The World …

See Bloomsbury are putting out John Irving’s new book Last Night in Twisted River in October. The World According to Garp is one of my favourite books. I bought a copy when it first came out in paperback, but lent it to someone … This afternoon I got round to replacing it with the Weidenfeld & Nicolson special limited edition (published July 2009), one of a series of nine classic books published to celebrate the publisher’s 60th anniversary. Can’t wait to read it again …

Afterword: I don’t usually go for ’special limited edition’ anything, but liked the die-cut cover (exposing the endpapers), designed by Karl Grandin. More on the series design in Creative Review.

Roll up …

About to review Susan Wicks:
Roll Up for the Arabian Derby
Bluechrome Publishing, 2008.

Enchanted Worlds …

[Above: Ray Caesar, Ebb Tide, 2006. Digital Print.]

Unexpectedly impressed by Enchanted Worlds: Art of Fairy Stories & Mermaid Tales, an exhibition of painting, sculpture, photography, film, animation, puppetry, print and illustration at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston (until 5 September), in which the curators cast the traditional alongside contemporary interpretations of magic and fairy tales.

Highlights were: Ray Caesar’s 30” x 55” Ebb Tide (2006) hung adjacent to The Little Mermaid series, a set of traditional pen and ink illustrations by Helen Jacobs (1935); an extract from Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film La Belle et La Bête, showing alongside a wall of colour plates from Eleanor Vere Boyle’s 1875 edition of Beauty and the Beast; Paula Rego’s quirky oil pastel interpretation(s) of Red Riding Hood (2003); a series of David Hockney’s etchings Rumpelstilzchen (1969) plus the original full colour artwork for Hansel & Gretel (1977) by Jan Pienowski.

I suspended judgment on The Cottingley Fairies (there are a couple of photographs) and Richard Dadd’s Puck (1841), but Blake’s Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1785) is still pretty cool!

Just one book

I discovered Salt Publishing a couple of years ago when I was researching potential (and at that time, theoretical) outlets for a creative writing project I was doing at university. I liked the style of their operation – the type of books they were publishing, even harboured a faint ambition that one day I might submit my work to them.

Though I didn’t buy one of their books, I came across Chris Hamilton-Emery on FB, was directed to the site this year by a tutor who recommended I read David Gaffney’s micro-fiction and Vanessa Gebbie’s short stories. I also wanted to read Tania Hershman’s The White Road & Other Stories.

I’ve been following the viral campaign on Facebook and latterly via friends on Twitter to ‘Save Salt – buy just ONE book’ – and as I was in a position to this week, have bought not one but two – wanted to buy three, but hopefully they’ll still be around next month when I can afford the one I want. Meanwhile the media have picked up on the campaign and the BookSeller reports that Salt have so far made up 20k of their 55k losses. This is good news, not just for Salt, but for readers and writers of poetry and short fiction.

Just in case you were wondering, these are the two I’ve bought:

If you haven’t already, you can buy online at Salt Publishing or from booksellers nationwide.

Reading at night

Find it difficult to read at night so keep a notebook and pen by the bed – sods law – ideas strike just as I’ve got comfortable. But I do keep a selection of books – either reference (see photo) or books I can read short sections of without losing the plot. Have a great one at the moment; Douglas Coupland’s The Gum Thief. Multiple narrators advance the story in the form of letters between the characters – interspersed with surreal prose sections written from the POV of  ‘toast’ – plus extracts from (one of) the protagonist Roger’s unpublished novel, Glove Pond, which features thinly disguised characters drawn from the staff at the Staples store where he works. Worlds within worlds, brilliantly written – and best of all, it doesn’t keep me awake if I’m tired, neither does it interfere with my own writing, nor does it send me to sleep. Perfect bedtime reading …

Watch where you’re walking

Found at bus stop.

Went to see a new exhibition, Revolver by artist David Newton, which includes a number of portraits, some recently exhibited at the Admiral Lord Rodney pub in Colne. The pub website states that Newton’s work is ‘concerned primarily with the associative nature of image and context’ and (it continues) the motto for his work and life is ‘watch where you’re walking’. An apposite sentiment, I thought, given the initiative (above) by the local council to remove chewing gum from the streets.

Unpopular culture

Artist Grayson Perry curates Unpopular Culture – an Arts Council touring exhibition currently showing at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston. Perry’s selection of figurative painting, documentary photography and bronze sculpture is a personal narrative of Britain from the late 1940s to the 1980s. Brilliantly conceived, it juxtaposes stark black and white images of the working class – pub-goers, beauty pageants and harassed dads – alongside vigorous and lyrical paintings by Auerbach, Burra and Carel Weight and bronzes by Moore and Paolozzi.

Perry has produced two works in response to the exhibition – a large ceramic vessel inset with cameos of a woman in a headscarf and a bronze skull (a response to Hirst’s Diamond skull), an icon of Britishness and relic of colonialism. ‘Arrangement in Turquoise and Cream’ (1979-81), a painting by David Hepher dominates the exhibition; the decaying facade of a 1950s tower block is interrupted only by the vibrancy of its ‘grubby’ curtains and a pink blanket – a reminder of the opening scene in Billy Liar which tracks a panoramic vista of post-war urban regeneration along to a sound-bite from Housewife’s Choice.

Unpopular Culture is a refreshing and optimistic antidote to the blockbuster show, reflected in its choice of venues; Bexhill-on-Sea, Preston, Durham, Southampton, Aberystwyth, Scarborough, Wakefield and Bath. A cloth-bound catalogue and limited edition silk headscarf designed by Perry accompany the exhibition.

Unpopular Culture, Harris Museum & Art Gallery. Exhibition runs until 13 September 2008.
(Contact gallery for opening times: 01772 258248).