it occurs to me I should say, that I've more or less gone away. I didn't really mean to, but it happened nevertheless, rather like the way the first sentence rhymed. Still, I check messages occasionally, and talk shit about Winchester College, so tell me if you think my writing is magnificently wise or appalling shit, or if you take vigorous issue with my assertions- though all these things feel like they were written about a million years ago, by someone else, so I may not be able to exert much will to defend them if so.
The rest of this stuff may as well stay, as a monument to taste past. I hope you're very well and lead as happy a life as is consistent with not becoming a cunt. For what it's worth, I still think this is a magnificent idea, and it's eminently possible that one day I'll start posting again.
I realise there is a tendency for departing homenode words to read a little like first drafts of lifetime achievement award acceptance speeches, and I apologise that mine does little to buck this trend.
With all good wishes, or love, or whatever you feel the appropriate sentiment is
Archie
5 books you should read
- Hunger by Knut Hamsun
- The Sportswriter and Independence Day by Richard Ford (and I'm counting that as one)
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Brother of the more famous Jack by Barbara Trepido
- we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch
5 albums you should hear
- 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields
- Master And Everyone by Bonnie Prince Billy
- Grace by Jeff Buckley, just to be sparklingly original
- Run Come Save Me by Roots Manuva
- You Are Free by Cat Power
5 films you should see
- Annie Hall by Woody Allen
- Y Tu Mama Tambien by Alfonso Cuaron
- Rushmore by Wes Anderson
- Don't Look Now by Nicolas Roeg
- Blue Velvet by David Lynch
5 plays you should attend or put on
(and Shakespeare, of course)
and these poets are good
I don't know you, but I think if you like this stuff, we're going to get along fine
these people or things also deserve your attention, and mine
(in no particular order)
the earl of rochester who has nothing to do with jane eyre
mr milton
john dryden
william wycherley
raymond carver
joyce carol oates
philip roth
saul bellow
thomas wyatt
A E Housman
w h auden
t s eliot
charles bukowski
bhartrhari
norman mailer
rainer maria rilke
Arthur Miller
pushkin
chekhov
patrick marber
p g wodehouse
ray loriga
wallace stevens
robert lowell
thomas carew
voltaire
ben jonson
john updike
ernest hemingway
F. Scott Fitzgerald
jonathan swift
laurence sterne
matthew arnold
rupert brooke
paul auster
charlotte bronte and her sister emily
jane austen
john cheever
john clare
dorothy parker
thomas more
lampedusa
flannery o'connor
l p hartley
ralph waldo emerson
william carlos williams
walt whitman
ezra pound
william faulkner
gentlemen prefer blondes
but gentlemen marry brunettes
yevgeny zamyatin
did I say john donne?
sigur ros
the smiths
nina simone
billie holliday
hefner, and I don't care what anyone else says
the divine comedy
sidney bechet
radiohead, obviously
lambchop
joy division
bright eyes, that is, conor oberst (and I wish these people would just use their frickin' names too)
the books
the be good tanyas
chet baker
ed harcourt
beck
nick cave
tom waits
gil scott-heron
james yorkston, only on the strength of one song, but I think he merits investigation
N*E*R*D
peaches
stina nordenstam
bjork
trash money
ugly duckling
fats waller
neil young
I don't care: coldplay and travis and fuck you
willis
rough trade compilations
the white stripes
the moldy peaches
sonic youth
ryan adams
the polyphonic spree
interpol
george harrison
faultline
akufen
the flaming lips
aimee mann