I love this novel. Powys is long overdue for the proper classics treatment. Really hope Penguin do others too.
Author of Idiopathy, Perfidious Albion, and Come Join Our Disease
697 followers 358 following 454 posts
view profile on Bluesky
I love this novel. Powys is long overdue for the proper classics treatment. Really hope Penguin do others too.
Increasingly convinced that there is no-one else experiencing, interrogating, and finding new forms to convey reality in the way that Rachel Cusk now does routinely. It’s as if every moment of existence is being minutely and sometimes painfully dissected. Genuinely remarkable writing.
We’re in an incredibly weird place. I think out of the surveillance culture and online life has emerged a deeply held suspicion of all aspects of personality.
Our obsession with judgement and a weird kind of interpersonal taxonomy is sending us hurtling towards a fully culture-free society in which no belief, interest or activity is regarded as truly authentic.
Increasingly fascinated by these men who are all at once not reading, reading but reading the wrong things, and reading the right things but for all the wrong reasons.
For The Guardian, I reviewed Samanta Schweblin’s excellent new collection of short stories. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
Yeah the Sunn0)) one benefits from being kind of merrily overblown I think. I find the drift probably the toughest of all of them. I do think it’s amazing but it really has to be a very particular kind of day for that to go on.
A quite remarkable number of people seem to observe our collective descent into madness, hatred, and violence, and think to themselves: the way to resolve this is through additional madness, hatred, and violence.
It’s not as suffocating as the albums that follow, so it doesn’t have quite the same “brace yourself” feel. It’s more sort of calmly unsettling. But it has these moments of real beauty too. It’s definitely a solitary listen lol.
Had this on a lot over the past week or so - it’s excellent. Somewhat reminiscent of Ka.
The speed with which I dashed off to see if this is available on BBC sounds (it is).
It seems to me that from the centre right across to the progressive left there must be one single shared goal and sense of purpose: preventing this man from getting into power.
Feels increasingly that we are just sleep-walking into the most dangerous possible reality.
“The potential impact on the lives of non-white and non-British people living in the UK is stark, yet Jenrick has yet to face any serious opposition to his actions from either his political opponents, or the media… The consequences of that silence risk being very grave indeed.”
Important information - worth sharing. Sunday 7th Sept at 3pm the UK government will test the mobile emergency alert system, meaning your mobile will sound with an alert. People experiencing abuse who keep a hidden phone should follow the instructions for opting out: www.gov.uk/alerts/optin...
Don’t want to start any drama but it’s actually his best novel.
A sense of its inscrutability can be gained from the fact that one of its standout songs is track six, which is titled Track Six.
His most overlooked and fascinating album - too weird for the ballad-lovers, too smooth for the people who love him at his weirdest and most brutal. Reportedly one of the worst selling albums of all time, but teeming with ideas and beauty.
That said I could have happily read more on his own brushes with mystical experience and also his struggle to integrate his interest in religion with his philosophical discipline, which I thought was quite a key point.
That’s interesting because I kind of felt it didn’t need that section. I like the music he’s discussing there and I agree with the idea that music is often a kind of gateway into the mystical, but I didn’t find him as convincing on krautrock as he is on Julian of Norwich!
“The bloodless duty of critique in the service of Enlightenment blinds us to what is rich, strange, and provocative about the tradition of thinking and experience that we label as mystical.” One of the best things I’ve read this year - Simon Critchley’s “On Mysticism.”
Going to be a fascinating unexpected outcome of AI if what it actually achieves is simply to confirm beyond all doubt that in fact our wellbeing depends on having our ideas and sense of reality regularly challenged and confronted.
“Chatbots can privilege staying in character over following the safety guardrails that companies have put in place.” On sycophancy in chatbots, and the tailspin of affirmation into madness that can result. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...
A book that has stayed deeply lodged in my mind since I read it. Fantastic to see it on the booker list. Easily one of my books of the year.
“Years went by. Many years. Some friends died. I got married, had a child, published some books.” Bolano - giving a very brief masterclass in both writing and the truth of life.
Also was today introduced, via Simon Critchley’s “On Mysticism”, to James’ beautiful description of mystical experience: “a tremendous muchness”, which could double as a description of the look he has put together in this picture.
Ok why have I never before seen this picture of William James.
Yes, although it’s interesting that Tolstoy situates his comments in a deep personal spiritual crisis, so the critique is also self-critique, whereas Bolano seemed to have just been up for a bit of a scrap, generally.
Bolano and Tolstoy, both of the view that something had gone terribly amiss with contemporary literature and the people tasked with producing it. Could it be that the cycle of stagnation and revolution is constant, and that rather than bemoaning the former we should contemplate the latter?
Ok maybe I went to see it at just the right time. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
No voices at the window, though the sound of the wind even on a fairly still day is striking.
Took a walk up to the cottage that, perhaps, inspired Wuthering Heights.
Needed to be said - the examples are countless, we can all name them, and still it keeps happening. A general obsession with authenticity and “true stories” has led to an era in which inauthenticity reigns.
If you enjoyed that, try this. One of my favourite of their songs and this performance is just stunning. The song is about artists losing control of, and the value from, their work so with the Rise of AI in progress has increasing relevance. youtu.be/31qwSm3chn4
Guitar and harmonies masterclass, this. Rawlings seems to find notes on the fretboard that don’t exist for other people. youtu.be/lfGdjdxxOuU
I think we must call time on “the discourse” while there are still one or two things of value it has not yet completely destroyed.
Just take my money, I’m all in.
Is this what people mean by the “male novelist”.
For The Guardian, I reviewed Wendy Erskine’s The Benefactors. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
I know. Hope it wasn’t important.
Cat has invited me to a meeting.
This is an absolutely remarkable exchange.
As the time comes round again for the bi-monthly “male novelists - what can be done” conversation, I think it worth noting that the publishing model of “submit, wait a year, maybe get a response” may be uniquely unappealing to young people able to just release and monetise their work instantly.
I found all his interactions very moving. What an array of people. And the way he just types away! It seemed to me that everyone was happy to talk to him and, like you say, often hadn’t had much chance to discuss their lives. But at the same time you’re conscious of how difficult his life has been.
Something I found fascinating is his technique when talking to people, which aligns with something I’ve heard a lot of street photographers say. There’s no pretence, no subterfuge. He sits down wherever people are, opens his laptop, and just types as they talk. The openness is incredibly disarming.
“One of the ways in which Americans have made themselves so unfree is by opening themselves up to continuous interruptions.” This is available now - for a week - and so worth your time. A very touching portrait not only of Vollmann but of all the remarkable, profoundly marginal people he meets.
I remember loving this when I read it at the time - be interested to know how it holds up. Always feel Stone is a bit of a neglected figure.
Sounds like a good plan - let’s do it.
Absurd, frankly, how staggeringly good this is. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGn0...
Sadly, yes, noting it again.
Feels to me that in this country we largely talk about work as something that might prevent a writer writing, rather than another, often very meaningful, way in which a writer engages with the world.
Struck, on reading this great piece, by how unusual and interesting it is to hear a writer talking about how their writing is informed by their regular work.
Caterpillar Tree.
Anti all the other, more difficult to interpret fascisms, but not the more obvious, no-interpretation-required kind.
What does “anti fascist” mean at this precise moment, one wonders.
Does seem to me that when you consider the era of outrage and backlash we have lived through, the near total silence in response to Kanye releasing a song called “Heil Hitler” from an album he claims will feature an “antisemitic sound”, the cover of which he said would be a swastika, is striking.
The dispiriting natural endpoint of a culture that has determinedly overemphasised product and outcome and in doing so has drained almost everything of inherent value. nymag.com/intelligence...
May 29 to June 8th - mark the date on your calendars. A ten years in the making documentary about William Vollmann will be available to stream online as part of the San Francisco documentary festival. sfdocfest2025.eventive.org/films/67efd7...
I really love his Messiaen especially. For a long time his was the only Ligeti piano I ever listened to but recently I find myself turning to the Danny Driver recording more - I think mainly just on the basis of the sound. I’d welcome Aimard revisiting the complete Ligeti etudes.
If you want more Kurtag, his remarkable opera setting of Beckett’s Fin De Partie is still criminally without a proper release, but available for now on YouTube. youtu.be/Bel9Sjfe2MA
This is extraordinary - tiny jewel after tiny jewel, amassed over half a century, approached with total, borderline mystical dedication by Aimard. And the recorded sound is stunning.
Genuinely feel that a lot of people writing about people haven’t met enough people.
Don’t really feel that saying “most working people” can be categorised on a spectrum from “idealistic yet unambitious to greedy and immoral” is really much of a winning start to a moral argument, frankly.
For The Guardian, I reviewed Katie Kitamura’s mysterious and unsettling “Audition”. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...
I had the great privilege of reading @totomcgee.bsky.social’s deeply moving, brilliantly inventive book in manuscript. Now it’s out in physical form from @dukepress.bsky.social. Very highly recommended.
Fascinating, clear-eyed, terrifying piece about Meir Kahane and his legacy by Joshua Leifer, whose book Tablets Shattered I also highly recommend. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ma...
On William Vollmann’s forthcoming 3400 page novel of the CIA, which at this point practically has its own online cult, and, tangentially, the end of an era in American Publishing www.metropolitanreview.org/p/the-last-c...
Out now and highly recommended - @willwiles.bsky.social brings his usual sharp eye and flair for the unexpected to a series of more classically weird tales, all packaged up in a lovely little volume that fits in your pocket. A delight.
Oh amazing thank you Rahul.
Does anyone who follows me happen to know a translator of Czech into English (also needs to be good at reading handwriting)?
Here we are:the worst kind of watershed for Starmer & his govt. Seems striking that disability is a big thing in the PM's backstory..but this is also another sign of the place of disabled people in politics being either non-existent or awful, even among self-styled progressives. Shameful, all told.
I imagine it's easier to come to this rather generous conclusion if you have already built a glittering and secure literary career www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
These are utterly unconscionable plans. Not only will they bring misery and suffering to a great many people, they will push more and more people into poverty, homelessness, and mental and physical crisis. This will cost money, not save it. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...
Very interested to know what he thinks he means by “meta fiction” and, relatedly, what exactly the “vibe” of that meta fiction might be, without just pointing to a paragraph written by a machine and going, “that’s the vibe of meta fiction.”
I had a thing that I wanted to write that seemed too long for Bluesky and so I set up a Substack. It's about visiting Lithuania and what it means to be "optimistic": naomialderman.substack.com/p/on-being-o... (if you respond to *this* with talk about Nazis on Substack I will block, thanks)
My discovery for today is this - absolutely remarkable, beautifully textured, impassioned stuff from the Ébène. I usually go for the Takacs recordings of these quartets but this may just edge them out.
The joy of a non-category based entirely on cultural vibes is that you can put into it anything you feel like.
Please for the love of god can we just not.
“The never ending happening Of what's to be and what has been Just to be a part of it Is astonishing to me” RIP Bill Fay.
Related to my post earlier thanking all the archivists who have helped me in my own research: Wiener Holocaust Library is going through a massive project of digitalising its records.
My grandfather: arriving in Dover in 1939 aged 18, with one trunk of possessions and 10 Reichsmarks to his name, the rest of his family still in Czechoslovakia, never to join him. His British immigration papers record his reason for leaving: “racial”.
Thanks to organisations like Yad Vashem, The Arolsen Archive, JRI Poland, The National Archives, The Wiener Holocaust Museum, and countless local and state archives in Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic, I was able to piece together my grandfather’s family and know what happened to them.
A good day to express my personal gratitude to all the remarkable archivists and researchers, many of whom are volunteers, painstakingly searching and transcribing documents so that history is not forgotten.
Agree - I felt totally unprepared for that moment when it arrived. No-one like him, either in sensibility or style.
“Hawk, I'm dying. You know about death, that it's just a change, not an end. Hawk, it's time. There's some fear, some fear in letting go.” Catherine Coulson’s last words as Log Lady, filmed when she herself was on the verge of death - an extraordinary collaboration between her and David Lynch.
I went to a Boulez master class for young conductors many many years ago. An extraordinary evening, for students and audience alike. Such an incisive and generous teacher.
They’re a real joy - ideas just pour out of him. Must have been amazing to study with him.
For those looking for a bit of creative inspiration/provocation, Boulez’s collected College De France lectures overflow with brilliance - not just about music but about the creative process generally. For some reason the hardback is a crazy £6.99 on Amazon.
“I learned about space and time, I learned about complete commitment to every sound, whether mine or my colleague’s, I learned how to take distance, and how to be present.” Lovely reflections on a great and fascinating man. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...
Imagine being Saul Bellow, and just casually dropping a paragraph of such wonder into a man’s uneventful train journey. So wide open to the world it borders on the mystical.
Boxing Day vibe
Great to see Come Join Our Disease discussed in this fascinating-sounding PhD thesis, which thanks to the internet may now be the most famous/notorious thesis in history. theconversation.com/my-research-...
Love the weird, gently psychedelic colours of marshland in winter.
Sometimes it takes a while for a work to get the kind of critical attention it truly deserves.
In 2025 I’ve decided to just read
Perhaps worth noting.
There is an argument to be made that writing novels generally is not an especially good idea.
When we bemoan the lack of boys and men in advanced English and writing classes, we ignore an educational culture that pushes STEM hard and a larger culture that pushes outsized money acquisition as the route to power and status.
On the other hand I was talking to an editor last night who is being besieged by men in their mid-50s who’ve made a fortune in the City and have now retired and want to be writers, but they all want to write Money by Martin Amis because that was the last novel they read.
