On not being good enough

My bath-time reading of the Guardian Literary Review recently involved reading D J Taylor’s interesting article, rather badly titled Literary hero to zero (I am guessing that the title is a sub’s and not Taylor’s.) However, before getting to the article, I am going to go off on a tangent, which will lead to another … Read more

Jun’ichiro Tanizaki: 蓼喰う蟲 (Some Prefer Nettles)

The latest addition to my website is Jun’ichiro Tanizaki‘s 蓼喰う蟲 (Some Prefer Nettles). This is wonderful little novel on the gradual falling apart of a marriage but one that it is falling apart without bitterness and recriminations but just because the couple are, as Kaname, the husband, says, no longer excited by one another. Misako, … Read more

The novel is (not) dead

I noticed Will Self‘s tired article on the death of the novel a couple of days ago but, having skimmed through it, I felt it really was not worth reading but a tired rehash of the old story, not least the idea that the idea of the novel being dead really meant that people aren’t … Read more

Rosemary Tonks

I was sad to see that poet and novelist Rosemary Tonks had died. She was famously reclusive. She wrote five novels, of which I own a couple. Naturally, I have always been meaning to read them but have never got round to it but, now that she is dead, I may push them up the … Read more

Carmen Boullosa: El Velázquez de París [The Velazquez of Paris]

The latest addition to my website is Carmen Boullosa‘s El Velázquez de París [The Velazquez of Paris], another wonderful post-modernist, feminist romp through history. This one tell the story of Velázquez‘s painting The Expulsion of the Moriscos (the Moriscos were the descendants of the Moors who occupied Spain and who had converted to Christianity but … Read more