Pretty Pictures, a new book by designer Marian Bantjes, is out on October 1st.
• A writer admired by Angela Carter, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Anthony Burgess, Jonathan Meades and Iain Sinclair; a “writer’s writer…[whose] best stories bear comparison with the Ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges”; a writer with an “unsettling quality to his writing, a whiff of brimstone that links him to fin-de-siècle occult figures such as HP Lovecraft—and even, at a further remove, Aleister Crowley”. David Collard explains why you may want to read something by Gerald Kersh (1911–1968), four of whose books are being republished.
• The Eccentronic Research Council and Maxine Peake pay homage to Delia Derbyshire’s The Dreams project with a new single out at the end of the month (Pye Corner Audio and Carol Morley appear on the flip). Ms Peake’s barm-cake reverie may be heard here.
• “Applying for grants, writing artist statements, showing up to openings—artists have to do far more than just make art if they want to find an audience for it.” Jen Graves on lies and deception in the art world.
The material does not make the work. The life does not make the art. Exactly the opposite. The work creates the material. The art creates the life. Did Trinidad exist before Naipaul? Did cargo ships exist before Joseph Conrad? Did Newark and the New Jersey suburbs exist before Philip Roth? Did women in playgrounds in New York City exist before Grace Paley? See how the writer invents the material? These places did not exist as literary subjects. They were invisible to literature. The magic of a great book is that it makes its own subject seem inevitable. The danger is, it makes the subject seem like the source of power in the work.
Phyllis Rose on life and literature.
• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 087, 40 minutes of original electronic music by Geistform (Rafael Martinez Espinosa).
• “You’ve Got This“, an It Gets Better-style video support campaign for people recently diagnosed with HIV.
• At Dangerous Minds: Babalon Working: Brian Butler’s trippy occult odyssey with Paz de la Huerta.
• Manfred Mohr‘s computer-created artwork, from the 1960s to the present.
• Robert Macfarlane on the strange world of urban exploration.
• Rick Poynor on Bohumil Stepan’s Family Album of Oddities.
• Oli Warwick talks to Martin Jenkins, aka Pye Corner Audio.
• The 384-page BUTT calendar for 2014 is now on sale.
• Pye Corner Audio: We Have Visitors (2010) | Toward Light (2011) | The Mirror Ball Cracked (2012)
I’d picked up a copy of “Nightshade and Damnations” three or four years ago because Alan Moore had mentioned Kersh’s “Corporal Cuckoo” would be in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” I was delighted with some of the stories therein and liked Kersch a great deal more than I had imagined beforehand.
I also remember Moorcock mentioning him as one of the “Fleet Street” writers, hard-drinking journalists, along with Maurice Richardson in the preface to Savoy’s recent edition of “The Exploits of Engelbrecht.” I’ll have to revisit Kersh- I don’t think I finished the collection last time.
The short story collection is still the only Kersh I’ve read, although I have seen Jules Dassin’s film of Night and the City (which is superb, incidentally). Moorcock has championed Kersh for years so I feel a little guilty I’ve still not broached any of the man’s other works.