Leonora Carrington didn’t so much write a memoir as vomit out an apocalypse. Down Below isn’t autobiography in the polite sense, with polite sentences arranged like cutlery for an afternoon tea. It is, rather, the table turned over, the crockery smashed, and the cutlery embedded in the wallpaper. This slim, feverish account of her psychotic … Continue reading Down Below: Leonora Carrington’s Descent into the Furnace of the Mind
Tag: philosophy
The Man in the High Castle: History as Hallucination
Some novels ask ‘What if?’ and there are novels that ask ‘What is?’ Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle manages the perverse trick of doing both at once. Set in a United States divided between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan after an Axis victory in the Second World War, it ought to … Continue reading The Man in the High Castle: History as Hallucination
The Ghost That Wasn’t There: On Hughes Mearns’ Antigonish
“Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there.” Thus begins one of the most famous fragments of verse ever to slip through the cracks of English literature - part nursery rhyme, part ghost story, part psychological confession. Hughes Mearns’ Antigonish (1899) was written in the playful spirit of nonsense, yet like all … Continue reading The Ghost That Wasn’t There: On Hughes Mearns’ Antigonish
‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace
There are phrases that ring through history like bells tolling in fog: ‘Et tu, Brute?’, ‘I have a dream,’ ‘Father, forgive them.’ Yesterday another such phrase was spoken - not in marble halls nor on the steps of Washington, but from a widow’s lips at her husband’s memorial service. Erika Kirk stood before the world, … Continue reading ‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace
How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon
Tolstoy was always the moralist disguised as a storyteller. He couldn’t so much as describe a hayfield without planting in it a parable, and How Much Land Does a Man Need? is among his most ruthless little lessons. At its heart, it’s an absurdly simple tale: a peasant named Pahom believes that with just a … Continue reading How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Tolstoy’s Six-Foot Sermon
Wording 