What I’m reading #98

All those new poetry books from the 70+ brigade. All good.

The Economist on orphan works and how to fleece a photographer.

David Hepworth on how the knees are the mirror of the soul. He also thinks the Stones have been a bit crap since Bill Wyman left. Yes, really.

Wilko Johnson, a QUQ guitar hero,  in the April Uncut on being diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer:

When we left the hospital, I felt elated. That’s the word. You never know what your reaction is going to be and at the best of times I’m a miserable so-and-so. I’ve suffered from depression all my life since my teens. So feeling like this was a bit unusual, but this elation remained all day and was still there when I woke up the next day. I realised there’s nothing to be hung up about, because the past, the present, the future: it doesn’t mean anything. So this elevation of spirit remained. You walk down the street just tingling, man, and you feel so alive. You notice every little thing – every bird against the sunlight, everything – and just feel absolute calm. At times it amounted to euphoria.

Eugene Doyle doesn’t enjoy his evening out in Wellington at an oratorio (I’m guessing: a work with orchestra and choir, anyway) about Captain Cook. He’d have been better off reading Graeme Lay’s new novel The Secret Life of James Cook which enters the bestseller list this week at #3.  

David Thompson on deadly biscuits. Apparently these are a problem in England.

More English food as Jeremy Clarke in the Literary Review considers breakfast:

I eat anything. Wipe its bum and chop the horns off, ho ho. I'm not fussy. The average number of taste buds in the average gob is between two and eight thousand. I have about twenty. But when my full English arrived, the mere sight of it turned my stomach. I prodded the bacon rasher with my fork. The factory-bred sow, raised in China in conditions only slightly more cramped, I guessed, than those in which she was served up, tasted, rejected, then thrown in the bin, had lived and died in vain. The flesh was bright0 pink, barely cooked, barely even tepid, and had a fleshy nakedness about it that was faintly obscene. The anaemic egg was a tragic poem. The themes of the poem were artificiality, incompetence, waste and quite possibly blasphemy. The tomato was a product of that strange impulse of the Spanish to export scarce water from the Costa del Sol to northern Europe in spherical, thick-skinned packages force-grown in sterile conditions under polythene. The triangle of fried bread was a saturated sponge, sweating cold grease. The sausage was a budget bag of (at a guess) snouts, intestines, eyelids and hepatitis C.

Via Tim Blair: how to write a novel. This is Joseph Heller’s outline for Catch-22:

If I have done this right you should be able to click on the pic and read the text. If not, go to Tim. It is worth it.

And finally, the Legionaires (Graham Brazier, Dave McArtney, Harry Lyon, Paul Woolrich and Lyn Buchanan so yeah nah, basically Hello Sailor), in May 1983 at Mainstreet with “I’m a Texan” and “No Mystery”. That’s me in the audience, somewhere. They were a great muscular live band: Graham was a bit out of it on the night – fancy! – but good to see Dave again and be reminded how cool Harry was. The clip is introduced by Karyn Hay in mega-80s hair and some sort of clown suit. I still see her and honestly, she hasn’t changed a bit*:

*She has changed a bit, actually. Shame, but there you go.