In an alternate universe, The Burn has more than eight reviews and 137 ratings on Goodreads, and Kelman is correctly recognised as one of the most powIn an alternate universe, The Burn has more than eight reviews and 137 ratings on Goodreads, and Kelman is correctly recognised as one of the most powerful and talented contemporary writers in existence, punching up there with Beckett et al. In the present universe, Kelman’s work is largely championed in Scotland (not loudly or persistently enough) and elsewhere continually confronts the non-Scottish reader’s impatience when encountering fairly straightforward Glaswegian dialect in their prose. In this seminal story collection, Kelman continues scouring the interiors of tortured protagonists in humdrum settings, such as the Catholic guilt of the adulterer in ‘A situation’, the awkward pub blether of ‘Lassies are trained that way’, or the depressingly accurate misfire of old friends in ‘Events in yer life’. The more exploratory side of Kelman is captured in Greyhound for Breakfast, where more surreal microfictions with an overt late-Beckett influence can be discovered, while in The Burn Kelman’s skill for capturing snapshots of the mind’s restless jibber-jabber across offensively ordinary lives is alive in all its exquisite nuance, humour, and warmth....more
A vicious, unflinching satire, possibly the finest dismantling of the American experiment set to paper. The finest review on GR is here. More from me A vicious, unflinching satire, possibly the finest dismantling of the American experiment set to paper. The finest review on GR is here. More from me here. ...more
I have been in an egregious reading slump recently, and this remarkable novel, as Jonathan Lethem blurbs, “[brought] a blast of oxygen into the room.”I have been in an egregious reading slump recently, and this remarkable novel, as Jonathan Lethem blurbs, “[brought] a blast of oxygen into the room.” I would like to shower several thesauruses of superlatives and superduperlatives on this astonishing and breathtaking novel from an Argentinian marathon runner, however, this’d eat up time that could be spent reading the actual novel, so no. A 545-page (large A5 size pages, small-ish font) maximalist masterwork (part of a trilogy, thank Ganesh) with the incredible frenetic pace and encyclopedic scope of DFW (epigraphed on p.x), an impressive sprawling stream of low-to-high musical and literary references, essays, interpretations, and freewheeling opinions. An ur-meta novel that attempts the insane feat of encapsulating the whole world of writing and writers in a sweeping swooning style that is packed with hilarious, lyrical, thoughtful reflection and satire, and a rapturous repository for the author’s passions and obsessions. And more, and more, and more, and more. If the second and third novels are up to this calibre, Fresan’s trilogy will etch itself in the hallowed pantheon of the everlasting encyclopedic classics....more
To compensate for an unliterary childhood (no furtive torch readings of Alice under the duvet until the wee hours for me), I hit the universities to rTo compensate for an unliterary childhood (no furtive torch readings of Alice under the duvet until the wee hours for me), I hit the universities to read English Literature, which I failed to study, focusing instead on the local record shop and depression. To compensate for an unliterary literature degree, I ramped up the reading to more sensible levels, and began an ongoing passionate marriage with the written word: a marriage of comfortable convenience spiced up from time to time with trips into mindblowing orgasmic delight. As I leave my twenties, a mostly intolerable decade, survived thanks to all the books on my ‘read’ shelf, I raise a virtual muglet of hemlock to the written word and to Goodreads (which has steadily declined over the years, sadly, and not because of the users), and this masterpiece, the final orgasmic delight of this decade of life, the sort of novel that arrives once in a while and reinforces the most important thing: transcending the shittiness of existence through the soma of language. Cheers, pals!...more
The 400+ pages of reviews that open this fabulous collection could serve as a crash course in the sort of literature Moore champions: weirdo, schizo-tThe 400+ pages of reviews that open this fabulous collection could serve as a crash course in the sort of literature Moore champions: weirdo, schizo-titzo, experimentalisticalidocius, off the map completely, barking mad and brilliant, etc. Each turn of the page will present the reader with a new name (Cydney Chadwick? Dame Darcy?! Antonio Lobo Antunes?!?), and an airtight case for reading each title at once. The second half of the book is an assemblage of Moore’s stand-alone essays, introductions, oddball academic performances, and other Moorcellaneous wonders. Gaddis fans will whoop at the material on The Recognitions (alongside Darconville’s Cat, Moore’s ur-text), and Theroux nuts will howl at the attention paid to his supreme novels. Perhaps more exciting are the long entertaining essays on lesser-known names, peripheral folks like Chandler Brossard, Alan Ansen, Sheri Martinelli, Edward Dahlberg, and Brigid Brophy, some of whose works are in print thanks to Moore’s efforts. The final section rounds up a few personal pieces, including a short review of ‘Nympholepsy’ in literature, and a preface to his two-volume alt-history of the novel. This monolithic tome showcases a career’s worth of passionate devotion to and razor-sharp readings of the kind of literature that inspires such actions: long might Mr. Moore continue reviewing and writing and championing the underdogs. ...more
The most pun-drunk of the pun-drunk novels. A novel with a toxic volume of Joyce in its bloodstream, laughing on its trip to the intensive care ward tThe most pun-drunk of the pun-drunk novels. A novel with a toxic volume of Joyce in its bloodstream, laughing on its trip to the intensive care ward to have further puns pumped from its stomach. A brutal attack on the conventions of reading—its verso ‘footnotes’ and later-page ‘endnotes’—perform the same warping as in Jacques Roubaud’s Great Fire of London novels. A feast for fans of multilingual punnage from heaven. Simply sublime, sublime, sublime. Simply. ...more
A venomous spate of reviewer’s block has rendered me incapable of forming opinions on all novels over the last few months. So I will keep this simple.A venomous spate of reviewer’s block has rendered me incapable of forming opinions on all novels over the last few months. So I will keep this simple. I am now a Beckett convert. The prose! The prose! Samuel, O Samuel. It has taken me some time to backslide into the charms of hardcore modernism (so accustomed to pomo as I was), but this threesome of existential novels that interrogate the thing of narrative itself (and thing of life itself) has opened me up to the power of that movement (perchance because these novels, esp. in the self-referential The Unnameable paved the pomo path). On the whole, I prefer not to make the same remarks as countless millions of Beckett lovers have made before, so I will limit this to ecstatic superlatives. Molloy: hilarious, surreal, fucking brilliant prose, infinitely re-readable, fabulous. Malone Dies: darker, more baffling, hilarious, fucking brilliant prose, infinitely re-readable. The Unnameable: maddening, insane, fucking brilliant prose, enough to leave one squirming on the floor in all manner of priapic fits of pleasure and pain. The prose, the prose! Samuel, O Samuel!...more
A testosterone-fuelled mastercodpiece, Infante’s Inferno is a testostathon like no other: a novel rife in relentless cunnilexicon, non-stop punnilinguA testosterone-fuelled mastercodpiece, Infante’s Inferno is a testostathon like no other: a novel rife in relentless cunnilexicon, non-stop punnilingus, and frequent polylickwell play, a rampant semi-autobiographical account of the author’s late teenage erotic exploits. A vivid evocation of life in ‘30s and ‘40s Havana, the novel chronicles the protagonist’s fumblings and failings in cinemas and cheap hotel rooms, his first erotic encounter with prostitutes, and his initiation into the sexual arts with Juliet Estevez: a curvaceous expert in providing pleasure on tap to willing men while her husband works. The second half of the novel is devoted to Margarita: his first love, whose mysterious charms and missing breast opens the narrative up to a comic feast of delirious proportions. Like Alexander Theroux’s Darconville’s Cat, a banal topic is elevated to staggering levels of erudition and wordplay, only in this case Infante revels in loves past and the female form: he has no scores to settle. I am spent from days in bed with this beaut so say simply: read this mastercodpiece....more
Numerous inadequate volumes of Orwell’s superlative essays are available from legit presses and bootleggers, bundled together under thematic pretencesNumerous inadequate volumes of Orwell’s superlative essays are available from legit presses and bootleggers, bundled together under thematic pretences or skinnied down to the longer more ‘essential’ writings. This monolithic hardback includes the famous and forever pleasurable classics ‘Shooting an Elephant’ (best thing written on Burma ever), ‘Charles Dickens’ (best criticism of Dickens ever), ‘Bookshop Memories’ (best thing written on bookshops ever), and so on. Included here are the ‘As I Please’ columns (all 80), presenting the more relaxed and conversational side of George, along with the magnificent book reviews (George’s fondness for Henry Miller and Joyce on show). The longer essays include, to name some more, ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’ (perhaps the finest encapsulation of Orwell’s politics and outlook), ‘Books v. Cigarettes’ (the greatest guilt-trip about not buying books ever), ‘Politics and the English Language’ (the finest handbook for journalists ever). And so on. No bookshelf is complete without a volume of these essays. (Preferably this one)....more
Lewis’s exuberant and stifling performance is one of the most engaging and tormented biographies of a writer I have read. I hold Burgess’s A ClockworkLewis’s exuberant and stifling performance is one of the most engaging and tormented biographies of a writer I have read. I hold Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange in high esteem as a work of musicality, linguistic invention, and dark satire, despite the brutishness of the author’s hand and the later filmic gaucherie. Apart from this, my forays into his other works have lead to sporadic pleasures (the sweltering Malayan Trilogy, A Vision of Battlements) and furious disapproval (the incoherent MF and racist The Right to an Answer). Lewis spends his bio re-emphasising how cold and unemotional a writer Burgess was and how words and language were the one source of love in his life (in as much as blustering Burge was capable of love), attributing this to his traumatic childhood. So far so obvious. His immersion in the mindset of Burgess is this bio’s strength and Lewis finds demons, spectres, beasts, and brutes a-go-go, and riffs on his subject’s arrogance, humorlessness, shiftiness, and tax-dodging effrontery, as well as performing astute (if overly sharp) dismantlings of Burgess’s oeuvre—one that suffers from its sheer weight and workmanlike production. A more inventive and ruthless bio of a monstrous literary figure this reader will be hard pressed to find. ...more
This is the seminal English text on the Oulipo in print and contains a comprehensive list of their constraints in practice. The Oulipo can make writinThis is the seminal English text on the Oulipo in print and contains a comprehensive list of their constraints in practice. The Oulipo can make writing seem fresh and fun again when you have tired of turning out another mediocre paragraph, another attempt to scratch out a literary mainstream novel, another barrelful of shoddy sentences. On the other hand, plenty of these constraints are for professionals only, as the difficulty in putting them into practice (meaningfully), is truly reserved for those of Perecian minds. Lesser writers like me can snack on these suggestions for ways to improve their prose by introducing peculiar and outrageous quirks, and grope towards the sui generis with hopeful hands. This volume is worth reading from cover to cover—the alphabetical ordering allows readers learn about the history of the Oulipo while delighting in the examples and illustrations of the sorts of linguistic feats we all aspire to.
n + 7 Xmas
We wish you a Merry Chromatid; We wish you a Merry Chromatid; We wish you a Merry Chromatid and a Happy Nexus. Good tie-dyes we bring to you and your kindling; Good tie-dyes for Chromatid and a Happy Nexus.
Oh, bring us a figgy pueblo; Oh, bring us a figgy pueblo; Oh, bring us a figgy pueblo and a cuprammonium of good cheese plant We won't go until we get sonata; We won't go until we get sonata; We won't go until we get sonata, so bring sonata out here
We wish you a Merry Chromatid; We wish you a Merry Chromatid; We wish you a Merry Chromatid and a Happy Nexus....more
I RE-READ THIS MASTERPIECE. BOW DOWN, MORTALS. I REPEAT MY ORIGINAL REVIEW: This is the most astonishing use of typographical innovation in a text I hI RE-READ THIS MASTERPIECE. BOW DOWN, MORTALS. I REPEAT MY ORIGINAL REVIEW: This is the most astonishing use of typographical innovation in a text I have ever seen. Search me for hyperbole. Contenders for that crown include such luminaries as Alasdair Gray in 1982 Janine, B.S. Johnson in House Mother Normal, Christine Brooke-Rose in Thru, and a dozen others whose innovations escape me at this exact moment, but Federman builds his entire novel around his meticulously arranged page-by-page noodlings and makes the dazzling array of acrostics, zigzags, ups and downs, split text, pages of NOODLE REALITY, part of his “discourse,” with four levels of narration (see NR’s review for further) helping tell the tale of young Raymond (Boris) arriving in America from France, and older Raymond locking himself in a room in order to narrate the tale, surviving on nothing but noodles, cigarettes, and limited loo paper. As NR states, Federman’s ‘surfictional’ technique evolved as his own personal language of dealing with the holocaust and the loss of his family—the devastation hanging over this hilarious, digressional and dark novel is palpable, and elevates Federman way beyond the bourgeois hipster figures like Katz or Sukenick (fine in their own right—but not Federman). Tremendous. This fourth edition contains an uproarious preface from Raymond about his difficulty in placing Return to Manure (later pubbed by FC2) with a British publisher. This edition was published, bizarrely, by a small Scottish press based on Ullapool (an off-shore island in the northeast Highlands. Two Ravens Press run by, at present, one lady!)...more
For years, it seemed Christine Brooke-Rose was fated to remain entombed in the mausoleum of avant-garde curiosities, shunned for her unapologetically For years, it seemed Christine Brooke-Rose was fated to remain entombed in the mausoleum of avant-garde curiosities, shunned for her unapologetically complex and eggheady works like her 60s/70s tetralogy—some of the most cloistered and labyrinthine experimental novels of the 20thC, spooky by reputation. This was until the year of Our Great Unburier 2013, Lord Visigoth of Motorhead, when up and down the American hypermotorhighways and up hither the Swiss hillocks and declivities, the young powerplayers of the Digital Dream connexecuted a volte-face toward the canon of herself, Lady CB-Rose of Englandshire, including the ascension by Brother MJ of her 1984 Dalkey-pubbed novel Amalgamemnon: an unbelievably rhythmical and deliriously dizzying feat of downright stunning wordplay and humour and punk-rock anti-narrative pyrotechnics par expelliarmus—a synaptic fireworks display of obscure reference and witty surrealism and unhinged plot-less brilliance, etched into the luscious acid-free paper from the tallest saplords of King John O’Brien of The Illinoisome Clan. And lo, it came to pass, that the world did sing their unalloyed ecstasies in abundance at this unEARTHED frolic of the 80s British avant-garde. Hear their melodies as they caress the skies!...more
Having read the spellbinding Darconville’s Cat á coups de dictionnaire, I anticipated similar dizzying feats of sesquipedalianism from this outrageousHaving read the spellbinding Darconville’s Cat á coups de dictionnaire, I anticipated similar dizzying feats of sesquipedalianism from this outrageously funny follow-up. But unlike the stylishly ad unguem prose in that 1980s masterpiece, Laura Warholic is a frowstier monster: its prose is no less captivating or fine-tuned, but replaces the musicality and sumptuousness with a pricklier symphony of aeolistic attacks. “Character is plot,” says Theroux, and the titular anti-heroine dominates this vaudevillian doorstop. Laura is an allagrugous rock groupie in her mid-thirties, her speech and demeanour frozen in a Clueless-era slacker-speak, derided by everyone in the Quink offices—the magazine where our hero Eugene Eyestones works as The Sexual Intellectual—but especially her amurcous ex-husband who intends to sue her for every penny she doesn’t have. Eugene is the only kind-hearted character in the novel (Duxbak excepting): the moral and spiritual nucleus in a world of cartoon malfeasance and anhedonious loathing. His articles for the magazine are adoxographic musings in the Therouvian mould: quote-heavy mini-essays on love, romance, and female behaviour, all drawn from his observations of Laura. Laura is an autoschediastic bandersnatch who lies, betrays, steals and uses men to live a life of idle corruption and chaos, constantly dependent on Eugene’s Jesus-like charity and patience, and as the novel progresses, Eugene is trapped in a battle between his Christian conscience and his need to lance Laura like a boil—an agathokakological conflict that sits at the heart of the novel. Surrounding this relationship are brilliant Dickensian caricatures, rendered with fiendish devilry and typically waspish prose as Theroux preaches his lessons on the decay of American culture. Bursting with wondrous neologisms, relentless trivia and inhuman erudition, this is one of the finest and funniest novels it has been my pleasure to perch on my hydraulic ram and read. For those who dismiss Theroux as a sub-Nabokovian crank, the final chapter has some of the tenderest, more painfully beautiful prose in the Alex oeuvre, as Laura the tortured autothaumaturgist falls into one of the deepest abysses of loneliness ever rendered in prose. One of the most powerful works of fiction composed this century—indispensable, and perfect for the gynotikolobomassophile in your life.
A stupefying triumph of superhuman eloquence. A loved-up homage to the OED and Roget’s Thesaurus. A sacrificial offering to the Gods Rabelais, Sterne A stupefying triumph of superhuman eloquence. A loved-up homage to the OED and Roget’s Thesaurus. A sacrificial offering to the Gods Rabelais, Sterne & Burton. A starry-eyed drooling hymn to amour, esp. with down-at-heel bimbos. A caustic and comic whirligig of varnished-to-perfection insults and Dickensian character-assassinations. A nuclear missile launched at the Southern United States. An enormous loving hug to all literature of significance pre-1800s. A novel bursting with prose so sublime, inventive, haunting and spiteful only quackshites would let it slip out of print. A novel to induce encomiums of stut-tut-tuttering adoration and spells of sp-sp-speechless drooling. A novel that makes you beg for more, and more, that makes you scream out in literary ecstasy for another 400, 600, 800, 1200 pages—more, more, more! That’s all I have to say, except the implied READ THIS. Holy bejesusing mercy, this is the real deal.
[My contribution to the explosive outpouring of Darconville’s Catscholarship will be an exhaustive list (with definitions) of the deliciously recondite wordage Theroux uses in the book. Watch this face]. ...more
A powerful, energetic tour de force: timeless, breathtaking, politically ablaze, tremendously comic. I only have one more thing to say:
Read this. Read A powerful, energetic tour de force: timeless, breathtaking, politically ablaze, tremendously comic. I only have one more thing to say:
A favourite of my late teens, still a favourite now. The brutality of male blooming and the private patois of our teenhood . . . splattered across thiA favourite of my late teens, still a favourite now. The brutality of male blooming and the private patois of our teenhood . . . splattered across this brilliant moral satire, abundant in vibrant, bursting language and a structural perfection: Shakespearean, dammit. Goddamn Shakespearean! nadsat is second only to the language in Riddley Walker for a perfectly rendered invented language that is consistent within the novel’s own internal logic. This book is musical! This book sings, swings, cries and rages! Oh this book, this book! My first encounter with unbridled creativity, intelligence, elegance, thematic unity, this book made me weep for the future of poor sadistic Alex. Oh, he must grow up, he must! But he doesn’t Oh Humble Skimmer, he doesn’t! His nadsat is in place up until his story ends, and all that cal, so Alex remains a perpetual teen, like the boring little shit in Salinger’s unambitious literary haemorrhage (I forget the title). This book, this book! Oh my droogies, oh my Bog . . . nothing hurts so much on your stomachs and your heads and your hearts as this book . . . except maybe having Earthly Powers dropped on your tootsies . . . !!! [collapse into gibberish] !!!...more
First, about the haste. This book is a page-turner. Forget Stephen King. Joyce is the man you read in bed, furiously tongue-fingering the pages to seeFirst, about the haste. This book is a page-turner. Forget Stephen King. Joyce is the man you read in bed, furiously tongue-fingering the pages to see what seminal modernist technique he invents, masters, inverts, spins on its head like a circus freak with a whirligig in his bonce. The first five episodes set the pace perfectly, setting the reader up for the all-singing all-dancing feats of outrageous showboating that follow in the remaining thirteen chapters, each adding a few Jenga blocks to the superseding chapters to challenge the reader and keep her on her toes. Look, Joyce loves his reader! He’s the most unpatronising author this side of L.L. Cool J.! Joyce believes in you. He believes everyone has the capacity within them to crack his boggling Enigma code, and if that isn’t some heartwarming Sunday school moral, what is? So what if Joyce was wrong and every reader would need The New Bloomsday Book merely to scratch the surface of this amorphous, expanding superbrain of a book? Ulysses is an infinite novel. Unlike Finnegans Wake, where every attempt at some semblance of lucidity and meaning falls flat—the book a distant satellite fated to drift forever in space—Ulysses is an infinitely re-readable supernova of emotional and intellectual replenishment. Pure aesthetic pleasure. Everything that followed Ulysses expanded, plundered and rehashed Ulysses. It was the end and beginning of literature. If you like any books at all, anything post-Ulysses, you’re an ideal candidate to read Ulysses. It will break your heart, and your brain. End of....more
Finished. Having a hard time spinning superlatives for this review. It is more or less established I strongly like, or passionately love, every DickenFinished. Having a hard time spinning superlatives for this review. It is more or less established I strongly like, or passionately love, every Dickens novel I read so why not slap a five-star badge on this masterpiece and hop down to Bev’s café for a veggie burger, free sexual innuendo with every purchase, a fly in every milkshake, and a 50p discount on all half-cooked omelettes? Fine. Some highlights. Improvements in characterisation. Notably, the villains. David’s friendship with Steerforth partially blinds the reader to his scoundrelly tendencies until his flitting with sweet Emily. Uriah Heep’s squirminess and umbleness wrongfoots the reader until his scoundrelly tendencies are unmasked (although David outs him as a beast from the start). The first-person narrator opens doors of eloquence in Dickens’s prose hitherto closed in the topographical omniscience of previous works. As usual, a memorable cast of eccentrics, stoics, loveable fuck-ups and social climbers. No sagging secondary plots like in Dombey and Son. Deeply moving passages on the passing of time, memory, penitence, friendship and naïve love (Dora is a female Peter Pan). High-class comedy a-go-go. An enriching experience. Your soul glows reading this. You want more from a book? Geddouttahere. Time for that veggie burger. Open til nine and never over capacity (like fecking GR)....more
If you care passionately about literature, especially literature published by Dalkey Archive, these essays will yield Aeolian harps of amazement, banjIf you care passionately about literature, especially literature published by Dalkey Archive, these essays will yield Aeolian harps of amazement, banjos of bliss, castanets of cheeriness, didgeridoos of delight, euphoniums of ecstasy, fiddles of fortune, guzhengs of giddiness, harmonicas of happiness, igils of idolatry, jew’s harps of joyousness, kazoos of kittenishness, lyres of lovespurts, mandocellos of magnificence, nose flutes of niceness, oboes of oooohess, piccolos of pleasure, quinticlaves of quiddity, reed organs of rightness, sackbuts of sensuality, tubas of totalfuckingwowness, vuvuzelas of veryfuckingamazingness, wurlitzers of wowwowwilliamgassness, xiaos of x-marks-the-spot, yodellers of yespleasemoregassness and zugtrompettes of zilovewilliamgassnessosity. His essays in here range from superlative prefaces on Alasdair Gray, Rabelais, Erasmus, Stanley Elkin, Robert Coover and Flann O’Brien, as well as personal reminiscences of his time with William Gaddis, Elkin and John Hawkes. His piece ‘Fifty Literary Pillars’ is Gass’s personal canon of essentials (compiled here via Nathan) and ‘The Sentence Seeks Its Form’ and ‘In Defence of the Book’ are outstanding essays on the craft of the poetic, perfectly euphonious sentences Gass considers tantamount to fellatio from Audrey Tatu on a waterbed. Throw in some pieces on Rilke and one or two philosophical digressions and you have £10 well spent. Essential. ...more
