What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world? I am never confident that writing of any kind changes things except in rare cases to change the ways writing itself is practiced. Nevertheless it’s clear that often very unambitious writing can often feel that it has the intention to … More To encourage others to know the desire and feel the will to change
Describe your life in an alternate universe. Human beings get horribly stuck in the notion of binary options when they think of themselves, yet the great thought experiments concerning the identity of things all have a clear message: Schrodinger’s cat is not either alive nor dead but on a continuum of potential states of being … More If there were alternative universes in which to live and describe your life, they would be, and indeed are, MULTIPLE.
What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it? This is a question you just have to undermine since its presumption is that there is a common starting point for people who answer it, but that is far from the truth, even if we take the fact the cost of … More Use value, exchange value and the sale of social appearances
Honour and the triumph of Western capitalism over ethics and the value of life in An Honourable Exit. A reflection on Éric Vuillard [trans. by Mark Polizotti] (2023) An Honourable Exit London, Picador. @EricVuillard This book followed Vuillard’s novel of historical analysis based on the life of Thomas Munzer and the socio-political complexities of religious wars, The … More Honour and the triumph of Western capitalism over ethics and the value of life in ‘An Honourable Exit’. A reflection on Éric Vuillard [trans. by Mark Polizotti] (2023) An Honourable Exit Info: @EricVuillard .
BOOKER 2023 LONG LIST (Ought TO WIN): ‘During the first month of his apprenticeship, Aunty Caro taught him how to measure and cut. … But when the last day of the month arrived and his parents did not pay his apprenticeship fee, she called him aside and explained that she could not continue training him. … More BOOKER 2023 LONGLIST: This blog examines ‘A Spell of Good Things’ by Ayò̦bámi Adébáyò̦
Describe one habit that brings you joy. A habit, when it isn’t an item of clothing, is usually an action or sequence of actions that is repeated subconsciously because it has been overlearned. Repeated and without variation such sequences are thought to be stored in the cerebellum and are easily accessible without much consciousness that … More Are joy and the habitual really compatible?
What are you curious about? At the beginning of Chapter 2 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we read: ‘”Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot to speak good English); …..’. We forget, at our peril, that, whatever his commitment to nonsense and queer adventures, the eminent … More Curiouser and curiouser! Being Alice in search of inverted worlds in lieu of Wonderland
The feelings surprise sometimes: feeding of self-sorrow, yes – but yielding to thoughts that lie beside you, hide within vines Like grapes that bold leaves recess Infinitely. Will I cry In that hurt voice of mine or Lost in your pain try to soar Above it all; only then To write love with blunted pen.
Write about a random act of kindness you’ve done for someone. A hug, a smile, a giving up Flesh finding its kind in random touch Not seen, not even felt perhaps Except in that touching when Flesh answers in the same kind. And ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ flowers Aloft above its lonely fragile stems of … More Almost flesh, not kind … Akin in ‘we’.
How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you? Seeing is an important word in our culture and so it was in Ancient Attica too. In Euripides play, The Phoenician Women, about the collapse of Thebes as it is subject to civil war by Oedipus’ warlike sons, it is associated with people who … More Why is seeing so important anyway? The dominance of the eye. The hegemony of vision.
2023 Booker Longlist – The Books I read this year. I’m aiming to keep these lower – but only by not buying unless in 1st impression. Although wanted to read Pearl so got it on Kindle Here’s the Longlist – and how I’ll record my adventures with it (so far I have only read one … More 2023 Booker Longlist (SHORTLIST IN BOLD)– Template for the books I read this year.
In a moment of charged reflection, the middle-aged queer man, Eddie Doyle, whose trials during the death of his half-acknowledged partner, Maurice, are at the centre of John Broderick’s The Trial of Father Dillingham (first published 1982), looks at the self-interested young writer Patrick Bellington and ‘for the first time … felt himself regarding the … More In a moment of charged reflection, the middle-aged queer man, Eddie Doyle, whose trials during the death of his half-acknowledged partner, Maurice, are at the centre of John Broderick’s ‘The Trial of Father Dillingham’, looks at the self-interested young writer Patrick Bellington and ‘for the first time … felt himself regarding the man with sympathy’. Broderick’s third-person narrator analyses the moment thus: ‘Perhaps his writing, meretricious though it was, meant more to him than money and publicity. And at the moment both of them were in much the same boat. Eddie wondered idly if all sympathy was a transference of mutual difficulties’. A blog.
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