BOOKER REFLECTIONS SHORTLIST 2022: ‘“Who? What? Said the man. “Is there a difference?” ’[1] This blog contains my personal views of Alan Garner’s (2021) Treacle Walker London, 4th Estate. Some readers of Alan Garner seem to be clear about who, or what, this novel is about. Reviewers for The Guardian (Alex Preston) and The Observer … More BOOKER REFLECTIONS SHORTLIST 2022: ‘”Who? What? Said the man. “Is there a difference?” This blog contains my personal views of Alan Garner’s (2021) ‘Treacle Walker’.

Arinze Ifeakandu describes the discovery of his amative preferences when he was ‘a little boy’ thus: ‘But it was boys who made my heart go wild. Boys were incredibly beautiful to me, not in the way that girls were—girls were beautiful in factual ways: fine girl. Boys, I wanted to hold. Soon, I began to … More Arinze Ifeakandu describes the discovery of his amative preferences when he was ‘a little boy’ thus: ‘But it was boys who made my heart go wild. Boys were incredibly beautiful to me, not in the way that girls were—… Boys, I wanted to hold. Soon, I began to write stories that satisfied this longing, especially as I began allowing myself freedom to be with, and think of, boys. Representing that love was my way of perhaps participating in something my heterosexual peers enjoyed without second thoughts’. This blog reflects on Arinze Ifeakandu’s (2022) ‘God’s Children Are Little Broken Things’ and previews an interview of him with Colm Tóibín on the 24th August 2022.

‘The rattling in my head began to fade. It would return, of course, … but I grew better at recognising it for what it was: a need to stop and admire the view’.[1] This blog reflects on why we sometimes might need the differentiated paces of the semi-graphic novel to get made. It uses an … More ‘The rattling in my head began to fade. It would return, of course, … but I grew better at recognising it for what it was: a need to stop and admire the view’. This blog reflects on why we sometimes might need the differentiated paces of the semi-graphic novel to get made. It uses an excellent example by Lizzy Stewart (2022) ‘Alison’.

‘Sometimes I would wake then, not knowing how the dream ended. Other times I would see a diver near the surface, his silhouette like an angel a mile above us, and then I noticed or knew somehow that it was myself, or some future version of myself that had come to tell me something, to … More ‘Sometimes I would wake then, not knowing how the dream ended. Other times I would see a diver near the surface, his silhouette like an angel a mile above us, and then I noticed or knew somehow that it was myself, or some future version of myself that had come to tell me something, to save me, perhaps to tell me a secret, to assure me that all this would mean something in the end’. This blog reflects on a recent memoir by poet Seán Hewitt (2022) ‘All Down Darkness Wide’

2022 Booker Longlist – The Books I read this year. My predictions-cum-wishes of WINNER, in order: I was aiming to keep these lower – certainly than the full list but maybe considerably lower than that. In previous year’s I blogged the full list. Here’s the Longlist – and the record of my adventures with it: … More 2022 Booker Shortlist & Longlist & THE WINNER (the one I predicted) – The Books I read this year (now complete by my own standards. Personal views only).

In a Foreword to a book relating to an exhibition based on David Hockney’s stimulus to the academic world to revise its boundaries, in the history of art at least, Alan Bookbinder and Luke Syson say that the ‘project demonstrates that the phenomena of seeing and experiencing are germane to both science and art’. They … More In a Foreword to a book relating to an exhibition based on David Hockney’s stimulus to the academic world to revise its boundaries, in the history of art at least, Alan Bookbinder and Luke Syson say that the ‘project demonstrates that the phenomena of seeing and experiencing are germane to both science and art’. They go on to claim it represents ‘easing’ between these academic disciplinary borders that will, by ‘cross-pollination of ideas and innovation help us all look differently at the world we inhabit’. This blog reflects on a much needed attempt to examine seriously and with respect the ‘Hockney thesis’ in the 2022 book of the exhibition edited by Martin Gayford, Martin Kemp and Jane Munro ‘Hockney’s Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction’

Interviewed in 1969 for The Observer, Rhys sought to ‘distance herself from the women whom she wrote in her novels. While agreeing that they often underwent similar experiences to their author, and bore an acknowledged resemblance to aspects of her personality, Rhys pointed to a crucial difference. They were victims. She herself was not’.[1] This … More Rhys sought to ‘distance herself from the women whom she wrote in her novels. While agreeing that they often underwent similar experiences to their author, and bore an acknowledged resemblance to aspects of her personality, Rhys pointed to a crucial difference. They were victims. She herself was not’. This blog reflects on the high quality of a biography by Miranda Seymour (2022) ‘I Used To Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys’

Ian Massey, in his superb but sadly out-of-print monograph of Patrick Procktor, helps us to see again the power of this artist’s intelligent defence of an aspect of painting that the artist named ‘theatrical’. It re-opens a perspective on art that is no longer represented in mainstream art history, or is perhaps actively suppressed. For … More Ian Massey helps us to see again the power of Patrick Procktor’s intelligent defence of an aspect of painting that the artist named ‘theatrical’. Procktor’s summary of what was required in the development of modern painting was to say: “It is the expressive possibilities of the imagination which need to be extended.”’[1]  This blog uses Ian Massey’s (2010) ‘Patrick Procktor: Art and Life’

‘I did more research on Alan Cumming for the writing of this book than I have ever done for any character I have ever portrayed’.[1] This blog focuses implicitly on the fascination readers and festival goers seem to have for observing celebrity (or ‘seeing stars’) and reading their ‘stories’.  This blog looks at why I … More ‘I did more research on Alan Cumming for the writing of this book than I have ever done for any character I have ever portrayed’. This blog looks at why I booked to see Alan Cumming at the 2022 Edinburgh Book Festival on Sunday 21st August. It uses … my reading of a recent memoir (his second) by Alan Cumming [2021] ‘Baggage: Tales From A Packed Life’ (pictured). The blog is updated after seeing the event.

‘Firm as A Rock We Stand the banner sings / but a limestone arch thrown up in the year dot / collapsed in pity after the last door / was slammed shut – a marooned stack now sulks’. This stanza from Simon Armitage’s lyric for the song by LYR, ‘Marsden By The Sea’ challenges us … More ‘Firm as A Rock We Stand the banner sings / but a limestone arch thrown up in the year dot / collapsed in pity after the last door / was slammed shut – a marooned stack now sulks’. This blog reflects on an event held in Durham Cathedral on the 15th July 2022 in which a work commissioned from Armitage and LYR by the Durham Brass Festival 2022 was performed by them with the Easington Colliery Brass Band. The work performed takes the title, ‘Firm As A Rock I Stand’.

‘Painting, as Patrick Heron said, is a materialist art, about the material world. The novel, however it aspires to the specificity of Zola’s naturalism, works inside the head’. [1] This blog reflects on Honoré de Balzac’s ‘The Unknown Masterpiece’, the limitations of theory of how art works as a path to producing or appreciating it, … More ‘Painting, as Patrick Heron said, is a materialist art, about the material world. The novel, however it aspires to the specificity of Zola’s naturalism, works inside the head’. This blog reflects on Honoré de Balzac’s ‘The Unknown Masterpiece’, the limitations of theory of how art works as a path to producing or appreciating it, and the assertive brilliance of A.S. Byatt (2001) ‘Portraits in Fiction’

At a crucial movement in this queer romance, two young American men at college together confront the manner of their love for each other, as one of these men also faces the fact that his mother, in another room of the home the men are visiting will soon die: ‘Desire, yes, but for something else, … More ‘Desire, yes, but for something else, for this space where they stood so close, for the quiet of it’. In an ‘Author’s Note’, Grimsley points out an anachronism in his novel relating to a Buñuel ‘movie’ mentioned therein: ‘ “That Obscure Object of Desire” was not released until later in the year that I depict but the title of the movie suited my purposes too well to lose’. This blog reflects on Jim Grimsley’s (2022) ‘The Dove in the Belly’