Deconstructing a life that seems to circle around complaints by a creative woman about ‘family’: Is that the function of biography about a ‘knife woman’? This is another blog on the challenging art of the biographer with reference to Marie-Laure Bernadac [trans Lauren Elkin] (2026) ‘Knife-Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois’.

January 30, 2026

Deconstructing a life that seems to circle around complaints by a creative woman about ‘family’: Is that the function of biography about a ‘knife woman’? This is another blog on the challenging art of the biographer with reference to Marie-Laure Bernadac [trans Lauren Elkin] (2026) ‘Knife-Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois’. New Haven & London, … More Deconstructing a life that seems to circle around complaints by a creative woman about ‘family’: Is that the function of biography about a ‘knife woman’? This is another blog on the challenging art of the biographer with reference to Marie-Laure Bernadac [trans Lauren Elkin] (2026) ‘Knife-Woman: The Life of Louise Bourgeois’.

From irresponsibility to organized competitive play (and / or choreographed display).

January 29, 2026

When I was but a child, the sport that filled those small flickering monochrome and then early colour TV screens was wrestling. It was killed off as a ‘sport’ when it was revealed that most of it was engineered for purposes of exciting spectators with over-exaggerated characters (‘Big Daddy’ and ‘Giant Haystacks’ for instance) with … More From irresponsibility to organized competitive play (and / or choreographed display).

‘In it to win it’: How did the verb ‘to win’ take on the expression of  magical thinking: ‘The sense of “exert effort” in early Middle English faded into “earn (things of value) through effort”‘

January 28, 2026

I queue in a local One-Stop every Saturday because it is the only place I can use my Saturday only pre-paid collection card for The Guardian. Shops like this have garish counters now, festooned with various kinds of prize lottery tickets, each numbered and behind it an assistant who acts to sell these and pay … More ‘In it to win it’: How did the verb ‘to win’ take on the expression of  magical thinking: ‘The sense of “exert effort” in early Middle English faded into “earn (things of value) through effort”‘

There is a point in reading trees, not just as somewhere – buried in the sense of the word or the product we call ‘paper’ – that contains writing. They bear the scars of human presence and the latter’s need to appropriate nature with alien systems of possession.

January 27, 2026

In an earlier answer to this question I concentrated on ambiguities in the word ‘read’, wherein I inferred (rather than stating directly perhaps) that just because our eyes pass over text, they cannot be really said to ‘read’ that text. I used a passage from a yet to be published book to show that reading … More There is a point in reading trees, not just as somewhere – buried in the sense of the word or the product we call ‘paper’ – that contains writing. They bear the scars of human presence and the latter’s need to appropriate nature with alien systems of possession.

The passage of time

January 26, 2026

Start with etymology: Don’t neglect this passage, as you read on:Wherein mere time passes idly, like scumUpon the surface of still waters stirred By just alighted coots. They pass us byLike lives, like deaths unreflecting horsemenContemplate at one wise poet’s grey slate, Whilst under stills, the turbulent currentsPlay tuneful ditties and dirges both. SpendMore time … More The passage of time

‘The History of Sound’: the silenced noise of the non-performative queer story.

January 25, 2026

I saw the new Oliver Hermanus film today, The History of Sound, with Geoff and dear friend Catherine. before going I had make the terrible mistake of seeing some of the reviews of the film, all it seems by people hardly equipped to speak of film as art, for this is precisely what this film … More ‘The History of Sound’: the silenced noise of the non-performative queer story.

‘I’m not sure how I ended up here … and I see only blocks of text that are unclear like each word is fused into the next …’. Reading is an aspiration towards a communion.

January 24, 2026

Have you ever felt that so much depended on a reading of what is in front of you? I have just made a first reading – fast and furious – through the proof text of a novel not due for publication until, I think, September 2026, Derek Owusu’s The Recovery House, which will be published … More ‘I’m not sure how I ended up here … and I see only blocks of text that are unclear like each word is fused into the next …’. Reading is an aspiration towards a communion.

This reconfiguration of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ through passive aggression and a heroic Calpurnia is stunning. This blog is on seeing Aaron Sorkin’s play in The Lowry, Manchester, at 2 p.m. on 22 January 2026.

January 23, 2026

I wrote a preparatory blog once I booked to see this play. You can access it at this link: https://livesteven.com/2025/11/25/boo-only-comes-out-at-night-so-says-jem-finch-in-the-1962-film-of-to-kill-a-mocking-bird-what-does-it-take-to-make-darkness-visible-this-is-a-blog-preparing-me-to-see-the-touring-produc/. In this blog, I say the following regarding the treatment of Tom Robinson in book and film: Tom is trapped. Tom cannot explain away his apparent ‘sign of guilt’ without exposing the contradictions in the … More This reconfiguration of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ through passive aggression and a heroic Calpurnia is stunning. This blog is on seeing Aaron Sorkin’s play in The Lowry, Manchester, at 2 p.m. on 22 January 2026.

Not Drowning but Waving in The Boundless Deep.

January 22, 2026

Richard Holmes is the literary biographer of the age, timing that age from my own time of literary awareness, and he, at last, has reached out to Tennyson, if confined (probably thankfully) to the Young Tennyson, before that poet became wrapped around with the populist British imperialism that most harms his reputation for people like … More Not Drowning but Waving in The Boundless Deep.

From making myself feel better by expressing my suffering to finding a means of redress for a grievance.

January 21, 2026

In reading this question, the contemporary and most frequent use of the word ‘complaint’ will be uppermost, which is mainly related to an expression of grievance or satisfaction leading to seeking a means of redress from the person or institution providing those goods or services which are found faulty or dangerous. It is part of … More From making myself feel better by expressing my suffering to finding a means of redress for a grievance.

Is there a rationale or purpose for a queer reading of Benjamin Britten’s operatic drama, ‘Peter Grimes’?

January 20, 2026

Worthwhile modern readings which root Peter Grimes in the experience of Benjamin Britten as a queer man may be available, although I think Phillip Brett’s Cambridge monograph on the opera may have served as a last word on why it both requires that perspective and why it is insufficient to provide a satisfactory reading on its … More Is there a rationale or purpose for a queer reading of Benjamin Britten’s operatic drama, ‘Peter Grimes’?

Ask that question to Daedalus? Would he uninvent the Labyrinth? In Seamus Sullivan’s bold debut novel his character, Persephone, the (part-time) Greek  Goddess of the Underworld, informs her prominent subject, the dead Daedalus, that, ‘Heroism isn’t strength or bravery,…. It’s the conviction in your innermost heart that the entire story is about you’. This blog discusses a superlative addition to much of the chatty mess that is the novel focused on sex/gender in Greek mythological heroes: Seamus Sullivan (2025) ‘Daedalus Is Dead’.

January 19, 2026

Ask that question to Daedalus? Would he uninvent the Labyrinth? In Seamus Sullivan’s bold debut novel his character, Persephone, the (part-time) Greek  Goddess of the Underworld, informs her prominent subject, the dead Daedalus, that, ‘Heroism isn’t strength or bravery,…. It’s the conviction in your innermost heart that the entire story is about you’. This blog … More Ask that question to Daedalus? Would he uninvent the Labyrinth? In Seamus Sullivan’s bold debut novel his character, Persephone, the (part-time) Greek  Goddess of the Underworld, informs her prominent subject, the dead Daedalus, that, ‘Heroism isn’t strength or bravery,…. It’s the conviction in your innermost heart that the entire story is about you’. This blog discusses a superlative addition to much of the chatty mess that is the novel focused on sex/gender in Greek mythological heroes: Seamus Sullivan (2025) ‘Daedalus Is Dead’.