Drawing on the rapidly developing alliances between cognitive psychology and aesthetics, in the work of Jean-Marie Schaeffer, for example, she presents reading as an activity where, as we go back and forth between the text and our everyday surroundings, we can view the world through the borrowed lens of the book, and also, if we wish, reshape our lives in harmony with the writer’s vision as imparted through his style.

Note: a life irradiated by fiction:

Textures
in the Literary Criticism section of The Times Literary Supplement
by MICHAEL SHERINGHAM

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Shared on October 9th, 2011 from Kindle

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Fast forward
in the COVER section of The Times Literary Supplement
by TERRY EAGLETON

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History is now skidding by so fast that the only image of the present is the future.

Note: Terry Eagleton quote: not #atemporality as such:

Shared on March 28th, 2011 from Kindle

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Recently finished Reflexions, the memoir of the food writer, wine expert and cook Richard Olney. (I read it on Kindle in the UK.) He writes — wrote, he died in ’99 — beautifully. He was a painter by vocation, and he wrote with brushstrokes, evocative and vivid with charmed hues. Also often very funny, as he tells a life of an American in France, surrounded by the mad and the beautiful, haunted by the demented chef Georges Garin and the brilliant, alcoholic statistician Mary Painter; drifting in and out of the orbits of James Baldwin, Elizabeth David, Alice Waters. It’s the story of a life lived well, and a reminder that even a well-lived life is not perfect.

(Also, a reminder to drink more red wine. LOTS more.)

Related articles

• Richard Olney: the quiet American who found his soul in Provence (guardian.co.uk)

Marie, she said, had died at the age of 99; the next morning, Jacques packed explosives into his fishing boat, went to sea and blew himself up.

Note: ostentatious suicide.

Shared on January 2nd, 2011 from Kindle

Reflexions

by Richard Olney

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–

SPECIAL SOUND: The Creation And Legacy Of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop – Louis Niebur. Page 29. Excuse shitty iPhone photo of the page in question, no time to run the scanner tonight:

Further down the page, there’s also this:

…he disavowed its comparison to music by noting that the BBC has chosen the term ‘radiophonic’ over the more controversial musique concrete and that the work they are to hear is a completely new genre, the radiophonic poem… ‘a poetic experience that only exists in terms of a sound complex.’

These were the days, you see, when you could hear Samuel Beckett plays on the (national) radio, and producers realised that the only way his bad dreams could be presented in audio was to accompany them with dream-sounds that could not occur in reality.

I don’t know that there’s anything in British radio that continues this today, beyond the work done at Resonance FM. You could, if you felt so inclined, probably draw a line between the 1956 BBC radio production of Beckett’s ALL THAT FALL and, say, the latter work of Moon Wiring Club.  The connection between the radiophonic and the supernatural, of course, remains strong in the work of many purveyors of the Confusing English Electronic Music — Belbury Poly and the Broadcast And The Focus Group project to name but two.

(Go here for Moon Wiring Club’s six favourite pieces of Confusing English Electronic Music in 2010.)

I was talking with Adam Drucker — cLOUDDEAD, Doseone, Anticon and the co-composer of the music for Alan Moore’s most recent spoken word piece, UNEARTHING — the other day, when it occurred to me that Bandcamp would be the most perfect home for the radiophonic production.

Anyway, completely random, just wanted to get the bookmark and the thoughts down before they vanished into the ether…

Related articles

• comicsweek 15dec10 (warrenellis.com)
• BBC Online ordered to be more ‘distinctive’ as cuts kick in (go.theregister.com)
• Chris Carter’s Tutti Box sound generator (boingboing.net)

A Highlight and Note from Warren Ellis(Twitter:warrenellis)

“What is that stuff he’s saying?” Serge asks Laura. “It’s from the Egyptian Book of the Dead,” she replies, hand pressed to her forehead as though this action alone allowed her to think. “ ‘The Book of Stepping Forth by Daylight,’ in fact, if I recognise this passage rightly.” “First thing ever written for a dead readership,” mutters Alby.

Note:but not the bloody last.

Shared on September 28th, 2010 from Kindle

C

byTom McCarthy

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A Highlight and Note from Warren Ellis(Twitter:warrenellis)

Above six hundred and fifty, the clicks dissipate into a thin, pervasive noise, like dust. Discharges break across this: distant lightning, Aurora Borealis, meteorites. Their crashes and eruptions sound like handfuls of buckshot thrown into a tin bucket, or a bucketful of grain-rich gravy dashed against a wash-boiler. Wireless ghosts come and go, moving in arpeggios that loop, repeat, mutate, then disappear.

Note:the ghost space of early radio.

Shared on September 16th, 2010 from Kindle

C

byTom McCarthy

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