The following blog comes from so many parts of my life but the immediate trigger was reading – only just in Chapter 1 still – James H. Rubin’s (1994) Manet’s Silence and the Poetics of Bouquets, London, Reaktion Books (with his portrait of Mallarmé on the cover) where I came across a reproduction of The … More I never was an absinthe drinker – quite!
Wordsworth was sometimes called an Egoist in religion, usually from an an extrapolation from the following ‘evidence’, although but from a sub-clause in his case against Unitarianism and plea for the staid doctrines of the Established Church. The Unitarian Henry Crabb Robinson in his 1812 journal reported that Wordsworth told him that: “I can feel … More When Wordsworth said that ‘perhaps’ he did ‘not want’ a Redeemer as a refuge, did he think this was a job he could do for himself. That indeed would be a DIY project to wonder at! This is a blog on the book by Colum McCann with Diane Foley (2024) ‘American Mother’ as a book of redemption through story-telling art.
This blog is about a debut novel that, in my view, examines deliberate and / or necessary complications of what we mean by ‘being clear’, especially in the pursuit of physical satisfaction to selves full of yearning. You may guess this concerns an art that takes aspiring men and boys mainly as its subject matter, … More This blog is about a debut novel that, in my view, examines deliberate and / or necessary complications of what we mean by ‘being clear’, especially in the pursuit of physical satisfaction to selves full of yearning. You may guess this concerns an art that takes aspiring men and boys mainly as its subject matter, the debut novel being ‘Jean’ by Madeleine Dunnigan.
The notion that I must have a book in me and write it. Some thoughts prompted by giving up on completing reading the whole of Sacha Coward’s (2024) ‘Queer as Folklore: The Hidden History of Myths and Monsters‘, Manchester, Manchester University Press. Sacha Coward is a beautiful man (even dressed as a Nordic mer-creature) and … More The notion that I must have a book in me and write it. Some thoughts prompted by giving up on completing reading the whole of Sacha Coward’s ‘Queer as Folklore: The Hidden History of Myths and Monsters’.
Fated to love, or fated to die – this blog is a review of ‘Fireworks’ by director, and the use of the history of homophobic hate and queer redemption in the Giarre murders and its aftermath in the history of Sicilian Gay Liberation movement. I am currently reading an amazing and beautiful novel about how … More Fated to love, or fated to die – this blog is a review of ‘Fireworks’ by director Guisseppe Fiorelli, and the use of the history of homophobic hate and queer redemption in the Giarre murders and its aftermath in the history of Sicilian Gay Liberation movement.
The internet is full of quasi-psychology that is, whilst sometimes pretending to be folklore, about ‘being yourself, with a plethora of websites offering tips about how to be yourself. These tips rarely extend beyond recommended changes of behaviour or attitude to ‘self’, although they often include that time hallowed impossible injunction to ‘know yourself’. This … More The fallacy of wanting to be, or imagining yourself being, for a restricted time, ‘someone else’ reveals why the silliest decision you will ever make is to ‘be yourself’.
‘Sometimes home is a place you have to discover or construct’ [1]. This blog is a reflection on a memoir by Mark Haddon (2026)’Leaving Home’, London, Chatto & Windus. I have blogged on Mark Haddon before, use the links to read these blogs if you wish: on the first chapter of The Porpoise, on The … More ‘Sometimes home is a place you have to discover or construct’. (p. 170). This blog is a reflection on a memoir by Mark Haddon (2026) ‘Leaving Home’.
Once we accept interiority as primary, people aren’t around you or you around them. We are mutually absorbed. Some reflections halfway through Mark Haddon’s 2026 memoir ‘Leaving Home’. Thoughts dedicated to a dear friend, Joanne. I am reading Mark Haddon’s new memoir at the moment called Leaving Home, and will blog on it with as … More Once we accept interiority as primary, people aren’t around you or you around them. We are mutually absorbed. Some reflections halfway through Mark Haddon’s 2026 memoir ‘Leaving Home’.
The Radio Times tracked down the designer of the shoes made specifically for J.K Rowing and shown above as Sophia Webster. If you had to design shoes for J.K. Rowling then why not base them on the golden snitch, a quidditich game ball which sounds, at least, a thoroughly gendered item with no non-binary aspect … More Binary Sexing or engendering magical thinking.
It is an ancient theme, as ancient as the first epics of war between tribes and peoples that certainly precede Homer but refined by the Romans into a dream of men as made of steel, flexed into active form by fire. Hence though Homer’s The Iliad mourns war in telling of it, Vergil’s The Aeneid … More ‘quibus ille viros, quibus excitat urbes;’. It bores me that we still think of men as stuff to be excited by targeted hate, and targeted hate alone
The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en … More The best gift I have ever received is to allow darkness and obscurity to work on me, as in preference to relying only on what people present as light and clarity, or as Lorca says, ‘La luz me troncha las alas / y el dolor de mi tristeza / va mojando los recuerdos / en la fuente de la idea’. [Translated by D K. Fennell: ‘The light trims my wings / and the pang of my gloom / will moisten the memories / at the font of knowledge’ (the last line seems somewhat to travesty the Spanish)]. What follows is a blog containing some dark or obscure (for Lorca’s ‘oscura’) thoughts about Lorca as invoked by a new novel: Neil Rollinson (2026) ‘The Dead Don’t Bleed’.
‘…, I no longer blamed myself for the sexual assaults I’d survived. I saw it like this: I could let myself sink in self-blame and self-pity or I could float and swim in this open water full of ambiguity’. (p. 241) ‘Love is abundant, an unlimited resource’ (p. 256). The aesthetics of the unlimited in … More If people really chose to be around those that offered most to them, they would not choose people by their limitations. Let’s go for people like Dean Atta, as described in his 2024 memoir, ‘Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer body’.
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