Tony White (born 1964, Farnham, Surrey) is a British novelist, writer and editor. Best known for his novel ''Foxy-T'' (
Faber, 2003), described by
Toby Litt
Toby Litt is an English writer and academic in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London.
Life
Litt was born in Ampthill in 1968. He was educated at Bedford Modern School, read English at Worcester College, Ox ...
in 2006 as his 'favourite British novel from the past ten years', White has been called a 'serious, engaging voice of the modern city'. Since 2010, he has been chair of London’s arts radio station
Resonance FM
Resonance 104.4 FM is a London based non-profit community radio station specialising in the arts run by the London Musicians' Collective (LMC). The station is staffed by four permanent staff members, including programme controller Ed Baxter and ...
.
Fiction
White's first novels ''Road Rage'' (Low Life Books, 1997), ''Satan Satan Satan'' (Attack Books!, 1999), and ''Charlieunclenorfolktango'' (Codex, 1999) – 'bizarre, depressing and unreadable' – have been located on the ‘marginal terrain of avant-pulp’, where writers such as
Stewart Home
Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative ''69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), an ...
and
Victor Headley
Victor Headley (born 1959) is a Jamaican-born British author. He is the author of the bestselling novel ''Yardie'' (1992), which gained cult status upon publication and "heralded a new wave of black British pulp fiction". Other books by Headley in ...
'channel the energy and drive of pornography, the skinhead paperbacks of Richard Allen and the cartoon anarchism of Leo Baxendale's
Beano comics to escape the stylistic and rhetorical corsets of the metropolitan novel.'. In 2006 the Russian publisher, T-ough Press faced criminal prosecution for publishing Russian language translations of ''Satan Satan Satan'' and ''Road Rage''.
Both the title and the triangular relationship at the heart of ''Foxy-T'' recall
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...
's 1922 novella
The Fox, but it was White's use of a hybridised, street language of London's East End in which the novel is entirely written, which drew most attention. Some reviewers referred to it as ‘broken, rhythmic patois’, or ‘Benglish’, and White was interviewed about his use of language by Ed Stourton on Radio 4’s
Today
Today (archaically to-day) may refer to:
* Day of the present, the time that is perceived directly, often called ''now''
* Current era, present
* The current calendar date
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Today'' (1930 film), a 1930 ...
programme. White himself has written that it was the
:language that I was hearing all around me in east London at the time, where white, Asian and other mainly (but not exclusively) young people were adopting or hybridising Black British language and in so doing were disrupting what had been the very necessary identity politics of the 1970s and 80s: a disruption typified for me by young Bangladeshi rudeboys calling each other ‘Rasta’ and most easily illustrated by the fact that it became impossible to determine the ethnicity of an unseen speaker (e.g. someone sitting behind you on the bus) by the sound of their voice.
White’s novella, ''Dicky Star and the Garden Rule'' (Forma, 2012), was commissioned to accompany a series of works by the artists
Jane and Louise Wilson reflecting upon the 25th anniversary of the
Chernobyl disaster. Set in
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...
it was written using an
Oulipo
Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...
-style
constraint, in this case a 'mandated vocabulary,' with each daily chapter told using all of the answers to the
Guardian Quick Crossword from that day in 1986.
Another novella, ''Missorts Volume II'' (Situations, 2012) was published as a free ebook to accompany White's Missorts app, a permanent, GPS-triggered, immersive soundwork for mobile phones that is activated in the
Redcliffe area of Bristol as a
public art
Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...
work. ''Missorts Volume II'' follows the lives of four characters affected by a derelict former Royal Mail sorting office adjacent to
Bristol Temple Meads railway station.
White co-edited the short story collection ''Croatian Nights'' (
Serpent's Tail
Serpent's Tail is London-based independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Pete Ayrton. It specialises in publishing work in translation, particularly European crime fiction. In January 2007, it was bought by a British publisher Profile Book ...
, 2005), with Borivoj Radaković and
Matt Thorne
Matthew "Matt" Thorne (born 1974) is an English novelist, writer, and journalist.
Life and career
Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Thorne's first book, ''Tourist'', was published in 19 ...
, which featured both British, Croatian and Serbian authors, and ''Britpulp!'' (Sceptre, 1999). His own short stories have appeared in various periodicals, exhibition catalogues and collections including ''All Hail the New Puritans'' (4th Estate), edited by
Nicholas Blincoe
Nicholas Blincoe is an English author, critic and screenwriter. He is the author of six novels: ''Acid Casuals'' (1995), ''Jello Salad'' (1997), ''Manchester Slingback'' (1998), ''The Dope Priest'' (1999), ''White Mice'' (2002), and ''Burning P ...
and
Matt Thorne
Matthew "Matt" Thorne (born 1974) is an English novelist, writer, and journalist.
Life and career
Thorne grew up in Bristol, England, and was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Thorne's first book, ''Tourist'', was published in 19 ...
.
The 2018 novel ''The Fountain in the Forest'' opens in the form of a modern
police procedural but White includes throughout a
mandated vocabulary (in the style of the
Oulipo
Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...
movement) to reflect particular episodes of recent social history.
Other work
In 2006, White’s ''Another Fool in the Balkans: In the Footsteps of
Rebecca West
Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...
'' (Cadogan, 2006) was published; a travelogue 'from Belgrade to Split, reporting the words of a people confused by shame, pride and hope, trying to make sense of brutal murder and hatred, managing to create something universally valuable from their lives and their history' in the post-Yugoslav republics.
White has been writer in residence at the
Science Museum
A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in ...
, from which came the story ''Albertopolis Disparu'' (Science Museum, 2009), and the
Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...
writer in residence at the
UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES ) is a school of University College London (UCL) specializing in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia. It teaches a range of subjects, including the histor ...
. In 2010 he collaborated with
Blast Theory to write ''Ivy4evr'', an SMS-based, interactive drama for young people broadcast by
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
in October 2010, which was nominated for a
British Interactive Media Association
The British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) is a not-for-profit industry body representing the digital industry in the United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) ...
(BIMA)award in 2011.
In 1994, White founded
artist's book
Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects.
Overview
Artists' books have employed a ...
imprint Piece of Paper Press, and has invited artists and writers, (including
Liliane Lijn
Dr Liliane Lijn D.Litt. (born 1939) is an American-born artist who was the first woman artist to work with kinetic text (''Poem Machines''), exploring both light and text as early as 1962; and in addition, she is in all likelihood the first woman ...
, Pavel Büchler,
Tim Etchells
Tim Etchells (born 1962) is an English artist and writer based in Sheffield and London. Etchells is the artistic director of Forced Entertainment, an experimental performance company founded in 1984. He has published several works of fiction, ...
,
Elizabeth Magill, and
Alison Turnbull
Alison Turnbull (born 16 March 1956, Bogotá) is a Colombian-born British painter and sculptor.
Early in her career, Turnbull worked as an invigilator at the Serpentine Gallery.
Exhibitions Solo exhibitions
* 2001 "Houses into Flats," M ...
) to create books made from a single sheet of A4 paper, folded three times, stapled and cut to produce an A7, 16-page, photocopied edition. Several of these artists' books are included within
Arnolfini
Arnolfini is an international arts centre and gallery in Bristol, England. It has a programme of contemporary art exhibitions, artist's performance, music and dance events, poetry and book readings, talks, lectures and cinema. There is also a ...
's collection of artists' books held at
Bristol Archives
Bristol Archives (formerly Bristol Record Office) was established in 1924. It was the first borough record office in the United Kingdom, since at that time there was only one other local authority record office (Bedfordshire) in existence. It ...
.
He was
Arts Council England Interdisciplinary Arts Officer between 1999 and 2007, overseeing the ''Pioneers in Art and Science'' DVD series, working particularly closely with UK film director
Ken McMullen and the artist
Gustav Metzger
Gustav Metzger (10 April 1926, Nuremberg – 1 March 2017, London) was a German artist and political activist who developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike.
Together with John Sharkey, he initiated the Destruction in ...
. Between 1998 and 2007, White was literary editor of
The Idler magazine.
References
External links
2002 interviewTony White at Diffusion
{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Tony
1964 births
Living people
21st-century English novelists
Pulp fiction writers
British art critics
English male novelists
21st-century English male writers