The BURIED Book Club discussion

"A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father..." So begins Berg (1964), the first published novel (she wrote two which were never published) by the British author Ann Quin. It was well reviewed, the Daily Telegraph described it as "exciting, original but as yet untamed...it heralds great things". Some great things were to follow, but not perhaps in the way the critic anticipated. Three (1966) ; Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972) are all worth reading, but the level of narrative coherence decreases with each novel. On the other hand the level of experiment increases and as with improvised music of the same time (e.g. The Spontaneous Music Ensemble) the process was more important than the cohesion of the resulting work.
Sadly her life was as knotty as her work. She had a relationship with the much older fascist-admiring author Henry Williamson, who wrote Tarka the Otter , but the affair ended when her behavior became increasingly erratic as manic-depression was intensified by excessive drinking and drug use. She did try to regularise her life and took a job as a secretary at one point, but while visiting her mother in Brighton she went down to the beach, took off her clothes and entered the water. Her body was found a week later. A few weeks after that tragic loss, B S Johnson did much the same thing. In this short space of time British fiction lost two of its most adventurous and tormented writers.

Love Berg. Would love to read other things by Ana Quin.

Tripticks is definitely a chaotic mess of sorts, but I think it has a pretty high degree of coherence hiding in there. One of my top 40 or so books ever, even. It seems to tie together very well to me, conceptually at least, and there's a lot of really insane and excellent plot tangent going on to keep it going page-by-page. The incoherence, I think, is a tv-culture side effect of sorts, among other things. Kniga has some interesting theories on the underlying story too, that may add another dimension. I liked Berg, but it seemed much less nuanced and developed to me comparatively, so I'd love to see some more Tripticks reading/scholarship going on. Or, for that matter, a good breakdown on the supposed alchemical progression in Berg.

Will be reading Passages as soon as I'm able to unearth my copy.

SPADE=Wielder Peter uncovered a film adaptation of Quin's Berg ::
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097667/?...

Netfilx folk say it's knot good! I plan on having a look=see.

!!

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "SPADE=Wielder Peter uncovered a film adaptation of Quin's Berg ::
Netfilx folk say it's knot good! I plan on having a look=see."

Film watched. Film sucks.

It appeared to hail from the school of dire British black comedies made in the 70s, a genre the British have never excelled at.

MJ wrote: "It appeared to hail from the school of dire British black comedies made in the 70s, a genre the British have never excelled at."

I would have been groping my way towards exactly a description of that nature had I known there was such. I was about to offend my former colonizers by suggesting that maybe you had to be British to understand (such a piece of rubbish).

What other films occupy the dire 70s British black comedy genre? Would O Lucky Man fall into this category? Or is that just normal 70s Britain?

O Lucky Man is a rare example of the genre being mastered by us. See also the underrated The Young Poisoner's Handbook.

Yeah, I rather liked O Lucky Man. It's somewhat all over the place but has all these amazing moments. Will have to check out the other you mentioned as well.

My Ann Quin reviews from the past year, in order of which I read the books:

Tripticks
Passages
Berg
Three

Passages remains my favorite of hers, although Three came in closer than I was expecting.

Relevant to Quin, I also read:

Re: Quin (not recommended)
Beyond the Words (includes an excerpt from Quin's unfinished novel The Unmapped Country — recommended, but difficult to find outside of libraries)

A few other Quin links to stoke the flames of interest in this unjustly Buried writer:

Ann Quin on the Complete Review

Lyrics from the Lacuna - a bibliographical essay by Christine Fox

A Forgotten Avant Garde podcast on the group of writers Quin ran with, including Eva Figes, Alan Burns, B. S. Johnson

Ann Quin on Facebook (run by her friend and correspondent Larry Goodell; includes photos of Quin's letters and other ephemera)

Hm, I was considering getting Passages instead of Three, but a further reading thereabout had me come to the conclusion that it didn't investigate anything I found, I suppose, "mysterious," so I'm presently likely to start off with her Tripticks, if anything because I'd initially balked at its subject matter, mine having a love for hern apparent brand of mashup?

The current volume (no. 7) of Music & Literature features a section on Ann Quin, including two of her short stories.

http://www.musicandliterature.org/no-7/

And Other Stories is publishing a collection of Ann Quin's stories and fragments next year:

http://www.andotherstories.org/book/t...

And Other Stories is a subscription-based publisher. If you subscribe before June 8th of this year you'll receive the book in November, a couple of months prior to publication. The names of the subscribers are also printed inside the book.

Wait so does the book become publicly available once the actual publication date is reached, then, or is it ONLY for subscribers?

Those of us who subscribe will have it in December I expect, while non-subscribers will be able to buy it in January. I'll be very happy to have my name in the back of that one.

For those who don't want to commit to a recurring subscription there is also an option to purchase a one-time subscription of either 2, 4, or 6 books over the course of a year. The price per book ends up being slightly less than the cover price after publication and shipping is free in UK/EU/USA/CAN. The 2-book option is £20 (~$25). The upcoming publication schedule can be found here.

I just did the six-book deal at Dorothy which actually shares some authors with this publisher (Joanna Walsh, for instance, who also wrote the introduction to the Christine Brooke-Rose story collection via Verbivoraceous) so I'm feeling like I should hold off on other big amulti-book deals for the moment -- but this is so tempting! I guess I have until the 10th to make up my mind for the Ann Quin...

Yeah, I just committed to the 2-book deal. I couldn't resist the Quin. I've been hoping someone would publish her uncollected work, and this is a unique opportunity to directly support that enterprise. The next one after Quin sounds interesting, too. Fish and Dragons by Undinė Radzevičiūtė, a Lithuanian writer appearing in English for the first time.

I'm assuming, given the title, that the Quin book includes the excerpt from her unfinished novel that appeared in Beyond the Words. The book will be worth it for that alone.

True! And after quick perusal, I was also intrigued by Undinė Radzevičiūtė.

Berg was reissued this month in the UK by And Other Stories. US publication is in June. I hadn't realized the Dalkey edition of this had gone out of print-- glad to see that it will be available again, and that Quin in general is getting more attention.

I've been subscribed to And Other Stories since this thread two years ago! Just today The Polyglot Lovers appeared in the post. They're well worth it.