Like some weird hybrid of Jam and Flann O Brien.
I look forward to more.

I was gonna say exactly the same thing about the Jam likeness... Ambient, twisted, dead-pan, surrealist humor. Chris Morris is a genius.

Nick, great recital, you need to release it on audio-tape.

SOUNDS fantastique, you will be at the top of the literary vanguard! TAO LIN, PETER SOTOS, MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, DENNIS COOPER, MOMUS!

Chris Morris is a genius

He is indeed. That sketch is perverse, but also deeply moral in the way it exaggerates the moral depravity of the property market, gazumping, and so on. It's Swiftian.

god i am so in love with chris morris.

Flann O Brien

Interesting, hadn't thought of that, but it might be in there... I've read "At Swim Two Birds".

A pint of plain is your only man!

Cheers!
I want it twice poured and the head scraped off with a wooden ladle. We shall watch the rings form down the glass like a receding tide.

"Any resemblance to persons living or dead is a total fucking joke, mate."

Noted, my man! Thanks for the warning!

"Any resemblance to persons living or dead is a total fucking joke, mate."
mmmh. I did recognise myself in brother francesco, or was it San Francesco?
Anyway, just can't wait for the book of jokes!
Francesco

quick like a bunny! you banged out that book in nothing flat!

absolutely! i wish i was as focused.

quick like a bunny! you banged out that book in nothing flat!

Thanks, this is great. I dig the bees buzzing around in the background.

Also the book jacket is some nice design, even if it makes a bit of a joke out of earlier-this-week's street art entry. Hey, dialectic: street art vs. patina!

The bees are the sound of me messing around on my Korg Mono/Poly, with which I've recently been re-united.

And yes, there's tagging on the book jacket! It's a photo of a chair I shot at the Beaux Arts in Paris and it actually suggests the underground, writeable, illicit nature of jokes quite well. It also looks a bit Arabic, that tag. But more important is the doodle below, which says "Merder". And the whole kind of "put your butt here" nature of a chair. It's the essence of comedy.

this book cover needs much improving. i fear, it wouldn't look very distinguished on a book store table, more like a random, badly (boringly) designed art magazine (german mag "texte zur kunst" springs to mind). would be better to translate the world of the book into a strong graphical take on the cover. your mock-up is a little bit a reprise of what made the cover for "ocky milk" quite weak: though overall nicely designed, the snap on the cover was rather boring, didn't really "say" anything, at least not anything that would inspire an interesting new association with the content of the album. while the previous two covers, for "oscar", and "otto", have exactly what i tried to say aboth, a fascinating, excelently executed wandering of the music into the graphic realm. works the same with literature.

For some reason, you remind me of a little boy reading this. I don't know, it strikes me as odd because the material is dark and filthy, etc. It's weird connecting the two when they are both completely opposite of each other.

why is ocky milk not on itunes?

and i would like an audio book of your book as well.


much love,
random appreciator

I'm not quite sure why Ocky Milk isn't on iTunes. It's on eMusic and on Cherry Red's own mp3 downloads page.

We're talking about doing a CD or DVD with the book when it comes out, which might be these vids, collected, or might be just readings; an audio book.

...a taxidermy of humpbacked Aesop Fable preserved in a big jar with pickles and mustardseeds... and eaten by an old lady without her dentures as a late night snack...

Aesop, La Fontaine, Leopardi, Rabelais, Moliere, De Sade, Lucian, Bruno Schulz, Swift, Sterne, Calvino, Gombrowicz, Kafka, Diderot, Apollinaire, Leiris, Bataille, Mishima...

Roussel? Perec?

how about some subtitles for the english disabled?

The subtitles for a book-reading are the book itself!

We know all we need to know, when the cover of the book is finished before the actual content. Good luck with that one.

And we know all we need to know when the judgement on the book comes in before the actual content has been read, and is based on the cover!

It might have escaped your knowledge, there is no book to comment on.

And why write for judgement/judges anyway? Especially ones like that!?

Do you think/write it in French first ? and what's the french title going to be ? I know you're quite fluent in French, judging on some previous entries here.

It'll be translated into French by a pro translator. That's way beyond my skills in the language!

As for whether it's "thought" in French, well, since La Volte have been in on this from the start -- they're the only publishers ever to have pursued me, and Xavier Belrose, the editor, has been in touch since his days at Serpente a Plumes, encouraging me to write something for one of the French houses he's been associated with -- it's certainly encadré in a French context. Also, culturally, I think it owes a lot to french traditions -- the medieval gross-out elements of Villon and Rabelais, the fables and clarté school of La Fontaine, the libertinage of De Sade and co, playful philosopher-pornographers like Diderot, transgressor-economist-anthropologists like Bataille and Leiris, eccentric dandies like Huysmans... It's really much more in a French tradition than an English one. Though of course Swift and Sterne loom large... So many heroes!

"Jokes" is a hard word to translate into French. Le Livre des Blagues? Des Plaisanteries? It's up to the translator, really.

I see, in English with a strong french cultural subtext. I'll probably have to buy both editions then (I'm french but I like to read UK/US books in English when possible).
btw, I liked a lot of books from Le Serpent a Plumes (and their revue was excellent), so it really sounds promising.

maybe also michaux could be a french reference? i think of "un certain plume", which is also quite a book of jokes.

I haven't read that.

it's a series of short stories with monsieur plume enduring ever more absurd situations. one of my favorites is "plume au restaurant" in which he's eating something in a restaurant, and gets a remark by the waiter, that what he got on his plate isn't in the menue, and plume immediately feels guilty (although what he eats was served by this very suspicious waiter), and excuses himself. he then gets visited by the maître de cuisine, the owner of the reataurant, a police officer, up to some people from the secret service. all hold against him that his meal isn't in the menue, and his excuses get ever more nervous and absurd, while they threaten to beat him up if he doesn't "confess".

I have heard more succinct variants of both jokes before but I prefer your versions with their narrative embellishment - I find I like jokes that carry a story with them.
One can get more from a mediocre joke that comes with a good (often superfluous) yarn than a punchy one liner that fire-crackles out of memory.
Your delivery is the antithesis of stand-up convention, you sound halting, hesitant and a little inconfident which actually makes the joke more effective - the stock bombast that most stage comics believe is essential to their trade is actually off-putting.
I actually think you could find quite a niche in stand-up but I would avoid telling the first joke at church benefit gigs....
Thomas S.

Divine, Momus. From one Nicholas to another. Divine!

Oddly this reminds me of Jackanory.

I appreciate that you have to be (a) british and (b) over twenty-five years old to understand.

Bloody writer's bloody block. Not block, but bloody commitment. As soon as I open that bloody mental zone, bloody spectres appear. Words are darts for cowards. Even your bloody muse, that innocent girl with the good smile, is secretly laughing at you. Your imagination was the curving shadow of your bloody sexual energy, and it drained, bloody quick as a bath. You lack an intrinsic concept of yourself to express. You don't know who you are. Not really. No-one, this time or fucking hence, wants to swim where you do, and the bloody ball is not in your bloody fucking court.

More BEARD!!!!
grow that thing out Moondog style!

Hi Nick, I just sent you an email but I never trust the address of you that I have...just wanted to ask you about the name of those cheap flights to beijing you told me about, cos I cant find them!
Thanks a bunch,
Mario El Canario

News earlier this year was that Fly Asian Express was going to launch on July 1st. They're still putting deals in place, and it now looks like next Easter will be the start date. More here.

Nick, it's a bit of a fiction itself to claim that you've never been pursued by an Anglophone publisher ;-).

Might be able to help you with that; have other news but you're going to have to drop me a line to get it...

that joke is a panic, thanks, i needed a chuckle

I can't wait for more.
Everything you touch must turn to gold or some other maleable rock.

P.S
Ocky Milk is incredible
"The birdcatcher" and Nervous heartbeat are in constant rotation
:)

it gets even more interesting with your reading.