6/30/2014

Gardens & Villa Release New Video; Announce US Tour Dates

GARDENS & VILLA SHARE "DOMINO" VIDEO

ANNOUNCE NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

   
Photo Credit: Tom Griffiths
         

Gardens & Villa have shared the new video for their song, "Domino," today. The track is off their latest album, Dunes (out on Secretly Canadian), which has received praise from Pitchfork, SPIN and Stereogum for a sound that Interview Magazine calls, "a quirky hybrid of folk and synthesized ambiance. They dabble in the atmospheric, but gravitate towards bright, catchy melodies." 

The video was directed by Robert Beatty, whose hypnotic interpretation of "Domino" effortlessly collates dynamic shapes with 80's-inspired visual elements. An underground musician in his own right (Hair Police, Three Legged Race), Beatty is also a talented multimedia artist, known for crafting vivid cover art for a range of artists (Real Estate, Peaking Lights). 

 
After recently wrapping up an impressive run of shows with Tycho, Gardens & Villa will once again set out on a summer/fall tour, kicking off in Las Vegas on July 23. The band will play a string of North American music festivals, with performances slated at Outside Lands, Music Fest NW, Midpoint Music Festival, Pygmalion, and Fun Fun Fun Fest in the fall. Full tour schedule is below. 
* * *

Upcoming Tour Dates /


07.23.14 - Downtown Container Park - Las Vegas, NV
07.25.14 - The Westin Riverfront Beach & Spa at Beaver Creek - Avon, CO
07.26.14 - The Underground Music Showcase - Denver, CO
08.07.14 - Mile Square Regional Park - Fountain Valley, CA
08.08.14 - FIGat7th Downtown Festival - Los Angeles, CA
08.10.14 - Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival - San Francisco, CA
08.16.14 - MFNW (MusicfestNW) - Portland, OR
09.12.14 - SLO Brewing Company - San Luis Obispo, CA
09.18.14 - The Casbah - San Diego, CA
09.20.14 - Bunkhouse - Las Vegas, NV
09.22.14 - Urban Lounge - Salt Lake City, UT
09.25.14 - Turf Club - St. Paul, MN
09.26.14 - The Empty Bottle - Chicago, IL
09.27.14 - Midpoint Muis Festival - Cincinnati, OH
09.28.14 - Pygmalion Music Festival - Champaign, IL
09.30.14 - High Watt - Nashville, TN
10.01.14 - The Mill Room - Asheville, NC
10.02.14 - The Earl - Atlanta, GA
10.03.14 - Cat's Cradle - Back Room - Carrboro, NC
10.04.14 - Rock & Roll Hotel - Washington, DC
10.05.14 - Johnny Brenda's - Philadelphia, PA
10.07.14 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY
10.09.14 - The Sinclair - Boston, MA
10.10.14 - Lovin' Cup - Rochester, NY
10.11.14 - The Garrison - Toronto, ON
10.12.14 - Club Cafe - Pittsburgh, PA
10.14.14 - Beachland Tavern - Cleveland, OH
10.15.14 - The Pike Room - Pontiac, MI
10.16.14 - Radio Radio - Indianapolis, IN
10.19.14 - The Record Bar - Kansas City, MO
10.21.14 - Club Dada - Dallas, TX
10.23.14 - Crescent Ballroom - Phoenix, AZ
11.09.14 - Fun Fun Fun Fest - Austin, TX


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6/29/2014

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Anenome at Glastonbury 2014



The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Anenome at Glastonbury 2014


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6/28/2014

BEST RECORDS of 2014 so far



BEST RECORDS 2014

SWANS “To Be Kind”
SHARON VAN ETTEN “Are We There”
PARQUET COURTS “Sunbathing Animals”
TUNE-YARDS “Nikki-Nack”
JOLIE HOLLANDWine Dark Sea
THE HORRORS “Luminous”
SYLVAN ESSO “Slyvan Esso”
BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE “Revelation”
HUNDRED WATERS “Moon Rang Like A Bell
BO NINGEN “III”

LYKKE LI “I Never Learn”
RAY LAMONTAGNE “Supernova”
LITTLE DRAGON “Nabuma Rubberband”
LUKE HAINES “New York In The 70s”
ST VINCENT “St Vincent”
THE WAR ON DRUGS “Lost In The Dream”
ANGEL OLSEN “Burn Your Fire For No Witness”
PROTOMARTYR “Under Color of Official Right”
OUGHT “More Than Any Other Day”
FUTURE ISLANDS “Singles”

THEE OH SEES “Drop”
WOODS “With Life and With Love”
SUZANNE VEGA “Tales from the Realm of The Queen of Pentacles”
FANFARLO “Let’s Go Extinct”
WHITE HINTERLAND “Baby”
DEAN WAREHAM “Dean Wareham”
LIARS “Mess”
TEEN “The Way and Color”
LES BIG BYRD “They Worshipped Cats”
WARPAINT “Warpaint”
QUILT “Held in Splendor”

WHITE FENCE "To The Recently Found Innocent"
PERFECT PUSSY “Say Yes To Love”
MARISSA NADLER “July”
BLOOD ORANGE “Cupid Deluxe”
ACTRESS “Ghettoville”
THE ORWELLS “Disgraceland”
TEMPLES “Sun Structures”
THE GHOST of a SABER TOOTH TIGER “Midnight Sun”
SLEAFORD MODS “Divide and Exist”
EAGULLS “Eagulls”

I chose some new stuff. I avoided some number one albums. This is based on what I have heard and seen live this year. I was reluctant to include some okay records by some big names and indie landfill type bands.

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Trash Talk @ The Well








TRASH TALK are playing tonight at the WELL DTLA, Saturday, June 28th 2014.

RSVP HERE: http://gpenfreetourlosangeles.splashthat.com/

All photos taken in Berlin by Daniel Murtagh.
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The Lovely Bad Things @ Lolipalooza



THE LOVELY BAD THINGS play at The Echo + Lolipalooza tonight, Saturday, June 28th, 2014.

Photo: Angel Ceballos
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The Allah-Las @ Summer and Music Fest




Allah-Las play Long Beach's Summer and Music Festival on Saturday, 6/28!

Allah-Las embody quintessential SoCal cool with their effortless charm and hypnotizing guitar jangles. At times, singer Miles Michaud's hazy vocals melt into psychedelic rhythms. Other times, the band allows instrumentals to speak for themselves, painting landscapes of late night desert drives.  Listen to the band's latest single "Had It All" on Brooklyn Vegan here.

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6/27/2014

BLEACHED @ Echoplex



BLEACHED are playing the Echoplex tonight, Friday June 27th 2014.

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DEVO @ Commodore Ballroom





DEVO photographed by BEV DAVIES in Vancouver 2014.

DEVO will be playing at the Wiltern, on Sunday June 29th 2014.

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6/25/2014

School of Seven Bells Announce Plans to Release New Album


School of Seven Bells Announce Plans to Release New Album

Video For 'I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up)' Premiered Today




(June 25, 2014)- Throughout 2012 School of Seven Bells were working on a follow up to the critically acclaimed Ghostory. When producer/gu itarist Benjamin Curtis was diagnosed with T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma in 2013 the band took a break. Today, School of Seven Bells is excited to announce plans to release a new album. Prior to passing, Benjamin had recorded  his portion of the record in its entirety, both before he was diagnosed and after, between treatments. Alejandra is picking up where they left off and heading into the studio to finalize the next record. Stay tuned for more details to come.

Additionally, School of Seven Bells have premiered the official video for the track 'I Got Knocked Down (But I'll Get Up)' today on CultureCollide, the new editorial platform founded by Alan Miller (co-founder of FILTER Magazine). Recorded in it's entirety to his laptop from his hospital bed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, 'I Got Knocked D own (But I'll Get Up)' is Benjamin's final recording before passing on December 29, 2013 at age 35. 

Directors and long time friends of the group, Toby Halbrooks and Alan Del Rio Ortiz, created a visually stunning piece, revolving around cross-country road trip stops in Indio and Joshua Tree, that celebrates life while displaying its cyclical and inexplicable properties. Viewers are reminded that nothing is quite as it seems while scenes give us the sensation we are traveling through a quick glimpse of our own best-life-memories. "Benjamin always held the desert very close to his heart," Alejandra comments. "It was a really important place to him. I'm glad we were able to shoot this video where we did, for him."


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6/24/2014

DOCUMENT AND EYEWITNESS - WIRE RE-RELEASE

DOCUMENT AND EYEWITNESS - RE-RELEASE

pre order here

 
Wire in 1979 by Annette Green
 
When informed that Wire were planning to reissue Document and Eyewitness, Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis (who released the original vinyl version in 1981) commented that the band were “completely mad.” 
Such is the reputation of Document and Eyewitness – an entry in Wire’s discography that has had as many vehement detractors as enthusiastic supporters. 
For those unfamiliar with Document and Eyewitness, it really doesn’t do the album justice to describe it simply as a collection of live recordings from three turn-of-the-80s Wire gigs. What makes it more than that is the unorthodox nature of the main performance and the way it was presented on record.
The centrepiece of the original vinyl release was a recording of the final gig of Wire’s 70s phase (albeit one that took place in February 1980). This was a concert at the Electric Ballroom that grew out of the band’s performance art-based residency at the Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre the previous November. 
Wire at the Electric Ballroom  29.02.1980 by Steven Richards
Delivering a traditional rock gig – or even fully realized songs, for that matter – was not a priority at the Electric Ballroom, and Wire’s set was composed of largely new (and often under-rehearsed) work, accompanied by a series of artistic actions and interventions. The annotated track list gave some indication of the band’s broader approach to performance and entertainment on the night: this included such delights as an individual beating a gas cooker with a hammer, a woman pulling two bound men across the stage, an illuminated goose and massed percussionists sporting newspaper headdresses. One band member donned an exaggerated beekeeper’s veil, while others wore Morris-dancing bells. Veering back and forth between the playful and the unsettling, this was a combination of performance art and absurdist farce, in more or less equal measure.
Wire at the Electric Ballroom  29.02.1980 by Steven Richards
The evening was memorable, above all, for the unusually hostile reaction from sections of the audience, which has perhaps elevated it beyond a simple passing moment. If the crowd was expecting a standard gig, the level of outrage, expressed in vociferous abuse – and with the odd thrown bottle – suggested that the band’s intentions were lost on those in attendance, who were instead confounded, bored and exasperated by the apparent artistic pretensions on display. What is beyond doubt is the fact that the documentation and presentation of the spectacle has lent an air of seriousness and intentionality to something that was considerably more about experimentation than deliberate career choice.
Wire at the Electric Ballroom  29.02.1980 by Steven Richards
A recording (marred by technical issues) was made for posterity, and by spring Newman, Lewis, Gilbert and Grey had begun to pursue their own projects beyond Wire. A year on from the Electric Ballroom gig, however, Rough Trade came to the band with a proposal to commit something of that night's events to vinyl. The approach was to couple selected live tracks with a spoken commentary on the proceedings by long-term Wire fans Adrian Garston and Russell Mills. Hence the title, Document and Eyewitness
For the album, the Electric Ballroom material was supplemented with recordings from a July 1979 show at the Notre Dame Hall (a straightforward band performance), along with one track ("Heartbeat") from a March 1979 gig in Montreux, during Wire’s stint as the support act on Roxy Music’s Manifesto tour. 
As Bruce Gilbert has often remarked, "Context is all," and it’s important to situate this material within a particular stage in the evolution of Wire. For many reasons, both good and bad, this period in Wire’s history became one of its defining moments, with the band paradoxically enjoying a phase of intense creative energy at the same time as it was dissolving – as if it had been dropped in acid. 
This release-cycle provides a wider view of the period, bringing in as much additional material as can be accommodated within the confines of the media. It takes as its core the Electric Ballroom, Notre Dame Hall and Montreux shows (remastered from the original tapes and pitch-corrected where necessary) and adds further texture with studio and rehearsal room recordings. 

In order to accommodate it all, five distinct items are being released:

DOCUMENT AND EYEWITNESS - 1979-1980 (DOUBLE CD) PF21 CD: Packaged in a square Amaray case with a booklet containing an adapted text from Read & Burn: A Book About Wire (Jawbone, 2013) by Wilson Neate . Disc 1 has the original album in full. Disc 2 adds two singles (+ B-sides) from the period, plus some rehearsal room recordings unheard for nearly 35 years!
CD 1: 01. 5/10 / 02. 12XU (Fragment) / 03. Underwater Experiences / 04. Everything's Going to Be Nice / 05. Piano Tuner (Keep Strumming Those Guitars) / 06. We Meet Under Tables / 07. ZEGK HOQP / 08. Eastern Standard / 09. Instrumental (Thrown Bottle) / 10. Eels Sang Lino / 11. Revealing Trade Secrets / 12. And Then… Coda / 13. Go Ahead / 14. Ally in Exile / 15. Relationship / 16. Underwater Experiences / 17. Witness to the Fact / 18. 2 People in a Room / 19. Our Swimmer / 20. Heartbeat
Tracks 01-12 from Electric Ballroom. Tracks 13-19 from Notre Dame Hall. Track 20 from Montreux.
CD 2: 01. Our Swimmer / 02. Midnight Bahnhof Cafe / 03. Second Length (Our Swimmer) / 04. Catapult 30 / 05. Ally in Exile / 06. Go Ahead / 07. Remove for Improvement V2 / 08. Over My Head V2 / 09. Safe / 10. Relationship / 11. Underwater Experiences / 12. Eels Sang Lino / 13. Cancel Your Order / 14. Part of Our History (emerges)
Tracks 01-02 from "Our Swimmer" (1981) single. Tracks 03-04 from "Second Length" (1981) a single not released at the time. Track 05: a personal recording from Jan. 1979 in Cadaqués, Spain. Tracks 06-14: Wire rehearsal recordings from 1979 and 1980.

DOCUMENT AND EYEWITNESS (DOUBLE VINYL) PF21 LP: Packaged in a gatefold sleeve with "eyewitness photography" across the whole inner. Disc 1 is the same as the original vinyl, albeit remastered and re-edited. Disc 2 features the original selection from the Notre Dame Hall show on side one and the two singles and B-sides on side two.
Disc 1
Side One: 01. 5/10 / 02. 12XU (Fragment) / 03. Underwater Experiences / 04. Everything's Going to Be Nice / 05. Piano Tuner (Keep Strumming Those Guitars) / 06. We Meet Under Tables
Side Two: 07. ZEGK HOQP / 08. Eastern Standard / 09. Instrumental (Thrown Bottle) / 10. Eels Sang Lino / 11. Revealing Trade Secrets / 12. And Then… Coda
Tracks 01-12 from Electric Ballroom
Disc 2
Side One: 13. Go Ahead / 14. Ally in Exile / 15. Relationship / 16. Underwater Experiences / 17. Witness to the Fact / 18. 2 People in a Room / 19. Our Swimmer / 20. Heartbeat
Side Two: 21. Our Swimmer / 22. Midnight Bahnhof Cafe / 23. Second Length (Our Swimmer) / 24. Catapult 30
Tracks 01-12 from Electric Ballroom. Tracks 13-19 from Notre Dame Hall. Track 20 from Montreux. Tracks 21-22 from "Our Swimmer" (1981) single. Tracks 23-24 from an unreleased 1981 single.

LEGAL BOOTLEG SERIES: In addition - the full, unedited gig recording of each show will be added to the 2nd Legal Bootleg Series (digital only).
These will be:
While "Heartbeat" was on the orginal (and re-released) D&E (mainly because of the 3,000 whistling Swiss who wanted Roxy Music) and a few tracks have turned up elsewhere (most famously on the Bootleg "Take a Terrifying Trip To The Past") this is the first time, to our knowlege, the whole set has been made available. 
Tracklisting
01. Another the Letter / 02. Practice Makes Perfect / 03. 2 People in a Room / 04. I Feel Mysterious Today / 05. Being Sucked In / 06. Blessed State / 07. A Question of Degree / 08. Mercy / 09. A Touching Display / 10. Former Airline / 11. French Film Blurred / 12. Men 2nd / 13. Heartbeat

The sets of the 19th & 20th of July were in fact the last "conventional" performances Wire made of the 70's. However, in typical Wire fashion - even though 154 was only recorded, not yet even released - the set only contained 3 songs from it (4 if you count "Question of Degree" which was recorded on the same sessions) whilst containing 8 "new" songs alongside 4 "oldies". Interestimgly this met none of the hostile reaction the "Electric Ballroom" received. Again this is the first time the whole set has been made available and most notably the first time any of it is at the right speed!
Tracklisting
01. Go Ahead / 02. Ally in Exile / 03. Being Sucked In / 04. Relationship / 05. Midnight Bahnhof Cafe / 06. Underwater Experiences / 07. Blessed State / 08. Witness to the Fact / 09. I Should Have Known Better / 10. Safe / 11. Lorries / 12. 2 People in a Room / 13. A Question of Degree / 14. Our Swimmer / 15. I Am the Fly / 16. Heartbeat / 17. Strange


Framed by a conversation between Graham and Bruce on one side and Russell Mills and Adrian Garston (the eyewitnesses) on the other side the "naked" version of the Electric Ballroom set of the 29th February 1980 (the full set with no edits or interruptions) is in many ways the missing piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, it tells the same story as the group photo at the head of this newsletter: four people in a fiercely creative mood but not necessarily heading in the same direction.
00. Eyewitness Accounts / 01. 5/10 / 02. Request Spot/12XU / 03. Underwater Experiences / 04. Everything's Going to Be Nice / 05. Piano Tuner (Keep Strumming Those Guitars) / 06. We Meet Under Tables / 07. Inventory / 08. ZEGK HOQP / 09. Eastern Standard / 10. Instrumental (Thrown Bottle) / 11. Ritual View / 12. Part of Our History / 13. Eels Sang Lino / 14. Revealing Trade Secrets / 15. And Then… Coda
Suggested reading: Wilson Neate's Read & Burn: A Book About Wire, Chapter 5

ORDERING & LEGAL BOOTS

While the CD/digital and LP versions will not be available in shops until August 18th, they are of course able to be pre-ordered HERE. Meanwhile, the three new items in the Legal Bootleg Series 2 will beimmediately available to all subscribers to the complete series; sorry, but the rest of you will have to wait! However, there are some bundles available for those that want to buy Document & Eyewitness and haven't yet subscribed to the Legal Bootleg Series 2While these three are supposed to mark the end of the second legal bootleg series, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that we might add something else, if the right thing turns up!


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6/23/2014

WHITE FENCE: White Fence - "For The Recently Found Innocent"


photo: Angel Ceballos

White Fence - "For The Recently Found Innocent"

It’s the 21st century man —we’re way past the feudal phase! Yet, somehow, some people still radiate their noble bearing, no matter where they are — just as certain songs are clearly meant to sing from the turrets still. In this fashion, and with high-collared coat turned up against the cruel wind, White Fence emerge from their high aerie to display a shining array of royal jewels each time they unveil a new pop album to the world. The gliss and glitter that sounds forth from For the Recently Found Innocent has a shine all its own, and for Reasons too.

For the Recently Found Innocent is many things — the fifth White Fence album, the first White Fence album to be recorded outside the bedroom fence (with live drumming!), the first White Fence record to be produced for Drag City. Plus also, a sophomore pump: the second time that Tim Presley and Ty Segall have met to record music (does anyone remember Hair?), this time pure and simply committed in the name of White Fence. Inevitably, the collision at the intersection of all these winding roads is a beautiful pileup of deep impacts, graceful lines and open space embodied in sound, White on White, compacted for your eyes and ears to believe.

In the tale of For the Recently Found Innocent, Tim Presley has succeeded in bringing his signature role, that of the hissing reptilian wraith, to the magnesium screen. Moving with the sidewalks in the first rippling of the light, our gimlet-eyed hero is steeped in the time-honored practice of hand-eye coordination known as ‘rhythmatism’; master of verbal acrobatics (always sticking the landing) and palm-reading melodies, where he proves uncannily prescient in tracing where the lifeline goes as moves it through the path of verse-chorus-bridge-et al.

White Fence’s previous release, Cyclops Reap, demonstrated a process being executed at the top of its game (which, we know, is NOT a game). For the Recently Found Innocent surges forth with fresh set of elaborately crafted songs, harmony vocalizations and trippin’ guitar tones that strike the face and viscera with an equal (easy) blow. White Fence conjure a fantasy about reality, of the world as it is and should always be; their songs are alterna-hits played out in green sun, in blue air, on repeat, relentless, RIGHTEOUS in the privacy of front-parlor and yes, bedroom — White Fence, full-circle, from the cradle to the grave!

One listen to For the Recently Found Innocent and (y)our faith is still growing.

TOUR DATES:

07-12 San Francisco, CA – Phono Del Sol
07-24 Los Angeles, CA- Echo ¢
07-25 Los Angeles, CA- Echo #
08-05 Big Sur, CA – Woodsist Festival @ Henry Miller Library
10-13 Brooklyn, NY- Baby’s All Right
10-14 Allston, MA- Great Scott ^*
10-15 Montreal, QC- Il Motore *
10-16 Toronto, ON- The Garrison *
10-17 Cleveland, OH- Happy Dog *
10-18 Chicago, IL- Subterranean *
10-19 Buffalo, NY- Tralf Music Hall *
10-20 Baltimore, MD- The Metro Gallery *
10-21 Philadelphia, PA- Underground Arts *
10-23 Kingston, NY – BSP Lounge !

* = King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
^ = Juan Wauters
% = Woodsist Festival with Woods, Angel Olsen, Skygreen Leopards, Kevin Morby
# = w/ Tomorrows Tulips, Cold Beat
¢ = w/ Dream Boys, Abigails

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Schonwald - Rays

Live dates Schonwald

26/09 : Paris, Le Klub (+ guests)
04/10 : Lisbonne, A Comisao
 
This week, we are very glad to announce the release of Schonwald's new singleRays, on June 24, 2014.

Spearhead of the Italian dark scene renewal, Schonwald, based in 2009 by Alessandra Gismondi and Luca Bandini in Ravenna, knew immediately how to find a just balance between electricity and sensualism, with a lot of deep and hypnotic basslines, synthetic striations and noisy acid guitars, mixing minimal wave drought and post-punk sweatiness.  

This first collaboration between the band and Anywave contains two new titles and can be listened as a true 7" summer single : on the A-side, Rays is a cold-pop spiral, coming with a strange video in black and white, shot between a forest and the Adriatic Sea, winking to Antonioni's Deserto Rosso; on the B-side, Lower Lovers goes for a ride between The Normal and the early Cocteau Twins.

Rays video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5RHl9D5MWE

Rays prefigures next Schonwald's album (out in September), we 'll keep you posted about very soon.


Press review :

"Schonwald are invading France at the end of June, with a hypnotic and psychoactive single, Rays, who would easily make The KVB or Soft Moon humble. Expect the walls to shake during all the good DJ sets in Paris this summer" - Villa Schweppes, June 2014
 
"Rays is an hypnotic post punk / new wave track, the frail vocal line is both haunting and enthralling. The drum machine beat drives the track over a wash of synths and pulsating bass. The sinister tone to the track makes one that you’ll revisit countless times. The minimalist electro deceives the complexity on display, new nuances and beats will surface one each listen." - Alt Dialogue, June 2014

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Gordon Lish Interview


Confessions of a Solipsist
While DeLillo hides, Lish pontificates

Gordon Lish Interviewed about the world of Fiction and the burden of The Reader 
looking over his shoulder


by Alexander Laurence

Lish has taught fiction classes for 38 years, but now he has retired. He has hung out with writers like Don DeLillo and Cynthia Ozick, and has inspired many writers by his fiction workshops. Many writers have even claimed to have taken his classes who may have not been there. Whether yes or no, Lish is known as an editor, at Esquire Magazine and at Knopf, and now as a writer of some compelling works of fiction, starting with Dear Mr. Capote, up to recent works such as Epigraph and Self-Imitation of Myself. How I became interested in Lish recently was that I had heard he and DeLillo meet once a week, watch movies, drink and talk about women. I wanted to join them on one of these nights but DeLillo refused to join us. As I entered the Upper East Side abode of Mr Lish, with the photographer, he told us to remove our shoes, which we did, and ended up having a conversation for over two hours. Here is some of our talk.
-------------------------------

AL: As far as the field of creative writing goes, you are a person who is known to a lot of younger writers, whether they have taken classes by you or not. Can you talk about your influence on these writers?

GL: I have taught at Yale, NYU, and Columbia. I used to teach week-long seminars and three-day seminars in various cities. I have taught privately. I used to teach two days a week at NYU. I would have about thirty students. At some point I wanted to teach longer hours. I ended up teaching as long as ten hours.

AL:  What do you think of academic writing? Were you teaching a certain esthetic or focusing on a certain type of writing?

GL: Absolutely. You have to pay a lot of money to find that out. (laughter). I have been linked to Minimalism, but I have also sponsored Harold Brodkey and Cynthia Ozick. This is a convenience for people who don't want to comprehend these matters. Minimalism has nothing to do with it. Amy Hempel once wrote an article for Vanity Fair where she was arguing for this esthetic, which she understood to be the one that I was promoting. She said "Well, it's just leaving out the uninteresting parts." My take on these matters hardly could be reduced to writing or information. I teach people how to manage to make a totality, a totalizing effect out of singularity. This term is also used in Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. It's the means by which one dilates the origin into destination. I'm very specific about that. These poetics do not confine the result, but they tend to potentiate any result. There has, on the other hand, emerged an industry of writing. The Quarterly still receives mail after being defunct for three years. Before I threw stuff away I look at things sent in and there are still people who are delighted to give you their pedigree. They offer a recitation of where they published, where they studied, and often these people are teachers of writing. More often than not, they are teachers of writing, and you can't believe that they are writing.....

AL: As an editor and publisher, has a writer's resume or history ever mattered to you?

GL: Oh no. I throw it out. I don't look at it. If I do look at it now, it's just to share the ironies of it with my students. It's comical.

AL: Do you read a page?

GL: I don't even read a page. Less than a sentence. I fancy myself being able to read a page without reading a page. There's a look that good writing has, and I have a talent for seeing it. At Esquire Magazine, I used to look at a thousand pieces of unsolicited mail a week. I do think that there is a painterly aspect to the page, in the hands of a literary artist, or it's not there. I think it's either the typewriter producing these utterances, or it's a peculiar psychological or emotional presence. It's either coming out a sense of the error that art is, or persons who think they can get it right. Those people think writing is sounding like everybody else. They don't understand that real writing is sounding like only you can sound. I don't do a lot of reading, but I do a lot of looking.

AL: What do you think of the role of the writer presently? I know that Don DeLillo has written a piece about history and fiction. Does the writer have a social responsibility?

GL: DeLillo can look at things and get them right. That is to say, get them wrong, and by getting them wrong, making them stronger. I am not competent of looking at things. All I am able to look at is language, and behavioral features in myself, as occasions to fit the language to. If I tried to do what DeLillo does, or even render that bench stoop, I wouldn't have the ability and I wouldn't have the enthusiasm for the task. I wish that I had the strength of what DeLillo's texts exhibit to the world, and convey to others a sense of what ones looking at. I follow Walter Pater's view of the object only exists as a means for the subject to enact himself. In fact, I go further, and say that you, the subject, are only present to the object because of the nature of the subject. I only see anything because of the man I am. Everybody is looking at something else. I tend to be autistic and do things an autistic person does and which is failing to see what is central to the event, and instead sees something peripheral to it. If we went to see a stage play, you might find me distracted and looking at someone in another row or looking at the curtain, and not looking at the drama on-stage. I tend to be very solipsistic and very shut off from other people. The only objectivity, authenticity, stability there is to the extent that any of these words would apply to what I'm about to say, is in language itself, but of course the language is not stable.

AL: It's really strange that in the new book you deal with so few elements, there's a solipsistic monologue aspect, but at the same time you are referring back to the text as text, whatever it's called, "self-reflective," and I'm often reminded of Italo Calvino's work. An episode may be set off by a mundane occurrence in life, which eventually disappears into the writer's voice.


GL: The two new books which will be coming out in the near future, Arcade, and Chinese, and certainly the one that I am working on now, all represent a more considerable descent into the very terms you just described. These books become more and more self-reflexive. And how should I say, capricious, and caught up in the paradox of the reader becoming a burden. Yet what are you doing it for unless you are positing a reader? At least one person has to read. I imagine one among the mighty dead, like Beckett or Joyce. I might be happy if Kafka is the reader. I might not be too happy if someone in my immediate family is the reader. Besides my students, I think that Cormac McCarthy, Cynthia Ozick, and Don DeLillo are the only writers who I care about, and I would like them to be my readers. 

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6/21/2014

Julian Rios Interview


Julian Rios Interview

Spanish author Julian Rios, who lives in Paris, was in New York recently, and we spent some time together. He is the author of several books including Larva, Poundemonium, and the new one is Loves That Bind. He also wrote two books with Octavio Paz, including Solo For Two Voices. Paz had just passed away a few weeks before we spoke. They had actually been writing some new work in the past year. Rios sees writing from Spain and Latin America as being of the same root. He has been a favorite author of mine for years, ever since I read Larva and some shorter works published in magazines.

It was my pleasure to finally meet him on the occasion of his newly translated novel, Loves That Bind.

by Alexander Laurence

AL: I just got back from London yesterday, and I realized while I was there that I was going to talk to you soon. Several of your books take place in London, and although you're Spanish, and have lived in Spain and Paris most of your life, you write often about being in London. Why is that the setting of some many of your novels?

Julian Rios: London is a kind of resume of the universe. New York is also. It happens that I knew London very well and it was a city that I liked. For me, the London that I like is not the "Anglo-Saxon" London, but, as I say, the resume of the universe, a kind of melting pot of different languages and different cultures. Different types of people have been established in London for many years, and they created their own cultures, whether it's the Italians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis, etc. That adds up to a fascinating concentration of cultures.

AL: You are interested in the literary history of London too....

JR: I am interested in the mythical side of London because it is a mythical city. It's like how T. S. Eliot calls it "unreal city." It's more real than reality. You have the real city and the mythical side of the city that exists in novels. For me, in many of my novels, the important side is the London seen from a foreign point of view. If somebody is a foreigner, he feels at home with other foreigners, because nobody belongs to London and everybody is a foreigner in a sense. That is the question. In Loves That Bind for example, each day the narrator takes a different path in London trying to chase or to find his lover. Each part of London connects in a way with different views, experiences, remembrances, past loves, and literary allusions. There are many things there.

AL: Is the character Emil the same person as the other books?

JR: He comes from Larva and Poundemonium. He's the same character. He's called Milliaus: a thousand aliases. That's his name in Spanish. It belongs to the same cycle and different parts of my book, or multi-novel, if you want. In Larva, the language was more important; in Poundemonium, the life of Erza Pound and literary history; and in Loves That Bind, the characters are most important. I have just finished a new novel, Monsturary, where the characters are equally important.

AL: I noticed that you are interested in puns and multi-lingual words. Does that come from the influence of James Joyce and Arno Schmidt, or is it that you are a Spanish person living in several countries and fluent in several languages?

JR: Maybe it's not the Castillian but the Out-Castillian in me. I am a kind of an "Out-Cast." I'm outside my own country. I am from the Northwest of Spain. Galicia is a Celtic land. There's a situation in the world now where everyone is sort of a displaced person. If you go to an airport in any part of the world, you have the global village there, the immigration, and everybody is moving, even if you have your own roots to some land or culture. The world is moving into that direction which is the direction of uncertain situations. We don't have any fixed point of view anymore. In my novels I choose London as a setting, because I like the idea of a labyrinth as a city. I found in that situation, when you have foreigners with other foreigners, you are home without a home. You can't go home again. There's no home anymore, or every part is a provisional home.

AL: With Larva there was this sense of a multi-novel, that it doesn't end with a book. Can you explain your sense of novel? I know that I have spent much time reading Maurice Roche's work, especially CodeX, and I'm surprised that he even links the word "novel" to it because it destroys all the conceptions of a regular novel.

JR: You think of characters and plot. I am against this kind of experimentation. I always insist on a double-track. In the circus it's like riding two horses at the same time. Of course you are a writer and you're writing, you're not filming, then you use words. For me, the use of words is very important. I need the sensuality of the word. I want the word to have flesh. One of my books is called The Sensual Life of Words. At the same time when I write a novel I am telling a story. I don't like books that are only interested in a verbal pyrotechnics and flashes without content. Plot, characters, and telling a story are very important to me. In Loves That Bind, you will follow a real story about love, and a sad one I think. Some people read intellectual things but a novel is also a notation of the heart. A recent reviewer said that I was part of a generation of new novelists born after Franco, and Franco doesn't appear in the novels. In Loves That Bind there are four or five concrete allusions to Franco. The time of the novel, 1973, Franco was still around. I am not writing from a stratospheric situation. I am definitely connected to my times and everything that matters in political and individual terms.

AL: Since you are known for writing Larva, people see you as a forerunner to the hypertext. It is a very difficult book to read.

JR: Larva has many sides. If you read the last part of the book which is made up of notes, meta-narratives, that's only one part. Larva is a very complex work, and maybe it is a premonition of experiences we have now. We cannot control everything when you use computers. Larva was written before the computer age, but the first Spanish readers had the sensation of a computer work: that you could open windows and go there, and go backwards. That means a new approach to reading. Hypertext is always in the text. The texts of Joyce and the other great authors are really hypertexts. You can really open windows infinitely.

AL: Is the new novel, Loves That Bind, a simpler approach to writing?

JR: The structure, at first glance, is much more traditional. Each chapter consists of one day. The book takes place in one month. The setting is London in 1973. I learned something on this novel: I learned to seem simple when I am much more complicated. I want to seem accessible to everybody, so they can understand, and at the same time, I want to disguise the difficulties on the surface. I am very happy with that. If you want to stay on the surface and come away with an impression. The majority of the readers will read it one time and get an idea and an experience, but if you have more time you can see things that you didn't see things the first time. It's important for a book to have real readers. I found it important to have a sensuality in writing and communicate that, and also to keep in mind that reading is an intellectual activity. Everybody tries to seduce the reader. I was reading a review today and the critic was embracing the novel and comparing it to Tarantino and Pulp Fiction. For me, a novel which is the equivalent of Tarantino means it is the opposite of a real novel. A novel should convey an experience so different from cinema. The problem is writers trying to tell stories like filmmakers.

AL: Some younger readers are more influenced by visual media. They like film and pop culture and music and TV and can relate to that instead of Modernist literature.

JR: Zamyatin, the Russian novelist said "The future of the Russian literature is in its past." That seems to be against progress. I understand that the century is almost over and we are leaving the 20th century. Look backwards and see how many beautiful novels this century has produced. You have Nabokov, Joyce, and Proust. Many critics think that the 19th century was the big century of the novel. The 20th century produced many great writers if you look back. Right now we have many programs, many publications, but not many good writers. Writing needs time. Publishers are pressuring their authors: "Give me your next novel!" Many writers are producing like copycats. Writing needs time for maturation and style. No new author needs to remake Ulysses. But they need to take the moral example of those writers who did things with dedication and time and hard work and emotion. This time, the fin de siecle, is very characteristic, and the same as the last one. Very simple naturalistic novels were produced, and so were realistic works without ambition. Every work was conservative and conformist. I think that will be the end of the century.

AL: Have you been writing for a long time?

JR: Maybe too young. When I was a child I wrote poems and I wanted to be a writer. But the important thing for me is to work against facility. I used to be an easy-writing person. I soon learned a writer is not only a person who writes something but a person who doesn't write certain things. That is very important, because everybody has these great or fantastic ideas. We have to realize that a writer is someone who refuses to write some things.




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Harry Mathews Interview


An Interview with Harry Mathews
by Alexander Laurence


Alexander Laurence: You have spent most of your life in Europe, mostly in Paris and in France, and a few years in Spain and Italy too. Paris has been your real base since 1952. Do you think about the United States a lot, and the fact that you are an American living abroad? Do you think about your “American-ness?”

Harry Mathews: I do not think that I expected to become anything else besides an American. I did, I think, have some misguided expectations about changing my spots and fitting into the European communities where I have lived. After stubbing my toes trying to do that, I gave it up, and accepted the fact that I’ll always be an American wherever I live, and no matter how well I know the language. I very much enjoy the life that I have lived in Europe. I enjoy equally being an American, more and more so. I had really no problem with America except in the very beginning when I didn’t know much about it. I thought Amerca was the milieu that I had grown up in, which was just a tiny part of it. I started coming back to America in the late fifties. I visited the West Coast several times, the South a little bit, and Texas, of which I’m particularly fond. I enjoy very much having two places to live, to feel that I could live happily in either Europe or America, to be at home in either place. But I have no illusions;I have no desire to be anything but an American. It’s not something that I think about except in terms of language. In that respect, living abroad is useful. When you’re living in a country and you’re surrounded by people that are not speaking your language, and especially in my case, where your wife and your step-children are all speaking in a foreign langauge, you’re obliged to become aware day after day of what your langauge is.

AL: You never thought of writing a novel directly in French?

HM: No. I’ve written shorter things, at most three or four pages. That will be about it because it’s only rarely that what I want to do when I write will correspond to my limitations in French. Learning written French proficiently as an adult takes a lot of work, and although it has been done by a few people, they still have a different relationship to the language than someone who has grown up speaking that language. Those people will never write French as well as someone who has gone to school and high school in France.

AL: Why do you suppose that is?

HM: That’s a good question. I would suggest that the answer is this: one’s relatioship to the language is a dramatic and possibly traumatic one. The experience of learning to read and write, first in terms of just letters and words, then in terms of syntax, is a dramatic and possibly traumatic experience. The writer who has not undergone that kind of drama, which is perhaps only available to people who are between the ages of five and fifteen, will never be able to write as well as someone who has. The theory of language which most appeals to me is one that says the trauma of the absense of the mother’s breast is replaced by words. That is to say the mouth is filled up with words that take place of the breast, beginning with the cry, then articulations of that cry. I think that the teaching of language by the mother to the child, or the family which centers on the mother, is post-traumatic. I think that the trauma has preceded it, and that language can be, on the contrary, a consoling substitute and one that is not alienating. For me, the drama began with finding out that language was not only a link between my body and my parent’s bodies, that in fact the link between me and my family’s surroundings could be alienated by written language. This is just a concept and not a record of what I felt at the time. But something happened then which I think probably happens to other people. There is also the fact that learning is painful.

AL: You are part of the Oulipo. Do you think that if you stayed in New York, there would have been that sort of community available? Paris has a history of groups, literary movements,and communities.

HM: I had a group in New York long before the Oulipo. The Locus Solus group was my first and most important literary environment.

AL: Which was related to the book that came out in 1971: An Anthology of New York Poets?

HM: Yes. It was the whole New York that I hadn’t known, that I got to know through Kohn Ashbery. I wouldn’t want to limit it to the people who were on or in Locus Solus, because through them I discovered a community that I could be a part of any time that I wanted to. I wasn’t here in New York very much, so I wasn’t a working member of the so-called New York School. But I was an honorary member. It was something that I knew that I could count on for support and acceptance. The Oulipo plays a very different role. First of all, it’s not a writing group.

AL: You meet once a month?

HM: Sure. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s a sort of a family, no doubt about it. It makes living in Paris much easier.

AL: Do you think that such a group like the Oulipo, could have been in New York or San Francisco?

HM: Well, in San Francisco you have the Language Poets, but again, that’s a writing movement. The Oulipo is not a writing movement.

AL: I was thinking of a group or a community that consciously creates an association of ideas. It seems that in the past American writers have worked independently, but in retrospect, they are thrown together in groups or movements by critics.

HM: That’s true in France as well, and it’s certainly true of the writers in the Oulipo. We don’t work together as writers at all. You’re right that it is a group, you’re right that it’s a nice substitute family to belong to, but it’s not a group of writers. In fact, many members are not writers. And those who are writers write in many different ways. We do not necessarily agree with each other about each other’s writing. What we share is an interest in exploring the possibilities of constrictive forms. People in San Francisco, like the Langiuage Poets, Carla Harryman and Richard Silliman for instance, discuss each other’s work; and that’s fine. Theirs is a real literary movement. It’s like Braque and Picasso trying things out with each other and testing their ideas. On the other hand, the Nouveau Roman, for all its fame, was not a true literary group or movement. It was a publishing gimmick, one that worked.

AL: When did you first meet Raymond Queneau, and when did you first become aware of his work?

HM: I first became aware of his work in 1956. That was before the Oulipo existed. I admired him and actually met him and read many of his books before my or even his Oulipo days. I heard of the Oulipo in 1968. It didn’t interest me at all. I didn’t know what was going on because the people who told me about it, as most people do, got it wrong and presented it in an inaccurate way. Later Georges Perec told me more about it and invited me to one of the lunches. That led to my being elected to the group.

AL: So you first met Perec soon afterwards?

HM: I met Perec in 1970.

AL: How did you meet him? Do you remember?

HM: Yes, I remember very well. My first novel, The Conversions, was about to come out in French, and I had left some proofs with a friend who gave them to an editor who worked with Georges Perec’s publishers, and she gave them to him. He wrote me an enthusiastic letter, and I wrote him back. Then we called each other up and met for drinks one afternoon.

AL: What did you think of Perec’s writing?

HM: When I met Perec, I hadn’t read anything by him. After we became friends I read his books as they came out. I thought of him primarily as a friend: I was interested in his books because they were his. I was neither surprised nor not surprised when he wrote La Vie Mode D’Emploi.

AL: You were elected to the Oulipo in 1973, the same year as Italo Calvino. How did this happen?

HM: What happens is there are guests of honor who may or may not become members of the Oulipo. I went there and we got along fine. (They used to have lunches, now we have dinners.) I talked a litle about my work.

AL: Did they know you at the time?

HM: Some of them did. Queneau did. Most didn’t. I do know that I went and had a good time, and they seemed to enjoy my company. Later I received a letter that told me I had been elected as a member to the Oulipo. There was no ceremony. It was totally informal.

AL: Did you feel that being elected was a transformation for you, that you and your writing changed somehow, or was the change not significant at all?

HM: I was very pleased. It was marvelous to be elected to this group and being accpeted by them. I got involved little by little, and learned more about their ideas. I didn’t know much about them, about the theoretical aspect of it. I had done Oulipian things on my own, but I hadn't thought in general terms about constrictive form. In fact, I guess that you're right to ask that question because one big difference it made was reassuring me about what seemed to be almost an aberration in having written this way. I hadn't known anything about Oulipian procedures. So what before I had felt uneasy about now was given a blessing. That was very comforting.

AL: Could you talk about some of the recent Oulipian activity? What have you done as a group and not individually?

HM: The work inside the group has led to publications of specifically Oulipian research. Two volumes published by Gallimard, and a whole series of smaller pamphlets which were eventually collected. A third volume of them will be out fairly soon. That's one ongoing part of our activity. Then there are the uses to which individual writers put the Oulipian idea such as Perec, Calvino, myself, Jacques Roubaud, Queneau, and so forth. What happens in the Oulipo is we invent or rediscover or analyze constrictive forms. The books happen outside, independently. The books are our own business as individual writers.

AL: So when you write a new novel, does it ever happen that someone like Jacques Roubaud will come up to you and say how he admires your work?

HM: Never. At a meeting of the Oulipo, we might say, in parenthesis, to one another "You've written a masterpiece." But we never discuss each other's work except in its explicitly Oulipian aspects. That's not the point. The Oulipo is not about written works. It's about procedures.

AL: Is it about production?

HM: It's about structure and procedure. Production in the sense of potential production, but not the product. I can give you an example of what happens which is much more interesting for all of us. I've just started a novel last month, and at the last meeting I presented one of the structures that's going into the novel and explained how it will work. But that has nothing to do with what the book is going to be like as a whole, or whether it will be good or bad. I'm glad you asked that because it's important to get that clear.

AL: One way the Oulipo has progressed is that it has invented some structural ideas, and then essays about them have been collected into a volume.

HM: We have ideas all the time! We have both practical ideas and theoretical ideas. I'm strong in the practical realm. I mean that I'm good at devising things to do. Jacques Roubaud is not only good at devising things to do, he's also a meticulous theoretician. He's very good at defining and working out the theoretical consequences of the general thinking that's going on.

AL: Are there some structural ideas that do not get carried out?

HM: That's not the point. The point is not the carrying out, but developing the structure. The only carryings out that are important are what we call "record setting." That's what Georges Perec did with the palindrome and the lipogram. He demonstrated that you could write a very long, beautiful palindrome. This had never been done before. He also demonstrated that you could write an extraordinary interesting, entertaining, and fascinating novel without using the letter e. That had never been done before. In that sense, those are actual Oulipian acts because they demonstrate an unrevealed potentiality of a form like the palindrome. There are many natural palindromes. There's no big deal about a palindromic word, for instance. But to do what he did is a true Oulipian activity. Perec demonstrated that the palindrome exists as an extensive form.

AL: What are the meetings of the Oulipo like Today? Can you describe one to me?

HM: Sure. They all resemble each other very much. There's one on November 16, 1989. A dinner. We'll go to Paul Fournel's, a very good writer, who also runs a publishing house in Paris. He and his wife will welcome us at seven o'clock, and we'll have drinks for an hour or so, then have dinner together. We'll work through the evening. We have an invariable sequence of categories that we work through: first comes "creation," then "erudition,"  "action," and "lesser proposals," which is a sort of odds and ends. At the beginning of the meal, one of us is picked to preside over the meeting, and someone else picked to be the secretary takes notes on it. We are initially asked if we have contributions to make. If I have something to say in the category of "creation" I'll say "yes, I do." After a few minutes, we have a schedule for the evening. The meetings end about ten-thirty or eleven. There is a slight tendency to rowdiness as the hours pass.

AL: So, each meeting ends with a good feeling?

HM: Yes, usually.

AL: Or is there a lot of arguing?

HM: Oh, sometimes there is some violent arguing, but the argument is mostly about getting definitions accurate. Sometimes there will be a procedure that is presented which may or may not be Oulipian, and the discussion or argument will be "Is this Oulipian?" Does it correspond to Oulipian principles: if not, why not? If so, why? So there can be some lively discussion. Rarely does someone leave in a state of upset.

AL: Your fourth and latest novel, Cigarettes, was popular? Or not?

HM: It was more popular than the others. It certainly didn't get to a lot of readers.

AL: It was translated into French soon after its publication here, in the States, in late 1987. When did you start this novel, and when did you finish it?

HM: Ah, that took me forever to write. I think that I began it in 1978, and it took me eight or nine years to write it all. A lot was going on at the time. I did work on it more or less continuously. It was very hard formally to handle, and I gave myself a lot of strict rules. I was doing things that I had never done before. That was one of the rules: not to do anything I had done before.

AL: To me at least, one of things that I noticed about Cigarettes  is that it seems like was written by a female writer, if you don't look at the cover. Surely the texture of the language is more feminine.

HM: Oh, that's nice to hear. I agree with that. I hope it's true.

AL: Female writers, especially female writers who write popular or romance novels, usually write in forms familiar to everyone though.

HM: The form of Cigarettes  isn't familiar to anyone, but the language is. Although a lot of people found it difficult. I was astounded at the number of people. To me, it was utterly transparent. Many people found it difficult, especially the beginning, and that totally baffled me.

AL: Yes, I think that I had some difficulty with the first part of the book originally. But soon as I became more accustomed to the book, it became more fascinating as it unfolded. It worked. I think that the reader must rely on memory more with this book than with others.

HM: But that applies to any detective novel, sometimes far more so.

AL: Your most recent books, 20 Lines A Day and The Orchard, are much different. One is a journal and the other is a memoir. Can you talk about how these works came about.

HM: They were very important to me, as was The Armenian Papers, all three. 20 Lines A Day  and The Armenian Papers  were written without any idea of what was going to happen. They were written off the top of my head. It was a surprise to me how they came out. Jacques Roubaud said that after working as an Oulipian for twenty years, my instincts were geared to intuitive forms. Or at least I had enough intuitive formal sense to be able to wing it without a structural procedure in mind. I was interested in 20 Lines A Day  particularly, because of the processes expressed in that book. I don't mean formal processes or writing processes, but the psychological process of writing each day. That was something that I didn't know. That seems to be what the book is about. It is coming to terms with myself when faced with a blank page each day.

AL: Other than that process, is it that you don't like to repeat yourself in following the same approach to writing, and if so, is it due to boredom that you avoid writerly habit?

HM: Every book is different in the way it is written. I do not think it's a question of being bored. I think I’m drawn to trying different things.

AL: I wanted you to comment on the phrase "The wealthy amateur," the first words of The Conversions.

HM: Grent Wayl.

AL: And this phrase also shows up in Perec's book.

HM: About Bartlebooth?

AL: Yes. And another character. He is described this way. I'm not sure that I understand this phrase. It sounds like something out of a novel by Jules Verne. Is there some special significance behind it?

HM: No. Grent Wayl is like the protagonist in Impressions of Africa. He's like the people in the novels of Raymond Roussel generally. He's like Roussel himself. Roussel as a writer was really an amateur. He was an amateur in other fields. I don't understand the question. The opening of The Conversions  is a very loaded sentence. There isn't an explanation. There's no hidden meaning.

AL: I thought that there was a problem here, that this phrase was some known designation of the past.

HM: It's sort of like a 19th century figure. There's nothing realistic about it, in The Conversions

AL: The Way Home  is a book published by The Grenfell Press (Leslie Miller). You collaborated on this book with the artist, Trevor Winkfield. Your short story is there next to photoengravings by Winkfield. More and more recently I have seen these editions coming out with artists and writers collaborating.

HM: They have been doing this for a long time. It's become profitable now. Speculators have now entered the market, so there is a market for it. More than there was at one time, thirty years ago. Then, even poets like John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara were doing books with painters.

AL: What is an average day like for you now?

HM: I get up around eight, and have breakfast. I usually read part of The Economist, or if I've finished that, I usually read part of a book of contemporary history. I work from about nine till one in the afternoon, till lunch. That is my goal. And after lunch, I may work again. There's usually a lot of things that arrive in the mail that need attending to. This week I've been spending an half an hour in the afternoon proofreading the copyedited text of a bunch of critical essays. There are things like that. I schedule myself, but I don't always keep to the schedule. That is the only way I get anything done. When the work is all done I usually play the piano for an hour. It's fun and games from then on. In Paris, I'm usually with my wife. We talk, read, or go out. It depends. It's the social part of the day. My days are pretty much alone, except for lunch with Marie.

AL: So you've been married to Marie Chaix, also a writer, for quite
a while now.

HM: For thirteen years.

AL: And she stays in Paris when you come to New York?

HM: She comes with me when she can, but she has a daughter who is still in high school.

AL: You have a new novel on the way?

HM: It's called The Journalist. Immeasurable Distances, a book of critical essays will come out in December 1991, published by The Lapis Press.


November 1989

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