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Index: Books & Publishing

13 The Kitchen

‘THE KITCHEN-GARAGE with a hubby hatch: this is now a must-have conversion in the suburbs of the redwood dream.’ The concept of wholesome living was the brainchild of a US architect elusive in the annals. In her spacious domain the triple goddess animates the frieze around her altar: cultured home cook, with giant spaghetti towers; […]

12 The Game

‘AS GOD IS my witness, if you pick up the second King of Spades you can’t then remarry the Queen! Ask the Tsarina if you don’t believe me.’ The opening ceremony is the dedication of objects; the closing ceremony is the thump and yelp of a silverback, probably neutered. No compromise is brooked: you can […]

11 the Honey Bee

‘WHEN A BEE comes to your house, let her have beer: you may wish to repay the compliment one day.’ (Congolese proverb) Outer workers shiver their wings to heat the ball; inner and outer swap in shifts. The queen winters in the middle. Between combs is a patented bee space, just letting two bees pass […]

9 The Market

‘THE SKEW IS NOW THE CENTRAL cognitive aspect of option trading. The first thing you want to know when you walk into a pit is, What’s the skew?’ His backpack frontwards, holding his nose, he tiptoes around large puddles – till the next tsunami sluices the floor. Live turtles, pickled ginseng, a cage of frogs, […]

10 The Ghost

‘A GHOST WHO imitates the owl’s hoot has misunderstood the moonlight. The canny ghost gets hold of a sheet.’ On our side, seekers of asylum may find themselves in a cell of longing; on theirs, there’s an occasional mix-up over papers, or emotions may serve as a one-way shuttle, earthwards. Some punishment may also be […]

8 The Priest

‘A COLD STORE WITHIN THE FURNACE of the flesh; in the Arctic wastes of loss, a hearth, with a kitchen chair beside it.’ The priesthood is a reserve force, in training for the great resuscitation. Experts in living, they breathe in controversies, breathe out judgements, poring over the law of the world – its terse […]

7 The Window

‘WINDOW TABLE COMPETITION IS a major cause of restaurant violence. Secure in our tenure, we gaze into each other’s eyes.’ Check for visual tunnels birds may imagine they can fly through. Keep your windows slightly dirty to emasculate reflections. After a burglary, angle a new window downwards – check first that your warranty won’t be […]

5 The Teapot

‘A SECOND BREW needs a helping hand, so shift your arse and serve me, Jeeves! Lift that lid and stir those leaves.’ Drinking tea directly from the spout, as the Chinese did in antiquity, is the brazen self-reliance of addiction. Teapots were smaller then, scaled for the individual. His brew crock stolen, perhaps by a […]

4 The Princess

‘THAT WAS NO LIPSTICK: it was a chip she’d dipped in ketchup. A tiara would be the height of vulgarity.’ Imagine if her buckle spelled ‘Peace’ or bore the Toyota glyph unwittingly; or she named her daughter Toya. Not on your royal jelly! The palace is omniscient these days. Even the secret tattoo is chronicled […]

6 The Oak

‘LADY GREGORY’S EARTHLY nightmare: the crash of the acorn, and the roots jostling each other rudely through the cleft.’ An Arthurian oak ship, sailing the seven centuries, is under attack from aliens. The bark emits a gall that traps every familiar monster in a spherical prison – a setback so habitual it alters the course […]

3 The Moth

‘THERE IS NOTHING to be gained, not even justice, by putting on trial the moth that has eaten the tapestry. It warrants the same amnesty as a rust moth.’ Our own lives may seem crepuscular in the wisdom of a warm summer night. Yet the dust on Castaneda’s moth, loose on its powdery wing, is […]

2 The Friend

‘ALPHABETICAL SEATING ARRANGEMENTS at the police academy encourage alphabetical groups of friends, with congestion in address books.’ A mishap in the tanning booth leaves him with an over-tanned front and pale back. It will be slow to fade, though his back can be darkened if he’ll risk the machine again. This duo – left-brain and […]

1 The Mirror

‘LOOK BOTH WAYS before you cross yourself. Gaze first at the hills in the picture and then at the picture made by the hills.’ Eureka! The crackpot scientist brandishes his formula: seven shards of light at right angles to flowing water. Only by running around the back of his mind could he take his panoptic […]

Basil Bunting.

Anthony Howell: ‘Gone are the mannerisms of Bunting’s apprenticeship: the phrases reminiscent of the way Pound might conclude a snide portrait in Personae, the fusions of word with word that works for Gerald Manley Hopkins but not for the aspiring Northumbrian. Bunting denigrates form in the poem – harking back to an earlier versification crying/before the rules made poetry a pedant’s game – but his poem is nevertheless very finely crafted. The stone-mason’s chisel is a leitmotif accentuating this; indeed, the work, which Bunting describes as an autobiography, continually contrasts a sense of crafting with the sweetness of love-making. ‘

Looking up Chinese metaphysics.

Robert McHenry: ‘The question of how best to organize the information in an encyclopedia has no settled answer. Ought there to be a few long articles covering broad areas of knowledge, thus emphasizing the interconnectedness of things (but then the question of organization emerges again at the article level), or a great many short ones focusing on the specifics and the details, or a mix of the two?’