Who will recount the pleasures of dystopia? The pity and fear of tragedy – pity for the other, fear for myself – does not seem very appropriate to a form which is collective, and in...
When Gravity’s Rainbow won the National Book Award in 1974, its famously reclusive author surprised everyone by turning up at the ceremony to collect the prize. Except that the rambling,...
‘You will see that this little clicking contraption with the revolving handle will make a revolution in our life – in the life of writers,’ Tolstoy allegedly said on his 80th...
George Saintsbury was in the taste business. By profession, he made judgments of taste on works of literature. He produced dozens of editions of the work of novelists and poets and more than 50...
1. I lift the lid on our compost bin. At the corner of sight, Fantail flickers like migraine through the sudden insect cloud. I am supplier – flies the supplies. 2. Feather-weight, Fantail...
Idea of Steve Too bad I have this idea of him based on someone else, named Matt (another uncluttered name), whom I disliked for no reason other than having once thought he misprised me, which I...
What is Pakistani writing? Whatever it might be, it seems to have taken up newsprint lately. Things have been changing quickly and irrevocably over the last seven or eight years: a great symbol...
after Lucretius A snake, if a man’s spittle Falls upon it, will wriggle And writhe in frenzied contortions, and may even gnaw Itself to death; and there are certain Trees, should you ever...
The Wood of Lost Things We went for walks here, as children, listening out for gypsies, timber wolves, the great hinges in the trees. Hours we’d wander its long green halls making swords...
When Luis Miguel Dominguín, the celebrated torero, died at the age of 69 in May 1996, the obituaries were many and generous. They recalled his curious relationship with Ernest Hemingway,...
Dubravka Ugrešić’s Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is the latest, most inventive and most substantial volume in Canongate’s series of revisioned myths. The first was Margaret...
On the Fairytale Ending Begin with the fend-for-yourself of all the loves you learned about in story books; fish-scale and fox-print graven on the hand forever and a tiny hook-and-eye...
In which country has Hamlet mattered most, politically, over the last couple of centuries? Despite a succession of celebrity stage productions, the answer probably isn’t Shakespeare’s...
Do novelists come nicer than Elizabeth Taylor? Her mother died of politeness – she developed appendicitis over Christmas, and didn’t want to interrupt the doctor’s holiday...
Out in the vacant lot to gather weeds I found these teazles – their ovoid heads delicately armoured with crowns of thorns. Arthur, from whom I haven’t heard a word in thirty years,...
Stories rely on mystery. Who killed the old lady? We don’t know, so we read on to find out. Perhaps we do know, so we read on to see if the killer will be caught. It may be that we know the...
A popular clip on YouTube shows a local news reporter trying to interview a costume-shop owner who’d been charged with cyberstalking. The woman is dressed as a giant rabbit and refuses to...
Stray dogs with a red plastic tag in one ear Have been licensed By the city to be safe and allowed to live in the street, So they wander around, or more likely just lie there, Healthy, checked by...