Breakfast in America

The only tolerable meal possible there. Except for the coffee, which isn't. Well of course that is overstatement, but though a good hamburger and chips is a fine thing, you don't want to eat it very often. But there is nothing else that isn't ruined in some way. Jumbo shrimp. Yes please. With a blue cheese and honey mustard remoulade dipping sauce? No thank you. You want cheese with that? Certainly not. You don't seriously call that cheese, do you?
But I love America and Americans. They are very polite and kind and open people, as I agreed this evening with my friend Harry Mount, the well-known Latin lover.
I have had passed on to me by Richard Hyfler, an American friend, some of the reading list which Donald Barthelme gave him when he was a student of his. The students all read it expecting to be asked about it at some point. They never were. Here they are.

Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez
Watt, Beckett
The Marquise of O, von Kleist
The Vintage Rabelais
At Swim Two Birds, Flann O'Brien

Not a surprising list, really. That'll make up for the recommendations having been few and far between recently. I'll try to be more diligent.

Science fiction news: Telegraph roundup coming. I will post a link when it comes out. Saw Jon Courtney Grimwood this evening. He has been to Mexico, because he is writing about the poem that Paradise Lost was going to be. Am about to start The Dreaming Void, by Peter F Hamilton, because it's out in August, and it will probably take that long, because I can't read more than about 950 pages a day. He can write that in an hour.

This is pointless except in my continuing bid to look more like Philip K Dick and show off the silly things you can do with my new computer. It will have to do until I can get Richard Linklater to Rotoscope me.



Lunch was Chinese noodles and tea.
Dinner was a beef and watercress sandwich.

I'm listening to: thunder.

The Total Library

First post for a while. Have had a very busy spell spying on a private library in my PKD disguise, resulting in the following recommendations for reading:

Heavy Game in the Western Himalaya, Sebastian Moran
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Hawthorn Abendsen
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Emmanuel Goldstein
The Era of Hopeful Monsters, Kilgore Trout
History of England, Herodotus (ed Fr. Rolfe)
Celtic Saints of Britain and Europe, Dunstable Ramsay
Den hemlige Fralsaren, Nils Runeberg
My Friends the Newts, Loretta Peabody
A General History of Labyrinths, Silas Haslam
Lesbare und lesenwerthe Bemerkungen uber das Land Ukkbar in Klein-Asien, Johanes Valentinus Andrea
Necronomicon, Abdul Alhazred
Codex, de Selby
Clothes: Their Origin and Influence, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh
The Dynamics of an Asteroid, James Moriarty
Camel Ride to the Tomb, X Trapnel
On the Use of Mirrors in the Game of Chess, Milos Temesvar
A Clockwork Orange, F Alexander
Fast Cars, Paul Sheldon
Don Quixote, Pierre Menard
The Fountain Pen Mystery, Harriet Vane
On the Care of the Pig, Augustus Whiffle
Notes on the Collection of Incunabula, PDB Wimsey
Poems, FX Enderby

Antescript

Flann O'Brien's suggestion for the bit you add above the letter. Example along the lines of


AS: What about that fiver you owe me?

Dear Jim,
So nice to see you for lunch the other day. We must meet up again soon,
yours etc,

Bill

This post is of course a PS, but it will appear above the post where I forgot today's recommendations. And I know that's what my legions of fans really want.

sf: Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell. And Frankenstein, Mary Shelley. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, etc. Oh come on you snobs, I know they're classsed as literature, but they transcend that narrow genre, and really have a lot to offer as serious sf.
crime: something by Robert B Parker. doesn't much matter which.
if you don't know it: The Spire, William Golding
lunch: burger and chips. dinner: chicken and chips. I was busy, ok? I know it's no excuse.