Angie Abdou is the author of “In Case I Go.” She and Frank Busch talk about the making of this novel.
Literature
The End of the World
How does it end? they ask, because I have seen the future. I alone have seen it, not in a dream or a vision but in math.
Consummatum Est: a story
“I have been ready to die for an eternity now.” THE KNIFE IN BOTH hands, I give a quick thrust and pierce the skin of my throat. The snap reminds me, all this time later, of the German wieners of… Read More ›
Jeremy Paxman and Poetry’s Bad Rap
A GUARDIAN UK article, written by Alison Flood and published over the weekend, quotes the Forward prize judge and TV presenter Jeremy Paxman as wishing aloud that “poetry ‘would raise its game a little bit, raise its sights’, and ‘aim to… Read More ›
A Decent Life (a short story)
HAROLD HAD KEPT in his mind the image of the newspaper’s doubled face, the luxurious automobile below the fold, and the latest disaster from across the world above. From the livingroom he regarded the quiet dignity of his neighbourhood and… Read More ›
Sei Shonagon and the Pillow Book
A PILLOW BOOK is an open-ended and spontaneous collection of fragments, and as such may include lists, observations, poems, short personal essays and diary entries. A precursor of the genre zuihitsu (random jottings – the more literal meaning to proceed,… Read More ›
Your Writing is Not Like a Barry Manilow Song
AT DINNER, my good friend Adrian M. Kelly (author of Down Sterling Road, which can he purchased here. Only one copy left!) observed that it’s difficult to make a living from serious writing.
Conversation and the Writer’s Voice
A TOPIC CAN BE both vast and yet reducible to the most simple of terms. Here’s an example: a writer is a person who does things with words. Whether her goal is to inform, deceive, terrify, entertain, charm, persuade or… Read More ›
Commonplacing Considered
FOR THE PAST twenty years and more I’ve maintained a collection of quotations in black, made-in-Czechoslovakia, Pragotrade-branded volumes. This sort of collection is known as a “commonplace book,” and the keeping of one commonplacing. I take such care to mention… Read More ›
The Virtue of Watching Your Language
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE is not unique in having a fluid, ever-changing character. Best described as a Low German dialect imbricated by Latin and Greek, via eleventh century Frenchified Norseman, English has changed a good amount since Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the… Read More ›
Good fortune and Bob Rae weren’t always on the best of terms
FEDERAL LIBERAL LEADER Bob Rae’s citation of William Shakespeare was an indirect invocation also of a commonplace political euphemism — the putting aside of personal ambition “to spend more time with the family.” Announcing his decision yesterday not to run… Read More ›
Remembering Christopher Hitchens
I FIRST CAME across the writer Christopher Hitchens when he was a young Socialist contributing his “Minority Report” to the Nation. Very much yet in his soixante-huitard, Trotskyist phase, if not in possession any longer of his Socialist International card,… Read More ›
How Writers Write
THERE IS an enormous store of narrative concerning the working habits of authors, much of it interesting and in my case consumed with amusement but skepticism also.
Ulysses, Bloomsday, and the Best of All Literary Parties
IN AN AGE which commends novels by citing their “accessibility,” one praises James Joyce’s Ulysses before a good many deafened ears. This singular 1922 work demands much from the reader, but the reward of one’s efforts is enormous. The highest… Read More ›
When the Bookish Finish Last
There is a famous anecdote concerning two nineteenth-century British Prime Ministers and bitter rivals, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. The former may be credited with first articulating “Progressive Conservatism” — by way of his 1844 novel Coningsby, or The New… Read More ›
