Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 338

It’s The Length That Counts

Ian McEwan seems to function better in novella form, and told an audience at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that he believes “the novella is the supreme literary form”. “Many of the writers we love the most, we love for their novellas: Death in Venice, The Turn of the Screw, The Metamorphosis”.

The novella can be [...]

Re:View – ‘Beasts Of The Southern Wild’

Onstage after the film, I attended a Q&A with this debut director and his very young star. Benh Zeitlin that explained he needed to understand how a small child might view the apocalypse, and asked the then six year-old Quvenzhané Wallis what she would do. She said that she would ‘fix what was broken’ by [...]

The Ultimate Reading Experience – Until The Next One

What Devil did Phil Rickman sell his soul to in order to be the only author mentioned on Amazon’s latest Kindle-flogging page? So the Kindle Paperwhite is here, promising the ‘ultimate reading experience’ (next to a book, that is) and the whole format game has just got more complicated. Because the Kindle family is growing, [...]

The London Books Continue To Pile Up…

This week I have Mark Ford’s immense (700+ pps) volume ‘London: A History In Verse’, starting in the 14th century and finishing around yesterday, with every possible aspect of the city covered. Lovely stuff from Pope’s ‘Dunciad’, terrifically filthy accounts from the Earl of Rochester walking in St James’ Park at night, WE Henley on [...]

How Did This Become London’s Favourite Suicide Spot?

There have always been a few favoured places to top yourself in London, including from the centre of London Bridge into the treacherous Thames waters and the bridge over Archway into, erm, traffic, but lately a new spot is bringing high-fliers down to earth.

Number 1, poultry is one of the oldest London buildings to have [...]

London’s Invisible Station

Ask any dozen Londoners where Fenchurch Street Station is and you’ll get a different answer from each of them. It’s not connected to the tube system and serves the East coast, not a hot destination in anyone’s mind, although its tiny platforms are very busy because a lot of city workers commute to the coast. [...]

Re:View – ‘Barbara’

You’ll notice this column doesn’t really cover rom-coms and Adam Sandler movies, mainly because you can find out about those anywhere. Instead, here’s a German film worthy of your attention; Christian Petzold’s quietly emotional film is set in the pre-reunification East of 1980, but instead of sunless gloom and grey-faced drudges we’re in sun-dappled countryside [...]

Hard Work Never Killed Anyone

My brother tells a story about a guy he knew who died in his company car park leaving his retirement ceremony, and always laughs at the end. Hard work is fetishized as a good thing. Doctors say that when patients suffer stress they’ve learned not to ask ‘Are you working hard at the moment?’ because [...]

New Worlds Beckon

Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine is back with an online launch for its first issue. This legendary bible of speculative fiction originally had a 201 issue run between 1946 and 1971. The new incarnation can be found here and has fiction, reviews, art (the one above is by the brilliant Jim Bird), videos, some excellent [...]

Best British TV No.1: The Avengers

The arrival of The Avengers comic ‘Steed and Mrs Peel’, set firmly in the 1960s, shows once again the groundswell of interest that remains in this now very old TV series. What keeps it going? Few of those involved can possibly remember it first time around, but here they are reviving the Hellfire Club and [...]