Truly Terrifying Things
Walter Nash
- 51 Soko: To the Islands on the Other Side of the World by Michael Westlake
Polygon, 258 pp, £8.95, September 1990, ISBN 0 7486 6085 2 - Behind the Waterfall by Chinatsy Nakayama
Virago, 213 pp, £12.99, November 1990, ISBN 1 85381 269 2 - Dirty Faxes, and Other Stories by Andrew Davies
Methuen, 243 pp, £13.99, October 1990, ISBN 0 413 63270 9
Yoshi, my visiting Japanese scholar, carried with him a little book of Everyday English Speech, out of which he was able to construct social uses ranging from the mildly unconventional to the downright alarming. ‘ARRO NASH!’, he would bellow as I entered Monday’s seminar, and on Friday afternoons, ‘Have a GOOD one, ya HEAH?’ – coyly, concupiscently, as though dismissing me, his pale grey crumbling mentor, to a furtive weekend of unspeakable amatory and alcoholic excess. We never quite got the hang of each other, code-wise. I think he may have been disappointed at my failure to respond in kind with ‘Hey, ma MAN!’ or ‘You betchar-ASS!’, professional courtesies not often heard by the banks of the Trent. For my part, I had some difficulty in understanding his general observations on life and literature, although I was very sorry when he went home. It diminished the hilarity of the shires.
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