2013 - the year in books

horsemouth has only been keeping an accessions and readings diary since august - nevertheless he will attempt a list of the books read this year. broadly the books are in order - most recently read first. 

new books of the year: the stalin organ - gert ledig, camilo jose cera - journey to the alcarria, the polish complex - tadeusz konwicki

re-read of the year: the marvellous adventure of cabeza de vaca - haniel long, though it was fun to re-read steppenwolf by herman hesse.

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two ghost stories (including 'casting of the runes' from m.r. james collected)

7 stories - sigizmund kizhizhanovsky

the lover - marguerite duras 

collected aubrey beardsley - introduction by arthur symonds

the narrow road to the deep north (part) - basho

the stalin organ - gert ledig

germenine lecerteux - the goncourt brothers

philosophy and social hope - richard rorty - liked the lilies

arthur lee - barney hoskins

exile and kingdom - albert camus

(first few stories from) billy budd - herman melville

a month in the countryside - author forgotten

the desert fathers - in penguin

steppenwolf - herman hesse

children and their books - gillian avery, julia briggs

the island - anton chekov

moorish spain - richard fletcher

ishi in two worlds - author forgotten

the prince - machiavelli (last half - not the advice on hiring mercenaries)

hangmen of britain - author forgotten

erik satie - allan m. gilmor

illuminations - walter benjamin (first few essays)

soldier in paradise - louise collis

letters to a young poet - rainer maria rilke (first part)

a good parcel of english soil - richard mabey

october ferry to gabriola - malcolm lowry

fragments - benjamin wilkomirski

the quest for corvo -a.j.a. symons

the blue lamp - colette

in the prison of her own skin,

the golden buttons - violette leduc

a week on the concord and merrimack rivers - h.d. thoreau

the lifted veil - (uncharacteristic gothic) george ellliot

akenfield revisited - author forgotten

report to an academy - kafka

the lives of animals -j.m.coetzee

a murky business - balzac

j. sheridan le fanu - through a glass darkly

camilo jose cera - journey to the alcarria

marie herbert - the snow people 

james boswell - some of  'life of johnson' and some of 'the journals'

the war - marguerite duras

the marvellous adventure of cabeza de vaca - haniel long

old goriot, gobseck - honore de balzac

reveries of a solitary walker - rousseau

abc of communism - bukharin and preobrazhensky

bob dylan - chronicles one

echolalias - daniel roazen hiller

ham on rye - charles bukowski

george perec - life a user's manual

(plus one short story mentioned in it  'into the abyss - by luigi pirandello)

elisabeth gille - dreamed memories of irene nemirovsky by her daughter

the successor - ismael kadare

(gerard de nerval and restif de la bretonne)

richard jenkins - being danish

gavin maxwell - lord of the atlas

rob young - electric eden

j.q. merquior - foucault

the polish complex - tadeusz konwicki

jessica mitford - book on journalism

g.m. goshgarian's introduction to 

louis althusser's 'the humanist controversy'

china mieville - london's overthrow.

in addition horsemouth started a number of other books but made no progress with them that he is comfortable about claiming to 'have read'.,,

the birth of the hero - otto rank,

seven types of ambiguity - william empson

the acquisition of literacy - ethnographic perspectives

iona and  peter opie -  the lore and language of schoolchildren

at the end of the world

sean has been in touch;

'Fascinated by the souf London slavery case. When I first heard they followed some sort of weird political ideology I thought "oh, let them be Maoists, please...."

Yes! They are indeed Maoists!  - Power comes from a bucket and mop! We sing for the future!

Formerly from a Brixton squat, no less....Isn't that the plot of a novel by Doris (farewell then) Lessing...?'

in the light of the escaped maoists horsemouth went and watched a documentary about the villa road squatters of the 70ies and 80ies. horsemouth broadly liked the people both back in the day and in the aftermath of their commitment to radical politics. broadly it all seemed very positive and horsemouth can only contrast unfavourably with his time among a later generation of squatter punks in hackney. the point (horsemouth supposes) is  that, unlike the maoists, they had had the chance/ misfortune to move on.

as usual horsemouth is horrified by some of the people the media found to interview - this from the bbc website; 

'Professor Dennis Tourish, from the Royal Holloway University of London, said followers of Marxism often committed their lives to their beliefs. "They develop a number of organisational rituals of which communal living is one," in this he is correct. but Professor Tourish is (to quote Royal Holloway's website) 'Deputy Head of the School of Management (Academic) and is a Fellow of the Leadership Trust Foundation. His main research interests are in leadership, leadership effectiveness, leadership development and organisational communication.' horsemouth finds it slightly worrying if a professor of management has been studying maoist groupuscles (what was he hoping to learn there?). but on second thoughts he probably hasn't been studying them at all - he's probably just a rent-a-quote. 

Steve Rayner, on the other hand, a professor at Oxford University, studied the particular maoist group involved for a wider 1979 PhD thesis on leftwing groups (PhD, Anthropology, University College London, 1979  Dissertation Topic: The Classification and Dynamics of Sectarian Forms of Political Organization: Grid/Group Perspectives on the Far Left in Britain), and said the group was the "clearest case of far-left millenarianism which I have encountered".  http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1349448/1/D32160.pdf

once upon a time horsemouth was a rent-a-quote. it is the thing he is probably the most ashamed of having done. on the other hand he found living communally merely annoying - like many of his generation as soom as he could return to living in isolation and alienation he did it. 

the interesting thing was that while some of the ex-villa road-ers continues to call for revolution, many had now accepted that revolution was far away (which is pretty much horsemouth's position).

on the subject of the millenium horsemouth was interested to see an album cover suggesting that  'at the end of the world' there will be keith harris, orville and cuddles. horsemouth suggests this is way scarier.

anyway, let's give the last words to sean,

Kind of surprised Horsemouth rates Fahey more as a cantankerous old git than a guitar player; his prickliness was indeed admirable, but.....  isn't it really his guitar playing that sets him apart? There are plenty of argumentative arseholes out there, many at least as capable as Fahey, but they can't play.... 

the men with beards who played acoustic guitars (popular in the mid to late noughties)

 so a friend has characterised john fahey (darn it horsemouth has missed the boat yet again).

the thing that made fahey interesting was his hatred for 'folk', 'folkies', 'folklore', 'authenticity' and especially 'singer songwriters'. his life and his writing ('how bluegrass music destroyed my life'/ his dissertation on charley patton/ the songtitles/ the voluminous inaccurate and frequently libelous sleevenotes) are probably more interesting than his guitar playing. lots of people do that 'old-timey' thing well if not better, lots of people do that proto-ecm thing well if not better, robbie basho could do it (and sing like anthony from anthony and the johnsons). what horsemouth hears and reads in fahey  is a complete rage against the position of the music in society, against the position of the musician in society (and against society as a whole and any role you could take in that society).

'some people talk about my career in music. I don't have a career in music. People sometimes pay me to play guitar that's all.'  (horsemouth may have garbled the quote a bit in his rush to get it down). 

fahey was endearingly keen on larding his writing with heidegger's dasein  et al.  (sure in the knowledge that this would wind up just about everybody who'd ever heard of him) and with nlp hypnotism scripts and cognitive-behavioural procedures. he was also keen on annoying people who saw folk as 'the music of the people'  or who wanted to use it for political ends. in a way he's the mark e. smith of acoustic guitar - a relentless curmudgeon. what would fahey make of americana? toilet paper and bird scarers probably. the dissertation on charley patton probably sums it up best - an attempt to destroy what the blues is commonly thought to be musically, lyrically and socially by showing that the music and lyrics and repertoire of archetypal blues-singer charley patton do not conform to it, that at the same time reduce the ethnomusicological tools fahey was taught to use to absurdity. 

... and then there's the guitar playing both horsemouth's own and fahey's and the other 'american primitives' (which horsemouth still enjoys - if in small doses). but fahey's music exceeds his musical choices which themselves exceed his 'guitar playing' the (mere-)technique he brought to bear.

or perhaps not - pehaps they can't do this - but they sometimes sound like they might.  

7 years of inconsequence - the 7th anniversary of horsemouth's beginning to blog

'who is entitled to write his reminiscences? everyone. because no one is obliged to read them.' says herzen in my past and thoughts (it's good enough and short enough to be repeated). 

it is the 7th anniversary of horsemouth's beginning to blog (on myspace - remember myspace?). he had the perfect post for you - saved from his recently returned myspace postings - but he has lost it in the mountain of 7 years of  inconsequence.

and despite horsemouth's keeping a diary - stuff keeps refusing to happen.

'autobiography is an exercise in self-forgiveness' says journalist janet malcolm. this morning it rains - this afternoon there may be sun. horsemouth has been pretty dumb - he finds this hard to forgive.

'there were holes in the fabric just where are reader was most hungry for densty and richness. people often leave no record of the most critical or passionate moments of their lives. they leave laundry bills and manifestoes.'  

so says a.s.byatt in their introduction to a.j.a.symons 'experiment in biography' the quest for corvo. (crypt charity shop roman road - £1)

horsemouth is no exception to this golden rule - horsemouth will leave you nothing but reading lists, chord sheets, musically illiterate music criticism, diegesis, commentary, backsliding, intellectual impoverishment, lists - expect no more of him.

recently horsemouth sat in east india dock park and read richard mabey's plant-spotting guide to metro-land, the suburbs served by the metropolitan line (£1 ditto ditto). it was fun. hazlitt (apparently) did the same walks over and over 'hesitating to quit the one I am on, afraid to snap the brittle threads of memory'. 

'the secret joys of the gutter in a finely printed limited edition for the bibliophile'

it's the anniversary of the wall street crash, the anniversary of black thursday. an event which evenually led (via the WPA) to librarians on horseback roaming the mountains of kentucky, a tradition continued today by the biblioburro in columbia.

horsemouth has started on iona an  peter opie's 'the lore and language of schoolchildren'  -in the introduction they discuss other earlier books about this (peter opie being a keen book-collector) in particular norman douglas's london street games'  which 'records the secret joys of the gutter in a finely printed limited edition for the bibliophile'. opie prefers it to lady gommes' (1894) 'the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland'  which deals with games played by the nicer sort of child in the countryside.

strangely the song 'old dan tucker' by blackface minstrel show musician daniel decatur emmett (the central character in nick tosches account of the minstrel roots of both country and blues 'where dead roads meet'  - horsemouth has it round here somewhere) survived in children's games as 'sam, sam, the dirty old man, washed his face with a frying pan...', a tune horsemouth knew as a child as 'I  saw esau sitting on a seesaw...' descends (in part) from 'I saw esau kissing kate'  by harry hunter and the mohawk minstrels. 

at his junior school in llansamlet (just outside swansea) as a child horsemouth remembers witnessing a game of 'oranges and lemons'  that ended with a tug of war, he also remembers being recorded telling a story about captain scarlet (in a variety of voices). it was from this moment that horsemouth derives his great faith in his story-telling abillity.

set the captives free

horsemouth's captives (6 years worth of his old style myspace blogs) have been ransomed and returned to him by myspace (having been disappeared by them without warning one fine morning about a year ago). he's glad to see them back. he didn't use to blog everyday but more like 3-4 times a week, so the bulk is not to bad. 

now to back them up somewhere against some other random data apocalypse/ the death of the facebook brand

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'he recommended to me to keep a journal of my life, full and unreserved. he said it would be a very good exercise and would yield me great satisfaction when the particulars were faded from my remembrance... I was afraid I put into my journal too many little incidents,

'there is nothing, sir, too little for so little a creature as man. it is by studying the little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.''

one advantage of horsemouth's flat is that it gets a lot of sky. last weekend sean was off for a meet with his publisher last night at some mcm - movies and comic convention - at the excel centre, he faced the journey there and back across the east with no map and half of the seaside towns tramway out of action. horsemouth worried that he would get lost and end up wandering round the salt marshes in the rain (but in the end he made it there and back ok despite the closures). apparently the youth were running around parttying it up in manga and superhero costumes - horsemouth is almost sorry he didn't go - one year, one sunday perhaps, he accidentally strayed  into the convention (and very pretty it was too).

last saturday night horsemouth stayed in and read -as he does most saturdays - he didnt even crack open a bottle of beer. for this reason he may as well move to the countryside - he has simply and finally become solitary enough to bear it. horsemouth is contemplating paying into a pension - as usual he should have started earlier - and now thinks he doesn't have enough time to...  but then he has thought that about loads of things that he subsequently did over the years, only of course as the years pass it becomes increasingly true. 

horsemouth was awaiting the delivery of a slide guitar that he won in a lottery (it has arrived - it is excellent fun) - yesterday he played a few notes from the start of la fille au cheveux de lin on kevin's electric piano (it sounded good). 

concurrence - a statistical analysis of horsemouth's friends

for the purposes of this study horsemouth has here taken only his facebook friends;

way out in front - at 48 occurences - the musicians. the entry requirement is low, horsemouth has only to have heard you say you played an instrument or sang in a choir, or to have seen you pick up a guitar and play a song at a party one time. djs, makers of electronica, radio show hosts, compilation co-ordinators and gig promoters are included (but no one gets two bites at the pie).

next up - at 19 occurences - the social activists -  here horsemouth has drawn the net quite narrowly here as many of his friends are frankly raging lefties, anarchists, dirty squatter malcontents (thanks for asking officer) or were back in the day... or perhaps we just imagined we were, anyway, to still be on the list people have had to show more commitment than horsemouth to this thing.

two way tie for third -at joint 3rd (with 12 occurences each) are teachers andacademics/ writers (there were also 4 journalists, a publisher, two editors, and a poet).

horsemouth is surprised that there were only 8  artists -he suspects he hasn't being paying as much attention as he should  when people discussed their non musical practices, there were however also, 5 people involved in theatre, 5 filmakers, 3 photographers, 2 craftspeople (clothing and furniture), 1 puppeteer.

that just leaves  - 1 nursery worker, 1 linguist, 1 antique store owner, 1 tramway designer, 1 modern dancer, 1 carnival dancer, 1 psychotherapist, 1 garden designer, 1 restauranteur, 2 deacons,

and last, but not least, 7 suspected (or known) fictitious characters/people with pseudonyms/ institutions.

if you do more than one thing horsemouth will have counted you more than once.

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if horsemouth were to include his non-facebook friends he would also have to add two comic book artists, some more artists and musicians... you know how it goes.