Wednesday, August 19, 2009

What Does a Fan Look Like?

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Yesterday I blogged about Kyle Cassidy's project photographing fans. Well, he left the URL for the pics in a response to yesterday's post, so that means we're all free to look at them! You can find the photos here.

Above, chosen pretty much at random, is Kyle's photo of Sharon Reynolds. Some of the people in the series are rather eccentrically dressed. But they look good too.


And on the Hope Mirrlees front . . .

I just now found a glowing review of Hope-in-the-Mist by the slightly mysterious MKS. I mention this for two reasons. One is that that midway through the review, MKS writes, "Swanwick's monograph is not a full-blown biography by any means, and I think he would be the first to admit it."

And since this is the only speculative sentence in the review, I wanted to say: Yes. Absolutely true. I admit it.

The other reason is that the review mentions that The Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees, edited by Sandeep Parmar and James Byrne, will be published by Fyfield Books (Carcanet Press) in 2011. I went to Wikipedia, and saw that this information is public, so now I can mention it.

Sandeep Parmar is also researching a full-scale biography of Mirrlees, largely based on papers that were not available when I was writing my monograph. I'll have a lot to say about this when it comes out, and it will all be positive. I got an advance peek at her introduction to the collected poems, and she's a very fine writer indeed.

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4 comments:

Farah Mendlesohn said...

MKS = Maureen Kincaid Speller, a very good British critic.

Maureen Kincaid Speller said...

I see I've already been identified, but wanted to say I am very excited about the biographical work-in-progress given your favourable comments.

Michael Swanwick said...

I've chatted via email a couple of times with Ms Parmar, and she's already gone far beyond me. So I'm really quite anxious to see the final product, some years down the road but quite definitely worth the wait.

I should mention that the copy of MADELEINE that Ms Speller refers to possessing is most extremely rare. Even John Clute, who inexplicably owns two copies of THE COUNTERPLOT, does not have it.

Maureen Kincaid Speller said...

Good grief. I have a book John Clute doesn't have? That's not a thing that happens to me very often.

My copy of Madeleine is a second impression, externally a little rough but clean inside, and I apparently paid the princely sum of £2.50 for it. My copy of The Counterplot is much more beaten up, though it cost the same princely sum.

I shall exercise patience over the biography but at least the poetry collection is on the horizon!