Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better

Some interesting news via John Connolly’s blog, folks, where he’s musing on a novel he’s currently writing: “At the same time, having finished the fairly minor edits for THE LOVERS, I’ve returned to an odd book that I’ve been humming and hawing over for quite some time … That urge to experiment, to try new things that may fail, is one that’s becoming increasingly difficult to indulge as time goes on.” ‘An odd book’? If we’re into territory even remotely approaching the ‘experiment’ of JC’s meisterwerk THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, I’ll be a very happy man indeed. As the boy Beckett may never have actually said, ‘Try again, fail again, fail better.’
  Meanwhile, I heard yesterday that John McFetridge’s SWAP will be coming to an American shelf near you in early 2010, and possibly late this year in a Canadian edition, which is superb news. I read SWAP last year in m/s, and even factoring in the provisio that El Fetch is a buddy of mine, it’s still a terrific read, and his best yet in my not-very-humble opinion. The vid below is the proposed trailer: roll it there, Collette …

No comments:

Post a Comment

Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.