tales from the late anthropocene

[ the white notebooks #16 ]

Thirteen Journeys Around Mexico City

IN JUNE I MADE A SPECIAL EFFORT to see the film Roma, time always goes too fast while I try to map the city. A little because its setting has long been of special interest to me: tourism (the Pyramid of the Sun is a must-see), a little Mexico City. After being suitably impressed and moved by hanging out in small city cafés, a little wandering the the movie, I felt the need to augment a particular reading various streets of the Centro Histórico. Given that it’s the habit I’ve developed over the last thirty years, which is to splashes of history that I find attractive, I’d understand seek out fiction set in this, the most populous place on suggestions of a few other movies set here such as Luis Earth. What might I have missed out on, in the last few Buñuel’s The Young and the Damned from 1950, but no, the years? books have always been my preference. I found web pages at two sites, ELECTRIC LIT and By no means does Mexican fiction that’s been CULTURE TRIP, which were recommending seven and translated into English always feature the capital city. Juan eleven books respectively as further reading on Mexico Rulfo, for example, one of the most important figures in City, with a total of just ten translated fiction titles between twentieth century Mexican literature, only completed two them (there was some overlap) plus a smattering of non- books – a novel and a short story collection, and both of fiction, one graphic novel and a film. There were only three these look mostly at the Mexico that’s found a long way books I was not familiar with so made a point of buying from the capital. Of even more importance is Nobel them and have now read them all. laureate Octavio Paz, who also looked far wider than the I also realised I could do better than these two capital for his subject matter. But there seems to be no websites in one fell swoop. So, because this is a proper translated books readily available in English written by fanzine and not a clickbait-driven website offering just natives of Mexico City that precede Carlos Fuentes’s capsule reviews (Okay, I know, I know…) I here Where the Air Is Clear, which I found to be a present the majority of what I’ve read about hard read when I read it in an English edition Mexico City in fiction. some time around 1987. It focuses on Mexico I have no definitive answer as to why I City’s upper classes and contrasts them with should be so enamoured with Mexico City in the situations of the city’s poor. Being his first fiction, although it probably began in the late novel and written when Fuentes was 29, the ’80s, plus my reading of the Beats in the 1990s, story centres around Federico Robles, a man with their frequent excursions south of the who has abandoned the revolutionary ideals of border. his youth to become a powerful and influential I don’t know Mexico City nearly as financier. Fuentes’s prose is dense, and he takes well as I would like because I visit it so rarely: a kaleidoscopic look at the city itself with a I’ve made only four visits over the last twenty series of vignettes in adjunct to the more years, and my regular day-and-a-half stay each personal stories he tells, all embellished with

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[ 1 ] internal monologues and subconscious explor- Mexico was basically an Oriental culture that ations. The book is multi-faceted and I received reflected two thousand years of disease and the strong impression that the ambitious poverty and degradation and stupidity and Fuentes was trying to write ‘the great Mexico slavery and brutality and psychic and physical City novel’ – possibly because no one before terrorism. It was sinister and gloomy and had ever attempted that? – and with this book chaotic, with the special chaos of a dream. … he also triggered the ‘Boom’ in Latin American …and so on. To put these kinds of observations literature of the 1960s. For anyone wanting to into the text of the novel itself might have explore Mexican literature this novel is pivotal, provided a more contextualised book, but I also but Fuentes also required a tolerant and at think it would have been irrelevant to times forgiving approach from this particular Burroughs’s purpose. reader: he provided me with irritation and Burroughs’s and Kerouac’s experience of charm in equal measure. Mexico City only provides a patchy intro- Another of my earliest reads in which duction to how the city is portrayed in fiction, I was made to feel conscious of the intensity of and by definition their viewpoint is that of the life in Mexico City was Jack Kerouac’s Tristessa visitor. An earlier book that also takes this (1960), which I also read in the late 1980s. This perspective is D. H. Lawrence’s The Plumed short narrative involves two trips into the Serpent (1926), about a female Irish visitor who junkie houses of Mexico City in pursuit of a becomes entangled in the political revival of a beautiful Mexican morphine addict, and this pre-Christian religion. The novel begins at a make it one of Kerouac’s most uncomfortable bullfight in Mexico City but heads out into the and tragic books. His ‘kick-writing’ occasionally country, and becomes either more fascist, white goes into overdrive and Kerouac often risks supremacist or misogynist along the way, losing the reader, who needs to keep apace. The depending on what your sensitivities are. I novella is simply a long meditation on a slow doubt that a book like this has much that is loss and one, as usual with the Beats, fuelled by useful to say to leftie readers of today, but I plenty of drink and drugs. suppose the only way to find out would be to I can’t remember what made me pick read it for yourself. up William Burroughs’s Queer (1985) when I All the above formed what I’d call my read it in the mid-1990s – probably because it’s early reading on Mexico City fiction so, short and offered a cryptic crash-course on ignoring the random order in which they were Burroughs himself – but the edition I read read, from here on in it would make more then could certainly have provided more sense to present the books mostly as they context which Penguin’s 2010 edition now does appeared chronologically, although some didn’t handsomely, hence the re-read. Queer was receive their English translation until many originally begun as a sequel to Junkie, written years later. between 1951 and 1953 but then abandoned Such a book is Calling All Heroes (1982, for three decades before Burroughs eventually trans. 2010) by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, which is centred on agreed to its publication after some very belated revisions. the failed student demonstrations of 1968 that were a There was some earlier interchange between the two texts pivotal point in Mexican history. Taibo is best known in the with some cuts from Queer to add to Ace’s word count English-speaking world for penning a definitive biography requirement for Junkie. Oliver Harris’s introduction tells on Che Guevara, and he imbues his left-wing politics into me everything I could possibly want to know about the all his fiction. But Calling All Heroes also heads bravely – book, including his observation that “the Mexico City of we might even say recklessly – into speculative territory Queer is not a “realist” city at all”. Burroughs’s character with its tongue-in-cheek plot of a Mexican journalist, lying Lee is simply in amorous pursuit of Eugene Allerton, all in hospital from a knife wound, summoning his favourite the way to Panama and Ecuador while he searches for the fictional and historical heroes from around the world to herb Yage that reportedly induces telepathy. Descriptions rescue Mexico City from right-wing forces. Mexico City is of Mexico City itself are non-existent, with the city the playground here and also the source and identity of all becoming a silent background to Lee’s obsessions. social unity, as the invited heroes bring retribution and However Burroughs’s does provide a few colourful anarchy to the city. paragraphs of his impressions of the city in his 1985 Roberto Bolaño was Chilean, but having lived in introduction to the book: Mexico City for a long period he set a fair amount of his … The slum areas compared favourably with anything in fiction there, and Amulet (1999) is especially enjoyable. This Asia for sheer filth and poverty. People would shit all over was the first title to hit the shelves after publication of his the street, then lie down and sleep in it with the flies posthumous magnum opus 2666, and there is a link crawling in and out of their mouths. Entrepreneurs, not between the two books: the year 2666 gets a mention infrequently lepers, built fires on street corners and cooked among the many ramblings of Bolaño’s wonderful creation up hideous, stinking, nameless messes of food, which they Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan immigrant and the self- dispensed to passers-by. Drunks slept right on the sidewalks declared ‘mother of Mexican poetry’. She’s holed up in a of the main drag, and no cops bothered them … Mexico City university washroom, hiding from the military

[ 2 ] as they try to quell the student demonstrations selfish behaviour, especially concerning his of 1968; her rather prolonged stay there results other secret girlfriends. But it is Tania, the in an increasingly hallucinatory excursion central girlfriend of the ménage-a-trois, who backwards and forwards in time as she recalls appears to have more secrets than anyone, dis- meeting people she could never have met, plus appearing for days at a time much to the some far-flung predictions of which authors frustration of Manuel, and Gregorio also will be popular in, say, 2017 or 2059. Bolaño appears to be tormenting Manuel with post- once again indulges a penchant for genre humous gifts and letters containing cryptic name-dropping; he also gives himself plenty of messages, as if Gregorio has not finished dying space to let his words breathe with his familiar and intends to taunt Manuel from beyond the long, rambling sentences, and once again it’s grave. The grey, potholed streets under the rain often difficult to see where fact separates from on a dark night is the image of the city that fiction or where he is taking the story until the seems to stand out for me in this book, and the very last page, although the thrill, as with his room in the love motel where Manuel meets similarly structured novel By Night in Chile, is in Tania adds the only real dash of colour and Auxilio’s mad journey itself. This is simply a intimacy. I found the writing (or, more lovely book. accurately, perhaps the translation) too bland, One book I enjoyed greatly in 2005, as if Arriaga is trying to let the drama of the despite also not being particularly descriptive story speak for itself without any narrative flair, of the city itself (but on the plus side it does so the choice here seems to be stark prose vs. have a Diego Rivera cover) was American gritty realism, and neither wins. author Jennifer Clement’s A True Story Based on Another rare Taibo title in English is his Lies (2001), a finalist for the Orange Prize for anthology for Akashic’s ‘noir’ series, Mexico City Fiction. It is not as difficult a book to pin down Noir (2010), which by all accounts took him a as its title suggests, so simple is its structure of bit of persuading to do. In his introduction he dual narratives and yet so beguiling and describes Mexico City as “the best city on the engrossing is the nature of the poetic language planet, in spite of itself.” I got through the Clement uses. The story explores the con- twelve stories in this anthology surprisingly sequences of a brief sexual relationship quickly, and that’s a reflection on its high between Leonora, a fifteen year-old native quality. There are the expected, brief hard- servant in a wealthy modern household in boiled crime capers but beyond these there are Mexico City, and Mr. O’Conner, her master. But more mysterious forms of narrative that flirt when a child is born from this union she is with the speculative, such as Juan Hernández raised as an adopted daughter of the house, Luna’s ‘Bang!’, which takes a multi-viewpoint while Leonora is expected to abandon any and slow-motion perspective on a murder. It hope of motherhood and merely remain the also has an otherworldly dimension to it that I servant to the manipulations of Mrs. O’Conner, find attractive. There is the short and rather all pointing to one possibly inevitable and brutal crime story ‘Private Collection’ by tragic conclusion. The narratives contain plenty Mexican science fiction author Bernardo of native Mexican ‘knowledge’ and other Fernández that starts in a most inoffensive way quirkiness, plus pathos that imbues the but then gradually turns towards an entirely Mexican servants with as much dignity as unexpected and grim conclusion. However, innocence. Further, it describes a situation that superior to every other story here is the dark must be common the whole world over, not novelette ‘God Is Fanatical, Hija’ by Eduardo just to Latin America. Monteverde. It’s hard to say what this story Amongst my more recent fiction on actually is, apart from being about a trans- Mexico City by Mexican authors there was one gendered padre who was once a nun, meeting disappointment: Guillermo Arriaga’s The Night in a confessional a transgendered woman Buffalo (2006). In the suburban city, Gregorio seemingly possessed by a character from and Manuel grew up as best friends – they both Homer’s Odyssey, and who is also in search of had a tattoo of a buffalo, which Gregorio lost children to eat. It would be fair to describe insisted was done with the same needle so this story as a kind of Mexican baroque, as their blood would mingle. But since Manuel ornate and shadowy as a vast city church that started sleeping with Gregorio’s girlfriend the hides a multitude of dark secrets, and in its friendship had become difficult particularly as trajectory it’s also undoubtedly noir, as well as Gregorio was becoming increasingly suscept- both impressive and haunting. ible to mental illness, and his eventual suicide It was inevitable that another recent read begins the novel. How do Manuel and all the set in the city was again by Roberto Bolaño: families involved react to this tragedy? The Spirit of Science Fiction (2016, written in Manuel’s response gives him away as 1984, trans. 2019). The city and its underground an ‘unreliable narrator’: he’s self-serving and arts scene comes alive albeit sketchily in one of prone to absolve himself of guilt over any the several intertwining narratives, that of

[ 3 ] Remo’s search for obscure Mexican poets who are fuelling detached from the world while also being privileged to the an unusual spike in poetry publications in the city. Remo hilt, autistic in his point of view almost to the degree of and his friend Jan – both from Chile and of course both The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time yet aspects of Bolaño himself – along with their Mexican possessing an urgent voice of his own. I did like this odd friend José Arco, are combing the city looking for love, sex, novella, self-contained as it is, and it provided some great companionship, stolen motorbikes, poetry and science moments of character illumination with the minimum of fiction for the hermetic Jan. It is Jan who Bolaño sees as effort from Villalobos. But narcoliteratura it really isn’t. the soul of the novel, but this is a guy who mostly stays in Of the twelve short stories in American author bed all day and night in his attic room filled with science Josh Barkan’s collection Mexico: Stories (2017), eleven are, fiction paperbacks, while writing idiosyncratic letters to with necessity, set in Mexico City. I had never read Barkan the likes of Alice Sheldon, Fritz Leiber, Ursula Le Guin before this year, so hoped he would be able to illuminate and Robert Silverberg (there is also the mysterious author the city as well as Mexico City Noir had. He was mostly James Hauer to contend with). At one point Jan gives successful at the job, and all his tales take on aspects of Remo a detailed retelling of the plot of the Gene Wolfe dealing with the narco villains that selfishly compromise novella ‘Silhouette’; the third thread is similar to this, that life in the country for everyone else. The first tale ‘The of an unnamed young writer who has just won an award Chef and El Chapo’ is the signature story for the whole describing his dreamlike novel to a journalist, but it does collection and is a small masterpiece: the notorious drug- become rather tedious. Notable though is that its plot lord El Chapo goes for a meal in a Mexico City restaurant concerns the Unknown University, a secret society derived (simply because he likes to taunt the police), and told from from Alfred Bester’s story ‘The Men Who Murdered the point of view of the chef it becomes a battle of wills Mohammed’ (Bolaño’s entire poetry was also collected over El Chapo’s seemingly impossible meal request. It’s under the title The Unknown University). nicely emblematic of the power these people have, yet Bolaño arrived in Spain from Mexico in 1977 and Barkan’s good vs. evil formula is then repeated in other The Spirit of Science Fiction was set in the Mexico City of stories although perhaps are less successfully in terms of roughly that time, which indicates that it impact. When starting each story, Barkan probably depicts life as lived by a younger quickly imparts an understanding of the level Bolaño, forming friendships, getting into of insight you are likely to receive by the end, scrapes and finding escape in literary pursuits. such that one final impression of the collection It ends oddly, however, with Remo’s descript- is a feeling of mild homogeneity in the stories’ ions of encounters in Mexico City’s various structures. Yet at the same time this feels like an bathhouses with a girlfriend, offering no undeserved criticism because the stories are conclusion to the central themes of the novel. also ambiguous enough to leave the question in On the whole, the story is rather less the reader’s mind, ‘Well, what would you do?”, than completely satisfying, and being a very so in this way Barkan does challenge the reader early unpublished work given the polish of a quite admirably. All stories cast a revealing light 2019 English-language hardcover edition on the nature of Mexico’s drug-trafficking thirty-five years later, this ought to be enough beast, a way of being so embedded in the to tell the reader ‘buyer beware’. But Bolaño’s everyday life of the country that it seems all but accurate referencing and name-checking of impossible to eradicate it. American science fiction authors was fun; he The final book I read for this excursion carries the reader along quite well with his was Chloe Aridjis’s Sea Monsters (2019), some- discoveries of Mexico City poets, and overall thing that was recommended at Electric Lit. the dialogue was engaging. It’s a long way from The first half of the novel is set in Mexico City, the clarity and energy of The Savage Detectives as the late-teen protagonist Luisa is going for which this was clearly an early test-run, and about her boring life in La Roma and finally also a long way from being a Bolaño novel meets a guy, Tomás, who she attaches herself to worthy of a wide readership as its focus is on before they run away for the coast, in pursuit of the niche cultures of poetry and fandom. Of a missing circus of Ukrainian dwarfs that she Bolaño’s early work it may still be far more read about in a newspaper. Luisa is typically a poetic and accessible than The Skating Rink or rather selfish and feckless character, and Sea Antwerp, so I do wish our fannish poet Steve Monsters took me away from the city (where I Sneyd was around to read this. kinda wanted to stay) and dropped me on the The concise and compact book Down Zipolite beach, all told in the first person. It’s the Rabbit Hole (2010) is a curious novella by good that the Ukrainian dwarfs were there for Juan Pablo Villalobos. It’s regarded as an the macguffin because Luisa’s narrative appears outlying yet also significant tale in the recent unendingly aimless, as she drops Tomás and Mexican tradition of ‘narcoliteratura’, being hooks up with someone else. There are some told from the point of view of a precocious kid colourful passages, but nothing in this novel imprisoned in the palatial home of his drug- reads in the language of a 17 year-old runaway lord father, and his quest to acquire a pair of other than with a long perspective, therefore Liberian pygmy hippopotamuses. His telling of becoming a series of memories strung together. the story shows the extent to which he is But all for what? Oh, to be back in Mexico City.

[ 4 ] On Private Libraries: A Letter Across Time to Leigh Hunt

Sir, I wish to discuss with you (unfortunately in a kind of one- I’m writing to you from the month of July in the year 2019, sided way that we cannot overcome) and what I initially from a railway carriage on a train journey from Liverpool perceived to be your unnecessary snobbery on the subject. to London. The carriage is full and cramped and noisy, But before I do that I need to provide readers of because I cannot afford First Class, although at least I have this fanzine with a brief sketch about who you are, or, from a seat. I’m using a device called a laptop to record my our time, were. I confess you barely registered with me as words; I’m also listening to music, using headphones, on a an essayist before beginning this letter, which may make device known as an iPhone; there is a female Japanese my communication with you all the more remarkable. You tourist travelling alone and sitting next to me, wearing the will be elated to know that people are still able to read you obligatory John & Yoko t-shirt, and she is texting, as all so far into the future, although you ought to know your Japanese teenagers do. She’s now on her third packet of popularity did wane considerably after your death: this Lay’s chips (Masala flavour), which is why I’m trying to anthology’s introduction states “Despite being a household drown out the sound of her endless eating with louder name in his day, and remembered as one of the great music: Joe Satriani, Toto, Led Zeppelin. I’m having one of reformers, his poetry has not been widely read.” Too bad, those Hell Is Other People days. Being forced to listen to but as we say these days, “So it goes”. We have something people eating in close proximity has always been, I admit, a called Wikipedia on something indispensable known as personal stress. It’s also called a First-world problem but the internet, and Wikipedia has this to say about you: you’re probably just scratching your head over what that “James Henry Leigh Hunt (19 October 1784 – [redacted, means, just as you’re certainly puzzling over the but you did make it as far as the second half of the 19th technological and cultural references I’ve made above, but century]), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, I’m not going to explain them because that would be an essayist and poet.” On your poetry: “Hunt’s preference was attempt to dissolve the time between us, which is not my decidedly for Chaucer’s verse style, as adapted to modern purpose. Truly, you and I are of different eras, different English by John Dryden. This was in contrast to the cultures even, yet by providence we do share the same epigrammatic couplet of Alexander Pope. The Story of language and the same country. So please bear with me Rimini is an optimistic narrative which runs contrary to the when I can’t help but slip into my own vernacular. tragic nature of its subject. Hunt’s flippancy and familiarity, There’s another reason I’m being forced to listen often degenerating into the ludicrous, subsequently made to loud music: it’s a method many use to keep awake, him a target for ridicule and parody.” because I’m reading a book that is sending me to sleep, an Mr Hunt, sir, I quote this with no intention other anthology in which an essay of yours appears, titled On than to provide my readers with an impression of your Reading, Writing and Living with Books, editor unknown, long-term significance in the world of literature. Today we published by Pushkin Press and The London Library in have any number of critics and essayists (not so many 2016 (that’s only a few years ago, granted, but hardly any of poets, there’s no money in it) who are filling your long- my contemporaries can remember anything about it except absented shoes. Most of our careers will be similarly time- for two politically disastrous events which still loom large). stamped, and we too will not be remembered or read a So that’s good, my mention of the London Library will hundred years after our deaths, as too with the writers we probably have brought about your full attention.… read and offer comment on – such is the ‘nature of the Your presence in this anthology is shared with beast’ of the profession we inhabit. Charles Dickens and George Eliot, both of whom you will So, digression over, back to the point to which I know, and Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and E.M. Forster am incrementally getting. As I said, what gave me the idea (1879–1970), who you won’t, because you all had strong of reaching out across time to you were some words in connections to the London Library in your respective your long essay ‘My Books’ in the above-named anthology. times. I’ve yet to visit the Library myself, but it is clearly From its beginning I was struggling to understand ‘My significant to the formation of your ideas on what a good Books’ simply because, having already suffered the ennui library should be. Then I came to your words on those induced by Virginia Woolf’s exacting opinions on the dry lesser entities, personal libraries, which I will get to because mechanics of being a fully efficient reader in her essay

[ 5 ] ‘How Should One Read a Book?’ (1932), I Mr. Hunt, I am a man of my time who blithely thought I was in for more of the same habitually prefers to look forward rather than from you. Writers of your era, you see, are back. Being a reformer yourself you probably rarely able to impart easy wisdom to modern have some empathy with this, although in my readers of the 21st Century. (It generally got time we are fortunate to have a flourishing better after that populist H. G. Wells, Esq. genre of fiction some would say is reformist in (1866-1946)) You too must have writers you spirit, still popularly but oddly referred to as consider boring and old-fashioned, and we ‘science fiction’ (because a lot of it is not really have ours, and my apologies to you Mr. Hunt about science), and I confess to being a regular but these days your writing does fit that profile. reader of these works. Our less imaginative Look, I grok the complacency of an entitled types will ascribe blame to that guy H. G. Wells dead white male expounding in full on what is I mentioned earlier. probably his favourite subject, because my However it is clear that inevitably you are father was cut from that same cloth and after also a man of your own time, and I must put it many more years of this I know I’ll eventually be filling to you that throughout your essay you appear to be a man those boots too in an even smaller league than you occupy. very much stuck in your era and your milieu. From the However, setting a course to my point once again: quite general tone of your essay ‘My Books’ I’d almost rudely simply the lethargy resulting from reading Virginia Woolf suggest that you widen the scope of your reading a little, was literally sending me to sleep. As I said above, this often but that might be utterly elitist coming from a man who happens when modern readers, especially attention- takes advantage of the full reading scope that the 21st deficient teenagers, encounter writing from way before century provides. I say this because works from Europe their time. So along with the loud munching of my fellow seems to be as far as you have ever read, or to soften the traveller the scarfing Japanese tourist (scarfing is a 20th blow a little, as far as you are able to read. Your books read century Americanism for eating voraciously, I’ll grant you in translation are most likely screeds from France, Italy, that one) I now had a second reason to wire myself up to Germany or Spain, and that’s as far from home as your some loud heavy metal… and after regaining full mind is regularly taken with the possible exception of The consciousness first via a few perfectly crafted Satriani solos Arabian Nights. followed by Toto’s version of Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Not long after you shuffle off this mortal coil a Love’ to bring me right back to consciousness via Steve Frenchman called Jules Verne (1828-1905) will write a Lukather’s riffs and Simon Phillips’s polyrhythmic popular novel titled Around the World in Eighty Days, which drumming (trust me, sir, if any English percussionist can will expand his readers’ horizons considerably and may do polyrhythmic, it’s Phillips), I soon came across these make them hanker for written works from more exotic words of yours (at last, we’re here) that furrowed my brow climes than just the Near East. Across the pond (OK, again a little as the gorgeous boredom of the English I’ll grant you this one: the North Atlantic) there is a new countryside sped past my window at 100mph south of country that coalesced in your time, the United States (I Crewe, words that I understand never appeared in print in understand your parents were from Philadelphia, and had your lifetime but may have seen first light of day forty years to leave Pennsylvania for London because of their loyalist after you left us. sympathies to the crown). The United States, in the future, To wit, they were as follows: will produce some blindingly good literature in English and also far more than its fair share of trash. I’m sorry you A grand private library, which the master of the house won’t be around to sample it all but as a reformer you’d also makes his study, never looks to me like a real certainly appreciate works such the Constitution of the place of books, much less of authorship. I cannot take United States (1787) or even, nearly two hundred years kindly to it. It is certainly not out of envy; for three later, reformist-in-spirit books such as Howard Zinn’s A parts of the books are trash, and I can seldom think People’s History of the United States (1980). Believe it or not, of the rest and the proprietor together. It reminds me the United States will actually put men on the Moon in of a fine gentleman, of a collector, of a patron, of Gil 1969. Humanity could not have achieved this without the Blas and the Marquis of Marialva; of anything but union of the American states and, earlier in the 20th genius and comfort. century, the second of two devastating World Wars. In And I immediately felt the need to respond. But I summary, it was a time when the Earth was first realised it’s either too late, or as we like to say these days photographed from space, and the word ‘global’ “it’s never too late”, and I prefer to believe the latter so fortunately became something more than just an here we are. It was at this point I decided to unpack the aspirational adjective. However sometimes, especially since laptop and start typing. that cursèd year 2016 I mentioned earlier, it feels like it’s Firstly, genuine thanks for educating me all been downhill from there. on the fact that “trash” is not a 20th century Americanism; But I’m digressing again. Back to private libraries, your use indicates it came into being much earlier. those of you, your acquaintances, my father’s and mine. Secondly, call me uneducated because I had also never What would you call your own collection of books heard of Gil Blas or the Marquis of Marialva, but now that if not a private library that is equally open to the criticisms I’ve Googled I’m more clued-in but not really any more you level at others’ private libraries? Because there would educated. seem to be very little that would distinguish it from the private libraries of your acquaintances that you so casually

[ 6 ] dismiss, yet presumably yours necessarily must be a cut born, then at Foyles, a famous London bookshop on the above the rest if you are to retain your place as a respected Charing Cross Road, and between the ages of 40 and 50 he and nationally-known intellectual. Today we call your kind accumulated, via dealers in rare books, complete sets of the ‘opinion formers’, and you would get paid thousands for first editions of Graham Greene, G. K. Chesterton and writing mere thousand-word editorials in a national Evelyn Waugh, none of whom you will have heard but who newspaper (probably double that if you created the are seen as three of the truly great novelists of the modern newspaper yourself; hell, you could write your own English language. In the 1980s he had to sell them all for cheque), but your private library is still your own business financial reasons, getting a fraction of what he had paid for and no one else gets to criticise it (nor should they). them. Earlier, in the 1970s he set up a bookshop in the Yet no matter how diverse the contents of entrance of our local Catholic church. Much earlier still, in anyone’s book collection, surely “genius and comfort” are 1950 he borrowed from his RAF library while he was not your only hallmarks of a good library. You are surely stationed in Malta, a first edition of George Orwell’s not that narrow-minded, and the time that separates us Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), possibly the greatest work of precludes me from asking you directly: what of the English fiction of the 20th century, and “forgot” to return it intelligence behind a collection, the evidence of the (he subsequently lost it). Today a good condition copy will aspirations of the aggregator of so many loosely connected sell for many thousands of pounds. works? (My dictionary tells me ‘aggregator’ is a modern After he died a few years ago, when my siblings computing term, which you will of course know nothing and I were selling his house I was charged with the task of about, although thankfully the liberal English language dismantling his library, and it was a heartbreaking thing to also allows me to apply it to pre-computing times.) have to do. He wanted it kept together if possible, and I Whatever the general subject of the library, be it science or found a place to take it all for free: a new conference religion or literature itself, does not a private library also centre on the Welsh border. But it’s ultimate fate may exhibit such a veiled intelligence in whatever form? How remain in not staying in such a complete state as the less- much intelligence must be evident for a library to be good central themes of his library are calved off, with a core enough for you? This is probably what you mean when you theme presiding. That is more your kind of library, say the content of most private libraries are ‘three parts although I suspect it is not nearly big enough for your trash’, and that the remainder and the proprietor cannot purposes of reading in quiet comfort, surrounded by be considered together as any sign of intelligence because genius. they allowed so much trash into their library in the first But all of this is anecdotal and in your far future, place. I can see your rather elitist point, but it doesn’t but it did happen and it’s important to some of us, just not really ennoble you as much as you think it does – my, how to you. My father’s example fit your description of “a grand times may have changed! Perhaps the private libraries you private library, which the master of the house also makes have in mind for your caustic wit are owned by mere his study”, even though you “cannot take kindly to it”. I’m casual collectors as opposed to proper librarians, amateur not asking you to, just to accept that my father’s library was or professional. as important to him (an intelligent man and more widely Also, surely it cannot be down to the collector’s educated in the ways of the world far beyond the scope of presentation and categorisation of their set of books. I your own time) as yours is to you. People have continued imagined yours are all kept on oak shelves behind lockable to have private libraries of every description more than 150 glass doors in darkened, stuffy rooms with a grandfather years after your death, and hopefully will continue to do so clock ticking loudly in the corner, maybe in imitation of long into the future. Your opinion on their worth has its the library at Christ’s Hospital school in Horsham which place, although it is not a particularly useful one simply you attended. This is all very admirable for affectatious because private libraries are not trying to be of any use to presentation, but it does not vouch for the quality or anyone other than their owners. connectedness of the work held within, as I’m sure you’d As for my own, Mr. Hunt, you would hate my agree. Also, not long after you left us, Melvil Dewey, a library with a passion. It is themed but I suspect it would fellow reformer in the United States, created the Dewey make no sense to you or hold any attraction. It is derived Decimal Classification System for use in general libraries. almost entirely from the translated literature of a part of It never really caught on in private libraries which are the world that you have read about or experienced very usually more narrow in subject matter and have no need little, Asia, comprising almost entirely of fiction, plus for such a system because the private owner already knows worse, that ‘science fiction’ that I referred to – despised by where he or she has shelved everything. Granted that it’s the uneducated in the West as “that crazy Buck Rogers easier now in times of colourfully illustrated book jackets stuff” – and ‘speculative fiction’ plus ‘fantasy’ and ‘horror’. rather than the austere serif-type-only embossed spines of I have sidelines of the same from Africa and Latin America your own time, but you get my point. – did you ever have the chance to read anything from these As an example of the above, my father had a good continents? If not, you are much the poorer for it. You private library (not indexed or classified but extensive) of a would probably believe it to be a waste of your time to read couple of thousand books, mostly of Christian theology, much of this ‘literature’ that is not based strictly on reality, European history and the humanities, with side sections of yet it educates me the way I prefer to be educated. Given what you would likely call “trash”: science fiction and your description of private libraries that you do not like thrillers. He had a long and enjoyable history with books, you would almost certainly describe mine as 100% trash which were probably his third passion after his family and with no redeeming qualities, united only by the single Christianity. He worked at Penguin Books before I was theme of what interests me, and useless for providing some

[ 7 ] kind of service to anyone else, the public. But there’s still a which would require so much effort from me for so little similarity between the London Library and mine, just as reward. I’m another one of those who struggle to work up there is with the London Library and yours: you’ll agree the enthusiasm to read much that was written in English we both get to lounge around in armchairs surrounded by before 1900, but at least I do continue to try. As I’ve said, knowledgeable books, latent “genius and comfort”, plus I fiction is my preferred medium for educating myself about get a dog and coffee within arm’s reach, plus good music the ways of the world and translations actually fare much for reading in the background. better in attracting my attention… there is always a new translation to look forward to, to replace the one that exists * * * in rather stuffier English from centuries or even mere I wonder how did you end up being the recipient of this decades ago. When something first appears in its original letter, and not Virginia Woolf or Charles Dickens, George form in English, we are pretty much stuck with just the Eliot or E.M. Forster? On Reading, Writing and Living with one arrangement of words from whatever time it was Books also has two letters by Dickens, including his famous written. In that way, some works in foreign languages can “you’re a lady, aintcha?” letter to George Eliot (which Eliot last longer in new translations than those that have fallen prized) plus one other to Wilkie Collins. But if I thought by the wayside in English, and will forever stay there. Woolf’s essay was dull, worse could be said of Eliot’s essay But let’s end on some positives. I see that you ‘Authorship’ (1884), which takes forever to get to its vague were the inspiration for the character Harold Skimpole in point and in the most oblique way imaginable. It really did Dickens’s novel Bleak House. Your newspaper The Examiner go whoosh, right past my head. Be thankful you are at least lasted seventy-eight years until 1886, a very good run. Your more readable than George Eliot. three-volume Autobiography has been described as “naïve and affected, but [is also an] accurate piece of self- * * * portraiture.” Despite your frequent money problems you I have read your long essay three times now, and I believe I died solvent. You are buried at Kensal Green Cemetery in finally understand better your points of view and how your London. With ten children of your own you probably have books are better organised and/or presented than anyone many descendants alive in my own time. else’s, but as for your finer points of book collecting and If you can find a way of to reply to this letter, and presentation, I really don’t care for them. Well, perhaps not, hopefully correct me on one or two assumptions, I’d be but I would need more context, which would mean reading very grateful (and frankly astounded) to receive it. more lengthy essays by yourself and your contemporaries, Yours in letters, k Markers

lightly edited

WAHF . . . and may already have purchased from Lulu or the man Julie Wills @ Galaxy Press (“I found your White Notebooks himself (Langford not Sladek, I know, I know). ~ Yes, I ezine today. Do you review science fiction? We publish the made an appointment with Dave at Eastercon to fork out annual Writers of the Future anthology. Would you be 15 of your English quids in return for a mint edition copy. interested in reviewing it?”), David Hardy and John Bray. Sladek Himself was unfortunately nowhere to be seen, probably hiding in the bar. ~ It’s another delight. The book DAVID REDD, Haverfordwest, Wales; 18 January 2019 is very well organised and indexed. I have to take things in As I write you’re halfway through your English Excursion small doses these days, so am reading a few pages at a time – hope you’re enjoying it and the weather is kind. Did you moving backwards from the end (review of Eleanor notice that Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs was in Arnason’s Ring of Swords, recommended). Even where I the album charts to welcome you? don’t agree with Sladek’s opinions I still find him Read and enjoyed your latest. For example, perceptive and enlightening. On Frederik Pohl’s The Way although no longer having a professional interest in The Future Was, he notes that Pohl has edited out anything bridges, I read about The Bangkok Cable Stayed Bridge with not of interest to fandom, but fails to see that its “fan- delight even after I realised that “Rama IX” was not an fodder” nature is the reason Pohl wanted to write it: to be Arthur C. Clarke reference. However, I have to report that Fred Fan as a change from Pohl Novelist. (As for Pohl not TWN+TLS have stiff competition on the table this month. mentioning his ex-wives in more detail, FP wanted to get (“On the table” sounds better than “In the pile”). out alive, didn’t he?) But Sladek is properly very Currently I’m reading John Sladek’s New Maps: appreciative of Man Plus and generally proves as more uncollected, the wrap-up assemblage of stories, compulsively readable as a Budrys or indeed a Langford. reviews, essays and oddments put together by David I’m going on about New Maps because even its Langford which you will have seen him trail in Ansible asides are illuminating. One example. Sladek comments

[ 8 ] about Thomas Disch’s The M.D.: A Horror Story: “I’ve the person handing us our tokens and conference passes, noticed something odd about this novel: its absence from she must have seen I-beams glittering in the dark by the bookstores... Is there a conspiracy to keep this fine book Tannhauser Gate and attack ships on fire off the shoulder out of our hands?” This sounded familiar, and not solely of Orion – and she quoted along with me the replicant Roy from Mr. Langford elsewhere complaining about Batty’s speech from Blade Runner. Once upon a time, it was publishers locking away their books in closely guarded a proud and lonely thing to be a fan; now, as a critic for warehouses. Sladek wrote this in 1992. In 1993, David The Guardian newspaper remarked a few years ago, science Garnett devoted his editorial in New Worlds #3 (whole fiction has powered its way to full-spectrum dominance of number 219) to the same phenomenon; “The chances of the cultural battlefield. Those who are not nerds (hello, Ian finding a copy of New Worlds in your local bookshop are McEwan with your inane novel about AI that SF writers remote...” In my head, a piece fell belatedly into place. have addressed a thousand times over) have been left The corporatisation of publishing noted by Norman floundering and screaming in our wake. Spinrad years before had now reached the point where the publishing industry was becoming inimical to its own • Lloyd Penney’s LoC for Issue #14 went astray – honest, products. Not just books: in music a few years later, record I’ve looked everywhere – so he resent it after noticing it company EMI decided that Cliff Richard’s next Christmas was absent from #15: release would never sell, and dropped him from their list after over 120 hit singles. (He put out the record on a rival LLOYD PENNEY, Etobicoke, ON; January 2019 label and got to No. 1.) And after the Nineties came the It’s taking me a while, but I am getting to all the zines that explosion of internet publishing, PoD and self-publishing reach me. Right now, it is The White Notebooks #14, and I which at least forced some book publishers to rethink. will get with it forth hence. Or something like that. Would be nice to find some hindsight survey to make I haven’t read anything by Neel Mukherjee or sense of all this. Walter Mosley, but the background of the essay comes to More to the point, I’m sorry John Sladek didn’t mind a lot these days. I had great hopes that racism would live to see the many more targets our present century eventually ebb away because we’d all be intelligent and would have given him. The book is recommended! educated enough to know there is only one race, the As for favourite travel books, may I nominate Bill human race, and some have more or less or different Gleeson’s 1994 Backroads Wineries of Southern California? melanin in our skin than others, as if that makes any Really it’s only colour-supplement type pics and extended difference at all. Especially with the MAGA-wearing kids blurbs, and not at all literary, sorry, but for me the harassing tribal elders in Washington, and the implication escapism content is 100%. that racism is OK coming from its own government, I am disgusted and dismayed. I think there are many readers of JOSEPH NICHOLAS, Tottenham, England; 6 May 2019 Blaxploitation books, just as there are viewers of the old Thanks for your 15th, which I’m still reading… although I Blaxploitation movies. I am sure some might want to read couldn’t stop myself picking up on your slight grammatical or see them out of historical value. infelicity (I’m sure that I must be at least the 94th person I am not sure if I told you about this when we to do so, as Private Eye might say) at the end of the second talked at the Toronto Corflu… you may have seen an issue paragraph of the introduction to your Formative Travel of the newest incarnation of Amazing Stories online. The Memoirs, where you say that “all those hours of good magazine may be owned and operated by an American in reading and learning might otherwise be wasted, New Hampshire, but the editor-in-chief is local, Ira languished, underemployed, abandoned and lost in time Nayman, and he had brought me onboard to act as a like tears in the rain, before it’s my time to die and take it proofreader/copy editor for issues. I have worked on issues all to the grave with me. Thankfully there’ll be no chance 2 and 3, and I hope to hear about issue 4 soon. This may of that now.” Indeed – I too, as it still says on my allow me to come as close to pro SF work as I can get. I unvisited-for-many-years LiveJournal profile page, decided also have to get to a couple of book reviews. long ago that I don’t have time to die, because there’s so ~ That’s excellent news, Lloyd! I hope it brings you a lot of much to see and do, and therefore intend to just carry on satisfaction. My proofreading/copy editing work mostly living, for ever and ever, until the sun uses up its hydrogen takes the form of the thesis work of Thai students at fuel and swells to become a red giant (etc. etc. British and Belgian universities, doing all kinds of subjects etc.). Seriously, if we could all live to see the heat death of they can’t find taught at Thai universities. Some have only the universe, that would be quite something (although our a very basic command of written English, and here they species would of course have perished long before the are doing a degree, in a foreign language, far from home. I heat death of the universe, because without the warmth of am full of admiration for them. I would love to find this a G2-5 star there would be nothing to keep us alive). kind of work in the SF field; I’ve enjoyed proofreading Incidentally, it’s extraordinary how widespread non-fiction works by prominent SF authors but that’s only and how quoted that “tears in the rain” line has become. been an occasional thing, and of course if it’s to become a Last September, we went to an conference organised by regular commitment it needs to be paid work. Somehow I the magazine London Archaeologist to mark its fiftieth need to cross that line, but at the moment I have no idea anniversary, at which drinks tokens were given out at the how to go about it or what competitive rates are within the registration desk, and we were advised that if they weren’t genre field. ~ used they’d be lost like tears in the rain. As I remarked to

[ 9 ] I certainly understand John Hertz’s plight about CHRISTINA LAKE, Falmouth, England, 9 May 2019 money and employment. Right now, I have neither, and Reading the latest issue of The White Notebooks has made Yvonne is keeping me going while I spend next to nothing. me think about doing some travel writing again. Maybe a The books you list… I have read some, and of them, quick series on British provincial airports and how to reading just about anything by China Miéville left me survive them? It’s Friday morning at Manchester Airport feeling like I needed a hot shower, and some have agreed and frenetic with pre-Easter traffic. A toddler framed with me. against the glass of the cupola, reaching for the sky. Kids in We’ve just gotten through a period of deep cold, baseball caps wrangling over their share of the iPad while with wind chills going down to –30C. Horrible times, but parents try to find enough seats and stop them crawling they have passed, and now it’s just cold outside instead of over the table. Sartre would be right at home in this hell of bone-chilling. Might as well stay inside and write, hm? other people. But travel is about escape and transcendence, not taking the family on holiday, or getting LLOYD PENNEY, Etobicoke, ON; 6 May 2019 from a work meeting in Glasgow back to an airport in Now that Corflu is done, and the right people have the Newquay. So, no go on the provincial airports. I’d have to correct awards (the FAAn Awards), it’s time to get back to hate people a whole lot more than I do to make it cruel the regular business of responding to fanzines, as I should. and incisive enough to be interesting. I reserve my hate, (Were you there? Michael Dobson kept asking if I was unfairly, for the representatives of our travel economy. The coming, but I have no cash for such a thing.) Flybe check-in staff who keep looking round for luggage laden latecomers to rush through ahead of those more ~ Nope, not this year; wish I could have, but I followed punctual passengers merely trying to check-in. The everything on the YouTube live feed. But to be there to security staff who decide they want to do a full body check receive the award for ‘Best Design’ for this ’ere fanzine on any passengers who don’t look like they are enjoying would have been a treat. ~ the body scanner. The woman who gabbles out inaudibly John Young and Gus Grissom got in trouble by the drinks options at the café. By contrast the school party smuggling some real grub aboard a Gemini mission, hm? I en route to Malaga, dressed in matching blue hoodies get a guess that became a tradition, for I do remember Alan free pass. They’re supervised and, crucially, not on my Sheppard smuggling a golf club and golf ball to the moon, flight. (NOMFyism?) for the longest drive in history. As far as I know, it’s still I like the idea of writing pen portraits of people going. And, it was out of the biggest sand trap ever, too. you have known, but I do feel a bit inhibited by the idea of Page 2 is full of the kind of conversations that I publishing something that personal and that focussed on walk into, and wonder aloud, what the hell was THIS one individual. I also wonder if the distance would conversation about? Especially the rat saying, “Oh, fuck!” somehow give me an unfair and maybe judgemental An interesting essay on your old friend. I lived in advantage over my subject. But in your hands the pen the same small-minded little town for all of my public portraits illuminate who you are as well as the subject of school life, so I had few friends, and of course, I was a your story. Your travellers tales also make mine seem tame prime candidate to get bitten by the SF fan bug, and so I by comparison. I never slept on beaches, or took to the was. The oldest friends I have are those I met on the west open road to find jobs. One of my work colleagues is coast of British Columbia; one of them is a professor of walking and wild camping across the north of Scotland, astronomy still working at one of the local universities but I’m not sure I could do that. We each have our comfort here. I know many local fans from my own lengthy level for adventures. experiences in Toronto fandom, but I never did have a Oddly enough I haven’t read that much travel friends I was close to from childhood. writing. Yet it’s a genre I love in fan writing. Maybe the I certainly can’t compete with the travels you’ve connections with the person writing make it for me, or the had in your life, but I can say that I will be travelling knowledge that it is, at least, partially true. shortly. Near the end of this month, Yvonne and I will be flying to England for a three-week vacation. (I don’t have JOHN HERTZ, Los Angeles, CA, 10 June 2019 the cash to travel at all, so Yvonne is taking me there.) Two Little as I like contradicting Lucy Huntzinger, whom I love weeks will be spent in London, where we will see things as a sister and to whom I owe much, your mind CAN TOO we saw in 2016, and a few things we didn’t, and the third grow by re-reading, even a book you know by heart. It week taking side trips to Lincoln, Liverpool, Bath and depends on what you do when you re-read. It depends on Stonehenge. We’d need another lifetime to see all there is the book. to see, but we are also off to see some people. We plan on I try not to buy books I haven’t read. When I fail I attending the June First Thursday in London, plus often regret it. For me, buying a book means I expect to re- meetings of steampunks in London and Liverpool, and the read it, and want it at hand. But I still remember looking obligatory march to Watford to worship at the shrine of through a zine in Bruce Pelz’s room at a con, crying out Harry Potter. It should be a ton of fun for both of us. when he arrived “I think I have this fanzine!”, and his It is late Sunday, and I am more warm than answering “Yes. But can you find it?” tired… the nice weather has finally arrived, but will be ~ My apologies to you, John, if I have mangled the here for a short time. We’ve had a cold spring, and there’s meaning of your last sentence in my transcription from been little incentive to actually go outside. We’d better get your handwritten post card, but I think I got it right. ~ some walking practice in, because we will be doing a lot of walking in London.

[ 10 ]

First Name Terms

NEIL ARMSTRONG VISITED ME in my dream last night. I And I think he moved on to the next guest know it was the real Neil Armstrong because he was because I’d suggested a question he couldn’t actually friendly and used my first name. answer, and really I couldn’t blame him, so I was thinking I was visiting friends somewhere in America – I of titling this piece “How I Blew It with Neil Armstrong” think it was in the north west, maybe Oregon but I can’t but even that would be leaning towards the negative and be sure, and it turned out Neil Armstrong lived just three not put either of us in a good light, and it definitely was doors away along the street. As you might expect, he was a the real Neil Armstrong, and because he’s a man who popular guy. He knew he was famous for all the right deserves better than that let’s stay focused on the positives, reasons – well, only one reason but it’s actually the biggest eh? reason we have right now – and during the week I stayed I So when I returned home I went to see my ran into him three or four times, always pleasant, polite parents who were evidently both still alive, and my father and enjoying the casual, down-to-Earth chats he’d have Ashley, being a bit of a space buff, actually seemed relieved with the mere mortals he’d meet around town. He knew that I’d at last got to meet Neil. And he said in a vaguely how to put people at ease simply by using their first names self-aggrandising way, “That’s why I put you in school, at the first opportunity. He knew a lot of stuff too, and I son.” don’t mean just technical stuff or geographical stuff or Of course I wondered what he meant by that. He political or historical stuff, no, he knew stuff hardly anyone might actually have said, in my dream, “That’s why I put else knows, because down here on Earth we just don’t get you in that school, son.” I can’t be sure now that I’m awake the bigger picture. He’s one of a dozen guys, dead or alive, and typing it all up while fixing my kids their breakfast, who all have what on a smaller scale London cab drivers but if so, he was probably referring to how I’d watched call ‘The Knowledge’. They’ve seen from a distance how Neil and Buzz on the moon from my school in England on the whole world works, and they know how to get from A a specially-brought-in black-and-white TV, which is true to B no matter how far away B is. and did actually happen, but he’s been dead a few years So the last time I met Neil it was at an evening now and he’s not around anymore to ask – Ashley, that is, barbecue that he was throwing with his neighbours – I can not forgetting he’s in the same realm as Neil now – but I call him Neil because he’d started it days earlier by calling think the real reason was that by putting me in that me Pete – and he walked up to me and handed me a particular school Ashley was subconsciously intuiting that veggieburger and french fries on a paper plate and said, one day in the far-distant year of 2019 he’d be able to “Hey Pete, anything you want to know about the world, posthumously share a dream with Neil, which is probably what’s wrong with it and all, you just ask old Neil, okay?” what dead people aspire to just for post-mortal bragging And I replied, “I don’t know, Neil, maybe I could rights, like buying your favourite mortal writer a beer just ask you what’s right with the world these days because to say thanks for the stories. everyone’s so stressed, you know? But that would be to Yeah, that must be it. It would certainly explain give in to the prevailing negativity, wouldn’t it.” I was dad’s relief that I’d finally met Neil. But as with most trying to stay positive, really I was, because no upbeat dreams (and realities these days) I can’t be sure, now that person likes to be brought down to Earth by being spoken I’m only partially back in the real world and driving my to in vaguely negative ways, do they? And Neil Armstrong, kids to school, making the usual mistake of assessing the dead or alive, deserves the best from everyone and that meaning of a dream using real-world logic. That possibly includes being friendly enough to casually use his first flawed assessment is that it might be to my benefit if I name as well, even if it is just in a dream. And Neil says, stayed more optimistic, to have more ‘joy in spite of “Right, Pete,” and maybe his eyes glazed over a little before everything’. he continued, “Anyway, when you think of something good But Mr. Armstrong sure was a nice guy when I that you want to ask old Neil, you just go right ahead and met him last night. He made me feel I could talk to him ask, okay?” about anything. Well, anything positive.

[ 11 ]

The Bangkok Literature Festival, 16-17 November 2019

Bangkok’s first books festival – at least the first here that Chinese, although the publisher made some odd changes: anyone can remember – finally happened last month. The Shanghai is simply renamed “H. City” despite the rest of Bangkok Literature Festival, organised and promoted by the text making it abundantly clear to any Chinese reader the Neilson Hays Library, was a small two day event that H City is in fact Shanghai. featuring many Thai and overseas writers and translators, The other two panel discussions I attended were with events happening at the library itself and also in both about the business of translation, and were both function rooms at the adjacent British Club. conducted in Thai. An instantaneous English translation The main draw was Pitchaya Sudbanthad [1] was available with use of a radio-linked earphone, but this whose first partly-speculative novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain proved to be a little unreliable as all I could hear for the was heavily promoted; indeed the Sunday evening event second half of the first panel was static, which left me lost, was a dinner on the banks of the Chao Phraya river with a but the gist of both panels was that there are too few special reading from the novel by Kuhn Pitchaya. I bought books in Thai being translated and published overseas – a US first edition of Bangkok Wakes to Rain back in January indeed the first Thai fiction ever to be published in 2019, however a few months ago that copy suffered a fate England was Prabda Yoon’s collection The Sad Part Was, similar to that of Bangkok in the novel: being submerged and that only happened as recently as 2017. My own under water, when a broken water bottle in my backpack feelings on this can be summed up by the simple completely soaked the book. At the Festival I was able to observation that there are too few overseas readers of buy the UK trade paperback as a replacement (and which Thai, and therefore there will be even fewer translators: has a much better cover, frankly) that Kuhn Pitchaya also the great majority of the current translation work is being signed for me. done by Thais fluent in English, which inherently carries a Another highlight was meeting Veeraporn risk of colloquial inaccuracies: it’s a given that a better and Nitiprapha [2]. After seeing her take part in two panels, I probably more readable translation will result if had the idea to buy a Thai edition of her magnificent novel translators are translating into their native language rather The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth to give to my wife. than from their native language. Having said that, I remind Kuhn Veeraporn thanked me again for my review [3] of myself that the two Thai translators on these panels, Kong Kong Rithdee’s translation as she was signing and Rithdee and Mui Poopoksakul, have both produce inscribing her book for me. Many people who’ve read it in excellent translations from Thai into English, but the English have commented positively on the translation, point still stands: far too few overseas readers of Thai are herself included, although she’s obviously more attached currently working on translations of Thai literature. to the Thai version: “The translation was not my words. Another point to take away from these discussions was to These are my words,” she said, returning the book to me. look at the success of South Korea in promoting their The first panel discussion I attended was a authors abroad, but as far as Thailand is concerned the moderated conversation (above) between John Burdett [4], government are not interested in providing such support English author of the ‘Bangkok Eight’ crime series, and unless they have a more major international event to the Chinese-American author of the ‘Inspector Chen’ promote, such as an Expo or the Olympics. Shanghai crime series Qiu Xiaolong [5]. The whole There was a relaxed ambience to the Festival, exchange was lively and informative about how these with adequate space for everything and a good attendance. authors go about the business of writing crime. Burdett in The cafe was a good size, and in the outdoor dealers’ area particular gave some good background on the riskiness of in front of the library entrance a few Thai publishers such writing another culture with the distinct possibility of as River Books presented their books for sale, plus Asia offending the sensibilities of that culture – he was once Books were also present although their selection of asked to consider having the series translated into Thai, English and Thai titles on sale could have been bigger. but was then advised by another Thai publisher “Don’t This Festival deserves to be considered a push your luck”. Qiu was a poet before writing the successful start if it’s to happen annually from now on, Inspector Chen novels, which it seems almost came about which I sincerely hope will be the case because Bangkok by accident, never having envisaged himself as a crime really ought to have this as a regular fixture on the literary writer. His successful series has now been translated into scene.

[1] https://psudbanthad.com [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veeraporn_Nitiprapha [3] https://thailiterarysupplement.wordpress.com/2019/01/31/veeraporn-nitiprapha-the-blind-earthworm-in-the-labyrinth-2015 [4] http://www.john-burdett.com [5] http://www.qiuxiaolong.com

[ 12 ] Corned Beef Sandwich

HANNAHTRAINING Twitter, 14 October 2018 RACHELLE MANDIK Twitter, 9 January 2018 Me: “I feel like my life is pointless.” i ask my toddler what’s in the box she’s holding. Therapist: “Why?” “chaos!” she replies. “chaos! chaos!” i know she’s Me: “Impending fascism and climate change mean I trying to say “crayons”, but it’s not like she’s wrong. probably won’t live to see 60.” Therapist: “Are you sure that’s rational?” Me: *looks at camera like Jim on The Office* TADE THOMPSON Facebook, 17 May 2019 Spawn: I like ice cream. Me: Ice cream isn’t good for you. punonometry: Spawn: [genuine pity and condescending laughter at my ignorance. More laughter. More contempt for my blackfemalescientist: clearly erroneous position] toopsy: Me: All right. nazism is illegal in germany. using nazi Spawn: [Laughter] greetings and flying nazi flags is illegal in Me: Fine. [Leaves room]. germany. why isnt the kkk unconstitutional in america. why arent white hoods and SUMERSPKL Twitter, date unknown white supremacist propaganda illegal here. Me: Alright, brain, we have two more tasks to do. why. One of them is more time sensitive, but working on Because germany is ashamed of their bigotry. the other will be more fun. Which should I start on? America is proud of it. My brain: Do fucking nothing for 72 hours Me: Understandable, have a nice day whoop there it is

JACK BERNHARDT Twitter, 13 June 2019 TADE THOMPSON Facebook, 7 February 2019 My rational brain: “Do not watch RASHOMON Me near tourists in London: oh you child, riding on tonight, you do not have the time, it’s almost the Tube is not exciting. It is my commute. Stop midnight.” treating my city like a theme park. This is not a game, My real brain: “You’re not the boss of me.” [fires up this is My Life that RASHOMON DVD] Me as a tourist in Manchester: oh my god tram tram My rational brain: [shakes head] “You have to work tram TRAM TRAM TRAM TRAM TRAAAM tomorrow.” My real brain: “Shh, get the popcorn started.” SLEEPY PANDA Facebook, 4 September 2019 “Can you fax the offer over to me?” “Sorry… I can’t fax from where I live.” FOR READING ADDICTS Facebook, 23 April 2019 Him: How is it possible your still single? “Oh, where’s that?” Me: You’re. “2019. I live in 2019, Susan.”

RYAN BOLGER Facebook, 5 May 2019 LIZ WILLIAMS Facebook, 22 December 2017 Person: Oh, you’re vegan. Tell me, what would you Last customer of the day: [gestures at something] do if you were stranded on a deserted island with Me: Er … only a pig as company? Customer: [gestures] Me: I’d probably be having a way more intelligent Me: [takes thing off the wall] This? conversation than I am having with you right now. Customer: [laughs, I swear to God, like a Bond villain.] Me: I’ll be putting this back, then. LIZ WILLIAMS Facebook, 3 June 2019 Customer: walks out of door with two magazines. I just ordered a coffee and bun and had to pay with a Me: EXCUSE ME! ARE YOU GOING TO PAY FOR card. THOSE, SIR? Me: Sorry about that. I don’t have enough change. Trevor Jones: THAT WILL BE £8.50!!! Young man on counter: It’s all make-believe anyway. Customer: [hands over a fiver] Me: THAT WILL BE £8.50. Customer: [coughs up remaining money, gives KATELYNN Twitter, 18 July 2019 Blofeld stylee laugh, and leaves, to the relief of all] Therapist: and what do we do when we are sad? Me: add to cart WTF? Therapist: no And then we went to a pub that was not in town.

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Technicalities Listopia

Let’s ban gravity. Let’s ban the moon and read all our spam. — David Berridge, wall text for Faith & Belief, Quad Corridors, Derby 2009

This fanzine was put together from 28 April – 31 December GENRE FANZINES RECEIVED / READ SO FAR IN 2019 2019. This fanzine is months late because I’ve been severely Alexiad #104–107 – LISA & JOSEPH MAJOR distracted by Big Sekrit Projekt, among other reasons. Ansible #382–389 – DAVE LANGFORD Thirteen Journeys Around Mexico City Banana Wings #74–75 – CLAIRE BRIALEY & MARK PLUMMER On my second visit to the city in October 2001, along the Beam #14 & This Here… #18–23 – NIC FAREY Avenida Paseo de la Reforma I swear I found myself The Baloobius #1–2 – TARAL WAYNE walking alongside Thomas M. Disch, or at least someone Captain Flashback #4–11 – ANDY HOOPER identical to him, who was having a conversation in American-accented English with another similar looking Cheap Truth #1–18 – BRUCE STERLING man, about if there were any bookstores in the nearby The Drink Tank #409–416 – CHRIS GARCIA Historic Centre that stocked books in English. My habitual Inca #16 – ROB JACKSON reticence about invading the space of (in this case, possibly) Journey Planet #41–44 – JAMES BACON, CHRIS GARCIA, ET AL a famous writer took over and I didn’t chance an encounter. Lake’s Folly – CHRISTINA LAKE There are other Latin American cities that I Lofgeornost #135–137 – FRED LERNER particularly like to explore in fiction – particularly Buenos Aires – but that habit is less compulsive for the present, as Opuntia #440–461 – DALE SPEIRS reading about Mexico City has once again taken over pretty PKD Otaku #40 – PATRICK CLARK much everything else for the last few months. Portable Storage Two – WILLIAM BREIDING – PAT CHARNOCK On Private Libraries: A Letter Across Time to Leigh Hunt Raucous Caucus #6 I admit to recently reading a few too many of Umberto SF Commentary #99–100 – BRUCE GILLESPIE Eco’s creative essays, but I don’t know if he wrote letters to Spartacus #32–35 – GUY LILLIAN III literary critics from the past. Corrections welcome. Wave Without a Shore #3 – TOM BECKER Simon Phillips is known as ‘Si-Phi’ in the American music business because of his long-standing obsession THE FANNISH EVENT of the last six months that I will with the technology used today to make music. probably recall more than any other was the funeral of “The gorgeous boredom of the English countryside” Martin Hoare, who died from sepsis on 26 July. Martin’s is a memorable description borrowed from a review of passing came as a shock to many as his cancer treatment Massive Attack’s music in that huge compendium The appeared to be going well. (One of my brothers also Rough Guide to Rock. I only nick from the best sources. recently had an encounter with sepsis after cancer treatment, with a happier outcome.) Martin’s funeral was a First Name Terms packed occasion with far more attending than the 150 the I had this dream before waking up on 1st August 2019, Reading Crematorium had seating for. He arrived in the wrote it up the same morning and posted it to Facebook, hearse at the Crematorium in a coffin decked out as Doctor wondering what reaction it would get as I’d never posted a Who’s TARDIS, so it was of course bigger on the inside detailed dream before. It was an optimistic dream but, than the outside, and the committal music was the classic because the dreamer is a Brit, you may detect a core of theme from Doctor Who. Martin also took a leaf out of pessimism at its heart, which is merely the yin in the yang. Graham Chapman’s book by having ‘Always Look on Joy In Spite of Everything is also the title of an album by the Bright Side of Life’ played at his funeral. Stefano Bollani that I’d been listening to the previous day. That good habit of putting people at ease by The last two funerals I attended at the Reading unexpectedly using their first names was something I saw Crematorium were both for family: my grandmother Gwen put to good use by Robert Sheckley at Noreascon 4 in 2004. Young in 1987 and my grandfather George Young in 1994. We found ourselves standing next to each other while Arriving early for Martin’s funeral, I took the opportunity to looking at Michael Whelan’s art, and for no good reason seek out their place in the Crematorium’s Garden of Robert, who I’d never met before, must have sneaked a look Remembrance, and was pleasantly surprised to find their at my name badge and simply said “Hi Pete.” This let me plaque, still present 25 years after my grandfather’s passing. know immediately that he was as relaxed, approachable and Of course I take no pleasure at all in losing people, but the genial as his writing, and we immediately started an time-sensitive melancholy I usually experience at times like amiable conversation. this is always bitter-sweet and welcome.

[ 14 ] THE THAI LITERARY TLS SUPPLEMENT, #16 DECEMBER 2562 / 2019

thailiterarysupplement.wordpress.com THAILAND, IN ENGLISH Edited by Peter Young [email protected] 136/200 Emerald Hill Village, Soi 6, Hua Hin, Prachuap Khiri Khan 77110 © 2019, all rights reserved

“Bangkok, like Las Vegas, sounds like a place where you make bad decisions.” — Todd Phillips, interview discussing the filming of The Hangover 2 at comingsoon.net, 2011

C OLLECTIONS

Alasdair D. McLeod Steve Rosse Ocean Sketchbook: Short Stories and Songs from the Far Shore She Kept the Bar Between Them: Stories from Thailand

2019 | Spanking Pulp Press, ASIN B07QDDJPVC, £4.59 2011 | Bangkok Books, ISBN 978-616-245-003-7, $3.82

So it turns out Alasdair McLeod I don’t know Steve Rosse is a teacher in a local inter- personally although I confess to national school, which is some- having nagged him on Facebook thing I discovered when they to put together a collection of hosted a football tournament. I some of the fine essays he posts even had a copy of Ocean to the Thailand Expat Writers Sketchbook on my iPhone – some List. That book is at last a reality, nice synchronicity there, to kick but before its existence he just things off. batted me away in good- Before beginning this coll- humoured fashion repeatedly ection I was aware that McLeod telling me instead to check out had a predilection for the this, his most recent collection speculative in his fiction. Three of the five short stories of fiction. Which I’ve now done, here could be described thus, especially ‘Code Tide Rising and feel all the better for it. – the Library of Code’ which is outright science fictional Many of the stories here, as you might expect, are in its AI premise. The remainder are set in Asia; Thailand’s superficially autobiographical in tone (but probably aren’t realm of the Nagas features in ‘When the Gods Make in fact) because Rosse clearly injects some imagination as Merit’, and ‘Tomorrow’s Light’ is a similarly-located potent well to raise things above the purely mundane. There are mix of psychic connection between brothers, augmented variations on the typical Thai ‘bar story’ which seem to by some extraordinarily powerful and unusual tattoos. skirt around the central issue (ie. where you think the story But Ocean Sketchbook is more diverse than just will go) and find other points of interest to head for short stories. The centrepiece of the collection is the long instead, such as in ‘Pilgrimage’, in which a farang enjoys travelogue of the same name, in which our intrepid his very last beer. There is a good science fiction adventure narrator crews a yacht nearly 6,000 miles across the in ‘The Crooked Houses’ which is set in a far-future Atlantic from England to Spain to the Bahamas. Also here Patong Bay, exploring inhabited submerged condos. There is the haunting ‘The Woman in the Suicide Forest’ about is domestic strife aplenty plus several bad linguistic jokes, an encounter in the Mount Fuji location (Aokigahara) more than a few sexual peccadilloes and a handful of east/ where people actually do go to kill themselves. west cultural misunderstandings, hopes and shattered The third part to the collection is a long section dreams: plenty enough to fill eighteen stories. But the best of McLeod’s poetry, most of it in a planetary/cosmological story of all for my money is the final one, ‘The Night vein as opposed to a speculative one (the notable Stalker’, about a seen-it-all hack doing his rounds of the exception being ‘When I Am Downloadable’). In his Bangkok bars, always on the look-out for something he poetry McLeod also exhibits a strong leaning to the hasn’t seen before, and yes, he finds it. It’s an excellent, romantic. upbeat story with which Rosse rounds off this collection. Diversity in subject/genre is the abiding strength But fiction aside, I’m pleased there are now more of Ocean Sketchbook, and it would be very interesting to of Rosse’s experiences to read about in his new collection, see further collections, particularly of his short fiction. Leaving Thailand: A Memoir … now top of the TBR pile.

[ 1 ] N OVELS S HORT FICTION

James A. Newman S. P. Somtow Bangkok Express / Fun City Express Fiddling for Waterbuffaloes 2006 | Spanking Pulp Press, ISBN 978-1-092-86114-4, $1.99 1992 | Pulphouse Press, ISBN 1-56146-547-X, $1.95

Now in its second incarnation as Somtow had already been Fun City Express, the original writing science fiction and 2006 edition of Bangkok Express fantasy for a decade before this, sold only a handful of copies his first story set in his native before disappearing for a few Thailand. As one might expect, years. But further editions this tale of alien possession appeared and it’s now in a new affecting the family of brothers 2019 edition from Newman’s who grew up dubbing episodes own Spanking Pulp Press, with of Star Trek into Thai is both the fifth series title published in colourful and lively and also on 2016. Joe Dylan finally seems to the borderline of being proper have done well for Mr. Newman. recursive SF, with nods to The story starts with what genre TV and film in several looks innocently enough like a directions. It all holds up well a fatal diving accident in Koh Samui, but it gradually quarter of a century after it was becomes clear there’s also an insurance swindle involved, written, although it’s worth noting that the family and ex-alcoholic London investigator Joe Dylan gets sent members may be indeed all be stereotypes now but to to Thailand to dig deeper. His journey is a rough one, readers of Analog in 1986 (where the story first appeared) encountering the usual variety of petty villains, failing they were probably much more of a novelty. expat businessmen, duplicitous females, fake doctors and corrupt cops… all allowing Bangkok Express to hand- somely show off Newman’s pulp credentials. The story is as S. P. Somtow strung out as the characters will allow, with both sparse and rich passages and a wealth of distant barking dogs. I A Lap Dance with the Lobster Lady 1998 | Shadowlands Press, ISBN 0-996-5662-8-9, $6.00 don’t want to wait too long before the next instalment.

Odd-boy-out Ronnie Desmond Ian Parkinson is growing up in Willowcreek in The Beginning of the End middle-of-nowhere America, 2015 | Salt Publishing, ISBN 978-1-7846-3026-3, £8.99 with an odd father who has some less-than-professional This came recommended to me embalming practices. Teaming for the writing, less so the up with even-more-odd-boy- tawdry subject matter which is out schoolfriend Delbert, they intentionally uncomfortable, take a trip to the carnival where and it is only tenuously con- Ronnie encounters the Lobster nected to Thailand. A Belgian Lady, a woman beautiful on the loner meets a Thai prostitute surface but also with an online and travels to Thailand unattractive crustacean side to to marry her. Bringing her back her. Can Ronnie and Delbert to Belgium, where the rest of fulfill her dream to be fixed up as a fully functioning the novel takes place, he soon woman? finds his life falling apart even A Lap Dance with the Lobster Lady is a far more more than previously, and his grown-up affair when compared to something like downward spiral is relentless. Somtow’s Fiddling for Waterbuffaloes. The carnivalesque Allegories abound here, especially that of the collapsing atmosphere is redolent of Weird Tales and the house in which he needlessly continues to live, and the environment of a boring rural existence somewhere sexual referencing in the first half of the book is downbeat remote in the USA is typically well drawn. But even better and explicit. But that’s the point: it’s detachment, in the is how the story pieces all fit together in a strange but fashion of Camus, becomes increasingly exaggerated and tight-fitting alignment that makes this story work so well. Parkinson also likes to shock in the style of Houellebecq If you’re into that 21st century genre known as ‘bizarro with the distances between supposedly close people fiction’, given its year this may be an early example, or measured in kilometres. A success, in other words, and the even a forerunner. writing keenly matches the subject, but readers will def- initely not discover an enlightening side to Thailand here.

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