An animated video including a reading from Patrick deWitt’s novel Ablutions.
Today Granta Books published Patrick DeWitt’s debut novel Ablutions, a story of decline, derangement and drunkeness in the dark underbelly of Hollywood. This video, animated by Carson Mell with music by DeWitt’s brother Nick, includes a reading from the book.
Photograph © CBC
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
Neel Mukherjee and Patrick deWitt discuss their books Undermajordomo Minor and The Lives of Others, subconscious influence, the power of the exclamation mark and love.
‘The question of whether or not I’m addressing America in my writing only comes up with people outside of America.’
‘We did not believe in naming horses but they were given to us as partial payment for the last job with the names intact, so that was that.’
‘Names are always hard to come by for me, which can be maddening, because it’s an ever-looming question mark when I’m trying to bring a character into focus. And oftentimes it’s the name that solidifies someone in my mind.’
‘I wore off my tongue / like candy’ Translated from the Catalan by Oscar Holloway.
