HP Tinker
HP Tinker | |
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Born |
1969 Southport |
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | British |
Period | 2004–present |
Notable works |
The Swank Bisexual Wine Bar of Modernity The Girl Who Ate New York |
HP Tinker (born 24 May 1969) is a Manchester-based short story writer whose avant garde fiction has frequently been compared to Borges and Donald Barthelme. In 2007, Time Out called him an "unsung comic genius" and he has famously been referred to as "the Thomas Pynchon of Chorlton-cum-Hardy".[1]
Initially championed by Martin Bax at Ambit, novelist Nicholas Royle and 3:AM Magazine's Andrew Gallix, he was considered a central member of the short-lived Offbeat generation [2]
His collection of short fiction, The Swank Bisexual Wine Bar of Modernity (2007), became an instant underground classic on its release[3] and earned Tinker cult author status. "If HP Tinker didn't exist, you'd have to make him up... he is as influenced as much by Woody Allen, Dr Seuss and Morrissey as he is by William Burroughs and Joe Orton. As one of the brave ones — and one of Britain's most shameless writers — HP Tinker has been peddling his own brand of surrealism for years now, in stories littered with pop cultural references where you are likely to meet Dorothy Parker, Tom Paulin, Paul Gaugain as you are Dean Martin and Morrissey." (Dogmatika website)
The Times has praised his "hilarious deadpan surrealism", The Independent thought him "unusual, arresting, smart and very funny" and The Guardian remarked that he "fizzes with the kind of zany, surreal conjunctions that recall Barthelme and Pynchon in their prime".[4]
In 2010 HP Tinker appeared in the 200th edition of Ambit magazine alongside Sir Peter Blake and Jonathan Lethem.
His story "Alice In Time & Space and Various Major Cities" was included in The Best British Short Stories 2012.
A second collection of short stories, "The Girl Who Ate New York", was published in November, 2015.
Works
Fiction
The Swank Bisexual Wine Bar of Modernity (Social Disease, 2007)
The Girl Who Ate New York (East London Press, 2015)
Anthologies
Dreams Never End (Tindal St Press, 2004)
The Edgier Waters: Five Years of 3:AM (Snow Books, 2006)
Expletive Deleted (Bleak House Books, 2007)
The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime (Robinson Publishing, 2009)
Bloody Vampires (Glasshouse Books, 2010)
The Best British Short Stories (Salt, 2012)
External links
- HP Tinker's Literary Top Ten at Pulp.Net
- Ambit editor Martin Bax interviewed by HP Tinker for 3:AM Magazine
- Writing a Rothko: An Interview With HP Tinker by Chris Killen
- Excerpts From The Extraordinary Autobiography of Mister HPT by HP Tinker at Everday Genius.
References
- ↑ "An assiduous champion of the short story, Nicholas Royle introduces works by three young English practitioners of contemporary noir. The best is HP Tinker, whose infusions of surrealism and pop-culture references have apparently already earned him comparisons to Thomas Pynchon, though his three stories here reminded me more of Paul Auster's New York Stories. His stock detectives flounder in an incomprehensible universe overloaded with information but short on meaning, and are as baffled as the reader by the improbable suicides and motiveless crimes which they come across. Unusual, arresting, smart and very funny, his stories easily repay Royle's faith in the form, though personally I look forward to him writing a novel." (Independent On Sunday)
- ↑ Surfing the new literary wave, Sam Jordison, 12 February 2007, guardian.co.uk
- ↑ "Burroughs Meets Amis" (a 3:AM Magazine review by Andrew Stevens)
- ↑ Travis Elborough, Guardian Books Review, Feb 2006
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