London ILB - FAP?

It's on Thursday. xyzzz is usually my last utterance of any evening in a pub.

Pinefox - Its Julio. We only see each other once a year, or thereabouts, but still you should know what I look like.

ah, would love to come to this, but not a chance I can make it.

That's a shame G00blar!

5 month old baby + wife trying to finish PhD corrections + moving in a week = hahahah the pub??? yeah right..

Julio? Sure I know Julio! It just wasn't intuitive to guess that 'xyzzz__' meant 'Julio'!

I can see that.

If I don't spot anyone immediately I will be drinking and reading Patricia Highsmith's Carol at some table.

If people are spotted but not everyone else I will leave it on the table.

:-)

sorry not to see catch you at the weekend julio — how did you find ornette? i think that night had maybe the oddest selection of musicians i have ever seen share a stage

hey julio, am in london typing this on a borrowed computer v. quickly - am going to wimbledon tomorrow, but still plan to stick my head round the door of the old kings early eveningish - have sent a link to m@rtin skidm0re, who i think will be coming along too

btw, i have a copy of THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY by Henry James going spare, have just finished it and don't especially want to lug it back w/ me to glasgow

thomp -- sorry I missed you too, Ornette was great, I sorta revived his thread on ilm but haven't checked.

ward -- I was at wimbledon yesterday.

see you all later

Will be struggling in probably between half six and seven, looking rather shop soiled and feeling rather vinegary, in all probability clutching a copy of Henry de Montherlant's Chaos and Night.

Right. Unlike the last FAP there are no pics but thanks to Gamaliel, Ward, woof and m@rtin for meeting up.

Pinefox you were missed.

As I said last night: a pleasure.

Ward - let us know when you come down to London again, and do try and go to Wimbledon some other year. The queue is 'work', but I managed to finish a book while sitting in the park waiting. And then once you get to the grounds its matches and luck that you might get to see something great, but some of the outside courts have this lovely intimacy to them. Its an experience.

Thomp - didn't get enough time to say more when I posted previously but yes, kinda weird and yet its part of harmolodics that you could get Patty Smith, Flea and Master Musicians of Jojouka on a single stage. How were the other nights you went to?

Gamaliel - Chaos and Night sounds really interesting. By a coincidence of sorts I am going to see Alain Resnais War is Over, both seem to be a central character's feverish dream of their role in the Spanish civil war(?)

i demand pictures next time!

glad you guys had a good time.

Yes, that was def some fun. Good to meet you all - now have a brain full of recommendations and leads and look forward to doing it again.

Yep, I had a very good time. Drink + interesting and intelligent people (er... + me) = an evening well spent.

xyzzz___, yes, I'm liking Chaos and Night a lot. It's rather vicious and comical, free wheeling and digressively conversational. The Spanish Civil War forms the main backdrop to both the book and the main character, Celestino (exiled in Paris, hilariously, self-defeatingly misanthropic), I'm not sure how much the book deals with the actual events of it. It seems (I'm only a third of the way through) more like it's going to be about how it affected Spain 20 years later, and how it's distorted Celestino's mind - he suffers from a sort of Quixotic political insanity, that causes him to unheroically misinterpret the world around him.

Greene was a fan, and I wonder how much using the Don Quixote template to explore the idea of a mind warped by political extremity was an inspiration for (the admittedly far gentler) Monsignor Quixote.

I wish I wasn't quite so attracted to Fascist writers though - Celine, de Montherlant. It's emphatically NOT the fascism that appeals, but I do wonder if the reduction in empathy and an unwillingness to tolerate democratic compromise produces a hard, extreme style that I quite like, not exclusively, but which I certainly have a taste for from time to time.

Speaking of Fascist writers, (sort of joeks) Wyndham Lewis wrote one of his more accessible novels on the Spanish Civil War and specifically the English types involved in it (more tilting at Bloomsbury windmills) in The Revenge for Love. If you're immersing yourself in civil war stuff it's possibly worth reading for the excellent opening scene set in a Spanish prison. Lewis was capable of writing remarkable set pieces, extremely evocative of their setting - I'm thinking of the scene I just mentioned and the one at the beginning of the otherwise daunting Childermass, where a sort of heavenly limbo is described, and which feels like the best science or perhaps more properly speculative fiction (as do the excellent and hardly mentioned sequels Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta - two remarkable books).

That Resnais seems quite appealing right now - I might go on the Monday if I can finish work early enough.

Need to find another word for 'remarkable'.

"I wish I wasn't quite so attracted to Fascist writers though - Celine, de Montherlant. It's emphatically NOT the fascism that appeals, but I do wonder if the reduction in empathy and an unwillingness to tolerate democratic compromise produces a hard, extreme style that I quite like, not exclusively, but which I certainly have a taste for from time to time."

Don't know about de Motherlant - but there a negative energy to Celine that makes his writing pretty vital. Not exactly because he was a fascist either. Beckett also had that quality, from what I recall.

I should be at the NFT on Monday for Resnais, too.

I will make a point to read some Wyndham Lewis, think I'll start with The Revenge for Love

Its really lovely out there -- drink sometime next week (later in the week: Thursday, perhaps).

I'd be on for that. Gamaliel, you about?

I could feasibly come along...

Can do Wednesday or Thursday, yep. (Wednesday slightly preferable tbh, but it's not a massive problem, Friday would be no go).

Wed is fine with me. We'll go w/that. I know its obvious but how about the Royal Oak in Tabard street? Any other suggestions welcome...

Damn, weds not actually great for me - thurs better. Any chance of that? Royal Oak good though.

oh yeah fine with either. Thur it is :-)

Royal Oak, absolutely. Thursday fine, just need to remind myself to take the late shift on Friday not the one that entails me getting up at five.

i wonder what happened to mikey g.

Oh and for anyone who wants to come along Thursday and does not know what we look like I will have a copy of the ARABIAN NIGHTS on the table.

^Likewise, I will be the one in the corner with the vacant illiterate stare. Complete fraud going to this - my inarticulate fists can barely hold a book at the moment, let alone turn pages. I blame the ILM listening clubs.

One more thing: should be there between 6-6.30.

For those who were thinking of coming along, here, from six-ish -

http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub1228.php

Kinda looking like it's just going to be me, xyzzzz__ and woof, any more? Stevie T?

def coming, get fucked up talk abt books.

South of the river (Mummy, I'm scared), but might come along, fancy a walk (and a pint)

Still not sure if I can come, but will be there around 8 if I can...

Got here early. Pint of mild and a copy of Eric van Lustbader's seminal work The Ninja, which I plucked more or less randomly off the shelves of the pub, in order to justify my appearance.

LYRICAL
in its tranquility
REMORSELESS
in its violence
STUNNING
in its sensuality (aye-aye)
HEART-STOPPING
in its suspense

apparently. Surely how this FAP is going to turn out.

Oh I say, apparently it also

EXPLODES THROUGH THE FRONTIERS OF MODERN FICTION WITH UNPRECEDENTED POWER

astonished I haven't heard of it before tbh.

Hmmm. Seems pretty conventional so far.

"What the hell am I doing with a Mercedes? he asked hi
Self rhetorically."

lol.

Might just liveblog this book if no one else arrives.

Ah, my game pie is here.

Game Pie? I wish I could've joined you chaps now. Liveblog the pie at least.

Game pie was good, not great. We've got a quorum now. Intense discussion about the finer points of literature as I'm sure you can imagine.

where is this FAP?

somewhere near London Bridge maybe?

Yes, Royal Oak. Borough. Link upthread?

Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring, you fapping fellows.

The beer sounds good, on that link.

A pity, for me, I couldn't make it.

I have ended up destringing a guitar.

def coming, get fucked up talk abt books.

✓

Thanks to everyone for a wonderful evening.

Yep, was v enjoyable. The beer is good, pinefox. Still one of my favourite pubs in London.

Further to the FAP talk of a UK 20 under 40, just spotted this.

Slim pickings:

1 Chris Cleave (b 1973) His first novel, Incendiary, was about a terrorist attack on London and was published on July 7, 2005. The Other Hand (2008), a cross-national thriller set in England and Nigeria, became a word-of-mouth hit.

2 Rana Dasgupta (b 1971) Born in Canterbury, but now lives in Delhi. His first collection of stories was set in a Tokyo airport; his first novel, Solo (2009), was about a 99-year-old Bulgarian chemist.

3 Adam Foulds (b 1974) After writing his verse novel The Broken Word about the Mau Mau rebellion, he wrote his Man Booker-shortlisted study of John Clare, The Quickening Maze (2009).

4 Sarah Hall (b 1974) The author of four novels, the first two of which were set in the early 20th century in her native Cumbria. Her most acclaimed work is The Carhullan Army (2007), about a band of women rebels surviving in a Britain hit by environmental disaster.

5 Steven Hall (b 1975) His debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts (2007) – about a man who loses his memory and tries to create a new identity for himself – unusually lived up to his publisher’s hype.

6 Mohsin Hamid (b 1971) The Reluctant Fundamentalist – a literary thriller about a Pakistani man who may, or may not, be a terrorist – came within a whisker of winning the Man Booker in 2007.

7 Anjali Joseph (b 1978) Her debut novel, Saraswati Park, is published next month. Sharp yet lyrical, the novel, which is set in Bombay, shows the influence of Amit Chaudhuri.

8 Joanna Kavenna (b 1974) Wrote seven unpublished novels before her eighth, Inglorious, was published by Faber and won the Orange new writers prize. Described as “Dostoevsky meets Bridget Jones”.

9 Benjamin Markovits (b 1973) Part way through a trilogy of novels about Byron and his circle, this assured writer has also just published an autobiographical novel, Playing Days, about a professional basketball player in Germany.

10 China Miéville (b 1972) Inspired by horror writers such as HP Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock, his science fiction and fantasy books – including Un Lun Dun for young adults – have legions of fans.

11 Paul Murray (b 1975) His second book, Skippy Dies, a comic novel set in a private boys school in Ireland, was recently described in the Telegraph as “gigantic, marvellous, witty…heartbreaking”.

12 Patrick Neate (b 1970) Won the Whitbread (now Costa) novel prize in 2001 for Twelve Bar Blues, a picaresque novel about New Orleans jazz artists. His most recent work, Jerusalem, deals, like his first novel, Musungu Jim, with European encounters with Africa.

13 Ross Raisin (b 1979) This Yorkshire-born novelist’s first book, God’s Own Country (2008), followed the dark story of a teenage farmer’s son living on the Moors.

14 Dan Rhodes (b 1972) After his second book, Rhodes declared he wanted to give up writing. Luckily for us he carried on with Gold (2007), about a Welsh-Japanese woman living in a coastal cottage, and his most recent book, Little Hands Clapping.

15 Kamila Shamsie (b1973) The author of five novels, mainly set in the Pakistan of her birth. Her most successful work is her latest: Burnt Shadows (1999) follows two families from the Second World War in Japan to the aftermath of 9/11.

16 Zadie Smith (b 1975) Wrote the wildly successful White Teeth while still at Cambridge. Her writing has matured since then, most notably in On Beauty (2005).

17 David Szalay (b1974) Winner of a Betty Trask Prize, Szalay’s The Innocent is told from the perspective of a KGB agent in late Forties Russia.

18 Adam Thirlwell (b 1978) Clever All Souls fellow who published Politics at the age of 25 and since then the Milan Kundera-inspired The Escape (2009).

19 Scarlett Thomas (b1972) The End of Mr Y (2007) was a surprise bestseller about a student who discovers a long-lost Victorian novel.

20 Evie Wyld (1980) After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (2009) was a haunting first novel set on the Australian East coat.

The question is, for those who actually read books that have come out recently, is which author (and which book) shd I go for?

Rana Dasgupta sounds like the kind of thing I'd like. He mentions 'central European guys' and I'm usually all over that.

1 Chris Cleave (b 1973) His first novel, Incendiary, was about a terrorist attack on London and was published on July 7, 2005.

Don't read this. Eerily unprescient - bomb leads to chaos and riots etc, rather than people knocking off work early and going to the pub. Also, awful 2D characters.

I tried to think of something to say about that list, but it's been 3 days and nuthin. Uninspiring names, and I'm p ignorant. But HELL why should that stop me

SO, braindump: I don't mind Dan Rhodes, might read the new suicide-museum one, no probs with Foulds (but have only read poetry by him), vaguely intend to read Mieville one of these days and Sarah Hall's Carhullan Army at least sounded intriguing – 70s feminist SF redux maybe. Scarlett Thomas sounds like she has a taste for strange ideas? No, wait, "Her first three novels feature Lily Pascale, an English literature lecturer who solves murder mysteries," fuck it.

Markovitz maybe decent? Can't shake the illogical suspicion that his literary career is parallel to his sporting career: couldn't make it in the American leagues, came to play in Europe.

For the rest, mostly names talked up by people I don't trust, and fuck a Thirlwell; but hadn't heard of Dasgupta, that could be good.

(The fap was great fun by the way - thanks for suggesting it xyzzzz__)

Good stuff