New books

Just ordered:

'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned' by Wells Tower

A buzz book which would usually put me off, but it's been recommended and the short story in my wanky McSweeny's app was good.

'Even The Dogs' by Jon McGregor

Not sure if this will be a dark, inventive British masterpiece or a slightly Booker-ish, 'edginess for squares' sort of thing. Sounds good though, and I liked his piece on coroners in the paper. (Guardian / Observer I think?)

All The Sad Young Literary Men

No idea about this. Again seems a bit hyped but also appears highly rated.

Bring em on.

Trundlespike

Has resurfaced. Look the fuck out.

Matthew De Abaitua's 'The Red Men' and Harry Matthews' 'Cigarettes.'

Are the two books I've been reading. Finished The Red Men last week and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's imaginative and ambitious as well as being very British, which was great. There's an obvious love/ hate thing with Hackney going on - mainly love - which I enjoyed too. My only criticism was that the characters didn't talk like people, but more like manifestos, or writers. For a man that spent a period as Will Self's amanuensis though, that's probably to be expected.

Harry Matthew's 'Cigarettes' is a work of genius. I've read 'My Life in CIA' and 'The Sinking of the Ondradek Stadium' previously, and I think this is the best of the three (although I haven't finished it.) Matthews was (is?) the only American member of the Oulipo, a great friend of Georges Perec, and a tirelessly experimental writer. The book tells the story of a set of well to do (on the surface) Americans in New York between the 30's and the 60's. It does so via a series of overlapping chapters exploring the relationships between a particular pair of these characters.

The writing is so fluid and compelling, and the characterisation so masterful and deep, that you forget that a tremendous amount of plotting and planning must have gone into the book's structure. I really admire the subtle, restrained writing of the relationship between Phoebe and Owen, as their relationship descends into something horrifying, sinister and damaging. On the other hand, the explicit, unflinching account of Lewis' sexual predilictions is equally brilliant. Not many writers have confronted the desire to be physically and ritually abused and humiliated, at least not in the form of actual crucifixion.

The consummate ease with which this novel works is both inspiring and shaming for me currently. I've started a new project with an experimental structure and I'm finding it increasingly difficult. It takes a certain mind and a certain love for complex, puzzle-like plots to write these things. I've never been one for giant sheets of paper all over the walls with lines between characters etc etc. Still, I persevere. At the very least I might be able to hack a straight novel out of it anyway.

More from McEwen

A few fine quotes on Ballard's influence on the art of Adam McEwen here

Sadly, I think he says it better than me...

Filling the void part 2: William T Vollmann's 'Riding Toward Everywhere'

After I'd visited the gallery, I wandered into Bloomsbury, past the hall of residence I lived in ten years ago, and into my favourite book shop, Judd Two Books on Marchmont Street. It was the same as ever, reassuringly staffed by the borderline surly (Scottish?) bloke with the voluminous hair. They had a copy of A Handful of Dust with a cover that made me wish I didn't own it already, and a few other odds and ends. I was tempted by a book of short stories by T.C Boyle, as I'd read one of his in last Sunday's paper earlier in the day. In the end, I quite wimpishly didn't go for it due to its having no stamp of approval from another writer I liked in the form of a quote.

I operate a policy of immediate purchase on finding anything I don't own by William T Vollmann. Judd had a copy of 'Riding Toward Everywhere,' which I'd never heard of and purchased immediately. It turns out it's another of his odd, idioscyncratic 'non'-fiction/ documentary novels; this one about trainhopping, hobo-style, on the freight trains of the US. I went across the road to the Lord John Russell (feeling slightly nostalgic by now) and drank two pints of Deuchars whilst reading it. The first chapter is the most revealing thing I've read yet about what this strange and brilliant writer is actually like.

In an effort to discuss the relative freedoms of America across its recent generations, he compares himself to his father and grandfather, his attitudes to theirs. I knew he'd done drugs (crack with addicts in San Fran) and he refers to this here. 'My father believes that drugs should be legalized, regulated and taxed. So do I. My father has never sampled a controlled substance and never will. I have proudly committed every victimless crime that I can think of. My father actively does not want to know which acts I have performed and with whom.' Funny that, fathers' abilities to decide just not to ask. Also, I'm not sure drugs qualify as a victimless crime in any sense. In fact, given the vast amount of crime (the majority of crime in the west?) committed due to drug addiction, funding the illegal trade in any way would appear to be contributing to the plight of addicts.

Interestingly, Vollmann also likes handguns. 'My father... is a sucker for the latest gadget. I enjoy the few mechanical devices which are simple enough for me to understand, such as semiautomatic pistols. My father occasionally shoots handguns with me, but has come to disapprove of civilian firearms ownership, an attitude which disappoints me.' This is the first time I've been able to actually locate some of Vollmann's attitudes, and they're very different to your average 'liberal' writer. I agree wholeheartedly with him on guns, just not the American system of licensing them. Britain can at least claim to have had that entirely right, prior to the foolish, unnecessary ban.

The loss of freedoms in America is making Vollmann 'angrier and angrier.' Apparently, he's pushed so hard against the system that he's been interviewed by the FBI! Twice! No mention of why. Finally, he reveals that to get around the law by which a man who uses his car to pick up prostitutes may have it confiscated, he says he 'uses somebody else's car.' Brave, I suppose.

I'm not sure it's healthy, but I do think all this madness makes him a very interesting and singular writer. And of course, books like The Rifles and You Bright and Risen Angels are up there with the very best fiction of the 20th Century.

Filling the void part one: Crash: Homage to JG Ballard

My other half left the flat for two weeks in Thailand today, and I'm contending with solitude. It's not something I'm very good at, despite the fact I'd like to be. I've done lots of good and interesting things all day, but the sense of joy which comes from prattling on excitedly about them with Scuz is sorely lacking. Still, they were interesting indeed.

Firstly I went to see Crash: Homage To JG Ballard. It's at the Gagosian Gallery on Brittania Street, WC1X 9JD. That information is important, as there are two galleries, and I went to the Mayfair one this morning by mistake. The exhibition is utterly brilliant. Not only is the gallery itself the perfect place to look at art (polite attendants, nice big spaces with interesting angles) but the collection of art they'd put together was spot on. Highlights for me were Hans Bellmer's brutally pornographic, Dali-esque drawings, Jake and Dinos Chapman's 'Bang Wallop,' (I'll come back to that,) and Paul McCarthy's mechanical pig. The latter is a lifesize, lifelike model of a pig that lies sleeping on its side. Four movement detectors set it into motion, and it breathes, snores, twitches and, well, grins. It was unsettling, beautiful and spellbinding.

I very often go to galleries and kid myself I'm enjoying it/ being moved. At this one, I felt shivers of excitement. It's full of brave, clever, transcendental works about violence, machines, death and sex. I think I was expecting to scoff at some of the art that they'd chosen as 'inspired' by Ballard, but there wasn't a single piece that didn't arouse the same feelings his books do. There's something about it all, something about being turned on by icons of doom, that both he and all of these artists convey brilliantly.

Just to indulge myself, and to do it justice, I need to also recommend the terrifying, bitter-laughter-in-the-face-of-death effects of Adam McEwen's 'I'm so tired,' and, very strangely for me, Damien Hirst's 'When Logics Die.' I hadn't realised he'd ever done anything good.

And the icing on the cake? One of the first things you see as you enter the gallery is a stack of books. The cover carries a painting of a mangled car against an orange background, and is titled 'BANGWALLOP,' by J & D Ballard. It turns out that this is a version of Crash by Jake and Dinos Chapman. From a first glance, they've interspersed the original text with random phrases and keyboard symbols. Every time I open it, I read something strange and interesting. You can pick one of the books off the actual display, take it to the counter and pay £20 for it. There's only 1000. I might have just bought my first work of art.

Alan Warner and Bret Easton Ellis: new books

It's 2006 all over again, and I've placed my first ever pre-orders. I'm equally excited about both Alan Warner's 'The Stars in the Bright Sky', and Bret Easton Ellis' 'Imperial Bedrooms'. Not only are these two of the finest writers alive (alongside Pynchon and William T Vollmann, for me,) but they're also very different. Perhaps the only similarity is that both novels are reprises of the casts of previous books. In Warner's case, the teenage girls of the Sopranos, and in Ellis' the teenage rich kids of Less Than Zero. Otherwise, Warner's lyrical, affectionate, darkness-and-light prose couldn't be further from Bret Easton Ellis' unflinching, stripped down writing. It's very exciting that there'll be two (hopefully) masterful books in two different styles this year.

In particular, it'll be interesting to see how Warner's book goes down. There was a little sniping and disappointment around the reception of The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven in 2006, despite it being up to his usual standard (if not a huge step up.) BEE. on the other hand, published what I think is his best book that year - Lunar Park.

Twitter, finally

Twitter, like Facebook, has never made sense to me outside of a way to promote oneself. Updating your status or twittering on about where you are and what you're doing seem to me to just be two more ways of showing off. Admittedly, so is blogging. At least with a blog there's a little more space, though. Despite all this, I finally got twitter last week, and all because I found out Bret Easton Ellis tweets. Pathetically, and in keeping with my fan boy leanings, I felt no dismay that he'd joined the twatosphere, just excitement that here was the real BEE, saying stuff, that I could read. I make no apologies about this. He's one of the very few greatest living writers, and the idea of him knocking out random thoughts on the internet was thrilling.

And random they were. The most recent at the time was a celebration of Salinger's death. In the face of lots of standard-type solemnity amongst all sorts of rent-a-quote dullards, Ellis said 'thank god,' and that it was 'party time.' Will's theory is that he must've been compared to Salinger since day one and is/was probably sick of it.

His last tweet is about Andrea Arnold. She made the film Red Road, which is truly excellent, and apparently her last, Fish Tank, is brilliant too. The tweet managed to combine praise of her film, praise of Quentin Tarantino's underrated 'Inglourious Basterds,' and a shameless reference to the misogyny I suspect is more commonly held than most men would admit.

This is a pure fanboy gush innit? Apologies