Jott – Sam Thompson

Honest Ulsterman

‘… a conversation emerged that returned on several occasions to the themes of communication and representation, their inevitable failures and the persistent, urgent necessity to pursue some form of apotheosis through language. We talked. We waited. No conclusions.’

David Haughey asked me a lot of in-depth, insightful questions in this interview in the latest edition of The Honest Ulsterman.

Splice review and interview

There’s an in-depth review of Jott by Daniel Davis Wood at Splice —

— and also an interview, in which we invent the genre of Beckettpunk.

Starting a book among Beckett’s letters

I’ve written a piece for the LRB blog about tracing a family connection in Samuel Beckett’s letters, and how that became the seed for a story…

Jott has launched!

Jott was published on Saturday. We had a launch at the Belfast Book Festival — pictured below, small guests treating the event with the appropriate attention and seriousness. There are a few more pictures here.

Jott launch 11

Interview in quotes

I’ve done a short interview with the novelist Ruadh Butler. Instead of questions, Ruadh uses quotations from well-known writers — in my case leading to ramblings about David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Flannery O’Connor, George Orwell and Virginia Woolf, among others…