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Index: Books & Publishing

October – Poetry and Prose – 2024

Under new management–new content coming soon.

Vladimir Sorokin’s ‘Blue Lard’.

A Fortnightly Review. Vladimir Sorokin. Translated from the Russian by Max Lawton. Blue Lard New York Review of Books 2024 | pbk, £12.85 | 336pp. By Garin Cycholl. ◊ f the religious icon works as a window, a frame onto that “other world,” does one see through or into time itself? If the icon is […]

Was Jesus a humourist?

By Alan Wall. ◊ ot a bundle of laughs, the New Testament, let’s be honest. And yet there is a subtle realignment constantly going on, which qualifies the texts for examination as the overall work of a humourist. That humourist is Jesus, and what he is up to is defamiliarizng morality. He cannot see a […]

‘Chaos and the Clean Line’.

A Fortnightly Review. Stephen Romer Chaos and the Clean Line: Writings on Franco-British Modernism Legenda 2024 | Hb, £85.00 | 384pp. By Chris Miller. ◊ n the magnifying glass of the poetic word, Modernism is the history of the twentieth century; it was, you may remember a turbulent history—utopian hopes, political polarisation, prejudice, wars, and […]

from ‘The Runiad’ book 8

< from Book 7                                                                                                        […]

Endangered Antiquarian.

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 […]

Imaginator.

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 […]

The Indian Jungle.

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 […]

Tragedy: The modern heist.

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 […]

from White Ivory, chapters 19 & 20

< 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 […]

On the Difficulty of Reading Susan Howe’s

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 […]

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 […]

Master Singer.

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 […]

Six haibun.

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. […]

John Matthias’s ‘Some Words on Those Wars’

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 […]