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.
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.


![Of a ‘chert the size of an olive pit’, that travels with the narrator through the spaces and times of the novel ‘Juice’ [2024] by Tim Winton, the narrator says that ‘… a stone is an expression of the earth, a signal of time. … but its journey isn’t over, and neither is its destiny fixed’. In the dystopia imagined by Tim Winton whether destiny is fixed or not at any point in the globe’s political and environmental history is the central ethical problem of the novel.](https://i0.wp.com/livesteven.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/slide2-4.jpg?resize=365%2C365&ssl=1)







