‘I began to conceive of the city itself as a kind of loving parent, vast but womb-like and surmounted by an overarching dome.’
From where I lie, I can’t see much of the world, save for a projecting wall of my own house still fringed by green wisteria, the grey slate line of the next row of houses, and beyond this, the pillbox hat of one of the council blocks on the Wandsworth Road. Of course, if I sat up, I could get a be…
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
In this episode of the podcast, Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers reads ‘False Blood’ by Will Self.
Striking the keys of the same typewriter that once sat under J.G. Ballard’s fingers, Will Self reimagines the legendary writer’s last days.
Will Self and Mark Doty's discussion with Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing about blood, the surprising relationship between Bram Stoker and Walt Whitman and the nature of addiction.
‘The only real universals are that we all live – and, of course, we all must die.’
‘I had been struggling – as every wannabe writer should – with what it was that I could conceivably write.’
Will Self on the influence of J.G. Ballard.
‘I may have mentioned this at a prior time but there are around 250,000 words in the English language, yet within the utilitarian scale they seem consumed according to advertising and profit.’
