literature

In true Bloomsday style, “Samuel Beckett got outrageously drunk…”

Pete Baker on June 16, 2018, 11:41 am | Readers 1230

If you don’t know by now, it’s tradition! [We know… – Ed]. Those of a sensitive disposition are duly warned, once again, that James Joyce enjoys the language in all its fecund nuttiness. And another reminder of a brief history of the day, from the Guardian, which includes this great 1924 quote from Joyce on Ulysses – “I have to convince myself that I wrote that book. I used to be able to talk intelligently about it.” Joyce’s last Bloomsday would take place on 16 June 1940, when the author was …

Caroline Magennis: Unsettled Intimacy in NI short fiction after the Agreement #JHISS

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 27, 2017, 5:05 pm | Readers 926

UNSETTLED INTIMACY – learning about Northern Irish society through the medium of short stories based locally – a talk by Salford academic Dr Caroline Magennis at the 2017 John Hewitt International Summer School.

Happy Bloomsday, intolerable Joyceans everywhere!

Pete Baker on June 16, 2017, 2:58 pm | Readers 838

If you don’t know by now, it’s tradition! [We know… – Ed]. Those of a sensitive disposition are duly warned, once again, that James Joyce enjoys the language in all its fecund nuttiness. And a reminder of a brief history of the day, from the Guardian last year, which includes this great 1924 quote from Joyce on Ulysses – “I have to convince myself that I wrote that book. I used to be able to talk intelligently about it.” In June of …

“Today, I hold fast to all tenets of mistrust…”

Pete Baker on April 19, 2015, 9:37 pm | Readers 381

The novelist Howard Jacobson on the virtues of art and literature over politics and politicians… It doesn’t follow from what I say that we should hand over the reins of political power to artists. They wouldn’t make a better job of it. But we would all make a better job of thinking about politics – indeed of thinking about anything – if we refused that daisy-chain of affiliation which the ideological hang around our necks, with the promise that we’ll …

‘The Living Spirit of Revolt: the Infrapolitics of Anarchism’: Book Review

John L. Murphy on May 4, 2014, 5:42 am | Readers 26

How can anarchism get beyond marginalized impacts, finicky theorists, and squabbling activists? A Slovenian political scientist, Žiga Vodovnik, offers suggestions forward. This concise survey occupies a space, if pre-Occupy (despite a 2013 copyright for the English translation this offers no updates but the late Howard Zinn, who died in 2010, provides an encouraging introduction), where an overview of anarchism’s philosophies and history segues into a connection to not only Continental and British thinkers, but its overlooked, attenuated American Transcendental roots. …

Vegetarian Stalinism Part 2: Ready the Gulags on the South Downs

Turgon on March 15, 2014, 10:34 am | Readers 84

Last month I highlighted the bizarre suggestion by the Green Party that in response to the flooding all government ministers and advisors who were sceptical of climate change should be sacked. Memorably when given the opportunity to refine and tone down this suggestion the leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett claimed that even those advisers with no connection to environmental issues should be sacked if they do not accept climate change. The BBC suggested the Chief Veterinary and Chief …

How poetry fuelled the Arab Uprising

Siobhan Fenton on July 14, 2011, 8:55 am | Readers 29

‘Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found its words’, like all great maxims, this musing of Robert Frost may seem on the face of it too suspiciously beautiful to hold any real truth. But with recent events in Egypt, the world watched as a nation which had long suffered from suppression of expression fought back through the written word. During a regime of controlled press and, in its later stages, restricted use of social …