Been a while since I looked at a play. So.. There are moments in literature when I realise the human race isn’t merely flawed but gloriously, catastrophically absurd. Gogol understood this long before Beckett ever let Vladimir and Estragon wander out onto a dusty road to wait for a man who’d never come. If Waiting … Continue reading The Government Inspector: A Farce in Which Humanity Trips Over Its Own Shadow
Tag: classics
The Room in the Tower: A Dream with Teeth
For years I dreamt of a house that hated me. It wasn’t merely haunted — it was hostile. Its walls bowed with resentment, its staircase groaned in complaint, and the air inside was the colour of rot. Every visit was the same: I would wander through its ruined corridors, knowing instinctively that one door was … Continue reading The Room in the Tower: A Dream with Teeth
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Frankenstein bites, and it gnaws politely. It sinks its teeth into your conscience while pretending to nibble at your imagination — a genteel vampire in paper form. It’s a novel born of storms, both meteorological and moral: thunder crashing over Lake Geneva and lightning striking through the skull of Western hubris. Mary Shelley, barely out … Continue reading Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
The Devils of Loudun: Possession in the Age of Reasonable Madness
There are two kinds of devilry in this world: the kind that froths and foams in the convent, and the kind that wears a signet ring and drafts policy. Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun is about both — a tale where hysteria kneels before power and calls it holy. I’ve long thought that if Lucifer … Continue reading The Devils of Loudun: Possession in the Age of Reasonable Madness
The Woman in the Wall: Madness, Marriage, and the Myth of Care
‘I’ve got out at last,’ said the woman behind the wallpaper. ‘And you can’t put me back.’ It begins, as all good horrors do, with a husband who means well. John is a physician, a man of reason and gentle authority, and therefore utterly unfit to understand his wife’s soul. He prescribes what men have … Continue reading The Woman in the Wall: Madness, Marriage, and the Myth of Care
Wording 