Poets as novelists...

Scott Pack has enlisted his readers' help for an article he's writing on the rash of poets as novelists. I guess its not a new rash - I wrote a similar article in 1999,(originally for PROP magazine, but never came out - you can read it here) noting how many were going down this route. It's strange, though, since most of the writers I know personally are either/or - they simply don't "get" the other discipline. I guess its more acute for fiction writers, who generally don't even seem to read poetry, never mind write it. Yet, there's quite a few poets I've met, mostly doing MA in poetry writing, admittedly, who can't imagine being fictionalists. Of course, many of these might stretch to the odd short story - and Comma Press, for instance, has often encouraged, not always wisely, this multi-tasking. Historically, the crossover has been minimal - at least amongst the successful ones - and this is probably the main point: if someone's successful at something, they'll keep at it, or if they're asked to do it, they'll keep at it. I've no doubt that a lot of the "brand name" contemporary poets, have simply decided to write novels as an alternative "day job" no less palatable than teaching or reviewing. The example of Nick Laird, who issued a debut novel and debut poetry collection in days of each other, is rare, but perhaps shouldn't have been - he's been around the literary edges for a while, and both a novel and a poetry collection take time. I'd be very surprised if he gave up writing novels until writing novels gives up on him; (i.e. he doesn't get a deal); whereas poetry is always possible as a glorified hobby with smaller publishers than Faber willing to take on board those ditched by the bigger publishers. From my survey a few years ago; the type of writers who thrive at both genres are those who've got a unique sensibility, and the form - poetry, short story or novel - hardly matters. These writers are usually more innovative - modernists or beats - their muse more important than the format, which has yet to be codified. At their best, they expand and join together the genres. I fear that many of the contemporary poet/fictionalists are merely moving their main subject into another genre, sometimes with less than sparkling results. So, there was something quite refreshing about Sophie Hannah's chick lit bon mots in her poetry, but turned into novels, she was suddenly in a very crowded field. Her latest successful book, is a thriller, a genre that, if successful, can be a career for life. Perhaps she's found her true calling? As for Simon Armitage his engaging poetry seemed to address a certain angsty working class male sensibility that you rarely found in poetry - yet in a novel, what is left, other than the plot and that predictable masculinity? Interesting that the more successful poet-novelists of late, Gerard Woodward's two autobiographical novels for instance, David Constantine's short stories, Jackie Kay's "Trumpet", have found subjects that translate well between the genres. Yet, Kay aside, they've perhaps been more "poets' poets", less known outside of the specialisms. It's perhaps too early to judge whether any of these writers will last - yet its interesting that Carcanet, the poetry specialists, has recently published poetry collections by writers more known as novelists, Anthony Burgess and Muriel Spark. Perhaps the lesson here, as with Plath, Lawrence, Joyce or Carver is that where a writer's sensibility is strong enough to be worth re-reading, then whatever they've written is worthy of investigation. Poets' beware, your "day job" novels could wreck your date with posterity! One thing we really encouraged with Lamport Court, and I'm sure will continue, was writing that didn't easily fit into the poetry or fiction (or even art) boxes. Artists like Tamzin Forster were as likely to be writing poetry or fiction for us as providing an art piece, whilst published poets like Togara Muzanenhemo and Chris McCabe were given room for longer pieces that were in many ways more narrative than poetry. Prose poems, and poetic pieces of prose rubbed shoulders with more traditional work.

Prematurely Reviewing the Year

Now its December I think I can offer a little reflection on my creative year. A little early, but I know how December pans out, and time for reflection goes by the wayside. I doubt anything particularly exciting is likely to happen in the next month, anyway. I've not had as much time for reading, writing, watching films, going to galleries as I'd like. I managed a couple of days with work in Brussels, and a couple of trips to London, one for the modernism exhibition at the V&A. I was trying to remember when I last went to the cinema - it might even have been Ken Loach's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" when I was over in Liverpool. A long hot summer put me off being indoors more than was necessary. Creatively, I seem to have been hardly awake at all: yet I finished the first draft of the novella I started in 2005. There's been a couple of decent short stories as well, but I'd wanted to write more - or at least complete more; there's a number I've started, and perhaps the one thing I might find some time to do before the end of the year. Not that it matters that much; since outlets remain limited - my stories tend to be over 3000 words in general, so a lot of magazines look for something shorter. I've also almost completed a 3rd poetry pamphlet, with around 25 poems, more metaphysical than usual, probably more consistent in tone. But need to spend a little more time on it before I make it available. Collation - of my music in particular - has taken up more energy than creation; it's not a bad thing to do, but I always wish I'd more time - or was able to create more time - to make some new music as well as new fiction/poetry. There's clearly a limit to what I can fit in. It seems a year of treading water; and though this blog has kept me a little connected in a literary sense; I've not had time or inclination to hobnob that much. "Verberate" was a nice regularly literary evening out, and I read at it earlier in the year; more nervous than I'd been at past readings, for some reason. Though I think I'm a good reader, I don't think I'm that disposed to reading - or that my work's particularly suitable for it. That was poetry of course. I've read a few books this year, and tried to fit in more than usual. I liked Sebastian Barry's "A Long, Long Way", but was as likely to read genre fiction - Asimov, Paretsky - as contemporary literature. The literary prizes haven't seemed particular exciting - or even consistent this year - and I think we're suffering a little from a new voice, or a new way of seeing things. Politics, so often out of the frame, has made some little comeback, but inevitably its non-fiction books rather than the increasing number of novels referencing "the war against terror" that most of us turn to. I don't seem to have either the patience, or the routine, to embed reading into my life in the way that I'd like, and whether I get a new job or stay where I am, improving that equilibrium seems a key one. I've got time - as time spent writing this blog proves - but haven't got the focus I used to have. That said, the one longer story that I did write, which I'm still waiting to hear from one of our slower magazines about, is as good as any I've written, I think. I believe I'm somehow sharpening my own political intent in the things I am writing, and effectively. The sometime ephemera of contemporary life seems to get more ephemeral as time goes by; whether its the Z-list celebrities of reality TV shows, or the bitesized commentary of so many blogs. I'm writing a new story this weekend, which is about the ephemera of success/popularity - how the opportunities it can sometimes provide often squeeze out the original reason you were doing things. Its thinking about the designer Peter Saville now creating a "brand" for Manchester; and what that sort of corporate commission might do to a creative's muse. "YouTube" and "MySpace" for instance, despite their estimable worth as "connectors", seem to create an endless clickable nothingness. I'm perhaps at an age and time in my life, where I want something with a little more depth - and yet contemporary culture seems less willing to provide it. I end up on little annoying crusades, like that which Patrick Ness has joined today in the Guardian, complaining about the poor quality of most books these days. Its ironic, that at a time when the "physical" product - whether book, CD or film - is under an assault from the "virtual", the care that once went into that physical product seems so much less. Its not just the yellowing pages of non-acid-free paper, but the seeming lack of interest in creating a product that will last beyond the season. In the next few weeks, I'm going to start early on new years resolutions: read more, write more. The blog still helps more than it hinders, but I'm wondering for how long?

A story

I haven't been too bothered about the kerfuffle started by Rachel Cooke in the Observer, dissing online reviews in favour of newspaper ones. For me, the Guardian/Observer have long ago stopped being an essential cultural lead. But I've always had a bit of a disdain for journalists anyway. This is not me being bitter that I'm not a writer for the 4th Estate - in fact I've hardly ever tried to get anything in a newspaper, and then its been against my better judgement. What I've found is that journalists I've had some dealings with are almost always very disorganised; unreachable when you want to speak to them; but insist on an instant response when they want to speak to you. A few years ago I was asked to contribute to a debate on the digital opportunities for writers, for the defunkt City Life, and after a phone conversation, also sent it in an email. The misquoting was ludicrous, lax, lacking sense. And there was no excuse for it - my words were there in order, ready to cut and paste. Another time, I almost did some writing for Janet Street Porter when she was editing the Independent on Sunday. I'd come up with some story ideas; they'd been passed on to a particular editor, who rang me up desperate to get in touch - having presumably been told to by JSP - and then, when I fleshed out the ideas and sent them through; nothing, despite repeated phone calls. "Did you get them?" "Oh yes, they're here, I've got your email but I've not opened the attachments." "So, you've not read them?" "No." "But you asked for them..." etc etc. But my worst story, I'll leave till last. In 1999, having completed my MA in novel writing, and combining finishing of the book with some voluntary work, I was, for a period on the dole. I'd paid my stamp for a good nine years, so was totally entitled to this "Job Seekers' Allowance." I found myself, rarely, at a rather high-brow (and low drinking) literary party in Clapham. Imagine how lucky I thought I was, when, in the kitchen, I got talking to someone who was the then new fiction editor of the Observer. How fortuitous!. "I'm writing a novel," I said. "But what do you do?" she said. "Like I said..." "But where do you work..." "I'm actually unemployed at the moment." "That's just diabolical," she said. "You're scabbing off all of us paying our taxes." "I'm finishing my novel, I'm doing voluntary work, yes, I'm going to get a job when I've finished..." I spluttered. "That's not just good enough," she said, and left to chat up my mate. It was quite amusing to think of her, a few years later, when this journalist moved on to one of the few well-paid jobs in British poetry! I wondered what she said to all the poets she was now meeting. "What do you mean? You've never worked...how wonderfully bohemian!" Despite my day job's being anything but ideal; I don't think I'd ever have had the appropriate levels of shamelessness to be proper journalist.

Lame at Fast

Crumbs. I'm now RSS fed into the wonderful "Britlitblogs" which now has a new autumnal look, your one stop shop for people like me making ill observed but well intentioned comments about things that may or may not be literature.

Scriptease

I've been enjoying "The State Within", BBC's American Ambassadorial drama, but mainly for the editing and the acting. The script, though riveting in the way it sets up its conspiracies, is actually one of the worst ever. Until this week's episode the whole farrago could have been overturned if the ambassador had found out that the "internal mole" was his MI6 trusted agent. Everything in the plot went through this guy, who just so happened to sleeping with his US equivalent. None of the leaks or anything else would have happened if he'd told Mark what was going on. But this week, oh god, despite him betraying the ambassador's new girlfriend, and destroying evidence of his wife's death, as soon as this duplicitousness is out in the open, Mark's treating him like trusted best buddy again. The ridiculousness of this has ruined my enjoyment of "The State Within" from day one. The multiple conspiracies, the unconnected strands, I don't mind that; but the whole thing been easily seen through if the secret service guy actually did his job rather than just shagging his American mate. Even though "24" and "Spooks" are far less realistic than this, neither of them is quite so dependent on such a bad plot point. Now that it's out, and Mark knows who the internal enemy is, they've become a bloody double act for chrissakes! Yes, I still enjoy it, but such terrible scriptwriting has come close to scuppering it entirely.

The Future!

I'm thinking of something post-blog; apres-blog; uber-blog; something that is less about the bad spelling mistakes of the moment but the considered spelling mistakes of poor proofreading. In other words, a blog like magazine or magazine like blog or some combination of those words that I've yet not made. Not that it makes one iota of difference. Iota is a great word isn't it? You only ever get "one iota" never two or zillions or none. Yet iota never stands alone either, it requires that "one" in front of it, or at the very least "an" which is near enough the same except with one less letter, and a different vowel. It's one of the world's great mysteries how there's never, to my knowledge, been a band called "one iota" or even "iota." I think the former would be a bit post-jazz, whilst the latter a little Slipknot. Then again it might be because Slipknot had a number one album called "iowa" which is one letter away from being iota. It's a funny old world.

The End of Rock and Roll

It's long been prophecied, but surely this week is the end of rock and roll?

Not only are "Take That" number one in the singles chart, but here is the album chart top 8...

1. The Love Album - Westlife
2. Stop the Clocks - Oasis
3. Love - the Beatles
4. u218 singles - U2
5. Twenty Five - George Michael
6. High Times - Jamiroquai
7. The Sound of Girls Aloud
8. Overloaded - Sugababes

In other words, everyone is a greatest hits, apart from the Westlife album, which is a covers album.

Globalnomics

Never been a better time to buy books from America, with virtually $2 to a £1. I've used it as an opportunity to get Borges' Collected Fictions and even more interestingly, Up is Up, but so is down, New York's Downtown literary scene 1974-1992, a 500 page illustrated tome, that's title alone is excitement itself. I've also been fascinated by the seventies crossover in New York of music, poetry and fiction. The 70s was a strange time for literature, a relatively few English-American books of real note - but a lot going on under the surface that I think the future (i.e. now) will reckon as important; a period when more minor authors are actually more important- the real deal. I've always been blown away by Kathy Acker's writing, for instance, yet she never really wrote a satisfactory novel; somehow that doesn't matter. I guess my occasional rants about bad avant garde writing, are based on my appreciation of good avant garde writing, and also a sense that 2nd-rate Acker or 2nd-rate Burroughs shouldn't be worthy of our attention. A musical equivalent would be all the sub-Stooges bands out these days - its made me go back to Iggy Pop himself, and pick up some of his forgotten 80s and 90s albums for a few pence on eBay. With a new Stooges album due in March with Steve Albini at the helm, I'm definitely regressing. I've had an incredibly busy week, 12 hour days at work because of evening events, a stinking cold, and some other personal stuff, so I'm just coming up for air. I looked out the window this morning a saw a giant black bird stalking the back of the flats. After a few moments thinking a raven had come for me, (perhaps bringing me a message from Odin!), I located my RSPB book, and I'm pretty certain it was a carrion crow, it indeed had a "a bold, upright stance and confident, long-striding walk." I will have to leave out some carrion, next time I leave the house!

The Names have been changed

Although one has a little sympathy for Jake Arnotts having inadvertently used a real persons name in his latest novel - and one in the similar line of work to his character (Though would a Tony Rocco be anything else other than a nightclub singer?) - I did find it funny as well. After all, Jake Arnott's novels are heavily modelled on the real world of the sixties and seventies, with thinly veiled versions of some real life characters. A name's a different thing of course, since you can't change it. There's no doubt a George W. Bush somewhere in Gateshead that curses the day the American judges found against Al Gore; and I'm sure there must be a peace activist Anthony Blair somewhere in the home counties. Luckily there's a ready made pool of useful names available free of charge to all novelists. Just check the "spam" folder of your email, and see what the randomly generated names that spammers use appeal to you: Sven Brown and Hussein Mercier would make a great pair of dodgy small time crooks, whilst Aileen Otero must surely be an octogenarian activist; and as for Sallie Stringer - nightclub singer anyone?

Oh no the Beatles

There's been a lot of hype about the Beatles Vegas mash-up "Love." I've always felt every few years we get the Beatles we deserve. In the 70s it was the reverential, but selective red and blue albums. In the 80s it was shallow retread collections, "The Beatles Love Songs", "The Beatles Rock and Roll Music", or Stars-on-45 style Beatles Movie Medley, then it was the re-issue everything in the vaults of the Anthologies, or get the whole collection on CD, for those who don't like any chance or mystery in the collection. Come the millennium we had the "if you only get 1 Beatles disc get this" of the number ones - just like any other band - and now, mashed up soundtrack to a hit show. When they finally remaster everything and put them on to iTunes we'll no doubt get our own personal Beatles albums, synchronised to our personality and mood, and I'll never have to hear "ob-la-di ob-la-da" again. I think its very hard to love everything they did unless you were there at the time - but they were so prolific and varied that you almost create your own Beatles from the debris. So, they were my favourite band when I was 11, but have long since been superceded by others - yet they still hold an interest; I think they'll survive "Love" the same way they survived "Free as a bird", "Beatles Love Songs" and "Magical Mystery Tour."

Roger & Out

We were going to go and see Roger Mcgough reading in Liverpool last night, but left it late to get tickets and unfortunately he'd sold out. He's got an autobiography out from Century, called "Said and Done". I've missed any reviews of it, yet he's one poet whose autobiography I'd certainly pay to hear read. I saw him ten years ago in Croydon reading poems - but in between anecdoting with the best of them. If I sometimes seem a bit dismissive of "funny" poets its probably because I've got so much time for McGough who is, of course, so much more than funny. His "Blazing Fruit" selected poems is a continually great read. I recently picked up a rewarding anthology, Penguin's "British Poetry Since 1945" which was published in 1970. When I was at college we studied the contemporary poetry scene through "the Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry." Reading Edward Lucie-Smith's 1970 summary, highlights how pernicious the Blake Morrison/Andrew Motion anthology from 1982 has been. I hated the book then, and hate it more now, for the way it restricted not just the number of poets in the "contemporary canon" but the range. In essense the Motion/Morrison book excludes those featured in Alvarez's "New Poetry" published in 1962 so has 20 years to play with - compared with the 25 years that Lucie-Smith has. It is not just the number of poets that is different but the range. The final chapter of the 1970 book "New Voices" finds room for Tom Raworth, Lee Harwood, Barry Macsweeney, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri and Roger McGough - all absent from the later book, onlly the 2 Irish writers, Heaney and Mahon making the cut. It seems now, more than ever, that Motion and Morrison's influence over the direction of English poetry, so codified in this book, has been nothing but disastrous, through both the exclusion of some of the poets listed above, but also through what followed. There's something of a private club feel to their book, that hasn't served us well since. It's notable that Morrison is most famous for a memoir, and that Motion's latest book is one as well. I think I'll be searching out Mcgough's instead.

I was walking down the road the other day

I'm giddy with excitement at the re-emergence of the funniest man alive, Ted Chippington. Not only has he a Myspace but in a bizarre move, usually reserved for those who are dead or paraplegic, there is a fundraising tribute concert in aid of getting a 4CD boxset produced and released, at the Bloomsbury theatre in London. I'm not entirely sure what this bunch of talentless no-marks think they can achieve, and the news that "Ted Chippington will not be performing or attending the event" is a reminder of comedy's loss. Ted, for those who don't know was and possibly still is the funniest man alive. Dressed like Jack Dee (who certainly stole his suits) and with pithy jokes more deadpan than er... a dead pan, Ted was also a bona fide popstar on the classic "Rockin' with Rita" Vindaloo Special EP ("you sure can't beat her, oh no".) Luckily the power of th' internet offers a chance to catch up with Ted's illustrious history. I first saw him supporting the Fall, and he certainly shared something of Mark E. Smith's unique take on the world. All together now, D.I.S.C.O.....

By the Sea

I've been in Whitley Bay for the weekend seeing family, and, last night, at Sage Gateshead, Herbie Hancock, which was a remarkably good three hour set including classics such as "Watermelon Man" and "Chameleon." I didn't know what to expect, having never been to a jazz "gig" before, but the musicianship - they were just a four piece - Herbie's crowd friendly banter, and a smattering of great songs that I knew showed how to do it. So this year, I've seen Public Enemy, George Clinton and Herbie, its like an all time soul hall of fame all to myself. Otherwise, I've still been recovering from pernicious bug, and though I'm now better, its like I'm now recovering from the convalescence. Take it easy, chicken, in other words. I've begun reading Martin Amis's "House of Meetings." Whilst his last novel "Yellow Dog" was a good book, sometimes shockingly written, the writing here is so far exemplary - I'd go so far as to say, the best he's done. Too early to say if the book lives up to the prose but its a promising start. And a promising start was all I managed in National Write a Novel Month or whatever its called, derailed, by sickness after 2000 words or so. Good luck to those, like the Manchizzle, who are continuing. For what its worth, I found the bit I did do, a little liberating, piling words on words rather than some higher purpose, and, if nothing else, I've the start of a new piece. In the week I gave a presentation to a number of artists/creatives we had at a drop in event with lots of other arts support agencies. "Ten ways for a creative to go digital" or some such thing. Get a Myspace, write a blog, buy a digital camera, start selling on eBay, investigate Creative Commons, post a video to YouTube, tag everything, use Adwords, set up a remote office and publish on demand. I've only done 4 out of 10 myself, but you get the idea...

Shelve It

A formidable response to the Guardian's question, "How do you arrange your books?" - as many answers as bookshelves I guess, clearly a hot topic, and the shelving advertisers at the backend of Weekend must be making a killing. I can certainly see the appeal of alphabetical for large collections, but somehow it always seems a little arbitrary. From being stacked perilously at my last place, to all over the place, but somewhat ordered where I am now - I'm particularly pleased of my poetry bookshelf, my literary biography bookshelf (they're all TOMES so it needed to be big), my reference shelf, and my "favourite authors" corner. Other things are in boxes, albeit alphabetical-ish and thematic-ish. One of these days I'll move to somewhere with perfect shelves and will be able to decorate them perfectly. I think I'm aiming for the feel of an exciting, but adventurous bookshop. Unlike Waterstones - 90% of my books would fit into the fiction/poetry/lit crit/letters departments - with my cookery books in a messy pile in the kitchen (where else?) and my music books strewn by the stereo and next to the CDs.

You Know You Should Like Them, But...

In David Lodge's "Changing Places" a parlour game between Eng. Lit. lecturers is about books you should have read but haven't. Poet Steven Waling has come up with a new variation on this, on "not liking Auden." "Admitting you don't like someone that everyone else thinks is great feels like letting out a great secret" he says, and its pleasing to have some a poet openly admitting to defeat when it comes to other poets. As it happens, I do like Auden, but kind of agree that its hard to read him. I think its partly because there's not really a good anthology. The little Faber books that introduced by to Pound and others, selected by another poet, falls flat in the case of Auden where a poem is chosen from every year. It's almost as if John Fuller was throwing up his hands and saying "There's so much of this stuff how am I ever going to choose?" and the classic "Selected" is a hard read. My favourite Auden collection is the lightest, "As I walked out one evening" - ballads, songs, lullabies and limericks - and at least it includes "Night Mail" which neither the Selected or John Fuller's collection does. I'm always amazed, reading Auden, he can seemingly do ANYTHING, but that almighty talent is a bit overwhelming. Every time I think about buying the "the collected longer poems" or "the English Auden" I groan a little and go back - perhaps like Waling - to my favourite Macneice poems. I can't say I've been shy about the two poets that I don't like that everyone else seems to, but they tower so much over the last three decades of English poetry that rejected them, also means rejecting much that follows. Like Waling with Auden, I kind of know that I should find more of value in Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, but they've just never done it for me. I'm not sure if it was a bad experience as an undergraduate being forcefed "Digging" and "View of a Pig" or is something more profound. But I liked "Birthday Letters" and you can't not like "Beowulf" so perhaps its something I'll get over? But I think Waling has hit on something, the poets that you don't like being perhaps more illuminating than the ones you do. I know that in both Hughes and Heaney I don't find the emotional response that I get in the poets I like; why is that? Be interesting what other pet hates people have. I guess since poetry lovers are so passionate about their likes, its more meaningful than disliking prose writers. Sure, I don't dig Rushdie or Carole Shields, but there's plenty more literary fish in the sea - poets, for good or for bad - do bestride their art; and sometimes the literature of the age. Without Hughes and Heaney in my pantheon, there's clearly a couple of missing "giants".

Lunar Park

It's been a strange, unsettling week, laid low by a stomach bug for much of it, and so finding a little time on the couch to read "Lunar Park" by Brett Easton Ellis. It's a book that deserves a proper long essay - the sort Mary McCarthy used to write - but I'll stick to a few paragraphs. One of the reviews says its "John Cheever meets Stephen King" and that's very true, for in one sense, whereas "American Psycho" was a horrific story, "Lunar Park" is partly a horror story - set around Halloween with all the necessary acroutements - a house, missing children, demonic toys. It's always been difficult to see the similarities between Brett and his contemporary at college, Donna Tartt, but here it's explicit for the first time. This is not a subverting genre book, more a book that uses genre - here horror, as Tartt used the mystery - to set the narrative for the wider point. I guess Ellis has always liked edifice - think the Huey Lewis and the News chapters of "American Psycho" - but here, more explicitly than ever before, its clear thats how an essentially autobiographical writer creates a "veil" between him and his material. Here there are almost seven veils, and in dancing with them, Ellis doesn't always pull it off. The self-narration - by a character called Brett Easton Ellis - is one barrier - in that when the ghostly activity increases there is none of the foward tension you'd get in a better King, because he's already told you about it, highlighted what goes next. As a reader, I think this is the book's main failing, that it doesn't take the "horror" seriously enough to make it truly work. There are two many things going on, and though he does a valiant job of pulling them all together - or apart - by the end, there's a lot of words before you get there. But that's the only negative really - after all, if you wanted to read a horror story about a writer you'd be far better with Stephen King's exceptional "The Dark Half". For Ellis is here writing about himself, yes, but also his dead father - and also about fathers and sons in general, his own in the novel "Robbie", the missing boys... typically, the grand satires that have previously played out around Wall Street and the fashion industry are here diluted, but still potent in dealing with American suburbia - surely, when you think about it, his real subject all along? I remember when he visited Manchester asking the question whether - in the wake of the novels that were then current ("Cold Mountain" et al) American writers were leaving the cities and the city's concerns. This was before 9/11 - he shrugged and didn't want to answer for anyone else - but he was probably already writing or thinking of writing "Lunar Park." That "tour" actually occurs in the hilarious, appalling, brilliant, self indulgent (your choice) first chapter, a potted and somewhat accurate autobiography of Ellis "the writer." I learnt a couple of things - that my favourite book of his "The Informers" was actually written before the others - and that "American Psycho" was actually about his father. That is this book's subject, and its painful and playful, with some astonishing writing - and occasionally, some banality. Unlike his other novels, this one has a definite heart. In the past it has been the intensity of Ellis's dark satirical vision which has astounded - but you'd have had to be a fool (or one of his early reviewers!) not to be impressed by how consistently and relentlessly that satire was written down. Here, the book's sometimes much sloppier - but books are quite sloppy these days, aren't they? - and there's a pulsing, human heart. There is still the darkness of his earlier work, and occasionally the dazzling pyrotechnics of his prose, but its more subdued. In one sense, he's just another writer now. There are echoes of Paul Auster's trickery here, and surely the "children's crusade" of Michael Cunningham's recent "Specimen Days" is mining the same "loss" as Ellis's missing boys. Yet, we can go back to Jay Mcinerney's debut "Bright Lights, Big City" to find a fascination in newspaper articles about lost children. America is a land where the missing appear on the morning milk cartons. Its hard to know whether "Lunar Park" will appeal to his normal fans - now older - and those who've stayed away to date, will probably remain distant, but they should take a look. American fiction is losing some of its "can do everything" feeling - and becoming more interesting as a result.

Me and my poem

Listening In

Being at home all day, and reading/writing/administering I've had the stereo on full blast all day. (Do people even call it the stereo these days? I've been playing both CDs and records - so its either that or Hi Fi.) The day began quite raucous, and stayed that way. I was clearly for blowing out the cobwebs; Neil Young "Sleeps with Angels", Ian Hunter's eponymous debut, "Don't Believe the Truth" by Oasis, "Rocks" by Aerosmith and "Use Your Illusion I" by Guns N Roses. The last obviously cured me since I mellowed a bit in the afternoon: "Madman Across the Water" by Elton John, "From a Basement to a Hill" by Elliot Smith, "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain" by Pavement (so good I played it twice), and now, winding down with "The Drop" by Brian Eno. I'm obviously going through more of a "classic rock" than "indie" or "soul" phase at the moment. I've wanted everything to be solid, and uncomplicated. "The Drop", a recent find, the soundtrack to a film about Derek Jarman's garden, is the first bit of uncertainty I've let into the day - I think because I had "things to do" I needed a good robust soundtrack. Other days, I like edginess, or soul, or funk. I've not really thought about the "whys and wherefores" just know that I sometimes put something on and think, "nah, not in the mood."

Last Hand Books

I rarely post up photos on this site, lack of "material" and I'm a bit luddite when it comes to photography (though hoping to change that shortly.) Anyway, this was taken when I went to Hay-on-Wye when I went in August, the outdoor bookshelves by the castle, not so much secondhand as last-hand books.

The Long Haul

There's a certificate on the wall of my old bedroom at my parents which says "Lineage - a novel by Adrian Slatcher, shortlisted for 1995 Lichfield Prize." I missed the ceremony because I was in America though I came down to a small promotional film for it - which I don't think I've ever seen. This was my autobiographical novel, albeit mixed in with a made-up plot. I guess it was the first time anyone who didn't know me had read my work and liked it. I always think I was a bit of a late starter - only going to college to study creative writing when I was 30, but "Lineage" was my second novel, and I wrote it when I was 28. I guess it surprises me that it never lead to anything - it was deliberately a provincial book and the couple of agents I sent it to were clearly of that opinion as well. I was, as well, constraining my style - which could be a little too American - and just "writing properly" - I've always retained a tension here. At the debate a couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of comments about writers being internationalised, and writing mid-Atlantic. Although I like "The Life of Pi", I think its a good example. A Canadian writer, published in Scotland, set in India, and in a style that is the current American vogue - sentences honed, perfectly workable, perfectly understandable, but somehow lacking local colour. How could they after all? Its an international book. Jane Smiley's probably the best example of this kind of writing, her books are all utterly different subjects, genres, but her language is this honed non-style. I'm not saying its always wrong - its just that you have to wonder what's being lost when those individual differences go. I'm just reading Bret Easton Ellis's "Lunar Park" its first chapter an "autobiography" about Bret himself. Its literature eating itself, but as always with him, utterly fascinating. Its got a looseness about the writing which seems very "now" as well - this is raw, unedited stuff (yet, edited), reminds me of "The Crack Up" or "Seymour: an Introduction" or John Cheever. He talks about his first lines - how they've changed over time, from one-liners to convoluted and how the new book is about going back to that simplicity. When I've time I might go back over my own "first lines" see where they're at! I spoke with a friend the other week who I'd not seen for a long time, she's just finishing a scriptwriting course, fitting it in between work, family, life etc. and we kind of compared case notes from the trenches - and I realised, yeah, you go down this route and you're in for the long haul, success or no success.

Cornish Pasties

I've just made my first ever cornish pasties. Things to do before you are 40 or what? A colleague - ex-Cornwall - gave me the belt and braces version - and I think next time I'll add a little bit more spiciness, but otherwise, they taste good. How do people make pastry though? The whole house is in a total fog like a Fields of the Nephilim gig! Do you need cold hands for pastry? Yes, I think so - it sticks to me like a glove, however much flour I use - but then, come to the "rolling" and I'm brilliant - big palms you see - who needs a rolling pin? a palm sized ball is just perfect for a single pasty. Of course, I've now got 5 cornish pasties. That would keep a village going for a week!

In praise of Low Brow

I've always liked pop - low brow as well as high brow - much preferring Madonna to Coldplay, for instance - but then again, I've never really seen the distinction. The pop I like is intelligent, feisty, meaningful, fun. So is the high brow stuff. So I was pleased to see that Sophie Coppolla's "Marie Antoinette" film is frothy enough to have "I want candy" and "Aphrodisiac" by Bow Wow Wow on its soundtrack. Bow Wow Wow are probably one of the ultimately great low brow bands - they were cynically manufactured by Malcolm Maclaren from the detritus of Adam and the Ants v.1.0 with the addition (after rejecting Boy George), 15 year old singer Annabella Lwin; were always too clever a concept to be as big as other "pop" bands of the time, but got big in America as one-hit wonders with "I want candy" and had enough about them to make their fans (I count myself one) cherish them even a quarter of a century later. What I don't like is earnest stuff - whether in literature or music or art. I'm not sure I'll ever get round to W.G. Sebald, too stern seeming, and I've a particular dislike for those furrowed brow poets who don't ever seem to be having fun (usually, they're academics.) I've far more time for a T.S. Eliot - old sourpuss being light enough to give his book of practical cats (never mind some of the music hall scenes in the Wasteland and elsewhere). But just as there's room for fun, and frivolity in even the most austere of lives, there's room for seriousness in the most frivolous - so though I don't expect Sophie Hannah or Wendy Cope to start doing blank verse a la Geoffrey Hill, its always nice when people surprise you. I once put together a cassette (it was a long time ago!) of "Cheesy Hits" on the assumption that even the most serious bands in the world had their cheesy moments (for instance, Velvet Underground's "I'm Sticking with you" or the Cure's "Caterpillar"). The only bands - even then who didn't have a comic side were Joy Division and U2. Probably the same, with Joy Division, you can probably let them off, but I'm not sure U2 ever had a cheesy moment - and they'd probably be better for it - you never know, Sophie Coppolla might use them in her next film. So far more exciting than compilations by Oasis, U2 and George Michael this Xmas, is the news that Girls Aloud have a best of coming out. But I suppose television is the best place to find the truly great low-brow in that in some eyes, its all low brow. And it can go very low. But I loved the first 2 episodes of Torchwood, the Dr. Who spin off (and how thick was I? I didn't even realise it was an anagram until someone told me), and not just cos I've always had a bit of a thing for Welsh girls. The second episode was, I thought, a little reminiscent of Harlan Ellison's classic sci-fi story, "How's the Night Life on Cissalda?", my favourite short story of the seventies. In Torchwood, an alien being is in gas form and inhabits a Welsh girl who works for a fertility clinic - it lives off orgasmic energy, the only catch being that whoever shags her, turns to a pile of dust on orgasm - Cardiff's make population was looking a bit thin on the ground at the end. In Ellison's story, a man returns to earth being made constant love to by an alien creature with many penises and vaginas. The alien telepaths to its fellows "we've got a live one here" and soon everyone on planet Earth is being shagged to death by aliens - except the original guy - who having been pulled off the alien, is the only being ever to reject the advances of the Cissaldan! What with Torchwood and Spooks, I've decided I definitely want to be a spy when I grow up. Definitely.

Heroine Addiction

Howard Jacobsen, writing in yesterday's Independent, talks about his "heroine addiction" - particular in relation to Jane Eyre's recent television adaption. I only caught the last two episodes, wrongly believing this would be BBC costume drama by numbers. I don't know the actress Ruth Wilson, who played Jane, but she was perfectly cast. Jacobsen talks about the importance of punctuation in Jane Eyre: that Bronte uses semicolons and colons to bring us closer to Jane, creating that closeness of empathy that grips most readers of the novel, and that we should revel in the novel's language, not wonder at its strangeness. "There was a time, you see, when a writer's being educated was not considered an imposition on the reader, or a hindrance to enjoyment," he comments. Indeed. He also says that the he remains "in thrall to the literary imagination of this country, which is in all essentials, female." I've not heard it put quite like that before - but its worth pointing out that the writers' education here, was homemade, auto-didactic, wide-ranging, not curriculum bound - the female daughter of a country parson's education.

Surfacing

The week before last I was fractious, pissed off, in a foul mood, this last week I've been positive, confident, optimistic. Yet its also been a bit of a rollercoaster, too much on, not enough time to think, and zooming from one thing to the other without a thought. One of the writers at Decapolis yesterday made the various obvious point that writers need silence, stillness, but then again, having moved from Athens to Berlin, she'd moved from one frantic place to another - silence, stillness were possibly another "ideal" that in reality we never get. F. Scott Fitzgerald could never write when he was drinking, yet could he live when he wasn't? There's two sides to Fitzgerald's drinking, early on he was poor drinker, a fall down after two glasses drinker. He couldn't hold his beer. Later, he died of his alcoholism. I guess he must have been a heavy drinker then, able to drink past the pain. So this week's been convivial, yet I've also had the daylight to return to, so I've stopped at a point. And I'd be happy to have a time off from it. Something is heightened - that optimism perhaps. I realise that I've not been talking about what I've been writing. Not that I've been writing that much, but some poems. Untitled ones. Full of Dickinsonian dashes. Some phrases I like, "the terrifying forefront of life", "I am the slave of twenty tribes," - and a metaphysical side to them. They're creating a language of emotion from the detritus of life. Do I mention "persons unknown" because I was listening to Crass last week? No matter. Language is not negotiable. Yet, something else David Constantine said yesterday, was that in translation you realise that every word counts, since it can only mean what it says. Yet, my poetry is both tentative and speculative. I'd like to think Dickinson was both those things - I can't quite put my hand on my copy of Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon" but that inveterate overcompensator seemed a little absurd in his gushing essay on Dickinson, something about her having the finest intellect of any American poet, when - to me at least - it is to the emotion that Dickinson appeals, most of all. And thats what I mean by tentative and speculative - that she was tentative because her subjects, God, life, death, love, are too large to be certain about, and speculative because in trying to make sense - or even engage with them - that's what she was doing. In a sense, I'm in disagreement with Constantine, for though I believe every word counts, it is not that every word is perfect, in the perfect order, rather that our tentative-speculative writing creates a case that that is the case. In other words, the act of creation is what creates the perfection. An early Keats poem that remains a favourite, "On first looking into Chapman's Homer", is very far from perfect, yet it is Keats putting down this homage, and making that tentative-speculative stab, that gives it quality.

MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told	5
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;	10
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

So much information

Its always the paradox of any sort of diary that the more you have going on in your life the less time there is for reflection. Shall we say its been a busy week, and a busier day. The Manchester Literature Festival made its way to my place of work today, with the Decapolis writers, an architect and an artist discussing interpretations of the city. It was fascinating, and everything that the "original modern" discussion with Peter Saville on Tuesday wasn't. I think I'm in love with Berlin's Larissa Boehning, but everyone was fascinating - and the only down side was that you had to remember the last time you'd been to "reading" rather than a "debate" that was this interesting. I think all of us think that fiction is more important than all the other stuff, yet here we never really talked about writing, and certainly never heard any of the fiction. David Constantine made the point that some writers (I'm assuming he's meaning Kazuo Ishiguro who has said this) are writing for an international audience nowadays, and as translator he finds this lessening of "difference" a worry. We're getting Starbucks writers, I guess. Yet there's no sign on the behalf of publishers that they're encouraging anything other. So "language" is a negotiable I think. And it shouldn't be. Later...rather than go to the Burgess project thing at the Whitworth, which I'm sure was fine and dandy, I went elsewhere and got into a conversation with a group of pissed air traffic controllers in Bar Centro. If anyone's flying tomorrow, they're on earlies.

Wait!

Other people will be far better than me at attending the lit fest. I went to the Manchester Blog Awards/Verberate on Monday, which was mostly very enjoyable - as always I'm left a little cold by the Speakeasy types who did the second set. I felt the blog readings were an enjoyable take on this whole thing. Blogs aren't books, and neither is necessarily good read live, but both the Airport Diaries and 43 bus readings were done well. Its coincided with a busy week at work, a conference on Monday, then a workshop on Tuesday, both involving Peter Saville, once Factory Records cover designer, now Manchester's "brand" manager. I get the feeling the city council wanted a logo, and what they got instead was a dialogue. They may not realise it, but the city has got the better out of that deal. Dialogue being hard. I felt quite inspired - but also a little cynical - in that working for that same council you get to see how far the rhetoric is removed from the reality; its a totally hierarchical organisation, that can at times seem opaque in the extreme in how it decides things. Factory records, as he reminded us, happened without the great and the good even realising it was around; and I'm not convinced that anything has changed - at times the city seems determined to develop the world's biggest bar crawl, and sod anything that gets in its way. But at other times - with the Manchester Food and drink festival, the literature festival etc. - one is more optimistic. I still know I'm far more likely to find the future in the Northern quarter or in an independent dive venue like the Britons Protection, Big Hands or the Star and Garter than anything badged with the words "Manchester International Festival", and that is a gap that needs to be bridged. As my homework from the Peter Saville event I'm meant to send a "viral" email out to three or four key people about the city's dreadful "official" websites. Not entirely sure how I phrase that one. But then again, you have to commend those who have raised expectations in this way; and only hope that they are capable of meeting them. As Saville said, a brand is about values, not a logo, and if you don't live up to the values you espouse then all the money in the world won't make a difference. I've not had a chance to "listen again" to Radio 4's "original modern" stories yet, but that's the other thing about festivals - half the year you are sat in wondering what to do, the other half you're frantically trying to catch half of the interesting things going on.

One Day in history

If you only write one "blog entry" this year than today's the day - a record of "one day in history."

Good Poem

I enjoyed "I'm in Love with a German Film Star" by Todd Swift in the latest Jacket online magazine, (its the 3rd poem down) particularly the line "I’m filled with an unbearable urge to be 32 always and to marry a chick named Miss Miss. " It reminds me of Ashbery in its pop-love of American culture, particularly the movies. It's got a couple of levels of the nostalgic in it, the reference to the Passions song of the title, which means something to people around 40, (and in itself was a nostalgic paeon), but also in the language, despite the reference to Bush and Cheney, in the poem, it harks back to more innocent times. Nostalgia's not always bad, you see, its just recognising it's there.

Swimming or Drowning

I've been a bit out of sorts this week, slow fuse, little things making me annoyed, and I seem to be making all the wrong kind of choices - mad ideas, that seem just plain stupid the next day. I guess you make poor judgements when you're feeling tense, or stressed, or simply frustrated, and its a combination of all three really. The warm glow of my 3 weeks off is in the distant past, and I think I need a few short weeks before Christmas. Maybe I just need to get away - I've only had a couple of short breaks in the last couple of years. But you also make poor decisions when you don't understand how the world works: and I think that's part of it - I'm a bit isolated creatively, this blog aside, and I guess every creative person sometimes thinks "why am I doing this?" I think I began an odyssey when I started my creative writing course in 1997, but its one that's left me no nearer land than before, and, I don't think I've learnt that much from the journey either. Ho hum. Perhaps I'm destined to remain in this state of flux, maybe its my natural state? Whatever...but making the correct decisions artistically, as well as commercially, is kind of critical. Any project's going to take time, effort, energy. My latest on the bus wheeze was to write an autobiographical novel/memoir, "Comprehensive", about my last year at a school that didn't really have much idea what to do with someone bright and creative. I could name the chapters after the timetable "General Studies" "Home Economics" "English Literature" rather than go through things chronologically. Then, I thought, lets call it "Incomprehensible" - which my last year at school pretty much was - but that would kind of ruin the earlier conceit. Perhaps I should get lofty - and ironic - and call it "A Comprehensive Education" - and then what does this say politically? I do agree with comprehensive schools, just not the crap, dumbed down, well meaning but useless one I went to. And would it have to be a memoir? I don't really like them. I'd prefer to write it as a novel. You can play around with things a bit more - but there wouldn't be much point in me making things up. And then again, I hate nostalgia, I see how bad it is. I don't think Manchester's had a successful breakout band since it was codified on screen in "24 Hour Party People" - falling foul of Liverpool's disease isn't really what the "original modern" city should be all about, is it? I'm only mentioning this, because I'm going to a couple of events next week where Peter Saville will be talking about his vision for the city. I get the feeling he wants them to look deeper, whereas they probably just wanted a "logo." Yet, the first thing to be badged "original modern" at the literature festival, stories written in and around odd locations, for broadcast on Radio 4, seems, on the surface, an entirely nostalgic idea, with some rather predictable choices of writer. But catch them on Radio 4 next week, or "listen again" here for 7 days after.I'll be interested to see whether Saville's "original modern" idea will survive the work that attaches to it. I have my own idea, but in a week of poor judgements its probably not a good idea to run with it, which is to commission a range of local bands to produce a piece of "experimental" music for an Original Modern Music CD. What I mean by "experimental" I'd leave up to them. It could be an interesting concept. Or it might just be another bad idea. I wasn't asked to contribute to The Burgess Project, but anyway, I'd already written my piece, a few years ago, a poem for a projected series of poems about "heroes" (I think I got as far as Anthony Burgess and Yoko Ono before abandoning it...) In the spirit of not knowing a good idea from a bad one here it is...

Anthony Burgess

The novelist is Mancunian
And he spits out the words
Takes tea with Lew Grade
And agrees to "do" Jesus.
He'd get a kick from the sanskrit
And papyrus, this linguologist,
Gasping for a beer on the road into Burma.
We look on at our life, make do with the naming -
But not the great writer,
Has still to wrestle posterity down
Finger reputation before the last breath.
I would burn all the books, burn them -
Let him stay on in memory
Kicking and screaming his way from the music
Ornating his pages with Joycean flourish
Out with his droogs drinking moloko
And never in need of rhyme for orange.

How I Write

Films show how writers write in a formulaic way - witness "Sylvia" with draft after draft of poems thrown over the poor girl's head, most missing the waste paper bucket. I kind of think a writers' writing methods are a little like a confessional, between him/her and their maker. Yet if God had not wanted writers to talk about their methods, he wouldn't have invented literary festivals. The Cheltenham Festival is celebrated in todays Times, with the secrets of the writing room. What a wonderfully weird bunch they are! Mainly, I confess, because they use pens, in Helen Simpson's case, an £8 a bottle-of-ink, Mont Blanc, THAT explains why she's never written a novel, too darn expensive. There are quite a few long suffering spouses (and, one presumes, employees) hidden a little off stage, from Marina Lewycka's "lovely husband" bringing porridge, to "that wonderful woman" who types up John Mortimer's incomprehensible scrawl. And they use a strange array of paper as well. Say what you want about Microsoft Word, but its a great democratiser. At least William Boyd is honest enough to say he's too old a dog to be taught new (word processing) tricks, though I'm pretty sure that before I wrote direct to screen, I'd sometimes write direct to typewriter. Simon Armitage is only a little bit older than me, so I was a bit surprised that he's "awestruck" by his computer, and has real problems when it doesn't. But then, even I write (most of) my poetry on paper. You kind of still need to see the crossings out, I think that's what it is.

Football Crazy

I like the Guardian's ball-by-ball commentary of sport; and this is a gem, referring to tonight's performance against Croatia as a "team of plucky but technically inept autobiography-writers." How right he is. All this extraneous activity, of course, isn't supposed to affect their "main thing", yet even someone so at ease with the media as Beckham, didn't see the footballing heights in the end. So, what can you say about Wayne "Five Book" Rooney? Has his stumbling form coincided with the book deal? Yes, its true, you can say its got nothing to do with it; but its like when a club, company or council are in strife, its the small things that make a difference to "morale" and "application." However, I may break the habit of a lifetime and buy a sporting biography, that of Paul McGrath; not only was he the most consistently good play ever to wear an Aston Villa shirt, but he was the tormented soul's tormented soul. Of course, McGrath, who has had more in his life to write about than most, waited until after he retired before he hired his ghost writer. I think what tonight's game highlighted was an old footballing truth, that decline can be disguised, but never ignored. I think England have probably been in decline since Beckham moved to Real Madrid and Paul Scholes retired, yet with the emergence of Wayne Rooney we had the perfect teenage diversion. Wiser commentators at the time said that Sven was a little brave putting all his faith in a teenager, but wiser than we knew, perhaps Sven realised that was all we really had - that and the discarded Beckham. England, for some reason have never taken European Championship qualifying all that seriously - after all, how valuable can a tournament be that we've never won? Tonight's result was part of a pattern that began a long while ago, but was cemented with that defeat by Northern Ireland, and confirmed by the performances in the World Cup. The Chelseafication of the team probably hasn't helped either - since this club of millionaire heroes has created its own new elite system, without, perhaps, the much undervalued austerity methods of Alex Ferguson. England, 4th in the world in Fifa's ridiculously inept rankings, is a team in decline. Publishers take note.

Wanna watch the Booker? Think again.

Its always been a rare guilty pleasure for me, watching the Booker Prize, the one unadulterated bit of TV-lit all year, you sit down with a glass of red, throwing olives and pringles at the tv screen. With multichannel TV, the old "rush" to meet the TV deadline shouldn't be a problem for the BBC, just bung it on BBC4. So what's going on tonight?

"The announcement of the winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will air on the BBC 10 O'Clock News. This will be followed by coverage on BBC 2 Newsnight, BBC News 24 and BBC Radio 4 as well as interviews that will air around the world. BBC Radio 4's Today Programme has been airing pieces on the shortlisted authors throughout this week."

What went wrong? What happened to the live show? And god forbid there's some real news tonight. The TV ceremony WAS the Booker in my mind. Otherwise what's the point of the rest of the country getting all worked up? As it stands its just a black tie do for the publishing industry. I seem to remember that everything from the Orange to the Turner gets a tv showing these days, leaning on the Booker example. So, I don't know who decided to pull it - but it's a shame. Remember, BBC, you're still angling for an increase on your licence fee...

But if I was a betting man, I'd not have a bet on the Booker this year, the best book will win, I guess, but whether it grabs the attention of the public is another matter. And that's got to be bad news for the retailers. Tower Records, a "long tail" retailer of American legend, is no more, and if it's gone, with its knowledgeable staff and wide-ranging back catalogue, what hope for HMV etc? The Oasis greatest hits apart, there's not many "big" records due this Christmas, and back catalogue exploitation has probably now reached its ultimate: a 2CD "Deluxe Edition" of Abba's "Arrival" album. The bottom of this barrel looks thoroughly scraped. Reading Simon Reynolds enthusiastic history of post-punk, Rip it Up and Start Again, he makes the point that in the late 70s, early 80s, albums were deleted so quickly by the majors, that you always had to look forward. Indie singles could sell 20-30000 copies, creating a genuine alternative to the mainstream. The massive availability of music via the internet doesn't really mean that much - nobody's pushing the envelope anymore, or if they are, its only their acolytes who are buying. And where music has gone, you'd be a fool, or a shareholder in HMV, not to think that books and DVDs will follow. Is YouTube, bought today by Google, the MTV? Or could it morph into a paid-content Chain-with-no-name? It's certainly an alternative distribution medium, as is print-on-demand for small presses. Just as the record industry of the late 70s required massive budgets, advances and sales to make money, the current film and publishing industries are wedded to the same. If this Tower is Babel, then can you hear the lapping of the waters all around?

CODA: Kiran Desai is the winner.

The best novel of the last 25 years is...

The Observer has asked 150 writers for their best novel in English (excluding Americans, how very Booker!) since 1980. "Disgrace" by Coetzee is a good winner, (though his early "Life and Times of Michael K is surely the more adventurous book) and with Amis's "Money" second, and Burgess's "Earthly Powers" third, I can't really complain about the list. Fascinating that Ishiguro's least loved novel, "The Unconsoled" makes the list, and a sense of recentness might explain why McEwan's greatest achievement is seen as "Atonement," the most likeable of his novels, but not his best. Alan Warner's "Morvern Callar" and "On the Black Hill" by Bruce Chatwin seem conspicuously absent from the longer list. I'm interested in what the top ten says about what makes a "lasting novel"? History... in the case of McEwan, "Remains of the Day" and Penelope Fitzgerald, big sweep books in Burgess and Rushdie, and, in different ways, the writing in the John McGahern and Martin Amis; and perhaps, a little more nostalgia than is good for us overall.

Connecting Things

I bumped into Andrew Biswell in the Cornerhouse last night, his very readable biography of Anthony Burgess is just out in paperback he tells me. He had a story in the latest Lamport Court, which I enjoyed, though its probably fair to say its straining to be part of a longer piece. Typically, another alumni of Lamport Court, Max Dunbar was also there. Its not that Manchester's such a small town, just that the Oxford Road provides a perfect cultural strip from the town hall and library at one end, down to the university's and the Whitworth at the other. Either that or I go out for a drink too much. I'd just been reading what Martin Amis had to say about Burgess in his essay collection "The War Against Cliche"; I think Amis, probably uniquely amongst that generation of writers, saw Burgess as some kind of kindred spirit. Burgess was never that clubable a writer; perhaps being published later in life, he had grown out of a peer generation. Its somewhat odd coming up against Martin Amis as literary critic rather than literary titan, though the first at Oxford and the job as literary critic on the Spectator were obviously as important in his literary development as the real and adopted fathers of Kingsley and Bellow. Last week's Observer had an interview with him, and it was good that these days they occasionally send a woman to interview him, rather than the young turk male wannabes. Rachel Cooke teases out a few of his contradictions. "Mine aren't the sort of books that produce a consensus. It's why I don't win prizes", he says, which is one way of deflating the annual debate of the eighties and early nineties about whether Martin would be on the Booker list. (It happens with Scorsese and the Oscars even now.) I like the ending of the piece, where Martin has difficulty opening a screen door and his wife does it with practiced ease; if only because in comparing his books and his fathers, Martin always said that he felt his fathers books had too many people opening doors and his father thought his books had too few. Now we know why - don't write what you're not very good at! My copy of "The War Against Cliche" is a handsome American hardback - an increasing option when the quality of paper and binding in UK paperbacks is so abysmal. Last week was a very quiet National Poetry Day, as if the original idea has run out of steam. Can we put it to death, please? I was wondering if Andrew Motion had still some life in his laureateship, (it was for ten years if I remember correctly), but it goes on till 2009. More interestingly, I guess, the first Manchester Literature festival rolls in to town next week. Next Saturday's pairing of Nicholas Blincoe and Palestinian writer, Sahar Khalifeh, sounds interesting, and the Manchester Blog Awards with Verberate on 16th at Urbis should be as well. Highlight of this week was a musical one, Public Enemy at the opening night of the Warehouse Project. Though it wasn't probably like seeing them back in the day, for at least two thirds of the gig they were a still awesome sonic assault, playing classics such as "Fight the Power" "Don't Believe the Hype" and "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos." The gig was a little late for a school night, the place only letting people in from about 10.30 and Public Enemy coming on well after midnight. Its a superb venue, though, even if the sound was a bit muddy - with two rooms and a genuine chill out area (its called outside!) It was a mixed crowd, thirtysomethings, serious clubbers, and scallies. Let's say I imagine Collyhurst was a little empty on Thursday night. It had the genuine feel of somewhere edgy, and one can only imagine the vibe when they've 2000 clubbers getting down to some serious drum 'n' bass. I'd forgot how many great songs Public Enemy have got, just look at last year's Greatest Hits. Mine's mostly on vinyl, naturally. Manchester's always been a hip hop town, and the audience seemed pretty knowledgeable whatever their age.

The Metaphysicals

I just come across a rewriting of Andy Warhol's phrase, for the new "social software" world. Here, everybody will be famous for 15 people. I've not been able to trace who said it first, so sorry about that. I'm actually writing a story about this subject as well! (I'm writing a story about most things, at one time or another, it seems, but that's mainly because I start more than I finish, like a particularly badly prepared marathon runner.) I'm indebted to Baroque in Hackney, for pointing our A.S. Byatt's referencing John Donne, if only because for the last few months I've been ruminating on an essay called "Towards a new metaphysical poetry." Ms. Baroque makes the telling remark that "So much current, anecdotally-based poetry just seems tame and pale to me." Which sums up my own view, though because so much contemporary poetry is anecdotally-based, it sometimes seems that even this mild criticism is an attempt to stab the sickly beast to death, best to see if it fades away of its own illness. But what is "metaphysical poetry"? I remember my O Level English teacher struggling with any definition that made sense, particularly since the metaphysicals themselves, Donne, Herbert, Vaughn, Marvell etc. were all so very different. T.S. Eliot's words seems as valid as ever, that

“…thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.”

But what would a new metaphysical poetry look like? We've not the religious backbone that underscored these writers (and those who have that backbone seem incapable of realising how it should be flexible, not rigid). Yet, prior to the romantic finding God in nature, the metaphysicals were finding nature (or life) in a "living" God. But are our writers looking for the metaphysical? I think they are. Compare these lines from Simon Armitage's first book "Zoom!"

“Heard the one about the guy from Heaton Mersey?

Wife at home, lover in Hyde, mistress

in Newton-le-Willows and two pretty girls

in the top grade at Werneth prep.”

With the last poem in his "Selected Poems" -:

“I looked for an end, for some dimension

to hold hard and resist. But I still exist.”

Anecdote replaced by the unfamiliar? I think so. And the metaphysical narrative that he applied recently to the the anniversary of the World Trade Centre attack, shows he's still looking in that direction. I'm not for a minute pretending this is Armitage's primary aim, he might well be horrified to be so analysed. I only use him as a familiar example: but I think it shows that whatever the merits of an anecdotal poetry are, they have limits - and it's not the romantic imagination that can be relied on to expand that range, but a metaphysical view of the world. Yet, we are either pragmatists (we work, we buy, we play, we consume), or fundamentalists (green, Christian, nationalistic) in our every day life. The metaphysical imagination seems to require a fundamental layering of our physical needs under our mental and psychological needs, so that we cannot address the one without the other. A new Ikea is hardly what we need.

So why did I begin with that quote about "famous for 15 people?" Perhaps because the internet is moving painfully, awkwardly, and not-all-that successfully, towards this "layering." It's no more than a pragmatic solution on the one hand - and has its own fundamentalists on the other. But given a "need", can it provide a "solution?" Though Donne was famous in his life, as Dean of St. Pauls, and particularly for his later religious poetry, the poems that now make his name along with those of Marvell and Herbert, to name just two, had the smallest of circulations whilst alive. "Famous for 15 people" indeed. And it makes me ask, that in the gap between the pragmatist and the fundamentalist, how wide can our circle of understanding be? Millions can enjoy "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley, untold millions can be born into a religion that affects every aspect of their life; more copies of the Ikea catalogue can be distributed by the Bible, but both will sit on the shelves of their respective pragmatist and fundamentalist audience, flicked through, at a surface level. A metaphysical sensibility has its own limits; perhaps a micro-audience of 15 people. Don't turn that dial.

And

Went to see the Onions and the Amelies at the Late Room last night. Good songs all round. Which meant I missed the Libertine Magazine launch. For no apparent reason, I've just started writing a comic strip. Don't worry, I've not suddenly decided I'm a great artist, its amazing what you can do with Paint Shop Pro and Microsoft Publisher. I might think about putting them online at some point, but like a lot of my projects, I'm not sure yet whether its just me being deliberately random in what I do, or something that will evolve. It made a nice change. Less words you see, less words.

Not Feeling Very Anything

I'm not feeling very anything at the moment. I feel I have some emotion blockage thats probably like an antibody, stopping me feel too strongly about anything - and it's probably because there's a real frustration about lots of different things. Lots of things are annoying me of course, but I've obviously got a failsafe mechanism at the moment that is refusing to get more than mildly annoyed by them at all. This morning I got off the bus at the university and walked past fifty gridlocked buses (at least) - taking over an hour to get to work in total - all because of the Labour Party Conference. The City Council's been congratulating itself on getting the big event into town, yet God knows how many thousands of people were late into work today; whilst the government is "going green" with the fashion. Nobody ever seems to go green by staying at home these days, it all involves a conference, preferably somewhere distant. But I'm hardly worked up about these contradictions. I didn't even get worked up about the posters for the Stop the War Coalition. Amongst the things that people were marching against were: that we shouldn't go to war on Iran, and that we should abandon Trident. Since the only realistic reason we would go to war on Iran is because they were developing nuclear weapons there's an absurd collation of ideas that means that those marching (or at least those writing the posters) are in favour of an independent nuclear deterrent for Iran, and against an independent nuclear detterent for the UK. I know it's supposed to be the sign of a first class mind to hold too contradictory ideas simultaneously, but let this be the exception that proves the rule. And I'm still not that bothered. I'm not even sure I can work out whether I prefer Blair, Brown or Cameron or some yet to be genetically engineered hybrid of the three (let's call such a beast Milliband). As one's work becomes increasingly Kafkaesque (will the project be extended before it's ended - which sounds like a Lenny Kravitz song) I'm not sure which conclusion I want here either. In the week that anti-ageist legislation is coming into focus, reading about the young Nick Laird and others being shortlisted for the "under 30" Dylan Thomas award should make me feel old, but doesn't. Everyone of my age seems to write nostalgically about the seventies/eighties - Badly Drawn Boy's new song, David Mitchell's latest novel, for instance. Puzzled at my own lack of nostalgia, I found this from a song I recorded, oh, God, it must have been 1994, called "J. Swift Remembers."

J. Swift Remembers playing drainies
Watney’s Party Six, out of reach at parties
Should have been asleep
Drainpipe jeans, hair cropped to the skin
Ra-ra skirted ingénues, bubble perms

...it begins - there I've done that. No need to write a novel about it now.

Summer Endings

Yesterday's Cohesion Live festival in Platt Fields was a qualified success. The weather was glorious and Platt Fields is always a great location. However, there were the longest beer queues I've seen for a number of years, and you have to wonder how we still can't get these simple things right? Musical highlight were an awesomely full-powered Elbow, getting better with every year, almost unbelievably. The rest of the main stage line-up was less stellar, pleasant rather than worth the admission fee, though each artist, from Graham Coxon to I Am Kloot, had its own following. I'd never seen Badly Brawn Boy, who drew things to a close, and he did all the things that had put me off seeing him before. His band were like a second-rate pick-up band who'd only been phoned-in the songs the day before, and he spent most of the stop-start set berating them. His streeturchin curmudgeonliness was as charmless as Robbie Williams at his arrogant best, and you got the feeling people would say, "oh, but that's Damon". His voice, never the finest of instruments was okay, but always vulnerable. I guess most disappointing were the new songs, all mid-paced, like something from a late-seventies Wings album. The best tunes of the night were those that weren't even his - Sister Sledge, Madonna and Taja Sevelle - and you realised that unlike those other riff-thieves, Oasis and White Stripes, who steal and then make it their own, Badly Drawn Boy draws attention to his postmodern stealings, and leaves you...well, with not a lot really. With a good band, inventive production and better songs, his first 3 albums were all excellent, but since he's neither Elton John or the Scissor Sisters live, a little more grace would be nice. The audience seemed to like it though by this stage it was mostly born again Christian music students with their soporific boyfriends, swaying to the slow bits. Put me down as ex-fan, I'm afraid. It was hard to get away from the main stage (and the beer queue) so I missed the Longcut, but earlier caught the KBC who were very good in a Franz Ferdinand/Kasabian/something of their own sort of way, and Stubbsy aka Stubbs the Band who had the best voice of the day, outside of Guy Garvey. The Cohesion event goes to creating a Manchester Peace Park in Kosovo, a reminder, in the week of the Labour Party Conference, that military intervention can be justified, and that the effects of war - civil or otherwise - don't go away when the journalists move on.

End of Days

There was a fascinating, and frankly bizarre programme fronted by Tony Robinson a few days ago about "Endtimers" those (mostly) Americans who believe we are in the "end of days" and actually want to make catastrophe a self-fulfilling prophecy. I did get the feeling that the appropriate response was to just laugh at these idiots, rather than stoke them up into a 2 hour documentary; but apparently they have some clout in the White House - which is increasingly appearing as prone to madness as the early days of Apple records. You have to be fascinated though - "Revelations" has always seemed one of the more exciting parts of the Bible, and the fact that it's still part of that scripture does make you take the whole thing a little less seriously - though of course Noah and Job show that the Bible's no stranger to catastrophe. The positing of the toothless United Nations as "the Great Satan" always seems a bit weird, a bit too Omen II - surely the White House itself would be a better candidate, or the House of Saud? The worry, of course, is that these extreme views can become terribly destructive in the wrong hands - a church in Uganda that had its own apocalypse was just the most horrific example. But the "end of days" is a fascinating subject for a writer. There seems to be a return to an interest in apocalyptic visions - in David Mitchell and Michael Cunningham recently for instance - that have perhaps been green-lighted by 9/11 and the Iraq war: and language is becoming one of the battlegrounds, as the Pope's travails this week have shown. As Katy Evans-Bush's recent blog entry makes clear nuance is being lost even as we try and explain and understand these events.

Politics

With the Labour Party Conference coming to Manchester shortly I think even a literary blog can turn a little political. Harriet Harman was interviewed on Andrew Marr's BBC show this morning, and she talked about how foreign policy was more important now to the public after having previously seen as the preserve of (I paraphrase) Queens, ambassadors and foreign secretaries. Andrew Marr, as crap as ever, failed to take her up on this. As anyone with any knowledge of anything but the most recent political history would know, the majority of crises in British government - Suez, the Falklands, Westland, the Irish Question, India - have been foreign, and Iraq is just the latest of these. Her naive popular-culture view on things, that if something's not happened in the last 6 months it doesn't count, deserved a little more robust questioning from Marr, don't you think? Needless to say, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Johnny B. Bad

I've been listening to Chuck Berry (he's 80 on October 18th, no great age really, he's our world) and as always when you listen to him, it kind of puts everything else into perspective. Without Chuck what would there be? No Beatles, no Stones, no Beach Boys. He's the Shakespeare of Rock and Roll - and knew it ("Roll Over Beethoven" anyone?). "Albums" were a world away, it was all about moments, and he had plenty of them. A musician friend said he was a crap guitarist, which just goes to show how overrated that talent is. He wasn't that great a singer either. You can easily prefer the cover versions. But was there ever a better writer of the American dream, the American road? Forget Kerouac, forget Ginsberg. Chuck's your man.

A Few Things

The Booker list hasn't generated much excitement that I've seen, Scott Pack's likes Sarah Waters (so, it is just me!), whilst Ready Steady Book can't work up much interest at all, but has noticed there are two "Mother's Milk" books out this year - who'd have thought a Red Hot Chilli Peppers album would be so influential? I'm always interested in titles, and lets be honest, all of this year's list are unimaginative cliches. I was far more excited by Parameter Magazine's Poetry Soccer Six Official Sticker album, which dropped through the door the other day, with such gems as "the midfield duo of Charles Baudelaire and Stephane Mallarme is high on flair but short on grit", and "T.S. Eliot can seem ponderous in defence." The literature/football crossover is a rare one, and should be encouraged. Having to sort out emergency accomodation at a local cattery for a friend's cat this morning, I was tickled to find that cat's have their owners' surnames for the purpose of vaccinations and boarding. After the third phone call asking, not for my name, but the cats, I felt like her blooming P.A. I just watched the film "Far From Heaven" which was on last week; it was a little too pleased with itself, but was sumptuous to look at, and extremely well written. Interesting that fellow Manchester blogger, Elizabeth Baines inadvertently "outed" herself as writer of "The Tart of Fiction", because of changes to Blogger. It brings up a few questions about both your veracity and your objectiveness, whether you go anonymous or not, but as she says, it's got a long history. There's also something to be said for whatever your "public name" is, becomes your real name in many ways. I've actually just written a story about this subject, funnily enough, and my older story "Martin Amis Lives Upstairs" is a treatment of a similar theme - with more than a nod to Amis's own excelent "Career Move." Just wanted to mention that new literary magazine "Libertine" is launched at Central Library on Friday 29th September. I've been doing some more print-on-demand experiments with Lulu - a turn around time of 10 days from uploading a manuscript to receiving the printed copies from Spain was pretty good. At the moment I'm just using the service for "proofs" and its pretty cost effective to do so, around £5.00 inc. postage for a 100 page black and white manuscript. I just found out that you can get the complete New Yorker on DVD, how tempting is that? I wonder if my local library runs to it? This month's Verberate has an "all woman cast," and Verberate organiser Zoe Lambert deserves supporting as one of three writers showcased by Comma Press, in their next short story anthology, early in October in Manchester and Sheffield. She's also got a story in the current Lamport Court, available from the Cornerhouse in Manchester.

Book Off

I was intrigued to read about "Book-off" coming to London - apparently the Japanese have taken to this chain of secondhand book superstores - where all the books are pre-"cleaned" to appeal to the hygiene-conscious Japanese. I'm a secondhand book addict, and yet it was only about 1997 that I started collecting - before then, perhaps because I had a good salary, and a legacy of a home life that said "new" was best, I hardly ever bought second-hand. It's hard to know whether its a good thing or not buying secondhand books, since obviously the author gets nothing for your troubles - but I'd argue, somewhat persuasively, that the majority of secondhand books I buy just aren't available elsewhere. Every town has a Waterstones, and you'd be hardpressed to find any surprises on their shelves - yet every secondhand bookshop, or charity shop can furnish unexpected gems. There's a couple of favourites here in south Manchester, but I can't resist hunting out secondhand shops wherever I am in the country; and though I'm pretty demanding about the condition, I might miss a bit of mustiness.

The Lowest Key Booker ever?

Hot(ish) off the press...

Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss - Hamish Hamilton
Grenville, Kate The Secret River - Canongate
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down - Canongate
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men - Viking
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk - Picador
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch - Virago

Is Canongate the new literary tiger? Scotland's finest - having given us "Life of Pi" - has two on the list. M.J. Hyland, I wasn't aware of at all, and yet she lives in Manchester apparently - though this might be a mistake in the press release, elsewhere she's said to live in Rome - she's Australian anyway, or Irish, amazing how everyone claims you as their own when you become successful - obviously the Lennox Lewis of literature. Kiran Desai is "Martin" to her mother Anita's "Kingsley," though possibly doesn't now need to continue on her creative writing course! and one is immediately worried when you realise 3 of the writers are younger than me. Ah, but what about the books? They sound, hmmm, unengaging - 2 historical novels, and 3 set outside of the UK, which is very Booker. I read a little of "The Night Watch" when it was in the Granta young novelist edition and didn't like it very much, but I couldn't get a handle on "Fingersmith" either - I think Waters is just not to my taste. Maybe its the relative youth of the list, but the overwhelming subject seems to be (unhappy) families. A quiet Booker then? Possibly no bad thing - this pantomime every year gets a little disproportionate (though I'm rather fond of that same pantomime). And if it looks a little more Orange than Booker, then perhaps having 4 out of 6 female writers might be the reason. Us poor men, perhaps we need our own prize... someone tell Carling Black Label.

Appropriate Response

I thought Simon Armitage's visual poem for Five was a superbly appropriate response to the horror of 9/11 on its 5th anniversary. You can read it here. Read from "And here is a rock from Brighton beach" on page 16 to the end, even if you don't read the whole thing, but the whole thing has a beautiful humanity to it.

Sunday Service

The Sunday Times has gone up to £2, but you got a Jimi Hendrix CD with it; yesterday and today's Telegraph's gave you CDs of the Royal Philharmonic; the Independent is papering my wall with lovely RSPB bird charts (today: wetland birds); and the quirky French animation Belleville Rendezvous was free in the Times yesterday. I passed on the Daily Mail's "Life on Earth". Newspapers are clearly an effective distribution medium; but it's getting ridiculous! I've got about 30 unwatched 3 DVDs and its an increasingly highbrow collection. The Guardian sticks to what it knows best; additional supplements and serialisations. I quite like the Observer's weekly magazines, when its Food, Sport and Music, but give the Womens magazine a miss, and look what the other papers have to offer; and the daily Guardian comes up with more posters (mushrooms anyone?) and little guides, like Best Walks, and the new Premiership season. With so much choice, an offer that doesn't appeal is as likely to make me not read the paper. I was utterly put off reading the Guardian because of it's big Bill Bryson feature, maybe I'm just not interested in a childhood in Des Moines; and if I was I could wait for the book, or even watch tonight's South Bank Show. The Booker Prize shortlist will be announced on Thursday 14th September, but before then it's wall-to-wall 9/11 retrospectives, and the troubling figure, from the Independent, that it's best estimate of deaths caused by the response to 9/11 is 62, 006. And on Wednesday Manchester United play Celtic in the first group match of the Champions League. Incredibly its their first ever competitive game. Literature gets a rare football connection with David Peace's new novel, The Damned United, which dramatises Brian Clough's 44 day reign at Leeds United. It's likely that my next project will be a novel about football - though that's merely the context to bring the characters together - so, I'm interested in seeing an actual football novel; there's not been that many. Andrew Motion's memoir gets a pasting in whichever of the many papers I've discarded this weekend that reviewed it, it seems he's tried to write a "Cider With Rosie." His poetry's always been nostalgic, and I wonder what's served by a fictional version? I read biographies of writers - including the one's Motion has written - and skip the childhood crap to get to when they started writing, so not sure what's served by these kind of things. But there's a market, even if it's not me. Craig Raine's daughter is the latest "chip off the old block" to have a literary life, having a play she's written reviewed in another of them, so you end up with this bizarre world where the offspring of writers are desperate to follow in their parents' literary footsteps, and the writers themselves are desperate to write about their non-literary upbringings. Sunday service, of course, everything will return to normal tomorrow.

Old, new stories

I've added a couple more old stories to my download page. Martin Amis Lives Upstairs is a story about literary paranoia, which was published in Main Street Journal; What's Happened to Larry? asks how long would it take for someone to notice you were missing, and was my first published story, in PROP magazine; whilst Bat-She-Bop is a young woman coming to terms with her sexuality, and was one of my earliest stories.

Pulp Barton

Last night, unexpectedly ended up at "Mary Barton" at the Royal Exchange. I have to say I've never read Mrs. Gaskell, apart from her life of Charlotte Bronte, and this was her first novel. Of course, part of the joy of this particular literary adaption was that the novel is squarely set in Manchester. The performance was fine, though it's almost impossible to judge these literary adaptions which strip a novel of its nuance, to find the plot, and sails close to melodrama as a result - though perhaps we should just admit it, we like seeing melodrama, and the classier the better. Got back to find "Pulp Fiction" on one of the cable channels. Here's a piece of writing where every line is a gem. It was good when it came out, but it's aged well. Will we look back on the Tarantino of "Reservoir Dogs", "Pulp Fiction", "Jackie Brown" and the 2 "Kill Bills" and realise he was one of the best? I think so - he realises, as David Foster Wallace has written in regard to television - that our writers and film makers are influenced, not by the real world, or even classical art, but by the ephemeral: the Brady bunch rather than the Odyssey; Hong Kong Phooey rather than Leonardo Da Vinci. Yet, having said that, I wonder what the next generation will feel is worthy of homage? It sometimes seems that culture is eating itself, niches within niche. Real life, like the Victorian novelists realised, remains a rich seam - and writers perhaps need to lift their heads a little more from their playstations, DVDs and yes, webpages. Whilst I'm here, I'd like to point you in the direction of This Space's musings on "The Despair of Popular Authors" (surely a Divine Comedy song in waiting?) part one and part two. Where Stephen Mitchelmore really hits on the head, is that writers like Robert Harris are always vague about who it is they're moaning about. Perhaps there's always a chance they'll be sharing a literary festival with Ali Smith or Salman Rushdie or John Banville, or whoever these "shadowy" literary writers are, taking up all those precious review space. Alternatively, what we have here is the oldest trick in the book. Robert Harris has been everywhere this week with his novel about ancient Rome; clearly not even the most fawning of interviewers actually wants to talk about his "new Labour in togas" (duh) novel - so he gives them a bit of spin.

The Unlistenables

I'm a bit of a connoiseur of "difficult" music. We had a record player in the sixth form common room, and whoever bought records in, got to play them on it. There was a challenge to play something so annoying that everyone would leave. Most of the sixth form were incredibly dull and would occasionally treat us to a Phil Collins or Meat Loaf album, which was reason enough, I think to impose on them something a little more out there. Psychic TV's "The Full Pack" - ten minutes of wolves howling was my masterpiece - though I think the most unlistenable thing we ever heard there was the first Alien Sex Fiend album; approach with care. Reading in this month's Mojo about "An Electric Storm" by White Noise from 1969, I had to get it, particularly with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's Delia Derbyshire involved. I must admit I was half expecting some unlistenable hippy shit, but it's actually great - first track sounds like Stereolab! So, not that unlistenable after all.

Great Poets

The Mercury prize has surprised by not being quixotic and giving the prize to the Arctic Monkeys, which is fine, but a little pointless. I'm listening to one of the great poets, Joni Mitchell, whose 1998 album "Tame the Tiger" has just popped through the door - it seems to take its bearings from the wonderful "In France they kiss on main street" from "Hissing of Summer Lawns" in 1975, which is just fine by me. I totally missed this album when it came out, but along with its superb predecessor "Turbulent Indigo" it shows that her 1990s were remarkably good.