Kenward Elmslie - An extremely demanding work that makes Borges seem like a particularly easy stretch of I-80, precious but never slick (as Gass and Barth can be), a small feather in the lonely cap of that rarefied bunch who still believe the avant-garde can come up with something interesting to say

Kenward Elmslie, The Orchid Stories,  Doubleday, 1973.                        


www.kenwardelmslie.com/


A classic work of American fiction and a masterpiece of eccentric detail.
Praised by John Ashbery as evoking “a rococo world of banality and nightmare which . . . comes in the end to seem like paradise.“ The Orchid Stories presents us with interwoven stories as delicate and exquisite as the flowers for which they’re named, conveying an almost otherworldly beauty. Images, moods, and characters recur with the clarity of a dream: Phil, the little boy gigolo; Mummers and Mummy, who “adopt” him; the alluring Diana Vienna; and the eccentric Dr. Schmidlapp, who plans to capture the rare “Native Innards” orchid precisely at the stroke of midnight.






“A various, campy, never-tiring display of verbal skyrockets and sweet, soap opera dilemmas, Elmslie’s oeuvre makes for joyous reading.” - Publishers Weekly



“It is easy to understand why someone would want to celebrate Mr. Elmslie.” (The New York Times)

“Kenward Elmslie is one of the unforgettable writers of our time. It is as though Burroughs’ permanent apocalypse were being observed by someone else: not a closet Savonarola, but someone motivated by the humor, sensuality, and joie de vivre of an O’Hara. . . .The world may be an industrial swamp, but Elmslie’s dazzling one-step ahead induction of it is a cause for rejoicing and even joy.” - John Ashbery


A strange, rather incomprehensible, collection of stories, odes and assorted phantasmagoria with a recurring ""orchid"" motif, apparently symbolizing something more than flowers to the chichi group of world travelers and sanitarium dwellers with whom the narrator more or less intermittently hangs around. You'll find Bubbers/Mummers, ""Rounding The Leaf,"" Dr. Schmidlapp who is interested in the ""interrelationships between air, weather, family ties, dreams, and 'breath pulse,'"" the Holy City Geography Book, the Blue Institute which studies links between laughter and history, assigning sex more guidance sheets as physical therapy -- all of this forms a coherent aesthetic whole whose content is nonetheless inexplicable and unanalyzable in the usual sense. An extremely demanding work that makes Borges seem like a particularly easy stretch of I-80, precious but never slick (as Gass and Barth can be), a small feather in the lonely cap of that rarefied bunch who still believe the avant-garde can come up with something interesting to say. - Kirkus




Upcoming Song Cave book to celebrate: A reissue of Kenward Elmslie’s  The Orchid Stories, first published in the early 1970s by The Paris Review. It’s hard to imagine them featuring this sort of formally experimental and seriously playful prose now. A marvelous one-of-a-kind whatsit. - Jeff Jackson


Before I ever experienced the obsessive delights of Raymond Roussel, the microfictions of Robert Walser, the skull-lifting novels of Flann O’Brien, or the doll-worlds of Guy Davenport, there was Kenward Elmslie. Because it was his book, Orchid Stories, that first allowed me to imagine my own possibilities as a narrative writer. True, I’d read Djuna Barnes and Beckett, so I should have gotten the message, but somehow hadn’t, maybe because back in 1974, I was still writing poetry (I did that for a long time), and was mostly focused on an extended argument with myself over irony and earnestness.
But Elmslie’s stories ignored all such questions, and the paragraph that follows, from a story called “Streetcar” marks the exact spot where, on a day nearly forty years ago, I actually felt an internal switch flip on:
Whole days passed when I rarely left my room. Friday night, I could barely sleep so involved was I in my Saturday excursion to see Dog Roots. I rehearsed getting in the streetcar in my mind’s eye—the steps, reaching in my coat pocket for the three pennies, saying hi to the uniformed traffic watcher. In point of fact, a new traffic watcher was sitting in the green booth beside the curtained conductor. A bunch of loud women got on, wearing minks and orchids. A bony girl in her teens with steel-rimmed spectacles and braces on her teeth accompanied them. In one hand, she held a pink noisemaker, and on the lapel of her white velvet break-away coat, a blue-and-gray orchid was pinned. I stared at it so relentlessly, she tossed it to me, with studied nonchalance. Her party got off at the next stop, opposite the Health Museum.

Kenward Elmslie

What was it about this single passage that changed my world, even though I didn’t know it at the time? Could it have been the vision of a movie called Dog Roots? The mysterious encounter with the teen? All those orchids? The looming presence of the Health Museum? To this day, I have no idea, but I remember at that moment I felt giddy, maybe to see a story that was unfettered both from “natural” details and “artfulness”.  What was that particular story about? What were any of the stories in that collection about? Even looking at them now, I can’t say, although if pressed, I guess I would answer that their true subject was play.
And maybe that isn’t surprising, because Kenward, who I came to know later, turned out not to be a storywriter at all, but primarily a poet, librettist, and graphic-novel precursor, collaborating with, among others, Joe Brainard and Donna Dennis. And what made The Orchid Stories so freeing, I think, was that unlike Beckett or Barnes, what was missing from Elmslie’s fiction was a sense of intentionality, or supposed purpose. It just happened and was interesting in and of itself, without needing to dominate a reader. Of course, that modesty of presence may also explain why his book isn’t more widely read, but for me, opening those pages was like the morning when, still a kid, I arrived from the pinched and greasy Midwest to see the Pacific Ocean for the very first time, shimmering and boundless, then waded in and, without any place at all to go to, swam. - Jim Krusoe





Kenward Elmslie, Nite Soil, Granary Books, 2000.                   




Kenward Elmslie's way with words cuts a singular swath through a polymath variety of forms. Jukebox hitlet sung by Nat King Cole. Ahead-of-their-time lingo works: The Champ, poem, City Junket, play. Balloons for cartoons by Joe Brainard. Pureed anthropological tales of fantasy drinking establishments: 26 Bars. Quirky surreal poetry mosaics (Routine Disruptions) that prompted Michael Silverblatt, host of NPR's "Book Worm," to finger Kenward as "Hands down, my favorite contemporary poet." Elmslie's verbal swath includes The Grass Harp (Broadway cult-fave musical) and, annum 2000, Postcards on Parade, composed by Steven Taylor, a concept musical that deconstructs musicals. Plus Cyberspace, tech poem enhanced by Trevor Winkfield visuals. The wrap: Nite Soil introduces Kenward, poet of dense stanzas, to Elmslie, outed collagist of resonant icons.



Kenward Elmslie, Cyberspace: Poetry by Kenward Elmslie & Art by Trevor Winkfield, Granary Books, 2000. 


Combining Kenward Elmslie's wild singsong verbal fireworks with Trevor Winkfield's unhinged heraldic Pop cubism, "Cyberspace" celebrates the bafflement, jargon and information deluge of the internet.



Kenward Elmslie, Routine Disruptions, Coffee House Press, 1998. 


This long awaited "selected" presents the full range of Elmslie's inventive, vulnerable, lyrical and autobiographical work.

CONTEMPLATING writing this review of Routine Disruptions: Selected Poems & Lyrics by Kenward Elmslie -- an excellent collection -- I've been unable to dislodge a picture from my mind. It is of Elmslie during a reading several years ago, with a large "hat" on, made by an artist, that used as its primary image a large brassiere. A man reading poetry with a brassiere on his head! This is an icon, for me, of Elmslie's work, its wild funniness, theatricality, brazenness, its love of art and objects. Cleanly designed strange or beautiful objects, as in poems, as poems, words as objects, but . . . this is not a doctrine, and the face below the bra-hat, Kenward Elmslie's pleased bemused own, never disappears.       Disruptions, as the title says, things never being the way they're supposed to be, stories never turning out the way they're supposed to. Upset expectations. Gender upsets, but isn't the idea of "gender" rather mild compared to the wearing of this hat? It isn't gender, it's the gratuity of everything we participate in, as invented, e.g. the wearing of hats; it's also the gratuity of life's real givens, its natural forms -- heads and breasts are weird. Elmslie has never done what he was supposed to, and after the nearly forty years this book represents, his poetry can be seen to be unique. You do keep reading the poems, not because they're part of an ongoing discussion as to What Poetry Should Be Right Now, but because they continue to be unpredictable and unlike (other poetry) and lifelike (weird, patterned, tender.)       Much of Elmslie's work has been in the form of librettos and lyrics, words for songs. Thus two things might be mentioned: a sense of a poem as not so much a drama as a small theater, with a stage to be enlivened, and a sound/metric influenced by popular song (as well as by something Beat-poetry-like, in that use of the articleless pronounless word pileup characteristic of people born in the 20s.)       When I say an Elmslie poem may be theatrical I mean that people, objects, and words themselves often seem to be onstage or perhaps on a psychic stage, lit in any of the varieties of stage lightings, not just spotlit. The poet makes a speech, or the poet is in a setting, or the poet himself isn't the poem this time; but there is a distance involved, which isn't impersonal but full of regard -- looking -- and the desire to make something happen. What happens emerges from the singular imagination of Elmslie, or out of words themselves coming alive and making things happen:

and I've been traveling ever since, so let's go find an open glade, like the ones in sporting prints, (betrayed, delayed, afraid) where we'll lie among the air-plants in a perfect amphitheater in a soft pink afterglow. How those handsome birds can prance, ah . . . unattainable tableau. Let's scratch the ground clean, remove all stones and trash, I mean open dance-halls in the forest, I mean where the earth's packed smooth and hard.Crash. It's the Tale of the Creation. The whip cracks. (from "Feathered Dancers")

 

Ché is so trusting re "Truth and Consequences." Too Yanquified. He has dreams of pressing flesh with Nixon in native village. They go in one, light toke, just sit there. Pow! Nixon is converted! He brings the brass, light toke. They're converted! Big Ten Day Speech to the U.S.A. Must stop "exploiting" etc. Impeached, natch. Chaos! Village? Corpse smoke rises from distant chimney. Bumblebees crawling around the empty Bumblebee tuna can. (from "Tropicalism") Kinky gentry into ransom crud used up. Holding our own in flustery weather used up. Many restful oases here in Hat City, same old snappy salutes at the roadblocks where om-like hum of shoot-out traffic of scant interest to us fine-eared hold-outs, honed to love outcries in the painted desert, shrieks from humanoid wind tunnels. (from "Communications Equipment")

Notice how the references to Che and Nixon have not dated; persons and things in such a "light" are not in time. As for the song-like metric, I can hear it throughout the book. Further I find it hard to distinguish "songs" from "poems", since Elmslie has achieved the Campionesque feat of writing songs which are also exactly poems on the page; they often have fancy, page-oriented layouts. "Bio" is classified as a "poem song" in the "Poem Songs" section:

Never saw "action" ransacked my dance act Came up with a nance act Trek aids Sped up the decades Loved ones Re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reruns

On the page it looks a bit like concrete poetry. "Girl Machine," which was also set to music, looks a lot like concrete poetry. A more "ordinary" song like "Brazil" (with the refrain "No extradition! Nya Nya Nya Nya Nya . . .") which is included in a section entitled "Song Lyrics I," displays the repetitions that song ordinarily includes and which permeate Elmslie's works called "poems."       A work called "Kitchen," which is ostensibly a prose poem and which is composed of paragraphs designed to accompany black-and-white artwork by Joe Brainard, also sounds like an Elmslie song:

The faucetry demo has 4 4x4s. Subtexts. Food Love. It's a Moviola. Sex Love. Paired up like wed. Money Love. Moviola. ?eat? TV gameshow veer, Vanna batwings on rollerskates, humps the pristine blanks. Lingo frottage. Th, tirechain, on wintry country lane, her first diphthong. Th. Th. Th. Death Love, you big lummox! Th. Th. Death Love Moviola 4x4.

Experience becomes songlike, also patterned, both at once, aural and visual; though one of Elmslie's poem titles, "Visual Radios", also suggests the overall effect of his works. Something you hear and see but finally you hear more than see, because that's what poetry's like, it occurs between words where their sounds meet. A songwriter usually works on the premise that the "music" takes care of the between-words part; a poet can't. Elmslie is a poet in both forms, poetry and lyrics. As for the Elmslie narrative, here is the plot summary of a poem called "Japanese City." It is Melville's centennial so there is an appropriate celebration in that priests (!) release whale balloons, there are whale floats etc. (Where are we?) "I" is in a hotel room and phones room service for ice water. There are cattle in the streets. (Cattle?) A Mexican seamstress keeps bringing I's clothes to him because he sweats a lot. (Is he in Mexico?) She tells him about some green caves which are cool. Description of the "other travelers'" hairs around the washbasin, what these hairs smell like. (Hairs? Hairs' smells?) Suddenly Jim the Salesman and his friends are massaging I's feet. Jim plays a card game and there is reference to (is it the card game?) red even numbers and green even numbers (no odd numbers) and their associations (!). Talk. About fish hatcheries and a disease one contracts from working in them called "the gills" (!). Ice water. Speculations about the evening. More Melville celebration. Jim and his friends leave.       What does this tropical story have to do with the title, which refers to a very large construction by Joe Brainard, called "Japanese City," that fell apart after approximately two years? I'm not sure. Elmslie never spells out his connections; they aren't really bizarre but are unexpected because of lack of conventional transition:

but mine, how perverse! Form a hoop, you there. Mine, mine smell like old apples in a drawer. Jim the Salesman and his cohorts are massaging my feet: a real treadmill example.

The "mine" refers to the hairs around the washbasin, and it's quite possible that the earlier word "washbasin" has triggered the words "Jim the Salesman" and that's how Jim gets to be there, and so suddenly, for that's the first mention of him, mid-line as if we must have expected it. In an Elmslie fiction I can never figure out how much to "believe," I mean was Elmslie once, at least, in a room in, say, Mexico? I don't know. I like not knowing. Why? I don't know. And not knowing feels more profound than knowing.

Behind all this invention the personal Kenward looms and he sometimes shows himself quite nakedly. Works that relate to Joe Brainard, Elmslie's long-time lover, partner, collaborator until Brainard's death in 1994, are especially revelatory.       Elmslie's "One Hundred I Remembers," inspired by Brainard's book-length work, is extraordinary even though he didn't invent the form (any good form can be reused, that's what it's for.)

I Remember my father, in the middle of the night, waking me up to tell me my mother had died. The last thing she told him, so he said, was Be Kind. For a long time this stuck in my mind, as if it were an admonition of gigantic importance that applied to me too. I Remember shitting, and very tiny gold balls began racing around the blue linoleum bathroom floor. Then suddenly they stopped and vanished. I never saw them again, much to my relief, for there was no "rational explanation" for them.

"Bare Bones," an account of Elmslie's life with Brainard, is what the title implies, a plain honest narrative, but also it implies the physical starkness of death from AIDS, described with a tact equal to Brainard's own. "Bare Bones" is preceded here by the violent "Champ Dust", quite a contrast. They are the two longest pieces in the last section, "Poems 1991-98" and make it a very powerful section. Such power implies future promise, even with sorrow around and even after so many years. The last poem in the book is called "Happy Re-Returns" and ends in a deeply satisfying insouciance:

Me, um, no deadbeat despite laughing stock enjambments. I did pay for my own sieve hoax, traumatized awful, by La Boo. Diaphanous Frenchie swamp goo-goo Gods curl me up fatal. Die alone. Orphan fate, whomped. I meant: curl me up fetal. How to downsize as co-waifs. Swing and sway and we'll do OK, Light years apart. Inches away -- the schtick of eons, Afflatus deconstructed. Postmoderns, besnouted, gaze at us. Rest in peace, shitheads. Springtime births great bone decor.

- Alice Notley





Kenward Elmslie, The Champ, The Figures, 1994.                          




Poetry. Illustrated by Joe Brainard. THE CHAMP (originally published in 1968) is back for a new generation of readers who will swim with delight in the Elmslie ocean. THE CHAMP explores the mysteries of dailiness in all its beauty ('He wept wetting the apple') and terror ('A black curtain removed the hair of the champ/pretending to be the wind'). And the mysteries are never revealed but amplified by Joe Brainard's lucid flowers, chimps, pendants, cigarettes, boys, toys, and tangled weeds--the perfect one-handed accompaniment to Kenward Elmslie's opaquely glowing language. But beware! THE CHAMP--a collaborative classic of alternative letters--still doesn't behave. It's alive and exuberant. Savor it!"--Maxine Chernoff.





Kenward Elmslie, Moving Right Along, Z Press, 1980.              


"One of the zaniest 'post-moderns' writing. His use of language, particularly the various jargons of popular culture, is startlingly unique and technically extravagant"-Michael Lally, Book World, Washington Post.







Kenward Elmslie, Tropicalism (Unmuzzled ox), Z Press, 1975.                       






"One is reminded, not unflatteringly, of Frank O'Hara. His poems find their strength in their uncanny directness, as the poet applies subtle force to allow his opinions full impact. A mellow and yet strong 'voice'." - Stephen Bett







Kenward Elmslie, Motor Disturbance, Columbia University Press, 1972.

SNIPPETS By Kenward Elmslie and Trevor Winkfield                                  this limited edition is available exclusively through Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Snippets is Elmslie's second collaborative work with artist Trevor Winkfield, co-creator of Cyberspace.

	BLAST FROM THE PAST By Kenward Elmslie  "Hands down, my favorite contemporary poet." -Michael Silverblatt Host
	BLAST FROM THE PAST COLLAGES By Kenward Elmslie
	SPILLED BEANS A CONVERSATION By Kenward Elmslie and Mary Kite Drawings by Joe Brainard

Kenward Elmslie in conversation with Kristin Prevallet

Christine Henseler - This book applies models that reflect the fluid, mediated, hybrid, and nomadic global scenes within which Generation X artists and writers live, think, and work in Spain

Christine Henseler, Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
read it at Google Books


www.christinehenseler.com/



This book applies models that reflect the fluid, mediated, hybrid, and nomadic global scenes within which Generation X artists and writers live, think, and work in Spain. Henseler touches on critical insights in comparative media studies, cultural studies, and social theory, and conveys the nuances of multiple voices, facts, figures, and faces.

“This thoroughly engaging and highly original study not only sheds new light on contemporary Spanish literature and Spanish cultural studies, it proposes new and exciting ways of studying literature in the twenty-first century. Henseler adapts some of the devices used in the texts themselves to her own writing, providing a thought-provoking, multidisciplinary, and revitalizing approach. In an open (sometimes literal) dialogue with a wide-range of disciplines, the book demonstrates the remarkable impact that Spanish and global popular culture (from pop art to music videos), film, modern technology, and new media have had in the Spanish literary production of the democratic period. The book and its author are set to become essential references in every study of contemporary Spanish literature.”—Santiago Fouz-Hernández


“This is a book that not only uses interdisciplinary and intelligent tools of literary analysis appropriate of the twenty-first century, but also proposes new paths and leads to brilliant findings. A book that, most certainly, will become an international reference on the study of new Spanish narrative.”—Agustín Fernández Mallo


“In a time where some readers (and also some critics) in Spain are beleaguered by the latest changes in narrative, Henseler brings us new theoretical tools to achieve a better understanding of a prose profoundly sown with scientific, philosophic, artistic, and afterpop references. Henseler’s work shows an alternative, savvy, and compelling vision of contemporary Spanish literature. Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age is of utmost importance in the study of the relations between literature and social behaviors in Spanish contemporary narratives.”—Vicente Luis Mora


 “The big paradox is that American scholars seem to read and know more about Spanish fiction than most Spanish writers and critics. Once more, Christine Henseler sheds her bright light on us!”—Gabriela Bustelo

An Overview of the Book’s Nodes

1                                  Tales of Generation X
Noticing Generation X, 1950–70
The Brat-Packers, 1970–80
Generation X of the 1990s
Left Between the Blank: Tales of Generation X

2                                  Punked Out and Smelling Like Afterpop
 La Movida and Generation X
 Punk’s Dictum to “Tell It Like It Is”
From Avant-Pop to Afterpop
Historias del Kronen by José Angel Mañas, Afterpop

3                                  Generation MTV
The Rise of MTV
MTV Aesthetics and Generation X Fiction
Setting the Scene: Reading Music Video Clips
What Is Video Clip Literature?: Héroes by Ray Loriga

4                                  From MTV to The Real World of Generation X Fiction
“Reality-Based” Television
On the Road with Generation X
Generation X: A Postdocumentary “Realist Project”
The Real World of Big Brother in Veo veo by Gabriela Bustelo

5                                  From Generation X to the Mutantes
“X” Mutations
 Material Mutations
Rules of the Game
The Video Game Ático by Gabi Martínez

6                                  Generation X and the Mutantes, A Mash-Up

Mallo’s Punk Remake and Spam Poetics
Blank Mutations in Error
Avant-pop in the Digital Age
Mashing Nocilla Dream by Agustín Fernández Mallo

CONCLUSION
Generation X Remixed: A Conversation
Back to Ground Zero
From Analog to Digital Literary Criticism

Imagine a book that provides a detailed account of the fiction by so-called Generation X writers and post-Generation Xers (my term, not Henseler's) while at the same time giving you a hands-on feel for the porous, interactive aesthetics in which the writers engaged. Spanish Fiction of the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed is such a book. Christine Henseler's imaginative, collaborative, remixed text assays a new kind of literary criticism in which the scholar participates in an ongoing dialogue with other scholars, with the fiction writers, and with herself. Henseler includes sidebars (in shaded boxes) on nearly every page that contain responses to her ideas from other critics and from the authors she analyzes, as well as pertinent material from and links to the Internet. This practice upends typical academic quotations, which are filtered through the author's viewpoint to bolster an  argument. Henseler's discussion exists on the same plane as comments by others without reducing them to a single point of view. It is perhaps the closest one could come in the traditional print media to an interactive chat room, simulating what some writers attempted to achieve in their fiction: "it is through non-traditional means such as blogs, literary magazines, videos, or fanzines that Mutantes must insert their critical voices and break down barriers between authors, readers, and critics" (Henseler 152).
                Amazingly, Henseler accomplishes this feat without sacrificing sound scholarship. Spanish Fiction of the Digital Age is exceptionally well researched. Henseler knows the primary literature (not only in Spanish but in other languages--particularly English and German), the secondary literature, and a great deal about the media (MTV, video games, the Internet, and reality TV) that underpin the aesthetics of a sector of recent Spanish fiction. She cites all the significant bibliography on Generation X, such as Cristina Moreiras Menor's Cultura herida: Literatura y cine en la España democrática, whose final chapter is devoted to the phenomenon, Carmen Urioste's Novela y sociedad en la España contemporánea (1994-2009), which covers the same period from a more socio-political perspective, and the seminal articles included in Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture that Henseler edited with Randolph Pope. Henseler's own approach is more akin to Eva Martínez Navarro's La novela de la Generación X, which "examined the role of television, video, and music on Gen X novels' themes, structures, and parameters" (Henseler 3).
              Henseler's interpretation of Spanish fiction in the digital age draws on these sources, but she deepens our understanding of how new technological media function and how writers with similar experiences with this media differ significantly in their literary appropriation of it. She makes an important distinction between "early" Generation X writers, like José Ángel Mañas and Ray Loriga, the so-called "dirty realists" who focus on drugs and rock and roll, and a later group, for which she suggests several names:  "the 'Nocilla Generation' based on Agustín Fernández Mallo's trilogy Nocilla Dream (2006), Nocilla Experience (2007), and Nocilla Lab (2009); the "After-Pops," in line with Eloy Fernández Porta's much acclaimed critical work in After-Pop: la literatura de la implosión mediática (2007); and the term [she] prefer[s], the "Mutantes," as best expressed in the short story volume Mutantes: Narrativa española de última generación (2007), coedited by Juan Francisco Ferré and Julio Ortega" (8). The latter are more cosmopolitan and project a less pessimistic view of life and media than the earlier writers.
              The book is divided into six chapters that follow a chronological format. Most center on a particular media phenomenon with an in-depth analysis of one work that exemplifies it. Chapter one surveys the history of the term Generation X. Chapter two focuses on the background to José Ángel Mañas's (by most accounts) watershed Historias del Kronen, including La Movida, Punk, and Avant-Pop, to conclude that Historias is Afterpop. Chapter three provides a comprehensive history of the rise of MTV and a detailed analysis of Ray Loriga's Héroes as an example of video-clip literature. Chapter four concerns the impact of reality-based television as exemplified in Gabriela Bustelo's Veo, veo. The Mutantes and video games, represented by Gabi Martínez's Ático, are chapter five's topic. The mash-up aesthetics of Agustín Fernández Mallo's Nocilla Dream occupy much of chapter six.
              In sum, this is a ground-breaking book. Its format, which simulates, assimilates, and remixes new technological media is fresh and innovative, and its content is a compelling, nuanced reassessment of recent Spanish fiction. Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age is playful and serious, informative and provocative--a delightful and instructive read. - Roberta Johnson


 "Generation X" in Spain moves through two waves. The first one takes place during the 1980s and 1990s, and the second one in the twenty-first century. The authors of the second wave are called "Mutantes" and more information about this group can be found in Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed, by Christine Henseler.

"Spanish “Generation X” writers include a particular base group, or first wave, of writers publishing in the early to mid- 1990s, including the well-known names of José Angel Mañas, Ray Loriga, Benjamín Prado, Lucía Etxebarria, and Gabriela Bustelo. Although these writers have publicly rejected the term (as most Generation X’ers do), it is important to note that they do not just fit into the demographic, but their rejection of being categorized as a literary group in itself points to a GenX consciousness. These authors fit perfectly into the GenX demographic: they were born between 1962 and 1977 and began to publish in the early 1990s. Their lives were defined by socially improved conditions and both the men and women have high levels of education and have worked in a variety of professions. These writers were and are still active in the music industry, visual arts and television, as actors, and film and television directors. They consume movies, television, computer games, and music from around the world. They are multilingual and have lived and traveled abroad, often for long periods of time. They are the first generation to grow up fully immersed in technology. Their worldview was shaped by MTV when its repertoire consisted of 100% music video clips and when advertising became a source of entertainment rather than an interruption of it. Their lives were first determined by technologies that asked them to get up and change a channel, record a video, listen to a tape, or pick up the phone. Today, the first group of Spanish GenX writers’s comfort with technology displays itself readily in their web pages, their blogs, and their use of electronic mail.
              In this book I extend the “Generation X” label to a second group of writers who recently have been dubbed the “Nocilla Generation,” based on novelist Agustín Fernández Mallo’s trilogy Nocilla Dream (2006), Nocilla Experience (2007), and Nocilla Lab (2009). They have also been termed the “After-Pop” generation, in line with Eloy Fernández Porta’s much-acclaimed book After-Pop la literatura de la implosión mediática (2007).[i] These novelists still belong to the “Generation X” demographic. They were born in the 1960s and 1970s, although they are on average 5-10 years younger than the first cohort. The work of writers such as Juan Francisco Ferré (b. 1962), Andrés Neumann (b. 1977), Jorge Carrión (b. 1976), or Mercedes Cebrián (b. 1971), is less minimalist and colloquial in style; it includes less references to the world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and it presents less of a disenchanted and nihilist worldview than their forerunners. Their work suggests a maturation of the GenX perspective, one in which cynicism has paved the way for a more more well defined presentation of self and a more conscious engagement with technology." - Excerpt from Spanish Fiction in the Digital Age: Generation X Remixed

Generation X in Spain

Christine Henseler, Generation X Goes Global: Mapping a Youth Culture in Motion, Routledge, 2012.
read it at Google Books


This edited volume is the first book of its kind to engage critics’ understanding of Generation X as a global phenomenon. Citing case studies from around the world, the research collected here broadens the picture of Generation X as a demographic and a worldview. The book traces the global and local flows that determine the identity of each country’s youth from the 1970s to today. Bringing together twenty scholars working on fifteen different countries and residing in eight different nations, this book present a community of diverse disciplinary voices. Contributors explore the converging properties of "Generation X" through the fields of literature, media studies, youth culture, popular culture, sociology, philosophy, feminism, and political science. Their ideas also enter into conversation with fourteen other "textbox" contributors who address the question of "Who is Generation X" in other countries. Taken together, they present a highly interactive and open book format whose conversations extend to the reading public on the website www.generationxgoesglobal.com.


'This exciting collection of essays explores Generation X as a global phenomenon in an approach that combines literary, political, and cultural analysis. The result is a cutting-edge volume that offers a broad, international, and rich study of Generation X, making the book essential reading for anyone interested in new insights into Generation X and global views on youth culture.' – Sonia Baelo-Allué


'Recommended. Contributors successfully demonstrate that Generation X is the first "global generation," influenced by both domestic and international events at an unprecedented rate. It is noteworthy that as the book was compiled, each contributor had a chance to read what others wrote for the project and discuss their essays through the project's wiki site. As a result, each chapter is in conversation with the others, helping create a holistic perspective on the generation…[T]he book is an informative source for students and researchers of global youth culture.' –  Y. Kiuchi


Hybrid Storyspaces: Redefining the Critical Enterprise in Twenty-First Century Hispanic Literature
Co-edited with Debra Castillo (Cornell University)
Hispanic Issues On Line, 2012. (free access)

Generation X Rocks: Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture Co-edited with Randolph Pope (Univ. of Virginia).
Hispanic Issues. Vanderbilt University Press, 2007.

Contemporary Spanish Women's Narrative and the Publishing Industry Univ. of Illinois Press, 2003.

Market Matters: Literary Commodities and Exchanges in Hispanic Publishing The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. Volume 9, 2006. Co-editor Alejandro Herrero-Olaizola (Univ. of Michigan) 

En sus propias palabras: escritoras españolas ante el mercado literario Madrid: Ediciones Torremozas, 2003.

László Földényi's book, part history of the term melancholy and part analysis of the melancholic disposition, explores many centuries to explore melancholy’s ambiguities

László Földényi, Melancholy, Trans. by Tim Wilkinson, Yale University Press, 2016.

Alberto Manguel praises the Hungarian writer László Földényi as “one of the most brilliant essayists of our time.”  Földényi’s extraordinary Melancholy, with its profusion of literary, ecclesiastical, artistic, and historical insights, gives proof to such praise. His book, part history of the term melancholy and part analysis of the melancholic disposition, explores many centuries to explore melancholy’s ambiguities. Along the way Földényi discovers the unrecognized role melancholy may play as a source of energy and creativity in a well-examined life. 
Földényi begins with a tour of the history of the word melancholy, from ancient Greece to the medieval era, the Renaissance, and modern times. He finds the meaning of melancholy has always been ambiguous, even paradoxical. In our own times it may be regarded either as a psychic illness or a mood familiar to everyone. The author analyzes the complexities of melancholy and concludes that its dual nature reflects the inherent tension of birth and mortality. To understand the melancholic disposition is to find entry to some of the deepest questions one’s life. 
This distinguished translation brings Földényi’s work directly to English-language readers for the first time.

I very much like this book, it is one of my favorites of the year so far.  It resists being excerpted, as it is an old-style think piece in the style of Montaigne, or for that matter Robert Burton.  Every page is idea-rich and should be read carefully and slowly, and that is rare these days.  Here is just one bit:
Melancholics are prominent…precisely because they are too full of life; because of them, existence overflows itself.  This explains their unappeasable sense of absence: since they have left the world of moderation, overflowing is inconceivable without being emptied.  The universe is damaged in their person; hence, melancholics’ sense of being among the elect, but also their self-hatred to the point of self-annihilation.  That makes them strong and outstanding, but also exceedingly frail.  Their strength is infinite, because they have gained knowledge of the end, but they are unhappy, since having experienced the ephemeral nature of humans, they have lost their trust in existence.  Their strength and frailty, their unhappiness and their heroism, cannot be detached from each other.  This leads us back once again to the starting point of our argument, to the Aristotelian question “Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?”
Definitely recommended. - Tyler Cowen


What would an adequate vocabulary for speaking about loss look like? Answers — or, at any rate, more questions — are to be found in MELANCHOLY (Margellos World Republic of Letters, $35), a collection of essays by László Földényi, a Hungarian intellectual. “A collection of essays” — perhaps better to call it a collection of riddles. Földényi is a formidable, if at times oracular, writer, who is at home in paradox. (“Melancholia is, among other things, a consequence of the inadequacy of concepts; that inadequacy, however, is . . . the sort of thing without which concept formation is unimaginable” is a typical sentence.) His book is a wide-ranging history of the Western discourse on melancholy, beginning with Aristotle, who asked, “Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?”
In ancient Greece, melancholy was connected to secret rites. Initiates had a special kind of knowledge whose price was solitude. As Földényi puts it, “A person who possesses knowledge is isolated from people who do not.” In the Middle Ages, melancholics were considered sick and sinful; rather than trusting in God, they had gone to the devil. The rise of astrology in the late medieval period led to an evolution in how people wrote about melancholy. Since the planets were believed to affect everyone, melancholics could no longer be classified as ill in the Christian sense, as standing outside grace. Today we think of astrology as a practice of pure description that abdicates personal agency in favor of determinism, but ideas about the saturnine temperament helped people to think of themselves as responsible for their destinies. The power of the planets was ambiguous, and it could either “abolish” or “ennoble” melancholy. Fate could be struggled against, even made.
In medieval paintings, melancholics were usually depicted as sleeping, but from the fifteenth century on they were shown awake and thinking. We still imagine melancholics as people who see more than others while getting lost in rumination. (The idea that melancholics are not disposed to action is, relatively speaking, new; the Greek heroes Heracles, Bellerophon, and Ajax were all cast from the melancholy mold.) Melancholics are isolated, withdrawn from the authority of society and from God, and self-aware, in one sense chosen and in another sense condemned. (Self-determination, Földényi writes, is “a melancholic’s most tormenting problem.”) Throughout history they have been keenly aware of the tension between the infinitude of the soul and the finitude of mortal life:
On the one hand, everyone is a unique, irreplaceable, autonomous personality, but on the other hand, everyone is subject to the same destiny, a fate that pushes the personality toward a common death — do we need another reason for sorrow?
The origin of melancholy is in the self but also in the state of the world, which is broken beyond repair, and the resignation of the melancholic — her unwillingness to be comforted — raises the ire of the can-do, fix-everything bourgeois. Melancholy is political insofar as it expresses dissatisfaction with the status quo, but it has no program or goals. “If the melancholic were able to say what he dreaded . . . he would not be melancholic but ‘merely’ bad tempered.” Twentieth-century mainstream psychiatry demoted melancholy from an existential critique to an illness, but what’s really interesting is how melancholics understand sickness and death — not as external obstacles or interferences but as the fulfillment of life itself. Melancholics live in a kind of time warp. They have no future, only the coming of what will soon be past. - Christine Smallwood

Laszlo F. Foldenyi, Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in

Siberia and Bursts into Tears. Trans. by Ottilie

Mulzet, Yale University Press, 2020

An exemplary collection of work from one of the world’s leading scholars of intellectual history

“Földényi . . . stage[s] a broad metaphysical melodrama between opposites that he pursues throughout this fierce, provoking collection (expertly translated by Ottilie Mulzet). . . . He proves himself a brilliant interpreter of the dark underside of Enlightenment ambition.”—James Wood, New Yorker

László Földényi’s work, in the long tradition of public intellectual and cultural criticism, resonates with the writings of Montaigne, Walter Benjamin, and Thomas Mann. In this new essay collection, Földényi considers the continuing fallout from the collapse of religion, exploring how Enlightenment traditions have not replaced basic elements of previously held religious mythologies—neither their metaphysical completeness nor their comforting purpose. Realizing beautiful writing through empathy, imagination, fascination, and a fierce sense of justice, Földényi covers a wide range of topics including a meditation on the metaphysical unity of a sculpture group and an analysis of fear as a window into our relationship with time.

“It is precisely Földényi’s approachable style, as well as Ottilie Mulzet’s impeccable translation, that makes this collection easily accessible to scholars and casual readers alike.”—Barbara Halla, Asymptote

“A collection of essays on why contemporary culture would do well to embrace transcendence. . . . Perceptive meditations on humanity’s need for spiritual nourishment.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Beneath the surface it is single-minded in its pursuit of a certain category of insight . . . Perhaps [this] essay collection is arriving in our language at just the right time.”—Robert Minto, On the Seawall

“Földényi has a knack for sustaining readers’ interest through the musicality of his prose and the variety of his references.”—John Toren, Rain Taxi

“Földényi’s brilliant essay on Dostoyevsky reading Hegel is an essential meditation on history, civic responsibility and our ongoing responsibility towards others.”—Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

“It is a hallucinatory moment: Dostoyevsky, first condemned to death, then sent as a soldier to the endless emptiness of Siberia, where he reads Hegel’s thoughts about the abstract building of History, a building in which neither Siberia nor Africa can have a place, an unsentimental construction made of glass, with its holy ending the Weltgeist, in which all the personal suffering of mankind has disappeared. Laszlo Földenyi has written about this in such a way that you can feel the sacred shudder with him.”—Cees Nooteboom

 In this eclectic essay collection, art theory professor Földényi (Melancholy) takes readers on an elegant but hard-going philosophical tour. His main premise is that, ever since the 18th-century Enlightenment, humans have vainly tried to dispel the “darkness” and “inscrutability” that inevitably coexist with light and reason in the human condition. In the title essay, he finds humanity both outwardly self-satisfied and inwardly anxiety-ridden. In Földényi’s worldview, the irrationality that Enlightenment thinking seeks to repel always lurks in the shadow. In an analysis of Francisco Goya’s “The sleep of reason produces monsters,” Földényi concludes that though the etching’s sleeping figure might wake “to do battle” with the monsters surrounding him, he could just as easily arise from his “troubled dreams” transformed, like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, into a monster himself. Here, as elsewhere, Földényi shows a knack for making surprising connections between different works of art. However, though the marvelously evocative title may draw in casual literature fans, they are likely to lose interest after discovering the book is less concerned with the lives of famous writers than with Földényi’s own ruminations. This rather opaque treatise will be best appreciated by those just as well-steeped in European intellectual history as Földényi himself. - Publishers Weekly

A collection of essays on why contemporary culture would do well to embrace transcendence.

Hungarian cultural critic Földényi (Theory of Art/Univ. of Theatre, Film, and Television, Budapest; The Glance of the Medusa: The Physiognomy of Mysticism, 2018, etc.) gathers 13 pieces, published in earlier versions from 1995 to 2012, that examine the spiritual and metaphysical consequences of the Enlightenment. The author regrets the loss of mystery in contemporary life, “the feeling that there is something incomparably greater than my own self.” That sense of the ineffable, he asserts, was suppressed during the Enlightenment, which promoted the idea that “only time and intellectual preparation were required in order to cast light upon all things—with no dark corners remaining anywhere unilluminated by the light of reason.” In essays that consider a wide range of writers and artists, including Dostoyevsky, Rilke, Goethe, Artaud, William Blake, Mary Shelley, Goya, and many more, Földényi underscores the importance of the metaphysical and warns against seeing “the renunciation of transcendence as a victory.” We are surrounded by the enigma of our own existence: “Each human life,” the author writes, “emerges thanks to a fracture, a break” that plunges us from nonexistence into existence and throws us back again. In the title essay, the author imagines Dostoyevsky, exiled in Siberia, coming upon Hegel’s rationalistic philosophy of world history, which eliminated Siberia “as a setting for historical culture.” Exiled from the rest of Russia and now, by Hegel, from the progress of world history, Dostoyevsky responded at first with dismay. But gradually, he came to find new understanding—of himself, religion, and the Russian soul—far from “Hegelian repression.” Among Földényi’s essays on art, his consideration of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog stands out for its precise, lyrical prose and insights about art and science. Friedrich’s painting, the author argues, reflects the contradictory longing of German romantics to become eternally submerged in nature—or to turn around and “write rapturous interpretations of the absolute spirit embodied by that sea of fog.”

Perceptive meditations on humanity’s need for spiritual nourishment. - Kirkus

Craig Wallwork - Here, there are talking camels, and should you ever want to crawl back into the womb and begin a fresh, birth can be reversed. Wishes can be granted, ugly can be erased, and those without ardor or enthusiasm can be nymphomaniacs by pinning a photograph upon a wall

Craig Wallwork, Quintessence of Dust, Kuboa Press, 2012.
E-Book, FREE
craigwallwork.blogspot.hr/






Quintessence of Dust delivers a world where the Minotaur exists in modern society, drinks in bars and is scared of the dark. Where to lose memories and extract all the pain you’ve brought on others is easily achieved by pulling twine from your rectum. It is a world where the Devil is an old man digging a hole to Hell in his garden, and romance is nurtured by spearing an umbrella through the chest of a winged demon. Here, there are talking camels, and should you ever want to crawl back into the womb and begin a fresh, birth can be reversed. Wishes can be granted, ugly can be erased, and those without ardor or enthusiasm can be nymphomaniacs by pinning a photograph upon a wall. In this world the girth of a neck can bring on suicide, sleep can summon death and people can live within the inner ear canal of others. The streets are always crimson. People are broken. Lust is a commodity measured out in chocolate, and love is lost more than it is conquered.





Craig Wallwork, The Sound of Loneliness, Perfect Edge Books, 2013. 
read it at Google Books






Manchester in 1991 is a town suffering under the weight of high unemployment and massive government budgetary deficits that is plunging the UK into a recession. To Daniel Crabtree, a struggling writer, it is the backcloth to his first novel, one that will see him become a famous published author. Living off mostly water and flour, Daniel has embraced penury into his life under the mistaken belief that many young artists have: one needs to suffer for success in art. But Daniel is a terrible writer. In the three years since signing on the dole, of every morning chastising his Irish singing neighbour for waking him from his sleep, and scrounging food from his close friend Henry Soperton, Daniel Crabtree has produced one short story. His heart is bereft of words as much as his pockets are of money.
It is a story of love, and how a poor starving man chasing a dream came to the understanding that amidst the clamour of life, the sound of loneliness is the most deafening of all.


Set in Manchester, England in 1991, The Sound of Loneliness follows desolate narrator Daniel Crabtree from his dreary apartment, to drearier pubs, and back again. Although Daniel is ostensibly a writer, he has only completed a single short story thus far, and has dreams of making it big, though little ambition beyond charging his friend “in publishing” with getting someone interested in the story.
Living off his monthly unemployment checks, Daniel begs or borrows (and occasionally steals) everything, from food and drink to the shabby furnishings in his apartment. Too proud to admit to his family that he is a starving artist, he makes up grandiose tales of his success for both his mother and uncle’s benefit. Is he kidding himself, or does he really think that this one story will one day make a name for him?
It’s hard to tell, as Daniel often comes off as delusional, thanks to his overinflated ego. Despite the fact that he occasionally realizes how awful his writing is, he continues to rage against the publishing industry that rejects him, do the bare minimum to receive his monthly welfare checks, and otherwise continue his sad existence.
If this sounds like a tale you’ve heard before, you’re right. The UK apparently has thousands – perhaps millions – of these aspiring author types, living off the government, avoiding an honest day’s work, and seemingly in thrall to the falsehood that suffering and poverty make Great Art. What makes Craig Wallwork’s book different than the dime-a-dozen plot is that the author himself sees through this ruse, and shows his audience what suffering and poverty really bring. To wit: bitterness, hatred, a growling belly, growing insanity, debt, and the inability to change one’s position in life.
Oh, and let’s not forget the alcoholism, for it wouldn’t be a tale of soul-crushing poverty in the UK without the omnipresent pub!
Oddly enough, though I thoroughly detested Daniel Crabtree as a character, I found Wallwork’s book quite engaging. Perhaps it was the dreary day that lent an English air to my reading, requiring a hot cup of tea and a purring cat for accompaniment, but I found myself curious to see where this sad sack (Daniel, that is) would take me. Though Daniel is, indeed, a terrible writer (and would be a terrible human being, were he real), readers might take pleasure in seeing him so thoroughly thwarted by his sorry attempts at publishing. After all, if the cream rises to the top, there will always be the chunks of whey and assorted detritus to sink to the bottom. What of these would-be writers?
They are the Daniel Crabtrees of the world, persistently beating their own heads against the wall, perpetuating the sorry stereotype of the starving artist, who suffers humiliations for his art. And yet here we see that this humiliations are not really for art’s sake at all. They are merely the pride that goeth before the character’s fall. Is it still a tragedy when one’s tragic flaw is the belief that one is actually better than all of the fools he reads about in books?
Though The Sound of Loneliness is truly a portrait of a young man desperate to become an artist who will likely never succeed, and thus a rather dismal view for aspiring authors, it is perhaps a more realistic take on artistic dreams. After all, we cannot all go from rags to riches, à la J.K. Rowling. Some of us will fail. And what then? - Laura Roberts


You’re having dinner at a fancy restaurant. Suddenly, all conversation stops and cutlery ceases to plink against loaded dishes. Everyone is staring at a very elegant woman who just walked in and is making her way to an empty table. She’s the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen. Judging by the gaping mouths of both male and female patrons around you, the feeling is unanimous. She reaches the table and removes her coat in one swift motion. A few gasps are heard. The woman’s arms are covered with hideous track marks. The dichotomy is overwhelming, but you can’t stop looking at her. It’s as if her unsightly darkened veins make her simultaneously ugly and unique, flawed but more interesting. Instead of sitting down, the junkie belle climbs on top of the table, spits on it, and introduces herself: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Craig Wallwork’s prose.”
The Sound of Loneliness follows Daniel Crabtree, a struggling writer who dreams about becoming a famous published author. To do so, he has left the comfort of home and embraced hunger and poverty, which is not hard to come by in Machester, England, in the early ’90s. The thought of publishing to critical acclaim and becoming rich because of it consumes Daniel, but thinking about writing and writing are too very different things. So far, he has written one short story, and the feedback has not been encouraging. However, Daniel is convinced that it’s only a matter of time before he catapults to literary superstardom. While waiting for that to happen, he survives with the bit of money he gets from unemployment, most of which he spends on pints, and looks at everyone and everything around him with derision.
This novel is a must-read for various reasons. For starters, Wallwork’s prose is as dichotomous as the junkie belle. The writing here is brutally honest and raw, but also polished and wonderfully eloquent without being snobbish. Wallwork uses language as a weapon, but his intentions vary from page to page — sometimes you have to laugh at very uncomfortable situations, and others you have to cringe at the smell coming from a bucket full of human waste. Also, there is a strange rhythm to the emotions evoked in the narrative. The anger and self-loathing are almost always present, but there are flashes of love, obsession, humor, and compassion.
Although the elements mentioned above are enough to make The Sound of Loneliness a good novel, what makes it great is Daniel Crabtree, the hungry, irritated, delusional narrator who abhors the publishing industry. In Daniel, Wallwork managed to cram the protagonist and antagonist into a single character. Daniel is his own biggest fan and worst enemy. He’s convinced he’s one of the greatest living writers, but he also accepts his prose is awful. He writes letter to himself and takes the punishment he thinks will lead to success. Daniel is a self-absorbed, relentlessly bitter egomaniac with no redeeming qualities, but Wallwork somehow manages to make readers stick with him. When he’s mistaken for a pedophile and a fuming father steals his shoes, or when he has to solve a bad case of itchy pants at a funeral, readers shake their heads and laugh, but they also stay for the depression, frustration, and famine, always wondering what will come next.
Like other great novels, The Sound of Loneliness is, ultimately, about (not) writing. It is a gloomy, witty, funny, rough, and beautifully written account of a young man with empty pockets trying to be a writer. It’s also a fantastic read.  - Gabino Iglesias 


This is an unusual book in that it begins ostensibly as a comedy, full of over-the-top characters and equally extreme situations, but proceeds into deepening realism and genuine tragedy. The view of life that we are left with is profoundly pessimistic.
       Written by the author of the surreal short story Gutterball’s Labyrinth that appeared in the Solid Gold anthology (of which I was Editor), The Sound of Loneliness begins with the young narrator Daniel Crabtree leaving home for the first time to live the life of the proverbial ‘tortured-soul-in-the-garret’ and write his masterpiece. Seemingly talentless but unshakable in his self-belief, he rapidly descends into a life of total penury, barely surviving the days between the arrival of each Benefit Giro Cheque, bulking out his pathetic meals of ‘soup, rolled oats, beef stock, even water’ by the addition of flour, dreading the ear-shattering early-morning attempts at song of his Irish neighbour behind the paper-thin wall. He seeks escape in absurd fantasies, and alcohol bought with money that is equally imaginary. Pausing often to philosophise, he attempts to convince himself that his situation is redeemable, success is just around the corner. One of the ways he does this is by writing optimistic letters to himself, containing the good news that he longs to hear.
       This is familiar comic territory, and for quite some time what we get is not so much a developing narrative as a series of unconnected incidents in pubs, public parks and dole offices involving gross descriptions of bodily functions, the symptoms of poor diet and personal hygiene, poverty, disease and squalor. A character emerges with whom we are generally familiar, the self-important, self-pitying grand loser of modern comic fiction –Tom Sharpe’s Henry Wilt, Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole, Douglas Adams’ Ford Prefect.
       This protagonist however has a facility for lyrical prose, which he exercises at unexpected moments, such as when he describes Salford as ‘a city endlessly caught on the final stroke of midnight, where a misplaced glass slipper lost in haste suggested an unseen beauty existed, but all that remained in its place were the much uglier sisters.’
       The first two-thirds of the novel is genuinely witty and funny, if not particularly original, but as the story continues a number of much more serious threads emerge, including the death of an old uncle who lives alone, and the beginning of a close relationship between the twenty-something Daniel and Emma, a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, which stops short of becoming sexual and is handled with great sensitivity and insight. There follows for Daniel a move to a different city, an upturn in his fortunes, and a potentially happy marriage which fairly quickly turns sour. Realising that he has chosen the wrong life partner he sets out to find his now grown-up Emma once again.
       The story’s theme is the gap between what we ask from life and what we actually get, which is presented as a mighty gaping chasm that can never be bridged. I found it uncomfortably realistic. A sobering read. - David Gardiner

Daniel Crabtree exists in a council flat in Manchester in the early 1990’s.Forced by his own arrogance and delusions into poverty, he supplements sporadic and insignificant meals with floury drinks to stave off a constant insanity inducing hunger. A talentless writer, he believes himself worthy of literary success despite evidence to the contrary and an excruciating inability to get words from his head to the page.
Crabtree is a narcissistic loner who enjoys looking down on lesser people, deluding himself and others of his greatness. He is neither likeable nor easy to know, but he is an intriguing character and a fabulous reflection of the dark and dank society in which he lives.
As a writer, I empathised with his frustrations and the chronic self-doubt which stormed in to contradict an otherwise arrogant delusion of grandeur.
Craig Wallwork explores humanity in its surreal Sunday best and it’s grubby, often shitty downtrodden worst in The Sound of Loneliness – so be prepared to squirm in self-reflection occasionally – especially if you are a writer!
You will take from this book a fresh literary read, an appreciation for this talented author, and the cozy knowledge that your life is not this bleak – I hope! It will also give you a butt-kick to write and not procrastinate – something I appreciated!
Occasional typos popped up, but the majesty, eloquence and wit of language used erased any jarring these may have caused otherwise.
I loved this book. It’s not my usual genre, and I’d normally be disheartened reading about a protagonists I disliked, but now and then a blurb will strike me and throw me out of my comfort zone into something completely new, and this was one of those times. Of course, most of the time it’s a bad idea, though I always try to learn something from them. In contrast, Loneliness was a pleasure to read and a lesson in intense character exploration, and the simple pleasure and wonder of great prose.
Bravo! - Shah Wharton


I SUPPOSE YOU could imagine the Craig Wallwork novel, The Sound of Loneliness, as an uncomfortable cab ride complete with potholes, gridlock, and one-way streets going the wrong way. The shock absorbers are shot all to hell and the driver is smoking a cheap cigar. But as the reader, you have to sit back, ignore the meter, and try not to anticipate the destination. A cushy ride from point A to point B is not on the mind of Mr. Wallwork, but you’ll certainly find the trip worthwhile.
In the novel, Craig Wallwork paints a dreary landscape where the protagonist, a would be writer, struggles between ineptitude and delusion where he is never more than a bowl of soup away from being consumed by absolute destitution.

{

... a would be writer, struggles between ineptitude and delusion where he is never more than a bowl of soup away from being consumed by absolute destitution

}

The main character, Daniel, is a not an endearing creation. He is an angry, conceited, arrogant, and sometimes violent young man. He has the soul of an artist, but lacks the talent.
Living hand-to-mouth, always down to nothing, feverish, reeling dizzy from hunger, Wallwork’s narrator is part crank and part eccentric whose delusions of grandeur, and Holden Caulfield-like observations of the shortcomings of human nature seem to ensure his failure in a society he loathes. He is the victim as well as the architect of his own misfortunes—impulsively driving himself to indulge in the most offensive and inappropriate public behavior.
Mr. Wallwork gets it right as he sets it down in dirty, realistic style, with prose both simple and rich. In concise, economically crafted sentences, he keeps the spotlight on the main character, Daniel, as the other characters in the book come and go, acting primarily as foils for his disdain. Here, Wallwork truly explores human values through one confused young man's eyes. The deep hatred and bitterness that's the flip side of love is here in its most brutally tragic and truthful form. The author seems out to force readers to face these feelings in themselves, and sometimes it's so right on, it hurts.
The repulsive odors and grubby feel of various settings (Daniel’s cheap apartment somewhere in Manchester,UK, and Uncle Billy’s dank smelly dwelling) is damn near palpable. You’re afraid that if you poke at the page the blood will run and you’ll find yourself in an empty belly amidst gas bubbles and lumps of groaning entrails. Not many books bring you into such close physical contact with a character. Through the protagonist’s nostrils you will inhale his own noxious body odors. After reading a few chapters, you’ll probably find yourself craving some fresh air.
Wallwork manages to explore the psychological dimension of the main character as he records the whims and the most perverse quirks of his behavior. The indirect focus of this novel might be the one person who is not very often seen—the wielder of the hammer who has shaped the main character's personality. The reader might be left with the obvious question: “What is the sound of loneliness?” I think the answer might come in the final chapter of the book. I believe that it resides inside the scream that rises above the rows of white marble and black granite tombstones of an unkempt cemetery: “JUST ONCE, WOULD YOU BE A FATHER!”
In a writing world filled to overflowing with zombies, vampires, werewolves, wizards and a huge cast of other miscellaneous fantasy and horror creatures, reading a novel that comes from a real place is as fine as discovering lost money in an old coat pocket. Thank you Mr. Wallwork. - DB Cox

I said somewhere that after reading the first half of – Loneliness, it felt like I was experiencing my first real influence of 2013. Having just finished reading this fine story today that initial feeling still holds true.
I don’t really want to talk about the simple way Loneliness is written, in terms of sentence construction and word usage and how I always prefer reading stories written this way, but I guess I just have so that part of the review will have to remain.
We all get different things from a story, depending upon our own life experiences and I want to talk about the things I got from this story as both a reader and a writer. Okay, firstly, as a reader, I felt a connection with the story setting and characters. I was born and bred in North East England in the sixties, while this story is based in North West England in the nineties. Despite that, the author has captured and written part of my early life too. This tells me Loneliness has a great chance of longevity, it shouldn’t ever feel out of fashion, it will still feel relevant in twenty or more years’ time.
I recognised much about the way the characters live and behave as well as the humour that constantly runs through each page. If it wasn’t for the humour, you wouldn’t survive this sort of life. Loneliness had me smiling throughout, more so than feeling down and out. That’s testament to the author’s craft. Mr Wallwork certainly knows how to put across a distressing moment, without turning the reader off. And reading Daniel Crabtree’s story, it felt like I should really dislike this character, contrary to that feeling, I liked him a lot. He reminded me of Alex, in A Clockwork Orange, not because of the things he did and the life he led, but because of his voice. The way he described people and his naïve manner, despite the harsh life he lived, was archetypal Alex for me. If Daniel lived in another world, a Clockwork Orange world, I could see him becoming Alex.
As a reader, after finishing Loneliness, I wanted to read more Wallwork, so I was pleased to download Quintessence of Dust, a collection of short stories that the author states as being different to Sol – it’s got magical realism, surrealism, bizzaro and absurdity, he said.
As a writer, I wondered how much of Craig Wallwork was inside Dan Crabtree. Quoting Mr Wallwork, – Any author who tells you their protagonist is nothing like them is lying. We are all our creations…maybe more exaggerated versions, but nonetheless we are the father, the son and the holy-fucking-shit to our characters. I guess that tells us there is a lot of the author in the main protagonist. I like that.
I also like the way the story felt, like it was grounding me, giving me a sense of my own writing and how I needed to keep things real, despite the crazy circumstances I put my characters into. It’s important that the reader believes in the author’s characters, like I believed in all of the crazy characters in Sol. Being a relatively new writer, Sol also gave me a sense of how far I can take my own stories and the kind of things I can write about. Yeah, Sol has helped me to believe I can take my characters a little further on their paths towards a story end.
On a subconscious level, I think Sol is going to be an ever present influence when I’m writing and after I finished reading The Sound of Loneliness, as a writer, I wanted to sit down and write again. I think that is the best compliment I can give a writer.
Enough of me reviewing, I’ve got some serious writing to attend to, but thanks anyway Craig, I’ve found another book to place alongside those few I return to for inspiration and to read again.
- Eli Wilde


The words of William Blake are quoted at the beginning of this novel:

‘Dear mother, Dear mother, the Church is cold, but the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.’

It doesn’t take long to work out that this opening is very apt.

Daniel Crabtree is a barfly of sorts – more of a pubfly really.  The pubs he frequents don’t have any of the dramatic or romantic connotations that one often finds in American fiction, rather they are down to earth places where men hide out and hang out and do little of interest other than drink.

Crabtree is a writer.  He’s written one story – a short story which isn’t good enough to get into his local rag.  Fortunately, he has only a loathing for those who can’t see his genius and is convinced of his abilities as an author and imagines his future to involve literary awards and high praise.

In order to help his prospects, he moves out of his family home to live a life where a living is barely scraped together.  Hunger, he thinks, will be the carriage of his muse.

The thing about Crabtree is that he has a point in regard to his own talents.  When telling his own life story or having to invent tales on the spot to get out of tight spots he has a real ability to entertain.  The detail into which he goes is often a little further than one might want him to , but he relates events with a curious and honest perception as well as with a wonderful sense of dry humour.

He is full of tales about his drinking, illnesses, his tricks for making sure his benefits aren’t stopped, his miserable living conditions, his encounters with women, fellow drinkers and his description of Salford and they are all superb.  Episodes with his dying uncle had me laughing out loud and drawing unwanted attention on the train and there were many instances where I couldn’t believe that the words used had actually been written down (these are brave words completely unshackled by Politically Correctness, words which sometimes seem chosen to stick up two fingers at aspects of modern Britain).

It strikes me as appropriate that this was the book I was reading at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s death given that the novel is set in a post-Thatcherite world where there was a lot of polarisation in many different ways.

There was a time when I thought I’d celebrate the Iron Lady’s passing.  Thought I’d put on Costello’s ‘TrampThe Dirt Down’ and dance on an imagined grave.  Having lost my own mother last year, I can’t find it in me to feel good about it – I guess I’m getting old – but there’s a little happy bubble inside that I’m suppressing just now and it’s an act of suppression that Crabteree  just wouldn’t understand.

The snapshot that Wallwork offers of an ‘it’s grim up north (and in lots of other places)’ Manchester pre-regeneration is clear and crisp.  It certainly took me back.  I’d like to think that one of Thatcher’s legacies was to set in motion voices of protest and a whole gang of reactionaries who turned to creative outlets and ended up presenting us with such fine works as this.

In ‘The Sound Of Loneliness’ we have a well-written novel that has many strands and many strengths.  It’s a book that tells an interesting and entertaining story and that kept me engaged throughout.  It follows a series of excellent works from Craig Wallwork and, as I’ve said before, he’s a man to whom admirers of a whole range of fiction should be paying attention.  - nigelpbird.blogspot.hr/2013/04/the-words-of-william-blake-are-quoted.html

Rich word choice and writing style grabbed and held my interest from the first page!  I love words...parsimony, gormless, ameliorate, malodorous, lynched...you get the idea.  These rich sprinklings add to the story itself, contributing to the irony of Daniel Crabtree longing to be a successful writer.  "It is true that as September rolled in on the last of the warm breeze, I was dying, but not of starvation.  Death was an all-consuming lack of confidence."  Poor Daniel (his story, when rejected, was referred to as 'toilet fodder')...even the lady working at the unemployment office had a short story published in the Manchester Evening News.

     Dark humor, one of my favorite story elements, was also an integral part of Daniel's story. "Being around my father had afforded me compassion to the lonely and deprived.  From an early age, I had learnt that booze could centre a man when the world around him turned on an unsympathetic axis...One day my dream of being a professional boxer ended after the pub my father went in was converted to a Chinese takeaway [restaurant].  He walked in to the gym, put on my coat, and said, 'The Lord Giveth, son, and the Chinese take away.' "

     The Sound of Loneliness contains excellent use of simile and metaphor, which in my opinion, is integral to an intriguing novel.  When present in a story, precisely written and used appropriately, I get novel goosebumps (ooh, good pun).  Craig Wallwork wrote some true golden nuggets:

"Structures of varying size plagued the road like panhandlers and tortured dogs."

"...Salford was a city endlessly caught on the final stroke of midnight, where a misplaced glass slipper lost in haste suggested an unseen beauty existed, but all that remained in its place were the much uglier sisters."

"Though no gates or fences prohibited me from leaving this town to see if happiness lay beyond its boundaries, I was scared to go anywhere lest the dream was more depressing than the reality.  It is true to say I was tethered to these streets by some ethereal warden who delivered sermons on the unknown, and lectures on its dangers."

     I don't write 5-star reviews often.  This novel deserves 5 stars!  The Sound of Loneliness is touching, interesting, and entertaining.  It made me think of people I've come across in my life who resembled Daniel's thought processes.  Have you ever met someone like Daniel Crabtree? - Beth DiIorio

Stick this book straight in with Walter Greenwood's classic Salford novel, Love On The Dole. Except that this beautifully depressing story, set in early 90s Salford, isn't so much about state repression and poverty, it's about state of mind, and poverty of opportunity on the streets, and in the pubs and towerblocks surrounding the Precinct.

The novel's anti-hero, Daniel Crabtree, is sure he's a top short story writer, which, in his head, sets him above and apart from those who populate the local area… "I consider myself a biographer of life" he tells his Uncle Billy.

And his `biography of life' isn't the kindest towards Salford people. The women? "More miserable than the buildings…I once dreamt that all the pretty girls were driven out of Pendleton by a piper in coloured clothes…Salford was a city endlessly caught on the final stroke of midnight, where a misplaced glass slipper lost in haste suggested an unseen beauty existed, but all that remained in its place were the much uglier sisters…"

And that's the nice bit. Meanwhile, Salford's streets are "tough, ruled by drug blazers, common thieves and mentalists. If you didn't act tough or crazy you could end up being beaten to a pulp, robbed or both…"

Daniel had been brought up by his mother and now-deceased father in Langworthy's Kara Street, where roast dinners were on tap - but had moved into a grotty flat in the Precinct towerblock to empathise with the greats of literature… "to understand their suffering, the despondency and madness that forged their words". He staves off hunger by eating flour and water, while his Giros go straight to pay off his slate at the local boozers.

He's certainly suffering. The only problem is that his one short story, Love Is A Gazelle, isn't exactly setting the world on fire. Even his mate at the Salford Gazette thinks it's crap. And his real life foray into perceived classy romance ends with a hugely symbolic kick in the balls on Salford Quays. He is trapped in the same psyche as everyone else in inner city, dole-ridden, 1991 Salford. But his mirror on local life barely extends to himself.

It's against this backdrop – and the real life settings of places like Churchill Way, Sycamore Court, the Woolpack, Agecroft Cemetery, Chimneypot Park, and The Flemish Weaver, complete with Hooky's mate, Twinny, in the bogs – that the story unfolds.

Asked by his mum to look after his cancer ridden, bitter brained Uncle Billy, Daniel meets hard-done-to schoolgirl Emma, who is also tending the old man. The wannabe author is convinced that he can fire Emma's life away from her Salford fate and that she, in turn, can be the muse, love partner and fate-firer he seeks. Except that she's under-age.

The crossroads are open but which way will Daniel go? Or will he just have another drink down The Flemish Weaver and screw it all?

In Craig Wallwork's The Sound Of Loneliness you can taste the pubs, chew the angst and wallow in the psyche of Salford circa early 90s. It's hyper real, staggeringly honest, very, very funny in places and, despite the shit-and-all content, dazzlingly written.

There's a bit of a modern, beer sodden, punch drunk Salford masterpiece going on here… - Stephen Kingston

Craig Wallwork, Gory Hole: a Horror Triple Bill,  Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, 2014.




GORY HOLE is a triple feature of grindhouse-esque short fiction by Craig Wallwork. Billing includes: "Revenge of the Zombie Pussy Eaters", "Human Tenderloin", and "Sicko".

“Like a grindhouse version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Wallwork’s fiction is smart, innovative, and a hell of a lot of fun.” —Carlton Mellick III

“There’s a place where intelligence and weirdness meet, and Wallwork’s prose is comfortably nestled there, feeding off both with the keenness of a crazed tapeworm. Sharp, nasty, and bizarre, GORY HOLE is a perfect treat for those who like their fiction unique and with heaping sides of humor and gore.” —Gabino Iglesias

“When your laughter turns to tears, saline to bloody rivulets, you have found GORY HOLE by Craig Wallwork. A master storyteller, this trio of black comedy is lyrical prose dipped in deviant lust dusted with violent retribution—for the horror fan in us all.” - Richard Thomas




Craig Wallwork, To Die Upon a Kiss, Snubnose Press, 2013. 


After a foolish act of rebellion uncovers a horrible truth about his father’s death, SADLER TRUMAN is forced to accept the certainty that in less than six months time he will die of a rare heart disease.
Fearing madness will arrive quicker than the last beat of his heart, Sadler immerses himself in the humdrum daily activities of sleep, going to work, and visiting his father’s grave. A regular part of this routine is attending the Accident and Emergency department of his local hospital, a ritual he finds hard to break after reading heart attacks mostly occur during the hours of 6.00am to 9.00am. Here he meets Prudence, an overly sexual Dispenser who works at the hospital’s pharmacy. To Sadler, Prudence is the perfect distraction, a welcomed interruption in his new routine. But Prudence’s persuasive charm and reasoning draws Sadler into the seedy underbelly of mortality. Believing to witness death firsthand will help assist his fears about his own, Prudence involves him in an experiment that may cost him his sanity and the lives of innocent people.
As each month passes, Sadler begins to question Prudence’s motives, and how their lives have become so fortuitously interlinked. But has the weight of all his victims become too much? Is the line between life and death interchangeable? Can one suffer a life worst than death? Seeking these answers, Sadler sets upon a voyage of self-discovery, one that will involve unearthing secrets to his past and revisiting memories he fears may reveal a sickening truth about his mother.
Spanning just six months, the story raises questions about humanity, and the need for acceptance. And like Sadler, the reader is forced to accept that some truths are much darker than lies.


Sadler Truman is dying in Craig Wallwork’s To Die Upon a Kiss, a stylish noir wracked from beginning to end by beautiful prose and multifaceted characters. Multifaceted, as in at war with themselves, both desperately morbid and exultant. Truman is convinced his death is imminent because no one in his family has survived past the age of thirty, victim to Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome. To help him come to terms with his mortality, his girlfriend, Prudence, suggests they undertake a series of murders.
This book is not for the squeamish and gets descriptively bloody in the deaths. Details abound, as in the two making up fake identities to help detach themselves from the victims, or the meticulous methodology they apply in executing the killings. The ritual takes on a disturbing skew when Prudence gets aroused by the killing. Both the killer and the victim “struggle for equal breaths, eyelids trembling in unison, both whispering similar noises, poles apart in life and death, yet both so alike at the moment it’s hard to differentiate between those caught on the threshold of death, and those getting off.”
Wallwork claws his scenes to life and the mundane is rendered in throbbingly visceral discomfort. Take his job as a censor at a photography laboratory for which he is given no guidelines or regulations. After he lets pass a set of photos he shouldn’t have, his boss flails him with the instructions:
Flaccid cocks only. And a woman’s vagina can’t be parted. Tits and closed piss flaps are fine. Understand?”
Sexuality gets a shade of the macabre and sensuality gets no censor, particularly as Truman is just as obsessed with pleasure as he is with his fear of dying from overly-exciting his heart. Literally and physically, he has to restrain his lust:
If only to inoculate the infection of love before it renders me sick.
His gnawing obsession with death shreds itself on an altar of tattered memories connected to his mother, Verity. Verity is a bad mother and she even puts it out in the open when Prudence visits with Truman: “I’m sure my son has made it clear how terrible a mother I’ve been. How I lied about his daddy, and the poor unfortunate situation he’s now in because of it.” As Verity continues to taunt him, he is consumed by a paroxysm of rage and when he reacts violently towards her, it’s clear Truman’s corruption has gone past the physical, festering beyond an attempt at empathy with the dying. The situation with his mother intensifies as Prudence prods him with questions he can neither deflect nor deny. Even his reflection scares him:
A ghostly apparition in a cabinet mirror grips my throat. At best, I look five days away from having every orifice in my body filled with cotton wadding. Put me in a surgical gown while asleep, and I would awake with veins pierced with plastic tubes; bags of embalming fluid feeding each. Foundation cream would do shit for my complexion right now.
Similar to Othello, from which the title gets its name, misunderstandings abound and spiral into a canvas of bloody murder. Like Shakespeare’s play, the characters may not necessarily be likable, but they are scarily authentic, even while astray, social vagabonds wading in anger at their wasted lives. Truman’s bitterness permeates the pages, but so does a longing for affirmation, for purpose in the meaninglessness. It’s a fine balance that Wallwork deftly juggles and though Truman tries to find an anchor in Prudence, she is just as adrift, a hurricane swarming in another stratosphere. In that sense, To Die Upon a Kiss is as much about living as it is about dying.
. . . for those I sit beside, waiting and watching for the last glimmer of life to abandon each eye, the prospect of a long life is more depressing than living it. If only we could exchange bodies. If only for a few extra years, I would happily endure the noisy neighbors and feeling of loss.
A pile of corpses lie in his wake. Truths are splintered. Even as Truman dispels misconceptions he’d held onto, the melting blur of fear and hate siphon off one another into a titular kiss. Craig Wallwork weaves a violently hypnotic story covered in a lipstick of decay, presaging a conjunction doused in strange love - Peter Tieryas Liu

Meet The Writer Interview: Craig Wallwork