Introducing a 1999 edition of Antonio Di Benedetto’s The Silencer, first published in 1964, his fellow novelist Juan José Saer saw the work as belonging to ‘a sort of...
Here – ahem – is a motif that has proved popular in many diverse cultures in many eras: think, for instance of Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere; or think if you dare, of your own turbid...
Anne Barton delivered the lectures on ‘The Shakespearean Forest’ that form the basis for this, her much anticipated last book, in Cambridge in 2003. The Clark Lectures were...
The Adulterants is a very funny comedy of arrested development: a coming-of-age novel in which the main character is 33. Ray Morris is a shallow, infantile narcissist reluctantly facing the...
When filming began, Nicholas Ray was married to its female lead, Gloria Grahame; by the time it ended, they were living apart. Ray said it was ‘a very personal film’ – and as parting gifts go, it...
There, he says His wife has died, he is alone and so we follow him into the storm because he wants to take us out. Out where?There, he says as we turn each black corner, there. A man in grief...
Grace Paley’s suspicion of ‘the absolute line between two points’ may explain why she was so frequently accused of wisdom.
Several factors contribute to the innocuousness of Ali Smith’s current project. She’s now published two novels of her projected ‘Seasonal Quartet’: Autumn, shortlisted...
The essay can seem to be the cosy heartland of belles-lettres, a place where nothing urgent is ever said. Recently, though, publishers have seemed willing to take on and even promote this...
à mon pote Jules merde en croûte, merde en daube, merde du pays, merde d’antan. merde de province, pâté de merde, folie de merde (merde boulangère). merde...
In a corner of the eastern Mediterranean, where the coast of Anatolia turns south towards Syria, a mountain massif rises by the sea. Its name in Ottoman times was Musa Dagh, the Moses...
o England, the time we thought your cows were cricketers the sun was blinking round like an uncle saying o o o very quietly to his feet the fizzed out grass beery river thick with weeds water...
For decades, Kurt Vonnegut was an unshakeable, if unconventional, part of the American literary canon: even if his books didn’t find a lot of traction in academia, they were in every...
The Flight Others look down on me. As well they might. I look down on myself from a great height: see the tramp’s straggly hair turned white – the off-white of effluent-polluted...
after Robert Aickman Your sisters flash like jewels, bright as needles. They’re threading languid reels in the ballroom. Your heart is young and taut; your heart is strung with sparkling...
The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognise Shigeo Shingo Thank you for giving me this opportunity in the world of work I will...
Although during his lifetime F.T. Prince (1912-2003) acquired a number of illustrious admirers – including those poetic polar opposites, Geoffrey Hill and John Ashbery – his poetry...
Marilyn Butler, whose Peacock Displayed was published in 1979, wasn’t the first to connect Peacock’s name with the showy wit of his satires. It started with Shelley, his friend...