Under Underneath the Bunker

30 07 2010

[The original Underneath the Bunker Manifesto represented, as I have hinted, something of a compromise. The article below was, thus, my attempt, at the time, to clear up any confusions it caused - and to address a further, often asked question: why 'Underneath the Bunker'?]


‘There is no single aim to ‘Underneath the Bunker’ except to be aimless; to reject the well-trodden path and rush off into the prickly undergrowth’

I am rarely questioned as to my motivation for producing a magazine devoted to the ignored quarters of the European cultural landscape, yet I am almost constantly harangued with queries as to the title I have bestowed upon this vital project.

What should be my riposte? Read the rest of this entry »


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Making Old Books New (with Donald Bready)

30 07 2010

[Here's a much more recent article, from an anonymous source]

I recall a quip. From whence it came I cannot remember. And yet the quip itself remains, sitting patiently in the worn valley of my memory: firm as a fencepost, still as a stone fish – as witty now as it ever was.

A man of potential literary talent was being urged and wheedled by an acquaintance to take up writing full-time. ‘By Solomon’s beard,’ said the second man (a rather dramatic fellow, it transpires) ‘take out your quill and write! String us together a sentence or six! Pen us a novel, why don’t you?’

The first men let these words sink in. ‘A novel, you say?’

He fondled his chin knowingly before coming to his conclusion: Read the rest of this entry »


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Hoçe – Receding Rainfall

28 07 2010

[I think it would be fair to say that this review - first published in late 2005 - speaks for itself...]

Enigmatic would not be a word that I would choose to describe the work of the Bosnian literary phenomenon that is Hoçe. Nor would I dare lumbering his output with the following adjectives: mysterious, inscrutable, numinous, fragmentary, revolutionary or explosive. Georgy Riecke may have the balls to call his most recent publication, Receding Rainfall, a ‘paltry twenty four pages of poetry’, but that is entirely his own affair – he always struck me as inclined to peculiarly absurd forms of suicide anyway. To my mind, perhaps the most sensible course of action a reviewer can take is to state that Hoçe’s work exists and leave it to the reader to decide whether he wants to take the possibly life-threatening risk of dragging his eye across the pages of his books.

Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Greatest European Novels

The Greatest European Novels

26 07 2010

[In 2005 I published the now famous list of 'Greatest European Novels by Contemporary Writers'. Whilst whiling away a week in Vladivostock I wrote the following fulsome introduction...]


INTRODUCTION TO THE GREATEST EUROPEAN NOVELS

‘Do we love all that we hate, do we not, I say now, in the end, do we not love it?’
(F L C Gorgny, Interloper 89)

The tradition of the ‘list’ deserves to be executed: bloodily beheaded by a symbolic guillotine. And well might I invoke the weapon of a social revolution, for undoubtedly ‘the list’ is a capitalist invention. It is a microcosm of a deformed social system which establishes an order of brilliance based on a series of deluded conceptions of worth and beauty stemming from the rotten brains of the Mammon-worshiping monkeys we insist on electing to government. The tradition of the list contains more holes than Swiss cheese, more mould than the most pungent Stilton, and crumbles at a touch, like Wensleydale. The very sight of a list makes me feel unclean; until I have the burnt the offending article and washed all over my body with a rough Albanian soap I will not feel the strength to carry on. The list is, in short, an invention of the very vilest sort.

Read the rest of this entry »


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Manifesto

26 07 2010

[What better place to start than with a manifesto? Five years ago, a team of Underneath the Bunker contributors got together at The Crippled Bee to fashion a succinct statement of our critical aims and ideals. The vast majority of the team got drunk instead, leaving a couple of us to scribble the following, somewhat scrappy list, the rough edges of which I have smoothed for the benefit of present-day readers]

UNDERNEATH THE BUNKER ONLINE: THE MANIFESTO

- The Modern Bookshop acts as pimp to a depraved line-up of sordid literature. When it comes to execrable drivel, the Modern Reader is spoiled for choice. The sickening effect of this situation is evident in the collapse of European society and culture.

- Underneath the Bunker Online is the deformed child of the eponymous journal, a periodical dedicated to the best (though not necessarily the most popular) examples of European art and literature; a critically acclaimed publication that has for several months drawn the attention of the intelligentsia to those works which the carrion crows of popular criticism have overlooked. Read the rest of this entry »


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Take a Seat

25 07 2010

Welcome, dear readers, to the new home of underneaththebunker.com. I trust you are well.

There is, you will have noticed, a distinct lack of content in this site at present. Fear not: the words are on their way. Surely and slowly, everything that used to be at our previous site will re-appear here, re-edited and re-organized to the benefit of each and everyone of you.

In the meantime we ask for your patience. Failing that, I suggest a visit to Georgy Riecke.

May the treacle of culture drip upon your lovely faces…


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Categories : Miscellaneous


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