Author: penwithlit

In Youth is Pleasure was first published in 1945, and has recently been re-published by Penguin Classics. It is an autobiographical novella (originally sub-titled ‘A Fragment of Life Story with Changed Names‘) about a skinny, awkward, upper-middle-class teenage boy named Orvil Pym. Orvil has a dreadful family, comprising two macho older brothers and a neglectful, permanently slightly drunk, opium-using father (who refers to Orvil as ‘Microbe’, due to his short stature) and who spends most of his time in China on business. Orvil’s mother has been dead for three years, but he is not permitted to mention her to his father, and his repressed grief permeates the text. Orvil passes the summer with his family at a country hotel, and dreads with a sort of existential horror the return to boarding school at the end of the holidays. Welch’s own biographical details match Orvil’s.

There’s something destabilizing, hallucinatory…

My friends at Sea Swim Cornwall invited me to design a swim hat.

Here it is:

I made two designs of St Ives Harbour, to show the East and the West of the Harbour.

The black and white is for the flag of Cornwall, which you see on the flag on one of the designs.

You can buy the hat, and many other great swimming-related items, from Sea Swim Cornwall: https://www.seaswimcornwall.co.uk/

Thank you to Tom Foreman of Sea Swim Cornwall for providing reference photos, ideas, inspiration, encouragement and practical help.

Here is me modelling the hat in Brighton last week.

I sketched the design on paper, then photographed it and laboriously traced it using “Graphic” which is a diagramming app.

Translated from German by Charlotte Collins

A Whole Life is an Austrian novella, 149 pages long in my Picador paperback, which has been a quiet international bestseller. Published in English translation in 2015, it was shortlisted for the International Booker 2016. Interesting titbit: author Robert Seethaler is also a sometime actor who has appeared on TV as well as on the big screen, notably playing a small role in legendary director Paolo Sorrentino’s film Youth.

I read A Whole Life to review in time for German Literature Month, hosted annually by Lizzy’s Literary Life and Caroline at Beauty is a Sleeping Cat (week 1 focuses on books from, or set in, Austria), as well as Novellas in November, co-hosted by Cathy at 746Books and Bookish Beck (this week focuses on contemporary novellas).

The book centres on Andreas Egger, a man of few words, who is not inclined towards an…