Francis King
Make It Short
MOST THINGS, IN my view, last too long - speeches at memorial services, Bruckner symphonies, dinner parties, holidays, waits for flights, and Thatcher and Blair governments. Add to that list far too many contemporary works of fiction and biography, and far too much 'quality' journalism.
'Make It Short' seems to me a maxim that every writer should pin up above his desk before embarking on the writing of a book. But, surprisingly in this age of rush and a surfeit of leisure attractions, books continue to grow more and more obese. Oddly,
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'Things began to go wrong between Mr and Mrs Eliot almost immediately. Ostensibly the problem was Vivien’s mysteriously fluctuating health. It would be easy to reduce the Eliot marriage simply to a catalogue of Viv’s medical crises.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/marriage-made-in-hell
'The trouble seems to be that we are not asked to read this author, reading being a thing of the past. We are asked to decode him.'
From the archive, Derek Mahon peruses the early short fiction of Thomas Pynchon.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/rock-n-roll-is-here-to-stay
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions