Duncan Fallowell

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Duncan Fallowell (born 1948) is an English novelist, travel writer, memoirist, journalist and critic.[1][2]

Early life

Fallowell was born on 26 September 1948 in London, son of Thomas Edgar Fallowell, of

psychedelic drugs.[8] While an undergraduate he became a friend of April Ashley, whose biography he later wrote.[9]

Career

In 1970, at the age of 21, Fallowell was given a pop column in

Records and Recording; and worked with the avant-garde German group Can. He began writing about Can's music in the British press in 1970 and visited the group in Cologne soon after. Early in the same decade he explored other aspects of the German rock scene, visiting Berlin, Munich and Hamburg. He wrote verbal covers to many of Can singer Damo Suzuki's non-linguistic vocals. When Damo left the band in 1973, Fallowell was asked if he would like to take over as a vocalist. Fallowell noted that "after a long dark night of the soul", he decided against it.[11]

In 1979 he edited a collection of short stories, Drug Tales.[12] This was followed by two novels, Satyrday[13] and The Underbelly.[14] Chris Petit, reviewing the second for The Times, wrote: "The author's pose and prose is that of dandy as cosh-boy.... The writing attains a sort of frenzied detachment found in the drawings of Steadman or Scarfe."[15]

During the 1980s Fallowell spent much of his time in the south of France and in Sicily, celebrated in the travel book To Noto.[16] Patrick Taylor-Martin, reviewing it, called the author "stylishly at ease with the louche, the camp, the intellectual, the vaguely criminal. His prose combines baroque extravagance with a shiny demotic smartness.... He is particularly good on the sexual atmosphere."[17] His second travel book: One Hot Summer in St Petersburg,[18] was the outcome of a period living in Russia's old imperial capital. Michael Ratcliffe, the literary editor of The Observer, made it his Book of the Year: it "combines, as exhilaratingly as Christopher Isherwood's Berlin writings, the pleasures of travel, reporting, autobiography.... There is candour of every kind... an absolute knockout."[19] Anthony Cross, Emeritus Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, in his book St Petersburg and the British, wrote that Fallowell's "evocation of life in the new St Petersburg is a stunning tour de force... in the spirit of Nikolai Gogol."[20]

It was while living in St Petersburg that he wrote the first draft of the libretto for the opera

Wuppertal Opera
in Germany, which had commissioned it. Schmidt was a member of Can and Fallowell had already written the lyrics to two albums of his songs: Musk at Dusk (1987) and Impossible Holidays (1991). This work is also featured in Irmin Schmidt's compilation Villa Wunderbar (2013) and his collection Electro Violet (2015).

A third novel, A History of Facelifting (2003),

de Chirico's paintings: "The text has the movement of a dream," he remarked in the New Statesman
feature "Books of the Year 2008".

His books have been controversial – Bruno Bayley in Vice wrote that Fallowell has "penned novels that people seem to have a tendency to burn."[23] In the same interview, Fallowell told him, "Fiction is such a turn-off word, not because I am against imaginative work – of course not – but because there is so much crap published as fiction. I am interested in literature. I am not interested in some commercial idea that is simply verbalised. I want high performance language operated by an expert." Roger Lewis dubbed Fallowell "the modern Petronius" in a recent book.[24]

As a journalist, Fallowell identified with the

Tages Anzeiger, The Age, La Repubblica, New Statesman, Vice, and many other publications. He has often contributed to the intellectual monthly Prospect and has had columns in The Spectator, the Evening Standard and several online magazines. A collection of Fallowell's interview-profiles, Twentieth Century Characters[25] was described by Richard Davenport-Hines as "like Aubrey's Brief Lives in twentieth-century accents. The effect is of a rich, energetic frivolity and passionate curiosity about human types."[26]

April Ashley's Odyssey, Fallowell's authorised biography of his friend, was published in 1982. In 2006 April Ashley published what purported to be a new book, her autobiography; but this was discovered to be mostly a reprint of the Fallowell book. After taking legal action for plagiarism, Fallowell received damages, costs, and the reaffirmation of his intellectual property rights; and a public apology from the authors and John Blake Publishing was printed in The Bookseller December 1, 2006.

The

Independent on Sunday said Fallowell "writes like a spikier Sebald, alternating between acerbic witticisms and passages of voluptuous description."[29]

He published his fourth novel London Paris New York in 2020 in electronic form via Amazon.

Fallowell has for many years conducted an epistolary relationship with the Surrealist Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg.[30]

In an interview with Prospect magazine (May 2008), Fallowell said '. . . both Graham Greene and Harold Acton said that I belong to the 21st century. At the time I was rather distressed by that, as it seemed a form of rejection. But now I understand it a little better.'[31]

Fallowell states on his Facebook page that he is also making experimental films and that 'The artist is the last free person.'

Awards

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-19280-687-1
    .
  2. ISBN 978-1-40818-120-1
    .
  3. ^ CompanyCheck
  4. ^ London Gazette Supplement 36192, London Gazette Supplement 36396
  5. ^ People of Today, Debrett's Ltd, 2006, p. 524
  6. ^ Advertisers Weekly- Organ of British Advertising, vol. 234, 1967, p. 59
  7. ISBN 978-0-41366-940-7
    .
  8. ^ Fallowell, Duncan (10 July 2009). "Psychedelic Drugs At Oxford". YouTube. Archived from the original on 15 December 2021. Retrieved 7 December 2018.
  9. ISBN 978-0-22401-849-4
    .
  10. ^ "Archive". The Spectator.
  11. ^ Fallowell, Duncan (March 2008). "Confessions". Prospect. No. 144. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  12. ISBN 978-0-24189-871-0
    .
  13. ISBN 978-0-33342-240-3
    .
  14. ISBN 978-0-33345-405-3
    .
  15. ^ Petit, Chris (26 November 1987). The Times.
  16. ISBN 978-0-46004-732-6
    .
  17. ^ Taylor-Martin, Patrick (9 November 1989). The Listener.
  18. ISBN 978-0-22403-623-8
    .
  19. ^ Ratcliffe, Michael (11 December 1994). The Observer Review.
  20. ISBN 978-0-71122-864-1
    .
  21. ISBN 978-1-90085-079-7
    .
  22. ISBN 978-1-84668-069-4
    .
  23. ^ Bayley, Bruno, Vice, 2 December 2009.
  24. ISBN 978-1-44470-869-1
    .
  25. ISBN 978-0-09947-041-0
    .
  26. ^ Davenport-Hines, Richard (4 November 1994). Times Literary Supplement.
  27. ^ "PEN Ackerley Prize: Previous Winners". English PEN. Archived from the original on 28 April 2019. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  28. ^ "Books of the year 2011". The Guardian. 25 November 2011. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  29. The Independent on Sunday
    . Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  30. ^ Fallowell, Duncan (11 April 2015). "Why is a fish like a bicycle?". The Spectator. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  31. ^ de Chamberet, Georgia (24 May 2008). "Duncan Fallowell interviewed". Prospect. Retrieved 17 July 2019.
  32. ^ "RSL Fellows: Duncan Fallowell". Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 17 July 2019.

External links

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