In respect of this, and with sympathies for Alison's unfortunate narrator,
and in a manner of Announcing Forthcoming Attractions, I'm happy to say that
the next edition of A Chide's Alphabet, to be expected either in September
or early October, will feature, among its many delights, the time and gender
challenged peregrinations of her protagonist so far, under the title of The
Gilded Man.
And I certainly think it worth reading.
Best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: Interview with Matthew Francis (Featured Poet #2, new serie
> Matthew wrote:
>
> >Beckett was not in thrall to a stifling realism, but surely to
*something*
> >stifling. There are moments in Beckett I find moving, but on the whole he
> >isn't for me.
>
> Sometimes I think reading Beckett might be exactly like going mad. But
> you can imagine his prose as a complete obsessive kind of realism,
> perhaps.
>
> >The trouble I have when writing novels is not so much plot but character.
I
> >find myself wondering what I really know about other people and whether I
> >dare to invent them.
>
> Character and plot are things which seem to take care of themselves, or
> maybe are better abandoned: surely they're 19thC inventions? I wrote a
> narrative-driven novel last year, and just sketched out a plan and then
> as it were followed my pen. The other novel, which seems to want to
> encompass everything (perhaps the difference between poetry and prose is
> simply one of amplitude) is a different kettle entirely; I really am not
> interested in plot, although I'm intrigued to see what happens next: my
> narrator is amorphous, but at the same time when I write him (her?) I
> feel enormous sympathy for him, compounded by a kind of sadism: he/she
> seems quite real to me. It seems like a mysterious business to me, this
> thing of looking at blankness and making something.
>
> I've always written secondly for a few friends, and firstly out of some
> desire to articulate something for myself. Yes, it is surprising if
> anyone else is interested.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
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