# OT (basically) james sallis

*The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 15 Apr 2002*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3149>

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### MBS 808
*15 Apr 2002, 03:26*

I was just introduced to this author I know little
about... now he is best known for an unusual "mystery"
series he just finished...
he began, among other things, with moorcock at new
worlds..

Also (here is the ontopic attempt)

in an interview he said:

The quote I relish most is Gene Wolfe's, used on the
hardback edition of Fly here in the States: 'Great
writing doesn't consist of doing something better than
anyone else can do it, but of doing something no one
else can do at all.' 


anybody have any comment/recommendations? thanks in
advance

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### Matthew Davis
*15 Apr 2002, 04:23 · follows MBS 808*

For more on Sallis - www.jamessallis.com

Sallis started off as one of the New-Wavers when he moved to London,
associated with the "New Worlds" set, and two stories in Harlan Ellison's
"Again, Dangerous Visions". Thomas M. Disch wrote a story about James Sallis
in the early 70s titled "The Master of the Milford Altarpiece" which
incorporates material by Sallis himself, and is about writerly aspirations.
The English writer Iain Sinclair is a big fan of Sallis; he not only wrote a
long piece about him for the "London Review of Books"
(http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n06/sinc2106.htm) he also included him in an
experimental film "Asylum" he made with Dave McKean, Mike Moorcock (in
dungarees) and Marina Warner (in a hedge).

As a writer Sallis is somewhere on the pared-down Samuels Beckett/Delany
axis: very good writing with exquisite apprehension of individual moments,
but I find it heavy going actually reaching the end of any of their books.
In fact Sallis edited a book about Delany and is also quite an expert on
20th century experimental French lit.  I've read almost no standard
detetective fiction so I have nothing to compare Sallis's "Lew Grade" novels
to, I'm afraid. Having moved away from SF in the 70s and 80s, he's become
rather more involved recently as one of the book reviewers for F&SF
(http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/depts.htm).

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