Galway Advertiser reviews Jude: Level 1! Wild celebrations in Gough apartment! Neighbours call police!

Well, if you've ever lived in Galway, as I did for twenty years, this is THE BIG ONE. Oh, the Irish Times is all very well, the Washington Post has its charms, the New York Times... (hmmm, let's not go there, girlfriend...), the Observer is good and well, and the Guardian is very nice... but the Galway Advertiser review is the one that has you holding your breath. Everyone that you know, everyone you will casually bump into for the next month, will have read it.

And the Galway Advertiser verdict is in on Jude: Level 1... and it's good!

Here's how it starts:

"Jude: Level 1, the hilarious new novel by Julian Gough, is a tour de farce, a comic chronicle of the history of the Irish psyche which takes the reader from the middle of the 20th century to the post-Celtic Tiger ennui of today, at breakneck speed. "

I may well be sticking that on the back of the next edition. Very happy. Very proud. I can safely show my face in Galway at the Arts Festival (I'm reading there on the 24th of July).

Read the rest here....

Me Waffling On At The Eleventh Hour

If any of you would like to avoid hearing me waffling on yet again about how great me and my book are, then don't tune into The Eleventh Hour tonight at 11pm on Ireland's RTÉ Radio 1. Páraic Breathnach,
Páraic Breathnach... a leather-skirt wearing monster of a man from Connemara, will be interrogating me for twenty or thirty minutes, at the end of which I hope he will give me the sound thrashing I deserve.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/theeleventhhour/

No doubt the whole distasteful event will be archived by RTÉ, in a spirit of public service, and made available for the discouragement of others. 

First reviews are in!

Well, the first reviews of Jude: Level 1 are in, and it isn't even officially published till Monday (July 2nd, 2007). A great review in the Guardian. No, not that Guardian. You're obviously not from Tipperary. Let me start again.

The Nenagh Guardian has scooped the world!

Unfortunately I can't link to the review, because the Nenagh Guardian (or to use its full, historic title, "The Nenagh Guardian or Tipperary (North Riding) and Ormond Advertiser, incorporating the Nenagh News and the Tipperary Vindicator"), hasn't updated its website lately. But it was a good review, trust me, my mother read it out to me down the phone.

Meanwhile, in cyberspace, the first review is also in, and it's a doozy. A lot of people had pre-ordered Jude: Level 1 on Amazon. Now, Amazon, being Efficient and Modern and Devoted to Customer Service, sent out the pre-ordered copies as soon as the books arrived in the warehouse, way ahead of the publication date. Thus I have my first five star review on Amazon.co.uk, from the delightful Peter Kettle. (He has also just sent me one of the most charming emails I've ever received.) It is such a splendid review, I am going to quote it in full here, and then go to bed and dream happy dreams:

"What happens when you cross Douglas Adams with Sam Beckett?", 29 Jun 2007 By Peter Kettle (Sussex, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"If you're one of those people who skip to the end of reviews for a sound bite I'll be kind and start with one: Jude: Level 1 is that rare thing, a novel that's funny and beautifully written.

For those who like a bit more meat in a review I'd say this is funny, stimulating, vividly exciting, and brilliantly written without a single boring cliche in sight. It's got a bit of Douglas Adams in it, and a smattering of Flann O'Brien. A small portion of it got minced up with Beckett, enough to get you imagining some great Irish heavy drinker like Jack McGowran. His fruity voice would be exactly right for this story of serial demolitions. McGowran would probably embroider the whole mad story into the creamy top of his Guinness. How often do you come across a writer who can make humour deep? Joyce of course, Beckett certainly, but it's pretty thin after that. Nutbeam's party in Annie Proulx's fab `The Shipping News' gets close to the same feeling, so if you enjoyed that one you'll go for this one.

Okay, who the hell am I to say this? I'm just a painter scratching a living who happens to be a fan of reading. I'm also keen on exploding buildings, and this novel manages to destroy lots of them. It also runs circles around those everyday Oirish accounts of hard times, famines and gangsters. Despite having several orphans in it the story doesn't for one moment get syrupy, and every time an orphan gets killed you'll laugh.

I shall be rooting for the next bits of this story on the net. I'll be ordering the hardback as soon as I can. It's a cheerful book with a skewed logic of its own, and I hope it becomes a major prizewinner. I want to see it issued as a film; as a range of kitchen utensils; and most of all in a signed limited edition, bound in the skin of the Salmon of Knowledge. You'll just have to read it to find out what the hell I'm talking about."

-Peter Kettle

Hurrah! Hurrah! And now I'm off to bed.

Geneva reading, hardbacks, other news...

Some nice comments on the Loudness War piece over on my myspace page (from Debbie Lear and Michael Knight), so I will return to that subject soon, and tell the True Tale of Toasted Heretic's Part in That Great Battle.

Meanwhile, this post is terse and businesslike. The novel comes out in two weeks, so here's some last-minute news:

I'm reading in Geneva this coming Monday (18th of July 2007). Do tell any Swiss friends who might be in the neighbourhood. More info from the Geneva Literary Aid Society.

And we're bringing out a hardback of Jude: Level 1. Probably a limited edition, probably signed (by me). It should arrive in the shops around the same time as the paperback. More news on that soon. Everything's gone to press now, so it's starting to feel real. My copy of the hardback is in the post. I'll put the new, finished cover up on the website as soon as it arrives. I'm told it's only gorgeous.

It looks like I'll be doing a few readings over the summer, in Geneva, Galway, Dromineer, and several in the UK (including a damn good music festival) which will be confirmed very soon. More on those once they're definite...

Some radio stuff is being firmed up, both English and Irish, also some press and magazine stuff... more when the dates are nailed down. Subscribe to the RSS feed, if you're keen to hear it all as it's announced...

Only two weeks to go, holy guacamole...

Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke

I've spent too long lately in the mirrored underworld of the literary blogs. (Too long = more than an hour a day for more than three days.)  So, to restore myself to health, I have been reading Rob Long's Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke. Whenever the idiocy of Literatureland seems too much to bear, a quick trip to Hollywoodland reminds you that it could be infinitely worse.

 
Rob Long wrote a bunch of episodes of Cheers. Towards the end, he executive-produced some, too. And, with his writing and producing partner, Dan Staley, he went on to write and produce a bunch of other TV stuff that (like almost everything ever done by anyone ever) wasn't as ludicrously successful as Cheers.

In the post-Cheers comedown he also wrote Conversations With My Agent, a grim classic that pretty much explains itself. Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke is the followup. Both are funny, have hidden emotional depths, and will help you a lot if you ever, God forbid, find yourself writing for television or the movies in Hollywood.

Here's Rob Long on pitching versus writing. This is as good an explanation as I've ever read of what's wrong with the entire development process in Hollywood:

 

"Most writers prefer to pitch an idea before they write it, but in our experience, this leads to difficulty.

    The whole point of writing a treatment – or, better yet, writing an entire script – is that there’s very little confusion left about what, exactly, the show will be about and who, exactly, the star or stars of the show will be, and what, precisely, is or is not funny about it.

But when you pitch a show, you pitch into the wide blue sky. You pitch the general idea, the concept – whatever that means – and you naturally smooth the sharp edges and tailor the pitch to the involuntary reactive facial muscles on the face of the highest ranking decision-maker in the room. It’s almost impossible not to. A pitch is like a performance by a raggedy subway clown. He just wants you to love him and toss him some change.

    So the network hears what it wants to hear: that your show will be perfect for an actor they have a deal with; that it will concentrate on family life, snugly fitting into an open 8.30 PM slot; that its point of view will be single people, or urban dwellers, or blue collar, or married with childrens, or whomever the target audience is for that network, on that night, that week.

But you go back to your office, mysteriously forgetting the shabby desperation of your pitch. You start writing the idea that was in your head before you started talking to the impassive face of the network executive, before he or she started grinning slightly, before the first laugh, before you made the sale.

And in the ensuing weeks – and sometimes months – between the sale of the script based on the pitch (which usually takes place in October or November) and the actual writing and delivery of the finished draft (sometime in January or even early February), the difference between what they bought and what you sold becomes enormous.”

Intolerable writing conditions

The worst thing about success is that it is intensely boring to read about. As I lie about the house here in Berlin, sipping champagne from the slipper of Kate Moss, while scratching that difficult-to-reach itch in the small of my back with the stiletto heel of Heidi Klum, I am in agony, LITERAL EXISTENTIAL AGONY, wondering what to blog about. "Tell me again your fascinating Theories of the Comedy, Julian," whispers Heidi in my ear, and I swat her away with her own discarded... what on earth is that thing? So tiny, how does she... Dammit, I am trying to Think.

How can a man be expected to write under these intolerable conditions?  How I yearn for the good old days, when I was homeless, my belly rumbling, writing Jude by flickering candlelight, in a cardboard box, under a bridge.

Wish I'd never won the bloody  National Short Story Prize.

Toasted Heretic on the Late Late Show

One of the more peculiar side-effects of my winning the National Short Story Prize has been the appearance of my venerable old band, Toasted Heretic, on Ireland's oldest and most venerable television chat-show, the Late Late.

After a brief interview (where I was asked about the prize, modern Ireland, and Jude: Level 1), I wandered across the studio to join the rest of Toasted Heretic and we played "Galway and Los Angeles",  which was originally a hit single in Ireland in 1991. (It peaked at number 9. It was also Single of the Week in the dear, departed (Allan Jones/Chris Roberts era) Melody Maker in the UK. In France, an import copy was played by Bernard Lenoir on French national radio until the grooves wore flat, though the single was never officially released there.)

 The performance is up on Youtube.

A strange but enjoyable evening. Everyone who was ever in Heretic played, so it was the full wall-of-guitars line-up  (seen previously only on the Now In New Nostalgia Flavour tour): me on vocals, Neil Farrell on drums and sampler, Declan Collins on lead guitar, Aengus McMahon on electric rhythm guitar, Breffni O'Rourke on  acoustic rhythm, and Barry Wallace on bass guitar.

Let us draw a silken veil over the debauch which followed, in the Westbury Hotel.

I've been talking to Aengus, official photographer to the band (ie the only guy who had a camera in the old days... now a very successful professional photographer), and we're going to stick up a bunch of old Toasted Heretic photos here in the next month or two. Watch this embarrassing space...

I'd Like To Thank Everybody For Everything

This is insane, I'm too busy to visit my own website.

I will soon post a full account of what happened in London on Monday, from BAFTA to Groucho (from croissant to kebab). Right now, can I just thank everyone who has congratulated me by text, email, blog comment, phone, forum posting, telex and pigeon. I'll try to answer everyone individually over the next while. My Irish mobile has died of love, and I can't get at any voice messages or texts. It will, however, return from the dead on the third day, and speak in many tongues, when I get a new charger for it here in Berlin (I left the old one plugged into London...)

 WWhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

 Fortuna's wheel is going UP. Fun while it lasts, and it won't last forever. Foolish not to enjoy it.

National Short Story Prize 2007

Er... I won.

I will post more when I have adjusted to this new and very strange reality, and gotten all this pesky tickertape out of my hair, and found my knickers, and worked out what city I am currently in, and what my name is, and why I am in bed with A S Byatt, Hanif Kureishi, and the Swedish women's volleyball team.