The BURIED Book Club discussion

A prolific writer who is securely Buried. As you can see on his Goodreads page, with the exception of two exceptions – Hopeful Monsters, and, Impossible Object, which somehow got some attention, the rest of his titles have very low ratings.
His catalogue is quite deep, deeper perhaps than the average six foot. There's little doubt that there's too much earth encasing this man whose books I am yet to try. Mosley is known as a "Novelist of Ideas" & his works deal with the religious & philosophical aspects of life.

Here's the obligatory Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas...

Here's where you can find out about his books:

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/search/?...

These John Banks interview series here, will give you a fairly good idea about the writer & his writings:
True to Life - Metatheory and the Writings of Nicholas Mosley

http://metameta.ca/

Some more interview links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyl...

An interesting conversation here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2009/05/f...

Mosley's bibliography for those who dislike clicking on links:

Novels:
Spaces of the Dark (1951)
The Rainbearers (1955)
Corruption (1957)
Meeting Place (1962)
Accident (1965) (filmed in 1967 by Joseph Losey, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter – see Accident (1967 film))
Assassins
Impossible Object (1968) (filmed in 1973 by John Frankenheimer as Story of a Love Story)
Natalie Natalia (1971)
Catastrophe Practice (1979) (Part One of the Catastrophe Practice Series)
Imago Bird (1980) (Part Two of the Catastrophe Practice Series)
Serpent (1981) (Part Three of the Catastrophe Practice Series)
Judith (1986) (Part Four of the Catastrophe Practice Series)
Hopeful Monsters (1990) (Part Five of the Catastrophe Practice Series) – which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award.
Children of Darkness and Light (1995)
The Hesperides Tree (2001)
Inventing God (2003)
Look at the Dark (2005)
God's Hazard (2009)

Non-fiction
African Switchback (1958)
The Life of Raymond Raynes (1961)
The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) (filmed in 1972 by Joseph Losey as The Assassination of Trotsky)
Julian Grenfell, his life and the times of his death, 1888–1915 (1976) Republished by Persephone Books in 1999
Rules of the Game: Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley 1896-1933 (1982)
Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family 1933-1980 (1983)
Experiece and Religion (2006)
The Uses Of Slime Mould – Essays of four Decades (2004)

Autobiography
Efforts at Truth (1994)
Time at War (2006)
Paradoxes of Peace (2009)

Critical works on Mosley:
Shiva Rahbaran (2010) Nicholas Mosley's Life and Art: A Biography in Six Interviews (London: Dalkey Archive Press)
Shiva Rahbaran (2007) Paradox of Freedom: A Study of Nicholas Mosley's Intellectual Development in His Novels and Other Writings (London: Dalkey Archive Press)
John O'Brien (1982) "It's like a story. Nicholas Mosley's impossible object." Review of Contemporary Fiction: 142–148.*
John Banks (1982) "Slight-of-Language" Review of Contemporary Fiction: 118–123.

* If anyone here has access to the John O'Brien interview, pls share it here.

I discovered Mosley's intense prose with "Impossible Object" only last week. The novel was crude, disturbing and utterly beautiful.
It's serendipitous to find him on this thread. Thanks Mala for posting this invaluable information. I'd encourage anyone interested in the complexity of our human condition to try to read his works.
Next stop: "Hopeful Monsters".

Ali & Dolors: Thank you for your inputs. Looking forward to some Mosley reviews from both of you.
And Dolors,I saw your Impossible Object review,that book has only 58 ratings so perhaps you wouldn't mind sharing it in the Archive of Unburied Reviews thread?

i found a Mosley today at a book fair for $2, Serpent. does it stand alone or is it better to read the previous Catastrophe Practice ones first? I may read it anyway because i don't think i'll come across any others any time soon.

The consensus seemed to be that it was fine to read them in pretty much any order, last I checked.

Thomas wrote: "i found a Mosley today at a book fair for $2, Serpent. does it stand alone or is it better to read the previous Catastrophe Practice ones first? I may read it anyway because i don't think i'll come..."

I think MJ is the only one here who has read the (entire?) Catastrophe series & that too in the exact publishing order.
So do check out his reviews of Mosley books. I've only read Impossible Object & a GR friend once said that Joseph McElroy had done a far better job using similar techniques in his A Smuggler's Bible earlier so that Mosley book left a lot of readers here cold. I've owned a beautiful first edition of Hopeful Monsters for many years now, though no idea when I might get to it. As for the other books in the Catastrophe series, I'll pm you about an available source.

I haven't read the first two in the series, Mosley strikes me as fairly hit-and-miss. I think he's put out another two books with Dalkey since the original post(!)

He may be hit and miss, but he's my favourite author, and (not that I'm blaming you) he's just died. Buried by now.