Her fingers called her in the middle of the night. The telephone rang – it woke her – and she sat up, blinded by darkness, and reached out her hand for the receiver. Pressed it, cold against her ear. It was them, her fingers. They played Beethoven to her.
It happened every night. In the [...]
Archive for October, 2012
the flame alphabet
Monday, October 15th, 2012The Flame Alphabet may be the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. The fact that it is beautifully written only adds to the nasty queasy feeling one is left with at the end. The sense of being made complicit in a series of cruel acts. I’ve never read a book which contains so much that [...]
mind your language?
Sunday, October 14th, 2012I was involved in a pub discussion the other night about whether certain extremely offensive words are okay to say and use, if you are not personally offended by those words or sitting next to someone who might be. One side of the argument claimed that words are neutral – if they hurt, it’s because [...]
time will tell
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012So I was given an an assignment I really didn’t want to do. Write a diary entry from the perspective of your eighteen year old self. I didn’t want to do it for a number of reasons, none of which I care to rehearse here, all of which can be boiled down to, ‘stop taking [...]
not dead, just resting my eyes
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012Currently reading Barthes’ Death of the Author, which is not as much fun as the title would seem to suggest, given that no one actually dies in it. However, it is the prompt for some high dudgeon and dramatic outbursts. I overheard one of my fellow students referring to Barthes as “our enemy – the [...]
