Tom Roper's Weblog

Patrick Hamilton in the NYRB

Francine Prose reviews Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, The Slaves of Solitude and Hangover Square in the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21437

Burns night

The sight of a piper in full fig on Lewes station platform as I returned from the University of Sussex winter graduation ceremony reminded me that it is Burns night; that's Robert Burns not the evil capitalist in the Simpsons.
Burns was as revolutionary a poet as any, and to prove this point, rather than the address to the haggis, I shall intone A Man's A Man For A' That while drinking a glass of Bruichladdich.

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Will Self and Ralph Steadman in Lewes

I went to the last gasp of 2007's Lewes Live Literature festival, a reading by Will Self and Ralph Steadman discussing their new book, Psychogeography.. Psychogeorgraphy, according to Self is 'a means of dissolving the mechanised matrix which compresses the space-time continuum, and decouples human from physical geography'.
Based on their columns in the Independent, the very first one, from which Self read, concerns a walk from Lewes to Eastbourne, a route I know well, and bits of which I run. Is it possible to run psychogeographically, I wonder?  He also read his account of a visit to Varanasi.
Steadman, once artist in residence at Sussex University, meditated out loud on art, and seems to have a particular devotion to Marcel Duchamp. At question time, an unfortunate member of the audience muddled him with Gerald Scarfe.

Frogmore

When I came to work at the Sussex Language Institute and saw copies of the Frogmore Papers for sale, I thought it must be the journal of a Queen Victoria fan-club, Frogmore being her mausoleum. I quickly discovered that it was instead named after the Frogmore Tea Rooms in Folkestone, where Jeremy Page founded the journal. Praised this summer in the Guardian, it now celebrates its 25th anniversary and 70th issue, and I went to one of the birthday events last night to hear six poets read: Ros Barber, Clare Best, Ian Caws, Judith Kazantzis, Rachel Playforth and Catherine Smith. I enjoyed everything, but above all Rachel's poems, and Catherine Smith's too, especially her epiphany at Clacket Lane Services (though why the westbound side?). I find poetry readings difficult; I miss the words on the page, but if I had been a contemporary of Sappho, Alcaeus and Archilochus I would not have had that luxury, so I must learn to listen. There are more Frogmore events in London on Monday 22 October at the Troubadour and at the Lewes Live Literature festival on 28 October.

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Patrick Hamilton and a stuffed penguin

I'm indebted to Robert Greenwood at the Royal Society of Medicine who spotted an article on Patrick Hamilton in the spiked review of books by Emily Hill, not only an appreciation of Hamilton, but a clever analysis of different ways of reading.
Robert also alerts me to an exhibition opening at the RSM: Treasures from the Libraries and Collections of Gentlemen’s Clubs and Learned Societies in London. The chief exhibit is a stuffed Emperor Penguin brought back by Scott from the Antarctic, the property of the Amry and Navy Club.

Technorati Tags: patrickhamil, clubs

ShandyWorld and WoolfPark

The depressing news that there is to be a Harry Potter theme park set me thinking. Why are other, more worthy authors and their characters not honoured in this way? For some reason the first to spring to mind was Lawrence Sterne and Tristram Shandy, which would lend itself very well to such treatment. Imagine the fun to be had wounding Uncle Toby at the Siege of Namur, or for toddlers, playing in the Cock and Bull paddock with real cocks and bulls. I offer this suggestion to North Yorkshire County Council; I ask for no fee, except acknowledgement of  the intellectual debt they owe me.
Theme parks begin at home, however, and what better way of celebrating Virginia Woolf's time in East Sussex than WoolfPark? Based in Rodmell, attractions will include trips to the Newhaven lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway's party and the Orlando area where visitors can change sex. The refreshment area will be modelled on the don's luncheon party in Jacob's Room. 

Gorse

My copy of Black Spring Press's edition of the Gorse Trilogy arrived on Saturday, I raced to LibraryThing to add it, but found someone else had got there first. No matter, it is wonderful to have it, still smelling of pumice (™G. Valerius Catullus).
I ought to say something about Russell May, who introduced me to Hamilton about thirty-five years ago. He turned me on to Hamilton's anti-fascism, his ear for pub dialogue, and his insight into evil and exploitation. I met Russell in the Cross Keys, a Cambridge pub a few yard away from my childhood home: the first time I saw him he was deep in conversation with Roger Law who, as part of Fluck and Law, was later to create Spitting Image. Russell died a few years ago.

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Swimming in Rodmell

The Parish Pump pages of the Sussex Express rise high above their usual banality with an item about a Canadian author and swimmer, Rick Taylor. I suppose a North American counterpart to the late Roger Deakin, author of Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain. According to the Rodmell and Southease Parish Pump correspondent: "Taylor, a Canadian writer from Ottawa...is in the UK to research his latest book Water And Desire – about swimming with writers and mortality... he swam from Rodmell to Southease bridge, thinking about Virginia’s last walk to the river".

Technorati Tags: rodmell, swimming, virginiawoolf

D.J.Taylor on Patrick Hamilton in the TLS

The TLS reproduces D.J. Taylor's introduction to the forthcoming reissue of the Gorse trilogy, under the title, "the lost worlds of Patrick Hamilton". His phrase, "the laureate of the saloon bar", sounds derivative to me, and the jibe that Hamilton was a "doctrinaire Marxist" is unnecessary; I have never read a less doctrinaire Marxist writer, but otherwise Taylor is worth reading.
Black Spring's edition is due for publication on 7 June, according to their website, though Amazon announce it for the 21st of the month .

On the quality of indexes

I have just started reading Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven's Made in Brighton, for its topographical interest and because an excerpt so outraged Guardian readers in that town.
First impressions are not good. I have skimmed some of the text, but went first to the index, complied, it seems, after a long gin-and-cocaine session in a louche Brighton pubs. The indexer or indexers have invented someone called Peter Hamilton, referring to page 141 where Patrick Hamilton is mentioned. Raven describes himself in the blurb as a proof-reader.
Burchill, Julie and Raven, Daniel
Made in Brighton: from the Grand to the gutter: modern Britain as seen from beside the sea
London: Virgin, 2007
9781852273958

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