11.03.2026 00:53
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What about when it's raining and the brown bricks of these old places start to drip and darken? And the smoke-gray sky is the smoky mirror of your soul. You give a lightning blink at a row of condemned buildings, starkly outlining them. And do they blink back at you? Or does that happen only in another type of storm, when windows are slyly browed with city-soiled clumps of snow. Was it under such conditions that you first thought of all the cold and dark places in the universe, all the clammy basements and gloomy attics of creation? Bleak locales you'd rather not think about, but at the time couldn't keep from your mind. Another time you could have. No two times are the same. No two lives are alike. We're like aliens to one another. And when you're traveling through these streets with some stranger, you have to contend with how they see things, the way you now must deal with my 20-20 visions and I with your blasé near-sightedness. Are these the same gutted houses you saw last night, or even a second ago? Or are they like the fluxing clouds that swirl above the chimneys and trees, and then pass on?
the fluxing clouds
Thomas Ligotti, from ‘The Chymist’
I’m an auld fella now. Reckon I should finally get around to Daniel Deronda. Still hesitating over Trollope mind.
I read Parade’s End for the first time last year and found it exceptionally powerful and interesting. Thirty years since I read The Good Soldier and in a way glad I waited that long to read PE.
Stations Some women love to wait for life for a ring in the June light for a touch of the sun to heal them for another woman's voice to make them whole to untie their hands put words in their mouths form to their passages sound to their screams for some other sleeper to remember their future their past. Some women want for their right train in the wrong station in the alleys of morning for the noon to holler the night come down. Some women wait for love to rise up the child of their promise to gather from earth what they do not plant to claim pain for labor to become the tip of an arrow to aim at the heart of now but it never stays. Some women wait for visions that do not return where they were not welcome naked for invitations to places they always wanted to visit to be repeated.
Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care. Some women wait for something to change and nothing does change so they change themselves.
to change
Audre Lorde, ‘Stations’
One Step Beyond.
Stations Some women love to wait for life for a ring in the June light for a touch of the sun to heal them for another woman's voice to make them whole to untie their hands put words in their mouths form to their passages sound to their screams for some other sleeper to remember their future their past. Some women want for their right train in the wrong station in the alleys of morning for the noon to holler the night come down. Some women wait for love to rise up the child of their promise to gather from earth what they do not plant to claim pain for labor to become the tip of an arrow to aim at the heart of now but it never stays. Some women wait for visions that do not return where they were not welcome naked for invitations to places they always wanted to visit to be repeated.
Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care. Some women wait for something to change and nothing does change so they change themselves.
to change
Audre Lorde, ‘Stations’
The sharp, dark, dazzling fiction of Beryl Bainbridge is being reissued by @dauntbookspub.bsky.social, starting with ‘The Bottle Factory Outing’ & ‘An Awfully Big Adventure’ intros by Yiyun Li & A.K. Blakemore. @mcnallyeditions.com in US. Two of my faves ‘The Dressmaker’ & ‘Harriet Said’ to follow.
What drives a painter like Poussin to bring the material reality of paint up to the surface - what makes painted-ness worth relishing, in other words - is that in it and through it other identities (I want to say "all other identities," or all the relevant ones in a particular case) are bracketed, and made to occur again - here, now, like this... And for a moment we do not know how to react to them; we haven't got our understanding of grass or horror or light in place - or not this grass or horror or light. We enter into the identity in a new way: that's the hope.
this grass or horror or light
T.J. Clark, from ‘The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing’
Very much admired, among other virtues, how she created a profoundly recognisable sense of place without a lot of obvious signalling.
The sharp, dark, dazzling fiction of Beryl Bainbridge is being reissued by @dauntbookspub.bsky.social, starting with ‘The Bottle Factory Outing’ & ‘An Awfully Big Adventure’ intros by Yiyun Li & A.K. Blakemore. @mcnallyeditions.com in US. Two of my faves ‘The Dressmaker’ & ‘Harriet Said’ to follow.
Beryl Bainbridge drew on her own life for her funny, dark novels. As two of the British writer’s best works, The Bottle Factory Outing and An Awfully Big Adventure, are republished this month, John Self reassesses her writing
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
A well-deserved, excellent review by @erinmaglaque.bsky.social in @nybooks.com of @drnaomibaker.bsky.social's 'Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century', which I edited for @reaktionbooks.bsky.social. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
The British Board of Shadow Classification has passed the following indistinct shape in the darkness as suitable for ages twelve and over. Parental guidance advised.
My first. I hope to start a trend.
What drives a painter like Poussin to bring the material reality of paint up to the surface - what makes painted-ness worth relishing, in other words - is that in it and through it other identities (I want to say "all other identities," or all the relevant ones in a particular case) are bracketed, and made to occur again - here, now, like this... And for a moment we do not know how to react to them; we haven't got our understanding of grass or horror or light in place - or not this grass or horror or light. We enter into the identity in a new way: that's the hope.
this grass or horror or light
T.J. Clark, from ‘The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing’
Mi chiederai tu, morto disadorno, d'abbandonare questa disperata passione di essere nel mondo? Would you, in death unadorned, have me abandon my desperate passion for being in the world?
being in the world
Pier Paolo Pasolini, from ‘Gramsci’s Ashes’, tr Stephen Sartarellli
Mi chiederai tu, morto disadorno, d'abbandonare questa disperata passione di essere nel mondo? Would you, in death unadorned, have me abandon my desperate passion for being in the world?
being in the world
Pier Paolo Pasolini, from ‘Gramsci’s Ashes’, tr Stephen Sartarellli
A well-deserved, excellent review by @erinmaglaque.bsky.social in @nybooks.com of @drnaomibaker.bsky.social's 'Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century', which I edited for @reaktionbooks.bsky.social. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
And this the Climate we must change for Heaven?
John Dryden, from 'The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man', 1674
Dressed as my favourite Virginia Woolf novel...
*waves*
I agree. Spending a great deal of time lately advising authors on AI-generated ‘book club’ scams. Just one example of the vast amount of sludge engulfing everyone. But it’s become the job now, and I still think we should make space to communicate courteously, at least with ‘good actors’.
In the book trade in recent years I’ve noticed a growing preference to abruptly ceasing communication rather than, I presume, to risk appearing disagreeable. It’s in all directions too: agent to publisher, agent to author, author to publisher etc. (I’m excluding unsolicited here).
This mournful empire is the losers lot John Dryden, Lucifer speaking in ‘The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man’, 1674 Screen still from ‘La Flor’, directed by Mariano Llinás, 2018
