London ILB - FAP?

Have had lovely holidays. Now, back to the books.

ILB FAP: 2009 edition. I'd be fine for a drink any day next week Monday-Thursday.

As for pubs: maybe go for one along Borough High Street?

Monday or Thursday would work for me, and Borough High St is A1 for me too.

Thursday's best for me - working a 12 hour shift the other days. Borough High St always a good place to go for a drink.

hey julio, im gonna be down in london next week so pl post details here - hope to come along

i don't live around london. tho i am heading up there for the weekend for the meltdown concerts and maaaay still be around monday/tuesdayish. can't say for sure, though.

hey Ward! This is good timing - hope to see you too. We'll keep details here.

thomp - Oops I knew about meltdown but didn't know if you were going to be around later that week.

Unless Gamaliel can make it Monday (doesn't look like it) I'd say next thur? Looking at the options how about this one just off the main street - Old King's head - but if you all have another option in mind then do tell.

http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub473.html

I'll revive thisILE thread now for casual ILB-ers (or otherwise) who might want to come along.

Unless Gamaliel can make it Monday (doesn't look like it)

I really can't unfortunately. Awkward customer I know - the toad work. I will have an ILB FAP by myself on Thursday if it's not possible for others though, to make sure I pay my alcohol/reading duties.

That's not awkward at all! See you and everyone who can come next Thursday.

Should be at the Old King's from six-ish, I shall be reading and drinking if I don't see anyone.

I'll say which book on the day :-)

Might bother to do a 'Balkanized' ILX London FAP thread over at ILE on the day of the meet.

And thomp - if you're in London later this year etc let us know and we can arrange a FAP (although I might see you on Sunday, I guess?).

Will def be along on Thursday, and will similarly post book-holding details (tho' Gamaliel and I can identify one another - we go back)

I might be back from Brighton in time for this FAP. Then again, come to think of it, I guess I don't know anyone who's going to it.

Pinefox we have been in the same FAP several times. I think you also have talked to Ward Fowler.

bit odd how the board has an entirely different clientele to last time. feels a bit like housesitting.

but, yeah, see you sunday maybe. i'll be hanging around the bar reading the bantam edition of dhalgren, i should think.

New generation, innit?

I shall look for the Dhalgren (bantam ed.)

did anything happen with this FAP?

it's nice to know that people think they've been at a FAP with me, but I doubt that I could walk into a bar and say 'hey, aren't you xyzzz__?' I don't think I can even pronounce it.

It's on Thursday. xyzzz is usually my last utterance of any evening in a pub.

Pinefox - Its Julio. We only see each other once a year, or thereabouts, but still you should know what I look like.

ah, would love to come to this, but not a chance I can make it.

That's a shame G00blar!

5 month old baby + wife trying to finish PhD corrections + moving in a week = hahahah the pub??? yeah right..

Julio? Sure I know Julio! It just wasn't intuitive to guess that 'xyzzz__' meant 'Julio'!

I can see that.

If I don't spot anyone immediately I will be drinking and reading Patricia Highsmith's Carol at some table.

If people are spotted but not everyone else I will leave it on the table.

:-)

sorry not to see catch you at the weekend julio — how did you find ornette? i think that night had maybe the oddest selection of musicians i have ever seen share a stage

hey julio, am in london typing this on a borrowed computer v. quickly - am going to wimbledon tomorrow, but still plan to stick my head round the door of the old kings early eveningish - have sent a link to m@rtin skidm0re, who i think will be coming along too

btw, i have a copy of THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James going spare, have just finished it and don't especially want to lug it back w/ me to glasgow

thomp -- sorry I missed you too, Ornette was great, I sorta revived his thread on ilm but haven't checked.

ward -- I was at wimbledon yesterday.

see you all later

Will be struggling in probably between half six and seven, looking rather shop soiled and feeling rather vinegary, in all probability clutching a copy of Henry de Montherlant's Chaos and Night.

Right. Unlike the last FAP there are no pics but thanks to Gamaliel, Ward, woof and m@rtin for meeting up.

Pinefox you were missed.

As I said last night: a pleasure.

Ward - let us know when you come down to London again, and do try and go to Wimbledon some other year. The queue is 'work', but I managed to finish a book while sitting in the park waiting. And then once you get to the grounds its matches and luck that you might get to see something great, but some of the outside courts have this lovely intimacy to them. Its an experience.

Thomp - didn't get enough time to say more when I posted previously but yes, kinda weird and yet its part of harmolodics that you could get Patty Smith, Flea and Master Musicians of Jojouka on a single stage. How were the other nights you went to?

Gamaliel - Chaos and Night sounds really interesting. By a coincidence of sorts I am going to see Alain Resnais War is Over, both seem to be a central character's feverish dream of their role in the Spanish civil war(?)

i demand pictures next time!

glad you guys had a good time.

Yes, that was def some fun. Good to meet you all - now have a brain full of recommendations and leads and look forward to doing it again.

Yep, I had a very good time. Drink + interesting and intelligent people (er... + me) = an evening well spent.

xyzzz___, yes, I'm liking Chaos and Night a lot. It's rather vicious and comical, free wheeling and digressively conversational. The Spanish Civil War forms the main backdrop to both the book and the main character, Celestino (exiled in Paris, hilariously, self-defeatingly misanthropic), I'm not sure how much the book deals with the actual events of it. It seems (I'm only a third of the way through) more like it's going to be about how it affected Spain 20 years later, and how it's distorted Celestino's mind - he suffers from a sort of Quixotic political insanity, that causes him to unheroically misinterpret the world around him.

Greene was a fan, and I wonder how much using the Don Quixote template to explore the idea of a mind warped by political extremity was an inspiration for (the admittedly far gentler) Monsignor Quixote.

I wish I wasn't quite so attracted to Fascist writers though - Celine, de Montherlant. It's emphatically NOT the fascism that appeals, but I do wonder if the reduction in empathy and an unwillingness to tolerate democratic compromise produces a hard, extreme style that I quite like, not exclusively, but which I certainly have a taste for from time to time.

Speaking of Fascist writers, (sort of joeks) Wyndham Lewis wrote one of his more accessible novels on the Spanish Civil War and specifically the English types involved in it (more tilting at Bloomsbury windmills) in The Revenge for Love. If you're immersing yourself in civil war stuff it's possibly worth reading for the excellent opening scene set in a Spanish prison. Lewis was capable of writing remarkable set pieces, extremely evocative of their setting - I'm thinking of the scene I just mentioned and the one at the beginning of the otherwise daunting Childermass, where a sort of heavenly limbo is described, and which feels like the best science or perhaps more properly speculative fiction (as do the excellent and hardly mentioned sequels Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta - two remarkable books).

That Resnais seems quite appealing right now - I might go on the Monday if I can finish work early enough.

Need to find another word for 'remarkable'.

"I wish I wasn't quite so attracted to Fascist writers though - Celine, de Montherlant. It's emphatically NOT the fascism that appeals, but I do wonder if the reduction in empathy and an unwillingness to tolerate democratic compromise produces a hard, extreme style that I quite like, not exclusively, but which I certainly have a taste for from time to time."

Don't know about de Motherlant - but there a negative energy to Celine that makes his writing pretty vital. Not exactly because he was a fascist either. Beckett also had that quality, from what I recall.

I should be at the NFT on Monday for Resnais, too.

I will make a point to read some Wyndham Lewis, think I'll start with The Revenge for Love

Its really lovely out there -- drink sometime next week (later in the week: Thursday, perhaps).

I'd be on for that. Gamaliel, you about?

I could feasibly come along...

Can do Wednesday or Thursday, yep. (Wednesday slightly preferable tbh, but it's not a massive problem, Friday would be no go).

Wed is fine with me. We'll go w/that. I know its obvious but how about the Royal Oak in Tabard street? Any other suggestions welcome...

Damn, weds not actually great for me - thurs better. Any chance of that? Royal Oak good though.

oh yeah fine with either. Thur it is :-)

Royal Oak, absolutely. Thursday fine, just need to remind myself to take the late shift on Friday not the one that entails me getting up at five.

i wonder what happened to mikey g.

Oh and for anyone who wants to come along Thursday and does not know what we look like I will have a copy of the ARABIAN NIGHTS on the table.

^Likewise, I will be the one in the corner with the vacant illiterate stare. Complete fraud going to this - my inarticulate fists can barely hold a book at the moment, let alone turn pages. I blame the ILM listening clubs.

One more thing: should be there between 6-6.30.

For those who were thinking of coming along, here, from six-ish -

http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub1228.php

Kinda looking like it's just going to be me, xyzzzz__ and woof, any more? Stevie T?

def coming, get fucked up talk abt books.

South of the river (Mummy, I'm scared), but might come along, fancy a walk (and a pint)

Both days work for me!

Saturday I can't get there til 8 or maybe later - Sunday can get there any time.

So on Sat we can have more ppl than Sunday.

Alfred - Sat eve ok?

so, is tonight on then?

That works.

I'm in the Tower area, just me know where

Royal Oak in Tabard St.

oh shit, will try and make this!

See you all later

Indeed

Wonderful time. Thanks, all!

No problem, enjoy the rest of your time in London.

Sorry I couldn't think of anywhere interesting to go in London despite having lived here for 20+ years.

lovely to meet you Alfred, don't make it 30 years next tine

Oh damn, I'm too far away from London to have joined anyway, but Alfred in the UK!! Amazing!

Let us know if you are ever about in London emil.y

Oh, for sure. Would be good to chat books and shit with you lot.

Also Tim, have you talked about your book anywhere else on ilx? If not, tell us more about it!

Thanks for asking!

It’s “my” book because I’m making the thing by hand rather than having written it! It’s “An A-Z of Work” by David Arnold*, a memoir of David’s time working in a power station in the 80s and 90s. It’s in 26 shortish sections, one for each letter of the alphabet. https://thehalfpintpress.wordpress.com/an-a-z-of-work-by-david-arnold-2/

It’s about the end of collectivism in the English working class against a backdrop of an array of characters and as seen through the eyes of a young man.

Or it’s about what it was like to be a young working class man, seeing the characters around him against the backdrop of the end of collectivism in the English working class.

Or it’s a series of lightly-drawn character studies, focussing on the pleasures and tensions of rubbing along with friends and colleagues, against the backdrop of the end etc etc.

Or as it says on the website, David Arnold went to work in a power station in Kent in the ’80s, on the YOP scheme out of school. He worked there for more than ten years. This is a reflection in twenty six short pieces about work, class, the people who’ve stuck in his mind, and what the hell was going on at the time. There are strikes, redundancies, ghosts, chess, evenings in the pub, workplace bullying, Thatcher, Weller and more.

I’ve typeset and printed the whole thing by hand and now I’m sewing it all, which is turning out to be more time-consuming than I’d imagined. That’s somewhat ironic because the end result is less physically unusual than other books I’ve made (https://thehalfpintpress.wordpress.com/projects/ ) by which I mean, it’s a bound book.

* David Arnold is a musician but he’s not the fellow who collaborated with Björk, he is the guitarist in the Medway band The Claim.

That is very cool - been poking around your website and I adore your design style, it's so good.