Books by and for independent women

Five-Minute Friday: Dan Holloway

Name: Dan Holloway

Day job: University pen-pusher

Extra-curricular: I run a literary project, eight cuts gallery, that has a tiny weeny publishing part to it, putting out 3 frabjous titles. I’ve written a few novels, but writing-wise there’s nothing to beat performing live, which I’ll do pretty much anywhere that’ll have me and most places that won’t (not to mention those that did but won’t have me back).

I love films (La Double Vie de Véronique is my absolute favourite), and cooking. Rich continental gorgeousnesses like osso bucco and cassoulet and reductions that have been worked on for weeks. And wine. Pudding wine, especially Tokaji, which I love so much I wrote two novels about it.

I’m not much for sport, though I was for several years a ringer in a team of Opus Dei priests, and I threw hammer for Oxford University many moons back.

And further moons before that, I was thrown out of the GB juniors bridge team for bringing the game into disrepute following an incident involving an after-tournament party in Northern France, six bottles of wine and two of vodka, a ferry, a petrol station somewhere outside Lille, and a guest house in Dover.

Best of all non-writing stuff, I love going to rock gigs with my wife. Especially The Kills. I forgot art. Especially modern art. The first thing I ever went to with my wife was Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy at the Tate. I have a thing for Abstract Expressionism (my earliest experience of art was a Rothko exhibition), especially De Kooning.

Favourite book of all time: N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto. Her writing has such a sparseness (which the previous answer shows I clearly don’t share), which belies the layers on layers of emotional complexity. At the heart of N.P. are secrets and tragedies handled with the most remarkable honesty and dignity.

Literary pet peeves: Very good, very polished, very accomplished writing. There are too many very good books in the world that say absolutely nothing. Oh, and those big, sweeping, epic Great American Novel things. What are they actually for?

Guilty pleasure: Dumplings.

Three favourite authors: I assume I’m not allowed to say Cody James, Penny Goring and Stuart Estell (the amazing people I get to publish).

So I’ll say Banana Yoshimoto because her simplicity is just devastating; Haruki Murakami because he can take a scene that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and make it explain, completely, the deepest emotional truth; and Elfriede Jelinek because she takes you by the throat and leads you down the darkest alleys of the soul without missing a beat.

Favourite fictional character: Miu in Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart. She somehow balances an almost preternatural self-possession with an inner fragility and a past that has literally cut her in two in the most perfect scene ever written, where she finds herself trapped on a ferris wheel, looking in through her bedroom window watching as she is raped, her hair turning instantaneously white as she watches. It’s one of those nonsenses that perfectly captures an emotional truth.

Other recommended reading: Blood and Pudding by Katelan Foisy, a remarkable celebration of a life built around transcripts of recordings she and her best friend Holly made on a teenage roadtrip, interspersed with wonderful, warm anecdotes about their adventures in the years between that trip and Holly’s death from a heroin overdose just a few years later. It’s a perfect thing.

And in a similar vein, Just Kids by Patti Smith, memories of the years she spent with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It’s not just haunting-but-uplifting, it’s a wonderful insight into life at the Chelsea Hotel.

Oh, and two names to seek out and watch. Allyson Armistead is a writer I came across whilst reading slush for Emprise Review. She’s destined for greatness. Joe A Briggs, the most interesting and interested cultural commentator I know.

For more from Dan, take a peek at his website or his awe-inducing project Eight Cuts. Want to be one of our five-minute Fridays? Just send us an email.