Me on holiday (but hard at work) in France, summer 1968.
Writing the Juvenilia
Nil by Page
“Nil by Page.” Aeon, 7 April 2022 — my piece on blank books. Huge thanks to Marina Benjamin who commissioned and edited it.
The Jacques Lacan Foundation
The Squiddity of Sam Mills 1
I am delighted that Sam Mills — author of The Quiddity of Will Self, The Fragments of My Father and Chauvo-Feminism, among many others — has chosen one of my portraits as her new author pic. The publication of her next novel, The Watermark (Granta, 2024), was announced today. The picture was taken on 9 August 2021. She had initially opted for the one below (white dress), taken the following day.
Dodo in the Wild
Me and my publisher.
What it Was Like to be Potential
“He wanted to remember what it was like to be potential.”
– Lavinia Greenlaw, An Irresponsible Age, 2006
Sous la plage les pavés
Me in Nice, 1968. (Update: actually, 1969 – année érotique!)
His Idea of Himself
“The coherence of Jacob the glimpsed stranger broke down and she saw in his image what she had never seen in his presence: his struggle to become and remain his idea of himself.”
– Lavinia Greenlaw, An Irresponsible Age, 2006
Après la Lettre
I have an essay — ‘Après la Lettre: The Death of the Novel Revisited’ — in the February/March issue of The London Magazine.
The Uber of Publishing (Unwittingly & Without Making Any Money)
Veale, Sarah. “Economics, Exposure and Ethics in the Digital Age.” The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online, edited by Houman Barekat, Robert Barry and David Winters, OR Books, 2017.
This increased supply of writing has unsettled prices in the industry, particularly in terms of online ad revenue, and consequently seen the erosion of many writers’ capacity to command a steady wage. (As Andrew Gallix, editor-in-chief of literary webzine 3:AM Magazine, gamely told me during my research for this essay, sites like his ‘make life difficult for professional journalists. We’re the Uber of publishing!’).
