The Gaping Void

Archive of longer blogs: In Writing and (from 25 Sept 04) This Space

2007

18 Jun	The Road to nowhere	On Cormac McCarthy's The Road
8 Jun	Torturing hope	On Kafka's Metamorphosis
17 May	In which someone is wilfully obscure	On academic publishers
12 May	A Danish Invasion	Kierkegaard stuff
25 Apr	Menance of the philistines	John CareyWatch
20 Apr	London Book Fair	On visiting the LBF
14 Apr	Measuring the reviews	On Daniel Kehlmann's overrated novel
10 Apr	Renounce action!	On Kundera's The Curtain
2 Apr	A book of beginnings	On not reading into a thriller
26 Mar	Cudgelling an author	Michael Roloff begins his defence of Peter Handke
24 Mar	Aggressive dimness	On a review of Goldberg: Variations
17 Mar	Modernist vs genre fiction: part one	On a talk by Gabriel Josipovici in London
17 Mar	Modernist vs genre fiction: part two	On Blanchot's The Gaze of Orpheus
10 Mar	Failed reviews: introducing The Liberal	On a review of Chomsky's Failed States
8 Mar	Fear of literature	On Arts Festivals' book programmes
4 Mar	Existence and "guilty pleasures"	As it says.
29 Jan	The aura of books	On the "end" of the book
10 Jan	On the one Handke	On Handke's "a very American kind of freedom"
10 Jan	Rimbaud too	On Rimbaud, Stevens and Blanchot

2006

19 Dec	"The sea closes up, and so does the land"	A footnote to my review of Richard Ford's trilogy
18 Dec	Proust and the entire secret of art	On Christine Cano's Proust's Deadline
14 Dec	Childish literary criticism	On Ursula Le Guin's defence of fantasy
10 Dec	"The Fire" that time and this	On Jörg Friedrich's The Fire
8 Dec	Allusions and caricatures	On a review of Jonathan Littel's novel Les Bienveillantes
1 Dec	Watching the Void	On watching Touching the Void
27 Nov	Library legacy	How libraries changed my life
26 Nov	Why read book reviews?	Etc.
19 Nov	Stephen King on a desert island	With a straw man
17 Nov	A kind of narcolepsy	No time to write
11 Nov	Opening every day	A rambling post
4 Nov	A bursting unity of opposites	On "difficult" poetry
20 Oct	Leap into parchment	On a film about Kevin Carter
11 Oct	Death and the Martin	On Martin Amis's comments about Islam etc.
26 Sep	Further to Chavez and Chomsky	What lies behind such ridicule
23 Sep	Hugo's there	On ridiculing the President of Venezuela
18 Sep	The civilisation of the book	On reading a biography of Kierkegaard
17 Sep	A voice comes to one in the dark	On opening lines
10 Sep	More Amis fiction	On Amis' Islam essay
9 Sep	"Lost" in literature	On Dickens and "Lost"
8 Sep	The despair of popular authors	part 2
4 Sep	The last days of fiction?	On Martin Amis' 9/11 story
3 Sep	The despair of popular authors	part 1
27 Aug	An award-winning lack of nerve	On comparing authors of different centuries
21 Aug	Nick Hornby and the "joy" of reading	Why popular fiction is a form of despair
19 Aug	A British Schreibtischtäter	On Daniel Johnson's open letter to Grass
17 Aug	Behind the mountain of prose	Bernhard and Grass
4 Aug	Multiple Bloggasms	Link to interview with self
31 July	Fixed in facility	More on Updike
29 July	Why am I telling you this?	On framing narrative
26 July	An 'ordinary' post	About inverted book snobbery
22 July	There's more to life than books, you know	But not much more
21 July	Unbelievable	On the Dylan Thomas Prize longlist
19 July	The niceness of evil	On blind eyes
19 July	Rewriting literary history	On light and humourous German novels
16 July	A dagger to the heart	On Ian Rankin and "literature"
15 July	More perplexity	On overrating Javier Marías
13 July	Betjeman not Beckett	The BBC fails again
11 July	Documents of barbarism	Walter Benjamin links and Afghan civilian murders
10 July	To write, not to win	Mentioning Joubert
8 July	Why write?	On Orwell's reasons
7 July	Three years of silence	On today's commemorations
7 July	Middle-class philistinism	part 384
30 Jun	The hidden order	On books and notebooks
24 Jun	The fictional black hole	On long and short books
23 Jun	Handke's Rhythm	On an interview with Handke
11 Jun	Black pages	On graphomania
5 Jun	Take the Waterloo train	On the Euston Manifesto
3 Jun	Viva the Bullfrog	On Pilger and Hitchens
1 Jun	"To the fair readers"	Third
31 May	Handke untriumphs	Second
29 May	Handke triumphs	First post on Peter Handke and the Heine Prize
24 May	The newest gloss	On a truly false anti-war video
22 May	In praise of books in films	On books seen in Eloge de l'Amour
21 May	What good is lukewarm, stewed tea?	On the question "What good are the arts?"
15 May	Non-photography Day	On photography and distance
7 May	A question to the misrepresenters	On the Handke ban
4 May	Still searching	On Jeffrey Ford's The Empire of Ice Cream
2 May	Signs of absence	On a book about Caspar David Friedrich
27 Apr	The future shouldn't be Orange	On the Orange Prize
23 Apr	Everynovel	On a review of Roth's Everyman
20 Apr	The material of expression	On Stevens and Beckett
14 Apr	Draught fiction	On a defence of Nick Hornby
8 Apr	Treasonable clerks	On a coincidence and the Dreyfus Affair
19 Mar	Writing, naturally	On writing something naturally
17 Mar	Patrick Giles	On a late, literary email friend
15 Mar	Mid-March miscellany	Four links
13 Mar	Oblivion stands between us	On Celan
11 Mar	Steven Pinker, philistine	On etc
10 Mar	Russell's Paradox ... and the novel?	On a vague notion about narrative
6 Mar	Conclusively Right	On books about journalism
5 Mar	Attention to detail is paramont	On proofreading and mistakes
3 Mar	Well-lodged poetry	On the opposition of prose and poetry
24 Feb	A correction	On a Celan essay
15 Feb	The lawyer of Genre	On Amanda Craig's defence of Romance as Literature
6 Jan	The Last Modernist?	On James Wood's essay on Henry Green

2005
17 Dec	The Plot Against Literature	On a remark by Philip Roth
11 Dec	Without end	A note on unfinished German novels
29 Nov	Not merely illustrative	On choosing fiction
22 Nov	The secret of the work	On a review of The Brooklyn Follies
18 Nov	Burn your novel	On National Novel Writing Month
8 Nov	The decorum of Michel Houellebecq	On Atomised
6 Nov	Glancing at Kafka	On Roberto Calasso's K
1 Nov	In the grip of something	A glance at Coetzee's Slow Man
31 Oct	Die all you can	On David Lodge's Author, Author
16 Oct	Deadwood	Pilger and DJ Taylor on Pinter's Nobel Prize
7 Oct	Photography, spilling into language	On notetaking from a book by Murat Nemet-Nejat
5 Oct	At home with the Kafkas	On an extract from a forthcoming biography
3 Oct	I feel despair filter through me	On Susan Hill's call for manuscripts
25 Sep	Milestones	A first anniversary post
23 Sep	Multiple volume madness	Single author collection details
21 Sep	Entering a world of pain	On self-help books
18 Sep	The sorrow of living	On Jorge Semprun's Literature or Life
15 Sep	Houellebecq	Asks whether a literary review is possible
13 Sep	Dreams we share	On dreams and stories
2 Sep	More reading in the west	Further thoughts on the reception of Reading Lolita in Tehran
31 Aug	"After mankind, the Horla"	On Maupassant's story The Horla
30 Aug	Beyond ambition	On literary success
26 Aug	Reading Nafisi in the West	On the reception of Reading Lolita in Tehran
24 Aug	Lostness	On the TV series Lost, almost
23 Aug	Leavetakings	On loving books
12 Aug	Christa Wolf's In the Flesh	A Link to a review with a comment
7 Aug	From the inside	On Jason Cowley's 'A new life for the novel'
6 Aug	The implications	James Wood on Saul Bellow
2 Aug	Life: a reading experience	On a debate about realism vs anti-realism
31 July	Beckett's Hall of fame	On Peter Hall remembering Waiting for Godot
30 July	Great novels need great readers	A note on graphic novels
28 July	Addicted to books	On despair and escape
20 July	GOB Stopper	Defining literary fiction
14 July	Poetry of the novel	Beckett in Germany looking at paintings
10 July	The novel is Incendiary	On the novel with the suicide bombings
9 July	Imagining the price	On the London bombings
7 July	Criticism for the wilderness	Josipovici on Grimm
26 June	Reading Appelfeld's The Story of a Life	As it says
26 June	Word and words	On creative writing software
25 June	Changing the blog's title	On the solitude of the long-distance blogger
18 Jun	Neufundland	On two novels with the same name but different lengths
17 June	In which no heroes stumble	On realism and suspending disbelief
14 June	Writers are cunts	On a review by John Carey
11 June	This morning	a commemoration of the day The Great Fire of London was begun
6 June	To death and back	Watching a BBC TV documentary about the arts
1 June	Clive James doesn't make connections	On rejecting theory
28 May	Confessions	... of an obscure and experimental reader. On recent library withdrawals
28 May	Resenting the real thing	On John Carey, the intellectual without mass
25 May	This story	Waggish reads Elizabeth Costello
21 May	Catching the truth	An oblique and Spurious angle on the LBC "controversy"
16 May	RSB is France, I'm Germany	On the LitBlog Co-Op
15 May	Aftermath	On Grumpy Old Bookman and The LitBlog Co-Op on Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
10 May	The first immensity	On "How Art Made the World" and some notes
27 April	Paratexts	And the inexpressible nothing
24 April	The gift of narrative	Why genre fiction is the new literary fiction
22 April	Reading lives	On Colm Tóibín's The Master and Nick Tosches In the Hand of Dante
17 April	First-time thinker?	Robert McCrum on the rush to publication
16 April	Dangling novels	On why Saul Bellow's opinions are beside the point
16 April	"Hated Americans"	On James Wood's review of Ian McEwan's Saturday again
15 April	Extreme narrative order	On James Wood's review of Ian McEwan's Saturday
5 April	Woolf, dogged by biographers?	On general disappointment with biography
22 March	Refusing to grow up	On Banville on Houellebecq via Lovecraft
10 March	Kafka dicks	On people with their subtexts around their ankles
7 March	Somewhere about hope	Including a transcript of comments by Adam Phillips
5 March	Fortitude that finds no raison d'être	On blogs that close down and Robert Lowell's poetry
4 March	The bed notebook	On a coincidence
3 March	Where do we find ourselves?	On ten things I've done that others might not have
3 March	A fantasy fulfilled	On the opening of a new public library
27 Feb	Moleskine redux	On beginning a new notebook
26 Feb	The same day	On HST's suicide
20 Feb	The pulse of everyday life	On Robert McCrum's comments on Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World
19 Feb	Dusting my library	On rediscovering some books
12 Feb	Moleskine notebooks	And the failure of reality
5 Feb	Is Craig Raine a mwgnker?	On word and thing
3 Feb	Instead of a Comment	On McEwan's Saturday as fiction
31 Jan	Another diseased spirit	Or the continuing literary adventures of a Tory wank stain
29 Jan	Abu Ghraib and real violence	On a liberal war essay
24 Jan	The photocopier speaks out	On comments by Jonathan Yardley
18 Jan	Sunday morning	More on Saturday
15 Jan	Extracted from experience	On Ian McEwan's novel Saturday
12 Jan	Time of the Superwolf	On Bonnie Prince Billy's new LP

2004
10 Dec	On the feast of Shakespeare	On the ULA's romantic delusions
14 Nov	Gardening	On Dennis Potter's philistinism
7 Nov	Reviewing	A letter from Michael Hofmann about translation
6 Nov	Death to everyone	On John Peel
2 Nov	All Souls' Day	On Nooteboom's novel of the same name
23 Oct	Literary immunity	On pretentiousness
18 Oct	Pornography	On insensitivity toward Derrida
10 Oct	Struck by death	On The Birth of Art
2 Oct	Afterlife	On the uselessness of art
1 Oct	The death of art	On corporatism and science
27 Sep	The necessary distraction	On literary sobbery
25 Sep	The poetry of narrative	On John Banville's Shroud
22 Sep	Dreaming of cool rivers	On (Smog) and Joanna Newsom in concert.
16 Sep	How do you write about this?	On creativity etc.
8 Sep	This space of resonance	On the task of criticism
2 Sep	On knowingness	On celeb gossip and omnicient narration
28 Aug	In the defence of narrative over character	On indifference to characters in novels
14 Aug	Sebald's uniqueness	On Sebald's uniqueness
7 Aug	A little personal pocket eureka	On reading and discovery
1 Aug	Museum sickness	On a visit to the British Museum
31 July	Not that, please not that!	On a graphic novel's travesty
30 July	A level of regret: comics and novels	On comics and novels
25 July	Fiction of Europe	On European fiction
22 July	The sociology of Creative Writing	On, well it speaks for itself
15 July	Reading experience	On reading a little more
13 July	A small clearing	On reading a little
10 July	The shape of a life	On a talk by Gabriel Josipovici
27 June	Last things IV	On another Saul Bellow story
13 June	Last things III	On Saul Bellow's story A Silver Dish
5 June	Bloomsday, to come	On commemorating Bloomsday
4 June	Last things II	On a writing group
31 May	Last things	On a recurring dream
25 May	Joseph Brodsky	On discovering Joseph Brodsky
19 May	Arrogant eternity: two poems	On unpublished poems by Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin
13 May	History, silence	On Peter Ackroyd's TV history of London
19 April	In the frame	On Cy Twombly
18 April	Top ten novels	On choosing favourite novels
6 April	Dweller on the threshold	On trying to think
1 April	Yielding oneself	On I'm not really sure what
23 March	Reading nausea	On, in a roundabout way, sentences in novels that cause nausea
22 March	Greatest Palace Music	On Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's new LP.
17 March	Uncertainty	On 'gay' fiction
15 March	Undoing My Library	On getting rid of books
9 March	The Writing of light	On a book about photography
3 March	The Worship of blood	On Leon Wieseltier's review of The Passion of the Christ.
20 Feb	I am not ashamed	On books I haven't read
19 Feb	The logic of the work	On humour, perhaps
12 Feb	Finding a voice	On the 15th anniversary of the death of Thomas Bernhard
10 Feb	Waste books	On Moleskine notebooks
31 Jan	The sea	Quoting Tim Parks and Linda Grant
4 Jan	Ending again	On Beckett-related stuff
1 Jan	Beginning again	On taking notes whilst reading Maurice Blanchot

2003
29 Dec	Happy New Year	On my own hope and despair with writing
5 Dec	The storyteller	On essays by Walter Benjamin and Dale Peck
16 Nov	Very old books	On very old books
12 Nov	I haven't read her	On Natalie Sarraute
10 Nov	The silence of writers	On a complaint by John Pilger
1 Nov	Peter Handke	On Peter Handke, generally
31 Oct	Profounds of mind	On Samuel Beckett's Ohio Impromptu, almost.
18 Oct	Resistance, Silence, Closure	On an essay by John Banville.
18 Oct	A round of denial	On Gert Hofmann's Luck and Vasily Grossman's Life & Fate.
1 Oct	Against the age ...	On George Steiner.
28 Sep	A lost England	On Christopher Hitchens' review of Peter Ackroyd's Albion.
27 Sep	Destruction	On Jacques Roubaud's The Great Fire of London
21 Sep	Ghosts	On Kafka's Last Love and Among Stone Giants
17 Sep	The mandate of fiction	On a review of Peter Carey's My Life as a Fake.

If you have any comments or queries please contact me at: steve.mitchelmore at gmail.com See also the Splinters blog at Spike Magazine