Beckett, Bernhard, and the Literature of Rage | Mark Bowles

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All My Precious Madness is available at bookshops, both good and evil.

In this conversation, novelist Mark Bowles joins Jack and Milo to discuss his debut novel All My Precious Madness, a voice-driven, rage-filled, lyrical work about Henry Nash: an academic turned telesales worker whose inner life spills out through invective, memory, fantasy, grief, class resentment, and strange beauty.

The discussion begins with Mark’s early reading life, from Treasure Island and Enid Blyton to the shock of discovering Samuel Beckett. We talk about Beckett’s stripped-down language, floating voices, physical detail, and the formative experience of encountering a literature that seemed to open onto an entirely different world.

Much of the conversation centres on what it means to write a first novel. Mark reflects on the pressure and preciousness of the debut: the sense that a first book announces a voice, discloses something private, and gathers up material that may have been stored for years. We discuss how All My Precious Madness grew out of fragments, notebooks, and an insistent central voice rather than a conventional plot.

We also explore the influence of Thomas Bernhard and Walter Benjamin: rage, repetition, digression, fragments, the “left-handed” approach to thought, and the idea that some truths can only be reached indirectly. Along the way, we talk about autodidacticism, class, Oxford, northernness, high culture, business jargon, academia, and the ways language can be degraded by institutions.

Expect reflections on:

Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, and the literature of voice

Writing a first novel and the strange exposure of publication

Rage, lyricism, grief, melancholy, and comic invective

Autodidacticism, class, Oxford, and the labour of acquiring culture

Telesales, corporate language, and soul-destroying work

Academic jargon and the policing of intellectual tribes

Digression as literary method

Reading, audiobooks, and the reader’s role in creating a book

English humour, irony, resignation, and satire

Fantasy, inner life, and the “uncommitted crime” of art

In the later part of the conversation, Mark discusses his next novel, How Do People Stay the Same?, written as a backwards-moving journal across thirty years, as well as a further book inspired by the mysterious case of Peter Bergmann.

If you enjoy long-form conversations on literature, writing, style, philosophy, class, comedy, and the strange private life of fiction, subscribe to the channel and leave a comment below.

00:00:00 Fantasy, fiction, and inner life

00:01:19 Introduction to Mark B. and *All My Precious Madness*

00:04:31 Mark arrives

00:06:18 Poetic epigraph

00:09:24 Childhood reading, *Treasure Island*, and Beckett

00:13:44 Voice, physicality, and literary interiority

00:16:19 Becoming a writer

00:20:26 The pressure of the first novel

00:24:09 Voice, fragments, and Thomas Bernhard

00:30:16 Class, Oxford, and cultural self-invention

00:38:01 Silence, childhood, and imagination

00:40:10 Rage, lyricism, and catharsis

00:42:26 Telesales and soul-destroying work

00:46:24 Corporate language, academia, and jargon

00:54:50 Digression as method

01:01:18 Stream of consciousness and reading rhythm

01:05:55 Books, audiobooks, and the reader’s imagination

01:11:25 Humour, English irony, and resignation

01:18:00 Language, fantasy, and expression

01:22:23 Art as an uncommitted crime

01:24:27 Future novels and publication

01:29:24 Conclusion