourite place to read).
Mike is the editor of excellent pocket-sized, anonymous submissions poetry mag Anon. I'm not sure if it's on hold at the moment, but the back issues are worth a look.
Over the weekend, though, it got an appreciative review in either the Daily or Sunday Telegraph (can't remember which, or find it online), so I'll save it for a long train journey (always my favourite place to read).
Mike is the editor of excellent pocket-sized, anonymous submissions poetry mag Anon. I'm not sure if it's on hold at the moment, but the back issues are worth a look.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
The Last Englishman
Literary heroes generally come in two varieties, I've found. There's those whose writing you love, and who probably influence your own writing hugely, however much you try to avoid it or at least temper it, and then there's the other kind. The type whose whole life is in some way inspiring.
For me, JL Carr fits into both categories. I came across his novels some time in the late 80s, I think, when I found a copy of The Battle Of Pollock's Crossing in the local library. It's not his best, but it's still a memorable and odd book, so I sought out the rest. At first I could only find A Day In Summer, his first, which is both very dark and, by his standards, not that great. It didn't put me off, though, and I eventually read all eight of them. They all have something to recommend them, especially A Season In Sinji, The Harpole Report, and his masterpiece, A Month In The Country.
Occasionally, especially in the later books, you get the impression that the author is simply using his characters to make speeches on his behalf (even in the best books, there's a strong undertone of wish-fulfilment), but the writing is always a treat - wry and witty and wholly distinctive.
Intriguingly, Byron Rogers' excellent biography, The Last Englishman, showed that the more outlandish events and characters in the novels were generally taken straight from life. Carr had a long career as a teacher and headmaster, during which he developed highly individual (but successful) teaching strategies in which the traditional and the progressive co-existed happily. And that career was punctuated by a year teaching in a Great Depression-hit town on the South Dakota prairie, and wartime service in flying boats in West Africa, meaning that behind a seemingly quiet and unremarkable exterior was a wealth of material just waiting to be mined.
There is, I think, a trace of that opposition between the traditional and the progressive in his writing. For all that his books seem pretty straightforward 20th Century English novels, they occasionally take big risks. The Harpole Report, for example, is told entirely in the form of journal and logbook entries, letters and other official documents. Pretty odd, when you really look at it, although as you read it you just enjoy the rather Pooter-esque humour. And then there's the way that characters wander from one novel to another, without dates and ages ever quite tallying up. Possibly it was just a way of disguising the real-life models, but it all goes to help create a world of his own, slightly and subtly out of sync with our own.
And the novels are not the whole story, if you'll excuse the pun. Carr was also a one-man publishing industry, producing and selling mini-anthologies of classic poets, idiosyncratic pocket books on subjects as diverse as royal consorts and forgotten cricketers, and lavish pictorial maps of English counties. He retired early from teaching to allow himself time to write, and made a meagre living from sales of such products through Quince Tree Press. There was the campaigning, too, to save neglected churches, and to bring to public attention long-forgotten historical figures such as the intriguing Captain Pouch, Carr sharing my own fascination with 17th Century radicals (and earlier rebels, of which more very soon).
I've been re-reading the novels lately (it doesn't take long, because Carr evidently believed Polonius's assertion that brevity is the soul of wit, making every word count to the extent that none of his books are real doorstops). For the next few weeks, I'll post little mini-reviews of each one, and maybe you'll be inspired to discover a writer who, while not really underrated (he generally got glowing reviews), is inexplicably overlooked.
Wednesday, 14 March 2007
Have a go
Bluechrome have launched their poetry, novel and short story competitions, which look interesting.
Regardless of the publication oppportunities, I enter the odd competition because the deadlines help to concentrate my mind on writing, and because most of them put money back into literature, which can't be a bad thing. This type, where you have to submit a mini-collection, are particularly good for making you think about how poems work off each other.
Regardless of the publication oppportunities, I enter the odd competition because the deadlines help to concentrate my mind on writing, and because most of them put money back into literature, which can't be a bad thing. This type, where you have to submit a mini-collection, are particularly good for making you think about how poems work off each other.
Sunday, 11 March 2007
Room for debate
I was interested to read JG Ballard's comments in Writers' Rooms in yesterday's Guardian, especially his assertion that no great novel has yet been written on a PC. It struck me that I've absolutely no idea whether he's right, simply because I've no idea how most writers write. Was he being a bit of a grumpy old man (why should a PC be considered less 'authentic' than a typewriter), or was he making a point about the particular way a computer allows you to write? I know a lot of writers, even if they have no qualms about computers generally, like to get their first drafts down on paper by hand, maybe because it makes you think that little bit harder about every word if there's not the option to delete and rewrite straight away.
For my own part, well, it all depends. I DO like to write by hand wherever possible, and type things up much later, but it's not always possible. What about when you're sitting in front of a PC at work and a few lines come to you? Straight onto the screen, I reckon. But I'd be interested to hear people's preferences...
For my own part, well, it all depends. I DO like to write by hand wherever possible, and type things up much later, but it's not always possible. What about when you're sitting in front of a PC at work and a few lines come to you? Straight onto the screen, I reckon. But I'd be interested to hear people's preferences...
Thursday, 25 January 2007
An appeal
My last mention of north Norfolk for a while, I promise.
Something struck me the other day, as I was sitting there considering the frostbite in several of my toes. The area is full of second homes owned by Londoners, and by all accounts Wells and Burnham Market turn into Hampstead-by-the-Sea in summer, so it’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more novels set in the locality. The Suffolk coast around Aldeburgh, beloved of the capital’s literati, seems to have featured in umpteen novels in recent years, but I can’t really think of any Norfolk equivalents. And looking back, the only examples I could come up with were The Go-Between (great, but set somewhere a bit further inland, I think), and The Eagle Has Landed, which let’s face it, is a good thriller but not literature as such (I know that sounds highly pretentious, but you know what I mean).
I’d be amazed if such a distinctive and evocative part of Britain hadn’t inspired at least a few good books, in the same sort of way as the Welsh border did Bruce Chatwin’s On The Black Hill, so if you know of any, let me know.
Finally, it’s Burns Night. I have only the faintest trace of Scottish ancestry, so I won’t be down at the Rangers Club in Thringstone tonight, but celebrating a national poet in such style is only to be encouraged. I don’t know that many of his poems, but this is a nice one, recommended by my colleague Mike.
Plus, anyone who can be moved to write a paean of praise to what amounts to an oversized sausage is OK by me.
Something struck me the other day, as I was sitting there considering the frostbite in several of my toes. The area is full of second homes owned by Londoners, and by all accounts Wells and Burnham Market turn into Hampstead-by-the-Sea in summer, so it’s perhaps surprising that there aren’t more novels set in the locality. The Suffolk coast around Aldeburgh, beloved of the capital’s literati, seems to have featured in umpteen novels in recent years, but I can’t really think of any Norfolk equivalents. And looking back, the only examples I could come up with were The Go-Between (great, but set somewhere a bit further inland, I think), and The Eagle Has Landed, which let’s face it, is a good thriller but not literature as such (I know that sounds highly pretentious, but you know what I mean).
I’d be amazed if such a distinctive and evocative part of Britain hadn’t inspired at least a few good books, in the same sort of way as the Welsh border did Bruce Chatwin’s On The Black Hill, so if you know of any, let me know.
Finally, it’s Burns Night. I have only the faintest trace of Scottish ancestry, so I won’t be down at the Rangers Club in Thringstone tonight, but celebrating a national poet in such style is only to be encouraged. I don’t know that many of his poems, but this is a nice one, recommended by my colleague Mike.
Plus, anyone who can be moved to write a paean of praise to what amounts to an oversized sausage is OK by me.
Saturday, 30 December 2006
Books of the Year etc
As I mentioned the other day, an awful lot of my reading and listening these days is what you might call back-catalogue stuff, usually catching up with books and records that have been acknowledged as classics for decades (at least) yet which I've somehow managed to avoid without even trying.
That's meant there's been precious little room for new material, and of course there's also the fact that new books are so expensive. But anyway, here goes.
As regards poetry, I've bought a lot, but very little of it new. Andy Brown's Selected Poems, Fall Of The Rebel Angels, was a pleasure, particularly as it's good to read a poet who makes no bones about keeping feet in all the (supposedly antagonistic) poetry 'camps'. It's eclectic enough to ensure that there's something in there for most tastes. Geoff Hattersley's New and Selected, Back of Beyond, was enjoyable enough too, although I suppose it would be fair to say I was disappointed with the newer work, and happier with the older material (especially the stuff I hadn't seen before). Simon Armitage's Tyrannosaurus Rex vs The Corduroy Kid was a difficult one to work out. In fact, Andy Brown had given it a rave review in Stride Magazine but again I was a little disappointed, feeling that there was maybe too much filler in there. That said, there was a refreshing willingness to try new directions too, so I suspect one or two of the pieces that didn't hit home first time round might grow on me on second reading.
That leaves Peter Sansom's The Last Place On Earth (see earlier post) and Hugo Williams' Dear Room as my two favourites. Now the latter certainly didn't explore new directions, or take obvious risks, instead picking up pretty much where the excellent Billy's Rain left off, and I suppose it was the sort of book you'd hate if you hate Williams' poetry, if that doesn't sound blindlingly obvious. But the point is, I do, like it that is, precisely because, in its own understated, unobtrusive way, it's as individual as any poetry being written in the UK. Williams consistently pulls off a very difficult balancing act, of being wryly funny even as he dissects failing relationships, and best of all, of creating an elegant, almost foppish poetic persona that is seemingly him but that couldn't really be (no one could write such honed, taut poetry and actually be as bemused as all that, could they?).
Three more to mention. Of the pamphlets (and I read a lot, either through reviewing or because I like the look and feel of a chapbook far better than a full collection a lot of the time), Gill McEvoy's Uncertain Days was the highlight. I make no apologies for picking a fellow Happenstance poet - buy it and you'll see what I mean. Intensely personal, but perfectly controlled too.
Finally, there were two books by a Nebraskan poet, Matt Mason. I got his chapbook, When The Bough Breaks, through an online pamphlet exchange scheme (more on that and Matt in a few weeks) and intially wondered what I was in for, given that it's about the death of his father from AIDS. In fact, it was wonderful - very moving, but also very funny, and with some imaginative leaps that really take you by surprise. His full collection, Things We Didn't Know We Didn't Know, was just as good, if more wide-ranging in its subject matter, but as I say, I'll post full details of how to buy both books early in January.
Where the back catalogue is concerned, Lee Harwood's Collected Poems is proving a favourite. There's plenty to puzzle over, plenty to dislike, even, but also huge amounts to inspire and delight.
My reading of novels was pretty restricted (although I've got a few good ones saved up for the New Year), and few stick in the memory. David Mitchell's Black Swan Green was good enough, but a big letdown after Cloud Atlas, which I loved. Lavinia Greenlaw's An Irresponsible Age had me spluttering with annoyance in a handful of places (mainly when she strays from her pleasingly spare prose to be self-consciously poetic), but was otherwise excellent, not least because most of the characters were so well drawn.
Music? Well, predictably, I loved Yo La Tengo's I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, which returned to the inspired genre-hopping of 1997's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. It's maybe not quite up to the standard of that particular classic, but it still contains more ideas than a lot of bands have in a lifetime. It's the only album this year that I can honestly say I can't stop listening to, so it'll have to be my number one.
And that's it. Happy New Year to everyone - see you all in 2007
That's meant there's been precious little room for new material, and of course there's also the fact that new books are so expensive. But anyway, here goes.
As regards poetry, I've bought a lot, but very little of it new. Andy Brown's Selected Poems, Fall Of The Rebel Angels, was a pleasure, particularly as it's good to read a poet who makes no bones about keeping feet in all the (supposedly antagonistic) poetry 'camps'. It's eclectic enough to ensure that there's something in there for most tastes. Geoff Hattersley's New and Selected, Back of Beyond, was enjoyable enough too, although I suppose it would be fair to say I was disappointed with the newer work, and happier with the older material (especially the stuff I hadn't seen before). Simon Armitage's Tyrannosaurus Rex vs The Corduroy Kid was a difficult one to work out. In fact, Andy Brown had given it a rave review in Stride Magazine but again I was a little disappointed, feeling that there was maybe too much filler in there. That said, there was a refreshing willingness to try new directions too, so I suspect one or two of the pieces that didn't hit home first time round might grow on me on second reading.
That leaves Peter Sansom's The Last Place On Earth (see earlier post) and Hugo Williams' Dear Room as my two favourites. Now the latter certainly didn't explore new directions, or take obvious risks, instead picking up pretty much where the excellent Billy's Rain left off, and I suppose it was the sort of book you'd hate if you hate Williams' poetry, if that doesn't sound blindlingly obvious. But the point is, I do, like it that is, precisely because, in its own understated, unobtrusive way, it's as individual as any poetry being written in the UK. Williams consistently pulls off a very difficult balancing act, of being wryly funny even as he dissects failing relationships, and best of all, of creating an elegant, almost foppish poetic persona that is seemingly him but that couldn't really be (no one could write such honed, taut poetry and actually be as bemused as all that, could they?).
Three more to mention. Of the pamphlets (and I read a lot, either through reviewing or because I like the look and feel of a chapbook far better than a full collection a lot of the time), Gill McEvoy's Uncertain Days was the highlight. I make no apologies for picking a fellow Happenstance poet - buy it and you'll see what I mean. Intensely personal, but perfectly controlled too.
Finally, there were two books by a Nebraskan poet, Matt Mason. I got his chapbook, When The Bough Breaks, through an online pamphlet exchange scheme (more on that and Matt in a few weeks) and intially wondered what I was in for, given that it's about the death of his father from AIDS. In fact, it was wonderful - very moving, but also very funny, and with some imaginative leaps that really take you by surprise. His full collection, Things We Didn't Know We Didn't Know, was just as good, if more wide-ranging in its subject matter, but as I say, I'll post full details of how to buy both books early in January.
Where the back catalogue is concerned, Lee Harwood's Collected Poems is proving a favourite. There's plenty to puzzle over, plenty to dislike, even, but also huge amounts to inspire and delight.
My reading of novels was pretty restricted (although I've got a few good ones saved up for the New Year), and few stick in the memory. David Mitchell's Black Swan Green was good enough, but a big letdown after Cloud Atlas, which I loved. Lavinia Greenlaw's An Irresponsible Age had me spluttering with annoyance in a handful of places (mainly when she strays from her pleasingly spare prose to be self-consciously poetic), but was otherwise excellent, not least because most of the characters were so well drawn.
Music? Well, predictably, I loved Yo La Tengo's I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, which returned to the inspired genre-hopping of 1997's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One. It's maybe not quite up to the standard of that particular classic, but it still contains more ideas than a lot of bands have in a lifetime. It's the only album this year that I can honestly say I can't stop listening to, so it'll have to be my number one.
And that's it. Happy New Year to everyone - see you all in 2007
Friday, 29 December 2006
Buy now!
A friend of mine, Mark Jones, has his first novella out now, from ISMs Press. It's called The Garden Of Doubt On The Island Of Shadows, and you can read more about it, and order it, by clicking here.
The way publishing is nowadays, it's even harder to get short stories and novellas in print than poetry, so it's always nice to see someone you know managing to pick out the difficult path to publication. I've not read it yet, but if his previous short stories are anything to go by, it'll be right up the street of anyone who likes well-written macabre fiction (think Ray Bradbury, maybe, as well as the names mentioned on the ISMs website).
Actually, Mark was my boss when I worked in Cardiff, and a jolly good boss too, albeit one with a dark and twisted imagination, or as dark and twisted as sub-editing the Pontypridd Observer and Cynon Valley Leader allowed.
The way publishing is nowadays, it's even harder to get short stories and novellas in print than poetry, so it's always nice to see someone you know managing to pick out the difficult path to publication. I've not read it yet, but if his previous short stories are anything to go by, it'll be right up the street of anyone who likes well-written macabre fiction (think Ray Bradbury, maybe, as well as the names mentioned on the ISMs website).
Actually, Mark was my boss when I worked in Cardiff, and a jolly good boss too, albeit one with a dark and twisted imagination, or as dark and twisted as sub-editing the Pontypridd Observer and Cynon Valley Leader allowed.
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