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The first two chapters - A Cure for Solitude
'A superb book that unveils the story of two loners; Dominik, brought up behind the iron curtain, salvaging what he can from life, and Alex, a Londoner, witnessing the scars of communism for the first time. Blends the sensibilities of Greene with the pace of Ammaniti.'
Foyles bookshop, St.Pancras International
The Romance is a slimline
hardback with
12 pieces
of artwork
well, anyway, I know what Judith wants.
She wants pleasure.
She is out to get things to appreciate things.
What am I out to do, I wonder.
p10I am expressing myself truly, greatly. What I am writing is something you cannot stop me from writing. Grammatical mistakes. What are they?
You cannot stop me from writing this.
No one will ever read this, so what is the point.
p12
It is not as bad as I would like it to be.
Again, I almost cry. when can I stop?
I've been running for too long.
I am not dehydrated.
I'm glad that I am not. I am glad I am not.
If I were something good might happen.
You might see me fall down.
I'd fall, my throat dry.
My legs would give.
I would fall, crashing to the ground.
My knee would hit the concrete.
It would bruise and graze. People give up.
They accept what they have.
p23
In 2005 Jason Shelley shares a flat in South London. He takes cheap flights he can't afford and is plagued by student debt. Life nauseates him.
Shelley exposes the tortured poetry of prose and the prosaic. He explores the isolation that haunts the existentialist. He plays with language, transgressing the linguistic and formal confines of the classroom poet.
Shelley's writing sits perfectly on the page with Shah's drawings. Shah's drawings look as though they have been cathartically scratched into the paper and then seeped in purple. Tortured drawings of the everyday, the mundane.
Entering the pages of The Romance is entering into a confrontation with a drunk, when we read The Romance we are left stunned, confused - we need to shake our heads to rid the taste of the words.
Marilene Oliver
Marilene is presently exhibiting at the Beaux Arts Gallery, Cork Street
6th October - 6th November 2010
Jelena Podereginen, Waterstone's bookshop
You might see me fall down. I'd fall, my throat dry. My legs would give.
I would fall, crashing to the ground.
My knee would hit the concrete.
It would bruise and graze.
People give up.
They accept what they have.
p23
I am out to avoid paying the stupid debt that I have.
I hate my debt. I hate it.
I shouldn't have told my bank that I took a weekend in Milan.
I shouldn't have told them that.
The intelligence of Martin seems to enable him to rise above anything.
He could reach absolute poverty, then still deal with his bad poverty.
He is poverty stricken.
I am writing off the top of my skull.
The top of my skull.
p11
The point is that I don't know what else to do with myself.
This is absolute honesty. It isn't. it is slightly filtered.
p15
It is, maybe, fifteen minutes past midnight.
I have had some coffee and some toast, just recently.
Do you really want to know the ins and outs of life.
Do you really? The ins and outs of Jason Shelley.
Do you want to know about it? I just heard one of my
housemates make noise. It was half cough, half sneeze.
I am now typing more quietly.
I'm glad the way I write is restricted by the amount
of words I know and by my knowledge of how to write.
I don't think i know how to write.
p22
where am I? I am living in South London, in a flat above a shop on Walworth Road. i share this flat with two people; one is Scottish, she got home from work, the hospital, at
10 o'clock. I wasn't here at that time. when I got in at
10.30 pm she was in typing away on the computer.
I am upstairs now.
p21
'Jason Shelley’s writing takes us inside a human being where the ego and the id bang away in every sentence. This is presented in a crisp small book form. Vishal Shah, as designer, manages an elegance that has an edge. The text is confessional and plays with the idea of being a diary of extreme moments that one might imagine being scribbled on a rough piece of paper, the first thing that came to hand. Vishal’s illustrations in The Romance hover between the literal and the symbolic. In Grey Love the book is more coherent, the cover image standing for less specific information (the shadow of the figure in the chair conforming to no known rules of light and shade) but implying a more intriguing enigma. The odd use of two type faces in the title throws up a useful jarring motif picked up in the text throughout the work printed in grey. Full marks to Vishal Shah and Jason Shelley for using this form in the new liberty of desktop and small scale publishing and credit to the production values achieved.'
Chris Orr RA Head of Printmaking Royal College of Art
