The saints were uneducated. Why, then, do they write so well? Is it only inspiration? They have style whenever they describe God. It's easy to write from divine whispers, with one's ear glued to his mouth. Their works h…
A review of Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Ingvild Burkey Karl Ove Knausgaard stands in front of a 14th century Swedish castle speaking to a film crew from Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show . "I don't …
"My compulsion to write does not occlude the uselessness of filling pages with words" writes Fernando Sdrigotti . "I know that what I do is pointless, one more message in a bottle in a moment when everyone else aro…
Painting is practical day-to-day thing I think. One might say something clever, one might say something big, but one does something limited. It’s a serious thing – like religion – like love – one does the persistent thing, and t…
We keep coming back and coming back To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns That fall upon it out of the wind. * Since its publication three years ago, David Shields' manifesto Reality Hunger has helped focus my th…
The focus of the first volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-book series My Struggle is in the foreground of its narrative and in the title of the UK edition – A Death in the Family – which for the book-devouring industry mit…
A question arises from my breathless response to volume one of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle : have I contradicted my exasperated review of David Shields’ Reality Hunger ? At least, this is a question I ask myself. After al…
Before I had even finished Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle , I had ordered a copy of his 2008 novel A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven , an act more to do with wanting to remain in his company once the first was read th…