John Elliott (1938 - 2017)

[qcrisp]

Those familiar with the Chômu Press list might have read one or two of the works of John Elliott.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/sho...om_search=true

Yesterday I received news that he had died earlier this week. No one in my acquaintance could talk literature like John after (or before) a few drinks. I put his Human Pages among my top one hundred books in the list I have been slowly compiling. I post here an interview I did with John almost six years ago. Please feel free to download it:

https://soundcloud.com/chomuradioarc...iott-interview

I talk about John from 9.34 to 12.11 in this video:

YouTube

If I feel able, I might write a longer tribute.

[qcrisp]

"Exhausted, she fell back on the pillow. Agnes's hand rested on hers. Its weight was almost too much to bear, yet she took comfort from the knowledge that his name had been on both their lips.

"From then on the die was cast, cast forever. Some other hand Sula could not see had spilled the dice free from their shaker. Patiently, she waited for their roll to cease. Hands, she thought, hands that once might have been folded in prayer. A deck of cards fanned out before her on the green baize of the bedclothes. Surely, they must realise she lacked the power or concentration to pick them up; especially when the dice still rolled and rolled."

Human Pages, John Elliott

[qcrisp]

"Countless numbers of ordinary people also inhabited the same place at different times, but their lives are so strange that it is quite impossible to describe them." - John Elliott, Another Example of Indulgence

[qcrisp]

In my opening post, I wrote: "If I feel able, I might write a longer tribute."

I have, in fact, written a tribute since then, under the title, 'The Last Chance Saloon (A Tribute to John Elliott, 1938 - 2017)'. It is currently in one of my notebooks in longhand, running to a length of roughly 10,000 words. When I get a little time I intend to type it up in the hope of finding a home for it in print somewhere.

[qcrisp]

It is exactly two years since John died.

I'm not going to do this every year, but I felt compelled to write here again.

In the wake of John's death I felt like I was carrying around a great secret that could never be spoken. I would walk into a branch of Waterstones and find myself indignant at the frivolity of the attention-grabbing displays and the serried ranks of literary celebrity on the shelves.

It was my anger, of course - not John's, I don't think. I remember him saying of Irvine Welsh, "I could never work out what he was so bloody angry about." I am not sure, either, he would want me to be too solemn about his work. "Yes, the novel has always been a low art form," he said on another occasion, "and thank God for that."

Still, he knew fine work from trash and there was little doubt that his valuing of the former was as deep as his understanding of it.

Having lingered deeply in the fringes - as it seems - of the publishing world for many years now, I understand well enough that it's a depressing, venal business, like most, or all, human endeavour. Sometimes, like today, I feel sick to my heart thinking of it. But occasionally one meets a real writer. John was one such - one of the few. The proportion of such writers to the volume of people being published is, I fear, rapidly shrinking.

I don't think I've been able to get a firm idea of the correlation between quality in writing and renown. If there is such a correlation, anyway, it is definitely not complete and, I say without much fear of injustice, not even very high.

It is strange to watch the years pass and observe, again and again, the pattern of that which should have a place in human memory being buried under the falling leaves, while that which would be best forgotten is endlessly upheld for general admiration.

Perhaps, if one could live long enough, one would see a larger, more reassuring pattern, containing this dispiriting pattern of blindness and neglect.

There is a temptation to make obscurity sacred. One begins to want to hide precious things from a blind world, and so they become doubly lost.

My life is in upheaval at the moment and all kinds of writing, publishing and other plans are delayed. Death, as one is reminded with increasing frequency as one gets older, might happen at any time. But I still want to put out my tribute ('The Last Chance Saloon') in some form, once my life has settled down a little.

[matt cardin]

I don't know what all is going on in your life right now, Quentin, but this certainly is a pensive and incisive (incisively pensive?) collection of thoughts, many of which resonate with my own and help to articulate them more fully. I wish you well.