{"id":111613,"date":"2022-08-21T12:16:38","date_gmt":"2022-08-21T11:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.3ammagazine.com\/?page_id=111613"},"modified":"2022-08-23T16:03:59","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T15:03:59","slug":"essays","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/essays\/","title":{"rendered":"Essays"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tWho’s To Say?: Life and Form in Life of M\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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This latest work is in some sense \u201cabout\u201d a movie star; at any rate, it\u2019s the angle that Cusk\u2019s publishers (understandably) and critics (less understandably) have worked in their selling and reading of the book. It\u2019s an approach that misses rather more than it captures, however, especially when leading to interpretations of the book that posit Cusk\u2019s project as one uninterested in, say, character \u2014 or even in being a novel at all. One thing to say from the outset is that we\u2019re not going to talk about movie stars, either generically or specifically, in relation to Life of M<\/em>; or about which particular movie star might have waltzed through the cosmic background of Cusk\u2019s own writing process in crafting it. We\u2019re not interested in fame, here; we\u2019re interested in art \u2014 and it\u2019s been a very long time indeed since those difficult neighbours shared an address.<\/p>\n

D. W. White<\/strong> on Life of M<\/em> by Rachel Cusk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tA Literary Action\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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My \u2018novel\u2019, The Coast of Everything<\/em>, was published on June 16th (Bloomsday, cheekily enough) and in fairly short order had accumulated a number of lengthy reviews in prominent places that exhibited a conspicuously uniform hostility and (the author would suggest) misunderstanding. It was almost as if a memo had gone around \u2014 indeed, one reviewer explicitly suggests that one at least should<\/em> have. But conspiracy theories are not necessary to explain what I see as groupthink. It wasn\u2019t really my book (as I believe the following essay will demonstrate) that was reviewed \u2014 it was \u2018this sort of thing\u2019.<\/p>\n

Guillermo Stitch<\/strong> responds to his critics.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tA Trip to Ripple\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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In the early evening we decided to head to Ripple itself for something to eat. I wore a shirt from Boden so as to blend in with the locals, then wondered if I was too smart; I shouldn\u2019t have attempted the first nor worried about the second. We walked down a single-tracked lane between high hedgerows and trees, past a small complex of renovated red-brick outbuildings called The Granary and The Stables. On the B road was a short row of new builds and the village pub. The pub was called The Railway. The front room was full of boomers in trousers in every shade of red, and as we entered we were given the once\/twice-over. The people behind the bar were as friendly as it\u2019s possible to be without giving off so much as a joule of warmth. We had prawn cocktail, squid rings, steak and a burger.<\/p>\n

By Charlie Hill<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tJoanna Rosenfeld – The Resonant Void – George Berger Column\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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I want to start by saying something that will make you read the rest of this column, so let me say this:<\/p>\n

Joanna Rosenfeld is the most intense, brave and astonishing performer I\u2019ve seen on a stage in the last 30 years, maybe longer. In any discipline, on any level.<\/p>\n

By George Berger<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tThe Jaguar’s Roar: Introduction\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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For [Micheliny] Verunschk, the images in the S\u00e3o Paulo exhibition became an obsession. \u2018The figures were very familiar to me,\u2019 she said in a 2021 interview, \u2018but finding them there, in the original, their faces looking at me, it was disturbing.\u2019 She visited the exhibition countless times over several years, trying to understand the nature of this disturbance, its origin. As a trained historian, she said, her first impulse was to conduct research, to dig for whatever information might be available about the children. But she\u2019s also a poet and a novelist. Not finding much recorded about the two, she began to write their story, weaving together the fictional and the archival to shape one version \u2013 her version \u2013 of what might have been.<\/p>\n

Read the introduction to The Jaguar’s Roar<\/em> (Dead Ink, 2026) by Juliana Barbassa<\/strong>, who translated the novel.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tMinute 9: U.S. Go Home\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Alain is all awkward points \u2013 a rangy frame on clothes hanger shoulders. He\u2019s got a squint like Eastwood\u2019s but isn\u2019t handsome with it. Even as the verse amps up, in this moment of ostensible release, his arms pivot around a locked torso, as if this room were a cell barely large enough to contain him. And it\u2019s here, in this cell, in this body, that Alain claims his authority over the forces that still linger in his country. Late in the film, he will refuse a friendly gesture from Capt. Brown (Vincent Gallo) with \u201cI\u2019m Communist. I don\u2019t drink Coca-Cola.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Ewins<\/strong> on U. S. Go Home<\/em> by Claire Denis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tThe Fisherman and the Businessman Revisited: Neglected History and Interpretations of a Trendy Parable\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Coelho was certainly right to think that that \u2018classic Brazilian story\u2019 was \u2018also present in other cultures\u2019. I think of Adela Peeva\u2019s documentary Whose Is This Song?<\/em>, exploring the history of one popular Balkan folk song and the emotional claims of authorship and ownership of it made by laypeople and musicologists alike in just about every country in the region. I would be fascinated to know more about the genealogy of the story of the fisherman and the businessman, and I\u2019m sure there is far, far more of that genealogy to be uncovered, especially if we expand it to include those Buddhist and Russian incarnations that Albion alludes to (but does not provide citations for), and other classic folk tales with noticeably similar characters and themes, like the one La Fontaine tells as \u2018The Cobbler and the Financier\u2019 and the one the Brothers Grimm tell as \u2018The Fisherman and His Wife\u2019.<\/p>\n

Benjamin George Coles<\/strong> revisits and reinterprets the parable of The Fisherman and the Businessman<\/em>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tLiving the Fairy-Tale Life: Paula Rego, Psychoanalysis, Taking Flight\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Whether we go to therapy or art or other ritualistic practices that prise open the dark stories dancing around in us all, we end up in the same strange place, I think, with versions of these characters and their stories. I wrote my novel as my own kind of fairy tale, simply because life itself is full of these magical, strange characters \u2014 but it was not until coming face to face with Rego\u2019s fairy tales that I understood the point of it all \u2014 to allow the weirdness, however discomforting. To allow a sort of sickness to be aired and so cured, perhaps.<\/p>\n

Christiana Spens<\/strong> on the Munch Museum’s Paula Rego<\/strong> retrospective, psychoanalysis, ballet, and The Colony<\/em>, her new novel.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tOrpington to London Victoria #13 – George Berger Column\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Bromley hasn\u2019t changed. Petts Wood has got worse, if anything. Reform are hovering on the edge of winning the next election and here\u2019s the human and vibrational evidence, in two pubs that are so different from my local pubs in Seaford. And it would be very easy to get depressed if I lived in these parts. I wonder if this makes me some kind of snob, and decide that if it does, I\u2019ll just have to live with that. Embrace it, even.<\/p>\n

George Berger<\/strong> reaches the end of the line. Again.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tIn Town, Earlier Than Usual\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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The women wearing this style were carrying cups of coffee. They were hurrying and looked serious and hard-pressed, as though they were quite high-powered \u2013 account managers for companies transitioning from advertising or graphic design to AI-collaborative advertising or AI-collaborative graphic design perhaps \u2013 and were struggling to accept the effort they had to put in to merely stand still in a role that wasn\u2019t nearly as much fun as they had once imagined it might be. I didn\u2019t know whether to feel sorry for them or not. <\/p>\n

By Charlie Hill<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tAngst\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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As soon as the telephone thrummed, I knew. I was in the back bedroom. It was the last room in the world. At that time, the stories that came were telling me what they wanted. I could believe anything, for I\u2019d stopped believing myself. Lying there, defenceless, without papers. Without remedy strong enough to keep me alive. Without being dead. But prey to the ache of hope. All the languages were spoken in the world except mine. All the books were writing to me, except the one I\u2019d have liked to read. No one ever wrote that.<\/p>\n

Read an extract from Angst<\/em> by H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous<\/strong>, translated by Sophie Lewis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tDon Juan’s Reckless Daughter at 50\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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Much misunderstood at the time, the album received mixed reviews when it was released in 1977 at the height of punk. It lost Mitchell her commercial viability. \u201cThe Tenth World\u201d, \u201cJericho\u201d and \u201cOff Night Backstreet\u201d were all released as singles in the UK but did nothing. As the years have gone by, though, the album has grown in stature and reputation. What before seemed artistically muddled now appears as a clear act of supreme self expression. In its \u2018carnivalesque\u2019 aspect, Don Juan<\/em> resembles The White Album<\/em> by the Beatles or Sign O\u2019 the Times<\/em> by Prince (a huge Joni fan), and because of the huge variety on it, it\u2019s the only Joni album for me that can still surprise.<\/p>\n

By Richard Skinner<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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