Today we’re going to start reading a book that Steve Finbow* recommended to us, in response to the Fifth Night…

 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Steve Finbow <>
Date: 10 November 2018 at 12:56:05 GMT
To: info@qtine.com
Subject: the names of the books that have changed the way you see the world

Fiction

Blood And Guts In High School, Plus Two – Kathy Acker

Reader’s Block, This Is Not A Novel, Vanishing Point and The Last Novel – David Markson

No Longer Human – Osamu Dazai

Zone – Mathias Énard

The Notebook – Ágota Kristóf

 

Non-fiction

Happy Like Murderers – Gordon Burn

A Short history of Decay – EM Cioran

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race – Thomas Ligotti

Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia / A Thousand Plateaus – Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari

Illness as Metaphor / AIDS and Its Metaphors – Susan Sontag

 

I no longer read much fiction. I read history, critical theory, philosophy, biographies of writers / artists / musicians / thinkers.

This list will change completely in a week’s time.

Thanks

 

 

 

*Steve Finbow worked with Quarantine as a writer on Grace (2005). His fiction includes Balzac of the Badlands (Future Fiction London, 2009), Tougher Than Anything in the Animal Kingdom (Grievous Jones Press, 2011) Nothing Matters (Snubnose Press, 2012) and Down Among the Dead (Number Thirteen Press, (2014). His biography of Allen Ginsberg in Reaktion’s Critical Lives series was published in 2011; other nonfiction includes Grave Desire: A Cultural History of Necrophilia (Zero Books, 2014) and Notes from the Sick Room (Repeater, 2017); his multimedia project Death-Mort-Tod: A European Book of the Dead (in collaboration with Karolina Urbaniak) will be published by Infinity Land Press in 2018.

Steve once worked for Allen Ginbserg, he has been a lecturer in the UK and South Africa, a journalist for The Japan Times and writer in residence at The Function Room, London. His work appears in many international anthologies and journals.