Matthew De Abaitua

open.substack.com/pub/matthewd...

The first of a series of terrible job interviews that I will be sharing over the course of the next few weeks. This was in 2009, so the moment when the grandees of the Serpentine asked me if I could “build us our own version of Facebook” should be understood in that historical context.

Failed Job Interviews of a Novelist I've arrived home past midnight to find Beth deep in labour. Can I get a cab to the hospital and someone to babysit the other children?

I’d never needed people like this before
open.substack.com/pub/matthewd...

Thanks Charles, it's much appreciated.

Part 2: In which I told my pregnant wife and mother of our two children that I'd been made redundant and she goes into labour.
open.substack.com/pub/matthewd...

Failed Job Interviews of a Novelist A speculative memoir

My memoir Failed Job Interviews of a Novelist is going up for free on Substack, a chapter a week. I never sent this one out on submission to publishers so it's fresh as a daisy.
open.substack.com/pub/matthewd...

The current vibe is Imperial Stout, drug anecdotes, 5-4-3-2-1 (Working five hours Monday, four hours Tuesday, three hours Wednesday and so on), lift heavy (fine), pub jazz on a Thursday, bike through the park, repent at leisure, delete everything, eat your fucking greens you protein doofus.

"To see them pass into Mess like ghosts - gentleman, tinker, and tailor; each having shuffled home from death; each having known his life rock on its base… not talking much - for what is there to say? - Not laughing much for they have been here too long - is a nightly pleasure to me.”

Enid Bagnold's A Diary Without Dates is a dreamy, sparse, modernist account of her time as a voluntary auxiliary nurse in a hospital during the First World War. Published 1918, its account was so candid she immediately lost her job. Bagnold went onto write National Velvet.

All our creative writing pedagogy uses reflection to encourage metacognition. Thinking about thinking and writing about writing are rungs on the ladder. To encourage reflection, it helps to have lots of low-stakes practice to build the habit.

A parable about adultery, I think.

Serve immediately and then leave the country before your guests realise what you have done.

So you are teaching and doing head of department at the same time? I

This book changed my life in a quite literal way: I gave a presentation on it that led to a British Academy award to fund postgraduate study, otherwise it was back to security guarding. Still: for all the class prejudice in her diaries, I'd take Woolf over Arnold Bennett anyday.

I am glad to discover that I am not the only philistine in this regard. I couldn't even remember the title of the novel that I read - Seiobo There Below, according to my bookshelf.

Reach for the stars... New @backlisted.bsky.social, LAST AND FIRST MEN by Olaf Stapledon, with @mdeabaitua.bsky.social!

253. Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon — Backlisted Writer and critic Matthew De Abaitua joins Andy, Una and Nicky to discuss  Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future  (1930), the astounding first novel by Olaf Stapledon. The...

New episode up now. Last and First Men (1930) by Olaf Stapledon, with guest Matthew De Abaitua in conversation with Andy Miller and Una McCormack. @mdeabaitua.bsky.social @unamccormack.bsky.social @iammilliam.bsky.social www.backlisted.fm/episodes/253...

Great essay.

YouTube video by zero.sHow's The Twilight Zone opening credits HD

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORbs...

In today's class we will be looking at:

LinkedIn: The Musical.

“Got your number”: 118118 as the cultural ghosts of a future we never had In the early 2000s, before the global financial crash ripped the world apart and our world of latent fascistic tumult was cloaked in a burial shroud of capitalist realism, the soon-to-be outgoing L…

Remember 118118? How ridiculous does that service seem now? So of course there's a Fisherian angle to it, which I've penned here

tacity.co.uk/2025/07/16/g...

The stresses of the week have turned this social butterfly into a social caterpillar.

Cat on a sofa next to a blanket with a person operating a laptop

This is not our cat. It moved in earlier this week and has made itself very much at home. Our cat Vincent is sulking on top of the wardrobe and won't come down.

We have tea. They have bleach. I prefer a gentler placebo than bleach.

"He's a legend in his own LinkedIntime."

I've had other recommendations from 4AD experts. I have explored other This Mortal Coil releases. But I am yet to properly move on from Blood. The most overlooked record since Five Leaves Left was rediscovered.