apparent. “People have been calling me an upstart for the last four decades because I published a first novel aged 24. Like I’m some perpetual prepubescent scamp having his hair ruffled by the wise-ass elders,” he said the moment he entered. “Hello Adam,” I said. “My last novel
Economics,
published two years ago, still came with patronising caveats like ‘Adam is the adolescent eager to appear smarter-than-thou’ and ‘the look-at-me-sir flash of his prose is endearing but childish.’ I’m almost 70! These dicks! I’ve skipped the mature artist and elder statesman phase. I will be buried an up-and-coming brat.” He knocked back two colas and lurched towards the back freezers where various prawns were dancing the cancan. Next entered the fighting fit Invernesian Ali Smith whose brio remained undimmed despite her long-awaited masterpiece
The The The The The The The The The,
a book containing a record number of uses of the definite article over its 1900 pages, began in 2020, having been lost forever in the technological meltdown. “I am maintaining a stoic outlook on the situation. In the Great Pantheon there are innumerable examples of lost masterworks, from Sappho to Perec. I am working on a novel instead about the disappearance of the masterpiece called
A A A A A A A A A,
because ‘a’ is the indefinite article, and suggests a series of impossible beginnings in attempting to reconstruct what is lost,” she said the minute she entered. “Hello Ali,” I said. “I look to novels like Christine Brooke-Rose’s tale of homeless dropouts
Next,
written without the verb ‘to have,’ where the constraint is integral to the intellectual and emotional core of the novel. There are no definite articles in my latest novel because there is no novel except a series of fragmented stuttered utterances from a work that with each day becomes little more than the spirit of a lost masterpiece.” And she went to brood by the broken biscuits, sucking on a custard cream. Next, Dave Eggers. His publishing house, having folded in 2018, left Eggers nursing a depression from which he failed to recover, penning a painful memoir,
A Heartbroken Genius of Staggering Woes,
which fast became a classic in the genre, keeping Eggers a millionaire, if not bringing him relief. “People say to me, Dave man, you got those riches, you can have four almond croissants for breakfast and only eat one of them, you can drive a Bentley around the hood flinging hundreddollar bills at the peasants, you can sing Shirley Temple’s loudest hits in the shower literally all afternoon without a tax man banging at your door demanding overdue cash due to you bunking off work and being fired and having no money, you can form your own publishing house that prints whimsical fiction about social issues and the dark underside of American families in misleadingly beautiful hardcover quarterlies, you can keep a unisex harem in your gazebo meeting the sexual needs of male and female visitors on a 24/7 basis, and I say to them, come on guys, it doesn’t matter if I can order nine fudge sundaes from the most expensive pâtisserie in Europe and fling them at Chris Ware’s miserable face, or import nine Ugandan rhinos and put them in a poorly choreographed home production of
Stomp,
or record an album of Half Man Half Biscuit covers with the reanimated corpses of David Bowie and Lionel Richie on backing vocals, or take a private flight to any of the world’s most breathtaking places with any number of supermodel girlfriends and drink nothing but champagne the whole time, if the brain is firing frowns, no-no-neurons, then no amount of cash-fuelled mirthmakers will lift Dave from his fragile funk,” Dave said after I offered him a cola. “I am looking forward to tonight, let me tell you.” Next to arrive, a nervous Zadie Smith, who had suffered at being dubbed a scenester, a constant on the literary stage, in the hippest anthologies and publishing ventures.
Economics,
published two years ago, still came with patronising caveats like ‘Adam is the adolescent eager to appear smarter-than-thou’ and ‘the look-at-me-sir flash of his prose is endearing but childish.’ I’m almost 70! These dicks! I’ve skipped the mature artist and elder statesman phase. I will be buried an up-and-coming brat.” He knocked back two colas and lurched towards the back freezers where various prawns were dancing the cancan. Next entered the fighting fit Invernesian Ali Smith whose brio remained undimmed despite her long-awaited masterpiece
The The The The The The The The The,
a book containing a record number of uses of the definite article over its 1900 pages, began in 2020, having been lost forever in the technological meltdown. “I am maintaining a stoic outlook on the situation. In the Great Pantheon there are innumerable examples of lost masterworks, from Sappho to Perec. I am working on a novel instead about the disappearance of the masterpiece called
A A A A A A A A A,
because ‘a’ is the indefinite article, and suggests a series of impossible beginnings in attempting to reconstruct what is lost,” she said the minute she entered. “Hello Ali,” I said. “I look to novels like Christine Brooke-Rose’s tale of homeless dropouts
Next,
written without the verb ‘to have,’ where the constraint is integral to the intellectual and emotional core of the novel. There are no definite articles in my latest novel because there is no novel except a series of fragmented stuttered utterances from a work that with each day becomes little more than the spirit of a lost masterpiece.” And she went to brood by the broken biscuits, sucking on a custard cream. Next, Dave Eggers. His publishing house, having folded in 2018, left Eggers nursing a depression from which he failed to recover, penning a painful memoir,
A Heartbroken Genius of Staggering Woes,
which fast became a classic in the genre, keeping Eggers a millionaire, if not bringing him relief. “People say to me, Dave man, you got those riches, you can have four almond croissants for breakfast and only eat one of them, you can drive a Bentley around the hood flinging hundreddollar bills at the peasants, you can sing Shirley Temple’s loudest hits in the shower literally all afternoon without a tax man banging at your door demanding overdue cash due to you bunking off work and being fired and having no money, you can form your own publishing house that prints whimsical fiction about social issues and the dark underside of American families in misleadingly beautiful hardcover quarterlies, you can keep a unisex harem in your gazebo meeting the sexual needs of male and female visitors on a 24/7 basis, and I say to them, come on guys, it doesn’t matter if I can order nine fudge sundaes from the most expensive pâtisserie in Europe and fling them at Chris Ware’s miserable face, or import nine Ugandan rhinos and put them in a poorly choreographed home production of
Stomp,
or record an album of Half Man Half Biscuit covers with the reanimated corpses of David Bowie and Lionel Richie on backing vocals, or take a private flight to any of the world’s most breathtaking places with any number of supermodel girlfriends and drink nothing but champagne the whole time, if the brain is firing frowns, no-no-neurons, then no amount of cash-fuelled mirthmakers will lift Dave from his fragile funk,” Dave said after I offered him a cola. “I am looking forward to tonight, let me tell you.” Next to arrive, a nervous Zadie Smith, who had suffered at being dubbed a scenester, a constant on the literary stage, in the hippest anthologies and publishing ventures.
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