Alan Rafferty
Drawing A Blank
An old man sits alone in a room. He does not know how long he has been there, or how he got there in the first place; he does not know whether he is a prisoner or a guest; he doesn’t even know his own name (he is only Mr Blank); but when he closes his eyes he sees the shadows of men and women he has sent to some gruesome fate, his ‘operatives’. More frightening still, it seems likely that, as he is given more and more of the drugs brought to him throughout the day chronicled in this novella, he will soon forget the names of the most basic objects around him, for there are labels on the wall (‘WALL’), desk (‘DESK’) and bed (‘BED’) to identify these things to him.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'In their needling, selfish, dry-as-dust way, these three books are works of cumulative power and never less than consistent interest.'
@lieutenantkije weighs up the final novel in J M Coetzee's Jesus trilogy.
http://ow.ly/TuWo50xqrL0
'It remains a poem comprised of clay fragments, short and long, and though the desert delivers up occasional additional text, we are a long way from a whole poem.'
Michael Schmidt on the oldest surviving poem in the world.
http://ow.ly/7OLF50xqr91
'Apparently if you’re a teenager and you send a declaration of love to someone heart emoji, heart emoji, heart emoji and they come back smiley face, that’s the worst.'
Thomas Blaikie tries to get his head round the language of the internet.
http://ow.ly/TU6d50xroRc