Dying writers

One of the saddest things about getting older

As favourite authors grow old and die, there's the realisation that there'll be no more from them. It's almost easier to find someone like Richard Brautigan after they're gone. There's their books, right there. There may be some posthumous half finished work saved from an ex-wife's attic or from under their last mattress, but few of those are anything more than publishers squeezing a buck from beyond the grave.

No more annual (roughly) Iain Banks and Russell Hobans to anticipate. They're all ageing. Those books that I have to order in advance from the reservation service or Waterstones: Amis, Murakami, McEwan, god, someone find a way of cryogenically preserving William Gibson so as he can maintain that (infrequent) publishing cycle, just in case of accident. There must be fourth trilogy to come. There's been a reading, the first chapter of the next book, The Peripheral.


Desert Island Discs

This is the stuff that matters. William Gibson talks about Martin Amis before playing his fist song on the programme. This choice of eight pieces of music, a book and a luxury, tells you more about the person being interviewed than all that Parkinson fawning and political posturing.

Gibson chose:

1. Alejandro Escovedo – Amsterdam. Impossibly cool, a cover of a wonderful John Cale song.
2. The Velvet Underground – All Tomorrow's Parties. The Cale connection continues, Gibson chose a demo, acoustic version, just (I think) Cale and Lou Reed.
3. Dock Boggs – Sugar Baby. Banjo blues, from the early days of recorded sound.
4. Steely Dan – Dirty Work. Steely Dan, named after a metal dildo in a William Burroughs novel, also impossibly cool, lyrics littered with almost undecipherable cultural references.
5. Bruce Springsteen – Highway 29. The Boss. Still the boss.
6. Nick Cave – (Are You) The One That I've Been Waiting For?
7. Tom Waits – Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six. Again, impossibly cool.
8. Taj Mahal – Johnny Too Bad. Now, that's an unexpected call.

These choices date back to 1999, and as such, I suppose, can't be regarded as current. The book choice was the complete works of Jorge Luis Borges. Good call. Nick Hornby would be no good on a desert island, you need convoluted, difficult, demanding stuff to keep you going.

Despite All Tomorrow's Parties being the last novel in The Bridge trilogy, Gibson picks the Nick Cave as his one essential song.

The luxury item? A junk yard. Another good call. Spend your days trying to assemble a boat, or better still a plane, or, if you like it there, a bigger better barbecue or a cable TV receiver.


Going to the gym...

...is like going to the toilet. Of no interest to anyone other than yourself, and, perhaps, your doctor.

I've had the misfortune to listen to any number of droning bores drone on about their exploits on a stationary bicycle or treadmill, while looking for a blunt spoon to slash my wrists with.