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Biog: Mick's top tips
Warning: this page contains author self-indulgence of the highest order. May induce vomiting. Over the years it's become a bit of a cliché - especially for men - but Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger really was the first novel to make Jackson feel that this reading business might not be a total waste of time. His older brother and sister had both read the book and passed it on to him. Its laid-back vernacular, all that teenage disillusionment was just what this 13 year old Lancastrian required. Jackson then went in search of other novels which purported to contain similar doses of disgruntlement, such as Room at the top, Kes, This Sporting Life, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, etc. with varying degrees of success. But it wasn't until he came into contact with more contemporary American fiction that the lightbulb lit up in his head again. Jackson did the Beats things, fell in love with Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. (Jeez - Jackson really is beginning to sound like just about every other young man on the planet) but it was whilst reading a Richard Brautigan collection called The Tokyo- Montana Express (page 27 / 'Shrine of Carp', to be precise) that he had that most profound of connections and to this day Brautigan remains a bit of a hero and touchstone rolled into one. For those not familiar with the work of Brautigan, he could be described as a sort of late-Beat writer (his first books were published by City Lights)... a hippie-poet... or simply an American eccentric. Many of his books are collections of... well not even stories, really, simply flights of fancy. His books can be intensely personal and autobiographical, so that reading them can be akin to secretly reading a writer's ideas book - but what can at first seem a little too whimsical has a powerfully cumulative effect. It would be futile to try and convey exactly what it is about Brautigan's books that provokes such devotion in his fans but it must have something to do with the intimacy and tenderness in the work. If you'd like to try and track down some of his books, the original Jonathan Cape hardbacks are few and far between (and usually frighteningly expensive), but you'll sometimes find the Picador paperbacks in second-hand bookshops. We should all be grateful that Rebel Inc (an imprint of Canongate) have reprinted quite a few of his books recently. Try 'Revenge of the Lawn' - a short story collection - for starters. Alternatively, tap the words 'Richard' and 'Brautigan' into any search engine and you should get about 99,000 hits. He's that sort of writer. Two living writers that Jackson is in awe of are Jonathan Raban (eg: Coasting... Old Glory... Hunting Mr Heartbreak) and Richard Mabey (eg: Landlocked... Food For Free... Nature Cure). Raban is often (inadequately) described as a 'travel' writer, just as Mabey is described as a 'nature' writer. What they share is an apparent inability to compose a bad sentence and their books are packed with brilliant observations. Live, both men are enviably articulate and entertaining. If either one of them is reading within a hundred miles of you, Jackson heartily recommends you jump on your bicycle and go and see them. In the meantime, their books have been printed in such numbers that you'll often pick them up quite cheaply... your local library should certainly have a handful of each author's publications. Alternatively, of course, you could always buy them new. It's a sad state of affairs but these days most of Jackson's reading is taken up with research for whatever project he happens to be working on, but rather than recommend the same (no doubt, wonderful) books that you'll already have had recommended to you by your friends and neighbours... here are a few you might not have come across:
While we're at it, here are a few other current cultural highlights in Jackson's world: Three favourite museums:
Three seriously under-rated films:
Three true British originals:
Three great pubs:
Three wonderful painters:
Three bands / musicians who are secretly megastars:
See Links for websites for many of the above. |
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