The Missing Links
“There is no such thing as the literary establishment. I know this because I am part of it.” Geoff Dyer. * John Ingham on the punk years. * James Bridle on Visual Editions’ iPad version of Marc Saporta‘s Composition No 1. * Iain Sinclair‘s wonderful Stone Tape Shuffle album, released by Test Centre. * 10 […]
Literature is what we are lost in
Vladislavić recalls how his eyes once alighted on a photograph, now well-known, of Robert Walser lying dead in the snow. Here the death of the author brings about the birth of writing, with Walser’s fallen, frozen figure stirring Vladislavić to ‘write a story about the last days, hours, minutes of a writer.’ But the story dies on its feet, first dispersing into digressions, then disappearing completely, just as Walser’s footprints ‘break off in mid-sentence,’ and his collapse ‘carries him onto the silence of a blank page.’ Writing is like dying and being born both at once.
David Winters on Ivan Vladislavić‘s The Loss Library.