About Cosmic John

I found this in a forum on, of all things, a climbing site, where the conversation had for some reason turned to Radiohead, about which I once wrote a book. And it’s a fair question. Two of them, in fact.

(Tries singing said questions in Thom Yorke’s voice.)

And your point is?

I still buy books, you know. Remember them, those papery things that  usually ended up full of receipts and train tickets? Although sometimes I wish I didn’t.  Buy them, I mean. Trawling the discount tables in a Bangkok branch of Kinokuniya, I come across a copy of my Noughties book, reduced to 100 baht (about two quid in old money). Slightly more expensive (but then it is a hardback, I tell myself) is Padgett Powell’s The Interrogative Mood. The title gives the twist away: it’s composed entirely of questions, a structural gimmick to which such staples of fiction as plot and character are pretty much sacrificed. The subtitle – A Novel? – suggests that this is the whole point. It doesn’t particularly work as an overall piece, but there are some passing delights among the queries. For example: “If architecture is frozen music, do we not deserve a whole cookbook of such recipes?” Which almost seals up the puncture wound in my creative ego. Almost.