Litt, Toby 1968-

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LITT, Toby 1968-

PERSONAL: Born 1968, in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England. Education: Attended Worcester College, Oxford, and University of East Anglia.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer.

MEMBER: PEN.

AWARDS, HONORS: Curtis Brown fellowship, University of East Anglia, 1995; named one of the Twenty Best Young British Novelists, Granta, 2003.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Beatniks: An English Road Movie, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1997.

Corpsing, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2000.

Deadkidsongs, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2001.

Finding Myself, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2003.

OTHER

Adventures in Capitalism (stories), Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1996.

(Editor) Henry James, The Outcry, Penguin (London, England), 2001.

Exhibitionism (stories), Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2002.

(With Marc Atkins) Thirteen: Photography, Do-Not Press (London, England), 2002.

Work represented in collections, including All Hail the New Puritans, edited by Nicholas Blincoe and Matt Thorne, Fourth Estate, 2000. Contributor of reviews, essays, stories, and poetry to the London Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Poetry Review, Tate, Architecture Week, Punch, and others.

SIDELIGHTS: Toby Litt is a contemporary British author who began writing short stories while studying creative writing at the University of East Anglia. His first collection, comprised of those exercises, earned him an award for being the most promising student and was published soon after.

Adventures in Capitalism's bar code and ISBN are displayed on its jacket. The stories speak to the manipulation of advertisers and the gullibility of consumers. London Observer critic Tobias Jones called them "surreal journeys beneath the surface of our consumer lives," and added that "amid the geek-speak of computers . . . there are threads of beautifully short, intense narrative." The first story, "It Could Have Been Me and It Was," is about a man who wins a lottery and decides to quit his job and, for one year, buys everything the advertisers tell him he cannot do without. Consequently, his life becomes a nightmare of brand names. Thomas Gibson, who reviewed the collection in the Times Literary Supplement, called the opener "a single gag, sharply executed."

In "When I met Michel Foucault," the narrator visits a club for people who fetishize the French philosopher. A man looks for his identity in the cakes he eats in "Mr. Kipling." Jones commented that Litt's "ever-so-slightly insane characters emerge from capitalism to tell their zany tales."

A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote that in Beatniks: An English Road Movie, "the healthy lusts of an aimless young woman do battle with the overwrought imaginations of two young men who would be guardians of the Beat movement." The story begins in 1990s Bedford, England, where the two male characters have taken the first names, and emulate the lifestyles of, their Beat heroes, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. Mary, the narrator, falls for Jack and joins the small revival group to be close to him, but in doing so, she makes an enemy of Maggie, Jack's current girlfriend. Mary uses Neal to get close to Jack, and there is a road trip, during which the relationship of Mary, Jack, and Neal becomes volatile. They travel to Brighton to work on their literary newspaper and on the writings of Beat poet Otto Lang. Michael Carlson wrote in the Spectator that "part of the point of On the Road was the essential boredom which Kerouac transformed into literature through his beatific sense of wonder. This is not a quality the English come supplied with, nor is it provided upon arrival at Brighton."

Neal disappears, and Mary and Jack travel to the United States, where they duplicate Kerouac's cross-country road trip from New York to San Francisco. APublishers Weekly reviewer wrote that "the emotional journey of the neo-beatniks is genuinely touching. Into this fun, fast read, Litt manages to pack remarkably rich characters and crisp social commentary, a considerable achievement."

Litt's novel Corpsing is a thriller narrated by television editor Conrad Redman, still longing for his lost love, beautiful Lily Irish, a model who appears in ads, when she invites him to dine with her at a chic Soho restaurant. During dinner, a bicycle messenger walks in and shoots each of them three times. Lily dies, but Conrad lives to suffer injuries that confine him to a wheelchair. Because Lily hadn't changed her will, he also inherits her estate, including the posh apartment they formerly shared. He attempts to learn the identity of the gunman, now in custody, but no one will tell him who his attacker is, nor the circumstances that drove him to commit the crime.

Times Literary Supplement reviewer Jonathan Fasman wrote that Litt "neither preaches nor ruminates on fame or violence; he shows, rather than tells about, the numbing destructiveness of both. More importantly, he weaves his observations seamlessly into the plot, which makes for an intelligent, well-constructed, quickly paced thriller in which surfaces always hide more than they reveal."

The New York Times Book Review's Gary Krist felt that in the first part of the story, Litt uses "gimmickry," and added that when he puts it "aside . . . Corpsing instantly improves. In fact, when he allows himself to tell his story without the stylistic high jinks, Litt proves that he can write very well indeed. He is a shrewd satirist, and manages to enliven the familiar investigative process of chasing down leads with some truly clever riffs on everything from comedy clubs to modeling agencies." A Kirkus Reviews writer called Corpsing "violent, fast, mean, funny, and thoroughly satisfying."

Deadkidsongs is a dark 1970s-era novel about four English boys who form a gang to protect their town of Amplewick from a Russian invasion. The four become alienated from the adult world, except for the father of one, a former military man who, though violent and cruel, is the single person they admire and respect. In a Times Literary Supplement review, Christopher Taylor remarked that "Lord of the Flies comparisons are probably inevitable."

In the stories of Exhibitionism, sex is the most common theme. Nicholas Laird reviewed the collection in the Times Literary Supplement, noting that "one of the strongest, most intricate pieces here is 'Mapmaking for the Middle Classes,' which shows the influence of Henry James, a writer Litt admires for being 'in control.' James's influence can be seen in the thoroughness with which Litt fine-tunes his characters into focus."

Litt drew on the popular "chick lit" genre and reality television in writing Finding Myself. Novelist Victoria About invites a group of friends and relatives to spend a month together and obtains their permission to write about anything that occurs, but when the guests discover closed-circuit television cameras, they turn off the heat. Things pick up when a ghost appears and the tabloid press descends upon Southwold.

New Statesman contributor Wendy Holden wrote that the story is "well executed: there are many funny bits, and the idea of Victoria's editor being one of the housemates and editing the text afterwards adds an extra layer of interest to this already multilayered operation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Irish Independent, June 28, 2003, Martina Devlin, review of Finding Myself.

Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2001, review of Corpsing, p. 1238; October 1, 2002, review of Beatniks: An English Road Movie, p. 1420.

New Statesman, June 9, 2003, Wendy Holden, review of Finding Myself, p. 49.
New York Times Book Review, January 27, 2002, Gary Krist, review of Corpsing, p. 8.

Observer (London, England), June 16, 1996, Tobias Jones, review of Adventures in Capitalism, p. 16; February 11, 2001, Robert McCrum, interview with Litt, p. 17.

Publishers Weekly, November 4, 2002, review of Beatniks, p. 60.

Spectator, June 29, 1996, Tom Hiney, review of Adventures in Capitalism, p. 33; September 13, 1997, Michael Carlson, review of Beatniks, p. 41.

Times Literary Supplement, July 12, 1996, Thomas Gibson, review of Adventures in Capitalism, p. 23; February 4, 2000, Jonathan Fasman, review of Corpsing, p. 22; February 23, 2001, Christopher Taylor, review of Deadkidsongs, p. 23; March 1, 2002, Nicholas Laird, review of Exhibitionism, p. 22; June 6, 2003, Sheena Joughlin, review of Finding Myself, p. 25.