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“What’s that dreadful phrase? Reader-friendly? It isn’t reader friendly; it’s saying to the reader, “I bet you can’t take this, and if you can you’re the kind of reader I want and you’ll stay with me. If you can’t take it, I don’t want you to read me anyway.”
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“Their hair belonged to some middle crinal zone between aseptic nord and latinindian jetwalled lousehouse.”
― The Clockwork Testament, Or, Enderby's End
― The Clockwork Testament, Or, Enderby's End
“All I do know, for certain, after 53 years in this business, is that writers who sincerely think that their language can represent reality ought to be plumbers.”
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“And so, for me, the only fiction that still means something today is the kind of fiction that tries to explore the possibilities of fiction beyond its own limitations; the kind of fiction that challenges the tradition that governs it; the kind of fiction that constantly renews our faith in man's intelligence and imagination rather than man's distorted view of reality; the kind of fiction that reveals man's playful irrationality rather than his righteous rationality.”
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“An artist in this nuthouse century is like a man running an obstacle race fitted out with all the gadgets of our riotous technology. He gets blown a mile into the air on a jet of liquid helium, shuttles about on little rocket tubes, plunges into the deeps of the ocean, shoots out again a hundred miles into the space while lurid sights and sounds shred his senses. Every year, every month, and ‘panoptic’ work appears and warps his consciousness into a new shape. Knowledge itself is in a molten, a plasmatic state and what titanic electromagnetic grip of intellect would be required to lock it solid long enough to reach artistic fusion point? The damned language becomes obsolete as it clatters from the typewriter.”
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The Kindred Spirits
— 300 members
— last activity Sep 23, 2025 07:28AM
Place to meet and talk about anything.
The BURIED Book Club
— 947 members
— last activity Feb 27, 2026 06:22PM
TODAY BOOKS ARE NOT BURNED. THEY ARE BURIED. WE SHALL UNEARTH THEM.
Completists' Club
— 544 members
— last activity Mar 25, 2026 12:59PM
A group for those attempting to complete, or who have completed, the canons of their favourite writers. Share your canon-wide knowledge and opinion wi ...more
Alexander Theroux Ville
— 118 members
— last activity Jan 07, 2026 03:01PM
The Theroux revival continues. This group counts as a village forum for discussing the works of Alexander Theroux. Both scholars and the naive and cur ...more
Dalkey Archive Press reads
— 155 members
— last activity Apr 18, 2020 05:39AM
Hi everyone, Join our Backlist of the Month discussions! What is Backlist of the month, you ask? It's something we'll tell you all about on Faceboo ...more
MJ’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at MJ’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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Books that Sound So Much More Interesting If One Removes the Last Letter of the Title
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