Tag: Modernism
THE BIG BALD BOOK CLUB EPISODE ONE – THE GREAT GATSBY
two bald heads are talkier than one
A Phone of the Artist as a Young Man by Pierce Day – PART FOUR OF FOUR
am i bitter? am i jealous? am i over the hill??? – a four part review concludes
A Phone of the Artist as a Young Man by Pierce Day – PART TWO OF FOUR
LITERATURE DIDN’T DIE WITH JAMES JOYCE: a four-post special series continues
A Phone of the Artist as a Young Man by Pierce Day – PART ONE OF FOUR
I WOULD HAVE SOLD MY DIRTY SOUL TO WRITE THIS BOOK: a four-post special series begins
Artemisia by Anna Banti
i struggle with a post over several busy days
Pleasure Beach by Helen Palmer
if u love literature like i do you’ll love this
Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner
progressive(ish) proto-modernism from 1880s South Africa
In The Shadow of the Springs I Saw by Barbara Adair
excellent polyvocal south african indie press book about an art deco district
LOTE by Shola von Reinhold
it’s not short, it’s not sexy, it’s not sad… it’s also not shit!!!
Tripticks by Ann Quin
am i too stoopid to enjoy ann quin? maybe maybe not?
Gilgi, One of Us by Irmgard Keun
some wiemar fiction that (still?) resonates
OUT by Christine Brooke-Rose
christmas brooke-rose quadrilogy day 1/4
The Last Days of Mankind
taxidermied rats telling a tale as old as time (100 years of time)
Jazz by Toni Morrison
redressing a gap in my reading
Cane by Jean Toomer
ok toomer
The Counterfeiters by André Gide
a not-dirty-enough-to-be-dirty french novel
Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford
a very very very good big book on WAR
Finding Time Again (À la recherche du temps perdu 7) by Marcel Proust
bye bye marcel, marcel bye bye
Ushant by Conrad Aiken
a sub-mediocre memoir
Three Lives by Gertrude Stein
you absolute Stein
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
is all modernism doomed to fail?
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
i can’t believe it’s so racist
Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
ideologically, i’d love to tear this apart, but i cannot…
Death the Barber by William Carlos Williams
so much depends upon triumphofthenow.com
Sodom and Gomorrah (À la recherche du temps perdu 4) by Marcel Proust
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu 4: This Time It’s Gay
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz
Have you ever had a dream? Have you ever dreamt a day, a week, a month, a year? Have youContinue Reading
A Cup of Rage by Raduan Nassar
A Cup of Rage is a Brazilian novella by Raduan Nassar first published in 1978 as Um Copo de Cólera. InContinue Reading
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Many people have told me that The Waves is Virginia Woolf’s best work. Many people have told me I should readContinue Reading
The Life of a Stupid Man by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
I read another one of those cute Penguin Little Black Classics, this one a collection of three short stories byContinue Reading
Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson
Mr Darwin’s Gardener is a beautiful, modernist novella about the late 19th century inhabitants of the small village inContinue Reading
Midland: A Novel Out of Time by Honor Gavin
midlands novel and a road trip into childhood
The Lost Weekend by Charles Jackson
Malcolm Lowry, secret hero of these blog posts, fell into a deep depression after the publication of Charles Jackson’s TheContinue Reading
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Almost two years ago to the day, I read Arthur Koestler’s Arrival and Departure*. That, unfortunately, didn’t really thrill meContinue Reading
October Ferry To Gabriola by Malcolm Lowry
As I continue to read through the (surprisingly) ever-expanding oeuvre of the alcoholic, depressive, late-Modernist writer, Malcolm Lowry, I amContinue Reading
Victoria by Knut Hamsun
I know I should be spending my free time writing something that isn’t this blog. I know I should haveContinue Reading
A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing was a surprise critical smash in the heady days of 2013/14, atContinue Reading
In Ballast to the White Sea (A Scholarly Edition) by Malcolm Lowry
The biggest tragedy in Malcolm Lowry’s life (in his own opinion) was when the lakeside shack he lived in burnedContinue Reading
In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À la recherche du temps perdu 2) by Marcel Proust
Volume 2 of Marcel Proust’s giant novel, In Search of Lost Time, is a joy to read. I don’t knowContinue Reading
A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf’s famous non-fiction treatise on ‘Women and Fiction’, A Room of One’s Own, is an embarrassingly prescient text aboutContinue Reading
Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
Both the blurb and the author biography of my 1980s edition of Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf state that thisContinue Reading
How to be both by Ali Smith
Ali Smith’s latest novel – How to be both – has been shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker PrizeContinue Reading
Swann’s Way (À la recherche du temps perdu 1) by Marcel Proust
I’m writing this in the beautiful Spanish Pyrenees, having spent a day doing little more than reading Proust and lookingContinue Reading
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is an engaging and somewhat strange book. It is, actually, the autobiography of GertrudeContinue Reading
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
I really like Virginia Woolf, and more than that I like the IDEA of liking Virginia Woolf. Pro-writing, pro-women, literaryContinue Reading
The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
I am now in the second half of my seventeen day run working the equivalent of every day (that’s workingContinue Reading
A Rubbish Couple of Days
Over the last few days I have made a series of unforgivable travel booboos. Yesterday I nearly gave myself heatstroke,Continue Reading
Ultramarine by Malcolm Lowry
This book took quite a bit of searching to find. I first read about it in Jonathan Coe’s Like A FieryContinue Reading
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer, to use a colloquialism Miller might have approved of, is a cunt’s hair from being EXACTLY myContinue Reading

















































