shelf love, h to j
by uzwi
Another bulletin from the bookshelf. Many favourites here, from Dubliners to Down There On A Visit. Am I going to compare Tree of Smoke with Dispatches ? I am not.
Rawi Hage
Dashiell Hammett
Elizabeth Hand
Colin Harrison
Kent Haruf
Graham Harvey
Pete Hautman
Dick Hebdige
Michael Herr
Werner Herzog
Russell Hoban
Fred Hoyle
John H Holland
Michel Houellebecq
Bernard Huevelmans
Liam Hudson
Christopher Isherwood
Denis Johnson
Steve Jones
James Joyce
The rawest item on the shelf has to be Of Walking in Ice. When Herzog discovered that Lotte Eisner was dying in Paris, he decided to walk to her from Munich, “in full faith, believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot”. His shoes fell apart quite soon. This act of commitment has additional resonance if, like me, you are reading David Constantine. But Constantine’s characters aren’t so confrontational, even as they confront the world’s implacability. They are tentative, hurt, rueful, & a kind of pliability or resilience gets them through & allows them to make the discoveries.
the m john harrison blog 
Surprising absences from that list: Hardy, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Anthony Hope, Henry James, MR James, BS Johnson.
And tons of stuff by some bloke called M. John Harrison is clogging up the equivalent bit of my shelves.
Hi Andrew. I’ve owned them all except Hawthorne; but they went by the board during other pogroms, purges & convulsions. Along the shelves I am known as the Stalin of Books.
Hoban and Herzog’s steamy tryst in the rainforest, presided over by a barking mad Kinski, fails to turn into a threesome when Sir Fred rejects the Big Bang.
Well, I can imagine disappearing Huysmans or something, but removing The Prisoner of Zenda is certainly very strict.
It is, isn’t it ? Sometimes, in the long quiet evenings–I know I can say this to you–I frighten even myself. Just kidding!
But anyone may change their mind. I can forgive if not, perhaps, entirely, forget. After all, Dimitrios is back on the committee.
Chatwin mentions Herzog’s trek from Munich in one of his essays. Apparently Herzog was the only other person he’d met who believed that walking had the ability to physically heal. ‘Walking is holy; tourism is sin’ or something like that.
Also: mentioning Tree of Smoke in the same sentence as Dispatches impells me to read the big, fat book and makes me feel like a fool for avoiding Johnson up till now.
I have recently been told the same thing about walking–that it is something that masters do–even when they are in their final stages of life.
One in particular, because he was so ill, had to continue his walking on a treadmill.
you got me interested in my shelves:
Hand
Hardy
Harrison
Homer
Hopkinson
Hulme
Ishiguro
Herzog and Chatwin are spot on. But it is somehow a deeply strange thing that walking on pavements for prolonged periods is actually very damaging. As a big London walker, it is the only walking I do, which, on return home, makes me feel exhausted, stiff and sick. A combination of the fumes and the hard unrelenting surface perhaps. But there is something else too, something hard to identify, something that refuses to reveal itself. London walking…
London walking doesn’t ease you, it’s nervy & just makes you do more. The appetite feeds itself. The classic London walkers, like Machen, were driven. I did a lot when I was young. You walk endlessly in London for a reason: unconsciously you are looking for the way out. Or not even unconsciously. Independent of you, your body is looking for the way out.
PS: Brendan–
As long as you don’t hold me responsible!
Reaching right back to Lewis Mumford on walking and the shape of the city:
“Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.”
“Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities. ”
(Well, perhaps the odd pub, MM)
from: http://allaboutcities.ca/our-national-flower-is-the-concrete-cloverleaf/
Hope you got a good price for your BS Johnsons, assuming they were original copies. I ‘discovered’ him in the early 90s, and he’s one of those writers I keep coming back to. But collecting his books is an expensive hobby!
You live and learn – reading Coe’s “Like a Fiery Elephant” now, and am immediately loving Coe’s blasts at muddle-class England (intended spelling).
Hi Mike – sorry, this isn’t a comment, just wanted to say I was v. interested to read your comments about the David Constantine book (and Hassan’s). Are you reviewing The Shieling for the TLS? And if so, I don’t suppose you know when it’s due out? Thanks ever so much again for your engagement with what we’re doing. Best, Ra
Hi Ra, good to hear from you. I’ve replied by email.