Essays
Illegitimate Son: On Patrick Modiano
It is unsurprising, then, that testimonials and critical assessments of Modiano’s writing should so often resort (as I have already done) to vague terms like ‘mysterious’ and ‘atmospheric’ and ‘haunting’. But the element of uncertainty is not only thematically significant on both a personal and a historical level; it also renders these two levels indistinct. Modiano’s books are not simply preoccupied with memory and the elusiveness of the past; they are troubled by the fragility and impermanence of human relationships, which are depicted as unreliable and contingent. The world of his novels is one of coincidences and fateful encounters. It is a shady world of criminal dealings, in which people are unforthcoming or evasive, origins are unknown or unclear, identities are falsified. It is a transient world of hotels and cafés – a world of passing acquaintances and broken family connections, in which people are apt to run away, commit suicide or disappear without explanation, and characters are disturbed by feelings of emptiness and loss.
Two Cultures (Again): Revisiting Leavis and Snow
The Two Cultures debate has no right or wrong conclusion. That is, while there are right and wrong things in it, the scope, shape and intensity of the exchange permits no final verdict. It is about beliefs, outlooks, potential, promise, what my father used to call in an admonishing way ‘character’.
Indirect Speech: Contemporary Writing in Cambodia
Oppression and control of writers and literature has been a standard measure of social and cultural life in Cambodia for a thousand years at least, but since the last elections in 2013 there has been the appearance of change.
Consider This: Helen Garner’s Cosmo Cosmolino
‘Helen Garner is known for her shape-shifting – or rather for her genre-shifting. She moves between fiction and non-fiction, making choices about genre in a way that might seem arbitrary to some readers, but to the close reader is most certainly not. Always up for debate is the notion that while a fine fiction writer, Garner does not write novels. This essay is an attempt to engage with this argument, using Garner’s 1992 novel Cosmo Cosmolino as its focus.’