Riddley Walker (book review)
This book is hard to read. The language insists on calling attention to itself, so no stars for “ease” or “comfort”. But I can’t imagine a more effective way of insisting on the fragility,...
Category: fiction
I Who have Never Known Men; Book Review
Jacqueline Harpman, I Who have Never Known Men, trans. Rod Schwartz, Avon Eos, 1998, first published in French, 1998) If anything, it heightened my respect for contemporary fiction — — I’d call it futuristic...
Re-reading the Picture of Dorian Gray
I’ve never really been attracted to the horror genre. The story invariably seems too contrived to be plausible. I need the horror to be real. The Picture of Dorian Gray is definitely a horror...
Writing and Digging
My first reading at Telltales (the writers group in Falmouth–see last post) was called “Daisies”. It’s pretty much a description of something that happened to me–hard to say exactly when, but within the...
Burning Bread
“Prepared” by having been in a slow oven overnight, the loaf that appears in Charlie Sinclair’s fine image Burning Bread is perhaps nearly incredible but not quite. In fact it’s perfectly “straight” photography: the bread has become...
science fiction
I became a bit unruly at a dinner party recently when my hostess asserted that science fiction was “license to just do anything you want, no rules”. I guess it’s a common enough bit...