{"id":10381,"date":"2019-03-06T09:25:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T08:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10381"},"modified":"2019-03-06T09:25:29","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T08:25:29","slug":"we-were-strangers-stories-inspired-by-unknown-pleasures-edited-by-richard-hirst-confingo-12-99-reviewed-by-richard-clegg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10381","title":{"rendered":"We Were Strangers: Stories Inspired by Unknown Pleasures edited by Richard Hirst. (Confingo, \u00a312.99), reviewed by Richard Clegg"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Were Strangers: Stories Inspired by Unknown Pleasures <\/em>edited by Richard Hirst. (Confingo, \u00a312.99)<\/p>\n

The short time that falls between the end and start of the Northern bands, Joy Division and New Order, splits the new city region from the old. Joy Division, through Ian Curtis, are connected to the declining areas of de-industrialisation with links to Macclesfield, Oldham, Salford, and Stockport. Their elective affinities are with the industrial music of Can and Neu! It is appropriate that the cover of the anthology by Zoe McClean echoes that of Faust\u2019s monochrome album, \u201cFaust,\u201d by Bridget Riley, as well as \u201cUnknown Pleasures\u201d itself.<\/p>\n

New Order come from a world of sand-blasted stone, glass and concrete that aspires to the status of a megacity and takes much of its inspiration from the dance electronica of the archetypal megacity, New York. They are the Arena band to Joy Division\u2019s Electric Circus, Collyhurst.<\/p>\n

Confingo publications and its anthology, \u201cWe Were Strangers,\u201d a homage to Joy Division\u2019s first album, \u201cUnknown Pleasures,\u201d are evidence of the resurgence of Manchester publishing. Confingo\u2019s writing can be added to the work of Carcanet and Comma press as a publisher of literary quality, reaching readers and writers from the area and beyond.<\/p>\n

Richard Hirst, the editor of the anthology, has collected a wide range of diverse stories from familiar and up and coming writers. Hirst is a prize winning short story writer himself, features in several cutting edge writing anthologies, and is an occasional contributor of fiction and non-fiction to The Guardian <\/em>and The Big Issue.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nick Royle\u2019s opening story is the nearest to Joy Division. Using the techniques of Oulipo and William Burroughs he has created a remarkable work. This is far more than a word game. The original words of Joy Division\u2019s album are re-arranged in terms of parts of speech, so that the whole work conveys the dark, despairing anti-epiphanies that run through Ian Curtis\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n

At a recent reading at Waterstones, Manchester, Royle explained how difficult it was re-ordering the words into a coherent narrative, using the same words and the same number of words as the original. The dead ends and inexplicabilities, the sense of the foreboding hints at both Kafka and Beckett and, of course, the death of Ian Curtis himself:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve talked for too long. But I\u2019ve said it all. I have to live. Until there are no<\/p>\n

sensations anymore. Until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Royle\u2019s story leads into a Curtisian elsewhere that is both familiar and remote, there are other stories that hop between the real and surreal. Take David Gaffney\u2019s story, inspired by a trip to Curtis\u2019s last place, Macclesfield. It moves from someone wanting to buy a garage to someone wanting to buy empty spaces freed of clutter, the opposite of most garages, with dialogue and comic timing that would do credit to Ivor Cutler.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to know if Gaffney\u2019s story is a parable of capital accumulation, the metaphorical emptiness of property, or is it just great fun. All that is solid does seem to melt into air in this story.<\/p>\n

Another established writer, Toby Litt introduces multiple Prousts in space in a story which could stand along stories in his debut collection, \u201cAdventures in Capitalism\u201d Again the dialogue is as pitch perfect as a Vinteuil sonata. His Prousts are as good as his Moriarty and Holmes from the earlier collection.<\/p>\n

If the anthology has several examples of elsewhere, it also has examples of somewhere. Newly published, Louise Marr, creates a finely observed story of office life as a new starter, a bright new world surrounded by the darkness of the natural world. Jenn Ashworth, too, observes the squalid with analytical precision.<\/p>\n

There is also a glimpse of the macabre in Jessie Greengrass\u2019s fiction creates an industrial dystopia. To add to the range Zoe McClean creates a graphic narrative that reflects on the prophetic aspects of Ian Curtis\u2019s words and his death-in-life, life-in-death.<\/p>\n

What many of the stories share is an unrelenting cold eye, for example, on epilepsy and how it impacts on ordinary life in Zoe Lambert\u2019s story. We are seeing parts of the world that Ian Curtis may have seen in the moments when he lost control.<\/p>\n

Nick Royle\u2019s is the most experimental story but \u00a0here are other experimenters abroad. Sophie Macckintosh uses the notoriously difficult second person voice to explore a process of flight from the past. There is also another flight, this time of balloons. Eley William\u2019s story borders on the magical and transfigurative:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd a lion and a taut ballon-man and hard glosser-over raised their hands to their<\/p>\n

brows and, just for a second, together watched a brawling, tight-lipped display of<\/p>\n

animals grow smaller and smaller above their heads, disappearing like prayers<\/p>\n

amid the ants and messing up a great, grey, blank sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final story of the collection, \u201c I Remember Nothing,\u201d returns to the macabre and blood-splattered with disturbing intensity.<\/p>\n

The anthology is worth a place on the shelves of Manchester music with Mark E Smith\u2019s \u201cRenegade,\u201d Peter Hook\u2019s \u201cUnknown Pleasures,\u201d and Deborah Curtis\u2019s \u201cTouching from a Distance.\u201d It is an example of the necessity of influence. Could a Confingo anthology be an annual or bi-annual production? I hope so. It would help to fill the UK\u2019s short list of short fiction publishers.<\/p>\n

Richard Clegg<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Were Strangers: Stories Inspired by Unknown Pleasures edited by Richard Hirst. (Confingo, \u00a312.99) The short time that falls between the end and start of the Northern bands, Joy Division and New Order, splits the new city region from the old. Joy Division, through Ian Curtis, are connected to the declining areas of de-industrialisation with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,15,283,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe Were Strangers: Stories Inspired by Unknown Pleasures edited by Richard Hirst. 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