2007_04_01_archive

A book of beginnings

Against all inclination, I began to read a thriller. The book just

happened to be there, offering itself. The packaging is classic: a

compact paperback with the starkly-worded title raised in gold

lettering against a foreboding image. I had no expectations at all and

it began well. The main character was introduced in crisp prose with a

wonderful pulse. I learned of his mundanely pleasant life, his

mysterious girlfriend and the suggestion of a dark cloud waiting to

float over and block out the sunlight. No trouble. I've read many

infinitely worse "literary" novels. Yet it was here that I put the

book down. Now that a world had opened up, I wanted more. I wanted the

whole book to be like this; a book of beginnings, sunlight ahead, and

I knew that was not going to happen. That dark cloud scuttled over

soon enough. That's why, I think, to take a recent example, I love to

re-read Peter Handke's Repetition (seventh time in progress) and have

been enjoying his No-man's Bay marathon. These books are full of

beginnings, full of fresh air and sunlight. By contrast, the thriller

felt like a noose tightening around the neck. Death is also escapism I

suppose.

at 9:32 PM 7 comments

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Please contact me, Stephen Mitchelmore, at steve dot mitchelmore at

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Literary and other links

* British Literary Blogs

* ReadySteadyBook blog

* Spurious

* Book Depository: Editor's Corner

* The Literary Saloon

* The Existence Machine

* The Reading Experience

* Scarecrow Comment

* Guardian Books Blog

* The Quarterly Conversation

* KCRW Bookworm

* BookForum

* wood s lot

* Mountain 7

* Todd Colby's Glee Farm

* Three per cent

* Tales from the Reading Room

* The Bibliophilic Blogger

* The Penguin Blog

* TLS: Peter Stothard

* Mary Beard

* Nomadics: Pierre Joris

* Lenin's Tomb

* Dispatches from Zembla

* Waggish

More literary blogs

* Jonathan Swift's Journal to Stella

* The Best of New Writing on the Web

* John Self's Asylum

* Anatomy of Melancholy

* The Truth About Lies

* Nigel Beale: Nota Bene

* Thomas McGonigle's ABC of Reading

* Vertigo: Collecting WG Sebald

* Un Arbre dans la Ville

* The Wooden Spoon

* The Joyful Knowing

* The Reader Onliine

* In Abstentia Out

* Jacob Russell's Barking Dog

* eNotes Book Blog

* Diderot's Diary

Book buying

* *Steve's Wishlist*

* The Book Depository - Cheap books and free delivery

* Booksprice - price comparisons

* Abebooks

Favoured author sites

* Maurice Blanchot

* Thomas Bernhard (German equivalent)

* Gabriel Josipovici

* Peter Handke (German equivalent)

* Princeton Dante Project

* Proust: Temps Perdu

* The Kafka Project

* Charlotte Mandell

* Noam Chomsky

* John Pilger

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