Oceans, The Deep, Coolth

A random week, but interesting. Had pieces published on Gwyn Prins' piece on A/C from the 1990s, one of the best papers I've read in ages; something on oceanography, again based on a scientific work which was as good as anything I've read, and a nice TV review.

Read The Big Sleep, some literature for something else I'm working on, finally London Orbital, (he loves the words "liminal", "plash", and "Italianate"); an ex-girlfriend's name cropped up in the acknowledgments, which was scary) and have started Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio's "Stories", within which the Joyce Carol Oates vignette blew my mind. A really tight, imaginative, visually clever narrative which was over in 15 pages. Not sure what I think of the Sinclair book, really, there's no real depth to it which is fair enough considering the ground he covers, but it's a very dense proposition. I guess it'll grow.

Harold Chapman

One of those rare pieces, speaking to an artist at the end of their career, which is really quite moving (the last time I think I felt this, really, was when meeting Liv Ullman at Karlovy Vary in 2005). Harold Chapman photographed all the Beats in Paris. I went to his home in Kent and spent a lovely couple of hours with him. His wife was taking photos silently throughout. The quote that really blew me away was this:

"I look back at those days in Paris as the happiest in my life. I discovered you could live frugally with very little and it didn't affect whether or not you were happy. All the worries people have about the rent, or the income tax, or insurance, had gone. Youth, of course, sees the world in different eyes. I am old, I can't see it the way they see it. But there are ways of existing quite cheaply."

I was really moved by that, for some reason. He has a lovely voice; I'd have loved to have uploaded an audio track of the interview. Anyway, as soon as he'd said that, my mouth dropped open. I finished the interview, pressed stop on the dictaphone. I looked up, and then his wife's camera just went "click", and she smiled. This is what she took:

I finally got around to reading my friend Jennie's excellent Costa-nominated novel, Inside the Whale, and Mr Satoshi by Jonathan Lee, which is brilliantly-well written. Am now reading Of Men and Monsters, a 1960s science-fiction book, and quickly worked through Laura Barton's first book, which is scarily-well written.

London lit mags

I wrote a piece on new London literary mags, vastly helped out by Pen Pusher's editor Anna Goodall, who came into the office and revealed herself to be a brilliantly cool and intelligent character. Have been going to a few of the salons in recent weeks and they're always a lot of fun.

I wrote a work blog about some of the short stories I've been enjoying recently and had some interesting suggestions.

Glastonbury 2010

Was in two minds about going to cover this, but I was glad that I went. I started off with a preview, then did coverage of the first night, Gorillaz's performance then a final night review, and finally an arts spread which I wrote between 7pm and 1am on Sunday night. We got caught in traffic on the way back; but I hope they let me do it again. I needed to blow of steam on Saturday night, and didn't go to bed, which made the following day quite challenging. I met some nice people who I'm still in contact with (including Vashti, whose brothers are Tom Baxter and Charlie Winston; she's an amazing character).

Bridge update

13/06/10 update. Have re-written The Bridge, trying to simplify it. Am reading the McKee book, China Mieville, and a couple of novels by people of around my age. Just finished short story collections by BEE, Jay McInerney, Raymond Carver. Kazuo Ishiguro's "A Family Supper" is quite nice.

Monarchy/anonymous bands

Interviewed Monarchy, who I've been obsessed with for about six months, then broadened the piece out to anonymous musicians in general. Went to Hackney to interview them via a laptop link-up; I really liked them, they seemed bizarrely human. I was glad they'd made the effort.

Also got to interview Patrick Neate, something of a hero, over the phone. It was nice of him to take the call because I think his wife was just about to have a baby. We interviewed him for my student paper for the first issue of which I was editor many moons ago, just as he was breaking through. I've finished The Pregnant Widow, re-read Lolita, felt obliged to read the first two Stieg Larsson books but I think I'm going to stop persevering with things I'm not really enjoying. On the other hand, Wells Tower's short story collection is ace.

Short stories #2

Spent a couple of weeks writing some other stories. I went for a run on Friday night and wrote Lost Cosmonaut afterwards. The relief of having got something done was weirdly moving.

The story is loosely based on the last minutes of Vladimir Komarov, the first man to die in space. I'd picked through a couple of books on it at the British Library - Epic Rivalry, and Fallen Astronauts (which possibly has the best subtitle in history), both of which are really intriguing.

Silver Tree is told from the perspective of a park keeper who is suddenly confronted with a silver tree that makes everyone who climbs it want to jump out.

Then there was Sky Island which I'm a fan of, told from the POV of an Ivy League undergraduate who kills someone while at a party held by a billionaire on a floating venue in the sky. Been loose with the details because I reckon the character wouldn't go into too many details. I got the idea for that on the flight back.

We All Need Space was the story of an old man going mad at the bottom of his garden; he's an amateur radio operator who thinks he's detected an astronaut's heartbeat (this was a first draft of Lost Cosmonaut which I kind of stuck with). Anyway, I'm going to leave these here until I figure out what I want to do with them. My favourites are probably Sky Island, Lost Cosmonaut, Silver Tree and We All Need Space, in that order.

Alan Campbell, who is represented by Mic Cheetham - and as well as being a very talented writer he was one of the programmers on the computer game "Vice City" - read a couple and said some very promising things, which I really appreciated.

22/05. I've been reading Interzone, F&SF, Pen Pusher, Litro and Ambit. William Boyd.