Disaffected young men of the Westworld have begun to believe that everything is loaded against them. Their self-respect has been stolen from them, they believe, by women who won't look twice at them. Their innate physical strength and their yearning to take on leadership roles are redundant attributes, while the breakdown of all their relationships is invariably blamed on them. They have willingly become what they never imagined being — permanent victims. [read full essay]
Vanessa Onwuemezi won the 2019 White Review Short Story Prize for her short story, ‘At the Heart of Things’. Her debut collection, Dark Neighbourhood, takes us through the liminal spaces of systems of power, such as borders, hotels or offices in the early hours. The world of this collection warps desires and voices; its themes are alienation, spirituality, family ties, loss. Onwuemezi’s characters are distant from themselves, but rendered fleetingly intimate to the reader through sound, rhythm and image. We talked about poetry and editing, the void, witchcraft and perception.
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What does it mean to connect with someone? What does it mean to see yourself in someone else? Is the former even possible without the latter? It’s potentially a solipsistic way of looking at the world, but then, what’s the alternative? A self-conscious and reflexive engagement with experiences that are ostensibly not our own? That feels worse because it is, to my mind, ultimately inauthentic. It means you’re interested because you ought to be, not because you genuinely are. Understanding and empathy become a moral imperative, not something instinctive, intuitive. [read full essay]
Neuroscience so confidently identifies consciousness with the cerebral cortex — the densely-folded, outer layer of grey matter in mammal brains — that surgeons sometimes question whether children born without one require anaesthetics at all. Yet these children cry, laugh, play, and distinguish familiar from unfamiliar stimuli — behaviours difficult to imagine alongside the total absence of experience. Animals whose cortex has been surgically removed continue to navigate mazes, eat, procreate, and nurse their young; if anything they are more active, and more emotional, than their normal peers. [read full essay]
Today, taking public transport often feels like taking a calculated risk. A risk that is continuing to shut many people living with disabilities or health conditions out of swathes of public life. The windows of Glasgow’s buses have little stickers on them declaring that, in order to allow for proper ventilation on the bus, they do not close fully. Glasgow’s passengers have proven these stickers wrong. Over the months, perhaps because of the cold or a lack of conviction in the importance of ventilation to prevent transmission of COVID-19, many of these windows have been forced closed. If I am feeling brave, I pull the windows open. Sometimes others close them. [read full essay]
Our end-of-year selection features two debuts: Sarvat Hasin’s contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, which is praised for its ‘propulsive energy and a refreshing lack of linguistic reserve’; and Egyptian-American poet Moheb Soliman’s collection of poems on the theme of place and belonging. There are also more familiar names including Cynthia Ozick and Gwendoline Riley, whose ‘genius’ novel My Phantoms was criminally overlooked for the Booker. Other choices include George Saunders’ ‘warm and vivacious’ Russian literature primer, Frank Wynne’s ‘absolutely essential’ collection of LGBTQ writing, translator Polly Barton’s ‘thoughtful and erudite’ essay-memoir about language and culture, and Charles Boyle’s The Other Jack — ‘a book about what we talk about when we talk about books.' [read full essay]
The historian Barbara Rosenwein is the latest to wonder whether a typology of the myths of love might be teased out of the centuries-long obsession with its elusive ideal. She distinguishes five of these: the miraculous kinship that unites soulmates; the transcendent rapture of the besotted state; selfless devotion to the loved one; ineradicable yearning that feeds on itself; and the blinkered carnal rampancy of the sex appetite. For all that its elements have propagated into five, there is an unmistakable hint here of Plato's triune definition of the soul, descending from the noble ideals housed in the head to the spirited adventures of the heart, and thence to the importunate hungers of the nether regions — the belly and genitals, their lust for possession. [read full essay]
Like much of the north, Preston is still battling the chronic after-effects of Thatcherism and deindustrialisation. As in most areas controlled by Labour councils, it suffered deep cuts to local government budgets after the 2007–8 Banking Crisis, leading to a contraction of services and provision across the board, from transport to social care. The big idea behind the ‘Preston Model’ is that, instead of waiting for Westminster to sort things out, locals decided to take action to reverse decline and regenerate their area. ‘At the heart of community wealth-building’, Brown and Jones explain, ‘is the belief that ordinary individuals and groups are capable of taking ownership, direction and control of their own resources in order to improve their own lives.’ [read full essay]
Rebecca Watson joined the ranks of promising young talents to have been showcased in the White Review Short Story Prize when she was shortlisted for the award in 2018, and has gone on to publish a remarkable debut. Published earlier this year, little scratch is a crisp, incisive and formally original novel about a day in the life of a young woman working in a newspaper office in London. She and I shared a windy outdoor coffee in East London, where she lives. We discussed Rebecca’s early influences, her second novel in the works, and how working from home also transforms the writer’s routine. [read full interview]
At its core, the Contemporary Tech Essay sets out to show how the internet and tech industry are warping our lives. In doing so, it will tend to cover one or two dominant themes. The first is self-optimisation, such as tech’s fixation on bio-hacking, evolutionary psychology, and nutrition over gastronomy. The second is surveillance: writers often return to areas such as data, targeted ads, and ‘God View.’ Take ‘The Night Gym’ and ‘Monstrous Energy’ from The Disconnect, both of which exemplify the former theme, and both of which link the availability of contemporary products and services geared towards maximising the hours in the day as stemming from a techno-capitalist culture. [read full essay]