"Not only have liminal spaces become culturally mainstream, there's a mainstream of liminal-space thinking; a kitsch of liminal zones is now inevitable."
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison #quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #AntiMemoir

"The last thing you want to do is 'tell stories.' Everyone claims to be doing that, from scientists to brand managers. As a result the whole thing has become nauseating. When asked, I now reply: I make things up, like everyone else in this very doomed & self-fictionalising culture."
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison #quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #AntiMemoir

"The Weird is not a genre in itself, it is a process."
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison
#quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #AntiMemoir #Weird

"I could run but I couldn't run away. I felt as if there was something between me and the world. In some lights it was a window, in others a mirror."
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison #quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #memoir #AntiMemoir #MJohnHarrison 2/2

"The idea was that tiredness should provide a kind of chemical cosh: but while I could relax, I still couldn't sleep. I still couldn't think of a way to stop writing fantasies in which people hit one another on the head with swords. I felt as if I still needed to have an argument with that subject matter, a dialogue with that way of writing, that job description."
Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison #quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #memoir #AntiMemoir #MJohnHarrison 1/2

RT @mjohnharrison :
Generous & humane review of #WishIWasHere in this week's TLS: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/wish-i-was-here-m-john-harrison-book-review-madoc-cairns/ #WIWH #AntiMemoir

2/2

… the weight of evidence such that each of us is really no more than palimpsest, dense overlays of misrememberings and dismemberings. Perhaps it’s a book about writing, about not writing, about an escape to and from writing: I don’t really know, and don’t need to know; I just absolutely loved its brilliance.

So looking forward to seeing the author at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this coming August.

#MJohnHarrison #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir #Bookstodon

1/2

‘Wish I Was Here’: this delightful, insightful, stubbornly peculiar anti-memoir by Mike Harrison is my book of the year so far; can’t see anything overtaking it, frankly.

The writing is as luminously sui generis and haunting as his best work, although there’s so much in that category to render the superlative clumsy. It’s also fictively tricksy, memory standing in for the undeniable, unreliable narrator, … (continued)

#MJohnHarrison #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir #Bookstodon @mjohnharrison

RT @mjohnharrison :
It's seeping into Jeff's head, maybe it'll seep into yours too... #WIWH #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir
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RT @jeffyoungwriter :
'The Sunken Land...' by @mjohnharrison haunts my dreams, unsettles my weather. It's my favourite book of recent years. And now, 'Wish I Was Here' is seeping into my head and it is full of wonders.

RT @mjohnharrison :
"Harrison, undoubtedly one of our most idiosyncratic writers, has you exactly where he wants you." Very glad to hear it. #WIWH #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir
----------------
RT @PaulBre34273593 :
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2023/05/4-new-books-reviewed-short-list : “so wholly original that a label doesn’t do it justice”

RT @mjohnharrison :
I recommend the brilliant, lucid, adult review of Wish I Was Here by @chris_power in the Sunday Times this morning. I feel seen. #WIWH #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir

"[L]et’s think a bit more about this complex business of relating what we think of as a self to what we think of as a past."

Lovely short interview with @mjohnharrison here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/20/m-john-harrison-i-want-to-be-the-first-human-to-imitate-chatgpt-wish-i-was-here

Mentions being a chocolate addict. I know the feeling, and can recommend a supplier - Zotter.
https://www.zotter.at/en/online-shop/brands/labooko
Their Labooko range is my drug of choice nowadays.

#WishIWasHere #MJohnHarrison #ChocolateAddict #Bookstodon #Memory #AntiMemoir #philosophy #PhilosophyOfMemory

🔁 @mjohnharrison :
I would like to say, here & now, that I have sorted out my confusion of the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City & District lines from Hammersmith, through bitter experience, no wonder #WishIWasHere #WIWH #AntiMemoir is about being lost in all its forms & excitements...

"People take what scraps of personal memory they want to believe in and erect a house of experiential straw"

From 'The Centauri Device' by @mjohnharrison

Reading this book has really got me looking forward to what M John Harrison describes as his 'anti-memoir', Wish I Was Here.

Will he, should we, like Pater, burn our houses to the ground?

Can we prevent our past shaping our present, and would we want to?

#CentauriDevice #MJohnHarrison #AntiMemoir #WishIWasHere #Philosophy #Memory

🔁mike harrison :
Adele's enjoying it with a glass of port, maybe you'd enjoy it too? Pre-order now, at your preferred outlet. #WIWH #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir

⏩Adelle Stripe :
Weekend read (stolen from @BenMyers1). Port and @mjohnharrison is just the tonic.

"No one could have been more angry, or more confused. Successful truanting had made me feel invisible; invisibility had become my project." #WIWH #WishIWasHere #AntiMemoir from @serpentstail, late May 2023

All sorts of exciting responses coming back for #WishIWasHere, now that we have a bound proof circulating. #WIWH #AntiMemoir

portrait of the artist as a junkman #WishIWasHere #antimemoir #WIWH

#WishIWasHere. #YouShouldComeWithMeNow

Since around 2008 I've been interested in self-storage, lost property office, secondhand shop, fleamarket & closed provincial museum as imagined depositories for my rubbish memory & bits & bobs of identity. These places are always envisaged as littered yet empty, open but somehow inaccessible. But I notice I've always carefully avoided putting myself in the charity shop. That's the true act of suppression.

#WIWH #Memoir #AntiMemoir

Changing your goals & methods & then discovering that all you've done is solve one of the hard problems you've always had, so that in a sense you haven't changed at all: very amusing & exciting & enjoyable, & one of the reasons to be a writer. Also scary because in the end, after a few self-revisions of that sort, you can't fail to detect your unconscious partner, #TheOtherWriterDownThere

#WIWH #WishIWasHere #Memoir #AntiMemoir #Bildungsroman