After all that cerebral activity, I thought I’d just put up a painting today – I love a lot of Stanley Spencer’s work, including this: Swan Upping at Cookham (1915-9) which is in the Tate (more info here).
Hope you’re having a good week! I’m finding reading a bit slow, but today read (as well as some interesting books about childlessness from the 1920s – did you know that a lack of commonsense could be to blame?[!]) two-thirds of a bizarre, funny, grotesque American novel published in 1980, but written in the 1960s by an author who killed himself in 1969. Any guesses?
love his work ,always a quirky comic feel to them ,all the best stu
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces?
I second A Confederacy of Dunces.
That's a wonderful book. I hope you're enjoying it!
It has to be A Confederacy of Dunces. I read it for the first time a few years ago (and I BOUGHT the book too) and thought it was absolutely wonderful from start to finish.
Grotesque is the word for those characters. While I didn't love this book, it was good to read, and one of those modern classics that is really worth reading for the influences it has since had.
Gotta be A Confederacy of Dunces.
Glad you like Spencer, Simon! So do I. Twenty years ago, I devised a one man show, 'A Present from Cookham', based on his life for an actor friend.
Hello Simon – I love Stanley Spencer too. I used to live near Cookham where there is a nice little village-hall-type place with his paintings in. Well, that's what it was like when I was there – with his painting gear too, as he used to pull a cart I think around with it all in, and an umbrella. He used to paint the inhabitants of Cookham rising from the dead – amazing!
The nice little village-hall gallery in Cookham is still recognisable but is now a proper art gallery. No doubt much better for the paintings but not quite as charming as it used to be.
The nice little village-hall gallery in Cookham is still recognisable but is now a proper art gallery. No doubt much better for the paintings but not quite as charming as it used to be.