HOW WILL I TELL CLIVE ABOUT MY FUGITIVE VISIONS?

LIVE FROM PERRIN'S

2012-01-08T15:59:00.000Z

THE VARIED FATE OF THE LAST BATTERY HEN IN PITY ME, CO. DURHAM

2012-01-06T19:34:00.000Z

If it was true that when last night before his desk he sat head on veiny forearms, a very young man though ordinarily as capable as most people at that moment as helpless as most people, until Honey called from the other room – the bedroom – it was the third time, Come to bed, without getting an answer for the third time, and again, Come to bed, and he raised his head, roared, NO, then lowered it onto his fist propped elbow on desk, staring at his blank page with an expression that looked like the mask of misery, saying to himself, it’s like being in space so empty you don’t even know whether you’re there, trying to describe what was happening so it would stop happening, this paralysis, to call it a paralysis, because he would know what to think about it and more important, what to feel about it, and she came to the door of the bedroom and moaned, What are you doing? In her blue pyjamas and the single long braid of thick brown hair that she slept in coming over her shoulder, falling like a brush between her breasts, sleepy, cranky, eyes half closed and cheeks flushed from the warmth of bed, and he answered, I’m laying an egg, she opened her eyes to a wide fuzzy, unfocused, sleepy, guileless brown, asking, You’re what?

-The Permanent Crisis, Ronald Sukenick

(Because I am too eternally grateful and delighted to be here to bitch n' moan about the minor inconveniences incurred whilst playing football for a living.)

THE BLOSSOMEST BLOSSOM

2011-11-07T22:46:00.000Z

Below my window in Ross, when I'm working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance ... not that I'm interested in reassuring people - bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.

With H. to see George Shaw show n' tell at the Baltic on Saturday. What to do when a Turner Prize nominee shares your fugitive visions? Les Dawson, Lady Godiva, Kenneth Williams, Rita Tushingham: Me too, George, me too! Must Matthew Collings act as one's go-between when attempting to invite a Turner Prize nominee on a fact-finding mission to the disused Humbrol Factory on Marfleet Lane? I expect we'll commune privately. Anyway, for now, he reminded me of this, about which, fucking hell, I cannot say a single thing.

THE RUSTLE OF THE REAL

2011-07-19T00:03:00.000+01:00

Bloody hell. I think it might be time for me to dust off the old tinfoil hat...

COMPLEXITY-AS-SUCH

2011-04-19T13:35:00.002+01:00

The uncanny has, as it were, been domesticated as yet another version of "an ethic" of better living through ambiguity, the ethic that of course continues to underwrite a wide range of literary studies.
- Mark Seltzer, "The Graphic Unconscious: A Response"

I was there during the Great Uncanny Goldrush of the mid-noughties, and for this diffident taught postgraduate in search of a lexicon with which to talk about "what makes weird stuff weird", that thing "The Uncanny" was a gift. It made "woooargh" legit. I'm still here, five years later, though, 'cos it's not quite as simple as that. That's the thing, with chasing the ball over the hill - you can't catch it, no, but neither is it enough to just stand there and point as it rolls away.

HONOUR

2011-03-28T18:52:00.001+01:00

One day, this thing's going to be more than a simple repository for disbelief, but until then here's a thought: sometimes the only thing to do when you're over a barrel is to fall on the sword.

EDIT: Or, indeed, to issue a swift rebuttal on your website.

THE GREAT HUG

2011-03-24T13:03:00.001Z

Pin Lady has the Pin of Tomorrow Night - a wicked pin, those who have seen it say. That great hug, when Balloon Man and Pin Lady roll down the hill together, will be frightening. The horses will run away in all directions. Ordinary people will cover their heads with shopping bags. I don't want to think about it. You blow up all them balloons yourself, Balloon Man? Or did you have help? Pin Lady, how come you're so apricklededee? Was it something in your childhood?

Balloon Man will lead off with the Balloon of Grace Under Pressure, Do Not Pierce or Incinerate.

Pin Lady will counter with the Pin of Oh My, I Forgot.

Balloon Man will produce the Balloon of Almost Wonderful.

Pin Lady will come back with the Pin of They Didn't Like Me Much. Balloon Man will sneak in there with the Balloon of the Last Exit Before the Toll Is Taken. Pin Lady will reply with the Pin of One Never Knows for Sure. Balloon Man will propose the Balloon of Better Days. Pin Lady, the Pin of Whiter Wine.

It's gonna be bad, I don't want to think about it.
(cont.)
------------
Because of this bloody article, and his idiotic "Contract", Jonathan Franzen's face became pinned to the bullseye in the dartboard of my imagination. (Before then, it was Zadie Smith for this bloody thing and yes, you're right, perhaps I shouldn't be pursuing my academic research in the manner of of Wile E. Coyote packing an Acme anvil - though I've a 5-page square-up as to why prepared, if you're askin'.)

This question of "consolation" and fiction is not quite as simple as bluster, though, is it, as the copy of Donald Barthelme's "Sixty Stories" on my bedside table indicates.

EPHEMERA (THAT'S THE NATURE OF RESEARCH)

2011-03-24T12:32:00.000Z

Yes, Youtuber, that's pretty much what I'm getting at. And The Fall soundtracking "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" would have been a bit pat, a bit so just so. So, thanks!

IN THE TOOL SHED AT THE HOUSE OF FICTION

2011-03-20T17:14:00.000Z

If you live a daily life and it is all yours, and you come to own everything outside your daily life besides and it is all yours, you naturally begin to explain. You naturally continue describing your daily life which is all yours, and you naturally begin to explain how you own everything else besides. You naturally begin to explain that to yourself and you naturally begin to explain it to those living your daily life who own it with you, everything outside, and you naturally explain it in a kind of way to some of those whom you own.

- "What is English Literature", Gertrude Stein

Between the set text (Ian Watt, Raymond Williams) and the seasoning (Steven Moore), ENGL1061 "Introduction to the Novel" students, I hope you've taken note.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

2011-03-17T12:22:00.000Z

Professor Chris Higgins, Durham University's vice-chancellor, said: "We are passionate not just about excellence – but excellence with a smile."

To reflect my vice-chancellor's tiggerish willingness to conform to the new paradigm, today I am wearing 37 pieces of flair. I raise you "exasperation with a determined grimace", Professor Chris Higgins.

EVERYTHING MY MOTHER EVER TAUGHT ME ABOUT HOSPITALITY...

2011-02-27T14:44:00.000Z

NON-STOP AUTO-EROTIC CABARET

2011-02-21T15:49:00.000Z

This is a little belated for that celebration of universal intersubjectivity (which I spent, thanks for asking, wrapping my brain around Carl Jung and D.H. Lawrence), but, Ann Quin, this one's for you.

THIS DOES NOT SEEM STRANGE TO ME, IT DOES NOT SEEM STRANGE TO AN ECHO AND MORE SURELY IS IN THERE NOT BEING A HABIT

2011-01-16T17:03:00.000Z

Broadcast are an uncommon, perfect thing made of nought but pure predilection and Trish Keenan, who died on Friday, has been the subject of almost every disassociative identity flight of fancy I've had since about 1995.

THE STRANGEST CANCER STORY EVER

2011-01-16T15:55:00.000Z

2011-01-11T13:45:00.000Z

Taking the tinfoil hat off - momentarily, I promise - and putting my "professional" (ahem) hat on, here is some work-related news:

GIVING THE HORNET'S NEST A BIT OF A POKE NEWS
With impeccable timing, we began a series of seminars called "The Uses of Literature" - intended as an attempt to hash out why exactly we do this bloody thing we do and, of course, to take issue with the unacceptably utilitarian, actually terms of the question itself - on the same day the Comprehensive Spending Review was announced. We've done four now, with another tranche of speakers to follow this term, and it'sbeen spirited, heartening and even rather passionate. Heck, we've even started streaming 'em online, take a look:
http://inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com/

INCORRIGIBLE SELF PROMOTION NEWS
I reviewed Tom McCarthy's good-but-not-as-good-as-Remainder novel, C, for the Review of Contemporary Fiction here.

ends

THIS COUNTRY

2010-12-03T17:03:00.000Z

Been a little busy lately...

...back soon.

DINING OUT

2010-08-04T15:48:00.000+01:00

I wish I could say this was an ill-fated dinner party I attended. In fact, I will say this was an ill-fated dinner party I attended...

...

THE LONG, LONG DEATH OF THE NOVEL

2010-07-29T13:47:00.001+01:00

Apparently, novelist and critic Gabriel Josipovici has launched an “outspoken attack” on the contemporary British novel. Though you wouldn't know it from this article in the Guardian today, in which Josipovici sticks the boot into Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie, all of whom began their careers in the mid-seventies.

To be fair to him, Josipovici appears to be reacting against a much-heralded “renaissance” in the British novel in the 1980s – Dominic Head's recent book The State of the Novel: Britain and Beyond echoes these sentiments – a perception chivvied along by the introduction of big-money, big-publicity fiction prizes and efforts to caricature the preceding post-war period in British fiction as provincial, parochial and anachronistic. Still, he's lain in wait a good long while to launch his attack. Josipovici's broadside seems rather more at home in the old “situation of the novel” turf wars between Malcolm Bradbury, Bernard Bergonzi and David Lodge, than the 2010, now-with-added-iPads, incarnation of this perennial debate.

Josipovici's book is the latest (although with Barnes et al up against the wall, probably the most retrograde) iteration of recent debates that pitch the contemporary novel against a likely opponent and find the former lacking. For his modernism, see also near-constant speculation on the challenge to the novel's primacy by non-fiction, the short story, and the entity that threatens not only the form but also the medium of the dog-eared, spine-cracked paperback, the internet. There's certainly a debate to be had about the forms and functions of fiction today; in the midst of these portents of its own demise, the novel is being laden with moral and cultural imperatives as never before. However, these staged ties in the literary press seem like mere grist to the mill. It's unclear to what end Grub Street's hand-wringing is directed – is this ramping up of cultural anxiety intended to give our novelists a kick up the arse or just the opportunity for a little eschatological bandstanding? Let's just say this isn't the rigorous, robust debate we need on the fortunes of this most liberal humanist form after the death of liberal humanism.

Though, for sure, it's gratifying to take pot shots at these “arrogant and self-satisfied” literary éminences grises, I'd question how valid – and indeed how radical – such an intervention is. Though what constitutes this Josipovici's “modernism” remains unclear (it seems to reside, for the purposes of the Guardian article, in a rather woolly “sense of destiny”) the Amazon preview of the book tells me that he characterises modernism as “art coming to consciousness of its own limits and responsibilities”. I would suggest that both Grub Street and Ivory Tower might do similar.

ANY OTHER CITY

2010-07-19T01:22:00.001+01:00

Chicago is pretty much the coolest city I've ever visited, in the proper, old-fashioned, sense of the word.

2010-07-08T17:59:00.000+01:00

I met you under the balloon, on the occasion of your return from Norway; you asked if it was mine; I said it was. The balloon, I said, is a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure, having to do with the unease I felt at your absence, and with sexual deprivation, but now that your visit to Bergen has been terminated, it is no longer necessary or appropriate. Removal of the balloon was easy; trailer trucks carried away the depleted fabric, which is now stored in West Virginia, awaiting some other time of unhappiness, some time, perhaps, when we are angry with one another.

100,000 FIREFLIES

2010-06-16T19:13:00.000+01:00

LOW SLUNG

2010-06-16T05:13:00.001+01:00

Ah! So that's where the fine minds behind those out-of-town retail developments got their inspiration from. The strip mall, where if you're on two feet, you're probably one of those mads fucks with placards on the street corner, yelling about the end of the world. Here, I was honked at for walking. For walking!

Now, I'm really not being all squeamish here, I promise, but it really is completely impossible to be a pedestrian here. In fact, they set you booby traps: footpaths that snake off to nowhere, parking lots that test your long distance fettle and four-lane freeways with no crossing for three miles. It's megalophobic stuff: just you, a preternaturally enormous sky, and a big, fuck-off Walmart.

...AND I REALISED THERE WERE STILL POSSIBILITIES

2010-06-14T16:47:00.001+01:00

Sed realistas, exigid lo imposible.

Tomemos en serio la revolución, pero no nos tomamos en serio a nosotros mismos.

Millonarios de todos los países, uníos, el viento cambia.

Todo comienza en la mística y termina en política.

(inscripciones en los muros de Francia, "El Corno Emplumado", octubre 1968)

El Corno Emplumado - a story from the sixties from Anne Mette W. Nielsen on Vimeo.

ORANGE SKIES

2010-06-14T02:56:00.000+01:00

Mother Nature behaves like a mardy toddler here. Hot, sweaty and over-excitable all day, culminating in a mack-off, thunderous tantrum around 4pm. But she makes up for it just before bedtime, pulling sunsets like this out of the bag.

COME ON, FEEL ILLINOIS

2010-06-12T07:58:00.006+01:00

So, I'm in the Midwest on what is, ostensibly, a research trip, but might be more truthfully categorised as a four-week long gawping residency. I'm at the marvellous and upstanding Dalkey Archive Press (support 'em, they're the good 'uns) at the University of Illinois, spending hot, sticky Midwestern days prying into the personal correspondence of writers too dead to complain about it, and too obscure for any (scratch that, many) other buggers to care. Man, if you only knew the handwriting I've caressed these past two weeks. The press itself operates out of what looks like a ship's container, hoisted into the middle of the university's Department of Veterinary Sciences. Perhaps this is all a Pygmalian-esque exercise in improving the reading habits of horses, I'm not sure. And, of course, I'm griping about the heat, the humidity, the rare-ass "sharp" cheddar, with all the vigour of a big old limey jonesing for her first shot at being "exotic".

Anyway, here's the bit where I note, smugly, that all your worst suspicions about America are true:

#1. Bread. Now, I'm not about to get all precious about crust and olive oil content, but, my God! I have never seen - and made puerile pantomime with - so many flaccid baguettes. Supermarkets here appear to be shilling tawny pillows with delusions of grandeur.

#2. Cars. On the subject of bread, it's a 45-minute hike for a loaf. Yes, yes, I get it, I'm in a town in the Midwest, what did I expect? However, I still can't get used to the fine-honed logistical operation required to, you know, buy a cup of coffee. These cities are built to four-wheel dimensions, and it's making all my urbanist nodes ping. I didn't see a single other pedestrian for the first four days I was here, and I've ended up feeling rather embarrassed about using the pavement, like the gap between the roadside and the verge is here for decorative purposes only, and I'm despoiling it.

#3. The constant imagined threat of tornadoes. The weather is big here, massive. On Memorial Day (in a despair at not receiving a single invite to a festive cook-out from my new friends on the checkouts at Schnucks), I was shaking the torrential rain out my hair outside Walgreens like a fetid Labrador, when a ginormous bolt of lightning came down from the sky directly above. It was quite the Gothic scene. Now, I've no doubt my colleagues' stories of Tornado Terror are in almost completely directed towards, let's say, "yanking my chain", but "ominous wind" seems to mean something rather different here. Like a good and cautious Girl Guide, I demanded the pleasant be-slacked men in the Accommodation Office here drill me in What to do in the Event of an Emergency. Apparently you just hide in the cellar.

And with that, and the uncomfortable knowledge that my cultural experience thus far seems to extend as far as bread and cheese, I'm out.