An American in Oulipo
From the Quarterly Conversation‘s symposium on Harry Mathews: One might more broadly argue that one of Modernism’s legacies has been to render plot something vulgar, more appropriate for popular genre works than artistic literature. Hence the truism that one should read fiction not to find out what happens (since any sophisticated reader understands that these […]
We will convert the king if possible
Greer Mansfield on the Modernist Journals Project & the greatness of little magazines: Since 1995, Brown University has been building a digital library of periodicals associated with the Modernist era – the exact dates they observe are journals published from 1890 to 1922. The University of Tulsa joined the project in 2003, and the result […]
Uniquely challenging
Landeg White in the TLS: Not much happens in a Lispector novel. In Near to the Wild Heart, Joana recalls her childhood, is orphaned and adopted by an aunt, attends boarding school, marries, chats with her husband’s mistress, takes a lover, and loses both husband and lover. But this “plot” is incidental to the life […]
Friday Film Focus: West 11
By Cathi Unsworth. Laura Del-Rivo’s The Furnished Room came as a revelation to me, for many reasons. While I was researching my novel Bad Penny Blues, I was trying to track down a film called West 11, directed by Michael Winner and scripted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, that was set bang in the […]