THE TREAD CONTINUES

Some weeks ago an acquaintance (I say acquaintance because I feel the word friend is used too liberally these days, friendship should be a process of building sturdy foundations of association and trust, not something reduced to the click of a mouse on facebook) recommended the author W.G. Sebald, in particular The Rings of Saturn in which the author walks the coastal region of East Anglia, Suffolk, U.K. This is a part of England I haven't explored myself, this combined with the fact that the idea of walking from town to town holds a certain fascination and romanticized attraction for me. The book itself is a homage to "the thread" to the weaving together of fragments into a historical and socio-economic fabric of the past and present. Roger Casement is mentioned in connection with Joseph Conrad. Casements name had come up in conversation a few years back and i had forgotten about him until Sebald reference. So I went to my local library and found The Lives Of Roger Casement by B.L. Reid, this book then connected to my interest in African literature through Casements involment in the Congo and Putumayo.

RUN WITH THE HUNTED: a charles bukowski reader

What put me off reading Bukowski for a long time was not his writing, but the people I met who were 'into bukowski' or the emulation of his myth, they were usually pretentious talentless hacks who drank too much at parties and ended up throwing up in the recycling box on the porch. I read a few stories from Tales of Ordinary Madness in the early 90's but never followed it up, until about ten years later, I started a more comprehensive reading of his work, poetry mostly and some of his letters, so when I dropped by the bookstore where I work the odd day now and again, Robert the owner was cleaning the covers on a stack of recently purchased books, I noticed the Bukowski Reader and decided to snap it up before it hit the shelf. If you're looking for the hard drinking, brawling, womanizing, tough guy there's some of that here, but there is also so much more...the hard is there to protect the soft....that blue bird in the heart...... edited with care by John Martin, the right man for the job.

THE THREAD

I was in a bookstore recently looking for something new to read, I bought a copy of Threepenny Novel by Bertolt Brecht. Walking back home I began thinking about what a friend and I call 'The Thread'. The thread is what leads you to a certain author/book/film/music/painting; it can include the multiple layers of influence of those living or dead. My interest in Brecht was peeked by a song by Blyth Power called Execution Song on the b-side of a 12'' single Better to Bat
which came out in 1990. I tried reading some of his plays, but never got to far, I find it nearly impossible to read plays and I rarely get to the theatre, either it's to expensive or it's middle-class crap. About four years ago a friend offered me a free ticket to see a production of Bretcht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, of coarse I jumped at the chance and really enjoyed it.
After finishing Threepenny Novel, I felt like keeping the German literature theme going but wasn't sure who to read next, while out walking I found a copy of The Clown by Heinrich Boll in a free box, which reminded me I had Billiards at Half Past Nine buried somewhere in one of the ever growing towers of books sprouting up around me. The thread was expanded further with a viewing of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum(1972), a film by Volker Schlondorff and Margarethe von Trotta, based on the novel by Boll. The Criterion Collection DVD includes interesting interviews with Boll and members of the film crew, about the films relevance in the post 9-11 political landscape. May the thread remain unbroken in all directions.