“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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07 April 2014

TO TRAVEL ONE MUST FIRST DEPART




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Training oneself to leave



As the dead become accustomed 
to the other side of all we thought
was permanent it's cool to watch
their rage subside without them

considering forgiveness. They
concentrate on other things, soon
realising this living bit was fickle
and really only necessary to give

fulcrum to the lever that was
in their hands before they even
came here to train themselves
to leave. So wipe your tears on

your sleeve, my waif, take one
last look in the hole, check your
young palms for blisters and go
live hungrily among the sisters.



Philip White  




photos by Philip White ... "To travel one must first depart" was a line of kind advice uttered by my friend Shiva Naipal as he left my house in Adelaide in 1984 .I never saw him again.

2 comments:

red ribbon said...

Shiva would love that Philip. He was nearly as thirsty as you. Cognac in Kinselas!

DRINKSTER said...

I was disgusted at the derision in the critical writing that followed his death. He was truly a great writer of fiction and travel. We became very good friends. He gave me the confidence to keep at it. He was fearless.