British author Jeff Noon gathers his top 10 in fluid fiction for The Guardian. Here is Jeff's article:
"I find it next to impossible to do these best-of lists, especially of books or music. I just love the stuff too much. So this particular inventory breaks down into two parts; the first three books are the cornerstones of my own work, the books I return to again and again for inspiration. Every word I've written drifts around somewhere in the weird shape formed by this trio.
The last seven (in alphabetical order of the author) are books I've been getting into recently. Just a bunch of things that got me excited in the last few months."
1. Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
The mother lode. Better than food. There's a rumour going round that only his first dozen or so stories are the jewels. I thought this myself, until this giant cartography came out. All through his career, Borges was capable of mining a deep seam. Dark sparkles of narrative, magic charms. I see it as a vast storehouse of ideas, the best ideas ever. I mean that. Ain't nobody coming near.
2. The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll, edited by Martin Gardner
Two nightmare destinations. Wonderland and Looking Glass. The more I read these books, the darker they shine. Gardner picks at the invocation, without breaking the spell. They're stuff in here you don't even know about, nobody does. Carroll operates on language like a cruel, crazy surgeon. Beyond the wordplay, check out Alice's own explanation of the Jabberwocky poem: "Somebody killed something." Scary stuff.
3. Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter
A complex, ticking bomb. This is easily the most difficult book I've ever read. It took me four goes, starting from the beginning each time, and it's 750 pages, just to explain Godel's Theory of Incompleteness. Along the way Hofstadter takes in all human knowledge systems, including Lewis Carroll. Still not sure what it's all about, but that's beside the point. Again, ideas abound. There are passages in here, without which, Vurt would not exist.
4. Digital Leatherette by Steve Beard
A novel. The word hardly contains the book. A narrative of sorts, all told through the fragments gathered from imaginary websites. Hardcore, fiercely committed, living by its own code, more than a little melancholic. When technology learns how to dream, this is what the English machines will wake up from, shaking their foggy terminals. Stick with it, there are delights to uncover.
5. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
When I first saw this, pardon me, but I just thought, "Shit, the bastard!" It's got the lot, including stuff that shouldn't really be in a novel. One of those books that makes up its own rules as it goes along. Also, it's a book that eats itself. It gorges on its own imaginative powers. In a slightly different universe (and country), I'd be writing a book like this. Perhaps I will, one day.
6. Rock Springs by Richard Ford
This is where I go when I just want some pure storytelling thrills. Ford writes a lovely sentence, and he piles them up to produce plots that never really close, so there's no sense of being manipulated. Glinting American prose, with a hard-bitten romanticism shot through. Losers predominate, searching for a way out.
7. The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus
Like House of Leaves, this is another American book that filled me with envy. House was over a 1000 pages; this does the same but in 139 pages. It's a description of various objects, all seen in a unique light, with a kind of hidden narrative connecting them all. A bit confusing at first, until you give yourself up to the mood, then strangely addictive. Very, very powerful imagination at work here.
8. The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven by Rick Moody
A recent discovery. I want to read everything this guy has done. He writes stories set in the worst excesses of human life, a lot of stuff about junkies and S&M addicts. And yet, out of the hideousness, the desperation, Moody manages to forge some astonishing moments of beauty. Great freewheeling rock and roll prose style filled with sentences I wish I'd written.
9. Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
Never trust a writer who tells you they don't like poetry. It's like an oil painter saying he doesn't like paint. Plath has the intense love of language that I'm always searching for. I like work that belongs to one writer alone, and this is Plath's own, very personal realm, illuminated by her own personal language. Painful, truthful, magical and filled with riddles.
10. A Humument by Tom Phillips
A favourite, and a big influence, especially on Cobralingus. Phillips is a visual artist. Here, he's treated an obscure Victorian novel called A Human Document. He's painted over every single page, with a different design on every page, but leaving words showing through here and there. All that's left of the first page is this: "The following sing I, a book, a book of art, of mind and art. That which he hid, reveal I." These words tell a fragmented story, and the page designs comment on this. A box of treasures, with many secret compartments.
Comments
Post a Comment