More Voices, Less Faces

Readings from Gilbert Sorrentino, Carol Maso, Philip Roth, Leslie Scalapino and Italo Calvino.



"Coming across sound files that are new to me, especially to start the day, is my rest cure. Many students will ask me to name the voice they hear from the computer, release some blank gesture and sit down, once again, undisturbed."



Ossian

Saul Bellow, giant of American literature, dies at 89

Guardian Unlimited Books | News

"From his earliest days, Bellow was determined to depart from the sparely written and macho American brand of story telling, falling back on a self-absorbed intellectual as narrator and plundering his often tumultuous personal life for material."

I remember when I read Mr Sammler's Planet, his theorising that we are "an explaining generation" always trying to explain everything, a sort of folly insofar as it appears to precede understanding, had a profound effect on my way of thinking. I sought out a collection of his short stories, from which I still recall something about a ramshackle place in the desert. (If I remember anything at all about a book, I've decided, it means that was a good book. Most are forgotten.)

It's been a bad week for people in their eighties, the Pope, Prince Rainier and now Saul Bellow (and of course, thousands more we'll never hear about.) Bellow was quite impressive in another way too, he fathered a child in 1999, which would make him 83 at the time.

Ossian

BBC, forget impartiality: it's payback time

Letters

Now is the time for all good broadcasters to kick the crap out of New Labour.

Nick McAvelly

Violent cretin gets £33,000 per week for being an arsehole

Bowyer and Dyer

"Bowyer, though, has been fined a club record six weeks' wages - estimated at £200,000 - and given a final written warning by Shepherd, while Dyer has escaped any punishment as he is deemed the innocent party."

That moronic fucker gets £33k per week for playing ponced-up games, while I'm up to my eyes in credit card debt, which I can never clear, just to pay the taxman, when I can't even afford to maintain my house, and look after my family, struggling for a living as a self-employed day labourer. These people and their equivalents in charge of ruining the media and every other worthwhile thing in the country represent the rats tail of degenerate Thatcherite dregs, squirming their way to the oblivion they deserve.

Zoz

Closing event in the Westwords festival

Monkey business in Willesden Green

The launch of the Willesden writers workshop anthology, The Monkey's Typewriter* was great fun. As well as rip-roaring tales, gems of poems, and masterful and hilarious compering by Nii Parkes, there was food and some particularly excellent bottles of wine. (I wish I'd noted the labels.) Nii Parkes also read his brilliant short story "The Smell of Petrol" (excerpt here) which keenly evoked a sense of life in Ghana with a mixture of wabi-sabi and keeping up appearances, of pride and tragicomedy.

*Soon to be available in Brent libraries and local bookshops. "Gerry Boysey's Human Circus", a wacky bit of nonsense by yours truly, is the last piece in the book.

Ossian

Urgent memo to Simon

Simon, I wish you'd turn your mobile on! I'm posting this via AudioBlagger from my accountants. I will be back in the office after three-thirty or after the four o-clock, depending how this meeting goes. I need to talk to you about a problem with my computer screen. It's gone yellow. Are you aware that there is a general election on? I want to make sure that nobody else has this problem with their screens, they might think we're favouring the Liberals. Please contact me, a.s.a.p!

Ed.

Hope for the hopeless*

'Editing' technique can rewrite genes

"The scientists combined a molecule called a zinc finger protein, which can identify and bind to a specified gene, with an enzyme that can cut DNA. The protein effectively delivers the enzyme to its target, just in front of the gene the scientists want to cut out."

*Can we place an advance order for a dose of perfect spelling genes, please? Ed

Jupiter's eye

World Exclusive



Willesden Observatory today released this picture showing the strange effects of ten thousand mile per hour dust storms on Jupiter.

Identity Card

Dear ... ...



Give the policeman your bones to look at, he has assessed you...

Ossian

Breaking news

"Little Ant and Dec" grill Blair

"LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair leaves no stone unturned in the search for votes -- so today he has faced a grilling on television from two 10-year-old boys during a primetime entertainment show." (Reuters)

Brilliant renaming plan for today's Britain

Scotsman.com News - Top Stories

The German commissioner, Arlo Pilof, the architect of the 2006 Race and Gender Equality Imposition Code (conformity), an amendment to existing rules, said: 'We believe many names do not conform, and we started with Scotland because it is the worst of the culprits with offensive names such as Skinflats, near Grangemouth.'

[...]

Mr Pilof revealed that England would be next on the agenda, citing the Isle of Man as particularly worthy of change.

A Manx spokesman said yesterday: "I hope this is a long way off. We are two-time losers, what with the island's name and Douglas as the capital. It's ridiculous, isn't it?

"It's as if these people sat there all day and made up this stuff."

From our point-of-view this sounds like a canny idea, and lang overdue, and we don't give two hoots as lang as they dinna change Willesden to Jillesden.*

*Scots dialect for the benefit of any Scotsman / Scotsperson readers who may be within range of the internet and surf in, as we computerised people say here.

The walls have eyes

A spy tells me The London Silence is available from Willesden Library. When last seen, the copy there had three date stamps on it. I don't know how the library got it, but it wasn't down to me. (You can't prove it.)

Ossian

PM woos the sadist vote

Blair hopes TV "masochism" will win over voters

In one recent speech -- condemned as cheesy by some, applauded as an impressive heart-to-heart by others -- Blair compared his relationship with Britons to a turbulent marriage. 'I understand why some people feel angry not just over Iraq, but many of the difficult decisions we have made. And, as ever, a lot of it is about me,' he said last month. (Reuters)

Nuns marry Jesus, and that's fine, no disrespect to them. But the idea of the British public playing stroppy vicar's wife to the Reverend Phony's gimp is beyond satire. Let him grovel till polling day, then kick him in the ballotbox.

Zoz

McMurder on the dancefloor

diamond geezer

"Los Del Rio - BigMacarena"
"Bobby McFlurry - Don't Worry, Eat Happy Meal"

Diamond Geezer on great form as usual.

© Craig

Six months for shooting at the ground, eight months for manslaughter

One law for you

A teacher who opened fire with a pellet gun after "yobbos" launched a campaign of vandalism against her family has been jailed for six months.

[...]

A confrontation with a gang of youths drove her [Linda Walker, 47] to fire the weapon [an air pistol] at the pavement near one teenager's feet on August 14 last year, a court heard.

[...]

In a phone call to the police she said: 'I'm going over to that field over the road, I've got an air rifle and a pistol and I'm going to shoot the vandals that come around here.' Walker's offence carries a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment.

And one law for them

When their victim, who had a water phobia and could not swim, grabbed hold of the bridge railings, the pair prised his hands away, saying "Berry needs a swim" and "Let's chuck him in".

[...]

Two weeks ago the two teenagers were sentenced at Bournemouth Crown Court to be detained for 18 months and eight months for manslaughter.

Obviously the judges have their rationale, and they are as good as anybody at rationalising their prejudices, but it does make one think, 'Pity she didn't shoot the buggers, and do the extra couple of months.' I know it's an unworthy thought.

Here's a better report about the teacher's case, in the Independent. Okay, she was in the wrong. But she gets six months, when people are getting away with murder, and the vandals are still out there vandalising.

Zoz

Bill and Andrew

By Craig (c) 2015

Oliver Letwin smells trouble

Tory turmoil as rebel fights on

"Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, admitted some Tories consider Howard and himself 'terrible wimps' for not advocating more radical tax cuts."

He knows he's going to lose, he can smell it. Yes, so can we Oliver, we can smell a pompous, lying hypocrite all the way from Willesden.*

*Meaning who? Ed

The monkeys' tea party

To mark its tenth anniversary, Willesden writers workshop announces "The Monkey's Typewriter," an anthology of poetry and fiction. There will be readings by contributors and possibly surprise guests from 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 31st. upstairs at Willesden Library Centre.*

*Carnival attractions courtesy of Gerry Boysey's Human Circus.

One MP for sale, low mileage, good as new

'We can make common cause with Lib Dems'

"Tony Blair said yesterday that Labour plans to make 'common cause' with the Liberal Democrats to expose Conservative policies in the coming election campaign."

Willesden Herald readers did not vote for Sarah Teather in order to get Bush's lapdog. No deal, no sellout, no way!

From the introduction to New Writing 13

"It's worth pointing out: a lot of what was submitted was dauntingly undaring. On the whole the submissions from women were disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking - as if too many women writers have been injected with a special drug that keeps them dulled, good, saying the right thing, aping the right shape, and melancholy at doing it, depressed as hell. Thank god for the writers here, then, who refute this strange trend; to name just a few - Nicola Barker's understanding of the strangeness of social structure, Frances Gapper's pier-end eccentricity, Kamila Shamsie's visceral force, Susan Irvine's good aggressiveness of form, Monique Roffey's theatrical panache."

That's the controversial bit from The introduction by Toby Litt and Ali Smith. Are they angry, are they in denial, why do their names sound implausible ... who cares?

Ossian

New Writing Anthology

How to submit work to New Writing 14

The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2005. New Writing 14 will be published by Granta in September 2006.

"We found it hard to understand why writers with nothing to lose but time and the cost of postage were so unadventurous." (Comment on submissions for New Writing 13 by the editors, Toby Litt and Ali Smith)

Ossian

Lunatic takes over asylum

BBC Director General Bit Colleague 'Like A Dog'

'Before I could say a word he suddenly turned, snarled and sank his teeth into my left upper arm (leaving marks through the shirt, but not drawing blood). It hurt. I pulled my arm out of his jaws, like a stick out of the jaws of a labrador.'

Mike Tyson would be jailed for six months for something like that. But it's not Mike Tyson in this case, it's Mark Thompson. He should have been fired from the BBC in 1988 for biting a colleague. Instead he is now the Director General, and in the past couple of weeks has set about firing thousands of presumably non-psychotic, non-cannibalistic BBC staff.

Zoz

Famous people from Willesden, a short series. No. 4

Simeon Solomon

He's not really from Willesden, but like a lot of other famous people he ended up here. At one time he was in with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, but he ended as a pavement artist and died in a workhouse. But just look at some of his paintings, they're beautiful. Luckily this link to his Mary Magdalene is too late to be added to Dan Brown's meretricious Da Vinci Code tapestry of drivel. [Dead links. Ed]

Goldsmith under pressure over war advice 'flip-flop'

Times Online

"The document was released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act, although key sentences were censored - fuelling accusations of a Government cover-up of its vacillating legal line on the war."

Face it, the war was illegal. Arrest warrants should be issued NOW by the International Criminal Court against Blair, Straw and Hoon for crimes against humanity.

Zoz