“... was the author of the Waste-Books, an aphoristic, fragmentary and prodigiously sustained record of self-exploration. The role of all-purpose sage which Goethe filled for Erich Heller, as for so many prewar Central Europeans, was in Stern’s case reserved for Lichtenberg, to whose ‘doctrine of scattered occasions’ he devoted his longest monograph, and ...”

“... was on the wane. Had he ever been truly valued ‘for himself’? But then, what was this self that he called his? And where did it belong, in Literature’s great call-up? Was he a left-over Pre-Raphaelite – a post Pre-Raphaelite? The grandson of Ford Madox Brown, he had spent his childhood trying to fathom the Rossettis. He was named after his ...”

“... Artaud and Kafka. The exploration of the text’s non-referential dimensions, its rhetorical self-consumption, was at the heart of the theoretical revolution. But many of the theoretical reading strategies developed at that time depended on a heuristic separation between the author’s life and the author’s work. The author was considered ...”

“... assuming other people’s voices it makes a set of rather dubious presumptions. The children’s self-naming, for example, is used to indicate not just their ethnic origin but also their social class and their intelligence. Thus, inevitably, the stupid young white English male who talks a kind of Estuary slob-speak gets called Wayne (‘all children called ...”

“... gravy train student politics is. The Kinnockian Labour Party, they argue, became in effect self-recruiting: a Party dominated by professional politicians chose its allies and successors from organisations dominated by budding professional politicians. It is a pity Heffernan and Marqusee do not acknowledge what a long and distinguished pedigree this ...”

“... today.* Is he a gay poet, or a poet who is gay? ‘At times,’ he says, ‘I do think of my-self as writing for a gay audience.’ However, he adds: ‘I don’t usually think very precisely about the matter of audience; I doubt if many writers do, unless they are deliberately writing for a specialised audience, like writing boys’ adventure ...”

“... ease, to his own delight and the relief of others – there is probably something adolescent about self-torture. But in hindsight Davidson sees her own infrequent escapes to a more ordered world with suspicion and embarrassment. With her Rabari companions and her chauffeur, Koju, Davidson has been on a wearying journey to Ambadji, a place of pilgrimage on the ...”

“... and distanced them from the decadence of Versailles. Gradually, they became professionals, ‘a self-organising, self-disciplining, and self-promoting social body whose loyalty was to the state, rather than to the king’. At the technical core of de Gribeauval’s reforms were ...”

“... were substantial and dignified, in accordance with the confidence and satisfaction with the self that marked the culture of the prosperous male animal at that time. The hero of a Tolstoy novel will enjoy his ‘fine, clean, well-ironed linen nightshirt’, his fine silk dressing-gown, and even his toilette. ‘Having refreshed his plump, white, muscular ...”

“... government should do. They quickly ramped up their testing capacity, educated the public about self-isolation, shut down large gatherings, restricted travel, increased hospital capacity. They have allocated 30 trillion won (£19 billion) to the response. They have confirmed 6593 cases, but only 42 deaths so far – though only 41 people have been declared ...”

“... into. Of course he wanted to put his personal stamp on US policy, and of course he offers up the self-justifications common among members of Trump’s cabinet, who have claimed at various times that they were working behind the scenes to save the country, or the party, or the presidency, from the president himself. During the first two years of Trump’s ...”

“... By the time the local surgeon arrived, he was dead. Born in Co. Longford in 1864, Wilson was a self-declared Irishman whose family had settled in the country during the conquests of the 17th century. He was a ‘political soldier’, in the words of the historian Keith Jeffery: an ardent advocate of Ulster Unionism who bitterly opposed any form of ...”

“... set of the head. After a little while something else occurs: the splitting-off of a protoplasmic self that insinuates itself into every part of the flat. Like smoke, it wisps into corners and under sofas, investigating places that are too awkward for the body to go, and which never get dusted. It’s almost like a dance, a floating ...”

“... falls in love with Protestant man, nothing ends happily ever after – makes space for narrative self-consciousness. ‘This is going to end really badly, isn’t it?’ Cushla says to Michael, tipping a wink at what the reader must be thinking. And again: ‘We’re doomed. Apart from that we’re grand.’ The key question Trespasses asks itself, often ...”

“... the same way other animals invent shells or camouflage – as strategies of protection and self-concealment.Mona, first published in Spanish in 2019 (Oloixarac is Argentinian), looks at first to be simpler than her previous two books, but in fact it’s just as extravagant. It tells the story of Mona Tarrile-Byrne, a Peruvian writer studying at ...”