Monique from SoMisguided.com was one of the lucky people who atttended JK Rowling’s event at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto last week. She’s written up a report of the event: to read it, click here.
If you were at the event and want to share your experience with other Harry Potter fans, leave a comment here or post a link to your own blog post about it.
Personally, I had a fabulous time at the event. The Winter Garden Theatre was a perfectly magical setting, as the theatre’s ceilings are lined with leaves and colourful lanterns—the above photo of the theatre was taken by one of our ticket winners, Lesley, a few weeks before the event took place. (Thanks, Lesley!) JK Rowling was a fantastic presenter. One of the funniest parts was that the microphone screeched at one point when she imitated Hermione screaming at Ron—very appropriate. When JK Rowling was answering questions from the audience, I almost cried when she started talking about George and how he’d never really be whole again after losing Fred—and I know I wasn’t the only one who was holding in tears. I was so glad to see how happy she was when we presented her with the huge “Canada Thanks JK Rowling” books which contained messages to JK from fans across Canada. (I’ll post some photos of the books soon!) All in all, it was an amazing day.
We’ve watched him grow up from a shy awkward school boy playing everyone’s favourite young wizard starting his first day at Hogwarts Academy to a confidant man starring on The London Stage in Equus. I have to admit that I was at a bookstore over the summer and while walking past the magazine rack did a double take when I saw this photo of Daniel Radcliffe on the cover of Details Magazine. Well now Daniel Radcliffe has another accomplishment to add to his resume… writer… well of an introduction that is!
Bloomsbury has just released a new book written by Paul Kieve with an introduction by Daniel Radcliffe called Hocus Pocus. Paul met Daniel while working as Producer of Physical Magic on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. For more information on how the two became fast friends click HERE for a blog that I posted a few months back about how it was magic at first meeting for Daniel and Paul.
The newest rage in book marketing is “Book Trailers” so of course for a book as highly anticipated as Hocus Pocus there has to be a trailer.
Looks exciting doesn’t it! Full of the wonder of magic and the amazing personalities of the greatest magicians of all time, Hocus Pocus is packaged with a magic envelope full of magical curiosities that can be used to baffle and impress.
Now is your chance to win your very own copy! All you have to do is post a comment in our comment section with a link to your favourite Daniel Radcliffe photo. We’ll pick one luck winner and send them their very own copy of Hocus Pocus.
Happy Reading and Good Luck!
Finally, after all the waiting, JK Rowling arrived infront of a crowd of nearly one thousand people to read from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Toronto yesterday!
The entire event went off without hitch. Despite traffic jams, heavy rain, and major subway problems, the Winter Garden Theatre was packed full of fans brimming with excitement. When JK Rowling strode onto the stage, she was greeted by an almost deafening standing ovation. After the cheers died down, JK Rowling spoke a few words about how excited she was to be here, and read from the chapter titled “The Silver Doe” beginning in the middle of the chapter on page 308 when Ron returns and is reunited with Harry and Hermione.
The event continued with 12 questions from fans and a presentation by Raincoast Books of two volumes of a giant “Canada Thanks JK Rowling Book” in which were pages of notes from fans collected from bookstores and libraries all over Canada. After a short break, JK Rowling returned to sign books and exchange words with all the fans who came up on stage to meet her.
It was an amazing experience and I felt so lucky to be a part of it and meet so many of the Raincoast winners as well!
If you would like a more detailed summary check out this posting by Amanda, one of our lucky winners, who wanted to make sure that anyone who couldn’t attend could at least hear a little more about what went on inside the theatre doors: http://blogs.raincoast.com/weblog/comments/the-final-list-of-winners-for-the-jk-rowling-contest/P25/
Thank-you Amanda! 
Do you know someone between the ages of 13 and 19 who lives in BC and loves to read? If so have them sign up to be a reader for The Stellar Awards. The Stellar Awards are the BC Teen Choice Awards for Canadian Teen Literature and they are looking for your opinion!
Raincoast has two books nominated for the 2007/2008 Season.
The Cure For Crushes (And Other Deadly Plagues) by Karen Rivers the fabulous follow-up to bestseller The Healing Time of Hickeys. Haley Andromeda Harmony is now in her final months of high school and must face the inevitable question: What happens next? Finding the answer isn’t easy. For one thing, having a real boyfriend is causing a strange reaction: Haley has crushes on nearly every other boy she meets. As well, her dad gets a job and starts dating, and Haley misses the life they had before he moved his Much Younger Girlfriend (MYG) into their ramshackle house. From bungee-jumping in winter to supporting best friend Jules at auditions for the TV show “Who’s the Prettiest of Them All?,” Haley’s TGYML 2 ("the greatest year of my life, part two") has more than its fair share of mishap-filled adventures.
Also nominated is The Freedom of Jenny by Julie Burtinshaw a gripping historical fiction that revolves around Jenny Estes, who is born into slavery in the 1840s in Missouri. Through Jenny and her family, Burtinshaw tells the true story of the immigration of a small group of African Americans from the banks of the Mississippi to Saltspring Island, British Columbia, in the 1860s. This first fictional treatment of a fascinating and important piece of North American history follows in the tradition of Barbara Smucker’s classic Underground to Canada. 
Today seems to be a perfect type of day to curl up on the couch with a good book.... so here’s another contest!
Who is your favourite author?
Leave an answer in the comment field and we will send one lucky randomly chosen winner a copy of both of our Raincoast Published titles on the Stellar Awards nomination list.
For more information on how to sign up to be a reader for The Stellar Awards visit their website HERE.
Pippi Longstocking, Annie, Ron Weasley.... We all love a good red-head, and the world needs more of them! Well the wait is over! Everyone’s favourite red-headed actress Julianne Moore has just created an adorable new picture book called Freckleface Strawberry. Illustrated by LeUyen Pham with engaging retro-style illustrations this book’s spunky main character Freckleface Strawberry will delight not just red-heads but blondes, brunettes and raven haired children and adults.
USA Today recently interviewed Moore:
Q: How autobiographical is the book?
A: When I was 7 (in Omaha), the other kids called me “Freckleface Strawberry.” I hated it. But they were just calling it like they saw it, even when they said things like “You look dirty,” and “Can I smell them?”
Q: Did you really wear a ski mask like your character?
A: No. I made that up. But when I wear a hat, people don’t recognize me. When they don’t see my red hair, they walk right by.
Q: The book is dedicated to your “own not-so-freckled strawberries” (son Cal, 9, and daughter Liz, 5, with her husband, director Bert Freundlich). Did they influence it?
A: I wrote it for them. In tone, Freckleface Strawberry is more like my daughter than me. She has a lot more personality than I did at her age. She’s more sure of herself. She’s more of a spunky kid.
Q: You join a growing list of celebrities writing children’s books.
A: There’s something slightly embarrassing about that. But I wanted to be published because I loved books as a kid and I love them now.
Q: As a kid, what did you read?
A: My father was in the Army, so we moved a lot, and in each new town, the first place I’d check out was the public library. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) and Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) because their characters seemed liked real girls. And I loved Judy Blume. I used to think, “‘How can she know this much about kids?”
Q: Do you have plans for more books?
A: I’m hoping it’s the beginning of a series with the same character. I have an option for the second book and a draft of the third.
I showed it to my son, and he said, “Mom, I think you need more of a middle and more of an end,” and I said, “But it’s just a draft!"
For the full interview check out Bob Minzesheimer’s article HERE.
And to leave you with here is a picture of Julianne as a young red-head.
Happy Reading!
From award winning author K.L. Going comes a haunting, spine-tingling new novel just in time for Halloween.
In The Garden of Eve a girl named Evie reluctantly moves with her widowed father to Beaumont, New York, where he has bought an apple orchard. He dismisses rumours that the town is cursed and that the trees haven’t borne fruit in decades. Evie doesn’t believe in things like curses and fairy tales any more: if fairy tales were real, her mom would still be alive.
But odd things happen in Beaumont: Evie meets a boy who claims to be dead and receives a mysterious seed as an 11th birthday gift. Once planted, the seed grows into a tree overnight, but only Evie and the dead boy can see it—or go where it leads.
The latest and greatest trend in books is creating trailers for your favourite novels. Publishers and fans alike are creating them and putting them up on You Tube. To see what I mean here is one for The Garden of Eve:
Click HERE for a link to a independent short made by a fan of K.L. Going’s previous book Saint Iggy. (Warning the film contains adult language.)
Now a question to throw out to all of you. If you were to create a trailer for your favourite book what book would it be? Leave your answer in the comment field. We will pick a winner at random and send them a free copy of The Garden of Eve and Saint Iggy.
Good Luck and Happy Reading!
LOVE & BLOOD: At The World Cup With The Footballers, Fans, and Freaks is the new book by Jamie Trecker, senior soccer writer for Fox Sports.
In 2006 Jamie, based in Chicago, Illinois, travelled with fans, footballers, journalists for the world’s biggest spectacle: The FIFA World Cup. With the kind of tragedy that can only be found in soccer and Shakespeare, LOVE & BLOOD is an irreverent and intensely readable account of the finals in Germany, examining the passion, politics, controversies and economics of the beautiful game. And drinking a lot of beer…
Jamie and I caught up on email earlier this week and talked about the World Cup, Toronto FC and the future of Major League Soccer (MLS)...
Dan W: What surprised you most at the 2006 World Cup?
Jamie Trecker: The overall quality of play in the first phase of the Cup was poor and the hard corporate sell that surrounded the Cup was at an all-time high . Both were a bit off-putting and detracted from what is the greatest spectacle in all sport. The former showed just how overworked the players really are in today’s hyper-competitive global soccer market and the latter showed why the global soccer is so hyper-competitive.
DW: Who was your player of the tournament?
JT: Fabio Cannavaro of Italy. Zinedine Zidane was a close second.
DW: At the 2002 World Cup, the US reached the quarterfinals. Why did a seemingly better-prepared US team under-perform in 4 years later?
JT: Well, they weren’t better prepared - as it happened, they were pretty poorly prepared. The difference is that the USA was sold as “being better” and that just wasn’t true. In 2002 the USA benefited from being a) an under-rated “unknown” and b) playing on neutral ground. They were well-known by the time 2006 rolled around and the USA have historically struggled on European soil. Fact is, getting that single point against the champs was a major achievement, but because of all the overblown hype, it felt to many fans like a failure. But the team is not able to handle true tactical football, and that’s a failure of development and the American training system.
DW: Can you see the day that a North American team will win the World Cup?
JT: Yes, but it may not be in my lifetime. Certainly both the USA and Mexico have the population bases and interest to produce top-level athletes, but whether either of them can is an open question. I think Canada, with the emphasis on hockey and its smaller population, is far less likely to be competitive outside of the CONCACAF region.
DW: Soccer is a popular sport for young kids in North America, but this hasn’t apparently translated into a successful adult game in the US or Canada. Why do you think this is?
JT: I think soccer is successful in both countries, actually; it’s just not a “major” sport. North America is such an inflated market because of the huge revenues from baseball, basketball, NASCAR and the NFL, so it’s easy to overlook the fact that getting 15-20,000 a night is pretty good for any sport.
Why is it not a major sport? For the same reasons boxing, horse racing and tennis aren’t—you didn’t have a league for a number of years and that took it out of the public eye. Boxing and racing were the two big sports at the turn of the 20th century, but they faded—the same thing might well happen to any one of the top sports today.
One thing that has contributed to it is that soccer has been thought of more as a pastime for kids than an actual “sport.” That’s slow to change.
DW: England recently played Russia on a controversial artificial turf instead of grass. The surface has been approved by FIFA and many MLS teams (including Toronto FC) use it, despite widespread disapproval within the game and fears over injuries. Should FieldTurf be used for soccer matches?
JT: I don’t like it, personally. Having said that, there is a need for some surface for very cold and very arid climates. FieldTurf seems to be the best of a bad bunch right now, and soccer players are going to have to get used to it.
DW: What is holding the MLS back from reaching mainstream success?
JT: Bluntly, the quality of play. Americans demand the best in sport, and it’s pretty obvious that just about anyone that cares to can see top-quality soccer—for free or the cost of a cable connection—virtually every day of the week thanks to networks like Fox, TSN, ESPN, Rogers et al.
MLS has done a good job building up its infrastructure, but a poor job actually building up the player base. Salaries are paltry, rosters are thin, and good young players from Latin, South and Central America are not being tempted to come and play here as a result. It’s very disappointing.
DW: Has the arrival of David Beckham at the LA Galaxy been a good thing for the MLS?
JT: It was illuminating, but no, I think it proved to be a public relations disaster. MLS rushed him out too early, on an injured ankle, and the folks in LA were woefully unprepared to deal with the pressure and attention they got as a result. It’s interesting that as soon as the hub-bub died down in LA that the Galaxy started to win again, isn’t it?
DW: How would you evaluate Toronto FC‘s first season in the MLS?
JT: I think it went as well as one can expect, honestly. Anyone who has followed MLS knows that it’s very difficult to assemble a team via a dispersal draft, and it became very clear that many of the Canadian internationals were not ready for this level of play. But TFC’s fans have stuck with the team, and the stadium has the best atmosphere in the entire league by my reckoning so I think that they’ve laid down a real solid base for next season.
DW: Would the MLS benefit from more Canadian teams?
JT: Absolutely. I’d love to see a team in Montreal, myself and I think Vancouver could be a good addition. Canada has been a great host for pro soccer at every level, and I can’t see why that wouldn’t continue.
DW: Thanks Jamie! I can almost forgive you for being a gooner....
Jamie’s book LOVE & BLOOD is published by Harcourt, and available in bookstores now. You can read Jamie’s latest thoughts on the soccer online at jamietrecker.com
It’s time to announce the winner of the Banned Books Week contest! Drumroll please as I conduct a random draw…
Congratulations to Chelsea!
Chelsea will receive a set of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore trilogy: GIFTS, VOICES, and POWERS.
Thanks to everyone who left comments about Banned Books Week—you made some good points about freedom of speech, the freedom to choose, the role of books and reading in our society, as well as the love of reading. Even Dumbledore got brought into the discussion! 
Click here to read all the comments (and even add your own!).
P.S. For the contest-hungry...
Be sure to check out our CLANCY WITH THE PUCK contest that is on right now. Click here for details and to enter.
The Maple Leafs might be having a tough time right now, but if you live in Toronto then you can win even if our team can’t! Five copies of MAPLE LEAFS TOP 100 by Mike Leonetti are up for grabs over at insidetoronto.com! You have until November 4th, 2007 to enter!
To find out more about the contest, click here.
Johnny over at Drawn.ca has posted a cool little review of Michael Perry’s typography book HAND JOB - A CATALOG OF TYPE:
I love me some hand-drawn typography, and this book just puts a big old smile on my face.
HAND JOB is a big, fat paperback full of really great examples of hand-drawn type including album covers, t-shirts and posters. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of this book too, and I love the fact that Johnny went to the trouble of making this neat video to accompany his review and stuck it You Tube.
Johnny: you rock!
In the final part of my conversation with Tom McCarthy, we talk about the future.
WARNING!: This conversation contains adults themes and references to German literary Professors!
Part Five
DW: So, can you tell me about your new novel ‘C’?
TM: It’s advancing slowly, is the main thing I can tell you - not least because I find myself constantly doing interviews about Remainder and Men in Space (which don’t get me wrong, I love doing, especially with you Dan). I’m about a third of the way into the first draft. In a word, it’s a novel about mourning. In more words, it’s a novel about the relationship between mourning, communication technologies and family structures. It’s set around the turn of the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, when radio was emerging and acquiring a quasi-mystical dimension: whereas spiritualists, for example, used to wait for their departed relatives to communicate with them by rapping on tables, now they’d trawl through the white noise, scanning the aether for hidden signals. I’ve been reading this brilliant book by a professor named Laurence Rickels called Aberrations of Mourning: Writing on German Crypts. He says that in this period, technology itself becomes the crypt in which the dead are mourned - and, further, that German literature in particular is one big death cult. I love that. If Remainder was, as 3:AM Magazine claimed, essentially a French novel written in English, C will be my German one.
DW: Any final thoughts?
TM: Yes: big love to all my friends at Raincoast - and in Toronto, Canada and www-land.
DW: Thanks Tom. I hope you’ll be back in Canada soon!
If you are thinking about travelling to the United Kingdom and/or Ireland, or you just want to read about them without ever leaving your armchair, take a look at Barbara Ballard’s Destinations UK website. It’s regularly updated with lots of new articles and there are plenty of book reviews too.
Barbara’s recent reviews include:
DUBLIN ENCOUNTER, Lonely Planet
WALKING WITH BEATRIX POTTER by Norman and June Buckley
A WALK AROUND THE NEW FOREST by Norman Henderson
GREAT BRITAIN 7th Edition, Lonely Planet
It’s a wonderful resource.
Today is the fourth installment of my conversation with British novelist Tom McCarthy. When we met in Toronto last year, we talked a lot about music and movies between events, and I was keen to pick up where we left off when we corresponded by email…
WARNING!: This conversation contains adult themes and references to avant-garde New York rock bands!
Part Four
DW: The music of The Velvet Underground features in MEN IN SPACE, and I know we share a love of My Bloody Valentine. How does music influence your work?
TM: Funnily enough (and without giving away too much of the book’s ending), the last word in Men in Space is ‘soon’, the title of the final song on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. It’s not an accident. I’m of a generation that grew up on music, and it’s shaped our whole sensibility in a really intimate way. Also, formally and thematically the best musicians are way ahead of the game: think of techniques like sampling, or the rapid-fire subcultural allusiveness of, say, Sonic Youth. It’s hard to say exactly how music’s influenced my work, but it’s surely as inextricable from my life and work as for most people of my age.
DW: Who are listening to at the moment?
TM: Just now, Nirvana.
DW: REMAINDER - a book about repetition - was published in 2005, 2006 and again in 2007. Do you ever feel like life is imitating art?
TM: When someone hijacks an aeroplane and flies it in a figure-of-eight until it runs out of fuel, then I’ll know that Remainder’s found the one Quixotic reader every book potentially has, its Mark Chapman.
DW: After the struggle to get REMAINDER published, how did it feel to see your debut novel on the cover story of the New York Times Book Review?
TM: It felt nice.
DW: When you were visiting Toronto last year for the International Festival of Authors (IFOA) you met with Canadian filmmaker Vincenzo Natali. He’s directing the film version of J. G. Ballard‘s HIGH-RISE, which has similarities with REMAINDER. Don’t you live in a 60’s high-rise? After reading Ballard, I think I would find using the lift either incredibly stimulating or completely debilitating!
TM: It was great meeting Vincenzo, and I can’t wait to see his take on Ballard. I do live in a 60s high-rise. It’s fantastic. Bizarrely (since you’re talking of movies and directors), the producer who’s putting together the film adaptation of Remainder came to visit me here recently - and got stuck in the lift on his way down. He got freed eventually and the project’s still on. I should have bargained for a bigger percentage before phoning the fire brigade.
DW: Are you interested in film as medium? The protagonist in REMAINDER actively avoids it, and yet it seems tailor made for you...
TM: Although the hero of Remainder doesn’t allow cameras at his re-enactments (effectively turning them into film sets without a film), he’s obsessed with DeNiro in Mean Streets, and with heroes in movies generally. Whereas the rest of us are continually comparing ourselves to characters in movies and falling short, he reasons, characters in movies aren’t comparing themselves and their actions to anyone or anything: they’re ‘just being’ - and are therefore more authentic. His logic’s skewed, but I’d say it’s shared by virtually everyone who’s ever seen a movie.
DW: What are your favourite movies?
Orphée by Jean Cocteau: best film ever made, all about transmission, death, love, poetry and time. The INS radio project was a direct appropriation of the scenes in that film where the dead poet Cégeste sends radio messages on illicit frequencies to Orphée, who copies and repeats them. I like Tarkovsky‘s work, and was thinking of it when I wrote Remainder: all the slowness, the absorption in surface and texture. Another film I hadn’t seen then but have since and think is brilliant is Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, in which a Peruvian townsfolk continually ‘film’ movies with wicker cameras and sound-booms after they’ve seen an American movie crew do it for real, making stylised events repeat ad infinitum. Lynch’s latest film Inland Empire is stunning too: completely literary, labyrinthine, regressive. It’s the best piece of art in any medium I’ve come across for years.
Photo credit: David Boulogne
OK, so the Toronto Maple Leafs may have got spanked last night by the Carolina Hurricanes, but even the most depressed Leafs fans should find something to cheer about in Mike Leonetti’s new book MAPLE LEAFS TOP 100: Toronto’s Greatest Players of All Time.
A beautiful hardcover book full of colour photographs, MAPLE LEAFS TOP 100 explores the team’s rich history and profiles Toronto’s greatest players from 1927 to 2007, ranking them from one to 100.
One of the contributors to MAPLE LEAFS TOP 100, Doug Farraway (AKA “The Deacon"), has posted a great article about his involvement in the book on his Fan 590 blog:
A year ago I was asked along with 13 other gentlemen to choose a top 1 hundred Maple Leafs of all time… I handed my list in almost ten months ago, and now the results are in bookstores everywhere.
It’s entitled “Maple Leafs, top 100, Toronto’s greatest players of all time”. The photos are terrific and the essays by John Iaboni are bang on. In other words if you’re a Leaf fan it’s a must to possess, and even if you’re just a hockey fan it’s a great book to own considering it’s a basic history of the best known franchise in this country.
I guess only the question is, will you agree with the selection panel? Who would be in your Leafs Top 100?
Here, in the third installment with my conversation with Tom McCarthy, we talk about art and Tom’s work with the semi-fictional avant-garde network the International Necronautical Society.
WARNING: This conversation contains adult themes and references to modern art!
Part Three
DW: You frequently explore and imitate the Kafkaesque nature of the Cold War (show trials, propaganda, arcane secrecy, sound recordings, radio broadcasts etc) in your work. On top of this, your interpretation of Soviet bureaucracy/totalitarianism is almost Dadaist. Do you see yourself in that tradition as artist and writer?
With the work I’ve done in a fine-art rather than literary field, I’ve definitely plugged into those histories. My semi-fake organisation the International Necronautical Society, or INS, deliberately uses the forms and procedures both of early twentieth century avant-gardes such as Dadaism, Futurism and Surrealism - manifestos, proclamations and denunciations - and of totalitarian political processes. So when we held a series of INS ‘Hearings’ in a London art gallery in front of the press and public, interrogating prominent contemporary artists and writers about their work, we looked at photos of the Stalinist show-trials and got a top theatre set designer, Laura Hopkins, to copy and reproduce the layout of the rooms: where the microphones are, where the press sits and so on. Later we broadcast a continuous stream of coded radio messages from the Institute of Contemporary Art, sending it around London by FM and over the web for rebroadcast by collaborating radio stations throughout the world, like some Cold War propaganda. What’s really interesting when you look into these histories is how the artistic and political realms mirror one another: after all, both come out of a period in which the world was being remade by man, moulded by technology, ideology and aesthetics, like an art piece. The Russian Revolution is amazing in that artists were actively involved in shaping public life during and after it - for a moment at least, before they were packed off to labour camps by Stalin.
DW: Thinking of the sound-recording aspect of both your INS work and MEN IN SPACE, have you seen the movie The Conversation?
I have now, but when I wrote the first draft of Men in Space I hadn’t. I’d seen an old Czech movie, made in the hiatus after ‘68 and quickly banned, called Ucho or ‘Ear’, all about audio surveillance, planting bugs in people’s flats. By the time I came to redraft Men in Space I had seen The Conversation, and I’m sure it had an influence. It’s a piece of genius: the audio surveillance expert lost in the labyrinth of his own phantasms and of a social and moral (or amoral) order too big for him to navigate; the death of God as represented by his hollowing out of his statue of Mary as he searches for bugs in it… My police agent in Men in Space, who starts out boasting that he can always get a strong signal from his bugs, then ends up losing the signal, all signals, and becomes a symbol of humanity abandoned by the message, by totality, by God: he has a lot in common with Coppola’s hero - whose surname, by the way, is Caul: watch that space…
DW: Parts of MEN IN SPACE reminded me of Andy Warhol‘s ‘Death and Disaster’ series (death, repetition, etc). Is Warhol an influence on your work?
Absolutely. I think he’s probably the best visual artist of all time. On top of that, his roots are Slovakian - or more precisely Carpathian-Ruthenian (the subject of a very funny documentary I’d love to see again, about Ruthenia’s bid for independence with Warhol as their national symbol: I never quite worked out if it was a parody or not) - and after the Velvet Revolution he was very big in Prague. All the Czech artists imitated him without really working out why or what it was they were trying to do. There was even this one big graffiti portrait of him that appeared on a wall opposite a flat I was sleeping in one night, which became a kind of shrine.
DW: What other artists interest you?
Loads. I like Bruce Nauman, Anselm Kiefer, Josef Beuys, Francis Bacon - and then some of my contemporaries in London are doing amazing stuff: Rod Dickinson with his re-enactments of traumatic events like the Jonestown Massacre and Milgram Experiment; Mark Aerial Waller with his strange, cryptic films about nuclear contamination and secret technological undergrounds; Margarita Gluzberg with her warped shopping-and-slashing drawings. The creative dialogue in the UK seems to be taking place in the artworld at the moment: whereas mainstream publishing has purged itself of almost all high-literary content, these people I just mentioned are thinking seriously about literature in their work. Nauman too of course, with the enormous evidence of Beckett’s writing in his images and actions…
pornography/forest (1 of 5) by Eva Stenram
DW: What is hanging on your living room wall?
I’ve got a large photo by Rut Blees Luxemburg called Orpheus’s Nachtspaziergang or ‘The Night Wandering of Orpheus’. It shows a public toilet bathed in blue light, and it was taken with a twenty-minute exposure, which means that there are actually people in it who passed in front of the camera but whom you don’t see. In the same vein, I’ve got an image by my girlfriend Eva Stenram (who was a pupil of Luxemburg) from her ‘Pornography’ series, in which she’s downloaded hardcore porn from the internet then digitally removed the bodies, so you just get an ‘event-space’ with no event in it - in this case, a quilt in a forest clearing. I’ve got an Alex Hamilton print in which he’s redone the front page of a German newspaper as a series of illegible ciphers, and a drawing by Jim Harris in which two figures sit on a carpet shunting an empty canoe between them. Oh, and a postcard of Yves Klein leaping into the void, that a friend’s altered to put his own face in the background (we’d had an argument about whether Klein actually leaped or faked the whole image).
Photo: Tom McCarthy with John Calder
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Check out our NEWEST Podcast for Clancy with the Puck, a hilarious tale of hockey hubris.