Sunday 30 October 2022

Newsletter 56


A reminder that I welcome suggestions for the final Glue Factory online gathering (which will be on Sunday 11th December). The show will feature recorded highlights from the entire series - so if there's something you missed, or would like to see again, do let me know. Thanks to all those who have already made suggestions - duly noted!

After this week we have six more shows, of which five are now programmed. They include an indie showcase from Sidekick Books; a night of the surreal and grotesque curated by Vik Shirley; Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry; the centenary of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Michael Rosen on the Johnson/Mogg correspondence; OPLIPO (the Italian equivalent to the French Oulipo movement); adventures in apostasy; a forgotten friend of T S Eliot (and a newsworthy archive discovery); Beckett's sucking stones and Pasolini's poetry. All this and more. Do join us.


Newsletter contents


1.   Aid for Ukraine


2.   This week’s online gatherings 


3.   Indie press news


4.   Beckett at Reading


5.   Samuel Beckett’s Visual Imagination


6.   T S Eliot Lecture 2022


7.   Boniface klaxon


8.   Shocking fillers


9.   Professor Kulpana Shankar 


10.  Tolka issue 4 launch      


11.  Next week's online gathering


12.  Nudge



_____________________



     

1. Aid for Ukraine


250 days of misery. Please give as much as you can, whenever you can. The most far-reaching aid programme has been, and remains, the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal. You can donate quickly and easily here.

Thank you.

_____________________


2. This week’s online gatherings 


Our annual Hallowe'en gathering and this year we welcome back as our guest curator the Chicago-based artist and writer Riva Lehrer (author of the prize-winning memoir Golem Girl) with her guests Hayley Campbell (author of The Living and the Dead)Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveller's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry), and the artist Landis Blair. 

They'll be joined by the Glasgow-based writer and artist Rose Ruane who will produce a unique artwork which will be offered for sale to the highest bidder at the end of the evening (with proceeds to The Trussell Trust). 

And there's an extra show on Hallowe'en night itself (Monday 31st October): an exclusive screening of Dracula: the Untold Story, the acclaimed stage production introduced by Laura Hopkins, who last week won the 2022 uktheatre.org award for Best Design. 

‘a technically flawless and thrillingly ingenious take on Bram Stoker’s vampire classic’ - The Stage

Read the Guardian review here.

_____________________


3. Indie press news

I spent the past two days at Conway Hall in Holborn, home to the revived Small Publishers Fair. It's the first such event in three years thanks to the pandemic and it was a wonderful thing to be back in this lovely building and to spend time with the 70+ indie publishers taking part.

Highlights?

- a reading by Natalia Zagorska-Thomas on her forthcoming book The Camden Hoard, a collaboration with Charles Boyle and featuring contributions from the likes of Will Eaves, Julian Stannard, Amy McCauley, Gavin Clarke, Kevin Boniface and illustrious others.

- a fascinating exhibition by poet/writer/performer S J Fowler (a Glue Factory guest earlier this month), showcasing his extraordinarily productive career over the past decade.

- an object, nine years in the making, by the Mexican artist Ximena Perez Grober, who shredded a 1965 Faber edition of Finnegans Wake then knitted the shreds together into a unique artwork. See her website here.

- newcomers Tenement Press with a terrific display of their striking bright yellow books https://tenementpress.com/ and a very powerful reading by Cristina Viti of her forthcoming translations of Pasolini's poetry (all entirely new to me)  https://tenementpress.com/La-rabbia

- Nicholas Royle of Nightjar Press, who kindly gave me a copy of his new short story collection Manchester Uncanny (Confingo Press) and Vik Shirley (many thanks to her for a copy of her darkly witty new collection Corpsespublished by Sublunary Editions, which will feature on The Glue Factory next month). 

- David Henningham (below) of Henningham Family Press, who introduced a reading by HFP author Claire Allen from her novel The Blackbird.




It was good to see old friends and catch up, and to make new ones.

The last newsletter will be on December 11th, although I'll continue to send the occasional email if something interesting comes my way that I think you'd like to know about. Discussion with some of the indie publishers at the Fair suggest an afterlife for the Glue Factory as an occasional pop-up shop - so keep watching the stars.


_____________________


4. Beckett at Reading
A two-day gathering on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th November - an event that will appeal to all Beckettians, and prompted (apparently) by the fiftieth anniversary of the trailblazing 1971 exhibition of Beckett manuscripts assembled by James Knowlson. Fifty-one years ago.

I have the original catalogue of what was then a modest collection but which has since expanded colossally.

Full details and bookings here.

NB There's a rail strike on the Friday, so plan accordingly

_____________________

5. Samuel Beckett’s Visual Imagination

Thursday 24 Nov 2022, 5:00 PM

More Beckett. A presentation by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon that will examine Samuel Beckett’s personal library, which has remained in his apartment in Paris since his death in 1989. It will discuss the reading traces and marginalia found in these books to chart Beckett’s intellectual world. Beckett was fond of ‘reading wildly all over the place’ (as he told his friend Thomas MacGreevy in 1936), collecting material from a wide range of subjects that would influence his aesthetic thinking and his creative works. In particular, the talk will examine the Irish writer’s profound engagement with the visual arts, which played a pivotal role in shaping the striking images that pervade his texts for stage and page. Drawing on his surviving library in Paris, his books on art and gallery catalogues, unpublished diaries, manuscripts and published texts, this talk will give a unique insight into Beckett’s creative, visual imagination.

Dirk Van Hulle is Professor of Bibliography and Modern Book History at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for Textual Editing and Theory (OCTET).

Mark Nixon is Associate Professor of Modern Literature and Co-Director of the Beckett International Foundation at the University of Reading.



Tickets are just 120 CZK (£4.30)

_____________________

6. T. S. Eliot Annual Lecture 2022

The Annual T S Eliot Lecture 2022 is to be given in London at 5.30pm on Thursday 17th November by Professor John Haffenden. Its title is Vivien Eliot – Woman and Writer.

John Haffenden is the “indefatigable, exemplary editor” (Evening Standard) of The Letters of TS Eliot, now in its ninth volume. This has given him a unique perspective on Eliot’s life and work. He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of English Studies, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. In a TLS review of the most recent volume of the Letters, John Haffenden was praised for his “expert hands” and “a manner both companionable and erudite”.

This is the first time that the Lecture has been delivered in London – in the Bloomsbury neighbourhood where Eliot worked for most of his life - thanks to the English Department of University College, London, who will be hosting the event in the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre at UCL.

The Lecture will be introduced by Professor Mark Ford, Head of the English Department at UCL, who has himself written and spoken widely on TS Eliot.

Admission is free, but the audience is limited and registration is required, via tseliotlecture.eventbrite.co.uk

_____________________


7. Boniface klaxon

Here's our Kevin getting into the groove at the 2017 Congress of Psychogeography. Tuneful.


_____________________


8. Shocking fillers

What follows is a plug. And when we say 'plug' do you think of bath plugs or electrical plugs? And why are we said to 'plug' something when we promote it?

None of these questions is addressed in my recent perpetration Multiple Joyce: 100 short essays about James Joyce's cultural legacy. Published in Dublin on 16th June (Bloomsday) this year, this is the only book about the author's cultural legacy you're ever likely to need.




It's not too late to order copies as Diwali gifts, and not too early to think about stocking fillers for bookish friends you're not that keen on. 

Here are some notices (more will follow in future newsletters until you give in:

“A rare, delicious treat for readers, and a book that would have tickled Joyce, with its vibrant potpourri of playfulness, punning, and pathos…. I defy Joycean purists not to be totally beguiled by this absorbing, upfront, funny, erudite, and charming book.”

    — Nuala O’Connor, in Books Ireland Magazine

“Simply charming…. His voice and his style are infectious…. Anybody who’s even remotely interested in Joyce should own this book.”

    — Chris Via, in Leaf by Leaf (video)

“Some of the 100 essays in this rowdy exhibit hall offer intriguing trivia; others provide literary insights, and readers of all interest levels will find something unexpected to contemplate. We may already know that Joyce wrote stories, plays and novels, one of which, Ulysses, is considered by many to be ‘the greatest novel of all full stop.’ But were we aware that the Italian perfumer Mirko Buffini created a fragrance collection based on Finnegans Wake? Or that Joyce favored Borsalino hats, worn today by the likes of John Malkovich and Nicole Kidman? What has Moby-Dick got to do with Joyce, and why is that hyphen in the title? Collard will fill you in. These short essays exude infectious delight for a universe of such arcana.”

    — Lori Soderlind, in The New York Times Book Review

“This year being the centenary of the publication of Ulysses, there has been a flurry of new books and republications…. But to my mind David Collard’s Multiple Joyce is the most joyful and the most Joycean…. The strategy of the book … is to take bemusement seriously…. There is a real pleasure in reading a book about Joyce that actually makes you laugh.”

    — Stuart Kelly, in The Spectator

“Collard is a wry and gifted essayist as well as an expert on Joyce. But he simply refuses to take himself—or Joyce, or indeed anything—too seriously…. [Multiple Joyce is] frequently bloody hilarious. It’s also erudite and considered, written by a cultured soul with a highly polished proclivity for satire…. I cannot recommend this delightful, unusual work highly enough. Bravissimo.”

    — Anne Cunningham, Meath Chronicle        

Buy one, buy many here

_____________________


9. Professor Kulpana Shankar 

Congratulations to Professor Kalpana Shankar who was this week became the first woman of colour to become a Full Professor in Ireland. 

____________________ 


10. Tolka issue 4 launch

Issue 4 of TOLKA (as featured on last Sunday's Glue Factory gathering) has gone to the printers, and copies are expected very soon! Pre-order yours now 

Tolka Issue Four will be launched as part of Dublin Book Festival on Saturday 12 November at 4.30pm in Dublin Castle. There will be readings readings from: Kasandra Ferguson, Sonya Gildea, Mark O’Connell and Isobel O’Donovan

Register for your free ticket here.



_____________________



11.  Next week's online gathering

On Sunday 6th November we'll have second Sidekick Books showcase curated by publisher Jon Stone with guest writers

     Adam Crothers 

     Belle Roach

     Julia Rose Lewis 

     Lara Frankena 

     Lotte Mitchell Reford 

     and 

     Vika Gusak 


_____________________


12.  Nudge

The reason behind nearly 150 live gatherings (more than 250 hours of online broadcasting) and the reason behind this free newsletter (issued weekly for the past year) is to raise funds for The Trussell Trust, the UK's main food bank charity. That's why I do it, and why so many fine creative practitioners - more than 500 to date - have donated their time and energy and talent to the programme in its current and earlier iterations A Leap in the Dark and carthorse orchestra.

I don't labour the fact, and you're welcome in the audience whether you donate or not. These gatherings are free and by invitation only (which gives me, as host, plenty of freedom when it comes to copyright material). But I hope all of you reading this, and all of you in the online audience past, present and future, will dig deep and support this very worthwhile charity. The Trust does a lot of good in these dark days and offers a lifeline to many of the most vulnerable in our society. 

https://www.trusselltrust.org/make-a-donation/


___________________



PS Did you remember to turn your clocks back, if you happen to be in Britain. It's now GMT, not BST, so you'll have enjoyed an extra hour in bed this morning.

Don't forget the Hallowe'en screening of Dracula: the Untold Story tomorrow night at 7:30pm GMT, introduced by its award- winning designer Laura Hopkins.

Sunday 23 October 2022

Newsletter 55



    Exiled Thucydides knew
    All that a speech can say
    About Democracy,
    And what dictators do,
    The elderly rubbish they talk
    To an apathetic grave;
    Analysed all in his book,
    The enlightenment driven away,
    The habit-forming pain,
    Mismanagement and grief:
    We must suffer them all again.

                                            (from Auden's September 1, 1939)

The day before Liz Truss resigned as Prime Minister last week an American friend emailed me to say

    'Britain is learning that there is no good way to do a bad thing, no smart way to        do a stupid thing.'

Truss was the shortest-serving British Prime Minister in history (44 days), yet still managed in a few weeks to wipe out the Queen, the economy and the Conservative party, which is some legacy. She grinned inanely throughout her short resignation speech outside Number 10 - as I've often observed her face doesn't know what her voice is doing - and she now has a promising future behind her. Johnson has flown back from the Dominican Republic for a second go at leading his party and the country. History (to adapt Hegel's aphorism) repeats itself: first as farce then as tragedy. We are once again exposed to his trademark blustercockery.

The Tories have destroyed the UK's unique and economically essential place in the EU, membership of the Single Market, an until-recently strong and growing economy, a positive global reputation, a respected currency, AAA credit rating and a reputation for fair play and hospitality. And now we have to grind through another leadership campaign and - Auden again - the elderly rubbish they talk.

What next?



Newsletter contents



1.    Aid for Ukraine


2.    This week’s online gathering 


3.    Indie press news



        Spiracle



4.    Any requests?


5.    At Home with the Boyle Family


6.    Irish Short Story of the Year Shortlist 2022 - Vote Now!


7.    The Booker Prize 2022


8.    Speaking of the Booker


9.    Small Publishers Fair 2022


10.   Next week's online gatherings


11.   Nudge


12.   PS



_____________________



     

1. Aid for Ukraine


Every week I open with this. I wish I didn't have to.

Please give as much as you can, whenever you can. The most far-reaching aid programme has been, and remains, the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal. You can donate quickly and easily here.

Thank you.

_____________________


2. This week’s online gathering 


You'll get a Zoom link at 6:30 pm London time for this 90-minute show, which startsat 7:30pm and features an online premiere of the Dublin-based composer David Bremner's new opera Slow Recognition. David will introduce two scenes and be in conversation with the director/dramaturg Hélène Montague and soprano Elizabeth Hilliard


The Irish theme continues with a clutch of five writers featured in the latest issue  of Tolka journal (below), namely Mae Graber, Kate Feld, Tim MacGabhann, 

Elizabeth Brennan and Darran Anderson. They'll be joined by Bernadette Lowry, author of Sounds of Manymirth on the Night’s Ear Ringing: Percy French (1854-1920) His Jarvey Years and Joyce’s Haunted Inkbottle, who will share some thoughts about Finnegans Wake.  





The feature on Alfred Hitchcock's undervalued and critically-neglected 1953 film The Trouble with Harry is being held over until later in the series. 

____________________ 

3. Indie press news


Spiracle Audiobooks

Listen up - this is something new, and different: an indie producer of talking books publishing works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and short stories, as well as books in translation.

Take a look at this short video introducing Spiracle. It's an imopressive list and they have clevere ways or organsiing their titles and supporting your choice.

To promote the launch of Spiracle you can set up a free month subscription You can subscribe for yourself or give a subscription as a gift, and this offer applies worldwide.

Select the monthly option and you will be prompted to set up a Spiracle account in the same way as others, including card details, but importantly no transaction will be made.  The 30 days will start from when you set up your account - we will keep this enabled until the end of this Sunday, 23 October.

When 30 days have passed you can consider renewing your subscription. Or not.  

The current monthly editions are Shalimar by Davina Quinlivan and His Bloody Project by Roderick Macrae.

As your 30 day subscription will overlap November you might choose one of next month's editions - The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing by Joseph Fasano and The Journey is Home by John Sam Jones, which will be available from 1 November.  Your subscription gives you two books which you can add to your library to enjoy.  Simply visit the book page and select the 'add to library' option.

____________________ 

4. Any requests?

The last Glue Factory online gathering, on Sunday 11th December, will consist mostly of highlights from the previous 49 shows in the series and I'm open to suggestions and requests... so hit me up, as they say. What would you like to see? Or see again?

To help you choose, I've uploaded a list of programme content for the past 12 months on my website: https://davidjcollard.wixsite.com/my-site/general-clean 

____________________ 

5. At Home with the Boyle Family

Thanks to Glue Factory stalwart Kevin Boniface (a huge admirer of the Boyle Family) for alerting me to this intriguing London event:

IKLECTIK presents

       AT HOME WITH THE BOYLE FAMILY – film launch

                   Sunday 13 November 2022 | Doors: 3:30pm

It's described as 'our painstakingly created new art-documentary film about the postwar British origins of the psychedelic liquid light show.' Full details here.

Tickets: Pay what you feel donation basis https://bit.ly/3SFVNke

Suggested donation: £10 Worker Supporter / £5 Budget Supporter / £1 Minimum
All proceeds go to the artists and the cost of making the event, which, like the film, is self-financed.

Boyle Family is a group of London-based collaborative artists, founded by Joan Hills and Mark Boyle. Embracing a multidisciplinary approach to artmaking before the term was coined, Mark and Joan’s experiments with assemblages and fascination with material processes led them to the chance innovation of the liquid lightshow, an aspect of their multifarious practice that also includes casts of landscape. Although deeply involved since childhood, participating in home studio experiments and more, Sebastian (b.1962) and Georgia Boyle (b.1963) officially adopted the Boyle Family moniker with their parents in 1985. Although Mark passed away in 2005, they continue to exhibit globally.

I'd love to go to this but would have to slope off almost immediately in order to beback home in time to set up the show. Unless... perhaps... an Outside Broadcast?

____________________ 

6. Irish Short Story of the Year Shortlist 2022 - Vote Now!

This year's judges –  author and short story award winner Rachel Donohue, bookseller Bob Johnston and literary agent Simon Trewin – have selected the six stories for the Writing.ie Irish Short Story of the Year shortlist. Now it’s up to readers (and this includes you), to vote for their favourite on the An Post Irish Book Awards website.

The six shortlisted stories, which have been published in both literary journals and collections, are:

Sleep Watchers by Roisín O’Donnell published in The Stinging Fly

Red Market by Sheila Armstrong from How to Gut a Fish (Bloomsbury)

Mathematics by Wendy Erskine from Dance Move (The Stingfly Press)

The Chekhovians by Rebecca Miller from Total (Cannongate Books)

This Small Giddy Life by Nuala O’Connor from A Little Unsteadily Into Light (New Island)

Miles of Bad Road by Neil Tully published in The Waxed Lemon Literary Journal

You can read all six stories by clicking on the links above, and you can vote here (but do read the stories first). And there are many other categories to vote in! Particular congratulations to Glue Factory favourites Wendy Erskine and Nuala O'Connor.

____________________ 

7. 2022 Booker Prize

Good to see the Booker won this year by an indie press - congratulations to Sortof Books and Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. I haven't (yet) met anyone who's read this 'comic noir mystery' and would like to hear from you if you have. (My fiver was on Alan Garner's Treacle Walker).

Here's Max Liu:

    The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is set in the 1990s, at the height of Sri Lanka’s bloody     civil war. It is narrated in the second person “you” voice by its eponymous protagonist        who, at the beginning, wakes up dead. Maali, a gay photographer who claims to have taken     shocking photographs that have the potential to bring down Sri Lanka’s corrupt government,     believes he has been murdered by a death squad.

    Maali exists in “the in-between” – dead but not yet in the afterlife – where he has seven     moons to find out what happened to him. Maali watches his family grieving, coming up        against corrupt police, as the novel roams widely to what Karunatilaka has called “the        dark heart of the world.”

The chair of judges, Neil McGregor, said that the novel 'takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through life and death, and there the reader finds, to her surprise, joy, tenderness, love and loyalty.

When it comes to fiction (and fairgrounds) I'm really not a rollercoaster kinda guy, to be honest. And Liu said he 'found the first 50 pages overwritten and self-conscious.' If that's the case I'd have bailed long before that point (but then I wasn't one of the judges employed to read 170 novels in a year at the rate of one every day or two). Liu also says that after finishing the novel 'it haunted me for weeks' which seems to me rather faint praise, because the best novels don't fade after a few weeks, do they? I've now read Treacle Walker three times (it's very short) and come away more impressed each time. It's deep and rich and strange but certainly not overwrought, not self-conscious. It's as simple as breathing, though not as easy. 

But I could be quite wrong. Any Karunatilaka advocates out there?

____________________ 

8. Speaking of the Booker

Let's assume that the Booker prize winner, like all prize winners, knows in advance that they have won (and will therefore have a witty and felicitous speech prepared in advance). This means that all the mon-winners will also know for sure that they haven't won. But they are still expected, perhaps even obliged, to turn up for the awards ceremony. 

Now this may be great fun for all, with good nosh and gargle, convivial company, a chance to dress up and press the flesh and even - joy of joys - meet the Queen Consort. The cost of the ceremony must come close to the value of the prize (£50k). It's very grand, although it also looks to me like the type of gathering at which the honking dullard Johnson comes on as the after-dinner speaker.

Speaking for myself I can think of few more ghastly ways of spending a Tuesday night in central London, and few experiences more remote from the practice of writing, and the business of being a writer. Has any winner, by the way, ever failed to turn up? Come to that, has anyone ever turned down a Booker?

____________________ 

9.Small Publishers Fair 2022


A final reminder that Small Publishers Fair returns to Conway Hall on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 October.

In addition to 69 publishers showing and selling their publications, and the exhibition (Bibliopoe: books by Steven J Fowler), there will be readings and talks both afternoons. This includes ther artoist Natalia Zagorska-Thomas talking about her forthcoming collaboration with Chalres Boyle (that's on Friday at 4:30pm) 

Click here for details.

The Programme

The free 20-page programme includes publishers' listings and featured books plus information on readings, talks and the exhibition. Download a PDF here to plan your visit or browse the Fair from afar.

On the day

When you arrive at Conway Hall please go to reception to pick up a free copy of the printed programme and this autumn's issue of the excellent Brixton Review of Books.

Conway Hall is in a lovely part of London just two minutes walk from Holborn tube. Admission to the Fair and all related events is free. Doors open at 11am and close at 7pm each day.

Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL

The Fair will feature some of the indies that have appeared in The Glue Factory (and in its earlier iterations). Bring cash, cards and totebags. If you see me, say hello!

____________________ 

10. Next week's online gatherings

Not a typo - there are two events next week!

Next Sunday (30th October) we have our annual Hallowe'en gathering and this year our guest curator is the Chicago-based artist and writer Riva Lehrer (author of the prize-winning memoir Golem Girl) with her guests Hayley Campbell (author of The Living and the Dead), Audrey Niffenegger (author of The Time Traveller's Wife), and the artist Landis Blair. They'll be joined by the Glasgow-based writer and artist Rose Ruane who will produce a unique artwork which will be offered for sale to the highest bidder at the end of the evening (with proceeds to The Trussell Trust).

And on Hallowe'en night (Monday 31st October) we'll have an out-of-series gathering to watch together a neglected classic of 1930s Universal Studios horror, from director James Whale (The Invisible ManFrankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein). It's The Old Dark House (1932), based on the novel by J. B. Priestley. A wonderful cast (including the immortal Wilfred Thesiger as the stratospherically camp Horace Femm and Karloff in his first role after playing the Creature in Frankenstein) and Charles Laughton making his screen debut. Murder, arson, transvestism, a sexual predator, power cuts and the worst dinner ever caught on film. 

____________________ 

11. Nudge

The reason behind nearly 150 live gatherings (more than 250 hours of online broadcasting) and the reason behind this free newsletter (issued weekly for the past year) is to raise funds for The Trussell Trust, the UK's main food bank charity. That's why I do it, and why so many fine creative practitioners - more than 500 to date - have donated their time and energy and talent to the programme in its current and earlier iterations A Leap in the Dark and carthorse orchestra.

I don't labour the fact, and you're welcome in the audience whether you donate or not. These gatherings are free and by invitation only (which gives me, as host, plenty of freedom when it comes to copyright material). But I hope all of you reading this, and all of you in the online audience past, present and future, will dig deep and support this very worthwhile charity. The Trust does a lot of good in these dark days and offers a lifeline to many of the most vulnerable in our society. 

 https://www.trusselltrust.org/make-a-donation/


Thank you.


____________________


PS 

Are there any wildly successful children's authors out there who would like to get involved in the celebrity telly chef/restaurant chain scene? You could get @jamieoliver himself to work for you as a 'ghost chef', cobbling up some unoriginal meals that include offensively stereotypical ingredients, and for which you take all the credit. Then, once you're established as a top celebrity telly chef you can move back into children's publishing and earn ££££££!!!!! Everybody wins!