‘We are all animals, and therefore, we are continually being attracted. That this attraction should extend to what is called love is a human misfortune cultivated by novelists. It is the horror we feel of ourselves, that is of being alone with ourselves, which draws us to love, but this love should happen only once, and never be repeated, if we have, as we should, learnt our lesson, which is that we are, all and each one of us, always and always alone.‘ — Henry Green
‘Start reading any of Henry Green’s books and some long dormant faculty in the brain becomes alert. The words are simple enough but the phrases never seem to slide into their usual slots, to be skimmed and forgotten – you have to read slowly, but it feels like an engrossing conversation rather than work. Why is “as he was doing” tucked into the middle of that sentence, comma free? And what in the world does he mean by “felt thoughts”? (I’m still not sure about the latter.) In this heightened state of attention, awake but slightly disoriented, strange bits of poetry come floating to us down the sentences – “would give the cool moon to stand in his shoes.” Not showy lyricism, but ordinary speech at its most expressive.
‘Over the years, Green has accumulated an odd coterie of admirers and, as far as I can tell, very few readers. Each admirer also tends to connect with a different set of Green’s books because they are extraordinarily dissimilar. Despite some obvious stylistic similarities – the preponderance of dialogue, the occasional dropping of articles, strange word orders – each novel takes on a different method of storytelling and an entirely new set of narrative problems. And unlike, say, D.H. Lawrence, Green doesn’t have a stable set of moral concerns, and occasionally appears to have no concerns at all: his books don’t seem to be making points or pushing any view of the world on the reader. At first, it’s hard to see what drove Green to write them, and indeed Green wasn’t too sure himself. He had plenty of money and a job available to him running his family’s factory, and he apparently wrote novels because he couldn’t help it. He once said that he was no more proud of producing his books than growing fingernails.
‘Green’s books are the work of a genuine savant. He never seems to have struggled through a derivative phrase, and his earlier books (the first was published when he was 19) are just as singular, in different ways, as his later ones. All of his novels, plus one extraordinary memoir, seem to casually shrug off the entire history of the art form – every familiar narrative device, every piece of emotional shorthand that we’ve come to expect as readers – and cut closer to the truth of lived experience than any writer I’ve come across.
‘I’m not sure why Green stopped writing. He died in the early 70s, without publishing a word after 1952. Apparently he spent much of that time drunk. I don’t want to pretend that I have any explanation for this, but I wonder if part of his dryness came from the loss of the vernacular culture from which he drew so much of his inspiration. In Pack My Bag, Green has wonderful samples of working class British talk: “When they describe,” he writes, “as everyone knows, they are literally unsurpassed in the spoken word.” And one can imagine him listening to maids and workers and the office typing pool, all of their words mixing with his imagination and becoming art. Much of that world was already going after the war, and maybe Green was himself withdrawing from what was left of it. In any case, it survives in the books – nine novels and a memoir – and it is among the great fictional universes left by any writer this century, a happy age of literature all by itself.’ — The Occasional Review
Henry Green’s house
______
Context
Birmingham, UK in the 1920s
Birmingham, UK in 1935
Birmingham, UK in 1964
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Further
‘Molten Treasure: The Books of Henry Green’ (1949) @ Time Magazine
‘Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green’
‘Caught in the Web: Henry Green’ @The Guardian
‘PUSHING THE DAGGER OF PERCEPTION THROUGH THE DRAPES OF NARRATIVE: TIM PARKS ON HENRY GREEN’ @ 3:AM Magazine
Henry Green page @ Facebook
Henry Green @ goodreads
‘Silent Treatment: Benjamin Anastas on Henry Green’ @ Bookforum
‘Henry Green, the last English Modernist’ @ TLS
Henry Green @ Dalkey Archive
Buy Henry Green’s books
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Manuscript
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Interview
by Terry Southern
from The Paris Review
INTERVIEWER: Now, you have a body of work, ten novels, which many critics consider the most elusive and enigmatic in contemporary literature—and yourself, professionally or as a personality, none the less so. I’m wondering if these two mysteries are merely coincidental?
HENRY GREEN: What’s that? I’m a trifle hard of hearing.
INTERVIEWER: Well, I’m referring to such things as your use of a pseudonym, your refusal to be photographed, and so on. May I ask the reason for it?
GREEN: I didn’t want my business associates to know I wrote novels. Most of them do now, though . . . know I mean, not write, thank goodness.
INTERVIEWER: And has this affected your relationships with them?
GREEN: Yes, yes, oh yes—why, some years ago a group at our Birmingham works put in a penny each and bought a copy of a book of mine, Living. And as I was going round the iron foundry one day, a loam molder said to me, “I read your book, Henry.” “And did you like it?” I asked, rightly apprehensive. He replied, “I didn’t think much of it, Henry.” Too awful.
Then, you know, with a customer, at the end of a settlement which has deteriorated into a compromise painful to both sides, he may say, “I suppose you are going to put this in a novel.” Very awkward.
INTERVIEWER: I see.
GREEN: Yes, it’s best they shouldn’t know about one. And one should never be known by sight.
INTERVIEWER: You have, however, been photographed from the rear.
GREEN: And a wag said: “I’d know that back anywhere.”
INTERVIEWER: I’ve heard it remarked that your work is “too sophisticated” for American readers, in that it offers no scenes of violence—and “too subtle,” in that its message is somewhat veiled. What do you say?
GREEN: Unlike the wilds of Texas, there is very little violence over here. A bit of child killing, of course, but no straight shootin’. After fifty, one ceases to digest; as someone once said: “I just ferment my food now.” Most of us walk crabwise to meals and everything else. The oblique approach in middle age is the safest thing. The unusual at this period is to get anywhere at all—God damn!
INTERVIEWER: And how about “subtle”?
GREEN: I don’t follow. Suttee, as I understand it, is the suicide—now forbidden—of a Hindu wife on her husband’s flaming pyre. I don’t want my wife to do that when my time comes—and with great respect, as I know her, she won’t …
INTERVIEWER: I’m sorry, you misheard me; I said, “subtle”—that the message was too subtle.
GREEN: Oh, subtle. How dull!
INTERVIEWER: … yes, well now I believe that two of your books, Blindness and Pack My Bag, are said to be “autobiographical,” isn’t that so?
GREEN: Yes, those two are mostly autobiographical. But where they are about myself, they are not necessarily accurate as a portrait; they aren’t photographs. After all, no one knows what he is like, he just tries to give some sort of picture of his time. Not like a cat to fight its image in the mirror.
INTERVIEWER: The critic Alan Pryce-Jones has compared you to Jouhandeau and called you an “odd, haunted, ambiguous writer.” Did you know that?
GREEN: I was in the same house with him at Eton. He was younger than me, so he saw through me perhaps.
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Book
Henry Green Party Going
Penguin
‘Party Going opens with a small group of hastily assembled characters converging in, or making their way to, the railway station, on their way to a holiday in Europe. The sense of holidaymaking suspends the hotel somewhere in a semi-realistic state: between home and holiday, and between station and city. When intense fog envelops the city they are halted on their journey and take refuge in the station hotel. This creates a sense of anticipation which is never fulfilled and which leaves the characters vulnerable –- unsure of how to act and behave in the static environment. The hotel as a refuge, however, soon takes a sinister turn as those unable to enter it become trapped in the station where they are swept up in a frenzy of panic and claustrophobia. Green continuously plays with point of view giving different descriptions of entrances and exits in order to juxtapose various characters’ reactions to the same space, highlighting the distinctions between interior and exterior space. Initially, a fragile sense of community is formed through those characters that are able to occupy the hotel, to take refuge in it. It is an odd sense of refuge, however, for they do, of course, all remain in the city where they live; yet at the same time removed from their everyday life and trapped by external circumstances (that is by the obscuring fog and crowds shut in on the station concourse). And it is precisely this ‘known’ London being rendered ‘unknown’ and their powerlessness in the face of this transformation, which brings about a growing sense of panic as they begin to lose control of the situation.’ — Joanna Pready, Literary London
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Excerpts
Fog was so dense, bird that had been disturbed went flat into a balustrade and slowly fell, dead, at her feet.
There it lay and Miss Fellowes looked up to where that pall of fog was twenty foot above and out of which it had fallen, turning over once. She bent down and took a wing then entered a tunnel in front of her, and this had DEPARTURES lit up over it, carrying her dead pigeon.
*
Seen by Julia from the hotel windows directly above, the crowd seemed to be swaying like branches rock in a light wind, and she had forgotten what it was to be outside, what it smelled and felt like, and she had not realized what this crowd was, just seeing it through glass. It went on chanting WE WANT TRAINS, WE WANT TRAINS from that one section which surged to and fro and again that same woman shrieked, two or three men were shouting against the chant but she would not distinguish words. She thought how strange it was when hundreds of people turned their heads all in one direction, their faces so much lighter than their dark heads, lozenges, lozenges, lozenges.
It’s terrifying, said Julia, I did not realize there were so many people in the world.
*
Standing prepared, empty, curtained, shuttered, tall mirrors facing across laid tables crowned by napkins, with space rocketing transparence from one glass silvered surface to the other, supporting walls covered in olive-coloured silk, chandeliers repeated to a thousand thousand profiles to be lost in olive-grey depths as quiet as this room’s untenanted attention, but a scene made warm with mass upon mass of daffodils banked up against mirrors, or mounded once on each of the round white tables and laid in a flat frieze about their edges — here then time stood still for Jane, even in wine bottles over to one side holding the single movement, and that unseen, of bubbles rising just as the air, similarly trapped even if conditioned, watched unseen across itself in a superb but not indifferent pause of mirrors.
Into this waiting shivered one small seen movement that seemed to snap the room apart, a door handle turning.
*
Air she breathed was harsh, and here where there were no lamps or what few there were shone at greater distances, it was like night with fog as a ceiling shutting out the sky, lying below tops of trees.
Where hundreds of thousands she could not see were now going home, their day done, she was only starting out and there was this difference that where she had been nervous of her journey and of starting, so that she had said she would rather go on foot to the station to walk it off, she was frightened now. As a path she was following turned this way and that round bushes and shrubs that hid from her what she would find she felt she would next come upon this fog dropped suddenly down to the ground, when she would be lost.
Then at another turn she was on more open ground. Headlights of cars above turning into a road as they swept round hooting swept their light above where she walked, illuminating lower brances of trees. As she hurried she started at each blaring horn and each time she would look up to make sure that noise heralded a light and then was reassured to see leaves brilliantly green veined like marble with wet dirt and these veins reflecting each light back for a moment then it would be gone out beyond her and then was altogether gone and there was another.
These lights would come like thoughts in darkness, in a stream; a flash and then each was away. Looking round, and she was always glancing back, she would now and then see loving couples dimly two by two; in flashes their faces and anything white in their clothes picked up what light was at moments reflected down on them.
*
p.s. Hey. As you may have seen, the Halloween London screening of ‘Room Temperature’ sold out really fast, so we’ve added a second screening the next day, November 1st, 4:30 pm at the same location. Tickets go on sale at 11 am this morning GMT. Get them here. I would move quickly, just to be safe. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Happy start! I guess my brain is back, but how would I know, I guess. Helen Keller as a metaphor or something, why not? Good plucking there by love. Love thanking everyone who bought or will buy tickets to ‘RT’, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, He’s sampleable up the wazoo, I reckon. Well, I’m def. skipping out on ‘Primetime’, but give me the scoop. ** Adem Berbic, Yeah, the speed at which the screening sold out was let’s just say a surprise. Hopefully you’re up early enough today to score Sunday tickets. 11 am, hit that site and button. Excellent that you found your de-clogger in James. Not surprised. Not anywhere close to an acceptable level of spooked yet, but it’s October 2nd. Needn’t be greedy. Yeah, super nice of Andrew to accept the moderator slot. ** Regina, Hi, Regina. Oh, gosh, hopefully you’re seeing this early enough to get tickets for the Sunday screening. Hopefully it’ll fill up more gradually. I hope you can come. Cool, you sound squared away on the film front. Here, the Cinematheque just reopened and the big annual experimental French film festival is close by. It has a screening of experimental films by teens aged 12 to 17, and that is always a must see. Where are you with your short? That’s exciting! Everything’s good enough here, thank you. Have the best day. ** scunnard, Hi. Well, assuming you still want to, a second Sunday screening goes on sale this morning. See: above. Humidity is the enemy. Except when it’s cold outside. New film: we’re starting the fundraising phase, i.e. the most stressful phase. I guess we’ll know soon how tough that’s going to be. Otherwise, it’s written and growing exponentially in Zac’s and my brains. Really excellent about the show and the upcoming projects. You sound pretty great. I’ve been fine, doing what I do and hope to do with no serious obstacles thus far. ** Jonathan Lees, Well, hey there! Welcome, and I so agree with you about the dumped baby. Respect! ** James Bennett, Thanks, yeah, so far so good. Holy crap, I was totally at that Sebadoh gig! Wild. I’ll re-experience it. I remember it being kind of a super fun total mess. And I’ll scour that guy’s channel. I probably knew him or something. Thanks! Week’s okay. Inching forward. Saw some good art and friends. So appreciating the atmospheric descent. For my money Joy Williams is pretty much the best living American fiction writer, so I’m happy she’s clicking with you, obvs. And Pinget! You are on a serious roll! ** Mark Stephens, Mr. Mark Stephens, old pal. So lovely to get to ‘see’ you. I know, no LA Halloween. It’s murdering me, but the Halloween/London thing killed off my dream because I can’t afford to fly all the way over there right now if I can’t get the full Halloween experience. But I’m sad as fuck, and seeing you will have to wait a bit, which obviously also sucks. I hope to get there before year’s end. I saw something about Disney making cuts, and of course I thought of J and tensed up a little bit. I’m beyond awfully glad that the artifact is just sitting there like an annoying but harmless little bitch. Ugh, though. Did we see that Nico show together? Awesome. Possibly Spedding, yes. Supposedly that show had Tim Hardin as the opening act, but I don’t remember seeing Tim Hardin, and I don’t see how I could’ve forgotten that. Sending tons of love back to you! And hopefully we’ll be in each others’ eyesight ere long at all. xo. ** Carsten, Glad you’re ensconced. For me, if the day ever comes when I stop absorbing & gulping down everything, I hope I’m being zipped up in a body bag. Romantic comedies may be the most off-putting genre for me. But luckily practically no interesting director ever makes such things. Musicals aren’t a problem. It’s a big enough area. My ‘fear’ is that ‘Digger’s is this moment’s ‘Megalopolis’, which I really hoped would be an auteur masterpiece but was in fact almost unwatchable level awful. ** laura w, Happy Halloween’s starting gate. ‘Stainless’, cool, Todd was an old friend of mine. Very sadly missed. Someone said the ‘RT’ BluRay is now preorder-able on Amazon or somewhere, but I haven’t checked. Out on November 10th, I think. It has some cool bonus features if I don’t say so myself. ** i🌙, Hi. Good characterisation of Bachmann’s gift. Too young, complete nonsense. You know and feel and understand things right now that you won’t or won’t remember accurately when you’re older, and I think the perspective of teenagers is as serious and valuable as that of people of older or any age. If you don’t write what you know and want to know, etc., now, important things will get lost. Musicians your age make great work, and there’s no reason on earth why it’s any different for writers your age. Granted, I became a serious, if not very good writer when I was 15, so I come from where I come from. ** HaRpEr //, You got a ticket! Whew! Never imagined it would sell out so fast. It is a small venue, but still. I’m sure I can find the Jack Smith doc in some nefarious streaming location, and I’ll head over there. Thanks, pal. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Rob the post with my permission and blessings! Happy October 2nd! Very sweet about the $1000! Wow. Um, I think maybe something like that existed back in my school days. It rings a bell. Fortunately or unfortunately I had moneyed parents, so I wouldn’t have qualified. There isn’t a ton of spooky stuff over here to choose from, but definitely a trip to Halloween makeover of Parc Asterix and checking out a ‘Haunted Park’ thing they’re doing that will probably be kind of lame. If the ‘Hellraiser’ game is on Nintendo, I will play it. I’m totally way more than okay with the post. October 9 is completely fine. Awesome, that would be amazing. I drove through New Orleans once, so I just saw it through the car windows, and I couldn’t tell what it was exactly. Never been to NC. Always wanted to. I’ll figure it out. Happiest day! ** Okay. Have you guys read Henry Green? People don’t seem to read him very much these days, but he’s awfully good. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Sunday tickets secured for me and T. Phew, I can finally wipe a day’s worth of sweat from my brow. Thanks for the tip-off.
I’m in Edinburgh right now to see if there’s any here here. So far: there’s a little here. The air is definitely cleaner. Munched on some Gass and attempted some scribbles on the train up. Gass is a very munchable author for me. More on that anon. I hope your weekend is opulent, love-featuring and – dare I say it – spookier.
Nice to hear about Henry Green, I’m from Birmingham (well, right on the border of) so it’s always fun to hear something interesting about it, especially cause theres not much going for it these days. I did manage to secure the tickets for Sunday! I am so so excited, will have to try not to get too wasted the night before. The short film is going well, as early as we are in the actual making of it. I have the crucial crew together, and we’re starting to get the breakdowns and budget together to get a bit of funding. Should be filmed by the time we break for Christmas, keeping fingers crossed. Have a great day 🙂
HI DENNIS. Wow, what a cool extract. I found the interview with him more interesting than the extract itself – I love the confusion anonymity, or at least attempted anonymity, brings to authors – it both accentuates the anxiety people have around authors of quote unquote unpleasant fiction, and throws up the possibility of fakery in biography. I love the sort of wildly veering perspective… it sort of reminds me of a rollercoaster or something, inasmuch as it’s a fast moving manicured experience with striking visuals and weird angles. I’ll see if I can find a copy.
Have been enjoying Halloween descending on my town… I don’t really celebrate it myself, and it’s so enmeshed with your blog and writing in my mind that it almost instantly reads as a sort of bespoke Dennis Cooper aisle in my supermarket, rather than Halloween. Looking forward to your blog this month!
I’m sure I’ve asked this before – but did you ever finish Nabokov’s “Ada, or Ardor: a Family Chronicle”? On paper it’s a perfect book for me, inasmuch as it’s a sort of Angela Carter-ified approach to Proust, but it’s sort of impenetrably technical. I hear the first 3 chapters are a sort of child-lock for the more sexual prose, but I’d be curious to get your position on the topic. Adios!
Hi!!
Congratulations on the sold-out screening!
Have you read anything by Nathan Hill? He’s been called “a worthy heir to David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon,” so I’m thinking about trying his book Wellness.
Love feeling intensely glad, always but today especially, that he doesn’t have children, Od.
I was at that Nico/Tim Hardin show, too. Was it at the Whisky? My memory of the show is almost like dream images. Tim Hardin was very drunk, and I don’t remember any specifics beyond that. Nico was equally drunk, and someone in the audience yelled out the name “Jackson Browne,” and it made Nico upset or angry. That’s my memory of that dream-like show.
I have all the Henry Green novels in my read-to-next pile, somewhere in the house. He’s a fascinating figure.
Sure I have a Henry Green novel here on my bookshelf from a previous occasion when it was highlighted on this blog. Just tried digging it out to no avail but will have another look over the weekend.
Do not think that Primetime is available for UK viewing, either via Apple TV or my dodgy Firestick. Maybe that could be just as well? Tonight instead, I’m gonna devote my attention to Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie, which I cannot believe I’ve somehow never seen up til now. Seems to be exactly what I’m looking for in a film. A bonnie girl going through emotional upheaval is something that I’m always here for.
hi hi, feeling like a teenager totally counts. i think i agree with you about the saving part, though i’ve felt like it’s doomed me, but then i guess that gives me something to be saved from. i also think connecting with others who feel the same way is life-affirming. thank you for asking about my chapbook, it’s not in stores or anything but i could send you a copy if you have a mailing address available. yep count lucanor is a computer game, it takes about 2 hours to play through to the end. i think you would like it. it’s a beautiful 2D design and the storyline delves into childhood wounds, dreams, fears, abandonments… it’s liminal in the best way. only video game that’s ever made me cry. anyways sorry about the existential terror, i get it <3
happy october!
caro
Hi Dennis, haha it’s not meant to be. Didn’t see this until after 11 and then it was gone by the time I clicked! At least that bodes well for you? Ah yes, the fundraising. I know it well but not at the same scale your stuff requires. A blessing on your house and all that and hopes it all goes surprisingly smooth. Oh hey look at that, it worked. Yes it seems like a positive start with the stuff here and also enjoy the geeking out of the process at this stage. The edition thing is also starting to open up some interesting possibilities beyond what I initially had in mind, which I’m enjoying thinking about.
Hey Dennis – Lovely Henry Green day. I read “Concluding” a little while ago and that’s become my favorite of his — and one of my all-time favorites. A quietly radical book about denying closure at every turn, but somehow still satisfying. Have you checked out that one?
Sorry to go AWOL on reconnecting via Zoom. Teaching work has been an avalanche and I’m still digging myself out. Daylight should finally appear in a couple of weeks and would love to retry then.
I have materials from the Song Cave for a post on Tom Cole’s Chimes and will send that your way in a week or so.
How’re things with the new film producer? Have any fiction ideas been tickling your brain or is the focus solely on the film right now?
Those London tickets seem to be selling like crazy, so congratulations! Wasn’t London a tough place to book a screening in at first? And now look!
I came across the name Henry Green during a bit of a Terry Southern phase in my early 20s. He always championed Green & obviously interviews him up there in the post. Only read bits & pieces back then, but Green was certainly unique. “Not showy lyricism, but ordinary speech at its most expressive.” Isn’t that what it’s all about? And that opening excerpt “Fog was so dense, bird that had been disturbed…” Love the use of the dropped article.
Well that’s the beauty & variety of character, isn’t it? I really like that about you, your voracious openness & curiosity. It’s a beautiful quality. I thought of a good example to explain my temperament, because I’d certainly also call myself open & curious, but I also have this gut instinct of where the deepest connections lie for me. Yoruba sacred tradition, which I studied throughly: I was interested in every aspect of it & immersed myself fully & so on. All the gods intrigued me, & I read all their praise poetry I could find, but I quickly realized where my affinities are. I’m drawn to & continually nourished by the hot, violent gods. I respect the soft, “cool” ones, but they fail to give me that electric shudder of deep recognition. So I know which direction to head in to deepen that connection. And I feel myself at a point in my life where it’s more important to me to deepen things rather than broaden them. Which is why I’m such an obsessive re-reader & re-listener too. I know that example is a bit from left field & a very particular (or niche) interest of mine, but it informs my approach to art as well. Even to social interaction, romantic matters etc.
Oh I dodged “Megalopolis”. It just sounded awful. The thing with “Digger” is weird. The trailer looked terrible, like a bad stab at “Dr. Strangelove”. The marketing as a whole is mystifying. I was at the mall today & went by its cinema to check the showtimes, & there was no promotional material for “Digger” anywhere. No posters, nothing. Can you imagine? For a fucking Tom Cruise film? Seems the studio has no idea what to do with it. And I keep telling myself that those are all solid reasons to go check it out, which I probably will Tuesday night when they’re showing it here undubbed.
did not recognize the name but checked on goodreads and apparently i added it to my want to read list… five years ago? i went through a phase where i was reading a lot of early-mid 20th century british writers. this sentence in particular rings for me; i like it a lot:
it’s terrifying, said julia, i did not realize there were so many people in the world.
i should have figured you might have known todd grimson! even if he was in the portland group. i did some googling on him and i guess he was very good friends with katherine dunn, who i know is a semi-big deal even if i’ve only read geek love. very sad how he died. i will do some digging on amazon for the room temperature blu-ray, as the idea of special features tempts me. the ultimate special feature ever is the short film of werner herzog eating his shoe on the dvd release of gates of heaven. very happy for you that the london screenings are selling out so quickly! hopefully seeing people there and with costumes on will make you feel a tiny bit better about missing la halloween. and hopefully the london screenings selling out is also a balm. it seems like this new film is going well so far? have a very happy weekend- i hope the leaves are turning over there and it’s looking as pretty as it is here.
The Jack Smith doc is on ok.ru which is the only place that I could find it. Here’s the link: https://ok.ru/video/3236537764451
I love Henry Green, ‘Nothing’ being my favourite. I don’t know why I haven’t read this one yet but I need to. He’s like if Evelyn Waugh and Ivy Compton-Burnett took a lot of ritalin together and decided to change places, and I love a dialogue orientated novel. I remember as a nine year old I wrote a story for school that was all dialogue and my teacher angrily made me redo it, so I think my disobedience there had some long lasting effect.
Pinget came up here today, and I should say that I read ‘Fable’ on the internet archive yesterday in one gulp. It’s truly so distinct from a lot of the other nouveau roman writers. Those writers were of course all very distinct, but Pinget really surprised me. I was reminded of Beckett, sure, with how a very simple language eats itself and mutates, characters changing names etc., but what is really interesting to me is that Pinget sets up these scenarios, as if writing a normal story, and then takes a total left turn and each page is like a different book. And he’s also less detail orientated than a Robbe-Grillet, say, and his works exist in a more fluid space, whereas a lot of R-G’s works are dedicated to exhausting the vast contours of a very concrete space. Anyway, I was blown away by it, obviously. Are there any other Pinget books you’d recommend? I’m eager to know.