novels ⁽⁴⁾

Recently I made some notes about stupidity, suspension of disbelief, and recent story-telling. They came up because this week I read Glenorchy Boy by John Dale. This is set centred on the northern suburbs of Hobart, Tasmania, of a lad coming into the grey zones of responsibility, relationships and restrictions. Mistakes are made, here and there, and avoided. Sort of.

Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea’s joyous grateful expectation was unbroken, and however her lover might occasionally be conscious of flatness, he could never refer it to any slackening of her affectionate interest. The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this because he…

Part 1 tilting In the Assistens Kirkegård, a cemetery in Copenhagen, a monument to the Russian writer has been raised (Dostojevskij Monument Unveiled in Copenhagen) and they have a facebook page. Hence the repost by an FB friend of something who shared their post from a year ago, in which Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky describes a quote from Don Quixote, itself a metafictonal work,…

This is a rebooted crosspost from substack written june 2023. See also: Worlding and the sentimental theory of value - part one and Etymology of Romance Terms Romance, romantic are words deriving from the ruination of the empire of the city of Rome. That is, after it empired or end-of-empired, and in those de-intensification of activity and power, its ruins forget their glorious…