Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 4)

At the time of writing (Saturday morning) I am halfway through reading Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School, and if I finish it, as I hope to, by the time of posting then I will have read eighty-five books this year. Not a colossal number by some marathon readers’ standards (you know who you are!) but good enough. Enough to be left with the sense that the year has provided something in the way of progress and of discovery. Enough to feel that I am about to enter 2020 knowing more about myself as a writer than I did twelve months ago. Reading, for me, has always been about that: the sense of community and communality with other writers, the being reminded of what we’re doing and why we do it. Now, perhaps more than at any other time in my life, I look upon writing as a vocation, and not just writing but everything that goes with it: thinking, reflecting, engaging with ideas and above all reading. It’s a serious business, a business of personal dedication, a truth that resists defamation as it resists erosion. It is this I hold to as we enter the next decade, with all its challenges.  

One thing I have decided not to do this year is to set myself any specific reading goals for the year to come. Chief among bookish pleasures through the month of December are the various end-of-year reading lists, videos and podcasts put out by reviewers, readers and critics, wrapping up old reading projects and detailing their upcoming reading plans. As many of these same readers discover, even the best laid of bookish plans are apt to fall by the wayside when confronted by time. Nor is this a simple matter of being seduced by newer, potentially more exciting titles. For me at least it has more to do with the fact that my reading evolves: each book I read has a knock-on effect on the next, has a direct bearing upon subsequent reading choices, and so I might often find – I do often find – that the reasons for setting a particular reading goal as much as the goal itself no longer feel relevant. This can feel frustrating but it is exciting too – that sense of discovery again, the feeling that you are being remade as a reader even as you read.

I know I am bound to be sucked into some prize-reading projects at some point – I am particularly looking forward to the release of the Republic of Consciousness Prize longlist in January (an energising and inspiring way to begin any year), the Gordon Burn Prize longlist in May and the Goldsmith’s Prize list beyond that. I enjoy book prizes not through any misplaced excitement at guessing the winner – the very notion of ‘winning’ in literature is a ridiculous one, and potentially harmful – but because of the discussion they generate, and because the particular focus of certain awards is interesting to me. They help my reading, in other words, even if only to push it in the opposite direction, they inspire debate. But I’m not going to be rigid about it: if I find myself losing interest in an awards shortlist, or if I don’t have the time, or if something more relevant presents itself, then that’s fine. There is always more to read.  

If I had to sum up my 2019 as a reading year, I’d describe it as oddly circular. You remember the hideous sequence in The Blair Witch Project where the three doomed students spend an entire day walking in a complete circle? My reading year has been something like that but (I hasten to add) in a good way. I find certain ideas coalescing, certain ambitions becoming cemented, certain interests being validated and reaffirmed. I’m working on three separate writing projects at the moment, a novel and two distinct pieces of creative non-fiction, each of which alternately feeds into and stimulates the other, the entire process stoked and bolstered by reading, and reading is rocket fuel. These three projects are my most personal to date, and the most challenging, which is why I am excited by them. There is a fear factor, but fear, at least when it comes to writing, is another brand of rocket fuel.

Since 2012, I’ve been in the habit of listing and making brief notes on all the books I read in the given year, as well as allocating to each a mark out of ten. These scores are arbitrary and personal, as likely to be affected by what was going on in my life or most especially in my writing when I read a book as by how far a particular title turned out to accord with my bookish needs or prejudices at the time. The lists are interesting to look back on though, especially over time as patterns emerge and themes repeat. For my best books of 2019, I’ve decided to reveal the nine titles I gave a 10/10. I had no plans to do this at the start of the year, so there has been no pre-calculation involved, and I have resisted the temptation to up the scores of certain titles just to include them here, strong though that temptation has turned out to be. (There are ten 9s on my list, any of which might have been a 10 on a different day.)

Here, in the order in which I read them, are my 9 10s of 19:

Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz. Reading Harwicz is like mainlining pure language. Her use of metaphor, her creative juxtaposition of particular images and ideas brings her prose so close to poetry it makes no difference. Her sheer outspokenness as a writer, her definitive abandonment of traditional narrative form, her willingness to break all kinds of taboos makes this novel seem almost illicit, a secret code for writers and for women writers especially. Harwicz’s follow-up, Feebleminded, which was published in English translation this May, is even more insane and just as brilliant (I gave it a 9, if you’re wondering, knocking off a point mainly, I think, because it gave me the literary equivalent of room-spin when I first started reading it. I subsequently discovered that the best, perhaps the only way of reading Harwicz is to down the whole book in a single sitting. This kind of full immersion not only allows the story to free itself from the mass of words, it also – frightening though this may sound – makes the mindsets of the protagonists seem logical and normal!)

As If by Blake Morrison. This is Morrison’s account and personal reflections on his time spent as one of the journalists commissioned to cover the trial of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the ten-year-old murderers of toddler James Bulger in 1993. I read this book primarily for research but as a work of true crime, as a personal enquiry into the nature of violence and the nature of the British media I cannot recommend Morrison’s work enough. Incredible writing, important insights. A very tough reading experience but absolutely necessary. I shall be reading this again.  

Black Car Burning by Helen Mort. I wrote about this novel earlier in the year and love it unequivocally.

The Sing of the Shore by Lucy Wood. I admired Lucy Wood’s debut collection Diving Belles, but for me this 2018 eollection is even stronger. We’re back in Cornwall, but the elements of myth and magic Wood incorporated so seamlessly into Diving Belles have been stripped away, leaving a tougher, harsher-seeming landscape that nonetheless seems to shimmer with aspects of the uncanny. Such a strong book, a natural (southern) counterpoint to the Mort. I’m hoping we’ll hear news of Wood’s next project soon because I’m eager for more of her sensitive, penetrative, unsentimental landscape writing.  

I Am Sovereign by Nicola Barker. Pure, unadulterated, mischievous, brilliant, intelligent, tender, human, literary delight.

Slip of a Fish by Amy Arnold. Thinking about this novel now I can’t help seeing how closely, in its way, it compares with the Harwicz. The approach is different – more vulnerable and less combative – but the unsettling subject matter, the unnerving ambiguity and pain of the relationships described, makes this feel almost like a sister narrative. Slip of a Fish is a profoundly impressive debut and I hope we see more from Arnold soon.  

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon. I named this book as my ‘Tiny Tim’ in my Christmas Carol book tag, the novel that I feel is deserving of more attention than it has so far received, and I will continue to repeat my puzzlement at why it has commanded so much less than its fair share of debate and discourse in 2019. The Porpoise is a masterclass in the use of myth and fairy tale in postmodern fiction. More than that, it is a heart-pounding story, immersive and interrogative at the same time (a hard trick to pull off). This novel is full of colour and magic, clever twists of both the narrative and literary variety. It also includes what might be the sole legitimate (and literal!) use of a deus ex machina in contemporary fiction. Glorious book. Read it.   

Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry. I was all set to give this collection a 9 but the final story, set in Berlin, raised the threshold because I found it so moving and resonant. Every story is a gem, though, and Barry looks set to be the kind of writer who will just get better and better. I’ve been saving his Booker-longlisted Night Boat to Tangier to read in early 2020 and I can’t wait.

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Reading this was like seeing my own thought processes laid bare. Not the substance of the thoughts, or not always – Lerner’s ‘Adam’ is still in his twenties, and a guy – but the way thoughts cross and diverge, coalesce into images, become ideas. The way he writes about becoming acquainted with a second language, the way meaning accrues gradually to words, and sets of words – the way meaning becomes defined, rather in the manner of the initially blurred outlines of a Polaroid photograph – resonated with me particularly as I’ve never come across such an accurate rendition of my own experience. Art, poetry, history, impostor syndrome, the writer’s evolving objective awareness of what will be their material – Leaving The Atocha Station sits beside certain texts I read in 2018 (Greg Baxter’s Munich Airport, Gwendoline Riley’s First Love, Eley Williams’s Attrib, Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation) that have been helping to build my courage, confidence and ambition as a writer. I gave Lerner’s follow-up 10:04 a 9, simply in response to the fact that of the two, Leaving the Atocha Station is marginally my favourite. At the time of writing I cannot imagine giving The Topeka School anything less than a 10 [edit 31/12 – yup, it’s a 10]. It’s the kind of novel that defines a career. I’m still struggling to articulate what it is about Lerner’s writing that has affected me so much, so I’ll stop trying for the moment and encourage you to go and listen to Lerner himself in this excellent podcast interview. His ideas about what constitutes autofiction are expressed with clarity and deep practical insight and I loved every minute of what he has to say.

Regular readers of this blog will know I struggle with Christmas, a festival that has become unsure of its identity, hollowed out through commercialism, unrealistic expectations and personal stress, and with December in general, with the light decreasing and the encroachment of, well, Christmas. I’m thinking that next year I might organise a special meal and evening of ghost stories for the solstice as a strategic counterattack – December 21^st is like a breath of light and sanity for me, always has been – but in the meantime, this winter has been made easier by my morning runs. Leaving the house each morning at around 7:30, I have seen the light leach back into the sky, the sun rise in a wash of red and blazing orange above the firth. The physical contact with the outside air, the sense of the world as planet has been a matter of spiritual sustenance and renewal. The days have seemed longer, more resilient, and Christmas day itself was made special by taking part in the morning swim at Scalpsie bay. The weather was… cold but incredible, as was the experience as a whole, in fact. I’ve never done a winter swim before and as a first this was unforgettable. Two books also have helped to anchor me through the disappointments and uncertainties of this past month: Under the Rock, by Ben Myers and Ghostland, by Edward Parnell. Both these works evoke and examine ideas about landscape, belonging, grief, creativity, resistance and inclusive heritage that feel powerful and relevant to me and I thank them for being there.

Huge thanks to everyone who has supported me this year, who has read this blog or read The Dollmaker or found interest or joy in any of the books or films I have ranted or raved about. A happy new year to you all, and here’s to new adventures and new directions in the months to come.      

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for everyone, and as Christmas is traditionally a time for fun and games, I thought it would be good to play one. There’s a tag going around on Booktube at the moment based around Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and in between rushing to finish some review commissions before the end of the year I’ve greatly enjoyed watching readers’ videos detailing their choices. The tag was invented by Booktube regular Lauren Wade – you can see her original video here – and my own choices are below:

1: The Ghost of Christmas Past – A book that was a childhood favourite

There are so many I could choose, of course, but I’m going to plump for Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. This is a time-slip story that in its melancholy and in its slight edge of danger has the feel of a ghost story, which makes it particularly appropriate for the season. As with so many favourite works from childhood, I never actually owned this book – I had to keep going back to the library whenever I wanted to read it again, which was often. I think I might treat myself to my own copy – finally – in the new year.

2: The Ghost of Christmas Present – A recent book that you think will become one of your all time favourites

I’m planning to write a best-of-year post around this time next week, so more recent favourites to follow, but for the purposes of this tag I’m going to pick Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. This was published in 2011, so an open question as to whether it actually counts as recent or not, but as I read it for the first time this year I think it qualifies. I cannot imagine ever falling out of love with this book, or with Lerner as a writer. The way he talks about art, poetry, the art of translation, the interaction of past and present, duplicity, uncertainty – this is a portrait of the artist as a young man that will stand the test of time for sure.

3: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come – A book coming out next year that you’re most excited about

The list of books I want to read next year is already well into double figures (David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock, Emily St John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel, Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands…) but if I had to pick one to top that list it would have to be The Liar’s Dictionary, by Eley Williams. Her debut collection Attrib. made such an impression on me I think it’s fair to say it changed my writing life. The synopsis for this new book sounds so far up my street it’s practically living in my attic. I can’t wait to see what Williams has come up with.

4: Bah, Humbug! – A book that everyone else loves that you just can’t stand

This isn’t going to be a popular opinion (and I guess that’s the point), but I’m going to have to pick Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. I love Atwood’s work, I love everything Atwood stands for. But come on, this novel is weak and massively overhyped. I’m just going to come out and say it: The Testaments should never have been written, much less won the Booker (Lucy was robbed).

5: Bob Cratchit – An old dependable that you always recommend

I’m sure the list of books I habitually recommend is overlong and predictable, so I’ll pick one of the weirder ones from it and go for Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child. I am obsessed with this book, by what Ridgway does with the crime genre. In fact, I think I’m due a reread…

6: Tiny Tim – An underhyped book that you think deserves more love

Zero hesitation here in pushing Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise. This book made me cry just because it’s so excellently written. The treatment of myth, the mixing and merging of genres, the sheer joy of this thing. And what a wonderful ending. I adored it literally from the first page. I cannot understand why this book isn’t making more waves.

7: Today? Why it’s Christmas Day! – What’s a book that always gets you in the mood for Christmas (apart from A Christmas Carol)?

Well, that’s going to have to be Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. For Christmas read Christie-mas. Job done.

8: The Muppet Christmas Carol – Your favourite film adaptation of a book

This is really difficult. I’m torn between the obvious Christmassy ones – Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (see above), Sidney Lanfield’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents – and adaptations I love that have no Christmas connection – Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, John Schlesinger’s Far From the Madding Crowd, David Lean’s A Passage to India – so I think I’m going to opt for Joseph Losey’s The Go-Between, which although it is set at the height of summer I’m convinced I saw for the first time at Christmas. This film had a profound effect on me and I love it still.

Wishing all readers of this blog a peaceful and magical festive season, stuffed with good books, good food and great ghost stories. See you back here soon for my end of the year book roundup and plans for 2020.

Looking at the average rating for John Darnielle’s second novel Universal Harvester yesterday on Goodreads, I felt kind of heartbroken. But then reader reviews are unpredictable – that’s what’s so fascinating about them – and a solid percentage of how they pan out can be put down to clumsy marketing, Trying to cash in on the thriller market is not usually a good idea if the book you are trying to sell is not a thriller. You piss off the thriller fans, and risk not reaching the novel’s natural audience in the process. More marketing departments should realise this, and come up with more imaginative approaches.

By coincidence, the shortlists for this year’s Shirley Jackson Awards were also published yesterday, and looking through the Best Novel category I felt heartbroken all over again. The Shirley Jackson shortlists are always strong, and this year’s are absolutely no exception. But there was no place for Universal Harvester and as it’s one of the finest pieces of weird fiction I’ve read in recent years, I’m finding it difficult to understand why. I can see that there are logical arguments for excluding it – no supernatural element, no ‘real’ horror, no easily definable weirdness – but then isn’t that the essence of weirdness, that it can’t be easily defined?

Universal Harvester is weird. And it’s fantastic. Reading a novel this well executed always makes my heart clench. If you’re interested in weird Weird fiction, you should seek it out.

*

When he imagined himself all grown up, he saw himself in Nevada, maybe owning a store, or managing a business in Des Moines. If he thought of the future at all, it looked like the present. and so the young, bored Jeremy of the Nothing Happened variation rings false, and I put more stock in the one I see this afternoon, standing behind the counter eating a sandwich, reading through the classified ads in the Des Moines Register, the Jeremy who’s there when Sarah Jane gets back from Collins, throwing herself wildly through the door of Video Hut as though seeking shelter, her eyes wide, her face darting deerlike first to the right, now to the left, the story she brings so fresh with the terror of its insult that she takes over an hour to tell it, like a person who’s saying things out loud to make sure she won’t forget them.

When we first start reading Universal Harvester, we think we can guess what kind of story we are letting ourselves in for. Jeremy Heldt lives with his father Steve in Nevada (with a long first ‘a’), Iowa. He’s twenty-two years old, still clerking at the video rental store where he’s been working since he left school at eighteen. His dad is worried about him, but he’s not the kind of man to interfere, especially when he knows that both of them are still grieving the loss of Jeremy’s mother Linda in a car accident some years before. Jeremy’s OK with his job. He knows he’ll have to move on sometime, only not quite yet. Then a regular customer – all the Video Hut’s clientele are regular customers – brings back a video saying there’s something wrong with it, that someone has recorded something over part of the movie. Not enough to spoil the picture – it’s just five minutes or so – but enough to make her think she should inform the management.

Jeremy takes the video home and watches it through. Strange scenes are revealed. The interior of an old outbuilding, a woman running along the road at night, a bound figure seated in a chair with a pillowcase tied over their head. Jeremy is disturbed, and captivated. The driveway, the outbuilding, look familiar. Could these scenes have been shot locally? He tells his employer, Sarah Jane, about the video, only by then a second customer has reported similar problems. Sarah Jane thinks they should investigate further. Jeremy is inclined towards the belief that it’s best left alone…

The haunted video subgenre has become a staple of horror fiction and film, and its popularity shows no signs of diminishing. The whole ‘Ring’ franchise is based around it. Books like Marisha Pessl’s Night Film and Joel Lane’s The Witnesses are Gone are honourable examples of it. Universal Harvester even namechecks The Blair Witch Project in acknowledgement of it. I am particularly fond of ‘lost film’ stories, and it was definitely this part of the premise that drew me towards Universal Harvester in the first place.

What I found when I read the book was something quite different. The first half of Darnielle’s novel – Jeremy’s day-to-day life in Nevada, the video store, the discovery of the film clips, Sarah Jane going AWOL – really is only the beginning, the receiving end of the mystery, rather than the mystery itself. We then jump-cut to another family, the Samples, living a similar life to the Heldts only forty years earlier. Peter Sample and his five-year-old daughter Lisa live through a similarly devastating loss to that experienced by Steve and Jeremy, when Peter’s wife Irene walks out of her home one day, never to return. The way her absence impacts the lives of her husband and daughter is the real subject of Universal Harvester. The way in which Lisa’s story connects with Jeremy’s will only be understood as the novel reaches its close.

*

Sarah Jane jutted her neck forward a little and narrowed her eyes, trying to get better focus without having to draw nearer; she noticed a few small yellow bodies lazily drifting in and out of the hole. It made the gourd feel heavier in her sight than it had when she’d been imagining robins or nuthatches. Birds nest lightly. She thought about so many wasps crowded into one place, a great throng displacing some small family of two or three birds. She saw the muddy netting of the nest half-blocking the hole, dusty runover from all the activity inside. And she noted, finally, a wet spot at the bottom, a darkening patch almost as big as her hand. Honey? There is no wasp honey. But the gourd had been put there for birds. 

Darnielle’s writing is laconic, languorous, his (eventual) plot distinctive and highly personal. Yet the subjects he deals with are universal and vast as the Iowa skyline. The way in which he breaks the fourth wall – an unidentified first person voice interrupting the steady flow of third person narrative – is mysterious and perplexing, leaving us with the feeling of being watched. In many horror stories, this unknown intruder would turn out to be the serial killer, salaciously plotting his next move, salivating over past atrocities, and it is assumed knowledge of this kind that makes these incursions seem sinister when we first start to notice them. The truth, again, turns out to be different and much more interesting. Darnielle’s formal experimentation is of the most skilful kind: subtle and ingenious, deepening the mystery before finally clarifying it, never tipping over into wilful obscurity.

*

If you learn to look hard enough, you can find stories in seemingly impenetrable tableaux. Street scenes. Parking lots. People waiting for a bus.

In its treatment of time and memory, Universal Harvester shares some interesting connectivity with Jon McGregor’s magnificent Reservoir 13. The story is revealed in sideways glances, brief asides. Both these novels – my favourites of the year so far – are concerned at their heart with the dignity, pathos and transcendence of ordinary lives; better, that there is no such thing as ordinary, that in the intricacy of their particular passage through the world, all lives are unique. In its examination of the inherent strangeness of lived experience, the hazy gap at the heart of things where even final revelations do not reveal everything, Universal Harvester is weird to the core. I cannot recommend this beautiful novel highly enough.

The Isle of Bute doesn’t get much snow usually. This morning it is settled too deep to put the rubbish out. The front steps form a series of steeply undulating curves. The wooded slope to the rear of our house, an enchanted forest.

I last encountered snow like this ten years ago, when I was living in London. Children sledding in Manor Park, the ducks, confined to one small area of an otherwise frozen pond. I remember leaving work early, anxious to reach home before the railway network shut down completely. Pulling out of Shadwell on the DLR, snow gusting against the windows, the stations closing one by one as the train passed through.

I remember when I was small: collecting icicles, storing them in the ice box, they were so huge, so beautiful. I didn’t want them to die. Completing the ‘barefoot challenge’ in a race with my brother: three times around the house, no socks, no shoes.

A fortnight ago, and a drive through the Trossachs: Callander, Loch Katrine, the Duke’s Pass, sere and glorious, a landscape from an epic quest. Snow still lying at the roadside from the last snowfall. A ‘road closed’ sign, which we hesitated over and then ignored, seeing cars running safely through from the opposite side.

The Duke’s Pass this morning would be impassable.

This morning I went barefoot to put the rubbish out, not wanting to drag snow inside the house, or soak my clothes.

I started reading Paul McAuley’s Fairyland because I’ve been wanting to catch up with a few more previous Clarke winners. I had no idea, when I began it, that the novel’s brilliant second section takes place in a future Paris. It feels wonderfully appropriate to have read it during my residency here.

I admire Fairyland, firstly for its creative ingenuity – rendering fairies as a science fictional conceit is a great idea and McAuley has a lot of fun with it – and secondly for its wealth of ideas: the socially divided, fragmenting Europe in which Fairyland takes place isn’t a million miles from Dave Hutchinson’s fractured Europe series and McAuley set out to explore it twenty years earlier. Its prescience – not of events so much as tone – is remarkable in places, a grubby, post-cyberpunk latent awareness of things to come. The biotech elements have so much potential, and my only gripe with Fairyland is that too much energy is wasted, in the end, on the ho-hum chase-and-find thriller plot. Your mileage may vary, of course – it’ll be no secret to regular readers of this blog that I find most quest plots excruciatingly tedious and much prefer the detective mystery template.

But Fairyland is well worth reading for Part 2 alone – a scintillating piece of writing, a magisterial novella in its own right, showcasing everything science fiction can do and should be.

Nano-fairies undermining Eurodisney. I think they’re already here.

*

Following the announcement of the Booker Prize on Tuesday, I’ve been thinking again about the decision, made back in 2013, to make American novels (albeit American novels published in the UK) eligible for the prize. I was an agnostic at the time, but now feel less sanguine. With two American winners in a row, we begin to see how our most celebrated literary prize might increasingly come to be dominated by American concerns, an American worldview, and most especially American modes of writing. Looking back at the shortlists these past three years, we see how interesting and diverse they are. We also see how an intangible something has shifted.

It’s not even about the winners and shortlistees, and least of all is it about Paul Beatty and George Saunders, both eminently worthy of winning prizes, both wonderful artists whose inclusive and dedicated approach to writing should be celebrated and promoted. It’s more about what happens further down the food chain, where – because of the necessary new rules restricting even further the numbers of books publishers are allowed to submit, and thereby concentrating submissions still more firmly into the hands of the more powerful players – ever fewer British and Commonwealth writers are going to have a chance to even have their book in contention. This will inevitably affect the texture of the prize, the overall outlook and – I have come to believe – not in a good way. Earlier this week I reread Philip Hensher’s piece for the Guardian, published shortly after the announcement that American novels were to be made eligible. At the time I thought it was a tad hysterical. Now I think that, although the Booker isn’t quite as doomed as Hensher suggests, he makes some pertinent points that are indeed being borne out by experience.

It’s a bit like Brexit, really: someone should have the guts to admit this was a mistake and press the reset button.

*

As a general rule, I wouldn’t normally be in the right place at the right time to observe an art world scandal as it unfolded but this week, by sheer force of happenstance, I was. Joep van Lieshout’s sculpture Domestikator, rejected by the Louvre on grounds of being a public obscenity, was erected (yup) on Monday in front of the Pompidou Centre instead. Pompidou patrons are more accepting than general strollers in the Tuileries, apparently. Our favourite Guardian arts commentator, Jonathan Jones, has got himself all in a lather about it, insisting that Domestikator is ‘nasty public art’ and that shoving people’s faces in it is an act of bullying. Which is a shame, given that he clearly understands the visual language and intent of the sculpture perfectly well:

“Van Lieshout is making an in-joke about architecture, mocking the Dutch tradition of utopian art and design. In the centenary year of the De Stijl movement, Domestikator resembles a De Stijl design gone badly wrong. It looks as if a socially responsible modernist architect has created a vision of an ideal habitation, only to accidentally make it look like a man penetrating a dog.”

Why the rest of his piece had to be so po-faced and self-righteous, I have no idea. Claiming that he believes van Lieshout’s statement to be ‘elitist’ is just Jones trying to position himself on the right side of the barricades. The sculpture is so abstracted it’s difficult to see how it could offend anyone unless – like Jones – they were deliberately setting out to be offended. Van Lieshout said on Monday that he was ‘disappointed’ by the Louvre’s decision to offload the sculpture. Well, he needn’t be. People at the Pompidou have been enjoying, chatting about and clustering excitedly around the piece all week. Dare I suggest they seem to have taken it to their hearts? It’s certainly getting a lot more attention than it would have done if the Louvre had simply put it up where it was originally supposed to be and kept stumm about it. As for Jonathan Jones, going on past form, he’ll no doubt pop up again in ten years’ time to tell us why Domestikator is actually the greatest piece of public artwork ever.

*

On Monday evening I took part in an event at La Maison de la Poesie, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of my French publisher, Editions Tristram. The honour of being onstage in such a venue cannot be overstated. As part of my segment of the evening, Tristram’s co-director, Sylvie Martigny read a short extract from the French edition of The Race, and it was brought home to me just what a marvellous translator Bernard Sigaud is. The words were in French, yet the weight and rhythm of the sentences, the emotional range and tone were inalienably mine. A small miracle had been performed, and it is precisely this kind of small miracle that the art of translation is all about. Once again, the privilege of having such passionate, committed, creative people working on my behalf cannot be overstated. Thank you, Tristrams. Thank you, Bernard.

“An intellectual is someone who challenges binary oppositions, bridges cultural gaps, has the cognitive flexibility to connect various disciplines and passionately defends a nuanced way of thinking.

Intellectuals should be bold and loud and yes, offensive. It is high time to stop denigrating the term. At least out of respect for those people who pay a heavy price in other parts of the world just to be a public intellectual.”

(Elif Safak on the Denigration of the Public Intellectual.)

“Values aren’t a birthright: you need to keep caring about them. Living in the west, however you define it, being western, provides no guarantee that you will care about western civilisation. The values European humanists like to espouse belong just as easily to an African or an Asian who takes them up with enthusiasm as to a European. By that very logic, of course, they do not belong to a European who has not taken the trouble to understand and absorb them. The same, of course, is true in the other direction. The story of the golden nugget suggests that we cannot help caring about the traditions of “the west” because they are ours: in fact, the opposite is true. They are only ours if we care about them. A culture of liberty, tolerance, and rational inquiry: that would be a good idea. But these values represent choices to make, not tracks laid down by a western destiny.”

(Taken from the 2016 BBC Reith Lecture, ‘Culture‘, by Kwame Anthony Appiah.)