The cat threw up on Louis MacNeice. I moved on to Theodora Fitzgibbon (With Love, 1982), who though air-headed is nice. Louis will dry out eventually, but will I want to go back to him ? Looking forward to: The City & the City.
Entries from January 2009
January 29, 2009
graves written early 1980s
The pale warm sun throwing very definite shadows of gravestones. The dead leaves scattered on the grass. The bulk of the church, and its shadow dividing the graveyard. A few flowers in cellophane decorating a new grave. The stones, whose inscriptions all seem to face away from the sun, look like dark Gothic windows. Hannah [...]
January 28, 2009
wednesday
Louis MacNeice on El Greco: “Those elongated saints of his are built for speed…”
January 23, 2009
name this city
A prison for the heart. The heart’s longings emerge squashed and distorted, in grimaces made inhuman by the sheer length of time they have been held in place: as if everyone you see there had spent their lives walking poorly-dressed into the wind and rain, which they have not. Hurt from the very beginning, the [...]
January 19, 2009
dracula-proof
C, who, as you recall, remained invulnerable to the contagion from beyond the stars, has a copy of the Four Corners Books edition of Dracula, with illustrations by Sheffield artist James Pyman. Will she turn out to be Stoker-proof too ? Maybe the sly old count can work his magic on her. Or maybe Pyman’s [...]
January 16, 2009
entidalled
A house alarm goes off, one of those noises halfway between a whistle and wail, modulated to sound both nauseous & like a toy. You expect to see someone pushing their house across the carpet of Barnes towards the river, while sparks come out a turret somewhere near the front. “I’m a victim! I’m a [...]
January 14, 2009
partly foundered
Some days writing isn’t the way to get traction on the world. & when you write fantasy the world can’t get traction on your work. So the things the “mainstream” writer gets free, you rarely get at all. What’s next ? Watch half a film. Ring someone up, ask them about their dreams. Make your [...]
January 9, 2009
in the club
Writing in the London Review of Books about reading comics as a child, Jonathan Lethem gives up trying to context his experience outside himself:
“I’m breaking down here. The royal we and the presumptive you aren’t going to cut it. This is a closed circuit, me and the comics I read and which read me. Stan [...]
January 6, 2009
long ashton trees
I like 2009 already.
I like a cold snap. It’s something to get your teeth into.
