Author: stevendouglasblog

Born in 1954. Chequered career including Lecturer in English, Social Worker and Lecturer in Social Work. Had breaks related to mental health that also meant I worked in social care. Now retired.

The limits of telelogical thinking with or without the concept of personal agency.

August 21, 2025

How do you plan your goals? Let’s unpack the question today, for it is culture-defining. Behind it lie three assumptions about modern humanity: The study of goal-orientated thinking arise in the history of philosophy arise from rather mixed sources in defining the paradigm that we call teleology. Originally the issues it covered stemmed from core … More The limits of telelogical thinking with or without the concept of personal agency.

Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.

August 20, 2025

The answer must be that art motivates me. Here I am testing ideas and prejudices about the supposed rivalries between great artists! This might be the reason that I am here anticipating a trip to London today (20th August 2025) to look again at Jenny Saville at the National Portrait Gallery and to see a … More Art is a great motivator and a comprehensive one: my London trip today.

This is a blog on Ben Markovits (2025) ‘The Rest Our Lives’ London, Faber.

August 19, 2025

Thinking of his father, John Layward, who has ‘He is gone into the world of light,’ inscribed on his flat grave, the protagonist and narrator, Tom Layward, of Ben Markovits’ Booker-longlisted novel wonders whether that proud man’s ‘hatred of religion’ ‘was only important to him in the context of the battle with my mother’. So … More This is a blog on Ben Markovits (2025) ‘The Rest Our Lives’ London, Faber.

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

August 18, 2025

Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’! When I was a student at University College London, I used to find myself walking through Russell Square to and … More Somehow twilight at evening draws us to favour it. Why? After all it promises us nothing but the night, unless we hope to make the next day the first of the ‘rest of our life’!

If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

August 17, 2025

The best known quatrain of Persian Poetry, in stolid Victorian translation is that from what The Poetry Foundation calls the ‘Rubáiyát, his collection of hundreds of quatrains (or rubais), was first translated from Farsi into English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald’, attributed to Omar Khayyam. There are versions on versions of the quatrains translated, not least by Fitzgerald . … More If I use the verb ‘to write’, do I really mean that what I write must or should endure

This is a blog on the role of endings in the modern metafictional novel and the light shed on that role by Maria Reva (2025) ‘Endling’ London, Virago Press.

August 15, 2025

‘She felt a small pang of resentment: the endling’s last moments on Earth, and it pined over not getting laid. Of course this was normal. If anything, endlings should pine all the louder for the end of their species. … // At least gastropods yearned in silence, …’.[1] This is a blog on the role … More This is a blog on the role of endings in the modern metafictional novel and the light shed on that role by Maria Reva (2025) ‘Endling’ London, Virago Press.

This is a blog on  Benjamin Wood (2025) ‘Seascraper’.

August 14, 2025

‘Edgar’s almost shrouded by the white swell of the fog. … All of Longferry – the tall spires of the churches and the chimney-tops of the terraces receding to the lights of other towns – has been snuffed out’. I think no other modern novel I know about has such a sense of being near … More This is a blog on  Benjamin Wood (2025) ‘Seascraper’.

Look not for ‘beauty’ but ‘precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility  and ephemerality’. This blog is based on a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland’s exhibition ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ on the 11th August 2025.

August 13, 2025

It is almost compulsory to describe the effect of art as achieved ‘beauty’. We use ‘beauty’ too often in this respect. The words that come to me as I reflect on an attempt to reconnect with the art of Andy Goldsworthy are precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility  and ephemerality, so how has his lasted … More Look not for ‘beauty’ but ‘precarity, structural fragmentation or decay, fragility  and ephemerality’. This blog is based on a visit to the National Galleries of Scotland’s exhibition ‘Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years’ on the 11th August 2025.

James VI & James I: Why curators undermine the case for a ‘homosexual’ King James. Visiting the exhibition at the Scottish Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, on the 10th of August, 10 a.m.

August 12, 2025

James VI & James I: Why curators undermine the case for a ‘homosexual‘ King James. Visiting the exhibition at the Scottish Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, on the 10th of August, 10 a.m. On the 9th August my evening ending at 9.15 and I walked from the venue of the Book Festival (The Futures Institute of the … More James VI & James I: Why curators undermine the case for a ‘homosexual’ King James. Visiting the exhibition at the Scottish Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, on the 10th of August, 10 a.m.

On the Edinburgh book festival: why I still go and on whether I should keep going.                  

August 11, 2025

The Edinburgh Book Festival may be anybody’s kicking post for at least some of the time. For years, it was supported financially by Baillie Gifford with known assets in some very illiberal regimes and ethically if not legally (as far as we know) shady practices. That tie now severed, the right wing press led by … More On the Edinburgh book festival: why I still go and on whether I should keep going.                  

James Graham’s ‘Make It Happen’ at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on the 9 August 2025, 2.30 p.m.

August 10, 2025

This is my response to seeing in the flesha play in which I had shown some curiosity in an earlier blog; (https://livesteven.com/2025/08/01/being-curious-about-questions-you-never-thought-youd-ask-a-way-of-preparing-to-see-a-new-play-seeing-james-grahams-make-it-happen-at-the-festival-theatre-edinburgh-on-the-9-august-202/ ). Of course, Brian Cox received the warmth of the audience in this play, and it was well deserved. What I had not realised was, that in the play, he first appears as … More James Graham’s ‘Make It Happen’ at The Festival Theatre Edinburgh on the 9 August 2025, 2.30 p.m.