Very Old News.

Here are a load of old news pages that we can’t quite bring ourselves to delete.

OCTOBER 2007.

Welcome to the October update. Without further ado, this is what has been going on in Rhodes’ world over the last few weeks. He has:

• SEEN Gold published in the US by Canongate Books. It’s been described by Publishers Weekly as “An immaculately crafted story” and we agree.

• PAINTED his sitting room and kitchen. Although open plan they are wildly different colours, so we are prepared to count them as two rooms. The sitting room required an astonishing five coats to turn it from red to yellow. FIVE. Rhodes has now decorated his entire flat.

• REALISED he hasn’t had a dream about Ken Dodd for several months.

• CAUGHT a cold.

• HAD stories from Anthropology hung on giant boards all over the Small Wonder short story festival at Charleston for the second year running. Sadly he wasn’t able to attend this year.

• MADE his first ever visit to Teesdale, where he walked in the footsteps of Wackford Squeers.

• WRITTEN a small amount. Our teams of hackers way down on the fourteenth floor have managed to find their way into his laptop and have viewed his work in progress, and while not giving anything away they have confirmed that at present it is something of a dog’s dinner. That puts paid to our hopes of a new book coming out in 2008.


Tour Date

November 24th: THE HAGUE - CROSSING BORDER FESTIVAL. Rhodes will be finishing his 2007 world tour with his third appearance at the superb Crossing Border festival – a mixture of literature and music. This will be a one-off opportunity to hear Rhodes waffle on about the influence of music on his work, in conversation with Harry de Winter and Richard Milward. Other people appearing include a bunch of writers as well as Vic Chesnutt (whose West Of Rome is one of Rhodes’ favourite ever records), Buffalo Tom (whose eponymous debut is one of Rhodes’ favourite ever records), Super Furry Animals, Patti Smith and many others.

Good job girls. Although this was written on a bus, we can confirm that this is, unbelievably, Rhodes’ normal handwriting. We have no idea why the girl was originally called Melanie, but we do know that Rhodes was not satisfied with this, and asked his Danish consultant Rikke Prenter to suggest a commonplace Danish name, which she did (Mette). After looking on a map, Horsham (why Horsham, a town Rhodes has never visited? We will probably never know) was moved (after him having earlier tried and rejected Cordoba) to Ulfborg, and the story attained the veneer of North European glamour that has seen it become a classic – at least among us lot. Anthropology has, alas, never been published in Denmark, but stories from it do appear in a school textbook there – Danish teens are learning English the Rhodes way, which can only be a good thing. More Anthropology action can be found right here.

News for shareholders:

Dan Rhodes PLC has announced the appointment of a new Director of Global Expansion (excl. Canada & the Cayman Islands), Arthur Rhodes. At a recent press conference Rhodes was quick to laugh off any accusations of nepotism in this appointment, saying that he had no idea whether he and the new Director of Global Expansion (excl. Canada & the Cayman Islands) were related – all he knew was that Arthur Rhodes came to his post with an impressive range of skills and experience, that he had read ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ and ‘What Color Is Your Parachute?’, and that he was clearly the right person to lead Dan Rhodes PLC into the challenges of the global market place (excl. Canada & the Cayman Islands).

This official photograph shows the two of them having an informal meeting at Rhodes’ home:

The larger Rhodes was later seen dandling his new colleague upon his knee, affectionately pinching his cheek, pulling faces at him, and at one point even changing his nappy.

Note the frankly exemplary shelving-in-progress in the background. Three spirit levels are visible, but we can confirm that this does NOT constitute Rhodes’ complete spirit level collection. Do you know of an author with more spirit levels than Dan Rhodes? We thought not – only Simon Crump comes close.

That’s all for now. We’re going to try to get an end of year round up posted by the end of the year, but maybe we won’t get around to it. We just don’t know.

Happy reading, everybody..

Welcome to the September update - particularly to all US readers of GOLD, which is published by Canongate Books this month. It’s already been described by Publishers Weekly as "An immaculately crafted story" and we agree.

With no update for the whole of August, you have probably been thinking that Rhodes has been doing nothing but lying around his flat watching episode after episode of Beavis and Butthead on DVD. If so you are half right, but there have been one or two other things happening in his world. Since our last update he has:

• STORMED Hollywood. It’s official - Timoleon Vieta Come Home has hit the silver screen. Sadly this does not mean that Pedro Almodovar has, at last, been returning Rhodes’ calls. But it’s the next best thing – we can at last confirm that about forty-something minutes into this year’s comedy smash "Knocked Up", a copy of the novel plays a pivotal role. Industry insiders attribute 15-20% of the film’s critical and commercial success to the book’s appearance. We all fainted with excitement when we saw it, so have no idea how the film ends, but we can assure you it’s a Must See. And Pedro, we know you read this site – isn’t it time you got your act together?

• APPEARED in a three page spread in the Russian edition of Men’s Health magazine. Anyone who has seen Rhodes’ rippling physique will be unsurprised by this.

• FAILED to make the deadline for a short piece of writing asked of him by his Finnish publisher.

• PAINTED his hall the exact same colour as the back cover of the current paperback edition of Wearing Dad’s Head by Barry Yourgrau. This is believed to be the world’s first ever Barry Yourgrau Appreciation Hallway. Rhodes’ hall is not large, but it does have six doors leading off it, two meter cupboards, two light switches, a smoke alarm and an entryphone, so it was a tricky job requiring a steady hand.

• MADE his fourth appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival. This time he did not disgrace himself with a pumpkin.

• LOST his rag with a spectacularly unreliable builder – surely a symptom of the onset of middle age?

• CHANGED his first nappy, and many, many subsequent nappies.

• PUT UP a further twenty-five feet of shelving since our last update. This is still not adequate though, so anticipate further shelving news in our next bulletin. We have now lost track of how many trips he has made to B&Q. Sorry about that.

• SEEN the film version of The Little White Car take a confident stride towards production. Hmmm…

• WRITTEN almost nothing

BITS OF EVEN OLDER OLD NEWS:

With no update for the whole of June, you could be forgiven for thinking that all has been quiet in Rhodes’ world. However, we are delighted to tell you that this has not been the case. Our team of researchers way down on the nineteenth floor can confirm that in the last few weeks Rhodes has:

• MADE his coffee table debut, appearing in How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors. Edited by Dan Crowe & Philip Oltermann, and published by Rizzoli, this handsome volume is a must-read for anyone who wants to find out what Rhodes used to do with his socks when they weren’t on his feet.

• SEEN Timoleon Vieta Come Home published by our friends Sammakko in Finland, and The Little White Car published by Miskal in Israel.

• BORED a Hay audience to tears by evangelising about Rhapsody by Dorothy Edwards. However, we have read it and can confirm that he is right – it is one of the best books ever, so why not order your copy right now?

• GONE to his local B&Q for DIY supplies over twenty times.

• PERSUADED Helen Oyeyemi to give him her entire fee from a reading they did together.

• POSTPONED an event in Hull because of the wretched weather making the journey impossible. He made it as far as Edinburgh Waverley but got turned back. Bah. This will be rescheduled. Apologies to anyone who canoed over to the venue only to be disappointed.

• PUT UP sixty feet of shelving.

• STORMED Hollywood. Rhodes is nothing if not box office dynamite, and rumours have reached us of a cameo appearance by a copy of Timoleon Vieta Come Home in the book store scene in this summer’s comedy smash KNOCKED UP. It’s not opened here in Taipei yet so we can’t verify this, but if it’s true Rhodes will be able to add this to such screen triumphs as having a copy of Anthropology on Carrie Bradshaw’s desk, and singing a heartfelt rendition of Broken Wings by Mister Mister on Croatian television.

• WRITTEN very little.

And yes, GOLD is a beauty, and is available from all good book shops throughout the British Isles. The Canongate US publication is scheduled for September, with more foreign editions to come – watch this space...

We’ve read it and we love it. But what do other people think? Let’s see (n.b. some of the linked full reviews give away the ending, so click with caution):

"Both hilarious and acutely affecting, perhaps even profound. *****"
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY. (Full five star review here)

"Smashing. Dan Rhodes comes close to perfecting the fragile balance of sadness and humour that has marked out his books as special for some time. This is a damn funny book… had me snorting like a hippo in mud."
SUNDAY HERALD. (Full review here)

"In all his books there beats a heart so sweet that to encounter it can be painful; this hones even further the razor edges of heartbreak when they inevitably come. Absolutely flawless comic writing – Gold is original, fresh and funny."
THE OBSERVER. (Full glowing review here).

"Laugh out loud funny. An amusing, original read – we recommend it."
HEAT (see below).

"This is a heartbreaking comic gem, with real pathos lurking underneath."
SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

"Oh, how we love Dan Rhodes…. Reliably odd but fabulous"
THE GUARDIAN (The Measure - see below).

"Literary novels can be a pain, but Dan Rhodes’ Gold brings nothing but blissful relief… Rhodes creates a remarkably full and convincing universe in a book that is less than two hundred pages long. Couched in perfect prose, and full of beautifully-pitched character writing (who but Rhodes can weave so seamlessly the hilarious and the pathetic, in its best sense?), Gold is a great and deceptively wise little book. Read it. *****"
THE SKINNY (The genius Michael Gallagher’s full five star review can be found HERE.)

"Welcome to the world of Dan Rhodes, a literary destination full of curiosities… It’s difficult enough to write funnily, but to achieve what Rhodes does here and effortlessly sustain immaculate comic timing throughout a novel – well, that’s just rude. What could have been merely an amusing tale of Welsh country life acquires a touching depth as unexpected tragedy seeps through. *****" Five stars from TIME OUT

"Both affectionate and richly humorous." 3:AM MAGAZINE. (Full review here).

Of course these reviews don’t give the complete picture. Inevitably the book has fallen into the hands of a few dim bulbs who Just Don’t Get It. We have collected a few of the more dismal reviews and posted them HERE. This site has an unashamedly pro-Rhodes bias, but it is only fair for us to warn you that if you’re a bit thick and have neither taste nor a sense of humour, then there’s a strong possibility that you won’t enjoy his books.

We’ll be back with a further update in a few weeks. Happy reading, and maybe we’ll even see you at one of the events. As always, if you see several hundred upsettingly beautiful 18-23 year old Taiwanese girls down the front, that’ll be us. Come and say hi!

In the meantime, please have a look around our reinvigorated site. There is now more content than is really necessary, but we have to fill our days somehow. The most useful innovation is that details of all the known editions of Rhodes’ books are now up. Click on a title to find out if it’s available in a language near you.


EVEN OLDER NEWS:

Want to hear Rhodes go on and on about nothing much? Why not read the interview he did with Dan Coxon for 3:AM magazine? It’s HERE.

And HERE he is expounding his latest half-baked theory…

This has been a relatively event-heavy few months for Rhodes. So far this tour he has:

• WATCHED the starlings flying over Aberystwyth pier.
• ALIENATED his few remaining supporters in the book trade by hosting a drunken pub quiz that they didn’t win.
• READ the sweary passage from Gold at The Boogaloo alongside PAUL EWEN.
• ENJOYED Avenue Q.
• STAYED in Room 101 at the St. Clears Travelodge.
• LISTENED in wonder to the magnificent RICHARD JAMES, who sounds even better live than on record (but who needs to update his web site more often so people can find out in advance where he’s playing).
• ATTENDED the triumphant LAUGHARNE WEEKEND in Wales, where he read in the corner of a village pub with Patrick McCabe.
• DISGRACED himself on the Radio Wales Breakfast Show.
• CHANGED trains at Crewe.

Rhodes has exclusively contacted us and asked us to pass on his thanks to everybody who has come along to the events so far, and his apologies to everybody whose books he has defaced with his amateurish scribblings.

Here he is in The Guardian Magazine’s ‘The Measure’ column. We agree – Dan Rhodes is much, much better than lip gloss. Not that we’ve ever needed to wear it – our lips are naturally soft, shiny and supple.

And look – according to HEAT magazine, Rhodes is almost as good a writer as Jordan. This is something we’ve always thought, so it’s great to have it officially confirmed.
Gold spent an unprecedented entire month in Heat’s Top 10.

And Rhodes’ mother can at last hold her head up high as she walks down the street. Her son has, at last, made his debut in Good Housekeeping:

Rhodes has clearly been busy these last few weeks, but has he had time to relax? Well, apparently he has. We were delighted to be sent this photo of him enjoying himself at Popjustice Live as he listens to the music of his joint favourite pop star Siobhan Donaghy:

Rhodes was overheard saying that he thought Swedish support act BWO (Bodies Without Organs) could well be the saviours of pop. Watch their performance that very night right HERE to see if you agree. We do!

The British edition of GOLD has a mild case of first-edition-itis – a problem which afflicts many books. The trouble is that the name Siân has been printed as Sîan throughout. However, after some tense arbitration the Rhodes camp has finally reached a financially crippling settlement with the National Union of Siâns, so hopefully we will now all be able to put this behind us and move on. And besides, it’s glitches like this that make first editions valuable, so we recommend you order several copies right now – they’ll become heirlooms.

In other news, The Little White Car has been adapted for the silver screen by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade – the writers of, among many other things, Casino Royale. More news on this as it breaks.


NOVEMBER 2006

As we’re sure you will have noticed, October 2006 marked Dan Rhodes’ tenth anniversary of coming up with (debatably) publishable writing. It was in October 1996 that a fresh-faced Rhodes, sitting at his desk by the boarded up window of his room in a revolting Sheffield maisonette, wrote the story ‘Glass Eyes’ that would later appear in Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love. Ten years and several abandoned retirement attempts later, this historic event was marked by anniversary parades in over seventeen major cities.

And still he ploughs on. Rhodes has now completely finished his fifth book, GOLD, which will be hitting the shops in March. After a solid decade at the coal face of words he really deserves to spend some time staring at the ceiling, but we, his devoted readers, will countenance no such thing. We will hound him until he writes another.

In other news, the only date of Rhodes’ 2006 UK tour took place at the Small Wonder festival at Charleston, Sussex, on September 17th. Eye-witness accounts reveal, as predicted right here, that Rhodes did a set of oldies and cover versions. And look – his stories were up on big boards all over the festival site:





Many thanks to Mez, Tess and the rest of the Charleston gang for these. This was followed by his European tour, which consisted of a couple of readings at the Helsinki Book Fair.

New tour dates will be posted as they come in. At the time of writing it’s looking as though his 2007 tour will begin at the Arts Centre in Aberystwyth, Wales, on St. David’s day - 1st March. Reports suggest that a queue is already forming outside the building. Surely this will be the perfect way to kick off your St. David’s day celebrations. We are already applying for our Welsh visas.

This site will be back with a load of new content in time for the release of GOLD. Until then, from all of us at the Dan Rhodes skyscraper, here in downtown Taipei, have a Golden New Year.

GOLDEN NEWS - AUGUST 2006

After months on end with no real news at all, and with even the rumour mill grinding to a halt, we started packing up the contents of the Dan Rhodes skyscraper, here in downtown Taipei. Dressed in black, we were getting ready to sign over the lease to a new tenant, when the phone rang. And what should it be but news from a trusted member of Rhodes’ inner circle – not a wild rumour this time, but real palpable news of Dan Rhodes’ re-emergence into public life. Wild with joy, we divested ourselves of our widows’ weeds and danced around the office for three days solid. Here is what we heard:

There will be a new book, called Gold, published by Canongate in March 2007. Early indications suggest it will sell a million in its first week, so we recommend camping outside bookshops as early as possible to be sure of a copy.

Also, the Tour Without End is not as over as we had thought. Rhodes has been announced as a shock last-minute addition to the Small Wonder short story festival at Charleston, East Sussex, England, on Sunday 17th September. As far as we know Rhodes hasn’t written a short story for some time, so this is likely to be an oldies set. A lunchtime reading with Tessa Hadley, details can be found here.

We’re still waiting for him to come to Taipei, but no news yet. Rhodes is, however, believed to be finalising some readings around the Helsinki Book Fair in late October. We’re saving up for plane tickets, so if you see a few hundred staggeringly beautiful 18-23 year old Taiwanese girls down the front, you’ll know it’s us - come and say hi!

In further news, Rhodes has provided a Q&A for our friends at Outside Left. This piece is particularly notable for it being accompanied by what appears to be this year’s first photograph to have been officially sanctioned by the Rhodes camp. We’ve had it turned into a flag, and it now flies proudly atop our newly invigorated skyscraper. Marvel at his latest stream of inconsistencies and self-contradictions here.

With so much to take in, we’re off to lie down in a darkened room, and we suggest you do the same.

More news as it breaks.

JUNE 2006:

Things have been quiet at the Dan Rhodes skyscraper, here in downtown Taipei. There has been very little news from Rhodes’ inner circle for some time, but we haven’t just been sitting around giggling and brushing each other’s hair. No, our dedicated team of hackers and spies on the fifteenth to seventeenth floors have been working overtime, and can confirm that:

1. Rhodes recently received a ticket for a parking violation in Edinburgh, Scotland. We were very happy to hear this - we love a bad boy!

2. He has received an annual library payment of £49.09, believed to be an all time low for any author, living or dead. (Update, Aug 06 – in fact, it turns out that this was not a library payment at all. Rhodes has been under the impression that his ALCS payments were from library loans, but in fact they aren’t. He is now in the process of registering with PLR, who administer library cash. Quite why this source of valuable income is kept so secret from authors is something of a mystery. On finding this out we spent a whole day weeping at the thought of how much money he might have lost over the years because nobody told him about PLR. So if you know a book writer, make sure they are registered with ALCS and PLR, otherwise they could, like Rhodes, be losing out on literally dozens of pounds every year).

3. He lost his R.A.C. no-call-out bonus after breaking down in the harbour car park in Solva, Pembrokeshire, Wales.

4. Also in Edinburgh, witnesses have reported that Rhodes was unexpectedly stang on the hand by a wasp while in the back row of an afternoon screening of Transamerica at the Filmhouse (die hard fans will remember he was also stang by a wasp in Poland last year). Flowers and cards to the usual address.

5. Rumours are sweeping Finland of a visit by Rhodes in the autumn of this year. A gigantic billboard reading, simply, "Dan Rhodes Tulee…" has been erected in central Helsinki. Could it be that the Tour Without End is back on the road? And that he has run out of supplies of Minttu and one star Jaloviina?

6. Rhodes (or more likely somebody just claiming to be him) has submitted a Top 5 to our friends at 3:AM Magazine, and you can see it here.

7. Rhodes (or more likely somebody just claiming to be him) has submitted a Top 10 to our friends at Pulp.net, and you can see it here.

And that’s about it, we’re afraid. You will notice that there’s still no official news of a new book. However, muffled audience recordings of last year’s personal appearance in Inverness have been changing hands online, and it seems as though he is working on a light and low-key village comedy set on the Welsh coast. That sounds like a recipe for a sure-fire million seller to us, if he can only get it finished. We anticipate a dramatic announcement in the coming weeks, but then we’re always anticipating a dramatic announcement and nothing ever seems to happen. And since Rhodes was recently spotted spending many, many hours that he could have spent writing watching Ken Dodd at the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton, we are starting, tentatively, to question his commitment to getting the job done.

Finally, you have probably already seen in the tabloids that Rhodes was recently surprised by a photographer while on a pilgrimage to the Curry Capital (formerly Rupali) restaurant, Bigg Market, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Here is the evidence of the outrageous press intrusion:

Bearing in mind he is some considerable way into his thirties, we are glad to report that Rhodes does not have a page on Myspace. It would just be embarrassing.

In the meantime, sources close to the author claim he is recommending Hound Dog by Richard Blandford as this summer’s essential read, and we agree. In fact if there isn’t any news from Rhodes soon he might just find us renaming this the Richard Blandford skyscraper…

That’s all for now. More news as it breaks.

FEBRUARY 2006:

The rumour mill has been working overtime at the Dan Rhodes skyscraper, here in downtown Taipei. While we have had no official word from Rhodes for some time, sources close to the author have revealed that he is working hard on a new book, which he is hoping to finish some time this year. It will, they say, be typically short, and similar in some ways to his previous work, while being different in others. As always with Rhodes’ writing, it is anticipated that some folks will get it and other folks won’t. Expect a release some time in 2007.

We are particularly delighted by the recent publication of Timoleon Vieta Come Home in Taiwan. Other new editions in recent weeks have included Anthropology and Don’t Tell Me The Truth About Love in Finland, and Timoleon Vieta Come Home and The Little White Car in Hungary. A particularly wonderful hardback edition of The Little White Car has been released in Japan. A must-buy for all crazed Rhodes collectors. More details of foreign editions to follow…

Only one new photograph has emerged so far this year. Rhodes was recently surprised by a photographer while on a pilgrimage to Barafundle Bay. We don’t condone the work of the paparazzi, but as this shot has already been run in a number of major publications (Daily Star, Heat, National Enquirer, etc.), and it provides a valuable insight into Rhodes’ new look for 2006, we have decided to make an exception:

Rhodes’ Tour Without End has come to an end. No dates are planned for 2006. If this changes we’ll be the first to let you know.

More news as it breaks.