MJ Nicholls > Recent Status Updates

“[...] the time is right for a Literary Fundamentalist takeover of the United States of America. Nothing less is called for, nothing less can we hope for, nothing less than inciting this takeover is appropriate at this moment in our lives. We have a moral obligation to lead a revolution of walking reading literary foot soldiers.”

There are three hateful things in the world, two that make the blood run cold, and one that makes it boil: the hiss of a snake, the snarl of a Tasmanian devil, and the smile of a banker.

I'm on BlueSky for anyone who wants to periodically engage in random book chat:

https://bsky.app/profile/mjnicholls.b...

RIP Martin Amis. 1995 novel The Information is one of the most acerbic accounts of the literary life written, as well as being properly, pant-wettingly hilarious. So many brilliant novels, from the early, viperous Waugh homages (Success, Dead Babies) to the more experimental (Time's Arrow, Yellow Dog), to the Big Beasts (London Fields, Money). Brilliant essayist too, read The Moronic Inferno & Visiting Mrs Nabokov.

Have a truly succulent Christmas, everyone. I rarely like or comment on any of your reviews these days, preferring to blithely swoop in to post my own minor burblings, but that doesn't prevent me from loving every single one of you book-drunk pillars of the page. Cheers!

"But it's queer how people detest a little originality."

Strained very hard to tolerate the new book page, but it's a complete disaster. Everything is TOO LARGE and there is TOO MUCH SCROLLING and the pop-up modals for adding or reviewing are EXTREMELY ANNOYING. It's been designed for first-time or casual users of the site, not the old hands.

Going to have a month reading only Irish authors. Anyone have any non-obvious, offbeat or ingenious recommendations for my reading pile?

I ordered about 11 books what seems like weeks ago. WHERE ARE MY BOOKS, DAMN YOU?!?!

Recursion.

“spit on the cretins’ bald heads, and while the rest of the world spins off its axis, contemplating itself with spherical astonishment, wringing its hands, I, in my glorious isolation, am illuminated by the marvellous incandescence of my electrically charged nerves.” [Manuel Maples Arce]

If you ever manage to pull yourself together Dada will clack its jaws as a sign of friendship. But if you rid yourself of lice only to keep your fleas Dada will bring its little insecticide spray into play. Dada is very happy.

“ye have a fine, rag-dog, hang-and-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat from a potato-bogle.”

“I may say at once that I am a confirmed anti-vaccinationist,” said Father Amerton. “Absolutely. Vaccination is an outrage on nature. If I had any doubts before I came into this world of—of vitiation, I have no doubts now. Not a doubt! If had God had meant us to have these serums and ferments in our bodies he would have provided more natural and dignified means of getting them there than a squirt.”

This is a delight, a real feel-good hit of the summer.

Sad news. Mike Puma, Goodreads legend, has passed away. Mike was a passionate reader and consummate reviewer, with a love for Latin American writers, as well as being a source of hilarity, loveliness, and absolutely exquisite chin hair. Goodreads is sadder for his loss.

‘I have good news for you fisherman.’ ‘What is that?’ the fisherman asked, and the ‘ifrit said: ‘I am now going to put you to the worst of deaths.’

I'll be reading from my new novel Trimming England this Sunday 2.30EST (7.30 GMT), alongside Lee Klein, Jeff Chon, and other Sagging Meniscus Press legends. Send me a DM if interested, as it's an exquisitely boutique invite-only sort of affair.

“Now, frankly speaking, I have always been irritated by the complacent conviction that a ripple of stream of consciousness, a few healthy obscenities, and a dash of communism in any old slop pail will alchemically and automatically produce ultramodern literature; and I will contend until I am shot that art as soon as it is brought into contact with politics sinks to the level of any ideological trash.”

“Naturally, it was behind his back that they jeered, but they did so with the utmost sans-gêne, disregarding the superb acoustics of every locus of tattle. Being, however, as deaf to the world as a grouse in courtship, he probably did not catch one sound of all this.”

“And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked foretips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness.”

Hi, chums. I hope to be more active on GR in 2021. Last year, I started lazily accepting all friend requests, meaning my feeds are fairly heaving with randoms with whom I have little in literary common. I hope to perform some weeding and return to a svelte coterie of mutually self-congratulating elitist uber-readers shortly. Take it easy, and avoid germs and fascism as much as you can.

My tribute to my publisher's book designer, Royce M. Becker, who died last week.

https://www.mjnichollsishere.com/blog...

I love you all, my GR friends. We're brothers and sisters of the book. As long as we have literature, we will never be divided.