After a Funeral
by Diana Athill (Ticknor & Fields)

Beer in the Snooker Club
by Waguih Ghali (New Amsterdam Books)

Diana Athill turned 91 on December 21, became an OBE in the Queen's New Year Honours List, and were that not compliment enough has now been announced as the deserving recipient of the Costa Award for Biography for her astute account of the progress of age Somewhere Towards the End.

Sempé Highs and Lows
by Jean Jacques Sempé (Phaidon)

Sweetness is poison. There is probably not a more horrible epithet to throw at any modern artist -- in any field. The word conjures up fields of Hallmark sentiments draped in saccharine emotion and as light as a souffle rapidly collapsing. In short, sweetness sucks. Big time.

The passing of Sir Reresby Sitwell brings to a close one of the most eccentric and diverting chapters of English lives and letters. His father Sacheverell, his Uncle Osbert and Aunt Edith were considered outlandlish heretics in the 1920's, that generation's equivalent of literary punks. Their patronage of the young composer William Walton resulted in 'Facade' which consisted of Edith reciting her uniquely eclectic verses through a megaphone as Walton's music skipped and shimmered, the first performance of which ended in an actual riot of disapproval.

Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
by Barney Hoskyns (Broadway)

I get the feeling that Tom Waits, like Dylan, loves to fuck with people. Remain the enigma, speak cryptically, keep folks guessing, slippin' and slidin', juking right and left. Much has been made of their artistry, but few -- writers and journalists -- know how they really tick. And I like that. It's refreshing to know that some of our most endearing and enduring cultural icons remain outside of the public's scrutiny by refusing to air their dirty laundry on their blogs and websites, tell-all autobiographies, and police rap sheets.

We Hate It When Our Ex-Lodgers Become Successful
by Marvin Cheeseman (Cheers Ta Publications)

A sense of fun is all too often absent from poetry. It doesn't have to be difficult or elitist, but humor is mostly seen as a disadvantage to the high-minded, a case of letting the side down. Marvin Cheeseman is a poet who thankfully has been letting sides down with laughter and tremendous aplomb for years. His work has been featured on the BBC, TV and radio. He's even been name-checked by the Ting Tings. A perfect collision of a pop sensibility with a wry twist on the everyday.

House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski (Pantheon)

If you don’t enjoy dark and disturbing sojourns into the foreboding unknown, then, in its own words, this story is not for you. If, on the other hand, you are willing to be infected and possessed by a book that will reach out and crawl under your skin as it draws you into the emptiness opening before you, then grab your measuring tape and head to the nearest bookstore.

Mistletoe Malice
by Kathleen Farrell (Rupert Hart Davis)

It was a brave move by Kathleen Farrell (1912-1999) to position her first novel (published in 1951) over those few portentous days known as the Festive season. Such a particular setting doesn't bode well for a long life on the shelves, the literary equivalent of a good melody marooned on a Christmas record. Her book employs the classic country house setting of an Agatha Christie, where a group of perfectly disagreeable people assemble under one roof. In Farrell's case, all could murder each other, but don't, they merely scratch, bicker, and add to the overall misery of their daily lives, supposedly in the name of celebrating Christ's birthday.

Mick Imlah 1956-2009

The poet Mick Imlah, who died on January 12, was a writer of immense concision and talent, but one with a scant regard for the sense of urgency. Compiling just two poetry collections in twenty years, evidencing the respect and effort of his devotions, provided the world with a legacy of rare worth. It has also left his readers with a profound awareness of pleasures unknown, unrealized, and denied.

I must confess I never read any of John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom novels. Nevertheless, upon the news of his passing, I felt a yawning hole open. His essays, his short stories (many of us have probably been force fed his masterful A & P in school, it still stands as a portrait of teen angst to rival Rebel Without a Cause), and, interestingly, his poems set him apart, above so many other writers.

In the age of the sentence, which we seem to be mired in, he was a crystalline master, if not the master.

What can we define as “Beat” poetry? A loose blend of Whitman, Blake, open sexuality bordering on erotica, and socio-political ideals, all cooked in a broth of jazz rhythms or at least associated with or accompanied by jazz? If this loose definition works for you, then Kazuko Shiraishi, a Japanese poet first embraced by Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsberg, fits that bill.

Shiraishi came into prominence in the '60s as a female poet who openly confessed to basically not being the good mother type, leaning more toward the liberated woman-poet-thinker that came to dominate that era.

Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe
by Mark Mazower (Penguin)

Despite its heft, this 768-page tome has the sharp impact of a punch to the stomach. From the first paragraph, it changed the way I look at life -- a feeling that only intensified chapter after chapter. A thorough, serious and supremely researched work, Mazower’s book makes good use of our sixty-year distance, as well as many recently unearthed documents, to present a dispassionate view of the unstructured madness that motivated Hitler and his ministers, as well as all the key players, often right down to individuals.

England is viewed by the wider world as a nation of eccentrics. This is considered a genetic characteristic, and something to be celebrated. Like most assumptions, the truth lies somewhat wide of the remark. Quentin Crisp, one such “National Treasure,” is now rightly revered as one, but his journey from pariah nuisance to that of sage-like venerability was a long and winding affair. He migrated to New York, remaining vital till the end, an amalgam of defiance and disappointment worn as wit.

Some considered him a latter-day Oscar Wilde, a comparison he didn't much value, remarking that he'd known many who'd been sent to prison for crimes of the flesh like Wilde's, without being broken or penning such bad verse.

Hollywood Pinups
by Timothy White (Collins Design)

Some of my most profound pubescent mam... er, memories were the sensual and voluptuous pulp illustrations by Alberto Vargas. His luscious renderings were fuel for any red-blooded male. New York photographer Timothy White created this photo book as a continued exploration of his 1994 commissioned homage for the 50th Anniversary of the Esquire Magazine's Varga Girl pinup. Housed in a delicious red slipcase with a glossy black flap jacket, this picture book is sumptuously executed.

David Robilliard was a poet and painter who lived from 1952 to 1988.

EATING OUT

You're like a potato.
You'd go with anything.

"David Robilliard was the sweetest, kindest, most infuriating, artistic foul-mouthed, witty, charming, handsome, thoughtful, unhappy, loving and friendly person we ever met.

Kafka
By R. Crumb & Dave Zane Mairowitz (Kitchen Sink Press)

Franz Kafka was the master of the transformation, the dive into darkness, the unpeeling, the alchemical combination of right and wrong, up and down, matter of fact and out of your mind. Which is why, were he with us in the flesh, I'm sure he would approve of the Kismet that brought his story (and his stories) together with artist R. Crumb. It is an artistic marriage made in heaven -- well, to be precise, in hell.

Watchmen: Hardcover Edition
By Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons (DC Comics)

Whenever a new comic book-inspired movie is a big hit, comic book stores report that sales of that hero’s books often spike. Which is why, this past summer, books by Batman, Iron Man, and The Hulk did brisk business. But so too did another comic, one that won’t be seen on the big screen until March of next year, but got a bump nonetheless when its trailer appeared both online and at the San Diego Comic Con: Watchmen, the groundbreaking 1986/86 graphic novel by writer Alan Moore (From Hell, V for Vendetta) and artist Dave Gibbons (Give Me Liberty, Captain America). Though this book has often been called “unfilmable,” and not just by Moore, the rather impressive trailer got enough fans so excited that the book started flying off store shelves.

Dandy in the Underworld
by Sebastian Horsely (Sceptre)

Some books make promises they fail to keep, drawing the reader into a disappointing experience that, like many affairs, should have been abandoned long before the bitter end. Sebastian Horsley has created such a piece of literary malpractice. Dandy in the Underworld begins like a more modern Naked Civil Servant, a book which it constantly references to the point of laziness and theft, but hasn't the intellect to better.

New York Dolls: Photographs by Bob Gruen
by Bob Gruen (Abrams Image)

To homophobic men, they appeared outrageously gender-challenged in makeup and spandex, but to those groupies who knew them, they were true macho dudes from the rock fringe culture of New Yawk. Sex and drugs and roll 'n' roll. More Rolling Stones raunch and primal then the calculated and effeminate glam of David Bowie or Jobriath.

A Casualty Of War: The Arcadia Book of Gay Short Stories
Edited by Peter Burton (Arcadia Books)

In this post Will and Grace, Queer Eye, Broke Back Mountain world, where gay is the new black, and every home should at least know one, a "Gay" anthology seems a little like a quaintly queer idea. However since being homosexual, to twist Graucho Marx, consists largely of being the member of a club you didn't initially want to be a member of, especially if you come from a small town, or live in a tough part of any major metropolis, such projects retain a fundamental necessity.

It's been nearly two weeks since the suicide of David Foster Wallace and besides the shock, what's been rattling round in my head is the question, what would he have written next? The stories untold. The blank essays. I was wondering, even before he died, how DFW was going to respond to the well-meaning blast he got from critic James Wood in Wood's marvelous recent book, How Fiction Works,. Wood was too smart to go snarky on Wallace (and as much as confessed to it not hours after the news) and Wallace was too smart not to ingest the knowledge and spin it into something unseen, and wonderful. At least that's what I hoped. Now, I know. We won't hear anything.

Three Balconies: Stories and a Novella
by Bruce Jay Friedman (Biblioasis)

Time was serious writers wrote to entertain audiences. Not entertain in the “anything for a laugh” style we’re so accustomed to, but to move, to captivate, to probe, to scare, to inspire, to confuse. From Dickens to Tolstoy to Chandler to O’Connor to Lardner to Dahl to, even, Hemingway, these artists used stories and storytelling to get to people. These days movies, and mostly crappy movies, have taken over this role.

Sway
by Zachary Lazar (Little, Brown)

Flower Power.

Ychhh? Yes.

Lame? Well, yes and no. It never would have sprouted without its dark side.

Meetings With Morrissey
by Len Brown (Omnibus Books)

For an artist who has widely shared his heroes, his obsessions, and his occasional anger, Morrissey remains an enigma, retaining a certain aura of mystery one normally associates with a different era. He is a rock original who has no rock and roll habits. He doesn't do drugs or drink to excess. A vocal vegetarian and a man who has a way with words, he is the ultimate iconic ironic. A man who lives in the heads of his fans, but remains myth-like and remote. A familiar stranger.

Freddie & Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody
by Mike Dawson (Bloomsbury USA)

In many ways, it was Rock 'n’ Roll that turned comic books into graphic novels. Even before R. Crumb quite knew what he was doing, and even though his tastes run more toward 78s from the torrid climes, the liberating force, the form meets content of Rock -- the sheer, in-your-face, ugly-beautiful, smart-simple, visceral appeal infiltrated his work. Here you could write, and draw, and the feeling that resulted was a true one plus one equals three equation.

Apocalypse Nerd
by Peter Bagge (Dark Horse Comics)

If R. Crumb was the preeminent cartoonist to capture the ethos of the '60s and early '70s, then Peter Bagge is his successor in capturing American culture and society in the '90s and new millennium. His frenetic, caffeinated cartoon style brilliantly exposed the dysfunctional energy of slackers and Xers alike. His first solo title, Hate -- starring everyone's favorite loser, Buddy Bradley -- was my literary junkie's fix for all 30 glorious installments.

Magic Circles: The Beatles in Dream and History
by Devin McKinney (Harvard University Press, 2004)

What do toilets, holes, mutation, meat and Yellow Submarines have in common? In the mind of Devin McKinney, these are the overarching themes of The Beatles’ journey, both performed and recorded, from Liverpool to Hamburg to Liverpool to America to Japan to the Philippines to America and back to England. And what’s truly extraordinary is…he makes an excellent case.

Ask the Dust
by John Fante (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Bukowski was a fan. (He wrote the Preface for the 1979 reprint.) And it is easy to see why. Here is Fante's masterful story about the pursuit of fame and fortune on the fringe in the Land of Plenty. Take into account that it was published in 1939 and it shines all the more remarkably. His first of a four-part serial The Saga of Arturo Bandini. This is a sordid tale of two dysfunctional young lovers trying to make their way in Day (and Night) of the Locust-era Hollywood.

The Leopard
by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Pantheon Books)

Rejected as being unpublishable, The Leopard, a short book written from a perspective of privilege concerning a time of change, seemed destined to be lost with the death of its author in 1957, at the age of sixty.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, an urbane Sicilian, a prince with a palace in Palermo, lived in Paris and London, but always maintained a strong love and association for the island of his birth.

Fame as an afterthought to madness. Valerie Solanas 1936-1988.

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, things took slower turns and more leisurely dives. Fame was usually a gradually developing state of grace or disgrace. Celebrity consisting largely of being noticed and the need for that desire to be fulfilled. It was about doing something worthy of note. It now consists of of shameless bravado. The right dress, the wrong drug or sex tape. Feeble-minded efforts at being seen or commented upon. Blame Madonna or the Spice Girls, Michael Jackson or Britney Spears. Or simply blame fame.