Sweet FA

Until the 18th of March, there were two people on Earth who were fans of Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Josipovici and Portsmouth Football Club. Once Anthony Minghella died, I was left alone. His first production was a musical version of Josipovici's story Mobius the Stripper and he contributed Play to the Beckett on Film series. One consolation is to know that, ten days before he died, he would have seen Pompey play Manchester Utd in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. The club hadn't won at Old Trafford since 1957 and had only recently lost 2-0 there in the league (I listened to it while in hospital). It was 0-0 when, with a few minutes left, we got a penalty. As 70,000 ManU fans looked on booing and whistling, Sulley Muntari had a chance to redeem 50 years of hurt. A Pompey fan happened to be recording the event from the stands.

Talking Thomas Bernhard

More joy for New Yorkers. In February last year, the KGB Bar in the city hosted an evening of readings from the work of Thomas Bernhard. Dale Peck was among the readers that night. He's also involved in The Art of Failure, a panel discussion about Bernhard to be held at the Austrian Cultural Forum during the 2008 PEN World Voices festival; the evening of Thursday, May 1st to be exact. Reservations are required, so best use the email address provided on the site.

Peck's co-panellists are Paul Holdengräber, Fatima Naqvi and Horacio Castellanos Moya. The latter is author of Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador and Senselessness, both of which, I'm told, borrow a Bernhardian style in confronting Salvadoran political violence. Senselessness is forthcoming from New Directions (something I'd usually expect to say of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize). In the meantime, Words Without Borders has an extract.

The discussion will be moderated by Jonathan Taylor, organiser the KGB event, which provides an opportunity to repost a link to Admiration Journey, his charming account of a trip to Bernhard's country home.

But that's not the last of Bernhard news: in June, the University of Delaware Press publishes Three-Part Inventions: The Novels of Thomas Bernhard by Thomas Cousineau.

Festival questions

Whose judgements are more trustworthy when it comes to books? Do amateur bloggers online do a better job than established literary critics in the press?

These are two questions to be addressed at the Oxford Literary Festival on 31st March by a panel of two book bloggers and two academics. Questions worthy of discussion of course, if only to define some of those terms. However, it looks to me criticism itself, rather its location, is the concealed issue. In responding to James Wood's new book How Fiction Works, one panellist has already expressed discontent with the established approach:

It seems to me that asking how fiction works is a very dull question indeed next to the existential one that really matters: why fiction is.

It's a question unlikely to trouble many "book lovers" but, if there are critics willing to address it, right now there's only one medium offering space to do so.

"Wonderful insidious prose"

It is not just in the Anglo-Saxon countries that publishers have assumed that readers crave "accessibility", that is, being told what they know already.

Jonathan Meades is King Cnut (sic) to the tide of philistinism risen even higher since the death of Robbe-Grillet. He read the late author's novels untouched by the rote populist judgement.

I thus didn't know there was no psychology in his work, because the depiction of impotent jealousy in La jalousie seemed horrible, painful and psychologically acute. I didn't know there was no characterisation because the pimp or protector in 'Immortelle was immediately recognisable as a hideous character. I didn't know there was no emotional affect because the soldier's plight - lost, mistrustful, seeking shelter in a snowbound city - in Dans le labyrinthe is so vividly realised, so elemental that it's harrowing.

While you're here, don't miss Meades' gloriously singular documentary Magnetic North hidden away last week on BBC4. The walk through the shrouded forest on the island of Rügen (episode 6/6 here) is alone worth a thousand and one Michael Palin travelogues.

Better dead than read

In The Times, John Carey reports on Julian Barnes' horror of death: "He wakes in the night, beating the pillow with his fist and shouting, Oh no Oh No OH NO."

How odd - I feel the same way about The Intellectuals and the Masses.

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Roubaud in London

On the evening of Wednesday, March 19th, Jacques Roubaud - novelist, poet, mathematician and member of OuLiPo - will give a reading (in English) at Foyles bookshop in the Southbank Centre. Among other things, he'll read from his major prose work, of which only volume one - The Great Fire of London - has been published in English. However, volume two - La Boucle - is said to be on its way. The event starts at 6:30pm and admission is free.

You can read more about all six volumes in Dalkey Archive's Casebook on the series.