Is Chuck Palahniuk one of America’s most underrated or overrated novelists? The answer to the question probably revolves around your attitude towards the shocking, because he is without doubt a novelist with the power to churn the stomach (although the reported faintings at readings of his short story ‘Guts’ seems exaggerated to me). Speaking to […]
Imagine the scene: The revolutionary court stands to order as its three women judges enter. There’s a tension in the air, the atmosphere is electric, as the accused stands in all his fuzzy-faced glory. There was a time in the mid-eighties when all you could hear on the radio had his reverbed vocals, and now […]
Short sharp shock is the primary philosophy Brooklyn’s Radio 4 unleash on their 2002 album Gotham. Appropriately titled, the post punk Noo Yoik angst transmits aesthetics as dour as a Monday bank holiday stuck in a bedsit with Stephen Gerrard and Damien Duff as company, with the mildly unfair Gang Of Four label sitting just […]
In Daniel Orozco’s brilliant short story Orientation, there’s a moment when – during an introduction to an office environment – the narrative slips into the startling: “Anika Bloom sits in that cubicle. Last year, while reviewing quarterly reports in a meeting with Barry Hacker, Anika Bloom’s left palm began to bleed. She fell into a trance, […]
This is something I’ve been going on about in Our Man in Gdansk for some time now. This time, the book in question, though Polish, is available in an English translation by the highly regarded translator Bill Johnston. I refer to Andrzej Stasiuk’s 9. Look at the mess on page 6: To the right there’d […]
Just for the record, this year’s Man Booker Shortlist has been announced: The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga The Secret Scripture – Sebastian Barry Sea of Poppies – Amitav Ghosh The Clothes on Their Backs – Linda Grant The Northern Clemency – Philip Hensher A Fraction of the Whole – Steve Toltz Perhaps the most […]
I’ve yet to read any novels by George Sanders, but after reading the following passage in an interview between Ben Marcus and Saunders, taken from meaty Believer Book of Writers Talking To Writers, I think it’s about time I did: So, when I’m writing, I am trying to move myself, or impress myself, or prevent […]
“This book makes no secret of the fact that it is aimed at specialists, containing as it does only four pages that are not structured as a list.” This is the encouraging opening of a review of Seamus Heaney: A Bibliography, by Rand Brandes and Michael A. Durkan which appeared in the ever-gripping Irish Times […]
