The Literature of Record Collectors

mills-headway

Magnus Mills is a expert in the surreal and the deadpan: the precise way in which he’s able to juggle observations on quotidian details, workday routines, and intrusions of the bleak, violent, or sinister makes his fiction regularly compelling. In an interview with Michael Barron for BOMB, Mills discussed one of his current projects, a novel inspired by a longtime habit of his: buying vinyl.

I never transitioned to CDs. I don’t go to record stores and talk to the clerks. The enthusiasts in this book don’t go to record shops either. They already have the records. They decide to meet to make contact with one another, but not in record shops. And they form this society, the Friends of Records Society. Simple as that.

Obsession and routine and secrecy: sounds like the stuff of compellingly surreal fiction. Needless to say, we’re looking forward to reading this one.

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