Novels
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Stick or bust?
When is it sensible to give up? Persistence we are told is a characteristic of success. Against this idea, I always think about sunk costs. An agency pal once explained to me there’s no sense pouring money into a project because you’ve already poured lots of money into it. Likewise, there comes a moment to cut your losses on an artistic project,…
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Victor Hugo and Guernsey
Having fallen down a flight of stairs two days ago, I have spent a good deal of time on my back applying icepacks to a torn thigh muscle. While trying to write in a horizontal position, I realise that I am feeling homesick for Guernsey. I’ve been glancing at a translation of Victor Hugo poems by Harry Guest called (fittingly enough) The distance, The…
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Visiting the Brontës
The importance of the author’s intentions in reading a novel or poem has been a hotly-argued subject. What became known as ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ (after a essay by Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt) suggested that the author’s thinking about their own work was irrelevant. Instead a novel, for example, should stand on its own two feet…
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Choking on potato peel
Just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (and completed by Annie Barrows) and I am trying to work out why it makes me grind my teeth. I can see why the book has done so well. As an epistolary novel, it is easy to read, and there is no…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 