The Glue Factory has been running for years as a remarkable Sunday evening zoom program celebrating contemporary and modernist literature hosted and curated by David Collard. He kindly invited me on to talk about my novella MUEUM and with him not living far away from me, I went to his house and we had this chat http://davidjcollard.blogspot.com/
A note on : MUEUM launch at Brick Lane Bookshop : October 5th
October 5th, 7pm, at Brick Lane Bookshop, my debut novella - mueum - will be launched alongside readings from Iain Sinclair, Chris McCabe and Chloe Aridjis. More on the event bricklanebookshop.org/events/#mueum and tickets at £5
The novella is available here tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M
As part of the book's launch, here is a long-form interview with Gareth Evans, shot at Resonance Extra studios in London, discussing the origins of MUEUM.
A note on announcing my first novella M U E U M
tenementpress.com/M-U-E-U-M
(Summer, MMXXII) COMING SOON
From the publisher : A novella of ludic menace, SJ Fowler’s M U E U M is a puzzle without pieces. Following the grand tradition of the Nestbeschmutzerauthors (one who dirties their own nest, vis-à-vis Bernhard and Gombrowicz,et al), M U E U M pictures the amassing and dismantling of a public edifice, brick by brick, in prose that refracts and breaks the light emitted by history’s ornaments and history’s omissions.
Suspended in unknowable time there is a city; in the city, an event, a conflict. Amid the ash, fog and cloud, there is the manufacturing of a space—a many-winged museum on the make. On the plinths, exquisite remnants of life present and past—adorning the walls, portraits of gentle torture sit hand in hand with brutal and statuesque portrayals of camaraderie—and the gift-shop is littered with plastic curios and gilt revulsion. Goya, as atmosphere rather than artwork, hovers amid iron age ghosts, bronzed ideas, and antiqued anxiety.
Pacing the halls, the atrium and corridor, there are those who keep the museum—the various midwives to the building’s demands—and those, like the reader, who merely visit; those who pass through the vacant galleries adrift with questions. What can I touch? What is next to Egypt? What is hidden in Mesopotamia? Where do we eat? Drink? Where is the entrance? The exit? In Fowler’s curt, spiralling and acute work, the museum’s keepers will answer...
A SONIC ITERATION OF THIS NOVELLA IS ALSO FORTHCOMING, & WILL BROADCAST SPRING MXXII WITH RESONANCE EXTRA PRIOR TO THE BOOK’S RELEASE