About

About

the underwrite: a place for things that don't belong elsewhere.

or: a public art project in an obscure location. 

the words will be found only by those who look for them. 


Popular posts from this blog

A Writer is Interviewed on the Eve of his Death

 " When I was young I hoped to be a war poet. But then there was no war, so I was fucked."   Q: … A: Writers today live in a melancholic time. Postlapsarian is the word. Nothing is more common now than the writer who believes literature has worsened in recent decades. It has not. Instead literature’s influence on culture has declined. Writers —we are invariably obsessed with power and approval— believe this signifies a decline in their craft’s quality. They wrongly assume the quality of their texts gave them influence. So they fetishise the days of “great” writing that could “change” culture. Really, they yearn for writers to become celebrities akin to “influencers” once more. Ultimately the problem is not one of quality. Relevant writing is not good. It is useful. Useful things do work: they exercise force across distance. Writers do not understand their irrelevance because they refuse to recognise the nature of their craft: they deny the fact that writing “changes” peop...
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Stories I Wrote While the City of London Devoured Me

Expiring Like dogs who drag themselves out of the house and crawl to a corner of the garden to die, there are people in this city who, sensing their vitality is at its end, descend to the underground rail network, take a seat on a 24-hour train, and ride through the tunnels until they expire. They board the carriage alive. Their body alights when they have died. What happens to their spirit down in the tunnels is anyone’s guess. Sometimes I wonder if the trains’ howls are the sound of their souls being ground into the dust that blackens our nostrils. Other times I don’t wonder anything at all.           Some of those who take to the trains for their final moments wish to prolong the experience. Food and water sustains them for days or weeks as they ride softly toward their fate. Others prefer to meet their end like the trains hurtling down these tunnels—rapidly, brutally, and without comfort. In either case, their bodies often ride the trains for days aft...
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Joseph

It was on his eighteenth birthday that Joseph’s parents said he could no longer live at home. They had no savings and no wealth. And as lifelong renters they planned to move to a one-bedroom unit now he could support himself. Joseph did not love or hate his parents and knew he was entitled to nothing. This was a fair decision. Without complaint or protest he moved into a flat in the city’s south with five other strangers. The flat was small and, from a certain perspective, depressing. Two of these strangers slept in the converted living room. The others Joseph rarely saw because they worked night shifts. Joseph illegally sublet the flat’s smallest room, originally a utility cupboard. At night Joseph would breathe dust and sweat into the mattress used by an unknown number of previous tenants.         Joseph got a job filling packages at one of the large warehouses encircling the city. The multinational company that employed him paid minimum wage and his commute t...
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