A Requiem for the Old Bookshops of Europe. By WILL STONE. ◊ ne by one, like lights going out in an office building at dusk, antiquarian bookshops are dying out across Europe, but who is even aware of the implications of this decline apart from their struggling owners and that minority of dedicated bibliophiles who […]
By ALAN WALL. ◊ he word has not survived, except in the far reaches of rock music, and some off-beat business ventures. Imaginator. One who makes it all up. The word became entangled in the seventeenth century with the Docetists, which might have led to it being treated warily. The Docetists believed that Jesus was […]
A Fortnightly Review. The Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations by Sudhir Kakar. Karnac Books, 2o24 | 9781915565204 (paperback); 9781915565181 (e-book) | £19.99 Kakar Art Collective ◊ By Anthony Howell. rom the word go, Sudhir Kakar’s book on psychoanalysis and non-Western civilizations promises to be entertaining as well as enlightening. Initially he points out that […]
By Alan Wall. • The Tragic Dilemma he gods still lurk in the background of modern tragedy. Characters cock one ear to see if they can make out the congratulation or tears from afar. But they hear nothing, or perhaps they hear the distant sound of laughter. It is not a cheering sound. It is […]
< chapters 17 & 18 chapters 21 & 22 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Nineteen. Vale of Llangollen T THE BEGINNING of the Apology, Socrates asks that his judges look upon him as a stranger. He might have said, as William Blake was to put it a few […]
Articulation of Sound Forms in Time ◊ By Peter Middleton. hat is the “fate of difficulty in the poetry of our time”? Charles Altieri and Nicholas Nace gather the thoughts of twenty-six leading poetry critics on this question, each of them discussing the issue in relation to a single recent poem. It’s a fascinating […]
By G. KIM BLANK. The only book, except the Bible, which has followed the Anglo-Saxon around the world. —ad for Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911 The New Encyclopædia Britannica is a complete and modern exposition of thought, learning and achievement to 1910, a vivid representation of the world’s activities, so arranged and classified as to afford a […]
Chronicler, Novelist, Storyteller By CONOR ROBIN MADIGAN. N EXHAUSTIVE PUBLISHING of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s children’s stories during his lifetime and well after — beginning with Zletah The Goat in 1966 and ending in 2015 with The Parakeet Named Dreidel — has made the novels and work preceding the juvenilia more interesting and powerful. But […]
By Sheila E. Murphy. ◊ Shoofly Pie ndow the cow toward matrilineal détente. Align, arraign, detain, refrain. Compos mentis, manu-fixtured decibels to drown out priest speak. Diction of addiction, pressure test, the breast. The side effects of context. Blame game face two-ply, like most discarded flings. Shoofly pie spawns attractive crumbs wedged between repeat signs. […]
A Fortnightly Review. Some Words on Those Wars by John Matthias Dos Madres Press 2021 | 320 pp. | $33.00 By Garin Cycholl. ◊ e kill at a distance, complicit both in the act and its reach. Take the distance of Homer’s warriors versus medieval archers, artillery gunners, bombardiers, or contemporary drone pilots with their […]
Thursday, 21 December 2023
The Virtue of Uncertainty. By ALAN WALL. ◊ t is a curious fact, a vivid historical coincidence, that the great French scientist Laplace was formulating his notions at precisely the same moment that John Keats was writing his letters about Shakespeare. Laplace was an eloquent spokesman for classical causality: we can summarise this crudely by […]
Tuesday, 19 December 2023
By MEG POKRASS. Clouds, the Day After You Were Born he day you were born, clouds flirted with each other. They had nice hair, ideas that led to better formations. Easily they blended into pleasant shapes. But the day after you were born, clouds argued about some misunderstanding. In the middle of the night, they collided in the cold kitchen. The one, slouched over martini breath, said, Why do I frighten you? The […]
A Fortnightly Review Four Times EightyOne: Bespoke Stories by Michelene Wandor. Odd Volumes | 978-0999136591 | £15.95 ◊ Florilegia by Annabel Dover. MOIST Books | 978-1913430047 | £9.45 ◊ Abécédaire by Sharon Kivland. MOIST Books | 978-1-913430-10-8 | £11.95 By ANTHONY HOWELL. aving “found my stride” in the seventies, I am always interested in […]
Anthony Rudolf: ‘Posing for months on end for one statuette, with great pride and high hopes that it would be completed and cast and displayed in a glass case, Pauline watched the artist desperately try to improve and complete it. No such luck.’
Civilizing, Selling, and T. S. Eliot Curled Up Behind the Encyclopædia Britannica
By G. KIM BLANK. The only book, except the Bible, which has followed the Anglo-Saxon around the world. —ad for Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911 The New Encyclopædia Britannica is a complete and modern exposition of thought, learning and achievement to 1910, a vivid representation of the world’s activities, so arranged and classified as to afford a […]