Metaliterature

Search This Blog

Quicksand by Steve Toltz

Posted by Gareth R Davies on July 13, 2023

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Awaiting review...

(Paid link)

Get link
Facebook
X
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

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.

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

Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool. In days gone by, when repeatedly pressed about what my favourite book might be, a banal question seeking an impossible and crude reductionist answer to which I was usually rude in response, I would offer Breakfast Of Champions as a pacifier. I first read it in University, and it has, to some degree, influenced how I think and feel about a lot of things. Strikingly, I've never wanted to re-read it. Perhaps I was afraid I'd find fault the second time around and wanted to uphold it as a paragon of meta-fiction. Perhaps, but then I'm a relentless consumer of fiction and was always on to the next consumable work, never having time or inclination to go back. So in the spirit of a more considered and thoughtful phase of my life I decided I wa nted to read something that once made me feel good. I'd clearly not remembered it very well. But before that, I'm amazed I've g

Toward Eternity by Anton Hur

What is DNA, but lines in the narrative of our lives? I reflected this week on what visitors to my blog, limited as its intellectual reality may be, might experience on first arriving; the majorly cringe descriptor at the top, a picture of Joe Marler’s hirsute chin, and an expectation that there is some sort of exploration of intertextuality in the pages of blank to-be-reviewed posts (or, if you can find some with actual words, those too). So, I thought, maybe I should go back to chronicling the primary causality or secondary correlation of book choice. But that’s a busted flush I now realise. This one (curses!) is totally due to the Mighty Algorithm, following as it does a book about British political arrogance and spite, Irish nationalism and sectarian violence, which was chosen on the back of relentless subliminal (and also liminal and super liminal – Hey, you two, join the Navy!) advertising by my current podcasts/podcasters of choice. In terms of how this follows my recent sci-fi

Powered by Blogger

Quicksand by Steve Toltz

Comments

Post a Comment