When I first took up Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes, I braced myself for the usual experience: a young woman falls in love, society disapproves, a man dangles from a cliff, and everyone ends up in a metaphorical ditch by chapter thirty. Hardy’s nothing if not consistent. He’s the grim reaper of literature - … Continue reading A Pair of Blue Eyes – Or, How Not to Court a Vicar’s Daughter
Tag: fiction
“Repent, Harlequin!” – A Meditation on Time, Tyranny, and the Tick of the Clock
If I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is Ellison’s scream of despair, then “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman is his snarl of defiance. Where one story traps us in eternal torment beneath the circuits of a god-machine, this tale sets us against a more mundane, and in many ways more sinister tyrant: the … Continue reading “Repent, Harlequin!” – A Meditation on Time, Tyranny, and the Tick of the Clock
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
I remember the first time I read Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. It wasn’t just a story; it was an assault. A literary thunderclap. Most science fiction of the Cold War era promised us rockets, aliens, perhaps a better tomorrow wrapped in chrome optimism. Ellison, instead, offered us a world … Continue reading I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
Grumbling My Way into the 21st Century: Reading Brat
Cover image © Gabriel Smith / Scribner UK (or Penguin Press) I’ll admit it: modern fiction and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. In fact, we’ve been glaring at each other across the room for years now, occasionally muttering under our breaths about how the other one’s gone downhill since the ‘90s. My own … Continue reading Grumbling My Way into the 21st Century: Reading Brat
Invisible, My Eye – Reflections on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
When Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man in 1952, America was still congratulating itself on having beaten the Nazis and saved democracy. Yet here was a novel calmly pointing out that a good chunk of its own citizens were treated as if they didn’t exist - or rather, as if they existed only when they could … Continue reading Invisible, My Eye – Reflections on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Wording 