Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Savage Detectives The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Best book ever.

View all my reviews >>

Monday, February 8, 2010

The Proust Questionnaire: Delphin Lecompte



Delphine Lecompte is the author of the novel Kittens in the Boiler from Thieves Jargon Press. Her stories are all over the Internet. She writes like no one else writing today. Delphine has created a grotesque, comic, absurd, and highly unique world. If Borges had invented a story with a Belgian prostitute, it would be Delphine Lecompte. You want to read real underground literature, you pick up Kittens in the Boiler. I would also dare to compare her to Henry Miller. Her prose is lucid and soaked with brilliance. Please check out her stuff below:
Get her Novel here
Below is Delphine's answers to the Proust Questionnaire:






THE PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE: Delphine Lecompte


1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Writing a prose poem at the kitchen table whilst my lover is ironing my favourite blouse with exquisite care, noone is whistling and i'm expecting a call from a close friend.


2. What is your greatest fear?
Choking on a thumbtack, being poisoned.


3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Unforgiveness.




4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Sentimentality.



5. Which living person do you most admire?
Leonard Cohen.



6. What is your greatest extravagance?
Fire.



7. What is your current state of mind?
Fragmented.



8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Hopefulness.



9. On what occasion do you lie?
Sitting in front of well-meaning little therapists.



10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My nose.



11. Which living person do you most despise?
The prime minister.



12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Insatiability.



13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Belligerence.



14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Sorry, it won't happen again, i'll make it up.



15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Omer Minnebo, 'my dodgy neighbour'.



16. When and where were you happiest?
I was deliriously happy on a breakwater on the 16th of february 2001 when i escaped from the nuthouse for a few hours.



17. Which talent would you most like to have?
Taxidermy.



18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My skin. I would like it to be more amphibian.




19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
The last poem that i've written: 'De tuinman is geen pedofiel die katten haat'.


20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
A happy-go-lucky neurologist.



21. Where would you most like to live?
In a hotel room.



22. What is your most treasured possession?
My house burnt down a few months ago, so i can honestly declare that there isn't one single possession that defines me.



23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Stealing from a child to buy vermouth.



24. What is your favorite occupation?
Writing incoherently.



25. What is your most marked characteristic?
My eccentricity (though some might call it 'whimsicality').



26. What do you most value in your friends?
Reliability.



27. Who are your favorite writers?
Graham Greene, Charles Bukowski, John Fante, James Hadley Chase, Hugo Claus, Toon Tellegen, Blaise Cendrars, Franz Kafka.



28. Who is your hero of fiction?
Bunny Munro.




29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Vladimir Mayakovsky.


30. Who are your heroes in real life?
My father, my neighbour, my grocer.


31. What are your favorite names?
Zoë, Peter, Françoise, Dolores, Nicky, Gerrit, Adriaan, Omer.



32. What is it that you most dislike?
Stinginess and bottle caps.


33. What is your greatest regret?
When i was 22 i tried to destroy myself and forgot to write about it.


34. How would you like to die?
Suddenly.


35. What is your motto?
Honi soit qui mal y pense.