It would soon be my turn to wash the corpse. The undertaker had done an excellent job with the dead body. This eighty-something-year-old woman, with her twenty-something assistant, had brushed rouge into his cheeks as the light of dawn and cicada-song filled the room. Make-up or not, hair done or not, beautifully fitted cotton yukata […]
What Is Great Literature?
Ezra Pound, in ABC of Reading (1934), states that great literature is ‘language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree’. As a concise definition of great literature, could there be a more accurate statement than Pound’s? Great writers use language with originality, mastery, and ingenuity. Writers who are not great have little originality beyond […]
How to Adapt Shakespeare (A John Dryden Case Study)
The word ‘adapt’ has its etymological root in the Latin ‘adaptare’, meaning ‘to make fit’. And today I’m going to attempt (or essay upon) how one might adapt Shakespeare, make his work fit, into the cultural, political, and historical context of their time. We’ll do this by looking at one of the most interesting adaptors of […]
The Jazz of Jack Kerouac
In ‘Essentials of Spontaneous Prose’, Kerouac instructed the reader to ‘tap from yourself the song of yourself’. Just one of the many implications that Kerouac viewed the writer’s approach to prose and the approach to poetry as being the same. An idea that was reinforced in his ‘Belief & Technique for Modern Prose’, in which […]
Romantic Closet-Dramas: How to Revolutionise the Theatre
I’ve been thinking a lot about theatre lately. The Stage reckons theatres won’t be back in business until 2021. That sucks when one of the reasons you’ve chosen to live in London is to increase your patronage of the theatre in hopes of learning the craft. But in this challenge lies opportunity. Reading Peter Brook’s […]
An American Prayer
Have you ever grieved for someone who died before you were born? I have. On this morning’s run, spoken word poetry album An American Prayer (1978) in my ear, I grieved for Jim Morrison. Tears and all. If I were Jim Morrison, I would have died in a blood-filled Parisian Hotel bathtub ten months ago. […]
Solid Air
Nick Drake saved my life. I had vicious insomnia aged fourteen. The doctor prescribed an old-school heavy-duty tricyclic antidepressant called amitriptyline. He wouldn’t prescribe my requested melatonin because, in his words, ‘It’s a hormone. You’ll become addicted. And then you’ll be back for more.’ This only scratches the surface of why I despise most doctors. […]
I Wanna Be Adored
Sometimes you need to be angry. Wrath pays. In life, like in writing. And in running too. This is not what I’m thinking as I start jogging this morning. But it will be what I’m thinking by the time the run is over. The run begins with the iconic opening track of The Stone Roses […]
Never Break The Chain
I tear through familiar foliage. Off the path, past green bowls nets, through an ivy-framed fir-fringed portal, and out onto the wide planes of Primrose Hill, BT Tower glittering through the mid-morning mist. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s narration of Anna Karenina, not the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation splayed open at page one-hundred-and-fifty back on my bedside table, […]
You Will Know Me By My Sacrifice
You will know me by my sacrifice. This is what the biblical story of Doubting Thomas teaches us. Jesus rises from the dead and returns to his disciples. Not until Thomas places his fingers into the wound on Christ’s side does he believe his eyes. We are all Doubting Thomas. But we all have the […]