Who's who
On the weekend I saw two works by Beethoven performed by the LA Philharmonic as part of the Edinburgh International Festival.
Camilla Grudova
Books i recommend reading, some films too
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lionman, bearman.. Thomas Mann
Last weekend I went to the Trimontium Museum’s inaugural Roman and Iron Age festival in the borders (most underrated part of the country) .
just keep doing what you're doing
I went to Dublin to do a talk on the weekend, and someone (thank you!) told me there was a William Blake show on and I could catch the last day of it.
Dublin event
A quick note to say I am doing an event in Dublin on Saturday at Whistleblower on reading and writing and a podcast too on Zoo, or, Letters Not About Love by Shklovsky to ask what happens when a critic writes a novel?
Glasgow Krasznahorkai
Last week, I was invited to a conference on Speculative Fiction at the University of Aveiro and I talked about M John Harrison’s The End of Everything and Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, both which say interesting things about AI and literature.
my book-my book-my book
Edith Wharton, Andrey Levkin, Tarkovsky
The End of Everything
M. John Harrison's New Novel, Bleak week, Pushkin thieves
engineering, human souls
I’ve been feeling really upside down, right now I am wearing a stained Mayakovsky shirt and having a mild panic attack about everything but here are some cultural activities which have steadied me somewhat.
Like a constipated cat
It’s been so hot here the past week i’ve been soaking mealworms in water to feed to the birds.
A broken Pliny and Knausgaard record
I recently discovered there is an audiobook version of Pliny the Younger’s letters and though I don’t recommend this as a first experience with the letters, if you are well familiar with them they are a comfort.
Many Problems?
Poetry is Emotion Recollected in Tranquility
Dear..
epistolary novels, Christopher Priest, Ballard, the bourgeosie
What he's reading
I realised I put the title of Knausgaard’s The School of Night basically backwards, The Night School, in my last post, but the book is full of sinister, Satantic mirrors and mirroring so I think this makes perfect sense that would happen.
The School of Night and Flesh
Knausgaard vs Szalay
sortes Helen Garner
The combination of things i’ve been reading, books about Nero, and a novella, The Princess of 72nd street (which I will write about on my ‘novella substack’) about an artist woman in the 1970s experiencing psychosis, have put me in a wacky mood.
Cold Rome and Kippers
Sometimes at the reference library, I accidentally order history books meant for children or adolescents, but these are perfectly fine for writer’s research ( creative research opposed to academic research.) I saw a picture of a Roman manicure set in one children’s book on Roman Britain I wouldn’t have otherwise.
jam-roll Julius
Late last night and this morning I read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Cod's head
vs the enchanter, Charles Dickens and his museum
a small green elephant
I am writing a piece about Dickens for here (with help from fathers Nabokov and John Carey) but it isn’t done yet so this week is more of a scrap book diary and I will pop to the Dickens museum this week as doing a reading at the Freud museum( so excited to commune with his begonias and Goddess figurines.) I heard the kitchen at the Dickens museum is fun and by the looks of it the museum doesn’t…
brains, drains and chitterlings
Turner in January