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Author: Kirsten Irving

2666, aka “The First Great Novel of the 21st Century”

written by the Judge
For those who haven’t read the book – there are no spoilers at all in this article. I promise. 

I no longer remember how I first heard about 2666. I have a faint recollection of reading somewhere about the Ulyssesof Latin America that came out only a few years ago. Since Latin American literature KICKS ASS, I was immediately interested. I wanted to read it in the original Spanish, but didn’t want to spend god knows how much to buy it on the internet. So I waited.

In early 2012 I found myself in Spain, in what I believe was the same contract that led me to purchasing another Great Classic. Going to a different country is always a great opportunity to pick up some books, especially poetry, but 2666 by Roberto Bolaño was one particular novel that I was on a mission to find. Once I did, it rested in my library at home for another two years until last Christmas I started leafing through the first few pages, more out of curiosity than out of a genuine decision to start reading it.

To my great surprise, I was hooked. When you start a book thinking that it’s going to be kind of like Ulysses, you expect difficulty and challenge. Instead, the beginning of 2666 is the reading equivalent of riding a bicycle down a gently sloping hill. The story is gripping and the writing is beautiful. I ended up taking the book with me back to England. A few days ago I finished it.

He does look a bit like Joyce I suppose
I already knew I was going to write an article about this novel, though the original intention – that of spreading the word about a piece of literature that I thought to be relatively unknown – sounds a bit funny now. In only ten years since its release in Spanish (six since that in English), the book appears to have garnered a global reputation as the first Great Novel (R) of the 21st Century. I was feeling pretty swanky as I progressed through it, thinking I’d be able to show off about reading something so advanced and modern and difficult nobody even knew it, but everywhere I pulled it out of my rucksack people went ‘Oh, Bolaño’. Heck, if you Google ‘2666 reviews’ you’ll get a hundred pages of critical commentary – and it’s so ubiquitously positive that it boggles the mind.

In effect, one of the (many, many) springboards for discussion around this book is simply that of its critical reception – and if I had more time and were more qualified, I’d be tempted to question the seemingly homogeneous response that the book has generated.

But that challenge, not unlike the others posed by this book, is one I will defer to the better judgment of others, not because I don’t believe it may be rewarding, but because 2666– and in this, if in very little else, it truly resembles Joyce’s great work – is a hydra that will devour you no matter how many heads you chop off. I do not know if it is a Great Novel, but it’s certainly the kind of book that you can go on discussing FOREVAH, and that’s scary (and also, perhaps, the very definition of a Great Novel… see me being sucked into yet another of the questions raised by Bolaño even as I declare my resistance to it).

I write this article because I know my limits. A few scattered thoughts is all I can afford; any more than that would be dangerous; any less, an insult.

So – a few thoughts about 2666. If you’ve read this far I assume you must have a vague notion of what the novel is, or what it’s about. Me, I purposely eschewed all information about the book until I could read it, to get as fresh an experience as possible (come to think of it, perhaps that’s why I was unaware of its reputation…). 2666 is a novel divided into five independent parts – or, if you prefer, five separate novels collected together in an anthology. They are only loosely related to each other – they share a fictional city where all the novels are set (or where they end up), and a handful of reappearing characters.

Regrettably “The Neverending Story” was already taken, but it would have been a fitting title
The story behind the writing of this book – how the author was dying, how he planned the books to be published posthumously to support his family – is as legendary as the book itself. It deserves its own article, but I’m going to assume here that you’re at least partly familiar with it.

What can I say about this book? I suppose I could do worse than sharing Alessandro Baricco’s impression: ‘Normally, if you write books, reading your contemporaries provides you with some self-esteem, it stimulates and challenges, sometimes it gives you a bitter perception of your limits: only very infrequently does it crush you.’ In an attempt to describe what the novel is about, he says: ‘I think it’s something like Evil. But I wouldn’t put my money on that. Maybe Evil and the delight of the living. Or Evil and the mystery of the living.’

This is no doubt one of the common threads that I’ve perceived in reviews / summaries of this book: it’s about the problem of evil, in and across the problem of history (or perhaps the two are one and the same). This is because the longest, most difficult and in my opinion the best of the five novels is just a long relation of serial murders in which women are raped and butchered in a town called Santa Teresa (inspired by the real events in Ciudad Juárez).

Though these are clearly important themes in the book, if I had to put my finger on what the book is essentially about, I’d go for something different. In fact, all the way until the end of the third book, I could have sworn that the topic of the whole work was that of dreams, or dreaming, and the significance thereof. It seemed to me that all of the novels were composed of characters experiencing events that take up an oneiric quality, moments in which the real and the surreal mingle at the edges. It’s impossible to tell when something really significant is taking place, and when, on the other hand, you’re faced with something that’s just random. Like the five novels themselves, the episodes within them stand alone as frescoes of sanity and madness, and simultaneously connect to all the others in ways that are subtle and suggestive but never quite definite: everything in this book is referential and intuitive, never quite important in and of itself but always somehow hinting at something that you should be aware of.

It helps my argument that there are several actual dreams being described. I usually dislike it when a writer interrupts the narrative to describe one of his characters falling asleep and having a dream, especially if the description is extensive. But Bolaño pulls it off with remarkable grace, perhaps precisely because all the other episodes are so dream-like anyway. This is but one of a number of small miracles that the author performed for me over the length of the book – another is the fact that the first three novels are about characters that I usually have no interest in reading about, such as critics, academics, philosophers, teachers, and scribblers of various nature (some journalists, though this category I don’t mind too much). And yet I was spell-bound, and very much intrigued by all of them.

If you were to follow the path that I took into the novel – that is to say, reading it as a novel fundamentally about dreams and dreaming – and it is but one of numerous paths that you can take, among other things because the five novels can be read in any order you like (and yes, this will change your experience of 2666dramatically!) – if you were to follow this path, I was saying, you will inevitably be faced with a challenge when you reach the fourth novel, the one about the crimes in Santa Teresa.

I suppose you’ll be challenged by that bit regardless, because it’s so different from all the others. But for the purposes of my reading, it’s relevant because in many ways it seems to represent the opposite of dreaming: the horrors of the serial killings are so down-to-earth, so grimy, so exhaustively and exhaustingly physical, that you could almost call it a representation of a world without a dreams. Not that it lacks some oneiric moments of its own, including a very esoteric clairvoyant and a whole subplot about ‘giants’ dreamt of by a German convict, but these are far more infrequent, and by comparison they almost seem crushed, powerless, insignificant when confronted to the horrors before them, or tainted in such a way that they partake in the evil.
Mexican noir. The fourth novel is kind of like this, but really long.
It goes without saying that having a part of the book, perhaps the most important part, being about the opposite of dreams does nothing but reinforce the sense that the whole thing may be explicitly about dreams.

At least this was the impression that I walked away with. I can’t really guarantee I’ll be holding to it a year from now – which is really the other half of the reason I’m writing the article, not just to spread 2666 to others, but to record it for myself. There is so much content in this book that the process of forgetting has already begun: like a dream, its details and characters are already becoming fainter.

Is this really the first Great Novel of the 21stCentury? I find that question tiresome, but it’s certainly a novel that belongs to a special, personal category: the Novel That I Write an Article About (or, That I *Need* to Write etc.). Not even a semi-humorous article, but a proper article. Yes, that’s rare enough. And I hope someday you’ll join us, as I look forward to reading your own articles. Some novels cause ten thousand words to be written for every word of their own. And when that happens, I guess it doesn’t even matter if the book is good or bad.


Three London Arts Nights Every Poet Should Know About

Whilst you’ve probably heard of, or been to, regular nights like Jawdance, Poejazzi, Utter! and Bang Said The Gun, all of which have built up a dedicated audience and a name for themselves, there are a great many distinctive lesser-known events off the beaten track. Here are three of my favourite hybrids, what makes them different and who might enjoy them.

1. Bingo Master’s Breakout



What be this?

One of the most joyfully anarchic and welcoming poetry nights in the capital, this merry stew of poetry, karaoke and bingo (yes, you heard right) is run by Kevin Reinhardt of the Vintage Poison collective. This evening has been running for years, but its existence is still a surprise to many people.

What makes it special?

Sheer variety, for starters. A typical night consists mainly of floor spots in which each performer goes up to read a poem of their own or one from a pile brought by the organisers, followed by a karaoke song of their choice. In between these spots, BMB presents a featured poet doing a longer set, who then goes on to call the numbers for a cash prize bingo game which everyone is free to play, and a band performing a karaoke set of their own songs, complete with inflatable guitars. Plus, the one-poem-one-song cap means you’re never stuck listening to an interminable mic-limpet.

Who might enjoy this?

Anyone who likes their readings a little less formal, a little less on the slam side and a lot more participatory. And of course anyone who enjoys karaoke.

Cost?

Free.

Where can I find out more?

Follow BMB on Twitter or check out their Facebook page.

2. Open Arts Cafe



What be this?

Run by the charismatic singer-songwriter Maya Levy, Open Arts Cafe is a variety extravaganza, showcasing new work from upcoming artists. Each show is themed (past themes have included Smoke & Mirrors, Seafaring and I Gave My Love A Cherry) and submissions to perform take their cue from this.

What makes it special?

Well for starters, it’s in a synagogue. For my fellow gentiles, it’s not often the opportunity really arises to go explore a synagogue, and practically, it makes for outstanding acoustics. But aside from the brilliant venue, the quality of acts is always outstanding. I guarantee that even grizzled veterans of London entertainment will discover something new here. Past performances have included poetry, acrobatics, stand-up, film screenings, live theatre and an improvised jazz board game with full audience participation. There’s also an art exhibition to look round during the interval, as well as snacks and drinks.

Who might enjoy this?

Anyone who likes their poetry set like a gorgeous stone in a big old crown of other artforms; anyone who wants to discover new acts; anyone who wants to be thoroughly entertained.

Cost?

Pay what you can (£6 suggested donation, which goes to the artists). Snacks are free, wine’s £3.

Where can I find out more?

Open Arts Cafe website
Twitter
Facebook page

3. Scaledown



What be this?

As the name suggests, Scaledown is a night of micro-sets, hosted by Mark Braby, Shaun Hendry and poet Jude Cowan Montague.

What makes it special?

A jamboree of poetry, monologue, music and performance art, the last Scaledown I played, I was performing alongside a sound artist collaging a soundscape from language learning tapes, an incredible experimental violinist, gorgeous folk music, a costumed band straight out of a Frank Zappa daydream and the hosts kicking off with an acapella song. Special enough?

Who might enjoy this?

Anyone who (not unreasonably) dreads a poetry set going over 15 minutes. With its quickfire lineup, Scaledown flat-out refuses to let you get bored.

Cost?

Free, but do, as they say, check out the Table of Wares and support the artists if the fancy takes you.

Where can I find out more?

Scaledown website

K reading with Brian Patten on Thursday 3rd June 2014!


I’m extremely excited to be reading at the Landmark Arts Centre in Teddington on 3rd June (that’s this Thursday) with Utter! MC Richard Tyrone Jones, Charles Causley Poetry Competition winner, Jo Bell, the irrepressible Julie Mullins and Brian Patten!

Fun fact about Teddington: Its famous residents and former residents include Mo Farah, Noel Coward and Benny Hill (who mentions Two-Ton Ted from Teddington in the song ‘Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West’).

Further fun fact about Teddington: It is but a short, Oysterable train ride from Clapham Junction or Waterloo! 

The Landmark announcement is here, the Facebook event is here and you’re advised to book ahead. Look forward to seeing you there!

Saboteur Awards 2014 roundup (with bonus Sidekick triumph!)

Woooo! Sidekick Books won Best Collaboration for Riotous yesterday at the Sabotage Reviews annual Saboteur Awards! Thank you to everyone who voted for us!

K following surgery to graft the trophy onto her head.

For those who don’t know the Saboteur awards, they are run by the Sabotage staff Claire Trevien, Richard T Watson and James Webster, and are an incredible force for recognition in independent publishing, particularly poetry. As with the website themselves, the awards are run voluntarily, and are nominated and voted for by readers and fans. They are also the only awards we know of in the world to recognise collaboration and anthologies.

The ceremony was held at the Jericho Pub, Oxford, and had a brilliant turnout. The accompanying all-dayer included showcases from last year’s Best Magazine champions Rising, The Emma Press (surely one to watch for next year’s awards) readings from Lucy Ayrton, Paul Hawkins and Best Spoken Word Performer winner Steve Nash. I also discovered the brilliant work of short story writer May-Lan Tan (Best Short Story Collection nominee and unofficial winner of the Best Twitter Name award) for the first time. Check out the haul:



Huge, huge congratulations to all the winners, including the brilliant Poems in Which, run by Amy Key and Nia Davies and illustrated by Sophie Gainsley.

Particular kudos is due to Nine Arches Press, winner of Most Innovative Publisher. One of the hardest-working, friendliest and most dedicated small presses active today, with a seriously impressive oeuvre. Great also to see recognition for non-London presses (and we say that as a London press).

Huge thanks to the Sabotage crew for a fantastic event, a breath of fresh Oxford air and an opportunity for us independents to show the world what we do and why. Here’s to next year!

For the full results, visit Sabotage Reviews. And while you’re there, have a good look around. This is what it’s all about.

Explaining Football to a Poet



Why do I like football? Near as I can tell, most poets don’t. I’ve tried to explain it to them sometimes. People who listened to me were usually familiar with my arguments (the tribal experience, the sway you feel when being part of something, the aestheticism of the athlete, etc.), the problem as they put it was just that they didn’t feel it. I couldn’t get them to ‘feel’ something by explaining it, of course, so I dropped it there.

I don’t want to start ridiculous comparisons, but there is at least one way in which poetry and football are similar. In both cases, people who don’t understand them usually think that the object they are looking for is somewhere inside the field or the page, and that they just can’t see it. It can be the feeling, it can be the meaning. Not many seem to intuitively grasp that they should be looking inside themselves.

Meaning is not something that you find ‘in’ or ‘inside’ a poem. It’s the result of the interaction between yourself and the poem, and that’s why there can be different meanings of the same poem that are equally valid. Football works, I think, in the same way. If you stare at the game and try to ‘find’ what it is that makes it click, you never will. Or you may get to a point where you think you found it, and will discover later (maybe a long time later) that you never did, like someone who thinks they finally discovered what a poem ‘really’ means and finds himself or herself reading it in a different light at a time when everything has changed.

You may think that I’m working towards an argument about football being as important as poetry (or as sophisticated, meaningful, interesting, etc.). Perhaps in a way I am, but not in the sense that I’m trying to raise football to nobler heights. From this as from any other sport you can draw abundant metaphors about life and the world. A man or a woman who understands football completely is a man or a woman who has understood life completely, and if you change the word ‘football’ for ‘poetry’ you’ll see what that statement really means.

I made the same mistake when I approached literature, or what you call high literature anyway. I was younger then in every way that matters and believed that there was something to ‘find’ in literature, some secret I could be in on, something to be revealed to me after reading a finite number of books. There was a supremely clever joke that I just didn’t get, but I could get it, and as I saw it, eventually I would. It took some time before all that washed away – and while this may sound cynical, in truth the ride was gratifying, even fun. I stress ‘the ride’, not ‘the literature’.

If you want to get football, and feel what other people feel, you will have to engage with it. I’m not suggesting that you should, because at the end of the day it’s just a game. But thinking that you’re exposing yourself to the sport by watching a match once in a pub is like thinking that you’re exposed to poetry because you’ve read a poem on the tube while commuting to work. Try reading a full collection, or a few collections, and try following a season or a few seasons, and see what happens.

Educate yourself. In football as in literature, the process of learning is enjoyable and beautiful. The process, not the football itself – get this clear. It’s ‘the ride’ that matters. You will start out knowing only the name of one or two stars in your team, the big ones. Then you’ll learn the names of the rest of the players. You will recognise their faces. You’ll find out what they do on the field and you may even discover an appreciation for the work of some yeoman who, at the beginning, you barely even noticed was there. You will develop sympathies and dislikes. You will look kindly on that young promise whom you noticed before everyone else did and who talks with an accent kind of like someone you knew. You will loathe that overpaid South American who always screws up the end-game.

Things will begin to come together. You will learn the playing styles of different teams and different coaches, and when some gang of champions loses 3-1 to the mid-table team, you’ll think goddamn if that doesn’t make sense. Goddamn if I didn’t see that coming. You’ll think formations and tactics. You’ll begin to watch games in a way that you don’t even think of now, barely even looking at the ball, only watching the patterns that the men make as they run on the football field. You’ll listen to the pundits and shake your head and think, why are they even being paid to talk?


And then you’ll make a prediction and mess it up completely. And you’ll castigate yourself for your arrogance and go back to the chalk-board. You’ll learn from your errors. You’ll start reading football history, the great teams of the past, and discover an entire universe made up of grainy colours that barely earns a mention in the sports media. You’ll start reading Zonal Marking. You’ll wonder how you could even think you understood the sport at all.

All of this process is internal. You won’t be captured by football, really – you will be captured and fascinated by your own knowledge, by the sense of your mind growing new wings. From this point of view, it’s no different than beginning to learn about literature. Knowledge, which I am not at all confusing with wisdom, is a joy in and of itself, a game in and of itself. It tantalises you with a sense of completion that never comes. It rewards you with a sense of entitlement when you interact with your peers. Many things in life we study only for the pleasure that is found in the study. My most personal example is wine. I don’t even particularly like the beverage, but the variety and the history and the complexity and the beauty of the language that describes it and the symbolism evoked by taste and so much more – that’s what drives me to learn about wine. You may think that I’m embracing vanity but I’m not. Knowledge works in this way, whatever the field. Wisdom doesn’t, but knowledge does.

I suppose literature has a more important role than football, though I’ve given up on trying to find a positivist explanation for its benefits to us, either individually or as a whole. In my own little life, literature has taught me nothing that football couldn’t have taught me as well. Or maybe neither could have taught me anything at all, which is kind of the same thing. The things I’ve learned that changed me came from the countries I lived in, the friends I made, the women I loved, the people I worked with. Not from books. Not from fucking books and football games.

Coming to this point of the article you may object that I’m just being a relativist – that I’m saying that what matters is knowledge in and of itself, regardless what the knowledge is of. Like being erudite in philosophy is the same thing as mastering the subtleties of Magic: The Gathering. That’s not really true though, because knowledge only matters to a certain extent. You need knowledge to start getting into football – and the fact that knowledge is a process (or a game) that is so seductive is part of what allows us to get there in the first place. But when you get there, and you will always get to a place that is both unique and inside yourself, it will be a specific place that nobody else can get to. It will be somewhere that only football could have led you to.

I can describe, as an example, the particular street and the particular house inside my spirit that football takes me back to, conscious that my experience will not be the same as yours, nor can it be. It is a rewarding exercise because looking back at my relationship with football helps me make sense of time. It is not very different with literature. There are phases, moments, things you grow out of, things you learn too late. Today, if I had to say what it is that keeps me in football in spite of everything, I would say – and this will be odd – that it is the sadness. You cannot do anything in football without stumbling into sadness. Not only because you will see your team lose so many times, and then so many times, and so many times, to the point that even those rare moments of jubilation (mine was in Rome, 9th of July, 2006) will quickly become the object of mawkish nostalgia rather than comfort. And not just because of all the filth that there is in football – the racism, the violence, the vulgarity, the sexism, the self-indulgence of celebrities, the culture of excess, all those things that give people a good reason to stay away from it and in the best of cases turn to rugby, or basketball, or athletics. Not even because of the most open lesson you can learn from the short-termed chronicles of the sport – that the job history does best, in football as in life, is not that of recording but that of forgetting.

No, for me football is so inescapably sad because its world is built on a foundation of lies. Everything that holds together its microcosm is false. There’s a story that takes place in the game, but the reason that game exists is that it allows for a different game – one in which people compete at who can tell that story best. Distrust anyone who speaks about football in a way that seems to make sense – they’re the best storytellers, which makes them the worst ones if you see what I mean. My own brief and mostly inconsequential experience with sports journalism saw me gaining a great deal of popularity very quickly before I let it all go – and the reason was not my preparation in the field of football, which was never anything more than passable, rather my preparation in that of poetry. My reputation was entirely built on articles like this, in which the only thing that really matters is the language in which the sport is described, and not the truth of it.

You may say that I was fooling my readers, bamboozling them. Believe me when I say that I was not. I was giving them football. The question of whether I believed in it at all is of no consequence – do I believe in poetry? Do I believe in literature? I’d love to say yes… but then the eyes of my next metanarrative, the one I told myself when I was sixteen years old as I forced myself to read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, come out from behind the door-frame and the hypocrisy of it all just gets overbearing.

And yet the reason I kept writing those articles, and the reason I still write poems, is that in the chasm of truth that they leave behind – and perhaps only in that chasm – I see something that is kind of like beauty. I won’t say that it’s beauty, but it’s something like that. And maybe that’s why there is so much sadness in football, because it teaches you that beauty is a lie that you can’t stop telling yourself. Maybe that’s why I can’t explain football to a poet, any more than I could explain poetry to a football fan. Maybe this whole article is a lie.

Sabotage Awards, Angela Lansbury and new Sidekick Cat!

Finest acolytes! Much news from Sidekick HQ!

Firstly, Sidekick Books has been nominated for THREE Sabotage awards! We’re up for (drumroll):

Most Innovative Publisher

Best Collaboration (for our hand-sewn tropical zoo sonnet sequence Riotous)


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So if you like what we do, please remember we need your vote to win! No registration gubbins needed. It’ll take less than a minute (or more if you’d like to elaborate on why you dig our strange creations). The Sabotage Awards are a big deal for small presses, so thank you in advance for casting your ballots!


Secondly, if you’re in London this week, get thee to Waterstones Hampstead this Tuesday 13th May at 7pm for some Angela Lansbury lovin’, featuring Twin Peaks, murder and     shunds. If you missed the launch, or simply need your Jessica hit, join Chrissy Williams as she takes us deep into the world of ‘Angela’…


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The King’s Cross launch event last year was packed, so this is a great opportunity to see one of London’s wittiest, warmest and most innovative poets share her darker Cabot Cove obsessions. 

Tickets: £5

Facebook event here.
Buy the book here, with free Angela pin badge!

Thirdly, please wish a warm welcome to Mitchell the Cat, who has moved from a prominent position with lots of responsibility at Battersea Cats and Dogs Home to our Silvester Road HQ, and is currently on photocopying duties.


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Have a fantastic Eurovision, everyone! Let’s wish Conchita Wurst all the best!

CONTACT:

contact [a] sidekickbooks.com

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