Wow. Thank you, John, for this note of yours. I admit I was unaware of Raynor Winn, but your incisive comment made me hooked.
(I also shed a tear or two, but then I am the kind of person who cries easily, ask my daughters.)
#RaynorWinn #MJohnHarrison #homelessness #TheSaltPath #weareallhomelessinthisworld
BUFFO (1982)
Acrylic on Watercolor Board - 32" X 22"
Reading a novel by M. John Harrison always leaves me with the feeling that I've experienced some vivid, chaotic dream full of important but indecipherable symbols and images. 1/3
#fantasy #fantasyart #sff #illustration #mjohnharrison #viriconium
I've finally got around to reading M. John Harrison's 'Viriconium' stories. It's kind of Michael Moorcock meets Mervyn Peake round Jack Vance's house, and contains some of the best writing I've ever encountered.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/94ee4179-9081-43f9-8fdf-4a72b56f8dc1
#fantasy #fantasyfiction #newwave #mjohnharrison #viriconium #bookstodon @bookstodon
"The whole point of a bedside notebook is that it encourages muddled yet possibly devastating communications from the unconscious."
"When this kind of stuff starts to happen fourteen days after you finish a book, you know your head is up & running again. The beauty of it is that you won’t know what it’s working on for months yet; & the beauty of that is its reliability."
Oh, "muddled yet possibly devastating communications from the unconscious", yes, if we find ways of channeling those, half the battle is won.
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
https://library.hrmtc.com/2025/02/10/the-sunken-land-begins-to-rise-again/
#book #conspiracyTheories #ConspiracyTheoriesFiction #DatingRelationshipsLivingTogetherMarriageAdvice #EnglandLondon #EnglandMidlands #fiction #FictionGeneralLiterary #FictionLiterary #fictionalWork #GreatBritain #HommesSeulsRomansNouvellesEtc #LondonEnglandFiction #MJohnHarrison #MagicalRealism #MidlandsAngleterreRomansNouvellesEtc #MidlandsEnglandFiction #MissingPersons #MissingPersonsFiction #ModernContemporaryFiction #NarrativeThemeInteriorLife #Novels #PersonnesDisparuesRomansNouvellesEtc #review #romans #ScienceFiction #ScienceFictionAliensUFOs #SingleMen #SingleMenFiction #SuspenseFiction #TPolyphilus #TheOriesDuComplotRomansNouvellesEtc #UnitedKingdom
Very well put.
"The phone is not smart enough to know–the artificial unintelligence is not smart enough to know–when to piss off & leave you alone. It has, in common with its inventors, no smarts for reading the room. Is there any way of communicating with these devices that goes: you will do this, this & this when I ask but you will never, ever, for any reason at all, do or talk to me ever again about doing anything else."
"He could not describe himself as lost, because he had never known where he was."
"The adrenalin of first impressions can only be replaced by patience and a slow gaze."
"You're like a cake now, you can't be unbaked: you'll never be returned to your separate ingredients."
A half-discomforting, half-reassuring truth, expressed in a simple unpompous image.
Always such powerfully re-orienting thoughts in your short blog posts! A constant reference point in my Fedireading.
"Characterisation is an accumulation of scenes, as in life; it is revelatory, but only in the sense that what you’ve seen is all you’ll get. There’s no such thing as “out of character” behaviour. We only ever know the behaviour."
Wow. Such a powerful manifesto against a writing that endows a main character with "main character energy".
I write, but not fiction, with efforts at creating "narrative" for the reader. And I read fiction. As reader and writer I feel that this manifesto takes me out of assumed safety. That must be a good thing.
"By enjoying main character energy in a 'story' you are able to revel in an agency you never had."
This goes so deep.
M. John Harrison's blog is worth following. Every now and then he posts something fascinating and challenging (often cryptic). Today, about removing main character energy from main characters:
«By enjoying main character energy in a “story”, you are able to revel in an agency you never had. The culture–via pretence, via a kind of cosplay of values–pretends to grant you agency against the sort of agencies which took it away in the first place.»
20 books that have had an impact on who you are. One book a day for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just book covers.
Day 9
Another stirring blog post by Master #MJohnHarrison. Obliquely de-familiarising and re-orientating as all his posts are.
"[...] & as ever the best of it is being done by people who don’t seem to know or care where they are & who are wandering about navigating by their own intuitions & are really quite surprised when they bump into another inhabitant."
I call this one "Viriconium and Vittles". #amreading #grilling #mjohnharrison
Good to see it back in print. @mjohnharrison
#mjohnharrison #attar #GreatGodPan #machen #yaxley
"keeping it in your head until it writes itself down without your interference"
My old buddy Laozi agrees. You have expressed this so beautifully.
Finally read @mjohnharrison's newish book. A summary:
* this probably isn't a biography.
* climbing: now there's a thing.
* not sure whether it's a good idea to outlive the cat.
* where did I put my notebook(s)?
Highly recommended to fans of all of the above.
Okay, back to K-pop and old computers.
#WishIWasHere #MJohnHarrison #antimemoir
Ah, Bill Nighy, he cannot put a foot wrong. A great actor. And he is such an incredible charmer too, never NOT quietly elevating our human sensitivies in unexpected ways, whenever he speaks.
Indeed, #MJohnHarrison, for you to stand next to #FordMadoxFord is an honor, and to be placed there by Mr Nighy gives that honour an extra unbookish twist. It goes both ways, of course: #BillNighy elevates himself (if that were possible) by his affection for FMF and MJH. Bravo all.
