Lead Igloo | Stories, Philosophy, Opinion
Mill’s On Liberty dedication
To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings – the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward – I dedicate this volume. Like all [...]
The short story paradox
Writing and publishing short stories is a part of the writer’s apprenticeship – but publishers don’t believe short stories sell. This is a problem.
If publishers say short story collections don’t sell, I would argue it’s not, for the most part, conspiratorial. They’re talking about sales figures, and you can bet if they did sell, short [...]
Public Library 8.1
Toward a theory of surprise. Chris Bachelder on surprise in literature. Via The Believer.
The Millions’ most anticipacted books of 2010. Comprehensive run-down of books to look forward to this year, and beyond.
Sea Eagle Dreaming. Nonfiction by Thomas Rye about living on an island in Arnhem Land, an Aboriginal Reserve in the Northern Territory. Via Overland.
The books which should [...]
The traitor
My hair was a few months long and only needed a trim, but I hadn’t been back here for at least six months. I only realised this, of course, when I saw the barber’s face. He looked near me for a moment, beyond me, then bunched up the cloak and used it to brush down [...]
Notebook 15.12
Her hair is impeccably styled, dyed a bright blonde. An unearthly blonde. She holds a magazine in her lap, one of those thick-bound publications, printed on heavy, glossy pages, seemingly full of only advertisements for shiny, gaudy items. The type of magazine that doesn’t fit in a mailbox slit. All that she wears but her [...]
Another presence – Extract from An Imaginary Life
Almost immediately, in the golden light of a fine autumn day, with the sky broken in rainpools among the drifts of yellow leaves, he is there, standing quite still and taller after two years among the slashed birches. I am filled with joy. He is there. He is real. The others see him too. He [...]
The greatest humiliation of his life
“Undoubtedly Dante himself had envisioned this meeting differently. Nothing in the preceding pages indicates that the greatest humiliation of his life awaits him here.” By Theophil Spoerri, taken from ‘The Meeting in a Dream’, one of Jorge Luis Borges’s Dantesque Essays.
Purgatorio: Canto XXX
When the Septentrion of the highest heaven
(Which never either setting knew or [...]
Public library 23.10
Theoi Greek Mythology library. A great resource, everything you will need.
Host by David Foster Wallace. This essay, though from 2005, is certainly new to me. It has a different tone to his better known essays – does this mean it is not as good? DFW’s non-fic strengths are (were) his wit and his keen observation of humans, [...]
On the train
The girl talks, her voice sonorous and clear. A mobile phone rings. Two dozing labourers listen to a portable radio. Beer bottles in plastic bags clink between their legs as the train jolts. Chatter and laughter rises from the back of the carriage. A passenger at the front unthinkingly opens and closes a window. It [...]
A truth scarcely entertained by theorists
It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the naked eye, we would clearly see the strange phenomenon whereby every individual member of the human race corresponds to one of the species of the animal kingdom; and we would easily recognise this truth, scarcely entertained by the theorists, that from the oyster to [...]