"Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
The master novelist discusses spooks, the ‘secret world’, Edward Snowden and Syria with his neighbour Philippe Sands Best Writer in the world Conversations with John le Carré
Storytelling and sex. For our ancestors in the Pleistocene, the ability to craft narratives wasn’t just charming; it was key to survival... Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines illustrates this on two tiers: In armchair-travel fashion, the book acquaints readers with the Australian Outback, while simultaneously describing how Aboriginals sang stories walking at a specific pace so that geographical markers within the story would guide their journey. Storytelling
Perhaps the best way to try to get through Kerouac’s poems is to approach them not as literary texts but as private ramblings of the sort you might find in the files of a psych ward. Making one’s way through them, one gradually discerns Kerouac’s preoccupations, but a voyeuristicfrisson is not the same as an aesthetic experience. Herewith, selected purely at random, one of Kerouac’s creations in its entirety:
Walking on Water
Nothing Ever Happened
Not Ever Happening
True Story
Old Story
New Story
Old & New
HOLY BOLONEY
Holy Cow
Holy Cats
Wow
Whatever
To The Feast
Story Book
Book
Story Words
"Anyway, It Happened”
Nothing Happened
Everybody Invited.