Juliet Jacques at The New Statesman:Too little has been written about Brightonian novelist Ann Quin since her death in August 1973. Most of what has been has highlighted the striking opening sentence of her first novel, Berg, originally published by John Calder in 1964 and later reissued by Dalkey Archive Press:
‘A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father …’
Robert Buckeye’s Re: Quin, also published by Dalkey and described as an “unabashedly personal and partisan critical biography” of “one of the best and most neglected” British “experimental” writers of the 1960s, breaks with convention by opening with a quote from contemporary author-artistStewart Home about “The body of a dead princess” serving “as a metaphor for literature”. Buckeye then moves onto a Malcolm X speech from 1964, using it to illustrate his point that radical times need radical culture, before placing Quin into a post-war avant-garde with William S. Burroughs, Alexander Trocchi, B. S. Johnson and others.
more here.