The Blatherskite - Literary Commentary

Out of This World

2011-05-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

It's Sci-fi but not as we know it. A new exhibition at the British Library includes what is thought to be the first Sci-fi story ever from the 2nd century AD and early illustrations from HG Wells' War of the Worlds (pictured).

Role Models

2011-05-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

For anyone who hasn't already heard the giddy east London gossip, legendary film director John Waters will be visiting Hackney's Last Tuesday Society on the 26th of May for a belated book launch of Role Models. Among many others, Role Models features Waters' Musings on Johnny Mathis, Comme Des Garcons founder Rei Kawakubo, actress Patty McCormack, writers Tennessee Williams, Lionel Shriver and Ivy Compton-Burnett, insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena, English novelist Denton Welch, ex-Manson follower Leslie van Houten, lesbian stripper Zorro, artist Cy Twombly and outsider pornographers Bobby Garcia and David Hurles.

Fun From The Ministry of Stories

2011-05-11T06:51:00.000-07:00

This looks fun... An evening of musical and literary delights at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club tonight, courtesy of The Ministry of Stories. Brainchild of Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine, the night includes appearances from John Osborne, author of Radio 4's book of the week, Radio Head, and James Walbourne, guitarist with The Pretenders and The Pogues. Broken Hearts will also be spinning some tunes (pictured). Take a look at the wonderful work The Ministry of Stories does to get kids into writing via their workshop and Hoxton Street Monster Supplies shop while your at it!

Tickets = 7 quid

Patti Smith In Conversation With Geoff Dyer

2011-01-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

Royal Geographical Society
25/1/2011
7pm

In many ways it has been a good year to revisit Patti Smith's relentless artistic endeavours, and there have been plenty of opportunities, what with her award-winning book Just Kids released last February, book signings and appearances at Foyles, together with a worldwide tour that saw her shouting, spitting and revelling in all her best punk-poet songs.

With no question of kicking off her creative boots just yet, her reflections in Just Kids help to enhance our understanding of that revered musical era of late '60s early '70s rock and roll - the prelude to her nascent punk scene - and remind us of other ambassadors of that time who didn't make it out; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison etc, etc, etc. The story of Just Kids follows Smith's complex relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and how they helped each other to success, not only through their friendship and encouragement, but through their collaboration (Mapplethorpe shot the iconic cover of Horses).

Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Sam Shepard were also amongst her friends at the time; with a knack for openly revealing all of her most treasured artistic influences, listening to, or reading about Smith is often an edifying experience.

Smith will be in conversation with Geoff Dyer, author of recently published Working The Room, a journey through a maze of literature, art, music and photography. Have your pens and pencils ready for a discussion that will no doubt cover myriad artistic influences.

Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie

2010-10-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Stuart Home

Talk

The Last Tuesday Society

9th November, 6pm

£12

Notorious literary experimentalist, film maker, hoaxer and leftist rebel Stuart Home has released his final work as commissioning editor for art book publisher Book Works, titled Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie. The seven titles released under Home’s Semina series are described as a place “where the novel has a nervous breakdown” and true to this theme, the Blood Rites ‘anti-novel’ emerges in his familiar non-narrative form. Its subjects of art and feminism are instead unravelled through second-person spam emails about penis enlargement and fantasies involving famous females of the art world. As with his successful 69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess (2002), Home’s postmodern proletariat standpoint grapples with politics, movements in art and carnal instincts in form which challenges traditional prose. This challenge is reflected in Blood Rites with the thought “It occurs to you that there has been an abstract movement in art but not in fiction.” This is neatly supported by the recent success of Tom McCarthy’s experimental novel C, and his notion that “To ignore the avant-garde is akin to ignoring Darwin”. Stuart Home will discuss his latest book at Hackney’s Last Tuesday Society.

Zero History

2010-10-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

William Gibson, 2nd Sept 2010

From fiction firmly rooted in sci-fi and cyberpunk genres, William Gibson's more recent works deal with contemporary society in a way which almost out-weirds fantastical futurist ideas. He is well known for coining the term "cyberspace" in his short story Burning Chrome(1982), and Pattern Recognition (2003) has been noted as one of the first novels to be informed by the 9/11 attacks.

Zero History, his latest book, is the conclusion of a trilogy beginning with Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. The new instalment follows Belgian marketing mogul Hubertus Bigend and focuses on themes of consumerism, viral marketing and technology as well as a sinister link between fashion branding and military contracting. The technology/paranoia relationship that underpins his earlier novels is still present, but the anarchic landscape of the Sprawl (the setting for Neuromancer) is replaced by a strangely objective view of the world we live in today.

Gibson recently spoke about his new book in London with fellow sci-fi writer, digital revolutionist and co-editor of techno-cultural blog of treasures Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow. The talk took place at Cadogan Hall and you can listen to an mp3 of it HERE. The talk also picks up on themes of Bohemia, Japanese subcultures, steampunk, and science fiction writers in general. Enjoy!

Editor of Wire Magazine Talks About His Folking Book

2010-08-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Thursday 5th August, 8pm

The Wire Salon
Café OTO
Dalston
£4 – tickets on the door only

Rob Young, editor-at-large of Wire Magazine, will be discussing his forthcoming book Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music at this month’s Wire Salon. On his blog, Young says that he was interested in why a lot of the music he loved was called folk even though it bared little resemblance to the word in the traditional sense. The book is therefore an attempt to document the movement and influence of folk music over the past century; from an Edwardian renaissance to folk-rock, psychedelia and modern electronic music. As such the contributions to this heritage by artists like Shirley Collins, Nick Drake, Pentangle, Sandy Denny, John Martyn and The Incredible String Band, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Talk Talk, and Julian Cope are placed on a continuum from past to present, or experimentalism and nostalgia. The talk will also be illustrated by film and audio clips and followed by a discussion around some of Electric Eden’s central themes. Plus DJ Jonny Trunk will be spinning some tunes.

Iain Sinclair in Conversation with Martin Karlsson

2010-07-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium

Saturday 3 July 2010, 14.00–15.30

£9

Writer, poet, film maker, psychogeographer and professional walking man Iain Sinclair talks to Swedish artist Martin Karlsson as part of his exhibition London – An Imagery.

Karlsson’s exhibition takes place on a hoarding outside the Tate Modern at Holland Street amidst the construction works for the gallery’s new building.

It begins with Gustave Doré's gothic etchings of London published in 1872 and Karlsson attempts to update the imagery of the city and its inhabitants to the present day.

Drawing on Sinclair’s wealth of work on the capital should be a step in the right direction, from Downriver to London Orbital and Hackney, That Rose Red Empire, he has lived and worked in Hackney for over 30 years.

Sinclair has also been a prolific commentator on many of London’s development projects such as the Millennium Dome and the 2012 Olympic site construction. As such it seems a fitting setting for him to talk about our changing city whilst the new gallery building is underway.

Pan

2010-06-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

Knut Hamsun

Norilana Books. Original Publication 1894

In the early pages of God’s Own Country, Sam Marsdyke reminded me of the protagonist in Pan, an 1894 novel by Knut Hamsun. I was originally introduced to Hamsun’s work by Charles Bukowski and Billy Childish, but he has been heralded by many others including Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and H G Wells.

He gained fame and infamy in his lifetime for winning the Nobel Prize for literature, and later angering his Norwegian countrymen for his support of Nazi Germany, they took to the streets in frenzy to burn his books.

Hamsun characteristically depicted a lonesome wanderer within a community, represented in Pan by Thomas Glahn, a huntsman who lives alone in the woods with only his dog, Aesop for company. Glahn becomes besotted with a girl in the nearby town, Edwarda, and they enter into a turbulent and disastrous relationship. Glahn indulges his emotions through an internal monologue which causes him to draw in and push away those around him.

Another recurring theme in Hamsun’s work is the importance of nature and our relationship to it. The seasons in Pan seem to dictate the state of Glahn’s relationships. The Norwegian countryside is also depicted in grand and minute detail through the character’s appreciation of it.

Both of these themes are the things that rang in my head when reading God’s Own Country; rather than the style and prose of the books which are completely different. Marsdyke and Glahn are also different, but they both share a loneliness and struggle with society and modern culture.

I’m not sure whether there is any direct influence in the work or not, but both stories tug on some of the same emotions, and the awkwardness of the characters and their illogical and intense reasoning gripped my attention in the same way. Pan is my favourite of the Hamsun novels I have read, and one of my most adored books ever.

Excerpt

God’s Own Country

2010-06-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Ross Raisin

Penguin, 2008

Young, lonely, outcast and dissolute, Sam Marsdyke is at odds with the world. He is confined mostly to his family sheep farm and to the moors where he wanders alone with his dog Sal. In response to his loneliness, Sam offers a delusional and comic dialogue with the world and creatures around him.

The town in the valley below has shunned him and it is only with the arrival of a new family nearby, in particular their daughter, Josephine, that Sam has any interest in making new friends. But he struggles with himself, his ego, his past, and his efforts to win Josephine over bring them both to disaster.

Sam acts wildly at times, often fuelled by the jibes of his community, sometimes seemingly wanting to be riled, but even in this knowledge the progression of the story leads to a departure from the comic beginnings toward a disturbing conclusion.

This was a little difficult to stomach at first, partly because Sam’s character seems to suddenly snap, but also because we have previously been led to empathise with him. After some time however, I found the exchange between identifying with and condemning his character more and more interesting. Like in the news when a neighbour gives a shining reference of a suicide bomber.

Another interesting aspect of the book is the Yorkshire dialect and slang used. It isn’t overwhelming or distracting, but it adds an originality and flavour I had not experienced before.

Although I looked up some of the slang, most of the words can easily be guessed at in their context, and are usually hilarious. Some of my favourites include; blatherskite (from which this blog title was derived), hubbleshoe, powfagged, upskittled and flibbery-gibberts.

A brilliant read and excitingly only the Author’s first novel.

Excerpt

SELINA HASTINGS ON SOMERSET MAUGHAM: A LIFE UNDER COVER

2010-06-16T04:56:00.000-07:00

A Talk on the Life of Somerset Maugham

The Last Tuesday Society

11 Mare Street, E8 4RP

17th June 2010

Doors at 6pm, Talk commences at 7pm

Under the biographer's microscope and into the public Petri dish, Selina Hastings talks about the life of one of the most celebrated and successful writers of the 1930s: Somerset Maugham.

Author of the classic novels Cakes And Ale, The Moon And Sixpence and semi-autobiographical masterpiece Of Human Bondage, as well as numerous plays and short stories, Maugham regularly intermingled fact and fiction, using the lives of men including Thomas Hardy and Paul Gauguin as inspiration for his work.

But it is his own life - loves, affairs, high society soirees and scandals which takes centre stage here. Hastings’ recently published biography on Maugham, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham delves into areas which the writer himself would likely preferred to have kept secret. At 81, Maugham spoke of his own life as “uninteresting” and “dull”, probably in an effort to protect it from public view.

Churchill and Chaplin were amongst a list of high profile friends. Whilst predominantly homosexual, he entered into an affair with Syrie Wellcome, daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo, whom he would later marry after her divorce from husband Henry Wellcome.

Hastings explains how his secrets would have been intensified by the times. He was a homosexual when homosexual practice was against the law. He also worked as a propagandist for the British Secret Service during both World Wars at considerable risk to his own safety.

All of this proves to be irresistible fodder in a time when we are fascinated by private lives of the famous, but hopefully it will also offer a look at the influences on one of the most prodigious talents of his time.

Suggested by a friend, I am currently reading Of Human Bondage, and I’m hoping this event will provide a context to place Maugham’s work.

Tickets

Hoss Kultureflash Preview

POINT OMEGA

2010-06-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

Don DeLillo

Picador, 5^th March 2010

I was a bit put off when other reviews pointed the new Don DeLillo book towards the heap of fiction on the war in Iraq. Not because there’s nothing new to add, just that there is a lot of it. Jarhead, WMDs and Jihad. But Point Omega seems to be more specifically concerned with a number of ideas cut and pasted together involving perception, although possibly as examples of our perception of the war.

Jim Finley, or Jimmy, is a film obsessive who wants to document Richard Elster’s role in the war as an academic advisor. Elster is said to have advised one panel or another on how to present the war effort to the American public (although this is not really explained in much detail). Jimmy leaves his home in New York to stay with Elster, secluded in the Californian desert, but his subject is reluctant to be filmed and instead the two sit drinking and talking most nights away on the deck of his house.

In their discussions, Elster entangles Jimmy’s thoughts into lofty ideas about consciousness and the way we invent reality through our perception. Sometimes this makes sense, sometimes vague, but either way it draws a picture of Elster’s world-weary personality.

Jimmy’s obsession with film is just as absorbing. A film exhibition is described in minute detail, slow motion, and with his unflinching attention. He looks at the projection from all sides to see what difference it makes.

Just as you try to get a grip on each of their concerns, they are abruptly swept aside (a turn in the plot that I won’t spoil) and all the talk is replaced by desperation and necessity.

The book is short, just 117 pages, but you could think and deliberate about it for much longer than it takes to read. The prose feels purposely hazy, then suddenly concise and meaningful. Dumbfounded when you finish, then it all makes sense, then you try to make more sense of it. I was thinking, ‘maybe it is actually more to do with the war than it reads’ as some sort of grand metaphor about the spin, mystery, guilt, loss – from New York to the desert. Not sure. The first book I have wanted to re-read in a while to figure it out better in the brain.

JUST KIDS

2010-06-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

Patti Smith

Bloomsbury Publishing, 1^st Feb 2010

Most of what I thought about Patti Smith was taken from Horses – all the poetic irreverence and post-punk style. I had read a bit about her artistic persona in interviews as recent as one inUncut last year, where she classically names a torrent of her favourite artists, poets and philosophers without any mystery, always revealing her influences openly. This was the main reason I picked up Just Kids, I knew it had to be an open memoir, not just cloistered ambition and rock n roll allure.

The book follows her youth and the meeting of Robert Mapplethorpe in New York, 1967, and their changing relationship and pursuits of art, until the death of Mapplethorpe from AIDs in 1989.

Their relationship is often confusing. At first, poverty stricken artists and lovers. At some point Mapplethorpe questions his sexuality and runs off to San Francisco to ‘hustle’. Then they become friends who help each other to success (Mapplethorpe, the photographer, shot the iconic cover of Horses).

There is a good scene of the broader turbulent atmosphere and famous happenings in New Yorkat the time without losing a more personal perspective. Smith is often an onlooker of themes of the time, not a fan of Warhol, not really involved in the revolutionary political or drug cultures.

She is also open enough to talk about where they hung around, what they wore and who they wanted to be like without fear of sounding naïve.

Revered artists are again revealed liberally. From the start, the book is littered with meaningful dates, births and deaths of artists and musicians that share a memorable time in the story. Both of them fanatics; Mapplethorpe steals a William Blake and flushes it down the toilet as he thinks he will be caught; Smith tries to persuade a friend to sponsor a trip to Abyssinia to discover Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘lost works’.

The story is sentimental, honest, unembarrassed, and often sad. Both of their successes do not seem to quite outweigh their difficulties and losses. Really worth reading if you are a fan – I got a signed copy from Foyle’s for nothing extra. Or you may still be able to find readings from the book by Patti Smith on Radio 4 on the internet somewhere.

Patti Smith reading and performing at Foyle’s bookshop, London

HACKNEY, THAT ROSE RED EMPIRE: A CONFIDENTIAL REPORT

2010-06-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Iain Sinclair

Penguin, 25^th Feb 2010

New to paperback – which is good because there are still waiting lists to loan it from Hackney Libraries, and even when you manage it, the hardback is fucking hefty. Iain Sinclair’s all encompassing look at the history, current state (downfall?) and future (further downfall?) of the borough. Sinclair puts his thirty years of life in the area to work in this ‘fictionalised documentary’. He also draws from contemporaries such as Stewart Home, Ian Askead and Chris Petit.

Not a short read, but full of interesting anecdotes and interviews, whether fictional or not, with infamous local characters such as the Mole Man of Mortimer Road, an associate of the Kray twins, Baader-Meinhof terrorist group member Astrid Proll as well as Orson Wells.

Sinclair also interviews various literary counterparts - I enjoyed the walking tour round Hackney with Will Self, who has fictionalised the area before in The Way the Dead Live. These interviews provide a breather from some of the intensely complex paragraphs of Sinclair’s own writing.

I did sometimes find the heavy sentences a battle although they usually resolve in a witty and enjoyable rant. It’s impossible for me to merit as an even representation of the area as I have only lived here for a year or so, but from this point of view it definitely opens doors to history and infamy that I was not aware of before and so I would certainly recommend it to a fellow migrant.

BILLY CHILDISH - UNKNOWABLE BUT CERTAIN

2010-06-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

BILLY CHILDISH - UNKNOWABLE BUT CERTAIN

Exhibition at the ICA

17^th Feb to 2^nd May

A friend told me about this exhibition, and it being free, I went the very next day. I had readNotebooks of a Naked Youth and seen Billy Childish perform once, enjoying both for their punk, unforgiving and neurotic sentiments. Only a superficial peek at his lifetimes work. The ICAexhibition is a collection of his paintings, books, poetry and music.

Starting in the lower gallery, I think I rushed embarrassedly over some of the paintings due to my often art-dumb brain. Mostly they are self portraits – this made sense to me since his novels and poetry are deeply introspective. But I did not feel comfortable with the style at first, a sort of modest expressionism. The canvases didn’t have any frames which reminded me of some of his miss-spelt poetry, and the knowledge that a lot of his books are self published.

Luckily, my sister (who I went with) spotted the free/donation Roland Magazine which would help as a tour to the mass of work. It is brilliant. Collages of his work and influences. Clever people (Neal Brown, Jutta Koether especially) describe it, “The man is a phenomenon on the margin of everything, even on the margin of art. He offers a bewildered nakedness as the solution to all contradictions…”

Much more comfortable in the upper galleries, these areas hold novels and poetry books and some films made on Childish. There’s also a collection of vinyl sleeves of his music and of the bands he collaborated with and several songs play over the top. The covers of many of Childish’s books are more of his own work, decorated by his woodcuts which also appear in many of the stories.

Seeing all the work together and with the magazine for help, I grasp a kind of protest about what art is and how other artists or writers are practicing it too properly or precisely. The poems are the best explanations – see I am the son of Art. I also liked the poems A Sad Donkey and a Fat Man Smiling and The Humility of Love which were pasted on the walls. Go and see those amongst all the rest of it yourself for a better understanding.