Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0857423339, Hardcover)
Toby Litt is best known for his “hip-lit” fiction, which, in its sharing of characters and themes across numerous stories and novels, has always taken an unusual, hybrid form. In Mutants, he applies his restless creativity to nonfiction. The book brings together twenty-six essays on a range of diverse topics, including writers and writing, and the technological world that informs and underpins it. Each essay is marked by Litt’s distinct voice, heedless of formal conventions and driven by a curiosity and a determination to give even the shortest piece enough conceptual heft to make it come alive. Taken as a whole, these pieces unexpectedly cohere into a manifesto of sorts, for a weirder, wilder, more willful fiction.
Praise for Toby Litt
“A genuinely individual talent with a positive relish for dealing with the contemporary aspects of the modern world.”—Scotsman
“Toby Litt is awfully good—he gives something new every time he writes.”—Muriel Spark
“He has invented a fresh, contemporary style—it will sing in the ears of this generation.”—Malcolm Bradbury
(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 27 Jan 2016 06:09:05 -0500)
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(4.5)
Wikipedia in English
1
The book is split into two halves - "What I think" and "Why I think it" and includes the text of several of Litt's summer lectures on creative writing. Litt teaches at Birkbeck which is one of the top Creative Writing courses on Unistats. And, judging by these lectures, you can see why. Being a writer, aspiring to be published, as I am they really hit the spot for me - but you don't have to be a writer to get something from them, for example you'll get an insight as to why some authors have the swing and others don't.
However these lectures, including one on how jazz can teach you about writing (hence the swing comment above), come after a series of essays on writers as varied as Tolstoy and Spark. It's obvious that Litt is well-read and reads well. These are insightful, and often entertaining essays. I especially liked the one on Muriel Spark, a writer I admire. The description of headfuck literature in an essay entitled - Headfuck fiction versus Carlos Labbé really chimed with me too, especially since I read Navidad Y Matanza in 2014.
The "what I think" section then is full of confident opinion pieces, but what of "why I think it?" Well here we get some insights into reading, on perversity, on monsters, on ghost stories and why historical fiction is problematic. These essays are just as insightful as the first half's. For example the essay on Sebald clarified what it is that I've been struggling to express about the writer since reading The rings of Saturn and The Emigrants.
I also enjoyed the essay on Hogarth and London, having attended the same exhibition that sparked the essay and the insight it gave into Litt's own novels - especially Hospital another of his books I'd recommend.
If there were any criticism it would be that some of the information contained in what are clearly originally standalone essays is repeated in others that were not originally meant to be read together. But there are only a couple of examples of this, and it didn't mar my enjoyment of the collection.
Overall - This is a collection you should read if you are interested in literature, in reading it or writing it and/or you're a fan of Litt's fiction.
Highly Recommended. (