Bio

What Wikipedia says (with annotations).

Geoff Nicholson

Geoff Nicholson

Geoff J. Nicholson (born 4 March 1953) is a British novelist and non-fiction writer. [1]

Contents

1  Biography
2  Bibliography
     2.1   Novels
     2.2  Non-fiction
3  References
4  External links

Geoff J. Nicholson was born in Hillsborough, Sheffield [2] studied English at Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, and Modern European Drama at the University of Essex.  

(Yes, I have two MAs, thereby guaranteeing my unemployability) 

He is generally regarded as a satirist in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh,[3] his writing also being compared favorably with that of Kinsgley and Martin Amis, Jonathan Coe,[4] Will Self and Zadie Smith.[5]

(I don’t recall anybody ever comparing me to Kingsley Amis, but I suppose they might have. I certainly can’t think why they’d compare me to Zadie Smith, much as I like her work. I’ve also been compared, in print, to Ben Jonson and Thomas Pynchon – far more flattering, if not necessarily very accurate)

The main themes and features of his books include leading characters with major obsessions, sexual and otherwise (guitars, Volkswagens, women’s feet and shoes), interweaving storylines and hidden subcultures and societies. His books usually contain a lot of black humour.

(I’d say that one of my ‘main themes’ concerns the relationship between people and things, which necessarily encompasses, consumerism, materialism, collecting, notions of value and fetishism)

He has also written several works of non-fiction and many short stories. His novel Bleeding London was shortlisted for the 1997 Whitbread Prize.

(I’ve made a list, certainly incomplete, of the magazines and newspapers that have published my fiction and non-fiction, in no particular order:  The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, the Independent, The Financial Times, the Yorkshire Post, Ambit, Iron, Grand Street, Leg Show, Boom, Knave, Custom Car, Black Clock, Boom, McSweeney’s, The Believer, the Village Voice, New York Times, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Modern Painters, Art Review, and no doubt many others that I can’t immediately bring to mind.)

His novel What We Did on Our Holidays was made into the movie Permanent Vacation, featuring David Carradine, directed by W. Scott Peake.

(I’m not the best judge but I thought it was a pretty decent film – I fear very few people have seen it)

He was a member of the delegation of Los Angeles writers and filmmakers invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to participate in the Guadalajara International Book Festival in 2009.

(I was prose editor for Ambit Magazine, taking over from JG Ballard.  I was a contributing editor to Black Clock, edited by Steve Erickson.  I’m currently a contributing editor to The Los Angeles Review of Books.)

Novels

  • Street Sleeper (1987)
  • The Knot Garden (1989)
  • What We Did on Our Holidays (1990)
  • Hunters and Gatherers (1991)
  • The Food Chain (1992)
  • The Errol Flynn Novel (1993)
  • Still Life with Volkswagens (1994)
  • Everything and More (1994)
  • Footsucker (1995)
  • Bleeding London (1997)
  • Flesh Guitar (1998)
  • Female Ruins (1999)
  • Bedlam Burning (2000)
  • The Hollywood Dodo (2004)
  • Gravity’s Volkswagen (2009)
  • The City Under the Skin (2014)
  • The Miranda (2017)

Non-fiction

  • Big Noises (1991)
  • Day Trips to the Desert (1993)
  • Andy Warhol: A Beginner’s Guide (2002)
  • Frank Lloyd Wright: A Beginner’s Guide (2002)
  • Sex Collectors (2006)
  • The Lost Art of Walking (2008)
  • Walking in Ruins (2013)
  • The London Complaint (2016)
  • The Suburbanist (forthcoming 2021, I hope)

References

1. Nussbaum, Emily (18 June 2006). “If You Show Me Yours”. New York Times. Retrieved 25 July 2011.

2. The Lost Art of Walking, Riverhead Books (2008).

3. Caserio, Robert L.; Hawes, Clement (12 January 2012). The Cambridge History of the English Novel. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316175101.

4. Caserio, Robert L.; Hawes, Clement (12 January 2012). The Cambridge History of the English Novel. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781316175101.

5. Ridenhour, Jamieson (1 January 2013). In Darkest London: The Gothic Cityscape in Victorian Literature. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810887770.

External links