Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 416

Finished! Please May I Leave The Table?

Truman Capote once said 'No book is ever finished. They just take it away from you'. It's how I feel about every book I 'finish', and is certainly true of 'Dream World', the longest novel I've written for years, if nothing else.

As usual, it started as one kind of book and morphed into something completely [...]

The Horror of English Humour

English newspapers have a habit of producing rather good TV critics. Clive James, Victor Lewis-Smith and Charlie Brooker have all managed to produce regular columns that balance the odd insight with cruel hilarity, so I was pleased to read Heidi Stephens' Guardian blog on the bottom-feeding entrants to the Big Brother house, the thing that [...]

How I Fell Out Of Love With Sony

When first our eyes met across a crowded bookstore I'll admit you seemed like an unloved wallflower against the big, buxom Kindle. You were small and lacked Wi-Fi, but it was your slim, shiny, sexy body that attracted me, and your screen responded to my delicate touch.

I carried you in my back pocket wherever [...]

When Brands Go Bad

Abercrombie & Fitch, the tacky T-shirt shop that thinks it's a lifestyle, is having a conniption fit over the inhabitants of 'Jersey Shore', the equally tacky reality TV show that features perma-tanned vulgarians talking rubbish. It doesn't want them wearing its brand anymore, even though their tasteless clothes seem perfectly suited to a bunch of [...]

How To Buy Your New Gloves

I've had gratifyingly high number of inquiries about how to buy my new double collection 'Red Gloves', which will appear very shortly. Because it's a limited edition, once the first edition's run has ended, it's gone for good. So in response, here's Nicky Crowther from PS Publishing to answer your questions.

'In the week beginning Mon [...]

All My Own Work

In 'The Seven Basic Plots' Christopher Booker puts forward the very convincing idea that it's impossible to create something entirely new. What we writers end up doing is creating variations on a theme, and often the hardest part is to shake the feeling of deja vu from a project.

Over the years I've seen many stories [...]

Along New Lines

Mark Noad's reworking of Harry Beck's iconic London tube map is no mere stab at design celebrity. The designer points out that while the original is a classic that has influenced tube maps around the world, it has been added to over the years, and the additions (particularly the sloppily-designed overground bits) have harmed the [...]

Woolly 'Hood

In the wake of the riots, our Old Etonian Prime Minister got down in the hood on Monday to speak to local constituents about crime.

But don't be fooled by the graffiti backdrop; he made the speech in the lovely Oxford town of Witney, a posh Tory stronghold with one of the lowest unemployment rates [...]

Untranslatable

Every morning the postie brings me the latest batch of Stieg Larsson knock-offs featuring miserable Nordic coppers investigating murders on freezing fjords. Finally, it seems, we're getting translated novels in the UK. The bad news is, they're all copies of 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo', which was massively overrated to begin with.

What about all [...]

More Parisienne Weirdness

A mystifying piece of graffiti from a Parisienne backstreet, a shop that caters for a special clientele of Spanish cross-dressing tango-dancers, and a lady enjoying a fag at the Tuilleries with a certain poise.