Lewis Crofts - MyBlog

The Prague Revue is back!

2008-06-29T18:49:00.004Z

Prague's literary journal, The Prague Revue, has been relaunched.

After a hiatus of a few years, edition number 8 is out, and features work by Ivan Klima, Jay Rubin, Gerald Turner and some waste of editorial space called Lewis Crofts.

Click here and support an important publication in one of Europe's most important cultural centres.

A Rotted Pit in a Peach

2008-06-28T18:42:00.004Z

This is the kind of imagery I like. It's not mine. It's this lady's. GimmeBackMyCoat.

Click here for her journal and a lyrical description of the hollow feeling that you have when finishing a book.

The Shropshire Star

2008-06-14T18:23:00.003Z

Shropshire, the county of numerous stars: Charles Darwin, Clive of India, Wilfred Owen and... wait for it... T'Pau (picture right).

And it is also the county of the Shropshire Star which has recently published this article. Click here.

Flattery gets you everywhere

2008-06-14T12:52:00.001Z

The most insightful and respected blog in the literary community – Uncool – has produced this long-awaited analysis of the cross-over of writing and aesthetics. Click here.

It is to be applauded...and is proof that flattery gets you everywhere.

3 for 2: choose well

2008-06-01T18:03:00.005Z

The dilemma: the PoV is released this week in pocket paperback format and will be available in the '3 for 2' offer at Waterstones.

But if you get your mum and dad a copy each, what to do with the third one? Oh, the choice, I hear you cry through cyber-hell. Oh, the dilemma of variety. Oh, the onus of selection... whatever. Well, some ideas:

1) a sacred text as the basis for a polygamous cult in a Norfolk enclave
2) slip inside a Mills&Boon cover and give it to your gran
3) give to that guy in the tight trousers who smiles at you in the tube
4) a fire-lighter for a sacrificial pyre in your back-garden
5) grind down with extract of thyme and use as a cure for baldness
6) douse in petrol and hurl through a library window
7) reading

Any other suggestions, write them on the back of a copy of the book and send them to my enclave in Norfolk.

Ich bin ein ExBerliner

2008-05-10T17:28:00.004Z

...as Kennedy is probably saying now.

The Berlin magazine ExBerliner has published a review of my book and an interview in this month's edition. If you haven't had enough of me already, please go click here.

I am also off to Berlin later this month (28 May) to give a reading at Kaffee Burger at 9.00pm. Do come along. I'll be the lanky bloke at the front with a book on his lap.

If you can't bring your tired finger to click on the magazine itself, here are a few tit-bits.

"This is the ultimate introduction: perceptive, comprehensive, and so evocative of the decadence and decay that marked turn-of-the-century Vienna that the streets and cafés seem to etch-a-sketch themselves onto the pages, a kind of literary biopic."

"Lewis Crofts brilliantly explores Schiele's fascination with female forms, starting with that of his sister, and their metamorphosis into symbols of patrician sanctimony. These sections of the novel are mesmerizing and come close to echoing the morbidity of writers such as Joseph Roth."

Out into the Ether

2008-05-04T17:03:00.002Z

An extract from Chapter 5 of The Pornographer of Vienna has just been published in a special fiction edition of the Viennese magazine Ether.

It is well-worth reading. There's not a single Sudoku in sight.

Six Random Things

2008-05-04T16:21:00.003Z

I've been tagged (in the internet sense, not in the playground sense) by PD Smith, author of Doomsday Men. It's a game doubtless meant to perpetuate clicks, surfing, blogs and other mouse-operated madness.

It involves saying 6 random things about yourself. For me, these are:
1. I have a fetish for cotton-wool buds
2. I can't say the words 'celebrity' or 'laboratory' without stuttering
3. I dress up as Darth Vader at weekends.
4. My second toe is longer than my big toe.
5. I am colour-blind but still a snooker-addict.
6. Poor punctuation should carry the death sentence.

Otherwise, the rules are as follows:

a. Link to the person who tagged you.
b. Post the rules on your blog.
c. Write six random things about yourself.
d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.
f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

The six people I’m tagging are:

Gavin Plumley
Claire Wigfall
Uncool
Sylvia Petter
Dolly Mopp
Phil Schoenfelt

Tibor Jones

2008-03-12T20:55:00.004Z

Kevin Conroy Scott, mate and general literary guru, has launched his own agency: Tibor Jones & Associates. You can find them here: www.tiborjones.com

Well worth a look, and it's not just about books....if you're into broader projects, original ideas and taking a fresh look at this oldest of industries, then this is the place to be.

Notes From The Underground

2008-02-20T20:51:00.003Z

A new literary magazine, entitled Notes From The Underground, is hitting the streets of UK cities and is well worth a look.

Coincidentally, of course, the current edition also features a facile little tale about the beginning of the world, syntax and emoticons (by me). It is as follows:

The Word
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was inaudible because there was lots of other things going on at the Beginning of Time and no-one, not even God or the People who had not yet been created (because Soil had not yet been created to make them out of… or Monkeys for that matter… or any Matter at all… apart from Dark Matter…but that doesn’t matter) could hear it. And no-one could hear the Word even though that Word had a capital letter at the front. Everything had a Capital Letter at the front back then, even God. But there were no emoticons. They were made on the third day. :-(

A True Book-Lover

2008-02-11T19:39:00.002Z

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, DollyMopp has surpassed not just herself but the entire assembled readers of the Pornographer of Vienna to show she is the ultimate 'book-lover'. Vienna's gallery-goers would have been proud of her Rouge Noir Boudoir pics.

Sex Goddess

2008-02-06T21:15:00.000Z

I am honoured to be picked as a Book of Sin by The Daily Dolly. She writes a searing and sensual blog entitled The Sordid Swashbuckling Diary of a Sex Goddess. 'Nuff said, methinks.

I am Uncool

2007-12-23T12:08:00.000Z

A fine and witty blogger at Uncool has done me the kind service of placing the PoV among Nabokov, Turgenev and Hughes in her favourite books of the year. Two even finer points, however: she has a laudable aversion to Kafka's The Trial and Russian writers bring her to tears. I wish there were more people like her out there.

I recommend you read her blog: funny, insightful and, most importantly, unflinchingly irreverent.

Yuletide reviews

2007-12-14T07:44:00.000Z

Mark Farley is the blogger-supreme of the bookworld, embarking on the laudable quest of "reading nothing but ghostwritten, celebrity biographies for a whole year".

But when he is not reading about Jordan's struggle for success despie the restrictions of her body, he has put together a set of reviews for all the blind wanderers of Waterstones around Christmas time.

These are my contributions, for anyone interested:

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is as powerful and persuasive a book as you will pick up this year. It reads as though Dawkins is twenty seconds away from breaking out in expletives and head-butting a vicar. Of course it’s clever; but it’s also entertaining.

Jude: Level 1 by Julian Gough is a mind-bending, exquisitely offensive romp through modern Ireland which pulsates like a 21st century Candide on steroids. Gough is at the forefront of making comic novels clever again.

The Curtain by Milan Kundera is a return to the Czech exile’s customary musings on what makes decent writing. Economic and insightful, every budding writer addicted to polysyllables and prologues should read it.

Sterling job

2007-11-26T19:26:00.000Z

Sterling Books - a superb independent bookshop in Brussels - has made the PoV book of the week.

If you can afford the Eurostar ticket (approx. 100 euros from London) or the bus ticket (approx. 2.50 euros) from the edge of Brussels, please scuttle down there and pick up a copy. 10 percent off!

Big in Malta

2007-11-18T12:38:00.002Z

Malta: the much-overlooked jewel in the Mediterranean’s crown; the centre of Europe’s gambling industry; the playground of Man United footballers; the pillar of martial resistance; Caravaggio’s haunt; the heart of teenage language-school hedonism; the Rock in the sea... and the glorious reviewer of The Pornographer of Vienna: take a look at the learned review in the Times of Malta.

When Caravaggio had committed a murder in Italy he fled to Malta where the island took mercy on him and made him a knight. He also produced a remarkable masterpiece The Beheading of St John the Baptist in 1608, which still hangs in St John’s Cathedral in Valletta. At the bottom of the painting, the murderous Caravaggio signs his own name in the fresh blood spurting out of The Baptist’s neck.

I can see why the Maltese might take to Schiele.

Spinal disorder

2007-10-17T12:13:00.001Z

The spine of the book continues to delight (book designers) and offend (Middle England). This recent blog posting from Caustic Cover Critic gives a learned run-down of why Schiele works well on the cover of books.

Literary injury

2007-09-30T14:03:00.000Z

Last week I went to a publishing party in London hosted by Bloomsbury. Star-struck and unsober, I must admit that I didn’t see any of the following: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Hagrid, quidditch, Hermione, dragons or wands.

My knee was, however, assaulted by a designer-handbag-yielding Sophie Dahl. I resisted crumbling to the ground like Michael Owen when she said “Sorry there”. She has a book out called Playing with the Grown-Ups, which I hear is rather good.

No Jumping: a short film

2007-09-27T17:22:00.000Z

William Gilroy is "The Jumper"

Things I would change

2007-09-05T07:13:00.000Z

When your book sits on shelves and other people thumb away at it, it’s beyond repair. There are parts which you want to tweak; other parts which could be slashed and burnt. But without re-entering the debate on whether you can ever really finish a book, here are a few things I would change.

1) Introduce a car-chase in the Chapter 1: All great stories begin with a car-chase.
2) Give the love-interest a name like Ingrid von Luvpump
3) Guns. Give ‘em all guns.
4) Remove the single mention of the C-word: My Mum has to read this.
5) Introduce one blatantly anachronistic American to get the thing to sell in the US
6) Change the final line to: And then he woke up and realised it was all a dream.
7) Make Schiele’s father a midget with a hump and a limp and a stump
8) More smells: Yes, I read Sueskind’s Perfume and envied it
9) Slip the titles of Wham! songs in the dialogue: e.g. “But, Egon, that’s just a careless whisper.”
10) Introduce an Italian secretary and rename it The Stenographer of Sienna

The Pornographer of Piana

2007-07-23T16:54:00.000Z

Jon Lacey sings the opening lines to The Pornographer of Vienna to the enduring tune of Daniel by Elton John. And some people had the gall to claim it couldn't be done.

10 Facts about the Book

2007-07-09T21:29:00.000Z

1) The first draft of the PoV was written in heiroglyphics

2) Duelling is legal in Belgium as long as both parties are using copies of the PoV

3) The PoV can usually be found in nests built in the webs of large spiders

4) If you lie on your back with your legs stretched holding the PoV you will automatically float 1 metre in the air

5) Cows will give a higher yield if milked when having the PoV read to them

6) First editions of the PoV were used as a cure to leprosy in Wigan

7) Vienopornophilia is the mindless worship of the PoV

8) The PoV was picked, sorted and packed entirely in the field and is 100% organic

9) The PoV was deleted from the Bibel when Crofts mispelt the title of the book

10) When a butterfly flaps its wings in China, all copies of the PoV in Europe open at the sex scenes

*Inspired by Tom Davis.

Telegraph strokes spine scandal

2007-06-13T08:01:00.000Z

The scandal around the dust-cover design of The Pornographer of Vienna has reached the heady heights of The Daily Telegraph’s comment column. I hereby bid farewell to my reputation.

Spine tingler

Author Lewis Crofts is incensing browsers with his new work, The Pornographer of Vienna. The fictionalised account of the life of the Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele has reproduced a painting of the artist's wife on the cover, with the lady's knickerless regions positioned neatly across the spine.

"Disgusting!" complains one on Waterstones' website. "I would not want my children to see that."

"It's not grotesque - it's art," Crofts tells me. "Children can wander into galleries and see even more explicit pieces. Frankly, it could be a lot worse: I could have chosen a completely undressed piece."

Two ladies' things: VOGUE & men

2007-06-07T16:15:00.000Z

Two totally unconnected things happened to The Pornographer of Vienna today, both of which I welcome, neither of which I expected.

Firstly, my book got picked by VOGUE magazine as part of its recommended summer reading list, so I hope to see a few sun-baked, sand-strewn copies at the bottom of beach-bags.

And secondly, an as yet unidentified friend of mine photographed himself holding a copy of the book in front of his groin and posted it on Facebook for all to enjoy. That was kind of him.

Spinal Tat

2007-06-02T11:48:00.000Z

It seems I’ve offended some people. Well, not me actually. The book designer. Good on him.

Since the book hit the shops, a few people have been expressing their “offence” and “indignation” at the book design which features a painting by Egon Schiele wrapped around the entire book. The woman’s face and torso are on the front and her legs are on the back cover. That, logically, leaves her genitals on the spine.

It seems that a few prim ladies browsing the bookshelves in the Home Counties have come across the spine, recognised - in the words of Courbet - “the origin of the world” and run away, blushing and spitting discontent at the state of modern publishing.

I had never head of www.indignation.org until yesterday but it seems to be a rather amusing puddle of bile, which has become a focus of all things degrading and ungodly: i.e. me, the designer and Egon Schiele.

For god’s sake, she’s wearing undergarments.