Wells Tower: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

How to express how great this book is? I'm having to restrain myself. My awful snobbery was in full effect before I started it; the fact he's written for the achingly hip McSweeny's, the fact that his name sounds more like a modern movie star's, the fact that the book's being mentioned everywhere amongst what I suppose are literary tastemakers. It's actually so good that I lost the urge to hate it within about three lines. The simplest way to describe it would be a cross between David Foster Wallace and Bret Easton Ellis. That's as crude as all such comparisons, but it gives some idea of the range across unflinching brutality and warm, everyday compassion that Wells Tower covers.

One of the first things I noticed and enjoyed was the exactitude of language. It's always the perfect word that is used in an image or description. A character pours a 'long grey dose' of sunflower seeds into his mouth, in one example. I evangelically pressed my copy of the book on Scuz as soon as I got home last night, so I can't quote the other lines I wanted to for fear of getting them wrong. Trust me, he's a very good writer, and seems to quietly revel in language.

Anyway, it's just excellent. Behind it all there's a sort of unobtrusive morality that you can take or leave (hence DFW comparison) and often there's a really shocking nastiness to the characters (hence BEE,) and it's hard to shock, these days. One character recalls his contrarian, bullying father - a lawyer - telling him as a child to 'fight to the death if a man tries to put you into his car. You're probably dead either way, and it's better to check out before they get creative on you.'

My snobbery has been well and truly confounded, once again. One day I'll learn.

Nabokov: Invitation to a Beheading

I take most of it back on this book, it ended up pretty fantastic. I still think Nabokov's supreme confidence is a little less controlled than in later novels, but the blend of slapstick, farce, horror and dread makes for quite a firework display. It does get better as it develops, and as the stinking, odious presence of M Pierre invades the novel. It's also (unless I'm reading it wrong,) very, very dirty. Surely the scene in which Cincinatus reflects on his promiscuous wife eating a pear is a barely concealed description of her giving another man a blowjob? Quite strong stuff for the 1930's.

I actually read a copy with one of those fantastic Penguin covers from the 1980's with a modern art image, but I couldn't find the picture online...

Mike Ladd

This one brings back memories. I think this must've been at the XEN: 10 Years of Ninja Tune party at Scala, 2000. Mike Ladd is one of the few musicians who was one of my very favourites then and still is now. This was in his crazier days (obviously,) but to give him his credit his live show hasn't lost an iota of its energy since then. For me he's always made raw, literate, black punk music. He constantly seems capable of being visceral and cerebral all at once, which is no easy feat. Great poet too, as in actually great, rather than the 'great' people normally use about musicians writing poetry. We're finally putting his new record out in May, and it's really fucking good.

Billy Childish

Great quote to finish up the Radio 4 program on him today. When asked what he wanted to achieve with his art, music and writing, he replied 'I want to mature, I want to be a better person, I want to be closer to god... And you can't do that just by winning.'

That's pretty much how I've always felt about art, except I'd have gone all long winded and couldn't have brought myself to say anything about god.

I just love this pic.

It comes from some film and was used to illustrate the review in The Times of The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe? by Paul Davies. The book sounds really interesting, although I'll never read it as I just don't get round to non-fiction. Two things highlighted in the review: That sending out signals to announce ourselves to any intelligent life could be akin to 'a smiling child attempting to make friends with a crocodile.' And the idea that intelligent life, wherever it may exist, may not last very long because it simply burns itself out through its violent impact on environment. Human life may exist for a fraction of time only, relatively speaking, and if the same applies elsewhere it's very unlikely that two intelligent civilisations would exist at once. The metaphor Davies used was a town of 100 houses whose lights came on for only a few seconds each night. Communication would only be possible if two house's lights came on at once, making it virtually impossible. Haunting thought that.

Stanza, structure and Invitation to a Beheading

It's been a week of varying success so far, partly as I'm struggling with my new project. I'm not sure if the structure works, and I seem to be getting distracted easily which is always worrying. I'm thinking about doing a third session on Sunday mornings. In other news, Stanza for iPhone is amazing. I turned my new book into an ebook and transferred it over, and now I can read through it easily on the tube. Funny things iPhones. They're irritatingly good, in the sense that they're so good that everyone who has one wants to talk about them, which is irritating.

'Invitation to a Beheading' is the first Russian Nabokov I've ever read. Obviously, I'm not reading it in Russian. It's maybe a little denser than the English language, later books. Although it has all the trademark playfulness and black humour, they're a little less controlled and a little more... showy? It also feels less startling in its originality than the later books, with a bit more existential (dare I say it) cliche. Still, it's good.

Here's hoping next week is better, writing wise.

Finished

Even the Dogs. It's really very good indeed. The prose is torrential, tough and lovely. It's full of astounding, nail-on-the-head images, the plot is great and the experimental narration and structure a wild success. It's also harrowing, moving and extremely convincing. Bloody hell. There are few downsides. I wish Robert's alcoholism hadn't been sort of explained or reasoned out by the revelation of his head injury. I just don't think there needs to be a reason - not that the book offers it as a full explanation or a justification. I wondered if repeating the intermingled images and narrative technique so often was maybe slightly indulgent, but hell, it's pretty effective to read. The only other thing was Steve being surprised that soldiers got shot in Northern Ireland. I wasn't really convinced by his 'my country lied to me' mantra. Apparently Lee Rourke is asking himself why he hasn't read Jon McGregor before, somewhere out there on the internet. I'm asking myself the same thing.

News

Had some good news this week, fingers crossed. If there's any more soon, I might even tell people.

David Foster Wallace: Archived

Just read this in the Guardian. DFW is one of my favourite writers, and I was really upset when he died. These archives that get put together when a writer dies leave me strangely unmoved. I guess I'd like to flick through a notebook, but I'd feel a bit guilty doing so. I certainly wouldn't want to pore over the lot for hours. I once saw a notebook of James Joyce's with part of the original, handwritten draft of Ulysses in it. That was exciting because it was the actual text - the most important bit - and it was in his wild, scrawled handwriting. I'm not sure I'd want to see the nuts and bolts and ideas and techniques and plans behind a writer's work, at least not masses of them. It'd sort of ruin the surface tension that gives a book its magic.

Also, without suggesting that anyone would ever be interested in my notebooks, there's no way I'd want them displayed anywhere, or read by a single other person. My notes and plans are interspersed with reminders, notes to self, lists of excruciatingly personal/ embarrassing concerns etc etc. Do these writers write notes with a view to them being looked over, or am I just unusually weird?

Pavement: Quarantine The Past

Pavement have sort of crept up on me as one of my favourite bands ever. It's only recently struck me that I've probably spent as much time listening to them as I have to anyone else. The last few days I've been listening to this, their best of, constantly. (Apologies to my co-worker Nicky.) It's an excellent compilation and has a typically Pavement, uncompromising and knowing sort of edge to it. At their best they evoke that feeling of, say, walking along on a sunny evening, after work, when everything is right with the world and yourself for just one moment. When the inner monologue has mainly good things to say. 'Frontwards' is my current highlight. Stephen Malkmus has a really excellent balance of irony and passion, and the way they play their perfectly imperfect pop songs is best described by the title of their debut album, Slanted and Enchanted.

Even the Dogs

Is scarily good so far. I'm right at the very beginning, but it's really quite masterful. It's narrated by what seems to be a group of characters, who speak in one collective voice. The opening of the novel describes the discovery of a body in a block of flats, and there's an incredible few pages in which scenes from the present and past intermingle. The images of Robert (it's his body) moving in with his wife, their decorating and lovemaking, are interspersed with the flat's later descent into ruin; his drinking, the holes punched in the walls, the damp and decay. It's breathtakingly well done actually, and very sad. I have a feeling it's going to be one of those books that's kind of painfully good. Ah well.

Dum Dum Girls

Are really quite excellent. I wish the album was out, or I knew who to blag it from.

James Sallis and Kurt Cobain

I went to what just might be the poshest Oxfam shop in the country on Saturday, in Harrogate. The books and records section upstairs was being run by a lady who looked like the Queen, but I suspect someone else was responsible for the displays of Mo'Wax 12"s and Las albums that would have put most record shops to shame. The books section was just as good. The second place I've ever come across to have a second hand copy of 'Coming Through Slaughter.' That familiar sense of almost wishing I hadn't bought and read it already. I picked up 'Ghost of a Flea' by James Sallis, Kurt Cobain's Journals, and 'Invitation to a Beheading' by Nabokov.
The Sallis book is excellent so far. Apparently it's the last in a series of 'crime' novels centred around ageing novelist and private eye Lew Griffin. I haven't read any of the others, but it doesn't feel as if I need to have, or won't be able to later. The book is full of uncontrived, casual philosophy and quotes from people as diverse as Pascal and Pynchon. It's all set in a grim, tough, faded New Orleans, and the tone is elegiac towards Lew and his 'past tense' friends, and the city itself. I'm riveted and can't wait to finish. Incidentally, Sallis' 'Driver' is also brilliant. He obviously hold genre snobs in disdain, and any such haters of the crime novel should certainly read him.
Kurt Cobain's journals? I just couldn't quite resist them. I'm still fascinated and enthralled by him. His band were the single biggest musical influence in my life, both in terms of sound and in attitude towards music in general. The journals are really interesting. So far they've mainly consisted of letters to The Melvins, other friends and sacked drummers. They detail Cobain's obsession and dedication to the band, how much time and money they spent, and that depressingly familiar suspicion of record labels. The wonderful Sub-Pop cops a lot of shit, that's for sure.
There's some bad, consciously stream-of-conscious writing about dream states, and some excellent comic strips. My favourite is the one about the red neck whose unborn son puts his foot through dad's head.
As for Nabokov, that might be the one after Sallis I guess.