Metaliterature

Search This Blog

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Posted by Gareth R Davies on January 06, 2014

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

The trilogy gets one great big review.

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Readers Are Reading

Horse Destroys The Universe by Cyriak Harris

I think our horse might be eating the internet. So, I hear you ask, what the utter fuck? To be honest, I pledged to the crowd-funding of this book purely on the premise that a horse could destroy the universe, which essentially, and spoiler-free (it’s in the chuffing title after all) it does. After that, this entire review is based on the research I did this morning between sitting at my desk and actually starting the work I’m paid to do (around 60-80 minutes all told). First off, Morgan Cyriak Harris is an animator who enjoys the surreal effects of the formal Western Art Tradition technique of mis en abyme , or in other words, the deliberate placing within an image of a copy of the same image and the subsequent implication of infinitely represented worlds – think two mirrors reflecting each other. In literary terms this could be the self-reflexive embedding of the story within the story, something of which I am inordinately fond. In Harris’s work this tends to be an a

Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino

The dog signifies nothing... Now is as good a time as any I suppose to admit that I regularly confuse Italo Calvino with Umberto Eco and when struggling for the name of one of them, invariably come up with the name of the other. What value does this add to a review of either’s work? None whatsoever. I just thought it would pay to be honest up front, so that if I start talking about semiotics, the discourse of literary criticism, or beards, then you’ll know my train of thoughts has switched tracks and is heading for a bridge under construction. Of course, reading the Wiki pages on the two of them (to make sure I was talking about the right fellow) I noticed with some dread that Our Ancestors is one of the best known works of the most translated contemporary Italian writer (at the time of his death) and here I am, trying to make sense of it in my own personal context. Well, I’m always going to be treading down some fool’s heels so why should I care if it’s actually most peopl

The Sealed Knot by Clare Clark

No, it IS good, I promise! I’m at a low ebb. The creative vim and vigour I felt after the week-long writing-slash-wellness-slash-cold-water-swimming (voluntary) retreat to which I retreated in September* has through temporal entropy become foggy and indistinct; coupled with what feels like a year-long cold I can barely lift my AeroPress®™ espresso without sighing. It didn’t help that in all the beautiful photos taken by the immensely talented Jassy Earl (quickly, send her money , you feckless boobs!) I look like a fat, 46-year-old who’s going all-in on his dad-jowls and is resigned to his fate – not even Jassy can disguise the attritional damage of time and neglect. So, to start a new sentence with a preposition, I decided that the only way to lift my spirit is to lift up other people, starting with Jassy but continuing with my good friend Clare Harman Clark and her historical romance (histomance? romanstory? romantasy? Where’s a good portmanteau when you need one?) The Sealed Knot.

The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Currently re-reading, again... Yeah, yeah, I know. Where's the review, eh? Well, don't let me disappoint you. I'm not planning to write a review of this one. In fact, I'm unlikely ever to write a review of it. This is partly because I plan to keep re-reading it in perpetuity until I understand it completely. Of course, there have been numerous famous faces who rubbished the Disney-esque narrative theories of Campell, but in truth, I can't help but love this book, even if I can't help but misunderestimate it. It's fab. It has a permanent home on the shelf next to my bed, along with Michel de Montaigne , the collected stories of Angela Carter , and William Hjortsberg's biography of Richard Brautigan . (Paid links)

The Book Of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

Only broken tools know they are tools. I was never a big fan of Thomas Hobbes. This is not an indictment of his philosophical output, or his quasi-geometrical political theory; I just never worried about him. De Homine and Leviathan aside, I was aware of him mostly because of my ex-wife whose pride in her dilettante philosophical and political learning lead her to proffer her profound distaste for those proponents of the social contract, amongst which were Hobbes and Rousseau. And, of course, from the album The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake. So, imagine my surprise when, after roundly dissing my own creative* raison d’etre by deriding the intertextual path of my own learning, I found that in the very next book I read for review, based on nothing other than its primacy in the cultural consciousness (and its lurid pink lettering which was hard to ignore), none other than Keanu Reeves** provides another example of the negative answer to Hobbes’ Ship of Theseus poser. This of cour

Powered by Blogger

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Comments

Post a Comment