and which when it touched the edge of a cloud spread out long beams that rose and fell at the wind’s touch, shifted and floated over one another like veils and then dwindled and vanished, the sun which had at last succeeded, in the late morning of the first of May,

around Easter time, when the grass in Easter Park in the northern part of the 9th district was ablaze with daffodils,

We drove on; the rain had begun to fall; the windscreen wipers were flicking to and fro through the streaming water;

A book stack every Friday. Today: Michel Butor, one of the most interesting nouveau romanciers (even though he didn’t care to be associated with them). I’m hoping to read this year his “stereophonic novel” Niagara, which on the page looks trippy AF.

That Saturday afternoon in April, we had gone to the Royal Cinema with the express purpose of having a laugh,

since by this time next Tuesday I shall be far away from you already, from your horrible oppressive and exhausting tyranny—that period in May during which I had taken Lucien to see the Museum tapestries.

I came back here to change because I was soaked, then I set off again along the streets as far as Town Hall Square and went into the Amusements Arcade;

The effort strained my eyes, so that the leaden lines began to quiver and dissolve, the red blood began to stream thickly down from Abel’s wounds to Cain’s red tunic in the light below

their machines that don’t work, and go out of order as soon as you touch them, and blow up in your hands as soon as you’re starting to win a bit, the wonder is that it didn’t all catch fire sooner

So, still hurrying, we went under the insidious grimy rain, along the busy glistening pavements, to try our luck for the last time at the third apex of the triangle

a threat in your very heart, your reproach, Bleston, and your safeguard, a six-pointed star with the penitentiary building in its centre, the image of which, like a black snow-crystal, had appeared to me when I burned your effigy

against Sunday’s boredom, which even fine weather scarcely alleviates, in its toffee-apples and ice-creams and gingerbreads, its Aunt Sallies and swings and bumper-cars, its Ghost Train and its Giant Wheel and its livelier crowds—above all in its shooting-galleries

It was the first time that I had devoted a Saturday afternoon to that auditing of my past experience on which I had been engaged since the beginning of May;

Then we went out again on to the damp pavements of the Square, kissed by the mild June sun as it broke through clouds after the rain

Republished #OTD three years ago, in a-format paperback, after a Covid lockdown’s worth of editing with the marvellous @cathannabel #MichelButor’s ‘PASSING TIME’ pariahpress.com/product-page/p… #Manchester #Literature

because I am writing in order to find my way about in it, all these lines being the marks with which I blaze the trail: the labyrinth being my days in Bleston, incomparably more bewildering than that of the Cretan palace, since it grows and alters even while I explore it.

Plans for upcoming holiday, in between some South Island sightseeing.

PARIAH PRESS 🍸 Collected from my local Manchester bookshop today. Beautifully produced (we will ignore the multiple ISBN stickers on the back). Shown below with a previous Pariah book purchase for scale.