Winter 2019. Spined. One poem, a story (Blake Morrison) and essays. The first essay by Claire Lowdon looks at Thomas Bernhard's late novels, wondering why some people think them so good - "I am going to list some examples. If you're new to Bernhard, let this be a sort of entry-test to his work. The requirement is that you find what you're about to read funny or profound, ideally both. If you think it's tedious and facile - more or less the same thing again and again [] then I think we can safely say that Bernhard is not for you" (p.17); "I don't think Bernhard's sentences are that difficult; I think his writing is just so excruciatingly boring it gives the illusion of difficulty" (p.20)
There's a MeToo theme. In the David Mamet symposium it points out that his female characters tend to be underwritten. I didn't think the Wendy Cope article was worth inclusion, but that may not have been her fault.
