So pleased we got to see @mjohnharrison at the Edinburgh Book Festival today. Like the best of Mike’s work, the conversation was full of insights into how life—whatever that is—bleeds into fiction—whatever that is.
I plucked up the courage to get my copies of The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again and The Course of the Heart signed by him.
Thank you, Mike! Such a pleasure to meet you and hear you talk about your work.
#MJohnHarrison #WishIWasHere #EdinburghInternationalBookFestival #Bookstodon
#bookstodon #edinburghinternationalbookfestival #wishiwashere #mjohnharrison
"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
#quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #memoir #antimemoir #mjohnharrison
"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
#quotes #bookstodon #books #reading #memoir #antimemoir #mjohnharrison
Edinburgh Book Festival tickets successfully secured for M. John Harrison's event, This Is Not A Memoir, on 19 August. Only 1856 people in the queue ahead of me to begin with, although not all of them *necessarily* to see Mike, more's the pity! Very much looking forward to it!
@mjohnharrison
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/m-john-harrison-this-is-not-a-memoir
#MJohnHarrison #ThisIsNotAMemoir #WishIWasHere #EdinburghBookFestival #EdinburghInternationalBookFestival
#edinburghinternationalbookfestival #edinburghbookfestival #wishiwashere #thisisnotamemoir #mjohnharrison
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.
#bookstodon #antimemoir #wishiwashere #mjohnharrison
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
#bookstodon #antimemoir #wishiwashere #mjohnharrison
One From The Archive: April 2007 featuring Gwyneth Jones, Alastair Reynolds, M. John Harrison.
Art: Jim Burns. #jimburns #sff #gwynethjones #alastairreynolds #mjohnharrison #scifi
#jimburns #sff #gwynethjones #alastairreynolds #mjohnharrison #scifi
"[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
#wishiwashere #mjohnharrison #chocolateaddict #bookstodon #memory #antimemoir #philosophy #PhilosophyOfMemory
"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
#centauridevice #mjohnharrison #antimemoir #wishiwashere #philosophy #memory
And now some hashtags for my favourite modern writers:
#CliveBarker
#MJohnHarrison
#BrianHodge
#LiviaLlewellyn
#TanithLee
#JoeKoch
#HelenGrant
#SteveDuffy
#ReggieOliver
#RobertWestall
#ThomasTessier
#JohnLangan
#AdamNevill
As you can I'm mainly into short fiction. And here are some of my go-to anthology editors:
#RichardDalby (much missed!)
#EllenDatlow
#StephenJones
#RosemaryPardoe
Some small presses :
#TartarusPress
#AshTreePress
#Sarob
#WordHorde
#Undertow
#clivebarker #mjohnharrison #brianhodge #liviallewellyn #tanithlee #joekoch #helengrant #steveduffy #reggieoliver #robertwestall #thomastessier #johnlangan #adamnevill #richarddalby #ellendatlow #stephenjones #rosemarypardoe #tartaruspress #ashtreepress #sarob #wordhorde #undertow
@nisjasper Also ich lache dich nicht aus: #MJohnHarrison ist bei mir eine einzige große Bildungslücke.
Der gute @raskolnik, falls ihr euch noch nicht kennt, schreibt immer mal wieder was über ihn.
Though I have a number of favourite writers, these three have been most significant. Each time I read one of their novels, I grow in understanding myself and the world I live in
That's something to celebrate.
#mjohnharrison #dondelillo #thomaspynchon
Sometimes an introduction to a collection of stories can be wonderfully illuminating: Jennifer Hodgson's intro to M. John Harrison's Settling the World: Selected Stories really opened up these disorienting stories to me.
'Suddenly nothing makes sense, it's all out of joint, all the familiar meanings have leached away. The string that attaches them to the world has broken or else become a kind of noose'
@mjohnharrison recent interviews about how he
"traumatise[s] the reader’s assumptions about what a story is."
#author #mjohnharrison #fiction #weird #sciencefiction
I also write weird/horror fiction reviews for @GNoH and a few other places.
Some fave author hashtags! 💕
#MRJames #sarban #mjohnharrison #walterdelamare #elizabethhand #edithnesbit #brianhodge #helengrant #steveduffy #chinamieville #johnbuchan #reggie oliver
#mrjames #Sarban #mjohnharrison #walterdelamare #elizabethhand #edithnesbit #brianhodge #helengrant #steveduffy #chinamieville #johnbuchan #reggie
I also write weird/horror fiction reviews for @GNoH and a few other places.
Some fave author hashtags! 💕
#MRJames #sarban #mjohnharrison #walterdelamare #elizabethhand #edithnesbit #brianhodge #helengrant #steveduffy #chinamieville #johnbuchan #reggie oliver
#mrjames #Sarban #mjohnharrison #walterdelamare #elizabethhand #edithnesbit #brianhodge #helengrant #steveduffy #chinamieville #johnbuchan #reggie
five to seven favorite authors. in the sff realm:
#JoannaRuss
#RALafferty
#JosephineSaxton
#MJohnHarrison
#TanithLee
#PhilipKDick
#FritzLeiber
#joannaruss #ralafferty #JosephineSaxton #mjohnharrison #TanithLee #philipkdick #fritzleiber
So I did poorly on the #introduction. Here are some more terms I should have hashtagged:
#mjohnharrison #old #weird #fiction #reviews #TLS #Guardian #novel #novels #GoldsmithsAward #innovativeFiction #WishIWasHere #memoir #anti-memoir #SerpentsTail
#introduction #mjohnharrison #old #weird #fiction #reviews #tls #guardian #novel #novels #goldsmithsaward #innovativefiction #wishiwashere #memoir #anti #serpentstail