a thread for b.s. johnson, christine brooke-rose, ann quin, alan burns,

had to buy them. Not actually read them yet, mind you.
^^this

i. travelling people is sort of at its worst when it hits its Big Notes ('there's one thing worse than the death of your love, love, and that's the death of love, love, before your love has died' - or however that goes - and the last chapter's excursus on class, say) but a joy much of the rest of the time. i think this probably comes out of johnson's insistence on a self-aware novel and autobiographical honesty at the same time, though, to be fair, so does everything else. -- it seems like cheating that the narrator acknowledges the artifice of a lot of things but then not before Henry's outburst or the Thoughts On Class or Henry and Kim's rather awkwardly rendered sex scene.

ii. the first few pages of out are pretty masterful

wld also rec 'I Hear Voices' by Paul Ableman in this line (Ableman contributed to Johnson and Drabble's 'London Consequences')

attempt to reread b.s. johnson ahead of the conference stymied by whoever has the efl copy of the omnibus choosing to accrue fines instead of return it. bah

i am still going through 'out' very slowly. it requires a lot of focus - the schtick is that the narrator is continually hypothesising / fantasising different versions of scenes before they happen, but it's difficult to read something quickly whilst paying attention to all this in-front-of-the-big-house-the-cicadas-are-in-bloom-in-front-of-the-big-house-the-cicadas-are-not-in-bloom business

My paper is terrible, arrrrrrrrrrgh. *panic panic panic panic*

i'm sure it's fine! i am theoretically presenting a paper on j.h. prynne at a postgraduate conference in a week's time and i have no idea how to start beyond 'have a look at that presentation i did in a seminar one time'. oops

Prynne! I still need to read more of his stuff, actually. He did a series of seminars at Sussex while I was doing my MA, but I only had time to go to two of them; they were okay, but a little more 'teaching' than the hoped-for intellectual insights...

eh, most of the MA seminars i have taken i feel like 'teaching' is a pretty high bar that a lot of people do not cross

Aye, I think I was hoping for more lectureship, really. Got spoiled by the N0ttingham Philosophy open seminars - a good mix of paper presentation and group discussion, with a super-awesome staff who never talked down to me as a lowly undergrad. I still miss them. *sob*

This is to inform you that the following item is now available for collection.

Location: English Faculty Library
Title: B.S. Johnson omnibus.
Author: Johnson, B. S. (Bryan Stanley), 1933-1973.
Year: 2004
Shelfmark: P52.70(Omn)

goddammit

all this in-front-of-the-big-house-the-cicadas-are-in-bloom-in-front-of-the-big-house-the-cicadas-are-not-in-bloom business

i would like to get into this business

in front of the big house the cicadas are budding, no they're not

is it possible for the tree by the roadside to be cracked, skeletal, with the cicadas in bloom?

i should probably try and explain why i actually like this novel

the big house is a prison, the big house is not a prison its a garden. all gardens are prisons we are the blooms warden

a list of ideas with square bullet points enumerates

yesterday wears tomorrows face cream, all our pasts are afraid of aging. printed out invitations on a bone white cardstock, thicker than my unkempt nails.

the paper in my printers paper tray is really tinted yellow or sometimes gray, i stole it from work

im sorry for ruining this thread out of boredom, i do want to read some of these books but my attention wanders

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm scared.

dutch courage, emily

in the coe bio there's a story alan burns tells about ann quin sharing a bill with johnson at a reading, where she gets on stage and refuses to say anything because we get more across by silently 'think-communicating' than by the exchange of words

probably every other option is better than that one though

It was good to meet you, thomp! Shame my paper was so rushed and broad. A good day in general, though.

it was good to meet the two of you as well, also i think i owe you a drink

i reread 'albert angelo' the other day. it's interesting watching how the architecture stuff plays out when you know what's coming. albert's passing wish to design a gothic cathedral, then reminding himself he ought to be designing shopping centres instead. and so forth.

Sara won't ever know. She never thinks about Andrew; hasn't ever e-mailed or called. Andrew never e-mails or calls either, really, just has imaginary conversations with her almost constantly; his idea of her. Maybe he will e-mail her tonight. She will respond with a form letter. We thank you for this submission but are unable to use your work at this time. Unfortunately, the volume of submissions we receive makes a personal reply impossible. She'll say she's moving to Florida and Andrew will pet his dogs, e-mail his mom, and buy Steve a present. She won't respond and Andrew will lie on the floor with a blanket over his face and body.

RIP Eva Figes. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/07/eva-figes

MAkes me wish I was a cataloguer: Cataloguer, B S Johnson Archive

err

bfi are bringing out a nice set of johnson's films:

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/flipside2.jpg

sorry,

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/flipside2.jpg

oh, niiice

^^^ finished watching that yesterday, and for anyone interested in johnson's work i can't recommend it highly enough. though fat man on a beach is :'-(

kind of related: bfi are also finally bringing out most of robbe-grillet's 60s/70's films in the middle of the year as well (hopefully this time!)

Saw most of those a few years back and they are marred by a misogynist streak, there is also this vacuum to them (saying b-but its avant-garde is no ans).

And they are not even as straight experimental as some Duras' films - now if they bought those out that would be cause for excitement.

so, not too dissimilar to his fiction, then... ;-)

i've never got around to checking out duras (film or fiction). i do have vague memories of seeing a film based on her time in a vietnamese(?) boarding school.

and to bring it back around to the avant/experimental school of british lit, how does rayner heppenstall rate compared to those in the thread title? always been curious about his work but i never see his books around.

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/2015/06/b-s-johnson-the-poet.html

small selection, but i should revisit this sometime:
http://pics.cdn.librarything.com/picsizes/10/57/10573d7927f261359776a2f5577434f414f4141.jpg

did find a heppenstall novel finally, from his later misanthropic crazy old man period. parallel narratives on alternating pages.

alan burns' work seems near impossible to find.

This story has been floating around since last August, but this is as good a place as any to mention that Music and Literature reprinted one of Ann Quin's uncollected stories:
http://www.musicandliterature.org/features/2014/8/6/every-cripple-has-his-own-way-of-walking

alan burns' work seems near impossible to find.

Just started reading, "Celebrations, a Novel" and what a peculiar thing it is. Was he using cut-ups, fold-ins, whateva?

... turns out he was. I really liked that book too. Followed that up with "Babel", which is ALL cut-ups and is tough to read for any more than a few pages at a time, often hilarious and/or disturbing. Trying to read "Europe After the Rain" right now and finding it a bit of a slog, tho that might be more down to me than the book.

http://www.verbivoraciouspress.org/the-alan-burns-omnibus-volume-one/

(have yet to actually read the one novel of his i did eventually find)

Oh, good. Not avaiable in the UK though. I've got another one of his novels lined up to read, I'll get round to it eventually.

The publisher has some good reprints, but their books are incredibly ugly.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tybwl

^ A programme on all of this. Managed to raise a smile early on for a couple of mins worrying away as to whether this is a group or not (unlike France say) - its got that insecurity of 'have the Brits done anything since Shakespeare and Milton?' about it. 20 mins in and I'm not hearing any new points but it doesn't matter. Its got some nice archive stuff.

lol @ Brooke-Rose making a weird point 25 mins in that you wouldn't read her books on the train (which is a consumer product). I am so reading her on public transport.

Eimear McBride does take a knife to a lot of this (in a nice enough way). As in Beckett is a lot better than this.

Good discussion of the poetry (unexpected amount of time given to Bob Cobbing), although they could've discussed J H Prynne. I suspect much of the poetry and Ann Quin (on the prose side) is what will endure.

Just finished "See the Old Lady Decently". Didn't like it much tbh.

... also "Thru" by Christine Brooke-Rose is sitting waiting for me but I'm not in the mood.

xp the construction is kinda interesting but yeah remember being completely nonplussed when i finally managed to get hold of a copy

It's the worst thing of his I've read, though "Trawl" is pretty boring.

need to reread trawl; remember it being pretty slow going but certain bits, like the evacuee class war epiphany, always come back to me

i deal with tom stoppard at work occasionally and am always tempted to ask about their beef

Big Bryan had a beef with everyone, more or less.