@stephenmay1

The BOGOF Ban is a nauseating class-targeted initiative, and patronising as Hell. If you really care about the diet of the poor, then legislate to reduce the price of healthier foods, rather than basically doubling the price of their (our) few affordable pleasures in life. Get to absolute fuck.

I WROTE Indiana in the autumn of I831. It was my first novel. I wrote without any plan, without any aesthetic or philosophical theory in mind. I wrote at the age when one writes instinctively and when reflection serves only to confirm our natural tendencies. People wanted to see it as a carefully thought-out argument against marriage. I was not trying to do anything like so important and I was completely surprised by all the fine things that the critics found to say about my subversive inten-tions. Criticism is far too clever; that is what will be the death of it. It never judges straightforwardly what has been done straightforwardly. It looks for midday at two in the afternoon, as the old saying goes, and it must have done a great deal of harm to those artists who pay too much attention to its opinions. Under all régimes and at all times, moreover, there has been a race of critics who, bringing their own talent into contempt, have imagined that they ought to ply the trade of denouncers, of suppliers of information to the authorities. What a strange role for men of letters in relation to their fellow writers! Governments' strict regulations against the press have never been enough for these ferocious critics. They would like such regulations to be directed not only against works, but against persons as well, and if they were listened to, some of us would be forbidden to write anything at all. At the time I wrote Indiana they brought accusations of Saint-Simonism against everything. Later on they brought accusations of all sorts of other things. Some writers are still forbidden to open their mouths under pain of seeing certain journalist guardians of the law pounce on their work to bring it before the official police authorities. If a writer makes a workman express noble feelings, it is an attack against the bourgeoisie; if a girl who has strayed is rehabilitated after expiating her sin, it is an attack against virtuous women; if a scoundrel assumes titles of nobili…

army; if a woman is ill-treated by her husband, it is an argument for promiscuity. And so it is with everything. Worthy fellow writers, critics with pious and generous hearts! What a pity that no one is thinking of setting up a little inquisitorial literary tribunal in which you would be the torturers! Would you be satisfied with tearing the books to pieces and burning them in a slow fire or, at your own request, could you not be allowed to give a taste of torture to the writers who allow themselves to have other gods than yours? Thank God, I have forgotten even the names of those who tried to discourage me on my first publication and who, unable to say that this humble beginning fell completely flat, tried to turn it into an inflammatory proclamation against the peace of society. I did not expect so much honour, and I think I owe these critics the thanks that the hare addressed to the frogs when, on seeing their alarm, he imagined he was entitled to think himself a warlike thunderbolt. Nohant, May 1852

“Worthy fellow writers, critics with pious and generous hearts! What a pity that no one is thinking of setting up a little inquisitorial literary tribunal in which you would be the torturers!”

George Sand has a pop at literary critics in the introduction to her 1831 novel Indiana.

The excellent #Todmorden Book Festival has just published its 2025 programme. Pleased to be there sharing the stage with @gritstonebooks.bsky.social colleague @andrewmccloy.bsky.social and @anitasethi.bsky.social. We'll be celebrating the 60th birthday of the Pennine Way.

Really honoured to say that on Friday November 7th, I'll be at the Todmorden Book Festival, talking about my book Maybe I'm Amazed, music, autism.... and the Beatles, Kraftwerk, Funkadelic, The Clash...
www.ticketsource.co.uk/todmorden-bo...

Watch Sunday Best: The Untold Story of Ed Sullivan | Netflix Official Site Ed Sullivan broke barriers by booking Black artists on his Sunday night variety show. This documentary spotlights the TV pioneer's legacy of equality.

My impression of Ed Sullivan was formed by rock music; the conservative scold who censored rebellious performers. I was far less aware of how this working-class Harlem-born journo was at the forefront of putting Black artists on US TV. This Netflix doc educated me.

www.netflix.com/title/82048609

Cartoon by unknown artist. Title: Why alien abductions happen only at night. A green alien sitting in a chair says to a smaller green alien: It's 9 p.m. and you're just now telling me you need a human for school tomorrow?!

Back to school time!

Author of #GreenInk @stephenmay1.bsky.social is in conversation with Sophie Haydock on 18 October at @ilkleylitfest.bsky.social to discuss how they reimagined real life historical figures and events in their latest novels.

Buy 🎟️ shorturl.at/0kQBB

Viral madness and jazz riffs: a chaotic comedy for our times Weird vibes, eccentric characters, odd punctuation — it’s all here in Nicola Barker’s energising and exasperating novel, TonyInterruptor

"Barker can turn on a traditional novelist’s skills. But mostly she chooses not to follow the trad path. She would rather be the Picasso of fiction, breaking the rules to see what comes out."

Me on Nicola Barker's energising and exasperating new novel, TonyInterruptor:

New York Daily News, August 16 1969: “TRAFFIC UPTIGHT AT HIPPIE FEST”

Happy 56th anniversary to this all-time banger headline.

Thanks google AI but I meant to type “shut”…

"Here is a thing to carve in pokerwork and hang over your typewriter. 'No one will ever complain because you have made something too easy to understand.'

"And here is another thing to remember every time you sit down at the keyboard: a little sign that says 'Nobody has to read this crap.'"

Apropos of nothing, here's a picture of Frankie Howerd being strangled by the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster... from November 1980...

Scandalously cheap

Arturo Martini, The She-Wolf, 1930-1

Sabrina Carpenter, Man’s Best Friend

I had my doubts about Sabrina Carpenter’s album cover, but now I realise she was parodying Arturo Martini’s fascist art of the 1930s as a commentary on these times, and not recreating Spinal Tap’s Smell the Glove

We are hiring a Marketing and Publicity Executive / Manager | Swift Press Purpose of role: The job is to drive and manage all parts of marketing for Swift Press and to manage occasional publicity campaigns.

We're Hiring!

Marketing and Publicity Executive / Manager 📖

Find out more: tinyurl.com/6jn22wrk
#PublishingJobs #JobsInBooks

Twelve of Brian Wilson’s greatest songs – from surf to psychedelia and beyond Elaborating classic pop and doo-wop into divinely beautiful and inimitable hitmaking, these are some of the late musician’s most unmistakable masterpieces

Typically insightful piece by @andrewmale.bsky.social Twelve of Brian Wilson’s greatest songs – from surf to psychedelia and beyond www.theguardian.com/music/2025/j...

Astérix et Ozempix

"At certain times in one's life anything more emphatic is murderous."

The ‘he was ignored at the time’ rhetoric has always been overdone. What a great find this review is

Nails it 👇

John Wyndham changed my life at about that age…

Isolation Row Scott Walker's Climate Of Hunter

An essay about Scott Walker’s “late style” dadadrummer.substack.com/p/isolation-...

Percival Everett: Parallels between the US and 1933 Germany are frightening The American writer, who this week won the Pulitzer prize for his novel James, says the White House under the ‘idiot’ Donald Trump is too absurd for satire

I interviewed the Pulitzer-winning Percival Everett. He was fun and pretty punchy ...
www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Pat Barker interview: ‘Success can be more challenging than failure’ | The Booker Prizes Thirty years after winning the Booker for The Ghost Road, Pat Barker discusses feeling like an outsider, writing about men, and the under-representation of working-class voices

"I didn't like winning the Booker at all. Success can be a lot more challenging than failure. I was used to failure, like most writers are. I did failure beautifully, believe me. I didn’t do success quite so well."

I spoke to Pat Barker about her @thebookerprizes.bsky.social-winning The Ghost Road:

Get your tickets to #GreenInk by @stephenmay1.bsky.social at @huddlitfest.bsky.social on 16th May.

🎟️https://shorturl.at/Wkz6y

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This new Joan Didion book should never have been published Notes to John is a collection of the writer’s jottings about her sessions with a psychiatrist. She didn’t think them worth publishing when she was alive — and she wasn’t wrong

"Notes to John is a scrapbook of secondary material. Reading it for an experience of Didion’s work is like trying to listen to Abbey Road by looking at photographs of the recording equipment."

Me on an entirely new experience: reading a boring Joan Didion book. Not to mention the ethics of it...

Very good review from @john-self.bsky.social of Green Ink from @stephenmay1.bsky.social. Stephen is in Barnsley this Saturday to talk about the book, and we will be there with signed copies. Go to the Barnsley Libraries website events page and book your free ticket to join us.

#booksky

Oh and thanks for the review (that was a very good surprise)

Yes! Oranges good. Chocolate good. Chocolate-orange? An abomination. (mint chocolate though. Perfectly acceptable)