Matthew Dooley's debut about ice cream wars in the north west of England, Flake, won the 2020 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, and his second graphic novel has been much anticipated. Aristotle's Cuttlefish uses the same rundown locale - Dobbiston, and there's another odd couple, this time, Mr Daniels, the elderly manager of… Continue reading Aristotle’s Cuttlefish: a rare treat
Category: naivety
Miranda July: All Fours
Miranda July's new novel, All Fours, continues her preoccupation with mediation and role play in the service of intimacy, and her challenge to the notion of an authentic or consistent sexual identity is as daring and disruptive as ever. Several things have changed, however, one being a shift in tone away from her first novel,… Continue reading Miranda July: All Fours
Comic naivety in George Saunders’s ‘Ghoul’
The pleasure we find in naivety is complex: it’s partly superiority at a lack of social sophistication or adroitness about social conventions, and partly relief at the failure to maintain those norms – a chance to vicariously share in a momentary respite from the ceaseless self-consciousness and responsiveness required of us as social creatures. There’s… Continue reading Comic naivety in George Saunders’s ‘Ghoul’
Humour in the Arts 