Surveillance & Identity

So, I've got nothing to write about. I've got bloggers block. There's only one thing to do. Sit down and here and write something and press publish and, yes, be damned. I should have something to write about - its been a heady week or two - but of course, you can't always process the life that's happening to you as it happens.

I was at Manchester's Social Media Cafe on Tuesday and tried to fit three evenings of networking into one. There was an interesting discussion on personal identity, and surveillance, and I realised that every story in the news at the moment is about this very issue. We that are rightly concerned with the government's insistence on identity cards and every other kind of monitoring of us, can only be amused how, at this particular juncture it is the fragmented, distributed nature of this "monitoring and surveillance" which is most effective - and, that's being used against the state. Surely the G20 footage, with its criminal investigation into the death of a newspaper seller shortly after being hit by the police; and Jacqui Smith and other MPs reluctance to have the details made public of how public money has been spent; and then the photograph of the secret documents held in full view by Bob Quick has been spent are the same story - where the state actually wants to "deny" the use of this information, but can't quite manage it. Only the courts - in the case of the injunction on the Guardian revealing Barclays use of tax havens - seems able to stop some of this "user generated content" - and only because it was a national newspaper, not the "crowd" who had released the information. I feel we're probably at an interesting juncture where its years away from a national identity card, yet everything about everyone is being made available - whether its your Facebook profile or the ubiquitous video phones and location-based devices we carry with us everywhere. I'm not sure how that genie gets in the bottle - yet I'm pretty sure the powers that be are looking at ways of doing it. (Just read Ourmaninside.com on the difficulty of photographing in public spaces these day.

It seems that every missing child will have some footage available on CCTV, a vast difference from when it was a grainy yearbook photo that was all we had. An interesting space, as I've said. We often talk about being in a "big brother" age, after Orwell, but I'm not sure that's the case, after all, it's happened so fast, that the control of this information is currently, at least, both with us, and with the corporations that provide the service. I can imagine in a state of emergency, Google and the like being turned into quasi-agencies of the state,(in the way that previously a TV company or newspaper might have been), but its not going to be easy. More like is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where little by little we give up our privacy and our rights to how we use our own "personal identity" in return for the things it gives us, this digital soma we've become addicted to. Those of us from "the old world" can probably keep a sense of what this should be - but I'm wondering if in the near future, as the control systems become more sophisticated and pervasive, and the legal and governance frameworks tighten up even more, whether this will always be the case.

Addendum: Appropriately, Marina Hyde in today's Guardian makes a similar point about "our" surveillance of the Police - she makes the point how difficult it is to film the police, since this is in itself seen as potentially a crime (I say potentially, as I'm not sure if its been tested in court, or if its genuinely illegal?)even when they are in a public place.

When I was a child... I read books

There was a recent report that children in many homes simply never see books, or reading of books, and so have no models to aspire to. It calls for new tactics and techniques to get children reading in families where books are seen as for "losers." (Can't find the link, sorry.)

Wondering if that is something so new? I grew up in a house where books were the statutory ones :- Readers' Digest condensed books; DIY and Haynes Manuals (hi, dad!); a few paperbacks (strictly for holidays); and the odd children's classic (King Solomon's Mines or Heidi) which had travelled down the family line.

I was a slow reader to start with, but caught up with my mum's endless patience, and of course, once you see those words on the page as not threats of incomprehensibility but keys into magical kingdoms, well...there was little stopping me. Every holiday my pocket money was spent on novelisations, ("Dr. Who" etc.), every trip to a big city saw me dragging the family round Midlands Educational (there were no Waterstones in those days.) Before that, of course, there was the library. So when tonight I was just thinking, I'd love to start reading a book, but one that wouldn't hurt either my eyes or my brain, the book that jumped in front of me was a memory from those days.

"Ninety-nine dragons" by Barbara Sleigh sees a young boy try and get to sleep by counting dragons instead of sheep, but the dragons then come alive in the dream, across the eiderdown fields of his half-sleep. I must have borrowed it on rotation from the library. It had pictures, I remember, but it was the story I think that captured me. When I googled it just, that half-memory of dragons also made me think of "counting sheep" - and it was the combination that brought up the book. There's not a picture of it by the looks of it, and I might have to have a nostalgic purchase from Abebooks to bring it back to life (a little like the book itself). I'm absolutely certain that's the book.

...and it's so me, isn't it. I can just imagine my dad asking me to get to sleep by counting sheep, and me saying "no, daddy, I'm going to count dragons." "Dragons?" he'd say. "Sheep are boring!" I'd say, and begin "one dragon, two dragon..."

The Manchester Novel

Given that there are so many writers in Manchester, I'm surprised how few novels seem to come out of the city. Unlike other metropolises (metropoli?) there's a sense that Manchester isn't quite big enough. The city seems to be zoned whenever its used in TV series, Didsbury for Cold Feet, Hulme for Life on Mars (and gloriously, Chorlton for the "swingers" party). Yet step into the city, step around, and more than anywhere I know, different lives are cheek and jowl. Only need to catch the 85 or 86 to Chorlton, a bus to Levenshulme, or even go down Wilmslow Road, and get a sense of a city of jostling communities, mostly rubbing up kindly against each other. Yet, Withington, where I first came when I moved to Manchester, is increasingly down-at-heel, a clump of drug addicts in the doorway of what (ironically) used to be "Pleasure", and the suburbs' great buildings either shut down (the White Lion) or pulled down (Cine City.)

The gleaming city centre is alive with a different vibe - media types and young professionals during the week; minibuses of out of towners at the weekend; university students during term time; suburban sophisticates down King Street or Selfridges or at the Hilton; football fans pouring through on match days; everyone from hen parties to drag queens on Canal Street; musical subcultures in dive bars, any day of the week. I'm not sure if this ever gets captured for people outside of the city.

I've often toyed with writing a Manchester novel, and found myself foundering on the ambition needed. My stories weave in and out of the city's night life in particular. The legendary rain and the long winters seem to have curtailed any other sense of the city - it's not a city where communities live, they circle the centre at a suspicious distance. There's nothing of the American city.

I need to think again of connecting all of this up - music was the link I once used, and would probably go back to again; or the regeneration itself - I stop, I start. The city sits grand and foreboding, resisting my best efforts.

Is Twitter the death of Email?

I am worried. For the last fifteen years the literate classes have swapped billet douxes via email. This quick - but intimate - communication method has been central to most writers' practice. Yet, over the last week, the last month even I have found my personal inbox empty. Those carefully crafted, and so individuallly personalised emails that I used to crave and love have disappeared, apparently overnight.

I used to so look forward to that long, rambling, non-spellchecked piece of a writers' heart, and yet now, I wonder if I will ever hear it's beat again. It is Twitter that is to blame with its Puritan 140 characters, and its annoyingly utilitarian interface.

We need to act now, or else email, that wonderfully florid and unmediated platform is no longer relevant - it has, in a nutshell, disappeared for good.

Spring Forward

Clocks went forward at the weekend, and I haven't caught up. This time of year is always hectic. The moveable feast that is Easter doesn't help either. Yes, I know its only a long weekend, but since schools close, and so much of the public sector has its holidays in line with the schools, you find theres a hectic rush to get events and openings in place before the holidays. Everything is seasonal - but is creativity? There's probably some matrix that you could do. Certainly the winter months don't offer much incentive to go outside the house. Yet, the long nights, and struggle against the elements doesn't seem that creative. Maybe its a time to settle down and read a few books. The summer, though, how can you be sat inside at your computer on a day like this? I spent school holidays at my grandparents' small farm, and whilst my sister roamed the fields, went horseriding, I stayed at the kitchen table, drawing and writing. Yet, its not the whole story of course. I remember wandering for hours, taking the do a walk. But I wasn't one to let the weather decide what I'd do. My dad, who has read around 3 books in his adult life, never could understand my reluctance to leave the hearth. What he didn't get was that I really valued the time I didn't have to go to school, as it gave me the time to do my own thing. Writing, music, creativity, are all selfish pursuits in many ways - and perhaps why there's so much reluctance to appreciate them outside the classroom. What did you do over the holidays? Oh, I stayed in and wrote the start of a novel. But didn't you go anywhere?

I've got today off - another time of year thing, as the holiday year ends tomorrow and I'd a day left - and I've just been catching up with the busy week I've just had (and thinking about the busy week to come) when really this should have been sacrosanct as a creative day. Perhaps that's our national holiday need - a day of creativity. Let's have it every month, then. Despite all our "life cacheing" via the internet, its just so much of this, and this and this - I don't think social networking tools yet do much for the longer game, the big plan, the developed or developing idea.

Its already starting to be the festival season - flat racing, literary festival, arts festivals, Glastonbury, Edinburgh - as we fill the summer months with outdoor jamborees. I have a feeling that nothing much gets written in the summer...

***
"The Wire" starts tonight, with much fanfare on BBC2. But I can't help but note what supine cowardice of the schedulers has it starting at 11.20 every week day night - yes, finishing after midnight. I can certainly say it "The Wire" is good post-pub viewing, but also that you might drift off with dreams/nightmares of Baltimore. Since, most regular watchers will either PVR or "watch again" (assuming they've got those rights?), might it have been simpler for the BBC to just give us all a box set or have it as an iPlayer only special. I think its creator David Simon said in a recent interview that HBO gave him $100 Million to make the Wire over its five seasons. The budget of a blockbuster movie, then, or the cost of Sir Fred Goodwin's pension over a similar time period. Or untold number of episodes of "The Weakest Link." Whatever the BBC has paid for it, why haven't they had the courage to strip it at 10.00 each night? It's clearly the spot it should have been put on at.

***

I'm going to try and avoid blogging (and limit twittering) for the rest of the day/week (see comments above), so just a reminder that the 1st year birthday of The Other Room takes place at the "Old Abbey Inn" at Manchester Science Park on 1st April. Readings by Tim Atkins, Phil Davenport and Lisa Samuels with the new anthology of The Other Room's first year, on sale.

What of & What about...

What do you write about? What is it that you want to write about? It's a question I ask, particularly of poets. I'm not so much interested in the subject but of the compulsion. Have you, of all these billions of people on planet Earth, got something to say, and, as importantly, a way of saying it? I'm envious of musicians, after all, a few chords can make the tritest lyrics sound meaningful, and its that transmission - from the creator to the listener (or the reader, or the looker)- which is, ultimately what's important. Yet communicating in a common language, a shared language, seems to put an even greater on what it is you write about. Have you a hook? An idea? Have you a story - in the sense that the "news values" of the day make into a story. "Boy runs away from school, police are concerned" may be a story, but it doesn't do justice to "Catcher in the Rye." Yet many stories have a news value - explicitly so in something like "The Secret Agent" where the "news" of the day is intertwined with the story. Poems, of course, often have their own news values, relating to a different currency :- for instance the death of an obscure poet may not be "news", but it could well be to those who knew him or her and may not only lead to an "elegy", but a reappraisal.

There's the story all around us, of course, and digging for it, is part of the fun(k) we get ourselves in. I wrote an album and a half worth of songs the last year or so and I'm definitely at the bottom of that particular well in terms of lyrics. Songs, like poems, need to have some resonance with the writer of them, otherwise they're just "there", not "lived" at all. In my case I think its a little bit of intellectual frostiness - I need some thawing, a Spring clean of the brain. I've had a week to do that to the flat, and, to a lesser extent, myself; but feeling more energised, more relaxed is one thing - the intellectual Springcleaning is more the opposite - not reorganising or throwing out the baggage, but revitalising: more renovation than restoration I think.

So, I have lots of things frothing away, but do I want to say them? Do I know how to say them? Music, in many ways, offers "the way", quite easily. There are very few Bob Dylans out there, whose musical template rarely shifts, and then mostly to let in a slightly different approach to the words. The musical ideas themselves can suggest a way forward, the lyrics, only of secondary importance sometimes. Yet, I feel there needs to be something conceptual, or at least intellectually stimulating about all jousts at artist targets. Being good enough isn't enough if the ambition is of a low level... though sometimes we fool ourselves, a "good poem" should be ambition enough, even if it could take us ten years to have enough for a collection.

I've squandered this week, artistically, you could say, by not getting down to doing something - or even, to thinking about the one thing I should be doing. I'm not so sure. There's some contradictory subjects battling away for me attention. There's also a problem particular to me, I think. I've written so much already. I risk running over ground I've already travelled over, and I'm not quite that kind of writer. Retreading old fictional ground seems an admittance of some kind of failure, of the original pieces, or of the inability of art to move the problem on. Creative writing can only reveal not solve.

Yet, starting to think of putting some older stories online, its not because I believe there's particularly an audience for them (or for online in general), more that its an important reminder to myself of ground travelled, destinations visited, creative challenges met.

New Blog for my Writing

I have finally got round to setting up a new blog for my poetry and fiction, and other writings. The link has been updated on the right of this post, or you can go directly there from here. At the moment it just includes links to any of my work that is still on the internet, but over time, I hope to add a range of stories and other work to download, as well as the occasional poem and non-fiction.

The Other Room Anthology

"The Other Room Anthology 08/09 features work from David Annwn, Richard Barrett, Caroline Bergvall, Stuart Calton, Lucy Harvest Clarke, Patricia Farrell, Alan Halsey, Tom Jenks, Alex Middleton, Geraldine Monk, Maggie O’Sullivan, Robert Sheppard, Harriet Tarlo, Scott Thurston, Tony Trehy, Carol Watts and Joy As Tiresome Vandalism. The official launch is at the next event on 1st April, but you can pre-order a copy now and have it sent to you by post."

- The Other Room

Peace in Our Time

There was an interesting and polarised debate on Radio 5 last night, following the film of David Peace's book "The Damned United." The Clough family were unhappy about the book, as were several of the players pictured in the novel; and obviously a film is far higher profile, and most people who go and see it won't know that its a dramatisation of a work of fiction, albeit one based on real events, but will see it as essentially a biopic on Clough.

Martin O'Neill had been to see the film. He had joined Forest shortly before Clough started there (and its worth mentioning that the book is not about these later triumphs, his greatest, but about that 44 day interregnum at Leeds, following his previous career pinnacle at Derby County.) His view was measured. He saw it as an entertainment, that occasionally strayed far from the facts, and occasionally, in Michael Sheen's performance, resurrected Clough before our eyes.

The book, I've written about before, is a tiny masterpiece. Regardless of its veracity, it reads real. And in a week when Rafael Benitez has finally signed a contract with Liverpool, delayed because he wanted control of transfers, seems, to this non-insider, to give a genuine sense of what football was like in the late 60s and early 70s, with Clough as the arriviste bringing success and confrontation in equal measure. Peace, interviewed on the show, is a little dissembling when he says its "a work of fiction", for, like James Elroy, he's wanting to use historical fact as closely as he can. This is not the "new journalism", nor is it the "faction" of a staple ITV drama; its a deliberate blurring of the edges, but requiring the reader's buying into its legitimacy to make it work. But I think, in this book at least, he chose the only viable option - after all, only rock 'n' roll has been worse served by the novel than football. A successful novel about football, has to, in my opinion, stick to the historical record. The only other option, is to write about the anonymous side of the game, the park footballer, or the amateur side. For as soon as you mention "United" and "City" and "County" and set it in a particular era, the reality of so many memories is there before you. (Similarly, a novel about music in the sixties could just about get away with an imaginary beat combo, as long as the Beatles and the Stones are not supplanted.)

Given the tendency of football to navel gaze, and at the professional level to be hostile to outsiders, its no surprise that football is the most antagonistic about an outsider writing a book from an "inside" perspective. Given that the story of Clough has been told many, many times - not least in at least two autobiographies from the man himself - Peace deserves praise for getting it (mostly) right. It is, after all, only a game. I'm looking forward to the film.

Art & Politics

I'm wondering whether the relationship between art and politics is currently the wrong one. There are quite a number of explicit criticisms of the politics that has took us into Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as of specific "establishment failures", (such as dramatisations of particular events such as the De Menezes shooting.) It is disappointing, to me at least, that art seems to mostly engage with the political/societal in such a direct way. For two reasons: firstly, because in doing so it takes on too many of the conventions of reportage, and, secondly, because art seems particularly well equipped for nuance and uncertainty. Not that anyone ever asks, but if I had to say what my primary subject was as writer, I'd more than likely say "doubt." Pinter's anti-war poems always seemed a let down from a writer whose critique of society had always been so piercingly oblique: I always wondered whether he felt that the art had let him down, once he became a political activist where the emphasis was on being direct. More worrying, of course, is despite the disquiet that many writers feel for politics in this country (and by extrapolation, America), how little it appears in the major works of the day.

But it is not just the direct relationship between art and politics that concerns me. I'm frustrated how little art itself seems willing to be a political movement. Am I asking for a return to Manifestoism? Perhaps I am. It seems that the creation and consumption of art can be a highly political act; and in the current time, that political action has to be in its implicit critique of consumerism and the capitalist financial model. In this version: a little magazine, a blog, a download, a painting can be political simply by disengaging with the production/promotion model. But there's something else that art needs to do, if it is to re-engage politically, and that is to do so within some intellectual framework. In other words, challenging assumptions of what is art, and why we are artists.

It is perhaps a lot to ask. Yet, it seems to me that good art gets it right more often than other media. The art that survives creates a version of the historical times that it was made in, in a way that is more valid than any "official" versions. The art is immutable, but the meaning can change. There's actually an infantilism about much artistic debate - from the old chestnut about the South Bank Show dumbing down (through showing Will Young), to the way a children's author such as Philip Pullman becomes one of our highest profile public intellectuals, to the ongoing "ne'er the twain" will meet misunderstandings of the poetry world. These all strike me as being partly because of art (and contemporary artists) unwillingness to make a political stand, for their view of art. Depending on the art form, the only intellectual positions taken are by marginalists - but not the marginalists of the new and coming work, but the outdated or the parochial.

If an artist or writer or musician has a clear intellectual-political position concerning their artform; then it matters not whether the work or the artist themselves is explicitly political, for surely, everything they do will be implicitly political as a result of their intellectual starting point?

Something to Read Online

I'm pleased that my essay "Writing Catastrophe" has been published online as part of issue 2 of Salt Magazine's "Horizon Review," and for two reasons. Firstly, I sometimes bemoan that although I spend a lot of time on the web, I don't read that much on the web. There's a generosity about an online magazine like Horizon, both in terms of the amount of material it makes available, but also from the writers themselves, some very well known, who are beginning to value an online platform such as this, as much as a paper magazine. The second reason relates to the essay itself, which, almost alone amongst the content of issue 2, talks primarily about the "novel." It's perhaps not surprising that Horizon concentrates on short fiction and poetry, but in terms of critical culture - and I'd perhaps include literary blogs and review sites amongst this - I think its important that the novel is not just left to the more august paper publications, the reviewer-bloggers and the academic monograph.

That said, it's interesting to read my essay, alongside Sophie Mayer's "Queer British Poetry". The full title, (and the shortened version does it a disservice) is "Hanging Out Beneath Orlando's Oak Tree, or, Towards a Queer British Poetry." Here she talks of poets needing to be more militant, in their subject matter, to be, in the words of post-punk band the Au Pairs, "equal, but different." Strangely she asks "Where are the great AIDS elegies?", well, I mention one, in passing, Thom Gunn's "The Man With the Night Sweats," in "Writing Catastrophe." Mayer's is a fascinating essay, because so much experimental writing, turned out to also be transgressive writing; if gay writing today is conventional novels like "The Line of Beauty" and "Fingersmith", then maybe it isn't sexuality that determines our artistic self, but repression of that sexuality. The Writer, I would tentatively say, wants acceptance for the writing, far more than for the self. (Though, aren't they indistinguishable?)But think that's edging into a different essay...

So I've already been inspired into other directions, other tangents, just skimming the magazine this Tuesday morning. I'd say there are considerable tensions, not consensus, in the contemporary literary firmament, which get articulated every time I speak to a writer; between poets of different styles; between the literary writer and the commercial writer; between the young and the slightly older. It is one of the reason's I want to write about novels that others may have read - since, they have become cultural artefacts that have a life of their own in the way that only very rarely a poem or short story does. Yet, like a glass of expensive wine, after two many cheap bottles, the right poem or story (and there are surely plenty here that will fit that bill), can raise the palate. Horizon, is, after all, a literary magazine. Who'd have thought they'd survive into our modern age?

Elsewhere in the magazine you'll find stories, (inc. one by my friend Elizabeth Baines), poems, (Katy Evans-Bush delightful Pirate Prufock) plays (!), reviews and interviews and in its podcast - which, editor Jane Holland rightly says - might be a good place if you are "looking for somewhere to start" you'll find Gwendoline Riley and Fiona Sampson.

And like any literary magazine, I don't think its for reading all at one go, but dipping into next time you're looking for something more inspiring than that dog on a skateboard. Woof. Wheeee.

Unwinding

Watched last night's Rough Trade Story. It wasn't particularly revelatory, but some decent old footage (mostly of Geoff Travis's black power hair!) Rough Trade always meant something to me - even I wouldn't just buy bands because they were on the label (unlike 4AD!) - for Robert Wyatt, Scritti Politti, the Fall, and of course, the Smiths. Apparently indie music was at its most successful when they went down the pan in 1991 - a bit of a rewriting of history. Post-Smiths the indie scene was utterly dire, add to that a recession (sounds familiar?), and its hardly surprising that that was when they went down. I was really only listening to hip hop and American pre-grunge (Sonic Youth etc) then.

I've been incredibly busy, following Newcastle, with London, and I'm doing a short presentation in Liverpool on Monday about social media and the arts, which I'm looking forward to - then, I've the rest of the week off, and its long overdue. Need some quality time with my "art" - and the flat seems very unloved at present! There's quite a bit of "unpacking" of my last few posts that I want to do as well.

Where is the literature?

I was at the Clicks or Mortar? conference at Tyneside Cinema yesterday. The symposium was about the role of venues in the digital age - a dichotomy of "clicks" or "mortar". As often happens at events these days, there's ample representation of the visual and performing arts, and a small, but noticeable gap for literature. Literature, of course, exists, offline, is non venue-based, despite the plethora of festivals and readings these days. That even these can exist in a variety of places - theatres, cafes, bars, bookshops, fields, market places - should offer some lessons about "venue" - but literature remains quiet. More worryingly, as Dick Penny, from Bristol's Watershed (and Dshed digital venue)said "we are living in an audio-visual culture these days." This has some very large implications for literature - because its saying that, since the age of the printing press, since mass education began - the arbiters of our culture have been writers: whether poets, legislators, priests or journalists. If the inevitable consequence of the digital age (and the generation that have grown up only knowing a world with the internet and digital images/sounds) is an ending of that age-of-text then surely we should be worried. At the moment, as I've made the point before, the web remains a text-based medium. Yet a culture of video games, short messages, flashing images, 3D films etc. is sensory - external, all around us. Reading, and writing, require a certain calm, a certain isolation. In this new world, even with our own "bubbles" (ipods, tomtoms etc), where is this calm?

Peter Greenaway was one of the highlights of the day, giving an extensive polemic about the "death of cinema". He made many points, both valid and contentious, but two keys ones sat in my mind. Firstly, that the crowd gathered in the dark in the evening to have a one way experience with the optical illusion of the two hour film on a project screen, is surely now an absurdity - that all those things about the experience are no longer sustainable. Secondly, that if we are now in this audio-visual age, that we have a problem, because we are so visually illiterate. Painting, he contrasted with film, as having thousands of years of history, film has 115 years and it is "over."

There's an irony about all of this of course - in that the disruptive technology of the internet is being adopted by the very things that it is most likely to replace: the BBC, for instance, and, yes, cinemas like the Tyneside and the Cornerhouse. The beautifully restored Tyneside is also highly connected, with good internet access throughout the building that allows things to happen - artistic and otherwise - throughout its diverse physical space. Like the Cornerhouse, it acts as both cinema and art venue - and as Greenaway's presentation makes clear, there is little distinction - amongst artists, at least - between both mediums. However, I'd add that the great wonder of 20th century cinema, like the Victorian novel is both an accidental anomaly that has become its own high-watermark - and something that has, inevitably to change. Theres a confluence took place: of talent, audience,technology and for want of a better word, "timing", that means the motion picture has held us in its thrall for best part of a century. I watch "The Last Picture Show" of "Cinema Paradiso" and I don't recognise that cinema going experience, any more than I would the Saturday matinees or the Drive-ins. My cinema going experience - a flat suburban one, dull Odeons, limited choice - was changed not by the multiplexes, but by the art house cinemas, and, yes, by the choice that the video player and multi-channel viewing (starting with the "option" of Channel 4) gave me. If those "new markets" were themselves made allowable by the success of, "Star Wars" and "Jaws", then so be it.

I think what is intriguing about the "venues" and their management, is that they have an impossible tightrope. Ideally their model should be beginning to fade, with any space becoming a possible replacement for the Cornerhouse or the Watershed. But these venues, holding houses for art, if you like, are culture-shops in many ways. They are in ideal locations, at the heart of a city's young urban cultural life. They are not, noticeably, growing... but neither would you close them down. Their success is of appealing to the young urban consumer. Where they are in the wrong place or have the wrong or even worse, an unclear function (Sheffield's centre for popular music, the first incarnation of Urbis, the Place in West Bromwich) they will fail, and fail again. A conversation was had about turning old Woolworths into cultural venues, but as someone pointed out, the reason that Woolworths failed was because not enough people came through the door.

I've noticed recently - with exhibitions at FACT and the Cornerhouse - that the venue is becoming a constraint on the art in many ways. There's an absurdity about going to a cultural venue, not to look at a painting or see a performance, but to watch a video (particularly when, in that same building there are high quality cinema screens being used to show an Oscar nomination rather than video art), or to hear some sound art. I think new forms of art are exploding from the venue, whether on the internet in the public space, and arts venues and festivals need to see this and replicate it.

Literature, I worry about. It remains mute at these events. Yet, as Peter Greenaway made the point, so much film is just animated stories, books with pictures. The irony is - I've mentioned recently - that writers are sometimes becoming "middlemen" in the cultural value chain, not originators or initiators. Greenaway recently illuminated Rembrandt's The Night Watch, and has turned it into a movie - seeing it as a source material, a visual journalist's account of a murder that has taken place.
Because literature has no venue, because, as well, it is everywhere (or at least, because writing is everywhere), because we no longer venerate the word (the Holy Books, the American constitution) - and may even abuse them instead (Jade Goody, Ashley Cole, because there's a "commercial" literature that dominates and doesn't receive public funding; because writers themselves baulk too much at the idea of art or of originality - all of these make it vulnerable. It has already gone from the centre of the university experience, I think; and there are few writers under 50, here or abroad, that seem to have the cultural heft of their predecessors, still writing deep into the night. We were not always a written culture, not even always an oral one. Did the crowds attending the mummers play or mystery play catch all the words, or simply revel in the physical action, the costumes, the spectacle? Yet there was a story - a telling - and a structure - an ordering - to even those representations. In many ways, a conference like yesterdays highlighted which art forms are most vulnerable in the modern age - and it may well be the representative ones (film or recorded music) rather than the experiential (theatre, dance). Greenaway mentioned that he had been commissioned to make a film by Nokia for its mobile phones - and his work is more likely to be presented, not in a cinema, but as public art, or in a gallery, or for a festival now, than as a conventional film. He is, of course, not the most conventional of film makers. Yet with the Hollywood blockbuster costing so much to make - the odd Slumdog apart - then the representative arts run a great risk. The Guardian yesterday pointed out that the game Guitar Hero has sold nearly as many copies as the best selling album of all time, and in much quicker time.

This recession that gathers around us may not be so bad for art, but it may be disastrous for the commercialising of that art. The refurbished Tyneside is a beauty, a gem, but it is also a living venue, a high church of culture. The audience at the conference was predominantly white and middle-class, the panel's predominantly male. Literature, as always on these occasions appeared absent. I'm hopeful that this absence might simply because literature have sorted it out already (though I know that's not entirely the case), but I also fear that the written word, which underpins so much of our great culture, may be chopped up, mixed up and made incomprehensible or easy to ignore by this newly pervasive multi-sensory audio-visual cultural world. The gatekeepers, whether arts bureaucrats, educators, politicians or Apple and Sony, won't notice till the damage is too far gone. It is the writer, and only the writer, who can continue to insist on his or her relevance.

Traps

I'm in a writing trap. Or rather I'm in a trap that affects my writing. But I'm not trapped. There's a difference between being trapped, and a trap, of course. Being trapped, implies something psychological, or something malicious that has happened to you. A "trap" though, is no such thing, its something that has a beauty to it, in some ways, a trap is set, it waits there, it has purpose, and, if it's sprung, then there's a sense - from the setter of the trap - of a job well done. And a trap might be beneficial to the victim, you set a trap for an animal that shouldn't be in your house, in order to re-house it, for instance. Anyone who has ever tried to set a physical trap, also knows that the trap mechanism isn't the key - no, it's the bait, it what leads you in. My trap is of that variety, I think. I'm being lead in, by a breadcrumb trail, and then snap, down comes the door, and I wonder how I got in there - and, whether there's a way out. That's how traps work of course, they're not inevitable, they are placed in the way of things, and if you fall into them, sometimes its because of a good reason, because you were too tired, or hadn't been looking where you were going.

I'm not sure I'm being clear, but I'm like a mouse exploring a house, much of my time is spent aimlessly, trying to find my way around - surviving if you like - but mice are curious. They know that others are in the house, and that, if they come into contact with them, then maybe it won't be so good for them. The mouse knows he's not meant to be here, but can't help himself. If you like, I'm looking for the breadcrumb trail, I'm looking for the trap. For a story can be a trap, as can a style. I'm in a trap, even if I'm not yet caught, because the traps are all around. I've sniffed out another breadcrumb trail today - the poetry one - and its as sure as any other going to trap me again. I never learn. Leave the poetry alone! I want to say. Leave the cheese alone! little mouse.

Snap goes the door. And I'm not sure how I get out this time either.

Originality

I've been thinking alot about originality - not just of the "voice" or the "style" of a writer, but of the subject matter. I'm seeing, it seems a tendency for literature to be 3rd or 4th generation. We kind of expect films to be made from books, whether good or bad, but when the books themselves aren't the original idea, but a fictionalising of something else, something that already exists, I'm wondering whether the writer has become a mere middleman (or woman) in our cultural supply chain.

What am I talking about? Well, if "Slumdog Millionaire" takes a novel as its source material, "Q&A", all well good, but "Q&A", of course, takes a TV quiz show, "Who wants to be a millionaire?" as ITS source material. Now, I guess that show is itself not a first-generation format. But its not the only one. Look at these other cultural supply chains... Charlie Brooker's "Dead Set", a recent C4 TV success had two archetypes, Big Brother and Romero's Zombie movies. "Big Brother" of course, takes its name if not its concept from "1984." Orwell's novel, a satire, I know, has, I believe the virtue of originality, one of the reasons it has remained so current, so useful. But Orwell created Room 101 (another TV show)and Big Brother, created and named them. I wonder what happens to a world where all our cultural artefacts are made up of existing ones. Its long been a problem in the art world, even when obviously ironic, like Jeff Koons "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" or Fiona Banner's "Hunt for Red October", and film takes its inspirations wherever it can find them, whether childrens toy ("Transformers") comic book ("The Dark Knight") or fairground ride ("Pirates of the Caribbean.")

Any round up of contemporary literature would find room for a few comic books, if only because in the work of Alan Moore and others, there's a startling originality, even if like all the best storytellers they nod in the direction of other works. What's more worrying is that between the fictionalisations of real life and history that still dominate the fiction lists, and easy-to-sell versions of contemporary life, literature, not pop, has begun to eat itself.

Why the Old Ones are the Best Ones

I am a great fan of Salt Publishing's lovely slim hardbacks, so I'm very tempted by their new range of pocket classics, starting with slim little collections from Emily Bronte, Christina Rossetti and John Keats, three of my favourite poets. Although you can easily get a cheap selected or collected, a nice edition is, well...nice. Far better in many ways than those "thrift" editions that sit uncomfortably on my poetry shelves. There's also something to be said for a wise guide through a poet's work; Faber did a similar thing a few years back with memorably results, particularly when extracting from a difficult poet like Pound, or a prolific one like Auden. I get lost in my authoritative Whitman, overwhelmed by my complete Dickinson, and despair at ever finding a decent selected Tennyson or Wordsworth. Not that Bronte, Rossetti or Keats were ever the most prolific - but still, there's a lot to be said for a careful filleting of even their work. Chris Hamilton-Emery who chose the selections finds room for La Belle Dame Sans Merci in the Keats selection, as well as On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, so no complaints from this corner on the selection. It will be interesting to see how wide the selection grows. A lovely Donne, or a careful Herbert perhaps, a pointed Shelley or a brilliant Byron.

Manchester Again

I've been both busy and unwell so don't feel I've done much that's creative at all in the last few weeks. I kickstarted the year very positively, but a few little bad things since then, seem to have taken the wind out of my sails a bit, and a couple of creative rejections, nothing out of the ordinary, have made me question myself more than usual about writing, and literature. There's a surfeit of magazines around these days - the online ones such as the Manchester Review and print ones like Succour and new one Bewilderbliss. Both Succour and Bewilderbliss have a theme (respectively "Fantasies" and "The Guilty") whilst the Manchester Review gives no clues to what it wants. I kind of think that the best road is somewhere in the middle. New magazines, of course, work best when they find their theme - I remembered "Metropolitan" for instance for a certain grittiness, laced with a little of the fantastic, but I'm sure this developed over the issues. The best of my recent stories wouldn't count as a fantasy - though it could pass muster as "the guilty" I guess.

Two Skins for the Contemporary Novel

I have just read "Netherland" by Joseph O'Neill, and so I guess, having previously read Tom McCarthy's "Remainder" I'm now fully qualified to respond to Zadie Smith's New York Review of Books article that compares and contrasts the two. There is much of interest in Smith's article, though it requires quite a bit of unpicking, and I wonder to what extent it has to do with the two books in hand, or whether either of them really has the necessary "heft" to deserve this close analysis. To my mind, they are not so much two paths for the contemporary novel, but rather, different "skins" for the novelist looking to write about contemporary experience. For in both books, there's a sense of early 21st century ennui brought to an absolute pitch. It may well be that the main literary trope of this first decade will turn out to be this ennui, or, perhaps more correctly, a sense of powerlessness. Our characters - whether O'Neill's Dutch commodity analyst, or McCarthy's recipient of an accident payout, are the accidental rich, that could as easily be reality show winners, or winners of the Richard & Judy/Oprah Winfrey bookclub lotteries in other words. It seems that the main distinctions between the two novels aren't as polarised as Smith would have in mind, other than those of nationality and style. For "Netherland" is very much an American novel, in a style that, puffed full of decorative lived-in prose, is almost unfashionable; whilst "Remainder" has the unfussy style that has dominated English writing for half-a-century. Smith mentions Ballard, and there is the same unblinking, unemotional sentences in McCarthy as you'll find in the great dystopianists work.

I'm wondering if what she's identifying here is a clash of styles rather than substances - and one's reminded of her own aborted take on the flashier end of contemporary American fiction, in the first half of the unloved "The Autograph Man." I'd go as far to say that it is the setting that creates the prose; for, reading the first half of "Netherland", I couldn't understand how this masterful writing had been dropped from the Booker longlist - unless, it was just too American. Perhaps that was the case, for in London, O'Neill's prose turns prosaic, no longer elegiac-romantic. It's like, in "Netherland", he's taken a deep breath on New York, and inhaled all its flavours.

I've written a little about "Remainder" before, and though its been an interesting think-piece, Smith's yoking of the two novels, it does seem a little artificial; both in their different ways are novels that are a little attention-seeking, whilst remaining some way from being revolutionary. What I found interesting about "Netherland" was both its centre of influence - it would be a prime suspect in any "all New York novels are indebted to Gatsby" investigation - and its intent. At its heart, its not about Gatsby - here, the vital but vapid Chuck Ramkissoon, but about Carraway - the less interesting narrator, Dutch oil analyst Hans van den Broek; or rather its about both of them, but comes to life through Ramkissoon's exoticism - even if, at its heart, Ramkissoon is just a foil to play opposite Hans, and boy, Hans is a cold fish. His life decisions are baldly existential - or, worse, complacent. Left alone in the New York that he followed his wife Rachel to, after she decides to go home following 9/11, we're given a marriage from a distance - actually, and in time - that it's very hard to care much about. These two rich, but vacant characters deserve each other. There's a self-absorbtion in Hans that is almost Jamesian; and by the end of the novel, it is James, not Fitzgerald who keeps coming to mind, not just the distance of a Strether in "The Ambassadors", but the struggle to give such a character anything of a passion. Though the Twin Towers is touched on with a ferocious delicacy, the homelessness of our modern knowledge workers - the rich, as well as the poor - comes home strongly throughout the novel. Home counties Rachel, and Dutch Hans, at sea in New York, a telling example of the shock to the system that 9/11 presumably still means to inhabitants of that city. I remember being in Manchester during the 1996 bomb, and how close I'd been to be walking in town that morning - over the next six months I shrank away from a city that was half-closed down anyway, and shortly moved to London.

The problem with a novel that's also about a failing marriage is that you have to care about that marriage to make it work. Neither Rachel or Hans seems to, so it makes it difficult for us to. But these problematic sides to "Netherland" shouldn't obscure its power - which is sometimes more painterly, more abstract, even more existential, than a non-realist novel like "Remainder" or Magnus Mills' work. It's evocation of the strangest of subject matters - the immigrant New York cricket scene is not the choice of a writer playing to the gallery - but an immersion in something the writer deeply cares about. Hans, in his time in New York is no longer a Carraway, but that other most rational of Fitzgerald heroes, Dick Diver from "Tender is the Night". Living in the neverland of the Chelsea Hotel, and with nothing other than his work, cricket becomes a therapy, a chance to live without thinking too much about one's own problems. Like in A.M. Homes' "This Book Can Save Your Life" or McInerney's "The Good Life", (the latter, also set in New York after 9/11), "Netherland" is an attempt to give meaning to a character whose life is too comfortable to actually require it.

I'm struck by echoes of my own work, in that a man falling apart when left alone (by a wife who goes to New York for a week) was the theme of my recent novella, and that my 1999 novel "High Wire", ends, as does "Netherland" with a scene of reconciliation on London's South Bank. That novel's faults were surely also of language, of finding a language that could effect the lyricism that O'Neill pinches more easily from the New York Streets, and planting it in the humdrum of modern life.

More than ever, as I said earlier, I feel that a sense of powerlessness, or ennui, is the decades defining literary characteristic.

Last night at the Social Media Cafe

I gave a small presentation last night at the Manchester Social Media Cafe, and really enjoyed it. My talk was a little more philosophical than others so was always likely to be a minority interest, but I sat with half a dozen interesting people in the "boudoir."

I could put all my notes here, but think its better to articulate the positions I took, without, necessarily having a conclusion or solution.

Position 1.

The internet is essentially a text-based medium and therefore remains beholden to the book.

Position 2.

That given this text-based bias, the internet looked to books for inspiration. If I say an "unreliable but reassuring source of information" am I talking about Wikipedia or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?

Position 3.

Our 18th century novelist wouldn't find the internet so strange. After all, what is Gulliver's Travels other than a platform game? Isn't Gulliver himself Jonathan Swift's avatar?

Position 4.

Modernism is the dominant literary form of the 20th century and is a form that denies the linearity of the Victorian novelist/poet - and therefore is a model for what writing should be on the internet.

Position 5.

Late 20th century fiction tried new forms because the writers were transgressive and felt that the existing forms were too patriarchal, heterocentric, class-based or empire-worshipping.

Position 6.

Writers need to be adaptive, and counter-intuitive, and not accept the norms of the day. In our use of Google or Youtube we are "peasant agriculturalists entering the cities of the future en masse looking for work/fulfilment/life/future and finding only the mass-factories of the industrialists."

All that in 40 minutes, and here is my reading list... vaguely touched on, but worth repeating, nonetheless.

F1. Fantastic Literature

Arabian Nights - trad.
Gullivers Travels - Jonathan Swift
News from Nowhere - William Morris
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Mark Twain
Alice Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
Rime of the Ancient Mariner - S. T. Coleridge
Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott
Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
First Men in the Moon - H. G. Wells
The Time Machine - H. G. Wells

2. SF

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long - Brian Aldiss
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
How’s the nightlife on Cissalda? - Harlan Ellison
Other Days, Other Eyes - Bob Shaw
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
Minority Report - Philip K. Dick
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Count Zero - William Gibson
The Jerry Cornelius Books - Micheal Moorcock

3. Modernism

An Imagist Anthology - Ezra Pound et al
Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein
The Making of Americans - Gertrude Stein
Ulysses - James Joyce
6 characters in search of an author - Luigi Pirandello

4. Experimental & Transgressive Writing

Dream Songs - John Berryman
The Tennis Court Oath - John Ashbery
Dream of a Common Language - Adrienne Rich
Memoirs of a Survivor - Doris Lessing
The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter
Locos - Felipe Alfau
Cities of the Red Night Trilogy - William Burroughs
The Penguin Book of the Beats - Kerouac et al
Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges
OuLiPo Compendium - Harry Matthews et al
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller - Italo Calvino
Boy Wonder - James Robert Baker

5. Contemporary Writing

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Specimen Days - Micheal Cunningham
The Age of Wire and String - Ben Marcus
Contraflow on the Superhighway - Richard Price et al
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Solibo Magnificent - Patrick Chamoiseau
Rings of Saturn - W.G. Sebald
Microserfs - Douglas Coupland
Red Riding Quartet - David Peace
A Crack Up at the Race Riots - Harmony Korine
Whatever - Michel Houellebecq
The Swank Bisexual Bar of Modernity - H.P. Tinker

6. Miscellaneous

The Arcades Project - Walter Benjamin
Pandora’s Handbag - Elizabeth Young
n+1 Symposium: For a Practical Avant Garde- Various
And the Band Played On - Randy Shilts

twitter: @adrianslatcher

From yahoos to Yahoo - from Ulysses to UGC

"From yahoos to Yahoo - from Ulysses to UGC - how experimental and innovative literature offers lessons and pointers to the social media future" is the title of the session I'm leading on Tuesday night at Manchester's latest Social media cafe. It's a think-piece rather than an essay, a lecture or a presentation - since I'm positing a number of ideas, and seeing whether they have any validity; ideas 2.0 in other words. Where has the web come from? Yes, we know the internet began as a futureproof military comms network, but the web, and the services that have been built upon it, have been developed by technologists, for use by all, but with the inspiration of a range of archetypes. Is the web based more in the visions of science fiction writers and other fabulists than we think? Our rich literary history provides us with plenty of archetypes that have been and could be applied to the information age. Yahoo! took its name from "Gulliver's Travels" and fantastical literatures such as this are surely archetypes for every type of platform game or virtual environment. Even more appropriately, the 20th century saw the linear narrative exploded in every direction - and can the word games of Borges, Joyce, Stein and the OuLiPo offer us a key to developing the new media of the next few years? In turn... in a richly complex non-linear digital world, will literature respond to the social media and networking aspects of the web? And how do writers change in an information age, writing direct to screen in a text box... creating the live and changeable multi-author narrative of a Twitter stream...

Rabbit at Rest

So sad to hear that John Updike, the wonderful American novelist and poet has died. Like many of his generation of American novelists, their sheer lifespan almost defies criticism - writers are supposed to write, be successful, be forgotten, and then be remembered again; not to be still writing, creating book after book. I can't pretend to have read more than half a dozen - the wonderful Rabbit novels (particularly the immortal "Rabbit Redux"), the seventies erotica du jour of "Couples", the scabrously funny "Witches of Eastwick", the obvious ones, in other words - but I also love his poetry, it was funny, slight, anecdotal, clever. I hope he's remembered for both. God likes his storytellers, and I think, tonight, he'll be staying up very late.

Sooncoming

Coming Soon :-
No Point in Not Being Friends 7 27th Jan
Edwin Morgan, a Celebration - 30th Jan
Philip Davenport Book Launch - 30th Jan
The Other Room - 4th Feb
Manchester Social Media Cafe - 3rd Feb

See you there...?

New Songs Are Better Than Old Songs

Popular Songs is a new 6-track EP by Bonbon Experiment (AKA Adrian Slatcher) recorded in 2008.

01 A Sad Affair
02 Wonderful Products
03 Big Pink Ship
04 Sympathy for a Drowned World
05 Mariachi of the Mersey
06 Sea Thing

Literary Jealousy

I caught the noir thriller DOA ("Dead on Arrival") last night. Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan star in a fast paced story about a university professor of literature who has been given a slow acting poison, and who spends his final hours unravelling who his own killer is. A remake of a 50s noir, its interesting that in this version it is a tale of literary jealousy that has been implanted in the plot. For Quaid was a hot shot writer who stopped at some point in his success, because of his fear of failure, and in doing so lets down his students, his wife and himself. His faculty colleagues and idolise despise and idolise him - the talent that he had which they haven't got or hope to discover, and his running away from it. Its rare to have a literary theme for a thriller (though Stephen King's "Misery" and "The Dead Zone" have covered it) but I thoroughly enjoyed the film, which is a very creditable noir, touched with now-kitsch 80s fashions (bad hair, "Timbuk 3" playing on stage in a bar). A recent piece by Adam Kirsch in Poetry posited that all writing is competitive, because there's not enough praise to go round; and Malcolm Gladwell's latest book talks at length about whether genius is instant or worked at. Outside of lyric poetry, I think "genius" in writing is a maturing art, despite the occasional young debut that seems to contradict this - after all, the "meat" of a novel is life itself, lived or imagined. We don't live in a time of great prose style, and I wonder if we ever will again?, but where "DOA" does totally get it right is in showing that however we get it, "literary talent" whether worked at, innate, or discovered by bitter chance (Anne Frank's diary for instance...) is something real, that can't be faked. Literary success, well, that's another matter.

The New Genre Writers

I've noticed a new-ish trend, whereby a number of fiction writers, who'd probably have been classed as "literary" writers, if they'd been classed as anything have become genre writers - with series of detective or historical novels, rather than the one-offs they'd previously written. It's interesting...since this particular street used to be one-way in the other direction, with, say, a detective fiction writer trying to drum up interest in a novel that was about something else. Kate Atkinson and Sophie Hannah both seem to have had a new lease of (commercial) life by writing detective fiction series, whilst Suzannah Dunn's latest historical fiction is everywhere at the moment. None of these writers, of course, were writing novels beforehand that were overly literary, but they weren't necessary writing work that was overtly commercial - Atkinson was shortlisted for prizes for her debut "Behind the Scenes at the Museum", Hannah remains an award-winning poet, and Dunn was a lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester for a number of years after I studied there. Of their new direction, I've only read one of Atkinson's (excellent) mystery stories, but I think I'd be more interested, in some way, in their genre novels, than the somewhat undefined novels of their past. There might well be some other examples (and some male examples perhaps? Iain M. Banks's sci-fi or John Banville's pseudonym-using Benjamin Black novels). Genre's never an easy thing to do, and reading Atkinson's "One Good Turn", what I found refreshing - its not so much a detective story, as a puzzle that unveils itself - might be frustrating to a genuine mystery fan, however much of the genre paraphernalia remains. Whether, once embarked on a series, with a well-loved character (or a particular time period in the case of Dunn), these writers will find is as easy to break out of it, remains to be seen - but for the moment, it seems a refreshing development, decent writers writing the kind of books that people want to read. Now what was so hard in that?

New Year, no Revolutions

I'm not a great one for New Year's Resolutions - but this year I'm going to try and do something creative (either making something, or consuming something creative) every day. I'm not exactly going to beat myself up if I miss a day. The main thing is to think creatively, create some creative space - yes, I'm busy, but I'm surely not that busy...

...not sure how I'm doing this week. On Wednesday was in the lovely city of Lancaster, but got back in time to meet up with a few Other Room types, who were out in town. The next Other Room is in February, in its usual place of the Old Abbey Inn. Looking forward to it, as ever. Before then theres the next lit night at the Deaf Institute, which I've kept missing as I always seem to be away. Nice to have a few things in the diary, however vaguely.

I'm not sure if yesterday was creative as such, yet I met up with a friend from my college days in the Cambridge Blue pub just off Mill Road, in Cambridge. We certainly covered plenty of topics throughout the evening - so let's cound that as a yes! And today I'm not only writing my blog, but spent the morning at a seminar about Motion capture for the arts - which was all very exciting, if only to meet a few interesting "hyphenates" (A hyphenate being someone with more than one role - writer-bloggers, musician-academics etc.)

I've got a bit of Work to do at the weekend polishing some writing that I need to send off; so I'm hoping for an early night tonight, and a clear head tomorrow. You never know, it might happen.

2 out of 10 is bad

I was pushed towards the Weblog Awards Lit category by Ready Steady Book, one of the shortlist - and, along with the ever estimable, (but hardly bloggy at all, its a DIGEST) Arts and Letters Daily, the only one on the list I'm a regular visitor to. Both do a really admirable job at pointing me to other stuff, and I'm always grateful, but aren't blogs supposed to be a little more... er... personal.

I looked at the others on the list - clearly put together by a person who never reads blogs, and probably works for a newspaper. The dullest selection of semi-corporate (or wanting to be semi-corporate) properties I've ever read. I'll leave Neil Gaiman and Samuel Pepys out as they're kind of niche rather than general, but the others are so dull, and dullest of the lot was the NY Times "Papercuts." Of the others, Maud Newton can at least write (and read) and I might come back, but otherwise, per-lease. Ready Steady Book as shoe-in, I'm afraid, (and I don't really think, with all due respect, that RSB is really a blog, it just has a blog kind of integrated with its other stuff.)

Yeah, I know I write a literary blog, but its not sour grapes, its just, well, is this the best there is? Of course not - its an old-school type of "prize culture" that's very old media itself. Actually, I'm bored with myself now, already. To quote David Eggars, here's a picture of a stapler.


And given that its the first one off the block in Google images, its probably the most staplingist of staplers ever.

The novel as a filter for history

The last two novels I've read, Philip Hensher's "The Northern Clemency" and Junot Diaz's "Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" both filter the history of our times through their characters. This is not to compare the two novels, which other than being published in 2008, are very different beasts, but to think about this technique. It's not new of course - the novel can always step away from the action of history, or insert an actor into that history. As long as the reader believes in the intervention, then the history can come alive. What interests me is what this does for the novel - in other words, what is the artistic pay off?

I knew very little about the Dominican Republic or the despotic regime of Trujillo, until reading Junot Diaz's novel. His use of footnotes deftly provides a backstory that would probably intrude too much if its in the narrative. Diaz's main technique in this, his debut novel, is to filter the past through a family history. The main character, Oscar, is a fat, unpopular, sci fi geek in America of Dominican Republican extraction. He's the least likely of filters for history, in many ways, and indeed, he's not the narrator, its his only friend, Yunior, who takes on that role, Carraway to his Gatsby! Yet, there's something entirely appropriate - albeit satirical - about seeing the horrors of Dominican life as being almost like an SF/Fantasy world. We see, in Oscar, the end of line, the end of a line of trouble - "Fuku" as Diaz calls the curse that haunts Oscar's family (and is it just "Fuck you" in another language, we are left to wonder...)- yet there's also a sense that despite everything bad that has happened, something can survive, can live, even if its transplanted to an alien soil. The "filter" works; the Trujillo regime, and what follows it, is laid bare as a travesty, an aberration; and the scars still remain - in people's lives, in the land, and - it seems - mostly in the Dominican male psyche. For Oscar is an unusual Dominican, he has no success with the ladies. Yet, the Dominican male in this book is always seen as not just a womaniser, but a brutal one. Oscar, like Coetzee's Michael K, is somewhat the result of decades of brutality, and yet he remains a humanity to the end. But if the book has a fault, its that the contrast between the Dominican and American passages is so distinct. Diaz made his name as a short story writer, and this book is full of stories - mostly of the family history - in all of this, Oscar, filtered through his friend's testimony, seems hardly there at all - a useful fool, if you like; little more than a filter. The hip hop and geek speak is fun for a while, but Oscar is no Holden Caulfield; and when his sister takes up the narrative, there's little of the linguistic invention elsewhere. Interestingly the novel was originally a short story in the New Yorker in 2000. When I get the chance I'll try and read the shorter version.

In Philip Hensher's sizable Booker-shortlisted "The Northern Clemency", the timescale of the novel is from 1974-1994, undoubtedly a period of massive change in British provincial life; yet his protagonists, two sets of neighbours in a lower middle class suburb of Sheffield are hardly actors in their drama - unlike Oscar's family in the Diaz novel. When the Sellers move to Sheffield opposite the Glovers the families begin a dance of connectivity that sees their children change throughout the next twenty years even as the parents stay defnitely put. The key political event of the novel is the1984 miner's strike, particularly the Battle of Orgreave. Here's a history I do know something about, having lived through part of it, however tangentially. Where Hensher excels is in the minutiae of middle class life, even if, as if he's read too much Proust, he gives us every bit of detail however trivial. But somehow that triviality is the stuff of these people's lives, and there's such a richly drawn cast between the two families (and a whole load of minor characters as well), that you skip the occasionally page of hubristic description, to return to their lives. What succeeds as a "family saga" seems to fail as a "social history." Part of the problem is that by concentrating on the one class that was almost untouched by the horrors of Thatcherism, (and were, in the Midlands and the North, partly the reason for her electoral success), the main events of the age happen offstage. On the one occasion that this isn't the case - the battle of Orgreave - Hensher hardly does justice to this great affront to British civil liberties, by having a walk-on part for one of the Glover children, who has turned into a cartoonish Marxist agitator, presumably, one thinks, to enable him to turn up in this page of history.

I think it's fascinating that after a long period where novelists either hid in the distant past, or in a present unbothered by the political, there does seem to be a taste for something that is more relevant. I wonder how many readers of "The Northern Clemency" will Wikipedia the miners strike afterwards? Fewer, I imagine than readers of Diaz's novel will want to find out more about the history of the Dominican Republic. With the seventies and eighties now slipping into history themselves, for the first time I'm seeing my own memories crop up in fictionalised histories. It's probably a trite observation, but "The Northern Clemency" wouldn't have suffered much from ignoring the bigger picture, and concentrating on the domestic dramas; whilst although "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" continues to enthrall across all its timezones, Oscar, his sister, and our friendly narrator, remain unknown, unknowable, tied to their past.

My Year

And following on from the posts below about my favourite books and records of 2008 - what about my year? It's gone quickly, that's for sure, and I'm sure I've fitted a lot in.

According to my horoscope, Saturn in opposition since 2003 "has made any successes hard won" and 2008 "has doubtless been no joyride," both of which I can nod along with. But, let's be honest, hard won, is still a victory, and I've never been of the joyriding persuasion anyway.

Creatively, I think I've spent my time equally between music, writing, and digital stuff, with sometimes the three coming together. My first full length album in years, "Vertical Integration" was completed in the spring, and I'm still really pleased with it. Inevitably, after that, I didn't quite record so intensively for a while, but have found time to write/record songs every now and then (including this week). Having ummed and aahed about making music for a number of years, let's just say its a very positive hobby to have, in that I enjoy both the process and the result.

Its not that writing took a backseat, because of the music, but that I've been so busy at work etc. that I've not had the extended time that's really necessary to write long fiction. I've been writing a few stories, now and then, and I'm pleased with them. Interesting that my stories are increasingly that - narrative led - though the only story I had published this year (in Parameter Magazine) was anything but. I've been trying to write some science fiction as well, which has been fun.

I am working on a longer thing, but I do find it difficult to just pick up and drop - and I think I'm going to need to have an extended time at it next year if its going to be finished, we'll have to see.

The one thing that has fallen off a little, is my poetry writing. Perhaps songwriting has taken its place - I'm not sure. I'll always write poetry, but not all the time.

More recently I've been thinking about all this "social media"/web 2.0/blogging stuff that I do. It falls in a bit of a middle ground between work and play, I guess.

I've got a few projects that I'm looking to move on with/finish over the next few weeks - one musical one, a couple of written ones - a year end is a "taking stock", rather than a "finishing off"; last year I recorded a song on New Years Day.

The number of blog posts I've made this year, year on year, is down on the last couple of years, but its still over a couple a week, so I guess it remains a viable forum. We'll have to see.

2009 then... what might you have in store for me?

Books of the Year

Its always difficult to sum up a year's literature, after all, much of what one reads will have been first published last year, or years before, particularly if its a new writer that one comes across.

If one book bestrode the year it has to be Cormac MacCarthy's 2006 novel "The Road". It got mentioned by Martin Amis in his debate on literature and religion in Manchester, and before then, by C.K. Williams at the New Writing Worlds symposia in Norwich. That debate, a 3rd panel discussion, which I had the pleasure to blog away at, looked at how writers were responding to nature, and, in particular the threat of global warming. "The Road", a writers' response to after-the-catastrophe is so clearcut in its disaster, so biblical in both its language and its themes, that it seems the clear book du jour. If the apocalyptic has been there in recent semi sci-fi novels from Michael Cunningham, David Mitchell and Kazuo Ishiguro, its also there in the mutually excellent "This Book can Save Your Life" by A.M. Homes and "The Book of Dave" by Will Self. A further hangover from the previous year, and the most enjoyable book I read all year, was David Peace's "The Damned United", without a doubt the best football novel ever - and, next year, hopefully the best football film ever as well.
I read last years prizewinner "What Was Lost" by Catherine O'Flynn, and enjoyed it immensely - more than Anne Enright's intrigueingly complex "The Gathering." Those books by new authors that do get published - a little like first albums these days - are highly competent works, well structured, well written, but not necessarily that exciting. Its a long time since we saw the shock of the new. This year's Booker list looked very readable, without being particularly exciting. I'm a fifth through Philip Hensher's "The Northern Clemency" - an immense state-of-the-nation novel, and so far its excellent. One novel I failed to finish this year, and had bought after glowing pre-release reviews, was Hanif Kureishi's latest, "Something to Tell You". With quite a number of good books to read, I can't quite see me finding the time to go back to a novel I was finding to be poorly written, linguistically baggy and emotionally overblown. In this Christmas period I am back to reading, and a real find has to be Roberto Bolano's "The Savage Detectives" which I'm enjoying immensely. Many people's book of the year, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, was one of the year's most readable, seeing the horror of the Dominican Republic's history during the Trujillo dictatorship through the most unlikely of filters, that of a transplanted Dominican sci-fi geek. If it had a fault, it was that these contemporary characters felt two-dimensional compared with the richness of the rest of the novel.

Bolano I discovered through his poetry, and the late poets' recently translated collected "The Romantic Dogs" is a pleasure throughout. Its been an interesting year for poetry in the sense that the mainstream has lost any interest to me. I think the rise in small presses such as Eggbox and ifpthenq, let alone the juggernaut that is Salt, means that good looking, readily accessible books are being made available outside of the majors - often concentrating on their existing list of poets. Seren, of all the small presses, has had major showings in the prizes, but there's a feeling that the prizes/majors have quite a bit of a symbiotic relationship if only because there's a need for the "big names" to continue getting a mention. What seems to be the case is that the vibrancy previously seen only in the "performance poetry" scene is spilling over into more interesting and experimental poetic arenas. With no major retrospectives/anthologies since the millennium, it will be interested to see what the scope of Roddy Lumsden's forthcoming anthology encompasses. My best poetry of the year has been particular poems, either in collections or in magazines, and I'll see if I get a chance to look at these in the new year.

I've read very little non-fiction - 'cept on blogs and in papers - but Alex Ross's "The Rest is Noise" I discovered about halfway through its year or success - and it remains a wonder, even if, after about 3 months of devouring 20th century classical music I reverted to type (e.g. hip hop, electronica and indie.) I also read Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" so there we have it - the most relevant critical essay of the year, and it was written in 1936! On the back of a remarkable essay in "Poetry" I bought Adam Kirsch's collection of essays on contemporary poetry, "The Modern Element" which I fully expect to be one of the best reads of 2009.

First, music of the year....

...I will get on to books of the year in a day or two, I hope, but music's a little easier. I've listened to so much this year, and I do feel its been a bit of a good one, with a wide range of new talent, mostly American, coming into the open. My singles/tracks of the year are mirrored in my favourite albums, but would probably finish off as 1. Time to Pretend - MGMT 2. Love Lockdown - Kanye West and 3. Paper Planes - M.I.A. 4. Ready for the Floor - Hot Chip 5. Piece of Me - Britney Spears

Albums of the year then... (to be rearranged no doubt!)
1. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes; like Midlake a couple of years ago, it almost defines what Americana is, an instant classic, based on the past, but also very now. Beautiful songs, beautifully sung and arranged. For me, its the combination of the album and their "Sun Giant" EP rather than the album on its own, as I downloaded both from Emusic to make a debut album +.
2. Third - Portishead; reviews and the album passed me by, but a couple of recommendations from friends made me pick it up. I was never a big fan, too ubiquitous, too sedate; but this new album reinvents their sound marvellously, taking in all sorts of new-retro devices yet remaining their mystique and magic.
3. What Does it all mean? - Steinski; a long overdue compilation of the original mashup expert - utterly wonderful, and remarkably contemporary.
4. Stay Positive - the Hold Steady; remarkably their 3rd great album in a row, and with songs as good as on their previous two, but with a fuller, more rock sound. In a year when landfill indie and tired old metallers were the best that rock music could give us, the Hold Steady went from being the best band that should have been around in 1978 to the best rock band of the day.
5. Supreme Balloon - Matmos; synthy Californian experimentalists surpassed themselves on this album, all recorded on golden age synths, the elongated title track in particular is a masterpiece
6. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp; a real grower, and yet again Goldfrapp seemed to understand the zeitgeist better than anyone; perhaps all the songs weren't as good as on previous outings, but the overall feel, subdued and pastoral was a wonderufl listen and singles "A&E" and "Happiness" were standouts.
7. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT; best single of the year in the ubiquitous "Time to Pretend" but the album almost lived up to it. Like much of the best music from Bowie to Prince it thrived in its inauthenticity - you felt that they were having fun, but there's none of the cynicism of the Killers.
8. Beat Box - Glass Candy; best of a new wave of electronic acts - a short poppy album full of unexpected gems including a great version of Kraftwerk's "Computer Love"
9. Feed the Animals - Girltalk; not an awful lot different or better than their earlier "Night Ripper" but the year's ultimate party album. A stars on 45 for the iPod generation and probably the last word in sampling.
10. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver; more Americana, and a universally acclaimed record; but it deserves it; a thing of unexpected beauty and poignancy
11. Arena - Todd Rundgren; a surprising mix of all that's good about Rundgren - great guitars, wonderful tunes, and fascinating arrangements. Live, the subtlety was lost a little, but otherwise, a real surprise in a year when the big names and old favourites weren't that much around.
12. Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles; an exciting adventurous all-over-the-place debut that didn't always reach the heights of their astonishing singles and live performances but was always interesting.
13. In Ghost Colours - Cut Copy; more electronica, but this time with an unmistakable pop edge to it - a bright shiny, pop album that just nicks a place ahead of Ladyhawke and Nick Cave as antipodean album of the year.
14. Dig Lazarus Dig - Nick Cave; not a bad track on it, not a bad album - yet so familiar are we with Nick that if it doesn't reach the heights of say, Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus it almost seems like an also ran of an album.
15. Pacific Ocean Blue - Dennis Wilson; reissue of the year and a top 20 hit as a result; a wonderful late seventies piece of Beach Boys magic
16. Made in the Dark - Hot Chip; more electronic-pop, but with lead track "Ready for the floor" one of the year's finest, and surely showing them to be fans of OMD, the album, a mixed bag, remains highly listenable.
17. Imperial Wax Solvent - the Fall; not their best even after a recent run of form, but with enough high points to remain highly relevant.
18. Fourth - Verve; surprisingly excellent return album that ditches the more introspective moments from their past and goes straight for the jugular with powerful guitar
19. One of the Boys - Kate Perry; unashamed pop record guilty pleasure of the year was her "I kissed a girl" but the anthem heavy album has its gems as well.
20= Jukebox - Cat Power; not as great a record as "The Greatest" but her total reworking of diverse songs such as "New York, New York", let alone her self-written Dylan tribute make this a good, if not stunning album.
20= We Started Nothing - The Ting Tings; (I knew I'd forget one...)... pop as anything but it should have been infuriating, and was actually great fun for longer than it should have been. I hear "Great DJ" is on the soundtrack of the new Danny Boyle as well...

In Praise of Pauses

Christmas often gives us time to pause, so its sadly fitting that Harold Pinter, the laureate of the pause, died over the season. There are, of course, many, many obituaries of the man, and reminisces of him, and reminders of his work. The ever estimable Arts and Letters Daily collects them in one place. His Nobel speech was reprinted in part in the Independent and summed up that key contradiction: between a literary life that was deliberate in not nailing things down, and a political life that insisted it was necessary. We can leave the nailing to others, particularly at this time of year, but its the work of course, rather than the political views or the contradictions, that will last. In the land of Shakespeare its perhaps not that surprising that our latest Nobel laureate should be a playwright, yet its instructive to think how much his work hangs over our time - in perhaps a way that no playwright ever will again. I saw a fringe production of the "The Dumb Waiter" a few years ago at Edinburgh, and it was in every way brilliant; it also felt endlessly relevant - and, contradictorily, of its time. There's something about the setting of those early plays that only just remains in England, the echo of the fifties austerity, the provincial towns, the grimey bedsits and b&bs. Whereas post-war America (say, like you'd see in Miller's "All My Sons") has material wealth, in which it sets a sometime spiritual poverty, Britain even up to the seventies and eighties remains drab. Pinter, in his willingness to shine a light on that drabness, will always seem of his time, even if his themes, and his writing transcends it. An early play like "The Dumb Waiter" is set in a single room, always recognisable, I guess, in any age, but its prop - the dumb waiter of the title is something that had gone into memory thirty years ago. I came to Pinter more through those two fascinating works: his screenplay of "the French Lieutenant's Woman" and, particularly, "Betrayal", an adult drama in every way. I'm not a particularly regular theatre goer, and there are only a few writers for theatre whose words seem particularly vital, but Pinter was one of those. The pauses of legend, are, I think, the spaces that he left where we could hear the words echo. To understand, to reflect.

Poetry Prizes

My uncharacteristic silence the last week or two has its usual reasons...alcohol and Christmas. After managing around half a dozen parties since my last post, its amazing I've still got any of the braincells required for writing this occasional blog. Poetry prizes come in all shapes and sizes and I'm generally no fan of them, after all its hardly a competitive sport is it?

Yet I have to say I can only applaud the innovation of the online poetry slam that Poetry Republic have set up in support of the Mines Advisory Group charity. Judging is by the entrants - and the winner will be announced as part of the "not part of" Manchester International Festival fringe next summer.

And although, as an unsuccessful entrant, I should be a little down today after not making the shortlist for Salt Publishing's inaugural Crashaw Prize, I'm far more intrigued by the six shortlisted writers, who'll have their books published internationally, and knowing Salt, very handsomely, in the next few months. A quick Google search shows that these are all poets with a little bit of a track record; a sign perhaps that the "slush pile" is not made up the mad and hopeless, but the hardworking, the worthy, the progressive, the comming. From my own perspective, even the discipline to enter the competition - i.e. putting together a 70 page collection - was a valuable one.

Staying In v. Going Out

The pre-xmas events season kicks in big time this week. Everything from regular nights, to one offs, from Xmas parties to informal catch ups with friends. The 2nd Social Media Cafe in Manchester is this evening at the Northern, with Heather Corcoran, curator of FACT in Liverpool as the speaker. I'm hoping to be there, let's see how the day goes!

Frustratingly I'll miss Nicholas Royle reading very locally at Didsbury Library on Wednesday, from 7.00, as I'm in London, and pondering whether I'll have time to get along to Openned reading at the Foundry, Old Street - Openned are good friends with Manchester's The Other Room, so it would be good to take advantage of being there at that time. Then back to Manchester for a choice of two Christmas parties!

The Spirit of the Age

With 2009 just around the corner it seems about the right time to think about this decade, and see if any themes have emerged in literature, or elsewhere, to define the spirit of the age. Post 9/11, and a week after Mumbai, you can say that "terror" could be seen as that spirit, but as no doubt someone else has said, terror is the spirit of all our ages, not just this one. If there is one literary work that seems to be evoked more often than any other at the moment its Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", which must say something about our view of the times - the last time post-apocalyptic nightmares took hold of our imagination were in the decade after the 2nd world war, as the threat of the cold war began to grip where the terror of Nazi Germany was only just subsiding ("Lord of the Flies" - 1954, "1984" - 1949).

Yet, I think its some other works of that late 40s/early 50s period we need to look to. "Waiting for Godot" (1953) has been revived a couple of times lately, and there's something about its ennui, its resignation, its passivity that seems particularly key to the current world. Look around the world, and what you see, whether thuggery, barbarism, militarism or imperialism, is at a state or semi-official level. We live in repressive times, where the sheer force of the state, or the immense reach of globalisation seems to quell anything other than feelings of resignation. This is no 1968, with a youth rebellion reeling round the world with contempt at their elders, nor 77, with punk rock, working class rebellion and race riots beginning to form a heady brew of discontent. This is the age when a shop assistant gets killed on the first day of the Walmart Sale, as the angry consumers trample over him; or when the decision on whether a cricket tour should continue in India is more about what's in the contract, than what is morally right or sensible.

Art reflects, doesn't lead - and yet I don't think the spirit of the age is an angry one, or even a collective one. Even in parts of the world where there is much more reason for rebellion and protest than in the west, the differential between the might of the state and the organising power of the people is too great; collectively there is ennui, resignation, even acceptance. (The destruction of value that the banks have given us over the last year or more, and the willingness of the population to almost reward the architects of this failure.) Much is talked about the internet and "social media" but a Facebook group seems a poor replacement for a union meeting. That other book of the age, A.M. Homes' "This Book Can Save Your Life" seems every bit as appropriate as "The Road"; they both deal in dread, but whereas the dread in "The Road" is very real, in the Homes book its almost existential.

I've been reading a few poems recently that seem to have something of this quality as well - a quietitude, a non-expectation of solving things. So back to Beckett, "I can't go on, I'll go on."

Elizabeth Gaskell news...

Following on from the news that Gaskell's house in Plymouth Grove is going to be renovated, this story on the BBC's website piqued my attention...

Apparently Mrs. Gaskell is "is best known for Cranford", well, only since the BBC's version of it is she. More quality reporting from our national broadcaster.

Lessons in Poetry

Its worth watching this week's Culture Show, on iPlayer or the net to see the piece on Mick Imlah who's 2nd collection, "The Lost Leader" won the Forward Prize and is being gerrymandered into winning the T.S. Eliot. Observers of poetry prizes know that with the odd exception of a "Birthday Letters", there's hardly any consensus between the awards, so it was interesting to see a full piece on one of the contenders, with reading from figures as estimable as Andrew Motion and James Fenton reading Imlah's poems. I was alerted to an article by a bookseller friend who said he'd been inundated with requests for the book after the piece went out. I've nothing for or against Imlah's poetry; I've not read them; and there's obviously a human interest story there - in that he was recently diagnosed with Motor Neurone disease - but I'm interested that a prize where the judging is led by Motion (a Faber author) has two Faber authors (Motion and Fenton) on the Culture Show giving such a powerful plug for another Faber author (Imlah) for that same major prize. Because, however worthy a winner the book is, this is, of course, how its done in poetry. I wonder if the other contender publishers on the list have been badgering the BBC for airtime? Perhaps anything that draws a new name into the public sphere is a good thing, though with the major poetry houses having so little to do with any newer, more vibrant poets out there (as the success of Salt, Seren and others has testified over the last couple of years), the poetry establishment remains as rigid in its ways as ever.

I guess, I'm interested in this, more - in a media studies sense - of how work gets out there, than any other way. It may well be that the other Eliot judges, Lavinia Greenlaw and Tobias Hill amongst them, have other things to say about the winning collection; it may well be that The Lost Leader is a very good book.

Poets, in particular, seem to relish scarcity, so a quick search of the web shows that Imlah is himself a bit of a "lost leader", his 2nd book rumoured but never delivered till now. I loved this page from the LRB, where it announces that "Mick Imlah's The Lost Leader will be published in 2002." Thinking of him not as a poet cum literary editor with friends in high places, and more as the Axl Rose of the Scottish literary scene, appeals to me. And it goes without saying, one wishes him well fighting his disease.

Freelance Writers, a Moment....

Whether its a Moleskine in the Cornerhouse, a laptop in Cafe Nero, or an exercise pad in Central Library, the freelance writer isn't always stuck at home in their garrett. In fact, the writer is as likely to be a nomad as any other freelancer; have battery power (and wifi) will travel. There's a move in the city towards providing cheap, available appropriate spaces for freelancers across the creative industries - and though the focus has been on digital and new media types to date - its clear that artists, writers, freelance journalists, bloggers, film makers and musicians are all part of that community. So if you think you fit into any of those, would like a bit more elbow room than Starbucks gives you, or find the lure of the Krombacher a big disincentive to setting up base in a bar, please have a look at this article and fill in the accompanying survey.

Credit Crunch Christmas

I can mention the C-word nows its December. May need to pick up an advent calendar this afternoon. I'm going to try and avoid going to town this week, it was so manic on Saturday, so local shops for local people, and - perhaps more importantly t'internet. I'm not usually one to "plug" books, but I'm pleased that small publishers and magazines are trying to entice you all to buy some unusual xmas presents. Short fiction magazine Transmission has a competition and a Christmas bundle, perfect for the short story writer amongst your relations; Salt publishing has both a poetry and short story book club and Facebook members of its group can get a third off all Salt books, which should be enough to give your postman a hernia. Interesting post from Chris Hamilton-Emery at his Facebook page last week, giving a great overview of the perils and pleasures of running a small press - and also indicating that Salt's going to move to London shortly. I saw Nathan Hamilton from Norwich based Eggbox last week, and this small press's books are lovely hardbacks - whilst if I do manage to force myself out of the house, there will no doubt be tables laden with goodies at this week's The Other Room, in Manchester and at the launch of the latest Comma title on Friday in Liverpool. I'm also thinking Tim Wright's "Oldton" "pack of cards" is too beautiful an artefact not to buy after meeting him and seeing it last week.