Tag: books

Each day is a chance to learn how to rely neither on what I possess, or wish to possess, and hence no longer, perhaps, to be possessed.

March 12, 2025

In her mid-career (in 1990), the mow deceased novelist A.S. Byatt wrote a novel called Possession. This novel attempted to bring together people whose actions running in parallel between two centuries learn about the values that gather around the term posession. to do so Byatt called on most of the meanings that the word ‘posession’ … More Each day is a chance to learn how to rely neither on what I possess, or wish to possess, and hence no longer, perhaps, to be possessed.

‘WIND AND SEA SOUND, vast and heavy, subside before words resume’. A reflection on Tennessee Williams.

March 11, 2025

A collage of features of the first play mentioned below, This is not my copy though it is identical and has the signature As I clear my bookshelves, cataloguing what I keep and dispensing the rest to fate, I occasionally start reading them. My collection of Tennessee Williams’ work is though sacrosanct and none will … More ‘WIND AND SEA SOUND, vast and heavy, subside before words resume’. A reflection on Tennessee Williams.

Today I found a poem.

March 10, 2025

Before you turn off completely in fear that the poem I found was actually found inside me and written out in my usual sadly mechanical verse style, I need to say that this poem, typed (clearly on a typewriter) and on flimsy looking but actually quite tough semi-transparent parchment paper (or at least this is … More Today I found a poem.

This blog discusses Santanu Bhattacharya’s 2025 wonderful queer novel, ‘Deviants’.

March 6, 2025

‘I don’t think I can write about my own life yet, but I’ve written it all down. … It’s funny how I’ve been writing stories about other people until now …’, says ‘Mambro’, the middle generation of the queer men as named by his nephew, in one Bangladeshi family. However, when Mambro told the story … More This blog discusses Santanu Bhattacharya’s 2025 wonderful queer novel, ‘Deviants’.

‘Would You Let Yourself In’ : Leigh Bowery’s inclusively exclusive or exclusively inclusive dilemma and other contradictions inside Leigh’s outside keeps us outside his inside. This is my blog reflecting on visiting the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern with the help of it the Tate’s  publication Alice Chasey (Ed.) [2025] ‘Leigh Bowery!’

March 1, 2025

‘Would You Let Yourself In’ : Leigh Bowery’s inclusively exclusive or exclusively inclusive dilemma and other contradictions inside Leigh’s outside keeps us outside his inside. This is my blog reflecting on visiting the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern with the help of it the Tate’s  publication Alice Chasey (Senior Ed.) [2025]  Leigh Bowery! … More ‘Would You Let Yourself In’ : Leigh Bowery’s inclusively exclusive or exclusively inclusive dilemma and other contradictions inside Leigh’s outside keeps us outside his inside. This is my blog reflecting on visiting the new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern with the help of it the Tate’s  publication Alice Chasey (Ed.) [2025] ‘Leigh Bowery!’

Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

February 24, 2025

The model of behavioural change promoted by Prochaska and DiClemente to describe the usual process of escaping addiction provides the best model of how success occurs and is more durable in nature. It applies to any human behavioural task and suggests that only when serial occurrences of apparent failure in the task occur (failures which … More Lapse and the Upward Spiral of Change, sometimes!

‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.

February 23, 2025

‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’.[1] When certainties fail us, as they must in time, there may be no alternative to … More ‘I’ve done worse things, things I am not proud of including standing here in the dark with David, I know there’s a little bit of hypocrisy there, there are shades of hypocrisy in everything. Our principles stretch like elastic bands’. This is a blog on Nicola Dinan (2025) ‘Disappoint Me’.

Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”.

February 18, 2025

Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”. It feels easier for me to say why not I would … More Is a day being a mythical version of someone else, worth the crashing out afterwards? “Jackie is just speedin’ away / Thought she was James Dean for a day / Then I guess she had to crash / Valium would have helped that bash”.

The ‘gnomic aperçu’ seemed once to be the quest of the literary academy. John Banville tells us that apparent words of arcane wisdom often turn out to be ‘academic writing at its most convoluted, most resistant and most sterile, the deathless products of the publish-or-perish academic treadmill’. [1]

February 8, 2025

It seems odd to take as the text behind a blog not a great work reviewed but the review itself. Nevertheless today I do just this. John Banville is a great reviewer – the grim and rather schoolmasterly distaste for orthodoxy in which he specialises makes him a resistible public speaker but a novelist of … More The ‘gnomic aperçu’ seemed once to be the quest of the literary academy. John Banville tells us that apparent words of arcane wisdom often turn out to be ‘academic writing at its most convoluted, most resistant and most sterile, the deathless products of the publish-or-perish academic treadmill’. [1]

A reader falls into Joelle Taylor’s fabulous ‘The Night Alphabet’.

February 3, 2025

‘Everything moves. Everything passes.  Threads tangle so easily, so completely. It is their nature to knot. …/…/ The truth is you must be everyone in a story to understand the story. …’.[1]  A reader who comes to The Night Alphabet looking for a linear story and quickly understood connections between the novel’s sub-narratives  (or some … More A reader falls into Joelle Taylor’s fabulous ‘The Night Alphabet’.

Feeling the Baroque and Roll of the Classical Drama and Leigh Bowery over two days in London.

January 29, 2025

Now hubby Geoff is so unexpectedly well so soon, I am off comprehensive culture -seeking in London again on the 26th-27th February. It’s a return that promises to make me feel the Baroque and Roll of the Classical Drama and Leigh Bowery over two days. Hubby Geoff now so well he is finding fault with … More Feeling the Baroque and Roll of the Classical Drama and Leigh Bowery over two days in London.

In the self-published memoir-cum-novel ‘poof: a curriculum vitae’, James, the narrator, generalises on the background human condition assumed in the work. He says, for instance: ‘Despair over our own existences certainly makes us bury obvious truths. Masochistic for meaning, we give ourselves over to existing powers so easily’.  At another point, James says: ‘Now I have become a master of fieldwork psychology’. Yet we cannot know the full context in which  that naming of a role has meaning. This blog tries to read this analytic novel’s study of the lives of masters and slaves, and a world where power seems all there is in relationships, in a way that makes sense to me.

January 23, 2025

In the self-published memoir-cum-novel poof: a curriculum vitae, James, the narrator, generalises on the background human condition assumed in the work. He says, for instance:  ‘Despair over our own existences certainly makes us bury obvious truths. Masochistic for meaning, we give ourselves over to existing powers so easily’.[1]  At one point, James says: ‘Now I … More In the self-published memoir-cum-novel ‘poof: a curriculum vitae’, James, the narrator, generalises on the background human condition assumed in the work. He says, for instance: ‘Despair over our own existences certainly makes us bury obvious truths. Masochistic for meaning, we give ourselves over to existing powers so easily’.  At another point, James says: ‘Now I have become a master of fieldwork psychology’. Yet we cannot know the full context in which  that naming of a role has meaning. This blog tries to read this analytic novel’s study of the lives of masters and slaves, and a world where power seems all there is in relationships, in a way that makes sense to me.