Reading Aloud And Allowed
TPQ: What are you currently reading?
IT: May We Be Spared to Meet on Earth: Letters of the Lost Franklin Arctic Expedition. The Franklin expedition is something which has fascinated me for years. They discovered the wrecks of Franklin's ships a few years ago, and in one they found the desk of Captain Crozier (from Banbridge), perfectly preserved, but for some reason they don't seem to be in a hurry to open it.
TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?
IT: My favourite book is Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. A lot of "drug novels" are highly variable in quality - I don't think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has aged very well - but Naked Lunch achieves timelessness, which I suppose is the mark of a great novel. I can understand why a lot of people are repelled by it, the passages about people being bummed and hanged by mugwumps in limestone caves and whatnot, but I've always found it hysterically funny. The other Beats didn't do much for me.
As for the worst, there have been a lot of stinkers. Where films are concerned, I will watch almost any old shit and rarely walk out of the cinema before the end, but I can't enjoy a bad book the way I can enjoy a bad film. I failed to finish a Kinky Friedman book called Spanking Watson which was utterly rotten, just shite. A friend kept banging on about him, saying that I would love his stuff, and this tends to be the kiss of death. I had the same experience with Flann O'Brien.
I was once stuck on a boat for about a week and the only novel on board was a copy of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. That was when I discovered that I am allergic to magical realism. The style antagonised me so much I had to pitch it overboard. Thankfully it wasn't like the time I threw a Traffic album out of my flat window and someone in the street threw it back in. It was so bad I ended up reading Johnnie Walker's autobiography instead.
I forced myself to read it because it was necessary for my work, but Lethal Allies by Ann Cadwallader actually left me with a feeling of despair and helplessness because it jump-started the whole Glenanne Gang mythos and sent readers ninety degrees to the actual truth. It'll be a monumental task to lead people back to the facts and sadly a lot of them will be lost for good.
TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?
IT: I had two books which went everywhere with me as a kid, one called Combat, the other titled Survival, published by Marshall Cavendish, the partworks people. By the time I was ten I knew how to lay a proper L-shaped ambush with a stop party and how to gut and dress a deer carcass. The less violent answer is an illustrated edition of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Robert Ballard's books about the wrecks of the Titanic and Bismarck sparked both a lifelong fascination with shipwrecks and a phobia of the deep sea. I also loved a book called A Summer in the South by James Marshall, about a crime-solving owl.
IT: I had two books which went everywhere with me as a kid, one called Combat, the other titled Survival, published by Marshall Cavendish, the partworks people. By the time I was ten I knew how to lay a proper L-shaped ambush with a stop party and how to gut and dress a deer carcass. The less violent answer is an illustrated edition of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. Robert Ballard's books about the wrecks of the Titanic and Bismarck sparked both a lifelong fascination with shipwrecks and a phobia of the deep sea. I also loved a book called A Summer in the South by James Marshall, about a crime-solving owl.
TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?
IT: It's the predictable answer for anyone of my age, but it has to be Roald Dahl. I read absolutely everything he wrote, even his two memoirs, Boy and Going Solo. Likewise, any time a new book from Robert Ballard came out it was straight on my Christmas or birthday list - Titanic, Bismarck, Ironbottom Sound...
IT: Growing up I read and re-read over and over again the 2001 series by Arthur C Clarke. I've always loved science fiction and the vastness of the concepts and timescales it deals with made a real impression on me. Clarke's prose is quite tasteful too. A lot of sci-fi writers can best be described as having rudimentary sensibilities.
The first "grown up" book I read was probably Papillon, when I was about 11. I remember my English teacher being quite impressed by that. Although I'm not sure a book which features man-on-cow "stuffing" and guys sticking money up their arse every other page was totally appropriate for someone who'd just finished primary school.
TPQ: Favourite male and female author?
IT: Male - I suppose it would be William Burroughs, even though his cut-up period is unreadable. Alternatively, Yukio Mishima is the most interesting as an individual, although I don't necessarily get on with all his fixations. I read him more in an attempt to understand the man, because I refuse to trust a literary intermediary - "All translation is treason" as they say. For women, I'm going to be brutally honest and say that the only female author I've read to any great extent is Joan Didion. Her books of essays and journalism are great.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?
IT: I can't remember the last time I read a novel, because I've been submerged in Troubles books for the last ten years. I've always believed that if you want to be a good writer - be it fiction or non-fiction - you have to read good novels, so I should really be reading more.
TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?
IT: Ian Kershaw's biography of Adolf Hitler is an incredible example of a book(s) as a definitive statement. There's very little to add to the subject after it. As a kid I read Mike Hoare's Congo Mercenary which was great stuff for a bloodthirsty junior commando ignorant of the politics. Johnnie Walker's autobiography is actually quite good too. Did you know he was warm-up DJ for the Dead Kennedys?
TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?
IT Magical realism is obviously right out the window, literally. Self help books too - I don't need some asshole with a headset microphone to tell me how to clean my room.
IT Magical realism is obviously right out the window, literally. Self help books too - I don't need some asshole with a headset microphone to tell me how to clean my room.
One thing that will put my rage meter from
zero to 100 instantly is American writers who are obviously writing in the mode
of "This is my big stab at the Great American Novel". Examples:
Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen. The British equivalent is Booker
bait...all that middle-class wank about "memory" and
"post-colonial identity" has the capacity to make me psychotically
angry.
There should be some sort of law regulating misery lit, the crap that clogs up the "Tragic Life Stories" section at WH Smith. 90% of them are straight bullshit, which is absolutely contemptible, but they're marketed towards a certain type of person who doesn't really care about that. We all know the type: Facebook women who post videos of horrific, mind-scarring child and animal abuse to "raise awareness".
The funniest one is A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I'm amazed that anyone was taken in by that guy and it was great to see him exposed as a fraud. There's one purported scene where he's at a rehab therapy session, and there's a heroin addict with two amputated arms and a snake tattoo on his neck. How the fuck was the guy supposed to get all that smack into his remaining arm after the first one went!?
TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?
IT: My one, if I ever finish it, so that they will understand what real pain and suffering is.
TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?
IT: Frozen In Time, another book about the Franklin expedition, specifically Owen Beattie's exhumation of three ice-mummified crew members in the 1980s. I also recommended A Canticle For Leibowitz to someone but I don't think they read it.
TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?
IT: There's a definite inverse correlation between the quality of a book and the quality of its adaptation. Bad or mediocre books tend to make the best films, e.g. Marathon Man, Die Hard, The Martian. Great books are all in the prose and tend to be interior monologue or descriptions of the characters inner world, and so make for duff films - The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, etc. Maybe it's better to leave the good ones alone.
It's why sci-fi adaptations are such a rich vein for Hollywood: dodgy prose, great images and ideas. With that in mind, I'd love to see a film version of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, or Larry Niven's Protector. 1980s Jeff Goldblum would've made a great Pak Protector.
TPQ: The just must - select one book you simply have to read before you close the final page on life.
IT: I think the standard answer to this is Ulysses but I gave up on that once and I don't intend to go back to it. I tend to prefer American novelists for their more direct style so I'll say Catch-22. The Great American Novel has already been written though. It's Moby Dick.
IT: Frozen In Time, another book about the Franklin expedition, specifically Owen Beattie's exhumation of three ice-mummified crew members in the 1980s. I also recommended A Canticle For Leibowitz to someone but I don't think they read it.
TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?
IT: There's a definite inverse correlation between the quality of a book and the quality of its adaptation. Bad or mediocre books tend to make the best films, e.g. Marathon Man, Die Hard, The Martian. Great books are all in the prose and tend to be interior monologue or descriptions of the characters inner world, and so make for duff films - The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, etc. Maybe it's better to leave the good ones alone.
It's why sci-fi adaptations are such a rich vein for Hollywood: dodgy prose, great images and ideas. With that in mind, I'd love to see a film version of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, or Larry Niven's Protector. 1980s Jeff Goldblum would've made a great Pak Protector.
TPQ: The just must - select one book you simply have to read before you close the final page on life.
IT: I think the standard answer to this is Ulysses but I gave up on that once and I don't intend to go back to it. I tend to prefer American novelists for their more direct style so I'll say Catch-22. The Great American Novel has already been written though. It's Moby Dick.
