‘Ditching neoliberalism,’ Mason announces, ‘is the easy part. There’s a growing consensus among protest movements, radical economists and radical political parties in Europe as to how you do it: suppress high finance, reverse austerity, invest in green energy and promote high-waged work.’ Simply to read that list of demands made by the protest movements invoked by Mason is, surely, to recognise that ditching neoliberalism will be far from easy. Any simple reading of the hostile press coverage and establishment soundbites that have greeted the mere election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in the UK would be enough to make clear that reversing austerity and suppressing high finance will not come about with any great ease. [read full essay]
Choosing to talk about ‘two men at once,’ Anne Carson reasons in Economy of the Unlost, means to ‘keep attention strong,’ to ‘keep it from settling.’ In Farocki/Godard: Film as Theory, Volker Patenburg deploys this strategy as a means to put in dialogue two of the most prolific European filmmakers/artists of the late 20th and early 21st century: Harun Farocki (1944-2014) and Jean-Luc Godard (1930-). Originally published in German in 2006, Patenburg’s study remains a significant... [read more]
In a universe of overused adjectives, there’s one you rarely hear: 'spellbinding.' Perhaps that’s because very little holds our rapt attention as if by some cold magic. The best Steven Millhauser stories, as fans of his many collections know, do exactly this. They cast a spell from which there is no release. But the sorcery chooses certain victims. I was thrown when my brother confessed he found 2008’s Dangerous Laughter a puzzling antique, its narratives at once too fanciful and... [read more]
JM Coetzee & Arabella Kurtz, The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy
reviewed by Marc Farrant
In a short essay entitled ‘The Art of Telling the Truth’ Michel Foucault traces two distinct strands of modern thought, derived from Kant’s philosophy and specifically manifested in the text Was ist Aufklärung? (What is Enlightenment?). On the one hand, Kant ‘laid the foundations for that tradition of philosophy that poses the question of the conditions in which true knowledge is possible’ – philosophy as an analytics of truth. On the other, however, Kant in this text poses ‘for... [read more]
Emily Critchley ed., Out of Everywhere 2: Linguistically Innovative Poetry By Women in North America & the UK
reviewed by Kate Duckney
Consider Peter Pan, the pouting boy king, a symbol of endless playfulness, laughter and petulance. Now turn your attention to Paul Auster and his assertion that we need ‘cackling boys to remind us of how great it is to be alive’, and that without these boy writers ‘there is no literature.’ There is space to experiment inside the outline of eternal boychild, but the writing never grows, it never connects. Peter Pan spurns the independence of Wendy when she is no longer compelled to be... [read more]
Eugene Brennan & Russell Williams eds., Literature and Intoxication: Writing, Politics and the Experience of Excess
reviewed by Stuart Walton
Intoxication has progressed over the most recent generation from being the great unmentionable in mainstream cultural discourse to being as present and urgent a theme as sex once was. Formerly no more than biographical ephemera in the lives of the pressing crowds of drug-fiends and pissheads with which the Western creative pantheon is stuffed, it has become at last a philosophical theme all its own. In the process, the focus on its psycho-physical potentialities has been enlarged from the... [read more]
Clarice Lispector, trans. Katrina Dodson, The Complete Stories
reviewed by Dominic Jaeckle
Only parts of us will ever / touch only parts of others – / one’s own truth is just / that really – one’s own truth. / We can only share the / part that is understood by within another’s knowing acceptable to / the other therefore so one / is for most part alone. / As it is meant to be in / evidently in nature – at best though perhaps it could make / our understanding seek / another’s loneliness out.
Marilyn Monroe, from ‘The Undated Poems’
I’m the one who’s... [read more]
David Balzer, Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else
reviewed by Julian Jason Haladyn
The topic of curating has become an increasingly important part of how we define the development of cultural and historical discourses, especially around art, in the 21st century. In addition to David Balzer’s book, which has received quite a bit of attention, there have been a number of key scholars who have turned their focus to questions of curating and the manner in which acts of curation have become mixed up with acts of creation. Two notable examples are Claire Bishop’s Radical... [read more]
Matthew Feldman, Falsifying Beckett: Essays on Archives, Philosophy, and Methodology in Beckett Studies
reviewed by Elisabeth Sherman
In an endorsement of Beckett scholar Matthew Feldman’s first book, a fellow critic praised Feldman’s ability to teach his readers how to ‘read as Beckett himself read’ by incorporating Beckett’s ‘notebook material’ into his analysis. In Falsifying Beckett: Essays on Archives, Philosophy, and Methodology in Beckett Studies, Matthew Feldman employs the same method to take the reader on journey through the ‘bewildering array of scholarly readings’ of Beckett’s... [read more]
Danilo Kiš was not your traditional purveyor of short fiction. As Mark Thompson’s excellent introduction to this new Penguin Classics edition points out, the Yugoslav saw himself as the man to rescue the short story from its ‘state of permanent stagnation.’ After the horrors of the 20th century’s disasters and wars, many of which he bore witness to, ‘the idea that “the totality of the world and of experience” could be revealed in a “slice of life”’ was laughable. For that... [read more]
Susannah Worth, Digesting Recipes: The Art of Culinary Notation
reviewed by Nina Franklin
'The significance of cookbooks within western culture should not be underestimated. Their value as cultural documents and as works of literature has been well stated.' Food, the ultimate cultural glue, is a rightful obsession of the modern - and indeed, any - age. What we eat says so much about us, and what we talk about when we talk about food is a true litmus test of society. What is on your plate divulges your class, your status, your racial background, your political ideals and your... [read more]
