I got hooked onto Wilkinson through his first book of short stories, Memoirs of the Messed Up Minds, so when I found that his next book was to deviate from his dark sense of humour and somewhat taboo subject matter, I was a touch worried. This was, however, to be an autobiographical account of his struggle with arthritis from a young age and there was something I could relate to in this.

It was confirmed a few years ago that I don’t have arthritis and it’s still not known about 8 years of tests and a bought of exploratory surgery what’s wrong with my wrists that causes daily pain. I took excessive painkillers daily for years, overdosing frequently around school exams or when it was so bad I couldn’t lift a kettle or tip a saucepan. Manual tin openers were just out of the question, and it’s incredibly unfortunate that I’m not at all ambidextrous. Not that it would help massively. Though nowhere near as bad as my right wrist, my left still has its problems.

So, here’s a writer who got struck with something ongoing that just hurt when he was young and fell back before he came forward again. The book is incredibly honest, from the ways he tried to hide his condition from work to the self-pitying thoughts and feelings that I know only too well. More than once over the years I’ve had to remind myself that although some days I can’t use a toothbrush with my preferred hand, I don’t have cancer nor am I indeed dying in any other but the usual aging way. It’s a hard thing to admit the ‘why me?’ moans, and incredibly heartening to see someone you respect say it without the handicap of still meaning it. At the time, yes you do, but looking back, at the worst times I’ve been lucky. It often takes someone else’s account to make you feel grateful for what you do have of your health.
One of Wilkinson’s strengths is that he never excludes the reader through complex tropes and ambivalent sentences. He just lays his thoughts down cleanly, frequently with a touch of humour. At times this looks too simple - he is ‘telling’ where he should just be ’showing’, but this is a minor nitpick within the book. The other one is more down to personal feelings I have towards exclamation marks, specifically that I have very little time for them. In sentences where you feel you need one of these horrible symbols, it would most likely look and read stronger without it. Within dialogue is a different matter, as a character may actually ‘exclaim’ something and ‘help!’ reads better than ‘help’. Outside of quotations, however, it feels kind of tacky.
But those are the two complaints I have, and they’re not even that big.
Still, I sincerely hope to see Wilkinson getting back to his old, twisted stomping grounds in his next writerly endeavor.

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… by reporting on his own murders.

The journalist, Vlado Taneski, is accused of raping, torturing and killing three elderly women in the south-western town of Kicevo.

Macedonian police began to suspect him after he included details in his reports that they had not made public.

Clever little sod.  Sick and desperate, but clever.

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This is from the author of Atomised, which is apparently slap yourself stupid fantastic.  Where I can, I try to read the book after the one that made an author famous as I am interested in new writers but I have an allergy to hype.  I refused Firefly and Battlestar Galactica for months/years because of how hyped-up they were, coming around to them in my own time and finding that the hype was well warranted in the end.

So, Houellebecq.  He’s clever, I’ll give him that, and has a style that very much speaks of an intellectual scrap-booker as he pulls in insightful little thoughts and titbits from all corners.  The story here is about a stand-up comedian who is sort of reincarnated in a dystopia future where his only friend is a cloned dog, and he hates the sound of laughing.  I expected it to be searing and brilliant.  What I found was that it was almost impenetrable with a character that couldn’t be emotionally latched onto.  I forced myself through a few chapters a night and, shamefully, gave up up on it entirely after 70 pages.

I haven’t given up on many books, but I simply wasn’t getting anything out of this aside from frustration that I wasn’t reading something else.

Nevermind.  They can’t all be winners.

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Harvey, the headstrong and very ‘teenage’ labradoodle, has now had three dog training lessons now and just now we had a bit of a break through.  He’s managed to connect two commands, come and heel, into one fantastic response where he comes, turns on his own and sits close at your left side, facing the right way.  This is the same dog that refuses every command aside from sit and runs amok.  We are so very, very pleased with him.

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In further tasteless news, we have this:

A street-sweeping truck has sucked a dog up through its bristles on a New York street, leaving its horrified owner holding nothing but the lead.

“It spun me around, and as it spun me around, I caught a last glimpse of her.

I was devastated. I was completely dumbfounded and shocked. I mean, I just witnessed my dog sucked up into a street sweeper.”

I have dogs and I love them to pieces, and this is a sad story, but at the same time… it’s quite funny. How this scene hasn’t turned up in a book or a film before it happened in real life is quite beyond me.

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 A mother who was intoxicated during her labor at a Polish hospital gave birth to a baby girl who was almost 15 times over the country’s adult drunk-driving limit.

That is one drunk baby.

Isn’t our world a special, special place?

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Unknown artist, but found along with many others, here.

I’ve ended up writing the wrong thing this summer.  I wanted to write about my brother and got about 2k into it before it sort of fizzled out, then I started on a new transgressive piece that revolved around 3 housemates and got further, but again with the fizzeling.  Gabe started talking over everything else, so I started listening.  Have got a decent wedge of the sequel to Dolls now and a solid idea about how the book is going to be shaped.  I’m enjoying it to boot.

I wish I was still writing short stories, as I keep finding pictures like the one above that just cry plot and characters, but between multiple jobs and writing Gabe, there just isn’t time.  I’m going to demo a chapter tomorrow night at the Open Reading in Slaks (if you’re in Cheltenham, do come along - an awesome time is guaranteed) and see how it gets on.

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Photo by Luis Vasconcelos

The caption says, “An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs. REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE (BRAZIL)”.

Images of heavy-handed oppression really don’t come much better than this - defenceless, screaming woman clutching naked child is shoved and beaten by faceless, armoured authority.Source.

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I’ve never had a ‘favorite’ writer before, at least not in the sense of if for some reason I was being stuck there and I could only have one author’s set of books with me I could produce the name instantly.  I was introduced to Burroughs by my very good friend, and soon-to-be-published poet, Ian Morgan, with Dry as a birthday present last year, and frankly it was like anytime I’ve been given a book by an author I’ve never heard of.  It just went on my bookshelf and looked chunky and blue despite the glowing recommendation that had accompanied the wrapping paper coming away whilst I read what I wanted to.

When my ‘to read’ had whittled down and I was waiting for another delivery of books, I finally picked it up.  I read it in two days and I was heartbroken when I hit the halfway point and I realised there was less to read than I had already done so.  I was addicted.  Burroughs became my literary chocolate.  Printed crack.  I read everything.  His two short story collections, Magical Thinking and Possible Side Effects, were so witty and sharp that I had to ration myself to reading only one story a night so the books would last.

It’s been hard waiting for him to write more, but finally it’s here in a memoir about his father.  Burroughs has had one of the most troubled and eccentric lives I’ve ever known, and he writes about it with such humility and frankness that it’s hypnotizing.  Not to mention the laugh-out-loud phrasing he puts on certain things.

This a break from his most recent books and gets back to tredding the ground of his first autobiography, Running With Scissors. Like in acting, it’s harder to be funny than to be serious, so the ones who are damn good at making people laugh have unexpected and astounding talent with the serious.  This book is chilling, strange and it lays a cold hand on your shoulder and a presence at your window.  Just try to read it one chapter at a time.

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An old story I seem to keep coming back to.

It never got easier to bury things.  Some things just never changed.  It was always crap earth in some way.  This was thick, sticky, clumping around the base of the spade and making it difficult to drive the metal back into the ground over and over.  It’s raining too, making the soil heavy, resisting and unyielding.

 
I wonder why I made the hole so deep.  Such a bottomless pit of death that I’ll only have to fill again.  And I wonder why it’s always me to do it.  Why I bury the lambs that have staggered and slumped by the barn and the house.  This one was the first my brother saw – his first true death among the sheep.  He begged me for a proper burial for it, despite having seen sheep leave for the slaughter a week ago. 

 
I’d given the creature some greater measure of dignity for his sake, wrapping it in a blanket and burying it near a tree in the field.  It’s always felt suitable to bury them under the cover of night, and this one is taking longer than usual this drizzling and cold evening.  I’ve made the hole too damn big, too deep.  My arms and back are screaming raw abuse at me for it, for the mindless act. The body isn’t large, but I could fit in the grave. 

At least the sticky clay is keeping the sides stiff, stopping it from caving in.  Much easier than sand, which moves like it has a sadistic mind of its own.  Sand graves are impossibly hard to dig, with the blazing sun and splintering wood.  But, I shouldn’t think about that.  Can’t.  I left that thousands of miles behind.  Bile’s still rising at the thought, though.  Still an ache sitting in my throat.

I remember the sand was hot, and crept into my boots, grinding like chipped glass into the soles of my feet.  My hands were clammy and pricked; splinters driven in deep and my sweat making them and my eyes burn.  I’d been toying with a gun in a shady place.  Accidentally rang off a shot into a beggar. I had to hide it.  That was the mantra in my head.  I had to keep it hidden.  I couldn’t shame my family, not when dad was ill and I’d have to go back and take over the farm soon.  No one saw the accident, and I could make a hidden grave.  My guilt was enough for that stranger’s memory; for his soul.

 
The damn sand kept caving in though, and the sun was sinking, night’s chill setting and freezing my sweat into a tight shell.  My joints threatened to seize and my tears stuck to my face.  I had to dig deep though to stop the sand caving in and the wind from exposing the body.  It was frustrating, but the anger was good.  It gave strength for digging and self-loathing, which was what was deserved.

 
Bloody rain.  Makes the mud sticky.  Clings to my knees like a hungry child when I try to stand where I’ve stumbled.  It’s almost liquid here at the bottom, creeping through my trousers, but no matter.  I’m already smothered in it.  The rain is carrying sweat into my eyes, burning them.  The pricking of tears in the corners too.  Stupid memories.  Fucking grave.

 
I’m not hiding a body here.  Just burying a sheep.  But it’s serving a reminder of what I am, what I’ve done.  That I’m a murderer looking after a child, the relationship hovering painfully between brother and son.  And soon he’ll be all I have left.  Grandfather’s dying, so soon it’ll just be me, Michael and the sheep.

 
I don’t realise I’m done filling it until the blade jars on flat ground.  All the soil’s moved and doing its job; covering, disguising, keeping the facts of the universe hidden from the eyes of those who are too young to see it.  Michael’s seen death before.  Never the sheep or lambs.  Someone always got there first.  Only small animals.  Hamsters.  Gerbils.  Little creatures.  Insignificant on one scale but enormous on another.  Cold, solid little things from where they were once warm and soft.  Death itself is one thing but hiding it away is another.  Watching dirt being dumped onto a bare body is something that few can watch or stand responsible for.  At first anyway.  A box or margarine tub makes it easier; you can pretend that it’s empty when you commit it to a soil prison.  Bury the box, not the creature that was once living and moving and eating and screwing to make other little living things.

 
I don’t know if it’s a good thing that I can do this; bury a body when I can see glassy eyes and bubbled wool.  That I’ve got the stomach for it.  Or maybe it’s bad because I have the detachment.  Is it less human of me?  Less love for our nature friends and all that ‘save the whales’ crap?  It hadn’t been like this in the desert though.  Then, I’d covered the eyes first.

 
The rain’s helped.  It’s stuck the mud together and sealed the joints.  I don’t have to worry about this one.  Don’t have to work for hours into the night to hide it; hide the evidence that shit happens in the universe and that you deal with it as best you can.

 
The rain’s finally letting up now, washing away some of the mud and most of the tears.  Still, grandfather’s going to be pissed at me; mud stained, sweat slicked and generally a sopping mess.  It’ll turn to understanding when I tell him that it’s because I was sticking an animal in the ground.  Making graves elicits compassion like that.

Handy that when guilt’s niggling: compassion.  Nice, fuzzy emotion that warms the heart and tells the soul little white lies that’ll let the body rest for at least a night before logic catches up and the mind actually realises.

 
Murderer.  Nice thing to remember when hiding death.

 
No one knows what happened last year, and I’ve been getting by fine with the guilt.  I think it’s changed me though.  Michael was surprised when I agreed to service the lamb so easily.  He’s an innocent boy; trusting.  I don’t know whether that needs to be preserved or corrected.

 
I need a shower.  A hot one, with some spicy smelling foam to rub into myself.  The grave’s a complete secret now, and I don’t think anyone will be able to find it.  I’ll know exactly where it is though; what secrets that little patch of ground holds.  I’ll deal with that later though.  Shower and then sleep. 

 
It was smooth ground.  No grass.  Burned up in the heat wave so the soil was naked.  Easier to hide that way.  Made even easier by wet mud and slithering rain, small mercies. 

 
Maybe it wasn’t really crap earth after all.

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