Tag Archives: literary theory

a cuckoo calling (jk rowling) & julia shaw’s the illusion of memory

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Houyhnhnm

a cuckoo calling really enjoyable – hard to put down (or a delight to pick up); cormoran strike and robyn are great characters, and the story unwinds and retangles in the manner of the best whodunnits that’s all it is … Continue reading →

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Borges on writers creating their own precursors

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

“If I am not mistaken, the heterogeneous pieces I have enumerated resemble Kafka; if I am not mistaken, not all of them resemble each other. The second fact is the more significant. In each of these texts we find Kafka’s … Continue reading →

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“Anabase” by St-John Perse

Posted on August 10, 2014 by Houyhnhnm

The book in question is T.S. Eliot’s translation of this 1920 French poem, with the original text on facing pages. Also included are several prefaces and forewords from other editions, all translated into English. I bought it many years ago … Continue reading →

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“The Big Over Easy” by Jasper Fforde

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Houyhnhnm

A clever, funny and surreal whodunnit, part of a series of novels; in fact after I’d finished reading it I found out that in an earlier novel one of his characters decided to lie low for a while by hiding out … Continue reading →

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“If on a winter’s night a traveller” by Italo Calvino

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Houyhnhnm

Unique (in my limited experience). A contorted and jerky tale which successfully breaks down the ‘fourth wall’: the protagonist is “you”, “the Reader”, who begins by beginning reading “If on a winter’s night a traveller” by Italo Calvino, and ends by … Continue reading →

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Tragedy and Comedy

Posted on July 21, 2013 by Houyhnhnm

Comedy comes from surprise, either from the breaking of a (moral) rule (e.g. a taboo) or from something unexpected (“boo!”) (or both – man-falling-on-banana-skin is unexpected and makes us laugh, naughtily, from the suffering of another). And in Tragedy the … Continue reading →

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“Smiley’s People” by John le Carré

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Houyhnhnm

Developing to some kind of resolution the story of Smiley and Karla, subtly making clearer the binary connections between them. P450 tries to make this explicit: Karla’s being brought down by Smiley’s defining compassion; Smiley’s being somehow damaged by his … Continue reading →

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“On the Road” by Jack Kerouac

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Houyhnhnm

A sustained poem, genuinely great in that it combines a modern(ist) absence of overall narrative, and a concentration on the modern, young, world, with a profound literary resonance both explicit (references to e.g. Le Grand Meaulnes & Proust), and implicit, … Continue reading →

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Assonance in Catullus and Sister Sledge

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Houyhnhnm

Catullus (poem XI): Furi et Aureli comites Catulli sive in extremos penetrabit Indos litus ut longe resonante Eoa tunditur unda “resonante Eoa” (“with dawn re-echoing”) has that amazing re-echoing vowel sequence (e-o-a) which Michael Brandon showed me all those years … Continue reading →

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