BRITAIN'S FOREMOST LITERARY SHREW

Honoured (honoured, honoured) to have been asked to provide an Afterword for The Coelacanth Press' brilliant republication of Brigid Brophy's 1956 novel, King of a Rainy Country. She's a right one, that B.B. Here's what they say at The Coelacanth:

The Coelacanth Press, founded in 2008 and having released seven issue so far of its cult journal, releases its first book title in November 2012. Continuing the press’ ethos of uncovering the forgotten (either in the present of the past) their first book is Brigid Brophy’s “The King of a Rainy Country”.

As Ali Smith writes in endorsement of this edition, ‘This pitch-perfect novel, an inquiry into romanticism and disaffection, is witty, unexpectedly moving and a revelation again of Brophy’s originality. Entirely of its time, it remains years ahead of itself even now, nearly 60 years later, in its emotional range and its intellectual and formal blend of stoicism and sophistication.’

The Coelacanth Press has commission one of today’s best visual artist, - Bonnie Camplin – to provide the perfect package for the reintroduction of this text now ripe for re-evaluation. 

It's out on Monday 19th November and available, as they say, in all good bookshops. More here.

UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY

I merrily dashed the last dregs of from a magic pot o' cash across the Indian subcontinent. Because: sheep/lamb, etc. Other, less magic, pot arrived mercifully quickly. Writing of the tooth-extracting and non-tooth-extracting kind continues, of course. Details to follow.

But! In the realisation of several girlhood dreams I am a radio announcer, now. For a bit. It's all these flat vowels ever wanted. Listen to or-bits.com's 128 kbps objects here 'til Sunday. 

IF I COULD JUST MEET KATE MOSS (I FEEL YOU, HONEY)

QUITE

IT'S AN IDEA

Phew! Back just in time for the dawn of a new socialist Europe and a showboating moon.

HULLNESS

If nothing else, at least I've located the sweet spot where West Hull meets downtown New York:

LEARNING TO LIVE ON YOUR OWN

Should you ever find yourself on a month-long research trip-slash-wild goose chase in the Midwest in pursuit of a forty-years dead writer from whom your critical distance has lapsed to such an extent that you are convinced that, like Oedipa Maas, you are being subjected to an elaborate web of posthumous booby traps, wherein you remain in almost total isolation for four weeks, attempt to read 47 novels (mostly all at the same time), become addicted to the Food Network whilst eating mainly stale taco shells and wasabi peas and spend much of your time tramping up and down freeways since that’s what you like to do when you are in America, and you find that Glenn Branca plus Fox News does not rouse you sufficiently enough to take it all out on the gym’s elliptical machine, then I recommend silencing the rattling inside your head by listening to Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson which, like alchemy, will soundtrack the up-lit marble atria, limestone and Frank Lloyd Wright-lite of your temporary home into a tense Soderbergh corporate thriller of your very own creation.

Then you’ll be like Catherine Zeta Jones or something rather than this hot, mildly-coddled woman who has her photocopies, her 27 new polyester thrift-store scores, her sunburn and far more esoteric paperbacks than will ever fit in her tiny broken suitcase, and would like to bugger off home and scoff a whole block of mature cheddar and enjoy some actual human company as soon as possible, please. Ta.