Category: Books

Order! Order! Book Retailer Defies Logic and Sends OCD Shoppers to the Edge

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I’ll admit that I’m prone to extreme pedantry and display many behaviours that are classic traits of the obsessive, the anally retentive. To be honest, I’m fine with that. I have a lot of books, records and CDs, and so storing them in alphabetical order by author or artist makes sense if I want to avoid having to spend hours rooting through haphazard piles of stuff. That I store items in order of publication or release date for those authors or artists I have multiple items by is also helpful, if not quite as essential, and that all of my records are stored with the A-side facing the front and records and CDs are kept with the labels the right way up is simply a preference. In a world where have very little control over anything, it’s comforting to maintain a sense of order in those aspects of my life where it actually benefits me. I choose the alphabetical by author / artist system because it’s ‘the standard’. Libraries, book stores, record stores… the simple fact id that it makes sense and is based on an indisputable logic.

Yesterday, for something to do and because, since they became a ‘media’ store rather than a music store (CDs now occupy less space than DVDs and are generally receive equal billing to console games), HMV have been known to stock some reasonable cult fiction at generously discounted prices. Burroughs, Palahniuk, Bukowski, Plath; all names I spotted amidst the predictable selection of music-related books, celebrity biographies and populist cack, and all with a decent whack off the RRP.

What perplexed me, however, was the arrangement of said books on the shelves. Stephen King books were interspersed throughout the display, which was some five shelves high and eight to ten feet wide. Burroughs’ The Place of Dead Roads was somewhere in the middle, while Kurt Vonnegut’s Armageddon in Retrospect was on the top shelf on the far left. What the fuck?

It actually took me a little while to realise that the books were arranged alphabetically by title. Apart from biographies, which were placed by order of the surname of their subject. And apart from books about a band, in which case the book’s placing was dictated by the name of the band. And apart from Frankie Boyle’s My Shit Life So Far, which appeared to be amongst the Cs.

On reflection, I suppose that’s probably right.

Of course, this begs the question, why aren’t the CDs arranged using the same system?

 

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk

I’m Not Afraid Any More….

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I’m generally too busy writing to look for reviews of my work. In fact, half the time I’m not even sure what’s been published or when, although since I decided to cut back and focus on some longer works in 2010, it has been a little easier to keep tabs on things (besides music reviews, that is). Having had 370 of the things appear last year, and having got off to a busy start in January (42 reviews so far), it’s fair to say that the short fiction has taken a bit of a back seat.

I daresay I will find the time and motivation again once my current, longer projects are done and dusted.

Anyway, the tail-end of 2010 saw a piece I’d been thinking about for an age but hadn’t got around to writing finally chiselled into shape and published in the second issue of the rather excellent northeastern zine I’m Afraid of Everyone. From what I can tell, it’s being well-received, and I was particularly heartened to find this review (and it’s nice to see that Ian Chung @ The Cadaverine is loving my work, too): http://www.thecadaverine.com/?p=2111

 

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk.

A Year in Literature: Christopher Nosnibor’s 2010 Read-a-thon

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So after a couple of years during which reading for pleasure took very much a back seat in my life, I vowed that in 2010 I would make time for books once more. After all, despite having all but stopped reading for pleasure (that isn’t to say the books I had to read weren’t pleasurable, but simply that after studying for several hours straight, my brain was too fried and my eyes too shot to read more), my book purchasing continued unabated during this time.

During the last 12 months, my to-read pile has continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate, since I have been slowly chiselling away at the stack of unread tomes that have accumulated in my home office. Since January 1st, 2010, I have fed my head with the following works… and it feels good!

 

J G Ballard – Millennium People
Richard Allen – Complete Vol 3 –     Trouble for Skinhead / Skinhead Farewell /                       Top Gear Skin
Philip Sidney – The Defence of Poesy and Selected Renaissance Literary Criticism
Raymond Chandler – The Lady in the Lake
Toby Litt – Ghost Story
Mickey Spillane – The Snake
Chuck Palahniuk – Snuff
Alain Robbe-Grillet – In the Labyrinth
Chuck Palahniuk – Choke
Phil Baker – William S. Burroughs
Chuck Palahniuk – Haunted
Stewart Home – Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie
Ian Rankin – A Cool Head
David Conway – Metal Sushi
Stewart Home – The Assault on Culture
Alex Garland – The Coma
Arthur Nersesian – Unlubricated
Donald Ray Pollock – Knockemstiff
Vincent Clasper – Kicks
J G Ballard – The Atrocity Exhibition
Ian Crofton – Nettle Knickers and Exploding Toads
Brian Masters – Killing for Company
Ed McBain – The Empty Hours
Various – Paroxysm
Lee Rourke – The Canal
Henry Millers – Plexus

 

 

And if you’re living my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk

 


No Success Like Failure: How Things Never Go To Plan

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As a rule, I avoid making New Year’s resolutions. They’re usually impossible o keep and I get sick of people going on endlessly about how they’re going to go the gym or whatever, only to moan six weeks later that their plans went out the window before they’d even started. Me, if I’m going to do something, I’ll do it when I’m read and when the time is right. New Year is a bad time to start anything, on a number of levels. Moreover, if I’m going to do something, rather than making a big song and dance about it, I just shut up and get on with it. Then, if I don’t achieve my objective, no-one’s any the wiser and I save myself shame and embarrassment.

Next month sees the publication of issue 2 of I’m Afraid of Everyone, a cool, no-budget old-school zine.  The brainchild of a collective who go under the banner of King Ink, Issue 1 was dark, yet also darkly comical, a proper photocopy and staple job that goes against the tide of the slick digital publications and all the better for it. Issue 2 will feature a new piece of mine, entitled ‘Blaming Bukowski.’ Alongside this, I was asked for a few words abut what I’m afraid of. After some thought, I realised that my biggest fear is of failure. And yet I have failed. I fail often, an this year has been one endless failure for me.

Back in January, I vowed to publish less, even to blog less, and concentrate on longer pieces. As it’s nigh on impossible to write something substantial and maintain a level of output in the public domain at the same time, the plan was to sacrifice the latter in favour of the former. After I’d done the Clinical, Brutal thing, that was.

So January saw the publication of Clinical, Brutal… An Anthology of Writing With Guts, which has been doing pretty well. To promote the book, I conducted interviews with a number of the contributing authors. It was time-consuming but immensely rewarding. It also meant that articles with my name on kept appearing for the next two months.

While I may have continued into the summer without much by way of new fiction, I was kicking out music reviews like it was my day-job, and have now written and published some 325 of the things, while also blogging on MySpace most weeks and throwing the occasional article out in various other directions on-line. Some of those pieces have been requoted elsewhere, and done my profile no harm whatsoever, other than further spoil my plan to disappear for a while

In the last couple of months, after I stepped down from working for them for the foreseeable future, Clinicality Press have seen fit to publish my novella, From Destinations Set and a new collection of short stories, The Gimp. Ok, so they’ve emerged and remained under the radar for most so far, but that’s fine. I’m just happy they’re out there.

However, in a final self-defeating twist, I have recently begun to assail open mic nights and other such events with my presence and brief performances. Turns out I’m not terrible at it, but given my objective to operate as an ‘invisible’ author, I’m painfully aware that I’m breaking all of my own rules by doing this. I’ll be doing it again on December 10th. I’m Afraid of Everyone will be holding a launch night event for issue 2 at the Python Gallery in Middlesborough, and reading a selection of my latest writing. It’s good for business, and perhaps the heaviest promotion I’ve ever done, but given my aims for 2010, the price of any perceived success this may equate to is without doubt absolute failure.

I’m Afraid of Everyone’s on-line base is here: http://imafraidofeveryonemh.blogspot.com/

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christphernosnibor.co.uk.

Anti-Everything: A Blogger’s Dilemma

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I greatly admire Kathy Acker’s writing, and I greatly admire the attitudes she espoused. I admire her writing because it’s exciting and unconventional and bursting with ideas. I admire her attitudes because she was antagonistic, awkward, challenging and non-conformist. Acceptance for Acker was extremely hard-won. I recently revisited an interview with her, in which she explained her early motivation:

“I took a lot of writing courses when I was in college… They were just torture… I reacted in this kind of this radical anti-authority stance, anti-right rules of writing. I started off by saying ‘no’ to everything. My whole identity as a writer was in saying ‘no’, in reacting. So in my first books I refused to rewrite. I wrote as fast as possible. I refused to have any consideration for proper grammar or proper syntax.”

It’s possible to react without being ‘reactionary,’ and Acker’s opposition to all things ‘establishment’, all things ‘conventional’ is something I’ve long been able to identify with. The establishment and the conventional frustrates me. The world frustrates me. I abhor the herd mentality, the misguided and broadly accepted notion that something must be good because it’s popular, the fact that so much ‘culture’ and so many ‘norms’ are simply accepted because that’s what the masses get fed by the various agents of dissemination. Our education system is flawed because it teaches people what to think, rather than how to think for themselves. Or, as Acker contended, “universities have peculiar transmission problems: they transmit stupidity.” It’s a pretty radical view, but it’s not difficult to see what she was driving at. 

As I’ve grown older, my views haven’t softened: I’ve simply found more evidence to substantiate them, and more cogent ways to articulate them. I’m frustrated at every turn, and as such, my writing, in all its forms, is writing of protest, it’s anti-something, if not absolutely anti-everything. Am I a nihilist? No, because I think that such negativity can be channelled for positive ends.

To return to a favourite analogy of mine, that of literature being the new rock ‘n’ roll, I find it irritating (you’ll probably be seeing the pattern by now) when bands plead with the audience to buy their CD at the merch stall between every song. Sure, plug it by all means, but ramming it down people’s throats is bad form. It’s overkill. It stops the set being about the music, and becomes a sales pitch. The set is an advertisement for the CD in itself. Do writers give readings and break after every page to ask the audience to please please please buy their book so they can get the bus home? Well, perhaps, but it’s rare in the extreme.

Writers do tend to be a lot less shameless by nature, to the extent that many come across as being quite apologetic. This can be similarly frustrating for audiences and people who meet them, for they seem shy, nervous or aloof. In the main, I’m no exception to this rule although I do try to speak confidently when reading in public.

This isn’t something I’ve done a great deal of. I have, so far, based a career on upping the anti, so to speak (yes, that’s wordplay, creative misprision, not a sign of limited literacy). I’ve refrained from using any mugshots on any social networking sites, and divulge very few personal details. I guard my privacy fiercely. I like to think it adds to the mystique, but it’s also a deliberate strategy. On one hand, it means my personal life remains just that, and on the other, it means I’m able to create a persona based around the invisible author. I’m the anti-author, if you like. I’ve done the anti-novel, in the form of THE PLAGIARIST, which is also a statement against originality, authorship and copyright. While producing music reviews ahead of release date, I’ve also written articles against music reviewing, and promoted the concept of retrospective reviewing as a means of combating the popular hyping processes. I’m against organised religion, I’m against CCTV and the countless infringements on personal freedoms. I’m against large corporations taking over the world and I’m against idiots cycling on the pavement. Yes, I’m pretty much anti-everything, to the extent that I’m quite averse to endlessly plugging my writing. Being anti-everything, I’m operating a strategy of anti-promotion.

After years of refusing to give public readings, I recently took a slot at an open mic night and read a couple of short stories, in the interests of (self) promotion. Only, I couldn’t bring myself to reiterate my name at the end of my performance, and I didn’t plug any of my books. Needless to say, I didn’t sell any.

Is this strategy of anti-promotion self-defeating? Perhaps. The trouble is, I get fed up of writers who post three blogs a week about their books, but never actually give anything away. Now, I have posted the odd snippet and link to my published works, but work on the premise that my blogs are separate from my fiction and other writing, and live in the hope that the blogs will pique the interest of readers sufficiently that they might feel compelled to investigate further. It works to an extent, but perhaps not as well as I would like. I’m so averse to plugging my work that many occasional readers probably won’t even realise I have books in print.

So, to redress this, for those who don’t know, I have a number of books out. Earlier this year, I edited Clinical, Brutal… An Anthology of Writing with Guts. It’s choc-full of brilliant works by some truly outstanding contemporary authors. A couple of months ago, Clinicality Press published my novella, From Destinations Set and a booklet, The Gimp. The former is conceivably one of the most progressive and innovative works of the last decade, while the latter is pure, unadulterated in your face (anti)literary filth. They’re all available from Clinicality Press at http://clinicalitypress.co.uk. Go buy ‘em.

(And yes, the title is a Mansun reference…)

And if you’re loving my work, there’s more of the same (only different) at Christophernosnibor.co.uk.

Less is More: Judging a Book By Its Cover

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From Destinations Set was a bitch to write. I set out to tackle the problem of presenting two separate yet interweaving simultaneous plots. It was something I had touched on before, in ‘Heading South’ and A Call for Submission. You could say that I was obsessed with simultaneity and pushing the limits of the dual narrative technique for a good year or more. I came up with the idea for From Destinations Set in the summer of 2007 as a submission to Bookworks’ Semina series, and knocked out around twenty pages and roughly planned the rest.

It made the 2008 shortlist in the Spring of that year. Realising that to produce anything like a complete working manuscript would take a lot of time and effort, I pushed on with putting some meat on the bones of the remainder. In the end it wasn’t commissioned (I can’t really grumble: the books that did come out are brilliant), but I was committed to seeing the project to completion. It was seriously hard work. Not so much the contents – although some of that was also extremely challenging – but the formatting. Having previously only produced short bursts of simultaneous narrative, inserted within the main body of the text within text boxes, for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to use the columns setting in Word (and I’m still running 97).

Given that the two stories were to run continuously in left and right columns, it meant I had to write both stories at the same time, and any additions / deletions in one narrative meant I had to match them, almost character for character, in the other.

I was explaining the arduous nature of the process to a friend over a few pints the other week, who asked why I’d not just written the stories separately and then pasted them into two columns in Excel. Now why didn’t I think of that?

So, having completed the manuscript, I touted it round a few publishers who looked like they might take such a brain-bendingly unconventional book, but without success. And so the manuscript languished: I had no desire – nor the technical know-how – to reformat it, and assumed that was that, until Stuart at Clinicality, who I’d mailed a copy of the story to, said he’d cracked it and wanted to publish.

The cover design looks unlike anything my earlier work has been wrapped in, but I do rather like it. While I’m less than keen on minimalist art, as a cover design it’s undeniably striking, and also appropriate, not only to the contradictions of the narratives inside (penned in places in a rather minimalist style, while in others more expansively, and not necessarily confining either style to only one of the two stories), but also the challenges the visual aspects of the text present to the reader. The bold rectangles are very literal representations of the twin columns of the text, and serve as a reminder that Destinations is a very visual text. The placement of the words invites alternative readings: from set destinations, for example. How should the reader approach the physical task of reading the text? One story at a time, a page at a time, cross-column to create a real-time cut-up in the mind? Any and all of these are quite viable options. There are more than simply two stories, and more than two readings here.

To further the sense of variability, the pages in the printed version are unnumbered. As such, the text is complex enough, without the need for a busy or complex cover. Moreover, ‘modernism’ and ‘futurism’ are now historical, and the cover lends it something of a ‘vintage’ feel (I’m personally reminded of Breakthrough by Konstantin Raudive, published in 1971, a remarkable book in every way: http://www.colinsmythe.co.uk/books/brere.htm). Given that Destinations is in many ways concerned with he ‘future’ of narrative and issues of (dis)location in time / space, a cover that drew inspiration from retro representation of futures now past, seemed particularly appropriate. The book is both retro and of the future, and therefore not of any one time, or of any time other than that of its own making.

And in case you’re wondering, the title is a line from the song ‘Double Dare’ by Bauhaus, which is fitting not only because of the ‘double’ narrative, but because a key element of the stories is the sense of the characters’ actions being ‘steered.’ Ostensibly, someone else is writing – and rewriting – their scripts. As such, the writing process is a part of the story: but who is writing the writer? ‘Don’t back away just yet / From destinations set.’ As if they had any choice in the matter.

From Destinations Set is out on Clinicality Press on Monday 2nd August. Here are the opening pages by way of a taster:

http://christophernosnibor.co.uk/Documents/From%20Destinations%20Set%20-%20Section%201.pdf

 

What Have You Been Doing? Managing the Real / Virtual Life Balance

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When push comes to shove, real life activity
has to take priority over virtual life. Similarly – and I’m not the
most fiscally-motivated person in the world – real paid work sometimes
has to come before that which doesn’t pay. So, what with various social
activities strategically placed to give me  a break from the
time-consuming, if reasonably paid work that the new semester brings,
and other academic and real-life things to attend to, the writing of
blogs and new rants, essays and works of fiction hasn’t had much of a
look in this week. This looks likely to be the shape of things for the
next few weeks, maybe longer, too.

However, I have been
conducting interviews with some of the truly remarkable authors who
contributed to Clinicality Press’ Clinical, Brutal… An Anthology of
Writing with Guts’ that I edited and was published late last month.
Whaddayaknow, as people they’re every bit as interesting and
thought-provoking as their fiction.

The interviews are being
posted at the Clinicality website, and so far I’ve interviewed Jock
Drummond, Karl van Cleave, Antony Hitchin, Richard Kovitch, D M
Mitchell, Dire McCain, Vincent Clasper, and, most recently, Jim Lopez in
what proved to be an expansive and incredibly informative exchange.
These can all be read here: http://clinicalitypress.co.uk/ClinicalBrutal.aspx

There
are more to follow, inlcuding Stuart Bateman, Constance Stadler, Maria
Gornell and Pablo Vision.

Please, go and read the interviews, and
explore the work of these illustrious wordsmiths. There should be
enough there to keep y’all going while I’m keeping a low profile…

And if you’ve loving my
work, buy
the book!

Slogging My Guts Out: The Day of Reckoning as Things Turn Brutal

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This week is a big week for me. The book I’ve edited and been heavily involved in at every stage – from design through to promotion, and beyond – is out on Monday, the 25th. Clinical, Brutal… An Anthology of Writing With Guts is a book I’m immensely proud of. It looks the business, and the contents are even better. Of course, I can only take so much responsibility for the contents. The authors who contributed have all delivered truly amazing works – as I knew they would. As the submissions flowed in, I felt the burden of responsibility to deliver an introduction and overall book that did these pieces justice grew. I like to think I’ve succeeded. The authors I’ve had feedback from so far, and the other Clinicality staff, have been brilliantly supportive, not to mention excited.

Some of you may be aware that I’ve been conducting interviews with some of the contributing authors, partly as a means of promotion, but equally because I’m curious to dig deeper into the minds of the twisted sick fucks behind the writing. Some of these have already appeared on the Clinicality website and over on Clinicality Press’ MySpace blog. There are more to follow in the coming weeks.

However, my work is done – for now – and so I’m heading off for my annual Coleridge Kick and will be off-line for a while. I sign off with the suggestion that you buy the book – not for me, but because it’s a cracking read: the list of featured authors is a veritable catalogue or roll-call of the most exciting cult authors who’ve been making waves (and tunnels) on line in the past couple of years or so. Their work deserves to be read, and I’m proud to have worked with them on this project. The list of contributors is as follows:


Pablo Vision
Kestra Faye
Jim Lopez
Radcliff Gregory
Díre McCain
Stewart Home
A.D. Hitchin
Richard Kovitch
Christopher Nosnibor
Lee Kwo
S. F. Grimm
David Mark Dannov
D M Mitchell
Jock Drummond
Lucius Rofocale
Stuart Bateman
Karl van Cleave
Vincent Clasper
Constance Stadler
Bill Thunder
Christopher Bateman
Simon Phillips
Maria Gornell


Clinical, Brutal… will be available from Clinicality Press on Monday – either direct or via the POD printer – and will be on Amazon and countless other places, ranging from Barnes and Noble to Tesco fairly soon (it’s something Clinicality has no control over in terms of precise dates).



The Clinicality website is HERE.

The Countdown Stalls… Today is the Day

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Yes, ‘Counting the Hours,’ the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to ‘Before the Flood’ is published today. The third in a series of four pamphlets to be published in 2009 and sold exclusively through Christophernosnibor.co.uk, it’s substantially longer than its predecessors (for those who are sold on ‘perceived value’), but continues pushing the same thematic elemets, albeit from another angle, and has a cover that clearly demonstrates the unity of the sequence.

To purchase your copy, go to Christophernosnibor.co.uk.

from ‘Counting the Hours’

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How did it happen? It’s hard to say. I suppose there was a certain trigger but it was nothing obvious. I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and find myself unable to function. There was no illness, no hospital white linen, no scars, just a loud noted absence. There was no accident or mishap, no signs of external injury, no black eyes. I sometimes – often – think that it would have been considerably easier if there had been something physical tangible or some event something I could mark in my diary or on the calendar, a date I could pinpoint and note as an anniversary. Yes truly I would really rather have suffered something, some trauma, some shock, something – anything – that I could spend my time trying to erase from my memory, than this… this nothing this lack the consequence of which I find myself devoting hours and hours – for wont of anything better to do – to the trawling of my recollections in a futile attempt to locate the source, the root, the single defining occurrence which marked the start of it all. The beginning of the end.

‘Counting the Hours’ is the third in a series of four pamphlets to be published through 2009 in limited edition runs of just 25 copies .

It will be available to order from Christophernosnibor.co.uk, priced at £3.50 inclusive of p&p within the UK. (for Europe it’s £4.50 and £5.25 to all other destinations), from Monday 28th September.