Dusk.
This is the first time this year I will have closed up in the dark.
What shall I read now? After Denis every novel I try seems weak and rubbish.
Any suggestions for a jaded bookseller fighting off a SAD attack or shall I just read essays and non-fiction for a while?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Did you ever read 'A Month in the Country'? (Carr not Turgenev.) My favourite recommendation for all jaded readers.
ReplyDeleteHave you read 'Gents' by Warwick Collins? It's fantastic, a modern classic, it's.. you've read it haven't you?
ReplyDeletehttp://justwilliamsluck.blogspot.com/2007/08/masterpiece.html
If you need to switch up to a biography I really recommend “Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia: the strange lives of Julian MacLaren-Ross” by Paul Willetts.
ReplyDeleteThe blurb:
No writer, not even Hemingway or Rimbaud, led as bizarre and eventful a life as the once celebrated Soho dandy Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64). Next to him, the conventional icons of London bohemia, among them Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard, appear models of stability and self-restraint. Besides providing a detailed account of his extraordinary escapades, "Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia" offers a portrait of the bohemian pub and club scene within which Maclaren-Ross was such a conspicuous figure. In the course of 52 hectic years, he endured homelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, and near-insanity, culminating in an erotic fixation on George Orwell's glamorous widow, whom he plotted to murder(!!). At one stage he was even the target of a Scotland Yard man-hunt. All this took place against a variety of colourful backdrops, encompassing not just Soho but also the raffish cafe society that flourished on the French Riviera during the 1920s. Fascinated by Maclaren-Ross's turbulent life, numerous other prominent novelists modelled characters on him, among them Graham Greene, Anthony Powell and Olivia Manning. Despite everything, Maclaren-Ross produced influential, sporadically brilliant work, revered by the likes of Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman, the latter declaring him a genius. These days, his many high-profile admirers include Melvyn Bragg, Iain Sinclair and Harold Pinter.
And it really is as good as it sounds. MacLaren-Ross’s writing is worth a look too.
Rich A
Thanks folks - I have woken up this am considerably more chipper...
ReplyDeleteThough I was persuaded by the first customer of the day to read Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman.
"A thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle..."
I'm just starting Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land and think it will be my best read for ages.
ReplyDeleteI read The Third Policeman when I was a young thing on the way to my interview to read English at Sussex University - and I then had to talk about it in my interview - what a nightmare. It scared me off Sussex -so I went elsewhere.
And yes, The Bookaholics Guide to Book Blogs is available now, and Crockatt & Powell are in it (I did ask permission) - as are many booksellers. I think the passages from the booksellers blogs are the most entertaining in the book - our two proof readers were laughing as they read. Hope you agree and wonder if you can sell it in the shop (and sneak a look at the book while it is on sale?).
Hi Catheryn, book should be with us soon. WAY too vain not to stock it...
ReplyDeleteI just remembered something else. The Door by Magda Szabo. Fantastically assured writing. A real masterpiece.
ReplyDelete