If you have been reading Derrida, you will know that a plausible gesture would be to begin with a consideration of “the question of the preface.” But I write in the hope that for at least some of the readers of this volume Derrida is new; and therefore take it for granted that, for the moment, an introduction […]
‘Masses are not held together by a consciousness of common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited, and obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any […]
I was fascinated to find out recently that the brilliant French writer, Georges Perec, author of books such as Life A Users Manual and A Void (a novel written entirely without the letter ‘e’) spent a month as writer-in-residence at Australia’s University of Queensland in late 1981, a few months before his death. I’ve been […]
In light of recent events, this passage from John Berger’s A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor, has been playing over and over in my mind. Quoting it in full probably doesn’t count as fair use, so if everyone could do me a favour and buy the book I’d feel I had done […]
“I think art has a right—not an obligation—to be difficult if it wishes. And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic.” – Geoffrey Hill A couple of weeks ago I picked up a second hand copy of King Lear: […]
If I were told, “You’ll be fucked by ninety soldiers and he’ll receive a piece of bread,” I’d ask to be fucked by a hundred and eighty soldiers so he’d get two pieces of bread… Calculations like those – I make them three hundred times a day. A finger for a piece of bread; two […]
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. – E L Doctorow. I was very sad to hear of the passing of my literary hero, E L Doctorow, couple of weeks ago. As I write this I […]
Time. It’s a bastard, pace Proust, pace Wagner. How do you capture its mercurial, telescoping, objective, subjective, historical, anti-historical sense when making art, by which I mean a novel? Should one cling resolutely to the subjective time of the main character , the imaginary objective time of the omniscient narrator etc etc? Each ambit is, […]
Researching the film Salo for an article in the summer edition of New Humanist (out now!) has sent me back to the films of Pasolini, in all their wonderful, exasperating glory. Pasolini is not a film maker of the mundane – his topics are meant to unsettle, his method of cinematography to provoke. He always […]