Essay

The withdrawal of the novel

We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “in…

Kingdoms of recurrence: To Duration by Peter Handke

" I’ve tried to read Karl Ove Knausgaard. But it is impossible… My Struggle lacks air. Literature needs a little air. "  Peter Handke " In his fiction [David Grossman] has always been a serious writer, a deale…

The walled and the book

What draws me back to Thomas Bernhard's novels is the wish to appreciate again how each is set in motion. The Loser begins like this. Even Glenn Gould, our friend and the most important piano virtuoso of the century, only …

From this bare island

From the front page of Brighton & Hove Council's free newspaper. That word, invariably connected to public art: accessible. What does it mean? The Festival is held once a year across May, heralded on the first Satu…

The authorisation to invent

The BBC marked Holocaust Day 2015 by showing the nine hours of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah over consecutive Sunday evenings. I had seen the film almost thirty years before when Channel 4 showed it in full with, as a mark of resp…

Book of forgotten dreams

For eighteen years I have wanted the English translation of Georges Bataille's book La Peinture Préhistorique: Lascaux ou la naissance de l'art , ever since Maurice Blanchot's review essay appeared in the collection F…

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